All posts by Pike

The Android's Bunker (Strategy), The Android's Horn-Rimmed Glasses (Indie)

Atom Zombie Smasher: Losing Is Fun!

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This is a game I’ve had for a while but, for some reason, never actually got around to playing until yesterday: Atom Zombie Smasher. Don’t be fooled by the silly-sounding name or what appears at first glance to be a rather simplistic layout: this is a full-blown real-time strategy game, complete with troops, weapons, and evac helicopters to position and (eventually) tech to research. Unlike many strategy games, though, this particular game isn’t about deciding which of your many available units/buildings to build. Rather, it’s about the tactical execution. It’s about “Here’s your stuff and it’s all you’re gonna get for this mission. Good luck.”

There's a giant artillery cannon in the game so this image is officially relevant.

The game’s premise is simple: There’s a zombie outbreak going on and it’s your job to evacuate as many civilians to safety as possible. Get any ideas of grandeur out of your head right now: there are going to be casualties and collateral damage. A lot of it. In any given scenario if you manage to rescue about a quarter of a town’s population you’re doing quite well.

This is the map where you’re going to be spending most of your time:

Click to enlarge!

The glowing golden dots are your civilians and the purple ones are the zeds. If a zombie touches a civilian, the civilian turns into a zombie. In other words, if one purple dot touches a clump of golden dots, you can say goodbye to that particular clump. The above screenshot was taken about ten seconds after the start of the mission so the zombies haven’t had much of a chance to do anything yet, but believe me– they will.

The meat of the game is juggling the weapons, troops, and other assorted help that you’re given at the start of the mission. You’ve got various types of explosives (artillery, dynamite, landmines, etc.), you’ve got infantry troops and rooftop snipers, you’ve got barricades and zed bait, and most importantly you’ve got your evac helicopter. Watch out, though: not everything is available for every mission, so you go into each one feeling rather crunched for supplies. But that’s part of the beauty and fun of the whole thing.

One of my favorite parts of the game is that it takes “real-time” to its fullest extent. Your helicopter doesn’t just land the second it tells you to. It takes a while to do so, and then it takes its sweet time loading up survivors, and then it has to fly away offscreen somewhere and unload them before it returns. Likewise, your artillery cannon not only has a giant cooldown, but it doesn’t actually fire until several seconds after you tell it to, so you can’t just fire where the zombies are– you have to think and then fire where the zombies will be. Oh, and buildings (and your own weapons/troops) aren’t invincible to your explosives, by the way. Once I piled a bunch of dynamite around my artillery without thinking and before I knew it, my artillery was out of commission. Hmm.

The game also has an experience system so you can upgrade your stuff, and eventually you’re able to research your own upgrades on top of that.

Another thing the game does really well is give you a sense of things spiraling out of control as the zombies multiply exponentially. What begins as one or two available missions on your map turns into this after about four or five successful ones:

Take a guess what the higher numbers mean.

Oh, and did I mention that you’re racing the zombies to a high score and that every single one of those numbers contributes to the zombies’ score? Yeah. Every time you feel good about a successful evacuation mission, you’re taken to the map screen and three or four more infected areas show up and previously infected areas become… well, even more infected.

Losing is fun? Losing is fun.

In short, this is a surprisingly unique and addicting little strategy game that you will easily lose a few hours to. It’s $10 on Steam or $15 elsewhere, which might be a bit high depending on how often you play this sort of game, but I’ve seen it packed in with those pay-what-you-want Humble Bundles a couple of times so it’s well worth the couple of bucks if you ever see it there or otherwise on sale.

Come on, you really can’t go wrong with a game that involves blowing zombies up with dynamite. Right? Right.

The Android's Bunker (Strategy)

An Army to Crush People With

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According to my mom, who went crazy with genealogy research one year a while back, I’m a direct descendant of both William the Conqueror and Charlemagne. I like to jokingly tell people that this makes me naturally good at strategy games because it means conquering people is in my blood.

If that is actually the case, though, ol’ Willy and Charlie both would be disappointed in me. My usual strategy in something like, say, Civ, is to sit around and tech and then win by space victory. I’m usually not the aggressor unless someone gives me a really good reason to be.

