Okay, so Planetside did this years ago, but it never exactly started a trend.  But now we really are starting to see MMO’s come out that rely more on twitch-based play.  There are a bunch of sport ones, like Shot Online, if you want to count those.  I saw a build of Jumpgate at the NY Comic Con, and that had a real fast-paced, arcade-style space combat feel to it.  I don’t know what’s going on with Huxley, but that promised tons of FPS action.  And even Free Realms, which I recently discussed, definitely has a lot of skill-based elements. While there is traditional MMO style play with the Brawler job, most other jobs require fast reflexes and arcade skills.

I recently came across another MMO that incorporates arcade play, and I think has the potential to be really fun. I really saw very few articles or posts about this one - but you know I have my clever ways of finding out about the most secret of information.  Okay, so someone told me about it (thanks, Jessie).

The game is called Dungeon Fighter by Korean company Nexon.  I know what you’re thinking - it’s probably yet another generic grindfest based on an anime. Well, the anime is based on the game this time - haha, I got you there!  Even from the website’s main page, this may look like your typical MMO…there are classes, items and dungeons.  But when you watch the video (near the end), scope the screenshots, or check out this page - you will see why I’m interested.  That’s some total retro arcade fighting action!

The fighting looks fast and awesome and it seems like complete old school fun.  There even appears to be Street Fighter style button combos for special moves.  Imagine how much fun it would be to actually kick the shit out of a monster with your buddies instead of just clicking buttons to do it?  And how fun would it be to go head to head with those same friends afterwards? That just seems totally badass to me.  Plus, you throw in the fun of itemization, character customization and RPG elements and you add some depth to it all.

The game is currently in closed beta.  I have confidence they will bring it to market because it’s already running in Asia.  Nexon also has experience running online games involving action, with their FPS title, Combat Arms.  The game will be the usual deal we see lately - totally free to play but sucking in cash through microtransactions like purchasing special items in the store.

This game makes me nostalgic.  It looks just like the side scroller beat-’em-ups I loved so much.  You know, like Double Dragon or Golden Axe.  Well, for me, it especially reminds me of the whole Streets of Rage series.  Haha, oh wow, my college roommate and I played those games to death and had so much fun doing it.  So if I can recapture that feeling in an online experience, I’m all for it.

After installing Launchy and playing around with it a lot, I decided I wanted to work on a little beautification and add some pizzazz to the desktop.  I went with another free option: Rainmeter.  Rainmeter allows you to create these widgets or gadgets or whatever you want to call them that sit on your desktop.  These can measure your PC info (hard drive space, memory usage, power) or pull info from the internet (weather, news feeds).  They look pretty cool…at least I think so.  And it is handy to see a nice calendar, large clock, rss feed and so on right on your desktop.

Rainmeter is also very customizable, with tons of skins and plugins available.  For example, I downloaded a stock ticker plugin and it works great.  And I’ve tested out a bunch of different skins and found different elements that I liked.  Now my Rainmeter stuff is all situated nicely and fits well with my wallpaper, though I had to do some editing for that.

That brings up a point - Rainmeter can be a bit difficult to use, depending on your skill level.  I think that doing the basic stuff like installing and using different skins, choosing what elements to use and understanding the options is pretty doable for anyone.  But it’s not some slick interface that’s totally simple.  If you do want an easy way to use Rainmeter, you can try the Enigma 2.0 skin which actually does implement a nice GUI for you.

However, I think most people at some point will want to really get in there and edit the skins.  Well, obviously for some you just have to - putting your zip in for the weather or a link for an rss feed.  You have to open the file up in Notepad.  Actually, I recommend using Notepad++ , which is really great and has a lot of nice features.  I think Karn actually introduced me to it a while back.   Well, anyway, for stuff like putting in your zip the skins usually have text telling you exactly where to do it in the code.

However, if you want to customize and tweak the skin a little more, you kind of have to figure out how the code works and edit it yourself.  I don’t think it’s that hard…for some people it may be so easy they’re laughing right now.  But it’s just going to take a little time and concentration for the average person.  It ended up being kinda fun for me - but I really didn’t take it that far.

