Lifestyle and Emerging Technology In Plain English

Tag Archives: Gaming

Tempting — Battlelore: Command

Posted on by Brad Grier • 0 Comments

Yeah, this little gem looks pretty cool. Yes, it comes in a bit  pricy at under $10, but then again, it looks like there’s some ser­i­ous game­play value.

The fine folks at Pock­etTactics pulled together a rather pos­it­ive review:

I’m start­ing to feel a bit spoiled. Ser­i­ously, what was the last major board game release that ended up a dud? It sure as hell isn’t Battle­L­ore: Com­mand, the latest release from Fantasy Flight Games, which, des­pite a major omis­sion, is still a strong con­tender for digital board game of the year.

If you’re a fan of board games or just strategy games in gen­eral, Battle­L­ore: Com­mand is going to trip all your triggers.

Any landing you can walk away from…

Posted on by Brad Grier • 0 Comments

Many of you will know that in my (admit­tedly rare) massively mul­ti­player com­puter gam­ing time, I’ve moved away from World of Tanks to WarThunder.

Sim­ilar concept except instead of driv­ing tanks, you’re driv­ing planes. Cool thing is they’ve got three levels of soph­ist­ic­a­tion (Arcade, Real­istic, Sim­u­lator). Also cool, that Arcade is actu­ally quite tough.

WarThun­der an evol­u­tion of the Wings of Prey / IL Storm­ivik style of com­bat flight sims. Access­ible, detailed and sophisticated.

Also fun. Here’s a little action from a few nights ago where I had my clown car out for a ride, was soundly bounced, yet man­aged to land along a dirt road in the bush. Go figure :D

Better than Flappy Bird. Because Orbits!

Posted on by Brad Grier • 0 Comments

Yeah, Flappy Bird got old quick, but this little gem has me trapped in its grav­ity well (see what I did there?).

Flappy Space Pro­gram, just like Flappy Bird, is simple. Click to launch your bird. Now, keep tap­ping to over­come grav­ity and launch your bird into orbit. Simple no?

Ok, now add another bird. Then another. Oh, they collided.

It’s Fri­day. You’re welcome ;)

Of Shields and Spears

Posted on by Brad Grier • 0 Comments

Lately I’ve been play­ing a highly access­ible puzzle-rogue-like game called Hoplite.

Simple graph­ics and ever-increasing dif­fi­culty make this a quick and easy game to learn, but a very dif­fi­cult one to master.

You play the role of an adven­tur­ous Hoplite — a cit­izen war­rior of ancient Greece city-states. You’re quest­ing in ever-deeper dun­geons look­ing for the Fleece of Yendor whilst avoid­ing doom at the hands of vari­ous dun­geon inhabitants.

Each level is a smallish hex map with lava obstacles, oppon­ents, a temple and an exit to the next level down. Defeat the oppon­ents, heal or receive a boon at the temple and jour­ney onward. Simple right?

Well, yes, and no. Depend­ing on the num­ber of enemies and your strategy, your jour­ney could end on the first level, or you could retrieve the Fleece and win, or hang on to the fleece and quest even further.

I find myself com­ing back to Hoplite daily, for at least one or two rounds. As you can tell by the shot at the top, I’ve man­aged to recover the Fleece once (yay me!), but am won­der­ing what lies beyond…

Hoplite is avail­able for Android and iOS devices (iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch).

Enjoy this fine game­play video.

 

New Pandemic scenario covers 2013 events

Posted on by Brad Grier • 0 Comments

Cool! The developers of Pan­demic have freely released a slight mod / scen­ario to their amaz­ing coöper­at­ive board game Pandemic.

Scen­ario 2:

… cov­ers one of the more not­able events in the US this year: the Gov­ern­ment Shut­down. It intro­duces some new ele­ments and changes the way you play Pandemic.

Will you be able to save human­ity with the Gov­ern­ment Shutdown?

Down­load the PDF of Scen­ario 2 here.