February 23, 2007

About Amazing Grace

As I said I would do here, I made my way tonight to see the newly released film Amazing Grace.

I lives up to every reasonable expectation, telling a solid story about the long campaign to sway the House of Commons against the slave trade. A strong cast is led by Ioan Gruffudd as William Wilberforce, assisted by a wide array of talented actors and the very capable direction of Michael Apted.

And while I found nothing bad about the film and even quite enjoyed it, I have to admit it had little to solidly recommend it, either. Now, if you're into British History and political drama (of the 'politicians debating and scheming' variety, not the intrigue and thrilling chase sort), or just love an uplifting tale of right triumphing by never being willing to quit, this is a good movie for you. But, really, just a workmanlike, solid, comfortable film, that might have been more with a somewhat more daring script, a bit less inevitability in its plot, or... I don't know, something.

Certainly not a bad way to spend two hours, but I have to admit I'd hoped for something special that was always just beyond what this film was reaching for.

Posted by ghoul at 08:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 09, 2005

Reviews and Comments (Part 4)

All right, as promised, the theme this time is Historical (or nearly so) games.

And the games are The Prince, Alexander the Great, Conquest of the Empire, Roma, Camelot Legends, 7 Ages, En Garde!, Kung Fu Fighting, and Heroscape Expansion Series Two - Utgar's Rage.

Okay, some of those are only distantly related to the Historic grouping, but it's my Staircase... I make the rules!

The Prince (subtitled The Struggle of House Borgia) manages to be the first real clunker in the Phalanx Games line, or at least the first I've encountered. The game claims to be about the political struggles within the high ranks of the Catholic Church of powerful and corrupt Italian families during the renaissance, but it's actually more about who can get a little lucky early and then run away with things while everyone else sits around wasting time. Also, for a game named for Machiavelli's famed book about cold-blooded, anything-to-win politics, this game is painfully polite and open. Nominally, you can make deals over each turn's Papal election, but since there are very few things you're allowed to trade, little can come of this. Add to this some really ill-thought game pieces (the VP track run from 0 to 96, then wrap around to 97-193 on ONE family's card, but to go from 0-108 and 109-217 on the other 4, for example; was 0-100 too outrageous to even attempt?) and you've got a game well worth avoiding.

Alexander the Great, however, serves to remind me how good Phalanx titles can be. This one is quite a surprise, since most of the games Phalanx has put out in the larger box size have been military, but this is a game of resource allocation and area control only vaguely modeled after Alexander's campaigns, here presented as 6 campaigns, in Greece, Asia Minor, Egypt, Persia, Parthia and Bactria, then India and the failed return toward Persia. The game is played in several rounds, and in each of these players set up a secret allocation of their resources among four categories (turn order, armies, city building, and temple construction). These are revealed and compared, at which time the winner for turn order can pick where they go in the turn (usually, they will want to go last); other players move in order by their current score. When it is your turn, you place your armies on the starting point for the campaign, then move them one, two, or three areas (perhaps leaving some behind, perhaps paying some extra cost due to rough terrain; costs come from either your city or temple building resources), then announce any temples or cities you'll try to build. Other players do the same. When all have acted, the player with the most armies in each area gets 2 points and someone builds any temple or city attempted. By "someone", I mean the player with the most resources allocated to that sort of building who moves to the area and announces an attempt. Completing a build costs that player 1 more than the 2nd highest number of resources (which might be 1 more than 0 if no one else tries). Success is worth 3 points for a temple and 5 for a city. If no one moved to the area marked as the campaign's end this turn, any unspent city and temple resources can be re-allocated (resources spent on turn order, used to pay for buildings, or still on the board as armies cannot be re-allocated) and another round is played. Eventually, someone will move to the last area and this round will end, especially since the longest campaign only has 7 areas in it. At the end of the game, bonus points are awarded for whoever built the most cities and temples in total and in each region. Each campaign is different, with more or fewer choices in movement, differently-placed city and temple locations, etc. Play for every point is quite competitive, and numerous options are offered. You can try for points from armies, from cities, from temples, from a mix. You can even (in the first 5 campaigns, but not the last 2) attempt to cut off some development by doing a rapid move to the campaign-ending space, leaving the other players positioned for future rounds that don't happen. All in all, a very nice game, and well presented with reasonably quality playing pieces (including nice little stand-up screens to hide allocation at the start of each round).

Conquest of the Empire is a huge game, from the 46"x36" map (covering the full geographical range of the Roman Empire, plus a bit they never got around to conquering) and some 350 player pieces, 50 neutral pieces, and 75 delightfully oversized coins (especially since most games are given to miniaturizing such pieces), not even including the cardboard counters (of which there are numerous) and a deck of cards. And, as if this wasn't enough, there are actually two games here, one the "classic" form, only slightly changed from its original 1984 Milton Bradley release, the other an all new game. The Classic form is just that, a classic. It's not a terribly realistic game, and it suffers from the fact that players must be eliminated to get to the endgame, which means some players will be sitting out the latter half of the game. Elimination is necessary, too, because without it you can have at most 5 active armies (4 under generals, one directly under your Caesar). Once you eliminate another player, you take over their 4 generals and thus expand your ability to act dramatically! Other than that, this is a fairly good game of conquest, development, and expansion. The new game, Conquest of the Empire II, is about as different as two games sharing the same pieces can be. This game is much more political, with armies used to defend or assault influence, but money and influence being what decides the game. Here, influence markers are purchased for each important region of the empire, with several available in each location. Majority means you get more points each scoring, so you want to keep up your influence. Also critical is an interesting alliance system whereby you can bid to form alliances among the players, forcing someone else to not attack you until the next round! Numerous action cards add lots of flavor to the game, and there's a nice little "Chaos" mechanic that costs you VP if you get too far outside acceptable Roman propriety. These are both really nice games, though I'd give a significant edge to the newer rules if only because they avoid elimination and have a certain time limit to victory. But they also emphasize politics over military, which is more to my taste. Someone who likes simple crunch and grind military games (ala the classic Risk) will likely find the Classic form of CotE more to their liking. Anyone who likes big, sweeping conquest games will like one or the other, if not both.

Sticking to Rome for a bit, we have Roma, a fairly straightforward little card game of two factions head-to-head in a political power struggle. Cards represent resources, either people of influence (merchants, senators, legates, or Emperor Nero, for example) or valuable structures (temples or the Forum, plus military hardware such as onager). The playing area is made up of 8 spots, each marked with a disk from "take cards" on one end, through spaces for die faces 1 thru 6, to "take money" on the other. Players will play their cards aligned with the die faces. Each turn, the player rolls three dice and then takes 4 actions, which can be 1) to play a card from their hand onto one die spot (either filling an empty one or replacing the current contents), at a cost in money; 2) taking money equal to the amount rolled on the die used; 3) taking cards equal to the number rolled on the die used, though only one is actually kept and the rest are discard; or 4) activating a card at a location the die roll matches (that is, a roll of 4 lets you activate the card played on your side of the "4" space). Each card has a different effect, some score victory points, some attack opposing cards, some allow additional card draws, or various other effects. When all victory point tokens are given to one player or the other (or if one player is drained dry of points), the game ends in victory for the player with the most. It's fairly simple, fairly quick, and a nice mix of random and strategic (a bit biased toward the random side). I'd be happier if it played about 10 minutes faster, or was a bit less random, but it's still a very nice game. One caveat... in an attempt to be as multi-national as possible, the cards are named in (roughly) Latin and are marked with fairly meaningful icons to indicate their power, but you'll still be checking to rulebook to identify effects more often than you may like. Still, a very nice, light game, bearing almost no resemblance to the big, heavy Conquest of the Empire despite the similar setting.

