Category Archives: Reviews

People Say Nice Things about our Stuff!

Posted by grimachu on

People have had nice things to say about our stuff. Look!

Colony: Moon

Like the author, I grew up with a sense of wonder and anticipation regarding space travel. As our generation has in a sense ‘lost the moon’ I find the concept of Colony Moon to be compelling. Those motivations aside, the game itself is quite simply fun.

The rules are easy to read and follow, so even a cursory amount of preparation will allow you to host a game without too much worry. The basic interactions of the game are interesting on their own, but adding in characterization and roleplay magnifies this significantly.

The game is ideal for those who love games like Civilization/Alpha Centauri or Outpost but have always wanted more from the diplomatic and political side of things.

I got the game for personal enjoyment, but after reading and testing it, feel it will be useful and enjoyable in an educational setting as well.

This game is well worth a look.

Anthony B

Tobyart 3: Knights

Toby Gregory’s artwork is among my favorite stock art pack and has made me seek him out for custom work. I have developed an entire series of releases based around the entire series of Tobyart. These images are always glorious to behold. In addition there is always a wonderful mix of the iconic and the original when it comes to the characfters created.

The Cover image of TobyArt Knights is actually the weakest image presented but is the most modular since a human knight can be found in any game. I truly cannot wait to use the female dragonborn with the eye patch or the drinking dwarf.

My highest praise.

Steven D. Russell
Rite Publishing

Review: Do – Pilgrims of the Flying Temple

Posted by grimachu on

This isn’t going to be that much of a review since we just finished playing and it’s not long until midnight. However…

Do is a simple story-telling game for 3-5 players where you take on the part of a gang of Pilgrims. The Flying Temple lies at the centre of a massive universe of floating planets, each different, each special and all contained within a great sphere of air and light. Pilgrims fly from world to world solving problems for people and getting into terrible scrapes along the way.

As a Pilgrim you’re one part Santa Claus, one part Buddhist monk and one part natural disaster, all rolled into one.

Characters are defined by their names, which form two traits one of which describes how you (usually) get into trouble and one describing how you (usually) help people.

My character was Pilgrim Oblivious Locks, he got into trouble by failing to pay attention and not noticing things, he solved problems with his magical, long, flowing hair.

You play the game by taking it in turns to draw beads from a bag. There are twenty black and twenty white (or you can use other colours so long as there are two different ones) and depending what combination you draw and whether you’re in trouble or not determines what happens. The players whose turn it isn’t are called the ‘troublemakers’ and determine what goes wrong for you – if you get into trouble.

Letters from people seeking help give you keywords and these are worked into your story as you go along to solve the problem. You fail if you get too many beads before all the keywords have been dealt with, otherwise you win, huzzah!

Between letters you can change your name and thus how you help and/or how you get into trouble. Oblivious Locks, for example, became Lusty Locks after one adventure and a regrettable flashing incident at the village square.

Lastly, when you decide to finish your pilgrimage one of three things can happen depending how you conducted yourself and the balance of the beads. You can either return to the temple and a life of service and contemplation, you can vanish into the world and settle on one of the planets, or you can transcend and become something more or other.

We had some of each in our games.

Is it a good game? Yes, but it works better as a sort of creative exercise amongst friends. I suspect the real pleasure can and will come in writing up the adventures ‘properly’ from the game notes. We had fun tangling ideas and making a narrative together but it’s much more stilted than an RPG and much more vague. Determining what is acceptable or not in someone’s turn is much more about other people’s ideas than rules and dice and, thus, is a subjective judgement. Something that can become hurtful and problematic if people disagree or don’t like each other’s concepts.

The art in the book is fantastic and inspiring, really brings across the feel of the game.

Some of the included letters are charming or interesting, all show the scope of the potentiality of the game world but some are more than a little… well, pretentious or anachronistic compared to the overall presentation of the work. That’s the only real fly in the ointment of an otherwise very agreeable game.

