GameWonk's Guide to Love and Games

3:11:40 PM EDT
Feeling Frustrated
Hearing The Dead Kennedys

I wrote this before my E3 to Die update but I figured that it might show readers that I had thought about the whole situation before simple delaring that E3 was dead.

Going to the yearly E3 is like a birthday for many in the gaming industry. Some love it, some hate it. In the end, you form new bonds with new and old friends and if you’re lucky, you walk away with some level of loot. But E3’s origins were seeded back when a then-young industry needed a stronger voice in the entertainment sphere, Nowadays, my mom knows the difference between a Nintendo DS and an Xbox 360 so the original mission was accomplished.

This year’s E3 2006 felt different though. First, EA had a smaller booth and assumedly the biggest publisher and developer (and my former employer) would never want to give up any floor real estate (especially – gasp - Nokia). Second, there just wasn’t enough time to actually see all the great games. Three hour or more lines to just look at the Nintendo Wii and another 45 minutes on top of that to play one of the A level games was far too excessive and during the show I wondered, “who are these industry people who I’ve never seen waiting for that long at an industry-only show?” Third, publishers over the past few years have created press days as a way for game writers to get more face time with the game’s developers, ask questions without headphones and open up time to replay games that believe require more time to discover. From all perspectives, this gets better coverage for those games and allows more time for journalists to ask more questions. Why compete with E3's 30-45 minute interviews between two massive banks of speakers?

Financially, if you can imagine the cost in developing a special version of a game that’s only 75% done, is expensive. Flying your big marketing staff and executive teams to Los Angeles for Four Seasons-style living ain’t cheap either.

Hence, a gastro bypass was greatly needed to circumvent the gluttonous expenditure to get journalists hyped about a particular game. And any professional journalist would never change a game rating based on the fact that they got to meet a supermodel, they rate the game and not a set of breasts.

My wishes for the thinner E3 are simple.
1) Keep it industry only. There are too many loopholes that allow too many non-gaming industry types into the event. Cut them off and stop wasting developers' time talking to some Halo fan for 45 minutes just because he loves the game.
2) Forget LA. Personally, I’m not a fan of the high cost cabs and traffic of the movie hub. Most fun expos move around from city to city and that allows journalists and staff explore the country a little more (and often allows marketing types to better understand the local vernacular). Sure, many industry types hated Atlanta as an E3 location but most journalists loved going somewhere different. Local events could be hosted by local developers to allow them a venue to show off their city. NYC, Seattle, Boston, Los Angeles, Orlando, Austin, and Chicago all have great differences, so why not shift it around?
3) Gameplay-only keynotes. If you can only show a pre-rendered movie to a group of professional game journalists, you should stay home and slap yourselves. Remember when you first saw Halo at Macworld and saw it being played, we should get that kind of wow factor.
4) Minimize the numbers BS. Two years ago, I went to the PS3 announcement where participants were tortured with an insane amount of crap demos of silly ducks and every one of the chip’s developers talking about the power of the PS3 and their part in that power. It was about two hours too long and the people I was sitting with were falling asleep. In the future, stick to what the audience wants. If you’re at a Chip Conferences, give them details; please spare us all the “I need a special calculator” mumbo jumbo and show us more game footage. Take notes from Nintendo. 
5) The Little Guy (or The Kentia Clan). Everyone makes fun of Kentia, the hall where all the really small developers and publishers attempted to get journalists to discover their products. Sure, they did have some cute women from Scandinavia and all over Asia but most fail to remember that Kentia was once what E3 was all about. Hopefully the post-bypass E3 will allow the little guy to have an equal or at least a stronger voice to talk about their efforts.

Well there you have it. Of course, I will miss my adventures watching bands like Incubis, Third Eye Blind and others, meeting more super models than I normally bump into, trying to figure out why games look 10x better on monitors at E3 than anywhere else and seeing friends as they’ve gotten chubby, then skinny, then often blond and then often, with less hair on their climb from lowly gaming slugs to executive and director positions at major gaming companies.

Written by gamewonk Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 0 comments: Add your own

5:36:56 PM EDT
Feeling Frustrated
Hearing Orbital Grooves Radio

Over the weekend a clerk at the video game section at Toys R Us claimed to be writer but he had never met a game journalist or anyone who had been to LA for the once annual leap to audio and visual insanity, known as E3. He asked one simple question, “What do you think will happen to E3?”

