Game Review: Cards Against Humanity

cards-against-humanity

I don’t think I’ve laughed as much as I did while playing “Cards Against Humanity” in a very long time, I laughed so hard I gave myself the hiccups.

Cards Against Humanity is a fairly simple game, each player is dealt a hand of 10 “White” cards with a random phrases on them like (The expansions give you blank cards to fill in with your own in jokes):

  • “Being a Dinosaur”
  • “Goblins”
  • “Stephen Hawking talking dirty”

Players then take turns drawing a “Black” card which has a phrase with one or more blanks in it such as:

  • But before I kill you Mr. Bond I must show you ___________________
  • In M. Night Shyamalaman’s new movie, Bruce Willis discovers that _______________ had really been ______________ all along.
  • Maybe she’s born with it. Maybe it’s_________________

The other players have to play in one or more white cards which are shuffled and then read out. There is a mild element of strategy to this, because the player who played the black card picks the winner, you have to pick not the funniest card but the one that you think will appeal the most to that player’s sense of humour.

Whoever’s card is picked wins that round, everyone draws a replacement card and the next player draws a black card for everyone else to play.

That’s it… There are house rules, some of which are genius, but that is pretty much the game in it’s entirety. It’s a really good way to get to know people and some of the bizarre/sick combinations that people come up with are hilarious.

I liked this game so much that having played it I ordered it off Amazon the next day, I can’t wait to play it again…

  

Film Review: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006)

I’ve been meaning to watch this moving for quite some time, so given I was in the mood for Anime after watching From Up On Poppy Hill yesterday I decided to give The Girl Who Leapt Through Time a watch.

This is a review of the 2006 Animated version of the film, the film is based on a 1967 book by  Yasutaka Tsutsui and there have been a number of adaptations of it (TV series, TV drama, live action movies and manga). Given that it’s been adapted so many times I’m going to assume the source material is pretty good and will have to look the original book up.

This film centres on 17 year old Makoto Konno who lives with her family and accidentally gains the ability to travel back in time. Her time travel takes the form of her rewinding the clock rather than her physically travelling back in time. This gives her the opportunity to relive events that have happened and in doing so alter their out come by behaving differently. If you seen “The Butterfly Effect” it’s a bit like that.

To start with this has comical effect Makoto goes back and has the “Perfect Day” having seen everything that went wrong with her day and fixing it, but of course events don’t happen in isolation and inevitably Makoto finds herself having to back track to “re-correct” the changes she’s made to get a better outcome as the net result of her time travelling escapades wreaks havoc on the lives of the people around her.

The characters in this are amazing, Makoto is brilliantly done and you will find yourself really connecting with her, less so with her slightly distant friends but they are still well written and well played and you learn that there is a reason that they are slightly distant.

I really enjoyed this movie, I’d happily watch it again and I’d even debate looking up some of the previous incarnations of the story. In the west you will probably find this film sorted among the Studio Ghibli films, and although it’s not a Ghibli Film if you like Ghibli you will probably like this film too.

 

Film Review: From Up On Poppy Hill

“I was expecting more talking cats” was what one of the people I went to see From Up On Poppy Hill came out of the film saying. Studio Ghibli have become famous in the west for surreal fantasy Anime like Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle. What a lot of westerners don’t seem to know is that they are also famous for making emotionally charged films that are set in the real world.

There are no talking cats in this film, no sentient fires, no giant forest spirits just people. And that’s not a bad thing.

From Up On Poppy Hill is based on a Japanese serialized comic by Chizuru Takahashi  and is the story of a high school kid in 1960’s Japan, the Olympics are just around the corner and the school club house is being threatened with demolition. Also she’s fallen for a boy with whom circumstances arise that make her feelings a little awkward.

It’s a whimsical tale, heart warming at parts and laugh out loud fun at others, the incidental characters make this film as much as the leads, I think I could watch an entire movie starring the head of the philosophy club, or the bespectacled artist sister of the main character.

If you come into this film expecting talking cats, you are going to be disappointed, the only magic in this film is in the interaction between the characters. If you come into the film expecting character growth, good story telling and an insight into what it was like to be a kid in 1960’s Japan, then I don’t think you will be walking away from it in the slightest bit disappointed.

Bravest Warriors: Animated Space Adventure Series by the Creator of Adventure Time

Bravest Warriors

I spent my evening last night watching these 5 minute episodes of Bravest Warriors, the new animated space adventure by Pendleton Ward the creator of Adventure Time.

I’ve only recently been inducted into the Adventure time cult, but I’ve fast grown to love the show, these episodes have everything that makes adventure time fun, just condensed into an even shorter time span and…

IN SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE!

