At present I am starting to notice this happen again with the current crop of titles, and there have been some issues that, well, just piss me off.   $59 dollars for a new game?   Come on.   Flaky DRM schemes and installation limits?  Fine, treat me like a criminal.   Piss-poor ports of console games at full price and months late?   Oh, you must think I have no choice in the matter…   That being said, I’m not abandoning PC gaming or anything.   It’s just that for me, the benefits bar is slipping, and the hassle bar is rising quickly.  

As this post title indicates, I think that board games might help fill the gap in PC gaming.   I want to play something that is engaging, fun, and has complexity.   It should be social, and if I play badly I want to daydream about how I will do better next time…   There is a lot to like about a good board game:

• It only takes a few minutes to set up
• It is easily portable
• Most are designed to be completed in 1-3 hours
• Most have an easy learning curve

They aren’t perfect though.   Two player board games usually aren’t that fun, and some times you have too many people or an odd number of people.   Still, they can be simpler affairs than LAN’s, and just as much fun.  

So here’s what I’m thinking.   Sometime in the next few months, I would like to host a board game night at my house.    The basic format would be dinner, the game, and optionally a movie (or another round or game).   I’m looking for a minimum of three players, with a max of six.   Google bots are not invited, even if they have been faithful readers of this blog.  

As for the game, I’ve listed three possibilities below.   I do not own any of these, but would purchase the one to be played, unless it could be provided by someone else.   I will take suggestions for other games as well, but if you suggest scrabble you are not grasping my point   

Axis & Allies

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_and_Allies

I played this a number of times in college, and it never failed to please.  I think I’ve played the three main variations, including Europe and Pacific theatres.  

The Settlers of Catan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Settlers_of_Catan

I’ve never played this game, but it looks intriguing.   Looking at the wikipedia page, it sounds a lot like Civilization for PC, which I love, but incidentally hate because it can take ten hours to finish a game!

Heroscape

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroscape

I haven’t played this game either.  I really like the idea of an RPG/D&D style board game.   I played one as a teenager called Hero Quest but it is out of print, and full versions now go for over a hundred bucks!   One thing that might not be so great about it is that there seems to be a lot of “add-ons” for this game, which screams money pit.   I did see that you can buy a “master set” for under $40, and if this could provide several evenings of entertainment it may be worth it.  

Although  the first two issues still exist after two expansions,   the last one was lifted in  Patch 3.0.8 . (http://www.wowhead.com/?patchnotes=3.0.8-ptr)

After this news, I jumped for joy and ran headlong into the battlegrounds to earn marks of honor for the Black Battlestrider.  Mind you, the first problem mentioned was, and of course still is, in effect.  I probably spent ten times longer earning those marks than ANY Horde player in WoW.  By stroke of luck, my last battle was one in which the Alliance swept Warsong Gulch in a three-to-zero victory over our opponents.

I went to the war-mount dealership and purchased a fully stocked, 0% APR financed Battlestrider with no interest till 2011!

Although I can’t go around corners faster than five mph without rolling the thing, I’m still damn happy with it!

What I didn’t know was that Audiosurf runs on whatever music file you give it. It’s not like the console music games that have a set number of songs to pick from that are all from one genre.  It even goes beyond the "wunderkind" of  Rock Band and it’s expanding library of songs that you can get access to for a price.  It pretty much gives you a storage space the size of the warehouse in Raiders of the Lost Ark, and says "Fill it with whatever you want, we don’t care."

This is why I call it the open source music game; the fact that you don’t have to pay for new songs, and can play whatever you damn well please without worry of copyright crap.  Hell, the game even tells you how to get songs with DRM on them to play properly and rid yourself of the regulatory noose put over you by online music stores like iTunes.

The goal is to get three or more blocks of the same color touching each other in rows of slots underneath the car.  Points are based on the number of blocks touching each other; matching seven blocks gets more points than three.  Also, the color of blocks comes into play.  Common block colors like purple and blue are worth less than rarer colors like red and yellow.  White blocks function differently.  You can’t match them together, and they can prevent the matching of other blocks, but if you manage to move a white block to the bottom of one of the rows, They will disappear and reward you with a substantial number of points.

Anyway, the game was on sale for FIVE dollars, rather than the usual TEN dollars, and I jumped for it after trying out the demo.  I’d say it’s money well spent.

