Token Female Gamer

In other fabulous April news (quick before the month is over!), Geek and Sundry has  been renewed for season 2 and its already begun airing brand new shows!! The announcement went live very close to April 1st, thankfully it wasn’t a joke and Geek and Sundry will remain alive and youtubing for another year. (Yes, I just turned youTube into a verb!)

Much of the show line up has changed and though I’m sad to see Sword and Laser go, I am super happy that Space Janitors finally has new episodes. It is by far the most entertaining show I’ve seen on youTube, probably ever. Then again I don’t go in for most of the reality based stuff that youTube panders.

But the best thing to come out of this announcement was the message that Felicia Day shared in her announcement video. After lamenting the commodification and hate mongering that has become the Geek online life, she made a call for taking it back, to honor the Geek we want to be regardless of anyone else’s opinion. “Your Judgment is not my problem” sums is up quite well and is a sentiment that I can fully support. Go Felicia Day!

Oh Kickstarter, another sucker punch to my wallet. Zach Braff, of the very fabulous Scrubs, is kickstarting a movie called “Wish I was here”. As of this writing, the campaign has been live for all of two days and has almost reached the $2million goal. Its safe to say this movie is getting funded. =)

I was quite charmed by Scrubs, but Garden State wasn’t my favorite movie. Probably because I like my funny a little more happy. Which is why I waited two whole days to support this new venture! Actually once they added an advanced screening near me all my excuses for not spending money vanished in a very convenient puff of smoke.

Which means I now have a date to see a movie in 2014 sometime. I hope its good.

April Fools Day online is great, because I get to observe without having to participate. Plus most of the online jokes tend to be funny and avoid being cruel. It also means that around mid march I start becoming suspicious of all news announcements that seems even a little strange.

Of course when April Fools Day does roll around and all the jokes are revealed, they inevitably only show up on the actual day and mysteriously vanish the next. I know this, yet still harbor a little bit of doubt, or maybe hope, each year.

Here are my top four “Let this be an April Fools joke” pieces of gaming news.

SimCity is most unplayable single player game of all time.

LucasArts gets Disneyed, I mean shut down.

Blizzard announces a card game….to play online. An online card game. Like Magic the gathering. Online. Still waiting for them to say this is a joke.

My World of Warcraft Warlock’s dps. Its a joke, sadly not relegated to April Fools Day only. Not news so much as QQ. >_<

As for ‘real’ April Fools, youTube was the clear 2013 winner. Best contest ever!

Any news items you think should have been an April Fools Joke or at least sounded like one?

The Veronica Mars thing has been so distracting I totally forgot about Pi day. FOR SHAME! So happy Pi day everyone. (Thats all I got, pitiful, I know!)

In other Veronica Mars news, the Kickstarter offered more bit parts in the movie for exorbitant amounts of money and once again they are all sold out (over $3million now). My yearly budget is very happy that I wasn’t able to snatch any of those up, but my inner dreamer is crying. ~sob~

<3

Was just wondering, is there a movie you guys would pay $10k to have a small speaking part in?

I was lucky enough to play on two different servers with two very different, yet awesome guilds. Inner Loop (last post’s pictures) ended up being my raiding guild, while Fourth Wall was my role playing guild. (Yup, I am that nerdy!)

While my bard in the Fourth Wall guild never made max level, she had a ton of really silly fun. Some of the best stories came out of spending time with these crazy people. =P

Images after the jump…

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With the recent new computer purchase I spent a bunch of time going through my old picture files. Turns out that I had a hidden stash of old EverQuest pictures. As per request I am downloading the best here to share. Funny enough, most of my pictures turned out to be me casting illusions on everyone. Lot more trolls and dwarves running around then usual. =D

I will note here that though I played on two different servers, these are all from the Inner Loop Guild that played on the Rodcet Nife server. Can do Fourth Wall next if there is demand. =P

Images are after the jump since there are quite a few of them.
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~sigh~

Clearly, I’m in a full fledged writing slump. Not that I’m very surprised by my apparent apathy. The end of thirty days of posting seems to have this effect on me. Pair that with holiday hangover and I can barely manage to drag myself out of bed, much less scrape together the brain power to write something worth reading. (I’m seriously trying here!)

But its time to get back in gear, lest what little skill I do have atrophy, so I’m going the least brain power required route with the Kickstarter update!

Yup, Kickstarter sucked me back in and roped me into supporting two new computer games. I still can’t decide if I’m just being overly optimistic or totally wasting money, I mean computer games are notorious for running late and over budget. Frankly I’m still baffled by how little money all these developers are asking for. Yeah, sure, its millions of dollars, but lets just remember that SWToR cost over $250 million to make. This perspective makes me wonder if these games will ever even see the light of day. Okay, totally rambling. Onward!

Godus is a new God Game from Peter Molyneux at 22cans. The description makes the game sound like a reinvention of Populous with the ability to shape terrain and influence your followers. The main point being that you get to be a god and lead your followers to glory. This wasn’t really an instant sell for me. Curiosity is what finally convinced me to sign up; Peter Molyneux has been making various version of god games for a long time, which speaks to his experience with the genre, but it also makes me wonder what he is trying to achieve. Maybe this version will be the One.

I am actually far more excited about War of the Overworld, which is to be a reinvention of Dungeon Keeper (ironically also a Peter Molyneux game). I was a huge fan of Dungeon Keeper back in the day, so anything even remotely related sounds interesting to me. My only (small) concern is that the developer is a new studio. I really hope this not only gets released, but that they do justice to the fun that was Dungeon Keeper.

Though both of these projects have already been funded, they are offering lots of post-kickstarter ways to still help contribute financially.

Lastly, another one of the projects I funded, Education Abroad: a Korean Drama, has completed and is now airing their shows on the youtubes. =D

This might come as a surprise but my pick is Tingle from the Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker game. He is this totally hilarious middle-aged man who believes in forest fairies, so much so that his only ambition is to become a forest fairy himself, thus the costume. He also happens to be a skilled cartographer.

Though he is a reoccurring character in the Zelda series, he had a starring role in the Wind Waker game, resident mapmaker. But the real reason I liked him so much (besides being ridiculously funny) was that Tingle could help Link by connecting the Game Boy Advanced to the GameCube. It was a total gimmick, but I loved every minute. It certainly ensured Tingle’s place in this line up. =P

Video game movie adaptations are pretty much universally terrible. Thankfully I really like bad movies, especially since many of these adaptations have crossed that line into ‘so terrible its funny’.

But there are a few that were enjoyable for simply being fun and entertaining. My favorite is probably ‘Tomb Raider’. Angelina Jolie does a great job of being an action star, and I’m always a sucker for an intelligent, kick ass, female heroine. My runners up are ‘Mortal Kombat’ and ‘Resident Evil’.

Let me clarify, these are not great movies, but they still managed to represent their games fairly well and be quite entertaining. Frankly, with the selection of game movies that are out there (~cough~ Dungeon Siege movie ~cough~) these three movies are masterpieces.

The TVtropes site has an interesting write up about why video game movies suck and how animated versions tend to be better received. Well worth a read for deeper insight.

While games don’t seem to adapt as well into other mediums, the opposite direction is often much more successful. Two of my favorites are Lego Star Wars and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. Both are super fun games that represent their various genres extremely well.