PCSG: TWO-PAGE GUIDE (7 February 2001, 18:33 EST) Martin Croft of the PC Strategy Games website has had his strategy guide for CTPIIposted on PCG's website. The two-page guide runs through some basic pointers for gamers getting into the swing of things.
The nod goes to Strategy Planet for scooping this story first.
A `C` FROM NEXT GENERATION (7 February 2001, 18:21 EST) Next Generation magazine has given CTPII a 60% overall rating. However, an online review is not known to be available.
That said, if you know that it is available online, or are able to provide us with an excerpt or two from this, please email us.
REVUE FRANÇAISE À LA VUE (4 February 2001, 0:13 EST) A critique of Activion's follow-up title to C:CTP en français comes from Quebec PC. If French is not one of your spoken tounges, then with the assistance of AltaVista's reknowned Babelfish translation service, you should be able to make some headway in understanding the reviewer's standpoint.
With a final rating of 70%, it's clear that while QPC felt the game had potential it disappointed gamers in certain respects.
G100: LEAPING BACK (4 February 2001, 16:55 EST) In the 422nd installment of the Top 100 PC Games, published every week by Global 100, Call To Power II leaps back into its previous high performance in 14th position.
CONVERSATIONS WITH RICHARD (7 February 2001, 13:48 EST) Frequent visitors will remember the nickname Azmel as the one used by Richard Meyers in our forums and chats. Richard worked on the CTP1 and CTP2 AI. A couple of weeks he offered his help to Wes(instead of geting into "consumer action"-type discussions with Yin ;)), as Wes had questions working on the AI for the MedMod.
A few mails later, Wes posted Richard's answers to his first round of questions, which dealt with issues in the strategies.txt.
You can send a question to Richard via Wes. Of course these should be on AI behavious issues, and not on such things as bugs or multi-player problems(or consumer actions :D).
MAPPING WORK AND PLAY (4 February 2001, 0:18 EST) When he's not busy uploading files and adding new entries into our CTPII Files Database, OmniGod takes some time out of his day to work on some of his own creations. Yesterday he tantilized visitors to our forums with a spectacular preview of his latest and last World map for the game.
OG says that while the work on this project is time consuming, he wants to be as accurate as possible.
The map is based on the lakes, rivers, geology and topography provided by Cornell, he explains.
Even if you're not a CTPII enthusiast, you'll want to check it out!
GG: GOLD NUGGET (7 February 2001, 18:14 EST) An overall rating of 89 from Gone Gold reviewer Matt Sakey has garnered CTPIIGold Nuggest status on the site.
Activision gets a big thumbs-up for the work done in CTP2, Sakey writes. It's still not perfect, but the most annoying aspects of the interface have been fixed, and, had it not been for the interface, the original CTP would have been a pretty solid game. Don't get me wrong, the interface is still far from elegant, but it's certainly better. Aside from the interface and the new diplomacy model, however, we're still pretty much playing the original Call to Power here. There is almost nothing new.
In other words, Stakey says, I went into CTP2 with doubts and came out reassured. It's not perfect, which is why it doesn't get the Pure Gold rating, but it is improved, and that's a start.
In conclusion, here is a rundown of the individual category breakdown scores from Stakey's review: Manual/Interface (87), Sound/Music (89), Graphics (85) and Gameplay (93).
NOT A CGM 2000 AWARD NOMINEE (7 February 2001, 17:58 EST) In announcing their Gaming 2000 Awards nominees, Computer Gaming Magazine had a seperate category for Real-Time Strategy Game Of The Year and a "general" Strategy Game of the Year, but not turn-based game of the year category and no CTPII nominee in the latter.
This is the latest in a string of gaming network awards for the year 2000 where CTPII has not made it into the nominee stage of the proceedings.
