Stronghold rant...

[David Lame]

Thoughts on stronghold.

I have been in three years. This was my favorite game. However, as a spectator sport, Aerial Assist was much better.

The obstacles provided some great engineering challenges, but by the end of the season, they were just dull to watch. Teams either did them, or didn't do them, and there wasn't really any tension associated with the effort. One of the great disappointments for me was the "sally port loophole", which was that you could drive backwards through it, do a momentary flick to lose contact, and then drive forward, with no real loss of time. One of the great engineering challenges of the game suddenly became a triviality.

I think if they had been a little bit harder, and worth a little bit more, that would have made a better game. In the initial stages of design, it seemed like we could try and decide to do a "sapper bot" that concentrated on the obstacles, with boulders as an afterthought, or a "tower bot", that put its effort into shooting. In the end, everyone was able to be the sapper bot, and it was pretty much a given that there would be a breach, so the deciding factor was always being the best shooter.

The tortugas were fun, though, especially at the beginning of the season.

I, personally, liked the "themed" game. I would like to see more of them.

Overall: Very nice game. Four out of five stars.