Body stars two very good actresses and Alexandra Turshen. The best part of the movie is when Turshen lets loose with a full throated scream into someone else’s face and the movie just cuts to black. The intensity of her scream and the abruptness of the cut are chilling. They belong in a better movie.
Unfortunately, the talented, winsome, and frail Helen Rogers will duplicate the moment and it won’t work. Partly because Body doesn’t cut away. Mostly because Rogers isn’t up to the full-throated intensity of Turshen’s scream. Rogers’ strength is her expressiveness and, ironically, her vulnerability, both used to powerful effect in “The Sick Thing That Happened To Emily When She Was Younger”, one of the best shorts in the 2012 horror anthology V/H/S.
The problem with Body, one of those thrillers about otherwise reasonable people making bad decisions, is that the bad decisions make no sense. Body hopes you’ll believe that these bad decisions result from the force of Turshen’s personality as the alpha female. But being blandly pretty and merely loud don’t qualify you for alpha status. So the script makes its absurd leaps, while Rogers and Lauren Molina, the other very good actress, gamely do their best to bring you along. It isn’t enough. Some leaps are simply too far to make. Body disappears into a chasm of implausibility.
Body is currently in limited release and will be available for VOD on December 29.
Rockstar is updating Grand Theft Auto V next week with crew activities. The free Executives and Other Criminals patch for Grand Theft Auto Online will add ways for players to enforce their rule on underlings and the city. Along with the usual increase in opulent real estate and clothing, the update lets leaders “hire” other players to be their bodyguards and set incentives like regular pay, experience bonuses, and stat boosts. The boss will also be able to access exclusive co-op jobs and challenges to assign to their hirelings. Finally, these player-run organizations can then muscle in on each other in all-out gang warfare.
Organizations can go head to head in Freemode, with new missions that make full use of the latest executive defense options including new armored vehicle variants, the devastating Turreted Limo and the missile defense systems of the Super Yacht, which also comes with its own suite of supporting vehicle upgrades including the new SuperVolito Carbon helicopter and personal watercraft.
The Executives and Other Criminals update is launching on December 15th for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.
Blizzard deliberately makes new players use terrible Hearthstone cards. Ben Brode, senior game designer on Hearthstone, discusses some of the strategy behind basic card design in the above video. In the presentation, Brode argues that the really awful cards given to new players in the basic set serve to educate. In response to the common accusation that Blizzard handicaps the basic deck to motivate people to pay for the expansion sets, Brode argues that the real imbalance comes from the gap in skill. The expansion decks have weak cards as well, but a more knowledgeable player will know to either avoid using them, or they can turn a card’s weakness into a strength by using it with another card’s special power. The newer player will struggle with the underpowered cards until they learn more about the game through play. Beyond that, Brode argues that the basic deck has very powerful, competitive cards as well.
We give new players Truesilver Champion, Fireball, Frostbolt, Flamestrike, Consecrate. That’s definitely intentional. We want new players to have some great cards. We want high level decks to include basic cards also. Just because there are bad cards in the basic set, it doesn’t mean we’re trying to make sure we give players really bad cards to start out with. That’s not our intention, but we do also want them to feel a feeling of progression and to learn what cards to put in the deck. Some good choices, some bad choices.
Hearthstone, or Baby’s First CCG, is free-to-play and available to download here.
A lot of the Fallout 4 conversation is about how it compares to The Witcher 3. What an odd comparison. The Witcher 3 is high fantasy with a predetermined protagonist in a very specific story that focuses on character development and good writing. Fallout 4 is pretty much the opposite of all that.
The more appropriate comparison is to Xenoblade Chronicles X. They have a lot in common, including a blank slot where you plug in your own hero. They both have an open world, mechs, sidekicks, character customization, an unruly world for you to settle, carefully calculated landscapes, quest list gameplay, stranger-in-a-strange-land storylines that you can pursue at your leisure, crafting, stylized combat.
CD Projekt RED has released the first images of the Blood and Wine expansion for The Witcher 3. In the upcoming DLC, the wandering monster hunter leaves the muddy swamps and dark woods of the base game and travels south to the idyllic environs of Toussaint. It’s a nice change for the gloomy witcher. The Blood and Wine DLC is the second installment of the game’s season pass bundle and promises a substantial helping of new content in early 2016.
