Hey all,
I am looking for any book suggestions in the Lee Child, Robert Parker, and Robert Crais vein. About two years ago I stumbled onto all three authors and have since read their entire collections, two or more times. For me nothing is like finding an author you like that has a huge library, I usually read a book every 3 or 4 days and if it’s something I like, I want to immerse myself in a long running character for weeks. If anyone has a suggestion for the any authors like this with reoccurring characters please let me know.
Also, I have been out of the video game scene for years, can anybody recommend any games that are similar to the old Starcraft, Warcraft model. Video game time for me has always been separate from social time, and it has always been relaxing. Warcraft, Starcraft always fit the bill because it was basically glorified “Risk” not a lot of stress, all characters are disposable.
Thanks, with winter coming I’m hoping to put together a big list of things to do, and this will help a lot.
On the video game front, there’s a lot of real time ad turned based strategy games out there. You might want to start with Stacraft II which recently came out. Other recommendations:
Turn based:
Empire: Total War, Medieval II: Total War, Rome: Total War. Shogun II: Total War is coming out soon. This series is really a combination of turned based and real time.
Civ IV. Civ V is coming out soon (next month)
Galactic Civ II
Real time strategy:
Dawn of War II and expansions
Starcraft II
Demigod
Sins of a Solar Empire
Company of Heroes
Majesty II - This throws a curve on the typical RTS gameplay in that you don’t control units directly, but rather try and influence them by placing bounties and objectives on the map.
Get the game that started the whole modern RTS craze: Dune 2. Or it’s remake, Dune 2000.
I’ve also heard, but haven’t played, a game that many credit for being the precursor to that game, which is Herzog Zwei on the old Sega Genesis. I’ve always meant to download an emulator and play that.
For a more modern version, Age of Empires 1 and 2 do a great job of capturing that RTS Starcrafty feel with a historical bent. They don’t have the diversity in “races” or “empires” like Starcraft though. Instead, their version of balanced sides is a unit/tech tree that is accessible in places only by some empires but not others. For example, the Greeks will have access to Scythe Chariots but not War Elephants, but the Egyptians are the opposite. Another empire might have War Elephants but not Scythe Chariots, but have an increased damage when using ranged attacks. It plays out a lot slower than Starcraft though, in my opinion, and there’s 4 different money assets instead of 2