Okay, I remember going to see this movie in the theater with Tim. We broke away from a social gathering of some sort (Sam’s birthday, maybe?) at West Ed to check it out at Silver City. I remember legions of nerds breaking in to cheers every time they thought the movie was starting, only to find they were cheering for Coke ads or promos for the latest Adam Sandler vehicle. And then the movie started.

I remember initially liking it when everything was fresh and new, only to find faults once time passed and the ‘just saw it!’ excitement faded. In fact, I’m pretty sure Time and I started talking about the incredibly racist Asian fish people on the drive home.

I honestly don’t think I’ve seen this movie since. Maybe bits and pieces, but certainly not the whole thing. Actually, I have seen the Rifftrax version, but that was more focused in hilarious mockery. I’ll be hopping back and forth from watching it and typing up thoughts here, and I’ll try to time stamp things to give some idea of just how quickly the shit flies. How bad will it turn out to be? Let’s find out…

00:59 – Well, that didn’t take long. Seriously, here is the first paragraph that scrolls up the screen :

Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Republic. The taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is in dispute.

Because nothing equals cinematic excitement like tax policy. This whole preamble sets the tone for the movie, and THAT is what it rolls out. This is going to be a long 2 hours.

3:30 – Seriously, how racist is George Lucas? How did these clearly Asian stereotype fish people get in this movie, considering how sensitive the entertainment industry is to possibly maybe kinda offending anyone these days?!  I keep expecting them to do this :

4:20 – Wait, so these things just go along with it when some holographic image in a bathrobe tells them to invade the planet they’ve been cutting off from trade for reasons that they don’t seem to understand? Oh, and could you kill those Jedi? You know, the ones that scare the shit out of you? Thanks. George doesn’t seem to think much of Asians.

5:00 – Remember how in the earlier movies lightsabers being drawn was serious business? Obi Wan wouldn’t pull his out except as an absolute last resort, because Jedi are supposed to be primarily peacekeepers. Well, Obi Wan and Qui Gon just pulled their sabers out because they heard a boom.

Oh yes, and now we’ll send in our ineffectual combat bots rather than leaving the poison gas enough time to kill them.

WHY DO THE FUCKING ROBOTS CHATTER TO EACH OTHER?! “Check it out Corporal…we’ll cover you.” “Roger roger.” They have RANKS? How exactly does a ROBOT earn a promotion?! Don’t they have some sort of non verbal method of communication?!

And then the Jedi escape because apparently these idiots don’t have any sort of tracking systems on their own ships.

8:00 – THAT is the regent of Naboo? THAT? I don’t blame the Space Asians for wanting to Pearl Harbour any people that would put this in charge.

Excellent, so we can also blame George Lucas for Lady Gaga!

What the Hell is that? Did Spielberg bet him that there was no way he could make Natalie Portman unattractive or something? Are the outlying worlds of the Republic so bored with themselves that they regularly have competitions to create the most ridiculous looking monarch? I mean, where would something like that originate? Did the costume artist draw that up while on a really bad acid trip?

10:30 – Like the arrival of the Anti-Christ, we have our first siting of the one known as ‘The Binks’. And with this happening, we reach Round 2 of ‘How Racist is George Lucas?’ Jar Jar could only be more of a racist early 20th Century depiction of blacks if he said ‘Me’sa want me some fried chicken and watermelon.’ It’s not like it’s subtle, either. Lucas must be a Grand Dragon by now…or maybe Grand Wizard?

WAS HE HONESTLY SO STUPID THAT HE THOUGHT PEOPLE WOULD LIKE THIS CHARACTER?! I suspect this was supposed to be this movie’s version of the Ewoks, but the Ewoks were FUN cute little furry dudes. This thing is a racist lizard thing with a bad Jamaican accent.

And now he have Boss Nass, the ridiculous negro…ERRRRR…Gungan leader. Did Lucas decide that weird tics and the like were a replacement for character development? “We’sa not caring about the…tic-tic-tic-tic…Naboo.” He then pretty much gives the room a raspberry. Delightful.

17:00 – Okay, here’s another major problem…George Lucas apparently decided that we need to see EVERYTHING. Can’t just explain that the Jedi and Jar Jar are on their way to the Naboo city; audiences are stupid and can’t be trusted! Instead, let’s spend 5 minutes showing their journey in some weird bio ship and a thrilling race away from a gigantic fish beast. And another. And still another. CG is teh AWSUM!

20:00 – Even under all the makeup, nobody could possibly think that this is Queen Amidala. For fuck’s sake, they even gave the decoy Queen a completely different costume! Are the Fish Asians blind as well as absolute morons?

26:00 -  Hey there, big bad guy here. Did I forget to introduce my student, Darth Maul? Well, now he’s introduced. Loose end tied up.

Hey, let’s give R2D2 an award for being the only droid not blown off the wing of the ship during the repairs of the shield generator! Way to go about your every day job and not be blown up! Something tells me that the issuing of Participaction medals is a very big deal on this world.

30:00 – Oh, Jar Jar just stepped in some sort of poo! The HILARITY as something not real stepped on something else not real. This is just a great example of why this movie doesn’t work…NOTHING IS REAL. I remember originally thinking that the actors gave bad performances. You know what? I can’t blame them. Stuck speaking this godawful dialogue to a bunch of digital things that they can’t even bounce their performance off of probably isn’t going to bring out anything more than a mailed in job. I call it ‘CSI Miami syndrome’.

Every damn scene has 55 different digital creations just wandering around in the background that serve no purpose beyond Lucas whacking his ego off with his precious digital environments.

31:00 – Episode 3 of ‘How racist is George Lucas?’ as we meet Watto. Part digital bug creature, part racist stereotype of Jews. All he’s missing is an intergalactic yarmulke.

And here comes Jake Lloyd. Oh boy. Sweet merciful fuck, he actually just said “Are you an angel?” to the ‘TOTALLY not the Queen’ Padme. “An Angel. I hear the deep space pilots talk about them. They’re the most beautiful creatures in the universe.” Apparently small children spitting out bad pick up lines from the 70’s is not creepy at all.

And then there’s this exchange :

“You’re a slave?”

“I’m a person,  and my name is Anakin.”

Good God…he actually just invited her back to his room to see his robot.

38:00 – Oh yeah, I guess we should have followed our plan from ten minutes ago to not communicate at all for fear of being detected. Now we’ve been traced by Darth Maul. WHOOPS!

40:00 – So, the little kid with the bad lines figures out that Qui Gon is a Jedi and Qui Gon has to reveal the entire plan to return to Coruscant to him. And now Anakin is telling the Jedi what to do. I am beginning to suspect that Midichlorians don’t just make you a Jedi, they also make you incredibly stupid.

43:00 – “I have acquired a pod in a game of chance.” Nobody talks like this. “Hey guys, wanna come over for some pizza and a few games of chance?” would get you beaten up and you would totally deserve it.

I’m also beginning to notice how bad Jake Lloyd truly is. He comes off as smug, which is rather insane from a 6 year old child actor. What the Hell have you accomplished to earn smugness? Congrats, you recently stopped shitting your pants!

