Rose Tinted Something Or Other

Rose Tinted Glasses, I said, thinking back to games of times passed and having fond memories of defeating dragons, and taking down polutant despots and their floaty machines.

So when these old games get rereleased as "Remasters", I get hopeful.  I'll get to replay games from my childhood that I really enjoyed, and it'll feel like a new game even if I hit all the same beats.

Wonder Boy: The Dragons Trap is a perfect example of that.  A Master System game that continues the story of Wonder Boy and his ventures across Monster Land and how he was completely upended by the antagonist of the last game.

You start off with top tier gear, running through the Dragons Labyrinth, searching for it's lair to stop it's tyrannical rule.  You defeat the dragon, whapping its face over and over between flinging fireballs and frantic trampling before the robotic dragon (plot twist!) explodes in a whirl of stars and cash starts raining across the room, and a blue wisp starts chasing you, desperate to catch you and fulfill the dragons purpose: to curse you and turn you into a dragon.

The game then drops you off at the nearby village and your venture fords from there.  It's a good time tracking down other Dragons and not only cursing yourself more by getting polymorphed into other creatures but clearing the world of other tyrants who would dare to rise up.

It was a great game when I was a kid so I was excited when I saw the kickstarter running for a massive Remaster hand drawing everything about the game and filling in negative space with anything and everything, for example a colossal centrepiece to an unknown warrior amongst a smattering of headstones which only asks questions that you can't go find the answer for because you're a Wonderkid with a plan.

The strange thing though is that everything there felt like it was there when I was a kid.  That I was playing the same game again and little has changed aside from the console itself.  This clearly was not true, as with a click of a button it reverts back to the original graphics and music at your leisure.

The game is great, and the guys who gussied this baby up did a fantastic job and I hope one day to see more.  I really wish others would follow this example.  There have been more and more remasters and rereleases coming out that have been aesthetically disappointing.

Take Advance Wars.  Fantastic game with many an hour spent spamming medium tanks and artillery over the gridded battlefield.  Can't espouse how good a game it was, especially for a Gameboy Advance game.

Recently it has seen a remaster bringing it to the modern Nintendo console with some modern amenities such as online play and spruced up graphics, and that last point is where I find my contention.

The Gameboy Advance has a limited amount of real estate on it's screen.  The resolution and colour palette are limiting, but the developers used every bit of it with gusto, making it rather distinct with the tools available.

So I get why you would decide to bump that up to 3D and perhaps redraw a lot of the assets.  What I didn't expect was a lack of effort in unit models.

Here we have a side by side comparison of the unit GBA sprites and their updated models.  They're bland and uninteresting, and what's more disappointing is that these vehicles are based on actual vehicles <Insert Link to Advance Wars Trivia>.  Almost would have rathered they did a 2.5d mode and just used the same sprites and had then standing on little notches to move across a game board.

This is an example of missed opportunity.  Yeah, sure, the models are fine if the game is great, but I would rather not be looking at it and wish it was more interesting to the eye.  These units are all based on actual vehicles, so why don't they look more like them?  I would like to see this reboot game also adapt the Gameboy <i>Wars</i> games as well, the progenitors to Advance Wars, and see them update the visuals and units to match the Advance Wars motif.

Which brings me over to Sonic Origins, a new release of the Sonic the Hedgehog Mega Drive and CD collection which now comes with a DLC containing Sonic the Hedgehog games from the Sega Game Gear in their original Glory.

That's where I have my problem, and I blame The Dragons Trap.  These games were good for their time, making the best with the limited tools they have.  But we can build it better.  Prettier.  We have the technology.  There's a guy who is remastering the Sonic Chaos and Triple Trouble games into Mega Drive versions, using similar sprites and animation direction with some liberties on unique levels, but making it a convincing remaster.

