Darwinia? More like Creationinia!

As I cleaned up my office the other day I found my copy of Darwinia and that got me thinking about why I didn’t like the game.  I remember seeing all the previews of the game and really liking the unique art style and presentation so when I saw a copy at Wal-Mart for low price of $8.77 CND I jumped on it.

The problem started after the first couple of tutorial levels.  As I went through the tutorials it felt alot like a standard RTS game but with stick men and drawing commands instead of clicking buttons.  As soon as the tutorial levels are over then the evelolution (Darwinism) part will kick-in, or so I thought.  I can’t wait to see the weak Darwinias will die out and the stronger ones, with their unique traits, will live one.

Unfortunately that never happened.  The Darwinia’s stayed exactly the same and continued to walk into the electric fence thingy and die in droves.  You needed to create units and upgrade (evolve) as you would any standard RTS game.

In summary, Darwinia is just your standard creationist RTS God game with a cool art style.

Why I bought Left 4 Dead and not Fallout 3 (Yet)

Both Left 4 Dead and Fallout 3 where released around the same time and I really wanted to play both.  The problem was I didn’t have the time to play both.  After some debate I ended up buying Left 4 Dead and shelved me Fallout 3 purchase till after X-mas.

It’s not that Left 4 Dead is better then Fallout 3.  I wasn’t too impressed with my first glance at Left 4 Dead.  I loved the fact it had zombies but I was worried it would get repetitive quickly and not have the variety Team Fortress 2 has.  I was also really excited about Fallout 3 as I haven’t played a good story driven RPGish game in a long time.

On the plus side Left 4 Dead turned out to be much better then I originally thought but at the time I didn’t know that.  We can talk about that later.

The real reason I got Left 4 Dead was because it was a multiplayer game and I wanted to get the “new game” experience.  Your experience with a multiplayer game is heavily influenced by your fellow gamers. When a multiplayer game is released it is fresh and new to everyone.  Everyone is exploring and learning together.  People take there time exploring levels and enjoying the atmosphere.  Everyone remembers the first time they get knocked to the ground and are swarmed by zombies.  Even more important everyone is roughly equal in skill or at least knowlegde of the game.

Now try starting a multiplayer game a month or two after it is released, especially a co-op game like Left 4 Dead.  All your fellow gamers know all the levels, know the guns, and now know the hiding in the closet trick.  Even playing with nice people you still feel like your holding everyone up and not contributing to the team.

With single player games, the experience you get is the same if you play it now or play it later.  It’s similar to a movie that you don’t see till a year after it’s release.  It’s still the same movie/game, you just have be careful to avoid any spoilers.  You’ll also have to give up talking to people about an old game that you just recently played to avoid looking like a loser.

You ever rent a movie that was released I while ago and you enjoy it but there’s kind-of this awkwardness because you can’t talk about it with anyone.

“Hey I just say Heat.”

“Heat?  I saw that 15 years ago.”

“Uhh.  Yeah I want to talk about it now.”

“No Loser.”

– Jim Gaffigan, Doing My Time CD

Generally not a problem for me because I’m not a scoical person.  That is why I have to blog.

Desktop Tower Defense Review

What simple but amazing game. It follows the golden game design rules of easy to learn but hard to master.

The point of the game is too stop creeps that enter from the left/top of the play area from exiting out the opposite side. You do this by placing towers that block the creeps’ path (except flying ones) and also shoot at them. The big catch is that the creeps will always follow the shortest path to the exit. This means they will not simply run directly into your guns unless you are smart with your placement.

An example of the type of maze you can setup is shown below.

Likely simple to code and simple graphics, it is by a company called Hand Drawn Games. Most of the time was likely spent trying to figure out the stats for the enemies the guns. Lots of trial and error.

If you get stuck (the end creeps have a lot of health) you can view mazes other users have created or watch a video of a maze being built. Yes, I did steal his idea for my own maze when I did the screen shot above.

Fantastically addictive game I would recommend it to anyone.

Good Old Hockey Game

Oh! The good old hockey game,
Is the best game you can name;
And the best game you can name,
Is the good old Hockey game!
- Stompin’ Tom Connors

This evening I got the opportunity to play some classic hockey on the Sega Geneses (NHL 95) and somewhat newer hockey on the original Xbox (NHL 2004, NHL 2005) at C2’s house. I then got to play some Wii for the second time in my young life which will be the focus of another post.

It was a blast to re-live my youth with hockey on the Genesis with it’s crappy controls and very pixelated graphics. It didn’t help that C2’s TV is like 50 inch wide screen or something ridiculously big. It is weird seeing teams that don’t exist anymore such as the Quebec Nordics, Winnipeg Jets, and Hartford Whalers and players that no longer play such as Mario Lemieux, Wayne Gretzky, etc. The game play is very slow, which wasn’t obvious till we moved up to NHL on the Xbox in which the game play was much quicker.

One thing the older hockey games had going for them was simplicity. With only 3 buttons on the Sega controller there was not a lot of options, it really boils down to a couple simple actions:

• Pass

• Shoot

• Change Player

• Body Check

I think there might have been a poke check or something but that never gets used unless your an “Advanced” player. When playing video hockey it is all about the hitting when you don’t have the puck and shooting/passing when you do. The Xbox controller has a lot of buttons on the top, two analog sticks, and 2 trigger buttons. Aside from the standard 4 actions listed above the buttons preform exotic actions such as:

• Block Shot

• Hook

• Spin Deke

• Hold Against the Boards

• Triple Axel Sow-Cow

The list goes on and on. Unless you have time to remember what all the buttons do you just revert to the 4 basic actions from old school hockey.

So designers of hockey games (I’m looking at you EA) make the 4 basic hockey actions easy to do and work fairly well. That way when a newbie like me is over at a buddies house I can have fun and be competitive without having to read and memorize the manual.