It doesn’t matter if you were a flannel wearing mumbler or sweating-too-much mother-knocker-outer, you lived through the 90s and it’s music helped you make it out alive. Like everything else in life, there was definitely some good, bad and HORRIBLE music in the 1990s.

Join Bill and Jim as they take you through an audio retrospective of the decade of discontent. The guys tasked themselves with each finding 5 songs from the 90s that they feel deserve placement in the “HORRIBLE” category. There is bound to be some controversy, so grab a Boku and a Fruit By The Foot and try not to spaz out.

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Jim dons his riot gear and pushes back the rundown. The guys get local and talk about Chicago’s fast and furious heat wave and the not so fast and annoyingly furious protesters at the Chicago NATO Summit. Jim gives us another spoiler free review of the ever so creepy Jonny Depp in Dark Shadows. The topic switches over to girls who grow up on camera and the men who covet them just a little too early (like Creepy Uncle Jim). Will Smith was caught on tape bitch slapping a celebrity news reporter in Russia recently. Was it a love tap or a premeditated Fresh Prince of “Bitch, I’ll Split Your Wig”? Details in the story lead to a short discussion on gay marriage and FUH’s thoughts on President Obama’s recent statement on the topic. The future of SNL is brought up quickly before Jim gets to talk about the recent backstage firing on his favorite television show, NBC’s Community. Bill believes that the internet is the new bastion for television shows that are put out to pasture. Thirty minutes of (previously exclusive) audio from The Water Cooler podcast‘s 12 hour podcast marathon for St. Baldrick’s charity is unearthed and shared with the File Under Horrible audience for the first time in it’s entirety to close out the show! We’ll see you next week when we travel back in time to the 1990s to jam out to some horrible songs!

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What was I saying? Oh yeah! Welcome to FUHcast! Bill chimes in with the rundown. Nothing much happened this week for the boys, so we get right down into it. Jim talks about his frustration with the Ultimate Spider-Man comic series. The guys examine Harvard’s recent study on Facebook over sharing. Is it really as satisfying as a sexual encounter? Hear about what happened to Bill after he took on 30 ounces of milk. Bill wants to create a college course dedicated to proving that Alton Brown (who Jim LOVES) is a zombie. The conversation then switches to John Travolta’s sex scandal, but not before a discussion on Estelle Getty, loose meats, words some people don’t enjoy, the trouble with talcum powder and poor commercial placement, and special vaginal products. How in the hell do you pluralize masseuse? After finally getting to the “meat” of the Travolta story, the guys discuss gay Hollywood before touching upon the music of Stevie Wonder and the possibility of Stevie accidently impregnating his sister. The guys break down the hoopla surrounding the breast feeding mom on the cover of Time magazine. Television is the next topic casualty as FUH discusses new shows, renewed shows and canceled shows. An excellent stop by the Imagination Theater helps everyone to understand how some of these horrible shows get made. The guys try some reverse psychology before signing off on another FUHcast! Come back next week (pretty please?)!

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Jim is back in black with a sack of smack and ready to FUHc your earholes, but not before thanking guest co-host Sean for a beautiful nugget of wisdom. ACen (Anime Central) is once again discussed, leading to a conversation on the Japanese culture and their fantastic vending machines. T3 calls into the FUHcast Hotline after a multi-episode absense. Hear all about Bill’s tasteless sushi experience. Jim teaches us a lesson on movie going etiquette. Listener EMAIL is answered; which features Jim’s SPOILER free review of The Avengers and a rant about his dislike of Joss Whedon. Is American television taking a page from the motherland? FUH examines the differences between American television season and the UK television series. A male motorcyclist in California is suing BMW over a 1 1/2 long sustained penile erection from 17 years ago. Best Buy outs a heterosexual man as gay on Facebook with his own phone in a classic tale of customer service. Is Sony shamelessly ripping off Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros. with their recently announced Playstation All-Stars: Battle Royale? The boys discuss their dissatisfaction with the gaming industry as a whole as E3 creeps up upon them. Clean out your ears and you’ll be ready for again next week!