45:00 – There was no father. I had forgotten that Anakin Skywalker is basically Space Jesus. So, who created this immaculate birth? Space God? Maybe the Holy Spirit was feeling a bit frisky? Something tells me this can be chalked up to a complete and utter lack of planning by Lucas. “Oh shit, who do I set up as the father of the most powerful Jedi around?! Yoda? No, that’s a bit weird for even me. Uhhh…”

Why are these kids blown away by the existence of R2D2 while they stand next to a pod racer and the robot Anakin built?!

48:00 – Ah yes, the Midichlorian count in the bloodstream. I’m not even going to get in to how stupid this is.

53:00 – Okay, the podrace preamble has just started…and we have our first space fart joke. Ugh. Anyway, let’s see how long this sequence is.

55:00 – More misplaced incredulity. Anakin has been in numerous high speed pod races, but Qui Gon physically lifting him in to his pod elicits a “Woah!”? Really? Nothing more shocking than a person lifting you up and stuff…mind blowing! The incredulity of it all!

60:40 – “He has to complete 2 more circuits? Oh dear.” The audience is with you, C3PO.

66:00 – And it’s finally over. Because we had to see every damn second of the stupid race. This actually could have been a decent scene if George Lucas was capable of editing. But his head is so far up his own ass that he can’t possibly see a way to remove even a moment of his ‘genius’.

68:00 Obi Wan – “Why do I sense that we’ve picked up another pathetic life form?” You have. His name is Jake Lloyd. Enjoy!

77:00 – Corsuscant…the planet is one big city. You will now get to see all of it as the digital effects display every building and ship flying by. Digital effects for the win! And now more thrilling and completely imaginary vistas of the futuristic metropolis as we go from the landing platform to another building!

79:00 – And now we have real Queen Amidala back. Nope, no differences to notice! There aren’t 2 versions of the Queen!

81:00 – Does anyone seriously consider the words of the Jedi Council member with a cock for a head? I find it hard to believe someone that looks like that would possibly have survived the brutal hazing rituals that must be a part of Jedi training. “I have reservations about this.” “Yeah, well you also have a dong on your skull. So shut up.”

“Master Qui Gon…more to say have you?” Yoda’s language is further proof of my midichlorians = retard hypothesis.

Hey idiots, you believe Anakin is the one foretold to bring balance to the force…right now, the force is so slanted towards the good that you all find it hard to believe the presence of a Sith. Do you think maybe balance might equal EVIL in this case? MIDICHLORIANS = DUMB.

83:00 – Wait, so the Trade Federation blockaded Naboo because of trade tariffs? Even though Naboo apparently produces nothing?! And since when are Queens elected rulers?

89:00 – Blah blah blah weak and stupid political crap that makes absolutely zero sense and isn’t the slightest bit interesting. NOBODY watched Phantom Menace hoping for ‘thrilling’ Senate action. George Lucas doesn’t give a goddamn what the audience wants, and doesn’t have a clue anyway.

91:00 – “Oh yeah, I need to explain what the fuck Midichlorians are! Roll out some bullshit about microscopic organisms and symbioses and other Science stuff.”

94:00 – “Jar Jar Binks…I need your help.” That might be the most horrifying line ever spoken.

96:00 – What the…Padme the handmaiden is the Queen?! Why I never! How is it that the damn Jedi seem shocked by this turn of events? Aren’t they supposed to have super senses and the like? Perhaps I should get my Midichlorian levels tested, because I saw right through that shit.

Oh how delightful. Boss Nass has given this new agreement a ceremonial spitting. Wait a minute…all the spitting and stuff…the overall look…he’s totally Space Frog Wooly Whatzit! “B-b-b-b-b-b Hey Anakin!”

Both loud, both outlandish, both somewhat annoying one note idiots…perfect!

99:00 – I love this alliance. The forces of Naboo will try to attack the droid control ship and take the capital city, while the Gungans stand against a massive Droid army and get slaughtered in the field.

And where the Hell has this Gungan army been hiding?! Thousands of troops, many of them mounted. Gigantic reptilian beats capable of carrying shield generators and turrets. What, were they all skilfully hiding behind trees every time the robots sent in a recon flight?

103:00 – Why are the star fighter pilots wearing WW1 era goggles?

Do they help keep the wind out of the eyes…in their enclosed cockpits?

Meanwhile, on the surface the droid army is activating…and walking right through the protective shield. What kind of shield can’t stop the forward motion of something walking? Oh well, it gives us a ‘thrilling’ fodder vs. fodder battle. The lame robots vs. the stupid aquatic things…can they please ALL lose? Does someone have a few tactical nukes?

106:00 – Oh, how dramatic…a Jedi vs. Sith clash. Or at least it might be dramatic if the Jedi didn’t have a 2 to 1 advantage from the outset.

And if the heavy battle droids are so effective, why does the Trade Federation even make any of the shitty regular variety? Stupid Space Asian Fish.

110:00 – All of the police and the Queen have Batman tether guns now? Because those damn droids are such effective fighters, you might need to make a quick escape.

112:00 – The shield that was doing nothing to protect the Gungans goes down, so they flee. Who does that remind us of?

115:00 – Qui Gon apparently forgot that he’s an awesome space ninja and fell for the ‘punch to the face’ fighting style. Midichlorians = dumb.

116:00 – Remember that the fight against anger is a big part of being a Jedi? Cause Obi Wan looks pretty damn pissed off right now. Bad Obi Wan…bad!

And now Anakin saves everyone by destroying the droid control ship COMPLETELY BY ACCIDENT. Perhaps his later turn towards the dark side would be effective if his great act of heroism here wasn’t entirely incidental. This doesn’t make him a hero, it doesn’t make him good and it doesn’t prove his place in the universe…it makes him a fluke. He won completely by chance. The great foretold one is pretty much Space Mr. Bean.

119:00 – And Darth Maul forgets that Obi Wan knows that Force stuff, then just stands there while Obi hops over him and cleaves him in two. Don’t I remember something later about the importance of the high ground? And didn’t Darth just kick Qui Gon’s ass? Midichlorians = dumb.

120:00 – Palpatine – “And you, young Skywalker. We’ll watch your career with great interest.” I’m not evil. Not evil!

Did Yoda always sound this Grover-esque? He seems to have really slanted his voice towards that particular blue muppet.

The council believes it’s a bad idea for Noob full Jedi Obi Wan to take Anakin as his apprentice, but they give in because the dead guy wanted it. Yes, this is truly the brightest way to run things. Forget about the hard won wisdom of the Council, we’ll go along with what this other guy wants.

123:00 – Remember that scene at the end of Star Wars that the kids liked, what with all the pageantry and medals for the heroes and such? Yeah, let’s re-do that only with 73 tons of digital wonderment.

And it’s over.

I remembered this not being a good movie, but this goes beyond that. It’s complete shit. Bad plot, bad dialogue, bad performances, bad everything. Nothing interesting happens in over 2 hours of movie. The entire premise makes absolutely no sense.

And who is the target audience here? Adults will mock the laughably stupid premise and childish bullshit. Kids will be bored to death by rambling governmental monologues and dialogue heavy with senselessness. This is not just total shit, it’s total shit without an obvious audience.

