Lately I've been playing Blood and Wine for The Witcher 3, and if there is one thing that can't be stressed enough about the expansion its that its fucking breathtaking. I'm not using that word lightly. I do not fuck about when I play games, I am a hard story/hard action player. Not happy unless I'm learning something relevant or killing something interesting. On at least three occasions in as many days I have stopped dead whatever quest or personal slaughter quota I was engaged in, lined up a specific view, and just had Geralt meditate until the moment when the light would be best to really experience a particular vista. The Witcher is a pretty fucking glorious game just generally, and the whole game is beautiful, but Toussaint is heartbreakingly gorgeous. To the point that just riding along a random coast road is a moving experience worthy of comment.
With the expansion they added a goddamn plethora of tiny UI and graphical improvements, cleaned up the crafting system by adding a badly needed buy option for materials that you don't have but the smith does. Though sadly it appears they didn't carry that into the alchemist shops, which given the the fact that you can do that yourself I can sort of understand. They also added an homage to the mutagen systems in the previous games by opening up the option to modify Geralt's mutation with some skills that almost make me alright with the fact that this is the third game in a contiguous series and you start at level fucking one.
So far Blood and Wine lives up to the hype entirely as far as I'm concerned. It's funny, engaging, vast, and displays an emotional landscape that takes the already vibrant and sympathetic characters that the series does so well and elevates them about as near as you can and still have them be fictional. There are games that I've had more fun playing, there are games that have scratched similar itches better, But I think B&W takes The Witcher 3 pretty handily to the #1 spot on my favorites list. Like ever.
Showing posts with label Review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Review. Show all posts
Monday, June 6, 2016
Tuesday, August 18, 2015
Dramedy
So over the past couple of weeks we have watched all of The Newsroom and I have to say I am very impressed with the show. I tend to dislike drama shows because most of them lack any sense of humor and focus so much and adding more and more drama that they feel joyless in general. The Newsroom bucks that by being one of the funniest shows I have seen while also offering good drama and catharsis. It is one of the few shows that I've watched where I want to watch more after it is done.
The show takes the subject of the news and runs with the idea that "we can do better". It gets a little preachy, but at the same time its a subject that deserves to be discussed like this. For most people in the US, their view of the world outside of the United States is from the news and pop culture. Pop culture is fictionalized anyway so you can't get to mad at them for not fact checking, but the news is supposed to let people know what is going on in the world. Its an important tool that has been hijacked by people who want to sell ad space.
This is the main premise of the show. What if a news program didn't have to worry about ratings? Its a good thought, and The Newsroom tackles it well. The show opens with an amazing speech that is supposed to make you think and inspire you, and this sets the tone of the rest of the show. It focuses on doing this type of work well, because its meant to be done that way.
The cast is excellent, and they all have good chemistry together. I am a fan of Olivia Munn's work from The Daily Show (which also focuses a lot on the news being done poorly) and I am glad to see that she can handle herself well in a pretty major role. Jeff Daniels did a great job as well, and it was fun to see him do a serious role in a funny way. Sam Waterston played the President of the news network and was my favorite character on the show. He was so funny, and I loved how he could go from calm and affable to balls out angry in seconds.
Aaron Sorkin wanted to make a series about competent people doing a good job, and he did well. The series is written phenomenally and was a joy to watch. I tend to binge a little when watching TV shows, but this is one of the only times I felt compelled too. Its a good show that was on the air for 3 seasons on HBO. Amazon has the first two seasons up for free if you have a prime account, give it a try, you will not be disappointed.
The show takes the subject of the news and runs with the idea that "we can do better". It gets a little preachy, but at the same time its a subject that deserves to be discussed like this. For most people in the US, their view of the world outside of the United States is from the news and pop culture. Pop culture is fictionalized anyway so you can't get to mad at them for not fact checking, but the news is supposed to let people know what is going on in the world. Its an important tool that has been hijacked by people who want to sell ad space.
This is the main premise of the show. What if a news program didn't have to worry about ratings? Its a good thought, and The Newsroom tackles it well. The show opens with an amazing speech that is supposed to make you think and inspire you, and this sets the tone of the rest of the show. It focuses on doing this type of work well, because its meant to be done that way.
