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A Gaming Life
Review – Sentinels of the Multiverse: Definitive Edition
One of the common words I hear to describe some games with lots of upkeep is “fussy.”
That’s when there’s a bunch of stuff on the table, you’re trying to keep straight multiple different abilities and tracks and hopefully you don’t forget anything.
From what I have heard, the original edition of Sentinels of the Multiverse was the picture you see in the dictionary when you look up “fussy.”
I used to love playing the app version of the game because the app did all of that tracking and calculating for you!
Now, however, (and when I say “now,” I mean “in 2022”) they have released Sentinels of the Multiverse: Definitive Edition which is supposed to greatly aid in all of that.
The game is designed by Christopher Badell and Adam Rebottaro with artwork by Adam Rebottaro. It was published by Greater Than Games.
Sentinels of the Multiverse (just assume I’m talking about the Definitive Edition unless I say otherwise, ok?) is a cooperative superhero game where players are a number of heroes (from 3-5) taking on a dastardly villain in some kind of environment, trying to stop their master plan from coming to fruition.
What is that plan?
Well, that’s not actually stated anywhere, but ultimately their plan is to defeat all the heroes!
And your plan is to defeat the villain.
You can defeat the villain even if only one hero is left.
How does that work?
Let’s take a look.
Read MoreTOP 10 GAMES PLAYED IN 2022 – #5-1
Wow, the second part of my Top 10 Games played in 2022 is being posted just a week after the first part.
I’m already scoring a blog win!
Last week I posted games 10-6 of my Top 10 Games played in 2022, and there were some great games on there.
So this one has to be even better, right?
I played 111 games in 2022, and there were some games that just missed the cut and would be in my 11-20 list if I was making one (maybe I should?).
I mentioned Underwater Cities last week, but I would also have to give an honourable mention to Fantastic Factories and Dune: Imperium, two games that I greatly enjoyed.
But enough about that.
You want to know what my #1 pick is.
Did you guess it last week?
You can find out after the break.
Read MoreOrcaCon 2023 Retrospective
OrcaCon is a convention held in Bellevue, Washington in January every year. Sadly, I wasn’t able to go last year and the two years before that…well, something happened. I’m not really sure what.
I went to my first OrcaCon in January 2020 and then everything went to hell so I wasn’t able to make it back again until this year.
I just got back on Sunday and thought I would give you a report of what happened and how it was.
I did mention the 2020 OrcaCon in my post about convention experiences, so you know I had a blast then.
Did I have a blast this weekend?
Well, except for the rain, it was actually pretty good!
The drive down to Bellevue from Vancouver on Friday morning was beautiful (cloudy and spitting rain when I left but by the time I had crossed the border, the sun was out) and I got down there just before Noon.
The rain started just when I got to Bellevue. It was ok the rest of the weekend, raining off and on (but never too badly when I went out to the parking lot for the food trucks) but the drive home on Sunday was hideous with rain.
My voice was a bit hoarse from singling along with the music I had been listening to on the way down, which made teaching a game first thing a bit rough!
But I persevered.
You don’t want to know about the drive, though.
You want to know about the games!
So let’s take a look.
Read MoreTop 10 Games Played in 2022 – #10-6
(Edit – Now check out the Top 5!)
It’s been a while since I’ve done a true Top 10 list.
Last year’s Top 10 was rolled into my Top 25 Games Played of All Time.
I didn’t play enough in 2020 to do a Top 10, so it was a Top 5 instead.
We have to go back to 2019 since there was a Top 10 list!
I know you’ve missed it, haven’t you?
You know you have.
As I mentioned in my Blog in Review post, I played 111 unique games in 2022, definitely enough to get a Top 10 list going.
As I was putting together the list, I realized that I left off a game that I thought would be on it.
Underwater Cities, played for the first time this year (and twice in the same month!), is a phenomenal game.
When I realized I left it off the list, I went looking to see what it would replace…and decided it wouldn’t replace any of them.
I would definitely say that it’s my #11, though.
It could move up in the future, especially if I play it some more.
With that all being said, let’s get into the first half of the Top 10 Games Played in 2022 list.
You know, so you can get on with your day.
Read More5 Great Books Read in 2022
I know this blog doesn’t do a lot of book stuff, but I do have some book reviews out there.
And there will be at least one more coming in the next month!
So I thought it would be cool to do a “Great Books Read in 2022” post just to let you know what I’ve been up to when I haven’t been gaming.
My Goodreads Reading Challenge I set for myself for 2022 was 55 books. I exceeded that by reading 61!
I did cheat a little bit, with a couple of novellas, but I’m still proud of that achievement.
