Tom Chick

We, podcasters. This, January. He, Frankstein. Rest, history.

Next week: Short Term 12

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You can tell a lot about a movie by the company it keeps. For instance, Sony just announced that they’ve made a deal with Cinema Management Group to help sell their Ratchet & Clank movie to overseas markets. Check out this page for CMG’s previous movies to get a sense for Sony’s expectations. I haven’t heard of a single one of those we’re-not-technically-Madagascar releases. Of course, that might be because I’m not a seven year old child living in another country. Alternatively, there’s this trailer in search of an effective joke. “Never mess with the animators” is all it could come up with.

The studio who made the trailer and who is currently working on the movie is Rainmaker, known (?) for Escape from Planet Earth, a middling success that benefited from being the first family movie out of the gate last year. Rainmaker and Sony obviously hope to repeat that middling success by conceding that Ratchet & Clank will be out in “early 2015”. I’m guessing this will follow a major Playstation 4 release from the preceding holiday season to hopefully scoop a few folks into the theaters.

Fortunately, a good Ratchet & Clank movie has already come out. It was the 2009 game, Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time. I’d rather watch those cutscenes strung together than see what the press release for the movie describes as follows:

When the two stumble upon a dangerous weapon capable of destroying entire planets, they must join forces with a team of colorful heroes called The Galactic Rangers in order to save the galaxy. Along the way they’ll learn about heroism, friendship, and the importance of discovering one’s own identity.

I wonder if there’s room for a RYANO joke in a movie like that.

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A Study in Emerald is often at odds with itself. I say that out of admiration. It is a study in opposites, or at least juxtapositions. Here is a territory control boardgame and a card-centric deck builder. Here is a historical setting and a dark fantasy world. Here is a team game and an every-man-for-himself stampede. Here is an open-ended game clock and a collection of abrupt sudden-death victory conditions. Here is combat and subterfuge, bomb throwers and dirty tricks. Here is a zombie apocalypse a century before it was even invented. Here is a melange of detective fiction, existential horror, and the industrial revolution. Here is one of the best boardgames I’ve ever played, fitted with jagged edges and abrupt corners, yet still an elegant collection of systems, simultaneously non-Euclidean and elegant. It’s elementary: I have failed my sanity check. Or at least my saving throw to resist unique gameplay interpretations of H.P. Lovecraft.

After the jump, a few acres of R’lyeh Continue reading →

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The developers of Monster Monpiece, a Vita strategy game intended for adults in which you rub the clothes off anime characters to make them more powerful, have decided that America can’t handle the game in its current form.

Idea Factory International, Inc. would like to inform fans and prospective users of Monster Monpiece that we have made the decision to remove several Monster Girl images from the North American and European versions of Monster Monpiece. The gameplay, game system, and storyline are fully intact and Idea Factory International strives to localize and publish Idea Factory titles with the same content as their Japanese releases. Here is the list of Monster Girls whose images have been limited to that of their level 1, 2, or 3 evolution form due to the strong sexual nature of the card images: Vampire, Kraken, Goblin, Cockatrice, Kobold, Skeleton, Titania, Bahamut, Fia, Brownie, Pegasus, Mandragora, Mau Sibau, Rafflesia, Death Scorpion, Phantom, and Tengu. We fully understand that there are needs and demands for the complete version of these games. Our intention and motivation is to offer Idea Factory titles in a form that is as close as possible to the Japanese versions. This was a tough decision, but we would greatly appreciate your understanding and support.

What a disappointing decision, even though this is probably a game I’ll never play. Not because of the sexual content. Instead, I simply have no tolerance for QTEs or screen rubbing gimmicks in my card strategy games. But it’s a shame that the weeping Graysons dictating the tone of the conversation in the videogame press have decided that sexuality and sexism are the same thing. At a time when there are more and stronger female characters in games than ever before, it’s too bad there’s also a ridiculous overreaction to harmless titillation in a dopey anime game.

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I’ve already played Tomb Raider twice, even though it’s clearly not a game designed to be played more than once. As a once-and-done narrative-driven AAA release, it’s one of a dying breed. But since it was released on the cusp of a new generation of console systems, publisher Square Enix has tempted me with a third playthrough by showing off the tech upgrades in the “Definitive Edition” re-release for the Xbox One and Playstation 4. If you’re looking for an excuse to re-experience one of the best games of 2013, how about new tress technology? How about new mud, blood, and sweat? How about new equipment physics? How about new, uh, drip maps? Yeah, drip maps. Frankly, I don’t really need an excuse for another playthrough, but this upgrade helps.

