Puzzle Strike, Familgia, Castlevania: Harmony of Despair, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood
A little of column A and column B today, with some two-player tabletopping. I won a couple of games of Puzzle Strike, mainly by aggressively pursuing combines and strikes. There are some chips that do some awesome stuff, like Mix-Master, which breaks up your opponent’s gems and gives you a combine, and Iron Defense, which guarantees you have a strike when you need it. Again the phantom of not being able to counter being hit arose, which I’m not sure I like. There’s just not enough time in the game.
Gave Familgia another spin, and the game holds water in its simplicity, if its aesthetic is pretty terrible. My opponent was going out of his way to grief me, picking up the exact guys I wanted by nefarious means, so I was blocked a lot, but I used the pitchhitters and a couple of well-placed punches to snag the level 4 boss of two of the gangs, which helped me win in the end.
Then I played some video games. I hadn’t played Castlevania: Harmony of Despair since I’d purchased a larger TV, so I turned it on to see if it was actually fun now that it was visible. It was…okay. I easily made it to the boss of the first level with only a few jumping troubles, only to have him completely swamp me. I just don’t understand why that jerk has so many hit points, considering everything else I fight goes down in a couple of hits. It just feels unbalanced, and there’s a lot to the game that’s undecipherable.
Then I lost a lot of time in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. Not that I want it back, but it just sucked me right in. I tried out a couple of missions of the new DLC, and it’s good, if a bit wonky in some of the story elements. For example, Mona Lisa finally makes her appearance, and it’s just as obnoxious as you’d imagine. Then I have to storm this villa, which is staffed by the laziest, deafest guards in the worlds. There are at least half a dozen times when Ezio should have been spotted but wasn’t. At one point you walk into a room only to watch a guard leaving the room and apparently not bothering to check again. There is a guard lounging on a fountain that you vault off of! And this after the guards were specifically told to double security by some crazy lady. What’s worse? Once you get inside, you chat up the enemy and convince her to give you a painting in exchange for sex (actual plot point) and she calls the guards into the room and tells them to leave the painting outside uncovered by the side of the road. They do not even blink and acknowledge that Ezio is standing right there. Then, two minutes later, you decide that you don’t really want to put your thing in that diseased mess and tie the lady up and bail, which gets all the guards’ attention, including the exact same guards who were told to move the painting. Fission mailed, right? No, because apparently the painting is already outside waiting for you. It took them literally seconds to move the painting, and it never occurs to Lady Death to not back out of her end of the bargain. So hey, free painting.
I also went through an entire set of missions for a sequence somehow, in which La Volpe spends the entire time being a bit of a dick. You want to save some actor from being killed so you can soak him for a key to the palace, but the Fox is far too concerned that Machiavelli may be a traitor, and refuses to help you because you’re willing to trust him. A whole bunch happens, mostly involving riding horses past guys holding boxes, and you eventually crash a passion play to stop an assassination attempt. Then, as luck would happen, you see the real traitor standing on the side of the road, just chilling, and you hunt him down and kill him. With the knowledge of the real traitor in your hand, you have 80 seconds to stop La Volpe from killing Machiavelli, something that he had mentioned he was going to do. I just didn’t think that he would be doing that RIGHT NOW, a good couple of hours after saying he would. This came out of pretty much nowhere. But everything is good, Ezio becomes the official leader of the Assassins, and now it’s time to do that thing we completely failed to do earlier in the game.
Showing posts with label Puzzle Strike. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Puzzle Strike. Show all posts
What I Played Today: March 28
Puzzle Strike, Nightfall, The Resistance
Game night that was dominated by Dominion clones, first Puzzle Strike, which went well enough. I got knocked out first and then walked away from the table, so I could not tell you who won, but I do notice that the ticking clock of the game ending makes the game a lot harder to build an effective deck. You are constantly adding things to your bag and given no real or useful options to get rid of them, and spending time with Self Improvement or other similar chips just waste your time. It make fighting important, but it’s also not nearly aggressive enough, because you do not get enough chances to actually attack.
A game that does offer a lot of opportunity for attacking is Nightfall, which I played with a full table for the first time. The players who have been in this situation before have pointed out that in this environment, you don’t want to dogpile on a single player, because while that person will definitely lose, there’s a higher chance that someone else will win. They also talked up cards that dealt damage to all opponents, so of course the player to my left got one of these in his private stash, putting the impetus on me to make sure he didn’t get a chance to chain it. I think this was a little unfair, so I let it happen as much as possible and tried to field as many minions as I could, to make me less of a target for attacks. The strategy worked, as I avoided a lot of aggro and only soaked the occasional stray hit and won with 7 wounds.
