There are two kinds of cards in Ascension: non-monsters that you buy to put into your deck, and monsters. When you beat a monster, it’s banished from the game and you earn some victory points. In the basic Ascension cards, the most powerful monster was a fellow called Avatar of the Fallen. I have no idea who the Fallen is or why he’s sent an avatar in his stead, but I know card was as bad-ass as enemies got. I had a friend maintain that if you could beat the Avatar of the Fallen, you were going to win the game.
After the jump, Sam he is! Continue reading →
Here I am, nearly a year after first hearing about it, finally giving Minecraft a shot. My first attempt didn’t go so well. When night fell and the zombies came out, I retreated to the back of a cave to hide until dawn. Of course, it’s dark in caves, and even darker in caves at night, and zombies are persistent. So when I heard zombies coming and I was unable to see anything, I did the only thing I knew how to do: I attacked the darkness. My inventory consisted of 8 flowers, 3 mushrooms, and 9 blocks of dirt. Of those three things, I figured the blocks of dirt would make for the most powerful projectiles. So I equipped them and right-clicked to throw them in the general direction of the moaning. I threw them until I didn’t have any more to throw.
I don’t think I killed any zombies. But I did succeed in walling myself in so I couldn’t move. Or see anything. I tried jumping, right-clicking, punching, crouching, to no avail. There’s apparently no crouching in Minecraft. Having Cask of Amontillado’ed myself, I think my only recourse is waiting until I starve to death and respawn. So, yeah, game one of Minecraft. So far, so good.
My second (and final?) game, after the jump Continue reading →
With The Sitter, Director David Gordon Green obviously intended a latter-day Adventures in Babysitting. Take a charismatic lead, add a handful of adorable kids, and send them out for a night on the town where they run afoul of criminals. The twist? A hard R-rating, which Green undercuts with one safely sappy facile redemption after another.
If there’s any reason to see The Sitter, it’s to re-affirm that Max Records is a kid to watch. In Where the Wild Things Are, he was easily as fascinating as those enormous weird puppets, and whatever payoff that movie offered came from how good he was in his final scene with Catherine Keener. Records is one of those rare expressive child actors with a very adult grasp on what he’s saying, and how to express it even when he isn’t saying anything.
In The Sitter, when it comes time for Jonah Hill and Records to have their convenient redemption scene, you get good writing, two lovely performances, and surprisingly delicate subject matter for such an obtuse movie. It turns out Records’ character, a 13-year-old kid with psychiatric issues, is merely gay. Hill explains this to him, and Records lashes out and says he doesn’t want to be a “faggot”. “Don’t say shit like that,” Hill admonishes. He then explains to Records that, look, high school is really going to suck, but once he gets to college, no one will care that he’s gay. And then he’ll get an awesome job in the entertainment industry. Facile? Sure. But it’s the sort of scene that deserves a far better movie.
Also, The Sitter is a little fascinating for Sam Rockwell hopelessly miscast as a vicious drug dealer. No one handles being miscast with as much enthusiasm as Sam Rockwell.
