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Tumble Town
Tumble Town
2020 | American West, City Building, Dice Game, Puzzle
Fun fact about me: I used to live in Le Claire, Iowa (birthplace of “Buffalo Bill” Cody) on a street named Wild West Drive. While the town named many of their streets after American West figures and items, it was not your typical Iowa ghost town – if there are such things. That said, I do have an affinity for the Wild West in my gaming preferences, so when I heard about a dice/building game with an American West theme designed by Kevin Russ (who also recently designed Calico) I was immediately interested. But how does this one… stack up?

Tumble Town is dice rolling, structure building, drafting game with variable player powers. You are charged with choosing building plans to be added to Main Street of Tumble Town. You do this throughout the game by selecting the plans that will make best use of the resources (dice) you gain. The buildings that you construct may allow you special powers to be used on future turns, or one-time bonuses to be used once built. The player who can turn the greatest profit (in terms of VP) at the end of the game will be the winner!

DISCLAIMER: We were provided a prototype copy of this game for the purposes of this review. These are preview copy components, and the final components will definitely be different from these shown. Also, it is not my intention to detail every rule in the game, as there are just too many. You are invited to back the game through the Kickstarter campaign, from your FLGS, or through any other retailers stocking it after fulfillment. -T

To setup, deal each player a packet of starting components: a unique Horse card, two reference cards, Storehouse card, Main Street card, and two brown (they are red in the prototype) dice to be rolled and placed within the Storehouse. Shuffle and display the 1-, 2-, and 3-cactus building cards per the rulebook instructions to form the market. Set aside a number of each die type per the rulebook (both the building cards and dice are determined by number of players). Determine the first player and give them the first player token (a colorful rubber potted cactus). Players will connect their two Main Street cards at the central icon to create a two-card street (we chose the wagon wheel – Easy) and the game can begin!

Turns in Tumble Town consist of four mini-phases that flow into each other rather naturally. The first phase will have the players choosing a revealed building plan card from the offer market. The face-down draw stack will inform the active player as to how many and which type of dice they must draw and roll. Once they have these dice in their Storehouse, the player may now build plans using the dice they control. Buildings can be constructed and placed right onto Main Street, or be placed on the plan card to be placed on Main Street on a later turn. If the player has collected more dice than their Storehouse can hold, they must discard any of the dice they wish. This concludes a turn and the next player can begin their turn.

Certain iconography on the building plan cards allow players to use special powers throughout the game once built, and there are three types. Cards with the silvery bottom panel of symbols and the 1x notation are powers that must be used only once and only when the building is constructed. These powers could be collecting a die of the player’s choice, or receiving various dice counters. The building plan cards that feature a circular arrow notation are powers that can be used once per turn, every turn, if wished. These powers are found on each player’s Horse as well and can be adjusting a die’s face value, or re-rolling two dice, as examples. The third type of power is from the golden paneled cards that have an arrow pointing to a vertical line. These powers are only activated at the end of the game and mostly include scoring variances, like 1VP for each building a player has constructed that has a vulture icon (or a windmill, for example) featured on the card art.

Once a building is erected, the player may choose to place it onto their Main Street cards. When they place them, the player will need to choose where on Main Street these buildings should live. Like Bob Ross always says, “There are no mistakes, just happy accidents.” A player can place their buildings anywhere they wish on Main Street, but the Main Street cards will give extra bonuses to those players who plan ahead and place their buildings strategically. Some plots will ask for a building of a specific height (one die high or three dice high). Some will ask for the base level of the structure to be made of a specific material/die color (brown wood, black coal, silver metal, and gold… gold). Extra points are awarded if one-die-width alleyways are allotted, and these Main Street placements can score a bunch of endgame points.

Turns can be very quick or very deliberate, depending on the types of players involved. AP-prone players will take longer on their turns as they internalize all possibilities of their rolled results, while people like me just fly by the seats of our breeches. The game continues in this fashion: four mini-phases of drafting cards from the market, grabbing the associated dice, rolling them, and attempting to erect the best buildings on Main Street until two dice pools contain two or fewer dice. The current turn order finishes and the game is over.

Components. Again, this is a prototype copy of the game, and the publisher was decent enough to include a listing of items to be improved in the final version (like the red dice being poured brown in final – that really messed up someone’s strategy during a play-through for us because they kept forgetting that red is actually brown). The overall art style is very simplistic and I do NOT mean that negatively. The graphics and artwork are great, and give exactly what is needed without being so distracting that you cannot concentrate on your strategy. The dice are normal dice quality (that always seem to roll poorly when I’m rolling… hmm…). Once you see the photos of how the game will look during production, you will appreciate how great this is going to look on the table. No problems with components at all, save for the red vs. brown debacle that happened on our table. I really hope they keep the awwwwesome rubber cactus first player marker because it’s amazing.

