103 – The Family Gamers Podcast – E3 and CTFIG with Stephen Duetzmann
We’re joined this week by Stephen Duetzmann, who tells us about his favorite moments from E3 (which we previewed in episode 99) and CTFIG.
Contest
But first, contest winners! Congratulations to:
Laura Prickett
Donald Highley
Will Griesmer
And thanks to all of the people who donated towards our prizes.
What we’ve been playing:
Stephen is (finally) trying Fortnite. Although it’s free to play, the upgrade is well worth it, and less expensive than most other subscription-based games. If your kids want to play this massively popular game, check out this beginner’s guide, and check Engaged Family Gaming for more information over the coming weeks.
Stephen also praises OctoPath Traveler: “If you are a JRPG person and own a Switch… this is required reading.” Pixel sprites on a 3D plane; 8 heroes, but their backgrounds / quests don’t intersect in a meaningful way.
Cuphead – Andrew beat it!
Rayman Legends – it’s neat to see our daughter blossoming into a determined, precise gamer :) It has also introduced our children to some interesting music.
Unravel Two – we really enjoyed the demo of this platformer/co-op on XBOX ONE. The rare sort of co-op where the weaker player doesn’t feel left behind.
Andrew played and beat Halo 5. Story was … better.
Andrew also tried out ReCore, and he liked it a lot.
The kids tried some Super Lucky’s Tale, but fell in love with A Kingdom for Keflings (at least it’s only $10.)
Anitra rants about how hard it was to set up both “big” kids with Xbox ONE accounts, because no offline account option is available. But once you get past the difficulty of setup, the defaults are pretty intelligent… and the default screennames can be hilarious.
Top moments from E3
The theme seemed to be “stand and deliver” – nothing shocking, but everything that was expected was great.
- Frozen characters will be in Kingdom Hearts III (“I was right all along”)
- MegaMan 11 – very good, cheap, and will be available on everything.
- Starlink: Battle for Atlas (“the best StarFox game ever made”). Toys-to-life with spaceships/pilots/weapons that are all customizable – and NEED to be customized to beat elemental weaknesses of enemies. Our kids saw the video (the ship attaches to the controller) and it blew their minds.
- Anthem – “Destiny but everyone is Iron Man”
Andrew asks about the new Spiderman : apparently not quite as much like the Arkham Batman games as it appears. Coming in September!
CT FIG
CT FIG is much like Boston FIG, but is hosted with Connecticon (a fan convention: comics, cosplay, video games, tabletop – you name it, they’ve got it!)
Highlights:
Blume (Yanaguana Games) best-in-progress award. Draft tiles from 4 stacks into 2 stacks of your own. Everyone creates their own 4×4 grid of flowers, with as many complete flowers as possible (bees land on and pollinate for points) and as few bugs as possible.
Life Siphon (Lay Waste Games): runner-up for best-of-show. Be a warlock locked in battle. Spend your “life” to cast spells, etc. – but if it hits 0, you die! How will you balance it?
That’s Wizard! (check out their Facebook page) best-in-show was a dueling wizard card game
Clear the Decks – coming to Kickstarter right now. Cooperative game set during the age of sail; players work together to fight off an enemy ship. (Not a pirate game!)
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