Game: Rise of Empires
Publisher: Mayfair Games
Price: $55.00 (USD)
Type: Board Game, Combat, Region Domination, Tiles, Victory Points
Players: Tom Carrier, Mark Corsey, Jason Quintal, Joe Selby
Snacks: Apples, Hot Cider, Kiwi, M&Ms, Pretzels
Theme Music: “Zantlop 786″ by Gasserpe from Podsafe Music Network

AUDIO

• Introducing the Game
• The Rules
• Our thoughts, pros, and cons

VIDEO

• Actual Play

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

• Jason: Walk the Plank
• Joe: Walk the Plank
• Mark: Good Loot
• Tom: Good Loot

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The Bomb by Steve Mannion

The Bomb is a weird but cool collection of stories. All drawn in Mannion’s style that is reminiscent of 50′s MAD artwork. The primary focus is on Prissy “Fearless Dawn” Jones and her rival/best friend Crazy Betty. Sometimes the two are high-school girls dressed as discount super-heroes who fight Nazis. And sometimes they’re WW2 Jet-bike pilots who fight Nazis. Plus high-seas adventures! Zombie Nazis! A dinosaur battlin’ jungle chick! A giant robot Beef-eater! And lots of cheese cake girls in halter and bikini tops…

Today we give thanks for you, our friends, and the good lives we lead. Thank you, everyone.

EA has locked down the console golf game for years with its Tiger Woods powerhouse. With the official PGA license, a ton of features, near photorealistic environments and the big man himself, Tiger Woods PGA Tour comes out like clockwork every year, tempting gamers to plop down another $60 for what seems like last year’s title, only with a few extra bells and whistles. However, what about those console golf fans who just want to play the game? What options are available for those who simply don’t need dynamic weather, precision putting and official courses? Xbox 360 gamers have a choice, and it’s as close as the Indie Games section of the Xbox Marketplace: Avatar Golf.

Xbox 360 gamers are well aware of Avatars. Since they were unveiled in the Dashboard update last year, they’ve been customizing their online personas with hairstyles, clothes, and more recently props like lightsabers and remote control Warthogs. Those who have played 1 vs 100 have gotten used to seeing their avatars incorporated into game shows. Avatar Golf puts them on the golf course.

The game itself is reminiscent of Mario Golf. Swinging the club is a matter of employing the “three-click swing” method, where one press initiates a power bar, the next press determines the strength of the swing and the third determines its accuracy. Landing in the fairway allows the player to make their next shot with a reasonable degree of accuracy, assuming they can handle the three-click swing method. Landing in the rough or the sand hurts the strength of the next shot to a random degree, so players are never quite sure where they’re going to wind up on the next shot.

Putting in Avatar Golf again employs the three-click swing method, only there are two default putt settings, one for up to 25 feet and another for up to 50 feet. The power bar is just as speedy while putting as it is for when players drive off the tee, so players may be surprised at first when they overpower short putts. Once they get the hang of it, they might find the putting downright forgiving and start sinking 25-foot putts with ease. Pressing the Y button will display the contours of the green in shades of light and dark to allow players to read how their putts will break. However, don’t expect the super-realistic physics that has puts just dancing off the lip of holes like they do in Tiger Woods. If you get the ball reasonably close to the hole, it’ll go in. If it doesn’t, there’s no replay that shows you just how close you were, so just take another stroke and get it over with.

Avatar Golf won’t win awards for graphics. The holes are as graphically detailed as the avatars themselves: not much. Trees are static, no matter how strong the wind is. The holes are like three-dimensional planes suspended in air and surrounded by decorative art ranging from sunny days to cities to even outer space. Balls shot out of bounds actually fall farther than the “ground,” as if they had been shot off the edge of the world. And for some reason, the indicator that shows where your ball should land is represented by something that looks like a barber pole.

Avatar Golf approaches multiplayer in a novel way. If more than one player is playing on the same Xbox 360, they’ll play sequentially much like typical golf games. However, if they play online, every player plays at the same time. That means no waiting to make your shot while others make theirs. Everyone plays at their own pace.

