The first thing was to download Windows 7, the 90 trial can be downloaded from here, it’s a 2GB+ .iso and can be burned to DVD using any of many iso burners, I used an app caller isoburner.exe, but I can’t find any links to it now.

Next job was to prepare for system restore, I’ve nabbed an official Win XP SP3 install from here. Again these .iso files can be burned to CD and provide a full install if you’ve got a license key. All ready for rollback I’ve finally bought a NAS (Network Attached Storage) backup drive, the Iomega Home Media drive (500gb). The reviews seem fairly good, it connects directly to my wireless hub and can be used as a media drive for XBox 360, an iTunes server and a USB print server. And a backup drive.

Setup started quite simply. Plug in the power and Ethernet cable to your network router and install the software on your PC. This is where it all went wrong and somewhere between my firewall, wireless connection and iomega software my laptop got into a cycle where it would reboot just after XP told me my firewall was turned off. Trying not to panic and with tea-time rapidly approaching I turned off the wireless connection on my laptop uninstalled the offending software and went back to Plan A: connecting to the drive through explored. Simples, logged onto my router, got the IP of the new drive and connected to it through Explorer.

Finally backed up my measly 100gb of ‘personal’ data (over Ethernet, wireless was  t o o s l o w) completely unbenchmarked it took about 5 1/2 hours. I only had one ‘cyclic redundancy check’ which occured twice but with the same file so chances are it’s a corrupt file or issue with my current HDD.

Next. After verifying my backed up data it’s time to install Windows 7.

AC was set (mainly) in the middle east during the 12th century crusades, you play as modern-day Desmond – an ancestor of a long line of assassins – kidnapped and being used to control assassin Altair via a machine called the Animus to embark on missions to identify, track down and finally assasinate a succession of targets. But there is more to the story than that, what do your captors really and how can you escape? The world is beautifully rendered and the controls fairly simple and you are soon running up walls and leaping across rooftops, pursued by guards.

The game itself was launched to critical acclaim and leapt onto many must-own lists, and it was very good. If there are any criticisms of the game, the movement controls may be a little too simple – but the upside of this is that you don’t have the endless replays of sections due to a single mis-timed button press, and the ending is different from the norm, leaving you wondering ifthe game is actually over.

So onto AC2 – this time flash forward to Renaissance era Italy and Ezio is Desmond’s ancestor and has new places to explore and tools to utilise in the pursuit of the swift, silent kill. It’s looking good and if Ubisoft do their job right it will also end up on many a must-have list. Accompanying the standard launch editi0n will be limited edition Black and White editions with collectible packaging (?) a figurine and ‘DVD’ extras like behind the scenes and sountracks. They also come with bonus in-game content – a big carrot for the completionists. I admit I’m a bit of a sucker for these special editions – especially franchises I enjoy.

AC2 launches on 20th November 2009 and I’m hoping Ubisoft will also pick up the DLC element that is starting to permeate the gaming arena with additional missions to extend the experience.

Wet launches today, from Bethesda Softworks (Elder Scrolls, Fallout) it’s a fast-paced 3rd-person shoot/slash/kick etc-em-up. With a 70′s theme & accompanying soundtrack and visceral action it has been likened in style to Tarantino meets Suda51 (Killer 7, No More Heroes). The lovely Eliza Dushku voices Rubi, the leather-clad, samurai sword wielding heroine and the storyline sounds like a simple double-cross / revenge scenario. I’m a fan of  ‘story’ and plan on writing about story in games compared to literature or cinema, but in this case i’ll be happy to let story play second fiddle to the action!

Above the waist it was semi-anthropomorphic; though its chest…had the leathery, reticulated hide of a crocodile or alligator. The back was piebald with yellow and black, and dimly suggested the squamous covering of certain snakes. Below the waist, though, it was the worst; for here all human resemblance left off and sheer phantasy began. The skin was thickly covered with coarse black fur, and from the abdomen a score of long greenish-grey tentacles with red sucking mouths protruded limply.

Their arrangement was odd, and seemed to follow the symmetries of some cosmic geometry unknown to earth or the solar system. On each of the hips, deep set in a kind of pinkish, ciliated orbit, was what seemed to be a rudimentary eye; whilst in lieu of a tail there depended a kind of trunk or feeler with purple annular markings, and with many evidences of being an undeveloped mouth or throat. The limbs, save for their black fur, roughly resembled the hind legs of prehistoric earth’s giant saurians, and terminated in ridgy-veined pads that were neither hooves nor claws.

Not the Dunwich Horror

I’m a horror fan, with a particular penchant for the insidious creeping gothic fear burried in the pages of short-stories and novels of 19th and 20th century writers such as Poe, M.R. James, August Derleth and H.P. Lovecraft and the Cthulu Mythos. Their style is similar to those of the classic Gothic Novels like Walpole’s Castle of Otranto – suggestions of hidden horrors too terrible to describe and whose very presence spread madness. They build tension slowly through the story, then the entity is revealed with a flourish!
And sometimes it’s not. I think it’s a style more suited to a short story or novella.

This wednesday’s get-together we were 2 players down so decided to break tradition and play a board game. Marky suggested Arkham Horror and it was a big thumbs up from all, being a fan I was rather excited (although not excited enough to read the rules). Fortunately I wasn’t the only one who didn’t know the rules so we started out s l o w.

