Month: May 2013

1219: Yes, The Third Xbox Really Is Called ‘Xbox One’

May 21 -- Xbox OneSo Microsoft announced the third-generation Xbox console today, and just to confuse everyone they called it the Xbox One. I can’t quite make up my mind whether this is more or less stupid than the “Xbox 720” moniker that everyone inexplicably latched onto a while back, but the fact remains that it’s a stupid name. And not stupid in the same way that the Wii has a stupid name; no, calling the third Xbox “Xbox One” is stupid in that it is misleading and confusing. Have Microsoft learned nothing from Nintendo’s apparent difficulty at communicating that the Wii U is a completely separate system from the Wii?

It seems not. And apparently Microsoft are not particularly keen to learn from anything either — least of all the general buzz surrounding the machine prior to its official reveal today.

No mention was made of the rumoured “always online” requirement, at least — though that doesn’t mean it won’t be there, of course — but in possibly the biggest facepalm news of the day, it was revealed by Wired that the Xbox One will indeed feature some anti-used games technology — not an outright block as was originally rumoured, thankfully, but instead an apparent requirement that all games be installed, and that once a game is installed it is tied to a single “account”. Other “accounts” (and it’s not clear whether this refers to a single console or literally a single user) may install and run the game by paying a fee. It’s not yet been announced what this fee will be… but it’s there.

Here’s the quote from Wired:

There’s one feature of Xbox One from which we can infer quite a few conclusions: You can install any game from the disc to the console’s hard drive, and then play that game whenever you like without having to put the disc in.

Wired asked Microsoft if installation would be mandatory. “On the new Xbox, all game discs are installed to the HDD to play,” the company responded in an emailed statement. Sounds mandatory to us.

What follows naturally from this is that each disc would have to be tied to a unique Xbox Live account, else you could take a single disc and pass it between everyone you know and copy the game over and over. Since this is clearly not going to happen, each disc must then only install for a single owner.

Microsoft did say that if a disc was used with a second account, that owner would be given the option to pay a fee and install the game from the disc, which would then mean that the new account would also own the game and could play it without the disc.

But what if a second person simply wanted to put the disc in and play the game without installing – and without paying extra? In other words, what happens to our traditional concept of a “used game”? This is a question for which Microsoft did not yet have an answer, and is surely something that game buyers (as well as renters and lenders) will want to know. (Update: Microsoft called Wired after this story was originally published to say that the company did have a plan for used games, and that further details were forthcoming.)

Some of that quote is, of course, drawing conclusions from the things that Microsoft said (and, for that matter, didn’t say) but the fact that this “fee” is present at all is further evidence of the growing anti-consumer trend in the mainstream gaming industry. Between all the stupid preorder bonuses, season passes, DLC that should have been part of the game in the first place, Online Passes (recently discontinued by EA — now we know why!), the “business” side of things is not presently particularly friendly to the people who, ultimately, hand over the money at the end of the day: the consumers.

The fact that Microsoft implemented this system at all is utterly bewildering. Surely someone at the company noticed the overwhelmingly negative attitudes expressed towards even the slightest rumour that the new Xbox would either block or restrict access to used games. There is absolutely no way that no-one at Microsoft would have noticed this — which means that they’ve taken an executive decision to simply ignore public opinion. This smacks of arrogance — and of pride before a fall. Although there are already Microsoft apologists in comments sections across the land saying that they “don’t mind” this proposed “fee” system, there are significant numbers of people saying they will jump ship to Sony if this is the way that things are going to be.

Sony learned this lesson the hard way after enjoying the huge success of the PS2 and then falling on their asses when they tried to overreach with the PS3 — something they still haven’t quite recovered from. That left room for Nintendo to swoop in and corner the market with the technologically-inferior Wii, and then for Microsoft to catch up with its successful courting of the casual gaming “dudebro” contingent who play little more than Call of Duty and Madden. While Microsoft has built itself a considerable degree of brand loyalty over the last few years, they’re in serious danger of “core gamers” (ugh) leaving them in favour of the PS4 if they’re not careful.

But perhaps this doesn’t worry them at all. The Xbox brand has gone from a hulking dark grey slab that featured a warning not to drop it on children in its manual (really) to an all-in-one entertainment solution with an appalling interface and an all-but-mandatory subscription fee if you want to do anything vaguely cool with it. People are still buying the 360 even though its user experience has gradually got significantly worse over the years — and despite a proven track record of hardware failure. The Call of Duty loyalists still see their beloved game as an Xbox-centric title. With all these people, perhaps they don’t need the support of the more dedicated gamers who want to do more than indulge in brown-tinted manshoots. Perhaps the Xbox One will be little more than a Call of Duty machine so far as games are concerned.

To be honest, if that happens, it’s actually fine with me — it saves me a few hundred quid. It’s just a bit sad that what should be something exciting — new consoles for the first time in quite a long while! — is instead reacted to with caution and cynicism rather than genuine enthusiasm. How the times have changed.

