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• We’re headed back to Zul’Aman tonight to see how far we can get. Progression is exciting! Here’s hoping we get some good loot! #

I received a lot of new video games during the holiday season, one of which I am currently obsessing over almost as much as World of Warcraft. Yes, I know that is a bold statement, but it is true. I stayed up pretty late last night after raiding Karazhan playing this stupid game.

I’m talking about a game called Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords.

Puzzle Quest is a turn-based RPG. You have a character with a specific class that give you special abilities, health and mana, and trainable attributes. As you progress in levels and gain money, you can purchase upgrades to your citadel, buy a mount, use companions, and more.

The combat system is what is unique to the game. Combat is very much like playing Bejeweled, which really is what makes this game fun. You are presented a square filled with different colored circular tiles. The tiles can be colored, with each color representing a different type of mana that is used for your abilities. You also have tiles that grant experience, give you money, wildcards which act as point multipliers, and skull tiles which deal direct damage to your enemy.

Much like Bejeweled, you have to get three tiles of the same type in a row to activate them. So if you get three red tiles in a row, they leave the game board and you get +3 red mana. On your turn if you have enough of the right color of mana, you can use different spells/abilities that will either buff yourself or cause damage/debuffs to your enemy. Combat is ended when either you or your opponent reaches 0 health.

The storyline is kind of cheesy, but the quests are fun and always result in a challenging opponent. The AI is pretty intelligent and you will spend a lot of time cursing it for seeing a 4-in-a-row that you didn’t see coming. (Getting 4 tiles in a row results in a free turn).

I have the game on the Nintendo DS, but it is also available on the PSP, Wii, PS2, PC, and even on the XBox Live Arcade. It’s cheap to pick up and very addictive. I heartily recommend it, especially if you are looking for a new game for your portable gaming device.

• Going to Pei Wei tonight! Yay! #

• Almost ready to launch my new forums! Stay tuned! #

• Allergies suck. #
• Puzzle Quest on the DS is a freaking fun game. #

• Feeling pretty useless at the moment. #

• I’m looking forward to the weekend! Going to shop for wood flooring and do some fun home improvement stuff. #

• Working with Grails 1.0 RC3, and learning the changes in Groovy 1.5 #

• Going back to work wasn’t as bad as I thought. #

Last night I downloaded the demo for Burnout Paradise on the XBox 360 and tried it out. I’m a big fan of the Burnout series (although not as big a fan as my wife is!).  We have copies of the game on just about every console we own.



For those not familiar with the series, Burnout at its core is a racing game. You get cars you can modify and race, etc. But the twist is that this game focuses more on creatively crashing cars and causing damage than actually racing.  In this way it is the exact opposite of games like Forza Motorsports with is a racing simulator.  My favorite event in Burnout is the Crash Party, where you launch your car into a busy intersection and try to cause the most amount of monetary damage possible.  It’s quite a form of stress relief. 

I was really excited to play the latest incarnation of the game and downloaded the demo as soon as I could.

This game is kind of a departure from previous versions.  At first I was a little underwhelmed.  Instead of getting a menu where you can choose the event you want to do, you are thrust into a city where you have to find different areas to change your paint scheme, refill your boost meter, or repair damages to the car. You also have to drive around to find different locations for your events.  So in a way it feels like Burnout meets GTA.  Not exactly what I was hoping for.

One neat feature though is that if you have a camera you can take a picture of yourself and it becomes your driver’s license photo.  That becomes more fun if you are playing online and you can see who you took down, or who took you down.  It adds a little more personality to the game.

Another cool feature is that even though this is a demo, you can play online!  So people on Xbox Live, download the demo and let’s try out some of the online stuff.

The thing about this game is that I want to drive really fast. I want to beat up other cars. I want to crash in spectacular ways.  I don’t want to have to drive around looking at a mini map to find an intersection for a particular event, slow down enough to hit the keys necessary to start the event, and then go.  At first I was  thinking I wouldn’t like it and would skip this version of the game.

However as I played the demo, I started to warm up to the idea of the city environment.  While different from previous games, I don’t think it is a bad idea.  Just different.  I think once the full version of the game comes out and there are actually more than like 3 events you can do it will be a lot more fun.  So right now I’m taking a “wait and see” approach to the game and will re-evaluate it after playing the full thing.