The Tropico 4 Demo

In a vein effort to keep my mind occupied until Deus Ex: Human Revolution comes out on Tuesday I have decided to play the Tropico 4 demo available on Steam. I have always had a very fond place in my heart for the Tropico series (well 1 and 3 at least) and I was excited to see what Kalypso came up with for a new installment.

I adored Tropico 3. When it released last summer newcommer Kalypso media quickly made a great first impression on me. Tropico 3 really captured the spirit of the original, while giving us gorgeous next-gen graphics and an updated interface. When the Tropico 3 demo came out I played the one level they offered 4 or 5 times just because it was that exciting. The music, as everyone who reviewed the game mentioned without fail, was absolutely spectacular and really helped create the banana republic island dictatorship theme to aplomb.

With Tropico 3 being so innovative and chock full of the things us PC master race strategy gamers dream of, you may be surprised to find I was not anticipating Tropico 4 in the slightest. Since the release of Tropico 3 last summer Kalypso has also released Dungeons, a "tycoon" type game focused around building dungeons for heroes that was marketed as Dungeon Keeper 3, and the Last Templar, a budget 3rd person slasher that no one really paid any attention to. Not releases that would suggest that Kalypso is a company focused on delivering quality products rather than releasing mediocre games that cost nothing to develop.

Enter the Tropico 4 demo. The first thing I noticed is, well, look at the 2 screen shots below and tell me what you notice.














The games share the exact same graphics. Only thing is Tropico 3 actually looks better! Tropico 4 has the same buildings, same character models, the same fountains, the same mechanics. The only thing really different are the menus. The game has a few more buildings and a perfectly imbalanced "quest" system that does nothing but inflate your income. Even the biggest community problems with Tropico 3, namely the gigantic footprint of garages and the non-existent difficulty (side note: turn up the difficulty on Tropico 1 and it is brutal!) are completely ignored in Tropico 4. The game is, for all intents and purposes, a map pack marketed as a full priced release.

I had the pleasure of meeting the North American head of marketing for Kalypso at Pax East this year and he was a very pleasant guy to chat with. He let me know that Kalypso is profitable. This really concerns me. Now Tropico 3 has proven to me that there is definitely talent in the publisher/developer. They are capable of great, but they make more money producing mediocre. This is bad news for us PC fans and for the future of Tropico in general.

Hasta lavista El Presidente.

Is Deus Ex out yet??

The Sony and PSN Silver lining

So yesterday the universe exploded with the news that not only had the PSN been compromised, but it would seem that hackers have stolen the private information of the users. All of them. Including credit card information. I think I am safe to assume that everyone can agree this is pretty bad. Was it Anonymous? Who knows and it really doesn't matter. What does matter is that PSN users are going to be getting a lot of mail with fantastic male enhancement offers.

Despite Sony being the mega-huge giant faceless corporation (sort of), I really don't blame Sony for the attack directly. I believe that everything revolving Sony lately is indicative of the monopoly of digital distribution for the console market. I think this is the blow that will bring competition; which will be awesome for us consumers.

Steam coming to the PSN is a huge win for consumers because it presents options. Options are about the best thing for us as gamers because it not only lets us choose how we spend our time and money based on our tastes, but it forces the providers of said options to make theirs the best in order to earn our choice (and hence our money). Right now if you own a Playstation your only option for online functionality is the PSN. If Sony allowed other networks onto their platform, like say Steam, this wouldn't be as much an issue. Sony could focus more on the basic framework of online functionality with the PSN and let other companies be, say, responsible for a lot more content.

Why on earth would Sony do this? Wouldn't this be giving away a lot of revenue streams from PSN sales? Well of course it would be but which is worse; losing as many accounts as they are over the whole hacking thing or keeping people on their console by saying they have the choice. It would give them a fantastic selling point over the XBLA or whatever crap network Nintendo has set up.

It would be easy! Kevin Butler could say "nervous about giving your billing information to Sony? Don't be because you don't have to! You have options. Keep your business here." (By the way if you haven't seen this Penny Arcade, well, look at it!) Sony doesn't have a good track record working with other companies and other technology so hopefully a new attitude will be born of this disaster.

