Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword (PC)

Please, make the addiction stop! Civilization IV: Warlords, the first expansion for Civ IV, made my "Best of the Rest" last year and Beyond the Sword tops this year's list. The funny thing is I'm not a Civ fanboy, nor am I even that great of a player (Full Disclosure: I still play on Noble level), but Civ IV is a game I can come back to over and over again. Beyond the Sword added much-needed mechanics for culture-prone and passive-aggressive players, with enhancements in espionage and other concepts "beyond the sword." Oh, and just to keep last year's tradition going: Firaxis (2K, Take-Two), please get the rights to Alpha Centauri back from EA and give us a sequel!

Team Fortress 2 (Xbox 360, PC, PlayStation 3)

While Portal is being given its much deserved credit for the year, and Half-Life 2 has enjoyed years of acclaim, let's not forget about the other pillar of Valve's The Orange Box. It's been eight years since the release of Team Fortress Classic, and the game has undergone so many revisions and delays we half expected it to be released alongside Duke Nukem Forever sometime in 2012. As it turned out, the game not only saw the light of day but ended up being an addictive online experience.

As a console gamer enjoying this with a gamepad, I don't care much much for the sniper, soldier, demoman, or anything except medic and occasionally the engineer. There's something brutally satisfying about charging into battle behind a heavy weapons guy, dodging the occasional bullet (people still haven't learned) and injecting him with a team-killing jolt of invincibility. Hours of enjoyment and not a single bullet shot. Pure. Enjoyment.

Every other week Scott Jon Siegel contributes Off the Grid, a column about card games, board games, and everything else non-digital.

"Non-digital games are awesome" is the line I usually insist upon in this column. But even awesome analog games have their faults: namely, if you don't have anyone to play with, you can't really play.

So, as an end-of-year treat, let's look back at the last year+ of games reviewed, and find some ways to play those suckers against some internet folk:

Settlers of Catan
I still haven't gotten around to reviewing Settlers, but I did chat with Brian Reynolds about the Xbox Live Arcade version of the game, which is probably the best bet for consistent, high-volume net play.

For those who don't have an Xbox 360 (like, well, me), Aso Brain Games hosts an unofficial, Java-based version of the game called Xplorers. After a free registration, the site allows users to player ranked and un-ranked versions against other users and bots, and features a number of expansion and additions to the base rules, which can be toggled on or off. Don't let the low-fi look of the site dissuade you; Xplorers is a well-put-together Settlers clone, with a solid interface and a consistent number of users online at any time.

To mark the fifth anniversary of the Xbox Live service, Microsoft will be offering Carcassonne (Hexic 2 in Korea) free to all subscribers for 48 hours starting at 12:01 a.m. EST on Nov. 15th (and presumably nothing to the peeps who already plunked down for the virtual board game), along with 500 Microsoft Points to the ten folks who've been on board since 2002 -- see kids, early adoption does pay off! In addition, Microsoft has confirmed earlier reports that 'Xbox Originals' will be made available for download starting Dec. 4th as part of the Fall Update (the update's additional features have yet to be revealed). Each game can be purchased and downloaded for 1200 points ($15).

In its press release, Microsoft explicitly named Halo, Psychonauts, Crimson Skies and Fable as titles for the Xbox Originals initiative, but did not confirm exactly which games will serve as the jumpoff: "This new service will launch with an array of blockbuster titles spanning the most popular genres from action-adventure to classic role-playing games." Third-party reports claim the preliminary lineup will include Halo, Fable, Indigo Prophecy, Crimson Skies, Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath Of Cortex and Burnout 3.

[Via press release]

Sierra and Microsoft have revisited the grid-based fortified town of Carcassonne, as the XBLA rendition of the popular European board game has gotten a new downloadable expansion titled "The King and Baron" as part of today's regular XBLA update, which also includes block dropper Tetris Splash.

With an asking price of 300 Microsoft Points ($3.75), the download is the second such expansion following the already available "River I & II," and adds a set of five additional tiles described as 'interesting configurations of Town pieces,' as well as pair of new rules. We're not exactly sure what they mean by "interesting" ... perhaps they glow.

The new rules are designed to award those players with either the largest city or the longest road at the end of the game with a pair of icons placed next to their avatars and Gamertags. But it's not just for looks or bragging rights, no sir! With this expansion, the player with the biggest city, identified by a newly added 'portly' King icon, will receive one point for each completed city in the game, while the player with the mightiest of roads, denoted by a 'crafty' Robber Baron, will take home one point for each completed road in the game -- and you know how much we love to pile up them points.

