Category Archives: Video Games

Books/Literature, Comic Books/Graphic Novels, Computers/Electronics, General, Movies, Music, TV, Video Games

What will become of the movie industry…?

Stumbled upon this rather grim article written by Tony Maglio and presented on indiewire.com…

Warner Bros Discover lost 2.4 Billion and Lionsgate lost 1.8 Billion and its not even dinnertime

The article rightfully wonders how film studios can survive with such staggering losses and, frankly, I wonder the same.

Looking at this from a longer view, it seems to me this is part and parcel of, of all things, the arrival of home computers and the internet.

Let me explain.

When home computers first appeared they were crude yet began changing the landscape. I’m old enough to have been part of the very first generation to have one way, waaaaaaaayyyy back in the early 1980’s. My first computer was the venerable Atari 800…

Compared to what we now have, the Atari 800 was a laughably crude and for the most part primitive machine. And yet I almost instantly found a use for it. See, I was in high school at the time and the word processing program it had allowed me to write reports and get them printed out (on an equally crude and extremely slow printer) which was an incredible blessing!

No longer did I have to use a typewriter and white out errors or have to start all over again when I made too many errors. With Atari’s Word Processor, I could type and correct the whole thing and print it out only when it was ready!

A truly marvelous innovation!

Of course, the Atari computers didn’t last and soon IBM and Apple computers appeared. Apple was viewed as more “graphic” intensive but the IBM computers seemed to have the leg up. They were constantly improving and, like the mania to buy new iPhones or new gaming computers, one expected each new generation of IBM or Windows based computers to be better and better.

And they were!

And then came the internet, which is essentially phase two.

Now, you could interact with people all over the world. You could communicate via email. You could send files…

When MP3s became a thing, you no longer needed to store your music on CDs or have those vinyl records (by then, cassettes were a thing of the past and, yes, I know vinyl records are making a comeback).

You could keep your music on your computer and soon enough, even buy albums digitally without having to leave the comfort of your home. Suddenly, all those music stores I frequented -some of which were incredibly large!- were gone…

Then came the Kindle and the iPad and, as with music, now you didn’t need to actually buy physical copies of books. You could buy digital copies and buy and read them in the comfort of your home and, just like that, bookstores also became something of a thing of the past.

Certainly in my area there are only a fraction of them around like there used to be!

Alas, next in line were movies.

With the ability to create music and book files, it wasn’t long before digital copies of movies became a thing as well. Further, Netflix appeared and showed the industry that streaming was also a viable option to watching movies and TV shows.

However, people still went to theaters to see the latest releases, so things seemed to be going ok…

Until COVID hit.

Suddenly people were homebound and the studios had to hold back on releasing their upcoming films. In some cases, these films eventually were released but appeared on streaming services very quickly afterwards. It’s fair to say that films such as Wonder Woman 84, No Time to Die, and Tenet, regardless of their quality (and I know some feel they’re not great films at all), would have performed far better had COVID not kept them from being released as they should have been… and those are the three “biggest” films I can think of offhand which were victims of COVID.

Here’s the thing I’ve come to notice after spending all these years watching the ebb and flow of entertainment: Something that is big at one point might suddenly become old hat really quickly.

There was a time disco music ruled. Then, suddenly, no one wanted to hear disco music. There was a time grunge ruled. Then, it was gone.

Movie theaters for so many years have been THE place to go see new films. But with COVID, we stopped going to them en mass. Yes, there are exceptions (Top Gun Maverick and the latest Spider-Man film being two of them) but in general the entire industry is in a funk.

And now that COVID is somewhat a thing of the past (get vaccinated, people!) we’re seeing that audiences aren’t necessarily flocking back to see the latest movies. At least not quite yet.

For we have seen movies appear on various streaming services and some of us figure we’ll just wait a month or two and see whatever film is currently in theaters then.