Camelot Legends isn't exactly a historical game, as the Knights of the Round Table are far more fiction than fact, but it's my blog, so I make the groupings. This is a nice little game, with lots of research behind it as nearly every significant character and storyline associated with Camelot makes an appearance, which is very impressive given the simplicity of the base game system. In effect, it's just this... There are 3 game locations (Camelot, Cornwall, and the Perilous Forest). Each player's turn, an Event is drawn, which might be placed on one of those locations or might be resolved immediately via a special rule, mostly commonly a bid. Then you check to see if you can complete any of the location events currently in play (usually achieved by summing up attributes from your knights and beating an objective printed on the event). Then you take two Actions, such as draw a character, play a character from your hand to any location, or move 1 or 2 characters from one location to another. Continue until the game is over (either all events are resolved in the simplified beginners game or a single difficult "final event" placed at the bottom of the event deck is resolved in the standard game). Whoever has the most victory points (won by completing events) at the end is the winner. Simple, yes. But wait, there's a complication... You see, almost every knight and almost every event has special rules, some simple, some quite complicated, that modify the standard play format. It's not a new idea (and hasn't been since Cosmic Encounters), but here it's taken to rather an extreme. Almost no two characters have even similar abilities, and by game's end there may be two dozen characters and events in play. Keeping track of everything is a challenge. But, I think, a challenge worth considering. This is an attractively produced (card are ranges from good to great) and well designed game, marred only by its potential for excessive complexity in practice. Maybe I'd play Shadows over Camelot before I'd play this, but it wouldn't be by a long margin!

7 Ages is an odd mix. It's an ambitious game, trying to do all of recorded history within one mechanic without getting silly, overly complex, or boring. It does a surprisingly good job at this, but it has one of the steepest learning curves I've ever seen, particularly for a game with so few rules. Opening the box is a decidedly old-school feel, as there are nearly 900 cardboard counters to be punched out and sorted. The map is huge, but just paper not a mounted board. And the big split that cuts right across the Fertile Crescent (i.e., the region where early play is very likely to focus) is just a wee bit annoying. In fact, graphic design is a major mixed back for this game. Play aid charts are astonishingly detailed without seeming cluttered, various terrains are reasonably distinct, and most spaces are large enough to allow play, but at the same time some spaces are amazingly tiny despite their possible importance (a problem caused by the real world not always making important places large, for certain, but no attempt is made to ease the problem via distortion or special play areas to expand on the undersized base location) and the cards are just astonishingly busy, to the point that many are tricky to read. This game is an interestingly lesson in elegance, which is that even that gold standard of game design can be taken too far. This game is often elegant to the point of confusion. Players control Empires, bringing them into play via cards then slowly expanding and developing them until they peak out and are taken out of play, to be replaced by a new Empire. Actual available actions at each turn are few (in fact, 7, plus a "wild card" that lets you defer choosing until you activate, but at a cost), and you select one action for each Empire you have in play each turn. Most of these actions are fairly easy to describe, and fairly easy to do. But the subtleties of their interactions... Wow! And add to this some very odd design choices, such as making each color of playing pieces slightly different (in number of each type of combat unit, or in the abilities each unit has), or the way some Empires naturally cannibalize others if they come into play in the right order, or the way some spaces on the board are specially valuable to some empires while almost worthless to others... In effect, if you don't spend a long time studying them game before trying to play, you'll miss out on just what many of the decisions you're presented with actually mean. This is a very complicated game presented in a form that is almost too simple to contain all its complexity. I'd love to really get into it, but I have a feeling it would take a half-dozen plays to get good enough to really enjoy its richness, and I can't imagine playing it that often at the frustratingly confused level it defaults new players to. Still, big points for taking an aggressive goal and doing an amazingly good job of it. Compare this to games it is similar to (say, History of the World or Vinci) and there's no contest; this is by far the richer and more worthy game. But I'd still probably pull down Vinci first. (Also, you have to take points away for one huge oddity of this game... if the first player has one of the right cards in their initial hand and chooses to play it, the game could start in Age 4 (the Renaissance), 5 (the age of Exploration) or even 6 (the age of Colonialization), ignoring the vast majority of history, which is to say ignoring just what the game is all about! There is an optional rule forcing the first empire to be Age 1. Why this should be an optional rule is beyond my understanding, as I'm sure several other things about this game are. I really, really want to like it... but I can't tell without spending hours of playtime with it I just don't expect to ever manage.

En Garde! and Kung Fu Fighting are going to suffer from being reviewed together... they're from the same publisher and share the same basic structure (draw cards, play attack to damage opponent, move to next player), but they really aren't the same game at all. KFF is martial arts combat the way the movies tell us it was (that is, nothing at all like it was). Players play cards to attack one another, or to enhance an attack, or to shift into various stances, or to draw weapons, or to block attacks, or to recover Chi (life points). Many combinations feed one another, such as Crane Stance giving a bonus to Fast or Kick attacks (and thus a really big bonus to fast kick attacks). Players play cards until there's only one standing. That's all. That's all you need! this is a fast, fun game and not to be ignored. It's only weak spot is that you discard unwanted cards and fill your hand at the beginning of your turn. This means you can't spend other player's turn planning your move and thus slows the game down (though it also means you're far less likely to have a Block card handy). En Garde! takes the same essential structure in a whole different direction. Here, instead of Chi you have Poise, and Poise is used both to record damage and to make attacks. A clever rule makes this slightly less dangerous than it might be... As long as you have at least 1 Poise when damaged, the worst an attack can do is drop you to "No Poise". You're only eliminated if damaged when already at "No Poise". And if you are at "No Poise", you can play any card you want for free! A cornered man is very deadly... Also, En Garde! expands dramatically on the simple attack/block pattern, allowing complex exchanges where the block leads to a riposte which itself needs to be blocked, back and forth until one player can respond no more, and only then is everything resolved. It's quite pretty, and offers a very decent simulation of cinematic swashbuckling fencing. What's that, you say? Kung Fu movies and Swashbuckling movies aren't history? Bah! If history can't make room for things this fun and interesting, who needs it?

