I’ve known about this series for a long time now but never picked it up until last week spurned on by the “get to it before Hollywood does” mantra. I’ve had my doubts as so much fantasy in book form is just absolute tripe. Fafrd and The Grey mouser, Elric stuff, LoTR, Wizard of Earthsea and a couple of the Warhammer novels (I think actually only Konrad) is all I’ve been able to stomach from the genre. I don’t count John Gardner’s Grendel as that falls so far into the literature realm that it’s not even in the Fantasy section in bookstores.
As for Game of Thrones, The first couple chapters are rather weak, especially the prologue, and I felt I was getting into a generic fantasy novel the exact opposite of what I want to be wasting my very limited reading time on. This year so far I’ve read Suttree, Blood Meridian (for the second time) and The Far Side of the World (book 10 of the Master and Commander series). Except for the last one, those are some weighty acts to follow. Certainly, Game of Thrones is not literature, and you won’t be wowed by Hardy-esque descriptions of the Winterfell environs, or challenged by post modern discourses on language, but by chapter 3, the vast number characters, subplots and plots began unfolding and you realize sheer scale, and it really starts to rock and roll. The pacing is excellent and I think that’s what’s going to keep me reading. If I can squeeze in a chapter here and there– things happen and happen fast.
As for the show– it’s gotten glowing reviews from both critics and the impossible to please fans. I’m rarely one to say anything I read is great (except for say, Blood Meridian or Grendel; which are simply titans of modern literature) but Game of Thrones is solid stuff that ha yet to ring my cheese-bag fantasy bell.
WFB 8th edition kicks total ass. I’ve mentioned this before, and I will continue to keep reiterating it. Other than Blood Bowl, which is the best thing Games Workshop has ever and will ever create, WFB 8th edition is a solid second place: it’s better than Necromunda (gasp!), better than Man O’ War (I would be throttled for saying this in some quarters of our fair city) and, as always, it’s the better game between it’s cool but not so fun to actually play Warhammer 40K.
That said, it’s getting close to a year since 8th edition came out, and we have only a single army book that’s ‘official’ and one just announced (Tomb Kings). Granted the Skaven and Beastmen books were written as crossovers from 7th to 8th and work just fine, but there hasn’t been all that much out for the game in the last (almost) year. There was supposedly a big announcement for the summer, and this could be it: just announced is not another army book (which we need) but a ‘Storm of Magic’ expansion that extends the magic phase and adds in what appears to be some bigger, more powerful MONSTRARS. Given that my last game I shocked and awed my opponent as my measly lvl 1 Bray Shaman transformed in to an 8’s across the board Greater Red Dragon FTW, I guess— bring on the MONSTRARS! In addition, it’s pretty obvious from reading some 5000 per side plus battle reports that the magic system (while great) does not scale up when there are half a dozen or more spellcasters on the table per side. I’m looking forward to it and damn I still have so much to paint…
Reading about this announcement across the interwebtubes you really get the impression that long time Warhammer players love nothing better than to complain about every possible thing. I just want to shake some of these guys and remind them that in the 70’s and early 80’s NOTHING like what Games Workshop has created and maintained was even close to existing. Everything miniatures-wise pre-Citadel (i.e.:. before the mid 80’s) was pure shit on toast. If you think differently, you have your nostalgic head straight up your pre-gen-x butthole!
Note, this is from my first days into multiplayer, I’ve only played the single player a tiny bit here and there and haven’t messed with the training mode (which like Blazblue, is supposed to be excellente).
Character selection:
CAPCOM: Some good, but you will definitely miss quite a few the characters missing that appeared in MVC2. I know Capcom was trying to update the roster with more modern games but adding more Resident Evil guys? And not even any of the big spooky RE monstrars? Capcom’s potential roster is just so full of goodness that it’s sort of sad to see what filled the slots in MVC3. No Strider Hiryu, no Jin (my favorite!), and NO ONE from Rival Schools (Batsu and those kids) or Star Gladiator? Nor God Hand (Clover got in there with both Viewtiful Joe and Amerterasu from Okami though)? Bottom line: it’s really a mediocre line up compared to what could have been with all the possibilities Capcom had. I for one heartily approve of Zero replacing Megaman, the Devil May Cry guy is cool, I am glad to see some of the absolute joke characters removed (Roll and Servobot) and the Clover characters but the rest, while not meh, could have been better.
