Posted by Skrud at Sunday, May 13th 2007 at 4:20pm
At the ECA Change of Power Retreat this weekend, at a cottage in the middle of nowhere, we were playing a standard game of Asshole. It wasn’t long before we realized that this can be combined with beer drinking. And thus, I present to you the game of Drunken Asshole.
(One “drink” is typically a finger of alcoholic beverage, or more or less as your players decide)
The Rules of Drunken Asshole
- Whenever a 3 is played, everyone who did not play the 3 has to drink.
- In the case of multiple 3’s, everyone drinks.
- You cannot say “pass.” Instead, you must drink.
- If play a 5, you can pick one person to have five drinks.
- Multiple 5’s mean multiple drink assignments, so if there are as many 5’s as there are players, then everyone has to have five drinks.
- No swearing, or else you drink.
- When you play a Jack, you can pick someone to have four drinks. Likewise, multiple Jacks means you can pick multiple people.
- Whenever a Queen is played, everyone has to point to another person and call them a “queen”. The last person to do this has to drink.
- When you play a 2, you must take two drinks.
- When you play a Joker, you must take five drinks.
- People who are not playing Drunken Asshole may still be made to drink when a Jack or a five is played.
- When you have to get up to use the bathroom, you must drink first.
- If you’re the last to finish (i.e., the “Asshole”), you have to drink.
Obviously, new rules will be added during play. ;)
Tags: asshole, beer, cards, drinking, games | 2 comments
Posted by Skrud at Thursday, February 22nd 2007 at 10:23pm
While I was in New York last weekend (and an awesome trip it was) I picked up a Nintendo DS game called Hotel Dusk: Room 215, since it’s in high demand and Amazon was sold out. The game is an interactive mystery novel, and plays like film noir.
You play Kyle Hyde, an ex-NYPD cop who’s now a door-to-door salesman in LA. Three years ago he shot his partner, Bradley, who turned out to be a dirty cop. Bradley’s body went missing and Kyle’s been looking for him ever since, wanting to find out why Bradley betrayed the force. Kyle’s company sometimes takes on unusual offers to look for certain things, and Kyle will execute these missions. The latest mission brings you to Hotel Dusk, which is riddled with mystery, and some clues about Bradley…
Adventure games are built entirely around atmosphere, and the best part about Hotel Dusk is the atmosphere it creates. The characters have … character, and there’s emotion pouring out from them. The art style is sombre and subtle, but serious and dramatic. You can see smiles and slight grins, frowns and furrowed brows. I think the line drawings emote better than fully-rendered 3D characters would. The music is mostly piano, and soft jazz – which fits perfectly with the film noir setting – and accents the mood of the events in the game. It’s really easy to lose yourself in the game world for hours on end.
The story itself was intriguing, and filled with twists and turns as you discover the secrets of the hotel’s guests. Although it was pretty predictable, I still had fun unravelling the mysteries. The only issue I have with the game’s story is that it’s very linear – that is, there’s only one story and only one way to go through the game (with incorrect paths leading to a Game Over screen). This effectively reduces replay value to 0.
Hotel Dusk makes very clever use of the DS’s dual screens and touch pad. You hold the console sideways, as if you’re holding a book. You use the touch screen to navigate and inspect objects. When you have a conversation with another character, Kyle will appear on the left screen while the character you’re talking to will be on the right screen. This makes the conversations flow dynamically, and the facial expressions are excellent and accentuate the text. This game does some pretty clever things with the DS altogether, but I won’t mention any more because I don’t want to give you any spoilers.
If you want to see more, you should really check out this video review. And then go pick up the game.
Tags: ds, games, gaming, geek, nintendo | 6 comments
Posted by Skrud at Friday, December 29th 2006 at 12:34pm
I want a Wii, but not as badly as other people.
This morning I got to BestBuy around 7:30am, to wait with Leilani for the store to open for Wii getting. We didn’t see anyone standing outside… and, figuring from asking BestBuy employees that people usually start lining up around 7, and it being after Christmas, we should be able to score a couple of Wiis (one for me, and one for Harley).
We didn’t see anybody outside because the line-up was in the underground, indoor, parking lot. Getting inside there around 8am we managed to spot some thirty people accompanied by two BestBuy employees handing out vouchers to the first people in line. Only the first five people in line actually got one, though.
Because BestBuy had only five Wiis. What a pathetic shipment quantity!
And how early did people start waiting in line? Well, 8pm - 11pm last night.
That means the five Wiis that BestBuy had were essentially sold out some 10 hours before the store even opened.
I think I’m just going to wait until March when they become readily available.
My favourite part of the whole ordeal:
- BestBuy Employee “Uhm … we don’t have anymore Wiis, but we have five PS3s. Does anyone want a PS3?”
