Aaberg is the man responsible for the art for the excellent and whimsical Dungeon Degenerates board game. I think 35$ for a 200 page book of his art is a pretty good deal. It’s a bit like Russ Nickolson, Rockin’ Jellybean and Big Daddy Roth had a baby and then forced them to read 80’s White Dwarf magazines and GROO! all day long. Here is the link.
Here’s some of his stuff including my favorite: the cover of the DD expansion, which is just amazing.
Promo shots of the new DUNE board game are up on BGG:
We got to play this a while back and have been wondering where it was at, because it was a super fun arena shooter with TONS of potential. It’s now in another closed beta but you can go to the FAQ and follow instructions.
We can’t post any videos or screenshots from the last time we got to play, but trust that as hardcore Quake 3, UT2K4 and Quake players— we’re sayin’ IT’S GOOD.
I would not normally put any health or exercise shit on this blog, as this is about fucking GAMES and sitting in chairs and pushing wood on cardboard or LANing out in a haze of smoke and ass-gasps right?
However, years ago I came across an article by Mark Sisson on sprinting and it’s been really helpful. I’m a sad sack of shit fitness wise and I eat like a 12 year old childe, but I try to sprint at least once a week during the temperate months (late march – november) with the 18 sprint workout (6 warm up, 6 real hard, 6 cool down). Before that I was running 2-3 times a week for about 2.5 miles (with a big 6-7 block hill at the end) with a 5-7 mile run peppered in here and there for lols. Sprinting made everything feel better and the core thing for me: sprinting is FUN where as running distance fucking SUCKS ASS and feels like shit the whole time.
Anyway, you sit on your fucking ass all day like I do, but read this and do sprints.
Anything fitness posted here will come with a hottie just so I’m kept honest about what it’s all really about.
This is a very interesting (and sometimes tedious) interview with Rephlex records from many years ago. I’d never seen it as it was on German televisions. It’s amazing that Wagonchrist, Squarepusher, Aphex Twin, and Mu-Siq were all on this label when they just were starting out. The video many of good tracks that may take you down memory lane and lots of crazy-ass videos.
I took the kids to see the new Godzilla movie (and matt and scooter went to) Thursday and it was quite the show. I knew it was going to be a big throw down from the trailer that depicted King Ghidorah and it did not disappoint in that regard. However I can see the complaint raised against the film that it was far too crammed with plot and scenes for a single one-sitting movie. In addition to Ghidorah and Godzilla, it’s got Mothra and Rhodan in major parts of the film.
I really liked the 2014 Godzilla movie– it had just the right amount of seriousness and fun mixed together, doing an excellent job of portraying the ‘holy shit’ factor when the humans see/experience Godzilla for the first time in modern CGI. Yet it wasn’t like Cloverfield or the Host, Godzilla was only partly this horror/menace, it also fights another giant monster in the film, something I did not expect at all walking in.
The 2019 film has similar themes and must have the largest casualty count in any Godzilla film I’ve ever seen. Yet it retains the fun of a Kaiju movie with an additional twist on what fans of the series think is going to happen (Alien invasion).
From the various Godzilla film series, we see a pattern of films that complete a story arc for that series.
First there’s a stand alone godzilla movie
Next is a godzilla vs some other monster, usually 2-3 of these films. One of these is Godzilla vs some aliens that use the other monsters to take over the earth
Next is Godzilla vs Mecha-godzilla that usually involves aliens
Finally there is the large alien invasion plot that inevitably involves King Ghidorah and all the other monsters (the original King of the Monsters, 2004’s Godzilla Final Wars).
When I walked into the film, I expected aliens to use Ghidorah to try to take over the earth in this one, but it wasn’t that, yet it didn’t recon the earlier set up that Ghidorah was an alien monster–which was quite clever. This is definitely an homage film, even throwing in the air-eater bomb that was used in the very first Godzilla film.
How does this compare to SHIN Godzilla (which won best picture in Japan). SHIN is a political film more like the very first Godzilla where Godzilla is a representation of nuclear/environmental disaster in monster form. While godzilla is in the film, and his scenes are horrifying and awesome, the real story is in the board and meeting rooms with the human characters rather than it being any sort of normal kaiju movie. Godzilla King of the Monsters tries to give us both the character development and politics as well as being a massive kaiju battle movie. While crammed to the brim, I feel it succeeds in both.
Gearing up for Rage 2 immersion I started looking at some classic mad max style post-apocalyptic films from the 80’s and holy fuck I missed this one.
Rowdy Roddy, Conan’s woman and… frogs. As the guys in the orange jumpsuits from Far Cry used to say: “What happened here?”
I really liked Farcry 3 (4 is good too) and I really liked Saints Row 4 (3 was good too). If there’s a game that I will love instantly it’s something that combines these two together and that looks just like RAGE 2. Superpowers, tons of guns, insane openworld chases, strange cars and trucks, massive and dare I say GREASY explosions to steal a phrase from Baldtree.
Maurice!Bastard says that he doesn’t want to get his hopes up or set the bar too high for Rage 2 and wants to be emotionally cautious. I played Rage 1 and while it had some flaws, the game had definite moments of absolute brilliance. This is going to be all that brilliance all the way through.
Very long preview which is pretty enthralling all the way through.
The core thing is bringing creativity to the play of this type of game, setting up strange effects, unplanned destruction and all the physics interplay that super powers, vehicles, area and building destruction bring. I rarely say this, but this is one to pick up launch day.
It was pretty shocking when FF cancelled the excellent Netrunner LCG, I’m sure mostly to hardcore fans and not passive fans like myself. I played it as a youth in the mid 90’s for a few months hardcore but then stopped (no $$ for that and Jyhad and Shadowfist and RAGE). The new set I didn’t get into from a $$ perspective too much, just a few expansions and a couple copies of the core box, but I played quite a few times and was glad it was back out. Fans have apparently taken up the torch and will continue to release expansions, much like On the Edge.
http://nisei.net/products/Downfall
If you follow that link and see what they are doing it indicates print on demand: usually something impossible to do since the card quality of print on demand is usually quite bad. This is neat because it’s possible for fans to get together to print some of the old ccg game sets if they have access to the proof sheets. Who knows, we may see Shadowfist or Jyhad going this route in the future, which would be pretty awesome (200 card set for 50$?!).