Mixed Signals

Straight-forward gaming

"You're going to take journey to a time and place you've been before. All you have to do is follow the sound of my voice."

It's the not-too-distant future. The world's oceans have risen, leaving most land masses flooded by varying degrees. There have been mass uprisings as flood refugees scramble...

The Fallout video games are the story of a desolate and dangerous post-apocalyptic world. Each Fallout is a computer RPG known by varying degrees for branching story paths, player agency, a unique real-time yet turn-based combat system, and character customization. The board game attempts to...

One of the best zombie movies I've seen, and I've seen a bunch. This probably isn't for every zombie movie fan. It's relatively low-budget, or maybe mid-budget, the pacing is slow, and the zombies probably aren't what you're used to. But this movie is absolutely unique, for lots of reasons, and ever...

If you've played a popular RPG like Pathfinder, Tales of the Valiant, or anything in with direct D&D lineage, then you know that there are at least two modes of the game. First, there's the roleplaying mode. When you're roleplaying, you pretend to talk to non-player characters and you make choic...

In an effort to keep better track of what I watch, I'm reviewing the movies and shows as much as I can. No spoilers in this one.

Cyberpunk Edgerunners is a Netflix anime series based on the Cyberpunk video game, which is in turn based on the Cyberpunk roleplaying game. I own the Night City...

Games Workshop re-released the first edition (titled Rogue Trader) of Warhammer 40,000 to celebrate the game's 30th anniversary. (I'm not sure about their maths. The book was released in 1987, and the re-release was announced in 2023 and shipped to customers in 2024.) Because it's got so much of...

I read Knights of Macragge by Nick Kyme, partly because I'm mystified by Black Library's sequencing, and this is my review. This review contains spoilers.

I thought Knights of Macragge might be part of the Indomitus series, which is weird because Indomitus (I think) isn't a series but a si...

Not "The Arrival" with Charlie Sheen, just "Arrival (2016)".

Scifi has a funny history with cinema. It started out as cheap pulp fiction about grown men in funny suits. And then history started all over with 2001: A Space Odyssey. That movie redefined what scifi could be, and I think broadly sp...

I played the Shadow of Mordor video game to completion, and I enjoyed it, so this is my review of the game. The game is a Warner Bros. game and I've heard that its combat system is a lot like the Arkham games, but as of this writing I've not played those games (I like Batman, and I've meant to pla...

Games Workshop re-released the first edition (titled Rogue Trader) of Warhammer 40,000 to celebrate the game's 30th anniversary. (I'm not sure about their maths. The book was released in 1987, and the re-release was announced in 2023 and shipped to customers in 2024.) What little nostalgia I hav...

In this horror movie, Sara Price travels to Japan to look for her identical twin sister Jess, who was last seen wandering around in the Aokigahara forest near Mount Fuji. Everybody fears the worse, because Aokigahara is said to be a popular destination for people considering suicide. There's a lot o...

I read the Warhammer 40,000 novel Indomitus by Gav Thorpe, and this is my review. This post contains spoilers.

You know how there are episodes of Star Trek (TOS and TNG) where our heroes beams down to a planet to save a civilisation in peril, and then there are episodes of Star Trek where our...

If you're used to D&D 5e but have [wisely] switched away from Wizards of the Coast, then you might be playing Pathfinder 2. And if you're the Game Master for a Pathfinder 2 campaign, then you might notice your players staying at level 1 for a lot longer than you're used to. D&D 5e and its unofficial...

I hear a lot about the Warhammer 40,000 skirmish game, Kill Team, and people seem to really love it. In fact, there's a significant player base out there who seem to like it more than 40k. I was curious enough to investigate, but not $145 NZD curious (the cost of the Kill Team Starter Set, so...

Army of Thieves is a prequel to the zombie movie Army of the Dead. Surprisingly, it's not zombie movie and it's one of those rare second films in a series that's better than the first.

Dieter was probably the only character in the first movie whose name I remembered after the movie was over. He...

Imagine a far future where space travel is trivial, mercenary missions are determined by a random table, and your wargame rules use a d20. Sound unlikely? It's all real, and it's a wargame by Andrea Sfiligoi called Rogue Stars, published by the ever-reliable Osprey Games.

Rogue Stars is a 64-pa...