jdodson | Cheerful Ghost

My Town 2 is a simple freemium mobile game I play from time

My Town 2 is a simple freemium mobile game I play from time to time. Its kind of like Sim City but since its a freemium Tiny Tower like game, time is a factor and you can purchase in game currency to speed things up.

I wanted to post an recent image of my town "Mos Eisley" above and let you know a secret I found. I don't believe you need to build roads in My Town 2. I mean, you can in fact build roads but I haven't built any roads at all save what came with my town and nothing bad has happened.

I believe roads are simply for looks because none of my citizens or businesses suffer because I don't build roads. One benefit to not building roads is you have more room to build other stuff. Since you need to expand your town and that takes money, you can save money and time by not building a single road.

At least I did it that way and my citizens don't seem to mind it one bit.

Todays shirt woot is pretty awesome.

http://sale.images.woot.com/8-Bits_to_Rule_Them_AlllmlDetail.png

Todays shirt woot is pretty awesome.

http://shirt.woot.com/

Yeah I am pretty crazy excited for this game. Barb looks

Yeah I am pretty crazy excited for this game. Barb looks awesome.

I will use this here site to let yall know when ill be on battle.net and how the games with people I play go. A few people on the site will be playing with me, so very excited.

Talked to one such person today about the lull in great games out now. I agreed, the games that have come out recently haven't been too exciting. Maybe we are missing something awesome?

AdamPFarnsworth wrote on 04/10/2012 at 07:10am

I like how at 2:12 he goes Super Saiyan.

Tungsten wrote on 04/10/2012 at 10:03am

There's a string coming up that has me pretty excited:
• Diablo 3
• Torchlight 2
• Borderlands 2
• XCOM
• Guild Wars 2

In the last twelve months though, I would agree. I think I really only wanted 4 titles or so.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 04/10/2012 at 02:14pm

I should add Torchlight 2 to my mental list. Then again, will it be on par with D3?

Tungsten wrote on 04/10/2012 at 10:45pm

I see your point, but if D3 wasn't coming out near the same time, I would be VERY excite for Torchlight2.

It is going to be cheaper? If that matters to you.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 04/11/2012 at 03:04am

Ill pay whatever for great games. Ill prob pick this up too. When sort of depends on how well Diablo 3 is working out. I do like that it offers LAN and online play with friends. The "netbook on an airplane" crowd comes to mind. I don't own a netbook, but if I did that might be nice.

If you want to join this conversation you need to sign in.

A few people have mentioned to me that its not straight

A few people have mentioned to me that its not straight forward how to get your imagery from your games to upload to the web and share on Cheerful Ghost.

Recently I created a blog post about it, check it out:

http://blog.cheerfulghost.com/post/20503613172/getting-your-own-images-on-cheerful-ghost

Long and short of it, nab your screen-shots, pics, etc and upload them to http://imgur.com/ Its the easiest way to upload your images on the web. Imgur is popular on Reddit and other social sites.

Hope you find this helpful, I used imgur to upload my own personal imagery for quite a few of my posts.

Often times board games dont translate well to digital.

Often times board games don't translate well to digital. Haven't played a Monopoly game I liked on the computer yet. That said, some games are simple enough to translate really well digitally and on mobile such as Ticket to Ride Pocket.

Ticket to Ride is a board game where you play one of a few railroad barons that are trying to build rail roads across the United States. At the start you pick routes and then compete with other players for completing your routes and getting points. If you are blocked and can not complete a route it counts negatively against your score. There are more rules, but thats it in a simplistic form.

The board game is a favorite amongst my wife and friends and recently there was a iTunes store deal where you could get Ticket to Ride pocket for free so I picked it up. Installed it on my wifes iPod touch as well as my iPhone. That was a good idea because we play it all the time together. Its one of the rare video games we can both agree on playing and its fun. The screenshot above is from one of our games.

The average Ticket to Ride Pocket game seems to last about 15-20 minutes. The average board game seems to last an hour or so.

