New Directions

I have finally allowed myself to become swallowed in the lore of EVE Online. I really like this game. I have posted about it a few times already, and I finally took the plunge and immersed myself. Even after several months, I cannot say I love the game, but I do like it alot. And I am learning a lot about its internal workings, the social community around it, and even a bit about myself.

About myself? Take, for instance, that I write this post as if I have an audience. I do not. So where does this desire to blog about a gaming experience that devours my time come from? Excellent question. Part of it is that I have read some really fun blogs, from all aspects of the game (mining, PVE, PVP, exploring, ratting, research/invention), from those are big into role-playing (the guys that have a hard time logging out even after the computer screen has gone black) to those who are in it for the quick fix. Oh, by the way, EVE has no quick fixes, per se. It is one of the slowest, yet most realistic, games I have ever come across.

So I hope to be cataloging some of my experiences. I'll delve into my character(s) past at some point, give some tidbits about the future, and paint the current picture as we go along. For instance, I recently joined up with SMX, an in-game corporation with some nice connections. On my first official mission/operation with a team, I netted 170 million isk (EVE currency). This is the most money I have ever made in one shot so far, and gives me great hopes about my time with this corp. They specialize in wormholes, the latest "thing", providing lots of exotic materials and "tougher-than-normal" enemies. I have been living in one of the spectactular environments, known as w-space (for wormhole space), a region of the universe with no rules what-so-ever, and even some bizarre physical properties. It is not exactly newbie friendly, which is part and parcel to the high rewards.

Any way, more later. I hope.

Currently reading through Vlad's audit logs.

Homeworld2, 2003

5 years after the game was released, I finally bought it. $10, including s/h. =)

I decided against Sins of a Solar Empire, which is much newer and produced by IronClad with StarDock, both of which I have a lot of respect for. I was very tempted to go with SOS just to support them. So why didn't I?

Homeworld2, much like Homeworld, has awesome graphics. Not as good as EVE Online (in terms of ship detail and scale), but the scenery is excellent (although highly unbelievable), the ship ion trails are great, the action is lively - that was one thing I really missed in SOS, as it was very hard to track ships while riding piggy-back, which I do a lot. While I enjoy the planetary aspect of SOS (and the more diverse tech tree), Homeworld focuses on being a space game.

My one biggest pet peeve with Homeworld, and my one major reason for not giving it two thumbs up, is that the different races have exactly the same ships!! What the heck!?! And it pisses me off that after thousands of years and I don't know many eons, I still have to research basic things like "advanced torpedoes". That is just plain stupid. I wished the game would doing something a little more realistic; the idea of capturing and acquiring Mover technology is a step in the right direction, and there should be much more focus on that. And what about those stupid Bentusi? "All-wise"? I love the high-tech nature of their background (pacifist dogs), but they are just plain naive.

Due to the fact that both the races have more or less exactly the same tech tree and ships, the "player vs cpu" option is just about pointless. I used it to get me ready for the singler-player. That is one good thing about Homeworld - the single-player campaign is very well developed. SOS has no single-player. At least the SOS player vs. cpu is interesting enough. It was more built for online play, and at that I would have to venture it excells. But I am not an online player. Maybe some day...

Homeworld scores high in looks, sounds effects and musical score. Replay is practically shot. I like it, but I no longer love it.

And the battlecruisers just seem weak. I wanted them to have much more punch. I liked the heavy cruisers from the first one much better. The Infiltraor/Marine frigates are somewhat novel, but underplayed. And how do you "infiltrate" something like a hyperspace gateway with marines??

Guess I'll start looking around for the MODs already. =) I really like the Babylon5 mod for the first Homeworld (although I never played a version that was fully developed). And I never found a mod with a fully developed single-player campaign, either, which would be really cool.

Sins of a Solar Empire, by Stardock/Ironclad

In light of my earlier post on Stardock, I was playing the demo for Sins. It is a good game, and I am hugely disappointed there is no single-player story. Grrr!!

