Best Matrix Game

[ravinhood]

Well there's always TROPICO.

[HansBolter]

ORIGINAL: ravinhood

Well there's always TROPICO.

Markshot raves about Tropico.

I have considered picking up a copy. Not sure how your reference to it relates as I am unfamiliar with it's graphics.....is it 2D artwork with sprites?

[Sarge]

ORIGINAL: Punk Reaper

The time has come to buy a new game. I have Carrers at war, John Tillers Campaign series, BOA, Campaigns on the Danube, Conquest of the Agean and Crown of Glory, but I was wondering if there was any sort of concenus as to which of the Matrix games was the best, in terms of gamplay, ease of use and replayability.

Easy

War In The Pacific


WITP holds a top slot in the all time category . But I have to attempt the game is a little daunting for the fist year (1941) .

[ravinhood]

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

ORIGINAL: ravinhood

Well there's always TROPICO.

Markshot raves about Tropico.

I have considered picking up a copy. Not sure how your reference to it relates as I am unfamiliar with it's graphics.....is it 2D artwork with sprites?

Tropico is that other game. It has elements of a Sim City with a bit of a cuban nation type of gameplay. The Dossier lets you build all kinds of leaders and you can set the game up to be what you want it to be. It has resource gathering, but, it's not frantic kiddy clickfest to play it. This is another one of those games with a speed setting that is just right to play the game. I like to play it to see how many years I can remain leader. I've had some over 260 years.

It's just so different from other rts games and sim building games. It's my favorite of them all. I can play for hours and days and not get bored. It's not easy playing the capitalist game though, playing communistic and favor russia is much easier game to play.

I like it also because you can name your citizens and if you play a "Tropico Only" game then everyone there will have been born there and will produce dynasties down the line (though I do usually have to ship in some outsiders for college professors to get things going above peasant level). Plus it's the only game I know I think outside of maybe Postal that you can kill whole families if you want to. It won't let you kill 12 year olds or under though....darnit. lol

One of my favorite parts is the elections every so many years. Toward the end you start getting less and less votes no matter what you do, then you have to resort to ballot box fixings and even that gets to a point where you barely get enough votes to win and then you have to resort to no elections at all , no democracy and that's when things get wild, you have some of your citizens become rebels, you start putting their families in jails or just executing them all, those kinds of deviate things Castro would probably do lol. But, eventually your military just turns on you and you have great coop battles and eventually you'll lose one and that's that time to start another game.

I guess you could say it's 2D sprites it's not 3D I'm pretty sure. The graphics though are still fair even by todays standards although a new 3D tropico would be neat and they need to add railroad building possibilities to it. You can build an airport, but, no railroads. It gets to a point with all the trafficing of resources it could have used a railroad for the huge maps you can play on. The music is excellent also, I think I play it a lot for the music as well as the fun gameplay. I give Tropico an A- there's room for improvement, but, it's still pretty solid as it is.

[EUBanana]

I got kinda bored of Tropico, I found that ballot rigging and such was so counterproductive as to not be worth doing.

After creating paradise with happy citizens who all loved the Leader for the umpteenth time I had enough.

Even clicking on the Rebel Yell option didnt spark things up enough for my liking...

[ravinhood]

I think with Tropico it's sorta like Crusader Kings as well. Both are not games you play to "beat", but, play for the fun of what they offer. I think I might have played one scenario of Tropico before I just went into sandbox mode and made my own game. I still had Politics and Economy and all the things scenarios offered, but, more in an open game play. This is how I enjoy it so much, same with Crusader Kings, I just like building dynasties, giving them to the AI and then building up another one. When I get 15 to 20 provinces I dump it off to the AI and take a Dukedom and start again. It's fun to play CK that way, dynasty building is the fun of that game moreso than conquering the whole map.
 
As far as Tropico PopTop made the game to be a lifetime of beating your high score from previous games. I didn't find that as much fun as just playing in an open world of the kind it offered and playing different Dossiers and different political and economic settings and island sizes. I like islands with huge land mass and little water, lots of vegatation (for population growth) and enough hills for a good coffee business. Rum, Cigars and Coffee were always the most lucrative in all the games I played until I got a nice Vacation resort area built up and those investment bankers going. There's so much to like an enjoy if you don't play trying to beat it, but, merely to play it.

[ilovestrategy]

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

ORIGINAL: ravinhood

warlords 4 pfffffffffffff.... that was disaster, I am long time fan of warlords, 1,2,3 were great.

Yup another game out of the box that was pretty bad, but, the 1.04a model is quite different from the out of the box game. The AI is ruthless, quite a fair game now since the PATCHES all these flippin games require. lol I got so beatup by the AI on the upper two tiers I had to come down to I think it was Prince level to have half a decent chance until I could build up some retinues of leaders. Trust me, it's much better than it was.

Diablo II may have been one of the worst sequals in gaming history. It completely lost the incredible flavor of the original.

That may be true about the losing the flavor of the origional, but, the loot and the skills and being able to play a necro with 40+ pets was quite fun. The horadric cube was half the fun of the game creating unique items and gambling for items was fun also. The 2nd Chapter Tombs was my favorite area and I musta played that 100 times or more, I hated them little pigmy creatures in Chapter 3 though, reminded me of them things in "The Mummy Returns" near the end of the movie.