I absolutely loved this one. I have always enjoyed using items for purposes other than originally intended – in this case, using dice as building materials. Of course, playing any game with dice introduces a bit of luck and instability in strategy, but Tumble Town offers quite a bit of manipulation of dice rolls that keeps almost all dice results feasible and useful. I really enjoyed the stacking, the quick turns, and the desperation when someone takes the last wood die when I was gunning for a wood-based building on my next turn. This game is light, but is chocked full of difficult decisions and luck of the roll. Tumble Town is for people who enjoy the rolling and stacking from FUSE (minus the frenzy), and the spatial building placement chaining of Villages of Valeria.

If this is the game for you, then we highly encourage you to check out the Kickstarter campaign which is running until Thursday, March 26. Tumble Town has already exceeding the funding goal at time of this review, but all future pledges will contribute to stretch goals that will improve components and add other components (spoiler?). So get out there and build up Tumble Town, ya yella-bellied greenhorns!
  
You're Next (2013)
You're Next (2013)
2013 | Drama, Horror, Mystery
EVERYTHING!!!!! (0 more)
One fucked up family gathering... Hey, who invited the sheep??
Contains spoilers, click to show
When I sing the praises of a movie in it's entirety, people who read my reviews know I think it's amazing.
First things first, let me get the blowing the writer put of the way... Simon Barrett is a God amongst horror writers. He brings you to the edge, makes you think you know what's going on and then drives a stake through you beliefs like Van Helsing...
Your typical home invasion movie turns into a sinister and diabolical insurance scam that deflates the typical nature of this formerly typical plotline... I know, I'm saying typical alot...fuckin bite me.
Adam Wingard is an absolutely kick-ass director who I personally have watched grow in the genre, and who I have come to trust when it comes to picking a film out... Regardless of what people say, had Death Note not been a successful anime series before he took the helm of the movie, it would've been glorified as a work or horror/fantasy art.
Take your (that word again) typical upper class family, stick them in a deserted home for a family get together. Add another horror director, Ti West, and Wingard and Barrett's favorite actors... Joe Swanberg, A.J. Bowen and Amy Seimetz... Dash in some Australian hottie, Sharni Vinson. And add one of the most amazing Scream Queens to ever grace the screen, Barbara Crampton. And chuck in some relative nobodies for fodder and you have the ingredients for a wild ride.
You're Next appeals to me because home invasions happen. It has a reality to it that can be matched by 2008's The Strangers and a more recent addition, Hush.
This movie delivers on all fronts.
The Killers are a band of ex Marines who are contracted but an unlikely source to carry out the deaths of rich mom and dad.
The children in the family are the height of dysfunctional, thus proving money can't buy you sanity.
And the twist in this movie proves that secrets can be hidden well in a script if the proper distractions are in place.
One thing I'd like to add before I end this is the masks work by the Killers are straight creepy. Whoever thought to put them in those is genius. And they made for some great marketing posters and internet spots.
Simple flat white masks that have not scared me to death since I was a child and seen the iconic Michael Myers for the first time.
Barrett and Wingard make movies that are more reality based and that scare the bejesus out of you.
Check out A Horrible Way to Die if you don't believe me. It will not disappoint.
  
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Bewitched (2005)
Bewitched (2005)
2005 | Comedy, Sci-Fi
2
5.4 (8 Ratings)
Movie Rating
Turning a classic television series into a feature film can be a risky proposition. While the built in audience of Baby Boomers and new fans of a show gained through reruns make remakes a potentially lucrative venture, the task of recasting classic characters and modernizing the story to today’s audiences is rife with hazards.

For example, for every remake that succeeds, such as The Adams Family, Starsky and Hutch, and The Brady Bunch, there are countless others that fail, like The Wild Wild West, Car 54 Where Are You and I-Spy.

Sadly the new film version of Bewitched falls into the latter category. It is so bad it begs the question as to why such talents like Nicole Kidman, Michael Caine, and Will Ferrell signed on.

The story centers on Isabel Bigelow (Nicole Kidman), a young woman who is anxious to set off on her own and leave the family structure behind her. While this is not so uncommon for most people, Isabel is a witch and her decision to live as a mortal without her powers is of great consternation to her father (Michael Caine).

Isabel is convinced she can find a man, and can live in happiness and love with a mortal. She wants no part of the shallow and wandering eye that makes up their lifestyle. Convinced his daughter will never be able to live without her powers, her father chides her for her frequent and casual use of powers to do everything from find and furnish her home to paying for everyday needs.

