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Posted on 06.16.05 by beuks @ 10:25 am
So, whaddaya think, WayIPlayers?
A look at his upcoming filmography is instructive: Bloodrayne, Dungeon Seige, Fear Effect, Far Cry. Why, it seems that Boll is in a race with Paul W.S. Anderson (Mortal Kombat, Resident Evil, Alien vs. Predator) for who can make the most shitty movies based on video games. Last year Warner Bros. announced a new policy in which a video game company could be penalized for “damaging the brand” if the game based on a movie gets poor reviews. This was supposedly in reaction to the deservedly bad reviews of Enter the Matrix and Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness (never mind that Tomb Raider was Eidos’ brand to begin with). What if the game companies held movie studios to the same standards? Are there any video game movies that really HELPED their brands? Mortal Kombat, maybe. Tomb Raider, maybe. Wait, oh yeah: Pokémon. Also in the news this week: Microsoft has been shopping around the Halo movie with a stipulation that the studio that produces it must stick to Bungie’s “Bible” of plot and character for the franchise. This is a savvy move on Bungie’s part — here’s hoping the stipulation stands and that the film doesn’t land in Uwe or Paul WS’s inbox. UPDATE: When I was looking for video-game-based movies on IMDB, I found a lot that are in the works that I didn’t know about. Here’s a list of those, for you all to shake your head over: Carmen Sandiego, Crazy Taxi (what?), Deus Ex, Doom, Driver, Metroid, Silent Hill, Spy Hunter, Tekken. Filed under: Beuks and General Comments: 2 Comments |
On a related note, I read on |
Posted on 06.07.05 by beuks @ 3:18 pm
When I played GTA:SA last fall, I got hopelessly stuck on the “Just Business” mission (pictured), in which a bunch of Russians on bikes pursue you through the LA River, just like in 30% of all action movies ever. Then a car carrier careens off an overpass, suggesting T2 in particular. Anyway, I played this mission about ten times, never successfully completing it. I got a little better, and then progressively worse, all because I couldn’t aim for crap. So now I can correct one of my major gaming failures of last fall. Now if only there was a “make headcrabs less like spiders” patch for Half-Life 2. In related news, word came round last week that one particular prefecture in Japan had banned the sale of GTA:SA to minors. Stateside, a similar law is pending in Illinois. Rockstar of course isn’t happy about this, since it represents the possibility of losing some sales. But only maybe. In the US, most of the major retailers already will not sell M-rated games to kids under 17, so from a business standpoint, the law is moot. In general, I don’t really get why regulating M-rated sales to minors is a big deal. To me, the situation is exactly analagous to R-rated films. If a 16-year-old can’t go see Menace II Society without a parent, he shouldn’t be able to buy GTA. Now, the one difference here is that while the ESRB, like the MPAA, enacted a ratings system, the stores were a little slower to decide that M-rated games shouldn’t be sold to minors, whereas the movie theaters enforced R ratings immediately. So now the politcal pressure is on. Filed under: Beuks and PC and PS2 Comments: None |
Although I already own it for PS2, I do believe I’ll be getting Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas for PC. In the first place, it stands to be prettier and to avoid the drawing glitches of the original. In the second place, I am useless at aiming with an analog stick. These are my PC shooter roots showing, folks: I still naturally reach for the mouse and WASD when I sit down at a computer.|
Posted on 05.26.05 by beuks @ 11:28 pm
Filed under: Beuks and General Comments: None |
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Posted on 05.23.05 by beuks @ 10:43 am
While waiting for my laundry to finish up on Thursday, I started playing Final Fantasy I on my GBA. It’d been a long time, of course. I played it through a couple times back in the early 90s when it first came out for NES, but hadn’t touched it until the Dawn of Souls combo of FFI & FFII came out. All of the time I spent playing on Thursday was spent fighting the Goblins (Imps, on the NES) around the first town, to level up enough to go fight Garland. So nearly all of this time was spent repeatedly pressing the A button, since there’s not a lot of strategy involved in fighting Imps. I have no patience for this. I know I’m not alone in that sentiment, but until recently it didn’t matter. When I was a kid, or even when I was in college, I felt ok wasting a half hour in one area of an RPG, fighting the same half-dozen monsters over and over to reach level [multiple of 5] to comfortably move on. Or pressing the A button over and over to scroll through the poorly-translated text one sentence at a time. But these days, my time, and in particular my video gaming time, is at a premium. Therefore I declare a new rule for myself: no new RPGs. I hereby resolve to not play any RPGs that I do not already own. And even then, I probably won’t be playing FFII or Chrono Trigger (which I have because they’re packed with FFI and FFIV, respectively). The one exception I may make is that Nels and I are talking about trying out City of Heroes. And action RPGs like Diablo or X-Men Legends are acceptable, since they tend to be a bit more fast-paced than a Final Fantasy / Dragon Quest type of game. So, for the rest of my life, or until this rule is recinded, I have only a handful of games to deal with. And only three (Knights of the Old Republic, Final Fantasy Tactics and Paper Mario 2) that I haven’t really made any progress in. But this year — this year is the year that I finish FFVII on the PC. I started in 1998. Filed under: Beuks and General Comments: None |
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Posted on 05.18.05 by beuks @ 11:14 am
Just found out about Lemmings for PSP. It’s undated as yet, but I’m pretty excited. I love those little idiots, and it’s been years (nearly a decade?) since I’ve played the game. Strange to think that DMA design, who are the folks behind Lemmings, also started a little franchise called Grand Theft Auto.
In other news, I read a headline on Gamespot today: “PS3 to sell for under $500.” Geez, I hope so, for Sony’s sake as much as my own. I don’t know that I’ll be in any hurry to get a PS3 (or an XBox 360, for that matter), but I worry about Nintendo. They’re taking a risk by catering more to nostalgia than to the males-aged-15-to-24 megademographic. It’s a risk that I applaud, because I really want to download and play Super Metroid on it, but it’s still a dangerous move for third place (2nd place in Japan). Anyway, if the PS3 is not competitively priced, it can only help Nintendo. I think that’s one of the only reasons DS is afloat right now, is the price point being $100 less than the PSP. Filed under: Beuks and Nintendo DS and PS3 and PSP and Wii Comments: 1 Comment |
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