I cannot help but feel like this game was hugely inspired by Homeworld, with a little bit of Galactic Civilizations thrown in. The graphics are great (not awe-inspiring, but great) and the gameplay is refreshingly easy to grasp. The ships scale well (fighters and bombers are really small, planets are big). The sounds leave something to be desired, and I was hoping more from explosions (it is appropriate that the capital ships leave debris, but they all explode and fragment the same way). Also, as I am only playing the demo, I have read that it is possible for one of the races to upgrade to a level where you can target specific sub-systems. I hate that. This should be something that any race, any ship can do. Even if you only target a physical part of the ship (aft, port, starboard, bow). I was also disappointed by the tech tree - it is not bad, but I want more of out of it, especially since there is no single-player scenario. On the other hand, I was really impressed that some of the games can take hours upon hours; this can be a bad thing, if all you are doing is waiting. The slow pace of the game is good to some degree; or rather, good for certain aspects. It is nice that you can complete a black market deal without having to just close the window and frantically jump to the system that is under attach. The flip side is that the weapons are notoriously weak; it takes a long time to pummel other ships and planets. It is an interesting choice, especially when you figure that genre-setting building blocks like Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica allowed capital ships to annihilate fighters and corvette-class ships with a single shot; even fighters had enough firepower to obliterate another fighter. But not in this game.

The nuance of "persuasion" and "culture" are interesting; I have not yet been able to fully test how effective it is in the demo, but I can at least see my culture spreading.

I am very tempted to buy this game. I like the direction that Stardock and Ironclad are going, but I really miss the single-player element. We will see....

Disappointed with sci-fi themed games

I have read this sentiment in many other places. The developers over in Russia have a strong offering of space-sims; EVE, which I love/hate, Tarr Chronicles and Dark Horizon, etc), but they do not quite fit the bill. I am looking for a new Homeworld. EVE would have been perfect, if only..... I downloaded SEGA's "Space Siege" demo; the cinematic is awesome, loved it to pieces! But the gameplay... ylech! And a 15-minute demo at that, not even enough time to enjoy blowing things up with little Seth Walker. All these games have excellent cinematics; I really dig the big fleets battling each other, and even the side that has overwhelming technology - love it! I like to see how massive the scale is, little fighters panning alongside a gigantic cruiser. Starcraft really screwed up scale in a big way. *grin* I would love to see a game that is hybrid RTS/FPS, able to switch from the cockpit to the fleet HQ, and throw in some RPG to give some sense of accomplishment. The space-sim games out now focus so much on flying around in a impossibly strong, agile and fast single little fighter that can take out every single enemy known to man. DarkStar One was an interesting twist on this allowing your ship to grow (the RPG element hard at work here), but it so repetitive it was sad. I mean, here was an otherwise good game (great graphics, great execution), but it was like "go warp to system x and destroy all enemies", over and over again. Yes, I am simplifying and there are elements in that game that add to the story (and a fairly good story), but I could not shake the bad parts.

Another kicker is that the teasers and cinematics have such groovy, hard hitting soundtracks. Mass Effect was actually low on the totem pole for me, but had some very catch sci-fi sounding soundbytes and tracks.

If only EVE had a single-player element. Yet if I had that, I would want more out of EVE.... If only I could write games (I suck).....

At least our fantasy RPG and RTS games are good. Strange.
Funny how much like Warcraft Quake 3 is turning out to be. Ooops.

Mass Effect, 2008

I was intrigued by this game due to its sci-fi RPG niche target. It failed to do either really well; it does a decent job at both of them together. Perhaps one of my biggest disappointments is the heavy focus on the story; the cinematics are great, the little twists are decent. However, since the story itself is rather short, it is a bit unsatisfying when your character can so quickly grasp all the complexities of the situation and eliminate the opposition.

Another big disappointment was the enormous price tag for such a quick game. It is labeled as "open-ended", but I am having trouble understanding how that is so. Perhaps multiple endings? Replay value is astronomically low. Why?

Because there are just so many things wrong with the game. The eye candy is awesome, the sound effects are superb, and the acting is quite decent. But the guts of the game suck. The map blow chunks so large they almost did not find through my monitor; I was actually impressed by how bad the mapping features were. There is no way to tell where you have been, the map is completely 2D, markers do not always show up appropriately, and navigation is an absolute pain in the arse. You can receive a side mission to go somewhere and then have no idea how to get there. Even in a small environment like Citadel, even with the "Rapid Transit", I found myself bumbling around trying to make heads/tails of the stupid map.

While the side missions help distract away from the main story (and make an 8-hour game a 24-hour game), they are all so similar to each other. I got to the pointed where I hated traveling to a rocky planet (where is all the fauna?) bouncing around in my MAKO only to find a "hideout" that had one of three configurations.

