Holiday Gift Guide: Games (of all types!)

Winter is the perfect time for gaming. It's cold and wet outside. You've got time off for the holidays. Friends and family are around. So get together and enjoy some games of all types! We've got some of the very best here in our Games gift guide. Check them all out, and share the love!


Mike: for the battling wizard in your life

Harry Potter: Battle of Hogwarts
USAOpoly

I had a chance to watch other people play this title at Gen Con this year and it immediately jumped to the top of my most wanted games.  One thing my family enjoys greatly is playing cooperative games.  It is easier for the kids to lose together and it is extremely satisfying to win a game together.  My kids (ages 9 and 6) just finished the fourth book so this game is timely for us. Having said that, I wanted to make sure that I didn't spoil anything for them playing this game.  One thing that is brilliant about this game, is that it is divided up into 7 games, with the cards from those games lining up with the corresponding book. This system also allows the players to decide on what difficulty level to choose.  Much like the books, the game starts off simple and then really ramps up after he who must not be named comes to power.  The game is a deck builder, and games 1-3 almost serve as a tutorial for those who may not be familiar with this style.  More experienced players will want to start at least in game 3, but the way the game is organized it is easy to revert to any previous game depending on who you are playing with.  The components for this game are phenomenal (my son mimics the motions on the spell casting cards) and this is a must buy game for the whole family.

brian: for the demon slayer in your life

Doom
Bethesda Softworks

Doom was my favorite game this year. There were plenty of opportunities for it to go wrong, but it succeeded magnificently in making a new game with respect for the original's legacy. This may be a new game with new mechanics but it's still fast paced action focused on movement and utter demon destruction. The gameplay loop of shooting and executing demons to get health promotes the kind of in-your-face action that was so prevalent in the first two games and has since been discarded by much of the FPS genre. There is no cover in Doom. You will not wait for your health to recharge. You will not pop and stop. You will kill demons. You will make them fear you. You're going to fight like hell.

Shana: for the nostalgic gamer in your life

The Oregon Trail Card Game
Pressman Toy

Okay, full disclosure, I don't actually own The Oregon Trail Card Game but a friend of mine received it for his secret santa and has been sharing how much he is loving it. Now I'm obsessed with getting it for myself and thought others might like to know about it as well. It is for 2-6 players and a full play through will take about 30-45 minutes, allowing for multiple attempts to blaze The Oregon Trail successfully in an evening. I adored this game in the computer lab of yesteryear, and I can't wait to enjoy it once again!

Joe: for the person in your life who wants to stab everything

Dishonored 2

Bethesda Softworks

I'll be upfront with this: I neither have played Dishonored 2 nor do I own a PS4. So, why recommend the game for this gift guide? Simply put, playing the original Dishonored earlier this year was one of the most sublime gaming experiences I have had in some time and finding out there was a sequel was almost enough to cause me to buy the next Playstation just to play Dishonored 2. The original is nearly perfect, offering multiple ways to achieve your objectives and I highly recommend you play that, too, but Dishonored offers so much promise and is so good that regardless of whether or not you choose to play the original, Dishonored 2 is an essential game. 

Mike: for the competitive stargazer in your life

Starfall

IDW/Pandasaurus Games

This game had quite a bit of buzz leading up to its release and I am happy to report that the early praise was well deserved.  The mechanics of Starfall are very simple and easy to learn, but the decision making process each turn will hurt your brain in a good way.  Players assume to role of astronomers who are competing over who can identify the most elaborate formations in the night sky.  On your turn you have three options.  You can either add a new sky tile to the board (if there is room), bump the price of a sky tile down, or purchase a sky tile to add to your collection.  You earn various multipliers depending on what is on your sky tile, so it becomes a difficult choice in terms of when to buy.  Players have a fixed amount of money in which to spend and once it is gone it is gone. One of the players who I played with at a launch event described the game as "elegant" and I couldn't agree more.  Easily one of the more mechanically sound games I have ever played and one that is sure to spend a lot of time at the table at my house.

brian: for the adult you want to introduce to games in your life

INSIDE

Playdead

If Doom is the game you get for adults who used to play action-y video games, INSIDE is the game you get for adults who've never played video games. INSIDE's simple controls allow the player to pay attention to the beautifully crafted game world. It's a grim game, but it's impossible to put down once you've started. INSIDE makes one of the best cases for games as art. It tells a story without uttering a single word, and does so in a way that wouldn't have worked as well as a simple movie. What makes it work is that you're a part of it. It's a short experience, but it's powerful and grim and should be played by everyone.

***

POSTED BY: brian, sci-fi/fantasy/video game dork and contributor since 2014

Microreview [video game]: Doom by id Software

Hella Good

It's a little funny that this is the fourth canonical Doom game, yet the second to bear the simple name of Doom. Doom has been in the works as far back as 2008, though it reportedly was scrapped at least once and remade from scratch. Id also lost one of its principal founders, John Carmack, during Doom's development, along with several other key team members. Another warning sign was that there was a poorly received multiplayer beta, and review copies of the game were not made available until the release date. These types of circumstances often lead to Duke Nukem Forever levels of bad video game, so I was absolutely skeptical of Doom. My skepticism was for nothing. Doom is fantastic.