These games deserve that at least.  They were fun games in their time, Sonic 1's Jungle Zone still makes me scared of rising floor levels; the Hang Glider in Sonic 2 still annoys me to think about that one emerald stuck in the sky.  The majority of them all had Sega Master System releases as well, so why wouldn't you release those instead of the dinky game gear versions?

It's another case of missed opportunity.  They could have remastered these games in gorgeous fashion, put some love and effort into a glow up, and you would be praised to the ends of the earth for showing some love for one of the biggest video game icons of the 20th and 21st centuries, yet it's squandered for the sake of ease.

Christian Whitehead, in the name of Sonic Mania, would you please help us.  Get involved more and remaster everything properly.  Make Sonic Pretty Again.  You're our only hope.

Twenty Two Token Nutshell

Well it's time for my one and only post for the year, the one time I even try to attempt some sort of writing and keep my blog alive.

Actually its kinda funny, one of the podcasts I've been listeining to have been talking about how, with the implosion of twitter and his typical outsource of creative talk, he has decided to return back to his blog and revive it there.

It's part of what got me jumping back this year, and then the numerous other posts I've half written up and drafted because I can't seem to keep my own subject focus. i'm barely able to keep my own sentences here going, having to backspace every few words just to make it sound "right". i just deleted the word unquote becaue I couldn't be fuckin arsed going back and typing quote.

anyway, I want to talk about video games. there's been a bunch I've played and I've had thoughts galore that are just drivels on epiphanys and just wanting to rave about games Ive had fun with.

Like Metroidvanias. so I've had little experience with them growing up. i didn't have a Nintendo so Metroid and the like weren't in my pervue. So when I started playing Hollow Knight and having the time of my life, which is fair because it's a beautifully crafted piece of work, I wanted to delve more into the genre.

I now have a Switch Lite, combined with a relatively cheap comfort grip, I grabbed a few of the popular and interesting Metroidvanias available: axiom verge (1 & 2), Blasphemous, and Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom.

I'll start with axiom verge because they are the most like the original metroid game, literally taking the 8 bit style and going gangbusters with it. the black backgrounds with weird tiled platform environments; tunnels circling about and confusing me until I happen to find one tile that isn't quite right and either shoot it or use a weird wave gun that changes a bunch of walls and floors because everything seems to be a biological but digitally real. It's a weird kinda game, where your character is thrown into a weird dimension of gigantic automaton trying to save themselves from another human who killed almost every other living creature. naturally you're tasked with fixing the issue, while also futzing about killing off minibosses that dont do an easy job of dying.

I havent said anything about the plot twist, because frankly that is something I was really confused and surprised about, and you should too.

Axiom Verge 2 is much the same, but jumps up to 16 bit era, and really pares down on faff. the first game had like 16 weapons, whereas now you've about 4 to work with, and maybe a few more tools after that. But again, the plot twist and the surprises, the fascinating levels and designs, just kept me going until I finished it off and moved on to the biggin.

Blasphemous is a fascinating game. It's a hard 15+ game because throughout the game, including the first few scenes, are very gorey. After you kill the first boss, you cut open his belly, pour the blood into your helmet, and put it on as the red pours down your bit-art body.

the appeal in it is that it's an interesting take on religion, and this in particular is a very old and spanish catholic art style, doused with literal examples of what are called miracles, like a boy the size of a building having the face of an old man growing in his chest, and as the game progresses the old man grows more and climbs from his chest until the one are two and they both die In The Name Of The Lord.

Weird and strange and horrific things that people and creatures allow to have happen to them because their faith demands they do it. Its a heavy theme and because it's so obscene in how it goes, it's fascinating to discover and learn, to read stories found by collecting bones of different saints across the world, to speak to different characters who are dumbstruck by everything out of the ordinary. It's a curious and gorgeous world to explore. genuinely, the art is phenomenal for something that could have been on a sega 32x.

Then there's Monster Boy. I actually haven't played much of this, truly about 3 or 4 hours in? Even that feels optimistic. And the reason is incredibly petty: I'm jaded by a related title.

