A Green Mushroom

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 ser...

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 b...

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...

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 a...

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...

Tesh posted a great recap of where he's coming from when he talks about MMOs and it inspired me to do the same. I don't know how interesting this will be for other people, but I'm hoping it will give you some perspective on my MMO history. The main thing you should know about me is that I love the idea  of MMOs, but when I go to play them they rarely stick.  There have been some exceptions, but in most MMOs I only dabble before moving on. My first MMO was Everquest .  My friends and I played this in middle school when it first came out.  I can still remember most of the details of Crushbone, one of the first zones in the game.  It's crazy that in my mind's eye I can see all of the hills, catacombs, the castle, the different routes through the zone, and I still remember the spawns.  It must be because I played the game so much, but never truly leveled very high.  I played from around launch in March of 1999 through the first 2 expansions. ...

FTL is a game about space exploration.  Well, that's what I initially thought.  Then I played it and learned that FTL is a game about survival.  But then I learned that the game is about managing the crew of a spaceship.  But the crew doesn't control the ship on their own, because the game is actually about balancing power and distributing it between different ship systems.  But... system power needs depend on what gear is currently equipped to the ship.  So I guess FTL is also about upgrading spaceships. The truth is... FTL is a game about a lot of different things.  The important part is that they all work together and create something magical.  I've been told by others that FTL is a " Roguelike " but since I've never played a rougelike I don't know if that's an apt description.  I do know that in any one playthrough of the game you'll be doing all those things I mentioned above and, if you're like me, you'll be having a fant...