Thursday, February 25, 2010
On my many deaths
I did mean to mention that I have been playing Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer on the DS pretty religiously. And I've died. A lot. And I've lost some pretty good loot. I have yet to make it to the top of Table Mountain, but I have reached said Mountain. Once. I was pretty close to adding a little widget over to the side chronicling my many horrid deaths, (Curse you Piggy! I want my sword back!) but I've died so many times the practicality of updating it is a little silly. Just know that I will get to the top of the Mountain. Oh yes I will. In spite of the Tanks and the Piggos and the Cursed Girls and the...
In which I've got nothing to say about very little
We have caught a couple films in the past week. Well, ok I've watched a couple, lovely wife only watched one. The one we saw together was Linda, Linda, Linda. It's a Japanese slice of life story about 4 girls that try to get a band together in 3 days. Three of the girls have played together before, but they need a new lead singer due to typical teenage girl angst - the bff's are on the outs at the moment. So they ask the Korean transfer student to fill in. Mostly because she's walking by and they can tweak the ex-singer's nose. So you follow the girls as they try to help the new girl come out of her shell a bit and get the band read for the culture festival.
Lovely wife will tell you that it was only ok and really slow. And while I can't argue the speed of the film (it is most certainly not fast paced. At all.) I did like it. Quite a bit actually. It helped that the song the girls were working on is pretty catchy, but I also found it a fun look at another culture. The movie does a good job of portraying life at that time for those girls. Yup. Good stuff.
The film I watched that lovely wife did not was Pandorum, a nice little sci fi horror flick. I actually think she would have liked it had she given it a shot, but I didn't know enough about it to sell her on it. Other than it was recommended by a friend. It actually was a lot of fun and I liked the ending quite a bit. You do have to pay some attention to it - the plot is a little on the confusing side - but the payoff is totally worth it. It concerns a couple of crew members on a space ship that wake up with little to no information about what's going on with the ship - they just know things Aren't Right. And they of course go downhill from there. Good fun.
There will be some book talk coming up, but I've not really finished anything worth talking about recently.
The letter 'r' and his fiance were over last night and a few games were played. She's relatively new to board games so we played a round of Pitchcar, some Bang! and a little Shipwrecked. It's actually been a little interesting going back through our collection looking for things to help ease a newcomer into the world of hobby gaming. I think maybe we'll try Loot and Bull in a China Shop at some point. Possibly Carcassonne as well. Or we could just jump into Arkham Horror. Heh.
Lovely wife will tell you that it was only ok and really slow. And while I can't argue the speed of the film (it is most certainly not fast paced. At all.) I did like it. Quite a bit actually. It helped that the song the girls were working on is pretty catchy, but I also found it a fun look at another culture. The movie does a good job of portraying life at that time for those girls. Yup. Good stuff.
The film I watched that lovely wife did not was Pandorum, a nice little sci fi horror flick. I actually think she would have liked it had she given it a shot, but I didn't know enough about it to sell her on it. Other than it was recommended by a friend. It actually was a lot of fun and I liked the ending quite a bit. You do have to pay some attention to it - the plot is a little on the confusing side - but the payoff is totally worth it. It concerns a couple of crew members on a space ship that wake up with little to no information about what's going on with the ship - they just know things Aren't Right. And they of course go downhill from there. Good fun.
There will be some book talk coming up, but I've not really finished anything worth talking about recently.
The letter 'r' and his fiance were over last night and a few games were played. She's relatively new to board games so we played a round of Pitchcar, some Bang! and a little Shipwrecked. It's actually been a little interesting going back through our collection looking for things to help ease a newcomer into the world of hobby gaming. I think maybe we'll try Loot and Bull in a China Shop at some point. Possibly Carcassonne as well. Or we could just jump into Arkham Horror. Heh.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
In which I go Rogue...like
This week on a very special episode of Brought to you by the letter 'd' we will be discussing Roguelikes. Mostly because I'm playing Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer on the DS and it is awesome. If you can locate a copy (it took us a few stores) you can pick it up for around $15 and I recommend you do so. Unless you hate fun. But there are a few things you should know first so you don't come crawling back to ol' letter 'd' complaining about how this isn't fun. (In which case I will tell you that you are wrong and then go back to playing.)