I was going to do “the best books read” in this post, but I think I’m going to instead do just five interesting books that you may want to pick up and read yourself. That will let me spread the genres out a little bit.
I hope you’ll let me know some of the stuff you’ve read in the comments section.
You can check out every book I read in 2022 here.
Also, I’m not going to highlight the Peter Ash books by Nick Petrie, since I’ve already done a whole post about them. Though I will say that I’ve now read all of them (I hadn’t read the last two, I think, when I wrote that post) and they are all just as good.
On that note, let’s begin!
Read MoreNew to Me – December 2022
December was a curtailed month for games.
The last game I played was on December 13 (or December 16 if you count my Combat Commander ladder game I played on a Friday night).
Between a Sunday Funday being snowed out, Christmas falling on a Sunday, as well as the last week before Christmas being all “work from home” (and thus no games got played at lunch), it was a short month!
I still managed to get 8 games played, and 4 of them were new to me!
That made the Cult of the New to Me happy.
What didn’t make them happy was that all of them were from 2022.
That got me a bit of the side-eye.
Even so, I’m not dissatisfied because four games is enough to make a substantial post!
With OrcaCon coming up in January (this coming weekend!) and three other Sunday Fundays, not to mention a regular work schedule, we should be back to regular programming in January.
Besides, I have so much work to do with upcoming “end of year” posts that it’s a good thing I only have 4 games to write about!
So without further ado (all of my ado died in the Marvel Mutant Massacre anyway), let’s begin!
Read MoreBlog in Review – 2022
It’s the new year and welcome to 2023!
As has been my tradition for the past 3 years, here is my annual post about the year that was, 2022 in this case.
Unlike last year, where I talked about how 2021 really should be thrown into the trash heap, I’m going to try and not do an actual year’s retrospective.
We all know about the evils that are out there, both foreign and domestic, and how the world and economy are taking yet another turn for the worse.
At least this year no beloved icon died on New Year’s Eve to make the transition into the new year even more terrible than it was (though I was sad to hear that Anita Pointer of the Pointer Sisters did die earlier in the day).
So I’m just going to celebrate the new year and wish everybody the best in 2023.
Personally, it was a year of ups and downs mentally (that seems to be a theme the last three years), and unfortunately more down than up as far as blogging goes.
Let’s have a look at all of the stats.
Read MoreTime of Crisis – Storage Solution from Rails on Board
One more for the road.
It’s near the end of the year so it’s time for one more post about storage solutions!
This time, we’re going to be talking about the Cube4Me storage solutions for Time of Crisis from Rails on Board.
Time of Crisis had another issue with it, which made me actually wait before actually using this storage system.
I needed the 3-inch box! Which I ordered from GMT Games in their P500 sale back in November and was finally able to pick up on Christmas Day.
The Cube4Me trays wouldn’t fit in the original 2-inch box.
This is how my game looked before, with a lot of baggies.
Sure, baggies are nice. If you have enough baggies, you can separate everything.
But why not have trays?
Read MoreApp Review – Chai
Sometimes we just need a little peace in our lives, especially during these tumultuous times.
What can be more peaceful than brewing and selling tea?
Ok, maybe a certain panda game, but other than that?
I’ve heard a ton of good things about the card game Chai by Steeped Games (designed by Dan and Connie Kazmaier with artwork by Mary Haasdyk, Sahana VJ, published in 2019) but I hadn’t had the chance to play it yet.
Then a surprise announcement from Digidiced, one of the best boardgame app publishers, said that it was coming to digital soon (and then quickly it was “soon” and it was out!).
After having played an asynchronous multiplayer game and a few games against the AI, I have to say that this is probably one of the sleeper hits of 2022, if you are into these kinds of games.
What is Chai? And is it any good? How about the app?
This review will answer all of those questions.
But only if you bring me a biscuit.
Read MoreApp Review – Early Access – Unmatched: Battle of Legends
(Edit: 3/2/23: And now it’s out of Early Access and also available on iOS and Android! Along with the season pass or the first DLC, whichever you prefer.)
One of the biggest 2-player game systems right now seems to be the Unmatched series by Restoration Games.
I could be wrong, but I do hear a lot about it and expansions keep coming for it!
I had been wanting to try it out but wasn’t able to get my hands on it.
So when Acram Digital offered me a review copy of the brand new (at the time, and sorry for the lateness of this review) Early Access Steam digital adaptation of the game, I jumped at the chance!
This Early Access edition came to Steam on September 15 and I’ve been playing it off and on for a while now.
What is this game, how is it and how’s the app?
This is a review of both the game and the app, though it’s primarily the app version.
Let’s take a look.
Read More
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