Screenshots, videos, guides, musings,and stories about various PC games.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Discovering the Age of Discovery

I'm playing Age of Kings III: Age of Imperialism for the first time, borrowing it from an acquaintance to make sure it runs on my Vista before buying my own copy. I'm well acquainted with its predecessor, the Age of Kings, a medieval real-time strategy game. I'm not terribly good at it -- I'm far too lazy and indulgent to bother getting "good", preferring instead to play on easier difficult levels where I can be wasteful but still win with a bit of effort. I'm the type of player who likes building towns and amassing armies, but not using them. After playing through the tutorial, I decided to play a skirmish match, set on easy. I'm playing as the Germans, mostly because I've gained an affection for all things German after four semesters of German language classes. Hearing a sturdy "Jawohl!" when I tell soldiers to march around is rather gratifying.

I chose a New England map, and as it happened the map was divided into half by a trading route with controllable areas. After my explorer "Klaus" uncovered that portion of the map, I made haste to start claiming them. Apparantly on "Easy" difficulty the computer spends most of its time contemplating its navel or some other such thing, because despite my woefully inefficent resource gathering -- directing settlers to chop wood, produce food, and mine silver for money -- I claimed all four trade route spots and build two outposts along the road.


Photobucket



I quickly found the enemy colony -- here you can see one of my "Uhlans" encountering rival woodsmen. The coin emblems on the map represent trade route spots, the little huts Indian villages, and the X's treasure sites. I'm rather lazy and never got around to taking any treasure. I parked a tower just south of the Dutch colony to  keep an eye on Dutch troops that might try to raid the trade route:  I could only support so many troops, and so preferred instead to keep my army at a central location and then move them to wherever they were called for if the time came.



Photobucket


As it happened, by the time Dutch troops started wandering southward, I'd already made the tower into a forward base: it was quite near a silver mine, and so I had workers there mining it. I also had a barracks and an artillery foundary. The Dutch would attack it numerous times, getting slaughtered and each and every time. There was no contest: my soldiers were massed and mixed, consisting of crossbowmen, heavy swordsmen, and skirmishing riflemen. Once I got cannon -- and an upgrade from my "home city" that allowed me to turn cheap cannon into field artillery -- the game was effectively over.

Photobucket


 I soon began reducing their town to rubble. After destroying their two barracks, all resistance stopped -- I needed only to keep reducing their colony to force them to surrender. Meanwhile, my cavalrymen were hunting down Dutch settlers and giving them a taste of silver.

Photobucket


The slaughter was not all on land, either: the tower I built just north of the trade route blew up a Dutch ship while I was busy watching my cannon reduce the Dutch town to rubble.

Photobucket




I decided to try another game, this one on a different kind of map, one that promised a river.

Photobucket


German Soldier:  Llamas....rheas....and dirt. Where the hell did we land? 

Again, a trade route lay roughly in the middle of the map, which was intersected vertically by a river with shallow spots. My explorer Klaus stumbled upon the Portuguese colony by accident and began throwing things at it. He would do this for a while longer.Once my economy started to develop, I militarized the middle of the map.

Photobucket

Where we see my troops attacking a pirate and an Indian with a blowgun to claim their treasure. Geld ist gute, ja?  I again built a tower just south of the enemy colony to help stymie any invasions on their part, then turned it into a forward base at my leisure. This turned into a nice move on my part. The location I chose allowed my soldiers to take over in the woods with a tower at their backs when the enemy tried to attack them, leading to a slaughter greater than before.

Photobucket


I soon began raiding the colony, at which point the Portuguese took great offense at Klaus throwing things at them and started shooting at him. He took refuge behind a rock.

Photobucket


 As my troop numbers grew, so to did my aggressiveness: I started attacking the Portugese workers. They would flee, only to find themselves facing another band of German crossbowmen, knights, and muskets: it was rather sad, almost.


Photobucket


Photobucket


I had the Portugese bottled up nicely. They were doomed. Rather than waiting on cannons, I trained pikemen to take on the town center directly. I lost quite a few during the siege of it, and afterward when villagers armed with muskets poured out of its sundered entryway, but was able to crush the colony quick-time.

