Brutal Legend

Growing up in high school, I was not a Heavy Metal fan. I looked askance at the dudes in their black t-shirts and doodling death symbols. I was struggling to be accepted as a gamer, and although the Metalheads played Dungeons & Dragons as much as I did, they came from a very different background.

As an adult it's much easier to embrace this form of counter-culturalism. Heavy Metal was rebelling at a time when 80s conformity was emerging, overhyped, oversynthed, and carefully marketed. Heavy Metal was at turns loud, angry, and violent or melodic, sorrowful, even romantic. But it's not too late. Brutal Legend will show you the way.

A lot of people criticize the short playing time of Brutal Legend, as if tearing from scene to scene, save point to save point, is the only purpose of the game. In fact, Brutal Legend is entirely the opposite – it's a world meant to be explored, a culture meant to be absorbed, a state of mind meant to be embraced. You've got to let go of your hang-ups if you really want to enjoy Brutal Legend.

Brutal Legend follows Riggs as he journeys through this strange land. He finds himself in a familiar role: supporting a better-groomed star from behind the scenes. With its twisty plotline of love and loss, allegiance and betrayal, players may be surprised to discover that Brutal Legend has a strong romantic element – an important part of Heavy Metal.

But mostly Brutal Legend is about music. Jack Black as Eddie Riggs is our comedic tour guide through this insane universe, which occasionally pretends it's part of pre-history but is actually a mad mix of Nordic legend, Heavy Metal sensibilities, and Frank Fazetta and Heironymus Bosch's art. It all ties together through a back-story that can be discovered piece by piece by wandering the land, digging up artifacts, musical solos that act as spells, and releasing bound and gagged stone dragons for blood tributes. On paper Riggs is a roadie, but in practice he's a bard of musical Metal, capable of summoning wild beasts, melting the face of his enemies, or even changing day into night.

Music is its own character in Brutal Legend. Riggs can create a vehicle known as the Druid Plow, an incredibly souped-up car that can drop mines, fire heat-seeking rockets, blast foes with sound, and – most importantly – provides the game's kicking soundtrack. This soundtrack is the perfect mood music for the game itself, which feels like you've been thrust into one of those Heavy Metal album covers.

Brutal Legend is highly original too. Forget the usual fantasy tropes of elves and dwarves. This game features carnivorous deer, porcupines bristling with metal quills, huge steel-headed beasts, monsters made-up like Kiss that breathe fire…and that's just the local wildlife. There's a whole coterie of Tim Burton-esque undead foes, the aforementioned Bosch-inspired demons, fire-trailing bikers, speaker-toting roadies…this game is as much as feast for the eyes as it is for the ears.

In fact, this game turned me on to groups I'd never heard of before: Angel Witch, 3 Inches of Blood, Motorhead, Riot, Omen, and KMFDM. I may not be a Metal-head, but Brutal Legend made me a fan of groups I would never otherwise have listened to. That's the highest compliment I can pay a game.

Waxwork II: Lost in Time

Quick, what movie features a murderous disembodied hand, zombies, buckets of blood, possession, projectile organs, time travel, and Bruce Campbell getting tortured? No, not Evil Dead II…Waxwork II: Lost in Time!

Picking up immediately where the first Waxwork left off, Mark Loftmore (still Zach Galligan) and Sarah Brightman (replaced by the considerably hotter Monika Schnarre) attempt to return to their normal lives. Sarah creeps back to her abusive stepfather's home where he berates her for ruining her dress. After she goes to bed, the zombie hand (also from the first film) murders the abusive stepfather because…let's face it, he had it coming.

In the typical Waxwork aside into "that makes perfect sense" territory, Sarah is blamed for her stepfather's murder, claims about murderous zombie hands not withstanding. She will likely be condemned to death unless she can prove her innocence. And that's where any semblance of realism ends, because Sarah and Mark concoct a scheme to find ANOTHER zombie hand by traveling backwards in time through a magic mirror. Because of course, that's where zombie hands hang out, right?

Waxwork II is of course not about time travel at all. It's about whatever the director (Anthony Hickox) feels like parodying, beginning with Frankenstein, alternating between Alien and The Haunting, and then throwing in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Godzilla, Jack the Ripper, Nosferatu, and Dawn of the Dead for good measure. And oh yes, a long fantasy sequence that has nothing to do with anything.

Waxwork II establishes a couple of things: They are NOT time traveling, but more dimension traveling, or perhaps film hopping. Mark and Sarah have stumbled into the world of Cartagra, "God's video game," as Sir Wilfred explains – in the form of a crow (it's complicated). Cartagra is a universe where good and evil duke it out for supremacy, apparently in the form of movie plots. Mark and Sarah are now Time Warriors, inhabiting the protagonist roles of each movie and ensuring the good guys win. Or something like that.

It is also a different form of dimension hopping than the pocket dimensions seen in the first movie. When Mark, facing down Igor the hunchback, attempts to disbelieve, he gets socked in the face for his trouble.

It's clear that Hickox a real fondness for all things Evil Dead and for swashbuckling romance. He has his cake and eats it too here (like he did in the first film) by including a long fantasy sequence involving what must be the first sword fight across movie genres. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

FRANKENSTEIN: Mark manifests as the butler, while Sarah is Frankenstein's wife. They are caught in the moment when villagers are about to set the place on fire. It takes awhile for Sarah to remember her true nature, during which time Mark battles it out with Dr. Frankenstein, Frankenstein's Monster, Igor, and angry villagers. Using a weird compass he found amongst his uncle's belongings, Mark can usually find the exit out of each movie by running in that direction, regardless of all apparent obstacles. Once he figures this out, Mark and Sarah are split up as they escape…

THE HAUNTING: Filmed in black and white, it's clear Hickox is a fan of The Haunting. And so is Marina Sirtis, collecting a paycheck. But the biggest winner here is Bruce Campbell in a hilarious series of slapstick. This is the funniest part of the movie. It's also the most overt homage to Evil Dead.

ALIEN: Sarah has taken on the role of Ripley. She faces down a giant Alien-rip-off – literally, the Aliens look terrible, with huge, lumbering heads. The Facehugger-equivalents are much more disturbing, with tentacles probing orifices. This scene drags on far too long, seeking to emulate the terrible silences and long pauses in Alien. Fortunately, Mark shows up and ends the madness just in time.

RANDOM FANTASY SETTING: Hickox may be a fan of horror movies, but what he really wants to do is write a swashbuckling romance. So stuck in the middle of the rest of the horror homage is this sloppy collection of Monty Python jokes, subpar special effects, and confusing elements. The best part is George (Michael Des Barres), a powdered, effeminate dandy who isn't afraid to murder people with a garrote. There are some laugh-out-loud jokes here, but they don't save the piece. Oh and David Carradine (?). There's also the aforementioned appearance of the talking crow, which is in fact Sir Wilfred reincarnated. His appearance presages a huge exposition dump explaining Cartagra. No matter, all is forgiven as Mark engages in a no-holds-barred sword fight with the villain, Scarabis (Alexander Godunoy) across the universe. In no particular order, their cross-dimensional brawl leads them to…

GODZILLA: A giant, poorly made puppet. The most hilarious part being that Mark is badly dubbed in English.

JACK THE RIPPER: Okay, not really a movie per se. Poor Jack gets kicked into…

NOSFERATU: Silent and with intertitles, Hickox nails the entire feel of a silent movie. And we get to see Nosferatu gnash his teeth after The Ripper.

INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS: Sarah takes a sneak peak at people running from a train. And alien pods.

DAWN OF THE DEAD: 1970s style attire, a funky beat, and a bunch of people bristling with guns shooting at zombies in a mall. It also conveniently provides a disembodied zombie hand, that flimsy "evidence" our heroes were looking for.

The swordfight ends back in Fantasy-land, but only one person can go back through the portal. Mark pushes Sarah through.

Sarah, with evidence of a zombie hand CLEARLY confirming her innocence, receives a note from Mark in the "past", attempting to establish that he was indeed time traveling. Yeah, right.

And the lovers are reunited. Eventually. The End.

Cue a gonzo song about the film, complete with rap lyrics that narrate the entire ridiculous story and 1980s style dancers.

Less horror and more a tribute to films Hickox happens to like, Waxwork II never seems to make up its mind as to what film it wants to be when it grows up. But that's part of its charm.

Bedknobs and Broomsticks

Quick, what movie features Britain in turmoil, three young children growing up under the tutelage of a sorceress, invocations of ancient demons and wizards, curse spells, and a modern school of magic that's not what it appears to be? Nope, it's not Harry Potter…it's Bedknobs and Broomsticks!

It's the beginning of World War II and Miss Price (Angela Lansbury, looking suitably spinsterish) has been saddled with three British war orphans: Charlie (Ian Weighill), Carrie (Cindy O'Callaghan) and Paul Rawlins (Roy Snart). Although she prefers to keep to herself, Price has no choice but to take them under her wing, at least until a more proper home can be found for them. As it turns out, Miss Price is a witch, a witch who hopes to help the British war effort if only she can master the final level of her training and thereby learn the spell "substitutiary locomotion."

The three orphans eventually stumble upon her secret. In an unlikely series of deals and skullduggery, Price bargains with the orphans to keep her secret in exchange for some magic, a bed knob that transforms any bed into a dimension-traveling device. Soon after, Price discovers that her tutoring via post from the mysterious Professor Emelius Browne (David Tomlinson), headmaster of the College of Witchcraft, has come to an abrupt end. Using the bed knob, Price and the three children track down Browne, who is in fact a con man that doesn't know much about magic at all.

Thus begins a quest to find the elusive substitutiary spell, first via double-dealings with a bookseller who has the other half of a mysterious spellbook, and then to an animated world of talking animals in pursuit of an amulet with the magic words inscribed upon it. Along the way, the motley band will face down the King of the Beasts, a razor-wielding thug, and of machinegun-toting Nazis.

