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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Board Game Review - Merchants & Marauders

I started writing my review of Merchants & Marauders last night, and realized that I would have to be a much better writer than I actually am if I wanted to make this game sound like it was as fun as I found it to be. So I scrapped it and started over, though I'm not sure why I bothered, having already thrown in the towel and decided the task was beyond my level of expertise.

The problem is that when I start telling you about the game, you're going to think Merchants & Marauders is slightly less retarded than a brain-damaged lab rat chewing on the plastic pawns from Candyland. 'Ooh,' I'll say, 'you can buy stuff in one port and then go to another port and… wait for it… sell it!' And you'll think I'm an idiot.

Or I'll tell you how you can turn pirate and raid merchant ships, and the raid is summarized by drawing three cards and seeing if your victim escaped or if he just shot some holes in your dinghy. And if you win the fight with the merchant, you will get some money and some cargo and you can take that cargo to a port, where you can… wait for it… sell it! I know, I sound like an idiot.

It's fun, I swear. It sounds like a game about running a business, but instead of doing all this competitive bidding and screwing opponents out of great contracts, you just handle the accounting and order office supplies. But it's not that game at all, because you have pirates. And you can be pirates. And you can die.

Oh, yes! I did forget to mention that, didn't I? Yeah, your pirate can totally croak. You can have your ship shot out from under you and find yourself tits up in Davy Jones' locker (which is stinky, because he was in the Monkees and girls used to give him used undergarments and he kept them in his locker). You can get stabbed to death by enemy pirates, be hanged by Dutch naval officers, or be forced to walk the plank by the other players at the table. Yep, the other people playing the game can kill you. If you want interaction in your board games, it really doesn't get any better than killing the other players (not literally, of course, unless some nimrod spills a beer on the board, and then no jury would convict you).

In fact, the better you do, the higher the odds get that someone will want to kill you. A really successful pirate will be wanted by the nations he has offended, and those nations will pay a whole buttload of money to anyone that can bring down the scurvy raccoon who keeps stealing all their silk pajama pants. If you're a crazy good pirate, the other players are going to have very good reasons to try to hurt you and keep you from winning, especially because if you are a really good pirate, you've probably got some great stuff worth stealing.

You don't have to get all piratical to play Merchants & Marauders. You can be an honest merchant plying the Caribbean, trading sugar in Port Royal and cacao in Havana and slaves in… oh, no wait, that's still distasteful. We don't want to be that historically accurate. Let's just stick with exploitation of the locals and murder of innocents.

However, just because you don't have to be a pirate, that doesn't mean there's not a good reason to give it a shot anyway. It's easy to knock off some poor floating treasure barge and make off with all their tobacco. Plus, if you do, there's a really good chance that the French navy will send all its ships to come get you, and they'll blow big holes in your boat and you can shoot back at them and you can both swing over to the other ship on ropes hanging from the snarled rigging, and then you can each realize that the enemy is on the other ship and swing back, but then the other guys are swinging back, and the whole episode looks like one of those hilarious Scooby Doo sketches where the heroes run in different doors on either side of a long hallway and the bad guy never catches up to them.

It wouldn't seem like there are many different things to do in Merchants & Marauders, but pirating and trading aren't the whole deal. You can upgrade your ship with better sails and cannons, you can hang out in bars and listen for rumors, you can lead the English frigate to the pirate hideout, or you can battle dangerous pirates on the open seas. And you can swash all these buckles on a stunningly attractive board with fantastic plastic ships and beautifully illustrated cards. And even though I know this sounds like it wouldn't be very much fun, Merchants & Marauders is probably the best pirate game I've ever played.

And the reason I really liked Merchants & Marauders is that while it lacked crazy depth or difficult decisions, it felt like I was a freebooting privateer in the Golden Age of Piracy. I was Henry Morgan and Bartholomew Roberts, alternating between bloodthirsty raids and legitimate business ventures. I scraped my hull in the shallows, sheltered in port during a storm, and braved angry Spaniards who wanted to stretch my neck. I covered myself in glory and gold, and if I had been a real pirate, you would be reading about me today. Probably you would also read about how I got butt lice and died too fat to get out of my bed, but the pirate I played in Merchants & Marauders was practically a historical figure. And I say 'practically,' because it was just a game. Real pirates marched across Panama to raid cities on the Pacific, and I didn't get to do that.

When I say Merchants & Marauders is the best pirate game I've played, keep in mind that I'm qualifying it with the word 'pirate.' This is important because I can't think of any pirate games I actually liked enough to want to play very often. Pirate's Cove was fun… twice. That pirate game from WizKids was terrible. So there's not a lot of competition, which means that saying Merchants & Marauders is the best pirate game is not the same thing as saying it's awesome.

I'm offering that qualification because although I did enjoy Merchants & Marauders, I don't know that I'm going to play it another fifty times. I won't be getting rid of it soon, but it just didn't have the epic punch or brain-steaming strategy that I usually like when I play a game. It was fun, and at times exciting, but if I never got to play it again, I would kind of shrug and say, 'meh, I'll live.' Compare that to some of my actual favorites, where if you said I couldn't play them again, I would kick you in the dingus.