And it hit me. EA, Activision. SCEA (Sony), Microsoft and Nintendo all have summer press events that help them to show off their product to journalists so they can evaluate, play and work on getting answers from real people and not email replies. So why would any of them want to participate in having their teams create another version of a game for a show that didn't really give them an advantage. Would you as a business manager who already had a relationship with the press, sign checks for both a company campus event where journalist only played YOUR products and another show a short time later where they get to play THE COMPETITION'S products? The answer is obvious; each of the big developers will back out of E3 eventually because there is no longer a reason to have an E3. Sony parties will still exist but there will only be a few hundred people, not thousands. Microsoft will still invite people to <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Seattle to look at their games. Sure, it is still sad but it's cheaper to do your own show when you're big like EA or Sony. 

What happens to E3? Well, E3 may give better representation to smaller developer and publishes like CDV and that's a good thing. But it will be interesting to see if the press comes since they too make their money by reporting the big games and without big games at E3... E3 will die a quick death. <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Written by gamewonk Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 0 comments: Add your own

4:23:49 PM EDT
Feeling Loopy
Hearing The Decemberists

Choosing a game a few years ago was a process of selecting your console or PC and buying the game. If you were a PC-centric type with the latest video card, you'd opt for the PC version. If you were the console type, you'd get the the version for your newest console. Several years ago, there were severe quality issues if the game was created primarily for the console or for the PC. Many of these games were "ported," a term that means the developer decided to recraft portions of their PC game to the console. As you may have experienced yourself, designs for PC games are either distinctly PC-centric with lots of keyboard buttons or a faster less multi-button style game with a console. Something always suffers.

PS2 and Xbox games helped gaming ports since game engines are often now created with a focus on multiple systems. It's cheaper to develop and if you create a butt-kicking engine like the Unreal Engine or Criterion's RenderWare, others give you stacks of money to make their lives cheaper by not having to develop their own engines. The Xbox 360 also helps as much of the DirectX code that allows high-definition games to display on PCs is the same on the 360. Porting games to PS3 may be a big more costly and difficult since Sony had taken the lazy route with PS2 in that developers had to develop their own tools to create beautiful games.

Recently, I had to upgrade my ailing little Soltek Qbic (P4 2.8) with a new ATI X1300 AGP video card so I could enjoy my journey to finish Half-Life 2 (nearly 60% through). Despite only having a 250W power supply and the card recommends at least 300W, it actually runs quite well. Anyways, I checked out the recent Prey demo and I have to admit that I really like it. While you can't get a more original storyline about a reluctant Native American hero-type during an alien invasion, it plays well. The graphics are top notch and walking on the walls via metallic walkways brings a very interesting perspective to first person shooters. With all the recent controversy about the organic alien doorways resembling female genitalia, (at first I didn't notice -- I must be married) guys looking for games that feature female genitalia will be hard press to not find a game that they can delve into, enjoy and replay.

So when an X360 copy showed up here in the office, I took it for a spin. While the game is exactly the same on both platforms (although I think the graphics look slightly better on my work PC's NVIDIA Quadro FX1400), the Xbox 360 version just seemed to lack something. On one level, there's a fisheye lens perspective that's much more pronounced on the X360 version and the filter feels like it removes the player from really interacting with the game. I really want to like it but I'm not sure what it is.

After debating this for a couple of days I think that it may have to do with a cultural bias on my part. The only other console FPS games I own are Halo and Halo 2. Newer gamers probably have the reverse opinion... and that makes me feel really freakin' old. Given the fact that I interviewed the designer of the originally Prey game back at 3D Realms' glory days, it's probably well-deserved.

Written by gamewonk Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 0 comments: Add your own

11:58:36 AM EDT
Feeling Hopeful
Hearing Carla Bruni

I've always been a PC geek. I've had an IBM XT, a horrible Leading Edge microchannel PC, a NEC 286/sx, a Gateway 486 (when Gateway was kinda cool), a Mac iBook G3 and so many PCs that I cobbled together that I'm still in debt over it. Why? Because I always needed the fastest and the fastest hardware always seemed to be the PC and Windows. But over the last year, I've been questioning my faith in Windows and how I've been interpreting the results that occur when that faith is tempted.

