More Megadeth for Rock Band. Woot!
In a community email sent out last night, Harmonix announced the first new full album DLC for Rock Band in quite a while. And it’s a doozy! Megadeth’s “Rust In Peace”. I quite literally whooped in happiness at this news! No joke. Getting songs from favourite artists on the Rock Band platform always raises a cheer. To get a full album is just a joy.
This DLC joins the previous “Peace Sells … But Who’s Buying?” album that, for me, is just a fantastic release. So Megadeth are only the second artist to feature two full albums worth of materials available for Rock Band. I’m thinking the other must be Pearl Jam as they have their older “Ten” album along with their newest release, the name of which is beyond me right now.
One of the “Rust In Peace” tracks, “Hanger 18″, previously appeared as a cover version in Guitar Hero ][, another Harmonix developed game coincidentally, and it was firmly a favourite ‘go to’ song in that game, once I got the hang of it. Dr.G. and I used to battle for high-scores on that one back in the day. I even occasionally return to GH2 to see if my skill level has improved enough to further me on in the Expert career. It hasn’t BTW!.
One of the things I’ve mentioned umpteen times before is that I find that playing songs in Rock Band is a great way to experience them. I’ve often played an album such as “Peace Sells…” in its entirety as an alternative means of actually listening to it. So to get another full album release from my CD collection into the game is just brilliant for me.
I just hope the upcoming Rock Band Network release sees a few more albums released specifically for me! I doubt the rest of my Rock Band band is particularly delighted to hear that “Rust In Peace” will be littering my DLC library as of next week.
Gaming Days: Pandemic with an evil Bio-terrorist!
This was the best damn game of Pandemic I’ve yet played. And I’ve played quite a few. We had a small amount of time leftover at the end of the night to fill so Dornorn suggested Cutthroat Caverns. But as I was pulling it off my board game shelf I spotted Pandemic with the On The Brink expansion next to it and a thought entered my head. I returned to ask Dornorn if he’d be willing to show me the Bio-terrorist variant of Pandemic, which I’d never seen before.
This is the type of role that Dornorn likes a lot. Apparently he’s played it a few times, including a New Year session with Bultark and Dr.G. that I’d missed. However, the Overlord/Dungeon Master in Bultark surfaced and he requested that he play the opposing player in this variant this time round. I had no idea what to expect as I haven’t even read the rules for this mode, which made the ensuing game all the more interesting as stuff happened on the board about which I had no idea!
There is also a secrecy rule introduced in this variant. Everything discussed over the table can be heard by the Bio-terrorist player. So we can’t play ‘open handed’ with our cards fully visible. Anything we need to coordinate does so publically. As mentioned, this is the first time I’ve played the game in a non-co-operative manner. It’s also the first time I’ve played ‘closed handed’ with my cards hidden in my hand. This added tension of not being sure how best to optimise our individual play was really exciting for me.
The Red Plague going into infection overdrive!
So as “Dr. Bultark” sneaked around the map, leaving a trail of blown up research centres – notice in the image above that the CDC in Atlanta is no more!!!! – we semi-role-played it up for quite a few laughs. Occasionally ‘Fox News reports’ reported sightings of the disaffected “Dr. Bultark” in various cities, hinting at his location as he moved around the world map. Seeing our research centres blow up came as a massive shock to me!
I’d scored a couple of cures for Yellow and Blue in America while Dornorn and Dr.G. tried to fend off the wave of infection from Red and Black. Bultark spread his lab-designed Purple infection around the globe wherever we had no chance of finding a cure. Seeing these erupt in unexpected locations was fascinating, especially as the Bio-terrorist player gets to do stuff inbetween each other player’s turn!
Running out of Red Plague cubes!
By now we were ‘on the brink’ of failure. It was all building up to an exciting conclusion. I dashed across the globe to try and help out against the Red Plague and was amazed to discover Bultark himself attempting to further his nefarious plan, the black player piece hidden behind mine in the image below:
"I've found him!"
I still had actions available to me and this time was able to apprehend him – I’d caught a fleeting sense of the evil-doer in Chicago a little while ago but not enough to be sure. The choice here was to either apprehend the mutinous Bultark and cripple his options or treat the infected victims in Hong Kong. Dornorn figured the chances of Red erupting at this location was slim, but I felt the risk was too great. If we scored another outbreak of Red in this area then the game was immediately lost. The situation was so critical that I decided I had to let Bultark go while I dealt with treating the disease outbreak he was trying to react with his special mutated Purple variant. This was a choice I was quite torn over at the time!!
