Spore

[alexander]

Great, another great concept, poor execution, why cant they make more games like Hack and Defcon, great concepts, great execution, or Crysis, mundane, same old crap concept, great execution, why do they have great concept, and an utterly horrifying execution that you want to shoot some devs for like that

Gah, back to maybe black and white, or age of empires 3 or something... I think i might give AoE a go, i know its an M$ product and all, but it is a very beautiful-looking game

[alexander]

I meant Empires Total War, that seems really cool

[Boerseun]

I'm pinning my hopes on CitiesXL, which started as a private initiative because of SimCity Societies suction.

For some reason, developers nowadays go with the idea that the simpler a game is, the better it will sell. This might be good for FPS games, but I'm more of a strategy and micromanagement nut.

I mean, I still play the odd SimCity 4 game every now and then, but it is showing its age. The new stuff just blows. And it's not because I'm getting older (I'm 32). My sister's kid is now 11 years old, and even he prefers my older games when visiting (SimCity 4, AoE, Empire Earth etc) over the new stuff, because the new stuff is "too easy", and "kid's games".

The designers have chucked SimCity 5 into the trash and instead came up with SimCity Societies, because the learning curve for new players was "too steep". Idiots. The complexity of it all and the interrelationship between different elements is exactly the reason I love games like that. It exercise your brain muscle ever so slightly more than the average point-and-click monkey see-monkey do kinda games.

But I truly believe that the final say as to game design and the logic behind it, sits squarely with the Board Members who have never, never played a single game in their entire lives. They are devoid of having a soul or imagination of any kind, and this rubs off on their final product. Because of the sheer size of these modern games, and the vast number of people that must be employed to slog through all the phases of development, gone are the days of individual mavericks who came up with the masterpieces of old. Today, a computer game is a purely commercial mass product, and like purely commercial products, they are completely friendly towards the lowest common denominator.

Hence games like SimCity Societies and Spore, which will knock your socks off if you're a drivelling, drooling moron. But they're ignoring the more intelligent segment of the population. Or maybe we're just in such a minority that nobody actually cares.