Oh, and if you are more of a mouse person and Launchy isn’t for you (or you just want both options like me), you can set up nice docks or launch bars (or whatever you want to call them) to fire up whatever programs you choose to put on them with a mouse click.

Rainmeter is free, useful and cool looking.  Just one note - many weather skins are currently on the fritz due to some issues with Weather.com.  I switched the xoap in the url to xml and it works perfectly but you may want to go with an skin that uses Accuweather instead or just check the forums for updates.

There’s a problem with Rainmeter in Vista though - when you click the Show Desktop icon on the Task Bar it shows you just the actual desktop…no Rainmeter.  Now, this isn’t really a problem with Rainmeter, because I had the exact same problem with the Vista Sidebar, itself.  When I hit Show Desktop, I would lose the sidebar too.  I find it insane that Microsoft has it set up this way, but they do.  The way around it for either Rainmeter or the Vista Sidebar is to hit Windows + M, which minimizes all your windows but keeps Rainmeter or the Sidebar going on your desktop.  But I didn’t want to hit Windows + M all the time.

So enter the third free program I installed, AutoHotkey.  AutoHotkey is another amazing piece of software.  It lets you remap keys, use macros and turn any key (or mouse/joystick button) into a hotkey.  So, for example, you can have a script that will replace “l33t” with “I am a l33t haxxor that just pwned you,” in any email you write.  I set up a keypress combo that would enter some Wordpress code I use frequently.  I set up another one that opens my todo list in Word.

And to solve my problem above, I decided to map Windows + M to my second mouse button, which was previously “forward.”  I use back all the time but I probably use forward once a week.  So now, whenever I hit my second mouse button, everything minimizes but Rainmeter is still there.  I love it…it’s so much better than hitting the show desktop button anyway.  But with AutoHotkey you can do whatever the heck you want.  It’s hard to explain how useful it is.

Again, I have to warn that this is not exactly the most user friendly of programs.  Doing the simple stuff that I did is fairly easy, though you still have to read the documentation on what code to enter and then create the script in Notepad.  You should have no problem just creating hotkeys and macros.  It’s just that you have to be willing to spend a little time and not expect a user-friendly interface.

And then there are people who go far beyond my skill in creating scripts…far beyond.  But the cool thing is I can do the easy stuff to customize AutoHotkey to do what I want, and then I can just use someone else’s advanced script to serve a function I don’t need to customize.  For example, I grabbed this script - which I think is excellent.  It’s a folder menu that pops up when you press your middle mouse button (or any button/key/key combo).  You can pick your favorite, most used folders and have them in your menu.  It sounds simple, but it’s so handy.

I didn’t realize cleaning my desktop would end up with me spending hours tinkering around with all these programs.  But, hey - it was pretty fun.  I think these are three great programs, even greater because they are free.  And they each give you so much room to customize, unlike many commercial programs.  But I think what I like best is that they are all made even better by the creativity and skill of the user community.  I’m still not done with my desktop, and I plan on checking out stuff like ObjectDock, RocketDock, Taskbar ++, and Taskbar Shuffle , so we’ll see how that goes.

Well, anyway, I shoveled all the garbage into the Recycle Bin and then threw most of the other stuff into the proper folders.  It was looking a lot better…just a couple of icons.  Whenever I do my desktop cleaning, I grab new wallpaper too.  I usually just go with a tiled pattern or something simple and abstract.  This time I ran across “Show Me Your World” by Nyius on Deviant Art.  As you can see, in the thumbnail it looks just like a blue wall, faded in places, but when you’re really close - it’s a rather beautiful old-school map.  It might seem too monotone but I love it…it’s not at all distracting but it’s visually pleasing.  I also moved my task bar from the botttom to the right side of the screen and I’ve found that to work a lot better.

And that’s where I usually stop, declaring my desktop cleaning mission accomplished.  But not this time…this time I decided to keep going, just a little bit.  Well, a little bit turned into hours and I’m not even satisfied yet.  In my desktop adventures, I came across three helpful programs.  They’re all free and they’re all great - what’s better than that?  So I’ll discuss one today and the other two in my next post.

