New beginnings, new hopes...

So anyway, as most who even know about this blog are probably already aware, I am about to start a Youtube channel related to boardgames. The style is going to be old-school, in the best sense of that phrase. The channel will focus on playthroughs, with some review and/or discussion.
This means that boardgame reviews, previously intended for this blog, will most likely appear there (though I might still do some video game reviews etc. here). I will be setting up a companion blog for that youtube channel including things not adapted to youtube, e.g. discussions of strategy. However, I intend to blog more actively here anyway, regarding subjects closer to my heart - expect scientific and statistical responses to current affairs to show up much more often.

Board Beyond Belief: K2

Photo credit: Kogo

FACT: K2 is the second deadliest mountain in the world. Around 25% of those who attempt it will not survive to tell the tale.

FACT: My mother has got 75% of her climbers killed while attempting to scale K2. The board game, that is.

K2 the board game is the board game of climbing K2. Surprisingly, it was designed by an actual mountain climber. Even more surprisingly, a game designed by a practitioner can actually be completely excellent.

Here's how it works. Everybody has two climbers, one with wavy sides, one with smooth curves. I call them "Bendy" and "Straighty". The aim of the game is to get both as far up the side of K2 as possible. In particular, to get them further up than your opponents.

Image credit: Maciej Teleglow

How do you do that? By a brilliant combination of planning, audacity, and luck. Each player has their individual deck of cards. Each deck is the same, so everybody has the same opportunities, but not necessarily at the same time - every round, the player has a hand of six cards, of which they will play three. Each point on the board has two pieces of information attached - the cost to move there, and the cost to "acclimitisation" (a.k.a. health) for every round they stay there.

As a piece of game design, this works as a fantastic example of the meeting point of open and closed information. Everybody knows where everybody else is on the board. Everybody knows what they need to go forward, and how it will affect their health. Health (and in some circumstances, movement) is also affected by the weather - however, you always have at least three days of forecast ahead of them, so everybody knows how the weather will affect them.

The problem, from a planning stage, is in the closed part of the information: what they have in their hand, and what their opponent has. Are they planning to make a big move next turn? Will they block your advance if they do? Even worse, are you trying to get down the mountain? If so, they may be moving to block you. Maybe you've calculated your movement and health budget perfectly for the cards you have in hand. You know you can make it up this round, and you're pretty sure (given what's left in your deck) you can make it down next round.

Photo credit: Henk Rolleman

Then some bastard moves in behind you. You've reached the top, and there they are, sitting right behind you. Someone else is behind them. There's no way you can leap over both of them. They can't shift you. And every round, your health is plummeting from exposure. You pitch your tent for its modest protection and comfort. It's not enough. Bendy is dead, shivering and alone, an arm's breadth from his supposed compatriots, the true authors of his downfall.

That's one example. Another is the heartbreak when you get both your climbers ahead of everyone else, you control the mountain, and you realise that, with your hand and the upcoming storm, there is no way in hell you can reach the top and live. Or even better, the pure elation of reaching the top and jumping off it in the same round, brilliantly leaving your opponent's homicidal blocking strategy empty and pointless. And that's just the easy game mode - if you want, you can play with winter weather, or attempt to scale the "difficult" face.

I have not tried these things. The game is more than heard enough on the easy setting. Maybe one day, when I'm really, really drunk (which is obviously the best time to go mountain climbing). However you choose to play it though, I confidently forecast you will not be disappointed. 'Tis the season - why not get chilly with the cold, hard brilliance of K2?

Sir, Your Film Is Bad: "The Master" Edition

Dear Mr. Anderson,

Your film is bad.

It is not that simply that it is long, and self-indulgent. It is not that no character elicits a shred of compassion. Neither is it simply that it lacks more than a pitiful repertoire of camera shots or lighting effects. True, these things are not helping your cause. But there is much, much more.

Your audience know who you are. You do not have to beat them around the head with a metaphor. We understand that this is a film about nothingness, where empty vessels seek to fill the gaping holes in their lives but the only people they can reach out to have nothing to contribute, and consequently, all are doomed to life in death. WE GET THIS. YOU DO NOT NEED TWO HOURS OF OUR TIME JUST TO MAKE THIS POINT.

There is nothing wrong with making a film about nothing. However, your film actually has nothing to it.