Always a silver lining!

Off topic: After more playing of Portal 2 it is quickly cementing itself as one of my favorite's of all time.

Age of Empires Online First Impressions

Thanks to GamePro I was fortunate enough to acquire a beta key to AOEO (heh). I spent about an hour with the game so far since and I have to say color me optomistic.

The game is a MMO RTS. To be honest I'm not to sure how it works yet either. I do have to say the tutorial is kind of mediocre so far, but that's okay because there are a lot of exciting ways this game could go. You start off with a capital city and get quests which are like missions in any other RTS. So far the only real interaction I've notice that would let you know there are other people playing is a chat window. Aside from that I haven't yet been introduced to the MMO part.

I'll hold off talking about the game play until I spend a little more time and really get the chance to wrap my head around it, but so far I really like the direction Gas Powered Games has taken it. I will say I absolutely love the cartoon like graphic style. Not only is it fun and unique, but it will help the game scale to many budget PC's and laptops, which will be very good for the game's appeal.

I will always have a spot in my heart for GPG. They are most memorable to me for their cult classic RTS Supreme Commander, which is hands down the best non-Blizzard RTS in my not so humble opinion. The game was very macro oriented and focused on amassing huge robot armies and smashing them against each other. It was really about who could get their resource generation going faster and who could keep their supply lines going rather then micro/expansion. They did release a sequel, Supreme Commander 2, a couple years ago but it definitely fell flat and lost a lot of what made the original so incredible. As big of a Starcraft 2 fan as I am I can say it's a shame that the original Supreme Commander couldn't "command" (heh see what I did there) as much of an e-sports following as Brood War and now SC2 control. Still great game if you ever feel like going back into it.

Anyways back to the OT I am super excited for this game because it is already doing something different with the MMO genre. Unlike the WoW clone Rift (IT IS GET OVER IT) this game tries some actual new game play mechanics! It is clearly not trying to be a WoW killer because, despite what Trion seems to think the only person who can kill WoW is Blizzard.

So far the only glaring fault with this game is that you need Games for Windows Live to run it, which I have avoided like the plague so far because I have Steam which works about as good as anything right now. Plus I fear this dystopian future....

Gamestop buys Impulse from Stardock!

The big news over the weekend is that retail giant Gamestop has purchased digital retail venue Impulse from Stardock for an undisclosed sum. Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock has released a statement, but this FAQ sums in up pretty well. I think this is an absolutely fantastic move for consumers, for Brad's company, and for Gamestop. Take the long journey through the wall of text with me if you please!

Quick side note: I'm not sure if this post is interesting or not so please let me know what you think in the comments if you could! Thanks!

Let's face it; digital distribution is the future of PC games. You don't need a fancy advanced economics degree to see that the retail video game market will start rapidly declining in the near future. It will never go away as long as there are grandma's with christmas and birthday gifts to purchase, but us "savy" consumers have already pretty much completely switched to digital for our PC purchases and many have even started with digital for their consoles.

Console digital distribution is another whole can of worms, but let's focus on why Stardock selling and Gamestop buying is a good thing.

One of the many amazing things our 26th president Teddy Roosevelt was very well known for was introducing the very first anti-trust laws into American culture. It is a pretty widely held opinion that monopolies are good for no one (except those who hold them) and that having no competition in a marketplace is scary for a few reasons. First there is no reason to be better or advance. If you have no fear of losing your grip on the market why try and waste money on new features or advancing your market? You are getting the income anyways because hey! Where else they gonna go? It is also bad because the monopoly can dictate price. If you want the product you will pay because hey? Where else ya gonna go? These kind of tactics certainly explain why diamonds are so expensive.

Valve are currently dominating the marketplace with Steam and for now it is a great thing. Steam has manageable DRM and low costs for developers, and it brings us consumers so much convieniance it is crazy to think we ever purchased games another way. Sure it certainly isn't perfect, but it is really damn close. It will always be this way as long as Valve has the threat of a usurper; ie another distributor like Impulse. So far Valve does nothing but right by it's customers and fear of losing them will keep them in line.