Okay, so when I had only a few icons left on my desktop, it obviously looked a lot better.  But I was thinking…I don’t even like these icons.  I’m going icon-less!  At that point I wasn’t sure exactly how I was going to accomplish that, but I hid my remaining icons anyway.  I poked around the net looking for an alternate way to rock and roll.  I kept seeing one program in particular that everyone spoke highly of: Launchy.  It’s free and open source.  At first I didn’t think I would like Launchy (sorry Launchy - I love you now!), because I’m so used to working with my mouse on the desktop.  But I was wrong.

How to describe Launchy?  Well, “physically,” it’s a bar that you can input text into that you place on your desktop.  But behind the scenes, Launchy indexes your Start Menu, your Documents, your collection of obscure music that no one else is cool enough to get…whatever.  It indexes what you tell it to.  So let’s say I want to play a little Daikatana.  I start typing it into Launchy.   As I type, Launchy doesn’t wait until I finish.  Once I’ve typed, say, “Dai,” and there are three programs that start with those letters - Launchy will display one choice and give me a drop down menu with the other two.  Then let’s say you get to “Daik” and there are no other programs but the awesomest game ever. Launchy will complete the word Daikatana and display the file icon.  Just press enter and you’re swinging your magic sword or whatever.

Maybe I’m complicating it - it’s just type, enter and program launched.  Or if you only input some letters - type, select from drop down menu, enter, launch.  So the beauty of Launchy is that it replaces all those icons on your desktop.  You no longer need them.  You no longer need to use your Start Menu.  Until you try it, you may be dubious - but once you get used to it you’ll be hooked.  Oh, it can also index your favorites folder so you type in say “always” and it will pop up with “Always Go Right.”  Press enter and you’re on the web and on our page.  You can choose the browser it launches.

As I said, you can pick which folders you want Launchy to index, and even how “deep” it goes in those folders.  There are other options as well, and one I really liked, since I’m trying to make my desktop perfect…is that you can select various skins to use with Launchy and control their opacity.  Some of these dramatically change Launchy’s look.  They’re very easy to install (just toss into the Skins folder and go into Options) and you can grab some on Deviant Art or the Launchy Forums.  So Launchy looks awesome as well as making you more efficient.

In addition to skins, there are various plugins.  For example, you can make Launchy a calculator.  But a really key plugin in is Runny.  I could do a whole post on Runny so I’ll just keep this brief and quote the example from the official documentation:

Create aliases for your favorite commands, even those that require user input. For instance, create the command “mailto: $1” with the alias of “email” . Then, when you type “email” into Launchy, hit tab, and then type the email address the email address will replace the $1 and your email client will launch.

Free and cool - Launchy’s a winner.  And I barely scratched the surface of what you can use it for.

When talking about the video clip, I actually said the following:

… “I’d love to know if this was an entire musical or just this scene was done for a variety show, because I really do think it’d be a real hoot to watch a whole movie like this.”

Those who remember the post might also remember that I also proclaimed:

“All laughs aside, wow - Leia’s hot.”

Well, I am excited to tell you all that I’ve figured out who Luke and Leia are, and I’ve also unearthed what I think could be the entire skit from the 70’s era television show.

The video clip comes from a 70’s musical variety show. I was rather surprised to discover that the show it came from was the Donnie and Marie show - you know, Donnie and Marie Osmond.

Okay… let that sink in. Still thinking about it? Yeah, keep jogging your mind about that, and remember what I said about the original video clip when I came across it.

Oh My Freakin’ God, did I actually tell the entire world that I think Marie Osmond is hot?

That’s it, my reputation is down the crapper now. My only saving grace is that I thought she looked hot as Leia; I just hope I get to keep some of my street cred by pointing that out.

The next thing that slaps me in the face is, how the hell did I not recognize Donnie Osmond as Luke? And, does this now not make the whole Luke kissing his sister thing that much creepier now?

