Not all glamor and groupies

So I have three games left to review (two for DIYGames and one for Computer Games Magazine) and I am kind of putting off finishing them. Not for any legit reason. I've given one of them a really serious play through, so I'm ready to finish the review soon. One I've begun playing, but not very enthusiastically. The third I am having trouble motivating myself for, even though it is actuallly an exciting game, supposedly.

I guess what I am trying to say is that game reviewing is not all glamor, bells and whistles. Sometimes it can feel like a chore when you have to notice all the minutiae about the game you are playing and remember to take screenshots along the way. There's not a lot of revelling in the cool factor since if anything really cool comes along you have to find a way to capture the coolness in a sentence or two.

Don't get me wrong. I love doing it, still. I mean, I've only been doing it for a few years. And for money only in the last year. Nothing beats seeing your name in print (I've written for four websites all told and one magazine) and that first paycheck for my Victoria review in CGM was sweet validation that I may have something worth saying.

Still, there are those times when reviewing feels more like work than play. Not that I have any intention of stopping. After all, even this blog will sort of review-ish only with no real deadlines on any material (qv my comments on Imperialism 2). But with so much on my plate at the moment - my own fault, I know - it's hard to keep going.

Ah well, back to the grind.

Help a guy out

So a friend is trying to design a computer simulation based on the Community Land Use project of the 1960s. He has a forum devoted to this project, which he sees as a more realistic and politically driven SimCity type thing, at his cooly named website.

The forum has a section where input into the design document will be welcomed. At this point at least. How far he gets with it will depend on a lot of things, and he is still at the planning stage. But there are lots of people out there who know more about games than we do.

Mind you, he hates Children of the Nile, which I like a lot. In fact, I am beginning to distrust his judgment on games altogether. Still, he knows what he likes and has a good reason for most of the things he does. So keep an eye on what he does, even if it is just to see how long it takes to get something like this done.

Age of Empires III: Age of Discovery

The forums at Heaven Games are reporting that the new Ensemble Studios game will be on the Age of Discovery, based on the story in this month's PC Gamer. So the press breaks the exclusive story before Ensemble can announce it on its website.

The game will go from 1500 to 1850 and tell the story of the rise of American civilizations. Other details are leaking out as people read the PCGamer story and tell people what is in it. I hardly ever buy the magazine myself, but I may just do so to check this out.

Frankly, I'm a little surprised. I was expecting another ancient/medieval thing, since that is what they have proven great at. Still this is a mostly unexplored subject for a real time strategy 3H game. Sure, we have GSC's American Conquest, but it's really not that good of a game. Ensemble has the talent and the track record to make this work.

I find muskets and cannon less interesting than swords and spears, but I'll almost certainly get AOE3 when it arrives.

War! Age of Imperialism - getting your ass kicked on the cheap

I am now playing two simultaneous online sessions of War! Age of Imperialism, both hosted by a fellow game reviewer. In one of them, I am so far behind and stuck in southern Africa that I will likely end up waiting out the game. The other has just started, but I have a bad feeling.

If you haven't played this now inexpensive gem, I recommend picking it up. I reviewed it for DIYGames last year, but only now is it getting the shelf space and word of mouth that are essential to sales.

My misgivings expressed in the review still stand, though. The board game system it is based on means that luck plays as big a role as skill. On the Risk vs Diplomacy axis, it is much, much closer to Risk. If you get bad rolls on the exploration phase (or are surrounded by 12 strength natives) you can't get going early enough to make up the territory gap.

A savvy player can salvage this if he has a good plan and is not operating alone. But in a match versus equals or superiors (like the game I'm midway through), it can look like a lost cause. I'm not giving up - I never give up. Even when my friend Kevin is killing me in any of the many wargames we've tried.

Still, the revival of interest in WAOI means that there is now an easy to play MP experience that doesn't have a lot of time intensive turns. Turns only take a few minutes, results are quick and intuitive and the rules are really simple. This is probably the best beer and pretzel TBS out now. Sure, Civ 3 is a better game, but who are these people who play it online? And does anyone really have the time to play Europa Universalis online? WAOI means you can get a lot of turns done in a night, and since it is easy to figure out, there is none of the "What was I going to do next?" problems if a player goes a week or two without a turn.

In casual online play, you want something closer to Risk and, so long as it is a little more sophisticated (I hate Risk) and avoids the "Battle of Karelia" problem that plagues Axis and Allies, I'll jump at it.

Risk versus Diplomacy Axis

This is a term that I will be using from time to time - I just used it in a post without explaining what it meant, though.

