Pathfinder: Can't Touch This

[Part of the Party Time journal]

A pair of frost giants and the lap running mammoth from earlier confront the party as they leave the Black Tower, but are no match for the heroes. Even the pair of rocs nesting in the tower who were attracted by the sounds of battle only get themselves dead or wounded, with the last remaining giant bird retreating back to its high up nest.

Proceeding below the party then uses the passphrase they found to get through the shining door into the lower basement where a strangely constructed room has Valeros shrink to half his size! While this makes his attacks weaker it also makes him harder to hit so he intentionally stays small for now.

Everyone else is protected from the shrinking magic by Ezren's shield, and they go on to beat another runeslave giant, smash a cauldron bearing golem (mostly Razmus with Shoanti blessings and then Kyra sanctified the cauldron), and fireball nuke the hell out of a zombie statue room. "Undead Giants" are the key words for things this team excels at murdering. An annoying wall demon keeps popping in and out of the walls spewing fire at them though, and it is with great relief when they finally catch that beast (a scanderig apparently) and slay it in its silo.

Advancing to the next large hall they are ambushed by five giant maidens who luckily can't hit the shrunken Valeros who pins them while the rest of the group takes them down. Resting up back in the zombie room, Merisiel soon spots a sneaky group of five dire bears and five halberd ogres stalking them and once again, Valeros blocks their progress and is untouchable as the enemies are destroyed.

The next little chamber has three hounds of Tindalos (apparently they can jump games too) get the drop on the party but are easy prey as again, they can't hit Valeros while his blind fighting and the high perception of everyone else makes their "hiding" kinda useless.

Menara

Cooperative temple building.

This simple cooperative dexterity game has players rebuilding an ancient temple. To start, put three random temple floors (cardboards in strange shapes) as the "base" with each piece only touching another with one point - load up some random pillars (pulled from a bag) for the camp space, and every player gets a handful of pillars too. Then, on your turn you can trade your in hand pillars with the camp ones if you want, then pick what "difficulty" card you want to try complete and then do what it says. 

Usually its just put x pillars which is just placing pillars on spaces that match their color. Afterwards draw random pillars back to your hand and that ends your turn. If you run out of places to put pillars, get the next "temple floor" and balance it on top to go one floor up! If this reaches your floor quota (which starts at 3/4/5 for easy/medium/hard) that's it, the players win!

If you can't put x number of pillars because you don't have the colors or just can't do what the your chosen difficulty card says, the required floor quota increases by one. And if the temple collapses at any time its game over! So yes, its a little bit like reverse Jenga and its easy to teach, easy to setup and has a fun amount of tension while playing. Definitely recommended! 

Stranger Things and Boardwalk Empire

Two five season shows that are really good!

Stranger Things

Despite having reviewed Stranger Things adjacent stuff, I'm only now reviewing the TV series which has just finished at five seasons. Set in Hawkins USA in the 1980s it is the time of crazy hair, Dungeons and Dragons, and scary extra planar creatures who like abducting people. The story focuses on a group of kids who set out to find their missing friend and end up embroiled with the illegal and supernatural. 

Though the story does wax and wane through some seasons good acting and excellent set designs and monsters make for an exciting tale, and the nostalgia factor for those of us who lived that era and played/are still playing D&D will most likely get into it. For that really specific target group (and for horror fans), its a must watch if you haven't already. For other generations, its still a good show but your enjoyment of it might be more subdued.

Boardwalk Empire

This series is set in Atlantic City during the 1920's where Enoch Thompson (marvelously played by Steve Buscemi) set about making a fortune bootlegging during America's prohibition period all while rubbing shoulders with some notorious and violent gangsters from all over. Given the subject matter, there is a bit of nudity and a decent death count in this show. 

Excellent production, story, acting, cinematography and I was most impressed by the live musical numbers that dot the series throughout. If you like gangsters, you'll like this. If you don't like gangsters, you'll still like this. It's really that good. Highly recommended.

Sky Team

A two player coop.

In Sky Team you take the role of a pilot and co-pilot who must land airplanes. To do this you need to roll your pool of 4 dice (secretly) and without discussing after rolling, place the dice in the proper spots to clear traffic ahead of you, lower landing gear, activate flaps, prep the brakes and possibly make coffee (which is hilariously quite important as each lets you modify a die result by 1). 

There's a whole checklist of things that need to be done before you reach the airport, and there will always be two dice from each player spent on balancing the airplane and handling the engines. Run into air traffic, spin too far, land too early or land too late and its game over. 

Later difficulties also have you dodging mountains, handling high winds, watching your fuel tank which might be leaking and training an intern (who must be trained by landing or you lose) just because. It's a good game, but the initial (one time) setup if finicky, and the hard requirement of two players might make it less appealing than some other choices.

Good Fortune Wrecking Crew

Two movies of the mid variety.

Good Fortune

Arj (Aziz Ansari) is doing it tough in the gig economy and when an inept angel (Keanu Reeves) oversteps his bounds to try convince him that his life is better than the one of being a rich guy, things backfire as being rich seems to solve all of Arj's problems. Turns out this movie has a decent plot with some good laughs too. While the acting of the main cast is good (though Arj is just borderline) some extras are super wooden but maybe that's the idea? Not a bad flick but don't expect anything amazing.

Wrecking Crew (2026)

The death of a PI reunites two estranged half-brothers (played by Jason Momoa and Dave Bautista) reunite and eventually team up to investigate - usually by beating up people and occasionally each other! The plot here is simpler, but the acting is better and the action scenes are decent. Again not bad, but its also not going to win any awards.

Gravity Circuit and Scourgebringer

Two pixel platform games with problems.

Gravity Circuit

Playing as a defender of the planet has never been so cumbersome. While your character in this game has a lot of moves and even a hook that can attach to the roof to swing from he still feels super clunky and the bad controls don't help which will no doubt lead to many "falling off the bottom of the screen to your death" ends, except in the parts you are allowed to fall off the bottom of the screen to progress (wtf, I hate inconsistency). To top it off the graphics are terrible, like back in the early internet flashing gifs and scrolling banner terrible. Not recommended.

Scourgebringer

Unlike the above, the protagonist here has excellent mobility, easy controls and a decent tutorial to teach you all of them. She's also 1/4th the size making her super tiny on the screen! The main loop of this rogue-like game is to move through randomly generated rooms and kill everything inside (you're locked in until they die) until you find the boss/exit to the next floor. There's also adaptive difficulty that means if you suck enemies will be removed from rooms and if you're good enemies will be added which means it should always be at a level where you eventually die. Not my cup of tea.

Wicked Moana

Two movies with singing!

Wicked

This musical fantasy is framed as a back story to Elphaba's origin aka the Wicked Witch of the West, very well played by Cynthia Erivo. Opposite her is rival and frenemy Glinda who is portrayed by the amazing and scene stealing Ariana Grande. Awesome sets, effects, songs and a nice story with a few strong emotional beats, make the long run time go pretty quick. Excellent movie. I just didn't realize it was a part one type of deal and was surprised when that showed up in the opening title. :P  

Moana

This animated Disney movie follows the titular Moana, the daughter of a chieftain to an isolated island tribe who are forbidden in sailing too far from home. Of course, Moana has an adventurous spirit and wants to find out what exactly lies beyond that horizon while also ending up discovering more about herself. Self discovery is actually the main theme of this film and it really hits home especially in the finale. Song wise its not bad, but nothing the general public will probably sing along to afterwards. Still an enjoyable film all up. Recommended!