Hail to the King, Baby (and other stuff, too)
No, I’m talking about Duke Nukem.
Last week the best tactical WWII sim of all time got an update – Battlefront.com released Combat Mission: Battle for Normandy. I lost weeks playing prior entries in the series, most Barbarossa to Berlin, the East Front simulator. If you have any interest in serious WWII tactical wargames, definitely give CM a spin (there’s a free demo!). But warning! It may not be your cup of tea. If you’re not already familiar with Combat Mission, the first thing you’re going to say is “Jesus, man, this looks terrible, was this made in 2005?” So, yeah, the graphics are not the game’s strongest point. Gameplay is, though. If you ever wanted to order a platoon of infantry to take a farmhouse while Sherman tanks provide support (and hope to avoid anti-tank fire), and have it all done in a fairly realistic manner, then this is the game for you.
Well that ended sad
We’ve been absurdly busy for the last month or more due to the move, but this weekend we finally had time for another family game night. Most of my RPGs are still in complete disarray as we kit out our game-room-to-be (see below), so we decided to try Wizards’ Castle Ravenloft boardgame. It’s a cross between “D&D Lite” and a simple version of Fantasy Flight Games’ Descent. The overall premise – a castle filled with monsters and one evil vampire lord – was a hit with my kids. We made the age-old critical mistake by splitting our party, though, and as a result we were overwhelmed.
As you can see, the kitchen table barely contained everything, and Ravenloft is one of the smaller dungeon-crawl games. A full scale Descent game would dwarf all of that. So after drooling for years over the gaming tables from Geek Chic, I’ve gone ahead and ordered a Spartan gaming table. It’s 4×6, has storage below, and all kinds of sweet options. With the dropped playing surface you can keep one game going for days; simply put the table top on and you can play another game on top while keeping the other game safe from harm. So excited.
It’s a Crysis
After long delay, I’m finally nearing the end of my time with Crysis 2′s single player story, and at this point have no qualms giving the game a hearty recommendation. It does so many things right, and the wide open play spaces & variety of approaches keep the levels fresh and engaging.
That table.. is awesome.
I am way excited about it. But it’s custom and they won’t even start production for 2-4 months. So…I need to get less excited & forget about it for a while. Then maybe one day it will show up on my doorstep, and I can be excited again!
What is this? You have a life outside games? FINISH CRYSIS 2 ALREADY.