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Apr 24th, 2009 at 13:06:57 - Age of Empires II (PC) |
Age of Empires-II is an RTS game published by Microsoft in 1998.
Game Play:
Like many RTS games you find yourself in control of a kingdom (and its people, both villagers and military personnel) which you are required to develop to withstand attacks from enemies, and also to counterstrike and destroy them. Some of the several buildings that can be built include: i) towncenter (used to create villagers and hold them in course of an enemy attack), ii) resource holding storehouses, iii) army buildings (used to create army and research new capabilities), iv) trade-center, v) Monasteries (to create monks and store relics, which are randomly placed in the map), vi) Castle (to hold the king), vii) Universities to research new abilities. Following are the several win conditions: i) destroy enemy kingdom or king (depending upon the option selected), ii) Fix a timeline, and player that has the maximum score (by the end of timeline) wins, iii) build either a Wonder (a building, it requires huge amount of resources) and hold it for 200 years, or iv) capture all the relics and hold them for 200 years (in both cases an year is decremented every 10 seconds).
There are two modes of play: Campaigns and Random Map. In Campaigns a predefined task, broken down into various stages, is assigned to a player who is required to accomplish the mini-goals to finish a campaign. In Random-Map players are allowed to select various options on the map (like: population, number of enemies or allies, wins condition, map structure) and try to build a kingdom with a goal of meeting the win condition. Two extra modes (sub branches of random map) include Regicide: where limited resources are provided and you are required to build the kingdom from scratch, or Death Match: abundant resources are provided hence you can right away start attacking.
The game starts with a load screen where you can select the various options mentioned above, once the game starts you see an isometric bird’s eye view of the map. Different resources are identified using variant sprites, and a thumbnail of the entire map is shown at the bottom which gives a broader overview of the map. The game ships with 5 difficulty modes: Easiest, Easy, Moderate, Hard, Hardest.
Analysis:
Game Play: I have been playing this game since 8 years and was never bored. I credit the RTS genre of the game for it. Every game is different as you try out different ways to kill the enemy. Even the options given to the players (for instance in terms of available military units) can make a significant difference to each play.
Sound: Pretty neat, and various music bits are assigned to indicate different actions happening; for instance when you are being attacked, or when a villager becomes idle.
Graphics: Age of empires does not demand high quality graphics as it’s a 2D game with a table-top view. However buildings are 3D models which mimic the real world. Overall, I will rate them good
Learning Curve: A separate section is dedicated for teaching how to play. Rather than having an exclusive (and boring, in my view) tutorial (for teaching) a player is required to finish mini-tasks which will eventually educate him (like a mini-campaign). In this way a player gets a feel of playing, and also learns about the game.
Multi-Player: Players can connect via internet or LAN, but looks like there are some issues with windows Vista.
Diplomacy: In Multiplayer mode players can talk to each other using chat window. One can discuss to make allies and target a specific enemy (may be someone who’s too good and growing fast, eventhough it’s kinda cheap).
Influence on our game: I took it as a reference when designing our Game2 for instance the concept of minimap is an inspiration from this game.
How does the game keep the players interesting? : You have to monitor your kingdom throughout the game play. For instance a villager becomes idle after finishing his assigned job, and then you are required to assign him a new task. In my view there won’t be a minute where the player can sit idle.
Final Thoughts: I would highly recommend it. Good way of spending a holiday. It requires a lot of time to finish the game, I remember me planning and spending weeks to kill my enemies.
Caution Note: HIGHLY ADDICTIVE.
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Jan 21st, 2009 at 06:03:07 - Battle Field (Other) |
Battle Field
Players:
This is a two-player game.
Initial Setup:
Each player draws his own 8x8 matrix in which the rows are named by alphabets and columns by numbers; hence each cell can be referred as A1, D8 and so on. Four predefined shapes (Sub, Tank, Ship and Plane), with fixed sizes, are drawn on the matrix, without any overlaps.
The basic theme of the game is: war- find/guess the location of the war-machines therby destroying them. Initially all the cells in the matrix are open; they get closed during the course of the game. A war-machine is destroyed if all the cells it occupies get closed. The goal of the game is to destroy all the opponent’s war machines, and the first person to do so is the winner.
About the Basic Shapes:
Submarine (sub): A straight line (should only be horizontal or vertical) occupying 3 cells
Eg: ---
Tank: T-shaped object (which can be drawn in any direction) occupying 4 cells.
Eg:
._ _ _
....|
Ship: L shaped object (which can be drawn in any direction) occupying 5 cells.
Eg:
._ _
.....|
.....|
.....|
Plane: A '+' shaped object, occupying 9 cells
Eg:
....|
....|
..-----
....|
....|
Playing Instructions:
In each turn a player selects three cells to attack the opponent’s war-machines. An opponent marks these as closed and if these cells overlap with that of his war-machine’s location he has to say so. For instance, player-1 says: B2, C2, F8 and player-2 says two hits on submarine. Based on the success of his previous guess a player chooses his next 3 cells to attack. In the above mentioned example by selecting A2 and D2, in his next chance, player-1 can ensure the destruction of player-2’s submarine.
Analysis:
Battle-Field is a fairly simple and interesting game which can be played on the fly. I find it exciting as it requires fair amount of logic and reasoning and yet has trivial design. Initially a player has to carefully spread his war-machines on his matrix. After playing the game several times i believe placing two machines closeby might confuse the opponent, which can gain you extra chances. Things get interesting when the selected cells result hits on multiple machines. One has to carefully keep track of the cells that are already closed and hence avoid un-necessary repetitions. This game can be easily converted into an online game. A non-online version can also be created but computer has to be the second player as each player’s matrix must be hidden from the other. Infact I even remember playing one which had some eye-catchy graphics where each hit on a war-machine is represented by explosions.
My Add-on:
To make things challenging and interesting I would reward a player based on his current selection. Before each turn, a player can select an option called ‘Confident’. When selected, any successful hit by the current guesses will earn him an extra cell for the next turn (a player can guess 4 cells); if not he will lose one and can select only 2 cells next time. Such options can be advantageous when the player is sure about the opponent’s location (in the above mentioned example, the second turn by player-1 guarantees a hit).
Game Play:
First Session:
I played with my roommate who knows about the game. It started out as fun and got really interesting towards the end. My plane and sub were exposed completely by the 7th turn, and I had couple of hits on his tank, ship and plane. As mentioned in my analysis I placed my ship and tank closeby which caught him stuck. He was trying various combinations to figure out the exact locations. He was so frustrated he started picking cells randomly in the confined region. In the meantime I was able to destroy his exposed war-machines but his sub was hiding from me. I guess one has to be lucky especially when it comes to submarine considering its small shape. Finally he figured out the locations of my ship and tank and his sub was still un-touched. He won :(
Second Session:
It was revenge time and I did not want to repeat the same tactic, hence I had my four machines well spread on my matrix. This time I was lucky and got his sub and tank early. He had only a few hits on my plane and tank by then. I got the rest of his war-machines by just losing my sub and tank; my plane and ship were partially exposed. I won :)
This entry has been edited 6 times. It was last edited on Jan 21st, 2009 at 06:31:09.
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