Finally, freedom.
SiliconNooB and Imitanis join Lusipurr in a representation of three great English-speaking centres of world culture: Britain, North America, and Australia, in a podcast designed to urge Imitanis to play more Warcraft with Lusipurr for glory and mounts.
LusipurrI think Imitanis should come help Lusi get his mounts and titles.
ImitanisI guess I’ll be breaking out my credit card in the next day or two…..
KisakiProjectPlay WOW, Imitanis. (I wonder how long before Lusi edits this.)
LusipurrEdit what?
SiliconN00BI for one think that Imitanis should help Lusi get his mounts and titles.
Lusipurr@SN: Huzzah! Except that now people will think I edited it to make it say that. ;.;
SiliconN00BEdit what?
LusipurrYou are sowing the seeds of doubt!
ImitanisNope, no editing going on here.
KisakiProjectLol…I totally said you should play WOW.
WolfeI’m glad the read was longer this week. This portion really deserved to be taken as a whole. It occurred to me shortly after that Lusipurr is in fact Lestat. I’m gonna say that Imitanis is Louie and Julian is Armand.
Mount up and play WoW, Imitanis.
Lusipurr@Wolfe: In many ways, yes! I think Louis is a bit self-obsessed, and that he tries to pass this off as some sort of deep involvement in humanity. Lestat seems much more balanced, in my opinion.
MelAnother week, another megaphone. Deary me.
Gaming moment! Far too busy to play anything of substance! I turned on Smash and Trackmania and Minecraft in small doses throughout the week. Those are my go-to pick-up-and-play games. They’re also good for playing while listening to something else, like a documentary or a podcast.
Lusipurr@Mel:
MINECRAFT IS NOT A GAME.
DiceAdmiralInfo Blast is Near the Beach, Not near a hut, and next to the largest forest
This week’s panel
Silicon Noob
Imitanis rehired?
Lusipurr
Also featuring:
Bup
Upcoming Features
Written Review
-Eternal Sonata
NEWS
Jason Scott
huh, neat. I’m not surprised that a guy who scrapes the internet for that data was aware when someone here mentioned him.
Mario 64 fan remake in progress
I have pretty fond memories of this game. That said, it looks like just one guy is working on it by himself so even if this isn’t canned by the studio he’ll never be able to finish the entire thing.
Elder Scrolls Online coming to XBone
A game I won’t play on a system I won’t own. Snooze.
Project Fusion (no link, I couldn’t find anything new about fusion)
I think that this kind of cross-platform-ness may lead to more Smash f U style problems, where games are designed to work on both, but are limited by the weaker of the two.
New Microsoft Rules for Streaming
Dumb dumb dumb dumb.
Console and handheld sales at 24 year low in Japan
Mobile is taking over I guess.
Bup Talk
What game of the next 4 months are you most looking forward to?
I’m going to try answering these since Bup never does. (I would also like to hear the panel answer these, but maybe that’s against the spirit of the Bup Talk)
I’m looking forward to Summoner Wars: Alliances. This is a new release in the Summoner Wars series (which I’ve previously covered). Summoner wars is an LCG (sort of, but I won’t get into that) which means Living Card Game. LCGs are like CCGS except that the contents of any given pack of cards is known. There’s no random draws. This helps encourage deck-building and evolving strategies as the overall meta-game changes.
Summoner Wars is a tactical game featuring over a dozen different factions which have their own strategies. Alliances created 8 new factions, each comprised of a combination of two of the earlier factions. As part of these new factions, old faction cards may be combined with the new cards, massively expanding the possibilities for creating cool new decks. It should be out around February or March. Board games tend not to have hard set release dates.
Imitanis Literature Corner
Interview With A Vampire by Anne Rice
This segment made me feel a little bad for Lestat. He seems so happy-go-lucky.
Earlier Louis told the interviewer that he didn’t know for sure if Lestat was dead. This leads me to believe that he may not be. That and the fact that the he’s in the sequel…
I wonder how Louis knew that the interviewer had a flask on his hip. Did he see it or can he read minds or something?