As disturbing as my discovery was, it is cool to know where the video clip came from. Sadly, the rest of the songs in this musical are not as good as the one from the original clip, but as a whole it is still worth watching.

And if you are looking for a transcript of the lyrics and script, I found a site with just that… so now you can print it out and sing along with Luke, Leia, and Han.

Enjoy the show!

Well, actually… yeah, I was.

I was on vacation last week, my first vacation in quite some time too. I took my family camping. It’s been a good long while since we’ve actually gone camping. We own a cottage now, and we usually end up going there these days; but I have to admit, it was great to whip out the old nylon tent, propane stove, sleeping bags, coolers and get right down and roughing it out in nature.

Only we didn’t really rough it much. One day it poured! We ended up haulin’ ass into town to catch a movie (we saw Up, btw… and I wasn’t overly impressed… maybe I’ll post my thoughts on it once I’ve decided how I really feel about it), had lunch in town, and did some groceries.

Then we got back to camp, grabbed the sleeping bags and popped over to a laundromat to dry the suckers out a little. Now, my tent did not take on water… but the humidity seeped into the sleeping bags making them feel rather uncomfortably damp. My 4yr old son would have been chilly, and frankly my spoiled self would much rather a dry fluffy sleeping bag over a matted damp chilly wet one - call me crazy I guess.

Anyways, this week I am back and I would have to say that it’s been a fun-filled week. Here’s the fun stuff I have come across and dumped onto my tumblog - as a quick FYI, check out my tumblog during the week if you want to see what links I’ll be talking about on Fridays. I encourage you to comment over there and let me know what you think of the link I’ve posted on i am karnatos… and if you come across a link you think I need to check out, please don’t hesitate to let me know: you can email me, or DM me in FriendFeed or Twitter.

• Zombieland Trailer
• The Many Faces of Space Invaders
• Apparati Effimeri
• Pinocchio: Vampire Slayer Preview
• Zombie Kickball 2009 in Portland, Maine

Zombieland Trailer

Zombieland is an upcoming ZomCom, but I don’t know where this one came from. I’ve not heard anything about this movie at all.

As expected with a zombie movie, it’s got an October release date - just in time for the Halloween season.

If you watch the trailer, guaranteed you will be recognizing some of the faces here; Woody Harrelson seems to play a central character, and I see Bill Murray in the roster as well - playing a zombie nonetheless!

The trailer looks quite entertaining, but I fear that it’ll just be more and more of the same: kill zombies in a new sillier way and crack a joke to stress that its funny - but that might not matter if it really is funny. I hope it is, because the trailer definitely makes the movie look fun.

The Many Faces of Space Invaders

Ahhh, yes. Space Invaders. You seem to be dominating my conversations here on AGR lately, and here you are again… cute little pixelated alien baddies that you are, I just can’t seem to get enough.

This is just a silly image I came across and it made me chuckle - my favorite is the Terminator Invader!

Apparati Effimeri

This is by far my favorite find this week - go and watch the video, it’s freakin’ trippy!

Apparati Effimeri appears to be a sort of movie cast onto a stone building… but holy crap does that look freaking amazing!

I cannot believe some of the effects and how incredible they were. It must have taken some serious time to get those animations to look that freaking believable. Even as I was watching the video, at times I was fooled and ended up doing double-takes - I could not believe that they were pulling off the crazy effects by simply casting light onto a structure at nighttime.

Absolutely amazing.

Pinocchio: Vampire Slayer Preview

This looks to be rather promising - a concept vampire story that crosses the lore of vampires with the story of Pinocchio. Geppetto, Pinocchio’s creator, has been murdered by vampires… and Pinocchio has vowed to take revenge against those that killed him.

It looks pretty funny - Pinocchio has an endless supply of stakes; all he needs to do is tell lies, snap off his nose and voila! Instant stake! The artwork looks great, and the potential for silliness is high… should be worth checking out when it comes out early this fall.

Zombie Kickball 2009 in Portland, Maine

Wooo, just noticed this now - this week’s Rabbit Hole has zombie bookends! Sweet!

