Another Torment Ended

I finished up Torment: Tides of Numenera, and found it to be...pretty fun! I'm still not a huge fan of the Numenera setting, and the game's voluminous text was a lot to get through (even just skimming it!), but I greatly enjoyed Torment as an example of the Cypher System translated into video game format. Spending points from your pools, applying levels of Effort, getting a "discount" from your Edge -- all that stuff felt very true to the paper-and-pencil game. I would love to see another video game make use of the Cypher System at some point.

A Novel Approach to Video Games

Torment: Tides of Numenera is great at world-building and presenting unique, complex NPC characters. It does, however, share a drawback of its spiritual predecessor, Planescape: Torment, in that there's a lot of text to read. As with the prior game, I find myself skimming the dialogue until something triggers an update to the Journal, where I can get a more concise version of what's going on. It's still fun, but man, it's like reading a novel.

Boomshakalaka!

Cross one off the bucket list! I've always wanted to own a stand-up arcade cabinet, and now, thanks to the good folks at Arcade1Up, I've got one! NBA Jam was perhaps my all-time favorite '90s arcade game, so it was an easy choice. 

Matthew and Nathaniel were kind enough to assemble it for me, and now I've got them hooked as well!

All I Really Want...

Random Thursday thoughts! All I really want -- aside from some patience, a way to calm the angry voice, and maybe deliverance -- is MultiVersus, but as a miniatures game. The obvious answer is CMON's Mayhem system, but it doesn't offer the full range of WB characters. In fact, it pales in comparison to what Restoration Games is doing with their Unmatched series these days.

One Last View of Dragon View

After overcoming countless foes -- and one very nasty real-life game glitch -- I completed the Drakkhen sequel Dragon View today. Here's a photo of my character, Widsith, about to take on the final boss...

The game concludes with a lovely (and lengthy!) series of cutscenes showing what happens across the game world after the hero's victory. Spoiler alert! Don't look if you want to play through and be surprised by how the story turns out.

The defeated villain is redeemed, and the hero is proclaimed king of the realm!

Hail to the king, baby!

Next up, I'll be putting the world of Drakkhen aside and delving into a new Evercade cartridge dedicated to the "cinematic" games of Delphine Software International. I remember playing Delphine's Flashback on my Sega Genesis long ago and just being blown away by the story and the silky-smooth (rotoscoped!) animation.

Retro Fun

My new Evercade EXP is totally rad! I'm really digging the retro gaming fun, so much so that I can overlook the system's piss-poor battery life. (Seriously, it's that bad.) With some vacation time coming up next week, I picked up a smattering of cartridges, each of which is a collection of ten to twenty retro games. 

I bought one particular cartridge, I have to admit, solely for game Drakkhen. I have such vivid memories of playing this D&D-inspired fantasy RPG on my old Tandy 1000 SX back in middle school. The game was revolutionary for its time, and mind-bendingly difficult. I never finished it, and it aggravated me to no end, but I always had a healthy respect for this game. I'm delighted to be able to give it another go on the Evercade. I've already rolled up my party, and we're on our way!

Retail Therapy

Although I'm not a big video game guy, comparatively speaking, I've always been a fan of handheld systems -- most recently the PlayStation Portable (PSP), but going back to the GameBoy Advance SP and even the ahead-of-its-time Atari Lynx. 

I've had a hankering lately for portable game action, and today's "freemium" style of mobile device gaming just kind of annoys me, even when the games are D&D or Warhammer or DC or some other brand I would otherwise be interested in. As such, my hope was to find a high-quality, modern handheld platform that plays retro games. Given that work is just, well, ugh these days, I decided on a bit of retail therapy and ordered the Evercade XP. Super excited to revisit some classic games from my childhood!

Super Cars

The National Automobile Museum in Reno is one of my very favorite museums. The last time we took the boys there, they probably weren't old enough to appreciate it. 

As we toured the exhibits today, I treated my family to an impromptu retrospective on my beloved Elmira's many connections to automotive history, from the Philion quadricycle to American LaFrance fire engines to the Brothers Bodine. Here's a shot of their American LaFrance engine, manufacturing in good old Elmira, New York!

They also had one of the old Adam West-era Batmobiles on display, which Matthew was excited to see after getting into a lot of Batman video games lately. 