Heroscape Expansion Series Two - Utgar's Rage... Well, I really like Heroscape, and more variety is a good thing. For the historically minded, this set adds a quartet of armored Knights and their commander, Sir Denrick, plus 4 members of the 4th Massachusetts Line. Yes, knights in shining armor and Revolutionary War soldiers. Heroscape is an odd history-and-fantasy-in-a-blender sort of game. The knights are reasonably tough and unyielding (and especially nasty to anyone who tries to disengage once in combat with them), their leader is especially good at smacking down Huge figures (you know, like Giants or Dragons), and the 4th Massachusetts lay down withering fire if they don't move. But those are the historical bits, and serve under the relatively "good guy" Jandar. The set is called Utgar's Rage, so most of the figures are on his side. Marro Drones offer us ultra-cheap, barely effective figures whose strength comes if you swarm the battlefield with them (which would require buying several sets), while the Minions of Utgar are bat-winged demons ready to swoop down and do some serious harm (especially since they deal double damage, 2 wounds per hit rather than the usual one). The Anubian Wolves and their leader Khosumet the Darklord are unpredictable werewolves, perhaps the deadliest things imaginable but perhaps accidentally killing one of their own each time they activate (you have to roll a die and find out!). Me-Buro-Sa is a mounted skeletal Marro-type with a 25% chance of paralyzing a nearby enemy at the start of each turn. Krug is a big bruiser who, just to be fearsome, actually has a tougher attack the more damaged he is! And, lastly, there's the Swog Rider, an Orc on a sabertooth tiger who gives a nice bonus to nearby orc archers but isn't actually a leader, so is fairly easy to take down. At GenCon, they were giving out a ranked-up repaint (same figure, different paint job) of this figure, Nerak the Glacian Swog Rider, who actually is a leader (3 life points), and who grants extra defense to nearby orcs, plus having a bonus while standing on a snow space (though, so far as I know, they haven't released any snow terrain pieces yet). All of these figures are attractive and well made, with special points to the bestial Krug and the shining armored knights. Heroscape is getting better all the time, and from the amount of space Hasbro gave it at GenCon (and the future products they displayed), it has no sign of dying off soon. In fact, I've already seen rumors that the next series has started appearing in stores, and it promises Highlanders and Shaolin monks!

And those are my comments. Do with them as you please.

Posted by ghoul at 05:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 07, 2005

You Mean What Now?

There's a word I use often in reviews that I know some readers understand, but I suspect others might not.

That word is "elegant".

When I say a game is elegantly designed, or that a certain mechanic or playing piece layout is an elegant solution to a problem, I don't mean the standard definitions you find at the top of that link. I mean something much more like the jargon definitions further down, from the mathematical use of the word. "Combining simplicity, power, and a certain ineffable grace of design."

An elegant solution is one that does its work as smoothly and just as visibly or invisibly as necessary. A very elegant solution might do several things at once, which is a real goal in games (board, card, and RPG) since "more rules" is almost always a bad choice (harder to learn, easier to get wrong, etc.). Or it might place the information you need commonly in a clear, handy place while less necessary information is hidden or even eliminated. True design elegance combines both, reducing the factors to a minimum and communicating them in a clear, ready fashion.

It has nothing at all to being fancy and everything to do with being functional.

I bring this up because elegance (or its lack) is likely to be a recurring theme in my Gen Con 2005 reviews.

Posted by ghoul at 11:49 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 05, 2005

Reviews and Comments (Part 3b)

Whoops, missed one!

Quicksand was lurking behind a stack of other games, and what is quicksand but fine sand and water?

The next set of games will be Historical (mostly) and should be posted by the end of the week, then a grab-bag set to wrap up the lot, hopefully by next Sunday.

Then I'll get into the RPGs.

Quicksand is a quick, easy board game for 2-5 players, likely taking around 15 minutes. Each player randomly and secretly takes on the role of one of six Explorers, nominally a Hunter, a Geologist, a Botanist, a Zoologist, a Jungle Lord, and an Archeologist, though the roles actually have no effect on the game. Each turn, a player may play as many matching cards as they wish, moving the character those cards refer to that many spaces forward toward the Temple. If the character lands on a space matching their color, the player may also discard a card (which is useful because you always draw back to 6 cards each turn). Mask cards and Mask spaces are wild, matching any character. There are also Quicksand spaces and cards. If a character ends their turn on a Quicksand space or if a Quicksand card is played against them, their counter is flipped over and it will take a character card to "rescue" them (flipping them back face-up) before they can move. The object is to get your character to the Temple first, but you'll need to keep your character a secret or everyone else will sink them deep, deep in quicksand. The game is graphically pleasing and smartly designed. Especially smart is that you fill your hand back to 6 at the END of your turn, so you can consider your move while the other players act. This will speed up the game considerably, and this is very much a "play quickly" sort of game. This one's fluff, but it's fairly decent fluff and there's nothing wrong with that!

Posted by ghoul at 06:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Reviews and Comments (Part 3)

I have finished a couple RPGs (okay, three), but I'm going to get most of the board and card games out of the way today so I can give the RPGs a more complete consideration. In the first group, I'm combining all the new games with some sort of watery theme, just because.

So, in the complete entry, you'll find quick reviews of Captain Treasure Boots, Caribbean, Oceania, Niagara, Parthenon, Amazonas, Santiago, and Atlas & Zeus.

Yes, watery themes are popular!

Captain Treasure Boots is the newest Cheapass Games release. As such, it consists of a 4-page rulebook and 4 board sections (grids of water or numbered islands, printed in color, which seems lush by company norms), with an available bits set that adds dice, pawns, and the necessary small colored chips for play, in a box (also needed to play). The bits set costs more than the game (though you could easily assemble it yourself). Players are pirates cruising the islands for treasure. Each turn, dice are rolled to place treasure on the islands (chips drawn at random from the box). Then you roll to move your ship, likely to collect or safely deliver to port treasure and/or to line up cannon shots at other pirates (which lets you steal their treasures). Treasure comes in colors, each of which enhances some part of your ship (movement, accuracy of attacks, effectiveness of attacks, defense against attacks), plus Pearls (limited-effect "wilds") and Privateers (non-player pirates who move when doubles are rolled and mostly get in the way, though they can be sunk for points). When delivering treasure to port, you get extra points if you have more than one color to unload. The game is played until someone scores enough points to win. Nothing very sophisticated (and more than a little reminiscent of the much fancier, much more expensive, but also somewhat better Pirate's Cove), but certainly not a bad game for its very low price.

Caribbean is another pirate game, though this one is considerably trickier to master. The board is a fairly realistic map of the Caribbean Sea, with major ports and major pirate havens marked. There are three pirate havens of each color, and that is what the players control. Your objective is to lure the six pirates into bringing their booty (taken from the major ports, where it is seeded out randomly, 6 at the start of the game and 2 more each turn until all are placed) to your havens rather than to other players'. This is done by bidding. Each player has bit cards from -1 to 5, and at the start of each round you place six of those in a holder, one for each ship (the seventh is kept as a tie-breaker). Then, in alphabetical order (the ships' names start with each letter from A to F for simplicity), bids are revealed and the winner moves the ship a number of spaces equal to the winning bid, reduced by any "-1" tokens bid for this ship. Having a treasure sitting on a ship is risky, however, as other ships can steal that treasure by simply moving by! There's lots of potential for cleverness here, setting up chains of ships to rapidly move treasures across the sea. Also impressive are the ship pieces, three-dimensional stand-ups that clearly display their name (in 3 places, plus 2 more that just show the first letter) and have a convenient spot for resting the treasure in their hold. It all looks very sharp, and in support of a reasonably challenging and competitive game. Points are scored for being the first to seize a treasure (a flat 2,000) and for delivering that treasure to your harbor (4,000 to 8,000 depending on the source port, clearly printed on the treasure), and the game is played until someone scores 31,000, 41,000 or 62,000 points (based on the number of players). As is common in this sort of game, a two-player game could be highly competitive and strategic while a four-player game is fairly unpredictable and random. But since it looks to take barely over a half-hour to play, I see no problem with that!