I’ll revisit my opinion on the Xbox One once I see some games for it. But for now, Microsoft have done a very bad job of selling it to me — someone who has been playing games since he was old enough to pick up a joystick. And I’m not alone in that viewpoint.

1218: Sins of the Fathers

May 21 -- Gabriel KnightI’ve been replaying Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers recently. I’ve been meaning to do this for some time now and have in fact restarted it several times, but never got around to finishing it for various reasons. This time is “the charm”, though, and I intend on running through the whole series — I can’t remember much about The Beast Within (except, bizarrely, for the puzzle solution “Thomas? Thomas? Herr Doktor Klingmann here. Show our wolves to Mr. Knight.”) and I’ve never finished Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned. Perhaps more impressively, I’ve managed to survive this long without having the latter spoiled at all, though I do know it ends on an apparently-infuriating cliffhanger that will likely never be resolved. Oh well.

Back to the subject, though: Sins of the Fathers is still a cracking good time, and one of the best adventures that ever came out of the Sierra stable. Sure, it’s not quite as elegant as LucasArts’ best work — the lack of smart cursor is still somewhat exasperating when hunting for teeny-tiny interactive hotspots on the screen and the game has a peculiar habit of adjusting its animation speed seemingly at random occasionally — but the important thing is that it tells one of the best stories ever seen in video games. And it’s a well-written story, too, because having a good story and being well-written aren’t necessarily the same thing.

I first played Sins of the Fathers when I was but a teenage whelp. I enjoyed it a lot and have thought back fondly on it and its successors ever since, but playing it now at the age of 32, I find myself wondering how much I truly appreciated it when I first played it. Playing it now, it’s abundantly clear that it’s a genuinely mature game, written for adults. This doesn’t mean it’s full of sex, violence and bad language — though it does contain all three to varying degrees — but that it doesn’t treat its audience as idiots. The characters are written in such a way as to be realistic and believable, even once the plot starts entering its stranger territory in the latter half of the game.

It’s also a wonderful example of pacing. By splitting the game into “days”, it has a somewhat episodic flavour that helps structure the story and gradually ramp up the intensity as it progresses. The activities you’re doing on Day 1 of the game are rather mundane — they’re the interactive equivalent of “establishing shots” — but by the end of the game, you’re thoroughly immersed in the game’s small world, feel like you know the game’s cast of characters extremely well and you’re emotionally invested in seeing things through to their conclusion.

The amount of detail in the setting is impressive, too. The topic-based conversation system allows you to quiz most of the game’s characters on any of the subjects Gabriel has found out about throughout the course of the plot, and most people have something to say about most of them. Whether it’s discovering Gabriel’s family history or delving into the historical roots of Voodoo, there’s a massive amount of obviously well-researched material in the game — much of which can be safely skipped past if you just want to get to the meat of the plot, but much of which provides some wonderfully flavourful background information on the game world, plot, characters and real-life concepts on which the narrative is based.

Also, mid-’90s all-star voice cast? Tim Curry! Mark Hamill! Leah Remini! Michael Dorn! Efrem Zimbalist Jr!

In short, if you haven’t yet played Sins of the Fathers, you should rectify this as soon as possible. It costs just $5.99 over at GOG.com, so there’s really no excuse. Get to it, Schattenjäger!

1217: Board Game Geek

I really like board games, as those of you who have been reading for a while will know. While I’m perhaps not quite as “hardcore” into the hobby as some on the Internet — largely due to not getting to play quite as often as I’d like — I do firmly count myself in that contingent of geeks who enjoy shuffling cards, fiddling with cardboard chits and moving wooden and/or plastic pieces around on a table. There’s something inherently fun about it as a physical activity, and the social side of things shouldn’t be understated, either — it’s a great thing to do with friends if you don’t feel like going out, and is an activity that can easily be “scaled” according to how many people you have and how much time you have available.

Next weekend, I’m taking a short trip away with some friends of mine to make merry and play a ton of board and card games. I’m really looking forward to it, since it will be some uninterrupted time to enjoy ourselves without having to worry about being home on time or anything like that. (I will add at this juncture that Andie is enormously understanding and patient regarding my geeky hobbies, and that I appreciate it enormously — especially when she joins in!)

Anyway, in preparation for said weekend, I catalogued the games I have available, and it seems I have amassed quite a sizeable collection over the last few years. I am happy about this, and I like displaying them as a talking point. (If you come over to our place and you see anything exciting-looking that you’d like to play on my shelf, just say the word and I’ll be more than happy to bust it out.)