It’s happened to me, quite frankly, with Black Adam. I’m certainly curious to see it (Dr. Fate is a favorite comic book character of mine and the fact that they got Pierce Brosnan to play the role delights me!) but frankly… I can wait.

How many other people are saying the same thing?

I’ve mentioned it before to friends of mine, but we still don’t know the extent to which the internet and home computers will affect our lives. We’re seeing it, day by day, from the early days when I realized I could use a Word Processor to write my High School reports, to realizing you can have your entire music collection on a small memory card to realizing you can have your entire library (books, comic books, magazines, etc.) on a memory card as well, to where we now realize we can stream or own movies on that same memory card.

Where will it all ultimately end?

I guess we’ll all find out together.

Video Games

Getting Serious? Cyberpunk 2077, Redux

A few days ago I wrote about Projekt Red, the company behind the magnificent Witcher 3, problems with the release of their next game, Cyberpunk 2077. (You can read about that here)

I noted that the game, which has been in development for some seven years and which was heavily promoted and anticipated, was released last week and… things weren’t all that pretty.

My understanding is that the game works well on high/medium high level PCs and is pretty good on the XBox One X (which I have) but with “lower end” gaming machines like the Playstation 4 and XBox One it has a lot of problems.

While these issues are worrisome and one can’t help but think the company ultimately released the game to try to take advantage of the holiday season, I feel like many of the bugs and glitches will eventually be dealt with over the next few weeks/months and the game will stabilize.

However, due to all those problems, Sony has pulled Cyberpunk 2077 from their download store and offered refunds to those who bought it…

Sony Removes Cyberpunk 2077 From PlayStation Store After Complaints

I’ve heard that Projekt Red has also offered refunds and, frankly, the whole situation has moved from one of anticipation and hope for a game that is great to frustration with the company -though not in all parts- with releasing a game that clearly wasn’t ready yet.

As the saying goes, you have one chance to make a good first impression and Cyberpunk 2077 seems to not be doing this.

At all.

But as I said in my original post, I feel like the annoying -and often hilarious- glitches and bugs in the game will get smoothed over in time.

What worries me more are people who say the game itself isn’t all that great to begin with. Even those I’ve read in various posts here and there over the internet who haven’t experienced many glitches and have positive feelings regarding the game seem to agree that the game itself isn’t all that incredible, that it feels like what was promised was more than what was delivered.

As I said before, on the basis of Witcher 3, I had no problem pre-ordering Cyberpunk 2077 and have it already installed -but have yet to play it- in my machine.

I’m in no hurry to play it so maybe I’ll wait until more patches are released and the game’s bugs are better dealt with.

At this point, though, my hopes for the game have been considerably tampered.

A true shame.

Video Games

Cyberpunk 2077, Released Too Soon Or…

1 Comment

…perhaps it was underdeveloped to begin with?

By now, most people out there who are into video games know about Cyberpunk 2077.

The game is easily one of the most highly anticipated releases of 2020, both for the “cyberpunk” concept and the fact that the studio which made it, Projekt Red, were also behind the magnificent (IMHO!) Witcher III game.

At least my thinking went like this: If they do even half as good a job as bringing to life a dystopian future like they did with the fantasy world of the Witcher, then this game has to be a home run, no?

…well…

The game’s release was announced but then delays set in. Finally, the title was released last week…

And then the trouble started.

The game’s graphics turned out to be in some cases quite poor depending on the system used, expending older system’s graphic capabilities and, in some cases, causing crashes. So many complaints were lodged that the studio quickly announced they would release a patch right after the game’s release and were working hard on subsequent patches to fix the game.

This is disheartening stuff, that a studio would release a game in such demand without doing proper quality control to make sure it actually worked well with all systems it was meant to work on!

Sadly, it seems to get worse.

As bad as releasing a game without proper quality control over how it plays on various systems is, this can be fixed with time and with various patches.

What is more concerning are people’s reactions to the story presented within the game.

