Halo 3 has stolen my life

I'm sure that it's only temporary, but right now I'm rather hooked on Hal 3 - Microsoft's biggest title for the Xbox 360 games console. I'm not very good at it - certainly not against other people in online games - but it's proving to be hard to ignore.

Of course, it helps that the game has been the biggest and fastest "entertainment" package in history - it's "opening weekend" sales comfortably eclipsed any other game, but also every movie release in history too.

Other than a Halo 3 obsession (and before that, a racing game called Forza 2), my favourite games recently have all been of the traditional variety with a board. Phoenicia is - I'm told - a reworking of a much older game. I've never played its progenitor, Outpost, but I have played Phoenicia often enough in the past 3 months to know that it's very good.

And there's Duel In The dark. I know that at least one of my readers isn't normally interested in games, but this might be up his street. I'll try to make a longer blog post about it later in the week, but in essence it's a game of bluff, misdirection and reading you opponent right, with a theme of RAF bombing raids over Germany in WW2. The RAF player pre-plans his target and the route to be taken by the bomber, then uses a Mosquito to either protect the bomber and harass the German nightfighters, open a path in the ground defences, or misdirect the Germans as to the bomber's next move. The German player meanwhile lays out his ground defences once the RAF route has been planned, then uses four nightfighters to try to intercept the bomber on his way in and out of Germany, but has the added complication of managing the planes' fuel load. Each side scores victory points during the game based on how well then manage their roles. Takes about 45 minutes to play a game, so there's usually plenty of time for two players to swap roles after one game and try it from the other side's perspective. Oh, and unusually there's a very simple way to play a solo game (although this isn't as good as playing the game face-to-face).

More info here: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/27048