Barnestorming #6- Junta:Viva El Presidente in Review, heist pictures, and more Misfits talk
Do you ever wonder what John 3:14 actually says? It's Barnestorming #6.
On the Table
So this week in Cracked LCD I’m taking a look at Z-Man’s US release of Junta: Viva El Presidente. It’s great. It’s a simple cards and dice game that strips all the old timey junk out of Junta and leaves everything that was good about the design in the first place. The main casualty is that long-winded and repetitive coup stage. Good riddance. There’s plenty of other light wargames that don’t require 7 hours and 7 players to play through. If I make it out to any of Avery’s events this weekend, I’ll bring it along.
I’ve just gotten into Warhammer: Invasion due to a trade I pulled a couple of weeks ago. I wound up with the core set and all of the “Corruption Cycle” add-ons. This is a really damn good game- it’s actually quite light and incredibly straightforward. I do think the deckbuilding angle is overrated, I’m having plenty of fun drawing 40 random cards from each faction with ten neutrals a piece and going at it. There’s not a whole lot of depth here, which is fine because it still captures a Warhammer vibe. Oh, look- Eric Lang’s name is on the box. FFG really just needs to assign him any Warhammer stuff they do from now on. Apparently there’s all kinds of multiplayer variants people have cooked up, but nobody seems to have hit on the most obvious way to do it- have a deck of “edict” cards like in Cosmic, that way nobody gets attacked more than once a round. Play straight elimination. Done. Was that so hard?
I’ve played a little more War of Honor, I like it but I think the board game part isn’t really all that significant and if anything it slightly overcomplicates the game. It’s really just a slightly streamlined L5R with different victory conditions and a very vague sense of geography…and since L5R is solid, this game is solid. I’ll likely review this in a couple of weeks after the E3 break.
On the Consoles
Over at Nohighscores.com, we're giving away a copy of Bethesda's new co-op action-RPG Hunted: The Demon's Forge for the
My reviews of Dead or Alive: Dimensions for the 3DS and Moon Diver are up at Gameshark. DOA is pretty good, Moon Diver is garbage.
I’m doing that thing where I bounce between also-ran titles right now. I picked up a cheap copy of Far Cry 2 and I’m really digging it. The African setting is cool, and I like cruising around in a beater looking for trouble. It’s open world, which I usually don’t care for, but there’s no stupid minigames and the missions are really free-form. Plus, it’s a pretty solid FPS. There’s some neat things that happen in it…you can grenade the jeep by the guys shooting at you, but the spread of the fire from the explosion might wind up being more dangerous than the guys. I like the “fidgetyness” of it, you have to take malaria pills and sleep occasionally. And guns can jam in the middle of a firefight, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen in an FPS.
I was in the mood for a jet game so I tried the Tom Clancy H.A.W.X. games. They really, really sucked. I guess that genre is just completely dead.
On the Phone
I picked up Knight’s Defense, a strange mix of chess, GeoDefense, and I dunno, a shooter. It may be brilliant. These spaces on a chessboard generate what are more or less creeps. You position chess pieces to protect your king. The pieces all have different special abilities when you double tap them, and they upgrade ten levels. It’s incredibly intense and quite difficulty. Another one well worth a buck.
On the Screen
I’m all about crime films this week, so I watched Stanley Kubrick’s classic heist picture The Killing. There’s very little that connects it to his later, more
I also watched Le Cercle Rogue again this week. This is an amazing, amazing French New Wave crime picture from 1970 directed by the tragically underrated Jean-Pierre Melville. Alain Delon, Gian Maria Volonte, and Yves Montand (yes, the singer) star in a relentlessly downbeat, slow-burning story about the robbery of a high tech (for 1970) jewelry store. There’s another sharpshooter involved in this one too, and the heist is shown in full detail during an absolutely stunning 30 minute sequence.
What makes this film- and other Melville films like Le Doulos and Le Samourai- is how freaking ice cold they are. The photography is muted, gestures are more significant than words, and there’s an existential, somber tone that hangs over them. They’re also cool in the hip sense too, with lots of French guys with terrific moustaches pulling Walther P-38s from trenchcoats. Several are available on Netflix for instant viewing, thanks to the Criterion Collection.
On the Turntable
Next week is E3 so there won’t be a Cracked LCD. I hope you’ll be able to get by without it. I’ll still report in for work here though.