Board Game Review- Terra Mystica

  Terra Mystica is a territory control-style board game for 2 to 5 players. In it, you play as a race of magical beings who are attempting to terraform the planet through mystical means to suit there own habitats (i.e. Mermaids into water, Elves into forest). Hence the name Terra Mystica. In order to achieve this, the players have to manage the resources of money, divine priests, energy and buildings.

  Terra-Mystica is played out on a hexagonal board, each split into one of six different terrain types. Each race can then use various amounts of resources to terraform the landscape, build houses and then try to upgrade the buildings into churches, fortresses and the like.

 What actions you can do during your turn governed by how many of all the different types of resources you have at your disposal. There is never enough resources to do everything that you want to do. It makes it imperative to plan out what you want to try to do and then work towards getting the resources you need to complete this strategy. This is both the greatest strength and biggest weakness of the game. There are so many different resources to manage and keep track of that the game can often slow down just so each player can fully assess their options.

 There is also no direct way to interact with other players. The most you can do is try to spoil their plans by getting resources before them. There is no trading of resources between players or a way to directly attack them. This gives the player interactions a very negative feeling as opposed to any feeling of positive satisfaction or gain between the players.

Another problem is the downtime between turns. With no direct ways to interact between players and some turns taking a long time due to the amount that you need to keep track of, it is very easy to lose interest when it isn't your turn. This is worsened when you can't do many actions compared to other players (due to lack of resources) so you are often left just waiting.

 Overall, Terra-Mystica is a game with allot of potential. I do have to mention that the board and all the components look stunning and the theme is nicely woven into the game. However, for too many games I was struggling to stay interested except for the brief time that it was my turn. It may work better with only 2 or 3 players, which I haven't tried yet, but that may run into the problem of no interaction between players as the territories are too spread out. With all the competition with better territory and resource management games, I would give this a miss.

 1.5 out of 5 mystical waffle landscapes.

Guardians of the Galaxy

Do you remember pop-rocks- the colorful candy rocks that exploded in your mouth? If you didn’t, you have no childhood. But all you really need to know is that they are awesome. Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is like eating a bunch of pop-rocks at once while listening to all your dad’s favorite hits. The resulting sugar-high leaves you riding a cotton candy unicorn over a rainbow in a galaxy far, far away. Star Wars 7- You are on notice.

Guardians follows a human named Peter Quill who is abducted by aliens just after his mother dies of cancer.  Quill, or Starlord  as he wants to be known, spends his time giving alien floozies the Captain Kirk treatment while going all Indiana Jones on ancient alien artifacts. Starlord’s archaeology hunting escapades eventually lead him into some serious trouble after he swipes an unlikely doomsday device. Similar to Thor: The Dark World, it’s a mystical orb of great power that every bad guys wants. Also a bunch of other important things are happening in the universe that just gets glazed over.

Guardians requires no previous knowledge of Marvel-cinematic universe events, so you’ll never feel like you're out of the loop. It knows it is just the bastard child of the long forgotten tongue-in-cheek space opera. It mixes all the best things about Star Wars and Firefly by taking a bunch of misfits and turning them into a surrogate family. It then adds all these conflicting personalities into a tiny spaceship, then sits back with a bag of pop-rocks to watch the fireworks.

The brisk plot wastes no time teaming-up Quill his new rag-tag frenemies. The Guardians include Gamora, the assassin with a heart and adopted daughter of the super villain Thanos. She is played by Zoe Saldana,who making a career of playing rainbow coloured aliens. Next is man mountain of muscle Drax (Dave Bautista), who holds a grudge towards Gamora. Drax’s lack of understanding humor becomes its own source of humor throughout the movie, with him having some of the best lines. Rounding out this B-grade super-team are Rocket, the wise-cracking raccoon, voiced with enthusiasm by Bradley Cooper, and Groot,  a sentient tree, who can only say one sentence (“I am Groot”). Huge props have to go to Vin Diesel and the visual effects wizard that live in the computer as to making it look effortless to bring this fearsome creature with a gentle soul and a gift for slapstick to life.

