Skip to main content

The Fallen Enchantress Obama Bug


Tomorrow looks to be a fun day as the long expected Beta 4 for Elemental: Fallen Enchantress is due out.  I know what you are thinking:  isn't that the sequel to 2010's biggest gaming flop?  Well, not exactly.  To be exact, Fallen Enchantress is the ambitious stand alone expansion to Elemental:War of Magic.  That is, it aspires to become the game we all hoped EWOM was going to be before the whole thing crashed and burned, and then some!  And let me tell you something: based on Beta 3, there is good reason to be optimistic that it will succeed. 

Initially, I wasn't that optimistic - Betas 1 & 2 were merely marginal improvements on the EWOM formula at best.  However, Beta 3 surprised me with its noticeable shift in quality.  Instead of coming across as a grade 'C' Civ clone, Beta 3 made FE finally feel like its own game - and quite an interesting one at that.


There were too many changes made to be listed here, but I definitely noticed a marked improvement to the tactical combat, not to mention the game's ability to create an interesting world from scratch with each play-through.  In fact, the thing that bugged me the most about FE beta 3 was the boring city development - something that goes to show you just how improved the rest of the game had become.  I mean, with all the problems that EWOM had, the lack of interesting choices for building your cities was way at the bottom of the list for me.  So, yeah, Beta 3 showed some definite improvement.

Speaking of Beta 4 - the focus for this beta will be....city building!  Clearly, Stardock is on the same page as its gamers, which is always a good thing.  In addition to that, a bunch of new enhancements are expected all across the game tomorrow, so I am excited to give it a try.  

Here is a new gameplay vid of Beta 4 that shows you what you can expect if you are part of the Beta, or if you are just curious whether or not Fallen Enchantress will be for you when it is released later this year (after Beta 5...so more changes are coming):

 

Now, about that Obama Bug:

In the changelog for Beta 4, I found this interesting fix for a bug:


Fixed AI bug where it would tax itself to death in certain cases

Isn't that just being a liberal democrat?  What is more, if that is considered a bug in gaming, just why do we tolerate it in real life?!?  Shouldn't somebody release a patch for Obama in that case?   When are we going to get that changelog? Oh yeah, on Election Day (November 6 for Republicans and independents; November 7 for Democrats).  Ahem.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Gamer's Review: Hellsing Ultimate

Is it too early to start queuing up some entertainment for Halloween?  Just a bit.  Regardless, I find myself doing just that.  Part of the reason is that summer for my region never really arrived.  Instead of the requisite heat and humidity, we were treated to largely cool, dry days.  Really, it has felt like little more than an extended late spring or early autumn.  As a result I have found myself yearning to get autumn underway as there isn't any point of continuing this useless summer.  This is why I have been looking forward to Halloween: it is THE holiday of autumn! But in addition to that, two games have recently awakened in me a love for the horror of "urban fantasy":   Shadowrun Returns , and The Secret World .  As I detailed here , those two games have hit a home run with me, and made me reconsider the whole horror genre - a genre I never particularly cared for seeing the low budget "torture porn" tripe coming out of Hollywood...
4 comments
Read more

The Tank Chooses You

In the much revered martial art of "Tankery", they say that "you don't choose the tank, the tank chooses you."  I have found this to be true...well, at least it is with Wargaming.net's World of Tanks . Going into World of Tanks with its over 200 armored vehicles is a lot like stepping into a Walmart:  I mean, where do you turn first?  There is so much to choose from that picking just one from the massive pile of tanks often comes down to an arbitrary criterion.  For me and WoT, that criterion was simple patriotism:  if I was going to have a favorite tank, it was darn well going to be an American tank!  With that in mind, I decided to go with the WWII light tank classic, the M3 Stuart: Some background:  built by Cadillac, a total of 13,859 vehicles were manufactured from 1941 through September 1943.  Initially, it was armed with a 37mm M5 gun, and five .30-06 Browning M1919A4 machine guns, but later the main gun was upgraded to a slig...
4 comments
Read more

Chapter 2: The Soviet Right Hook

Chapter 2: The Soviet Right Hook As we detailed in the previous chapter ( "Red July" ), STAVKA had conceived of the assault on the Fulda Gap not as their central effort but as a grand diversion to draw NATO forces away from other sectors of the West German front.  As expected, NATO, long expecting Fulda to be central to a Warsaw Pact onslaught, took the bait and committed the bulk of its ground forces to holding off the fierce Soviet offensive. STAVKA waited three full days to ensure that NATO forces were fully engaged before committing their strategic reserve to opening a new front to the north of Fulda.  Known as "Operation Gold Pluto," this daring Soviet plan would put NATO in a perilous position. Final unit dispositions of Operation Gold Pluto with operational overlay (courtesy 8th Guards Army Archives , Volgograd, 1985) Historical Redux If this sounds a bit familiar, it should: Operation Gold Pluto was based on the plan used by Germany during ...
2 comments
Read more