#this is a remake of the very first (i think?) gif graphic i made in 2017

[sirtadcooper]

Her feet on the ground and her heart in the stars.

[elionwriter]

Sherlock Holmes the Awakened: a Review

(SPOILERS AHEAD)

Sorry, sorry, sorry, but I just NEED to talk about this game! I have been a Frogwares Holmes fan since the very beginning and 'The Awakened' was always among my favourite titles. Not to mention one of the games that had scared the wits out of me. So I have to speak about the Remake now.

First and foremost, I think it needs to be reiterated that this game was made DURING THE FU****G INVASION OF UKRAINE! During such dark times, the team kept working on this. I would have supported this game even just for this reason alone.

Now, let's be honest: Frogwares never had the most marvelous graphics nor the most polished of gameplays and this entry is not an exception. I still feel the map system is a bit difficult to navigate (I may be an idiot, but I had the same issue with Chapter 1) but I really appreciated the added help the game gives you when you're recreating a scene, letting you know which passage you got wrong. Last game I found myself changing everything trying to hit the right combination so I really liked this fix.

This needs to be said: the game doesn't feel under any shape or form a product for a new fan. Everything from dialogues to game mechanics sort of take for granted that you've at least played 'chapter one'. Honestly? I'm ok with this, I hate having to always go through nearly identical tutorial stages for games I know inside out (like Pokémon) and I believe that most of not all people who are going to get this game ARE old fans!

I wasn't originally a big fan of the new Holmes and Watson models when the last game came out but....I dunno, they have grown on me. I find myself liking them now for, I suppose, no other reason than 'they are very expressive' and 'I've gotten used to them'. I think it's gotten to the point that these might be my favourite models of the two to date. Please ignore how fickle I am! (In honesty, just to draw a similar parallel, when Roger Craig Smith was first announced as Sonic's voice I hated it and now he's my fav Sonic v. actor)

This game has something.....compared to its predecessor, that makes it less scary. I can't really put my finger on it, but I distinctly remember the feeling of claustrophobia building in me when I was in the Black Edelweiss. Or the sheer jumpscare I got when the sacrificed American detective on the altar had tentacles coming out of it and severing his head making it roll to the ground. I remember almost not wanting to paddle the rowboat under the tree of hanging men in the Bayou. I remember how viscerally sick I felt at the lighthouse by all the gore and blood depicted. This time round.....I just didn't. I'm honestly not sure why this didn't hit me nearly as hard as its 2006 predecessor did!

And talking about comparisons, one thing I'm a bit disappointed they didn't grab the chance to do in this remake was fix the loose ends that were left hanging in the 2006 version. I mean....they still abandoned completely the search for that one Maori servant, what happened to all the people they managed to rescue? Who hired the private American detective that was killed? Why give out the cheap pendants? I know I'm a bit dumb and need extra explaining than what is necessarily needed but...I can't be the only one right? Sometimes you want to be told just a bit more.

Now, getting into the really good bits, that make all of it worth it!

'Chapter One' acted as a 'de facto' reboot of the Frogwares Holmes series, and I honestly think that was for the best. I don't really see where they could have gone with things after 'Devil's Daughter' and their Holmes had changed too much to be the same guy from 'The Silver Earring'...let alone Watson. But like this? They have a fresh, clean slate to start off from and they can rebuild the two mains' relashionship and lore from the ground up in a more strictly consequential manner. And the way they are doing it? I think it's state of the art!

The fact that they poke fun at themselves on certain points like Watson stating: "What about when you used to roll up only one of your sleeves? Did you get bored halfway through?!" I think the Devs themselves realized this was a cringe design choice and I like that they said so out loud.

The meta-conversation they wrote in towards the end, 'because yes, this HAS Happened before and the story still has the same outcome', is brilliant. I don't think I've ever seen another remake that acknowledges that it is a remake, and in the general madness that is mounting in the narrative this makes perfect sense! It adds one more layer of horror and inexplicable to the tale. The villain's warning 'that the Final Problem is coming and Sherlock will fall in the abyss too' is such a powerful way to use Canon. The prophecy is only made more real and dreadful by the fact that this person is aware of what has already happen in a similar but different scenario!

Also, not them using that one quote from 'The Valley of Fear' novel which happens to be one of my all time favourites!

I say, Watson,’ he whispered, ‘would you be afraid to sleep in the same room as a lunatic, a man with softening of the brain, an idiot whose mind has lost its grip?’ ‘Not in the least,’ I answered in astonishment. 'Ah, that’s lucky,’ he said, and not another word would he utter.

I think the thing that has most benefited from the Remake is Watson's character. Compared to the 2006 version, this Watson is a truly compelling character in his own right and this time round he's not just along for the ride. In this version, you simply cannot imagine how Holmes would have done it on his own. Watson was in every way a key component to the solution of the problem and the reason why Holmes didn't drown in madness. That point is driven home by Rochester asking 'How did you defeat me?' and Holmes answering 'I made a friend!'

Much of the narrative in the game was focused on Holmes truly learning to accept Watson's friendship and him as a person when he was still clinging so much to his old imaginary friend. You can see how, at first, Holmes refuses to be honest with the Doctor about what he thinks and feels and it's only as they move forward in the adventure that they both open up to each other. You can see as the adventure progresses that Holmes shifts his desperate cries from 'Jon' to 'Watson' to 'John' and the Doctor goes more and more often from 'Holmes' to 'Sherlock'. Mycroft also points this out when he says that Sherlock 'went from one Jon to another'. But this one, John Watson, is real and there to stay. In the context of a story that happens mostly in the detective's mind, Watson's friendship is really what turns the situation around!

I could add of little tid bits which were so random and on the nose that somehow worked, like the possessed 'Heidi' doll or the fact that you had to actually 'Kill Holmes' with the booby traps instead of avoiding them.

Also, "The director Guygax was randomly killed.....by a doll?!????!?!?! Yeah, let's just walk out of here no questions asked. That's too deep a wormhole even for this f***d up Adventure to go down. I'm sure nobody is gonna ask us questions, suspect or stop us as we go out the main doors!" 😃 -Holmes, probably.

So, yeah, I loved this game despite it not being perfect and my love and support goes to Frogwares more that ever!

[jeremy-ken-anderson]

Ranma Remake

So far I have just one real gripe with the two episodes of the new Ranma 1/2 show I've seen: Akane's fight scenes were just plain better in the original.

Admittedly, the school fight scene from the original show is a fucking masterclass

It was hard to imagine anything topping it. But I'm sad the new fight choreographers couldn't keep up.

Likewise, the original dojo scene is so good, showing the frustrating inability to hit Ranma from an Akane's-eye view to an outstanding score played on violin. The new one is good in a different way, but I do find Ranma's Ninja Vanish insufficiently telegraphed - It felt like it needed more afterimage? Or less? Something felt off about it, and I preferred when we could kind of see Ranma getting out of the way outrageously fast, rather than having her teleport. I think I'd have been more okay with the "teleport" if it'd been from Akane's perspective - We've seen that kind of thing before, for instance when Ichigo first uses his Bankai in Bleach. If it's from the perspective of the person whose eyes can't keep up with the movement, we're not being told this person can teleport. We're being told the POV character lost track of them because they were so fast, which is what we're going for.

