Overall, we’re pretty disappointed in Andrew Dominik’s Killing Them Softly. But as far as disappointing movies go, you could do a lot worse. This week’s 3×3, which starts at the 46-minute mark, is old ladies. That’s right, old ladies.
Next week: Hump Day and Your Sister’s Sister
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In the wake of the Black Friday $200 Playstation Vita sales, this week’s podcast is all about Sony’s handheld. We invite guru Brad Grenz to teach us the ways of the Vita.
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As boys continue to make zombie movies, the female characters will continue to be boy fantasies. Danai Gurira’s character in Walking Dead, Michonne, consists mostly of tight pants and a samurai sword. Even Laurie Holden as Andrea confesses that she loves the thrill of the kill, which we already knew from how quickly she plunges knives into zombies. The most recent [Rec] movie exists only to show a woman in a wedding dress taking a chainsaw to a zombie, even if it’s a bit more than the actress can handle. In the Canadian thriller The Day, Ashley Bell (one of two reasons to see The Last Exorcism*) plays one of the most bad-ass zombie killing chicks you’ll see in any zombie movie with or without zombies, and she makes it worthwhile sticking around for the final scene. Michonne wishes she was that bad-ass.
But what kind of bad-ass zombie killing chick do you get when a woman makes an arthouse zombie movie? The answer to that is April in the very Scottish horror movie The Dead Outside, directed by Kerry Anne Mullaney. April is a closed book behind her needlepoint, her porcelain figures, her hunting rifles, and her steely blue eyes. This last character trait is the exclusive and invaluable contribution of Sandra Louise Douglas, an actress with only this film to her credits. She plays April with a raw unfocused anger and she does a remarkable job revealing something else as the movie progresses.
You have to watch The Dead Outside closely and you have to listen carefully. If the quiet sound mix isn’t bad enough, the Scottish accents can make the dialogue impenetrable to American ears. The cinematography is deliberately dreary. A nighttime scene is, sure enough, shot at night. And it’s slow because it’s about the relationship between the characters rather than April’s prowess with firearms. But if you want a new take on chicks killing zombies, The Dead Outside reveals that a tight outfit can’t hold a candle to the fire in Douglas’ fierce bright eyes.
The Dead Outside is available on Netflix instant watch.
Scrabble, like football and dealing with roommates, is all about controlling territory. Anyone can drop letters on a board to make a word. Bug! Nation! Crass! Veal! Expressly! But you’re not actually playing Scrabble until you’re watching the triple score squares as closely as you’re watching your tiles. QatQi, a new iPad game that understands the importance of the territory under the letters, takes worldplay to unexplored depths.
After the jump, yeah, it’s called QatQi and no, I have no idea what that means Continue reading →
Not since Lincoln has the Qt3 Movie Podcast been so divided on a movie! If you want to avoid Life of Pi spoilers, fast forward to the 59-minute mark for this week’s 3×3 of our favorite movie epiphanies.
Next week: Killing Them Softly
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Last weekend, Guild Wars 2 tried something new with a one-time event that was variously spectacular, clever, and disastrous.
I have the utmost respect for how ArenaNet puts drama, action, and storytelling into its open worlds. But [last weekend’s] battles against the karka on Southsun Shoals were a misbegotten spectacle of epic misproportion. I was there for four hours on Sunday afternoon, and it was four of the worst hours I’ve spent in Guild Wars 2 thus far, because I knew what ArenaNet was trying to do. I could tell how it was supposed to go, and so I was keenly aware of how it wasn’t going.
Read about it in this week’s Guilded.
Considering our differing opinions, the Lincoln podcast pits brother against brother against brother. Not since that movie where Daryl Hannah and another chick and some dude go to the Greek isles has there been such a spirited three-way. Then we start the 3×3 somewhere around the forty minute mark. This week’s topic is exceptional acts of cowardice, such as Dingus stealing Tom’s #1 pick.
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Although the campaign begins with Activision’s usual “hey, we’re going to get super edgy and we might offend you!” disclaimer, Black Ops II is an almost entirely harmless war story, except for a few grim burn victims. Okay, so a skyscraper collapses. But it’s free of any civilian massacres or conspicuously killed children. Pretty much everyone who gets killed deserves it.
After the jump, world conquest, undead mass transit, and bronze leagues Continue reading →
When Sony Online converted Vanguard to free-to-play, I assumed it was being put out to pasture. Apparently not. Apparently someone somewhere was making new content. Because today, Vanguard gets a whole new area.
In this update, the Efreeti have returned and are imprisoning mortals beneath the fiery skies of Jhor Razkur, otherwise known as The City of Brass. Players are invited to join the fight against the Efreeti and their allies inside the City of Brass in this all-new adventure area.
The new City of Brass area can be accessed beyond the eastern walls of Khal. Users will face off against more than a dozen challenging named and boss mobs, earning valuable new loot. Daring souls who best these foes may summon forth The Keeper of Lesser Wishes, a 12-person encounter that is sure to test their strength.
Will someone take a quick break from Guild Wars 2, Rift, Lord of the Rings Online, or World of Warcraft to duck in there and let me know how it’s holding up? Is this new Orangetown in any way nifty? Because I played a bit of Vanguard about a year ago and was happy to discover that it’s just as good as I remembered it, considering it’s a mostly conventional MMO that emphasizes scope over detail. And you really can’t beat the absurdly detailed crafting and collectible card game diplomacy.
