Some Thoughts on Playstyle

I tend to spend a good amount of my time over at the forums and chatroom of mydndgame.com.  Often a discussion will arise where we discuss a difference in playstyle and I’m often finding myself taking the side of the argument “Play the Game as it is” but with the reservation that you can reflavor elements within the game to work as you want without changing the rules.

I don’t know about you, but I find this stance is increasingly rare.  I read other blogs and also discuss games at gaiaonline.com and even there it’s rare.  Everyone wants to change the game from what it is to fit what they think the game should run like.  If you want examples of this, look at some of the previous posts I’ve made on this blog, but to give a few more recent examples (mainly from Dungeons and Dragons 3.5):

1. People want to use a 32 point buy for attributes while the game is under that assumption that it’s players will be using a 25 point buy.  Then these same players begin to complain that the game doesn’t work for them because the monsters stop being a challenge after a while.  This seems like it should be self explanatory but they just don't see why the game doesn’t do what they want it to do.

2. The skill system of the game allows for a great amount of versatility but people think about things like the RNG(Look it up on google or find the gaming den).  I think people are limiting there experience with a robust system so that they can play numbers games and metagame their way through the campaign.  These players to like to complain.

I guess the point that I’m trying to get at is that I’m tired of people saying a system doesn’t work and needs to be fixed when all the player has done to the system has caused the game to not function like it should.  I think this is why I prefer a rules lite system like the older editions of the game DnD, or I run a game that doesn’t stray far from the rules.  And that is my playstyle.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen Review

Last week, on Thursday, I took my family out to see the latest Transformers movie.  Little did I know what I was getting myself into when I planned this event but overall the movie was good.  What follows are some pros and cons to the film based on my opinion.  You don’t have to agree with my assessment but I don’t have to agree with you either.

First thing that got me about the movie was that matinee price has risen to $7.75 a ticket.  That’s not as much a problem for the movie as is one of the movie theater, but how is a family supposed to come during the day and enjoy a movie when you can only afford the price of a ticket?  I can understand hard times but this is ridiculous.   Well I was able to pass my son off as 3 so we had to only purchase two tickets to enter.

We picked seats near the middle section of the theater and waited around until the movie started.  The thing I noticed was that we were the only parents there with children of that age and that should have alerted me to the rating of this movie but I was thinking about how the first movie was.  They really pushed that PG-13 rating.  There was so much swearing in this film that I was shocked and felt offended in a sense.  It was all pointless and didn’t add humor or anything.  I guess it was used to establish a set of characters but over it was bad.  There are also scenes of lude conduct (like a robot humping a Meg Fox’s leg) but I let that slide since I didn’t pay attention to the rating.  I don’t know how my son saw the film but I think it didn’t instill any negative things in his little brain because I think he’s only going to remember the giant robots.  So this is a warning, check the rating before you enter a movie with children.

Last thing before I actually get into the movie review, the movie was bloody long.  My son was a trooper for a 4 year old because he was able to remain in place for almost 3 hours.  3 hours of my life were spent there in that theater.  The movie was good but not that good or at that price.  I’ll talk more about the time issue as well later because it will be part of the review.

And now the actual movie stuff and I’ll minimize the spoilers as much as I can.  So you have been warned there will be a few to explain a few points.

Overall, the movie was good.  Michael Bay has an eye for a scene and his focus on the humans instead of the robots is actually an interesting one for the Transformers universe.  The robots look amazing and the voice acting is superb despite the fact the robots don’t have as much screen time.  There is also a bit of good humor in the movie and some intense action.  I was glad to see a few of my old favorites make an appearance in the movie; most notably Soundwave, still voiced by Frank Welker.  Instead of the cassette player this time, he happened to be a satellite in orbit about the planet.  I would have loved to seen him fight but he sent down his little hound thing to do his bidding which was ok with me, I was glad to see him.  Starscream actually had some spoken lines as well.

But what the movie needed the most was to be pulled back a bit.  Mr.. Bay couldn’t fit his movie in the 3 hour time slot and there are quite a few holes in the movie because of this.  A great example of this is when the twins are fighting the giant robot in the desert.  They just disappear and the other robot starts to scale the pyramids.  The Twins were fighting this thing and then all of a sudden disappear.  I didn’t get why.  I also noticed that they took a shortcut when they started reusing Decepticons from the first movie or you would see the same Decepticon over and over again being shot, stabbed, knocked down, etc.  This is very apparent in the end of the movie for the big fight scene.  As I mentioned before, the tone of the film was much different than the first, with more swearing, more sexual innuendos or lude acts, and this idea that there is always something bigger and badder out there.  I would like to say I enjoyed these elements, but for this film they didn’t work.  Leg humping aside, you had panty shots, most of the swearing was done by a goofy looking pair of autobots, drug humor, and a mockery of ethnic backgrounds.  Any way you look at it, it wasn’t really a welcome addition to the movie and could have been cut to bring the movie back down to a manageable time.

I still found this movie to be good after all that, that means Michael Bay has a magic touch.  My son still remembers all the robots and doesn’t talk about the things I would have censored him from so I think can’t be all that bad.  I think it’s a good rental but not worth the price of a ticket.