Two reports down, two to go. No additional posts today, but feel free to head on over to Boardgame News to check out my photo essay on the convention. I’ll be back next week to finish up with coverage of the more advanced boardgames and then wind up with an overview of collectible gaming, video games, and the just plain strange at this year’s GenCon.
In the past few years, GenCon has made a concerted effort to appeal to a broader audience than the stereotypical gamer geek. They have a areas set aside for kids to play boardgames, trips to the local museums and movie showings for gamer spouses, there’s even a giant highway billboard I see every day on the way to and from the convention that advertises GenCon as a family vacation destination. For the most part, I think they are succeeding. Even in the past five years that I have attended, I have noticed a significant shift in both the family-friendly offerings and a much larger family contingent of attendees. As I’m a big boardgaming fan, I managed to find more information on boardgames than can fit in a single article. So today I’ll focus on games and companies that are family-friendly. Next time we’ll cover boardgames that are cut out more suitable for enthusiastic gamers.
GenCon has come and gone once again in Indianapolis, leaving attendees with a bit less sleep, a bit more crowded game rooms, and a bit lighter in the wallet. However, most can claim to be satiated for the moment. GenCon is four days of concentrated gaming in one of the oldest and largest game-focused conventions in the US. I was able to attend for two days and spent most of my time roaming the large dealer floor, checking out the upcoming games. Started as an offshoot of TSR (the original Dungeons and Dragons company), GenCon has a strong role-playing presence in addition to the large number of boardgame and slightly fewer electronic gaming companies. For today, I’ll focus on the role playing game news that I found most interesting. In future articles, I’ll cover the electronic and the boardgame news from the show.
Wii Sports Resort releases today (Sunday) and if you have a Wii system, run (don’t walk) down to your local game vendor and pick up a copy. Many people I know consider the console pack-in Wii Sports title to still be one of the best around for family friendly pick-up and play fun. Wii Sports Resort takes that style of game and kicks it up another level with even more games and options as well as incorporating the new MotionPlus attachment for even better control. If you had any interest at all in the original Wii Sports, you owe it to yourself (and your family) to check out Wii Sports Resort. I’ve had the pleasure to take the game through its paces in the past week. It has dominated my limited play time and I believe it will be my go-to game for weeks to come.
Take some action, add strategy, mix with a dash of exploration and you might create something like the top-down team exploration-shooter that is Elite Forces: Unit 77. Players manage a team of four unique individuals as you explore a somewhat confined mission area, discovering traps and enemy agents along the way. A bit too slow paced to be a pure action game, it has too many real time elements to be considered a strategy title. If I had to describe the game to an old-school videogame player, I would consider it a top-down perspective of GoldenEye on the Nintendo 64, but with a team of four instead of a single character.
With the new version of Dungeons and Dragons (4th Edition) revealed last year, there has been the expected line of products released by Wizards of the Coast to supplement the game. Some are targeted at all players, while others are primarily for Dungeon Masters (the folks who put together and referee the game every session). Here’s a quick rundown of supplements released over the past year with a few comments to fill you in on what’s included and who might benefit from them. If you just want the best of the best, feel free to read my previous article going into detail on my favorites for the year: D&D Insider Character Builder, the Players Handbook 2, Dungeon Delve, and the Monster Manual 2.
The newest incarnation of the Dungeons and Dragons role playing game (4th edition) has been out for just over a year. Reviews were fairly mixed at first, but most of the furor of over changes to the game have died down. Die hard fans of the old system (3.5 edition) have moved on to keep their holy flame lit in support of their familiar system, but most players have moved on and begun to embrace the new version. Wizards of the Coast has succeeded in their attempt to overhaul the game by making it easier to learn, quicker to play, and better balanced for character options. My initial reservation to the new system was a concern over the lack of variety in player characters. One fighter-type was pretty much like another and there was very little room to customize to make a unique character. Fortunately, material published throughout the year has done much to improve the situation. Follow along with me and I’ll give you a virtual tour of a year of releases, giving you the skinny on what books are best, and which ones you might as well avoid. Today we’ll look at my top picks of the year, and tomorrow we’ll briefly hit every major release of the year.
Just this morning, the most prestigious boardgame award of the year was awarded to the card game Dominion. The award is the Spiel des Jahres (German for game of the year) and nominees are announced each May with the actual award presented every year at this time. In Germany, boardgames are a common gathering point for families and friends and games recognized with the Spiel des Jahres (SdJ for short) are known for their uniqueness, fun, and appropriateness for families to play together. Winning the award virtually guarantees huge sales in Germany for the base game and then future expansions are almost always added on to take advantage of the increased interest. This year’s winner, Dominion, is easily my favorite game of the past year and I’m glad to see it win the award. Congratulations to the designer, Donald X. Vaccarino and publisher, Rio Grand Games. Both are from the United States, so that bodes well for the domestic boardgame industry. Clearly the German judges like the game, but how does it play?
In the past few weeks there have been several new sport related titles on the Wii, several of which tout new, improved controls through the use of the MotionPlus peripheral which plugs into the base of the Wiimote. In honor of Father’s Day, I thought take a look at some of these new sports titles to see how they measure up. Of course, since it is all about the competition, we’ll have to have the new titles go up against old, established ones in a head to head match for dominance on the Wii system.
I’ve been spending some quality time with my new DSi lately playing through games of a favorite genre, the role playing game. However, that genre is quite broad and can often be placed into two camps, what I call old-school RPGs (as could be found in the 80s and 90s on computers) and ones commonly found on modern console systems often made in Japan, sometimes abbreviated jRPGs. While playing through The Dark Spire and Super Robot Taisen OG Saga: Endless Frontier . Even the length of the names gives you a clue as to which is which. The Dark Spire is an homage to old-school RPGs while Super Robot Taisen is through and through jRPG. Both games have their advantages and disadvantages, but I more often found myself drawn to The Dark Spire.
