Bakery Review - Sugar Deaux Bakery

Yeah, you read that right. I'm reviewing a bakery. I told you I was going to review some crazy stuff, and you were all like, 'hey, man, it's cool, we'll read it,' and I was all like, 'man, I'm warning ya, it'll be crazy!' and you were all like, 'naw, dawg, it be cool,' and then I was all like, 'fo shizzle my nizzle' and then we all decided to quit talking like white kids who let their pants hang too low because they think they're black.

My friend called me last night to ask me if I would help out his friend who has a bakery and is trying to get it a little face-time. My first instinct was to say, 'are you high? A bakery?' and then he said, 'I will bring you some baked goods,' and I immediately agreed. For a box full of delicious baked desserts, I would review a plastic dog whistle.

When it comes to baked desserts, I'm somewhere between a connoisseur and a rabid fan. So when that box of delicious treats arrived, it didn't take me many bites to realize that I really loved the cupcakes. The strawberry cupcake was amazing, and there was a huge cinnamon cupcake decorated up like a king cake (you know, Mardi Gras? Comes with a plastic baby inside, and the guy who gets the baby is the king for next year, by which we mean that next year he has to buy the cake? Yeah, that). That huge cupcake was also super tasty. I'm writing this review and kind of salivating a little, but I'm not too concerned because I still have a couple more cupcakes downstairs.

This bakery, the Sugar Deaux Bakery, does baked treats really well - better than you can get at the grocery store, for sure - and they also do some stunning wedding cakes. They are going for a sort of Texas-meets-Louisiana thing, and also sell pralines and chocolate-filled croissants. Also chocolate-covered pretzels, which were good, but I wouldn't go to Plano for pretzels.

If you want to see some pictures of the cool stuff the Sugar Deaux Bakery can make for you, just visit their site. Of course, if you do, you will have to see a website that was apparently designed by the owner's 12-year-old nephew who just finished a book about how to build a gaudy Angelfire page. But ignore the horrible design and poorly shot photography. Seriously, the food is very good. The website is not representative of the quality of the baked treats. It's like opposite day.

Now, this still seems kind of insane, reviewing a bakery. I mean, it's not like my Finnish audience is over on the other side of the Atlantic going, 'man, next time I'm in Plano, I totally have to stop by this Sugar Deaux place!' You're not coming to Texas for the express purpose of getting a strawberry cupcake. Hell, I'm not even going to drive to Plano unless someone I know needs a wedding cake, because no cupcake is worth the 90-minute round trip. But there's a bigger reason I'm telling you about the Sugar Deaux Bakery

The folks who run the bakery are parents of three sons. And the reason they're trying to make a run at the bakery is to raise money for their sick boys. Out of three kids, two are medical train wrecks, diagnosed with the kinds of illnesses that sound like they were invented by Doc Savage in a fight against underworld ape-men. 'Monk! We only have minutes to adjust the Central Hypoventilation Syndrome before we're overrun! Tell Patty to prep the Spinal Muscular Atrophy!'

So these people are trying to raise money, not just to take care of their kids, but to find cures for their incredibly horrible maladies. And that's why I agreed to review a bakery. Well, that and free cupcakes. That, and the dad is a cop, and I hope some day he can get me out of a speeding ticket.

So here's the part where you can do something if you're not in Dallas. If you go to the bakery's website, they also have a link to the site they're trying to use to raise research money. It's another incredibly professional affair, and when I say 'incredibly professional', I mean 'this is why Geocities died.' But it's a mix of brave and gut-wrenching and sad and uplifting, which is the kind of emotional cocktail I like to chase with hard liquor and Quaaludes. And they've got a donate button where you can throw a couple bucks to help kids who get messed-up diseases that I can't pronounce or even begin to understand.

Am I about to turn into some kind of soft-headed crybaby, telling you about whatever charity wants your money and then playing 'Arms of an Angel' and making you look at very sad kittens? No, no I am not. However, if you know of a charity that could use some exposure, and they are willing to hand-deliver a box full of delicious baked goods that I can share with my whole family, I may be willing to consider your plea. It does help if we're already friends, and you can personally vouch for the people running the donation site.