crying mad
MARVEL: Quite a few on the original roster were pretty lame in MVC2, so most of the cut characters you will not miss at all (war machine, thanos, silver samurai, Spiral, Omega Red were all meh-esque). Additions and retained characters though are a mixed bag. Super Skrull, great! Modok: great! Phoenix? Well, Ok. Shuma Gorath? Seriously who even knows who that is? Has anyone actually read Dr. Strange since the 80’s? It may be my taste, but Deadpool is really lame, Taskmaster and Dormammu are just generic guys with skull faces (one burning, one not). Dr. Doom, Magneto, have to be in there but no other members of the Fantastic 4? No Psylocke? She Hulk as the second bruiser rather than Juggernaut? Let me just lay it out here: The Avengers are and always have been the height of comicbook mediocrity and MVC3 has FIVE of their members (Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, She Hulk and Hulk). They are the blandest, most in-cohesive and thrown together super team there is, just the leavings of other comic books stuck together with some mansion with no coherent vision to justify their existence. Yes they are the Marvel heavy hitters, but have you ever really enjoyed a storyline with them as the Avengers? Compared to Justice League International/America from DC, Avengers writing and character arcs have always fallen flat. Each Avenger has stood on their own, well sort of, but the Xmen are simply better, better designs, better characters — just plain better.
Gameplay:
Ok so it’s insane. Most comboing is really easy compared to MVC2. I can pull off a ground combo to a launcher to air combo to super move with quite a few characters without much trouble, even with the Xbox controllers after just a few plays. It would take me a week of play to do the same things in MVC2. It’s a stark contrast to Street Fighter IV or King of Fighters in that you have to combo or chain every hit to win. It’s even more dramatic in this regard than Blazblue. The 3 on 3 is great fun but man characters go down fast sometimes.
Graphics:
I hate the look of the game and couldn’t figure out why for the longest time. The backgrounds are great, the specials look awesome, the character models are superb but the skins are what suck ass. The psuedo- cell shading and extreme highlighting/black lining they did to the skins that I just absolutely think is atrocious. I can’t really put it into words, it just looks like the characters are fighting at night all the time and some of the skins are just too plain. Look at Modok’s face for a good example of what I mean.
All in all, an absolute must-buy for the fighting fan buried inside me, I would have had to get it eventually. Will it top Virtua Fighter or Blazblue in getting play time? No, but it will be fun to get the unlocks and learn the system and get beat down online for a bit before it only gets pulled out at parties. Just like the old one, if everyone is a scrub it can be a great time to play with peeps that normally don’t get into the fighters.
Shacknews posted a bit that the developers of GW’s Blood Bowl will be doing a computer version of Rackham’s Confrontation– and absolutely excellent miniature skirmish game (at least the 3.0/3.5 rules era). Now I have another excuse to NEVER PAINT MY DRUNE.
Link for more info. This is one I will be following as closely as allowed by the interweb tubes.
Due to some much-needed wiring assistance over the weekend, I got the new box all set up and downloading FURIOUSLY from Steam. Though I was able to spark up Bad Company 2 for a few moments yesterday morning, my lovely, darling daughter came in to ask if she could sit on my lap while I ‘rode in the car’ which was actually a boat headed towards some nameless pacific island. I said yes, but then I remembered the first kill in Bad Company 2 was up the back with a knife and so just shut it down before seeing any of the amazing particle or lighting effects denied to me with my socket 939. That said, the first game I actually played last night, guiltily, was Torchlight. I just wanted to check if my character data was actually there up inside the steamcloud and, being that it was, ended up being an hour of destroying goblin hounds and the like.
I did span some time with Bad Company 2, just the single player, and goodness me it is pretty. The initial area of the Bolivia mapset is nothing short of amazing with the lighting, particles and foliage. Breathtaking stuff. Combining that BFBC2 is just flat out fun as shit makes this probably my only pick for game of the year 2010 on the PC (like all the magazine’s and websites have already stated, and I wholly agree, Red Dead Redemption is the game of the year in the Xboxen region), because I haven’t gotten around to Starcraft 2 yet. One cannot judge 2010 from any level: technologically, socially, musically, culturally or emotionally without experiencing Starcraft 2 (well, I was in the multiplayer beta for some beatings but that’s not enough), so I have to officially hold back judgement of GOTY until I get that shit put to bed. Given that I still play Warcraft 3 from 2003, I have a feeling.
