The Backlog

Mafia (Card Game)

I played Mafia for the first time last night, and it was fun. There were about 10 of us, and we sat around in a circle at McDonalds. One chose to be the Game Master, to moderate the flow of the game. The other nine will assume different roles such as Villagers, Mafia, Doctor and Spy.

The game starts with every player (except the GM) given a random card from a short deck. Different cards correspond to different roles. For example, the King card is the Doctor, the Jokers are the Mafia, the Ace is the Spy and the other cards are the Villagers.

I began the game as a villager for the first two rounds. To be honest I was actually waiting to be killed by the Mafia because I had to go to the toilet. When I came back for the third round, I got the Mafia card. I had fun killing villagers one by one, and they had no idea who was the Mafia. I killed the villagers at random so everyone was confused right till the end. The last game ended with me being killing all villagers except one, resulting in a Mafia victory.

The game has many variations, you can check it all out here.

When I reached home it was already 4am in the morning. If we had more time we would have played a few more rounds.

Posted in Games | No Comments »

Football Manager 2008 Frenzy

After my last paper on Friday, I went into a Football Manager 2008 frenzy. I started a new game and went on from there. It’s my 6th season now and I’m still going strong! If things go really well I might carry on for many more seasons.

In my first season as Newcastle United manager, I was very active in the transfer market. Given a small transfer kitty by the new chairman, I was forced to sell Obafemi Martins at the cut throat price of 7m pounds.

Yes, my currency setting is set at pounds so any amount mentioned henceforth is in pounds.

I bought in 10 players in my first season.

Of course, to spend a total of 11M, I have to sell one of my prized players. I ended up selling Obafemi Martins to A.C. Milan for 7M, which is more like a desperate sale. I know Martins does worth more than that, like around 12M.

In the second season, I dropped players like an anchor. Only two players were signed and a total of 14 players were released from their contracts.

The only players who managed to get in are Javier Chevanton, who is signed from Sevilla on a player exchange clause with Michael Owen, and world-class fullback John Arne Riise from Liverpool at a staggering price of 17M.

Well, I didn’t want to sell all those players. Some of them demanded to be placed on the transfer list because they want to go to a bigger club. Players like Balazs Dzsudzsak and Jose Enrique were sold to the highest bidder.

There was another exodus in my third season, as I was slowly releasing all the players I didn’t want in the club. In this season I only signed Adrien from Sparta Prague for 17.5M and Joe Cole from chelsea at only 300K. If I remember clearly, Avram Grant threw Joe Cole into the reserve squad and he became unhappy. As a result he was placed on the transfer list for a cheap price, so I went in for him.

Notable outgoing players in the third season were Steve Harper to Watford, Steve Sidwell to Tottenham, and Andy Carroll to Chelsea for 9.5M. Sidwell and Harper were allowed to move for free as their contracts had expired. Shola Ameobi was released on a free transfer. I couldn’t do enough to keep Andy Carroll, but I figure that the likes of Henri Saivet and Mauro Zarate will replace Carroll well.

The fourth season was a mess! I spent a total of 47M on players like Distel Zola of AS Monaco FC for 12M, Ledley King of Tottenham for 20M and Ben Foster from Chelsea for 15M (Yes, he moved to Chelsea). I also signed a young defender named Giannis Arkoukmanis from AEK for free.

Not many notable outgoing players this season as the squad was reaching some kind of stability. Nicky Butt signed on a contract to play until he is 40, but West Brom came in with a 250K offer. I accepted and he went shortly after. Belozoglu Emre, Cacapa, Matty Pattison and Jonny Godsmark were released from their contracts on a free transfer. Purchases from the first season were maturing quick!

The fifth season came and another two players were signed. Frode Sandberg from Reading and Carlos den Otter from Feyenoord both came in for less than 300K in total. I think these two players are regens so you won’t see them in real life.

Players who left were David Edgar to Mallorca, Hilario to Almeria and Phil Airey to Colchester. All players left for free as their contracts had expired.

In the current season, which is the sixth, I went crazy and signed in Giuseppe Rossi from Tottenham for 29M. He was valued at 18.5M, but Spurs demanded twice his value. I negotiated and managed to pull the price to 29M.

