For the first time in years, I played a first-person shooter over the weekend. With the help of one of my gaming-inclined nurses, I played through the opening chapter of Bioshock: Infinite. The game has garnered an impressive number of gushing reviews (even NPR thought it was sophisticated enough to deserve a story) and I’m a fan of the original BioShock, so I was excited to get the chance to play it. And so far, it’s damn impressive. The setting–a city floating in the sky called Columbia–is rendered with stunning attention to detail and I spent a considerable amount of time poking around in various corners of this seemingly idyllic American town before proceeding with the main plot. The game slowly reveals the vitriolic mix of jingoistic Christianity and racism permeates every aspect of civic life in Columbia and I’m looking forward to discovering more about this strange place while kicking a little ass along the way.

I’ll post a more complete review once I finish the game.

While browsing at a bookstore earlier today, I noticed a large display of board games. My brother and I were avid board game players as kids and we had some truly epic fights over a Monopoly or Stratego board. But the games on display weren’t the inexpensive titles of my youth. These were big, heavy boxes full of ornate game tokens and lavishly illustrated playing cards. Most of them had a heavy emphasis on strategy with a dash of fantasy or horror. I counted at least a half dozen variations of Settlers of Catan. Board games seem to have become much geekier since my brother and I were hunched over the kitchen table. And more expensive. The games I looked at retailed between $60 and $80.

I still prefer gaming on my PC, but it might be fun to have an occasional board game night with friends.

FTL (Faster Than Light) is one of the first Kickstarter-funded games to earn heaps of critical praise; praise that it is well-deserved. FTL puts players in command of a starship whose mission is to escape the invading Rebel Fleet. As you flee across a randomly generated universe, you must carefully manage your ship’s resources and crew to survive. The agents of your destruction are legion: rebel ships, pirates, asteroid fields, and more. FTL is also a game of decisions and consequences. Do you stop to protect a merchant ships from attacking aliens or do you ignore their pleas for help and keep going? Do you try to destroy that heavily armed rebel drone or do you try to escape before your shields fail? Each playthrough acquires its own narrative, but they all provide the tension of a particularly action-packed Star Trek episode.

FTL is often referred to as a roguelike because of its randomly generated content and because death is permanent–no loading a saved game after your ship is destroyed. And the game is unforgiving. I’ve played a couple dozen games and I have yet to survive to even the halfway point of my journey. Some might find the minimalist graphics off-putting, but I find the interface to be clean and elegant. This is one of the most compelling (not to mention affordable) games of the year.

I can barely keep up with the video games that I already own, but I’m eager to try out the remake of X-Com. The original 1994 version X-Com was a turn-based strategy game where you, the player, would command an elite squad of soldiers against invading aliens in missions around the world. I sucked magnificently at the game and my poor soldiers would typically die horrible deaths before killing a single extraterrestrial, but the concept was compelling. The updated version has a more cinematic look and a cleaner interface. I may still suck at it, but X-Com will likely be my timesink for this fall.