Blessed by the Potato

Carefully picked out of the discount dustbin, Sid Meier’s Railroads! is a fun little minigame to keep yourself busy and relax with when you’re home with a head cold. There isn’t much depth to the game: you have cities with industries and sources of raw materials; build train tracks and buy trains to bring one to the other (and to move goods and people between cities). You can play with just your own model railroad, or compete against others (humans or AI) to see who can become the biggest railroad tycoon first.

While there are maybe 20 different industries in the game, they’re segregated by scenario so you can only encounter 8-10 of them in any given game you play. Like I said, there isn’t much depth to the game: you can choose to deliver to industries and make money on the shipping, or buy them up to earn it manufacturing as well… but not a whole lot to play with beyond that. Whether industrial output grows or not is a function of how long the industry has been active; you can’t choose to pay to upgrade. Sometimes it feels like I should be playing it through a flash-enabled web browser.

The game’s scale is way off: when playing the midwest scenario for example, a single 8-car train stretches nearly the entire 400 km distance from Toronto to Detroit; it’s impossible to route a train from Toronto to Niagara Falls because the “turn is too tight”. You’re constantly battling the terrain in this way, a gameplay mechanic that by all rights probably should be there, but stands out as silly at certain times (trains really don’t have a 300-km turning radius in real life). The biggest complaint I have about the game is that the train routing is really, really dumb. Since routing trains is just about all the game does it’s especially aggravating that it does it so poorly. Each track can only take one train at a time — despite how far out the game map seems to be zoomed from real terrain, you can’t take things like sidings for granted. Each city can only have 3 unloading tracks in it. So once I start having a large number of trains I like to spend the money to build parallel tracks — an eastbound and a westbound lane if you would. I put crossovers through the network so trains can shunt around as needed, and so the two travel tracks can split to the 3 station platforms… and the trains still get stuck. If there’ s a single train moving between two cities in a setup like this, it will invariably take every crossover (slowing itself down — trains move fastest when going straight ahead) instead of just going straight on the clear, open track it was on. Most of the time, the trains will manage to split up and make the most of the 3 station platforms, but not all the time. Every so often you’ll look at a city, see an open platform, and a train just sitting there, perfectly capable of switching over to it, but instead waiting and waiting for the occupied platform to open up.

Laying track goes easily enough: the game automatically throws in bridges or tunnels as needed to get from point A to point B. Most of the time, branching works fairly well… but again, it’s infuriating when it fails. You can click from one track to another to build a connection, and sometimes it just simply won’t see the second track and you’ll be left with an orphan piece running under the track you were trying to connect to. Sometimes, in the brilliance of the train routing, the trains will take this piece of track to nowhere, get stuck for a few seconds, then magically teleport to the other track. So I guess in a sense those “connections” do sort of work… kinda… and slowly.

However, there’s something about watching the electronic trains make their way around the map and tooting their steam whistles that appeals to the child in me.

Well, I’ve got the Xbox all hooked up to the TV now, and Tversity running on my PC. I had no end of trouble trying to make it work at my parents’ house (I was in Toronto when I picked up the Xbox 360), with the Xbox connected via a wire to the router, and the computer with Tversity running over the wireless. But back at home with both the Xbox and the PC on a wired connection everything was up and running smoothly right away. I can stream files from my computer to the xbox, and they look great. If I had a high-def TV they’d probably look even better. I am having a minor problem with a few codecs, but since it’s only for one or two files I’m going to try forcing transcoding later to see how that works, and if that fails I’ll have to reinstall the codecs. One other minor annoyance is that there are a lot of default folders in the Tversity view on the Xbox, only one of which actually has content. It would be nice if I could get the Xbox to default to that one folder to start with.