Oceania is a rather unique idea, a game designed for 1 or 2 players. It is explicitly a simplification of Entdecker, a well-regarded older (1996) game. The theme is much the same, exploring a new land. Here, you sail into the unknown (an initially empty board, then later from already-explored locations), each turn drawing and attempting to place a tile that may contain water and land. If you can place the tile, you can also land a scouting party (valued 1, 2 or 3 from a fairly limited supply). If an area is completely walled off with land (that is, made so no new ship could get into it due to existing tiles, but not due to the impassible top of the board), "reserve" tiles are used to fill in. When the game ends (by either mapping the whole board or using up all the random tiles), each island created by the tiles scores its size to the player with the most scouts on it, with incomplete islands scoring nothing. This game is pretty, quick-playing (10-15 minutes!), and reasonably well explained in its rules (though the bit about the top of the board being impassible sea and thus not creating "surrounded" areas is more implicit than stated). The solitaire form leaves out the scouts, encouraging the formation of large islands by giving points equal to the square of each completed island's size, but penalizes the player by 20 points for every square left unexplored at game's end (and big islands risk being left incomplete). A nice, light distraction of a game, and small enough to easily carry along for whenever 15 minutes need to be filled.

Niagara is this year's Spiel des Jahres winner, so I expected great things. I wasn't disappointed. This is a unique little game, a combination of fairly simple strategy, fairly complex interaction, and attractive and significant game design. The theme is fairly simple, if just a bit silly. Fearless (and somewhat foolish) folk row canoes down the Niagara river, trying to collect the valuable gems that, for some reason, gather near the falls. (I'm pretty sure there are few gems to be found anywhere near Niagara, but it's a game, accept the fiction.) Each turn, each player selects their paddling speed (a card from 1-6, plus an "adjust weather" card), moves one or both of their canoes, and tries not to go over the falls. Since the rules force you to use all 7 of your cards before you can re-use any, you have to think ahead. You can move both canoes the full point score if you want, but you can only launch one canoe a turn, so unless one is already on the river you won't be able to move both. Rowing with or against the current is the same difficulty, and it costs 2 points to either reach out and take a gem or toss the gem you have to shore next to you. You don't score by doing that, though you can advance the more rare fall's edge gems to an easier-to-reach spot (though, of course, someone else might swipe it before you can). You can also steal gems from other players by landing on them (though only when moving upstream). You win by getting 1 of each of the 5 gems, 4 of any one gem, or 7 gems total back to the docks. Oh, but I left out the fun bit... The board, designed to be set atop the inverted box, is built with a sunken river track, with the water is represented by transparent plastic discs that slide along the path the board creates. Each turn, after everyone moves, discs are pushed down-river (carrying the canoes along with them, and perhaps over the falls, which actually means falling off the edge). The number of discs added is based on the slowest rowing speed played this turn plus a weather adjustment from -1 to +2 (it starts at 0, but can be changed whenever you play the "adjust weather" rowing card). The river splits near the end, and so the current might go either right or left (depending on the mostly-random way the discs physically move), creating unpredictability (and, thus, a small chance of surviving). Canoes pushed over the falls must be bought back with gems, so it isn't something you want to have happen. This is a great little game, with a strong (if slightly artificial) theme, great components, and very interactive play. A very deserving award-winner and well worth seeking out!

Parthenon is the least water-themed of the games in this group, but I feel it qualifies (and it's my blog!). Players are attempting to advance the development of their Aegean island, through production, trade, and development. Each season, the island produces goods which they can trade to other players (risk-free, except you might make a bad deal) or to the larger non-player lands. It is here that much of the game lies, and thus the semi-watery theme. Travel to Athens, Sparta, or Ionia is relatively easy (draw one hazard card); travel to distant Italy, Carthage, or Egypt is trickier (two hazard cards). One of the major decisions of the game is what to ship, where to ship it to, and what defenses to send along. (As an added risk, random cards determine 'harbor status' when you arrive, and just might make your trip a bust even if you do make it safely.) There's a lot of risk (and randomness) to this process, and managing that risk is how you get ahead. Now, sea trade isn't the only mechanism of this game... You also have to build with the goods your develop and receive via trade. Each player island has a unique mix of goods it can produce, and none is self-sufficient. The goal is to move beyond simple subsistence and develop a full culture, even constructing two "wonders". Each step along the way gives you additional options (some fixed, some random). But the game lasts only 12 turns, so you can't dawdle! Random events added each turn add to the unpredictability, potentially either helping or severely hampering development. How you manage risk is more important than how you manage the other players (though only slightly). Drawbacks? Well, there are a lot of cards (some of which probably should have been counters or tiny wooden blocks or tiny wooden buildings to ease the monotony) and the game really only works as designed at 3 or 6 players, with some specified adjustments at 4 or 5 to make up for the unequal resource distribution. And the rules are a bit long and somewhat more imposing than they really need to be. But this looks like a nice variation on the Settlers form (trading and development) that allows for more strategy and risk-management, and with no randomness in production (though far more in trade).

Amazonas is also only semi-watery, being a game of exploration and discovery in the Amazon jungle. But as the river dominates the board, I'm going to let it into this group (especially since it makes this group closer to 1/3rd of the remaining games I have on hand). The board, as I said, shows a section of jungle, with numerous villages connected by jungle paths or river routes. The object of the game is to manage a successful expedition, which is judged by finding numerous and varied specimens of fish, iguana, orchids, butterflies, and parrots, and also by dealing successfully with the natives and, as best you can, meeting the secret mission assigned you at the beginning of the game (which will state 4 villages you should try to establish research stations in). Each village allows 1, 2 or 3 stations, at increasing cost, shows what specimen you can gain by building here, and connects to other villages. Each turn, an Event card is flipped (half are bad, preventing jungle or river movement for the turn, halving income due to a fire, or subjecting players to theft of resources; half are good, granting rewards or chances to hire native guides). Each player then selects an income card which sets their base income and determines which specimen pays a bonus this turn (or, if they play their "Native" card, negates the negative effect of the Event for them only). Highest total income (including specimen bonuses) gets to go first, then 2nd highest, etc. Income is spent to place more research stations and thus gather more specimens. Each income card can be used only once until all seven have been used (remember this mechanic from Niagara above?), and the game continues for 18 turns (the size of the Event deck, so every event will occur once each game). At the end, you score one point per specimen provided you have at least 3 of that type (none if you have 1 or 2), plus bonus points depending on how quickly you got to all 5 types, less penalty points for each village on your secret mission you failed to visit. A fairly simple game, but with lots of options each turn. Good play will very much help you (though luck in the Event deck is also critical), and there are significant ways to hamper your opponents as well (mostly by building in the smaller villages to block the short routes to their destinations, if you can guess what those are). It plays in under an hour. A minor drawback is that it plays at 3 or 4 players only, but that isn't always a bad thing.

Santiago is a water game of a different sort, as here water is rare, the most valuable resource of the game. Play starts with a barren desert divided into grids, with a single spring bubbling up at one lonely spot. Each turn, various plantation tiles (crops of bananas, sugar cane, potatoes, beans, or chili peppers with space for one or two planters) are put up for auction. Win the auction, you get first pick. But if you lose the auction, you get something extra (in addition to the last remaining plantation)... You get to be the Canal Overseer for the turn! Once plantations are selected and placed on the board, one or more canals are built, extending from the stream or from previously-placed canal segments. This will irrigate adjacent plantations, allowing them to grow and flourish. Non-irrigated plantations slowly dry up (losing one planter a turn) and return to desert (when no planters remain and more drying is called for). The other players must propose canal options for the turn, and are required to offer a bribe to the Overseer to encourage their preference! The game continues through several rounds (11 for the 3 or 4 player version, 9 with 5 players). At the end of this, everyone scores their plantations, with continuous blocks of the same crop being worth more than smaller, less orderly distributions. Everyone can score the same block, so long as they placed some share of it, but you score size times the number of planters you have working that area, so every turn a plantation goes without water means fewer points for you! This game is fairly simple, fairly quick (plays in around an hour), but has very real strategy and solid, continuous interaction among the players. A solidly designed game, well-produced, and well worth play.

