Archive for May, 2012

I used to think I was above Kickstarter. That was about $200 ago.

After the jump, I blame Cthulhu and Louis XIV Continue reading →

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I had five or six games going when it happened. As soon as it happened, I had a few options. I could throw my iPhone against the wall, I could take a deep breath and practice the tenets of buddhism taught by zen masters in the far reaches of Tibet, or I could just stop playing Nightfall. The answer was obvious, since iPhones cost several hundred dollars and I’d never actually been to Tibet.

One by one, I went through all my games of Nightfall. Forfeit, forfeit, forfeit, forfeit, forfeit. There. Problem solved.

After the jump, the fall of Nightfall Continue reading →

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This week sees the release of some shooter called John Hurt 3 or something. I think we also get a Throne of Games RPG or some such. Whatever. I can’t really see anything past midnight tonight, when Diablo III goes live.

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In Dark Shadows, Tim Burton and Johnny Depp have done it again! Then this week’s 3×3 takes a look at the writing on the wall: starting at the 38-minute mark, we talk about the best graffiti in movies.

Next week: Battleship

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Trials Evolution track of the week: Rainbow Road. Track designer: LatChoX. Difficulty: Medium.

I’m flying on this track. I’ve totally nailed the opening, where you immediately have to finesse the throttle so you approach that first trough with just enough momentum to be able to nail the first jump, but not so much that you smash into the incline. I’ve learned not to over-think the loop. I clear the track without a fault. Great. I’m flying.

On the leaderboard I’m somewhere past one thousand. What the hell?

I start thinking about parity. I’m riding a Scorpion 450cc. That’s the best bike I’ve unlocked so far, the best bike I can unlock given my license level. Am I supposed to put in more track time in the game before I mess around with the community tracks? No. That can’t be it. But still, I realize I’m running against folks with far better bikes. How am I supposed to compete with them? This doesn’t come up in LBP. In LittleBigPlanet, all sacks are equal. My sackboy is only limited by his human. Not so in Trials Evolution. Here we are also limited by our equipment. Ahem. At first I find this disturbing. Then I find it brilliant. There’s a sort of feedback loop here. A reason to return to the actual game beyond cosmetics. If I get more medals I’ll get a higher license and a better bike, and thus a better time on this community designed track. I start to see a beautiful back and forth.

Rainbow Road, you deserve to be featured on your own merits, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that our president’s announcement about marriage equality this week helped your chances. Politics aside, once I get a better bike, I will be back. You can count on it.

Rainbow Road was designed by LatChoX.

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I love a boardgame port that’s unashamed of its roots. Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear — don’t think I don’t hear you snickering at that name — is a World War II tactical tabletop game that isn’t afraid to invoke a touch of Squad Leader’s complexity, but prefers to veer closer to the beer-and-pretzels of a Memoir ’44 match. The port just published by Matrix lets you play with wargaming chits (pictured) instead of the usual 3D low-rent models. Thank you, Matrix! Furthermore, all the rules, stats, and modifiers are at your fingertips with easy tooltips. It even shows you the results of every die roll.

But sometimes that’s not enough. Consider how often disgruntled gamers accuse computers of cheating the die rolls, usually because they remember that time they needed to roll a three or higher on 2D6 and, hey, snake-eyes? What the…? What are the odds? The computer must be cheating!

Conflict of Heroes has an answer to that. If you can angle your webcam in such a way to look down at a pair of rolled dice — actual, real-world, tabletop, analog dice, preferably white with black pips — you can tell the game to determine every die roll by referring to the dice rolled under the webcam. If your reaction to this rather adorable solution is ‘Well, hey, why don’t you just play the tabletop version instead?’, then I’m kicking you out of the boardgaming nerd club.

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Ubisoft, the company that hired Frag Dolls and Jenny “vaccinations will make your kids retarded!” McCarthy to promote their games, has hired Ice-T’s wife. She makes observations like the following about Ghost Recon: Future Soldier:

When you’re on this game, and you’re pointing, and you’re shooting, you really feel like you’re at war.

