Archive for the ‘Otaku’ Category

NYCC Day Two

Friday, October 12th, 2012

Here’s how I feel right now:

20121012-194919.jpg

Assuming, of course, that her face says “My hips need replacement and I need to sleep for a day!” πŸ™‚

We spent over 7 hours at the con today, and the highlight – indeed the highlight of the entire con I expect – can be summarized by this photo:

20121012-195218.jpg

Yep, I was star struck a little. As would be expected meeting a childhood hero. He was personable and charming and gracious and everything you’d expect him to be.

Later on we also went to his hour long panel…

20121012-195345.jpg

…which was held in a massive room where all seats were packed! The moderator made a few funny jokes about the disparate audiences, which included the old-schoolers and the new, much younger fans (who were well aware Doctor 5 is now Doctor 10’s dad-in-law)!

We actually saw two panels in a row in this room. Before Peter Davison we sat through Grant Morrison which was very entertaining, including the bits when he spoke about his experiences summoning demons via black magic (he didn’t seem to be joking).

But thats not the only Who we saw today! Not only was the Doctor Who shop twice as big as ever:

20121012-195933.jpg

But they even had a special guest in the form of Karen Gillan’s cousin, aka. young Amy Pond:

20121012-200101.jpg

20121012-200134.jpg

There was also some actual comic appreciation going on today! A good chunk of the main hall has vendors like this:

20121012-200252.jpg

I bought some comics today, and then later on in the day met (and got an autograph from) Amanda Conner, whose comic art I’m a fan of.

There’s so, so much more. About a dozen hours at the con so far and I still feel there’s lots to see. Tomorrow we’ve got more panels to see and some special autographs to (hopefully!) collect.

Before I end for the day, the cosplay! To say the quality is high is an understatement. Check out the three best I took photos of today:

20121012-200658.jpg

20121012-200726.jpg

20121012-200740.jpg

NYCC Day One

Thursday, October 11th, 2012

We had an early start today, then hopped on a train for a mini-vacation in New York City. As we have the last several years, we’re going to the New York Comic Con!

Today is KLS’s birthday as well, so that makes this little trip even more special πŸ™‚

20121011-213035.jpg

The show runs Thursday through Saturday, and we’ve got 4-day passes. We got to the city a few hours before the doors opened which was fortuitous, since I had to visit the Australian consulate. With that out of the way, after stops at a few shops (I spent $70 on the new Monster Hunter Jsoanese art book at Kinokuniya!), we headed down to the convention center.

20121011-213642.jpg

For some reason I had assumed the lines would be small on this first half-day of the con, but as you can see that was hardly the case.

20121011-213840.jpg

As usual, sensory overload was what followed. Hundreds of exhibitors filling several halls across 3 levels of a gigantic convention center…

20121011-214018.jpg

Movies and books and comics and games and clothes, toys, cars, food and art. Free stuff everywhere, and even more (do much more!) for sale!

20121011-214157.jpg

And then, the cosplay:

20121011-214242.jpg

20121011-214305.jpg

20121011-214322.jpg

The major highlight of today was seeing the next Monster Hunter games so prominently featured at Capcom’s booth. I lined up to play the 3DS version and it was awesome. The WiiU version was also playable and has beautiful graphics. I can’t wait for these to be released.

20121011-214542.jpg

After about 3.5 hours we were ruined. Not only had it been a long day, but we were toting heavy bags full of purchases ($280 in total already!).

20121011-214712.jpg

We’ve only got to see maybe a half of the total show so far, and even then need to revisit the booths we skimmed today. But now it’s time for bed πŸ™‚

20121011-214835.jpg

Return To Ravnica

Wednesday, October 10th, 2012

A couple of weeks ago, the new Magic The Gathering expansion, named Return To Ravnica, was released. As with all previous expansions for the last few years, I attended the prerelease tournament.

This prerelease was a bit different from most, in that you had to pick one of the ‘guilds’ that the set is themed around. I chose ‘Azorius’, a blue/white guild themed around control and denial. Each participant was then given a fun little box that contained various goodies (and, importantly, their cards) themed around their chosen guild:

photo

So… I built a bad deck! I had misunderstood the rules a little, and assumed I must play blue/white only, and did just that despite perhaps having better green cards than blue. So I took what I had, put it all together, and ended up with a deck big on denial (especially the Azorius keyword detain, which prevents opponents creatures from acting for a turn) but very weak on offense and – importantly – removal.

The first round I won 2-0, against a player using a tri-coloured deck based around the guild Rakdos (which is red/black, but he put a bit of green in as well). I’ll admit my victory has a lot of luck in it, and even after only one game the weakness of my deck was clear to me. After the round I debated changing it (which is allowed, only between rounds) but was at that point already irritated by the sheer amound of players and general stuffiness of the venue that I decided to just continue and leave after my first loss.

