Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer is by far one of my favorite card games. It’s right up there with 7 Wonders and Bang! Board Game Geek has awarded Ascension: CotG 3.5 stars out of 5 and the good news is that they full game is now available on iOS for a mere USD $4.99. The physical game costs USD $27.99.

Ascension: CotG is a deck building game for 2-4 players. The game was designed by a handful of Magic: The Gathering Pros and they wanted to build a fast-paced card game that didn’t rely on who had the better deck beforehand. Instead, players start off in equal footing and build the deck as they play. Winning entails computing the sum of Rune points acquired from creature kills and points from the types of cards you built your deck with during the game It’s good news to those that don’t want to spend a ton of money on booster packs and special cards as the core game is pretty much a standalone set good for 2-4 players already.

On to the iOS version. I can pretty much sum up the experience of CotG as quite similar to playing the actual card game. The UI is very well thought through with each card having a zoom in function anytime during a game session is ongoing. As the screen of your iOS device is limited, the board allows you to touch areas of the screen to pull out your summoned Constructs, view the Void and discard deck (you can hold and drag to see everything scroll by!) as well as see summaries of other player decks such as the number of constructs in play, number of Runes acquired and so on.

The game features both offline and online play. You can hold several offline games simultaneously as well as queue up in gaming lobbies for multiple games to see which one you can get into first. Because CotG is fast-paced by nature, wait times are never annoying.

Bottomline
Ascension: CotG is a definite MUST HAVE for the iOS. If you’ve never heard of the game till this review, you STILL should pick it up and I guarantee you that this will be one of the most played games on your iPad or iPhone.

[Download Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer]

Driver: San Francisco

EA, Sony, THQ, Ubisoft, and Warner Bros. Interactive have all announced plans to start charging for “Online Passports,” which will be required purchases for players who want to play with used game discs. Specifically, these $10 passports will be needed to play multiplayer games (like Ubisoft’s Driver: San Francisco, pictured above), but there’s nothing to keep publishers from using the same policy for singleplayer campaigns in the future.

The basics are thus: you buy a brand new game, a passport code comes with it, which you use for accessing all of the online features of the game. Once the code is used, it can’t be transfered to anyone else. So if the disc winds up in a “used games” bin at a retailer, or even if you just borrow it from a friend, you won’t be able to access any of the online features — unless you shell out an extra $10 for a new passport.

I can understand where game publishers are coming from with this; it’s a means of preventing user abuse of their online services. But it also muddies the waters between games being a tangible product, versus a virtual/digital service. With games starting to occupy more and more space in the cloud, game possession could become a thing of the past. Maybe soon we’ll all be renters, and there will be no owning games anymore.

The music industry tried out that same model a while back with devices like Microsoft’s Zune, where you had unlimited access to cloud-based music for a monthly fee. On the other hand, film buffs have taken to this business model in huge numbers, accessing Netflix’s entire inventory of movies for a monthly fee. The burgeoning digital book industry hasn’t caught onto this notion yet, but it’s probably just a matter of time.

Services like Gamefly are already already offering video game rentals (though this new policy means that playing the online portions of rented games will cost you an additional $10 per game), but are gamers ready for where this road may inevitably end?

One of the reasons for the fans’ continued support for Starcraft, aside from the deep, strategic gameplay is the fact that you can play it with your friends and mount frenetic multiplayer battles during LAN parties. Nothing beats having a heated game in a room with all the trash talking going on between two competitors.

But if Blizzard’s plan for Starcraft II does push through we won’t see those cool Starcraft LAN parties anymore. Blizzard confirmed what many are speculating about Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty. The game will be launched for the PC at about the same time the newly revamped Battle.net online network service, which is at the last part of 2009. Unfortunately, the game will be releaed without any LAN multiplayer option.

Blizzard said that the decision to remove this popular option is a type piracy prevention mechanism and also a way to maintain quality assurance. Blizzard wants to direct players to Battle.net as the best, and now the only, option for multiplayer gaming for Starcraft II.

I’m not too sold on the whole anti-piracy thing idea. Why would long-time fans of the game suffer for what pirates are doing? By removing the LAN multiplayer option, Blizzard is effectively alienating a large majority of Starcraft fans who plan on playing the game through their local networks. LAN multiplayer will obviously not need an internet connection — why would Blizzard expect players to connect to the internet to play with people who are all in the same room? And what about the lag, which is obviously not going to be a problem with LAN multiplayer? I think Blizzard is making a big mistake with this move.