The Sunday Reflection

Well, so far I haven’t been able to keep up anything on Friday and Saturday, mostly because it’s those two days on which my social life usually occurs. Also, my original plan for Fridays, modern video game reviews, doesn’t seem to interest me that much right now, because, besides Call of Duty, I’m mostly playing a lot of older games at the moment. And you can get reviews for new games practically anywhere. I suggest IGN, GamesRadar, and PC Gamer to get you started. All of this is just to say that I probably will post some modern reviews eventually, but don’t expect them very frequently unless developers start sending me review copies. And they likely won’t be long ordeals either. The Wizardry 8 review took a relatively long amount of time that I can’t see happening often. Expect something more like Yahzee’s Zero Punctuation reviews rather than GameSpot’s. Not many modern games interest me, and paying 60 bucks at  the launch of a new game is impossible for my current budget. Not to mention, the time it takes to complete a new game is anywhere from 10 to 100+ hours, and I am only one very poor man.

What I can tell you is that the surprise I hinted at a week ago is still on the way, and I will let you know as soon as it is official. I’m expecting news about it tomorrow or the next day.

What I’d like to use Sundays for is a more casual reflection on what I’m playing, what I’m currently into, what’s going on in my life, and whatever else comes into my mind. I naturally tend to write in this free-association style, and it’s both informative (for you) and therapeutic (for me). So let’s dive right in, shall we?

The past week I’ve been playing a lot of games from GoG.com. Most notable are The Last Express, The Longest Journey, Duke Nukem 3D, Baldur’s Gate, and Fallout. I hope to have a review of The Last Express up soon. I’m very excited about the game and it’s relatively short, a fact I always admire in a correctly priced game. I’m also still playing Pokemon White to an extent, but I’m getting burnt out on Victory Road, which I imagine is a pretty common occurrence. CODBLOPS is still fun for me when I’m not getting completely destroyed by people with better connections. I was finally able to download the latest update for the game after hooking my father’s network cable up to my PS3. For some reason the updates were just not happening with the WiFi, and I’ve heard similar stories from other people online. If only Sony could just make their system work all the time, then I wouldn’t even bother considering to buy a 360, no matter how much I yearn to play the upcoming Halo remake and Halo 4.

I’m still working on my Zedruu commander deck as well, and I think it is shaping up nicely. There are a lot of cards I don’t own that would make the deck considerably better, but that’s the fun of casual formats. Not everyone has to have every top-tier card. I’ve got my Sensei’s Divining Top and my Zedruu and my Sol Ring, and that’s all that matters. Killing someone with my Bronze Bombshell or Transcendence for the first time is still going to be fantastic fun.

I’ve been reading Matt Barton’s book, Dungeons and Desktops, for about a week now, and I find that it is a mostly adequate and accurate history of CRPGs. I started to get bored about half way through, I admit, and skimmed over the rest. To my surprise and shock, there is almost no mention of Wizardry 8. The only reference to the game is half a sentence at the end of the section covering Wizardry 7. It wouldn’t be such a problem for me if he hadn’t paid so much attention to worse, more obscure titles than Wizardry 8. It just wasn’t given its due in my mind. I was disappointed after discovering this fact and probably will return the book to my library unfinished. It is still a wonderfully informative book, though, and anyone who has even the slightest interest in role-playing games should look it up. Matt Barton has definitely done his homework in almost every regard.

As for movies, I haven’t been able to see a new one in quite some time. Despite the negative reviews, I still would like to see Green Lantern, but I won’t be shelling out nine dollars any time soon. X-Men looks good, but what I’m really excited for is Super 8. Harry Potter, of course, is a must-see, and I should have my ticket soon. If you don’t plan on going to the midnight release in your area yet, I highly, highly, HIGHLY encourage you to do so. The last movie marks the end of an era (almost as long as the time it took Duke Nukem Forever to come out) and you won’t get another chance at something like this for a long, long time.

(this trailer gives me chills every time I watch it)

And that’s pretty much all I’ve been up to for now. I have an interview with a store I’m very interested in tomorrow and I’m looking more closely at apartments. One in particular in downtown Iowa City looks like a good idea but nothing is official yet, and nothing will be until I have a job to take over from my work/study gig.

Lamp out.

Magic Review: WotC Commander Decks Part 3

At last! The final commander deck of the five. If you’ve missed the other four, check out the other two commander articles I’ve posted. Have you done that? All right then let’s move on.

Get ready for a giant Jell-O mold with a T-Rex head for an arm, say hello to THE MIMEOPLASM, leader of the Green/Blue/Black Devour for Power deck.

It’s a legendary ooze. Can you say “awesome”? I love strange creature types. Who cares about human clerics and fungi when your team can be led by a giant slime monster? I’ll be honest and say this deck is tied with Political Puppets in my mind. I naturally gravitate to these colors whenever I build a deck, and the legendary options in this deck are absolutely stellar. The Mimeoplasm is graveyard hate and a beater, and you’ll have multiple ways to get him back if you decide to put him into the graveyard when he dies. Because this guy will die; he’s liable to be number one on your opponents’ most wanted list the moment he hits the table. Something to note about old Mimeo is that you don’t have to declare what creatures you’re exiling until he resolves, which means your opponents will have to decide if they want to counter it before they get that critical information. Just don’t betray your intentions too early! But the ooze isn’t all you’ll be getting. I’m equally excited about the other new commander options as well: Damia, Sage of Stone; and Skullbriar. First of all, Damia is a freaking gorgon wizard, which is just plain delicious on its own. But she’s also a 4/4 Deathtouching beater AND one of the best pieces of card advantage in the format. Skullbriar is great in the early, middle, and late game since his counters remain on him no matter where he goes, and you could easily stick him in the Counterpunch deck will little work. Vorosh the Hunter, while not as exciting, can still get huge and get the job done in a pinch. The rest of the deck is all about getting stuff in and out of the graveyard and taking full advantage of it just like this deck should be. Another killer creature I have to mention is Sewer Nemesis, who really will give one of your playmates nightmares. There’s so much you can do to modify this deck but I’ll leave that to you. Overall I think this is a great deck that you can’t go wrong with.

