Best Of 2003
Mark Asher - Features - Comments - 05/31/04
10. Culdcept
Monopoly: the Gathering
Tom: The Japanese have taken everything you love about Magic the Gathering and grafted it onto an elaborate Monopoly style board game, complete with a stock market subgame. Displaying their penchant for trans-Pacific linguistic blunders, they've given it a name that you will confuse with something you buy when you get one of those blisters on your lip. You can play alone against a surprisingly competent AI to collect cards and build decks. You can also break it out as an excellent multiplayer game. Although it's annoying that Culdcept can't quite decide whether the players are supposed to have an open or closed hand of cards, this is an almost flawless game system. If you're a board gamer or a CCGer, or better yet if you're a board gamer and a CCGer, Culdcept has your name written all over it. And, no, I have no idea what the title means because -- thankfully -- you can skip the stupid cutscenes that presumably tell the story of what a Culdcept is.
Mark: I give up. I can't even understand the names of these crazy console games - Culdcept? Wait till you see the names of numbers 7 and 6. Will someone please come over and explain them to me, and then program my VCR for me so I don't miss any more episodes of Matlock? Thanks.
9. Rise of Nations
Build a civilization to stand the test of time...for about an hour
Tom: Although it can be a bit dry compared to stuff like Warcraft's Frozen Throne and even Stainless Steel's Empires: Dawn of the Modern World, it's as playable and slick as an RTS could ever hope to be. It also manages to work in some Civ-style elements like borders, strategic resources, and technological advantages that aren't just units with more hit points (although that's in there, too). The combat has some of the tactical nuances we've seen in Creative Assembly's Shogun/Medieval games. The resource management is both streamlined and complex. And it's all tied into a tight unified package that you can play through in under an hour. Like Brian Reynolds' work on the Civilization games, this is what you get when an accomplished designer tackles a potentially stagnant genre.
Mark: Interesting RTS, but way, way, way too much stuff to manage when you get to the advanced ages. I can't imagine the upcoming expansion doing anything besides adding to the complication.
8. Space Colony
In space, everyone can hear Tammy bitching Tom: You know those movies where a rag tag group of people has to run a spaceship or an outpost on some remote planet? They're in the middle of nowhere, wearing cool jumpsuits, and flipping switches on complicated consoles. You got Keir Dullea running laps in a rotating ring (2001), Harry Dean Stanton and Yaphet Kotto complaining about having to split a share (Alien), and a buck-nekkid Kirk Douglas grappling with Harvey Keitel (Saturn 3). Put that vibe into a sci-fi city builder, let the developers of Stronghold give it some resource management in a funky alien ecology, and then tie it together with some Sims style personnel management sans the preoccupation with bodily functions. Voila! It's Space Colony! It looks great, with sharp and informative 2D artwork that keeps the interface annoyances to a minimum. Space Colony shouldn't be as good as it is, but it is. No joke.
Mark: Space Colony is a fine example of how you ape a successful game like The Sims in such a way as to ensure that only nine people buy your game. Take the dollhouse, dress-up, soap opera game loved by pre-teen girls everywhere and set it in space in a science-fiction setting. Oh yeah, they had their Brainiac caps on when they came up with this idea.
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