“Side step to your left, no right!” “Oh nasty!”, if those words resonate with you, then rejoice fans of seminal and ground breaking kids TV show Knightmare. After years of building up a cult following, even inspiring the critically acclaimed Knightmare Live and featuring as part of Youtube’s Geek Week, ideas are afoot for the first ever KnightmareCon.
KnightmareCon is set to be hosted May 9th-11th 2014 in the very studios where the original series was shot, EPIC Studios in Norwich. Guests are set to include Hugo Myatt (Treguard), Mark Knight (Lord Fear), Tim Child, the creator of Knightmare and David Rowe the artist behind the original rooms featured in Knightmare, amongst others.
As everyone knows though, Cons aren’t cheap and passion and enthusiasm only go so far, so the team behind Knightmare Con need help to pull off this off. So if the idea of talking to the minds behind one of the most iconic and influential shows in kids TV history (and even playing a room of the dungeon – no, really!) sounds like a good thing, then watch the video and help make this happen at Knightmare Con at Indiegogo vist the offical website KnightmareConvention.com
2000 AD’s most well known and arguably most popular character Judge Dredd turns 37 today after his first appearance in 2000AD #2 way back in March 1977!
Judge Dredd was brought to life by 2000 AD’s creator and founder Pat Mills, writer John Wagner and artist Carlos Ezquerra, who is responsible for the characters now iconic look.
Dredd was based on the idea of a Dirty Harry style cop exaggerated to the max and over the years Judge Dredd’s enduring popularity lead to the character getting not only his own publication( dubbed the Judge Dredd Megazine) named after Dredd’s setting of Mega City One aka The Big Meg, but also to the exponential expanding of his world over the years. Now dozens of characters inhabit different corners of Dredd’s world, often featuring in their own stories, like Judge Anderson of PSI Division, Jack Point of “Wally Squad” and Shimura of Hondo City, amongst many others.
Dredd is also associated with explorations of fascism, the police state, the rule of law and authoritarianism, whilst also being known for its quirky and inherently British sense of humour, with Mega City One being a character in itself, along with its bizarre inhabitants, like The League of Fatties, to name just a few.
Chief amongst Dredd’s hallmarks is the characters anonymity, with his face being constantly obscured by his helmet or deep shadow in some stories.
The character was also the basis for two feature films the first starring Sylvester Stallone which we don’t talk about and the second starring Karl Urban, which we talk about a lot because it’s excellent. You should watch it if you haven’t and then wonder why they aren’t planning a follow up when so many dire films get sequels.
Zombies are big, trending like mad in all shapes, sizes and medias; movies, video games, books, comics, even television is getting in on the act with big budget series The Walking Dead. Table top gaming hasn’t been immune (we all know the virus has no cure!), with the undead cannibals being main actors and bit players in every genre from TCG to war games. So why is Zombicide special enough to stand out from the shuffling, decaying crowd? Well, let me tell you all about it, just as long as you promise not to take a chunk outta my brain…
Zombicide is the brain child of designer team Guillotine Games and was released following a massive Kickstarter campaign by CoolMiniOrNot. At $781,597 and 5258 backers, it was clear that Zombicide had a lot to live up to.
The detailing on the miniatures is fantastic!
Opening the box, the first thing I spotted was the number of bits you get. Zombicide isn’t cheap, retailing at around £60-70, but here is the reason. The parts list is huge, with 71 miniatures, 110 mini cards, 9 modular game boards, rulebook and stacks of tokens, player boards and dice. All of it is heavy duty and built to last. The cast on the miniatures is clear and well-detailed enough that it could be painted if you become so inclined, and the variety of the zombies means the board will not look like the dance line in a Michael Jackson music video; in short it’ll will look the part of a shambling horde of Zed heads all closing on the earnest survivors.
Next is the artwork. In separate parts, it looks gorgeous. The portraits of all the survivors and zombies are comic-book style drawing and colouring with thick black outlines and a grungy palette; this is extended into the card art works and the main box cover. The board pieces however are more of a photo-realistic style, with everything carefully shaded and inked in such a way that looking down, you get the feel of a real cityscape that’s seen a lot of bloodshed in the last 24 hours. Unfortunately, the two styles don’t quite marry up with the result of a mild jarring effect when you look from rulebook to board and back again.
A selection of survivor sheets
But enough on the pretty, what about the gameplay?! Zombicide is fully co-op, with full AI written into the rules to govern the zombies. The rule book is well written and easy to follow, with plenty of gameplay examples to assist in understanding. Each player gets a figure and a player chart to log their progress. Each turn a player has three Actions they can take, ranging from moving and opening doors to searching for new equipment and shooting bad guys. This sounds simple, but there’s enough variety to keep the game flowing at a good pace without feeling like you’re on a railroad track of ‘Move, Shoot, Repeat’.