I like the MAKO. I hated using it because of the scenarios. The sound effects of the gun punching holes were spot-on, and the cannon's explosive discharge was excellent, and the little click as a new round was slammed into the shaft was just a perfect way to top it off. The handling was a bit cartoonish; I found I could do flips, rolls and flat-out awful face-plants, and the MAKO always bounced back unto its wheels. But it was very prone to climb up the side of things, or spin out in a very unrealistic way. The only fun time I had using the MAKO was when taking out Geth or defensive positions.

I also liked the experience/point system, and building skills. That is RPG, after all. But it all seemed rather limited. I expected a lot more from a BioWare game; NeverWinter Nights had its faults, but limited class and skill growth was not generally among them. Not to mention that after playing Oblivion for a while, I most definitely wanted something more out of Mass Effect.

I hated the inventory. While it is nice not to have a weight limit, and it is nice to be able to morph any item into the moronic "omni-gel", trying to figure out how best to upgrade a weapon, for who and when was a nightmare. Perhaps I paid too much attention to that, and instead micromanaged where I should have been more laid back. The special effects on the guns were not as impressive as everything else, IMHO. Even grenades failed to impress me.

The "magic", or biotech as it is called, is rather impressive, but so dang narrow-minded. Yes, there are two branches, Biotics and Technology, which can be used to confound, harm, heal and do other wonderful things. But just a handful of things, getting bigger and better as the character grows in experience. I wanted more. Something like a chain-lightning effect would have been cool. Or what about mind control? The nemesis was able to control others, but we cannot.

I was also extremely disappointed that I could not have my technology specialist disarm/hack components that were too "hard" for my character. Why have them along in the first place. It is like the old D&D days and having a thief in the party for the sole purpose of picking locks. What if you had no way to tell the thief to pick the lock?

The manual is dismal. I never did figure out how to use the quickslots (didn't spend much time trying to figure it out). Perhaps this is the stamp of EA on the game? Hard to tell.

Some other things I have to get off my chest. The background musak when in the Navigation computer is downright annoying. And while the music in other environments was tastefully sci-fi, the same trak being cycled over and over just made it taste bad. The adrenalin pumping sounds/music and "exotic" new look of the last battle-scenes near the end of the game were great, if only because they broke the tired mold cast by the rest of the game. Collecting the little trinkets (medallions, writings, precious metals, etc etc) reminded me of the Ratchet & Clank little extra doodads one could collect, and just as worthless. Again, the mapping features (or lack thereof) utterly failed to bestow any kind of historical information or keep stats on where one has been.

The Reaper "Sovereign" was enticing; a teaser, really. I wanted to see it do more, and it went down too easily in the end. I wanted something that would compete and be able to go toe-to-toe. But then we start talking about space ships, and this game is not about space ships whatsoever.

There were a couple bugs, but not huge deals. I got stuck in an elevator once; after 20 minutes (I left to go run an errand), I killed the game and came back. I also once was pushed into a narrow crevice by some stairs (a biotic push) with one of my comrades, and the stupid character would not move out of the way so we could both get out of the crevice. Even if I gave instructions to move. Minor things.

I liked the game, but there are a number of serious flaws. It is most definitely not worth the "brand new, just released for PC" price! I would be curious what Halo fans thought of it. I usually do not like FPS (first person shooter) games, and now I have more reason to stay away from them. I am sorry if this is not fair to the FPS crowd; I realize this is allegedly a sci-fi/RPG first, a shooter second.

UPDATE: July 9, 2008
I played through once again to test my theory of replay value; it holds true. The single biggest advantage of replaying the game is if one can remember where things generally are, they can ignore the featureless maps. I continue to be disappointed by the fact that my tech squad members did not contribute enough decrypt skill to unlock all the goodies. I also tried a new task (not mission critical) of "Locating the Keepers". The result was enormously disappointing, especially since it utterly missed a grand opportunity to tie into the main story. I also tried to aim for a couple achievements, like having an Alliance soldier by my side for a majority of the game; I have no idea how I did not get that achievement, since Ashley was there 99% of the time. The achievements in general seem kinda nice, but not enough to entice me to play the game over and over and over. If only there were a way to turn off the cinematics, fast travel (getting better at Rapid Transit, but it is not enough) and vastly improved mapping functions. The game is fun, but in the end it was a waste of money.

Age of Empires II, Microsoft game

Well, version 2 is definitely better than the original, but I was shocked to realize that some basic issues were untouched between the two. While AoE II is more polished and a few of the annoyances worked out, there is a sharp lack of diversity between the French, English and Scottish armies and buildings. The eastern races have a slight breathe of fresh air in that they at least look a little different. While extremely minor, I did not like how the menu graphics have such poor quality. And the music....

