A Green Mushroom

Overcooked is a multiplayer co-op game, one of my favorite genre's ever.  I picked it up on sale and then didn't get around to playing it until over the holiday break. In one night my entire family was hooked. Overcooked sees you take on the role of a chef trying to prepare meals under increasingly difficult circumstances.  The levels get crazy, but in a good way.  Like, having to run across ice flows between different halves of the kitchen.  Or cooking on a ship where the rocking of the waves moves your counters back and forth.  Or having a pedestrian crossing in the middle of your kitchen. Even though the levels get tricky the best part of the game is that it has simple controls so anyone can jump in and be playing decently within a few minutes.  Where we're playing on PS4 one analog stick moves your character, the X button picks up and drops off items, and the Square button interacts with a work station (like for cutting).  That's it. ...

Warbands: Bushido is a really cool tactical miniatures game.  I picked it up in the winter Steam sale for cheap and had some fun playing around with it for a day or two.  It's still in beta right now which is why I decided to set it down for the moment, but it's one that I'm going to keep installed and then dive it deep once it hits a full release. It's already obvious that the full release will have some type of single player campaign beyond the tutorial and looks like it will have new single player scenarios rolling out all the time. The multiplayer is the only thing that's basically fully fleshed out right now, but it's fun too.  I would dive into this right now if I weren't worried about progress being reset when the game goes into full release.  You can collect minis to use in building your warband.  The more you level up the more points you have to spend on which figures can be in your warband at a given time. Honestly, it feels a lot like so...

I've been playing a bunch of World of Warships lately and having a really good time with it.  I didn't think it would be a game for me but my brother convinced me to try it and I'm glad he did. Instead of being a game about fast twitch reflexes, World of Warships is about positioning, strategy, and skill.  It does take effort and skill to aim and fire but it's nothing like a FPS in terms of twitchiness. I loved shooting up the first few ranks and unlocking ships along the way.  Each ship feels distinct in a number of ways and I find myself jumping between different types of ships a lot just to change up the feel of the game. This is one of the better free to play games I've played in years.  I can feel my progression slowing down a bit now that I'm around tier IV and V for ships, but I've still felt no pressure to pay.  And even though my progress has slowed down I'm still playing fairly consistently. Mostly I just wanted to get this game on ...

Metroid Prime Federation Force is a game I really wanted to like.  It's another one that I tried out via Gamefly because I was unsure about it... and I'm glad I did. It's not that this is a bad game.  It actually looks like a really solid game, but only under the correct circumstances. This game seems like it would be great if I were playing on a New 3DS and had four friends in the room with me.  Or even having four friends I could coordinate with online.  But, I'm here by myself with a 3DS XL. It seems like this game was built from the ground up with four player co-op in mind and playing single player just feels lacking.  The fact that I'm not playing on a "new" 3DS means I don't have that analog nub that functions as a second analog stick.  So, instead of traditional dual analog stick FPS controls it's a huge step back. Again, this game isn't bad, it's just not for me.  If you do happen to have four friends to sit down with an...

After my brother and I played Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes at PAX last year we knew we would absolutely need to play it when it released on PC.  I picked it up right when it launched because it was fairly inexpensive and it sat unplayed on my computer until last week. We finally got around to playing and it was super fun.  I was the bomb deffusal player and he had the bomb manual.  As we got into more and more complicated ones to defuse he ended up spreading out every page of his printed out manual on a table so he wouldn't have to flip pages. We also started using shorthand verbal cues to identify different modules and patterns.  It's a game all about communication and it worked super well over headset. If you aren't familiar with it, the player in the room with the bomb isn't allowed to look at the manual and the manual player isn't allowed to see the screen with the bomb.  It's asymmetric and it's kind of amazing. You should take a look at...

Triforce Heroes is the newest Legend of Zelda game on 3DS.  It came out two weeks ago but I still haven't see much coverage of it.  Maybe it's because Triforce heroes isn't structured like a typical Legend of Zelda game, it's basically a follow-up to The Legend of Zelda Four Swords. If you don't know what that means... it's essentially multiplayer Zelda. The main conceit in making Zelda multiplayer is that the open world exploration is completely gone.  Instead, the game is structured into zones which contain levels which contain stages. You connect online and choose the zone you want to play in.  This will match you with other people who also want to play levels in that zone.  Once you have a party of three you enter the zone and cast your vote for the level you want to play.  It does a little roulette spin and choose the one of your three votes randomly.  Then you actually enter the level and play through the four stages within it as a team...

One of the suggested F2P games to check out for Blaugust was Dirty Bomb.  Since I put it on my gaming to-do list yesterday I thought I could check it out today! I jumped in and played a couple games of it, and almost immediately realized it wasn't for me. There was a time in my life where I might have clung onto a game like this, but these days it seems like I can pick out all the influences that went into this game... and they're all games I've already played. It has the feel of a game somewhere between Battlefield, TF2, and Counter-Strike.  Those are all games I've played to death in the past, so they no longer get me very excited.  Because of my past play experiences Dirty Bomb felt generic and already been done. It seems like it's a serviceable multiplayer FPS.  If you've never done a multiplayer FPS before it might be worth your time to look at this one because it's free.  Even then, you're probably better off checking out Team Fo...

