The problem with writing a shopping guide on a non-monetized blog that is as much a personal exercise in writing for fun as it is for promoting anything out of the goodness of my own heart is that practically anything I advise will always necessarily imply a "YMMV" following it. For example: I happen to think that Terminator: Dark Fate, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, Deadly Premonition Origins and The Mandalorian are all fine sources of entertainment. Stellar or for everyone? Well, remember: YMMV
That said.....here are four things you should think about when shopping for that gamer out there, or heck, just for yourself:
Books worth Grabbing
Eberron: Rising from the Last War is actually a really good D&D book and you should totally get it. Preferably with the amazing alternative cover art. If you're not in to D&D then you should also look at Shards of the Broken Sky for 13th Age, a fantastic campaign in the 13th Age world, running from levels 1 to 7. Or for that matter, take a trip to space fantasy land and check out the invaluable new Character Operations Manual for Starfinder, with new classes and options for players. And of course, if you haven't seen Pathfinder 2nd edition yet, you should! More on that later though.
Portability
The Switch Lite is a cool gadget and worth owning if you are the least bit in to decent handheld, on-the-go gaming experiences. If you have some young tyke or old whippersnapper who might also appreciate a portable gaming experience, this is a no-brainer. Just remember to get an SSD card to go with it! The 32GB onboard memory fills up fast.
Once you have it, if your tastes are like mine then you should grab Deadly Premonition Origins, Assassin's Creed III Collection, Asphalt 9, Astral Chain, Pillars of Eternity and the D&D collections for Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale and Baldur's Gate I and II. Also, check out Legrand Legacy, a worthy retroclassic RPG.
Free to Play King
The best free to play gaming experience on PC currently is Destiny 2. I will argue this objective, holy truth at this point. Sure, Warframe is out there, but that's sort of like comparing Star Trek to Star Wars, if Star Trek is Destiny 2 in this scenario and is about immortal space wizards fighting alien cults in a post-utopian apocalyptic solar system, and Star Wars was Warframe, a game entirely about Guyver-like bodysleeves who are also sort of immortal fighting alien cults in a post-singularity apocalyptic solar system. The main differences are one makes its microtransactions weird and hard to benefit from and the other makes its microtransactions even weirder, harder to benefit from and expensive as $#!*.
Past the Breakpoint
Despite its issues, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Breakpoint is actually a lot of fun, and much better on PC than PS4 (I run into almost no glitches or bugs at 4K on ultra settings on the PC). The graphics at this setting are so impressive I just can't stop treating the game like a beautiful forest/mountain excrusion sim punctuated by moments of intense violence.
Or, you know, you could go play CoD: Modern Warfare with all the sheeple. I will probably get MW as well when the price goes down at some point so I'm not one to gripe.
More advice to come! I plan to rant and rave about all sorts of things from this year now that my work life is calming down and I am finding more time to actually think.
Showing posts with label Eberron. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Eberron. Show all posts
Friday, November 22, 2019
Monday, August 19, 2019
Eberron Returns!
I'm excited for this announcement...details here.
Check this alternate cover out:
The thing about Eberron is: it's the best "modern" iteration of a D&D setting that WotC has tackled, and offers enough of the "different" from Forgotten Realms to stand out. With any luck, this portends more cool sourcebooks bringing back other key setting in the future, or alternatively it sells well enough we see some Eberron-focused adventure books in the future.
Either way....this is good! It's the first D&D book to tear me away from my Pathfinder 2nd edition obsession that has gripped me this August.
Check this alternate cover out:
The thing about Eberron is: it's the best "modern" iteration of a D&D setting that WotC has tackled, and offers enough of the "different" from Forgotten Realms to stand out. With any luck, this portends more cool sourcebooks bringing back other key setting in the future, or alternatively it sells well enough we see some Eberron-focused adventure books in the future.
Either way....this is good! It's the first D&D book to tear me away from my Pathfinder 2nd edition obsession that has gripped me this August.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Books and on Looting Borders' Smoldering Corpse
I've been reading some good books lately, thought I'd take a bit of time to share. I'm one of those biblioholics out there, so naturally I am deeply concerned about the future of print media, trees be damned, but sooner or later I guess I'll have to adopt some sort of reading tablet and get up with the times. In the meantime, I've taken full advantage of Borders' corpse and looted it for all it was worth; I have about 100 new books* on my shelf now demanding attention, and I'm already wondering if the baby is going to object to me reading him things like The Seal of Karga Kul or Zombie CSU. I figure I'm good, at least until the poor little guy starts developing real language and comprehension skills, and is suddenly mortified to discover that his parents are a couple of uncool geeks...!
Anyway, some books I would strongly recommend:
The Edge of Physics by Anil Ananthaswamay is a great read, a chapter-by-chapter journey in which Anil travels to various remote corners of the world where physicists, astronomers and sundry other researchers are relying on the unique conditions of specific locales to do their research. It's a great read, with a fair amount of insight on how and why these remote institutes come into being and the trials and tribulations involved in doing the research in such exotic locations.
