Gameguythinks

World of Smurfcraft

December 22nd, 2010

My friend John has been telling me some of the exciting changes that have been made to the World of Warcraft game. Now, I stopped playing WoW some time ago and I’m not really interesting in getting back into it, but I do respect the amount of work the game developers put into keeping that game fresh.

Ironically, my wife has recently become obsessed with the Capcom Mobile Smurf Village game. It’s ironic because my wife gave me such a hard time when I was playing WoW and made fun of me for playing Farmville on Facebook when it first came out. Well, since I bought her an iPhone, she’s been totally obsessing about these crazy Smurfs. She was up until 1:30 AM waiting for a virtual watermelon to ripen.

I don’t think she would be interested if it wasn’t about Smurfs. My wife loves Smurfs. I think she also likes the Snorks, but that’s neither here nor there. I’m not sure why she loves the Smurfs. Maybe she longs for a simple and magical existence in an enchanted forest where everyone you know can be described with a single adjective, or maybe she just likes the idea of being the only woman in a village filled with men who fawn over her and bring her gifts. I don’t think either of those reasons really apply. I think she just likes Smurfs.

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Delay in Game

December 13th, 2010

Just when I thought my life was going to calm down a bit so that I could get back to blogging on a more regular basis, my laptop has been struck down. My own attempts to repair it has met with very little success, well alright, let’s make that absolutely no success at all. I am going to now enlist the aid of folks with higher tech skills, since I have obviously failed my skill roll.

Quick story: I was driving to work on the morning that my laptop died and was feeling pretty wretched. I was finishing up the latest episode of Boardgame Babylon, and was very surprised to learn that I had won a copy of Homesteaders! It was the high point of my day. Thanks Eric!

Posted in Blogging | 1 Comment »

Iron Man 2 Uno

November 15th, 2010

Yes, seriously.

My wife asked me yesterday why I hadn’t been blogging as much, and I said that I hadn’t really played anything recently. She reminded me that we had just played Uno the day before. I said, “I can’t blog about Uno!” Well, why not?

I remember playing Uno in middle school, but until a couple of weeks ago, I hadn’t thought about the game in decades. It was just one of those games that I remember playing but never wanting to play again. We even had a beaten up copy in a drawer, but I can’t recall that we had ever played it. Someone must have, or it wouldn’t be beaten up!

I hadn’t thought about Uno until I listed to an episode of the Game Night Guys podcast. I don’t really know what to say about this podcast. For gamers, there’s really nothing that’s going to be of any interest to you; however, for some odd reason, I find these guys very amusing. Anyway, they did an episode on Uno, and I realized that I had played the game incorrectly when I was young. Who knew?

I picked up a copy with an Iron Man 2 theme that came in a nice tin. The Iron Man theme made it an instant hit with my son, and there’s even a special card type unique to the set that allows you to cancel an opponent’s play. I have to say that once we were playing with the correct rules, it’s not a bad game. Remember, Uno is a variant of Crazy Eights, so you are trying to get rid of your cards by playing matching cards the same type or of the same suit. Uno is the same but there are additional cards thrown in that force an opponent to skip their turn or draw cards. I was under the impression that if you couldn’t play a card, you had to draw cards until you could play, but that’s not right! If you cannot play a card or do not wish to play a card, you must draw a single card from the deck. If it is a playable card, you may play it immediately; otherwise, your turn is over. There’s even an actual scoring system where you accumulate points based on the cards that remain in your opponent’s hands. We always just played until someone got rid of all their cards. Oh, and you can’t play a wild draw 4 card unless you have no other legal play. Uno with actual rules? Go figure!

We’ve played it a few times in the last week, and I must admit that it does not suck. Go find that beat up copy in your drawer and actually read the rules. If you can’t find the rules, then you just do a search for them online. I’d toss up a link, but I’m too lazy.

Have fun, everybody.

Posted in Blogging, Play | 3 Comments »