Risk and Diplomacy are both world conquest board games, but each has a different approach.

Risk is all about the dice rolls. There is not a lot that separates a great Risk player from a good Risk player. Some planning is necessary, of course, but more depends on fate and luck.

Diplomacy is all skill. There are no dice, no combat result tables, nothing but the player and his/her brain.

The Risk vs Diplomacy axis is the spectrum along which all strategy games lie. Some lean more towards luck, others towards skill. All are somewhere in the middle.

Imperialism 2

A thread on the Quarter To Three forum reminded me of Frog City's classic Imperialism series, so, in a fit of nostalgia, I installed Imperialism 2. And promptly realized how hard this game was.

People talk about learning curves today and they usually mean that a game has a lot of menus and stuff that you never get all the way through on the first few goes. Imperialism 2 has a real learning curve, though, because even though it is always obvious what needs to be done and the order it needs to be done in, it is not always clear how to get from A to B in an efficient manner.

I was great at the original Imperialism game - it was easy to muster a medium sized army and take down a neighboring country, enabling you to expand your resource base quickly. You can't do this as easily in Imperialism 2. Plus, your soldiers eat food in Imp2, so if you expand your army too quickly you will run short of the food you need to keep the labor.

It's a delicately balanced game with a simple diplomatic model, and yet the entire series seems to get short shrift when people talk about great strategy games of the nineties. It was turn based, and the battle minigame wasn't very good (even though the automated battle system was worse) but there was so much going on in this series economy and infrastructure wise that it's a shame that they are overlooked.

Frog City followed the Imperialism series with the very average Trade Empires, a good looking but ultimately hollow exercise in profit making through history. Since then, they have also done Tropico 2, but have largely been missing in action. Their website is little more than a tech support and sales site at this point, with no announcements of upcoming games or anything. Which is really a shame. Frog City was one of the few strategy game developers with a woman (Rachel Bernstein) as a lead programmer, but even without that they deserve a little more credit for those two Imperialism games. Very difficult, but very elegant.

2004 for strategy gamers

Suffice it to say, 2004 was a great year to be a PC Gamer. No matter what type of game you liked, there was a good chance that something released in the past year would sate your thirst. Well, adventure gamers had it hard, but they always have it hard. And single player RPGs were in very short supply. For the most part, though, gamers had it good.

Strategy gamers in particular had a lot to be thankful for. Rome: Total War and Sims 2 proved that reliable franchises do not have to just phone it in. The Thrones and Patriots expansion for Rise of Nations expanded that great game without breaking the precarious balance of cultures that makes it so much fun. Paradox looks like it has beaten the bloat disease by releasing a preciously simple game like Crusader Kings - the hardcore Victoria players hate it, but I can't really see why.

There were some real sleeper titles too, like Sunflower's Knights of Honor and the ever underappreciated Timegate's Kohan 2 (What do these guys have to do to get some respect from the average gamer?). I'm hearing good things about Armies of Exigo, so I should probably check it out, too.

Disappointments? Axis and Allies proved that Timegate is mortal after all - it was an ill-conceived mess, IMO. And Golemlabs proved that they never learn from their own mistakes, because Superpower 2 was terrible.

The theme of the year was World War 2. I can't count how many WW2 games were out this year - both strategy players and shooter afficianados had lots to choose from.

Age of Empires 3

OK, so the Ensemble Studios updates were just a bunch of dates counting down all the momentus stuff before Ensemble was created and Age of Empires was made. They were not a clue as to the actual new game itself. Disappointing and a little anti-climactic.

Fall of Rome = big deal
"Rise of Rome" expansion = not so big

What makes a game bad?

Check out this piece and the associated comments on Scott Miller's Game Matters blog.

Tough question, since every bad game is bad in its own way. Since I know strategy games better than any other genre, here's a quick and dirty guide to making a bad strategy game.

1. Bad interface - this is the real killer. A good UI can pass by almost unnoticed - look at the elegance of Rise of Nations, for instance. A lot of strategy games confuse complex with complicated and make an interface that tends to the latter.

2. Backwards priorities - Think about this year's Superpower 2. Deep and complicated domestic model with a lot of detail on social and economic policy. Now look at the foreign policy/military model - terrible. People play world politics sims - mostly - because they are interested in wars and diplomacy and all that stuff. By putting more energy into how many options were open to a player who liked variable tax rates, Golemlabs completely missed the boat. The result was one of the most disappointing games of the year.