Imitanis Gaming Moment
This week we played another round of Risk Legacy and a game called Tobago.
Last time I covered Risk Legacy Lusi complained that Risk is long and tedious and I can’t really disagree with that. The difference in this game (as compared to vanilla risk) is that the games tend to be much shorter. Rather than needing to conquer the entire globe to win a player only needs to control 3 of the 4 starting points. This drastically speeds up games and discourages turtling as quick decisive action can end a game pretty early. Such was the case in the last game. One of the players left a gap in her armies and allowed a player to swoop in and end the game early. The downside of this is that players who don’t lose their base can feel cheated when they lose because someone else didn’t protect their backside. This happened to me. I had Europe totally sealed and lost before I ever got a chance to use the extra troops. :( The game is still fun though and I still like making permanent changes to the board. I guess what I’m saying is that I’m enjoying this game in spite of it still mostly being Risk, so take that for what you will.
Tobago is a game about piece together old treasure maps to find hidden treasure on a tropical island. There are four different treasures that can be tracked at any given time. On a turn a player can add a map piece to one of the treasures (ex: “Near the largest forest”, “Next to a statue”), or move their jeep around the board. Each new map piece added to a treasure must reduce the number of spaces that it could possibly appear in, so as players take turns it will become more and more clear where certain treasures are. Players will rush to get their jeep to the treasure and play the last map card to claim it. It can also be fun to use a map card to limit a treasure to a space on the other side of the island from the player who has been hunting it.
When a treasure is discovered every player who contributed to its discovery (by playing a map piece or actually retrieving it) gets a chance at earning some gold. The mechanism for distributing the gold is awesome. Each player draws a treasure card for each of their contributions. They then hand these cards to one player who adds a random one and shuffles them. A treasure card is revealed and each player who contributed gets a chance to take it or pass in order of most to least recent contribution. When a player takes a treasure they must remove one of their contributions from the treasure. This creates a “press-your-luck” situation where you can pass on a 3 value card in the hopes that there’s a 6, but if the later cards are worse (2s or curses) then you could end up much worse off.
I enjoyed this game a lot. The island is comprised of 3 board pieces, each of which are double sided, and a handful of wooden components (palm trees, statues, and huts) which are randomly added prior to each game. This creates a pretty high diversity in each playthrough and a lot of replayability. I also like how you can get clever with map cards to limit a treasure to a location near you or far from your opponents. I can envision a situation where players might just drive around the island not place map cards so that they don’t give other players the treasure, but playing map cards to a treasure that is recovered gives you a cut even if you don’t discover it, so contributions are always valuable. This created a kind of spitefully cooperative atmosphere for the game which I really enjoyed.
I recommend this game highly! It’s very replayable, has great component quality, has logic puzzles, push your luck excitement, and good player interaction without outright conflict. Here’s the downside: It’s out of print and my copy was a gift. I’ve seen this game go for $70 used, so best of luck if you want to find it on the cheap. I guess I just hyped up a very unavailable game… Ain’t I a stinker?
DiceAdmiral Travel Moment
Not this week.
Final Notes
“Shorter and Worse”
“It’s a series of clicks and chores! You could do that with me!”
“Might as well rename it the Imitanis cast”
I also think that Imitanis should play WOW with Lusi. *Totally Not Edited By Lusipurr*
Donators
Cumulative total record holder: Imitanis
Single Donation record holder: Imitanis
Donators eligible for end of year drawing: 1
Lusipurr@DiceAdmiral:
“I’m not surprised that a guy who scrapes the internet for that data was aware when someone here mentioned him.”
A fair point! Does he know we are speaking about him now? I bet he does. JASON SCOTT IS WATCHING.
“I have pretty fond memories of this game.”