Audiosurf lets you "ride your music" in two main ways.  The first is commonplace in music games, moving shapes (in this case, blocks) that come along to the beat of the music.  The second is something not featured in games like Guitar Hero: the road upon which your vehicle drives moves with the music as well, bouncing along to the beat and changing incline/color with song speed.  If a song slows down, the road slants upward, turns to a cool color like blue or purple, and your vehicle slows down.  At fast parts of a song, the road aims downhill and changes from blue to yellow and red.

This road dynamic can be best visualized by the chart presented upon each selection of music.

There are several modes and strategies to Audiosurf.  Here’s a brief look at some modes:

Pusher Mode: This mode functions like most other modes of play, using the multicolored blocks.  The special thing about this mode is that by right-clicking and/or left-clicking, you can "push" blocks as you hit them into an adjacent row of slots.

Vegas Mode: In this mode, you cannot direct blocks as you please, but if your slots are filling up with no match in sight, you can move onto the shoulder and wait for a channeled effect that shuffles the blocks around, increasing their chance to match up.

Eraser Mode: By right-clicking in this mode,  Your car will break through blocks, keeping them from filling in your slots when they aren’t wanted. Note the parallelogram shape that appears above the car while "erasing" blocks.

Mono Mode: This one is the most simple of the modes of play, and is my personal favorite.  In this mode there are only two types of blocks: gray blocks and colored blocks.  Colored blocks change color with the road, and are all worth the same points.  Gray blocks are worth no points, and stack up in your slots for lengthy periods of time until disappearing automatically.  However in the higher difficulty setting, they do not and you must remove them by right clicking, docking you seven hundred seventy-seven points.  I enjoy this mode for its simple, yet fast-paced gameplay.

This is only a brief and fleeting glance at Audiosurf.  There are far more modes of play, global scoreboards, and much much more.  Believe me, this game is WORTH the ten bucks.

http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.com/viewtopic.php?t=18093

I was able to learn how to Solo Onyxia!!  While this fearesome <sic> creature used to require 30-40 60′s to take down, she can now be bested by only a few number of courageous <sic> heroes.   The fight is actually not that difficult… it is just long as she has over a million hit points.   The big concern was phase 2, where she flies in the air and whelps come out.   I wiped on the first attempt, but I got the hang of it, and on 2nd try I got her down in about 30-45 min.  I’m not sure what other classes are capable of soloing, besides druid and maybe a lock.   I know people have done it at lvl 70, but those were crazy 3 hour attempts.

She had quite the treasure for me as well, netting 159g, several epics, and an 18 slot bag.    I prob won’t do this by myself again anytime soon, as 1 or two dps would speed things up greatly, and would still be making a good amount of gold.

Somebody’s mad!

She’s down

As far as getting Wrath goes, all I can do until I get a real job come next year is offer my commissions to you guys, and then take the one job from an obligated brother-in-law.  Even that won’t get me there.  Is there ANYTHING else I could do?  I’ll take suggestions.  I would like to obtain Wrath before the next expansion is announced.

Almost there...

It’s been a slow, and rather lame-ass march, but it at last seems like I’m closing the gap to that epic 5,000 gold in World of Warcraft that shall guarantee me the right to ride a flying mount capable of speeds in excess of 279% percent my normal running speed.  They are true SR-71′s of Outland, and after being badly beat to the finish line by Brian’s wife, Kim, I’m more anxious than ever to prove that I don’t totally suck at earning fake money.

Ironically, however, it seems that real money is holding me back from my position as a flying ace.  My WoW account runs out on the 7th of October.  I’m still kicking my self for not having been able to save up the 5k over the summer, but pulling off a stunt like that would require me to live as a hermit in an Internet accessible cave high in the Andes Mountains above Chile.

I have a plan to reclaim my glory though.  I’m going to re-open my status as a commissioned artist with a few tweaks to make dealings more streamlined.

Firstly, I will no longer be doing fully-photoshopped pictures unless someone requests so and has the means to pay fifteen dollars to me.  I find myself excruciatingly slow in photoshop, especially when under pressure.

Secondly, The standard commission will cost eight dollars, and consist of a very finished looking pencil drawing of either the client as a cartoon character, or something that they request.

On a lesser note, thirdly, these commissions are NOT caricatures.  They are drawings of people and/or things in a cartoon style of my own, not drastic accentuation of facial features.  I’m not a guy working at a mall kiosk.

Of course, I’m not asking anyone who reads this if they’d like to commission me.  You all already fall into my “Do things for free” list.  However, encouragement would be psychosomatically helpful. ^^