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One of the best tower defense games you can play on any platform — let me repeat that, since I want to make it clear I’m putting this side by side with personal favorites like Toy Soldiers: Cold War, Unstoppable Gorg, Dungeon Defenders, and Immortal Defense — one of the best tower defense games you can play on any platform is Defender Chronicles on the iPhone. It balances neatly the moment-to-moment tower defense gameplay with a long gratifying RPG progression. If you sank as much time into Defender Chronicles as I did, leveling up the General and Melwen, you’ll probably recognize them in that goofy panel up there, which the developers at Gimka whipped up by way of announcement. And, to be fair, I mainly recognize Melwen because her face yells at me from the Defender Chronicles icon every time I boot up my iPhone. It’s a little odd to see her serenely washing a cup, or whatever she’s supposed to be doing.

The sequel will include two new heroes alongside the General and Melwen, some new units, and a whole new RPG progression system to unlock unique artifacts, all of which is geared towards beating the harder difficulty levels to progress the RPG stuff farther. It’s a vicious circle. Did I say “vicious”? I meant “delicious”. There are a few details here that will only make sense to hardcore players, but the bottom line is that it looks like Defender Chronicles II is mostly the same tower defense gameplay, but with a lot more RPG tying it all together.

Defenders Chronicles II will be out for the iPhone on May 24.

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Like a thief in the night, Storm of Souls has appeared as an in-app purchase for Ascension. This sequel/expansion is a new set of cards for Ascension, the current nonpareil of deck building games. Storm of Souls addresses some balance issues in the basic game, adds some cool new gameplay concepts, and gives Eric Sabee all new canvases for his unique artwork.

Since the iPhone and tabletop versions are functionally identical, you can read my review for more specifics. New rules for events and trophies place greater demands on the screen real estate, but it’s handled as well as can be expected, even on the teensy iPhone’s screen. Ironically, it’s a bit easier to play Storm of Souls on the computer, with usable cards highlighted and a helpful end-of-turn nag reminding you when you’ve missed something. The add-on also adds Gamecenter achievements that recognize feats like defeating Samael with Adayu (called “don’t mind if Adayu”), collecting one of every trophy monster (as if!), and getting both Umbral blades into play (like I need another reason to want to make this happen).

You shouldn’t be in any rush into Storm of Souls if you’re new to Ascension. But once you’re ready to wrap your head around something more complicated, more demanding, and ultimately more satisfying, Storm of Souls is just what Master Dartha ordered.

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In the kingdom of Circlandia, the powerful circles used their might to intervene among the warring squares and triangles. Although an uneasy peace reigned for centuries, the kingdom prospered. Young triangles were raised and educated side-by-side with young squares. It looked as if ancient hatreds would be forgotten. But then one day the evil wizard Derounded invoked the diabolical rite of Fertang, summoning into the kingdom four tiles of unimaginable power. In the mad rush to control the tiles of power, the kingdom split into two warring factions, one worshipping the blue gods of Skyforce Olympus, the other in the service of Fell Reddite Imps. Who would prevail?

Okay, none of that stuff is in Fertang. Except for the name Fertang.

After the jump, Fertang? Continue reading →

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This week, we welcome Dan Archibald, the guy responsible for the wonderfully creepy iPhone game, Pandemic 2.5. Look out, Kate Winslet! Dan talks about the game’s evolution, viral spread, and prognosis. We also discuss Warlock: Master of the Arcane, Starfarer, Portal 2, and the Bioshock Infinity delay. And Tom finally supports a Kickstarter project!

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Plenty of movies have songs. Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head, in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, for example. Or whatever AC/DC song that is — they all sound alike — in The Avengers. But not many movies take the time to show us characters listening to songs. There are three points in Roadie when Ron Eldard’s character listens to a song and reveals something about himself. Regret, fury, and longing, in that order, and each for a different song.

The character, Jimmy Testagross, a recently out-of-work roadie for Blue Oyster Cult, is otherwise pretty bottled up. He’s a combination of childlike vulnerability and the guarded quality of a picked-on teenager. He wears on his face the perpetual ingratiating smile of someone always waiting to discover he’s the punchline of a joke that he’ll have to laugh at to get people to like him. I’ve previously written off Eldard as a TV lightweight who works best with a CG monster or Ben Kingsley doing the heavy lifting. But there is nothing TV lightweight about what he does in Roadie, from his paunch to his pathos to the way he takes a slap or steals a glance. During one scene, he lets down his guard and explains why Blue Oyster Cult is unique, and what the music means to him. It’s like Paul Giamatti talking to Virginia Madsen about wine in Sideways: so this is what this man is all about.

