Tag: games

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Games of 2011: You Don’t Know Jack

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.

2011 felt like the year that a number of old franchises were dusted off, given a warm bath to get the color back in their cheeks, and re-presented to the world.[1. It may be worth noting that Duke Nukem Forever is not on my list of games.]

Of the three that made my list, I was most excited about the return of You Don’t Know Jack. The original series was one of the few games that delivered on the promise that CD-ROMs offered. It was whip smart and absurdly funny.

The world has changed in the sixteen years since the series premiered, and that manifested itself into a more console-friendly experience. The randomly selected pool of questions is out, and a series of episodes each with eleven questions are in. With a nod to other quiz games trying to keep all players engaged, there’s no longer buzzing in – everyone can play every question. Some question types are gone (the much beloved Gibberish Question being the most notable), and some new ones are in (including the amazingly named Cookie’s Fortune Cookie Fortunes (with Cookie “Fortune Cookie” Masterson)). And so on.

These changes are fairly hit and miss – the biggest shortcoming being that an eleven question game feels pretty damn short. Luckily, you won’t always notice, as the strength of the writing is just as good as it was during the original series peak[2. Which, in my opinion, was Vol. 4 The Ride.]. Tom Gottlieb returns as host Cookie Masterson, and the tone of the game just feels so perfectly right. Few games can manage to have such a clear house style as YDKJ has managed to over the years.

In a perfect world, someone would combine the writing and style of YDKJ with the robustness and functionality of Sony’s Buzz series. And given THQ’s rumored monetary problems, the odds of us seeing another title in the series are probably pretty low. Even if this is one last gasp at YDKJ returning to the world, it brought me a lot of joy, as it will to anyone who enjoys trivia, puzzles, and lisping ventriloquism dummies.

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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.