Yarr. One episode of Tales of Monkey Island and no gold out of yer pocket. 'Tis a value of free ninety-nine!
In no time at all ye will find yerself treasure huntin', seeking the hand of comely wenches and crossin' swords with the Dread Pirate Le Chuck. So don't be a-feared, but prepare to click the link!
Meh.
Marvel was already a huge corporate entity. Stan Lee is a multi-millionaire, people! Anyway, I part ways with most people on the whole 'corporations are inherently evil' thing. Corporations are made up of people. And people can be kind of stupid and greedy, yes, but that's the risk you run anywhere.
In the short run, I don't see that the merger will have that much impact on Marvel, unless it's positive. Disney is supposedly not firing everyone and replacing them with Mouseketeers. And Marvel now has access to the infinite resources of the vast Disney media empire.
I'm not as savvy as Wired is that Pixar is going to start churning out Marvel films, though. I mean, technically if they wanted to do that there was nothing stopping them already. There is this thing called 'licensing', you know.
Meanwhile, Penny Arcade has ( other concerns... )
Yep, that Dungeons and Dragons. The one where you roll funny-shaped dice and pretend to be an elf and say things like "I cast magic missile on the vampire lord!"
Well, okay, it's not exactly the D&D that social mitfits played in their parents' basements in 1985. The makers of the game recently (er, two years ago) released the Fourth Edition of the core rulebooks, giving the iconic tabletop role playing game a major overhaul. I'm a long time fan of cRPGs ('computer role playing games', like Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights), virtually all of which are inescapably based on the principles of D&D. But I had never played the actual, dork-tastic, dice-rolling table top game.
When I heard a new edition was immanent, I was curious mostly because there will inevitably be a video game or two based on the rule set (and dozens more influenced by it). But as I started reading about what was changing, I got really intrigued. I realized I wanted to try the game itself.
If you already know your d20 from your d10, then Wikipedia has a pretty good summary of the technical differences from '3e' to '4e'. But here's the high-level view.
Ahem:
D&D 4e is a game that allows players and a 'game master' to quickly dive in and start playing a game of intricate, tactical fantasy-based combat and exploration. A group of 4-6 players works together as a close-knit team to solve puzzles, escape traps and, most importantly, beat up monsters and steal their treasure. Which you then use to get better stuff for killing monsters and... rinse, lather, repeat.The emphasis on tactical combat was the part that first caught my attention. I love a good game of tactics. D&D 4e really shines at letting players create a 'party' of characters where everyone has an important role to contribute to fighting off ravening hoards of zombies. The game is designed to be played with an actual gridded map on the table, with markers for good guys, bad guys, rivers of molten lava, etc. In some ways it's like a really intricate, really flexible board game.
When I got back from Amsterdam I immediately started looking for a game to get involved in. Sadly, there seem to be a paucity of D&D action within easy driving distance. So I said, what the heck, I'll just start my own. I purchased dice and a dry erasable 'battle mat', got the rulebooks and started in on the process of convincing my friends that this wasn't nerdy at all oh no not even a little bit.
Two weeks ago seven of us staked out a big round table in the lobby of my friend Jeff's apartment complex. We drew a map, put some chess pieces on it for markers, stashed a ton of caffeine in a cooler, and started playing. I was nervous - it was my first time ever really playing and I was in charge of running the game! What if I forgot something? What if I messed up the rules? What if people weren't having fun?
We had a blast.
If you need proof that Dungeons and Dragons is not just a pastime for Comic Book Guys and teenagers without girlfriends, I think we are Exhibit A: two of the party are happily married, we had a girlfriend and boyfriend at the table, fully half the 'party' was female, and no one was under the age of 28. And they were rolling dice and hitting skeletons with their warhammers like there was no tomorrow.
( Our adventures so far, in brief... )
At any rate, we're two games in and people seem to genuinely be enjoying themselves, rather then just humoring me, so hopefully we'll continue for a while. As geeky hobbies go, this one is fairly unique! So much so that if you've never tried it, you might actually give it a go. There's a lot of weird mis-conceptions about what D&D actually is. They seem to run the gamut from fantasy world for social misfits to recruiting tool for Satanists. The truth is probably closer to 'glorified board game', or perhaps a very elaborate game of 'Mafia'. Whatever the case, we're having fun.
