With the intro fight thugs dead, James got the pre-written adventure provided by Wizards of the Coast into full swing. The mayor told us how his town had been harassed by a Medusa and her loyal band of kobolds, but it had recently stopped (which was great!). Unfortunately, it had been replaced by a evil cult who had been uniting all types of baddies in a uneasy alliance with the goal of destroying the town outright (which was not great!). They also want to bring doom to the world because blah blah evil cult blah.
The point being: we had to stop them. With murder.
After the jump, how it went down Continue reading →
“Roll initiative?” Vegas asked. “But we aren’t even fighting!”
“Yes, you are,” James corrected him. “You’re all in a tavern having a drink when a group of thugs bust down the door. ‘Give us all your gold,’ they sneer.”
James is big into voices. One time we played a game online through Google Hangout, which allows you to put silly effects on yourself that sync up to your face on your webcam. He also downloaded a program that alters the pitch of his voice. For every NPC we encountered, he put on a virtual mask he had drawn and used a different voice. It was both really cool and incredibly surreal.
“I draw my sword!” Vegas exclaimed. “Let’s fight!”
After the jump, fighting! Continue reading →
“I’ve never played D&D with a girl before,” James confessed when I first told him that Audrey would be joining us. “I don’t want her to feel uncomfortable or anything; it can get kind of juvenile.”
“Are you talking about that one time you farted?” I asked. “You apologized like twenty times.”
“I, uh, well, we do other guy things.”
“You mean when Alex and I talk about UFC? You always tell us to be quiet and focus. One time you threw pretzels at us.”
“Yeah, well, good. Who wants to hear about dudes just laying on each other?”
“Listen,” I said, plopping a bag of dice on the table. “It shouldn’t be an issue at all. She owns a 360 and has a Live account. She even asked me if I play Call of Duty.”
“Ew.”
“Yeah, I know, but still. It doesn’t sound like she’ll be the judging type.”
“Fine. But she better bring snacks.”
After the jump, oh she brought snacks Continue reading →
I dig tabletop RPGs. More specifically, I dig the tabletop RPG: Dungeons and Dragons. Yeah. So? I like D&D. Don’t look at me that way. Unless you want a fight on your hands. Brah.
Honestly, most people are more curious than dismissive when I mention playing D&D. I always explain it as an interactive story that you tell with your friends, but with rules for combat. And when your friends are actors, or improv comedians, or writers, you can tell a pretty neat story.
Recently, Wizards of the Coast released their newest iteration of the rules (called D&D Next) for public playtesting. Over the years, countless Nerds have attempted to court Nerdesses while using this ever-evolving social game as a backdrop. Last weekend, I joined those hallowed ranks. Jealous? Cause you, uh, totally should be. Seriously though: I will fight you.
After the jump, an explanation Continue reading →
I was walking around in a local bookstore this weekend. The kind that has a cat, and you pet the cat, and then browse for books, and then you think that there isn’t anything interesting here but you can always go back and pet the cat again. Except on the way back to the cat part, I got sidetracked and took a trip I wasn’t expecting. That’s the best kind of bookstore.
After the jump, taking a trip from Greece to Greyhawk Continue reading →
I’m technically not supposed to say this until midnight tonight, but I really like the latest installment in a certain long-running series of games, hence this week’s wallet threat.
Rift gets an add-on called Storm Legion that consists of a new continent, player housing, a new type of rift, and new skill trees for each class. I dropped into the game last week and was surprised at how spoiled I am by the visuals in Guild Wars 2. I didn’t remember Rift looking so, well, rudimentary. But it sure did run smoothly! And the character system is as effective as ever if you like to mix-and-match skills to come up with your own play styles.
The Sims 3 gets seasons. I was tempted to take a cheap shot and say that EA is selling each season separately, but I liked what they did with the Supernatural add-on. And I really appreciate when seasons figure prominently into games. Assassin’s Creed III and Bully, for instance.
Also new this week is Paper Mario for the Nintendo 3DS, which might be the most ironic game ever made.
