In Conquest of Elysium 3, the new turn-based strategy fantasy game from indie developer Illwinter due out next week, each of the 16 factions is unique. This means unique troops, unique leaders, unique abilities, and so forth. It also sometimes means unique resources no one else can use.
For instance, Hands of Glory. These are the severed left hands of executed murderers. Necromancers gather them from any settlement large enough to have murders. Cities are great for this. Peaceful hamlets not so much. The real motherlode is the occasional gallows, a location on the map apparently dedicated to hanging murderers. Necormancers start with a gallows next to their dark citadel. Track down a few more gallows, conquer a few cities, and soon you’ll be rolling in Hands of Glory.
After the jump, the horror, the horror Continue reading →
Every game genre develops its own language and terminology over time. These words make no sense to anyone outside of fans of that genre; your mom isn’t going to know what turtling is, unless she’s one of those cool moms that plays RTS games. Of all the genres I’ve played before though, MMOs seem to have the most exclusive and complicated words and phrases.
Some people have an ear for foreign languages and can pick them up with relative ease. I had a friend in college who spent a summer in Italy – when he came back, he was speaking Italian to my grandmother, an immigrant from there, better than I had ever been able to despite having taken five years of Italian classes. Not surprisingly, I had absolutely no idea what the hell everyone was telling me to do when I started SWTOR.
After the jump, confusion abounds Continue reading →
The problem with History is that you can’t just go back and see what would have happened if someone had made some different decisions. The problem with wargames is that you can.
After the jump, what a difference a heavy bomber makes Continue reading →
Monday is the best day of the week. No, seriously…
J.P. Lucas works, pays bills, eats, and sleeps. He changes diapers. Lots of diapers. And he does whatever his wife tells him to do. It’s safer that way.
It’s Saturday night, but officially Sunday because it’s past midnight. Defcon 2. This is why you can’t stay up all hours of the night gaming. Abigail, the 17-month-old, has a fever. We’re out of children’s Tylenol. I’m going to the 24 hour pharmacy for medicine. While I’m there I get a call from the wife. Magdalene, the pukinator, is screaming about her ear. We place an emergency phone call to the pediatrician while I’m standing in the pharmacy. An hour later I’m home, the medicines have been applied, and everyone goes to sleep.
After the jump, we go to defcon 1 Continue reading →
The weekend is time to play The Sims. Only in real life. I’m cleaning the house, doing the laundry, helping with the shopping, rake some leaves, mow a lawn, play with the kids, make dinner, watch a movie, maybe fornicate with the wife (even that is rare to do with kids), make breakfast, clean some more, drop my son back home, pick up my mother-in-law to watch the kids for Monday. Weekends are fun for the family, but suck for gaming. The only thing holding me together, besides a bottle of wine, is that by Sunday, I can see Monday.
With all that free time you’d think you would have a chance to really spend a few hours gaming. But you don’t. One kid goes to dance class, the other to karate lessons. The little one needs to be fed and diaper changed, etc., etc., etc. Even when there’s down time you really can’t start anything, because you never know when a kid will need assistance, or they get into a fight, or want to have a tea party. You’re basically a glorified butler. After they’ve all gone to bed, I’d love to play League of Legends, but I’m exhausted. Kids are like energy vampires. I love ’em, but my day job is easier than this.
Up next: Defcon 1
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J.P. Lucas works, pays bills, eats, and sleeps. He changes diapers. Lots of diapers. And he does whatever his wife tells him to do. It’s safer that way.
Now that reporter Darrell Simmons and famed archaeologist/adventurer Monterey Jack have gone stark raving mad — a proud tradition for any Lovecraft hero — I’m left with two investigators running around trying to gather elder signs. One of them, private detective Joe Diamond, is clearly the hero of the rest of the game. The Graveyard, Something Has Broken Free, You Become That Which You Fear Most, Stay Away From The Windows, The Pleateau of Leng. Joe Diamond defeats them all, amassing relics, spells, weapons, powerful clues, and even elder signs!
Meanwhile Ashcan Pete, his pockets empty and his sanity waning, spends a lot of time failing adventures and then hanging out at the entrance to heal up.
