Now that we are getting painfully close to the next cascade of space-piss called [DISNEY]Star Wars, some of you may have forgotten just how bad the last movie in this series of films is.
Just in case you need a reminder in incredible detail: READ THIS.
Note, I’m not talking about Solo or Rogue one, both anchored by the old plot-lines and characters as they were, and prequels to boot–I’m referring to Disney’s creative failure: the post Return of the Jedi films. This series and it’s financial (wait for it), artistic and narrative failure pretty much assures that Disney will never successfully move FORWARD in time after the Return of the Jedi and will likely cannibalize the past (before the prequels, etc.) from here on out. Hopefully though, Disney will stop making Star Wars films altogether.
“The people sometimes called fanboys, but by the wise called loyal, lifelong, cash-heavy customers with disposable income, did not make undue demands. All they asked was not to be bored, not to have their intelligence insulted, not to have their beloved space fairytale of princesses and star-knights mocked and derided and deconstructed and turned into a political football.
All the filmaker had to do was not suck. That was all.”
I found the video below and wanted to post it for those of you that may have an interest. Even though I was a little kid, I was definitely OFF normal superhero comics by the mid-80’s, especially the DC ones who seemed super cheesy next to the Xmen– that is until Crisis on Infinite Earths, which was amazing beyond compare. Note: generally people think Marvel got WORSE after Secret Wars, and DC got BETTER after Crisis and set shit straight that DC was and is better than Marvel. Out of that came a new Justice League comic that was pretty much one of the best –and certainly my favorite— comic runs in the history of (standard) superhero comics.
This series takes a bunch of second run heroes, many of which were acquired from other comic companies over the years, and mixes them up in some high-stakes trouble while following many of their domestic lives. The core series with the writers lasted for 60 issues and is collected in trades. Like Swamp Thing, Groo, the Claiborne Xmen and Byrne Fantastic Four, JLI is a must read series even today and has had a huge influence on the direction of DC. The also excellent and much more recent Mr. Miracle series is almost a sequel to this work.
This con went FAST, which usually means we were having fun or we were drunk or a mix of both.
We got in our Shadowfist draft after many years, which I will detail in another post on it’s own, Matt and I played in the Keyforge sealed tournament, we played a lot of ROOT, some Runequest and Mutant Crawl Classics.
The house of cards was still there after all these years of DEAD CCG’s.
Keyforge
This was damn fun and the people were great. It’s hard to be a complete pysse-ant when your decks are randomized and no one knows what they are going to get. My deck was absolute shit, and since I’m a n00b player, I didn’t do well. Really, I can blame the deck on this one for sure which is how the cookie crumbles. Fun game, cool expansion and really cheap buy in with the core set and two random decks. And they had a fuckn vending machine for decks.
One thing to remember is that you can MULLIGAN if you don’t like your first draw.
Mutant Crawl Classics
MCC/DCC: you can be nearly certain that you’re going to get a good GM, a good CON adventure and a romping good time when you sign up for one of these games, and we did. The scenario took place on the Metamorphosis Alpha mothership and involved our (funnel) characters being ejected from our home area to the “death zone.” A bunch of us got robot parts (my pure strain human got a robot head!), we defeated some mutant cyborg hippo and then had all but two of the 18 characters wiped out by someone failing to learn to use a grenade properly while we stood on a ledge with no railing (I had gone off to piss when this happened, so I can’t be blamed!!). Only my manimal Squirrel with her bubble helmet survived. Looking forward to more of this one once Matt fires it the fuck up!
Runequest
This is the Chaosium RQ and not RQ6, so heavy Glorantha throughout. It was the second time I’ve played and it was OK, the combat system is not on the same level for easy of play and intensity as Mythras (RQ6) at all, but Glorantha can be interesting. I’ve had RQ GM’s that have shown up with just a piece of scratch paper, some pregens and dice and it was fantastic, but this wasn’t one of those, it was just OK and for four hours of your con, that’s tough.
ROOT
We played two games, one 4 player and one massive 7-player game at the Hyatt. Both Patrick Leder and his ops manager came by to say hi during the (5 hour?) game which was awesome. The 7-player game is absolutely insane and some factions just don’t stand much of a chance (i.e.: the area control ones). While the vagabond didn’t win, it was the Lizards at 29, Vagabond (Ranger) at 26 and the Otters at 30 in the end FTW, which should tell you a bit about how the game went. The Cats and the Birds had to simultaneously chase the vagabonds around, destroy sympathy as well as trading posts while at the same time trying to score a few points here at there. While certainly a bit unbalanced for the area control factions, 10/10, would play 7 player yet again.
Near the end of the LOOOONG 7 player game.
Other stuff I saw
Other than gaming, I did a share of wandering around the dealer hall and the various areas.
DUNE is really coming out, and soon! GF9 really got on the horse and produced the game quickly–I figured based on the past that they would take long into 2020 to get the game out but, nope, it’s out next month. The new set looks good and I am very interested in the rules changes. I do think the leader pieces are too small, but the art is good and the map and box both look beautiful. We will be able to play this again rather than our 1980 copies sitting in the safest shelf possible in our houses only to be brought out every few years!