Hero Academy is the game I've been longing for .  I didn't know how much I needed a game like this, but now I'm playing it more than anything else.  I've been in the mood for a nice tactical game without twitch elements, and Hero Academy fills that role perfectly. The premise of Hero Academy is simple.  On your turn you get five actions to spend how you will.  The game plays out asynchronously over multiple turns.  If you destroy your opponent's crystals or kill all of their units you emerge the victor. These five actions can be to move a unit, attack with a unit, or bring an object into play from your current available "hand" at the bottom of the screen.  The objects you'll bring into play are more units, equipment for existing units, and spells that you cast on the battlefield.  At the end of every turn your current hand of objects refills up to six. Those are the basic mechanics of the game,...

I'm finally done with Mass Effect 3.  I've been reading all sorts of reactions about it since the day it came out, but I wanted to finish it myself before passing judgement.  First let me say the ending wasn't absolutely horrible. The game  itself was great.  I loved how 3 games worth of content slowly came together in interesting ways.  The combat, dialogue, and general flow of the game were all improved.  I had a great time through the first 60 hours of gameplay.  Only the last 10 minutes let me down.  If you've played Mass Effect 1 and 2 then you should definitely play Mass Effect 3. I also dabbled in multiplayer but wasn't too impressed.  I play Mass Effect for the single player campaign.  The 3rd person shooting is satisfactory, but if I wanted to play a multiplayer shooter I have about 10 other games that are better suited to the task.  Single player is where the strength of this series lies.  I was also really sad t...

Recently I’ve been playing two separate games which go by the names of Starcraft 2 and League of Legends. Both games are highly competitive. Both pit players against each other in deadly head to head combat. And, without a doubt, both are ruthlessly brutal to new players. Yet, only one of them frustrates me beyond belief. League of Legends. It’s interesting that two games which are so competitively similar can affect me in two vastly different ways. So why is that? I believe the key lies in how information comes across, or does not come across, to the player. Starcraft 2 is very transparent, while League of Legends is extremely opaque. In Starcraft 2 most information is telegraphed to the player. It’s pretty obvious to anyone that an army with 30 units is better than an army with 15. While unit composition can muddy the water of army size comparisons, most of the time, it still takes a miracle to beat an army twice the size of yours. This transparency also extends to...

It's interesting to watch the evolution of a gaming community around one specific game.  Things begin to change after the hype and excitement of launch.  People play through the game and discuss it with friends.  They revel in the shared experience.  And then it slowly fades from mainstream attention.  But, for some, they cling to a game and never let it go.  This poses some challenges in competitive multiplayer games. The divide between mediocre players and master level players increases as time goes on.  No longer is there the full spectrum of players be paired against.  Instead, most of the player population has gotten good at the game and they are the only competition left. If you're looking for some specific examples, think along the lines of the Halo or StarCraft series. Where there is a lot of competition to be found. As the total population playing the game decreases, the average skill level of each player rises.  The longer th...

At my new job, which I love, we're encouraged to do whatever we want with our lunch hour.  We also happen to have awesome computers because we do video editing and compositing which is CPU, RAM, and video card intensive.  My first day on the job a couple of guys in the office came up and asked, "Do you game?" Obviously I do.  Thanks to daily virtual warfare sessions over lunch we quickly became friends. Some days it's an inner-office match of Modern Warfare but most days it's all about team games in StarCraft 2 .  It's never happened before but I now have regular 2v2 and 3v3 partners.  Talking strategy and executing fun builds with my co-workers never gets old.  Not to mention that winning as a team feels great. Our boss, who also heads the company, knows all about our lunch time gaming and encourages it even while poking fun at us.  The other day he walked by as we were in the middle of an intense SC2 battle and asked me, "So, Void, working hard?...

Sitting down to write is always the hardest part of writing. A really good friend of mine died last week, so I haven't felt much like writing. But, it's time to start getting back into my daily life.  I miss writing already, but not all my thoughts today are gaming related. I've known my friend since we were around 3 years old.  I have memories of playing all sorts of games with him over the course of the last 20 years from NES to Xbox 360.  One of the memories that kept flashing through my head this last week was about playing couch co-op games with him while we were roomates in college. Freshman year we lived in the dorms and we also got a little game called Guitar Hero.  We ended up socializing with a ton of people on our floor because we would rock out with Guitar Hero and leave our door open.  But the best part of the game was knowing that every night we could both relax for a while and hang out together.  Working on our skills and learning to m...

I'm so excited for StarCraft 2!  I can't remember the last time I was this pumped up for a game release.  But Spinks isn't impressed.  She wrote on her experience trying out the StarCraft 2 beta and the reasons she wasn't impressed.  Her points are completely valid.  The beta was entirely multiplayer focused and she says that she lost every game.  I can understand how that would be extremely frustrating.  Because of her post I've decided to talk about some of the other features in StarCraft 2 that might appeal to those who haven't been impressed so far. The single player campaign is made by Blizzard.  I haven't played it yet (no one has) but Blizzard has a great pedigree for story in their real time strategy games.  They have a long history of polishing their games until they shine.  The single player campaign also has a variety of difficulty settings so that everyone can enjoy it, even RTS newbies.  It won't be brutal the way ...