Breweries and Games!

Happy Halloween!  With Halloween on a Wednesday this year we had to take the chance to talk about a scary game.   Now If your reading this on Halloween then the game is still 75% off on Xbox and 85% on Steam. I'll spoiler my final verdict and recommend the game now. If you want to play the game at all then this sale is the prime time since it's $6. Now let's get into it.  Friday The 13th The Game puts you (and others) into a slasher film and all that entails. That's it. That's the entire premise. Fortunately, that's all it needs.  In the style of Evolve or Left 4 Dead   The game is a one vs all multiplayer. You are either one of seven counselors at Camp Crystal Lake or Jason Voorhees himself. As the counselors  you need to find a way to escape the camp, hide through the night, or kill Jason (though it's not easy). As Jason all you need to do is kill all the counselors.  Counselors can work together to escape or survive and have...

Longtime readers will remember that the RAM brewery was among the first breweries we visited. Well that was just one of several. That brewery was located in University Village shopping center. Well tonight we'll get to discuss another RAM location, conveniently located at another shopping mall. The RAM restaurant and brewery (Northgate) Flagship: multiple  Dogs: no Kids: yes Do they brew there: yes Food: full menu Has guest taps: no (but has liquor) Events: yes Outside seating: it's cold now, but maybe in the summer.  The brewery here a great deal less space to work with than the University Village RAM. That said, I think it plays to the breweries strength. The condensed space allows for the more natural layout.  What I mean is while the Uvill RAM has a distinct room for the bar it's all connected here. I like that. I'd always kinda felt segmented away from the rest of the building at Uvill. I've often said it's a strength of breweries...

Bioware really is THE name video game RPG storytelling. Where Bethesda is master of the open world, Bioware has always had the narrative down. From Knights of the Old Republic to Dragon Age anyone who has played these games has fond memories of them.  So now Mass Effect Andromeda exists. The soft reboot to the franchise after they wrote themselves into a corner. Seriously who ok'd that ending?  Jokes aside I do kinda wonder why this game bothered being a part of the Mass Effect franchise at all. You'll see what I mean as I explain the plot.  An initiative to colonize a far off galaxy is started sometime during the last three games.  You are a member of the pathfinder team on this, a combination explorer and soldier who is helping set up the new worlds.  Your traveling on the human ark with 20,000 colonists in cryofreeze.  The briefest of cutscenes rolls and bam. The game starts 600 years after the last games ended. 600 years and in a comp...

For the modern Seattleite, specifically one not native to the area, Bellevue is something of an unknown. There's the mall, of course, with a few stores that all of the malls have and some Seattle doesn't. There's a few restaurants that all cities have and some Seattle doesn't.  It's different sure, but I've spent very little time there. I need a reason to make the drive across the 520. My most recent reason was to visit Bellevue Brewing Company.  Flagship: None Dogs: no Kids: until 8 Do they brew there: yes Food: Full menu Has guest taps: no Events: yes/ has event spaces Outside seating: no Wifi: no Located a fair distance from the hustle and bustle of the town I nearly missed this place when I drove out. A sign on the window, the one in the picture above, is only obvious when directly in front of the place.  The unassuming outside of the brewery was nonetheless flanked by several parked cars. Evidence, I reflected as I held the do...

Oh Battlefield what happened?  You used to be great. With a new entry into the franchise out its high time we looked at the previous title.  Battlefield 1 tackles the far less morally clear of the two world wars. There's not a lot of games about the Great War and for good reason. In addition to having less evil enemies the war was far less glorious. Many people died of disease in trenches, choked to death on the air around them in gas attacks, and lived broken lives in a world that didn't understand what a conflict like this had done to their psyche. The technology of war then was at once simpler and more terrifying. Most had access to only bolt action weapons while the latest technologies cut people down in droves.  Battlefield, a series which has never had problems putting you on both sides of a conflict and equip the player with period weapons, opts here to give you a machine gun and point you at Prussians all day.  In fact, the game makes a point...

