Dragon Commander depresses me because I don’t like it. I desperately want to like it. It deserves to be liked. It begs to be liked. It should be liked. It has an endearing and deliriously loopy playfulness, like a dog chasing its tail. Here is a videogame that refuses to adhere to any established genre, giving it an unhinged quality you won’t find in better games. There’s a reason no one is jamming real time strategy games into RPGs into turn-based boardgames into card games into action games where you fly a dragon around. And that reason is because it probably doesn’t work. You can tell by playing Dragon Commander. Which I really wished I liked.
After the jump, my god, it’s full of genres Continue reading →
While rummaging through the closet of my parents’ house back in 1995, I came across this boardgame. I want to play it. Unfortunately, it says 2-6 players and no one is home. Where is everyone? Where is my sister? And what’s with the the elliptical references to time travel, sci-fi, insanity, and dark family secrets? What is Steve Gaynor, the writer of the Minerva’s Den DLC for Bioshock 2, setting me up for in Gone Home, a darkly atmospheric first person exploration game developed by a small team in Portland and available later this week?
After a few weeks that were no real threat to your wallet, it’s the week of August 12. Which is no week of August 19, but it’s close.
If you liked Payday, you need — yes, need — Payday 2. Developer Overkill really lived up to their name with this one. Unfortunately, I’m not going to sink much time into such a deeply progression-based game when my progress is just going to be wiped at release. So after sampling a press build, I’m poised to pounce as soon as the game goes live tomorrow. Or tonight. What time is it?
Unfortunately, there’s one problem. That problem is Europa Universalis 4, also out this week. Paradox’s strategy games have been getting exponentially better in terms of design smarts — Victoria and Crusader Kings are nothing short of revolutionary, and their sequels are better in every way — and also in terms of interface, AI, and quality control. I can’t wait to sink some serious time into this fourth version of their magnum opus series. But there’s one problem. That problem is Payday 2.
Also, there’s another problem. Occult Chronicles is Vic Davis’ fiendishly clever and fiendishly fiendish strategy game about exploring a haunted house. After a beta period of letting players bang on it while he does his usual fine-tuning, Davis releases the final version this week.
Also this week Craig Hubbard, the man from Monolith who arguably invented Kate Archer (pictured, because she’s awesome) in the No One Lives Forever series, releases an early access version of his new studio’s game, Betrayer. It’s just an alpha, but given its pedigree and how absolutely weird it is to play a black-and-white shooter about zombie conquistadors, it’s a viable wallet threat for anyone who doesn’t want to wait until the game is done.
Neill Blomkamp’s dystopian Matt Damoner, Elysium, divides this week’s podcast. And then the 3×3 on dead pets really brings the room down at the 1:08 mark.
Next week: Ain’t Them Bodies Saints
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“Did Napoleon Dynamite do the artwork for this game?” my friend asked as I was explaining Rise of the Zombies, a tabletop co-op zombie survival game. The developer, Dan Verssen, is known mostly for a dogfighting card game called Down in Flames and a solitaire game about air strikes in Vietnam called Phantom Leader. I’m currently addicted to Phantom Leader. There are other versions of Phantom Leader involving Hornets, Warthogs, and U-boats. You can even play it on the iPad. Don’t get me started or we’ll be here all day. Verssen isn’t known for lavish production values. I didn’t even need to use the word “lavish” in that last sentence.
“I think this is supposed to be a liger,” my friend mused, studying one of the zombie cards.
He has a point. Rise of the Zombies, a card game with a tiny smattering of chits, doesn’t have much, uh, visual punch. I hate to ding the artwork for such an obviously modest project, but there’s no style to these sketches. There’s no color. Literally, and figuratively. And who picked this wretched font? As near I can tell, the zombie herd is actually a zombie hero.
As a design, Rise of the Zombies doesn’t seem very well thought out. The interface, as it were, is a sometimes incoherent sprawl with little thought for how to relate the cards to each other. The manual recommends that if players want to fight each other, they should make it dramatic. Like a movie. Which is one of the dopiest things I’ve ever read in a rule book, which should instead contain rules. But what Rise of the Zombies does right is the stuff that really counts.
After the jump, no one gets left behind except the guy who made the Napoleon Dynamite crack. Continue reading →
A lot of the changes in Legendary Heroes are the stuff of solid patchwork. Lots of rebalancing, tuning, interface improvements, and supposed improvements to the AI. I say supposed, because I still get the sense that the AI players don’t quite understand the importance of grabbing land and keeping a strong army together. But they play by the rules and there’s plenty of challenge to be had, unlike many other strategy games with AI shortcomings.
But like solid patchwork, a lot of the changes in Legendary Heroes mean there’s no way I would play Fallen Enchantress without them. Legendary Heroes makes Fallen Enchantress the game it’s wanted to be all along.
After the jump, how Continue reading →
Guncraft combines the world-building of Minecraft with the combat of Call of Duty, complete with classes, perks, vehicles, and a horde mode. It’s an admirable hybrid in many ways, assuming you can find other people playing, because it’s got no bots except the literal ones that run at you in horde mode.
But for all its admirable hybridization, I can’t help but feel crushing disappointment — or not crushing, as the case may be — when I blow away all the walls of a building and the roof just hovers there. Pictured, of course. Gravity is a crucial part of destructibility. Breaking things is only half the fun. The other half is watching them fall.
