Archive for Gaming

You Don’t Play TripleA for the AI

// May 28th, 2009 // No Comments » // Gaming

futurama_bender

I am a huge fan of the open source knock-off of the great game of Axis & Allies. I’m especially fond of the current “unstable” release that has the new 50th Anniversary rules as well as the ‘41 and ‘42 boards that go with them. I can probably say that I’ve played somewhere north of 50 games between the two AA50 boards and in about 80% of those games, I play all six players. You see, the AI in the game is absolutely absurd.

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Axis & Allies by TripleA

// April 27th, 2009 // 5 Comments » // Gaming

triplea-revised

Back in high school my friends and I were big into a number of strategy “board” games such as Risk, Red Storm Rising, Supremacy and our ultimate favorite, Axis & Allies. With the exception of Risk, the games were extremely complicated, required an obscene amount of table top space, and generally went on for hours. All of that being said, the games themselves were immensely satisfying from an intellectual perspective. While there was always an element of chance to the games, much of your success (or failure) was directly attributed to the manner in which you (or your opponents) played the game.
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Wii Wasteland

// March 7th, 2009 // 2 Comments » // Gaming

The Wii landscape is as barren as the world outside of a Fallout 3 vault. The selection of games that have been released over the past couple of weeks have demonstrated an utter lack of creativity that frankly has to be seen to be believed.
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Are you ready for some football?

// September 29th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Gaming

This past weekend I picked up Madden ‘09 for the Wii and while it can’t hold a candle (visually) to the PS3 and XBox360 versions it trumps both where it counts. I have to give credit to the guys and girls over at EA Sports, because they finally “get it”; the Wii is different. My biggest complaint with most of the Wii ports has been that they are often ‘half-baked’ attempts at paying lip-service to the console and its radically different control scheme. MLB 2k8 did a decent job with the controls on the Wii, but the interface didn’t degrade well from the HD goodness of the PS3 and X360 to the lower resolution Wii. Madden 09 on the other hand aces both.
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5 PC Classics I’d Like to See on the Wii

// September 11th, 2008 // No Comments » // Gaming

The Nintendo Wii was far from my first choice when it came to purchasing a new game console, but I just couldn’t reconcile a PS3 with my budget, two small girls, and library of GameCube games. The Wii was a natural choice. Now that I’ve had the Wii for nearly a year, I’m more than happy with the console and downright apoplectic with the crap that the development houses have been creating for it. For the longest time I flat out refused to play FPS or RTS games on a console because of the controls, the Wii has completely negated that concern. In fact, there are some games (or styles of games) that are just begging to be brought to the Wii.
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