Together, they have to stop another supervillain,Ronan the Accuser, who is only slightly more one note then that dark elf from Thor. This is mostly due to Lee Pace’s performance as he seemed to have fun hamming it up. The villains really seem there to more properly introduce the audience to Thanos, who actually gets a speaking part this time.

Where Guardians soars is in its world building, which fully trusts the audience to either take notice or ignore it depending on their preference. Guardians has you hyper jumping all around this colourful galaxy, with each new world you visit being populated by seedy alien hustlers and weird, swaggering creatures. There a character that has a deadly flute arrow. Let me repeat- a flute arrow. That sounds totally ridiculous, until you see it in action. Now I want one.

I love how director James Gunn’s overlays the film with some great pieces of music. These are mostly snippets of classic rock and golden oldies. Like a Quentin Tarantino movie, this all adds extra layers of coolness to the movie. Of course, now I am addicted to listening to that darn soundtrack, which makes me want to watch the movie again, which will make me want to listen to the soundtrack some more. It is a perpetual loop.

Guardians of the Galaxy is a movie that is just a fun romp through the galaxy. It is a rag-tag team getting together to combat a threat and learning to be a family. Like pop-rocks, the further you get into the movie the more awesome it becomes.

5 out of 5 intergalactic cotton candy waffles. Pew-pew. Laser beams. Pop-rocks. Go watch it.

P.S. DC take note. We don't want dark and gritty disaster porn masquerading as a superhero movie, we want want fun.

MOVIE REVIEW: AVENGERS CONFIDENTIAL- BLACK WIDOW AND PUNISHER (2014)

With Guardians of the Galaxy just around the corner and Avengers: Age of Ultron hype starting to ramp up, I decided to delve into one of the Avengers animated offerings. Avengers Confidential follows the story of Punisher and Black Widow as they try to take down a team of villains.

It starts with Punisher and Black Widow butting heads over custody of a criminal. This, of course, establishes that they are pretty evenly matched, before Nick Fury shows up. It is quite an effective introduction for showing the spy-style of Black Widow as opposed to Punisher’s brutal style. From here, it quickly gets into the story of Punisher and Black Widow teaming up to take down Leviathan, a bad-guy group who has stolen Shield weapons. Of course, things don’t quite go as planned.

Avengers Confidential keeps trying to artificially increase the tension in the story by making the characters take actions that make no sense. Whether it is a convenient deus-ex brain washing machine or Nick Fury withholding vital information about the mission, it always feels like it is trying to shoe-horn in tension. I envision that this movie could have worked as a buddy-cop type drama, with the contrast between Black Widow’s spy skills and Punisher’s brutal style as they are trying to be heroes even though they are ordinary people in a world of monsters and super-soldiers. Instead, we get an endless string of fights between them which just ends up feeling tiring.

The animation style for the fighting doesn’t help matters. It definitely feels like they overused the big-sound-and-camera-shake for a hit, leaving it feeling mundane instead of only for the big hits. Most of the moves that they depict also end up feeling very unrealistic, which takes away from any impact that the fights might have. What could have been an interesting movie on the non-superpowered heroes of the marvel universe just ends up feeling like a mash-up of styles.

Overall, I feel like Avengers Confidential was a missed opportunity. It could have been good and starts off promising, but too many times it feels the need to shove extra tension and action into the movie instead of letting a story develop. Oh well, at least the proper cinematic marvel franchise is still awesome.

2 out of 5 punishing waffles.

Moone Boy

Moone Boy isn't groundbreaking, but it one of the most charming series I’ve watched in awhile. It’s delightfully funny, upbeat and touching. It has that quirky family dynamic and coming-of-age story arc that's timeless and relatable, and it’s set in Ireland.


The premise is pretty simple. Let O’Dowd in the show’s opening voice-over explain it: “Ever wanted to be the imaginary friend of an idiot boy in the west of Ireland? Me neither. But there you go.” I was immediately hooked on the show from there.