Having the board game ‘check out’ be a ticketed event SUCKS, it’s much better at Gary and Gamehole con where you just walk up, give your drivers license and play whatever.
Pathfinder 2nd edition was a big release during the con and again, like 2008 or so, they had MASSIVE stacks of books. It’s got to be tough when you build a direct clone of an older game and then do a second edition of that clone.
Harassment signs. I’ve been going to GENCON every year since 1993 or so and I think it is the most accepting convention for ALL types of people, freaks, deviants, nerds, etc. one can imagine. It just goes without saying that it’s completely unacceptable for people to be mean to the weird or normal alike, so I’m not sure why these signs are necessary to put up on every single door in the entire convention center. Do they really mean ONLINE harassment?
The Gencon App was really helpful– and saved a lot of paper with those big con books with their (outdated) event lists. Get it for sure if you go.
BIRDS and LIMES. This was a fantastic addition to the Con. We had one incident where Matt parked the car and JP forgot his badge, and instead of having to walk 45 minutes to the car and back, we tossed a few bucks at the BIRDS and it was really and excuse to ride a motor scooter for 15 minutes total! In Milwaukee, everyone had to have helmets and ride on the road and stuff, which is fine. However, in Indy you can ride all over the place, no helmets no nothing. I would only say people SHOULD have to ride with a helmet, but then be able to go all over, on sidewalks, whatever. Sure there will be drunken accidents and all that, but no different than people riding a bike around.
Gwar was there again, and they had a game to boot.
Gencon Auction! I hadn’t been in this thing for years and it was great. I may spend most of a day in there one of these cons. So much shit for cheap and the consignment store had some ridiculous deals.
Triumphant Entrance Man. We saw him again at an MTG booth looking and triumphant as ever (and lost some weight as well) and took some pics.
Here we go for another fucking Gencon. When oh when will I learn? The overpriced everything, the MASSIVE crowds (and I mean that on every level) and the constant hunt for the awesome thing– when really this year I would be fine staying at home with a bunch of friends and playing a whole lotta ROOT instead.
That said, I’ll be able to see some homies from across the lands (not as many this year are going), and play some stuff that I wouldn’t ever have a chance to, so that’s good. I think until our kids are old enough, gone are the days where a whole shitload of us would ditch the kids for the weekend and go down for all four days. It may be better to go back to what I used to do: drive down Friday, stay saturday and leave Sunday. Ahhhh well, in a moment of weakness and Maat’s prompting, I’m in it for all four days.
Events! I’m in what should be a very cool FASERIP miniatures Free For All battle. I’ll post impressions and the rules and all that shit when I get back from the con. Second I got into the Keyforge tournament, which should be ridiculous. RPG-wise we are in a Mutant Crawl Classics game and a game of Mythras on Saturday morning at 8 AM (let’s see if we make this one).
Most importantly though is the self run SHADOWFIST DRAFT! I got together all my remaining boxes of Shadowfist and we have a few people ready to draft and play. It’s going to be a real shit swarm of decks as we are starting with:
Standard Starter – Absolute DRECK of cards, the lowest of the low. When I look at this stuff, I’m shocked that Shadowfist survived after it’s first Limited run…so much garbage.
Boosters of the following:
Standard Booster – More of the same crap and still no hitters to find…
Empire of Evil – everyone will be hoping for the best with their booster here
Netherworld 2 – good stuff, just need to get lucky
Throne War – great set, but pretty big… so chances are slim
Boom Shaka Laka – in for the LOL’S. Maybe someone will get a good dragon card or…?
This should be enough to get a semi functional deck out of and we have pods of feng shui and foundations. Should be a great time, if we can only get a couple 3-man tables anyway.
So see you after with pics and other nonsense. Luckily I can’t spend much money on anything, so there won’t be the horde of crap I come back with this year. Hoping to find a decently priced John Company, Conquest of Paradise or Fire in the Lake, but that’s it.
We had a tournament with all 22 characters from My Hero One’s Justice last weekend. We only had three players, so we had to switch off and play different characters and even sometimes play each other’s mains when two of a player’s characters got into the same bracket.
We seeded them based on this tier ranking, which I now feel is pretty out of date and maybe is only for what my kids would call ‘try hard’ players and not for dirty, dirty casuls like us, actually, reading other stuff online, it’s just out of date, by a LOT.