Clearly George Lucas is fond of himself and his ideas. He shouldn’t be. Now we know why Paramount parachuted Lawrence Kasdan in to help re-write Star Wars and work heavily on the sequels in that trilogy (Kasdan actually wrote Empire entirely). Lucas can’t write. He can’t come up with story ideas that work or interesting characters or decent lines. Then to make it worse, he fills those voids with digital tricks that do nothing more than really illuminate just how hollow an experience the movies really are. What an absolute mess. George Lucas has recently said that he wants to focus on small movie projects, but he’s simply incapable of it. Small movies don’t get budgets for 7,000 pounds of digital shit…they need well thought out characters and realistic dialogue. And he isn’t capable of producing either of those.

And there are two more to go. Fuck.

Yes indeed, it is a new adaptation of XCom : UFO Defense called…well…XCom : UFO Defense. People online have been going nuts. I…actually, I was initially a bit blah about the whole thing.

See, I’ve played XCom. Played the shit out of it. So if all this was going to be is a fresh coat of paint on the same game, why exactly would I be all that interested? I hate to start shooting sacred cows, but there were problems with that game. Like the broken difficulty system, and possibly the worst game UI ever designed.

But it isn’t just a shinier version of the old. They’re changing things up.

It sounds like nations turning against XCom, and especially turning towards the aliens, will have real repercussions. And there might be options to do something about it. It never made any sense that China would up and walk away and start palling it up with a bunch of fucking Sectoids, and everyone was apparently cool with it and just went about their day. They’ve turned their backs on humanity! BOMBS THE FUCKERS!

I think the move from time units to an RPG-esque move action/standard action type system works well for ground missions, too. Really, that was essentially what you were doing most of the time by reserving time units for a response attack anyway. And you can still do that by throwing a guy in to overwatch. So all of the mincing fairies complaining about the loss of time units like that will open a mouth to Hell and damn the Earth can fuck right off.

Research is still there. Base development is still there, but you can only have one major installation with the rest limited to satellite systems and the like. Not really a big deal since I tended to have one main base anyway. A lot of people are whining about a limit of 4 troops initially on ground missions, but it sounds like that’s expandable through research and training. And perhaps the average trooper here is more effective the generally crap dudes you got in the first game? And yes, you can still re-name your soldiers.

Of course, the average whining piece of shit is complaining about everything. Apparently knowing when your research will be done is unrealistic and a mockery of the original game, the game where I could pick up an unconscious teammate and put him in my backpack.. The graphics are apparently a travesty, even though the original featured a collection of troops that basically looked like the start of the Fourth Reich stampeding across the planet.

But fuck those people. To me, this is looking and sounding fantastic. Bring it on!

Even the Chryssalids…cheap bastards.

If you think wasteland mutants are fresh and original, have I got a game for you…

I wasn’t even really planning to mention this game, simply because of how completely uninspired it was. But then I realized I’d written a lot of positive game posts recently, so say Hello to balance.

RAGE is the latest game from id Software (aka the Doom & Quake guys). It was built up and hyped to the moon. It didn’t live up to it. It didn’t even hint of living up to it. Instead of entering the world as the big, bold promise it supposedly was, it cut it’s wrists and bled out in a bathtub of disappointment.

Let’s start with the game engine. I don’t normally give a shit about such things, but id always bills their latest idTech engine as the greatest thing ever, and this thing was a lump of old shit. Let’s take a look at another screenshot :

Now what you don’t see here is the texture pop in. That isn’t something you’re ever really supposed to be aware of, but you can’t miss it in this pile. Any time…and I mean ANY TIME…that you turn enough to rotate the view in this game, a second later you’ll see the textures on EVERY SINGLE OBJECT finally decide to fill in. EVERY TIME. John Carmack has claimed that to fix it, the game would require a 100 GB graphics texture patch. Either he is a lying cunt, or this is the single most badly optimized graphics engine in the history of man.

If only this were the least of this game’s problems…

The single biggest issue with RAGE is that nothing about it is memorable at all. Well actually, several aspects of it ARE quite memorable…from the first time I’d seen them. In other games. Games that were better than this.

Bad guys, driving sequences and twisted dialogue filled with black humour? Oh hi, Borderlands. Not just the concepts were taken, but the complete FEEL of all of it was lifted 100% from that game. And the plot line in the second half couldn’t have been a bigger rip off of the story from Red Faction Guerrilla if it had tried. The fucking thing might as well have shown up for work in a Red Faction shirt. Um…that analogy really doesn’t make sense. Whatever. I can’t be bothered to think up a new and sensible comparison for this game.

Now, one part of it that IS original is the ending. It is the single worst ending that I have ever seen in a game. Ever. I’ve had a few weeks to think about this, and I cannot come up with a worse anti-climax.

The overall story : You are the only survivor of your ‘ark’ (Oh hi, Fallout!). You step out in to a brave new world where you are promptly handed a gun by a survivor and sent off to kill people. Because that’s how suspicious wastelands survivors constantly expecting attempted intrusion by government spies roll…they just hand weapons to the noob and send him off to do shit while telling him how much they hate the government.

Erm, anyway…you do a lot of missions for the secretive Red Faction….ERRRRR…The Resistance (more startling originality!). Finally, you discover that several hundred Arks remain buried underground, because the military dictator in charge refuses to send out the satellite signal that will surface them. So in you go to hijack the satellite system and free the damn people.

Before the mission, you’re warned about a new breed of wastes mutants that have been ‘weaponized’ by the military and who are protecting the relay station. Okay, maybe this is something new!

Here is your average wasteland mutant (and I mean in any game, not just RAGE). It’s a creature of a savage land armed with a crude melee weapon.

And there is the weaponized Authority (Yes, the ruling junta is actually known as ‘The Authority’.) mutant. It’s a creature of a savage land, wearing some sweet gloves and what looks to be a VR sex helmet as seen in mid 80’s sci fi graphic novels. The only difference between these stupid things is that this one looks like it escaped from some sort of S&M themed slave encampment…or perhaps a Tool video. Aside from that, it’s the same damn thing you’ve been blasting with shotguns for ten damn hours by this point.

So you reach the relay, you activate it…and the credits roll. That’s it. The game just ends. You’ve played through possibly the easiest stage in the whole game, and you’re done.

And it doesn’t even make sense! This is a brutal planet populated by hostile gangs and a military dictatorship. How in the fuck is releasing a couple thousand people with no weapons or gear in to that wilderness going to just magically equal freedom, as the game claimed it would? There are holes so large in that idea that the idea has collapsed in to itself and become a vortex hungering for anything resembling coherent thought.

The only fond memories that I still have of this game are :

-John Goodman doing voice acting? Nice! Actually, the voice acting as a whole is really good.

-Weapon and gear building by buying recipes and scrounging parts. Want exploding RC cars or spider robots? Learn how to build them and find the bits to make them!

I just realized something. Several months back, we realized during a discussion at coffee that as soon as spider robots appear in a movie, that movie is guaranteed to suck. Think about it : any movie you have EVER seen that had spider robots somewhere on the screen was probably total shit, right? It looks like that theory also applies to games.

-Silently beheading guards with Wingsticks (think really sharp boomerangs).

-RAGE Frenzy. As you play through missions and perhaps optional side quests (that take you through areas you just played through during main missions. I’m all for recycling initiatives, but come on!), you’ll encounter playing cards featuring characters, weapons and vehicles you meet or encounter in the game. In taverns, you can use those cards to build custom decks and play them against other players for money. It’s like Magic the Gathering, but with less of a need to spend thousands of dollars on cards and future shame. This mini game takes the full game out by the bike racks and beats the living shit out of it, because it’s awesome fun.

