THE SIMPSONS NEWS

Working late for two days straight again this week.  Need to make up the hours because I’m going to be missing a day of work to take care of the kids for a day.  My work load isn’t too crazy but the scenes I need to do are pretty complicated.  I’m working on a new crew right now. I’m helping out for the week. I’m not sure what happens afterward.  Hopefully I get put on a new crew.  Right now, the show I’m helping out on, is a show from last season.  This is their last week to ship everything.  I’m feeling the pressure.

FAMILY

Big day for Carolina’s family last Saturday.  Angelita, Carolina’s youngest daughter, did her First Communion.  We were all very happy for her.  Afterward we gathered at their house and had a First Communion party.  Munchkin had a fantastic time.  She had so much fun that when it was time to go, she left crying.

Meanwhile Dante and Alesha had to stay home.  Dante had a fever late last week.  He wasn’t doing very well at all.  Still, in spite of the fact that he was burning up, he insisted on sitting down to eat.  He also wanted to walk around and play.  He wanted so much to do what he always does, but the poor boy found himself not being able to do much.  By the end of the week, he was back to normal.  He just needed to spend at least one weekend at home without going out anywhere.

CATHOLICISM

I went to get my lunch on Monday from the kitchen at work.  As I was walking back to my desk I overheard a conversation at a  table in the kitchen from my fellow co-workers talking about the whole Obama/Notre Dame thing. Of course, most of the people I work with are on Obama’s side of the debate; and of course, they saw it as a purely political thing.  “Conservative Catholics” vs. “Liberal Catholics”. Their conversation was also the typical anti-Catholic prejudice, you hear everywhere.  “Those Catholics don’t know what they’re doing, they have it all wrong, they’re holding on to ancient things that don’t mean anything”…etc.   It ruined my lunch.  All I heard was a couple of sentences but it got me sooo steamed up it just ruined my lunch.  I couldn’t stop thinking about all the things I would say to them and how I would say it.  How “I would SHOW THEM”.  How my arguments would make them look foolish.  How I would show how much smarter and more intellectual my view was.  How arrogant, heartless and mean an angry Catholic could be…which is, of course, the reason I couldn’t do it and didn’t do it.  I was too angry to say anything that wouldn’t have done more harm than good. It wouldn’t have been a conversion about the topic at hand so much as an exercise in arrogance and pride on my part.

I wondered though, if I HAD said something in a calm, collected, and charitable way, if they would have seen it as a political argument rather than a logical one anyway.  I wonder how much I would be able to say to them that wouldn’t have sounded as if I was politically “Conservative” instead of just Catholic.  Why is it that if you live your faith as it is taught by the Church  you are automatically “a close minded, ultra conservative, right winger”? Why is it that being unfaithful to your Church and faith is celebrated as being “progressive” and open minded? Yes, I understand that there are political Conservatives that are Catholics. I also understand that there are political Liberals that are Catholics. Yet, that really shouldn’t be the issue.  The issue should really be about whether you are a FAITHFUL Catholic or not. You shouldn’t put you parties or political views ahead of the dogmas of your faith.  If you do, it only goes to show which one of the two is your REAL Religion.  In the end, it just  made me sad.

MOVIES

I  used to like Star Wars more than Star Trek.  I thought that Star Wars, in general, was a bit more fun and Star Trek was a bit to “hard sci-fi” to be as fun.  Then George Lucas released his  Star Wars prequels and pretty much ruined the fun of Star Wars by making three movies that never actually captured the fun of the original three.

Along comes the new Star Trek movie and does to Star Trek what Lucas couldn’t pull off with Star Wars. It updates the Star Trek franchise, makes it fun, captures the essence of what made the original Star Trek work (the characters), takes away the dryness of Star Trek, adds some action and makes it cool to like Star Trek.  Yes, the intellectual parts and the hard science, that made Star Trek truly geeky, are missing, but what we get in it’s place is a good fun time.  Hopefully, some of the intellectual stuff will make an appearance in the next movies, for now, I’m happy with what they gave us.

