Monday, August 15, 2011

The Ones to Watch - August 2011

Hello VG30 readers!  We are back from Gencon and we have a TON of new games to try out with our play group.  We're going to get to them as soon as we can, as well as a Gencon 2011 wrap up post, but for now we need to take a look at the video side of gaming and see what's coming out for the rest of this month.


El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron - Multi Platform - 8/16/11



El Shaddai is a beautiful game that puts a spin on the Book of Enoch, a religious text that tells of the fall of the Watchers (angels) and then the spiritual journey Enoch takes on.  The demo's been available for some time, and is worth checking out, but feels too clunky to be what we want it to be.  I could watch somebody play this game all day, but once you're in combat, it feels bland and boring.  Try it before you buy it.


Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Multi Platform - 8/23/11



Deus Ex was originally a PC game from 2000 that won countless awards for its ability to allow players to play the game they wanted to.  You can break into a building with stealth, hack the security systems, talk your way in, or go in with guns blazing.  Deus Ex: Human Revolution is going to try to recapture that magic and put it on the consoles.  Despite the pedigree, I'm wary of this one because it's being put on consoles, which I'm sorry to say, tends to simplify game mechanics for the sake of a larger audience.  We'll have to wait and see how it turns out.




Madden 2012 - Multi Platform - 8/30/11


I don't really need to say anything here.  It's Madden.  Either you want it, or you don't.  Either way, you can't ignore the 500 pound gorilla in the room. 


That's it before the big September releases begin to hit, folks.  Enjoy the last few weeks of summer, and we'll see you in a couple weeks for Round 1 of the Holiday Season.  Happy Gaming!

Friday, August 5, 2011

Gencon 2011 Day 2 Highlights

Another great day at Gencon! People running demos now feel confident about what they're showing, but are starting to feel the draining aspects of the con. Without further ado, here's what we checked out today!

Penny Arcade Gamers vs Evil



VG30 got the opportunity to sit down with Cryptozoek for a private demo of Penny Arcade's new card building game. In it, players take on the role of one of the characters from the PA universe, I was Tycho, my wife played as Gabe, and our demoed played as Mr. Period. They say there's many more characters that people can play as, each with their own abilities like adding additonal tubes (power) or tokens.



It's a deck building, so players start with a standard deck. What constitutes a standard deck is actually different between each character, however. Tycho starts with more tubes than tokens, and Gabe the reverse (yes, I was a bit surprised that Gabe wasn't the one who started with more tubes, but the design has Tycho being more aggressive which makes sense). As cards get played, you'll either defeat enemies with power, adding them to your deck for points and abilities, or acquire them with tokens that will allow you to build up combos to get more powerful cards or defeat more powerful creatures.



As you can see from the pictures, the game board is two rows, the tubes row and the tokens row. Each row culminates in a boss card which comes in three levels. As you defeat them, you are rewarded with powerful boss cards that are added to your deck. I had one that allowed me to draw three additional cards, for example. The game ends when either of the level 3 boss cards are defeated, or when six card stacks have been emptied.

As fans of Penny Arcade, we really enjoyed the art style and the humor. The game plays pretty well with definite inspirations drawn from Dominion and Ascension. They tell me it plays best with 3-5 players, but there'll be more characters available than that. They also are hoping to have it ready for release at the Penny Arcade Expo this fall.


Super Dungeon Explore



I brought the wife to check out a very chibi style game called Super Dungeon Explore. Essentially it's a dungeon crawler game in which one player controls the monsters and The others control heroes. The heroes explore a Pre made dungeon made of fairly large tiles (roughly 12" x 12") to destroy spawn points and from what we could tell, force a level boss to spawn.

The art is extraordinarily cute and might even be tough to swallow for some gamers, but it was fun to play and seems to be doing well as they're already completely out of the promotional figures they were giving out for Pre-orders, even with the steep price of $90. Check it out if you're here at the con.