So yesterday I was rather surprised by the sudden urge I felt the urge to play a Civ game specifically to go around and destroy everyone. I did so, and it was glorious. Why build more cities when you can just plunder some for yourself? Why worry about diplomacy when you have a military that could take on three or four other civs at once? Why worry about tech when you’re going to be ahead in tech by the end of the game anyway due to, well, conquering everyone?

The rules of the game.

Anyways, going against my usual grain was a lot of fun and by the end I even found myself juggling things I didn’t think I’d have to, like culture– when you take a lot of cities from other people, culture becomes a big deal in order to avoid losing your new prizes.

I did inevitably end up winning with a Space Race Victory, despite taking about half of everyone’s cities for my own. I just can’t resist the lure of flying to Alpha Centauri. Mister Adequate has issued me a challenge, though: Next time, I have to turn off all victories except for Conquest. Bring it on.

The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical), The Android's Universe in a Jar (Sim)

A Little Story For You All

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The other day Mister Adequate and I were on Sporcle doing quizzes together, which is a fun little pastime that we do on occasion. We had discovered the mother lode of strategy game related quizzes and were having a blast doing things like trying to name all the Civilization IV techs in 14 minutes and whatnot, and then we discovered one particular quiz that was called “Name Every Sim Game” or something.

So we took the quiz. We knew full well that we weren’t going to remember every single Sim game, but we wanted to see how well we would fare anyways, because we both have a huge soft spot for the Sim series. We did pretty well; we probably got about 75% or so, and then at the very end we eagerly went through to see which ones we had missed. It was standard stuff that we should’ve gotten; SimRefinery, Streets of SimCity, Sid Meier’s SimGolf…

…

…

Wait, what?

Sid Meier’s SimGolf.

Sid Meier’s SimGolf.

It’s actually a thing. That neither of us knew existed. Quickly we scoped out the Wikipedia article:

Sid Meier’s Sim Golf is a computer game created by Sid Meier, Firaxis, and Maxis in 2002.

Okay, so, let’s get this straight. Firaxis and Maxis got together. And made a game.

Firaxis and Maxis made a game together.

But instead of taking all the strategic turn-based depth of Civilization and combining it with the sandboxy micromanagement of SimCity to make the ultimate civilization simulator… they made a golf game.

Have a picture of our exact reaction.

And then we were confused for the rest of the day.

The end.

The Android's Bunker (Strategy)

The Civ V Challenge

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As I’m sure you’re all probably aware, I play a lot of Civ IV. A lot of it. Steam tells me I’ve dumped 366 hours into it in the last six months alone, and I have no regrets about this fact.

Civ V is something I have played considerably less of. In fact, I’ve never actually finished a game. Either my (dated) computer decides that it doesn’t want to handle the game and it crashes, or something in the gameplay annoys me and I quit. So, while I’m technically able to tell people that I prefer IV over V, I feel a little bad anytime I do. Like I didn’t give V a fair shake. Like I have no right to really decide for myself which game is better because I haven’t tried it enough.

So leave it to Mister Adequate to issue me a challenge. Mister Adequate has played a lot more Civ V than I have. He has since decided that he likes IV better, but at least he is able to back this up with his own personal experiences. And, as he knows my desire to be able to come to a similar conclusion, he gave me a challenge, which is as follows:

Play three full games of Civ V from start to finish. Not quit if I run into a game mechanic that I don’t like. Keep trying if my computer starts acting up.

Three full games of Civilization V.

My initial reaction.

Now anyone who knows me knows me even moderately well knows that a.) I don’t back down from a challenge, and b.) If you say “I bet that you can’t [insert thing here], I will do everything in my power to prove you wrong. So obviously Mister Adequate said this knowing full well that I was going to have to take him up on this. And so, you had better believe that I am going to play three complete games of Civ V. I’m going to blog my experiences and conclusions as I go, as well. This may not all be in a timely fashion, since for those who aren’t aware, I’m actually going to be moving a solid six hundred miles east this weekend, so I’ll be busy doing that. But inbetween packing and sorting and being-busy-in-general, I hope to bring you all screenshots and impressions of The Civ Game I Never Gave a Fair Shake To.

