And you really do. We’ve talked about PCG’s Tom Francis’ new Gal-Civ-2 game-diary in passing before, but since it’s now concluded, it definitely deserves another link. His idea was to try and conquer through peaceful methods alone the largest size of GalCiv map. Forty hours or so later, things have changed. Peace Through Tyranny is still peace, right? My personal highlight is the ludicrously devious method to create the fastest moving spaceship known to any alien species. Highly recommended.
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Isn’t Tom’s diary nominated for some award or something? If so it deserves to win :D
Great piece of writing, I really enjoyed the whole thing. Damn it why does killing billions sound so fun :D
Tom’s nominated for a GMA, which is a brit games media award. It’s for best magazine writer, basically, but I dare says included how good the first diary was.
KG
That Gillen is a Spy?
You should read this excellence, then vote for him at the Games Media Awards:
http://www.mcvuk.com/news/31510/Games-Media-Awards-finalists-revealed
Ah brilliant. I had a look for this after it got mentioned on the podcast but failed miserably.
Great stuff and I’m keeping my fingers crossed for the GMA Tom.
Cheers
Draycen
Simply awesome. Both this and the old one.
fastest moving?
His ‘fastest moving ship’ jumped 600 trillion kilometers in one second due to a legal exploit in the game.
It was a good read and I’m enjoying the biscuit I earned by getting the GCU / ROU references!
I am reading it now.
just finished day 9.
“So no, you can’t have Solidarity.” I laughed my ass off.
I love those diaries. Why there aren’t more of that sort of thing is beyond my understanding.
Damn, at this rate we’ll have to wait for galciv 3 before he does the next one, and that won’t be before 2010 at the very least D:
Looking forward to when I can give this a good read this evening. Someone wrote a really brilliant blog for EvE-Online, I think he was basically trying to take over 0.0 in his rookie ship. I can’t find it for the life of me :( .
@Kua
http://00experiment.blogspot.com/
Awesome writing skills – up there with living in oblivion lad for sheer entertainment and ability to make you use over an hour of office time reading a blog in plain site :)
Screw timelines, that was more than worth it! So very tempted to purchase the game now.
I received the printed book with my PC Gamer subscription, the original and this are some of the best pieces about gaming that I have ever read.
Please don’t hit me.
All I could think about after reading this is: “We are at war with the Terrans. We have always been at war with the Terrans.”
that was epicly awesome!
I was sad Tom couldn’t achieve his goal in the way he intended, but it was a valiant (and hilarious, of course) effort. I wish I had his strategic imagination when it came to GalCiv.
Reading his diaries always leaves me with a strong urge to boot up GalCiv2, but my experience never quite matches his excellent narration.
…I probably just need to get better at the game :P
I have the book copy of the diary that came free from PC Gamer. Think he might sign it?
Ehehehe, I liked the GCU WTFIIYF (WHERE THE [FREAK] IS IT YOU [FREAKS]?)
If you’ve ever wondered why space sometimes has the occasional starless “dark patch,” now you know.
I can’t believe how much I laughed with that article. Simply amazing.
A delight to read.
I read the first couple of days of the online version and liked it so much I went and spent some of my hard earned cash on the mag [a tough descion between 2 drinks and merryment, it's a tough life being a student] and I was a little disappointed. I was sold the dream that he’d take over the galaxy by culture hugging people to death and instead he went and blew up suns. Still a great read but not the story I wanted to read after reading the first few days, I wanted to hear the story of how he slowly but surely broke everyone’s will and sold them rubbish tv show after rubbish tv show.
Playing GalCiv is nothing like reading that, it is however a bit like taking crack. Only more destructive.