Caesar III

Good old Caesar 3. Even on a peaceful map you'll get stomped on by barbarians because the gods hate you. I mean that literally. Forget to build a few temples and they will hate your guts and do terrible things to you.

This classic old builder comes with a Roman Empire theme, about accurate pantheon, too few trading partners and very demanding citizens. To build a perfect neighbourhood, you need to demolish half of the neighbourhood to add stuff they demand. City planning at it's weirdest. And don't get me started on workforce allocation and access issues. I don't know how this one sucks me in time after time, but I spend hours toiling over a city always heading for a disaster.

For such an old game, it has some complexity to it. Balancing the city workforce demands often your attention. Trading isn't a brainer but add Rome's demands on top of it and you get quite a headache figuring out your warehouse and granary management. Micromanagement at it's finest.

The good thing is, it doesn't have any alligators as far as I can remember. Pharaoh has, Pharaoh also has monument building which adds more interest to the game. If I can find my Pharaoh disc, I'll write about that one next.

Tropico 4

Tropico 4 was on sale on Steam recently. I tried the demo a week before the sale, and I've played one of the previous version so I decided to get it. -75% is nothing to sneeze at.

The graphics aren't anything amazing even when I cranked them up for screenshots, but the details and the sheer liveliness of the island is good. At any given time you have you people living their lives, going to their jobs, trees swishing about in the wind, waves lapping at your sand beaches, hot air balloons flying in the sky etc.

After playing a full career in sandbox, with a lot of quesswork involved as the tutorial was what it was. I'd rate this game 'I'll probably play this game again, someday'

As the island is gridless, you can pretty much build as you wish, limited only by the elevation of the ground. Which is silly. Hillside building is an old thing. When you've got a dirt hill that's preventing you from building, you get to play carousel building as you sping it and try to find an angle that works. Luckily the lowest bumps just slow down the construction speed. Which is still annoying.

The most annoying feature I can name is the road. It's a finicky auto system where you get to try several times before you get the road to go where you want it. Or you don't. I had several dirt crossroads as the AI decided that crossroads were unnecessary.

Despite almost all the DLC's that came with the complete pack, Tropico 4 is just another building game. Yeah, you get a pretty island, you're a dictator and all your friends are communists, but just another building game. And why almost all? They published another DLC a couple of days after the sale. *sigh*

Played Lineage for a while...

until I got killed by a random player and remembered why I loathe the game.

This is where we started our gaming together.

On some of the private Lineage II servers we last played on. We enjoyed playing tourist in wedding clothes.

Introduction

So I'm TD and I'm starting this blog with my sister Mal. We'll see if we can get a couple of other people to write a few pieces here too.

It's mainly going to be about games and gaming but expect random tangets and general geekery. Or if we get bored we'll write about whatever. Me and Mal have been playing video games since the late eighties, when out brothers got an Amiga, and after enough whining they'd let us play too. We've been through PC's, PS1, PS2, and PS3 and currently have a PS3 and and a PC each. We've been playing together for not quite a decade. We play MMO's, RPG's, some FPS, puzzle games sometimes, Sim games etc.

I'll probably cover a few retro games by myself as Mal gets hives from bad/old graphics. When I'm in the mood. I cycle through games fast. And truth be told, Mal is way more hardcore than me. I'm the backup up, she's the heavy hitter, she's saved the earth, I've seen the intro three times but always wander off before I get chapter one done. There's only a handful of games I've played through, she's played through some games so many times I'm wondering how come she hasn't fed the game disc to the dog.

We've been currently playing Minecraft. On our own server. We've got plans. And they're happening. It's going to be fabulous. Or end in a zombie apocalypse. I don't know which one is more likely.