Photobucket






Community Center

Photobucket


A number of years ago when I spent most of my free time playing the original Sims, I created the above lot, which I titled "the Community Center". It was one of my favorite two lots, a must in any neighborhood I played, and saw a lot of use. The design was rather simple, but I was able to put a lot of stuff on the lot -- a pool, basketball court,  playground for children, blankets for the sun-worshipers, and so on. Families could buy food from vendors or grill outside: a telescope attracted a lot of attention, some of it extraterrestrial. I liked the idea of a family being able to come here and spend the day doing a variety of things, interacting with their neighbors.

Photobucket

Today I decided to rebuild in in The Sims 2, and the above is the result. It's not done yet: I imagine repeated visits to the lot will give me ideas for how to make it look or work better, but it's a very solid start, I think. I called it the "Gene Debs Community Center" after one of my Sims, the former mayor of the town who recently died. He was named after a real-world personality and shared the same politics, although probably not the same personality. My idea in the original lot was that the "Green Gaians" -- a petitioner group from SimCity 3000 Unlimited, which always asked the mayor for more parks and recreation -- sponsored the center. In The Sims 2, it's "sponsored" by the Debs family (he married into wealth).

Photobucket

The above is the center proper. I wasn't able to translate all of its elements, but I tried. This building is actually more useful than the Sims 1 version, allowing Sims to buy clothing and groceries. An in-store diner takes the place of vendors and is much more efficent. Sims can also dance, watch television, and read while a bird and fish stare at them.

Photobucket


Here we see the playground area. A basketball hoop is mounted on the end of the building, while a playground for children and Sims who are young at heart is immediately near. There are showers behind that wall, a carryover from the original game.  At the other end of the lot, you can see a soccer goal: this replaces a stretch of payment with a smoothie vendor from the original. This is an improvement. Note areas where grass can no longer live because of heavy foot traffic: this is one of those little touches you can add to make appearances more realistic.

Photobucket

Behind the center is the garden, an area which recquires more work. My original idea was for a twisting path lined by hedges, with plenty of flowers and the odd pocket or so where couples in love could sit on a bench and talk by themselves. The hinterarea isn't quite as large as that would recquire, but I'm making do. Still, I want to revisit this area.

Photobucket

This is one of my favorite areas: families can grill meals and then enjoy them under shade trees. I wish Sims 2 had picnic benches as the original game did, but this is lovely nonetheless. I would put a telescope in this area, but they don't seem to be available in Community mode.

Photobucket

Here we have a little open area and the stage, which Sims can use to play instruments or get married on. Nearby is the phone "booth", a little room with a phone and a place to sit to wait for the taxi. In the original game I tried for a "gazebo" effect, but here I just went with a little shack. This is the only building on the lot with a pitched roof, by the way: the rest are straight asphalt. I put pet beds nearby for Sims who bring their dogs.
Photobucket




Photobucket

This is the neighborhood view. I've sent a few Sims to this lot to test out its functions and it seems to work all right, although I haven't yet tried the grill or marriage arch out yet.  Comparing the two, I see Sims 2 has a lot less pavement.

Understatement

Photobucket

In one of Vice City's initial missions, the player obtains a cell-phone, by which contacts keep in touch and alert "Tommy" as to when they have new missions for him. This also allows characters to ocassionally bug him. Toward the end of the storyline missions, Tommy's lawyer calls in a panic because the Mafia is threatening to take over Tommy's business and kill him and the lawyer. Tommy, in an attempt to calm his lawyer down, says the above.

When I took the call, I happened to be checking on my garages. The timing was...unspeakably brilliant. 

Friday, November 13, 2009

Driving through V.C.

Photobucket


Vice City remains my favorite GTA game because of its atmosphere, both in graphics and sound. In this shot, I'm driving through town with the Cinematic Camera enabled. This camera allows for visually stunning shots outside of the player's perspective. This makes it a bit difficult to drive, but allows for nice videos and screenshots.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Unfortunate Bystander

Photobucket
Imperial Officer: I'll just ehm, stay out of you fellows' way, then shall I?

Back in the spring I began playing Jedi Knight II: Jedi Academy. It's a third person action/fantasy game where the player begins as a Jedi padawan. After playing through the tutorial, the player can begin to play missions. At the start of every missions, you may choose a force "power" to develop or develop further. Force powers from both "sides" of the force are available, and the player's mentor will comment on his or her developing proficiencies in the force -- praising the player for developing "good" Force powers and cautioning against overdevelopment of darker powers. The game has two endings, based on the player's choice at a pivotal moment -- one "good", one "evil".

