I've been writing Drake's Flames for a couple years now, give or take a few months, ever since my gig at Knucklebones went away, which was a direct result of Knucklebones going away. For most of that time, I've updated three times a week, although every now and then, I only write two articles in a week. I took my wife on a New Orleans vacation, and updated twice from the hotel. I went to GenCon twice in that time, and still managed to squeeze out some stuff, despite being neck-deep in stank-ass gamer nerds and alcoholic binges.But now I'm doing...
Saturday, 26 June 2010
Wednesday, 23 June 2010
I've been a smoker for nearly twenty years. If I could go back in time and do things differently, I would pass on that first smoke, because ever since, I've enjoyed a number of benefits of smoking. Those benefits include, but are not limited to, coughing until my face turns red, panting like a fat guy on a treadmill every time I climb a flight of stairs, smelling like dirty sweat socks, and hocking up tarballs that look like they just floated in from the BP oil spill. But that damned nicotine is more addictive than heroin (or so I hear), and every...
Monday, 21 June 2010
Before I start reviewing the smokin' hot expansions for Okko, allow me to direct you to this review of the original game:This review of the original game.There, now you can go there and read about how fun it is to play Okko. So with that out of the way, now I can tell you how much better the game is when you add in the expansions.Now, one caveat is necessary up front - I don't have the first expansion. I have the second and third, and I'll be pestering...
Friday, 18 June 2010
You know what chaps my ass? Well, OK, lots of things, but specifically today, it's when games are funnier than I am. Not that I'm Richard Pryor, or anything, but when I read the rules for Galaxy Trucker, I was laughing my balls off the whole time. Literally - I had to have them surgically replaced. It hurt like hell, but I couldn't stop laughing.OK, it's not really THAT funny, but in all fairness, the only time I can't stop laughing is when I'm watching...
Wednesday, 16 June 2010
You know, we just don't see enough blatant disregard for cultural sensitivity. We get plenty of games with violence, but the various factions are so often completely fictional. It's not exactly insensitive to make fun of dwarves, unless by 'dwarf' you mean like that little dude from Austin Powers.So sometimes it's just really nice to open up a box of games and have so many ridiculously overstated stereotypes that it almost makes you pull your eyes...
Tuesday, 15 June 2010
I have a review already written for tonight. It's pretty good, too, with plenty of crude, base humor and some truly tasteless nods to cultural insensitivity. I actually had it ready to post last night, and then something happened.Wizards changed the HeroScape bases.OK, that's not the end of the world. Hell, it's not that big a deal on any level. But it pissed me off, and now instead of writing lewd jokes about people I don't know, I'm going to rant loudly about game publishers with their collective heads jammed up their collective assholes.For...
Friday, 11 June 2010
I get games from small publishers all the time. Usually, they have several things in common, such as:* The rules are somewhere between manageable and catastrophic failure. People have great ideas, but they don't have any idea how to put them on paper, and the rules for many small press games tend to resemble junior high term papers.* Components often suck. Small publishers have incredibly small print runs - like 500 copies (or less), and that means...
Wednesday, 9 June 2010
As far as I can tell, I'm pretty stupid. I can't figure percentages in my head, I don't have any idea what's in the new healthcare reform bill, and for the life of me, I don't know why I can't win at Zooloretto. It seems like such a simple game, but somehow, I always wind up building a zoo where most of my animals are hiding in the barn and all we sell is stale peanuts.The object of Zooloretto, in case you hadn't guessed yet, is to populate your...
Monday, 7 June 2010
Making games is a tricky business. I like to think of it like baking - take your bread out before it's done, and it's all gross and sticky in the middle. Put too many ingredients into your bread, and you can't even taste the good parts because you're too busy picking the orange rind and flax seeds out of the crust. Leave it in the oven too long, and you wind up with this blackened chunk of inedible charcoal.So if making games is like baking, then...
Wednesday, 2 June 2010
If I were to start thinking of cool stories for board games, I would probably start obvious, with some elves and orcs and big men with heavy swords. Then, since that particular idea has been beaten so far into the ground that it has popped up in China, I would move on to my personal favorite - animal people, ninja-turtle-style. And as a grown man with a little too much testosterone, I might also come up with a game where you look at a lot of naked...
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