I can’t get enough of this silly thing. And boy is Need for Speed: Most Wanted a silly thing. But as I play, I notice things that Criterion and Electronic Arts didn’t have to do. Cool things. Things that ultimately make a difference for me. Need for Speed: Most Wanted didn’t have to be this good.
But, after the jump, it is Continue reading →
The latest Guilded is basically my to-do list now that I’ve hit the level cap. Read it at Gamespy.
As part of their Halo 4 launch week coverage, 1up asked me to write an article on the history of the Halo series. Has it really been ten years? It feels like longer.
Click here for five things Bungie did right, and five things Bungie did wrong.
Painkiller: Hell & Damnation is an uncanny Unreal 3 remix of the original Painkiller, which is my favorite Doom game of all time. It’s every bit as good as it was in 2004. Actually, better. I forgot how awesome it is to play a shooter that doesn’t need a reload key. And this time it’s got co-op support. If there’s one thing better than replaying Painkiller, it’s replaying Painkiller cooperatively.
Cargo Commander is an indie space dungeon exploration game. Think of it as a sci-fi Rogue-like with unique space-based qualities and the catchiest space honky-tonk aesthetic this side of Starcraft 1. Here’s how it plays.
The last few Assassin’s Creeds are kind of a blur for me. Kind of like they were a blur for the folks who made them. Zing! So I had very little enthusiasm going into Assassin’s Creed III. After playing for a while, I still had very little enthusiasm. Assassin’s Creed III starts slow, despite an interesting idea for how to do a prologue. It’s ponderous and familiar. It features way too much Desmond (at this point, any Desmond is way too much Desmond). For those of us burned out after a few years of cavorting around cities that weren’t as good as Venice, Assassin’s Creed III feels like just another Assassin’s Creed, but with dishwater dull Colonial architecture. Here we go again. But then you get past the first five or six hours and, holy cats, the Assassin’s Creed series is good again! At this point, I couldn’t be happier with how this is turning out. Consider your wallet imperiled.
After an extensive beta period, Natural Selection 2 finally goes live this week. This team-based aliens vs marines multiplayer shooter/strategy hybrid has a following from the first game for a reason. And lest you worry what you’re getting into, this is no free-to-play grindfest. It’s a straight-up, two-asymmetrical-but-equal-teams-against-each-other, reset-to-zero-when-you’re-done complete package.
And speaking of team-based multiplayer shooters with a twist, Guns of Icarus launches this week. This release doesn’t yet include an intended adventure mode where your airships fly around trade routes to make money and buy upgrades. Instead, it’s an airship vs airship skirmish game in which players crew the airships. Considering the dearth of airship deathmatches since Flying Heroes, I’ll take what I can get.
Electronic Arts releases Need for Speed: Most Wanted. No telling how long the servers will be up, so hurry up and race before it’s sunsetted!
Marvel Avengers: Battle for Earth is some sort of Kinect fighting game that poses the question “who would win in a fight between Spiderman and Wolverine?”. The correct answer is “Spiderman and Woverine aren’t Avengers”. I also would have accepted, “I’ve already played Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and I didn’t need a Kinect to do it”.
The better part of my weekend was spent with the final version of Fallen Enchantress, mostly losing against the AI. Stardock has really outdone themselves this time. If you like turn-based strategy games, if you like fantasy, even if you like RPGs, don’t miss this one.
A Game of Dwarves is publisher Paradox’s version of Dwarf Fortress with a 3D tileset and, presumably, a under-friendlier interface. Dwarf Fortress for Dummies? That doesn’t sound like a bad idea for those of us who’ve been standing at the base of the Dwarf Fortress learning cliff, staring up and wondering how we could ever get up there.
Forza Horizon is a perfectly cromulent caRPG with a laidback open-world conceit where the no-frills campaign mode used to go. Skylanders Giants is this year’s iteration of Toys for Bob’s and Activision’s Spyro-themed collectible toy/videogame series (look for a review later this week and coverage on the next games podcast). Oh, look, Medal of Honor: Fightwarrior, the latest in Electronic Arts attempt to answer the call of duty.
