Review: GiftTRAP

GiftTRAP: "The Hilarious Gift-Exchange Challenge" 

 The Spin:   “Play and discover the real you!”; “Do you know your friends and their dreams?”;

“Thinking you know people is all you need to play”; Imagine the gifts you’d exchange for real”

 The Intro:  The Nerdbloggers crew loves itself some deep, strategic board games.  When it is just the core guys and gals gathered around a table, we can usually be found playing something meaty and brain burning.  Often though, we game with “non-gamers,” and that means pulling out the dreaded party game.  Actually, scratch that “dreaded” part.  Mainstream party games are often crap (Scene-it, Cranium, Battle of the Sexes—I’m looking at you guys), though there are some good, popular party games (Balderdash, Taboo, Apples to Apples) released by the big companies.  Even better,  hobby game companies have managed to really expand the number of party  games that can be enjoyed by gamers and non-gamers alike.  In heavy rotation in our group are Wits and Wagers, Say Anything, Dixit, Telestrations and, recently, GiftTRAP.

The Game:  GiftTrap is a simple game about gift-giving.  The board is a three-by-three grid with spots for up to nine gifts.  The game comes with more than 400 gifts split into four color-categories according to cost.  Each player gets a small gift bag that contains his necessary pieces (9 tokens that represent each spot on the board, a opened-gift marker , a unopened-gift marker, and four tokens of different values with which to pick gifts). 

One player begins by choosing a expense-level and placing gifts on the grid (one more gift than the number of players).  Once the gifts are on the board, players now assign a gift to each player by giving them the token with that gift’s location printed on it.  These look like little Tic-Tac-Toe boards with a grid location marked on it.  These caused a bit of confusion with our younger players the first round, but things cleared up for them after the first go.  It should be pretty clear cut for older players. 

The "Give Tokens" look like a game unto themselves.

Then, each player places their four tokens onto the board.  These are valued as such (+3 for the gift the player would most like to receive, +2 for the next most desirable, +1 for final positive present, and -4 for the gift that the player would not want to receive). 

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Hallo's Atari 2600 Review #2: Berzerk

Luckily, the robots had yet to master the skill of shooting diagonally.

Berzerk

Publisher:  Atari, 1982

 The year was 1981 and the Atari 2600 was about to release the most important video game port in home video gaming history:  Pac-Man.  The beloved arcade classic remains to this day one of the most popular video games of all time and it was a no-brainer that the 2600 was going to port the game for their console so that millions of boy and girls around the world could enjoy the simple thrills of eating pellets and running from ghosts.  Boy, was it a disaster.  Pac-Man is the worst adaptation of a classic arcade game I have ever seen and although Atari sold them by the truckloads because of the name alone, it remains a pitiful entry into the 2600 game library.  But hey, this isn’t a Pac-Man review, so why start a review on Berzerk in this way?

 Because the very next year in 1982, Atari showed they were more than capable of porting a game in a more-than-worthy manner.  Berzerk is a masterpiece.

 The game is all about a “humanoid” fugitive who is inside a robot compound and is shooting his way from maze to maze.  His enemies are armed, one-eyed robots who range from incredibly stupid to super fast and lethal.  The single eye rotates back and forth on the head of the robot and for whatever reason, the sound of the laser gun being fired is downright creepy.  Add to the mix a bouncing smiley face guy named “Evil Otto” who makes his way onto the screen if the humanoid takes too long disposing of the robots, and you actually have a video game that will make your heart start racing very quickly.  I find Berzerk to be a nerve-wracking game. 

 Comparing the 2600 version to the arcade classic yields very positive results.  Since the original was not known for its groundbreaking graphics, the 2600 was able to capture the essence of the game with little difficulty; the only difference being simpler mazes.  The robots in the 2600 game are not able to fire diagonally, giving you a huge advantage in combat.  I found this out the hard way when I was playing the original arcade version for comparative purposes.  I got lit up by a diagonal robot shot because I wasn’t expecting that capability.  Unfortunately, the completely freaked out robotic  voice warning “intruder alert” is not present on the 2600 version (although in 2002, a voice enhanced version was released that is apparently awesome).   Also, Evil Otto is able to be temporarily killed in the 2600 game, something that is impossible with the original. Other than that, the playability, skill in timing, controls, and overall fun remain intact.