Style: 5 (Near as damn to perfect).
Substance: 3 (It’s a light game, but there’s still a bit of a consistency issue in the letters).
Overall: 4 (Enjoyable, but there’s definite potential for hurt feelings and disagreements).
Verdict: Small-group filler game, great fun with the right people. Trust and creativity are important though it’s simple enough that anyone can do it.

Review: John Carter

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I saw John Carter opening day in the UK and I was pleasantly surprised. Given that I’m British and we have a talent for understatement, let me rephrase that in an American-friendly fashion.

This film is goddamn awesome. Go see it right now!

Liberties have been taken with the story – somewhat – but it’s recognisible. The racism and sexism of Burroughs’ writing (a product of its time) has been tempered with some modern sensibility, but by no means has the naive charm of the story been destroyed.

The effects are excellent, the CGI is grounded and is not disruptive or included ‘simply for the sake of it’. The landscapes are gorgeous, the props solid and while, perhaps, it’s a little less colourful in palate than it could have been it doesn’t succumb to the ‘beige = realistic’ mistake of many CGI heavy films.

First the little nitpicky criticisms:

1. Not enough nakey: there was no way Disney was going to go with the original. Tits were out of the question and loose-flapping wang was absolutely never going to happen. It’s a pity we can’t see the ‘real’ vision brought to life but this is as close as it gets and I can deal.

2. 3D: I saw the film in 3D. It had absolutely no reason to be in 3D and while the 3D didn’t ruin the film it did detract from the experience. In many of the wide landscape shots it made the travelling figures/mounts look like little toys and spoiled the sense of scale they were trying to convey. If you can see it in 2D, see it in 2D.

Now the gushing praise:

I haven’t felt like this about a film since, perhaps, the original Star Wars. It was wonderful, truly wonderful. There was nothing cynical about it, nothing knowing or nodding. It didn’t make fun of itself or view itself in a self-deprecating way. It was a great, ‘old fashioned’, adventure film.

I mean, I loved it. I felt like I was ten again. I want to go charging around a playground having pretend swordfights and rescuing princesses (fortunately, as a gamer I can do some of that).

The Tharks were believable and harked back to some of the best illustrations of those there ever have been and while the creatures weren’t always true to the book descriptions they were close enough.

Carter wasn’t a huge, buff, hero, more an everyman of the type you can relate to physically. A break from the book, certainly, but also one that I think is an improvement. Dejah Thoris is, equally, a believable beauty rather than a barbie girl and the ending scenes had a palpable chemistry and a look of convincing adoration in her eyes worth a hundred more explicit love scenes in a hundred other movies.

Martian women have always been fierce in the novels and in another break they introduced her fierceness a lot sooner in the story. Again, I think this improved it though I do think it will upset purists. It was one of the chief things that concerned me going into the film (along with the atrocious marketing) but I left reassured and happy.

I sincerely hope they’re able to follow up with sequels and that they remain this true to the books in the future. The perfect balance between respect and modernisation.

Just, see it in 2D if you can.

Style: 4

Substance: 5

Overall: 4.5

Here’s some Michael Whelan cover art to end with. The original had no panties :) Also here’s a download of a Barsoom compilation, which is public domain in Australia and Canada, but ABSOLUTELY DO NOT DOWNLOAD IF YOU LIVE ELSEWHERE. I certainly didn’t.

Little Grey Book Review

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Shane O’Connor did a nice review of The Little Grey Book over at RPGNOW. I’ve been loathe to go too into the game or what it is since I didn’t want to colour preconceptions about it. I wanted to let it speak for itself and have people put their own interpretation on it.

This is a good review though. If you want to honour my wishes SPOILER ALERT! If you want to get an idea what it’s about, read on:

It’s been said that “simple is best.” This is a fairly universal axiom that can apply to almost anything, including games. Of course, it can also be fairly ironic in that it’s also easy to take too far, in which case the simplicity is no longer what’s best. It’s in this vein that Postmortem Studios has released their game – I’m not sure if I should call it a role-playing game or not – The Little Grey Book.

