The Official Angry Video Game Nerd Discussion Thread

[optic_85]

Great video, very informative, but I probably would have been a little harder on the first X-Men game for Genesis. It was pretty damn flawed, it was very tricky to navigate, it was hard as hell, and that reset thing fooled me pretty good as a child.

[Aku]

I actually played (a lot) the wolverine game for nes nes back in the day. It wasnt entirely bad, but it certainly was hard as nuts. The one thing that was actually good about that one is the music, especially the intro tune. The sound effects were ok as well.
The avgn seemed a it "jaded" to me in this video; too much beer can do that to you in the long run i suppose.

[CRV]

But why even do that much, when they could probably just buy the relevant engines from some guys in Hong Kong (not unlike what Color Dreams did) ? As per Wikipedia:

Wolverine was developed by Software Creations, and X-Men was done in Japan.

[alexander4488]

Awesome video, however, the Nerd's first episodes will always be the best.

I've started reviewing games myself. Check them out here:

http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=131341

Or here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/alexander4488

[ryborg]

Awesome video, however, the Nerd's first episodes will always be the best.

No

I've started reviewing games myself. Check them out here:

No

Or here:

No

[ShinobiMan]

I love everything the guy does. What a talent. Looking forward to seeing his name on the big screen one day. Not enough filmmakers as passionate as he is.

[elvis8atari]

Here's his review of the boardgame DragonStrike. Anyone remeber that?

http://www.cinemassacre.com/new/?p=1169

[c0ldb33r]

bahh, it's been reviewed better.

I really like this review of board games though

[elvis8atari]

Spoonys is good too. Spoony and AVGN seem to be friends. I think they were in the TGWTG video together. Two different takes on the game. I think they're both funny.

[Ryaan1234]

Spoonys is good too. Spoony and AVGN seem to be friends. I think they were in the TGWTG video together. Two different takes on the game. I think they're both funny.

Just to clear up what he's talking about TGWTG.com did a 1 year anniversary "Brawl Battle" video that features the AVGN, TGWTG, Spoony, Little Miss Gamer, and Lee from Still Gaming among various other people in an amazing fight with each other.
TGWTG 1 Year Anniversary Brawl Battle.

It's epic-ness is on the level of a battle from Lord of The Rings. Really.

[Gameguy]

I stopped watching Spoony since he switched to Blip.tv, none of the videos play correctly on my computer so I can't watch them.

[Kitsune Sniper]

I stopped watching Spoony since he switched to Blip.tv, none of the videos play correctly on my computer so I can't watch them.

I've seen that happen to a lot of folks. I love Spoony's videos, but damn is Blip.tv annoying as hell.

[joshnickerson]

Dear God, that fight was awesome... despite the fact I didn't recognize most of the faces.

[Jorpho]

For a second there I thought it even defeated DownloadHelper, but no, it seems that's the way to go.

If you're dead set against using Firefox extensions, pausing the video and copying the FLV out of your browser cache after it has finished loading works splendidly too.

[Arcade_Ness]

Yeah the Big Brawl made me very happy. I know most of the people involved. We'll see what else they have up their collective sleeves.

[Sosage]

I was just rewatching his Indiana Jones vid...he gets pissed, yanks out Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, takes it to the side and whips the fuck out of it...sending it flying into something (a lamp?) and he breaks character with an "oh fuck!"...which I think is hilarious. Anyone know if there is a backstory to that shot?

Also...how the hell do I send him a game for consideration? Where do I send it?

[A Black Falcon]

Here's his review of the boardgame DragonStrike. Anyone remeber that?

http://www.cinemassacre.com/new/?p=1169

Dragon Strike is an awesome game, it's one of my all-time favorites... I have it, as well as Hero Quest (the game it was 'inspired' by) and two of Hero Quest's expansions (Kellar's Keep and Quest Pack for the Elf). All the contents of both games fix in the DragonStrike box, so I don't need to choose between one and the other when I have the box with me.

The video is awesome though. Awful acting, silly sparkling things around the characters... but awesome anyway. It's so ridiculous that it's awesome. It's better than the first Dungeons & Dragons movie, at least... that one was just awful. This is at least funny.

As for the game itself, which neither of those reviews really cover much (but particularly the Spoony one, which is just a play of the video; AVGN has a bit of the game itself, at least -- and that is most of what you're doing with this game, playing it...), it's great. It has more variety than Hero Quest in some ways, with talking to monsters, feats of strength and dexterity (hitting the manscorpion with its own tail would surely be one, or both, of those feats), etc in some ways, but the number of missions that comes with the game is somewhat limited and only moderate in difficulty most of the time (Hero Quest is just as easy to win, but has more missions and continuity, so you carry over your character; in Dragon Strike each mission is a self-contained one and you do not keep special items or anything between them.), and unlike Hero Quest there were no expansions apart from one or two missions in TSR magazines of the time, so once you've done them you just got to make them up yourself.