There were little moments I missed - Soun's "tracing an hourglass shape with his hands" moment after hugging Ranma for the first time, the delivery-echo of Ranma each time saying, "I'm Ranma Saotome...Sorry about this," and the dub delivery of, "Dad, you're gonna scare 'em spitless!" The speed with which Akane picks up the whole-ass table to use it as a weapon.

But those I don't consider failures. The new adaptation has artistic differences; It's not just a fresh coat of paint on the older show, but a new attempt to adapt the comic. And it's got some really excellent moments. The animation of Ranma when she's just received Kuno's proposal, as rose petals float around her and she turns to dust and blows away in the wind, is top-notch. The look on Tendo's face when he realizes Ranma's female more than makes up for the missing "hourglass trace." I love the bits of floating sound-effect text. Those were animated with love and care.

Also, both Ranma and Akane are cuter in this one. You can more easily believe that they'd fall for each other, get pissed off and swear off the other...and then kinda fall for them again, because this show does a better job than the original at selling each of them as attractive - in form, and in personality, and in...demeanor? There's more humanity in Akane's reaction to losing to Ranma in the dojo, and in Ranma's silent response to that reaction. They both have this layer of emotional vulnerability that the show (and even the comic, usually) didn't make time for, and I am here for it.

In fact they made Ranma so cute that it feels weirder here than in the original show that Nabiki immediately has no interest in him. Kasumi made it very clear that she was out of the running because of her disinterest in anyone younger than herself. But Nabiki was merely hoping this unknown guy would be cute, and then he was pretty fuckin' cute. Maybe she didn't want to mess with the curse business, or he didn't fit her vibe, or maybe she genuinely thought he'd be a good fit for Akane (though that ruins the joke of the two older sisters foisting Ranma off on her).

Honestly what I really want is for the new series to have four seasons. That should give about enough time for all 48 original graphic novels, with no dumb filler. Maybe drop it to three seasons and have a "just the good bits" like the Princess Bride film. Against the first two episodes of the original show, the new series barely treads water in spite of its dramatically improved budget and animation techniques. But that was a really high bar, and on the whole I think the new series did successfully tread water and not drown. I want to see the remake tackle things the old show did horribly, and get to see those scenes made competently.

Show me a well-animated cat fist vs shark fist, and I'll be a happy camper.

[yeahiwasintheshit]

I watched and I really loved the new Suspiria movie from 2018, Luca guadagnino who directed the movie says he sees it less as a remake of the classic movie, and more like when a band covers a song. Which is one of the things I appreciated most about the newer film. It has only the loosest of character and plot similarities with the classic Dario Argento film from the 70s.

Style wise the new movie is very much on its own. It’s quite beautiful in its sort of earthy 70s color palette, and naturalistic lighting. It kinda looks and feels more 70s than the original movie made in the 70s. Lol the Argento film has such a distinctive use of bright vibrant colorful lighting that sometimes make sense sometimes don’t, where Luca deliberately did not even attempt anything close to that, and it’s to the movies benefit. It really feels like a completely different movie, and any comparison is ALMOST not fair, cause both movies are not trying to do the same thing. The Argento film is an almost stylistic exercise in horror... a waking nightmare of exaggerated color, exaggerated gore and exaggerated acting, in a movie with a plot that is very thin, and used to hang gory colorful scenes on. which i also love. Its great, and I like the original for the abstract weirdness it is, but the new one is so completely not that at all. its a slow burn, punctuated with intense graphic violence, told nationalistically, that is building fear, building tension, building a deeply complex plot that is not only about witches, but about power and how it corrupts. how it changes those in power into monsters who do terrible things. it kinda reminds me of dune and the messiah that is birthed into a world that needs to be cleansed. i dont know if any of that is spoilers, or not. or if im gonna spoil anything more, soooo....

the first real violent scene, is done so perfectly. what i really liked about this movie, is that the witches in the movie cast their spells thru dance. which makes sense why they have a dance academy. so we see theres a dancer named olga, who has previously slighted the witches, and is now caught in another room by them. shes alone and scared and she cant get out. so then cut to dakota johnson, shes starting to perform this dance, which was apparently originally choreographed by tildas character. it is this really sharp, rigid, animalistic almost tribal like dance. and as dakota does these wild "modern" dance moves, its edited wonderfully, so that this other woman, olga, is almost being punched and kicked and thrown around the room in sync with the dancing. dakota does these harsh twisting movements with her hands and the girls arm breaks, then another move and her leg gets twisted up behind her head. shes contorted like a pretzel by the end of the dance, but not dead. its horrific! the witches then show up later as shes a pathetic lump on the floor, and use these meat hooks to lift her up. shes later used in the ceremony at the end. its insane and creative and disturbingly wild!

the movies not perfect tho, and tilda swinton in old man makeup was kind of a distraction for me a little bit. i dont really understand why they chose to do that. like for me whenever i see someone in old age makeup it says to me that you are going to see that actor later, in like a flashback or some scene when the character is younger. i was waiting for it and it doesnt come. theres gotta be a reason for it, cause why bother. but we get thru the whole movie and there seems to be no reason... no flashback or tilda ripping her old age makeup off. so it was a little confusing. but it also actually makes me think, maybe there was a reason for it??? idk

for me when i figured out it was tilda in the old man makeup, i was wondering why? and as the movie went on i assumed that we were to infer that yes josef was a vessel for the witches to spy on chloe moritzs character, from the beginning. even before the beginning of the movie. to know all her secrets. to know who she was talking to. when we met josefs wife later in the movie, i thought maybe she was a witch too, and that was how they controlled josef and got information about the girls, maybe? josef also is important because he becomes a witness at the end to mother superiorums ascension. it made me think he has a deeper connection with the witches, maybe thru his wife. so by the end when none of that happened or at least none of that was spelled out, i was a little confused, cause i thought that would have made sense? but none of it happened so maybe it wasnt any of that? and they just wanted tilda to play the old man? idk. you cant make a movie more than what is on screen, but these were the thoughts i was having as i was watching it. it may be deeper or may not... maybe its left vague for a reason. i dont really know.

but that was pretty much my biggest question mark about the whole movie, besides that i was completely invested thru the whole 2.5 hr movie. it didnt feel like it dragged at all. the pacing, while some people may think is slow, i was really into. it made me pay attention to all the scenes. i wanted to know what was happening. i didnt want to miss any piece, so i was focused. didnt pick up my phone once lol

the performances also were really great! dakota johnson as susie bannion, was so good. in my opinion she knows who she is right from the get go. ive seen people say that they think susie comes into the dance academy as an "innocent" someone who is "corrupted" by the witches and is "overtaken" by the spirit or soul of mother superiorum, but i think susie is mother superiorum from the beginning and she comes into the dance academy as almost a spy, someone powerful enough to block the other witches knowing who she is, so she can observe the witches without them knowing. and when she see how they are following the corrupt and power hungry mother markos, she springs into action, in the final scene, to kill mother markos and her followers. which is so creepy and gory and insane! but for us, the audience, we are like the witches, we dont know the extent of susies power at the beginning, we find out what shes capable of as the movie goes on, like the witches do. i didnt see that twist coming, but when it did, i thought that susie has been mother superiorum from the beginning, which apparently some didnt think. so again, i dont know, and the movie doesnt explicitly state. which i do kinda admire that they keep it vague and open to interpretation.

