Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne: It's like they designed the game to piss me off. Look, I'm an RTS player from ages back. Since Dune 2. I've played RTS games you've probably never heard of. And frankly, I haven't any idea what people see in Warcraft III. As a game, I don't care for it. Sure, the full-motion video cut scenes are exceptionally well done. But the game? Annoys the hell out of me. The game requires an extensive amount of micromanagement, and at the same time, is designed to split your attention between two or more groups simultaneously. And this is in both the single- and multi-player aspect! How kind! Thank you, Blizzard!

Some game talk:

Call of Duty has overtaken Medal of Honor as the premiere WW2 infantry game. While Battlefield 1942 is a great game for vehicle combat, I've always found its infantry aspect rather unimpressive. There seems to be a lack of polish and the animation and fighting just never felt all that smooth. The former two games, however, have always focused on the infantry experience. Call of Duty makes use of a "use the weapon sights" system, so anyone who's played Night's Edge should have no problem picking it up.

Command & Conquer Generals: Zero Hour introduces a few new units and the Generals challenge is interesting, but overall I found it a little disappointing. Especially the way the computer cheats. That always turns me off. The cut scenes stuttered incessantly on my system, making them unbearable. The docs suggested this was due to my old ISA soundcard, which I removed. Problem remained.

Tried Black & White for the first time a few weeks back. Thanks to online strategy guides, I managed to get further than most of my friends said I would. It was a very interesting game, often fun. It just doesn't seem like they got anyone to playtest the damn thing. Or, if they did, simply disregarded all input that wasn't bug reports. There are far too many "WTF?" moments in the game, stuff that simply isn't explained, forcing the player to try and figure out just what is going on. I had gotten pretty far in the game when my animal was inexplicably and irreversibly frozen. There was nothing else I could do, because I couldn't progress on that level without him, and there was absolutely no explanation as to why he couldn't move. Too many levels ended up with me stripping the map bare of vegetation. Apparently my followers can breed generation after generation but the damn trees don't grow back! Maybe B&W 2 will address some of these basic design flaws. Or maybe they won't.

Good news: Scavenger placed 3rd in the 2003 Interactive Fiction Competition, just behind Slouching Towards Bedlam and Risorgimento Represso (both very good games). My own reviews can be found on my IF page.

This year's trend seemed to be "a youth transported from our world to a magical fantasy land". This could be found in the games Curse of Manorland, Sweet Dreams, Sophie's Adventures, Risorgimento Represso, and A Paper Moon. IF Comp trends are always interesting simply because the games are developed independently, in nearly all cases without any knowledge of the other games being created.

Some sub-trends:

• The PC is a young girl (4): Curse of Manorland, Sweet Dreams, Sophie's Adventure, Shadows On The Mirror
• Research facilities (2): Scavenger & Bio
• Pure puzzle games (2): The Recruit & The Erudition Chamber
• Takes place in an office (2): CaffeiNation & Episode in the Life of an Artist (I won't count The Adventures of the President of the United States even though it starts in the Oval Office)
• Games where you learn to cast spells (2): Sophie's Adventure & Domicile

Just finished playing all of the 2003 IF Comp games. More or less. There were several I did not play to completion because I just couldn't bring myself to try them any longer than I did. I also managed to get all 30 pics matched up on the Competition 2003 Drawings page, though with 3 of them I had to guess because I didn't get far enough into the game to see the relevant scene.