The game is playable via Game Center, Wifi or Bluetooth. The bluetooth works pretty well and recently we were traveling and played Ticket to Ride on the plane and in the airport waiting around. The mobile version moves much faster than the board game as the bots don't spend much time making moves. Speaking of the bots they are pretty decent. They win if you are doing badly but for the most part we are mostly competing to beat each other. Since my wife is VERY competitive we enjoy beating each other. As we started the game I easily bested her but lately she has been winning each game handily. I am changing my strategy up somewhat but I have a bit to go to catch up with her, she is pretty good already.

Recently watched a video talking about the Diablo 3 beta on

Recently watched a video talking about the Diablo 3 beta on Slashdot.

http://games.slashdot.org/story/12/04/03/2042253/the-state-of-the-diablo-3-beta-two-videos?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2FslashdotGames+%28Slashdot%3A+Games%29

Its a bit dry but found the content interesting and afterward was really excited to play it. Originally I wanted to play as a Demon Hunter when I started but the reviewer seemed to think it wasn't quite up topar with the other classes. From his description I may try the Witch Doctor for my first play through.

May 15th can not come soon enough!

Good Old Games is offering the original Fallout for free for

http://static.gog.com/upload/images/2008/11/174652fc1e425eb0aefc66dca2cb7cc553b3d5bf.jpg

Good Old Games is offering the original Fallout for free for the next 48 hours:

http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/fallout

While you are adding that to your account, grab all the other free GoG games:

http://www.gog.com/en/catalogue/?price=free

I picked up Empire Earth free a few months back and this is just as cool. Enjoy!

Timogorgon Member wrote on 04/06/2012 at 05:10am

Awesome! Thanks for the tip. Just snagged it for myself. :) Another great game I may or may not have time to play sometime in the future! lol

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 04/06/2012 at 05:15am

Yeah, having access to cheap or free games is awesome but it doesn't mean you play them all :)

Tungsten wrote on 04/06/2012 at 05:00pm

I got this a few years back while waiting for Fallout 3. I had the same problem I have with RPG's now: I constantly start over, convinced there was a better way to do things. I think in the 10 hours I played it I never got more than one hour in with a character. TOO MANY CHOICES!!!

Fun though. Makes me miss turn based games. We have this obsession with real time action now. The VATS system was a decent compromise in Fallout3, but I do miss the good old tile based movement.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 04/06/2012 at 05:11pm

Miss the old days: I do too. Seems like the only people that are doing these older styled games are mobile or indie devs.

That said we can always play the old games, well I guess until they no longer run. Been impressed how old games still are playable on windows though. It's cool.

Travis Admin wrote on 04/08/2012 at 04:13am

I need to give Fallout 1 and 2 their fair shake. I barely played them, and not until after playing 3 and New Vegas. Now that I have some distance from those, I can probably appreciate the old ones the way they deserve.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 04/08/2012 at 03:23pm

Makes sense. Kind of wonder how I would react to the ol Baldurs games considering I never played them. Excited about the new remake though.

Old games I played back in the day seem to hold up just fine though.

Tungsten wrote on 04/10/2012 at 12:18am

I love old games, but I've been too coddled by the new mechanics. I can't imagine playing doom without regenerating shields and health or mellee attacks. At least it had co-op.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 04/10/2012 at 01:37am

And deathmatch.

I hear you though, but some old games still hold up for me. Not all but quite a few.

If you want to join this conversation you need to sign in.

Check out this cool article on The New York Times called

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/04/08/magazine/08cover/08cover-sfSpan-v2.jpg

Check out this cool article on The New York Times called "Just One More Game ...
Angry Birds, Farmville and Other Hyperaddictive ‘Stupid Games'."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/magazine/angry-birds-farmville-and-other-hyperaddictive-stupid-games.html?_r=1

Yeah ok the name isn't great, but its an interesting article. Also interesting is the HTML5 game on the page. Play it. Its a very fun idea.