Blood and Wine is a 20-hour tale that will introduce the all-new in-game region of Toussaint, will take Geralt to a land untainted by war, where an atmosphere of carefree indulgence and knightly ritual masks an ancient, bloody secret.
Check out the (rather large) new images after the jump.Continue reading →
Join us for an exploration of Christmas horror/comedy. Then, if you have time, stick around for our 3X3 of watches and clocks. It starts at the 1:02 mark.
That’s Eagle Flight, Ubisoft’s first game made for virtual reality systems. Assassin’s Creed’s eagle vision taken to the inevitable end. Now you can be the eagle, soaring over towers, racing, and collecting thingamajigs. No need to parkour about. Just fly using the magic of VR and a painfully contrived backstory.
Set 50 years after humanity’s complete disappearance from Earth, Eagle Flight will feature a single-player experience with diverse missions and collectibles to uncover, as well as multiplayer modes for up to six players.
Eagle Flight will be available in 2016 for PlayStation VR on PlayStation 4, and for Oculus Rift and HTC Vive on PC.
The Game Awards 2015, the Geoff Keighley produced industry awards show, was on last night. If you watched, you may have seen one of the most incredible spectacles that has occurred in a videogame promotion, but it wasn’t anything planned. Double Fine announcing the start of funding for Psychonauts 2 was a long-rumored reveal. CD Projekt RED taking home awards for Best Developer, Best RPG, and Game of the Year for The Witcher 3 was predictable. Even the news that Telltale was making a Batman game with Warner Bros. as well as a three-part series for The Walking Dead: Michonne was just okay. Rocket League finally coming to Xbox One was long overdue. Shadow Complex: Remastered being a free download on PC was a pleasant surprise. An extended preview of Rock Band VR by Harmonix and Oculus including an on-stage boost by Palmer Luckey was endearingly awkward. Repeated segments with back stage guests talking about Star Wars Battlefront were clumsy and annoying. The show as scripted was the usual collection of marketing and fluff. Mostly harmless.
If that’s all there had been to the show, you could easily dismiss it for its obvious commercial ties. Luckily, there was something better than the trailers, announcements, or thank you speeches. The big event was this amazing moment. After awarding Best Action/Adventure Game to Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, and letting Kiefer Sutherland accept the honor in designer Hideo Kojima’s place, host Geoff Keighley took a few moments to publicly chastise publisher Konami.
“Mr. Kojima had every intention of being with us tonight, but unfortunately he was informed by a lawyer representing Konami just recently that he would not be allowed to travel to tonight’s award ceremony to accept any awards. He’s still under an employment contract. It’s disappointing and it’s inconceivable to me that an artist like Hideo would not be allowed to come here and celebrate with his peers and his fellow teammates.”
This was followed with a live performance of “Quiet’s Theme” sung by Stefanie Joosten, the voice actor for the character in the game. The falling out between Konami and Hideo Kojima began shortly after the announcement of the now cancelled Silent Hills, and culminated in the studio head’s apparent dismissal and muzzling despite the publisher saying he is “on extended vacation.” Konami has declined to comment on The Game Awards 2015 dust-up.
The first free content package for Warhammer: Vermintide has launched. Sigmar’s Blessing comes to Fatshark’s fantasy take on Left 4 Dead today. New items, weapon traits, and a host of fixes and balance changes are part of the patch. A new loot altar will appear at the in-game inn, so players can try to influence what goodies they get at the end of a match. According to the developers, it’s the first of many updates planned for the game. Fatshark says they’re working on adding a private mode to the game, so solo players can attempt to take on the hordes alone, as well as a survival mode for endless waves of enemies. Never have rat-men been so generous.
Warhammer: End Times – Vermintide is available on Steam.
Leaving Earth is one of the reasons I have no desire to make games. Sometimes a game design comes along that’s smart, unique, and exciting. Sometimes a game design comes along that convinces me to leave it to the professionals to do the hard work of thinking up this stuff. Sometimes a game design comes along that makes me think, “Oh man, I never would have thought to do it that way!” Joe Fatula’s Leaving Earth, a boardgame about the race into space in the 60s and 70s, is one such game.
