Your overall progress in Victoria II is mostly your prestige. In 1839, as Sweden, I get a nice little prestige bump because of that chick up there.
After the jump, the best use of opera in a videogame since Heroes of Might & Magic 2 Continue reading →
The story of Amerikatown is the story of what makes SimCity Societies unique. Amerikatown began as a city hall at a crossroads, staffed by a handful of people from nearby apartments who drove to work every morning, stopped off at the grocery store on the way home, and then spent weekends at the baseball field. Where it went from there is unlike anything you’ll find in another city builder.
After the jump, I violently oppressed 20,000 people and all I got was this lousy monument? Continue reading →
The above image is what you get when you start SimCity Societies. Basically, a gaping hole through which you can see an abandoned Facebook page that won’t even fit into the hole. The first thing you see every time you play this game is a reminder that Electronic Arts will gracelessly orphan the games they sell you. How hard would it have been to patch that gaping hole out of the launcher? How hard would it have been to retire a game this good without leaving it basically vandalized? How hard would it have been to do something other than unceremoniously abandon one of the boldest citybuilders since the original SimCity?
Furthermore, let’s take a look at SimCity Societies’ online mod database, prominently featured on its main screen. Or not. The button goes to a dead web page that doesn’t even load a 404 error page. Has Electronic Arts never worked up a 404 error page? I can think of no publisher more in need of a 404 error page.
Fortunately, unlike another more recent SimCity, SimCity Societies wasn’t designed around the idea that it can’t be pirated. It is a traditional videogame that you install from a disk and then play whenever you like, however you like, with modded XML files if you like, when you’re travelling, when your modem is flaking out, no matter how many other people are playing it, no matter how few other people are playing it. I don’t mind that a new online SimCity game has launch problems so much as I mind having to trust Electronic Arts to do the right thing in the long run, particularly for a game where the online stuff isn’t optional, like it is with SimCity Societies. I just wish I didn’t have to be reminded of it every time I boot up my game.
Up next: dystopia in three easy steps
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Behold the humble office building! Not too expensive, not too high an upkeep cost, not too substantial an income, not too big a footprint considering it employs 20 sims. You might think it’s a boring building. In any other game, you’d be right. But this is SimCity Societies.
After the jump, the slippery slope from clerical work to mind control Continue reading →
You’d think children would be useless in SimCity Societies given its population model. When you build houses, you add people to your city. Those people visit venues — movie theaters, retail shops, bars, churches — to keep their happiness up so they don’t riot. And that’s all you need in a city if you have infinite money.
But since you don’t have infinite money, you need to build workplaces. People go to workplaces to fill the available jobs, which provides you with money. That’s the basic economy in SimCity Societies. Houses provide people; workplaces translate people’s time into money; and venues make people happy. And the happier they are, the more money they (i.e. you) make.
So in a game without aging, what good are children if you can’t put them to work? Because you can’t put children to work. There are a few options for dystopias in SimCity Societies, but none so Dickensian.
After the jump, children aren’t the future. They’re the now. Continue reading →
As you may know, Electronic Arts publishes one of the worst citybuilders you can play, and one of the best. I’ve been heartily enjoying the latter now that I’m no longer playing the former. SimCity: Societies, a 2007 game created by the folks at Tilted Mill who know citybuilders like no one else, takes a unique approach to the genre. Love it or hate it, you haven’t built a city like this.
Many citybuilders are based on a “gardening” model. You stake out rows for particular crops, make sure the conditions are right, and stand back while they grow. It’s an organic and arguably realistic approach to how cities develop. But SimCity Societies is nothing like planting a garden. It’s more like fitting together unique pieces to create elaborate clockwork systems with unique personality. And one of the game’s strengths is how much personality you’ll find in the different pieces.
After the jump, let me tell you about one of the pieces. Bring your knitting needle. Continue reading →
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 →
Most videogames are power fantasies. Tomb Raider is no exception. Lara Croft has always been an action heroine, and this latest Tomb Raider is an origin story to get her to that point. However, the template this time is a horror movie instead of an action movie. It’s a bit like Far Cry 3, but without being embarrassingly bad. Far Cry 3 clumsily resembles something by Eli Roth, something about how foreigners are bad, and learning to stab them with a machete is as much a rite of passage as getting a tribal tattoo on your forearm.
So what sets Tomb Raider apart? For starters, it knows better than to mistake Eli Roth for a good horror director.
After the jump, from zero to axe murderer in one game Continue reading →
The previous Lara Croft was perfectly expressed by casting Angelina Jolie for the Tomb Raider movies. Larger than life, iconic, aglow with celebrity, handy with pistols, plastically unreal.
