The Steam Controller

So, The Lord GabeN, in all His glory, hath heard my prayers and gifted upon me a Shiny New Toy.

The Steam Controller.
Why did I get it?
Because I’m an engineer, the subsequent pathological love for interesting new tech-stuff, disposable income and poor impulse control.
Also, I wanted to try out controller-based PC-gaming for quite some time and decided to save myself for the Light of the Lord GabeN, instead reverting to the tools used by the Filthy Console Peasants. But seriously: I really wanted to take a look at this thing. It arrived on Friday, I got it on Saturday, and over the weekend I tested a whole bunch of games with it. Here is what I found.

[Disclaimer I: I never really used a controller before, except in agony-filled afternoons when friends decided we would game on their consoles. I have no way of comparing this thing to any other controller, so I wont.]
[Disclaimer II: Depending on how things work out, there might be a follow-up post some day, hopefully addressing problems mentioned here.]

Continue reading The Steam Controller

Anno 2205 – good, but not great

So, Anno 2205 came out.

As these things go, it costs a shitload of shineyz at launch. So I waited for the reviews to come out. Consensus was “if you like the building and planning of past parts, but weren’t into fighting, diplomacy and trade so much, this is your game”. Naturally, I screamed “SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEYZ!” at the screen. I didn’t regret it, even if there are some things that mildly annoy me at times. Which is nice for “screaming bloody murder at my screen”, as my flatmate found out the hard way. Why, you might ask: because if you a) split combat from the rest of the game, map-wise, and b) make combat missions fully optional, then you really should not have your NPC reminding the player every x minutes about it. Especially not in the highly passive-agressive manner as some of the culprits. But let’s start from the beginning.

Continue reading Anno 2205 – good, but not great