I went back and played some Mario 64 a few months ago, just before Sticker Star. The first thing I noticed was all the solid colours and low-res textures. The second thing I noticed was the goofy camera. The third thing I noticed was that it was still better than any 3D Mario game since. I played quite a lot of it for a few days, and had a blast.
“I think that this kind of cross-platform-ness may lead to more Smash f U style problems, where games are designed to work on both, but are limited by the weaker of the two.”
My concern precisely; heightened by the fact that I have always felt, and still feel, that Nintendo’s console endeavours tend to be much better than their handheld endeavours. This isn’t to say that they haven’t produced good handheld games (they have), or that they haven’t produced bad console games (they have), but that the console games tend to be much better than the handheld games.
“Mobile is taking over I guess.”
Sickening.
“This segment made me feel a little bad for Lestat. He seems so happy-go-lucky.”
I’ve been thinking about how I would describe Lestat’s approach. I think I would use the word “superficial” or even “shallow”. He is a person interested primarily in appearances. There is no interiority. Which, of course, makes even more interesting his “use” of apparent depth/interiority when he wants to manipulate. Perhaps he considers these things as tools of duplicity or as somehow inherently false (i.e. interiority doesn’t exist; it is always a psychological projection), and consequently he uses them accordingly. In such a philosophy, Lestat is the most honest of all.
“I wonder how Louis knew that the interviewer had a flask on his hip. Did he see it or can he read minds or something?”
He saw the shape of it and also noticed the Interviewer’s behaviour–little, faint cues that we would have missed. This isn’t explicitly said, but we can gather it from the conversation.
“This week we played another round of Risk Legacy and a game called Tobago.”
I hope Tobago comes in the same box as another boardgame called Trinidad.
“The downside of this is that players who don’t lose their base can feel cheated when they lose because someone else didn’t protect their backside.”
Why? This is how the real world works.
“This created a kind of spitefully cooperative atmosphere for the game which I really enjoyed.”
Now we’re getting somewhere–except for that ‘cooperative’ bit.
“I’ve seen this game go for $70 used, so best of luck if you want to find it on the cheap”
Alas. Too expensive for something I will almost certainly never actually use. I’ll stick to Chess.
“It’s a series of clicks and chores! You could do that with me!”
That is actually a perfect description of this site. It’s going in the tagline rotator.
“I also think that Imitanis should play WOW with Lusi.”
Unanimous.
“Donators eligible for end of year drawing: 1”
:D
DiceAdmiralI forgot to mention regarding Tobago:
It also has a very reasonable length. It ends when the treasure cards run out, which will happen pretty quickly as players snag treasure. If players keep adding maps to treasures without reducing it to a single spot then there will be lots of treasure cards handed out once someone finally gets it, so it balances out a bit that way. It takes ~30 minutes once players understand the rules, which are pretty simple.
Lusipurr@DiceAdmiral: Can I just win by default? Because if so, I will buy that game.
DiceAdmiral“I hope Tobago comes in the same box as another boardgame called Trinidad.”
It doesn’t, but there is a game by that name:
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/6780/trinidad
It looks to be very different though.
“Can I just win by default? Because if so, I will buy that game.”
I’m not trying to sell you on, just being clear about my reasons for liking it. I would not have spent $70 on it either and would not own it had it not been a gift. $70 can get you 3-5 new games.
Lusipurr@DA: But I would buy it if it had a rule that I win by default.
DiceAdmiralThat sounds like it would be a terribly boring game. Why would you want to just win every time? It’s like that Twilight Zone episode. You describe the gambler’s hell.
Lusipurr@DiceAdmiral: I like it well enough!
EthosI had a similar experience with Mario 64 last year. I remember that I had written it off because of the issues you initially mentioned, but going back to it, I was reminded of all its timelessness in spite of its issues. It holds up incredibly well. It is firmly the second best single player 3D Mario platformer (behind, of course, the outstanding Mario Galaxy 2)
Lusipurr@Ethos: What a load of codswallop.
Dancing MattSuper Mario 64 may be my favorite Mario game, period. It needs no remake at all.
