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The Last: Redux! 
By EightBucks | February 8, 2009
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
It’s avaliable in somewhat larger resolution if you go over to my YouTube profile, and I’ll be working on getting the original file uploaded to machinima.com soon.
So, back in the summer of 2006 I finished up The Last, a Half Life 2 based machinima piece. It was originally completed as part of my final year project at university.
When originally released it met with… well, basically there was a big, angry mob outside my place with pitchforks and flaming torches. Some people liked it, I think, but the overall response was very negative. A few people even seemed to get angry, which I hadn’t expected - the film doesn’t exactly deal with controversial topics. I had complaints from film school students/graduates about how my camera work was terrible, and modders seemed upset that I’d made such a travesty using the Half Life 2 engine. Some people liked it though, I did get some positive comments…
Anyway, some of the criticism was constructive and well thought out. The main issue people had was clearly the pacing, the massive overabundance of exposition that wasn’t interesting. Certain shots were poorly executed too, I’d really struggled with smooth camera pans.
The film had originally been completed to a strict university deadline, and I think rushing to meet that and my general exhaustion towards the end of the project did contribute to many of the problems. Not to let myself completely off the hook though, as I made a lot of bad creative decisions and just showed a lack of experience and skill with this kind of thing.
I spent so long on the damn film though, that I felt I ought to go back to it at some point and try to re-edit it all. I re-watched it numerous times and some of the problems people had talked about with the pacing became more and more apparent, I started to see whole swathes of dialogue that I could cut out without really losing anything. I realised just how bad the pacing was, how glacially the middle segments moved along, how some scenes dragged terribly. I’d really gone overboard with needless exposition and side-stories that complicated things, there were even needlessly long pauses in places. It just wasn’t terribly coherent, the story didn’t really work that well despite all the dialogue.
I’ve been re-editing the whole thing on and off for over a year, just going back from time to time. I edited the new version from scratch, using the same footage that I’d had for the original. I’ve finally been able to complete the re-edit, the new version which I am dubbing The Last: Redux. I know that Apocalypse Now: Redux was actually longer, but whatever. I realise the title remains terrible, but what you gonna do? The important thing is that, hopefully, its a lot better this time.
The original cut was 40 minutes, Redux stands at 26. I’ve cut 14 minutes of needless dialogue and slow action scenes. I’ve simplified the story and made it less confusing - the whole side story about Durand having no idea what is going on throughout is gone. It was a good idea that could have been very funny but I don’t think I used it or explained it very well. Rejigged the action a little to try to get it more dynamic in places, and more sound work in the background to beef it up a little in places. There are a few bits of new footage in the new version too, short segments that I didn’t include in the original but found a place for. The balancing is more like I’d intended now - higher proportion of action to dialogue (like 1:3 instead of 1:20). Kept most of the jokes, took out more of the serious bits - it was supposed to be funny, after all.
So I think its a lot better, I think it flows. It’s not perfect and obviously short of rewriting it and re-capturing all the footage, it can only change so much, but I’m kinda of happy with this version. So, comments welcome!
Topics: Machinima | 1 Comment »
So very tired 
By EightBucks | November 13, 2008
It’s getting hard to keep up with all the new games to play and at the same time hold down my job as a spaceship pilot, or whatever the hell it is I do. I’m not sure why all the big releases have to come out in about 3 weeks of each other, but its kind of exciting. Fallout 3 is excellent, compelling and then there’s the Left 4 Dead demo and the zombies just keep coming. For some people, Left 4 Dead is the most anticipated game of the year, but we’re a select group. For others, its all about Gears or War 2 (massive sales already, unsurprisingly) or Call of Duty 5 (it looks exactly the same as CoD4, only with different skins and weapons?). Then for an awful lot of people, many of them already queuing outside a store in readiness for the midnight launch tonight, the only game that matters is the new expansion for World of Warcraft. People are booking holidays off work for that one, people are getting in supplies and stocking up. A whole lot of people are going to get sucked in all over again.
