I Promise I Don't Know Anyone At CD Projeckt Red

Lately I've been playing Blood and Wine for The Witcher 3, and if there is one thing that can't be stressed enough about the expansion its that its fucking breathtaking. I'm not using that word lightly. I do not fuck about when I play games, I am a hard story/hard action player. Not happy unless I'm learning something relevant or killing something interesting. On at least three occasions in as many days I have stopped dead whatever quest or personal slaughter quota I was engaged in, lined up a specific view, and just had Geralt meditate until the moment when the light would be best to really experience a particular vista. The Witcher is a pretty fucking glorious game just generally, and the whole game is beautiful, but Toussaint is heartbreakingly gorgeous. To the point that just riding along a random coast road is a moving experience worthy of comment.

With the expansion they added a goddamn plethora of tiny UI and graphical improvements, cleaned up the crafting system by adding a badly needed buy option for materials that you don't have but the smith does. Though sadly it appears they didn't carry that into the alchemist shops, which given the the fact that you can do that yourself I can sort of understand. They also added an homage to the mutagen systems in the previous games by opening up the option to modify Geralt's mutation with some skills that almost make me alright with the fact that this is the third game in a contiguous series and you start at level fucking one.

So far Blood and Wine lives up to the hype entirely as far as I'm concerned. It's funny, engaging, vast, and displays an emotional landscape that takes the already vibrant and sympathetic characters that the series does so well and elevates them about as near as you can and still have them be fictional. There are games that I've had more fun playing, there are games that have scratched similar itches better, But I think B&W takes The Witcher 3 pretty handily to the #1 spot on my favorites list. Like ever.

Acting Appropriately Stupid

So, in one of my recent posts I talked about how I have been enjoying tabletop RPGing lately, and I just wanted to talk about a game that is very fun and easy to pick up and play in a couple of hours. This RPG is called "It came from the late late late show" and was released a long ass time ago in 1989, but you can still find copies of the first and second editions on ebay for like ten bucks (I got mine from a friend in college).

The basic premise of the game is your players are actors in a bad horror/sci fi movie and they have to play through the plot. The director can throw monsters at them and play as all of the extras and co stars. Its a cute Idea that is executed very well. Players can do things like "call in a stunt double" who takes damage for them or call for a commercial break in which the actors can come up with a strategy to beat the monster(s). The director can also force the players to "act appropriately stupid". You know how in horror movies where a person will do something stupid to force movement in the plot and/or make a situation exciting? Acting appropriately stupid is a mechanic that forces that. That being said, its not hard to get the players to go along with it in the first place. In the three or four games of it I have run I have never had to use it.

If you like bad horror movies, this is a great game that allows you to make your own with your friends. Its got some great mechanics that make playing it a blast and its very simple and easy to play, even for people new to gaming as a whole. I highly recommend it.