Honestly, even though video games are the more popular (probably because a lot of them can be played alone) for threads like this, tabletop games are just as valid. I would play more if I had people to hang out with. 
9 Likes
I think that in decently sized cities, board game meetups are a thingā¦ I go to a biweekly (bimonthly?) meetup and get my boardgame fix at a local boardgame cafe. Itās great! Get to play all those 8-10 player social deduction games my small circle of friends canāt account for, like Resistance: Avalon and Secret Hitler. Also get to try new games out since it is a board game cafe with a selection of games that would be unreasonably expensive for me to obtain. The only thing boardgame meetups isnāt good for is for playing some of the longer, deeper gamesā¦ I wouldnāt try and play the Game of Thrones boardgame or Twilight Imperium at a meetup.
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I thought MGSV was perhaps the best in the series (mechanically at least). Yeah the story is ridiculous and incomplete, and the less said about Quietās outfit the better (even though her storyline was great). It was just so damn good. In some twisted ways the futility of the end-game kind of further drives home some of the gameās themes. Once you peel into the layers thereās just so much to like and such insane attention to detail sprinkled throughout. Even after playing it for nearly 200 hours I was still finding and discovering new things and tricks. (Did you know you can Fulton yourself?)
Plus thereās something to be said for flying into a war zone blasting Gloria and launching rockets at everybody.
ETA if you enjoyed MGSV I highly recommend both Ground Zeros if you can get it for cheap. Itās often on sale. MGSV happens immediately after GZ and it fills out some of the plot details. I also recommend Peace Walker (PS3/Xbox 360/Vita only unfortunately). Itās very much like MGSV and as a bonus also has Fulton extractions and base management as a mechanic. PW is very much a proto-MGSV.
4 Likes
I thought The Turing Test was a great little game. Had a Portal vibe and some neat gameplay. Definitely far too short though.
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I saw an article about the release of Bridge Constructor: Portal and picked it up on Steam. So far Iām playing through regular Bridge Constructor and itās a lot more challenging than Iād have expected. I work for an engineering software company but Iām not an engineerā¦
Since most of the challenge comes from severely limited budgets, my spouse calls it as āThe Red State Civil Engineering Game.ā
7 Likes
Played through Exit: The Game - The Abandoned Cabin today. I saw this one in an Ars Technica story about the best board games. The game is essentially a board game translation (though without an actual board) of āescape roomā puzzles, with a sort of choose-your-own-adventure mechanic of solving puzzles and advancing through the game that is facilitated by a decoder wheel and several sets of ordered cards.
As weāve established, I tend to like puzzlers - I havenāt played any escape-room-type games before, but Iām aware of them and Iāve dabbled with a few ARG-style games. The person I played with is a bit less into puzzles than I am, but isnāt bad at themā¦ mostly just lacks experience.
This ended up being a very interesting game. We barely squeaked by completing it under the 2-hour time window and ended up using a couple of clues, so our āscoreā was 5 stars out of 10ā¦ considering that itās our first experience with that kind of thing, Iāll take it. I may have leapt to the solution a few times more than my partner, but we both had several āeurekaā moments so It didnāt feel one-sided. The puzzles varied quite a bit - they are all built around discovering a 3-digit combination, but the methods of getting that combination were quite different from puzzle to puzzle and the difficulty ramped up pretty smoothly as we went further along the path.
The high side: for under $15 for two hours of cooperative fun, itās way cheaper than a movie. Thereās also not a solid built-in win/loss condition - you can get a score based on the amount of time you took and the number of hints used, but any completion is still a āwinā.
The low side: the puzzles are, of course, entirely static, so there isnāt any replay value. There are several different āadventureā versions available to buy, but each one is actually designed for a one-time use: the fastest solution sometimes involves damaging parts of the game. We were very gentle on it and ended up keeping it in almost pristine condition, but doing that probably slowed our final time down a little bit.
Overall, Iād definitely say this was worth the cost for two hours of fun and a mental workout, and if itās kept in decent enough condition to pass on to someone else then thatās a nice bonus.
6 Likes
We played this for the first time on Christmas Eve and it was pretty fun. Sort of between Magic: The Gathering if every card was blue, and Munchkin ā itās all about changing the rules and screwing over everyone else.
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I feel Iām about to slip into Town of Salem, again.
Itās basically Mafia with microtransactions and ads. Add to the mix idiot teens with offensive usernames, townies who canāt even logic, and random mob lynching, and itās somehow enjoyable. If you can get into a lobby with a āthemeā, the camraderie and backstabbing is totally worth it.
(For sheer lunacy, try an Any/All mode)
If youāre looking for a good secret role game you can play in a browser, try Kraplow:
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I absolutely adored the original Life is Strange so I was pretty jazzed to hear that the series was being revisited with not one, but two new games in the series. The first title which was announced was, of all things, a prequel to Life is Strange called Before the Storm.