One more thing - if you are going to ask me to review your random storefront, pay a rodeo clown ten bucks to design you a site that doesn't play really loud New Orleans street music when I get there. Although if you give me fantastic strawberry cupcakes, I'll overlook it.

Turn down your speakers and check out the Sugar Deaux Bakery at:
http://www.sugardeauxbakery.com/

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Expansion Review - Dungeon Command: Tyranny of Goblins

Tonight's review feels a little like I'm cheating. There are probably a dozen games ahead of Dungeon Command in my pile of stuff that I'm supposed to review, but when it comes down to it, I don't want to play those. I want to play Dungeon Command again. So when the Tyranny of Goblins set arrived, all the other stuff got pushed to the back of the list so I could send my evil hordes out to take on the heroes of Cormyr.

Having already thoroughly enjoyed the original Dungeon Command sets, I really wasn't worried about the goblins. Heck, I was really looking forward to them. But as is the case with almost any expansion release, there was always the possibility that they would either be too powerful or too weak. Too strong is how these things usually go, as new powers and new units are introduced to an existing game, but every now and then, the new stuff just isn't up to competing with the old stuff.

So I played the goblins, and my wife played the heroes. And I got my ass kicked so badly that I have to write this review standing up.

It might seem like I'm about to complain about the goblins being underpowered, but let me clear that up right now. My wife played very well, and I made mistakes. I should have sent my weaker units to gather treasure, rather than charging them into the fight. I should have played a little more defensively, and built up my forces before I sent them running across the field like a third-grader fielding a kickball. I can't even blame it on the dice, because the game doesn't have any dice. I lost because I sucked and my wife played really smart.

In fact, if anything, my loss illustrated how well balanced the new set is. If I had won with as many mistakes as I made, the goblins would have been a total train wreck. They do have some incredibly powerful units, but everyone else has those, too. They also have some really weak guys, but everybody else also has punk-ass cannon fodder. There are some incredibly cool examples of units working together - the wolf is twice as dangerous next to a goblin cutter, and the hobgoblin sorcerer is especially impressive if you keep him in the background. The strength of your team is not in how big they are, but in how you use them. You know, like a penis.

Happily, not all your fighters are goblins. Sure, you've got a good handful of goblins, but you've also got a hobgoblins and bugbears, a wolf, a troll and a huge burly demon. Yeah, that's right, the goblins have a demon. Like the other two sets, using these pieces appropriately is the key to winning the game. Your bugbear berserker is a bad-ass, but all by himself, he's cannon fodder. Manage your territory, though, and you'll be able to control the battlefield and continually flummox your opponent (and who doesn't like to hand out some good flummoxing?).

The order cards you get are also really handy, though unlike the drow or hero sets, it can be really hard to get extra cards. That's one strength the original sets have that the goblins lack, but the order cards you can get tend to be pretty darn cool. You can run faster, hit harder, and stand longer. I think my favorite was the dodge card, 'mortal wound,' which ignores the heaviest, most brutal attack - but then your guy dies at the end of your next turn, so you better make that next turn count. This was one part I did right - after my berserker was tag-teamed by some pipe-hitting heroes who should have cut him down in his prime, he managed to get one more turn. I like to imagine the looks on the faces of the ranger and cleric when the bugbear looked at the hole in his chest and started grinning. Then he killed them. Then he died.

I kind of wonder if anyone is buying these sets just to use them to play D&D. If they are, I think they're not doing too bad. The game is great, and you get 12 painted miniatures for 40 bucks. That's just over three bucks a figure, and you get a pretty decent variety. No, there are no orcs, but I'm not even sure those guys are evil any more. I think they've been turned into a goofy Games Workshop sideshow.


I still have kind of a beef with the format of Dungeon Command. We were discussing as we played how much we wish we could just buy some cards, or a few new figures, so that we could fine-tune our armies a little. It's great to get this balanced army that's ready to go, right out of the box, but I desperately want to mix it up. Of course, that's easier to do now that I have three different sets. It would be easier if I had some smaller sets, is all I'm saying.

