PixelCast 17 - Your Pixel is Under Attack

PixelCast is back with another exciting episode. This time, we talk about Super Street Fighter IV, Blur, Split/Second, Starcraft 2 Beta and Silent Hill: Shattered Memories.

I'm also talk enthusiastically about a great reality TV/social experiment on the Discovery Channel: The Colony.

News and the attractions of 2D gaming round out the show.

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Monster Hunter Tri - Review

My review for Monster Hunter Tri (Nintendo Wii) has just gone up over at Pixel Hunt. So if you wanna know what I thought about the game, click on the link, give it a read, and make a comment.

Here are some snippets of my review:

Players will need to prepare, plan and scavenge in order to become a successful hunter. Knowledge of a monster's patterns of behaviour and being able to live off the land are also factors in a hunter's ability to succeed. In other words, Monster Hunter Tri rewards attention to detail and patience.

The game's visuals are quite impressive, and no one can deny that Capcom has managed to draw a lot of power out of the Wii...

...However, seeing the game in its current form makes one wonder about the greater potential that could have been realised had it been reproduced on a more powerful console. The colours could have been more vibrant and the sense of scale could have been even more majestic and epic. The artistic potential in the game outstrips the technical capabilities of the console it was created for.

...the first time you take down a towering beast and skinned its hide to make a nice new coat, you will know whether or not you are cut out to be a hunter.

Read the rest of the review here.

It's been a long time since... / Catacombs

It's been a long time since I last played a boardgame. My last recorded play was two rounds of Space Hulk earlier in January 2010. Before that, it was in August and July 2009. And before that, it was in 2008. So it's pretty clear that my boardgaming has gone down drastically since I've moved to Melbourne.

There's a number of reasons for that. 1) My games collection is back home in Singapore, and I'm not keen on re-buying most of them. 2) We've moved about from one rental home to another, and owning games would be a hassle. 3) It's a touch more troublesome getting to meetup groups.

I do still try to keep up with the newest games being released, and I've still got a couple of pre-orders still going on. And one particular game that's caught my eye is Catacombs.

And it's pretty simple why it's caught my interest. Catacombs = Descent: Journeys in the Dark + Pitchcar. It's a dungeon crawl game where playing pieces are flicked around a board.

From the reviews and session reports on Boardgamegeek, it seems like a light game with minimal strategy, but with some tactical depth. It also seems to foster collaborative group play, which appeals to me.

I'm not sure if it's available in Melbourne, but I think it'll be worth a hunt. Neither Milsims or Mindgames seem to list it on their sites, so I'm probably going to have to get to a store to physically search for it.

PixelCast 16: Time to Pixel

It's a return to form, with the original 3 on the latest episode of PixelCast - Time to Pixel. It's our 16 time out together, and we reminisce about our early heady days in gaming. We also talk about the games we've been playing in the past 2 weeks.

In the news, we've got Infinity Ward/Respawned shenanigans, the impending free Mechwarrior 4 release, and the reduction of paper waste by Ubisoft in the form of game manuals.

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