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.
Carlos, Ben, and special guest host Scott discuss Zombies in popular culture and their impact on movies, television, books, and video games. Ben and Scott then go off on the new modification for Arma II called Day Z and explain that despite its many (MANY) flaws that it’s one of the best Zombies games ever made.
Also, Ben takes off for Australia on Wednesday, so there may not be another podcast for a few weeks (And this one was already delayed a few weeks, for which we’re sorry). We’ll see if Carlos can pull together a few special co-hosts to fill in for Ben.
I originally wrote this for my own personal blog, which I’ve revived. Â But it seemed like it belonged here too.
I had been wanting to write more but couldn’t really think of anything else to write about today until I saw the news in my FB feed that Ernest Borgnine had died at the age of 95. Â The man had a very long and distinguished career as an actor, winning an Oscar in 1955. Â He had more notable roles than the one I’m going to talk about, but my earliest memory of him as an actor was from the 1979 Disney movie The Black Hole.
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….
For a topic so massive in scope, Carlos and BJ call in their backup expert JJ to help them analyze all things Star Wars related. All manner of Star wars geekdom is discussed, including the Movies, anime, books, video games, television, and role-playing games.
I created an XBL account for my daughter, so that she can play Minecraft in an online game.
I get an email to her address saying that we have to verify the account (perfectly fine) by an adult.
Click it, and get taken to MSN (MSN? That’s your interface? Really?). Where it has two options – “Get your parent” or “ask by email.” Note that I’ll later find out that the “Ask by email” link doesn’t even work – it goes to a dead page.
Choosing ask a parent gives a confirm or deny link. I click confirm, and it asks me to sign in my account (fine, no worries).
Then I sign in, and it says it wants to verify me as an adult. And to do that, I see this:
“To verify that you’re an adult, you must provide a valid credit card number. A credit card is the only method of age verification we accept.
We’ll charge your credit card $0.50 (50 cents) and a portion will be donated to charity.”
A review of the popularity of My Little Pony and the creation of Bronies (Ben then surrenders his mancard) followed by some Batman talk to cleanse the palate.
Carlos and Ben review the Dresden Files in novel, comic book, television, and RPG format. Then they talk about the variety of online tools available for running games via a virtual table top or play-by-post campaign.
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).