After nine months, one $40 follow-up, and DLC for the $40 follow-up, Marvel vs. Capcom 3 will get something Mortal Kombat had the instant it was released. The downloadable Heroes and Heralds add-on, which will supposedly be available when Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is released in November, is a mode where you can earn special abilities for your team as you fight your way through a series of battles. In other words, a series of battles with nifty tweaks and modifiers to vary the challenge level. Capcom takes their sweet time, and when they finally get around to it, they come with their hand outstretched and asking for a few ducats more.
On a related note and against my better judgment, I bought a copy of Dead Rising 2: Off the Record over the weekend. I understood that it would recycle Fortune City, but I had no idea it would also recycle the missions, the bosses, and the survivors. As near as I can tell, I’m replaying Dead Rising 2 a fourth time, but with a $40 Frank West skin that can take pictures to earn xp. It takes real chutzpah to make Electronic Arts’ business practices look charitable, but Capcom manages.
Holy cats, this turned out so much better than I expected!
Driver: San Francisco is a perfect example of how far personality can get you in a videogame. This open-world driving game is nowhere near as technically proficient as, say, Midnight Club: Los Angeles. I never thought I’d see the day when San Francisco seemed so washed out and bland compared to Los Angeles. But that’s more a testament to Rockstar world-building prowess than a criticism of Driver developer Reflections. Because as a game, Driver: San Francisco has personality to spare, with a fantastic funk, soul, and 70s soundtrack; a unique car-shifting mechanic that has you jumping from car to car, complete with a tenuous but effective story rationale; and an open world with plenty of opportunity for exploration and general faffing about. The variety of activities dovetails neatly into the variety of cars, with just enough physics lite to keep this from being a game about steering a rocket, a la Criterion’s Burnout games.
After being all but forced into high-end cars in Forza 4’s online games where no one seems interested in anything street legal, I’m delighted with how the multiplayer in Driver: San Francisco effortlessly and quickly moves through various modes. Tired of a given race? Just wait a few minutes! In one half-hour session, you might drift imports, bounce buggies down a dirt road, dodge traffic in wildly swaying American muscle cars, jostle other players to follow an AI leader, and astrally leap-frog your way to the head of a race (although first you’ll have to figure out how to get past Ubisoft’s screwed up Uplay prerequisite, which means downloading DLC instead of using the broken code that ships with the game). Pay attention, Electronic Arts. This is the sort of wheelsport the Need for Speed arcade racers should have been providing all along.
Most horror movies aren’t too concerned with character development or acting. They just shoot for the lowest common denominator of gore and pacing. A Horrible Way to Die, from a startlingly talented young director out of Alabama named Adam Wingard, is the exact opposite. The trappings are straight-up genre stuff about a serial killer, but the format is a languid character study that lets three very good actors breathe as their relationships develop, coalesce, and finally do what they’re going to do.
The subject at hand is the worst kind of relationship PTSD, with Amy Seimetz’ frail performance as the emotional core of the movie. AJ Bowen, who is unforgettable in an indie horror triptych called The Signal, is the movie’s id, once again balancing a fine line between funny and gruesome. But the real star of this movie is Wingard’s bold camerawork. The handheld camera sways and struggles to find focus, like someone waking up from a dream, trying to find her bearings. If you want your camera on sticks for 90 minutes, with maybe the occasionally dolly shot and a crane shot right before the credits, you will hate A Horrible Way to Die. But if you accept that a camera is just as much a part of telling a story as a script or a performance, then A Horrible Way to Die is a provocative horror movie about three characters and how the director shoots them.
A Horrible Way to Die is available on Netflix here. I heartily recommend the gorgeous Blu-ray version.
(In case you’re wondering what this is, it’s my opportunity to recommend obscure horror films that you otherwise might have missed. I consider this a year-round job, but what better time to do it daily than the two weeks leading up to Halloween?)
Like Trenched before it, Orcs Must Die does a good job with the moment-to-moment tower defense gameplay. It looks great, it’s got charm, and there are plenty of toys to help you bring about the eponymous imperative. But also like Trenched, it fumbles the crucial bigger picture.
I suspect this will be known as the week Batman: Arkham City came out. But don’t forget that it’s also the week the surprisingly good Dungeon Defenders came out. Not since Renegade Ops has such a great game with such excellent multiplayer support and such long legs at such a low price had such a terrible name. That’s a lot to parse, so suffice to say Dungeon Defenders is easily one of the best tower defense games you can play.
Speaking of Renegade Ops, Sega promises that it’s finally coming out for the PC this week. Sony also promises that Payday: The Heist will finally come out this week. Sony also hopes to release Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One this week. Ubisoft hopes you’d rather learn to play a real guitar instead of playing Rock Band, hence this week’s Rocksmith.
Finally, there’s a new Professor Layton game out for the Nintendo DS, but how can there be any puzzles left after the previous Professor Laytons? Seriously, how many variations can you come up with on getting a chicken and a bag of grain across the river with one boat? From here on out, it’s got to be all mazes and sliding tile puzzles, right?
In this podcast, at least one of us correctly pronounces the names of Matthijs van Heijningen and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, the director and one of the actors in the 2011 version of The Thing. Then we recall fondly how good movies called The Thing were back in 1982. At the 57-minute mark, this week’s 3×3 covers our favorite accidental deaths in movies that don’t have the words Final Destination in the title.
