Kinects – Microsofts new Xbox add on

Posted by Bob Weber on Jan 6th, 2011 in Games | 1 comment

After Christmas my sister and her family bought Kinects for their Xbox. In case you aren’t a gamer, here is a description

Microsoft’s Kinect is a controller-free, webcam-style gaming experience made for Xbox 360, where gamers have the ability to manipulate the actions of on-screen characters through a series of spoken commands and physical gestures. Sony’s Playstation Move is a motion-sensing game controller platform made for Playstation 3.

I remember hearing about this a while ago, when it was still in development, and thought they looked kind of lame, but after playing with it I was impressed. It’s a less than perfect system by far. I thought the lag made it difficult to play any fast paced games with and it didn’t seem to track the feet very well, but overall it was a fun add on for the Xbox 360. It’s actually amazing to me that it works at all.

Bike Hero

Posted by Bob Weber on Nov 24th, 2008 in Games, Humor | 4 comments

This is a way cool parody of Guitar Hero using a bicycle. The word is it was professionally created by an ad agency, but it’s still cool.

More Ikariam tips – combat

Posted by Bob Weber on May 3rd, 2008 in Games, Tech | 6 comments

I’ve learned a few more interesting things about Ikariam. Some of the most valuable are concerning attacking other cities, and being attacked.

1. When attacking another city don’t leave your own undefended. Sure, you would think this was common sense, but peace and leads to a false sense of security. I recently thought I would try my hand at attacking a neighboring city. I sent all of my ships to attack a harbor, and while they were gone guess what happened. That’s right, somebody else attacked me and got away with a bunch of loot. Easy for them since my harbor was undefended.
2. When attacked, move goods out of that city. The individual that attacked me the first time thought it was so lucrative, he launched another attack the next day. Fortunately I was watching the game and saw him coming, so I was able to make him pay. I quickly moved all of my valuable goods to a neighboring colony. He spent a lot of ships and troops to come away with a handful of gold, and no other loot. I’m sure the expedition was a costly one. Serves him right.
3. Be sure you have enough wine when under siege. The biggest cost to me on both attacks was a lack of wine. My wine ran out and my citizens got angry and started jumping ship. Kind of irritating. Of course I couldn’t resupply quickly enough, and that’s cost me a lot of gold, which leads to my final tip for this session.
4. Build big museums. Museums are nice because they allow you to keep your people happy with limited daily cost. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to maintain a large enough museum to keep a large city happy without wine, but it definitely softens the blow, and everyone is pretty happy to do a cultural exchange with you.

A couple interesting notes to make about the randomness of the game play. The combat reports of my recent hammering is no longer in my military section. I’m not sure why this is, if my opponent stopped playing the game. I don’t know if his attacks were so costly he was then overrun by someone else, or if there is some other reason why the history disappeared. This is unfortunate, I liked having that for reference. Another annoyance is the cost of maintaining an army altogether. The cost of maintaining, defending and attacking other players is astronomical. It’s difficult to come out of the deal and show a profit. You almost have to spy out the place before hand and then get lucky in order to generate a profit, and it’s really easy for your spies to get caught. Guess that’s a correlation with real life, intelligence gathering is difficult, and war can be extremely costly, but it would be nice if it was a little more economical to invade your neighbors.

Ikariam

Posted by Bob Weber on Mar 19th, 2008 in Games, Tech | 1 comment

Ikariam is an online game similar to Civ or AOE. It is completely free (at least so far) and completely browser based.

I’ve been playing for a couple weeks, and the really cool thing is it’s slow pace. I can check it a couple times a day, and it doesn’t take up a lot of my time.

After playing some, here are some tips I have for some of the more advanced/strategy items. If you have any tips, email me or post a comment, and I will include it.

• Barracks One common strategy for players is to attack other players that have a 0 in their Generals score. When you build a new town, build a barracks and create some slingers so you get a general score and don’t get attacked as easy pickings.
• Transport You can transport goods to another city, but when you do so your ship just goes and drops them off. You can’t load their ship with goods in return. Means that all commerce takes twice as long – kind of silly.
• Trading Often people put goods out for sale at ridiculously low prices. Not sure why this is, but I have made quite a few game coins by buying at low prices and reselling at higher prices.
• Size Worlds in Ikariam are SERIOUSLY huge. If you are going to play with friends try to join up near the same time. I had a friend join, and her island is a day and a half away by ship. Kind of irritating.
• War For whatever reason, it doesn’t seem like the worlds are very warlike. Outside of some raiding on new towns there doesn’t seem to be a lot of fighting. Not quite sure how the whole battle thing works, you can siege and occupy a town. Not sure if there is any way of actually ‘owning’ that town, or if occupying it is essentially the same thing. Guess I should go attack someone and find out how it works.

Again, if you have comments, please leave them. Any tips on gameplay would be appreciated.