Because of that stand-alone nature, though, it's easier to play a single Dragon Strike mission than Hero Quest, so playing a game doesn't commit you to an entire campaign. This also means that designing your own missions isn't too hard; you just design it for the players. You don't need to take character equipment into consideration, as with Hero Quest, or worry about having to make an entire campaign, instead of a single mission. Or you can do what we usually did and just make it up as you go, traveling between the maps in an adventure... in Hero Quest that would require more planning, I think, with the character sheets, money, buying stuff between missions, etc, and really would need to be in a more formal campaign setting, as with the various campaigns in the original game and its expansions. So when playing a single game of boardgame D&D style stuff, I found I usually ended up with Dragon Strike, even though I probably like Hero Quest a bit more (though the elements like feats, talking, etc, add a lot and are very nice to have).

Dragon Strike does have only a limited number of monsters, so you rarely fight more than a few at a time. You can only do one point of damage per character per turn though (unless you have an item that boosts damage) so it is balanced, but compared to something like Hero Quest where you can face off against large groups, sometimes the game feels a bit empty, particularly in the official quests. Still, they are decently fun, the first time at least.

The official missions also all have somewhat annoying turn limits. In my own quests I'd just drop that, but the built-in quests all have a turn limit, and when you hit the turn limit the dragon comes, and he's tough. They are also all set on one map only. That was always kind of annoying, one of the main reason to want to do them yourselves is to use more than one map in a mission.

Also, because the maps are drawn, the game gets a bit predictable even when you are making up your own missions. In Hero Quest, you placed the doors, furniture, etc. into the rooms, and it has cool stand-up paper and plastic furniture to use, as well as tiles. In Dragon Strike, most of those things are printed on the board, so you have much less configuration of the layout. Now, you do get four maps instead of Hero Quest's one dungeon, and they are quite varied, but still, after a while, it's like "what's at the campfire this time", "what do the blue eggs do now", etc...

Of course to solve that problem you could just play real D&D, but if you want something simple, or for kids too young to understand the real thing, games like these are fantastic. I really have no idea why they didn't stick around, there were a bunch of great ones in the late '80s to early '90s, then the genre for some reason seems to have faded... the ones there are now aren't nearly as popular as Hero Quest or Dragon Strike were, I think.

Anyway, last time I played the game with my cousin last year, we tried to recreate the story in the movie in a campaign, from memory, both having seen it many times. We were doing pretty well I think (got more than halfway through), before we had to stop for lack of time. I've always preferred to play as the Dragon Master/Zargon/whatever, as opposed to the characters...


Oh, as an aside, US Hero Quest and European Hero Quest have some interesting differences. In the US one, Fimirs, the Gargoyle, Chaos Warriors, and most bosses have multiple hit points. You put skull tokens under enemies to mark how many hit points they have lost. In the European one, all enemies except for a very few bosses and the Giants have one hit point. This makes the US one more difficult... which is impressive, given that it's still very hard for a full-power party with a full set of weapons and a bunch of potions and such to actually lose to just about any possible enemy group. But in the European one it's even less possible. Oh, and the bad guy (the DM, that is) is called Morcar in the European one, but Zargon in the US. Also, while the base game and the first two expansions came out in both regions, a further three expansions only came out in the Europe, and a further two only in the US; none of those came out in both, so only player-edited rules allow you to play them by the altered rules of the other region's game.

The two US-exclusive expansions are very expensive now, going for upwards of $200 on Ebay... too bad I didn't get both of them back when they were new, instead of just one (though I did have a friend with the Barbarian Quest Pack, I didn't get it myself).

[optic_85]

I really liked the Dragon Strike video. Easily one of his best. When I was a young my friend had a plethora of board games like Dragon Strike, Hero Quest, Castle Risk, Axes & Allies, and a few others that we would play all the time. I haven't seen that cheez ball video in years, so that brought back quite a few good memories.

[CaryMG]

Jesus Christ -- try ta navigate that guy on YouTube ....

BoardGame reviews ....
CardGame reviews ....
Trailers ....
Movie reviews ....
Trailers of multiple part movie reviews ....
Guys with a similar name -- "Andy VideoGame Nerd" -- using the same font ....

I guess it would be too much of a bother to label your videos VGN32 -- "Contra" For NES or some such.

[kupomogli]

I owned that Dragon Strike game. It was good, although obviously not as in depth as D&D.