I beat the single player portion of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 last night on the 360. There were a couple of thrilling moments, but for the most part it was pretty average… exactly what I would expect from a Call of Duty game. I don’t get excited about these heavily scripted games; half the time I felt that my actions really had little effect on what was happening. There was no real reason to take things easy or methodically; I knew that if I was going to get ambushed, it was going to happen no matter what I did.

I’m mainly interested in the Spec Ops mode, so hopefully that redeems it.

And why do these games think it’s so fun to have the AI throw grenades at you every 3 seconds?

It’s been over a month and I’ve posted nothing at all. The main reason for that is that I’ve been dealing with a lot of real life drama. I’ve not played much in the way of games, although Borderlands is pretty damn awesome.

Oh, and I did buy that Civ IV pack.

Anyway, I’m not dead.

I’ve been meaning to get Civ IV Complete, and I told myself I’d get it the next time it was on sale on Steam. Of course they put it on sale the day I pre-order Borderlands, and just a couple days after I bought a new plasma tv. I think I’ll wait it out…again.

I see that Borderlands is now available for pre-order on Steam. You save $5. I’m seriously considering it, but am still a bit unsure about the game. I wish they would release a demo ahead of the release.

I also noticed they are selling Joint Ops : Combined Arms GOLD, whatever the hell that is. Combined Arms came out a long time ago, and as far as I can tell, GOLD means nothing at all. I love that game, but come on, make a sequel!

Now that there are more and more confirmed cases of H1N1 coming out of PAX, that is. I’m still trying to figure out if I can make the Boston PAX in Spring. I’ve never been to Boston, but I’m guessing that it’s not the greatest weather at that point in time… although it’s possibly better than what I’d have here at home. It comes down to whether or not I want to spend the money. We’ll see.

I finished Batman: Arkham Asylum last night, and here’s what I thought about it. TLDR…. it’s great. Buy it.

Spelunky is a cool freeware indy game that you may or may not have heard of. It’s sort of a cross between Rogue, Mario, and Indy Jones. Version 1.0 just came out and is available here. I highly suggest you check it out, I’ve been playing the beta for some time and it is fantastic.

It’s also going to be on XBLA next year!

Wow, a game that actually inspired me to do a comic! I’m not overly far into Batman: Arkham Asylum yet, but I can already tell you that if you like Batman, or even just like games where you get to play a major bad-ass, you want to play this. I may put up a review of this one… I think I may actually finish it!

One thing I’ve noticed… they took a cue from Oblivion and hired 3 voice actors to play 30 characters. It would bother me more if one of them wasn’t Spike Spiegel from Cowboy Bebop, my favorite anime of all time.

I got back from Gencon today. It was a great time but I don’t know how people can do 4 days of that. I had the good pleasure to meet Kevin Wilson, the designer of Descent: Journeys in the Dark, and he told me about the upcoming campaign expansion, Sea of Blood. It’s essentially Road to Legend 2, but this time a significant portion of gameplay takes place on the open water. The heroes control a ship, and can upgrade it with cannons and other options. They hop from island to island, exploring dungeons as they go. Meanwhile, the overlord has 4 new avatars, and new plots (I don’t know how many).

There are no new miniatures, unfortunately. There are cardboard counters representing lieutenants, as with Road to Legend. There are also sharks, and if I have anything to say about it, those sharks will have beastmen riding them. I also saw that the dungeon deck contained 45 dungeons. UPDATE: According to the comments (and I have good reasons for trusting them), there are not necessarily 45 dungeons. It seems that the numbers continue where Road to Legend left off. Does this mean that this campaign does in fact interface with Road to Legend? I know that would make a lot of people very happy!

Here are the pictures I took of the prototype that they had on display. I believe this was a proof copy or something. I could not get a great shot of the back of the box, but I could see enough to verify the lack of miniatures. I know that is disappointing to a lot of people, myself included.

I also picked up the Descent Quest Compendium volume 1, which Kevin Wilson was kind enough to sign for me. I have yet to read through any quests, but they all seem unique in their own way, bringing many new mechanics into play. Many of them also seem quite long. If you are wondering how much use each expansion gets….I’ll tell you. There are 16 quests, but a couple involve multiple expansions. Here I’m listing them out on a per expansion basis, so the total here will exceed 16. UPDATE: Apparently the editing on the Compendium wasn’t overly strict; some of the quests don’t seem to require the expansions listed, so take these numbers with a grain of salt. I haven’t verified any specific claims. We just played the first quest last night, and the heroes got creamed. I expect the difficulty to be cranked pretty high on these quests.

• Base game only: 7 quests
• Tomb of Ice:  4 quests
• Well of Darkness: 4 quests
• Altar of Despair: 3 quests
• Road to Legend: 2 quests

To let you know about quests with multiple expansions in use:

• Well of Darkness + Altar of Despair: 1 quest
• All of them: 1 quest
  

  Sea of Blood banner

  Here’s a large banner they had set up near their play area.

  

  Sea of Blood Overland map

  Here you can see the overland map used in Sea of Blood, including its many islands. Kevin tells me this is from Runebound but I’ve not played that game. You can also see the overlord’s avatars.

  

  Sea of Blood components

  Here are the contents of the Sea of Blood expansion, including cards and part of the ship. Next to the ship you can see cannon tokens. Standing behind them are tuck boxes for the campaign.

  

  Sea of Blood Box cover

  The expansion was behind glass, so I apologize for the flash. Next to the box you can see the campaign guide. It looks just like the Road to Legend guide. Folded up you can also see the ocean map. On the other side of it is a large island map. I did not get to see that.

  

  Sea of Blood back of box

  Again, sorry for the flash. This was the best I could do on the back of the box, but I could verify that there are no miniatures.

  

  Descent Quest Compendium Volume 1

  Here’s the quest compendium, sitting on Tomb of Ice for scale reference.

  

  Quest Compendium Autograph

  The photo is blurry, but this is Kevin Wilson’s autograph on the inside cover. He wrote “Have fun storming the castle!” Thanks Kevin!

Thursday through Sunday is Gencon, a huge gaming convention. I’ve been pretty into boardgames lately, and since it’s only a state away, I’m going. I’ll only be there Friday and Saturday, but I think I should get to do plenty of things in that time. I really just want to see what it’s like. I don’t expect it to be as cool as PAX, but I just couldn’t justify spending the money to go to Seattle this year. I do hope to go back soon though.