A nice thing about the Tyranny of Goblins set for Dungeon Command is that it's not hard to figure out if you want it. If you like Dungeon Command, and want to see more variety, get the goblins. If you're buying a couple sets to try it out, the only question is whether you like goblins more than dark elves (or both more than heroes). There are no balance issues to mess it up and no difficult decisions that you'll regret later. Goblins are fun, and so are drow, and so are heroes. Buy the ones you like, or just try the game with one set, or go for broke and get them all. All I can really tell you is that the game is a blast, and now you can add goblins, and if that's not enough for you, then I'm sure there's an exhaustive but wordy summary on BGG somewhere that you can read if you're already bored with folding socks and watering the grass.

Summary

Pros:
Lots of new cool figures
A new faction with new possible play styles
Adds one more piece of awesome to a game that was already pretty darn awesome

Cons:
Same as before - I wish they had boosters

Did I say 12 minis for 40 bucks? Not if you're shopping at Noble Knight.
GET EM CHEAPER

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Comic Book Review - The Sixth Gun

I don't know how I lived without an iPad before I bought one. It does all this totally cool stuff, almost acts like a laptop without weighing me down, and it has this awesome thing where I can buy comic books cheap and have them with me wherever I go.

Now, before I tell you about the totally awesome comic I'm reading now, I should mention that I have pretty much sworn off comics altogether. I started reading Spider-Man when I was 16, and was a serious comic nerd from then on. I read Punisher and Spawn and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, back when the turtles were actually bad-ass killers and not dorky Saturday-morning cartoons who ate too much pizza and said, 'cowabunga!' But then, about 1998, I just kind of gave 'em up. The costumes were stupid. The stories were endlessly recycled. Timelines were impossibly convoluted. Superheroes were just lame.

I still love comic books, but now I'm a lot pickier. If you've got a super-powered crime-fighter wearing brightly colored underoos, count on me to take a pass. But the medium is still incredibly fun, and so I still read comics now and then. I just don't buy them in paper form any more. And I avoid superheroes.

The Sixth Gun has no superheroes. Instead, it has gunslingers in the Old West, but this is no rehashed Jonah Hex. The Sixth Gun is about a handful of people who are staving off the end of the world by preventing the forces of darkness from controlling all six of the most dangerous weapons the world has ever known. There are ghosts and dark magic, monsters and demons, and to make it extra awesome, brothels and gunfights. It's like if Harry Potter starred in a John Wayne movie, but without all the teenage whining.

Too many comic books depend on fight scenes and cool powers to drive a tale. Some of the better ones land on a compelling story, but pay too little attention to the characters. The best ones, like The Walking Dead and The Sixth Gun, weave as excellent a yarn as any Dickens novel, by building an interesting world with believable characters and a suspenseful plot. From Gord Cantrell, the escaped slave with talents in the dark arts, to Drake Sinclair, the pitiless gunslinger with questionable motives, even the heroes are flawed enough to be interesting.  Becky Montcrief, a young woman thrust unwillingly into the middle of the struggle when she comes into possession of the most dangerous of the guns, is a likable and brave character who refuses to be controlled. Yet she is still given to occasional weakness, and is no more a saint than - well, than anyone you know. Compared to Superman, the world's most boring hero, these characters are so interesting that you could almost watch them doing the laundry (mostly because if they're doing laundry, it's probably because they have to wash bloodstains out of their long johns).

The story in The Sixth Gun would be thrilling even without these well-developed characters. The collection of arcane weapons carried by some of the most evil men on Earth are primed to release untold darkness and end the world - or remake it, depending on who you're asking. That's where the story starts - but after 18 issues (which is as many as I've read so far), the story continues to twist and turn, and shows no sign of slowing down or losing my interest.

And the art! If you read enough superhero comics, you get used to a pretty boring, redundant, generic style. Sure, now and then someone is really impressive, but for the most part, the best comic book artists are indistinguishable from each other. This is not the case in The Sixth Gun, which balances out a horrific story with a clean, crisp, detailed look that borders on being cartoony. It's not Japanese-inspired crap, either - it's unique and exceptional, and you'll want to read the book just to look at the pictures.