I managed to break the records by selling Giannis Arkoumanis to Inter Milan for 30M. He became a world-class centreback in an instant! I’m glad he went to Inter, because Chelsea offered the same amount that triggered the mininum fee release clause. I don’t want to play against a player like him. Besides Arkoumanis, Alan Smith was sold to Portsmouth for 2M.

Posted in Games | 1 Comment »

Battle For Wesnoth

I’m a big fan of turn-based games, because I get to keep things slow enough to come up with strategies to beat the game. It all started with Western chess and Chinese chess, when I was given ample time to ponder about possible moves and evaluate many different possible scenarios. Then came the smooth transition from board games to computer games. My first turn-based game was Civilizations. Today I still have Civilizations 3 installed in my PC. I couldn’t play the subsequent versions because my PC cannot support the high requirements to run the game smoothly.

Days ago Sean mentioned something about Wesnoth and that it was a turn-based game. After so many years playing real time strategy games such as Warcraft and Age of Empires, I was excited by the prospect of another mind-blowing turn-based game. He assured me that Wesnoth is lightweight and my 6 year old computer might be able to support the game. He was right. The game runs smoothly on a P4 1.6GHz machine. My 1GB DDR RAM must have helped too.

Wesnoth reminds me of Heroes of Might and Magic - another great turn-based strategy game - but in Wesnoth you move leaders and troops individually, not like in HoMM where troops move together with their leader. Wesnoth lets you recruit different classes of troops into your game. Examples of the many classes include Mage, Elvish Shaman, Elven Ranger, Elven Knight, Bowmen, Spearman, Peasant and Merman Hunter. The availability of these troops depend on the scenario that you play. Some storylines let you recruit more types as you progress, some limit you to a few classes as a challenge.

Each unit (leaders and troops alike) begin at a low level. As far as I know, leaders and basic troops all begin at level 1, but peasants start with level 0. As they achieve victory or survive attacks, they will increase in level. There will be a bar beside the life bar that indicates the progression of the level. Once the level bar is filled, the unit advances a level. Sometimes you can have units advance jobs as well. For example, a Mage that advances can be a White Mage that focuses on White Magic.

Scenarios are created and uploaded by the players of Wesnoth. Much like HoMM, there is a map editor that allows you to create your own scenarios. As a result replayability seems high, as players can try out each scenario based on their preferred difficulty level.

The game is downloadable for free right here. At time of publishing, the latest version is 1.4. Take note that if you are using Linux, there is a version for it as well. Don’t download the Windows version by mistake. Good luck.

For more screenshots, try this.

Posted in Games | 2 Comments »

Cinema Tycoon Gold

I absolutely love tycoon games. It all started with the old Lemonade Tycoon, it was fun finding the correct recipe for the lemonade to be sold that day, because the best recipe that has the right amount of sugar and ice will sway the crowd to your stalls. The excitement has always been addictive, I sometimes find myself playing Tycoon games for hours!

About two days ago I downloaded Cinema Tycoon Gold of TikGames, LLC. Of course, I knew I was never going to satisfied with a trial copy, so I obtained a crack from one of those torrent sites to unlock the game. My first impression of the game was that the missions would be purely based on building cinemas and upgrading them to attract customers. I wasn’t quite far from being wrong. It turns out that the game has three mission and each has three difficulty settings; The Suburbs, Warehouse District, and Downtown. These places naturally mean how expensive will your upgrade be.

The three missions are named Mogul, Megaplex Star and Cinema Czar. The Mogul has to come up with a million bucks faster than the competitor. The Megaplex Star will race to achieve a full upgrade on screens, that means the gamer has to build all extra screens to win. The Cinema Czar requires the gamer to achieve outstanding stats and gain a lot of popularity to beat the game.

The game only lasted me a few hours, and the simplicity of the game could explain the lack of replayability. I found myself doing the same things over and over again. Though the process of maintaining a cinema was fun in the beginning, the repetitions bore me real quick. Here are some screenshots taken from the game.

Despite the hype from the game title, I personally think this game deserves a meager 4 stars out of 10.

Posted in Games | 14 Comments »