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So Many Games
December 08, 2013 by Adam in Adam's Games
  I made it through the Steam Thanksgiving game sale only slightly unscathed. I've yet to play The Wolf Among Us, the new Civilization expansion, and Spelunky. What I have been playing is Assassin's Creed: Black Flag and Starbound.
Black Flag is a great pirate game, where I play as a scoundrel captain sailing the Caribbean. I keep improving my main ship and I have a fleet of captured ships I keep sending off on trade missions. The main storyline is decent, but I'm having the most fun capturing other ships, harpooning sea life, and diving undersea wrecks. I'm admittedly somewhat guilty with the whaling, though I entertained everyone with my Captain Ahab impersonation when I found and caught the elusive white whale.
The other game that we've all been playing is Starbound. It's a lot like Terraria, mining and exploring and such. The main twist is that you're in a galaxy with tons of planets. You fly a space ship around and explore strange places both on the surface and underground. It's still a beta, but an entertaining one. I'm the sole human in the family - Sam's a bird man, Emma's a plant person, and I think Duncan is some kind of robot.
I'm busy playing away as I wait for the pipes to defrost so we can get hot water again.
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Bioshock 2
November 25, 2013 by Adam in Adam's Games
 Occasionally I go through my really old game collection. It turns out Bioshock 2 had some free DLC, and I'd never finished it. It turned out to be pretty good, returning to the underwater city of Rapture and going through some quirky storyline. Playing as a "Big Daddy" who had to take care of "Little Sisters", it made for an unusual parenting experience.
I'll probably go back to my old game collection and see if I can finish up a few more things before the next batch of games arrive. I still have Swapper, an unusual puzzle game, and one of the earlier Kickstarter games Sam and I backed has come out in beta. The name is Planetary Annihilation, with the best part being that you can crash planets into each other. I haven't quite managed to pull it off yet - most of my AI battles end with a final nuclear exchange.
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Brutal Legend and Scribblenauts Unlimited
November 13, 2013 by Adam in Adam's Games
I've been hopping around different games these last few weeks. Few have gotten my full attention as of late. I finished Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, which was great. I messed around for a long while with Terraria, building up my little base and acquiring even more awesome loot. Duncan and Emma would occasionally join me, if only to ask for cool Halloween costumes.
This last weekend I played a little more Brutal Legend. I'm not sure it's all that great, but I love the humor and style. Any world based on 80's heavy metal starring Jack Black is unique.
I also had a good time playing Scribblenauts Unlimited. Basically any word you type appears in the game - from Cthulu to a black hole to an invisibility cloak. I had a hungry alligator and so I typed "baby" and dragged it on the alligator. Unfortunately the baby started riding the alligator, so I clicked on the baby and chose "dismount". The alligator promptly ate the baby and I scored a point.
The game suggests a hint for giving a person in the game something to make them happy or solve their problem. A little girl was crying and wanted something to make her feel better. I gave her morphine and scored another point.
Fun game.
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Gone Home
September 10, 2013 by Adam in Adam's Games
 It's always a treat to veer away from the polished big-budget games towards an interesting indie game with a novel concept. Gone Home starts with the player coming home to their family house, strangely empty, after a long trip to Europe. It's up to the player to discover what happened, slowly unraveling the story as they look about.
I like how the storytelling is implied to a large degree. There are the traditional notes and letters, but also receipts and book reviews and scribbled cheat codes for video games. After awhile you get a sense of the people and the tensions in the house, and this forced voyeurism is somehow acceptable because of the situation.
It's also set in Portland in 1995, which has considerable nostalgia for me. I wasn't quite so young at the time, but I wasn't quite as ancient as I am these days.
I bought it for Joanna as her first Steam game. Hopefully she'll get around to playing it soon.
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Antichamber
August 21, 2013 by Adam in Adam's Games
 I finished Antichamber last night, one of the most maddening/rewarding puzzle game I've played in a long while. I kept accidentally discovering the rules of the world, and towards the end felt like I was master of it all.
Sam and I have been occasionally playing a Shogun 2 game together, slowly conquering Japan together. I can't tell if he's fascinated by the history and culture, or ordering massive armies to battle it out at his whim. Probably both.
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Steam Summer Sale
July 12, 2013 by Adam in Adam's Games
 It's the start of the Steam Summer Sale and I'm thousands of miles away from my computer. Fortunately we just arrived at Christopher's house and he has a decent Internet connection and a newly purchased laptop that will work in a pinch. I'm not sure how much gaming I'll manage over the next few days, but it does seem to be a time for hanging out and doing very little.
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Kerbal Space Program
February 21, 2013 by Adam in Adam's Games
 This isn't actually my game - Sam had me buy it for him with his game money bank. Still, I spent the first day he got it looking over his shoulder as he assembled rockets and tried to launch the little Kerbals into space. It's essentially a sandbox space simulator, which lets you create rockets, space stations, and landers. Each part you add to your rocket has drag, weight, and various functions.
It took us a good hour to get into orbit, and we've crash landed on the moon a couple times after great effort. At this point we're attempting to get an actual lander on the surface of the moon, though already our solar system is scattered with aborted attempts, flung off to orbit the sun.
Some of the failures are wonderfully spectacular, exploding dramatically or spinning out of control. The game nicely displays the faces of the Kerbal astronauts, either cheerfully smiling as they successfully get into space or going wide-eyed as their spacecraft flies out of control into the ocean.
Sam's also learning orbital dynamics, getting a feel for increasing his orbit by doing burns at the right moment in the right direction. I love it when games accidentally teach him things.
Dad - this is one I'd highly recommend for you. You'd enjoy it immensely.
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