One of the greatest strengths of comic books is the ability to tell a story with just the art. So many comics miss this aspect, and plug in copious dialog just to tell you what you should be seeing. The Sixth Gun, on the other hand, takes full advantage of the medium. It spares no detail, relaying incredible scenes without getting cluttered, and often going full pages without any written words at all. Those pages still manage to convey sadness and rage, loss and betrayal, without being the kind of thing that you just skip past to get to the part where someone gets punched in the eye.

I'm not sure exactly how many issues of The Sixth Gun are available at this point, because I just have the first three trades. But I do know that there's more story in 18 issues than you'll usually see in twice as many pages about costumed crimefighters, and better yet, no gaudy color schemes. It's not far enough along that you won't be able to get whatever has been created to date, and it's so good that when you finish, you can go back to the start and read it all again.

I don't read many comic books any more, even with Comixology on my iPad. I'm picky as hell, and rather hard to please, and so when I find a story as outstanding as The Sixth Gun, I feel a need to crow about it. If supernatural gunfights in the streets of old New Orleans sound like fun, you should definitely consider flipping through The Sixth Gun.

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Board Game Review - Puzzle Strike 3rd Edition

Oh my holy crap. I have been playing this game wrong since I got it two years ago. It worked so well that I just assumed that's what was intended, and now I feel kind of stupid because I finally read the rule correctly and thought it was a rule change. The rules haven't changed for counter-crashing, I just played wrong for two freaking years.

So now I feel bad. Sort of. See, the way we played it worked so well that we could knock out four games in two hours, and we loved it. When we played it correctly, we didn't like it any more, because it took too long and was kind of slow. What used to be a slam-fest is now kind of long in the tooth.

So I apologize. The rule change was not a rule change. This is the same game as before, but a little more free-for-all than it used to be. I'm keeping my first review up here, so that everyone can see what a maroon I am. I take it back, and when I review Shadows, the expansion to Puzzle Strike, I'll make sure to play it right. Then I'll revert to playing it wrong, because the way we used to do it, we liked it a lot better.

Here's the original (wrong) review:

It must be so awesome to be Dave Sirlin. Not because his games are successful - they are, but that's not why I'm jealous. I wish I was Dave Sirlin because there must be a parade playing in his head every day, where little imaginary people carry him on imaginary shoulders and whistle 'Hail to the Chief' everywhere he goes. To read the rules he writes, he is this generation's greatest  designer, a veritable virtuoso of cardboard, the Amadeus of gaming.

Though I have to wonder - if Sirlin is so magnificent, why does he need three tries to get it right? Puzzle Strike 3rd Edition is the same game as Puzzle Strike 2nd Edition and Puzzle Strike 1st Edition (the original, of course, was just called 'Puzzle Strike,' because it came out before Sirlin knew he was going to have to keep changing it). The difference between the two predecessors and this latest iteration is that a bunch of the chips changed and the rules of the game changed. Yeah, that's all.

The least obvious but most interesting changes that Sirlin has made to his magnum opus is that many of the character chips have changed. By way of refresher, you start each game with three character chips that are unique to you, and buy more as you play. These character chips are usually fairly powerful and can really alter how you play. The fire chick can take wounds to do some harsh attacks, then throw the wounds away to do other attacks. The fish dude has lots of defensive capabilities. The panda is pretty good at getting paid. The ninja girl is extraordinary at showing people her bikini underwear.

The changes in the character chips range from 'so what' to 'I can't believe he did that.' The panda, for instance, has changed almost completely. My original copy was lost in the fire, so I'm going off memory for some of these, but I do remember most of these being pretty much how they are now, with several being very different. The changes affect... well, almost nothing, really. They probably make the game more balanced, so that you can win with whoever you use, since that's kind of Sirlin's thing. He believes emphatically in balanced tournament play, and fun is a lot less important than balance.

