Collegiate Times

Play: ESPNU (Facebook)

ESPN has gotten its hands into the Facebook game market. In ESPNU, you control a small college campus in an attempt to transform it into a nationally renowned university.

Players accomplish this through building various buildings on the campus. Build a journalism department to increase student happiness (I built two). Build a fraternity to attract more students. Build a hot dog stand to increase revenue and build a football stadium to play games against rival colleges.

Colleges can “rank up” as play goes on by increasing the size of their college (both dimensionally and in enrollment) and becoming the best at various sports. Another option allows players to affiliate their school with a real-life college or university. I chose Virginia Tech, of course. My school colors, along with the uniform of the very informative and kind cheerleader serving as my tutorial guide, switched to orange and maroon.

Over time, some buildings will produce money or new students, which can be obtained by clicking on the building. Sports venues will be ready to host new games but must be “cleaned up” first by clicking on them.

If any of this sounds familiar it is because ESPNU is a shameless rip-off of Farmville. I can imagine the meeting where it was first pitched, one executive saying to another “Hmm. Facebook can make us money but we don’t want to spend a lot of money. You know that Farmville game? Let’s just do that, but for boys!”

Nearly every aspect of the game is the same with just enough tweaked to prevent any lawsuits. Look up Skinner Box on Google and you’ll see exactly what this game is: an attempt to get Facebook users to stare at ESPN ads for as long as possible.

ESPNU gets one punt out of five but don’t worry if you’re one of the 70 million people using the Google Chrome browser (I am). ESPNU won’t work for you.

Play: Star Control II (PC)

Star Control II was released in 1992, back when floppy disks really were floppy and Windows 3.1 was the hot new thing.

Star Control II is a bit hard to explain. It is a relic of an age when games could not rely on stunning visuals to scrape by, so not a single ounce of the game could be wasted. The result in Star Control II is a game with writing that both intrigues the player and pokes fun at its own genre.

It is part starship strategy game, part role-playing game and part exploration game. It is truly the predecessor to multi-titled epics such as
Mass Effect.

The game can be a bit frustrating to those who aren’t used to the difficulty curves of older games. In fact, if you do not write down every bit of useful information (hint: star coordinates) you come across, you can quickly become confused or
frustrated.

The game requires active thought as opposed to passive reflexes to get by. But when diplomacy breaks down and ship-to-ship combat is your only option, you better pray your fingers can be light on that
keyboard.

Star Control II has been heralded as one of the greatest games of all times by entities such as Gamespot and IGN. 

Its visual standards may not be up to par, but if you’re looking for a solid, quality game to pass time over Thanksgiving break, check it out and you will not be disappointed.

Star Control II gets five stars out of five.

A version of this article appeared in the Nov 16 issue of the Collegiate Times.