3.Quick copies - no game can become a success without seeing a spate of copycats in its wake. Soon after Civilization became a hit, 4x games were all over the place. One of the most ignominious was Activision's Rise and Rule of Ancient Empires. It had research, city building, warfare - all the stuff that Civ had. But it had only two sides, terrible graphics and no real sense of discovery and expansion. It short, it was Civ-Lite. Look at all those Tycoon games. How many are actually any good? Two? Three? Even Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 and Railroad Tycoon 3 were middling games - and they have real legacies behind them. National Lampoon's University Tycoon? Rarely have I needed to play a game less to know how much it stinks.

Feel free to contribute more suggestions. This list is hardly exhaustive.

Age of Empires 3

For the last couple of weeks, Ensemble Studios has had little historical teasers on their website, advertising the upcoming Age of Empires 3. So far we've had the usual stuff on Sargon, the Greeks, the Romans, etc.

Now we have one that's clearly Medieval - "1096 - the First Crusade".

This can only mean one thing. Age of Empires 3 will be a combination of the first two Age games, taking us from the beginning of history into the Middle Ages.

Will they go beyond that? Unclear, but unlikely. Bruce Shelley told me in an unpublished interview that pre-mechanization weapons have a lot going for them game design wise, not least of which are ease of comprehension and looking cool.

So you heard it hear - but probably not first - "Age of Empires 3: Stabby, stabby goodness."

End of Year wrapups begin

Gamespy's End of Year wrap-up has three strategy games on their PC top ten list: Warhammer, Rome and Sims 2, with Sims 2 taking strategy game of the year honors. I guess you could consider Pirates a strategy game, after a fashion, but it's really more action/RPG in my opinion. Warhammer gets the nod as the game that best used a license and Kohan 2 is acknowledged as the most underrated game of 2004.

IGN has given out its PC Game of the Year awards, too, and recognizes the same big games - Sims 2 and Rome. Sims 2 gets dubbed best management sim of the year and Rome wins best strategy game and best use of sound. Rise of Nations: Thrones and Patriots wins best expansion of the year.

Not many real surprises here. I don't take IGN all that seriously - they have a "Babes" section, for crying out loud - but both sites have made reasonable cases. The lack of Doom 3 awards is kind of shocking given the general salivation from the mainstream press, but since it's a shooter I won't say anymore than that.

Real Time Strategy too imprecise.

While reading a thread on "Best RTS of the Year", I noticed a lot of votes for Rome: Total War. It's my favorite game of the year - so far - so I understand the sentiment. But is it really RTS? The real "strategy" component (the campaign game) is turn-based, not real time. The battle engine is actually tactics, not strategy, though some of the battles can have strategic consequences - especially when you hunt down that 8-star Celtic general who has been driving you crazy. In fact, if you simulate most of the battles, there is precious little real time stuff going on at all.

You often hear people say how much they hate RTS games, but in this case they usually have one type of RTS in mind. They are talking about those Warcraft/Starcraft type games where you assign peons to collect resources and then build an army to smack your opponent.

Then you have the RTS games like Paradox's grand strategy games - Europa Universalis and its progeny. Clearly strategy, clearly real-time, but nothing like either the Total War games or the *crafts.

You could even go so far as to call city-builder or Tycoon games RTS, since they require strategy and unfold in real-time.

In short, RTS is as broad a category as strategy itself. With turn-based games largely being pushed aside (except in ye olde wargame circles), RTS may simply become synonymous with strategy.

I would prefer to separate the *craft and Age of X games from the lot by calling them 3H games - Harvest, Hoard and Hassle. We already have 4X as an abbreviation, so 3H fits just fine. Plus, it is more descriptive of the game style than the simple delineation of how time is measured.

The Paradox Games can just be called Real Time Grand Strategy since that's all it is. Everything is done in real time, the decisions are all pretty high level, so RTGS it is.

As for the Total War games (and the upcoming Imperial Glory from Pyro Studios), they kind of stand alone. Real-time Historical Battle Sims doesn't do justice to the campaign component, and Action Risk is too snarky to be useful. So feel free to contribute a new acronym for these types of games.

Spike TV video game awards

OK, we all know that this is a stupid award show targetting...well, I'm not sure who they are targetting. Lots of rappers were presenters, so I guess the target audience was anyone who likes rap or hip-hop music. But the models purring cheat codes suggest that they were targetting teenage males. Tara Reid was there, though, so the target audience may have been the mentally infirm.

