tberton

Most games aren't "about" sexism, but they are often about power fantasies where the only person that matters is the main character and everybody else is simply a tool or an obstacle, which is often where the sexism comes from when the main character is a man. Even when the main character isn't a man, that self-centered fantasy is still somewhat problematic, although certainly less sexist.

The whole meta-joke of that scene is great too: they're at Casa Loma, which is notorious for being a movie shoot location, filming a movie set elsewhere, but in the actual movie (Scott Pilgim, that is) Casa Loma is just Casa Loma. It's cool too, because I used to live near there, so I've walked up and down the stairs that Lee grinds down a hundred times. I absolutely love it when things are set in Toronto. My biggest annoyance with Orphan Black is with how coy it is about where it's set.

Oh wow, that's nuts. I guess my decision is made then, for purely monetary reasons. Heck, I'd pick it up right now if I weren't almost certain that it will go on sale once BE comes out.

I've played Space Alert, but never actually read the rulebook, and while I've heard lots of people talk about Vlaada's rulebooks very positively, that honestly sounds awful to me. The reason being something that Rob Daviau has mentioned a lot when talking about rulebooks: they have to serve two very different purposes, first teaching you the game and then being a reference when you want to check a rule more in depth. Vlaada's books sound like they are terrible for that second purpose (also, I find it's often difficult to accurately convey rules in a narrative voice.) Honestly, I think Catan has the best approach here: part of the book teaches the game in a nice, ordered, logical progression and then the back ten pages describe each element of the game in more detail for easy reference. All that said, the worst thing about most rulebooks tends to be the translation. If international publishers paid more attention to hiring good translators (or paying the ones they've got enough money to make them care) that would make rulebooks, like, 75% better.

I don't think that's the case. Brave New World and Gods and Kings are both the same price and sold separately on Steam. It wouldn't really make sense to sell them that way if Brave New World included all the Gods and Kings content.

Well, at a certain point there won't be "other AIs hate me for no apparent reason despite mutual interests" because, almost by definition, AIs that don't share your Affinity will not have mutual interests with you. You victory conditions will be incompatible. Which is, as you say, something of a mixed bag. However, I do like that it at least fictionally will justify the "AIs gang up on you to stop you from winning the game" problem. In regular Civ, I can see it being frustrating if you're going for a Diplomatic victory and the AIs all stop you just because they don't want you to win, even if, fictionally, a diplomatic victory might be nice for everybody. Here, it makes perfect sense that if one person's trying to emancipate humanity from their flesh cages and the other is trying to settle a new planet and maintain the essential humanity of the populace, that those two groups would stop at nothing to prevent the other from achieving their goals. I think the "competing visions for the future of humanity" angle they've taken is a smart one. Honestly, though, I'm still not certain I'll be picking this up. I've only just gotten into Civ V and I'd like to pick up the two expansions, which I'm sure will go on sale when Beyond Earth comes out. However, I find the historical theme pretty distracting, since they really make no attempt to say anything interesting about history and instead use it as window dressing. If the theme is going to be window dressing, I'd rather it be fictionalized, and putting things in the future in space solves a lot of the cognitive dissonance problems I've got with Civ: the scale of space and time seems to make more sense, the ideas of technological determinism are somewhat less present, there's fewer weird "these people are inherently this way" sorts of problems. I don't know, I'm on the fence.

Whoa, I never knew Anita was Canadian! And she did her Master's at my Alma Mater! That's pretty cool.

I suppose so. That's not how factions seem to work in Civ though. Unless I'm completely off-base, whatever Civ you pick only gives you a couple perks and special units. Otherwise, they're identical. But I take it that wasn't how Alpha Centauri worked. Did all of the seven factions in that game really play all that differently or look that unique? Because I could see bringing it down to three as an attempt to make each feel more unique. For me, in this instance "more" does not necessarily mean "better." That said, each Sponsor does offer a unique personality, so there's still variety there, along with all the other starting options you get. It seems like there will be plenty of opportunity to get a variety of different combinations. The worry I do share is weather the game will be too combat focused. Unique units and combat technologies have been the focus of a lot of the previews, although they've talked about how you'll be able to earn "favours" with other leaders that can be cashed in later on (the devs specifically referenced The Godfather as the inspiration for this) and the Covert Ops system for spies sounds like it at least has the potential to be interesting. However, while theoretically the only victory condition that actually requires combat is Dominance, I do wonder if the emphasis on opposition between the affinities will make things overly difficult for peaceful players.

The Affiinities aren't really factions. You still pick a "Sponsor" at the beginning of the game, like you would pick a Civilization in any other Civ.

Once again, I'm not a Civ expert, but there do seem to be a few more significant changes. The Affinity system seems to be pretty core to the design and affects multiple systems. At the very least, having those types of choices represented aesthetically is really interesting, as are the ways it affects victory conditions. But you're right, it's still building on the core of Civ V.