Since I'm now a full-fledged Game Master, you can probably expect more postings on our ongoing campaign and perhaps even the ins-and-outs of the 4e rule-set in the future. I'll tag them with a D&D tag, so you can avoid them as necessary.
You've been warned!
Yes, I'm stuck. Which means that yes, I'm playing a classic adventure game. Sort of. Does anyone remember the hilarious Lucasarts classic, The Secret of Monkey Island? Well, it's back.
Way back in 1990 Lucasarts released this seminal hilarious pirate puzzle game. Players starred as Guybrush Threepwood, the dweebiest pirate wannabe ever, as he took on the Dread Pirate LeChuck and sought to win the love of the fair Governor Elaine. The game featured wall-to-wall sixteen bit sound and a scintillating 256 colors, every pixel of which was highly visible.
It was brilliant.
Flash forward nearly two decades, and my sister is telling me that the game is available... on Steam?!? And the art and music has been completely redone? And voice work added? Seriously?
Yes, she insisted, it's true. And to prove it, she and Steven bought me the game! I downloaded it and am now knee deep in scurvy scalawags and swashbuckling sea-dogs. Don't believe me? See for yourself:
The really cool thing about the 'remake' is that it's built on the exact same source code. At ANY point in game you can hit F10 and flip seamlessly to the pixel-intensive original. Which is worth checking out, by the way, just to see what passed for state of the art back then. To it's credit, the original Monkey Island made the best possible use out of the available technology. That's why it's still such a good game.
It's also very funny and the puzzles are clever but generally without being wall-bangingly maddening.
( I have a couple of niggling nitpicks with the update but they're hardly worth mentioning... )
So I'll just say instead that if you've got ten bucks to drop and you love either pirates, monkeys, or adventure games you need to get on Steam (or XBox Live if you're into that) and download it pronto. This is an adventure game in the classic style, faithfully ported into the twenty-first century. GET IT.
And then if someone could PLEASE kindly help me get the herring from that dang sea-gull?!
Video gaming's longest-running-joke has come to an end with no punch-line: Duke Nukem Forever is canceled as developer 3D Realms dissolves due to financial difficulties.
Damn you, credit crisis! Is nothing sacred?!?
I think we all assumed that the storyline would go something like this: DNF would eventually be released. If it was a flop, the derision would be universal but the joke would be satisfying. The other scenario was vindication. DNF would be such a triumph of video game virtue that it would silence all critics and justify it's many years of being the butt of all jokes.
I don't think this was on anyone's radar.
Didn't 3DR make a huge pile of money selling off the Max Payne franchise? What did they blow it all on, a cocaine habit?
Anyway.
The Duke Nukem series has a lot of history for me. When I was young and VGA was new, I saw a demo for the original side-scrolling platform game Duke Nukem running on a friend of my dad's top-end 386x PC. The advertisement said something to the effect of, "Better than Nintendo", an unheard of statement in those days, but it looked like it just might be.
In due time my dad and I scraped together a computer capable of playing the thing. We played the shareware version until we wore a groove in the disk drive, then eventually the rest of the game as well. When Duke Nukem II dropped, we were there (I think my dad is still playing that one).
Duke Nukem 3D, a joke of sorts at the end of the second installment, became reality circa 1995. It left my dad behind (he's never made the switch to 3D gaming) but my friends and I greatly enjoyed it. It's goofy action-hero sensibilities were great, and the multiplayer was violent and highly engaging. Plus, the game was kinda groundbreaking.
Duke, you'll live on Forever in our hearts. Hail to the king, baby.
UPDATE: some sources are claiming that since 3D Realms parent' company survives, development on DNF is not affected. Color me skeptical, to say the least.
As a standalone, though, it's loud, chaotic, and goofy, one of the more negligible entries in the comic-book genre.Watching it, I got the feeling that I was about ten years too old to really be in that sweet spot of amped-up testosterone-fueled action-movie enjoyment. I felt as though this template of PG-13 Hollywood Action Movie had been jammed onto it. It needed to be either a lot grittier and psychological, or a smidge more light-hearted and breezy.
I think there were some genuinely good ideas buried in there. With a little tweaking I think this could have been a winner. For instance, I'm sure that I was not the only person who wanted to see more of the Mutant Black Ops team. I'd watch that movie! Also, Wolverine's brother managed to be an interesting character in spite of being fairly one-dimensional. Then there's the fact that the dude has fought in every major American war of the past 150 years. THAT has some interesting implications.
