Carlos and Ben give a shout out to their local gaming store before reviewing the Neverwinter beta and the upcoming MMOs from the PAX convention. Then they discuss the upcoming summer comic book movies and discuss Joss Whedon’s reaction to the Veronica Mars Kickstarter.
Category Archives: Reviews
COTB 018 – A Geek Christmas
After a small break Carlos and B.J. return for a Christmas review of gift ideas for the geek in your family. Along the way they talk Justice League speculation, the new Superman and Star Trek trailers, and engage in various other geeky topics.
COTB 014 – Geek news all the time
Carlos and B.J. take some time to catch up after taking another extended hiatus. All corners of the geek world are covered as the boys try desperately to discuss as much news as possible without being side tracked by rants and raves. Carlos succeeds in his normal graceful fashion while B.J. begs for a Mass Effect RPG, throws conspiracy theories out about the retiring of the Bioware founders, and gets a little creepy about Milla Jovovich.
COTB 013 – Free to play games and Asian horror films
After a long break Carlos and BJ return to wade through a huge collection of free to play video games, then they battle shoddy internet connections (apologies for the rough edit in the middle), and finish with a review of Asian horror movies.
Start Kicking….
I thought it might be nice for us to have a place for Basement dwellers to mention stuff they’re kickstarting, or stuff they think others might be interested in Kickstarting. I figure the comments make a reasonable facsimile of a thread….
COTB 008 – League of Legends and board games
For the first time Carlos and Ben have 3 guest hosts on the podcast to discuss board games and League of Legends. It may be a crowded room, but there’s a diverse experience where it comes to the hobby with this group (except for League of Legends, which is apparently the only MOBA game they all play).
COTB 001 – Kickstarter and Superman Grounded
Carlos and I cover the purpose of Coming out of the Basement, give a brief intro of each other and our geek credentials, then talk about Kick Starter and Superman Grounded (We can’t help ourselves and delve into the new 52 briefly).
Last minute Geek Christmas Gifts already?
Cripes, it’s Christmas already. What’s going on? Well, here’s gift suggestions- maybe for your geek friends, maybe for you.
Of course, I expect lots of folks around these parts are playing Skyrim or Star Wars: The Old Republic. I’m certainly doing the latter at the moment. The only problem looking at those as gifts is that it is incredibly likely your fans of the material already have them. ^^ But it wouldn’t hurt to check. Also, the Humble Indie Bundle 4 looks great, and half the profits go to charity.
Hey, look- The Guild Season Five is now out, just in time for Christmas.
Right Stuf Anime is having a bunch of sales. Of particular note is the remastered Utena DVD box sets. The series had been hard to find for awhile. It’s one of my wife’s favorites. I may have picked up the Soul Eater holiday package…
For the budding RPGer, or someone who might want a bit simpler rule set, Pathfinder’s Beginner Box has been popular. And the Bestiary 3 was just released! Another interesting up and coming d20 game seems to be Legend. It’s a little over the top at times, but it’s an interesting approach to mixing classes, races, and specialties via mix-and-match tracks. That is, you can take a bit of ranger, combine it with a bit of steampunk robot-making, and be a dragon. Or you can be an elven ranger with all of its ranger-y goodness. (I suspect the former option might be more popular, but ya never know.) ^_^ Plus, right now all proceeds go to the Child’s Play charity. Nice. And lest I forget, although I haven’t had the opportunity to play it, the 3rd edition of Mutants and Masterminds sounds fun.
For the eBook fantasy readers out there, check out B. Justin Shier’s Zero Sight and its sequel, Zero Sum. Check out Zachary Rawlin’s The Academy. Both are marketed YA, but fun reads. Of course, if you haven’t picked up Sanderson’s Way of Kings, that’s fun. And Rothfuss’s Name of the Wind and its sequel, The Wise Man’s Fear. If you’d like RPG tie-ins, Paizo’s James Sutter’s Death’s Heretic is really very good.
Come to think of it, I can recommend books forever. =P
Oh, and I did pick up Betrayal at House on the Hill, for board gaming goodness…
And who can go wrong with a squishable Narhwal? (Picked one up for Q, it’s great. ^_^)
Other suggestions?
Dark Sun Dark Sun (to the tune of “Dark Place”)
So, 4E Dark Sun is here. First, I must say, I like it. I like it a lot. I had a chance to play with pregens this past weekend, and my group had a blast and is probably switching over to Dark Sun in the near future.
The 4E Campaign Book is one of my favorite 4E products to date.
I’ll start by mentioning some of the things I *didn’t* like.
-Elemental Priests aren’t nearly as interesting as the old elemental clerics were. I see what they were going with- they have all these other power sources for leaders, so they don’t need to be restricted to the cleric- but I don’t think it worked particularly well.
-Sorcerer-Kings aren’t as powerful as they used to be, and I don’t think the game captures the arcane/psionic joining that the original game had.
-Defiling. I’m not sure I liked the way they’ve handled defiling and preserving here.
-Almost forgot this one. Editing. How many references to page XX were there? This isn’t the Malkavian clanbook. :P
Things I liked and disliked.
-Wild Talents. I love Wild Talents. I like that they’re included. Some of them are kind of ‘eh,’ though, and there’s nowhere near the diversity and craziness of 2E wild talents, which I thought made for some of the most fun game situations.
-The art. Some of the art was really interesting, and certainly evoked Athas in my mind. Some of it was recycled, which is always kind of ‘eh.’
Things I really liked.
-Alternate treasure. Instead of an item in the item-poor world, how about the favor of elemental spirits, or breakthroughs in the Way? I think these are neat additions to the game.
-Themes. The Dark Sun book has introduced Character Themes, which give more options for your characters. Want to be a gladiator? Add the gladiator theme to your character. Each theme gives you a secondary role, a new encounter power, options for powers at higher levels, and access to feats and prestige class, most of which are quite interesting. Big plus here.
-Templars were reflavored, and unlike the Elemental Priests, I really like what they did here. “Templar” is now a character theme you can apply to your character, and templars are basically sanctioned arcane magic users. Very cool.
-On a related note, the sorcerer-king Warlock pact. Really like this- your warlock was granted power through the rituals of the sorcerer-king.
The Curious Case of Copyright and Anime
As the others allude to in the About section, in my Real Life I do a great deal with copyright.
The Anime Industry runs on copyright infringement.
Just about everything the fan community does with anime is infringing somehow. This type of statement could be made about fandom in general, but it’s particularly true with anime. And the anime industry wouldn’t exist as we know it without it- in Japan as well as the US.