A S S
A brief description of the game: MHOJ is an arena fighter like Naruto Ultimate Storm, and some of the DBZ games but with strange hyper-Japanese superheroes rather than ninja or… uhhh whatever the DBZ guys are. Basically, you can run all over the fighting area, which is usually inside a big cube or rectangle that looks like a city street or a park or a classroom (!). There are standard attacks, counter attacks and unblockables (most are grabs, but many are something else). Counter attacks give you super armor (like Hulk in MVC2) so you cannot be hit out of your attack animation, but you still take damage. All characters have two ‘quirk’ attacks that are specials unique to just them and are part of the normal move set (as in, you can constantly do them). All characters also have a meter that increases during the matches like most other fighters of any type. When full the characters can pull off Ultra attacks which go into a cinematic if it connects. Usually I hate these cinematic moves due to one of Budokan 3 on the PS2, which constantly had these super looonnnggg cinematic attacks where you could get up and take a piss during. Luckily, the MHOJ’s Ultras are short (for the most part) and rarely occur as meter takes a long time to build up.
You also get to pick two team mates from the roster that you can call to help you either break or extend combos a bit like KOF 2013 and again like MVC2. I thought it was a 3v3 fighter at first, and was like huh.. I can’t play as all these guys? But with play, I really enjoy the team assists.
There is normal movement on the map which seems to make the game slow as shit, but the game has dashing which makes you pretty vulnerable but speeds the game up crazy. Basic cancelling is typically done with the dash button mid combo, leading obviously to some crazy combos like every other game with a specific move for a cancel rather than cancelling normals into supers and stuff like that (which you can also do).
Because it’s a superhero game, you can knock people across the maps, and even knock them into the walls so they get stuck and you get a free attack (which usually leads into the truly huge combos). The game is remorseless about characters with ranged attacks–firing off constant fireballs is not a punishable offense and can be done with the press of a single button. The first time you play against one of the ranged characters (like Todoroki or Dabi), you will be like WTF sort of game is this?! as they seem uber over-powered. Most of the ranged/zone characters are weak close in, so there is some balance. However, a few are good at range and close up, which makes it very difficult to win against them at any time.
Even as n00bs with very few matches under our belts, the tournament was quite a bit of fun and there were some intense match ups, and some matches that people just sloughed off in apathy around the characters. Since he’s brutal at range and close up, everyone expected Shoto Todoroki to dominate, and he was logically placed at the highest seed. Yet, in a chilling upset in the semi finals, he was taken down –not by my well-practiced Momo (practiced for a couple hours that is) –but by a button mashing MUSCULAR who went on to win the final vs All Might.
Here are the winners and the runners up:
Muscular
All Might
Todoroki
Jiro
Semi finals (in no particular order)
Momo
Deku Shoot Style
Shigenaki
Kaminari Deki
In the final 8, we have three hardcore zone characters (read as ‘fucking annoying’) with Todoroki, Jiro and Deki and all the rest are either close-in combo characters or weird AoE types (Momo and Shigenaki). It was very annoying to go up against Dabi, Endevour and Ihasa the wind dude, but in the end, all the zone characters had their tickets punched by the large fists of Muscular and All Might.
All that said, I really, really like the fighting engine in this game and I’m very surprised by this. My first ‘arena’ fighter was Ehrgiez and the last one I really liked was Urban Reign by Namco. I played a couple of the Dragonballs games but the characters are just not my cup of tea at all. What I like most is that the dash cancels (and therefore combos) are easy to figure out and timing is relatively easy (we play on Manual mode). With the support characters, there’s just a ton of shit going on in the game yet it’s all very tactical, despite the fact that a few of the characters can beat you down with the press of a couple buttons if you don’t know what you are doing. All of the 22 characters feel very different from each other and some have radically different quirks including one that can become the other character they are fighting during the match, and one that can use his powers so much that he stuns himself and leaves himself open for a massive beating.
MHOJ is also surprisingly good since Superhero fighting games usually suck. You have Marvel vs Capcom 2, which is incredible, but since then: what is there? Many tries, but not much that’s good. The new Marvel vs Capcom games are lackluster at best, especially without the Xmen: I mean, why bother? Injustice is a SNOOZE fest, especially for a superhero game. MVC2 pulled it off because it was completely insane and the Marvel universe does not have a Superman/Supreme/Saitama/Marvelman (Miracleman) to defy the canon by placing them in a fighter where they would normally destroy all foes easily. When I see Superman standing there punching batman in a 2-d fighter, it just seems very stupid. Granted, these types of games are very difficult to make in the first place. You have crazy ass powers, some of which only tangentially work in a fight, and certainly any characters that can fly or really jump high are ridiculous to try to model. MVC2 pulled it off, and MHOJ has also.
While we wait for the Kill la Kill game, and the One-Punch Man game has just been announced, there are more ‘super’ arena fighters right around the corner. Meanwhile, My Hero One’s Justice is excellent fun, even for plebian filth casuls. With it’s stupid name and severely unbalanced roster, so far, MHOJ seems like the best super hero fighting game that I’ve played outside of MVC2.
I just finished Rage 2 this weekend and overall, I think the game is solid. I have yet to finish Far Cry 4, and yet Rage 2 kept my interest enough to plow through the game over a couple weeks, which is saying something, especially when I was playing Bloodborne on the PS4 at the same time, which is a holyfucking masterpiece.
