Embarrassment of a Solar Empire

I had another "saying stupid things on national television" episode today. I am to be in some sort of fashion show hosted by Hanna on Z TV, aired tomorrow, and I sort of dressed up in tight, dark blue jeans, a turquoise dress, a horrible grey sweater and a shabby Burberry coat. Then I talked about how this style was inspired by "rural nobility" (sic!). All in all, I was almost as silly as the time when I appeared as a post-apocalyptic techno rocker (speaking of which - only a few months left 'til Fallout 3 - woo!!!).


I also met a very nice hobo. Hanna gave him some cigarettes and he talked about his homeless life for a while, relating to us a story about how he had fallen asleep this weekend, drunk as hell, outside a local theatre. Some women had apparently painted his nails and put on lipstick while he was sleeping, which would have been a so-so prank, even had they been his friends or something. Doing it to people on the edge of society, however, is just fucked up.

He admitted to stealing the yucca palm leaves he wore as ears, or horns, I dunno. He justified it with a simple "the yucca palm has 500 leaves, and new ones will grow!" I thought it was pretty poetic.

Yesterday evening was spent testing Sins of a Solar Empire. It is a new space strategy game rather devoid of unique ideas but with a lot of things going for it like the sheer scale in combination with possibilities for micromanagement, nice graphics and a generally nice feel to it. Sort of like Supreme Commander in space.

At first, I felt I was in love. However, on the smallest map, it took me about three hours to corner the enemy civilization, not even defeating it. If a casual game lasts at least half a day, how are people without unlimited quantities of time supposed to play it? However, problems quickly became apparent, such as the AI being a bit retarded, the scout ships being nigh impossible to destroy in time, the pirate raids becoming very tedious, and so on. And, there is no campaign in the game, only skirmish. Come on! I like playing campaigns, even if they are badly written and rather short. They give me some sort of purpose and motivation for playing, instead of just taking some short "Eurasia and Oceania have always been at war" at face value. Anyway, I will not be buying this unless they come out with some (a lot of) fixes.

Scratch that. I will not be buying it, because if its crappy aspects get fixed, I will spend far, far too many hours playing it.