PS I love silly and addictive games, they are awesome.

Genghis Khan II A Great Retro Strategy Game

I love old Koei games. Three games in particular: Le Emperor, Genghis Khan II and Romance of the Three Kingdoms 2. I only owned one of those games and Genghis Khan was the game.

Genghis Khan II is a turn based strategy game where you can start doing one of two things: conqueror Mongolia then use Mongolia to conqueror the world or just start out as Mongolia and try to conqueror the world. Both were fun but starting as Mongolia was almost always easier. Easier because by the time you conqueror all of Mongolia Genghis might be dead or very old making the world conquest harder. If you started at world conquest you could pick a different country to start as, like India or England.

Koei games are all turn based strategy games set in a particular period of time and you are left to manage your small empire with aspirations to take over all other territories or countries. You have simple controls for managing your territories, army, generals and diplomacy. Genghis Khan II kicked it up a notch by allowing you to marry and have kids. This is awesome because you can name your kids "Darth Vader" and "Jon" but lame because if your current leader lacked in an area the kids were not much better. Also, if you didn't have a male child and you died you lost the game. Women can be leaders of Mongolia too Koei!

All the earlier Koei games simply allowed you to assign up to 100 troops per general and train them and equip them. Genghis Khan II upped that by allowing different kinds of units you could train and assign. The best units in the game were the Mongols as they had all A's in nearly every category. It was fun building other kind of units, like Elephants or Catapults but you never went wrong by simply building Mongols. I guess the game wasn't "Super Knight Quest II" as the Knights Templar were not great.

I played this game for hours but didn't find many people willing to play a two player game with me. I guess an 8 hour session of a turn based strategy game didn't excite many of my high school friends. Too bad too, it was a fun game.

Ben_Dodson wrote on 04/04/2012 at 04:28pm

I remember hours of countless play time with you and this game. Fun times. My son did not like nor understand the greatness of this game when I played it with him.

Timogorgon Member wrote on 04/04/2012 at 06:28pm

I remember playing this with you guys. So many fun hours were sunk into this game! :D I liked that it was complex enough to keep you interested, but also pretty simple so it was easy to pick up and start playing with only a minimal learning curve.

Ben_Dodson wrote on 04/04/2012 at 07:45pm

Our uncivial alliances that did not stand but just to piss someone off

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 04/05/2012 at 01:13am

It was fun, games were long though. I always liked starting as India or England but it was nearly impossible to defeat Genghis Khan because he was such a great general and the Mongols were so overpowered!

NERF NERF!

If you want to join this conversation you need to sign in.

Next Gen Console Rumors Are Depressing. Seriously, they

Next Gen Console Rumors Are Depressing.

Seriously, they are.

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/04/02/codename-orbis-sony-playstation-4-gets-working-title-and-other-rumors/

"The bad news is that the PS4 will not be able to play PS3 games, so users might want to consider selling their games, or trading them in."

and this gem:

"Rumors are circulating that the next generation PlayStation and Xbox consoles will also block people from being able to play used games.

Some news isn't too bad, like the Playstation 4 releasing before the "NextBox 720":

http://m.ign.com/articles/1222124

Nintendo has mentioned what the Wii U will be backwards compatible with Wii games and Wii controllers. No word if they want to disallow used games though.

All that to say, not all the rumors about the next gen consoles are bad its just that some of them are really bad. Its no secret many publishers hate used games.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-57405801-17/how-much-do-industry-ceos-hate-used-games-a-whole-whole-lot/

Simple fact is used games are great for publishers! They just see a used game purchase as a lost sale so they get upset because they wanted that as revenue and view it as a loss. I buy games based off what I hear from other people(ala Cheerful Ghost) and what I play from demos. Most demos I play suck and I immediately delete them and that translates to a lost sale, does that mean demos are bad and should be abolished? No, they should have made a better game.