tilda swinton is also amazing. playing 3 roles, as madame blanc, josef, and mother markos. the old man makeup is really good, but its clearly old man makeup, and they didnt really disguise tildas voice, so it sounds like tilda swinton doing a frail old man voice lol she does really do a great job physically as an old man. its a great performance. mother markos is all grotesque makeup and a gross weird fat suit and weird voice, that i suspected it might be her under all that, but i wasnt sure until after the movie. lol her best performance for me, was as madame blanc. her scenes with dakota johnson were great. you sorta get this feeling like blanc is falling in love with susie, but its played like shes afraid of it a little, and almost a little scared of susie. like blanc knows more than the other witches do. idk. i like they kept a lot of it vague. like there might be another chapter in the story possibly? who knows. id love to see a sequel.

its also worth mentioning, that the josef character has a bigger role than it would seem, and is in more of the movie than youd think. i appreciated the sweeter ending, especially considering the orgy of blood and naked bodies in that red cave scene, athe end, before the very ending of the movie. i thought that that ending scene of mother superiorum at the bed with josef, as he finally got the news he wanted, really worked. cause it doesnt end with the cynicism sometimes in horror movies. the real villains were killed in the movie, and now they can start over. like maybe the message is that when people in power become too bloated and disgusting with power, like markos, its time to get rid of them and start with a new one.

anyway, really loved the movie. i saw it last night and im still thinking of it, so that a good sign, when it sticks with you so long, and theres parts that are vague enough to build your own story to, which i like, & its kind of exciting. def worth watching.

[statueofeden]

Eras of L4D2!CATS Art (and Nellis Cats)

(CW: badly drawn blood, gore (its a zombie game haha), mental health briefly mentioned (minimal!).

Hello, I'm Eden. (They/them) I'm 22 years old and been playing L4D2 since it came out for xbox 360 in 2009 (I was 8 - going on 9). I started shipping Nellis when I was about 11. It was in fact my first ship ever.

I decided to make this lil thing because i've seen some interest in my recent post with my Nellis!cats :P.

In 2013, I hated my human art so I decided to design and make as cats so I could draw them easier. I use to use drawcast on my ipod touch.

I would finally get a more stable style and made more of my fav ship.

Later on that year, my mom gave me her old laptop and I got heavily into animation memes and computer digital art.

my first computer drawing:

My first animation:

I was hooked. A few months later, Little kid me decided to play around with an AU.

Heres more info about the AU before we move on:

(AU animation Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsesYjlm_htaAxclwRcBg6uhhjtQEN3OY )

I dropped my first banger of the AU on Dec 14, 2013.

2014-2015:

I was obsessed with drawing Nick and Ellis as cats still. I had made many animations and drawings of them.

Before I was diagnose with BPD, I had an episode and created this gem it like to mention :

I had also dropped this banger way before that (important later, I promise)

I ended the year off with a remake of an old Nellis drawing I made in 2013.

^(2015)

^(2013)

2016 - 2017:

At the end of 2015, I got a graphics tablet for Christmas. Legit my second drawing was Ellis!cat.

Sadly in 2016-2017 I was going through alot and also developed a new hyperfixation on fallout 4. I kinda forgot about l4d2 otherthan a few mentions of it here and there. Honorable mentions of art:

2018-2019:

I was going through alot during this time in my life.

I would redesign my most of l4d2!cats completely. I highly preferred natural colors over the other designs.

L4D2!Cats:

L4D!cats:

Honorable mentions of animations:

2019 - now:

Im still making l4d2!cats content. I adore them still and still plan on drawing them until I cant draw no more.

2021 art:

2022 art:

2023 art:

Remember when I told you to keep the "get out alive" video in your mind. Well, Ive very recently have sketched out a remake of it. (Come see the improvement!)

^(2015)

^(2023)

Welp, I think that's all! I hope you've enjoyed this post! Any questions, feel free to ask! I may or may not have answers.

Some of you may know me, some of you may not. Either way, thanks for reading and sharing the love for left 4 dead with me! I hope to share more soon! <3

[phoenixwatchesmovies]

What I'm Watching 2023: February

And here we go... I hit the image limit this month! 😅

The Neverending Story

This movie traumatized me back when Disney Channel would play it every other weekend, and it continues to do so. It was good to come back to it after too many years.

Vertical Limit

I'm actually surprised I could find gifs for this, tbh, as I didn't think anyone remembered this movie. I liveblogged this one, with some commentary and observations. It was fun.

The Mountain Between Us

Different enough from the book to keep it feeling fresh, though it felt like something was missing. Don't get me wrong, it's good, it's just that so much of the book was internal, and that doesn't translate well to screen.

Along Came Polly

Another rewatch. Nice to know this one still makes me laugh.

Wolf Creek

Hoo boy, this was something else. It owes a lot to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and it was most certainly made in the mid 2000's, right at the start of the torture porn era of horror. Not to say it's terribly gory, just that it's graphic and very, VERY mean-spirited. A tough watch, but I'd watch it again before, say, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

Scream 2

A near perfect sequel, if you ask me. I'm planning on ranting about the franchise in general once I'm finished with it, so that's all I'm saying for now.

The Lost Boys

Yep, rewatch. At this point, it doesn't take much before I'm waxing poetic about allegories and how this is a tragedy in disguise as a coming of age story, and I'm probably going to have a look at the sequels, so expect more about this later.

Evil Dead (2013)

HOLY FORKING SHIRT BALLS, THIS IS AWESOME. At first, I wasn't too sure I wanted to give this a shot, since remakes generally suck and I wasn't too keen on the level of gore I'd heard about. Thank the Dead Meat channel on YouTube for finally talking me into this, because this was one of the most fun viewing experiences I've had in a hot minute. Again, expect a franchise rant!

Scream 3

Can't poor Sidney catch a break?

The Princess Bride

Everybody knows this movie, and if they don't, they should. This is the greatest movie ever made, and I will hear no arguments to the contrary.

It (2017)

HELL FUCKIN YEAH, I ACTUALLY WATCHED IT, AND I'M STILL MAD ABOUT HOW MUCH I LIKED IT! AND I'M PROBABLY GOING TO WATCH IT AGAIN SOMETIME!

Scream 4

What am I going to do with myself when I'm caught up with this franchise?

The Black Phone

Second time around, and I made Sis watch with me. (This would actually make a really good double feature with It Chapter One, tbh...) Solid all around, and I've enjoyed Scott Derrickson's work before, but Finney and Gwen are easily the strongest elements of the movie. I'd take bullets for these kids.

Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

By happy accident, I finally stumbled across the extended version! Which means I got a whole extra hour to cry about everything!

The Evil Dead

I'll save most of my thoughts for a franchise rant, but I'm fairly certain this one is somewhere on my top ten horror list.