You can only really hold interest in so many things at once, gladly a WoW addiction is not something I have to worry about, while CoD5 just doesn’t look like much of a step forward from its admittedly excellent predecessor. Gears 2 is bound to be a lot of fun in co-op, and the graphics jaw dropping, but it can wait. The Left 4 Dead demo features 2 early levels in the nightmare, and showcases the amazingly frenetic action, the well thought out mechanics, the sheer drama in each play through. Taking out a zombie as it lumbers, unseen towards one of your companions, firing over their shoulders as they turn and see it tumble to the ground right in front of them. Trying to thin out the swarm surrounding you after you’ve been knocked to the ground, defiantly firing your pistol as your health drains away, or taking out a hunter that has lept onto someone else. Listening to the music swell as a massive horde streams down the stairway above you, standing directly in their path and letting the shotgun do its work. Valve really got what made this whole scenario dramatic and they’ve concentrated all that and put it into the game.
The good design decisions are classic Valve too, the healing kits you have to hold down to use (so you don’t accidentally use them when you don’t need them), the ease of healing others and the good balancing of arcade style convenience (infinite ammo for pistols, infinite weapons of any type at a weapon pickup table so everyone can have what they want) with zombie film certainties to ratchet up the tension (team kill ion and ambushes are regularly unexpected). The zombies don’t just stand around or hobble slowly in your vague direction either, it isn’t just a shooting gallery, they can swarm in alarming numbers and at great speed. Sometimes it will take all four weapons firing continuously to stop them getting through, and then some more come from the other direction. Oh, and the shotgun is exactly the weapon that zombie films promised you it would be.
The demo is fantastic, and the full game it out November 18th.
Topics: FPS | No Comments »
Falling Out 
By EightBucks | October 25, 2008
For me at least it hasn’t been a particularly great year for games so far, with the two 10/10 masterpieces that headlined the first half of the release schedule; GTA IV and Metal Gear Solid 4, not really being my thing. From talking to people that played MGS 4, I am baffled by such stratospheric scores for any game with long cutscenes featuring a man frying eggs, or making omelets or whatever the hell it was. Anyway, after a less than stellar set of releases since then you suddenly get most of the major releases in the second half of the year flying out at around the same time - Fable II, Far Cry 2 and Dead Space all out around the same time, with Fallout 3 out in a week.
I think it would be fair to say that Fallout 3 is the most anticipated of the lot, a game that could potentially be outstanding but that might still turn out a lot more limited than that. The Official XBox Magazine gave the 360 version a 10, but that doesn’t really tell us very much… despite having little enthusiasm for it at first, I’m coming around to the thinking that it’ll maybe not be a massive disappointment. Obviously, if they can mix in the open ended exploration of Oblivion with the role playing and depth of the early Fallout games it’ll be one of the games of the year, but it could still fall into the trap of having limited characters and a lack of interesting decisions and dialogue with underwhelming combat thrown in.
Keeping in mind that I haven’t played any of them, my synopsis of the reviews and general vibe for the various games is - Dead Space is excellent, well made and extremely scary; Fable 2 is very good, it seems rather flawed to be getting the kind of scores it has been but apparently the overall ambiance just wins out anyway, I’m still quite undecided myself on whether its really worth looking at - most Lionhead games seem to be increasingly less acclaimed the further from the release date you get, you know what I mean? Far Cry is pretty good, looks nice and has a great African setting. Nice to see games turning out as good or better than expected after the somewhat disappointing Force Unleashed and Brothers in Arms and the fairly disastrous Too Human.
I’ll put my cards on the table - I expect Fallout 3 to be brilliant, game of the year material. It’s got giant ants right? You can’t possibly make anything but a classic with giant ants.
Topics: General | No Comments »
This castle is over
By EightBucks | October 8, 2008
So, it’s been a while. I feel like I abandoned you. But let’s just consider it a summer holiday of some sort and pretend like it never happened?