Bedknobs and Broomsticks shows its age, both in its narrative speed and its approach to mature themes. The musical numbers often meander, with the characters speaking their lines and dance routines that are far too aggressive for the two older protagonists. There are a few misogynistic references (met with a frown by Miss Price) and…well, it's all very British, as it should be. The movie also isn't afraid to threaten the children with real harm, be it from a charging lion or a Nazi wielding a machinegun. Bad people in this movie are really bad, and there's a refreshing honesty about the whole thing.

By the time film gets around to its climax, young children will likely be bored. But what a glorious climax it is, complete with unrealistically numerous legions of animated suits of armor arrayed against the Nazis, who are there to "teach Britain a lesson." Although at times jingoistic, Bedknobs aims high and rarely sugarcoats the harsh realities of war.

This is as much a war film as it is a flight of fantasy, and in that regard Bedknobs and Broomsticks has some important lessons to teach young children. And in that regard, Miss Price and friends could teach Harry Potter a thing or two.

Beowulf

By now, everyone knows about Beowulf, if only because they were forced to read it in high school. Judging from the audio track of the DVD, some folks clearly resented having to read the "boring" heroic saga of a man who rips a troll's arm off with his bare hands, slays its monstrous mother, becomes king, and later dies fighting a dragon.

There's some odd defensiveness about Beowulf from the directors. This movie isn't JUST going to be about Beowulf, it will have a tightly wrapped story from beginning to end! It won't JUST be about a hero slaying monsters, it will be about father and son guilt, mother and son pride, and the lies they tell each other! There won't JUST be actors, there will be beautifully rendered superbly animated avatars! It won't JUST be a movie, it will be a movie in 3-D!

For the most part, it works. Beowulf and the king who hires him to slay Grendel are at times drunken louts and macho warriors. Grendel isn't just a disgusting monster, he's a piteous troll-child that throws a deadly tantrum. And Grendel's mother? Mmm, Grendel's mother is a delicious golden-skinned incubus who actually sprouts high heels (because, hey, human isn't her real form anyway so why not?) and a slinky tail. Gone is the random moment when Beowulf finds the sword that will slay Grendel's mother just laying around in her treasure horde, a situation I always found a little lazy on the part of the mysterious author. Replacing the somewhat jumbled juxtaposition of heroic mythology and Christian values is a tale of men tempted by lust and greed who go on to father the demons that ultimately destroy them.

The three-dimensional effects are lost on my television, a problem that's going to only become more prevalent as movie theaters give up trying to compete with DVDs and switch to gimmicks like 3-D. This makes some scenes more amusing than exciting, like when a flagpole juts towards the screen at the viewer.

The computer graphics, while breathtaking, seem to be almost beside the point. Yes, it's great that we have Jolie in all her near-naked glory. But why bother recreating her in CGI at all? When you watch the making-of docs, the actors acted with props, right down to Crispin Glover tossing dolls around as Grendel. Was that really necessary? Do we really care how realistically a warrior swings a lamp (a weighted prop, in case you're wondering) or Grendel tears a man in two?

Perhaps the most grating attribute of the DVD is the insistence that Beowulf was "boring." That somehow, the producers have made Beowulf better, because reading is dumb and so is high school. Maybe it's the English major in me, but I found the tone condescending.

If you can look past that, Beowulf's an entertaining if somewhat gory tale. But with its gratuitous nudity, buckets of gore, and significant changes to the plot, it's not going to be shown in high school English classes any time soon.

Barlowe's Guide to Fantasy

Of the guides, this one is the weaker of the two. For one, Barlowe seems to pick his subjects at random...we see monsters that had minor roles in the various books where they were portrayed (and thus, we probably didn't have a burning interest to see what they looked like if they were minor characters in the books). There's quite a few human subjects in this one as well...and they seem out of place here, as some of them are rather plain (okay, so maybe the golem did look like the Pillsbury Dough Boy...but why put him in the book?). There's also several shape shifters, which Barlowe illustrates by showing them in "mid-form", which doesn't tell us much about what they really look like. If anything, Barlowe's work competes with itself -- I was spoiled by his Science Fiction guide and this one, while definitely a beautiful addition to any collector's shelf, simply cannot match the detail of that book.

Galatea in 2-D

My mom told me about "Galatea in 2-D" around 1993, when it first came out. 12 years, two states, and several relocations later, I finally cracked the book open to see what all the fuss was about.

The title evokes images of a creator in love with his creation, and in that regard Galatea in 2-D is faithful: Illustrator Roger Simons discovers that his painting of a magical nymph comes to life in full, three dimensional form. Poor Roger is down on his luck after being slandered by an incident in which he supposedly sent cardboard blanks to Nonesuch Books. As a freelancer, he barely scrapes by, and Roger figures hallucinations are part of his downward spiral into homelessness.

Believing things can't get possibly worse, Roger has the misfortune of bumping into his old rival, Kevin Matthews. Kevin's got everything: the money, the fame, and a hot new wife named Julia. What he doesn't have is talent. But how?

Kevin's success is not without its victims. Kevin's ex-wife, Donna, was once a fellow artist, but now she's a shell of her beautiful former self. Eventually, Roger and Donna discover the common link to their misfortune is actually Kevin.

After Roger confesses to Kevin that he thought his pictures started coming to life, two people show up with the intent of killing him. As a last desperate measure, Kevin and Elsie end up in one of his paintings. And then things get really wacky…

Aaron Allston perfectly nails both the fiscal uncertainty and thrilling creativity of a freelancer, and he takes both to new extremes. What if an artist could create life just by thinking of it? And what if the better the artist, the better the life?

What ensues is essentially a war of wizards, as Kevin and Roger begin a magical duel to the death that spans cities and paintings. Roger and Donna's paintings consist of futuristic science fiction tropes (flying spy drones, robot clones, and laser rifles) while Kevin's paintings are something out of a Harryhausen flick (ancient Greek heroes, gargoyles, and stone Cyclopes). Along the way, Roger discovers his 30-something lust for a perfect dream girl looks a lot like a fellow mature artist than a clueless nymph.

With such limitless possibilities, Allston struggles to contain the plot. Roger decides to paint an incredibly powerful superhero, only to discover that there's a limit to what he can pull into the real world. And yet Kevin has crystal balls that record the goings on of "important people," but not his arch nemesis. When the final battle comes, Kevin seems a little too easily tricked. The conflict is inspired, especially because it takes place at a science fiction convention, but I saw the twist coming a mile away.

All in all, Galatea in 2-D is less about Galatea and more about the artist. For anyone who has ever been a freelancer, his frustration and aspirations make for entertaining (and sometimes painfully accurate) reading. If only we could all blame a Kevin Matthews for whenever a contract goes bad.

The Eyes of the Dragon

I've never liked Stephen King very much. The only story I liked of his (and I didn't know he was the author) was Hellcat, which was made into a pitifully moronic movie. And yet, while Stephen King is out of his element here, it's not a bad novel.
The appealing aspect of the story isn't the story line itself, which is rather straightforward, but the manner in which King approaches his subjects. The villain doubts himself at times - when the prince doesn't fall for his story at first, he begins frantically making other plans. Likewise, because the prince shows tears when accused of a crime, he is assumed guilty - an interesting and rare statement in a genre normally confined to the "heroic" part of heroic-fantasy.

And while we are reminded that King knows his horror element well, as his villains shine, it's also painfully obvious that he can't help but resort to being just plain gross to "enhance the atmosphere." I've always had this problem with all of King's books - he seems to lose interest in the plot and begins being disgusting, the difference between hack-and-slash horror and a truly terrifying presentation. Do we really need to read, in detail, a soldier picking his nose? Do we REALLY need to hear how much the prince's father farts? King is fixated on the "make them unlikeable so you don't feel bad when I kill them" method, which works fine in formulaic horror movies but is awkward and obvious here. Nevertheless, despite the occasional rude distraction, The Eyes of the Dragon is an entertaining read.

I've enjoyed many of Stephen Kings novels a great deal. Others I couldn't wait to finish (I always finish a book I've started, no matter how bad it gets!). He is either on his game or off it. In The Eyes of the Dragon, he is very much on his game. It is a departure from his normal fare of vampires, undead, aliens, and serial killers. His brings us into a world of fantasy complete with kings, dragons, heroes, and the inevitable Bad Guy™. The villain is one us SK fans have seen before in such incarnations as 'The Walkin' Dude' from The Stand. Yes, it's Flagg, playing the part of the evil sorcerer. Quite effectively, I might add.

I was delighted to pick up this book and find SK taking a wild gamble into a new genre. Yes, there are the obligatory graphic scenes Talien referred to, but I've read worse (Clive Barker, anyone?). I expect it and, yes, I take a sick fascination in some grotesque descriptions. I love to REACT to my reading, even if it is only to say "EEW!" and grimace. The Eyes of the Dragon is a wonderful tale of castle intrigue and heroism that has you rooting for the good guys and loving to hate the seemingly immortal Flagg.

The Discovery of Dragons

I stumbled upon this book when I was looking around in the Children's Section (yes, I do that), for the role-playing books. Terribly annoying that they put role-playing in that same category, but oh well, I'm not so proud that I won't go there. And I found, much to my surprise, a similar outcast - Base's books are written with amusement and sophistication, and while they could be entertaining if read to a child, they are not children's books. This one is gorgeous, with the dragons fully rendered, amusing (and fictional) notes in reference to them from various explorers, tiny cartoons in the framing illustrating the stories involving the dragons, and maps of the world which show where the dragon comes from. Also, the dragons have a size comparison, from a man (who happens to be running away in the silhouette comparison), to an elephant. The only flaw? A jungle dragon described as a "massive beast" in the text and shown to be much larger than a man in the cartoon frame, is shown as the size of a cat on the size-comparison silhouettes. An impressive side note: Base did the artwork too!

