Wednesday Game Nights

I have a great wife. I'm a busy guy with work, kids, church service and whatever else comes along in life, but my wife always lets me take one night a week to play with my brother(s) and friend(s). Wednesday nights are game nights at our house.

My game night group hasn't changed much over the years. It mostly consists of my older brother, who is a network administrator at a software company, and a friend (who married my brother's wife's sister-- I know, just move on) who is also a radiologist. Once in awhile my younger brother will take a World of Warcrack hiatus and join in on the Wednesday night festivities with us.

We've played several games throughout the years. Here's a run down of those games.

The first game that we all played together was World of Warcraft. Few games (if any) are funner to play together with a group of friends. As you may have heard, WoW has addictive potential and it may have occupied more than just a Wednesday night for us. We tried to enter Azeroth whenever we could. It was only a matter of time before the wives stepped in and like High Inquisitor Whitemane herself wiped our little group. Even great wives have limits. Some of us only made it to level 40 or so. I kept playing solo for awhile and made it to level 70 before I called it quits. It's just not fun playing alone. Still, I think WoW will always hold a special little place in our hearts *sniff *sniff.

Next we all picked up Battlefield 2142. This is a great coop game. It is extremely well designed and balanced to be played as a squad. We started Helix_C clan and it wasn't long before we had a full team of Helix_C soldiers all in the same squad battling it out together. Battling it out is an apt way to put it because this game is all about the battle. It is intense. There is no better way to put it. My heart literally raced during some of the firefights. 64 players is a lot to have on the same battlefield. We learned our roles well and became a tight squad. There were many nights when Helix_C turned the tide of a tough battle. We played 2142 for a long time and really never got tired of it. We went on to the next game just to try a new genre out for awhile. To this day we'll play a few rounds of 2142 while waiting for all of us to get online.

I don't think we ever really got over our WoW loss. In an attempt to enter into another fantasy world that has groups and loot and leveling up and skill points and many other standard WoW/RPG elements, we started playing Dungeon Siege II. While this game had some fun elements, it definitely was not a WoW replacement. I personally got bored with it, mostly because the combat was so simple. You just hold the right button down on an enemy and your character attacks it. Every once in a while you can use a special power. This is all there is to combat. It was nice to level up and continually get better loot though, this almost reminded us of the good old WoW days... almost. It was close enough that my younger brother left WoW once a week and joined us on Wednesdays.

I hardly ever buy a just released game, mostly because I'm so cheap and I am patient enough for the prices to drop. I just couldn't wait to buy Borderlands though. I started reading about this game more than a year before its release and knew that I was going to like it. I love FPS and RPG games, and Borderlands is a nice fusion of these genres. I also was really excited because Borderlands is meant to be a coop game. It was a perfect fit for our Wednesday night game nights. I convinced my brother and friend to purchase it and it wasn't long before we were zipping around planet Pandora shooting up anything that moved and running over everything else. I still couldn't convince my younger WoW-head brother to join us though, which is unfortunate because Borderlands is at its best with 4 players. It is still an absolute riot with 3 of us though. So much loot! The game is genuinely funny. The NPC characters are hilarious. This is the game that we're currently playing Wednesdays and I can't wait to play every week.

So there's a brief history of our game nights. We've played some good games and I'm already thinking of some more for the future, maybe Left 4 Dead or League of Legends. We'll see. All I know is that I'm always excited for Wednesday nights to roll around.

Raptr

I was surfing the web looking at game sites when I came across this cool site and program called Raptr. The program runs in the background and keeps track of the games that you play and how much you're playing them. It also allows you to chat in game with your friends via your preferred chat program.

Thinking of this blog, I thought I'd give it a try to display how much/how little time I get in playing and what exactly I'm playing. Hopefully the system resources it takes up running in the background won't be noticeable or else I'll have to kill it. Give Raptr a try.

First Impressions 1701 A.D.

Wow, this game really gets you hooked. I was able to install it last night and get my first game time in. This is a fun game. If you're not careful, it won't let you leave the game. There were about 6 times when I said "ok, it's time to exit" but then I'd get a notification that a workshop had stopped producing or something similar and I just had to see what that was about. I ended up playing until 3 am.

It's a great economy game with extensive trade. The interesting part is that you build cities on several different islands and your islands don't have all of the necessities/wants your people need to be happy and progress. You therefore have to colonize more islands and set up trade routes or trade with the AI players.