And because I can't help myself, our rewatch rewatches this month are:

Labyrinth

The Shining

A Nightmare On Elm Street

###

Now, maybe I'll get around to The Last Of Us sometime in March...

[imsailorpluto]

Island - 아일랜드

thoughts pt xyz, pre-finale

It all started with a few cool gifs on suggested for you page. Then I found the show and watched the first part. Next thing you know, I was reading the old manhwa, it was like discovering oasis in the middle of a desert. At first I was ecstatic but then disappointment hit me and I tried to brush it off. I thought reading manhwa would give me some solid answers regarding drama. Despite the fact it didn't, reading this unfinished masterpiece was extremely enjoyable. There is a new remake of manhwa, which I'm not a big fan of and honestly doubt I'll be finishing it (but you never know, curiosity does wonders if applied constructively).

The thing is, I'm in love with the old graphics of Island. This is it for me. I don't want the reboot. I want the old manhwa to continue where it stopped. That's Island.

If you've meet Pan and Miho through manhwa, then watching the drama might be quite shocking. These two (four??) characters only resemble each other. As a matter of fact, atmospheres these two products bring are not comparable at all. The only consistency that keeps binding manhwa and drama seems to be Johan or John, whatever you want to call him, although even he was wrongfully neglected too many times. He isn't a weak boy who can easily be stopped by someone pulling on his hoodie, and although such depiction does contribute to his cute image, it also contributes to making him look weak. That, he most certainly is not, which is greatly covered by manhwa.

Liking Johan is as easy as breathing. He deserves the world. If that character came to life and asked for anything, my card would fall out of the wallet and start hitting the desk all by itself that instant. No questions asked. The end.

While this isn't an attempt to draw parallels between drama and manhwa, I can't help but think why the writers chose their approach of bringing many tremendous changes. There's so much potential in the story and character development, but that's all. It's just the potential. Miho is regressing as a character as drama continues in pt 2, and so is Pan. And all for the sake of recycling an overused love story.

Just don't mess with the original code if it works, ok?

I can't deal with this pairing. Yes, it was cute at first how Miho and Pan interacted in part 1. They made my heart flutter. It's something about Pan's lack of interest and Miho's character portrayal in part 1 along with her fascination with Pan in those very first episodes that made their dynamics charming. Their toxic interaction tickled my imagination, just like everyone else's. Anticipation of possible romance between these two fit in there perfectly. However, actually going a step further in a way it was executed (in ep 10) feels inconsistent with the previous events.

Can't we have yearning and bond as deep as the sea that isn't romantic? Because their bond was pretty special. She actually needed him to protect her from lust demons. She was desperate at this point. It was either she dies or she hires a "killer" to protect her.

What's wrong with "I'm a half-demon and would kill you but you pay me well so I'm not going to" or "I promised not to let those demons harm you and that alone is the reason I am there for you, don't be fooled". Can't we have a human falling for a half-demon who's been out of touch with his humanity for so long that he doesn't even take Miho's feelings (in development) seriously?

It didn't felt right when Pan pushed Miho's head into the desk in part 1, but something about Miho reaching out to him nonetheless makes all the difference here. That's the point. That's them.

Couldn't writers work more on that toxicity, since that's how their relationship started in the first place? Somehow we got damsel in distress and knight in a shining armor instead, even for a brief moment in ep 10. I love a good romance but the drastic shift from their original selves doesn't sit right with me. Characters went from 2.0 to beta-testing mode.

Appealing to the masses just doesn't seem like a suitable explanation anymore. Someone who is only getting familiar with Island through watching the drama will almost certainly get awfully confused before disappointment hits them, let's keep it real. Wrapping up is rather clumsy and episodes leave impression as if different crews worked separately on filming. Making one slow burner episode in a 12 episode challenge is something most would frown upon. Making more than one slow burner episode while not resolving so many important issues most definitely won't sit right with the audience. Well, it's done. Whether we like it or not.

Then there's Gungtan, a whole mess of a character. Beautiful. Tragic. Broken. Beyond repair. But only on the surface.

While the old manhwa has John in the position of writer's personal punching bag, in drama that special place is reserved for both Pan and Gungtan. Gungtan appears in the remake of manhwa for the first time and his purpose there is killing Pan, apparently. That's as far as I've got, which is really not even half-way through. In drama, however, writers put him through hell and back, for the sake of creating a generic super-villain. It's been implied that his purpose is killing Wonjeong/Miho, but something doesn't feel right about this. Again.

My what will be what now? Honey, can we talk about this? You know I want only what's best for you. Let's have some nice warm tea, I've even baked you your favourite cookies. Let's take a shower, put on some fresh clothes and then we can go to the park and have a little picnic out in the sun. Come on now.

Writers, why couldn't you make a choice on time and stick to it? Why would anyone appreciate this poor and hurried attempt of vilifying? Are we building a complex character who is also a villain? Are we adding some very realistic depths to his character and making him look more human? Or are we making a simple cold-blooded murderer without a proper backstory because there is simply no humanity in him to begin with and therefore this whole narration is useless? What the hell are we doing? We can't do both at once. Because I'm pretty sure accidentally turning him into an actual protagonist of the show in few easy steps cannot be "fixed" by a (useless/pointless) shocking mass murder, preceded by lovey-dovey fabrication pulled out of thin air. Only to bring him back to factory settings from part 1 all over again. I'm taking it as screenwriter's cry for help, nothing more and nothing less. Did that second mass murder even happen? Not in my head it didn't.

Fear of the audience favorizing Gungtan, murderer of the whole religious sect of child abusers, over a forced cliché beauty and a beast love story, between a damsel in distress and a morally enlightened demon-slayer who is half demon himself, is very real. God forbid that happens, of course. Well, it's happening anyways and no cheap trick will stop it. He stole the show, it's done.

We. Love. Gungtan.

May the babygirlification begin. Starting sequence in 3, 2, 1

Leaving manhwa aside, the series had a huge potential to go in so many different directions, without even following original plotline. That's exactly what happened, it went into too many different directions at the same time and ended up being a huge mess difficult to clean up and wrap up. The only thing that makes me cling to it is the genre it represents and what's left of main characters, as each of them has their own well distinguishable charm. I'm loving the series, despite what it turned into.

It's like putting on every piece of clothing you ever looked good in, all at once, at the same time, because, well, you think you'll look even better. And it doesn't work that way. Or buying all the finest ingredients you could find and thinking it will make the food taste heavenly but instead you've got served Rachel Green’s Thanksgiving Trifle, so what do we do now?

All in all, it's easy to conclude even writers got lost in redefining already well defined plotlines, so nobody truly knows what is going on and why. Formulas for success got mixed up pretty badly. Even without taking manhwa in consideration, there's that bitter-sweet taste. Nothing is clear and everything's been mushed. It takes some time for impressions to set, but as time goes by, the less I am happy with the final result.

It's gonna be better next time. Hwaiting!

Pluto's out

[doesyourshipmakeyouabadperson]

hay, this is more me looking for advice, but how do i stop lying to my followers about being proship? there was one point where i drew fontcest (undretale), and i got an anti who harassed me in ask, and sent me a graphic description of their brother killing their hamster. ever since i've been very weary of saying anything, or confirming i ship something cuz i don't want to read something like that again. that, and in general, i don't ship things too hard/go all in with it, at least 1/?