The episodes are to air exclusively online on the Bravest Warriors YouTube channel, and Boom Studios are releasing comics based on the show that you can buy now!

The Art Style is adventure time, the humour is adventure time, the voices are for the most part adventure time, and it has a chip tune theme song, what’s not to like, I’ve embedded the first few episodes here so you don’t have to go anywhere to watch them, you can thank me later.

Episode 1

Episode 2

Episode 3

Episode 4

Via Laughing Squid

Why Don’t We Have These in The West? Retro Game Bars!

The state of webdesign in Japan is miles behind that used elsewhere, but Game Bar Continue in Osaka seems to be in America Muri (Think China Town but American but not really) And has a host of video game consoles that you can rent by the hour as well as booze (From my reading you aren’t allowed to bring your own games, although the statement might be that you are allowed to bring your own games…

????? ??????????

Also in Osaka is Game Bar Dendo which just has a static page. Although that has got a map on it…

And and address:

2nd floor leisure Misono 2-3-9 Chuo-ku, Osaka-shi, Osaka Building Sennichimae ? 542-0074

TEL 06-6648-8148

Although sadly it seems like you can’t play any of their games, they are just for display… Points deducted for that I think…

In Kyoto you can find Cafe la Siesta who have a slightly nicer website but it’s also impossible to navigate as it’s all in a frame that is pretendinf to be a game console…

They DO have a map that looks quite retro:

More importantly they have a giant Game Boy!

06

Who doesn’t want to play this shit?! Their menu is pixelated too:

07

Source Hiyoko-g and again and again…

So why don’t we have this kind of thing in the west? Maybe we don’t have the geek culture they do in Japan, but I think that enough people would come to one of these if it was in a big enough city, and maybe diversified into board games too?

Is Microsoft Saying Fuck-You to Multi Gamer Households?

According to Edge Microsoft’s next X-Box console is going to require an always on connection to play games and games may be linked to a gamer tag to stop people reselling their games.

I don’t really care about the resell market, I’ve got games that I’ve had for over 20 years, and I don’t think I’ve ever sold a game. I’ve bought second hand games before, but I guess I’ll live without that.

Sure I’ll be a little annoyed that I can’t get classic titles that are out of print any more, I recently got my other half K.O.T.O.R. 1 and 2 for the X-Box and she loved them.

But what will make me think twice about getting an X-Box 720 if they do this is that I live in a two gamer household, with two X-Box 360s and I don’t buy games just for me to play, I buy them so I can play them as well as my other half. I already find it really irritating that we have to decide who gets to activate the DLC code for a game when we buy one, this happened when I decided to give Mass Effect 2 a shot 3 years after my girlfriend completed it: I couldn’t use the online features because she’d used the code on her gamer account.

But if I can’t play the game at all… Screw you Microsoft I’m not even going to buy your console.

Sony have a way around this, they have a parent account and all other user accounts are sub accounts of that account, so I guess if you activate a game for the parent account it would remain active for the sub accounts.

Microsoft don’t, as far as I can tell, do this. They have a family version of X-Box Live Gold which allows you to pay for 4 accounts to be gold for less money, but they don’t have a system of attributing accounts to a household.

To be fair to Microsoft previously they didn’t let you log the same account onto two different consoles without importing it over which would stop it working on the old console, so they recognise the people might own more than one X-Box, but do they recognise that more than one person might “Own” a game?

I’m not averse to buying two copies of a game to play multi-player, I own two copies of Halo 3 and Borderlands 2, both so that we could play multi-player over 2 consoles, but I really object to buying a game twice so that both myself and the person I live with can play a single player game.

Vi Hart Makes a Video about Makeing a Video about How She Makes Her Videos

I’ve shared a few of Vi Hart’s videos before, they are a gift to anyone who wants to make math fun because they are fun and about math. She made a documentary with ebstudioslive about how she makes he videos then she made a video about how he made that video, and all her other videos.

Recursion is fun…

Lichtenstein Makeup by @c0louredlights

Have actual hi res images but thought I’d upload this in the meantime… Had wanted to redo my pop art makeup for ages as it was my first ever finished look and I know I’ve learned a lot since then, though I still love the original pictures. Rebecca’s hair being blue and incredible face made a great opportunity to try it again.

I have a soft spot for posting pictures of People wearing Lichtenstein Makeup. some of my  most viewed blog posts of all time are collections of Lichtenstein make up images and I’ve also posted a tutorial I found online which people seemed to like.

So I was pleasantly surprised when twitter suggested I follow @C0LOUREDLIGHTS (Tumblr) a Glasgow based make up artist and upon looking at her profile saw an example of Lichtenstein style make up. Looking through her Tumblr I found yet another which made me even happier: