Blogging the experience of gameplayhttp://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=http://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4876For this entry, I decided to play the game Orcs Must Die!, an unorthodox tower defense game where the player takes the third person perspective of the "apprentice" as opposed to a more traditional overhead view. This game was made by indie game developer Robot Entertainment and bought/downloaded through Steam. The game begins by giving a brief exposition. The player is an apprentice in an institution known as the Order. His master has just died, and he is alone left with the task of defending a fortress against hoards of Orcs and Goblins and assorted other monsters. Following, it gives an explanation of the main game concepts. Waves of monsters spawn from large double doors, and they attempt to get to "rifts" which the player must protect using different weapons, traps, companions, and spells contained within his spellbook. Items from the spellbook are bought using gold gained from killing monsters, and an initial supply of gold is given at the beginning of a map. Only a select few abilities may be chosen from the spellbook to use on a given map, limiting the player to just a few options of their choice. In the first level, the player doesn't have many options, but the defense is not difficult. The map is a straight hallway between the single set of double doors and the rift. Two archer companions are placed on the sides of the hallway to assist you. Companions generally stay in the location that they are assigned and automatically attack monsters that come in range, and monsters will reciprocate. The player is given a sword and a crossbow as means of personal defense, along with spike traps which damage enemies who walk over and tar traps, which slow enemies. If enough enemies make it to the rift, the player loses and must restart the level. If the player character dies to enemies, it also counts against this rift total. During downtime between levels, the game gives the player a number of "skulls" based on their performance during the previous level. The skulls can be used to purchase upgrades for your spellbook, giving abilities an extra effect or increasing their strength. New abilities are also given as the player beats new levels. The first trap unlocked is an arrow trap, which is placed on a wall and fires arrows at any enemies that walk in its area of effect. The game does not take itself very seriously at all. The apprentice is portrayed as a dimwitted individual with little regard to his enemy or what he is fighting to protect. The cartoony animation supports this, and the story is not a major factor in the enjoyment of this game. The action is the main focus, with hectic and fast paced action, including weapons that fire/swing as fast as you can click the mouse button, combo counters, and headshot indicators. Humor supports the action with quips from the apprentice and funny hit/death animations from the orcs. The apprentice even does different dances at the end of a level based on how well he protected the rift. Overall, I completed three levels and explored as many of the game's options as I could for this first session. I will reserve any judgement for my second log.jdh681Sat, 04 Feb 2012 21:53:37 CSThttp://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4876&iddiary=9031http://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4875I started playing Half-Life 2 three days ago. I have been extremely impressed by it because the game flow is quick and intense, and the story is unique and captivating. Before I get into talking about the game and its story in detail, understand that I have not played Half Life 1. At the start of the game, the player gets immersed into a world past the brink of destruction, meaning that the player can obviously see that the world is not as it should. The first scene of the game is an old man's head appearing in the screen telling you strange things in an even more absurd way of speaking. As you continue, the story gets only weirder and darker, which pulled me into it even deeper. Since I am a role-player and love role-playing video games, story is always the make or kill feature of games for me. This story is amazing and does more to captivate the player than anything else in the game. The gameplay is tremendous because it is extremely realistic. You start out the game utterly defenseless, but most evade capture from a much superior force. Shortly into the game, you receive your first weapon - a crowbar. With this weapon, you can defend yourself and quickly kill a soldier to receive a gun. The aiming is simple yet very effective with considerably realistic physics. Meaning that the gun recoils realistic with each shot and head killers do extra damage. My only complaint about the game is that it does not allow the player to look down the scope and manually aim. The game is very innovative for its time because its graphics are amazing for when it came out, the physics engine realistic, the story detailed and well thought out. The game creates conflict by placing you in a strange world and giving you only one command: RUN! The steam reward structure is enjoyable because it allows you to show off your achievements in game to your friends. The other reward system is giving you a feeling being a major badass because you can kill an army of advance soldier with just a crowbar. The game flows very well through having not out of game cutscenes and few loading areas. There