In this biopic, starring Johnny Depp’s piercing blue eyes and receding hairline, we learn about south Boston, the FBI, and jai alai. At the 1:05 mark, we are absolutely delighted to bring you a 3×3 about moments of ecstasy.
Next week: Sicario
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Join us for our spirited discussion of a star-studded disaster movie. The Britney Spears cue comes in at the 1:16 mark for this week’s 3×3 of musical cues in movies.
Next week: Black Mass
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When Rainn Wilson quips “nap time, motherfuckers” before killing a bunch of zombies, I think he was talking to the scriptwriters, who couldn’t be bothered to come up with a single interesting moment, joke, or concept for Cooties beyond its promising premise. Which is “what if there was an R-rated zombie movie in which the zombies are all kids?” After writing that on the page, the scriptwriters apparently lapsed into a nap, because nothing further is done with that premise. Hence this turgid, cheap, under-written, and over-cast exercise in by-the-numbers straight-to-VOD zomcomedy. I guess we have Simon Pegg to blame. I remember when zomcomedies were written and directed by Dan O’Bannon.
The cast deserves better. What a waste of Alison Pill, who demonstrated fiendishly comedic chops in Snowpiercer. What a waste of Nasim Pedrad, who has elevated a lot of weak writing on Saturday Night Live. And poor Leigh Whannell, who along with James Wan founded the Saw series. Oh, wait, Leigh Whannel is the scriptwriter, along with Glee co-creator Ian Brennan. At least they gave themselves a couple of the best parts. Cooties is especially a waste of Rainn Wilson, who gamely plays yet another bloviating clown. I cannot recommend enough his performance in the uneven but wonderfully odd indie horror movie The Boy (watch it here). Cooties, on the other hand, should be avoided like the plague.
Support Qt3 by watching Cooties on Amazon.com. Better yet, don’t watch it and support Qt3 using the donate button over there on the right.
From the prologue, to its one and only chapter transition, to the prologue again, and to the annoying against-all-odds stand-off that actually ends the game after the credits have already rolled twice, Metal Gear Solid V: Phantom Pain is so very Kojima. And just to remind you, there will be a title card and interim credits every half hour or so.
After the jump, written and directed by Hideo Kojima. Continue reading →
I haven’t read anything about Metal Gear Solid V. Even though I’m pretty sure I’m almost done — well, “done”, if things play out like I think they’re going to play out — I still haven’t read anything about it. I prefer to just play it for the same reason that I prefer to see movies without having watched the trailer.
That was almost a mistake.
After the jump, saved by the patch notes. Continue reading →
TO: All Mother Base staff
FROM: Moist Caterpillar, chief of operations, Seychelles
CC: Quarter to Three
DATE: September 17, 2015…no, wait, I think it’s the 80s
SUBJECT: When the helicopter lands
When you hear the helicopter coming in, please congregate at the landing pad so Tom doesn’t have to run around a godawful labyrinthine tangle of catwalks and ladders to find you so you can salute him. If your morale isn’t improved by hearing Kajagoogoo’s Too Shy playing as the helicopter approaches, and if the only way you’re going to be happy is if you can salute him, then make your own way to meet him. He’s got better things to do. Like some hoo-ha about metal gears and I think nukes or something and also flipping around on his iDroid to set up dispatch missions and such. Anyway, all that other stuff is supposedly more important than learning the layout of an oil rig.
Also, please don’t stand at attention right at the shower entrance while he’s taking a shower. It’s kind of creepy.
Also, quit making such a big deal about the dog and the animals that have been saved, which are mostly gerbils.
Finally, he’d like to apologize for all the men he’s accidently judo thrown to the ground. The icon for hand-to-hand combat is exactly what an icon for returning a salute would look like.
Today’s DLC — free DLC! — for Victor Vran adds a new weapon. Adding a weapon to Victor Vran isn’t like adding a weapon to any other game. In any other game, a weapon is just like a weapon. You probably got a unique one when you pre-ordered from Gamestop, signed up for the online NameOfGame.net service, or just killed a bat. But a weapon in Victor Vran is like a whole new class. Well, half a whole new class. How Victor plays at any given time is based on his choice of two weapons from his arsenal, each with unique abilities and gameplay. Let me explain.
The new weapon is a book. Yep, a book. But he doesn’t hit anyone with it. He reads to them from it. Here’s what the Tome of Souls does when Victor Vran reads to you from it:
The Tome can unleash devastating forays of magical attacks, teleport the caster and hamper his enemies with crowd-control effects. This DLC…includes several legendary Tomes such as the Nekonomicon and Fifty Shades of Slay, as well as a new legendary destiny card for Tome-users.
