Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8512231" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 86: August 1993part 5/5Into The Dark: It always happens. When a new technology come along it's first adopted by people who use it to push boundaries, then the big companies come along and try to homogenise things again for the mass market. James has only been doing this column a couple of years and it's already become noticeably harder to find the kind of videos he likes, with the little stores being undercut by Blockbusters popping up in every town, all carrying exactly the same kid-friendly selections. Don't worry, they'll be on the other side of history in a decade's time when Netflix does the same to them, and then it too will make the same mistake of cutting down on archive selections for licensing reasons and focussing more on original material, making it impossible to find many old movies on legal streaming sites. It's a neverending cycle. What can we do apart from keeping the torrents seeding? But anyway, back to various nights of weirdness happening, as there's more than enough of those to fill many months in here, and even more that James has heard of but can't actually find.Night of the Ghouls is one of Ed Wood's inept but still interesting attempts at moviemaking. This isn't so much a review as a digression on his whole oeuvre, and the upcoming Tim Burton biopic on the topic. Discovering how these films came to be is probably more fascinating than actually watching them. Night of the Comet gets a mediocre result, being neither particularly funny or cutting a social satire, but at the same time not so badly made as to be interesting. Ok enough to have on in the background, but nothing mindblowing.Night of the Creeps is slightly more entertaining, as it doesn't have any pretensions about being more than a B-movie about brain slugs turning people into zombies, but it's still on the mediocre end overall, with the dialogue in particular being very cheesy indeed. Oh well, at least you know exactly what to expect going in.Night of the Zombies is one James reviews just to warn you away. Useless zombies, even more useless human protagonists, poor special effects, all padded out with large quantities of stock footage. It's no wonder Bruno Mattei decided to use a pseudonym when releasing this one. Night of the Strangler is also not recommended, for one thing because the serial killer in it never actually kills anyone by strangulation. Micky Dolenz is bafflingly cast, the attempts at politics are hamfisted, and the technical aspects are once again distinctly lacking. Many modern youtubers have a better setup. Take A Byte: So much for Dark Sun: Shattered Lands, as they're forced to announce that the expansions to their game have been "delayed". We know in hindsight that that delay is indefinite, but at this point they still think it'll just be a few extra months work. It's a hard life being a PR person when things could change behind the scenes at any moment and all you can do is put the best spin on them and hope your words won't be proven wrong again at the next whim of the boss. On a more positive note, D&D: Fantasy Empires will be out on time in a couple of months, giving you a way to go straight to that domain level play that they tried to include in earlier editions but few players ever reached. Play against a mix of other human players and computer ones and try to expand your territory and level up individual characters in your roster. Was that any good? Are the multiplayer elements still functional in some form to make it playable on modern computers, or is it another one that the passing of time has made unusable?The Roving Eye:  this time looking at Eclipse Con in Columbia, MO. Aside from an unusually high ratio of hats amongst the attendees, it looks the same as any other convention. Unless they have some particularly cool props or cosplay, these things kinda blur into one after a while. You've seen one large echoey hall filled with stalls, you've seen 'em all. Like most post hoc landmarks, there's nothing particularly exceptional here, although the double helping of Star Wars stuff is at least worth noting. Despite not having a dominant sci-fi system, there's still plenty of sci-fi fans amongst the RPGA, and they're trying to publish articles for them. How will the Amazing Engine & Alternity compare in here to Dragon, and will they bother to do any tournament adventures for either? Time to see what diversions from the typical Living City fare next issue might contain.</blockquote>

Verification