I have no idea what to make of Basement Crawl, an indie title created for the Playstation 4 by an unproven Polish developer. Based on the bullet points in a press release, it sounds like a latter day Bomberman with a horror motif. The developer promises more info soon. Until then, the box art (pictured) is promising.
Also, Naughty Bear was underrated. That’s right, I said that.
Brandon Cackowski-Schnell, Tom Chick, and Rob Harvey are adults enjoying certain children’s games. What’s the deal with that?
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Chris: The late 1970s and early 1980s gave us a slew of what I call, for lack of a better term, lunkheaded ghost movies. The most famous example is The Amityville Horror (which was based in turn on a lunkheaded ghost book), but there were others. The Changeling falls squarely into that category, but has ambition to transcend it. It probably doesn’t. As an effectively creepy haunted house movie it succeeds, but don’t spend too much time analyzing it. It is the Citizen Kane (or at least How Green Was My Valley) of lunkheaded ghost movies.
After the jump, rosebud was a medallion! Continue reading →
Don’t be fooled by the iOS platform. This universal app isn’t exactly lite fare. A game can last for a few hours, or at least several sessions, once you’ve learned to endure the weight of constant decay. The tactical combat is simple, but occasionally oppressive, sometimes because of the randomness. Your entire army might march into a cruel latticework of archers and there’s nothing you can do about it. No matter what happens, it will all end with a crushing defeat as you scrabble to eke out a few more points. You probably won’t get any more points. The final turns will likely be a matter of rolling over to die. Just hit the next button a few more times.
After the jump, learning to live with failure. Continue reading →
Tom: Well this was an unexpected delight. Unexpected because I haven’t seen The Shining in probably over ten years. Probably more. Not since I was old enough to appreciate it. And a delight not because I think it’s a good movie. I kind of don’t. It’s just as stilted and occasionally overblown (“Here’s Johnny!”) as I remembered. But it was a delight because I had no recollection that The Shining is about what it’s about. I feel like I’ve discovered something thrilling that was there all along, like finding a twenty dollar bill in a pair of jeans you’ve put through the wash.
After the jump, I’m not going to hurt you, Wendy. Continue reading →
Chris: By 1979 there was no bigger name in horror in any media than Stephen King. His run of work in that era–The Stand, The Shining, and a short fiction collection–made him a household name. The film version of his first novel, Carrie, had been a tremendous success with critics and at the box office, and so adapting more of his work for the screen was a no-brainer.
One of the problems with doing that–setting aside creative issues–was the sheer length of King’s other works of that era. As a novel, Carrie comes in at under 200 pages, and not a lot happens between a couple of big events. King’s later works would nearly quadruple that word count, making adapting for the screen a problem for the studios. They’d be required to either significantly adapt the work for the screen, or make 3 hour films. With Salem’s Lot, the first post-Carrie attempt to film King, they tried that latter approach, turning it into a two-part miniseries for CBS.
After the jump, how’d that work out? Continue reading →
I’ve been on a board game tear lately. Thanks to Geek Auctions on Board Game Geek, I’ve picked up a bunch of games for next to nothing. My favorite among them is Betrayal at House on the Hill. I’m almost too in love with this game to write it up fairly, so I won’t try to do that. I will, however, tell you why I love it. From the get-go you know that one of your group is going to betray you. You and your party arrive at the house and begin exploring. Tiles flip over as you move, much like Descent or any other number of randomized maps for games, and you can run into events, items and omens. After each flip of the game’s “omen” cards, the players make a roll and, if they fail, the game begins what is known as a “haunt.” The person who gets possessed or changes sides leaves the room with a book that tells them what their specific role is in the haunt while the rest of the players read the rules out of the good guy’s book. It’s almost like Arkham Horror met Battlestar Galactica and went on a dungeon crawl with Descent.
Crap, now I have to design an Event Horizon game. Wonder what Sam Neill has going on?
See that? If you’ve played Battle of the Bulge by Shenandoah Studios before on the iPad, that screenshot might seem a little odd. You might not be able to put your finger on exactly what is different. The combat boxes don’t look like that, do they? Sure, they are clean, well designed, and a model for conveying information to the player in a stylish and meaningful way. But did they patch the game or something? Well, yes they did.
Battle of the Bulge was a revelation in wargaming when it came out just about ten months ago, but it was restricted to the iPad. The new Battle of the Bulge 2.0, which you can just call Pocket Bulge, adds support for the iPhone and iPod Touch. It also demonstrates that Shenandoah is capable of getting every bit of efficiency possible out of a small screen. It bodes well for their future designs, and because I’ve been playing a lot of their upcoming game Drive on Moscow, I can tell you (spoiler!) that the lessons Shenandoah is learning about optimizing their interfaces are being well applied to future products.
Bulge plays pretty well on the iPhone, which actually surprised me, because after playing it on the iPad, I couldn’t really imagine it getting much smaller. Shenandoah is designing their new Gettysburg game with the iPhone in mind from the start, which I have to admit worried me at first. The way in which Shenandoah was able to adapt Bulge to the much smaller form factor gives me some reassurance. Shenandoah is sponsoring a tournament befitting a pocket-sized Bulge, using the pocket-sized Race to the Meuse scenario. As of this writing there are a few spots left. And if you go to the in-app purchases, you will find a free Player’s Guide* to help you with strategy, as well as a design guide describing the game’s development which — if you’re interested in game design — I have to say will be some of the best $2.99 you ever spent. And it’s on sale for $5.99 until October 24th.
