Among the many changes to Marvel Heroes since I last played — Why couldn’t it have been this way when it came out? — is the addition of some new heroes. One of them is Emma Frost. With a name like that, I was assuming she could shoot icicle blasts and invoke a frost aura. Stuff like that. Boy, was I wrong.
After the jump, Emma Frost is way too cool for mere ice Continue reading →
This week we’re sufficiently thrilled by Paul Greengrass’ Somali pirate biothriller, starring Tom Hanks, the US Navy, and four dudes woefully unprepared to take on Tom Hanks and the US Navy. At the 43-minute mark, we pitch our combinations of actor, famous character, and director, only to be upstaged by some of the listener picks. Darn listeners.
Next week: Carrie
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If God hadn’t created Christopher Walken, we would have to invent him. And did no one tell David Warner how awful the dialogue is? Because not only is he trying to sell it, he’s actually selling it. That’s an English actor for you: so much better than the material deserves!
Finally, Clive Owen asks the question on everyone’s mind back in 1996, when Privateer II was released. Spoilers, by the way.
Path of Exile has been so gratifyingly playable for so long it’s easy to forget it’s not actually out yet. But then you read these notes for the official release, when Path of Exile drops the beta disclaimer and becomes a 1.0.
My favorite bullet point is a pair of new leagues. What other games might call modes are leagues in Path of Exile. You roll up a character specifically for that league, which has a self-contained balance and economy. The upcoming domination and nemesis leagues give the gameplay a new focus:
Domination: A variety of powerful Shrines now spawn throughout Wraeclast, surrounded by large groups of monsters that are influenced by their power. These monsters receive substantial bonuses or are protected by their shrine’s effects in some way. If you are able to tag the shrine, you receive these powers for a short time. It’s often very risky to run in and try to claim the shrine, but it is a gamble that can pay off. One of the new challenges is to tag each of the shrine types.
Nemesis: Nemesis is a Hardcore league (characters who die are converted to Standard characters). Rare monsters have one guaranteed mod from the Nemesis Pool, which makes the fight substantially harder. One of the challenges is to kill a rare with each of the Nemesis mods.
Among the other features are new enemies, new types of skill gems, guild support, new player vs player options (Path of Exile has player vs player?), and an unlockable Scion character class too complicated for anyone who hasn’t played through on normal difficulty.
Mark you calendars for 10am Pacific on Wednesday, October 23rd.
It’s the second time I’ve lost someone at the approach to Thistletop Delve. This is the next to last adventure in the game. Basically, the staging area before the final boss. Two weeks ago, I lost my sorceress to an ambush here. Spellcasters are powerful but frail. If they’re caught off guard, or if they can’t cycle their spells properly, it can get ugly. What’s more, a handful of d4s can be deceptively comforting for the higher minimum range you’ll roll. What nerd wouldn’t rather fight with 4d4 than 2d8? But when an ambush applies a -1 to all your rolls? Well, so much for my sorceress. Permadeath is a hell of a thing.
And just now, we had Gogmurt cornered in the Treacherous Caves. My monk has almost single-handedly cleared the Nettles and the Goblin Fortress. The monk was the only one still hearty enough to go after that little bastard goblin. The monk was primed to fight with a tight cycle of blessing cards to pack a real whallop. But I cut my deck management too close. The monk stumbled across explosive runes that he wasn’t smart enough to disarm. Well, so much for my monk. Did I mention that permadeath is a hell of a thing? Because it’s the driving force behind Pathfinder, an odd hybrid of deck-building game, tabletop RPG, and push-your-luck sadism.
After the jump, what’s in the box? Continue reading →
You can’t very well have a list of top videogame spaceships without folks like us needing to offer a second opinion. So, in honor of Starship Week, Brandon Cackowski-Schnell, Tom Chick, and Nick Diamon fill some holes in official Quarter to Three list. We also discuss the birth pangs of Grand Theft Auto Online, we celebrate the revival of Bioshock 2, and we stage an intervention from Marvel Puzzle Quest.
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Playing the bounteous Fall from Heaven mods for Civilization IV was a steady progression of “I can’t believe they even put this in here!” moments. But it wasn’t enough to come up with crazily imaginative factions, game bending concepts, and so many revised and refined rules that you forgot you were playing a variation on Civilization. Creator Derek Paxton even built into Fall from Heaven a deck building game called Somnium. You could play against the other factions for a diplomacy bonus or penalty, depending on how well you did. It was simple but hearty. It was the sort of thing you wished you could get for your tabletop. Or, years later, your iPad.
