Progress

I always like to feel like I'm making progress in life.  It's not just my career or family life, this extends into my hobbies as well.  I always have multiple things that I'm working my way through.

Generally, I have a game I'm playing, a TV show that I'm watching, a book that I'm reading, and a skill that I'm learning.  At any given time in the past 10 or so years I guarantee that I could name all four of those thing for you at the drop of a hat.  Every night I make some progress on one of those things.

Even when I have a "lazy day" I know that one of those will move along a little bit.  Does anyone else find themselves in the same mindset?  I find that I literally can't sit in front of a TV and just watch random stuff all day.  I feel like I'm not making progress on anything that counts and it drives me crazy.

Right now I'm finishing up watching Game of Thrones Season 1 again.  I'm in the middle of reading A Clash of Kings (Song of Ice and Fire Book 2).  I'm playing through both Final Fantasy III and Dishonored, depending on my mood.  And I'm learning Javascript with the help of a book and a fantastic website called Code Academy.

What type of things do you make progress on when you have free time?

Pointing and Clicking and Walking and Dying

I've never been much of an adventure game fan.  All that pointing and clicking didn't hold much appeal for me.  The stories were too slow and the puzzles too obtuse to enjoy.  Every time I played an adventure game I felt like I would rather be reading the story in a book or playing a more active version of the game.

This all changed when my brother convinced me to play The Walking Dead.  I have never played an adventure game like it.  For the first time ever I was drawn in and captivated by all the pointing and clicking.

But there is so much more to The Walking Dead than just that.  There are truly meaningful decisions and the most difficult moral choices that I've ever made in a game.  In an undead apocalypse who can you really trust and what are you willing to do to survive?  I made a lot of decisions that seemed like the best idea at the time but ended up with unforeseen consequences.

I want to give so many amazing examples from my playthrough, but this is a truly a game I don't want to spoil for anyone.  My simple recommendation is to play this game.  It's definitely not for the faint of heart but it's worth it to see the power a game can have when the decisions are difficult and everything is morally grey.

End of Summer, Start of Fall: Impressions

Life has been busy lately, but I've been playing games when I get a chance and I finally have time tonight to write up some quick impressions.  These are all games that I'm currently playing.

FTL
FTL: Faster Than Light is a game that I helped kickstart a while ago and it's great to see it doing so well on Steam!  It's a brutally challenging space survival game that I've been recommending to everyone.  My first round of impressions still stand.  For $10 on Steam you really can't go wrong.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
This is a fantastic refinement of the Counter-Strike series.  CS has been one of the quintessential competitive first person shooters since it was first released and I can see this latest iteration becoming huge in the esports community.  I convinced a bunch of co-workers to try it at work and we've been having tons of fun killing each other during lunch.  I also spent some time setting up a custom CS:GO linux server as a side project.  I don't sit down and play this for long stretches at a time, but I have been playing a match or two most days.  I was extremely impressed that Valve released CS:GO for $15 on day one for all systems.

Guild Wars 2
I've been having a lot of fun in this MMO.  I haven't played a MMO since about a month after Cataclysm released, so it's nice to get back into this type of world.  I'm picking away at it a little bit at a time.  I love all the little improvements and refinements, especially the downleveling that let's me play with my brother whenever we can both find the time.

The Walking Dead
I didn't think I was a fan of adventure games until my brother convinced me to play this one.  I've never been so engrossed in an adventure game before.  The classic zombie survival scenario is seriously given a human face here.  I'm invested in what happens to the characters around me and I'm genuinely saddened when they die or get hurt.  Having not played many adventure games I really don't know how to analyze this one but I'm really excited to dive back into the new episodes soon.

100000000
An amazing puzzle game with a hard name to search for (there are 8 zeros if you're wondering).  I obsessed over this game for 2 weeks straight and never got to write about it.  It's a twist on the classic match-3 style of puzzle game where the tiles slide around and you can make combos for bonus points.  The RPG style progression system build on top of the puzzle game is really what makes this one shine.  Every puzzle game fan should check it out.

Team Fortress 2
I'm still playing this regularly which I can't say about any other games that came out in 2007.  My wife and I have been having a lot of fun in the new Man vs Machine co-op mode.  It's a great addition to the TF2 roster.

Hero Academy
Another game that I've been playing for quite a while but that I'm still enjoying.  I play a couple turns in each of my games every day.  Check out my past impressions or just try this one out for free on the iOS app store.  It also recently released on Steam.

