Tag Archives: Gaming

Gaming

Mercs: Recon

As is becoming traditional, my gaming group and I recently did an initial play through of MERCS: Recon, so I wanted to capture my initial thoughts about the game. I found the game to be quite good, and it flowed well, but I found a number of nit-picks that would have improved the polish of the game. For me, this wasn’t unexpected or problematic in the sense that they are things that could be smoothed out over time playing the game, but they do provide a higher barrier to entry, which is always a struggle.

First, and probably the most minor nit-pick was the internal packaging. All the tiles were shrink-wrapped together, and, since they were different sizes, the shrink-wrap deformed a lot of the tiles. This didn’t cause any damage (sans a little warping), but it was a little disheartening to see when opening the box. The other noticeable item right out of the box was that the miniatures all needed to be assembled (a total of 40 miniatures). This wasn’t unexpected for me, as they mentioned it in the kickstarter updates, but it was a lot of extra work to get the game playable. I generally enjoy putting together miniatures, and these were fairly easy, so it was not a problem, but it felt like a barrier to actually getting to play the game. Continue reading Mercs: Recon →

Gaming

Fireteam Zero

During the last game day, I got the chance to play a couple rounds of Fireteam Zero with Ian. I backed Fireteam Zero on kickstarter, so my expectations were that it would be a good game, but that there would be some polish missing. I was pleasantly surprised, then, that Fireteam Zero was really quite fun and was well polished.

Over the last few years, I have played a lot of cooperative games. Oftentimes, I find that cooperative games are very complex, and I have often wondered if that is strictly necessary. The first thing that I noticed about Fireteam Zero is that it is a fair bit less complex than many other cooperative games. This means that both player turns and monster turns are fast, and downtime is minimal. The main exception to this are the player’s tactical response cards – these are very powerful cards that get played out of turn, and tend to be a lot more complex. However, the only chance players have of playing these cards are after having them in hand for a full round, and they are not allowed to draw cards the turn they play it (meaning that they are unlikely to do much else that round). Continue reading Fireteam Zero →

Gaming

Path of Exile

As I mentioned in my 2015 retrospective, I’ve been playing Path of Exile again. It has been a while since I’ve played, and it is really interesting to see all the things that they have added to the game since then, including a complete fourth act.

As Path of exile adds new features, it’s definitely creeping up the list of my favorite rogue-likes. One feature that they added was skill jewels. These are bundles of passive skills that are socketed into the skill web. The novelty here, I think, is the image in my mind of someone in a designers meeting saying, “Why not allow the players to customize parts of their passive tree?” Just like the passive web itself, this is really quite the novel concept, and the fact that they pulled it off (without stretching the bounds of their universe overmuch), is pretty impressive. Continue reading Path of Exile →

Gaming

Getting Back into Guild Wars 2

Lately, Jessa and I have been playing a lot of Guild Wars 2. The thing that really brought me back to Guild Wars 2 is the removal of my primary complaint about it at the start: the level grind. In particular, there are a couple of new features that made this less of a problem for me.

The reason the leveling annoys me so much in Guild Wars 2 is basically two-fold. First, Guild Wars 2 is a mostly-open world MMO, meaning that you can pretty much go to anywhere on the map immediately after the tutorial. The catch is that a lot of this grand map will be indirectly locked off if you’re not high enough level to deal with the mobs located there. The reason this one in particular sticks in my craw is that they’ve made levels irrelevant up to your level by downleveling you when you are in a zone that is below your level – so if they can downlevel you, why won’t they uplevel you, or, better yet, remove levels altogether? Continue reading Getting Back into Guild Wars 2 →

Gaming

T.I.M.E. Stories

For our weekly game day last week, my wife and I decided to give T.I.M.E. Stories a shot. This is another game that I got for Christmas, this one from my mother-in-law, Sally. I saw this for the first time when I was in The Jester’s Court in Grand Junction for Thanksgiving. It’s a cooperative “decksploration” game based around the idea of time and dimensional travel – for me, this is an obvious hook!

The nature of T.I.M.E. Stories’s gameplay makes people very nervous about spoilers (which I’ll address why in a bit), so I want to be upfront that I’ll be keeping this review out of spoiler territory and I’ll be discussing mostly mechanics, though I will dip into broad strokes about how the stories appear to be structured. Continue reading T.I.M.E. Stories →

Gaming

Resistor

Of the Christmas gifts that I got this year, I only got the chance to play one of them during my post-Christmas Game Day – Resistor. I got this one from my wife, and it’s a small game that I very nearly backed this fall when I saw it come across kickstarter. My main hesitation was that it was a two-player head-to-head game, and sometimes these are a little difficult for me to get my wife to play (which is my most common second for playing a game). Conversely, during the game day, there were a number of 2-on-2 games going, so Resistor actually got a fair amount of table time.

I was quite impressed with Resistor as a product. First, the quality of components was solid. I may not be a fan of the size of the cards, but they did get the job done. The theme is also suitably 80s and the artworks really brings it home (I doubly love the mock tractor-feed rules printout). Continue reading Resistor →

The Plaid Mentat

Looking Forward into 2016

Just as I looked back at 2015, I am also looking forward into 2016. I’m not really a goals-oriented person, but I wanted to write down some of the things that I want to do in 2016. Of course, life changes, so I’m not sure I can really levee these as expectations of my future self, but they are things that I plan to make time for this year.

Finish a Game Design Project

Last year, I started and completed Ticket to Ride: Iceland. This year, I want to complete another project and get it printed. I have a couple of smaller projects that I have designed from the ground up that I could finally get printed, or, alternately, I may make myself a copy of Dune. In either case, I want to create something cool this year. Continue reading Looking Forward into 2016 →

Gaming

The Beginner’s Guide

My wife and I have been spending some time together playing through some shorter independently developed games. For me, these games are a lot of fun because they are the short-story equivalent in the game world – they have a neat idea and spend enough time exploring it to be interesting and still leave some aspects open. Most recently, we played “The Beginner’s Guide”.

I heard about this game first on the Diecast, which is the primary reason I picked it up. I really enjoyed “The Stanley Parable” by the same developer (Davey Wreden), and the idea of a learning about someone by the games they designed was an interesting concept (especially with narration). Ok, it could just be that I’m a sucker for good narration. Continue reading The Beginner’s Guide →

Gaming

Designing Ticket to Ride: Iceland, Part 3

In my last few entries, I talked about how I distilled the information from Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries and designed the Ticket to Ride: Iceland board. In this post, I’m going to discuss the last part of the process, creating the deck of Ticket Cards. I tried to describe this to Cam last time he was over, and I completely flubbed it, so here it is written in detail.

First, on the card design, I used the back of the Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries cards, and did a small modification to change “Father Christmas Tour 1910” to “Golden Circle Tour 2525”. I wanted to set this game in the future since there aren’t really any cross-country rails in Iceland currently. Instead, I projected some point in the future when railed mass transit is possible in Iceland and what that might look like. Finally, I love the song “In the Year 2525 (Exortium and Terminus)” by Zager and Evans, so it’s my own personal in-joke.

Continue reading Designing Ticket to Ride: Iceland, Part 3 →