Civilization and the iPhone are an obvious match. A mouse-controlled, turn-based strategy is pretty much the ideal game to port to the iPhone. So obvious that it wasn’t a matter of “if” but “when” Civ would hit the iPhone. I’m glad Firaxis took their time with this one, because if it hit before I graduated, it would have led to a premature end to my university career.

Or maybe not? Despite my initial excitement, Civilization Revolution for the iPhone left me a little cold. The game itself is an excellent reimagining of the franchise for a more casual crowd, programmed by Sid Meier himself. The interface, on the other hand, leaves much to be desired.

Don’t drag, tap!

The basic interaction in Civ Rev is moving units across the world. This is done by tap-and-holding a unit, and then dragging to the destination. This doesn’t work as well as you’d expect.

The difference between the mouse and the finger as a pointing device is that the mouse cursor lives in the screen, but your finger is attached to your hand. As you drag your finger across the screen your hand gets in the way.

This is especially annoying in Civ Rev because as you drag, the game draws the path your unit is going to take. Because my hand covers most of the screen while dragging, I find myself constantly struggling to both move to my destination as well as review the path which my unit will take. That the fundamental interaction in the game is this frustrating ruins the game for me.

(read on…)

… playing Street Fighter IV in glorious HD with the exquisite Street Fighter IV Tournament Edition Fightstick.

Obviously, this controller is incredible! Firm stick, tactile buttons, and nicely laid out. It’s designed with a bunch of well thought out extras too: turbo modes, a built-in storage compartment for the cable, and the ability to lock Xbox Guide button. The build quality feels solid without being very heavy. I play with it on my lap very comfortably.

Also, the packaging is very fancy. I haven’t gotten this exciting about an unboxing since my MacBook.

Back in December I lamented that GTA IV, while very good, didn’t significantly improve the game mechanics of GTA. As a long time GTA fan the formula began to run thin. I desperately wanted Rockstar North to make progressive design decisions, to reinvent the mechanics of GTA. I wanted GTA to be fun again, but all I got was more of the same. However it seems the old adage, good things come in small packages, is still alive and well. GTA: Chinatown Wars for the Nintendo DS delivered exactly what I wanted.

Chinatown Wars addresses core issues with the GTA formula, and does so ingeniously.

(read on…)

As we near the end of December the time to reflect over games we’ve played over the year has arrived. I’ve compiled my list of the best games I’ve played this year along with lots of text explaining why the heck you should care about them. Enjoy!

6. Grand Theft Auto 4
I agonized over including this. GTA4 is fun, but it fails to do anything interesting with the GTA format. I’ve been a fan since the first (top-down view) game, so I was heartbroken to find that GTA4 is essentially The Same Game With Better Graphics^TM. The few tweaks in there are great. Specifically, the wanted system now displays the police patrol radius on your mini-map telling you how far you need to drive to lose your wanted rating. Brilliant! I just wish Rockstar North did more of this sort of thing, i.e.: iterating on the core mechanics of GTA.

(read on…)

Looking back, I can safely say Bioshock is one of the best games I’ve played in recent memory. I could discuss the various aspects it gets right for days, but instead, I’m going to be a bit grumpier and talk about what it could have done better. For today, let’s focus on what it does with emergent gameplay.

Bioshock provides the player with a complex simulation to play around with. The opening act does a fantastic job of introducing you to Rapture as a living world which you can influence. The player is even rewarded for “thinking outside the box”, which is something a worrying number of sandbox games fail to do at all. But where Bioshock falls short is encouraging the player to think outside these bounds.

Some may argue that the reward is the encouragement. To an extent, it is. At the start of the game, players experiment to familiarize themselves with its mechanics. But once the player gets better, they get into a routine, and the encouragement is lost. This isn’t a gamer thing so much as it is a human nature thing. Once you figure out an effective way to kill Splicers, or a sure-fire way to take down Big Daddies, the rewards are irrelevant. The rewards only worked when the player needed them. Now that they don’t, the experimental aspect of Bioshock gives way to the repetitiveness of your standard-fare first person shooter. It’s a shame, and I’ll admit that I’m as guilty as the next person in this regard, but it’s to be expected.

