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Mar 4th, 2010 at 18:44:36 - Uno (Other) |
The game ties into the human competitive spirit by pitting the players against one another. By adding elements that not only decrease your own card count, but also increase another player’s card count, oftentimes there will be “friendly” confrontations between the players. The competitive portion also automatically generates interest in the game. Both sessions I played with my wife, who is very competitive, and we always ended up bickering. At one point she said, “If you play one more Draw Two you’ll be cooking supper tonight!” Therefore, somehow she ended up winning that game. It is because of the way that card games have brought people together to socialize that has made them so popular. It is for this same reason that they have stayed around for such a long time, even though we have video games. There have actually been implementations of Uno on several video consoles including Game Boy, Playstation Network, Xbox Live Arcade, and a few mobile phone versions.
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Mar 3rd, 2010 at 21:53:38 - Uno (Other) |
Uno is a card game that can be played with 2 to 10 players that uses a special deck of cards. The normal cards are number 0-9 and come in red, green, blue, and yellow. Then there are special cards: Draw Two makes the next player draw two cards, Skip skips the next player, Reverse causes the order of play to change directions, Wild lets the player choose what the current color is, and Wild Draw Four lets the player choose the current color and causes the next player to draw four cards. Gameplay starts with the dealer giving every player seven cards. The dealer then takes the top card from the left over cards (the stack) and places it face up next to the stack. Play then starts in a clockwise direction from the dealer. The current player must play a card that is of the same color or the same number as the card that is on top of the cards that are face up and have been played, or the player may play a Wild card. As a player is playing their next to last card they must say “uno”, which is “one” in Spanish. If a player forgets to say “uno” and another player says “uno” first, the player that did have one card must draw two cards from the stack. When a player lays down his or her last card, all of the other players must count up the face value of their remaining cards and record the number of points they received. Once a player reaches a predetermined score, the game is over.
As with most card games, there is a certain amount of skill involved, as well as luck. The luck element comes into play, because the player is restricted by the luck of the draw, but there are strategic elements to the game as well. One simple strategy is to play the highest number that you possibly can for a given turn, that way if you do lose, the cards you have left in your hand will count the least toward your score. Often times a player will save cards that will cause the next player to draw cards until close to the end of the game, so that when the player is close to “uno,” they can be forced to draw more cards. When playing with two players, there are additional strategies that do not exist when there are more players. For instance, if you play the Skip card or a card that makes the other player draw a card, that means that it will go to the next player, which is yourself. This allows for “combos” to be made, such as Wild Draw Four, Skip, Skip, Draw Two, and then followed by a normal card.
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Jan 28th, 2010 at 19:37:05 - Warzone 2100 (PC) |
Warzone 2100 also has a multiplayer system. The user has the option of filling opposing spots with either other humans or computers. The multiplayer games really bring about a completely different game. This is due in part to the persistent base that you have in the campaign. In the campaign you mainly just have to worry about keeping your defenses and units up with the latest technologies. But the pace is much faster in multiplayer games. This is for multiple reasons. One is that you have to build a base from scratch. Another is the technologies aren’t slowing being given to you; instead you have full access to the entire technology tree. Of course it is a hierarchical structure so you must research the earlier technologies to have access to the later ones. But due to the significantly faster pace that technology is acquired the game speed is greatly increased. There is also typically a rush to acquire as many of the limited oil sources as possible, the players must build an oil derrick on top of an oil source to receive a slow steady income.
There are two popular playing styles when playing multiplayer: rush and turtle. Many times the host for a multiplayer game will put rush or turtle in the title to attract that style of player. A rush game is just that a rush. The players spend virtually no time building up their bases and spend their time from the very start rushing to attack the enemy. Due to the fact that units and buildings are so weak before any technologies are researched it doesn’t take a very large force to do enough damage. Typically the idea behind a rush attack isn’t to annihilate the enemy is a single attack. But to have several small attacks that cause the other player to have to spend their limited resources to replace what they have lost. One perfectly timed attack can set back a player so much that they will not be able to recover enough before the next attack. The other style is called turtle. It was originally a term used to make fun of people who played the game so slowly. But eventually the people that played that way took up the term to describe themselves and started putting it in the title of the games they played. It was not uncommon to see in a title “Turtle: 1hr”. That meant there was a one hour build time, meaning it was against the rules to attack any opposing player until the game had been going for one hour. That time was supposed to be spent researching, building up the bases, defenses, and amassing armies. Something else that was common, and often comical, was a rush style player would join a turtle game agreeing to the build time limit and then rushing the opposing player. This would usually result in some very colorful conversations.
Although the only change from the campaign mode to multiplayer was the releasing of technology it resulted in very different playing styles. The single player campaign did do a good job of preparing the player for multiplayer by introducing them to majority of the technology tree and attempting to teach the player some of the strengths and weaknesses of different types of units.
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Jan 28th, 2010 at 19:37:45.
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Jan 27th, 2010 at 21:02:55 - Warzone 2100 (PC) |
Warzone 2100 is a real-time strategy game that was released in 1999 and developed by Pumpkin Studios. It takes place after the majority of the human race has been eradicated by nuclear war. The user plays the role of a commander of a group that call themselves "The Project". Initially the player must defend themself and mount assaults against a poorly armed militia that called scavengers. Early on in the game it becomes apparent that the scavengers are being supplied more advanced weaponry by an unknown force. Later in the game it is discovered that that unknown force is being supplied by another unknown force. This process happens 4 times in the game. The final organization is called Nexus which is actually led by one of the people responsible for the nuclear war that almost eradicated the human race.
Many single player rts campaigns get very repetitive. At the start of the board you build a base and gather enough resources to build a large enough army to wipe out the enemy. At the start of the next board you do the same thing, and so on. One of the things that is different about Warzone 2100 is that you have a persistent home base. From the very start of the first board you start building the base that you will have throughout the rest of that particular campaign, the complete single player campaign is actually divided into 3 campaigns. There are some missions where you must send some of your troops off into an explored territory in a transport ship and then at the end of the mission fly them back to your home base. On other boards the enemy will build bases or send troops into your home territory. Typically you will do 2-3 of one style then do 2-3 of the other style. This changes thing up enough so that things don't seem repetitive, but it doesn't changed too often that the flow is slowed. One major thing that helps the flow of the game is persistent home base, it allows for quicker transition from board to board.
One thing that needs some work is unit path finding. If you select a group of troops and send them to the opposite side of the map, invariably one of them will get stuck on a wall or go down a path that is a dead end. Also if you have two units that are facing directly towards each and tell both of them to move forward they will run into each other and will not move. Usually in either case if you tell the unit to go to its destination again it will find the correct path.
To keep things fresh as the campaign progresses the player will collect pre-war "artifacts" that they must then research, this often times then leads to new discoveries. The technology is slowly released to the player, but fast enough that user must make decisions whether it is better to keep their current units or recycle some units to build stronger or different styles of units. The user also has the option to customize the units that they build. There are 4 types of tracks (wheeled, half-track, track, and hover), 12 types of armor (small, medium, and large for each of the 4 playable factions), and 19 types of weapons (each of which have several subtypes) that can be discovered through research throughout the campaign. The user can enter a design mode where they design the units they wish to able to build in their factories.
The single player campaign is very enjoyable and keeps the player drawn into the game world. The path finding could use some work, but the good points of the game far out way the bad. The flow of the game and the ever expanding technology really makes the user want to continue playing.
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