 

Windows machines are kinda like Fords or Harleys. They get the job done, they often look good but they require more love to keep running in tip top performance (or often, running at all.) But all the good games hit Windows first so as a gamer, I've needed a Windows PC. Since I was always playing on the PC and my wife wanted to check email at the same time, I got her an iBook after she played around with one at Frys. She loves it. I've crashed it twice and recently it blew out a motherboard (or logic board as Apple called it) that recently cost me $300 but it's been so trouble-free with 4 years of daily use that I started to secretly wish for a Mac that could run my Windows games.

 

For all the time that I've had to spend getting new drivers, reinstalling different drivers because a current game works best with the old drivers, and worked on getting the last anti-spyware/anti-virus/anti-wireless hacking software on a yearly basis, I started thinking... I'd rather just waste that time playing games.

 

So last week's announcement that new Macs can run Windows with Apple's Boot Camp beta download got me drooling like a Pavlovian puppy at a BBQ. After playing around with my wife's iBook, I would probably do almost all my day to day functions in OS X. Granted, I still have Photoshop CS and Microsoft Office for Windows, but email and Web stuff is just stupidly easy on OS X and without the fear that some program will install something that will mess up my machine.

 

My current Soltek mini PC with a P4 2.8 MHz and an ailing ATI Radeon 9700 Pro (AGP) is getting a little old, noisy and in desperate need of an upgrade. But Apple's costs are super high for what you get. The iMac Mini has an embedded video chip (crap) and runs a slower hard drive. The iMac 17-inch screen has an ATI X1400 video card with 128 MB GDDR3 RAM and the option for a 500 GB drive is a whopping $375! Add in 1 GB of RAM and the system rings up for $1774. Now the 20 inch screen looks better (bigger too) but with 1 GB RAM and 500 GB drive (strangely only $300) and an option for 256 MB added to the X1600 (+$75) comes in at $2174.

 

Heading over to Newegg.com, I can find a Acer 20 inch monitor for $500. A 500 GB Western Digital Serial ATA drive runs for roughly $285 and an X1600 with 256 MB for $124. Ok, that brings my bill to about $909. Add in an Intel Core Duo chip at 2 GHz for $414.00 and a 1GB SO-DIMM stick of memory for about $100 and that adds up to about $1423. So there's a difference of $751 for case, OS ($129), DVD-RW ($50-ish) drive, keyboard/mouse ($60-ish), motherboard/power supply and a built-in camera ($20?)... still expensive. But I find myself wanting a little more. If Apple knew that they were going to do a dual boot, why not come up with a gamer's case in black and have a special edition X1900 or X1800 in it?

 

Even after going down all that logic, I'm still tempted. I'd get a sexy case with an OS that I don't need to upgrade each year for anti-virus software but a dual boot option so I could still play games. I'd still like gamer's editions of the iMac or an iMac mini with a real video chip in it but I'm probably asking too much. In hindsight, gamers do pay a premium for the hottest machines so the higher cost shouldn't be too prohibitive as long as it runs games well. Check out an Alienware machine and try to call them cheap.

 

In the meantime, I'm sitting back to see what others are playing and what troubles they're having before buying my first Mac desktop and cleaning the years of cables, video cards, power supplies, cases, mice and other PC-related errata that I've been stockpiling for years. Spring cleaning may be coming soon.

Written by gamewonk Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 0 comments: Add your own

1:47:15 PM EDT
Feeling Silly
Hearing Gorillaz

First person shooters are a staple in any gaming diet. I remember when "Wolfenstein' was first released on a local BBS that I frequented and as many gamers remember, that was one of the biggest events in PC history... even through Ultima Underground had a small FPS screen in their interface, Wolfenstein presented full-screen goodness.

I played Unreal, Quake, Doom, Half-Life, SiN, Tribes and all the other ones but the thread was a common one, FPS just worked better on PCs. Consoles just didn't have the power or control that one could muster on their trusty PCs. Halo presented one of the first and best FPS games on consoles that brought a better level of control and with Xbox Live, it brought millions of potential players to the mix. Halo 2 arrived and it was good... but there was always a part of me that wanted more realism and a way to help me prefect my horrible jeep driving skills.

In short, I was a snob.

