Due to a strange quirk of my gaming history, I never played a numbered Civilization game beyond the original Civ (also known as Sid Meier’s Civilization: Build an Empire to Stand the Test of Time). That game I utterly consumed back in the early 90s when it was released, probably completing the game with every possible combination of civilization and victory condition.

Civ II, for example, wasn’t released until 1996, five years after its predecessor (I had spent much of that intervening period playing Civ), and at that point Quake, and then the mod Quake 40K/Chapter Honour (boy, there’s a site I haven’t seen in ages), become my time-sucking game of choice.

During most periods of my life, I’ve tried to consistently play games in a variety of genres—in the 90s, I was mainly into adventure games, shooters, and strategy games—but I’ve also generally had one game that lurks in the background, filling the cracks in my gaming time between this title or that title. Civ was probably the first game to hold that honor. (more…)

In a rare moment of scheduling success, my co-hosts and I at the Played Podcast have lived up to our ostensible weekly format, releasing our latest episode in the week following the previous episode.  Anyone who follows the show will recognize this as something of an achievement for us.

This week’s episode is number 43, and includes Comic-Con talk as well as residual E3 affairs (The Conduit, Fallout 3, Fable 2), and discussion of currently-played games including Siren: Blood Curse, Space Invaders Extreme, Civilization Revolution, Ticket to Ride, Catan, and Everyday Shooter.  Go check it out.

I think I’ve had my monthly fill of cutscenes.  In the last six hours or so, I completed both Metal Gear Solid 4 and Mass Effect.

And then I won three rounds of Catan.

Anyone who has played the Xbox Live Arcade board game adaptation Catan, about which I have previously posted, is surely familiar with the neverending admonishment, “Not now with you.” For reasons completely beyond my comprehension, NPCs will often not simply reject your resource trade offer, but will spew that rejection alongside a finger-wagging emoticon. There seems to be no rhyme or reason behind it - my friends and I have tried to apply all sorts of empirical theories, to no avail. Alexander (The Great, presumably) seems to be the most dogged of these naysayers.

Anyway, after a few hours of Catan last night, I couldn’t get that endless drone out of my mind, so I constructed this unnecessary non-sequitur:

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I’ve never really had any familiarity with that tradition of specialty board games like Settlers of Catan and its ilk, those games that always seem to have German designers and feature strong economic elements–like a lot of niche hobbies, it’s absolutely huge once you become aware of it, but if somebody involved doesn’t induct you into it, you are extremely unlikely to ever become aware of it.

I took my first (and, so far, only) steps into that world when a friend of mine showed me Alhambra, positing that we, The Guys, who had never played these sorts of games, would enjoy it. He was right. I spent about a month in San Diego earlier this year hanging out with my old high school buddies, and we played that Goddamned game about twice a day every day for weeks straight. It was then that the corruption seen in this post’s headline was spawned. (more…)