Civ V at E3

Posted on June 17, 2010 by Meg

I was already sold on Civ V before I went to the demo at E3. Civilization, in all it’s incarnations, is one of my favorite games, and I was really looking forward to seeing the newest version.

Civ V keeps the hex grids and city building we all loved in Civ IV, but adds gorgeous new graphics, new diplomatic options and city-states. One major change from previous Civ versions is the end of the unit stack. You’ll no longer be able to pile up every possible unit into a killer stack and then march over to fight your enemies. Instead, ranged weapons have been introduced to combat. You’ll still have diplomatic routes to make peace or to demand tribute. Once you’ve captured an enemy city, you’ll have the usual options to take it over or raze it, and a new option of installing a puppet leader to keep the citizens happy and also receive resources from your new friend.

Game demonstrators used the nuke on Montezuma, because everyone agrees that he really is a jerk.

Other political leaders are shown in gorgeous cutscenes, subtitled from their native languages. Or ignore the animations and just declare war. I couldn’t get a list of national leaders who’ll be featured in Civ V, but I was promised that they range from the famous to the obscure across world cultures.

Civ V will also include city-states, a new form of NPCs somewhere between the barbarian states found in Civ IV and the other AI or player-controlled nations. Players will be able to make trade alliances with city-states, try to gain their votes in the UN for a diplomatic victory, or just fight them and take their stuff. Political relationships will become more complicated with the addition of city-states, since your relationships with city-states will affect your standing with nations. I wonder if I’ll be able to use my Civ superpower of making every other nation my ally.

Since I don’t like combat unless I’m forced to it (Why conquer cities when I can just let them revolt and join my glorious empire on their own?), I was pleased to see new options for diplomatic, science and culture victories. For a science-track victory, spaceship parts are physical entities that need to be moved and assembled in one place. Civ V includes a new stat of Piety, which will work in conjunction with religion founding to affect political and religious relations, and therefore, the cultural victory conditions. No word on whether that will make Isabella any easier to deal with.

The game will be available on the PC in September, 2010.

Oh, and the promo swag was a Civ Addicts Anonymous button. No more turns!

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When Booth Babes Go Bad

Posted on June 17, 2010 by Meg

As a girl reporter, I know I’m not supposed to like booth babes, but I actually found them to be part of the sensory overload of music and lights and scenery and action that gives the E3 show floor such a Roman games feel.

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Zombie promo girl throttles random passerby.

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Impromptu execution on the show floor.

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Yeah, she’s having a bad day.

“What’s a booth babe?” my dad asked on the phone the other night.

I told him.

“Oh! You mean a demo dolly!”

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In Transit

Posted on June 15, 2010 by Meg

Packing (verb) — Throwing the absolute minimum amount of wash-in-the-sink-and-hang-dry t-shirts in a bag, so I can leave maximum space for hair products and books.

Once again, I forgot to take my shampoo and conditioner and lotion and mouthwash and antiseptic out of my carryon and put them in a little plastic bag, and put the plastic bag on the belt separately, and once again, I went straight through security.

I’ve thought airline security was a bit ridiculous since I was caught with an oversize lotion (I forgot! Again! Because it’s stupid!) and I was allowed to take it on plane after explaining to the TSA agent that it was my very favorite lotion. Homeland Security can be totally thwarted by asking the security agent “Smell this lotion! Isn’t it nice? Wouldn’t you be sad to have to throw it away?” (This does not make the entire shoe-removal and baggage x-ray into a farce! No terrorists would ever think of saying please!)

But I hit a new low yesterday on the flight to Los Angeles, when the flight attendant made an announcement that she’d misplaced the corkscrew for first class, and did anyone happen to have one?