This short video is highly entertaining. Folks in Portland, Maine, apparently have a yearly get together where people show up as zombies and have a friendly Inter-Zombie League game of Kickball.

It looks pretty serious too - I saw zombies really taking a crack at kicking the ball, only to succumb to the ball’s velocity and end up tumbling over it. Sometimes the zombies would be making a break for second base and get distracted… there’s so many distractions at a public event like this, so hard for a zombie to stay focused.

I have to admit that it looks like a pretty good time, and spectators appear to come out in droves to check out the wackiness. Looks like even the kids watching the spectacle were getting into it; they allowed the zombies to decorate their faces with some blood before the zombies started to see the little plump-kiddies as food rather than spectators, sending the kids off running.

You can never have too much fun with a combination like that; zombies and kickball - such a great annual community event, every town should have one!

The new brand in full force.  I guess Imagine Greater is their tag-line.  That’s a nice TV in the background.  I was going to watch it for a bit but they had the Sci Fi Channel on. Zing!

In addition to this computer station, there was free wi-fi in the area.  It took you to the Syfy website on launch but that’s still pretty cool.

Remember these things?  They were pretty sweet but I guess they’re pretty much gone now.  My mind’s blanking - viewfinders, right? I remember you could buy different “episodes” to put in them.

The giant lollipop actually had free lollipops in it…but the beverages cost money.

There are rocks in the future!

Two things: That’s not my litter on the other seat - it was there when I sat down.  And everything else was spotless…I just got the crappy table.

All of those flags are Syfy flags that say “Syfy - Imagine Greater” on them.

That’s not all they have planned for NY.  They were handing out little info pamphlets with ads for Eureka on one side and Warehouse 13 on the other.  Inside were the plans for the Summer of Syfy.  They claim they’re actually providing free wi-fi to Rockefeller Center for an entire year.  That’s pretty insane…and handy for any tourist who needs a wi-fi connection.  And it’s not just Rock Center, they’re doing Union Square too, which is really awesome.  They even say they’re hooking up Times Square soon…because it’s not only the most congested, awful part of the entire city, but we need people trying to get wi-fi signals on the impassable sidewalks.  But damn, they’re going all out with this thing.  I was impressed - until I saw they called it wyfy from Syfy and then I almost threw up a little in my mouth.

But that’s not all you get from Syfy’s marketing blitz.  Order now and receive a bonus - Syfy will sponsor a Tim Burton retrospective at MOMA (which sounds freaking awesome).  But if you call in the next ten minutes, Syfy will also give you…a series of free movies in Brooklyn Bridge Park!   You can check it out here…how cool is it to watch a flick with that view?

I’m pretty wowed by the whole thing and I can’t really be cynical about it because it’s all great stuff.  So I thank them on behalf on NYC (as the city’s appointed ambassador to science fiction related entities).

Man, they really, really want to get the word out about this whole name change thing.

I checked and the name change has been completely blasted from fans all over the internet in angry posts, tweets, comments and other internet stuff people do.  I do understand one aspect of the need for a name change.  They absolutely had to have a brand they could trademark and there’s nothing wrong with that.  But did they have to pick such a ridiculous, moronic name?  I don’t know…it sure hasn’t gone over well with fans.  But Syfy is very interested in broadening their appeal beyond the whole “geek market” (they didn’t use those words but you know what I mean).  I don’t see how that’s going to really work.  Because it’s called Syfy, is everyone in the world going to suddenly tune in to whatever Stargate series they’re doing now?  Are people suddenly going to be fooled: Oh, this isn’t the Sci Fi Channel - it’s called Syfy!  That must be something totally different and a channel that would be of general interest to myself and everyone in my family!