Each survivor has unique abilities at the start, including ‘Slippery’ (can move away from Zombies without penalty), ‘Starts with a gun’ or ‘Free Search’. The survivors are all riffs on common characters seen in zombie culture. Ned is the survival junkie, a mash-up of Rorschach and a loner hick, Wanda is a chainsaw wielding roller waitress (oh my!) and Phil is the tough-guy sheriff looking to clean up the town. This adds an element of familiarity and tongue-in-cheekiness that gives you a hint of how seriously this game takes itself, whilst not losing the grittiness of the Z-apocalypse theme. What’s more, as you kill stuff, your character can level up, gaining new abilities and bonuses (more on this later).
Sadly, these survivors hadn’t read their Zombie Survival Guide…
Games are set up according to whichever map you choose from the rulebook, ranging from a 20 minutes introductory game up to a 3 hour epic survival-thon for the expert players. Each map features a set of the modular game boards, spawn points for the zombies and objectives for the players to reach or collect. More advanced games also include cars and more exotic weapons like Ma’s Shotgun and the Evil Twins. The variety of games is insane; with the ten maps that come in the base set rulebook, the range of boards, survivors and equipment available, plus the capacity to write your own campaigns and one-off scenarios means players can literally play a different game every time they pick Zombicide up. This again ties into the value for money, which this game has in spades.
The zombies themselves come in four flavours; walker, runner, fatty and abomination. The walkers are the bog standard shuffler, getting one Action per turn and just appearing in droves. Runners are the 28 Days Later variety, having two Actions per turn and quickly becoming a head ache for the players. Fatties are chunky zombies, making them harder to kill (if your weapon can only do one point of damage per hit, you can’t kill a fatty – ever). The abomination is even tougher, and generally requires the intervention of a molotov cocktail to take down.
Zombies will spawn at the pre-set spawn points every turn, based on a deck of Zombie cards. Each card is tiered based on the level of the highest level character in the zombie party, with the higher tiers sending in more deadly Zed-heads or bigger groups. This presents the players with a strategic quandary; does the guy with the big gun kill everything, levelling up quickly but causing the bigger zombies to arrive before the rest of the group have caught up, or do we all take turns killing stuff and risk being overrun (you start the game with a frying pan, so, ya know, not great zombie killing stuff). This system of levelling the survivors and the zombies leads to some tense moments as the board slowly begins to fill with undead hordes.
One element I thought was incredibly well done was the Noise mechanic. Taking some actions, such as breaking a door or using a gun generates Noise, represented by tokens placed at the feet of the offending survivor. During the zombies’ turn, their movement is governed by what they can ’see’. If they see multiple survivors, they move towards the ones that made the most Noise. If they can’t see anything, they will again start stumbling towards the source of the most Noise. This introduces another set of tactics for the players, with hit and run being used to distract the zombies and funnel them away from critical objectives. Just hope you’re not the one on bait duty!
In a little break from my normal MO, I’d also like to talk about the support for this game outside the base set, which in a word is fantastic. The Guillotine Games website comes with a slew of tools for map editing, free missions and even new survivors to play.
So a novel take on a rather bloated genre, that’s fun, accessible and well supported. Zombicide has enough complexity and variety for the hardcore gamer, but doesn’t exclude with its simple ruleset and clever AI, and it looks cracking on the table top. A must have for the zombie enthusiast and gamer alike! Now to stock the cupboards, board the door and sharpen that machete!
Images courtesy of Guillotine Games and Jacob Kerr. Please note that the green zombies featured are from the Toxic City Mall expansion.
Monochroma is a physics puzzle platformer with a cinematic visual style set in a dystopian alternate 1950s. The main hook of the game mechanics sees you needing to carry your injured little brother through the environment. You’ll need to place him down when you require greater agility for the puzzles, but like all younger siblings he’s pretty needy: You can’t stray too far and his fear of the dark means you must leave him within pools of light.
Personally I love the art style and the game certainly has a feel of Ico about it which is unquestionably no bad thing. I can’t wait to see what the full game has to offer when it launches.
The game was originally set for a December 2013 launch but this was pushed back March 2014 due to ‘unexpected problems’. Clearly there have been some last minute hitches, but Nowhere Studios have confirmed for us that Monochroma will be released in April 2014 for PC. There will also be versions for all the next gen consoles as well as the PS Vita and the Ouya but as yet a date has not been specified for the release of these versions.