2/? i don't think i do. granted, i draw a bunch of art and post it, but for me that's just general hyperfixation. i'm also ace, and while yes, most ships are romantic or sexual, mine tend to be platonic, or suggestive. and are not as clear cut as to if i ship the characters or not, because even for me, it's up in the air, and i don't know, i'm not good with knowing how i feel about things, i just express myself through art and hope it says all it needs to. i've come up with a sorta tagging

3/4 tagging system, with tags for platonic ships, joke ships, etc, but even then sometimes how i view the relationship changes. like right now, i'm drawing a child and adult character together, most of the time the dynamic i portray is paternal, but other times i want to make it romantic, either as a cope for my own truama, or just because it's been my brain rot for weeks and i want it out of my head to get back to the "clean stuff" and just not post for a while. idk, maybe this is

4/? is all overly complicated, and i've made a mess for myself, but i feel like at this point i've tricked ppl into following or liking my work. because ppl do like my work, and then they send ask like "your art's now tainted for me", but i've been this way since 2016, i've just been scared of getting disturbing irl hamster gore stories again. or i've been told "fuck you for normalizing this", "don't hc this character as a murder pedo", "this feels like grooming", "you know your audience"

5/5 like i don't, idk how old anyone is who follows me, idk if there's children looking at my content. and i can't just make a poll, or check the thousands of followers i have to see if they have their age in their bio, i can't fucking ask for an id before following, i just. idk, this was very long and ranty, i'm sorry, i just don't want to remake my blog again, maybe i'm just dumb and anxious, i don't know. srry this was long, hope you're doin ok (^.^)v

Hello, I delayed answering this for a while since, well, i'm definitely not usually the person people go to for advice so im not used to it lol ❤ /nm

Buuut i mean... I can see why youre upset. I dont think you should have to come out and say you're proship. Being an anti shouldn't be seen as the default. You should also be able to make whatever kind of content you want as long as you tag it properly. If your fanbase is making you feel like you can't, then that fanbase isn't your demographic.

There are actually a lot of decent people out here who are pro ship, and if you choose to be openly pro ship, yes you will get some hate mail, death threats, suibait etc and lose followers, but you will also gain a lot of fans who want to see your interesting takes on different interpersonal dynamics. (Also, the former group weren't really your fans in the first place if they'll be so godawful to you over some pixels on a screen)

And yes it is impossible to police thousands of followers and that quite literally is not supposed to be up to you. Minors on the internet are supposed to be monitored by their guardians. If you put a disclaimer/tag for your content and some dumbass clicks it anyway and doesn't like what they see, that's their fault not yours.

I've also noticed that the majority of people who are pro ship are prone to actually filtering content they don't like, while antis seem entitled and want the creator to do it for them. Its just a better fanbase experience all around in my experience.

As someone who helps run multiple pro ship accs, i understand the visibility can be scary. But I promise at the end of the day you'll feel a lot better for it. Hope this is at least semi-helpful/reassuring idk ❤

[popculturebuffet]

Scottrospective Part 7 :LONG OVERDUE FINALE: Scott Pilgrim Vs The World Film!

Hello all you happy scottaholics! I’m Jake I review stuff and today marks the end of a yearlong journey thorugh the precious little life of one Scott Pilgrim... and my 30th birthday. Go me. For those just joining us since December 16th of last year, my birthday, i’ve been reviewing all 6 volumes of Brian Lee O’Malley’s classic epic about an aimless 24 year old slacker who finds the girl of his dreams and has to both grow up as a person and punch her 7 evil exes into coins if he wants to stay with her. Packed with great art that only gets better with each volume, one of the best casts in comics with all time faviorite characters of mine like Kim and Wallace, and some of the best jokes and action in the buisness, this series is still loved a decade after it bowed out for a reason.  If you want to se the ride so far

LINKS TO EVERY PIECE OF THE RETROSPECTIVE ARE RIGHT HERE IN ONE NEAT PACKAGE. 

So while I COULD have just ended with Scott and Ramona x slashing gideon and riding off into the snowy banks of toronto to live their best lives, I felt it just wasn’t complete without one last major piece. One last ride to see another take on the story that’s just as loved and in fact likely got even more people to read this masterpiece than they would of had it not existed. This film was something I only watched once but on rewatch I certainly will again and again, a film that somehow compresses four volumes of comic (and the outline of the last two volumes) into two hours, lovingly and painstaklingly remaking parts of the volumes while still doing it’s own creative things with it. It felt like the proper ending to this retrospective.

And that’s part of the reason that, despite orignally planning for it to be part of this.. I cut the review of the game from the retrospective.  I still think it’s an excellent game, even if Ubisoft can eat a bag of acid coated barbed wired dicks for a variety of sexually harassy reasons, but while it has plenty to talk about some other time, it just didn’t feel like enough in comparison to the main series and film. I’ll likely throw it up on my patreon with the other suplimental reviews, such as the free comic book day stories, backup comics, and short film made to tie into this one, and if you want to check those out it’s only a buck a month to see exclusive reviews

LINK IS RIGHT HERE I HAVE NO SHAME

TLDR: A great game, just not a work that fit easily into a far more analitcal retrospective. The movie however fits like a glove, though ill still be covering it differently. I usually do my reviews as full recaps with snark and analsys sprinkled in like garlic on some very delciously fattenting bread, but for this flim, having covered a lot of it’s scenes already in a diffrent medium, I felt it was best to break things down more, divy it up into sections that sort of thing. Your still getting what will hopefully be a pretty meaty review it’s just a diffrent format is all. 

Finally before I got started.. I just wanted to thank all of you. These review shave been easily one of the most read things i’ve EVER done. I get new likes on at least one of the reviews a month and i’m not sure that’ll ever stop. You guys have been great with your feedback, you’ve been great readers and it really does my heart good knowing you love this franchise as mcuh as I do and really enjoy my take on it. So with that out of the way join me one last time under the cut as we go to a slightly diffrent snowy tornot ofor one last slugfest under the cut. 

1234! 

The Backstory You Don’t Need to Read the Book For:

The story for Vs The World fittingly starts where this retrospective began a year ago: with the first volume, Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life. Precious Little Life was a hit. The company wasn’t satisfied with JUST having a hit comic though. Comics are awesome and all and what their company was known for but you can’t swim around in gold coins like a porpose and burrow in them like a gofer on indie graphic novel money. And since comic movies were in their second boom period at the time (For the record the other ones to me are the late 80′s early 90′s boom caused by batman and the current decade long one caused by the MCU), making a movie was naturally an easy proposal, and given the graphic novels were set as a 6 part story from the get go, that easily lead to at LEAST a trilogy if not more, meaning if the film took off they could get franchise money on top of their scrooge mcduck box office. 

