Sightseeing in Liberty City – a set on Flickr
Cool comparison shots of New York compared to Liberty City!
Category Archives: Games
Games we played this week…
Last Night On Earth, about 5 times – Best zombie game I’ve played.. though I’ve only played 3 or so. It can be unbalanced depending on the luck of the draw and dice rolling, especially for the zombie master, but it’s still a fun game. And it comes with a soundtrack CD! Too bad it isn’t quite long enough… We ended up playing that and the Event Horizon soundtrack, which was perfect.
Arkham Horror, three times – Fun cooperative Cthulhu-themed game. A little long to set up, so we played it again the next day before putting it away. Our first game, including set-up, took about 8 hours (spread over two days)! The next one took only 3 or so and the final one took about 5 hours… but that was partially because midway through we had a black-out. Seriously! And had to take some time to find and light candles. Photos soon… 🙂
World of Warcraft the Boardgame – I set expectations low on this one since I’ve played it many times before and decided that it wasn’t as good as I’d hoped. Alliance and Horde factions end up playing two separate games, almost, with lots of downtime as you wait for the other faction. So this time we played with a variant where we were all on one side (Horde, of course!). The only problem here was that we had four players so the end fight was a little unbalanced. But still, I thought it was fun. I think maybe there should be some way to keep a running total of all dice you get to role so that you don’t have to keep counting them during each battle. That might save some time.
Rummikub – I played this with Robin, my mom, and my brother a few weeks ago when we were at Ocean Shores. Fun game. Gray is very, very tired of it, after apparently growing up with it.
Give me the Brain – Aaron gave me this along with a bunch of other Cheap Ass Games (see below for others) since he was clearing out his closet. Players are zombies in a fast food joint and compete for control of the one brain among them to fulfill various orders or complete tasks. It wasn’t as fun as I remember, but still… :p
Lord of the Fries – Another CAG. This game is what I remember more and liked more. And this time I still liked it. A card matching game. I wonder if it could be combined with needing the brain to put fulfill orders… or if that would just make it mean you need one more card for the run…
Bleeding Sherwood, twice – Another CAG. Very resource-scarce bidding game featuring men of Sherwood Forest exploiting/ransoming or whatever various characters they meet. I thought it was fun and quick.
Duff Dice, about 8 times – Basically, Liar’s Dice with a Simpsons theme. The Duff beer cans need felt lining or something to make the game less loud and jarring to my bleeding ears.
Blackbeard – Gray bought this pirate simulation game and had it shipped to my place (it just came out and note that the photo above is not what comes with the game but since it just came out I had a hard time finding a good photo on bgg). It’s one of those independent publishers that wait for enough pre-orders before printing a game. Some bad things about it are: a. there a numerous typos despite the manual being available on the web for a while (I guess no one who read the manual reported back to them that there were typos). One huge typo on the game board itself (Soth instead of South). and b. the game seemed relatively dependent on the cards you drew without a lot of strategy that you could do with two or more of your pirate ships. I think Gray thought it royally sucked. Song Gong and I are willing to give it another shot before we pass judgment.
Pandemic – Fun cooperative game that I mentioned before. I like this game because it takes about 45 minutes. Makes for a great, light game to introduce others to boardgaming, since coop mode makes the possibility of newbies being trounced by veterans impossible.
Clans, twice – A cool area control game… Somewhat reminds me of water beading up on a smooth, water resistant surface. 🙂
Aaron, Gray, and Song Gong all in town
for a week of total geekdom.
We’re going to try to play at least these games:
- Long Live the King
- Game of Thrones
- Arkham Horror
- Grand Theft Auto IV
- Dungeon Twister
- Pandemic
And we’re going to the Seattle Art Museum‘s Roman exhibit (with a slew of Reedies–“slew?” gaggle? grouping? an anarchy of Reedies maybe?).
I’ll post game write-ups and photos if I have time.
This comes at a time when I’m trying to write a game review on The Witcher and morality in games. I’m also going to submit something for a pre-conference on games ethnography happening as part of AoIR 9 in Copenhagen in October. Due in one week! But if I don’t get in, there’s also a doc consortium happening there and the deadline to submit for that is in 3 weeks. 🙂
The history of New York City (architecture) in video games
The Bowery Boys | New York City History: The history of New York City in video games
One day back from New York and I see this post. 🙂
Zak McKracken 2 is out!