Basically the story is fairly generic, the intro to the game could have been Serious Sam style funcheese, but it really felt like it took the middle ground of taking itself too seriously, sort of. The character you play (Walker… Ranger.. .get it?), while voiced well, is supergeneric action hero man with very little to cling to character-wise. The main guy from Bulletstorm or the a’fore mentioned Serious Sam are done quite a bit better. I was waiting for some more Chuck Norris jokes, but I didn’t notice any.
It’s got to be rough for a Bethesda studio to take on post-apocalyptic without it being Fallout, but for me, I was glad that it’s totally separate as Rage 2 has a different focus; one that I felt they hit right on the nose: the firefights and gunplay. This is where id software absolutely shines and damn the firefights are fun, especially the set pieces at various bases. Everything else in the game is just a distraction from the firefights really.
The guns are good, but I found myself using the shotgun for just about everything and then the assault rifle for the rest with occasional use of the rocket launcher. You can pretty much get through the game with those three weapons no problem. The ‘nailgun’ type weapon that does more damage the more it fires is useful for boss fights, but that’s about it. The ‘set people on fire’ pistol is solid fun, but I found myself just always wanting the shotgun instead. Overall, nothing really crazy here in terms of weapons except some are full on useless compared to others (the settler pistol for instance). I loved the fact that there was no sniper rifle! None of that wussy shit!
What I didn’t like is when you get in firefights, your enemies don’t drop ammo so you tend to avoid any fights while you are on your way to a mission zone, there isn’t any reason other than feltrite to kill stuff. They also don’t drop guns– you have special Ranger-only guns throughout the game so their guns are shytte anyway. However, I’ve found myself out of ammo and it would have been nice to pick up a crap submachine gun to finish off the last few guys without having to wait for my Ranger Power timers to cooldown.
Which brings us to the powers. The MEAT of Rage 2 is the creative and combination-al use of the environment, weapons and powers in the game. When you start to get access to powers, you start to be able to do all sorts of funky stuff and interact with the physics of the game. Some of the stuff I used a lot (the big ‘stomp’ power just like Saints Row 4) and some not at all (the hold-jump while aiming thing or any of the grenade knock back powers). My favorite thing was probably setting up an electrified shield and then throwing out the mini-black hole thing which would suck everyone into the shield to get electrified. There’s a lot of fun play here due to the chaos of the physics and what the powers do. If I play it again with the next expansion, it will be for this stuff alone.
I found the actual upgrade system really frustrating, with levels purchased with feltrite and perks and nanotrites and what the hell is all this shit? This is a game where I may have just wanted straight unlocks without any choice on my part, just to remove the hassle. Plus on PC, the UI for upgrading levels was so weird I had to look up on the interweb tubes how to do it.
If you get this game and want to get to the fun real fast to see if you like it, start the game, sit through the intro then press the FOCUS key when you get out of the first town. On the horizon you will see these rainbow colored beams shooting up into the air. Go to all of them as quickly as you can and get the stuff inside the arcs. Do this before anything else!
Cars and stuff
I liked this better than Rage 1, but … it was lackluster. What I wanted out of the game was TWISTED METAL and they just did not deliver. They had all these different cars, monster trucks, tanks, funny wheeled tanks, some advanced vehicles– but there simply wasn’t any meaningful car combat AT ALL. Yes you can go after the big rigs and their escorts, but the escorts don’t break off and engage, they simply stay in formation and let you shoot the fuck out of them. You do not get vehicularily attacked on the roads either except by a couple punks on bikes which do nothing. They have a big race track, but NO arena style combat. This was a fucking HUGE opportunity missed in my opinion and I’m not sure how this could have happened, it almost feels like they were going for it but had to cut it out.
Overall, there are two vehicles you need. The first one you get (that… talks….) and the flying Icarus bike. The first one is good for combat and is fairly fast on the road and the Icarus flies so you can avoid all the nonsense twisting around of roads to get to where you gots to go much faster. The racing cars were fun to drive too, but no weapons. All the rest of the cars and especially the motorcycles were not that fun to drive, and not fast enough (with enough control) to warrant using.
Encounters and set pieces are a mixed bag, with some being incredible and some being pretty boring. A lot of the random road encounters are of two types. First are just people standing in the road waiting. Not going anywhere, just standing around. That’s pretty odd. Secondly there are two groups fighting at very close range, also sometimes in the middle of the road. Every once in a while you will see a group carting something somewhere or carrying boxes or sitting around a fire, but it’s fairly rare. There are very few ambushes on the roads, I think I saw only two.
whachu waitn’ fo?
The set pieces, like bases and road blockers are all pretty solid, with some very interesting environments mixed in. Fights in big towers, cliff faces, all seem to be goon squad base which are the best. The Mutants have caves, which give interesting (but eventually repetitive) indoor environments. The River Hogs and the Shrouded have pretty boring bases compared to the other two, but the fights are more difficult as their weapons and armor are better. Many of the set pieces are similar in pattern, so when you’ve destroyed 2-3 bases, you sort of know what all there rest will be like, with the exception of the Goon Squad (punk looking dudes) which seem to have the most interesting and varied bases.