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Check your privacy settings, it’s time for another FUHcast! Bill skeets his way through the rundown before welcoming his good friend Sean on as guest co-host. Jim is off at Anime Central this week. Sean is also attending the convention, which prompts a discussion on cosplay and general wild wooliness of geek cons. The conversation heads straight to the gutter as Bill and Sean perform an audio critic on the lastest YouTube craze: The Facebook Jack-Off Bandit. Hear the touching love story of a blue haired gal and her red mohawked fella sharing their love in a Chicago public restroom as told on Craigslist. After a rant from Bill on subject of overly complicated music genre names, we’ll hear a song from Sean’s “dirt rock/psychobilly” band 13 Angels. A disgusting new law in Egypt (link has update and clarifications made after recording) which may actually turn necrophilia into a civil right gets thrown into the FUHcast Imagination Theater. Are kids really drinking hand sanitizer to get drunk or has the the American public simply run out of things to blame on kids? All this and a little bit more on this week’s FUHcast!

Bill didn’t forget! Click HERE for a picture of Two Bad!

Check out the rest of the 13 Angels demo on Last.fm!

He appreciates all the time you take to post those pictures, ladies.

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Holy nerd hygiene Batman, it’s a brand new FUHcast! This week, the guys return to the mics after a weekend full of geeky festivities at the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo (C2E2). The guys were very proud to say that this was the first event they attended as press. You’ll hear tales of the sights that were to be seen, the flesh that was to be touched (or avoided at all costs), and some of the general and wonderful weirdness that was to be experienced. Hear how fun parking at a Chicago convention center can be. The guys remind us to check out the site for some written reviews and more in-depth coverage from this extremely visual event. The topic of podcasts and podcasting in general is briefly discussed. The focus then switches to messages left on the FUHcast Hotline; something that you won’t want to miss. We’ll see you next week!

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Check out their Tumblr and Facebook pages to see some sample artwork, and if you’re interested in picking up The Exquisite Corpse Collection, you can purchase it online here.

So that’s a little bit about the story behind the game, but what about Cryptozoic? If you’re into card games, they are definitely a company you need to know. They’ve already made several popular games including the Penny Arcade deck building game, the hilariously fun Food Fight, and Blizzard’s World of Warcraft collectible trading card game. As a company, they’ve always had a great presence at pretty much every convention. Last year at GenCon, when I picked up Food Fight, they also did a wonderful job at providing demos for their games. However, the real question is how does the Locke & Key game stand up to the games that have come before it. So without further ado, lets get into it.

Keys and Cards

The first thing you are going to notice about the game, especially if you are a fan of the comic book series, is how well the original artwork transfers onto the cards themselves. All of the cards, including the box itself feature the artwork of Gabriel Rodriguez from the comics. Additionally, all of the cards for the magical keys are foiled which does a great job of putting an emphasis on how special and powerful they can be, both in the game and the comic book. One of the issues that I had with the game Food Fight was that the cards were especially difficult to shuffle out of the box. I’m glad to say that this was not the case with Locke & Key. The card stock and coating is very well done and shuffling the cards as soon as you break them out of the plastic is a breeze. You may not think this is a big deal, but when you play a lot of card games, you know how frustrating it can be when you are trying to shuffle the cards and they just start going everywhere.

As an added bonus, if you buy the game at a convention you will most likely receive a bonus, the Harlequin Key. This is very cool for fans of the comic book, because the artwork for the key is featured in Locke & Key: Keys to the Kingdom, but is never actually named. Cryptozoic went to the creators to get approval for naming the card, so that name is now official. However, what I found really interesting was the artwork on the back of the key cards. I don’t remember some of the keys being featured on the card art in the comic book itself. So it’s possible you are going to get a sneak peek at some future keys that have not yet been introduced. The most noticeable is the hourglass-shaped key that is shown sitting on top of the grandfather clock, but has not been found by the family yet. Finally, the game also comes with a pop out stand-up of the house which is not functional for playing the game, but adds some fun.

Shuffle Up and Deal

The gameplay is easy to understand and within one round of play, my friends and I were very comfortable with all of the rules, with maybe the exception of the “combos”, which I will explain later. The basic goal of the game is to work together to overcome the challenge cards, but at the same time you want to be the person who helps the most. Whoever helps the most gets to add the challenge card to their score pile. At the end of the game, whoever has the highest score wins. Pretty simple, right? Most of the time, there will also be a reward for second place, and often it’s possible to score even more points that way. Each challenge card is designated a color, and you have to play strength cards that match that color to win. This basic premise is augmented with a few other options, such as passing to draw strength cards, discarding to draw keys, and attempting to play combos.

