He Never Died isn’t just a smartly written and adroitly directed story about an immortal doomed to wander the Earth. A grimly R-rated story. That’s also sort of a wry comedy. An angels with bloody faces for the post-comic book 21 century. More importantly, He Never Died is utterly inspired casting. The sad and quietly seething Henry Rollins is equal parts Black Flag frontman just chillin’, bewildered Starman, unconcerned burnout, ill-at-ease introverted nerd, reluctant absentee dad reconnecting with his 19-year-old daughter, divine terminator, and exhausted demigod. It’s a pretty tall order. While the gracefully graying Rollins might not be the most comfortable actor, there is not a single moment in He Didn’t Die that isn’t fascinating because of him. He even gets a chance to let loose with those same outraged and outrageous pipes that bellowed “myyyy waaaaarrrr!” back in the day.
Superman movies taught us that invulnerability is inherently dull. It turns out Superman movies were wrong. Henry Rollins and He Never Died writer/director Jason Crawczyk present invulnerability as vulnerable, interesting, and — bingo! — bleakly funny. And it’s always nice to see Steven Ogg let loose from behind the character of Trevor in Grand Theft Auto V. Ogg’s Nicholson-esque mugging is the yin to Rollin’s stony faced yang.
Welcome to the sometime annual awards ceremony for the 2015 Quarterlies! Our panel of judge (not pictured, left) has carefully considered all the nominations and Steve Harvey is about to reveal the lucky winners (not pictured, right), each of whom will receive (not really) a trophy (not pictured). Please take your seats.
After the jump, we’ll skip past the opening musical number.Continue reading →
Dying Light, Techland’s already stuffed-to-the-gills zombie game, which is going to get a bunch of new content in February, is also getting 250 new character levels. That’s not a misprint. 250 levels of skills, unlocks, and experience to grind. The upcoming Enhanced Edition of the game will feature Legendary Levels beyond the original 25. As the linked video shows, some of the perks seem comically overpowered. That’s probably a good thing because anyone that’s maxed out the base game’s levels is probably playing in a manner that’s less serious and more experimental. It’s all about flying judo kicks and bunny-hopping into undead crowds rather than trying to stay alive.
Dying Light: Enhanced Edition will be a free update for owners of the base game on February 9th. A bundled Enhanced Edition of the game will be sold at retail that includes the Season Pass content.
Two out of three Qt3 movie podcasters are absolutely over the moon about the new Star Wars movie. At the 1:25 mark, we’re going in! It’s a discussion of the worst action heroes.
For the first time since I’ve been doing these lists, which is probably ten years or more, over half of my choices are from independent developers. It’s an encouraging development. When you consider the movies chosen by critics on any given year, you won’t necessarily see the most popular, and you probably won’t see the most profitable, or the movies with the biggest budgets. Instead, you’ll see lists that include the best of independent cinema, arthouse releases, or at least the indie branding from the major studios. When the best of the year skew towards people who aren’t beholden to stockholders, it’s a sign that a medium is maturing creatively. Leave financial success, hollow fun, and the pursuit of pure entertainment to the corporations. Leave thoughtful design, innovation, storytelling, and creative impact to the hungry men and women with something to say.
Not that I didn’t enjoy my share of AAA releases this year! There are four in this list. Another five were in the running but didn’t make the final cut (Anno 2205, Mad Max, Total War: Attila, Xenoblade Chronicles X, Star Wars: Battlefront). Another half dozen or so I didn’t play or didn’t play enough. But on the whole, it was a year in which independent developers took the wheel and confidently steered us in exciting new directions.
Overrated is a loaded term. It looks good in a headline. It’s often used for no purpose other than to goad a reaction. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t useful. When I call a game overrated, I don’t mean it’s bad, that the reviews were wrong, that the people who liked it were dopes, or even that I didn’t like it. It just means I’m surprised more people weren’t more critical, that the conversation wasn’t more often about ways the game could have been better.
So if the most disappointing category is a list of games that should have been better, the most surprising category is the opposite. These are games that were better than they should have been. Just as disappointing is about falling short of expectations, these surprising games exceeded expectations and, in some cases, were among the best games of the year.
After the jump, the ten most surprising games of 2015.Continue reading →
On December 21st, Nintendo will release a free update for the Super Mario Maker that will make it easier to search for levels, see how quickly someone beat your levels, and adds a few new items to the palette. The Bookmark Update features a browser-based search engine made specifically for the game. Once you sign in with your Nintendo ID, you can mark creations to play later. The Bookmark site will be available on any device that can surf the web, as well as within the game on the Wii U. You’ll be able to find that frustratingly difficult level so much easier! The update also adds an area on the level menu that shows who beat a level first, and the record for beating the level the fastest. How wonderful it will be to see how quickly that guy in Canada blew through your carefully constructed deathtraps.
In addition to bookmarking and score enhancements, the update will come with new items to destroy other players, or for them to destroy you.
Calling a game disappointing arguably has more to do with me than the game itself. Disappointment isn’t an inherent quality. It can’t exist without some sort of expectation in the first place. In many cases, these games are sequels, or the creations of developers with proven track records, or entries in established genres, or games with promising beginnings. But for various reasons, the central fact about these games is that I had personally hoped they would be better.
After the jump, the ten most disappointing games of 2015.Continue reading →
Matt Peckham joins us from Time.com for a discussion of Xenoblade Chronicles X, the JRPG that isn’t quite like any other JRPG and open-world game that isn’t quite like any other open-world game.