Other than that though it’s working fantastic as a media streamer, well worth the money for that capability I think. I’m also gaming a little bit on it — I haven’t really enjoyed Lego Indiana Jones that came with it, but I got Gears of War 2 previously played from Rogers Video for $20, and I’m enjoying the use of cover in that shooter. My one-month trial to Xbox Live is just about over and I haven’t gamed multiplayer at all, so I suppose I’ll have to give that a shot soon. It seems like a really expensive system to game on: the Xbox Live subscription is $5/month normally (though Amazon has the 13-month card on for $52+tx right now); it’s another $60 for a second controller or guitar controller (and $200 for Rock Band), and even the “cheap” Xbox Live arcade games (like Castle Crashers) are $20.

Well, like Yahtzee, I got Force Unleashed on the Wii. There are some issues to be sure, the graphics aren’t as smooth as on the Xbox (and not just a hi-def vs std-def issue, either), and the physics are more cardboard-box-like (a lot of objects will start flying around if you run into them, the same way they do when you force push them).

But I did get into the controls and the experience, and it was fun (though so was the Xbox, and it was fun and pretty). What I found interesting is that the storylines were somewhat different between the two games, and the levels and force puzzles were much simplified on the Wii. The Wiimote is, as usual, pretty spazzy, but it’s a much better sabre experience than Zelda was (which really turned me off). The camera tracking is also pretty terrible (a problem that Zelda also had), and not as good as the Xbox.

The game is fun, though that might be because I just am hard-wired to love Star Wars and lightsabers, and is a great way to pass about 6 hours hacking and slashing and force lightning your way across the galaxy. However, it was short. I was left at the end wanting more, much more. There is the duel mode for the Wii, but the characters get very small since it’s not a split-screen experience, but rather a fixed central camera, and that makes it less satisfying. Also, with a touch of min-maxer in me, I saw the four stat bars and immediately wanted to know what they do for me… but I couldn’t find anywhere what they meant (I even read the manual!).

I would have liked a random level generator, or more “instant play” missions where you could play as the other characters (Obi Wan, Vader, etc.) to stretch it out a bit more, and offer more getting-my-force-on replay value — and I do see a lot of stress relief potential in a game like this.

It also wasn’t particularly deep. Pretty much every mission involves going in and killing everything. There are I think two where civilians or nominal allies appear, but there is zero consequence for throwing them off ledges along with the bad guys. Also, the flying stormtroopers were seriously broken. I know that there wasn’t too much that was terribly challenging in the game, but these guys were just obscenely powerful (both tough and with attacks that you couldn’t deflect).

And as Yahtzee mentioned in his video review, the force powers are a touch ridiculous in this one, while the lightsaber is underpowered. There’s no limb detachment/decapitation! When the kitty decided she wanted me to pay attention to her and not my game, I continued to play with just the nunchuck — no lightsaber, just movement, force push, and force lighting. And I didn’t actually do all that bad!

Other than that, I haven’t been gaming much lately. I got MarioKart for the Wii as well, but haven’t actually taken it out of the box yet. There are a few guys at work that play, and I figure I’ll take it out when we’re all less busy and can do some multiplayer. For the most part, I’ve been trying to finish off Yoshi’s Island for the DS. It’s my sister’s game, which I borrowed for the flight to Chicago, but it’s surprisingly fun. It’s like a juvenile version of Mario, where dying is a lot harder, and there’s a wailing baby now and then (ugh). There are 5 worlds, and the first 3 are really really easy. But the 5th I’m finding is actually quite challenging. I came into it with nearly 200 lives, and that’s just what I got along the way in the first few worlds, no life farming or anything, and I’ve burned through about a hundred of them so far trying to get through world 5. I also installed Strange Attractors 2, which is a fun little game, especially if you only want a distraction of a few minutes and don’t want to have to close all your document windows to launch it :)

World of Warcraft has come out with two expansions now, and I briefly thought about returning. Blizzard did send me a 10-day free trial pass to try to suck me back in, and I might actually give it a whirl after the MRI goes down in December (hey, I’ve got to see how these new fangled weather effects look on my new video card, don’t I?). Of course, I’m going to have to freeze my credit cards when I do, because 10 days is all I can afford to give that game!

