Has David O. Russell conned us into liking American Hustle? Well, some more than others. Find out what happens when three Silver Linings Playbook fans watch some of our favorite actors get all 70s. At the one-hour mark, we do a 3×3 that has something to do with corporations.
Next week: the top movies of 2013
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Twitch gives people, anyone in fact, the opportunity to broadcast and ask for donations. A few streamers even make a decent living at it. When it comes to League of Legends streams, most of the higher level players get the lion’s share of the audience. But there are always a handful of people streaming for love of the game. One of these streams that has recently caught my attention. The Twitch user HanBlades is doing a 24 hour stream for Autism.
I’m Han and I’m 17 years old and diagnosed with autism. My grade of autism has been severely lowered due to constant aid and now I can live a normal life. But many of other people who are diagnosed won’t be able to live a normal life because either their kind of grade is so high that you can only permanently aid them, which costs a lot of money, or they’re untreatable. Even if they are untreatable you can still change their life with little things! And I want to be able to give them something so they can experience life at their fullest!
So this is my plan.
I’ve searched for a charity where I can donate to so I found this site called Autism Donations (https://www.autismdonations.com/donate.php). I’ve made a PayPal donation box which is found at my stream and at the end of the stream, I’ll show that I actually donate the money. I guess you can as well directly send the money to them but I would love to have an overview of how much money they’ll actually get and if you give your LoL username when you donate, I can invite for some games to play! So for the people who are wondering, I’m giving 100% to this charity. NOTHING will get in my pocket!
I’m going to play League of Legends of course but probably as well some other games that you can suggest! League will include Ranked Games, 5v5 teams and many more!
The event will start at 9AM GMT+1 at December, 31 2013.
For us Americans, that’s 3 AM Eastern. There are worse ways to ring in the new year. For instance, Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve.
Battlefield 4 continues to have multiplayer issues across platforms even after multiple patches as noted on DICE’s official issue tracker. Players continue to experience problems connecting to servers, random desynchronization, hit detection, drops in framerate, and other errors. A new notice on the Battlog page notes that a special double XP event has been postponed presumably due to the intermittent connectivity issues.
The end of December 2XP event for premium members has been postponed and will be run at a later date. Stay tuned for more information. We apologize for the inconvenience.
The issues in Battlefield 4 have gotten severe enough that two separate lawsuits have been filed on behalf of EA investors.
Join Tom Chick for a conversation with Banshee Chapter director Blair Erickson, who has made a Lovecraft movie that isn’t technically a Lovecraft movie, but is definitely a Lovecraft movie. He defends his use of jump scares, reveals his inspiration for some of the creepiest bits of the movie, and explains that parts of the sound design are 100% real.
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Capcom says that the core fanbase of Resident Evil is aging. In a special feature on the venerable action-horror series for investors, Capcom revealed that the average age of the Resident Evil fan is trending into the 30’s and 40’s. The publisher says that the growing maturity of the audience could be an issue for the health of the series as players age out of the marketplace. Younger players need to courted in ways that appeal to them like fashion magazine articles and themed restaurants!
Therefore, we have created opportunities for receiving coverage in fashion magazines by collaborating with fashion brands which are popular among young people. We are also actively working on spreading name recognition among non-gamers through expansion in other industries, including the “Halloween Horror Night” event in alliance with Universal Studios Japan (USJ) and the opening of the “Resident Evil Cafe and Grill S.T.A.R.S.” (a “Resident Evil”-themed restaurant) in Shibuya PARCO, Tokyo. These collaborative events are opportunities to be enjoyed by non-gamers as well, so it is important to plan them so that anyone can enjoy them and not aim them at a section of our core gamers.
I remember a time when everyone wanted to play Mumbledypeg and Checkers. It’s all about the Jacks and Hopscotch now. Also, where is my M.U.L.E-themed hot dog stand?