For instance, he probably thought the 'combine' action was overpowered. That would explain why it costs you money to do it, which would make it a little more difficult to decide whether to combine your gems if it were not for the fact that you almost always want to combine your gems whenever you possibly can. This particular change has almost no effect on game play, at least from where I'm sitting, because I'm still going to combine every single time I can, and I don't care how much it costs.

The rules changes, on the other hand, definitely change how you play. For starters, it's not last-man-standing any more. The game ends when one player goes over 10 gems, and then the player with the smallest gem pile wins. I think this decision was made to balance out the other significant alteration, in which countering attacks actually removed gems from the game.

As opposed to nearly every other change, which I have to say are all improvements, this cancelling thing almost ruins Puzzle Strike, at least for me. The best thing about Puzzle Strike was always how fast it went, how it would be almost a frenzy of action for 20 minutes and then you would be watching the last two players battle it out. I liked that. Hell, I loved that. I liked the old Puzzle Strike more than nearly every other deckbuilder, exactly because it was this frenetic, mind-bending duel that would build towards an inevitable climax. It was tense and fast and fun.

Now, though, Puzzle Strike 3 is not fast or tense, and that has the basic result of making it less fun. It takes almost three times as long to finish a game, and it has removed the tension and sense of impending doom. It might balance better, and it might make for better two-player tournament play, but it has made these giant strides at the expense of making it not as much fun to play.

I know Dave Sirlin is a genius. I know this because it says so in the rules, where he says how fantastic the game is, and how it's hard to make a game this fantastic. But genius or not, I'm going to have to overrule him. When I play Puzzle Strike with my friends (as opposed to tournaments, because I would rather lick the shocky end of a 9-volt battery than play this game in a tournament), we will not use the amazing disappearing gem rule. We're overthrowing the establishment, breaking the rules, forging our own path and striking our own trail. We're true innovators. Mavericks, if you will. What's next? I don't know. Maybe we'll start ripping tags off mattresses or feeding our mogwais after midnight.

I'm poking a lot of fun at Dave Sirlin here, and it's not entirely fair because I have, by-and-large, enjoyed all his games. Yomi was a blast. Flash Duel is still a riot, and the new version is even better than the original. And Puzzle Strike is still awesome, but in this case, it's going to be awesome because I am throwing out some if his rules. They might work great for two-player tournament battles, but they suck when you're playing with your friends. And unlike Dave Sirlin, I don't give a flying rat's ass about game balance, as long as the game is fun.

Summary

2-4 players (but apparently, Sirlin thinks you should just play with 2)

Pros:
Many of the changes are actually better, and make the game faster
Still a pretty damned fun game
All tweaked up for tournament play

Cons:
At least one of the new rules makes it less fun than it was - not broken, just less fun
I don't play tournaments, so I could care less about balance issues

If you're thinking about playing Puzzle Strike in tournaments, you probably really need the 3rd edition. If not, just play what you already have. It's still fun. Either way, you can only get this online from Game Salute:
SO MUCH BALANCE

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Movie Review - The Avengers

I hate going to the movies, because no matter how crowded or empty the theater, there's always some inconsiderate douche nozzle who feels absolutely compelled to hold lengthy conversations while the rest of us are trying to watch the film. So as much as I wanted to see The Avengers in the theater, I didn't get around to it until last night.

Holy CRAP that movie is awesome. If it weren't for Christopher Nolan's recent Batman reinventions, The Avengers would easily be the best superhero movie of all time. It was fast and exciting and hilarious and just plain fun. It was the first time in years that I saw a movie and said, 'Damn! I need to own this movie!'

If you've seen the movies leading up to this huge special-effects monstrosity, you know the characters. Heck, if you read comic books, you know Captain America and Thor, Hulk and Iron Man, Hawkeye and Black Widow. You probably also know they're not the actual founding members of The Avengers, but if you see this movie, you'll be willing to let that ride. I'm not sure what Ant-Man could have added to this one, aside from being a really stupid hero that would only have been marketable in the late 60's.