I have only so much money for video games so if you artificially make them all $60 I have less to spend and therefore own fewer games. Often times ill pickup a game I heard was good for $15 and love it. Often times that means ill pickup the sequel to that game on release day. The Orange Box was one such deal. I picked it up on the PS3 used for $20. I pre-ordered Portal 2 for $60 and will get pre-order the next Halflife game with no thought spent.

I wouldn't have picked up The Orange Box for more money. More money would have meant a lost sale because I had no VALUE for The Orange Box before I learned to love it. I had no idea how rad the Halflife-a-verse was before I existed in it. I had no idea how bad-ass Portal was before I played it. Now I love them all and will funnel money to buying each sequel. Lost sale? If you only think in the short term, possibly.

You can't value something you don't know about and a lack of used games OR incorrect video game pricing lead to gamers, like me, simply not valuing your product because its not priced accordingly to how I value it.

So you can say that all used games are lost sales or you can look at used games as getting it into the hands of people. I hope Microsoft and Sony don't listen to publishers here because the console that doesn't allow used games will be one I don't purchase. Reason? If you going to basically adopt the Steam model and allow me to do LESS with what I buy you are wrong.

The next gen will be living in the "half realm" of discs/memory cards AND digital downloads. Have a physical product I can buy that locks me into a console sounds like Steam but less appealing. Why? Well Steam has years of a proven track record of allowing you to buy a game and access it across your PC's life-cycle. Plus, many games run on Mac and Windows. Console manufacturers are now possibly dropping support for old gen games on next gen hardware. So, again, you have the digital only model, but its WORSE than the Steam. Imagine if Steam didn't allow people to play Halflife 2 on a Quad Core computer when you upgraded. Its as silly as Playstation not allowing your digital or physical games to not play on the PS4.

I love my Playstation 3. It ain't perfect but its pretty damn good. I can buy a game and play it used or new. I often loan games to friends and get games from them to try. Graphics look great and it plays Bluray. I am not interested in doing less for the same or more money with no benefit to me as a customer. Then again, these are all rumors.....

The problem is that it doesn't sound so far out of band for Sony or Microsoft. I hope someone in the console space can get it right though and perhaps Nintendo is the only company that can?

I want there to be a next-gen console in my future. Hope someone gives me a reason to buy one. Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo its your play now.

Tungsten wrote on 04/03/2012 at 10:50am

I'm sorry, I can't get on board with the Wii-U. The touch screen controller looks like it was designed in 1998, and the graphics don't look all that "next-gen". Oh, and it's reportedly spendy too. We'll see I guess.

You know how you combat used games? Cheap games. Arcade and PSN games are the future. $5 here and there, and you're set. No one is trading in a $5 game. These games are impulse buys. I've bought probably 15 games on a whim.

I've spent as much or more money on Humble Bundles over the last year than I have AAA titles.

Look at TF2. It's free to play, but it costs $10 to buy a hat for your character. It's not even functional in game. You know what? People pay it, because it's an impulse level purchase. I would love to see more of this stuff, because its fun.

You just have to convince the major pubs not to abuse this. Can you imagine spending $60 on COD6, and then you have to spend another $5 each level? EA would do it.

I'm on record as loving Steam, so I'm not going to complain about a similar setup for XBOX and PS4, as long as it's free. LIVE: dump your subscription fees and I'll let you stop me from playing used games. Or at least bundle the subscription with a free game. I let my LIVE account lapse last month because I've been on Steam for the last year.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 04/03/2012 at 09:48pm

Wii U: Well see. I have no plans to get one.

I agree one way to combat used is to sell games more cheaply. Digital allows for this. Problem is, if you lock in the purchase to the hardware you bought it on ONLY you have a problem. Steam allows your games to move to your new hardware, this is nice.

And for the record, I was initially hostile to Steam and have warmed up to it a lot lately. I think the service it offers is really really great. I compare console digital offerings to it because I consider Steam to be best of breed alongside GoG.