Having the series take place in Boyle, Ireland in 1989 is refreshing change of pace from middle America. You might miss a few Irish-centric jokes, you’ll absolutely will not miss the visual jokes about clothing, music and lack of technology. It smartly focus on the universal problems that we can all relate to. Most of the character motivations, foibles and personalities will resonate immediately with you. Plus the Irish make swearing seem innocent and adorable.
 
All the cast are terrific. Martin's family really grows on you over the first season and you’ll find yourself connecting more with them than you would have expected. David Rawle really shines as the main character Martin. He a quirky 12 year old that’s completely lovable and doe eyed. I was hoping for more from relationship between Martin and his imaginary friend Sean (O’Dowd). While the premise is set up, it never touched too much on. After a seconded viewing I liked that the world of imaginary friends is pushed to the back to make way for the rest of the characters in the real world. Makes it feel more believable.

 
Moone Boy is a coming-of-age story for a child not yet equipped to battle the real world. But there’s so much humor and sincere moments, that it’s the kind of adventure you can’t wait to see Martin (and O’Dowd) experience together.

4 out of 5 imaginary friend waffles.

Book Review- Lessons in Forgetting by Anita Nair (2010)

 Lessons in Forgetting was a book with a strong central story and characters. However, it seems to want to do everything it can to want to sabotage any set-up it has as it keeps jumping between central themes and plot arcs in an attempt to try to fit way too much in. Spoilers ahead.

 There are 2 intertwining stories of Meera and Jak. Meera is a middle-aged socialite wife whose husband disappears one day during a party for no apparent reason. Jak is a cyclone expert who is trying to uncover what happened to his daughter during a holiday she was on which left her crippled. After a chance meeting at a party, Jak hire Meera as his research assistant.

 Naturally, there professional relationship eventually turns into a friendship and then a romantic involvement as the novel progresses. We also discover why Meera's husband left and what happened during Jak's daughter's holiday. It is in trying to tell these simultaneous stories that the book starts to unravel a little bit.

 The two stories are not evenly paced. The mystery with Meera's husband is intriguing at the beginning of the novel. However, as more is slowly revealed we find out that Meera has been an unreliable narrator as she lives in her own cocooned life. In contrast, the story of Jak's daughter becomes intriguing towards the end as the pieces slowly start to fit together. While this sounds like it should fit together, it leads to the novel feeling disjointed as one story is constantly interrupted by the other, often with a far less interesting section. Add to this that each separate story had its own semi-random time jumps and cast of characters and plot threads, it generally leads to a very disjointed experience in reading.

 Despite this, the author did keep the stories interesting enough. It also, for the most part, avoided having to cheaply raise the stakes. The stories are driven by the characters (mostly) and each of there decisions feels believable rather than a plot convenience. The story of a father looking for answers and a wife cast adrift are easy to emphasize with and this keeps the story together, despite the disjointed nature of the novel.

 3 out of 5 forgotten-flavored waffles.

SECONDS

1) Write Your Mistake

2) Ingest One Mushroom

3) Go To Sleep

4) Wake Anew

Thus begins "Seconds," Bryan Lee O'Malley's first graphic novel work since  "Scott Pilgrim". It's more confident and mature, yet still as in engaging. Still contains all of O’Malley favorite topics - existential angst, hope, fantasy and growing up. Seconds is all about learning how to be okay with your own decisions.

This time round our hero is more mature and with it  than Scott. Katie is the former head chef at Seconds, a restaurant that she has turned into the best in her town. Everything about the restaurant is perfect. Except that it isn't hers, leaving her feeling unfulfilled. While biding her time as her new restaurant opens up across town she secretly canoodles with the current head chef, lords over her current restaurant like she’s still the boss. Even though she currently isn't any longer. Katie’s  wandering causes an accident in the kitchen and injures a server. After a dream,  she uncovers a secret panel in her bedroom dresser that offers her a chance to correct that mistake. Of course Katies wonder if she is crazy, once she realizes that it work’s, she quickly starts to take advantage of this cosmic power. If you’ve learnt anything from books or movies that use this causality and effects device, you’ll know it doesn't stay good for long. Eventually Katies life begins to  fall apart in front of her.