10,000 B.C.

Ten things I learned from 10,000 B.C. (spoilers beware!):

1. Nobody speaks in contractions.
2. Everybody is dirty.
3. Nobody speaks the same language except for one guy in Africa, and yet the translation of "Mammoths" is "Mannak."
4. The way to get a bull mammoth to stampede is to stand up in the middle of the herd and scream your head off.
5. Even isolated arctic tribes have tremendous racial diversity.
6. The pyramids were built either by space aliens or Atlanteans.
7. Egyptian pharaohs were white guys who spit a lot.
8. 10,000 B.C. had its own versions of velociraptors: giant angry chickens.
9. For some reason only white men can lead the more powerful and numerous African tribes.
10. Blue-eyed girls are hot.

Yokai Attack!: The Japanese Monster Survival Guide

Pokemon. Collectible toy monsters. Godzilla and his ilk. The bizarre popularity of the monstrous in Japanese culture finally has an explanation in Yokai Attack.

The act of classifying monsters harkens back to the late 1800s, when several authors attempted to catalogue the wildly colorful and imaginative yokai. Amidst the usual menagerie of demons and ghosts are eyeballs sticking out of screen doors (Mokumoku Ren), monsters that lick bathtubs clean (Akaname), and inanimate objects that, having been around for over 99 years, eventually take on a life of their own.

The usefulness of these kinds of guides is best reflected in whether or not you can find the same information online. Fortunately, Yokai Attack brings a refreshing level of detail and charming artwork to a subject that could easily be a retread of obakemono.com, a great resource in its own right.

Each creature is sorted into one of five self-explanatory categories: Ferocious Fiends, Gruesome Gourmets, Annoying Neighbors, The Sexy and Slimy, and the Wimps. The creatures are then described, in true Japanese style, by their Pronunciation, English name, Gender, Height, Weight, Locomotion, Distinctive Features, Offensive Weapons, Abundance, Habitat, Claim to Fame, a description of how it attacks, how to survive an encounter, and comments by scholars. Peppered throughout are pictures and material that represent the yokai along with occasionally amusing commentary.

There are modern monsters too: the Kuchisake Onna looks like a normal woman wearing a surgical mask (common in Japan) but removing the mask reveals a huge mouth filled with razor-sharp teeth. The Nopperabo appears to be a friend or relative, only to reveal a completely faceless head at a terrifying moment. It was sighted as recently as 1959.

The yokai themselves are a combination of folklore, myth, fairy tales, ghost stories, and puns. Mixed in with the serious hauntings are creatures that are simply too ludicrous to be believed. To Yokai Attack's credit, the utter preposterousness of some monsters is never questioned; they are all treated as authentic creatures to be respected.

The artwork is bright and colorful, if a little cartoonish, but that too is keeping in the Japanese style of popular fiction. The descriptions aren't always uniform. Sometimes the authors tweak how they describe the creature, especially those that are less likely to attack (the Wimps section is rife with monsters that basically just scare people). And yet, other Yokai are listed as being relatively harmless (the Mokumoku Ren) and then the entry describes a tale where a victim lost his eyes. Not so harmless after all!

Ever since the Worst-Case Survival Guide came out, there has been a series of "pocket guides" of every sort, from detailing how to hunt vampires to surviving a zombie attack to how to be a superhero. There are very few worthy of more than a single read. In Yokai Attack's case, it's an excellent combination of graphic presentation and gentle humor that makes the book a worthy reference. For monster-philes tired of the same old ghosts and ghouls, Yokai Attack is a refreshingly accessible look at Japanese monsters.

Mirrormask

I came to Mirrormask with no expectations other than that the film was Neil Gaiman's pet project, and anything Gaiman passionately believes in is something I wanted to see.

Mirrormask's style is a combination of those psychedelic Beatles cartoons mixed with The Neverending Story, Legend, and Labyrinth - appropriate, since The Jim Henson Company helped create the virtual world where the movie takes place. At its heart, Mirrormask is about a girl, Helena (Stephanie Leonides) and her independence from her mother Joanne (Gina McKee). Like so many impetuous young girls in movies, Helena ranges from clingy devotion to her mother to feckless rage, and it's during one of her darker moments that she wishes Joanne dead ... which ends with Joanne in the hospital.

The guilt that this tantrum engenders in poor Helena is enough to send her on a Hero's Journey. And wrapped up in this journey isn't just a quest to save her mother, but to save herself; as an adolescent, there are clear signs that Helena is on the wrong path. Throughout the bizarre universe that Helena travels, she discovers the duality of self: between darkness and light, affection and possession. Windows are gateways to the real world. Creatures have bizarre features or none at all, and the few humanoids that live in Helena's fantasyland all wear masks, which they believe are their real faces.

And what a strange world it is! Labyrinth was odd, but the protagonist was grounded in reality. Helena comes from a junk pile universe of recycled material and garish display, and her imagination reflects her circus origins in every character and building. In that regard, Mirrormask is a breathtaking spectacle.

Story-wise, Mirrormask isn't quite as interesting. Helena discovers that she's not just in a dream world, she's actually switched places with her evil twin. While Helena is exploring her childlike fantasies her doppelganger is exhibiting, as child advocates say, "risky behavior" in her body. It's up to Helena to take back her real self, both physically and spiritually, and maybe save her mother's life in the process.

Mirrormask is a surprisingly feminine fantasy, all too lacking in a genre dominated by sword and sorcery. It's also marketed to a very specific niche, that of the tween heroine fantasy, and that might not go over well with everyone. My wife thoroughly enjoyed it; I was so caught up in staring at all the backgrounds that I didn't always track the plot.

Ultimately, Mirrormask is more of a tour of a bizarre universe than a movie, and worth watching with female company. You will never listen to "Close to You" the same way again.

Stardust

ONCE UPON A TIME, there was a movie called Stardust based on Master Gaiman's popular work. And so it was that the film came to pass, and it attempted to stay true to its roots, and in doing so was actually three tales combined.

THE FIRST TALE was about a randy young man named Dunstan Thorn (Nathaniel Parker) who escaped the town of Wall, which also happened to have a wall, and was thus the reason for its namesake. On the other side of the wall (or Wall, if you prefer) was a kingdom known as Stormhold. The very first person that Dunstan met there was a princess, who was captured by a witch. Having discovered that she was held captive, good Dunstan promptly did what any good adventurer would do; that is, to sully her virtue and not call her for nine months. Thus it was that a bundle of joy named Tristan (Charlie Cox) arrived at his doorstep.

But Tristan was as unwise in choosing love as his father was lax in returning for his lady friend, which, by all accounts, means the adventuresome Dunstan left the princess to languish for something in the order of twenty plus years. Anyway, Tristan promised to win the beautiful but decidedly unpleasant Victoria's (Sienna Miller) hand in marriage by retrieving a fallen star. Except said star turned out to be quite the hottie herself (Yvaine played by Claire Danes) rather than a glowing piece of plasma, which complicated matters as you can probably imagine.

THE SECOND TALE was about a ruthless king (Peter O'Toole) and his backstabbing seven sons. These seven were all as ruthless as their father, and when the king fell ill they merrily offed each other in devious ways, until only one was left. But alas, the princes all were cursed to roam the earth as ghosts, and really had nothing else to do but comment on the events happening in the movie, as if the audience needed to be told when there were funny bits. The inclusion of these princes was largely superfluous, as those who have read fairy tales, and those who have had fairy tales read to them, most certainly knew who would end up with the crown in the end.

It just so happened that any prince-who-would-be-king required an amulet, which was tied to a star. And that the king, on his deathbed, sent the amulet into space, which turned the star into a woman, and then brought her back down to earth, which led to quite a few jokes about being a star. All that glowing and such.

THE THIRD TALE was about witches and pirates, an unbeatable combination when the primary witch, Lamia, was played by Michelle Pfeiffer and the primary pirate, Captain Shakespeare, was played by Robert DeNiro. And yet it was odd in that Lamia, who became uglier and weaker with every spell she cast, cast an awful lot of them, often with wild abandon. And it was also odd that Captain Shakespeare, a flaming fey pirate if there ever was one, was also an awful combatant, as evidenced by his sound trouncing by one of the many princes in pursuit of the star. And it was most certainly odd that a talented actor like DeNiro would play a gay pirate so outlandishly foppish, complete with a lisp, that it should devolve into offensive parody instead of humor. But that's pirates for you.

And so it came to pass that Stardust, which ran far too long, was the rare film with more budget than it knew what to do with. And thus the special effects were amazing, the acting pretty good, the plot not so much, and the conclusion, while thrilling, a little trite. So the adventurous critic, only somewhat amused by Stardust, watched Princess Bride instead, which while not having nearly as much of a special effects budget, had twice the charm.

And he lived happily ever after.

Mel Gibson's Apocalypto

My father saw Apocalypto, bought the movie, and demanded I watch it. So on Christmas Eve, my brother, my father, and I gathered around to watch a heartwarming family movie about human sacrifice.

I knew a lot more about Aztec and Mayan culture than my relatives, so much of what happened (or was about to happen) took on special significance for me. When Jaguar Paw's (Rudy Youngblood) tribe is attacked by the Aztecs and carried off instead of killed, we know it's not to live a life of slaves. It's something much worse.

Jaguar Paw's pregnant wife and young child manage to evade capture by lowering themselves into a well, but they're trapped there. If it rains, they drown. If the Aztecs find them, they're sacrificed. And thus we have a race against time, as Jaguar Paw must both escape captivity and pursuit, all in an effort to save his young family from certain doom.

