Moral/Lawful Alignment Guide

Movie Geek: A Star Wars "What if"

A Little vulgar but still very cool. i'm all for a re-write.

Music Geek: New Flight of the Conchords

It has been three long years since Flight of the Conchords graced our television sets on Sunday nights with oblivious, self-deprecating pop songs, but now Brett and Jemaine have finally reunited to rally behind a good cause. In support of Cure Kids, a New Zealand-based charity that researches childhood illness, the pop duo has released a one-off single, “Feel Inside (And Stuff Like That).”

Check out the extended video above, which features a typical band meeting with Murray, and watch as Brett and Jemaine interview kids for their thoughts on how to fundraise for sick children and then cobble together an entire charity song from their ideas at the end. It’s adorable, and potentially even economically viable. And if the video puts you in the giving spirit, you can find out more information here, at the Cure Kids’ website.

New Hobbit sneak preview release

Oh, hey, another production video from Peter Jackson on the set of The Hobbit was released this weekend, with more shots of the spectacular locations and a look at the logistics of shipping massive amounts of equipment and people to remote areas. You get lots of looks at a village and folks in costume. And the Prime Minister of New Zealand drops by, too. And livestock. Lots of livestock. It’s pretty interesting to see how they create Middle Earth out of rolling countryside.

Board Game Review: Wise and Otherwise

Wise and Otherwise is the intellectual elite big brother of party game Balderdash. But instead of words, you deal with proverbs. One designated Reader each round reads the first few words of a proverb, along with the country of origin. Everyone else then writes down an ending to the proverb and passes that to the Reader to be read aloud, along with the correct ending. For instance, an example proverb would be “There’s an old Croatian saying: ‘Those who eat porridge…’” So it’s your job to come up with a convincing ending! Once all the endings have been read aloud, everyone guesses the right one. You get points for being correct, and points if people guess your answer. I really enjoy creative games like this. It can be a little mentally exhausting, and ego bruising if no one ever chooses your proverbs, but it can also be hilarious. There’s always one person in the group who writes the most ridiculous, laughter-inducing phrases. Then there’s always those rounds when the actual proverb is so unbelievably weird and funny that no one votes for it! I recommend the game, especially if you’re looking to trying to spice up your party game repertoire.

My biggest criticism of Wise and Otherwise is that there’s a board included, which is just dumb. It helps with scoring, so the player who reaches the end of the board first wins the game. This just seems wasteful – it’s just as easy to keep score on a piece of paper (or smart phone) and announce when the first player has reached 20. The inclusion of an unnecessary board seems like a ploy to make you think this is a bigger, more expensive game than it should be. Lose the board and shave ten bucks off the price and now we’re talking.

THE BASICS:

Play Time: 45 minutes

Number of Players: 2-6.

Suggested age: 12 and up.

Published: By wiseandotherwise.com, 1997

Buy: I found it on Amazon for $42. Internet pickings seems slim. Board Game Geek doesn’t rate it very highly, so I’m wondering if this game just kind of died out. Don’t forget to check your local friendly board game store.

Wise and Otherwise is a great game for the collection with lots of re-playability. I recommend it if you're looking for a fun, intelligent party game

Board Game Review: Carcassonne

Carcassonne was one of my own “gateway” games that got me into Euro board games and it remains one of my favorites. It’s an easy-to-learn tile laying game named after a medieval French town. You lay down one randomly drawn terrain tile each turn. You may place it wherever you like, as long as it’s adjacent to an existing tile and all the sides match up so that roads connect to roads, fields to fields, cities to cities, etc. Then you may place one of your seven followers, little wooden people affectionately known as “meeples,” on one of the tiles to claim a city, road, field, or cloister. On to the next turn. It’s really pretty simple. When the element you claimed gets completed, you can remove your meeple and gets points based on what the element was and the number of tiles it took up. If it never gets completed, your meeple stays on it until the tiles run out and you get your points then, but you may not get as many. A lot of the game is dictated by luck from the random tiles. But strategy is still very important. You may choose to conserve your meeples for bigger claims down the road, or you may wickedly try to take over another player’s claim.

THE BASICS:

Play Time: 40-60 minutes

Number of Players: 2-5. I haven’t played it with more than two very often, so I can’t say what the ideal number is. But BoardGameGeek users voted 2 as the best.

Suggested age: 8 and up.

Designer: Klaus-Jürgen Wrede

Published: 2000, Rio Grande Games (English version) and Hans im Glück (German version)

Buy: This game is widely available. It looks like you should be able to get it in the $15-20 range online. Or you can skip the shipping charges but pay a little more and support your Friendly Neighborhood Game Store.

