Hail friends and enemies! Apologies for the long-overdue updates, but I’ve had my head up my arse writing chapter one of my masters thesis in law the last couple of weeks. It’s still not done, but I’m sick enough of it to take a few days off to play the greatly anticipated HOMMV PC release (any excuse will do, won’t it?). If all goes according to my non-linear, non-existent, non-planned plan, I should have some play impressions and any Mac compatibility issues recorded for you by the weekend, and I will be very eager to hear of your adventures in dual-boot hero arse-kicking as well. Over the last little while I’ve also collected my thoughts on the MacIntel dual-boot transition by looking at how the new economic and market conditions effect port jobs like those of Freeverse on HOMMV, so you can look forward to a bit of that. And finally — we have some news of the OSX port itself! Stay tuned, things are about to get interesting.

Then just to round things out, lets get one more “arse” into this post. Ahh, sweet relief that.

The official site has two new .WMV videos for you to watch in every Mac users favorite piece of crap media player. The first clip is Fabrice explaining how the new Ghost Mode will improve multiplayer by a factor of eleventybillion. For once I’m inclined to agree with the guy. The second clip is the new HOMM•V trailer. Not bad as trailers go, but what’s with the over-exposed trend to run through the credit text at the end of the trailer and then “surprise” us all with one last violent scene, typically involving an attack on the cameraman? Killing the innocent cameraman is a hell of a way to fade to black, and I’m just not convinced that it is effective now that the Lord of the Rings movies set the standard way high by killing four or five dozen cameramen in this way.

Fans of the Might & Magic universe might also want to take a look a the Dark Messiah gameplay video hosted by our sometimes interesting friends at Kotaku. This first-person RPG looks pretty hawt with a dynamic combat engine and multiple play styles, and is starting to get some good press as a breakout surprise at E3 this year. I think a lot of potentially great games were drowned in the Nintendo Wii feeding frenzy, this being one of ‘em.

Wish me luck — I’m heading down to my local independent games shop to cruise for a copy of HOMM•V tomorrow.

Also, for those who can, I found out from a good friend today that freakin’ Ehksbawks360 Live has total killer app: an amazing online version of UNO as a downloadable game for $4! And the damn thing includes 1) fully customizable rule-set; 2) ranked- and unranked games; 3) unlockable achievements; 4) customizable and specialty decks; 5) full Xbox Live matchmaking, voice support; 6) a mechanic for calling Uno for screwing the guy who doesn’t; 7) full High Definition support. Don’t ask me why, but I suddenly have a strange compulsion to spend $504 to play Uno.

Looks like I should have pre-ordered online as my local shop won’t have HOMMV until May 23rd. *Sniffle* At least let me know if you’ve got your copy and how she plays, as well as your general impressions. There is some rumbling in the wider world that the AI is not quite up to the challenge of beating veteran players of the franchise.

I definitely don’t want to put the cart before the horse (especially if its an ammo cart, and the road is steep, and there are little children frolicking around, and I am uninsured) but some impressions are emerging about playing single-player open-ended maps without scripting, and the AI seems a little mixed. On a post at Quarter of Three, the gamer claims that by the time he had conquered 2/3rds of the map on the hard difficulty level,

(1) The AI doesn’t take resource mines in any serious way; (2) The AI doesnt Improve her Heroes very efficently (my heroes where at least twice as good); (3) The AI doesnt improve her Cities very well (Last city I conquered had only half of all buildings and my home city was fully improved (all buildings built)).

Similar sentiments and experiences are expressed in this Celestial Heavens thread. However in both instances there are a lot of unanswered questions about how the scenarios are being set-up, so it is merely anecdotal at this point. Another post on the official forums claims that the AI was competent on a large map with a number of human players on the heroic (highest) difficulty setting, but that the AI clearly had a material resource advantage from teh begining.

In an interesting development, Nival has already announced that a new patch will be out in around a week. All we know about this patch is that it will introduce an “easy” difficulty setting after complaints the scripted scenarios were too hard. The inclusion of a new AI level might indicate that the AI on the whole has undergone more work since the product went Gold Master (and hence pressed to disk) almost a month ago.