Brian Lee O’Malley was naturally less enthuastic. While the period DID have some really good comic book movies (Mystery Men, the first two x-men (if directed by a grooming highly unstable monster), the first two spider-men, the first two blades) we also had things like Catwoman, Elektra, the THIRD spider-man, x-men and blade films, so Brian being a bit trepdatious is understandable.  He didn’t put up a fight though for the most primal reason of all:

As Brian himself put it he was a starving artist at the time, as the series had JUST started and wouldn’t be the reliable residual check he could live off of for the rest of his life it’d become quite yet. So even if the film wound up an awful, lifeless action comedy by a director he hated.. it was money he badly needed. It also REALLY makes DC and Marvel, and their respective corprate overlords, look WAY worse when theys till won’t give out those sweet residuals to creators, work for hire or no.. while Oni, a much smaller less compitent company.. had NO issue doing the same for someone way less established than some of the people Marvel’s fucked over. I didn’t know it was POSSIBLE to make Disney look worse, lord knows i’ve never held back and I rely on them for a portion of my own paycheck and fanbase, but here we are. 

Thankfully Universal, who optioned the rights, picked the exact right man for the job: Edgar Wright, himself at the time incredibly fresh faced and having just had his own first major success with Sean of the Dead, a film I still haven’t seen and you may freely boo me for. I’m LONG overdue on that one despite utterly loving Wright’s other works i’ve seen (For the record those would be Hot Fuzz, This Film, Baby Driver and Last Night in Soho, all certified classics and genre touchstones in my eyes). Funny enough Wright was already a fan, having gotten a pre-release copy while working on Sean, and glommed onto doing it, citing, of ALL films Danger: Diabolik! as an inspriation yes folks the same one from the final episode of the original run of MST3K Danger!: Diabolik!, mostly in making sure the film wasn’t even really reality. I’ll get more into how he pulled this off in a moment. 

Wright and O’Malley got along greatly over the long preproduction work for the film, with the two admitting on their commentary track to sending each other mixtapes first. On the same track Wright also admitted to stalling the film slightly so he’d have more to work with, but I can’t blame him there. The first volume is neat and is even adapted prettty much virbeatem.. but there’s just not enough material there for an entire film, and it’d also mean if the film failed we’d never get adaptations of the rest of the work, something Wright smartly sidestepped by simply  making it once complete story. 

He also poured a LOT of love for the works into it: he outright admitted to making sure all the costumes were book accurate, something I didn’t realize but now can’t stop noticing, the framing was similar to the comics, and that the film actually shot at a lot of locations featured in the book like the park Scott and Ramona go to for their first date and Casa Loma, even using the same neighborhood O’Malley’s rathole apartment Scott’s was based on was in for location shoots. It’s very clear Wright wanted everything pitch perfect and succeeded. Gotta love this man.

For the music they orignially planned to have Sex Bomb Omb be cut off before singing every time.. but once they got Beck of all people on board to do the music that was a non-starter.  They also got a song from Radiohead, had broken social scene write the crash and the boys song (wanting a diffrent band for each in universe band, a nice touch) and most intrestingly of all from Metric, who as I went into in the volume 3 review was the basis for Clash at Demonhead with lead singer emily haines in paticualr being the model for envy, contributing one of their b-sides they felt lapsed into accidental self parody which worked perfectly for a patische of them. Their only caveat was to put their version on the soundtrack instead of the one with Brie Larson, which we only got a decade later with this year’s anniversary version of the soundtrack. But I can’t really fault a band for wanting their version on the soundtrack. 

We’ll save the cast for in a second, but as you can tell tons of love, effort and hard work went into this film. And that naturally resulted in box office right?

Yeah as you likely know.. the film tanked. And as much as I absolutely love it and the series it’s based on it’s pretty easy to see why: For starters the film stared Michael Cera. I feel Cera is perfectly cast and a damn talented actor.. but at the time the public saw him more like this:

See like many stars who break out over one movie, in this case superbad, Cera got typecast bad in doey eyed slacker type rolls. As such to many it came off as yet ANOTHER one of those, instead of one that honestly , intetionally or not, deconstructs that kind of character and gives cera more to work with.  The other problem was audience: It’s an indie film that also involves video game styled punch ups. While easy to sell in comic form since indie comics are built on fiinding a niche audience and letting it grow from there, for a wide audience it was likely a harder sell to watch an actor they were already growing tired of punch people in what was essnetially a musical just with fights instead of songs.  As such the marketing was decent but really dind’t know WHO to sell it too: gen x kids who got the deep cut game refrences? current teens who loved cera’s work? This photo of dave collier?

Thankfully the film is easily one of the biggest cases of vindicated by history i’ve ever seen: like many a film home video was VERY kind to Scott Pilgrim, making it easier to share with people who’d be reluctant to see it theatrically and letting the film’s quality speak for itself. Add in the fact the super talented cast all went on to bigger things, meaning fans seeking out their past works would inevitbly stumble on this one and the film has only grown and grown in popularity every year since and rightfully so. The only film I can think of that had a bigger second life like this was the Thing, which went from critically panned for.. some reason to rightfully seen as one of the best horror films period. Also I now want to see scott fight the thing.. not the john carpenter one the fantastic four one. watching ben punch our boy througha wall is just inherently funny to me for some reason. 

So overall a well crafted journey here that while it had a bumpy landing has ultimately ended up happy. So with how we got here settled and squared away le’ts look at what we got here:

The Wright Stuff: You’ve already heard me sing Wright’s prasies quite a bit in this article..

As the film would not be the same without him. One of Edgar Wright’s biggest strength is his visuals: quick cuts, gorgeous intresting shots, and expermenting with the format to tell whatever story he’s telling the way it NEEDS to be.  As such SPVTW might be one of the most comic book looking comic book movies that ever comic booked. 

What the hell i’m on about is that Wright often frames the shots like comic panels, trying to keep focus on one thing, still uses text on screen. He said in his commentary he wanted it to feel like reading a comic and succeeded, getting the feel of O’Malley’s own unique style down pat. Two of Scott pilgrim’s most notable style bits, the big bits of text that show up for transitions or gags such as this

Or my beloved little caption boxes that give a characters name, age and some funny bit of text both make the jump to the film, using Bill Hader’s narration for the former when needed. Often it’s hard to translate visual elements like that to screen for comic book adaptations like that, but Wright makes it look effortless. 

The fights keep this too with the wavey lines, said outloud sound effects and what not seen in the comics coming to the screen, giving the fights a nice dynamic feel that no other film sense has captured. Their fast paced, frentic and fun, matching the energy of the comics while still letting the actors and their stunt doubles work speak for itself. The actors trained every day for these scenes and it shows, taking the skinny tree of a person that is Micheal Cera and making him look like the excellent combatant Scott is. 

As said before Wright went the extra mile to insure the film was accurate to the books and used a mixture of sets and real locations that look like they were peeled right off the page. This also nicely grounds the film the same way the slice of life elements did in the book: it’s still not clearly our world, but the emotional attachment to the cast and the real world settings help anchor it. 

And since we’re talking about the cast....

