After Action Gencon Report
Posted by beowulfthehunter
Back from Gen Con and I am ready to drop. It is indeed the best four days of gaming and my 3 ½ time going for multiple days. I will say that of the 2 other times this one was somewhat a disappointment in comparison, but even a bad day at Gencon is still better than a good day in the classroom.
Dave and myself left 5am on Thursday and arrived at 9:30 am in Indy (time change so a 3 hour trip took 4). First up we found a parking space close by with no need to hunt one down. In previous years I spent a solid half hour looking for a space. This time, boom, we found one right off the bat. Awesome, then we get in and receive our swag bag. In years previous the bag had tons of coupons, trading cards, dice, minis, and even full games. This year it came with the 2010 Gencon die, a tiny dice bag, and not much else. Some people did not even get the die in theirs. I made my way around the hall, ran into a few friends, and knocked out most of my purchases.
Unlike previous years video games did not dominate the hall and it contained all manner of companies. You had your old grognards like Flying Buffalo as well as those fly by night companies you hear about, but then fall of the face of the earth, and then those that dominate. The Wyrd booth had a bigger line than Privateer Press. WotC was back in full force with the entire Sagamore filled with D&D. Unlike last years Con Delve that cost 2 bucks for an hour and allowed you to win cool tokens, minis, or a dice bag, the Delve this year allowed you to win stamps on a card and turn it in for absolute crap, oh and they doubled the price. I only did a few this year due to the wait and cost.
I took in a few speed painting events and then sat down to a painting class taught by Vaolla. While she is not up to the standards of some of the other names teaching classes, I will say that in retrospect she had the most professionally run and organized class among those I took. I look forward to her teaching more next year as I will sign up again. I was able to pick up some techniques that I plan to use in the future.
Friday had me taking part in the Anima Tactics National Tournament which I won, but due to miscommunication with my opponent it was a Pyrrhic Victory as he made some mistakes that cost him the game. I did however win a mini that will not be sold for another 6 months and he won 50 bucks for best sportsmanship. I still tired to buy him a mini to make up for it. Played a few more Delves and went home to sleep.
A note about the delves, they used the new Essentials characters. Having seen them in action they are simple to use, and awesome. While the fighter no longer marks he does hit for +9 vs. AC at first level for 1d10+10, that we call Striker damage! The wizard was pretty fun if you do not mind rolling dice.
Saturday had me playing Malifaux….all day. I took 3rd place and best painted. Score for me! It was run by the newest employee of Wyrd Drew Little, who ran numerous events at Games Plus and he is a consummate professional and runs an awesome event. Thanks Drew should you ever read this.
Saw numerous costumes. The con babes were out in force this year and looking great doing it. Picked up a few games and another painting video. Oh I got to see the cast of the Guild and Felcia day is that hot in person!
Sunday, was a sad day, the last day. I took two painting classes taught by two of the bigger names in the industry. For all their accolades, I found their classes to be a complete disappointment. I did not get much info out of them and very little hands on help (which is funny because the largest class had 5 people!). I was not able to find any deals and they did give away the remaining grab bags…all missing dice. Drove home and now I write this report. I plan to add more details and describe the offerings the the booth but for now I am exhausted. Until then…I’ll be in my bunk.
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Fun Party Games from Games Day
Posted by Fozz
At our recent games day, I was able to play a couple board games that I really enjoyed. Here are some games that you may or may not have played yet.
Zombie Dice
Is a very simple dice rolling game by Steve Jackson Games that has you running around as a zombie trying to eat as many brains as you can until you get blown away by a shotgun. The dice have three pictures: brains, shotgun blasts and runners. You bank brains and re-roll runners all before you get three shotgun blasts.
The game is short, fun and brainless (well lots of brains, just easy to play). It is a great filler game to play in between rounds of other longer games or before you start and everyone is still arriving. It is so easy even my younger kids picked it up easy and had fun playing.
