Sometimes you pay a price when you write reviews for people who’ve already played a game. That price is people who look to reviews to decide what they’re going to play. Where will they spend their time or money? But if I’m going to critique Inside based on what I know after I’ve played it, and if the majority of Inside’s appeal is discovery, I can’t tell you much without compromising your experience with the game.
In other words, there will be spoilers.
But first, I have three things I want to tell people who haven’t played Inside.
After the jump, don’t worry, it’s safe to keep reading!Continue reading →
Ghostbusters from the team that made Bridesmaids? What could possibly go wrong? At the 1:08 mark, we don our hooded robes and begin the creepy ritual known as the weekly 3×3 to discuss cults in movies.
There’s a bit of The Witness in Quadrilateral Cowboy. Just a tiny bit. The Witness is a game about teaching you how to play The Witness. Period. Full stop. Quadrilateral Cowboy is, at times, a game about teaching you how to play Quadrilateral Cowboy. Dot, dot, dot.
After the jump, I promise you won’t read the word “heuristics” because this isn’t that kind of review.Continue reading →
You can tell how strongly some of us feel about this movie by the fact that we don’t get to the 3×3 until the 1:45 mark. Then we adjust our mics to do a 3×3 on microphone scenes.
Last year, I predicted that Fantasy Flight would choke their elegant Lovecraftian adventure boardgame, Eldritch Horror, with the usual glut of add-ons. This was like predicting the sun would rise in the East.
Was I right? In a fit of pique, curiosity, and indiscretion, I bought all of the expansions. I spent a day organizing everything. Labeling plastic baggies (not included), integrating the bits and bobs from six (6!) separate boxes, and trying (and failing) to fit everything in fewer than three full-size boxes. Then I spent several more days playing Eldritch Horror. I lost several points of sanity. But I have emerged to update you on my prediction.
After the jump, rumors of Eldritch Horror’s death are mildly exaggerated.Continue reading →
I don’t normally post Kickstarter campaigns, because I prefer getting excited about finished games that are currently available. But Brain Good Games doesn’t normally announce a new title. The creators of the minimalist and clever Axes and Acres are looking for support for Skyboats, which seems to be abandoning the minimalist part of the equation. They’ve launched a Kickstarter campaign and a page on Steam’s Greenlight.
Skyboats is what us boardgamers call “pick up and deliver”, but the twist is that a skyboat doesn’t just go where it wants to go. A skyboat is at the mercy of the wind. The flow of goods is dictated by the wind patterns, which are in turn dictated by the flow of goods. If you’re not convinced, you probably haven’t tried Axes and Acres. You can get it here and I’ll walk you through the basics here.
Before there was Vermintide, the very good Left 4 Dead But With Warhammer Rats, there was Lead and Gold. In 2010, developer Fatshark released a very good Western-themed multiplayer shooter with unique character classes, carefully built multiplayer modes, and an absence of unlockable hats. No one played it.
Now that Vermintide is presumably paying the bills — the latest DLC was released a month ago — Fatshark is feeling magnanimous; they’re handing out copies of Lead and Gold for free. Well, at least the first 100,000 copies. Get yours here. You can even find populated servers online.
Even if you don’t have plans to jump back into Guild Wars 2 just yet, you’re going to want to at least reinstall it when season 3 starts on July 26. Otherwise, later in the year, you’re going to jump back in and you’re going to be all, “Wait, there was a new season and now I have to buy it?” From the announcement:
Just as in Season 2, you can unlock each episode for free by logging in to Guild Wars 2 any time between the episodes initial release and the release of the next episode. If you dont own Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns, you can still log in to unlock the episode for free — itll be there waiting for you once you purchase the expansion!
This gives me just under two weeks to finally get around to finishing season 2…
Just in case you had any questions after the original Now You See Me, here’s a sequel. At the 1:39 mark, we register for a discussion about getting firearms in movies.
Why are Brandon and Tom so taken with a goofy Japanese fighting game that has cooking and gardening? And what’s the deal with the developer who makes these kinds of silly things?
The god of boardgaming is an angry god. Very Old Testament. I have just come down from the mountain with these 10 commandments printed on quality cardboard stock mounted on boards that unfold like, uh, like this, I think. Here, you hold that side, and…no, no, that doesn’t bend that way, it bends the other way. No, no, yeah, okay now this part folds out like so. Okay, lay it out on the table. I think it’s upside down, spin it around thisaway. Okay, there. Let’s see what we’ve got here.
After only 20 years, Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin from Independence Day come back to Earth to destroy more stuff, and this time, they’ve brought Liam Hemsworth! At the 1:11-mark, we spin the wheel of decision for this week’s 3×3.
I want to like Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens. I really do. In the past, the folks at Traveller’s Tales have whimsically recalled the joy of Batman, Indiana Jones, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and, of course, Star Wars. But unlike JJ Abrams whimsically recalling the joy of Star Wars with his adroit filmmaking, this latest Lego iteration can’t live up to its inspiration. It’s familiar, played out, and disappointingly half-baked.
After the jump, 87/243, so only 156 Lego characters to go!Continue reading →
