Fox is carrying on making X-Men-based movies with a new installment based on the comic, The New Mutants. I have all of the early run of this comic, and it was one of my favorites. As a wee nerd I had missed out on a lot of iconic X-Men events like The Dark Phoenix Saga, so this comic let me get in on the ground floor of a mutant team. For some reason, I liked “Cannonball” the best, so I’m a little disappointed he’s not doing any “blastin'” in this trailer:
Another very early comic I bought off the rack was the limited series Magik, so seeing Illyana Rasputin in the movie helps reinforce my purchasing decisions from that bygone age.
What strikes me as odd, beyond the use of a child-chorus version of Pink Floyd’s “The Wall,” is how small the cast appears to be. The “Full Cast & Crew” page from IMDB shows only nine actors, and two of them have the names “Coal Miner” and “Sam’s Dad.” With a 2018 release date, more people could be added, but it looks like it’s going to be a haunted house movie with a small group being jump-scared for the most part. And I never thought I’d see the use of latex walls in a scary-ish film again, so yay for practical effects.
Now just let Cannonball blast through a few things, and I’ll be happy.
Some people in white armor came to my door and told me I pretty much had to, so here’s an admittedly slick-looking trailer for Star Wars: The Last Jedi:
Since we’ll probably be getting Star Wars movies for the rest of the foreseeable future, I wonder if the roman-numeral’d films will ever do stories that don’t involve conflict on a galaxy-wide scale? I mean, they’re going to run out of planets if they keep making things that blow them up all the time, and it never seems to solve things permanently.
Star Trek: Discovery had it’s fourth outing last weekend, and it seems to have hit a bit of a plateau. That is, it’s not getting much better overall, but it’s not getting much worse overall. The quality seems to shift from place to place in the series, kind of reminding me of a point-buy role-playing game system. If the show takes points in Special Effects, it has to sacrifice points in Dialog or Plot Structure, that kind of thing.
Without spoiling, the episode sees the new Macguffin advancing towards usability, there’s some character development, and the TV Trope Anyone Can Die appears to be in effect. There’s more sort-of science involved, but as with last week, it leaves me scratching my head as to how it got past the brainstorming phase.
It was also an interesting visual choice to begin a scene with what looked like a stormy landscape full of lightning-spewing volcanoes and faceted rocks that rose and fell as energy danced through it. Clouds of blue fire obscure the view as we pull outwards and upwards to see that what we’ve been watching is the replicator synthesizing Burnham’s uniform. That was a nice touch, I thought.
I also like that they’re apparently letting the makeup design people put new aliens on the bridge every episode, and the one pictured is referred to as “Osnullus.” Props (no pun intended) for creativity, but I think I would’ve put some non-human bulges under the uniform somewhere. Otherwise, he reminds me of the teleporter accident from The Fly. Perhaps we’ve merely progressed from ‘Trek’s venerable “forehead of the week” to “whole head of the week”? 🙂
This episode’s purpose was to give Burnham some redemption points and establish the spore tech from the previous episode as workable. It accomplished those, but not very elegantly. I’m more interested in Episode 5, as a character from the original series makes an appearance. Spoilers after the jump. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
The third installment of Star Trek: Discovery has aired, and I was interested to see it was a mix of old tropes and new takes on them. It skirted with space fantasy a bit (maybe more than a bit) and went farther down the “dark” path that I think fans are split on. Many grew up on the bright, happy Federation where humanity’s problems are more to do with exploration, diplomacy, and dealing with the odd alien who can bend reality. In this series, the Federation is at war and rules are being skirted to try and win it.
We finally get to see the titular vessel the show is named after, and its dimly-lit corridors are explained by Captain Gabriel Lorca having a medical condition: Due to a recent injury, his eyes adjust very slowly to lighting conditions, and he can’t correct the issue if he wants to keep his original optics. A lampshade (both literal and figurative), but at least we get a reason for the ship often being lit like a haunted house.
Without delving into spoilers, the Discovery is kind of like a war-effort version of the SCP Foundation, as is its sister ship, the Glenn. They’re loaded with secret and experimental technologies, trying to find the key to winning the war against the Klingons. First Muntineer Michael Burnham gets to lend a hand in this effort, and…
Well, let’s put spoilers after the jump. It’s another decent episode, and I want to see where they’re going with this concept. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
It’s turning out to be a really awful week for a lot of people. I can’t think of much to say that hasn’t been said or expressed, so how about a few things that might give a little amusement for a bit? One item does involve a death, but it’s important to tabletop gaming (or so I’ve decided). Here we go:
• A dose of surreality for everyone: Loopism is a Tumblr blog of looped animations of (usually) famous characters as if made from rather floppy inflated balloons.
• Not doing anything for about 63 straight days? How about a game of The Campaign For North Africa? It’s a game so full of rule-oriented minutia that it takes about 1,500 hours to play a single game.
