This week we see Spike Lee’s remake of a Korean revenge movie, which is not unlike trying to choke down a live octopus. From the 43-minute mark on, we span the topic of our favorite bridges in movies for this week’s 3×3.
Next week: Inside Llewyn Davis
Podcast (movies): Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
In the Breakdown DLC for State of Decay, you’re no longer playing towards State of Decay’s final mission. What was previously a once-and-done zombie apocalypse with an abrupt and decisive end is now an open-ended world without end. In theory. In practice, the difficulty ramps up until you fail. That’s a pretty decisive end, but not at all sudden. It’s also a fundamental part of zombie mythology. The zombies always win. The demise of all your survivors is a matter of when, not if. The main difference is that this time, you know what you’re doing. This time, your heroes are a band of experienced competent ruthless efficient survivalists. This is no amateur hour zombie apocalypse.
After the jump, there’s no more room in hell, but we can accommodate you on a harder map. Continue reading →
Gender discrimination in videogames has to stop. In the nearly two decades I’ve spent covering the industry, 2013 was one of the most egregious years I can remember in terms of how women were portrayed in videogames. I am astonished at how blatant it is, and at how few people are talking about it, and at how few developers are willing to recognize it. I can no longer stand idly by. It’s time to speak out.
After the jump, I call out the entire videogaming industry. Continue reading →
There is no multiplayer in Need for Speed Rivals because it’s all multiplayer. That’s why I have to wait for a minute or so whenever I want to play. “Finding game to join” it says. That’s before the game even loads. Then it has to load. Then I’m at a menu and not even in the game yet. I might not have minded all this if the multiplayer was as diverse and creative as the multiplayer in Need for Speed Most Wanted. It’s not. It’s just a modest handful of us doing our own thing on the same map, like an unwitting car club that didn’t tell each other where they were meeting this month. There’s so and so chasing a car. Or running from one. It’s hard to tell. There’s someone’s Xbox Live avatar on the map. And another one. And another one. Such-and-such account name just joined. The announcement appears on the center of my screen, as if it’s something I should really care about. I’m in the middle of finessing a drift around a cliffside bend and now I’m staring at a screen about the host migrating. Waiting for each of the other random yahoos. Waiting. Waiting. And now I’m idling on the side of the road near that cliffside bend.
After the jump, (almost) always online. Continue reading →
In the course of not seeing Hunger Games: Catching Fire, we watch Margin Call director J.C. Chandor’s survival thriller, All Is Lost. We’re pretty sure we made the right call. At the one-hour mark, this week’s 3X3 is modern movies that have to be in black-and-white.
Next week: Oldboy. The remake.
Podcast (movies): Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
The Breakdown DLC is an alternative way to play State of Decay stripped of all its scripted story beats. Here the characters are all randomly generated, arranged in survivor enclaves for you to recruit, exploit, or ignore as you choose. Your only objective is your score, which is a factor of missions accomplished, zombies killed, upgrades researched, and so forth. At a certain point, your resources will get scarce. That’s when you load up the RV and start a new map with harder zombies and a higher score multiplier. The only story beats are the ones you make.
Okay, that’s not entirely true.
After the jump, meet Lyanna Carter, one of the exceptions. Continue reading →
My first game with the Breakdown DLC for State of Decay ended in the above zombie buffet, with my last survivor as the featured guest. My score was 151. You won’t know how bad that is until you try it yourself when Breakdown comes out next week. Fortunately, the leaderboards don’t seem to be enabled yet, so no one will ever know I did that poorly. I mean, seriously, 151 points?
Brandon Cackowski-Schnell and Tom Chick welcome new contributor Scott Dobrosielsky. Together, the three of them share the excitement of three people with two new Playstations among them.
