Buttes & Dongers (Gaming Thread 12/22/13)

Not much news but eh

• Nintendo finally starts selling the battery that they should have shipped the Gamepad controller with in the states. Cost you $32 plus shipping

• Day 4 of a sale where Valve seems to not give two hoots about. Yesterday they started with the recycling of deals. I dunno what to say other than this should be expected as the last 3-4 years have been complete crap for their sales. Also doesn't help that this year's metagame is complete crap as well. At least Amazon, GOG and GreenManGaming have had decent deals so far.

• Sure, why not. A third law firm has filed suit against EA for the state of Battlefield 4 and not disclosing it to investors.

• Lincoln Chafee spergs about 38 Studios and their Project Copernicus. Nice zing from Curt Schilling btw

• Simogo announced that they will be boring people on another platform with their iOS game, Year Walk coming to the PC.

• iFixit tears down a Steam Machine (keep in mind that there are a few different speced machines that Valve sent out for their beta).

• Blizzard announced a release date for the upcoming Diablo 3 expansion pack, Reaper of Souls. Out on March 25 which adds another game to the avalanch of stuff releasing that month.

• Just a year late but the early alpha of the standalone version of DayZ has come out (though I guess techically it's longer than a year as they wanted the release to be in beta form as it's debut). Run ya $30.

• Frontier released an alpha version of their upcoming Elite: Dangerous to their Kickstarter backers. Here is the video

• Natural Selection guys, Unknown Worlds announced that they are working on a new game titled Subnautica. Keep an eye on their site for more upcoming news

• New trailer for the upcoming Tex Murphy game. Doesn't show anything at all but them going with dramatic music is funny

• Digital Foundry gives the skinny on SteamOS and it's not pretty.

It's about four to five years too late for the genre but Zelda is getting a Musou style game (think Dynasty Warriors).

They're closing out the Year of Luigi by dusting off the corpse of Dr. Mario in a Luigi flavor for the Wii U. Out next week.

Eclipse - It's a boardgame version of a 4X with an insane amount of depth in the way you spend your resources. Hope you like reading through the game though as there is a frigging ton that needs to be done while playing as the rules are a bit byzentine until you get into the groove with playing. You're best bet is to play it cold with a group as it's a bit of a pain to get noobs up to speed. Also, hope you have a big table as the map can get really huge when you know what you're doing and I hope you have some time on your hands as a game can get turtiling Axis & Allies game long.

Phantom Leader - It's a frankly IMO a better version of the seminal solitair game, Hornet Leader. Instead of randomly picking your targets, you get to pick them as you work with the game's political scale. Do too many high intrest targets and the game essentially ends without being able to finish off the Congs in Nam. Game is really pricey for a solitaire and comes with a ton of chits and small stuff to get lost. In my honest opinion, I would just skip the actual boardgame and go straight to the iPad game. It's really good, takes care of the number crunching and you can't lose it. Plus, it's only $15.

Samurai - Like a game like Othello, it's an easy game to learn but it gets really complex when you get it. It's dead simple, you have a map of Japan and there are markers that the players place on the map. Surround the markers with your hex tiles to win them. Sadly the game is out of print and very pricey.
Pandemic - Ever wonder how you and your friends could do leading CDC during an outbreak? Well, here you go. You and your three friends/family members (you can play with only two people but more the better) race against the clock in controlling the disease while searching for a cure. For a cooperative game, it can get pretty tense as you don't get the draws you need to continue your research. I will say that the base game is dry without buying the expansions though. You can get some good fun but the new wrinkles and cases that the expansions really draws out what the game actually is.

Memoir 44 - This game is an old worn shoe. It's not new, it's not the best but something about it just makes you still pull it out on occasion. Pushing the tank minatures around the board is still quite satisfying even if it did take you 20 minutes to setup. And the amount of battle scenarios is staggering. That being said, if you've never played it, I honestly can't recommend it as without the rose colored glasses, it's outclassed quite easily by more modern games (Fighting Formations comes to mind)

Ticket to Ride - It might quickly get long in the tooth but it's been used as one of tje gateways to good board gaming for any and all ages for a good reason. It's fun little ditty about building train tracks that connect cities and frankly, it's fun screwing people over by denying them of a completing a long route. Not much to it.

Neuroshima Hex - It's a hex based apocolyptic slobber knocker. Pick a gang and fight for supremecy in a hexagon shaped map. Bit of a learning curve as there are enough different type of units to catch you up but it's pretty easy going. The more expansions you buy, the funner it gets.

Elder Sign - First off, you can replace this with Arkham Horror and you wouldn't be missing anything, me and my friends just have played Elder Sign more than Arkham. The game is a really solid balancing act in keeping your sanity while scrounging up enough supplies to take on your randomly picked Elder God in the final fight. Now, you can make a good case that the game is fun until the final section and I can't completely disagree but man, it's a lot of fun to get there even with rememberances of Clue running through your head while playing.

Titan - It's an Avalon Hill classic and well, it's a solid bedrock in getting your feet wet in the board game world. How do you cram a full pen and paper RPG into a short amount of time? No idea but they found a way. Even with it's age, the good old royal rumble is a hoot. Valley Game's reprint is really good.

The Settlers of Catan - If you play board games, you've more than likely have played the game that epitimizes the concept of a "resource game". The butifulness of it lies in it's simplicity of collecting resources and building stuff while trying to screw over your neighbors. Fun for all ages and it has a bunch of expansions to keep the game fresh, they even have a Star Trek themed version.

That's it, I'm done. Hit me up on Twitter
The Dude

posted by Gang of Gaming Morons! at 01:49 PM

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