AoEII Chronicles Cotd., Street Fighter

There's a handful of things I want to chat about on this blog entry. First of all, I've been playing more Age of Empires II recently, but more importantly I also got my new copy of the Age of Empires Gold Edition, featuring the Conquerors Expansion. It's amazing how much different, and frankly better, that game is with the expansion. They took so many small things and made them much more user friendly, so you don't have to assign villagers to a task when they've just built a resource building next to the task you want them to do, and I don't have to manually reseed all my farms every time they expire. The raised population cap on all games also is useful, and some of the maps they included are really cool. But what I'm realising is that one of the best things about the Conquerors is being able to play as the Huns. I never really spent that much time with them during my early days as an Age of Empires player, but playing them now I'm realising they may be my favourite civilisation. Not having to build houses is an amazing advantage, and they have some really cool special abilities.

So one of the side effects of this added time spent playing AoE is that I decided to cancel my Halo Wars pre-order. A number of reasons for this. Firstly, I realised that a lot of what I liked about playing the Halo Wars demo was just the sense of nostalgia, which is now being fully exercised by my return to AoE. Secondly, the game's price is £35, and I have a policy of not spending more than £30 on a game unless I really want to play it. Thirdly, the reviews are now out, and some people didn't seem to think it was a good console RTS, which has me a little concerned. Still, I think my probable course of action is that when I get bored of AoEII and the nostalgia wears off, I'll get a copy of Halo Wars for cheap or rent it. I still see a situation where I could have a lot of fun with that game, and I still think it could turn out really well, but I'm not sure I want to have it on day one.

Moving on the new business, it's quite hard to ignore the incredbile response to the recent release of Street Fighter IV. The gaming world seems to be going mad over it. Now my own experience with Street Fighter is completely limited to the small amount of time I've spent with Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix in the past couple of months. Good lord that game is hard. Even on easy mode I get my ass handed to me most of the time, and I daren't go anywhere near the online mode for fear of a brutal beating.

At first I decided I was going to use Sagat in HD Remix, because he looked cool, and Honda, because he was a Japanese sumo and therefore awesome. However I judged these decisions to be unwise, and at the advice of Jeff during a recent Bombcast, I served my apprenticeship with Chun-Li. Indeed, I won a few battles by just hammering on the kick button, and actually unlocked two achievements, one for beating the arcade mode (on easy, having died like 5 times) and one for beating Honda in under 15 seconds. I've had a little bit of fun playing Street Fighter, including experimenting with other characters, including some time spent playing with Ken, with limited success, and I find that with an Xbox controller, I can't reliably do a Hadouken or Hurricane Kick, and I've yet to successful pull off a Dragon Punch. Maybe I should invest in a joystick.

Still, after my limited time with HD Remix, I can see it's going to take a lengthy trial to get decent at Street Fighter, and there's a part of me that's debating whether it's worth the effort. I quite like the characters, gameplay can be fun if a little frustrating, and it looks really clean and cool, but I hate failing at games, and just feel that I can't enjoy Street Fighter until I get somewhere close to being a halfway decent player. Maybe it's a fatal flaw of playing against the A.I. Also, from what I hear, the SFIV training mode isn't a great solution as it doesn't quite explain the full principles of Street Fighter's gameplay, and all this talk of charge focus cancelling is fucking with my head. So I may rent SFIV just to see if I can get into SF that way, and maybe spend some more time with HD Remix, but there may come a point where I'll have to run back to Soul Calibur and Dead or Alive with my tail between my legs. But hey, at least I'd be having fun playing those games.

There's a handful of things I want to chat about on this blog entry. First of all, I've been playing more Age of Empires II recently, but more importantly I also got my new copy of the Age of Empires Gold Edition, featuring the Conquerors Expansion. It's amazing how much different, and frankly better, that game is with the expansion. They took so many small things and made them much more user friendly, so you don't have to assign villagers to a task when they've just built a resource building next to the task you want them to do, and I don't have to manually reseed all my farms every time they expire. The raised population cap on all games also is useful, and some of the maps they included are really cool. But what I'm realising is that one of the best things about the Conquerors is being able to play as the Huns. I never really spent that much time with them during my early days as an Age of Empires player, but playing them now I'm realising they may be my favourite civilisation. Not having to build houses is an amazing advantage, and they have some really cool special abilities.

So one of the side effects of this added time spent playing AoE is that I decided to cancel my Halo Wars pre-order. A number of reasons for this. Firstly, I realised that a lot of what I liked about playing the Halo Wars demo was just the sense of nostalgia, which is now being fully exercised by my return to AoE. Secondly, the game's price is £35, and I have a policy of not spending more than £30 on a game unless I really want to play it. Thirdly, the reviews are now out, and some people didn't seem to think it was a good console RTS, which has me a little concerned. Still, I think my probable course of action is that when I get bored of AoEII and the nostalgia wears off, I'll get a copy of Halo Wars for cheap or rent it. I still see a situation where I could have a lot of fun with that game, and I still think it could turn out really well, but I'm not sure I want to have it on day one.

Moving on the new business, it's quite hard to ignore the incredbile response to the recent release of Street Fighter IV. The gaming world seems to be going mad over it. Now my own experience with Street Fighter is completely limited to the small amount of time I've spent with Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix in the past couple of months. Good lord that game is hard. Even on easy mode I get my ass handed to me most of the time, and I daren't go anywhere near the online mode for fear of a brutal beating.

At first I decided I was going to use Sagat in HD Remix, because he looked cool, and Honda, because he was a Japanese sumo and therefore awesome. However I judged these decisions to be unwise, and at the advice of Jeff during a recent Bombcast, I served my apprenticeship with Chun-Li. Indeed, I won a few battles by just hammering on the kick button, and actually unlocked two achievements, one for beating the arcade mode (on easy, having died like 5 times) and one for beating Honda in under 15 seconds. I've had a little bit of fun playing Street Fighter, including experimenting with other characters, including some time spent playing with Ken, with limited success, and I find that with an Xbox controller, I can't reliably do a Hadouken or Hurricane Kick, and I've yet to successful pull off a Dragon Punch. Maybe I should invest in a joystick.

Still, after my limited time with HD Remix, I can see it's going to take a lengthy trial to get decent at Street Fighter, and there's a part of me that's debating whether it's worth the effort. I quite like the characters, gameplay can be fun if a little frustrating, and it looks really clean and cool, but I hate failing at games, and just feel that I can't enjoy Street Fighter until I get somewhere close to being a halfway decent player. Maybe it's a fatal flaw of playing against the A.I. Also, from what I hear, the SFIV training mode isn't a great solution as it doesn't quite explain the full principles of Street Fighter's gameplay, and all this talk of charge focus cancelling is fucking with my head. So I may rent SFIV just to see if I can get into SF that way, and maybe spend some more time with HD Remix, but there may come a point where I'll have to run back to Soul Calibur and Dead or Alive with my tail between my legs. But hey, at least I'd be having fun playing those games.

Just posting to unlock this from the forums.