In the end, one man is no match for Cthulhu, even if that man is Diamond Joe Diamond. One fateful midnight, we draw our final doom token and the world is devoured. My final score is 2,980, which is actually one of my better scores.
Shortly after my defeat, I play another game with the same team. No dice are ever locked. No one goes insane. We handily gather the required elder signs for a win, while the bad guys only ever get a handful of doom tokens. The stars align and I save the world. My final score is 4,540. That’s the thing about dice-based games. Sometimes you roll a one. Sometimes you roll a six.
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Friday. Time to gulp down your beverage and stare into that empty glass with a long look on your face. Weekends suck. That’s when my game time sinks to an all-time low. Fridays are like Mondays. Limited game time. The difference is that while Mondays are usually ramping up, Fridays are ramping down. The train ride is spent playing Out of the Park Baseball. Win, lose, doesn’t matter. I’m not gonna see it again until Monday morning.
After the jump, you may wanna jump Continue reading →
This happens about once a week, when just about every free minute of the day is spent in gaming bliss. It’s not easy to find and you never know what day it will happen. This week, it happens on Thursday.
After the jump, sweet sweetness so sweet you’ll sweat sweet sugar Continue reading →
Ancient relics? Monterey Jack knows ancient relics, even if they’re guarded by a high priest. He’s got his cigarettes and his two magic books. Lighting up and reading a page from The Nameless Cults, he rolls the dice.
After the jump, Yahtzee! Continue reading →
Hi. Psst, over here. I’ve got my telescope set up right out the backdoor. No, that’s not a sexual pun. I wanted to show you how the stars are aligning themselves into position. The wind is blowing from the east, ahhhh…the signs portend to gaming nirvana.
After the jump, the stars are right Continue reading →
Elder Sign: Omens is basically a race. Can you use your resources to accumulate 12 elder signs before 14 doom tokens stack up? Your resources include your investigators, who get battered in the process and have to burn turns healing themselves. In my case, the most precious commodity is sanity, since no one on my team of burly investigators is known for his mental stability. I frequently send them back to the museum entrance to recover sanity. Meanwhile, the doom tokens build up.
After the jump, things get a little crazy Continue reading →
Okay, so Monday’s nothing but a memory they implanted in your head which leads us to Tuesday, the day we really get our game on. The morning walk is spent pissing and moaning to my buddy about last night’s League of Legends debacle. I bitch that I wish he would learn more than the one champ he’s pro with. He mentions something about dealing with a wife and kids are a priority and time constraints and blah, blah, bleh, blah, boo-hoo. Learn another champion, noob.
After the jump, the price of late-night League of Legends Continue reading →
In another Lovecraft themed iPhone game (that isn’t very good) called Necronomicon, I’ve had the most luck pairing a lunatic with a shotgun and just letting the cards roll out. It’s a bit like trench warfare, with cultists, monsters, shoggoths, Old Ones, and so forth dying in suicidal charges against my lunatic and his shotgun. Cthulhu’s Verdun.
But in this game, Ashcan Pete has amply demonstrated that a hobo and a shotgun are only as good as the handfuls of dice they roll. Since his disastrous showing, things haven’t gotten much better.
After the jump, can we snatch victory from the flabby maw of defeat? Continue reading →
I’m here to piss on your day. Not intentionally, mind you, but a dose of reality is in order here. You see, I was once like you, single. Or maybe you got a girlfriend who lives on the other side of town and you just whispered “I love you, miss you, wish you were here.” And you dream about the day you’ll have a girl of your choosing, married, ring on the finger and a couple little rugrats running around. Stop dreaming. Feel that? It’s raining and there’s not a cloud in the sky. Let me tell you what you won’t be doing when your dreams come true; joining in on a ten man raid, going up against another Riot inspired OP champ, saving Arkham City, exploring the Sword Coast, blasting every Zed in sight, doing something badass in Skyrim…you get the idea. Enjoy yourself now, because lemme tell you, when you’re finally old enough to get married and have a bunch of kids or two, it’s all over. It’s all over! I can not stress that enough.
So, I’m gonna take you through a week in the life of a gamer with a wife and children. For the first entry we’ll start with, hmmm…how ’bout Monday?
After the jump, reality beckons Continue reading →