So yeah, RAGE.. It isn’t very good, but it isn’t even lame enough to actually bring about real anger (or rage…HAHA!) in me. It’s just there. Woo.

This is one of those ‘do whatever the Hell you want’ sort of games, like Grand Theft Auto. But like Grand Theft Auto with the insanity meter cranked up to about 217. A few bits I will share that don’t give a ton away :

-Side missions seeing you stealing whores from rivals and pressing them in to service for the Third Street Saints? Check.

-Beating down cops with a combination dildo-bat called the Penetrator? Check.

-Professor Genki’s Hyper Ordinary Fun Time…a game show that sees you score bonuses for head shotting heavily armed mascots and penalized for shooting up pictures of adorable pandas? Check.

-Pimping out a street sweeper in to an urban assault vehicle? Check.

-Running about the city of Steelport as a cross dressing 400 pound Australian man with a zombie voice? Check. Well, you don’t HAVE to use this character build, I guess. Thanks to plastic surgeons in the game, you can completely change your character at any time! Experiment with glee!

-Listening to news updates on the radio delivered by the same voice actress who does Trisha Takinawa on Family Guy? Check. Actually, there are several radio stations using licensed music that you probably aren’t sick of hearing, which makes for a nice change.

-LONE SPOILER! Going on an op to rescue a pimp (who has a voice box thanks to a life of smoking) taken and pressed in to service in an S&M club…finding the pimp strapped to a cart, then engaging in a running  gun battle with him (in full gimp attire) pulling you and a buddy along the streets while bad guys chase you in their own gimp rickshaws? Check. SPOILER OVER.

And as insane as the game is, it manages to be both funny and rather smart. There’s an entire sub plot involving the stupidity of giving up freedoms for ‘security’ that is rather well put together. Dildo bats AND intelligence? Sweet.

Really, the selling point for Saints Row 3 is the fucked up city you’re running around. Allow me to give an example.

I witnessed a woman crossing a road, only to be struck by a golf cart being driven by someone in a rabbit costume. The guy was apparently angry at her denting his ride, so he got off and proceeded to stomp her to death in the street. This was noticed by the cops, who gunned him down…and in doing so, apparently pissed off the local posse of gang bangers. This sparked up a massive running gun battle in the street, including cop snipers in helos and heavily armed gangster types with grenade launchers. And as the carnage spread, a lone man in a gimp suit just casually strolled on through. My only interaction with this entire episode was observing. The whole crazy thing blew up all on its own. Any game that can have that sequence of events just happen is a winner in my books.

Yes, there are zombies. And yes, there is something called Gangstas in Space. I’m not saying anything more. Just buy the fucking game.

Actually, hold that thought…I will issue one more SPOILER. You know that song “You’re the Best Around” by Joe Esposito? You probably do…it plays during the tournament scene in Karate Kid, where we witness the wins of Daniel-san and various Cobra Kai members. That song gets put in to such a ludicrous situation in this game that I had to pause because once I caught the song, I was laughing too damn hard to play.

Yes, that’s a chainsaw. And you’re butchering people with it while Joe Esposito inspires with his glorious song. If you can still resist picking this up, there is something wrong with you…or maybe something NOT wrong enough with you. One or the other. Play the damn game!

Battlefield 3 was patched earlier this week, including amongst many fixes several new search parameters for games to join, a new chat interface, and the reduction of tactical flashlights and infrared night vision sights from hellish cheat machines to something more reasonable. The patch was 2 GB in size, since it also included all of the data for the Back to Karkand expansion that releases in a week, bringing several BF2 and BF1942 maps in to the BF3 universe. All is good with the world.

Yes, it does look like that. It’s pretty sweet. Dust kicks up under foot or from a passing helo. Rubble sprinkles down after a tank round slams in to a wall. Perhaps you’ll spot the glint of a sniper scope in time to dive for cover. You’ll hear bullets crack by as they get close. Grenades will make your hearing ring briefly after exploding nearby, or maybe they’ll rattle down the sidewalk a bit further before going off. And the scream from a nearby room tells you somebody was just force fed a knife. The production values are insanely good.

So yes, Battlefield 3. Let’s get the single player part out of the way right off the bat : it sucks the balls of a dead dog. It’s really just an out and out piece of shit. Scripted everything wrapped in to what ends up being essentially a one route corridor shooter so restrictive that it makes Call of Duty look like a Grand Theft Auto style open world game. And since nobody is buying a Battlefield game for the single player anyway, it just seems like a weird waste of developer time. It’s like the game programming team took a vacation, and while they were out a collection of mentally handicapped drunken monkeys took over and slapped this shit in.

But the multi player. Oh the multi player.

Up to 64 players (on PC. Consoles are 24 player max) trying desperately to shoot each other in the face. Hop in a tank (and then try not to be a douche and WAIT FOR SOMEONE TO MAN THE FUCKING MACHINE GUN TURRET before driving off) or an attack helicopter (DITTO). Or just run overland. And there’s lots of running. You basically have limitless sprint, which I guess is DICE’s way of dealing with douchebags driving off in otherwise empty vehicles and leaving their team stranded. It works, but it’s like two teams of Kenyan runners engaging in a firefight. I do enjoy the genius types who just sprint around without using cover, though…so easy to shoot in the face.

There are Team Deathmatch modes, but nobody plays them because they’re boring. The two modes that do get played are Rush and Conquest. Rush mode sees one team attacking a pair of targets that the other team are defending. Every time the attackers succeed, the map shifts. Every time the defenders get a kill, they drop the attacking team’s total number of lives towards failure. Conquest mode splatters objectives on the map for both teams to capture and hold and fight over like bratty children trapped for a long journey in a hot car…and packing assault weapons. Each team has a ‘tickets’ total representing the lives available to them. Not only do those drop when someone dies, they also ‘bleed’ whenever the other team currently holds more objectives. So there is incentive to actually push to take points, and incentive against being a selfish cunt hiding in the middle of nowhere with a sniper rifle not really accomplishing any sort of team goal. And as you play, the level will morph as buildings are blown open, cars explode on the street and trees are felled by fire. It isn’t as drastic as it was in Battlefield : Bad Company 2, but those levels often ended up resembling moonscapes without any cover before too long so that’s okay.

There are 4 classes to play : A hybrid Assault/medic guy, the Engineer (who can repair things and also gets shoulder launched anti tank or anti air weapons), the Support class with access to heavy machine guns and other fun toys, and the Scout class with sniper rifles. Load up your chosen class with your choice of weapons (many, MANY more unlock as you go) and uniform (same), then head out. Every time you re-spawn, you can choose a different class and spawn point. You could even tweak your load out every time you spawned if you wanted to.

You used to also be put in to a 4 man squad. They still exist, but now you have to manually join them, and that blows. A lot of people don’t, and it creates a bit too much lone wolfing. Not only does being in a squad give you a group to move about with and support, you can also use your squad leader as a mobile spawn point when re-spawning. No squad, no mobile re-spawn. I personally think this was a bit of a bad move on DICE’s part.

