Stately Citizen Journalism

Tides of Time is out. I’m not too sure about it, though. The screenshots look nice and there seems to be some sort of campaign, but there doesn’t seem to be any kind of multiplayer other than hot seat. The app is $5 and Portal’s description in the store merely explains the game, but doesn’t tell you what any of the app features are. If anyone takes the plunge, please let us know.

Had my eye on this one too, but was leery of the lack of mp as well.

Hotseat MP only. Think they said they’d do proper multiplayer “If the app was received well”.

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I have the related game Tides of Madness. It is a beautiful looking game that I’d like to play more (only played a few games). I like the idea of this as an app, but the game is so small, I’d rather just bring and play it instead of playing it on a screen. So hotseat only play seems like a reasonable choice for the times I don’t have the physical game with me. But would prefer a local multiplayer option (such as through bluetooth). Memory is an aspect of the game so async doesn’t seem that compelling (sorry). Though a campaign sounds like a good idea.

To nit-pick about the app itself; it seems that the cards are partially hidden by each other. I think this is just poor game design when the whole point of the game is to look at the cards and evaluate which cards you have and which to get. (I could really be wrong here because I’m looking at the screenshots they provided with the game).

I hope they offer Tides of Madness as an IAP.

There is no online multiplayer at launch. I talked with Ignacy about it, and he said they’re looking into including it later, but if the game is ‘well received’.

I think there’s a good chance it won’t be ‘well-received’ simply because there’s no online multiplayer…

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I’ll give it 1 well of receipt as soon as I can get it from Google Play here in the UK.

Yeah, I’m tempted by this but Tides of Madness, beyond simply a reskin of the same game, adds the “Madness” mechanic that really makes the game. It’s a very fun mechanic which rewards the player for acquiring madness but, if you gain too much, you’ll instantly lose.

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Not the usual kind of product talked about around here, but DCS F-14 comes out in a couple of days. Despite (like every kid of a certain temperament and age) loving Top Gun, I had planned to sit this one out. I have too many modules gathering dust as it is, and I find the workload kind of overwhelming without a mounted stick and throttle quadrant, let alone without some way of tracking targets since I don’t have a track IR or VR setup. Plus it’s $70, pretty steep.

This trailer, however, changed my mind.

I literally could not have imagined this as a kid playing the old Top Gun game on the NES and dreaming of being a Navy pilot (a dream which bad eyesight and worse motion sickness would eventually put paid to). Couple days left to get in on the preorder. They seem to have done some really excellent work with the Jester AI, so maybe he’ll take some of the target spotting work off my plate. My girlfriend has even expressed some interest in playing the RIO role, holy shit. Never thought I’d see the day.

We’ve come a hell of a long way from this:

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Holy shit. Those aren’t movies? That’s insane.

Hell yeah, it is. Check this one out. The voice in this one is the Jester AI’s voice actor, but it’s not representative of the AI’s actual dialogue, which would be absolutely nuts.

Still cool!

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Any word on an iOS port? /s

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Portal should keep their promise to fix the online MP for Neuroshima Hex in first place, before releasing another game without online client.
total disappointment.

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Zero faith in Portal.

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I don’t blame you.

The app is…ok. My review will go up later today.

But yeah, they really need to fix Neuroshima Hex so @js619 can go back to destroying me there

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I do so miss that game…

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Even with the old interface, it is still potentially one of the best board game apps available, and certainly a unique game design. Would I like a complete overhaul and facelift? Sure, but I’d be more than happy with a simple multiplayer fix.

Completely randomly, I actually had a dream the other night that I unlocked my phone and Neuroshima Hex was updating. Yeah, I’m weird like that.

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Neuroshima Hex one of my most missed all-time favorites.
it was always such a blast to play.

SHAME, SHAME, SHAME on Portal for ruining the online playability with friends!
must be sheer ignorance or incompetence as other devs can do it easily.

there had been so much blabla and ballyhoo by Portal about the re-release.
and then… TOTAL FAIL.

[edit] i just tried again to send an invite by GameCenter: “ERROR: error occurred while sending invitation.”
and i have sent another email invitation to a friend, containing that infamous link (“tap this link and join game: try again”) which never functioned since the relaunch.
there never was an update since a year, but maybe a serverside patch fix?

i will inform you about the result of this new (last?) try.
[edit] the invitation link function still broken.

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I tend to play most of my games with my 2 long-time friends, and we actually loved Neuroshima Hex as a 3-player game. The reason it works is that there such little space that the typical 2v1 problem doesn’t work all that well and ganging up on one player can leave you very open to attack. Yes, it is a better 2-player game, but it worked surprising well with 3. The only downside is that certain armies aren’t as good with 3; dancer, doomsday, and neojungle come to mind.

Forgot to tell you…I contacted Aspyr. Very useful information…

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For those interested in Tides of Time, here’s what I thought.

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