The Little Grey Book is a two-page PDF file. Each page is divided into three columns, with the first column of the first page being the cover image, and the last column of the second page being a “character sheet,” as it were.

I keep equivocating about whether or not this is a role-playing game because, as a game, it lacks a lot of the traditional trappings of most RPGs. There is no randomizer, for instance (e.g. dice, drawing cards, etc.) nor is there any sort of referee or Game Master. The Little Grey Book is more of a storytelling game than anything else, and the quality of the stories are…well, read below for more on that.

The premise of The Little Grey Book is that it takes place in a utopian society. Everyone is equal in every way, and society is run by the Consensus. All permutations of sex and sexual identity are accepted, all ages are accepted, and even names have not only had surnames removed entirely, but the remaining personal names are all gender-neutral.

The game-play here involves each player (of which there need to be at least three) creating a character based on choosing a name, age, and gender/sex. Each player then describes one typical day in their character’s life, from waking up until going to bed. The remaining players collectively play the role of the Consensus; each Consensus member can describe a troubled situation that happens during the day (e.g. someone flirts with you), and the player needs to describe how they resolve it before continuing on with their day.

The rub here is that the (non-Consensus) player gets a black mark from the other members of the Consensus each time he does anything that violates the equality of someone else. This is incredibly easy to do. Frowning at someone is passing judgment on them, for instance. Using a gender-specific pronoun is making an assumption on their sexual identity. Offering a tip to a waiter is a comparative insult to other waiters. In other words, differences (both real and perceived) still exist between people, but every time you fail to pretend that such differences don’t exist, you get a black mark. Hence, virtually every time a Consensus member introduces a troubled situation into your day, you’re going to screw up somehow; it’s a given.

Each player takes a turn as the person describing their day, and all of the other players operate as members of the Consensus, until everyone has had a turn. Consensus members tell the player why they got the black marks they did, but there’s no arguing these judgments. The explanations are final. The game ends when the person with the most black marks is taken away for “adjustment” (which isn’t defined, though you can probably guess) and the person with the least black marks gets off with a warning…making them the de facto winner.

That’s literally the entire game.

It’s clear that The Little Grey Book is presenting us with a minimalist critique of political correctness. However, how much of fun you’ll get out of playing this game is debatable – like all instances of minimal presentation, what’s here is so little that it invites you to fill it in with your own interpretations; you can’t help but imbue this game with your own thoughts and prejudices on the exaggerated premise that it lays down. Likewise, the real fun also comes from just how bastard-ly your friends feel like being when they come up with troubles for you, and how try to wriggle out of the situations they invent.

I do think that there could have been some greater emphasis on some of the unique aspects of the setting, such as noting how the Consensus seems to be a borg-like collective governance, or that the troubles that arise during your day are caused deliberately by the Consensus as a test of a random citizen’s perception of social equality (though how they caused such issues to happen would be a bit tricky to answer).

Ultimately, there’s little to do here, which is sort of the point. Nobody will get through a day without a black mark, but the real fun is in trying. The game here is a very basic framework, and the play style is similarly basic. It’s a simple game, but as they say, sometimes simple is best.

Rating:
starstarstarstarstar
[4 of 5 Stars!]

Review: Airship Pirates

Posted by grimachu on

Introduction

Airship Pirates is either a work of genius or a foolhardy and doomed endeavour. Steampunk is big, yes, but it’s still a subculture and this isn’t just a Steampunk RPG its an RPG tied to a particular Steampunk band – Abney Park. There’s a risk, then, that this game could be passed over by people who aren’t simultaneously RPG fans, Steampunk fans and Abney Park fans. That’s a bit of a tall order. That said, subcultural ties worked out great for Vampire.

