Category: Reviews

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Reviews Video Games

Falling out not with a bang, but a whimper

A long time ago, I declared Fallout 3 to be little more than “Oblivion with guns” and set off to play said fantasy game and its expansion. Naturally, my short attention span got the better of me. I created a new character for Oblivion, spent a few days levelling him and finishing the Mages Guild quest path, and went to explore the Shivering Isles expansion. Too bad that this was exactly the moment when I got bored with the game.

In the meantime, I had been watching Flip play Fallout 3 and decided that it looked like fun. We had also been talking with nobody, who had already finished it once and had some good things to say about the versatility of the character build system. So, I resolved to dig in and give it a try. Flip generally plays a good character, so I went for agent of chaos (which in too many CRPGs is equivalent to destruction) and found a build online which would allow me access to pretty much all the skills fairly quickly.

In the fast moving world of game critique, a lot has already been said about Fallout 3. I know I’m several months behind the ball, but I’m happy to not be bleeding edge, and pitch you my own observations.

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Reviews Tabletop Games

EYECON 2009

It’s been a while since I did a con report. Admittedly, I was an organiser for SYDCON 08, but I still could have written something. Anyway, other than providing the IT services, I was largely left to play games at this year’s EYECON. For the first time in ages, I played only freeforms (oh, and a LARP — you can’t have everything). I’ll review them in a second.

I want to acknowledge the hard work of all the game designers (whether or not I played your game), and my colleagues in the SRGA. As a secondary organiser, much of my work was done weeks before people started registering for games. Props go to everybody who did all the running around, lost hours of sleep, and nearly went insane due to everyone else’s “special” requests. You guys know who you are, so give yourselves a pat on the back and get some sleep.

Before reading further, be warned that I may not be able to avoid spoiling these games. In the event that you may want to play them in the future, you may not want to read my review.

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Movies and TV Reviews

BSG: Return of the King

I know I’ve been slack and not kept up with the last stretch of episodes. Of the three between “No Exit” and “Daybreak”, I really liked “Someone to Watch Over Me” and was underwhelmed by “Islanded in the Stream of Stars”. I’ll probably go re-watch the former and hopefully review it, while glossing over the others.

But seeing as it was the finale, I don’t think I can delay writing something about “Daybreak”. Possible spoilers after the jump.

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Movies and TV Reviews

Quo Vadis?

Watchmen is one of those dangerous works in contemporary culture for anybody to touch. It’s a seminal work in the superhero comic genre, which comes with all kinds of nasty fanboy baggage, as well as being highly political. It also presents many challenges for a film maker, even given today’s amazing technology and recent successes with comic book adaptations.

And so it was with a little trepidation (mitigated somewhat by FSR‘s coverage of the whole thing) that I went to see it. I’ve only recently read the original graphic novel myself, but I could already see that the plot was compex and the visuals and narrative subtly nuanced such that there was plenty of room for error.

Overall, I was happy with Zack Snyder’s work. Obviously his previous successes with adapting comics to the big screen have not been flukes. The script kept the essentials of the long and detailed plot together coherently, and captured the essence of the story, and the dialogue was engaging enough (in that stilted comic book way) that I kept my disbelief suspended for the whole movie.

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Movies and TV Reviews

BSG: No Exit (or Meet your maker)

Gaeta’s mutiny is over, and the fleet has disposed of the two major mischief makers. They are now bereft their Quorum, and Galen has discovered that Galactica is falling apart. But neither of those are important compared to the two other parallel storylines. Read on if you’re prepared for spoilers.

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