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RPGs With Chinese Characteristics

Posted on June 12, 2010 by Meg

I can’t always combine my love for China and games, but right now, I’m playing two different new Chinese releases. The first is RainBlood, an indie PC RPG from developer Soulframe. It’s technically not new, but the English translation is.  It’s a blend of mythic storytelling in fictionalized China, and hack-and-slash combat. I can’t tell yet if it’s a bit combat-heavy for my taste, or if the story is so intriguing that fighting bad guys is just a distraction.  RainBlood is beautiful, with hand-drawn greyscale backgrounds of curving Chinese village streets.

The second is Princess Fury, a classic combat RPG for the iPhone from Chinese developers Mo-Star. So far, this tends towards button-mashing, not my favorite gamestyle (I see button-mashers as the checkers of videogames — there’s nothing wrong with it, but wouldn’t you rather play something else?), but I’m really enjoying my adorable purple-haired princess with her giant sword and her male harem, er, adventuring party.

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Stranded Without A Phone

Posted on June 8, 2010 by Meg

This morning, I reviewed Stranded Without A Phone over at DIYgamer. I’m particularly proud of this review, it’s great when I can articulate exactly which parts made a game annoying and which made it awesome. (Spoiler alert: Most of it’s awesome.)

Stranded Without A Phone  is an iGadget game from indie developer Gilligames, set in the same  universe at their previous release Space HoRSE. (No knowledge of Space HoRSE is required to play and love Stranded, but it does explain why the protagonist is wearing what looks like a stylish dress-shirt-and-diaper ensemble.) I enjoyed the island survival and crafting found in Sims2 Castaway and Lost In Blue 2, so I went in with high hopes for Stranded Without A Phone.

 

Story:

You play as the lone survivor of a rocket crash en route to a new colony. You have no food, no water, no shelter, no way to call for help, and apparently no pants, either. On the upside, you’ve landed on a tropical island and not, say, a gas giant with a methane atmosphere.

Via Stranded Without A Phone [Review] | DIYgamer

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Choice of Dragon

Posted on June 1, 2010 by Meg

Playing Fantasy University reminded me of how much I enjoyed text-based adventure games. Not that FU is entirely text based, just the the quest texts and item descriptions are meant to be read.

I checked out Choice of Dragon, a free text-based adventure game  for a web browser or iToy.  The multiple-choice interaction gave me the opened-ended storyline I loved in text games, without the turn-key-in-lock frustrations of a game that parses text entry. (Hey, I wasn’t THAT nostalgic) You play as a dragon in a generic fantasy land, full of princesses to capture (or princes, your dragon can be an equal-opportunity kidnapper), adventuring parties to torment, and treasure to steal.

CoD is a solid IF game. Engaging descriptions of scenes and character never become long-winded. The story uses fun fantasy stereotypes, without going into the complete parody in Fantasy University or Kingdom of Loathing, and uses light sarcasm, but never takes on the unhelpful DM’s tone from Zork or Adventure. The game is fairly short, but reading the game is such a delight, it’s practically impossible not to play through a few times for different stories.

Each decision players choose has an in-game effect. You can fight or flee, split the booty or turn on your ally for the whole thing. Burning the village increases your infamy and treasure hoard, while letting the villagers live as your vassals increases your honor. Your stats continue to affect your abilities and choices, giving you more story options and personalization.

The game could be improved with a way to save the game. At several interesting crossroads,  I was sorry I could not travel both / and be one traveler, long I stood / and looked down one as far as I could. What works in poetry could be greatly improved with a saveslot. Right now, an incomplete game is stored for further progress next time, but there’s no way to return to a particular place besides restarting the game and trying to make all the same choices to lead back to that point. Knowing how way leads on to way, it’s a poor solution that could be solved with an option to save the game.

Choice of Broadsides, another similar game from Choice of Games, won my love with a choice of gender. Some games give you a female avatar, or swap some pronouns around to make the ladies feel at home, but CoB creates a world when young ladies sail the high seas and young gentlemen are sweet domestic angels. You encounter mutinous sailors, brave enemies and honorable sea captains, all female. Later, when one of your salty companions suggests you marry, and give yourself an attractive mate and the comforts of home life, you can choose a husband from an array of accomplished young gentlemen.

