DooM the Board Game

     A very fun and mini heavy game. DooM the Board Game. Plays like the first revision of Descent: Journeys into the Dark. In matter of fact, DooM was Fantasy Flights first game that featured those mechanics. People loved how it played so they then made a new IP that they owned and set it in the Runebound (another fantastic game) fantasy world.

     Back to DooM, the game plays 3 marines trying to survive a host of demons and zombies that are controlled by a demon lord per se. Not going to talk too much about the mechanics this time around but did want to state that I will be playing through the game and turning the events into a written story. The game features 10 scenarios so I will make it like 10 chapters. I believe this will be a fun little project and can not wait to let you the readers enjoy the finished product and tell me what you think.

See You Soon

:)

Some Good Games -UnPlugged-

   Hello all the great people that read these entries, let’s talk about a few board games that I have fallen in love with. I will summarize in this post and then spend the next couple of posts in detail about each game.

   Last Night On Earth – Not much of a zombie fan but I must admit that this game does a great job at creating an 80’s zombie flick into a board. The way they did all the visuals for the game and all of the filler text for the scenarios are campy like an 80’s flick and it feels good. You have a zombie player and 1-4 players that play as the heroes. The mechanics I feel are fun to play on both ends. The minis for the heroes and zombies look great.

   Zombies!!! – I know, another zombie game. Pros. This game is inexpensive and comes with a ton of minis. 6 heroes and 100 zombies to be exact. The game itself is fun, very open to being modded easily and has a lot of fun expansions that add a lot of replay value to the game.

   Descent: Journeys In The Dark – Solid game mechanics, well told story for scenarios, amazing minis for all the heroes and monsters. This is a great example of an RPG in a box. Each time you play it does feel epic and whether you as the heroes succeed or fail the story still goes on but does change depending on each outcome. Price point it’s not too bad but still is a little pricey. Descent also has a lot of expansions that give new stories, heroes and enemies.

Like I said, I will go over these in better detail in a few days.

Thanks again for reading J

Board Games Happened

     Can’t put an exact date on it but my wife and I started playing board games. And when I say play I mean a lot. It started with Betrayal and Pandemic. We then went out to buy Forbidden Island and Forbidden Desert. Those four games gave us tons of fun but we kept getting new ones for different themes, play styles and mechanics. Since I love minis, I was attracted to games like the D&D Adventure System and Descent: Journeys Into the Dark. We even came to love some zombie survival games like Zombies!!!, Zombiecide and Last Night on Earth.

     We have a great amount of fun with our new found love and I will be writing more about our play throughs, adventures and our near survivals. I will also go over and show pics of the terrain I have created and minis that I paint. Sorry I will not go into that too much right now but I want to give all of you the basic direction I will start to go into with this blog. Music and video games will still happen, but I believe that my creativity went a little more towards board games and mini creation.

Thank You all for reading  J

WOW, it has been a long time.

This will be short and sweet and from this point on I will be hoping to keep regular fun filled posts.

Video Game Violence :: For or Against

Fellow gamers, I would like to bring up a very important topic that repeatedly finds its way back into the news. Video game violence and how it influences the gamers who play them. Now from some of the previous reviews that I have done, we all know that I like some action in my games from time to time and I know we all fall into that category in some way. I strongly disagree with the statement that games influence us into acting out violent crimes or even becoming violent.

I play games to entertain myself, kill time, or just flat out socialize with my wife or friends. Games bring us together, even if we are bashing each other in or shooting each other with guns. I get off of work from a long day and what do I do? That’s right, log into Steam and fire up a game and most likely end up killing stuff. It’s like a beer after work but instead I am playing a game instead.

When I was younger I used to have issues with being angry and high strung a lot. Then I started playing stuff like Mortal Kombat, DooM, Unreal Tournament, Duke Nukem 3D. The list actually goes on. Through these games I was able to let out my anger or even life pain. It was very calming and kept me out of a lot of trouble.

Please tell me your stories about how games might have helped you out.

DooM Retrospect

 This is kind of a review but more of a look back at what makes DooM and DooM II so great. So Thanksgiving... great sales ... needless to say I picked up DooM 3 BFG Edition from Steam for a great low price of $15. Keep in mind I already own the original release of 3 and have owned the first two for a very long time. So long and short. I picked it up primarily for the new campaign with 3 but besides that I figured I would play through all games in order from start to finish. So I fire up the game and then choose DooM from the menu, that is after doing a fun little play (1 hour) of DooM 3 to see if I could tell the rendering improvements they have made. As far as I can tell, the looks are still the same but the rendering itself has been improved as in optimized. Oh it can now be played in 1080 without modding the config files (most awesome). So DooM 3 plays and feels like a DooM game but now it comes time to load the first one and start my journey. 

Dead silence fills the dark halls, pistol in hand, semi lit rooms, ambient zombie moans. The first few levels of Episode 1 Knee Deep in the Dead are very simple to help you build up the courage to play through the rest of the game. The level design, enemy and item placement, top notch. The game is not super dark to scare you, the ambiance created through the sounds and gritty imagery keep you at edge. The enemies let off their painful moans or their hellish sounds, edge building cause you know they are there you just do not know where.

This is where I will make a small comparison between 3 and the first 2, 3 will, most of the time, spawn an enemy in from silence to give you that at the moment jump from pop out. 1 and 2 both let you know that the enemies are there but keeps them from you or has them hidden in a corner. This also allows you to sometimes sneak up onto an enemy. But 3 only seems to have the zombies placed and all hell based enemies usually spawn into the combat instead of being engaged upon. To be fair Doom 3 was meant to be faster paced and try a new scare tactic, which did work very well, but it is not DooM and DooM II style.

I love all 3 so I have no favorites. I just felt that little feeling of hopelessness and major accomplishment while playing through the first that I did not really get when playing the third. Maybe it's the sounds and dingy GFX that the game was made with, maybe it was the magic that ID had back then. But needless to say and regardless of why, DooM and Doom 2 have a feeling that overtakes you while you play. Doom 3 gives a very good thrilling experience.

So the summary of what you should take from this is that even if you came after the first 2 installments and have only played through the 3^rd, play the first two. Trust me, it is well worth the experience. And it will let you fully appreciate where first person shooters are now today.

Neuntoter

They Bleed Pixels Review

They Bleed Pixels, one word, … beat your face in .. (ok, maybe more than one). This is a pixelized platformer by Spooky Squid Games. Controls are pretty simple but take a little to perfect. And the graphics are pretty good for pixel art. Now about what the game is... a platformer with some crazy jumps and obstacles that require precise timing. Creatively killing enemies and finding hidden items and power ups. You get graded at the end of each dream sequence for the amount of blood you spilt and how creative your kill combos were. The check pint system is also very unique in that you collect blood from your kills and after you have collected so much you can then stand in place to cast your check point.

Gameplay : 9 – A jump and an attack button that uses some good directional combos to perform different moves. Simple but takes a little to get used to.

Graphics : 8 – A mix between pixel art and paper and ink styles. A very neat blend.

Sound : 6 – Nothing special to help make game darker but then again the specialness of this game is the unique gameplay and visuals.

Length : A lot of time. A single stage can take between 20 – 40 minutes. Has about 40 stages or so.

Price : $9.99

Recommendation : If you like good challenging platformers then this is for you. If you get nerd rage easy, this game is not recommended.