The boss fights are not too bad, but nothing awe inspiring. The boss designs are cool, but not really all that varied. Only fighting one type of boss during the game would have been better (like in the Souls series– you never fight the same boss twice unless it’s an early game one that shows up as a normal enemy late game. Early in the game, I got in a situation with one boss where I skilled through the fight before the boss and then with my load out at that time of powers it was impossible (I tried like 20 times) to defeat the boss and his respawning minions. At this same time I took down the Blood Starved Beast and Vicar Amelia in Bloodborne…so this was very frustrating.
Lastly the environments, characters and visuals. Graphically this game is fanfucking tastic. The places you can go are trashy and beautiful at the same time. There is amazing amounts of detail in the buildings and environments and, like ALL id games, it pays to look around at everything and how lovingly crafted it is. I loved loved loved the look of the explosions, GREASY explosions all over the place and could probably watch that shit all day.
Character wise, I was impressed at the visuals, but man the people in this game have all been beaten with the ugly stick, and I mean BAD. Especially the women. All of the women in the game with the exception of two that I remember seeing were made to be as physically repulsive as possible. Terrible haircuts, awful facial features, dirt and grime, puking on themselves, and generally women, even in the civilized settlements, that have zero concern for their attire or appearance at all. These are not irradiated desert dwellers, but people that live in rooms and apartments. I get that video game women are typically either supermodels or elderly with nothing in between (Kingdom Come does a good job of mitigating this a bit, since none of the women are supermodelesque, but they aren’t ugly either), but Rage has swung so far to the ugly that I can’t help but mention it over and over. Here are some examples.
And a shot from RAGE 1 of the hottie just for memories.
her sole purpose in the game is to teach you the wing stick…
And didn’t Moonbeam McSwine teach us that you can still be hot and live in FILTH?
My overall take on Rage 2 is that it has some bugs, it’s got GREAT shooting and powers combat, but is lacking in the Twisted Metal vehicle combat department, which I was really expecting. The bosses are underwhelming, which may be a product of it being very hard to make large bosses for a first person shooter. The story… doesn’t matter. While it has some flaws, Rage 2 finds it’s redemption in it’s core gameplay as a crazy shooter.
Well four years after starting, I finally finished Dark Souls 2, my second victory over the requirement of getting gud to beat one of the Souls game. I got invaded, I sunbro’d, I used a hint guide I got when I got the game on launch day (which was totally inaccurate most of the time!) I used help whenever I could just to get through it as quickly as possible.
Given that this is a Souls game, and considered the worst of the three, this game still blows nearly all other video games out of the water. It’s so brilliant about showing you early what you are going to go up against, teasing you into thinking your are getting the hang of it, and then throwing you into something totally different from what you faced before in order to test your character build, skills and intuition. The game trolls the player constantly and despite what appears to be an entirely bleak and unforgiving game– there are threads of humor throughout the game of the blackest sort.
Oh fuck….
The story in this one felt a bit more disjointed than the first. Not that this will be spoilers but again you have several cities and areas that have fallen to the curse of undeath, and to reverse the curse (on yourself) you have to kill a ton of stuff. This one has giants, dragons, undeads and a lot of these Ogre things that you can’t help but shoot in the ass with fire arrows.
My favorite areas in the game were probably the Iron Keep (think of a citadel sinking into lava) and No-Man’s Wharf which was both Spanish and Viking… pirates? There was a part like Blightown from the first game, which was not quite as annoying: again, the developers are trolling you so they have to put in some vertical madness or it just wouldn’t be a Souls game.
Boss wise, I really liked the Undead Chariot, despite it being fucking super annoying. The Mirror Knight was really cool (but and easy fight for the most part). The most intriguing boss was the Demon of Song, that got all these undead chicks to sing constantly to draw victims to it, sort of like sirens but they were all tricked into doing it.
HOW CAN YOU RELAX AT A TIME LIKE THIS???
It’s also amazing to me how the Souls game still retain tropes that are super common in fantasy games, but it just isn’t fucking cheesy. You DO fight a shit load of dragons and you DO rescue a princess from a tower. How plebian can you get? But this is SOULS, so the pain and anguish you had to endure to get there makes none of it cheeese at all. In fact I would say the only thing cheese in the game was my fucking build!
I did a classic tank and spank, with the Gyrm Great Shield (good against fire and physical damage also giving mega poise too) and the black knight greatsword (added damage with strength and faith). I used magic for the first time in a Souls game with heal and greater heal.
So there are some of you that don’t try these games because they are hard. YES. To solo a Dark Souls game you need to really ante up. However, the multiplayer in this game really really makes the game more playable if you don’t want to be super hardcore. Most of the bosses are very difficult vs just you– but if you bring a friend or rando in there you can waltz through all but the most difficult bosses (Smelter Demon). What I’m saying is that you can do it and don’t be shy about becoming human and summoning if you need to. Also, if you are sitting on a shitload of souls and don’t want to die at a boss– lay down your summoning sign and give help to others to practice fighting the boss before you go in there in your own game. It really helps.
be a (sun) bro!