As a fan of LIS I was pretty worried about this title when it was in development ā it wasnāt being done by the original developer, the original VA for the principal character was changed (because of the VA strike), it had none of the supernatural elements of the original, and of course, it was a prequel to a seemingly well trod story.
Iām pleased to report that while not as good as LIS, it was still a worthy title in the series and pretty damn good as a whole.
Despite it being a prequel (and you ultimately knowing where the characters end up) it still manages to do a great job telling a compelling story. Rather than focusing on the events that lead into LIS (any foreshadowing is pretty oblique and subtle) it focuses on the relationship between the two characters and their very intense relationship. You could actually play through BTS without spoiling anything in LIS if you played them in chronological order.
It didnāt suffer too much from prequel-itis ā characters that would be in the later series are introduced in a way that makes sense and not just for fan service or because they had to be there. As usual, thereās tons of easter eggs and little details for nerds like me to obsess over.
I took my time and really explored everything the game had to offer, so my total playtime was around 9 hours for all three chapters but it can be completed in around 3-4 hours if you rush through everything.
Thereās a bonus āprequel to the prequelā episode coming out in the next couple of months that Iām eagerly awaiting. Then thereās the LIS2 sequel coming out sometime in the indeterminate future (hoping for more news at this yearās E3).
I just canāt get enough of LIS.
6 Likes
Iām still playing Temple Run 2. Iāve unlocked all coin-cost characters, four alternate outfits, and the second map, Frozen Shadows. Yay me!
Butā¦ Iāve noticed I have an older version of the game (1.35.) The current version is 1.43.1. For some unknown reason, the Amazon Appstore (I play on my Kindle) hasnāt pushed out the update. I downloaded the new versionās APK. The question is: can I install the new APK without losing my progress?
Iāve noticed the game saves at least one file every session (gamedata.txt), and I can make a backup copy of the file pretty easily. As far as I can tell, itās the only save file generated. So should I dare upgrade? Because I do NOT want to start again from square one. 
4 Likes
Can you install the newer version as a seperate app see if it plays nice before you get rid of the old one or will it just overwrite it?
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Iām not sure. I donāt know that much about Android. But I think it will overwrite the old one. Iām going to call Customer Service again today and see what they say, but the person I got yesterday wasnāt sure how to do it. She gave me the number to the Appstore people. They might know.
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If only life itself had save game files. Then you can save your progress now, try the APK, and if it erases your game progress, then you can just say ānever mindā and just reload your life to its earlier state and restore everything to how it used to be.
This might work well for blind dates as well. Man, one could make a fortuneā¦!
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Thinking about it, if you can back up your save fileā¦then shouldnāt you be able to install from the APK, and if it doesnāt work, uninstall and then reinstall from the Amazon store? Youād be back to where you began?
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No, there isnāt. It looks like changes were made on the fourth map/stage, and Iām still on the second. So Iām holding off for now. I did email the game company with my question, just to see what happens.
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I had seen how great the reviews were for Life Is Strange, but it didnāt sound like the type of game that I normally enjoy. Then it popped up on the new yearās sale and for some reason I decided that I just had to have it. Starting to get into it, looks like thereās a good story forming. 
3 Likes
Started playing L.A. Noire yesterday, after finishing a third run of Dishonored 2. Been on the backlog for 5 or 6 years, so better late than never.
Itās pretty good - similarities to the (later) criminal investigations in Assassinās Creed Unity but far better done.
My only real issues are every time it boots up, I remember āoh yeah - Team Bondi was that studio that was apparently really shitty to work in, even when measured against other game studiosā, and also damn, it makes the fans in my PS3 work overtime. Great thing to have happen in a heatwave 
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Check out this article. Not only were the dialogue options mislabeled from the start, but thereās no real great way to relabel them to fix the issue (though I think that Coax, Force, Lie makes more sense than Truth, Doubt, Lie).
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Thatās really cool.
One thing Iām digging about this game is Iām often wrong with the dialogue options and I donāt care**. It makes it feel more real, rather than a game where you go from find evidence > convict person.
It may not be the intention, but being able to make mistakes, miss evidence, say the wrong thing etc and still have things progress for good or ill is refreshing.
**and the way I play games, I should care 
5 Likes
Played through Bridge Constructor: Portal just recently. Nice physics puzzler, and gets some of that Portal flavor that Valveās been letting stagnate. The difficulty progression is mostly smooth, though there were a few stumpers that were followed by far easier levels.
Currently playing the original Bridge Constructor and, wellā¦ I really liked the interface and motion of the Portal version better. I keep accidentally deleting portions of the bridges when Iām just trying to cancel out of a tool Iām using. The difficulty also seems much more uneven, with some early levels requiring a completely different approach from the level before them. The music and sound effects arenāt great, either. Still a decent puzzler, but it feels much less polished.
Oddly, I could have sworn Iād briefly played a āBridge Constructorā some time ago that was much more like the Portal version. Not sure what game I might be thinking of there.
2 Likes