Available Here: Amazon.com
Ninja Burger
Image via Wikipedia
Is another Steve Jackson game that puts you in the shoes of a ninja that stealthily delivers fast food burgers. You are given missions and must accomplish them by making various dice rolls using "ninja" type skills, such as disguise, climbing, and combat. Every game is jam pack with hilarious situations and every ninja has strengths and weaknesses. It has a similar feel to the Munchkin games (which is a good thing).
I really enjoyed this game and had lots of fun using my ninja skills to deliver the delicious Ninja Burger. It is a medium length game that takes about 45min to an hour to play. Every game is different because there are many different ninjas to choose from and you gain fortunes to help in various ways. The missions are varied and will make you laugh out loud. I am definitely looking forward to the next chance I get to play this game.
Available from Amazon along with an expansion, sequel, and even an RPG. Check out the video on YouTube.
Wits and Wagers
- Image via Wikipedia
Wits and Wagers is a game by North Star Games that combines trivia and gambling. Everyone answers a ridiculously hard trivia question and then bets chips on which they think is closest without going over. You win chips based on the odds and if your answer was closest.
I first played this game with the creators at Gen Con a couple years ago as well as played the game on the Xbox 360 and it has continued to be a family favorite. The questions are so diverse and difficult, it doesn't really mater how smart you are at answering the questions, but more on how good you are on your bets. You will get wild answers that make you laugh and everyone will have a good time playing.
Available on Amazon along with an expansion and family version.
What games have you played recently that you recommend or even a game you have heard good things about? Post below.
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Torchlight – Action RPG Game – Mini Review
Posted by Fozz
I just heard about this game yesterday, although it came out a couple weeks ago, so I decided to give it a try. We were just talking about Diablo the other night, and it seems that several of the creators worked on the first 2 Diablos, as well other ARPGs. Torchlight has everything I enjoyed about Diablo and it is a great little game. I say little, because it only cost $20 as a downloadable game. You can download a demo here.
Torchlight plays just like any other ARPG and has all the things you love, dungeon exploring, multiple baddies, big bosses, and my favorite loot, tons and tons of customizable loot. When you start you only have 3 classes to choose from basically a fighter, ranger and mage, but each of these can be customized as you level up into 3 different talent trees. You also start with a pet that fights with you as well as returns to town to automatically sell your junk items. Depicted very nicely in thr Penny Arcade cartoon below.
The games graphics are stylized in an exaggerated cartoon manner, very similar to Team Fortress 2 or WoW. They are such that the game can be played smoothly even on lower end PCs but really shine in high resolution. The sound effects and musical score are spot on to give you an atmospheric and energizing soundtrack to your battles and exploration. The interface is clean and simple and it makes it very easy to do the most common tasks and then get out of your way as you play the game.
The game features randomized dungeons for lots of variety and replayability. Once you max your player out you can retired him and then hand down certain benefits to a new character. If you get tired the dungeons you can take a break to fish, which when fed to your pet have an interesting effect.
The game only features a single player campaign, but I am fine with that because I never got to play Diablo multiplayer and it was still tons of fun.
Overall I highly recommend the game even though it is a single player experience only, but the team is currently working on a mutiplayer version of the game. It is only $20 and will easily eat up at least a week or two of your life. So give the game a download and tell me what you think below in the comments.
Sting Review – Magic: The Gathering – Duels of the Planeswalkers for Xbox Arcade
Posted by Fozz
Wizards of the Coast and Stainless Games released Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers on the Xbox 360 arcade this week and I have been playing it nonstop. It offers a great Magic experience for the extremely decent price $10, less than 4 booster packs.
The game features several different modes of play. The single player campaign mode allows you to test your skills against increasingly difficult Planeswalkers as you unlock new decks to play with. Magic: The Puzzling offers a series of Magic puzzle where you have to figure out how to win in one turn. A co-op campaign allows two people on the same console play a Two-Headed Giant match versus two planeswalkers. You can also play online via Xbox Live in 2-4 player matches.