After the jump, we choose to leave Earth not because it is easy.Continue reading →
Way back in 1995, Bandai Namco’s Ridge Racer on the original PlayStation featured a Galaga-style arcade mini-game in its loading screen. It was a simple way to give players something to do during their wait. Unfortunately for gamers, Namco patented the idea of presenting an “auxiliary” game while the main game was being loaded, killing the concept for most developers. For the last twenty years, you’ve been staring at loading bars and little orbs filling up instead of playing something because no one wanted to pay Namco for the right to do something else. Some games like FIFA and Battlefront have skirted around the patent by presenting mini-games that were essentially small slices of the main game, but giving players a mini-game that was substantially different from the rest of the code during a loading screen would’ve infringed on the patent.
That patent has expired. As outlined by the Loading Screen Game Jam, developers are now free to get creative during their loading screens. The progress bar can be a game on its own. Loading screen achievements! Loading screen DLC! Loading screen season passes!
Shooting aliens? Fun. Creating functions, pivot tables, and formulas in Microsoft Excel? Not fun. But what if you could shoot aliens in Excel? A budding programmer has melded both worlds in EXLCOM. Redditor “ccruzi” made the unholy union while learning to program Visual Basic. Only the tactical portion of the game is present, but for something that shouldn’t exist, it’s surprisingly deep. There are troopers and aliens, special abilities, loadouts, and even a rudimentary map editor. Tell your boss you’re working on a spreadsheet. You wouldn’t be lying.
Kaboom! Within minutes of starting Just Cause 3, you’ll be blowing up stuff with Rico Rodriguez’ explosive box of toys. You get sticky bombs, grenades, and an RPG to start with, then more fun later as you complete challenges and unlock more gear. Blammo! Speaking of challenges, what’s that text scrolling on the right of the display? Oh, no. This won’t do at all. SexyPanther121 has blown up more of the island nation of Medici. GottaBMe has snapped off more headshots on government troops. Blow4Deth has collected more sports cars. Can you para-glide higher than OmniButt? Yes! Now Jackalacka has blown up more news helicopters. Just Cause 3 doesn’t have cooperative multiplayer, but what it does have are live leaderboards that push you towards more acts of destruction. As if the explosions weren’t enough carrot on a stick to make you do things, they add leaderboards!
Just Cause 3 is available for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Windows PC.
Is this minor Pixar or is it a refreshing change of pace? Does it look good or does it look awful? Is it paced well or is it too slow? Is the first part better or is the last part better? All these opinions are represented on this week’s podcast! But at the 1:08 mark, we come together as if one for a 3×3 of our favorite twins.
There are three reasons to watch The Final Girls, not to be confused with The Final Girl also featuring Alexander Ludwig who’s probably having a heck of a time convincing people he’s in two separate movies this year. The Final Girl, singular, basically has no reasons to watch it. But then there are all the reasons not to watch The Final Girls, plural. Most of them have to do with writing that can’t sustain it beyond a clever premise as a send-up of slasher flicks. This has been a cottage industry since, oh, about 1981, starting with Student Bodies and going all the way up to the brilliant Cabin in the Woods. But as any of those other movies know, one of the worst ways to lampoon a slasher film is by having to play it safe. But Final Girls is conspicuously PG-13 with the way it assiduously avoids gore, nudity, and more than one occurrence of the F-word. The F-word is near the end and it’s pretty awful. “You fucked with the wrong virgin,” our final Final Girl growls weakly.
The reasons to watch The Final Girls are Thomas Middleditch, Adam DeVine, and Angela Trimbur, all of whom are relegated to minor roles playing facile stereotypes, and all of whom knock it out of the park with comedic timing, admirable commitment, and more energy than this script deserves. Angela Trimbur’s fantastic striptease-on-Adderall dance routine is worth the price of admission. Just fast forward to that part. Or wait until it’s on YouTube. Better yet, watch the comedienne’s joyous Youtube videos. Start with this one. Three millions views can’t be wrong. At least on YouTube her dancing isn’t interrupted by a forgettable movie in which less capable actors like Taissa Farmiga and Malin Ackerman carry what I think is supposed to be emotional gravitas. I can’t really tell since they’re both so, well, mild. The heartfelt moments drag ponderously. Their eyes well up with tears. They look at each other. They smile sadly. The moment drags on. I think there’s dialogue here, but it’s hard not to lose interest. Oh, hey, would you believe the movie ends with Taissa Farmiga doing wirework? And can someone please do something with her hair? She’s a dead ringer for her beautiful sister Vera, but plopping a dishwater blonde mop on her head doesn’t do her any favors.
