So, I got together with a group of my gaming buddies on Friday night and we played a couple of different board games. Here are the highs (and lows) of our time together.
After dinner, we started out with a couple light rounds of Incan Gold, since that had been a big hit at lunch time already. One of the guys didn't get a chance to play the first time so I wanted to give everyone another shot at it. We played two complete games and everyone seemed to enjoy it. There was a bit more trash talking this time around, which was to be expected, but that just added to the fun. Nobody left the temple empty handed this time and there were a couple different winners so I'd say it was a big hit. As a light game, I haven't found much wrong with this one and highly recommended it for all sorts of gaming groups.
We switched to something a little more complicated for the next game and played Last Night on Earth: The Zombie Game. My friend Slash and I ended up on the heroes team, while Matt and Patrick took up the reigns of the zombies. The heroes got SMEARED all over the place, thanks to some nice card draws from the zombies and some horrible horrible rolling on our part. I was in an epic battle against one zombie as Billy the track star, armed with a baseball bat. I rolled my three attack dice and get 3 ones. The zombie easily beat that, so I rolled for breakage to see if I could get another swing with bat (since I already got the doubles I needed for a kill) and rolled another one! At that point the heroes pretty much resigned themselves to their fate. If I hadn't had to leave early, we would have switched sides and tried another game, so that we could play as the zombies. Hopefully we'll get together to play this one again soon. Everyone liked it and we were only playing the basic scenario, so there is a lot more to see.
The group decided to wrap up the night with a little co-op play, so I broke out Pandemic and set up a basic game of that. The blue and red diseases spread pretty rapidly, but we kept them in check for a pretty good chunk of the game while curing (and eradicating) the yellow disease. We were working our way through cleaning up red when the blue and black diseases went nuts and a couple outbreaks hit almost back to back. Before we could get enough people into Europe to contain the diseases, we ran out of blue cubes and that was the game. Not only was the world over run by ramapaging zombies, but it was infected with hideous diseases as well.
So, it wasn't a very good night if you are hung up on winning, but at least every one had a lot of fun. And since this gaming group is fairly new, that is probably more important than having big winners, right?
On a video gaming note, I'm happy to say that I'll be upgrading my gaming rig soon, thanks to a nice bonus from work, so I'll be heading back into that realm a bit more. I was also very excited to see that Blizzard's website has gone live with new info on the rumored Diablo 3 game, which I'm sure Gary and Coling will talk about in an upcoming Gamer's News. I'll leave further details on that to them.
I'll just say it looks pretty sweet already and I can't wait for it to release. Until next time, keep gaming!
Just thought it was time for a quick update. For the past 7 days, I have had the flu. YAY! Okay, it's been very lame and as a result, little has happened on this site and I'm sorry about that. Shorty after I got sick, Nañiel and Michelle both got sick as well, so since they both rent rooms from me it made for quite the happy household. I'm beginning to feel better but don't think I'm going to wake up tomorrow feeling 100% cured or anything. All shows will be on break until I am feeling better. I just can't seem to go 3 minutes without coughing, which is going to make recording anything difficult.
We have a verbal agreement with our first sponsor of the site and that's very exciting. We are working on a contract and it should be wrapped up soon. Sponsorship will allow us to do some very cool things, such as going to more trade shows. Origins happened this last weekend, but we could not justify being there until at least one sponsorship had been landed. We are looking hard at going to Gencon though. We'll see what happens.
Gary and I have been talking quite a bit about ways to revamp the show that he and I do together. If you have watched Obsessed Gamer News and have feedback for how we can improve it, please let
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. We might go as far as to change the entire format. We'll see what happens.
I'm off to the doctor today, so hopefully I'll get back to this site sooner rather than later.
Note from Colin: I was supposed to post this a few days ago, but I have been battling a terrible flu. Now Michelle and Naniel have it as well. Enjoy Josh's new article.
First of all, welcome back OWG readers! Also, welcome back to Colin, Gary, and Obsessed Gamer News. It's been too long.
And now, on with the show!
Occasionally, I find myself at an all-nighter with my church's youth group, because I've somehow convinced myself that working with teenagers was a good idea. Some of the things we do during these bouts of insanity is game, of course. Otherwise why would I even be talking about it on this site, right?
Anyway, for a long time, their video game of choice was usually Halo (or one of its sequels) and being a gamer myself, I'd mix it up with the kids. And most of the time get I'd my butt handed to me.
"How can this be?" you are probably asking yourselves. "Aren't you Obsessed with Gaming?" As I've already established my credentials, you know that I am. However, I don't play First Person Shooters (fps) on consoles, because I'm an elitist who grew up playing them on a PC. You use the mouse to look and shoot and scroll through your weapons and alt-fire and you use your keyboard to do everything else. End of story. Using mostly my thumbs just doesn't seem to be the most efficient way to play a FPS. Sure, some games help you out by letting you lock on to a target and strafe around them the easy way, but that always seemed pretty cheap.
Maybe I'm just old school, or the teenagers have a lot more free time and can practice much much much than I can, but I think I'd have half a chance if I could use a control scheme that made sense to me. Maybe I'll pick up a FPS or two for the Wii if any good ones ever come out (enough with the mini-game collections already!). At least that control scheme would have a more familiar feel.
Of course if they did something else besides camp with sniper rifles, things might be a little different too. Sigh. It sucks being a grown up sometimes.
Don't even get me started on Guitar Hero (another teen favorite). My lackluster skills were no challenge against kids that can play on expert like it's nothing. I do get more style points than they do, however, because I wasn't playing sitting in a chair with no rocking out at all. If you aren't going to play correctly and rock out, why even play?!
I'd probably be better of practicing more and complaining about it less, but where's the fun in that? At least I can still beat most of the little punks in the board games we play. That counts for something.
Board game night this Friday, so look for an article on that next week. Happy gaming!
