I downloaded the new Wits & Wagers Arcade game for XBOX 360 last night. The download was easy through the arcade. The game itself looks ok. You select between 1 and 4 local players, and then join the rest of the players to the game online. I found games easy enough last night. You select a “character” to represent you, basically you select a head. Your head then gets thrown on a body in each round, and the bodies sort of dance around. It was distracting, un-necessary and in general poorly executed. This would have been much cooler with Wii style Mii’s. On the XBOX, I would have preferred just a static Gamertag or something.
The game play is fine, and is basically the same game you get on the board. The game played through ok, although perhaps the ability to visit Wikipedia in the time they allot to answer questions means that the timer should be set to less. In the last round, when you can bet unlimited money, I think it was very obvious that a player had looked up the answer. The player had two from the same XBOX and both of them immediately put all of their money on the one answer. Everyone followed suite, and sure enough it was a perfect guess. Maybe the game needs to integrate the XBOX camera so you can see who is cheating. You vote at the end for the player who made the game most enjoyable…not sure what that was about.
Regardless, I would say the game is an enjoyable online as it is off. I would prefer to play with a selected group of people though, as oppose to random. If you have the game, and want to play, look my up on XBOX Live. My gamer tag is Uncle Elwyn.
I have been playing around with Diigo for the past couple weeks. Diigo is a social bookmarking and annotation community. It is the annotation bit that really separates Diigo from Ma.gnolia and other bookmarking services.
The first thing I noticed when reading about Diigo is that the community there is different from the community at Ma.gnolia (my typical bookmarking service of choice). Diigo has a huge following among those working in education, and seeing some of the things they do with the service is quite impressive. A very structured, and organized approach to bookmarking.
Here are five reasons I think you should take a look at this service, if you have not already.
Effective Searching - I have entered about 300 bookmarks into Diigo now, and have started to run a number of searches to see how fast information is returned. Diigo offers not only tag and description searches, but also full page text searches. Very handy. The searches are fast and effective, and searches also give you a set of relevant tags to help further refine results with a simple click.
Whole Page Comments - I like to be able to leave my thoughts about a page. I really think of my description and my comment on the page as two different things. Diigo allows you to quickly leave a public or private comment about a page. Very handy both as a reminder of why you bookmarked a page, and to others of why you think it is good.
Bookmark Your Spot - A bookmark, in the paper world, is used to help us find our way back to the actual page or paragraph we were reading, not just the book. Diigo has a Sticky Note feature which can be placed anywhere on any page you bookmark. It allows you to leave a page, make a note, and come back not only to the page, but also to the right place on the page. I will also mention that when you bookmark a page you can set it as Unread. You can later filter on your unread bookmarks, and get right back to what you still have to read. I didn’t understand the power of this feature until I found the option to show only unread bookmarks. Very nice!
Highlight for Reference - Highlighting, and commenting on those annotations, is the main feature that differentiates Diigo from other services. Basically, you bookmark a page, select the text you want to highlight and add a comment if you want to. Share your comments with a group, the public, or yourself. I find myself highlighting addresses, phone numbers, in addition to passages and other snippets of the text on the page. This is an area where the Diigo team is looking to constantly improve what they can offer, so I would look to see this feature get better and better.
Lists, Lists, Lists - This feature is very cool. Many services offer the ability to create groups, but most don’t offer you the ability to create a simple list. Maybe there is not a big difference between a private group and a simple list, but they have done a nice job with integrating your lists into the side bar in your browser. Makes working your way through a set of daily reading sites very quick and easy. You can also add sections to your lists, similar to what you can do with Google Notebook, which makes public shared lists quite visually appealing.
Overall, you end up with a very nice experience both bookmarking and annotating websites. You will get the best feature set if you download the Diigo toolbar (sidebar) for your borwser, but you can also make use of a fancy bookmarklet. All of the typical web 2.0 goodies like RSS feeds are present in the service as well.
