Lately I find myself playing a lot of Chromehounds for the Xbox 360. In fact, I find myself playing more Chromehounds than any human being should have to play. I'm more or less burned out on the game, but one of my close friends loves it. I find myself playing to to hang out online with him. The wonderful gas prices we've had for the past half a year have meant XBox Live is the only way we can get together.
In many ways, the nights where I and my two friends get together on Xbox Live is like the pen & paper gaming days of old. We generally play the same thing week after week. Before Chromehounds it was Halo 3. And we do interject other games from time to time. I was happy to get some Commanders: Attack of the Genos in this past week, and we play Carcassonne with fair regularity. We BS, make jokes, kill stuff, and otherwise act just like a tabletop group.
One thing I like about Chromehounds is how it lets us play cooperatively against the AI. Lots of games let you kill each other, or team up against other human players, but games which let you team up as friends against a CPU GM are pretty rare. I wish more non-MMORPGs were like that. This past week I discovered Age of Booty, a pirate game, which allows coop play versus an AI, so I'm hoping to add it into our regular rotation.
I saw some news that Talisman for Xbox Live Arcade had been cancelled. That was a bit of a bummer, though not because I like Talisman much. Talisman is a pretty poor game, and can be summarized as "roll dice for 8 hours until you lose all desire to live." I think Dungeon would be a better game for XBox Live, but it's undeniable that Talisman has a sort of gamer cache. We all played it back in the day, and it would just be appropriate and nostalgic to play it in our online gaming get togethers.
On the other hand, I'm getting my crew into Culdcept Saga ($20 on amazon, btw). It scratches much of the same itch as Talisman in the Monopoly for RPGers vibe. Plus, it's a much more engaging game than Talisman ever was. This week I should finally see a reprieve from the constant Chromehounds. I'll be able to recharge and come back to it fresh.
All I have to do now is work on my Culdcept deck.
