Monday Report [July 21-27]

Flash Games
You Don't Know Jack, Episodes 82 & 83

7 minutes, each

More Jack. It's an addiction by now. Or at least a bad habit.

Wii
Wii Fit

Less time than I should have

It's starting to worry me that only a couple of weeks in and I'm starting to lose the will to workout. Or even to do the daily body test. Must keep it up. I need to find a better time to work it into my schedule.

LEGO Indiana Jones
A whole lot (I lost count)
Morgan and I finished the game, 100%, in co-op. A full review is pending. There is about 20-30 hours of playable content there, and we did all of it. There are a few quibbles, but it was a fun romp, and easy to play. I'd recommend it to people who are fans of the recent LEGO games, or of Indiana Jones, or who have a non-gamer that they want to play some games with.

Monday Report [July 14-20]

Wii
Wii Fit

3.5 hours

Wii fit is interesting. It has mini-games, but I don't think it qualifies as a game itself. In the same way that Brain Age isn't really a game. It's a trainer program. You use it the same way that you used to use Typing Tutor. Only to help improve and track your body. Mostly it's great. There is just one glaring deficiency: no guided workouts. I'll explain more when I do a full review. I still have some things to unlock. One thing to note is Wii Fit Time Dilation: 30 minutes of workout in Wii Fit can actually be upwards of 45 minutes in real time.

LEGO Indiana Jones

7.5 hours

Wanted to get a LEGO game, and since I don't own a X360 yet, I had to get it for the Wii. Morgan prefers Indiana Jones over Star Wars, so we went with that. Because I want to play it with her. Ad we did. The game is LEGO fun, LEGO irreverent, and bloody annoying in some places. A lot of the world is "realistic", where realistic means not made of virtual plastic. This is good for helping you figure out what to smash (everything made of LEGO), and really good at helping you fall off of platforms. More review as we get further. So far it's fun, but slightly annoying. Two movies down, one to go. Then a whole load of extra things to unlock and find.

Flash
You Don't Know Jack, Episodes 80 & 81

7 minutes, each

More Jack. Basically I like my trivia.

Board Games
Zombies!!!

2 hours  (2 games, 4 players)

Yes, those exclamation points are necessary. It's a board game about, you guessed it, Zombies. Basic premise includes fighting your way through a horde of zombies while trying to make it to the Helipad and escape. This is not a co-operative game. You can also win by offing (and collecting) 25 zombies. Every turn reveals a little more of the city, which is built tile-by-tile, Carcassonne-style. Then you move, kill, and try to survive. Then you move some zombies. Most of the action cards are weapons to help you or events you can use to hinder your fellow players.

At the core, this is a simple game. You can learn it in 5 minutes, and set it up in about the same amount of time. The randomness of the city, and the sheer joy of being able to blast your way through a building full of zombies to get that health you need are what make this game shine. Sometimes the dice work for you, sometimes they don't. Either way, you can tell some neat survival (or horrible death) stories from the events that happen. Oh, and there are 7 expansions which cover the gamut of zombie tropes. This will be a game to just pull out an play with friends: simple, quick, and a lot of fun (who doesn't like killing zombies?).

Monday Report [July 7-13]

Wii Games
Wii Fit

1.5 hours

Bought this on Friday. So far have used it three days. I don't really have much to say about it. The quality of the balance board itself is good. It feels solid and sturdy. The "game" itself is well designed and has a pleasing aesthetic. I wanted to get it as a motivational tool to working out and tracking my weight. I don't have the time or money to spend on a gym membership, but I don't have the motivation by myself to research, design, and maintain a workout regimen. Hopefully Wii Fit will provide a source of direction and motivation as it tracks my progress.

PC Games
Beyond Good & Evil (via GameTap)

2.5 hours

The second assignment hasn't been posted yet. Although I figure that it will be somewhere after the second mission (the one in the Nutripils Factory). So I played some of the side-stuff, collected a few more pearls, and had the game crash every time I tried to go into something called "Vorax's Cave". I'll have to look into that. I'm part way into the mission, and taking my time to collect all the extra animals and pearls I can.

Flash Games
You Don't Know Jack, Episodes 78 & 79

7 minutes, each

This week brought back a personal favourite type of Jack moment. It's called the Bring Back. Or rather, the lead-in and follow-up. The full games did this sometimes, and The Netshow used it extensively. It's where it'll set something up, a joke or a clue to another question, and then follow through. Appropriately mocking if you failed to listen to the advice given. Monday's show was the lead-in and Friday's had the follow-up on the last question.


Totem Destroyer

30 minutes (complete)

This is a fun little physics game. You have to remove block from the (often unstable) towers while trying not to drop the golden idol on the ground. Challenging, but not too hard. I on;y got stuck on one level until I started to really pay attention to how the tower was swaying. The game's graphic design is simple and elegant, staying out of the way for the gameplay. the music also works nicely with the theme and doesn't manage to get too annoying. I'd recommend playing through. Also, the game has achievements. While some of these are just for filler (play for X amount of time) some do provide a sense of fulfillment.

Open Doors

30 minutes (incomplete)

This is an interesting game about movement. Draw as a blueprint, this game has you moving around a grid trying to get to the exit space. Doors are in your way, and are designed to only operate in certain directions. You can push doors open only certain ways and passing through an open door will close it behind you. I'm pretty sure that I was playing mostly on intuition. Eventually I got stuck and frustrated, maybe you can do better.

Real Games
Arkham Horror

About 3 hours

If you play board games at all seriously, there is a good chance you have heard of Fantasy Flight Games. They make the World of Warcraft, StarCraft, and upcoming Gears of War board games. They make games with ridiculous numbers of pieces and whole buckets full of miniatures. Arkham Horror is based on Call of Cthulhu, and the whole Lovecraft Mythos in general. Played over several hours, the game is a cooperative effort as the investigators (from 1 to 8 players) try to stop a Great Old One from awakening and killing them (and everyone else). This is not an easy game. Lots of bad things can happen, and you only have a short time to stop it.

This was my first time playing it, and I had a blast. There were four of us, and only one (the game owner) had actually played before. Fortunately the rest of us were familiar with many of the game conventions used in Arkham Horror, so we were able to pick it up easily. Part RPG, part miniature-style combat, and part open-path board game; you pick a character, get some stuff, and start wandering Arkham trying to close gates to other dimensions and killing (or evading) the monsters that emerge from them.

We all died. We were unable to seal any of the gates and prevent them from re-opening. This meant that we were constantly moving towards awakening the Old One and our doom. He woke up and promptly devoured us all. It is the most fun I've ever had losing a game. It's not like you go in expecting to come out whole: it is a Cthulhu game after all. I can't wait to play this again (maybe with expansions) and I hope to get it for myself.