Saturday, July 28, 2007

Everybody Wants to Rule the World


I love this game called "Conquest" that I've had on my computer for years. It's played just like the board game "Risk." You get a particular color, and then as you get more armies, you can attack the other colors until you conquer continents and eventually the world.

It's the ultimate white man's game.

I get really into it sometimes. I start to think that the other colors are out to get me. Other colors are controlled by the computer, but they apparently have "personalities" to go along with their fictional colors. I sometimes think that the other colors intentionally gang up on me to ruin my attempts at global domination. The army battles are supposed to be random, but the computer is randomly creating outcomes for itself. If I was doing that, I'd be put in a rubber room. As a result, I start to get annoyed with my virtual opponents. Not since Senator McCarthy has a single individual yelled "DAMN YOU RED ARMY" so many times.

I love the geography of the game too. Hundreds of cultures can be summed up in the general blobs labeled "Eastern Europe" and "The Middle East." Oddly enough, conquering Greenland and Australia are good strategic moves in this game while having the United States won't help you for shit. Don't even get me started on the subdivisions that they give for Russia. Who wants to attack "Kamchatka," "Yakutsk," and "Irkutsk"? The abominable snowman?

I recently purchased the full-version of this game. It gives a wider variety of computer opponents and gives me the ability to choose which territories I want to start with. It also creates a lot more animosity between the computer colors and myself.

I think I need psychiatric care.

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Conquest - Making Manifest Destiny look like a rental agreement since 2005.

1 comment:

contemplator said...

I'm addicted to Civilization. It's the most xenophobic inducing game I've ever played. Some other civ is on my island?! Build war elephants and raze their cities!!