After playing the game through my first time as canon mostly intended -- a mostly balanced character with a strong tendency for the light side -- I decided to play it again as a mostly balanced character with a strong tendency for evil. As the player is allowed to customize the appearance of his character, I went with the flow. While my "good" character wore light robes, used a green lightsaber, and fought defensively, my "bad" character wore a dark tunic, used purple blades, and fought aggressively. Interesting, he killed less: he tended to move fast and strike hard, and I didn't like him getting slowed down by mere mooks -- so they tended to get force-pushed to the side. He did blow up droids for no reason, though, just to earn his "Bah, I'm a grumpy Sith" credentials.



I'm beginning the penultimate mission set of the game, where I must "rescue" a fellow Academy student from the dark side. I have to find him first, and that means fighting through a seemingly unending series of Imperial stations alongside a lava river. The stormtroopers are easy to handle -- a little Force Lightening clears the room -- but the numerous Dark Jedi require saber battles. In this battle, an Imperial officer has climbed upon the equipment for his own safety, but he's still shooting his little pistol at me. Normally I'd ignore him, but the little pistol is annoying me, so, minutes later:

Photobucket


One of my blades accidently hit him when I was jumping around fighting. "Oops".

Monday, November 2, 2009

Home Invasion



This may be one of the funniest things I've seen in San Andreas. I'm robbing homes, and am dressed appropriately enough for the occasion in my hockey mask. I've parked a shady-looking van outside the home, and about to go in -- but wait, whose patrol route am I blocking? The police. Good thing they don't find a masked man entering a home and leaving it with a television in his hands remarkable in the least.

Introduction

One of my hobbies is PC gaming, a relatively inexpensive hobby for me given that I get a lot of value out of the games that I buy. I favor games that tell a riveting story, or better -- allow me to tell interesting stories.  These games tend to allow the player to fool around quite a bit, and are called "sandbox"-style for that reason. I've decided to start sharing the more enjoyable parts of my gaming experience online. This blog is mostly for my own amusement, but hopefully other people will find it enjoyable.

The games that will probably feature most here are:

  • The Sims 2, a "life simulator" dubbed as a software toy by its creator, Will Wright. The Sims allows players to create people and create buildings for them to live and shop in. It's very detailed, and very fun: I've been playing games in the series since The Sims debued in 2001. I'll probably get The Sims 3 at some point, but not for a while yet. I may tell stories or simply share screenshots of homes I've proud of.
  • GTA Vice City is one of those few games where when I say I love it, I don't just mean I enjoy it. I truly love this game: my life is made better by its existence. You may be familar with the Grand Theft Auto series reputation already, but pay that no mind. What I love about this game is not the fighting, the car chases, or the story, but the setting. Vice City is the sequel of Grand Theft Auto 3, a revolutionary game for its time that is set in dreary Liberty City, Rockstar Games' interpretation of New York.  Vice City is far from dreary: set in the 1980s, it places the player in city defined by its white sandy beaches, its glorious sunny days, its insanely fun taste in music, clothes, and cars, and -- just a touch of jadedness and consumer culture. The hours I've spent playing this game -- driving around the city on bikes while listening to the game's 100 eighties hits or my own sutff -- are incalcuable.  I've never played a game with more atmosphere, except perhaps Mafia.  (Mafia may make this list once I find all of the install cd.)
  • Vice City was followed up by GTA San Andreas, a massive undertaking that I just started experiencing this fall.  San Andreas's story -- and it does have one, unlike its predecessors -- unfolds in three cities (Los Angeles/Santos, San Francisco/Fierro, and Las Vegas/Venturas.) and a vast countryside. San Andreas doesn't have the atmosphere of Vice City, but holy wow does it have a lot for the player to do. The storyline missions are just a start: besides this there are gang wars to participate in, races to win, oceans that need swimming, and planes that need flying. San Andreas tends to monopolize my time, given that I'm just really getting into it. 
  • The Civilization series are turn-based strategy games that allow the player to rule over a nation of people from its beginnings as a tribe of nomads til the modern era. There are multiple victory options, both peaceful and non. Civilization 3 is one of my favorite games, but I'm still getting used to its sequel, Civilization IV.


There are other games, but these are the ones that take up most of my time, and what you will probably be seeing most of.  Content on this blog will be varied: one day I may share a housing design, the next I may post a video of a particularly spectacular stunt in Vice City. You can expect screenshots, guides, content-based musings, and stories just for starters.