sid meier

This Fortnight’s Releases (May 1-12, 2006)

  • Reading time:8 mins read

by [name redacted]

Weeks thirty-eight-and-nine of my ongoing, irreverent news column; originally posted at Next Generation

Game of Early May:

SiN Episodes: Emergence – Episode 1
Ritual/Valve
PC
Tuesday

It’s kind of weird; back in mid-1998, everyone was waiting for SiN – then the very day it arrived, Half-Life sprang out of nowhere, and took all the attention. That didn’t stop SiN from becoming a cult hit; it’s just hard to escape such a poor case of timing. Over the past eight years, the game has built up a reputation as perhaps the pinnacle of the old “Duke Nukem“-style FPS, before Half-Life changed everything. Traditional genre fans, who just like to charge forward and shoot stuff, have been waiting a long time for a sequel – and here it comes, via the Half-Life 2 engine, via Steam, and via the episodic template that Valve has set out.

This first episode brings back all the major characters from the 1998 original, to do much the same business as before: run forward and shoot. The difference is in the method; aside from the obvious enhancements in physics and envionmental interaction allowed by the Source engine (and the consequences thereof), the game now automatically adjusts itself to the player’s skill level and playing tendencies. If you get good at head shots, apparently, enemies might start wearing helmets. According to Ritual, the game will take experts about as long as new players to play through.

Emergence, being only one of at least nine planned episodes, will only last about six to eight hours; on the other hand, it only costs about eighteen bucks. Something tells me this episodic download thing is going to take off. It’s almost like a revised take on the early-’90s Shareware scene. The difference with shareware was that people got a whole episode for free, then typically had to pay full price for another several episodes. Now you pay pocket cash up-front for each episode. Same thing; just reorganized for efficiency on both ends. Tie in Steam, and you’ve even got the return of online distribution. It’s obvious, in retrospect.

Now if only we’d come up with this ten years ago – if we’d just adapted and kept up with the Internet – just imagine where the PC development scene would be today.

Firaxis Railroads Take Two

  • Reading time:3 mins read

by [name redacted]

Originally published by Next Generation under a title I no longer remember.

This Thursday evening in San Francisco, Fixaxis followed an uneventful awards presentation with a smaller, boozier, more informal get-together of its own. Across the Metreon catwalk from the Walk of Game ceremony, Firaxis laid claim to the cozy SoMa Room: a carpeted, dimly-lit bar-centric private club-cum-meeting area.

Following a time of kabobs and schmoozing, the projector flipped on, the movies began to roll, and the assembly of journalists and industry insiders was introduced to a trio of new Firaxis products (one down from the advertised four): the modern-day remake of Sid Meier’s Railroads; the CivIV expansion Warlords; and the major new curiosity of the evening, CivCity ROME.