Posted on by Alexander Case

NWCW – Setting up the Promotion

I recently picked up the role-playing game Wild World of Wrestling by Timeout Diversions from DriveThruRPG. The game is from the same people who brought us the underrated RPG WWE: Know Your Role, which I also own and like. As I’m reading through the game, I’m also working on setting up my own little promotion. This is partly with original wrestlers and in a large part with adaptations of real-world wrestlers. But, first, I’d like to do a little world-building and set-up the in-game organization.

Read more
Posted on by Alexander Case

Where I Read – Computer Gaming World V. 1, #1

CGW Issue 1 CoverI’m taking a break from Analog Computing this week to instead take a look at the first issue of Computer Gaming World, for November-December of 1981.

We start off with an ad from SSI, hyping their port of their Civil War Strategy game “Battle of Shiloh” and the World War II game “Battle of the Bulge: Tigers in the Snow.” It’s kind of interesting. Nowadays we’re used to strategy games which will take either larger battles or even campaigns and allow the player to control them from the strategic level all the way down to the tactical level, like with the Total War games. Whereas here, on the other hand, you’re either on the strategic level, or the tactical level. If you’re on the tactical level you’re controlling a fairly generic fight or only one battle, and if you’re on the strategic level you’re either controlling a massive battle (like the Battle of the Bulge), or you’re controlling an entire theater of operations. Read more

Posted on by Alexander Case

E3 2011 – SOLD!

After much delay, it’s now time for me to talk about the games from this year’s E3 that caught my interest. Specifically, I’m referring to titles that I wasn’t already sold on coming in to the event (like Uncharted), or that were announced at the event (like Hitman: Absolution).

Posted on by Alexander Case

Quality Control – Rock & Roll Racing

To be absolutely blunt, Rock & Roll Racing is like RC Pro-Am with some Heavy Metal & Hard Rock music, plus a psychotic announcer. To be fair, this isn’t totally a bad thing – RC Pro-Am is one of the best racing games of its period, with pretty solid controls, a game-play style that keeps you hooked, and decent racing, though the game had some problems with its learning curve.

Rock & Roll Racing basically fixes those learning curve problems and makes the gameplay a little more combat focused. You get more weapons for your car, and they automatically re-stock every lap. The majority of upgrades you can purchase between races are more ammunition capacity for your weapons, plus additional armor. Read more

Posted on by Alexander Case

Thoughts on the “war” within Anonymous

So, this interesting little article from Ars Technica came up on my Digg feed, and I felt like commenting on it – and I felt like commenting on it outside of a forum site like RPG.net.

In a nutshell, a turf-war has started among Anonymous. One faction favors the group’s current anarchic “Anyone who wants to be part of anon can be part of anon, and use our big DDOS Of DOOM” (no, they don’t actually call it that). The other faction feels that Anon should be limited to those whose Kung Fu, if you will, is strong enough. Prove your worthiness, you are admitted into the ranks of Anon. So, this second group has basically pwned Anon’s two main IRC chat rooms, as the guy running the Way of the Closed Fist faction, if you will, was the guy who was handling domain registration. Read more