I guess I've been slacking off, no entries for over a week. Even still, I don't have any grand revelations to share at the moment. I just don't feel very creative lately.
As a Heroscape player, I was very happy to receive my wave 7 expansion packs in the mail the other day. The wave is more than a bit Utgar (bad guy) heavy, but what's really important are the mounted Knights, the Templar Cavalry unit. I can't wait to use these guys in a game, and were in fact almost my entire reason for ordering this whole wave of figures.
I really can't say enough good about Heroscape. I love it. It's like the Rifts of miniature gaming, meaning there's a little bit of everything. Dragons fight cyborgs. Elves fight samurai. World War II heroes rub shoulders with vikings. It plays extrordinarily well, using a variant system of the old Heroquest boardgame (any other oldies remember that one?). I highly recommend checking out the Rise of the Valkyrie master set if you can still find it.
Lately I've been in more of a videogame mood, which is good since I've spent so much money on videogames. One of my most recent acquisitions is R-Type Command for the PSP. It's slow paced, but otherwise very good. It's definitely a tactical gamer's tactical game. I probably need to do a full review of it.
I've been sick the past couple of days which meant I had not much better to do than sit in front of my 360 and blow my nose a lot. It gave me a chance to snag a few achievements on old games (I'm not normally an achievement whore). I found myself playing Warriors Orochi a lot yesterday.
About Warriors Orochi, I wonder if newbie gamers of today are like I and my friends were back when we first started playing D&D. Back in those days, we had characters which were named after whatever comics character sounded cool to us at the time. Travis Morgan, Lilith, Jocosta, Conan, and others all appeared in our games' collections of NPCs and PCs. I have a feeling if we were starting to play today, we'd have Zhao Yun, Xiahou Dun, and Diao Chan in those lists. I wonder if any newbies still do that or if I'm just an old fogey?
Regardless, videogames are a good source of names if you're lacking inspiration. They also provide an instant visual hook for the character. No, it's not original, but a lot of us are just in it for fun rather than trying to publish anything. One of the major characters in Battle Fotress Independence came from a videogame. His name is Vermillion. Bonus points if you know what game.
Moving on and closing out, I've been trying to follow Macross Frontier as much as possible. It's probably sad that I'm so old yet so enthralled with this anime. Episode 7 is a good example of why. I don't think there has ever been such beautiful "mecha porn" as the main battle that episode showcases. It hits all the emotional buttons that a centerpiece mecha battle should with it's excellent music, two heroines singing for our protagonist, a mysterious outsider, huge spaceships...
It's only episode 7. I don't know how they're going to top that one. I was worried the series was going to get lost in the homage bits which got out of hand in episode 2. But with the near perfect ending of episode 6 and the concentrated awesomeness of episode 7, I think Macross Frontier is finally ready to live up to it's name and explore some new territory.
Tags: Heroscape Videogames Macross