But mostly the movie is intent on rushing through all this and getting to the part where Wolverine wakes up with a headache and no memories and decides to become an X-man.
One of the places where I'd part ways with Mr. Snider is this:
I get the feeling the film was made exclusively for hardcore fans of the "X-Men" comics. It is rife with characters, events, and details that have nothing to do with what's going on but that have clearly been included to produce fanboy salivation. That's good pandering, but bad filmmaking.I disagree. I have very little detailed, comic-book geek knowledge of the X-men canon, but I really enjoyed that stuff. And wanted more.
Comic book movies have received a huge boon in the past couple years. And not from CGI technology, like you might expect, but from people like J.J. Abrams. Thanks to shows like Lost and its imitators, today's film consumers are a lot more willing to put up with and even expect complicated mythologies and sophisticated, twisting plots. Oh, and lots of characters.
I like that the recent Marvel films are willing to indulge in this kind of thing. It reminds people watching comic book movies about what we like so much about... comic books.
You know, the Romans first said it: the clothes make the man. Can wearing a costume inspire someone, either negatively or positively, to do things they normally wouldn't? Well, I have no problem with that idea. Sometimes the act of 'putting on someone else's skin' can give us a fresh perspective and overcome the inertia of our every day lives.
What I'm saying is, I can totally understand on how being dressed as Batman might make one more willing to take on terrorists.
You know, maybe we should all start wearing a Spider Man costume under our clothes. We might make the world a safer place!
It's official that the two prequels to the Lord of the Rings being filmed will be just The Hobbit, in two parts. I think I'm fairly positive on that decision. Part of me really loved the idea of the second film being 'tabula rasa', a blank slate in Tolkien's world on which new stories could be written. But harsh experience has taught us all, I think, that there's so, SO many ways that that can go wrong.
At any rate, with two films to fill it looks like they are going to expand the scope of The Hobbit to include the events surrounding Dol Guldur and other hints at the larger backdrop of the Third Age.
I'm down with that.
By the way, if you haven't already you need to go Netflix Pan's Labyrinth and and find out why Guilermo Del Toro is the man for this job. Fantastic journeys through strange worlds are just what he DOES.
I don't think Realms ever made much of a splash commercially, but it was a great game. A friend gave it to me, I think. I had no idea what it was, but one fateful evening
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unfjoel and I popped the first of the four CD-ROMs into the drive. We were immediately introduced, through the magic of Full Motion Video (still popular in the late nineties), to a man who has just buried his father, had a run in with a very dubious priest, and is now on his way to a strange house that he has seen frequently in his dreams. We also learn that his father left him a strange relic and that his dreams are grainy CGI renders. But whatevs.Then he steps into the haunted house, the doors slam shut behind him, and the game begins.
The game itself was a hybrid of an old-school first person shooter and an adventure game. You moved around with the arrow keys and shoot things, but you could click on objects with your mouse to investigate them. And there were also points in conversations and in the FMV sequences where you had choices to make. Basically, if they'd thrown in some real time strategy they would have covered every genre of nineties PC game.
What I mostly remember about the game (aside from it being SUPER long) was that it was absolutely sopping with spooky atmosphere. I mean, Joel and I were playing together throughout most of it and it was still scaring the pants off us. But the story was so devilishly intriguing that we didn't really have a choice, we had to keep playing. Hmm, sort of like our hapless protagonist. I wonder why that strange priest had a copy of this game lying around for me anyway? Well, nevermind...
I knew absolutely nothing about this game going in, and that was definitely the very best way to experience it. Because what starts as your typical hack-your-way-out-of-the-spooky-mansion game quickly becomes much more.
( Spoilers... for a game that's over a decade old )The other thing I remember about the game was that it was SUPER long (I mean, four CDs was a lot in those days) and that some of the maze-based puzzles were a bit... galling.
It was worth it though. It was inventive in its scares (I still get chills thinking of the long, dusty hallways where you have to crunch your way over thousands of dead rats). And the story was quite passable, especially for a video game. As the narrator in the above YouTube link points out, it's like the people who shot the movie sequences actually knew what they were doing... and cared.
Anyways, if you find yourself in the mood for a classic PC game, this might be worth digging up. There are some helps out there to get you running with it on your Computer Of The Future, which is what poor Realms will think you have. But if you come across it in a used game bin, you should scoop that puppy up and give it a whirl. It's a certifiable classic.