is, however, one drawback in the game: no multiplayer.jws412Sat, 04 Feb 2012 16:34:54 CSThttp://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4875&iddiary=9030http://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4874Thus far, the main conflict that the user faces in the game seems to be a giant spider. When you first encounter the spider he is hiding behind a tree and when you walk up to him he tries to stab you with one of his legs. You have to explore the environment to find out that you must use one of the bear traps to attach his legs when they come after you. The second encounter that I had with the spider he spun me up into a web like a mummy. I then had to get loose from his spider web, still wrapped in spider web, and hop around the world. I died shortly after freeing myself, which is where I ended the game. Limbo really shows that 2D games have really evolved and that you don't need 3D games to experience full immersion. The designers were able to create a world that is very intriguing and entices the player into learning more about the story/environment. Their use of sound and visual effects to set the mood is innovative IMO. I have not experienced a game like this before. What I can take away from Limbo for my own game designs is the importance of world mood and how to control the world mood through sound and visual effects.Joey GreenFri, 03 Feb 2012 20:31:59 CSThttp://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4874&iddiary=9029http://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4873I started playing this game based on reviews I had read online when the game came out about the unique and interesting the gameplay. Knowing it was a Rockstar game and how immersive their games are (see GTA IV and Red Dead Redemption) I had no doubt that L.A. Noire would be of a similar quality. And from what I've seen so far, I have not been disappointed. The opening cutscene sets the stage - postwar 1940's L.A. From that point on, all of the sights and sounds look like they're pulled right from a period movie - colorized of course. You start the game as a beat cop, Cole Phelps. The first "mission" of the game, as it were, was to search an alleyway for a gun used in a murder and tossed by the suspect as he fled. Here you are shown the basic mechanics of the game. As you enter an area to search, music swells indicating that there are clues in the area. While searching the area, your controller vibrates as you walk near an item that can be searched. This definitely helped, because many times (before I got the hang of it) I would try searching every area that seemed logical to me. Once all of the clues for an area had been found, the music fades away. So the physical and audio clues were an interesting way to aid the player in the search, and a gameplay mechanic I really liked. The other really unique aspect of this game are the interrogations. L.A. Noire uses extremely accurate facial modeling (creepily so at times) to show the player exactly what the characters are thinking while they speak. It is these nonverbal clues (avoiding eye contact, fidgeting) that aid you in the interrogation. You ask the suspect a series of predetermined questions based on the evidence you have collected so far. If you think the suspect is telling the truth, you treat them kindly and keep questioning. If you know they are lying, and have the evidence to back it up, you can accuse them of lying and get them to confess. If they look uneasy but you have no solid evidence to hit them with, you can doubt them, but if you are wrong they are likely to clam up and not say anything. The interrogations can be challenging but they are definitely unique and engaging. Other aspects of gameplay: the game is broken down into cases and each case has you performing a series of 5-8 investigations, searches, and interrogations. After becoming promoted from beat cop to detective, you start at the traffic desk. As you prove yourself as a traffic detective you move up through the ranks of detectives. Each detective's "desk" you sit at appears to last around 5 cases before being moved to the next level. This would seem to be repetitive, but in the 4-5 hours I've played so far the cases have been varied enough to not get boring. Between cases we see flashbacks of Phelps' time in the Marine Corp during WWII. These also help keep the player engaged with the Cole's backstory, which you can only see by completing more cases. The most frustrating part of the game I've found so far is driving. It is bad. Period. Some reviewers have said this adds to the realism, and that cars back then were a pain to drive. That may be, but at some point you have to sacrifice some realism for playability. It also doesn't help that the game penalizes you for every accident and pedestrian you hit - which I guess it should; this isn't GTA after all. The one saving grace of all this is that you can let your partner drive to locations, saving you the infuriating frustration and penalty of driving yourself by instantly teleporting you to your destination. One really nice thing about this feature is that if your partner has any dialogue he was supposed to say while you were driving, the conversation will still occur before being sent to your location. This way you don't miss out on any of the story or immersion of the game - other than the fade to black and sudden reappearance across town. I guess that is it for my first impressions of the game. My next GameLog will delve deeper into the game's character as I continue playing through the