Anno 1404: My Kingdom for a decent manual

There may be a good game in here somewhere. Unfortunately, the lack of a decent manual or proper tutorial is making my experience so frustrating that I may just give up and never find out. The manual, such as it is, contains just 8 pages explaining how to play what is clearly a complex game, plus a list of keyboard shortcuts. Hopeless. As a result, I've been blindly using trial and error (usually error) to try to find out what I'm supposed to be doing, and how to do it. How can a game developer potentially waste years of development on a game for the sake of the cost of putting together a reasonable manual and/or tutorial? I shall persevere a bit longer, but my patience is running out...

Meanwhile, here is another screenshot:

Anno 1404

I've been trying out the demo of Anno 1404. I like it. The graphics are gorgeous, and the gameplay is not just the usual gather resources and build things of other RTSs. Here are a couple of screenshots:


I may just be buying this one...

Diablo III

It's no good, I guess I just don't like fantasy RPGs any more. Perhaps I'm too old for them. All that collecting items, repetitive battling to level up and wandering around aimlessly just doesn't do it for me anymore. Recently I've tried both The Witcher and Gothic 3, but got bored only hours into the game. Even my old favourite Oblivion seems tedious.

Maybe Diablo III will relight the fire:

Gothic 3 Enhanced

Real life got in the way of gaming for the last couple of days, hence no posting around here. I thought I would get back by loading up something I've been meaning to have a look at for a while - Gothic 3. I did that, then patched it up to the Enhanced Edition.

First impressions: colourful, stutters when loading, looks good apart from the limited view distance. As for gameplay, much like any other fantasy RPG.

I'll try to come up with some more pertinent comments and more interesting screenshots later...

Tongass Fjords love-in

At the risk of turning this blog into a Tongass Fjords love-in, I am enjoying this FSX add-on so much that I thought I would post a couple more screenshots:

Tongass II

I've been enjoying Tongass Fjords so much that I decided to upgrade my favourite bush plane, the RealAir Scout, to FSX, to enhance the enjoyment. It worked. Here are a couple more screenshots:

Tongass Fjords X

The much-anticipated Tongass Fjords X has now been released, and I downloaded it today. Tongass Fjords was created by Holger Sandmann and Bill Womack, neither of whom require any introduction for hardened flight-simmers. With a pedigree like that, you know it will be good and it is. No, scratch that - it is GREAT, quite simply the best scenery add-on I have seen for any flight sim, period. Covering a slice of Alaska and British Columbia larger than Switzerland in unprecedented detail, Tongass Fjords enables you to truly explore a vast area, with beautiful vistas wherever you look, and surprises over every ridge. Highlights include true coastlines and rivers, real glaciers, photoreal areas, ships and boats, traffic, custom buildings, sounds and numerous airstrips and seaplane bases. I've only just scratched the surface, but already it is clear to me that you can have your own adventures exploring a truly diverse scenery that is the closest I have yet seen to reality in a flight sim. If you are a bush-plane fanatic, or even if you just enjoy flying low and slow and enjoying the view, Tongass Fjords is a must-have add-on for FSX. Here are a couple of screen shots I took on my first flight:

The Hobbit: Nostalgia ain't what it used to be

The year was 1982. We were all singing Eye of the Tiger (well, I wasn't), Knight Rider was on TV and the first CD player was sold in Japan. Meanwhile, hidden away in a million bedrooms were computer geeks playing The Hobbit. I was one of them.


I've just taken a trip down memory lane to play The Hobbit again. No, I didn't dig out my old Spectrum (which I still have), load the tape into the cassette deck and listen to fax-noises for five minutes while it loaded. I went to ZZ Spectrum, an online java Spectrum emulator, where you can sample the delights of a number of old Spectrum goodies.


Was it as great as I remembered? Well, no. The Hobbit was a text adventure spiced up with some very basic graphics (which, despite being basic, took an age to load, at least on the cassette version). The big selling point of the game was its use of 'Inglish', a slightly more natural version of the language than the very simple inputs that were all that was allowed in previous text adventures. It was still pretty limited, and you still had to endure minutes of frustration before you came up with a command that the game actually understood. Still, it seemed pretty cool at the time.


The other frustrations were finding the right way to solve problems, and roaming around blindly as if in a maze, before arriving somewhere interesting (read: a location with a graphic and a couple of items in it). As you can imagine, my re-acquaintance with The Hobbit was somewhat brief. Now, I'm off to play something a little bit more modern...