If you like Gran Turismo 5 multiplayer, you’ll need to upgrade to Gran Turismo 6 before May 20th, 2014. That’s when Sony is turning off the multiplayer servers for that game. According to Sony’s updated support page, other PlayStation titles are getting the online axe as well. On March 28th, Resistance: Fall of Man, Resistance 2, and Resistance 3 will become strictly single player games. Unfortunately, if you’re a fan of MAG or SOCOM: Confrontation, then you should be concerned that these multiplayer only titles will be useless after January 28th. Get your gaming in while you can!
It’s not in slow motion, and it isn’t being played backwards, but Techland’s Christmas advertisement for their upcoming zombie survival parkour game, Dying Light, is short and sweet.
Banshee Chapter is the reason I watch so many terrible horror movies. Because occasionally something like this bubbles up from the muck and makes it all worthwhile. I don’t mean to overstate how good Banshee Chapter is, because it’s got a lot of the trappings of bad horror. If you were to lift any five or ten minutes out of context, you might guess you’re watching yet more half-assed found footage of people wandering around on the way to another cheap jump scare. You’re partly right. Banshee Chapter can’t quite decide why or whether it’s a found footage movie, and it relies on its share of cheap jump scares.
But writer/director Blair Erickson ultimately pieces together something far more haunting by doing three very specific things. His first trick is his script’s focus on something other than the usual ghosts or demons. Banshee Chapter makes it clear early on that this is a conspiracy yarn about MKUltra, but with a definite in-your-face supernatural bent. For no good reason, it sometimes cuts to extended footage of government experiments. It even sprinkles in a little Lovecraft before it’s all over. It reminds me of a little-seen short film called AM1200 for how it’s about evil tidings carried on electronic signals out of remote desert locations, luring victims to their doom. Take note, bad horror movies! A commitment to an unusual idea goes a long way.
Erikson’s second trick is his cast. A lot of Banshee Chapter is an actress named Katia Winter doing research or just looking around with a flashlight. Miss Winter is lovely enough that you’ll probably assume she’s just another annoying horror movie protagonist. She is not. She’s appealing and likeable, and most importantly, she’s convincing enough to sell the long stretches of research and the bursts of horror. She is also an ideal foil to the movie’s greatest asset, Ted Levine. About half way into Banshee Chapter, he lumbers in clumsily as a thinly veiled nod to Hunter Thompson. He and Winter engage in an appealing push/pull act that keeps the rest of the movie rolling.
Finally, Erickson also knows how to use a handful of unlikely assets sparingly and to creepy effect. A numbers station, an ice cream truck, the hiss of static, a latex mask. You won’t find any of the usual CG here, but you will find some genuinely tense stretches that culminate in awful “oh god, what was that?” scares. And the whole thing closes with “The Girl in the Window”, a lovely song by Mark Lenover that fits the movie like a glove. An absurdly clawed latex glove illuminated by a dim flashlight.
Banshee Chapter is available on video on demand services. Support Qt3 and watch it on Amazon.com.
How would you follow up the critically acclaimed Tomb Raider reboot? If your answer is “with a free-to-play iOS card game” then you’d be doing exactly what Square Enix is doing with Lara Croft: Reflections. The game features Lara collecting cards and fighting enemies with upgradeable weapons. Players can purchase upgrades through in-app offers. If the image above is accurate, Lara can fight herself which likely explains the “reflections” part of the title.
Lara Croft: Reflections just launched in Australia and New Zealand and will presumably be available in other territories at a later date if Square Enix follows the same publishing strategy that was used for Plants vs Zombies 2. EA and PopCap launched Plants vs Zombies 2 in the Australia and New Zealand iOS markets to test pricing and balance before launching in more populous regions.
Joss Whedon’s Firefly, the boardgame of Joss Whedon’s TV show, can be demanding. It can be slow. It can be lonely. It can be mean. It can kick you in the teeth with a bad die roll or an unfortunate card draw. It can leave you drifting in space while everyone else has lively barroom brawls and exciting tangles with the law. They’re buying awesome ship components and fancy gear for their crew. You’re mopping floors on some backwater planet until you can afford fuel. But when you’re the one enjoying the brawls, tangles, awesomes, and fancies, Firefly can be a gratifying tabletop space opera with a few unique selling points. And you don’t even have to know the TV show.