Combos are achieved by playing specific combinations of colors or numbers, such as 1-2-3 and 2-2-2. Each combo has a different benefit, and often you can score some decent rewards even if you don’t win the challenge itself. Several of the cards tell you straight out that it is a combo card. It was a little confusing to us at first if these cards were the only way to pull off a combo, or if anytime you played cards that matched the number or color requirement you achieved that combo. After reading through the rules again, it seems that the cards are the only way, but it would help if it were made a little more clear.

One of the things that I liked most about the game is that you don’t feel bad when you don’t win every challenge. There is enough strategy for you to feel deviously clever when you pull something off and win, but there is also enough random chance that things can be stolen away from you at any time. Overall, the game is pretty well balanced as well. The key cards can sometimes make all of the difference in the world, but other times they are useless unless you are in a specific situation. The Philosophoscope Key is a great example. When it is your turn, it lets you look at the face down cards that any one player has played to win a challenge. However, if you go first it is useless, and even if you go second you aren’t going to get much out of it. It is really only useful when you haven’t won a lot of challenges and are going third or fourth. So even though you get to keep it and use it every turn, it’s not going to be overpowering or even helpful all the time.

Just Like a Real Dysfunctional Family

As far as the flavor and theme of the game go, it can be somewhat of a mixed bag. As part of the story, you play members of the Locke family who have to work together to overcome challenges. And much like a real family, you often hurt each other’s feelings (aka “screw your neighbor”) and cause some in-fighting. The challenges are broken down so that each color gets a theme. White challenges are psychological, blue are supernatural, and black are all the evil armies of the story’s antagonist. The strength cards used to beat these challenges pretty much match those themes through their artwork. However, truth be told, you could easily re-brand this game with almost anything. Instead of Locke & Key, it could be about weapon-wielding anthropomorphic turtles, or mechanical lions that combine to form a giant robot, or ponies that are little and belong to you. This is both a good and a bad thing. It is bad, because it doesn’t really convey enough of the amazingly cool world that Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez created. It is good, because the game is easily accessible regardless of how much you know about the comic book. Anyone can pick it up and learn to play in 5-10 minutes. The fact of the matter is that the game is absolutely going to appeal to fans of the comic book (such as myself), it will most certainly appeal to people who like to play stand-alone card games, and it will most likely appeal to people who don’t consider themselves gamers at all.

Overall, Cryptozoic has created another great card game that is worth spending your money on. Also, because the comic book is only two thirds of the way done, there is the possibility that we may see an expansion pack come out with more amazing keys and other cards. HINT HINT. I’m talking to you, Cryptozoic. The game can be purchased on their site, for $29.99. It recommends 3-6 players, and a minimum age of 15. However, I do not believe either the difficulty or the subject matter are so adult that someone younger couldn’t play it. An average 12 year-old could easily play this game and enjoy themselves, and frankly I’ve found over the years that the closer games are to being all-ages, the more fun they are.

It’s not deja vu, it’s the Best of FUHcast! Episode 50 is here and with it, the conclusion to the first full year of File Under Horrible’s FUHcast podcast. Join your special guest host, Lothgar, the Magical Mixing Board Demon, as he takes us back through some of Bill and Jim’s favorite moments from their first year behind the mics.

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Get your pill box, it’s time for FUHcast! After Jim shoots up the Rundown, the guys chat a bit about the big Whitney Houston toxicology reveal. Bill is terrified that Justin Bieber and Ashton Kutcher are joining forces in an attempt to “entertain” you. Jim goes on a small rant about DC Comics’ graphic novels. A repeat FUHcast Hotline caller gives himself a name and offers up a futuristic question for the FUH. Google is going to make Star Trek geeks look moderately sexy with Google Glasses. Find out what Apple fanbitches have to say about Instagram showing the love to Android. Companies really need to start potty training their IT departments better. Chevy Chase demonstrates once again how he is a bottomless douche. Microsoft force pushes geeks over the edge with the wacky dancing in Star Wars Kinect. Discover why registered sex offenders are being forced to once again play with themselves. Guard your danger zones until next week’s FUHcast!

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If you like the show (or hate it), please take a moment to leave us a rating on iTunes, Zune Marketplace, or Stitcher!