The reason for this post, however, is a connection to our Tales of the Ternion campaign. I nearly walked right past this beautiful Lincoln-Zephyr...

It then dawned on me that it was the favored vehicle of Ian "I'm missing a finger!" Silverstone, the British used-car salesman who has factored in numerous Front Porch campaigns set during the middle part of the twentieth century. The boys learned about Silverstone recently in our Tales superhero campaign as they've been working to unravel a decades-long conspiracy that links together all of my modern-setting campaigns.

Gold Box

Oh, come on, you magnificent bastards! Damn you for the countless hours you're about to take from me!

Worth the Wait

I've waited over six months for NHL '21 to come down in price so that I could justify purchasing it solely for the copy of NHL '94 that comes bundled with it. Matthew noticed the other day that NHL '21 was on sale for about twenty bucks, so I jumped on it. 

This old gem was worth the wait! From the graphics to the music to the sound effects, NHL '94 is just as I remember it from high school. Well, it's not exactly as I remember it, because it's a lot harder to play using the Xbox controllers. Once I get the hang of it, I can't wait to start a playoff and guide my team to the Cup!

Pop quiz: Why do these screenshots feature the New York Rangers and Vancouver Canucks?

NHL '94

I've always been more of a paper-and-pencil gamer than a video gamer. Keep your first-person shooters and your MMOs, and give me board games and roleplaying games any day of the week.

However, one of the few video games that has left an indelible mark upon my life is NHL '94 from EA Sports ("It's in the game!"). Every day after school, my good buddy Jason (the legendary Sir Roberts from the original Druid Cycle campaign) would come over and we'd load up '94 on the Sega Genesis. We played through countless postseasons, winning Cup after Cup. Although we were both die-hard Rangers fans, we kept coming back to the Maple Leafs. Those early '90s Toronto teams were a lot of fun. There was Doug Gilmour, Dave Andreychuk, Wendel Clark, Felix Potvin...and then, after the season, the MATS SUNDIN trade! Rocked our worlds. 

Now, EA Sports is bringing back NHL '94, and I can't wait to download it. I've posted a few times here about playing the last couple of EA Sports hockey games on our Xbox, and they're very good, but nothing can compare to the original! (Well, technically it wasn't the first game in that series, but it was the one that created a decades-long phenomenon!) I can't wait to share it with my boys!

Retro Fun

With the new Atari VCS coming in early 2020, I thought it might be fun to introduce the boys to the wonderful world of Atari gaming, so I picked up one of those cheapo mini-consoles that comes pre-loaded with Atari 2600 games. Nathaniel really digs the retro vibe, but I don't think Matthew can get past the forty-year-old graphics and sound. For my part, I've enjoyed revisiting old favorites like Adventure and Asteroids, hidden gems like Crystal Castles and Gravitar, and a few I'd never even heard of, like Secret Quest and Double Dunk. We'll definitely need to poke around online for the manuals, however, as it's not really obvious how to play some of these games; I mean, the original 2600 controllers had only one button, but the controller that came with our mini-console has nine!

Atari Art

I'm back in good old WNY for some time off, and it's been a bit of an artsy-fartsy visit thus far. I enjoyed seeing the Rembrandt, the two Monet pieces, and many other great works at Rochester's Memorial Art Gallery, and now I'm working my way through Art of Atari, a fascinating visual history of the pioneering video game company. I'd highly recommend it for any fellow Gen-Xers who grew up on the 2600!

BG3!

TAKE MY MONEY!!!!!

Old Timers' League

I've had a passion for nineteenth-century baseball since I was a kid. I have distinct memories of my twelve-year-old self trying to create a text-based baseball simulation game in BASIC, and then using it to replay the first recorded organized baseball game -- a dust-up between the New York Knickerbockers and the Nine York Nine from way back in 1845.

Fast-forward to today: The Strat-O-Matic Hall of Fame edition has given me the opportunity to explore the simulation of nineteenth-century baseball in a far more realistic fashion. You might have seen posts last fall about our Hall of Fame League, in which the boys and I divvied up the all-time greats into teams based on twenty-year time periods. We had some very memorable games, but Matthew and Nathaniel don't have quite the same zeal for baseball that I do, so it's been hard to get them back into Strat-O-Matic.