story.sweenrFri, 03 Feb 2012 15:08:58 CSThttp://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4873&iddiary=9028http://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4872When you start Limbo, you're a kid waking up in the forest. There isn't any instructions or goals defined. You just start trying to figure out what this game is about, but you're intrigued because you're wondering why is this boy waking up in the middle of a forest. Is he lost? It plays on the same emotions that you might of felt the first time you saw Bourne Identity. Why can't Bourne remember anything? Why does he have super-ninja powers? etc.. This makes the player intrigued about the story and motivates them to discover these questions for themselves. All aspects of the game is exploratory. There is no communication on your goal( which for me is to uncover the story), controls, or mechanics, which I feel adds to the mood of the game. You soon find out that all you can do is go left/right, jump, and do actions on things. These actions are also exploratory. It seems so far that all things that you see in the game( which are not trees or grass ) you can interact with. So, after you wake up you just start going right to explore and learn more about the game. There is no color in the world, just shades of black/gray. This is also a game you want to put your headphones on for as the sound effects really set the mood. There are a couple innovative elements in this game including the art style and environment. The art style leaves a lot for the imagination to process itself. You don't really see the boy, just a shadowy figure with white eyes that blink occasionally. Also, because everything is blacked out you have to pay closer attention to the environment to make sure your not fixing to do something that will cause harm to the boy such as drown, step in a bear trap, or get killed by a spider. The mood set by the game really make this such an awesome game. The visual effects give the player a lot of feedback. For instance, while walking the grass moves and when you land after jumping there is a puff of dust. There is also a flicker for the whole screen like what you would see in a old black and white film, which adds to the whole spookiness of the game.Joey GreenFri, 03 Feb 2012 12:57:58 CSThttp://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4872&iddiary=9027http://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4839I "finished" Braid, aka, got bored and watched the ending on Youtube. Here's the thing about Braid. It's pretty. It's challenging. It's thoughtful. It takes typical 2D game mechanics and turns them on their heads. Each chapter has a particular spatio-temporal twist to it. There's a chapter with a wedding ring. When Tim drops the ring on the ground, everything near the ring sloooows down, allowing Tim to place the ring near quickly-closing doors to make them open slow enough for him to slide through. Stuff like that. I played another chapter tonight where moving right makes time go forward and moving left makes time go backward. I had some fun solving those levels and picking up some puzzle pieces. I thank Mr. Blow for his innovation and ethical stance on video games and all that, but after playing Braid for a while, I got bored out of my mind. The time-space manipulation puzzles, while each was unique, were all about...manipulating time and space. I had fun playing around with the different mechanics, but where it lost me was getting the difficult-to-reach puzzle pieces. I lost interest. Fun to play with mechanics. Not fun to master them. I mean it's fun WHEN you master them, but I didn't feel like bothering any more with the process. Then when I found out at the end that I couldn't go to the last level until I collected each piece in each level, I turned to YouTube. The last chapter looked neat. I wish I didn't have to find all the puzzle pieces to get to it! A couple things to take into consideration about my comments and my shelving Braid tonight: (1) It's late and I'm tired and have had a headache for like 8 hours. I'm probably less patient than usual. (2) I've been playing Portal 2 for the last week, which is a far superior puzzle game. (3) I typically don't gush over puzzle, 2D, or platforming games. I bought Braid because it had awesome reviews and looked pretty. Same reason I buy most the puzzle, 2D, platform, or adventure games I buy, the genres I don't love the most. Machinarium comes to mind here. Pretty, interesting, too hard for me to bother with after a while. Worth playing, even if I put it down prematurely. dkirschnerThu, 02 Feb 2012 12:50:42 CSThttp://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4839&iddiary=9026http://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4871History: I played Xenosaga way back when in 2002-2003. I played Xenogears on PS1 before that and never had any clue how the two relate. Xenosaga is one of the most memorable RPGs I've ever played, (from what I fondly remember) a brilliant sci-fi RPG with a fun battle system with enough complexity and strategy to keep me really entertained, a ton of impressive cut scenes, interesting characters and plot, etc. etc. OH, and a sweet card game. I played Xenosaga 2 at some point after that and never bought Xenosaga 3 until now. It so happened that I bought it with Xenosaga 1 and 2 because I certainly don't mind playing a great game again to catch up with the trilogy finale. So how does it hold up? What's it like 10 years later? What are my first impressions after an hour and change of