For those less familiar with the hobby, it’s difficult to know where to start. So I thought today I’d spend a moment going over some of my favourites from “The Davison Collection” and why they’re worth a look. Not all of these games hit the table regularly in our gaming group due to our varying tastes, but I enjoy all of them for various reasons.

tickettoride_boxTicket to Ride

If you’re just getting into board gaming — and by that I mean “ready to step beyond Monopoly and Scrabble” — there are few games I can recommend more than Alan R. Moon’s classic Ticket to Ride. It’s as simple as that.

Ticket to Ride’s theme is that you are claiming train routes across North America, circa 1920. (Alternatively, in one of the many other versions of the game, you might be traversing Europe, Scandinavia or all manner of other places — each alternative version also features slightly-modified rules for variety.)

This isn’t a dry, complicated business simulation, though; quite the opposite. Ticket to Ride is actually a relatively simple game of set collection. You’re dealt a hand of coloured cards at the outset of the game, and on each of your turns you can do one of three things: draw two more cards, either from the selection of five face-up cards on the table, or from the face-down draw pile; claim a route by playing the corresponding number of like-coloured cards to the discard pile and scoring points for it; or drawing new “route tickets” that provide long-term challenges to be scored at the end of the game. That’s essentially everything you need to know to get started — there are a couple of extra rules involving when you can and can’t draw rainbow-coloured “locomotive” wild cards, but essentially those three actions are all you need to know to start playing Ticket to Ride.

Once you’ve got the rules down, a game of Ticket to Ride is done and dusted in maybe 30-45 minutes, depending on how many players you’ve got. It’s a great game to introduce “non-gamers” to the hobby, and a good “start of evening” game to get everybody warmed up.

carcassonne_boxCarcassonne

Staying with the theme of “easy to understand, hard to master” games, we have Klaus-Jürgen Wrede’s Carcassonne, a deceptively simple yet enormously competitive game that is as fun with two players as it is with five.

There are very few rules to learn in Carcassonne. On your turn, you draw a square tile from a face-down stack, then place it somewhere on the table in such a manner that it connects to something else. Pretty much every tile connects to something, so I believe it’s impossible to get into a situation where you can’t play anything at all — though clever play by your opponents may mean that you might not be able to play exactly where you want to.

Points are scored in Carcassonne by completing “features” on the map. These include cities, roads and cloisters. Each of these is claimed by placing one of your little wooden “meeples” on the tile you just placed to mark your ownership of the feature, then completing it. Cities must have a complete wall; roads must terminate at junctions, cities or cloisters; cloisters must have the eight tiles surrounding them filled. You don’t get your meeple back until you complete the feature, so one strategy is to make it as hard as possible for your opponents to finish their features, thereby depriving them of further point-scoring opportunities in the later game. You also can’t “share” a feature with another player unless you claim an unconnected part of it and later join it up. You can add more than one meeple to a feature to defend it more strongly in the same way — you can’t, however, simply add multiple meeples to connected tiles of the same feature.

Carcassonne’s “long game” comes in its “farming” mechanic, the exact implementation of which depends on how old the edition you’re playing is. In most current editions of the game, farms are claimed by lying a meeple down on its side in the grasslands between roads and cities. This meeple can never be reclaimed, and scores no points at the end of the game. When the game ends, each field enclosed by cities and/or roads is calculated separately — the player with the most meeples in that field scores three points per city. Again, you can’t add meeples to a farm that has already been claimed except by claiming an unconnected area and later joining it up — a process which can often be quite tricky to complete.

Carcassonne has extremely simple mechanics that belie a huge amount of tactical depth. It’s quick and easy to play, yet has the potential to get enormously competitive — in other words, it’s a great game for board game newbies to cut their teeth on, and one that remains relevant even as you get deeper into the hobby.

pandemic-2013-box-art-fullPandemic

Pandemic is a cooperative board game in which players take on the role of disease control specialists attempting to cure four viruses that are spreading across the world. Each player has unique special abilities, and a significant amount of collaboration is required to beat the challenges the game provides.

Like the other games on this list, Pandemic’s mechanics are fairly simple. To cure a disease, all you have to do is collect a set of like-coloured cards, then ensure you’re in a research station to discard the cards and discover a cure. The twist is that it’s a bit fiddly to trade these cards between hands, and all the while you’re faffing around collecting cards, the disease is continuing to spread across the world, meaning you occasionally have to prioritise charging off on an aid mission to stop the viruses spreading unchecked.

Pandemic is a challenging game. There are several ways to lose: running out of cards to draw; running out of coloured cubes to represent a disease; or allowing the number of “outbreaks” — occasions where an already heavily-infected city causes nearby cities to be struck down also — to reach its maximum. It is fairly likely that the players will lose the game, particularly when playing on the harder difficulty levels — but it is still fun despite its challenge factor.

