Strategic Non-violence Video Game

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This is NOT an April fools joke:

Sponsored by the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, the game, called “A Force More Powerful,” resembles a cross between a political science model and one of the popular city-builder games. The player represents the chief of staff of a non-violent resistance movement. He gives orders to various characters within the movement, who will attempt to carry out actions such as making speeches and organizing demonstrations.
The non-player-characters are rated for factors such as willpower and ambition. “There is a balancing act between the different egos and wills of the individuals involved,” said Bob McNamara, a producer at Breakaway Games, a Hunt Valley, Md., developer of entertainment games and military simulations. “They will always attempt to carry out your orders, but if they don’t like the task, the chances of success will be modified. We wanted to capture the dynamic of the fact that you’re in a movement of volunteers, and they won’t always do what you say.”

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Xbox.com

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I bought an Xbox at lunch today. I got it used, but just barely. The guy who had it played it once and brought it back to exchange for the new Playstation 2. It’s the limited edition Halo box, which came with the Halo game and is transparent green. I also got a second controller and the game Fable. And Rachel loaned me a game Morrowind.
But another game I might want to get: Super Monkey Ball Deluxe.

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Red Marble Games (Mac video games)

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I got a free download of the Holiday Express video game (similar to a Tetris game) with my .mac account through Apple, and because I enjoyed it, I looked up the company that made it, Red Marble Games, and played a few of their other free demos. I ended up buying Digby’s Donuts, which is a lot of fun. You run a donut stand, and as the finished donuts are flipped through the air at you, you have to catch them on a tray and place them in a display case with other donuts of the same color. With out dropping them, and without shelving burned donuts. It’s hard to do.
The have a new game called Witch’s Yarn that seems really interesting. I may try the demo of it.

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Wild Divine

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When I first started looking at this bio-feedback game called Wild Divine I thought it was pretty hokey, (I tend to take Deepak Chopra with a grain of salt) but watching the demo made me think it might be pretty fun to play around with. You have a machine hooked up to your fingertips that measures your bio feedback, and when you’ve reached a meditative state you move to next levels in the game. Visually, it’s nicely done with a lot of cool graphics and things to explore.

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Betrapped!

I’m at work right now, so I can’t play this interesting game Betrapped, so I’m saving the link for later. It looks like a combination of Clue (my favorite!!!) and Minesweeper. You have to clear a room of traps (the minesweeper bit) and interrogate suspects (like Clue) to solve the crime. Here’s their synopsis:

A murder has been committed in an old English castle. As Inspector Parker, it’s your job to track down the culprit. Interrogate 12 shady suspects and examine each room for clues, carefully avoiding deadly booby-traps at every turn. A minesweeper-like puzzle game, BeTrapped! features both Adventure and Puzzle modes, with over 1400 mind bending puzzle levels, 37 spine-chilling adventure rooms, and a meta map to track your progress through the castle. Download now to solve the crime in this engaging whodunit!

Hmmm, looks like they also have a version of the game called Inspector Parker that’s more like the traditional Clue game. Fun. Sucks that the download versions are only for Windows, though. boo!

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Review: The Settlers of Catan

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At first glance, you wouldn’t expect The Settlers of Catan game to be as addictive as everyone who’s played it claims that it is. For one thing, there are two thick, daunting rule books (“Game Rules” and “Almanac”) and the playing pieces themselves are fairly non-descript wooden block-like house structures and “little rectangles” that turn out to be roads. If you’re looking for a traditional board for this “board” game, you’ll be confused, because it’s made up of numerous hexagonal tiles that you lay out in a beehive pattern to play on.

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Trivial Pursuit: Book Lover’s Edition

The Book Lover’s Edition is played very similarly to the regular editions of Trivial Pursuit; the goal is to collect pieces of pie representing different categories of questions, and then to land directly on the center of the board to answer a final question in the category chosen for you by your opponents. Unlike other versions, there are only four tokens to move around the board (a coffee mug, a stack of books, a book bag and a typewriter) and therefore at most four players or teams, instead of the usual six can play.