There were players who noted that, while the game allows you to pick and choose between various different character “types” to play as your Avatar, after the first 20 minutes or so of gameplay these various Avatars prove to have no real impact on the story told… basically, you wind up playing the same game after 20 minutes regardless of your Avatar.

Or, to put it even more bluntly: Your Avatar doesn’t matter.

So why bother giving players the option of creating a unique Avatar?

Worse still, the game that follows has all kinds of glitches on its own, bad A.I. (again, according to several players) and an underwhelming overall story.

If the players are right, these things won’t be easily fixed with a patch.

I can’t help but wonder if with Cyberpunk 2077 history is kinda/sorta repeating itself.

Bear with me here…

When Game of Thrones, the HBO series, first came out, it was an incredible hit. The show benefitted, for at least four or five seasons, from being able to adapt the books of G. R. R. Martin. However, when the producers ran out of Mr. Martin’s books and the stories within them (the final two novels are yet to be released), the show took a sudden downturn, eventually ending in a way many fans of the show found terrible.

With Witcher III, Projekt Red were able to adapt the stories and novels written by Andrzej Sapkowski. However, with Cyberpunk 2077, these same people didn’t have the benefit of adapting any previously written stories. In fact, with Cyberpunk 2077, as was the case with the later seasons of Game of Thrones, they were creating something “new” and, perhaps in both cases, it proved to be too much for them.

I hope not.

I pre-purchased Cyberpunk 2077 solely on how much I loved Witcher III but I have to admit, these early reviews have me concerned.

I’ll eventually play it, when I have the free time.

Though I really hope the critics are proven wrong, I very much fear they may be right.

POSTSCRIPT (12/15/20):

I’ve been looking around some more on various commentary posts and, I’ve noted, there are many people who are pushing back against those who are labeling Cyberpunk 2077 a bust.

The pushback falls into two areas: 1) There are those who say they have older systems and have not experienced problems with the play of the game, that the graphics may have minor glitches -if that- but the gameplay is good. 2) There are also those who say the complaints against the game itself are exaggerated as well, that the game is fun -though there are those in this camp who also note that maybe it isn’t quite as ambitious as it could have been- but that the complaints are exaggerated.

Again: I have the game, I’ve already loaded it into my XBox system and, soon enough, I’ll give it a try.

Frankly, these later comments -and pushback- encourages me.

Perhaps the game was a victim of too high expectations and isn’t quite the disaster many have posted to them it is.

Video Games

X-Box One vs. Playstation 4

For those interested, Thorin Klosowski for lifehacker.com offers a comparison between the X-Box One and the Playstation 4, now that two years have passed since their respective releases:

http://lifehacker.com/xbox-one-vs-playstation-4-two-years-later-1738166534

If you haven’t bought either system and are considering doing so, the article offers an interesting comparison between the systems.

Not a terribly big shock to find (SPOILERS!) they’re very comparable in many respects.

Books/Literature, Computers/Electronics, Movies, TV, Video Games

The Overwhelming Era…

Keza MacDonald offers a fascinating article, posted on Kotaku.com, regarding his frustrations with so many really, really, REALLY big/multiple-hour-killer games being available seemingly all at once:

How Are We Supposed To Play All These Enormous Video Games?

I’ll go Mr. MacDonald one better: It’s not just video games.  We live in an era where we are being absolutely crushed by the amount of recreational material we have available to us.

I know, I know, first world problems.

Still, they’re there.  We have too many TV shows, too much music, too many books, too many DVDs/BluRays, too many (yes) video games, etc. etc. etc. screaming for every single second of our free time.

Used to be that the choices for entertainment weren’t all that many.  When I was young, there were something like five or so channels on TV and the major networks didn’t air all that many first run shows, at least compared to now.  You pretty much had to see these shows when they aired or, a little later, when they were rerun.

