Life is a Mind Bending Puzzle

Surely the most ignominious moment for PC Gaming in recent years was when so many members of the loudly protesting Steam Modern Warfare 2 boycott group were exposed to be actually playing the game. Well I guess I can lay claim to some small bit of personal pride that I did not cave in and maintained my own personal boycott of the game. Of course this was somewhat easier for me because my boycott wasn't based on a sense of entitlement as to what Activision should or shouldn't put into their games. For me the big issue has always been the price of the game. The €60 initial purchase price was more than the game was worth to me.There was just too much other gaming entertainment available to me for less money to make that a worthwhile purchase. Given that the game racked up more than a billion dollars in sales it it perhaps no surprise that MW2 maintained it high price point far longer than most other games. The price did fall but only slowly and while I kept an eye out for it i...

My exasperation at regional pricing differences for Deus Ex Human Revolution led me to stumble across a wide range of "grey market" resellers who Sell activation codes for Steam games at substantial discount over US /European prices. Intrigued I spent some time researching these before concluding that it would be better to stay away from them but just in case it could be useful to others I will summarise my opinions on the subject here: 1. There are a wide number of websites selling cheap Steam codes. Some of these sites seem to be very dodgy, some of them seem to be run as legitmate businesses. 2. The business model is to buy games cheaply in bulk in a low cost market (Eastern Europe or perhaps Asia) and then resell the code to customers in higher priced markets (America / Australia / Western Europe) at a profit. 3. In many cases the code is taken from a boxed retail copy and the supplier may offer a scan of the box. I am not sure what extra protection this provides....

Normally I am a miser when it comes to game purchases. My threshold of pain is about €10 which pretty much rules out new releases . Nevertheless I had made up my mind to pre-purchase the Isegard expansion for Lotro despite having sufficient Turbine points accumulated that I can probably buy it from the TP store after release. Having bought my lifetime sub at the lowest ever price of £75 some years ago I feel it is probably time I gave them some extra cash. Unfortunately reconciling myself to spending more than I need to on a game has weakened my resolve  and I now find myself seriously eyeing Deus Ex Human Revolution ( currently €36 from Get games ). I know I will be able to get it much cheaper in a few months time but once in a while it would be nice to be able to play a game while everyone else is still talking about it. If I do splurge on Deus Ex that exhausts my budget and Turbine will have to wait for new cash from me. Decisions, Decisions. EDIT: When I went tot purch...

Following a very rocky start the remainder of the Napoleon Total War Egypt campaign was something of an anticlimax. I faced no more rebellions and by garrisoning my conquests with a couple of units of militia I found I could keep them subdued if not entirely happy. Napoleon's sojourn in the South of Egypt was time consuming but worth it in the end because one Southern Egypt was pacified neither the Bedouin's nor the Mamelukes managed to raise a significant force again. Most surprisingly the time limit was more generous than expected and by January 98 Napoleon's grande armee had worked its way from Awlad in the South West corner all the way to Tyre and was only a few turns from taking Damascus itself with a whole year to do it in. The Ottoman's proved a tougher enemy than the Mamelukes with several large combined forces well supported with artillery. By this stage though I had built the Grand Armee up to a full stack of experienced troops and the Ottoman's never had...

For me the battles are the highlight of any Total War game with the campaign map being a secondary albeit also enjoyable part of the game. For this reason when I started out I fought every single battle manually. This attitude has changed over time and I now use auto resolve for a signifcant number of battles. At first it was simply a matter of saving time. On some turns you can have five or six separate battles to fight, many of which are already foregone conclusions because one side (hopefully mine) has an overwhelming superiority. There is nothing particularly edifying about crushing 100 enemy troops with 1000 of yours and yet you can spent quite a long time chasing them around the map to do it. A few experiments convinced me that if one side has an overwhelming advantage (as shown by the red-green relative strength bar) then the random number generator can generally be relied upon to give a reasonable result. Sure you can experience slightly heavier losses than if you fought the ...

Napoleon had a hard time in Egypt and the advisor at the start of Total War's Egypt campaign leaves you under no doubt illusion that you will too. You have two and a half years years to drag your armies from a toehold in North West Egypt all the way over to Damascus in Syria. Everyone is out to stop you including the British, the Mamelukes, the Bedouins and the Ottomans. These guys are so pissed off with Napoleon that the diplomacy option is greyed out - you won't be able to bribe your way out of this. Things start out calmly enough. You start with three generals, two armies and a foothold in Alexandria. The advisor helpfully suggests that you take Cairo to the South to deal a blow to the Mamelukes and while you are at it why don't you send a few ships to Cyprus to end the British threat too. The Cyprus mission seems a bit premature because the British already have a massive Mediterranean fleet  and I don't have so much as a leaky bathtub. Cairo seems more reasonable ...

In order to try and squeeze a bit of gaming into this fairly busy period I finally got around to installing Napoleon Total War and playing one of the campaigns. Although it is very similar to Empire in period and gameplay I find the Napoleonic setting and atmosphere are more familiar to me and therefore more immersive. The Italian campaign that I played is really an extension of the tutorial and still has limited units and abilities. Nevertheless it is still quite challenging and the campaign kept me entertained for several hours. Unfortunately I somehow overlooked the tight timescale allotted and set out to play a marathon when I should have been aiming for a sprint. Playing carefully and cautiously I reinforced all my conquests as Napoleon marched Eastward to displace the Austrians. I guess I should have been suspicious that my "Grande Armee" was so much bigger than anything the opposition could pit against me but I thought I was being very clever biding my time and try...