We all agree that The Place Beyond the Pines, the latest movie from Ryan Gosling and Blue Valentine director Derek Cianfrance, is no Blue Valentine. At the 57-minute mark we focus on our favorite lasers for this week’s 3×3.
Next week: Oblivion
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When you talk about Moon, there’s no reason to point out that Duncan Jones is David Bowie’s son. But when you talk about Antiviral, you can’t very well not point out that Brandon Cronenberg is David Cronenberg’s son. The younger Cronenberg channels his father’s body dysmorphia with scalpel precision, stark insight, and the same dreamy malaise of David Cronenberg’s best movies.
The subject of Antiviral is celebrity obsession, but not in the obvious way. This isn’t a satire, but it makes the same point as satire in the context of futuristic biopunk noir, with disease as a metaphor and McGuffin, with the subject matter being the unlikely intersection of disease and beauty, blemish and perfection. The world it presents is new, imaginative, and unsettling. It’s impossible to get through Antiviral without wincing several times. It’s not gore so much as squick factor, which is far worse than mere gore. I can watch Michael Ironside’s head exploding till the cows come home. But the early simple medical procedure in Antiviral will put you off your lunch. It’s only going to get worse.
Antiviral wouldn’t work without the fascinating Caleb Landry Jones in the lead role. His performance, which consists largely of lurching, is a thing to behold, every bit as integral to Antiviral as Jack Nicholson is to Chinatown.
Antiviral is available on VOD. Support Qt3 by watching it on Amazon.com.
Boy, does that screenshot bring back memories. Castle of Illusion, the 1990 Sega Genesis game, was a seminal platformer back in the day of Mario’s hegemony. I vividly remember hopping Mickey Mouse from leaf to leaf and just being gobsmacked at how beautiful the damn thing was, even though I couldn’t care less about Disney’s frontmouse.
I don’t know how well Castle of Illusion will hold up after 20 years, but Sega and Disney Interactive intend to show me with an HD update due out this summer. Maybe the best way to do a Mickey Mouse game is to go back to a time less Epic?
The 1000 Club Expansion free DLC is coming to Forza Horizon tomorrow. We like free stuff, right? The DLC adds over a thousand challenges to the game (five per collectible car) that encourages players to compete for bragging rights. Most of the challenges can be completed with the cars that came with the retail game, but owners of previous DLC will have more challenges to overcome.
With the 1000 Club Expansion, each car in Forza Horizon will have a number of new challenges associated with it. Once you select a car, you’ll see each of the challenges you can complete while driving it. These challenges come from practically all facets of Forza Horizon’s gameplay – from skills challenges like drifting or jumping, to plain and simple speed zone challenges and all points in between. There are location-based challenges, like drifting around the winding roads of Red Rocks, or new twists on familiar Horizon Festival events.
The DLC also adds 10 new Xbox Live Achievements and two new cars, including the snazzy 1956 Ford F100 pictured above.
Lovelorn mindfucks aren’t what they used to be. I mostly blame Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Jesse Armstrong’s fiercely insightful The Entire History of You from the British series Black Mirror didn’t help (watch it before the mostly likely toothless American remake arrives, courtesy of Robert Downey Jr). So it’s a bit late for Danny Boyle’s lightweight Trance, a mindfuck oddly jammed into a movie about an art heist by some lovable thugs. Don’t read too much into the early torture scene. It’ll pass. The real substance of movie is after the fact, when hypnotist Rosario Dawson helps James McAvoy recover his memory about the $27 million stolen Goya he misplaced. Oops. The solution comes down to Dawson’s shaved pubic hair. I’m not making that up. It’s particularly disappointing that this is what we get when Boyle rejoins Shallow Grave and Trainspotting screenwriter John Hodge.
At least Boyle knows how to shoot dreamlike energetic sequences that weave and build and crescendo spectacularly. The aforementioned reveal about Miss Dawson’s grooming, for instance. Anthony Dod Mantle’s lurid realer-than-real supersaturated cinematography is as gorgeous as ever (you can see Mantle’s work most recently in Dredd). And Trance has a sexy finale that makes me want to watch Boyle’s Sunshine again, which features fiery crescendos on a larger scale. But Trance ends with an unsatisfying “gotcha!” resolution that does more to sell iPads than elicit a-ha’s. Where’s my Eternal Sunshine DVD and Sunshine Blu-ray?
Bethesda announced that they are moving on from Skyrim development to a new project. They will not be creating any new DLC for the open-world cheese wheel rolling simulator.
For the last year and a half we’ve been working on new content for Skyrim; from the game updates, Creation Kit, Steam Workshop, Kinect support, to DLCs. Parts of our team have also been in pre-production on our next major project, and that game is at the point where it requires the studio’s full attention to make it our biggest and best work yet.
