Penny Arcade

This was an authentic series of text messages sent to me by Gabriel.  I would take a picture of it, but I would have to use my own phone to do so, which would sunder the universe.  Rest assured that such communiques are not uncommon, and that taken in aggregate they present a wholly unified Aesthetics of Shit.

I kept returning to the Transformers: War For Cybertron demo, time and time again - and yes, spell checker, Cybertron is a motherfucking word.  Even though I’d hit the level cap, I kept telling myself I “wasn’t sure” if I liked it or not, but that wasn’t entirely true.  I did like it; I just didn’t know why.

Did I like it because I wanted to?  Did I like it because robots that are also other things constitute the steel pantheon of my youth?  I don’t entirely know if it’s possible to extricate the person I am from what I like, and it hasn’t seemed to bother people who have read the site for the last decade, so long as I am forthright about my inclinations.  Well, I have one.

It is my inclination to like things that say Transformers on the front.

For those who live by a similar ethos, Transformers: War for Cybertron is an act of worship.  For creatures made of an indeterminate alloy, these beings are surprisingly, convincingly alive.  They fidgit.  They’re covered with plates of mysterious purpose that twitch and fold.  Even when shifted into a vehicular form, they still manage somehow to communicate a livingness.  This can’t really be overstated, and I want to praise them like I should.

To look at a screen of Transformers is to get ass-deep in some visual density.  Articulated metallic shapes shooting at other shapes on a planet made out of the same material they are presents the user with a suite of unique challenges.  Navigating such an environment (or even, at times, interpreting it) is something that utilizes every skill we’ve developed as enthusiasts of electronic entertainment.  There are polish issues that rise up: and not polish on the chrome surfaces, which uniformly gleam.  In attempting to play through the campaign, all three of us - at different times - fell entirely through the world into space.  Now, the game takes place in space, so falling through its infinite reaches with no hope of rescue isn’t the thematic break that it might be in other titles.  Plus, the party is spawned near one another at the end of a cutscene, which are frequent.  But it speaks to aberrant behaviors that run through the play experience: getting stuck on shit is surprisingly common.  Non-combat physical interactions between entities feel rough.  I wouldn’t say it was “half-baked,” but still.  It doesn’t feel entirely baked.

Multiplayer is a mess, but it’s a good mess, like a ladle of gumbo over dirty rice.  The second Activision game in as many months that attempts to boil stock off some venerated bones, but the classes (as we discussed earlier) sequester the entirety of the offering into four independent experiences, all of which have their own progressions, closer to Bad Company than Modern Warfare.  Except in Bad Company you might wait at the spawn in a vain attempt to secure a vehicle, whereas in Transformers, well, you know.  That’s where the “transformers” bit comes in.

Kee kurr kee kurrch jown.

I’m sure I’ll convince one of my cohorts to continue the campaign, but when we can jump into quick forty-kill rounds, progress, customize, and paint robots who crack each other open with Energon blades it may be a tough sell.  I want to investigate their Escalation mode, a take on a Hordy/Nazi Zombiesian mode that (combined with the classes) has potential.  The offering is surprisingly wide; the multiplayer that I think most people (me) assumed was “tacked on” is probably where I’ll spend the bulk of my time.

(CW)TB out.

if the feeling drops out of your voice

So yeah…how about those poop jokes. I guess at the very least it is not unprecedented.

I made a pretty major change to the rules in my D&D campaign that I wanted to share. I’m not sure this is right for every group but it really worked for my guys. I decided to make most checks a minor rather than a standard action.

Normally if a player wants to examine a strange fountain or try and pull a statue he needs to make a check. The DM might call for an arcana or a strength check and that is a standard action. This means that if you want to try and see if there is anything magical about the strange alter,you can do that but you can’t do much else. I found that my players would wait until after a fight to go around and make all their checks. This would be fine except that I would often spend a lot of time creating things in the environment that could affect the fight if the players used them. They simply didn’t want to waste a standard action on interacting with the world when they could spend it hitting the bad guy.

In our last game I decided to make checks a minor action and the results were incredible. My players were making checks all the time. Trying to determine if the crazy warlock was lying to them, checking to see if the magic runes are still active, can we reason with the demon? They all agreed that it really improved the game for them. As the DM I still reserve the right to tell them that a particular check is a standard action and I might do that depending on what they are trying to do. But for the most part I want them out there making checks and exploring the world.

Like I said this probably isn’t something for every game but if you have players like mine, it might be worth a try.

-Gabe out