Apocalypto encompasses everything you ever wanted to know about Aztecs. It's all here: black panthers, Aztec martial prowess, steaming jungles, ziggurats, and a twist ending that ties it all neatly in a historical bow. If the movie wasn't so violent, high school teachers every would be showing this movie as a snapshot of history.

The violence is actually not that bad. A scene where an Aztec is mauled by a panther is more graphic than the heart sacrifices performed atop the grisly temples. Much more exciting are the thrilling chase and combat sequences, some of the best on foot.

Given that this is a film about a time before modern convention, it's amazing how Gibson fits in movie conventions usually associated with car chases. There are twists in Jaguar Paw's escape and his hunt by the Aztecs that are worthy of any action movie.

Did I mention that this entire movie is subtitled? The movie's so enthralling that you stop noticing it a few seconds in. Apocalypto's that good. Sure, it's a blood-drenched action thriller in another language. But what did you expect from Mel Gibson?

Pathfinder

A long time ago, a Columbus scholar came to my undergrad college to continue a debate about the significance of Columbus' discovery of America. I, being the snarky student that I was, asked a question around the Viking discovery of America: why didn't the Vikings mention battles with the skraelings (the Viking name for American Indians) more?

The professor's response: "They came from fish and ice and when they got to North America, it was more fish and ice. The skraelings were more of a nuisance than anything."

I always thought the notion of battles between Vikings and Native Americans would make a good movie. Sure enough, along comes Pathfinder about precisely that.

Almost.

Of course, Hollywood had to go and muck up the idea. So instead of the plot really being about a Native American warrior fighting Vikings, it's about a Viking (read: a white guy) raised by the natives. Instead of portraying the Native American warriors as worthy opponents, they're cast as complete morons incapable of detecting a simple pit trap constructed by our protagonist. Instead of crafting a compelling tale about a clash between two very different cultures, Pathfinder turns into every Hollywood cliché imaginable, from a lone warrior leading his enemies onto thin ice to skiing down a mountain slope on a shield.

Pathfinder is far more interested with its cinematography. The movie is shot like scenes from a Frank Frazetta painting, with faceless horned warriors and rippling muscles wielding wicked-looking axes and flails overhead. Great stuff for paintings, not so great for a movie.

300 did all of this, from the digitally inserted blood to the culture clash, heroic speeches to demonized villains, only better. By the time stock footage of an avalanche appeared on screen, my hopes for Pathfinder were dashed along with the Vikings on the rocks.

Overlord

I didn't start out planning to be an evil overlord.

When I found out that Overlord was a cross between Dungeon Keeper (where you get to play the bad guy in a fantasy world) and Pikmin (where you get to control different colored carrot people in quests), I was sold.

My first impressions of Overlord was that I was playing Sauron, back when he was still a horse-headed giant-type, before all that all-seeing angry red eye on top of a tower business. As Overlord you are in charge of goblins, who come in four flavors: brown, red, blue, and green. Fans of Pikmin (or any video game on the planet) know how this works: blues are immune to water, greens are immune to poison, etc. These diabolical minions accompany your Overlord everywhere as you rampage around the countryside reclaiming your evil inheritance. You know, cleaning up the tower, reclaiming all your minions, and finding a naughty girl to settle down with.

Being an Overlord is rather domestic, apparently.

-----+= EVIL OVERLORD RULE #24: I will maintain a realistic assessment of my strengths and weaknesses. Even though this takes some of the fun out of the job, at least I will never utter the line "No, this cannot be! I AM INVINCIBLE!!!" (After that, death is usually instantaneous.) =+-----

I started out feeling very charitable to the peasants of Spree, returning their food from the evil halflings. I discovered that Overlord is basically a cynical view of Lord of the Rings, with all the heroes being horrible hypocrites, and thus truly the villains. Compared to Melvin Underbelly the gluttonous halfling, the Oberon the slothful elf, Sir William the lecherous lord, Goldo the greedy dwarf, Jewel the envious and Kahn the wrathful. The seven deadly sins, wrapped up in fantasy stereotypes, all waiting to be defeated.

There are two paths you can pursue in Overlord. Be nice to people and do good deeds (or at least, not particularly evil deeds) and you can pursue the path of Lawful Evil, for those of you who know D&D. Be mean and it's a downward spiral into Chaotic Evil. These choices reflect how the various characters interact with you, from the lowliest peasant to your mistress of choice. I started out trying to be relatively nice, if only because all the walkthroughs I consulted whenever I got stuck took me down that path.

Then I was on a quest to save some stupid sacred Tree of Life in a stupid sacred elf forest and in an attempt to stop two bloody unicorns (no, really, they're unicorns covered with blood) from killing me, I used a fire spell...and set the Tree of Life on fire. This in turn set the whole forest ablaze, bloody unicorns, elves, and all, who went up in a screaming conflagration.

Well that pretty much dashed any hopes of my redemption right there and I started considering an evil path. I felt bad about the whole thing and was actually considering making it up to the elves, maybe by planting some trees or something...

Until I met Velvet.

-----+= EVIL OVERLORD RULE #49: If I learn the whereabouts of the one artifact which can destroy me, I will not send all my troops out to seize it. Instead I will send them out to seize something else and quietly put a Want-Ad in the local paper. =+-----

About halfway through the game you have the opportunity to take a mistress. Rose, Velvet's older and more straitlaced sister, calls your little goblins "pixies" and generally sets an imperious tone about your tower--MY tower, which I didn't invite her to. So when I had the opportunity to switch to the sleek little minx named Velvet, reclining in laced up stockings on her bed and promising Teen-rated services...I suddenly had a change of perspective.

Velvet's evil and she's not subtle about it. She constantly threatens, cajoles, and pouts throughout the game to get you to do more evil things. It worked. Oh how it worked! And when you give Velvet what she wants, she...reciprocates.

I'm not proud of this, but Xbox Live is. Because it has Mistress Master as a title. This has to be a new low. Or a new high, depending on your perspective.

Thus I became not just an evil overlord, but a really sadistic jerk. I went back to Spree and slaughtered every inhabitant, burned every building to the ground, and took all their stuff. Then I went back and enslaved their best-looking women as servants. I mean...somebody knows what 12-year-old boys want. I am not a 12-year-old boy, but I hope to be when I grow up.

Overlord is a glorious form of stress relief. You travel from area to area via your tower, slowly accumulating more minions and gold. You can upgrade your weapons, learn new spells, and of course evil-fy your tower. Because Velvet wants you to. And you should really do what Velvet tells you to do if you know what's good for you.

-----+= EVIL OVERLORD RULE #53: If the beautiful princess that I capture says, "I'll never marry you! Never, do you hear me, NEVER!!!" I will say "Oh well" and kill her. =+-----

Overlord can be repetitive at times, especially when you run out of minions and have to resort to "farming" lesser creatures to get the magical energy up to create new ones. Death has no penalties other than a loss of minions and starting over on a level, so there comes a tipping point where you are either clearly outmatched and thus have to spend more time mindlessly killing wimpy critters, or you are so powerful that you roll over everything in the game.

By the end of the game, I had a huge pile of gold in my coffers--you can visit your coffers and watch as the gold accumulates. I bought Velvet everything her wicked little heart desired and then some, from flaming demon-shaped fixtures to skull banners. And I had a shiny new set of armor and weapons. At one point I had ten female servants, Velvet lounging around, and Jewel in a cage in front of my throne. This is not a game that caters to females...unless your name happens to be Velvet.

It's good to be the Overlord.

(Rules courtesy of Peter Anspach's The Top 100 Things I'd Do If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord: http://www.eviloverlord.com/lists/overlord.html)

Freeport: Crisis in Freeport

I run a Living Arcanis campaign, which also contains Freeport. With a wealth of material at my disposal, I decided to pick up Crisis in Freeport (CIF) to see how I could fit it into my campaign. I should point out that this is a long playtest review that contains spoilers galore. To help clarify what I did differently in my campaign, I will use a PLAYTEST tag.

CIF begins with the announcement that the Captain's Council, the ruling body that governs Freeport, has declared the Rule of Succession for the Sea Lord's throne null and void. Since the Sea Lord title is hereditary, that means the throne is up for grabs by anyone, including the other councilors. The news incites rioting in the streets, which leads to the city newspaper being burned to the ground, the murder of the Commissioner of the Sea Lord's Guard, women in need of saving, and a monster on the loose.

PLAYTEST: I combined this adventure with the final chapter of Black Sails Over Freeport. By having Drak, an orc, declare his lineage to the Sea Lord's throne, it was further incentive for the Captain's Council to invalidate the Rule of Succession. I ran the riots straight out of the adventure, with a few tweaks to the NPCs' names. I replaced the bulette with a two-headed dragon of my own creation that ended up killing our dwarf fighter. The gang who attacks the Sea God's Shrine was changed to a gang that attacks the God of Pirates shrine. I also inserted the orc riots from BSOF into the mix.

And this is where we start to get some bizarre content that skirts the "decency" rule in the Open Game License. It's repeatedly mentioned that the bad guys (all elves and half-elves) have been molested as children, that the pirates rape people before (and sometimes after!) they kill them, and that there's more than one opportunity to catch pirates "in the act." While most of this is easy to drop, it's certainly not in the fun spirit of the other Freeport adventures, none of which emphasized (over and over and OVER) that pirates "have a bit of fun" with their victims. I agree that Freeport needs to get a little more focused and a little more serious, but I felt that the way it was handled in this book was over-the-top. One of my players, my wife, found it to be simply offensive.

The other thing is that elves in my campaign wouldn't think of sullying themselves in such a fashion. And since this particular form of violence is motivated by racial hatred (elves vs. humans), the whole thing seems forced. It's all a bit squicky, in my opinion.

During the riots, Arias Soderheim, the only half-elf on the Council, has hired the elven Captain Allethra Sharpe to kidnap Lady Elise Grossette. Grosette is one of the good guys on the Council and a rival for the Sea Lord's throne. The PCs eventually follow the trail to an island during a thunderstorm, whereupon they face off against sahuagin led by an oddly named female villain (rhymes with witch, but I won't include it here as some filters will reject the review outright).

