Murdoc

That would be a cool graphical treatment and I do like brkl's idea about minreals. In context to the fiction, why do they know this or that is useful or does something specific for them? I guess maybe they did unmanned surveys before, but then why don't they know the landscape? We're about 1% into a design doc for a Idle Thumb's Beyond Earth mod. Anyway, I'll wait until its out.

Ah, hm. Anyway, will find out how it runs tonight, I can't even remember what video card I have it's so old, so that may not bode well, lol.

That sounds pretty cool. Not to be too hard on a game I've never played and will probably end up playing a lot of and enjoying it, it just seems like they are so rooted into the civ 5 infrastructure that all the possibilities discussed here ended up being beyond their scope for the game. Which is a bit of a shame. I think Civilization test of time had subterranean map as well as the overland map, I can't recall if it added anything.

Yeah, I'm pretty surprised, it's like they took a step back, maybe for graphical purposes or something? I dunno, it's weird.

sweet, I set mine to download last night, it's probably still downloading. But tonight, yay! Hows it running for everyone? The lack of the PC reviews had me a little worried. Stability? Does it look a little better than the console footage?

I got it for free and I didn't think it was really worth the price. The short of it: It looks fantastic, graphically, it's really tight. Disappointing: Load Times: I barely remember Sims 3, but I recall an "open world" to travel to, even with some load times, I don't remember anything like this. You can move a sim outside your house, but walk across the street? load time. Go anywhere in town? load time. Gamey: Sims 3 was pretty game-fied but struct the right balance Work: Work seemed more involved in Sims 3, the system now feels more like Sims 1, but it's a step back. Plus the career choices seem kind of dumb Money: Money seems nearly meaningless, maybe that is a modern sims thing at this point, but I loved original Sims and how you'd start out basically with nothing and had to work your way up. Right now you start with so many luxuries and a nice house, I find that there isn't much that feel like accomplishing at that point. AI: I think the AI is worse. They won't do anything on their own, even with their personalities and such. As an example I got so bored of the game I downloaded the Giant Bomb crew and stuck them in a house, I was going to twitch stream it on auto pilot, but with out you telling them what to do, they just sit around and sleep, they don't fix anything they don't have any inclination on their own. It's more a doll house/second life thing than ever. Neat things: More interactions seem cool, ghosts seem kind of neat and involved now, graphics/art, as I mentioned look really good. There's a lot of people in town so you don't feel like you need to make up a ton of households just to for people to interact. Overall kind of boring, incremental changes, and sadly not as good as the last one I played and still a pale shadow of where the series started. I get that the intention of a family Sim is no longer it's goal, but that is what made Sims 1 such an oddity and intriguing.

Yeah, I'd be really interested in getting a sense for what this game even is and looks like.

Not to derail the thread, I am not familiar with GalCiv, but could you explain your last sentence?

That would be some pretty poor planning if you planned to colonize a world. Again, not a big deal, just seemed kind of weird to me. Any justification would be pretty easy, it's just that it anything seems like an easy way out of a design problem. It would have been cool to see if they approached little things like that and found new mechanics to justify the world fiction.

Watching the quicklook on giant bomb and I'm fine if it plays like Civ 5, but a lot of what I am seeing looks simply like a mod. I know going in I won't be getting my SMAC sequel, and the whole tech web does look like it was inspired by the idea of the SMAC civs where instead of having a predefined world view and ideology you make one by researching along their techs. Which is kind of cool I guess, but kind of disappointing that the sponsors don't have more of a unique identity. I realize it doesn't mean much in terms of gameplay, but for atmosphere and fiction, for both regular Civ and Alpha Centauri, it means a lot to me. The choice of of language for the Quest system seems really bizarre. It makes sense in terms of game words, but for future civilizations why wouldn't they be called Directives, Objectives, or something else more suitable than some fantasy roleplaying word? Just odd. The landing on the planet rather than crashing and not having any data of the terrain or world, when you just came from space, seems rather odd too. Again it's in service to the Civilization series, but there is no context for it in the fiction and seems like a dissonance between the set up and design. I'm going to stop nit picking a video and just wait to play it for myself. Cautiously optimistic.

Yeah, fair enough.

The vehicle is giving me a Vampire Hunter vibe and, yeah, that landscape is very Moebius, they just need to get rid of the DOF on the foreground stuff, it isn't doing them any favors. Oh man those costumes are definitely inspired by Moeb. I don't know if I am ready for another tactics game now, seems to be so many, but I do love the art style.