Pandemic is a good game to encourage cooperation, communication and collaboration, and it’s great for those who aren’t good with super-competitive games or direct conflict. It’s strictly the players against the game — unless you’re playing the “bio-terrorist” mode that comes with the “On the Brink” expansion set — and thus either everyone wins together… or more likely, everyone loses together.

catgirl-coverWhack a Catgirl

I’m not going to pretend this is the best game in the world, but it is silly and enjoyable — and not only that, it plays super-quickly, too.

In Whack a Catgirl, you are attempting to pelt an irritatingly cute anime-style catgirl with a variety of amusing objects. The basic mechanics of the game consist of drawing cards from a central face-up pool and either playing them immediately if they are an action card, or putting them in your “arsenal” in front of you if they are item cards. Once you have at least two “hearts” worth of items in front of you, you can lure Neko-chan the catgirl over to you with them — discarding them in the process — and then batter her over the head with another one or two of your items, depending on how many “hearts” you expended to lure her. Flinging items at Neko-chan allows you to discard them into your face-down score pile, which is totted up at the end of the game.

That’s basically it. The game mechanics are super-simple, but the fun in Whack a Catgirl comes from the silly cards and the theme. It’s fair to say that the humour and references on the cards are probably best suited to anime fans or at least those familiar with Japanese popular entertainment, but anyone can get a kick out of the amusing artwork and inherent ridiculousness of the theme.

Fun fact: this was one of the first games from Asmadi Games, who have come to somewhat greater prominence recently through their chaotic card game We Didn’t Playtest This At All.

RoboRallyRobo Rally

This is basically Logo: The Game, a reference which was totally lost on everyone I last mentioned it to. Come on! PEN DOWN, FORWARD 100, RIGHT 90? No? I’ll be over here, being an old fart.

In Robo Rally, you take on the role of one of several amusingly-named robots and must proceed through a series of checkpoints before the other robots do. Simple as that. Except it’s not quite that simple — the courses are extremely hazardous, the other robots have a habit of shooting at you if you’re in their firing line, and the amount of control you have over your robot can occasionally be inconveniently unpredictable.

A single turn in Robo Rally consists of drawing cards, then using them to “program” your robot’s actions for the turn. Cards allow robots to move forward and backwards and turn left and right. Once everyone has programmed their robots, everyone resolves their moves one step at a time. If a robot ends a move facing another robot, it fires at it and causes damage. If a robot moves into another robot, it pushes it along — something which can seriously fuck up a carefully-laid plan.

As a robot gets more damaged, more of its cards become “locked”, which means that the robot must perform that same fixed action on its turn. As you can probably imagine, this can be enormously inconvenient, particularly if it’s a “move forward” card that carries a significant risk of throwing you down a pit. Further complications are added by environmental hazards such as conveyor belts, lasers, walls and all manner of other problems. What initially appears to be a simple task quickly becomes very challenging — particularly with the chaos of the other players thrown into the mix.

Robo Rally is simple to pick up but hard to master. It’s a lot of fun, particularly for those who enjoy thinking about things logically, but be warned, it’s pretty rare you’ll be able to pull off the “perfect” plan every time!

Storm-of-SoulsAscension

This is a “deckbuilding” game — a game where you start with a fixed deck of cards, shuffled randomly, and then gradually acquire more and more cards as the game progresses. These cards fall into two main categories — cards which help you buy things, and cards which help you fight things. Your points largely come around from fighting things by playing a high enough value of “fight” cards on the table — but in order to acquire said fight cards you will, of course, have to spend some time acquiring some cards that help you buy things.

Ascension’s mechanics are easy to pick up and games flow quite quickly, even with four players. The deckbuilding mechanic is a lot of fun and helps ensure that games are never quite the same, and it’s just thematic enough to keep fans of fighting fantasy monsters happy, while providing enough strategy for beard-scratching tactical fans to have things to think about.

Talking of deckbuilding…

dominion_boxDominion

Dominion is an interesting game that has a lot of potential variations. Each time you play, you pick a random selection of card decks to use, meaning that each game has a different combination of special abilities available to you. Thematically, you’re building a kingdom by purchasing territory and constructing facilities, but in practice you’re collecting cards that work well together and allow you to do more with your turn than you can at the outset of the game. The basic mechanics are relatively simple, but the tactical possibilities provided by the cards mean that the game grows gradually in complexity as you collect more cards for your deck.

Dominion perhaps isn’t quite as accessible as Ascension is, but it’s probably the deeper game. Once you get your head around the rules and become familiar with the cards, games can flow pretty quickly — until then, however, be prepared to spend a bit of “thinking time” determining how the various cards can benefit you.

Agricola-box-artHonourable Mention: Agricola

I feel honour-bound to mention Agricola because my gaming group is such a big fan of it, but I honestly don’t enjoy it all that much when it does come out. This is largely due to the fact that I’m not very good at it, which I appreciate is a somewhat shallow reason to dislike it, but there you are.

