I have played Descent a couple times with my dad, and the game is a bunch of fun. I got the game as a gift last year, and I have loved it since. I played both times as the Dungeon Master, and it’s great because being a DM of a D&D game has been my dream for a while. The game plays a lot like the paper and pencil game of D&D, but has been simplified to go faster and be less complex.
The game is very hard for both the players and the DM, or in this game, the Overlord. The game is easier for the Overlord with less players, and gets much harder with more. With only two players, however, it is very easy to fill a room with monsters and the players just won’t have enough turns to kill them before the next wave comes. The one thing that the players have going for it is that even the named bosses can be defeated little more than a hit or two, and it can be a quite depressing to watch your ogres and manticores get shot down so quickly after using all your power to spawn them.
Because of the ability to spawn monsters and traps, the game is never the same, but maps will be very similar if they've been played before. As the heroes advance, they can go deeper into dungeons and later into new maps. The monsters get tougher and more frequent in the later maps, but the first one is easier and meant to be a tutorial map so you can to learn the ropes. We played the first map twice, and it was quite a journey both times.
The first game took many, many hours and we did not get very far at all. My dad and sister were quickly shot down in the second room, overrun by spiders and hell hounds. I came into the second game a little over confident. Since my sister had decided not to join us this time, and after the crushing defeat last game, I felt invincible. The first two rooms went by just as before, and I showed no signs of slowing down. Defeat seemed moments away! Then, when my dad encountered a very nasty ogre, he grabbed the key it guarded and ran, then closed the door and never looked back. I allowed him to plow through many of my monsters and put up minor resistance. He got a false sense of security and fell right into my trap. He marched into the last room and was over powered instantly, with more monsters coming every turn. His mage did get a nasty attack off on my giant, though, putting him out of commission for a while.
I was able to kill his mage character a couple of times, with help of my traps and creatures, which was good because every time a character dies, the player loses conquest tokens. If he runs out of tokens, he loses. I continued spawning many monsters, but the game get sour for my dad when I charmed his fighter and made him kill his own mage. He had received some very powerful weapons in the last room, and I planned to use them against him. Next time, I charmed his mage and made him attack himself but he missed. Dad was sure that the game was unfair, and that he had no chance. Had I been in his shoes I would have agreed, but I knew more than he did. I had made a few fatal mistakes, including spawning monsters in places where they were blocked in by rocks and I was out of good cards. The end was near for me, and only I knew it. Dad quickly blasted through my last remaining creatures and finally my giant. I was done, but Dad will move on, to go deeper in the dungeon with a new quest.
  A few months ago I posted a sort blurb about a gigantic new board game called Descent: Journeys in the Dark. Recently, my son (age 13) and I returned to the game for another round. Last time, my daughter and I played a character each and were overrun by the Overlord’s (my son) forces.
This run was a little different.
First of all, I didn’t have my trusty partner with me. I had to play two characters on my own. I was hoping this would speed up the gameplay a bit, however it did not. I chose the paladin (Valadir) and a powerful mage (Landrec). I wanted a ranged/magic user and a tank type that could use some magic. This was a decent combination for two characters, however in hindsight I believe a third, ranged character (all bow) would have been an excellent addition.
It took two hours to get out of the first room. We did have to consult the manual a few times since we had forgotten some of the rules. Line of sight was still an issue, but we came to some agreements on our own of how it should work, specifically around “blind” corners. Lance kept spawning wave upon wave of creatures on my poor heroes, basically halting my progress. Once I made it out of the first room, the game started to take off.
This particular dungeon contained five normal rooms and a final room containing the boss character, a giant! Since I had played this map before, I knew where the rune key lay that was required to open the door to the giant’s room. I ended up skipping one of the farthest rooms as my heroes had uncovered just enough power up items to ready me for the big guy. So, after another two hours, I was ready for the final assault.
The “final assault” consisted of another two hours of near death battles and crafty use of potions and movements for my heroes. I managed to get close enough to Narthak to whittle him down to just two hit points, when Lance retreated him to the back of his cavern and spawned waves of bane spiders, sorcerers, and skeletons upon me. I was forced to pull back into the center room where my mage died twice. The second time, Lance charmed my paladin who easily dispatched poor Landrec (the mage). By this time, I was fuming. I was running out of conquest tokens (each time a character dies, you discard a number of tokens) and beginning to feel that I would lose (again).
Some time during the fifth wave of spawns from the Overlord, I started to feel that the game was imbalanced. Every attack I made that rolled up a few surge symbols, gave Lance more threat tokens which in turn allowed him to spawn more monsters. I felt that the quest was hopeless. The tide began to turn when I finally was able to dispatch 2-3 creatures per round by using a lot of fatigue points and simply not moving (not moving allows you two rounds of attacks per character). A third, ranged character would have been a major help during this phase.
As the clock dinged 11pm, I was finally able to make it back towards the giant’s lair and after another couple rounds of his attacks (which stun and knock heroes backward), I finally had Landrec blast the poor monster into oblivion. Huzzah!! My characters each gained a level and were ready for the second quest.
