That would be an adequate adjective for my tax software or a spreadsheet that I was using, but I don’t see how “functions as intended” has anything to do with whether a game is good or not. If the design is poor, functioning as designed has little to recommend for it.
Hence the limiting descriptor and the second sentence ;)
I very much liked Xcom I characterize it as very good especially with the expansion, but not great. I have played too much Civ V for me to say anything other than I loved it while acknowledging its significant flaws and I respect Tom and others who simply couldn’t get past the awful combat AI.
Ace’s Patrol and Starships were both good little games, I got my money’s worth but were well short of great.
The unforgivable sin for Civ:Be was it just wasn’t fun and in fact was boring. Any game that I follow asleep playing at Midnight the first day is bad. (At a quarter to three is a different story) The fact that it had Sid’s name attached is just criminal.
Stealey recalled: “We were at dinner at a Software Publishers Association meeting, and Robin Williams was there. And he kept us in stitches for two hours. And he turns to me and says ‘Bill, you should put Sid’s name on a couple of these boxes, and promote him as the star.’ And that’s how Sid’s name got on Pirates, and Civilization.”
Solo Flight
F-15 Strike Eagle
Silent Service
Gunship
Sid Meier’s Pirates!
F-19 Stealth Fighter
Sword of the Samurai - (just a genius game)
Sid Meier’s Civilization - (oh boy…Civ! a revolution to me)
Pirates! Gold
Sid Meier’s Colonization
Sid Meier’s Civilization II
Magic: The Gathering - (Still the best version of this game system on computer)
Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri - (although this was mostly Brian’s effort)
Sid Meier’s Civilization IV - (the best Civ imho, especially with the mods, stacks-of-doom, you just deal with them(or not!))
And that is my personal history with Sid, even of not all those efforts were his alone, his mark on some of the most enjoyable, memorable and ‘deep’ gaming experiences, like EVER, will not be forgotten, even if at CivIV i stopped following. That was not his fault but more an industry wide issue, and i guess even Sid could not move past it, as it is all about the vast sums of money now. Civ IV felt like the last true, deep and interesting game to come out of Microprose/Sid/Firaxis. It was like all those other games in the list above, in that it was not ‘streamlined’ or ‘dumbed down’, it was a perfect sandpit to play in and discover all sorts of amazing things, just as all those other games did too.
Flying the mail route through the Rockies (iirc) was real seat of the pants stuff in Solo Flight, and the depth of the simulation belayed the simplistic visuals of that time. That was on an 8 bit machine, and the depth in that game puts many modern games to shame, as do pretty much all the other games in that list.
So no, Sid is never ‘out’ for me, but the modern form is not good enough to persuade me to part with money for games that are worse than his older classics. And that is echoed all through the modern game industry for me, if your game is not magnitudes of orders better (=deep, interesting, involving, worth my time) than an older game it is mostly no sale. Just a sign of the times.
Jeebus, that was dull as dishwater. I couldn’t make it past the first couple of minutes. I would assume that these are the most “exciting” parts of the expansion, since that’s what you would use to sell it, but Great Caesar’s Ghost, I can only imagine what the final product is like.
I don’t know if I’m the normal player but…I already hate managing lots of cities. I didn’t buy the original game but this expansion doesn’t interest me either.
That’s what Civ needs - more places to put cities… :rolleyes:
It looks okay. It’s just a real shame that they don’t seem to realize what made Alpha Centauri so special and unique: the factions themselves. The many personalities and how they interact with one another; how the game tells a story through their eyes, discovering technologies and building wonders. I mean, they are even trying to mimic the Alien Crossfire expansion with Rising Tide and its focus on the oceans, but c’mon, they still don’t get it. :(
It looks to me like they’re adding the wrong kind of depth to the base game, but I’ll try my best to keep an open mind.
Yep, that’s what I was thinking too. Especially since wide works so much better than tall in Beyond Earth anyway.* You’ll just be able to take your infinite city sprawl to the seas now, too!
*Haven’t played since the last two patches, so maybe Beyond Earth is now a balanced and razor sharp combat-focused TBS with many equally viable paths. Maybe.
Rock paper shotgun has another post on the upcoming expansion: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/08/14/civilization-rising-tide-livestream/
To be honest the improved diplomacy system sounds like a major improvement; not sure if I’ll support it though as the initial release was pretty weak.
The initial release was an interesting one-off in that I really enjoyed the game I played first, but I never had the oomph to get in and play a second game. I might pick up the expansion if it gets decent reviews, but I want to know more about the 2.0 upgrade to the base game, first, I think.
Space Korea is best Korea!
I watched that and my “meh” was quite loud afterward. There is no hype for this expansion.
For once I don’t even feel tempted.
This is one of those times I’d be willing to forgo a content and features expansion and simply buy a redesign of the core game itself. Maybe they could call it Sid Meier’s Civilization V: Beyond Earth: Everbody Died in the First One So We Sent People Somewhere Else: Rebooted
Have watched Quill18’s streams lately and the game looks just as tedious and uninteresting as ever.
I’ll be waiting for all the positivity to spring forth in this thread and prove me wrong in the coming days.
Civ5 eventually turned into a pretty good game. I’m still holding out a sliver of hope for this one, but that sliver is hard to see unless you grab your glasses and squint just right.
I have a feeling if I picked up the expansion I’d have a darn good time playing through once more (I only played it once, at launch) but with all the other great titles coming out (Wasteland 2 Director’s Cut, Divinity Original Sin Enhanced Edition, Age of Decadence, Legacy of the Void, Fallout 4, Darkest Dungeon, Witcher 3 expansion, the list just goes on and freaking on…) I just don’t have time for this one yet. Plus, one more play through is probably not worth the price of admission, without a sale at least.
Maybe there will be a few weeks early next year while I’m waiting for XCOM 2 to drop that I’ll be interested in taking the plunge, though.
I have been watching some of the gameplay videos and this is back on my radar. They made some interesting changes. The big question mark will be AI improvements which we won’t know until it is in the wild.
-Todd