Live Long and Prosper

So today I am not going to write about any games.

I have been trying to cut down playing games a bit for the past week or so because I think Mass Effect 3 had a a MASSIVE EFFECT on my sleep which led me to sleepwalking (I think I was running away from the husks). I am not going to go too much into it but lets just say Vivid imagination + gaming until 2am + side of the bed + head = a lot of blood, dozen stitches and a week off from work.

Instead today I am going to rant a bit about SCI-FI series… and the lack of.

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Star Trek (Mainly Voyager and Deep Space Nine for me personally), V, Farscape, Babylon 5 and Stargate SG-1 were the best TV series I was lucky to grow up with, they really created the Sci-fi geek out of me that I am today.

In fact I would even throw X-files to the group… I think Fox Mulder probably was my first TV crush.

Then in the beginning of this millennium something happened and all the sci-fi series either turned into total garbage or got canceled before they even reached any kind of “cult” status.

I was forced to watch stuff like Roswell and Dark Angel. Not saying that either of the series were particularly bad but I can’t put them even in the same sentence as the ones mentioned above. These were bubblegum sci-fi which mothers and fathers sit down to watch with their kids… not the awesome geeky sci-fi that makes grown up men dress up in tight space suits and go meet fellow enthusiasts.

I never fell as low as Angel and Smallville though, I watched them a few episodes and decided they were not worth the time of the day (for me at least).

  

I was so happy when I found out that there was going to be a new Star Trek series (Enterprise). I followed it regardless it being a bit tedious at times and was really gutted when it was cancelled after the 4^th season.

I was also over the moon when I found out that they were making a new series for V. It was a big surprise that ABC decided to cancel it as it was doing pretty well. It was left in such a cliffhanger as well that I was almost tempted to join the protests people had against ABC for canceling it. There are still several websites and petitions by the fans to revive this TV series so I am hoping one day we will see what actually happened to humankind (https://www.facebook.com/ProjectAliceV and http://geek-news.mtv.com/?p=22544).

Does Lost make it to the Sci-fi category?

I have been thinking about this as to me Sci-fi always have to be about space and great adventures to the galaxies far far away, but some people claim that LOST definitely is sci-fi… and I guess with all the gizmos, time travelling and the such, it kind of goes to that genre. I quite enjoyed Lost, so much that I have watched the series twice. The 1^st time around I found the ending extremely boring and felt the series was a bit of a flop but when I recently watched it again with my boyfriend, James (who had never seen it before!!) I actually paid attention to different things (as I already knew what was happening sort of) and found it quite brilliant.

I do hope they bring something as mind bending to the TV again sometime soon as Lost was.

Now, few days ago we started to watch Stargate: Universe (Which in our household first was Stargate: University - don’t ask me how I got that - and then in my sleepy state one morning I asked James if he wanted to watch the Star Trek: University....[srsly wtf, I MUST have hit my head]).  I quite liked the pilot and I was sold from the word go as it had one of my favorite actors in it (Robert Carlyle). Regardless the fact he plays a bit of a psycho scientist in it, I really liked his character which caused some heated debates in our household.

Now 10 episodes later I unfortunately feel the series has nothing new to offer to the sci-fi world.

The main storyline is like Star Trek Voyager (stuck on the other side of the galaxy trying to get home) and the character profiling is like Battlestar Galactica (grazy science dude, strong leader, rebelling civilians who come across like morons, a love triangle and a few political issues to deal with).

The episodes are individuals (i.e. there is no real storyline to follow, except that they are trying to get back to earth) and usually follow the same pattern: There is a problem, someone gets hurt while trying to fix it, everything is fine in the end.

I am really desperately hoping they would come across some enemy that would follow them throughout the whole series (like Borg in Star Trek, Cylons in Galagtica and Goa’uld in SG-1) but so far the biggest thread they have had was some disease they got from the water they brought to the ship from some alien planet… LIKE SERIOUSLY!?

Well, I went to Wikipedia today and found out that this series as well only lived as far as the end of 2^nd season… So I might as well stop watching now because I bet nothing that interesting is going to happen.

It is a sad world we live in…

Now my question is, am I missing something big that I should be aware of?