The cast is excellent, and they all have good chemistry together. I am a fan of Olivia Munn's work from The Daily Show (which also focuses a lot on the news being done poorly) and I am glad to see that she can handle herself well in a pretty major role. Jeff Daniels did a great job as well, and it was fun to see him do a serious role in a funny way. Sam Waterston played the President of the news network and was my favorite character on the show. He was so funny, and I loved how he could go from calm and affable to balls out angry in seconds.
Aaron Sorkin wanted to make a series about competent people doing a good job, and he did well. The series is written phenomenally and was a joy to watch. I tend to binge a little when watching TV shows, but this is one of the only times I felt compelled too. Its a good show that was on the air for 3 seasons on HBO. Amazon has the first two seasons up for free if you have a prime account, give it a try, you will not be disappointed.
Friday, March 27, 2015
Weekly Cinemeh
Welcome, once again, to Weekly Cinemeh. This week's theme was Bruce Campbell, one of our favorite actors. With his trademark roguish charm and his badass chin he makes B movies that should be bad amazing. He has a great sense of humor and likes to show it off (The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. and his foil-y character Sam Axe in Burn Notice as well as myriad other parts he has played) and is proud to be in many "bad films" The difference between him and other actors in B film is that he owns that shit. He has fun with it instead being pompous, and that's what makes him great: He loves what he does.
1: Mindwarp
This movie is about a woman who is tired of her life in a world where people live the bulk of their lives in a simulation and wants to see the real world. She eventually gets her wish when she is expelled from her home and is thrust into a world filled with cannibals and Bruce Campbell's chin. Shit goes down when they get captured by cannibals and need to escape. This movie was way better than I was expecting it to be. Marta Martin did a good job as the fish out of water "Judy" and Bruce Campbell was great (especially when he goes insane). Angus Scrimm was a surprise for me, I always like seeing him in movies, but I never knew his name until I watched this one. A couple of the twists are easy to spot, but the story is also surprisingly good, and more than a little fucked up. This movie is in the vein of my favorite type of movie: good bad movies. I have a feeling we will see more of them in this list. Good fun, watch it.
Eshi: Bruce Campbell holds a place in my heart that approaches even that of His Abnormally Tall Holiness, so this week was a fucking delight. Mindwarp is exactly what I expected it to be; a terrible, terrible, sci-fi flick made grand in its camp. Angus Scrimm is, as usual, wonderfully creepy, and Marta Martin plays the lost and wandering Judy well. But really we came here for Bruce and he does deliver. The man goes from suave and charismatic to balls-to-bumper fucking crazy like someone flipped a switch and it brings me a joy that borders on troubling.
2: Terminal Invasion
This was a TV movie that was campy from the very start. Aliens attack an airport by posing as humans. Attack is a bit of a stretch as most of the aliens only attack people after being found out as aliens, though shit eventually goes down for reals. There are some pretty great twists that play on the audience building connections for themselves, though the rest of the movie kind of plays out like The Thing. Bruce Campbell is great, although the rest of the cast isn't terrible just kind of mundane. Jason Jones, of The Daily Show, was a surprise that I was not expecting, though he wasn't in the film for long. Its another good bad film, and fun to watch with your buddies making fun of some of the bad decisions the cast makes (seriously maybe explain what is going on rather than just threaten everybody with a gun >_<).
Eshi: Terminal Invasion has a pervasive sense of "fuck it", that I approve of wholeheartedly. The writing is pretty much what you'd expect, with a few noted exceptions. The casting seemed almost accidentally brilliant and the chemistry would have been surprising if Bruce Campbell hadn't been a primary role. Its on Netflix, you have no excuse for not watching this movie.
3: Man With The Screaming Brain
This movie proves to me that Bruce Campbell is the master of the good bad movie. He wrote, directed, and starred in this movie, and it is great. It is a movie about a man who gets a head injury and has part of his brain replaced with another persons brain. Antics ensue as the two have to work to get along. Its funny, irreverent, and knows what it's all about. The story is something that has been kind of done before, but this was a great take on the possessed body part trope. If you like Bruce Campbell, this is a movie for you.
Eshi: "I'm on FIRE!"