Stacked Actors:

One of VS The World’s most notable attributes is just how PACKED the cast is. At the time most of them were unknowns with only MIcheal Cera really being a bonified star. But as proof of how much of an eye Wright has for talent, the bulk of them would go on to bigger and better things, with some being bonafied supestars now.  Not only that a lot of the character changes, for better and for worse feel dependant on their performances. While Wright certainly wrote everyone well, without the cast really selling it it woudln’t have sizzled the way it does. So i’m combining my examination of what changes the characteres went through in the adaptation process with a little bit of “where are they now” for funzies. 

Starting us off we have our hero ladies and Gentleman Scott Pilgrim. Scott is played by Michael Cera and as outlined Cera was the big name of the cast.. and also quickly had his career burn up due to people getting tired of him. As such it’s not a huge shock his career since has mostly been smaller rolls, with the more notable ones being a return to his star making arrested development roll for some mediocre followup seasons and vocing robin in the lego batman movie, which slaps. He seems content just doing work here and there and as long as he dosen’t go away entirely i’m fine with that. I feel the backlash was overblown and Cera is a talented person but I can’t blame him for not wanting to put up with that shit again. 

Scott here is even more socially awkward than the comics. Which if you’ve been following this retrospective.... is a tall order.

It feels less like this Scott is actively repressing the bad shit he’s done or his shitty behavior and more he just dosen’t get he’s fucked up until his actions smack him in the face in the last act. Scott in the comics wasn’t malcious or intetnionally dickish either, but could get pissily defensive in situations he had no right to be...

While this scott seems less manic and more just confused a lot and half there.  This works fine though: without the Nega Scott plot twist, as it might or might not have been in the notes Edgar Wright got from o’malley, having Scott be a little shit just woudln’t have worked. Here he can still grow, realizing his actions hurt people and how much he truly cares about Ramona, which works better for the film’s overly compressed timeline. After all this Scott’s only had a week to really change as  a person. In contrast Comic!Scott had a full year of perosnal growth, mistakes and a whole life with Ramona. It makes more sense his Journey is a bit deeper. So overally Movie!Scott isn’t bad, just a bit simplified from the comics to make him work better. 

And since we brought her up Rammy is next. Ramona is played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Winstead was a small name before SPVTW, having worked in Final Destination and Death Proof, but Vs the World would be the real start of her rise, going on to do tons of work since. The most notable for my nerdy ass are 10 Cloverfield Lane, the only one of those films i’ve seen and probably will ever seen and a truly suspensful masterpiece, and Birds of Prey as Huntress, a role she badly needs to reprise at some point even if they don’t give the film a sequel. She also did a great turn in Season 3 of Fargo, even if I ended up bailing on said season due to it being pretty bad. She was not though. 

As with everyone, Winstead does a great job as Ramona.. but I feel the character gets short changed by the film. Film ramona is more emotinally guarded which, while a big part of Ramona’s character, wasn’t really ALL she was. She had moments of snark, flirtness and other stuff. In contrast Film!Ramona just seems to be stoic almost the entire film and dosen’t really get to grow as a person, much like scott but even less satisfying. She feels like less of a character here, just the aloof cool girl scott thought she was and got a crush on, instead of learning she was a real person with feelings and emotions like the comic. And while again Wright only had three volumes to work with, volumes 2 and 3 have Ramona open up just enough to show off her personality and he could’ve easily given her her own. Instead she feels more like an afterthought in a film that has her as one of the main characters. 

The reason for that is wrapped in our next character so onto Knives. Knvies is played by Ellen Wong, who sadly hasn’t soared to the heights of some of her costars which is a shame given she is wonderful here and was utterly awesome on GLOW, her other major role to date. God I hope we get a finale movie for that at some point. Wong is fantastic in the role and Knives innocence and later slide into ax crazy both play well. Knives isn’t changed MUCH from the comics.. but there is one rather big change that does effect the story quite a bit: her relationship with Scott is taken a bit more seroiusly. 

This is a massive mistep. In the comics the relationship was INTENTIONALLY shallow, as Scott doing this was rightfully seen as a creepy way to avoid his feelings. Here the film plays it as it’s OTP: he and knives fight gideon together and were SUPPOSED to end up together before test audiences rejected it.  It just MASSIVELY misses the point in a way i’m baffled someone as skilled as wright can do, but here we are. They even tried to ease things by having the age gap lowered by a year.. but it dosen’t really fix it. 5 years, 6 years, he’s still dating someone way more naive as a way to sooth his own emotoinal wounds. It’s still fucking wrong. It’s one thing to ship characters who are both teens and have maybe a one or two year age gap or two adults who could have as much as a decade or so between them. But with Scott and Knives.. i’ts someone more experinced dating someone as an ego boost. That SHOULDN’T end well or be painted at all well. I shouldn’t even have to say that it sounds obvious but here we are. This is far and away the weakest point of the film. It dosen’t RUIN it for me, but it’s one of the few things that steps down from the comic and isn’t just a consequence of not having all the volumes at the ready or the compressed storytelling. This is squarely Edgar Wright’s fault. 

So just to make it an even trilogy of mishandeling characters, let’s talk my girl Kim Pine, played here by Allison Pill. While I haven’t seen much of Pill’s work since Scott Pilgrim she’s had a steady career, mostly in tv on shows such as American Horror Story, The Newsroom and currently Star Trek Picard. She’s a fantastic actress and not only matches Kim’s look perfectly down to the freckles, but gets her sardonic attitude and complex relationship with Scott through well in dialouge. The problem is that Pill really dosen’t get to do much. Granted I know i’m not the most objective person when it comes to wanting to give Kim more screentime.

But you have to keep in mind Kim is the tritagonist of the books: She’s just as important as Scott and Ramona to the story and whiel this truly dosen’t blossom till the final two books, she still averages one major scene a book and has a major say in some of the side plots in paticular having a LOT of tension with Stephen over his ignoring live performances and actually being a band in favor of working on the album. In contrast the film has her as easily the least prominent member of Sex-Bomb Omb, with Stephen and even Neil getting more screentime and jokes. Granted both are fantastic in the film, we’ll get to that, but it’s really sad that the third lead of the books is relegated to being the sidekick’s sidekick. This is part of WHY I feel we need a longer form adaptation: this movie is awesome.. but there’s a LOT you could do with Kim, Wallace, and others that the film simply didn’t have time for and the books didn’t get around to doing. 

Speaking of the handsome devil, Wallace is played god’s gift to this movie Kirean Culkin. This film made me a fan of the guy, who also as a fun fact played Ralphie Parker in the christmas story sequel My Summer Story that I still need to watch and specfically saught out in part because he was involved. Naturally right now his biggest success is being on Succession, a show I probably will never watch as it’s not my forte, but do appricate for sharing his gift with the world. 

Kirean is pitch perfect as Wallace, getting his nice mix of sarcasm, flamboyance and deadpan all wrapped into one. He’s far and away the stand out of the film, having tons of it’s best moments, including brand shiny new dialouge to the hilaroius sequence with Crash and the Boys, even giving us a just as good retort to “We Hate You Please Die” with “Great I love this one!”. Wallace as you can tell isn’t changed much he just has two slight tweaks: there’es now a running gag where he calls stacey even when dead asleep or having JUST talked to scott a minute ago, and he’s now dating Other Scott instead of Mobile, as well as having an escalating number of partners in his bed at the same time as Scott plantonically sleeps next to him, a nice way to condense the runner from the comic of Wallace throwing Scott out to have sex in their place on a regular basis. 