Well, there’s a lot people have said and written about these games, and while I liked DS1 better (most of it anyway), DS2 is still an absolute classic that you should push through at least once. It totally stands the test of time graphically and gameplay wise, much like the first one. There will always be a place where you just feel so frustrated you have to stop for awhile, and the game absolutely demands that you learn a ton about how the weapons work, how to upgrade your shit properly, as well as how to execute on the gamepad, so it’s not for the casul Devil May Cry/ Bayonetta types (both great games). My next challenge is the (tons more difficult) Bloodborne and then it’s on to Dark Souls 3 (in 2-3 years….).
For those of you that like dungeon crawls and like SOLO dungeon crawls, Bloodborne is probably a ticket to dungeon crawl heaven. Frankly though, there are a fuckload of these types of games, almost a new one like this every month from various manufacturers. From CMON alone, if you’ve already got Zombicide of some sort, The Others, Rise of Moloch or the excellent and insane diablo-esque crawl Massive Darkness why would you even look at this one? Also take into account Games Workshops excellent forays into the dungeon crawl realm as well as tons of others (including Dungeon Degenerates!) I think BB is CMON’s answer to Kingdom Death, you probably love Bloodborne, and look at those miniatures (as always from CMON).
You have to ask yourself, as I have, what to do with all these big ass boxed games and all the miniatures. I picked up The Others, Massive Darkness and HATE and can attest that the first two are excellent but holy shit does the Others take up a lot of shelf space, Hate isn’t all that bad which is odd because of all the miniatures it has in the box (which are CMON’s best so far, even if the game doesn’t have mass appeal).
Given that you have the means and board game addiction to pick up some of these big ass games– what do you do with them? You play them of course, but how many times? These are similar to games we played in the 90’s and early 2000’s that took years to acquire (or even get released) miniatures of this amount. For Necromunda or Bloodbowl, you could build up your teams over time rather than this huge blast these games require even with their base sets.
I think one solution is to have a community of gamers buy these together or share them, play through the campaigns in each and then sell them off or keep them if there is absolute love. Many of these dungeon crawls especially do not have reasons to play through them multiple times as it’s always the same missions, path, etc. Sure it’s fun to try a different character but if you are the judge/Overlord and you have to run people through the same missions again… ZZzzzzz… So these are big games, take up a lot of space and have limited replay value. Yet the games themselves are worth playing and in some cases, owning if they are really important for you to keep.
Lots of times with gamers in a group that all have the fever for board game collecting will duplicate the SHIT out of each other’s collections: most of the time for no reason at all. For example, we all love Eclipse. When the new kickstarter came out, we had 3-4 people (out of about 8-9 gamers total) who bought into it…why did we do this? One or two people could have picked it up and that would be fine for many plays.
When I was in college, and very, very poor, I had Talisman 2nd edition at school, along with Jyhad and some MTG and at home I had basically Cosmic Encounter and a few other games like Saga or Awful Green Things. If you wanted to play, say, Wizard’s Quest, you went over to the guy’s house that had that shit– you didn’t go out and buy the fucking thing at the store!
While it’s tough to imagine as a collector and I have my weak spot for some of these games (anything Adrian Smith is involved in for instance), it’s best if one person in a group picks up these big ass fucking games– for sure go ‘all in’ so you aren’t scrambling for that expansion you missed in the kickstarter that you really want later–make the investment knowing that your group has committed to play, that you will sleeve that shit so it stays in good shape (print the rulebook rather than using the one that comes with the game– that will get fucked up for sure) for later sale and then the next big ass game like this that comes along– which it WILL–have someone ELSE buy that, you guys play it and then ditch it when you are done. Otherwise you are just chasing the dragon alone– maybe don’t.
Here’s the Bloodborne gameplay video of interest. Note he is playing SOLO:
This is going to be a hellaciously long post because I have many thoughts on this game from both a mechanical perspective and a historical one.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance is a Skyrim-style first person RPG set in the early 1400’s in Czechoslovakia. The game is heavily political, unapologetic about it’s historical depiction, has a ‘git gud’ combat system/mechanics… and no magic. I asked myself many times while playing: how the hell did this get made?
Games have to appeal to the mass of gamers, especially open world type games that take millions upon millions of dollars to make, so how did a game set in a country that most Americans can’t even find on a map, about a local political situation that most American’s have never even heard of, with a steep learning curve and extremely historically accurate setting get this popular?
Well, it’s real good. Since most of you have played the new Zelda or Skyrim or one of the other open world RPG’s, I’m not going to go into what that type of game is much except to say that Kingdom Come, despite is core story line and despite it’s long story/tutorial/rails in the beginning, is an open world RPG, and one that should be reckoned with!
