Top ten first half of 2018
The year is only half over and it speaks volumes that when I sit down to make a list of my favorite ten games so far, there’s no room for Into the Breach, Subnautica, or Vermintide 2, all of which are brilliant in ways I haven’t fully explored yet. I mean, seriously, what kind of list doesn’t include any of those games?
After the jump, that kind of list Continue reading →
Some players of Grand Theft Auto V’s online mode have been seeing the above message flash on their screens the past couple of days. It may look official, but it’s not. Rockstar confirmed that the message is a hoax perpetrated by one or more players that have hacked the system to show custom messages to online players. Sanity check! As much as you may want this to be true, Rockstar’s focus through 2019 is going to be on Red Dead Redemption 2.
In related news, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick told GamesIndustry that Red Dead Redemption 2 matching Grand Theft Auto V’s 100 million total unit sales is not a realistic goal.
“It’s hard to expect anything to perform as well as the most profitable entertainment product of all time.”
We’ll get a real Grand Theft Auto 6 announcement someday. It likely won’t come in the form of a text message for in-game players.
Before we fling ourselves into a discussion about noble sacrifices, we talk about Ghost, Hereditary, and Damnation Alley.
Next week: The First Purge
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That’s Wrecking Ball, the newest playable character coming to Overwatch. The design inspiration is clear. He’s your childhood pet hamster in the plastic exercise ball you rolled around on the floor. In Blizzard’s game the hamster is super-intelligent and bloodthirsty, and his plastic ball is now a combat mech. It makes sense.
The hamster’s name is Hammond and according to the lore he escaped from the same Secret of NIMH type laboratory as Winston before becoming an Overwatch hero. You know what that means! Erotic gorilla-on-hamster fan art coming soon!
You don’t read Deadhouse Gates to read Deadhouse Gates. You read it because you just read Gardens of the Moon and you’re about to read, uh…hold on, let me go look up the next book. Memories of Ice. You read it because you’re reading Steven Erikson’s bloated drawn-out Malazan series and this is the second book of, good lord, ten? There are ten of these?
Domenico Selvo, Doge of Venice, did not bring the fork from Asia to Western Europe. I point this out because Bosnian newspaper, Dnevni Avaz, recently gave him the erroneous credit for the deed in an article spotted by a Reddit user. According to the paper, Domenico Selvo’s wife Theodora had a couple of the eating utensils given to her as part of her dowry, and Domenico Selvo popularized their use in court dinners of the day. But that’s just not true. Theophanu, Holy Roman Empress Consort of Otto II, brought the fork over a few decades before. Not content with just being wrong, the editors of Dnevni Avaz used a portrait of Domenico Selvo from Crusader Kings II. It’s a nice enough image, but come on Dnevni Avaz! You didn’t even fully crop out the game’s portrait border. Nerds, especially European Crusader Kings nerds, see that stuff.
Tapeworms, sleepwalking, claustrophobia, and the shakes. These are a few of the new negative perks available in Kingdom Come: Deliverance. You’ll need to take at least two of these character handicaps to experience the new Hardcore Mode that’s been added to the game. If the medieval life simulator wasn’t difficult enough for you, playing in the new mode will disable the compass, make healing more difficult, and eliminates fast travel among other restrictions. Get out there and die like a peasant!
The From the Ashes DLC for Kingdom Come: Deliverance launches in July.
Fancy an early look at Fallout 76? Modder SK550 uploaded a cheeky facsimile of Bethesda’s upcoming multiplayer survival game for Fallout 4 that recreates the worst of the preview rumors. It enables random nuke attacks, most campaign characters get deleted, and you’ll get randomly spawning NPCs that act like the jerkiest of human players with “l33t-420” style names to go with them! Experience multiplayer Hell in all its glitchy glory! Fallout 4-76 is available now!
If nothing else, this movie has given us a pretty epic Kellywand synopsis.
Next week: our favorite noble sacrifices
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“I don’t give a good goddamn. You get out there right now and wash it. I’m not going to be seen in the car like that.”
I knew my dad meant business because he was cussing.
That’s Sir Lora the Squirrel Knight. His story, and an opportunity to gain him as a companion, is a pre-order bonus for the Definitive Edition of Divinity: Original Sin 2. Folks that already have the regular game on PC will just get him and the Definitive Edition for free when it launches.
