Cities XL 2012

For the first chapter of my Age of Empires hiatus, I'm playing Cities XL 2012. I'm just fiddling around with the mechanics at the moment and haven't decided on my completion criteria just yet. This game has a put a lot of effort in providing aesthetic views of your cities, so I thought I'd show off some of their work in my cities.

Postcard view of my first 10,000+ population city. Notice the city fragment in the background.

Even small towns can look pretty.

Motion would probably do more justice to the really up close shots where you see people strutting and cars rolling around the streets.

You can get down real low to check out the details.

From the isometric view, the building depth is difficult to notice, so a the ability for a horizontal camera makes certain areas pop.

I hope to have some bustling metropolis pics sooner or later, but I just wanted to show off the awesome work of Focus.

As a bonus strip, this comic is highly related to my current back catalogue completion.

Age of Empires 2: Age of Conquerors Finally Complete

With the sunshine gone and the darker days arriving, I've had more reason to stay inside and play them videa mahgames. So, I finally completed AoC. I started playing through it in April. At this rate, I'll never finish my game collection in my life time!

I'll be under a tombstone before I finish my collection.

Like the earlier AoE games, the campaigns too often relied on the pattern of surviving a first wave attack, rebuilding and then overcoming the stacked AI team.  While that was true for the campaigns, the mishmash 'Battles of the Conquerers' scenarios were more entertaining. These maps were generally faster paced and had more interesting objectives. Still, all the world history tied into each map, made for some wikipedia romps.

Needs more horse.

I'm taking a short break from the AoE series to try at some interesting new franchises that came out over the summer.

League of Legends Complete

A couple of months ago during a gaming session (likely while we were getting our ass handed to us by Shiva), ImilTheWinged mentioned that he still played  League of Legends. I introduced him to the game last Spring (my referral list proves it) and he's been playing since. He's also been playing regularly with a few of his friends.

LoL, best with friends.

I decided to fire LoL back up to try playing with a regular crew. Wow, I've rarely had this much fun playing a game. I haven't had the chance to play any game with the same people regularly in a long time. Playing Perfect Dark 64 back in the junior high school days or smashing demons in Diablo 2 with Steve-O were the closest I'd come to regular play with friends.

Hitting 30 feels something like this.

So, with thanks to ImiltheWinged, DavidTo, BelgarionX and Archwing I have reached level 30 in League of Legends. That does not mean I won't continue to play the game. I'm still going to play it quite regularly while beating the other parts of my collection.

Oh, and shameless referral plug if you want to try out the game.

Magicka Complete

I'm actually about a week late on posting this, but I completed Magicka and its DLC packages.

Rainbow Making

The Magicka spell system impressed me. After all the glorious applications of spell combos, other RPGesque spells seem so tame.  I feel trapped with only using a single spell in Champions of Norrath (I want to link to the Sony page here...but it's down).  I do hope more studios incorporate combination spell casting in to their games. In fact, they could use the idea and expand it to other combat types.

I also thought Arrowhead did a good job by not taking their game too seriously.  They referenced everything from SkiFree, 300, Highlander to Chuck Norris.  They were even comfortable enough to mock themselves by creating a "Crash to Desktop" spell that humourosly added lines like "Goblin Archer has disconnected from the game."

I look forward to what Arrowhead pumps out next.

Magicka: Another AoE Interlude

After chatting with ImiltheWinged on his previous visit, I was convinced to pick up a copy of Magicka and it's assortment of DLC, including the ridiculous Magicka:Vietnam.

Fortunately, like Limbo, Magicka is a great game.  The controls feel right, the game's length is appropriate and most importantly, the concept is focused.  There's no meddling with inventory, there are no (save one) side quests, and there is limited character progression.  The game feels fantastically arcade like.  This doesn't mean there isn't content, the content is in the actual levels and combat opposed to long-term mechanics.

Magicka is about dousing things in water and then applying electricity.

The game's achievements look doable and entertaining, so I plan to tackle them all before putting it down and returning to Eurasian history.

Streets of Rage 3 Hurts

ImiltheWinged came by last weekend in attempt to finish Streets of Rage 3.  We failed miserably.  We even tried to cheat using level select to the furthest point we reached, but still died.

Thanks to Shiva (see picture), we were slaughtered.  This guy has cross screen tracking attacks, blocks combos, breaks throws, has 5 life bars and beats up kids on rollerblades and kangaroos.  He just hurts. I'm going to have to practice playing this game just to feel comfortable attempting to tackle Shiva.

Anyhow, we put SoR3 down and started giving Gain Ground a whirl.

Ya, it goes something like that...

AoE2 AoK Complete

I thought AoE1 took me a long time to complete, but AoE2 took even longer.  At least AoE2 entertained me.  Still, finding time to beat a 2 hour map is tough. Let alone finding time to beat 30 of them!

Joan d'Arc

All of the campaigns were lots of fun, with very few lulls. I did accidentally make a few of the missions boring by killing everything rather than doing the objective. The idea behind that was I was expecting the following objective to require some hardcore defending, but it turned out I just needed to do the one thing and I was done *shrug*

I <3 Mamelukes

I'm looking forward to AoC because the New World civs are awesome and because I don't know much about El Cid or the extraordinarily interesting history of Spain. Onwards!