Atlas & Zeus is the last of the water-themed games in my GenCon purchases, and an opposite to Santiago as here the problem is too much water, not too little. It's actually a relatively straightforward game, with two factions of Atlanteans (those worshiping Atlas and those worshiping Zeus, as the name suggests) struggling to be the last ones left as the islands sink. Initially, 16 characters are distributed one each to 16 islands. Each turn, players schedule 6 cards (3 each) to occur. These cards can move characters, cause combat, adjust the order or the islands' sinking, or otherwise modify the board. Eventually, only one player's characters will be left, and they win. There's constant conflict, as the circle of islands contracts at least one each turn (sometimes faster, based on the cards). There's also more than a little strategy and bluffing/guessing, as you have to pick your actions well in advance of knowing what your opponent will do. Clever choices can make or break your side. The game is a reasonably quick play (30-40 minutes) and straightforward to learn, so not a bad little game at all.

Hmmm... seems I liked pretty much everything here, at least a little. Niagara, Parthenon, and Santiago are highest on my list, but anything here is well worth your consideration, and Amazonas very close behind (and gaining an advantage over Parthenon if longer, more complex games are not to your liking).

Posted by ghoul at 03:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 26, 2005

Reviews and Comments (Part 2)

I'm working my way through the next couple of RPGs (With Great Power... and Burning Wheel are my current top priorities, with Capes close behind), but I've taken a break for some of the smaller, quicker board game reads...

In the extended entry lie comments on Saboteur, Wench, the Hollywood Card Game, and MidEVIL.

Saboteur - First off, this game reminded me of something I should have known... just because I haven't seen a game mechanic before doesn't mean it's new. The mechanic for determining which players are gold-diggers (I would have translated this "miners") or saboteurs is very much like that used in Shadows Over Camelot, excepting that here, if there are more than 4 players, there will certainly be at least one saboteur. The game is fairly simple, with players laying out tunnel segments each turn to either try to connect to the goal cards (one of which pays off with gold if connected to the entry spot) or prevent the same, depending if they are a gold-digger or a saboteur. A few special action cards can modify the cards already in play or prevent a player from making progress until they find a "repair" card (reminiscent of the classic Mille Borne, which is never a bad thing). Gold-Diggers and saboteurs score points as teams, though the gold-digger who actually strikes gold and those counter-clockwise of that player are likely to get the most. All in all, an interesting game, probably just about as long as it needs to be (you play three full hands, starting the map fresh and re-assigning roles before each). It certainly makes the "want to play a couple of times" list.

Wench - I expected something fairly silly with silly-sexy art, and that's all this is. It's pretty much a standard "dump all your cards" game, much like the Cheepass classic Give Me The Brain only with scantily costumed babes on most cards and some rather unique card effects. Most cards require or are triggered by certain behaviors (resting your elbow on the table, cheering other players on, etc.). It's rather silly, and obviously intended as a drinking game (despite the long, lawyerly paragraph toward the end of the rules explaining that it really isn't a drinking game, but if you want to play it as one, you should obey all local laws, designate a driver, etc., etc.). Oh, and the cards are also marked with traditional 52 card suits and ranks, so you can ignore the game and just play poker (or, I suppose, a card-using RPG like Castle Falkenstein or With Great Power...). Bought on a whim, probably will do little more than sit around.

The Hollywood Card Game - Another quick and light card game. Here, a certain number of film and star cards are laid out each turn, and players go around the table claiming them, then assembling them into movies. The trick is that you claim them by column, putting a marker on the bottom card and shifting other markers on that column up. Thus, you won't necessarily get the card you claim! Completed films score points equal to the number of film cards of the same suit (they come in "horror", "action", and "romantic comedy") multiplied by the Star Power of the attached lead actor. Incomplete projects at game's end are worth nothing (except your largest, which is scored as if it had a rank 1 start). It's fairly abstract and a little arbitrary, but there are enough cards put out each round (and a couple of special actions each player can do once per game to modify the usual card-claiming order) to make it strategically interesting. This one will make the "play it to see if it works" stack.

MidEVIL - A successor game to the popular (and played out, probably one expansion set before they stopped producing them) Zombies!!! series, being a quite transparent but unofficial Army of Darkness game (unofficial because there is an official Army of Darkness game, and this isn't it). Instead of Zombies, we get Skeletons. And we're in the past. Oh, and the object is "find the graveyard, pick up the Necronomicon, carry it back to the starting space and end the curse" rather than "find the helicopter and escape". The general mechanics are familiar from Zombies!!!, but with the improvements of having done it before. Here, skeletons come in three colors, each equally easy to kill but worth different amounts (1-3 points) as rewards if killed. Thus, you have the added strategic choices around placing or moving skeletons to try to block opponents with low-point white skeletons while placing higher-value red or blue skeletons around for you to snatch up. Also, grey human figures are placed on the board which can be picked up for healing. There are lots of plastic bits in this game... 100 skeletons (40 white, 40 red, and 20 blue) and 56 humans (50 grey to use as markers, 6 in unique colors to use as player pieces), plus a deck of cards and 30 map tiles from which you build the board. This looks to be better than Zombies!!! because there's more to do and some real competition for the end-game rather than just (relatively) dumb luck of finding the helicopter. Points off for a 50 card deck with only one non-duplicate and for not clearly indicating passible from impassible squares on the map tiles. Probably best played after re-watching Army of Darkness as a mood-setter. Not that I ever have a problem with watching Army of Darkness.

Posted by ghoul at 03:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 25, 2005

Reviews and Comments (Part 1)

Here, I'll take a look at the games I read or experienced at the Con and those I couldn't pass up reading right away, either because they were too darn tempting or because they were nice and short.

Of coure, board games take a lot less time to read than RPGs, so this list is mostly them... Most of these comments are for games I'd already read or had taught to me at the con itself.

Under the fold, you'll find comments on InSpecters, Beowulf, Paranoia Manditory Bonus Fun, Poison, and Dungeon Twister.

InSpecters: I'd read the free start-up version, but that leaves out some of the really cool parts of this very clever RPG. InSpecters attempts to fix one of the more nagging RPG problems, the inherent frustration of playing mysteries (either as GM or as player). The fix used is simple and elegant... Rather than creating all the clues in advance and waiting for the players to find them, an InSpecters GM creates an initial mystery and sets its difficulty (the number of clues needed to solve it). The players then send their characters off investigating, using whatever skills or contacts they wish. The clues are created on-the-fly among the players (including the GM) and the solution to the mystery comes once there are sufficient clues to meet the difficulty requirement and a satisfactory linking story is developed, again on-the-fly among the players. Pure gold! Added to this is a clever setting (a parody of the dot-com venture capital world, here with startup paranormal investigators rather than internet companies) with a nearly perfect blend of seriousness and humor (think Ghostbusters, and done well rather than overdosed on the silly as the actual Ghostbusters RPG tended to be). Also present is a reality-TV-inspired "confessionals" mechanic, whereby a player can step out of the plot and do a direct-to-the-audience monolog, commenting on the goings-on either to set up a scene or the comment on other characters. But it isn't just fluff... the rules make comments made in confessionals a source of bonuses, so long as you play your character the way the confessional framed them. I love game mechanics that do multiple things at once, and InSpecters is a great example of this kind of elegance. Highest ratings (and I'm almost certainly going to be using it for a future AmberCon game)!