Actually, the thing I dislike more than anything about Agricola is not that I always lose at it, but it’s that I don’t really understand why I lose, or how I can do any better. And looking up potential strategies online doesn’t really seem to help either. It’s just something I need to become more familiar with, I guess. I can certainly appreciate the interesting, complex but accessible mechanics at work in the game — I just have no idea how to do any better than I already do.

Time to practice, I guess.

 

1216: Hometime

I am writing this to you from English soil. Boooooo!

Yes, that’s right; we’re back home. Apologies to those of you who are in the Toronto area who maybe wanted to catch up and we didn’t get the opportunity to — turns out we filled two full weeks pretty nicely with Stuff to Do.

A very public “thanks” to Mark and Lynette for putting us up for two weeks at their lovely house with its regular squirrel visitors, and thanks to our mutual friend Jonathan for providing us with some board and card game entertainment on more than one occasion. It’s a shame we didn’t have more time to try some games a little more than we did — I would have liked to play A Touch of Evil again, and I’m bummed we didn’t get time to play Mice & Mystics — but we’ll just have to save those for next time, I guess!

The flight back was uneventful, and unusually for me, I managed to actually sleep for most of it. This was perhaps at least partly due to the fact that we had to be up at some ungodly hour in the morning to actually catch the plane, but perhaps it was also a case of the prior two weeks catching up with us somewhat. It wasn’t the most hectic, chaotic holiday I’ve been on — thankfully; I’m not a big fan of holidays where you’re constantly doing stuff and never get any time to just kick back and relax — but it had enough stuff going on to keep things interesting while wearing us out somewhat. To be honest, my main priority for the trip was to see my friends rather than do the “tourist” thing, but I’m glad we had the opportunity for a jaunt around the ROM and the zoo while we were there.

I think the highlight of Toronto for me has to be the board game cafe Snakes & Lattes that I mentioned the other day. If there was such a place here in Southampton, I think I would probably spend a lot of time there — so long as I could find people to go with, of course.

There actually is a regularly-meeting board game group here in Southampton, but I have held off attending thus far due to my own issues with social anxiety and meeting new people. I have little doubt that I would probably have a good time if I just went along and met some new people, but it’s getting over that initial hurdle that’s the tough bit. Of course, if I lived in Toronto and attended Snakes on a regular basis, I’d probably run into the same issue, so… well. That’s something to contemplate another time.

It is both nice to be back and sad to be home. We both had a great time, and I hope we get the chance to do it again sometime soon. For now, however, I think it’s probably time to get some sleep!

1215: Zoology

Derrrrrp.Andie and I took a trip out to Toronto Zoo today. Getting there from Mark and Lynette’s house was quite a trek on public transit, but it’s eminently possible. (For those curious, you ride the subway all the way to the east end of the green line — Kennedy station — then catch an 86A bus to the zoo. Said bus stops approximately every 100 yards on the way, lengthening the journey by a considerable degree, but you do get there eventually.)

I’ve been to the zoo here before, but Andie hasn’t. (Obvious, really, since she hasn’t been to Toronto before.) Like much of my wanderings around the city in general over the last couple of weeks, I was surprised by quite how much I remembered. A few things have changed since I last came — some exhibits have opened and closed, and we were just a day too early to get a chance to see the zoo’s newly-acquired giant pandas — but for the most part it was pretty much as I remembered.

I’m generally not particularly big on “cultural” trips. Museums often bore me if there’s not much in the way of interactivity, and my appreciation of the visual arts (or lack thereof) limits my enjoyment of an art gallery. I’m not even a huge fan of live music in many cases, despite being a musician myself, because I’m more interested in the music itself rather than the performance more often than not. (The exception to this rule is live performances of jazz/soul etc, which often have a lot more “personality” than live performances of art music. But I digress.)

IMG_2551Where was I? Oh yes. I’m not generally that big on “cultural” trips, but I must confess to having something of a soft spot for a good zoo. I think it’s the simple fact that animals are interesting and unpredictable to watch, and it can be fascinating to discover a creature you were previously unfamiliar with. Particular highlights today, for example, included a “tree kangaroo”, which looked rather cat-like; the discovery that bats can and will climb around like monkeys as well as hanging there being boring and/or flapping around wildly; that tigers actually do say “rawr”; and that somewhere in deepest darkest Africa there’s a ridiculous-looking bird with an enormous beak that would apparently rather jump between tree branches than actually fly.

Toronto Zoo is a good zoo if you enjoy looking at animals (derp) because there’s a lot of them in a variety of different environments. It’s quite a trek to get around the whole thing, but it’s a worthwhile experience, as you’ll have the chance to see all manner of different things. Although today, being a weekday, was relatively quiet, it was clear what the “highlights” for the general public were — the polar bears were winning by a long shot, though I suspect once the new panda exhibit is open to the public it will prove similarly popular, if not more so.