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What happens when a Gemma Chan fan, a Jack Ryan fan, and Kelly Wand see the new spy thriller, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit? This week’s Qt3 Movie Podcast is what happens. If you’re not into movies, skip to the 57-minute mark for our 3×3 of our favorite appearances of books in movies.

Next week: I, Frankenstein

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Euphoria is an intricate machine, slow to get under way and a touch inscrutable at first. But once you’ve dribbled a little fuel into the tank and turned the crank a few times, it starts humming confidently, building in strength, spinning faster and faster, positively purring. It might even run away from you, yanking the handle out of your hand and — oops! — someone else just won.

Don’t be fooled into thinking Euphoria: Build a Better Dystopia is just another worker placement game. I mean, it is, but not in the sense that you would dismiss it because you already have Agricola, Lords of Waterdeep, and Carson City. It has its own sense of identity, a wonderful approach to pacing, and a lovely long-term sense of discovery that comes from seeing how its meticulous clockwork interaction pieces together. It is an ornate marvel of gameplay and interaction.

After the jump, cannibals, burning teddy bears, and zeppelin meth labs Continue reading →

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I don’t envy anyone trying to sell an MMO before it’s done. Heck, I don’t envy anyone trying to sell an MMO within a month after its inevitable launch woes. But when you’re making an new MMO, what are you gonna do? You put on your dog-and-pony show, you talk about your ideas for what it takes to make a good MMO, and maybe you bank on the reputation of what you’ve done before.

The latest MMO from veteran MMO maker Brad McQuaid — here’s where you opine about whether you liked Everquest, Vanguard, and whatever stories you might have heard about McQuaid (pictured) — is called Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen. Pantheon: Getting Back Up Again. Pantheon: He’s Going to Try To Do It Again. Pantheon: Once More Into the Breach. Pantheon: Let’s Put On a Brave Face and Some Alpha Footage To Sell the Heck Out of This Thing. Pantheon: I’ll Even Do That Horns Things With My Hand.

For more information, and lots of terrible quotes from fake fantasy heroes, the Kickstarter page is here.

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Joel Toppen is the guest this week for a conversation about his fascinating solitaire boardgame, Navajo Wars. He reveals that it almost didn’t get made, he justifies its only supernatural element, and he talks a bit about his next game.

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When I was in seventh grade in Little Rock, Arkansas, I was sledding with some friends during one of our precious snow days when we didn’t have to go to school. Because snow. We put our sleds on the frozen street, laid belly down on the sleds, and then hurtled downhill along the frozen asphalt, hoping a car wouldn’t come along. It was winter and there was ice everywhere, so cars never came along. But for whatever reason, ice isn’t as uniform as you might think. Something to do with physics. So when my sled hit an unfrozen patch, the runners caught on the asphalt and the sled stopped. I didn’t. My body continued hurtling downhill along the frozen asphalt. I basically did a fullspeed faceplant along a frozen street. When I got up, my entire face was numb, I could taste blood, and my tongue was probing a strange new gap in my front teeth, like an explorer who’d just found a pass through previously inviolable mountains.

“Whoa,” my friends proclaimed when they saw the blood and especially the jagged lines of my broken front teeth. “Whoa!”

“You guys have to help me find my teeth! You guys have to help me find my teeth! You guys have to help me find my teeth!” That was my panicked mantra as I fumbled around in the snow, looking for things tiny and white, with images in my head of having shiny gold front teeth replacements for the rest of my life. If I could just find my tooth pieces, the dentist could glue them back into place. So that’s why I live in California now, where winter isn’t allowed.

Anyway, this is an article about the ten best games about winter, none of which will knock your teeth out. Okay, maybe the #4 pick, because it’s just that good.

After the jump, don’t forget your fur-lined parka. Continue reading →

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I’m still working through the learning curve for Mage Knight, which I just bought this week. It’s a big ungainly fiddly game, sprawling across far more real estate than it really needs. It won’t even tell me how much table it needs. “Well, how far are you going to explore?” it asks, arms akimbo defiantly, “because that’s as much table as I need.”

It snorts imperiously as I flip the day/night board so I can, uh, get the same information I had on the other side, but this time in a different color? “Flip it,” Mage Knight demands. “How else are you going to know it’s night?” It is the epitome of Ameritrash with its busy bland artwork and painted plastic miniatures and those ridiculous WizKid clicking bases on its cities so that it costs easily ten dollars more than it should. I haven’t yet inflicted Mage Knight on someone else, and I might never do so. I’m hoping it’ll be a cool tabletop fantasy epic for solitaire play. Although it’s clearly not designed that way, with its emphasis on turn order and snatching mana from the pool before the other guy can get it and personal keeps and competitive scoring. Here I am, finally uncovering distant lands with a fireball in my deck. I could have played three games of Darkest Night by now.