Introduction

Arkham Horror is a co-operative game i.e. all the players aim to beat the game. In this case each player controls an investigator with specific skills, abilities, items and spells which are used to stop one of the Ancient Ones from breaking through to this mortal realm and destroying Arkham.

Chapter One – An Ancient Evil Stirs

The box is full of counters, cards and tokens with a large board representing the fictional town of Arkham. Everything is beautifully illustrated in full colour and really captures the ambience of Lovecrafts mythos. There really is a plethora of cards but we separated them out and selected investigators in a semi-random fashion, selected an Ancient One to battle (Yig – never heard of him, he’s a snake god and any cultists in the game are actually lizard men and tougher than normal cultists) and worked our way through the setup phase.

Chapter 2 – The Opening of the Gates

The setup culminates with the drawing of a Mythos Card, a gate to another realm opens and a monster appears! The invasion of Arkham had begun and we hadn’t even had a turn. We took a deep breath and opened our minds to the horror.

Chapter 3 – Investigation begins

Our first turn took a while and a fair bit of reading – but as seasoned gamers we battled through. A good read of the rules would have benefitted us greatly, but Yig held no fear for us. We moved around Arkham, performed our encounters, hunting down clues and worked out we needed to close the gates that would appear, usually as a result of a Mythos card. We found that the Mythos cards were poorly laid out as the order of the four actions to complete on the card are not intuitive, although they looked good and after a couple of turns we managed to get the hang of them.

Chapter 4 -Darkness Descends

After a fairly lengthy setup and first turn we fell into stride, pausing briefly for rules checks on new events – moving into and through the other realms, closing gates and encountering monsters. Here we found the flavour of the game really came though, the beasts coming through the gates were tough and you don’t want to fight one without a weapon, two of us ended up in the hospital very early on. It’s a nice touch that if you lose all your Sanity or stamina you aren’t out of the game, just get sent to Arkham Asylum or the Hospital respectively to recuperate.

Chapter 5 – Investigations in the Dark

Turns passed quite quickly once we got the hang of it. I didn’t feel that Arham Horror was as collaborative as the Lord of the Rings boargame by Reiner Knizia, we generally did our own thing each turn. I imagine you could work with a combat character to take down monsters roaming the streets of Arkham to clear the way for Lore-based investigators and some powers allow you to give other players re-rolls but beyond that I didn’t see much scope for teamwork. Admittedly this was only my first playthrough and repeated play could reveal more.
A note on mechanics, the game uses a success system where you get to roll a number of dice based on your abilities, skills and difficulty modifiers and need to roll at least one 5 or 6 to succeed a check, it works well and is satisfying rolling a fist-full of dice, and worrying when you’ve only got one or two.

Chapter 6 – The Tide Turns

Soon enough we were closing, and more importantly sealing gates (which stops gates re-opening). Yig was gathering in power but we finally sealed the sixth gate and were victorious!

Epilogue

Arkham Horror really brings Lovecrafts Cthulu to the table, mixed with 1920′s smalltown America, with every turn bringing opportunity at the cost of your sanity. There’s an element of skill-based rpg and you can ‘re-train’ by changing your stats through the game, but at the cost of others – more speed, less stealth; more lore, less luck. And through the game you can develop your investigator with more items, skills and spells. There is enough of a random element, plenty of characters and several Ancient ones to allow plenty of replay. Our game took about 3 1/2 hours for four players, so with experience a game will take around 2 1/2 – 3 hours.

A thoroughly enjoyable romp in madness 4 out of 5 Pseudopods X X X X _

Arkham Horror is published by Fantasy Flight games

Generally they read well and it’s nice to see some rules based uses of skills in combat (beyond DCs set by the GM). We’ve generally used Athletics and Acrobatics in combat to pull off cool moves – Vaulting over sarcophagi or climbing onto rooftops to shoot from, the occasional use of nature\dungeoneering etc to identify creatures – but History..? Now such a fearsome character as Raelthos Moonchild III can use his Intimidating presence.

Snap Out of It – Intimidate – Utility 10
A smack across the face brings your ally back to his or her senses.
Encounter  Minor Action Melee touch
Target: One ally subject to a dazing, dominating, or stunning
effect that a save can end
Effect: The target makes a saving throw against the effect.

Other powers give you just that little more that using a skill imaginatively – allowing you to transplant a trained skill for another i.e. Insight instead of Bluff to gain combat advantage (L2 Insight: Anticipate Manoever) or use History in place of an int check (an automatic +5)

It’ll be interesting to see how these play out alongside class-based utilities,  it certainly allows more room to individualise your character. I can see that these could’ve been built as feats instead and come with a +x to the skill also to assert the focus but they look as though they sit alongside other utility powers quite neatly, we’ll see how Snap out of it Works for the next level.

But my Laney amp still only goes up to 10

I knew a bloke once known as Frag. He wasn’t blue but he was a big chap and while we were running around with album covers painted on our leathers he had a chain & hook painted round the arm of his. Why? He was Lobo.
Apparently Guy Ritchie’s new film will be Lobo. Again a little dubious, Lobo ain’t an Essex gangsta, but paint Ron Perlman blue and we’ll be halfway there.

Controls are pretty good, well laid out and responsive my only problem so far is if you get stuck in the corners you can’t see what’s going on because the controls overlay the game screen, not nice when all you know of what’s going on is *chomp* *chomp* *chomp* *aargh!*

3 Brains! out of 5 x x x _ _