2007 June 27 | I Am Teh Bagder

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Opine: Customer Dis-Service In Gaming Stores: Today’s Norm

Today, the two Bagder cubs and myself popped along to one of the local gaming stores in town to score some of the Wizkids Star Wars PocketModel Sample Kits and some actual play packs. You know those game stores that are run by and staffed by gamers? Yeah, we hit one of those. Now, fair enough, we hit them at ten minutes to closing, but you could have cut the apathy with a large knife. The people staffing the store seriously need to lighten up and learn how to interact with customers. A nice “Hello” as soon as you walk in the door would be good. Perhaps all my years working in various areas of customer service/care/satisfaction have turned me into some sort of monster, but I believe strongly that for you to survive in retail, you need to be able to actually want customers to visit, shop and return. Call me crazy.

I’m all for supporting local game stores, but they need to want my support. Stores like this one are the reason I’ll shop online for games. I’ll forego a discount if I get a good store locally that I can get behind, but I’ve found this lacking. Living here in Columbus, OH, a central hub of gaming that hosts the Origins Games Expo every year, this shouldn’t be the situation, but it is. So, the online stores get my business, I get a discount and can get more fun for my money.

We came home with three sample kits and three $4.99 packs which netted us a number of ships, allowing for at least a decent 20 point game. Our booty included a bunch of X-Wings, Y-Wings, V-Wings, A-Wings, TIE Fighters, TIE Interceptors, a Nebulon-B Battle Cruiser, a Corellian Cruiser and some Droid Fighters. Not too bad. We scored a couple of foil rare cards as well.

Tomorrow Mrs Teh Bagder and I are going to face off across the dining room table and try to squash each other mercilessly using dice, cards, styrene ships and a modicum of strategy and tactics. Knowing my luck, she’ll whip me. She has this strange beginner’s luck that just comes out and trumps me when playing CCGs and table top games.

PS: Sorry for the cheesy YouTube video above. I couldn’t help myself. I feel too much apathy at the moment.

Links

IATB Article on Star Wars PocketModels

Original Wizkids Announcement

Origins Games Expo Website

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Web: Smacktalking 101, a PSA

NSFW, but still incredibly funny. This is why I don’t play online much, because most people I’d play with have never seen this, and they don’t know how to play nice with the other online kids.

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Opine: Top 10 Worst Game Movies? Objection!

Image courtesy of The Mushroom Kingdom.

Film School Rejects has an article detailing what they consider to be the 10 worst game-based movies. They are:

10. Tomb Raider

9. BloodRayne

8. Double Dragon

7. Resident Evil: Apocalypse

6. Mortal Kombat: Annihilation

5. Alone In The Dark

4. House of the Dead

3. Wing Commander

2. Street Fighter

1. Super Mario Bros.

Now, I'm going to take umbrage with this list because these people obviously have no sense of fun and think that all movies have to be high-falootin artsy-farsty intelectshool brain fodder. Pshaw!

Yes, some of these weren't great movies, or instant classics. They gained notoriety for a number of reasons, mostly because of the cheese factor in the movies. There's a lot of cheese in most of these movies. In fact there's so much cheese you could make cheesecake every day for ten years and still have cheese left over. You could make three cheesecakes every day and still be safe.

Yes, three of them were created by Uwe Boll who is lambasted for his movie-making skills, but the man makes a nice tidy living doing what he loves so half his luck; I rather enjoy his movies just for the fun factor. BloodRayne had Kristanna Loken in it, and I have to admit I have a thing for her. She's quite excellent in the new Sci-Fi channel Painkiller Jane series as well.

I actually enjoyed ALL of these movies a lot, some more so than others. Super Mario Bros is one of my all-time favorite movies for a number of reasons: I mean Bob Hoskins, John Leguizamo, Dennis Hopper and Samantha Mathis all in one movie? That's awesome. More awesome was the inclusion of Walk The Dinosaur by Was Not Was as the dance track in the club in the movie. Cheesecake? Yes, please, and pass the biscuits and tea.

I'm also a huge fan of the Resident Evil movies, but I'm a sucker for any movie with Mila Jovovich in it. I'm male, sue me. There's just a ton of fan service in those movies, but only fans would notice these things, and I'm pretty sure that the guys that made this list aren't "fun gamers" but "artsy gamers". C'mon! The movie has kick-ass zombies and kick ass girls kicking ass!

I urge you to watch these movies if you haven't yet, just so you can turn your nose up at this review and show that your sense of humor and fun hasn't been removed. I plan on seeing the DOA movie in the coming weeks as well as BloodRayne 2, In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale and every other single game-related movie that comes out in the future. I take my fun seriously, but I don't forget to have fun with it. Some people try to make having fun too much work. Either that, or they need to consider an operation to get the stick removed.

PS: If you want the bejeebus scared out of you, check out the Silent Hill move. Watch it in the dark with headphones on. Awesome. Very, very awesome. Fan service? Check. Creepy kid in lead role? Check. Brutal, freaky and gross bad guys? Check, Check, Check.