Then there’s Roadie’s supporting cast. Lois Smith smolders with a combination of confusion and anger as Jimmy’s abandoned mother; Bobby Canavale shows that being a smooth clown doesn’t have to mean being funny; and the remarkable Jill Hennessy is a revelation to someone like me who thought Crossing Jordan was the name of that post nuclear apocalypse thing with Skeet Ulrich. She’s far more than the usual object of affection. And as the person singing one of the songs Jimmy listens to, she’s got a sultry set of pipes. Queens is also a character in the movie, which is no surprise given that director Michael Cuestra and writer Gerald Cuestra have been here before. Their first movie, L.I.E., was a darker look at the same area from either end of Roadie’s age range.

But don’t be fooled by Roadie’s happy-go-lucky romcom DVD cover. This is no romcom. It’s a grown-up movie about the inability to be a grown-up, like Young Adult minus the double twee of Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody.

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After all those years of Playstation exclusives, it’s hard to remember that Ratchet & Clank developer Insomniac is still independent. But they’re finally stretching their wings, collaborating with Electronic Arts for a game called Overstrike, which will be playable on systems other than the one you use as a Blu-ray player.

But Overstrike won’t be their first release with EA. They just announced something imminent called Outernauts!

Combining Insomniac’s immersive storytelling with a unique art style and sense of wit, Outernauts is an adventure role-playing game that casts players as members of United Earth’s elite Outernaut force. The Outernauts are charged with capturing and training exotic alien beasts as they uncover the riddle behind mysterious “ancients” while battling pirates and evil corporations seeking to control the galaxy. Players will explore planets, harvest loot, and fight asynchronously alongside or against friends to master a wild, untamed universe.

Sweet! So when can I play it?

Outernauts is currently in a closed beta testing phase and will launch on Facebook this summer.

Oh. Nevermind.

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If you consider games journalism the process of writing about games that haven’t come out yet, I’m a terrible games journalist for caring instead about the games that are already out. And I’m an especially terrible games journalist in the case of a few specific games that I don’t want to know anything about. For instance, Bioshock Infinite. I know everything I need to know to want to play it, and any additional information I get I’d just as soon get from actually playing. As you can see, I can’t even bring myself to post a screenshot of it.

So E3 was going to be a real pain in the butt, because everyone and his dog was going to be talking about Bioshock Infinite. But no more! 2K just announced that not only has Bioshock Infinite been delayed until February 2013, but it furthermore won’t be showing at E3 next month. Phew.

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Home invasions are low hanging fruit for horror movies. It’s one of those timeless fears: What if a bunch of dudes break into your house, your sanctuary, the place where you’re safe and relaxed, and have their way with you? It’s the ultimate “what if they get in here?” scenarios. One of the earliest home invasion movies I know is the original Desperate Hours with Humphrey Bogart, which holds up well even if it has a charming civility as far as home invasions go. Among the worst recent ones I’ve seen are Trespass, which isn’t a home invasion movie so much as a Nicolas Cage movie, and Secuestrados (Kidnapped, in English), which is the sort of tasteless pointless stylish trash that gives good horror movies a bad name. If I had to pick a favorite, I’d go with Paul Andrew Williams brilliant brutal Cherry Tree Lane, which isn’t available in the US yet. Someone get on that. It is the Straw Dogs of the 21st century.

Until that time, there’s Mother’s Day, not to be confused with the original Troma film it’s supposedly based on. Speaking of trash. The original Mother’s Day was one of those gross 70s rape movies that recreates the feeling of stumbling across Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s porn stash. But this remake — which is absolutely not a remake — is a mean lean smart script about colliding systems. On one hand, a veritable beer commercial of good-looking fun-loving privileged friends. On the other hand, the eponymous mother and her brood of mismatched white trash kids. A literal and figurative tornado is brewing.

Briana Evigan, recently locked in a house with a tiger in Burning Bright (get it?), is locked in a house with a whole other kind of tiger this time. The icy menacing Rebecca De Mornay isn’t mad; she’s just disappointed. She’s like the crocodile in Black Water, just waiting, watching, keeping her prey in place until she’s ready to either pounce or saunter off. It could go either way. She’s as sexy as she was in Risky Business, as dangerous as she was in Hand That Rocks the Cradle, and as sexy as she was in Risky Business. Did I mention that she’s sexy? With an unlikely brood at her beck and call — wait, she had all those kids? — she is the biggest baddest wolf since Cate Blanchett in Hannah.

Mother’s Day is out on DVD this week.

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