Blokus Duo

Blokus Duo is an abstract strategy game designed by Bernard Tavitian and is the two player variant of the award winning game "Blokus".

Each player starts with twenty one unique pieces, made up of squares (think Tetris) and take turns placing one of their own pieces onto the 14 x 14 square game board. However there are a few caveats to placement:
1) The first piece a player places must touch a certain starting position on their half of the board.
2) It cannot be placed adjacent to one of their own pieces on the game board, although placing adjacent to an opponents pieces is perfectly acceptable.
3) It must be placed touching at least a corner of one of their own pieces (corner to corner).

Play continues until one player cannot place. The opponent may then place as many pieces as possible. The winner is the player with the least number of unplaced "squares" totalled up from their un-played pieces.

What soon becomes apparent when playing is that each piece has its own role to play. Some pieces are excellent for attacks and counter-attacks, whilst other pieces are better held in a defensive reserve. As a piece is unique to that player some thought must be put into deciding what piece to use and where to play it. Once that piece is used there's no going back, play it in a bad position and you will find yourself in a compromised position. Be careful however when reserving pieces, you may find that you've held onto a piece too long and it is now unplayable. The canny player will not only keep track of their own pieces, but also their opponents.

The game can be over fairly quickly (30 mins) and you could therefore play a number of games in an evening if you so desired.

Although I'm not a huge fan of abstract games I found that I enjoyed this game. It achieves the right level of complexity for a quick two player game. The rules are simple but the strategy requires some forethought. It leaves you with the satisfaction that you've given your brain a quick workout, but not feeling exhausted from the effort.

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Voting Polls!

The voting polls are open for service! I've started the ball rolling with a poser about Sony and how they can improve the PS3's fortunes. I'm open to suggestions if there's any burning questions you'd like to pose!

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Euro Wii VC - 27th April

It's Friday, and as usual the Virtual Console has had a few more releases added to it's growing portfolio of retro games.

This weeks offerings are: Final Fight (SNES), Mighty Bomb Jack (NES points) and Battle Lode Runner (TurboGrafx-16)

Of those listed I've only ever played the GBA version of Final Fight. The game is a side scrolling "beat-'em-up" with players progressing from left to right dispatching a steady stream of enemies and end of stage "boss" characters. Eventually they will come face to face with the final boss "Belger". I remember the game being quite fun, and if you're looking for a quick fix of action this may be worth checking out.

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The "Next Game" Chart

A friend suggested it would be worth listing the games in my collection that I've not yet played and organising them into a "chart" to show the order that I'm most likely to play them. As with any other "top x" chart it's not set in stone and a games position may change as new entries arrive.

The new chart has been added, feel free to let me know what you think.

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Settlers of Catan - Looking Forward to Live

The Settlers of Catan is one of my favourite board games. I first played the game a number of years ago and immediatley thought the game was one of the best I've played. The game soon became a favourite of the weekly sessions but unfortunately we overdosed on it's gaming goodness and after a while it got replaced by newer kids on the block. Luckily, it was recently dusted off and brought back into the fold once more.

It's a simple game (in a nutshell): The island of Catan (game board) consists of randomly placed tiles representing different landscapes: moutains, fields, pastures, forests and hills and each kind produces a different resource: ore, wheat, sheep, wood or brick respectively. In addition each tile will have a number (2 - 12 excluding 7) placed upon it.

At the start of the game each player has two settlements and two pieces of road that are placed on the game board. Your settlement placement is critical as some resources will have a higher probability of being generated. With a bad placement you will soon find that your expansion slows to a snails pace while your opponents race ahead.

Players take turns to throw a pair of six sided dice, the result determines which tiles will produce that turn. Every player that has a settlement adjacent to the producing tile will recieve a resource for each (or two if the settlement is a town). During their turn players may build, trade resources, buy or play an action card. Resources are used to purchase new settlements, pieces of road, action cards or you may upgrade an existing settlement to a town.

Whenever a 7 is rolled that player must discard down to 7 resource cards, however on the upside they get to move the "robber baron" onto another tile and steal a resource card at random from any player adjacent to that tile. For as long as the baron occupies the tile then it will never produce a resource.

Points are awarded for each settlement, town or "points" card. In addition players can score points if they own the longest road or have played the most "knight" action cards. The first player to 10 victory points is declared the winner.

It's exciting to see that Settlers of Catan is coming to the Xbox 360 arcade this summer (rumoured May release). Although there have already been PC online versions of the game, this iteration should fit perfectly into the "live" environment. It's nice to see the game getting a shiney coat with some pretty graphics to help further the experience.

So far it looks as if the game is staying true to its boardgaming roots, and the designer Klaus Teuber looks to be involved to some degree. I have high hopes for the finished game. Am I looking forward to this game? You bet I am!

Catan Live: Official Site

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Forza Motorsport 2 - June Release Date

It's been confirmed that Forza Motorsport 2 for the Xbox 360 will be released in Europe on the 8th June. The game will be available in both standard and limited editions.


Microsoft have stated that a demo of the game will be available on Xbox live sometime soon. Although I never played the original game I've a penchant for racing games and I can foresee I'll be playing this as soon as it's available.

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Puzzling? Frustrating?

I've not had much time to play games over the last week but I managed to get an hour or so on Puzzle Quest last night. I must admit I was getting a bit frustrated with some of the battles.

The AI was chaining together better sequences and whenever new tiles appeared on the game board they always seemed to favour the opponent. I had to replay a few quest battles, and some I couldn't win even after a couple of attempts. Of course there is a simple and logical explanation; I suck at this game! So to solve the issue I resorted to the belief that the AI was cheating. I'm sure this is not the case, but it made me feel better all the same.

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