Until a few weeks ago, I took the Xbox 360 home to see if Ubisoft's Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter looked and played well enough to live up to the hype. First and foremost, the game looks unspeakably beautiful. Rich textures on the ground, buildings and even the movements of the enemy look beautiful -- even when they're trying to cap you. Being the manual-less gamer that I am, I never even opened it, assuming that I could learn by doing. After 60 seconds I died, a good shot from below as I walked down a stairwell and poked my head up. Next, I got capped at 65 seconds just below my first death, a stupid move where I figured out how to crouch and then did an immediate jump up. Bam. Frustration set in. I went to the far right of where I started to try to flank in from the lower right and take out the enemies from behind. Capped around 2 minutes after 3 enemies heard me running. Tried to crouch on the stairs and take out enemy with over the railing shots. Nailed like 6 of them and then heard a tank come up from behind me with more enemies. Then they nailed me. Damn, Advanced Warfighter is mind-numbingly hard and frustrating but gamers know many levels of frustration. First, the frustration gamers experience is through poor game design where a few pixels that seem to be solid somehow allow for any shot to kill you. The higher level of frustration is skill-based. It frustrates the player because the game has great AI, variable ways to finish the level and it challenges the player to better their techniques. Advanced Warfighter isthe latter. After staying alive for 7:10 in my longest sessions of my 60 minutes of playing, I went to bed. While I only have an old Xbox at home and the version of Advanced Warfighter for Xbox isn't as well rated as the X360 version... I can't wait for my next 360 session.

Written by gamewonk Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 0 comments: Add your own

10:27:21 AM EDT
Feeling Happy
Hearing Badly Drawn Boy

A few months ago, Big Huge Games (BHG) invited me up to their Timonium, Maryland based building to meet with the team behind the upcoming Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends and gain a little experience with the game to make sure my RTS skills could get some polish.

Being a hardcore Alpha Centauri fan (the key staff at BHG were from Alpha Centauri's developer, Firaxis) I was pumped because I finally had the chance to meet the game's designer Brian Reynolds and discovered we both share an unnatural obsession with fine tea. My old gaming buddies Jason Ocampo and Andrew Park from GameSpot were there as were IGN's Steve Butts and GameSpy's Allen "Delsyn" Rouch. We talked about everything from Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica and how each of our gaming-connected interests show up in subtle ways in the upcoming Rise of Legends.

First and foremost, I was already watching Rise of Legends after getting a few minutes to check it out at E3 2005. I played Rise of Nations quite a bit since it was the first major attempt to merge RTS (real-time strategy) and TBS (turn-based strategy) genres into one game. It was amazingly well done and while at first I felt the balance between the two was slightly off, after repeated plays, I began to understand the reasons for BHG's balancing.

Rise of Legends does offer more of the same develop your tech tree, build new advancements, and try to squash the opponent's army but adds tons of new components to make fans of both genres happy.

At the end of a game, you're presented with a screen that gives you multiple opens to determine why you won... or why you lost. After running through a match with Allen (who slaughtered me), I could actually go back and learn what I did wrong. The game also feels like a definitely slaughter is always that eminent. In one match, I thought I had Delsyn on the ropes and he then built a bunch of cities behind the scenes that helped grow his wealth... so much so, my troops got a surprise.

Since the demo of Rise of Legends arrived on AOL Games, I've played a few times on my shiny new non-AOL standard PC and as I play, the game still offers new methods for developing creative strategies along with an amazing game engine that allow you to see lots more of the detail. The only one item I want in the game is a series of advisors (like in TBS games) that help to advise the player in what technologies to develop and where they'll lead. RTS people may get annoyed but they'd get over it once they used the advisors.

Apart from that, download the Rise of Legends demo and take it for a spin. Great graphics and the type of gameplay that sucks you in for hours can be risky but in the end, you'll feel that the time spent was well worth it.

10-4,

micheal

Written by gamewonk Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 1 comments: Show Recent | Add your own

4:42:32 PM EST
Feeling Chillin'
Hearing Texas "The Hush"

Way back when I was in elementary school, I became aware that boys didn't hit girls because they hated them. They actually liked them but probably couldn't begin to deal with the feelings they knew that perhaps someday, boys would give up the whole cooties thing and embrace the cooties that the fairer sex had to offer. Ah... Patricia de Rochemont, where are you now? Although she did kick me in the "kids" when I last saw her in 4th grade.

WTF does this have to do with gaming? Before I arrived at AOL, I worked at a really big huge gaming publisher and developer (actually the biggest if you had to ask) and while I was there, I was a devoted Xbox player who played all he could to appreciate the machine and get some replay value out of the $299 I paid for it. I finished 99% of Burnout 3: Takedown (still can't get more than one bus takedown or more than one tuktuk takedown per race.)