Even though we’re moving on, we’ll still have minor updates to Skyrim as needed. We’ve invested so much of ourselves into Skyrim and will never truly say goodbye to it.
Although the blog post did not mention the new project by name, it is rumored to be Fallout 4.
What Defiance does well, it does well enough. This is basically a wide open playground dotted with activities, almost of all which come down to shooting a bunch of dudes, and sometimes pressing a button once you’ve shot them. But lots of shooting. Gratifying shooting with as many different guns as you like. Light machineguns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, shotguns (three flavors!), pistols (as if), some lasery things, rocket launchers, grenade launchers, a gun that shoots bugs. Guns, guns, guns! It’s very nearly mindless.
The shooting activities are scattered widely enough, and the world is big enough, that you’ll often have to zip around on your vehicle, enjoying featherweight simulated driving physics along the way. Say what you will about these vehicles, but they’re ten time better than any MMO horse I’ve had to ride. You can do races, but they’re just a brief distraction from the shooting. Defiance is a game with focus. 85% shooting. 15% driving.
After the jump, 5% MMO Continue reading →
2K has removed the page for their XCOM shooter as well as all the preview videos from their official Youtube page. The game, unveiled at E3 2010, was supposed to be a first-person-shooter set in a version of 1962 America being invaded by aliens and has long been rumored to be in development trouble.
A Superannuation rumor report from last week suggests that the 2K Marin developed shooter may be rebranded as The Bureau, dissassociating it from the X-COM brand. A 2K survey in October 2012 asked respondants if they’d like the game if it was turned into a third-person cover shooter with a less-expensive digital download size.
Before Mortal Kombat’s latest surprisingly good reboot, there was Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe, which was not surprisingly good. Or so I’ve been told. I myself never explored the implications of who would win in a fight between Superman and Johnny Cage. I’m pretty sure there is no version of that match-up where the answer shouldn’t have been Superman, but I’ll reserve judgment until I’ve seen Zack Snyder’s upcoming biopic.
And now this week, the team that made the Mortal Kombat reboot so good, NetherRealm, releases Injustice: Gods Among Us, which reboots only the DC Universe portion of Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe. The box cover poses the question, “Who would win in a fight between Superman and Batman?” and implies that the answer is “The Joker”. Well played, box cover.
I just hope it’s not too difficult to unlock Aquaman.
Speaking of heroics at sea, Jetpack Joyride developer Halfbrick will mostly likely release their next game this week (the release date isn’t yet official). Fish out of Water for the iOS, in which you throw fish like you’ve never thrown fish before, is every bit as addicting and adorable as Jetpack Joyride. But wait, there are more naval shenanigans! I’m really excited about Victoria II: Hearts of Darkness, which revamps naval battles and colonization in Paradox’s brilliant strategy game. As you can deduce from the title, the focus is on Africa, often overlooked in favor of the sexier America when it comes to historical strategy gaming and real life.
Sacred Citadels is a side-scrolling brawler not from the folks who made Sacred 2. It’s supposed to be a sort of prequel/appetite whetter for the upcoming Sacred 3, which is also not from the folks who made Sacred 2.
Finally, there’s DLC for Dishonored, in which you play the jerk responsible for the main character getting dishonored, and Black Ops II, in which you play a guy who gets shot a lot by other people online.
EA is shutting down SimCity Social, The Sims Social, and Pet Society. The three free-to-play Facebook games developed by Playfish will cease operation on June 14th. All three are being retired so EA “can reallocate development resources to other titles.”
Players are being encouraged to spend the rest of their in-game money before the shutdown. The in-game cash will not be returned and will instead be rendered invalid.
Some footage has leaked of what seems to be unstructured gameplay of The Elder Scrolls Online. I won’t bother linking to it here since it will have moved to another spot by the time you read this, but it’s out there. The internet being what it is, I’m sure there will be a way for you to find it. The video shows some character creation options, the starting area of Port Hunding, some combat against a few rats, a mudcrab, and some bandits, and finally resurrecting at a Wayshrine. It’s all MMO standard stuff with some Elder Scrolls nouns pasted on.
ZeniMax Online has not commented on the video at this time.
You don’t maintain a 0.46 kill/death ratio in Black Ops II by just logging in from time to time and playing. It takes a certain type of innate skill. 9.77% accuracy with your gun of choice isn’t something that just happens. It takes concentration and nerves of steel to bring wild spraying to bear on your target. Be the bullet, I tell myself. The one that’s going to connect with the dude you just stumbled into and who is now about to kill you. I enter a zen-like state. Time slows. I see all possible outcomes, drawn before me in a luminous web of possibility. Fear me, IKillzU_420. 4.6 times out of ten, I prevail.
Black Ops II is having a double XP weekend. It’s always gratifying to see a double xp tag pop up from time to time during a match. I feel like I’m getting away with something. Like double coupon Tuesday at the store.