Final Fantasy III
I'm not having a lot of fun with this game so progression is really slow.  I want to finish it for my Final Fantasy Project but I'm only playing a little bit at a time.


What's everyone else been playing for the past couple months?  Are there any games you've been having a lot of fun with that I should look into?

Now That It's Live

Guild Wars 2 has been out for about a week and I've been spending most of my gaming time with it.  I still really enjoy it and my feelings toward the game haven't changed much from my beta impressions.

I have come to realize that the driving force behind my purchase of the game is that there is no monthly subscription.  It's amazing to me that the business model plays such a huge factor, but the truth of the matter is that I wouldn't be playing this game if I had to pay for it monthly.  It has all sorts of incremental improvements on the genre but nothing is revolutionary to the point where I would dish out $15 a month to play.

My in game time is mainly taken up with exploring and completing zones.  I'm an explorer at heart which makes completing vistas and collecting points of interest appealing to me.

I'm also loving the ability to play with friends easily.  I love the down scaling of player level for content because it lets me and my brother play together without worrying about our levels, something that has always been an issue for us in MMOs.  It also keeps low level content fresh while exploring.

If you're sick of hotbar MMOs you're not going to be happy with GW2.  If, however, you're looking for the next stage of hotbar MMO with improvements and no subscription fee this is the game for you.

Final Fantasy III: Virtual Analog Stick Woes

I've previously discussed my thought on the virtual d-pad implemented in FFI and FFII on iOS.  It generally works fine, it just doesn't have the tactile feedback I'm used to with a controller.  Final Fantasy III uses a virtual analog stick instead of a virtual d-pad and it's a totally different story.

The virtual analog stick is extremely frustrating to use.  The lack of tactical sensation makes it difficult to judge how far you actually have the analog stick pressed in one direction or another and which direction it's been pushed.  Not only is it hard to judge but the stick location actually moves around the screen depending on where your thumb is touching.  It's impossible to learn the area the virtual analog stick occupies because it is constantly moving every time you pick up your thumb and put it somewhere new.  If it wasn't constantly moving around I could at least learn to use it by spending enough time with it.

Final Fantasy III is a fully 3D game with 3D environments which means the player isn't confined to simple 4 direction movement like in FFI and FFII.  This makes having a reliable and functional input device a key aspect of the game design.  Unfortunately, it's sorely missing.

So far the graphics, story, and gameplay are all good but every time I sit down to play I immediately get frustrated with the controls.  I'll struggle my way through it for now and I'll write more once I'm farther into the game.

Now I'll Play It

Most of you heard last week that Star Wars The Old Republic is going free to play.  This really isn't a surprise since their subscriber numbers have slowly been dwindling.  At this point it's hard for any quest based MMO to have a subscription model since they're immediately competing with World of Warcraft and it's 8 years of expansions and polish.  Even if that game has a huge intellectual property, like Star Wars, behind it.

When SWTOR was released I said that the only way I would play it is if they dropped the subscription.  Now that there will be no subscription I will most definitely be playing.  I don't know how much I'll like it, but I'll give the game a try.  I really enjoy Bioware RPGs and would have loved for SWTOR to have just been a new single player RPG when it released.  I never thought that it needed to actually enter the MMO space.  If they had made KOTOR 3 I would have bought it on release day.

Anyway, you can find all sorts of commentary about what SWTOR going F2P means, so I won't spend time diving into an analysis.  I'll just say that I'm happy they've finally caught up to modern online financial models.

Boxed Up Fun Contests!

I'm really excited to announce that Boxed Up Fun is launching monthly board game giveaways!  This is just one of the features we've been working on and we're constantly striving to improve the site.

We want people to enjoy interacting with the site and this contest is all about leaving reviews and getting the word out about Boxed Up Fun!  You can see the official contest rules right here, but basically you get entries for writing a short (twitter length) review on a game, spreading the word about us on twitter, or posting on our facebook page.

This month we're giving away Eminent Domain.  It's a fun and fast sci-fi deck building game.  It has some interesting role selection mechanics on top of the deck building which all combines into a unique game.  I really like it because it's not too difficult to grasp, but it still has enough strategy to be enjoyable and it can be played fairly quickly.  Most of our play sessions have lasted 30-45 minutes.

Come visit, let us know what you think about the site, and interact to win a free board game while you're at it!