Podcast (games): Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Shenandoah’s scoring system has players each pushing and pulling on the same victory point track rather than racking up individual scores. The score is for the game as a whole, and not for either side. For instance, at the beginning of the campaign, with the Russians holding the map and the Germans arriving from the west, the score is a tidy zero. When the Germans capture an important territory, the score goes up. There goes Rzhev! Now the score is three. But when Russia destroys German units or recaptures a territory, the score goes down. Russia just trashed the 36th Motorized Brigade for a point. Now the score is now two. And now they’ve liberated Rzhev. The score is negative one.
After the jump, what can this tell us about Drive on Moscow? Continue reading →
Let me be very upfront about this: I don’t like Lords of Waterdeep. The boardgame. I’m just talking about the boardgame for now. It’s a me-too worker placement game without any meaningful twist other than its forced connection to a fantasy license. What is the fantasy analog to these “agents” we’re placing every turn? Why am I visiting the harbor to commit intrigue? So why are the orange cubes warriors? The purple cubes might as well be ham, silk, elerium, or monarchy points. Oh, they’re wizards. I see. Purple wizards. It’s all worthy of a breakfast cereal and not much else. If I want a good worker placement with distinct theming — or even moderately realized theming instead of this desperate effort to appeal to the Official Dungeons & Dragon Fanbase — I’ll play Carson City, Dominant Species, or Agricola. Lords of Waterderp. See what I did there?
After the jump, now let’s talk about this iOS port. Continue reading →
Drive on Moscow (pronounced “Moss-COW”, right?) is the follow-up to Shenandoah Studio’s Battle of the Bulge, which put the strategy game back in wargaming. It’s out tonight, but don’t expect much help from the folks who made the game if you want to talk out loud about the places where you’ll be fighting. Prepare for the battles of bat urine and fatties!
Developer Funcom wisely put Solomon Island at the beginning of The Secret World. This area is the most accessible, familiar, and varied. As Chris wrote in the previous entry, it’s arguably the strongest part of the game. It certainly affords ample hooks from which to hang the usual horror tropes. HP Lovecraft’s New England by way of Stephen King’s Maine with room for zombies, ghosts, Native American graveyards, re-animators, and more bigfoots than you can shake a dowsing rod at.
But, after the jump, there’s more to horror than King, Lovecraft, and Coombs. Continue reading →
Paradox, a company that does things with strategy games no other developer would even dream of doing, has apparently put some classic 70s horror into the Sons of Abraham add-on for Crusader Kings II. According to an after-action report from Galloglasses on the Paradox forums, certain children might attract certain mysterious caretakers who put on certain dramatic shows of devotion:
Out for a picnic, my king looked up, saw the nun on top of an old watchtower in her habit (or some other black robes)…she shouted down to my daughter Sebdan, proclaiming her love for her. And then jumped. My daughter clapping all the way to her bloody smushy death.
That bit was probably just a text event, but the real cleverness comes from how Paradox codes the narrative arc of The Omen into Crusader Kings II’s gameplay system. And how it further escalates into a uniquely Medieval version of the story. Read the rest here.
(Thanks Fenris!)
Who doesn’t like variety in character skins, clothes, and weapons? There’s no reason every sword and helmet should look the same. But I can’t help but wince every time my character, who relies on pistol skills in combat, fires her “pistols”, which are the nicest ones I’ve found. It sounds as ridiculous as it looks.
2 stars
PC
Up next: the wisdom of Solomon Island
Click here for the previous entry.
Egosoft’s X games are the last word in open-world space sims by virtue of being the only word in open-world space sims. At least in terms of ones that are still in development. X Rebirth, the latest X game, is a mess. This is no surprise given Egosoft’s penchant for releasing messes and then tidying them up after the fact. But the problem with X Rebirth is that it’s a different kind of mess than the previous games, in new and terribly wrong ways that are beyond tidying up. X Rebirth doesn’t seem to understand what people liked about the previous games. It is a game based on misguided assumptions.
After the jump, X Rebirth’s serious misconceptions about me. Continue reading →
