I enjoy novels focusing on a character whose motivations and questions mirror my own darker side. Two recent examples, The Magus (John Fowles) and The Magician’s Land (Lev Grossman), both explore the plight of the young man, and what is he to do? The Magus is a cryptic chasm of false starts, true shocks spiraling the narrative down a hole so deep, I don’t know if I’ve climbed out yet.
There were so many times I asked the very same question the main character did, he might as well have been me. What just happened? Was I there? Who is in on this? Is anybody in on this? What does this all mean? Questions still flood my memory and I’m unable to breach the surface to breathe. What just happened? How am I 31? Did I really do that play? Were they laughing at me? Did I say the wrong thing at a social gathering six weeks ago? Is everybody aware I said the wrong thing? My inner frustration grows, moreso when I’m not even sure if I should do something about it. READ MORE
A while back I talked about Lord of the Fries, a Cheapass Games title about zombies working in various restaurants. While that game just finished up a successful Kickstarter campaign for a new edition, the zombies of Frieday’s (the Fast Food Restaurant of the Damned) first appeared in Give Me the Brain!, which itself just received a new “superdeluxe” edition as part of the Stuff and Nonsense campaign. READ MORE
In this super-sized episode of Gaijin Guide, Graham and Jeremy join their friends Terry and Rikku for a dice-rolling real estate competition! Itadaki Street Special, the predecessor to localized Wii title Fortune Street, features Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest characters in a game that resembles Monopoly but fixes many of that game’s infamous ills. Who will win? Is it Rikku? (It’s not Rikku.)
New episodes of Gaijin Guide are posted every other Wednesday.
If you are at all familiar with modern board games, you’ve likely been exposed to The Settlers of Catan. Klaus Teuber’s 1993 design helped to change the face of the hobby, kicking off the “eurogame” revolution. At the time, it was a massive paradigm shift for players who had been raised on Parker Brothers and Milton Bradley fare for generations. To this day, it is still a leading “gateway game” for introducing new players to the wider world of board games outside of the mass-market stalwarts. READ MORE
It promised a revolution. It promised a common consumer’s upheaval to the traditional console market: taking down the last stronghold against democratizing the creation and sale of video games, the home console market. It promised that the future wars of gaming would be fought with ideas, not hardware specifications. Ouya promised a lot when it first showed itself to the world. READ MORE
