It is too bad that force feedback joysticks are dead. That was a creative tech but people didn't like it.

Do any modern flight sticks also rumble, basically the same as a 360 controller?

I guess the best answer is the stealth-action genre.

Like, by the time you finish a typical Call of Duty game, you are a mini-genocidal maniac having killed hundreds of enemy soldiers.

Is there any way to make a shooter game that doesn't have you committing mass murder? I don't think any human being has ever killed more than say, 50 people in personal combat.

I described how it is like starcraft 2, dude. It's just that Starcraft 2 does a much better job on the endgame.

It's kind of like a pop song compared to a classical opus.

but they're both songs.

Civ 5 for me comes down to you basically come up with a formula at the start of a play session, which for me would be like, "use the liberty tree with Carthage to get maximum benefit of harbor trade routes" and then babysit it for 2-3 hours.

Meanwhile, a game like Starcraft 2 essentially has the same thing going on, testing your build theory vs the opponent, and it all wraps up in about 20 minutes.

the late game is awful because what happens is as the civilization grows to cover the world, your army gets bigger. This is because you have more land that you need to defend and because you have more resources to devote to the army.

When it comes time to fight, you have to move each piece individually. So if your army has 20 units, that's like 60 clicks per turn. And if you want to keep things simple with a small teching civilization, you at some point will be invaded by a large army so you'll have to do move around 20 units per turn thing anyways.

The fundamental problem is that everything but army maintinence is subject to diminishing returns. Like, culture quickly gets expensive.

Growth of cities slows meaning that each unit of food is less useful. The only area that isn't subject to this is armies, with each unit always taking up 1 gold in maintinence.

So it would probably be smart to do something like units in renaissance age cost 5 gold per turn in maintinence, and atomic age units cost 10 gold in maintinence.

Right now, by the time you get to the late game, your economy should be roaring and so it is easy to have like 100 gold surpluses, so you don't need to economize in unit production. You just build more. But to get the same comparative effectiveness, you need to build many many more units. SO you just end up clicking like crazy.

Since modern weapons are so much more complex than simple clubs, this makes perfect sense to make unit maintinence more expensive for modern units.

I don't get how Mafia II is any worse on the open-world department. You can still go around robbing stores and crushing cars for cash for instance.

The only difference is that you don't have those optional missions where in GTA 4 you have like 3 mission destinations you can go to.

Which isn't that big of a difference.

Like, Mafia 2 is open world *enough* so that it doesn't feel like a cinematic shooter that plays itself. You get to choose the destination and can wander around the city.

And in everything else from graphics to animation to characters and gun play to even car handling and damage modeling it is better than GTA.

GTA4 is actually really arcadey I found.

The shops were noticably better than GTA 4. I liked the animations of the characters when shot.

The characters on a whole were much much better than GTA 4. GTA 4 is entirely unpleasant characters. It's funny as slapstick for a little bit, but can't really sustain interest IMO.

The the radio in Mafia 2 is a nostalgia treat with song styles I haven't heard in a long time. GTA 4's radio isn't too different in theme from GTA 3, it's actually not as funny I think.

I'm finding GTA 4 to be a chore to play through.

I have genuinely found myself surprised by twists in the story.

The game world is the best of a realistic place ever created. Just the level of detail and care taken. It's like a game world where you want to shut the door after you leave because it's the right thing to do.

It is easily better than GTA 4.

The gun mechanics are surprisingly good. They pack a good punch and have good sounds.

Enemies are really smart. Like, if you shoot at them, they duck back under cover IN REPONSE TO YOUR SHOT.

Or if they see an open door, they go and check it out.

There's lots of elements where the game is superior to standalone stealth games like splinter cell or standalone shooter games. Wrap it all up and I'm very very impressed with this game.