Girl Fight is out today. No, not the Michelle Rodriguez movie. The latest game from Microprose. That’s right, Microprose. The publisher of games like X-Com, F-19 Stealth Fighter, Civilization, Railroad Tycoon, and Master of Orion is publishing Girl Fight for download on Xbox Live Arcade and Sony’s Playstation Store.
Featuring eight lethal ladies each with deadly sex appeal, these girls can devastate their opponents using conventional combat techniques and metaphysical powers. Girl Fight brings intuitive fighting mechanics with slick animations to deliver a fun fighting experience that’s easy on the eyes.
Of course, this isn’t the real Microprose. It’s merely a name fished out of several rounds of acquisitions and slapped onto hilariously inappropriate games like Girl Fight. It may be easy on the eyes (seriously?), but it sure is hard on the brain.
A huge thanks to everyone who participated in our listener lottery/pledge drive, and congratulations to Soren Hoglund, whose pick for our next movie is, uh, not the sort of thing we’d normally see. But this week, we see Julia Louis-Dreyfus and James Gandolfini in Enough Said, which seems deceptively like a fluffy romantic comedy. Don’t hold that against it! The 3×3, which starts at the 1:02 mark, is about our favorite mistaken identities in movies.
Next week: Why Did I Get Married, Too
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You know those movies that rely on the character doing really stupid things to get the plot underway, and then to keep it going? A Single Shot is one of those. But as the story plays out, you discover Sam Rockwell’s hapless backwoods hunter isn’t doing what he’s doing just because he’s stupid. This is a movie about a small, powerless, and deeply frustrated man at the tail end of a series of bad decisions, trying to keep terrible situations from getting worse. Rockwell’s likability and charm occasionally surface, but they’re buried under a layer of pain and confusion, hidden behind his considerable beard and furrowed brow. This is yet another role that establishes Rockwell as a Serious Actor. See also Moon and Assassination of Jesse James.
A Single Shot is an atmospheric slow-burn hillbilly noir that knows noir is at its best when it’s uncompromisingly bleak. In addition to Rockwell, it features a cast of memorable actors (brace yourself for a searingly good Jeffrey Wright performance) drawling the script’s dense hillbilly argot so well that you can’t always tell what they’re saying. But you don’t need to. The inevitable events will carry you along, just as they do Rockwell’s character. You’re not here to untangle the plot so much as you’re here to watch one man dig himself a deep hole. Imagine a Chinatown in the damp hills of West Virginia, but without someone as sharp as Jake Gittes to unravel the threads.
Nothing on director David Rosenthal’s short list of slight films suggests he’d do a movie this dark, languid, rural, and uncompromising. Nothing on composer Atli Orvarsson’s list of credits suggests he could do a score this eerie and quiet. Edward Grau’s gloomy cinematography is spectacular, which is no surprise from the man who shot in the dark confines of Buried (Ryan Reynolds in a coffin), the moody atmosphere of The Awakening (Rebecca Hall in a haunted Victorian manor), and the lush period fashion of A Single Man (Colin Firth in bitchin’ Italian glasses). This is one to stream in HD or hold out for the Blu Ray.
A Single Shot is available for VOD. Watch in on Amazon.com to support Qt3.
The threat to your wallet this week isn’t that Shadow Warrior is a remake of 3D Realms’ 1997 crass “Who wants some Wang?” Asian take on Duke Nukem. Instead, the threat to your wallet is that the guys who made Hard Reset are releasing a hyper-gory, slick, first person shooter/slicer with hearty RPG elements. That happens to be called Shadow Warrior. I’ve played an early build and I’m completely sold on the tech, the concept, and the tone. Also out this week is Alien Rage, a splashy generic sci-fi shooter that makes me want to reinstall Hard Reset.
This week’s mystery threat is a survival adventure called Day One: Garry’s Incident. I had mistaken it for the Source engine mod that lets you put ragdolls in compromising positions that resemble a cross between the Kama Sutra and Porrasturvat. But Day One: Garry’s Incident is something else entirely about an action hero who has to explore Amazonian ruins starting with nothing. Minecraft meets Uncharted?
Finally, it’s time for hockey season with the Fiffy games from EA and Pees 2014 from Konami. Nothin’ but net! Or, as they say in foreign countries, skoaaaaaaalllllll!
The following article is about a mission in Grand Theft Auto V called “By the Book”. It contains spoilers about the game up to that point, but not beyond.
The root is still hanging on right at the gumline. I pull with the pliers while Mr. K screams and gurgles. Am I supposed to pull the tooth straight out, or just keeping yanking it side to side? I shouldn’t have hidden my eyes during this part of Marathon Man. Ah, I see my problem. The controls indicate that I needed to apply a circular motion, like trying to loosen a fence post.
Then, a comment behind me: “Eww.”