• If I read the description correctly, this collection of locks can be removed by unlocking any of the locks present.
• And how about a wholesome puzzle game? Here’s Song for a Bird, a game where you have to decipher a visual clue then select letters to spell what you think the solution is.
I have no idea if this will work with a Steam install of the game (mine is from GOG.com), but there’s the Fallout Fixit Mod from No Mutants Allowed that corrects a lot of errors, does away with bugs, and can make the whole game customizable to just about any taste.
If the game proves too frustrating, which is understandable given its unforgiving nature, this guide can be of service. It does have a walkthrough, but it starts off with a look at character creation, stats, perks, and how they affect the game at a nuts-and-bolts level. If nothing else, it helps avoid making a “hopeless” character, or one whose abilities you might regret later on.
As someone who has seen just about every Star Trek media production (with the exception of a few of the video games), I find myself having to judge the latest installment, Star Trek: Discovery not only on its merits as a stand-alone show, but how it compares with other installments of the franchise.
Overall? It’s not bad. It starts with a Federation ship investigating a destroyed communications relay, things go pear-shaped, and it does a decent job thus far. Since this is supposed to be a season-long story, I’ll need more shows before passing some kind of final judgement on whether or not it holds together. I’m still concerned with Alex Kurtzman being a producer, since he and Robert Orci are (apparently) responsible for some of the worst aspects of the recent movie reboot decisions, which mostly have to do with referencing past Star Trek movies and shows without knowing what said references are about. Star Trek Into Darkness brought out Khan, but he’s only known as a villain to the audience because of Star Trek II. In their universe, there was no Original Series episode called “Space Seed,” he and Kirk had no history, etc. He was put in the movie just because fans would recognize the name, not because he was a part of the narrative.
Much like the movie reboot/prequel, Discovery has the problem of sci-fi prequel-itis, a curious condition where a more recent production that’s supposed to come before the first stories in a franchise doesn’t quite match up with said universe, especially visually. It takes place 10 years before Captain Kirk’s voyages, but everything is far more advanced-looking and realistic. Naturally, this is because it’s not 1970 and special effects that outstrip Roddenberry’s original show can be done on smartphones now. Still, you wind up with a situation similar to having a Phantom Menace with lightsaber choreography that looks supernatural in execution leading to the one in A New Hope that, while a key dramatic event, is two guys largely standing in place while they hit their weapons against each other.
I don’t own many roguelike games where death is permanent and you have to start over. Heat Signature is probably not quite a roguelike in that your burgeoning galactic empire is where your hard work is saved. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Heat Signature is a game where you’re helping to liberate space stations from four rival factions, getting them to join your cause to unite your area of space. You do this by performing jobs that make nearby stations think you’re really awesome. These jobs all involve breaking in to various ships and performing acts of theft, rescue, assassination, or capture. Do enough of these, and you can pick one of your nearby space stations to join your cause (minus combat, which seems odd). Each station gives you access to more stations beyond them as well as unlocking items that are sold in your territory’s stores. You also unlock “clauses” for the missions that net you a bonus if you succeed. For example, you may be required to leave no living witnesses, no one can be killed, and so forth:
The tactics needed for successfully navigating most missions involve some preparation based on the briefing coupled with an ability to improvise when things go pear-shaped. Some guard may see you, another guard might have a defense shield that makes them impervious to your weapons, or a ship attacking the one you’re on might have just blown the bit where your escape pod was docked to atoms. Your characters will die, and that will, indeed, suck. However attached you get to them, the point is to advance your empire, because that’s the “permanent” progress you’re working for. Eventually, you’ll have a setup where your new recruits will be able to purchase the gear you had to rely on random loot drops to acquire, meaning they can handle tough missions right out of the gate.
Even if your mercs don’t die, they have their own personal goal that, once fulfilled, will likely lead them to voluntary retirement. Each one has a mission they can purchase help for (i.e. your spouse was kidnapped, you have a vendetta against someone, etc.) and perhaps end their career on that high note of accomplishment. You may also want to retire them because as a given character accomplishes more and more, the easy missions aren’t offered to them anymore. The more time they’ve spent bleeding or deprived of atmosphere is a permanent condition (unless you unlock some higher tier equipment), so they could be looking at dying within seconds the next time they’re shot or tossed into space. Also, they can eventually be too big of a hero to generate as many liberation points for nearby stations, and there’s really nowhere left for them to go other than taking suicide missions and eventually dying or entering a kind of Hall of Fame and passing on a treasured piece of gear.
There are also Defector missions where a named character from a liberated station has a personal mission (like taking an enemy out on a heavily-armed ship only using a short blade and a concussion grenade). Afterwards, they go into the Hall of Fame, though I believe they might be available as playable somewhere down the line. Maybe. I’m not entirely sure. They don’t have any effect on the galactic liberation thing, so they’re mostly for funsies, as far as I can tell.