So one of my favourite games from my Sega days is Wonder Boy III: The Dragons Trap. It's a fun game that has you changing forms to solve puzzles and reach different dragon bosses to return your character to normal. It's really the closest thing to a Metroidvania style game that I can attest to playing, because it has a hub area and a bunch of regions you can branch out to explore from there. It's more like a star than a series of infinity loops, but you get the idea. I'm going to have to find a name of that type of loop now, a magnus loop or something?

Anyway, a few years ago a company made a remaster of it and I fucking loved it. The core game is exactly the same, I could play the game on both a Sega Master system and whatever modern consoles side by side and I would literally have the same results. What's changed is the visuals and the soundtrack, all perfectly crafted for the game, adding so much more character to levels that weren't much more than plain blue backgrounds, but all the while making them feel like they were always there. Like they had built rose tinted glasses for this game, to make it feel in every essence the same game I played when i was a kid.

as such, Monster Boy is related in that it has the same ideas as The Dragons Trap, but sets it in the future of the characters life and allows him to change into different monsters on the fly, and having a whole new world to explore and delve into.

And my petty problem is that it's just not a similar game except by name. The controls and feel are different, the art is more of an anime cartoon style than the slightly gritty style of The Dragons Trap, and the soundtrack is just... so yeah, it's really surface level things that I don't like, and nothing I can really do about because it was all made by a different company.

All it really makes me wish is that The Dragons Trap gets a DLC addition to tell a story they want to tell, but after so many years I assume they're onto bigger and better things.

there's been a lot of that lately, last year brought in a good handful of blockbuster games that I was keen to get my hands on except for a few, and for the most part i was left disappointed early on.

Halo Infinite is really the biggest heartbreak. It's my own fault, I set up expectations that it was going to be a lot like Destiny, with having an open world that becomes incredibly deep and complex and interconnecting and having secrets in any nook and cranny you care to gawk at.

it wasn't that. it felt like a halo game, don't get me wrong, and it was super pretty in a lot of places, but... it really just felt flat.

part of that I blame on the grappling hook. that's been a big gimmick of late, to launch a grappling hook and traverse levels and encounters constantly. And it's a good thing in combat, you spot a vehicle running past and you grapple hook yourself to it and board it with ease. or you can pull an explosive barrel to you and launch it away into an enemy pile just to see them scatter.

But if you can use it to travel about, you're about to find that everything is easy to reach and youre going to spend a fair chunck of time just ninja roping your way around town.

But knowing that, you work around that. there's a bunch of different collectibles across the world and good handful of them are designed for that consideration. One type of collectible that didn't is the High Value Target (HVT), an individual enemy that carries a specially designed weapon you can pick up and use. So when Im about to cross a Jackal who carries an alien sniper rifle, standing at the top of a long slope littered with cover, brutes, shield jackals, and grunts, I would expect to run the gauntlet while he's spamming shots at me and driving me mad with each headache. Not reverse abseiling behind him and clocking him with the scifi equivalent of a boxing glove with nails in it and calling it good.

Its been a year and I havent really returned to it, partly because my Game Pass sub ran out and I havent renewed it, partly because I'm not even sure I want to yet. They have online coop implemented to the game, but I'm not finding it worth the time until they add something new or different to the game.

In the same vein, I keep thinking about Borderlands 3 and just came to the conclusion that they should just give in and become an RPG. They have all these characters, and these whole worlds they wanted to introduce, and all you're doing is just dakka dakka dakka. Which is cool, but for whatever reason it just isnt fun.

That's why I want a Tactics RPG, so you can get both hand in hand. Fix their writing, expand everyones story, have your Combat that you delve harder into to build stronger strategies than "this has big DPS", and have a god damned campaign the setting deserves that isn't just a bunch of popular memes strung together.

And while you're at it, take a look at the Mario and Rabbids games and build from that. They tackle, they slam, they shoot the shit out of stuff, all things you can do in the FPS, so why the fuck not?!