After the jump, what does gorram mean? And which one is Summer Glau? Continue reading →
Skullgirls Encore, the upcoming re-release of Skullgirls, will include an optional mode inspired by Typing of the Dead. During a Twitch livestream, design director Mike Zaimont announced that Lab Zero Games will add “Typing of the Skullgirls Encore” mode in the new version of the game. The mode will require players to quickly type out words when using a super-move. Bonuses to damage will depend on the player’s accuracy and speed when typing out the challenge. The option will be available in Story, Arcade and Versus modes, but not Tournament or Online.
Skullgirls is re-launching as Skullgirls Encore in January due to a split between Lab Zero Games and Konami.
This week we finally see 12 Years a Slave and aren’t quite as impressed as, say, the Golden Globe nominations. At the 39-minute mark, we cover the topic of umbrellas in movies for this week’s 3×3.
Next week: American Hustle
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This year, instead of just singling out games I like, I’m going to single out games that do best what I like most. Namely, games that tell a story through gameplay. A relevant story, unique to the way videogames tell stories. Games that really get the unique strength of the medium over and above books and movies. Games that are particularly great at being games and not just puzzles or tests of skill or dazzling virtual wonderlands.
This is partly a shame, because it’s going to exclude some of my favorite games this year. It’s going to exclude games I liked mostly for mechanical reasons. Don’t Starve is the game that finally got me hooked on procedurally generated survival-a-thons, partly because it’s got so much personality and mystery. Desktop Dungeons is the most amazingly intricate cerebral puzzle rogue-like I’ve ever played, neatly arrayed under a superlative meta-game of building up and unlocking. Tales of Maj’Eyal is a rogue-like with addictively intricate character development, honed over a decade of development. I never really cared for the goofy sloppiness of kart racers, but this year’s best driving game is a kart racing game called Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed. Monaco is a glorious playground full of interactive bits, lovingly realized in that often too-precious retro fat-pixel way, and some of the best multiplayer co-op you can play. Splinter Cell Blacklist takes stealth as far as I can imagine it will ever go by giving it varying levels of importance in a generous set of sandboxes, all interconnected by the economy of buying cool weapons and gadgets. Which brings me to Dead Space 3, which drank up far more time than a Dead Space should with its funky cool spaceweapon crafting. Assassin’s Creed IV’s gorgeous pirate ship shenanigans were just the breath of salty fresh air the Assassin’s Creed series needed. If there’s a platformer as good as Rayman Legends at the art of running, jumping, and variations thereof, I haven’t played it. I haven’t gotten very far into Wonderful 101, but I love the fighting system I’ve seen so far and I’m eager to explore the rest of it.
All those games would vie for a spot on a conventional top ten list. But none of those games really had an effective narrative hook, and that’s what my list is going to single out this year. As videogames grow up and increasingly earn their rightful place alongside movies and books and TV, these are the ten games I’m proudest of, the games I enjoyed the most, the games I’ll remember for reasons other than mere gameplay. These are the games that spoke the loudest, the clearest, the most poignantly, the most memorably. These are the games with voices that most deserve to be heard.
After the jump, the best games of 2013 Continue reading →
On the first day of Christmas, my papa gave to me, an Xbox (selflessly):
After the break, 11 to go Continue reading →
Tom: Super Mario 3D World has more endings than the Lord of the Rings movies. Just when you think it’s over, it’s not because there’s more to do. And then you do all that, and you get to the end and…well, I’d rather let you discover that. Suffice to say that this game diary probably could have gone for another day or two.
But we set out to write up eight worlds, so let’s write up the eighth world in Super Mario 3D World.
After the jump, eight is enough? Continue reading →
