Feb 25, 2011 Posted by matt in featured, games, nintendo ds

World domination at your own pace

I don’t know if you follow PC gaming much, but there’s this whole, booming category called real-time strategy, or RTS. And as far as world domination goes, it’s kind of the new hotness. Rather than playing your turn, ending it, and sitting around for a half hour while the computer moves its armies around, everything just keeps happening simultaneously. In REAL TIME. I picked up Age of Empires for the PC, and it was pretty fun, but I have to admit that playing it stressed me out. Just trying to keep track of where all my little guys were at any given time, much less what any of them were actually doing, required a particular skill that I couldn’t seem to master with any grace. It was like operating some kind of bloodthirsty, musket-wielding daycare center.

So here’s my secret video game shame, everybody: I prefer my strategy games TURN-BASED, yo. I like taking as much time as I want to figure out where each little guy is supposed to go, and if waiting around for the computer (or, God forbid, another actual human being) to do the same is the price I have to pay for that, so be it. I’ve played a fair amount of Civilizations II-IV (although I guess they’re up to V now?), and some old game for the Mac called Deadlock, where you were played as one of 5 alien races competing for space on a cramped planet. AQnd the old-school Warcraft (before there was a whole world of it). But I think my all time favorite TBS games (I’ve decided to honor the category with that acronym, even though I’ve never actually seen it used, in order to pretend that it’s a valid computer wargaming lifestyle choice and not just the video game equivalent of me shaking my fist and yelling at any game made after 2005 to get off of my lawn) are the Age of Empires games for the Nintendo DS: Age of Kings, and its sequel, Mythologies.

I know they’re my favorites because I turned one of them on the other day after not playing it for at least a solid year, and that was pretty much Wednesday. Seriously, it’s like Narnia in there, where time passes at a rate that has no bearing on the regular world. But in reverse? The point is, I started first thing in the morning and checked the clock maybe three times — 8:45, 11:00 and 2 p.m. You start by building a town center, and balance the need to gather food and gold with the need to build military units — the more you focus on resources and technology, the sooner you’ll have access to the really good stuff, but if you err too far on the side of nation building, your neighbor (who has been focusing his time on shock and awe) will storm in and just kill your ass. It’s like strategy game boiled down to the essentials. The fact that these games represent the full-throttle RTS experience of the PC Age of Empires scaled way down to run on a tiny handheld system isn’t lost on me. But for me they’re perfect.

Both of these games have their charms — Mythologies has far superior graphics and way cooler special units (um, hello, LASER GATORS). But I prefer the actual gameplay of Age of Kings just a bit, since you’re not limited to designated spots on which to build new cities, and there’s nothing quite like dropping a castle right on your opponent’s doorstep (and then increasing its defense by researching something called “murder holes”). Either way, though, you really can’t go wrong. If you have a DS, and hunger for world domination even a little, find a copy used somewhere.

Unless, of course, you have anything that needs to get done this weekend.

3 Responses to “World domination at your own pace”

1. kormantic says:

   Feb 25, 2011 at 12:09 pm

   VALKYRIES RULE.

   That is all.

   Reply
2. matt says:

   Feb 25, 2011 at 2:10 pm

   I’m pretty fond of the Sphynxes, because they TRAMPLE BUILDINGS LIKE IT IS GOING OUT OF STYLE.

   Okay, I change my mind — Mythologies is my favorite! And I challenge you to a game AS SOON AS YOU GET HOME

   Reply
   • kormantic says:

     Feb 26, 2011 at 12:44 pm

     The giant boars are kind of my darlings, though.

     Reply