Archive for November 12th, 2012

In Phantom Leader, some day this war’s gonna end

, | Game reviews

Years ago, every boardgame was a solitaire game. I know that because I played a lot of them solitaire. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, there weren’t a lot of ways to play board wargames against someone else unless you wrote your moves on a piece of paper and put them in the mail, or went to a convention, or somehow knew someone in your area who wanted to sit around pushing cardboard counters back and forth for days at a time. When you add that to Soviet Communism, it was a pretty bleak world.

Commies defeated and gaming saved, after the jump Continue reading →

November 12: wallet threat level black

, | Features

I’m technically not supposed to say this until midnight tonight, but I really like the latest installment in a certain long-running series of games, hence this week’s wallet threat.

Rift gets an add-on called Storm Legion that consists of a new continent, player housing, a new type of rift, and new skill trees for each class. I dropped into the game last week and was surprised at how spoiled I am by the visuals in Guild Wars 2. I didn’t remember Rift looking so, well, rudimentary. But it sure did run smoothly! And the character system is as effective as ever if you like to mix-and-match skills to come up with your own play styles.

The Sims 3 gets seasons. I was tempted to take a cheap shot and say that EA is selling each season separately, but I liked what they did with the Supernatural add-on. And I really appreciate when seasons figure prominently into games. Assassin’s Creed III and Bully, for instance.

Also new this week is Paper Mario for the Nintendo 3DS, which might be the most ironic game ever made.