Then a couple of games of The Resistance, which is a game lot like Werewolf, except everyone is involved the entire time. Each turn, the leader (who constantly rotates) nominates a set number of people to go on a mission, and everyone votes on the choice. If a majority agree, those people go on the mission, and they determine if the mission succeeds or fails. The spies want it to fail, but they can only force a failure if they are on a mission. So it’s a game where you’re trying to figure out everyone’s motives, who’s lying, who’s not, and trying to make three missions succeed or fail.
Both games went about the same way, back and forth failures and successes, followed by the spies lying their way into the last mission and winning the game. I think the game isn’t very well suited for five players, because if you aren’t sure who the spies are for the last mission, it’s going to fail, and during the missions with only two players going, there’s no incentive for the spies to force it to fail, leading to a sense of false complacency. I got confused by this in the first game, assuming the player who was on the team both times a mission failed was the spy without even considering the guy who was sent on every mission. The second game went about the same way, with the law of probability confusing us and making us assume the same people couldn’t possibly both be the spies again. I definitely want to play this with more people, if only so the game feels less cloistered, and because I like playing games where I get to lie.
Game night that was dominated by Dominion clones, first Puzzle Strike, which went well enough. I got knocked out first and then walked away from the table, so I could not tell you who won, but I do notice that the ticking clock of the game ending makes the game a lot harder to build an effective deck. You are constantly adding things to your bag and given no real or useful options to get rid of them, and spending time with Self Improvement or other similar chips just waste your time. It make fighting important, but it’s also not nearly aggressive enough, because you do not get enough chances to actually attack.
A game that does offer a lot of opportunity for attacking is Nightfall, which I played with a full table for the first time. The players who have been in this situation before have pointed out that in this environment, you don’t want to dogpile on a single player, because while that person will definitely lose, there’s a higher chance that someone else will win. They also talked up cards that dealt damage to all opponents, so of course the player to my left got one of these in his private stash, putting the impetus on me to make sure he didn’t get a chance to chain it. I think this was a little unfair, so I let it happen as much as possible and tried to field as many minions as I could, to make me less of a target for attacks. The strategy worked, as I avoided a lot of aggro and only soaked the occasional stray hit and won with 7 wounds.
Then a couple of games of The Resistance, which is a game lot like Werewolf, except everyone is involved the entire time. Each turn, the leader (who constantly rotates) nominates a set number of people to go on a mission, and everyone votes on the choice. If a majority agree, those people go on the mission, and they determine if the mission succeeds or fails. The spies want it to fail, but they can only force a failure if they are on a mission. So it’s a game where you’re trying to figure out everyone’s motives, who’s lying, who’s not, and trying to make three missions succeed or fail.
Both games went about the same way, back and forth failures and successes, followed by the spies lying their way into the last mission and winning the game. I think the game isn’t very well suited for five players, because if you aren’t sure who the spies are for the last mission, it’s going to fail, and during the missions with only two players going, there’s no incentive for the spies to force it to fail, leading to a sense of false complacency. I got confused by this in the first game, assuming the player who was on the team both times a mission failed was the spy without even considering the guy who was sent on every mission. The second game went about the same way, with the law of probability confusing us and making us assume the same people couldn’t possibly both be the spies again. I definitely want to play this with more people, if only so the game feels less cloistered, and because I like playing games where I get to lie.
What I Played Today: February 4
Puzzle Strike, London, Crackdown 2
A new game on the table today, London, a name which you think would already be taken. In this game, you are playing cards into your tableau while trying to score the most victory points, and balance the fact that every time you use your cards, you also take some poverty tokens, which can become negative points if you hang onto it too long. It’s the pressure of trying to utilize the best cards while preventing yourself from having too much going on so you’re not buried by negative points. I lost because I was trying to keep a low poverty count and so didn’t overstretch my tableau, but didn’t actually do enough to get points on the table. An interesting part is that it’s hard to track who is winning, because you can buried cards that are worth points to you under others. Each card is also only usable once, which is definitely interesting. Lots of give and take, this game.
I lost another round of Puzzle Strike. Not really sure what I did wrong, just got rolled by Big Rocks.
And then I played a lot of Crackdown 2, jumping about and kicking ass. I got through a few beacons, getting to the next island. One really interesting bit was how much processor power they put into something I’m going to avoid like the plague; I roll into the quarry and see maybe 200-250 freaks just standing around and my first thought is “Holy shit.” That’s a good reaction. There was also a really goofy bit where I turn on one of the light shooty things and it gets blocked by a big panel. The man with the voice FREAKS OUT and says to take care of it, I find the panel and shoot it up and then he says, “This was not put here by accident! Cell did this!” Well, of course Cell is behind it. They don’t want us to do what I’m doing. They are going to try to stop me. Come on!
