Greg's illustrious gaming career started out at the age of three, when he managed to get a bean from 'Don't Spill the Beans' wedged up his nose. While he has never been quite that intimate with a game since, he loves all manner of games, and will play anything that is put in front of him. He even goes to a week-long convention every year devoted entirely to board games.
Keeping the website up and running can be hard work, and Greg likes to relax with a nice puzzle game, but also likes to play LotRO with some of his GiN colleagues. Adventure games and shooters have also been known to hold his interest.
And he still maintains a sad devotion to that ancient religion: Civilization II.
Sometimes a puzzle game will come out where the entire purpose is to solve puzzles. While I could be perfectly happy solving puzzles all day long, I crave some atmosphere and story and characterization intermingled with good puzzles. Fortunately for me, there are games like Jazz & Faust. Jazz & Faust is a puzzle/adventure game set in a fantasy environment with medieval and Arabian Nights -style elements. In it you play one of the two title characters as you try to unravel a mystery and achieve an ancient treasure. The trick is, once you have solved one of the character’s … Continue reading Russian Fairy Tales→
The Watchmaker is the latest offering from Got Game Entertainment, and while it has a great deal of potential, it only lives up to part of it. You play two characters: Victoria Conroy (lawyer) and Darrel Boone (paranormal expert), who meet at 3:00 in a London law office, where you are briefed on the mission. Apparently an item of potentially dangerous power, a pendulum, has been stolen, and the castle you are about to go to is one of the suspected hiding places. Of course, your mission is to find out what you can, and hopefully recover the pendulum. The … Continue reading Watchmaker's Clockwork Mystery→
I can remember a time when the game that was taking everybody’s quarters, and sucking away more work hours than pointless meetings was a now-classic game called Tetris. As time moved on, the market shifted, and we were treated to eras of shooters, RPGs, and strategy games. While these were all enjoyable in their own way, still I missed the days when a game with such an incredibly simple concept managed to capture the fancy of a game-playing nation. Those days may be here again, thanks to Cuboingo. In Cuboingo, you have a cube that is paneled on all six … Continue reading Cuboingo is Fun Cubed→
I hope I’m not hopelessly dating myself, but I remember when the pizza joint down the street from the college campus got in a game called Ataxx (this was back in 1990). It was different from a lot of the other games that were coming out at that time, in that is was a turn-based puzzle game. I spent many hours at this game, trying to beat ever-increasingly-difficult AI opponents in an effort to get a higher ranking. (Take that, Droolman!) Later, in 1993, 7th Guest came out with a rehash of the Ataxx game as one of its puzzles … Continue reading Assimilation: AI is Irrelevant→
Patrician II takes you back to Europe in the 1300’s, where sea trading was really starting to take off, and a veritable fortune could be made if a trader was clever enough. The most resourceful sorts of fellows could even reach positions of power in a town or even a seat on the fabled Hanseatic League. As with any economic strategy game, the concept of "buy low, sell high" is a must to master. However, it’s not exactly simple to determine what is in low demand in one town, and more difficult to predict what will be in high demand … Continue reading Patrician II is a Rich Game→
It’s weird being the ‘puzzle guy’ around the office. Everyone automatically assumes that I’ll want to get the latest puzzle game to review, and – plop – there it is on my desk. But do they know me? Do they know my secret desires? No, let the ‘puzzle guy’ have his puzzles. Maybe I wanted a shooter or something instead, huh? There are two very good reasons why I don’t get the shooters. One, I suck at them, and two, I don’t enjoy them very much. So maybe they have me pegged, and ‘puzzle guy’ I remain. This is fortunate, … Continue reading Once You Pop, You Just Can’t Stop→
I don’t know how they do it, but Dreamcatcher always seems to find a new puzzle/adventure game just to keep me from being bored. Publishers of some of the best games in this genre ever (Traitors Gate, Cydonia, Safecracker – hey, while I have your attention, guys, where the heck is game two of The Forgotten series? I’ve been waiting on that one for almost two years) they never cease to surprise me in their ability to find the next one. In this case the game is called Schizm: Mysterious Journey. It takes place in 2083, ten months after humans … Continue reading Somewhat Divided on Schizm→
When I first ran into Neil Nusbaum, the president of CycleFX, at E3 in 2000 he was showing off an interface he’d developed that would feed into a PC running software that would track mileage, speed, etc. Like I imagine others had, I said, "You should really make it so you can play games on it." Well, the next year, sure enough, he was showing us the GameRider. The GameRider is an exercise bike attached to an interface for the Sony Playstation. With it, you can play virtually any Playstation racing game, just by peddling and steering. In order to … Continue reading CycleFX marries exercise and gaming→
Through all the to-do around the new console platforms and who’s got the hottest sports games and so forth, it’s good to see certain types of games that I thrive on enjoying some popularity on the PC. In particular, the economic/military strategy games are really starting to come out. Maybe it’s because of Civilization III coming out in November or maybe something else entirely. But I don’t care, I am just enjoying the influx. One game that I had the privilege of previewing was Patrician II. Patrician II takes you to northern Europe in the 14th century, during the time … Continue reading Patrician II is in a League of its Own→
Scandinavian innovators change the face of wireless gaming. What do you think of when you think of Finland? Well, if you're anything like me, you think of Laplanders, those really big reindeer, probably a lot of snow, and the only country in Europe to pay back the United States its Lend-Lease from WWII. Pioneering advances in wireless communication and gaming would be pretty far down on the list. Well, surprise! At E3 I had the pleasure of running into the Finnish co-op booth (not quite literally, though), and finding a company called G-Cluster there. G-Cluster has developed a service that … Continue reading Here's the Finnish Line→
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