How do we fix this?

(read on…)

Rapture is an incredibly unpredictable world. The simplest task, one that I’ve done dozens of times during the course of playing Bioshock (and games in general) can change dramatically given the slightest complication. The task at hand was securing a room. The complication? A security camera looking me square in the eyes.

The alarms sound, and within seconds security bots are swarming around me. I quickly survey the room. Two security bots, and two Splicers (the thugs of Rapture). I electrocute a security bot and stumble towards it. If I hack it, I might be able to turn this battle around. In my frazzled state I manage to botch up that routine job and I’m left in deeper trouble that I was already in. I’m losing health fast. I retreat, heal myself, and get back into the fray.

I’m still being attacked from all angles, but I hear something. A familiar, haunting moan. Slow, echoing footsteps. It could only be one thing: a Big Daddy. Normally it’s a sound that sends chills up my spine. But this time, I hear opportunity. A new plan is hatched. With a wry grin on my face, I select the “Hypnotize Big Daddy” plasmid and toss it at him. Now he’s on my side. I have half a mind to stay and watch the action unfold, but I’m shaken up and very low on health, so I dash out of the room. I don’t know exactly what happened, but when I re-entered moments later everything that moved was lying on the floor, charred or broken. Only the Big Daddy remained standing.

I’m tempted to kill him and steal his loot, but I can’t bring myself to do it. How am I suppose to kill the creature that just saved my life?

It might look utterly meaningless, but Rhythm Tengoku’s name highlights the best aspects of the game. “Rhythm” indicates that the game will be focused on music in some way. “Tengoku”? It means something in Japanese, and because nobody bothered to translate it, this obviously means the game is a bit insane.

What its name doesn’t tell you is that Rhythm Tengoku is a mini-game collection released for the Game Boy Advance, and as alluded to in the intro, in Japan only. Given the rather strange premise of the game, I imagine you are either scrambling to import it as we speak, or think the game is a complete waste of time.

(read on…)

I made a trip to Toronto yesterday to meet up with a friend. Hopped on a bus which reached Union Station at 5pm. On a weekday. This meant that hundreds of people were marching off the subway towards the bus/train station. My destination was the subway station, against the flow of the masses. And quick! as I was already a bit late.

I ran, trying my best to dodge the never-ending stream of people. This required me to have a razor-sharp focus on my immediate surroundings, to make quick decisions and even quicker movements, all the while anticipating the movement patterns of the people in the distance. Eventually their seemingly chaotic movements became logical in my mind, and dodging people became second nature.

I was in the zone.

That’s when I realized that running through Union Station at rush hour was the closest I would ever get to achieving a perfect run in a hardcore bullet hell shmup.

Arrived along with them: $17.48 worth of “Taxes and handling”.

Still, as my first set of Japanese import games EVER!, I was too excited to be pissed when I picked them up on Friday. I bought Rhythm Tengoku, and bit Generation games Coloris and dotstream.

I’ve only played the first two briefly (haven’t touched dotstream yet) but as expected, my thoughts on them are as follows: bonkers.

Introversion have posted their first in-game video of Multiwinia, the multiplayer-focused sequel to the rather excellent Darwinia. My verdict? I’m well impressed.

This is the RTS I’ve been dying to play for years. Hell, this is the RTS I’ve been dying to make for years. Judging by the five minute video, I’d describe Multiwinia as “the love-child of Command & Conquer and Quake III Arena.” Similar to it’s predecessor, Multiwinia seem more like a fast-paced action game with strategy elements bolted on as opposed to the other way around. This, I wholeheartedly approve of.

Apart from Darwinia, I haven’t enjoyed an RTS in a long time. Shogun: Total War was the last one that managed to be tactically complex without being overwhelming. After that the genre spiralled into an overcomplicated mess, where you were either a hardcore fan who relished the ever-increasing complexities of the genre, or you weren’t and just stopped enjoying RTS games. I, like a lot of people, fell into the latter group.

Introversion are picking up from where “real” developers lost the plot. They are creating a game which will (hopefully) be complex enough to allow for a wealth of different tactics, but without throwing a ridiculous amount of information at the player. I can’t wait to get my hands on it!