The new Lara Croft is none of those thing. This Lara Croft is small and girlish, with a pony tail instead of the previous tightly practical braid. She looks more likely to raid a library than a tomb (she even claims to hate tombs at one point). She’s smart and competent, but aware of her limitations. She expresses self-doubt, grief, confusion, anguish, and pain. She runs out of breath. She is not a superman. She is cold, wet, dirty, and sometimes wounded. Indiana Jones might get his knuckles scraped up before the scene is over, but he — and Nathan Drake, by the way — is defined by swagger and confidence. He has no self-doubt, only the grim resignation and acceptance that befits a stoically invulnerable character. See also, pre-Skyfall James Bond.
So if this Tomb Raider reboot were made into a movie, the new Lara Croft wouldn’t just be someone famous. She certainly wouldn’t be just another model. She would have to express something new for the series and it seems to me Crystal Dynamics had someone in mind.
After the jump, is it as obvious to you as it is to me? Continue reading →
One of the so many ways that Tomb Raider is as good as Rocksteady’s Batman games is that it’s sprinkled with collectibles. And not just haphazardly. It’s not “hey, go get me some feathers!”, a la Assassin’s Creed. Many of these are artifacts, modeled in 3D as they were in Uncharted, and sometimes worth turning over to discover a hidden bonus, all tapping into the game’s xp system and all arranged in themed groups relating to the game’s setting.
It’s easy enough to find the locations of most collectibles on the map, by either finding treasure maps, usually in tombs, or by unlocking the skill that lets you “ping” the area with Lara’s instinct mode. You can then go into the map and drop a waypoint on an artifact so that its location shows up in the world when you use instinct mode again. This is a great way to find stuff in the more vertical areas, where you’d otherwise go bonkers trying to figure out if an icon is something above you or below you.
But then there are themed collectibles that don’t show up on the map. These are called challenges. They rely on actually exploring, looking around, peering into places you wouldn’t normally peer, basically poring over the world the developers have created to be a place worth poring over. And at times, they’re really hard to find.
After the jump, the challenge of challenges Continue reading →
There have been a few recent shooters that are supposed to put the main character through some kind of psychological terror. Far Cry 2’s hunt for the world’s most dangerous speed reader (did they only book the recording studio for four hours or something?) had laughable allusions to Apocalypse Now and Heart of Darkness. Like calling the last level “Heart of Darkness”. Far Cry 3 had Flight of the Valkaryies and a speech about insanity, in case you didn’t get that the character delivering it was supposed to to be insane. Spec Ops: The Line did a somewhat better job with the material. But nothing can rival the unintentional descent into madness that is White Gold.
After the jump, welcome to the bungle Continue reading →
We storm out of the landing craft onto the beach. German pillboxes are slaughtering soldiers left and right. The whole thing looks like something out of Saving Private Ryan. Probably because Saving Private Ryan came out only two years ago. Dying soldiers are everywhere, though they don’t seem to be suffering any bleeding. After we reach cover by barb wire, a sergeant yells “Go back down there, and grab those bangalores!”. Yelling to be heard over the din, I scream “What the fuck is a bangalore!?”
After the jump, shocking spoilers about the mystery of the white gold Continue reading →
On the second island, I finally reach my CIA contact at the US embassy. The embassy is one room in a two story apartment building, a great satirical jab at the decline of American influence in the Caribbean, or just an indicator of the game’s small budget . They’re also blaring the Star Bangled Banner constantly. I don’t want to sound anti-American, but could they please turn that crap down? Anyhow, I’m told to meet another contact in the local bar. Alright, meeting an informant in a bar. I feel like I’m in Dr. No, or Our Man In Havana, or just a better game. The ass tells me to cough up 20k in pesos before he spills the beans. This is the part in a non-linear game where the developers grab you by the lapels and shout “Go do some of our side-quests!”. See Baldur’s Gate 2 for an example of the same device. What follows are tales of my adventures on the second island…
After the jump, “I come not to praise Don Guillermo…” Continue reading →
When I drive back to the starting village in White Gold, I find a group of villagers having an informal dance party. It’s a great serendipitous moment, one more games should have. Their dance moves wouldn’t make the grinding strippers in Fallout: New Vegas envious, but it adds more character to the world. Most games are too obsessed with explosions and gore to include wonderful details like this one. I even stop to admire the scene for a few seconds before I machete one peasant, fire a burst from my M60 into another peasant, and launch a grenade into the crowd.
After the jump, let us prey Continue reading →
