The Fortnight in A Bad Education Towers #007
Intro
Yeah, every two weeks is probably best
New Stuff
Only new video was a Mean Machines Audit video:
I did my best for the Netherlands, but that US goalie was like a brick wall.
I did get a new video finished this week, thats scheduled to go up on Monday. This one is a bit more of an in depth look at Dark Castle that came up earlier in the Mean Machines Audit. It is, objectively, a terrible game but when you dig into it a wee bit then you can understand why it’s terrible. I did write down a few other potential games sent out there to die so might be a little sub series this.
I also need to finalise the Darkplace script as thats next in the list. And, yes, I need to finish Luigi’s Mansion 3 as well.
Broadsword!
So Hasbro launched a new version of HeroQuest on their version of Kickstarter which has also popped up in the UK on the Zavvi website. It looks to be a big box going for around £150 depending on what bits you get with it. £150. This massively misses the point of the old version of HeroQuest; when that one came out it was £20/£30 and you could walk into most toy shops to get a copy. It was a way to get a lightweight D&D game into the mass market which is pretty much the opposite it this new version. This looks to be going down the path of the huge box miniature games that have been raking in the money on Kickstarter, Gloomhaven probably being the pinnacle of these. This new HeroQuest is firmly for the collectors market, not a wide audience which the original had. This is fine, it’s just a bad sad that there isn’t that mainstream box out there that replicates the appeal that HeroQuest had back in the day.
The Spookiest Time of The Year
What with it being Halloween season, we’ve been making Ethan watch some more horror films. We got him to watch Sinister a couple of weeks back, a Blumhouse Productions horror film. And you know what? It was alright, a decent spooky story with a couple of good moment. Ethan, however, pretty much watched the whole thing from behind a cushion. This made me chuckle, until I saw this going around on twitter: a list of horror films based on how high they made people’s heart rates jump up. And number 1 on the list? Sinister.
Guess I can understand his reaction a bit better now.
Picked up Scream for him to watch as well. It’s probably a bit early in his horror film watching career as he may miss some of the references that Scream uses but, hey, it’s still a great film with one of the best last 30 minutes of any film.
Games Roundup
Been playing Retro Bowl on my phone which is really good. It’s an 8bit style American Football game, and the fact it’s so good should come as no surprise as it’s from the guy behind New Star Soccer which I reviewed years ago and very much enjoyed. And I was enjoying this one too, until the ugly head of micro-transactions popped up. You see, the currency of the game is coaching credits, depending on how well you do in a game you get like 2 or 3 from a match. You then use these to buy player, coaching staff and upgrade your stadium and facilities. Problem is, you need like 20/25 credits to get a good player which takes an age to save up when you need to keep your facilities up to scratch. After you upgrade then they can drop down again meaning you always need to pump credits into them, chipping away at your savings. Then you might lose the odd one if you don’t meet up with the team owners or something. It quickly turns into a pain with the best way forward being to drop money on extra credits. It’s a bit cynical and takes a bit of the shine off the game. Still, it’s free to try and 99p to unlock the full game which is probably still worth it.
Outro
Yeah, two weeks feels better unless something weird happens. See you in a fortnight!
Phil Doyle