The Rezzed Report 2013

In an industry such as gaming, it’s surprising how often things can change and surprise you. In the past few years we have seen whole segments of the gaming industry rise and fall, with indie gaming most notably emerging as a dominant force. At no other point since the twilight of games development in the 70’s, have we seen such a prominence of “bedroom coders”. Is it any wonder when titles such as Minecraft (which recently hit 11 million sales) and Super Meat Boy (which has sold over a million copies) have captured the gamer’s attention, even managing to outperform some publisher backed blockbusters?

So if indie games are really such a big thing why don’t we see more at expos? Better yet, why don’t they have their own specialised events? This is what RockPaperShotgun and Eurogamer aims to address with the follow up to their indie focused event – Rezzed 2013.

The Good The Bad The Ugly - Xbox One

Welcome to the inauguration of a new format here at Crash To Desktop. With The Good The Bad and The Ugly we will bring you a weekly review of the latest in gaming and tech, introducing you to the great and the downright rotten.

Firstly let me say I love my Xbox 360, not the PS3 and I will most probably own an Xbox One within a year or two of launch. I will, however, be buying a PS4 on the launch day and will be signing up for a pre-order after E3.

I’ll admit, I have not been playing many games recently and I did not watch the Xbox One announcement live. I have watched the full video and honestly I'm feeling very underwhelmed by the whole announcement.

Thats not to say that I am not interested in the console.

REVIEW: Munchkin

Raksha is Crash To Desktop’s very own Malkavian, occasionally released from his sanctuary to inflict upon us his mumblings about the end being neigh, or just being out of tea bags. This time it is Munchkin that receives his most deranged visions. So sit back and hold on to your seat, this will be a bumpy ride. - Silverfuge

Munchkin is a card game based on the dungeons and dragons style games, with a sense of humour. Produced by Steve Jackson games, the game borrows heavily from dungeons and dragons, and has a heavy comical influence, making the game much more fun. The art work is done by the same gentle man who brought us the web comic dork tower, giving us art work that fits very well with the humour within the game. The object of the game is to win by reaching level 10 before anyone else in the party, via any way Munchkinable (Raksha sure does like to make these words up so bear with him- Silverfuge).

The game itself comes with one die which is used to determine the turn order, and two decks of cards (the treasure cards and the dungeon cards). The Treasure cards are usually potions or equipment that you can use, trade or sell to level up, and in some cases level up cards. The dungeon cards are monsters and curses, which are the primary tool for the game.

REVIEW: Dragon Age - Dark Fantasy Roleplaying

I wanted to do something myself and Raksha used to do frequently when we first started writing/presenting, and very rarely get to do these days due to real life issues. This is of course a review, in this case Dragon Age: Dark Fantasy Roleplaying, which I must admit to being a quite a fan of.

Now for anyone who doesn’t know, Dragon Age started off on the EA website as a game called Dragon Age: Journeys which spawned Dragon Age: origins (and it's various DLC) then Dragon Age 2. There have also been mentions of an anime coming out soon (we hope). The game is set in a fantasy universe and is considered Dark fantasy, since no matter what choice you pick someone dies.

Retro Review: Heroes of Might and Magic 2

The Heroes of Might and Magic series, popular off-shoot of the Might and Magic games, has been an enduring classic in PC gamers’ libraries for many years. Many consider the third entry, HoMM 3, to be the definitive game in the series. Though I loved that game from the first time I played it, I've had a soft spot for its predecessor, (Heroes of Might and Magic 2) since being introduced to it by a friend. Maybe it’s the entrancing soundtrack, the addictive gameplay, or the nostalgia-educing graphics - but whatever its secret is, this game is truly magical, in more ways than one.

The first game in the series was first released in 1995, and told the tale of Lord Ironfist, who fled to Enroth from his home and was forced into a life-or-death battle against three opponents vying for the kingdom’s throne. Eventually he won the ensuing war - this ending is canonical, but in the game you can also lead one of his opponents to victory as well.

I have never played the original HoMM, though I have a copy on my hard drive. I’m sure that the basis for the wonderful series it would become was there, but surely Heroes 2 was the game which solidified it as the turn-based strategy series of choice.

A friendly guide to Warhammer 40K

Warhammer 40,000, or 40k as it is also known amongst its players, is a tabletop wargame played with numerous 6-sided dice. Games usually take about a couple of hours to play through, (for most “average” sized games of 1,500 points per side) and consists of two or more players moving, shooting and attacking with their respective armies.

Bigger games take longer and it is common for games of 4,000 points to take an entire evening - The game itself is played in turns, with each player taking their turn before their opponent does, and each turn is broken up into numerous phases. These phases are movement, shooting and assault.

Savage Worlds Review

Savage Worlds is a generic system written by Pinnacle Studios, and published by Studio 2 Publishing it has won the award "The People’s Choice 2003" for "Best Roleplaying Game".

Savage Worlds is a generic system and as such tailors itself to that genre of gaming. Although the game system has uses outside of table top roleplay, (and can be used in table top war games) the difference is that on a roleplaying game, the games master describes everything, on war games the players can see the models on the table and don’t need to describe everything.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer Review

Overview

Buffy The Vampire Slayer is a TV show that I am sure most of you all know; if not here is a quick description of the show and its ideas.

Buffy is a teenage American high school student, she is an attractive yet troubled student having burned down her last school. What the rest of the world doesn’t know is that Buffy is a vampire slayer and there is only one. She has been chosen to fight vampires and demons and other nasty things.

Ok the role-play game works around that you will be playing ever the original cast, which are all given stats in the book or you can start completely for scratch with your own cast of characters. Which can be anything that you want them to be, as long as you can come up with the concept for the character, you can play it from bog standard human to a demon.

Eden studio are the creators of the role play game they decided that the game would be aimed at fans and that it would be made for the average fan rather than for the regular role-play as a result of that the gaming system is a simple system that allows people to learn it very easily.

The system is cinematic, which means that the game runs like a film rather than being rules heavy like White Wolfs Storyteller system. So instead of being bogged down by large amounts of skills and large amounts of rules its keep pretty clean cut and simple which makes for a system that is pretty fast and rolls on constantly, thus allowing for a quicker progressing storyline.