Honorable Mentions: Everything Bruce Campbell has done that I have seen is good. The Evil Dead trilogy, My name is Bruce (in which he plays himself in one of his type of movies), Bubba Ho-Tep, Jack Of all Trades, Alien Apocalypse, and everything we have mentioned here. Don't go in expecting high art, go in wanting a good time.
Eshi: Bruce Campbell is fucking amazing, full goddamn stop. I will straight up kung fu fight any mother fucker says otherwise.
1: Mindwarp
This movie is about a woman who is tired of her life in a world where people live the bulk of their lives in a simulation and wants to see the real world. She eventually gets her wish when she is expelled from her home and is thrust into a world filled with cannibals and Bruce Campbell's chin. Shit goes down when they get captured by cannibals and need to escape. This movie was way better than I was expecting it to be. Marta Martin did a good job as the fish out of water "Judy" and Bruce Campbell was great (especially when he goes insane). Angus Scrimm was a surprise for me, I always like seeing him in movies, but I never knew his name until I watched this one. A couple of the twists are easy to spot, but the story is also surprisingly good, and more than a little fucked up. This movie is in the vein of my favorite type of movie: good bad movies. I have a feeling we will see more of them in this list. Good fun, watch it.
Eshi: Bruce Campbell holds a place in my heart that approaches even that of His Abnormally Tall Holiness, so this week was a fucking delight. Mindwarp is exactly what I expected it to be; a terrible, terrible, sci-fi flick made grand in its camp. Angus Scrimm is, as usual, wonderfully creepy, and Marta Martin plays the lost and wandering Judy well. But really we came here for Bruce and he does deliver. The man goes from suave and charismatic to balls-to-bumper fucking crazy like someone flipped a switch and it brings me a joy that borders on troubling.
2: Terminal Invasion
This was a TV movie that was campy from the very start. Aliens attack an airport by posing as humans. Attack is a bit of a stretch as most of the aliens only attack people after being found out as aliens, though shit eventually goes down for reals. There are some pretty great twists that play on the audience building connections for themselves, though the rest of the movie kind of plays out like The Thing. Bruce Campbell is great, although the rest of the cast isn't terrible just kind of mundane. Jason Jones, of The Daily Show, was a surprise that I was not expecting, though he wasn't in the film for long. Its another good bad film, and fun to watch with your buddies making fun of some of the bad decisions the cast makes (seriously maybe explain what is going on rather than just threaten everybody with a gun >_<).
Eshi: Terminal Invasion has a pervasive sense of "fuck it", that I approve of wholeheartedly. The writing is pretty much what you'd expect, with a few noted exceptions. The casting seemed almost accidentally brilliant and the chemistry would have been surprising if Bruce Campbell hadn't been a primary role. Its on Netflix, you have no excuse for not watching this movie.
3: Man With The Screaming Brain
This movie proves to me that Bruce Campbell is the master of the good bad movie. He wrote, directed, and starred in this movie, and it is great. It is a movie about a man who gets a head injury and has part of his brain replaced with another persons brain. Antics ensue as the two have to work to get along. Its funny, irreverent, and knows what it's all about. The story is something that has been kind of done before, but this was a great take on the possessed body part trope. If you like Bruce Campbell, this is a movie for you.
Eshi: "I'm on FIRE!"
Honorable Mentions: Everything Bruce Campbell has done that I have seen is good. The Evil Dead trilogy, My name is Bruce (in which he plays himself in one of his type of movies), Bubba Ho-Tep, Jack Of all Trades, Alien Apocalypse, and everything we have mentioned here. Don't go in expecting high art, go in wanting a good time.
Eshi: Bruce Campbell is fucking amazing, full goddamn stop. I will straight up kung fu fight any mother fucker says otherwise.
Friday, October 31, 2014
Kinda Whatevs Presents: Weekly Cinemeh
Here is our first list of movies we watched and what we thought of them. We didn't know if we wanted a theme or not, and just decided to do foreign films as a make-shift theme. We will try to do better with that in the future, if we decide to make themes a thing.
Spoilers abound, so read at your own risk.
Week of 10/27
1: Stalled
Stalled was an odd movie for me. It was very funny in bits, but also pulled some of the crappy stuff that most horror pulls nowadays. It is basically a movie about the worst day in a guys life, a guy who, while working a shit job, is stuck in a bathroom after zombies attack. It was fun, with a couple of very unique scenes that had Eshi and I rolling. If you just want to watch a silly zombie movie on Halloween with a couple of friends, this is a great contender.