 One of the crucial aspects of Berzerk is the use of the walls.  Not only can you make robots walk into the walls, killing them, but they also provide the essential strategic element of knowing when to hide, pop out and shoot, and how to move around the maze.  I totally love how the hero dies in this game – your butt gets fried to a crisp, complete with electrocution sound effects.  Berzerk is really a must have if you are a shooter fan at all.  It paved the way for the shooter craze and remains just as fun to play today as it was in 1982.         

 Hallo's Rating: A

Are the proposed PSN reparations enough to bring gamers back?

Is Sony doing enough to compensate gamers for the PSN outage?  Are Playstation Plus members getting the shaft?

We have finally gotten word on what Sony plans to do to compensate PSN users for the recent outage caused by Sony’s decision to completely re-write their online security in the wake of an attack by hackers that lifted the information from over 70 million PSN accounts.  Here is the excerpt from the press release:

Central components of the “Welcome Back” program will include:

• Each territory will be offering selected PlayStation entertainment content for free download. Specific details of this content will be announced in each region soon.
• All existing PlayStation Network customers will be provided with 30 days free membership in the PlayStation Plus premium service. Current members of PlayStation Plus will receive 30 days free service.
• Music Unlimited powered by Qriocity subscribers (in countries where the service is available) will receive 30 days free service.

Additional “Welcome Back” entertainment and service offerings will be rolled out over the coming weeks as the company returns the PlayStation Network and Qriocity services to the quality standard users have grown to enjoy and strive to exceed those exceptions.

 Let’s look at that list.  The free downloads bother me immediately.  When Microsoft had a hiccup with Xbox Live in 2008, they gave a free game (Undertow) away.  That was fine for people who didn’t own the game and wanted it, but all of us that had already purchased it or had no interest in it, got no compensation for the outage.  This could easily happen with Sony.  Clearly Microsoft should have offered free points to be spent on any content, but I don’t think that is an option with PSN since the transaction there are based on actual dollars, not points.  There are likely a number of issues involved with giving money away that don’t come up once those dollars are converted to “points.”  Still, I would hope Sony offers a variety of choices, and that every gamer has the opportunity to pick up games or DLC that they don’t have and actually want.

The next bulleted point tells us that each user will get a free 30 days of PS+ (Sony’s premium online service) and that current PS+ subscribers will get 30 days added to their account.  I’m a PS+ subscriber and have been since that program launched.  I would have been happy just to have the length of the outage added to the end of my subscription, so this is a bonus.  It isn’t mentioned here, but with the related Sony Online Entertainment takedown, Sony has said subscribers will get a free 30 days plus however many days are lost to the outage.  I would hope this is true for PS+ also.  Otherwise, while new users would get a full 30 days, current PS+ members would be getting 30 days minus however many days it turns out PS+ is down during the outage.  Sony should add the time missed to the end of our subscriptions and then add the 30 days to that.

I do not subscribe to nor am I curious about Qriocity, but the same points above apply.  If Sony doesn’t offer back the days the network was down, they are not really giving 30 free days.

So, for Nerdbloggers, the jury is still out on Sony’s reparations.  It will come down to the free content offered once the Marketplace comes back online.  If the offerings are good enough, I will be happy.  After all, Sony was the victim* in this crime; the users are just the collateral damage. 

* A victim much like a tourist walking down the street with gold chains and our money sticking out his pockets.

Hallo's Atari 2600 Review #1: Smurf: Rescue in Gargamel's Castle

Smurf: Rescue in Gargamel’s Castle Publisher: Coleco Date: 1982 Smurf: Rescue in Gargamel’s Castle is a side-scrolling adventure where an unnamed Smurf attempts to rescue Smurfette from the clutches of Gargamel who has hidden her deep within his castle. Ok, maybe not too deep, but she is stuck on top of some dining room furniture and apparently is not able to climb down by herself.

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Review of Monsters up at TheBlackestEyes

My review of the giant-monster movie, Monsters, is up at The Blackest Eyes.  I can't claim that the film is for everyone, but it really worked for me.