Tungsten wrote on 04/03/2012 at 10:02pm

You're right about the hardware thing. If I have to buy symphony of the night again for the xbox 720 I'm going to
revolt.

With mobile gaming, I'm becoming less and less invested in consoles. I was hoping that kinect might be the hook to draw me back on, but it's starting to look half baked and under utilized.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 04/03/2012 at 10:25pm

Mobile has the potential to change the way I play games but it hasn't really arrived for me yet.

It has some great games, but nothing has come close to sitting down to play Borderlands on my console VS nearly anything on my phone. Then again, Sword and Sworcery got close.

Tungsten wrote on 04/04/2012 at 12:00am

I like a good puzzle game, and those are pretty doable. Action games, you're right, I can't quite see those really working on mobile. What do I know though: I thought the iPhone was a fad that would die after a year or two and everyone would go back to hardware keyboards.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 04/04/2012 at 02:40am

I don't think smartphones are a fad at anymore. What I do think is that right now I can't really play a game as immersive as a PC or console game on mobile. Two games have come really damn close though:

Sword and Sworcery & Plants VS Zombies. I guess with Plants VS Zombies it was better than the PC experience I had, so yeah perhaps that game transcended the mobile experiences ive had thus far.

Tungsten wrote on 04/04/2012 at 10:32am

I played Canabalt for about an hour on my phone yesterday. All you do is jump. No, it's not the immersion you get from a big title, but it still drew me in.

Timogorgon Member wrote on 04/04/2012 at 06:24pm

No used games? Forget that. I will not buy a new system that won't play used games. The PS1, PS2, and Xbox I all bought because they had an expansive used game selection. Instead of buying 1 50 dollar game for my new system I was able to buy 4-5 used games. And of course from that point on I purchased many new and used games for all those systems. :)

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 04/05/2012 at 01:16am

I agree. If a console has a feature where you can buy a PHYSICAL product to place in, because of the closed nature of consoles they shouldn't be bound to the hardware. If consoles want to avoid used games, make older games cheaper. Already you can download full games on the PS3 but the price is a little steep for a game thats been out as long as they have been.

Like Civilization Revolution, that should only be like $10 digital.

Timogorgon Member wrote on 04/05/2012 at 04:41pm

I think part of the problem is publishers feel they need to combat used game sales and they view someone who buys a used game as a pirate instead of a customer. Really they need to compete with used games and reward customers who buy new, but realize that people who buy used are still valuable customers. This is where DLC can shine, because companies can package fun rewards, like vanity items, in game rewards, or even additional playable characters to reward people who buy the game new. Instead companies are using DLC to lock out used games from playing on-line, or using "day one" DLC to charge people extra for something that should have shipped with the game.

Timogorgon Member wrote on 04/05/2012 at 04:45pm

And making older games cheaper is a great idea. There are several PS1 games on PSN I would like to buy, but not for what they're charging. :\

Tungsten wrote on 04/05/2012 at 09:28pm

@notch I think said it best: people who pirate or buy used are fans, not criminals. The publishers need to find a way to profit from that fandom, not punish it.

Tungsten wrote on 04/05/2012 at 09:31pm

http://www.gamezone.com/products/street-fighter-x-tekken/news/capcom-defends-on-disc-dlc-for-street-fighter-x-tekken

Great example of lazy dlc.

If you want to join this conversation you need to sign in.

jdodson1

2746 Posts

My Town 2 is a simple freemium mobile game I play from time

Todays shirt woot is pretty awesome.

Yeah I am pretty crazy excited for this game. Barb looks

A few people have mentioned to me that its not straight

Often times board games dont translate well to digital.

Recently watched a video talking about the Diablo 3 beta on

Good Old Games is offering the original Fallout for free for

Check out this cool article on The New York Times called

Genghis Khan II A Great Retro Strategy Game

Next Gen Console Rumors Are Depressing. Seriously, they