There was so little “new” programming available for all the hours of the day that it wasn’t unusual for the local networks to replay old TV shows on “down” times such as the weekends or early afternoons.

Thus it was that I’d discover shows cancelled long before I first saw them.  Shows like the original Star Trek.  The Wild, Wild, West.  Perry Mason.  The Twilight Zone.  The Outer Limits.

Cable came and grew and suddenly you had hundreds of channels and the need to fill the time with something.  So many new shows appeared that it became impossible to watch everything you were even mildly interested in.

A confession: I’m one of the very few people out there who hasn’t watched a single full episode of what is arguably the most popular show on TV today, Game of Thrones.  It’s not that I don’t want to, its just that I never got HBO and, when the episodes were finally available to me via video release, so much had been written/talked (and spoiled) about the various plot points that it was pointless -by that time- to try the show out.

But early on I was damn curious about it and even bought the first couple of books of the series.  These books sit unread on my bookshelf, given up for the same reasons I gave up on watching the show.  Granted, its my fault I was spoiled regarding the show’s plot.  I could have resisted checking out the various spoilers, yet having seen a few -even one!- there became no need for me to play catch up on the rest.

Getting back to Mr. MacDonald, I too have video games I’ve purchased fully intending to play them but getting sidetracked and eventually letting them go, sometimes without playing even a minute of them.

With whatever free time I have I’m nearing the completion of the latest Batman game (XBox One version) but waiting in the wings are The Witcher, Forza, and a few others I may never get to.  And that’s not counting the current Grand Theft Auto game I’ve got on my computer!

By now I think I’ve made my point: We live in an era of oversaturation and we have to be more and more picky about what it is we decide to spend our free time doing.

While it is a good thing we have so many options available for entertainment, I worry about all those things we might have missed while pursuing the new and shiny.  Used to be that certain works, with the passage of time, would be given second or third looks and, over the years, people would realize these sometimes forgotten works were special.

For example, the writings of H. P. Lovecraft.  Never successful in his time, his works were re-assessed over the years and became viewed long after Mr. Lovecraft’s death as truly great works of horror fiction.

Could that happen today and with so many works competing for our time out there?  Could anyone find the free time to re-assess an older work and realize they are holding something truly special in their hands?

For better or worse, I fear that is no longer the case.

TV, Video Games

Atari: Game Over (2014) a (mildly) belated review

I consider myself a part of the first generation of home video gamer fans.  I had a Pong type video game system in the mid-70’s and by 1978 or so had an Atari system (later it would be renamed the Atari 2600 system to distinguish it from later systems).

If you lived and experienced this home video game revolution, you know how incredible it was to have an Atari 2600 system.  Back then, video games were a revolution in the entertainment medium and having an Atari in your home allowed you to continue having arcade type fun outside the arcade itself.  Looking at the system and, in particular, the Atari 2600’s crude graphics today may have modern audiences scratching their heads.  Today’s games are almost hyperreal.  How in the world could anyone like that crude stuff?

Trust me, we did.

As dominant as the Atari system was, it is bewildering that in the early to mid-1980’s the system was suddenly and abruptly gone and Atari, the company that was so much a part of my childhood, faded away into oblivion.

Which brings us to Atari: Game Over, the documentary that on its surface explores one of the great legends regarding the company’s most infamous video game release, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, yet also looks back with nostalgia and sobriety at the rise and fall of the Atari Company.

The legend the documentary explores goes like this: The E. T.: The Extra-Terrestrial video game, released to coincide with the release of the famous Steven Spielberg film, proved to be such a disaster that its failure sunk Atari.  Because the company produced way too many copies of the game, it was ultimately forced to dump the massive unsold stock into a landfill.

Did this happen?  And if so, could the buried copies of the game be found and the legend confirmed?

Using this as a jumping off point, the documentary that follows explores the Atari company and the people behind it.  The man responsible for the E.T. game, Howard Warshaw, proves to be the most interesting person, at least to me, in this documentary.  He talks of coming to Atari in the early days and the success of his very first game, Yar’s Revenge.

