Shmee.Me

May 7, 2013May 7, 2013

The Force is with Star War Pinball

For Star Wars day Microsoft had the Star Wars Pinball tables for Pinball FX2 half off, so for 400 points or $5 I got three tables: An Empire Strikes Back table, a Clone Wars cartoon table, and a Boba Fett table.

I had never bought any Pinball FX2 tables before, so I was worried that when I bought the Star Wars add-on that now I was going to have buy the full pinball game to go with it, but luckily there is a free base package you can get that just allows you to use the tables you have bought.

I have not played electronic pinball for a long time, but it is still a lot of fun. I really like the Empire Strikes Back table. The only problem is that sometimes there is so much going on in the tables that I just want to watch it all, and I loose track of the ball, but I am sure that is the point.

They are a lot of fun, and something I can play if I only have fifteen minutes to spare, so for me it was 400 points well spent.

April 28, 2013April 28, 2013

Is There Just Cause 2?

Just Cause 2 is an open world action game by Avalanche Studios that takes place in the fictional foreign country of Panau. I picked it up because it was cheep. Is it worth the $10 dollars? Yes it is.

The game starts off with the hero Rico Rodriguez in a helicopter being told about the political situation in Panau. Basically it was US friendly, but recently it has taken a bad turn, so your job is to destabilize the country, so someone new can take over, and the way you do that is to use your awesome grappling hook to steal helicopters to blow the government’s stuff up, or what ever else you want with whatever else you can find.

You can do missions for some major rebel forces if you want, or you can just cause Chaos freestyle, and Chaos is capitalized because you get Chaos points for the crazy stuff you do, and the more Chaos you cause the more cool stuff you unlock. Your major weapon is your grappling hook. It pulls bad guys off towers, allows you to skyjack helicopters, or just about any other moving vehicle you could want. You can also buy weapons and cars off the black-market and have them dropped at your location.

It is a crazy fun game that rewards you for the crazy fun stuff you can do, and unlike other games, the entire world is open to you from the start so can really just have fun the way you want to. It is a great game that you can find at an even better price these days, so if you haven’t played it yet, you should add it to your list.

April 20, 2013

Third Run in Shadowrun

Last night was my group’s third campaign in Shadowrun, and it went pretty well. I think the main reason for its success was the source book I used called Ghost Cartels. It centers around a new drug being traded in Seattle called tempo. It gives non-magic users a little taste of what it is like by being able to see peoples auras, and being able to see the plane that all magic users have access too.

Ghost Cartels starts you out as low level street spies, and that is the part of the book we played last night. The real bonus is that there is a lot more to do, and the book is very flexible on what you can do and how you do it, so if you are crafting your own campaign you can use this to supplement it.

Just like always the game is most fun when you are playing with a bunch of people that just want to have a good time, and forgive the multitude of mistakes made by the GM.

April 4, 2013

El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron

El Shaddai is video game based off the Book of Enoch. It came out in the summer of 2011 for most major platforms. I decided to give it a try when the price dropped to two bucks on the Xbox Live store, but was it worth the reduced price? I think so, but two dollars is probably as high as I would go.

The game pretty much works like this. You run in a straight line, and then when you get to an open area people pop up and you hit them a bunch of times and then you run some more. What makes this game interesting is the story since it is based of the Book of Enoch, which is not Biblical canon for most Christian groups, but is viewed like ancient historical fiction. The game also has great visual style, and every new chapter shows you something cool, but sadly the game still is just you running and then hitting stuff, so it gets old.

If the game is ever on sale again it might be something you want to take a look at. It might help you kill some time, or you could just read the Book of Enoch, and call it a day, your choice, but I do applaud the people that made this game for trying something different. It was just a shame they couldn’t vary the gameplay a bit.

March 22, 2013March 22, 2013

Is Warhammer 40,000 fun?

My friend Todd Fadden got me in to a little game called Warhammer 40,000 (or 40k), and by little I mean huge. It is a miniatures game, meaning you buy little bits of plastic or metal, and then glue them together, and then paint them, and then you have to develop a strategy, and then after all that, you get to play a game for about an hour and a half. It is also a ton of fun.

There are a ton of different factions to choose from. You can be space bugs, space orcs, space marines, space elves, and tons more, those aren’t the official names of the groups but they are easier to understand. I have been building a group based of the space marines called the Space Wolves, and if I was good at the painting, they would look like this:

Maybe if you are nice I will take a picture of my guys for you someday.

As with all geeky games, Warhammer 40k has very complex rules and every faction has its own subset of the rules, but what it comes down to is that you compare spread sheets and roll a bunch of dice, and argue about whether the units have line of sight or not. It is very fun.

Now for the not so good part. The maker of this game, Games Workshop, has started jacking the prices of the miniatures, and they weren’t cheep to begin with, so the only affordable venue is to buy them off EBay, but that can get frustrating if people aren’t selling what you want, or someone else snakes your units (in my case probably guys ridding giant wolves) out from under you, and then once you get them you have to paint them, so it requires a ton of time.

But all that being true, the game is fun, and it possibly one of the geekiest games in this word. Now, if you will excuse me, I have to check on some EBay bids.