PC

Sid Meier’s Railroads!

March 5, 2007

PC / Reviews / by Tony DuLac Make a comment! / Tweet it!

One day, while I was still a tiny tyke, my dad told me to follow him downstairs to our dank and fairly dreary basement. Confused but curious, I did as asked. As I rounded the corner past our laundry room, there it was, in all its mini-mechanical glory – an absolutely HUGE model train set. The amount of track space alone was mesmerizing, and while I was too young to truly appreciate the amount of work that it must have taken for my father to craft such an amazing toy for his son, I wasn’t too young to be giddy with excitement at the prospect of driving (and crashing) my new model train.

Cue the present day and the inestimable Sid Meier, one of the world’s best game designers and his company Firaxis Games. Firaxis had already revisited such timeless gaming classics as Civilization and Pirates, and they decided to use a fresh brush on their venerable Railroad Tycoon franchise in the form of Sid Meier’s Railroads! for the PC. Results were mostly positive though a wee bit messy in a few places.

For those who have never played the original or ANY train tycoon type of game, the basics are this: you lay track, build stations, and transfer goods between needy cities to make extra scratch that you can then use for further upgrades and to lay more tracks. Along the way various random events can affect the in-game economy or provide side-missions for you, the aspiring railroad mogul, to complete for extra bonuses. Further depth is provided by routine auctions for newly created patents that can help your trains run faster or carry more or even lower the cost of bridge-building.

Both of the preceding Firaxis remakes sport eyeball-peeling graphics that really add some fresh life to those older titles, and Railroads is no exception. Trains chug out realistic puffy smoke, tiny people wander around each train station, clouds meander across the colorful landscape, and the trains themselves are appropriately shiny and well-detailed – plus you can paint them with any kind of color scheme and decals that you’d like. It’s those little graphical details, the kind that designers occasionally overlook, that are really appreciated in a game of this nature.

Sound design isn’t really noteworthy but it’s acceptable. The music is enjoyable and appropriate for each time period, and you’ll find yourself humming Railroads’ jaunty main theme long after you turn off the game.

Curiously, despite all these refinements, the game itself doesn’t feel as complex as it probably should. Once you get a grip on how the whole economic system works – one city needs something that another city has and you deliver it – there’s not a whole lot else going on. Though the built-in scenarios do their best to provide sub-missions like A

War Front: Turning Point

March 5, 2007

PC / Reviews / by Chris Massey Make a comment! / Tweet it!

If there’s anything to be said about War Front: Turning Point, it’s that imitation is the greatest form of flattery. The Command & Conquer series helped to pave the way for future strategy games in the early A

The Sims Life Stories

March 5, 2007

PC / Reviews / by Chris Massey Make a comment! / Tweet it!

Whether you like The Sims or not, there’s no denying the kind of effect it’s had on the gaming world. One of the best-selling series on the PC and in gaming as a whole, there seems to be no stopping The Sims war machine as it pumps out expansion-after-expansion for fans to gobble up. Trying to further capitalize on the series, EA has now introduced The Sims Stories, a collection of stand-alone games focused for play on laptop computers, with the first of the series being The Sims Life Stories. It’s nice that EA has begun to adapt the popular series to customers with laptops, and with controls that have been specialized for laptops, Life Stories is right at home with the portable crowd. Unfortunately, you might not be able to shake the feeling that the game feels like a watered down version of The Sims 2. Laptop owners may want to look into The Sims Life Stories, but regular PC owners will probably want to stick with The Sims 2.

There are two concepts at work in The Sims Life Stories. The first is like the title suggests: a focus on storytelling. There are two storylines that you can play through, along with the standard open-ended Sim-mode. The second concept is that the game is optimized to run on laptop PCs. The game controls are specialized to work around the setback of the touchpad mouse controls by controlling the camera with the WASD keys as well as setting hotkeys to work with Sim interactions. The game works in a closed window rather than taking up the whole screen, allowing you to run the program in the background while listening to music or chatting with Instant Messenger. It also automatically pauses when you close the laptop and starts right back where you left it when you open it, and it even contains a battery indicator in the options menu, making Life Stories very user friendly to laptop users.

The two storylines are the main points of interest in Life Stories. The first story follows Riley Harlow as she moves back into the neighborhood, while the second story, which you unlock after playing into the first, is about millionaire woman-less Vince Moore. Each have their own focuses, but they both eventually end up being about finding a life for the starring character. The storytelling is different from the mode seen in The Sims 2, where you essentially craft stories from your own imagination. Here, the story plays out as you complete actions that further the story, and things boil down to playing a chapter of the story each day. Though you can take your time and wait a few days to play the next chapter.