Tarkovsky's Solaris has almost no action and is filled with long segments where nothing happens. However, each one of these segments is potently different to every other one, each layered upon the other to create a tapestry that sublimes the viewer. Seinfeld has easily produced more hours of footage about nothing than even the most avant-garde Teutonic auteur, yet every minute was packed with sound and fury. Of course it signified nothing, but the very fact that it had purpose, no matter how solipsistic, allowed the viewer to experience something fleeting and powerful. Merchant Ivory has produced countless films with unspoken, unrequited romances, as yours film seems to be attempting, but their vivid characters and gentle disappointments evoked so, so much more than you could conjure. Hell, even Gus Van Sant's Elephant was a better film about nothing (pointless shower scene notwithstanding).

In conclusion: I know you are capable of fine work. Your leads are superb, but their efforts and contortions to turn this material into something, anything, led to nothing we were interested in watching (and, in the case of the final musical number, actual laughter from the audience). The underlying subject matter is fascinating, and worthy of the deepest investigation. There are many excellent films in existence, and no doubt many more to come.

But your movie is just worthless.

Games I Finally Finished: The Thing

Release Date: 2002
Metacritic Score: 77/100

As shadows lengthen, the longer nights draw in, and shuddering families prepare to cower as the ghosts of their ancestors haunt the night (that is, we get close to Halloween), I generally try to sneak in a few plays of horror games on the ol' desktop PC. Since I'd just finished XCOM, some might think this rather unnecessary, but a tradition is a tradition. I could have gone back and finally finished fixing that stupid lift in Amnesia: The Dark Descent, but I chose another course - the PC game of John Carpenter's The Thing.

Released a decade ago to reasonable hype and middling but not terrible reviews, The Thing is something of an oddity. Though essentially an FPS, it tried to work in issues of paranoia and squad-based trustworthiness to create a first-person horror game - a genre now common as muck, but then barely existent. I received it as a treasured gift, enjoyed it on my (then already antiquated) PC, but never got even half way through it. It wasn't that I didn't like it, it was more that other things were receiving more immediate attention, load times were slow on my doddering machine, and it just wasn't quite compelling enough. I just never got round to picking it up again.

This year was to be different. I was going to fulfill the honourable obligations of the gift-receiver. I was finally going to finish this fucker.

For those unfamiliar with the game (probably most people), The Thing is set immediately after the events of the film. You arrive as part of the mission by the US to find out what happened at the recently-deceased McMurdo outpost. The game is based over several Antarctic and internal levels, with reasonably open levels but linear structure (you can frequently explore wide areas, but must gain access in a fixed sequence). Beyond being a bog-standard FPS, it brought in the following innovations to justify its license and claim to be a horror game:

1. Crazy-ass alien monsters (though only actually a handful of different types) as well as humans who decide they'd rather you were dead
2. The need to finish of the bigger monsters by BURNING THEM WITH FIRE
3. Squad members must be convinced you are trustworthy in order to join you, and may panic and go crazy if faced with too much gory gibberish. However, while they remain sane, they do a pretty good job providing covering fire, medical care, and repairing structure damage.
4. Those same squad members will occasionally explode into an alien monster. This means they were infected.

 How well do these work in practice? Well, (1) is perfectly acceptable, though the monsters look distinctly underwhelming compared to modern creations. Can't blame them for that however. (2) is acceptable as well - while it does little more than add inconvenience (by forcing you to switch between weapons), the fact that setting fire to things creates a risk for you means that it constantly forces you to adjust to the environment. So, a bit repetitive, but maintains a certain amount of challenge.

The real problems are (3) and (4). Read those two again. Can you see how they might come into conflict? Squad members you persuade over to your side can (and there's at least an even chance will) turn on you later. You can perform blood tests to find out who's human and who's a naughty little ET, but the game gives you no reason to do so - while still human, they are an asset, so why would you force them to switch sides prematurely? And since no squad member stays around that long (if they don't transmogrify or die, a level end condition will separate them), you never develop any empathy for them.

Other than this, there's not a lot to say about the gameplay - lots of jump-scares, creepy messages left around the place, the occasional environmental puzzle, and a mid-way bait-and-switch where the military presence turns against you. Any of that sound familiar? Yup, this game is pretty much a Half-Life clone with a Thing theme tacked on and some interesting but not-quite-functional squad management.

Is it worth a play? If you are a big fan of The Thing (as I am), then probably yes. It's not bad. If you like the Half-Life series and its pretenders, then this isn't a great addition to that stable, but it's not bad. Otherwise, probably don't bother.
Am I glad I finally finished it? Yes, absolutely. It has been lying around, waiting for completion, for a decade. It needed doing. And it wasn't at all a terrible game. I just wish they'd learned lessons and put out a strong sequel.