Everyone knows that it all really happens in the second half of the year anyway, somewhat like the film industry in reverse. So, the best thing that happened in the past few months would probably have to be Castle Crashers, a work of genius on XBox Live Arcade. To give Microsoft their due, they have really turned XBox Live Arcade around over the summer, with a string of quality titles like Braid, Bionic Man, Galaga and Geometry Wars 2 really giving the whole XBLA thing a real boost and some much needed credibility. Plus there’s some system exclusivity in there with some of these titles, and that never hurts. I’m not surprised to hear that XBL revenues went up so sharply during the summer.
I would like to take a moment to complain about XBox Live’s overall approach though, which might well be a good example of taking capitalism a little too far down the road to madness. Everything costs money on there, on a service you pay to use, everything. Obviously downloable games and game add ones, fair enough, and they aren’t even horribly overpriced by my reckoning. But gamer pictures and backgrounds? Even if you bought the game? C’mon!
Okay, back to Castle Crashers. Its mix of classic co-op brawlers like Tenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the drop in/drop out multiplayer simplicity of the Lego Star Wars games make it one of the best designed co-op titles I’ve played. It also takes the collectible and hidden elements from Lego Star Wars to add a lot of replay value, and bolts on a simple but fun RPG system giving you XP for taking down enemies which can be spent on four attributes, as well as an array of attribute-altering weapons to find and choose from. They even have pets, which you can find around the world and offer an array of bonuses. There are loads of these too, more than a dozen pets, dozens of weapons, plus unlockable characters to play as on top of the starting four. Essentially then, this is a game that a lot of people were waiting to get made, even if they didn’t know it at the time.
Topics: XBLA | No Comments »
Dramamine
By EightBucks | May 22, 2008
There has been a fairly successful game, so I am told, which is supposed to be very good. The stats for GTA 4 are scary, absolutely unprecedented - over 3.6 million copies sold worldwide on the first day of release, over $310m and nearly twice what Halo 3 made on its opening day, which had been the previous record by some distance. It was indeed the biggest entertainment launch in history, grossing far more than any film or album ever has in a single day. Worldwide, around six million copies sold in the first week, six million… a revenue of something like half a billion dollars. In the UK alone, it sold a reported 631,000 copies on day one, and over the whole first week 926,000 copies - it has since surpassed the million mark here. Since release it has overtaken Call of Duty 4 as the most played title on XBox Live.
This must be a bit like what people who have no interest in football whatsoever must feel like when World Cup fever hits. All anyone wants to talk about constantly is something you’re not really bothered about. I’ve never been a big fan of the GTA series, and now I almost feel more opposed to it the more successful it becomes, the more I see it being lavished with unadulterated praise. Major game websites, despite their many faults, tend to be pretty stringent with the perfect 10s - both Gamespot and IGN gave the game a full 10/10, the first time Gamespot have done this in years and the first time IGN ever gave a game a perfect 10 (with all sub-categories also given 10). On gamerankings, GTA 4 has currently become the highest ranked game of all time based upon the overall review scores.
So its the fastest selling, highest rated game ever made. Maybe its just me going against the populist choice because I hate everything, but I don’t like the idea of this game being the flagship for the whole medium, the video gaming equivalent of Star Wars or the White Album or whatever. Perhaps a better point of comparison would be Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, was that a film that glorified violence and the mafia or did it put across a pretty mixed message, showing both a respectable Brando and a soulless, monsterous Al Pacino in the final shot? Is GTA 4 a game that portrays a cinematic story inside a huge, immersive and living world, or is it essentially about going around committing crimes and just killing anything you want?
Unfortunately, the mad ravings of some of the anti-gaming publicity magnets have often focused around the Grand Theft Auto series, and because these morons are so obviously spouting uninformed opinions and complete fabrications it seems as though having a problem with the content in GTA 4 puts you in the same camp as people like that. The ignorant, fear mongering talk of games being the cause of all societies problems is evidently crazy. I’m sure it won’t start a crime wave. But still, I wonder if we should be at all bothered that this is the most popular game ever made? A game where you kill hundreds of innocents who cross your path as you go about your climb to the top of the criminal underworld in the NYC-inspired Liberty City.