Alright, what the hell, it looks interesting enough even if I am so over Jackson's vision of LOTR. Thanks for the code Architecture!

... Mullholland Drive wasn't weirdness for weirdness sakes, it was probably one of his later movies that made the most sense.

Yeah I am totally onboard, except I don't have an XboxOne and I don't think this is going to have me drop the money on it. Crossing my fingers it does really well to warrant a steam release.

I've never played Wasteland. I did play a ton of Fallout and Fallout 2. Checking out the quicklook and a few things bothered me, but figured I'd ask. Was Wasteland typically a party based game or was that a choice they went with in the sequel? Is it even possible to play as a single character from the start? I don't mind getting party members as the game progresses, but the only thing I loved about Fallout was roaming the world alone, it was part of the fantasy appeal for me. Would be silly if that was the deal breaker for me, but figured I'd check. edit: I spelled Wasteland wrong two times there. sad.

This going off rails, but I started going grey at 22, I figured by the time I was 30 I'd be completely white. Sadly that wasn't the case and now i just have this crappy blend that might be getting close to skunk like. Anyway, what I was going to say is the whole silver/grey/anime hair thing seems to be the rage for 20 something girls in SF. It looks really dumb.

I'm sure someone at DoubleFine makes 120k a year. SF alone is the most expensive city to live in North America. One of the reasons why few traditional game develop companies are around anymore, Vancouver ran into a similar situation. With that said, I've heard rumors that the average DF employee makes less than what a lot of others do in the same industry, within the same city. It's the price to "pay" for working a cool job. Again, just rumor, but people who be in the know, so I'd trust that assessment.

Taking this out of context, though I'm not sure what context I should have, but that just makes those bros that much more dickish. The dialog is very much them on a road trip stopping to stretch or shower, or get food or whatever, yet they pull over to the side of the road and start beating the shit out of some cows. and +1 Barons boy band theory, it would make it all that much worse/better. Maybe it'll employ army of twos fist bump technology.

I can't stop laughing at the theme... it's ridiculous. I can't believe it gets that level of production value. WIth that said, it does look top notch, but jesus, what happened to this series?

I was so excited for this but haven't heard much about it. I guess it never really caught on? But then again, they didn't seem to promote it that much either. I had a similar situation with Nom Nom Galaxy, PixelJunks "terraria" thing, they seem to keep updating it, but it doesn't really feel like a team is moving forward working on it either. Releasing the source code is cool as long as it is semi easy to understand, I know I really wanted to work on Spacebase, so maybe there will be an intrepid programmer out there willing to do some cool stuff with it. I wouldn't mind trying to mess around with it, but I doubt I'd get anywhere with source.

I'm not even sure if this is a game yet or just an awesome virtual haunted house. To be honest, I'd be super happy with the haunted house idea more than video game.

Yeah, with any gripe I have against Prison Architect, it's now at the point mechanically and design wise to be played and enjoyed or hated. Reading back to my original comments on page one and thinking back to it, it was broken as hell, it's come a long way since then and dium mentioned, probably the best in it's class from anything in the genre, even as "early access" right now. I haven't looked too much into it, but now that it's at the level of functional, I wonder how hard it would be to mod it and just adjust the theme/graphics. Really no point in doing it other than just to do it, but wondering if it is even possible.

The mechanics have gotten better and for all the types of games out there trying to do the same thing, PA is probably the most successful at doing it. It is a shame though they decided to go for the theme that they did, it's almost irrelevant since you could easily replace the language and art with little dwarves or whatever, but just the context in which they want to frame their game has never capture my imagination or attention for long. I'm glad they didn't continue/add to their presentation/story telling style of the tutorial as it was immediately a turn off, but at the end of the day, I can't get over the theme, it's not a world I want to escape to for long periods of time like I can with other games of the genre.

Agreed, in the age where some chat messenger no one has ever heard of can sell for 25 billion to face book, grabbing a recognized brand and a really solid platform (it's a platform more than a game) of an entire generation is pretty reasonable. I don't think Markus, Mojang, or anyone else had any real vision for Minecraft, it is what it is and it's pretty interesting. While hugely successful, it hasn't seemed to go anywhere in a long time, so it'll be interesting to see a fresh take, some company vision, and leverage in a market to take it even further... where ever that may be.