As you play, you’ll score points. Get a kill? Points. Protect/neutralize/capture a flag? points. Disable or destroy a tank or vehicle? Points. Damage someone that is killed by another? Points. Suppress an enemy that someone else takes out? Points. Ride in a tank whose driver scores a main gun kill? Points. Spot targets? Points. Heal or revive others? Points. Throw out ammo reloads for team mates? Points. Headshot? Points. Score a vengeance kill (killing someone who just took out a teammate)? Bonus points. And so on. And so on. These points add up to unlock all sorts of crap.

You’ll keep getting overall points that jump up your rank and give you everything from new uniform and dog tag options to a few new weapons and attachments. Points earned in vehicles earn you bonuses for that class of vehicle (Limited stealth, auto reloaders, etc.). Points earned as a specific class earn you new gear and weapons for that class (M4’s, Tactical flashlights, Extra carrying room for explosive weapons, etc.). Points earned with a specific weapon or piece of equipment earn you new attachments and bonus options for that weapon or piece of gear (Laser sights, Foregrips, etc.) There is a LOT of stuff, but it isn’t like the starting gear is garbage either.

And every single stat in the game is tracked through your Battlelog, a web page that is also launched when you load the game up. It’s a server browser, friends list, chat client, stats tracker, game updater, game news hub, forum hub and Platoon (clans, basically) system all jacked in to a web page. the nice part about it is that you can access all of your information without needing to load the game. Hell, if I’m on a computer on which I have the game installed and notice that someone on my friends list just joined a game with server openings, I can launch in to that same server and play via the web page without actually starting up the game first. And if you want an idea of how insane the stats tracking and progression tracking is, hit the little BF3 logo I added to my Follow Me box up top, then wade through everything.

There are some bad points. The tactical flashlight is ridiculous. A Flashlight being blinding in a building : perfectly reasonable. But here is a screen shot of the glare off of this thing OUTDOORS in the DAY TIME :

What in the Hell is that? Does he have a small sun mounted under the barrel of his rifle?! Am I witnessing some sort of celestial event here?! Is this guy being attacked by a ghost? Fuck, I have been blinded (and it is REALLY bright in game) by a team mate who had one of these mounted and turned on and it just happened to swing the right way while he ran by. Stupid stupid stupid.

And then there is the IRNV  scope. This thing was clearly designed by the biggest dickwad on the entire dev team, because it’s essentially a legalized cheat. Bring this up and you see EVERYONE. Bad guy trying to creep around behind you under the cover of some bushes? You see him. Dude 300 feet away through a stand of trees and behind a wall? You see him, too. It’s absolutely insane that this fucking thing made it in to the game. Sure, you need to earn it with 100 kills with a weapon (which can take awhile, what with the constant temptation to switch to a shiny new rifle), but come on! Who passed this fucking thing, and why does he hate me? I mean, in real life these things would blind someone worse than this game’s flash light if they tried to use it in broad daylight…can we at least get THAT put in?!

So yeah, there are quibbles. But overall, the game’s a lot of fun. So play it…or don’t and go fuck off and knit doilies or something. Whatever, I’m busy hunting this guy before I…FUCK, he had an IR scope. Rape his whore mother with a chainsaw!

I realize that I’ve generally been pretty effusive with my praise and positivity when discussing board games. Outside of a few games I mentioned during the blog challenge that were disappointing, things haven’t been bad at all. And that’s probably a little weird coming from me. Thanks to Battles of Westeros, I can now amend that with some anger and annoyance. Thanks, Fantasy Flight!

Battles of Westeros is part of the Commands & Colors family of games, a series of light tactical games that are pretty easy to pick up and play. They run the gamut from the Civil War (Battle Cry) to World War 2 (Memoir ‘44), Ancient Rome (Commands & Colors : Ancients) to a weird version of the Hundred Years War with knights and archers being joined by goblins and dwarves (Battlelore) all the way to the 19th Century (Commands & Colors : Napoleonics). Last weekend, I headed down to spend some time with my sister, brother in law # 1 (The original one, yo!), nieces and nephew. I stayed in Calgary the night before heading down there, basically to go to The Sentry Box on Friday and browse.

I knew I wanted one of the gamers from this series, and it came down to C&C Napoleonics and Battles of Westeros. I’ve become more interested in the era of European history when Napoleon was crushing everyone like rats, but I also really like the Song of Ice & Fire books and liked the concept of playing out tactical battles with major characters from the books leading armies of horsemen and foot soldiers.

I went with Westeros. I mean, Fantasy Flight Games (who are an enormous board game publisher) is known for really good stuff. I own quite a few of their games and have yet to be disappointed. Surely THAT wouldn’t change in a massive way, right? Certainly nothing will change that opinion at all, and this will be the least dramatic and interesting blog post ever created, right?

So…fucking…wrong.

Opening up the box, I was greeted with a huge 6 panel board and about 8 sheets of thick cardboard tokens and banners to be punched out. Also, two small packs of cards, a bag of dice, and 4 bags of units. One is full of green bases, and the other 3 with the actual figures…one of leaders, one of the Stark army, and one of Lannisters.

There’s a pic from Boardgamegeek. Look pretty decent, right? Sure does.

Lies. All horrible lies.

Okay, not LIES. Obviously it isn’t some sort of elaborate hoax involving holograms and perhaps a laser of some kind. But what isn’t made clear without searching a bit is that actually putting these things together is an exercise in enraging futility.

I could accept it being as actually painful as in Tide of Iron. Fine. A one time bout of excruciation and we’re done? I can do that. But no. See, the Tide of Iron guys actually fit in to the goddamn bases. Not the case here.

The units pop in to grooves in the base, and also have tabs (2 for foot troops, 3 for horses or wolf riders or the like) that stick through small holes in the bottom. Let us count the ways in which these are completely and utterly fucked up.

-The holes are too small. And I mean they’re too small for dust particles to squeeze through.

-The holes are too big. Guys are falling out of those bases like any man likely falls out of Kim Kardashian these days.

-The holes are nowhere near where they need to be to match the tabs. I realize these were probably made by child labourers toiling in a Chinese sweatshop, but did they have to get the kids drunk before their shift?

-There are no holes. In at least one case, it seems they plum forgot to do what they’re supposed to do.

-Tiny little tabs of excess plastic all over the bottoms of the figures. Tiny enough that you’d need a surgical scalpel to get the damn things off of there. And yet enough of an issue that the entire slot of the unit won’t fit in to the groove at all…and no, I don’t suspect that a lack of foreplay is the problem here.

Oh, and did I mention that those figures are about as sturdy as warm butter? What a lovely combo!

Maybe I got a bad batch of stuff. It can happen…just not here. turns out this is par for the course. The only way to actually make this workable is using a really fine size x-acto knife to trim, then using a toothpick to apply crazy glue and try to push the units in to the stupid bases. Even then, they often don’t fit right.

Lovely.

Look, I’m willing to spend the time to get a game set up right. C&C Napoleonics uses wood blocks for units, with stickers on either side…stickers you have to apply yourself…on hundreds of blocks.

I’m happy to do it. It’s a simple one time thing.

This, on the other hand, is likely to be a nightmare. And the work wouldn’t be necessary if the components weren’t pieces of shit. In fact, they might actually BE partially petrified pieces of shit rather than really crappy plastic. And if that’s the case, perhaps some sort of weird kudos are in order. And perhaps my babbling on like this is evidence that I’ve had enough beer this evening.