Freeverse VP Colin Smith dialed the HOMM•V for OSX! hotline yesterday with an update on the OSX port:

We now have the GM Source and have started work. It won’t be an easy port, it’s looking like there are a few complicated issues, (most of which go over my head since I’m not a coder), but we’ll get it done! No time estimate yet it’s still too early in the process.

Colin also mentioned that their working relationship with Ubi has been smooth sailing, and describes the HOMM•V producer / mastermind Fabrice as “very pleasant and accommodating to work with.” Hopefully this will mean that there will be no trouble keeping the OSX version in lock-step with developments on the PC-side.

Speaking of which, Fabrice recently promised in this thread over at CelestialHeavens.com (as his alter-ego MuadDib) that HOMM•V would be getting regular content updates. The first patch is scheduled to be released within the next week or two, and will be including both a random map generator for single-map open-ended playing and a new easy AI difficulty setting in response to complaints that some campaign scenarios are too difficult. Another content patch in the coming months will include the map and scenario editor as well as additional maps designed by Ubi. Hopefully by the time the OSX port is near release it will beable to incorporate all these additions and patches into one seamlessly lovely product.

Fabrice also responded to some early complaints about the lacking “intelligence” aspect of the computer “Artificial Intelligence”. He noted that AI was “developed late in the process” (not very intelligent if you ask me) but that “the result is quite good… It’s a pretty efficient attacker”. He then went on to assure HOMM•V gamers that any deficiencies in the AI would be addressed in future content patches. This is reassuring given that HOMMV gamers were pretty much abandoned by 3DO when the AI in HOMM4 proved mostly useless.

I sadly still don’t have my copy yet (should have pre-ordered >.< ) but hope to provide some serious play impressions over the weekend. In the mean time, you can read why Gamespot game HOMMV an 8.2 in its mostly glossy, fatuous, descriptive and air-headed review.

I finally managed to go down to the local trade tent and exchange a few pieces of gold in return for a copy of HOMMV. After having played about half of a large single-player scenario, I’m happy to report that the addictive “one more turn” fever still runs just as hot in this latest sequel. Before I take the time to write a full and exhaustive review (that probably won’t come before the first patch is released next week), here are a few preliminary observations for those gamers still sitting on the fence and MacIntel gamers wondering if there are any problems.

Installation into BootCamped WinXP was unproblematic, though on my MacBook Pro I did have to Alt-Tab out of the (needlessly) full-screen installer to switch install CDs because my “Eject” key is unresponsive. For those sensitive about disk space on their partitioned drive, the HOMMV install is a relatively modest 1.5GB and so isn’t much of a hit compared to many other contemporary games.

That said, Nival didn’t chintz on the eye candy. The game remains damn pretty to look at and generally seems to run very smoothly and more consistently than did the beta on my MacBook Pro (2Ghz, 1GB RAM, 256MB x1600 at native 1440×900 resolution). This was with the graphics set to “high” (”very high” being the maximum) and without antroscopic filtering or anti-aliasing activated. I plan to test the various configurations pretty exhaustively, but right now the game seems scalable enough to run great on any MacIntel hardware that meets the minimum video card requirements (sorry MacBook and Mac Mini owners, you are probably out of luck).

As for the gameplay itself, all the core elements are there in spades, and old-timer HOMM fans won’t be let down as regards city development, hero growth, creature variety or combat tactics. But unfortunately for those who prefer single-player custom scenarios to either online play or the carefully scripted campaign, the AI looks like it will be a complete disappointment until thoroughly patched. I was incredulous and discouraged that in setting up a single-player custom scenario (of which there are currently only 8 maps or so), there was no option to customize faction settings, starting castles, win conditions, or the like! Unless I’m dumb as a brick and missing something (in which case we have a UI problem!), this must be interpreted as an indication that the AI is basically running as an almost completely scripted entity. The single-player scenario maps seem more like orphaned campaign rejects than the true “sandbox mode” that gave previous HOMM games such longevity and endlessly strategic gameplay.

More research is required, but single-player aficionados might want to hold-off on buying HOMMV until I’ve had a chance to better gague what is going on in “the matrix” and/or a couple of AI patches have been released.

Still, in the end, it feels great to be playing a finely crafted version of HOMM again, and the new additions to the game make it a worthwhile successor to the storied franchise. I’m eager to give the new online mutliplayer modes a test, and might even find the courage to play through a campaign or two as well.