It’s my roommate. He has walked into the living room on the way to the kitchen, and there I am, with a pair of pliers plunged into some screaming guy’s bloody mouth, yanking the tooth back and forth. Well, not me, but Trevor, who I’m controlling. Torture by proxy. My official representative is torturing someone while I look on, pressing the buttons to let him do this, and suddenly someone is looking at me. Why does this feel strangely familiar?
After the jump, Rockstar is talking to us, America Continue reading →
What I know about MirrorMoon can be pretty much summed up in a single phrase, which is on the game’s main screen when you boot it up: it’s a “recursive space mystery”. I don’t even know what that means, which is no surprise given that I don’t know what I’m doing, where I’m doing it, or even whether I’m doing it. But here’s a picture of a planet I found with some sort of funky swirling thing going on. It seems like it’s this planet’s version of weather.
The basic concept — I have no idea if this constitutes a spoiler, because I have no idea whether there’s anything deeper down this inscrutable galactic rabbit hole — is that you fly a ship with unlabeled controls to a planet, where a hovering miniature version of the planet serves as a map/control panel, which you then use to activate something to let you do something that somehow involves going to other planets something something something. I think the miniature planet map (a mirror moon, perhaps?) is the recursive part of the game. Everything else is the space mystery.
MirrorMoon is available now on Steam. Let me know if you figure it out.
In the pilot episode of TNT’s Falling Skies, Noah Wyle’s character is on the run from aliens. He has to travel light. When you’re on the lam from aliens, you can’t pack a lot. In fact, you can only bring one book. So Noah Wyle’s character soulfully considers whether to bring Jules Verne or Charles Dickens. The show was so awful that I don’t remember which one he chose.
But I know that me and my colleague Bruce Geryk would totally choose Verne, because there’s never going to be a good solitaire boardgame based on a Dickens novel. Geryk and I adore — yes, adore — Chris Taylor’s Nemo’s War, based on 20,000 Leagues under the Sea. We prove it on this podcast with Taylor. We adore it so much that we don’t mind it’s lack of aesthetic appeal or its rough edges or the fact that you can’t play competitively, so it’s not a really good candidate for a Tom vs Bruce article.
And now publisher Victory Point Games has announced Nemo’s War will be getting better production values and refined gameplay under the rubric of their Gold Banner series, which revisits their more popular titles. From their latest newsletter:
By popular demand, Nemo’s War will be first on the Gold Banner playtest table, with [Victory Point Games] boardgames producer, Josh Neiman, heading this second edition project, ably assisted by the game’s original developer, Alan Emrich and VPG co-founder, Stephanie Newland. Chris [Taylor] will be communicating his notes and thoughts to us to charge forward with and we will get the job done with Chris in the loop every step of the way and commenting his thoughts to us as his schedule allows. Expect us to round off some of the wargame edginess in this game’s presentation to make it more friendly and accessible to a broader market, but the great narrative and tension-filled solitaire gameplay will remain, of course!
The Gold Banner version of Nemo’s War will be out not soon enough.
I never thought I would type the following words: Maybe I’ve been playing too much Saints Row IV. Because when I read that the latest DLC for Metro Last Light includes a bicycle shotgun, it didn’t occur to me it was a shotgun made from bicycle parts. But that’s exactly the design by Alexandre Bannwarth from New Zealand, whose “design your own weapon” contest submission was chosen by Metro developer 4A to be part of the latest DLC.
The Developer’s Pack DLC also includes a shooting range with challenges for each weapon, a spider’s nest level with a new flamethrower, and an AI arena where you can set up battles. It’s available for $4 on its own, or as the third of four sets of DLC included in the season’s pass.
How can we not talk about Grand Theft Auto V? I mean, seriously, come on? What else were we going to do? Talk about the new Metro Last Light DLC? But don’t worry, we only talk about the very early parts of GTA V! Then we force ourselves to talk about Godus, Arma 3, A Machine for Pigs, and Rayman Legends.
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For the following press release, imagine Sam Kinison’s voice and his intermittent screaming:
Let’s Sing and Dance combines singing and dancing at the same time. Featuring songs such as Like A G6 by Far East Movement, LMFAO’s Party Rock Anthem or Moves Like Jagger by Maroon 5 (feat. Christina Aguilera), up to two players can dance to professional choreographies to their favorite super hits, while an unlimited number of singers can support them in the background. Using Kinect for Xbox 360, Let’s Sing and Dance scores the players’ dance moves as well as their singing performances.
Let’s Sing and Dance is out October 9th for Xboxs with Kinect. It’s ten dollars. And just to clarify, they don’t pay you the ten dollars.
The problem with eco-terrorists is that they’re just misunderstood by the people trying to infiltrate them. That’s the premise of Zal Batmanglij’s The East, a less interesting but more lavishly cast reskinning of Sound of My Voice, which was about time travel instead of eco-terrorism. Guess which movie is more preposterous. Nope. Guess again.
