What I Played Today: September 18

Minecraft, Space Hulk: Death Angel

Apparently there’s this hot new indie game out there, getting the attention of Penny Arcade and a lot of other sites, and the amount of attention it is getting is enough to cause the website hosting it to go down and the owner to say, “Yeah, okay, fine, you can all play for free this weekend only, but stop wrecking my shit.” So, download and try I did!

The game is Minecraft, which creates a huge world around you full of trees and mountains and pigs, and basically says, okay, go at it. You can pretty much destroy everything, and so you start doing so quickly...tearing apart trees to get wood, digging huge holes into mountains to create a little home for yourself, getting ores and various other sundries to prepare yourself against the creatures of darkness that come out at night.

It’s a interesting sandbox game, there is so much space to explore, and I have spent hours already, digging a huge dungeon that I live in, just going deeper and deeper to see what is down there. (Answer: more rocks) I am still unnecessarily terrified of the night creatures, but mainly because their voices carry through the very walls...you can hear them even when you’re safely 300 feet underground digging hallways. It’s distracting. I did find this weird cave system which leads to a magma waterfall, so that’s neat. I’ll probably try to play it as best I can while it’s still free, but I already find myself saying, “Okay, now what do I do?”

I also picked up Space Hulk: Death Angel, the coop card game by Fantasy Flight that I was really excited about. I played three times today, and I must say I really like it. The choices you have to make each turn are simple, but deep, the mechanics make a lot of sense, and the overwhelming dread builds slowly as your space marines get picked off one by one. I haven’t won yet, mainly because once you lose a space marine, it’s a downhill slope from there, but I keep wanting to try, see what I can do better, see how the different teams synergize, and already want more cards. Which I’m afraid I never get, because it’s a Silverline game, but it also has apparently sold out already, going for over $100 on Amazon for some reason, so maybe it’ll be pretty popular. But I want to play with friends now, because there’s an added “Hey, better you than me,” mechanic to some of the events.

2 comments:

  1. I love that even though you now actually own the game and can theoretically glance over at the box which is mere inches from your face, you still keep getting the name wrong. ;)

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  2. I did think to myself, "Man, Space Angel sure is one hippy-dippy name for a game about the Warhammer universe." Fixing it now.

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