history – Page 2 – My Game Reviews

Empire Earth: The Nano Age and the Architecture of an Epoch

Starting in the Digital Age in Empire Earth, the architecture suddenly shifts to a futuristic style. The Capitol for instance, isn’t trying to replicate the St. Basil’s Cathedral in London now, but some theoretical capital in the future. Its architecture is rounded, like it belongs on some distant planet and not on Earth. The culture that it represents is one that worships efficiency over the idea of human culture. Compare that to the Colosseum wonder being built next to it.

The Colosseum was an expression of Roman culture using the technology they had in order to construct it. It also represented their many abstract ideas of how to organize their society. The Digital Age capital in Empire Earth is a representation of the technology overtaking the expression of human culture. What we see in the buildings in the future epochs is really a continuation of what saw beginning with the Modern Epochs; architecture is now functional. Now architecture is basically just housing technology within those structures.

Here is the great idea behind Cyber Labatory which is right behind the Colosseum; it isn’t about the structure which is mattering in here, its the technology which matters here. Gameplay wise, the Cyber Labatory is representing something new in military affairs in the game. These Cybers are made specifically to counter other Cybers not the remaining human units. This is Cyber on Cyber conflict not human.

This is the essence of the Nano Age.

Tech is more important than when we use it to make culture.

It is not surprising that the houses in the Nano Age do not have any distinctive cultural aspects to it. Art and Culture is subordinate to the interests of efficiency, or more specifically, how we use technology to interact with our epoch.

That is the essence of the Digital and more importantly, the Nano Ages in Empire Earth.

Can Outlander Blood of My Blood be a success and stand on its own?

Outlander: Blood of My Blood is going to be released on Starz on August 8th, and it will be a prequel to the time travel romance series, Outlander. The reason why I was attracted to this series is because of my love for history and romance combining together. The main character, Claire, is not a loudmouth but someone who has great maturity which is often missing in many characters in cinema now. The series is an oddity among series in that it is historical series spanning many centuries and somehow it manages to get renewed multiple times without not having lost its vigor. Unlike Game of Thrones, Outlander hasn’t really given up on its original vision that began in Season 1.

Can Outlander Blood of My Blood be its own series?

The series is a prequel, taking place in the early 1710s vs the 1740s of the original series. The modern era in the series is also taking place in World War I vs the immediate post-war era of World War II in the original series.

Outlander: Blood of my Blood is looking like it is going to be great addition to the story of the series but can it really stand on its own?

There are always issues with prequels. One issue is that they have to tie into the existing canon, and this can cause problems for fans of the previous stories.

Outlander: Blood of my Blood seems to have a good area to start with. It is staying true to its own previous stories, rather than making changes which would alienate the Outlander book readers and the ones who have watched the TV series.

In my opinion, the series can stand on its own but it is going to have to be coherent and have good writing and acting just as any other production would require.

Outlander: Blood of my Blood will get stronger when it goes to the 1st Jacobite Uprising.

The historical background of the Outlander series which is the Jacobite struggle will have an impact on the narrative on this story.

We shall see how the series does when it released but for now, the most important aspect for the early seasons is how they link up the three Jacobite Risings in the narrative here.

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.