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pasternakski -> RE: Buying New Games vs Economic Realities (7/20/2008 1:38:46 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins
Pasternakski,
Have you looked at the new Kharkov release? I think that's a great good old hex-based wargame and a really fun battle.
Gary's WBTS is also a fantastic game and gives us three great ACW grand strategy titles to decide between when we get that itch.
Regards,
- Erik
Thanks, Erik. Before I say anything else, I want to reiterate what I have said many times before: I am a staunch supporter of Matrix Games, and a longtime cash customer. I hope most earnestly for your success, as the games you have published brought - and bring - me a great deal of pleasure, and I am an admirer of your work.
The Kharkov release is from a development group I no longer trust, and I have no inclination to buy any more of their products. That's all I have to say on that subject.
Grigsby's entire line of area-movement products based on the system he (with some help, of course) developed for GGWaW don't move me. In fact, I bought heavily into area-movement games through the AGEod products. I liked 'em for awhile, but later came to realize that they did not satisfy my rather odd desire for specificity of information.
A lot hides "under the hood" in area-movement games. You don't "see" all the details in the way I prefer.
So, I remain on the sidelines. As I have stated many times before, the problems with UV/WitP have led me to conclude that they are designs that can never be improved on to the degree of making them palatable to a gamer like me. There's just too much there that leaves me shaking my head in dismay. At the same time, area movement games "get away" with a lot of sleight-of-hand that keeps the player at a distance in a way that puts a distance these days between such games and my wallet.
I know I have been standoffish about games that try to combine the strategic aspects with tactical battle control, but, so far, I am unimpressed. Such games (and we all know which ones they are) seem to me to lose the strategic feel while at the same time presenting the tactical in such a way that is just unpalatable to me.
An example of that is how one of those games abstracts all terrain into a half-dozen templates, then expects you to be satisfied playing out a tactical battle in an area that you know completely (and selected as ground for the battle because you thought it would favor you) as though what you're doing is about as relevant to the strategic side of the game to which you will return after the battle is over as playing a pinball machine is relevant to Shakespearean theater.
Just me, I know, and I apologize if this post seems unduly critical, because I do not mean it to be.
The bottom line, for me and for me alone, is that I am not much of a computer gamer these days, because I can't find anything that interests me anymore - and I have tried, oh, how I have tried.
I plan to keep on trying, but I need products that are really principled and designed with a clearly defined goal in mind that is sought - and achieved, at least in large measure - by the finished product.
That's one of the things that made me a great fan of Grigsby's games back in the early days. Flawed they were, and extremely limited, but they set out to do one thing: put the player in a clearly-defined driver's seat, give him what was available to his historical counterpart, and d@mn the torpedoes from there.
I guess what I am really saying is that I see contemporary computer wargames as lacking focus and constraint, because they try too hard to pander to open-endedness and "modding."
Okay. The anklyosaurus will crawl back into his retreat of extinction now. Thanks for listening. Sorry about the verbosity.
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