Alexander Payne’s latest meditation on the absurdity of human weakness features Bruce Dern not paying attention when Will Forte talks to him. At least one of us on the podcast thought that was pretty funny. At the 45-minute mark, we take note of our favorite secretaries for this week’s 3×3.
Next week: All Is Lost
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State of Decay’s Breakdown DLC will be available on November 29th, for $7, for both the Xbox 360 and PC. You’ll get a survival sandbox mode, new characters, and an RV. Did you hear that? An RV! Like in Walking Dead, Breaking Bad, and We’re The Millers. More info here.
I can’t say I’m terribly excited about another Minecraft clone, even if it is made by some of the folks at Trion who brought us the reliable Rift and Defiance. But I like the cel-shaded look. And I like the name. How come no one has used the name Trove yet?
Trion pledges they’ll communicate “directly with alpha testers and forums such as Reddit to help determine the direction the game will take”. That should end well.
More info here.
If you were to see the name Desktop Dungeons and study a few screenshots, you would get the wrong idea about this fiendishly clever little gem. You would think it’s a roguelike. A cute frivolous one with wacky graphics. You might figure it had a lot of competition. You might figure you’d just as soon play Dungeons of Dreadmor, Rogue Legacy, or Diablo. You might figure you already have games like this.
Boy, would you be wrong. Furthermore, you would have no idea what you were missing.
After the jump, the anti-roguelike. Continue reading →
On this week’s podcast, Nick Diamon and Tom Chick discuss whether it’s a good idea to rush headlong into an XCOM map just for the chance to cybernetically enhance your soldiers. That’s what Firaxis seems to want us to do. Also, Chris Hornbostel reveals the latest in The Secret World and Jason McMaster wields a mighty blowtorch in Battlefield 4. Also, Desktop Dungeons is not what you think it is.
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The significance of the title of Frances Ha is arguably a spoiler because of when it’s revealed. It’s a bit like how Greenberg, director Noah Baumbach’s last movie and similarly a showcase for Greta Gerwig’s gangly charm, ended with the simple insight of the line, “This is you”. What a way to close out a movie.
Frances Ha might seem at first like the hip stylings of twentysomethings in New York City. But it would be a mistake to lump this movie in with the precociousness of Lena Dunham’s Girls. Because for all the emotional honesty and stylized naturalism in Girls, it’s still a neatly packaged weekly show arranged into seasonal arcs, neatly divvied up among its cannily arranged cast. Frances Ha is also emotionally honest and stylishly naturalistic, but it’s a far more focused story about the pain of transitioning into adulthood at a different rate from your friends. It’s about not quite being able to move into your place in the world. It has bite. It’s almost never played for laughs, although it’s certainly funny. Sometimes cruelly so.
Baumbach’s fondness for New York is in full force, shot in lovely black-and-white. Also, it’s masterfully edited as a series of flashes about the process of day to day life over the weeks and months. It even jumps nonchalantly to a whole other country. If there’s one problem — and this is a great problem for a movie to have — it’s that Gerwig is so striking in black and white. She has the elegance of Ingrid Bergman, but with an amazing unselfconscious expressiveness. It can be hard to accept her as a down-on-her-luck twentysomething. Isn’t the world kinder to people this luminous?
Watch Frances Ha on Amazon.com to support Qt3. Or just go ahead and get this Criterion Collection Blu-ray with a handful of interviews.
Days of Wonder is selling sculpted figures of four of the races from the Small World games. I can’t imagine who would ever buy them, considering they’re $100 each. There’s no telling what they’re made of. They’re each a bit over 20cm tall. I have no idea how tall that is in American. But they sure do look nice. Get a closer look here. But Days of Wonder cautions:
Note that the Amazon figure is mildly NSFW. If you, or your family, are offended by partial nudity, you should not view or purchase the Amazon.
It’s an odd choice of races. Isn’t the halfling the signature Small World race? The spiderine is from Underworld, so you won’t recognize her if you only know Small World from the excellent iPad version. But the wizard instead of the sorcerer? And what is the wizard doing to that sheep? No kobolds? And more to the point, what kind of skeleton, spiderine, wizard, and amazon are these? Flying? Heroic? Swamp? Dragon master? Flocking?
This is a sad tale of both how great and how awful The Secret World can be. It is a tale of the investigation missions, which are unique in a genre when so many missions involve collecting ten boar hides or delivering a doo-dad to the next quest hub. It is a tale of backstory and clues and demonic rune alphabets and world building and characters. It is a tale that spans the globe. It contains spoilers. And I should warn you that it does not have a happy ending.
After the jump, meet Daniel Bach, who’s covered hell, you know. Continue reading →
Based on spending a little time with Enemy Within, the new add-on to XCOM, I can totally see through 2K’s evil scheme. They must think they’re pretty clever. By adding mech suits, cybernetic implants, new upgrades, medals with selectable perks, and scads more options for customization, the goal here seems to be giving you more ways to upgrade and therefore care about your soldiers. But by tying a lot of this stuff to a new resource that expires if you don’t rush headlong into battle to claim it, the other goal here seems to be giving you more opportunities to get your soldiers killed. In other words, more risk for more rewards. Pretty sneaky, 2K. Pretty sneaky.
