Royce's Random Thoughts

Author and game designer Aaron Allston collapsed and died of a massive heart attack, February 27th

While most of Allson's recent fame was in his series of Star Wars novels, I knew him best as one of the most prolific contributors to SJG's Car Wars automobile combat board game. Back in the 80's he was Steve Jackson Games to me, more so than Evil Stevie.

His loss takes away another fond creator of worlds from my childhood, along with John M. Ford several years ago.

The game assembly process for Steve Jackson Games' massive Ogre Designers Edition project. There was a lot more hand labor in the process than I'd originally imagined. It's especially fascinating for me because if we hadn't adopted Georgia, she might have eventually ended up working in a similar place.

Who would have thought thirty years ago, when I was fourteen and playing Tank! on my family’s Atari 2600, that today I’d be playing a game about gangsters and carjackings that starts with a man complaining to his shrink about his mid-life crisis?

Yes, I bought the game yesterday. Which was completely silly, considering I’m only going to be able to play it for an hour or two each evening after the kids have gone to bed, but it was worth it I think. I’ll try to post every day or so to give my impressions on the game and the missions. Nothing organized here, just a running commentary of my impressions.

( Yo, spoilers Homie )

The Good: Gran Turismo 6 is going to be released this year, for the Playstation 3, giving the console one last hurrah before the PS4 takes over the market.

The Bad: They're releasing December 31st. Does it make any sense at all to release a highly anticipated driving sim six days after Christmas?

One fun (for certain values of fun) aspect of having a learning disabled child is their ability to lock on a subject like a pit bull on a man's wrist and never let it go. Take for example my son's interest in the classic ST:TNG pinball machine, fueled by an original table that my sister owns for the rec room down in her family's basement. He absolutely loves that thing, and when we make our annual visit around the holidays, he'd happily play it for hours rather than do something boring like open presents.

So recently a DLC video game called "Pinball Madness" became available, which translates classic tables into a hyper-accurate video game format. Including the ST:TNG table as an add-on. Which we recently bought for our PS3, since Thomas had been watching YouTube videos about the ST:TNG game and was obsessing about it again. Needless to say he's been overjoyed.

And I just realized that I have a pinball obsessed, autistic child named "Tommy." Facepalm

"Some nut calling himself Commander Straker has been all over the news talking about 'SHADO agents'."
-The X-Com development team shows they know their roots.



Summary: In this remake of the classic 90's era turn-based tactical game, only the multi-national forces of X-Com are able to match the threat and try to thwart the evil schemes of a group of mysterious aliens bent on spreading terror across the globe.

Review: When it was announced last year that the venerable X-Com (originally released as UFO: Enemy Unknownin the UK) franchise would be revived by 2K Games and Irrational Games, fans rejoiced. They were considerably less joyful when it was revealed that the original near-future setting would be dumped for a retro-50's and 60's era setting, and worse, be made as a 1st person shooter.

In response, Fireaxis was called in to create a turn-based, 3/4 perspective tactical game, similar to the original franchise. This had every chance to be a cheap throw-together to settle the unpleaseable fanbase, but it turned out to be far better than anyone could expect, and is well on its way to earning several Game of the Year awards.

Essentially, everything that made the game fun originally, from building up your base, to shooting down UFO's, to making tight tactical decisions to keep your team alive while under fire, has been kept and streamlined down to their essentials, while dumping all the cruft.

Instead of building several bases around the globe, you get one, with the option to watch over other continents with satellite and interceptor coverage. Instead of a team of twelve or more individuals, you max out at six, but they're a damned well-equipped six, and slightly less vulnerable to the infuriating one-shot, one-kill madness of the original. You still have to build up your tech tree to match the UFO threat, but you don't have to worry quite as much about gathering salvage to equip your units. In particular, once you research a weapon you can build it immediately, and in combat your ammo is essentially unlimited (though you do have to reload periodically).

The complex AP system of the original tactical combat has also been simplified to a move/move, move/shoot system, with additional tactical options opening up as your soldiers gain experience. The most important change however, is the new emphasis on finding cover. A soldier out in the open, as in real life, is pretty much dead meat. Under cover though, he's got a chance to survive even if he isn't wearing the beset armor. Fortunately, the wide variety of maps in the game offer a lot of cover.

Down points in the game are few. Despite the world wide setting, urban areas are very Western looking (at least they had euro license plates in the Hamburg tutorial). Likewise, the voice actors sound universally American in the tactical segments, though a scientist with zee bad German aczent is around for the cut scenes at base. But if you can live with that, you've got a damned fine tactical combat game to play, the likes of which are rare to find these days.

Highly recommended.

24 inches by 21 inches, by nine inches deep and weighing twenty-five pounds! Please bear in mind that the original version of the game, Ogre, GEV and all supplements, was something I could fit in my lunchbox.

Yeah. even at $150 I'm getting my money's worth.

Because the thing also comes with a shoulder bag to carry it in...

Now if I only went to conventions so I'd have an excuse to buy it.

[Poll #1856723]

Summary: After the Great King of the Cosmos gets clonked on the head while destroyed a black star headed on a collision course with the Earth, he falls into a comfy nap deep coma. With his dad out of the picture, the diminutive Prince of the Cosmos and his numerous cousins build a Robo-King to rule things in his father's absence.

This works about as well as can be expected.

In the wake of the universe being destroyed again, the beleaguered Prince must once more roll up Earth's random scattered crap in order to rebuild the cosmos under the orders of the Robo-King and also rattle around his dad's head to restore his memories.


Review: While sharing the same nonsensical humor of the previous Playstation releases, Katamari Damacy and Katamari Forever, this game unfortunately also shares the same levels. Basically, aside from a couple of the final stages and one seriously irritating new level that's on par with the firewood gathering stage and the infamous "cow level" from the original game, every single stage is just a re-skinning of the original levels with new graphics filters. Even that doesn't count as an enhancement, since the King's Memories stages all start in black and white, making it harder to see what you're doing as you roll around and restore the colors with each object you roll up.

Unfortunately, this is the only version of Katamari available for the PS3, so if you want to play it's your only option. Just be prepared for a lot of nostalgia, whether you want it or not.