Funcom designer Tanya Short introduces the Albion Theatre, which will be open for business in the next update.
…you’ll be able to go inside, and put on whatever kind of show your heart desires! Our goal is to empower players. Open mic night? Sketch comedy shows? Extensive Shakespearean productions? Cabaret? Music video? It’s really an open toolbox — you and your friends can use the Albion to do whatever you want.
Intriguing. If you’ve played Lord of the Rings Online, maybe you’ve seen impromptu bards loitering around Bree, availing themselves of the game’s indepth music system. I was gobsmacked to hear a halfling plucking perfect Zeppelin out of a lute. Maybe this could be like that?
One group at a time can reserve the stage for an hour for a small fee. Anyone who joins that group at any time has free access to get on stage and do almost anything you can think of! Raise and lower the curtain, place out sets willy-nilly, change the backdrop, add visual effects (weather, filth, confetti, etc), adjust the lights, trigger sounds and music… and tadaaaa you can host whatever show comes to mind. We’ve also added the “stagesay” and “act” chat commands, which broadcast your screenplay across a broader radius than the usual “say” and “emote” commands.
We wanted to keep the Theatre as personal and player-driven as possible, with an eye to promotion. Any would-be directors or comedians can also organise their publicity, through the forums, chat, etc. We’ve combined the Theatre chat channels with the London ones for convenience, and we’re sure some of our fan radio stations (there are multiple!) might also help spread the news of the upcoming high-quality productions, and reviews of those past. Perhaps cabals will use their message of the day to track promising young screenwriters?
As much as I think it’s a fascinating idea, as much as I admire the thinking behind it, I can’t imagine Albion is going to be anything but entirely empty after a week or so.
To get a videogame movie made, game publishers traditionally shop their IPs around to the studios. Hey, Paramount, want to make a Daikatana movie? No? What about you, Fox? Columbia/Sony? Miramax? Microsoft went so far as to get a Halo script written first and then they allegedly got some dude in a Master Chief suit to schlepp it around. See how well that worked out? You can’t wow movie studios the same way you wow Gamespot reviewers.
But Ubisoft has a different idea. Go straight for the star power. They did that earlier this year by hitching Assassin’s Creed to Michael Fassbender’s production company and, by association, Michael Fassbender (who might not actually be in the movie, but never mind that).
This week, Ubisoft enlisted Tom Hardy (pictured) to spearhead a Splinter Cell movie. There’s no director yet, and no studio, and therefore no funding. But given Tom Hardy’s rising star, it’s a pretty safe assumption that the money will follow, and therefore a Splinter Cell movie is all but in the can, with Tom Hardy playing Michael Ironsides.
The first step in doing dungeons is wanting to do dungeons. Peruse the merchants lined up under the bright blue awning at Fort Marriner, trading for trophies you’ll earn in any given dungeon. Each merchant has armor relevant at the level when the dungeon unlocks. Furthermore, they also sell weapons and armor that you can only use at level 80, called exotics. This is a significant part of the endgame. Go ahead and check the stats. Furthermore, feel free to try on the armor (right click and then select “preview”). Pretty nifty, huh? Now try to tell me you don’t care about doing dungeons.
Read this week’s Guilded at Gamespy.
Rudy Basso is here to update us on Natural Selection 2 and the now free-to-play Star Wars Old Republic, one of which sounds pretty darn awesome. We also discuss whether you should skip Call of Duty: Black Ops II, which games you need to get when you pick up your Wii U, what the guys behind Fallen London are up to now (or should we say “down to now”?), and which downloadable Rock Band songs are going strong. Finally, no one will be seated during the thrilling finale, in which Tom Chick recants his Halo 4 review!
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You ever stop reading a book or watching a movie because you don’t want it to end? Me either. That’s another example of how books and movies aren’t like videogames. Because I’m at the ending of Assassin’s Creed III — I’m in the final “sequence”, which is roughly analogous to a chapter or episode — and I have no desire to find out what happens at the end.
After the jump, so far, yet so close Continue reading →
The Storm Legion add-on is now live for Rift. The most relevant part of the update for Rift dilettantes like me who haven’t hit the level cap is the new set of skills for each character class. But the most intriguing part of the update is Rift’s new player housing. Developer Trion takes the mostly traditional approach of giving players instances that everyone can ignore. Voila, player housing! Because, short of selling virtual real estate (imagine what a nightmare this boondoggle is going to be), what else are you doing to do?
But the instances in Storm Legion aren’t just places where you drop your trophies. They’re the sites of building sets where you can arrange components you’ve unlocked or crafted. Use them to modify the location or create your own structures, a la Minecraft. For instance, Trion proudly showed us someone who had made an entire Viking ship, and another player who had built a mountain with a jumping puzzle, and another player’s magical resort. Players can visit these instance to admire each other’s handiwork (pictured). Naturally, you can “like” your favorite creations, visit the highest ranked creations, or just sample them at random.
Is there anything relevant to gameplay in the housing? Of course not. This is no more meaningful than coloring your armor. And as someone who’s diligently collecting dyes and parceling them out among his characters in Guild Wars 2, I can completely understand the appeal.