Other changes and additions to Divinity: Original Sin 2 coming with the Definitive Edition are outlined in this video from Larian Studios. The developers have adjusted 150,000 words in text and recorded 130,000 new spoken bits of dialog. A “story mode” difficulty is being added that combat-averse players should find even easier than the game’s current “explorer mode” option. A new tutorial area will greet novice players. Returning players will see a ton of balance and performance improvements. Finally, there’s Sir Lora and his Great Acorn apocalypse.
Like Divinity: Original Sin’s upgrade, this sequel’s Definitive Edition on PC will be a separate install. PC owners will have the option of playing both versions. The Definitive Edition launches in August.
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is rolling out a time-limited season pass system for unlocks along with the addition of the Sanhok map to the public game. In a lengthy announcement, the PUBG Corp explained that the Event Pass will be progression-based and will dole out rewards to players as they complete missions and achieve level milestones. Players that do not buy immediately, can still participate and track their progress, then purchase the pass before it ends and all previously attained rewards will be unlocked at that time. A rather generous proposition for hesitant players.
Savvy battle royale players have noted the broad similarities to the way Fortnite handles its Battle Pass system, with most applauding the change. Sanhok and the Event Pass launches on June 22nd.
I wear glasses. I would not survive in the wild. I would be one of the last to see a predator coming. My weak eyes would be culled from the genetic pool. Humanity would be stronger for it. But that’s not how humanity works, at any level. Whether it’s the near-sighted, the simple-minded, the infirm, the sickly, or even the completely shattered, our capacity for empathy compels us to value all human life. The religious traditions that knitted this into our civilization fall away, yet we still feel it keenly. It is a fundamental part of humanity. We believe more in being alive than being strong.
Chloe Zhao’s The Rider is a laconic yet lyrical expression of this idea, found in the barren expanse of South Dakota, among people who have the audacity to sit on top of a thousand pounds of brutish flesh that don’t want to be sat on. It bears a structural similarity to Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler. Mickey Rourke’s character, beset by age, injury, and exhaustion, can no longer do what he’s been doing all his life. His resolution is tragic and perhaps relatable, but facile. Might as well jump, The Wrestler eventually concludes.
The Rider knows the question of survival isn’t that simple. You can contrast the two movies by their relationship to staples. They’re the opening in The Rider and a turning point in The Wrestler, but each making a point about the limitations of the flesh. Both movies are about entertainers who wrestle brute strength into submission as a form of showmanship. But whereas The Wrestler belongs in the world of contrived stagecraft, The Rider situates itself alongside a very different world, an older world, a world that lives in the land, with a relationship to history and nature. The scene of Brady extending his hand to a panicked horse, a gesture combining empathy and dominion, puts him in a tradition going back through the Comanche, the Spaniards, the Mongols, the Macedonians, all of whom built empires on the backs of their powerful horses. But we don’t do empires anymore, at least not with cavalry. Horses, like cowboys, are a relic.
Cory Finley’s Thoroughbreds, a vicious sneer at the lack of empathy among the rich, uses horses as a metaphor. Actual horses are barely in the movie. But Zhao, who obviously appreciates the seemingly indomitable power of these beasts, isn’t interested in metaphors. She’s interested in truths. Before I saw The Rider, the only thing I knew about it was that it starred Rodrigo Santoro, who I’ve seen most recently as Thandie Newton’s cowboy love interest in Westworld. Or so I thought from looking at the poster. Boy, did I feel silly. To understand Zhao’s lack of interest in metaphors, to understand her approach to the usual trappings of moviemaking, acting, and even storytelling, to understand that The Rider is about inveterate truths that define humanity, you need look no further than the cast list.
We know that a bunch of male celebrities can go on a heist. What this movie presupposes is what if a bunch of female celebrities went on a heist?
Next week: Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
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John Deere equipment is finally coming to Farming Simulator. While you were drooling over E3 fodder like Ellie’s kiss in The Last of Us 2, Smash getting Ridley, or Fallout 76 dropping nukes in West Virginia, fans of the Giants Software Farming Simulator games were going nuts for a green and yellow tractor. John Deere’s iconic line of tractors will be in Farming Simulator 19, marking the first time the brand has officially joined the stable (pun intended) of machines in the series.
Farming Simulator 19 is still on track for a late 2018 release.