O'Malley's script is much more balanced that Scott Pilgrim.Still has that signature O’Malley style would expect from him. Except there is much less videogames references and fantasy elements. Less you count Katie’s hair which looks like Knuckles from sonic the hedgehog. Seconds is more like a modern folk tales for late 20’s adults. Like how Katie  constantly engages with the omniscient narrative. This helped to balance out the comedy and the drama of the story. Definitely feels like a natural next step for the author, allowing him to explore the themes of growing up more than in Scott Pilgrim. Having that revision sequence helps to reinforce the themes of the book. As well as allowing the fantastical elements to come life.

Only downside is that there is much more limited background characters. The one’s there  all feel honest - each one has good and bad qualities that help and hinder them at every turn and reveal themselves in new ways each time Katie warps the world around them. But there’s no Wallace Wells to give you a backhanded comment of inspiration.  

Seconds is a wonder to behold. O'Malley work is some much more confident. His character have more life I page then some people I’ve meet. There  designs are simple and detailed at the same time, and the fashion and clothing choices for each character are totally on point.

When the action kicks, it's clear and well choreographed. The use of negative space and blank or disappearing panels on pages add to the flow of the tale. Also much more detailed than Scott Pilgrim. The backgrounds reveal a much larger world, they’re several pages within the story that I immediately wanted to hang on my wall.  O’Malley continues to find new and clever ways to muck with the existing ideas of how a story is told within the comics medium. Also in magnificent COLOUR !!!

Seconds is a much more mature in every way. From its imagery and storytelling. Seconds blew me away. I couldn't stop reading it -- once the hooks were in, it just absorbed me into it. The brilliance of it, at least to me, is just how it handles what it’s like to finally accept adulthood. 

4 out of 5  existential waffles of hope. 

Wonder Woman, Vol. 1: Blood (The New 52)

I've never been much of a Wonder Woman reader or DC enthusiast. For the longest time, I considered Wonder Woman a character only recognizable by her association with the Justice League and really nothing more. I’ve only been reading praise for DC new 52 relaunch of  Wonder Woman under writer Brian Azzarello (100 Bullets, Loveless, Joker, Hellblazer, and many more) which peaked my attention, and the end result is the best Wonder Woman story I've read.

What I gather this is a soft reboot, meaning it's still has all the same character but they’ve tweaked wonder woman mythology. Which is good because one of the reason I never got into Wonder Woman was due to her laughable origin story. Seriously. go Wikipedia it for yourself if you want to know more. Azzarello replaces it with something much more interesting and fitting for the character.

The plot basically revolves a young woman named Zola whose pregnant with Zeus's unborn child. Hera pretty pissed about this so she decided that Zola and the child need to be killed. Lucky Wonder Woman happens to be around to provide protection. While this is happening a prophy regarding Zeus’s offspring is relieved. Like any good father he decided to leave Olympus. Now the king is gone the other gods are making plays for power among themselves for the position of ruler of Olympus. Azzarello has clearly taking inspiration from Greek epics like The Odyssey. There is a little bit of everything adventure, mysticism, suspense, love, desires, humor, revelations, and a whole heap of things being setup for the future. What I like is how clear and balanced the storytelling is. The first story arc is compulsively addictive, the political war of the Gods is always in the background. The action never feels unwanted or to over the top. Which makes it all the more page-turning.

Combine that with the wonderful artwork of Cliff Chiang. The bold thick lines and distinct color palette are just excellent.Chiang's designs for the Gods are creative, intriguing and fascinating to behold (wait till you see Poseidon) .

Wonder Woman herself is drawn more like full-fledged Amazon warrior then a supermodel princess. She's lean and mean and beautiful in-between.This all comes down to both the writer and artist being on the same page. Under Azzarello's pen and Chiang art the new Wonder Woman is a winner.

If like me you’ve never read Wonder Woman before, check out Azzarello's new and exciting take on the character. You'll be pleasantly surprised by the twisty twirly story that will have you salivating for more.