BOARD GAMES/VIDEO GAMES

Haven’t written about games in a while so I just thought I’d write about a board game that will become a video game and some video games that have become board games.

• Dungeon Twister

Andy and I played a game of Dungeon Twister last Friday.  He beat me, but I think the game would have kept going. On hindsight I think we messed up a rule that would have changed the way we saw the last move of the game.

Andy really likes the game. He’s liked it ever since we played it for the first time months ago.  It’s a dungeon crawl-ish chess game with a modular board whose parts twist around. There is no luck in the game.  It’s all tactics and strategy. Here’s the Description of the game:

Dungeon Twister is a 2-player high level strategy game where 2 teams of adventurers with various powers are trapped in a dungeon. The board is composed of 8 rooms that can be moved and rotated by the players. Each turn, a player is able to spend actions to move around the dungeon, pick up and use items, battle with the opponents team, or turn and move the rooms of the dungeon.

The goal is to reach 5 victory points. Points are collected by moving adventurers out of the dungeon or by killing an opponent’s adventurer. Treasures are disseminated across the whole dungeon and will bring the adventurers well-needed powers.

Each player has the same characters, each with different powers. Some run fast, some fight or disarm traps. The cleric heals, magician burns everything in sight and the goblin is so weak that the simple fact of getting him out will bring you two victory points.

Combat and actions are managed via cards. To move, fight, heal or turn a room, you must manage action points obtained by playing cards. Those cards are not drawn but selected from a set of cards by both players. Both players have access to the same panel of cards at the beginning of the game so the game is really about managing the resources and adapting to the changing environment.

It has recently  been announced that a new version of the game is coming out called: Dungeon Twister 2: Prison. This version of the game will actually be different and yet will still play the same as the original and it will be “backwards compatible” with the original. It will be coming out in December. The interesting part is that the game will also be released for Xbox live through Hydravision at the same time.

• Skirmish Wars: Advance Tactics

A few years back, when the first Advance Wars game came out for the GBA, I bought it and totally fell in love with it.  I played that game once for an entire night.  I started playing it at around 7 or 8 pm, looked up after some hours had gone by and discovered the sun was rising.  It was just such a fun game.   I didn’t buy the new ones that came out after that, Mostly because (like the Street fighter games) the new games where pretty much, more of the same and I hadn’t (and still haven’t) unlocked all the maps in the game I have, and the original allowed you to make your own maps as well.  Theoretically I can keep playing the game without needing to buy a new one.  Besides, I haven’t played the game in a few years.

Just found out from the Purple Pawn website that someone has made a free print and play version of the game called Skirmish Wars: Advance Tactics.  They put it up on BGG  and I downloaded the pdf.  It looks great. They made the maps modular so you can create your own scenarios and everything. I’m so going to print it out.  I just need the figure out how “fancy” I want to make my version. I’m sure Andy will be up for a game. I just hope the game doesn’t take too long to play.

Above is a screenshot of what the original video game looks like.  Below is the board game version.

Just looking at the picture make me want to play it.  It looks so fun.

• FITS

From the mind of Reiner Knizia comes FITS.  It’s Tetris the board game. It sounds great.  He really came up with a great way to translate the game into a tabletop game.

FITS (Fill In The Spaces) is essentially a multi-player Tetris . Each player has an inclined board on which they place different polyominoes – like Blokus pieces, with three, four, or five squares. Cards are drawn from a pile to tell the players which piece to take. The pieces may be rotated and reversed before they slide down the inclined area to dock to other gaming pieces, but unlike Tetris cannot be slid horizontally once dropped. Scoring is based on quantity and configuration of squares left uncovered.

Unlike original Tetris there is no time pressure but like Tetris there is no player interaction as every player is engaged with his own board.

This game is now on my Wishlist under “Must have”.  Definitely looks like a game most people will want to play if I was to bring it out.

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