Tea Leaves

No more Ubisoft games.

Earlier this year, I was treated to the tedious train wreck that was GRAW. Now we have the new Splinter Cell on the 360. The game does have the signature Splinter Cell stealth mechanics. Sneak sneak, grab, kill. Unfortunately, this core engine is wrapped up in shell made of crap.
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“You will not find it difficult to prove that battles, campaigns, and even wars have been won or lost primarily because of logistics.”
– Gen Dwight D. Eisenhower

I have been jonesing for a replacement for Warlords 2 for a long, long time. Ilwinter Design’s game Dominions 3: The Awakening comes tantalizingly close to being that replacement. Today, I want to take a look at the game — available for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux — and talk about its high and low points.
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I’m continuing to play Dwarf Fortress on a fairly regular basis, at least when I have time.

I’ve reached the underground lava river, set up a magma forge, and my latest wave of immigrants included a number of nobles — a broker, a manager, a sheriff, and a representative of the farming guild. They showed up and immediately began demanding luxuries (for starters, each wants their own personal dining room, sheesh). But they clearly make a difference: when the human caravan showed up to trade, having the broker really made things much easier. It’s not all wine and roses, though. There have been a few tragedies. The most recent was when my legendary miner was attacked by a lone fire imp. He burned to death, and died weeping.

The big problem with playing Dwarf Fortress, though, is that I have to reboot into Windows to do it.

So I am putting out a call for participation, on behalf of the developer: help port Dwarf Fortress to Mac OS X and Linux.
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A while back, I picked up MLB 06: The Show for the PS2 in part because the guys over at the Sports Gamer Blog and Bill Harris loved it and in part because I was bored and curious. Baseball, it seemed to me, was a hard game to convert over to the video format because of the need to potentially control so many players.
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I can’t even summon the energy to write about Neverwinter Nights 2. I suspect this means I won’t be able to summon the energy to actually play it, either.
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“Hey,” I said to Nat. “I got my Gamefly queue a little confused, and ended up with Lost Magic for the DS. You have that, right? Will I like it?”

“It’s interesting,” he said, “but the difficulty curve is a little high. Play it until it gets hard, and then send it back.”
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