Hammer and Sickle, huh? I keep hearing such mixed things about that I don’t know what to make of it. What do you make of the opinions saying it’s too hard, reducing missions to die until you get it right puzzles?
I’ve seen some movies of the game and it doesn’t look that engaging. What makes this game so good?
Rediscovered MUSHing (text-based online roleplaying) and I’ve been in several scenes that kept me up well past 2:45 without even realizing it. “Oh, crap, I have to be at work in 5 hours!”
Haven’t been playing any console or PC games since mid-December with the exception of CoV on rare occasions but that’s more like filler when there’s nothing else to do.
It’s kinda like Pirates!, except in space. Best analogy I can find.
Had another one last night. Dammit!
You know, I’m still really digging EG after a few more hardcore sessions. I guess I’m at that stage where I like small scale “management” sims like Evil Genius, Ghostmaster, and Roller Coaster Tycoon. I mean I just finished playing like three action games (Max Payne 2, CoD2, and Pariah) and they were OK but didn’t have as much depth. I used to loves me some FPS; now not so much. I like the paced planning games where things are usually slower but then there’s a flurry of activity for like 10-15 minutes every couple hours, then back to the fixing, planning, and restructuring to better handle it next time.
I don’t mind starting over after 15 hours of gameplay on games like that because the game will be different the next time around, because my entire approach will be different. But also the scope is more limited than Civ4, so the game experience isn’t 50% remembering what you were doing over here vs. over there vs. back here. I like Civ4, but damned if there aren’t 1000 things to do at once. Give me 50 things to do at once.
Play The Movies, then.
I find it scratches my micromanagement itch nicely, without going to overboard.
Thanks for the recommendation, I’ll take a look.
3.6 on gamespot scared me off
I admit i played a lot of this but gave up when I realized that there wasn’t quite enough of a useful tutorial nor enough feedback from the stars to figure out why they were having tantrums on set for no apparent reason.
Bear in mind that Quatoria is also the same person who said that Shin Megami Tensai Nocturne was the best thing since sliced bread. I picked that one up and found it dry, dull, repetitive, and overly difficult without sitting around killing enemies for hours to properly train your underlings out of being gimped.
I think he just has a very high threshold for pain mixed with his fun.
For what it’s worth, I like Nocturne a lot. I haven’t played it in a while, but I’m going to get back to it. The gameplay isn’t perfect, but it has that Tim Schaefer everything-else-is-awesome thing going for it. Really I think you have to be prepared to fight beasties in JRPGs, period. I went into it expecting lots of random encounters, and sure enough, there they were. I find it more congenial by far than an MMO in that respect though.
DeepT’s opinions on Evil Genius are close to my own, but it was fun for a while. Any game that lets you put the Ark of the Covenant in the break room next to the pinball machine…
The Movies… my experience with that game was a humiliating moral lesson. I started a couple of games trying to learn the ropes. Then, when I figured out what worked, I started a third game. I got the basic buildings plus two stages and no other sets. I hired the full five scriptwriters – although there weren’t enough applicants, so three of them were people who came in looking to be janitors. Here’s a typewriter, kid! I set them all to work churning out comedy scripts. P. G. Wodehouse once wrote a short story which jokingly involved the premise that in Hollywood people are kidnapped off the street, locked in offices, and forced to write scripts. I was actually doing that. Every time they finished a script and tried to leave the office, I grabbed them and chucked them back in. It was just like wrangling imps in Dungeon Keeper, although minus the awesome imp noises. They created a steady stream of one-star comedy scripts. I produced as many as I could, staffing my films with talentless directors and played-out no-name actors. Both of my stages were in constant use. The scripts I didn’t produce, I sold. All of my movies were one-star comedies, and their number was legion. I released them one after the other, and every time, the critics would deservedly pan them, but there would be enough stupid chumps of the general public who didn’t realize that my studio (“She’s Not Really Chinese Productions, LLC,” logo: strange slit-eyed girl scout) was a dreck-fountaining shit festival of terrible, awful, criminally bad movies. I was the most hated man in Hollywood, but also easily the richest, because my earnings were massive and my costs were minimal. Conditions on my lot were terrible. In a costly fit of whimsy I replaced all of the terrain with sand. The only food – and indeed the only entertainment – was a hotdog cart. The only restroom was a single portable. All of my employees were paid far less than anyone anywhere else. The only thing I spent money on – apart from sand, of course – was a fully staffed laboratory. With only a small fraction of my massive pile of cash, I led research by a large margin. I used this advantage to make films with far and away the best technology available to any studio. And I wasted sound and color on these terrible, terrible abominations of comedies, these ineptly filmed and abysmally scripted exhibitions of aging, talentless actors despised by everyone. And I made ever more money doing it. I had two billion dollars in 1950.