A new game on the table today, London, a name which you think would already be taken. In this game, you are playing cards into your tableau while trying to score the most victory points, and balance the fact that every time you use your cards, you also take some poverty tokens, which can become negative points if you hang onto it too long. It’s the pressure of trying to utilize the best cards while preventing yourself from having too much going on so you’re not buried by negative points. I lost because I was trying to keep a low poverty count and so didn’t overstretch my tableau, but didn’t actually do enough to get points on the table. An interesting part is that it’s hard to track who is winning, because you can buried cards that are worth points to you under others. Each card is also only usable once, which is definitely interesting. Lots of give and take, this game.
I lost another round of Puzzle Strike. Not really sure what I did wrong, just got rolled by Big Rocks.
And then I played a lot of Crackdown 2, jumping about and kicking ass. I got through a few beacons, getting to the next island. One really interesting bit was how much processor power they put into something I’m going to avoid like the plague; I roll into the quarry and see maybe 200-250 freaks just standing around and my first thought is “Holy shit.” That’s a good reaction. There was also a really goofy bit where I turn on one of the light shooty things and it gets blocked by a big panel. The man with the voice FREAKS OUT and says to take care of it, I find the panel and shoot it up and then he says, “This was not put here by accident! Cell did this!” Well, of course Cell is behind it. They don’t want us to do what I’m doing. They are going to try to stop me. Come on!
What I Played Today: January 21
Puzzle Strike, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood
I played the Dominion knockoff Puzzle Strike today. It’s an interesting beast, with its active timer that you constantly have to worry about. Each round, a chip is added to your pile, and if you ever have a total of 10 in that pile, you lose. So you have to use a certain kind of chip to get them out of there, which will in turn send those gems to your opponent, so it’s a lot of back and forth, trying to get some good combos while worrying about the constantly ticking clock. We played two games, one in which my opponent wasn’t paying attention to his gem pile, and one where he was well-aware of it, and completely ruined me. It kinda sucks that you know you’re totally going to lose a good two minutes before you do, because if your pile hits 10 and you don’t have the right chips in hand, you are done.
Also played what felt like way too much Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood multiplayer. The new update came out, with a new map, which is A-alright, and a new mode of play, which is crap. It plays a lot like Manhunt, in which one team tries to hunt down and kill another team, only instead of the hunted just being required to not get killed, they instead have to run around “opening chests,” meaning standing in very specific locations for short periods of time…meaning a lot of movement. If there is one thing you don’t want to be doing while being tracked by three to four enemies, it’s moving around a lot. It’s just absolutely no fun for the treasure hunters, because the protectors can still track you with the compass, and it’ll be obvious which one you are because you’ll probably be running. Sure, the compass shuts down if they are near a chest, but at that point, there is no incentive not to just stab the hell out of every version of the treasure hunter’s avatar that ambles into view.
This mode could have worked a lot better if no one had a compass and instead knew where the chests were and when they were currently being opened. That way they would have to depend on specific tells to figure out who to kill and who to hide from. I guess in that mode the hunters would instead just go hang around the treasure chests and just start stabbing at will. Maybe the only info the protectors get is “A chest is being opened!” without specifying which ones? I don’t know, all I know is that this was not fun, so I played two hours of wanted instead.
I played the Dominion knockoff Puzzle Strike today. It’s an interesting beast, with its active timer that you constantly have to worry about. Each round, a chip is added to your pile, and if you ever have a total of 10 in that pile, you lose. So you have to use a certain kind of chip to get them out of there, which will in turn send those gems to your opponent, so it’s a lot of back and forth, trying to get some good combos while worrying about the constantly ticking clock. We played two games, one in which my opponent wasn’t paying attention to his gem pile, and one where he was well-aware of it, and completely ruined me. It kinda sucks that you know you’re totally going to lose a good two minutes before you do, because if your pile hits 10 and you don’t have the right chips in hand, you are done.
Also played what felt like way too much Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood multiplayer. The new update came out, with a new map, which is A-alright, and a new mode of play, which is crap. It plays a lot like Manhunt, in which one team tries to hunt down and kill another team, only instead of the hunted just being required to not get killed, they instead have to run around “opening chests,” meaning standing in very specific locations for short periods of time…meaning a lot of movement. If there is one thing you don’t want to be doing while being tracked by three to four enemies, it’s moving around a lot. It’s just absolutely no fun for the treasure hunters, because the protectors can still track you with the compass, and it’ll be obvious which one you are because you’ll probably be running. Sure, the compass shuts down if they are near a chest, but at that point, there is no incentive not to just stab the hell out of every version of the treasure hunter’s avatar that ambles into view.
This mode could have worked a lot better if no one had a compass and instead knew where the chests were and when they were currently being opened. That way they would have to depend on specific tells to figure out who to kill and who to hide from. I guess in that mode the hunters would instead just go hang around the treasure chests and just start stabbing at will. Maybe the only info the protectors get is “A chest is being opened!” without specifying which ones? I don’t know, all I know is that this was not fun, so I played two hours of wanted instead.
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