So this mess is going back in the box and being relegated to a dark corner where it can think about what it has done. Maybe someday down the line I’ll develop the patience to bother, but it’s a lot more likely I just dump the goddamn thing on someone in a trade and be done with it. Let someone else fight for the stupid Iron Throne. How disgusted am I with this? It’s such a mess that I find myself wishing I had instead bought the game that glorifies A FRENCHMAN.

Let this be a lesson to you, would be game owners : research the fuck out of anything you’re thinking about buying. Otherwise, you’ll eventually find yourself briefly consumed by a boiling rage that has you contemplating tracking down a head designer and shoving his windpipe full of his horrid creations. Also, a game can sound like a lot of fun, but it’s all for nought if getting it ready makes you want to smash your own face in to a bloody mess.

What’s this one? The ultimate (and possible only) full FPS simulator, cooked up by The Gadget Show.

And by FPS, I mean First Person Shooter.

And if you don’t know that or what that is…uhhh…you may be at the wrong site. I believe the blog you were looking for is over there some place. Maybe try Googling ‘boring ass stuff’. Actually, don’t. I do not recommend EVER typing a word like ‘ass’ in to Google.

This thing is ridiculous. A 4 meter by 9 meter video dome that surrounds the player, created by 5 HD projectors. A 360 degree treadmill system is how you move yourself in the game. Ten infra-red motion trackers and a sensor on the gun you actually wield control your aim and viewpoint. Crouch or jump and the hacked Kinect system will transmit that to you in game. Pull the trigger on the gun and you fire in the game. An ambient lighting system and surround sound helps complete the package.

Oh, and get if you happen to get hit in the game, one of 12 paintball gun turrets will blast a round in to your sorry ass. Or your sorry leg. Or your sorry face.

Go ahead and watch it, if for no other reason than the fact that a British person cursing while being shot by paintballs is really, really funny.

Battlefield 3 comes out next week. The pre-load from Gamersgate opens up in…2 hours for those degenerates who pre-ordered it (like me). The Beta was awesome, even without that system (which would run you a cool $650,000, by the way). And as much as I’d like it, do I REALLY need technology that will encourage me to curse out digitized characters more than I already do? Probably not. It already happens a lot. In any game. Honestly, if I’m not calling some AI controlled soldier a fucking prick, I’m shouting down ‘that punk ass bitch’ Castille for daring to invade my territory in Europa Universalis.

Also, it’s bad enough having to deal with the fact that you got shot by XXXTehEVAL14. Do I really need to feel actual pain when he blasts me with all the mad skillz he has built up through many moons of not working, going to school, or doing anything more than play the game? Not so much. I’d rather just repeatedly snipe him from distance and send him in to an F-bomb dropping froth while I laugh from the shadows.

Pretty sweet rig, though.

I don’t play the table top game, though. I ain’t about to drop thousands of dollars on a bunch of tanks I then spend dozens of hours painting, only to return home in defeat because some 17 year old moron’s parents got divorced and they both try to assuage their guilt over his feelings of abandonment with thousands of dollars worth of Chaos Marines.

Anyway, let’s just say that my being interested in Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine wasn’t exactly shocking.

That’s you. Well, not YOU you but in-the-game you…that you being Captain Titus of the Ultramarines. Yes, that’s the name of their chapter. And yes, that’s really fucking lame. We’ve got Space Wolves, Imperial Fists, White Scars, Black Templars, Deathwatch, Blood Angels and…Ultramarines? Could this name come off as more of an afterthought?

“Oh shit, we need another one. Uhhhh…Special Marines? No, that literally sounds retarded. Super Duper Marines? Sounds like the gayest chapter in the Imperium. Ubermarines sounds German, and we don’t need people thinking German while playing our fiction of gigantic warriors in huge, metal jackboots…”

“”How about Ultramarines? Cause they’re…like…ultra marine-y…and stuff.”

“Whatever. Write it up, I’ve gotta go take a shit.”

In that shot, Titus is using his jump pack to leap from a Thunderhawk gunship towards an orbital Ork flak platform. And yet he looks like about as excited as he would while sitting down to write up a grocery list. Ultramarines don’t tend to be very emotional, which makes them a tad…meh.

So yeah, the game. You run around from the third person perspective and butcher Orks. A LOT of Orks. I mean A LOOOOOOOOOT of Orks. You’ll rip in to them from range with your bolter (think rifle firing massive explosive cannon rounds) and other ranged weapons, but the game really wants to make you wade in with a chainsword (combine a chainsaw and a sword. Yes, that IS awesome) or a power axe. How does it do this? It seems that Ultramarines don’t take cover. Even though they do.

Except that you will…sort of…by trying to precisely position yourself kind of behind a big pile of crates or a rock or whatever in such a way that the distant enemies can’t shoot you in to little pieces of valour. This happens a lot more once the vile forces of Chaos enter the fray.

If you’re going to make me face waves of enemies armed with energy weapons that they REALLY like to fire, let me actually take cover. Or go fuck yourself.

And would it have killed Relic to give me USEFUL squad mates? Star Wars Republic Commando came out a decade ago, and it had some of the best friendly AI that I’ve ever seen, mixed with simple orders and directives that you could pass down. It was a fantastic squad game. 40K is completely built around squads, yet here you are matched up with some old Sergeant who must have survived this long by hiding, because he can’t shoot for shit, and some new guy who spends more time whining like a fairy than accurately firing at anything. We’ve gone from friendly AI taking objectives and killing bad guys to a couple of guys who must have made the Chapter through family connections and who occasionally manage to hit something purely by accident. Why is friendly AI apparently de-evolving?

So anyway, the game really wants you to get in close with melee. And frankly, you want to because it’s awesome. You also want to because you regain your health by stunning some poor opponent and then utterly savaging him in to a pile of viscera with a brutal finishing attack.

Like those.  Apparently Orks are just giant blood balloons with a thin veneer of skin wrapped around them. There’s another where you break the guy’s back, throw him facedown to the ground, then curb stomp the xenos bastard into oblivion. Yeah.

You have to be careful while launching those moves though, because if you’re surrounded by his buddies, they wail on you as you’re performing it.

So anyway, there’s a lot of that. It’s a bit repetitive, but that’s okay (aside from the aforementioned lack of cover or effective buddies).

And in the end, you face off with a Chaos sorcerer. Well, first you fight several waves of summoned demons and Chaos Marines and these annoying psykers who float around and shoot these horrible fucking energy beams at you…all without being able to effectively take cover. I believe Satan may have been responsible for programming that particular stage.

WARNING – SPOILERS AHEAD. SPOILERS OF ABSOLUTE BULLSHIT AT THE END OF THIS GAME, BUT SPOILERS ALL THE SAME.

NOW you fight the big baddie. This is a guy who stops you dead at multiple times earlier in the game by harnessing a small bit of the vast immaterium of the warp that he can bend to his will to totally immobilize you. He walked up behind one of your squad mates and pretty much effortlessly tore him in half. He has lived for dozens of millennia, and achieved so much that the dark Gods of Chaos are on the verge of elevating him to existence as an immortal daemon. THIS will be a fight!

And then you run at him and knock him off the ledge of the huge spire you’re both on.