Back in 1989 when Back to the Future II hit cinemas, everyone wanted a hoverboard. If you didn’t, you’re lying like a cheap rug. Well, according to startup company HUVrTech, they’ve actually made one.
Pimped by none other than Doctor Emmett L. Brown (aka Christopher Lloyd) himself, along with celebs like Moby and Tony Hawk, HUVrTech show us a “demonstration” of their new Hoverboard prototype… and have even made one to look like an exact prop replica from the movie.
Of course, take this video with a pinch of salt – I know April 1st isn’t exactly far away, but it looks like someone’s getting into the spirit early in my opinion!
It’s here! The finale in Rocksteady Studio’s epic Batman Arkham trilogy has finally been announced!
Game Informer revealed today that Batman: Arkham Knight will be coming to Xbox One, PS4, and PC later this year, following an apparent leak on UK retailer GAME’s website. The retail listing suggested that the game will serve as the ‘explosive finale’ to the Arkham series. This seems to be the case as Rocksteady’s Sefton Hill had the following to say:
“We kind of feel this is the natural end to the story. We really want to go out in style.”
Details are fairly limited at the moment, but it had been revealed that Arkham Knight will be taking place a year after the events of Arkham City, when Batman is ‘at the peak of his powers’ and will feature ‘all the super-villains teaming up to take him down’. Furthermore, in a first for the series, players will be able to drive the iconic Batmobile around the streets of Gotham City.
After the fairly lacklustre reception of Warner Bros. Games Montréal’s Arkham Origins, fans will undoubtedly be glad for the return of Rocksteady’s guiding hand over the series.
Check out the reveal trailer below and let us know what you think!
Nick regails us with his trip to New York, while I try to figure out where he went using Spiderman Web of Shadows as a reference point. I am then bemused.
This week Evil was once again vanquished by the legendary Master Sword in the not-so-legendary world of Texas.
Eugene “Link” Thompson brandished the sword as a means of defence after his girlfriend called her ex for help after they had an argument, allegedly over whether a pet Octorok was a good idea with so many vases in the house.
Eugene claims the assailant (read “Moblin”) “Walked right into the point” of the blade, stating “I don’t know if he thought it was a toy”. He should’ve know the blade of evil’s bane isn’t something to be sniffed at, and thank his lucky stars Mr Thompson hadn’t acquired the magic gauge yet.
His attacker is now in critical condition in a local hospital, and a following court case will decide if he is to become trapped in the sacred realm.
Below is a re-enactment of how it may have went down
Brian K Vaughan is a big name in the world of comics now, being the writer of Image Comics’ smash hit ‘Saga’ and ‘Y The Last Man’ for Vertigo amongst others. Something which isn’t generally associated with Vaughan is Swamp Thing, written before he became a widely acclaimed writer. Back in 2000, Vaughan wrote an interesting take on the title, which ran for 20 issues, the first part of which is collected here for the first time.
The most immediate thing about Vaughan’s Swamp Thing is that for the most part Swamp Thing himself barely features in the story. The story focuses on the ‘daughter’ of Swamp Thing and Abigail ‘Abby’ Holland, Tefe.
The background for Tefe is a little on the muddled side, especially for those not familiar with older Swamp Thing stories. In a previous Swamp Thing arc, the Parliament of Trees thinking Alec Holland aka Swamp Thing dead, created the seed of another avatar to take his place. Swamp Thing’s return caused a problem, since there can’t be two avatars of The Green. The Parliament orders Swamp Thing to kill the seed, now dubbed Sprout, but he refuses. To get around this, Swamp Thing calls on John Constantine and through ritual magic possesses his body, to father a child with Abigail, incorporating the life essence of Sprout, thus avoiding having to kill his replacement. Complications arise though due to Constantine’s demon blood, meaning Tefe not only has the power to control plant life, but can also manipulate flesh.
Tefe is immensely powerful and doesn’t know how to control her powers despite Swmap Thing’s best efforts to teach her. She is manipulated by The Green, which was imbalanced, into thinking humanity should be wiped out. In order to try and prevent this and curtail Tefe’s immense power, Abby and Swamp Thing call on Constantine again. Out of desperation, they have Constantine wipe Tefe’s memories and opt to switch her conciousness into the body of another older girl who is terminally ill. Tefe, upon awakening, thinks she is now Mary Conway and her parents think she has miraculously recovered from her illness.
Problems arise when Tefe’s old memories and powers come bubbling back up to the surface when she attends her prom and finds her boyfriend cheating on her.