Let’s do this.

The Android's Favorites, The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical)

Favorite Video Game Quotes

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None of our readers will be remotely surprised to find out that most of my favorite quotes come from SMAC. I mean, really, were we expecting anything different? No. No we weren’t.

This is my all-time favorite quote:

I haven’t a clue why I love it so much. It tickles me in just the right way, though. I quote it on a near-daily basis (just ask Mister Adequate for confirmation on this.)

On a more serious note, have another quote from that game. I dare you to read it and not get chills:

I sit in my cubicle, here on the motherworld.
When I die, they will put my body in a box and
dispose of it in the cold ground.
And in all the million ages to come, I will never
breathe or laugh or twitch again.
So won’t you run and play with me here among the
teeming mass of humanity?
The universe has spared us this moment.

Anonymous

Beautiful, no?

Now it’s a little unfair to every other game to have have a blog post called “Favorite Video Game Quotes” and then spend the entire time lovingly quoting SMAC, much in the same way that it would be unfair to blog about the “Hottest Places in the Solar System” and then focus on the sun. So let’s talk about some other games.

For starters, Blizzard games have given us a multitude of memorable quotes, between “Stay a while and listen”, all the unit quotes from Starcraft/Warcraft, and, of course, so much stuff from WoW that I wouldn’t even know where to begin.

More recently, Deus Ex: Human Revolution has given us “I never asked for this”, another quote that I find hilarious for some reason.

This leads us to our obligatory pony image.

Video game writers have truly given us some great stuff, whether humorous or thought-provoking. What are some of your favorites?

The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical)

Ponies, Pop Culture, and Games

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There is no cow level.

There is, however, a pony level in Diablo 3, if the datamining is correct.

The blog's official response.

Now our initial idea with this post was to semi-jokingly rescind any previous doubts we’ve expressed regarding this game, and leave it at that, but I actually think I can turn this into a more in-depth blog post, so here we go:

I’ve heard some people express dismay at developers who throw too many knowing pop culture references into otherwise immersive games. Blizzard is a good example here; most of us played Cataclysm when it first came out, even if you quit directly after reaching level 85 the way Mister Adequate and I did.

Mister Adequate actually rerolled entirely and leveled to 85 from scratch rather than playing his existing level 80 draenei, presumably because he breaks out in hives when he is not playing a tauren warrior. Picture is related.

Cataclysm, as I’m sure you’re all aware, is chock-full of references, jabs, and full-on homages to pop culture. Uldum is pretty much entirely dedicated to it, between the Indiana Jones storyline, the Katamari Damacy quest, the Hackers references, and anything else I’ve forgotten. Actually, I’m pretty certain that there were more playful pokes at culture than there weren’t.

There were a lot of people who weren’t exactly fond of this, feeling that an MMORPG should be more immersive and that what WoW was doing here was purposefully pulling players out of the world that they had so carefully crafted. Others thought it was all in good fun and point out that, come on, Blizzard has pretty much always had their tongue firmly in cheek.

This isn't Warcraft in Space!

I tend to sit somewhere in the middle; I like my games full of rich lore but it doesn’t always have to be super-serious business. It might say something about me that Uldum was my favorite zone in Cataclysm by far. And ultimately, for me, it comes down to the gameplay. Civilization isn’t exactly the world’s most accurate history simulator– in the game Mister Adequate and I are currently playing, my civ just discovered an ancient manuscript containing the secrets of nuclear fission– but it’s sure as heck fun.

What do you guys think?

The Android's Hardware (Tech)

Gaming on Linux

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Back when I was a WoW blogger, I made no secret of the fact that I played WoW on Linux. In fact, my main was level 70– the then-level cap– before she even saw daylight on a Windows system.

Since then, I’ve managed to wheedle a select few other games into working on Linux (Kubuntu 10.04 is my current distro, before you ask) as well. It’s not always the easiest thing in the world, since getting games to work on Linux often feels like trying to push two similarly charged magnets together– they just seem to repel each other– but sometimes you can pull it off.

Which makes Pinkie happy.

