Civ IV and other miscellanea
In response to Harry’s brief post about Civ IV, we, along with seemingly the rest of the world, have been sucked in. We’ve played cooperatively with two computers and with the hot-seat option. Two computers is certainly the preferred method, first because it just makes the game go so much faster, and second because trying to find a position for Harry’s lap-top that doesn’t end in either rampant frustration or neck kinks is something of a trial. However, that said, given that my PC is currently deciding that it can only go about 10 min crash free, having the game come with a hot-seat option is lovely. This version of Civ comes with some tasty improvements over the last games, although I am hardly an authority. I never played the previous Civs very much because I would quickly find myself overwhelmed at having so much going on that I just would lose interest. It was one of those unpleasant experiences where in game play all of a sudden becomes a chore (one of my main frustrations with The Sims too, but I digress). So far, Civ 4 seems to have rather neatly solved much of what I previously found frustrating. The graphics are better too, and with games like this, I think that’s often important. The more I can see the tangible results of what I’m doing, the more emotionally and intellectually invested in the process I am. Kind of a “duh” statement, but worth noting.
Also, just FYI, Harry and I are still toying around with the overall format of this site, and it is likely that we will come up with some useful review and ranking system. So, think of these little posts as just sort of our daily thoughts. We’ll try to publish some actually fleshed out reviews (whatever that ends up meaning) of the games we’ve been tooling around with in the last year in the near future, along with our less formal running dialogue and links. Keep checking back, we promise it won’t look so ugly and chaotic once we can figure out just what the heck it is we’re doing here anyway.