Anyway, you know the drill by now:
The DayZ Update
Not a lot to report this week. 1.7.2 was originally scheduled for Monday, then Wednesday. Now it looks like today will be the day. In which case, I should have some time to check it out before my next post.
I do have to say that the bugs in the "ARMA II" engine are starting to take their toll on my enjoyment of the mod. Whether it's getting hung up on scenery when trying to turn around in tight spaces, or not being able to close doors behind me while being chased by zombies because the interface for doing that is too slow and clunky, or just having zombies warp around while I'm trying to shoot them if the connection to the server isn't pristine– there's just an awful lot of jank in "DayZ" that's easy to overlook when you first start playing because the overall experience is so unique, but that rears its head with a vengeance once the honeymoon ends.
I'm still very enthusiastic about "DayZ" and will definitely continue to play it and submit feedback to the development team to help improve it as time allows but I need to limit my time with it so I can play some more polished games as well– lest the issues with it drive me mad. :)
DayZ - http://www.dayzmod.com
Civilization V: Gods & Kings
Got a chance to play a few hours of this over the weekend with a buddy. As much as I liked "Civilization V" (Civ) and appreciated many of the changes Firaxis made to the Civ formula with it, I was definitely disappointed in certain aspects. The utter removal of religion being one of the biggest offenders.
As you might expect, the "Gods & Kings" expansion does a lot to remedy that but the jury is still out as to whether it goes far enough or not.
Things start off really well with the game allowing for the founding of pantheons in the early stages and full-blown, fully-customizable and upgradable religions in the mid-game. This gives you a staggering number and combination of perks that you can use to complement your play style, civilization's natural tendencies or resources to really open up the game in new and interesting ways.
Unfortunately, like many of the systems in Civ, religion seems to be front loaded to give you all the best and most interesting choices and opportunities for interaction early in the process, with the results of those early choices playing out automatically and without intervention later in the game.
Having not completed a game and having barely scratched the surface of the espionage system, the other big inclusion, I'm reserving judgement on the product as a whole, but if nothing else, it has caused me to go back and play more Civ and enjoy it more than I have in the past thus far, so in that regard it's already a winner.
Civilization V: Gods and Kings (via Steam)
Shout Out: Super Monday Night Combat
I've talked about this free-to-play, 3rd-person MOBA game before but I wanted to bring it up again because I've seen the community for it dwindling over the past few weeks and want to do my part to try to reverse that trend.
SMNC is a great game. It deserves to be way more successful than it is. If you only played the beta or only played at launch, you should give it another look. There have been a steady stream of patches and content updates that have addressed nearly every possible technical complaint with the game and it is without a doubt one of the best, most polished free-to-play games out there right now.
I completely understand why some people might not like SMNC due to personal preferences regarding its esthetics or some of the design decisions that are critical to its unique gameplay, so I'm not going to suggest that everyone should love it like I do, but it absolutely deserves a chance to win you over if only due to the sheer amount of effort and care its developers have clearly put into it.
Super Monday Night Combat (via Steam)
Development Update
Plugging away at the monster that is my "to do" list. With only a month to go of hardcore development time before I need to start dividing my time between the project and looking for new work, I find myself pondering some decisions that you folks might be able to help me with.
To begin, I will reveal a clue about the nature of the game. It is a turn-based strategy game for iOS. I mention this because I have a few dilemmas about it. As such, I'm going to ask some questions that I'd like any of you who might consider buying such a thing to comment on if you're so inclined.
How important are Universal Apps to you? Would you rather pay $1.99 for an app that runs on both the iPad and iPhone/iPod or $0.99 for an iPad-only or iPhone-only version? Of course, the easy answer is that you want to pay $0.99 or $0.00 for the universal app but to be blunt, I need to eat so that's not going to happen. :)
How important is a feature like Apple TV integration to you? Would you be more likely to purchase a game that gave you the option to use your device like a controller while displaying the primary game screens on a television via Apple TV?
How important is multiplayer to you in a turn-based strategy game? Local Play? Network Play? Play-By-Mail? Co-Op? what if any of these multiplayer modes do you look for most when making a purchasing decision?
Obviously, I have my own ideas about all of this, which I'll share next week, but I am genuinely interested to know what you think.
Powergrids (My current iOS game.)
That's it for now. Back to the grind and such. Have a good week folks! :)
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