The Masked Carnie

I am a big fan of 1vG games (1 vs. group).  I love being the 1 big, bad juggernaut that everyone else has to team up to destroy.  When I played Magic, Archenemy was a massive gift for me, even if I never really had the cards to make a solid deck to abuse it.  I really enjoy playing Pandemic as the bio-terrorist, even though he becomes more of an after-thought in that game.  In Heroclix, I'm forcing myself to figure out how to manage large swarms myself, but I find a particular glee in bringing a giant beast against the horde.  It is for this reason that I feel I would really enjoy being a DM.  I understand that the DM's job in D&D is simply to operate the story, and should be expected to adjust the difficulty in whatever direction is necessary for a good story, victory be damned.  That would diminish it for me a bit, but I still feel I'd have a lot of fun with the role.  Recently, I've had the opportunity to play a game that puts one player ...

I just finished watching Batman: the Killing Joke in a theater.  Right away, I want to state that it is a great vindication to have a DC animated movie finally in theaters.  DC animation has been very strong over the years.  It's missed occasionally.  Justice League: War and Son of Batman weren't particularly strong, but even for those low points, they still delivered as well as any live-action movie did.  The last time this happened was for Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, which was ok in its own right, but it was really a movie of its time for what superheroes were back then.  Mask of the Phantasm was a bit of an adolescence of animated movie superheroes.  It acknowledged that it had grown, but it still kept itself appropriate for young audiences.  With the rise of superhero movies in live-action becoming really a whole new monster now and the quality of the Arkham games, we've seen the maturity level of superheroes in the media truly grow. ...

Civilization: Revolution, a game that I truly never anticipated I would end up enjoying.  I never played a Civ game before this one, and it took some time before I was actually willing to give it a shot.  In fact, I think this was given for free for Xbox Gold members at one point, and I might not have bought it otherwise.  It's definitely made me a fan, though.  When I have a computer again (my last one had a traumatic accident and died), I definitely would want to get whatever is the most recent version of Civ.  Then again, perhaps I won't enjoy the newer ones more than this.  From what I could research, this was praised by Sid Meier as being exactly what he always wanted Civilization to be.  It's also supposed to be good for fast games, and that's with a typical game lasting 4-6 hours!  This is currently a game I play when I want to spend a lot of time just chilling out.  This is my long game.  I don't think I could handle a game tha...

My roommate recently picked this up.  I've been trying to get him into board gaming, and since he's a big fan of GoW, this seemed a natural intro.  Honestly though, I expected this to be a big bomb.  It seems like just a big cash grab.  I couldn't have been more wrong.  We tried it with my game group and it was a big hit.  They're gonna need a few more copies to sell.  I don't know if this is going to be a staple for us, but it's really looking good.

I've finished watching all of Hikaru no Go.  I can see why people would enjoy it, though not being Japanese myself, it's hard to actually get myself involved in something so foreign to American life.  If I change the premise to being Chess though, I can understand it clearly  enough.  I'm going to see if I can find the manga that handles a part of the story that the anime doesn't cover.  All in all, this is certainly a quality anime, but it lacks any explicit action.  To fully appreciate it, you need to be a Go player yourself.  I'm not really that, but as someone who appreciates gaming in general, I can certainly appreciate the spirit even if I don't see exactly what's going on in their minds.  Anything less than that, you'll probably find it uninteresting.  Yes, this actually is an anime about Go.  No, they do not artificially inflate the action similar to Yu-Gi-Oh.

I kinda went a little crazy last week and bought some expensive things.  One of them was the new controller, whose biggest marketing point is the new D-Pad.  All-in-all, it's a decent piece of hardware, but isn't enough to make me think people should get it if they don't already need a controller.  Details past the break.

You Don't Know Jack is definitely one of the best video game series you've never played.  It's one of those that has a bit of a cult following, yet anytime I introduce it to people, the reception is always a positive one.  Now they've finally released it to consoles!  I'll be anxious to see the sales figures for it, but sadly this does not entirely live up to the glory of its predecessors.  It still does an excellent job and is certainly worth the $30 price tag.  Yes, a new disc game at half the price you'd normally expect!