PLAYTEST: I changed the identity of the kidnapped NPC to a candidate the PCs were backing, Emric Ossan-Drac from a previous Living Arcanis adventure. Likewise, the attack by the sahuagin still happened but were led by Camring, also from a previous adventure, and his traitorous mother, Black Jenny Ramsey, AKA Sycorax.

Upon arriving on the island, the PCs sneak onto Sharpe's ship, The Knife, and find a pirate doing naughty things with a cabin boy. It turns out said cabin boy is a succubus. With clues from the ship's hold as to who hired Sharpe, the PCs land on the island, face off against serpent people ghouls, and finally to Felix's, a resort turned into the last stand for Sharpe and his pirates.

PLAYTEST: I kept the squicky pirate/boy encounter because it fit a decidedly squicky NPC named Talathiel that I took from another adventure. I did make a point of having the boy reveal himself to be a succubus. My PCs were suitably disgusted and dispatched Talathiel promptly.

Sharpe and his men are engaged in various acts of debauchery, but they are not without their firepower. Kyl, an elven evoker, and Dirty Malone, who is exactly like he sounds, join Sharpe in fighting to the bitter end. Then it's back to Freeport with Elise in tow for an emergency Council session: what to do about Soderheim?

PLAYTEST: I replaced all the NPCs with villains the PCs had encountered in the past. Sharpe's last stand was suitably climactic. I dropped all the other stuff involving pirates violating corpses.

The Captain's Council decides to have a meeting in the town square, only to suffer an assassination attempt. Assuming the PCs survive, they discover that Soderheim is holed up in a brothel. There, they face down Soderheim and his lieutenant in another climactic battle...when suddenly one of Freeport's massive cannons is pointed at the brothel and blows the building to smithereens!

PLAYTEST: I have to admit, I loved this idea. I further complicated Soderheim as a villain by having him protect elven interests, and holding hostage an elven PC. But when he realizes that the cannon is pointed at the brothel, Soderheim had a change of heart and dimension doored out with his hostage in the nick of time. Even though he released her, he later fell to his death and was ripped apart by angry Freeport citizens. Of all the parts of the adventure, this is the most exciting. One PC survived by diving out a window with a potion of fly. The other cast a sphere of force around himself at the last minute. Good stuff!

It seems someone paid the guardsmen who control the cannon to point it at the brothel in an effort to keep Soderheim from talking. That Continental spy shows up in the middle of the night to personally destroy the PCs, summoning a Zelekhut inevitable to join in the attack. This is perhaps the weakest part of the adventure: it makes little sense that a spy would engage PCs in an all out attack -- spies run away to fight again another day, not wage one-man wars against heavily armed PCs. In addition, the spy "convinces the zelekhut that the PCs have denied justice..." and "it's eager to destroy the PCs, almost as eager as the conspirator."

Seriously? Shall we pit the zelekhut's Sense Motive (+12) against the spy's Bluff (uh...he doesn't even have any points in the skill)? It defies belief and seems like the zelekhut was included for the sole purpose of utilizing its locate creature ability to find the PCs. And why is this lawful neutral spy lying to a creature of law? More importantly, why is the spy lawful neutral at all?

PLAYTEST: I changed the spy's identity (turns out we already had a Continental spy in the campaign named Cunegunda), changed the attack to actually be an accident, and changed the zelekhut to another monster entirely. The effect was still the same: an ambush in the middle of the night on the PCs can be extremely deadly. But it at least made a little more sense, and my PCs did indeed fight for their very lives.

At the conclusion, a not very convincing case is made for Marilise Morgan to be named Sea Lord. Apparently "the aggressiveness during the hunt for Soderheim endeared her not only to the other council members but also to the populace." -- which is hard to believe, since what amounts to aggressiveness on Morgan's part is that she "proposes not only arresting and trying Soderheim, but seizing his estates and banishing any of his blood relatives from Freeport." I'm sure such a bloodthirsty ruling suitably impressed all of Freeport's pirates!

PLAYTEST: I would have preferred the adventure making a case for each of the Council members, allowing the DM to choose from one of them, as opposed to the lame argument that Marilise (who took over for her corrupt brother) is somehow a shoo in for the position. In fact, during the assassination attempt in the square the DM is told to specifically spare Marilise so she can win the succession later. A little too heavy-handed for my tastes. In the end, Emric, an NPC the heroes had been struggling to protect for years, took the throne,. Or to put it another way, while Arias was built up as a villain throughout the Freeport supplements, Marilise is a nobody that comes out of nowhere to take the throne. It doesn't feel like she deserves it.

Overall, CIF is a deadly serious action adventure with a plot that moves briskly. From a riot to a hostage crisis, an assassination attempt to a crime boss raid, a midnight retaliation to plenty of politics, CIF provides enough fodder to wrap up a Freeport game. It's probably impossible to please every DM with the conclusion, but CIF does an adequate job of providing a definitive ending to a story arc. I just wish it were a little less squicky.

Freeport: Tales of Freeport

I run a Living Arcanis campaign, which also contains Freeport. With a wealth of material at my disposal, I decided to pick up Tales of Freeport (TOF) to see how I could fit it into my campaign. I should point out that this is a long playtest review that contains spoilers galore. To help clarify what I did differently in my campaign, I will use a PLAYTEST tag.

The first adventure, Soul of the Serpent for PCs of 5th to 7th level, is a sequel of sorts to the original Freeport adventure trilogy. We find the former High Priest of the God of Knowledge (once known as Thuron and now known as the serpent person K'Stallo) skulking around in Freeport in human guise as the unimaginatively named Steel. His goal is to unite the serpent people through the teachings of Hitthkai, a peaceful sect that worships Yig. There is another, rival serpent priest named Ffashethh who preaches the way of Sskethvai, a more violent sect that is actually a front for the diabolical cult of the Unspeakable One. Ffashethh is actually a shapeshifting Brotherhood of the Yellow Sign cultist known as Corwin Laxton.

The PCs stumble into this mess when looking for Matthias Brack's daughter, who was captured as a sacrifice for the Sskethvai. With K'Stallo's help, the PCs hopefully rescue the girl, kill the bad guys, and escape before the Unspeakable One is summoned.

There are a few things that struck me as pointless in this adventure, not the least of which is the pages upon pages of information on what PCs might do to find the damsel in distress (like a listing of every organization who might help them out) and much less focus on what happens when the PCs finally find the bad guys. K'Stallo's people may or may not show up, the bad guys may or may not escape, and the climactic showdown between the Unspeakable One and Yig himself is optional. The adventure lacks focus and clarity -- the summary I gave above of all the NPCs and their motivations is more than you get from the adventure itself. For example, the name of Laxton's serpent man persona (Ffashethh) is only mentioned in passing.

One other thing: this adventure uses recycled maps from one of the other Freeport adventures, including the same room descriptions. In other words, it's recycling content, content that could have been used for something else entirely.

PLAYTEST: I used only the second half of the adventure and focused on the exciting parts. The Unspeakable One was summoned -- and Yig showed up to do battle. K'Stallo secretly attends the sacrifice in the arena, leading a surprise attack on Ffashethh's serpent people. This made the adventure very short but very exciting. Ironically, a fireball from the party's sorcerer did the job for Ffashethh when he accidentally killed all the hostages, summoning the Unspeakable One.

Overall this adventure gets a 3 out of 5. Not great but salvageable.

The Last Resort is supposedly an adventure for character of any level, although the text indicates 3rd through 6th level. It is basically a series of timed events that take place in an inn (the Last Resort, get it?). Encounters range from an assassination attempt to a kidnapping attempt by the Brotherhood of the Yellow Sign, a game of chance with high stakes to a jilted husband, ghostly vengeance and a risen mummy. There's a lot going on here, and it all happens in fifteen-minute increments.

PLAYTEST: I changed the identities and names of the various NPCs but kept the events the same. To keep the action moving, Henry Tranco ran a game of chance with the PCs involved. I had the PCs play Three-Dragon Ante between every fifteen-minute increment, which kept the game interesting. The events in this adventure actually had tremendous repercussions throughout the rest of the campaign. I converted the mummy into a samat (a powerful serpent person from Nyambe) named Ffashethh, leading into the Soul of the Serpent adventure. Elijah Quelch, who is a minor dealer interested in the mummy, became a major recurring villain in the campaign. All in all, it was a great adventure...even though it's really more of an outline.

This adventure gets a 3 out of 5. It's got all the right ingredients but very little direction and again seems to miss the point -- why have a gambler play a high stakes game in a room "off camera" when the PCs could be directly involved?

Cut-Throat's Gold is for PCs of 4th through 7th level. I ran this adventure first, as it ended up being the location of the aforementioned mummy.

PLAYTEST: Because I had a lizardfolk PC in my campaign, this was a perfect hook for the party to visit his hometown. I also combined the city of Saltmarsh (converted to Sulfurmarsh from the DMG II) with this adventure. The PCs became quickly frustrated with the random encounters, even though I found them all very amusing. I converted Thomas Hariot the necromancer into a Death Master (a class from the Dragon Compendium) and gave him an undead minion, an Entomber, as a companion. Coupled with some nasty necromancer spells, a hostile lizardfolk tribe, and communication difficulties, this adventure transformed from a merely passable jungle encounter to a memorable battle.

The PCs really enjoyed the outcome of this adventure. I give it 4 out of 5.

Fair Salvage is an adventure for character levels 7 through 9. There is virtually no combat in this adventure, so the level ratings don't really apply. A group of alien beings known as Strangers invades Freeport with the intent of retaking artifacts stolen from one of their beached ships. It turns out the huge cannons that defend Freeport actually belonged to these Strangers and they want them back. And they're willing to do anything to retrieve them.