Other than those couple of laughs it was a fairly standard zombie movie that pulls something that all to many zombie movies pull. I hate it when a zombie movie decides that it needs to have message or make a point. Horror doesn't need to make a point, that's not why most people watch them, but I understand if you want to, just do it better. If they were subtle about it I would have less an issue with it, but when its this ham-fisted it just seems lazy.
(Eshi) I liked this movie, it wasn't good but it was a lot of fun. It doesn't bother me as much as it does Brian when they include messages in their horror movies, what bothers me is when they cram it down your throat unashamedly. Stalled gets into that territory a bit but I can't entirely blame them, subtlety is a troublesome proposition in modern film.
2: Beyond Outrage
This is the sequel to a movie that Eshi and I loved, Outrage, and both deal with modern yakuza infighting/some level of police corruption. Takeshi Kitano (also known as Beat Takeshi) wrote, directed and starred in both, and he is amazing. He has a nice atmosphere about him, and he did a good job showing the political movements in the yakuza that underlie most of the actions they undertake. Beyond Outrage continues the story of the first movie 5 years later, and has a corrupt cop trying to orchestrate a gang war to further his own ambitions (and he is fucking bad at it).
The movie is the right level of violent, only being overt about it when it needs to accentuate the importance of certain kinds of symbolic violence. A scene that shows this well is when a character bites his own goddamn finger off to show submission to someone he is trying to ask a favor of. This is a great way to make sure that the audience is not so desensitized to violence that important uses of it still have impact. This is antithesis to how most American gangland movies/TV shows seems to lack nuance when it comes to showing violence.
(Eshi) Beat Takeshi is a fucking artist.
3: Age of Uprising: The Legend of Michael Kohlhaas
Age of Uprising is a French/German film (originally titled just "Michael Kohlhaas") based on a novella about this guy. Michael Kohlhaas is a 16th century German merchant who seeks revenge/justice for being wronged by a corrupt Baron. This movie is bleak and heavy. It is basically an exploration of justice and whether justice served from the self is better than justice served from the courts and or God.
The movie struggles a bit near the end and ends kind of anti-climatically and things felt kind of unresolved for me. Kohlhaas gets what he wanted but its ultimately unsatisfying, and I am not sure if that was meant to be that way. It could be that the movie was trying to point out that the justice from the justice system and justice meted out by the hurt party are both, at some point, unsatisfactory to society. If so it does a great job of making the viewer feel that way.
Mads Mikkelson is also fantastic. I think that he is one of the best actors I have seen in a while, not just with this movie but with Flame y Citron and the TV show Hannibal. He emotes well, and does a great service when it comes to the dark, oppressive tone of the film.
(Eshi) I cannot stress how oppressive this movie is. It takes place almost entirely in the countryside and yet never for a second does it feel more open than a firmly planted casket. I spent the entire film completely immersed in the futility so masterfully created. Brian mentioned that the film is a commentary on Justice. The most interesting demonstration of this for me was the absolute worthlessness of the theologian character. That single character and his interjection of how a "good christian" finds justice, and how completely he fails to engage, was spectacular.
4: Las brujas de Zugarramurdi (In the US as Witching and Bitching)
LBDZ is a horror/comedy that takes a satirical look at gender politics, and does a great job with it. Both the protagonists, represented as some very badly misogynist, self-centered criminals, and the antagonists, "feminist" and literally man-eating evil witches, are shown as being bad due to the hard line they take when it comes to their positions. Only when the two sides (or at least one person from each side) work together and trust each other does any kind of good relationship occur.
This is the first movie that I have ever seen from Spain and I was very impressed. It was great at creating a surreal, and in an odd way kind of whimsical, depiction of the world; with people acting normal in situations where running away would have been more than appropriate. I would suggest watching it with an open mind as it took a while for us to realize that it was supposed to be a satire and not poorly veiled assholery.
(Eshi) This was the least sexist film about sexism I've ever seen. Through and through it displayed an honesty and earnestness about a subject that is nearly impossible to be honest and earnest about. Also, one of the only movies I've seen that even remotely handles a child character well.