On the good side, I like the improvements made to the game system. Primitive waypoints are introduced, and selecting large groups of armies is a huge advantage. Pulling in the Egyptian architecture and units was a nice touch. And the upper-tech units add some nice variety, with distinct styles of play and unique weaknesses/strengths.

Age of Empires, Microsoft game

I dabbled with the AoE II demo a while back, so I thought $10 would be a good price to get everything up to an including the AoE II expansion pack. You get what you pay for.

AoE II is definitely more polished than the original. I am playing through the original now and really finding it hard to like. No way points or build queues. My warriors stand around like dummies when an enemy is nearby (I already set Diplomacy to "Enemy"), and the pathfinding algorithms suck big time. Watch towers seem hesitant to fire upon the enemy (fear of retribution?). And how come if I kill an animal with a warrior I cannot harvest its meat?

I am looking forward to playing AoE II again; my memory is a little blurry, but I seem to remember that it was a little more satisfying.

More on EVE

I am still reminiscing about EVE Online. I have never felt such a pull, and such a revulsion, for a game. Gamespot has a review of the game that, for once, strikes a strong vibe with me. EVE is heavily PVP, so like one reviewer said, if you are not in it for PVP, don't waste your time.

I have been looking for something that is non-PVP EVE. Or at least, something that has a rich, rewarding PVE side to it. I tried out the demos for X3 and the Tarr Chronicles, Starlancer and Freelancer; all of which are quite interesting and even kinda fun, but I am not exactly interested in the first-person experience. Especially with no joystick. I want something like Homeworld, but something current. I briefly looked at Nexus: The Jupiter Incident, but the graphics are horrid, and the game is a bit old. And slow. There are a slew of other games recommended by Amazon, but they are all older. I browsed stargamer.net, which looked like my kind of place, but that is even old. What's up with that!! I briefly read about the Battlestar Gallatica and Star Trek games, but I have never been impressed with the games-from-movies projects (including Star Wars). Maybe I need to give them another chance. Maybe.

Is this genre dying out?!?

At least the bevy of fantasy RPGs are seemingly unending. I won't have to worry about spell-casting, sword-weilding games running out any time soon.

EVE Online, a massively multiplayer online role playing game

Why do they call these things MMORPGs? Why not just MMOG, or MMG?

Anyway, this was my first foray into the MMORPG arena, and wow did it open my eyes! I sampled this fine offering with the trial account. And although I only played for roughly 2.5 days, I put in almost 20 hours. I am still unsure if it was worth it. It certainly was not the best use of my time. =)

There are many good things and many bad things about EVE, and this will be very subjective.

Bad things first
The massive multiplayer online genre itself is probably my biggest issue. Due to its nature, it is extremely immersive. Meaning that you are invited, enticed and even provoked into dumping hours upon hours into developing your character in one fashion or another. You can explore the life of EVE on your own, but that path is very slow, very time consuming and filled with pitfalls. You can join up with another group which will speed things tremendously, keeping you relatively safe (even if only by sage advice), but the intrinsic coercion of playing more can hit you like certain hot peppers that build up and pack a punch. It is very hard to play this game for, say, 1 hour at a time. It might be possible to run a PvE (Player vs Environment, dealing with computer-generated events and characters) mission or two, but you may quickly find that some times it takes a while to get to where you are going. There is an autopilot function that helps, but has a built-in safety feature of dropping you off a few klicks away from your target so you are not instantly ambushed by those with nefarious intent. Warping is not always fast, especially if your ship does not have enough juice to do the jump all in one go. So, you can chew up 10-15 minutes just travelling. And for a newbie (we all start at square one), just figuring things out takes time.

The tutorials help. But they are so slow! Amazingly slow, especially if you make a mistake. I have read that EVE has one of the most severe death penalities, and since this is my first online game, I am rather curious what others are like. When you "die" in EVE, that means your ship was blown up by "bad guys", whether that be a NPC (non-playable character) or a real person, for better or worse. Your characters, as it were, is jettisoned into deep space in a small lifeboat called a capsule. Amazingly, you can warp around with this capsule and the idea is that you make it back home so you can refit in another ship. If you have adequate insurance (all starter ships are automatically insured for free), your ship will soon be replaced. If someone shoots your capsule, you can opt to have a clone. These are your only options for "saving" the game. If you die and you have no insured ship and no clone, your account is essentially locked. What also sucks is all the stuff you were carrying is left in your ship's wreck, referred to as a "can". You can go back and claim it, but so can anyone else in the game. Which means there is quite a lucrative pirating underground. I had an opportunity to be a part of a shady group that would trick newbies and blow away their ships, raiding their cans. All perfectly legitimate, if done correctly. That is one of the things that stands out with EVE; it is one of the most dangerous game environments. Unlike a FPS (first person shooter) where you are expected to kill and be killed, EVE paints the picture of living a life in space on a ship, chipping away a living by doing "normal" things like finding a job and making money. It is just that there are a disproportionate amount of people whose job it is to take your money.