Fair Salvage is basically an investigation, another one of those boring adventures where the PCs show up too late for any action. The PCs, especially if they're Freeporters, are in a no-win situation - they won't want to hand over the cannons. And given that the Strangers have killed several people already, the odds that the PCs will be fighting mad are high. The other problem is that the PCs have a final "negotiation" with the Strangers in front of a ship wielding the same magical siege cannons that defend Freeport. Or to put it another way, the ship is immune to everything the PCs throw at it, the Strangers are ultra-powerful, they want cannons that Freeport would never voluntarily give up, and the adventure's resolution is...to not provide one.

The adventure's discussion of the Strangers skips the political implications of a nation essentially giving up its nuclear weapons (by force, I might add) and instead dwells on the possibility of the PCs negotiating a sweet deal for themselves, an all-out invasion by the Strangers, and the Strangers settling in Freeport. There's absolutely no evidence up to this point that the Strangers would settle in Freeport, but the adventure hurdles forward with more text about how the Strangers will make Freeport's serpent people look benevolent in comparison...

This is one of those adventures that can wreck a campaign. Super powerful aliens who apparently couldn't be bothered to retrieve their weapons for the past hundred years or so suddenly show up, want their weapons back, and the PCs don't really have a clear path to deal with it. This is perfectly acceptable for an adventure; after all, moral quandaries are what great role-playing is made of. What's not so great is that the adventure doesn't provide any real guidelines about actually resolving the problem and instead dwells on the alien invasion angle.

PLAYTEST: I converted the Strangers into an alien race known as the Fihali, which had an established history in the Arcanis game. I also had the PCs show up during one of the Strangers' raids, as opposed to investigating the murders after the fact, just to inject some action into the adventure. When the tense negotiations finally happened, one PC (also a Fihali) sacrificed the party, thereby preventing an ensuing war. Both sides agreed to work together to save Arcanis.

This adventure is the weakest of the bunch. Big ideas with poor execution: 2 out of 5.

After the adventures follow Plots and Places, basically adventure hooks. I used A Stunning Likeness, about a renowned sculptor, as the plot seed for another adventure involving a medusa (you're shocked, I know). I didn't use any of the others plots, thirteen in all. The Plots are fine for what they are, with some more interesting than others. 3 out of 5.

PLAYTEST: As for Places, I used all of them. Falthar's Curios, a magic shop, figured prominently in my game as a contact for one of my PCs and it was Falthar who was a victim of the above Strangers in Fair Salvage. I also used the Salon Du Masque and the Countess D'Amberville. In fact, I enjoyed the connection to Castle Amber so much I ran a conversion of that Basic D&D adventure. The Countess eventually died, but she was a constant thorn in the PCs sides for years. 5 out of 5

The book wraps up with Rules You Can Use. There is one new skill (Shadowing), new uses for existing skills like Knowledge and Profession, firearms rules, and prestige classes: Freeport Merchant, Ship's Captain, and Gambler. Two of those prestige classes now have official versions in Wizards of the Coast supplements, rendering most of the info redundant. I did use the Gambler class though, if only to stat out Henry Tranco. 3 out of 5.

Overall, Tales of Freeport is full of good ideas but has a somewhat unpolished execution. The book could easily have been twice the size and dealt with some of the interesting plots in more detail, while at the same time excising recycled content from old adventures to make space.

Black Sails Over Freeport

I run a Living Arcanis campaign, which also contains Freeport. With a wealth of material at my disposal, I decided to pick up Black Sails Over Freeport (BSOF) to see how I could fit it into my campaign. I should point out that this is a long playtest review that contains spoilers galore. To help clarify what I did differently in my campaign, I will use a PLAYTEST tag.

When the adventure begins, Freeport is in the midst of a war between two nations: the elves and the barbarians. Neither side seems particularly friendly, but most Freeporters don't care--they just want the right to privateer, selling out their services to the highest bidder. Of course, both nations want Freeport to pick a side.

PLAYTEST: I essentially kept the sides the same. Coryan, the ruling country in Arcanis, was in the midst of a civil war. Loyalists serving the Emperor hired the barbarians; the elves were allied with the Rebels, led by the High General. Given that BSOF involves some major campaign-altering events, including two nations with enough troops and ships to wage a full war, DMs need to carefully consider the impact on the game world. To me, this part of BSOF was far more interesting than the silly islands that come later.

BSOF begins with the PCs bumping into a gnome. The gnome pretends to know them and, in a desperate bid to escape cultists, hands them a map. This map subsequently involves them with a scholar named Lucien, who just happens to be kidnapped by Captain Morgan Baumann of the Kraken's Claw. It's a treasure map of course, and Lucien is the only means of unlocking its secrets. Rescuing Lucien leads to five quests for five artifacts, each guarded by a member of the Full-Fathom Five.

PLAYTEST: I changed this significantly. Flint became a minor character and Lucien was replaced with Corinalous, the father of one of the PCs. This helped draw the PCs into the adventure immediately. But it was always with the intent of defeating Yarash (who was renamed Leviathan in my campaign), rather than a vague quest for treasure. I combined the raid on the drug den to rescue Lucien/Corinalous with the free Freeport adventure, The Consequences of Vice.

Yarash, an evil pirate god who opposes the "good" pirate god, Harrimast, formed the Full-Fathom Five. Yarash is the hands-on type, and he gave each of his pirates an artifact to rule the seas: Ezekiel Carthy received a sextant, Black Jenny Ramsey received a pirate's hook, a Moab Cys'varion received a spyglass, a Zoltan Zaska received a pistol, and Daen Danud received a ship's bell. But Carthy betrayed his comrades and Yarash, leading to the god's imprisonment in Hell's Triangle along with the Full-Fathom Five. Carthy, in the intervening centuries, has been blissfully hiding out in Freeport, with none the wiser.

Until now. The PCs unwittingly reveal who Carthy really is. But Carthy doesn't have the sextant. It's in the possession of Drak Sockit, a half-orc with plans for the Sea Lord's throne. The Sea Lord is a hereditary title, the equivalent of the King of Freeport, and Drak believes the sextant proves he is descended from the original Sea Lord. The orcs, cheap labor that up to now have been helping rebuild Freeport, are sick and tired of being treated like second-class citizens and they're not going to take it anymore.

PLAYTEST: I tweaked Drak to become Drak Scarbelly, using Scarbelly from one of the other Freeport adventures. This gave him a lot more relevance to the campaign. I also enjoyed the parallels to realistic politics about importing cheap labor, and one of the PCs went along with it; it was a major role-playing event to see him begrudgingly put his own biases aside to work with Drak. I also got rid of the ridiculous way the orcs talk. For example: "Hey manflesh! You am wake up! No seaweed god am protect you from Sons of Krom!" This style of speaking was taken from the old Green Ronin game, Ork! It's funny for a beer and pretzels kind of game (in Ork!, Orks explode if they eat broccoli), but it's nigh unreadable when Drak goes on for paragraphs discussing orc rights.

This leads to Drak getting imprisoned, along with the sextant, which he thoughtfully hides by swallowing it. The PCs have to rescue him from the Hulks, floating prison ships off the coast of Freeport. Once they retrieve the sextant and reunite it with Carthy, the portal to Hell's Triangle opens and that's the last the PCs see of Freeport for a bit.

PLAYTEST: One of the major villains is a cultist named William "Billy Bones" Grimshady, who kidnaps Carthy. The whole scene is supposed to be a thrilling chase, except that at this point one of my PCs could fly. Oddly, the cultists can too (one of them has a potion of fly) so clearly the authors understood that PCs could ruin the whole chase scene with a simple spell. This is just one example in a series of forced plotlines that don't go the way the authors planned because higher-level D&D games tend to break a lot of assumptions.

Billy Bones is a rip off of Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper) from the movie Blue Velvet. Right down to his breathing mask; in the movie, Frank inhales some kind of narcotic (laughing gas, maybe?). In BSOF, Billy Bones uses the inhaler to inhale potions or narcotics. This is the other problem with BSOF, which is that it will sacrifice any sense of continuity or plot for a joke or a homage. Billy Bones, with his inhaler, flintlock pistol, cloak, and fedora, looks like something out of a post-apocalyptic game. And his bizarre swearing is completely out of character for what is otherwise a light-hearted adventure. In other words, Billy Bones isn't just a homage, he literally feels like a cameo appearance by someone's favorite character. Most of the players hadn't seen Blue Velvet, so I simply made him a foul-mouthed Jack Nicholson rip off, and that worked well enough.

Thus begins what turned a lot of people off of Freeport entirely. Each villain has his or her own island, with a particular theme that seems predicated more on a single joke than an actual adventure path.

Daen Danud is the lord of the Isle of Undeath, where he drills his undead troops in the military arts, even though the Intelligence scores of most of the undead are far too low to be trained.

PLAYTEST: I played Danud as if he was Skeletor from the old He-Man cartoons. That made for a lot of fun. I also converted Danud's penchant for blood magic into the Blood Magus prestige class; thanks to the powers gained from that class, Danud managed to kill one of the PCs. It was the longest battle I've ever run in D&D, ever (spell durations actually ran out), but also the most fun. There's also a vampire who helps the PCs in this adventure; again, I took a vampire from a previous adventure and inserted him into the plot. As it turned out, this was a necessity--my time for gaming was running out and we needed to bring the campaign to a close. So rather than go through every one of these islands, which could take two or three sessions per island, we accelerated the timeline thanks to the vampire-ally's planning.

Zoltan Zaska controls the Boneshaper's Throne, a weird mix of science fiction and horror, wherein Zaska leads the PCs through reenactments of his life on a gigantic flying skull in a series of supervillain-esque tests, each with the purpose of weeding out who will be the perfect new body for Zaska's spirit.