play time? I *immediately* recalled the metallic sci-fi 'door-opening' swish sounds of the menus. When I pushed "New Game" and the menu made the sound it makes when you select "New Game" or "Continue" I was transported back to my room in that shitty townhouse I lived in my second year of college. I was brought right back to that room on the second story with that silver TV with the Knife Trade sticker across the top, and remember that time that Gesci got pissed off at me for taking the PS2 into my room because then she couldn't watch DVDs, which she only seemed to want to watch when I was playing PS2, and then she wrote Paul a letter at boot camp complaining that I'd taken *his* PS2 into my room and wouldn't let her use it. Hilarious. But I'm not being poetic or going into story-telling mode for fun or verbosity. All these memories literally flooded back when I heard that menu sound. I remembered the first time watching the opening CG movie about the discovery of the...of the...well there's one thing I don't remember...of the Gnosis artifact, whatever it's called. I watched that opening movie over and over back then and showed it to all my friends because I thought it was so cool. That's definitely a sign of the times because regular gameplay of an average game today looks better than that CG. But it's still cool. I did notice now that the characters in that movie, a guy who looks either Middle Eastern or Asian of some sort, and some Kenyan workers, all speak neutral American English. Why? I read a neat article on language and accents in games showing that whoever decides that ends up perpetuating certain stereotypes about people in various places in the world. So all these workers speak perfect English, whatever that means. I really don't know how I remember this game so well. I remember the tutorial, the battle system came back to me very easily. I remember the characters, I remember the dialogue and the events that have happened so far in the first hour. It's literally almost all familiar. The first real level of fighting I remember. I remember the secrets, I remember exploding barrels, I remember so much. My only conclusion is that I must have freaking loved this game and it must have had a huge impact on me. Ten years later though, I've read some Nietzsche, and the titles of the 3 games are titles of his books, so I figure there is some philosophical commentary and ideas explored through the characters and the story that I wouldn't have picked up on last time. I'll look specifically for that out of interest. I'll probably play Beyond Good & Evil after/during this to go on and make it a Nietzschean gaming semester. Looking forward to playing some more this weekend!dkirschnerWed, 01 Feb 2012 02:16:08 CSThttp://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4871&iddiary=9025http://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4864So, this stupid session-based website logged me out when I tried to submit my assignment (my second game log) because I had been on one page for too long (because I had been writing the stupid thing). And it didn't have the courtesy to save my work in its form submission or anything. So now I get to try to reword what I have already written. Be warned, I'm not happy about it. My first impression when starting my second gamelog session with Skyrim was regret. I really did not want to be playing this game; there were other things I wanted to be doing with my time. Now that I had completed the main campaign, I had no desire to return to this unchanged world and waste any more of my time. Sure, there were some guild quests that I hadn't completed, but I didn't feel any motivation to complete them. And it's because of the reasons that I wrote in my last log, some of which I am about to discuss. There is simply too much content in this game. And it's not that I wish the game had been less of a game, but given the amount of effort the developers put into this game, I wish they would have taken that effort and made a much more condensed, engaging package than the one they in actuality produced. In reality, what we have a game mindlessly filled with fetch quest after fetch quest, without any concern for creating a believable universe. Bethesda has struggled with this since I started playing their games back with ESIII: Morrowind. The developers can neither create a convincing, realistic narrative, nor can they engage me with any single character. They are all lifeless vessels that apathetically blot this game world that is supposed to be heaving with vitality. Because of this fast-paced, cram-as-many-locations-into-the-story-as-possible structure, we players never get to know anyone, and we consequently don't care about them when we are tossed into the air by a dragon or when we together slay some giant mythical beast. I do have to give them credit for one thing at least. Bethesda has designed the game so that you can play through the entire main campaign without entering some of the game's main cities, and for that I am impressed. And the reason I'm bringing this up is to relate how a convincing game universe is so crucial to an immersive experience like this. So I, after 70 hours of playing, only yesterday entered Markarth, a town nestled along the side of a mountain ridge in the far western reaches of Skyrim. As I approached the gates, I admired the town's architectural structure, which was splayed in much more of a vertical direction than the other towns. At the very least, it changed things up, and for that I was grateful. Before entering, I