At roughly the same time, fading actor Jack Wyatt is about to sign up to play the male lead in a new television version of the classic Bewitched television series. With the gigantic failure of his recent film, Jack is in need of a hit. Not wanting to take any attention away from his star turn, Jack insists that the producers cast a complete unknown in the role of Samantha. He does not want anyone infringing upon his spotlight.

A chance encounter with Isabel leads to her being cast by Jack in the new series. Isabel is taken by Jack and when she learns the role is that of a witch, she signs aboard despite some reservations.

Naturally Jack and Isabel will hit it off, and yes there will be issues, particularly when Jack’s shallow nature becomes clear to Isabel, and this is to say nothing of Isabel’s true identity which in and of itself is an issue.

What starts as a good premise with a solid cast quickly dissolves into a disjointed mess thanks to a paper thin plot that is rife with plot holes, non-sequitors, and unresolved moments. One such example is the character of Iris Smythson (Shirley Mac Laine), who plays Endora on the show. It is at first hinted at that she too is a witch and then made obvious. However there is no conclusion to this revelation. We see that she has a power and uses it, but we never really get the why she is there, how she chose to live as she does, and how her relationship with Isabel’s father is going to be altered by this.

Another problem the show has is that Ferell is reduced to running around, over-acting to get laughs. The situations go on way to long, and things that are at first amusing, become tedious after a while. One such scene has Ferell’s character appearing nude on a live television appearance. It is something that is used to generate laughs but there is no setup to the scene and it plays out as a desperate attempt to get laughs.

The only thing that works is the charm of Kidman who, as the quirky Isabel, is delightful, as is the supporting work of Caine and Steve Carell as Uncle Arthur. Sadly they are the only good things in a film that became so bad that many in the audience at my press screener were voicing their disdain when we left the film. Perhaps Samantha can twitch her nose and make this one vanish, as there is precious little to redeem it.
  
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Fred (860 KP) rated the PlayStation 4 version of LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2 in Video Games

Jul 12, 2018  
LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2
LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2
2017 | Action/Adventure
Tons of characters from the Marvel comics (2 more)
Cool story
Cool locales
Voice acting is meh (1 more)
Lots of glitches
More of the same, but different & glitchy
I've played all of the Lego games & I've seen some good ones, like the Star Wars one & I've seen some bad ones. (Looking at you Indiana Jones) I'm a fan of these games, as they're mindless fun, plus they're easy platinum trophies.

Lego Marvel Superheroes 2 is one of those good ones, although it does have some problems.

Let's start with the good. There are tons & I mean TONS of characters to unlock in this one. Mostly based on the comic book versions of the characters, with some from the MCU of course. It was so fun to play some of my favorite lesser-known characters, like the Spider-Man Noir version or the Kronan in the Planet Hulk arena.

The story is an original, with Kang the Conqueror as the main villain of the story. Because he's altering lime-lines, along with different dimensions, we have a world mixed with different worlds. We have Asgard, Manhattan Noir (a 30s-40s version of New York), Wild West Town, Avenger's Mansion, & many many more. Just like the mall in the movie The Blues Brothers, this place has got everything. It's so much fun jumping around from place to place.

Now the bad. Let's start with the voice acting. There are no famous voices in the game & it shows. Supposedly, the game was made during an actor's strike & so we got what they can get. Now, not saying the voice acting is bad, but it's just so-so. Some voices seem out of place for some characters. Captain America doesn't sound like he should. Doctor Strange doesn't sound like he should. Now, I may be ruined by the actors from the movies, but if you hear them in the game, you'll agree. It has less to do with their live-action counterparts & more of "Yeah, I never pictured Tony Stark sounding like...that."

And now my main complaint. Lots of glitches. Even after the update, I find lots of glitches in the game. The most annoying one is finding one of your characters stuck in a spot, dying over & over in an endless loop, such as falling off a platform to his/her death or stuck on some radioactive material. I found myself more than a few times having to exit the level & start all over due to this happening. Another glitch was in the arena, where Hulk turned himself back to Bruce Banner & would not turn back into the Hulk. Now maybe this was meant to happen, like in the Infinity War movie, when he was scared to turn to the Hulk, but I don't think so. Reason being towards the end of the fight, they have Hulk talking, while he was still as Bruce Banner. Luckily I didn't need Hulk to beat the level, as I would have had to start over. Other glitches include characters switching by themselves & audio cutting out.

This being said, I still want to play this game. While not one of the best Lego games, it's still fun & it's very cool, especially if you're a comic book fan.