Also happy First of July for Canadians. July has come in with a little bit of heat. The warm weather is right up some people's alley, but not so much for me. I like things to be on the cooler side. Spent this year's Fourth playing some Munchkin Booty with some friends on ours. I couldn't scrape together a win but it was still fun. Made some lunch of grilled chicken wings which turned out good as well as throwing some walla walla onions in with asparagus in tin foil for the grill. Messy but good.
Lately I have been pretty busy with work but have managed to squeeze in some time to game. Finished Saints Row 2 recently with Ish. A ridiculously fun game. It is completely over the top criminal behavior that just runs to the crazy side. Add a dash of co-op and you have a really great time. Graphics are good and the game play is straight forward. Plenty of side missions/activities to go with the main mission so there is always something to do. Pretty much all I have left is some races, the DLC and some online...
Also finished Heinlein's "Have Spacesuit - Will Travel". Very typical R.A.H. juvenile. I enjoyed it. Next looking at the Difference Engine by Sterling and Gibson.
Also recently got to try some new card games. First up was Anima. This is a card game that attmepts to mimic a JRPG. You control a party of characters that are out to save the world from a great evil, but you are racing other parties trying to save the world as well. One wonders if you should be competing to save the world? But the game is fun and the mechanics are pretty simple and neat. You have an initial mission that has you exploring the world and having random encounters in order to build your party and also complete that mission. Once that is done, you uncover the final mission and attempt to complete that. Ben and I have been working on some slight variations and found some pretty neat ideas for extending the game (base play is about 40 minutes) and also making it a bit more dynamic. It does has some balance flaws around party size and how quickly you can get to full party, but overall I can recommend it.
The other game is Arkham Horror. I went searching around for a board or card game that you can play in a co-op fashion. The adversarial games are just rough on me as they generally make Michelle pretty upset which means I lose arm hair. This one is pretty dark in that you and a group of friends trying to stop and ancient unspeakable horror from destroying the land. So far, Ben and I have only given it a single pass which took about 5 - 6 hours. And we lost. But still had fun in the process. I am definitely looking forward to trying it again and hopefully with more people so that we actually have a chance at clearing out the baddies.
Also, please can it rain? Although with Ish coming out to visit, I think we are guaranteed some rain. :)
3 comments:
For co-op games, Corrie and I have the Lord of the Rings game for 2-5 players where everyone plays a hobbit cooperating to destroy the one ring before your souls are corrupted and Sauron claims the ring. It's rather hard to win. I do enjoy the addition of the 5th Hobbit, Fatty.
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/823
http://www.amazon.com/Fantasy-Flight-Games-Rings-Board/dp/B0002S6MCU/ref=pd_sbs_t_2
On another note, you don't have any opinions on essential science fiction?
You win... I made my comment. Really I would like to get more reading in before I make statements about great sci-fi, since I spent a lot of my time and youth reading fantasy. Wasted times :)
I am somewhat curious about Lord of the Rings. Ben, Karen and I got in a game of Arkham Horror and it was pretty intense and difficult.
S.W. Win! The current publishing trend is away from sci-fi and swinging toward fantasy with some higher quality works being published (Harry Potter, Mr. Norrell and Jonathon Strange, etc.) than some of the older stuff (Eddings, Anthony, Dragonlance). Not to say there is a dicotomy, old=bad, new=good. Not when the first Thomas Covenant book is more than 30 years old.
http://xkcd.com/483/
Lord of the Rings (the multiplayer board game) is actually really difficult. There are three difficulty levels based on how close you start the Sauron game piece to your little hobbit pieces. The easiest configuration is still awefully challenging (for us, it's a 90+% fail rate when playing two players, still 80+% fail with four, which seems to be the number the game was balanced for).
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