Gaming on a Budget – Age of Empires

It’s time to talk about a game that we found to be a lot of fun for just $10 at your local Evil Empire – err, Wal-Mart.

It is a game of world domination in which you start with a town center and a couple of villagers and build up your civilization with houses, mills, lumber camps, gold and stone mines, barracks, castles and other various buildings for the advancement of culture.

The best part of this game is after you advance through the ages and can build your civilization's unique attacking units such as knights and trebuchets (big freakin’ catapults that destroy enemy walls and buildings). After amassing a decent size army of attack units and fortifying your base with stone walls and guard towers, march your army to the enemy base and wreak havoc among their villagers, town center and defense units.

We have found this game to be at its best when doing a LAN and joining forces against computer opponents. A common task is for us to take our team of 2 cultures against either 3 teams of 2 cultures per team or against 2 teams of 3 cultures per team. (There is an 8 player maximum.)

We urge you to buy this cheap game, set up a LAN with a couple of friends and set out to dominate the world. It is the cheapest game I have ever spent so much time playing – outside of that pet rock I got when I was 3 years old… I definitely suggest Age of Empires over a pet rock if you are old enough to operate a computer.

GTA IV Details - The Taxi Cab Driver

For the past couple months I have been playing the new GTA IV on PS3, and let me say, that game is amazing! The thing that amazes me the most is not the stunning graphics, the storyline, or even the huge map with no loading......it's the attention to detail. I have been playing the game quite a bit since it came out, and I still find new things everytime I play it. The area that I am going to write about is, The Taxi Cab Driver.




The Taxi Cab Driver

What some people may not know, is that if you don't feel like driving across the whole map to get somewhere, you can just hail a cab. I tend to do this for just such a reason, but what I've been finding out that is entertaining, is the cab driver. There are about 3 different types of cab drivers, each with their own personality. First detail is when you enter the car, the dome light comes on, and if someone else is hoping in with you, it will light up when they enter and shut off when they close the door. Next, the taxi cab driver will always turn around and ask you where you want to go. You can then pick from either a spot you picked on the map, or from various areas of interest (bar, comedy club, resteraunt, or even a gentlemen's club). Once you decide where you are going and tell the cab driver, is when the fun starts. Below is a list of different responses I have heard when telling him where you want to go:

• "Okay, don't play with the windows"
• "Nobody knows this town better than me!"
• "I can't wait till I get off work, go home, smoke some hash, and beat up the koochie!"
• "I hope you don't mind, but I just layed some serious gas in here."
• "Sounds good, I'll take the long way."
• "Would you make up your %&*#* mind?!" (when switching locations)

After you are on your way to your destination, you can either switch locations (response from above), or tell the driver to hurry up. When you tell him to hurry up, he will start to drive recklessly, hitting anything and anyone at high speeds, and will follow it up with saying:

• "You don't have to tell him twice!"


• "Now you're speaking my language!"


• "You got it!"

I will still hear new sayings, especially when finding drivers from different areas of the map.

The Taxi Cab Driver is one of the many areas in GTA IV that I have noticed the game developers have put in a lot of work and great detail to make it as realistic and enjoyable as possible.

An Introduction to Pfieffer and Focko

Welcome to the Pfieffer and Focko’s first blog. We aren’t know-it-alls when it comes to video games. We are more like a poor-man’s Video Gamer magazine. We plan to discuss interesting tid-bits about random games for PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii and maybe a few PC games as well – neither of us own an Xbox 360, sorry. We may refer to games that apply to multiple platforms even though we will experience them mainly on the systems we have access to.

Our target audience is the average to under-average video gamer that has a substantial/average life to attend to without being able to game-it-up 24/7. We may like to game from after work until the wee hours of the morning from time to time, but realistically, our lives may get in the way of such gaming rampages. This blog will help us keep in touch with that inner child that still memorizes cheat codes (for NES TMNT: Manhattan Project at the start up screen – Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, A, B, Start).