Now, it isn’t like this is a sudden move. You’re a good 50 feet away, you rev up the chainsword, and you run at him while screaming. You couldn’t give him more early warning if you’d hired a skywriting plane to draw your plan up in the sky above. He could easily just raise his hand and stop you dead in your tracks, as he has before, but no…you just knock him off the spire.

Fuck off.

So now you’re falling together, and the final boss battle is…a series of quick time events.

Seriously. Fuck right off.

You press one button to punch him repeatedly. Then you press another to avoid one of his loping attempts at a melee strike. Apparently he decided to just put away the psychic powers and the magic and the effectiveness in favour of just taking these stupid, elongated swings at you like an un-coordinated gorilla with 200 pound weights strapped to each paw.

Oh, now I’ve released from him, and I’m flying around and firing at him while he shoots bolts of psychic energy towards me. Hey, that last punch to the jaw must have trigged his memory! “Oh, YEAH! I’m an immensely potent psychic warrior for Chaos!”

And you start hitting him again, and he apparently forgets his skills. Again. And then he dies.

Then comes the lame ass cinematic where your worthless young cohort sells you out to the Inquisition because you can touch warp energy and because he’s a wanker. There are a lot of really nerdy reasons that this is stupid as shit, but the whole thing is just lame and not worth the explanation. So lame that I uninstalled the game and will never, ever play it again.

WORST. ENDING. EVER.

So yeah. Space Marine. It’s a game. You can play it and stuff. I’m gonna go crank up the new Deus Ex.

And yet, they can’t all be winners.

Since I’ve spent numerous posts during the challenge extolling the virtues of the great games I’ve acquired, I figure it’s only fair to cover the other side of the things. They aren’t all bad games, some are just…okay.

Let us begin.

Pacific War

This is actually a regret from yesteryear. Back in the day (exact definitions of when ‘the day’ might have been are not available), Derek LaFay and I played a fair number of strategy games. Nothing too heavy, mostly games that could be played in a day. For reasons I cannot remember, we got it in our heads that Pacific War sounded like the next step to take.

Let me put this in perspective…this game cost around $100.  It was fucking enormous.

There’s the map and all of the reference sheets, task force sheets, air base sheets, etc. Not included in the photo : thousands of counters. Thousands. It took us basically an entire day just to punch them out of the boards.

Now, hard core war gamers will go out and buy a sheet of plexiglass to put over the map. We didn’t have that. So air squadrons and fleets were constantly drifting thanks to the nefarious folds of the Pacific Ocean.

This damn thing took up an entire ping pong table. And it’s not like this was a short term game…to play the full game of this would have taken months. This game absolutely smashed both of us. It was pure micromanagement Hell on a gigantic scale. The rulebook was filled with minutiae designed to try the patience of the mellowest of heshers.

It flopped. OH did it flop.

I had actually forgotten that I had this, until I was looking through closets for 3D Snakes and Ladders to play with the kids (before I had purchased better options) and came across it. The box was beat up, but the contents were fine and all there. Turns out this thing is a collector’s item now. I got rid of it as quickly as possible.

Runebound

Fantasy Flight Games are a massive board game/RPG publisher. They have several games that take place within the realm of Terrinoth. One is Descent, which I rambled on about previously at some length. Runebound is sold as an adventure game in the land of Terrinoth that works as a group game or solo. So I figured, okay, I’ll try it. It sounded decent so I went ahead and ordered.

Doesn’t that look fun? Adventurers wandering around and conquering monsters. Item cards. Companion cards. Magic spells. Battle axes. Kickass!

Not so much.

The typical turn consisted of moving, then fighting something in a space. You either beat it and receive a pitiful reward or lose (AGAIN). Most of the gear you can acquire costs a lot of money, so you have to keep fighting boring skeletons and the like again…and again…AND AGAIN. Either that, or take on something harder and getting your ass kicked. Again. No quests. Very few events. Just that. Over and over again.

And the game is a prime example of what turns out to be multi player solitaire if you play it with others. You all take a turn wandering around fighting weak ass stuff and dying a lot, But you never interact with one another. Ever. You aren’t really allies, you aren’t really rivals, you’re all just randomly wandering around and occasionally wave at one another.

“Magnar, is that you?”

“Holy shit! Zaxos?! It’s been far too long! What are you up to?”

“Oh, heading off to see if I can take out that skeleton. Say, is that a new breastplate?”

“Sure is! I FINALLY bested that troll down by the river and had enough to buy it. Pretty happy with it so far. Anyway, I’m going to wander off and hope to beat up a skeleton of my own. Call me later this week!”

This game is multi player sort of like masturbation is multi player. You’re doing stuff and other people are just watching. And this has taken a turn towards creepy town.

Moving along…

I may have succeeded against the evil that was apparently rising (actually…no. I never actually finished a game. So I suppose evil won. You’re welcome, bad guys), but the game failed miserably in the fight against tedium. Someone else was interested in it : gone.

Tide of Iron

Now, I don’t hate Tide of Iron, but it certainly has a few…quirks.

We’re still in Fantasy Flight land. Tide of Iron is FFG’s WW2 tactical war game. It’s one of their titles that comes in one of those monstrous coffin boxes.

Every game, you pick a scenario to play and set up the map boards and overlays to create the area being fought for. Each player gets to draw from different decks of cards offering everything from reinforcements to off board artillery support to surprise attacks.

There are a few different models of tanks, meaning that German Tiger heavy armour have different characteristics from an American Sherman. Take turns manoeuvring around the map and taking objectives, frequently rolling lots of tiny 6 sided dice to reflect damage.

My first problem with the game is also something of a strength. At the start of the game, each player receives a certain number of unit bases (those discs in the foreground of that photo). You also get certain numbers of regular and elite infantry, machine gun and mortar units and officers. You can then slot those in to the bases to custom build your platoons. It’s a fantastic addition to the game that gives the players flexibility that I have yet to find in another war game.

The problem is that most of the pegs do not slot in easily. By the time you’re done setting up, your fingers are ready to commence bleeding. It’s actually painful to put together (and take apart) your infantry units. Physical pain doesn’t tend to be a selling point for me when I’m gaming.

The other major issue is that the defender tends to have a massive advantage in any scenario where the attacking player doesn’t have access to heavy support cards.

Finally, I have a lot of WW2 games. This really shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows me, seeing as I’m a WW2 history buff. And I’m not really sure where this game really fits in my collection. Band of Heroes fills the more complex niche for me. Conflict of Heroes is similar to this but I like it a lot more. I’d rather pull out The Hell of Stalingrad if I was going to teach someone something a bit more complex. It certainly isn’t a quick and simple to teach game like Frontline General : Spearpoint 1943. So when is this going to be played?

Horus Heresy

Another Fantasy Flight coffin box title. Apparently I get less selective as the boxes get bigger or something.

Actually, I quite like this game. It’s set in the Warhammer 40K universe and tells the tale of the…wait for it…Horus heresy. WOAH! didn’t see that coming, right? Totally thought it was going to involve different Imperial worlds squabbling over who can produce the tastiest frozen yogurt in the universe!