Tactics games have been pretty good of late. They re-remastered Tactics Ogre again and put them on every console available (actually I should check if it's only available on Playstation and Switch or not); Mario and Rabbids is actually pretty good, the sequel I'm playing has a LOT of improvements, especially in the free roaming where there are puzzles galore; I rebought Darkest Dungeon on my Switch so I can run that while something plays in the background on TV; Also rebought XCOM 2 when it came to the Switch because I do like a lot that it has to offer.

I did grab up Warsaw, the Darkest Dungeon-like rpg, and I've been bouncing pretty hard off it, mostly from information paralysis. It doesn't exactly ease you into the game very well and I want to learn more about the occupation of Warsaw more through this like i learnt about World War 1 from Valiant Hearts, which is getting a sequel on mobile through Netflix's service, which is a bit hurtful.

After that I have The Banner Saga which I hear is really good, it looks absolutely Captial-G-Gorgeous, but Im having trouble hitting that epiphany point with the combat. You have Armour and Strength, Strength Doubles as your Health, but the less Strength you have the less damage you deal, and you can counter it by having higher armour, which the enemies tend to have along with matching strength, so when I'm having my hard hitters get attacked first from either ranged enemies or just getting the first strike, I end up being on the back foot the whole match. I know the game is supposed to be a bit hardcore, but I just need that epiphany moment.

What I've learnt through the last few years though is that my Switch is an MVP. There's a lot of people ragging on about how it needs a hardware update and Nintendo should try to rival Playstation and Xbox in capability, but I don't really think so. It's become an Indie machine and it'll play just about any Indie that gets thrown at it.  

Speaking of Indies, Sega should let others get involved with the Sonic IP more. Sonic Mania when it came out was absolutely lourded for being a fantastic rendition of the Sega Mega Drive games made into one fun package.

i enjoyed it for the most part, some of the new levels felt a little too goofy and I didn't particularly like them, but that's a small complaint compared to the positive. Really, it's a fun game and I hope those teams dip into more of the Sonic games. Rather than the latest collection they put out.

So Sonic Origins is a bundle of the Sega Mega Drive games including Sonic 1, 2, 3 & Knuckles, and Sonic CD. Only Sonic CD I haven't actually played, but it's nice to have such a collection of games available. The problem is that they put out their purchasing options and they were Horrendous, items clearly for a cheap cash grab on top of an already fairly expensive game. Background menu Items? The option to move cosmetic things around? A Hard Mode sounded good but should have been part of the base purchase. Same with Remastered Music.

I had a plea written out that if you're going to release a remaster bundle and then offer up downloadable content, why don't you just keep remastering other games? Get the Sega Master System games and remaster them, use the Mega Drive Assets to zhush them up into something more interesting to the eye and tack it on! You'd get more than your moneys worth with remastering those underappreciated classics than you would trying to offer up the same fucking music played on a better synthesizer.

The only other big thought I had this year was of Elden Ring. It came out early 2022 to mass appraise, even got game of the year I think, and it kinda has me curious to get into it. It's a hardcore game and I can think that the only game I've played similar to it is Monster Hunter World, which I had a bunch of fun with. Next down would be God of War, but that is very much a Souls-lite, not to it's detriment though.

About a month or two later a Final Fantasy game came out called Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin. A strange name for sure, pun not intended. It had a cool idea, a prequel to the first Final Fantasy game played out in an Action RPG, running around with your party and casting spells between whapping away with whatever weapon you had equipped. There seemed a pretty good variety of options at its core, some pretty environments as you would expect of its ilk. But it fell flat at it's writing. It was dreadful. Not because of the translation, but genuinely just... just terrible. I only watched a few hours of it in play, watched the scenes on youtube, and laughed with pity at the memes generated from it because it's really that bad it's not particularly funny.

