Princess Power

After returning Puzzle Quest to GameFly, I put a few games for my daughter at the top of the queue. They sent us Disney Princess Enchanted Journey for the Nintendo Wii. If you have a young daughter who adores Disney princesses, this is the game for you. We've had fun this weekend playing the game together. My 12-year-old son even played it with his sis, but I doubt he'd admit it to his friends at school.

The controls are easy to learn and use. You use the Wiimote and nunchuck to move the princess avatars around 3D worlds from the Disney movies. You can also jump, climb ledges, and use a magic wand to defeat the occasional non-scary enemy.

Two features she (okay... we) enjoyed were customizing her princess avatars similar to a simplified version of Sims 2 and the two player cooperative play. I encourage my daughter to be more than a princess (she says her favorite princess is Mulan because she is a warrior too) ... but sometimes it's just plain cute to indulge her with the pinkness and tiaras. With the two player co-op mode, we could enjoy the game together.

The completely voice-acted plot is similar to the other Disney princess types of games: help a different princesses restore order by completing simple mini-games. For example, we were helping Snow White's friends sorting gems by color or helping Ariel's crab buddy escape a friendly octopus in a whack-a-mole style game.

My only complaint is the game is too short. We completed in the four-day Thanksgiving weekend without trying too hard.

All things considered, I recommend this game for your young daughter under 8. Rent it if you can, because replay is minimal.

Random Junk Oct 15

We're in crunch time at work. Ten hour days. Plus six hours over the weekend. We should be done by the end of the month. My company has a few projects at different stages in the software development process. One is in the elaboration phase, another in construction, and a third in transition. Then the parent company dropped a hot project on us. Everything is paused; everyone is thrown on to Project FUBAR (my name for it). We've had busy periods before, but nothing like this. What does this mean? Less time gaming because I have to go to bed earlier.

Speaking of gaming, I hit a small wall in Lord of the Rings Online. Pluck is at level 22 now. I completed all quests in the Lone-lands that were doable at my level. I'm too low to tackle the higher level ones. I tried. Red means dead when your a semi-squishy hunter and you pull two mobs by accident. To be honest I was frustrated. Then I remembered I had one quest that took me into The North Downs. Beautiful... more level appropriate quests.

My son and I are working on a Heroscape battlefield. I should post some pictures when we're done. We're taking longer than usual because we keep coming up with new ideas to try out. I set up a table in the garage for a more permanent table top gaming area.

I bought a new computer chair over the weekend. The local office supply store had a sale for 40% off. I like stumbling on to a clearance sale. I am so comfortable. Padded arm rests and everything.

One Dwarf, One Elf, and One Woman

The other evening the kids helped me create three new characters in Lord of the Rings Online. If you're a parent and a gamer, you understand how there are things you can do when the kids are awake and things you can't do. For example, playing healer on a difficult dungeon run is out. Designing alt characters or crafting items or posting auctions is possible. My son leans towards characters with brightly colored mohawks and odd facial tattoos (uh oh) but my daughter is a good helper. At six she has a knack for designing a good-looking toon.

We created a dwarf champion, an elf loremaster, and a human minstrel. The original plan was to make a dwarf minstrel and a human captain, but I felt the dwarf racial abilities were more suited for champion then minstrel. I played the dwarf champion through the first few levels in the newb zone. I shouldn't rush to make a decision after playing a class for 3 levels, but the champion's game play didn't interest me. The human minstrel, however, has me hook, line, and sinker.

The one problem with my human minstrel is that the character is a female. My daughter wanted me to create a woman character, and what dad can say no to their little girl... so Elisawyn was born. This wouldn't be a problem except for two reasons: 1) this is an MMO and 2) I may join a light RP kinship.

I tried roleplaying a female character in D&D for a few sessions. Difficult and a bit weird. Pretending to be a bard in Middle Earth will be hard enough. My minstrel is only level 6, so rerolling her as a male wouldn't be an issue. On the other hand I've known guys in WOW that played female toons and it wasn't much of an issue. Plus roleplaying online is different than roleplaying while sitting across the table. What do you think?

Pokethulu

Recipe for an amusing read:
1 part Pokemon
1 part Cthulhu
1 part joke RPG

See here.

My son received the Pokemon Junior Adventure RPG (or whatever it is called) as a birthday gift many years ago. We played it with some of his friends. Imagine DMing a weak Pokemon RPG for a handful of seven-year-olds. Amusing for an afternoon, then sent to the back of the shelf.

And then I find Pokethulu... which is based on that little RPG we played. While it's not appropriate for young kids, I laughed at its dark humor. It's worth a few minutes of your time.

A quote from the site:

Amid the sagging gables of old New England, evil lurks . . . and squirms, and scuttles, and purrs. Grownups are fleeing in terror, hiding behind the Elder Sign.

You're 10 years old. You're our last hope. Armed with a Shining Dodecahedron and the elder incantations to make it work, you capture the monsters and train them to use their power . . . But not for evil. For sport.

You've thrilled to the popular TV show. Now, you can play the game! Is your Shoplifting score good enough to sneak a page from your opponent's Pokenomicon? Is your trained Jigglypolyp powerful enough to defeat a devolved Fungal Cluster? This is the world of Pokéthulhu, and now it's yours to save – or conquer!

