It’s pretty clear that Capcom and developer Spark have no idea why those of us who liked Lost Planet 2 liked Lost Planet 2. So they have instead decided to tell a linear story (side quests excepted) about blue collar busywork along the corridors of Hoth. The busywork — I presume this will become shooting at some point — apparently stretches over fifty years, because the game opens with an eighty year old man pinned in rubble reminiscing about stuff that happened fifty years ago, at which point you’re playing Lost Planet 3. While I’ve been chipping ice off things, unsticking frozen valves, and enduring the three loading screens it takes to get to the guy who gives me the quest to kill 20 spiders, I’ve been pondering why Lost Planet 3 has the hero it has (pictured). What went into the thinking for a character design like that? How does a game made by a developer here in the Valley and published by a company in Japan settle on that dude? Then it hit me:
He’s a combination of Toshiro Mifune and Nicolas Cage! He’s the uncanny marriage of Hollywood and Japan. Kurosawa would be proud. Or creeped out.
The early parts of Alyce Kills are pretty grating as pretty Alyce and her prettier friend Carroll descend into a vapid rabbit hole of partying, girl angst, faux improvised dialogue, and more partying. I don’t necessarily recommend sticking around for the twist. You’re better off watching Angela Bettis in May or Charlize Theron in Monster or Beatrice Dalle in anything. In fact, just go ahead and watch Jennifer’s Body. But soon enough, the middle act kicks in. As guilt spirals into self-destructive behavior, the movie wisely focuses on the better actress, Jade Dornfeld as Alyce, doing her level best. Some gruesome special effects make an appearance, along with a fascinating turn from an actor named Eddie Rouse as slightly more than your average drug dealer. In fact, the scenes between Alyce and this drug dealer belong in a better movie, minus the tedium, the thin but forced Alice in Wonderland angle, the caricatures that pass for other characters, and whatever political point is made by having Alyce masturbate to news of war in the Middle East. But then, about twenty minutes before it’s over, Alyce Kills comes alive with some wickedly black humor that shows off what Dornfeld and director Jay Lee could have been doing all along. Where was this movie during the other 70 minutes?
Alyce Kills is available for video on demand. Support Qt3 by watching it here.
As much as I like Payday 2 — What else is any serious Payday fan going to say about this sequel? — it’s nearly criminal how badly developer Overkill has mismanaged the overall experience. I just want to play Payday 2 the way I want to play Payday 2. I just want to grind an easy mission. I just want to quickly jump into a game with other people. I just want to play a practice game to figure out how to mix methamphetamines. Do I use the caustic soda before the hydrogen chloride? I just want to be the baddest bad-ass shotgun toter I can be. But developer Overkill won’t let me.
After the jump, they did it their way. Continue reading →
It’s hard to narrow it down to ten. But nine simply isn’t enough and eleven would be unprofessional.
After the jump, the things you’ll hear in Steelport. Continue reading →
Square-Enix re-releases Final Fantasy XIV. In case you can’t keep the Final Fantasies straight, this is the one that’s an MMO. It’s aptly subtitled “A Realm Reborn” because the informal “version 2.0” makes it sound like something Tron. I’m a card-carrying Lost Planet 2 fanboi, but I have zero hope Lost Planet 3 is anything other than a throwaway sequel. Developer Spark Unlimited, who had nothing to do with Lost Planet 2, is known for a console port of the original Call of Duty and then two shooters you’ve never heard of. For Lost Planet 3, they apparently thought it was important that you see the character’s faces (pictured). Suda 51’s Killer is Dead is the “spiritual sequel” (i.e. published by someone who doesn’t have the rights) to Killer 7 and No More Heroes. Unfortunately, the Suda 51 brand, as it were, hasn’t been a reliable bullet point for a game since 2005. Finally, basketball fans will be delighted that Madden 2.5 is available.
Director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett knocked our socks off with this fiendishly clever horror movie! We hope you’ll see it before listening to us yammer on about how good it is. Until then, you can fast forward to the 1:02 mark, which marks the spot where we talk about our favorite maps in movies.
