New Column: Might and Milla

[PhoenixReborn]

Hi everyone,

Hey Milla, I experienced some similar confusion going from H II to H IV. I never could figure out those caravans...and the fog of war confused me to no end.

To everyone who likes April Ryan, I thought the opening sequence of that game was really excellent. Pretty good story. You guys might also like Kate Walker although you probably already know.

[VortexD]

Although HoMM IV is not such a bad game, I think it was just too different from the time proven methods of the previous three. Although some changes were cool additions others were not. I do believe Nival made the right choice to go the Heroes III way but they could have added some of the good aspects from Heroes IV, but that may be something for Heroes VI. None the less Heroes V is quite a good game regardless of how we feel about the previous four games. Heroes IV simply did not fit wel into the whole M&M universe. While Heroes V does, short of the story and game world then.

Yes, Kate Walker from Syberia. Also a very, very, very good female protagonist. Not suprising that the most memorable female characters come from adventure games. They usually are not reduced to male lust objects in adventure games, unlike certain 3RD person shooters with some out of proportion gall from England going into tombs and stuff. But I honestly can not complain about that too much myself. I thought Nico Collard from Broken Sword I-III was quite a good character as well.

BTW IMO; The Longest Journey has the best story ever told and in a close second comes M&M.

[ozzlander]

Milla aka, the

slayer says - -- - And even though the experts say that those kinds of games can make children violent in the future, there's no reason to believe so

I think it can actually be very educational.



One night while we were sitting at the older boy's Tae Kwon Do lesson, my 8 year old, then 6, asked me to read the book I had out loud to him. I was reading The Ilium by Dan Simmons, and my son recognized most of the characters from Age of Mythology and was able to follow along to a pretty complex novel. I was very impressed.



The downside... they want to play so much, it is hard to get them to read anything.



About HOMM IV - I also liked the caravan feature (and yes I did play HOMM 2 previously, but not 3) and the creatures moving by themselves. I used that to my advantage constrantly by teaming up peon creatures, having them stand guard around my cities and having them knock down an enemy attacking force so I could then clean them up with my heavy hitters. The downside of the caravan was that I would get so many "lairs" of creatures that I could spend 15 - 20 minutes just buying them all.



Another thing I miss about Heroes 4 is having more than 1 hero in an army. I would set up great combinations of "Healing" Heroes and "Destructive" Heroes and whoop the snot out of everything that came my way.

[Daelius Praal]

Yeap, I miss heroes iv too



I've played all the heroes games, and I liked them all but I only loved H4, and the complex magic system and yet very fluid game play. And I was feeling kind of bored after finishing the last campaign of H5, so I just went back to play some fan made H4 campaign. Which was superb btw



I don't know, I guess I miss the line of sight and a real magic system, and all the other great features of H4. But mostly it's because H5 like H3,2,1 after are more chess like, while H4 is more story/personal and has more possibilities than limits.



Like H5, the ultimate skill is a really great idea, however most of the time you don't feel the joy of getting it, most of the time you feel the frustration of the game giving you a choice of skills that will make it impossible to reach.



And I even remember being able to play with my friends the same fight over and over again, and win or loose based on our decisions. However in H5 the outcome is usually the same.



And I do remember a lot of gamers, at the time H4 was released, complaining by the fact the game was unbalanced, I however think it was unbalanced in a balanced way. For ex., teleport and mind control order spells were equally unbalanced to dragon strength and summon creature nature spells, and used correctly both could turn the tide of the battle.



I guess enjoyment vs. frustrations is equal to strategy possibilities vs. limits or balanced vs. equally unbalanced.

[DaemianLucifer]

How lame is that. How do you answer such a question And why even bother...

Oh,I can think of dozens of answers to make them really quite afterwards

Heh, female gamemodels. The chick from Unreal 2 comes to mind ^^

and the boss with the lightninggun in Quake III from one of the earlier tiers. She was kinda hot.



Lara Croft have never been anything....ugly clothes, ugly character....



About female gamers identifiying themselves on MP servers are always funny but can sometimes be quite sad.



One guy from the Swedish PC Gamer magazine (get GameReactor for free instead) went online to a CounterStrike chat server and pretended to be a woman. As soon as he said that, things got nasty. From what I remember the conersation went like this:



PC Gamer: Am I the only female here?

CS nerd: Seems so....

CS yerk: Yeah, you smell fish

PC Gamer: So what map do you prefer to play?

CS pervert: Do you got big boobs???

PC Gamer: Thanks, I'll make it. Anybody here that want to partake in a normal conversation?

CS dork: You got a wet *****?

**PC Gamer loggs off**



No wonder women don't want to play CS....

Again proof that CS are for kids.
Edited on Wed, Jul 19 2006, 18:06 by Campaigner

Well,CS community are mostly idiots towards anyone,not just females,so...

[LindaG]

I'm glad to see that I'm not the only person dissappointed by H5 as far as game play. I prefer single player, single scenario maps, so to speak, and have yet to finish my first game on H5. I find the whole thing annoying. Pretty pictures have never made a game for me.

It is really sad. I was hopeful in spite of my dislike of 3D games.

All the other games in the series are better, IMHO.