Shop Around

Spurred on by my recent purchase of Empire: Total War, I thought I would do something I've been meaning to do since it came out, and that is buy the Medieval II: Kingdoms expansion. Being English, I had always fancied doing the Brittania campaign and kicking some Welsh/Scots/Irish ass. So, where to buy it? Well, these days I think first about downloading new games rather than buying boxed versions, so I began by going to Steam. They had it, for £8.99, but it would only work with the download version of the game. Next, I went to Direct2Drive. Their download works with both the download and the boxed versions of the original game, but they are selling it for £19.50, which I think was the full price when the expansion was originally released two years ago. Sorry, I thought, but I'm sure I can do better than that.

And I did. I found it on Amazon for the somewhat lower price of £3.99 plus postage, a total of £5.92. That's a small price for a hell of a lot of game. Ok, I didn't get it straight away as with a download, but Amazon (actually 4GamersUK) lived up to their usual high standard - ordered over the weekend, dispatched on Monday, arrived on Tuesday. Can't say fairer than that. So, the moral is: shop around.

I may be doing a review of Kingdoms later, but for now, here's a screenshot I took:

G15 FSX Applet

... I have, however, had more success with this G15 applet for FSX. It displays just about every piece of information a pilot could require when not looking at the cockpit panel (e.g. when in outside view) including speed, altitude, vertical speed, heading, fuel, lights, winds etc. etc. Here are nine 'screenshots' (you can switch between them) of what you get on the lcd display:

Highly recommended for all FSX-ers with a G15 keyboard. Just download the applet, extract it and run the .exe file - make sure the applet is running before starting FSX.

Crysis, what Crysis?

I've been meaning to do a post reporting upon my experience of using my G15 display with Crysis, but to be honest, I'm so crap at Crysis that I never have a moment to look at the display to check my stats. Certainly, not when the action is going on. Still, here's a screenshot of a rare moment of success:

Flight Systems G940

NOT CONTENT with taking my money for an MX Revolution Mouse and a G15 gaming keyboard (not to mention a QuickCam Pro webcam), Logitech are now trying to tempt me with their Flight Systems G940, comprising a force feedback joystick, dual throttle and rudder pedals. According to the Press Release:

...the design and controls of the Flight System G940 were inspired by military and commercial planes and helicopters.

“There’s nothing ordinary about a G-series gaming peripheral, and the G940 is no different,” said Ruben Mookerjee, Logitech’s director of product marketing for gaming. “We approached this project with the goal of redefining the flight sim experience. Whether you’re flying an A380, an F/A-18 Hornet or a Comanche helicopter, when you want to feel the wind on your wings, control engines together or independently or master tricky maneuvers, the G940 behaves and feels like the real thing – from takeoff to landing.”

For an immersive experience, the three-component Logitech Flight System G940 features a force feedback joystick, dual throttle and rudder pedals. And, with more than 250 programmable button options integrated into a fully featured HOTAS (or Hands On Throttle-and-Stick) design, you’re able to access critical aircraft systems without taking your hands off the controls.

Come on, Logitech, show my wallet some mercy...

Infinity: The Quest for Earth

Now, I don't play multiplayer games. The idea of getting thrashed by some spotty-faced kid on the other side of the world just doesn't appeal to me. What may just change all that, however, is Infinity: The Quest for Earth, slated for release next year. Infinity is a MMORP space game and the coolest thing about it is that play will also take place on the planet surfaces, with a seamless transition from space to surface, as shown by this early trailer:



I for one can't wait to see the finished result.

Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard

Here's my latest bit of kit, the Logitech G15 gaming keyboard. No idea what it does, but it looks pretty mean on my desk. Once I've worked out what it can do, I'll post a review.

Sims 3: From Character Creation to WooHoo

I've now had The Sims 3 for a couple of days, and here are my first impressions.

Download from EA went without a hitch. I did not, as I expected, get an email from EA telling me that the game was available for download - I just kept checking the EA Download Manager on the day before release and, sure enough, there it was at about 9pm. It downloaded at a solid 2.3 megs a second, taking about 40 minutes (for 5.6 gigs, as I recall), so none of the server overload or crawling download speed issues that I have had previously with downloading games on release. Installation went just as well (although the game didn't recognise my graphics card, a GTS 250, despite this being listed in the readme), and I was playing well before release day arrived. I duly downloaded the free extra town, Riverview, with only a slight problem - some of the dialogues were located too low in my browser, making it difficult to click the appropriate button.