Next week: Closed Circuit
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Fallen Enchantress’ latest patch, which focuses on making the AI players less passive, has just been released. Go here to read the changes in version 1.3, dubbed the “empires” patch. Or read on for an account of the AI doing things I haven’t seen before.
After the jump, cleaning up the Scrapyard Continue reading →
Karla Zimonja, one of the Gone Home developers, explains those SNES carts you found in the game. I bet you didn’t know they were created by famous people.
At the beginning of Shelter, a game about being a badger mom caring for her badger babies, one of the badger babies is unmoving and greyed out. The other four badger babies snuffle around and follow you as you try to figure out what you’re supposed to do. You can left click to bark pitiably. You can pick up a turnip. Invisible walls stop you from leaving. Indie games can be brutal! But who knew the Shelter developers — previously known for a ruthlessly puzzly platformer called Pid — were this brutal? What a harsh statement about the life of badger moms. Here you are, trapped by invisible walls to mourn a dead baby for all eternity. Maybe it’s a bug. I emailed the developers with one of those annoying “Hey, there’s a bug in your game” emails that must frustrate developers to no end, because sometimes a bug is just a player too dumb to know the greyed out badger isn’t dead, but just faint from hunger and waiting to be fed the turnip lying conveniently beside him. I appreciated the developer’s patient reply.
From that point, Shelter seems like a laidback exploration game to teach you stuff about nature, like how badgers headbutt apple trees to knock the apples loose. I should watch more nature documentaries. Then comes the badger stealth sequence, where you move from cover to cover to avoid an eagle. At least I think it’s an eagle. Whatever it is, it’s terrifyingly big. But I know stealth. I’ve been playing a lot of Splinter Cell. So I wait for the eagle to pass and then I dash to the next– Oh god, no, the baby badger is being carried away by the eagle, WHERE’S TEH ATTACK BUTTON THIS IS THE WORST THING TO EVER HAPPEN IN A VIDYAGAME!
So there are four badgers left. If it’s any consolation — it isn’t — I’m back where I started when I thought one of the baby badgers was dead in the beginning. Now we’re in a dark cave at night and I feel like the surviving badger babies are judging me when they look at me. Dudes, it’s not my fault! I blame The Last Of Us for conditioning me to think stealth rules only apply to the player character.
The artwork is fantastic, stylized and slightly twisted, but washed out for some reason. Is it because badgers live mostly underground and don’t see color well? Or is that moles? I should watch more nature documentaries. But I don’t mind the washed out color because I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more lovely videogame interpretation of a night sky. Check it out, little dudes. I’m sorry your brother/sister isn’t here to see it. I blame Ellie.
Shelter: God Hates Badgers is out next week. You can pre-order it on Steam or directly from the developer for $10.
For my second playthrough of Saints Row IV, I have to get the character just right. But after faffing about in the character builder, I could’t get anywhere near what I wanted. I don’t know what to do with sliders for temple depth and jowl height and rear neck width and so forth. But then it occurred to me that I don’t have to, because the player community does. And they’ve probably created exactly what I need.
Sure enough, I typed “palin” into the search box and there it was! Thanks, bsnead79, whoever you are. Although I don’t appreciate that you made her so old. And why did you figure she wouldn’t wear underwear? This was a potential Vice President of the United States! Do you think Keith David goes commando? Actually, don’t answer that.
Anyway, it’s nothing a visit to the plastic surgeon and my wardrobe can’t fix. Then apply a stylish blunderbuss model for her shotgun. Now to find someplace that sells a red power suit with the skirt and blazer. After that, here I come, Zinyak. Again!
Note: Phantom Leader designer Dan Verssen asked if I would take a look at a prototype version of a game he’s publishing, which is in the middle of a successful Kickstarter campaign. Since the game is basically finished in terms of the design, and since this sort of thing is definitely in my wheelhouse (i.e. horror, tabletop, solitaire!), and since it’s H.P. Lovecraft’s birthday, I happily took him up on the offer. Fortunately, it didn’t suck, so I’m happy to also write about the game here.