Here’s my advice if you want to try:

1.) If you play a lot of PC games, have a working Windows install somewhere, either on another computer or on another partition. This is because, let’s face it, you’re not going to get every game working on Linux. Heck, you’re doing really good if you get over half of them working on Linux. I’ve got a Windows partition on my computer which I’ll switch to when I want to play certain games.

2.) Check the Wine AppDB. Wine is the name of the program you’ll probably be using to run your games with– there are other programs, as well, but they aren’t as widely used and I don’t know as much about them. The AppDB is an extensive catalog of what applications (mostly games) will run in Wine, sorted into groups based on how well they run. Note that the database isn’t definitive, as every individual computer setup will get you different results, but it will give you a good rough overview at how tough of a fight you’re up against. Use the search box at the top to find your program out of some 17,000 they’ve got cataloged in there.

3.) Install Wine. Pretty readily available on most distros these days; use Google to find the instructions for your specific distro. On Ubuntu it’s just a “sudo aptitude install wine” away. (Last I checked it was, anyway.)

4.) Install your program! How you accomplish this varies from program to program. If you have an .exe file available you should just be able to run it through Wine and it’ll install. You can find more application-specific or detailed instructions on Google.

5.) Run your program and see if it works!

6.) Mess with winecfg if it doesn’t work or if you have other issues. You can get to it by simply typing “winecfg” into a terminal. Mess with your settings. Audio settings are often going to make or break you so try different options there. Occasionally you’ll have Library overrides that you’ll have to tweak; the Wine AppDB comments will help you here.

…aaand that’s pretty much it. If you’re having trouble running your game, Google will often be your bible here, particularly for more popular games.

And now a small list of things that I’ve personally gotten to work in Wine on my Linux install:

  • World of Warcraft – runs flawlessly most of the time once you’ve got your settings and config file properly configured
  • Starcraft 2 – albeit with some sound issues
  • Civilization 4 – runs flawlessly after messing with some libraries in winecfg
  • SimCity 4 – Works fine; there are a couple of very minor graphical bugs
  • Most anything I’ve tried released by Valve, including: Portal, Half-Life 2, and the Steam program itself– all work with minimal problems
  • Age of Empires 2 – worked with few problems
  • Warcraft 3 – worked last time I tried, although it was a few years ago and I think there were some sound problems

And now a couple of other games that I don’t need Wine for!

  • X-Com: UFO Defense – runs flawlessly with DOSbox.
  • Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri/Alien Crossfire – If you can get a hold of the old Linux-native version it will run perfectly on modern Linux distros with a bit of dedicated tweaking.  I describe how I did it here.
  • Minecraft – Runs in java right from your desktop.
  • A whole bunch of indie games because making your games work on Linux is the “in” thing to do right now

So!  As you can see, I’ve got a pretty good library available to me while on Linux.  Granted, those aren’t the only games I play, so I’ve still got to switch over to Windows on occasion (Paradox I’m looking at you nice and hard now), but I think people are often surprised by what you can get on Linux.

In conclusion! Obviously this is all a bit more complicated than I make it sound in this very, very basic guide. If you want to try running games in Linux, you’ve got to be willing to spend some time on Google or various forums and you’ve also got to be willing to accept that it might not always work. You should also keep in mind that results vary from system to system. But Wine is getting better every day, Linux is getting more and more stable every day (the Ubuntu of today is hardly recognizable from the Ubuntu of years past when I first started), and I know that this subject continues to be one that people are interested in so I figured I’d toss up a quick post on it.

Questions? Comments? You know where to leave ’em!

The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical)

Thoughts on “The Gaming Community”

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Games are ubiquitous. I don’t know if they’ve quite eclipsed movies and TV as the world’s entertainment medium of choice but they’re certainly close. Pretty much everyone plays games, to a greater or lesser extent.

Which is why I think it’s slightly unusual that a.) people tend to refer to “the gaming community” as a whole, and b.) tend to position it as something weird/edgy/underground/geeky/pick your adjective.

Now don’t get me wrong– gaming communities exist. Obviously. These, however, tend to be focused on a game or series, a genre, or a company. Or they’re centered around some other sort of common ground: a blogosphere, an idea, or what-have-you.

