reviews – My Game Reviews

The Google Empire: Why we need more search engines other than Google

The usage of “network” effect to basically dismiss calls for other search engines or any other institution is a common phrase. The people who use it to say there is something transhistorical about Google and that people should be just accept Google. The thing that Google has is the ability to just control the access to information and also installing their search services on every Android device here. Microsoft got in trouble for the same thing, but now they are basically the underdogs here in the search space with Bing, which is good but is basically unable to gain traction because Google keeps people within their systems. This means that people only see Google and not other competitors.

I use Google’s products as they are not incompetent at making email services such as Gmail. However, they are often used as the only service and the “nerds” or power” users are trying to use other products. For example, think about DuckDuckGo or other search engines such as Bing as I mentioned earlier. However, Bing is the only one that is capable of challenging Google. In the early 2010s, its market share was higher than it is now but it is unable to get beyond a small percentage.

We need more search engine choices.

Why is that we allow people to congregate in the “best”

This best is being propped up with all sorts of trickery and manipulations. The most important thing that can happen now is that we need to break up the app stores of both Google and Apple. This duopoly has allowed for the ossification of many aspects of the internet. It has led to the decline in the quality of desktop sites. Previously, desktop sites had all their charm and qualities. Now it the same throughout and it is not interesting now. Even the corporate sites, the front page of a company’s brand have become little more than portals to their social media sites.

We need competition and while we may have alternatives, we do not currently have competition.

Search engines should be an area of competition and growth and not beholden to only one company. The internet is a space without any limit in space only bandwidth. We should have many choices.

Battlefield 6: Vehicular combat is a return to form for the series.

Battlefield 6 CV-90 on the Siege of Cairo Map

Battlefield 6’s Open Beta is in full swing, and people are coming into play. Battlefield 6 has already gotten over 500,000 peak players on steam charts. On console, it is probably even higher. I have been very impressed with the performance that the game is giving me on my computer.

In terms of the Vehicular combat, I have to say that this game series is one of the best and there no one that comes close to competing with it. Vehicular combat is a genre of video games that used to be more popular in the past and Battlefield holds up that tradition in spades here and with greater fidelity than before.

As of right now, Liberation Peak is the best map for vehicular combat. Considering how snipers are so prevalent on Liberation Peak that it is better to be inside a vehicle.

The map has a variety of vehicles available for use. There are jeeps that spawn at the various bases. Such vehicles are useful for attacking objective points on the map.

The infantry fighting vehicles are also there. It useful in being able to transport many soldiers. The CV-90 seen in these screenshots, can be used to transport 6 soldiers at a time. This means that the vehicle, piloted by someone with lots of skill can takeover objectives quickly on the map. It has multiple weapons and countermeasures, making it tough vehicle.

There are also Main Battle Tanks on this map also. In the beta, the main one available is the M1A2 Abrams. It is a very powerful vehicle capable of taking out vehicles as well as infantry. There is also a copilot position in here also which adds more firepower to the tanks.

Aircraft are also make their presence known on Liberation Peak. Such maps have their detractors in the form of some more purist FPS players but the aircraft opens up Battlefield to more players; I’ll be honest, they make the game more interesting than just having guys running around shooting at one another. The interplay between infantry and vehicle in Battlefield is what distinguishes it from other games.

The CV 90 on the Liberation Peak map in Conquest. A M1A2 Abrams can be seen on the road here.

The CV-90 is an example of what I like seeing in this series. Unlike some of the fanbase that only wants to play on the same urban maps, these vehicles allow for greater squad play than any other approach. One of the things that these vehicles allow is for players to hitch rides and capture objectives. The usage of vehicles in these games helps to build a sense of teamwork and give people something to strive for over just running and gunning opponents in games.

Battlefield always had a variety of maps and we should appreciate that. However, we cannot just have Urban repeats all the time. I like the bigger maps as they force players to think more about how to organize themselves and win the game.

Battlefield is all about the holistic integration of combined arms not just running and gunning on a small urban map. Battlefield 6 shows why the series is not just a clone of other FPS games but its own subgenre that is still highly popular amongst gamers.

Civilization 7 Review: The Worst Game in the Series.

Civilization 7 is the worst game in the series. There are some who want to say that it has new ideas and not recycled ideas. I am guessing these are casual gamers or people who are easily swayed by marketing because this is basically SimCity Societies from 2007 in a Civ Game.

The issue is that the players who played the older games before Civ V have been seeing the changes and that it is becoming very much like Angry Birds and other forgotten mobile games, just a brand to put on mediocre gameplay and hide it with marketing.

The UI is terrible and when compared to Civ 1, it shows the generational changes and the malaise we are currently in this culture.

The Civ switching was a concern of mine earlier on and I see that Fraxis was lazy and put in a bunch of leaders who are not leaders but Great People.

The game does not have England in the game but hides behind a DLC and puts in a person, Ada Lovelace, who was not a political leader, phlisophical, or spiritual leader in any sense. The leader of England should be a King or Prime Minister. I would recommend King Charles II of the Restoration Era.

The Shawnee were put in the game for politics and yet Confucius can rule them. Do not use the CIV has never been about history. It has a tech tree which contains many of the most important technologies in human history. This is not a very good argument to using here.

The crisis system is lazy and does not provide context for what is happening. Having every Civ move into the same age is silly and makes the game too easy. There needs to be consequences to not being able to catch up in tech or economics. Having a reset does not make the game challenging. The Civ Switching doesn’t even stop the snowballing that they say they wanted to not have.

It is clear that the game has increasingly become attached to politics in America more and not just a game about history.

The map generation is terrible and worse than 20 year old games.

The positive reviews are people who generally enjoy simpler, easier games. While Microsoft is no saint of a company, they have made AOE 4 into a game that appeals to casuals and power users. They even encourage people to improve their tactics while also being a great platform for teaching history about multiple cultures, without being myopic about it.

Civilization 7 is the worst in the series. Civilization V was a strange experiment on launch but they did not railroad the player into 3 mini games.