gaming

25 years of Rollercoaster Tycoon

by
A photo of The Big One, a rollercoaster at Blackpool Pleasure Beach

Last week, the game Rollercoaster Tycoon turned 25 years old. There’s a good retrospective from The Guardian, including interviews with two people who played the game in their youth and who now design rollercoasters, and the game’s designer, Chris Sawyer. Whilst its graphics felt dated even in 1999, it was well-received at the time and was a game that allowed plenty of flexibility with each scenario.

I have fond memories of playing Rollercoaster Tycoon – indeed, I spent much of the summer of 1999 playing through the various scenarios. And of course, I ended up buying both expansions, which added additional scenarios and new rides.

Rollercoaster Tycoon was the second of Chris Sawyer’s games that I played extensively. I also spent many hours playing Transport Tycoon, which was released in 1994 and came on floppy disks. It’s notable that Sawyer wrote most of the code for his games in Assembly, which meant that the games were light on system resources but also hard to port to other platforms.

More recently, I’ve played the open source clone, OpenTTD, which works on modern computers. And there’s OpenRCT2, which is an open source re-implementation of Rollercoaster Tycoon 2, although it uses the original data files.

Of course, realising that Rollercoaster Tycoon is now 25 years old is another sign that I’m getting old.

Pokémon Go

by
A screenshot of Pokemon Go on iOS

It probably won’t surprise you that I’ve spent quite a bit of the last week playing Pokémon Go. I downloaded it within hours of its official UK release; the screenshot shows how far I’ve got, and overall, I’m level 11. This is mostly through capturing Pokémon on the way to and from work, and on my lunch break.

Christine has been playing it a little longer. She has an Android phone, and so she was able to sideload the APK file from a third-party web site prior to its official release on the Google Play Store. She’s therefore slightly ahead of me, and has had the benefit of being on maternity leave to have more time to catch Pokémon.

I’m enjoying it, although it is further exacerbating my iPhone’s battery issues. As I write this, Pokémon Go has used 51% of my battery over the past 24 hours. Even before last week, I was struggling to get through a full day on one charge. To be fair, I use multiple Bluetooth devices with my phone, and use it on a train journey with frequent tunnels. So my iPhone’s battery was already getting a strong workout even before I started playing. But, notice how my phone was already down to 61% before 9am in the screenshot.

I haven’t added any Pokémon to gyms yet, and have only played a couple of battles. I’m waiting until I’ve collected more, and had the chance to upgrade or evolve them. Many of the nearby gyms have Pokémon with combat power over 1000 already, and my best is under 800.

It’s been fascinating to see how much of a phenomenon Pokémon Go has become. It’s already outperforming many other social apps, including Twitter and Tinder, in terms of how long people use it. And the news has been full of stories, both good and bad, about the game and its players. I never played Ingress, its spiritual predecessor, but I had friends who did. It seems that Niantic, its developer, has found the perfect balance between Ingress’ gameplay, and the popularity of the Pokémon franchise.

I don’t know how long I’ll keep playing. At the moment I’m still discovering new Pokémon and enjoying levelling them up – even if I’m sick of always finding Drowzees everywhere. Maybe the game will become less fun or stale after a while, but at the moment I like it.

Distracted in Draenor

by

Oops, looks like I forgot to post any new blog entries last week. This is mostly because a lot of my free time has been spent playing the new World of Warcraft expansion, Warlords of Draenor.

I didn’t play it much in the first week following release, which is probably a good thing as it meant that I avoided the worst of the launch issues, although it was almost two weeks’ after the expansion became available that the game settled down reliably. Apparently a higher than expected number of former players have returned to the game and Blizzard Entertainment hadn’t foreseen this, so there have been capacity issues. A few weeks on and the game is now playable without queueing, disconnects or lag, for the most part.

During the last expansion I effectively retired my main character, a human paladin called Hexorious, and mostly played on a shadow priest. Because it’s been so long since there has been any new content, I managed to level four characters to level 90, and another one was boosted using the offer that came with the purchase of the Warlords of Draenor expansion. However, I decided to go back to my main for this expansion and now he is level 100 – the other four still at 90.

Indeed the player character development features of this expansion make it less-alternative character friendly, in my view. The big new feature of the expansion is Garrisons – your own base of operations where you can construct buildings and gather resources. Building this up is a major time investment and not one that I’d necessarily want to repeat on another character. This is not to say it isn’t fun and I spend quite a bit of time every day tending to my garrison – starting and collecting work orders, sending followers on missions and building up resources to expand. My garrison is level 3 – maximum level – but the buildings are all level two as I haven’t come across any level three plans yet.