If you are on Diigo and would like to look me up or add me as a friend, take a look at my profile page. If you decide to sign up for Diigo due to this posting, give me a shout either in the comments here or on Diigo.
I cannot think of another mass combat miniatures game where you can carry seven complete armies in a shoe box, but that is easily possible with Battleground Fantasy Warfare (BGFW) by Your Move Games.
BGFW is unique in the miniatures gaming world in that it does not actually use miniatures. Instead, you use a set of cards which provide you with a top down view of the different units in your army. The cards are also used to measure distances and keep track of the stats for each unit.
The game is heavily governed by your ability to manage your troops through the command and control phase. If you do a better job of managing your troops, and get them into position to attack, flank, and pinch your opponents you will be in good position to win.
The game is not a collectible game. Each army has two things you can purchase, the basic deck and the expansion deck. The basic deck includes a set of core troops, plenty of variety to play the game, as well as a set of command cards for your army. The expansion gives you more copies of the same cards from the basic deck in addition to a few new units. You can buy both decks for an army for about 30.00 at full retail, and around 20 on discount online.
The Five Reasons
Ok here are the five reasons I think that you should pick up this game if you have not already.
Unique, Balanced Game Play - I have to mention this one first, because really it is the only reason to play a game. BGFW is simply a good game, with a very unique set of game mechanics. Setting aside the fact that the game is played with cards, the game still offers a unique take on command and control and manages to maintain a good balance between all the armies. You can download a copy of the rules and try them out before you buy.
Inexpensive - I already mentioned the cost, and you really cannot compare the value of this game. In the Men of Hawkshold army for example you get 11 different units if you buy both decks, adding up to over 60 different unit cards. You can make a huge army with all of these cards.
Table Size - This is a huge deal for me. I hate playing games on 4′ x 6′ tables, because standard tables for your home are not that big. BGFW plays on a table sized 3′ x 2.6′. I use a piece of brown felt I have cut to that size. I can carry the “board” with me anywhere and play a game on pretty much any table.
Ultraportable - I have a lot of games, and having games that are just the right size for what they are is good. Even better though is a miniatures game that fits in a box, along with the board, all the terrain you need…everything. The box I am using right now is actually too big, but I wanted some room for extra terrain as I have chance to make it.
Amazing Support - The Your Move Games team is constantly working on this game. Work does not just mean creating new things for gamers to buy though. It means spending a lot of time on the forums and BGG answering questions and drumming up interest in and support for the game.
**BONUS** - You can play this game for free by downloading issue #28 of Harbinger Magazine. This issue includes not only a BGFW scenario, but also printable cards to play the scenario. You can actually try out this game for the price of a little ink.
Related Links
Here are my top links for Battleground Fantasy Warfare.
2 or 3 years ago my favorite method for keeping track of information on the Internet was a product called Onfolio. Onfolio was a combination Windows application/browser addin that allowed me to capture, tag, organize and search various type of content from the web. I really liked Onfolio, used it every day. Onfolio got bought up by MS a few years back, and the Onfolio tool sort of got merged into the Windows Live Toolbar, but really mostly just seems to have died.
I saw an article on Download Squad today for a new piece of software that reminded me of Onfolio very much.
Eluma is a combination RSS reader and bookmark manager. It looks quite interesting. The software seems to be taking advantage of many of the common social computing tools of the day, RSS and tags etc. It also makes use of folders, and smart searches. They have some publishing capabilities to allow you to share collections of information with people.
The software is in private beta for now. I am hopeful to get a chance to take a look at the beta pretty soon. You can get a quick overview of the tool from the following You Tube video.
I will report back if I get into the beta and get a chance to take a look.
P.S. The video ends with a rather retro product theme song. I am not sure about the song.
I am sure every one has heard or read the news that Gary Gygax died today. I, like many people, can remember when I got my red box basic set. I even have the dice still (but sadly not the books). It’s always sad to hear that a pioneer in the gaming industry has passed away.
