Game of Thrones fans might know Kate Dickie (pictured) as a mother who doesn’t have a grasp on how long you’re supposed to breastfeed. But she’s so much more than that, as anyone who’s seen the Scottish thriller Red Road can attest. And in Outcast, she is to female magic users what Gandalf is to dude magic users. I shall henceforth name all my female magic users after her character in Outcast.
Outcast is a supernatural thriller from 2010. Oh, who am I kidding? It’s a horror movie. Not your usual horror movie, to be sure. It’s Scottish, drenched in the bleak grey of Scottish weather, lore, and low rent housing. It’s got a great cast, most notably Dickie as the druidic version of Alice from Martin Scorcese’s 1974 movie, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. Dickie’s character is on the run from what we assume is an abusive husband. Only this abusive husband can be deterred by blood glyphs on the walls. The cast also includes James Nesbitt as an Irishman out of his element in Scotland, a nuance that will be lost on a lot of us Yanks, along with the piker vs. gypsy subtext. But you can’t deny Nesbitt’s appeal as a slightly confused magician. He certainly looks the part. There’s a thin line between “wizard” and “homeless”. Together, Dickie and Nesbitt are the Sarah Connor and Arnold of celtic Terminator plots.
This is ultimately a movie about a custody battle, but with spells. And I love the way magic is portrayed here. Grimy, unpleasant, painful, requiring clean up afterwards, and with rules beyond human ken. Real magic means that when someone tells you to eat bony roasted pigeon flesh, you don’t ask what for. As Nesbitt says during the obligatory shot from The Shining — you know, with the camera look up from underneath as he leans his head against a door and roars at the person on the other side — “Them’s the fucking terms!”
You’ve also got some young lovers and it’s such a relief that they’re not awful, which would have been the case if this were an American horror movie. However, as with most horror movies that have the courage of their convictions, Outcast will get a bit ridiculous before it’s over. As Christopher Lee would have told you while prancing merrily toward the end of the original Wicker Man, “Them’s the fucking terms”.
Outcast is on Netflix instant view.
In 1787, after things didn’t go so well with America, England decided to invent Australia. So they pushed out to sea some ships full of convicts and rabbits. They headed vaguely southeast, hit an island, and flourished. The convicts eventually produced Olivia Newton-John, Sam Worthington, and the Lord of the Rings movies. The rabbits produced more rabbits. A lot more.
The rabbits, which bred like rabbits, took to Australia’s mild winter-less climate. They enjoyed unchecked population growth as the colonists thinned out the predators that should have eaten the rabbits. The furry little darlings destroyed young trees by eating away the bark. They dined freely on plants that were supposed to anchor the topsoil. For two hundred years, rabbits wrought havoc on Australia’s ecosystem, single-handedly causing the extinction of plant species that occur nowhere else in the world.
I’ve done something similar in Waking Mars.
After the jump, Night of the Lupus, but on Mars and without rabbits Continue reading →
Following the resurgence of the survival horror genre with Resident Evil, other developers attempted their own horror games. The first Silent Hill was compared to Resident Evil, as it shared the gameplay and basic combat system. However, the sequel for the Playstation 2 not only elevated the series to stand on its own, but also delivered one of the most atmospheric (and arguably disturbing) games around.
After the jump, trying to make sense of that image Continue reading →
Risen 2 (pictured) is the other RPG from the folks who made Gothic. This one has pirates. Prototype 2 is the other open-world series from the folks who made The Hulk. This one has — stop me if you’ve heard this one — tank punching. Bloodforge, the only game out this week that I’ve actually played, is a bantamweight God of War clone for Xbox Live Arcade. All in all, it sounds like a pretty good week to play The Witcher 2.
Contraband is out on DVD this week! Should you see this Mark Wahlberg remake of an Icelandic blockbuster? Listen to find out. This week’s 3×3 of scenes that made us feel oogie starts at the 42 minute mark.
Next week: The Raven
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Every six months or so I bug Tom to resurrect a game at our weekly gaming night, Shoot Club, because I have fond memories of being good at it. Usually it’s some old Half Life mod where you get insta-kills with the crowbar in death match. Or Screamer 4×4.
“What’s that motorcycle game I totally rocked last year? The one with the cool physics?”
“Trials HD. It wasn’t last year. And you didn’t rock it.”
I totally did, and since I’m annoyed with LBP this week for screwing up my home network with its [failed] updates, I’m just going to give some love to that game’s successor, Trials Evolution, which I played for the first time last night. This works out just fine since the motorcycle game and the sackboy game use some of the same muscles. There was a particularly sweet moment when I had to negotiate my Scorpion over two giant rotating gears, and somehow I cleared the obstacle without a fault on the first try. “How did you do that?” It was more of an exclamation than a question. I was surprised too until I got to the end of the track and realized I was using skills instilled in me by LBP. Jumping. Balance. Timing. So, thank you Sackboy, but you’re in the doghouse this week in favor of Trials Evolution.
