I have been playing only 1 game on my X-Box 360: Lost Odyssey. I started in april and today I finished it. The end sequences and boss were amazing wow.
It was the best game I ever played. I traveled the complete world, learned all skills, gathered all accessories, leveled everyone up to max, found all dreams, all seeds, all side-quests and enjoyed this comprehensive game to the max.
I can only propose that you play it, it’s amazing, it’s a life experience.
Here are my achievements:
While updating the risk.startpagina.nl I found the Risk Express edition on the Hasbro site, it is out for a while but I haven’t written about it yet.
This is a mini version for Risk Addicts, like me, which we can bring along on vacation or to party’s and which can be played within 20 minutes.
It can be played with 2 to 6 players.
You can download the manual in PDF format here to give you an indication of the game. I haven’t had the game in my hands "physically" but it looks pretty cool to play.
In this portable game all territories are cards. Which makes it handier than carrying along a big board.
Each of the so called territories / country cards looks something like this:
What you see the right is an example card, e.g. North America.
If you conquer North America you will get 3 points, the one with the most points at the end of the game wins. Complete territories give extra points and, different than the board game, if you completely conquer a continent noone can re-conquer it.
On this specific card you see 3 lines of icons:
- 1 line consisting of a cavalry icons and a cannon icon
- another line consisting of a cavalry icons and a cannon icon
- and a line with 3 soldiers
You need to break through all three lines before you can conquer the country. Which means that you have to dice all the icons on the lines with your 7 attack dices whereafter you get to conquer the country.
E.g. suppose you throw:
This means that you can place the cannon and the cavalry (horse) icon on the first line of defense. You can not place the other dices all at once because you can only conquer 1 defense line per dice roll.
The next roll you might throw this:
In this roll there are neither a cavalry+cannon nor the 3 soldiers so you can not conquer any defense lines, so you must put 1 dice away and roll again:
Now you have a roll in which you have a cannon and a horse (artillery and cavalry) which you can put on the second line of defense, You now only need to conquer the third line of defense (3 soldiers):
you have 4 soldiers which is more than enough to conquer the defense line with the three soldiers, so now you have conquered North America!
Pretty simple. There is also the "general" icon on the card. This should be used/diced when another player already has the country and you want to conquer that territory.
There are some minor house rules you can introduce: if you do not manage to conquer the country you could create the rule that the other players can then continue the fight to conquer the country.
As said, I do not have this version yet, so I can not say anything about the playability or real strategies you could form around playing the dice/card game. If you have played it let me know how it was.
Edward de Leau
http://risk.startpagina.nl
I decided to start again with "the Unknown" on thestonemonument. (read my previous blog about it here).
So I fairly quickly solved 7 out of the 9 puzzles of the Unknown: Celebrity Status, Gravity, Enlightenment, The Watchers, Eye of the Storm, Top Secret and The Movement. (For the movement I got a nudge on the forum and I remembered the answer I gave years ago).
Puzzle "The Matador" took me some longer time. But I solved it some moments ago. I really had to put the word(s) correct. I didn’t do that the first time so I dwelled for some time in all kinds of directions. But what the heck, I am happy 
On to the last puzzle "Entertainment Value". If I solve this one then I have solved all puzzles of "The Unknown" and I will then allow myself to enter the big enigma. update: Solved all!
The Unknown
I just want to warn you that if you read this weblogposting you might get addicted in a very bad way. You will find the most addictive mind game in here that will keep you busy for weeks per puzzle and years to solve them all. I have been doing it since august 2001. However, solving a puzzle will make you feel better than any drug out there can do. This could well become part of your regular life. It took until august 2007 until 1 player finally solved all puzzles!
Many many years ago, in 2001, I bought, in a shop in the Netherlands, a little box named "the stone".
the physical stone - Inside it was "a stone" of which only 2 were made. If you would find the other stone containing the same symbols you would find your stone soul mate. You could check it online and although I checked during a long period, I think noone has bought my other half of the stone.