All the while, I told fellow gamers that the Nintendo GameCube has a mere cutie plastic square that looked like a Kleenex box without the tissues. Everyone knows that system is small, compact, and well, it is really kid focused. So a few weeks ago, I grabbed the group's Nintendo GameCube to take it home and try my hand at a little Mario Party 7, Metroid Prime and Super Monkey Ball. And after a few minutes of playing, I decided that I had to admit my fault and declare the GameCube as a really cheap and capable gaming machine. Sure, the games may not be as challenging as Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter but Metroid Prime brings me back to some of the core tenets of what it is to be a gamer. In short, you always seem to fall in love this the thing you hated, just before it dies. Such is life.

Rather than list out all the crap I like in Metroid, I'll present a few choice reasons why you should drop down $99 + 19.99 for a Cube and a copy of Metroid Prime.

1) Stupid easy. I grew up on Atari machines which presented ugly but fun gaming distractions that could suck entire days away from your life. While it did take me a few minutes to get used the controller, I never had to look at a manual. Right now, too many games add functions for just about everything in a game. Sure, I love a good technical game with lots of maps and accessories that popup and tell me I'm getting shot, who will be shooting me or who else is getting shot. Which gaming design genius decided to make FPS games so hard to just play? I just want to have fun.

2) Cheesy storyline. I love crappy sci-fi movies from Quartermass & the Pit to the old poorly dubbed Godzilla movies. I've watched really dumb movies from Sci-Fi Network by Bryan Singer and while I always feel like there's a roughly 100 minute space in time that I should have wasted in some other way, I always can't help but watch mutant crocs and new interpretations of the H.P. Lovecraftian mythos.

3) Subtle skill evolution. If I have to go into the first battle of a game and learn that they only way I'm going to see level two is that I have to read six maps, place waypoints on those maps, reload after every two bullets in my supposedly "high-tech" rifle, I'm done. Metroid does teach the player new tricks as they progress but that progression feels organic, like it would if you were actually in some sort of game level. Of course, Advanced Warfighter is a more technical game that has my praise and many cuss words to discribe my inability to live past 7:10 seconds and I need more o' that gaming love.

4) Replay replay replay. While everyone loves the idea of a 40+ hour storyline RPG game with lifelike graphics, who actually finishes them. Even teens have busy lifestyles and forty hours out of a week is like a whole job. Game makers do need to focus on their single player experiences but MUST ensure that those experiences can be replayed in some way so that while most players may not memorize thegame like a Zapruder film, they can say they loved the game because of the experiences and interactions they endured within the gaming environment.

4.2) You can play while drinking. Fire up this console after a Friday night on the town and you can still play sorta well. Or at least think you're doing well until you've discovered that you're overwritten your perfect game save with a far from perfect match.

So there you have it. Next up, I may have to sell my spleen to get my own Xbox 360 and a copy of Advanced Warfighter to call my own.

 

Written by gamewonk Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 3 comments: Show Recent | Add your own

6:10:37 PM EDT
Feeling Mischievous
Hearing Underworld

As gamers, we all have this long list of games we love and that list continually shifts as new games arrive or a developer really finds a way to break into new territory where others have only thought about.

My fairly solid list of game favs includes Vectorman (now available on GameTap, yippee), Dungeon Keeper, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, and Descent. But the one game that I consistantly proclaim as my all time favorite has to be Alpha Centauri because in many ways it was and still is perfection.

When it first arrived, I was not a fan. Simply because I once bought this really expensive Leading Edge computer from a really fat PC dealer who told me, if you like to play games you really have to play Civilization. Because he kinda smelled, I purchased Powermonger instead. The PC was a horrible machine that didn't readily proclaim that it wasn't compatible with almost every piece of PC hardware on the planet.

Ok, back to Alpha Centauri. So because of that fat smelly guy, I stayed away from anything "Sid Meier" or "Civilization." Then one day I was bored at work (I worked for a gaming site so you can sometimes actually discover games and get paid for it) and installed Alpha Centauri because we had a box of copies at work. It was addictive and after about an hour, I was hooked. Over the next week, I spent almost two complete days playing the game and at one point, played for almost 18 hours!

Since then I've tracked Sid and Brian Reynolds (Alpha Centauri's designer) through their trials and tribulations and watched how their unique styles show in their games. With Civ IV, Sid may not have a lot to do with the design but it does showcase how a few people who grew up in gaming after Civ are giving something back to the Civ legacy.