Next I turned over my 3 Infection cards … and found Hong Kong in amongst them! I whooped at this lucky, lucky break. My decision to release the insurgent had paid off after all. We had time, but not a lot. As the taint of the Purple organism Dr.Bultark had left behind expanded, America saw a re-infestation of Blue to critical proportions. Along with this there was a growing threat from Bultark’s Purple disease which he’d left behind. These too promised us with game loss if we couldn’t deal with the issue promptly.
The Blue Pox spreads across America!
By now we’d managed to find a cure against the Purple Pox spread by our enemy but time was nearly gone for the world, with the Player Cards about to run out. Maybe 3 turns remained.
Time is running out for the CDC and its scientists!
Unfortunately, despite this Purple Pox cure our other problems meant we couldn’t treat it in time, never mind eradicate it entirely. Bultark was able to orchestrate another outbreak which ran the supply of Purple cubes out, ending the game in his favour.
Game Over - no more Purple cubes
Really good game. The secrecy aspect and working against a human foe as well as the game system itself led to a very tense session that lasted substantially longer than a normal game would. But as usual with Pandemic the danger level builds up rapidly and stays constant to the end of the game, keeping everybody engaged.
Adding in a little bit of flavour to our actions with some verbal descriptions of what we saw and did made for an entertaining aside that I thoroughly enjoyed; “You see a fleeting glimpse of somebody you recognise in a coffee shop.” “Fox News reports a potential sighting of the suspect at passport control in Moscow.” “I promise I will hunt you down for betraying us!” etc. I can totally recommend this game mode with a cunning opponent like Bultark who played his role very well.
The Bio-terrorist's play sheet at the end of the game
Gaming Days: Yet More Thunderstone!
It’s new, we’re all playing it, time to make sure everybody can play it! Bultark and Dr.G. were the next victims subjects to be trained. We had a whirl around the basic game (and like Dominion I’ll probably be quite happy not to have to play this combo again) and concluded with a really tight 20 points for both Dr.G. and myself, with Bultark trailing a little behind on 16. I won this one on the Thunderstone tie-breaker.
However, Dornorn was then to rock up and show us how it’s done with a strong 30 point finish on a fully randomised configuration. The rest of us were miles behind on another 20 points for Dr.G., 17 for myself, and a noobish 13 for poor old Bultark in last place! But Bultark was to rally strongly and come back to chase Dornorn down in our 3rd and final game for the day.
This 3rd game was really interesting as it was the first time practically all the heroes in the game were bought. And having got some tasty level 3 heroes in play the interactions with other players increased with cards being borrowed or discarded. I suffered at least 2 rounds where a series of events around the table left me with absolutely nothing of any use and I all I could do was buy a really, really cheap Village card or sit and do nothing. Ouch. Anyway, 36 points to Bultark, his first win a smidge ahead of Dornorn on 34. Dr.G. trailed on 26 and I was stuck on last place with a poor showing of 20 points.
Guest Review: Thunderstone
Dornorn emailed me some early thoughts he’d had on Thunderstone following his 1.5 games to date. Here’s what he had to say:
Thunderstone… not to be confused with Thunderdome
“We don’t need another hero.
We don’t need to read a spell tome.
All we need is dwarves with polearms,
In Thunderstone. ”
(Tina Turner is not included in the box)
Credit for these lyrics goes to this thread over on BGG.
Mini Review
Subject to change with more plays ; )
The Components – Overall Average
- Price - £25
- Box - Poor – Especially considering what a good job Dominion did.
- Rules - Poor – Badly laid out and confusing as hell lots of ambiguity that had to be clarified before playing. The rules do not show all of the cards you are going to play with so if you want to read up on a card and it’s effects you have to go and find the physical card. The rules clarifications do not mention the card they are clarifying which is a bit annoying. I think it assumes you have played Dominion as it skips over the deck set up and deck cycling in a few short sentances… I can imagine a non-Dominion player being totally confused by the rules as they are laid out (which is mad as they are pretty straight forward and simple!).
- Cards - Good – Really nice artwork, good theme bit of crazy symbology which is okay once you decipher the meanings from the rules, there is room for improvement though.
The Game – Overall Average to Good
- Setup - Average – Fiddly and time consuming but not so much that it’s a game killer for a casual lunch time game (with practice!)
- Teardown - Average – A lot of sorting and putting away the box is far from helpful again fiddly and time consuming.