Well, to circle back, quite a few of the reviewers I follow were comparing this game to Elden Ring, saying it's Square Enix's answer to Elden Ring because of the style and combat. I couldn't agree any less. Actual gameplay in hand might be different, but looking at it I was immediately thrown into thinking of Kingdom Hearts. It may not be as zippy and floaty as Kingdom Hearts is, but I would rather that comparison than with Elden Ring.

Thinking of a Final Fantasy Soulslike just puts Vagrant Story front and centre: A single character running around a labrynthian city; using different weapons and equipment against a variety of enemys, large and small; a dark mystery surrounding all characters involved in the world. It all adds up and falls short when the combat comes and you're showing the difference between a strange turn based game, and an action game.

I think that's a wrap up. My 2022 thoughts that were half baked in the first place and just didn't have much more point than what they do here.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

Sega's Finest of the '90s

I was going through the Playstation Network the other night, just window shopping all the various games that I want, don't want, and simply can't afford, when I came across an odd entry: Wonder Boy In Monster Land.

Now I like Wonder Boy.  Especially the Monster Land versions, they are great fun.  I have played that game almost to it's death along with its sequel "The Dragons Trap".  I think I even got Mum to buy it on her Wii many moons ago just so I could play it again.

But when I saw it sitting in amongst the W-Z section of the PS3 Downloads, it hit me.  We still live in the 80's and 90's.

It's been over 2 decades since they released the Sega Master System.  Two Decades.  Video games have grown exponentially since then.  They no longer have cartridges or wired controllers with two buttons and a D-pad.  They aren't limited to 16 Colours and a resolution that's smaller than what my phone can produce.

Yet I can still pick up for $7.50 a game that I played as a child. (And didn't finish until I was in my 20's, on the same console no less)

Then I look at some of the other games I have.  They're fairly big games, like Crysis 2, Little Big Planet, Skylanders.  They're all fairly intricate games in their own rights, and are siginificantly prettier than a game like Wonder Boy.  Probably much better too, even though it doesn't have basic amenities that games have today, such as an Auto-save.  Mind you, the game could be completed in 20 minutes given a perfect run, so no need to worry about it.

It was then that I remembered a recend release, Penny Arcade Adventures: On the rain slice precipice of Darkness Episode 3.  This iteration of the game was released in an old 16-bit V-RPG format, a throwback to games like Final Fantasy, and a need to actually strategise when you enter a battle.

I was somewhat disappointed that the guys at Penny Arcade didn't make a competition with a prize of a remade Sega Mega Drive and a Cartridge with the game on it.  Maybe it's an idea for them in the future.  Like PAX Aus.  Though I suppose it doesn't stop others from porting it.

Anyone looking through digital distributors would find more and more games released in 16-bit formats.  And I can't help but look at it and think how ironic it is that even though we're at a point where a game can be as immense and intricate as your own city, yet there is still a place in the world for a world that could be drawn with Lego.

Does the world really need games like World of Warcraft when you could be playing a Final Fantasy MMO with a toon no more intricate than your desktop icons?

Well apparently not.  Introducing Minecraft.  While it incorporates the 3D sort of scale of a modern game environment, it has the graphical application of Pitfall.  Okay, I exagerrate a little, but it's only a little.  It's still not the most glamorous of games.  Yet it's still one of the most popular because of what you do in it.

What do you do?  Well you mine and you use various levels of cubes to create your very own personalised island of insanity in between mining for certain cubes and fending off monsters during the night.

While the game may sound as simple as the bitmap images for the cubes, it has brought forth many creative results.  So it's not all bad for those who are either determined, or have enough spare time to do these sorts of things.

So while there is a place in the world for high resolution and detailed scenery, it still makes you wonder how much worth blockbuster games will provide in the end.

I keep on Wondering. See what I did there?

So with more thinking about the player characters and their encounters, I was thinking of having an Anti-party which the players would come up against every so often. And because the campaign is themed around killing Dragons, when I came across this I figured it to be an awesome figure for the anti-party leader.

