COD: Black ops 2 Zombies

Over the past months, this is the one game that I have been constantly coming back to. Forget the campaign and the multiplayer, this is one game I cannot put down.

For people that do not know, it is part of Black Ops 2, available on PS3, Xbox and PC. At its heart, it is just a hoard mode, with lots of zombies to dispatch of. With a few modes, survival is the most fun. Start with nothing, and build your weapons and money up by killing the undead hoard, and survive as long as possible.

The game quickly racks up the speed and pace, and can get overwhelming very fast.


In further articles I hope to describe some of my tactics that help me to get further in the game, and I hope that there will be some information there that will help some people raise there game.

In all, this is one game that I would recommend to anyone that likes FPS games. Its tense, and rewards players who play and practice and strive to get better. Playing online is fun to, but the one thing I found is that playing with people that you don't know makes this game much harder. Get your regualar gaming buddies together, and plug your headset in, and you will be in good stead for a great night of intense gaming.

Railways of the World: The Card Game

It's very rare that I will play a card game that is based on another board game, but this one is different.
Railways of the World is one of my favorite board games of all time. Even so, sometimes it is just to big of a game to get out and play, especially so if you don't have enough time to play a full game. This is where the card game come in.
Played with one deck of cards, some trains and a table, this really gives you a cut down version of the game without losing anything. Players have a hand of cards, that will consist of track cards, city cards and engine cards. Track cards allow you to build between cities, city cards show how many goods are available and engine cards upgrade your engine.
There are different city cards, and the higher cities yield more goods, but less colours go into them. Track cards come in a variety of colours, and you must chain them to get the required number to get into a city. So a brown 3 city requires you to place brown track that equals or exceeds a value of 3, which you then place a control train on.
Deliveries are as normal, with you needing a engine of sufficient power to move along the links. This is where the engine cards come in. Play one, and the level of your train goes up. They can also be used as wild cards for track placement.
You start in a central hub, and build the map as you go. All the usual game rules apply from its bigger brother, and scoring is almost exactly the same.
Cards are drawn from the deck to your hand, but you can also take the top card of the discard pile aswell.
The games is great as a standalone, and if you have played the full version then it is very easy to pick up and play. But I use this game to teach people how to play the full game, and it takes just 45 mins to play, and deals with all the major rules.
All in all fantastic game which can be played multiple times in a session, with enough nuances to actually warrent getting both this and the full game. Again, as with the full game, don't let the theme put you off. Play and you will be hooked.

Game Review: Railways of the World

The aim of this game is simple, build the biggest and best railway network, deliver goods and make money. The premise is simple, the game play however is as deep and strategic as you would like in a medium weight game.

Sitting in between Ticket to Ride and the 1830 series of railway games, do not let the theme put you off. It could be anything, they just chose trains.

Game contents

You get a lot of game in this big, heavy box. There are two game boards, Railways of the Eastern US, which is quite simply put, HUGE. You need a big table for this one, or the ability to bring in another table to the room. The other board, Railways if Mexico, is smaller and suited to 2-3 players. There is also a score board and income track board. Each board has their own set of cards assigned to them. You get a main rulebook, and two smaller rule sets for the individual maps. Also in the box you get paper money and bond cards, train cards, wooden goods cubes, lots of track tiles, and lots and lots of trains.

Set up is simple. Each city on the board has a number, this is the number of goods cubes that starts on it. Place cubes on all the city's. Each player each gets a level 1 train card, and a handful of train markers. 5 cards are dealt out, representing events that unfold throughout the game, and play begins. It could take a while for one person to set up alone, but with a group setup should not be more than 5 minutes.

How it plays

The game uses a auction system to gain the first turn. This can be vitally important, as if there is a card that would greatly benefit you, chances are it will greatly benefit someone else also. Bidding wars can be fierce, but great fun.

You start with no money at all in this game. Once the first auction is completed, players have to take bonds from the bank to get some money and get that game going. These bonds can never be payed back, and deduct points from you final score, 1 point for each bond you have, so you have to decide if you want to go for big money and gain a big lead, or play more reserved and see if other people will get into a lot of debt.

So now you have a little bit of money and its your turn. What to do? Well, you have 5 options.

• Build track, which costs money.
• Deliver goods, which gains you money
• Urbanize a city, change a grey city to a colour and place some good on it.
• Upgrade your train to the next level
• Take a operations card

It can be overwhelming at first, but after one turn, most players will have picked up what to do.

I'm not going to go into much detail on this game, as this review could then easily turn into a small novel. I cannot speak highly enough of this game, its almost perfect. There are just a few little niggles, like it being 1 turn to long, and some of the rules are not that clear, and you need to turn to the internet to work some problems out. But on a whole, this is like monopoly on steroids, with a good dose of strategy to boot. Plenty of options, and no two games will be the same due to the randomness of the cards and goods in play.

If you like trains, this is the game for you. If you don't like trains, then forget about the train theme, and play it. Its a economy game at heart, and a very good one at that, don't pass this one by.

Vintage Game: Connect4 Advanced

Every now and then a game comes through the doors of Farlands Games that somehow manages to get everyone who sees it excited. This is one of them.

I have got to say that honestly I had never heard of this, that MB Games had “expanded” the game. Vintage may be a term not used much for games from 2002 (even though its still 10 years ago!), but this is a rarity. Only produced for a short time before disappearing from shelves, this is that rare to find that as of writing this, there is not even a BoardGameGeek.com entry for this.

The idea of the game is still to connect 4 of your coloured pieces in a row, but this game introduces a third dimension. You can connect 4 horizontally, vertically, and diagonal from base to top. This is a real brain bender of a game. The extra dimension is very hard to keep track of, and you might be setting a devious trap to get your opponent, only to be beaten by a very obvious line that you did not see.

Diagonal connect4 from bottom left to top right, yellow

Construction wise, this game is bad. Cheap plastic all around, but it seems strong enough to withstand some vigorous playing. Price wise, it would have been around £14.99 when released, but if you want this now, you will be paying nearly £30 now, due to its rarity. It does however pop up in charity shops and places like that. If you do see one, I would highly recommend that you pick it up, if only as piece of gaming history, as I don't think that this will be released again by MB.

There are wooden versions available from various manufacturers, under the name of 3D Connect4, but to me they don’t have the appeal of this set, because to be quite frank, this set looks cool.

This shall take pride of place in my collection, as a piece of history, and as a game to get out to lure people into advanced strategy games. Don’t be fooled by this being Connect4, this is different beast of a game entirely.