The demo may be limited, but I think it fits really well - surprisingly well - on the 3DS. The controls are a little bit awkward, but that should be improved in the full version due to customization options. But the game plays super smoothly and is really fun. I don't think I'll get the same "four people on a couch doing ridiculous stuff like Big Blue - Lightning Mode - Only Bunny Hoods on Very HIgh" feeling that I had when I was twelve with Melee, but since I don't own a Wii U, this is a pretty dang good replacement.

So Firaxis has been putting a lot of these kinds of videos up lately, looking in depth at each of the features of the game. I'm a big Civ newbie (just started playing V the other day) but a lot of the stuff here looks pretty cool. Has anybody with more Civ experience been watching these and have anything to say about how Beyond Earth looks?

I'm still waiting for the Pikmin episode. An Intelligent Systems episode (the developers of Advance Wars and Fire Emblem) would be pretty cool too. I think excursions into non-PC strategy games are always fun.

There's not really one "Canadian French." What teg's showing is Acadian French, which I imagine is fairly different from the French in rural Quebec, which is different from Montreal Joual, which would be different from the French spoken in Ontario and Manitoba. It's all super cool though. Those lines that teg quoted are fascinating.

Yeah, that's one of the major complaints I hear about that game. I think Skyward Sword is a bit better about it, actually.

Certain games have a ton of expansions that are unique to certain regions as well. Both Catan and Bohnanza have dozens of expansions that have only been released in Europe.

I feel the same way, unless the game is designed from the ground up, like Netrunner. In fairness to The Duke, it actually seems to be a bit closer to that type of game, rather than the "expansions out of control" thing that happens to games like Arkham Horror or Carcassone. Adding new pieces seems almost like adding new cards to an LCG cardpool. In fact, a "constructed" variant of The Duke would be pretty interesting.

I think it's been more like a year and a half and yeah, it's been out of print for a while. That's probably because it was a Kickstarter game, which means that it's tough to get print runs going consistently. Also because it's a Kickstarter game, it not only has an Arthurian expansion, but a Robin Hood one, a Robert E. Howard one, a Three Musketeers one and several that aren't specifically themed but add new mechanics. I haven't tried any of them though: the base game is plenty. Conveniently, the publisher has the entirety of the game available for print and play on their website. It would probably be a hassle to play that way - lots of gluing paper to cardboard - but you can check it out before buying it if you want.

I have to agree about the TF2 hands. They seem incongruously cartoony for such a grounded game. Maybe they just look that way because it's early though.

Teg, I don't think anyone's accusing you of making an unreasonable argument. It seems like Hedgefield was responding more to the original point than to you.

My cousin is actually a huge fan of Mount & Blade and has said many of the same things that you're talking about here. I only ever played the demo of the first game. I guess I should check it out again. Thanks for answering my question guys! It was a great discussion.

I'm watching the stream and the game looks awesome. Great work guys, I'm super excited to play it. Questions/comments: Are those gorgeous backgrounds off in the distance actual geometry or are they concept art painted onto a skybox? I'm assuming it's the latter, but if it's the former: wow. I have it on good authority that Rich Sommer is a Cool Dude. Some friends of mine played board games with him when he visited a cafe I used to work at. It's cool that he's working on this. The stuff where you can talk to Delilah about various objects looks really interesting, and the traversal stuff sounds really cool. I'm trying not to set my expectations too high with the comparisons to Metroid and Batman, but a non-combat version of that style of game appeals to me greatly. One annoying thing: you know that stomping out a fire would in no way prevent it from being a forest fire hazard, right? There would still be hot embers - some of which were probably knocked into the grass from your stomping - and everything would still be really hot. To properly put out a fire you need to soak it in water until the coals are literally swimming and everything is coll enough to touch with your bare hands. I know that simply stomping it out makes sense from a production standpoint and a character standpoint - Henry's in a hurry and new at this, after all. But it still irks me unreasonably. Anyway, keep up the awesome work. Ambiguous 2015 release date can't come soon enough!

I don't think this is a fair comparison. I haven't played Crossfire, but looking online, the cards seem to have colour art on them. That most likely means that they're a lot more expensive to print than CAH's black and white, text only cards. Expecting them to be the same quality based on size and quantity alone is unreasonable.

On Castles of Burgundy: I find that Stefan Feld, like Uwe Rosenberg, is a designer who's got two styles of game, one of which I love and the other of which I couldn't care less about. For Feld, the games of his that I love (In the Year of the Dragon, Rialto, The Spiecherstadt) are simple and elegant, in which every single decision is extremely important and mistakes have clear and obvious consequences. The games I don't care for (Burgundy, Bora Bora, Bruges, Macao) are point-salad games, where there's a million different things going on and each feels equivalent to the others because they all just boil down to victory points in the end. Both styles have elements of the other, but the first group just feels tighter and more interesting to me. Also, In the Year of the Dragon is one of the best board game names ever.

I hadn't thought of those as being in the same family, but yeah, it makes sense.