This is a real thing that comes out on May 18. It is not a joke. Nor is the fact that the publisher’s other game is called Fist of Jesus: the Bloody Gospel of Judas.
Remember the part in Ghost Recon: Wildlands when your character did that really tough thing and said that badass quip at one of the villains? Something profanity-laced and war hard and grim. Maybe it was at the villain that unlocks the cowboy hat. Or maybe the one that gives you the pink gun. Your sidekick/handler chick was there, too, and she said also something really tough and badass and also profanity laced. Remember that part? Remember when your characters tell each other jokes and anecdotes while you’re driving to the next helicopter to take you to the next mission? Remember the cutscenes? Remember how consistent the writing is in Ubisoft’s games and how Ghost Recon: Wildlands is a perfect example of that consistency?
That’s just a taste of what you can expect if Universal ever makes a Gears of War movie. Variety reports the studio hired the Ghost Recon writer for a potential Gears of War movie. His name is Shane Salerno, and you can see it in the credits for Armageddon — yes, that Armageddon — where’s it’s listed as “adapted by” him and another fellow. That’s not language you see very often when a movie isn’t based on a comic book or something. It was the result of arbitration with the Writer’s Guild over a dispute about how many of the nine people hired to work and rework the script would get credit. Five of the nine won the arbitration. So there’s Salerno’s name alongside Tony Gilroy and JJ Abrams.
But to be fair to Salerno, James Cameron has tapped him for the upcoming Avatar movies, so Salerno’s name will be more familiar if those movies ever get made. I give it 50/50 odds. A Gears of War movie, on the other hand, probably has about a zero percent chance of ever getting made. The franchise has declined into irrelevance alongside the Xbox One. Nothing ensures failure quite like tethering your game to a ten-pound brick when you throw it into the marketplace (see also, the Halo sales numbers). Although I’ve been told you can play the latest Gears of War on the PC once you figure out whatever error the Windows Store is giving you this time.
You don’t have to have watched Breaking Bad to appreciate Better Call Saul. But you have to have watched Breaking Bad to appreciate it fully.
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In the usual horror movie, a monster stalks its victims. Will it get them? When will it get them? How will it get them? What even is it? A Dark Song is the inverse of this forumula. The lugubrious soundtrack that would normally promise Something is coming instead promises Something is being steadily approached.
You know how some titles don’t really tell you anything about a movie? What genre it’s in, what sort of tone it will have, what it’s even about? More movies should do that. At the 1:22, this week’s 3×3 about flying cars takes off.
Next week: Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 2
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I own an unwatched copy of Barry Lyndon because it came with a Kubrick collection I bought a long time ago. I didn’t buy it because I felt the need to own a Kubrick collection. I bought it because it was cheaper than buying 2001, Full Metal Jacket, and Dr. Strangelove separately. Those are two movies I love (half of 2001, half of Full Metal Jacket, and the entirety of Dr. Strangelove is two movies worth of movies). Clockwork Orange is quaint for how it was once considered scandalizing and for the synth Beethoven. I didn’t appreciate The Shining until recently. Eyes Wide Shut is like that scene in The Shining where Shelley Duvall sees two furries having sex, but drawn out into a full movie starring movie stars instead of furries. Like everyone else under 80, I’ve never seen Paths of Glory.
There. Now you have my Kubrick bona fides. Continue reading →
In the tradition of renovating their games so that they’re almost unrecognizable (in a good way!), Stardock has pulled away the scaffolding from Galactic Civilization III to reveal the Crusade DLC, available May 4, for $20. If you don’t already have Galactic Civilization III, you can buy it bundled with the Crusade DLC for $40. Let me show you one of several reasons you’ll want it.
The unique problem for television as a medium is that it has so much space to fill. A typical series is at least 10 hour-long episodes. By my math — I’ve worked it out on the back of this Talking Dead transcript — that’s ten hours of television. Ten hours of me sitting, watching, listening, presumably being entertained. Ten hours of storytelling. But the average script simply doesn’t have ten hours of storytelling. So the average television show fills out those ten hours with padding. I can think of very few TV series that wouldn’t be better off trimmed of their fat and compressed into movie-length features.
But then there’s Better Call Saul. Continue reading →
See that screenshot up there? See that big green tree in the middle of Ancient Egypt? Guess what that is. That’s a skill tree. Ha ha, get it? A skill tree. But seriously, here’s what it looks like when you use it (i.e. press the E key).