Beowulf: The Legend - I did not know this game would be at the con (it wasn't supposed to be released until this fall), but when I saw it, I made an immediate purchase. It obeyed my Reinier Knizia rule, which is (stated simply) "If it's by Knizia, buy it, then look at the theme". On Sunday, I carried the box back to the booth to have it signed by the creator, and since the line was short, I even got a brief summary of the rules from the man himself. I later got to play most of a game at the booth. Beowulf is set up as the maneuvering of the followers of the great hero to get the best leavings as the epic adventures occur. Cards come in suits representing Courage, Travel, Fighting, Fellowship, Wit, and Beowulf (a wild suit), and each challenge must be met with a specified combination of suits. The player who best meets the challenge gets first pick of the rewards, then continuing down the ranks. Rewards include Fame, Treasure, Alliance Scrolls (which are either Fame or Treasure, but in random and secret amounts), Healing, Cards, special single-use cards (representing unique treasures or the favor of the minor characters of the story), Penalty Markers, or Wounds. Yes, rewards can be bad; you don't want to come too low in the picking order or that's all you'll have to take. Each challenge has its own unique reward set, representing what can happen in the story at that point. It's a bit abstract (it is, after all, a Knizia game!), but it plays nicely and reasonably quickly (45 minutes to an hour, including teaching the rules). There is a Knizia scoring twist (he tends to always provide one)... At the end of the game, having no wounds is worth +5 Fame, having 1 or 2 wounds means nothing, but having 3 or more means -5 Fame per wound. Ouch! And it's quite pretty, with an L-shaped board, John Howe illustrations of Beowulf, Grendal, the Sea Hag, the Great Dragon, etc. It's not quite as deep a game as its larger-sized box implies (it's the same size box as the component-rich and long-playing Arkham Horror, for example), but it's certainly a worthy game.

Paranoia Manditory Bonus Fun Card Game - I love Paranoia. I have since it first came out, years ago. And now, there's a way to play Paranoia without the bother of a GM and thinking up original missions. Manditory Bonus Fun sets the players up as Troubleshooters in the insane dystopia that is Alpha Complex, nominally working as a team (though it's really every clone for himself). The game ends when one player dies for the 6th time (using up all their clones), at which point you check and see who has the highest security clearance and they're the winner. Until then, you deal out missions, resolve them by playing action cards (which can also have effects other than on the mission; in fact, each card has more than one possible use, though only the one chosen by the player takes effect when played). Players accumulate wounds and treason points, with the former possibly killing you directly and the later indirectly. Interaction is complex and often unpredictable, but great fun. The componant quality is a slight let-down (what art there is is mostly reprinted from earlier Paranoia products, often too small to really be enjoyed, and the markers are particularly dull, just colored circles with "Treason" or "Wound" printed on them), but the game is quite nice.

Poison - Another Knizia game, which meant I bought it as soon as I found the right booth. This one is a light card game, having four suits (three colors and "poison") of numbered cards. Each hand, players try to deal away all their cards onto cauldrons (you have to match the color already played on that Cauldron, except you can always tip in some Poison). If the card you play takes the total on that Cauldron over 13, you are forced to claim the cards. Every card claimed in a round is a point (Poison cards are 2 points), and you want the least points after one hand per player is played. Oh, but here's the Knizia scoring twist... Whoever captures the most of each color (not including Poison) doesn't have to score that color of cards (they "build up an immunity")! So what you get is a sort of Hearts-style trick-taking-avoidance (unless you can get the most) game, though with a rather unique way of defining "tricks". A nice little passtime game.

Dungeon Twister - This game was a big hit at Origins this year, which was interesting because it wasn't actually available there (or at GenCon, at least until Saturday). I've been told it's actually the first game to make it into the top 100 at BoardGameGeek without being printed in English first. And I can see why. This is a very pretty game, a cleverly themed game, and a very fun game. At first blush, it looks kind of like the classic Wiz-War, but in practice that resemblance is barely skin-deep; both games involve dungeons randomly built out of square map pieces that can sometimes be rotated to modify the map. That's it. Whereas Wiz-War is a highly random, very chaotic game, Dungeon Twister has no random elements except the map; whereas Wiz-War is single wizards (and possibly their summoned creatures), Dungeon Twister is teams of eight adventurers, each with their own specific abilities and talents. Players must allocate their action cards (which allow a different number of activations per turn, 2 thru 5) and combat cards (which add to the total on their side), with non-zero combat cards usable only once in the game and action cards only available for use after you've used them all. The object is to score 5 points, with points coming by getting a character off the opposing side of the dungeon board (that is, out through the opponent's starting row), killing an opponent's adventurer (that is, wounding them twice). Bonus points come for leaving the board with a Treasure or as the Goblin character (a weak adventurer whose only power is that he's worth 2 points if he can escape). Character art is excellent, the eight adventurers offered are nicely distinctive and all useful in different ways, and play is tightly balanced and tense. Magic items are distributed around the board (placed by the players pre-game, then located exactly on the map when it is revelaed by exploration in play) to offer even more special effects. Promised expansions (some already out in France) expand the game to 3 or 4 players and add additional adventurer classes to choose from. This is a game to watch, because it deserves to be a big hit. My only caveat is that my copy came with only 14 bases for the 16 stand-up adventurer pieces, so I have to raid another game to finish the set.

More reviews to follow.

Posted by ghoul at 05:46 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

July 27, 2005

Visiting the Factory

Dunno if I have too much to add... I may be (and, in fact, am) allergic to chocolate, but I'm far from allergic to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

(spoilers possisble... except, of course, most everyone reading this has seen the older movie or, I hope, read the book.)

I agree with Dorothea here and, linking to other comments and extending on her own, here. There's a fairly clear subvsersive take on class and labor relations here. Some of it is in the original, but the film certainly emphasizes these elements.

On less serious notes... the five kids around whom the story rotates are all very well done, with only one requiring a bit of updating to the 21st century (and the new Mike Teavee is annoying in ways the original can only approach thanks to the addition of video games and techno-child arrogance to the mix). And cutting back to only one parent on the tour with each child (the book allows for two) just keeps things from being far too crowded.

I was delighted to hear original lyrics (albeit significantly cut back and occasionally re-ordered) in the Oompa-Loompa songs, and thought Elfman's music was a very good match to the rather difficult material. "What?", you may ask. "Did you recognize the re-ordered lyrics while watching the film?" Well, no... though a couple did feel wrong to me, I had to check the book to know just why. And, yes, Elfman did re-arrange some lyrics here and there, as well as cutting a good bit (the original songs are quite long).

You see, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has been a favorite book of mine for some time. My copy, in fact, has my name and address written in the front cover, and from the address I can tell I've owned this copy for at least thirty years. I've read it a lot. I've seen the older movie version several times, though I've never been too taken by it. Wonka is too nice. Charlie is not nice enough. I mean, Charlie and Grampa Joe end up tripping over one of Wonka's odd confectionary deathtraps themselves, and that's just wrong in so many ways!