No trip I take down south of Renton is ever wasted. Or perhaps I should say that I make sure all my trips down south are worth it. To that end I recently visited a brewery which had been on my list for a long time. Wingman Brewers! Flagship: mutiple Dogs: yes Kids: yes Do they brew there: yes Food: bagged chips Has guest taps: yes Events: yes Outside seating: no Wifi: yes Located practically in the shadow of the Tacoma Dome this brewery sits on a wide street surrounded by highways and interstates. Despite busy roads all around them, the area is quiet.  Just a little remote. If you weren't looking for the brewery you might just miss it.  Doing some research before I headed to Tacoma my girlfriend remarked that they didn't serve wings there. "Why are they called Wingman then?" She remarked. I silently agreed with her and felt all the more silly for it with a single look at the brewery when I arrived Ah. Wingman. Wing-man. Of cours...

There's a certain kind of feeling when you leave a place or people that you've known for a long time and return to find things have changed.  It's the realization that the world, perhaps what you considered your world, has continued spinning without you.  Moved on without you. It's not a comfortable feeling and that's Gone Home at its core.  In Gone Home you play a young woman returning home from an extended trip abroad.  The game starts you off with you on the front porch, the house dark, and a note on the door.  The game from there has you exploring the house, trying to find where your family is. The gameplay is light. Mostly you lift objects and look at them, find others behind them. Read things. There's a puzzle or two but this isn't an adventure game at all. It's a story.  A story that is told through your interactions with the objects and places as you find them. Some interactions will have a memory relayed to you by a voic...

Seattle, I'm told, only averages about 150 sunny days each year.  If this is the case then no place in the Emerald city is making better use of the nice weather than the Peddler Brewing Company.  Flagship: Tropic Haze IPA Dogs: yes  Kids: yes Do they brew there: yes Food: food truck Has guest taps: yes Events: yes Outside seating: yes Payment: Card only Another of the great breweries in Ballard, Peddler sits just a stones throw from the Ballard Bridge. The building is big with wide windows that let in the sun. Fitting for a bicycle themed brewery a massive bike rack extended into the street out front.  Inside there's a great impression of space. High ceilings connect to plain walls that have been uniquely decorated. Any free space has been covered by maps showing off bike paths in different places, or bikes themselves. Most of these bikes are ruined and accompanied by a short story detailing their destruction. There's plenty of bar ...

This DLC does what all good additional content for a game should do; add new features while expanding on the setting. The game is fun and probably the best way to tell a side story in the Assassins Creed universe.  It's now 1888 and Evie has been called back from India to London. The city is gripped in terror due to the vicious murders by 'Jack the Ripper'. Jacob has also gone missing so it's up to Evie to save the city and her twin.  Narratively the game switches between Evie and Jack (the Ripper) as the former is investigating and hunting down the latter. As Evie your not only trying to stop the Ripper but save your brother and the Assassin Order itself which is at risk of exposure by the Ripper. I don't want to get further into the plot for fear of spoilers.  Functionally, you spend most of the game as Evie and all side missions are hers.  You have only two neighborhoods to explore this time, all with a bunch of things to find. The game world i...

Ravenna is one of those neighborhoods in Seattle that's small but still has a clear identity. The Burke-Giliman trail runs through it, its adjacent to the U district (and Uvill), and it has its own brewery. Unless a video game comes out set here it's this last point that we're going to focus on today. Ravenna Brewing Company was our destination this week.   Flagship: N/A Dogs: yes Kids: yes Do they brew there: yes Food: Food Trucks Has guest taps: no Events: yes Outside seating: yes! Summer in Seattle is defined by the nice weather in a way unique to the space. In a city that only averages 70 sunny days a year we savor each good day. A great way to spend these days, I've discovered, is at Ravenna Brewing Company.  I found that I wasn't alone. The place was packed on the sunny evening that I visited this modest brewery. I don't want to undervalue that last statement though, because the outside seating was actually larger than the ...

The original Alien film is a masterpiece of cinema. A brilliant example of the wonderful marriage that exists between horror and special effects. The visual styles and themes pioneered in this film have gone onto influence countless things that have come after. It's also a period piece. The style is a prime example of a special, 1970's version of the future.  Alien, and the film that came after it, along with its crossovers, have always been an obvious choice for video games.  The games that have come out haven't all been bad, but there were enough bad ones that it's become the rule for the series.  Alien Isolation the has the unenviable task of coming after all of this. Two legacies, both with plenty of bad parts but still enough good in them that people keep trying and we keep buying.   You are Amanda Ripley, daughter of Signory Weavers character from the Aliens series. Your off to a station where the black box from your mothers ill-fated ship has ...