Monday, February 7, 2011

Swarm Arena Tournament, Other News

I want to apologize for the delay in posting about the tournament.  Unfortunately we've only had 6 people show interest in playing.  While this would be more than enough people for a fun LAN-party style evening, chances are it will be extremely difficult to arrange for all of us to be online and free in the same evening.

Given that there are so few people to play in Swarm Arena, I am no longer suddenly enlightened with ideas for strategy posts.  I'd be lying if I said that I could keep posting regularly.  However, given how much I have enjoyed writing about Swarm Arena and how many people have visited the Real Gaming Review, I plan on releasing a review for the strategy game Greed Corp, available on Steam, within the next week.  If there is some interest, I will blog about Greed Corp strategy as well.  For anyone interested, Greed is a turn-based strategy game where you destroy the land by harvesting from it.  This has some pretty interesting, different, and non-linear implications on the gameplay.  It's a good game, and it has a campaign worth playing.  I got it on sale, but I'm about 3/4 through the campaign and I've already got much more than the regular price of $10 out of it.

Company of Heroes Online is currently it its free Beta cycle, and it will be that way until March 31st.  There is a good chance I'll be playing more of it.  I missed the wave where CoH was popular, so now is my chance to learn and get some good competition for the next couple of months.  For those of you who don't know, CoH is the highest rated RTS of all time, and for good reason; it has fantastic strategic depth, excellent graphics (especially for 2007), and a great atmosphere.  It is likely that I will be posting about CoHO as well.

Lastly, I recommend visiting http://www.realgamingreview.com .  It currently redirects here, but soon it will be a different site with all currently existing content uploaded as well.  I plan on using it for many gaming purposes including news, finding other like-minded gamers, as well as a homepage for Clan RG (Real Gamers), a brand new idea for an open clan that anyone can join.  And, of course, I will be posting reviews and game strategy as a primary function.

Daniel Moniz

2 comments:

  1. A nice, if somewhat melancholic post. Though I too am perplexed as to why so few people play this game. It's conceptually a simple yet very tactically sophisticated game which above all places the competitors on a level playing field i.e. it’s balanced - your speed, your intelligence Vs their speed, their intelligence. What more could you want?

    There are two things that I would attribute to its low playing population.
    1). It shouldn't have been released before the Vs online option was available, imo this severely damaged sales and interest simply because in this day and age few people have time for a 1 player retro duel blaster. It’s all about beating someone else in games now.
    2). The majority of young gamers nowadays are being reared on big graphic games, with the exception of the few. Style over substance seems to rule the roost these days so again it would be harder for games such as this to take hold.

    Anyways, take nothing away; keep plugging away and who knows. It just takes a small ripple of enthusiasm to create a wave.

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  2. I agree with all of the above. One major issue with indie games in general, however, is that it takes a lot of work, and a lot of knowledge, to allow for a lag-free multiplayer environment. I guarantee that this is why the game wasn't released with multiplayer.

    In case you (or any readers) are interested, I have been working very hard on a website dedicated to allowing users to read and write about games, as well as rate content so that the best authors are the most visible. I know there are others out there who enjoy writing about games and being part of a community. I will be posting about the site once it's in the Beta portion of its lifecycle.

    The reason that I haven't been posting about Swarm is simply because my own micro-community of gamers (eg. Pikaaa) has stopped playing the game, and without gaming, I am without inspiration for new material. However, someone added me on Steam the other day (my current ID is Paragon.RG), and I played for the first time in weeks! Good times were had. :)

    Thanks for your thoughts!

    Daniel Moniz, AKA Evilmeat, AKA Paragon (.RG)

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