Ah, Gaming

I love games. Board games, computer games, card games, I love them all. (The Maul?) I personally prefer strategy games and word games, but also enjoy simple card games that are 98% luck. Here's a rundown of games I enjoy.

Board Games

1. Hit or Miss. An excellently fun game with similarities to Scattergories.

2. Scrabble. There is some ultimate version of Scrabble where the board is bigger and you get more tiles, including multiples of the Q, Z, J, and X. Finally, I could spelled quizzed without using a blank.

3. Trivial Pursuit. (Or almost any trivia game.) I've gotten pretty decent at this game, not necessarily because I've become more knowledgeable, but because I've gotten to become a better guesser.

4. Balderdash. It's just a classic.

5. Boggle. While in general I enjoy Scrabble more, I really like games where you start off on an even playing field. Everyone is looking at the same letters, and you can't win a game by the luck of the draw. If the letters are difficult in one round, they're difficult for everyone.

Other board games I've played and enjoyed: Monopoly, Risk, Castle Risk, Settlers of Catan, Starfarers of Catan, Carcassonne, Aladdin's Dragons, Scattergories, among many others. I am going and visiting my family in June, and I look forward to (hopefully) being able to play some of these games that I haven't played in a while.

Card Games

1. Lord of the Rings: Trading Card Game. Of course. One of my two main hobbies in life. (Along with Everquest.) Tonight we are having a card night / computer gaming extravaganza, and this will be one of the main things we do, including opening a bunch of packs of Rings and using those cards in decks. Ah, good times!

2. Star Wars: Customizable Card Game. This is what used to be our main game before Rings, but it still gets played from time to time. There are things I enjoy more about this game than Rings. It's still good fun.

As for trading card games, in the past I have played at least a game of the following: Young Jedi, Jedi Knights, Austin Powers, Magic: The Gathering, Pokemon, Middle Earth, X-Men, Star Trek (First and Second Editions).

I won't go into detail about all the other card game I play (these are not trading card games, like those listed above): Quiddler, Rage, Phase 10, among many others.

That last one is interesting - Phase 10. My wife and I play this a lot. However, in an attempt to make things a little more interesting (we don't have too many games, so there's not a lot of variety), we added some extra phases that we made up, thus making it Phase 15. These were originally our new phases:

11. Set of 5, set of 4
12. 2 sets of 5
13. 10 cards of one color
14. Run of 5, all one color
15. Set of 6, set of 2

However, we determined that phase 10 was rather difficult, and phases 14 and 15 were easier than they should be for being the last 2 phases. So we changed the order and phases as follows:

11. Set of 5, set of 4
12. 2 sets of 5
13. Set of 6, set of 3
14. Run of 6, all one color
15. 10 cards of one color

And this seemed to work pretty well. For now, at least.

Computer Games

1. Everquest II. Of course. This is an MMORPG (massively-multiplayer online role-playing game), and it is loads of fun. I play every Thursday night for 3 hours with my 2 brothers and my sister-in-law (two of which live in Ohio, one lives in New York).

2. Unreal Tournament. I've gone through and beaten the single-player tournament multiple times, but this first-person shooter game is most fun playing multiplayer with friends.

3. StarCraft. This game originally came out in the late 1990s, but it is still the favorite to play when a group of us get together to play computer games. The graphics are not anything terribly impressive by today's standards, but the game play is still excellent fun.

4. Doom. First-person shooter. I have beaten Doom I and Doom II and have Doom III, but while the graphics of the third installment are obviously superior, I actually enjoy playing the first two (especially #2) more. There's less storyline to get in the way, and you can just get right to killing things. The Cyberdemon in the first two games is quite a challenge to defeat.

Other computer games I've played and enjoyed: WarCraft (I-III), Heretic, Quake, Need for Speed (I enjoy pretty much any racing game). I also enjoy video games on gaming consoles, especially any of the MarioKart games. I remember defeating Super Mario Brothers 3 on my computer with a Nintendo emulator. Ah, fun stuff.

Also, for your online enjoyment, I present this time waster:

1. Line Rider. Not really a game so much, but still, I found it to be entertaining. You build a track for the guy on the sled. He can fly around, go around loops, and do flips through the air. However, it can be somewhat aggravating to get him to land right so he doesn't fall off his sled. See the links below:

Line Rider

Video - Cooper's Track 1

Video - Cooper's Track 2

While the fact that I made those last two videos does make me kind of a dork, they were pretty fun to make. Anyway, excessively and needlessly long blog entry over and out. :)