Good article, Milla. I didn't start playing games until after I was married, but then, Atari didn't come out until after I was married. lol.

[Kaboth]

Heaps of women play adventure and rpg games on PC and consoles. Then there are all the non-games that Women love like Singstar and The Sims. Its no longer a rare pastime at all for women to game in some capacity.



But strategy games seem to have a much smaller female audience which is a shame as they are often amongst the best unisex games.



I look forward to any future columns you may write Milla.

[Qurqirish Dragon]

But most female gamers I know won't tell the other players on a server that they are female because most of the time you get this:
Really??? are you hot?

How lame is that. How do you answer such a question And why even bother...

You could say "of course", and then blast the asker's character with a fireball. Then say "see?"

[Milla aka. the Slayer]

@ Qurqirish Dragon: You just made my day..

@ Kaboth: Well, thanks you. I'm glad you found it interesting

@ LindaG: Well I prefer single scenario maps too and in those the caravan really helps. In campaigns there may not even be any outside dwellings so there it's not that useful and I think the reason why some people don't find the caravan especially useful might be because they primarily play campaigns...
(this is just my take on caravans. Might not be true).

@ozzlander: Yes, it's quite a pain in the @$$ that only one hero is allowed in the army. I use the same tactic that you do and it's a really good combo that I was sad to see being left out in H5.

It's nice to already see more girls here Girls' comments on various topics are often very different from guys' comments so this will be a fresh breath of air

[asandir]

nice article milla, that'll get the boys going!!

[Xander]

Its good to know there are female players as well



Great article

[opening_gambit]

Its nice to see the female perspective, but also equally nice to see the perspective of someone who started off playing heroes IV, i personally and everyone i know started playing heroes III which had a similar tone to it as games such as civilisationII, the turn based game that hooked me onto most games and the only computer game ive ever seem my dad play other than solitaire and minesweeper. But as far as things go prequels always better the original but normally loose the soul of the game or the interest, i dont play civ IV and i have stopped playing heroes V mainly because it frequently crashes on my computer.



For future sequels of games i think it is important to change the games quite a lot each time, especially games like heroes, fps games you can just add a different weapon set and do a few tweaks and it completely changes the way you play the game, but for heroes you would need a radical change, i think homm IV did that and the reverting to the original is kind of loosing the interest to save the soul, i think ubisoft need to go overboard with the next game in the series, overboad swimming for 4 days and then finding a new abandoned ship with nothing but lsd and a computer to write programming on board.

[MER]

Its nice to see the female perspective, but also equally nice to see the perspective of someone who started off playing heroes IV, i personally and everyone i know started playing heroes III which had a similar tone to it as games such as civilisationII, the turn based game that hooked me onto most games and the only computer game ive ever seem my dad play other than solitaire and minesweeper.



Ha, ha, I was going to say exactly that, lol (actually I can't believe there might be a HOMM addict that isn't a civ addict too).

Now I've read Milla's article I came to realize why many of us didn't accept the caravans and heroeless armies in H4 - we didn't want to break out with the old ways. But ppl like Milla, who started at H4, found it great. Come to think of it there might be smth like that happening now with many ppl not accepting the 'fanciness' of H5.

[DaemianLucifer]

Ha, ha, I was going to say exactly that, lol (actually I can't believe there might be a HOMM addict that isn't a civ addict too).

Browse the forums and youll find that there are lots of people that like heroes,yet dont like civ.I know my nephew is one of those.Actually,heroes is the only strategy he likes.

Now I've read Milla's article I came to realize why many of us didn't accept the caravans and heroeless armies in H4 - we didn't want to break out with the old ways. But ppl like Milla, who started at H4, found it great. Come to think of it there might be smth like that happening now with many ppl not accepting the 'fanciness' of H5.

I played since HII,yet I love HIV,though I hate HV.It has more to do with taste then with what sequel you started with.

[Milla aka. the Slayer]

It's all just a matter of adapting to the new stuff in a game that one used to love. I think opening_gambit has a very good point when he/she says sequels need more alteration. Otherwise it would be enough to just keep releasing expansions, additions and updates to an original game and that would really suck.

I hope so very much that I will eventually come to like H5 but as it is right now I can't see how that's gonna happen. It would just be nice to not regret having gotten the game

[Paulus1]

actually I can't believe there might be a HOMM addict that isn't a civ addict too

I also love to play Civ, even though Heroes does rank higher for me. Civ II was my all time favorit. Just great game with very low requirements for the computer.

I hope so very much that I will eventually come to like H5 but as it is right now I can't see how that's gonna happen. It would just be nice to not regret having gotten the game

That kind of resembles my initial feelings towards Heroes IV. But the game grew a lot on me, so now it stands equal to Heroes III in my opinion.

[Milla aka. the Slayer]

I think I need to be forced to play H5 to come to like it and I don't have that kind of discipline

[Paulus1]

It's that bad??
Playing should be fun, not a torture

But if you really want, I guess I could stop by and delete everything else from your harddrive ... that should do the trick.

[Milla aka. the Slayer]

I can delete it myself thank you If I want to ruin every chance I have for some good fun..

[Paulus1]

And I thought it was such a nice offer, to help you get into Heroes V of course