Yeah, its game mechanics are very similar to Civ5, which is still considered one of the high points in the Civ series. And it does reproduce them quite well, so I do think that can give you a good impression, if Civ is for you.
Then again, I do own Civ5, but still end up playing Unciv instead, because I’d rather have my laptop not screaming at me while it runs in the background and I do a couple turns every so often…
we would like to officially announce that this will be the [last] version labeled Alpha. We have already updated the versioning scheme (this version being 0.27.0) and we will progressively stop using the Alpha label altogether up to the next release, which will be Release 28.
Excellent. Whenever I told people about 0 A.D., I felt like I should add that it’s not actually an Alpha, especially with their webpage saying in various places basically “no, don’t look at us yet, we’re not ready yet”.
If they continue adding content, I do think that’s awesome, but what’s there is already plenty solid.
I’ve heard the reasoning before that reviewers typically only have access to a, well, pre-release version. A day-1-patch is pretty common now.
So, as reviewer, you have to decide whether the performance problems look like they might be fixed on release day, and therefore whether you want to incorporate them into your review/score or not.
Certainly some food for thought, but I feel like people saying indies will save us are saying that as consumers and a lot more selfishly. AAA is struggling to deliver interesting games and indies are killing it, so you play indie titles instead. Whether those indie titles are actually produced organically and whatnot is kind of secondary for that purpose. The mass layoffs in AAA are bad, but in the New York Times article, for example, they’re mainly seen as indicative of the business model faltering, which should naturally give more room for indies. But yeah, that these studios are still horrendously profitable kind of shows that this may not be true in the end.
It would certainly be weird, after their recent games were so story-driven. You can’t tell a good story, if you need to always keep the end open for possible expansions.
Yeah, and they often launch with loads of systems where future content could be plugged in, but the actual content itself is typically bad or at the very least incomplete. The publishers try too hard to build a platform rather than a good game…
Yeah, theoretically the exact model for monetization isn’t as important, but many publishers are hoping to get players to pay subscriptions indefinitely.
Fucking hell, man, with how many very publicly visible security problems they had last year, you’d think the stakeholders would be on board with doing security for a bit.
I could never get over how boring the gameplay of Infamous looked. Comparing it to a third-person shooter is pretty apt. Like, you’ve got these crazy lightning powers, but 90% of the time, you just use your hand buzzer to give folks a bit of a zap. Riveting.
Yeah, that frustrates me a lot, too. They almost had it right, that they need to go beyond realism to make truly good-looking games. But in practice, they say that only to show you the most boring-ass graphics known to humanity. I don’t need your pebbles to cast shadows. I can walk outside and find a pebble that casts shadows in a minute tops. Make the pebbles cast light instead, that could look cool. Or make them cast a basketball game. That’s at least something, I haven’t seen yet.
The big problem for these AAA studios is that this is their unique selling point. Hyper-realistic graphics and sprawling game worlds. If they stop doing these, they’re hardly different to the games from five years ago (which you can still buy and cheaply at that). And they’re hardly different from indie titles. They would enter quite the competitive market.
I do agree that we’re at somewhat of a breaking point. The production costs grow to absurd levels. The graphical advances are marginal. And not many gamers can afford the newest hardware to play these titles. But I don’t think, there’s an easy exit strategy for these AAA studios…
Interesting. I almost guessed that variant, too, but figured it would be a bit too wild for a country to auto-adopt most laws that another country implements. 🙃
I’m more surprised that it even got offered there. There’s some legal hurdles to clear for selling in a new country, and I guess, one of their distribution platforms decided it was worth it.
I guess, the Vatican might not have a ton of laws, though…