This review was originally published 09/14/2010 on Game Observer (now defunct as of 05/13/2014). It has been republished here for archival purposes.

Defines a new genre: the "On Rails RPG." I hope it’s a short-lived genre.

The "Final Fantasy" name is synonymous with "quality." The idea that any FF game could ever be bad is tantamount to gaming blasphemy. The reputation is well-deserved, as the franchise has consistently provided incredibly compelling characters and story with rich, interesting worlds, and deep customization and character development options. The franchise has completely reshaped the fantasy role playing world. With Final Fantasy XIII, the developers took some radical new directions in every aspect of the game. Unfortunately, these changes severely hurt the game, since they practically take away the need for the player to do much of anything. It reminded me of the girl, Yorda, from the game Ico, being grabbed by the hand and dragged around by Ico all over the castle. In fact, the game could be considered a whole new genre: the "On Rails RPG."

I did not at all care for The Amazing Spider-Man movie that was released last year. In summary, the movie was too dark, it lacked the light-hearted fun that I expect from Spider-Man, and the romantic dynamic between Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy just didn't work in my mind. Apparently, I wasn't the only one who was disappointed in the movie because of these issues. At this year's San Diego ComicCon, the creators and cast of the sequel, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, revealed a lot of information about the new movie that actually impressed me! It just might be possible that the creators swallowed their pride, and took the criticism of the previous movie to heart.

This movie might actually look like a Spider-Man movie

The most noticeable and immediately obvious change in the overall look and feel of the new movie is the color palette. Most of the images from the film are sequences that take place during the day, so the images are bright and colorful. But the most important change is the complete redesign of Spidey's suit.

The new Spider-suit is "amazing"!

The new suit design is absolutely gorgeous! They totally nailed it this time around!

NAILED IT!

First and foremost, it is actually a direct adaptation of the comic book suit (minus the armpit web). It actually looks like something Peter Parker could have put together with the limited resources at his disposal rather than some kind of military-grade commando outfit. It looks like a spandex suit. The eyes are bigger and buggier and actually white instead of gray or silver, which just looks great and adds just the right amount of "cartoonish-ness" to the character. The colors could have been a little brighter, but I can live with that. Put simply: this is the best looking movie Spider-Man suit so far, hand down!

Over the weekend of June 15, I participated in a bi-weekly Civilization podcast called "PolyCast". This episode was number 175, and it was titled "In Response to That", and focused on responding to several forum topics. The episode can be streamed in its entirety at here.

It was an interesting show, full of confusion and technical difficulties when it was broadcast live; although some of those difficulties were edited out in order to fit into the standard 1-hour format for the show archive. The show started out with difficulties getting the audio to work in the live steam, and it took us around 20 minutes to get up and running. That was a great start to the show. On top of that, I suffered several power outages at my house that disconnected me from the group chat and caused me to stumble through the show's closing sign-off. Oops. I'll do better next time.

This was my second time on PolyCast. The first time I appeared on the show, I predicted Civ V's first expansion. This show wasn't quite as prophetical (is that a word?), but I can't be Nostradamus every day!

This review was originally published 10/17/2010 on Game Observer (now defunct as of 05/13/2014). In anticipation of the soon-to-be-released Brave New World expansion pack, the review has been republished here for archival purposes.

For better or worse, I probably won’t be able to go back to Civilization IV after playing this.

I want to put my review into perspective before I begin. I’m not a day-one Civilization player. I didn’t start playing the franchise until Civilization III (after it had already been out for several years and both expansions had been released). Civilization IV, however, is probably my favorite video game ever -- or at least, my favorite PC game. The only games that I’ve probably logged more hours with than Civ IV are the Sims 2 (plus all the expansions) and the cumulative sum of all the Madden games I’ve played since 2000.

My hopes for Civilization V were sky-high from the moment the first details of gameplay were revealed about a year ago. This was despite my misgivings about the vendor and edition-exclusive gameplay content -- gameplay content should NEVER be exclusive to a vendor or edition of a game; anybody who buys a game should have the right to play any content that is released for the game (even if they have to pay extra for it) regardless of where they got it or when they bought! But now is not the place to discuss industry politics -- I’ll save that rant for another day.

Back on-topic: Civilization V promised a lot: competitive, tactical combat with a totally new rule-set; intelligent, interactive AI leaders; a simpler, streamlined interface; and simpler, more streamlined gameplay without sacrificing any of the series’ trademark depth. I’ve been spending almost every free moment playing this game for the two weeks since release. Does it measure up?

I recently uploaded a new Civilization V mod onto the Steam Workshop. The new mod adds a National Park building that is unlocked with the Scientific Theory technology. The National Park can be built in cities that contain natural wonders, and the National Park will provide bonus Gold, Science, and Culture to all natural wonders within the city radius, as well as provide 3 global happiness.

National Park building adds gold, culture, and science to all natural wonders within the city,
as well as providing 3 global happiness.

UPDATE (July 18, 2013 9:35 PST): National Park updated for Brave New World expansion

I have updated this mod for the new Brave New World expansion. If you have BNW installed, the National Park will now be unlocked with the Railroad technology, and the building will improve the Tourism output of your city.

If you are still playing Gods & Kings, the mod does not change the prereq or functionality of the National Park for that expansion. Updating the mod should not affect saved games for G&K players.

Thanks for playing, and enjoy!

UPDATE (July 24, 2013 10:30 PDT): National Park changed to provide +5 tourism instead of percentage modifier

Version 4 of my National Park mod has been published. The update changes the 25% conversion of culture to tourism so that the building provides a static +5 tourism. This was accomplished by using the TechEnhancedTourism and EnhancedYieldTech properties so that Railroad (the unlocking tech) adds +5 tourism to the building. This is the same method that is used for the Eiffel Tower world wonder.

This was done so that the National Park will always provide a substantial tourism output to the city (equivalent to 2 1/2 Great Works), regardless of how culturally strong the city is. Since many Natural Wonders do not generate large amounts of culture, I couldn't expect that a city containing the National Park would necessarily have enough culture for the 25% conversion to be worthwhile.

The only major downside to this change is that the Airport and Hotel don't synergize quite as well with the National Park. Aw well, can't be perfect, I guess...

UPDATE (March 5, 2014 11:15 am PST): Yields of BNW natural wonders fixed

Apparently, I had neglected to include yield modifiers for the new Brave New World natural wonders. I have just uploaded a revision that addresses this issue so that all natural wonders in the game now include the bonus culture, gold, and science from the National Park building.

This fix is available in Version 5 of the National Park mod.

I did discover one other issue: it appears that Isabella's trait ("Seven Cities of Gold") does not double the bonus yield provided by the National Park. It seems that the core game does not check the Buildings_FeatureYieldChanges table when applying Spain's trait. This will likely require an update to the game DLL, which I do not have the time to implement at the moment. I hope to be able to update the mod to address this issue at a future date.