Flickr user Universal Donor made a smaller version of Carcassonne to fit in an Altoids tin. "I know this stupid, but I like creating versions of my favorite games that can fit in an Altoids tin," he writes -- we think it's cool, though. Check out the highlights for today:

Joystiquery
The Guessing Game: Sony's E3 showing
Joystiq at the Ninja Gaiden Band concert
Today's most retro action game: Die Hard (NES)

News
Believe it or not: Zelda in Smash Bros Brawl
F-Zero X, Street Fighter II Turbo rush onto Virtual Console
Nintendo officially bigger than Sony in Japan
New games this week: The Darkness edition
PSP firmware hack drives Lumines sales
Nicole Kidman the pretty face of More Brain Training DS
Newsweek's Croal, MTV's Totilo hands-on with Manhunt 2
This Wednesday: Carcassonne taunts from the castle wall
Pokemon takes Wii online in US
Concept trailer for LEGO Universe: building, battling, bricking
Sony tells PSP devs to get creative, attract customers
Romero unearths unreleased Doom music
Insomniac lands 8th in the '50 Best Companies to Work For' list
Analysing the $1mil acquistion of WoW database site
Shadowrun developer gets honest (or scary)
Square Enix: No PS3 games (Final Fantasy XIII) until after April 2008
Third-party HDMI cable coming for non-Elite Xbox 360
Turrican remake released, rocks you like a Hurrican
ESRB seeks to rate game trailers
GameTap 'leaks' franchises coming to service
Cory Barlog talks E3 inside the developers studio

Rumors & Speculation
Rumor: Hitman film trailer premiering with Die Hard

Culture & Community
MacArthur Foundation funds NYC school to teach 'Gaming Literacy'
Wiimote mod gets NES Zapper zappin' again
Nintendo hearts the environment
College librarians urged to think like gamers, play more games

If you're one of people who's been enjoying what Catan brought to XBLA, then get ready for Carcassonne, another European board game powerhouse landing next month. Carcassonne is more about tile and villager placement than Catan's resource management and diplomacy. The game, which premieres in June, had some more details released onto the villagers before the big unveil.

IGN reports that the visual style is very similar to Catan, however players will not by able to rotate the playing field, only zoom in and out and pan. Games are under 20 minutes in two-player and under 10 for five-player and includes Vision camera support. The XBLA version of Carcassonne also includes the "River I & II" expansion packs that were apparently released later for the board game. Players lay the river to begin the match in this version instead of starting with the basic castle/road starter tile of the original game. Sierra says other add-ons to the board game like Inns & Cathedral and The Tower will be released through Xbox Live. We hope the transaction ends up being truly micro. Carcassonne is expected to cost 800 MS points ($10 USD). We can only hope the Carcassonne gamers are as civilized as the Catan crew.

Although it's taken almost a year to arrive, Xbox Live Arcade players and board game lovers can rejoice: Carcassonne will finally be coming to XBLA in June.

It's no secret that we're fans of the original board game, so the announcement of a date comes as a welcome relief, and a cruel form of torture knowing we'll have to wait more than a month to get it. To whet your appetite even more, check out a slew of Carcassonne screenshots here.

Power to the Meeple.

[Via GameStooge]

It looks like board game lovers are going to be getting even more Euro gaming goodness. At least, that's what the signs are pointing to. We already know that Xbox Live Arcade will be getting games like Settlers of Catan, Alhambra, and our personal favorite Carcassonne, but according to some rumors at GameStooge it looks like another Rio Grande Games classic will be coming down the pipeline ... Puerto Rico.

Apparently in the threads over at BoardGameGeek.com (which is a fantastic site for board games and such, along with the equally as fantastic FunAgain.com) the German gaming site BrettSpielWelt has taken down their online version of Puerto Rico, and replaced it with a message that another company has purchased the rights for "online exploitation." And c'mon, no one is better at exploiting things than Microsoft, right?

Puerto Rico is a fun game that takes about an hour to play, and is all about shipping goods and building cities. It's been critically hailed as one of the best games of the past twenty years, already has a PC version out, and it's continually voted the number one game at board game sites, and it sure would be nice to see it on XBLA.

Microsoft has announced plans to port European tabletop favorites like The Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne and Alhambra to Xbox Live Arcade. Price details and release dates have not been revealed, but the Catan port is likely to appear first as MSN Games has been hosting an online version of the German board game for nearly two years.