When you go to a superhero movie, you expect a certain level of action. And that certain level would be 'a lot.' The Avengers knows this, which is why it has lots and lots of high-flying, hard-hitting, laser-blasting fights. Hell, the first throw-down happens in the first five minutes, and blows a crater into New Mexico the size of Poughkeepsie. And that's just the appetizer that comes before the salad that you get before the steak. The fights just get better and better, until the battlefield is all of Manhattan and explosions are causing more property damage than Godzilla with explosive diarrhea.

A recent development that I've seen in so-called action movies recently is the shaky-cam fight. This is where two heroes mix it up with brutal punches and lightning kicks, and the camera flies all over the place like it was taped to a gadfly with ADD and a caffeine buzz. The result is that you know you saw a fight, but you don't actually know what happened. This is as satisfying as having someone describe a cheeseburger. It might make you hungry, but it's not going to make you jump out of your chair and say, 'Oh, HELL YES!!!' Of course, if a cheeseburger is making you jump out of your chair and yell, you may want to let it cool off first.

The Avengers does not use the shaky cam. In fact, the fight scenes are exciting because you see every blow, every blast, every flying body and demolished tree. When Hulk pounds the stuffing out of Thor, you see the giant green fist hit that pretty-boy face and then you see the sanctimoniously arrogant tool go flying through a stack of metal crates. It's visceral and powerful and fun, and you can almost feel the blows landing. Happily, they're not landing on you, because these guys would seriously kill you if they hit you.

If you saw Captain America or Thor or Iron Man 2, you might have been skeptical about The Avengers. I actually kind of liked Iron Man 2, but Thor and Captain America left me wondering why anybody would want to watch these yahoos doing anything at all. Those two movies were dry and flat and uninspired, but it turns out that all you need to do to make Thor and Captain America interesting is to put them in the same room with Bruce Banner and Tony Stark. Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey Jr were not just spectacular on their own, they provided the raw material that made it fun to watch two otherwise dull heroes really come into their own.

In fact, while the action sequences in The Avengers were enough to make me hoot and holler (especially the ones with Hulk), the reason the movie was so fantastic was the dialog. There were witty jokes delivered with spot-on precision. There were lightning-fast exchanges that left you a little dizzy and lightheaded, and grinning like an idiot when Tony Stark makes someone else look like a neanderthal moron. Even the one gut-wrenching scene was punctuated by lines so well-written and well-delivered that you wanted to laugh as you wanted to cry.

The recent Batman trilogy raised the bar for comic-book movies, but it raised to a dark, serious level with disturbing acts of violence and too many shades of gray (but not 50. Definitely not 50). The Avengers is like the slap-in-the-face answer to those moody epics, because while it has its serious moments, it's a fun romp and a thrilling tale that leaves you wondering if Joss Whedon is going to pull a Joss Whedon and kill one of the heroes. I won't spoil it and tell you whether they all live - it is, after all, Joss Whedon.

I am absolutely delighted to see comic-book movies pulling in the audiences they're seeing these days. It's like vindication for my misspent youth (which I misspent by being scared of girls and reading WAY too many comic books). I am also glad to see them being made by awesome writers and outstanding directors, full of big-name actors who bring power and poise to the screen. I remember when superhero movies were crap, and it's great to see them really kicking ass. And if you want to see the best that super-movies have to offer, you should see The Avengers.

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iPad Game Review - Avernum: Escape From The Pit

I got an iPad for my birthday. Or, more accurately, I bought myself an iPad for my birthday, and got one for my dad so we could play games even though he lives halfway across the country from me. And while I have really enjoyed many of the games we've been playing, I'm not writing tonight to tell you about any of them. I want to tell you about Avernum: Escape from the Pit, which is simply spectacular, but decidedly single-player.

If you've been around a while, you may already be familiar with Spiderweb Software. They make arguably the best indie RPGs available on your computer, and have been doing it for almost 20 years. They don't try to blow your mind with sexy graphics and amazing cut scenes, they don't trim out their games with gallons of extra crap meant to get their price tags to sixty clams, and they don't have a huge budget for sound effects. What they have is some of the absolute finest computer role-playing games you'll ever play.

