Hot Heart

That's not how the quote function works, gosh!

Oh, no doubt it was rushed or not given full support from Activision or whatever. The fact that the "levels" are just bland sort of open-world things is a lame decision though. The previous TMNT could've been great if the developers had more time, I reckon. All they really needed was to tighten up the controls and fix all the bugs (along with a bit more polish, I guess).

Goshdarnit, it sounds like the new TMNT game from Platinum was mostly made by the Legend of Korra team, plus they lied about it being 60fps. Which I wouldn't care about except for the fact that that was the reason they said the game couldn't handle local co-op. It'll probably still be alright fun, and it's a relatively budget price release, but it sounds quite shallow and that is disappointing.

So, I finished it. Gotta agree with Nate a little: the adventures leave you with that feeling of emptiness. Good fun while it lasts though and you gotta love the characters. It seems like they're never going to "figure out" combat, and I kind of wish they borrowed more from The Last of Us there as they did in other places. Make it more tense and impactful when you can, rather than the running around, rolling away from grenades clusterfuck that it can be. I actually kind of enjoyed a lot of the stealth stuff but it's too easy to get caught by one guy because you didn't spend five minutes working your way round to the opposite side of the combat arena in order to see him standing against a truck. There was even a later section where I'd done well, been patient, etc. but there was one fucking guy high up at the back who I had no way of reaching and I couldn't find any other sneaky route in that wouldn't start a massive gunfight. Plus, it's clear that the game spawns in additional enemies as soon as you initiate combat, even if you get into hiding again (as you can see in my "stealth-bomb" video) which just makes you think that you might as well just go in guns blazing anyway. The game wants you to shoot stuff. Which is funny because it feels like 80% of it is exploration and playable "cut scenes". Very nice looking exploration and playable cut scenes, mind, but too much of the latter, I think. And they still know how to do big setpieces. You can sense that they took all the previous criticisms onboard but maybe swerved a little too into safe territory though. On reflection, I'm half sure it's my second favourite Uncharted experience but it's probably actually the best from a more objective standpoint.

I finished a video game. I FINISHED A VIDEO GAME. It was just some quick indie, you know. Uncharted 4. It was a really nice end to the series. I have some gripes with it, and I think it's never going to have that "wow" factor that you get from your first time playing Uncharted 2, but it's an entertaining ride.

A couple of random thoughts while watching some Agent Carter with some potential Civil War spoilers. These questions are probably covered or answered somewhere online but I figured I'd share them here. p.s. Jarvis is the best thing in Agent Carter. Besides Agent Carter, obviously.