5: The Woman in Black
The last movie in our list this week was The Woman in Black and it was solid, if slightly disappointing. Its a movie about a sad lawyer who goes off to a hamlet in northern England to deal with a dead woman's will, and while he is out there shit goes down. Its a sadly vanilla story with a good, but very telegraphed, ending. Daniel Radcliffe is good at what he does, and the rest of the acting was pretty solid. The movie as a whole though feels flat. Its all stuff we have seen before done well, but not so well as to be exceptional.
I have written about how I feel about horror before, and I want to add something to my list of things that need toning down and or elimination: musical cues. If I am supposed to be scared and you have done a good job setting it up, I will be. You don't need to add tense music only at all the exact times in which shit is going down. WiB does this for every jump scare to "enhance" them, and that just felt cheap. This is especially unacceptable when it ruins the really well established scares.
(Eshi) There were things I really enjoyed about this movie. The environment was beautifully arranged, there were a few well developed scares, and Daniel Radcliffe is one of the rare male actors who can play tortured and empathetic without just being pathetic. Other than my appreciation of set direction and a growing respect for Danny Rads, however, this one was a bit bland, more than bordering on stereotypical. Would be a good third movie in a five movie horror marathon.
Spoilers abound, so read at your own risk.
Week of 10/27
1: Stalled
Stalled was an odd movie for me. It was very funny in bits, but also pulled some of the crappy stuff that most horror pulls nowadays. It is basically a movie about the worst day in a guys life, a guy who, while working a shit job, is stuck in a bathroom after zombies attack. It was fun, with a couple of very unique scenes that had Eshi and I rolling. If you just want to watch a silly zombie movie on Halloween with a couple of friends, this is a great contender.
Other than those couple of laughs it was a fairly standard zombie movie that pulls something that all to many zombie movies pull. I hate it when a zombie movie decides that it needs to have message or make a point. Horror doesn't need to make a point, that's not why most people watch them, but I understand if you want to, just do it better. If they were subtle about it I would have less an issue with it, but when its this ham-fisted it just seems lazy.
(Eshi) I liked this movie, it wasn't good but it was a lot of fun. It doesn't bother me as much as it does Brian when they include messages in their horror movies, what bothers me is when they cram it down your throat unashamedly. Stalled gets into that territory a bit but I can't entirely blame them, subtlety is a troublesome proposition in modern film.
2: Beyond Outrage
This is the sequel to a movie that Eshi and I loved, Outrage, and both deal with modern yakuza infighting/some level of police corruption. Takeshi Kitano (also known as Beat Takeshi) wrote, directed and starred in both, and he is amazing. He has a nice atmosphere about him, and he did a good job showing the political movements in the yakuza that underlie most of the actions they undertake. Beyond Outrage continues the story of the first movie 5 years later, and has a corrupt cop trying to orchestrate a gang war to further his own ambitions (and he is fucking bad at it).
The movie is the right level of violent, only being overt about it when it needs to accentuate the importance of certain kinds of symbolic violence. A scene that shows this well is when a character bites his own goddamn finger off to show submission to someone he is trying to ask a favor of. This is a great way to make sure that the audience is not so desensitized to violence that important uses of it still have impact. This is antithesis to how most American gangland movies/TV shows seems to lack nuance when it comes to showing violence.
(Eshi) Beat Takeshi is a fucking artist.
3: Age of Uprising: The Legend of Michael Kohlhaas
Age of Uprising is a French/German film (originally titled just "Michael Kohlhaas") based on a novella about this guy. Michael Kohlhaas is a 16th century German merchant who seeks revenge/justice for being wronged by a corrupt Baron. This movie is bleak and heavy. It is basically an exploration of justice and whether justice served from the self is better than justice served from the courts and or God.
The movie struggles a bit near the end and ends kind of anti-climatically and things felt kind of unresolved for me. Kohlhaas gets what he wanted but its ultimately unsatisfying, and I am not sure if that was meant to be that way. It could be that the movie was trying to point out that the justice from the justice system and justice meted out by the hurt party are both, at some point, unsatisfactory to society. If so it does a great job of making the viewer feel that way.