Roguelikes are a genre of video game based upon the game Rogue. For they are Rogue like. You see? Simple. Typically they are a dungeon crawl in which you, the poor wandering fool, are attempting to reach a goal so many levels into said dungeon. You will encounter treasure and random dungeon layouts and monsters. Occasionally in that order. In the Shiren games they are turn based so that for every move you make, the monsters in that level of the dungeon also get to make a move. Oh and if you happen to get killed (you will) you are sent back to the beginning minus your levels and items. You get to start over. Armed only with the knowledge you acquired and a pithy statement about how you died at the hands of a Rice Boss.
Additionally the Shiren games let you make small adjustments to the world over time. You will encounter people that may become allies. You occasionally find storehouses where you can leave things for your future self to take and so on. But yeah, you'll get terribly familiar with the first few areas as you learn how things work and so on. Good fun. There are several roguelikes available for trying out. Nethack is one of the more famous ones, although I've heard it can be pretty difficult to dive into without some knowledge about how it works. Angband is another one with a Tolkein bent. This here column talks about roguelikes in some detail. Also Episode 9 of Active Time Babble talks about them at length.
In other news a decent three day weekend was had as casa del 'd' visited friends way up North. We watched the Percy Jackson flick (it was good if wildly different from the book) and played some games. Tobago is indeed better with 3-4 players. But that will most likely get its own post once I get some pictures. Really not good at the taking and posting pictures.
Roguelikes are a genre of video game based upon the game Rogue. For they are Rogue like. You see? Simple. Typically they are a dungeon crawl in which you, the poor wandering fool, are attempting to reach a goal so many levels into said dungeon. You will encounter treasure and random dungeon layouts and monsters. Occasionally in that order. In the Shiren games they are turn based so that for every move you make, the monsters in that level of the dungeon also get to make a move. Oh and if you happen to get killed (you will) you are sent back to the beginning minus your levels and items. You get to start over. Armed only with the knowledge you acquired and a pithy statement about how you died at the hands of a Rice Boss.
Additionally the Shiren games let you make small adjustments to the world over time. You will encounter people that may become allies. You occasionally find storehouses where you can leave things for your future self to take and so on. But yeah, you'll get terribly familiar with the first few areas as you learn how things work and so on. Good fun. There are several roguelikes available for trying out. Nethack is one of the more famous ones, although I've heard it can be pretty difficult to dive into without some knowledge about how it works. Angband is another one with a Tolkein bent. This here column talks about roguelikes in some detail. Also Episode 9 of Active Time Babble talks about them at length.
In other news a decent three day weekend was had as casa del 'd' visited friends way up North. We watched the Percy Jackson flick (it was good if wildly different from the book) and played some games. Tobago is indeed better with 3-4 players. But that will most likely get its own post once I get some pictures. Really not good at the taking and posting pictures.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
In which I talk about the few things that I remember
We've seen a few movies and I've read a few books since the last time I had anything to say. But I can't remember what they were. So here are the highlights.
Paranormal Activity is awesome. I would actually love to have a conversation with K about this movie. It's sort of similar to one of the Exorcist movies we watched when we were younger and we had a conversation about how she didn't like scary movies that could happen. Now I know that this wasn't a true story, but I suspect there are people that have weird things happen to them. They did a really nice job of ratcheting up the tension in this movie. It was far better than the Blair Witch Project, that's for sure. So watch this one. In the dark. With the sound up. At night. Heh.
Malice is mostly book, part graphic novel. It follows a couple kids who discover that the world written about in a comic book is real. And not a nice place. And one of their friends has been killed there. So one of them decides to check it out and see what he can do to stop it. I enjoyed reading it and look forward to seeing what happens next. It's mostly on the fluff end of YA fiction, but it was fun to read, so that's worth something.
Memories of Murder is a movie about one of the first serial killers (if not the first) in South Korea. It was directed by the guy that did The Host which was a nice little monster movie a few years ago. This one deals with how the police force was completely unprepared for dealing with a serial killer. It's at turns sad, funny and horrifying. It was definitely interesting to watch.
Ping Pong was an amusing little Japanese film based on a manga series. It wasn't quite as funny as I'd hoped it would be and there wasn't quite as much Ping Pong as I'd hoped there'd be. Still it was funny and there is Ping Pong. Worth watching on a lazy Saturday when you want to kill some time.
