A Green Mushroom

I've been playing a lot of games for my 3DS.  Right now I'm playing through Fire Emblem: Awakening and enjoying it a ton. The older I get the more I move away from real time strategy games and start to appreciate the turn-based format.  It's not that my reflexes are bad, I'm only 26, but I just don't have time to devote to getting really good at execution in games.  I'm usually playing less than an hour each night and I'm lucky if that is one uninterrupted block of time. For me, right now, Fire Emblem: Awakening is perfect.  It's a turn based strategy with interesting mechanics that I can suspend at any time.  I constantly have it near me since my 3DS is almost always close by.  It's great to be able to take a turn and then put it down to come back to later.  Even if I know I only have 5 minutes I still get to make some progress and stretch my mind with some strategy. It's more character driven than most turn-based RPGs I've playe...

I've mostly been gaming during my lunch hour or once my kids are in bed at night.  When I finally get a few free minutes to play a game I almost always turn to my 3DS.  It travels everywhere with me just in case I get an opportunity to bust it out for 5 minutes and play. It's really an awesome system.  The 3D effect is cool, but not required.  It has a great lineup of games that's constantly growing.  It has support for digital purchases.  It's finally a Nintendo console with decent online play.  It's easy to carry around.  But most importantly, it's fun! I've had a blast with Mario Kart 7, Fire Emblem: Awakening, Paper Mario Sticker Star, Donkey Kong Country Returns, New Super Mario Bros 2, and Super Mario 3D Land, Animal Crossing: New Leaf. Not to mention all the fantastic eShop and Virtual Console games I've been playing.  Nintendo has a lot to offer. They're even catering to our nostalgic impulses.  I had a few weeks wher...

There's a wave of hype building for Blizzard's new digital CCG, Hearthstone .  It's winning me over.  It's strange since I'm not normally a CCG guy, but I think this one could be for me. I've dabbled in various card games over the years.  I've used other people's decks and played a little bit of Magic the Gathering and the Pokemon card game .  I got seriously into the Game of Thrones Living Card game for about a year.  It helped that one of my friends owned every single card from that game.  I also picked up a starter kit for the Netrunner Living Card Game and loved the ideas in it, I just didn't have anyone to play it with consistently. So that's where I'm coming from.  A little of bit CCG and LCG knowledge paired with one year of fairly intense play (and a tournament) for the Game of Thrones LCG. Why does Hearthstone appeal to me so much?  Well, it's the first digital card game created by a proven AAA video game design comp...

It's been a busy year.  I haven't written on here in about nine months, and I feel pretty bad about that.  Sometimes you just have to drop things to free up time for others.  In my case, I have 2 little kids, I moved my family, and I've been teaching myself the programing languages in a typical web stack (HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, MySQL).  My time is essentially accounted for with all of this on top of my full-time job. I'm finally starting to feel the stress and the crazyness let up, so I'm hoping to write more.  If all goes well, you should see more posts here soon. The last nine months have been busy but I have found time to play games.  I just haven't had time to write about them. Steam and Nintendo have been my companions when I can find free time, all of my gaming has been taking place on PC and my 3DS.  My (fifth) Xbox 360 died a few months ago and I didn't feel like replacing it again.  I can basically play everything I want to pla...

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 (...

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 amazi...

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...