The corollary is that this "pirating" mindset is also one of the most fun for your average person, I think. EVE is a sci-fi game, and it is almost mantra that you blow things up. Mining for minerals in an asteroid field and trucking the goods home, day after day, just does not hold much excitement. There is a very strong sense that role-playing is not on a majority of your average player's mind. In fact, it is almost big news when you hear about a pure role-playing faction (I came across Lame Duck Corp, which consisted of two folks). Where is the RPG in MMORPG?

Lastly, the background music. It is a nice affect, very ambient and "space sounding", but too much monotony! I guess if you play for a short time span (1 hour or two), it is not that bad, but when you are online for long stretches, you start to hate the music. Perhaps there is a way to customize the "jukebox".

And a minor irritation that all games have, aside from the broken physics (slowing down when you stop accelerating?); there is no real sense of collision. If you happen to get close to someone, either you bump off or pass through them. I really wish that some game engine would finally get it right and respect object boundaries (and the requisite boundary conditions).

The interface is a little klunky. It looks sharp and has a very appropriate sci-fi skin, but window management is not up to par. Kudos to the context-sensitive mouse.

The good things
Very intriguing game. I love the futuristic sciences, the variety of career paths one can pursue, the vastness of space, the sheer scale. The fact that you can learn skills, even when offline, is a huge plus. Right now, my character is learning a skill that will take 6 days to complete, and I am not even connected. That is huge. It is strange that the skills are somehow not associated with what you do. In other words, there are no experience points as in the traditional RPG model. There are other stats you can accumulate, but skill points only go up when you train a skill. And you need to have skills to open up doors to other tech. I think that is a most excellent model, much preferable to the "traditional" model, and very realistic. Which makes me all the more sad that more players do not take advantage of the role-playing potential.

But blowing things up is just plain fun! The sound affects are awesome; from the ripping thundering screech of a stargate, to the squeezing acceleration of a warp, to the rewarding (but most unrealistic) reverberating sounds of missile launches and explosions. Whoever coordinated and engineered the sounds was quite good.

And the EVE universe is just big. I like that because it is easily the kind of thing that can swallow 23000 online players at once, and you can still find places of little or no activity, explore the unknown, or hang out in favorite 'hoods or crossroads. There is a realistic market force in action, along with politics, and a volunteer player-run University. Even an official EVE television station! Amazing. A universe that makes immersion very accessible.

I have also been glamorized by the cooperative efforts in gang warfare (or even fleetwar). The first group I hooked up required the use of Ventrillo, a VOIP operation favored by game-conferencing individuals. The physical technology is outstanding all by itself. You can even get software that tells you which icon belongs to which voice. How cool is that? Yes, I realize that this has been going on for years; like I said, I was smitten. Anyway, you have a gang boss (leader) who basically coordinates the attack by giving verbal orders (which is so much faster than typing). There are many technologies to deploy against a target; cloaking, damping, webbing, siphoning and the run-of-the-mill range of damage-inducing weapons. Sure, everyone wants to be a tank and just blast away, but having specialists in electronic warfare (ewar) can turn the tide quickly. Having a scout that can tell you more precise information can allow a team to take out strategic targets quickly.

The graphics are pretty sweet as well. After a couple warps, I noticed that the game engine depicts red-shift and blue-shift; wow, yet another attempt at "real physics" to demonstrate hypothetical faster-than-light travel. And back to scale; the smallest of ships (frigates) are really small. The big ships are really big, especially the space stations. I was actually hoping for a little more in terms of extremes (thinking Star Wars and the death star and capital ships), but what EVE offers is very satisfying. Except the whole thing about collisions. =)

In the end, I both love and hate this game. For me personally, the cost of my real life time is simply not worth the benefit of such an awesome game experience. If I could dabble in it, I would be hard put to avoid it. But the time commitment, not to mention a subscription fee, put this game out of my ballpark. Sure, $14 bucks a month is not much, but the principle of it is what eats me. On a more practical level, look at it from my wife's perspective. =) Which I try to do often, while not always succeeding.


