Panzer General: Allied Assault is a combination board and collectible card game (CCG), focused on two player Germany vs America World War II action.   Yes, I was expecting some sort of hex-based war game as well, but as things turn out, the game’s actually a modular board game with considerable CCG elements.  Other versions of the game will be made available at some point.  I’ve only put a little time into the title so far, but it comes across as surprisingly dense and complex.  The computer player in the Tutorial kicked my ass and really showed me what war’s about.  The How to Play section of the game seems like a good place to start instead.  The game sports a Campaign mode, a Skirmish mode with 30+ maps (although they’re just the same tiles reorganized different ways) and Xbox LIVE multiplayer support.  Curiously, there is no map editor.

The game looks way better than a board game should.  There’s a realistic-looking battlefield that’s representative of a number of terrain tiles all lined up, with little units trucking about.  No plastic or pewter little static dudes here.  Players assemble decks of cards from their collection and rumble Germany versus America style.  The game seems similar to a lot of other war games I’ve played, with units getting played, moving around, capturing towns and doing battle with adjacent units.  Cards in hand can do stuff during battle, bring units into play, summon bombing runs and so on.

I’m going to have to put some more time into it to figure the game out, but what I’ve seen so far has me intrigued.  Looks like Magic: the Gathering and Culdcept Saga have some CCG competition!  Board game fans might want to give the trial a download and see what they think.

Tower Bloxx Deluxe is the Xbox LIVE Arcade port of Digital Chocolate’s life-ruining mobile title.  On mobile devices, it was an addictive, pick-up-and-play title noted for its simple controls:  one button.  The main activity in the game is building towers.  A crane dangles a cube-shaped section of building over a swaying section of already placed building.  Press that one button and stack ‘em up!  See how high you can go!  And that’s pretty much it, as far as gameplay goes.  Better timing places the blocks better, making the building sway less, and rewarding more population (more score).

The Xbox LIVE Arcade version keeps all that gameplay intact.  There’s a Quick Play mode and a Time Attack mode, but the bulk of the single player experience is found in the Build a City mode.  Progress through larger and larger cities, build increasingly taller towers, and try to reach population goals.  Certain buildings can only be placed besides other buildings, so there’s a minor strategy element to all of it.  Simple fun, to be certain, but pretty decent all the same.  There’s a few multiplayer modes, but they’re all focused on local only – no Xbox LIVE multiplayer support at all.  I haven’t tried out any of them yet, but they’re Time Attack, Battle and Co-op.  Co-op is two player, but all the other ones support up to four.

This is a pretty easy one to recommend.  Just download the trial and make a tower.  Now, imagine doing that probably a thousand times more.  Sound fun?  The game has a nice, colourful look to it, and a tiny bit of Avatar integration.  I’ll probably be playing a bunch of it because sometimes I just love to press ‘A’.

In the age of anti-aliasing and bloom lighting, THX and 7.1 sound systems, the first thing you’ll notice is the rather poor production values of this niche title. This sequel to the PS2 cult classic has improved graphics and sound quality, and even though everything is clean, it is just not on par with what is the standard for games in the current age. They added atrocious voice-acting to Saga, which is quite a downgrade from the text-only dialogue in the previous game. I’m pretty sure my computer can generate some voice samples less irritating than the voices you hear during the cutscenes.

Luckily, most of the time you won’t be too worried about the poor animations or the voice acting.  You’ll be too immersed in deciding what spells to cast and whether to attack with a creature. To get an idea of the gameplay, think Monopoly, except that when you land on someone’s property, you have the option of trying to take control of it by battling the creature that is occupying the property. You win when the sum of your money in hand and the worth of your land adds up to the target amount, which is different for each map.  You can even level up the land you own, much like buying houses and hotels, but that carries its own risk since it’ll make that land a target. The most interesting part is that before each match, you choose a deck of spells, items, and creatures that will be available for you to use during the match. At any point, you will have a hand of six or fewer cards to choose from, so there are some decisions to be made about whether you keep cards to use later.

There is some luck entwined with the strategy, too. Much like CCGs, what cards you draw into your hand affect the outcome.  Even the most well designed deck can run into some bad luck.  From the board game side, dice rolls determine how far you can move, and since the lap bonuses scale according to the number of laps you’ve completed around the board, a string of good luck with the dice can often become a huge advantage.

Another trait it inherits from its parents (card games would wear the pants in that relationship) is that Culdcept is best enjoyed with other people. The multiplayer setup provides a range of options such as splitting off into teams, choosing random decks, and even how the colours of the squares on the board is arranged. Imagine if you could play with Board Walk beside Indiana, and you’ll get a sense of how this works. You can set the target goal when the game ends, or set a turn limit. And if you’re worried that people are going to stall the game until you run out of patience and quit, there is the option to set a time limit for each individual turn.  The victor(s) of these stressful battles receive more random cards added to their collection, which they can then use in their various decks.  CCG veterans will be familiar with the concept of card rarities, which helps you to keep playing until you have enough copies of the cards you want in your deck.

If you’re not into the multiplayer aspect of games, the single player mode has plenty to offer as well. The AI is sufficiently challenging until the quality of the cards in your collection becomes fairly good. It suffers all the stupidities you’d expect from AI, but you can choose to handicap yourself by facing a team of two opponents.  In addition to the story mode, there are also special achievements that you can get, which will award unique cards. For example, collecting all the cards of any colour will award you a special card of that colour. I would drop the dollar value to $25 CAD though if you’re not going to try the multiplayer.

Culdcept Saga is not a fast-paced game by any means.  In fact, my biggest complaint is that you can’t skip the animations that you’ll be forced to watch hundreds of times. However, Culdcept Saga is a great game if you’re looking for a game that relies solely on your mental faculties and a bit of luck, and not on reflexes.