Gameplay
They have done a great job of translating the paper and tabletop game to the TV screen and Xbox controller. You can easily flip through your cards pulling your trigger to fly the cards fullscreen and even view card specific rules such as First Strike and Deathtouch, in case you forget, add in the intro tutorial and even Magic newbies will be playing in no time.
They have made the gameplay flow very smoothly for a great arcade feel. Certian things like The Stack are disguised as a brief countdown timer when you play card and spells and each section of your turn is followed in order. I enjoy that I can play a quick game in less than 5 minutes without leaving my house at anytime, either against the very capable AI or a human player matched to my level using the Xbox TrueSkill system. The game is instantly accessible to players of every skill level and that is a great accomplishment given the complexity and depth of Magic.
The game starts with 2 decks to play with and as you defeat different planeswalkers you will unlock a total of 8 decks. Then everytime you win with a deck you unlock 1 of 17 extra cards that can be added into the default decks. It is not completely a customizable deck building system but gives you a few options to beef up your deck of choice. With downloadable content, I expect to see them release extra decks, extra unlockable cards, and new play environments to customize your play experience.
Graphics and Sound
The graphics and interface are very slick and animations are smooth. Spells and effects have subtle animation and sound cues that tell you the state of your cards, such as summoning sickness and tiggered spells. The attack animations are fairly generic as animating every card would have been a nightmare for the developer, but do an adequate job of showing what happens when you attack and defend. Certian spells are given a little extra polish such as Incinerate, which lobs a fireball at your opponents as it burns away their life.
The sound effects do a decent job of giving you audio cues as to what is happening and nothing is over the top. The music score is soft and appropriate but will quickly get old once you hear it over and over, thankfully the Xbox allows you to play your own music in game.
Conclusion
If you love Magic: The Gathering or are even slightly interested in TCGs, I would wholehearted recommend buying this game. It is a steal at only $10, and you will get plenty of play time out of this title. I have been playing all week and can't say enough good things about it.
Something Old… Issue #1
Posted by Bucky
I am a hug fan of back issue bins. To me there is nothing better than diving into two dozen or more dusty long boxes, picking through the comics, ogling the covers and looking for something that just jumps out and bites me in eyes. It's also fun to go hunting for that last issue that will complete your set or hoping to find that bit of gold that may have slipped through the cracks at your local comic book shop.
To that end, I thought it would be fun to dig through my own boxes and find a rare gem to share each week with the rest of you. The only requirement? The book had to be at least a year old and not collected into any kind of trade paperback. That way, if you like what you see here, you too can go on that same quest as I once did, digging through the long boxes like Allan Quatermain looking for gold in King Solomon's Mines, seeking out your own hidden treasure.
Fearless – written by Mark Sable and David Roth with art from PJ Holden
Fearless is the story of one Adam Rygert, a millionaire with more than a few dark secrets to his credit. The first being that he is the armored Vigilante known by the name of Fear. The second being that he suffers from crippling anxiety and the only way he can do what he does as Fear is through a cocktail of various chemicals and antidepressants: an anti-fear drug that Adam is now addicted to. When Lionel, the creator of the drug, disappears along with the cylinder used to manufacture it, Adam is forced to use what little reserves he has of the drug and confront the Gasparian crime family and rescue his mentor. When Adam finds Lionel, he is forced to face the young upstart Victor Gasparian, Jr. and the dark secrets that the young crime lord knows about both Lionel and the drug. Victor uses an old family heirloom of great power to literally become untouchable and best Fear. It's then when his real plans come to light-to give the drug away to public for free, allowing them to become addicted, and then take it away-making himself infinitely powerful in the ensuing chaos. Can Adam confront his fear without the help of the drug and his armor? What will happen when everyone's secrets are brought out into the light?
