Princes of the Renaissance

When I introspectively look at the games I play and how I play them, I find that I'm a rather violent person. Show me a game where I can build a military and blow stuff up or beat something down and I'm all over it. This was most apparent in a recent game of Fire and Axe where I ignored building my viking civilization by settling cities and trading for riches, and instead went on a rampage sacking all the cities I could, including Rome, Paris, and Constantinople (not Istanbul). While it was really cool having all those plastic trophies of my glorious victories, I ended up with the least amount of victory points. By a lot. Clearly I need reevaluate my stratigeries when playing any game that has even the hint of a fighting aspect.

The game to heal me of my aggro affliction is Princes of the Renaissance. The backstory of the game involves foppy Italian families getting various cities to fight seemingly pointless wars for fun and profit. I say seemingly pointless, because no matter how much you fight you never EVER lose a military unit you've purchased. This floored me as the rules were being explained and I was beginning to wonder whether I'd made a mistake in sitting down to this silly game. As it turns out, the point of fighting is not actually to kill anyone, it's to make a big show for the city that you're fighting for at the moment. Win or lose, you get paid if you're fighting but it's the honor of the city that's on the line. This game is really an investment game, as players slowly buy "shares" of the individual cities hoping that they'll be worth more by the final turn. In fact, it may be to your overall benefit to have a really crappy army and fight for cities that you want to take down a peg, or want to buy into on the cheap. I really ended up liking this a lot, especially coupled with the auction mechanic that takes up a majority of the game.

Now for the not so good. The packaging is really minimal, and while it's really not cool to judge a game by it's box, it's hard to ignore the medicore bits the game comes with. In addition, the battling in the game comes down to dice rolling, and while that's fine for other games that I like, it really bothered me in this one. I'm probably being way too harsh, but it almost seems that when you boil down the mechanics of this game you're almost better off just playing Ra. It's got a lot fewer rules to learn and is just as or more fun. I will say that getting into the theme of the game is pretty easy, and we were talking like snooty royals and role-playing a little near game's end.

In the end, this is a game you really have to be in the mood for. As a new player, it took me a while to get into how I was supposed to play and win. I ended up in second place out of four players by 5 or 6 victory points. I had fun, and give this game a 6/10 VP. Definately something I'll be playing again soon.

Still Alive?

Yep, just been busy with work and house hunting. Still, that's NO excuse for laziness! I'll make it up with a couple of new reviews this week for Kingsburg and Princes of the Renaissance, from this last meeting of the Super Fantastic Gaming Hour group. For now, here's a video of one of the most stupidly awesome games to have come out ever. Seriously, it's random and retarded all at once. Just like your mom. :D

Puzzle Quest

Apparently this game had some sort of following before I'd stumbled upon it on XBLA in between sucking at Grifball and trying to gold star "Vasoline". I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I was pleasantly surprised when I found the game to be much lighter than your average RPGish fare. See, I've got somewhat of an addictive personality, especially when it comes to games involving XP, lootz, and spells. The drive to get more levels and get a buffer guy consumes me. This is why I don't play games like WoW, EQ, or even single player adventures like Elder Scrolls or Mass Effect. I actually want to have a life, and I know that for me personally such a life cannot exist while I'm hunting orcs on some electronic media. Puzzle Quest isn't like that, which isn't to say that it's an addicting and yet interesting game. It's puzzle are quite entralling and I do find myself thinking about colored gems dropping in patterns when I'm not playing, but I do find I can put it down quite easily. I'm not sure if this is personal growth on my part, or some mechanic of the game, but I'm not compelled to sit in front of the TV for hours leveling up my character. Perhaps it's the way that you can more or less choose which fights you get in, but this non-junkie behavior is quite a refreshing change for me.

The most surprising aspect of the game is the music. It's regal, majestic, and almost unappropriately good for what is essentially Hexic with XP. One almost gets more entranced with the medieval fantasy-inspired soundtrack and forgets that their actually playing a puzzle game to besiege that city and pillage the citizens for greed and fun.

If you haven't already, jump on this colorful bandwagon and match some pretty colors for the glory of your... uh... kingdom, and not in the least for your own gains. $15 or 1200 MSP makes this one of the more pricey Arcade titles, but I'm feeling that it's worth it. I give it a 8/10 VP.

Overkill

I've been playing Halo 3 for a while now, and I've been at 995 gamerscore for almost as long. The Overkill achievement has long eluded me, until tonight.