Updated 20-Nov-2007:

Some other thoughts about the skill point model. It goes slow. Very slow. And you can do nothing about it, except 1) train skills that help you learn faster, 2) bump up character traits that support faster learning (ie, intelligence). I am not even so sure the last point has much of an impact. But I could be wrong.

I am not as convinced this model is superior. What you end up doing is having to buy or earn books from which to learn new skills, and there are a ton of skills out there to be learned. But books cost money (some cost mega $$). So, you end up doing a lot of missions to earn money to learn skills to earn skill points. In the old system, you went out and did missions to earn experience points, which either bumped up a skill or could be allocated towards a trait (or both). But EVE is biased towards PVP. So there is a severe lack of incentive to do missions, except for the sole purpose of getting money to buy books and stuff.

I was reading in the EVE forums about the possibility of queueing skills. I think this would be extremely advantageous, but then someone made the point that the game developer (CCP) would loose lots of money because folks would queue up skills to get an uber-ship, log off for a couple months, than restart their subscription read to rock'n'roll. I think that might be true for a number of people, which indicates there is something drastically broken about why people play. Which is why I am not going to buy a subscription.

But dang it, the game is awesome! There is so much going on that I would love to a part of. EVE TV, EVE University, fleet warefare with tons of supporting roles for folks of every niche... the EVE Universe is just amazing! And growing! Lots of RPG opportunities, although I have a hard time seeing how someone can get excited about mining ore from rocks. But folks do. You can join corporations and organizations, go the political route, or just blow things up. For me, it just takes too long to get the juicy stuff. And I do not feel like paying a subscription to get there. It would be very interesting if there was a single-player feed, perhaps a way to interact with only the NPC part of the game. I am not sure if that would sell or not.

Homeworld 2, 2003 PC game (demo)

I fell in love with Homeworld when it first came out in 1999. There is something about the epic space battle that I really like; perhaps the mixture of high-technology and nomads struggling to survive. Aside from the story, I am enthralled by the truly 3-dimensional universe. Granted, there is much more untapped potential, but the fundamentals are there. This post is going to jump all over the place, but this is the way I think. No apologies.

For instance, most capital ships (the big ones with thick hulls and either bristling with guns or ship factories) have "weaknesses" on the top- or underside. Which means if you focus an attack from one of those directions, you can more easily punch through the skin. However, the game engine (in both Homeworld and Homeworld 2, and even Cataclysm) does not properly align ships moving along the z axis, they may tilt about 35 degrees or so, but essentially you end up with a lopsided ship careening through space at an angle that is impossible if its engines were really pointed in the direction they are. On the plus side, I like a lot of the effects. Especially if you crank up the resolution and detail level; absolutely beautiful!

V2 offers some nice things, but also took away some nice things. The interface, while being a little more easier to grasp, lots its sci-fi appeal. It is now too... comic looking. I like that the build, research and launch windows are now cordoned off to a side of the screen, and that they are linked to the ship in context. I just wanted something that looked really cool, really sci-fi like. I really like the hover mouse effects; hovering over a ship will give you a line to its target, whether it be a waypoint, resource or target. The pulsar weapons are cool, and I think a good addition. I was not able to play and of the behemoth, gun-toting ships (stinking demo). But the class of ships I did play are really exciting. I love big battles, catching a ride on the back of an interceptor zipping around, watching everything blow up.

I did not really like the story behind V2, at least not what I gathered from the demo and the website. One of the best new concepts behind this kind of RTS is that your army (or armada as it were) do not mysteriously disappear for each new session or campaign. What you built from the previous scenario carries over. So, how is it that after this many years, our little fleet is starting from scratch, having to redevelop all its technology?!? Come on! I mean, what would be better is if all the old technology is still available, and some new technology from the intermediate years, with options to develop new and improved technology, assuming the enemy already has tech that can best your old stuff. And where's my fleet?? Did the fleet mastermind sell off ships to scrap and force the gene pool to dwindle? For this, I will not buy the new game; the story is basically recycled from the previous one. At least Cataclysm had a better story.

But the graphics are awesome! The soundtrack is still a big hit with me; a little different, but I think it is generally the same flavor.

Another thing I noticed that I thought was a little strange. In the original, any ships that were too close to a exploding mothership suffered the consequenes; they were toasted and incinerated. But in V2 I have not noticed that. Maybe in a patch?

