(no subject)
At the diesel trying to find the spirit to get some more business writing done. I completed the first wave of partnership letters last night (though I still have replies to make to responses already received) and need to get into funding-pitch mode now. Eh, I'll just write about other crap instead first wheee.
I've been in the mood for games lately. I definitely wanna play more board games, but I've been itching to find a digital game I like, too. (Taking a break from Ace Combat 5 after last week's binge.)
I have tried Homeworlds 2, recommended to me last year. It is a very pretty game, maybe the prettiest thing to grace my Mac, but it's really just another RTS. Mine asteroids, build cute little warship phalanxes, blow shit up, repeat. I haven't played an RTS this decade, and recalling the fun I had last summer rediscovering FPS games, I'm willing to give it a chance.
The game is hard, and assumes prior RTS experience. In my case this was the original Command & Conquer nine years ago, played on a 60 MhZ Performa, but it works; the genre's gameplay hasn't changed much since then. I failed the first real mission, which gives you several time-sensitive tasks in parallel; it's the sort of mission I'd expect to see halfway through a more introductory game. I have been thinking of other approaches to it in my mental downtime, which is generally a sign that I like a game. But the controls frustrate me more than a little. I bet I'd like it more if it had a pause button, so I can freeze the action and queue up commands while fumbling the camera around space at my own speed. I bet it doesn't, since obviously multiplayer mode couldn't support that.
Also tried No One Lives Forever coz Gaming Steve loves it so much, and I can see why (I did in fact chuckle out loud at some of the dialog) but I don't think I'm really interested in playing another FPS it right now. While watching the second or third cutscene I actually said out loud "I'm too old for this." By this I meant that I can't help but feel that I have grown past these kinds of games, that my desire to play them is me just following my childhood/young-adulthood ambition to obtain play all video games because all video games are awesome.
Maturity has shown me not just how patently untrue this is, but that the main digital game genres have in large part said all they can say to me, after just a few years of play -- or they're having trouble expressing themselves in novel ways, which is probably just as likely. I think what I'm supposed to like most at this stage of my life is MMOs, but the thought of "grinding" just makes me die inside. Really, what I want to play now is what Volity can offer: casual and multiplayer, fast, and giving faster returns for gaining real-life mental skill than investing real-life time into it (in order to gain fake in-game "skill"). This is why I was so excited about Tetris DS and so on, and why I'm so disappointed when they never seem to get it quite right.
I've been in the mood for games lately. I definitely wanna play more board games, but I've been itching to find a digital game I like, too. (Taking a break from Ace Combat 5 after last week's binge.)
I have tried Homeworlds 2, recommended to me last year. It is a very pretty game, maybe the prettiest thing to grace my Mac, but it's really just another RTS. Mine asteroids, build cute little warship phalanxes, blow shit up, repeat. I haven't played an RTS this decade, and recalling the fun I had last summer rediscovering FPS games, I'm willing to give it a chance.
The game is hard, and assumes prior RTS experience. In my case this was the original Command & Conquer nine years ago, played on a 60 MhZ Performa, but it works; the genre's gameplay hasn't changed much since then. I failed the first real mission, which gives you several time-sensitive tasks in parallel; it's the sort of mission I'd expect to see halfway through a more introductory game. I have been thinking of other approaches to it in my mental downtime, which is generally a sign that I like a game. But the controls frustrate me more than a little. I bet I'd like it more if it had a pause button, so I can freeze the action and queue up commands while fumbling the camera around space at my own speed. I bet it doesn't, since obviously multiplayer mode couldn't support that.
Also tried No One Lives Forever coz Gaming Steve loves it so much, and I can see why (I did in fact chuckle out loud at some of the dialog) but I don't think I'm really interested in playing another FPS it right now. While watching the second or third cutscene I actually said out loud "I'm too old for this." By this I meant that I can't help but feel that I have grown past these kinds of games, that my desire to play them is me just following my childhood/young-adulthood ambition to obtain play all video games because all video games are awesome.
Maturity has shown me not just how patently untrue this is, but that the main digital game genres have in large part said all they can say to me, after just a few years of play -- or they're having trouble expressing themselves in novel ways, which is probably just as likely. I think what I'm supposed to like most at this stage of my life is MMOs, but the thought of "grinding" just makes me die inside. Really, what I want to play now is what Volity can offer: casual and multiplayer, fast, and giving faster returns for gaining real-life mental skill than investing real-life time into it (in order to gain fake in-game "skill"). This is why I was so excited about Tetris DS and so on, and why I'm so disappointed when they never seem to get it quite right.