Tag: games

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Games of 2011: Ascension CotG

I’ve spent a lot of time in 2011 playing games, but not a lot of time writing about them. Instead of my usual end-of-year game recommendations, I’d like to tell some stories or share some thoughts about the ones that meant the most to me this year. I’ll be posting one a day until Christmas. See all Games of 2011 posts.

As someone who spent a disgusting amount of his childhood allowance on collectable card games (CCG), I have a hard time resisting their siren song. It’s a very weak spot in my gaming spectrum, and one that can quickly lead to financial ruin – especially digital versions where booster packs are a click away.

I’m happy to say that Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer scratches my itch for a CCG without exposing my wallet to trample damage. Those of you who get similarly itchy around Magic: The Gathering cards, pay attention.

Most CCGs work under a prebuilt deck model: you enter the game with your personally assembled deck of cards, and compete against one or more other players with their own constructed deck. Ascension is not one of those games; it is instead a deck building game. All players start out with the same ten card deck, and uses their five cards drawn per turn to generate Runes and Power (if you’re a M:TG player, think of mana). Runes can be used to recruit Heroes or Constructs out of the communal center row, which then get added to your deck. Power can be used to defeat Monsters in the center row, which tend to include a side effect. The overarching goal is to collect more honor tokens (through recruiting heroes or defeating monsters) than your opponents before they run out.

Because you’re constructing your deck as the main game mechanic, there’s no concept of add-on packs, saving you the pain of opening virtual boosters in the hopes of getting cool cards. One might worry there’s not a lot of variety in strategy when you’re working off a shared deck of cards, but you won’t see all the cards from the main in the course of a single game, so you do get a lot of variation from game to game.

While A:CotG is available as a physical card game, I grew to love the game through the iOS version. Playing a lot of board and card games on my iPad, I can say it’s one of the best designed experiences since Carcasonne[1. If, by some chance, you don’t already own the iOS version of Carcasonne, you should drop everything and go buy that immediately.]. The interface is extremely well designed: appropriate controls are in reach, game prompts are intuitive, and the card art is clear. There’s asynchronous online play through Game Center[2. Developers that choose to use OpenFeint as their primary matchmaking method frustrate me. Developers that choose to write their own account systems – as one did when adding multiplayer to a title I’ve owned for over a year – piss me off.], which allows you to juggle multiple games at once in an effective manner. It’s about a solid as an online implementation as you can get for a card game, although it does lack chatting functions from what I can tell.

I’ve spent all of $8 on Ascension – $5 for the core game and $3 for an expansion IAP that adds a whole new set of cards to the core deck. That’s 1/5th the cost of my horrible 14-year-old self’s decision to buy a full box of [Fallen Empires](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallen_Empires) boosters, and I’ve gotten far more enjoyment out of this. If only I could’ve saved 14-year-old me.

Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer is available as a physical card game as well as a Universal iOS app.

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Games of 2011: FIFA 12

I’ve spent a lot of time in 2011 playing games, but not a lot of time writing about them. Instead of my usual end-of-year game recommendations, I’d like to tell some stories or share some thoughts about the ones that meant the most to me this year. I’ll be posting one a day until Christmas. See all Games of 2011 posts.

FIFA 12

I’ve had a love-hate relationship with “serious” sports games.[1. By “serious”, I essentially mean “not NBA Jam, Mario Kart, or anything with motion control.”] They are rarely intuitive or come with strong tutorial modes. With manual size decreasing and annual releases churning out regularly, there’s a certain expectation that you’re intimately familiar with the series even before you touch a controller.

This is especially pronounced in EA’s FIFA 12. A scant manual of about eight pages highlights a handful of changes but doesn’t concern itself with telling you how the core game works. The game does launch with a tutorial, but mostly of a new defensive control system that doesn’t do a great job of explaining itself. Then, you are thrust into a giant menu system and left to find the mode you maybe heard about, once.

The gap between what you’re told and what you are expected to know how to do is greatest during the Virtual Pro career mode, where you join your favorite team and attempt to break into the starting XI over the course of a season. You typically only control yourself, and the first thing that will jump out at you is a numerical score next to your stamina bar. It starts at 6.0 (like most actual player rating systems do) and will fluctuate over the course of the game based on your performance. But the game never really tells you what raises your score and what lowers it. It’s pure trial and error in the hopes of eventually learning how to play in a way that the game feels is acceptable.

I understand that as the world’s best selling sports franchise, there’s little impetus in EA Vancouver spending time on a well written manual, or a tutorial mode that goes beyond “well, here’s a penalty kick, take it already, you fool!”. But I worry that so many sports games seem to be going down this road.

That said, I can’t be entirely down on FIFA 12, as it finally fulfilled my dreams of a online multiplayer sport. Shockingly, all of the FIFA 12 games I have played online have been lag free, have not been subject to any griefing or abusive voice chat, and generally have people who are not terrible playing. Strangely, it may have been the best multiplayer experience I had this year.

FIFA 12 is available for PS3, Xbox 360, PC, Wii, 3DS, PSP, iOS, PS2, and the Mac.

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Games of 2011: GROOVE COASTER

I’ve spent a lot of time in 2011 playing games, but not a lot of time writing about them. Instead of my usual end-of-year game recommendations, I’d like to tell some stories or share some thoughts about the ones that meant the most to me this year. I’ll be posting one a day until Christmas. See all Games of 2011 posts.

GROOVE COASTER

Genres come and genres go. The first person shooter came in strong in the 90s, languished a bit in the middle part of last decade, before exploding again over the last few years. Real time strategy tends to ebb and flow entirely around when Blizzard releases titles. Pinball, despite some nice digital options lately, is unlikely to ever stage a real comeback.

Rhythm games, after experiencing their explosion between 2000-2007, went into a sharp decline for the last three years. This isn’t to say there weren’t some excellent releases (see: Rock Band, Singstar), but they didn’t translate into overwhelming success. When Activision opted to shelve Guitar Hero instead of trying to keep squeezing blood from a stone, you know it’s a bad time for the genre.

But the last year has seen a modest return, primarily in the form of camera-controlled dancing games (Harmonix’s Dance Central, Ubisoft’s Just Dance). Given the explosion in mobile gaming, it’s not surprising to find that there’s increasing options on the iOS front as well.

My choice this year is not from Konami – jubeat plus too simplistic, REFLEC BEAT too complex, both requiring IAPs to have any real substance – but instead Taito’s GROOVE COASTER. The game comes from the Infinity Gene Project, the same team that brought us 2009’s excellent Space Invaders Infinity Gene.

Groove Coaster is a pattern tapping rhythm game. Your icon will move down a twisting, turning line and indicators will appear in front of you. When you cross them, you tap the screen. Simple, really – although later levels and hard difficulties add held notes, swiped notes, and tap-repeatedly notes. (Thankfully, it avoids the common iOS music game failure of requiring people to shake the device while playing, which has never worked right in any game I’ve played.)

The game comes with a wide variety of songs over a range of genres. There’s leaderboards, unlockable bonuses, three difficulty levels per track, and even has some IAPs for additional songs (of course). It’s well presented, well packaged, and just a solid, well-executed music game. And sometimes, that’s enough to make something worth playing.

GROOVE COASTER is available as a Univerisal iOS app.