PLAYTEST: Danud may seem silly with his military drills, but he's tolerable. Zaska is just off the wall. Zaska creates construct minions out of the corpses of his own clones. When he's not flying around in a giant skull trying to get his clones to fight each other, he's impregnating clones of Black Jenny Ramsey, whom he is hopelessly obsessed with. The PCs found the journey through Zaska's life to be very amusing. In the end, I had Zaska challenge the most flamboyant PC to a duel, which Zaska promptly lost. The goal is to get the PC to pick up the artifact pistol, which then allows Zaska to jump into the PC's body. It turned out to be a lot more amusing than irritating, as Zaska would take over whenever the PC had a weak moment (like when he failed a Will save vs. a spell).

Ramsey, who has remade herself as a vampire goddess named Ahunatum, rules the Island of the White Gorilla. She subjugates the population through her sentient gorillas, who regularly make blood sacrifices atop a pyramid.

PLAYTEST: And you thought Zaska was bad? This whole chapter is filled with Planet of the Apes jokes, Donkey Kong jokes, gorillas gambling for bananas jokes, and a bunch of other dumb jokes. Like much of BSOF, it contains in-jokes for the DM only. There's also the little matter of a vampire who conceals that she has a hook on her hand by...HIDING IT BEHIND HER BACK. No wonder it takes a DC 30 Spot check to notice! With Zaska possessing one of the PCs, he was loath to harm her. And given that they only needed the hook, the PCs promptly lopped it off Ramsey's arm and she managed to escape. Right before they rammed Zaska's giant skull ship into her pyramid.

That's another problem with this adventure. It doesn't actually take into account how the PCs will use the artifacts until they reach Yarashad. For example, the ship's bell gives the PCs control over ALL undead. The pistol gives the PCs control of Zaska's flying ship and his legions of skeleton constructs. The hook can control men's minds, and the spyglass can see everywhere and open a portal to anywhere. For each island that the PCs beat, things get that much easier.

Finally, there's Crystal Lake Island, a land of paranoid mutants ruled by the former drow Moab Cys'varion. In another science fictionish twist, Moab has been mutating the humans and animals around his island, allowing for all sorts of unique, bizarre creatures for the PCs to fight.

PLAYTEST: I decided that Moab, with his spyglass that sees everything, knew what was up. He's planning an invasion of Freeport anyway, so instead of invading Freeport, he invaded the PCs ship, gating monsters onto it one round after another, then his bodyguards, and then himself--it made perfect sense: each pirate needed all five artifacts and there the PCs were, just waiting for him to take it!

Mutations are another science fiction idea that has little place in D&D. We get the idea of mutations--that's why we have owlbears--but we don't need fish mutants, warrior mutants, ape mutants...there are plenty of D&D monsters to fill the same niche.

Retrieving all four artifacts summons Yarashad, the island where Yarash is entombed. The PCs meet an incarnation of Harrimast, cleverly disguised as an avatar known as "Old Mad Harry," who leads them on a merry quest to Yarash's tomb. There, the PCs are encouraged to use the power of each of the artifacts to overcome the various obstacles to Yarash's immense treasure. Having reached the end of their quest and wealthy beyond measure, Harrimast returns the PCs to Freeport, where they will live out their days with over three-hundred thousand gold pieces each...

PLAYTEST: Again, there's a lot of sloppy plotting here. When exactly Harrimast reveals himself is undetermined. Beyond acting as a foil for the PCs, he doesn't do much. When the PCs defeat all the challenges, they are left with a pile of treasure and no way to get back. BSOF doesn't even explain what happens to Harrimast, nor does it explain how they return. All this time the four villains and a GOD couldn't get out of Hell's Triangle, and the only hint that the PCs are somehow able to escape through Harrimast's intervention is his speech, "if ye can put me in me right mind, I'll fix you up and set ye windward." Apparently, "set ye windward" translates to "escape Hell's Triangle with treasure and artifacts in tow.

The other problem is that Harrimast seems like something of an idiot. Old Mad Harry led the PCs to Yarash's tomb, he lets them have Yarash's treasure (with plenty of threats, of course), and he also is apparently severed from his god form. He needs the PCs to use the artifacts to free him of his curse. The ones Harry led them to. Riiiight.

The PCs also get an obscene amount of treasure. Although the obstacles are suitably daunting (twelve bodaks, anyone?), they are easily overcome by judicious use of the artifacts. That left my PCs singularly unfulfilled. Sure, they were flush with cash. But they came to defeat Yarash. Instead, they found the god locked in his tomb, surrounded by money, and led there by the god who beat him, without a clear means of getting back. I couldn't blame my PCs for being a little aggravated with Harrimast. It seemed like he was wasting their time.

Back home, the war between elves and barbarians has reached a climax. Drak has been imprisoned (again). Orcs are rioting in the streets. And that's when the barbarians choose to strike. Freeport is under attack, and it's up to our heroes to put a stop to it: by convincing the Sea Lord's Guard to let Drak go so that he can rally the orcs to defend Freeport, by firing the massive cannons at the invading fleet, by foiling elven plots to sabotage the city. With the barbarians on the run, Freeport gives chase...

PLAYTEST: I inserted Crisis in Freeport into this part of the adventure, thus wrapping up the succession crisis as to whom would take over the position of Sea Lord. I'll save that for a separate review. Suffice it to say that this was an exciting part of the adventure and all the PCs stepped up.

Only to be attacked by those pesky elves. And while the elves are attacking, the Son of Yarash (a kraken) rises. Summoned by Yarash's cultists, it consumes ship after ship. Once it consumes ten ships, Yarash's tomb rises and Yarash is reborn! A big, Cthulhu-like monster with four arms, he blathers on about the Full-Fathom Five and how they utterly failed in their mission. He had to trick a couple of meddling kids (that's you, PCs) into resurrecting him. And now the world will PAY! MUAAHAHAHAH!

PLAYTEST: When the PCs saw the kraken, they turned tail and ran. No, seriously. It wasn't until Yarash showed up that they decided to fight. Then it is revealed that secretly, Harrimast wanted Yarash to think his plan was working so he could destroy him once and for all. Wheels within wheels, see?

So to sum up: Harrimast couldn't remove a curse from his avatar, but he could lead PCs to the artifacts that could remove it. He could waltz right into Yarash's tomb, but couldn't obliterate Yarash personally. He could pretty much do nearly everything but not the thing the PCs needed to do. Harrimast has to be the most unresourceful pirate god, ever.

Fortunately, Yarash has a weakness: the five stars on his forehead. The PCs hopefully get the hint, wipe the stars and smile off of Yarash's face, put an end to the war (since both the barbarian and elven fleets are decimated), save Freeport and save the world.

PLAYTEST: I replaced Yarash with a weakened avatar of Cthulhu and let the PCs go at it. One PC died, the others were hanging on by a thread, but they managed to just barely defeat the evil god. And that wrapped up my four year D&D campaign.

BSOF devotes an entire page to what happened to Carthy, as if anyone cares about Carthy. It leaves other important political questions completely unresolved: what about Drak's claim to the throne? Do any of the captains die during the battle against Yarash, thereby opening up seats on the Captains Council? What about the elven and barbarian fleets--who wins the war? That's up to the DM to decide.

BSOF is a very old school module. At times it feels like it was written by twelve-year-olds, with its flagrant disregard for continuity and logic, its over-the-top puns and homages to video games and movies nobody cares about, and its "oh don't worry about it" attitude towards details. One example: instead of giving twelve cultists poisoned daggers, they're all given daggers of venom. Twelve daggers of venom add up in PCs hands.

Similarly, the adventure doesn't take into account the fact that the PCs will have five ultra-powerful artifacts when the war commences. Sure, Yarash deactivates the artifacts when he appears, but prior to that point the PCs could conceivably rout both fleets through the artifacts alone. To solve that problem, I made the artifacts stop working as soon as they returned to Freeport.

And yet, I can't be too hard on this adventure. It's like that player you have in your game who doesn't know how to play D&D but has big ideas; he's big on theatrics and sketchy on details, cracks a lot of jokes, drinks all your soda, and is basically just there to have fun. For all its stogie-smoking zombies, card-playing gorillas, and flying giant skulls, BSOF is about having a good time and damn the consequences. DMs should consider carefully if their campaign and players can handle it. Mine did just fine.

Pirates of the Caribbean - At World's End

There's a gesture I make in films that my wife knows well. It starts out with me slouching in my seat. As I get progressively aggravated with the movie, I sink lower and lower. And then finally, if the film really aggravates me, I drop my head on my wife's shoulder. The last time I did this was during the third Batman movie.

I thought a child being hung was a pretty disturbing tone way to start the movie, but then, he's a pirate and he's beginning "the song." Apparently the song is somehow significant to pirate lore. What the mournful song has to do with anything, I have no idea. It's not a big deal though, because World's End is so stuffed with ideas that the weird song concept is quickly dropped.

We then careen to a scene in an Asian bathhouse, where our heroes attempt to negotiate with Captain Sao Feng (Chow Yun-Fat). They need a boat, you see, to rescue Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) from Davey Jones' Locker, the equivalent of pirate hell.

This is a bit odd, since one character has already been brought back from the dead: the dread pirate Barbossa (played by the inimitable Geoffrey Rush). Why is Barbossa easy to return through the voodoo magic of Tia Dalma (Naomie Harris) and not Jack? 'Cause "Jack's spirit was taken, you just died," she explains.

I guess being eaten by a kraken will do that to you. Speaking of the archvillain of the second movie, the poor thing is found dead in the middle of World's End, washed upon a beach. Unfortunately Verbinski doesn't show that merciless discipline to the rest of his characters.