I feel that all the Sci-fi series I start to watch let me down in one way or another.

The only slightly positive sci-fi experience I have had in the past year was Battlestar Galactica, which was great for the 1^st and 2^nd season (So good I actually watched them in one week), but even that got worse and worse the further it went and when I finally reaced the final episode I couldn't wait it to be over.

I feel that there is nothing worth watching in TV anymore (unless it’s comedy, as I quite like stuff like Big Bang Theory and surprisingly the New Girl – don’t judge me until you watch a few episodes, I would go as far as compare It to Friends!).

Like… I can’t believe there are boring soaps, crap like Jeremy Kyle shows, “scripted” reality shows like Made in Chelsea, a dozen different vampire series, another dozen different crime investigation shows that gets recycled in the screens year after year but not a single good sci-fi show that is worth to actually watch.

If you go to TV.com and check out the Most popular Science Fiction shows on TV the number 1 is WALKING DEAD!!!! Which is about Zombies… 2^nd is Doctor Who, which quite frankly deserves its place even if it is just for the long history it has (I never got into it, maybe because I only heard of Doctor Who when I moved to UK), 3^rd is some series called Grimm which is a supernatural crime drama (really now?!) and 4^th is FRIGGIN DRAGONBALL Z!

Like what the hell world?!

I wish I could write to the mighty TV God a complaint letter for neglecting this massive group of tights wearing sci-fi fans as it really is time we got something good to our TV screens!!

SimCity (2013)

To anyone who has never heard of SimCity I have two things to say: 1) Shame on you, you have a massive hole in general knowledge! and 2) If you were a child who used to play in the sandbox building houses and roads, this game is for you!

The basic idea of all the SimCity games is that you build a city and then run it. It is a simulation of a city (hence the name). There are some scenarios you can play to give yourself some tasks (like make people happy or increase the tax revenue this and this much) but I find the most enjoyable part of these games is simply building a small village and turning it into a succesful megacity.

It might sound simple, building houses and roads etc. but it gets more challenging once you have to start dealing with budgets, power shortages, air pollution and all the other issues that we face in the real world as well.

Back in 1993 (when we still had a ancient intel 386 computers) I remember installing SimCity 2000 in dos (c:/cd simcity.exe ... *pulls hairs, how did these commands go again!!?? c:/Format c.*.*!!!!!!)



SimCity 2000


10 years later (This time already in the Windows era - I believe it was either Windows 2000 or Windows XP I had back then) I installed the shiny new SimCity 4 on my PC.




SimCity 4

 Now, another 10 years later (so the time flies!) I rushed to the Game shop on my lunch break on Friday and bought me "still warm from the oven" copy of the newest SimCity. I opted for the Collectors Edition because I am a fool for tin boxes.

The launch of this game has been widely criticized and Amazon even stopped selling the game for a while because people were buying the game but weren't able to play it at all. I had my concerns, but I decided to make up my own mind.

So I got home that evening and began my mission....

Installation:

The game was fairly quick to install. I already had an Origin account because I have been playing Sims3 through them, but my boyfriend made a new account for himself and it took maybe 5 minutes, including the installation of the Origin Software to his laptop.

The unique thing about this new SimCity is that you play the game online. It's not really a multiplayer game but you have the option to play with friends (will go into detail later).
As great as this feature is, it also has it's setbacks; you require a constant connection to the internet to play the game - even if you want to play on your own. And THIS is the thing that was causing so much trouble for Maxis - sorry EA, who runs the show nowadays for SimCity.

Ok so, once the game was installed I was already itching to start building my city, however I was a bit mortified when I saw the "now on queue for 30:00 minutes" note on my screen.
Well, at least I had time to have some dinner!

After my chicken kebabs I returned to the PC and the little child got over me again when I saw the countdown only had 2 minutes left. All the servers were yellow (i.e. pretty full) but none of them were down - great!

I managed to get to the main menu of the game when the little sign of major annoyance appeared on the upper left corner of my screen "Servers are down!" And then this lovely thing appeared on my screen:

I starter to understand the frustration of all the angry people on Amazon reviews...