We also took a ride on the “zoomobile” electric car tour thing. This initially appeared a bit steep at $8 each, but after riding it all the way around and being taken into some “zoomobile exclusive” safari park-style areas with free-roaming animals, it proved a worthwhile experience, so be sure to check it out if you’re in the area.

IMG_2568Oh, and also we saw a horny male zebra with a gigantic dong trying to boff a female who wasn’t having any of it. Poor chap.

1214: Inner Sanctum

ss_41673936cf0df5cdf2b4c0549e118829730d8e88.1920x1080Mark and I played a bunch of a recently-released indie game today. That game is Coffee Stain Studios’ Sanctum 2, which I purchased a copy of for Mark as a thank-you present for putting us up for the last couple of weeks, and which I was also interested in playing. I enjoyed the original game’s interesting fusion of tower defense and first-person shooter mechanics as well as its distinctive presentation and excellent music, so I was actually quite interested to try the second game, and purchased a copy without a second thought.

Then the game was released, and I decided to take a peep at the Steam Community page to see what the rest of the world thought of it.

Big mistake.

It seems that Sanctum 2 is the latest victim of elitist players expecting one thing from a game and getting something slightly different, then throwing all their toys out of the pram, demanding refunds and hurling abuse at the developers. Because Sanctum 2 is not the same game as the original Sanctum, it seems, it is worthy of scorn and vilification. Because Sanctum 2 incorporates a number of features that not only make it workable on console — it’s also being released on Xbox Live Arcade — but change the game balance significantly from the original, apparently it is worthy of review-bombing on Metacritic and endless, endless whining on forums.

ss_18b928231ce4b8b50c8e6f1bd11e9ef7cbd88164.1920x1080You know what, though? I’ve played a good 4 or 5 hours of Sanctum 2 today in total, and it’s great. It isn’t the original game, no, but why would you want it to be? Sanctum is still available for download, so if you like that, go play that. Sanctum 2 is a distinctive experience that, while in possession of a couple of strange design decisions, is a lot of fun to play both solo and cooperatively with other people. It is both strategic and action-packed; challenging and fun; and it offers a significantly greater amount of content and depth than the original game did when it came out of the gates.

The complainers’ biggest issues with the new game seem to be the fact that resources to build towers are now delivered as “drops” that have to be picked up manually, and that there is a hard limit of ten towers per level. The “drop” system means that everyone playing has to either agree on who is going to be in charge of building what — or charge off and race to be the first to pick up the resources. If you’re playing with friends or people with whom you can communicate well, no problem. If you’re playing with griefers and trolls, potential problem, but not insurmountable. (For what it’s worth, I always prefer playing cooperative games with people I actually know anyway, and I’m sure I’m not the only one — and as such I probably won’t run into this problem personally.)

The ten-tower limit also simply isn’t an issue in practical terms. I am yet to hit said limit, because plonking down “tower base” blocks to create a maze to hold up enemies does not count towards this limit, and the limited quantity of resources on hand means that it’s only really practical to build a few towers per level anyway — you have to support your towers with your own gunplay in order to succeed. It’s a true hybrid, in other words; you can’t win without your towers, and your towers can’t win without you.

Some complainers have also whinged about the fact that you supposedly can’t make complex mazes in this new game. To those people, I would invite them to have a go at the level Mark and I were playing before we wrapped up for the evening, in which we were defending two cores simultaneously from assault, and built impressive mazes on both sides of the level in order to keep the enemies away from our precious charges as long as possible. Careful tower placement and resource management was a must, and the nature of many of the enemies that came along made it necessary to cooperate, communicate and use skill and tactics to take them down rather than simply firing blindly at anything moving.

ss_8a9cbab892d41cb1734508a572f1471a5b5a2117.1920x1080In short, Sanctum 2 is a very good game if you enjoy both first-person shooters and tower defense games that demand a slightly heavier degree of thought and strategy than normal. It’s an excellent fusion of two fairly disparate game genres, and while there are a few things that could be tweaked here and there, it’s perfectly enjoyable as it is. Not only that, Coffee Stain Studios have demonstrated that they are open to constructive feedback, too, and will likely continue to improve the game after its release. Given the abuse and vitriol that has been hurled their way today, they would be perfectly within their rights to just say “fuck you” to all the ungrateful gamers who are bitching about their new release, to be honest, so I have to admire them for their self-restraint in dealing with these people.

It is, essentially, yet another case of a not-insignificant number of people suffering under the assumption that Their Way is the Right Way, and that anyone who disagrees with them is somehow an awful person. These people preferred the original Sanctum to its sequel and that’s absolutely fine; their behaviour towards Coffee Stain Studios and anyone who has expressed a liking for the new game is not.

1213: Another Board Game Post

Today we had another little jaunt into Toronto. Our original intention was to have a wander around Kensington Market, but by the time we got there it was so hot and sunny that it was getting not-particularly-pleasant to wander around outside, so we decided to repair to Snakes & Lattes to sit in the relative cool, play some board games and wait to meet Mark and Lynette later that afternoon.

