I love board games. One game ive wanted to add to my collection has been Descent Journeys into the Dark. I really enjoy awesome table-top fantasy games. I am a huge fan of board game designer Kevin Wilson's Doom: The Board Game and heard Descent was worth checking out.

As I did some research on the game the consensus seemed to be that it was good but suffered from a few problems. Notably it was hard and the rules were too complicated. I can understand that as The Doom Board Game has very complicated rules as well its just such a great game I can get around that. That said, I took what people were saying to heart and didn't get Descent because of what people mentioned.

A few months ago Fantasy Flight Games dropped the news that they are releasing a second edition to Descent! Excitedly I read the post eager to see what they had made better.

"This updated version of the classic board game of dungeon-delving adventure features a host of enhancements, including new heroes and monsters, accessible rules, a class-based hero system, campaign play, and much more. In addition to its nearly 40 detailed plastic figures, 48 map tiles, nine custom dice, and much more, Second Edition offers a comprehensive Quest Guide with 37 original maps."

Loved what I heard. If you want to read the entire announcement check it out:

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=3198

A few things I love hearing:

1. They have an into campaign called "First Blood" where you are given a simple goal to complete. These kinds of entry starters are great because starting off with a complete zone and rules can be pretty overwhelming.

2. They are breaking the quests up into different types. They can be played standalone or as part of a campaign. They are also shipping a "plot tree" that will branch players to different campaigns depending on what you did in the earlier quest.

3. The overlord player can pick a class and customize the deck.

I haven't seen any word on the release date for second edition, but when I know ill post more about it. More than likely ill pick it up at some point and let you know how that goes.

The source code for Prince of Persia was released today from the original Apple 2 port:

https://github.com/jmechner/Prince-of-Persia-Apple-II

Awesome to see this sort of thing happen regularly. A few companies I respect have released source for some awesome games like Sim City, Doom 3, Quake 3 & Duke Nukem 3D.

Seeing this kind of thing is awesome because it allows these classic games to live on well beyond they are fiscally viable to keep running on modern systems. I believe culture should be preserved and source released of old games helps that.

Heres hoping that old games like Warcraft Orcs and Humans, Unreal Tournament and Mario Brothers see a source release at some point.

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SimCity:
http://www.donhopkins.com/home/micropolis/

Doom 3:
https://github.com/TTimo/doom3.gpl

Quake 3:
http://ioquake3.org/

Duke Nukem 3D:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Nukem_3D

Occasionally games come along that change the way you think about what games can do. A month or so back I heard that Sword & Sworcery was a rad iOS game that took the experience beyond the typical mobile game faire to have a great story and interesting game mechanics. I picked it up hoping for great and I wasn't disappointed.

The game brings you into its unique universe from the start and I was immediately hooked. I watched the entire intro and "more information" game sections before I even started playing. It was that unique.

The game is stylistically similar to the old Out of this World game released on PC and Super Nintendo. It forgoes speech in favor of text and that works very well for the game. It also has a very simple control and fight mechanic. If you want to fight you put your phone up and down and when you want to move around the world you have to put the phone on its side. Simple.

My only downside to this game is that it joins many other awesome adventure games in its "mystery meat" puzzle hardness factor. Old games like Day of the Tentacle and Full Throttle were awesome, but often you had to do very non obvious things to progress. I am at such a part now and am considering using a walkthrough to get past it. I guess it bears noting that I haven't really played a game in years that required me to think about going to a walkthrough.

The game has an interesting mechanic where you can read the minds of anyone you come in contact with. You can go to a screen where you can read through all their thoughts and this adds a real depth to the world and tone of the game. For instance, there is a dog in the beginning part of the game and you can read his thoughts.

It being occasionally difficult shouldn't stop you from picking it up, its fantastic and if you are looking for a richer mobile game experience, this is it. Oh and its for sale on Steam as well now until April 28th so no reason not to pick it up!

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Out of this World: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Another_World_%28video_game%29

Two Part interview with the Diablo 3 developers.

