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If you guessed “Moxie accomplished absolutely no housework this weekend,” you are correct. I spent the whole time glued to my Xbox, giggling myself silly. But now I feel a difficult decision looming on the horizon like a disturbance in the Force. You see, Lego Star Wars covers all six of the Star Wars movies. And while I regard the original three films as magnificent works of art, I was so intensely disappointed by “Phantom Menace” that I declined to watch either of its sequels. Well, one of the things about the Lego games is that they retell the movies in brief and very humorous fashion; each one is basically a series of in-jokes.
So that’s the question: is it worth spending four hours of my life watching two movies I never wanted to see, just so I can fully appreciate their parodies in a videogame? Or am I better off playing in blissful ignorance? What to do, what to do…?
Ah, well. It’s not like Lego Star Wars is the only thing I’m playing at the moment, so I can always hop back into a different game while I’m making my decision. In fact, the past two weeks have been positively rife with games; much like the summer movie scene, the videogame world is big on sequels. And game sequels have the same crazy-making tendency to release all at the same time. Given my limited amount of free time, I inevitably end up feeling like I’ve brought a very small plate to a very large buffet. Still, two weeks’ worth of evenings has given me the chance to spend at least a few hours with each of these tempting new sequels…
Sequel Roundup #1: Westward 2
One of the best things about the original Westward game was the profusion of pop-culture references. If anything, Westward 2 scatters them even more liberally throughout, from character and building names to plot elements and even the little comments your settlers make when they construct a new building. Trying to identify the origin of each mini-homage is almost a game in itself; I caught references to classic Westerns, 20-year-old cartoons, and recent sci-fi hits, among many others.
In terms of gameplay and story, Westward 2 follows closely on the heels of its predecessor; it’s definitely a case of “more of the same, and then some.” Settlement missions involve collecting resources and building a town infrastructure. Combat missions don’t need no steenkin’ resources: you just round up a posse of lawmen and gunslingers and hunt down the bad guys. Each successful mission gives you points to spend on new buildings and upgrades, and every purchase improves either the productivity or happiness of your town. It’s all very intuitive, but far from simple: I’ve been stuck for two days on an attempt to build a large, thriving, extremely happy town… in a valley plagued by constant tornadoes.
If you tried and liked the previous Westward game, you’ll definitely like the new one. If you didn’t try the previous Westward, but enjoy Age of Empires, the Caesar series, or other large-scale real-time strategy games, you’ll consider Westward 2 a delightful little cousin of the genre. Tornadoes aside, I’m having a great time with it.
Sequel Roundup #2: Build-a-Lot 2
The original Build-a-Lot was one of those games that sounded questionable on the design front: buy empty lots, build and upgrade houses, collect rent… how much fun could that be? But after playing a bit, I realized it was much more engaging than it initially seemed. There was a rather addictive strategic element to deciding what to buy, when to sell, how much lumber to order, and what sort of houses to build; after two or three towns, you’d end up forgetting that you even had doubts about the game.
Now there’s Build-a-Lot 2, and oddly, many of the same worries crept up on me all over again. Yes, the original game squashed them when I played. But honestly, could a second game about building and selling houses really keep my interest? Particularly when it looks almost exactly the same as the first one? Well, I’m two or three towns into it now, and dealing with a particularly tight deadline, and trying to crank the street appeal of my houses up enough to offset the smell of the landscaping company… and hey, the doubts are gone again.
I’m filing Build-a-Lot 2 with Diner Dash, Miss Management, and Sally's Salon under “things I’d probably be very bad at in real life, but which seem easy and fun in a game”!
Sequel Roundup #3: Virtual Villagers 3
Before I get into describing this game, a word of advice: if you download the demo, play it for a while, and think you might purchase the full version at some point in the future, make sure to set the game speed to “none” before closing the program. I played the demo on a Friday, then bought the full version the following Monday. Hadn’t thought to set the game speed to “none” before my trial hour ran out, though, so by the time I loaded it back up again, my little villagers had run out of honey and died of starvation. Whoops.
Anyway, Virtual Villagers 3, like Westward 2 and Build-a-Lot 2, takes the previous version’s basic gameplay and adds a few new elements, new goals, and new challenges to make it interesting all over again. (There’s a pattern here: good sequel = not messing too much with a good game.) In this installment, a group of your villagers have become tired of overcrowding and set out to find an uninhabited part of the island. What they find is the ruin of an advanced city, with a lovely lagoon, tasty beehive, and many unanswered questions. What does the broken machine do? How can they repair the baths? Why are there soooooo many sharks? As usual, you can tell your villagers what to do, and you can show their children where to pick mushrooms or find shiny collectables, but you can’t really do the work for them. Once they’ve been set to a task, they’ll work away at it (or wander off and do something else), whether the game is running or not.
This is the sort of game that is best played several times a day, for a few minutes or a half-hour each time; your villagers are good at getting things done, but only you can direct them to discover new resources or to try different tasks. Besides, it’s just plain fun to start the game up after a few hours away and see how they’re doing for themselves!
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| Tech Talk
We’ve had a few emails this week from folks who get “Security Settings” error messages when trying to play our GameSpring games. Turns out that they were just being extra-cautious with internet security (which is actually a good thing!). And it’s easy to set Internet Explorer to allow GameSpring to run even through high security settings. Here’s the scoop from our Support guru:
In Internet Options, click the Security tab, and then Custom. In the Downloads section, make sure Enable is selected under File Downloads. Also, click Restricted sites on this tab and remove ‘zone.msn.com’, ‘msn.com’, or ‘zone.com’, ‘live.com’, ‘passport.net’, and ‘*.gamehouse.com’, if any of them are listed.”
See you next time!
Ask Moxie!
Do you have a question or comment? I’d love to hear from you. Just email me at zmaster@microsoft.com and I’ll do my best to answer in one of these Coffee Breaks! Oh, please make sure to include your MSN Games nickname, so I know who to list here if I quote you!
(And if you have technical questions or problems with a game, we’ll cheerfully answer those as well. Just submit them through the support section of this site!)
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