This would end up being the very next round. I face another Rakdos opponent, and actually played a very lengthy but fun game against him, that he eventually won by (quite literally) a toss of a die. See this card for what I mean πŸ™‚

The game had taken a long time – almost half an hour – so I forfeited the second match to give him a 2-0 victory against me, and I left early. I only played 3 games during that prerelease, and can’t say I had anywhere near as much fun as I did at others, mostly due to the crowd.

photo3

The next week I went back to my store and picked up my box of the set, which I had preordered. Over the last few days I’ve been opening the dozens of booster packs this gave me, and the above photo is a shot of all the cards laid out waiting to be sorted and boxed. There’s a lot of interesting material in this set, and I’m looking forward to tweaking my existing Commander decks and perhaps making some new ones.

photo1

The above shows the few mythics (and promos) I have pulled from the boosters, with only 4 or 5 left to open. In terms of numbers, this is statistically low. But I’m happy I got the Gorgon plainswalker and the big angel at the back of the picture. Epic Experiment though… that’s an underwhelming mythic!

Anyway I have a few unusual plans for my Return To Ravnica cards. In time, these plans will become clear to some of you πŸ™‚

I Went Crazy And Purchased 27 Gamebooks for About $150…

Thursday, September 13th, 2012

…and over 70% of the price was ‘shipping and handling’ πŸ™‚

Anyway, here’s the proof:

books2

And yes, I know one is missing from that photo. Every single one of these was purchased from Amazon, and all but one came from sellers in the USA. The average book price was about $1.50, and the average shipping cost was about $4. It took about 3 weeks for everything to arrive. Three of the books are (brand) new, and the others used, although many of them are obviously still ‘new’ (even if 20+ years old).

In this rather lengthy entry, I’ll offer opinions on many of these books, most of which I’ve read or played these past few weeks.

Sagard The Barbarian series (I have books 1, 3 and 4)

sagard4

I was attracted to this series since Gary Gygax was co-writer. Much like Sagas Of The Demonspawn, this is a 4-book gamebook series with a single hero that spans all books, leveling up as you play through them. The writing isn’t terrible, and the stories mostly interesting, but the structure is weak, there is very little section randomization (you are often referred to the next section, or the one after) and the books are short. Combat is often overly easy as well. After finding the first few battles trivial, I simply ended up reading the books from that point on.

Perhaps the most notable thing about these books is that in book four, I found this incredible paragraph:

ghozombies

It’s almost like someone was having a joke on the readers expense?

1-on-1 Gamebooks (I have ‘You are Fafhrd’ and ‘You are Garth’)

1on1_6two

TSR may have been late to the gamebook party, but they certainly made up for it with many different ranges of gamebooks. This 1-on-1 series was packaged as a pair of books meant to be played simultaneously (a ripoff of Clash of The Princes, in other words) and based on these two I have read were poorly designed and edited. They both suffer from the usual half-rate gamebook problems of jarring transitions, overt forcing (too many decisions made for the character) and infinite loops. The Fafhrd one in particular is a dreadful Monty-Haul-y city-dungeon hack filled with unlikely scenario upon unlikely scenario. Two ‘for the collection’.

Starlight Adventures (I added books 2 and 4)

ss2

I already had a couple of books in this ‘FF for the girls’ series. There’s no combat, and the game ‘system’ utilizes only your Zodiac sign and lucky number, but after reading book 2 thoroughly I have to say the series hardly falters for lack of complexity. You play a private detective on the search of a missing heir, and the search takes you around the world (including through Albany, NY!) and into the world of a traveling rock-and-roll band. ‘Failure’ in these books doesn’t mean death, it just means your life took some alternate path (like, no joke, marrying a wealthy oil baron you meet in a Vegas casino)! I liked it a lot, and plan to read the others I have in the series.

AD&D Gamebooks (I added 1, 9, 11, 12 and 18)

a18

I already had a few in this series (and the Marvel Super Heroes series, which uses the same system) and added five more. Inexplicably, although high numbered books in this series can fetch ridiculous ($100+) prices, I was able to get the last book published, Prince Of Thieves, for a song. The books are neither bad nor good, and notable for a style of writing that tends more toward prose and contains far less combat than gamebooks that originated in England. I like that the series sets different books in different AD&D worlds, although I wish they’d written a Spelljammer one when they had the chance!