There is no doubt that Rockstar are one of the most talented development studios around, this game didn’t get all these high scores and rave reviews for nothing, the technical accomplishment is astounding and the gameplay combines that free world thing with a lot of depth, interactivity and character. They’ve improved upon some of the weak points of the last GTA iteration - the combat and the graphics. They resisted the temptation to fill the game with name big name voice actors and instead threw in some cult people. I do wonder at whether those review scores are a little inflated based upon the hype, in the same way that scores for games like Black & White and Oblivion were. But still, it would be churlish, it would be downright petulant to suggest that this isn’t a great game. Still though, I’d rather have something else be considered the pinnacle of video games. It doesn’t so much bother me that all the violence is in there, its perhaps more the way that no one even seems to notice that it’s there.
Topics: General | No Comments »
Hot new look 
By EightBucks | May 22, 2008
I decided, for no particular reason, to upgrade the wordpress of this blog a little. Then I figured I might as well play around with some newer features, throw in some more functionality, some utterly needless polls - you know the kind of thing. I quite like the new look too, although it may be subject to further tweaks. I also played around with an add-on that allows you to add icons to posts based upon category, and so I will really get full value by tagging this post with five or so different catagories.
Topics: General, Run and Jump, Sports | No Comments »
Arabian Knights 
By EightBucks | May 17, 2008
I think rather inspired by the general awesomeness of Assassin’s Creed, I selected Saladin and the Arabian empire for my second single player Civ 4 epic. Interestingly, Saladin is the one major figure that you never see or have any interaction with in Assassin’s Creed, which makes me wonder if he has some part to play in the future of the series. Anyway, he seems to be generally considered to be one of the weaker leaders in Civ, although his attributes seemed to suit my general approach quite well.
I had learned a lot about the game, and having played it all the way through with the Carthaginians I now had a better idea of what to expect in each age, some of the key techs, wonders and military innovations that can win you the game. We had a good starting position on the south of a large Pangaea, having expanded into this area I was a little blocked in by the Ethiopian empire which resulted in a series of on again-off again conflicts in which we took several of their southernmost cities, which became my northern border for the rest of the game. We were near the top of the scoreboard the whole way though, although sometime around the Renaissance period the Native American Empire was threatening to charge into an unassailable lead, pulling hundreds of points clear. It seemed that this was fueled by the fact that they had Buddhism’s Holy city, where the religion that the entire game world followed had originated. Once they built Buddhism’s Holy structure, the Mahabodhi Temple, they were bringing in enormous amounts of gold every turn (its one gold for every city that has this religion, which almost every city did).
We had to take them on, and after building a major offensive force including a navy, with frigates that can batter down the defenses of coastal cities and galleons to transport troops the short distance across the narrow stretch of water between the Arabian and Native American empires. In a difficult war, we were able to take four or five major Native American cities along the southern coast, which made a huge dent in their score, income and production.
For the rest of the game the Khmer were my main rivals, an expansive power that brought several other nations under their control as vassal states and aggressively developed their military. We had a major technological edge over them, but their armies were numerous and they were keen to declare war on anyone they could. In the end their aggressive attacks brought both of my former enemies, Ethiopia and Native America to come to me requesting to become a vassal so I could help them out. Nations only tend to do this when defeat is looking pretty inevitable, and the problem with accepting the requests (as I did) is that it brings you in to the war and causes the enemies of your new vassal to become your enemies as well.
Defending the Ethiopians and Native Americans from the Khmer and their vassals proved to be very difficult, and several cities fell despite some massed defenses. The good thing was that my vassals provided a buffer between my empire and my enemies so the battles were being fought over cities that weren’t mine. I’ve found the ability to draft units to be absolutely vital to fight off a dangerous enemy, and I used it liberally throughout the long struggles against the Khmer. The problem is that it damages the population of the city you draft from, and by extension the cities production and strength. We lost huge amounts of population rushing troops to cities that were under threat from imminent attack, trying to get enough soldiers into the cities to give them a chance of holding off against hordes of attackers. It was fighting with the modern, late game units, which proved interesting. Jet Fighters dominate the skies, without them you find your armies being battered by huge wings of bombers, as mine were. Tanks are extremely powerful, then eventually Modern Armour comes in and wipes the floor with anything on the ground. Mobile Artillery and SAMs are powerful in super-specialised roles, while Mechanised infantry become a very strong, mobile infantry backbone.
