My New Interactive Addiction: Evony

In addition to film and television, I also love video games. I am, after all,of the right age to have spent hour after hour in Pong tournaments when it was the absolute king. There was no one else vying for the throne, of course. That interest has followed me all these years. Currently, in addition to a couple computers, there is a Wii, a PS2 and a PS3 in this house, with dozens of games to play on those platforms.

My latest addition to the game catalog is not a cartridge though. It's a browser game, completely free and available to me anywhere I have my laptop and an internet connection.

Evony (www.evony.com) is basically a persistent real time strategy game. When you sign up, you are given control of a village nestled in a valley. Your valley is tucked in a landscape filled with terrain, barbarians and your competition. Your task? Grow your city and provide for your population while defending yourself from the predations of other players.

Luckily, they give you seven days of protection from other players. Use that time to get some farms and sawmills, build some walls and recruit an army. By the end of the week, you'll have enough knowledge and power to get your feet wet in the big, bad world. That's when the real fun begins. Because it is the community of other players that elevate Evony. The real time, real people aspect means that there is political manipulation, competition for resources and plenty of war and peace.

For me, the greatest thing about Evony and the reason I am enjoying it so much is that the game has been set up to appeal to multiple levels of what you might call "dedication demographics." One of the dangers of any MMOG (Massively Multiplayer Online Game) is that those who can pay the most attention and dedicate the most time to the game will dominate. It is as true here as it is in World of Warcraft or anything else out there. But where Evony really scores is in the way it allows you to pop in for a few minutes, make some tweaks and then let them run and get back to work.

Evony is wonderful for this. Because the tasks of building, recruiting and researching technology all take real time, you can log in and spend a few minutes at random and still make progress. The Beginner's Protection, which is frustrating and tempting to leave voluntarily by day four or so, saves you from simply being food for the wolves.

With me, that means that I can be writing or editing and take a quick little mental refresher break. Pop a browser window open and recruit a few cavalry, build a quarry, research military tech and then back to editing Urban Werewolves.

The games not perfect, of course. The biggest annoyance is the frustratingly low drop rate for the medals that are necessary to advance in rank and thus expand your realm to more than a single city. Rumor is that this drop rate is currently 1% and has been adjusted down since the beta period. Based on my own personal experience, calling it 1% might be overstating it. This needs to be adjusted if they don't want people leaving. Personally, I am getting close to the limits of what I can do with my two cities and the annoyance factor of having attacked dozens of valleys and cities fruitlessly is starting to build. If I abandon Evony, it will be over frustration with medals.

But that's not enough for me to back away from a hearty recommendation for Evony. It's fun. The ability to pop in for a little bit a few times a day and still succeed, if not dominate, is absolutely wonderful. And the system of alliances makes for a human element that may be the best thing about the game. Machiavelli would love Evony.

They've even elected a Queen. Using their forums. Worst thing about that was that I joined too late to get in on the voting. The best thing was seeing the diversity of interesting and yes, attractive, women who play the game. Gamer girls are breaking through that 'Daria' stereotype at last.

If you decide to give it a whirl and should happen to end up on server 50, look me up. I play under the name Belegon, have two cities in the province of Burgundy and am a member of the AE2 alliance.

Oh, and if you end up conquering five valleys and getting a Rose Medal, please forgive me when I hate you with a passion.

The Hangover Won't Make You Sick...

....but your stomach might hurt from laughing so hard.

This is one of those movies that it is hard to review. Because the last thing you want to do is give away any of the story.

Basically, the story line is that four guys go to Vegas for a bachelor party and get blitzed out of their minds. Hilarity ensues. It's not giving anything away to most people to set the very basic scene, because other reviewers have already let some things emerge and because the trailers and ads give some stuff away.

Four friends (actually, three friends and the future bro-in-law) hit Vegas. They make a pledge to hit the town and get crazy. The next morning they wake up with the dentist missing a tooth, one guy wearing a hospital bracelet, a baby in the closet and a tiger in the bathroom. Oh, and missing one groom.

The rest of the movie involves them figuring out what the hell happened. It is not politically correct. It is not tasteful. It is not safe for children.

It is funny as all hell.

Oh, and stay and watch the credits. They are accompanied by some of the best laughs in the film.