Audience Participation: what old games have you recently unearthed? And did they hold up against your memories of them?
Regardless, I'm pretty sure I have a handle on what happened here. The grandmaster was so disarmed by his young opponents' apparent wide-eyed innocence that he forgot there was a game in progress. Cheeky little bastard!
Let me know how it goes!
It really is worth picking up. Get this, even if you don't read a lot of sci-fi.
Briefly, it's the story of three friends growing up sometime during the present. One night, without warning, all the stars in the sky go out. Panic sets in - if the sun doesn't come up in the morning the earth will be an icicle in no time.
Without ruining too much, the sun does come up in the morning. But without the moon or the stars. Earth has also lost all contact with orbital satellites, and when an astronaut on the International Space Station returns reenters the atmosphere after having been gone for just minutes, he is babbling about having been out there for three weeks.
Our hero's best friend, Jase, is the genius son of a well-connected leader in the aeronautics industry. So we're kept abreast of unfolding developments.
It turns out that our homeworld has been enveloped in an envelope that slows time. For every second of Earth time, the universe outside is rushing by, weeks crammed into minutes, eons that take just days. This is a problem.
You know how over the course of billions of years our sun is supposed to grow old, expand, consume most of the solar system, and die? Yeah, that's going to happen in about twenty years.
This is perhaps the kind of classic story that science fiction does best: the tale of the apocalypse. And while there's plenty of technobabble and geekery to go around, the heart of the story is two people (our hero and Jason's sister) dealing with their feelings for each other and with the fact that their generation is most likely the Last Generation.
This is a very thoughtful and human piece of SF. Recommended.
For those of you who aren't huge nerds, DRM is the reason why you can't copy music you bought on iTunes to your friends' computer and why you have to enter those really long CD keys every time you install Windows software. Basically, DRM is what prevents the PC universe from descending into an orgy of illegal copying and file sharing. Or so the theory goes.
Others aren't so savvy on the idea, and feel that DRM restricts users from using what is rightfully theirs.
Here's what I want to see: I don't want to buy an MP3 file, or a five installs of a program, or whatever. I want to buy the right to that song, to that movie, that game, to download or watch or listen to on whatever computer I currently own, or may own, forever and ever, amen.
I'm confused as to why iTunes is still asking me to backup my purchases. They ARE backed up, Apple - on your servers! You know which ones I've bought and paid for. I should be able to re-download them at any point and for no extra cost. The same goes for games on Steam such as Portal, and in fact anything that has been digitally streamed directly to my computer. Which, in the future, will be everything.
I believe that this will be law someday, when copyright law catches up a little bit with the information age. As physical media goes the way of the dodo, exactly what we are buying with our money will have to be more specifically and concretely defined.
I don't think 'everything free' is a viable model, really. Sorry, libertarian anarcho-capitalists. I accept that there will probably always be the tug of war between publisher and consumer about 'making copies' and 'sharing'.
But the question about whether or not I can use software that I legitimately paid for and downloaded on a computer or device that I own should not even enter into the discussion.
But whenever those funky scientists start scratching their heads, they just harness the power of hip-hop. You can too, with this educational rap video!
( Get ready to get rocked in the head... )
This one's a long one, but totally worth it for fans. Adam Savage recently addressed a hacker conference, of all things. He gives a speech on his obsessions, which include building full scale replica models of dodo skeletons and the Maltese Falcon (not to mention goodies like a hand-drawn map of Middle Earth). He then does over a half hour of free-wheeling Q&A, mostly on the topic of everyone's favorite cable TV show. Some really interesting tidbits in there as well.
Check out the video below the break:
( Read more... )
* It's not really Video Wednesday
I've never really gotten 'into' Neal Stephenson like some people (I need to read Cryptonomicon one of these days, but if you think I'm reading all 2700 odd pages of The Baroque Cycle you'd better check your meds), nor do I have the obsessive attention span necessary to attempt solving cryptography problems, but this is kind of cool. To promote the release of the first volume there was, of course, a website, and the first page of the site contained a cryptic inscription.
One intrepid (or very bored) reader went to work on it, and over the course of many months finally solved the puzzle, all by his lonesome and without any formal training. You can read all about his own Baroque odyssey here.
The good news is that the resulting message was NOT "Drink More Ovaltine".