There is the ever present worry about nuclear weapons being deployed, although this requires completion of the Manhattan project. My enemy attempted to build this at one point, but luckily I had massively increased my spending on espionage to the point where I could see what most of his cities were building, and I quickly dispatched numerous spies to sabotage the project, which was apparently never restarted somewhere else. You need all that espionage when you’re working on the space ship, as your enemies will send plentiful spies to try to sabotage the projects required to build all the components, as I found out in my Carthaginian game. I had so many spies in all my main production systems that they seemed invincible to hostile spies, but even then I had one of the components sabotaged. Still, on the whole they held back the legions of dangerous spooks, I eventually even had spies dotting large parts of the countryside around my key cities.
After suffering a space race defeat last time, this time around tings worked out differently. This time I had the technological edge over my enemies and so was able to get to all the late game wonders first, including the space elevator, which allows for faster construction of space ship components. We were well ahead in getting the Apollo program and had numerous components of the space ship completed before anyone else had even begun in earnest with a space program. The Khmer attacked us with huge forces, but we just about managed to stem the tide without too many of my vassal’s cities falling. In the end we were able to get an extended period of peace with the Khmer by offering them occasional bribes and yielding to most of their demands for resources, something about the reed bending in the wind? Now there is a forest of reeds that the wind cannot budge…
The Arabian space ship left earth from our largest city of Damascus. In a nice touch, if you zoom out far enough from the map you see the game world on a globe floating in space. As I did this, I saw the space ship hurtling from the earth towards Alpha Centauri. I managed a space race victory, which gave me a normalised score of 10,292 - the game tells me this is a score analogous with the leadership skills of Emperor Constantine, which is a serious step up from Ethelred the Unready. I’m improving…
Topics: Strategy | 1 Comment »
Startling Developments 
By EightBucks | May 17, 2008
The new Penny Arcade game is only a few days away, set to be released on May 21st. An interesting mix of gameplay elements and the creator’s trademark style make it an intriguing prospect, especially with the added involvement of industry legend Ron Gilbert (Monkey Island et al). I like the whole Lovecraft influenced Steampunk style they’ve got going on there, seems an excellent and original setting for a game. There are some likable ideas in the game too, the co-operative multiplayer and the RPG and character customisation stuff.
They’ve got a comic detailing a little of the game’s back story on the site where the game will also be available to download for PC gamers. I’m more excited about the prospect of episodic gaming available for download on XBox Live, seems an excellent idea and I really hope we see more of it in the future. I’m all for nostalgic returns of classic games and small, co-op focused titles, but I’d like to see the medium used to bring numerous regular, episodic adventures to XBLA users. If this is a big hit, perhaps that will follow.
Topics: RPGs | No Comments »
Nothing is true, everything is permitted
By EightBucks | May 17, 2008
I recently completed Assassin’s Creed, it was a fairly epic six or seven months as I only got the chance to play on the 360 when I went home for the odd weekend. These occasional spurts of gameplay separated by months aren’t really ideal when playing a game, you have to keep getting back into it. However, I think it says a lot about just how good this game is that I generally found it extremely easy to find my way back to. It managed to keep my interest over the whole extended period, a rarity indeed.
It divided opinion, many reviewers labelled it a disappointment and gave it a 7ish type score. A few others (like Gamespot) declared it a to be a resounding success, something like a 9, if you’ll forgive my use of cold, hard numbers. I agree with the later, while it is by no means flawless, I think its a terrific game. The storyline is one of the best I’ve seen in any game, it reminded me quite a lot of Deus Ex, sharing many of the same themes; freedom, good intentions achieved through amoral means, religion, world domination, the Templars and conspiracies aplenty. It featured similar, fairly lengthy debates upon the nature of freedom, reality and power. There was the whole sci-fi vein running through this game too, since the events set around the Third Crusade are genetic memories being replayed through a strange device (”the animus”).