The bottom line is, Descent was great fun, but very long. If you have the patience, the game is rewarding. Next time we’re going to play it in sessions rather than by entire levels.
You can buy Descent: Journeys in the Dark at Amazon and many other online gaming stores.
  I recently got into the game Dark Cloud 2. The game is an RPG, but is fun for the casual fan and hardcore RPG player alike. The game has an odd sense of humor, but anyone who has played a Japanese game knows to expect some silliness. The game has great music and the graphics are quiet nice. I originally would watch my dad play and the game looked so interesting that I decided to start playing it for myself. The game looked similar to a N64 game called Quest 64, which I loved and played to death, so I had high hopes for the game.
The game starts out with an uncomfortably long beginning, but the game picks up quickly afterward. You fight in real time, which makes for fun combat. The main character, Max, is an inventor, so you can take pictures which help you create things like weapons and armor. The main part of the game is involves finding pieces of the world and rebuilding towns and the landscape. This is fun because you can create unique towns that are different than anyone else's. You also have the ability to make different weapons by building them up with items found in the game. Plus, now that the game is a little older, it's a $15 game and quite a steal.
This is a must buy and a great game, even if you are not a true RPG fan. Besides the fact the game is only $15, the game is worth it. You can do the main quests or spend hours with side quests and extra things like photography and fishing. The replay value is nearly endless and the overall time to complete everything in the game is likely over one hundred hours. It's fun just to stop and fiddle with your inventory or take pictures of the stuff around you. The time spent on this game for such a small amount of money is great, and makes Dark Cloud 2 a perfect bargain bin game.
Gameplay: 9/10
Graphics: 8.5/10
Fight System: 9.5/10
Overall: 9.5/10
Pros: So much to do, nice colorful graphics, great gameplay, unique storyline
Cons: Can be hard to fight at times, occasional camera bugs (they are rare though!)
  Most Wanted Racer
This game has just about everything you could hope for in a racer. The driving is good, the cars look great, you can customize and unlock tons of things to add to your car, and the graphics are great. The game tries to have a story, but its nothing more then a single player race mode really. The police chases are what really set the game apart from the Burnout series. The excitement of getting chased by the police while going 160 miles an hour is just too much to be described. The only real problem with the chases is that they can get very long, I've had one go on for over an hour between saves. You can not save during chases, so you may have to continue playing for a while or lose your progress.
You can unlock many new cars and customizable pieces such as decals and spoilers. When you first start out, you get a low quality car and the driving is rough. As you work you're way up though the races, you can end up with some great, completely unique cars. You need to really be careful though, because the cops will get more and fiercer the longer you stay on the streets. There is also a challenge mode that gives you a car and makes you do a certain challenge, which is a fun addition to the game.
The multiplayer is great but has a few drawbacks. One of the best features of the single player game, police chases, is absent. The circuits and sprints are longer races and good for 3 or 4 people, but the drags are short and sweet and best for 2 people. Traffic can be annoying or awesomely hilarious, but thankfully the amount in each race is adjustable. The destructibility of everything is great in multiplayer, as you can make street lamps and fences fly onto the windshield of the racer behind you. Is someone riding your tail? Then blow up a gas station! It is also great fun to drive right through a glass building and use it as a shortcut.
The graphics on this game are stunning and jaw dropping, and help make this game so great. The cut scenes are absolutely beautiful, and the game itself is not far behind. The destruction of things always looks real, and when you jump off a building or hill, it goes into a slow-motion cut scene type of mode, and looks great. The periodic rain is gorgeous too, and will hit your screen and distort your vision, just like real rain. It also will collect on the streets and make beautiful reflections of trees and things in the puddles. The game is just absolutely amazing on every level.
Graphics: 10/10
Game play: 9.5/10
Driving: Varies greatly based on the car, but always feels right
Pros: Gorgeous graphics, Great cop chases, Fun multiplayer, tons of unlockables
Cons: It's been done before in other Burnout games and Need for Speed games
Overall: 9.5/10
XBox Need For Speed: Most Wanted
I have been somewhat worried that Nintendo will end up getting buried by Sony and Microsoft, but thankfully it isn't very likely, at least not in Japan. I have been concerned about Nintendo possibly throwing in the towel, and was really expecting the Gamecube to be their last console. Regardless of how the Revolution may do, Nintendo's handheld products continue to improve. They released a revised DS handheld in the gap between major console versions.
According to Gamespot , the new DS Lite completely sold out on the day of release in Japan. In March, they sold over 380,000 DS Lites and 180,000 original DS systems while PSP only sold 150,000 last month. The revised DS handheld has not yet been released in America, but hopefully it will come around soon.
The DS system was in need of a smaller version, and it is unfortunate that Nintendo could not have done this with the original version. The DS has quite a few great games like Meteos, Animal Crossing: Wide World, and Mario Kart DS and many other games that are also quite good. It is quite a handy portable, and if you don't already have a DS I suggest waiting and grabbing a Lite when it comes to America. A revised update from GameSpot suggests a May or June release in the US.
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