Enemy Within is available today either as a full-priced standalone release for console systems or a relatively pricey add-on for the PC version.
“Kemet” is the ancient Egyptian hieroglyph for ancient Egypt. At least that’s what Wikipedia claims. After several sessions with the boardgame of the same name, I’m not convinced. Granted, Kemet does have a very very ancient Egyptian theme. But I figure “kemet” means “get out there and attack someone already, because you’re not going to accomplish anything by hanging back”. The boardgame Kemet is carefully designed to encourage players to bang into each other early, often, and decisively, at which point they readily come back for more. It is one of the most elbow throwing boardgames I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing. You’d think ancient Egypt was like the NFL what with all the frequent banging into each other.
After the jump, the good old red, white, and blue Continue reading →
Now that the scenarios are live in The Secret World, I realize I’m not ready for them unless I have help. I was hoping they would be accessible enough to my character, since I’m definitely at the level where I want to start using augments, which you can only find in scenarios. But I can’t get through a single wave of enemies on normal difficulty in a solo scenario. There’s no way I’m going to survive the later waves, much less the bosses.
Fortunately, I can easily handle the scenarios with a group. But then I’m competing with up to four other players for the dropped augments. In my last group scenario, eight augments dropped. Since Secret World is still one of those MMOs where you have to choose need, greed, or pass every time a trinket drops, I rolled “need” on all of them. As did everyone else, naturally. I got zero of them. I’m willing to keep trying, but because I’ve spent almost all my time in The Secret World playing solo or with real-world friends, I have no idea how to go around finding a group. The protocol is different in every game. The lobby for the scenarios, the Sunken Library in Venice, makes me think I should have no problem finding a group. Look at all those people (pictured)! They obviously want to play scenarios, too. But why is no one LFGing in the general chat? Am I supposed to LFG? Is there an LFG channel? Should I be using the built-in LFG tool that no one else seems to be using? Is there a separate website somewhere? I type secretworldscenarioslfg.com and get nowhere. Maybe it’s a .net address.
It’s like walking into a crowded restaurant and not being sure if you’re supposed to seat yourself. This sort of content, which is a great addition to The Secret World and a fantastic exercise in group combat, needs a better infrastructure for those of us used to playing this as a solo game.
3 stars
PC
Up next: to hell, but not back
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The Enhanced Edition of Baldur’s Gate II is out for PCs this week. This is Bioware’s classic RPG with the Throne of Bhaal add-on included. It’s also got a whole mess of new content, new characters, an updated interface, new cinematics, and support for monitors you wouldn’t have even dreamed of when you first played it back in 2000. It’s also only $25. Get it here.
For something a little more latest-gen, X: Rebirth is the latest in the X series of open-world space games that are too complicated for you. XCOM’s expansion, Enemy Within, adds mechs and biogenetic mods for your soldiers. Deadfall Adventures is an Uncharted-a-like from the folks who did the wonderfully unhinged Necrovision and the Painkiller remake. It’s no Necrovision. But then again, what is. Finally, the latest Killzone will be available for $600 ($60 for the game itself and $540 or so for a platform to play it on).
It’s a dark world indeed when this podcast can’t agree whether the second Thor movie is awful or wonderful. So we purge the sickness for this week’s 3×3 by considering our favorite scenes of vomiting in movies. Well, inasmuch as a scene with vomiting can ever be a favorite. It all comes out at the 59-minute mark.
Next week: Nebraska
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The Playstation 4 and Xbox One? Pish. Leave it to EA’s technical wizards at DICE, a Battlefield game, and a souped-up PC to rip the curtain back from the next generation. You can’t very well watch one of these skyscrapers topple — as carefully scripted as anything in Call of Duty, but with some secret ingredient that actually instills awe — without feeling like you’ve arrived somewhere you haven’t yet been. Unfortunately, the skyscrapers aren’t the only things that topple.
After the jump, next stop wonderland. Continue reading →
Marvel Heroes gets a massive update today which adds Loki as a playable character and Asgard as a new zone.
Travel to the frozen Fjords of Norway and battle Frost Giants, Dark Elves and more! Help Reed Richards uncover the mystery of how and why these enemies from another realm are invading Earth by donating items that have been exposed to the energy of the Cosmic Cube! Doing so will unlock a brand new zone! Norway can be unlocked by bring a hero who has defeated Doctor Doom on the present difficulty mode to the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier and speaking with the transport S.H.I.E.L.D. agent near Nick Fury. Over the next 4 months, new areas of Asgard will become available, including a raid zone, PVP zone and Siege challenge.
Furthermore, Thor’s storm strike has been buffed. All this just as a new Thor movie is coming out. How fortuitous! You’d almost think it was planned!
Details here.
