I sort of hate a lot of game journalists these days. No, hates too strong a word, Im simply confused that they can get away with pumping out so much shite without losing their job or getting roundly lambasted by the general public. I suppose, as usual, its as much a condemnation of the general public as the direct target of my ire. Anyhow, following the annual summer lull were moving into the tidal wave of autumn game releases which drops away to a mere trickle in the first weeks of December. And I know that you my gentle reader may be too busy with this much ballyhooed “real life” to weed out the wheat from the chaffe. So here you go, the titles coming out in the next few months (or that have been recently released) that I would suggest buying/playing/pirating/taking a look at/worshipping like a god. Continue reading…
Tag: elemental
Let’s Play: Elemental War of Magic – Part 4 – The End (for now)
Hmm, well after reading this comment from Brad Wardell here my interest in continuing to play Elemental at the moment has dropped to more or less zero. If as Brad says theres going to be a major content patch out in less than a month which also addresses some of the more irritating issues with the current build of the game then it seems foolish not to put this lets play on hiatus until then. Hell, just fixing mana management issues alone would make the game so much better. I was looking at trying to mod it in myself but it seems the necessary values need to activated globally which cant be done by modders at the moment. At the moment the way magic works is all over the fucking place and mana regen is so slow thats its not a balancing mechanic. Its a fucking punishment. Oh well enough complaining. The game is clearly good enough to abosrb half of my week so Im really looking forward to playing a more balanced and expanded version of it in a month. So until then Im afraid the aventures of Mickgard’s motely monarchs is taking a break. Not that we ever actually got to any in game reports. Ah well such is life. Continue reading…
Let’s Play: Elemental War of Magic – Part 03(.75) – Smoked?
Well I installed patch 1.06 and updated my graphics drivers, windows updates and scented voodoo candles. I thought old Papa Legba had done the job until that pernicious memory leak once more brought my burgeoning empire to a close. Unfortunately that was about half five this morning. Needles to say, I was not at my best in work today. If half my blood was not currently replaced with caffeine I’d be unconscious. However one error in five or six hours of play was acceptable enough for my purposes so this evening when I got home from work and finished eating my (delicous) toasted prawn and sweek chilli sandwiches I loaded up Elemental. Whereupon I got a bit too carried away with my save game housekeeping and deleted all of them. (Luckily?) I was too tired to really work up much more than a shrug and so I began my fifth game. Continue reading…
Let’s Play: Elemental War of Magic – Part 03(.5) – The End?
Well I started over for a third time yesterday. Had to really after going to the bother of creating custom faction leaders and editing them into the factions via some (very simple) XML sauciness. Third time may be the charm in other things. Not so much in Elemental. While I wasnt doing particularly poorly the third run at it was extremely slow in comparison to the other two attempts, not much going on other than building up my forces in isolation. I suppose thats the chance you take with random maps. Still I pushed on and was around Turn 363 when the game decided to go tits up (yet again). It now consistently crashes every three to four turns, and frankly Im bored with re-starting and re-loading. I see that a new patch (and attendant hotfix) is out. So I think I’ll wait until I’ve installed that and then give it another go. Continue reading…
Let’s Play: Elemental War of Magic – Part 03
Well I was about an hour into the game when I thought that I’d take a break and write up post three. However while browsing the internet I discovered that a hotfix has been released for the 1.05 patch. So I’m going to install that and start again. Or maybe I’ll leave it till tomorrow just in case another patch comes out. Whether I start again or not the game’s turns are a lot more limited than I initially thought, so my initial estimate of ten turns for post is just too small. I think I’ll increase that to fifty for the moment and see how that goes. (Six or seven hours of play later) One other thing Ive noticed is that for sandbox games the game randomly assigns monarchs to each kingdom. Which is weird as theres now three versions of my sovereign ruling three different factions. Which didnt bother me last night but is now pissing me off for some reason. Hmm I could create custom rulers for each custom faction, abandon my current game (Turn 298) and start over for a third time. Hhhhmmmm, it is tempting in some ways, as now I have a much better idea of how the game works and I can try out some things I totally forgot about on my current playthrough (dynasties, sea trade, etc.). Oh well I’m going to be creating the custom sovereigns anyway, so I’ll make them and then see. Continue reading…
Let’s Play: Elemental War of Magic – Part 02
Well Windows Explorer seems to be behaving itself so I can finally get around to properly starting this Let’s Play. I received a tragically small amount of input and as such was forced to call upon my much wearied brain for inspiration. Unfortunately my brain seems to be screening my calls at the moment so my factions are based largely on the people I saw or interacted with today (online or off). At the moment there’s no option to create Empires in the Faction Builder due to a small bug. But I dont really understand the difference between Kingdoms and Empires so it doesnt really bother me. Continue reading…
Let’s Play: Elemental War of Magic – Part 01
Ok, after sleeping in and then spending the afternoon reading more Kyou kara Ore wa!! I’ve finally got my hands on and got around to installing the 1.05 patch. So with that done I’m all ready to start a New Game (I’m going to go with the “Sandbox” option as the campaign is, well, pretty fucking boring based on last nights play). Oh wait, after rebooting my machine Windows Explorer is crashing every three to four minutes. Bollocks. Well it’s ten to five at the moment, hopefully I can get this windows explorer bullshit sorted in the next hour or so and I’ll start playing at seven. Continue reading…
Let’s Play: Elemental War of Magic – Setup
I’m going to do a Let’s Play of Stardock’s new game – Elemental: War of Magic. Continue reading…