There is also an awesome iPhone version out now. You can play it online or locally with a friend who has it, and includes a great solitaire game, with which you can challenge your friends to beat your high score. There is at least one big game-changer I noticed about this version though: it gives you the ability to see how many of each kind of tile are still left in the virtual tile bag. When I played with my firend, I felt this gave both of us a new advantage we never had before. Sure, you could conceivably figure out how many of each tile are left in the original game, but it would take a lot of keeping track and counting. I’m not sure if I like this new feature, but either way, I very much recommend BOTH the original and the iPhone versions. There’s even an Xbox 360 arcade one if you’re interested!

Love Carcassonne! Highly Recommend it!

Board Game Review: Pandemic

Pandemic

Pandemic is a cooperative game in which you and your fellow players team up to eradicate the threat of four deadly global diseases. Each teammate plays one of 5 randomly chosen characters, each with their own unique abilities: Dispatcher, Scientist, Medic, Researcher, and Operations Expert. Every round more disease spreads, as you race to discover cures by traveling the world, using a simple system of cards and tokens A lot of luck is involved, but it’s up to you to come up with the best strategy using your team’s given abilities and situation. The game is fun, but HARD. I’m sorry world, but we regularly succumbed to pandemic while playing leisurely over the last few months. Fortunately the game is fast enough that a loss isn’t too discouraging. Instead it would embolden us to try again, until we were victorious. I sometimes dislike co-op games because they don’t feed my competitive hunger, but the ease and quickness of this game make up for that.

THE BASICS:

Play Time: 60 minutes

Number of Players: 2-4. I would recommend 4, though 3 and even 2 is fun too!

Suggested age: 10 and up.

Designer: Matt Leacock

Artist: Joshua Cappel (graphics and illustration), Régis Moulun (cover painting)

Published: 2008, by Z-Man Games, among others.

Buy: I found it on Amazon for $27.

Hey, kids, what time is it?

If you check this clever — perhaps too clever — clock that looks and expands and contracts like a Japanese folding fan, you might need to take a few seconds to figure it out:

spire_ from ekaggrat singh kalsi on Vimeo.

“Spire” won a Reddot Design Award in 2010 for designers Ekaggrat Singh Kalsi and Darshan Soni. You can’t buy one. Yet.

Kids these days: Tech in toys.

Kids these days. Am I right? With their Nintendo DS’s and their PSP’s and their Pokey Mons. When I was growing up, our idea of fun was to go in the backyard and hit each other with sticks and pretend we were Jedi or ninjas or VR Troopers. VR Troopers? Anyone? No one? Fine, moving on.

We! Are! Not a knock-off!

The point is, my electronics time as a kid was limited. My parents actually made the effort to shoo me and my brothers outside if we spent more than two hours playing Nintendo. Let me tell you, when you were working with a broken Zelda cartridge that would save your game only, oh, let’s say 42% of the time, that made rescuing princesses very difficult. Instead, we had to make do with analog toys like Matchbox and Nerf guns, and set the electronics aside.

I was on the Toys R Us website (I’m disappointed that I can’t type a backwards “R” right now) looking for gifts for the kids i babysit, and as soon as the front page loaded, I was shocked. I did not see an ad for a Slip n’ Slide, or a bicycle, or a LEGO set. Instead, staring me in the face was an ad telling me to buy an iPod.

Now, I have an iPod. I love my iPod. I couldn’t live without my iPod. But I’m pretty sure the two-year-old kid i babysit doesn’t need an iPod.

"Hm? Oh, just listening to some She & Him. Yeah, I liked them before they got big."

Electronics have become a huge part of kids’ toys over the last twenty years. Click on the “educational toys” tab on the Toys R Us website, and the first thing you see is a handheld gaming device. They sell laptops now as well, which are listed in the 5-7 age range. Five to seven years old. Do kids that young even know how to spell laptop?

Now, I don’t want to give the impression that I’m anti-technology. As the tech geek i am, that would be like Mike Tyson saying “Hey kids, remember, violence isn’t the answer”. I can’t go four hours without my laptop, I can’t go four minutes without my phone. And if I go a day without some World of Warcraft, my thumbs start to twitch.

But the thing is, kids need to use their imaginations. Anyone remember the "duck hunt" gun for nintendo? how many of you unplugged that and ran around shooting it at invisible bad guys? i know i can't be the only one. Many of us did. It’s because when we’re kids, we play. It’s all part of developing our feeble little kid brains.