The website - Inside it was also an access code to give you entrance to the stone website, which was filled with extremely hard "mind-puzzles", ordered in a particular 3d shape that consisted of just 1 images and some words or little clues. Puzzles were named like "stained glass" or "the unknown". For insider each of these names are legendary. I solved my first on 5 august 2001.
So, beginning august 2001, you can see me working my way, and blogging about it, of slowly unlocking puzzles, giving you access to even more puzzles. During the years I only managed to solve a little part of the Enigma but others have conquered it all, as can be read on selective weblogs.
Back then I think I infected quite some people with this stone virus. Some days I went to work with a printed out version of a puzzle (just 1 image) to "keep it alive in my head" and discussing options with others.
I went away for some while and today I discovered that the stone has closed. Which was unfortunate because I was looking for another puzzle. However I also discovered that the complete website is now open to everyone for FREE (…) on http://www.thestonemonument.com, just register and you can log in immediately!!! Read Wikipedia on the Stone to find out it closed august 2008.
Ofcourse, since it is now free, I want you all share my experiences with the game and "feel it". This is now a unique opportunity possible since it’s free. If you are a LOST fan than you will get about the same experience from the Stone site, however now you can solve it!
Do not think of these puzzles are "regular" "difficult" puzzles. These puzzles work differently. I think I can only explain this to you by giving you an example, but for that I will have to give you much extreme clues about the solution to this puzzle.
EXAMPLE WITH SCREENSHOTS
So only read on if you want the clues about one of the specific puzzles!!! I am only posting this because I think giving you an example is the only way to "explain" what it is and get real excited about it.
As soon as you log in you will see this:
At the bottom you see different icons.
The first icon is "The Unkown", this is actually a very small mini version of the large game with only a little set of puzzles.
Click on that icon to start the "demo" and to give you a feel for the games.
You will now see a little cube with 9 dots in it. Each dot represent 1 puzzle, when you mouse over it, you will see the name of the puzzle.
When you click on the puzzle "Gravity". You will see your first puzzle. It took about 3 minutes to solve this one on august 5, 2001. So remembers, these are only the 9 demo puzzles and are all much easier than the real puzzles (which are now all free, wow). Gravity looks like this:
Now what you see is an apple falling, 6+6 and 32-1. Furthermore the puzzle is titles "gravity". I think your mind is now already making some associations and this is exactly what this game is about.
So let’s see, 6+6=12 and 32-1 = 31. Which makes 12.31, maybe a year or a time or something else? Or should we treat the numbers as characters? So 66 and 321?
The apple and gravity ofcourse reminds us of Newton under the tree, discovering Gravity. Let’s try to enter "newton" although we don’t have a clue about the numbers:
So the system tells us that this is not true. Probably everyone enters this the first. Apparently it’s an event.
Hmmm… an event mostly has a date. Let’s Google on "1230" and "newton" and "apple" and "gravity" …. that brings us nowhere.
Hmmm… that apple looks quite BIG, like a "big apple" (your mind has to make this snap), and the numbers could be turned around like "31/12" (your mind must be capable to make this other snap).
What does that mean, what event are we looking for, 31 december (in the big apple)?
Exactly!
You have now solved your first puzzle in the stone. The numbers could have probably led you to the solution, but as often in this game you can get extra mind-hints to direct your thinking.
The other 8 demo puzzles in "the unknown" are challenging each in its own, they all have their little twists. When you have solved them, it’s time to enter the real deal, the immediate:
As you can see you have access to 12 puzzles to start with, solving each on of them will give you access to more, eventually bringing you to …
Good luck! Let me now how you liked it and on which puzzle you are working on.
One of the two games I got with my X-box 360 was Project Gotham Racing 3. The game of the year 2005.
It gave me a chance to really test the X-Box out (eh.. I only have 2 games) and I must say…. wooooooooow! The graphics in this game are so minddazzling beautiful that it almost seems that I’m racing in real life. The car models have been made out of an average of 96.000 polygons, meaning that they look drewling hot, I can not believe this is an actual game and not a movie. The audience really jumps back when I’m heading straight for “the wall” or give me cheers, these are not the audiences I’m used to from the last time I played a racing game (grand prix on CGA on the 286), these audiences consist of indivual persons with own characters. The cities (Londen, New York, Tokyo, Las Vegas) through which I drive look fantastically detailed, in such a way that I feel like I’m actually driving through them. Wow, these racing games have made a giant leap.
This game is worth the purchase of the X-box 360 alone.
On the website of the game you can find screenshots and some movies (press the forward button to race to the next cars and you will enable the menu items). The movies will make you drewl.
I only just started playing the game so I am wrecking a Ferrari F40 and putting my black Lamborghini Diablo to the max. It seems that I now have to start a career and slowly race my way up in the game, this can keep me some month occupied I think. After that I might go online via Microsoft Live and race online against other players (while I am racing my wife now in a split screen mode).
Here are some more reviews with some more background on the game:
90 images, 27 videos, driving basics, art of scoring, city tours: tokyo, city tours: las vegas, city tours: new york, city tours: london, city tours: nurburgring, gotham career, which car is the best, complete car list overview, achievements and kudos (this achievement list going to take me some months).
Tibia – Free Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game – About Tibia
I heard this was the best game ever
XBOD.NL
Im going to order my WII here!
I was with my parents-in-law and they introduced me to a new (for me) little game: the mexican train game. It seems to be some sort of hype because they were introduced to the game by friends and these friends by other friends and so on.
After playing it I also decided to buy it, it’s a simple little domino based ga
me but can be addictive as uh…trains.
The rules are simple: you get a set of domino pieces and need to put them all (one by one) on the table before your opponents do. However if you can not add a domino piece (like the original domino) then you need to take a piece from the pile. Your personal list of played domino pieces (everyone has their own list) is called the the railroad.
To make it uhm “the mexican train game” there are some additional rules: if you have a double domino (same numbers twice) then you “block” the railroad and you can only unblock it by adding a fitting piece again. As long as it is blocked other players can add to your railroad to.
Apart from your own “railroad” there is also the shared railroad to which anyone may lay pieces and if you have only 1 piece left you need to say “choo choo!” or else you will need to take a domino piece even if you could finish.
On the Internet you can find a gazillion different versions, electronic stuff, keep boxes, computer games, strategies and so on, so apparently I am running behind in my gaming knowledge.
The weird thing is that I can not find a supplier in the Netherlands of the game.
Tower "Addiction" Defense
A long list of Tower Defense Games – bye bye free hours.
De Catan bordspelbox
Dat is leuk om voor kerstmis te vragen: de Catan Bordspel opbergbox: je kunt er alle uitbreidingen en handleidingen in kwijt.
Play a game of chess against the fun levels of Shredder 11 on the shredder servers directly in your browser.
To enter a move, click on a piece and drag it to the desired square. You can choose between three playing levels.
Please note that even on “hard” Shredder doesn’t show his full capabilities. He is trying to provide an equal opponent for a human player on those levels.
(via Beertjes)
Ok guys, this game about the emporer Caligula is pretty much the most stress relieving game around.
Basically you get to slaughter anything alive and not alive!
You wander about all parts of ancient rome through different connected sets of maps and have the chance to collect weapons which can be used with the accompanying letter on the keyboard. The weapons you get are awesome like a giant lion or the zampogna of death (though personally I like to burn everyone to death *grin*).
Once you have collected all 26 weapons you are off to the palace and boy, you get an enormous surprise (which is worth it) (and takes about an hour playing time).
good luck!
Old skool! I can listen to this for hours!
Besides this guy who has waaay to much time. This has to be the coolest soundtrack ever!
You can find Blogxorz here. There are just 33 levels, so good luck!
And uhm… these might come in handy:
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