I finished the audiobook version of Dune Messiah. Mostly because I always meant to read more of the series and decided to let my commute contribute to that effort. It was interesting. It's one of those, "let's take the hero from the first installment and turn everything on its head this time around" type stories. Paul Atreides isn't exactly a bad guy, but he's not really the all powerful force he was in the first one. Well, that's only sort of true too. Really this time around it shows him trapped by the powers that he came into in the first book. I'm not certain I'll finish the series, but anything is possible. I think I will give the next book a try. Although I hear that one of the characters actually turns into a sandworm at some point in the series. And that sounds a little silly to me...
We picked up Tobago the other day. I've heard rumors that it will be one of the games in the running for this year's SdJ award. It's part race game and part reverse deduction game. You set up an island at the beginning (the board is made up of 3 double sided pieces that lock together and a few pieces that you can set in various places according to a couple simple rules) and then play cards to help narrow down the location of up to 4 treasures. Things like in the biggest jungle, not in sight of a palm tree and so on. Once the treasure is narrowed down to one location it's a race to see who can get to it first. The people that contributed to locating the treasure all get a share of the loot with the person claiming it getting one extra bit. There's a slight press your luck element in the claiming as each player gets to look at part of the treasure with one extra card thrown in to keep things interesting. And occasionally the treasure is cursed causing you to lose treasure. It's really not too complicated and is a lot of fun. It's not bad with 2 people, but I bet things are a lot more interesting with 3 or 4.
I suppose there are other things that have happened, but at this point I can't be bothered to remember what they were. So off with you lot, go find something interesting to do.
Paranormal Activity is awesome. I would actually love to have a conversation with K about this movie. It's sort of similar to one of the Exorcist movies we watched when we were younger and we had a conversation about how she didn't like scary movies that could happen. Now I know that this wasn't a true story, but I suspect there are people that have weird things happen to them. They did a really nice job of ratcheting up the tension in this movie. It was far better than the Blair Witch Project, that's for sure. So watch this one. In the dark. With the sound up. At night. Heh.
Malice is mostly book, part graphic novel. It follows a couple kids who discover that the world written about in a comic book is real. And not a nice place. And one of their friends has been killed there. So one of them decides to check it out and see what he can do to stop it. I enjoyed reading it and look forward to seeing what happens next. It's mostly on the fluff end of YA fiction, but it was fun to read, so that's worth something.
Memories of Murder is a movie about one of the first serial killers (if not the first) in South Korea. It was directed by the guy that did The Host which was a nice little monster movie a few years ago. This one deals with how the police force was completely unprepared for dealing with a serial killer. It's at turns sad, funny and horrifying. It was definitely interesting to watch.
Ping Pong was an amusing little Japanese film based on a manga series. It wasn't quite as funny as I'd hoped it would be and there wasn't quite as much Ping Pong as I'd hoped there'd be. Still it was funny and there is Ping Pong. Worth watching on a lazy Saturday when you want to kill some time.
I finished the audiobook version of Dune Messiah. Mostly because I always meant to read more of the series and decided to let my commute contribute to that effort. It was interesting. It's one of those, "let's take the hero from the first installment and turn everything on its head this time around" type stories. Paul Atreides isn't exactly a bad guy, but he's not really the all powerful force he was in the first one. Well, that's only sort of true too. Really this time around it shows him trapped by the powers that he came into in the first book. I'm not certain I'll finish the series, but anything is possible. I think I will give the next book a try. Although I hear that one of the characters actually turns into a sandworm at some point in the series. And that sounds a little silly to me...
We picked up Tobago the other day. I've heard rumors that it will be one of the games in the running for this year's SdJ award. It's part race game and part reverse deduction game. You set up an island at the beginning (the board is made up of 3 double sided pieces that lock together and a few pieces that you can set in various places according to a couple simple rules) and then play cards to help narrow down the location of up to 4 treasures. Things like in the biggest jungle, not in sight of a palm tree and so on. Once the treasure is narrowed down to one location it's a race to see who can get to it first. The people that contributed to locating the treasure all get a share of the loot with the person claiming it getting one extra bit. There's a slight press your luck element in the claiming as each player gets to look at part of the treasure with one extra card thrown in to keep things interesting. And occasionally the treasure is cursed causing you to lose treasure. It's really not too complicated and is a lot of fun. It's not bad with 2 people, but I bet things are a lot more interesting with 3 or 4.
I suppose there are other things that have happened, but at this point I can't be bothered to remember what they were. So off with you lot, go find something interesting to do.
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