I think at some point in this series I promised you some role-playing. Strategy role-playing, to be exact. Not by me, of course, because I don’t do that kind of stuff. But from a game design perspective, you can’t help but appreciate the possibilities. Because the best games tell the best stories, the chance to tell a good one shouldn’t be missed. From a strategy role-playing perspective, what could be a better story than what I’m about to show you?
Find out after the jump Continue reading →
I don’t envy Atari having to promote their upcoming game for the Wii and DS. Thanks to Dutch filmmaker Tom Six, I mentally put the word “human” in front of the word “centipede” whenever I see it. It’s his fault the last feature in this paragraph is so unintentionally creepy.
Centipede returns as an updated version of beloved gaming classic. Explore an expansive new world with seven different environments and 40 stages. Defend Maisies [sic] garden from waves of nasty creepy crawlers with an arsenal of over 20 weapons. Test your power and skill against five devious bosses. Team up with a friend for maximum fire power for nail biting two player co-op action.
The Debt is one of those movies where characters deal with a Deep Dark Secret from Many Years Ago ™. And, to be fair, these are interesting characters. Tom Wilksinson, Helen Mirren, and Ciarin Hinds are former Mossad agents credited with taking out a prominent Nazi many years ago during a mission in East Berlin. Cue Samuel Jackson making a gun-to-the-head gesture and asking “taking out”? Yes, taking out. Mossad, dontchaknow? The Debt is about something that happens thirty years later.
Well, at least that’s what The Debt is about before it spends far too much time with the less interesting younger versions of the characters, particularly Jessica Chastain. She’s certainly lovely, and we know from Tree of Life that she’s capable of gravity. But here she’s just lovely and not much else. The most interesting thing about her is that she’s going to grow up into Helen Mirren. She does demonstrates one hell of a way to take out a gynecologist who you might suspect is a former Nazi, but that’s still not as interesting as growing up into Helen Mirren.
I saw in the credits that Sam Worthington was supposed to be in this movie, but I don’t recall seeing him. Maybe he was in the Sam Worthington-shaped hole that was moving around on screen a lot. And I’m always up for watching Marton Csokas, who you probably know as Mr. Galadriel in Lord of the Rings, or the agent who Matt Damon kills with a toaster and a magazine in Bourne Supremacy. But it wasn’t enough to keep me from wondering when we were going to get back to Helen Mirren. And when that finally happens, the movie is nearly over, leaving just enough time to literally stumble to a silly and hurried finale in which Mirren demonstrates that she is the worst secret agent ever.
Hey, Hollywood, can I tell you a secret? People over 40 are inherently more interesting than people under 40*. I say this having been on both sides of the equation. Now if your goal is to get people under 40 to see your crappy movie, good job focusing on Jessica Chastain. But if your goal is to tell an interesting story, The Debt is doing it wrong.
* if I knew how to do footnotes, here I would cite episode 12 of season two of Louie
During the Civil War — bear with me — battles often happened by accident. That’s just how it worked back then. Two armies would maneuver around, chasing each other, or feeling their way around the land, trying to find advantageous ground. Eventually, they’d tangle up a flank, or stumble onto arriving enemy reinforcements, or get caught flat footed crossing a river. Skirmishes blossomed into full-blown encounters that gave birth to unplanned Civil War battlegrounds. We don’t often think of battles as surprises, but that’s often what they were.
After the jump, why I thought of this as I plunged to my death in Dead Island Continue reading →
New content goes live for DC Universe Online today, including a new set of superpowers and some more instances.
Introducing DC Comics legend The Green Lantern and the game’s seventh power set (Light), the “Fight for the Light” pack allows players to join the Green Lantern Corps or Sinestro Corps as reservist members while helping to restore balance to the universe.
Along with interactions with Green Lantern based favorites and foes, players will be launched into multiple action-packed scenarios, including an epic battle for control in S.T.A.R. Labs, a light-to-light showdown with the Red Lantern Corps in Coast City, and chaotic prison break at Sciencells Prison.
I really enjoyed DC Universe Online, and if I had time to jump into an MMO, it’s on the very short list of MMOs I’d like to get back to playing. But I wish the developers at Sony Online would find a way to get players out into the cities of Gotham and Metropolis. When the game launched, these cities were full of players zipping to and fro, getting into skirmishes with each other, and generally bringing the places to life while they did quests on the short trip to the level limit. At which point they all retreated into instances to grind for raid gear. Last time I checked, Gotham and Metropolis were ghost towns.
And Sony Online seems content to keep them ghost towns by continuing to shunt players into places like S.T.A.R. Labs, Coast City, and the Sciencells Prison. What about Metropolis and Gotham City, which are already in the game and in dire need of things to do and players doing them? And when is Sony Online going to unbottle some of those buildings and let us fight over them?