And of course, all the questions are regarding literature in six categories:

Children’s
Authors
Non-Fiction
Classics
Book Bag
Book Club

The first four categories are easy to figure out, but even after playing, I haven’t determined what the significance of Book Bag or Book Club is. The questions from them seem to be across genres and subjects, so I haven’t figured out a common theme, and there’s nothing in the directions that helps distinguish them. I wonder why they didn’t do categories in genres like mystery or sci-fi, which, like the regular game, would give people their specialities.

My strongest category in the regular editions of Trivial Pursuit was always literature, so I thought I’d do well at this version, but it’s quite difficult in regular play. As always, I seem to get easy questions on non-pie spaces and then I whiff on tough questions when a piece of pie is at stake. I thought that I knew a lot about literature, but playing this game makes me realize how much great literature is out there that I haven’t had a chance to read yet. I expected the Children’s category to be easy, but there were some tough questions in it, and I seemed to do my best in the Classics, if only because I had studies about the books on English classes, even if I hadn’t read them. The ambiguity of two of the categories made me want to avoid landing on those spots, and is the only flaw in an otherwise exciting game.

The reason I love Trivial Pursuit is that I enjoy the game even when my girlfriend kicks my butt, because I love asking and answering (or guessing) questions — I feel like I’m learning something new and interesting whether I get it right or not. The fact that this version is about my favorite subject makes it even more enjoyable. I could never quite muster up the same enthusiasm for the sports category.

The fact that only four players or teams can play at a time helps the length of the game, which can drag on in the regular edition with six tokens on the board. Four tokens means that pie is collected faster and the game winds up in just over an hour or so.

And of course I always recommend you add in the “Rachel Allen technique” of play, wherein you disconcert your opponents by singing “Piece of pie! Piece of pie. Pie, pie, pie!” when they’re about to answer a pie question, and then shout “no pie for you!” when they miss it. Of course this works best if everyone is drinking.

I was lucky enough to pick up the game at half the regular price at one of the calendar kiosks in the mall, so the price was great. Otherwise, the regular price would have been a bit out of my desired range for a board game.

Rating:

Four
Great Play
Price: $49.99 regular price

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My Board Games

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I love board games and other games like 겜블시티 슬롯, and have 100+ different games in my collection. So far.

General Games

Adverteasing – The Game of Slogans, Commercials and Jingles
Aggravation
Apples to Apples (with expansion packs one and two)
Backgammon
Bazaar – A trading game
Bethumpt’d With Words (with Voyager expansion pack)
Bingo
Carcassone (with Inns & Cathedrals and King and Scout expansion packs)
Card Caper
Catch Phrase – electronic version
Catchpenny – Monopoly-like game set in 1800’s
Channel Surfing – The Game That Will Change The Way You Watch TV
Checkers
Cheers
Defiance – The Battle of Xuan Loc
Deluxe Monopoly
Deluxe O’no 99
Deluxe Scrabble
Dominos
Earth Game – A Cooperative Game About Saving Planet Earth
Easy Money
Fact or Crap
Frederick The Great – The Campaign of the Soldier King 1756-1759
Green Eggs and Ham
Hugger Mugger
I.D. – 1980’s game cimiliar to “Celebrities”
Jenga
Jumanji
Life
Lizzy McGuire – What Would Lizzie Do?
Loaded Questions (with booster pack)
Malarky (similar to Balderdash)
Monopoly
Monopoly – fake “Carmel” version
Operation
Outburst
Parcheesi
Password
Pictionary
Pictionary Party Version
Proclaim – The Thoughtfully Ambiguous Word Association Game
Ripley’s Believe It or Not
Risk – Wooden Box Retro Edition
Rubik’s Checkers Challenge
Rummikub
Scrabble – Deluxe Edition
Scattegories
Scruples
Scrutineyes – The Game of Closer Looks
Settlers of Catan
Sorry
Stratego – Wooden Box Retro Edition
Taboo
Telling Lies
The Newlywed Game
Think Alike – The Game Where Two Heads Are Better Than One
Twister – Wooden Box Retro Edition
Where in the USA is Carmen San Diego?
Yahtzee
You Just Became a Millionaire
Zobmondo – The Crazy “Would You Rather” Game