Anyway, you can find a list of the winners just about anywhere so there's no need to rehash them all. I will say that the Spike TV Video Game Awards have done strategy games no favors by not having any strategy games win. Rome: Total War was nominated for best PC game, but that was about it. I mean, there isn't even a Best Strategy Game category - or best sim. There is Best Military Game, but that went to a shooter. Considering how console focused the whole show is, I shouldn't be too surprised.

So we have these awards and we have the AIAS awards and all the publications' annual lists. Hopefully in a few years, when Spike TV reinvents itself again to be a cooking channel, this travesty of a broadcast will be long gone. But there is still no industry awards show that anybody takes really seriously. In fact, I suspect that an endorsement as "Game of the Year" from any of the PC Magazines carries more weight with gamers and developers than anything that Snoop Dogg passes out.

The ironic thing about the Spike awards is that no matter how often they drag some celebrity on stage to say that they game, too, the less secure in my coolness I feel. So Method Man and Red play games? Good for them. I'm sure they do a lot of stuff that I do - eat, drink, sleep. I don't think I need a man of average talent or woman of even less talent (hello, Ms. Reid)to make me feel like I'm part of some big social movement of urban cool. I came out of the gaming closet a year ago.

Alexander the Great Disappointment

Oliver Stone's Alexander was a critical failure and a commercial mediocrity. Despite all the pre-release hype and early Oscar buzz, the end product was a major disappointment, especially to ancient history afficianadoes like myself.

So you have to feel sorry for GSC Gameworld, the Ukrainian developer tapped to make the "official" Alexander game. Movie tie-ins are pretty commonplace in the gaming industry these days, and now a strategy game is getting the Hollywood treatment. I'm sure that GSC was hoping that the movie would be a huge hit and that people would start picking up the game with a pouty Colin Farrel on the box.

And now they are entering a crowded Christmas season stuck to a dud of a movie. Plus, there are two other Alexander games out there. Tin Solider: Alexander the Great is a wargame, and Alexander: The Heroes Hour is sort of a roleplaying RTS.

GSC's big advantage is its track record. They made Cossacks and American Conquest - two games that I could not see the appeal of, but both managed to be huge hits is Europe. Alexander was intended to be a showcase for their new Cossacks II engine, though a quick glance didn't reveal any major changes to the game.

The reviews I've seen of Alexander the game are average at best (IGN gave it a high of 7, though the text of the review made it seem that the reviewer hated it.) The demo did nothing for me, but, like I said, I didn't like their other games either.

We're used to seeing bad computer games come out of movies. But when your game was supposed to debut some of your new tech, the one-two punch of a bad movie and a mediocre game worries you. I, of course, have little doubt that GSC will continue to make money hand over fist from the Euro market for Cossacks II. Still, the debacle of a movie must have made some people at GSC wince when they saw what they were tied to. I mean, no one expected Catwoman to be good.

The idea of making a game about Alexander is not so new or original. In fact, there is little doubt that, given the release of the movie, Alexander games were inevitable. After all, the release of the Troy movie was closely followed by the abysmal Battle for Troy and the expansion for Spartan, Gates of Troy (soon available in North America). But to so conspicuously tie a strategy game to a movie is a big moment for the genre. I'm sure that it looked like a win-win for GSC. The movie was getting good buzz while in production, GSC has a lot of loyal fans and with Ubisoft doing the distribution there was good chance of shelf space - unlike the other Alexander games.

Until I play the full version, I will reserve final judgment on whether GSC has made a silk purse out of Stone's sow's ear.

Fixed the comments

OK. I imported a HaloScan script so now anyone can comment and leave a name or email address.

Almost makes me want to learn HTML so I can do this myself.

No comments by non-members?

I just learned that non-blogspot members can only comment anonymously. Lame, lame, lame.

If you have a comment, just sign it at the bottom of the box.

Civilization 4 - what's left to do?

Civilization 4 is on its way. Not sure when, though screenshots of an early build can be found in PC Gamer's January 2005 issue. So sometime in late 2005 is not a bad estimate.

Like many, I found Civ 3 close to greatness, but not close enough. Too much seemed confused or poorly considered. Huge maps were unplayable because of corruption, captured settlers worked more slowly but it was sometimes easy to forget which was which, the idea of unique units did nothing for me and the lack of an early source of fresh water would kill you quick.

Though it did little to fix these problems, the Conquests expansion made Civ 3 one of my favorite games of all time. Not sure how, but the addition of more civilizations and a few new traits and wonders made me forgive all the sins of the first incarnation. Corruption was still and issue and the AI's diplomatic cheating became more noticeable as I got better. The new maps and units for the "Conquests" part of the game were a blast too. It's been a year and Conquests is still my TBS of choice.

