Sometimes icons pop up in your city. If you click on them, citizens offer you missions. If you accept the missions, they’re listed on the right side of the screen where your quests would go in World of Warcraft. Sometimes the missions are so important they go straight to the quest list.
For my latest city, one such mission was to build an expo center and hold an event. Fine. It’s expensive, but money in SimCity is inevitable. A given sum of money is usually just a matter of how long you have to wait to get it. Bonds? Pfft.
So I waited long enough to buy an Expo Center and crammed it into one of my last remaining corners of free space. As for the Metro Arena’s inaugural event, I’m not about to wait to save up enough to have a fancy rock concert. My people get the less expensive motocross event, which SimCity says appeals to low wealth folks (I know dogwhistle terms for white trash when I hear them). So far my city of about 20,000 people consists of mostly of low wealth citizens, so that should be perfect. I can seat 3000 of them in the Metro Arena. First come, first served, folks. Get here early. No pushing, please.
Here’s the final tally for an event that cost me $30,000 in a building that cost me $150,000:
Up next: let’s play SimCity!
One of the criticisms I’ve seen of the new Tomb Raider is that the supporting characters aren’t well developed. Which is a good point if you’re comparing it to, say, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia, Robert Altman’s Gosford Park, or Mass Effects 1, 2, and 3. But if you’re comparing Tomb Raider to action/adventure videogames, and even most action/adventure movies, that’s only a good point if you didn’t watch any of the cutscenes or read any of the collectible text snippets.
After the jump, it takes a research ship’s crew Continue reading →
I was already back on board with what Ubisoft is doing with the Assassin’s Creed games, but all I need to know about the newly announced Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag is in that screenshot up there. October 29th marked on my calendar.
Tomb Raider, one of the best games of this generation and a reboot every bit as exciting as Arkham Asylum or Skyfall, is a dire threat to all wallets. The game diary starts here. It’s one of the few games I’ve ever 100%ed and now that it’s over for me — the multiplayer is pretty much a non-issue — I look forward to vicariously re-enjoying it through your comments.
I’m not sure what to make of Sim City yet. It’s clearly taking a page from the Anno 2070 book, which is a great book to take pages from. But for better and worse, it leans heavily on EA’s forced social gaming shenanigans by presenting tiny pocket cities that rely on other nearby pocket cities, either your own or those of other players. Is this really the best way to do a city builder? Stay tuned.
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow — Mirror of Fate can’t make up its mind about whether to use colons or dashes, but it sure knows how to use the Nintendo 3DS for some classic Castlevania. Here’s one of those rare 3DS games where I really like keeping that 3D slider dialed all the way up. And it doesn’t just look great. I wasn’t sure what Konami and developer Mercury Steam were doing with the previous Lords of Shadow other than God of Warring it up. But this handheld version I can really get into for how it feels like a traditional Castlevania with latter day production values. I like the 2D movement (ironic!), the relatively simple combat, and the exploration. Now this is more like it!
The University add-on for The Sims 2 is a gold standards for add-ons. It inserted a new age stage between children and adults, creating in that new stage a rich playful world of college life. Can University Life do the same for The Sims 3, which is already piled high with playful add-on content? Will college be lost in the shuffle with spellcasting, winter wonderlands, and nightclubbing?
Speaking of nightclubbing, the Citadel add-on for Mass Effect 3 is a single-player adventure that gives Commander Shepherd more adventuring on everyone’s favorite space station MacGuffin.
Some of us feel very strongly about this critically panned and commercially disappointing follow-up to that earlier found-footage exorcism movie. Not the one with the nuns. The other one. At the one-hour mark, we discuss our favorite explosions for this week’s 3×3.
Next week: Oz the Great and Powerful
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