Fearless is a great story about the nature of our fears, the power they can have over someone, and what it takes to move past them. It's a story about the monsters that lurk in our past, the specters that hover in our present, and perhaps the hope of freedom that exists in the future. Mark Sable and David Roth's story is both interesting at the same time that it is heart-breaking. Their dialogue and pacing is fantastic. With the help of the stylish art of PJ Holden, the story blazes quickly to a satisfying conclusion. I was a huge fan of this four issue mini-series published by Image Comics when it was first released and upon reading it again I can't help but hope that we will see these characters again. Fearless earns a strong recommendation from me and a well deserved 8 out of 10 fanboys.
Be back here next week when I again reach into the back issue bin. Until then, good hunting!
Indie Gaming Spotlight: The Chzo Mythos
Posted by burninator
Before Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw became an internet celebrity with his gaming review show, Zero Punctuation, he was an indie game designer. While he made several series during his bout as a game maker, his most famous and by far best was his quadrilogy known as The Chzo Mythos. These 2D point n' click adventures showcase Ben's incredible knack for story telling, atmosphere, and horror. Do not be fooled by his low-bit drawings, by the third game he masters the use of sound and timing to create a truly scary game with very limited resources.
5 Days A Stranger
The first game puts you as a thief who attempts to keep a sense of morals, Trilby. When a routine robbery of an abandoned mansion turns into a nightmare, he finds himself trapped in the mansion with four other unlucky people. To make matters worse, a killer is lurking the mansion killing off the group one by one. While the plot may seem like a stereotypical slasher flick, the game is anything but. Ben pays homage to the slasher genre at every turn, particularly to a certain Jason Voorhees, but his story telling never goes to that level; his characters are interesting and rounded and the secrets surrounding the mansion are defiantly worth discovering. The puzzles aren't very hard, so people looking for a challenge will go away disappointed but the richness of the story will keep most people's interest tell the end.
7 Days A Skeptic
The second game takes a leap forward in the mytho's time line, a big leap. For 400 years, the powerful evil of the killer's soul has been kept contained, but when a star ship stumbles upon a casket in the middle of space, the whole nightmare starts again. You play as the ship's psychologist, Johnathan Somerset, and his desperate struggle for survival. After taking a shot at slasher films, Ben moves on to make a game reminiscent of many sci-fi horror movies. The result is just as glorious. The narrow hallways of the ship make for a tense environment and you will quickly find out some members of the crew weren't exactly mentally stable before the casket arrived.
Trilby's Notes
The third game deviates from the rest of the series not only in title, but also in game play. While the other three have been standard point n' clicks, this game features a type entry system that harkens back to the old King's Quest games. Also while the first two games a relatively light on scares, I can genuinely say Trilby's Note is one of the scariest games I have ever played. If you play this game with the lights on, your just doing yourself an injustice. This is also the point where the story takes a dramatic turn from being about a single stereotypical horror villain, into an epic tale that seems to be pulled straight from a Lovecraft novel. The music has been amped up too, instead of pulling tracks from RPG Maker like he did in previous games, the amazing Mark Lovegrove has composed a wonderfully haunting score that will give you the chills, so make sure you play with the volume up. Read more below.
Dark Reign – Three Issues In
Posted by Bucky
Marvel Comics recently ended their Secret Invasion company- wide crossover with Norman Osborn aka The Green Goblin taking the shot that killed the Skrull Queen and sent the invaders packing. In the wake of these events, SHIELD has been dismantled and Tony Stark aka Iron Man has been booted from his position. This leaves the new hero Norman Osborn in charge of the nation's superhero Initiative and his SHIELD replacement agency, HAMMER. All of these events lead into a new era in Marvel comics... a Dark Reign. As with any new era, an array of new titles were thrown out into the hands of fans, and I have waited until a few issues of each were in the can until I commented on them. Granted, I am not commenting on all of the series that have been born out of Dark Reign, only the three that I actually picked up and would recommend to others.