Okay, quick geek-splanation of what the fuck the Horus Heresy is. Basically, the imperium of man was a gigantic, powerful force fighting various alien and demonic species throughout the stars. There were hundreds of thousands of Space Marines…some of which began to resent the Emperor of Man’s power. They came to believe that humanity could not stand against it’s enemies without a singular focus. And that focus could not be delivered by the Emperor (who they saw as less of a God and more of a charlatan), but rather the demonic forces of Chaos. So several chapters of Space Marines went rogue and led an attack on Earth itself to try to take power.

It’s 40K. I like 40K. And I don’t need to spend hundreds of dollars buying table top shit to play this. A winner is me.

There are a number of disappointed reviews, but those tend to be from people who were expecting a board game version of the miniatures table top game or something with a lot of fast, chaotic action. Instead, they got a fairly involved strategic game. One with a unique initiative track system that is starting to be copied by more ‘serious’ war gaming fare. Every order you can give involves a certain number of initiative points, with more powerful options usually spending more. As soon as your counter passes that of your opponent on the track, it’s now their turn. It forces you to really think long term and make tough decisions : Do I launch an all out assault for a specific sector and then hand control of the game to the other guy? Or do I enact several smaller scale orders that may not result in a decisive victory in any region right now, but which will only let him use simple orders to avoid handing control back to me immediately?

However, Horus Heresy is not without faults. I’ll need to bust out my oh so impressive photographic skills for this.

Firstly, we have the packaging itself.

I’ll be honest, opening coffin boxes is still gleeful. There’s room for so much stuff in there that it’s just exciting. So let’s just remove the board and the rules and scenarios books and…

…ummm…huh. Really? Yes indeed. Remove the board and everything fits in to a space that’s the size of a normal game box. While popping the lid off of one of these bad boys is always fun, popping it off to see this is the epitome of disappointing.

I own a number of games that have a center fold in the board to make it fold to six panels. CLEARLY that could have been done here and the whole thing would have fit easily in to a taller version of a standard big game box (something FFG has done before), but they wanted to upsell the fucking thing based on box size. Lame.

Okay, once you get everything set up, it IS a fun game. And Fantasy Flight, normally known for absolute content spam, has actually pulled back a bit. For example, a number of different game effects (orbital bombardments, bombardment by Thunderhawk gunships, laser defense turret fire at landing Chaos forces and loyalty checks for Imperial Guard units) are all done from a single deck of cards, and done well. It’s nice to see, since FFG would frequently have split that in to 4 separate decks. I already mentioned the interesting initiative mechanic. There is a randomly built events deck every game that will potentially throw plans in to disarray. Good stuff.

But there is another component problem, and there is no way that it wasn’t noticed during play testing. Yet there it is in the production copies.

Look again at that pic above. See the board lying above the box? Why, it looks like there are holes in it! GIANT SPACE MOTHS…EATING GAMES! RUN FOR YOUR FUCKING LIFE, PAWNS!

Or, you know, it’s for the 3D buildings to slot in to.

There’s a side shot of the Imperial Palace. To the right is one of the bunker strongpoints on one end of the Palace. Now, my first complaint is that all of the pop in buildings are made from that really light vacuum blown plastic. So while they look decent, they’re flimsy as Hell. But that isn’t the biggest problem.

Here’s the initial set up for that bunker strongpoint, as Sanguinius (primarch of the Blood Angels Space Marine chapter), three squads of Blood Angels and a defense turret are put in there.

Really? Really, game? If you’re wondering where the turret is, it’s attached to that barrel protruding from underneath one of the Blood Angel squads.

NOBODY COMPLAINED ABOUT THIS DURING TESTING?! FUCK OFF!

There isn’t room! On top of that, because they’re vacuum blown plastic, they bulge up in the middle. So even if you aren’t trying to cram units in, they’re tipping off to the fucking side all the time! It’s absolutely silly. And just wait until you need to squish a couple of Imperial Army units and a wall breach counter in to that fucking thing. Good luck having that result in anything other than an Imperial avalanche in to Lions Gate Spaceport.

And no, the other buildings aren’t any better.

Finally, while the scenario book includes 6 scenarios, they’re all variations on the same one. The game doesn’t really suffer for it, but it does seem like false advertising to someone who isn’t the 40K nerd that I am.

I like this game, but aspects of it make me want to punch the Emperor in the face.

So there you have it. Sometimes gaming tastes like failure. And sometimes the flavour just has a tinge of disappointment to it.

Other Blog Challenge Participants

Liam – http://www.bisonweb.ca/blog/
Chad – http://grindingpixels.blogspot.com/
Tammy – http://tam–i–am.blogspot.com/
Vlad – http://www.analogcoast.com/
Kim – http://www.mynaturebaby.ca/blog/
Shaun – http://expeditionoftruths.com/
Peter – http://crazywookiecookies.blogspot.com/
Earl – http://earljwoods.blogspot.com/
Zita – http://ignitestrategicsolutions.com/
Brad – http://kickmeoutsoon.blogspot.com/
Natasha – http://blog.naturalurbanmamas.com/

This weekend, I finished 2 games. One was Bastion, the other was Call of Duty : Modern Warfare 2. Both took about 5 hours or so to play through. Both cost me $15. While MW2 was sorta fun with a plot that may have been written by drunken 15 year olds, Bastion was one of the better games I’ve played this year.

A cataclysmic event known only as ‘The Calamity’ has ripped your world apart. Only by collecting various energy cores and shards can you set things right by way of the abilities of your home base, the Bastion. How do you know all this? The narrator.

That’s one of the things that sets it apart, since the game play isn’t anything Earth shattering. As you play, a narrator (also a character in the game) is telling the story that you’re playing. He talks out what you’re doing on screen, gives you the background for what’s led the world to this point, and explains things as best he can in his weathered voice. He can also occasionally be funny. For example, while he was in the middle of telling the tale, I accidentally rolled off the edge of the level and fell in to the abyss. Without missing a beat :

“And then the kid killed himself.”

A moment later, I dropped back on to the level with a thud…”Just kidding. That would be a terrible end to the story.” He then picked up where he had left off previously. Mix that with some of the best game soundtrack music I’ve ever heard, and you’ve got some pretty fantastic audio. How good is the music? I just bought the goddamn soundtrack.

The art is gorgeous. Look back at that picture at the top of this post, with that watercolour look. That’s not just a publicity shot…it’s what the graphics in the game look like. Everything pops and looks completely unique from anything I’ve ever played before. Watching it quite literally drop in to place before you as you move forward is a nice twist, too. You don’t always know what lies ahead until you get there.

The game isn’t perfect. Because it’s played at a sort of 3/4 isometric view, I found aiming with mouse and keyboard a bit awkward. My 360 controller was a great substitute, but you might struggle in places without a game pad. And as I said earlier, the game play itself isn’t anything to write home about. You choose which 2 weapons and 1 special ability to have on you, then you go play a mission. Back to the Bastion, wash, rinse, repeat. There are a few customization options that let you upgrade gear and add new potions to the mix, but it’s basically things you’ve seen before. But this might be the only time that the game’s overall story and aesthetics rendered that completely moot for me. I simply didn’t care.

In the end, you have a couple of choices to make. Do you leave the one who betrayed you to his fate, or accept that fact that he was only doing what he felt was right? Do you reset the world before the Calamity and hope that people take a better path this time, or do you simply move forward with your small band of survivors and try to start over? I made my choice. You have to make your own.

$15 gets you a lot on either XBox Live or Steam.