Anyway, I don’t really care about their name change because I never watch the channel.  Early on, I associated the channel with really bad sci-fi movies…kinda like Mystery Theater 3000 except without any of the entertainment value.  And I was just never a fan of Farscape or Stargate - though those may very well have been awesome.  Of course, then they blew up big with their Battlestar Galactica home run.  Of course, I did watch that, but I was still never really drawn to the channel in general because they had no secondary offerings to back it up.  And every time I’ve flipped by it since, it’s always some people hunting paranormal creatures in a dark room with green lights and electrometers or whatever they are.  Then one day I saw they had wrestling on.  Wrestling?  Okay…

So without the programming to back it up, I’m not sure what the name change will do.  I don’t know why they didn’t do it in conjunction with the release of a major new series.  They’re doing that Alien Nation thing with a dude from Firefly writing…it doesn’t really appeal to me (the Quantum Leap one might) but it sounds like it’s an attempt at a big-time series.  So why not launch it with that?  Oh, and by the way…a fun drinking game is to listen to an interview with anyone from Syfy talking about a new show and then drink anytime they say “Battlestar Galactica” in an attempt to somehow link the two.  You won’t last long.

Anyway, what they’re pimping now is Eureka and Warehouse 13.  I really tried to get into Eureka in the beginning but I just couldn’t.  Warehouse 13 looks completely uninteresting to me.  Even if it’s good, it’s not going to be a major hit.

So it will be interesting to see what they do in the new “Syfy Era.”  Will they do some big time epic sci-fi series?  More wrestling?  Reality shows about people fighting robots in a pit of doom?

They seriously seem fired up about the name change (even the people working at the park thing were all amped up).  I just hope they have a plan beyond: Step 1 – Change Name, Step 2 - Profit!.

Even though it’s all a big marketing exercise…they did a kickass job in NYC so props to them.

Since I was fascinated with pen and paper role-playing early on and always fascinated with video games, you would think I would have made the natural connection to board games earlier.  I think it’s because we think of board games like Monopoly, Sorry or Chutes and Ladders when we hear board games.  But there are tons of amazing games like Puerto Rico, Ticket to Ride, Settlers of Catan and Caylus, to name a few, which are definitely made for adults and which put a much larger emphasis on skill rather than luck (not to say that luck can’t play a factor too - I definitely like a dose of luck).

When I started reading about and playing these board games, I couldn’t believe how many were out there and how great the community was, especially at BoardGameGeek.  I also listened to a podcast called Dice Tower.  You might think, “Oh, there’s nothing new anymore in board games!”  But these brilliant designers keep coming up with fascinating new mechanics and concepts.  You can learn so much about game design in general just by understanding how these games are put together.

In fact, I hope most video game designers take the time to play these types of board games.  Before they are allowed to touch a video game they should be thoroughly versed in the playing, playtesting and creating of board games.

When you have a great board game going it can be great fun.  And with fun people involved, it’s just amplified.  However, the reality is it’s just too much of a pain in the ass for me at this point in my life to try to get people together, get them to learn the rules to new games, continue games that are stopped midway because someone had to go, etc.  But I still love reading and hearing about board games and I have no regrets about getting so caught up in them for a time.

Well, that was an insanely long lead-in to:  About the time I just stopped listening to board game podcasts and so on, a game came out that was getting rewards on top of it’s rewards and then more rewards on top of those. I mean, this thing won the Spiel des Jahres, which is like the board game equivalent of hitting a home-run just as you are voted most awesome person on earth and win a new bike.  I guess the Spiel des Jahres peeps might not describe it exactly that way but it’s a big deal. That game was Zooloretto, and I guess it just stuck around in the back of my mind forever…even though I had never played it.  So when I saw it in the App Store one day, even though it seemed so pricey ($5) by App Store standards (fair or not), I just had to grab this game.

Now that I’ve done the longest intro in history, I’m going to do my shortest summary.  Zooloretto is an awesome game about putting animals into their little zoo-homes (or enclosures as some might say).  Some animals make babies together…but you probably already knew that.  If not - sorry for the spoiler. Oh, and sometimes you place vending stands too.   I just can’t explain the rules (official board game rules here) because I know if I even try to summarize them it won’t work and I’ll just go on forever and make a ton of mistakes.