Here is part 2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBbEuHivdNw&list=UUxn8csYeZg6awRnZS-aqg0g&index=1&feature=plcp

In the video its the end of 2011 and they look very tired. I wonder how they are doing now?

2k is talking about after release Borderlands 2 support in a new class called the Mecromancer:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-04-09-mechromancer-class-announced-for-borderlands-2

They made a pretty large point that this wasn't "day one DLC" but something they have been considering and will most likely ship as DLC well after launch. I like the idea of adding characters as DLC and really like the idea of this class. The Necromancer was my fav class of Diablo 2 and its cool to see the Borderlands take on it.

In other news, I was playing "Borderlands Classic" the other day and need to pass on a tip. In RPGs people often power level characters to help get certain characters to the highest level quickly. A few months back I played with a few level 60's online and they power leveled me about 8-10 levels. This was fun but something I want to warn you away from. My character had problems fighting by itself because the Siren didn't have the gear to go at the higher level characters on her own. So I am going at the main campaign again in playthrough 2 to get at better weaponry to take on some of the "Borderlands Classic" DLC that was way too hard otherwise.

My Town 2 is a simple freemium mobile game I play from time to time. Its kind of like Sim City but since its a freemium Tiny Tower like game, time is a factor and you can purchase in game currency to speed things up.

I wanted to post an recent image of my town "Mos Eisley" above and let you know a secret I found. I don't believe you need to build roads in My Town 2. I mean, you can in fact build roads but I haven't built any roads at all save what came with my town and nothing bad has happened.

I believe roads are simply for looks because none of my citizens or businesses suffer because I don't build roads. One benefit to not building roads is you have more room to build other stuff. Since you need to expand your town and that takes money, you can save money and time by not building a single road.

At least I did it that way and my citizens don't seem to mind it one bit.

Todays shirt woot is pretty awesome.

http://shirt.woot.com/

Yeah I am pretty crazy excited for this game. Barb looks awesome.

I will use this here site to let yall know when ill be on battle.net and how the games with people I play go. A few people on the site will be playing with me, so very excited.

Talked to one such person today about the lull in great games out now. I agreed, the games that have come out recently haven't been too exciting. Maybe we are missing something awesome?

A few people have mentioned to me that its not straight forward how to get your imagery from your games to upload to the web and share on Cheerful Ghost.

Recently I created a blog post about it, check it out:

http://blog.cheerfulghost.com/post/20503613172/getting-your-own-images-on-cheerful-ghost

Long and short of it, nab your screen-shots, pics, etc and upload them to http://imgur.com/ Its the easiest way to upload your images on the web. Imgur is popular on Reddit and other social sites.

Hope you find this helpful, I used imgur to upload my own personal imagery for quite a few of my posts.

Often times board games don't translate well to digital. Haven't played a Monopoly game I liked on the computer yet. That said, some games are simple enough to translate really well digitally and on mobile such as Ticket to Ride Pocket.

Ticket to Ride is a board game where you play one of a few railroad barons that are trying to build rail roads across the United States. At the start you pick routes and then compete with other players for completing your routes and getting points. If you are blocked and can not complete a route it counts negatively against your score. There are more rules, but thats it in a simplistic form.

The board game is a favorite amongst my wife and friends and recently there was a iTunes store deal where you could get Ticket to Ride pocket for free so I picked it up. Installed it on my wifes iPod touch as well as my iPhone. That was a good idea because we play it all the time together. Its one of the rare video games we can both agree on playing and its fun. The screenshot above is from one of our games.

The average Ticket to Ride Pocket game seems to last about 15-20 minutes. The average board game seems to last an hour or so.

The game is playable via Game Center, Wifi or Bluetooth. The bluetooth works pretty well and recently we were traveling and played Ticket to Ride on the plane and in the airport waiting around. The mobile version moves much faster than the board game as the bots don't spend much time making moves. Speaking of the bots they are pretty decent. They win if you are doing badly but for the most part we are mostly competing to beat each other. Since my wife is VERY competitive we enjoy beating each other. As we started the game I easily bested her but lately she has been winning each game handily. I am changing my strategy up somewhat but I have a bit to go to catch up with her, she is pretty good already.