The "What are you playing?" topic.

[frogbeastegg]

I've played the demo to this Rome building sim a week ago, the name of the game escapes me but visually it's pretty neat. The game reminds me of a simpler Caesar III. But unlike Caesar III, I can't get my city off the ground; I seem to be stuck in a vicious loop of failure. I need to feed my people so I need to build homes, but after the homes I need resources to build the farms, after that I need praefects to stop fires which plague my farms so I need to build a school then study the tech, once I study the tech I need a forum (mind you my farms are burnt to the ground, my people are starving and I have to wait around for them to gather resources in this condition) I get my forum then I build praefects, but now I need the middle class, I build middle class homes but with the lack of food no one moves in, then my other buildings burn down and I have to rebuild, finally my people just revolt and burn everything down. I've tried four times to build a city and all four times I meet the same fate.

Is it Grand Ages: Rome, by any chance? The demo for that came out fairly recently. If so then it is supposed to have a very different resource system to the standard city builder. I have the demo downloading as I type.

[Mailman653]

Is it Grand Ages: Rome, by any chance? The demo for that came out fairly recently. If so then it is supposed to have a very different resource system to the standard city builder. I have the demo downloading as I type.

Yup, that's the one. I'm trying to like the game, but if only I could get past that first map, I could try out the second one which is supposed to have some kind of battle in it I think.

[frogbeastegg]

Yup, that's the one. I'm trying to like the game, but if only I could get past that first map, I could try out the second one which is supposed to have some kind of battle in it I think.

I'm fortunate enough to have seen some developer posts detailing how the game works before I downloaded the demo. It's very simple when you know how. Each building has a maintenance cost in bricks, wood, stone or marble. You need to be producing enough of the required resources. That's it. No need for a prefect's office. If the building requires workers then it needs to be staffed, otherwise there is no one 'there' to fetch the resources and patch the building up. You don't even need to have a 'distrubuting' building nearby to hand out the maintenance goods; they are all classed as flow resources and thus are automatically available city-wide.

To check how many of each resource you are producing and how many units are require for city maintenance click on the materials button on the bottom of the screen. Put your mouse pointer over a resource and a pop up will tell you. If you aren't making enough to meet maintenance needs just slap down another producer building.

I find the game works best if you build slowly and steadily. Only build as many houses as you need to staff your buildings, and set the city up one stage at a time. On the demo map you're talking about I put down 1 woodcutter and 1 insula, then when they were done I put down a brickworks and another insula. Once they were done I placed a wheat farm and a pig farm, and the houses to support them. Once they were done I did a farmer's market near the houses, followed by a school. IIRC the housing required to support those buildings took me up to 9 insulae total. I researched the techs which helped me produce more basic goods, like wood and what. Once all of this was nicely settled I expanded a bit more, adding in a stone works, slave market (to provide workers for the stoneworks), water mill, bakery, a second woodcutter and a second brickworks, plus the housing to match. Once that was running smoothly I built my forum and an arena. By this point I had hammered the objectives, including the optional ones.

The second mission is indeed a basic military scenario.

It's a really good demo; I like it.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

I'm currently working on unlocking the new Scout stuff for Team Fortress 2. The new shotgun is awesome!

[Fragony]

Killzone 2, and you are all mere mortals.

[Monk]

Arthritis Guitar Hero: World tour. Picked it up yesterday, having never gotten in on this Guitar hero thing before now I can say with confidence i am a complete newb. Hard scares me, but I'm getting farely good at Medium.

Its a fun game. The only con I can think of is OW MY WRIST.

[CountArach]

Arthritis Guitar Hero: World tour. Picked it up yesterday, having never gotten in on this Guitar hero thing before now I can say with confidence i am a complete newb. Hard scares me, but I'm getting farely good at Medium.

Love that game. Play through on medium first then put it on hard and start the first few songs over again. It is like an entirely new game.

[Daimon]

GTA 4

Mostly multiplayer.

[Xiahou]

I picked up MadWorld for the Wii. Yet another, fresh, original, and just plain good M-rated title for the Wii.

It was made by Platinum Games, which is basically made up from the remnants of Clover. They may be under a new game, but they still know how to make a quality game. The primarily black & white (& red) comic book style looks simply amazing on the Wii- I don't know how they did it on that hardware.

The gameplay, of course, is very violent, but is also excellent. For most enemies you come across, the challenge isn't killing them- it's killing them with style. I've used old tires, trash cans, sign posts, metal spikes, spiked bats, and a chainsaw (just to name a few) and the interactivity of the environments continues to impress me. Your exploits are monitored by your very own "sports" commentators who are always cheesy, usually off-color and often hilarious.

[frogbeastegg]

I started Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars Director's Cut on my DS yesterday. 7 hours and one battery charge later it's done. Excellent remake of a classic point and click featuring a bit of new material. It works so well on the DS - the control set up is a perfect emulation of mouse control. I'm amazed at how quickly I completed it; it used to take me months to finish the likes of Monkey Island.

If this one sells enough then Ubisoft say they will remake Broken Sword 2 and some other point and click games. :crosses fingers: Please, please, please!

There's a wii version as well. Better graphics, speech, a proper musical score, some wii-specific new puzzles, and a very literal point and click control set up.