After the jump, it’s years later Continue reading →
It’s Starship Week! Which means we’re going to take a long adoring look at our favorite ways to travel the stars, from games, movies, and maybe even TV shows (books not eligible because nobody reads books anymore no matter how many clever spaceship names Iain Banks thought up). This week we’ll bring you a movie spaceship of the day every day, a series of articles from Dr. Bruce Geryk based on his experience crewing spaceships, videogame spaceship expert Brian Rubin’s list of top ten videogame ships, and more from some special contributors whose names you might recognize. Punch it, Chewie.
(Note that spaceships are too big to be contained in a single week. So according the laws of physics as proved by Einstein and other leading scientists, Starship Week actually lasts for two weeks.)
After the jump, your Starship Week hub Continue reading →
Alfonso Cuaron’s masterful sci-fi thriller, Gravity, lets us re-appreciate what it means to see movies in a theater. And Sandra Bullock. You can skip Gravity spoilers by rocketing to the 58-minute mark, where this week’s 3×3 hits on the issue of head injuries.
Next week: Captain Phillips
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This week you’re in for either a treat or an ordeal, depending on how you feel about recent games designed around the concept of a character as a deck of cards. Tom Chick, Rob Harvey, and first-timer Scott Lufkin talk about Card Hunter, Pathfinder: Adventure Card Game, and Sentinels of the Multiverse. And we furthermore welcome the creators of those games for an epic-length, star-studded podcast featuring Jon Chey, designer of Card Hunter; Mike Selinker, designer of Pathfinder; and Christopher Badell and Adam Rebottaro, the designers of Sentinels of the Multiverse. We hope you’ll enjoy the entire podcast, but you can skip to the Card Hunter interview at the 18:00 mark, the Pathfinder interview at the 1:14 mark, and the Sentinels interview at the 2:29 mark.
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There are a few sequences in The Avengers when the various superheroes team up for combo moves. The Hulk positions a shard of armor plating and Thor hammers it into the giant space worm’s back. Captain America uses his shield to bounces Iron Man’s beam through several bad guys. Hawkeye needs to command a higher view of the city so Iron Man flies him up there (“Clench up, Legolas”). Black Widow catapults herself off Captain America’s shield to grab a passing airship. Are director Joss Whedon and his team indebted to the kind of combo moves I’ve been doing all along with my Marvel Ultimate Alliance characters or my Marvel vs Capcom tag teams? And doesn’t it go farther back to the comics that inspired them? You can only do so much with lone gods and superheroes. It’s in the aggregate that they’re most interesting. That’s the key to Sentinels of the Multiverse, a co-op card game that so good at emergent superheroics that it doesn’t need an established licence.
After the jump, DC who? Marvel what? Continue reading →
If you’re not into NBA (pictured), this week’s release of NBA 2K14 is no threat to your wallet. The other possible wallet threat is for people who want to farm, romance, and JRPG on a Nintendo 3DS with the latest Rune Factory, also known as Rune Factory 4: I’m Surprised There’s Not Some Long Title in This Space. Atlus is trying to get you to buy a re-issue of the previous Etrian Odyssey JRPGs by bundling them under a new name and using the word “Untold” to imply it’s new. Nice try, Atlus.
But for most folks, this week’s threat is to whatever time they might be eager to spend with Grand Theft Auto Online, which goes live tomorrow. I predict great and/or terrible things.
Why are we watching a Tyler Perry movie from three years ago? Because listener Soren Hoglund won our listener pledge drive/lottery and this was his pick! So we present our first ever Tyler Perry movie, which Tom thought was totally worthwhile thanks to a last-minute cameo. We unveil our 3×3 about favorite character reveals at the 1:03 mark.
Next week: Gravity
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Brandon Cackowski-Schnell joins us this week to discuss what sets Grand Theft Auto V apart from other open-world games. We also touch on some of the more controversial issues. For instance, is it fair to call it out for misogyny? Is the torture scene out of place? Has Rockstar grown up or just gotten more provocative?
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Remember when Burnout was about crashing instead of just racing? Former Criterion developer Adam Sawkins does. You can tell from Truck Stop, his Unity-built version of what Burnout used to be. Truck Stop has two things that would make any latter day Burnout update more awesome: 1) destructible environments, because why just wreck cars when you can wreck other stuff as well? And 2) zombies, because zombies.
You can see more of Truck Stop and support it on Steam Greenlight here.
