{"id":110,"date":"2008-05-06T11:59:32","date_gmt":"2008-05-06T19:59:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/driph.com\/words\/?p=110"},"modified":"2008-05-10T16:09:30","modified_gmt":"2008-05-11T00:09:30","slug":"play-list-update-may-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/driph.com\/words\/2008\/05\/play-list-update-may-6\/","title":{"rendered":"Play List Update – May 6"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yes, I’ll freely admit being a few years late to the party. I’m currently in love with Cave Story<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The thought that everything within was created and coded by one individual<\/a> blows me away every time I launch the game. From the fantastic gameplay and spot-on controls, to the endearing characters and charming soundtrack, every piece of this game is quality. Why hasn’t a publisher picked this up? Cave Story<\/strong> would be a natural fit as a portable or XBLA\/PSN release.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The core gameplay is reminiscent of Metroid<\/strong> or Castlevania<\/strong>, a 2d platformer with multiple weapons and upgrades, puzzles, and challenging boss battles. My recommendation would be to play the PSP port <\/a>(custom firmware required), where it’s a perfect fit, but barring that, Mac OS<\/a>, Windows<\/a>, Xbox<\/a> and Linux<\/a> versions are available. A Nintendo DS release is even in the works<\/a>. You have no excuse not to play this game.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/div>\n

I’ve been writing a lot about Sins of a Solar Empire<\/strong> lately, so I figured it was about damn time I actually sat down and spent a few hours (okay, days) with the game.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

While initially daunting (even after the not-so-illuminating<\/em> tutorials), things fell into place about 45 minutes into my first match, a co-op 2v2 duel against the AI. Now I agree that the idea of a realtime Civ-style game sounds like a recipe for a complete clusterfuck, but I’ve gotta say, Ironclad nailed it. The pacing is mostly solid, and neither of us (both somewhat experienced RTS\/4X players) felt harried by the system or interface.<\/p>\n

By the third game, we were easily stomping the Normal AI and had moved up to Hard. Beyond just difficultly, the AI temperament can be set or randomized, although I have yet to figure out how much of an effect it has on overall challenge. Back in high school we used to play a port of Risk on the Mac SE<\/a>, where the temperament choices were basically easy, crazy, and kick-your-ass<\/em>. I dunno if the Sins AIs are like that.<\/p>\n

\"test\"<\/p>\n

The lack of any sort of campaign is disappointing. The manual and launch movie do lay out some very basic groundwork for a story, which leads to the thought that Ironclad may be planning some sort of campaign mode in the future. As it is, all three factions feel a bit dry, and I didn’t find myself particularly attached to any of them. With a dev team of less than a dozen people, I suppose the campaign sacrifice was necessary, but I really hope they add something eventually, I’d like to see the story play out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yes, I’ll freely admit being a few years late to the party. I’m currently in love with Cave Story. The thought that everything within was created and coded by one individual blows me away every time I launch the game. From the fantastic gameplay and spot-on controls, to the endearing characters and charming soundtrack, every […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[43,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-play-list","category-video-games"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/driph.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/driph.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/driph.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/driph.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/driph.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/driph.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/driph.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/driph.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/driph.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}