I think that I'm only scratching the surface so far too. For example, I haven't even had one battle yet, so I don't even know what to expect from that. All I know is that I'm looking forward to getting some more time playing it.

New Game On the Way

I downloaded a demo for "Dawn of Discovery" by Ubisoft this last week. It's a city building game set in the early 1400's with a big emphasis on trade. Here's the link to the demo. I had a ton of fun with it and I can see myself really getting into the game. The demo only lets you play 60 minutes of the continuous game and the first 3 compaigns. In a game that I'm sure can last for literally days, 60 minutes was just scratching the surface and I was itching for more.

Unfortunately, Dawn of Discovery is new and therefore costs $50. I have a real hard time paying full price for new games. I tend to just be patient and wait for the prices to drop. I discovered that it has several predecessor games including the next most recent one entitled "1701 A.D." After reading many reviews and looking at the screen shots, the two games appear to be very similar and lucky for me, it sells for $5 new on Amazon. I couldn't pass it up.

So hopefully within the week I'll have a new game to play, "1701 A.D." It will be a nice change from Torchlight and Borderlands, the two games I'm spending the most time on currently.

1701 A.D.

Gaming Podcasts

One of the ways that I stay in touch with the gaming world is through podcasts. It takes about 20 minutes one way for me to get to work everyday so I use this time to listen to podcasts. I used to listen to the crappy local radio, but that sucked. I then started to listen to NPR, but I just couldn't stay interested in their stories. It was about that time that I got a Blackberry and installed a podcast program on it called podtrapper. It automatically downloads podcasts overnight so the next day I have new things to listen to. Now I listen to a few gaming podcasts throughout the week and that keeps me more informed than the average gamer.

Here are the podcasts that I listen to and what I think about them.

The best one by far is Gamespot Presents the Hotspot. (click here or the logo on the left to go to their homepage) The host, Brendan Sinclair, (a dry-humored Canadian) keeps things moving along well. You can tell that he puts in a lot of work each week to stay on top of the gaming world and in turn churn out a good podcast. He actually works at making an interesting podcast- this is where the other podcasts come up short I think. There are usually at least 3-5 other people with him each week. One thing that I've learned from listening to podcasts is that the more the merrier. Some regulars on the show that are always hilarious are Tom Mc Shea and Kevin VanOrd. This podcast discusses all gaming platforms, not just PC gaming. There are weekly features that keep it interesting like "MSRB Rating Description Theater" and the weekly homework assignment. I always laugh out loud several times while listening to this podcast.

PC Gamer magazine puts out a weekly podcast as well. (Here's the link) This one is hit or miss depending on who the host is. These guys take turns hosting so it all depends on who's turn it is. Evan Lahti and Josh Augustine do the best job I believe. Logan Decker and Dan Stapleton are just plain annoying and I have a hard time listening to the entire podcast when they are the hosts. This podcast is PC gaming specific so they provide the most pertinent news and information to me. This is a well produced podcast and the commentators are well informed. They just aren't that funny. They don't have any special features like the Gamespot one does either. I rarely laugh out loud when listening to the podcast. That said, I almost always listen to the entire thing.

IGN puts out several podcasts including a PC gaming specific one entitled "Command Prompt". This is the poorest of the three that I'm mentioning. Whereas the audio in the above two podcasts are great, as it should be, these guys just can't seem to get it right. The panel of guests is spread out across the country and it sounds like a bad conference call when you listen to it. The podcast just does a poor job of maintaining my interest. I only listen to this podcast when I've listened to the other two, and it's not fantasy football season (I listen to ESPN's Fantasy Focus a lot during the NFL season). In fact, I haven't listened to Command Prompt for several weeks and who knows, it may have significantly improved between then and now.

Finally, I have to mention CNET's Buzz Out Loud. Though not a gaming podcast per se, it still gets included here because, well, it's so awesome. I'm a tech junky and this daily program discusses the days top tech news. They all really know their stuff and are interesting. They occasionally talk about the big gaming news, so I guess it does fit in here.

Give some of these podcasts a try to get into the gaming world more. I know that I'll never get to play all of the games that they talk about on these podcasts so it's a way for me to get to know the games vicariously through the hosts. It sure beats local radio and NPR, that's for sure.