Mads Mikkelson is also fantastic. I think that he is one of the best actors I have seen in a while, not just with this movie but with Flame y Citron and the TV show Hannibal. He emotes well, and does a great service when it comes to the dark, oppressive tone of the film.
(Eshi) I cannot stress how oppressive this movie is. It takes place almost entirely in the countryside and yet never for a second does it feel more open than a firmly planted casket. I spent the entire film completely immersed in the futility so masterfully created. Brian mentioned that the film is a commentary on Justice. The most interesting demonstration of this for me was the absolute worthlessness of the theologian character. That single character and his interjection of how a "good christian" finds justice, and how completely he fails to engage, was spectacular.
4: Las brujas de Zugarramurdi (In the US as Witching and Bitching)
LBDZ is a horror/comedy that takes a satirical look at gender politics, and does a great job with it. Both the protagonists, represented as some very badly misogynist, self-centered criminals, and the antagonists, "feminist" and literally man-eating evil witches, are shown as being bad due to the hard line they take when it comes to their positions. Only when the two sides (or at least one person from each side) work together and trust each other does any kind of good relationship occur.
This is the first movie that I have ever seen from Spain and I was very impressed. It was great at creating a surreal, and in an odd way kind of whimsical, depiction of the world; with people acting normal in situations where running away would have been more than appropriate. I would suggest watching it with an open mind as it took a while for us to realize that it was supposed to be a satire and not poorly veiled assholery.
(Eshi) This was the least sexist film about sexism I've ever seen. Through and through it displayed an honesty and earnestness about a subject that is nearly impossible to be honest and earnest about. Also, one of the only movies I've seen that even remotely handles a child character well.
5: The Woman in Black
The last movie in our list this week was The Woman in Black and it was solid, if slightly disappointing. Its a movie about a sad lawyer who goes off to a hamlet in northern England to deal with a dead woman's will, and while he is out there shit goes down. Its a sadly vanilla story with a good, but very telegraphed, ending. Daniel Radcliffe is good at what he does, and the rest of the acting was pretty solid. The movie as a whole though feels flat. Its all stuff we have seen before done well, but not so well as to be exceptional.
I have written about how I feel about horror before, and I want to add something to my list of things that need toning down and or elimination: musical cues. If I am supposed to be scared and you have done a good job setting it up, I will be. You don't need to add tense music only at all the exact times in which shit is going down. WiB does this for every jump scare to "enhance" them, and that just felt cheap. This is especially unacceptable when it ruins the really well established scares.
(Eshi) There were things I really enjoyed about this movie. The environment was beautifully arranged, there were a few well developed scares, and Daniel Radcliffe is one of the rare male actors who can play tortured and empathetic without just being pathetic. Other than my appreciation of set direction and a growing respect for Danny Rads, however, this one was a bit bland, more than bordering on stereotypical. Would be a good third movie in a five movie horror marathon.
Friday, October 24, 2014
A New Project
Eshi and I both love movies, and have wanted to watch more for a while now. A little while ago I suggested to Eshi that, since we have a lot of time on our hands currently, we should watch a movie a day. Now that our blog has hit the sixth month mark, if you include our previous incarnation, I wanted us to include that with our blog along with us doing some analysis/review of the movies we watched. It might not be one movie a day (probably more like 4-5 a week), but we will try our best to get close to that goal.
So, starting next Friday I will be posting a list of the movies we watched along with a bit of a review of them on here. If anyone has any suggestions for movies to watch please let us know in the comments section of any of the posts pertaining to this project.
So, starting next Friday I will be posting a list of the movies we watched along with a bit of a review of them on here. If anyone has any suggestions for movies to watch please let us know in the comments section of any of the posts pertaining to this project.
Tuesday, September 2, 2014
Achievement (Not) Unlocked
Something that has been a big inclusion in modern gaming is achievements. As with most things this hides some deeper issue with the industry as a whole. Achievements are basically just used for bragging rights and serve no real purpose, unless you really really want that 1-3% rebate from Microsoft's live market. Companies like Microsoft have attached a "gamerscore" to the idea, adding up points received with achievements and rewarding Xbox live gold members with minor prizes worth about $.25, which is kinda shitty considering to get to that point you would need to play and completely beat 20 games minimum. An added requirement for these "rewards" is that you have to pay Microsoft for the pleasure of getting that 1-3% rebate, as only people with Gold Live memberships can get them. By the way a gold membership costs $9.99 a month or $59.99 for a full year, so you would end up needing to buy 10 $60 games in a month (or just 5 if you have the year long subscription) to make up for the loss from the membership cost. Alternatively, if you don't want to buy shit tons of games, you could just not pay and have more money to spend on a steam sale or something. You can also get points to spend on games in the live market, but once again these rewards are kind of negligible considering you need to pay to get them.