Then I realized what I’d done. I was the Electronic Arts of movies. I have not played the game since and doubt I ever will again. There are some things that are, beyond any question of ethics or morality, simply wrong.
Oh, it’s hard, no question - it can be very hard- but so far, no fight that I’ve run into has been a puzzle. With sound tactics and some crerative thinking, I’ve only needed to save and reload to combat a couple bouts of incredibly bad luck, as you occasionally have in any rng based system. The only significant complaint that I would levy against the title is that it can be unclear about what your objective is, and in what time frame you have to complete it. It helps significantly to consult something like the walkthrough at CDV’s boards cdv-board.de in order to get a pointer when you’re stuck. I’m really enjoying it, even with that problem.
The story line and dialogue are much more convoluted and interesting, you frequently face some exceptionally challenging combat situations (which I love), and the missions go out of their way to reward you for thinking like a spy. Extra experience for hiding your bodies, practicing deception on your own party members, et al. Great stuff.
That’s true. It’s also true that I can find a lot of enjoyment in things that other people might find dull or frustrating. For me, the fun of creating new demon hybrids, levelling up my existing demons, finding new demons to fuse, and the great plot all conspired to keep me hooked on SMT Nocturne. Man, did I love that demon hybridizing system. The only thing that came close to breaking my will were the increasingly insane extra dungeons, in the underworld.
Thanks quatoria, that was exactly what I hoped to hear. Hard doesn’t bother me, just so long as it’s not so hard there is only one abuse-the-game|AI solution. The bits about attention to detail and uncertain objectives actually appeal to me quite a bit.
Dungeon Keeper and Dungeon Keeper 2 had this.
At midnight the narrator would say “It’s the witching hour”.
There were others, one for 1AM 2AM and so on.
At like 3 or 4, he’d ask, “are you still there, the imps were about to lock up”
I plan on finally checking out Mount and Blade based on the comments in this thread.
Damn it, Civ 4 nailled me again. I thought to myself, “I’ll just see what it’s like to play the Indians and go for early religion” (I usually use bronze working to chop out settlers)… Next thing I know it’s 1500 AD, and dawn…
I can’t do 2:45 mornings any more.
You see, my 14 month old (and nigh unendurably cute) baby daughter wakes up within 15 minutes of 6 AM sharp, each and every morning.
And right now we’re working on weaning her, which means that I need to give her her first big milk bottle every morning.
So 2:45 AM game spree = unbelievably painful waking after 3 hours. Until further notice 11:45 is my new 2:45. Sooner or later she’ll be bigger and schedules will change again, but for right now I’m digging 6 AM pretty seriously :-D
Cheers!
Rob
I love that last one. Heard it several times! (back in the olden days, when dinosaurs ruled the earth and I wasn’t a parent yet…)
What were some other late lines of his? “Don’t you have better things to do?” (or something much like that, believe it or not…)
I remember Earthbound for the NES having your mother call you if you played too long. That was hysterical.
Repo, I feel your pain. I have too little ones, one 3 and one just 1 year of age. You gotta get your sleep when you can.