But don’t get the wrong idea – the rules are not complex at all.  They are dry and possibly confusing to read but if you start playing after reading them without worrying about it too much you’ll find it easy to learn and you will have it all down in a handful of games.  What’s more, the iPhone game couldn’t be more intuitive and easy to play.  If you guide them at first, I think it could certainly be played by kids - it’s a great match of strategic thinking and a super fun setting.

You may glide through the first few games thinking, “I didn’t win but I did okay, there’s not much to this.”  Your first plays kind of almost seem to happen as if you’re just a bystander…things happens - some good, some bad.  You put tokens on any truck and put animals wherever you can. It feels like the game is all about luck.  But actually, in Zooloretto you are constantly making strategic choices and you’ll find yourself being more and more successful as you keep playing.

The game looks very professional and just really nice – bright and colorful - and has this great board overview feature you can pull down from the top of the screen.  Though I suppose the original creators could have used cars in parking lots or any number of things, the theme of Zooloretto is a great one which works so well with the mechanic.  And that theme also happens to translate beautifully to the iPhone.  Another thing that translates nicely to the iPhone is something that the game is not dependent on in real life - direct player interaction.  Oh, I can see there are definitely times there would be laughter and yelling about who put what onto what truck and so on.  All I’m saying is that some games depend totally or largely on player interaction.  Zooloretto is on the end of the spectrum where player interaction would be great…but it’s not required to experience the game.  Speaking of player interaction, there is an option for multiplayer games, but, sadly, no wifi or online play.  So for multiplayer, you have to pass the phone around and while that sometimes might be handy to pass the time, it’s not optimal.

But it’s a fun game to play on the go and it does have a family feel so it would great to play it with your kids.  I find it very enjoyable - addictive and challenging without being frustrating. But don’t listen to my words…I figured the harshest critics of this app would definitely be the posters over at BoardGameGeek, the most knowledgeable, passionate crew of board game fans around.  So I was pretty shocked to see the thread there was so positive and filled with genuine praise.  As poster Eddie the Cranky Monkey put it:

I’m used to taking cheap shots at the slightest weakness in a product like this, and even *I* love it.

That’s pretty much all I need to know.  They also picked up on the same issues I saw: need for an undo button, need for a better signal of when the last round is and need for a way to change avatars/turn order.  Also, you win points when you play, but the only thing you can unlock with them are the fourth and fifth AI players.  This seems pretty cheesy…like someone shouted “unlockables rule” at the last minute and they just coded this in.

Remember, it’s a board game sorta transposed onto the iPhone.  And even though they did a killer job with the conversion, it’s still going to play like a board game being played on the iPhone.  Even if it’s a great board game, that still might not be for you.  Not everyone likes board games in the first place (although this is considered a “light gateway” to the realm of hardcore german board games) and you can’t argue the fact that they are more fun played in person with friends.  But I still find myself playing Zooloretto quite often and having a blast.

Keep in mind that on the TouchArcade forums a dev stated that are planning an update which includes the polar bear expansion.  Which actually…is not so much an expansion as a Polar Bear sitting on one tile (story behind it-scroll down to description).  But seriously, it sounds like it can really be a factor and even that will add more twists and fun to the gameplay.  The quote said that this was the “first” big content update planned, which has me hoping for more.  I’ll need to see the Polar Bear update before I believe it, but it would be really great if they continue to update with other Zooloretto expansions, like Petting Zoo.  I don’t even know what that is, but it sounds cute.  And strategic.

Zooloretto is just fun to play.  It would take a big boost with the addition of wifi play, but even now I’m happy with it.

The funniest thing about writing this post is that it sucked me right back into board game world.  I was looking at the Spiel des Jahres page and I had never before checked who won for 2008.  Well it’s a game called Dominion and it looks so awesome I want to sign up now to play it for the next 3 weeks straight without even knowing if I like it.  But it sounds like a lot of the things I love about CCG’s without a lot of the things I don’t like about CCG’s.  And the BoardGameGeek crew seems to love it.  I start writing about an iPhone app and end up ordering a board game…that’s the way it goes.