took a quick detour to the stables outside the walls to speak with some NPCs. One of the three there immediately began complaining to me about having to carry some dog food up to to the city castle. After he had finished rambling, my character had the option to offer to take it up there for him. What?? I, the fabled Dragonborn, the legendary slayer of the evil dragon Alduin, the Archmage of the Mages Guild, offered to carry dog food up some mountain to serve to a noble's pets?? What on earth would drive me to do such a thing? Was it the promise of some mighty reward upon completion of this grandiose task, rewarded to me by the kingly stablehand? What a stupid idea. I was taken aback. Instantly, my sense of awe and any sort of appreciation for the potential that this mountainside city may have held was demolished, as I was painfully reminded the truth about this game world. This static universe didn't care if I had journeyed to an unreachable land on the back of my own dragon to defeat a millenium-old, murderous, winged beast with three immortal souls (as dull as that actually was). This universe was content to plod along in its own way, with no regard to my past accomplishments, and dish out the same menial tasks as it would have if I would have just begun the game. But that's not even the entire problem. Another monumental problem here was that this NPC wasn't ever going to do anything anyway, unless I did it for him! He was going to get off his lazy rump and drag that sack of Pedigree to the Royal Doghouse in the first place. I, in every conceivable case that the game could provide, was going to have to do it for him. If I turned him down (which I assuredly did), he would stay leaned nonchalantly against that clay-brick wall until the heavens themselves fell down. And it's things like this, this sad and immersion-ruining experience, that destroy all suspension of disbelief. So why, if the game universe is so botched, and the characters so boring, do people still consistently fall head-over-heels to spend their life on this game? It's not because the combat is intense, undoubtedly. But it is because Bethesda has nailed it where they needed to nail it (when it comes to the business of selling games). They have stripped down their product to include the one thing that gamers really want, what really fulfills them: progression, and that quickly. The one draw here, from Bethesda's point of view, is not to invest players in a realistic game world that they can care about, not even to make the gameplay considerably enjoyable, but to give them some false sense of achievement through the rapid numerical advancement of their skills or some aesthetic enhancement of their character. What else do people talk about when they discuss MMOs? Every time I hear my friends talk about Skyrim, it's never about the epic battle they took part in, or how this or that narrative thread really grabbed them and threw them for a loop; instead, it's always about how they maximized this skill, or made this kind of armor that they will never need anyway but only wear because it's better than their last set. We have exactly what we wished for: a gave that gives us exactly what we want, and makes it easy for us to get there. There's no thought given to the progression of your character; the developers stripped out all tactical forethought for your character's advancement. There no classes that limit your skills, no races that provide anything more than minimal modifications, only skills that desire to be thoughtlessly power-leveled. Everyone starts out at the same playing field, and everyone has an equal opportunity to reach the same level of accomplishment. Your character can be proficient in Heavy Armor, Light Armor, One-Handed Weaponry, Two-Handed Weaponry, Archery, Stealth, Speechcraft, and every School of Magic available. You can be everything at once. Where's the sense of replay in that? And why would players even need to put forethought into their character? There's no difficulty, no conflict of direction to take. Keep on chugging along, and you'll be better than everybody at everything in no time at all. This is called addiction. And when you have a game that feeds directly to that desire, you have a problem. Eventually, your mind degrades until you no longer even feel combat anymore; it serves only to bring you closer to leveling up this skill or receiving that inevitably disappointing item at the end of some quest that has without a doubt overstayed its welcome. What you end up with is a repetitive game, complacent in the mire of its proven formula, shed of its complex mechanics and difficulty for a fast-paced console generation, and over-inflated because some long-time fans would have most certainly complained had the breadth of content been anything less than overwhelming. And the sick part of it all is society's acceptance -- no, embracing -- of this well-disguised cow fodder. Will Americans continue to blindly devour what big-name publishers continue to shovel at their faces as "next-generation" RPGs? This improvement is not next-generation. It is merely skin deep, and I'd be inclined to argue even that. (This entry has been edited2 times. It was last edited on Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:14:42.)wjm110Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:01:01 CSThttp://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4864&iddiary=9024http://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4870Upgrade is a free online 2D scrolling shooter that i came upon