So anyway, back on topic: there are people who let the concern with their gamerscore choose what games they play. That article I linked is about a person addicted to getting achievements, and it displays the main problem I have with them rather well. Achievements control how gamers play games and that removes from the overall experience. Achievements feel as though the game company decided that it needed to wave a carrot in front of our faces to guide us along the best way of playing through a game. The best games act as a medium for storytelling, i.e. most RPGs, or as a great distraction for the player, i.e. one of any number of FPSs. Movies have the same basic goals in a lot of ways. Movies try to tell a good story, make a point, or just be a cathartic distraction from reality, but there are no achievements for having seen The Godfather trilogy because that would be stupid. The subjective experience is the important bit. You don't see directors and writers sitting in an audience telling them the way they should watch and interpret a movie. It is their job to nudge you in the direction they want you to go in a non-forceful, engaging way. I would argue that good game design does this as well.
So anyway, back on topic: there are people who let the concern with their gamerscore choose what games they play. That article I linked is about a person addicted to getting achievements, and it displays the main problem I have with them rather well. Achievements control how gamers play games and that removes from the overall experience. Achievements feel as though the game company decided that it needed to wave a carrot in front of our faces to guide us along the best way of playing through a game. The best games act as a medium for storytelling, i.e. most RPGs, or as a great distraction for the player, i.e. one of any number of FPSs. Movies have the same basic goals in a lot of ways. Movies try to tell a good story, make a point, or just be a cathartic distraction from reality, but there are no achievements for having seen The Godfather trilogy because that would be stupid. The subjective experience is the important bit. You don't see directors and writers sitting in an audience telling them the way they should watch and interpret a movie. It is their job to nudge you in the direction they want you to go in a non-forceful, engaging way. I would argue that good game design does this as well.
Achievements seem to add extra goals for you to achieve as well as "rewarding" you for completing certain stages of the game. I kinda get the extra goals thing, most games want players to play the game for as long as possible so adding more goals on top of the main game is an easy way to do that, but this was something that happened before achievements were a thing. Did you ever play Super Mario 64? There was a non-essential quest in the game to get all 120 stars hidden in the game. If you did this you got an extra scene at the end of the game, 100 lives, and no fall damage from falling from your triple jump. So by giving the player a goal outside the bounds of the main storyline it accomplished the same goal as an achievement, but differs in a major way because it added to the game. Sure it was kind of a crappy reward considering you had already played the shit out of the game at that point, but it was something. In the Saints Row games (at least from 2 and forward) there was an in-game list of challenges that rewarded you with in game guns, vehicles, and power ups that could only be obtained if you had the genuine skill to complete the challenges. Though these got linked with achievements later, the key aspect of them was still essentially to provide benefit to the player by expanding game play. Achievements don't add shit, they just get tacked on as a way of showing off.
Because of achievements games are becoming more goal oriented and the focus of the gamer shifts from caring about the story, just looking for a distraction, or trying to have fun; to trying to show off how many achievements they can get. I am being hyperbolic here, but only slightly. We live in a world where individuality is incredibly important and largely determined by a person's role in a group. People self identify with a group and then try to show that they are the person most representative of the positive aspects of that group. They scream "Look at my gamerscore! I am the BEST GAMER EVER!". I find this sad for a couple of reasons, the amount of time "wasted" playing games not among them. First of all it denigrates the people working on the game. Why write a good story if gamers are only going to run through it just to get their gamerscore higher? The even sadder part is, by adding the socializing aspect to the game you are exacerbating the perceived need for superiority within the group. This is the way that you show you are a gamer now. It's telling people that if they don't play the game in the way that the people who determine achievements want, then they are not just not a gamer, but that they aren't having fun in the right way. And fuck them for telling me how to escapism.