After reading another baseball history book while I was on a business trip in Seattle last week, I decided to create a new historical league that I can run all by myself. For this one, I'm using all Hall of Famers who debuted between 1871 (the beginning of Major League Baseball) and 1899. I have just enough players to create three full teams. I'll rank the players at each position and then conduct a draft with the hope of getting three relatively equal teams. Then we'll play ball!

Chronicles of Mystara

Remember those awesome D&D arcade games from the '90s? Neither do I, because they never made it to Horseheads, New York. I learned about them years later, after coin-gobbling arcade games had gone the way of Blockbuster Video. At long last, I have the opportunity to scratch that itch, thanks to our Xbox. Last night I downloaded Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara, which contains both arcade games from that series -- Tower of Doom (1993) and Shadow Over Mystara (1996). As old-timey side-scrolling games go, they're not half bad! I think the boys will enjoy joining me for some multiplayer action.

What the Halo?

The boys received quite a few games to go along with their new Xbox, but about 95% of their game time thus far has focused on an anthology of games from the Halo series. The whole Halo thing seems kinda like a 40k ripoff to this uninformed non-video-gamer, but the boys are really digging the first-person shooter stuff, especially the player-versus-player options. I'll circle back with them when they're ready to explore other titles; among the games in their stash is Warhammer 40000: Inquisitor - Martyr, which even Nathaniel hasn't spent much time checking out yet.

Merry Merry!

Hope you all have a great holiday season with your families! Here at our house, we'll have the most gaming-filled Christmas ever, as the boys are getting a long-overdue modern video game system (an Xbox One) along with a handful of games.

I'm still not a big-time video game fan, however, so I'm even more excited about some of the other gifts. They've got one of the Zombicide sequels coming, along with the highly acclaimed Betrayal at House on the Hill and an additional expansion box. Best of all, perhaps, is Forbidden Sky, the newest entry in the "Forbidden" series (following Forbidden Island and Forbidden Desert, which may be the two most frequently played board games in the Sutton household). The boys will also find their stockings stuffed with the new Space Marine Heroes line of individual randomized models for Warhammer 40k. Perhaps we'll paint them up as Blood Angels in honor of the upcoming 40k animated series, Angels of Death.

Christmas can't come soon enough!

Mash Up

It's been a while since we've had a Strat-O-Matic game with our Hall of Fame League -- the pendulum has swung back toward the sci-fi Shattered Realm campaign -- but I was thinking the other day about an amusing genre mash-up from many years ago. Back in the pixelated '90s, I had a primitive baseball video game that allowed you to create players, so one day, on a whim, I whipped up a team consisting of characters from the Druid Cycle setting. Now, that was a real fantasy baseball team! (Sorry.) 

Strongholds & Campsites

One of the best parts of Baldur's Gate II was the stronghold. At a certain point in the game, your main character would get the opportunity to obtain a permanent headquarters where the party could rest safely, stock away surplus magic items, and even resolve local issues that were going on in the area around the stronghold. The coolest stronghold of all was the one that fighters could get -- a massive castle, complete with a great hall, guards and servants, and plenty of secret passages and hidden chambers. (Side note: During my last play-through, about four years ago, my party lacked the magic items necessary to defeat a powerful golem, so we basically just locked him in one of the many castle bedrooms -- and there he remained for the rest of the campaign!) The castle stuff in Baldur's Gate II remains one of my all-time favorite bits from any video game I've ever played.

So, that brings us to Pathfinder: Kingmaker. This game has the same play style as Baldur's Gate and its ilk, but it seeks to take that castle experience and flesh it out so that it becomes an absolutely integral part of the game. You don't just end up with a stronghold -- you build and manage your own kingdom! Super awesome, right? I assume so, but I may never see it.

I'm stuck in the campsite.

Resting rivals the long load times for the most annoying problem with this game. Your characters consume rations when you rest (fine) and often you get attacked while resting (also fine), but
camping is so tedious and time-consuming that it seriously detracts from the experience of the game. You're sending out hunters, you're appointing a cook, you're camouflaging the tents, you're setting the shifts for your watch, you're sharpening your weapons....you get the idea. I have no doubt that some folks will find this added realism to be enjoyable -- I thought it was kind of cool the first time around -- but as I'm traipsing through dungeons and finding myself in need of rest to replenish hit points and spells, I just dread the whole process of resting. I think I need to give this game a rest.