The X-Men arcade game was recently made available on the Xbox Live Marketplace.  I'll admit that it was never one of my favorites in arcades, but it was definitely something I enjoyed still.  I love this style of gameplay.  Factor in the wide screen it had (it originally combined two TVs) due to the remarkable 6-player capability, and you have a very strong arcade beat-em-up.

Uber Entertainment's free DLC has finally been released, and it's a doozy. The DLC is over half the size of the game itself! I spent most of yesterday checking it out, so here's a bit of an examination over all of it.

How long has it been?  Sorry for my absence, I've been flexing my writing energy on Monday Night Combat stuff.  On the side though, I've been taking another crack at Metroid 2.  I tried it once before and got stuck from my inability to find the next step.  Now that I actually did some wall-hugging, I managed to work through the game at last and my experience is untainted by nostalgia.  This should be a good read for Metroid fans.

What do you know?  I think this is the first time I've given a review of a new game that's not simply a better version of an older game (see Super Street Fighter 4).  Monday Night Combat's been out for a little over a month, but I was rather hesitant to pick it up.  First, it's a third-person shooter.  I'm really turned off by shooters at all, and more so if I can't look directly where I'm aiming.  (I'm a bit of a sniper, personally.)  It's also a "tower defense" style of game, a genre which I've really misunderstood from mixing it up with a totally unrelated game.  I decided to check the mock "commercial" of Ammo Mule they had, since I figured it'd be some nice entertainment, and things just rolled on from there.  I got to play some real games with a friend that did buy it and the trial allowed me a couple legitimately online games.  This has got me hooked, but I'm a little reserved as to how popular it really can be...

As promised, I have a review for this Dominion game written for those who are not already familiar with the game. The popular opinion here is that this game is ideally played with 3 or 4 players, but I've only ever had a chance for a 2-player game once. I cannot honestly say it's bad to go 2-players with this level of experience, particularly because I do enjoy personal games. The essential idea is that you have a deck of cards that is set a certain way, and you have to purchase more cards for the deck (game money, not real money) using the coins in your existing deck to improve it. More powerful cards are worth more money. The end goal is to purchase victory point cards which, for the most part, offer little to no value in assisting your gameplay.

Wow, I am really late to this party.  I had considered getting Phoenix Wright for a long time, but I have a little thing about doing games in order.  I could never find the first game for Phoenix Wright, so I never started it.  Well, this was made available on the Nintendo Wii, I had some points given to me free, so I finally got myself started.  Not surprisingly, I'm very glad I did this.  This game has sparked my interest in law again through the philosophies it expresses, even though the judicial system of Japan in 2016 is far from the American judicial system of 2010.  Of course, Capcom really brings it up with its music, as it always does.  If you have not started Phoenix Wright but have an interest in puzzle/mystery games, I strongly suggest picking this up (or at least start with Harvey Birdman's game).

Well lucky me, Capcom splurged on quick shipping and it was actually overnight!  I received my package on Friday and proceeded right away to my game store to try it with my friends.  Of course someone wanted to play me purely because I didn't know any more about the moves than he did... but he didn't know I was already familiar with T. Hawk from Super Turbo.  We played it throughout the store's weekend (they close Sunday), and I'm happy to report that everybody found something else they're proud to work with.  I'm pleasantly amazed someone could put up a good fight against my Zangief with Adon.  Read past the break for details.

So, I got Mega Man 10 on Friday.  I had a little issue with getting points registered, so I had to go out and buy points from Target.  Small hassle, unrelated, but at least it made me feel like I was going out to physically pick up a game.  When I started playing it, I must say I didn't feel the same kind of rush I felt when I played 9, but that's honestly to be expected.  Nobody expected Capcom to ever go into the NES theme again, so when 9 hit, it hit HARD!  It was new and bold.  It was a fresh infusion of the new retro that got everybody excited.  Now with 10, it was recently done so it doesn't have that same fresh feel.  This means it cannot possibly give the same feeling that 9 had and it has to work harder to be good.  Looking objectively, it seems this game has the same kind of replayability that 9 had, if not moreso.  However much you would have liked 9 as a game, you'd like 10 just as much if it had come first.  It's got al...