Lord of the Rings Online finally comes to Rohan this week. At this rate, the One True Ring will splashdown in the Crack of Doom sometime in 2017. Go Frodo, go!
007 Legends is a box of chocolates approach to celebrate fifty years of James Bond movies and 10 years of mostly forgettable Eurocom tie-ins. The Jewel of the Nile add-on for Serious Sam III adds Egyptian themed levels to a game that consists entirely of Egpytian themed levels. Furthermore, Serious Sam III itself comes to Xbox Live. The Legacy of Rome add-on for Crusader Kings II will get Byzantine on your ass. Dance Central 3, aka “the only reason to have a Kinect”, is out this week.
Finally, a Japanese RPG called Mugen Souls is out for the Playstation 3. It would have been out earlier, but publisher NIS had to edit out a sequence in which you grope women to level up. I am not making that up.
The Japanese version of the game contained a mini-game in which the player had to scrub/grope 2D depictions of female characters in a variety of bath scenes. The characters and surrounding audio/visual elements were extremely sexualized, and a number of the characters were depicted as potentially being pubescent or pre-pubescent. We decided to remove this content out of concern for the potential of receiving an AO rating from the ESRB, which would prevent us from releasing the game. In addition, as a company, we did not want NISA to release or be known for content that could be seen as sexualizing or objectifying children in this way. As this system contained no real story elements or gameplay (it was used to level up your characters, but the player’s inputs had no impact on the final stats) we felt it was not a substantial loss of content. Note that your characters will still level up as if you had viewed the scenes, so no gameplay functionality is lost.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYkuZ9zf18A
The new XCOM comes out this week, as well as Arkane Studio’s Thiefly RPG, Dishonored. Could this week be the peak of 2012’s holiday wallet threat?
But wait, there’s more! Atlus releases what looks like an ambitious JARPG — Japanese action RPG — for the Nintendo 3DS called Code of Princess. It’s about time I offload some of my recent action RPG habit to the DS. Cyanide transitions from Blood Bowl and Game of Thrones to Of Orcs and Men, an RPG in which you play an orc with a goblin sidekick. Kalypso releases a pirates and merchants strategy game called Port Royale 3. Fable and Harry Potter show up for the Kinect, if you’re into Fable, Harry Potter, or the Kinect as much as the actual people in the above video. All this and yet there are still only 24 hours in the day, some of which have to be spent sleeping, eating, and working?
If you’re into playing anthropomorphic panda bears, this is the week for you! World of Warcraft’s Mists of Pandaria adds playable pandas, even if the timing is a bit awkward. Also, something something soccer something PES 13 something something FIFA 13 something.
Maybe you’re not getting enough loot in Diablo III and Guild Wars 2. Maybe you need more. Because that’s the thing about loot. You never have enough. So this week, you’re in luck. Borderlands 2 and Torchlight II arrive, bearing even more loot.
I won’t know anything about Borderlands 2 until I pick up a copy (i.e. midnight tonight for the Xbox 360), but I have it on good authority that Torchlight II is pretty much exactly as good as you think it will be (i.e. even better than Torchlight I). I’m not too keen on what my 24th level liked Outlander (pictured) is wearing, but gear in Torchlight II is like the weather in the South. If you don’t like it, just wait fifteen minutes. It’s also nice to play an action RPG that I can make as difficult as I want whenever I want. It lets me get ambitious by starting out on veteran and then having to dial it down a notch half way into Act II. What a nice contrast to Diablo III, which forces you through an obligatory easy playthrough before it starts getting interesting.
The HD version of Jet Set Radio will be available on Xbox Live and the Playstation Store. I have no idea whether Jet Set Radio holds up in the real world as well as it holds up in my imagination, where it’s a timeless classic. But if it doesn’t hold up — hi, Tony Hawk HD! — I’ll at least have the soundtrack.