If you're looking for a great pirate game that captures the feel of the days of swashbuckling danger on the high seas, Merchants & Marauders can deliver. It doesn't have a ton of depth, but that's OK because it's more about playing out the story of being a disreputable businessman in a time when laws were more like rules of thumb and brazen men made their own fortunes at the end of a sword. Or they bought stuff in one port, when to another port, and then… wait for it… sold it.

Summary

2-4 players

Pros:
Be a pirate! Or a merchant! Or a merchant-slash-pirate! It's an adventure however you do it.
Absolutely fantastic art and pieces
Enough strategy to be worth playing twice

Cons:
A little shallow, but still enough meat to be satisfying

If you want a good pirate game, I think you would be hard-pressed to do much better than Merchants & Marauders. You can get it from Noble Knight Games:
ARR BLOW ME DOWN

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TV Show Review - Copper

I mostly hate cop shows. It's not that there's not a ton of potential for a police show to be awesome, but more often than not, they turn into a lame procedural thing where the cops solve a different case every week. It turns into a formula where a body turns up (for some reason, there are no cop shows about cops who investigate shoplifting), then the police start hunting up leads, then there's some sterling detective work and the bad guy is apprehended. Basically, every episode turns into a villain-of-the-week, and no matter how you try to trick it up with surprise guests and crazy murderers, after a while, it's BORING.

This is not the only reason I dislike cop shows, though it is the main reason. Even some shows with tons of potential, like Longmire or Luther, fall prey to this cookie-cutter story format, and it's a damned shame that we can't get a show about the life of a cop. One of my best friends is a cop, and his life cannot be broken down into one-hour episodes. Different stuff happens every week - he has to deal with an irritating co-worker, or he has to go out of town to chase bad guys who run to small towns, or he gets to throw the cuffs on bodybuilders who could rip off his arms if they didn't know damned well someone would kill them for it. I want a cop show that tells a story, and one that doesn't wrap every episode with a neat little bow.

Enter Copper. This show, which is on BBC America right now (sorry if you don't have cable), features Kevin Corcoran, or Corky to his friends. He is a police detective in New York - but this ain't Seinfeld's town. This is Five Points in 1864. Corcoran has been fighting the Confederates for the last four years, and comes home to find his daughter murdered and his wife missing. In the meantime, he has a job to do - and policing Five Points was a nasty job at the best of times, and a downright impossibility most of the time.

Brief history lesson for those of you who missed Gangs of New York. In the early 1800s, there were a lot of immigrants to New York. Many of these were Irish people fleeing the devastation back home. Many were Jewish immigrants. And many were black people looking for freedom in the North, and discovering that being free often meant being hungry. They all got funneled into Five Points, a segment of New York reserved for immigrants that rapidly became grossly overpopulated and dirtier than a farm hog's ass crack.

So right off the bat, Copper is about police at the very beginning of the nation's organized police force, charged with fighting crime in a place where crime was most peoples' day job. There are multiple brothels, and nobody even tries to shut them down, because when bank robberies and murders were commonplace, policing morality was less than an afterthought.

I knew I was going to like Copper when, in the first five minutes, Corcoran and his fellow coppers are surrounding a band of bank robbers. Corcoran decides to spring the ambush and leaps out from behind a wall, shoots one bank robber dead, and then yells, 'Police!' Yeah, in that order. Due process was not exactly an overwhelming concern, and once all the robbers are dead, the police chief shows up and takes all the stolen money... back to his house. These were gritty men in a gritty time, and if they did things a little questionable, there weren't a lot of people who could object. After all, the coppers might keep you from getting murdered in your bed, so if they kept some 'evidence' for their efforts, you may have been willing to let it slide.

I love the tarnished brass of Copper, but that's not enough to make me come back every week. What keeps me anxious for the next episode is the story. Corcoran's search for his lost wife is a continuing thread, as is his affair with the madame at his favorite house of ill repute. We also get to follow Annie, a very young girl who is abducted, sold into prostitution, rescued from said prostitution, and then - well, I don't want to give it away, but suffice to say this story feels a lot more believable than the one with Daddy Warbucks. And there are more bodies.

In fact, not an episode of Copper passes without someone getting, at a minimum, beaten like a cheap rug, and most of the time, somebody gets snuffed. Stabbings and shootings and throat-slittings were practically routine in Five Points, and thanks to a story that refuses to shy away from the uglier truths of our glorious nation's past, we get to see a whole damned lot of them. I do like a show with a body count, and this one even has a boob every now and then. If you ask me, that makes it a keeper.

If you prefer your police shows to follow the old tried-and-true method of busting a new bad guy every week, you'll probably be fine with Law and Order: CSI. But if you want to see a story develop, if you like to see what life was like 150 years ago, or if you just like to see good guys get away with bad things, you might really dig Copper. It's fun and violent and dark and cool, and yet hopeful and noble at the same time. It's in full swing right now on BBC America, with five episodes aired. You might be able to catch up if you have On Demand, or you can go download the episodes from iTunes or the Zune marketplace. I highly recommend it, though I gotta tell you, it's not for everyone, and certainly not fit for the squeamish.