Background

Something has gone wrong with time and the world has changed, peculiarly. Down on the surface things are a bit post-apocalyptic, up in the air and in mountaintop cities things are all a bit neo-victorian and mighty airships ply the skies, well above the dangerous chrono-fused plains, wastes and jungles below where all manner of monstrous creatures from Earth’s past are wandering around. An oppressive Empire, a wild and dangerous world and airships cruising the skies. It’s a ripe world for air piracy, plunder, adventure, freedom fighting and maybe, even, making things better or worse by tinkering with time yourselves.

Mechanics

Airship Pirates uses the Heresy game engine, which is the same game engine used for Victoriana. While there are a few changes here and there it’s almost entirely compatible with Victoriana – which could make things quite interesting – and thus has the same little rules oddities that Victoriana has, namely the use of both negative dice (chance of reducing successes) and reduction in dice pool which, statistically, amounts to almost the same thing and seems needlessly finicky.

Where Airship Pirates advances the system is, in particular, with the design and customisation of airships which is hardly surprising, given the name of the game, but which could provide a sound basis for the design of vehicles and devices in Victoriana and anything else that comes along using the Heresy system.

Atmosphere

I’m not that familiar with Abney Park being more of a Vernian Process man myself but the game clearly draws quite strongly on the imaginations, costuming, music and lyrics of the chaps and chapettes of Abney Park. The book is full colour, though this pretty much means ‘sepia’! The stories and quoted lyrics do paint a picture but much of the book is, thankfully, a fairly straightforward and unobfuscated world guide.

Personally I was a little disappointed it was concentrated on America, but the bally Abney Park people are filthy colonials and I suppose it gives one room to carve a little bit of the world out for oneself. Many of the ideas presented compensate for yankee parochialism, pirates and aerial cities for just two.

Artwork

It’s hard to nail down exactly what to say about the art. There’s a mix of styles and competencies on display but it’s all appropriate and the eclectic mix of material fits the chronologically kerjiggered nature of the setting. I don’t know if it would necessarily work in another game or setting but it works here.

Conclusion

The genius of this game is that due to all the temporal flux and reality issues going on characters could be crossed over between people’s games, taken and played at – for example – convention games and then going back to their home games. I wish there was a Heresy LARP system because with the crafting/costuming talent and effort of the Steampunk community some LARP events and groups could really accomplish something special and there’s not necessarily any need for them all to jibe perfectly together.

On the plus side

  • Pirates!
  • Airships!
  • Accessible vehicle rules.

On the minus side

  • Tied to a relatively obscure band mythology.
  • Heresy system quirks.
  • ‘Impure’ genre

Score

Style: 4
Substance: 4
Overall: 4

Review: Saint’s Row III

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Introduction

Saint’s Row is a weird little franchise. It’s a GTA rip off, there’s no getting away from that, and that’s pretty much all the first game was. Somehow, since then, it’s taken on a life of its own. While GTA is pretty crazy it maintains a certain amount of verisimillitude in which the humour and craziness takes place.

Saint’s Row II got a little crazy but by the time we find ourselves in the third of the series. Saint’s Row III has finally completely gained its own identity and that identity is balls-out, batshit loco crazy.

This game is FUCKED in the head – in the best possible way.

Normally I play a game completely through before posting a review but here I really don’t feel I have to. In the few hours I’ve found to play already I’m sold. I think I’m even going to play it before Skyrim because frankly, this bloody thing is wonderful.

Story

Do we particularly care? The game opens with two of the craziest, most ludicrous gunfights I have ever seen in a game. With content that strong who cares about story really?

Alright then… basically the Saints – after the end of SRII – rule the city, they have a shitload of money and a financial and media empire, even their own energy drinks. Their ascendency, along with a badly targetted bank robbery, brings them to the attention of The Syndicate. The Syndicate is an international crime organisation with some serious chops and when the Saints reject them they are not happy. So unhappy, in fact, that they decide to fuck with the Saint’s shit and take their empire away from them.

Bad idea.

Rather than coming up from the street as in so many of these games, this is a story of reclamation and revenge and that’s delicious.