Mars and Hell look pretty good.

Believe it or not, Doom has a story, and it's exactly enough story and of an appropriate tone for a Doom game in 2016. You are Doom Marine (yes, that's one of your names), and you wake up chained to a table in research base on Mars and surrounded by zombie-like monsters. After you bust out of your restraints and kill the demons, you find your armor looking like it's been excavated out of a block of stone. You then learn that Mars is suffering from a demonic invasion and you're the only solution. Kill the forces of Hell and stop the invasion. 

There's a lot conveyed in the first 10 minutes of Doom that set the pace and tone of the entire game. Doom 3 started with upwards of 30 minutes of tension building and place setting. In Doom, you're immediately surrounded by enemies, handed a pistol, and forced to fight. Before the talking head finishes telling you about the demonic invasion, Doom Marine violently shoves the LCD monitor away, breaking it. Then you fight a handful of demons in an enclosed area where you learn about Glory Kills. Glory Kills let you execute a weakened enemy to regain health. You ten find the shotgun, the talking head tells you that everything leading up to the demonic invasion was for the good of humanity while you look down on a mutilated corpse, and then title screen hits. 

Even in 2016, there is no lack of Satanic imagery in Doom.

Like the classic Doom games, Doom is about skilled movement and aggressive action. It is not Call of Duty. Doom Marine can take a lot of punishment and easily dodge around enemy fire. If you're low on health, hiding in a corner will do you no good; there are no regenerating health mechanics. You have to get back in the fight, and violently murder demons with Glory Kills to regain health in combat. Doom also gives a good reason to use the chainsaw in combat. Killing enemies with the chainsaw causes them to pop like a pinata full of ammunition. This is a core gameplay loop of Doom; kill demons to reduce their numbers, Glory Kill them to refill health, chainsaw them to refill ammo. 

It's a little blurry, but yes, I am punching the jaw off of this imp.

It's not perfect, but the problems are fixable. It has bugs. I've experienced more than a couple of crashes to desktop. If you're playing with keyboard and mouse (as you should on PC), you'll find that some of the really good flavor text is unreadable because there's no way to scroll through it. The scroll wheel, which you'd expect to do that, doesn't. It has a multiplayer mode that's fast and fun enough, even if it isn't particularly interesting.

As a single player game though, Doom is incredible. It does what may have seemed impossible; it takes the classic games and gives them a 2016 upgrade. It's undeniably Doom from beginning to end. Where Wolfenstein: The New Order was great for reimagining what Wolfenstein could be in 2014, Doom largely keeps the original's formula and adds some smart modern improvements without harming what made the original games great to begin with. 

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 9/10

Bonuses: +1 fast, brutal action like few games can pull off

Penalties: -1 some minor bugs mar an otherwise great experience

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10 (very high quality/standout in its category)

***

POSTED BY: brian, sci-fi/fantasy/video game dork and contributor since 2014

Reference: id Software. Doom [Bethesda Softworks, 2016] 

STRANGER THAN FICTION: Masters of Doom by David Kushner

The Two Johns in Prose

 

Growing up, I was an enormous id Software fan. For me, it started with a pirated copy of Wolfenstein 3D on my Packard Bell 386, but Doom 2 was really my jam. I spent countless hours finding and playing user-made levels and modifications. I lived through the split, when John Romero broke from id to form Ion Storm. I anxiously awaited each new game. Even now, hearing a Doom alum worked on something gives me enough reason to take a look at it. I thought Masters of Doom wouldn't contain much I didn't already know, but I was quite wrong.

Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture primarily follows the two Johns of id Software, John Romero and John Carmack. Though the narrative involves all members of the id team, it starts with the two Johns. Masters of Doom follows their lives from early adulthood, through the formation of id Software, their formal split, and closes shortly after the release of Quake 3: Team Arena. It's primarily focused on the early days of id, Doom, and Doom's impact on the company.

Masters of Doom is a excellent look at the wild days of 90's game development. I'm talking about when a team of less than 10 can make a game that changes the game industry and makes them bazillions of dollars, which is precisely what id did. Even more incredible, they did so without much of a plan beyond "make games" and "have fun". When you consider how video game hits today are made, it's shocking to me that they got as far as they did. Sure, we occasionally get a Minecraft, but most games are done with teams of hundreds.

What is also surprising is how much internal strife occurred along the way. id made big moves, and stepped on a lot of toes along the way. It's arguable that they didn't even properly utilize the resources they had, with people instrumental to their games' development either half-hearedly doing so, or outright unhappy with the games direction. When Romero split from id, it was huge and public because Romero was a huge, public figure in the gaming community, but there were equally important and devastating losses throughout id's history.

If you're not a fan of Doom, or id Software's games, or game development in general, there might not be a lot of reasons to read Masters of Doom. It knows its audience, the 90's PC gamer, and its audience should know something about the time before heading in. However, if you have any interest in those things, Masters of Doom is truly compelling for providing an inside look at one of the most important video game developers of all time.

***

POSTED BY: brian, sci-fi/fantasy/video game dork and contributor since 2014

Reference: Kushner, David. Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture [Random House, 2003]