The Grumpy Gamer posted that a fan-made sequel to Zak McKracken is out!
I am way more excited about this than GTAIV. :p
[Edit May 2: Oh, boo… it’s not in English yet. Damn my lack of multilingualism.]
The Witcher
This past week I’ve been playing The Witcher, an RPG by CD Projekt Red using the Aurora Engine (the one Bioware used for Neverwinter Nights, Knights of the Old Republic, etc.). The Witcher is based off a series of short stories and novels by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski set in a wartorn grim fantasy world. Witchers are a clan of superhumans devoted to destroying monsters and evil. I had heard, however, that there was a lot of moral ambiguity in the game, which made me interested enough to download the demo. From what I saw in the demo, I was impressed enough to buy a copy.
Amanita Design – point n click Flash games
New boardgames!
I just got some new boardgames!
I wanted a pure cooperative game but I thought that Shadows Over Camelot and Lord of the Rings were a bit long. When I heard that this game was pretty quick and good for newbies, I grabbed it!
This is a cool idea and caught my eye when it first game out a few years ago. Basically, think miniature war game without the miniatures. It uses cards that you place and move around on the table instead, using the sides of other cards to measure how far they can move (like Pirates of the Spanish Main). I used to play Warhammer Fantasy Battle back in high school (16 years ago) but ever since have never been able to get a stable enough life to consider getting a huge miniatures collection. Expensive and bulky! Having them in playing-card form is genius! I hope the game is good.
Dungeon Twister and the 3/4 player expansion
I’ve been playing a lot with Ari or Brian H. recently, and this made me think that I need a good two player game, but I also saw that this game had a 3/4 player expansion so it would work with more people, too! I hear it’s like dungeon chess. Reading the rules, I really like how combat is done Cosmic Encounter style except that you don’t have a random hand. It adds a nice guessing game to the combat–“do I play my good card or save it for later?” I hope the game works well and that it isn’t so cerebral as to be unapproachable.
Dungeoneer – Vault of the Fiends
I originally got one pack of Dungeoneer (Tomb of the Lich Lord) a few years ago after I had been playing Carcassonne a bit. Like Carcassonne, Dungeoneer is a tile laying game but around the dungeon delving theme and using playing cards. (I wonder if the use of playing cards only came about due to CCGs like Magic.) I never felt like there was enough variety in the dungeons though. Brian H. got another deck of Tomb which will make the dungeon bigger, but I got Vault of the Fiends hoping it’d make a nice complement to our two Tomb decks.
Got up at 2 today…
That’s 2AM, thank you very much. 😛
Sometimes I get insomnia and can’t fall back asleep. Usually, I can get some work done, but last night all I did was play a PC version of HeroQuest and then some Peggle that came with The Orange Box.
I found HeroQuest through a geeklist on BoardGameGeek.com that features computer versions of boardgames. HeroQuest is an old Games Workshop/Milton Bradley game. The PC port is still in beta and is made by a guy named Gerwin Broers, who’s really good at illustration, too. 🙂
There certainly are a lot of games on the geeklist that deserve some trial. Space Hulk is there in a couple of different ports. This is nice because a friend and I were just talking about Space Hulk recently. Other gems include Puerto Rico, San Juan, and Ra. Man, the list just goes on!
Peggle, by PopCap, the same people who made Bejeweled, is very addicting. I wanted to try it out because it received best puzzle game of 2007 from Games for Windows magazine.
Sam & Max Informer round
Some friends of mine from high school and I (and now some more friends from college, work, etc.) play a game called The Informer. Basically, it’s like the Dictionary game except that instead of writing fake definitions for words we write fake continuations of prose. We call it The Informer because it was originally played using the book by that same title by Liam O’Flaherty featuring the craziest non-sequiter, detective noir crap ever. Anyway, I ran a round of The Informer recently and used the Sam & Max games as the text. You can see the round and results on the Sam & Max Informer round page I created.
Incidentally, the compiled volume of Steve Purcell’s Sam & Max comic books is finally in reprint, called Surfin’ the Highway. The last time I read any of them was back in high school, about 18 years ago! I think my brother might still have some original issues lying around. He should sell em! Our comic book obsession finally worth something!