It's a pretty sweet model, I reckon. I may change the shield, but the sword is awesome!

But there's also NPC's that are part of the story. The Players get to run around with a Paladin. So after a little bit of searching for a Sword and Shield Warrior, i found this one: http://www.reapermini.com/OnlineStore/paladin/sku-down/14508

Game on!

Plan de Scion En détail

So the thoughts of a Physical World map made of Hexagon pieces has just flowed through my mind with awesome and I got descripts after descripts. So far it's down to either 13 pieces with detachables, or 18 pieces to alternate other pieces.

Lets start with the Lake, where the players start and attend quite a few times. Its story is that over the lake itself is a cloud that never goes away. It just rains and rains and just doesn't stop. Secretly on top, there's a castle where hides a dragon and a small village. And secretly the castle and cloud are a veil to cover the actual castle and the village, which are on an island in the middle of the lake.

So I could have 3 alternate pieces: Lake with Cloud; Lake with Castle on Cloud; Castle on lake. Or I can have detachable pieces on top of the base: Raining Cloud; The castle on the cloud; the Real castle on the island.

Then there's the main city and the tunnel. They could have two pieces each, or I can have the city itself and the tunnel be replacable on the base. There's the castle as well which the players visit at least twice, which I can keep a wide fortress on the base itself, and get an extension to make it taller for the next time the players attend it.

Otherwise pieces are a one time thing. The labyrinth, the pagoda, the pirate ship, the seafaring town, the Desert (How can one change the desert short of destroying a freakin pyramid?), the mountains, the caves, and the island. Oh and the Swamp, can't forget the swamp. That'll be an awesome level.

Hey Look!

I found the original map for "Wonder Boy in Monsterland".

I can say now, I'm not going to use that as a reference.

It's a Wonder

So i caught myself thinking about a Dnd campaign which i'm basing off of Wonder boy "in monster land" and "the dragons trap", and ghouls and ghosts. I've got it all basically figured out, where the characters have to progress and how the world interacts with them. I even figured out how to solve the transformation connundrum i had going for a while.

But i had a bit of trouble figuring out the map. I drew it in different ways but only one form was i actually happy with, and it evolved/devolved into something like a grid. I even had it figured out in Excel, where i just had names and arrows to where they were.

Recently Humph has been making his brother a birthday present. His brothers favourite game is Settlers of Catan and the game is played on a large set of Hexagons.

That got me to thinking. What if i asked humph to show me how he made his pieces and i'll make some up based on my dnd campaign? I know he used some casting resin, but it's what he cast them from that's important.

I also want to get a whiteboard for Dnd. And i don't mean a pissy little thing for putting on the table. I mean one of the roller whiteboards you see at school. So i get some magnets in the bottom of the pieces and i have a map that won't need to be remade every week because it'll be stuck to the whiteboard.

Now we generally use grids for our maps so i sent an enquiry to the local whiteboard people asking if they could bake lines into the boards, and if they could make modifications or not. Yes and no respectively. So when i one day make myself this board, not to mention have room for it, i'll have some awesome plans.

At least i reckon they'd be awesome.

"He's an Ideas man"

Brimming with ideas, I am.
Brimming I say, like a pot on boil with too much broil.

Over the past... year?... I have made up Iron Kingdoms Diorama ideas.
A few people know about this, as I posted one up on Defiant Gaming not too long ago.
But wait. THERE'S MORE!
So I've posted them up on the net.

I was bored, okay?

One of my favourites is one I thought up for Spenny for his Heartkids events: Mammoth.
The figure is Beast-09, but with a Marauders head and weapons, standing in the gateway of an Orphanage, a stone Archway overgrown with vines, defending them from Tharn Ravagers, whom eat hearts.
I thought it was a little clever. Too bad I don't have the motivation (money or ability) to go through with it.

Another of my favourites is The Arcade, which is segregated into three parts (four as soon as I think of what to put in the fourth section).
The first is a Shooting gallery where some of the characters from Iron Kingdoms that use firearms as a preferred weapon are testing their skills on Spin offs of actual games, such as House of the Mechanithralls (House of the Dead).
The scenes in front of them are actually constructed from other IK figures.

The second scene is a Skirmish map.
You know Skirmish, with the paintballs that leave welts on your body large enough to convince people you have cancer.
That. So far, I have Trenchers and Dawnguard. Their melee weapons would be painted like Nerf Bats, because lets face it: People wouldn't be allowed into Skirmish with a sharpened blade. Nerf solves everything.

The third is a little uninspired. It's the "Managers office".
It's just the Butcher of Khardov, with Lola removed (Lola is his weapon), attacking a punching clown, in the midst of a messy room.
Uninspired, but still a little funny.

---

Other ideas that I've fiddled around with in my head is a Starcraft/Warcraft custom campaign story.
I have no idea what story I would do, but the desire is there!

---

A while ago, I wanted to do a webcomic.
That's right, a webcomic.
I have poor drawing skills however, which in my opinion is a rather large obstacle.

The comic would be a gaming comic, basing a few characters 'Role Playing' in different gaming settings.
The first story would be based on a D&D Campaign idea I have based on Wonder Boy.
The first arc would be Wonderboy in Monster Land, a classic tale of a boy destined to defeat the evil dragon.
The second arc would be Wonder boy III, the Dragons trap. The sequel and continuation to Wonderboy in Monster Land, where after defeating the Dragon, he finds that there is more to the incideous plot and continues his adventures to remove the curse that the Dragon has placed on him.
The third arc is not related to the Wonder Boy games, though. No, the third arc would be based on Ghouls and Ghosts, originally a story of a Knight names Arthur who saves the princess from the god Loki who is sending the world into an Apocalypse.

Since there are more than one character 'Role Playing', there are some slight variations (Such as more than one Wonder Boy). And instead of having to fight the Trickster God, Loki, I thought to have the party fight Tiamat instead. Since they will be fighting dragons through the whole thing, why not fight the Five Headed God of Dragons to finish off the story?
I thought it was a cool idea.
Just having a bit of trouble figuring out what to change the players races to in the WBIII set.

If there's one thing I've learnt as well about D&D is that you can make it "Episodic", something I learnt from Rob. Episodic makes it interesting between levels. You can have one session, with three encounters and role play between, and you would have a good session.

---

Changing subject entirely I move onto Monsterpocalypse, a game based on Gigantic Monsters rampaging through a city to defeat their opponent/s.
The game has been around for approx 8 months now (maybe 9) and has had 3 Series: "Rise", "I Chomp NY", and "All Your Base".
The current series, "All Your Base", has taken a different spin on monsters by creating "Morphers": Units that transform into a Monster. For those who don't quite understand, think "Voltron". Or "Devastator" from Transformers.

So as per my own tradition I have my Series 3 Monster to represent my faction through this series.
First season, I swapped between Yasheth and Cthugrosh. Yasheth was the biggest fear because he regained health up the wazoo so he was rather tough to kill.
Second season, I discovered I didn't like Mogroth. So I played Ulgoth for the whole season. Turns out Ulgoth is ridiculously difficult to play against for most monsters as he 'explodes' every time you attack him, and if you're standing next to Ulgoth when he 'explodes' then you suffer damage. Also, his Ultra version deals additional damage on his normal attacks. To top it all off he couldn't be 'Thrown', one of the more common power attacks in the game.
Because he was so brutal I won his Mega form which I play to this day as he is not as brutal as his Ultra version.
Season Three, I field Osheroth, the first Morpher monster of the Faction. Four tentacles, burst through the ground to tear apart and manipulate their enemies in a small variety of ways.

The Morphers are an interesting concept. They work a lot like Units, however are very dangerous.
Osheroth's tentacles (yes, four tentacles with different painted tips) aren't the most threatening in the game. They have the same stat line, have average health, and have mostly the same abilities each.
Their differences lie in their melee attacks.
The two most dangerous are those with Beat-back and Vampirism. The other two are there for combining attacks and summoning.
The Summoner remains behind, helping with securing buildings and increasing your units on the field.
The Vampire and Beat-backer charge up the front to either deal damage to the monster, or steal back hit points lost. The last guy, who has Fling and Telekinesis, goes where he wants. I find myself securing buildings, most of the time.
A trick I pulled out on The Dick yesterday was one pulled on me not long ago. When you power up and go into your ultra form, you place your ultra overlapping a space one of your morphers were occupying. You then move using one action dice.
When you're in a profitable position, you power down into your Morphers Form using the same spaces that your ultra form occupied.
Aside from the similarity of matching abilities, the morphers each have a Red ability allowing figures adjacent to them gain that ability as well.
So all four have Telekinesis, Siphon, Penetrator and Hit-and-Run. The only two that really matter are Siphon (Steal a Power dice from them) and Penetrator (Lowers their DEF stat). Use summon to bring in a Cthulubite, a new unit that also lowers opponents DEF stat, and then brawl away at them against their DEF-2.
Most monsters come down to about DEF 4 or 5, easy enough for 2 combined attacks to really put the hurt on. Heck, if you're lucky enough to get a Corruptor in there with flank (Another -1 DEF to the enemy) then you can easily make 4 attacks against the monster for a MASSIVE amount of damage.
Back to the original setup: One combined attack to steal back health, siphoning Power dice at the same time, and the other combined attack to throw them into a nearby building, siphoning more Power dice.
Four damage, right there, if you consider the hazard available as well.
This was possible because the Powerup on my monster is Cheap. Probably too cheap. The only thing that Osheroth really has going for him is Annihilate and Radial attack. Sacrifice is a nifty ability if you have units to spare, and Global Telekinesis adds options to your units that you didn't have before unless you fielded taskmasters in your force. Frankly, I rarely have a taskmaster on the field as they are too expensive and hardly worth the effort, and when I do I put their shadow incarnations on at a discounted cost (Summon at 1A-die or a dying Meat Slave at 0A-die, compared to 3A-die) only to act as a distraction.
So with a ultra so cheap I feel a little overpowered since my morphers are really quite powerful, and when I lose my morphers I have an ultra that can clean up what's left.

What should I be afraid of?
Monsters with immunity to buildings or super damage.
Or maybe martians with enough Nuclear hazards around the field. A good example of this is Tharsis-5. He doesn't have Immunity to Super Damage, but he does have immunity to buildings, so hitting him into a building is not going to do much damage unless it is a fire hazard that he can land in.
Monsters with beat-back. This is actually something ALL morphers should be worried about. If you have a morpher aligned with another one of your morphers, they will suffer 3 points of damage from a single beat-back attack (one for the attack and 1 each for collisions). It's a harsh thing.
Multishot is no longer a worry. Multishot has been nerfed to only target units with the additional attacks.
Radial Attack is somewhat of a big danger. If a monster is surrounded by Morphers, they can deal a bucketload of damage. An example is if Osheroth was surrounded by morphers and he did a radial attack, that would be 5 damage to the enemy morpher form. Super damage does not apply to the additional attacks, so 2 to the initial target, and 1 each to the morphers around him. Still, 5 damage is not a easy thing to pull off. It's usually reserved for those situational events and is often worth it since it drops a monster out of form (In most cases).

So this Season of MONSTERPOCALYPSE? Yeah, it's going to be fun.
And if I'm lucky, Erin might get bored one tuesday night, offer a drive wherever and we can chat afterwards. If she's really lucky, I'll be in a complimentive mood.

---

On a final note, I'm loving the Horizontal rules.
They do well separating subjects.