I think I would have enjoyed Warlords of Draenor even if it wasn’t very good, because it’s the first major bit of new content in the game for over a year and overcomes the staleness. But it is a really well-done expansion. So far I don’t quite think it’s my favourite – that would be Wrath of the Lich King – but it’s probably a close second, and certainly far better than Cataclysm which didn’t feel very immersive despite the decent story lines. I particularly like how we get to see the planet of Draenor in a different timeline – some bits still recognisable from Outland and some completely different but still familiar. And the non-player characters have a more defined back story – without wanting to reveal too many spoilers, Alliance characters should pay attention to Vindicator Maraad, especially paladins.

I’m still questing through Nagrand and have a number of bonus objectives to complete too, so even though my character is at the maximum level there is plenty more to do. And I’ve only just started setting foot into dungeons. So far, I’m really enjoying it, although hopefully I’ll have time to write things here too…

Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft

by
Screenshot of the game Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft

Some months ago, I was given access to the then-closed beta of Blizzard Entertainment’s new game Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft. If I’m honest, I didn’t really bother to play it until a few weeks ago.

The open beta cycle is now coming to an end, so presumably the final release of the game is imminent. Unlike other Blizzard games it’s expected to be free to play, but with in-app payments to be extras. It integrates with Blizzard’s Battle.net service so you can chat to friends playing other Blizzard games like World of Warcraft, Diablo III and Starcraft II whilst playing.

Hearthstone is, essentially, a turn-based card game. It can be played either against the computer, in practice mode, or against other players – either friends or random matches. So far, I haven’t ventured outside practice mode so I haven’t played against any other real people as yet.

The basic premise of the game is that you have a deck of cards, which belong to a class from one of the original nine World of Warcraft classes (i.e. no death knights or monks), and you play a hero of that class. As I started with the Mage deck, I played Jaina Proudmore. You then play against another hero of a different class – so choosing a Warrior opponent will give you Garrosh Hellscream. As you defeat other classes, you get access to those decks, until you can choose any of the nine class decks to play.

In the games, you start off with several cards, and receive at least one more card with each turn. Some cards produce minions, which can attack or defend you; others enable spells and abilities. You also gain a mana crystal with each turn – the number of crystals you have for each turn budgets the number of abilities you can use. If you defeat the opposing hero, you win.

It’s very similar to real world table top games, but with the bonus of having the computer enforce the rules. I occasionally play table top games but sometimes the rules can be bewildering, and some games have a steep learning curve that puts off more casual gamers like me. So I appreciate having my hand held by the game in this way. It’s also nice that it uses a familiar universe of characters, as all of them have appeared in the Warcraft game series at some point.

Hearthstone itself is relatively easy to play, and is controlled entirely with the mouse. I’m pretty sure it’s been designed so that it can be easily ported to tablets, although as yet it’s only playable on Windows and Mac OS X. Hopefully Android and iOS versions will be forthcoming when it’s finally released, as I think it would lend itself well to casual play on a tablet.

If you want to try Hearthstone before it exits beta, you’ll need to download it now. A Battle.net account is required, but it’s free to play.

Parting the Mists

by
The login screen for World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria, showing a 15 minute waiting time to login

I’m writing this blog post whilst waiting to connect to play a bit of World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria. Although the game has been out for several weeks, a combination of a lack of spare time and the server being full (as shown in the screenshot) with queue times exceeding an hour, has meant that my main character is only level 86. That said, I’ve managed to get around 12 hours of playtime in the new expansion, and, generally, I like it.

As you will know, if you’re a long-term reader, I’ve been a World of Warcraft player since June 2006, although I’ve not played as much since 2009 when I quit regular raiding and decided to just become a casual player. I’ve therefore played every expansion, and also the classic pre-expansion game as well.

Prior to Mists of Pandaria, the second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, was my favourite. It built on the improvements of the first expansion, The Burning Crusade, but had a much better story, and some great quests – the Wrathgate and ensuing Battle for Undercity being especially memorable. The third expansion, Cataclysm, wasn’t quite so good; there wasn’t much to it in terms of max-level content (the release of the expansion coincided with a complete rework of the original game content, so resources would have been split), and it felt disjointed as the new zones were spread out without a strong consistent story between them.

I’m therefore glad that Blizzard has reverted to its classic expansion formula for Mists of Pandaria, where there is plenty of new content, on one new continent. And there certainly seems to be plenty of content – I’m about 39% of the way to level 90 and I’ve only managed to finish the first zone and a bit of the second; there are seven new zones in all. And the quests in that first zone, although less strictly linear than before, all led to one big plot moment at the end which was great. Like with the first two expansions, you can’t use flying mounts until late on in the new content, which also helps to provide the immersive experience that Cataclysm lacked. Although I’m a long way away from level 90, I also gather that there’s a lot more to do when I get there.

…And now I’m connected. It took 20 minutes rather than 15. The screenshot lies.