Virtual Reality (book 3)

vr03

Staggeringly thinly-veiled allegorical story in which you, messianic representative of the oppressed ‘Judain’, lead a rebellion against ‘The Overlord’ and ultimately the physical embodiment of ‘Hate’ (the thing on the cover). At one point, you are emboldened by finding and reading a magical text called Song Of Suleimon. No I’m not joking! A very depressing and dreary book, in which most allies or even acquaintances die and the final, good ending feels like a bitter pill. Amusing since the author clearly tries to shoe-horn fantasy tropes (giant spiders, crystal golems) into a work that would probably have been better served as a (bad) novel. In short: another curious installment in a most curious series.

Catacombs (Book 3)

cat3

Another weirdo gamebook series from TSR. I have one already, the astonishingly-well-illustrated Fairy Mound Of Dragonkind, but am glad to now own the only ever Top Secret (an old 1980s TSR RPG) gamebook in the form of book 3 of this series, The Final Bug. I tried to play this one in full, but about half-way through the impossibly complex rules – which involve a dossier of secret documents (stored inside the back cover) and a villian’s complex that you assemble room-by-room using random die rolls – led me to continue by simply reading. Very well written, very interesting, and probably one of the more complex gamebooks every written. I’m happy my copy is essentially mint, including most of the secret documents still being sealed πŸ™‚

The Renegade Wizard

renegade

This gamebook was published only months ago, and is the first of a proposed series. My opinion: If you’re going to write a new gamebook in 2012 you had better make sure it’s better than the hundreds that came before it (such as Destiny Quest). In that sense, this book fails miserably. The author throws a very average Warlock Of Firetop Mountain clone at players, full of all the cliches and inconsistencies that gamebooks should have evolved beyond. It’s lengthy (over 500 entries) and reasonably well written, but lacks a soul and is ultimately a disappointment. I’m not sure a second book in this series will ever exist. Oh, and there’s hardly no illustrations, including zero full page ones πŸ™

Fabled Lands (books 5 and 6)

No comment, except to say that all installments in this superb series have now been republished. Get them while you can!

Treachery in Drakenwood (book 1)

fate1

I haven’t played it yet, but this is one of two (I have the other coming in a few days…) in a series from 1985 that is viewed highly by enthusiasts. Much like Fabled Lands, the player is free to explore as he sees fit, and careful notes (and a map!) must be kept since locations can be revisited. The game system looks satisfying complex and I look forward to playing both once I have the whole series (although, unlike Fabled Lands, the books are not connected).

Oh, and the art is terrible. As in I could almost draw better terrible:

spider2

Car Wars (book 1)

carwars1

Flipping through this, the first in a series of 6 books written by Steve ‘the American one’ Jackson, I was intrigued by the complexity of the system, especially combat. Lots of statistics, combat diagrams and damage maps to keep track of. Then I played the game, beat it in one sitting, and only got into one very brief fight! That said, I enjoyed this quite a bit. The story is suitably gonzo (as if Mad Max was set in the US) and the pace quite leisurely without abandoning a strange and constant menace due to the setting. I’m not sure if my first-play victory was dumb luck or if the book is easy, but I liked it enough I’m interested in others of the series.

I also purchased a few other books in my mega-order, as you may have noticed in the photo at the top. These included another Lone Wolf (I now have the first 20), some more Middle Earth series books, Bloodfeud Of Altheus (book 1 of Cretan Chronicles) and Dragon Warriors book 2. And lastly, this gem:

sniper1

A case of gamebooks expanding into genres they had no right venturing into perhaps? We shall see…

My New 3DSXL

Sunday, September 9th, 2012

A couple of weekends ago, I purchased this:

2

It’s the new, much larger model of the 3DS, called the 3DSXL. Nintendo announced this several months back, and since I thought the old 3DS screens were too small and loved my DSXL, I knew I was going to buy one.

So what’s new? Well it’s physically quite a bit bigger, with much larger (90% actually) screens, which are also brighter and (in the case of the top, 3D screen) have a better viewing angle. Physical changes to the hardware are all for the better, such as replacing old membrane style buttons (start, select, home) with actual buttons. The d-pad and analogue stick feel better as well. The larger size also makes the system much more comfortable to hold for me. The speakers are less powerful, which I think is a good thing since the sound tended to distort at high volumes on the old model.

As far as software changes or added functionality – there’s nothing! It’s the same old 3DS software, love it or hate it.

And on that last point… I’m still a bit on the fence. I love Nintendo games, and am happy to pay a tax to play them (ie. buying Nintendo systems), but I truly think the writing is on the wall with respect to dedicated portable handhelds. The 3DS is a nice unit and has some good games on it so far, but I truly question it’s future in the age of iPads and smartphones.

But as long as I have the 3DS I’ll love it and keep playing it. There’s a lot of good games on the horizon, including a new Smash Brothers, a new Mario RPG, a sequel to Luigi’s Mansion (a very underrated Gamecube game) and – most of all – a new Animal Crossing. I’m looking forward to playing all of them in XL style πŸ™‚