Because of achievements games are becoming more goal oriented and the focus of the gamer shifts from caring about the story, just looking for a distraction, or trying to have fun; to trying to show off how many achievements they can get. I am being hyperbolic here, but only slightly. We live in a world where individuality is incredibly important and largely determined by a person's role in a group. People self identify with a group and then try to show that they are the person most representative of the positive aspects of that group. They scream "Look at my gamerscore! I am the BEST GAMER EVER!". I find this sad for a couple of reasons, the amount of time "wasted" playing games not among them. First of all it denigrates the people working on the game. Why write a good story if gamers are only going to run through it just to get their gamerscore higher? The even sadder part is, by adding the socializing aspect to the game you are exacerbating the perceived need for superiority within the group. This is the way that you show you are a gamer now. It's telling people that if they don't play the game in the way that the people who determine achievements want, then they are not just not a gamer, but that they aren't having fun in the right way. And fuck them for telling me how to escapism.
Monday, August 18, 2014
Don't Take the Ride, Burn The Ticket
The more observant among the audience may have noticed that Brian and I are something vaguely approaching movies buffs. We watch movies, by and large we like movies, but recently I feel a trend setting in. I'm talking about the gross squandering of potential. I know that this isn't really a new thing in cinema (I'm looking at you Uwe, your mother and I are very disappointed), but I feel like its getting worse and I'm not entirely sure its unintentional.
The most recent example of this for me was a movie called Banshee Chapter, and without getting too deep into spoiler territory, fuck this movie. The premise is actually good, and riding a bit of a gravy train right now. Its a (more) sinister exploration of the MKUltra experiments done during the cold war (given some of the stuff I've had to search for some my recent posts, bet your ass I'm on a list somewhere), and so it cashes in on the popularity of conspiracy movies lately. Here's the problem; its kinda fucking terrible. Putting aside the fetal dependence on jump-scares, there's a frankly fucking insulting low-rent Hunter S. Thompson character who, despite being one of the main characters, only really exists to justify the presence of Bad Drugs and drop a few poorly represented catchphrases.
On top of that, they can't seem to decide whether they're going for a shitty shaky-cam/pseudo-found footage thing or actually being a movie. There's an implied cameraman in that the camera itself seems to play a role on several occasions, but then again there totally isn't because its never spoken of. The camera behaves as though its being held by someone active in the movie (I wont be calling this a film) but that person never manifests, leaving the whole thing just looking brain-damaged. The casting was pretty terrible, but its essentially about people being mind-controlled so they kinda almost get away with it.
In all they failed their premise, and that's where my issue really comes in. It feels like so many of the terrible parts of this movie where an attempt to garner indie cred that it didn't need if it had just let the story do its thing. This movie is a grand example of what can go wrong when you try hedging your bets, a habit I'm increasingly afraid cinema wont be able to break.
The most recent example of this for me was a movie called Banshee Chapter, and without getting too deep into spoiler territory, fuck this movie. The premise is actually good, and riding a bit of a gravy train right now. Its a (more) sinister exploration of the MKUltra experiments done during the cold war (given some of the stuff I've had to search for some my recent posts, bet your ass I'm on a list somewhere), and so it cashes in on the popularity of conspiracy movies lately. Here's the problem; its kinda fucking terrible. Putting aside the fetal dependence on jump-scares, there's a frankly fucking insulting low-rent Hunter S. Thompson character who, despite being one of the main characters, only really exists to justify the presence of Bad Drugs and drop a few poorly represented catchphrases.
On top of that, they can't seem to decide whether they're going for a shitty shaky-cam/pseudo-found footage thing or actually being a movie. There's an implied cameraman in that the camera itself seems to play a role on several occasions, but then again there totally isn't because its never spoken of. The camera behaves as though its being held by someone active in the movie (I wont be calling this a film) but that person never manifests, leaving the whole thing just looking brain-damaged. The casting was pretty terrible, but its essentially about people being mind-controlled so they kinda almost get away with it.
In all they failed their premise, and that's where my issue really comes in. It feels like so many of the terrible parts of this movie where an attempt to garner indie cred that it didn't need if it had just let the story do its thing. This movie is a grand example of what can go wrong when you try hedging your bets, a habit I'm increasingly afraid cinema wont be able to break.
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