One gets the feeling he was something of a “golden boy” at the company during its good times (Yar’s Revenge was the best-sellingest video game Atari would ever release) and became the scapegoat when the E.T. game proved a failure.

In between we follow the people behind the search for the spot where the video games may have been dumped in a landfill in Alamogordo and go through the process of digging said site up (after making it through several levels of bureaucracy).

If there is one complaint I have about this documentary is that it is rather short and could have delved a little more into the life of Mr. Warshaw and perhaps a few others at Atari.

In spite of this, Atari: Game Over is a delightful documentary that explores a video game legend and, in its own way, proves to be a treasure hunt…though the treasure hunted, let’s face it, is trash.

Recommended, particularly if you were there during Atari’s golden years.

Video Games

Best Video Games of 2013…

…at least according to Luke Winkie for Salon.com:

http://www.salon.com/2013/12/30/the-9-best-video-games-of-2013/

Of the nine games listed, I’ve played exactly…three of them.  One third.

Dead Rising 3 is a fun and seriously goofy game.  As mentioned in the review, the idea of riding a steamroller over a hoard of zombies is both outrageous and hilarious.  The game also feels like something between an old style video game and a full on story.  I haven’t reached the end of it yet, but I agree it is a pretty fun ride…at least so far.

BioShock Infinite is a gorgeous looking game that I found pretty fun to play with but which also got rather repetitious.  As for the ending, that was easily the best thing about it.  Having said that, as interesting as the ending revelations were, they didn’t blown me away quite as much as this reviewer.  In some respects the looping ending invalidated the game itself, creating an almost “it was all a dream” type resolution.  I certainly give the creative team points for going for such a bold story line but I can’t help but be stuck on the fact that the game itself got rather repetitious as it went along.  I liked it, but didn’t “love” it.

One might be tempted to compare The Last of Us with the far more goofy Dead Rising 3 to see the alpha and omega of zombie games.  Both deal with people trying to survive through a zombie type apocalypse, but while DR3 has its tongue in cheek, The Last of Us plays its story out very seriously.  At times, devastatingly so.  There are characters within the game you grow to like quite a bit.  There are some that are lost along the way and the emotional impact is certainly there.  The ending is also an interesting one and it made me wonder if the choices being made were appropriate…or a mistake by the lead character.  All in all, I would have to rank this game, at least among those I played (and bearing in mind I am hardly a game “freak” who has had the opportunity to sample everything released this year) among the best of the year.  Haunting, profoundly touching, and at times very exciting.  A downbeat game for sure, but an enjoyable experience.

Video Games

Punishing players for…swearing?!

Fascinating article from Slate.com regarding the XBox One’s NBA 2K14 game, and the fact that swearing by the (human) player while playing the game may result in penalties within the game itself!

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/12/04/nba_2k14_for_xbox_one-punishes-gamers_for_swearing_wtf_video.html

I first heard about this with regard to the XBox One game Dead Rising 3.  It uses the system’s voice/sound recognition in a curious way: If you make noises within your living room, the on-screen zombies you are fighting against will hear you…and therefore know where you are and attack!!!

Anyway, here’s the video related to the NBA 2K14 gameplay (careful if you’re seeing this at work as there is some harsh language!):

The comment by Zanya connected with the article summed up my feelings about this interesting/alarming new element to these video games:

This is sad, terrifying, and hilarious all at the same time.

Video Games

Speak, Atari

2 Comments

While continuing my search through old posts in the previous blog, I ran upon this post that was essentially a link to the following article by Michael Agger for Slate magazine.  My comments are very brief and hardly worth repeating, but the article itself, if you’re roughly the same age as I am and have very fond memories of the Atari 2600 video game machine, is worth a look:

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/the_browser/2009/03/speak_atari.single.html