Avian Gamers Network

Has anyone tried it yet? Obviously, from my posts, I'm a huge city builder/empire sim nerd, so I normally jump on these types of games like a jungle cat. But after wasting money on Cities XL (seriously, don't waste your time on this even if it's just to download to try) I'm a little gunshy now. I played Tropico 2 and had some fun with it, but the interest died off due to the limited amount of building and structures available to build. I've read some great reviews about 3, but I also heard great things about Cities XL and I've come to the conclusion that reviews for the latter were drafted in a shut garage with a car running.

wow Cities XL that bad? STEAM was raving about it all last week.

Have not heard much about Tropico 3. I enjoyed the original and pirates cove was novel but have not payed much attention to this new release

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Ryric Krael
Former Vice President AGN
Former Director, Section 6
Former Head of Department of the Treasury
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Ask not what your PA can do for you, but what you can do for your PA
"Gone Section Five"

Yeah, CitiesXL is almost insulting lol.

WIth SimCity, you have almost organic cities. They live, develop, and change all according to several variables which you can have a large impact on. Areas of town, once slums, slowly get torn down and gentrified, or vice versa. Traffic can kill an area. All kinds of "live" elements that can greatly affect your city, or even just a block. With CitiesXL, it's like a children's paint by number. You simply place buildings. Voila. You don't grow and nurture a city, you simply put down what you want and there it is. The lack of data in the game is horrible as well. For an example, you may start running short of electricity for your town. No problem, go and click on the power plant you have and check out it's stats. Oh wait - it only says "This building creates some electricity". Heck, unless you want to pay the month fee for online access you will NOT have mass transit. Enjoy your two lane roads.More of the continued dumbing down of games for the masses.

I blame consoles.

/ducks

On topic: I caught a tweet from CrispyGamer (gaming site) about Tropico the day it released but there wasn't much about an opinion of the game. I had fun with the first one but no real desire to get this one...so far.

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Liro
"The english language is not a wedding gown, it doesn't get better the more lace you add. It is instead a thong. Less is more." From /.
I need to remind myself of this regularly.

I agree! However, I also blame the money-makers. The games industry used to make games because they enjoyed making games. Now they make games to make money.

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X2-PB

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AntanKarmola on their forums

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I blame consoles that havn't been updated to keep up with computer gaming power... Case in point is going to be the new COD:MW2

_________________
Ryric Krael
Former Vice President AGN
Former Director, Section 6
Former Head of Department of the Treasury
-------
Ask not what your PA can do for you, but what you can do for your PA
"Gone Section Five"

If you ever want a shining example of how complex consoles are willing to go, check out Civilization: Revolution on Xbox. You can download the trial and then cry a little inside. It's all wide ruled paper and oversized number 4 pencils.

Eh? What do you mean in reference to MW2? The graphics? Max number of players in multiplayer? Mod-ability? I am getting it on the 360 so am curious what you are referring to.

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"I built me a bomb and dropped it on every MFer who got in my way!"

Would rather say the industry isn't to blame, but the money-makers who made it into an industry in the first place.

Of course if the didn't make it into an industry we wouldn't games as we know it, but the problem is that the money-makers, while they wanted to make as much profit as possible from the beginning, they needed to compete with other game houses when the industry was new.
And the only way they could really compete was either by:
1) Giving a game alot of ekstra stuff, like a tome-thick manual with background story, maps and fun DRM's (who doesn't remember Railroad Tycoon where you had to look up the manual every now and then to confirm the train-type, mode on the screen?)
2) Making the games good.

Basic problem is that some developers did it too good.
Some gaming houses were bought up and made games for other houses.
Some houses got so big they developed less and focused more on publishing (*cough* EA *cough*) while buying the competion out or taking them in (I miss Westwood, Sierra and Bullfrog).

Further more, with the spur with the Internet, people suddenly sought out info on the net.
Online media suddenly wrote alot about computer gaming and how it was on the rise. And the printet media, where it was only a few (geeky/nerdy) magazines before, suddenly increased to the pop-media with the dumbing down on how to play games, what was good on games and what wasn't. Through that the masses wanted got interested but they wanted more, in the form of realism and entertainment. And when I talk about realish I talk about sound, graphic and physics. Therefore less on gameplay/gamevalue.
Hyping suddenly came along and games has the last ten years becommen profiled almost as much as blockbuster movies (Halo anyone) which mean games are suddenly something the Avarage Joe/Lars/Malik/Yuusuke + female equivalent noticed. They wanna play too but they can't spend their time as the nerds/geeks did so games where made easier and shorter...

BTW this i just about the PC-games... w/o the MMO's.
Don't make me start on console...

And many apologies for threadjacking, but I need to rant about the new games comming out.

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1st Feb 2008

COD MW2
PC "FEATURES"
9v9 p2p hosting via matchup service (means hosted on a random players computer that is selected by matchmaker)
no dedicated server
no mod tools
no PC Lean mechanic?
no console commands (to change various tweaks that help performance)
No record video/demo feature (effective neuter's clan based warefare anti cheat prevention)

just found this which i think illustrates the PC gamers disillusionment with MW2
http://www.tek-9.org/news/mw2_developer ... -2115.html


That doesnt answer that question at all...it says its a port but we added the things you need to...to make it functional on a PC

you can have all of these neuter'd features for the low price of $60.

They have effectively said fuck you to all clan and more serious PC gaming. I except servers with 40ppl to be the norm for a PC game. They have taken their PC base and screwed it.

IW can take a long walk off a short bridge.

_________________
Ryric Krael
Former Vice President AGN
Former Director, Section 6
Former Head of Department of the Treasury
-------
Ask not what your PA can do for you, but what you can do for your PA
"Gone Section Five"

DF,

That is the general consensus I hear from CoD players on the PC. I've never played online CoD on the PC so cannot say that I am overly disappointed with IW personally, but I can see how the vast majority of the PC players are up in arms. What IW has done to their PC version just does not make sense.

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"I built me a bomb and dropped it on every MFer who got in my way!"

I know this is a Tropico 3 thread and Imma let you finish but CoD: MW2 bears at least one more comment:

Not having a dedicated server option does feel a bit odd but after playing it for a couple days, I really don't have any complaints. I like the smaller headcount going into multiplayer - maybe this is because I suck more than I used to but smaller servers are fine by me.

I haven't tried it yet, but it appears you can host your own server for LAN play.

The one odd thing I noticed is that tonight while I played, the host switched - twice. Other than the fact that the game paused for about 15 seconds, there were no negative side effects.

In all, I had a great time with the SP; the MP is a ton of fun in all the ways that matter plus it's very easy to get in and out of quickly.

_________________
Liro
"The english language is not a wedding gown, it doesn't get better the more lace you add. It is instead a thong. Less is more." From /.
I need to remind myself of this regularly.