Trivia Games

Clever Endeavor
Bet I Know – Where it Pays to Know It All
In Pursuit
Movie Mania – A Game of Famous Quotes and Questions
Proverbial Wisdom – The Exciting Game of Proverbial Fun
Super Quiz II
Teams of Enemies
Time Magazine – the Game
TriBond
Trivial Pursuit 20th Anniversary Edition
Trivial Pursuit DVD Pop Culture Edition
Trivial Pursuit Genus One
Trivial Pursuit Know It All Edition
Trivial Pursuit Silver Screen
Trivial Pursuit The 1960s

Card Games

Flinch
Free Parking
German Card Game
Milles Bornes
Mystery Rummy – Al Capone
Mystery Rummy – Jack the Ripper
Mystery Rummy – Jeckle & Hyde
Mystery Rummy – Murders at the Rue Morgue
Pit deluxe
Rook
Spite and Malice
Split
Squadron Scramble
Uno
What Happened Here?
Who Stole Ed’s Pants?
You Just Became a Millionaire

Mystery Games

I’m a huge, fanatical fan of Clue, so I have a bunch of different versions of the game, as well as lots of ancillary stuff. I’ve also been collecting knock-offs and copy-cat games like it.

Mystery of the Abbey – This game kicks ass! It’s like a very elaborate game of Clue set in a monastery, based on The Name of the Rose. There are 24 suspects, each with 6 different characteristics. Wicked complicated.

1313 Dead End Drive
221B Baker Street
Alfred Hitchcock’s “Why”
Alfred Hitchcock’s The Unexplained
Black Spy
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Clue 1989
Clue 1996
Clue 2003
Clue Alfred Hitchcock (Characters from Hitchcock movies, rooms are sets)
Clue Card Game (Suspects, Vehicles, Destinations)
Clue FX/Digital Clue
Clue Junior
Clue Master Detective (1989 Version, with more rooms and weapons)
Clue Mystery Puzzle
Clue Simpsons
Clue Wooden Retro 1949 Edition
Clue the Great Museum Caper
Cluedo Super Sleuth (British Version of Clue, more characters)
Crack the Case
Scotland Yard (Incomplete)
Simply Suspects
Whodunit

Cheap Ass Games

See the website! Cheapass Games come with the bare essentials: boards, cards, and rulebooks. If you need anything else, they tell you, and it’s probably something you can scrounge from a game you already own, or can buy at a hobby store. For these games, I bought one standard set of pawns, color markers, timer and dice that many of the games.

Captain Park’s Imaginary Polar Exibition
Deadwood
Escape from Elba
Freeloader
Get Out
Kill Dr. Lucky
One False Step For Mankind
Save Dr. Lucky
Save Dr. Lucky on Moon Base Copernicus
The Great Brain Robbery
U.S. Patent Number 1
Vegas
Witch Trial

Miscellaneous

Ouija
Lost in a Jigsaw Maze Puzzle

Vintage Game Boards

Carrom
Uncle Wiggly
Clue Board
Davy Crockett

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1982 Video Game high scorers…

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Boing Boing has a really great post on Life magazine’s 1982 magazine spread on the hot teen craze, arcade video gaming, with the best of the arcade gamers meeting at the Twin Galaxies arcade in Ottumwa, Iowa to battle it out for the high score.
The picture they have of the geek kids is pretty classic, but what’s even better is that one of them, Leo Daniels, even has a website today. Check it out, because the best page is the photo gallery of the dude’s bachelor apartment. It’s exactly what you would expect from a guy who was a 1982 high scorer in video gaming.

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