I generally enjoyed Lev Grossman’s The Magicians. I was less impressed with the sequel, The Magician King. While The Magicians seemed largely about how magical fantasy worlds are no real escape from the harsh truths of reality, The Magician King simply seemed needlessly brutal to me. If you’re inclined to skip reading things that get introduced with the term “trigger warning,” then give this one a pass.

You saw it here first. (And by “here,” I mean here.)

Would you … drape hagfish goo all over your face?

Back in February, after months of deliberation about what kind of phone I should upgrade to, I bought an iPhone on Verizon. Shortly thereafter, I began receiving many, many inquiries from friends and family members asking whether this was a good move, whether they should upgrade, whether it’s worth it, and so on. I told them all the same thing: “It’s still too early for me to say.”

Well, it’s been some months, I’m less busy with work, and I’m looking for an excuse to blog, so it’s no longer too early to say. Here are some thoughts for those of you who were once like me: Not trying to choose between different smartphone brands (which is another question altogether), but those who have been using a flip phone without a data plan for years, and are wondering whether those shiny iPhones your friends seem to love finally give you a reason to get a smartphone.

The short answer: probably not. But it’s still pretty cool.

Read More…

I explained this game to my girlfriend as “I’m a witch with amnesia who likes killing angels,” and that probably pretty well sums it up. It sounds good, but probably I’m not the target audience for this game. I resisted buying it for a long time on principle because of the over-the-top display of T&A, but I heard so much about the gameplay being awesome (and some women actually finding the protagonist empowering) that I picked up a copy on sale. In the end, though, I just found it to be a harder version of Devil May Cry, with a a convoluted and bizarre anime-style plot that gives Neon Genesis Evangelion a run for its money. The other thing that gives Evangelion a run for its money, though, is the art direction: the angels look horrifically awesome, and the environments (which sometimes include enemies so big you must run upon them) are as grand and spectacular as anything out of the God of War series.

Finally, if this short review is using too many references to other games and movies to make sense to you, consider that a friendly litmus test: Bayonetta is full of references and inside jokes for nerds, right down to a last-minute cosplay gag. This is a game for gamers, geeks, and fans. I feel a little sheepish I didn’t like it more.

In the near future, vampires rule society, humans are rounded up like cattle, and when the blood supply gets low, the vampires turn monstrous. Cue the human resistance who discovers a cure for vampirism and takes great risks blah blah blah ho hum etc. I’d heard this movie was bad, but it isn’t; it’s just entirely predictable and completely uninteresting beyond the otherwise promising premise. It’s paint-by-numbers Hollywood filmmaking, which is why you probably never heard of it despite at least a couple high-profile cast members (Willem Dafoe and Ethan Hawke). Not a terrible way to spend an hour and a half on a sick day, but probably not worth the effort I put into finding a torrent for a working file that wasn’t in Spanish.

You know, this game actually made me appreciate the first Kane & Lynch even more. Unfortunately, that’s because it was so unimpressive in comparison. At least its predecessor had some fascinating things going on with messing with player perception and narratively purposeful forced-failure. Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days, on the other hand, is a fairly straightforward four-hour campaign without much going on beyond shooting lots of Chinese guys. To the game’s credit, the “set design,” “cinematography,” and sound design are pretty excellent, but it’s a shame they had to ruin the believably movie-like setting with some of the worst modeled and animated characters of this generation of gaming. And while the “Fragile Alliance” multiplayer is just as interesting and twitchiness-inducing as ever, the matchmaking system makes Gears of War 2‘s hellish lobbies look practically elegant.

Overall, I’d say I got my twenty bucks’ worth, and I would be happy to play with friends online if we can figure out a way to actually get into the same party—what can I say, I like to pretend to shoot guys in pretty environments—but I can’t recommend paying much more than you’d pay to see a movie.

First of all, no, the game is not about porn. Yes, I can see why some of you asked me this already, given the whole “sexy heroine” approach, but this is the kind of sexy heroine who gets bonus points for shooting guys in the junk. If Kill Bill and Grindhouse had a video game, this would be it. In terms of third-person shooter mechanics, it’s basically John Woo’s Stranglehold—jumping, sliding, running against walls, and shoot from two guns in slow-motion—but generally more fun because it’s easier to fire at multiple targets, and it’s even more over the top.

I can see why many critics dismissed it, as it doesn’t really bring much new to the table as a shooter, but it pretty perfectly captures the action B-movie aesthetic it’s shooting for, from an intentionally grainy image (which you can turn off if you prefer) right down to using old drive-in ads for loading screens (which are the best loading screens ever). There are a few really frustrating instant-death scenarios and particularly challenging fights that really hurt the sense of cinematic progression, and the game is pretty short, but overall, it really raised the bar for Jason’s test for worthwhile movies; seeing a protagonist jump from car to car on a highway while shooting people, for instance, is now pretty well covered in games.