Very happy with my build out and thanks to sensless for coming by to help put it together and everyone for their advice. The Ars Technica article that came out the day before I was making my purchase choices helped enormously, especially in the choice of case (Power is on TOP so no tiny hands switching off the power randomly) and solidifying the motherboard choice. I could have gone more hardcore with the video card, but the GTX 560 is doing the trick. Here is the list of stuffs:
LIAN LI Lancool PC-K7B Black Aluminum/ SECC ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
ASUS P8P67 (REV 3.0) LGA 1155 Intel P67 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
Sony Optiarc CD/DVD Burner Black SATA Model AD-7260S-0B
2X G.SKILL Value Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333
EVGA 01G-P3-1561-AR GeForce GTX 560 Ti FPB (Fermi) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support
Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5″ Internal Hard Drive
Platinum Games (Madworld, Infinite Space, Bayonetta) has put out some amazing and, in my opinion, underrated titles since they reformed from the defunct Clover Studio (creators of both the legendary God Hand and Okami). While God Hand is one of the greatest titles on the PS2, it is not the best. That glory belongs to the only beast left on the stage after all others have stepped down beneath the footlights: Urban Reign by Namco. Seen as Tekken toaster leavings in the States, Urban Reign, like God Hand, is an extremely difficult Double Dragon style brawler, one with some exceedingly unforgiving levels, well, unforgiving if like most of the reviewers of the game, you never bother to learn the fighting system. Hence the game, one of Namco’s best, was reviled by reviewers in the USA who typically get a game on a Wednesday and have to have a completed review on Friday. This is simply not possible with a game as difficult as Urban Reign (nor God Hand, nor Demon’s Souls). Of course, Japanese reviewers actually take the time to play the games they review, and it was put on the pedestal it deserves by the Japanese. Out since ’05, only in the last couple years have purveyors of punchy type video games spread the word of mouth across the Pacific that Urban Reign is not only one of the best Double Dragon-esque brawlers, it is the best game on the Playstation 2. While the single player is OK, what makes Urban Reign great is the multiplayer. It supports 4 person multi-tap, and if you haven’t experienced the game in this way, I urge you to go out and buy it and a multitap and do so, or find someone that has one. The game itself can be had for a song, the mulitap– not so much.
Namco, where’s the sequel? Steeped in Tekken, and probably brow beaten by poor sales over seas, I honestly don’t see Namco pulling out the franchise again in a recognizable form on a modern console (hell though anything is getting made into a mobile game these days). So where do we look for the next great Multiplayer brawler? Yeah, Platinum Game’s Anarchy Reigns. Looks like online co-op, online free for all (I counted 4 players total duking it out, but interviews say 8 at a time) and from the videos online so far– an assload of lag! No word yet on any single player, but the interviews (see below) have entirely focused on the multiplayer action. Needless to say, it looks a lot like Urban Reign, and of course the use of the word Reigns in the title is probably no accident. Obviously we mustn’t overlook the distinct similarities to the also excellent Power Stone series. While this seems great, Anarchy Reigns is stepping into the ring with some of the best games in existence, including titles like War of the Monsters and even Twisted Metal, including one I have to give props to but dislike quite a bit: Smash Brothers Brawl.
The characters in Anarchy Reigns seem your standard Platinum fare– that is totally foaming at the mouth berserk. The only semi-normal character is the ice lady above, but even she has a BARCODE ACROSS HER TITS. The rest of the revealed cast so far are pretty much cracked out stereotypes. Four of the characters are straight from Madworld and I’m sure we’ll see a few more from it. Whether Platinum can tap into their Clover IP is yet to be seen but you could see Gene, Devil Hand, Shannon and Elvis. The lady in waiting for announcement is, of course, Bayonetta. Since Bayonetta 2 is confirmed, I doubt you will see her as a playable character but who knows. Her and that other witch with the red glasses would make fine editions, though they seem a bit over powered compared to the current cast (they can stop time and all that jazz).
Fall of 11 is going to be a brutal time with Elder Scrolls and this busting out. I need to make sure to spend my summer entirely outdoors in a tent raped nightly by animals digging up from under the earth.
There are a lot of videos out there, but this limey one seems the best of the bunch for a quick view of what the game is about:
Though it’s sad to see the socket 939 up and die and then be disassembled forever anon, the new beast that’s soon to take the stage makes that look like a 3rd grader’s public school issued laptop.
Asus P8P67 (rev3), GTX 560 Ti, i7 2600,
I stuck the DVD drive and the PSU up inside and will wrap the rest tomorrow. Then the deluge from Steam will begin.