The Cards of Cthulhu is a solitaire game with a healthy amount of die rolling as you try to keep the boards from filling up with nasty Lovecraftian creatures. The overall vibe is holding back evil tides pouring through dimensional gates. Anyone who’s played Fantasy Flight’s Arkham Horror knows the feeling. Plug one hole and two more pop open. Before you know it, you’ve got byakhees in your basement, old ones in your attic, and Cthulhu dragging himself out of the Pacific. It’s not easy holding back elder gods. It’s even less easy holding back four of them. This is what happens in The Cards of Cthulhu and I’m pretty sure it’s not realistic. There is no HP Lovecraft where four gods come knocking at once. But I suppose I can make an allowance for a fantasy tabletop game.
After the jump, full house, deep ones over fungi from Yuggoth Continue reading →
This week we welcome Steve Gaynor, one of the developers of Gone Home. Unfortunately, you are not allowed to listen unless you’ve played Gone Home. Which you have done, right? No? Why not? Read this review if you need any convincing. Now go away and don’t come back until you’ve played it.
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Even though it mostly plays like an endless runner, Race the Sun isn’t really an endless runner. Despite the structural similarities, this is no mere jetpack joyride or temple run. Sure, you’re trying to get as far as you can along an infinite track before you screw up and die. But an important difference is that Race the Sun, as befits an unfettered PC game, isn’t just infinite out to the horizon. It’s also infinite left and right, ranging as wide as your reflexes will take you. It’s like skiing down one of SSX’s open mountains. I can go wherever I want, as long as forward is one of the directions.
After the jump, if 2001 and early Dynamix games had a baby… Continue reading →
No One Lives is so obvious and predictable. A couple is passing through. They stop for dinner and get waylaid by a band of murderous thugs. You can see where this is going. The couple is going to have to fight to survive. There will be screaming and stabbings and whatnot.
But it makes an early misstep that doesn’t bode well. There’s a serious problem with the casting. The most psycho of the thugs sits down at the table to intimidate the couple. The thug is played by a pretty TV actor who’s shaved his head to look hard. And the man in the couple is played by Luke Evans. The chiseled god-like Luke Evans who has played Zeus, Apollo, and the best Musketeer. As the lightweight TV actor attempts to cow him, it becomes clear Evans’ is going to have to defend himself. His fingers inch tentatively towards a steak knife on the table.
“Don’t,” his girlfriend says softly. They don’t want any trouble.
“Yeah, don’t,” says the pretty TV actor. “You’re not the type. Trust me. I know the type.”
But Evans, as an actor, is totally the type. He played Zeus, Apollo, and the best Musketeer. He has faced down boys as pretty as Paul Walker in Fast and Furious 6. He would eat this latest guy for breakfast. He wouldn’t take any guff from him and he certainly wouldn’t need to fumble for a steak knife to do it. Who does this movie think it’s fooling?
Me, for one. Because No One Lives isn’t obvious at all. It’s an entertaining danse macabre of reversals and unexpected turns, and it’s cast very well. Among the other actors is the always reliable Lee Tergesen as the aggrieved leader of the thugs. Lindsey Shaw, who voiced the wholesome Trip opposite Andy Serkis in Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, talks about someone getting a “deep dicking” and then engages in a very unladylike fight scene with Bitch Slap’s America Olivo. Michelle Williams doppleganger Adelaide Clemens is a formidable partner in the series of escalating pas de deux mind games.
Director Ryuhei Kitamura got his start in 2000 with Versus, a movie about a bunch of dudes out in the woods fighting each other. Way back then, he showed an eye for choreographed action and gore. No One Lives affords him plenty of opportunity for both. There’s not a character here whose face isn’t sprayed with blood at some point. And that’s about the only thing that’s predictable.
No One Lives is available for video on demand. Watch it here to support Quarter to Three.
