Mar 04 2008
Video games and dice
Brian’s been focusing on the dangers of the real world lately, so in the interests of proper ying-yang balance and chi flow of the blog (or something), I will step up to supply some entertainment for you.
Today, I don’t have much to offer, quantity-wise, but I feel the quality makes up for it. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the trailer for Lego Batman. I, personally, am always excited when I see someone’s breaking out of Arkham, and if you toss in my love for Legos? Looks like a winner to me.
In your Calendar of Obscure and Largely Made-up Holidays, you might notice that today is GM’s Day, so be sure to give your game master, dungeon master, or story teller a quick thanks for their hard work, interesting plot lines, and extreme amounts of patience in not killing off your entire party out of frustration. Thanks, guys. Without you, we’d just be weirdos sitting in our living room, tossing around strangely shaped pieces of plastic. With your help, we’re Jedi, or half-elf mages, or dashing bandits, or mech pilots, or…
I’m afraid my post isn’t all good news, though. On GM’s Day, it seems oddly fitting to find out that Gary Gygax, the man at least partially responsible for the entire hobby, has passed away. I can only hope that an overly-elaborate, multi-level mausoleum will be built, and he’ll be buried with several powerful magical items that can only be retrieved by defeating the dozens of monsters that patrol the hallways.
Finally, in more of a middling ground, I enjoyed this article about Grim Fandango, one of those games that was entertaining, but difficult to market, and thus failed commercially. It was a somewhat odd game, but very fun. It was, as I recall, one of the first games I played on CD-ROM, and one of the last “adventure games” I recall coming out before the genre was grievously wounded by FPS, RTS, and console games. Unfortunate.