I was determined to play the game so I kept on trying. I changed to another server (Europe East 3) and after few pulled hairs and several swear words later I managed to make my way through the tutorial!

After that, I don't know what magic tricks EA did to the servers (well besides adding a LOT more servers) as I had no issues loggin on what-so-ever... and for the whole weekend I was completely sucked into the world of SimCity.

Playing SimCity:

So, you start with a piece of land which has no buildings, only a road leading to it and if you are lucky, train tracks going through it.
You have no goal what to do, if you want, you can just sit there and admire the countryside.

OR you could start building stuff.
First task on your list is to make roads, build residential houses and add some industrial buildings so people have somewhere to work.
The way it happens in SimCity games is that you draw "zones" which determine which kind of buildings the little Sims will build to the area as they move into your village.
You don't really have to worry about people moving in, it seems that they have been queuing to move in to this area at least as long as it took you to queue in to build it for them.

The thing I really like about this SimCity compared to the old ones is the level of detail you can go in with every Sim that moves to your town. You can actually see their little van driving down from the highway, unloading the materials to the empty slot and start building their house. They have a name and they have feelings, you can see what they are thinking and what makes them happy/sad by just clicking them.

As the Sims move into your village they soon start to request some basic things that we take for granted, such as water and electricity. You need to quickly build powerplant and water towers (But what about sewage and rubbish collection? - well... yes, you need to take care of that too!!!).

In the old SimCity you had to draw the electricity lines under the ground, same with waterpipes, you had to take care of them and fix any broken bits - luckily in this new version this task has been removed and as long as you have a road leading to a building they will have all the services.

As you see your village get bigger the money that was given to you in the beginning (50 000 Simoleons) starts to shrink with alarming rate. It costs A LOT to build roads and provide expensive services to the growing demand from everyone moving in.

I soon realized what the goal (at least for me) in this game was... I wanted to make a lot of money! But it turned out to be a lot more difficult than I first had anticipated.

There are many different routes you can take. You can make your city a tourist hub with all the sights around the world (such as Sydney Opera house and Big Ben), or turn it into the new Las Vegas with massive hotels and casinos. Your city can find success in becoming the educational hub of the region, specializing in building high-tech items. Or you can mine ore and coal or drill oil and sell the goods by trading them to the rest of the region. Which ever route you take, there are always negative side effects to the choices you make and finding the right balance can be quite challenging.

My first city was very chaotic. I wanted everything. I built all the services, educated my sims, gave them parks and once I started to struggle for money I increased the taxes which made everyone mad at me and soon I felt like starting over (doh!)

My 2nd city was a bit better, I decided to go for the educational route, since afterall educated sims recycle, commit less crime and get sick less often, I can only win, right?
Wrong.
Educated Sims also refuse to work in factories and mines, they demand expensive parks and public transportation for less pollution... I had more wealthy Sims but my industry was struggling to find workers and people started to move out. All I was left with snobby upper class who didn't want to pay such high taxes and all they wanted to do was walk their poodle in a overpriced boulevard.

When I created my 3rd city I had a battleplan in mind. I was not going to educate my Sims at all and if they wanted to spend all their days shoplifting they were free to do so, I would just ignore it.
I chose an area with a lot of ore and coal to mine and started a little village that was only concentrated on mining.
I kept my Sims stupid (sounds pretty harsh...) so they happily kept working in my mines and earning me big bucks! In no time I had so much money that I didn't know what to do with it.
I had a massive problem with not being able to provide enough houses for everyone who wanted to move in and soon I was faced with a problem of running out of space.

Now, all my 3 cities were in the same region, one was a chaotic "a bit of everything town" another was full of snobby upperclass elites with high education and the last one was a massive mining city with rednecks living in trailer parks... Sounds pretty realistic to me!

Sometime on Saturday my boyfriend decided to buy the game as well and he joined my region. He built his massive metropolis around gambling and tourism. People from my cities went to visit his city for shopping and gambling while all the criminals from his city came to my snobbyville to loot their upperclass cutlery.