- Replayability - Good – Can see myself playing this a lot quite a lot of variety in the setups but does not massively change the game
- The Game – Good – Once you are playing it’s good fun but it’s no Dominion. There is some strategy but the cards don’t combine together very often to become greater than the sum of their parts. The advantage of the single cards strategies make it simpler and less thought time is required so each turn does go quite fast. Although it initially gives the impression of being Dominion with an extra layer of complexity it’s actually much more basic and not really fair comparison. The end game is annoying, once the Thunderstone is revealed all the players stand off of killing the monsters for fear of giving the Thunderstone to an opponent, thus dragging the game out unnecessarily.
In Summary – Overall Average but small changes will push it to Good
- All said and done though it’s still really good fun but decidedly lightweight alternative to Dominion.
- Should I buy it? NO, there is a reprint edition coming out sometime before the first expansion (which will include a new much better rules book as well as possibly new cards that have been erratad (unconfirmed). However there is currently no release date for the reprint.
Gaming Days: Sea of Blood
I recently picked up a copy of the newest Descent expansion, Sea of Blood. We’ve decided to schedule this into our calendar on a regular ongoing basis rather than sit on it as I’ve unfortunately done with the previous ‘advanced campaign expansion’ for Descent, the Road to Legend.
Having read the rules I proposed to Bultark, Dornorn and Dr.G. that we have a disposable trial game to see what’s new. I mean, this game features naval combat!!!! How different to normal Descent in vast dungeons can that be?! We all powered up some hastily chosen characters and ran through a very quick copper-campaign level encounter, departing our starting town for a nearby island.
Bultark rolled up a random sea encounter enroute so we setup the sea map for an ambush situation. As we started out we only have a lowly Sloop with but a single rune-cannon on board – the smaller ship in the image below. Our first engagement saw us up against a full-sized Brigantine! Being unsure of the NPC ship setup rules at the time we just picked some stats and threw on a cannon of each of the four different types available, just to see how they worked.
You can see the smaller world map sat beside the main, reversible, sea map – there’s an island map on the other side for land-encounters.
If you look closely above the larger enemy vessel caught us up with its 3 sails to our 2. We moved our cannon to face the ship while the Overlord, Bultark, directed his minions to fill up all four cannon mountings facing us! We decided to go for it, Dr.G. manning the Captain’s helm to steer us directly towards the enemy so that Dornorn and I could fire the cannon (singular!) and take ranged potshots as we approached. Finally we planned to rope across to board the enemy vessel. Exciting stuff!
All the while we have to deal with wind speed moving us forward based on the number of sails up, ocean currents drifting us in a situation defined direction determined by a die roll, and an awkward anchor that didn’t want to catch on anything on the sea bed when Dr.G. left his post to drop anchor to try and prevent us sailing onto the rocks ahead of us. Hitting these rocks would cause instant and total destruction of our good ship, the Revenge, at least for this encounter anyway – ’tis a magical ship after all! The Revenge was already getting battered by enemy cannon fire as Bultark gleefully targetted our ship and rolled his attack dice multiple times.
I was quickly removed from the battle entirely when a dragonfire cannon fire blast caught me for big damage. Dornorn was been blown off our ship entirely at one point, straight into the water where the daggertooth sharks were circling. He barely made it back onboard while his armour tried to sink him!
As we sailed gradually closer Dornorn roped across to start laying down some suppression fire against the Overlord’s forces manning the cannons. Dr.G. tried one last time to drop anchor before abandoning his position entirely, sprinting across the railings between the two now adjacent ships to also try and stop the cannons from blowing our ship apart, perhaps by now our biggest concern. We were banking on the ocean current not drifting out ship onto the rocks at this point as our ship health was critical. Being a man or two down meant we couldn’t take down the sails to slow the ship either as there were just too many tasks to do with our limited resources and time at hand.
Needless to say we lost this first encounter. Good fun, and very different from our usual dungeon crawls with so many other things to manage. In the interest of having a ‘quick’ test we pretended we’d won and sailed on towards our original destination to have a look at an island-based encounter.
These work similar to normal RtL 3-level dungeons, except that the first level takes place above ground on the island. We’d anchored our ship up near the island and we had to get off and swim to shore while the Overlord called his forces out of the dungeon to prepare for our assault. Then there’s a large land area with varying obstacles to tackle, again highly different from normal corridor/cavern-based encounters, one where cover from trees and distance for ranged characters comes up.
Ahhh, recurring characters!
I’ve briefly demo-ed Mass Effect 2 to Dornorn, Bultark and Dr.G. now. I’m a total fan of this game, even if I’m only some 5h in thus far. During my demo I’ve usually shown them a bit of the conversation system. It’s as elegant as the first game, letting a conversation flow back and forth as you select your responses before a sentence is completed. This tends towards a rather enjoyable cinematic presentation. I think it looks good for onlookers and that I’m guiding the tone of my responses while not knowing quite what’s going to be said myself means I’m interacting with it directly. Brilliant.
