Marvel movies of late have never seemed particularly good to me. Sure, they can be entertaining with well-done action sequences but that’s about where my interest stops. These movies tend to lack quality and they range from okay to pretty good. The plots have started to run together for me because they all mirror each other. The bad guy hatches a plot, the hero steps up, tries to overcome a personal obstacle and defeats the bad guy in the nick of time. “The Avengers” looked like more of the same and I was in no rush to go out and see it. I was confused when so many people kept telling me how good it was and I was even more confused when I found out how much money it was making. Maybe Marvel had stepped up its game and made a super hero movie that gets out of its comfort zone? Not really, but I had a lot more fun watching this than I did with “Iron Man,” “Iron Man 2,” ”Captain America” and “The Incredible Hulk.” I missed “Thor”, but I don’t think I’m missing much. (more…)
In the summer of 2010, “The Human Centipede (First Sequence)” was available on our local On Demand service and Kevin and I decided to watch it together with some trepidation. After it was over, he and I both agreed that the movie is disturbing only if you let your imagination run away from you, and neither of us wanted to watch the impeding sequels. As I’m sure you’ve figured out by now, I unfortunately ended up watching the second one after all. (more…)
Movies based on video games are plentiful, but finding ones that are actually worth a damn are few and far between. It’s no big secret that they’re notoriously awful, but, though this subset of video game movies is relatively small, documentaries that focus on the medium have had a great track record in my experience. One very entertaining and informative example of this is “The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters.” The gaming community can safely chalk up another spot in the win column with “Indie Game: The Movie.” This documentary follows different independent game developers at different stages in their production. It details how these games get started and what goes into making them. As consumers it’s easy to forget that there are people behind the the games we sometimes take for granted, but as this movie clearly shows there’s a lot more to developing a video game than writing lines of code. (more…)
Everybody likes “The Wizard of Oz.” Everybody. They might not love it, but they, at least, enjoy it to some degree. Whether it’s the girliest of girly-girls, your grandparents, or the fry-bag dude that lived in your dorm that showed it to you with the sound off while having it synched-up to Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon,” I don’t know anyone that has a prevailing negative feeling about this movie. Then again, if you do, I don’t really want to know you anyway.
That being said, when a “Wizard of Oz,” edition of the card game Fluxx came to my attention, I knew that it would be something that would gain a fair amount of interest in my circles, so giving it a whirl was definitely in order.
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As a person that’s begun to tire of the same ol same ol when it comes to my video games it’s been an interesting year or two. I can feel myself turning my back on the big huge AAA titles in search of something different, more unique. I like games that take the medium in a new direction, or try something different. Games like Limbo, Bastion, Journey or To The Moon for example. So it’s with that sort of mentality that I can say I really appreciate games like Yesterday for existing.
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Unless you’ve been living in a cave with no internet access, you probably heard of a little movie called, “The Hunger Games,” which opened up last weekend to largely positive reviews, and a shit-ton of money. The movie shares the same title as the young adult book on which it is based. Both tell the story of Katniss Everdeen, a girl from District 12, the poorest district of all in the future nation of Paenam.
Each of the twelve districts in this dystopian society are powerless against the control of the Capitol. Every year, as a way to flex their control and continue their subjugation over the districts, the Capitol holds an event called, The Hunger Games. For this event, each district must randomly choose a boy and girl between the ages of 12 and 18 to fight in an arena to the death and only one may come out alive.
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Just now, inside your head you read the headline to this post in whatever voice you use to do that with. Just like you’re doing it now. And now. Here too. I guarantee there is no way you didn’t have a ton of fun hearing the word “Wizorb” in your head as you read it. Go ahead and say it out loud now, don’t worry what other people might think just say it. “Wizorb” Feels good, right? Something about the way your mouth feels when you meld that “z” sound into the “orb” part that is immensely satisfying. Whoever named this game should be given some sort of medal or something. (more…)
Wizards of the Coast did a great job of bringing the RPG Dungeons and Dragons to the board game arena last year. They released the Risk-ish area control game Conquest of Nerath and the tile-based co-op dungeon crawlers Castle Ravenloft, Wrath of Ashardalon and Legend of Drizzt. All good in their own ways for sure. But with Lords of Waterdeep they’ve gone in a totally different direction. Euro.
This is a worker placement game, through and through. You’ll use workers placed around the board to trigger different events. The goal is not to rack up a body count or hoard treasure like in a dungeon crawler, here it’s all about victory points. And while it takes place in the Dungeons and Dragons universe, the influence of the seminal RPG is minimal when it comes to gameplay rather taking the inspiration for the setting and activities be colored by DnD. Why, there aren’t even any dice in the game! I know, it’s craziness!
It’s also fantastic.
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