In anticipation of the upcoming Brave New World expansion pack for Sid Meier's Civilization V, I've been working on some mod projects.

Today, I published a small resource mod called "Copper Buff" that improves the effectiveness of the copper resource in the game. Currently, copper is a fairly weak luxury resource, since it doesn't get buffed by any buildings in the game. This mod adjusts the Forge and Mint buildings to provide a bonus towards nearby copper as follows:

• Forge: +1 Production from copper worked by the city.
• Mint: +1 Gold from copper worked by the city.

Both buildings can be constructed in a city if copper is present within the city's borders.

Forge and Mint improve nearby copper.

The mod can be downloaded from Civilization V's in-game mod browser by searching for "copper buff", or through Steam by visiting MegaBearsFan's Workshop (http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=144822605).

I've heard that a lot of players are complaining about the save system of Capcom's new Resident Evil 6. I haven't played the game yet because RE5 sucked, and the demo for RE6 sucked, so I can't comment on that game. What I can do, though, is take a moment to reflect on the genius of the classic Resident Evil save system.

Most of my readers know me as a Silent Hill fan [boy], so it's uncommon for me to heap praise upon Resident Evil. But I actually am a big fan of the original game (it was one of my favorite PlayStation games). Maybe some day, I'll get around to writing about how Resident Evil 4 killed my interest in the franchise...

Resident Evil took a unique path in terms of it's save-game system. I'm not sure if it was the first to use this particular style of system, but it was definitely one of the best implementations that I played!

During the PSX era of the late 90's, game saves generally took one of 3 forms:

• Level saves: games like Devil May Cry and many level / mission-based action games and arcade fighters required the player to complete a whole level or mission before being allowed to save. This broke the game up into distinct segments and create natural stopping points.
• Pause menu saves: games like Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy VII (in the Overworld), and most sports games gave players the ability to save in the pause screen (or other menu). Sometimes there would be restrictions, such as not being able to save when enemies are present, but this is generally the easiest save system from a player's standpoint. Unless you forget to save...


Ico allows players to save by making the characters rest on these magic couches. Both Ico and Yorda must sit in order for a save to be permitted.

• Save points: many RPGs and action/adventure games such as Ico or Silent Hill required the player to activate a specific item located in the game world in order to save. This had the advantage of giving the player a visual reminder to save, but limited the ability to save and forced the player to backtrack if you wanted to save before reaching a new save point.

Resident Evil falls firmly in that last category, but with one significant (and game-changing) caveat: in addition to only being able to save at pre-defined locations, the ability to save was also tied to a consumable inventory item!

The scoring system that I've been using for video game reviews on this blog is a holdover from the reviews that I wrote for Game Observer (now defunct as of 5/13/2014). I'm not a big fan of using scoring systems for reviews, since reviews are inherently subjective, and it's very hard to quantify the quality of a creative work with any degree of precision. I can rate a game on technical levels, but that still doesn't tell whether a game is "good" or not. A game can be technically perfect, but not very "good"; alternatively, a game could be technically inferior, but is just more fun to play, and is thus "better". In fact, sometimes, my scores don't really match up with how I actually feel about the game because I include categories for technical executions of the game that may not have any real relevance with respect to whether I like a game.

Unfortunately, however, attention spans being what they are, a simple score does serve a function for some readers who are either unable to read the full text of my reviews, or who are unwilling to read the full text of my reviews.

You may have noticed that my scoring system changed slightly. I'm still going to reuse the basic scoring system in which I grade a game based on a set of five criteria and then average those criteria scores into a single overall score. However, I've changed the criteria slightly, and would like to spend a moment to define what these categories represent.

My reviews will now start using 4 pre-set criteria, and an additional "wildcard" criteria.

If you’re not completely sick of reboots by now, here’s another one to sink your teeth into: Capcom’s DmC (Devil May Cry). The franchise is only 10 years old, but nothing’s too young for a reboot these days (see: Amazing Spider-Man). The original Devil May Cry still stands proud and tall as one of the shining gems of the PS2’s library, and I would even argue that it might be the single best game that Capcom has ever made! I’m sure Mega Man and Street Fighter fans will argue though. Bottom line is that Devil May Cry single-handedly created a whole new genre of game: the "stylized action" genre. It was the first in what would become a long line of spectacle action games that would eventually contain names like God of War, Bayonetta, Lollipop Chainsaw, Batman: Arkham Asylum (to an extent), and Heavenly Sword. That last title is of particular interest because its developer, Ninja Theory, is the developer for this new DmC game (Capcom is only publishing).

Table of Contents

• A new Devil May Cry
  • A new Dante
  • What a Brave New World that has such demons in it
• Offended by the O’Reilly Factor
• Alright, so how does the game play?
  • Gameplay is worthy of the name, but difficulty isn’t
  • Giving you options, then taking them away
  • Out of the way bonuses
• A unique aesthetic
• A good effort, but pales in comparison to the original

New Dante sucks.

For those of you paying attention, EA's launch of SimCity was a disaster. Server problems combined with the always-online DRM requirement prevented many gamers from even being able to play the game, while others had to wait hours just to connect, more suffered crashes and glitches, and still others lost save files (and hours of progress) due to failures in specific servers that housed their game files.

It got so bad, online retailer Amazon.com pulled the game from its site, citing the unplayable state of the servers. They've since reinstated the game, but with a warning to consumers, and a lowly 1 1/2-star rating (as of the time of this writing).

Having participated in one of the closed Betas for the game, I was fully aware of the potential for problems, since Beta users were plagued by server issues that prevented many players from even being able to login to test the game. I had to wait hours before the server was operational long enough for me to load a city, and even then, I got booted off several times. It was incredibly frustrating, especially with the knowledge that the Beta would only last through the weekend, so I was under pressure to login as quickly as possible and spend as much time as possible with the game before the Beta ended.

One of the best features of the game is the snap-to-grid for building roads that lets you keep your roads nice and parallel, even if they curve!

So I fully anticipated server problems with the launch, since I didn't trust EA to put any real effort into making sure the game would work. This is the same EA that won a consumerist award for the "Worst Company in America" in 2012! And deservedly so! Despite the servers not being up to par during the two closed Betas, EA still seemed to think the online infrastructure was suited for a full retail launch. Boy were they wrong!