I didn’t enjoy the naval adventure quite as much the fantasy one, partly because I’m more of a princess-capturer than a vessel-seizer. I also felt like there were some choices that could be made in CoBroadsides that were just wrong, that in certain crossroads there was a distinctly correct and incorrect choice to be made, while in CoDragon I felt like different dragons and different choices led to different but equally valid stories.

If you also have fond memories of text-based games, both games are available online here or on the App store.

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E3

Posted on May 30, 2010 by Meg

Stick brought in the mail yesterday, and brought me a book I’d ordered and a couple adverts, and then asked if maybe I was waiting for something else to arrive. I guess in the excitement of getting my press credentials confirmed and booking my Los Angeles solo trip, I’d completely forgotten that a physical E3 media pass was on it’s way!

Yeah, I’m going to E3 next month! I first blogged about wanting to see E3 in 2006, so when my press pass came yesterday, I was more than little excited. I’ll be covering some events for Indie Game Mag, and then I’m going to go into the press room and file my stories, the way a real games journalist does. I’ll be the kind of games journalist who’s completely starstuck by who else is in the press room… but still.

Think I have time to find an old-fashioned press hat before the expo?

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Truth In Advertising

Posted on May 29, 2010 by Meg

This awesome recommendation appeared on the side of my Facebook page today.

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Chinese School After-Action Review

Posted on May 26, 2010 by Meg

Chinese school is over for the semester. I’ve been teaching here for two years now, the longest time I’ve worked in one school. RACL is really a special place, I’m glad I could work here. I had the best class this semester, thanks to a perfect combination of students, parents and administration. Oh, and my awesomeness.

I had a couple of boys in my class who competed to answer the most questions, win games and generally succeed in class. In doing so, they made it cool to raise your hand, and cool to have the answer. This lifted a lot of the burden of encouraging class participation from me, and all but eliminated two of my unfavorite classroom events: the horrible dead silent stares following a question, and the hilarious hipness of not having a clue.  The downside was that I also had a class cheater, a boy who desperately wanted to compete with the others, and it was weird for me to create classroom games with anti-cheating mechanics.

I believe that anti-cheating measures and dire warnings about plaguerism set up an antagonistic relationship between teacher and student. I want students to feel comfortable asking me questions and relating what we’ve covered to their other interests.  How can you ask questions of someone who’s just told you they think you’re lying scum, that you’d be downloading a term paper right now if they hadn’t thwarted your sneaky plan with threats of CopyScape? 

On the first day of fall semester, I told the kids they if they needed to come in late, leave class early, or go to the bathroom during class, they didn’t need to ask permission. They should just do what they needed as quietly as possible and catch up what they missed from a classmate or on the class blog. Thanks to years of asking permission and requiring a hall pass for everything, they couldn’t believe it at first. I don’t know if this system would work in a bigger school (I probably wouldn’t be allowed to do that in public school), but it was a great policy for this group. Now I didn’t have to spend ten minutes listening to stories about why it really, really, really wasn’t their fault they were two minutes late, and we didn’t have to interrupt the flow of discussion to request and give permission get up for a tissue or go to the toilet.

I didn’t have any helicopter parents. This is one factor over which I have absolutely no control, so I’ll just be grateful it happened.

My classroom this semester shared a wall with an awesome teacher who saw (or, I guess, heard) my students cheering or laughing as a sign of a successful, active learning environment. Let’s just say that has not always been the case for me, and it’s been quite hard for me to turn a roomful of duds into active participants and then face criticism over my unruly students. No scolding about noise, or veiled remarks about uncontrolled students, from my classroom neighbor this term!

Some of this great semester is me and my teaching awesomeness. A last-minute room reassignment to a room without a whiteboard doesn’t mean a botched lesson. Six new late-adds can be added into my lesson plan.