Early reports say that Civ 4 will take out the "unfun" parts. This was how Soren Johnson put it at the Game Developers Conference last March. For him (and some of us), the unfun means corruption and pollution.

Both of these game mechanics have been in Civ since the birth of the game. They are concepts that longtime players understand and have resigned themselves to. Now they will be removed in what appears to be a major reimagining of the Civ franchise.

Ah yes. The franchise. It seems that every strategy game out there now is a franchise. Heck, every game. No one is more excited to see a Pirates! remake than me. (please Santa. I've been good.) Still, a part of me wonders why the talent at Firaxis hasn't done anything really, really new in a long time. Meier's Dinsosaur game was abandoned, and probably for good reason. He knows more about game design than I ever will. But Civ 4 is just another step in the "sure thing" "make a hit" mill that the industry is turning into.

I will buy Civ 4. So will millions of others. But you know what? Based on reputation, I'd buy almost any game Firaxis made.

2005 IGF nominees

The 2005 Independent Games Festival nominees have been announced and there's a strong strategy presence.

In the Open Category, Sliterine's Legion Arena, Black Hammer's Supremacy: Four Paths to Power and Donohoe Digital's War! Age of Imperialism go head to head with seven other games.

War! Age of Imperialism is a bit of a surprise since I reviewed it for Do-It-Yourself Games over a year ago. It's hardly a new game. Still, it's a very good turn based game, best enjoyed in multiplayer. I have an ongoing game at the moment and find myself in a lot of trouble. I have an obvious target, but it will take some time to get all prepared for the attack.

Legion Arena is Slitherine's latest ancient wargame and is certainly an exciting idea. It's sort of an RPG game where you build the ultimate ancient army through a series of victories against historical enemies in an RTS combat environment. Arena is most exciting since it is the debut of the combat engine for Slitherine's upcoming grand strategy sequel Legion II. I'll be honest - to this point I've found their games range anywhere from average to poor. I hate to say this, since the McNeil's who run Slitherine are two of the nicest guys I've met in the industry. They always have time for questions. Legion II will certainly be seen as a Rome: Total War rip-off, which is a shame since Slitherine's been mining the ancient world for grand strategy ideas for years now.

I know very little about Supremacy: Four Paths to Power. Its graphics look dated, but the idea of a turn-based space soldier game is very appealing.

In the Web/Downloadable category there is no strategy game that looks as brilliant as last year's winner Oasis. Lux is a Risk-type game, but looks like there is a little more customization to it. I should try the demo before I say too much about it. Pretty colors. And Canadian too. Like me.

Star Chamber from Nayantara Studios is a 4X multiplayer strategy game - a tough market to break into since the idea of a MP strategy game is pretty off-putting given the time that most of them take. The developers promise short sessions, though. It looks a little like Master of Orion, only it's clearly different. It uses cards to control play (a much more common mechanic than it used to be. The Magic the Gathering influence is spreading pretty far and wide. Star Chamber even has deck building. Odd concept for a 4X game.

Why Portico? And Uti-whatsit?

I originally wanted "Porcius" to be the address of this blog, since it is my pseudonym in a number of online communities. Some guy in Alberta has it though, and is using it to write a decent daily blog. So I went for "Cato" and it was taken too, though the blog it's attached to seems to be inactive. So I went with Uticensis, the honorific title given to Marcus Porcius Cato the Younger after his suicide at Utica. (The younger Cato is a hero of mine.)

Portico is just Latin for doorway, and some vain side of me hoped that this blog could be a doorway for some people into something.

The point and purpose here

So what is this blog about?

Good question. It took me a while to answer it.

Computer gaming is my major hobby, and something I am sometimes paid to write about, so I thought "Why not write about games?"

Well, for one thing, there is no shortage of gaming blogs out there. Look around. Hundreds and hundreds of blogs devoted to every wannabe tech writer's opinions on what is wrong with games today.

Well, here's one more but with a little more focus.

Strategy games are my thing. I play almost every one I can get my hands on and it is something that I know a little bit about. So that's what I'm going to write about. Not just the games themselves, but design issues, philosophy, some general game culture critique plus the usual raving about games I like and games I don't.

As a former member of academe, I may get a little pedantic at times so feel free to smack me if you need to.

Time is precious, and I have precious little of it. So we'll see how long I can keep this up. In the meantime, play some strategy games, get some opinions of your own, and we'll see how much we line up.

Hello?

First post! W00t