Any game that contains these kind of elements is bound to be labelled pretentious, as Deus Ex was. Sure, it probably is a little, but so what? If its a choice between a game being a little pretentious and containing some interesting ideas and dialogue, or being completely brain dead, generically tedious and predictable, well, it makes a nice change for someone to choose the former. As was noted in PC Gamer, it’s amazing a game like this got made in as risk averse environment as the games industry. It deals with some fairly touchy issues, you know, the Crusades and religious war and such. You assassinate important figures on both sides, Crusader and Muslim alike. The aim of your order is to maintain peace by killing those that threaten it, which is in itself a difficult and debatable concept. At the beginning of the story the protagonist, assassin extraordinaire Altair, is a complete bastard. He manages to break all the fundamental codes of his order in a single botched mission, killing an innocent among them. Over the course of the game he undergoes a major change as he begins to find some humility and compassion, its a well worked character arc.
A strange kind of atmosphere is created by the duality of the game’s focus, since Altair’s descendant Desmond is also holed up in some skyscraper sometime near the present day. Desmond’s only points of human contact are the brash and thoroughly unlikable head of the project, Warren Vidic, and a fairly sympathetic woman named Lucy Stillman. Desmond is a captive, being forced to use the animus device to live out his ancestor’s memories. The entire world that he sees and that the game plays out is an artificial representation largely but not entirely as it really was. I found the parts of the game with Desmond to be a highlight that I looked forward to reaching, since his talks with his two captors and occasional feats of subterfuge provided a slow trickle of information about exactly what was going on, and why.
Since the game itself is set in a kind of virtual representation of the Holy Lands circa the Third Crusade, it allows for a lot of the unrealistic game-like elements to be swept under the carpet and explained away as glitches in the simulation or build-in helpers added by Desmond’s captors. They almost go overboard in mentioning the unrealistic aspects in the game and tying them in to some plot related explanation, apparently enjoying having found a way to use a game’s story to get around the fact it is still a game.
The gameplay in Assassin’s Creed contains some sublime brilliance, but is also a little shallow in places. Leaping atop the rooftops is really exhilarating (and remained so throughout the game), its a joy pretty unique to this game. It all looks amazing too, absolutely beautiful. The animations are the best I’ve ever seen in a game, Altair moves perfectly, with so much grace that you can believe all the superhuman agility he displays. The cities are also fantastic, large and thronging with people and a real technical accomplishment. I love this period of history and this game captures better than any has before, the strange mix of splendor and squalor all mixed in together.
I didn’t think I’d like the combat, but I never really tired of that either. It seems fairly simplistic, mostly being about timing the button presses right, but it works very well. Its not massively tactical, but its certainly not just about jamming buttons either. Since the animations are so effective, I found this element of the game continually worthwhile. Certain attacks are quite rare since the timing and location need to be just so, although you don’t get massive benefits for using particular forms of attack. It was nice how well thought out it all feels, I went from being fairly useless in a fight to being able to wipe out a small battalion of hostile guards, strategically throwing knives to thin out their numbers when I could get the distance between myself and them and using the environment to my advantage.
The real joy though is not to fight, but to run. The chase and escape mechanics are solid, with the difficulty being just about right. The guards are not easy to ditch, they don’t get confused as soon as you climb to the rooftops. Indeed, they show somewhat ridiculous agility at times for men wearing armour. They clamber after you and prove difficult to lose, its very exciting. The major assassinations themselves are particularly exciting, since having taken out your target and dipped a feather in his blood, you’ve got the entire town guard on your tail and the bells are ringing and everyone is looking for you. Those major missions are really excellent, with several different approaches possible for many of them and some forward planning required.
All these elements then are really good. The problems with the game are the repetition and general lack of interesting content in large portions between assassinations. You have to prepare for each assassination by conducting an investigation to learn more about your target, their movements and likely whereabouts. These elements can be a little dull and they never really change much over the course of the game, although you don’t have to conduct many investigations (of varieties including surveillance, interrogation, pick pocketing and flag collection/Templar killing) for each mission. There are some other things to do, collecting flags dotted around is a good way of flexing your acrobatic muscles but also somewhat frustrating. Saving civilians proves helpful later on since their friends will prove allies against the guards, although it seemed as though there were just too many incidences of this scattered throughout the cities.