I’ve spent a lot of time writing and thinking about Battle of the Bulge. And I’ve also spent a lot of time and energy thinking about and playtesting Shenandoah’s upcoming El Alamein and Drive on Moscow games. So when it comes to impartial observers, you probably need to take me off that list, although given my voluminous (internal) comments during the playtest, I still like to think I can tell the difference between good and bad ideas and implementation when I see them. But for the most part, I think that Shenandoah has got a lot of things going right now regarding traditional wargame design that are exciting to anyone who enjoys this type of game. What I’m trying to say is that if you’re following the future of wargame development, you should probably be following the progress of Shenandoah Studio.
Battlefield 4 has a story according to EA and DICE. As seen in the trailer above, it’s something about gender integration in combat units, naval craft safety, and canine assault. Remember the story in Battlefield 3? I do. It was about yelling. Also, there was that time I was shooting at some guys next to a capture point while a jet got into a fight with a helicopter overhead. The jet flew too low and smashed into a tank. I respawned a few times. Finally, I unlocked a sight for my rifle at the end.
Tom: As most horror movies progress, they lose their mystery and therefore their impact. The exposition bubbles up and molds itself precisely into whatever template the movie is using. Oh, it’s aliens, radiation, the devil, a ghost, etc. Now I see. Phantasm is a movie without a “now I see” moment. Even the ultimate reveal in the antique shop is more of a “so…uh?” moment than a “now I see moment”. This sort of batshit absurd senseless implausibility is a precious commodity.
After the jump, let me break it down for you. Continue reading →
I’m pretty enamored by Pokemon Y. Don’t get me wrong, this is the same basic Pokemon game we’ve been playing for fifteen years now. You get a starter Pokemon and then use that starter to amass a collection of magical creatures. Along the way you can take down gym leaders, fight the enemy team of the day, breed some new Pokemon, explore caves, swim in oceans, hunt legendary beasts and engage in dozens and dozens of trainer battles. The details of those actions may change, but the basics have stayed the same, even through Pokemon Y.
After the jump, so what’s the big deal? Continue reading →
The Google Quantum A.I. Lab Team, a deep-thought group that explores quantum computing, has made a mind-bending mod for Minecraft. qCraft adds blocks that exhibit quantum entanglement, superposition, and observer dependency. Huh? What? I’ll be honest, the video above explains nothing for me, but the Google Quantum A.I. Lab folks say they worked with MinecraftEdu and Caltech’s Institute for Quantum Information and Matter to make a fun, engaging way to teach quantum physics concepts to kids.
We built the Quantum A.I. Lab to explore the potential of quantum computing, and figure out what questions we should be asking. One question is clear: Where will future quantum computer scientists come from?
Our best guess: Minecraft.
Looking back on some of the incredible Minecraft creations I’ve seen over the years, I think these Google people may be on to something. You can download the mod at the qCraft site.
The podcast is split two-to-one on this latest remake of Carrie, in which the stunning Chloe Grace Moretz plays an unconvincing wallflower with telekinetic powers that make this a prom to rememeber. At the 51-minute mark, this week’s 3×3 is for our favorite shopping scenes, some of which include people actually buying things.
Next week: The Counselor
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Tom: Depending on how much of a zombie purist you are, you can make the case that Invasion of the Body Snatcher is not really a zombie movie. But it belongs in the discussion. You can see the lines of continuity and the cross-pollination. The original Invasion of the Body Snatchers in 1956 was an allegory about communism, very much in keeping with Who Goes There, which would turn into The Thing (the John Carpenter one, not so much the James Arness as a giant carrot one). The original Invasion is creepy, but entirely clean and antiseptic. Plus, we prevail, as we were wont to do in the 50s. But the idea is that the people we know and love have been taken over. They’re still themselves, but different, and ultimately hostile to our way of life.
Then along comes Last Man on Earth (based on a 1954 book), which has your friends and neighbors coming out at night and trying to break into your house en masse, but with a certain amount of lethargy, as if they know they’ll get in eventually and there’s really no hurry. They were called “vampires” in that movie, and they would call out to you by name, asking you to come outside. Vincent Price would venture out by day to hunt them. The scenes of night falling and the zombies — err, I mean, vampires — surrounding the barricaded house will look instantly familiar. Four years later, with 1968’s Night of the Living Dead, George Romero will basically codify zombies as we know them. They’ll be slow and lethargic, in no particularly hurry, but they won’t talk.
After the jump, the next shambling step. Continue reading →
Tom: Time and tropes have not been kind to Halloween. John Carpenter’s dialogue and all his actors are terrible. Even — especially? — Donald Pleasence. “He’s gone! He’s gone from here! The evil is gone!” At least it’s a joy seeing P.J. Soles. Her “see anything you like?” scene, which has a wholesomely 80s quaintness to it now, certainly blew my adolescent mind back in the day. But the slasher template established in Halloween is so played out, and so thoroughly deconstructed, that Halloween itself has become inadvertently hilarious.
After the jump, what really breaks my heart. Continue reading →
