CV

Late post due to Civ5 being released. Currently, I'm enjoying it a lot more than civ4. Things seem to be a bit slower and less hectic. It may be a property of the difficulty I'm playing on, but I seem to be doing pretty well. I'm on Warlord difficulty, which is one less than Prince, the normal difficulty. Whenever I played civ4 on warlord though, I had problems. So we shall see what happens after this game and I start one on Prince.

I'm playing as the Japanese, who have an amazing ability which allows their units to fight like they are at full strength, even if they are wounded. I've taken advantage of that in order to remove the Americans and the Ottomans. They were in my way. More so the Americans than the Ottomans, but they were weak and there was no reason to give them a chance to make my job harder.

After getting rid of them though, and a couple other civs removing the Indians and the Romans, I may be the weakest now. I'm not sure. I'm going to use the time I have to tech up and get a good army composition. I don't plan on attacking the Germans or the Native Americans, nor the Chinese, but just in case.

I've been watching a lot of starcraft videos casted by H-to-the-usky Husky and one he did last night mentioned how important macro is. In SC, macro is mostly all the things you need to do with your base. Proper mining, expansion, unit and building creation. One thing is that you need to use your minerals. You don't win starcraft by having the most money at the end. You win by being alive. If you didn't spend as much as you could, then you wasted a lot, not only in what you didn't spend, but also whatever you spent on any workers who did nothing but mine.

I need to bring the mentality into my civ5 game. One change made between 4 and 5 is that when you get a resource, like iron or horses, you only get a set number of them. So if you have one mine that gives you 2 iron, you can only have two units that require iron at one time. There was no such limitation in civ4. Back to the point though. I can see how many unused iron and horses I have. They aren't being used and won't help me in the end if they just sit there. I have them and I should use them. If I run out, I can destroy a unit. I'm not sure how much longer I will be needing horseback units, but if I don't make anything, then those pastures were just wasted worker time.... not that I don't have 5 workers sitting around doing nothing every turn because I don't know what to do with them. Hey look at that! Another SC lesson I need to bring to my civ5 game.

Off The Wagon

I started playing guild wars again. A coworker wanted to give it another try, so I decided to play along with him. Made a new character, an elementalist. She's okay. I've done all the things in prophecies so many times that I usually want to go play my mesmer, so I've been doing that fairly often as well.

I was vanquishing an area earlier today and discovered that its still really exciting when a gold item drops for you. It's just so cool. Now I just need to duplicate the feeling of getting a green drop. There's a staff I sort of want. I have one that shares some attributes, but why not try for the other one?

I was planning on making this post called "Cody-pendent" and have it chock full of links to all the best information on Cody (my new street fighter semi-main). But that would have been boring.

Schfourteen-teen

I've been playing the Final Fantasy 14 Open Beta somewhat. I won't be paying for a subscription for this game. For how big of a name it is, it seems really unpolished. Twenty days for an open beta is not enough time for a game in this state. Getting client updates is a challenge in patience. They like to stick at 94.6%.

There is no direction on what you're supposed to do. When I started the game, at my first fight there was a message printed (eventually) to the screen indicating that I should go into battle mode. That's it. It didn't say how. It's 'F', by the way (though using a skill does it as well). After that, I get to the city and start doing the quest I'm on. Standard quest fare, except for the bit where you are supposed to talk to these children and perform an emote. What emote you say? Ask the internet. Somehow, when a child tells you that you are supposed to greet your dance partner to show respect and joy, the correct response is not the "Joy" emote, nor is it "Bow", nor "Greet". It's "Surprise". Of course. That's logical. If you didn't look it up, the only way to finish that portion of the quest is to perform every emote you have for six different NPCs.

Eventually you finish that quest and you can get a few simple ones and then...? Grind. I guess. That's fun. There is also the option to pick up a trade, or be a miner or something. I haven't tried a crafting profession yet, but I've tried mining. It's weird. You find an ore deposit and then a vertical slider shows up, asking you where you want to aim on the rock face. There's nothing that tells you what this means or how it affects things. I've put it in different places and haven't found any difference. Either way, then you swing at the rock and either hit harder or softer, depending on the messages you get. It's not bad, I just wish I knew what the slider did.

More complaints: poison. It's way too powerful. There doesn't appear to be any antidotes, so if you don't kill your enemy when you still have two hundred or so life and don't put your weapon away instantly after your battle is over, you will probably die.

The client crashes every so often and there are some words in dialog that haven't been translated to English.

The only part of all of this that I don't like is that my super-cute half-cat girl, Perin, will be gone forever. I need me some guild wars 2 and some mesmer love.

Bayonetta

I hate it. The difficulty is inconsistent, the lack of mid-level saves is retarded and while you're supposed to have all these different combos, you just mash randomly and different things come out. I don't understand why there is no good way to regain your health. Sure, you can use an item if you have it, but they aren't particularly common. Regaining some health between fights would make things a lot more palatable. If you die, you get your health back and you can starts at a check point, but a death breaks morale. Why should you be punished in a fight for not being perfect in the previous one? You won, and fights are a lot more exciting if you were one hit away from dying and you pulled it out.

I'm not sure if I'm going to finish it. NHL11, FIFA11 and Civ5 all come out this month, not to mention Fable 3 in October and GT5 in November. It's something that is taking up some time, but I'm not interested in putting that much time into something I find really tedious.