You might think Guild Wars 2 is all about crazy creatures like talking bipedal polar bears (kodan), talking gorillas (grawl), talking moles (dredge), talking birdmen (tengu), talking frogs (hyleks), talking plant people who totally aren’t elves (sylvari), totes adorbs cooing penguin/seal hybrids (quaggan), and World of Warcraft gnomes (asura). But the thing about most of those races is that you can’t be them. But you know what you can be? A cat. And you know how Guild Wars has a hundred or so miniature pets, including cats? That means your cat can have a cat.
But Guild Wars 2 has decided it’s time to go deeper. Next Tuesday, on February 26th, you can get a cat as a mount. So now your cat with a pet cat can ride a cat. It’s a cat singularity, which is one of about three hundred reasons that Guild Wars 2 was designated the Greatest MMO of All Time by the International MMO Designation Committee, which is comprised of me and my cat.
Some people enjoy tropical paradises when they take a vacation. But for their vacation, Tom Chick, Tony Carnevale, and Bruce Geryk enjoy War of the Ring, Fort Sumpter, The Estates, Imperius, Discworld, Time of Crisis, SpaceCorp, New Angeles, and Chronicle. Hassan and Mike, who didn’t get to go on vacation, will be back next episode.
I spend a lot of time moping around, mourning the death of traditional RTSs after everyone else has gone off to play some dumb MOBA. I can’t even muster the energy to rail against MOBAs, because I’m too busy being dejected that Starcraft online would just be a string of humiliating defeats. I’m a lot fun at parties. At least it keeps me busy. Mourning the death of traditional RTSs is a full time job.
But sometimes I get a vacation. Sometimes something like Infested Planet, Tooth and Tail, or Offworld Trading Company comes along and brings me a little joy. Today is one such day.
Sometimes customer service goes right! Then whether Blood Rage is better than Rising Sun, whether Dinosaur Island does dinosaurs well, and whether you need the expansion to enjoy Fallout.
The latest dungeon crawl to sprawl across my table is Warhammer Quest: Blackstone Fortress, a hundred plus dollar monstrosity that Games Workshop has stooped to my level to offer. That level being people who would play a Warhammer game, if not for the painting of a bunch of miniatures, the finding of a tape measure, and the task of pressing into service a friend who will then have to paint his own miniatures. We can share a tape measure, however. If I were willing to go to those lengths and drag someone along with me, I’d be playing Netrunner regularly.
Tom Chick, Hassan Lopez, and Mike Pollmann on playing times that are too long, Disney games that aren’t as dopey as you might think, and miniatures that just might be worth the hassle.
Tom Chick and Mike Pollmann have played some Martin Wallace, some mindreading, some utter trash, and the superior blue version of a game. They intend to play Gloomhaven, Dinosaur Island, Empires of the Void II, and Dawn of the Peacemakers.
Although the 1977 horror movie The Car belongs in the killer car genre, the template was Jaws. Move Amity from a coastal town into the desert. Change the shark to a demonic driverless car. Otherwise, pretty much everything else is the same. A small-town sheriff, mysterious casualties, Fourth of July celebrations interrupted by a public attack, an old man with unique insight enlisted for a third act hunt, and everything resolved by an explosion. The Car ended with the car vanquished. Or did it? The credits played over footage of the car driving around a city. Hmm. So it wasn’t buried forever in a desert canyon?
We present, using fancy spreadsheet technology, our top ten movies of 2018! Also, our biggest surprises, our biggest disappointments, and our favorite miscellaneous thingies.
