日常生活

I meant to buy the next game after Castle Ravenloft (which would be Wrath of Ashardalon), but I got them mixed up and ended up with The Legend of Drizzt instead. I don't know if it's necessarily a bad thing.

It's basically more of the same, but with a few added components to spice the game up a bit. It's entirely possible that some - or all - of them were added in WoA, but I don't really know. I guess I'll have to buy it at some point and see for myself. ;-)

We have only played it twice so far. The first time my brother, a friend, and I played through the second adventure where we were "killin' some foes, stealin' some crown". The second playthrough my brothers and I tried the third adventure, where we went looking for a dragon to punch in the face. We tried to incorporate the cleric from CR as an ally (with mixed results) as TLoD doesn't come with a properly designated healer.

I really enjoy the cavern-tiles; the art is wayyyy nicer than both CR and WoA (even combined, as their "walls" are just black squares). The walls on the cavern-tiles in TLoD are beautifully and unevenly painted to flow with the setting; you really feel like you're in a cavern and not some maze built out of Lego.

It's still pretty challenging, even when we try to make it easier by tweaking the rules, and honestly; it seems the more we tweak them the harder it gets so I don't know why we bother in the first place. But we're hardcore like that. ;-)

We've never been huge fans of sports, in any form. When we were younger my brother got NHL 95 for the SNES, but I believe that's pretty much the only "proper" sports game we have owned. One of very few, at least. (Not counting the Wii titles; Wii Sports, Wee Sports Resorts and Wii Play).

Now and then we'll sit down to play emulated SNES games and for some reason my [other] brother and a friend started playing NHL 95 a few weeks ago.

Hey this shit used to be cool, let's play it again!

I wanted to join them (hey, playing together is playing together), but the game only support 2 players, so we had to look for another game that had support for 3/4 players. We sorted through the various NHL games on the SNES but due to poor emulation (I suppose) the games would freeze now and then and we decided to start looking at other consoles.

We eventually jumped to the Nintendo 64 but the emulation was once again pretty shoddy with cramped gameplay and broken textures (the rink went missing in one instance). Emulated console playing only goes so far, I suppose.

The other day when I got home from work I noticed a green Xbox 360 game case laying on the table. Upon inspection I came to the realisation that my brother had ordered NHL 11. When I laughed and asked him about it he replied "Yeah, it dawned on me that we have an Xbox". Yes. Yes, we do.

We've been playing a few games, for some reason in teams of 1 vs 2 and I guess I would go as far as to say that I'm somewhat enjoying the game. Not so much because of the game itself but because we're playing together. I'm not so sure the others enjoy playing with me as much, though. They noticed I tend to hog the puck when I fall asleep. Haha, oops.

NHL though? What the hell? :D

Since Gears of War didn't turn out to be the awesome "board game that we play every weekend" I've kept searching for another game to play. (Really, I've been pushing to play GoW again, to at least beat that first annoying level, but the others won't comply. What do?)

I noticed Ad Astra was on sale and figured we should give it a try. I didn't really know what the game was about and after having seen a quick review on the game on Youtube - after I had ordered it - I didn't think it would be very good. (But hey, it was on sale..)

My brother, a friend and I tested the game yesterday and as it turns out, Ad Astra is actually a lot of fun to play! There's a lot more strategy in this game compared to many of my other games (which are mostly just all about killing stuff). Travel to various planets, gather as many resources as possible to score more than the others and eventually win the game. For some reason that setup worked out just fine with us. Maybe we're getting too old for mindless mayhem? Grah, the horror!

The tokens, or pawns, are all pretty neat. A few of them look a bit fragile and the ships are a little skimpy for my liking, but all in all, they're very nice looking.

Both my brother and the friend commented that it would've been interesting if there were a way to attack the planets in an "intergalactic war kinda way" somehow.

I suppose there's still room for some mindless mayhem, after all. :-)

One of my brothers bought the game Rock Science and the three of us broke it in yesterday. It's a trivia board game with a Rock-theme and we quickly found out that neither of us is a Rock Scientist. A lot of the questions were super hard (or rather, they're about bands that neither of us listen to). To move your marker (which is a cool guitar pick) you have to answer a question correctly. Or - and this is what got us around the board - you "bet" that the player answering the question can't get it right (which happened about 90% of the time, even on the easier "Poser" questions).

Yeah, we suck.

Eventually I completed a lap around the board, just shy ahead of the others, winning the game. Woop! But rather than feeling victorious, I walked away from the table full of shame, feeling like a poser. Not worthy..

There are some additional rules with the game, such as a drinking game variant, which I'd like to try out some time. (Not that I see how that would make things any better)..

A while back the money ran out on my account and I have been on another of my "sporadic" breaks. My plan to reach level 85 on my paladin was put on hold, once more. I only got to about 71 when my account was frozen from the lack of funds, and I haven't been bothered to reactivate it again. Truth is, I have decided enough is enough. I'm quitting, finally.

Game Over.

