Gotta love the secondary ticket market.

The secondary ticket market.

It teems with life. You used to only see it outside stadiums where shady dudes held up tickets to sold out shows for insane prices. Scalpers, we used to call them. Now we call them secondary ticket brokers.

Some dude sitting outside a show, smelling of booze and weed, attempting to sell his tickets for major cash has now been legitimized by the market and even Wikipedia.org.



Enter Al Gore and his miraculous invention, the internet. Now, thanks to this great man, we can all skip the booze/weed stench and head straight to many great secondary ticket websites to find that desired ticket.

While many sites offer secondary tickets, few sites out there actually do aggregate sales from a number of other sites. Think Orbitz, Priceline, etc., but with tickets. One such site that I have found to be most excellent is TicketsFTW (For The Win!). They actually search numerous secondary ticket sites for you in order to get you the best price.

Check it out sometime if you want Superbowl XLIV tickets, or Springsteen tickets. But don't expect to see me at the Springsteen show. I know it makes me un-American, but I can't stand that douche.

Game Review: Puzzle Quest: Galactrix (DS)

I recently played Puzzle Quest: Galactrix for the Nintendo DS

Result:

FAIL

Why do I think Puzzle Quest: Galactrix sucks major ass?  

Not because I hate on the Puzzle Quest franchise.  

When Challenge of the Warlords hit the scene, I played it for days.  I still play Challenge of the Warlords...and sometimes for days.   

I really wanted to love and embrace Galactrix.  It has all the makings of a good game.  Interesting (if not overdone) story, side missions galore, a massive universe to explore, and many alien races to make your most hated enemy.  Everything about this game makes me want to love it; it truly is a deep, engrossing puzzle/rpg fusion.   

"So what was the dealbreaker?" You ask.

The Controls.

I may as well have a stump for an arm and attempt to touch the very small and sensitive icons littered throughout the Puzzle Quest universe.  How hard is it to make a text block selectable with the stylus?  I felt like I was going for the funny bone in Operation every time I tried to click on an option.  Half of the time, the nose would light up and buzz, sending my ship to the far reaches of the galaxy when all I wanted to do was trade some Goddamn food to a Goddamn space station I was already docked at.  

Puzzle Quest: Galactrix also includes timed challenges, tasking you with matching a certain amount of gems within an alloted time.  That would be fine if the touch-and-slide mechanic of Challenge of the Warlords worked as smoothly as it does here.  It doesn't.  Frustration abounds and I wanted to throw my DS through the window and pray it would be run over by a passing bus.  

I love what Puzzle Quest has done to fuse genres.  Role playing game?  Hell yes.  Match 3 puzzle game?  Hell yes.  Shitty controls?  

FAIL

Drinking Game Playtest.

     The night passed quickly.  Drinking was had by all.  To ensure better pacing, I tweaked the game a bit.  The few friends who played it before didn't have much trouble acclimating to the new rules.  Even with the spaced pacing, much drinking was done.  The rules changed a good deal as we played.  The no-laughing rule became difficult when the next commissioner implemented the "kiss the person next to you" rule.  I tried not to watch, but there was moaning as well.  Everyone busted out laughing.  Everyone drank some more.  

       I consider the first real playtest a success.  Everything went well until the uber-strong Jell-o shooters came out.  After that, I don't know what the fuck happened.  One minute I'm playing Rock Band, ripping out my best drunken rendition of Casey Jones, and the next minute I'm stumbling and falling toward the ground.  Thankfully, we have carpeted floors.  Unfortunately, my delayed reaction time kept me from putting my hands out to catch myself.  

      I wanted to make a drinking game.  We drank.  We had fun.  

     I always thought game design would be a safer vocation than machining.  I guess everyone must shed a little blood for their passions, no matter what they are.  

Drinkng Game

So, we are hosting a housewarming party this weekend.  About a week ago, while sitting down playing LittleBigPlanet, Sarah asks me "what games should we have out?"  

The wheels in my mind turned for a split second.  The cartoon lightbulb over my head was almost visible to the naked eye.  I responded:  "Shit.  Why don't I make a drinking game?"  

I thought of a shot (or rather, a group of shots) I had taken on my 21st birthday and it went from there.  I also thought of a little skit by the Dead Alewives (roll the dice to see if I'm getting drunk).Sarah went to hang out with some friends for a movie night, and I hit the craft store to make my play-test copies.  2 hours later, I had my rough game.  We play-tested it two days later.  We got really loaded in about a half hour.  Taking the advice of my most trusted colleagues, Ben Reeves and Sarah Blossom, I sat down to tweak the pacing of the game.  

I work in a machine shop.  During long machine runs I am able to stare off into space or do whatever I please.  This week, I rolled dice.  I rolled dice so much I am now afflicted with minor carpel-tunnel syndrome.  And I want to say this:  I love dice.  I love games of chance.  I haven't played craps in 3 years and it kills me.  I love the clackity-clack-clack of chance.  I infused my love of dice, my love of people, and my love of interpersonal relationships into this game.  It kicks my ass.  I will be testing it out on a select few people tomorrow and I will pray to God tonight that it kicks their asses too. 

I will follow up with more information as it becomes available.  I am looking to place the game on the market within the next month.  For now, I will set up an Ebay store; I want the Sunday Gamer website to launch with 3 different games available at the same time, so the Ebay store will have to suffice for now. 

I am still working on my version of the "Jump to Conclusions Mat."  I will post as I move toward a working copy of that.