And to dash even more water on your hopes for grand destruction — or to not dash water on them, as the case may be — check out what also won’t happen after the link. Continue reading →
The $20 three-part season’s pass you bought for Bioshock Infinite before knowing what DLC it included begins today with a horde mode called Clash in the Clouds. I like a good horde mode as much as the next guy. Heck, probably more than the next guy! But the disappointingly vanilla gunplay, aptly portrayed on the horrible “Booker Dewitt and his trusty shotgun” box art, is one of the last reasons I’d want to go back to Columbia. Frankly, I’d just as soon go back into the Protector Trials for Bioshock 2.
Fortunately, the rest of the season’s pass consists of single-player story stuff, which is probably why you were into Bioshock Infinite. Parts one and two of Burial at Sea will be available at dates yet to be determined. Each part is its own installment in the three-part season’s pass you bought before knowing what it included. It’s hard to believe this is from the same publisher whose Borderlands 2 season’s pass was such a great deal.
By the way, I’m selling a pair of 1988 Jeep Wranglers on Craig’s list. It’s a package deal. You get two cars for one price: the front half of a 1988 Jeep Wrangler and the back half of a 1988 Jeep Wrangler. Email me if interested.
This week Tom Chick talks to the San Filippo brothers about their hypnotically cool Race the Sun, an endless runner that’s not just an endless runner. And it’s always an interesting game-of-the-week session when two of the three games are entirely out of the blue. Gorgoa? A Ride into the Mountains? Leave it to indie developers like the San Filippos to suss out the cool indie games.
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Rodrigo Gudino is the founder of a horror enthusiast magazine called Rue Morgue. Those aren’t really the credentials I look for in a director. So I can hardly blame you if you suppose his latest movie, The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh, wouldn’t be worth watching, even though he somehow finagled Vanessa Redgrave into lending it her stately voiceover. But rather than read anything I have to say to the contrary, watch this minor masterpiece of tableau. Seriously. Just watch it. It’s only six minutes. And it’s the six minutes that sealed the deal for me wanting to see Gudino’s latest movie without knowing anything else about it.
Last Will and Testament presumably stars Aaron Poole — I know him from Ed Gass-Donnelly’s fascinating Small Town Murder Songs — as a man staying in his mother’s house shortly after her death. But the real star of the movie is the production design for the house. If you watched the short I linked above, you’ll see in this movie’s set the same amount of lovingly eerie detail. You’ll also see the camera once again as an active participant. Gudino uses it to prowl the house with otherworldly intention. Is he showing us things? Is this someone — or something — looking at things? Is this a ghost’s point of view? And how does he explain Redgrave’s voiceover? Although it’s ultimately more mood than plot, I’m convinced it all makes as much sense as it needs to make. And although it’s slow, creepy, and subtle, it’s perfectly willing to be shocking. There are at least two “what the effing eff did I just see?” scenes, including one where I couldn’t see half the scene. But when Gudino wants to show you something, he sure knows how to show it.
The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh is currently available on VOD services. Watch is here on Amazon.com to support Qt3.
In Dragon Commander, you don’t command dragons. That would be silly. Instead you are a dragon. Who commands stuff, since this is a real time strategy game. But when you’re not commanding, you have to make political decisions as part of the turn-based strategy front end. For instance, what do you do when your vegetarian elf princess wife (pictured) is invited to a dwarven banquet where they’re serving meat?
But if you thought that was a tough decision, wait till you see what issue Dragon Commander tackles after the jump.
After the jump, choose wisely Continue reading →
Like many decent sequels, especially when they’re on a Nintendo system, Pikmin 3 is just more Pikmin. The basic experience doesn’t differ from the usual slight cute puzzles, all very Nintendo, all very Wii, all very candy colored and conveniently soluble and cheerfully chirping and rather irresistable, all very Pikmin. But there are four things to recommend Pikmin 3 over the previous Pikmins.
After the jump, think pink Continue reading →
3 guys 2 Guns on this week’s podcast. Then, at the 56-minute mark, we talk about our favorite movies trees.
Next week: Elysium
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The F-4 Phantom IIs in my squadron, which consists of nothing but Phantoms and a single E-2 AWACS on overwatch, are veritable mules of war, what with all the stuff you can cram up under their wings. Missiles, rockets, guns, bombs, fuel. These were A-10s before A-10s were even invented, but instead of so-awkward-they’re beautiful, they’re simply beautiful. Simultaneously bulky and sleek, with stubby wings, jutting air intakes flanking the cockpit like be-pauldroned shoulders, and frowny downturned horizontal stabilizers that defy the usual neat empennage (empennage is the word for the little wings on an airplane’s butt). The Phantom looks like a spaceship someone thought up in the 1950s. In this wonderful solitaire boardgame of Vietnam era air strikes, I am their leader.
After the jump, not your grandfather’s Cuban missile crisis Continue reading →
I love the guns in the Metro games. Awkward, ruthless, post-apocalyptic testaments to the harsh reality of scavenging. Namely, that a good gun isn’t a pretty gun. These so-ugly-they’re-beautiful Frankenstein firearms are the most memorable weapons you’ll find this side of your Borderlands locker. The first round of downloadable content for Metro: Last Light, called the Faction Pack, has some grand new additions, like the Reich’s pneumato-electro-whatever sniper rifle (pictured) and the last-resort single-shot flare gun for the Polis ranger. Firing these ungainly beauties was nearly enough to make me not care that two thirds of the Faction Pack is brainless shooting minus Metro’s somber storytelling. I’m here to shoot funky fugly lovely guns and chew bubblegum, and the apocalypse burned up all the bubblegum.
After the jump, say hello to my ugly friends Continue reading →