Sentinels of the Multiverse



Sentinels of the Multiverse is a cooperative superhero card game. Each player selects their superhero from an available pool, takes their corresponding deck, and then gets ready to thwart a villain's plans for world domination. The villain begins with a countdown timer of sorts that forces the players to act quickly to stop them. Once their countdown is stopped and the villain defeated, he enters a last form and has final combat with the heroes. The game is challenging and a lot of fun, we're looking forward to offering a full review of it after we've gotten to spend ore time with it.


Fandooble



If you've ever played Zombie Dice and wished there was a way to recover from being blasted by shotguns, Fandooble is your game. Each turn you will roll three dice consisting of treasure chests, green dragons, and a red dragon as well as a fourth die of heroes. The heroes can bring otherwise dead dice back into the game, and steal treasure from your opponents. In the center of the table is a pile of treasure and once it's all claimed the game ends. Beware of rolling too much, though. Three dragons of any kind will end your turn making anything you gained that turn return back to the pile, and if they happen to be three red dragons, it will empty your treasure pool.


That's going to wrap up day two of Gencon for us. We saw lot more than this, and hope to get to visit andnpost about everybody, but time flies fast here at the con, we're already half done!

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Gencon 2011 Day One Highlights



This year I have the very fortunate disposition of being a recognized media outlet, and as such have been granted a press badge. That saved me from the sight that I saw as I exited the hotel early Thursday morning.



That, my dear readers, is the Will Call line. Gencon attendees will recognize this area as the main entrance to the Exhibit Hall (changed to a new location this year), and will know that the hall stretches back quite a way down until you reach an exit. Well, this line went all the way down, looped back, and then went BACK to registration. It was truly a sight to see. I don't know if they're having problems this year, or if the attendance is that high. Based on what I saw in the hall, I think it's the attendance.

So what's at Gencon this year?

Mage Knight - Wizkids



As soon as I tweeted that I was playing this (@videogamingat30) I started getting tweets back filled with excitement that Wizkids was bringing back Mage Knight. It's really important to note that this is the new board game version of the game, not a return to the clix franchise. This is also the first time it has been demo'd in public, and the pieces shown here are stand-ins, and not final design (although from what I'm told it will be close)



The game is basically a scenario that plays out with an objective in mind. In our demo, the goal was to reach the city from a portal that your character emerges from. Players take turns using cards in their hands to advance through territory and encountering monsters and locations along the way. What they do with those encounters determines how the world views them. For example, killing an Orc will benefit you with experience and renown, but burning a monastery down will get you extra cards and make life a bit harder for you as people don't like to deal with Monk slayers. There's advantages to both types of play.



The game has a light deck building aspect to it, but it's mostly to control turns and the passage of time. When a player runs out of cards in their deck, they can declare the round to be over on their next turn, changing it from day to night, making some terrain easier to traverse (deserts) and some harder (forests). Cards in your hand are used for movement, attacking, and other useful bonuses.

It's really only Mage Knight in name and story, but it did have a pretty interesting play mechanic, and once we were into it, was pretty easy to follow and understand despite so much going on at a time. The person giving me the demo could only speculate on MSRP, but guesses somewhere between $80 - $100 which falls in line with their current offerings, and will support 4 players at launch, but the idea of expansions has not been ruled out.


Gears of War



I got to sit down and try out the Gears of War demo that they're running here, and it is brutal. Two players moved in and tried to keep up with an ever-spawning horde of Locust. In the scenario we played, our object was to get to their hole and drop in a grenade to close I up, something very common in the Gears of War franchise. Because of the random nature of the game, however, we had to face several Boomers, that is, large rocket carrying grunts, to get to the hole. It was an exercise in futility that seasoned players would likely enjoy.

Gameplay wise, it plays quite a bit like Doom with the exception that you have more control over your ammo, and the enemy plays itself via an AI deck. In our game,the AI deck was able to discard our ammo, chain together several different spawns, and move, making things especially difficult. But I liked how it *could* have worked. I'm not sure it's worth the $80 MSRP price tag, but it's certainly worth a look if you're a fan of the series.


Face Eater



I first noticed Face Eater at my local gaming store, The Gaming Goat, and was intrigued by it's concept and it's art. I decided to check out Board Game Geek to see what they had to say about it, and the few posts that were in there were very confused by how the game is supposed to play. Their qualms stopped me from getting it at the time.

Fortunately I spotted it at the show being sold by the designer who was able to rest my fears and offered to answer any questions that I might have. Face Eater, you'll get your day in the VG30 court as soon as we can schedule a trial date. I'm looking forward to it.


Order of the Stick - The Shortening



If you own The Order of the Stick board game, you know that this game can take somewhere in the neighborhood of 7 - 10 hours to play. That fact alone has stopped us from playing an otherwise very enjoyable game. When we heard that Ape Games was coming out with this expansion, entitled "The Shortening", we were thrilled. The Shortening promises to make your epic adventure much shorter, to the tune of 1 - 2 hours. I can't wait to get this home and try it out. If you're at Gencon, this is the only place you'll be able to pick it up without going online, so do yourself a favor and snag one before they run out. While you're at it, snag a copy of Snips, Snails, and Dragon Tails, also very limited in quantity, and you won't be able to get it much longer.


Chaostle



I was able to meet up with the creators of Chaostle to talk about how their game works. Chaostle Is a game for 2 - 8 players in which you move an adventuring party around a board in an effort to get through all of the game zones to the center. There's the long way, but as you battle the other players you can level up your heroes to enable them to traverse through the castle's different shortcuts faster. It very much reminds me of a PvP centric version if Talisman, so I'm looking forward to trying this one out with our playgroup.


Mage Wars



Probably our favorite new game of the con is Mage Wars. In this non-collectable, but certainly expandable game, you take on the role of a powerful Mage armed with a spell book with the ability to summon creatures, equipment, and enchantments. Each Mage has their own specialty; Warlocks deal with demons and fire, while Beastmasters control large creatures that are capable of dealing heavy damage.

The designer, Bryan Pope, sat us down in one of their fairly hard to get into demos at the booth (if you want a demo, sign in early and ask about additional demos that they're running in the gaming hall). We had a blast with it. Similar to Magic: The Gathering, you cast spells and summon creatures. That's where the similarities end. When summoning, your Mage is out on the board and spends their action to bring in a new creature. Your opponent starts in an opposite corner, and you gradually move your creatures and Mage to be in a position to fight your each other head on.



Combat is resolved by rolling attack dice, comparing the results to their armor, and dealing damage. Critical attacks ignore armor, and happen a third of the time on each die, so turtling isn't a concern. The last Mage standing wins the battle.

We noticed the copyright on the cards dated 2007, meaning this has been in development for a long time. We're looking forward to seeing the finished product and what Bryan and his crew come up with in the future. If you're at Gencon, you need to demo this game. You even get a free t-shirt, there's no reason not to give this one a try.


That's it for our Day One coverage, but that's not the end to what we have in store! Tomorrow we meet with Wizard of the Coast to talk about their latest project, Neverwinter, and we'll see what Cryptozoek has in store for their table top offerings. Sleep well, Gencon, we'll see you tomorrow!

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Dining at Gencon

I've mentioned this before, but its a good idea to bring snacks and such with you to Gencon, you should be spending you money on games, not fast food. But let's be honest here, you're going to want to go out for lunch or dinner at some point, and downtown Indianapolis is not a bad place to be when looking for food.

RAM



I haven't been to the Ram in a couple years, and there's some good reasons why. The Ram has decided to cater to gamers, and be open all hours of the night, which is not a bad thing by any means. The problem with The Ram is that because of it's location and openness to gamers, it's often flooded with people with hour plus waits. When you sit down, it often takes 30-45 minutes to get your order to you, and from my experience, cold. I can only blame this on Ram's inability but desperate want to cater to the masses. There's better places to go.


Scotty's Brewhouse




Scotty's Brewhouse is another brewery who are trying to cater to gamers, but haven't yet fallen into the same pit that The Ram has. There's a great outdoor area, and inside has flat screens with geek friendly movies playing. Last year we were able to walk right in and get a table, this year we had a minimal 30 minute wait. The crowd is starting to become too much for their staff, as we found our table already taken over by another group, close to 15 minutes before we got our drinks, but the food was still pretty good and the drinks are just awesome. Make sure to swing by to check out the events they'll be running throughout the weekend.

Buca di Beppo




di Beppo is one of the best dining experiences I've ever had in Indianapolis. It's a warm and cozy environment, and the food you get is served family style, giving everybody the opportunity to try a bit of everything. You definitely get what you pay for, and you won't be leaving hungry.

Rock Bottom




Rock bottom is yet another brewery, but doesn't try to change their appearance up to bring in gamers. Because of this and that it's a couple blocks away from the con, makes Rock Bottom a great place to hit for food. The staff have always been friendly, the food and drink great, and the price isn't too high either. It's no frills, but sometimes that's what you're looking for after a long day of traversing the hall.

We'll try to take a look at some of the better lunchtime places that are in the area a little bit later into the week. We'll see you guys on the floor starting tomorrow morning, keep checking for updates!

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

The Ones to Watch - Gencon 2011 Edition

Welcome to August!  Unlike last month, this month has a few titles that are worth keeping an eye on.  But since they're not coming out until the second half of the month, we can spend this time instead going over what I'm looking for at GenCon this year!

Disclaimer - These games may or may not already be out, and may or may not be at Gencon.  This is just what I want to see while there


Dungeon Run - Plaid Hat Games


Regular readers know that I'm a sucker for a good dungeon crawler.  Dungeon Run is a semi cooperative game where the team works together to get the final treasure, and then the carrier dashes out before his companions can stab him in the back.  The concept is very reminiscent of Cutthroat Caverns, but shows the entire adventure instead of just trying to get out.




Cutthroat Caverns - Smirk And Dagger


Smirk and Dagger have been really quiet about their games recently, and that has me a little worried.  For the past couple years, they've put on an event at Gencon with an RPG one shot adventure, and then sold the adventure the following year.  I was looking for it in the events this year, but didn't see anything for it.  So what I'm looking for is Cutthroat to have last year's one shot adventure for sale, and hopefully more news of the set.




Gosu - Asmodee Moonster Games


Gosu is a four player card game that we discovered late last year in which you control armies of goblins.  Wars get waged, and whoever has the bigger army at the time wins.  The hitch to the game is the placement and mutation system that it uses.  Higher powered cards can only be played by standing on the backs of low ranked goblins, and if a card becomes more hindrance than help, it can be mutated into a new goblin.  We've heard of an expansion coming out for the game that will increase the number of players to 6, so we're really interested here.


Gears of War - Fantasy Flight Games



A big pet peeve of mine is any game where somebody has to run the game instead of playing with everyone else.  I know some people really like it, having an army of monsters and trying to stop the players, but I don't think anybody always wants to be the GM (if you are, you are a beautiful person, don't ever change).  Gears of War looks to take on what has been done with Doom and Descent, but have the board be randomly generated (yay!) and cards will dictate when and how the locusts move.  I'm definitely curious to see it in action.


Chaostle - Chivalry Games


Look at that board.  Just look at it.  Now tell me it's another dungeon crawler.  I'm sold.  Chaostle has players choose a starting army or adventuring group, and then work their way to the center of the board towards their goal before anybody else can.  I can't wait to check out this one.


Small World: Underground - Days of Wonder


The wife and I picked up the two player version on the Ipad and liked it (as confusing as it was with the rules as written).  We wouldn't mind trying out this one which sounds like a great spin on the classic Smallworld game.  Days of Wonder, you'll be seeing us at some point in the show.


Ascension - Gary Games





I've already talked a lot about Ascension, so there's really no need for me to talk about it any more.  Gary Games is doing a lot of the game at Gencon, bringing the storyline of the Godslayer to a close with the final tournament on Sunday, in which the winner becomes the Godslayer and the right to make their own card.  Be sure to swing by their booth if you're missing any of the promos, and to pick up their new goodies.


The Next Big Thing - ?


Every single year I find something at Gencon.  Something special.  Something that I wasn't expecting to find.  To be honest, I'm not always the one to find it, quite often it's my wife.  What game will it be this year?  I don't know yet, but I'll be sure to let you know when I find it.