Quick Hits

This month's Super Fantastic Gaming Hour was this last weekend's at Jon's. I'll have some reviews up later, but for now here are some of the pics I snapped...

Random Thoughts #1

• I got Scene It: Box Office Smash the other day on the cheap. It's a pretty decent game, and as a trivia party game there's not a whole lot to it. I also got the DLC, just because.
• Speaking of my XBox, I had to replace the wireless board yesterday. See, I'd not been able to use any of my wireless controllers ever since we moved into our house last year. I originally thought that the wireless bridge that was connecting the 360 to my wireless network was interfering with the controllers signals. But when I took the XBox over to a friend's house to play Street Fighter IV, it displayed the same behavior. So I got a new wireless board off of eBay, and borrowed a coworker's XBox tool to open up the console and replace the board. After swapping out the old board with the new one, putting everything back together and firing up the console, it seems to have resolved the problem. I played Rock Band 2 with one of my new wireless controllers for about 30 minutes with no problems. Yay!
• I'm looking forward to finally playing Roads and Boats this weekend. At no point will I ever refer to the game as Motors and Boats.
• The Left 4 Dead Survival game type that came with the new DLC is nihilistic, infuriating, and a lot of fun in small quantities.
• Our two current D&D campaigns are going well. I've got an 8th level Dragonborn Paladin that's starting to multiclass into warlord, and a 5th level Fighter with the Battlerager class features. We've also got another mini-campaign on the back burner that involves rescuing my corrupted cleric of Moradin. I'm running a 6th level Swordmage in that adventure. One of these days, maybe I'll play something other than a defender. :P
  

Street Fighter IV

Sublime is a word that shouldn't be thrown around that much, as it applies to so few things. It's rare that's something is actually worthy of the word, but it's wonderful when something that good is discovered. Street Fighter IV is a sublime fighting game. It's flawless in its execution and presentation and a worth successor in the Street Fighter franchise.

Street Fighter IV preserves the 2-D fighting format of its previous editions, but renders everything in 3-D. This is nothing new, as New Super Mario Brothers did something similar in their last 2-D platform outing on the DS. 3-D fighting games are much more common these days, and the fact that Street Fighter IV chooses to eschew that 3rd dimension is admirable. They're sticking to what they know, and it works. The action continues to refine what's been done in the Alpha series and in Street Fighter III. The game plays very smoothly, and anyone who's been playing a Street Fighter game for the last decade will be able to hop in and play.

What really takes the game above and beyond is the online play. When you fire up Arcade mode for the first time, you might be surprised when you're all of a sudden challenged by an online opponent. By default on the 360 version, online matchmaking is enabled in Arcade mode. This means that you can be challenged by online opponents at any time while you're in Arcade mode. You can also specify criteria for said challenges (connection speed, player ranking, location), or turn them off entirely if you're feeling antisocial. You can also set up a room to play random opponents or your friends, or you can become that random opponent that challenges people in Arcade mode. Playing people in Arcade mode is definitely where it's at, as it reminds me of the days in the mall when you'd slap a quarter on the machine and challenge the guy on it. You play, and then maybe you play a rematch, but then you're done w/ that person and you move on. You get your win, or take your loss and then take on the next opponent. It's a great way to play a lot of different people of varying skill and truly test your mettle or just mess around as Dan and try to get that super taunt off.

Speaking of Dan, the characters making an appearance are both awesome and odd. The old standbys are here, some new characters throw their hats into the ring, but some other interesting choices are there. Dan is back for some reason, as is Rose, Gen, Cammy, and Fei Long. The Super Street Fighter II love continues with rumors that Dee-Jay and T. Hawk are fully rendered in the game engine and ready to be released as new characters. I'd love to see Karin and Adon make it into the game as downloadable content.

That leads me to my only complaint about the game. The DLC so far has consisted of costume packs that are $4 for an alternate costume for 5 characters. This isn't a very good deal, and the only really good costume set is the one for the girls. Fortunately, we're told that if extra characters do become available in the future, they'll be free.

If you love fighting games, this is a must buy. Obviously Street Fighter fans are going to pick up this game, but it really is simply a fantastic all-around game. 10/10, with the awesomely bad boy-band theme song and dumb DLC balanced out with the potentially awesome free downloadable characters.

Die Saulen von Venedig (The Pillars of Venice)

It's well known among my friends that I'm a sucker for cool gaming bits and a nifty game theme. Die Saulen von Venedig (The Pillars of Venice) has both of these in spades. The game puts the players in charge of building the city of Venice. For those that might not know, Venice is an ancient European city that's built in a lagoon. It's entirely supported by large wooden piles, ontop of which are the buildings and streets of the city. The games plays a lot like Race for the Galaxy, where players choose a role and perform the associated actions. The goal is to score points using a variety of methods, such as claiming piles, constructing buildings, or even simply leaching off the actions of other players with several hangers-on roles, like the Gondolier or Begger.

The game is a fun area control game, because matching different parts of buildings scores bonus points. Additionally, you must decide which piles to use and which player to give points to when constructing your own buildings. It also reminds me of Leonardo Da Vinci, in that you have to perform several steps over consective turns to eventually score points. In Die Saulen von Venedig, you must aquire buildings, lay piles (or wait for someone to do it for you), then actually build the buildings. The game is not only about putting your various pieces in advantageous positions, but timing your actions so that you pull ahead on the score track right as the game is ending. While I would have preferred some 3-D city and bridges bits, the piles pieces are pretty cool, and the board ends up very busy quickly. The game is possibly expandible, with new buildings and roles potentially being added.

The visceral joy of building the city from the marsh up is the games biggest plus, giving this an edge over a lot of other area control games and earning a 7/10. Good game, great fun and an great addition on the city building/area control offerings!

Dominion

Dominion is a card game that embraces the fact that it's a card game. It's not like Race for the Galaxy or even Battle Line, both of which are card games that try to emulate board games. Dominion is all about building your deck, then manupluating your deck to get the cards you need. If any of this sounds familiar, you're probably a former or current collectable card game player. Essentially, you have cards that are worth money, cards that do actions, and cards that are worth victory points. Each turn your allowed to play one action, buy one card, then discard and refill your hand. Some of the action cards allow you to do more actions, buy more cards, draw more cards, or just screw with your opponents.

The game is all about optimization. Victory points are in the form of cards that, aside from scoring at the end of the game, do absolutely nothing else. Point cards are necessary dead weight that you must balance with the more functional elements of your deck. I've seen players run a VERY lean deck that does nothing but buy high value VP cards every turn, and I've seen player run stacks of cards with a ton of extra actions every turn that eventually buy the same high value VP cards.

There are two things that I love about the game. The first is the before mentioned variation of strategy that's possible. There are about 25 different cards that are available to the players besides VPs and money, and only 10 of those are actually in the game. This means that every game has it's own challenges to overcome and combos to exploit. This leads me to my other point. The game is VERY expandable, with new cards able to be dropped into a game with great ease, making this one of the most replayable games I've seen in a while.

If Descent is D&D-lite, then Dominion is Magic: The Gathering lite. All of the fun, but boiled down to a easy to play concentrate. Don't let the CCG comparison worry or scare you off of this game. It's great fun, easy to learn, and fast becoming a must buy for board gamers. 9/10