Now that I've gotten my Commander rating, I was back doing the Lone Wolves playlist. This also meant that I had another shot at the achievement. This particular match started OK, as I grabbed the shotty and got two quick kills. I then was killed by an invisible dude, respawned and found myself the shotty I'd dropped earlier. What ensued was by all accounts raep of a high order, as I used every round remaining to go on a 7 kill shotty spree culminating in finally getting my overkill. I'd like to thank the players in that game for unwittingly helping me out. I'd also like to thank that shotgun for not running out of ammo before that last kill, and I'd like to thank my wife for putting up with the hootin' and hollerin' that followed. :D

Fire and Axe: A Viking's Saga

Vikings have an interesting and varied history. Not only were they accomplished explorers, but they also took the time to dabble in pillaging and mayhem. Who doesn't enjoy a little mayhem every now and again, but I find myself wandering from the point. Vikings are just plain cool and most things that involve them are pretty cool too.

Fire and Axe: A Viking's Saga, is no different. Boardgamegeek lists the game as a nautical/medieval game with action point and area movement mechanics. Basically during a players turn, you have 7 action points (days) to spend. Everything requires at least one day to complete, and loading your Viking longboat can take even longer, since load a single unit or trade good requires an action point. The board includes a space for keeping track of the points a player has used in their turn, but it's pretty superfluous. It's not THAT hard to count to seven. Points in the form of gold are awarded for completing quests, or sagas, raiding cities or trading goods. Gold is also awarded at the end of the game as bonuses for controlling all cities in a given area, or having the most completed quests of a certain type. End-game bonus points are also awarded for having the most sacked cities. Our groups end scores ranged from around 145 to 170.

The game play is pretty straight forward, and it's pretty fun to load up your boat and go kick some ass. That said, the combat sometimes devolves into a dice-fest, and it's possible for a player's clever planning and positioning to get ruined by some bad rolls. There are also rule-breaking action cards that also add in a random element, but this is much less annoying than getting dice-whipped.

Overall, this game is worth playing. I question it's replay value, but it's definately good for a least a few plays and is simple enough to be introduced quickly to new players.

Pros: Excellent board design and art.Plastic are of good quality and pretty cool to play with.The game play is smooth and pretty quick. A game can be completed in a little more than an hour with veteran player or about 90 minutes with n00bs.

Cons: The combat can be frustrating.Replayability is questionable.

I'm going to try out a new rating system where 1 is a game I'd never even glance at again (The Simpsons: Don't Panic) and 10 is game I'd trade my pinky for (Twilight Imperium). I'm giving Fire and Axe a 7/10. I'm going to try and avoid decimals and other cliches, except I will be giving my system a cheesy name, like 7/10 Victory Points or wooden cubes or something. I've not decided yet. :)

Pics:

Quicky Update

Just some gameplay videos. I'll have a review for Fire and Axe up later, as well as a D&D post. Speaking of D&D and in case you having already heard, somewhere Gary Gygax is playing D&D with Einstein and some other famous nerds. :(

I'm The Boss


Galaxy Trucker, again!

Dreadnaughts, Gold Stars, and the West.

Wednesday night brought us another round of Twilight Imperium. I'm happy to say that I was able to pull out the win, thanks to some careful maneuvering and some fortunate fleet deployments that were just enough to ward off the other players. Go me. Let's see if we can get a streak going.

This morning my wife and I played a few hours of Rock Band. Before that, I was warming up on some easier songs on Expert vocals. After some screwing around on Mississippi Queen and Nightmare, I retried Time We Had. Gold Star. I had impressed myself. I then tried Maps and Gold Star'd that one too. Now I was really happy. After that, me and my wife's "band", The Dorklesons, proceeded to mop up Seattle and nearly complete Sydney. :D

Moving on, the second half of the NBA season is turning out to be a lot more interesting than the first. As you can see, the Western Conference is loaded as hell. As of right now, there are only 5 teams from the East that even have .500 records. My beloved San Antonio Spurs are at the top of the Southwest Division, which in and of itself has at least 4 playoff bound teams. This is probably going to be some of the most exciting, heart-breaking, and intense playoffs in a long time. Well, at least for the West.

I'll post back later with my thoughts all the Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition stuff that's come out in the last week. Not only did WotC release some juicy bits, but it looks like some NDAs probably ran out.

PS, kobolds FTW