If there's one overarching flaw in World's End, it's that there are too many characters. It's like watching an entire season of Lost over the span of two hours. There are so many plot points, so many entertaining leads, so many good (and not so good) actors, that the film is stuffed to the brim until it all becomes a soupy mess. Villains from the first movie has become good guys, good guys from the second movie have become bad guys, bad guys change allegiances, good guys betray each other, and after awhile you give up and wait for the big battles to arrive.

Only they don't. The huge armada battle between the English navy and a fleet of pirate ships never really happens. Instead, we get the equivalent of naval grandstanding, with single ships battling it out over a whirlpool while the others look on (the movie equivalent of ninjas hopping around in the background while they are dispatched one at a time by the hero). It struck me that World's End long decided that "normal" ship-to-ship battles are boring, and thus need to be utterly ridiculous to be entertaining.

And they are entertaining, to a point. There's just too much to do and too many plots to follow. Jack Sparrow is superfluous, which is a crying shame. His most entertaining moments are when he's having a nervous breakdown, talking to good and bad (or, depending on your perspective, bad and bad) versions of himself. Or shouting at a crew populated by his doppelgangers. Or arguing with a skeletal version of himself that "loses its brain." No, really.

Will Wil Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) ever get together? There were some misunderstandings in the second film that could arguably drive a wedge between them, but that wedge was named Jack. With him out of the picture, it takes much too long for the two to reconcile their differences. Fortunately, their reconciliation (a wedding performed by Barbosa in the middle of a shipside battle) is probably the best moment in the film.

Speaking of Barbosa, there's not just too many plots, there's too many captains. The Brethren Council, a council of nine pirates who each possess a Piece of Eight (Why not eight?) to free the sea goddess Calypso seems to have been made up on the spot. In about two minutes, Swann ascends to Pirate King, thus nullifying the whole purpose of the Council. At some point, Keith Richards shows up as a really scary pirate that tells everyone what to do. These pirates seem to have more ranks and nobility than the English!

By the time Tia turns into Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, I leaned my head on my wife's shoulder.

World's End doesn't give us happy endings. It doesn't wrap up Jack's story. And it shamelessly dangles yet another sequel to a series that's not sure what it wants to be when it grows up. Verbinski obviously is having fun at our expense, as evidenced by the audio playing from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, playing over Jacks' arrival to Davey Jones' Locker.

World's End is a wild ride. But I'd rather pay to see it at Disneyland than in the theater.

300

I have tremendous respect for Frank Miller, having been exposed to his reimagining of Batman at an early age. Miller infused Batman with mature dignity, heavy with grief over what he was doing but doing it anyway. No wonder, then, that the tale of the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae appealed to him enough to create a graphic novel.

I've heard that comics were originally movie story boards that someone decided to sell, so it's no wonder that, when the director has respect for Miller's material (as Robert Rodriguez did with Sin City), the end result is nothing short of breathtaking. But there's a lot of ego and a lot of money in Hollywood, and it takes a clear-minded director to subsume his own inclinations and stay true to Miller's material. Zack Snyder follows in Rodriguez's footsteps and the end result...

Well the end result was a theater packed with kids, who, five minutes into the film, become utterly silent.

The movie's plot is somewhat beside the point. 300's really an experience, not a movie. It's everything cool about Gladiator's war against the barbarian tribes, everything amazing about Achilles' fighting style and six-pack abs in Troy, all the special effects of Clash of the Titans brought up to date for the modern age, everything terrifying about the villain from Stargate, and a whole heap of the Lord of the Rings' saber rattling wrapped up into one glorious, bloody fight to the death.

Squeamish about gore? This movie is not for you. 300 doesn't just show you death, it rolls around in it and makes it beautiful. Limbs, heads, entrails...all of it spatters and smears on screen.

Don't like violence? This movie is not for you. 300 kills and kills and kills, and when the bodies are heaped so high that you can make a wall out of them, it kills everybody else too.

Machismo annoys you? This movie is not for you. Men joke as they skewer their helpless enemies, make fun of Athenian "boy lovers," and keep a running murder tally for who can rack up the most kills. Gimli and Legolas would be jealous.

Want to be politically correct? This movie is not for you. 300 is a retelling of a Greek war from the perspective of the Greeks. Persians are the enemy, and they are demonized in every way imaginable, both figuratively (the Immortals wear demonic masks) and literally (yep, that's a goat-headed monster playing the flute).

300 is about a leader and his 299 best friends standing to the last to do what's right, to bow to no man when every logic dictates otherwise, to die for king and yes, country because history will remember you as a hero. Back when we remembered what heroes were. And you find yourself cheering, because this is how many men secretly wish they could die...not in a hospital, not walking across the street, but with a sword in their hand and piles of enemies at their feet.

I loved the movie. My brother loved the movie. My sister-in-law loved the movie. My pregnant wife loved the movie too.

And the other 296 kids in the audience? They gave it a standing ovation.

Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II

Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II is a curious name. It's like calling a movie Part Two: The Sequel. Dark Alliance was a chapter in Baldur's Gate's history and this game continues what was started in the first, including many of the same characters and voice talent.

To wit, all the efforts in the first game to prevent the teleporting Onyx Towers from falling into the wrong hands was for naught. Mordoc Selanmere (a vampire) has located the towers on the Shadow Plane and manipulates both the Harpers and the Zhentarim into bringing it to the Prime Material Plane so he can teleport right into Baldur's Gate itself and turn all the citizens into shambling undead.

Our three heroes from the first game (the elven sorceress, the human archer, and the dwarf) have been captured and apparently are in for a long torture session. Meanwhile, five new heroes are recruited to the cause:

* Borador Goldhand: a dwarven treasure-hunter
* Alessia Faithammer: an aasimar cleric
* Vhaidra Uoswiir: a drow monk
* Ysuran Auondril: an elven necromancer,
* Dorn Redbear: a human barbarian.

My wife chose Vhaidra and I played Ysuran, because they were the most interesting characters. I mean, come on, Dorn Redbear sounds like a Klingon.

Vhaidra is known mostly for her sarcastic comments and the inability to walk without crouching like Elmer Fudd. Ysuran is identified mostly by his bare nipples, which he seems to have a pathological need to display at all times. It must be a necromancer thing.

The heroes must journey from place to place to retrieve certain items at the behest of various employers, whom ultimately all happen to be connected. The same merchant sells and buys all things with the same annoying and repetitive banter. The twist is that finding masterwork equipment and then augmenting them with gems can improve items. In this way, you can end up with an Exceptional Helmet of Viper's Quickness.

Also new to the Baldur's Gate games is the notion of prestige classes. After reaching 20th level and doing enough research about their past (which always costs gold, of course), the characters can join prestige classes. Ysuran's can join Shadow Adept and Vhaidra can join Assassin. These classes give you new nifty abilities. The only problem is that by the time you're 20th level, these abilities are marginally more effective at best.

The Baldur's Gate series uses a simplified version of the Dungeons & Dragons game system to good effect. All spells, feats, and class powers have been turned into feats. At each level, characters start with a certain number of points in certain feats. For example, Vhaidra starts with 1 dot in Armor Proficiency, Sprint, and Unarmed Combat. One dot in Armor Proficiency means she can only wear light armor, like leather armor. Role-players, look in horror upon that which is possibly Dungeons and Dragons 4.0!

We played the game on Medium difficulty, which was probably a mistake. Ysuran is capable of surviving just fine by himself, because of Skelly.

What, you don't know who Skelly is? Why, he's the skeleton that arises from Ysuran's Animate Dead spell. Unfortunately, Ysuran doesn't really animate any dead-Skelly just rises out of the ground and does not require any actual corpses to create him. Another missed opportunity for gaming coolness.

The world hates Skelly, but he doesn't seem to care. Every monster in the game has an inexplicable desire to kill Skelly (again), but Skelly just whacks away at them with his bare fists. Fortunately, Ysuran's protection spells extend both to his undead as well. Which really makes them unstoppable. There were a few situations wherein the boss monster killed Vhaidra and Ysuran prevailed with just Skelly and the Life Drain spell.

If Skelly makes the game less challenging, the Life Drain spell makes it a cakewalk. In essence, Life Drain inflicts damage and heals Ysuran. However, Life Drain doesn't require any targeting-Ysuran merely needs to point in the direction of his victim and red darts of energy flow out of his foes towards him. Yes, I ate several cookies while Ysuran sucked up the souls of his enemies like a Shop-Vac.

Because you can craft magic items, things quickly get out of hand. With enough money, Ysuran had a +4 helmet that protected him from 15 percent of fire, cold, and acid damage. And then because he was such a wuss, I gave him a ring that gave him a +4 bonus to Strength so he could carry all the crap Skelly found.

There were some challenges, like the Elemental Plane of Air, where Skelly and Ysuran often fell to their doom. Although really, how long did it take for them to hit "doom"? It's all Air, right?

Dark Alliance II seems to be dumbed down a bit. There are no longer ammunition limits, so ranged weapons effectively fire forever. Stocking up on arrows kept the archer in the first game in check. Here, it's all bolts, all the time.

The graphics are more or less the same, although my wife appreciated the fact that most of the main characters didn't seem modeled after certain movie stars (remember the bartender of the Elfsong Tavern, Lady Alyth?). And no, you can't strip down the drow chick to her underwear like you could with Adrianna in the first game.

For reasons I cannot comprehend, the map function was moved to the touch pad instead of pushing down on the stick. Since spells are up and down on the touch pad and the map requires pressing to the left (right switches from ranged weapon to two-handed weapon to one-handed weapons), more often than not I brought the map up in the middle of a combat. Please guys, if ain't broke, don't fix it!

Baldur's Gate II is an inferior sequel that offers more of the same, only easier. It's probably more entertaining in a single-player game, but it was definitely not balanced for two players. Restricting the necromancer to a single-player might have been a good start.

Although I feel obligated to tell you that Skelly thinks that's a stupid idea.