helsmuth

If you haven't watched the 1997 series of Berserk, do yourself a favour and check it out. The most 90's anime ever, from the grunge soundtrack to the ultraviolence. The 2016 reboot is just awful by comparison. Thankfully, the current decade of anime also has plenty of fantastic shows, as surveyed in my first post  (2010 - 2015) and second post  (2014 - 2016) of reviews. This post will highlight my favourites from the 2017 and 2018 anime seasons.

Following up on my previous post , here are some more anime (and other Japanese TV series) from the last 3 years that are worth checking out. Anime has never been easier to access, with online streaming sites like Crunchyroll , Funimation , Daisuki  &  AnimeLab (as well as Netflix, Hulu & YouTube). Many of these sites are subscription based, but some provide limited access to shows supported by advertising. The concept of simulcast and "simuldub," where shows are available within weeks of when they are originally broadcast in Japan, is really exciting.

After watching Blade Runner 2049, I was in the mood for some more neo-noir, so I decided to give Martian Memorandum another go. This is the second in the Tex Murphy series of point-and-click adventure games, originally released in 1991. It is one of many old school games that have been revived by GOG.com and can be played on modern computers. I was even able to play it on my Mac, using Boxer/DOS Box! My review (with some minor spoilers) is below.

I've been watching a bunch of anime recently, so I thought I'd collect together some brief impressions on what I've seen. This baker's dozen is very much a mixed bag, so your mileage may vary. At the very least, Steins;Gate and Parasyte are highly recommended. A lot of these series are available to stream online from Crunchyroll or Netflix and are worth checking out.

This game is beautiful. If I blame the limitations of the Xbox 360 for many of the drawbacks of DA2 , then at least with DA:I we get an expansive game with amazing graphics that finally gives my GTX 970M something to do. Maybe the environments aren't quite up to the standard of the Witcher 3 , but it is miles ahead of the previous two games. In many other aspects, DA:I synthesizes the best elements of DA:O and DA2, particularly in terms of combat and storyline. Combat is even more dynamic and immersive than DA2, but they've also introduced the option of a tactical view, which helps make combat more strategic. I switched between both, depending on how difficult the fight was and how many enemies I was facing. Some of the encounters are more difficult than DA2, and several times I faced a Total Party Kill. As for the story, more will be said below. It took me 84 hours for my first playthrough of the main storyline (not including the 3 expansions), so almost exactly the same as ...

The least popular game in the Dragon Age trilogy, and I can see why. Gone are the excellent camera controls from the PC version of DA:O . Indeed, combat in general feels much more like a console RPG. In some ways, this is an improvement - the mage in particular is much more dynamic, and many fights are over quickly. Likewise, the Mass Effect style dialogue wheel means that Hawke, the player character in DA2, is no longer a silent protagonist (for better or worse). Some of his (or her) sarcastic comments are quite amusing, but Hawke lacks the dry wit of Geralt of Rivia. Fenris, Varric, Aveline & Hawke

Unfortunately, my save files for the Isle of the Maker in NWN: Hordes of the Underdark were corrupted, so you'll have to wait a while for the next installment of that review . A colleague mentioned that Dragon Age: Origins was his favourite game of all time, so I decided to play that instead. It took me 85 hours for my first playthrough of the core game (without any expansions). My opinion (and many spoilers) are below.

The first expansion pack for the Witcher 3 took me 22.5 hours to finish the main story quests. I'm glad I waited a couple of months before playing it, since the next expansion "Blood & Wine" still has no release date. I'll definitely be preordering as soon as its available. The following review contains plot details and spoilers for the game.

This game starts in an inn. Not on the Plane of Shadow, where you fled as Undrentide crashed to the ground (if only Heroudis had flown her citadel above 1000 feet, like the wise Dagget Filth had advised...). Soon enough, the inn is under attack, thereby combining two of the laziest beginnings possible for a BioWare game. This hackery might be forgivable if they had leveled up my character to cover the gap in time, but oh well. Can NWN:HotU possibly live up to the example set by chapter 5 of Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn? We shall see...