After the jump, the anti-Mage Knight Continue reading →

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Behold an unfamiliar New World in Europa Univeralis IV’s latest add-on, Conquest of Paradise! In the game I just started, this is what you’ll find in place of the usual North and South America. It sort of resembles a squashed Australia, with a crowded Crimean-looking dangly bit on the bottom and the Apache relegated to their own little New Zealand to the south, where they can’t cause any fuss. It may not look like much, but it’s a Big Deal. This is Paradox’s first dalliance with randomized maps. I mean the actual maps are randomized and not just the stuff on them. The manual explains how it works:

…the game draws a box around the regions from Greenland south and west. Pretty much anything past the Azores is going to get mixed up. The engine then generates new continents and islands. We’ve made efforts to get the maps looking sort of like real land masses and not like blobs of space just stuck together. The territories are still grouped into historical regions, of course. There will be a Caribbean region, a Mississippi region and so on, because we use these tags for a bunch of other mechanics in the game, including some new ones. The random maps will also have the same trade nodes (but in different specific locations) and they will feed into each other in the same way that they do on the historical map.

The $15 add-on, available now, also introduces playable Native American nations with unique gameplay and new rules for colonial nations so they aren’t just extra overseas provinces. Maybe it’s time to just call the game Universalis.

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Muramasa Rebirth, an absolutely gorgeous hack-and-slash sidescroller for the Vita, gets new DLC today. Fishy Tales of the Nekomata — don’t ask me, I’m just delivering the news — adds a new character who uses claws instead of swords. She is the heroine in a new adventure highlighting how seriously people took tea back in the olden days.

Okoi and her brother are tasked with delivering her family’s prized tea set to the shogun. While on their journey, Okoi’s family’s chief retainer hatches a plan to steal the tea set, killing Okoi’s brother along the way. Swearing to avenge her brother’s death and maintain her family’s honor, she becomes a cat-demon.

Take that, Princess Peach and your Super Mario 3D World cat suit!

Fishy Tales of the Nekomata, which lets you summon a flurry of attack cats, is available from the Playstation Store for $5.

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Banner Saga is out today. It’s certainly lovely, and any turn-based game should be proud to have artwork this nice. I remember Jean d’Arc on the PSP was pretty, but you can’t beat a big ol’ computer screen to bring to life this kind of animation, even if it’s not very animated. These are a lot of talking heads, with the bare minimum of drifting snowflakes, wafting Nordic braids, and fluttering capes, but they’re far prettier than the average talking heads.

Unfortunately, it seems like Banner Saga is a series of dull tactical combats with a whole lotta storyline between every battle and a character development system with broad simple strokes. And then a whole lot more storyline. At a time when I could be fighting richly detailed battles in Card Hunter or Fallen Enchantress, why am I poking around with this basic system, which turns into a bit of a mess thanks to the uncompromising 2D graphics and the not very good interface. Can you figure out what’s going on in the above screenshot? Do I have a dude behind those tall black robot guys? How do I rotate the camera? And why do I get to see the numbers, but not how they work? Since the artwork is so pretty, am I not supposed to care so much about the math?

It’s still early. I’m only three chapters in, with no telling how many to go. At this point in a tactical SRPG, I’d just be getting warmed up. So maybe there’s a lot more to reveal as Banner Saga goes on. But it’s not looking very promising. I didn’t know I was signing on for a pretty cartoon with a lot of dialogue about some burly Norse guys and some humans and some evil black robots and occasional primitive tactical battles. Personally, I was hoping for a tactical combat game first and foremost, with a strategic level where I managed varied interesting characters and made meaningful choices, with a bunch of historical flavor on top. Fortunately, I haven’t uninstalled Expeditions: Conquistador.

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It’s January. Boy, is it January. And what a January it is with Kellan Lutz in The Legend of Hercules, a movie that sets the bar for Januaries to come. In case you don’t want to listen to three people talk very seriously about Kellan Lutz and the legend of Hercules, which you might not want spoiled so you can see it for yourself, jump to the 39-minute mark for this week’s 3×3. The topic? Our favorite Kellan Lutz roles. Sorry, I lied. The actual topic is lies in movies.

Next week: Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit

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