It gets darker and funnier in the PDF rules here. Check it out. Seriously. You're bored at work anyway.

Doduo, Fury Attack Now!

Confession time. The first trading card game I played was Pokemon. I built a fun, tough water/psychic deck I dubbed Brain Drain. Let me explain a bit more and why I'm bringing this up now.

When my son was in kindergarten, the Pokemon TCG was new and very popular. He watched the cartoons on TV and wanted some cards for his birthday. I bought him a starter deck and some booster packs. His friends gave him some pre-built decks and more booster packs.

We had many, many fun nights learning and playing the card game together. Not only was he improving his reading, math, and problem solving skills, but we were spending some quality father/son time together. I enjoyed playing the game and deck building too. It was my first exposure to a TCG. I have to admit I spent a few dollars more than I should have to expand his collection. We played the game for a couple years before he lost interest and moved on to other things.

Fast forward a few more years and now my daughter is starting kindergarten. A couple nights ago she asked me to teach her how to play her brother's Pokemon card game. He gave us permission to use his cards, so I rebuilt the starter decks as best as I could remember. Finding the cards was easy... I just looked for the oldest, most worn cards in his collection. Hello, Staryu. Welcome back, Machop. They've seen countless games, and now they will be played again.

My daughter is bright and had the basics of the game after a few rounds. She loves flipping coins and shuffling her deck. Amazingly enough she wins about 80% of the games. Huh. We play with the cards in our hands face up on the table. After she is more comfortable with the cards and rules, we'll play with our hands hidden and start introducing new cards.

She wants a deck with all cute pokemon. Um... okay. They're all cute compared to the zombies and goblins in the Magic TCG. At first I was thinking of building her a deck with Ponyta/Rapidash but a Jigglypuff/Bellosom deck may be better. Those fire pokemon are a tough looking bunch.

Hmmm... my son should be old enough for Magic now. Maybe I'll dig my collection out of storage this weekend.

Speed the game

No, I'm not writing about the newest MMO feauturing a bus, explosives, and the voice talents Mr. Reeves. Now that would be a niche game.

I went camping with my son and his scout troop last week. During their down time, they played a card game called Speed. I played a variant when I was younger, so it was cool seeing the boys ranging from ages 11 to 17 challenging each other to quick rounds. Eventually we had to confiscate the decks so the boys would get back to their service projects.

Speed is a shedding type of card game where your goal is to play all the cards in your hand and draw pile before your opponent. To do this, you play cards from your hand as fast as possible that are one higher or lower than one of the cards on the discard piles. Players replenish their hands from their draw piles up to a max of five cards. If all players are unable to play, you put a new card on top of the discard piles from little side decks. There are no turns in speed. You play as quickly as possible. You can play runs of cards at the same time or block your opponent by laying a card on the discard pile first.

The game requires quick thinking and quick reflexes (and a quick wit helps to throw your opponent off with some well timed trash talk). Good qualities to improve. Yes, even the proper way to trash talk.

My son has been challenging me to Speed games every night since we've been back. While he's pretty good at it, he can't match my awe-inspiring skills, lighting-quick reflexes, god-like card playing powers. I kid. Another year or two and he will be beating me consistently instead of the other way around. There's been a few rounds I've one by mere luck.

Last night my five-year-old daughter asked me to teach her to play. She's smart so I knew she'd get how to play the game. But the quickness isn't there. She has troubles telling 6 and 9 apart and forgets the order of 10-J-Q-K-A-2. Ugh. How is she going to win the Junior Texas Hold 'Em Championship if she doesn't know the difference between two pair and a full house? What is her teacher thinking? Sure, she can read books and she's still in preschool, but how is she going to be competitive in the world of high stakes poker? I digress.

Oregon Trail

The first half of my vacation was spent rafting the Deschutes River in Oregon. Twelve guys celebrated a friend's upcoming marriage by floating, drinking, and camping. Good times. Still recovering. I could handle shots of Jager off the bottle ten years ago, but now I'm just hurting for days.

Saturday's stretch of water was easy, so I had time to stretch out and admire the scenery. Seeing rugged landscapes got me thinking about pioneers and the Oregon Trail. Growing up in Oregon means learning a great deal about this piece of history. As an adult, I couldn't begin to imagine the hardships involved with loading up your family on a wagon and traveling across the plains and mountains and deserts. But as a middle-schooler in the mid-80s, Oregon Trail meant playing that old school edutainment game (named, of course, Oregon Trail) on the library's Apple II computers.

I'd forgotten about how much I loved that game until I was daydreaming on the Deschutes, hung over and sun baked. The game may have taught me some history, but talk about fun. You created a family, got supplies, and then traveled across America to Oregon. I remember you had many decisions to make along the way and the consequences were serious. I don't know how many family members I lost along the way. Oregon Trail also had a shooter mini-game when you hunted for deer. A bug in the game could be exploited to give you near unlimited food or money. I can't remember the specifics of the loophole.

I want to play that game again, just to see if it lives up to my fond memories. I doubt it would. Things seemed so much bigger, better, and cooler through kid eyes. Oh well.

Tomorrow I leave to go camping with my son and his scout troop for the rest of the week. I may get a little game time in tonight. I read a review of Dungeon Runners and it looks intriguing.

-Link