Monthly Archives September 2012

Torchlight 2 shows us all how it’s done.

Posted on September 27, 2012 by Charles Spurr

The original Torchlight is the game that I point to as being influential in my leaving the world of MMORPG playing where I hadn’t actually had much fun for years. So I’m sure you could imagine that I had the sleepless anticipation of an energy drink addict when it finally came time for Torchlight 2 to launch. It’s now been nearly a week since launch and I definitely have some opinions to share about this incredibly well done game.

Leading the genre

Torchlight 2 is clearly up against some rather stiff competition in the current market. While there is some chiding from Kotaku about mentioning Diablo 3 in reviews of Torchlight 2, I don’t necessarily see that as a bad thing. Continue reading

Avatar: The Last Airbender

Posted on September 26, 2012 by Nick Bergeron

Avatar: The Last Airbender. Not to be confused with either Avatar movie.

Why do you watch television? If you’re like most people it’s because you enjoy it when oddly orange tinted people poke you in the eyes with their abject terribleness. Or possibly because you like the commercials. For myself, I like something a bit more nuanced than the entertainment equivalent of eating Valtrex. And from experience, we all know how well any show with depth does on the networks. Anything that presents shaded viewpoints, poses challenging moral and ethical questions, or just tries to tell a long term story not filled with bullshit “What’s the smoke monster?” unanswered mysteries just gets dropped on the floor. I’m not even going to name the show you’re thinking of right now – we both know what you’re thinking. Continue reading

InSpectres: A Peek into “Ghost Adventures” Table Top

Posted on September 25, 2012 by Jon Spengler

Having hosted a few successful evenings of Fiasco (the perfectly palatable link between “traditional gaming” and “touchy-feel-y story gaming”) I’ve been looking for more out-of-the-box games to test on my group. If Mouse Guard and Og taught me anything, it’s that broadening your horizons as a gamer is always a worthwhile endeavor, especially when those endeavors are hilarious alcohol fueled one-shots! One game has come across my radar thanks to RPG.net, and I can’t wait to bust it out for my guys: InSpectres by Momento Mori. A quick peek at the Startup rules and I’m already in love. Continue reading

The Felix Castor Series

Posted on September 24, 2012 by Reuben Poling

Initially, to open this article, I had a long and freewheeling description of the evolution of the Hellblazer comic series, its lead character John Constantine, and the process that led to the books that this review is about. It was kind of fun to write, but it was also strictly unnecessary. So let us dispense with the rigamarole: there’s some comics about a blue-collar British magician in a trenchcoat. One of the writers who worked on that comic series had lots more story ideas, so he invented his own blue-collar British magician in a trenchcoat (as many others have done since Hellblazer began in the late 80s) and started writing books about him. Continue reading

Borderlands 2 uncovers more hidden treasure on Pandora.

Posted on September 20, 2012 by Charles Spurr

Update 9/26/12: It seems that a lot of people are coming here to find secret things hidden in Borderlands 2. This is my review / opinions of the game. For a rundown of in-game secrets check out this Kotaku article. Now to the review:

The game that every intrepid vault hunter has been waiting for is finally out. Borderlands 2 returns players to the world of Pandora with a new set of hunters, a new villain, and a seemingly unending supply of weapons with which to rain violence down upon the heads of anything that gets between them and their treasure. I haven’t had a lot of time to sit down with the game as it was just released on Tuesday, but what I have seen has not disappointed. So here are my early impressions with the disclaimer that I may need to add further depth to my opinions later on as I get to spend more time with the game.

Continue reading

Romancing the Monkey Man: Og Unearthed Edition

Posted on September 18, 2012 by Jon Spengler

This past Friday my friends and I gathered around a table for some serious roleplay. We got our character sheets out, our dice out, pulled up chairs, and immediately started grunting, flailing, and romancing. I ran a one-shot of one of my favorite games: Og, Unearthed Edition, written by Robin Laws and published by Firefly Games in 2007. It’s one of those “humor games”, but trust me when I say that this clever humor game delivers in a big way. A big, shiny way. Continue reading

Gentlemen of the Road

Posted on September 17, 2012 by Reuben Poling

Michael Chabon’s Gentlemen of the Road. Go read it.

Due to time constraints, Reuben was unable to acquire and read a copy of Mockingbird before print time, so today’s review is something from the back catalog instead.

Michael Chabon ought to be a quiet hero to dorks everywhere. He made his name as a Very Serious-Minded Literary Writer, writing Very Serious-Minded Modern Literature. Short stories that got published in the New Yorker, novels about creative struggles, joblessness, Judaism, sexuality, divorce, frustration, alienation, and failure. They were good, of course, but nobody was ever going to side-eye you and shake their head if they saw you reading Wonder Boys or The Mysteries of Pittsburgh on the bus. They were…respectable books.

Sevencore presents alternative to traditional MMORPG conventions

Posted on September 13, 2012 by Charles Spurr

Saddle up your giant riding spider because Sevencore entered its open beta test phase last week. I thought this would be a fine time to take a look at the game and how it’s shaping up. Since I covered the basics of what it’s about in my look at the closed beta test, this is more about my thoughts and whether or not Sevencore is worth investing time and effort into. If you like guns, wizardry, swords, and collecting mounts to show off in a game, then Noria and gPotato have a treat for you.

What makes this different?

Sevencore is ideal for the solo and casual player. Since there’s no healing class or even healing abilities, group dynamic for difficult content isn’t nearly as important as it is in other MMORPGs. The basic class tropes are missing here (warriors don’t even have a taunt) Continue reading

Go Daddy insists that outage was not a hack.

Posted on September 11, 2012 by Charles Spurr

According to a press release earlier today, Go Daddy denies that the massive outage yesterday is the result of a hacker or DDoS attack.

“The service outage was not caused by external influences. It was not a “hack” and it was not a denial of service attack (DDoS). We have determined the service outage was due to a series of internal network events that corrupted router data tables. Once the issues were identified, we took corrective actions to restore services for our customers and GoDaddy.com. We have implemented measures to prevent this from occurring again.”

The outage, which occurred yesterday, was reported to be a hack by Anonymous member @AnonymousOwn3r who claimed responsibility on their Twitter feed. AnonymousOwn3r claimed to have acted alone and that this was not an action by Anonymous itself. Numerous web sites including Go Daddy’s own page were down for about 6 hours.

Go Daddy insists that data for its customers remains completely secure. So that’s at least a bright side. However, I don’t know if the internal network events story works for me. Of course, denying the attack, if it was an attack, could be asking for another round of troubles.

Dungeon Command at PAX 2012

Posted on September 11, 2012 by Jon Spengler

I didn’t play as many board games this year at PAX when compared to previous years; the expo floor exuded a surprising gravity. The one board game I did get my mitts on was Dungeon Command from Wizards of the Coast. With all the trappings of a D&D game, Dungeon Command pits two players armed with their own separately purchased warbands (complete with minis and cards) and has them duke it out for some sort of dungeon supremacy over the course of an hour. Is this game a fun stand-alone board game, or is this a way to price twelve pre-painted miniatures for $39.99? Continue reading