I initially started a game in the default town, Sunset Valley, but this was lost with the only technical issue I have had: the game crashed when saving, and I was unable to re-load. I haven't had the issue since, but I recommend saving under different names, rather than overwriting saves, to avoid losing a lot of your hard gaming.

For my new game I used Riverview. As usual, the first task is to create your sim. It is a long time since I played Sims 2, but it seems to me that there are a lot more options for character creation, meaning that you can end up with a sim looking reasonably like yourself (if you so wish), or looking like just about anything you want. What is new is the traits system. You get to choose five personality traits and, depending upon these, five choices for a 'lifetime wish'. I tried to choose traits that reflected my own personality, and was pleasantly surprised to find that one of the lifetime choices I was offered was to become a chess grandmaster - something I once aspired to in real life. Naturally, this was the wish I chose.


So on to gameplay. Well, the game plays pretty much as previous versions, and this is no bad thing. For any seasoned Sim-er, getting into the game is a breeze. You still have the usual mix of the mundane tasks (eating, cleaning, sleeping etc.) with the things you really want to do (career, wish fulfilment, romance etc.), and the interface hasn't changed a lot. What has changed is the graphics, which are a real improvement. Also, some of the micro-management seems to have gone or been reduced, which allows you more time to concentrate on the interesting things. One of the best improvements, though, is that the town is now a seamless whole, which really does add to the sense that you are part of the larger community.


As for my sim, his career is now progressing (he works in the medical profession, and has risen from 'organ donor' (really!) to paramedic), his chess career is starting to take off (despite mistakenly leaving a tournament to fulfill a sleep requirement, before the tournament had ended) and his love-life knows no bounds. He met Fatima when he went to the chess tournament and, despite finding out she was a 'snob' (hey, he still fancied her) made his move. He eventually persuaded her to give her previous boyfriend the elbow, and has just married her! Oh, and for all you saddos who wonder what 'WooHoo' (yep, sex) looks like on screen, you may be disappointed:


Keep tuned to find out what happens next to my sim...

GT5: Awesome graphics

This is the official E3 trailer of Gran Turismo 5. Or at least, that's what it claims to be. Personally, I think it's just some real racing film that Sony have put together to get us salivating for the game. After all, computer graphics just aren't that good. Are they?

Well, yes they are. Compare this screen shot from the video:


With the real thing:


See any difference? Nope, neither can I.

Looks like I might be forced to splash out for that PS3 after all...

The Future of Gaming?

This looks amazing:

Flight Simulator

I've finally gone back to my old love Flight Simulator recently. Probably got something to do with the fact that I've now got a PC that can actually run FSX at more than 2 frames a second.

Joy. For the first time I can really appreciate what FSX can do. To enhance my experience, I bought three enhancements: Traffic X, REX and my favourite aircraft, RealAir's SF260. I'll deal with each in turn.


First up, Traffic X. Wow. One of the problems with FSX, even on my rig (i7 2.67, 4 gigs of ram, Vista 64 bit, GeForce GTS 250), was the lack of AI traffic. No more. With Traffic X I get full traffic at all major airports, at the same AI traffic settings in FSX. But I also get a lot more: more varied AI traffic types and liveries, military aircraft and a Traffic Control Centre, to name but a few.

Next up REX, or Real Environment Xtreme, to give it its full name. This add-on includes, amongst other things, a weather engine, a flight planner and new sky, water and airport textures. For me, the jury is still out on this one, but I do certainly appreciate the new textures, which are a serious improvement on the default textures, and which do made a noticeable improvement to the sim.


Lastly, we have the SF260. This really needs no introduction, as it has long been one of the best add-on aircraft for flight simulator, and the FSX version is no different. If you appreciate excellent small aircraft, then buy the SF260.


To celebrate my new purchases I recently did a trans-USA flight in the SF260. I started at New York and went to San Francisco via (amongst others) Niagara Falls, Chicago, Denver, the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas. Great. My flight simulator experience has truly just gone up a notch.

I don't like to finish this post on a low, but I have to mention Micro$oft's apparent recent decision to discontinue the series. What the f**k were they thinking? Everyone hates Micro$oft, but Flight Sim was one of their few titles that was truly loved. Whether it made money for them I don't know, but it certainly gained them some much-needed goodwill. Now, they are hated by the flight sim community as well, especially as they don't appear to be prepared to release the code to others who are prepared to continue the franchise (remember, Micro$oft bought the series themselves, from Bruce Artwick's subLogic). Still, hopefully Aerosoft will take up the reins, as mentioned in this post.