Let’s talk about classroom nirvana. This is the state where I’m pitching my lesson difficulty right to hit the mainsteam kids without boring the highest achievers (easier to do here without a Charlie Gordon in class!), I’ve split up the chatterboxes, I know who’s listening without taking notes and who’s just staring off into space, I can recognise whispers and rustles without turning around, for that magical “James, leave Kimmy alone!” while I’m writing on the board.  It takes me a long time to become an education jedi, so I usually get to this state towards the end of the semester, and have two or three great lessons before the class ends and I have to start learning names all over again. I got to classroom nirvana about halfway through this semester, and just had a string of really good classes.

Blah blah blah, the kids learned a lot,  I could see their vocab improve and their understanding of  poetry deepen, and more blah blah blah. But most importantly, the kids were my evil minions.

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MyTribe’s Second Island

Posted on May 18, 2010 by Meg

I finally built the Great Ark and got off the island. Oh, hi, I’m talking about MyTribe again, not LOST.

When your tribe completes the Ark and sails to a new island, they’ll bring everything from the first island’s storehouse, even if that’s more than the tribe’s new storehouses can hold.  Making sure your stocks are full before leaving seems like a good idea, but it can create a small problem because if your tribe already has more rocks and wood than your starter storehouses can hold, you can’t clear any trees or rocks.  I arrived with lots of skilled people and lots of supplies, and no places to build all the housing my tribe needed. Oops!

Your tribe also retains everything they’ve found, harvested and made (under Supplies and then Raw Resources)

When you choose a new island, you can also choose three new mysteries. (Details on unlocking all of them are in my MyTribe mysteries walkthrough, if you’re stuck) The fountain of youth is probably the most valuable island mystery. It wasn’t so important in the old single-player version, but keeping your tribespeople young is essential in the Facebook MyTribe. Adding to your tribe becomes prohibitively expensive in stork feathers, so you need to keep your tribespeople young and fit. A drink from the fountain of youth makes your over-forty crowd feel 40, and your under-forty crowd feel 24, permanently.

The mysterious stump may be the worst possible mystery. The resulting Ever Tree is pretty useless, since you can replenish your wood source by planting saplings at any time. A sapling doesn’t cost any resources, just a tribesperson to tend it, and there’s also a MyTribe achievement for planting 20 saplings.

I knew I didn’t want a star rock or moon rock, since I already have more stardust and moondust than I can use.  I also didn’t need the Cornicopia Bush, because I kept all the stored harvests of berries and the ability to plant all the seeds gained from having a Cornicopia Bush on my previous island.

I picked a new island with a fountain of youth, the tiki head, and the fossil rock. The science bonus for the fossil rock is pretty helpful, but it would probably have been more beneficial on my first island, when I had fewer people and they were producing science more slowly.

The tiki head, well, I should just admit that I picked it because it was pretty. The powerup for any new babies is good too, but I won’t be using it all that often, since it costs me over sixty (!!!) stork feathers for a new tribesperson, and by the time I finish unlocking the tiki head, it’ll be even more expensive.

Collecting stork feathers is where MyTribe turns into a typical Facebook game. To accumulate stork feathers, you’ll need to visit your friends’ islands. Since players will more friends will progress faster, it only encourages the annoying friend-spam cycle. For maximum progress, players need to sign in daily to collect the feathers, but at least MyTribe doesn’t actively punish players for not checking in. (I’m looking at you, Farmville, Island Paradise, and the rest.) I’ve never had a problem telling my friends to play a game I enjoy – I blogged about enjoying the original MyTribe without the possibility of stork feather benefits from newly converted players – and I don’t want a game that requires players to participate in chain letter invitations.

Fortunately, most of MyTribe is a light strategy game on a cute tropical island, without the constant requests to exchange gifts or sign up for email updates.

What do you think are the most helpful mysteries? What would you pick for your second island?

Edit: Just added the solution to the new mysteries, Flotsam’s Call and the Jewel Vault.

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