Meet Colorado congressional Representative Jared Polis. He loves League of Legends. The Riot Games produced video from April was meant as a harmless bit of marketing to promote the diverse community of players. Hey, look! Even Congressmen play videogames! Unfortunately, this video along with a fashion makeover landed Polis in some political trouble. Based on his promotional appearances, the Office of Congressional Ethics investigated Polis and found “substantial reason” to believe that he had violated federal laws relating to improperly using taxpayers’ time and resources to participate in the events. On Monday, The House Ethics Committee (the only body legally able to bring charges in this situation) cleared Polis of wrongdoing. Polis’ lawyers had argued that the congressman’s appearances in these events resulted in no material benefit to him, and were no different from any other community outreach or press function, and The House Ethics Committee agreed.
The takeaway for gamers? There’s someone in Congress that geeks out about League of Legends hard enough to get into trouble. In fact, Representative Jared Polis loves gaming enough to work on legislation for it. Go Colorado gamers!
It’s microtransaction time for Destiny and Call of Duty: Black Ops III. Both games are adding new in-game purchasable items, just in time for Christmas.
In Bungie’s Destiny, players now have the opportunity to buy a consumable that instantly boosts one character to level 25. The Taken King expansion came with one free boost that did the same thing, but now players can apply this level-up to another character for $30 more. Sub-class experience will still need to be earned the old-fashioned way, but with this new offering players can bypass all that pesky low-level stuff and get right to the Taken King content. Who really wants to play through a game anyway?
In Treyarch’s Call of Duty: Black Ops III, cyber-soldiers can purchase Call of Duty Points a new in-game currency that can be traded for Black Market cosmetics for versus multiplayer and consumable boosts for the cooperative zombie mode. Unfortunately for fans of pay-to-win, it appears that the new system won’t allow you to unlock game-breaking advantages.
Star Citizen’s crowd-funding has passed the $100 million mark. Along with this milestone in funding, Cloud Imperium Games announced the release of Alpha 2.0 to their backers, featuring first-person shooter gameplay. The newest build of the game includes “open-world” combat interaction in the Crusader planetary system consisting of a gas giant surrounded by three moons and two orbital stations. The latest build offers more gameplay than has been present previously, but it is still barebones in comparison to the stated goals for the final product. According to the developers, the game “will evolve as development continues” towards a final release some time in the future.
While the funding for Star Citizen shows no signs of slowing down, critics of the project continue to level accusations at the company. Game designer Derek Smart maintains that the company is being financially mismanaged, including the possibility that the whole studio is a scam of epic proportions. In a less confrontational blog post, Cliff Harris, the creator of Gratuitous Space Battles and owner of Positech Games, sees Star Citizen funding and wonders if more government oversight is needed for games industry marketing and addiction manipulation.
“They just passed $100,000,000 in money raised. They can do this because individual ships in the game are for sale, even though you bought the game. I guess at this point we could just say ‘A fool and his money are soon parted’, but yet we do not do this with gambling addiction. In fact some countries have extremely strict laws on gambling, precisely because they know addiction is a thing, and that people need to be saved from themselves.”
Access to Star Citizen’s Alpha 2.0 release is available here beginning at $45, but you can spend tens of thousands on the game should you choose to do so.
This week, we discuss the latest historical drama from the director of The Da Vinci Code. At the sound of the Brittney at the 1:17 mark, we leave a message about our favorite voicemail messages.
Matthew Fox and Jeffrey Donovan have earned a lot of goodwill lately. Fox with his efficiently ruthless Indian killer in Bone Tomahawk and Donovan with his treacherous elder son in the second season of Fargo. They’re not given nearly as much to work with in Extinction, but that’s hardly a fair comparison; Bone Tomahawk and the second season of Fargo are two of the most amazing things I’ve seen this year. Extinction, on the other hand, is just an occasionally clumsy zombie apocalypse yarn. So while they’re eminently watchable here, I can’t blame them for coming across a little flat in comparison to what else they’ve been doing lately. They’re each standing in tall shadows they partly cast themselves.
But Extinction is a unique entry in a genre that’s rarely unique. The first distinguishing feature is an unconventional love triangle. It’s Heather has two daddies…who went through an acrimonious divorce and are now the last survivors in a town called Harmony (subtle irony isn’t Extinction’s strong point). Simple and powerful relationships provide the structure, with Fox, Donovan, and the adorably Barrymore-esque Quinn McColgan as the fulcrum between them. Zombies provide the threat, but instead of shambling hordes, they’re lurking memories. They are a second distinguishing feature for how this isn’t your usual undead rot or rage virus. The final distinguishing feature is a crisp winter aesthetic, icy and colorless. The door to an abandoned house cracks open with that same gratifying ice sheet shatter as a car door opened after an overnight freeze. That cold glaze covers Extinction. This is where it lives. It is the opposite of fertility. Mother Nature has turned as harshly indifferent as a drunkenly numb parent.
Spanish director Miguel Angel Vivas’ previous movie, Kidnapped, was hollow home invasion trash with nothing to recommend it but its real-time split-screen gimmickry. Here Vivas shows that he doesn’t need a gimmick. He shows he can be heartfelt, exciting, and unpredictable, if a bit too earnest. Brace yourself for occasional clunkers like “you are so hellbent on surviving that you’ve forgotten how to live”. I can even sympathize with the zombies in that I sure do wish the music would let up. I’m trying to watch a movie here and the soundtrack keeps butting in to explain everything.