So the Financial Post StockStar game is on, and it’s kind of fun to make all the trades that come into my head but which I would be afraid to try in real life, or even just don’t have the money to carry out. You can play with $100k of fantasy money (up to $200k including fantasy leverage) to invest in the shadow stock market between now and January — best return wins. If you’d like to play, let me know and I can send you an invite through the game. It can be a good way to get some practice and education in how trading works, and to get used to looking at the rollercoaster ride your portfolio value will take.

Right now I’ve built up a portfolio that’s concentrated heavily in financials and energy, hoping — like I’m sure many players are — for a rebound that will take me to the top of the charts. I’m “only” leveraged about 40%, which in a game like this might hurt my chances. I’m also at a crossroads: the game is divided into two classes of players. Investors, who make 25 trades or less, and traders, who make more than that. I’ve just made my 25th trade. I’m pretty happy with my portfolio, and now have to decide if I want to face off against the active traders or the other buy-and-hold investors. Since it’s only the first week and I’ve already racked up those trades it’s very likely I’m going to end up as a trader: one more puts me over the edge. However, my gut instinct tells me that the “good” players will end up being traders, and I might have better odds in the game by just switching off now and competing against the <25 trades investors, even if it means I can’t use the rest of my margin between now and the end of the game. At the moment, just from pure odds being a trader looks better: there are 4000-some investors to 400-some traders. However, as the trades rack up through the months I anticipate most players will end up as traders.

The top guys are just making a killing: 80+% return in 4 days. I’m at about +3.5% [Update: I ended up sitting on this post for a few days; I’m now up 6%, after being up 14% last week. The top player is up over 138%]. One thing I noticed this week is that the trades now seem to be delayed 15 minutes. I think it’s because the quotes are 15 minutes delayed, and it appeared possible to use a service with real-time quotes to make “psychic” trades in the game. This happened once to my advantage last week, when I saw a stock was going up and went in to buy, and actually got it for cheaper than my real-time quote was giving me; this week that doesn’t appear to be happening any more.

Well, I spent the better part of a day on the weekend playing Spore, which is really unfortunate since I had a lot of work to do and it left me somewhat frustrated.

The game involves progressing through 5 different minigames from single-celled organism swimming for food particles in a puddle, through creature, tribal, civilization and space exploration. There are a large number of reviews out there, and I have to agree with a number of points. While each stage was fun, they often felt kind of rushed — the game was prompting me to upgrade to tribal level when I hadn’t even harvested enough resources to upgrade my creature with all the new parts I found. The cell stage only had 12(?) organelles to upgrade to. Tribal and Civilization didn’t seem to fit in with the feel from the first two stages, where you were focused solely on one creature, RPG-like. I think the transition could have been smoothed a bit by making more of the pack option.

I spent the most time in Creature phase as I had to play through it twice, and it really struck me how expensive arms and legs are, even if you put on non-stat-boosting ones. I wanted to create a 6-legged creature, but it was just too costly to pull off unless I spent a lot of time grinding after being prompted to proceed to tribal. I had to play through Creature stage twice because the first time through, as soon as I graduated to tribal, none of my units could move. Then, the same thing happened when I graduated to space stage. This just goes to show that Spore is, at the moment, a pretty buggy game. Those were just the game-ending bugs — there were numerous graphical glitches and random crashes through the game that I was ready to ignore. The big problem, however, is not the bugs but the terrible save game system. You have just one save game per planet that is always overridden when you save. There are no autosaves, either, so if it crashes and you haven’t thought to save, you’re out of luck. Plus, if you enter tribal, hit save, and then find you’re bugged out, the bug persists after you reload — you can’t go back to the creature stage to try to change your creature to see if that might help, since there’s only the one saved game. This also makes it difficult if you feel like exploring different options — going back to just before graduation to tribal to see if being more of a carnivore than an omnivore would change your fate, for instance. Skipping ahead to a stage is an option, but you lose certain bonuses you accrue for playing through the previous stages.

I’ve heard that the space stage is the most interesting and in-depth part of the game, so it was a shame I couldn’t even play it with the same creature I had taken through the other stages. When/if I get time next weekend, I might give it another whirl, but after so many crashes in one day, I’m tempted to just shelve it until a patch (or several) comes out.