I received Zombie Fluxx as part of my 2009 Ars Technica Sekrit Santa gift. I had some limited, prior exposure to the original Fluxx game several years ago when I worked in Maryland and remember not liking it. I wasn’t entirely sure why I didn’t like it, and in fact I don’t remember if I played it or just watched it being played. However, I think it had something to do with all of the rules and that it seemed confusing.

Now, we all like zombies out here, and most of us like games, so I thought Zombie Fluxx would be worth a try, despite my reservations. We gave it a shot on the tail end of Christmas break, and have run it a few times since with different groups of gamers. Here’s what we thought.
Read the rest of this entry »

Every year, I am impressed at the thoughtfulness of the gifts I receive from my Sekrit Santa. The amount of consideration from my Sekrit Santa this year is matched only by my embarrassment at not posting sooner. We’ve been preparing the house for holiday visitors, and between the painting and the unexpected kitchen sink explosion I have been very bad at not saying thank you.

Here’s how my Ars Sekrit Santa did a fantastic job this year.
Read the rest of this entry »

We love board games at the Den o’ Gibberish. I prefer to play games that are partly competitive, partly co-operative. If a game isn’t truly co-operative, I like games that allow for “isolated group” play, wherein every person in the game can still do something, no matter how far ahead or behind they are. Games like Settlers of Catan, Dominion, and Carcassonne get a lot of play. Recently we’ve been playing a lot of Power Grid by Rio Grande Games. Power Grid is a nice blend of city building, auctioning, resource management, and tactics. It can be played by a wide range of ages and a wide range of player skill, all at the same time.
Read the rest of this entry »

I guess I’m officially old. When the sequel to Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare video game launched yesterday I was super excited. I took yesterday off in order to play online as late as I wanted to Tuesday and Wednesday.

I played the original Modern Warfare a ton online, mostly “free-for-all,” which pits players against each other. There were other game modes that were team-based, but I preferred the lone wolf style of FFA. I didn’t like my playing skill to handicap an otherwise good team, and I didn’t want to feel like lesser-skilled teammates were pulling me down.

After struggling with my Verizon FiOS-supplied router for over an hour, I finally got connected to Xbox Live!. After a short game patch I was in the multi-player lobby. I joined a game of other new players, and was ready to relive all of the fun I had playing COD4.

I spawned, took two steps, and was killed. I respawned, ran about ten yards, and was killed again. And so on. And so on.

Now, when you play a game like this online there is an adjustment period where you learn the maps, and the mechanics, and what not. But something felt different. It turned out that the “difference” was an increase in weapon damage and game tempo that I disliked. I sold my copy of MW2 after five hours of gameplay.

Here’s what went wrong.
Read the rest of this entry »

Hopefully by the time you read this, Amazon.com will have delivered my copy of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 for the Xbox 360. This is the first game I’ve purchased on launch day in recent memory. I think Everquest was the last game I bought at launch, which would have been in 1999.

Modern Warfare 2 is a first person shooter. There are many game modes, the vast majority of which are only available online versus other human players. The single player (offline) game mode seems to be expanded from the original. The trailer below is from the single player campaign.

Playing online is a quasi-role playing game experience; you start at level one with your choice of three “classes” that have different weapons packages. As you level up by killing opponents and helping team mates, you can select different equipment and customize your gear. While I am unsure of the details for MW2, the game will operate in roughly the same manner.

I played the first Modern Warfare, COD4, to the point that I canceled my subscription to GameFly, the Netflix-like video game rental service. In preparation for the game’s release, I’m taking tomorrow off at work. I haven’t decided if I want to finish up the single player campaign first, or jump right into multi-player. There will definitely be an advantage for starting the online component early. Learning the key points around the map is one of the most important parts of the game.

I already have my article typed up for tomorrow and it’s set to auto-post, so if I don’t come up for air for 48 hours you’ll know where I’ll be.

Torchlight by Runic Games is an isometric game for the PC that keeps in the tradition of Diablo, Diablo II, and Titan Quest, among others. The premise is simple: control your character as they fight their way down a very deep dungeon below a besieged town. When most video games are trying to cram in as much stuff as possible, Torchlight keeps things simple. And unlike those epic games, Torchlight won’t break the bank at $20USD.

Torchlight is a fun, one-dimensional game that happens to fit right into my gaming style right now, and I highly recommend it. Here’s why.
Read the rest of this entry »

I played in the Magic: the Gathering pre-release tournament yesterday for Zendikar, the latest set in the old and wildly popular collectible card game. The event was held at Richmond Comix. There was a larger pre-release event at the Richmond Convention Center on Saturday; attendance was estimated at about three hundred folks. However, going to the more personal event at Richmond Comix reminded me why I started (and re-started) playing Magic in the first place: the people I met and having fun.
Read the rest of this entry »

Mental Floss has a really sweet quiz on matching Monopoly Chance and Community Chest art to the right card. It’s a twelve question quiz. Unfortunately the usability of the quiz sucks, and I had to write down 1 – 12 and cross the numbers off as I made my answers.

http://www.mentalfloss.com/quiz/quiz.php?q=739

I got 9 out of 12, how did you do?

Thanks to Jumbotron for showing me this at work last week.

I love board games. Love love love them. I grew up playing Parcheesi, backgammon, chess, and the “usual” family games at my house growing up. It was a big deal in my life when I beat my father at chess for the first time.

I have tried to keep gaming since, and I always have a soft spot for board games. There is something special about sitting around a table with your buddies and rolling some dice and moving tiny pieces around. The amount of smack talk that occurs always makes me laugh. I never knew so much about Stilt’s mother until we started playing board games together (love you buddy).

So, I was anxious to try out Smallworld, a board game designed by Philippe Keyaerts and published by Days of Wonder. Days of Wonder makes a lot of bad ass games board games, I am particularly fond of their game Ticket to Ride. The premise of the game is simple: control up to two races at a time (usually) to take over as much territory of Smallworld as possible. You earn one coin (usually) for every territory you hold at the end of a turn. Whomever has the most coins wins. The game combats staleness and default strategies by pairing race cards (humans, orcs, ratmen) with special abilities (merchant, flying, stout). The game designer Keyaerts seems to have put a lot of thought into play balance. True, there are some races and abilities that are more useful than others. Dragonmaster Ratmen are a brutal pair, for example. Hard to take “wealthy dwarves” over a ton of angry rodents and a pet dragon.
Read the rest of this entry »

With H1N1 (“swine flu”) still making the headlines, I thought it was time to write up Pandemic, a co-operative board game that pits up to four people against four diseases that threaten to take over the world.

Made by Z-Man Games, Pandemic requires at least two people to play. The game starts out with all players in Atlanta, GA (presumably at the Center of Disease Control). Twelve randomly determined cities throughout the world have been infected by the four diseases. Game setup determines what cities are “sick,” but each disease will infest three cities. One unit of disease is represented by one cube. The more cubes on a city, the more infected it is. When a city gets four infection cubes the disease jumps to a nearby city, thus spreading across the globe.

The game is lost if there are eight outbreaks, or if there are no more cards to draw, or if all of the disease cubes are used.
Read the rest of this entry »