The Story
You play a specific character named Henry. You can’t alter his sex or appearance or voice or skin color at all. He is the son of a blacksmith in a small village next to a lord’s keep. None of this can be altered at all and this was a bit shocking to me until I got a bit into the story and realized these constraints were fantastic for the immersion and the quality of the narrative throughout the game. You have a ton of leeway how you play Henry, but you are him in this game and that’s that. In addition to looks, what you fight, what you want to swive, your lineage and how Henry is warped and weaved into the story is set, but how you go about doing everything else is up to you.
No spoilers, but things go very wrong for Henry, and like most good stories, Henry’s story is a story of revenge and the hero’s journey from country bumkin who can do jack and shit, to someone who hits like a sledgehammer, can sneak up on people and slit their throat in broad daylight and who has swived more whores than most holy roman emperors of the time.
Overall, the arc of the story is long, broken up into very interesting sections with lots of time in between most to jag around. You will learn a LOT about Czech, German and Holy Roman history and politics in this game and while this may seem tiresome, I was extremely impressed with the game’s lack of shyness around discussion of politics in cut scenes. What’s more they do not hold back on medieval brutality, rape, and slaughter of unarmed peasants. Yet the scenes of carnage and rape are made much more poignant because they seem wholly an anomaly in the verdant and peaceful villages and castles that make up most of the game. In addition to the revenge story which is an obvious driver, you also gain an affinity to the working way of life (even of the bandits and thieves) which is horrifically disrupted by events in the game.
The map to the game seems small at first, but there is a lot of detail. I felt completely lost many times in the woods, always looking back at the overhead map to see where to go. Even though the game feels populated, out in the wilds the forests go on and on without seeing anything of interest– so travel feels like it’s travel rather than the get to the fast travel spot and then fast travel back to where you came. There’s a lot to see and destroy and have sex with in the game.
Women in this game, it being the 1400’s, have traditional roles. You won’t see a transexual cyborg spouting a bunch of made up pronouns or taking on a male role in society. Nor did they sneak in some female-combat savant for the sake of inclusion (certainly, this existed with women pretending to be men in order to fight).
Lastly, the NPC’s are very well done even if it gets a little cheesy at the end with sort of a Kelley’s Heroes type of vibe.
Mechanics
I’m going to go through Combat, Stealth, Alchemy and the fast travel system. I’m not going to go into the haggle and social parts of the game just for the sake of brevity.
Combat is a bitch in this game and you will be glad if you put your lead shoes on in Dark Souls or Bloodborne before playing Kingdom Come. Those games teach you one thing that will help the most and that’s patience. Every fight has the potential to damage you if you are not careful and patient. Getting in fights with multiple opponents, unless you are heavily armored and experienced, will get Henry dead like very quickly. Combat is split into Sword work, Mace work, Axe work, and unarmed. Each of them follow the base combat system which is attack, parry and instant parry/counter attack and grapple. Your attacks can be combo-ed if you follow a rhythm of attacking and generate another attack the moment the first attack actually connects. This can be challenging for players who haven’t experienced say, Witcher 1, which has a similar rhythm combo system. You also have to control where your weapon is: either up, down or in the middle of the body. You can start an attack high and then switch to low or mid level during the attack which is quite fun. Henry has health and stamina and can also be damaged in various parts of his body, which causes problems regardless of your level of health/stamina.
Like Dark Souls, you use stamina to run and make attacks and block. If you get hit blocking with no stamina, you take damage and can get staggered, which is no fun at all. Fights without armor but with sharp weapons go rather quickly.
Unarmed combat, while it doesn’t happen often, is my favorite of the combat systems. You start fist fights early in the game during the tutorial when Henry is a fucking creamed puff extraordinaire, but later you get into many fist fights, sometimes protecting the women, sometimes fighting with friends, sometimes just to prove yourself and it’s awesome. Range, movement and timing are all critical components to good fisticuffs which really raised my cockles. I knew I had arrived wen I punched an armored knight out in a fight in a barn (his weapons were too slow and I was able to constantly hit-stun him until crushing his skull underfoot).
mincing fuck!
Sword work is typically used against the unarmored peasantry who are easy to slice open with a blade compared to the armored folks. Swords have the most attack combos and I can see them being very attractive for people that want to combo up. You also look cool with a big bastard sword, but for me, instead of a sword, I went for a mace.
Maces have very few attack combos, but do tons of damaged to armored foes, and still do enough damage to unarmored to warrant using them all the time. Henry can also get a perk where he can possibly knock anyone out with a headshot after which they can be killed via a coup de grace.
Axes I did not use much in my playthrough, so cannot comment, but they seem to fall between the sword and the mace.
Archery is VERY difficult in this game as you have to aim as you would in real life: down the bow and arrow without a reticle to help know exactly where you are aiming. Drawing back and shooting an arrow is also very slow, so in a fight or in just practice shooting, I had a lot of problems with archery in general throughout the game. However, it does help in mass-combat fights and to get at other archers. You can run away and shoot, hoping to take out a few of the peasant bandits or vs slower armored opponents, whittle them down. Overall though, except at close range, Archery is not something you can rely upon. You will need to learn it to some extent for the main plot.