while browsing some game sites. The game title seemed interesting and i decided to try it out. After playing for a while i found the game interesting and continued on. Below is my gamelog from the first day of playing this game. The gameplay of Upgrade is very simple. The player is in control of a main ship and the aim is to shoot down other ships.If all enemy ships are destroyed, you progress to the next level. Where this game gets interesting is in the concept of upgrading. Virtually everything in this game has to be bought or "upgraded", including the preloader, the title screen and even the menu buttons which give you the option of playing the game (You are given a small amount of money at the start to buy all these). Even the graphics can be upgraded. You start out with stick-figure-like ships that can be upgraded to look presentable. The money to upgrade all these comes from destroying the enemy ships. Each enemy ship gives off a coin upon getting destroyed which the user's ship has to catch. I start off the game with my basic ship which consists of two level 1 guns and fail at the very first level. However, the good thing is that the game does not penalize you for being a failure and you can fail any level any number of times without any consequences. Shooting down some enemies has given me some money though and i use that to buy another gun. The game also gives me the option to build the ship however i wish to and i place my new gun in the middle of the other two to maximize shooting range.I get past level 1 and progress through the other levels.In the process, i have added a lightning arc, a speed panel and a missile to my ship. I have also upgraded the graphics of the game( this costs a lot of money ) and it no longer looks like i'm stuck in the stone age.However, i also make the mistake of buying background music. If you are planning to play this game, please don't do this. The in-game music seems like something used to initiate seizure attacks and i play the rest of the game with my volume turned down to avoid a trip to the physician.I progress through to level 10 and that is where i decide that i am done with upgrading for today and save the game for playing later(you have to buy the save system as well of course). After the first day of playing Upgrade, I feel that the the whole game being based around the concept of upgrading is very innovative and the most interesting element of the game.Although this is certainly not a new feature as you can draw a parallel to games like age of empires where you can upgrade your civilization and weapons as the game progresses, the whole game being dependent on this idea of upgrading is certainly unprecedented.The main incentive for me to carry on playing the game was finding out how your new upgrades will function/look rather than to complete the levels. The controls for the game are very intuitive and require no time at all to learn.The arrow keys move the ship while spacebar fires bullets. The main ship can only move horizontally and not vertically.It may be an addition to the game to enable vertical movement as well, but in truth it is not necessary as the game is easy as it is and adding vertical movement will only make it easier. There is a good diversity of weapon choice in the game from the guns which you can aim where to fire at to the lightning arc which automatically drains the health of nearby enemies.There are also other accessories to add onto the ship such as the speed panel which enables your ship to move faster and the coin magnet which attracts coins towards you.The ability to design your own ship is also very interesting for me. This is probably the only place in the whole game where you need a bit a strategy as if you place the weapons too close together or all to one side, your shooting range narrows. Thus, you need to manoeuvre the weapons around to find an optimal place for all the weapons which will maximize your shooting range. This is a very short game. There are only 20 levels and progressing to the tenth level took less than half an hour. I guess this is a good thing as i was getting a bit tired of all the shooting and just wanted to progress through levels as fast i can and obtain the money to do the upgrades. There is not much replay value to the game as like i mentioned before, my main interest was in finding out how my upgrades would look/function. Once i discovered that, there is no incentive for me to go back and play the earlier levels.A good idea would be to introduce some sort of difficulty level to the game as i do not find it to be much of a challenge.The added difficulty could be in the form of more/stronger enemies or more intelligent enemies.Right now, all enemy ships just drift to the bottom of the screen. It would definitely make the game much more interesting if the enemy ships tried to avoid the bullets being fired at them. That is all from my first day of playing Upgrade. The link to the game is below. http://armorgames.com/play/3955/upgrade-complete (This entry has been edited1 time. It was last edited on Sun, 29 Jan 2012 00:25:27.)NaveenSun, 29 Jan 2012 00:23:33 CSThttp://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4870&iddiary=9023http://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4868First, here is a brief summary of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri: Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri (SMAC) is an oft-overlooked game. SMAC deals with creating your own empire by building cities and military units, exploring, researching