Our Pathfinder GM is busy with his studies so we had a four player session. First, this involved Smash Up. Funny little story in that two people discovered they'd both brought it and then I told them I owned it already. However, the guy who had "The Big Geeky Box" with all the expansions, including the latest, had clearly outdone us. So we did some random selection, which between all of us I don't think managed to turn up a single one of the shiny, new factions. Anyway, we had Cyborg Apes with Bear Cavalry, Mad Scientist Aliens, Spy Pirates (Spyrates!) and Giant Ant Dinosaurs. I knew Dinosaurs were pretty powerful and the Giant Ants are cool because they're all Queen references (like Killer Queen, obviously) and make use of power tokens. I made some pretty strong gains early on, but the Spyrates were being a bit of a nuisance until the others took them down a notch for me. A big problem was both Ant and Dinosaur decks had so many actions for increasing power until the end of a turn, and I had mostly those for a large part of the game. There was a clever little play from the Apebears who had a minion of 3 power with an ability that destroys any minions of a lower power level that get moved to the same base as it; he put it on a base where you earn 1VP every time you destroy one minion or more there and used another card to give the minion +3 power. We got really worried when he used an action to move 5 minions all in one go and gave him 5VP before we realised how the base bonus was supposed to work. The "move" and destroy counts as one thing, hence the "one minion or more". So he managed to clear out a bunch of minions, but only got the 1VP in the end. Panic over, I continued grabbing another base which then allowed me to search my deck and put a minion on the base that was replacing it. King Rex at 7 power was still in my deck so he got down there and a few other cards I'd been hoarding (thank god for the 10 card hand limit) meant it was easy to really lay down a lot of power and score the base for the win. Good game. Then we tried Ninja Camp, with the player who missed it last time. Things went pretty quickly and smoothly. I managed to make some clever moves (I think) and used some different cards compared to last time, which netted me enough points before I backed myself into a corner (for a high-scoring) card, finally to utilise my animal clan's ability and warp to another card of the same type. This was enough for another close game of 34-30-30-29. I like this game. Decent little filler. And onto the main event. A game my friend got from his replacement Secret Santa on BoardGameGeek. Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar. It's one of those eurogames that tries to break your brain with all the things going on. In this, there's the sort of worker placement element like Stone Age in that you're collecting resources, building things, getting food, etc. but there's tech tracks and other little things as well. The big twist is that your workers go into slots on cogs that advance each round and you pay corn to use "farther" or open slots as well as place extra workers in a turn, then you only get the resources/actions when you pull them off (hur hur). So you could go on the 0 slot space and try and leave that guy there for a few rounds to get a bigger reward. However, because you must be placing or removing workers each turn it becomes a seriously finnickly process of calculating exactly where to put a guy to get what you want. It's not the end of the world if you slide past where you wanted to be, but it can mess up combos and then leave you sort of stuck for a couple of rounds at least. The resource track is a fucker because it's easy to skip past what you want at the perfect moment without overspending to get guys down. And this is without anyone upsetting rhythms by making the cogs rotate two spaces when they claim the first player marker. I was sort of managing it and got some sort of lead purely by focusing on buildings and bonuses from those but then it fell apart towards the end when I was completely blocked from getting a space I needed and a couple of other players realised their optimal moves involved taking potential points from me. Not that they needed to anyway, I think even with the stuff I "lost" the gap between me and the actual winner was still too big. Not as bad as I thought it was going to be, and it certainly didn't take too long to play for a first time. The iconography's mostly pretty self explanatory once you learn it (albeit with some required clarifications about limits, exceptions, etc.) I can say it was one of the more enjoyable "euros" I've played. More so than Terra Mystica, Stone Age and Power Grid as well as most other worker placement games purely because of the interesting cog stuff and because you kind of feel like you can optimise a little. It's just not something I'd really ask to play though.

dat bass

I AM SO STEALTHY

I like Thor: TDW. No way would I put it above Civil War or Age of Ultron though.

Umm... where the fuck is co-op? I sincerely hope that's in a future multiplayer update. The little missions and wave modes were dope.

I'm only up to chapter 8 or 9 currently, but I'm really enjoying it so far. I say "only" because it doesn't feel like I've gotten to the meat of the adventure yet I've still done a bunch of cool stuff. Barely any shootybangs so far, and one I was completely trying to avoid participating in until it made me do so. I'm loving the actual character interaction stuff too. The animation and acting really sells it. I can definitely feel a sort of Last of Us influence in terms of how it's a lot of exploring with some somewhat open encounters along the way. Also the little white circles that show a triangle button prompt when you get near. That too.