Tom Zoellner wrote Uranium which I am in the middle of and absolutely loving it. It's an engaging read (unlike Rhodes, who may know his stuff but I found tedious to plow through) and provides a great variety of interesting history and data on the discovery, development, research and seedy hidden details of the history of uranium. Well worth reading, and very engaging.
In fantasy, I finished Tim Waggoner's Thieves of Blood, the first volume of the Blade of the Flame trilogy set in the world of Eberron. It was a good read, with some very distinct characters, and a plot and pacing in style for the pulp fantasy world of Eberron. I'm looking forward to reading the next two books in the series now. My only gripe really was that clearly Wizards of the Coast was employing some lazy editors back in 2006 when this book came out, as there were a fair number of typographical errors best attributed to someone who was spell-checking with Office Word 2003 rather than properly proofing the manuscript by hand. That doesn't detract from the author's work, though.
Aside from the above mentioned books I'm plowing once again through Salvatore's Drizzt Do'Urden novels, which I read many years ago, around 1999-2000, getting up to around book 10 before I ran out of steam and took a break, never finding the time to return. Well thanks to the Looting of Borders I have all of the Salvatore Forgotten Realms novels to date, and plan to work my way through them, restarting with Homeland (in the can) and moving on from there. I'm sure everyone's familiar with these books, but I'll only comment to say that I am consistently impressed at how engaging and simple Salvatore's writing is, and how evocative his books are; I really do consider the first Drizzt trilogy to be among the best fantasy I have ever read.
Aside from all the fantasy, I'm also finally picking up Larry Niven's Known Space prequel series (co-written with Edward Lerner), and just finished Fleet of Worlds a few weeks ago. I haven't started Juggler of Worlds yet, but I will soon; I've also been catching up on his other collections such as N-Space and Crashlander. I really love Niven's Known Space universe, and its fun to read new books in the setting, revisit the classic Known Space tales, and watch how the authors try to reconcile the inconsistencies and evolving science of a series written over nearly five decades!
My wife says this is common among imminent first-time fathers, who try desperately to get all that last-minute living in before B-Day and the Loss of All Personal Freedom arrives. I guess I'll save my staggering video game exploits in recent months for another column...
*if you're following my blog and have noted my lamentation at not getting the Tome of Horrors Complete, I will admit that the 100 odd books I bought at Borders in its closing days probably had more to do with that than all the money I've spent on baby gear....sigh, such is the life of a biblioholic, sacrifices must be made and all that noise....!
Anyway, some books I would strongly recommend:
The Edge of Physics by Anil Ananthaswamay is a great read, a chapter-by-chapter journey in which Anil travels to various remote corners of the world where physicists, astronomers and sundry other researchers are relying on the unique conditions of specific locales to do their research. It's a great read, with a fair amount of insight on how and why these remote institutes come into being and the trials and tribulations involved in doing the research in such exotic locations.
Tom Zoellner wrote Uranium which I am in the middle of and absolutely loving it. It's an engaging read (unlike Rhodes, who may know his stuff but I found tedious to plow through) and provides a great variety of interesting history and data on the discovery, development, research and seedy hidden details of the history of uranium. Well worth reading, and very engaging.
In fantasy, I finished Tim Waggoner's Thieves of Blood, the first volume of the Blade of the Flame trilogy set in the world of Eberron. It was a good read, with some very distinct characters, and a plot and pacing in style for the pulp fantasy world of Eberron. I'm looking forward to reading the next two books in the series now. My only gripe really was that clearly Wizards of the Coast was employing some lazy editors back in 2006 when this book came out, as there were a fair number of typographical errors best attributed to someone who was spell-checking with Office Word 2003 rather than properly proofing the manuscript by hand. That doesn't detract from the author's work, though.
Aside from the above mentioned books I'm plowing once again through Salvatore's Drizzt Do'Urden novels, which I read many years ago, around 1999-2000, getting up to around book 10 before I ran out of steam and took a break, never finding the time to return. Well thanks to the Looting of Borders I have all of the Salvatore Forgotten Realms novels to date, and plan to work my way through them, restarting with Homeland (in the can) and moving on from there. I'm sure everyone's familiar with these books, but I'll only comment to say that I am consistently impressed at how engaging and simple Salvatore's writing is, and how evocative his books are; I really do consider the first Drizzt trilogy to be among the best fantasy I have ever read.
Aside from all the fantasy, I'm also finally picking up Larry Niven's Known Space prequel series (co-written with Edward Lerner), and just finished Fleet of Worlds a few weeks ago. I haven't started Juggler of Worlds yet, but I will soon; I've also been catching up on his other collections such as N-Space and Crashlander. I really love Niven's Known Space universe, and its fun to read new books in the setting, revisit the classic Known Space tales, and watch how the authors try to reconcile the inconsistencies and evolving science of a series written over nearly five decades!
My wife says this is common among imminent first-time fathers, who try desperately to get all that last-minute living in before B-Day and the Loss of All Personal Freedom arrives. I guess I'll save my staggering video game exploits in recent months for another column...
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