Each story lasts roughly three hours at the least. That is without taking breaks or getting distracted by outside forces. The storylines themselves are fairly involving if you’re into that kind of thing, but if you got into The Sims just to play around with the little guys (like, say, catching them on fire), then you probably won’t be as captivated by the stories. The people who might get the most out of these stories are the people who enjoyed making up their own little worlds in The Sims 2 with the storybook mode, although even then, those same people might find it more rewarding to make their own families and craft their own stories than play through the mostly predictable main storylines. I will say that Vince’s story ends fairly interestingly, though.

Life Stories also includes the standard Sim-mode that is near identical to the one seen in The Sims 2. The only difference is that the options are slightly more limited to keep requirements down. For instance, you only have access to a single neighborhood that seems a bit more compact than the ones from The Sims 2. Besides that, though, things are mostly identical. It would have been nice to have some exclusive items to Life Stories, but most of the Buy Mode items remain unchanged, excluding even any seen in the numerous expansion packs. There are some brand-new items that are unlocked through story mode, however, so that’s something.

The biggest draw of Life Stories is that it doesn’t need much to run it, making it great for laptops. No video card is required, and with the other laptop friendly features mentioned earlier, The Sims Stories line seems to aim itself at a somewhat new market. However, doing all this essentially leaves those with PCs out of things, as Life Stories doesn’t have much for PC gamers that The Sims 2 hasn’t already achieved. The A

The Lord of the Rings, The Battle for Middle-Earth II

February 27, 2007

PC / Reviews / by Mate Bors Make a comment! / Tweet it!

After the success of the original Battle for Middle Earth RTS game, it was obvious that EA would make a sequel. Many people anticipated that it would be the same thing as the previous game, something that has sadly been associated with the EA brand name. Thankfully, those people were wrong. BFME II is not only an excellent sequel but a greatly enjoyable RTS based on the Lord of the Rings franchise.

Though it is undeniable that the Lord of the Rings books and movies were some of the best pieces of literature and film making, it was getting tiresome to play as the Fellowship of the Ring. In BFME II, players get to play as the other heroes/villains who lived during the War of the Ring. The game centers around these people and hardly on the Fellowship. In fact, they are only featured in one level during the Evil campaign, where you must kill all of them. Some characters, like SmA

The Godfather

February 23, 2007

PC / Reviews / by Mate Bors Make a comment! / Tweet it!

The Godfather is probably one of the most popular movies ever made. It is currently #1 on IMDB’s Top 250 movies list, based on almost two hundred thousand votes. EA knew that it was going to be a very difficult job for them to make a (quality) game based on the Godfather franchise. How did they fare?

You join the Corleone family after your family is killed by an enemy gang. You start out as a nobody and can eventually earn (by earn I mean steal, murder, destroy) your way up to the Don of New York City. All of this, of course, takes quite some time, and if you want to do all the missions, then the game will take you a few dozen hours.

The game’s setup is like your normal GTA clone. You are some Joe Shmoe who will eventually end up in a very high position somewhere (in this case, the mafia). You take on missions from various characters from the movie to do hits on the enemies of the family, drive around, and take over illegal gambling places and businesses. Taking over businesses is quite fun. If the store owner is reluctant to pay protection money to the Corleone family, you can destroy their shops to make it obvious that when you want to take over a business, you mean it. The Godfather game is equally violent as the movie, so fans won’t be disappointed.

Classic tunes and voices return in the game version of The Godfather. The unforgettable theme song plays quite a lot, and most of the actors (even Marlon Brando before his death) provided their voices for this adaptation.

The graphics in The Godfather are a mixed bunch. The characters’ faces and animations are simply fantastic, and quite realistic. Most of the actors from the films lent not only their voices, but their looks to the game, making it a very authentic experience. However, it seems the good graphics stop there. Other animations, such as buildings, cars, or pedestrians look bland and the same. Kind of disappointing, but I guess it would have been silly to make the buildings neon pink and orange just because technology allows it nowadays. After all, it was the early 20th century, not the early 21st century, so in a way, it adds to the authenticity of the game.

The controls break the game for me, and this is why I will rate the PC version of this otherwise fun game so low. The controls are just plain weird on the PC. You need to go through which weapon you want to use on the numbers on your keyboard, and then press a button to draw it. If you want to focus on someone to help you aim, you need to press a different button. If you want to holster your weapon, you need to press another button. Hiding, covering, and crouching all require different buttons. It wouldn’t be so bad, but since some of the buttons are used in strange ways (A

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