Fancy kicking off your advent calendar with a spot of 80s strategising? Atari are releasing Sid Meier's classic Command series on Steam tonight, so you'll be able to get your hands on Decision In The Desert, Crusade In Europe, and Conflict In Vietnam. They're a vintage bunch of RTS games that make you a commander in various wars, you know, if wars were about controlling tiny little blocky tanks in a bright blue desert.
]]>Sid Meier, that legendary game dev whose name sits before the names of Civilization games, had a lovely chat with our very own Nate Crowley this weekend, as part of PAX Online X EGX Digital. The pair talked all about some of the most notable parts of Meier's career - including, Railroad Tycoon, Pirates!, and Civilization - as well as chat about his upcoming book, Sid Meier's Memoir!: A Life In Computer Games. And thanks to computers, you can watch their whole chat in full below.
]]>Gandhi is one of the most unique figure in history. His adherence to non-violence, his establishment of a full-fledged philosophy behind it and, above all, his success, are practically without precedent. Kings, empires and leaders can often blur into each other. The locations change, the dates are different and the numbers differ, but the essence remains the same. Gandhi was something completely different, and yet games try to represent him with the same pieces they use for everyone else - and so they always make him something far less than he was.
]]>No matter how many variants of “cool human does awesome thing in Minecraft” [official site] stories I hear about, I’m always blown away by the ingenuity some people have. This time, a team of modders have managed to bring much of Civilization [official site] into Mojang’s burgeoning sandbox. The mod is called Civilizationcraft [official site], and a new update has just added religion to the game.
]]>Here's the latest Civilization: Beyond Earth - Rising Tide [official site ] trailer talking about hybrid affinities, overthrowing dictatorships, and combining harmony and purity in a part faux-propaganda, part technical rundown of what the upcoming expansion has to offer.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
The exclamation mark doesn't mean I'm shouting at you. It's part of the game's name. Originally released in 1987 (though I first played it on an Amiga in the early nineties), Pirates! was the first game to carry Meier's name in the title, although not the first game created by the statesman of strategy. It's a fine early example of open world gaming, allowing players to create a unique legacy within its ever-changing world.
]]>There's few game designers whose names alone perk my interest, but Sid Meier is one of them. He's the videogame industry's avuncular Werther's Original dispenser, popping sugary, plastic-wrapped hexes into the hands of young designers everywhere. I met him once and I can't remember if he was sat in a rocking chair, but let's assume that he was.
I am now rocking because Firaxis have announced Sid Meier's Starships, a new game set after and within the same fiction as the recent Civilization: Beyond Earth. Speaking to Gamespot about the announcement, Meier explained that it would be st in space, would feature "dynamically generated tactical combat", and that the focus would be "starship design" and "interstellar adventure, diplomacy and exploration." There's an animated trailer below.
]]>Spies! They're kind of dicks®. If they're not seducing us or gambling away our taxes, they're shoving microphones into cats or jabbing us with umbrellas. It's hardly surprising that so many games about them veer into cartoonish James Bond territory, or cartoonish parody of cartoonish James Bond territory, or some kind of recursive humour vacuum that threatens to make Miranda Harts of us all.
But there's a lot to be said for the more grounded approach. Sid Meier's Covert Action, for example, steers clear of supervillains and outlandish capers, instead presenting a sort of action puzzle, with various criminal mysteries to be solved via a collection of minigames. Say "collection of minigames" in the early 90s and the responses you'd get would likely be "take this film licence dreck out the back and shoot it", but Covert Action is a far better game than that technically accurate description lets on - and one still worth playing today. Let me explain.
]]>I love it when a plan comes together. On the surface, Covert Action is a game about minigames, each acting as an optional node in a procedurally generated tale of espionage and infiltration, but it's really about the metagame. Covert Action is one of those games that bloody well deserves a remake - even Meier said it had tried to do too much on its initial release. It was about as ahead of its time as James Joyce shaking hands with an Eloi and I'd love to see a version made with modern tech. Maybe some of the charm would be lost though - I've been mucking about with the game this morning following a Steam release (it's already on GoG) and it continues to be brilliant, despite overstretching itself and my brain cells.
]]>Is... Is this E3 news? On day three, I can't tell anymore. Did Sid Meier swing on a trapeze across the E3 concourse to announce that Civilization 5 was now available on SteamOS and Linux? Did Aspyr gather the world's press in an art deco theatre to reveal that this was their first Linux port, after years of porting popular games to Mac? Or is it the case that there was a simple post on Civ V's Steam forum to declare that users of Ubuntu could now begin conquering 4X strategy worlds?
Probably that last one.
]]>The latest Humble Bundle offers the chance to own three complete Civilizations, as if you were trying to recreate the British Empire. Along with Civs III, IV, the lowest tier contains the recent Ace Patrol games, which are fairly lightweight, but clever, replayable and oddly adorable considering the World War dogfighting subject matter. All of that, along with the latest incarnation of Railroads! can be yours for any chosen price. Pay more than the average (at time of writing, $8.16) and you'll receive Civ V, and the Gods and Kings DLC. More than $15 unlocks the Brave New World DLC as well. BONUS: approximately two days of a Humble Paradox sale remain.
]]>Traitorously abandoning the all-father of gaming platforms to go mince about on mobile, Sid Meier released Ace Patrol earlier this year for iOS. Thankfully, sense (possibly money) prevailed and he's seen fit to bring his World War 1 air-battler back home. If hex-based historical revision's your bag, the strategy master might have what you need. Rather than the free to play, micro-transaction supported original release, it's just over a fiver and seems to contain all content from the off. Launch trailer if you can dive low enough.
]]>Alpha Centauri has a special place in my heart. It's a sort of spin-off from the Civilisation series (but don't tell the lawyers), released way back in 1999. It's not available to buy digitally (EDIT: Now available on GOG.com), but it had a Complete Edition reissue on the Sold Out range, available on Amazon US/UK. It's essentially Civ in space.
Or is it?
]]>An epic Civ V trailer sits below the click, and it contains plenty of game footage, as well as featuring the dev team talking about their plans for the fifth in the absurdly popular strategy series. Interesting that modding is at the forefront of their angle of attack this time, something that they say was inspired by modder responses to the previous game. Anyway, go have a look, I think this is one of the more interesting videos we're going to get this week.
]]>Here's proof positive that uncle Sid isn't just a figurehead these days. In the fun mini-documentary below, the god of Civilization pops back to his old university to encourage and judge a group of wannabe developers in a 48 hour build-a-game contest. Which seems to frazzle their minds in and of itself, but then he goes and designs a game in 48 hours too, which pretty much blows their efforts out of the water. Who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?
]]>Civilization IV: Colonization (prop. Sid Meier) is due out all sorts of soon, but we've yet to see a teaser or trailer. UNTIL NOW! See how I surprised you? Of course, showing me an RTS or TBS is the equivalent of showing a 12th century peasant an iPhone. I react with fear, suspicion, and ultimately setting things on fire. Fortunately, three other people in the RPS Orbital Station know all about the things, meaning I'm usually safe from them. But suddenly I find myself alone, frightened, and hiding in a corner from the conquesty complications of a Sid Meier game.
]]>Newsweek's N'Gai Croal writes that he managed to ask Firaxis' Sid Meier about the possible EA take-over of their owner Take 2. To which Sid responds...
]]>From our 'Putting Words In Sid Meier's Mouth' desk.
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.png?width=1200&height=630&fit=crop&enable=upscale&auto=webp "שחרורו של Assassin's Creed Shadows נדחה למרץ כאשר מועצת המנהלים של Ubisoft שוקל מכירת חברה")