- Crowd of about 30 people: silence
- One guy that was pissed off about not getting a Wii and didn’t want to leave empty handed: “Sure whatever.”
I think shortages of the Wii are actually driving up sales of the PS3. The word “pwned” comes to mind.
Tags: games, geek, nintendo | 5 comments
Posted by Skrud at Monday, November 13th 2006 at 7:00pm
Following the Arcadia Festival was the Minibosses concert at Club Soda. Last year, the Minibosses played at the festival itself – but I think the idea of having a separate show at a club was a good one, since it allowed for more performing artists.
DJ/Mixer Touchboy started things off with an upbeat electronic blend of Gameboy sounds and techno beats. It was some pretty good stuff, though doesn’t make for much of a visual show. That’s where Harley and I realized that it’s great music to listen to while playing video games, and started playing some competitive Tetris DS.
The next band was Freezepop, which I instantly fell in love with. The music is entirely uncharacteristic for me: electro/synth pop that sounds like Depeche Mode crossed with a Gameboy. Their music is recorded almost entirely on a Yamaha QY70, a curious portable device that itself resembles a Gameboy. The music has this 8-bit, cheesy, bubblegum-pop meets femme-bot quality to it. It’s addictive, simple but not overly simplistic, and fun. After the set I rushed to buy both full length albums, Fancy Ultra-Fresh and Freezepop Forever along with a T-shirt – and got a free EP and poster, too.
Freezepop has been in a few Playstation games, including both Guitar Hero games with the songs Get Ready 2 Rokk and Less Talk More Rokk – so it’s entirely possible that you’ve heard them before. According to the official website, they’re “Hip enough for hipsters but nerdy enough for nerds.”
Finally the Minibosses took the stage, playing music from tons of NES classics like Mario 2 (aka Doki Doki Panic), Castlevania, Metroid, Mike Tyson’s Punchout and Contra, among others. What was most surprising about the Minibosses was the mosh pit that opened up … It’s Contra, not Slayer! It was a violent mosh pit, but it was pretty damn big for a place like Club Soda. I’ve seen smaller mosh pits at death metal shows.
The entire concert, and the Arcadia Festival in general, was infused with love for Nintendo. It’s as if all the people that grew up with Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda and The Wizard came out of their hiding places showing off the impact that Nintendo has had on them. Most people were wearing t-shirts with Mario or Zelda references and – this the best part – whenever a slow song was being played, instead of holding up lighters, people set the brightness level on their DS Lites all the way up and waved them around.
Nerdy? Hells yes. But it’s also awesome.
Tags: 2006, arcadia, events, games, music, nintendo | 2 comments
Posted by Skrud at Monday, November 13th 2006 at 2:02pm
I went to the 2nd ever Arcadia Festival on Saturday, hoping to try my hand at the Wii. I woke up (later than I wanted to), packed my Nintendo DS Lite and headed off to Stade Uniprix. When I got there I had to wait in line, outside, in the cold November rain. Finally I reached the indoors line-up, for the mandatory coat check. Once inside the festival proper, I headed straight for the Nintendo booth’s line up.
The largest concentration of people at Arcadia weren’t even in the Nintendo booth – they were in line for the Nintendo booth. Indeed, I didn’t even bother to stop anywhere else. The nice thing about a line-up of Nintendo enthusiasts is, of course, the fact that a lot of people were carrying Nintendo DS systems. We managed to bide our time playing a massive multiplayer game of MarioKart while waiting – for about 3 hours. Nintendo was kind enough to set up some of their DS Stations so that a console was facing the lineup, so people without DS’s could entertain themselves. There were also animators blowing horns and chucking t-shirts and belts into the line up, making sure everyone was properly hyped and enthused.
When I finally got inside the Nintendo booth, I lined up for Excite Truck, quickly gave up (4 minutes a race multiplied by 10 people in front me …) and went to line up for WarioWare: Smooth Moves, a series of micro-games about three seconds long, each completely wacky and each requiring a different way of holding the Wiimote. It was ridiculously fun, as you would expect from WarioWare (which blew me away at the previous Arcadia on GameCube).
The only other game I managed to play was Wii Sports. I played boxing (and accidentally punched my opponent in the head for real … ) and a 4-player game of tennis. It’s just as much fun as it looks. The controls are so simple and intuitive … You box just like you would expect, and you play tennis just like you would expect. It’s so … natural.
Was Arcadia worth the $10 ticket price, even though I spent about 5 hours in line and only 1 hour actually playing any games? Hell yes. I’m waking up uber-early / not going to bed in order to get a Wii next Sunday.
Tags: 2006, arcadia, events, games, nintendo | 3 comments