The game needs depth and variety in these areas, interesting characters to talk to around the cities, perhaps a way to buy equipment and such, optional side quests. I hate to say it, but I’d like to see some RPG elements creeping in to the sequel, although perhaps I am mistaken in thinking this would be a good idea. Still, something to deepen the experience and add interactivity to the cities and variety to the gameplay.
The ending, I heard a lot of negative remarks about the ending. These criticisms are completely false, lies, utterly devoid of reason or truth! Okay, I’m willing to admit that the ending goes a little strange and might bother some people, but I think it was one of the best endings I’ve seen. It had an after the credits bit, which they should do more often in games. But it wasn’t just a cutscene after the credits roll, it was an interactive segment where you could walk around and investigate. It hints at the future of the series, and after the game’s great commercial success I am glad to say that a fully blown franchise is a certainty. Some of these things have me really excited for where the sequel might go and where the story could lead us. One thing I noticed; the Illuminati? Another Deus Ex reminder. Interesting, but I’ll say no more. There is an interesting, spoiler rich tell-all article on the meaning of all the end of game clues and puzzles which I advice you not to read unless you’ve completed the game or are never likely to play it. But you should, because its one of the best games of 2007, and that was a really good year for games.
Topics: Run and Jump | No Comments »
The Carthaginians
By EightBucks | May 1, 2008
One of the amazing things about Civilization 4 is how the game changes over time, as history advances and new technologies appear, as empires rise and fall. Some of the fundamentals stay the same, some change. In the earlier periods it is slow going, as your civilisation begins to take shape and the early technologies come into play - the wheel, agriculture, mysticism. Basic military units are slowly replaced by more specialised forms, as ranged, melee, horse and counter-horse units appear. Then gunpowder comes along and changes it all, while professional armies of highly trained soldiers become the norm. This period of Napoleonic pageantry is then replaced by the grey horrors of industrialized warfare, mass produced destruction. Machine gunners, infantrymen, marines and armoured units. Sieging is no longer a matter of dragging slow moving siege equipment to the city walls and waiting some time for them to batter down the defenses. Instead, bombers can be flown in from distant cities to quickly pound the defenses to dust, later still the weapons carry themselves to their targets in rocket form. Eventually, if nuclear weapons proliferate, a city can be wiped out in a single attack.
Time changes your cities too, they slowly grow with new improvements and technologies as they move from small settlements to sprawling metropolises. New resources also come into prominence over time; at first it is copper, iron and horses, later coal, oil, aluminium and plutonium are vital.
When you finish a campaign, the game displays an overview of the whole map for you with all the major world events playing out, as you can see civilisations literally rise and fall from afar. At one point the Chinese empire to our south and west was nearly twice as large as my Carthaginian one, while to the east were the hostile and dangerous Sumerians. During the middle ages there was a protracted campaign against the Chinese which ended eventually after I had been able to take a couple of their lesser cities. The Chinese armies were more numerous than my own and they could churn out troops quickly with all their cities, however I had the technological edge. The key though was probably the Native American Empire to the south of the Chinese declaring war on them - as the Chinese sent the bulk of their forces to their southern borders to meet the threat, I was able to attack in the north and take several key Chinese cities. Several more periods of protracted peace and then war followed, with another city or two falling to us each time. At some stage our possession of gunpowder started to take a toll, when well trained rifleman troops proved to be far more than any of the outdated Chinese troops could handle. At that stage victory was fairly straightforward as we took the bulk of the remaining Chinese cities and ended their empire.
The difference technology made in the later stages of the war were huge, as my troops could easily best his even when they were entrenched in defensive positions. I was a solid second or third place after the wars with China, as my empire reached a good size and we were able to use the impressive Chinese finance cities which produced enormous amounts of gold. With our technologies developing fast and strong finances, I looked to the east for my next fight - time for some payback on the Sumerians. Although strong early on, they had struggled mightily against the Indians to their east and with our superior technology we drove them back with speed. Modern, industrial type units like tanks and bombers began to appear and moved the attack forward quickly. On the other side, the Indians were also at war with the Sumerians, giving them no chance.