These eco-terrorists are played by hale good-looking actors pretending to be filthy hippies, or at least rapscallions from some carefree place where people don’t wash their hair so much. Oregon, maybe. It’s really funny when these eco-terrorists bathe and put on suits so they can go on “a jam”. That’s what they call their operations. Jams. “This is my jam,” one of the eco-terrorists says jealously when another eco-terrorist expresses doubt. On their jams, with their hair combed and their nice clothes, they have the carefully calculated scruffy look of a trendy clothes catalog or a TV series about an apocalypse.
Brit Marling, who was fascinatingly cryptic as the guru in Sound of My Voice, just seems lost. She seems equally lost whether she’s kissing Alexander Saarsgaard, kissing Ellen Page, or fishing around someone’s guts with her fingers to look for a bullet. For the conclusion of her character arc, she eats an apple out of the trash in front of her boss, who is played by the similarly lost Patricia Clarkson. Clarkson puts on an evening gown and flies away in a helicopter. Because that’s just what the privileged do. Oh, big pharma, corporate security, and utilities companies! Flying helicopters to parties and throwing away perfectly good apples! You deserve to be eco-terrorized.
The whole movie is trite, from the politics to the performances to the premise. It’s the exact opposite of Sound of My Voice, where Batmanglij’s chief sin was picking the least interesting ending to an interesting story. But by the time The East winds up where it’s going — eating an apple out of the trash — there aren’t even any interesting endings to not be picked.
The East is currently available on DVD and VOD. Watch it on Amazon.com to support Qt3.
The expanse between summer and the holiday season known as September brings movies like The Family. Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer in the witness protection program in France. What could go wrong? Find out or skip to this week’s 3×3 at the 49-minute mark, where we discuss our favorite military commands.
Next week: Enough Said
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When I started playing Grand Theft Auto V, I thought this was where the review would go. But somewhere on the way to Monday morning, it became clear that wasn’t going to happen. Not because I couldn’t get to the end of the story. I probably could. But because I didn’t want to get to the end of the story. I like this game too much to not let it take as long as it wants to take. In fact, I’m not even sure a review will appear this week. I’m pretty far along, but in the tension between wanting to find out what happens next and wanting to luxuriate in Rockstar’s richly realized San Andreas, the luxuriating tends to win out. If there’s one thing Rockstar’s games deserve, whether I like them or not, it’s seeing them through to the end at their own pace.
After the jump, not a review Continue reading →
The wonderful The Wonderful 101 for the Wii U is out this week. Read more here about why it’s wonderful. If you’ve got a Wii U, you can also get Legend of Zelda: Wind Walker in HD. If you know enough to correct me on the title, you know enough to know it’s worth an HD playthrough.
Foul Play, available on Xbox Live Arcade this week, is just another beat-’em-up, but it’s got unique 19th century theatrical style. That goes a long way. Mechwarrior Online is officially live for free-to-play mech-on-mech action after its long beta period. There’s a third Infinity Blade out for the iPad. Metro: Last Light gets another round of DLC called The Developers Pack, which includes a gun sandbox, an AI vs AI arena, and a spider’s nest scenario.
Also, Grand Theft Auto V.
The best thing you can say about Drinking Buddies is something you can say about far too few romantic comedies: there’s a lot of emotional nakedness here. It’s not a conventional romantic comedy, but it hits all the conventional beats in its story about two people who work at a brewery and how they each triangulate with their set of significant others. It might sound complicated, but it’s not. We’ve all been there. You’re with her and she’s with him, and it sometimes bubbles up in the back of your head perhaps something’s backwards. It’s not about hashing it out or making a big complicated deal out of it or turning into some grand dark thing. It’s just happening. Or not. Drinking Buddies has a heady uncertainty in terms of how it unfolds and where it may or may not go.
Director Joe Swanberg — also an actor — gives the actors room to move, to improvise, to exchange gestures, to sit in silence, to just breathe. For better or worse — mostly better — this is a seriously mumblecore movie. Somewhere there’s a producer immensely frustrated that Drinking Buddies isn’t at least ten minutes shorter, because all this extra air is going to confound the people who showed up because Jake Johnson is so funny in New Girl or because Olivia Wilde is hot. But everyone else will be delighted at their effusive effortless chemistry. They both seem to bubble with joy as they work with each other, slipping into an easy back-and-forth as if they’ve been friends all their lives, as if they belong together, as if the camera just happened to be sitting in front of these two people close enough to have their own private wordless language. Johnson is a real natural with this kind of laid back whatthefuckever style, but it’s a delight to see how he carries the more conventionally Hollywood Wilde along with him, almost like slipstreaming. Plus you’ve got the always reliable and eminently watchable Anna Kendrick and Ron Livingston providing back-up. And you’ll even get a glimpse of director Joe Swanberg and Ti West, each unharassed by crossbow bolts.
Drinking Buddies is available now on VOD. Watch it on Amazon.com Instant Video to support Quarter to Three.