Gameplay

You have plenty to do, activities, missions, self-selected missions, storyline, purchasing and building your empire. That’s what I love about these kinds of games, the ability to feel that you are genuinely working to take over a city and build an empire. Something missing from other, similar games where it feels more arbitrary. There’s plenty to do, plenty to keep you busy in the game and it’s all fun and relevant. The only game that’s felt remotely as complete when it comes to empire building on the street, and that’s GTA: Vice City.

Controls

This is a pretty standard third-person sandbox game, so if you’ve played any of those you’ll find this easy enough to get into. No real surprises involved. Cars handle easily which, after GTAIV, was very welcome. The system is improved over the previous SR games and feels less clunky and sluggish on foot, which is also nice.

Atmosphere

This is a crazed, drug-fuelled dream of a city. It’s the extreme end of ludicrous action, Crank meets Shoot ‘em Up meets the worst/best excesses of Hong Kong cinema with a healthy dose of hollywoodised gang culture. The city itself is a cariacature as much as the personalities that inhabit it. Nothing, nothing, NOTHING is taken seriously but, rather than being a loner you do feel part of a gang, a family. Despite the silliness, you do feel part of something bigger.

Graphics

Nothing massively wonderful about the graphics, but they don’t need to be. The character customisation is a great compromise between accessibility and complexity and – while it’s not graphics – the option to have a British accent on your character is very, very welcome. The main thing is, it runs smooth and fast and it’s just as complex as it needs to be and no more.

Conclusion

Crazy-fucking-wonderful.

On the plus side

  • Crazy as fuck.
  • FUN!
  • SR finally feels like its own game.

On the minus side

  • Graphics aren’t up to true next-gen snuff.
  • A refresher course on the controls and a little hand-holding would have been nice.
  • How can they top this?

Style: 4
Substance: 4
Overall: 4

Review: RAGE

Posted by grimachu on

Introduction

RAGE kind of came out of nowhere for me. I wasn’t keeping up with it in the release schedules and didn’t know what to expect from it particularly. I don’t think we’d have picked it up if my wife hadn’t played a little at a trade show. Generally speaking FPS shooters aren’t our cup of tea on consoles since we came up playing them on the PC and console controls just don’t feel as accurate or useful.

RAGE is a weird sort of game, it’s sort of on the opposite end of the FPS/RPG scale from Fallout. Where Fallout is an RPG with some FPS elements tacked on, RAGE is more of an FPS with a few RPG elements tacked on. It’s not as RPG oriented as – say – borderlands but that’s probably the game to which it bears the closest comparison.

You don’t have skills or levels but, with progress, you can upgrade your weapons and vehicles, gain access to new areas and unlock new recipes for junk-built gear.

Story

The asteroid Apophis came spinning out of space towards the Earth and there was nothing that could be done to stop it. Rather than try and ward it off, civilisation hit upon a survival plan of burying a number of Arks in numerous locations around the globe, each equipped with cutting edge technology that would help jumpstart civilisation after the tumultuous effects of the asteroid strike had died down.

The Ark pioneers were the best of the best and fitted with experimental nanotechnology to help keep them alive and sustain them through their cryosleep. While Apophis came spinning in the Arks sank into the Earth with their cargo, to wait.

Something went wrong, not all the Arks emerged at once and time passed, much longer than was originally intended. Your Ark is one of these light risers and you find yourself facing a destroyed world that is not, quite as you might have expected.

The world is a wreck, a blasted wasteland dotted with scrap-built settlements and dominated by The Authority, a high technology empire, equipped with Ark technology and determined to stamp itself over the wasteland, across the globe, suppressing every other surviving town.

They also hunt Ark survivors…

Gameplay

While an FPS, RAGE is centred around mission-based play and exploration. You move around the wasteland on foot or by car from location to location completing missions to advance the plot, to unlock elements, to earn money (or certificates to improve your vehicles). Missions normally take place in their own sub-levels that you load into.

There are driving sections – races and in the wasteland – and FPS levels, interspersed with information gathering and listening in, playing gambling games and picking up the history and current state of affairs from the conversation around you.