And this is the thing about playing SimCity online I quite like. You can share resources and plan how you want to rule the region. If one city can't support itself for some reason, another city can provide much needed funds. Or like for example my hillbillyvillage was able to collect all the rubbish from the fancypantsland so they didn't have to have a garbage dump in their neighbourhood. And my police officers went to my boyfriends city to catch all the arsonists and murderers that were planning to move to my cities.




My miner town with its trading port in front and my boyfriend "New Las Vegas" in the horizon


Conclusion:

After the little hickups to actually log on the game, I found SimCity a very pleasant experience. I am a seasoned SimCity fan so it was nothing revolutionary, but I had forgotten how addicting it is to see your city grow bigger and overcome all the obstacles. You can easily spend a day playing around with different options and layouts for your city - so much that I actually forgot to have lunch on Saturday!

Having said that, there are some things that this newest addition to the SimCity series left me a bit cold with.
Like for example, In the old SimCity you had newspaper articles pop up from your city, which I found really interesting because it gave you tips on what you should be doing differently.
Yes you have your advisors saying "You have a worker shortage" but it took me a long time to actually realize that certain level of wealth in the neighbourhood led to people not wanting to work in low paid jobs (I know, quite self explanatory in real life but when you are playing a game you don't really think that way).
Also EA removed the "cheetah" speed (for now) which makes the game really drag sometimes. Often you need to collect taxes to be able to build something and if that something is for example a recycling centre that costs 65 000 and you are earning 500 per game hour you can go to the shop and back and your city is still collecting the money for it.
Furthermore... living in London I have to ask this... if there is so many people demanding for public transportation why there is no underground network?! We demand the tube!!!

Would I recommend it?

Don't buy it just yet (but buy it in the future!)

Not because the price is still high - I am sure the price will stay high for a long time because this is one of those games you can pick up one rainy afternoon even 5 years from now and still enjoy it as much as you did the 1st time - but because the servers are (at least at the moment) still a bit buggy.

It's not one of those games that you play months and months (or years) like you do with some RPGs. I played it one Saturday and now I probably won't pick it up for a week or two - but I know when I pick it up I will hear myself say "just a bit more..." and end up going to bed at 3 am still wondering how I could have prevented the people moving out from my city after a zombie attack...

Games

Big gaming companies have finally awoken to the reality that there are more and more girls and women who play games - yay!
I am going to review some of them from a very female perspective with very little technical knowledge nor experience with building computers, graphics design nor any other specialized field that some other game reviewers have.

Long story short, I play games because I like playing games. I am not an expert in any field, I pretty much know how to turn on the PC and press "play" but I am not a total blondie either - I for example know how to build a spellcast for my whitemage in FFXI ;)

I own PlayStation 3, Nintendo DS, PSP, PC, Laptop (specs coming later) and a Samsung S3 smartphone.

About me: I am a young woman who plays games. I work and live in London, UK. I am not obese slob (like Eric Cartman in the Wow episode!) nor do I have any serious addiction (at least at the moment!) to any RPGS (Like Penny did in Big Bang Theory to Age of Conan!).
I do get engulfed sometimes to gaming if something really takes my fancy but I try to keep my real life in check as well.

I mainly like fantasy RPGs (big Final Fantasy fan!), but recently have also played a lot of SWTOR and last weekend I wasted the whole weekend by playing the newest SimCity (which by the way is pretty addicting regardless the problems everyone seems to have with logging on for the moment). I also have soft spot for games such as Civilization, Red Alert, Starcraft, Settlers, Diablo series etc. without forgetting my secret guilty pleasure MARIO! I play quite a bit also with my smartphone, mainly to pass time while commuting to work.

Occasionally I might write something about movies or TV shows I watch.
I am a huge Family Guy fan (and American Dad) and everytime Family Guy is on, yes... I always sing the tune with the show like a 5 year old.
I like Sci-fi, loved Farscape (yes!) and Babylon 5. Star Trek Voyager is my favourite of Star Treks. Loved Lost the 1st time I watched it and actually liked it more the 2nd time because I knew what I was looking for. Battlestar Galactica was awesome for a bit but they dragged it too long. Same goes with Heroes, which was brilliant to begin with. ANYWAY - I shall write about all these later.

Thanks for following my site and I appreciate all the feedback and comments that I get!