Does this new film have problems (other than, if you're opposed to the view it presents, it's take on labor and class issues)? Sure. Dahl's book had some rather pointed and nasty things to say about children and (especially) parents, and while the message is still there, the songs (which served in the original to hammer home the point) are cut and simplified to where they're more comic commentary than polemic (OK, maybe polemic wouldn't've worked in the film... but it's pretty clearly what Dahl wrote the book for). The added sub-plot of Willie Wonka's issues with his father are entertaining (especially since Christopher Lee is cast to give creepy gravitas to the role), but I'm not sure it doesn't actually undermine the "bad parenting messes kids up" message, since while Wonka is clearly "messed up", he's also a highly successful and beloved (if completely misunderstood and cut off from the world) candy-maker. Oh, and the extended ending does another disservice, at least in my book... It doesn't leave the original direct set-up for the sequel.

And Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator is a book I love even more than the first. I mean, how could I not hope for (as unlikely as it is) a Tim Burton take on the Vermicious Knids?

Posted by ghoul at 04:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 19, 2005

Some Less Conflicted Comments

Okay, so I was a bit divided about Batman Begins, but I'm less conflicted about the two TV series I watched yesterday and today thanks to internet downloads of international broadcasts...

So let me take a minute to talk about Doctor Who (2005) and Justice League Unlimited.

(Extremely limited spoiling again... but I'll go under a fold anyway.)

So, first, the Doctor.

I was introduced to the Doctor in 1979 thanks to the US publication of some episode novelizations. I was 14 and had slightly heard of the show reading science fiction fan 'zines of the era, but didn't really know much about it. The first of these was Terrance Dick's Doctor Who and the Day of the Daleks, adapting the 60th story of the long-running series. The story spoiled me for most of the series, unfortunately, as it actually featured honest-to-goodness time travel as part of the plot (all too often, the Doctor only travels at the start and end of stories, sticking around as if just another native during the adventure). Here, bad guys (the titular Daleks) use their limited powers of time travel to manipulate events to lead to their conquest of Earth, said manipulation made possible in the future because they have conquered the Earth. Except, of course, the Time Lords forced an exiled outcast of their race (The Doctor) to set things right.

And what a character this Doctor was. It was a 1972 episode, so the Doctor was Jon Pertwee, who came across as a brilliant but more than a bit cranky pseudo-Victorian scientist, assigned to assist (and be watched over by) a United Nations anti-alien task force. It was all a bit silly, didn't really make too much sense, and I loved it. Of course, I was reading a book, so the Daleks came across as the frightening, inhuman death machines they're described as, not the comic dodgem-cars mated with a pepper grinder I later saw them looking like on PBS re-runs of the series. No, to my imagination, they were something really frightening, a relentless, heartless killing wave that could be pushed back but never stopped. (Sort of like what the Borg were much later in Star Trek: The Next Generation, at least before they started humanizing them for "greater drama").

I eventually saw and read a lot more Doctor Who. I've seen episodes with all the various versions (a clever writers trick allows the Doctor to be re-cast with a new actor whenever needed), and liked most of them. I suffered through a painfully mistaken attempt to Americanize the series that, thankfully, lasted only one two-hour special. And then, for nearly than a decade, it went away.

And now, it's back. And is it ever!

Writer Russell T. Davis, clearly a classic Doctor fan from way back, somehow convinced the BBC to bring the Doctor back, this time with a bit less cheese and a bit more SFX budget (though it doesn't always escape its roots; often, though, that looks to be on purpose). A brilliantly funny man, Christopher Eccleston, was cast in the lead, and this Doctor manages to have all the best and worst of his past selves. He's cross, razor-tongued, quick to judge, impatient, sarcastic, reckless, and just a little bit too harsh in how he deals out "justice". He's also funny, charming, impossibly clever, and given to forming deep and unshakable loyalties to the right people. In this case, that's the sweet but apparently unimportant Rose Tyler (Billie Piper), with whom he happens to cross paths in the first episode (entitled "Rose", so you know where the real focus is).

Through the 13 episodes of this series, we also meet several other recurring characters, including Rose's mother (Camille Coduri), who never really understands what is going on; her boyfriend Mickey (Noel Clark), loyal and true but just a little bit wrong to make it onto the Doctor's team himself; Adam Mitchell (Bruno Langley), a near-future techno-nerd who is just a little too tempted by technology; and the roguish Captain Jack (John Barrowman), who can't seem to decide if he wants to seduce Rose or the Doctor. Plus tons of other interesting people, creatures, and things. The world is saved, the world is accidentally put in peril, the world is saved again. And a rollicking good time is had, including an amazing episode poking fun at BBC game shows (including an Anne-droid who mercilessly disintegrates the "weakest link"... voiced by Anne Robinson herself). And, in the end, it all ties up into a complex but astonishingly neat pattern.

And, amidst it all, the Daleks, still looking like they always have, are somehow made just as scary as they ever were in their descriptions.

This is worth checking out! And if the next series (coming in 2006, with a one-shot special for Christmas first) is anywhere near this good, then the Doctor is not going away again anytime soon! (And there are rumors I've heard about Cybermen, another old foe who could use a modern touch to make them as scary as they should be.)

Now, Justice League.

I commented in my Batman Begins review that I really like what the WB animated team has been putting together since they started Batman the Animated Series. Well, JLU is the culmination of that work, now broadened to include most all of the DC Comics universe (including many parts I never expected to see on TV). In the US, we've seen an excellent season so far, including some unexpected hostility between the government (especially a top secret group called "Project Cadmus") and some unlikely romantic sparks (or did anyone honestly see the Huntress and the Question as a couple in advance?). We've also had an astonishing degree of continuity, with references back as far as the first season of the Batman animated, and countless tiny plot threads, many probably not even intended by their original authors, picked up and run with.

Well, America, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

Canada's YTV has already shown the next four episodes, a four-part epic that brings everything to a head. (The one episode left in this season, "Epilogue", is an obvious afterward, an anti-climax, and shows there next Friday, but since I'll be at The Black Road, I'll review the series now.)

What the US is still to see is a story arc the likes of which was completely unexpected, even with the high-quality work this series has shown from day one. Even the titles were designed to tease and excite JLU fans.

"Question Authority"

"Flashpoint"

"Panic in the Sky"

"Divided We Fall"

Well, if you're a JL fan from, oh, the second season and, say, episodes 37 and 38, you may think you see a thread in those titles. You're right. And you're wrong. You probably went down the path they want you to follow, and if so, they will surprise you at every turn. Dwayne McDuffie, the writer of this arc, proves deft and clever. He also proves to know and care for the DC Universe deeply. This is great TV.

Don't miss it. The next four weeks (and almost certainly five; I don't expect "Epilogue" will disappoint) are ones of the record books.

Posted by ghoul at 11:09 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

June 18, 2005

Rebooting the Bat

I'm not sure just how to express this. I haven't been this ambivalent about a movie in some time. But I'm just back from Batman Begins and I'm really not sure what I thought of it.

(Very limited spoiling in what follows, but I'll put it behind a fold anyway.)

Is it the first film version of the Batman to really have a coherent theme that fits the main character? No... I think Mask of the Phantasm achieved that, as did Mystery of the Batwoman. Maybe the first live-action movie to manage that feat, but I don't discriminate against animation. So it isn't unique there, and it doesn't even succeed quite as well as its cartoon predecessors, if only because it tries too hard and so drops a few of the many subplots it tries to juggle.

