Zoo Vet

What a boring game!

My kids liked this game, until it came time to take the animal's temperature--rectally! Then, one animal's wound needed surgery, which required a cut, and removing a "yucky thing", and stitching it back up. It wasn't overly graphic, but the kids didn't enjoy it much. It was a great learning experience for them, but overall it didn't score too well.

Perhaps on the harder settings it might be a challenge, but on the easy setting we played together, it pretty much leads you through what to do step by step. It was good to help the kids learn what a vet does, but as I said, it was pretty boring. There were about a dozen cases to work with, and then the game is just over.

One way to help children become more aware of anatomy, but definately something I don't see my kids volunteering to play.

Delicious 2 Deluxe

This is another fun shockwave game from shockwave.com.

In this game, the Uncle is losing his resturants due to the inability of his nephew to run them. In each setting you get help from friends and family.

It's a quick paced customer service game, that'll keep you on your toes.

Overall it's pretty simple, but it's very addictive.

Pirates of the Burning Sea

We recently finished an open beta for Pirates of the Burning Sea, an upcoming MMO that will be pre-order released on January 7, and public released later in January. It seems like a promising game, although there's not much to do end game except for PvP, which seems to be the case for most MMO's these days.

At first you almost have to rely heavily on the questing system to get experience points. Not really much of a problem, since things stay pretty much low level in the quests. At some points it's very blahblahblah because you either go in and sail to a ship to kill it, or go in and walk along a beach to kill someone. There wasn't much of a break from this, except to sail along the "Open Sea" which led to more instances of sailing to kill things.

The customization side of things is pretty exciting. You can make your own sails and flags, which support transparency. During the beta you had to submit things to the forums for votes as to if it should be put into the game or not. I hope this isn't something they put into the live game as it drags things out - in my opinion. If they do put it like this, I hope they add in bits about requirements to vote on other people's items as well.

They have a very rich economic system, although it seems a bit much a first. The way it plays out is that you will have to buy things from the merchant system, as well as make your own no matter what you choose to do. They've limited how much you can be self-reliant. It's a shame they limit these sort of things, but I'm sure they have a great reason for it.

As will all beta tests I'm left feeling wildly dissapointed, and as if the game is not yet ready for release. I still can't wait for Darkfall.

Home Sweet Home

Here's an interesting game from shockwave.com.

Home Sweet Home

Design and build rooms based on customer desires. Most of these are riddles you have to figure out before you build. At the beginning there are very few design choices, a couple of floors, walls, etc. They slowly add on as you go--which helps keep the chaos low to start.

As you figure out the customer desire puzzle you pick items to decorate the room. It shows a sketch of the item where you place it. After you finish the room, you have a build crew that come along and build the room. They have a world of problems, from needing tool box items, to hurting themselves, to running out of energy. You have to work hard to keep them on task or you won't meet your construction deadline.

I enjoyed playing this game, it gives you a "house" to play with, so you can make any kind of room you want to. I played around with this a lot, each task you complete for the game gives you more money to play with in your own house.

This is a great way to kill time and work brain muscles. I don't think it's kid friendly because of it's complex play, but that may be because my kids have short attention spans. ;)

Spongebob Monopoly

YAY! A new twist on Monopoly. (Again!)

I really liked the minigames available in this. It's a fun play, especially if you have kids who like the cartoon. It has a lot to offer, including Spongebob rules, plain Monopoly rules, Squidward rules, and Plankton rules.

Spongebob rules - play the minigames for just about everything. Lower property prices, lower rent, raise rent, GO! Bonus money, etc. There's a minigame for getting out of jail too, which had me laughing so hard I almost cried. I got a kick out of this, and so did the kids.

Squidward rules - Haven't played this yet, but it says you can move any players piece you want to. Sounds like it could get pretty chaotic.

Plankton rules - Make as much money as possible before Plankton gets around the board one time. Sounds like a crunch, I guess it depends on how much he moves, and how quickly. I only enjoy playing Monopoly casually, so a race type scenario doesn't interest me at all.

Overall? I'd give this an 8/10 for the new-and-interesting factor. The kids enjoyed it a great deal, and that helps it's rating out a lot.

Dark Age of Camelot

What can I say? Dark Age of Camelot will always be my favorite MMO. (Until Darkfall comes out, hopefully.)

We recently re-started Dark Age of Camelot. We moved from our normal server/realm to play Midgaard on the Killibury cluster. I've had a lot of fun exploring the new classes. Since I already know the crafting system inside out, I don't intend to play with it very much this time around.

I've purchased a bunch of houses on all servers for our characters, and now I'm fretting over paying for them all as I've sort of lost interest in playing at the moment.

Either way, here's the rundown of classes I've tried on the Mid side.

Warlock - powerful nukers. Not my play style at all, I'm really more of a hack-n-slash person, and these characters are squishy at best. They have some hard hitting spells, especially when you get the chambering option and effectively hit with four spells at once. Unfortunately, it's a little bit confusing and I felt like I needed a tutorial every time I picked up a new spell. First, you cast a primary spell, and then a secondary at the same time. If you chamber spells, you do a primary, and then a secondary which spawns a little circle symbol that floats over your head. This symbol changes based on spell combination. Then, to hit you cast a primary, secondary, and the chambered spells. So you hit with 4 at once, but then you have to re-chamber before your next strike, or only hit with 2. I can see how this would be helpful in PvP situations, but in PvE it just gives nukers another way to pull aggro and get themselves killed.

Shaman - OhhhhHhh yea. Casters who can tank, but without combat styles. I really, really...really like my shaman. I've leveled her more than any other tune. She had an awesome nuke, and the most powerful growth rate DoTs in the game. (Yes, I researched it.) She effectively kills yellows without them ever getting close, and oranges with minimal damage as they die before many rounds of combat go by. If you aren't in a close quarters fighting area, you can use the single DoT as well as an AoE DoT. Thats 180 damage per round!

Valkyrie - This is the Mid polearm class. They have insta-cast heals, HoTs and some damage spells. They have awesome DPS styles as well. I have friends who swear by this class, but I never made it very far with mine. I was a bit disenchanted by the name, and then got distracted by my Shaman.

There are several other classes, including the spellcasting tanks called "Thanes", as well as Warriors, Berserkers, Runemasters, Spiritmasters, Bonedancers, etc. I experimented with a couple of these classes - such as the pet summoning Bonedancers - but I don't have much to say about them at the moment.

Midgaard is by far the most lore-rich realm in this game. The team who put this realm together really did a great job. It's very strongly steeped in Norse mythology and the countryside is breath taking. Although it isn't as green as the other two realms, Midgaard can steal a person's heart rather easily. Despite the beastial nature of the races available to play (Trolls, Valkyns, Kobolds, etc.) it's a beautiful realm. The structures show a level of detail that seem to be lacking in the English-derived Albions, and Celtic-derived Hibernians.

Once again, I'm wildly biased in favor of this game. No matter how far I've strayed I always seem to come back to Camelot.