I also let them see the opening scene which I really like. But rather than re-import my Level 50 character I’ve just gone for the generic default. And immediately I was struck by a different character choice from my opening scene that meant a whole lot to me personally having completed the first game. None of the guys played ME1 so it’s meaningless to their eyes, but it’s a really neat little touch that tickled me greatly.
It’s actually one of two little changes to the presentation I’ve seen thus far that has clearly been customised based on the choices I made in my playthrough of ME1. I found a picture frame on the desk in my cabin on the Normandy for instance: I burst out laughing when I saw the image. That kind of continuity and attention to detail makes the whole game that bit more absorbing. That I’m completely smitten with the setting only makes the job easier I suppose!!
I was also telling the boys how I’d wandered into a room on the Normandy in ME2 and immediately recognised a character as they turned towards me. “What’s she doing here?!” I thought to myself, rather surprised. Of course, that question gets answered, but I enjoyed my little reaction to that little scene. Good stuff.
I’m not so wow-ed by the Blood Dragon armour bonus I get for having bought and played Dragon’s Age: Origins. The helmet doesn’t seem to come off! I kinda like seeing my ME2 avatar talking without a helmet on.
Gaming Days: Thunderstone
A sudden surge in board gaming of late has seen a few things on the table. We’ve had a quiet period for a few weeks but some excellent sessions are worthy of note.
First, Thunderstone. I received a copy of this earlier in the week shortly after its UK release. I’d started reading about it on BGG as having similarities with the excellent Dominion. While the underlying tone of a Designer Diary on BGG put me off the game designer himself a little, the dungeoneering theme of the game sufficiently filled my interest to invest in a copy.
Before it had even arrived Dornorn asked if I’d heard of it. Apparently his lunchtime gaming group at work are big into Dominion at the moment and one of their number has started exploring other candidates, including Thunderstone. Thus Dornorn was particularly interested in hearing more of the game.
After a quick rules read-through I decided to take a punt and have a go with TJChlorineHead and Woody. Being unfamiliar with the game meant the initial setup time was quite excessive, but things have improved now that I’ve sorted the 500+ cards into groups I can immediately recognise. We didn’t finish our trial game but enough was played to interest TJChlorineHead in another session. Dornorn popped over for that and together the three of us completed the noobie game setup configuration, TJ nipping ahead for the win by a single point over Dornorn!
Next we rolled out a random card game. Here I realised that a system of picking 8 random Village cards, 4 random Hero cards, and 3 types of random Monster cards needs a little bit of structure rather than many hands digging for cards in the box. I really, really don’t like the storage system that Thunderstone employs. It just groups vast handfuls of cards into a few varying size cut-outs in the tray. The Dominion tray with slots for each card type and an index card up the spin of the box is very quick and easy. When you distribute the randomiser cards to the other players to shuffle and select from, with one person managing the main box of cards, it’s quite swift to setup a new game with a little familiarity.
The monsters in this second encounter were much more vicious and interesting than the basic set, but once again we ran out of time. Counting up at that point put Dornorn firmly in the lead with myself solidly last.
I feel that the game theme is much stronger than in Dominion, partly because you’re building a party of heroes that you can later level up for enhanced abilities. You’re equipping your party and sending them off into a dungeon to fight terrible monsters. This is a stronger fantasy setting than the perhaps medieval period of Dominion.
Dornorn pointed out a lack of exciting combo’s in Thunderstone over the likes of Dominion where a great many cards combine to f orm something far more potent. Still, the build-up of stronger parties through a game with improved abilities still makes for an interesting game with a little bit of adventuring, which I like a lot.
After a few games I do wonder if the apparent thin linearity on the cards in play may mean that I’ll be seeking a greater variety of cards quicker than I would with something that’s so tremendously mixable like Dominion. There are more things randomised in Thunderstone (Heroes, Village cards and Monsters) but they’re all fairly alike. More plays will reveal more.
That’s How You Open Your New Game!
Mass Effect 2. What a great opening scene!
My most anticipated game of the past while has been Mass Effect 2 which was released today. There has been a, ahem, mass of promo material published in the past few weeks, videos and interviews, enough that I stopped paying attention to it all after a while. They’ve long had me hooked, I don’t need reminding that, “hey, ME2 is coming!” Initially I gave it some attention but after learning something I didn’t really want to know, I shyed away entirely.