First on the list is Dark Avengers. This is a book that I would have picked up and supported sight unseen, simply because of its concept. I have always been a fan of villains as feature characters, and a team of Avengers born of the ashes of the Ellis-era Thunderbolts (Moonstone, Venom, and Bullseye), Wolverine's son Daken, and a few anti-heroes (Marvel Boy, Sentry, and Ares) being led by the Iron Patriot (Norman Osborn in Iron Man armour painted in Captain America's colors) was just too much to pass up. Three issues into the book and the reader is treated to a team dynamic that I guarantee they have never encountered in any Avengers book. These first issues deal with the formation of the team and a trip to Latveria to protect Dr. Doom from Morgana La Fey. The book is written by Brian Bendis and drawn by Mike Deodato and I give the first three issues a solid 4 out of 5 fanboys. Oh, and did I mention all of the villains are dressed as heroes? Pick up the books and find out what I'm talking about.
Second on the list is War Machine. I have to preface this review by saying that I was unaware of much that had happened to James Rhodes aka War Machine in the past few years, but he's always been a favorite of mine. The book follows War Machine, who is now in possession of a powerful non-Stark suit which can take objects surrounding it and meld them to his form, using them as new weapons. Rhodes darts about the globe, from the safety of his stealth satellite, doling out punishment to war criminals based on a computer-generated kill number. The first three issues deal with the rescue of a doctor from the clutches of mercenaries in a war-torn country. It is also setting up a supporting cast that I am sure will add another layer of depth to a book that already raises many questions about humanity, war, and what it means to be a soldier versus a hero. If you plan to pick up the series, I strongly recommend you also pick up the Secret Invasion: War Machine TPB and read that ahead of time. The series is written by Greg Pak and drawn by Leonardo Manco, whose pictures will make your jaw hit the floor with their over-the-top and gritty quality. A solid book, but not hitting on all cylinders just yet. 3 and a half out of 5 fanboys.
The last book of the bunch, and by far my favorite, is Punisher. Marvel decided to end the Punisher War Journal series and reinsert Frank Castle into the thick of things post-Secret Invasion. The series opens with the title character preparing to assassinate Norman Osborn during a press conference using a stolen alien rifle. As the plot is foiled by the Sentry, we are whisked along at a cheetahs pace as Frank tries to make his escape. He is assisted by Henry, a hacker and strategist who sees the Punisher as someone who could cripple Osborn's reign by hitting him in various ways, striking at the dark heart of his empire by taking out his criminal means of income. The Punisher and Henry arm themselves not only with information, but with an array of stolen equipment belonging to both heroes and villains. After the last issue, it seems certain that a showdown between Castle and the Hood (the current Kingpin of Crime and Osborn Cabal member). Written by Rick Remender and drawn by Jerome Opeña, Punisher is a must-read in my opinion and scores a solid 5 out of 5 fanboys for its first three issues.
Be here next week when I toss out a couple old lesser-known series worth looking into.
All images copyright of Marvel Comics.
The Sting: Star Wars Pocketmodel TCG
Posted by Fozz
I was given a couple free packs of the Star Wars Pocketmodel TCG game at GenCon and have fallen in love with this unique game that combines build-it-your-self miniatures with a TCG game set in the the Star Wars universe.
The Sting: Braid XBLA
Posted by Fozz
I recently downloaded the new Xbox Live Arcade game, Braid and wanted to post my initial thoughts on this thought provoking game.
First of all let me tell you that I absolutely love this little game. I'm not even halfway done yet and I have been blown over by the unique mind bending gameplay. This game brings such a fresh game mechanic that makes you rethink how you view time, very similiar to how Portal made you rethink space. You are constantly having to juggle platforming, rewinding time, and understand how to bend time to your will. The puzzles are devilishly clever and you will jump for joy when you finally figure out a puzzle that has been vexing you.
The graphics are dreamy and evoke a watercolored look like the movie "What Dreams May Come" with Robin Williams.
Overall I highly recommend this game, although the $15 price is a little more than I was expecting. At least give the free demo a try first and I'm sure it will hook you like it did me.
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