The oddly uncute sunflower, looking like a starlet after the rigors of bad plastic surgery, scuds along the cluttered street of this boxy cartoon suburbia. She unfurls and releases a pee yellow stream of laser death. A rocket sails past her.
“Man, they fuckin’ rocket launcher can’t aim for shit,” someone observes, courtesy of Xbox Live’s $60 a year ingame voice support. He has a point. Normally, the rockets are the perfect counter against sunflowers using their pee yellow laser. Oh, here comes a linebacker zombie, either using his rush ability or lag warping into the waiting mouth of a purple chomper.
“What up, nigga!”
The color commentary is accompanied by someone else’s mic that has been open the entire match. I can hear his TV. Sometimes I hear his dog. Sometimes I hear someone — his mom? — doing dishes or something in the background. Sometimes she yells something at him and he ignores her.
After the jump, did we really need a Plants vs Zombie shooter? Continue reading →
Tom Chick, Nick Diamon, Rob Harvey, and Jason McMaster assemble to discuss Titanfall. Is it just Call of Duty with mechs? What makes it stand out among multiplayer shooters? Will these bipedal tanks have legs?
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The problem with the march of history is that the rules change. What starts as a charming little war with spears and bows soon becomes a whole big kerfluffle about the Enlightenment and suddenly you’re having to manage airplanes on your aircraft carrier. Who needs the headache? The marvel of Nations is how it manages so much consistency across eight simple turns that span hundreds of years. What you’re doing in the Industrial Age is more or less what you were doing in antiquity, yet it still manages to capture the march of history from spears to aircraft carriers. Well, dreadnaughts, at least.
After the jump, through the ages Continue reading →
It’s a pretty grand time to be into turn-based fantasy strategy games. Fallen Enchantress, Eador, Warlock, and Dominions 4 are all well worth playing for distinct reasons. And with the release of Triumph Studios’ Age of Wonders III at the end of this month, it might get to be an even better time.
After the jump, let’s take a peek Continue reading →
300: Rise of an Empire isn’t just an entry for the list of sequels that are better than their predecessors. It’s also an entry for the list of movies we’ve absolutely loved. Take note, summer of ’14! The bar for great action movies has been set. At the 50-minute mark, we read to you from our picks of books that should be movies.
Next week: The Lego Movie
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This week, I’m joined by Infested Planet designer Alex Vostrov to talk about my latest favorite real time strategy game.
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One of the many advantages of not being a videogame journalist is that they get to play games early. This means they can do the really dumb stuff so you don’t have to. For instance, building a house zeppelin the wrong way in Windforge, the impending Terraria meets Moby-Dick-but-set-in-a-steampunk-version-of-Bespin RPG.
One of your early tasks in Windforge is to rebuild your house zeppelin after a crash landing. It’s a tutorial for how travel works. You have a balloon for lift, propellers for propulsion, and engines for power (don’t worry, you’ll get your guns once you get to the first town). You engage all these components at a control panel. When you “use” the control panel, the inputs that would normally move your character move your house zeppelin. Moving in a given direction engages the appropriately mounted propellers. Your house zeppelin goes up and down and left and right according to the game physics of the balloon, the propellers, and the engines, with a dash of character skill on top. It’s a pretty nifty moment when your house lifts off and you see it in action the first time. Like the house in Up. But steampunk instead of all those clown balloons.
But in my game, there was apparently some kind of bug. I kept taking damage. And because I didn’t know why I was taking damage, I was unable to prevent the damage. This leads to death. Which leads to reloading. Was it a bug? Was I dying from exposure? Did I need to craft a warmer jacket? Being a putative game journalist, I investigated.
After the jump, a horrible way to die Continue reading →
Argentinian director Adrian Bogliano might be one of the most talented horror directors you’ve never heard of. He’s sometimes awkward but almost always subversive in a genre mostly known for stultifying formulas. He recalls a time when horror and sexuality weren’t afraid to fumble and clutch at each other. I’ll Never Die Alone, released in 2008, is probably the only 70s rape/revenge movies I’ve seen that understands Virgin Spring, portraying sexual predation with the detachment it deserves. It’s a ruthlessly shot sequence that no one should have to see and it’s sickening that it’s not part of a better movie. I don’t recommend it. Cold Sweat, about a girl soaked in nitroglycerin, is a bit of a goof, but Penumbra is a clever mystery with an even cleverer follow-through (you can read my so-spoiler-free-it’s-almost-useless review here).
So it’s no surprise that Bogliano’s latest movie is such a disjointed throwback to the horror of the 70s, complete with smash zooms and saturated grindhouse color. The subject at hand is the impossible dilemma of parenthood, reconciling sexuality and innocence in the context of a Catholic culture (Bogliano shot it in Mexico, which gives it a stronger religious subtext than his Argentinian movies). The only way you can bring children into the world is by fucking, and then you have to protect them as best as you can from the same sin that conceived them. It’s the juxtaposition of evil deeds and good intentions. Or is it the other way around? Throw in some demonic possession, gratuitous lesbian sex, and plenty of blood.
As the parents, Francisco Barreiro and the wholesome/sultry Laura Caro carry the movie admirably (it’s a shame the child actors couldn’t pull their weight a little better). Here Comes the Devil doesn’t have much focus, or even much coherence, and as it wends its way along a torturous route to a dark empty nowhere, you could say it’s following a state of unease more than a plot. But it’s also clearly the work of a talented director with a distinctive approach and no interest in the usual formula.