There are other strange anomalies from both games. They stand out only because everything else about the game is so awesome and spectacular. Ship geometry can be weird. I would want to see sparks, damage and explosions if any ship got too close to another, no matter what size. Instead, I see smaller ships bouncing off larger ones, and larger ships usually just pass through the extremities of another large ship. In V2 there is more "bouncing" going on, especially with larger ships. My guess is that it takes a lot of code and computational power to keep track of that kind of stuff, and it is easier to draw a loose rubberband around a ship. However, a much bigger complaint I have is with the AI. Why the heck would ships even get that close?!? Sometimes the AI is spot on; I have see a capital ship pass through a company of smaller ships (corvettes and fighers), the smaller vehicles parting like a wave and reforming in good military fashion. But in battle, the gloves come off and there is nothing nice. And if everyone knows about the soft undersides, why do all the ships attack from the front or the aft and starboard?

V2 really did improve some aspects of the AI that I noticed. Each ship type is aware of what ship it counters best and usually (always?) targets those ships first. I saw some horrendous examples in the first version where smaller ships would take on a larger capital ship when better choices where nearby. Or a Heavy Cruiser focusing on a bomber when an Attack Frigate was within range. This is handled much better in the newest release. Also, the smaller class (fighters and corvettes) are now launched and exercise tactical maneuvers in intelligent groups (would squads be a good name for that?). That is a huge plus!

It is sad that Sierra and Relic (and might as well throw in Barking Dog) are being broken up; No Homeworld 3. But maybe that is a good thing. Maybe we need something new, something from scratch.

However, having said that, I wish there was something to fill the gap, the gaping maw really, of the Kadeshi, the Bentusi and the "Council". I am tempted to go reading a bit more (Wikipedia can really whet your appetite), but there is really not much in-game.

So, what will the next, great space game be? Genesis Rising was a very interesting approach, but essentially flopped for several reasons. For starters, only 2d movement. What, are the magnetic fields too strong to traverse up or down? Very different twist, though, with living ships that you could morph to your purpose; I liked that. I have heard rumors of some other games, but I am still looking. I remember the Space Commander days, and bringing that flavor back in a big way would be would be just swell.

Update: I have got to find a friend who has Eve Online. I usually a totally against MMOG, but this one sounds quite intriguing.

Heroes of Might and Magic (V), 2006 PC game

I downloaded a demo a few days ago and checked out this facelift for an old but enjoyable game (the HOMM series has been fun). The turn-based system is really old-school, but gives the game a little character, slows down the pace a little. Almost feels a little more like the old-fashioned D&D games.

Anyway, the same thing that I liked about the older HOMM games is what I like in the new. The downside is that very little has changed. Yes, the graphics are awesome, and the soundtrack is excellent. And the little tweaks they have made to acquiring experience, new skills and abilities, are all welcome (and long overdue), the core of the game is exactly the same.

If I had started on this game, I would probably have fallen in love with it, hands down. But since I have played the older games, I have a hard time wanting to play it for hours and hours. The 3D aspect is definitely very cool. And I want to explore the new artifacts, the special and unique racial abilities, and see what else has been tweaked. But I really doubt I am going to invest the proper amount of time that is demanded in order to find all the eye-candy and uber level-up trinkets.

I read some online reviews, and everyone is raving about the game. Well, there are some nay-sayers, but they are few and far between. I cannot believe the big-name reviews have ranked it so high (8 out of 10, or better).

Warcraft III, 2003 PC game by Blizzard

I have always enjoyed Blizzard's stuff. And the Warcraft series is no exception. I played it a little back when it came out, and decided to buy it 4 years later. While I like the game, I forget how 4 years of technology moves on and that it has no chance what-so-ever to compete graphically with any current titles. Oh well.

After playing the earlier Warcraft games and Starcraft, I have noticed some obvious trends in the way the games are laid out, trends I wish I could change. For instance, does this sound familiar; "Ultra-high tech race is wiped out by savages; ultra-high tech race comes back with 1 hero, builds an army, wipes out savages; savage hero escapes and haunts ultra-high tech race." Whatever. Another annoying thing is that there is so much similarity across the Blizzard universe; peons gather resources (some form of money, and some form of combustible), there are always 2 or 3 unit-producing strutures, 1 or 2 town defense structures, and about 8 different unit types ranging from the guy who sticks his finger up his nose to the guy who shoves a stick of TNT up yours. Also, you are limited to selecting (and thus grouping) about 8 units at once, and the max number of units is usually around 100. "Total Annihilation" was a game from the 90's and was never encumbered by such immature obstacles (but it had other problems).