new technologies, and dealing with other empires. SMAC does all this in much the same way Civilization II does. However, SMAC also incorporates new elements into the classic Civilization mixture. For one, the game occurs on a distant planet and, as a result, most of the military units and technologies are the stuff of science fiction. Naturally, this means that there are some units that can do things that modern science has not yet discovered or explained. Also, unlike the early Civilization games, the player’s faction of choice has a massive impact on gameplay and strategy. Each faction has their own unique bonuses and deficiencies. For example, one faction’s military units are twice as effective when attacking, but that same faction also has vastly reduced research capabilities. Additionally, as the player advances through the technology tree, he or she can select one of several “social engineering” choices in the areas of politics, economics, values, or future society. Like the initial faction choice at the beginning of the game, social engineering choices have upsides and downsides. As an example, free market is one of the social engineering choices in economics; it increases the monetary and scientific production of an empire, but also increases ecological disruption and makes cities harder to control for that empire. Each of the game’s choices can be combined to give an empire a unique set of advantages and disadvantages, which further leads to a wide variety of effective play styles for SMAC. Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri stands among the best of the Civilization games and, certainly, provides the most depth of play within the series. Now, here is my first SMAC gamelog: So, I begin playing SMAC. At the start of the game, my first major choice is which of the six factions I want to play. I select the Gaians, a group of people who are defined by their ecological sensitivity. They choose to adapt to the native ecology of Alpha Centauri and look down on empires that choose to exploit or disrupt the native ecology. In terms of gameplay, playing as the Gaians gives me two advantages. First, the Gaians are more effective at training and capturing native lifeforms, called “mindworms.” When captured or trained, mindworms can be used like any other military unit; however, instead of traditional combat, they engage in psi combat which ignores all technology-based combat bonuses. Second, the Gaians are more effective than other empires at managing large numbers of cities. Since I fully intend to develop a massive empire, the Gaians seem like an ideal choice. The game begins with my ship crash-landing on Alpha Centauri, on the edge of a small continent. This leaves me with one city and a couple of units with which to begin exploring the planet. I spend the next several turns building more military units to explore the continent and some economic units to build more cities and to improve the cities I already have. All this is going swimmingly until I encounter CEO Nwabudike Morgan, leader of the Morganites. As his title implies, he is the leader of a faction that prioritizes wealth above all else. As a result, his cities tend to be both fabulously rich and poorly defended. I decide, then, that it would be a fantastic idea to separate Morgan from his money, and I immediately declare war on him. Unfortunately, for me, Morgan has a bigger and more technologically advanced military than I do and handily trounces all the (admittedly weak) units I send after him. Seeing the rough shape my army is in, I contact Morgan and request a truce, which he is quite willing to accept (for the right price, of course). I haven’t finished with Morgan yet, but my ambitions can wait until my military is strong enough to finish the job. Shortly after signing the truce, I unlock the ability to train mindworms. As mentioned previously, mindworms ignore technological combat bonuses, meaning that they will do just as well against Morgan’s more advanced troops as they would against other units. This plays to my faction’s strengths and will give me something of an edge against Morgan next time around. Once I am satisfied that I have enough mindworms, I contact Morgan and demand that he transmit some of his research data to me. Predictably, this enrages him, and he declares war on me. We once again start fighting, and my units clearly have a significant advantage, winning most individual fights. However, Morgan has a significant stockpile of troops, which keeps me from conquering any of his cities for some time. Also, due to his faction’s economic strength, he has plenty of money with which to rush the production of his military units, allowing him to build units much more quickly than I can. It is during this second war with Morgan that I encounter several of the other factions. After trading maps with one of the factions, the Believers, I find out that I am alone with Morgan on a medium-sized continent. All of the remaining factions are scattered about on three large continents. I also find out that the faction that’s currently in first place, the Hive, has significantly more cities, technology, and Secret Projects than any of the other empires, including my own. I resolve, once the war with Morgan ends, to “deal with” the growing power of the Hive. In the next gamelog, I will provide some background on Secret Projects, finish my war with Morgan, and confront the Hive.NatesGameLogSat, 28 Jan 2012 13:28:49 CSThttp://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=4868&iddiary=9022