On Neptune's Pride: The reason why I've been out

Hello everyone,

Well. It's been a while. Quite a long while, judging by the number of months since my last post.

Holy cow, I've been busy. I haven't touched Distant Worlds in a while, so I don't think that AAR is ever going to get done. Ah well...

Anyways, I haven't been gaming as much lately. Being a grad student and all has taken quite a toll on my free time. Thankfully, I've found some great alternatives that offers some gaming in bite-sized pieces. Neptune's Pride is one such 'snack'.

Found here, Neptune's Pride is the very essentials of 4x strategy without the crazy complications that leave theorycrafters up till the wee hours of the morning (though, there's absolutely nothing wrong with writing battle calculators, or AARs at all!) Neptune's Pride features very simple elements of play; move starships around systems to capture them, upgrade your starsystems in three fields: economy (money making), industry (ship building) and research labs (faster research) and advanced research in four different areas (weapons, range, speed and sensor range).

Neptune's Pride happens in real-time but at a very slow pace consistent with other massive online strategy games (on standard settings, you get your income from your economic development per day, every point of industry builds two ships throughout the day, and ships take many hours to fly between systems). Unlike other massive online strategy games, a single free game will usually pit 8 players in a randomly created galaxy; this makes gentlemen's agreements and trading a lot more personal and interesting as well! Note that there are no diplomatic options per say, except for the trading of cash or techs. This means there is absolutely no binding treaties that can stop you from plunging the knife (or in this case, the dozens of fleets you'll be flying around) in your would-be allies.

From realizing how important weapons research is, to discovering how important it is to scout out as many systems as possible to find cheaper places to build up. See, in Neptune's Pride, industry upgrades build ships at the location where the upgrade is, but economy and research are civilization-wide. Also, each system you find will have a number of resources on them; the more the resources, the cheaper it will be to build upgrades. At the same time, building one type of upgrade makes building that same type of upgrade on the same star system more expensive. This makes expansion a necessity to advance!

Guns, butter, or research that directly improves your ability to build better guns or indirectly improve your ships abilities to go find some creamier butter? Such are the simple, but engrossing choices in Neptune's Pride. Try out a free game before paying credits and you'll agree that this is quite the gem!

Have you also heard about this game or given it a try? Please leave a comment below!

On Day 3 of My Wallet Growing Empty; Summer 2010

Day 3, and I'm a little disappointed with Valve; I've already bought most of the games listed for considerably cheaper before (exception of L4D2, of course). I'm personally not sure that Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is really worth the $7.49. That, and I'm personally holding out for cheaper fare tomorrow!

Here's a gem I've found through browsing the Specials tab on Steam:

Puzzle Kingdoms: 95% off. $1.00 only!

Holy cow! If you're a fan of puzzle games and RPG-like games, then you'll probably like Puzzle Kingdoms. I've only played the last game from these Puzzle Quest, which was good fun itself, so I'm not 100% sure if this game's better or worse off. But at $1, or less than 5 minutes of work for the average American worker, it's a freakin' steal!

As I scour the website for more goodies at super cheap prices, I'll let you guys hear it first, only on OTOOEP. Yay acronyms!

On Steam's Summer Sale: Day 2

Hey yo everyone,

So, the new batch of sales have been released. Frankly, they aren't as impressive as yesterday; though that's just my own opinion of the games they have on (and mostly the lack of stuff under $4).

I'd recommend the Galcon Fusion game that's going for $2.50; tons of fun as a iPhone app and I've heard it's been ported to the PC / MacOSX just fine too! Ghostbusters!: The Video Game is a lot of fun, but you won't get a lot of re-playability due to the lack of multiplayer on the PC version. Meh.

Hmmm... Let's see. If you're willing to spend the bucks, Resident Evil 5 and Serious Sam HD: Double Pack will keep you entertained for a while.

Like I said, nothing truly spectacular on today. I'm going to go back to play Oblivion; yeah, I love that game. And I'm probably gonna regret buying it for $7.50 (not as part of the Steam Summer Sale, but a previous weekend offer) when it goes on sale for $2.50 sometime later.

On Steam's AMAZING SALE OF SUMMER!

I LIVE!!! Or maybe it's just work getting in the way. I still have a blog though? This blogthor is easily distracted.

Anyway...

Hate going to the beach? Worried about getting bitten by sharks? Well not to worry, because Steam has the ultimate answer for destroying the contents of your wallets... er... I mean... ensuring you don't killed (especially those off the Louisiana coast coated in oil).