I do like how the Blizzard team threw in some twists. The Hero unit is a nice addition, able to carry items and gain experience. I wish all the units gained experience. In addition, some of the special Hero abilities have some nice eye-candy, and some abilities are actually quite useful in battle (Invincibility, Blink, Storm of Blades, summon creatures, etc). I appreciate how there are different races that try to alter the "status quo" a little; the Burning Legion and Night Elves let you assign 5 peons and basically soak up the gold without traveling back and forth; the Night Elves structures are mostly all mobile (and can attack!), and the Naga are water-based (but amphibious). I am still finding it hard to shake off that feeling that this is Warcraft 1 just in prettier clothes.

Oblivion, PC game

At first, I was extremely put off by the first-person perspective; my one biggest pet peeve for first-person is the lack of peripheral vision. There is a view that is a few feet back and a few feet above, looking forward and down on your character which I tend to use a lot, but it does not do the trick wholly.

But then I got into the game. Wow, it is amazing! The graphics are gorgeous, and the game is so open-ended that you could easily just hike trails to see the amazing views; spectacular sun sets, towns that sprawl beneath a realistically snow crowned mountain, forests that hum with the life of the occasional breeze and flitting butterflies. The amount of detail is.... outstanding! There are hundreds of side quests apart from the main story-line; in fact, I often found myself forgetting what the main story line was, just to pursue my interest of the day. This is by far the most immersive and mesmerizing game I have ever played.

There are some draw backs, of course, as no game is perfect. While the leveling system is quite unique (in a good, breathe-of-fresh air way), one can easily find oneself poorly equipped to handle subsequent fights due to the fact that everything in the game levels along with you. I think this can be especially disappointing if you are a warrior class and have accidentally gimped yourself by the choice of major and minor skills, and how you use them. Fortunately, I decided early on to read about character creations and to focus my attention on having an extremely well-balanced character, even to the point where I spend 15 minutes of wall-clock time shooting arrows to increase Marksman, or running willy-nilly and jumping off cliffs to increase Athletics and Acrobatics.

Another downside is that after a while, even though there are vast quantities of NPCs, each with a different role in life and a real schedule that they can follow (including eating and sleeping), they start to aggregate into a small set. You start to recognize voices from one NPC to the next, the bodytypes start to blur together, and they all seem to get the same rumors from the same source. I have to admit that the game attempts to address by introducing new topics as you progress (folks rumor about things you have done) and that the NPCs talk to each other just like real people would.

I am also a big believer in that if you are a master or expert at something, it should really stand out. When meeting other characters, the fighters, thieves and assassins stand out. For instance, the Morag Tong Assassin; you probably don't see much of him, right? =) And the Imperial soldiers seem quite adequate to handle threats on the road from bandits and highwaymen. But the mages and wizards all seem vastly underpowered. I have a hard time finding a game where magic users can stand on their own. I liked "Dawn of Magic" because it is all about using spells to progress, and you can actually take down enemies with that alone. I laughed when, in Oblivion, I was fighting in the Arena and my "coach" warns me about a high elf I am facing. When I fought this supposed wizard, he pulled out a dagger and tried to run me through. What's up with that?!? My character has a strong focus on using magic (currently, all my magic attributes and skills are maxed), but I still find that I go through mana like crazy when casting big spells. It would be nice if you could hotkey a mana potion or a Welkynd stone. Unfortunately, I find the eye-candy in spellcasting a bit wanting, and the group affect spells never seem to do enough damage. Yes, you can soften them up with weakness spells, but dang it, I am the Arch-Mage for crying out loud. *grin* Additionally, I would love to see a blademaster and other expert fighters actually look like they have practiced for hours and hours on end; I want to see more moves, more technique and more style. The 3 or 4 "moves" that one attains when progressing through the various levels are quite unflattering, and not always effective; the side-step power attack when you become a journeyman is useless when you get it, and takes a long time to get right.

The game is great! I have already put a lot of time into it, and I can tell I still have a long way to go. This is mostly because of the myriad quests that one can uncover by talking to various folks and doing various actions; one will find that a particular action may open up a line of discussion with a previously "unknown" character, which may lead to a quest which takes you across the country and back, meeting new people... and it grows. The creativity and ingenuity behind the numerous quests are both extremely satisfying and quite successful of breaking the tedium of a hack-n-slash focus.