Mind candy

Well, it's a three day long weekend for us up in Canada. I intend to spend some quality time with my family, doing a spot of studying for my coursework, cooking yummy dishes...and devoting an inordinately unwisely large chunk of time playing Sins of a Solar Empire by Stardock. I've known Stardock since their Object Desktop and Entrepreneur days of yore, circa mid/late 1990s.

In an age where gamers are treated like criminals by game publishers, Stardock does something amazingly simple: they trust their customers. There's no copy protection on the game at all, although if you want updates you have to use the unique CD-key/game code on their website to get that goodness, ditto multiplayer.

I bought Sins last night and am having a blast. It's been a long time since I played a 4X that's space-based. The last good one that grabbed my attention was Master of Orion I and II (III was done by a different publisher as SimTex had gone bye-bye by then and it was horrible). Coming close (but not quite) was Galactic Civilizations II, also by Stardock.

I haven't gotten very far into the game yet (still doing tutorials) but it's very similar to Homeworld in the combat sequences. Insofar as I am concerned Homeworld I, II and Cataclysm rank amongst the best space-based tactical games of all time.

The family is reaping some benefits too; my sis has the full run of the house while I'm busy destroying planets and my nephews each get a full-colour poster of starship combat (I bought the Collector's Edition) to put up in their rooms.

I have some coursework to do, then I hope to spend a disproportionate amount of personal time this long weekend crushing hapless virtual space empires under my tastefully jackbooted sensible heel.