These communities have one base thing in common– a passion for games– but after that, you’re dealing with a very wide range of individual people with differences in opinion, taste, and so forth. And I think that sometimes, everyone forgets this. Players forget this. Companies forget this. The “non-gaming world” (as it exists) forgets this.

Just as one can’t make sweeping generalizations about any group of people, one cannot make sweeping generalizations about “gamers”. For example, not all gamers like DLC and microtransactions– but not all gamers hate those, either. Some like them a great deal. Some have complex opinions on them.

Likewise, not all gamers play Call of Duty or WoW or TF2, but some do. Not all gamers dress up and go to cons, but some do. Not all gamers think Portal jokes are still funny, but some do.

And now the obligatory pony image.

When you have a group of people that is this diverse in tastes and interests, you’re going to have a lot of differences in both opinion and background. And that’s a beautiful thing. Unfortunately, stereotypes exist, and so depending on who you ask, “gamers” all do this or “gamers” all want that. Even we, as game players, are guilty of making these generalizations sometimes. It’s okay, it’s a part of human nature. But I think the world as a whole would do well to try to remember that it’s a bit more complicated than that.

…anyways, not sure where I was going with that. I just thought it might be an interesting subject to toss around. I will tell you one thing that all these different communities have in common, though: friendships (and more) are forged in them. Heck, Mister Adequate and I met on a video game forum seven years ago, which explains how a couple of kids on opposite sides of the pond got together in the first place.

And that’s pretty fantastic.

The Android's Bunker (Strategy)

My Weird Relationship With Starcraft

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Starcraft 2 is a popular game, to make an understatement. I can go to pretty much any video game blog/forum/message board/whatever and people will be talking about it.

I think a lot of this is due to the huge meta-game that surrounds it. The tournaments, the websites, the streams, the wikis, and of course, all of that terminology.

I… don’t follow any of it. I’ve nothing against it, at all– it’s just not something I do.

It’s sort of weird, though. I’ve been playing Starcraft, oftentimes religiously, for over ten years. And yet, I don’t have a clue what people are talking about 75% the time when I wander into the middle of most SC2 discussions these days.

My exact reaction when I wander into an SC2 discussion.

So I tend to stay out of the discussions, and when I do occasionally play SC or SC2, I play the way I always have played Starcraft, or most RTS games, for that matter. Scout around. Expand. Build up a defense. Build up an offense. Troll the other guy a bit. Attack. Profit! That’s my strategy. It seems to work out okay. I don’t often play online, but when I do, I can hold my own.

So when I see people dissecting every move the Korean pros make and then getting nervous about trying to do it themselves, I shrug and go back to making a boatload of dragoons (or whatever they’re called these days, I know they renamed them), dark templars and observers. You’d be surprised how well that works. Sure, it’s not gonna beat any Koreans, but I’m not trying to.

So yeah. I’m Pike, and I’m a strategy game fan and a Starcraft fan, and I have no IDEA what any of you hardcore SC2 guys are talking about. We’re still friends, right?

The Android's POG Collection (Retro)

I want an arcade. In my house.

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It’s every kid’s dream, isn’t it? Get a whole bunch of arcade machines, set them on freeplay, and put them in a dedicated room in your house? You know, alongside the vending machine that dispenses limitless candy and pop? You know you’ve had this fantasy.

I love arcade machines. I love how the way they look and how there’s art all over them. I love that they build a big fancy cabinet specific not just to playing games but to playing ONE GAME. These days it’s all the rage to make game consoles that double as Blu-ray players or internet browsers or whatever, but back in the day you had machines that played ONE GAME and there’s something great about that.

When I go to work, I pass a Chuck-E-Cheese’s that has these huge windows and you can see what’s inside. They have a ton of arcade games in there. None of the kids ever play them because they’re too busy climbing all over the slide/ball pit contraption they’ve got set up in there. Good for them, because ball pits are pretty great, but I feel kind of bad for the games. I’d give all the arcades a good home.

I know some people have actually made this dream come true and have a bunch of arcade games in their basement or whatever. I’m jealous. Have any of you guys actually done this?