Many of you have probably played Baldur's Gate. I fondly remember the first time I played through that classic game. I remember the time I was at a party, celebrating with some people I barely knew, and left early because I wanted to go clear out the thieves' guild in Waterdeep and get a level for my main hero, a ranger names Xerxes (yes, I'm an unoriginal bastard, and a nerd, and an antisocial loser - I might just as well have gone back to my mom's basement, except that I was paying the mortgage and my mom lives in California). I still have Baldur's Gate on my computer, having had to install it over and over on the last four computers I owned, but I don't go back to it. Instead, I just check with Spiderweb Software and play their most recent Avernum game.

Only this time, I'm not playing Avernum on my computer. I'm playing it on my iPad, and I'm here to tell you it's just as good as it ever was on my PC. My party of exiles was thrown into the prison caves of Avernum, just like all the exiles before them, and they're happily brawling their way across the dungeons and caverns of this underground domain. I've met with dragons, banished undead, battled bandits and slain evil cat-people. And after all that, I'm not even a quarter of the way through the game.

Most of the games I have on my iPad are kind of weak. Apparently, developers are just starting to figure out that they're allowed to put serious games on a mobile device, and we're not all huge fans of Angry Birds or Fruit Ninja, possibly because some of us are no longer eight years old. I download them, play for a month or two, and put them down again. There are some really good ones, to be fair, but none of them can hold a candle to the pure tactical adventure I get out of Avernum. I have played more computer RPGs than I can count, and Avernum can hold its own against the best of them.

If you look at Avernum, or any of the other games from Spiderweb Software, you may be initially underwhelmed. And even if you're not actually underwhelmed, you may be simply whelmed. The graphics are whelming, if you're being generous. There are no 3D graphics. The dragons are visually unimpressive. The fighters are all basically static sprites, with a brief animation of a waving arm when you swing a sword. And when you try the demo, you'll find out that there's virtually no reason to bother turning on the volume, because the music and sound effects aren't even whelming. They're just underwhelming.

But if you judge this book by its cover, you're missing out on one of the greatest adventure games you can buy, not just for your iPad, but for any platform, period. It's bigger than Skyrim. It's more exciting than Fallout 3. It's more fun than GTA4, and it's more tactical than all of those games put together. Granted, I am a huge fan of turn-based tactical RPGs, but you don't have to be a tactical snob to enjoy Avernum. You just have to enjoy roaming an enormous, challenging underworld, meeting all manner of people and creatures, hurling spells, wielding magical swords, battling ancient evil and growing into the greatest warriors the underworld has even known.

Let's pretend you don't own an iPad, maybe because you're not a mindless follower of the cult of Apple like me (although in all fairness, the iPad is the only Apple gadget I own, and I just got it because the software selection is awesome). You can still enjoy the great stuff from Spiderweb Software on whatever you're using to read this review, unless you read Drake's Flames on your phone, or your work computer, because work might be pissed if you spend the whole day killing bandits instead of finishing the TPS report. The game is available on PC and Mac on top of being the best RPG on the iPad, so unless you're a homeless guy who reads my site at the Internet cafe where you spend your day so you can get some sleep without getting rolled by roving teenagers, Spiderweb Software has your hookup.

Still not convinced? That's fair. Not everyone will be. Not everyone loves an excellent turn-based RPG with incredible adventures and an exciting, consistent setting. Not everyone can get behind a finely tuned story and a plot that doesn't drag you around by the scrotum. So if you're skeptical, and I don't blame you if you are, go over to the Spiderweb Software website and download the rather gigantic demo of Avernum. Give it a whirl, because I think you're going to love it. If you don't, you don't have to pay for it, and you still won't have anything to complain about, unless you really are that homeless guy, and then I think not being able to play computer demos is the least of your worries.

http://www.avernum.com/avernum/index.html

Oh, I almost forgot - you may want to play this one with a stylus. Some of the little spots can be tough to nail with your finger.