It's been a good few years and you will be missed, but I suppose I've finally come to the conclusion that it's time to move on... I tip my hat to you, WoW. :-)

First impression: "WTF Steam?"

I got home from work and started installing the game. Six hours later, it's just about ready to launch. Six hours. What. The. Fuck. It feels like the DVD didn't contain anything else than an initial pre-install program asking for the key which, once entered, turned over to Steam and downloaded the game. Seriously yeah, I think I downloaded the fucking game and the DVD was just a facade...

*clicks PLAY*

(A.k.a. To be continued)..

Edit 11.30am: I accidentally attacked a man instead of talking to him and the entire village of Riverwood came out to get me. Fuck this - restart from previous save..

Edit 1.00pm: Experiencing a lot of glitches, a lot of them to do with either my character's model or lightning of the world around me. I fell through the floor in a cave, and the screen went haywire, flickering. Loading a previous save didn't fix the flickering so I closed the game.. Hopefully when I restart the game will be back to "normal".

Edit 5.15pm: I could continue (thankfully) without too much trouble, even though glitches appear here and there all the time. A few screenshots:

A lot of these glitches happen when I tab in and out of the game, but they also randomly happen when stepping through doors to new areas/buildings. It has also started crashing, kicking me out of the game, forcing a restart which is quite annoying.

Despite all the bugs I'm facing, I think it's an alright game but there's just too much to take in. There are so many things to pick up, and you can only carry so much, and I have no idea what things are useful. Do I need a cooking pot? A broom? (I actually got 2 of those). And all the clothes that I strip of the dead bodies I leave behind me...

I haven't really figured out how to use magic yet, but I'm getting quite skilled with a bow, so I'm thinking I won't be needing it. Yet...

I got StarCraft II a while back and it's really rather sweet. The single-player campaign is pretty interesting; I'm currently on my second playthrough (started on casual and are now working on normal).

Rather than campaigning though, my focus have mostly been on custom games, such as tower defence or tug of war. Having a blast playing with my brothers and some friends. Heaps of fun!

We've played a few 2v2 and 3v3 matches but I suck pretty bad at those so I generally avoid them. (It's no fun losing all the time..)

Yesterday Blizzard revealed WoW's fourth expansion to be Mists of Pandaria and it looks pretty interesting. A lot of players were upset by the news of the new playable race pandaren, but frankly I'm looking forward to it.

The pandaren brew beer for fcks sake, they can't be any less than awesome!

Everytime we start playing a new game there are always some rules that we miss. Rather, that I miss - I'm usually the first one to glance through them. GoW:tBG was no exception.

Three of us started out on Friday, gathering up all the pieces from the box, setting up the first stage and taking the first plunge through the Locust swarms. After a few unlucky turns, near-dead and hardly off the first map-piece, I realized that we had missed a couple of rules that would have made it easier on us. After some yelling at me we decided to start over.

The next time we set off things turned out better for us, but we still faced a lot of resistance as we pushed forward through the swarms. We got up to about halfway through the map when one of us had to break up early on account of work on Saturday morning. We decided to leave the table overnight and come back the next day.

When we came back on Saturday we still faced a lot of resistance, and my brother started to lose his patience when we realised that there were more rules we had missed. Come on, this is the first level, it can't be this bloody hard...

Turns out no, it's not really - we (ok, me) are just stupid and very unlucky with the rolls. We decided to restart once more, but my brother had had enough, so our friend took over the role of both their characters, while I grabbed the last char we hadn't played before then, meaning we were now 4 "players" instead of 3. That ought to even the scores some, right? Right? Nope. Still hard as all hell.

We went at it for little over an hour (or maybe two) when my brother returned to the table announcing he wanted to play Magic: The Gathering. I groanded a bit, but agreed - it had taken us too long time to get nowhere on the first level. It's a hard ass game...

Come Sunday, I decided to try play it solo. The amount of starting monsters on the map changes depending on how many players there are which made it pretty easy to get through each room; either killing the Locust or skipping by them, rushing to the end objective of the map. It took me less than half an hour to kill the last of the Locust and beat the level. For serious and like a baus.

I actually think it's a great game and having played Gears of War I & II on the 360 I think the transition from digital media to a board game captures the feel of those games pretty well. It's just very luck-based with the dice, but there are ways to turn them in your favour.

I like how your life is slowly regenerating over time (like in most modern day shooters), instead of as in say, Castle Ravenloft, where your life pretty much just drops all the time. ;)

I'm insisting on another round next weekend to get through the first level, hopefully further than that, because I know we can do it....we have the technology...

Edit October 9: No.

We haven't touched a board game in a while, the weekends being occupied by Magic: The Gathering. I've been meaning to change that, and have been looking for something new and fresh. I stumbled upon Gears of War: The Board Game. Buying it on Friday.

It looks pretty sweet, kind of reminding me of Doom: The Board Game except it's full-on co-op against an "AI", like Castle ravenloft (meaning not one person will be stuck playing the DM; cards determine how enemies react). Brilliant, really.

Looking forward to playing it. :-)

(Click image for video)