The game is procedurally generated, so occasionally you’ll hit a mission that’s absurdly easy or (to your style of play) nigh impossible. I find myself trying to do no-death runs because it’s a bit more of a challenge, but also because it tends to not alarm the entire crew at once, so if there’s a countdown clock (and there often is), waiting for someone to stop standing with their friends and walk away so I can hit them over the head in peace is probably a poor strategy… unless the mission *calls* for stealth, in which case… You get the idea.
Combat gives you an advantage in that at any time you can pause the game. This lets you line up shots, choose different weapons, and pull off chained attacks that would make you seem like a caffeinated Neo. Even so, your opponents can come with an array of gear that makes fighting them a quick way to get tossed out of an airlock (which happens a lot). Realistically, and somewhat annoyingly, they have a hard time calming down, so if they’re around one of the bodies you’ve left behind or they’re otherwise alerted, a change of strategy may be called for. I think you can leap through space from one section to another (if there’s a gap), but I’ve not been brave enough to try it yet.
For most of the game, my buddy has been the wrench. It’s quiet, non-lethal, and you get 8 meters of “dash” between triggering an attack and hitting your target. That’s just outside of the range of some of the personal sensor devices guards might have, so it’s still effective unless the guard requires armor-piercing weapons to take out. You can also get various flavors of teleportation device, traps that can beam your victims into space, guns that turn enemy turrets to your side, and many other items I’ve likely not seen yet.
The game isn’t perfect, as it does have some A.I. exploits that I’ve discovered. Firstly, when a guard is doing a task at a terminal or is in the ship’s captain’s chair, they’re totally absorbed. They won’t notice you strolling up behind them, ready to put their lights out. Terminals are like crew-bait, in that eventually every crew member apart from the one flying the ship will have some reason to go look at a terminal, which opens them up to having a short conversation with Mr. Wrench. They also won’t venture through any openable doors in the ship, unless they’re actively chasing you. If you’re confident that you won’t attract such a fan club, you can store your piles of bodies in a cleared-out section behind a bulkhead and none of the other crew should ever open it and peek inside. They’ll never try to get into your boarding pod, either, so you can dump all the bodies you want in there. However, until you close and reload the game, you’ll be sharing your pod with a bunch of unconscious or dead people, as they don’t go away for some reason.
Did I mention that bodies cause panic and alarm? They do that for some reason. Best to tidy up after yourself as you go, if possible.
I’ve not been brave enough to try a “wanton destruction” strategy, as there are ways of blowing up parts of a ship. You can shoot fuel tanks, set off certain kinds of explosives, or even commandeer other vessels and crash them into the target. There’s a lot of emergent gameplay potential, I think, and I hope there are going to be some add-ons in the future to expand on the mechanics thus far. It’s also a good pick-up game, letting you do a few quick missions between tasks… unless you get sucked in to the campaign, like the hapless victim of a sudden cabin decompression.
I hate colds. I haven’t had one in over a year, which is my explanation for why this one knocked me flat. I think my fever is finally gone, I’m not using a tree’s worth of tissue, and I’m back to drawing ‘n’ stuff, which will be evident later today. In the meantime, here’s a fun ditty that puts me in mind of all of those CGI “Animusic” videos that used to wow us old folks back in the day:
Tape measures. We’ve all used them. Some of us want Olympic Sports based on their alternate uses. They can be turned into slap-bracelets (mind those metal edges, kids!). However, they have some features I was completely in the dark about that are so simple I’m kind of ashamed I never noticed them:
I’m especially upset I never noticed the number on the bottom of the tape measure and its use. So many window sills would’ve been a breeze to record had I but known…
Star Trek: Discovery had it’s fourth outing last weekend, and it seems to have hit a bit of a plateau. That is, it’s not getting much better overall, but it’s not getting much worse overall. The quality seems to shift from place to place in the series, kind of reminding me of a point-buy role-playing game system. If the show takes points in Special Effects, it has to sacrifice points in Dialog or Plot Structure, that kind of thing.
The third installment of Star Trek: Discovery has aired, and I was interested to see it was a mix of old tropes and new takes on them. It skirted with space fantasy a bit (maybe more than a bit) and went farther down the “dark” path that I think fans are split on. Many grew up on the bright, happy Federation where humanity’s problems are more to do with exploration, diplomacy, and dealing with the odd alien who can bend reality. In this series, the Federation is at war and rules are being skirted to try and win it.
• Famed game show host 
Want some post-apocalyptic isometric 3-D RPG goodness? Then 
As someone who has seen just about every Star Trek media production (with the exception of a few of the video games), I find myself having to judge the latest installment, Star Trek: Discovery not only on its merits as a stand-alone show, but how it compares with other installments of the franchise.