Does it do the best job of the live-action Batman films at keeping the focus on Batman/Bruce Wayne and not on the villains? Sure. But that's saying it's good because it doesn't make the mistakes that trapped others, not because it's actually good itself. Now, it does manage an impressive feat by having an all-star cast but still keep its focus mostly on its main characters, most of whom are lesser names. (And big props to the director for bringing along one of the lesser-known actors from his amazing Memento to give another fantastic supporting performance.) And it does so without forcing the big names into the background, because everyone gets a chance to shine. It's hard to fault the acting of anyone, except perhaps Katie Holmes, but that's more because she has no coherent role in the plot than any glaring problems with her performance.

As many reviews suggest, this film tries to "bring realism to the Batman story" Well, yes, it tries... but in many ways it goes too far with this effort, setting us up with a long prelude (it's easily an hour in before we even glimpse the Batman) of martial arts training sequences; repeated discussions on the nature of Justice, Vigilanteism, Right, etc; demonstrations of military prototype equipment; etc. But then, once the mask goes on, the film lets itself change gears and then action-movie rules apply. Both halves are reasonably well done, but the last sixty minutes of this movie takes place in a very different world from the first sixty, and the twenty in the middle don't manage to explain the changes.

It has very many good points, but it also is too ambitious, trying to be a movie with at least a half-dozen villains. We have two major, name supervillains (both excellently done), one named henchman of unusual skill (with countless unnamed henchfolk), a mob boss (built up too much for how easily he falls down), one name corrupt cop (with countless other unnamed), and the street thug who killed Bruce's parents (thankfully restored to his correct identity from the mistaken merger with the Joker in the Tim Burton Batman). They all have to get built up, they all have to get knocked down... and that's just too much for the film to manage. None of them quite get built up high enough to perform the role of a villain (that is, to make the hero look good when they are beaten). Meanwhile, it also wants to re-tell the Batman origin story (exceptionally well, and including many details often skimmed over, though with a few changes I could do without; the traditionalist in me really wants the Waynes to be leaving a Zorro movie, not the opera), establish its supporting cast (Alfred, Gordon, and a surprisingly good take on Lucius Fox, all of which manage to work because of the talented actors who establish their roles with expert craft even when given only limited screen time), and develop a love story (the most skimped-on subplot, painfully under-developed to the point where it is more distraction than anything else). This is just way too much to do.

And maybe that's why I came away feeling like nothing was quite complete, like there was a lot of good starts put there, but far fewer good ends. It's hard to dislike a film that does so many things as well as this film does, but it has to be admitted that it fails in around a third of what it tries, and some of those failure are painful to sit through, especially when there's so much done so well.

Am I glad this team wants to do another film (in fact, rumor says they want to do two more)? Yes, because I think they have the basics down better than anyone not working for WB's animation division, and because they could probably bring some of their dangled threads to completion with more time. Plus, I like superhero movies that are done well, and this one is done well (or, at least, isn't done poorly like I'm very worried this one will be). Still, this is no Incredibles or Spiderman (I or II).

So, a limited recommendation from me. You may find it too slow, too convoluted, too serious or too silly (and it can be both, depending on which half you're in), but if you like superhero movies, you could do far worse.

Posted by ghoul at 06:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 19, 2005

Sigh...

When you tell a great story, it is possible to mess it up far, far more ways than anyone could list. There are many right ways and many, many, many more wrong ones.

You could decide to change everything and make it "better". Then you'd be last year's groan-fest, Troy.

You could decide speed, glitz, and a famous name is all you need, and you'd be the remake of Dawn of the Dead (and extra points for the ultra-bad choices made during those end credits!).

Or you could tell your story in leaden, plodding steps so everyone forgets why they ever even cared before you get to the big scenes.

Then, you would be Revenge of the Sith.

Oh, it has good spots. The action scenes are glitzy and sharp, even if they lack most of the originality seen in the first trilogy and the fluid continuity of the final duel in The Phantom Menace (a sequence which was perhaps the only really good thing about that film). At least Lucas does (mostly) avoid the over-editing, overly-shaky camera work that many directors use to hide their ill-choreographed action. And it mostly lacks the painful juvenile attempts at humor of the prior two prequels, but it's a movie that lacks a heart, told by a writer/director more interested in the colors of the various weapons his protagonists wield than in their characters. Numerous shout-outs to the fans of the original trilogy fall dead, especially the completely meaningless role given to Chewbacca.

There isn't a prize for simply not fumbling, and that's almost all Lucas achieves here. "Not as bad as the last two" isn't the same thing as "good." To be praiseworthy, you have to actually move the ball forward. And I was more thrilled by this story reading it second-hand from interviews Lucas has given over the years than I was watching it. Most of this film, I was just as bored as the actors seemed (with rare exceptions, mostly from those who took the director's effective absence as an excuse to munch the scenery until it was almost gone... so yes, you can chew on digital scenery).

I almost hate to quote this, because I disagree with it so vehemently, but this film pretty much exemplifies the something Laurie Anderson said in her early piece, United States Part One...

In science fiction, the hero just flies in at the very beginning.
He can bend steel with his bare hands.
He can walk in zero gravity.
He can see right through lead doors.
But no one asks how he is able to do these things.
They just say, "Look! He's walking in zero gravity."
So you don't have to deal with human nature at all.

I like my films to deal with human nature, especially my science fiction. Which, I guess, is why I'm so disappointed to be certain this film will make many times the money of, say, a certain other movie that manages that in spades.

Posted by ghoul at 08:43 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

February 25, 2005

More About New Games

For those who are interesting in my opinions after reading last week's big catch of new games, just look here.

These opinions are based on reading the rules and playing with individual ideas a bit, with the exception of the one game that offers solo play (and even there, solo play is minimally like the regular game). But I've read a lot of game rules and usually can reach a reasonable conclusion just from that. Still, conclusions about "this will get tedious before the game ends" or "the joke won't last out the game" are my estimates based on reading, not on play.

Posted by ghoul at 10:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 17, 2005

Movie Break (and HeroScape)

This being NH (which didn't even get around to recognizing the day until after I'd moved here in 1999), there was no chance I had the holiday off, but I did call it a day slightly early in order to make it to an afternoon showing of The House of Flying Daggers. And that was worth it. Zhang Yimou has managed to move into the action film genre without losing any of the lush look and hyper-melodramatic romance of his earlier films (which I also love). This film, like Hero, takes a moment out of the rich history of China and fills in the blank spots with tragic characters caught up by events even their amazing skills cannot control. This is not a film to miss!

And, afterwards, I stopped by the local Toys R Us and found 2 of the 3 remaining HeroScape Expansion Sets (I'd found Snipers and Vipers on Saturday). Now I just need to locate the Grut Orcs and I'm caught up. I'm quite happy with the figures so far, both in appearance and in clever new additions to the game. And its just great that a set of Roman Legionnaires is now one of the larger unified-look groups in the game (only the Orcs have more).

Posted by ghoul at 05:48 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 05, 2004

It's...

I don't care how good you think Pixar is.

I don't care how good you think Brad Bird is.

I don't care how much you're expecting of The Incredibles.

I don't care how many times you've watched the trailers and wondered how it all fit together.

Because it all doesn't matter.

You are just not ready for how good this movie is.

Think Spider-Man 2 is the best superhero movie of all time? It's not even the best superhero movie of 2004, my friend.

Go. Watch. Be amazed.

And be warned, you who are making Fantastic Four, that the bar has been set really, really high. You do not want to be thought of as a second-rate Incredibles rip-off, but you'll have to work very hard to avoid it. Get cracking!

Posted by ghoul at 05:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack