I saw it last night. The movie is both enormously touching and hilarious, a wonderful piece of science fiction and cinema. While I've always enjoyed Pixar's movies, I think this may be the first that I actually will go out and buy. Definitely see it! Also, if possible, go late enough so that you won't have the annoying distraction of little kids... it's much easier to appreciate Wall-E when watching it with adults.
Otherwise... um... what have I been up to?
Remember Hard Power? That board game I was working on about a year ago? Well, I revisited it this week and have spend the last couple of days reworking the rules and cards. I've attempted to simplify some things, although whether or not I succeeded is debatable. There's been two big changes:
- The resources are no longer tied to specific territories. Instead, there will be 56 "resource chips" - one for each territory, divided in a 3/2/1 scheme amongst Food, Metal, and Oil - which will be placed, face down, on the board during set up. When a trading tie is placed on a territory, the resource is flipped over, revealing whether or not the player made a good or bad choice in investing in trade with this territory.
- Battles are no longer determined in a Risk-like fashion, instead battles are card-based. There are eight different "tactical cards", ranging in value from 1 to 8. Basically, the player whose hand has the highest value wins the battle. I'm hoping this injects a little more strategy into an area that was, until now, just a matter of chance.
This week promises to be... eh. I have school until Wednesday (finals, yay... -_- ) and work until Thursday (I think). I have to feed Kim's turtle while she's away at Wildwood (I'd be there too if it weren't for finals this week) and the family dog-sitting my cousin's chihuahua. He's a really nice dog, but he just reminded me once again why I never want to have a dog. I'm a cat person, plain and simple.
Oh yeah! I finally got around to buying Halo 1 and 2 for the PC. While I've played both games countless times, both through story (co-op) and multiplayer modes, I've never had the opportunity to sit down and play through the campaigns by myself, so as to really gauge the story (I already know the gameplay and soundtrack are fantastic). Based on my previous experience with both games, I suspect Halo 1 will have the tighter story while Halo 2 will be deeper and a bit more well rounded. I expect to find both stories to be better than Halo 3's plot, which I found to be... well... rushed. It felt like they dumbed it down... but, I guess I'll just have to play through the first two games to see whether or not that's true.
I still haven't finished reading Count Zero. It's a good book, I just haven't had much time or energy to sit and read. I'll see if I can do that this week.
I watched the Japanese versions of Ghidorah the Three Headed Monster and Terror of Mechagodzilla this week. ToMG was better than I remembered, especially since this was the first time I'd ever seen it uncut. Ghidorah... not so much. It wasn't bad, but I can easily see how this was the beginning of Godzilla's transition from "Godzilla the Villain" to "Godzilla the Superhero". I, personally, consider the middle of the Showa series - from Ghidorah to Destroy All Monsters - to be a transitional period called "Godzilla the Anti-Hero", basically that Godzilla is acting like the Superhero but still being treated by the humans like the Villain.
My main problem with Ghidorah is that while the human storyline is being treated fairly - it concerns a police officer sent to protect the crown princess of a foreign kingdom who has lost her memory after an assassination attempt - the monsters, who in the past were treated as walking mountains of horror and might, had been relegated to comedy relief. I specifically refer to Godzilla and Rodan, who spend most of the film fighting (off camera, mind you) and are generally portrayed as stubborn buffoons. Mothra is once again shown as heroic (as usual) and only Ghidorah is allowed any measure of fearsomeness.
Ah well, just ignore my fanboy rantings. ^^()
3 comments:
So, the Hard Power tactical cards... and stop me if you think this is a terrible and overcomplicated idea... I imagine they each represent different warfare tactics? Like a 1 is "just rush the joint, guns a-blazing" or some such? I think you might want to do something sort of like Stratego, where there are extra bonuses to certain pieces. Like, the one card can defeat the eight card, or let's say card number 4 is "Amphibious assault", which is normally pretty good, but counts as a 7 when you're using it to attack a country that is on the shore. That's probably too powerful, but it's just an off-the-top-of-my-head suggestion.
I did think of Stratego when designing the cards. Here's the eight, in order of power:
Retreat - (1), Defeats all other cards, but you lose the territory (not the army) and can only be used if you have someplace to retreat to.
Forward Assault - (2), Three Forward Assault cards have a value of (12).
Flank - (3)
Pincer - (4)
Entrenchment - (5)
Strategic Bombing - (6)
Ambush - (7), Only one can be played at a time.
Surprise Attack - (8), Only one can be played at a time.
Obviously, I'm still tinkering with it...
Oh, retreat! I like retreat, that's a good one. Makes good strategic sense too. No, I like this, I'd like to see where it goes.
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