Tefe turns her back on her old life and embarks on a voyage of self discovery to try and figure out who she is and to see if humanity really is worth saving.
There’s an interesting narrative structure, with the story being narrated by various characters whether it’s Abby, Swamp Thing, Tefe or one of the others. One story has a narration from The Grass, revealing The Green’s contempt for humanity. ‘We are ever present spies. We are camouflage voyeurs. We are The Grass’.
There are plenty of memorable moments too, with flashbacks to the younger Tefe, as Abby confesses her and Swamp Thing’s plan to Mary’s parents (explaining the rather convoluted backstory too). Discovering that the young Tefe has killed a group of loggers, by fusing their hands and feet together, and strung them up like paper dolls is what sends them on their path to Constantine.
As an indicator that this isn’t your average story of someone finding themselves, Tefe carries with her a small potted Laurel Tree, that she names Daphne. On her travels Tefe meets up with other wayward souls, who are outcasts in one way or another. Of course, none of them believe her story until she uses her powers. One scene has Tefe reviving a dying Impala in a safari park experimenting with her powers. A later story has Tefe saving a family from a forest fire at great cost to The Green only to then discover that they are the ones responsible for the fire kicking off a chain reaction of events.
There’s a distinct moral ambiguity at work in Tefe’s character. Growing up isolated in the swamp with only her parents for company she has little understanding of social norms and has little patience for people and views them with contempt. Her companions of course just think she’s a bit crazy. As the story progresses Tefe can’t decide whether to side with The Green or not and goes on a quest to find the ‘Tree of Knowledge’.
Following Tefe’s adventures is intriguing and features the same level of characterisation that has become one of Vaughan’s signatures as the conflicted elemental goes about her voyage of discovery.
Roger Petersen, along with the rest of the large art team, handles things well, both the mundane and the more disturbing elements being well executed. The image of Tefe fusing swat officers hands to their faces and their mouths together is just one example of how her powers manifest.
It might not be Swamp Thing as you know it but Vaughan’s talent is definitely evident here.
Thrud The Barbarian first appeared in a project by then student Carl Critchlow for his then tutor Bryan Talbot (himself now known as an acclaimed comic writer/artist). After early appearances in fanzine ‘Arkensword’, Thrud made his official debut in Games Workshop’s ‘White Dwarf’ magazine, in 1983. He appeared in almost 60 strips in the magazine and was twice voted most popular feature by its readers.
With the character’s popularity enduring over the years, Critchlow (now working on various other projects) produced his own small press comic of full length Thrud comics (which are collected here) with the first appearing in 2002. These would would go on to win an Eagle Award for ‘Favourite Small Press Title’.
Thrud is a comedic take on sword and sorcery/fantasy tropes with Thrud himself being a caricatured version of Conan the barbarian. Immensely strong with a hugely exaggerated, muscular physique and a very small head, Thrud is nigh on invulnerable and what he lacks in brains and skill as a fighter he makes up with sheer brute force and resilience.
In the several stand alone stories, Thrud faces the nefarious necromancer To-Me-Ku-Pa, searches for a long lost arcane repository of knowledge, faces off against his surprisingly named nemesis, assumes the role of king after accidentally killing the real one and ventures deep into a primeval jungle.
The most immediate thing is just how good Critchlow’s art is. Interesting characters and environments are rendered in a highly detailed style with impressive line work. This detailed approach makes various visual gags and sound effects really pop. The cartoonish ultraviolence looks great and the occasional splash pages are packed with detail.
Another thing that is genuinely surprising to the unwary reader is how funny Thrud is. Reading this in a public environment will no doubt result in odd looks due to your laughter, it’s that good. Making comedic gold out of various tropes associated with fantasy and sword and sorcery storys.
Thrud despite its fantasy setting has anachronisms due to its comedic nature. He makes his first appearance here fighting in a tavern after which he casually comments ‘If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a pub with no Worcester Sauce crisps!’
As well as great art, Critchlow’s writing and dialogue is full of in-jokes and nods, from elder gods, crowded taverns down to amusingly titled bands of knights: ‘Sir Percival Pursuivant and the Magnificent Seven Knights of Saint Simeon The Saintly’ and more. Older fans who can recall the characters’ earlier appearances will pick up on several nods to their pasts.
This collected edition also includes some single page strips from Valkyrie Quarterly, as well as a comparison between the older black and white and new colour versions of the ‘Blood Bowl’ strip, which featured in Citadel Journal.
Whilst Critchlow may be known for other things, like Judge Dredd and his numerous illustrations for Magic:The Gathering, Thrud remains an enduring and quirky icon to many, and this is the character in his prime.
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