Akalabeth

Members
  • Content count

    54
  • Joined

  • Last visited

About Akalabeth

  • Rank
    Advanced Member

Recent Profile Visitors

2338 profile views
  1. Three Moves Ahead 572: Forever Games

    My forever game would likely be Minecraft. It has enough variety and creativity to get by. For a strategy game? Don't really play strategy games much anymore. Maybe Civilization 2, Master of Orion 1 or - an old PBeM game called VGA Planets.
  2. This format is enjoyable, just so long as it's not all the time- maybe one in every four episodes. I would rather have more content than wait for people to say all get on the same page with a particular game for a show. Also, thanks for the reference- made me look up that Rimworld article: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/rimworld-code-analysis Interesting read- I think the code has been changed since the article, but not before the predictable backlash against the female journalist.
  3. Game has a cool look.
  4. Episode 216: Lost in Space

    4X games do come up in later podcasts along with some of Rob's opinions. I found the episode entertaining myself, mostly because I enjoy hearing people angry about stuff. I don't know if this podcast addresses it but I've heard that MOO3 was such a failure because a critical piece of the game was dropped/not completed, specifically some AI governors or somesuch that would help run the empire. Never played the game myself.
  5. One point of note, I think the idea of the Mandalorian being a grey character who always does good but still gets by is- kinda off the mark. (Warning, some spoilers) Maybe that's the intent of the show, but- I think it largely fails, mainly for one incident in the first season where Mando's ship was getting striped for parts by Jawas and Mando whipped out his rifle and proceeded to kill about a dozen of them. And in the end, when the situation was reconciled, there was no harsh feelings. Similarly- there's another episode from season 2 where a passenger is carrying precious cargo, and another character is basically destroying that cargo on the way, and the show makes it all out to be a joke- the passenger never gets mad, and in the end the cargo seems as plentiful as it was at the beginning. Basically you can't take the shows seriously because at certain points it just blatantly disregards life and that disregard is not meant to judge the offending character whatsoever. The characters do bad but there are no consequences. Instead it's supposed to be a big joke or a laugh. It's very inconsistent and bizarre in that way. As for ethics in video games. Triggering topic it seems given some of the replies. The whole point of a game, ANY game, is to give the player interesting choices. Making those choices ethical is simply another way to infuse interest into the choice. It's valid and worthy of discussion. And even if ethics are not factored into the choice at all, it should still factor into that game. Why? Because if the intent of a given game is to create a believable and interesting world then real world concepts like ethics and morality should factor in the design. If a designer wants their world to be believable, they can make the non-player agents in the game react along ethical lines where appropriate. This has been around even in the very earliest 4X games. When you wipe out a civilization, everyone hates you. Even when you conquer too much of the world or become too big, everyone starts to hate you, which factors into ethics like greed and so on. There's also that herbalist from Ultima IV who is blind and you can cheat her by underpaying her, but if you do then later in the game when you ask her for help she'll tell you you're a thief and to get out- that's ethics in games as far back as 1985. I will agree also that the most interesting part of a 4X game in my experience is the conquest. And more recent games, like civilization which focus on all other sorts of gameplay are less interesting to me as a result of it. I don't want to sit around watching things get built, I want to explore and send expeditions. I think also a failing of a game like Civilization is that it's not really about civilization, it's about regime. And when the regime falls, the civilization disappears- while in history we've seen many countries which were conquered and then reborn years or centuries later. The spirit of the people in a given area survives.
  6. I've really enjoyed these episodes with Bret. Very cool to get an academic perspective on some historical aspects of these games and the different definitions or categories of empire, states and so on. Would be cool to have an episode with him based on the fall of empires, with a look towards how different empires have broken apart (not just rome). Though- maybe that's too tangential to video games since I'm not sure how well the fall of empires is really modeled in video games.
  7. I really appreciated the Academic perspective on states, nations and so on. Very cool.
  8. Three Moves Ahead 538: Hell Let Loose

    Is the discord server really only available at the 33 dollar (cdn) pledge level? That’s more than all of my streaming services combined
  9. Interesting sounding game though the podcast had quite a lot of people talking over one-another. Maybe could've been a bit more organized in that regard.
  10. Three Moves Ahead 513: 2020 in Review

    I don't know if anyone told Rob Zacny but regarding mission ranks for Valkyria Chronicles - the rank is ENTIRELY based upon how long it takes you to finish the mission. If you play the game careful, trying to preserve your soldiers, you will never get S rank. If instead you take fast movers, and just bum rush the objective- S rank. It's one of the reasons I felt sour on the game after I finished it. Vehicles, Scouts and Engineers are king in that game and taking anything else feels like a waste of time because you're not rewarded for it.
  11. Why is there mouse clicking in the background the whole time? Family member on another computer or is one or more of the guys doing something else at the same time.
  12. Three Moves Ahead 500: Origins

    Shucks, at first glance I thought this was going to be a show about Origins Systems. Haven't listened to it yet, but sure it'll still be good
  13. Episode 411: Total War: WARHAMMER II

    The episode seems to work for me. Both listening from the website and downloading the MP3. 3MA content seems to have a slowed down quite a bit lately though-
  14. Pretty sure they've mentioned At the Gates, maybe in the last episode? But their comments were pretty disparaging.
  15. Don't know the exact radio message, but the helicopter guy complaining about darkness at 6pm- vietnam is near the equator so they wont have long summer days like up north in Canada. Looking online, daylight is going to end between 530 and 620 depending on the time of year-