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Board Game Revisit - Risk Legacy

My new plan of playing the games I actually enjoy even though I have a huge stack of review copies sitting in the corner of the room and calling in silent, hissing voices, 'play us!' is working out pretty well. Today, instead of playing one of the dozen games I've got lurking in the corners of my office like monstrous toddlers with sharpened teeth, I played two games of Risk Legacy. I may not have reduced the pile any, but DAMN! did I have a good time.

The first time I reviewed Risk Legacy was about a year ago, before it came out. I played 13 games on that particular copy, which was obviously unlucky because my house caught fire before I could make it to 14, and destroyed that copy of the game. That level of luck is infectious, apparently, because when Risk Legacy's numerical curse destroyed the copy I had, it took every other game with it. It also cost me fifteen thousand dollars to fix the house. That was one unlucky board game.

So being a rationally superstitious man, when I got a replacement copy of Risk Legacy for my birthday a month ago, I resolved that I absolutely had to play it more than 13 times. Sure, I could have decided to stop playing after 12 games, but come on. It's Risk Legacy. It's one of my favorite games. I would much rather break the curse by going to 14. I'll risk it.

The thing that struck me as I played games two and three on my new copy was how incredibly awesome this game really is. I already know what's in all the envelopes, so it's not as though I'm looking forward to the surprises Hasbro has seen fit to bestow upon me. But what amazes me is how this new board is completely different, and the games I play on it will be new and fun and unlike anything we've played before. The surprises that matter are not the ones Hasbro dreamed up. The surprises are the ones you'll create yourself because you really need to protect North Africa, so you put in a bunker, or the world capital winding up in Canada and being named Sphincter.

Risk Legacy is the most unique game you'll ever play. Sure, it's a do-over of a 50-year-old classic, but there is no other game that mutates and changes so thoroughly as you play, until your Risk Legacy game will be unlike every other Risk Legacy game, and the more you play it, the more you make it your own. No other game has you writing in permanent marker on the board, tearing up the cards as you play, or putting stickers into the rulebook. Well, OK, other games have tried, but it was always a lame gimmick, and not anything that actually worked. Risk Legacy, on the other hand, works.

The furor over Risk Legacy has died down, thanks largely to the fact that gamers can only focus on any particular game for 45 minutes, or until Matlock is over. I still remember all the people who have revolted against the concept of permanently altering their game, people who have called Hasbro a money grab or tried to coat their board in dry-erase plastic so they could wipe out their changes. I remember all these people who totally missed the point and I want to get a little angry at their short-sighted idiocy, but when I do start to feel my blood pressure rising, I remember that I am having so much more fun than they are. It's like revenge for them being stupid - you feel free to act like retarded nerdlings, because in the end, I have something almost magical, and all you have is an obsessive-compulsive disorder and conspiracy theories that you can expound on the Internet to other like-minded anal-retentive assholes.

It's amazing to me that I have not grown the least bit tired of Risk Legacy. I love the game as much today as I did the first time I played it. This is the only time I'll play a game five times in a weekend and still say, 'anyone up for one more?' It's also the only game where, if I said that, everyone would agree.

Most people who play Risk Legacy will never need more than one copy. They may not even play through it 15 times. If they do, they can continue to enjoy their uniquely branded copy of this amazing game for as long as they like having fun. But for my part, having seen how much fun it is to build this world twice, I plan on owning several copies before I die. I'm going to have the one where Alaska's biggest city is Palinoia, and Brazil is a smoking ruin, and then I'll have the one where the world capitol is Testica, and then I'll have the one where the Enclave of the Bear guys can't spread out too fast because they get insecure if they get too far away from each other. I'll play one copy until the world gets a name, then play it some more, then I'll go get another one and start a new planet. Then when we decide to play Risk Legacy, we'll go grab them all and decide which one looks like the most fun.

If you haven't played Risk Legacy yet, what the hell is wrong with you? If you ask me, it's a flat-out travesty that it didn't sweep every award for 2011, and I simply cannot imagine why every gamer on the planet isn't playing it right now. Well, not right this minute. It's late. Your mom is wondering why you haven't walked the dog yet. So go let Spot mark an X, then get back inside and do something important - play Risk Legacy again.

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