While there is a lot of fighting, stealth (and lockpicking) are critical skills for Henry in the game. Your ability to sneak around effectively will make things a lot easier throughout. Early on, Henry is so clumsy that you have no hope at all of sneaking up on anyone, which can be very frustrating to new players who expect it to at least work some of the time based on other stealth games. Remember that Henry, from the outset, explicitly sucks ass at everything. You do get Henry better with practice, and eventually you are sneaking around in broad daylight. Getting caught in normal circumstances gets you laughed at or asked if you are taking a shit by bath maids. Getting caught in a place you’re not supposed to be can lead to a lot of problems.
Locking picking is essential and I can only say for new players: get your lockpicking skill as high as possible as soon as you can. There is a long part of the game where it’s essential. If you have played Skyrim, the lockpicking is familiar enough.
Alchemy is excellent, but fucking tedious. You need to actually craft the items on an alchemist bench and I don’t mean how skyrim does it where you pick your stuff and it makes a roll to see if it worked– nope: you have to physically guide Henry through the steps in the recipes you find in the game. For example, you will need to grab ingredients, put them in a pot of boiling water or spirits, and then cook them up for a specific amount of time tracked with an hourglass that you must manually turn. I ignored it for much of the game, but there’s a part where you must do it so just learn it.
Fast travel in the game is excellent. Instead of just appearing where you want to end up, your little avatar moves across the map and can encounter various things on the way which can drop you back into real time. Most of these are bandit ambushes. So it’s never guaranteed that you are just going to show up where you want to without being harassed, but it still functions as quite a time saver, especially later in the game when you’ve seen everything along a particular route many times.
Tits
Despite our differences on everything else, every race, gender and sexual orientation can agree on one thing: TITS. If you are going to play some of the romantic bits in Kingdom Come, note that there are tits and Henry gets down to fucking in the game. It’s not gratuitous, but enough to bring out the horny gamers for sure. Just make sure kids aren’t around when you are wooing or going to the bathhouse. There’s only one part of the main plot where you get greased up and fuck– the other nudie parts are optional and you will know when you are getting close to seeing tits in those. One of the side missions tits will sneak up on you during, so watch it if you are playing in front of your grand ma on the big TV in the living room.
Bottom Line
Kingdom Come is an unbelievably immersive gaming experience, unrelenting in it’s depiction of life as a Czech during this time period. Some of it stands in stark contrast to modern existence and some of it is eerily similar. While the combat has a steep learning curve, coupled with Henry’s trash skills make it even more frustrating, pushing through so you can take out multiple enemies at once is very satisfying after taking such a beating for so long.
The writing is superb and the arc of the story, while nothing new, is well worth giving this bad boy a play through.
I couldn’t help myself and printed out the PnP of the The Great Dutchy of the Moles from the new Root kickstarter and we got in a couple games with them plus the base four factions (Cats, Alliance, Vag, Eyrie). Here’s my view of the Moles so people can see if they fit their play style.
The Moles start with a single tunnel on the board that connects to their off-board ‘cave’ where the moles swarm from. The mole cave connects to ALL the mole tunnels, so the more tunnels you have out on the board, the easier you can move your guys around. Moles have a terrible action economy at the beginning of the game with only two actions to take (cats have three in contrast). Their actions are similar to the Cats: Move, battle, recruit, build (factories or citadels), dig (add a tunnel) so if you are familiar with the Marquise, you will easily pick up how to play the Moles.
Despite their weak and slow start, the Moles can elect members of their underground species to parliament by revealing matching sets of cards (2, 3 and 4 depending how far you are up the parliamentary track), which begins to increase their action economy. This is a bit like the bird’s decrees… and is also fairly unstable. Once officers are placed in parliament, you can take their action every single turn. Most are Move or Recruit, draw cards, etc., but three of them score points off the buildings on the board, which is the main mechanism for scoring for the moles. Other than crafting and destroying stuff, the Moles get points for electing officers and using officer actions to score points. Unfortunately if you lose buildings due to battle, you also lose officers permanently (much like the Riverfolk’s trading posts).
The Moles need to control areas to build buildings, keep lots of cards in their hands (and not use them!) in order to get parliament filled up as well as watching their scoring to not alarm the other players…
Like the Cats and the Birds, the Moles are useful to police the forest against the non-area control factions (Vag, Lizards, Riverfolk and Alliance), so you need to stake your claims on the board and then kick the crap out of those little bastards if they come around. You will need to likely make an alliance with one of the other police factions or you’ll both end up losing badly.
The Moles are an interesting design, basically a new take on the Marquise de Cat but with a little of the Alliance and Eyrie mixed in. I’ve played twice with them so far, and in one the Cats pulled out the win in the end, with the Dutchy in second place, the second place (5 player game) the moles ended up lagging mid game and in 3rd place. They are very much about take-and-hold with them being pretty useless scattered around the board since they really really need to protect their buildings once they start scoring points.
