Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.>

Dear God, why? … [visit site to read more]

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.>

Sid Meier is famous for his line that games are “a series of interesting decisions.” Which makes it interesting that Sid Meier’s Civilization V is a game about telling people to stand still over and over again.

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I say top ten, but there are actually only seven different games in the past week’s Steam charts, once pre-orders and deluxe editions are filtered out. It seems like a lifetime ago that Stardew Valley and Factorio were doing a little indie rampage around the charts, as Steam’s best-sellers have now very much reverted to big-brand type. Also: pre-ordering sure doesn’t seem to be going away any time soon, no matter how unwise it might seem. … [visit site to read more]

As if 2016 didn’t already contain a rich enough seam of strategy games, Firaxis announce today that Civilization VI will be released on October 21st. Development duties are in the hands of the team behind Civ V’s expansions, Gods & Kings and Brave New World, and when we spoke to designer Ed Beach and associate producer Sarah Darney last week to learn all the details, they told us that almost every system from the complete Civ V will be included in the sequel: trade routes, religious systems, archaeology…there’ll be no need to wait for expansions, it’s all in the base game.

The game is running on a brand new suite of software, built to be far more mod-friendly than its predecessor, and as well as brand new AI systems, there are a host of new mechanics that will explore and emphasise your relationship with Civ’s greatest character: the map.

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The last big official update to Civilization V [official site] came in 2013 with its second large expansion, Brave New World. Three years later, and almost six years after the game s original release, there s another big new release expected, but it s not an official expansion. It s the Community Patch Project (CPP; to be named Vox Populi on release), a community-made mod that overhauls and improves a majority of the game s systems in an attempt to make Civilization V the best game it possibly can be.

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All Walls Must Fall [official site] is the first commercial release from inbetweengames, the indie studio founded by former members of Yager, developers of Spec Ops: The Line. It’s a “tech-noir tactics game” set in Berlin 2089. This is a Berlin still divided by a wall and a world where the Cold War never ended. To navigate its perils and its nightlife, you’ll use a combination of social stealth, time travel and combat. It looks delicious, like a propaganda-powered, post-Syndicate dream.

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Well, in fairness, they’ve still got a week to squeak out a much-needed fix for the otherwise great XCOM 2 [official site]’s assorted technical issues before the Anarchy’s Children DLC arrives next week. They might yet do right by us. Leaves a bit of a bad taste in the mouth to even be talking about flogging extra content before the base game’s fully ship-shape, though – especially as said extra content makes me twist my lips into a sort of bemused pout. I really dig XCOM 2’s current and generous character customisation options, which manage to be playful without capsizing into arbitrary weirdness. I’m not sure the same can be said about the Anarchy’s Children pack of cosmetic add-ons. … [visit site to read more]

When Civilization II came out, I spent an entire summer playing it for several hours a day. The only check on my binging was the fact that my parents would eventually come home and force me to pretend, for a few hours at least, that I cared about things other than Civilization II.

I was a senior in college when Civilization IV arrived. I’d barely played strategy games at all for the previous four years, and “senioritis” brought with it a case of intense nostalgia. I bought it in the spring before graduation. It was still consuming my days and nights when the leaves fell later that year.

That was probably the last time my enjoyment of a 4X game was pure and uncomplicated. Lately, I’ve been wondering where that joy has gone, and why so few games seem to add anything essential to those old experiences.

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In which Adam and I sit down with XCOM 2 lead designer Jake Solomon to dissect the strategy sequel. We discuss what it does well and some of the complaints levelled at it, hear about ideas tried and discarded during development, why story had more of a focus this time around and the continued importance of the original X-COM games. >

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XCOM 2 was made significantly more difficult late in its development cycle after playtesting suggested it was too easy, says the game’s lead designer. “I remember saying ‘you know what, we’re going to make the game a lot harder. We’re going to go back and make the game a lot harder on every level, because this game is not engaging people the way it should,'” Firaxis’ Jake Solomon told RPS. “Of course it triggered a fairly mad rush to balance things out, but I think when the game got more difficult then you started to see people engaging, you felt that spark of life.”

However, he acknowledged that some players might be struggling with the game as a result. “There were definitely moments of ‘is this too much?’ and how do we cater to people that maybe don’t want that experience?”

Solomon also felt that the presentation of the game’s difficulty settings might be to blame for this frustration. “I made a mistake, I think, by calling the lowest difficulty Rookie”.

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