Maybe I’m overreacting. To be honest, I’m just kinda jealous. Nowadays, kids get to play with awesome stuff like this Star Wars Force Trainer, which comes with a headset that READS YOUR EVER-LOVIN’ BRAIN WAVES so that when you think about levitating the ball in the tube, it actually levitates. Do you know what would have happened if I had gotten one of those for Christmas as a kid? My head would have exploded. Literally exploded. My parents would have been cleaning gray matter off of the Christmas tree and cursing the heavens and Mattel.

OH MY GOD I'M A JEDI

I’m actually of the belief that I owe a lot of my problem-solving and other life skills to video games, so I think there is some value to electronics for kids. But we do need to shove them outside at some point. Nothing builds character more than getting shot in the face with one of these:

Yeah, that’s a freakin Nerf machine gun.

Go ahead, prove me wrong. Show me some good tech for kids in the comments.

Board game "mini review" for small world

Small World is a beautiful and fun civilization game that I was first introduced to at a new years eve party a few years back. It has some fantasy RPG elements I found appealing, and the art is so gorgeous, I often find myself picking up tokens and examining them, when I should be examining my strategy instead. The object of the game is to be the player at the end with the most points, which are gained by controlling territory. To start, each player chooses a race and power combination. For instance, you might wind up with Flying Halflings, Swamp Ratmen, or Pillaging Amazons. The combos that are available to you at a given time are random, but it’s up to you to pick the one you find most advantageous. Small World has a nice balance of strategy, luck, and player interaction. If you want, you can take strategy to the max, thinking through the possible scenarios before you. Or you can relax a little and go on instinct and still be in for a fun time. It really depends on who you’re up against.

THE BASICS:

Play Time: 80 minutes

Number of Players: 2-5. BGG users recommend 4. I’ve most often played it with 4, and I agree that seems ideal. Still, the 2-player version isn’t shabby, and it’s great to have to that available for couples.

Suggested age: 8 and up. I played with two different kids – a 10-year-old and 12-year-old, and while they enjoyed it, they needed a little guidance.

Designer: Philippe Keyaerts

Artist: Miguel Coimbra

Published: 2009, by Days of Wonder, Edge Entertainment

Buy: The game retails for $50 on the Days of Wonder website, but I recommend looking on Amazon or Thought Hammer for a better deal. And don’t forget about your local friendly board game store.

Geeky tatts of the week

So I’m buying my five dollar foot long and a dude came in to tell me i left my lights on. I reply with the clever, “Thanks!” (as you should do in a situation such as this) and go to shake his hand. When I look down, I see some decorative flesh art that is so epic that I start taking pictures of it almost before I ask if it’s okay.

The best part is, THEY’RE NOT DONE. Soon light sabers will adorn each finger. He said he felt weird because, “If I were Caucasian, Obi Wan would look right, but because I’m Mexican, he just looks kinda tan,” to which I reply drolly, “Well, Tatooine IS in a binary star system.” *snort laugh*

So to this fine young gentleman with exquisite taste in online periodical literature (whose tweetstream is @matthewebone) I say, “NICE TATOOINE TATTS!”

Btw, don’t bother cutting off his right hand. It would only become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.

How the heck do i beat the last level of Plants verses Zombies?!?

Plants vs Zombies is a pretty easy tower defense game, as tower defense games go. But HOLY CRAP the difficulty jumps up at the very last level. I really want to beat it so I can move on to trying for achievements and such, but every time I try, I lose, get frustrated, and play The Creeps! instead.

If you haven’t played through Plants vs Zombies and don’t want to know anything about the last level, I suggest you don’t read the following. It contains ****SPOILERS!****

Ok, so you’re still with me. Then you probably know that in the last level, an ugly dude controlling a giant robot appears, unleashing the usual zombie onslaught, along with some new dangers, like camper vans and ice and fire balls. I think his name is Dr. Zomboss. This is one of those levels where you don’t worry about making sunshine, and available defenses just roll up on the left side. The thing is, I think I’m doing everything right. I’m saving my ice shrooms and jalapeño peppers for the fire balls and ice balls respectively. I heard that if you use the ice shrooms as soon as he bends down to freeze him, you can have more time to hit him. But when I do that I run out of ice shrooms and don’t have them when I need them. Gah! I hates it. I got really far tonight right before writing this, got to where the green bar at the top was nearly full. But some stupid giant zombie got me. How do you kill the giant zombies in this level anyway? The jalapeños don’t work on them, so I guess the only thing to do is freeze them with an ice shroom I no longer have while pummeling them with a melon I also NO LONGER HAVE. They were all squished by a camper van or stolen by a bungee zombie.

So yeah. That’s my rant of frustration. I still love the game and only blame myself for not yet beating it. If you have any tips please feel free to share them in the comments.