War of the Roses is by no means a new game, but it’s one that I only finally got around to playing after getting it as a gift. It’s a multiplayer-only medieval combat game with a heavy focus on action and which takes place in the English civil war between the Lancastrian and Yorkist factions. It is, to a degree, historically accurate, though the fact that it’s an action-oriented video game means that it’s not exactly going to be winning any prizes for realism. Continue reading “Thursday Review: War of the Roses”
Category: Review
Thursday Review: The Game Master
Tobiah Q. Panshin’s The Game Master is an interesting book from front to back, one which is both wonderful and cringe-worthy at the same time. Of all things, perhaps its worst is its inconsistency; verging from academic-styled formal writing to wonderfully light informal prose, it does few things explicitly wrong but doesn’t seem to know where it is. Nonetheless, it’s something that I would recommend, with a caveat. Continue reading “Thursday Review: The Game Master”
Thursday (Kinda) Review: Tunnels and Trolls
This week I haven’t really had that much time, because of a lot of crazy stuff, but I did do a little looking over of a game that I’d always sort of overlooked: Tunnels and Trolls. In particular, it’s somewhat interesting because of the fact that it’s an older game; and, of additional interest, one that has a relatively low profile among most of the gamers that I know, despite the fact that its age and legacy speak for themselves. Continue reading “Thursday (Kinda) Review: Tunnels and Trolls”
Thursday Review: 44: A Game of Automatic Fear
Normally I try to keep my reviews pretty up-to-date, but recently I’ve been running with a hectic schedule and a release log that doesn’t give me the flexibility I’d like to do long reviews, so I’ve been going through and reading some of the games that have been recommended to me but which I never really gave enough attention or never really gave my thoughts about. This week it’s 44: A Game of Automatic Fear which has fallen under my microscope. Continue reading “Thursday Review: 44: A Game of Automatic Fear”
Sunday Extra: Eclipse Phase: Transhuman Reviewed
Eclipse Phase is one of my favorite games, but I’m not beyond admitting that it has its faults, some of them pretty serious. For one thing, although there was a great range of morphs and the game really felt like it vibrantly embraced the question of not only transhumanism but the practicality of a diverse and exotic range of morphs, it didn’t really feel like the rules did. Transhuman, which could best be described as their player’s guide, does a great job of fixing a lot of those issues, and introduces a lot of new content. Continue reading “Sunday Extra: Eclipse Phase: Transhuman Reviewed”
Thursday Review: Learning Stencyl 3.x Game Development: Beginner’s Guide
As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been using Stencyl to work on Defender of Azekal, an educational video game project, and the folks over at Packt sent me an e-mail asking if I’d like to review their latest guide to learning Stencyl. Naturally, I was interested, and they sent me a copy so I started going through it pretty quick. Continue reading “Thursday Review: Learning Stencyl 3.x Game Development: Beginner’s Guide”
Sunday Extra: The Void Reviewed
I know I’ve been doing a lot of reviews recently, but I’ve had a lot of family issues going on and I’ve been reading in the downtime between stuff going on, so I’ve just been voraciously going at anything that I can get my hands on that looks interesting. The Void looked pretty interesting to me when I first saw it, and it wasn’t disappointing. The fact that it’s Creative Commons licensed and available as pay-what-you want was particularly interesting, as I’ve always been a fan of open licensing, and even though in the past such games as Eclipse Phase have done major releases in CC they haven’t made themselves widely available for free. Continue reading “Sunday Extra: The Void Reviewed”
Thursday (Bonus) Review: BattleTech: Alpha Strike
I’m a long-time fan of BattleTech, in part because I grew up playing the MechWarrior video games and quickly fell in love with the wargame as soon as I discovered it. Alpha Strike is a bit of an oddity; on one hand, it attempts to include all the features and complications in BattleTech, but do so in a way that minimizes bookkeeping and allows for a faster form of play. Continue reading “Thursday (Bonus) Review: BattleTech: Alpha Strike”
Thursday Review: Rocket Age)
Rocket Age is a game that sort of came out of the blue for me; I don’t tend to keep up on forthcoming games until they’ve released (I find that being unhyped about something I’m not familiar with makes me more objective), unless it’s something that I’ve explicitly been waiting for like a game in a franchise I’ve loved previously. Rocket Age coming into my inbox out of the blue quickly became a bit of a pleasant surprise. Continue reading “Thursday Review: Rocket Age)”
Thursday Review: Shadowrun Returns
Shadowrun Returns is one of the games that I’ve been looking forward to for a long time, and I’ve got some mixed feelings about it. On one hand, it’s given me a dreadful amount of thrills, and on the other I’ve wanted to slam my head into the desk several times out of frustration. Part of this may come from my personal attachment to the franchise, which makes me a little more critical than I would otherwise be, but some of it is just the fact that at times the developers just seemed to forget what they were doing-they proved themselves capable of doing some pretty cool things, and then every once in a while a typo, glitch, or gameplay balance issue slipped in. Continue reading “Thursday Review: Shadowrun Returns”