With the bulk of Sumerian forces destroyed and their empire in tatters, the Indians then made them their vassals. This seemed a little like a kick in the teeth, my troops had taken most of the loses and now all the remaining lands would now defer to the powerful Indian empire. The Indians were my good allies through most of the game, rather more reasonable and peaceful than most of the other nations. They had also build a formidable lead at the top of the leaderboard, with the technology clearly a long way ahead of anyone else.
The choice was either to fight them or try to find another way to win… and I realised that a space victory was my only chance now. The Indian forces were too strong and numerous and their technological edge would make them superior to mine in a fight. Being the first civilisation to construct a space ship and get it to Alpha Centauri is another way to achieve victory, and I began to look into it. Around this time the Indians began completing the projects necessary for a space ship of their own - creating the Apollo Program project that kicks things off, then building some thrusters and casings for the craft. I hurriedly began researching the right techs and preparing my key cities for the production of parts of the craft. I figured that five or six cities would spread the load between them, while the others would support with research and funds.
The game had changed again, from the medieval to-and-fro wars against China to the industrial conflict fought against Sumeria, I was now in a cold war type scenario against India. I had never really bothered with espionage up till this point, it is very expensive and time consuming for results that never seemed particularly impressive. But now I realised that sabotaging the building of these projects, the components of the Indian spaceship, would buy me more time to catch up and begin completing my own. We were clearly behind, they had a huge lead time in their rocket but our research was gaining on them. My spies tried desperately to find the right building projects to sabotage, but with 25-30 cities to choose between, it was awful hard to find the right ones. Slowly I saw one component then another get completed by the Indians as my own rocket was still a bare skeleton of a ship.
This was really exciting stuff, I paced around anxiously as some of the parts for my own ship started to near completion - we were gaining on them! Our research was fast enough now to gain the key techs we required, while our production seemed stronger. My spies continued to search for their projects under construction, in vain. Then, disaster struck. The Indians destroyed several of our completed spaceship components, I had not realised that you could destroy completed projects themselves and this set me back some. Then the Indians created the Space Elevator wonder, which provides a massive boost to spaceship construction. It seemed that all was over, but then one of my spies stumbled across a city with two of their completed spaceship components in and was able to destroy one before being arrested! I threw spies and espionage points at the Indians while our own production continued and masses of counter-intelligence made it hard for anyone to get anywhere near my own completed components. It seemed close again… but alas, the Indians were able to defend against my spies while finishing off the last components in good time, sending their fully-functional ship to the stars. We glumly finished our own rocket and launched it, but it was not the joyous day we might have hoped for. The counter saying “30 turns to victory” on the screen taunted me, for I knew their ship would arrive first, and so it did.
In the end, I came in second with 3700 points in my first completed game of Civ, on the standard Noble difficulty setting. Apparently this makes me roughly the equivalent of Ethelred the Unready in historical terms, so… yeah, I don’t think that’s particularly high praise. Still, I don’t mind, I learnt a lot from this campaign. I think I’ve even learnt a few actual historical bits and pieces, which is a nice side-effect. At the end of the game Carthage was also the greatest city in the world, so it is said.
I kind of expected Civ 4 to be pretty dry and poorly presented, but to my surprise it is quite the reverse. The graphics aren’t astounding, but they are quite nice to look at. The music is great, with song selections for each period of history, including some really memorable pieces in each age. Voice acting for the units of every separate nation is a nice touch, and Leonard Nimoy’s introductions for each new technology are very worthwhile. There’s actually some really good humour here too, something about seeing a great historical leader asking you for a tech and saying “I have always relied upon the kindness of strangers”, and if you give them the tech perhaps telling you that “you are the wind beneath my wings”. When an enemy gains the ability to build mounted medieval cavalry, there is nothing as chilling as the message “Ho ho ho. Now I have a knight.”
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