A few buildings in Modern Times are interesting, but they don’t share a common purpose. Two of them are prominent in the above screenshot: the business center in the foreground and the diamond cathedral to its right. These gleaming glass and chrome structures nicely symbolize both the good and the bad of the Modern Times expansion–they’re bright, they’re useful, and they’re powerful, but do they really belong on Tropico?
After the jump: they paved paradise and put up a business center Continue reading →
If we’re going to look at the horror genre, of course we have to start with the one that started it all: Resident Evil. Old school purists might call me out over that, citing Alone in the Dark as the first survival horror game. Even older school purists might cite Sweet Home for the NES. Regardless, just as Capcom changed the action genre with Devil May Cry, the same is true for survival horror with Resident Evil.
After the jump, got a light? Continue reading →
One of the biggest liabilities Xenoblade Chronicles has to deal with is that it’s a JRPG. The first letter in that acronym comes with a lot of baggage that will deter many people who enjoyed Skyrim, Mass Effect, and The Witcher. It’s also only on the Wii, and only available from Gamestop. Yet what Xenoblade Chronicles accomplishes, what makes it as great as it is, are the things that make any RPG great, regardless of their culture of origin, their platform, or an annoying clerk steering you towards a pre-order.
Three of those things, after the jump Continue reading →
One of Tropico 4’s most significant improvements is making tourism economically competitive with industry instead of a self-inflicted challenge. Islands based on tourism in Tropico 3 didn’t earn much income and were fairly boring to play due to a lack of options. Tropico 4 introduced a slew of profitable new hotels and attractions, many of which could also be enjoyed by everyday citizens. The Modern Times expansion continues this welcome trend by adding even more buildings and edicts to the tourism mix.
The seven-star hotel, pictured above, is the crown jewel of tourist accommodations. It replaces the skyscraper hotel in 1979, and, like its predecessor, only one can be built per island. Because the seven-star hotel unlocks fairly late during most scenarios and sandbox games, it’s usually possible to build both it and a skyscraper hotel, which is a nice plus. While the number of tourist families who can stay in these buildings is identical, seven-star hotels provide almost double the service quality (an amazing base of 150) and employ only 75% as large a workforce. Their only drawback is that guests rarely leave–they have such a good time hanging out by the two rooftop pools that they neglect to visit Tropico’s other attractions. Still, the huge boost to tourism rating that seven-star hotels provide creates a ripple effect that will benefit those other attractions when guests flock to less-entertaining accommodations and then look for fun in the Caribbean sun.
Not all of the new buildings are so welcome, however.
After the jump: did they have to replace one of my favorites with this thing?! Continue reading →
My appreciation for the horror genre has changed over the years. When I was younger, I was a huge baby, afraid of the dark, needles, bugs, and so on. When I was four years old, I couldn’t play the Adventures of Lolo because one of the characters scared me.
But I haven’t felt fear in a long time. Two leg surgeries and chronic pain are an excellent one-two punch to being scared of things like videogames. I’ve been trying to find a game that can scare me for the last few years. Nothing has managed to do the job.
After the jump, I’m going to dropkick some skeletons out of my closet Continue reading →
Join us this week for a discussion on the first 30 hours of Xenoblade Chronicles (we’ll tell you when and how much to fast forward if you want to skip spoilers), the Halo 4 announcement, Trails Evolution, The Binding of Isaac, and Skull Girls. We also say goodbye to a friend. Rest in peace, Brian Rucker. You were part of the best of us.
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Like all good city builders, the Tropico series devotes considerable resources to infrastructure and industry. In the real world, traffic, power plants, and pollution can be unsightly nightmares, but in a game setting they’re just interesting problems to be solved. I’m happy to say that this is one area in which the Modern Times expansion excels. While biofarms are so productive that they eliminate money woes from sandbox games and modern apartments are so unbalanced that they render every other form of housing obsolete, the new infrastructure and industrial buildings provide options and enhancements without destroying Tropico’s underlying challenges.
After the jump: riding on the metro Continue reading →
The point of zombie movies is partly that the people we know and love will track us down and kill us. Everything else — whether they walk or run, whether they’re dead or infected, what they eat, how they got that way — is incidental. If you use that primal fear as a starting point, if you’re not the type who denies 28 Days Later is a zombie movie, then movies like The Crazies (both of them) and the underrated Impulse (the 1984 one) are a subset of the zombie genre.
That’s where The Signal comes in.
After the jump, enter the mind of a “zombie” Continue reading →
Call of Cthulhu is the $3 in-app purchase that adds a new campaign to Elder Sign: Omens, along with some new gameplay mechanics. This gameplay is most prominent during the second half of the campaign, when you sail out into the Pacific Ocean on the cargo ship Ultima Thule. There you’ll encounter an entirely new set of adventures and tasks, often with new gimmicks. Thrilling heartbreaking new gimmicks.
After the jump, what Bob found — and lost — in the Pacific Continue reading →