Despite its rough edges, Avatar Golf has something great going for it: a price of $5, or 400 MS Points. For that price, Xbox golf fans will get gameplay that’s well worth the price, along with several golf courses and a golf course editor. Gamers will be able to let their inner golf course maker run wild and create holes as easy or as difficult as they’d like. When they’re done, they’ll be able to share their courses with their buddies online. If you don’t mind the stripped down graphics and gameplay, there’s still the essence of a great console golf game here. That, along with multiplayer online support, a robust editor and a screaming deal of a price point, make Avatar Golf a highly suggested title for all golf fans.

It’s our first long-form episode!  And by first, we do mean First.  The Producer has been a guest once or twice on the Podge Cast, and The Holmberg doesn’t even have that much experience.  Do be kind, if you would.  Or don’t.  We’ll be strong.

After a brief introduction of who we are and where we’re coming from, we move into a discussion of recent video game related news, and keep the tangents to an absolute minimum.  (That last bit may not be true.)

After the break, we bust out our personalized Top Ten Lists.  There is a considerable amount of disagreement in the lists.

There will be show notes with links, all official-like, soon, but the first editing took a lot longer than expected, so notes are a bit behind.

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Blue Monday: The Kids Are Alright by Chynna Clugston-Major

Thrilling tales of teenager Bleu Finnegan. Bleu attempting to get Adam Ant tickets. Solving the mystery of the stolen mascot head. Bleu copes with the “friendship” of Alan and Victor, mental and emotional age: 7. Plus: Graveyard desecration!

Following a question The Holmberg asked on our forums, I thought a primer on how bills pass through the house and senate might help before Jeff, Darryl, and I talk health care and other pending issues.

Items Explained are…

• Sponsored bills
• Conference committees and reports
• Concurrent resolutions
• Super Majorities
• Filibusters
• Reconciliation
• Senate Rule XXII

For additional information, I recommend Project Vote Smart. It has a lot of good information.

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This past weekend was Harmony, Inc.‘s International Competition and Convention (IC&C). Celebrating its 50th anniversary, Harmony is a society of women dedicated to the enjoyment, education, and promotion of Barbershop a capella. Choruses and quartets from across the eastern United States and Canada (as far west as Chicago, Illinois, and London, Ontario) gathered in Providence, Rhode Island, to share their love of music and compete for gold medals and sparkling crowns.
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What do you do when your Xbox is red-ringed? You cope. For me, that meant blowing the dust off of the PS2 and hunting up some of the few PS2 games I still had lurking around my home. I still had a few review copies of some Atlus games that I had never finished: Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga (heretofore abbreviated to SMT:DDS) and Stella Deus. I also went to Gamestop and traded a few games that had lost my good graces (Civ Rev, I’m looking at you) and picked up a game I wish I had never traded in, Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers. From deep in my vault, I retrieved Front Mission 3 from the original PlayStation.
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The Punisher: The Slavers Written by Garth Ennis, Pencils by Leandro Fernandez, Inks by Scott Koblish, Colors by Dan Brown, Letters by Virtual Calligraphy’s Randy Gentile

I give Ennis’ current projects a lot of shit. Because they deserve it. Lately he’s just coasting, mildly revamping old ideas and seemingly trying to out “shock” previous efforts. But his MAX run on The Punisher captured the character of Frank Castle so perfectly, Marvel honestly should have just retired it. Ennis and his various artists give a 50+ year old Punisher. One who has been killing criminals for decades, with a tally of the dead in the thousands. And you can see it in every line and scar on Frank’s body. In the effecient and cold way he carries out his mission. But for this volume, these people, they spark something in Castle. Real hate…

“It was in that moment that I realized something. A dull, blurred feeling that I’d had since this whole mess began, all of a sudden crystal clear. It had been a long, long time since I hated anyone the way I hated them.”

It starts with the Punisher preparing to kill yet another low-end drug dealer. But a crazed woman begging in the rain involves him in something much, much darker. A group of ex-military Baltic War vets. Ones that are traffic in women, stealing them off the streets in Eastern Europe and selling them into lives of enslaved prostitution. Before it all ends Frank will have drugged a man, cut him open and dragged out his intestines. All as a prelude to torturing him for information. He’ll have beaten an unarmed woman to a pulp and thrown her out a high-story window. And he’ll have covered a tied-up old man in gasoline and lit him on fire while videotaping it. And everyone one of those will be a good and righteous thing…