The other big failure of D2 was it's inclusion in an entire genre of loser games that straddled the transition from 2D sprite driven graphics to 3D. Panzer General 3 is probably the king of that genre. The early introduction of photo mapped terrain background with 2D sprite characters was a grand abortion across the board.

In both PG3 and D2 the extremely low res necessary for the photo mapped terrain background to be able ot run on the computers of the day was so atrociously out of scale with the 2D sprite characters that the combination was laughable. Early 3D was so horrible compared to the richness of the 2D sprite artwork that it was a guaranteed recipe for failure.

I played and loved the Ultima series of RPGs in the 90s and jumped at the chance to immerse myself in the world of Britannia when Ultima Online came to be. I played UO for 4 years until they made the mistake of trying to force a transition to abominabal 3D graphics on their subscribers.

The transition to 3D in the computer gaming industry was rocky to say the least.

I hear ya about UO. I stayed with the 2D version and quit after 3 1/2 years when Age of Shadows changed the entire format.
My favorite Ultima game was Ultima 6. 7 and Serpent Isle were great but I never cared for Ultima 8. 9 just kept crashing on me. [:@]

[B1B Lancer]

I see your a fan of Eddie Ezzard. I am also.

[DirkX]

if the question is "what is th ebest matrix game", it CANT be WITP [;)]
because playing WITP is like a fulltime job [8D]
 
i consider myself a "grognard" but i discarded WITP after 30 minutes of trying it [:D]

[jvgfanatic]

ORIGINAL: DirkX

if the question is "what is th ebest matrix game", it CANT be WITP [;)]
because playing WITP is like a fulltime job [8D]

i consider myself a "grognard" but i discarded WITP after 30 minutes of trying it [:D]

WiTP would be so much more playable if it's interface were revamped from the ground up, and I don't mean slapping a prettier picture over the mass of data that one has to manage.

[ravinhood]

I've heard playing WitP is like taking accounting 101 102 and 103 altogether in one semester. lol

[Halsey]

ORIGINAL: ravinhood

I've heard playing WitP is like taking accounting 101 102 and 103 altogether in one semester. lol

Best game out there.[;)]

Years of playability.
Not many games out there that can claim that title.

For the cost, it's the best investment in gaming that's available.

[Sarge]

ORIGINAL: Halsey


Best game out there.[;)]

Years of playability.
Not many games out there that can claim that title.

For the cost, it's the best investment in gaming that's available.

Agreed,


The depth is staggering not to mention the longevity . Sadly I believe WITP is the last of the giants PC war gamming will offer.

The ground combat is way to abstract ,but overall will hold a top slot of my all time list

[ravinhood]

Best game out there.[;)]

 
 
You guys ever hear of Value Judgement:
 
[
Noun

• S: (n) value judgment, value judgement (an assessment that reveals more about the values of the person making the assessment than about the reality of what is assessed) ]

[Hertston]

ORIGINAL: ravinhood

I've heard playing WitP is like taking accounting 101 102 and 103 altogether in one semester. lol

Not really. In view of its complexity and scope it actually manages surprisingly well to avoid that sort of feeling; you really do feel you are organising a war rather than a spreadsheet, which is more than can be said for an awful lot of strategy games out there.

ORIGINAL: ravinhood

You guys ever hear of Value Judgement:

[
Noun

• S: (n) value judgment, value judgement (an assessment that reveals more about the values of the person making the assessment than about the reality of what is assessed) ]

And how does the judgement of a game by somebody who has never played it fit in with that, do you think?!! [X(] [:D]

[ravinhood]

And how do you know I've never "played" it? You really should stop having delusions like that Herston ole boy. We shouldn't have to go into this have to own it to know anything about it routine everytime something is said about a game. I don't own a Mercedes, but, I've driven them before.

[JudgeDredd]

ORIGINAL: ravinhood

And how do you know I've never "played" it? You really should stop having delusions like that Herston ole boy. We shouldn't have to go into this have to own it to know anything about it routine everytime something is said about a game. I don't own a Mercedes, but, I've driven them before.

so you have actually played it? Really? [:'(][:'(]

[Sarge]

ORIGINAL: ravinhood
I don't own a Mercedes, but, I've driven them before.

Now I know you are full of it , if you did nothing else would ever do .

Assuming you did not shell out over $15 bucks for another one of your bargain bid gems is hardly a stretch.

[Oleg Mastruko]

Best Matrix game?
 
Best, for me very personally:
- WITP, hands down, I lost more hours playing WITP than any other game, ever
 
Best game design all round, considering that WITP *is* too complex for 99,99% of humanity:
- GG World at War - magnificent, simple yet deep game design, incidentally this is also a GG game like WITP, so take two guesses as to which game designer and development team is my favorite [;)]
 
Probably the best Matrix hardcore military game:
- HTTR/COTA series. However I can't get rid of the feeling that there's always something missing from those excellent games that would make them great, more popular etc.   
 
Honorable mention:
- TOAW - before WITP my most played game ever. Matrix didn't do everything they could and should have done with TOAW when they got the license, but it's still a must-have title for every wargamer and would be wargamer.  
 
 

[Hertston]

ORIGINAL: ravinhood

And how do you know I've never "played" it?

Just call it gut instinct [:D]