I started playing Civ IV at home two nights ago and while it does have a few tiny flaws like my inability to micromanage like I used to, the full game adds a lot of the depth and beauty that Civ III should have been. I'll write more about this later but wanted to sow the seeds for my unofficial review.

10-4

Written by gamewonk Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 0 comments: Add your own

5:55:16 PM EDT
Feeling Mischievous
Hearing Kraftwork

Old games that show their worth as fully intriguing experiences often stand up against the winds of time and are viewed as “gaming like it used to be” or “the games I once enjoyed.” Think Pong, think Frogger, and of course, think Spy Hunter. My memories surrounding each of those games comes with the time my sister “accidentally” jammed a pencil into my leg or the time my friend Jeremy was half-playing Spy Hunter and accidentally pulled the steaming hot cheese off his pizza… leaving a small red beard on his 11 year old face for a few days. Good memories.  

 With that said. Spooky Slots is not even in the same league as the legends mentioned above. I may actually be breaking laws in many states by writing about Spooky Slots in the same article as the legends. Spooky Slots is basically a simple slots-style game with Halloween styled reels, sounds, backgrounds and a bloody eye on the end of the pull lever.   Operation of the game is pretty straight forward. You drop money into the machine and pull the lever. Then you wait for images on the reels to line up on the “pay line.” If the images fit the payout criteria at the top of the page, you get money based on the payout. Put more money into the machine and you’d multiply your chances at winning more tokens. Of course, to steal away your tokens, the reels don’t often line up with the pay line. You’d figure that in the digital age, they would have figured out how to reward players instead of allowing players to lose tokens by incorporating annoying real-life features like this.

Did I mention that I’m not a slots fan?

Apart from the Halloween theme, Spooky Slots’s only other unique features include a small part of a spooky story and a few tokens as you gain bonus or unlock items like a magic wand that keeps the reels rolling until you get some serious tokens. They help to try and scare off the boredom but that’s about it. If the game were to be improved, Spooky Slots 2006 should have updated graphics, new and more detailed reels, and more interactivity.

Spooky Slots is really showing its age and I think that it’s time to walk Spooky Slots into the Cemetery of Games Gone By. Do you disagree or agree? Let’s fight it out on the boards.

Written by gamewonk Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 0 comments: Add your own

10:24:04 AM EDT
Feeling Surprised
Hearing Gorillaz Sometimes in a really rare case, someone reinvigorates a classic old gaming style with something new or something old to make it exponentially more addictive. This week, I sat down with Lottso! and found that even with a few minor flaws, the game offers lively head-to-head competition and robust single player challenges.


So Lottso! is a bit like Bingo and a bit like scratch cards. You start with 6 scratch cards of varying types that have empty spots labeled with numbers from 1 to 12. When you start the round, 6 balls drop onto a tray in the middle of the board. Then you must place those balls onto any of the labeled spots on the cards with the corresponding number.

Sometimes you’re not able to use all the balls. If you fill all the numbers on a card, you’re given quick number matching or just charity giveaways to fill your coffers with more money. To make it even more interesting, there are special star balls that you can fill any number with and special spaces labeled FREE where you can place any ball into. Each ball you place gives you 5 points. If you get rid of all the balls in the tray, you get 50 points.

The real fun in Lottso! comes from the unexpected. You don’t know which cards you’ll get when you clear a card, you’re not quite sure what numbers the other online players are looking for, and every time you play, you really need to modify your strategy in order to win.

How would I make it better? I would love to have the option of winning the round and adding a burn card to one of the other player’s boards (in many puzzle games, first place players can do something similar). The burn card is one of the fun unexpected cards that will destroy any card under it if you don’t clear the cards below it within 3 rounds.

If you’ve been hooked on Slingo and looking for a new pastime, Lottso! brings Slingo-like playability and hours of fun (and I do mean hours).

Tips:
- Wait as long as you can until you proclaim Lottso! (which is done by filling the card). I try to fill 5 of the 6 spaces as early as possible and leave 1 number open to make it easier to react.

- If you get a Lottso! card early and others are proclaiming Lottso! early, don’t feel obligated to complete the card. Each round adds another $100 to the starting value of $250. If you play your cards right, you can easily take the round.

- If you get into the final 2-3 rounds of the game and someone declares Lottso! (the card will shake) then fillthe card if you can. Or you could wait and see what fate brings.

- If you complete cards in the 10th round, make sure you complete those first. If the round ends, you won’t have a chance to reap the card’s rewards after the round. It hurts.


Written by gamewonk Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 0 comments: Add your own