"New" games! Sheriff of Nottingham This isn't exactly a new game, and you might have heard about it because of the buzz that surrounded it way back when. I'd never actually played it though. It's a neat, little bluffing & negotiation game involving a sort of "customs inspection" kind of game (sounds super fun already, I know!). Essentially, the aim is to get the most points from money and goods you've brought in. The way you bring in goods is from the 6 market cards you start with each round from which you select between 1 and 5 to put inside your little pouch, complete with important sealing popper. Goods can come in various forms from the four types of legal goods with green borders (apples, bread, cheese and chicken) through to contraband like crossbows, pepper or silk and also "royal goods" which have additional bonuses (if you see the picture above, I have two of the apple ones which also count as double apple cards, which becomes important in endgame scoring). The legal goods are fine and ideally you'll want to be bringing in sets, but to score big you'll want to be bringing in some contraband. This is where it gets interesting. Every round, one player will assume the role of the sheriff while the other players load up the little pouches and then declare what they're bringing in. The stipulation is that the declaration must account for the correct number of cards and of the amount of one type of legal good. So you could have two cheese and one crossbow, but you'd say, "Three cheese" or you could simply have two cheese and two bread but say, "Four cheese". Then it's up to the sheriff to decide whether or not to inspect the bag. If they open that popper then there's no going back; it then comes down to whether or not the importer was telling the truth. If the player who loaded the pouch is caught trying to smuggle in contraband or a mismatch of goods then they lose those and must pay the penalty listed in the bottom-right of the card. However, if the sheriff inspected a pouch and found the claim was perfectly legitimate then they must pay the penalty for those cards to that player. Since they carry much smaller bonuses, legal goods also carry a smaller penalty. Even if the bag is inspected, any stuff that matches the declaration is okay and you get to collect it in front of you as normal. If the bag isn't inspected then the legal goods go by your board face-up as normal but contraband is tucked under, face-down. The further wrinkle is that you can use your money to bribe the sheriff either not to inspect your pouch or to inspect someone else's. I had a fun moment where the sheriff was gradually being persuaded to accept a certain bribe from another player before I took a rough guess of what amounts/gains of contraband we were talking and then made a lower bribe that would actually benefit him more. As it turns out, he would've made 10 gold from accepting the bribe whereas my 5 gold bribe plus the penalty he received from the other player netted him 13 gold. Small gain but an optimal outcome. Anyway, it made for lots of fun situations and some amateurish attempts at reading people. I mostly hedged my bets and took advantage of the "softer" players to get some contraband through, and I think I only lost out once from an inspection. Being the sheriff is actually kind of fun when you have an inkling of what's going on. I managed to run away with the game with 188 points but it was a first time for everyone. I had heard about people complaining that playing completely legit could easily net you the win (partly because getting the most in each type of legal good also nets bonuses from between 5-20 each) but I wouldn't say I agree. Yes, second place was someone playing almost completely legitimate (I think I caught their only two smuggling attempts) but legal stuff needs to be strong to keep things fairly matched and ensure the smuggling remains very significant when it's successful and that it's enough to tip the balance. Fun game. Next up we played the DC Deckbuilding Game. I like it because it's very simple and you can really feel the combos and things from building a decent deck, but it does go on too long for a deckbuilding game of its simplicity. Long story short, I played to my hero's strengths and had a feeling of what was coming so snatched up the Bizarro card when I had the chance. The Bizarro card then becomes worth 2 points for every "Weakness" card you have at the end of the game (these are dud cards worth -1 point each so it's a net gain of 1 per each). One player amassed a bunch of villain attack cards and handed them out like candy. This all helped and I secured a surprising victory (honestly, I thought I'd done terribly). Finally, How To Serve Man which is a worker-placement game (put your "workers" down to collect things then turn those things into other things/points) themed around an alien cooking show (clever Twilight Zone stolen title, huh!). It's designed as a "gateway" game so plays pretty fast and has been tweaked so it doesn't go on past an hour (like most worker placement games). At its core, you have your team of chefs who run around the kitchen collecting ingredients and cooking them in various ways to complete recipes while a panel of judges watches. The judge thing is cool because these are actually score modifiers you collect that will then impact every subsequent recipe you collect or certain things at the end of the game. So you might have one judge who rewards you for using baked humans but deducts points for using boiled humans or one who awards points for any leftover cooked ingredients you have at the end. I liked it, and the event deck also throws out some interesting wrinkles (although, one that hampered me!) like disabling certain cooking stations or forcing ingredient discards ("because they smell funny"). One player actually said it felt too short for this type of game and I agree somewhat (although, the swiftness was the designer's intention). I think you could probably extend things with some tweaks (fewer or no starting recipes, no starting ingredients, higher score for game end, etc.) to make the other elements shine (events and judges). All in all, I think it works well as a light game of its type and it's a cool theme; which is why I backed it on Kickstarter. I've played a few worker placement games that don't flow and just drag on too long. On the Kickstarter note though, they really needed a better editor on the rulebook.

I like the joke that Cruz should've been forced to carry his abortive campaign the full term.

So, yeah, pizza's pretty good, huh? Right, AFCLystad?

Amazing. Felt they could have their own film while watching it. Ethan, Civil War is oooold news now. Gosh!

What We Do in the Shadows Been meaning to watch this for a while. Very funny with some terrific writing and acting. It does a great job of squeezing humour out of the vampire (and werewolf) mythos while building an amusing ensemble of characters. Weird to think that Viago will be directing the next Thor film. Then again, who figured the guys who worked on Arrested Development and Community would wind up helming one of the biggest, if not the biggest, superhero films ever? Marvel seems to like making somewhat left-field director choices, and it's worked so far. p.s. "We're werewolves, not swearwolves!"