Andie and I hit a few old favourites while we waited, including Carcassonne (which I won), Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries (which I did not win), and Blokus (which I did win). Then other people showed up, including our mutual friend Jon, who introduced us to a few interesting games I hadn’t come across before.

The first of these was Fist of Dragonstones. I’d heard of this before but wasn’t really familiar with it, so it was essentially new to me.

Fist of Dragonstones is a bidding game in which you’re trying to be the first player to score three victory points. This might not sound like a lot, but it’s not especially easy to come by points. Most of the game revolves around bidding various amounts of in-game currency (the exact amount of which you have is kept secret from the other players) in a “closed-fist” bid to acquire character cards with various special abilities. These range from dragons, which provide you with coloured dragonstones, to wizards and magicians, who help you score points from various combinations of dragonstones. Certain cards allow you to mess with the other players or hinder their efforts, but your access to the cards is limited by what money you have on hand — and there’s nowhere near enough for you to be able to bid on everything.

It’s an interesting game that I feel probably takes a few goes to “get” but it proved enjoyable. The dragonstones themselves are sparkly and shiny, too.

—

The “main event” for the afternoon was a game I’ve been curious about for a while: A Touch of Evil. This game had been sold to me as being “like Arkham Horror but a fraction of the length and a fraction of the complexity”. Since I like Arkham Horror but it rarely hits the table due to the sheer amount of time it takes to play it to completion, I was very curious to try this theme-heavy game that sees you fighting various evil masterminds in Colonial America.

A Touch of Evil is indeed quite like Arkham Horror in many respects in that it encourages players to contemplate the narrative of their characters’ actions rather than just following the game mechanics in a rather dry manner. There’s no requirement to “role-play” or anything, but a considerable amount of enjoyment is added to the experience if you imagine or describe what the characters are getting up to and attempt to contextualise their dice rolls and skill checks.

It’s also interesting in that, unlike Arkham Horror, it doesn’t have to be played as a purely cooperative game. It can instead be played as a co-op-competitive game in which players split into teams to see who can be the first to take down whatever Great Evil is threatening the world this time around, or even as a “free for all” game in which all players are working individually to be the first to take down whatever Great Evil is threatening the world this time around.

There are a bunch of interesting little mechanics in A Touch of Evil that make it enjoyable, and heavily thematic. For example, the game’s setting features a band of “elders” who can potentially be recruited to help out in the game’s final confrontation. However, each elder has their own secret, represented by a card played under their character card. These secrets range from minor misdemeanours which don’t affect the gameplay but which add some flavour to their character to the potential for them to be in league with the Great Evil — or even to be the Great Evil in disguise themselves! There’s a lot of scope for surprises and hilarity, and the game never really felt like it was dragging — by the time Arkham Horror is starting to get tiresome, at least one player in A Touch of Evil is probably ready to trigger the showdown against the scenario’s boss.

—

I took advantage of Snakes & Lattes‘ excellent prices before I left and picked up copies of Flash Point and Guild Hall to add to the copies of Smash Up and Zombie Dice I acquired the other day. Andie also bought me a copy of King of Tokyo as a belated birthday present, and I grabbed a copy of Race for the Galaxy on behalf of one of my regular board game buddies back home. I’m looking forward to trying all these games out when I get back — we have a “gaming weekend” lined up at the end of the month, so that should be a lot of fun.

Not sure what we’re doing tomorrow as yet. It’s possible we might have another quiet day, then we’ll probably hit Toronto Zoo on our last full day here on Friday. We fly back on Saturday. It’ll be sad to leave after the enjoyable time we’ve had here, but it’ll also be nice to get back to relative “normality”. I miss our rats!

1212: The Meme-Ing of Life

We went out to Toronto’s apparently-famous comedy club The Second City tonight to see a sketch/improv show called The Meme-Ing of Life. And what do you know? It was pretty great.

I’m a fan of sketch comedy, and have been since the days of The Fast Show and Big Train. One of my favourite shows that I’ve seen live at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in years gone by was a sketch/improv show, too — performed by Amsterdam outfit Boom Chicago. I particularly enjoyed tonight’s show because it reminded me, to a certain degree, of Boom Chicago’s shows that I’ve seen in the past — and that is most certainly a very good thing indeed.

The Meme-Ing of Life was an interesting show for a number of reasons, perhaps chiefly for what it wasn’t. The name and posters implied that this would be a show heavily inspired by Internet memes, which gave me some degree of trepidation going into it. A two-hour show in which people who think they’re funny simply regurgitate things they’ve seen on Reddit recently would be pretty cringeworthy, I’m sure we can all agree — there are certain things about Internet humour that make it best viewed in its native environment rather than bringing it into meatspace.