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Lego Review - Monster Fighters

You could cut the anticipation in here with a knife. Everyone wants to know what this new direction of nerd reviews will look like. You're all waiting with baited breath. 

(Quick aside -  what the hell does 'baited breath' mean? Do you have really bad halitosis, and your exhalations smell like worms? And did I even spell 'baited' correctly? Should it be 'bated'?  I hope not, because that sounds uncomfortably like it could be the past-tense for a shortened phrase referring to self-pleasuring, and I most certainly hope that is not on your breath.)

And here's the big reveal - my review of Monster Fighter Lego sets will be pretty much like a review of a game, except I won't have to talk about how the rules work. I know, it's a little anticlimactic.

Now that I've wasted this much time discussing the fact that I'll be discussing something, allow me to address the fact that I am both a middle-aged man and a ridiculous child, all wrapped up in one rapidly failing body. I readily acknowledge that it's a little silly to love Legos as much as I do, but I just plain don't care. Legos kick ass. 

Other companies can make cheap knock-off imitations, and some of them might even be halfway decent, but you just can't beat the original. If you know Legos, you know what I mean. You know how disappointed you were as a kid when your Aunt Gerty would buy you a birthday present, and you said you wanted Legos, but Aunt Gerty was one cheap-ass old biddy, and she got you those crappy MegaBloks instead. And they wouldn't hold together, and you had to put cheap stickers all over the pieces, and the stickers would peel off and the bricks wouldn't fit together and the arms fell off all the ugly little firemen.

Those knock-offs have come a long way, but every time they try to compete, Lego is a step ahead. Witness the Monster Fighter line. They show once again that Lego is the innovator, and everyone else is just playing catch-up.

Let's start with the theme. Other bricksters fall back on licensed crap like video games and movies based on board games that get turned into toys, but Lego brings its A-game and comes up with its own awesome stuff (except Star Wars, but that immediately gets a pass because, come on, Star Wars). In Monster Fighters, every set comes with a bad guy or five and some intrepid opponents. The villains are classic movie monsters like vampires and werewolves and ghosts, and the heroes are Edwardian steampunk warriors flying ornithopters or driving jalopies mounted with missile launchers. I know that sounds awesome enough to make you run out and start throwing your money around, but it gets better.

The monsters have to be cool, obviously, or why would you bother? So the sets that come with these creatures of the night are just plain ridiculously awesome. For example, the crazy scientist and his monster (think Frankenstein, and the monster we all thought was Frankenstein when we were kids until we grew up and found out there was some actual guy named Frankenstein and the monster never really had a name, and we were all disappointed and part of our youthful innocence died forever) come with a prison and a diabolical machine designed to bring dead flesh to life. And the machine spins when you turn the dial on the back of the building, and the table slides into position when you turn the wheel, and then the light comes on - literally, there's a little LED that pulses when you spin the dial, and it's channeled into this clear plastic rod that flashes onto the monster's head and then crazy Frank turns the wheel again and the monster comes to life just as the heroes roar up to the lab in their modified monster-busting wagon and fire rockets and rip down the walls and... OK, yes, I'm a child. I am a grown-up child. My kids are just glad I don't play with Strawberry Shortcake (though I would, if she had a body count).

Then there's the mummy on his chariot, which is a drawn by a skeletal horse that glows in the dark, and he is pursued by a tough dame with a crossbow who attacks from the sky in her steampunk one-woman helicopter device. Or the monster from the lagoon who is attacked by the two-fisted pulp hero in a swamp boat. Or the train full of ghosts and the heroic warriors chasing it through the night.

Honestly, this is a little edgy for Lego. The vampire hearse comes with a zombie driver, and we all know that zombies are more violent than Sicilian mobsters. There's a werewolf in one set, and as Warren Zevon reminded us, those guys will mutilate little old ladies late at night. The head vampire is concocting a plan to shift the moon out of orbit, and if that happens, I think we can assume humanity is pretty much screwed. Lego has said over and over that they are opposed to violent toys, but I think it's safe to say that is a smokescreen. I mean, they make Star Wars sets. Can you think of something more violent than war? Oh, but that's OK, because it's space. Entire planets are destroyed by genocidal super-weapons, but at least there are no gangsters with tommy-guns.

I'm actually pretty glad that Lego is willing to relax a little on the 'violent toys' thing. The only toys more fun than ones where people die are toys where people die and then come back from the dead, cursed to walk the Earth and feast on the flesh of the living. Seriously, it doesn't get any better than that. And when those awesome violent toys are accompanied by building sets that put every competitor to absolute shame, they are an instant winner in my book.

I bought these Monster Fighter Legos for my birthday with the gift certificate my mom sent me. I haven't been this excited about Legos in a really long time, and I don't care if those Danish engineers want me to call them Lego Bricks because seriously, nobody says that. I'm having more fun building rocket-powered early-century hot rods than I ever have reading a rulebook, and while I definitely enjoyed playing Merchants & Marauders this afternoon, I didn't get to assemble a brilliant mind-control device then play out the battle between the brave heroine and the cruel, sword-wielding mummy until I started playing with toys rated for 14-year-old boys.

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