Controls

Somehow Id have managed to make a smooth and controllable FPS control set that isn’t as horribly inaccurate as many and feels very playable, without the usual default of aim correction or dropping into a sub-game (as with Fallout). The driving controls in particular are easy to pick up and use, even for people that don’t normally like racing games. I can’t fault the controls.

Atmosphere

The chief source of the atmosphere in the game is the graphics, the wasteland and the townships are brought to life very well and the quality of the imagery is fantastic. Being a ‘silent protagonist’ you feel a bit left out and unable to role-play or make any meaningful character decisions. That removes you from the action somewhat and there are elements that are missing. The Authority remains a faceless enemy without anything to really grasp hold of or an enemy to confront. Many of the characters don’t really spring to life – though the voice acting is good. There’s just not quite enough development of characters for them to really make a proper impact on you.

Graphics

As mentioned before, the graphics are where the atmosphere really comes through and the graphics are utterly fantastic, blowing away a lot of other games completely and immersing you in the wasteland and its industrial wreckage. There can be a lag between the graphics that load at a distance and the more detailed graphics that load in after but that’s completely forgiveable.

Conclusion

A well thought out world and a different take on the apocalypse than a nuclear holocaust. It’s wonderfully executed graphically and in terms of controls and the only way it really lacks is in true depth to the various characters you meet around the wasteland and providing more information and more of a ‘face’ to the enemy. A game well worth getting and a star in the genre.

On the plus side

  • Fantastic graphics.
  • Smooth controls.
  • Interestingly different post-apocalypse.

On the minus side

  • Silent protagonist
  • Who are The Authority and why are they so bad? Who’s my enemy?
  • Lack of NPC depth.

Score

Style: 5
Substance: 3
Overall: 4

Review: Cadwallon – City of Thieves

Posted by grimachu on

Cadwallon: City of Thieves is a board game by Fantasy Flight Games set in the independent city of Cadwallon in the world of Aarkalash, made famous by the now defunct Rackham. FFG, apparently, still has access to a lot of old Rackham IP and in partnership with Dust Games is leveraging some of that into game properties, such as this.

The basic premise of the game is that each player takes the role of a small gang of thieves (each gang is made up of four individuals) and these gangs invade a district wholesale on a variety of missions to steal as much as possible and then have it away on their toes.

 

  1. Everyone enters the same district to pilfer anything that isn’t nailed down.
  2. The thieves tangle with each other and steal each other’s lewtz.
  3. ?
  4. Profit.

You only get seven actions spread between your four gang members each turn, as well as a random chance of controlling one of the two militia guards that are patrolling. Each individual mission also has its own little foibles as well as little sub-mission cards that reward you for collecting particular treasures or sets of treasures and trading them in early.

You supplement your tactical play with bonuses from ‘Arcana’ cards, special effects that influence your various actions, let you move in particular ways around the board or make your fighting and other abilities better or those of others worse.

Halfway through the whole thieving farce the alarm is raised and a bunch of portcullis gates slam down, cutting off many routes of escape. Your gang then needs to get out before the end of play or they get captured! Oh noes!

It’s worth your while trading in what you have early, according to the little sub-missions as you can then trade them in for Ducats, which are easier to protect from being stolen and free up more space in your ‘inventory’ for pilfering more items before time runs out.

With multiple players I can see this all getting a bit hectic, too hectic even, with a very chaotic board full of minis all running into each other and a lot of opportunity for backstabbing fun and hilarity, not to mention vindictiveness.

The only drawbacks I can see is that gameplay can be quite repetitive, not normally a problem with board games but you expect a little more from these sorts of games. The other problem is that there just isn’t really enough differentiation between the various characters in the gangs. The special skills bring a slight difference but for characters that look so different you’d expect them to be a bit more individual in their capabilities.

All things considered, this is what the game brings to mind…

Score
Style: 4 (Good quality plastic minis, great board).
Substance: 3 (Rising to 4 with the free downloadable extras).
Overall: 3.5