My rating (compared to the other four decks):

Fun Factor: 4/5
Value of Cards: 4/5
Competitiveness: 4/5
Overall: 5/5

As you can see if you’ve read all three articles, all of these decks are good if not great, and I would recommend any of them (maybe with the exception of Mirror Mastery) to any playgroup. New groups especially, though, will get the most out of these, I feel. The decks are more or less balanced with each other, and pitting all five against each other in a huge war would be a fantastic experience. Wizards of the Coast really hit the mark with this product and I’m proud of them for embracing a format developed mainly outside of their offices.

If I were going to buy all five but I didn’t have the cash to get all of them at once, I’d likely buy them in this order:

Devour for Power
Political Puppets
Counterpunch
Heavenly Inferno
Mirror Mastery

My overall rating of the entire commander deck product:

Fun Factor: 5/5
Value of Cards: 5/5
Competitiveness (in commander): 3/5 (Each deck is likely going to take an additional investment before they can compete with some of the best decks in the format, but competition isn’t really the point of commander anyway. At least, not for me.)
Overall: 5/5

Well that’s it, we’re done! Keep in mind that I still haven’t gotten a chance to actually play with these decks at the time of this writing, but I’ve had a great time speculating. I hope you’ve enjoyed the ride as well!

But wait, there’s more? Well, I’d like to take this opportunity to inform you, constant reader, of some more of my plans for the blog if you don’t mind. First of all, I want to apologize for not doing a full review of a video game this week. I had hoped to review a video game every Friday, but I simply didn’t have enough time this week with all the commander shenanigans going on. I promise to try a bit harder this coming week, but who knows what will happen. I recently bought Dungeon Keeper, Duke Nukem 3D, and Baldur’s Gate 1 off of GoG.com, and I’d like to review one of those in the future. I don’t think I’ll be buying or renting the new Duke Nukem any time soon despite what I said in a previous article; the reviews have all been terrible and I just know it’s not worth my time. I’m going to continue with the daily columns because I think they’re a good way to force me to write every day and I really enjoy them.

Now, I have something to ask of you. I know I don’t have a lot of readers right now but I think I have enough to ask for a little feedback. So leave me a comment and tell me a few things if you wish. Did you like the content posted in the last ten days? Do you want to see more of something or less of something else? Would you like the Magic content to be relegated to a separate blog? Is the information presented here entertaining and helpful to you? What are you most interested in reading about? Whatever you want to say is fine, you have my regards no matter what.

Finally, I have a small announcement to make. I don’t want to spoil the surprise right now but I recently have been given an opportunity to contribute a little something more to the community. If it succeeds you’ll hear about it in the next week or so. And that’s all I’m going to say for now. Have fun speculating.

Until next time, thanks for reading, and lamp out.

Newsday Tuesdays

As the second part of my scheduled content series, let me introduce you to Newsday Tuesdays. By Tuesday, I’m usually feeling a little more ambitious and maybe even looking forward to the rest of the week. I generally am not a fan of Tuesdays, but I’ll take a Tuesday over a Monday any day. I find there’s nothing better than a great piece of news to make me really jazzed up about games, so Tuesday seems like a good day for these reports.

While the weather in Iowa this week is dreary, the game industry is looking up. Despite the numerous hacking reports still coming in on IGN, there’re a lot of games coming out this year. Most notable this week is Duke Nukem Forever.

After twelve years, Duke has come back. The world’s changed a lot in those years. Duke missed an entire chapter of America’s fight with terrorism. Duke missed the election of America’s first black president. Duke missed the legalization of gay marriage in Iowa. And those are just a few of the major events. I’d like to ask a question; is Duke still relevant in this day and age? Does anyone still care about a muscle-bound, obscene, dense, straight male fantasy character? Reviews of the game have not been overwhelmingly positive by any means, but the real question is does anyone still care?

I never played Duke Nukem 3D so I don’t have the nostalgia factor I feel most people have. But if we look at other forms of media with similar attitudes, I think we can shed some more light on Duke. Movies like ATeam and The Expendables have made flashes in the pan, but no one is still talking about them. People are still talking about Avatar, Harry Potter, Twilight, Glee, American Idol, and Family Guy, though. What are the deeper ramifications of the shifting favoritism of the public? I won’t begin to speculate on that right now. But I think it’s clear now more than ever that there’s a huge disconnect between the 90s and the 10s. And I think that will spell doom for Duke in the end.

Not that I don’t think there’s a place for Duke or that his new installment won’t be fun, it’s the next game I have cued up from GameFly, but I won’t be surprised if Duke Nukem Forever is the ironic swan song of this dinosaur of a series.

Well that’s all I’ve got for now, see you next time.