PC Game Fun Time

While we seem to be doing a little to much gushing over Stardock around here of late, I feel like this news is noteworthy.

Stardock has continued their tradition of releasing major free updates for already released games.  Their latest free “patch” for the Galactic Civilizations II trilogy (the original game and 2 expansion packs) would almost put some expansion packs to shame (I’m looking at you, Sims!)

This update adds a bunch of new features, including new more varied game setup options, improved graphics, a substantially revised espionage system and new diplomacy options.  It also adds some of the usual game balance improvements and bugfixes.

It would be nice if more developers would show this kind of continuing commitment to an already released game.  Stardock has publicly stated that there will be no more official expansion packs for Gal Civ II and there is no monthly fee for playing.  However, the decision to add these “content updates” still makes good business sense, as I’m certain each substantial update generates some additional sales for Stardock.

Maybe there is still hope that someday most developers will actually care about and even take pride in their games.

It has been a long time since the days of Windows 98. While the famous “Blue Screen of Death” was a common occurrence for users of that operating system, most of our readers have probably only seen a handful of full-blown computer crashes in say, the past year.

Unfortunately, while Microsoft operating system stability has improved by leaps and bounds since the 90’s, the same can not really be said for the games that run on Microsoft operating systems. At least these days when a game crashes, you generally only need to restart the game, not the whole computer. But many PC games, even the very high profile big budget titles, still crash with distressing regularity.

For a recent example, look at Fallout 3, a game that has sold a lot of copies and received a huge amount of press.  The latest patch supposedly fixed several crashes related to alt-tabbing behavior and updating the game.  I did not experience these crashes.  I have however had a steam specific problem: unless I disable the steam “in-game” client, Fallout 3 crashes immediately at startup, every time.  This is obviously not an issue that affects every player, or it would have been fixed by now.  Still, it is an issue that affects me, and it is quite annoying - when I play TF2, I really want to have the Steam in game options, so I have to enable / disable this feature every time I want to switch between games.

Read the rest of this entry »

Stardock, the makers of such fine games as Galactic Civilizations and Sins of a Solar Empire, and who are well-respected ’round these parts for their vehement opposition to Digital Restrictions Management, have announced their next game, Elemental: War of Magic. In case the name didn’t give it away, this is a departure from Stardock’s usual science fiction fare into the realm of fantasy. Now I’m not especially fond of said change of venue, seeing as how I tend to think that swords-and-sorcerers fantasy is over-represented in videogaming while space opera science fiction is under-represented, but I’m remaining hopeful.

First of all, the game being from Stardock immediately gives it a leg up in my book, as I’ve enjoyed every other title they’ve produced for PC in recent years. Compare this with a larger publisher like Electronic Arts, whose titles are often hit-or-miss. And the graphical style looks pretty nifty. Rather than aiming for hyper-realism, Stardock is going for a cel-shaded look. It’s now been long enough since the initial cel-shading boom that I think cel-shading can be considered cool again.

But of course, what really matters is how the game plays, and we simply don’t have much information available on that front yet. According to GameSpot (if you’re willing to trust them after the Jeff Gerstmann incident; I’m still iffy) , the game will play like a mixture of Civilization and the Total War series. Stardock envisions battles being just as large as those in, say, Medieval II: Total War. It’ll have the ability to pause the action at any time and queue up commands, which is what makes it a bit more strategic than classical-style RTSes (and more of a chore to play online to boot). I suppose the main difference over Medieval II is that the out-of-combat screens are more like Civilization, which will allow creation and settlement of new cities (Medieval II was effectively played on a static map of Europe in which the cities simply traded sides).

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the game is the announced “persistent multiplayer” mode. I suspect it’ll compare to Cities XL in this respect, but there isn’t yet enough information to be sure just yet. I’ll be keeping a close eye on this game as time goes by and new information is released. Unfortunately, it isn’t scheduled to be released until February, 2010, so don’t get too excited over it. Also, I suspect the game is far from completed, because while we’ve seen lots of screenshots from the simple-to-program overworld map, we have nothing yet from the promised battle screens. That could take awhile to do right; heck, the Total War series is on its fifth game now and it still has significant problems with it. Simulating combat between thousands of units in military formations correctly is hard.