video-games – Page 9 – My Game Reviews

Civilization III: China shoots down ICBMs in the 2nd Nuclear War.

Civilization III is proving to be a truly amazing game. Persia attempted to attack me once again, this time with ICBMs. My previous war with them had put so much pollution onto the planet that the sun image was red and my environmental efforts were going nowhere. Recently planted forests were becoming grassland as the planet became filled with nuclear radiation. However, peace was far away and the war had to continue.

I had a peace treaty with the Persians while the Koreans barely managed to hang on with their own treaty. The Persians simply had too many tanks and I lacked oil and aluminum to have an armored army to counter the Persians. As a result, I relied heavily on TOW infantry and huge amounts of artillery located across the mountain passes to slow them. I then used tactical nukes onto the capital of Persepolis and other major cities multiple times to cut the empire from resources and luxuries. However, they kept sending tanks and mechanized infantry into the area around Tokyo and Osaka; I had to make peace as I was basically in a stalemate and move to peacetime economy so that my cities could get new infrastructure in order to compete with the Persians.

However, I didn’t have all the time I needed to prepare for war with Persia. I was building ICBMs to counter their military. I also ordered my city governors to build a huge air force, a part of our military which wasn’t a factor in the previous war. The main issue was always the tanks and infantry fighting vehicles. Persia had tons of such machines. I had only recently built a city on top of an oil deposit in order to start building huge amounts of bombers and jet airplanes to counter this huge, mechanized army. However, no matter how well bulit ones plans are, only experience manages to tell us the truth or show the durability of our ideas.

The attack began without warning on China.

In Civilization III, the AI is very aggressive in comparison to the later versions. Some of this is what it has to work with. The game is simpler in a sense than the games that came out later. It is not a game that the AI has a hard time understanding the rules. Under the hood, however, the game is similar to Civ 7 except in the Hexes and some of the rules. The hexes in my opinion messed up the Civilization series. Squares were just easier for the AI to handle.

The result is that the AI is competent in a war and is an actual threat. In strategic thinking, the AI in this 2001 game is still behind the human but it is clear that they were planning to attack me with nukes for some time. I was in their way for domination of the globe and I was ready for their attacks.

Beijing, once again, was hit but my SDI system was able to defend the nation from attacks. As a result, my workers would not have as many duties at repairing the radiation and damage that was caused by the ICBMs.

This is actually the only time I have seen the SDI small wonder in action.

This is why I love Civilization III. You get to run a nation in the late game, and it is truly wonderous. This why Civilization VII was able to reach its heights.

Why Battlefield 6 will be the most successful Battlefield game yet

Battlefield 6 gameplay on Liberation Peak in Tajikistan.

The Battlefield games are now in their third decade and its been quite a journey. The games have always had some degree of success but they have been growing in popularity with streaming services such as Twitch making gaming even more communal than it was in the past. Battlefield 6, the newest entry in the series, is going to be going back to Modern warfare that hasn’t been since Battlefield 4 in 2013. Such a huge gap means that many players will be experiencing such a game as novelty over a continuation of their gaming habits.

Battlefield 6 gameplay on Siege of Cairo

Battlefield 1’s success with World War I FPS mechanics and gameplay made the franchise return to older warfare. Battlefield 2042 was an attempt to return to Battlefield 2142, without the Battlewalkers and had a mixed reception upon release. Battlefield 6 is return to the series’ modern style that began with Battlefield 3 in 2011. Such a return will evoke many memories among the older generation of gamers who buy this game as well as younger players.

It is going to be competing with Call of Duty: Black Ops 7. As of right now, it seems that Battlefield 6 will win on quality maybe not on the quantity of its sales.

The screenshots that I took of the beta are not of the official game coming out in October but the game was already of a high quality at that time. The beta was very interesting and I felt the game had a seriousness which is missing in Battlefield 2042. While I like Battlefield 2042, especially some of the maps, the operators make you feel like a mercenary instead of a soldier. Seeing some of the characters with those skins just made it look goofy and distracting in a sense.

What Battlefield 6 had already in the beta was that the gameplay just seems more weighty.

Battlefield 6 Liberation Peak Vehicular Heads Up Display

The vehicular combat has always been an attraction to me in the Battlefield games. Endless infantry combat gets boring and is easier to manipulate by cheaters. The combined arms approach of the Battlefield games make them more interesting to watch on YouTube and Twitch in comparison to other games. Seeing players attempt to outwit each other while infantry and vehicles interact with one another is more interesting than seeing infantry only maps. While I am aware Saints Quarter is a infantry-only map, Battlefield 6 seems to be attempting to give infantry combat a better squad focus over the run and gun approach of the Call of Duty games, which is really harkening back to the arena shooters of Doom and Quake of the 1990s era. There is a place for both, but I prefer combined arms over engaging people in houses and warehouses.

Battlefield 6 Helicopter firing flares on Liberation Peak in Tajikistan.

My main focus for my Battlefield 6 gameplay is going an Engineer. I want to focus on the vehicles. Infantry only will be support as I perfer slower gameplay vs most of the people you see on YouTube; they are generally the higher tier players who also have to put on a good show. They tend to be kind of players who are very aggressive about the score. My main focus is putting in some RPG elements from my experience with playing Skyrim. I have always been serious about the winning over the score, so I tend to be more careful, conserve my lives and focus on helping the team win over my score.

I look forward to getting the game. It has been some time since I have played an FPS in a serious way. The open beta rekindled by love of the genre and I hope that the game’s release is smooth and helps to revitalize the series.

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.