This week we see Liam Neeson in Non-Stop, the most exciting movie about texting since Catfish. The 3×3 about delusions in movies starts at the 1:01 mark and we’re convinced we’ve got some pretty great picks.
Next week: 300: Rise of an Empire
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Time was I would have thought adding Moon Knight — who? — to the roster of Marvel Heroes was scraping the bottom of the barrel. But I know Moon Knight. I know him well. He’s one hell of a pinball table in Pinball FX. I don’t know anything beyond what I learned on the pinball table — something about an ancient Egyptian demon sidekick named Con Shoe and, uh, I forget if there’s any other stuff — but it’s enough to convince me that adding him to Marvel Heroes isn’t scraping the bottom of the barrel; it’s skimming silvery moon-colored cream from the top.
Okay, that was gross. The point is that I’m all “yeah, Moon Knight!” even thought I don’t know him from the Silver Surfer.
One of my favorite things about 28 Weeks Later (pictured) is how it turns on its head the conventional zombie movie wisdom that the military are the bad guys, ineffectual at best, and most likely downright sinister. In 28 Weeks Later, the military is part of a humanitarian mission and they’re good at what they do. When children go missing, they’re rescued in force. When things fall apart due to unforeseen events, the contingency plans are effective. The military tries everything they can before making the tough call, at which point they successfully contain the outbreak. What dooms the world in 28 Weeks Later — and this is the point of the movie — is personal compassion. The fact that people are good.
That’s what came to mind when I read State of Decay developer Undead Labs’ introduction to Lifeline, their next DLC.
On the State of Decay team, we have a different perspective (some of us firsthand) — the military is made up of many good men and women who stand on the line that divides safety and civilization from chaos and war.
At the height of the initial crisis, you still have support, but things are rapidly breaking down. You control Greyhound One — a small surviving unit that has been sent to the fallen city of Danforth to rescue scientists whose research is critical to fighting the outbreak. This is at the height of the initial crisis. You still have a chain of command and access to off-map support, but the voices over the radio are making it clear that things are rapidly breaking down.
So what you end up with is the inverse of the usual progression. Instead of starting with nothing, and slowly building yourself up into a post-apocalyptic powerhouse, you start the game as a well-equipped, well-supported military unit, and then must learn to improvise as one resource after another is depleted…and isn’t coming back.
I love where they’re going. And the perspective and intended gameplay flow reminds me of another rare great zombie game.
Undead Labs provides a few more details here, with the promise to reveal more in the coming weeks.
This week Tom Chick and Jason McMaster talk about their experience with celebrities, the upcoming Elder Scrolls Online beta, the new Thief, and of course, the new Diablo III update. Plus possibly actual reader mail.
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Warehouse and Logistics Simulator is out now. For serious.
As if Diablo III wasn’t already unrecognizable from the state of its release, Blizzard has given it another dramatic update, paving the way for next month’s Reaper of Souls add-on. The latest patch doesn’t just rework every character, which is sort of what you expect in patches for action RPGs. It even reworks the basic character stats, which are the building blocks for your character builds. In addition, it has completely overhauled the economy. New uses for gold, a phased out auction house, a new currency, hooks for the upcoming new adventure mode, a new role for crafting, gems reworked and expanded, and new ways to adjust the difficulty to level up faster and get better loot. The oddest thing is that I’m now picking up every single thing that gets dropped, even if the text is white. And in about an hour or so of playing, I’ve found three legendary items, which is as many as I’ve found in my entire time with the game before the patch. Suddenly, Diablo III on the PC looks suspiciously like a game with a meaningful economy.
Read the highlights here and the full notes here.
One of the downsides of convenient digital distribution is that kids today won’t grow up with a treasured copy of Sacrifice, Brian Reynold’s Alpha Centauri, or Unholy War signed by Fred Ford and Paul Reiche. When a game exists only on your Steam account or in your Good Old Games download folder, it will never include a worn box, a creased manual, or that huge honkin’ three-ring binder for Falcon 4.0. It will never show its age and therefore the love that has sustained it as part of your collection for so long.
But then there’s boardgaming. There is no danger of boardgames escaping the ravages of time and love. Any boardgame that you care about enough to keep for a long time will show some sign of how much you love it. I don’t care if you sleeve your cards, or deny your cat a place in the boxtop while you’re playing. Something will happen in the physical world to designate the passing of time. Card edges ding, box corners blunt, colors fade. If you play your games instead of curate them, they will show how much you love them.
The above image is Mark Geusebroek’s copy of Carcassone. Geusebroek started a thread on Boardgame Geek called “A celebration of your well worn/well loved games”. I love how his name is written on the box cover, as if his mother had written it there before he took it with him to summer camp. He shows photos of some of his more cherished games. Among my favorite contributions to the thread is a comment from a fellow named Brian Lucid talking about his copy of Up Front.
I love this game, started playing it when I joined the Army, literally. My buddy Dale Martin and I drew CQ together and we’d play it all night. I visited him in Detroit and bought a copy for $20 at some game store. That copy has made every move and deployment I’ve had over 20 years. I think I take it along becasue it always feels new, each game is tense, I can teach new players easily and they have fun and most of all it makes me happy when I’m feeling low. I’m retired now, made it through the Army with my Up Front and my family intact.
Lucid includes a picture of him and his friend hunched over a table playing Up Front. That picture, along with the picture of Geusebroek’s worn Carcassone box, say everything that needs to be said about what makes boardgaming special.
