Oh, Final Fantasy! So many great memories!! What a Legacy!!
This is 13 after all!! What other game series has come out with this many titles and remains as successful? It’s quite incredible really.
And yet, after playing this version, I wonder how the franchise has managed to hang on this long. Legacy coattails?
I came across this expansion at my local game store (love that place!) The box said Small World, which automatically made me pause. As I noticed that it was an expansion I did not own, my internal debate team reared its ugly head; it went something like this: Ooooh Small World expansion….but we already have so many and do we really need even more races to play?…..but more is better right?….so many we can hardly fit everything into the one box?….but its SMALL WORLD!!..
On and on it went with me frozen in place. Gradually the opposing team gained footing (I really didn’t NEED another expansion) as I prepared to leave the premises and stop all the staring. Much cheering ensued on the opposing team.
The supporting team, fearing the end was neigh, rallied a last ditch effort! Caving, I took down the box to at least give it a once over before walking away.
Time slowed down, the angels sang, and ten geeks got laid, for I saw that the expansion came with its very own storage box. I had to have it!!
The losers slunk away defeated as the supporting team threw a winners party riot. (It gets loud in my head sometimes.)
Small World has been my de facto first pick on game night for quite a while now. This odd tendency of mine emerges when a new board game catches my fancy and Small World certainly managed to hook me.
In short it’s a territory and conquering game. Held territory earns points, with the highest point holder at the end winning. Pretty standard stuff, but where it gets interesting is the race selection.
Hello, Scrabble on the iPhone. Sound boring? Yeah that’s what I thought too. Frankly this was a game I was more then happy to ignore.
See, I suck at spelling, which means my spell checker and I have a very deep and overly dependent relationship. Okay, the dependency might be a bit more weighted to my side.
Somehow I totally missed April Fools this year. Granted its not really a holiday (sort of like Pie Day) but its all in good fun. And fun is after all fun, right? (^_^)
Turns out that I hadn’t really missed all that much. Then again I’m a day late so maybe I missed all the fabulous ones.
Anyway, here are the ones that I think are definitely worth sharing:
-Bungie reveals new turn-based Halo Mulitplayer!!
http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?type=topnews&cid=25354
-Blizzard finally puts in an accurate EPEEN rating into WoW. Now everyone finally knows how leet you are by just looking at your head.
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/underdev/equipmentpotency.xml
-Google Japan developes a new “Japanese” keyboard, solving years of struggle with substandard “romanised” keyboards.
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http://googlejapan.blogspot.com/2010/04/google.html&sl=ja&tl=en
-Spam just got a sparkle upgrade: Canned Unicorn Meat!!
http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/41/unicorn-meat.shtml
Professor Layton returns to us in this fabulous continuation of his puzzle solving and crime busting adventures. And he certainly doesn’t disappoint, with a mysterious murder, a stolen box, and a town shrouded in mystery.
Love, redemption and curiosity fulfilled await us at the end of the journey and it is well worth the effort.
I love getting games as presents and when said game turns out to be a) one I don’t own and 2) one I really like, it’s a near miracle. Turns out, Culdcept Saga is such a miracle.
The fabulous friend, who gifted us this excellent experience, knew that waiting would just not do. So he presented it at the first available opportunity. It was just some random day, but I have since dubbed it “Culdcept is Awesome!” Day. (And like most holidays/birthdays/anniversaries I never remember the actual date!!)
This thing is, even though the game arrived with such fan fare I didn’t believe it was going to be that great (because, really, how often does it happen that a fabulous game gets shoved in your face?), so it just sat around for a while (sad and lonely).
After the third call from my friend asking how I thought the game was, I finally popped it into the xBox and started playing. I devoured it whole.
I love Final Fantasy. This means that when something is associated with Final Fantasy I perk up and listen – that’s great marketing at work! Yes, I am brainwashed by the Final Fantasy MAN! (Or they just make great games….not quite as dramatic as brainwashing though.)
Now that hasn’t always worked out for me. Some products end up being duds (~cough~ FFX ~cough~) but usually I like what I get. That’s why, when I saw Chocobo tales it was almost an automatic decision that I should get it.
When this came out no stores seemed to carry it. I had to order it off Amazon, and even they didn’t have it in stock. Thankfully, mid summer the game had a renaissance and stores started stocking it. (Who decides what games to carry anyway? They don’t do a very good job in my experience.)
It was recently re-released for xBox live. Playing the demo made me want to check up on my DS character again. Maybe, in my absence, she had saved the fair prince in distress. (Yes, that’s right, I said Prince!)
Originally I thought that this review would just cover the expansion, but it turned out that I couldn’t remember how to play Civ 4. Either I had absolutely forgotten how to play or I had never played it at all.
This completely took me by surprise since the original box had been opened. Maybe I opened it up, way back in 2005 when it came out, just to look at it and revel in its shiny newness, then placed it at the back of my closet and promptly forgot.
Ah well. At least I had the chance to revisit it.
Enjoy!
tfg
Starting out with the expansion really felt like one of those nightmares where you show up to school and find out you have a final test for a class you never knew you were supposed to be taking. I really thought I had played Civilization 4 already. The box was opened and looked like it had been used, that must have been me right? /sigh
With two sparkling new icons on my desktop, one for the original Civ 4 and one for the Beyond the Sword Expansion, I immediately dove for the expansion. Side note: I already owned Civ 4, but since I just got a new computer I didn’t have it installed.