There are like 300+ games on sale on the Steam platform; a few of which are actually worth picking up. Now before you go running on over and spending your hard earned cash, keep an eye out on the Today Only! section of the Steampowered webpage. Those are games that are on sale ridiculously cheap (probably as cheap as it'll get) for that day only. Now, while you might run off and buy a game that's already on sale, you miss out the chance of that same game popping up on the Today Only! section sometime later for an even greater deal!

My suggestion: Don't buy stuff unless it's on the Today Only! section, or do buy it if it's the last day (who knows when that is) and it never popped up as a daily sale.

My recommendations for today (placed in order of how badly you should get this game):

Killing Floor for $5. What? You haven't played this yet? It's a freakin' great multiplayer game built around the zombie run-in-gun genre. Not just your standard shooter, also comes with "perks" and "levels" to keep the game fresh. Plus, humorous British accents and a sexual-innuendoized gun trader to spice up the humor. BUY THIS NOW!

Trine for $4. Yes, Trine is a great puzzle game and is well worth the $4. Buy it now!

Counter Strike: Source: The question is, who doesn't have this game already? With new achievements, killcam and a few other features, getting headshotted all the time by a bunny-hopping AWPer is SOOO much more fun!

Overlord Complete Pack: Good for a couple of hours of fun. I'd get the other two games above first before getting this one.

And now for a few mentions:

The Square Enix Eidos Collector's Package: What was once $586.84 worth of gaming is now $74.99; that's a fantastic $511.85 worth of savings. Holy cow!

The Witcher: A fantastic RPG that I have yet to play that's currently for $6.79. I would strongly recommend waiting for a daily sale of this title before buying it.

Oh man, there's just so many sales! But like I said, if you got the patience to hold off till the daily sales (or who knows if there's a weekly version), you'll be solid gold (or saving lots of it!).

On Portal is Free - Why are you still reading this?

Oh, and by the way. Portal's been free on Steam for a week now and it is available for the Mac or the PC. What are you doing reading this blog? GO GET IT IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY!

If you have, good on you! Now go play it again and get all those radio station-related achievements!

*Eagerly awaits Portal 2*

On My Successful Return from Examination Argh-ation!

Hey everyone,

Well, it's over! The Spring 2010 semester has been successfully concluded and it is now summer time! I'm still waiting to hear back from a few internships that I am applying for, but I am now considerably more free now! Man, it's been like, what is it now, 2 weeks? Geez Louise I've been out of the loop for a while.

So, let's start with the biggest of news. Steam now has a new format (was part of the Beta so it is not a big surprise) and Steam now also supports Mac users. Tripwire Entertainment; the guys who made the awesome FPS shooter Killing Floor, has jumped the gun and is offering the game at 33% off; or $13.39 (two cents higher than being truly leet). Having played Killing Floor yesterday, I noticed quite a few more full servers than usual. It's quite nice to see the game come back from the dead (both literally and... well... realistically meta-physically). In fact, I would say it is a valuable lesson for any publisher who works with Steam to consider the advantages of adapting your games to work on as many systems as possible. More money is always a good thing, right?

Well, I'm going to go celebrate with a bottle of Bass beer (omigosh, he posted something related to alcohol on a website with Google AdSense Ads... EEEKK!!!) and a round or two of Killing Floor. I'll keep the blog posts coming and... hopefully, will finally get around to posting that Distant Worlds AAR.

On the end of the semester and the start of exams!

Hey all,

As I've written in a few past blog posts, the end of the semester has come nigh and hither! Woohoo! Alas, the examinations I will be sitting for has not yet passed, nor has the interviews for certain jobs that I am expecting to hope to be able to fulfill this summer. As such, my gaming has come to a relatively complete stop.

Distant Worlders, I have much love for y'all BUT my schedule does not. I've gotten exactly one hour of play since my last AAR and... frankly... not a lot happened to justify a good AAR update like the ones before (the Kiadians are STILL looking for a good planet to colonize; seeing waaay too many volcanic and ocean world planets for such a small galaxy, it's like one of those statistical anomalies you know can happen but never ever expect to see). I'm hoping that after the 19th I'll be somewhat more free.

In terms of gaming, I... Well, what I mean... I'm trying to say that... Meh, mayhaps I shouldn't have started a gaming blog in mid-April; a month before exams were supposed to start. Hehe...

Don't worry though, this is not the end of On the Optimization of Electronic Play; though it will most likely be a very quiet 2 weeks. And before you all go, ZOMG YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT YOUR PERSONAL LIFE AND NOT VIDEO GAMES ALL THE TIME. Well, yes, I am; it keeps things fresh!