What a wicked game to play, to make me feel this way
It has been an exciting week for comments! I think soapbox week was a success. Yesterday I was gonna do one more rant about how Star Trek III is the most egregiously underrated member of the franchise, but I wasn't really in the mood, so I wandered off and found some computer games instead, and then I forgot to post anything. So, now that I don't have anything else to say, I guess I'll tell you about these games?
(Also I just want to mention how pleased I am with the last few post titles. Yay me.)
1. Weird Worlds--This is the sequel to Strange Adventures in Infinite Space. These broadly follow in the 4x space tradition, but have the feel of a quick ten minute game of solitaire. You just zip around the galaxy in your ship, collecting amusing alien devices, blowing people up, that sort of thing. Weird Worlds offers a number of improvements: first, it is just amazingly gorgeous, especially the starmap and the combat scenes; second, there are lots more aliens and stuff; and third, and perhaps most significantly, there are now three different kinds of missions, including military and scientific. These contribute the most to the replay value of a game that would otherwise probably get a bit repetitive over time.
It occurs to me that a lot of y'all are reading this on a Mac. At present, this game is PC only, but since SAIS was ported to the ol' Etch-a-Sketch, this one probably will be too.
2. Speaking of pretty games that you need a real computer to play, Torus Trooper is an older "race around a tube shooting enemies" game that is pretty dang satisfying. The collision detection is somewhat nonintuitive; most of the dozens of bullets that appear to hit you actually don't, which for me evokes fond memories of being nine years old and playing arcade games with only a very poor grasp of the actual mechanics involved.
3. The dreadfully-named Pax Galaxia is available on Mac, and it is an interesting departure from the regular Risk clones, in that one's unit commands are given and continually carried out in real time. It's pretty okay, but I bet multiplayer would be downright intense.
4. Democracy (also Windows-only, haha sucks to be you guys) is a political simulator which seems pretty fun. Basically you run a country and try to get all the different groups of people to like you enough to reelect you. I need to play it more before I can really pass judgment, but for now I will say that its interface is an informational marvel.
(Also I just want to mention how pleased I am with the last few post titles. Yay me.)
1. Weird Worlds--This is the sequel to Strange Adventures in Infinite Space. These broadly follow in the 4x space tradition, but have the feel of a quick ten minute game of solitaire. You just zip around the galaxy in your ship, collecting amusing alien devices, blowing people up, that sort of thing. Weird Worlds offers a number of improvements: first, it is just amazingly gorgeous, especially the starmap and the combat scenes; second, there are lots more aliens and stuff; and third, and perhaps most significantly, there are now three different kinds of missions, including military and scientific. These contribute the most to the replay value of a game that would otherwise probably get a bit repetitive over time.
It occurs to me that a lot of y'all are reading this on a Mac. At present, this game is PC only, but since SAIS was ported to the ol' Etch-a-Sketch, this one probably will be too.
2. Speaking of pretty games that you need a real computer to play, Torus Trooper is an older "race around a tube shooting enemies" game that is pretty dang satisfying. The collision detection is somewhat nonintuitive; most of the dozens of bullets that appear to hit you actually don't, which for me evokes fond memories of being nine years old and playing arcade games with only a very poor grasp of the actual mechanics involved.
3. The dreadfully-named Pax Galaxia is available on Mac, and it is an interesting departure from the regular Risk clones, in that one's unit commands are given and continually carried out in real time. It's pretty okay, but I bet multiplayer would be downright intense.
4. Democracy (also Windows-only, haha sucks to be you guys) is a political simulator which seems pretty fun. Basically you run a country and try to get all the different groups of people to like you enough to reelect you. I need to play it more before I can really pass judgment, but for now I will say that its interface is an informational marvel.
posted by Evan at 3:49 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home