Wildermyth will fill the XCOM sized hole in your heart.

 

 

After only 3 hours with this already critically acclaimed gem, I smell a GOTY. This husband/wife team has absolutely blown me away. A simple, kid friendly, style belies fantastic turn based tactics and charming characterization. Like… imagine if your xcom sqaudies could talk and had procedurally generated character arcs with each other. I've logged an embarrassing amount of time in war of the chosen and I say these tactics measure up. Just make it through the first act, the training wheels will come flying off, I promise.There's only a couple thousand people playing this on steam and folks... we need to pump those numbers up. This deserves a modding second life akin to skyrim. 

It's dialogue is charming in it's earnestness and you'll love it if you give it a chance.

 

Invincible Review: Bleeding Gods

 

First off I'd like to thank wikipedia who, many years ago while The Walking Dead was still pretty good, kept me from overly spoiling myself for Kirkman's second biggest claim to fame. An ultra violent superhero deconstruction called Invincible.

The surface level of the comic, as well as Amazon's 40 minute animated treatment, doesn't give the sense that there's anything overly special about it. A teenage son of superman stand in, omni-man, gets superpowers and learns how to use them while navigating high school relationships. Synopsis wise it's been done to death. What can a little blood and emotional trauma really add to that sort of thing? For me, quite a damn bit.

 

I'm a sucker for a good inverted murder mystery and this first season revolves around a damn fine superhero Columbo caper. What's more is the cast is stacked to the gills both with guys you've known for years (Stephen Yeung, Sandra Oh, J.K. Simmons) as well as Saturday morning cartoon wrecking crew dudes (Grey Griffin, Clancy Brown, Kevin Michael Richardson). Holy balls do I love this cast. 

For one it shows that it, like it's source material, it isn't embarrassed of where it came from. It loves a good supervillain quip fest but it also has realistic expectations for the actions of teenagers put in charge of life and death circumstances. The innocent lives lost in a downtown laser gun fight are given the weight of a war movie and it just. frikken. works. Pile on some government intrigue with a healthy dollop of Walton Goggins and I'm in for the long run.

There are some sour notes, unfortunately. Some comedy bits work better than others, Invincible's gay best friend feels more like a ticked box than a human being, and a lot of the teenage romance dialogue falls uncomfortably flat. Though the slow disintegration of Omni-man's marriage really worked for me. J.K. Simmons has earned a black belt in passive-aggressive rage.

There's alot more I'd like to share, Clancy Brown's homicide detective for one and Jon Hamm's character for another. But the less you know going in the better. It's a solid "coming of age" superhero yarn first then it lets politics, biology, greed, and human error get in the way. I can't recommend it enough.
             

Put some pepper on the next one

Postcard from Vegas

 1

 

If you asked me 2 weeks ago if I'd ever play new vegas again I'd have flatly said no. There are games I've played to death and then there is the one game I own on steam with a play time clock in quadruple digits. Hbomberguy's video got to me, though. It made me think about how ridged my playstyle was and how I only ever played Lonesome road once. For years I'd get tired 20 hours into a run and bail. NO MORE.

I'm much more comfortable with the mod manager now and it wasn't long until I had all of the guns and most of the textures looking... well not AMAZING but pretty damn good considering. Since I left the mod community they added an incredible 300+ radio new vegas catalogue and a handy Fallout 4 style loot preview.

 

This.... changes EVERYTHING. Like at the end of the game it will have saved me HOURS in looting time.

All this adds up to me falling in love for the first time in 5 years. I'm staying away from stealth, speech, and medicine as well as sticking to the one perk every other level rule; which I've never stomached before. Suffice it to say... being a mealy mouthed dim wit instead of a silver tongued genius kicks me out of a lot of early quests and I've had to hustle 2,000 caps in other ways.

Yes, I have an encyclopedic knowledge of where all the best guns and skill books are but I've forgotten enough about NV's ingenious traps to get myself into trouble and I'm just... sucked in. I'm also sure I've never reached 2,000 caps this fast either. I'm both better and worse at this game than I remember and for a game I've practically memorized that's pretty remarkable. 

Damn, Lucky, you look good.