One of my main critiques of Keep on the Shadowfell is a lack of choices for the players to make. I guess my ideal pre-built module would be presented almost like the branching structure of a choose your-own-adventure book. Sadly Dungeons and Dragons modules seems more built around a model of brutal design conservation: if we’re going to design an area or combat encounter you’re gonna have to go there sooner or latter, and in fact if you put off going there you’ll find yourself under leveled in some other combat situation.

For example: After the players survive getting attacked by bandits on the road to Winterhaven, they meet the locals, pickup some interesting leads for where they might head next, and then turn in for the night (i.e. recharge their powers.) The next day they get to to decide what they want to do. Seems reasonable enough I suppose. However, as read the module states that regardless of what the players choose to do next, they will get attacked on the road outside Winterhaven. Well great. Not only do we remove the opportunity for the players’ choice to mean something, the module basically prescribes repeating the exact same (and only) combat encounter they just experienced, with the same battle map and so on. This seemed like pretty lazy design and a way to quickly build an expectation with new players that Dungeons and Dragon is a game about going places but it always takes forever to get there because you get attacked by Kobolds on the road every time.

Instead I decided that the players would just get to go wherever they sought to explore. The two main leads the characters had to explore were: 1) their mentor told them about a dragon burial site nearby which promised treasure, or, 2) seek out the Kobolds who have been attacking travelers, which seemed to promise advancing the story. I was kind of surprised that the players quickly chose the dragon burial site as their destination. I supposed I made that lead a bit easier to follow up, but I was really just trying to balance the possible level of interest for what seemed like a vestigial plot path vs. the direct path for progressing the story.

I think this actually worked out nicely as I had a story hook planned for the dragon burial site where the players stumble upon hired thugs of Kalarel (the big bad) excavating an artifact as part of his nefarious plans. The other nice part of the burial site encounter being second is that it allowed for the players to deal with antagonists that weren’t just more/bigger Kobolds, and also lay the groundwork for there being more than just a simple bandit problem to solve. In this way the first “chapter” of the game basically presents two stories: kobolds abducting anyone who travels on the road, and suspicious characters skulking around. By the end of the first chapter these stories will have converged  presenting the characters with a greater challenge they must solve by exploring the Keep on the Shadowfell itself

Keep on the Shadowfell presents 10 different non-player characters to interact with in the town of Winterhaven, but not much more than a sentence or two of personality for each one (they tend to be defined more in terms of occupation than persona.) Rather than rattling off a list of people they could talk to upon arrival in town I slimmed the list of NPCs down considerably:

• Lord Ernest Padraig –  The lord of Winterhaven (the players immediately took to calling him “Patty.”) He has information about the people of Winterhaven and begs for help with his bandit problem. Padraig has little to provide in the way of physical resources or information on how to solve the problems at hand. At first I played him with a pretty lousy scottish-esque accent but I couldn’t keep that up and dropped it altogether. He is always friendly and outgoing to the players, though at time concerned with their lack of progress. After the second conversation Padraig had with the players I started to see him as kind of a blustery politician: charming and outgoing, but providing no real solutions and somewhat helpless.
• Salvana Wrafton – The proprietor of Wrafton’s, the only tavern in town. Her role is minimal beyond providing food and lodging, she also directs the players to other NPCs that hang around in her tavern.
• Valthrun the Prescient – A scholar and sage, he will provide some critical information later in the story to help the player piece together what might be going on at the Keep on the Shadowfell. I envisioned him as kind of an absent minded academic: well versed in the history of the area, but completely unaware of current events. In conversations Valthrun is likely to trail off without finishing sentences and is usually too distracted to offer all the information players need without some additional coaxing from them.
• Elian the Old – an old farmer and Valthrun’s drinking buddy. So far he has zero dialogue but I always mention that he’s hanging around the tavern. I guess he’s kind of Keep of the Shadowfell’s Morn.
• Ninaran – I decided to introduce Ninaran the elven ranger later in the story, with the idea that she would only be able to get to Winterhaven after the roads were safer. Once there she wouldn’t be particularly friendly to the players but would be the prime source for information on the surrounding area that they would need to locate the Kobold’s base camp.

So in the end more than half of the townies named in the module make no appearance. Even with this cut down list my players would still mismatch names and roles and make other silly mistakes. Having a smaller cast or characters just seemed more practical for the player’s sake, but it also let me create more personality for each of the important NPCs.