Tag: reviews

What Total War Medieval III really needs to thrive

Total War: Medieval III has been announced and this what it really needs in order to be a great game that will surpass the previous titles in the series.

It needs to be fun and interesting.

That’s it. While I will write posts later on about specifics, this is the main part that is most important. I have defended Starfield on here, but I realize that the game is more of a sandbox waiting for gameplay to fill in the gaps. Such a game could have done well in the past but not now. Players have been used to optimized experiences. Games that want you have to explore systems is something that games in the generation from the SNES to about the PS1 could get away with. When the PS1 came out, standardization became the trend and the video game industry we have today is the product of that. There were some exceptions in between the way but the emphasis has on been on making everything optimized and holistic.

Total War: Medieval III has to be a holistic game that is also fun and interesting to play. They need to make sure not to overload with too many features here. Focus on making the game fun to play at first and then attempt to add more features. Many games focus on features at the beginning of making a game rather than the user experience.

Total War: Medieval III needs to make sure its art style also does not get in the way of the experience. Some games think they are being sophisticated with their art but its more important to have good gameplay than great graphics. Great graphics can come in a passive experience, but we still stay for the story not the experience of graphics alone. It needs to service the experience, not the experience just servicing the graphics. This happens too many times in movies and we are also seeing it in video games.

They also need to stick to history but not too tightly that it affects the game. I see Total War: Medieval III having a similar nature to Crusader Kings III here, but with more focus on battles you can control in here. The focus on changing history should make for interesting emergent gameplay, something that Paradox Interactive has pioneered but I feel needs more refinement. I believe that this game can accomplish that here.

The user’s needs are important. This is not productivity software but a game. A game needs to be fun and then expand our minds. Sometimes games get too complex and simplicity is bliss.

Why Netflix is not the new cinema

The box office seems to be coming back to life now. Five at Freddy’s and Zootopia 2 are battling it out with other movies such as Wicked for Good and some other stragglers. It seems that the studios are pulling out the big guns in order to save this year so that they can make up some of the money they didn’t have in the previous parts of the year here.

Netflix has Stranger Things 5, Emily in Paris Season 5, but it seems that the magic isn’t there.

I remember years that Netflix would release new titles and it would garner attention. Now, it seems that they are attempting to hold onto their audience rather build it. This explains why they began punishing people who were sharing passwords and putting ads on the cheapest tier. This is adding to the expense of using Netflix and other streaming services. Instead of having one or two places to watch content, you now have them in so many places.

This is not a great arrangement for people now, especially with the novelty of streaming not as strong as before here.

Netflix’s inablity to make originals which match Hollywood’s early output is telling.

Where is Louise Brookes of Netflix? Simple answer: The culture is simply not there.

The idea of having a Charlie Chaplin or Joan Crawford is not happening in the Netflix age. The people who started Netflix were Silicon Valley who didn’t like Blockbuster’s return policy. They managed to create rental giant which became a streaming giant here. They were just interested in a business more than the art. It wasn’t until they began making originals that the art became more important; it was still subordinate in sense to a third concept, the information and archive culture of our age.

Netflix was more interested in using these shows to sell data back to the people who made the content rather than the artistic quality. A few shows and movies could have been seen to be of classic Hollywood quality, but there are not that many shows that reach the brilliance of Hollywood of many decades ago. Maybe of our age but Netflix is going to have be better than that, not just an addition.

Netflix is simply not the new cinema but more of a upstart which thinks it is. They have had successes but most of these were in the beginning of their time of making originals. They are just pumping out more reality television than ever before. Emily in Paris may appeal to many people but Netflix needs to really start focusing on creating artistic movies which can appeal to their audience.

They have a huge audience and yet they make the same content as one saw on the old broadcast channels.

Netflix will continue to gain subscribers counts but it needs more creativity if it wants to retain that audience.

Investors and tech guys generally do not care about creativity. Only investments. Netflix needs to learn how to treats is originals as something more than images on a screen.

Why Empire Earth is better than most Modern RTS Games

The Intro Screen of the Russian Campaign in Empire Earth

The Russian Campaign in Empire Earth is one of the reasons why I still love playing this game. I have not actually won the campaign even after so many years. However, its the possibilities that the campaign has which still captivates me. The ability to have a science fiction story set on Earth rather than space in an RTS was a great accomplishment. Regardless of the quality of the voice acting or the plausbility of the story, the campaign is known as the hardest in the game. You really get a sense of a futuristic struggle between Russia and America and other nations which you rarely get to see.

Why is that we cannot see that with modern RTS games. The only RTS game recently to accomplish any dynamicism in its design while honoring the past is Age of Empires IV. While Age of Empires III was in a beautiful obscurity, a middle child one could say, Age of Empires IV has regenerated the franchise and RTS games as whole. Starcraft II’s hold on the RTS genre along with other offshoot genres. However, one game cannot do it on its own here. There needs to be more RTS games out there as I see the genre as a virtual chess style game which can help enhance people’s minds here.

Instead of focusing on esports, maybe developers should focus on making their profits sustainable versus a constant stream which eventually tires out and then they have no artistic integrity. Video game companies need to start paying attention to the tension between art and business. Without capital, most art could not start but they should not let business take their soul away from their jobs. Such a compromise ends up damaging many businesses. Somehow, Japan, with its harsher corporate culture has managed to keep the soul of its IPs intact versus the West here.

Empire Earth has a been game that I have played for over twenty years. There is a reason why it stays with me. Nostalgia, a very much misused word in our age, isn’t really for software. It’s more for our physical places and the sense of time passing and a willingness to come back to it. The technical aspect of a video game isn’t what we are sentimental about here, but the atmosphere around playing the game. The game’s technical aspects are solid, not prefect, but better than what you see now, regardless of sentimental aspects surrounding our playing of the game.

Empire Earth has something unique about it. The AI cheats in the game, but it is competent and the battles, even when annoying are also exciting. There is something about the quality of the battles where every unit has a role to play, big and small. Unlike so many RTS games now, I feel the gameplay loop is similar to Skyrim’s. It has a mythic quality while still personable. This is an issue that Starfield had, where its huge nature made the player seem too small and not distinctive enough. This is another issue I have with Stellaris, inspire of its great gameplay. The mythic nature is so huge, that the player just seems to be clicking buttons on a screen.

What we need in video games again is a sense of personal stakes and personality again. Not just moving digital information on the screen.

The reason why Empire Earth is still played by players is really down to its technical brillancce combined with the memories of an industry that wasn’t perfect but knew how to make games over assets for investors in corporations.