Thanks to a busy summer schedule, I’ve not been playing a lot or posting. Who said, ‘summertime, the living is easy’? Still, the summer is good for gaming, and in my opinion, the Wii has one of the better summers among the consoles, with games like The Conduit and Overlord – Dark Legend.

Unfortunately, I see a couple a couple of Zack & Wiki titles, games that are very good games but sell poorly for whatever reason.

The more promising title is Dawn of Discovery, which is the retitled, North America release of Anno–Create a World. which IGN rated an 87. This is a strategy game, something that we’ve seen too little of for the Wii which would seem to have the best controls for a strategy game. If you’ve not played the PC or DS versions, now’s your chance to play a very solid, fun strategy game. It’s a city building game with resource management, but it also has an exploration, combat element. It’s a quick style of strategy, not one where you can crunch the numbers and come up the most efficient path [which is not my idea of fun].

Next is Cursed Mountain, a horror adventure game set in the Himalayas. Adventure games seem well suited for the Wii, but a horror game depends so much on the delivery and cinematics that it’s hard to know from a clip what to expect. And I’m uncertain about the combat. Still, it has potential, and it’s not a horror adventure with zombies, which seems to be all we get on the Wii.

Plus, my H.P. Lovecraft interest is piqued by the frigid mountain setting, although I doubt we’ll see giant blind penguins in this game.

If these are indeed good or excellent games, I hope gamers notice them and don’t let them fall to the wayside. And if you still haven’t picked up Zack & Wiki, you should.

• I played Advanced Civilization with 6 friends for about 13 1/2 hours on Saturday, and it was blast, especially since I’ve not played an all-day board game in ages. It’s amazing how well Advanced Civilization stands up after all these years as an excellently balanced game. At one point, I had 3 calamities that threatened to wipe me out, but I was able to get back into the game and remain competitive. The nice thing, too, is that there was talk of starting up a D&D 4th edition campaign. [The computer game Advanced Civilization is available for download at abandonia, and it's a very near, if not exact, duplication of the board game, unlike, of course, Sid Meier's adaptation.]
• In that game session, I talked to several friends are game developers, and they confirmed not only how steadily the game companies in Dallas have continued to wane but how the recent cuts across game companies is going to affect the games we see, though not until 2010, given development cycles. Plus, the necessary credit for producing AAA games isn’t there. One large publisher is even concerned about the lack of new releases for the fall. [Again, I'm amazed that there's not more interest in producing up-market games for the Wii because of its relatively cheap development costs.]
• I had played through a bit of Zack & Wiki and then stopped to play other things. But I picked it up again on Friday, playing with the kids who were very helpful. Games like this are actually excellent multiplayer games, as even my wife sat down and tried to help with a couple. The reason is that the game, unlike RTS, RPG, and FPS games, doesn’t rely on controlling the character to have fun–a puzzle is a puzzle . . . as long as the gamer listens to others and respects their suggestions.
• I picked up Skies of Arcadia in trade from Goozex, and I’m looking forward to playing it. Having fun with Chrono Trigger has made me eager to play through those RPGs that i really didn’t give time to before. I found that Skies was actually rather available in different game stores as a used game. This could be one of those games that would probably make a good suggestion for a game club such as Michael Abbot’s [which I keep meaning to join].
• Playing games, especially board games, as a family can be tricky largely because my 6-year-old daughter is at a disadvantage. I recently ran across a very promising coop board game called Pandemic, in which all the players work together using the strengths of their roles to prevent the spread of a disease. Below is a video of the creator talking about the game’s design. [It's a little advanced for my daughter, but as a coop game, it's easy to help her along.] I like the fact that the game not only encourages but also requires lots of discussion, which is both good for the family and good to help teach the kids about strategic thinking.