Anyway, the first game was released 2 years ago, and after nearly 50h of gameplay from a single playthrough it easily became my GotY that year. An engaging story linked extremely well with cinematic scenes sucked me into a grand adventure. And the fiction and setting tickled my interests just right.
So it was with great anticipation that I installed the 2-disc Mass Effect 2 to my Xbox360 HDD. I now vaguelly recall mention of this being a 2-disc release, with the disc transition coming at a specifically designed point in the game that it really wasn’t a big issue being spread across 2 discs. But I’d long since forgotten and got a surprise when I popped the case open. That’s a 12Gb HDD install right there!
The game comes with a really nifty idea for working around the rental/secondhand market from which BioWare receive no sales revenue. Buy it new and you get a freebie redemption code that accesses the Cerberus Network, a sort of front-end/pass for upcoming DLC. Buy the game secondhand and if you want access to the continuing adventures of Commander Shepard then you’ll need to pay up 1200 MS spacebucks. As soon as you fire up the game you get the opportunity to redeem your code in a completely smooth operation. From this you can download some day-one DLC; Blood Dragon armour (a bonus from my owning Dragon’s Age: Origins from late last year in fact), a new party member, and a mission of some kind I guess – I haven’t got that far yet.
Onto the game though, and that opening scene I mentioned at the top. No spoilers here, don’t worry. Stuff happens, it’s all quite exciting, then boom … the game presents you with a really fine idea for bridging the real-time gap between the two games. This also neatly settles certain character import issues. In fact, the character import was another pleasant bonus for me in that I get my old familiar Shepard back. After 50h of gameplay I was quite used to the face I’d crafted in the first game for my Shepard avatar. I did look at the default face model but in the end I figured I’d stick with what I was familiar with. I even continued with the same class – it just felt right. Finally the import gives you a quick revision on what plot decisions you made in your last adventure, although I wish this had a bit more background than a simple one sentence summary. [update: more details are spread into the early game so that's cool]
I was also delighted to hear that they got the same voice actor in. I like that continuity. In fact I cheered when I first heard the voice as that was something I was hoping for. Hopefully the other familiar characters will be back too. It just feels more comfortable to continue the story with the same parameters as before.
Really tremendously excited about this game. Onwards I go.
Unwanted Achievements
I like my Xbox360 Achievements, and I don’t mind bagging a few awkward ones via boosting or picking an easier level to achieve something on. But oh boy, scoring an unwanted Achievement through accidental participation is really annoying!
At the w/e our Lego Rock Band band scored 100% notes hit as a full band, but only I, as the first sign-in on the box, scored the Achievement. That’s not right – it really should have dinged for everybody involved. I suggested to Dornorn that we exit and restart with him as primary. He loaded up his own band rather than our normal 4-player effort, The Dark Lanterns, and we completed another song 100%. Ding, he scores the Achievement. Yay.
Then I get two freebie ones for participating in a gig with a band that has progressed further along the story/career mode than I have as yet! “NOooooo!!!!” I cried, “get me outta here!” We aborted thing there. I still scored 2 Achievements without actually accomplishing them, and that feels wrong. Not happy about it.
It’s happened before, so I should have remembered, but there’s no going back now. I’d easily have scored those Achievements by myself later on, but the fact that they won’t ding at the right time is a mild source of displeasure for me. Curious isn’t it, I don’t feel like I deserve those Achievements, even though I’ll happily take the easiest route to others. Getting ‘cheap’ Achievements is one thing but there are some that are so cheap that I just won’t lower myself to getting: 1000G in Avatar within about 2minutes for instance, that’s cheap and dirty and deserves all the p!ss-taking.
The Sopranos
I mentioned in another post how I’d deleted a load of TV episodes that I couldn’t gather myself to watch. I then decided that having caught up with the backlog maybe I’d tackle The Sopranos which while well recommended had never persuaded me to watch it. That was just over a week ago and I’ve already finished Season TWO!! There seems to be 13 episodes per season and most are around the 50+ minutes mark in length. That’s a lot of hours of viewing…
…and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it.
Geez, where was I when this was on?! I vaguelly, vaguelly remember bits from the start of the first episode. I can also very vaguelly recall watching some of this episode on E4 when it was new to the UK. But for a reason long forgotten it just didn’t stick. Maybe now that I’ve had more exposure to this sort of show I’m more willing to watch? More recent shows such as Brotherhood have been enjoyable but going back 10 years in a show’s lifecycle has been especially interesting to contrast then & now – the computers and telephones for instance. It’s also been interesting to see so many familiar faces I recognise from newer shows.
Xbox Live