My intention was to quickly boot up Black Ops II so it could patch itself after months of inactivity. I meant to get ready for next week’s Uprising add-on, which consists of four news maps and a new zombie mode. But then I thought I’d just check and see what level I was. Then a quick look at my loudouts. Ah, right, that gun with that attachment. Yes, those tactical grenades. Hmm, that perk? What did I think that was going to do? What was Tom Chick thinking last December when he was still playing this? Let’s hop online real quick and take it for a spin.
At which point Xbox Live decides to barf out for several hours. Microsoft’s servers went offline for the Black Ops II double xp weekend, which demonstrates why there’s no way the next Xbox is going to be as always online as some supposed Cassandras are claiming. Because even though I wasn’t able to work on my 0.46 K/D ratio, I was able to poke around at the campaign, checking my high score, considering ways to replay missions for a higher score, or to do the challenges that unlock more stuff, or maybe even to work on a hardened or veteran level playthrough, which would not only improve my scores, but would unlock the achievement. And, perhaps most imporantly, I would beat podcast co-host Jason McMaster’s mission scores, and thereby unlock something more precious than any achievement: gloating rights.
And while I’m still looking forward to Uprising’s new maps and new zombie mode, the overall takeaway for me this weekend is that Black Ops II holds up, even without the DLC (although the last DLC pack includes a skatepark map (pictured), which is the best skateboard-related thing Activision has made in years).
Read the original Black Ops II review here. Uprising will be available on Tuesday for $15 or as the second of four downloads included in the $50 Season Pass.
Firaxis rolled out some publicity for their upcoming Brave New World expansion for Civilization V. Among the gaggle of interviews, Lead Designer Ed Beach spoke to PC Gamer and took a moment to address Jon Shafer’s recent criticism of his own work in designing the base Civ V game.
“He was a little harsh on it,” said Beach. “And I won’t try to guess as to exactly what his frame of mind was, where he’s coming from.”
“Unit stacking can be a problem in Civ V, and I definitely think we’ve been acknowledging that for a while,” continued Beach. “In Gods & Kings we made a change so that embarked land units could stack with naval units, because there was a lot of congestion out in the seas. So, there were definitely issues, but I’m still a big fan of one unit per tile. I think it improves the combat in so many ways, there’s so much more tactical maneuvering and positioning.”
Jon Shafer had posted an essay of lessons learned in making Civ V, and the one unit per tile (1UPT) design in his Kickstarter for At the Gates in which he stated that although he found the combat in Civ V better than previous Civilization games that allowed unit stacking, he admitted that there were problems. Shafer wrote that designing good 1UPT AI was a challenge and that the maps had too many bottlenecks to allow for proper maneuvers.
Speculation aside, the reality was that the congestion caused by 1UPT also impacted other parts of the game. In every prior Civ title it was no problem to have ten, fifty or even a thousand units under your control. Sure, larger numbers meant more to manage, but hotkeys and UI conveniences could alleviate much of the problem. But in Civ 5, every unit needed its own tile, and that meant the map filled up pretty quickly.
To address this, I slowed the rate of production, which in turn led to more waiting around for buckets to fill up. For pacing reasons, in the early game I might have wanted players to be training new units every 4 turns. But this was impossible, because the map would have then become covered in Warriors by the end of the classical era. And once the map fills up too much, even warfare stops being fun.
Volition has had an amazing couple of years. They shipped the disappointing Red Faction Armageddon, then shipped the critically and commercially successful Saints Row: The Third. Shortly afterwards, parent company THQ imploded and Volition was sold in an auction to Koch Media and publisher Deep Silver.
Now, they are developing Saints Row 4 and settling in with their new bosses. Volition spoke to Polygon about the transition and what it means to create a game the tops the gonzo zaniness of Saints Row: The Third.
During the auction process, the team at Volition had to receive potential bidders at its Champaign offices, giving the competition a thorough, unrestricted tour of its facilities, its technology and its projects. Including the still-unannounced Saints Row 4.
“For example, here’s Ubisoft sitting across the room from you,” Boone explained. “And, you’re going through everything in your project. You’re talking about the budget, you’re talking about the staff, you’re talking about your process, you’re talking about your… I mean, everything.
“They’re all our competitors. So, it’s like… it’s strange. One of the ways we reconciled it – at least selfishly for Saints Row 4 – is that we knew that, in the not-too-distant future, we were going to be announcing the game.”
Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli is famously outspoken about the games his company makes and the direction he believes the industry is headed. Yerli spoke to X360 Magazine and said that graphics are “60% of the game.”
“People say that graphics don’t matter,” says Yerli, “but play Crysis and tell me they don’t matter. It’s always been about graphics driving gameplay.”
Yerli told Gamasutra in March that he blamed Crysis 3’s less than enthusiatic reception on “console fatigue” and expectations based on the first Crysis game.