I can’t tell if Nekonomicon is a [sic] situation or if it’s a joke about Neko Case and H.P. Lovecraft that went over my head. But I did get the E.L. James reference, so I’ve got that going for me.
Warning! Explicit lyrics in this week’s podcast! At the 1:11 we brighten the podcast with a discussion of lens flare in movies.
Next week: Everest
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Hey, look, it’s one of the guys who made Renowned Explorers and Reus!
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One of my complaints about Victor Vran, the really good action RPG in which each weapon is like a separate character class, was that the stakes were so low. Without any meaningful death penalty and without a hardcore mode, you could just plow through the game until you hit the inevitable end (i.e. next level of challenge stars). From my review:
There is no penalty for dying. No experience point setback, no financial ding, no repair costs, no respawned monsters. The worst that happens is that you might have to run back a few screen lengths to where you died. Its an odd oversight that sometimes makes the whole enterprise feel pointless. But when you play in hardcore mode with permadeath, suddenly the game becomes– Oh, wait, there is no hardcore mode or permadeath.
But in the ongoing tradition of patches marginalizing reviews, Victor Vran gets a patch today that adds hardcore characters! From the notes:
Veteran hunters are challenged to create a Hardcore character and play the game without dying. Hardcore characters can only use equipment found by themselves or other Hardcore characters. If your Hero dies, he isn’t lost completely; he loses his Hardcore status and can still be played.
When it comes to designing a game, the folks at League of Geeks clearly know what they’re doing. Armello is smart stuff, shrewdly tuned, paced, and themed. An adorable little kingdom of animated animals is succumbing to evil purple rot (purple is always the color of evil in non-grim situations). Four heroes must scramble to fill the impending power vacuum, either fighting the rot or embracing it. What a great design!
But when it comes to implementing a game, hoo boy. What happened here? It’s rare to see such a smart game so poorly made.
After the jump, through a VaselineCam ™ darkly. Continue reading →
If there’s one thing The Gift gives, it’s a further awareness that Jason Bateman should be playing serious roles. You might know that from movies like Disconnect and especially Bad Words, but you probably didn’t see those. You were probably seeing This Is Where I Leave You and Identity Thief. Nice work. See what you’ve done? It took us this long to get a scene like the one we get near the end of The Gift. This is the most smirkless he’s ever been and it suits him.
Otherwise, The Gift is a mostly forgettable thriller, written and directed by Joel Edgerton. It also stars him as the “is he a psycho or isn’t he a psycho?” guy, who unfortunately bears an uncanny resemblance to Conan O’Brien. If you have nightmares about being stalked by an awkward late night talk show host, this is the movie to freak you out. Rebecca Hall is the stalwart female core of the movie, left home alone during the day in a fishbowl house. The awesome Allison Tolman lives next door, but only to help out with a couple of thankless exposition scenes.
The Gift’s wind-up is strong, and it unspools a delicious cruel streak. But the longer it plays out, the more trying it becomes. Ultimately, a thriller needs to both earn and exploit its twists. The Gift does neither. The twists we can see coming are obvious and simple. The ones we can’t are hastily dropped, as if the movie had surreptitiously picked them up and was examining them while it didn’t know we were in the room, so it quickly puts them down and hopes we didn’t notice. Even the finale is timid. If I were feeling charitable, I could call it ambiguous. Instead, the resolution just gets sort of blurry and indistinct and finally fades out, just like the final shot.
I hate to put it this way, because it’s hardly fair, but Act of Aggression is a competent game that does everything mostly right that I have zero desire to play. It has very little personality and almost no identity of its own. Which, really, isn’t such a bad thing. There are plenty of terrible games about which this is also true. Why should I also be dismissive of a perfectly competent game that also happens to be bland and forgettable?
After the jump, living in the shadow of Westwood. Continue reading →
My friend Gordon Cameron has assembled on his Flickr account an amazing assortment of ads for old-school CRPGs, from back in the days of these things we used to have called print magazines. Do you remember those? If you do, I bet you remember some of those ads. If you don’t, take a look at how we used to have to advertise games before the days of Game Informer articles, IGN exclusives, and YouTube let’s plays!
This week we see a movie that wasn’t appropriately titled because the name Trainwreck was already taken. At the 41-minute mark, we put on motorcycle helmets to discuss our favorite stunts in movies for the 3×3.
Next week: Straight Outta Compton
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