Don’t be fooled by the dippy name. Immortal Redneck is a surprisingly polished, glossily cartoonish, seriously rogue-like, first person shooter set in a procedurally generated catacomb of handmade rooms. Hmm, it feels awfully familiar. Where have I seen this before? Where have I hurtled weightlessly through this kind of bantamweight Painkiller with a grindy metaprogression? Ah, right, Ziggurat! This is pretty much a Ziggurat clone. Which isn’t a bad game to clone, especially if you bring a distinct voice. Think of this as a Redneck Rampage to Ziggurat’s Hexen. Serious Sam as a rogue-like. Shadow Warrior 2 for casuals, but with even dumber jokes. You’re a redneck mummy who comes anew out of a sarcophagus for each playthrough. And whereas the progression in Ziggurat was a bit too oblique for me, Immortal Redneck has an edge in the longer term metagame. You collect your gold as you play, you die, you put your hard-earned lucre into the skill tree however you want, and you try again. I’m sold. The developer is Crema Games and they’ve certainly done the work it takes for a glossy polished game. Who are these guys? Why haven’t I heard of them before? Oh, right, here’s the answer (bolding mine):
CremaGames is a young indie studio from Madrid (Spain) who has been doing apps for Google Play and App Store since 2010.
Welcome to the PC, Crema. Glad to have you here. Immortal Redneck is available on Steam for $20.
On this week’s “Aren’t Ben Wheatley and Amy Jump Frickin’ Awesome?” podcast, we discuss the movie Free Fire. At the 1:24, we stop pointing our guns at each other to discuss Mexican standoffs.
Next week: The Girl With All The Gifts
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Republican Congressman Mike Bost invoked something called “struggle sessions” last month. While talking to journalists, he explained why he wasn’t holding any town hall meetings, which have provided angry constituents a forum to make themselves heard by their Republican representatives. Bost felt holding such a meeting wasn’t a good use of his time. He compared it to “the cleansing that the Orientals used to do where you’d put one person out in front and 900 people yell at them.” That’s how I learned about “struggle sessions”, a form of public humiliation used in Communist Russia and China. Bost later apologized for using the word “Oriental”, but not for shirking his duty as a representative.
The Three-Body Problem, an award-winning “Oriental” science fiction novel, begins with a struggle session during China’s Cultural Revolution. It is the catalyst for everything that happens in the book, which might include the end of the world. It is also an example of the novel’s uniquely Chinese cultural identity.
You’d never know from its beginnings that despite this identity, The Three-Body Problem is literally universal. Continue reading →
Is eight enough? One of us kind of thinks so. The rest of us had a grand ol’ time. At the 1:26 mark, we run the numbers on our favorite measurements in movies.
Next week: Free Fire
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I’ve been looking for Hailee Steinfeld for a while. I thought I caught a glimpse of her as an unlikely bridge between Kristen Wiig and Guy Pearce in the morose romcom Hateship Loveship. If she was in that Romeo and Juliet that no one saw with a Romeo no one has heard of, I wouldn’t know. I didn’t see it. Could that have been her in Ender’s Game, playing fourth fiddle to Asa Butterfield, something no one should ever have to do? 3 Days to Kill was a showcase for the easy cool of Kevin Costner’s post-leading-man charm, but wasn’t that her giving it a little emotional gravity to offset McG’s McGness?
I seem to recall she might have been one of the lost faces in that dull swirl of girl slop called Pitch Perfect 2. Continue reading →
Sega was pretty coy for how they implied, but didn’t actually announce, that Platinum Games’ Bayonetta would be available on Steam today. So while it wasn’t exactly a surprise when it showed up, it was nevertheless a delight. It’s a great game and certainly my brawler of choice. I’ll take the Palin-esque Bayonetta over the emo Dante or brooding Kratos any day of the week.
However, don’t expect Bayonetta 2 to follow. The original game was published by Sega, who is more than happy to provide for venues other than the console systems in your living room. But Bayonetta 2 was published by Nintendo. Although they’ve flirted with other platforms (Pokemon Go, anyone?), they’re awfully parochial when it comes to non-Nintendo platforms. You’ll probably see Mario Kart on Steam before Bayonetta 2, which should happen sometime around the heat death of the universe.
This week we watch the other winner of the 2017 Make Us Watch Whatever You Want Fundraiser. It’s a 1983 Canadian animated rock fable for adults that was never even released! Let’s see how that turned out. At the 1:13, the podcast drops precipitously into a discussion of falling chandeliers.
Next week: The Fate of the Furious
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