Stardock kind of started Impulse by accident. The have been using their own methods for digital distribution for years and it made sense from a business standpoint to make some extra cash over it. The important part of this sale though is that Stardock as a company decided it wanted to define it's identity as a developer of software and games, and not a retailer. When a company has one sector that represents the bulk of it's income then of course that department is going to get the most focus. That is why we never saw Starcraft Ghost from Blizzard (RIP Nova).

Stardock want's to focus on what they are really passionate about; making REALLY nerdy PC exclusive strategy games that are so complex and with such a hgh bar of entry that no one but the best of the best PC master race will dare to venture in (ie me). Their last game Elemental: War of Magic was kid of a disaster to say the least. I did purchase and play it about 5 months after release and a few patches and while functional, it wasn't that fun. It certainly had a lot of potentail, but the bulk of the mechanics and game play elements were clearly rushed and not well planned out or executed. It clearly wasn't the company's main focus and it showed. I have a feeling that Wardell and crew were not happy about that and didn't like the way they were going, so they changed things. They wanted to release "Starcraft Ghost" and not focus on "WoW" (yeah that analogy is a bit of a stretch but I think it works).

Gamestop is a retialer. They know retail. They also know that physical stores are on the decline (see above). They will be much more passionate about really expanding impulse and becoming viable competition for Steam because they need to to survive. They have no choice but to take a piece of the digital marketplace because I am assuming that they enjoy making money and feeding their families.

I think we will see a lot of changes to Impulse in the coming year. First, and certainly least I definitely a level of DRM implemented that doesn't exist with Impulse right now. From a publishers standpoint this may be a sticking point for more AAA titles being put up for sale on Impulse (not that there aren't plenty). What else will we see? I certainly have no idea but we do know that Gamestop is coming for Valve and for all of us PC peeps that is certainly a good thing.

Valve will continue to make Steam the best, and I think they will work harder because now they have a real retailer who will be clawing at their throats. Gamestop know's that their future really depends on this purchase and I really believe they will be hungrier for our PC dollars. I certainly don't plan as of now to switch to impulse, but I am excited that they will certainly keep Valve on their toes.

The Crysis 2 Demo Kicked my Ass (but not my Compy's)

I noticed on Steam last night that the Crysis 2 demo was available so I made the rookie mistake of taking that out for a spin. Before I get in to had badly I got pwned I have to say the game ran really well. Despite my compy being middle of the road at best the game had no graphical hiccups running at full 1920 by 1080 with medium settings. The graphics did look spectacular.

The mp itself plays very much like COD to me. You run around shooting people, raising your sights with the right mouse, getting knifed every 2 seconds. I suppose I can't blame my lack of skill on the developers, but I can say the game (and mp FPS's in general) are very forgiving to new players. I don't think I have, or will have the mental and testicular fortitude to really become average at the genre in general. It really makes me pine for the good ol' days of 1995 playing Quake on the WPI computer labs in my hometown of Worcester. I was actually competitive back then!

Also I am a reasonably strong L4D and TF2 player. I always tend to hold my own and be at least average (spy FTW), but those skills just seem lost in Crysis or COD.

Anyways the game did add the spin of both stealth and armor mode (pretty self explanatory). I can envision a leveled up player jumping around, raining death Crackdown style which would pretty pretty awesome actually. I just don't think I can develop the skills to get there. I'm sick enough as it is consistantly getting rocked in Starcraft 2 these days as it is.

On another note I was staring at my crappy, old XBOX 360, wondering why I could not get any adapter for HDMI for it when a thought came to me; why doesn't Microsoft and Sony sell XBOX and PS emulators? It seems like it would be easy money and a much higher profit margin for us PC master race. You can already use a 360 controller with a PC, why not take control of the market and let people play XBOX or PS discs too? I would definitely prefer that and it seems like it would be easy money.