Fortunately, however, the cast didn’t take this route. Rather than directly referencing memes, the show consisted of a series of sketches that were loosely inspired or which made oblique references to things which had been Kind of a Big Deal on the Internet at various points in the past. For example, one sketch featured a band of cheerleaders spewing out increasingly-inappropriate sexual chants on the subject of “legitimate rape”, abortion et al, while “Coach,” an “old white man who knows what’s best for us” gets increasingly irate. This is, obviously, a reference to a number of things — the famously-heated discussions over whether or not you can make the word “rape” funny (hey! You can!) and the U.S. politician (I forget who) who made the ill-advised comments about “legitimate rape” a while back.

It wasn’t all politically-charged stuff, though, and not all of it wore its inspirations on its sleeve. Two of the best sketches in the show featured no words whatsoever — one was a wonderful mime/dance number accompanied by music in which a man and a woman did the “dance” that will be familiar to anyone who has ever ridden public transit in their life as the man attempted to get the woman to move her bag off the seat; the other was a fantastic mime scene in which two rival basketball players performed increasingly-ridiculous shots.

The overall theme of the show was “making a little difference”, and this was returned to a number of times throughout the course of the evening through a number of touching little interludes. In one, a member of the audience was “picked on” and it looked as if he was going to be the butt of a few gags, but it actually turned out the cast were just buying him a drink. In another, the same thing happened, but this time the “unfortunate” audience member was rewarded with a pre-loaded Starbucks card. And in the last, an audience member was quizzed on what she would do if she had a bit of money to spare and then rewarded with an improvised song about her desires which unfolded while a bucket was passed around the audience for everyone to sling some spare change into — once the song was over, she was just given the money.

To say too much about the show would be to spoil it significantly, but it provoked a number of genuine laughs very regularly. I’m always impressed by the quick wit of people who are good at semi-improvised sketch comedy, and this show certainly did not disappoint in that regard. In fact, just to prove that they were serious about what they do, the cast returned after the main show had ended and performed an extra, completely improvised routine based on an audience prompt word. It was something quite special to see.

1211: I Want A Place Like This

Toronto is in possession of an establishment that I very much wish was a more widespread “Thing”, particularly in the U.K. Said establishment is known as Snakes & Lattes, and you can probably guess from its name what sort of place it is.

Or perhaps you can’t, since it’s sort of an unusual establishment.

Snakes & Lattes is a board game cafe. That is to say, it’s a cafe in which the playing of board games is not only welcomed, it is actively encouraged. How, you ask? By the fact it has an impressively huge selection just sitting there on its back wall waiting to be played with, ranging from well-thumbed copies of popular card games to the hardest of the hardcore Eurogames and everything in between. It costs just $5 (plus food and drink) to hang out there for as long as you like, and that price gives you access to the establishment’s impressive collection of titles as you please.

Snakes, as it tends to be known, is not just a place to go and play board games, though. It’s also a great place to go and learn new board games. The staff on hand are all ready, willing and able to recommend new titles to you, and even to teach you how to play. If you’re looking for a particular kind of game and you’re not sure what to try, chances are someone at Snakes will be able to recommend it to you.

The other thing that Snakes is is a place to buy board games. A healthy proportion of the games that it has available for play are also available for purchase at the front of the establishment, and for very reasonable prices, too — I picked up a couple of games myself today on the recommendation of a Snakes staffer. Specifically, I grabbed a copy of Zombie Dice, which is a very simple game I’ve heard a few people recommend recently, and a copy of Smash Up, a very entertaining and chaotic card game that rewards being a complete dick to your opponents — I’m looking forward to introducing this one to my friends back home.

I’m certainly going to be taking at least one more trip back to Snakes before our holiday is over, since there are a number of games I’ve had a chance to try that I’d like to take back with me. Specifically, King of Tokyo and Flash Point are two that intrigued me a great deal — King of Tokyo for being an excellent, fun and quick game with simple but enjoyable mechanics, and Flash Point for being a great cooperative game with enough differences from Pandemic — and a similarly short play time — to be worth a look. There are also a bunch of small games that I’m keen to introduce to my friends back home, too — stuff like the color-matching card game Coloretto and the thoroughly silly Ghost Blitz and Anomia, but I haven’t decided which of these, if any, I’m going to pick up my own copy of. I did also try and snag a copy of Love Letter to take home, but that game appears to be like gold dust at present.

Anyway. No idea what’s on the cards for tomorrow daytime, but I believe we’re going out to a comedy club tomorrow evening to see an entertaining-sounding improv and sketch show on the subject of Internet memes. There’s a subject that could easily be cringeworthy, but the comedy club in question is apparently rather highly regarded in the area, and thus I’m looking forward to it quite a bit. Doubtless I will be splurging my thoughts on the matter over these pages tomorrow evening, so look forward to that then.

For now, good night!