When Neverwinter Nights was released in 2002, it had everything I wanted in a CRPG. In particular, Kal & I had tried the awful multiplayer in Baldur's Gate, but there's only so much of "you must gather your party before venturing forth" that we could put up with. I had enormous fun on the multiplayer servers, especially the persistent worlds . I spent quite a few hours in the level editor as well, dreaming of creating an electronic version of my pen & paper city, Helsmuth. However, I have never finished the single player game. I only ever made it as far as Chapter 2. Partly it was the sheer grind of tracking down the "Waterdhavian creatures," but mainly because it just couldn't compete with the experience of playing D&D in person. NWN did finally convince me to convert my game from 2nd edition to the 3rd edition rules, though, so there's that. The main reason I decided to buy NWN Diamond from GoG was because NWN2 was too demanding fo...

After 117 hours, I've completed my first playthrough of the Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. I actually bought a new laptop specifically so that I could play this game, since my Acer Aspire with GeForce GT 640M could barely keep up with the Witcher 2. I've had enormous fun with this game and I'm very much looking forward to playing the two expansion packs, Hearts of Stone and Blood & Wine. However, after such a satisfying ending, I feel the need to take a bit of a break for a while. More details (and spoilers for all three Witcher games) after the jump:

Planescape: Torment Retrospective  by Kieron Gillen (Rock, Paper, Shotgun) More lengthy, academic analysis of the game: Carr, Dianne (2003) Genre and Affect in Silent Hill  and Planescape Torment Game Studies 3 (1) ISSN:1604-7982 The PC game has been re-released  on the occasion of its 10th anniversary. However, you'll probably need to install the fixpack   to run it successfully on XP or Vista. Planescape: Torment has been released on GOG.com It is their second most-requested game title. GemRB Game Engine open source re-implementation of BioWare's Infinity engine, 1998-2002 http://sourceforge.net/projects/gemrb/files/ http://www.moddb.com/mods/gemrb-the-infinity-engine-clone http://linux.prinas.si/gemrb/doku.php http://forums.gibberlings3.net/index.php?showforum=91 Pages of Pain Troy Denning's book

En Route Preventing an overland journey from deteriorating into a tedious succession of random encounters has always been a struggle for me as a DM. Therefore, when the player characters found themselves over 300 miles from the next plot point in the main storyline, I was keen to try out some of Penumbra's mini-adventures: Dancin' The Night Away  "A travelling party is charmed into serving at a pixie's dance and must escape."  very harsh: all of the DC 20+ Will saves are not something that I would want to inflict on my players very often. If you take away their ability to act, then you reduce them to a passive audience. They are sure to find this trying on their patience.  However, it is in keeping with the reputation of the fey as enchanters and illusionists. Gwydd and his band of cheeky tricksters are only after a bit of fun at the adventurers' expense, but their ploy stands a significant risk of backfiring.  The player who heard Amadan's warning ...

Fields of Blood: The Book Of War Eden Studios have created a truly impressive pen & paper resource management sim. They describe in detail how a DM and players can incorporate these rules into their D&D 3.5 campaign. For 10th-20th level characters who decide to establish a stronghold and raise an army, this book provides a comprehensive, coherent basis for adding wargaming to your roleplaying. However, there are aspects of these rules that are unsuitable for my own game: the rules operate on a fixed level of detail and impose certain assumptions on the way that settlements function. Mass combat involves units of 100 basic troops, or their equivalent (a handful of giants, or one dragon). Resource management employs hexes with maximal diameter of 12 miles (just under 100 square miles in area). Since the empires in my game span millions of square miles, it is infeasible for me to describe every hamlet and outpost in such painstaking detail. Likewise, clashes between armi...

Open Mass Combat System Mongoose Publishing introduced the OMCS in Seas of Blood (2001), then expanded upon it in Quintessential Fighter (2002). Of all the mass combat systems I've come across for D20, this one is the easiest to convert a creature stat block into its corresponding mass combat statistics. Unit Hit Points (UHP) are equal to the total number of hit dice for all members of a unit, adjusted by Constitution modifier (and possibly by Toughness feat). Cavalry units receive a 50% bonus to account for their mounts. Particularly large or small units receive a modifier to damage from their ranged attacks. And then you're basically done. You roll a single to-hit roll for the entire unit, which is just the ordinary to-hit modifier for a single member of the unit, adjusted by the relative size of the unit and its target (eg. if a unit attacks another unit half its size, it receives +1 to hit and a x2 damage multiplier. Conversely, it's opponent is at -1 to hit). You...