Stephen Stills is played by Mark Webber, whose done.. stuff since. Yeah not EVERYONE on the cast went on to do stuff and while Webber’s still acting, he hasn’t done anything huge I can spot apart from being on SMILF and dropping out of doing the series Stumptown post pilot due to creative differences.  And that is a shame as Webber elevates Stephen from the dillhole he was in the comics to a stressed out wreck serious about getting a record deal, and just generally fun to watch as he breaks down. Him scooping up the coins at the end was also a nice touch. The character was nicely retooled into comic relief and whlie not much like his comics counterpart anymore, that’s for the better. 

Johnny Simmons plays Young Neil and has just kinda shown up here and there since the film much like Webber, which is a shame as Simmons is easily my second faviorite actor in the film next to Culkin. Neil here is completely diffrent, being more peppy and deeply into the band instead of the stoic mophead he was in the comics. Simmons got the role due to using the “you punched the higlights out of her hair!” bhit for his audition and his extra bit of ham to neil makes the character really stand out, esepcailly since the sex bomb omb crew are really shoved to the side for this adaptation outisde of the fifth ex fight.  It also makes his relationship with Knives more palatable as he comes off a b it more naive, and thus way more manipulatable. I also headcannon that like this neil , comics neil can play the bass and joined shatterband eventually.. that part’s not really relevant I just wanted to mention that. 

Scott’s kid sister and concisence is played here by Anna Kendrick, whose one of the breakout successes of this movie having gone on to do dozens of films since this, most notably starring in the Pitch Perfect and Trolls franchises but having done PLENTY outside that. Naturally with someone this talented she plays Stacey well even if Stacey’s roll is even more reduced, never getting to meet ramona, though she does get a nice emotinal moment with Scott towards the end. 

Rounding out our supporting cast we have Aubrey Plaza as the bane of my existence Julie Powers. Plaza is an actress I deeply admire having been part of parks and rec around the same time as this, and having gone on to do work on and off since, including the criminally underrated film The To-Do List.  So i’ts not a huge shock she takes Julie from a character so odious I prayed for god to strike her down for 6 volumes straight, to someone tolerable. She’s still an ass, but Plauza has a talent for making asses entertaining, phrasing, so julie’s at least ENTERTAINING HER. She’s also kept to two scenes, so she dosen’t wear out her welcome and it helps one of those scenes, the whole censor bar bit that’s fully wright’s baby, is easily one of the film’s best and most well remembered gags. 

Finally before we can get to the exes, but not quite in supporting hence putting her here, we have mrs. Envy Adams, played by Brie Larson. While it took larson a bit, she became a massive star thanks to the film Room, a truly stunning and heartwrenching little film, and of course playing Carol Fucking Danvers in the MCU. Fun Fact: I honestly didn’t realize this was the same actress till it was pointed out. She does a good job as Envy, with the phone scene and the truly showstopping Black Sheep Scene both being iconic, though Envy, like most of the female cast, is given the short end of the scott pilgrim stick that dosen’t have his face on it. Due to her volume being barely featured, she’s mostly there to serve as todd’s cheerleader and gets a great closing bit. She’s still memorable as all hell as Larson gives her a nice, icy vibe that fits the character perfectly with a well constructed stilted way of speaking that feels like Envy is trying to act out every word and can’t even run into an ex without making it into a  performance. Well acted, just not as deep a character. Pretty much this film in a nutshell. 

Okay starting us of with #1, we have Matthew pattel played by  Satya Bhabha. Bhabha hasn’t done much since, matty is pretty much the same though this time he gets a fucking bollywood number that slaps, Slick. It’s not long sadly, but damn is it funky. 

Now onto #2 with Chris Evans as Lucas Lee baby! No need to look up this one as I usually make mine marvel, meaning I know both his major marvel roles: years before this he played Johnny Storm in the Tim Story Fantastic Four films and honestly did a good job in my opinon, one of the only three characters with proper casting the others being Ben, with Micheal Chiklis having set a high bar for whoever calls for clobberin time in the mcu, and having Stan Lee play Willie Lumpkin, the ff’s mail man. Yes they have an old man mail man as a supporting character.. he also dated Aunt May for a while, when you ‘ve given mail to people who can stretch, set thigns on fire, create whatever they imagine nad clobber, and bang peter parkers aunt then you can judge.  He then went on to play the star spangled man with the plan something that actually got spoofed at comic con as he was too busy with the first avenger to attend, so Micheal Cera dressed up as cap in a goofy muscle suit outfit. He’s still a certified star even after leaving the mcu, going onto knives out where he told us to eat shit and we ate not one iota of shit. 

So Lucas is almost completely diffrent here. In the comics he was a calm chill dude, gladly talking to scott, only kicking his ass because he had to and offering to take a bribe. He only really got ready to killl the guy when Scott called him a sell out and then died the same way he did here. In contrast Lucas here is throughly a sell out: a smarmy mugging dick who has his stunt doubles fight first, though is still perfeclty nice to ramona. Evans plays this version perfectly and honestly.. I feel it’s an improvemnt. Whie I have nothing against book lucas, the movie one is just so enjoyably hammy, from his growly tone to his mugging for the camera and his death is even more hilaroius as a result as it fits this lucas more to want to show off.. and end up dying from the velocity of trying to show off. 

#3 is our good old Akira Himbo great disaster stopping cleaning lady on monday pal Todd played by Brandon Routh who at this point played superman in “Superman returns”. Poor guy. Thankfully Routh’s had a much steadier superheroing career in tv, playing the Atom in the Arrrowverse. He also played Tsar Nicholas the Second in a movie last year.. the fuck?

Anyways, Todd is, like most of the cast, a bit diffrent. In the comics he’s a bit more abrasive, gladly saying he can do what he wants because he’s a rock star, serving as an evil scott basically doing a lot of what Scott did, cheating being a dick to people, but because he CAN rather than because he needs to grow as a person and dosen’t realize he’s hurting people. Here he’s just a bit of a quite broey dick, as his screen time is cut down massively like Envy’s, though once again they do give Scott more agency in his fight, having him cleverly trick todd into eating dairy instead of Todd doing it “becauase i’m a rock star!”. So while I feel he’s less of a character, and it’s mildly disapoitning, it still works. 

#4 is good old Roxie Richter, the reason their called “Evil exes” and not “evil ex boyfriends”. Roxie is played by Mae Whitman who while not a mega star had already made a name for herself at this point, having voiced Katara on Avatar: the Last Airbender and played Anne (her?) on Arrested Development.. who ironically was Michael Cera’s love intrest. And given Wright was an AD fan, this bit of meta casting likely wasn’t a concidence. Whitman hasn’t slowed down remotely since this film, having done long stints on the excellent show Parenthood, what I heard was an excellent show Good Girls, and currently playing ANOTHER iconic animated character with Amity on the Owl House, and yet another angry lesbian. Whitman herself came out as bisexual this pride, and I couldn’t he happier for her what a talent. 

Roxie isn’t much diffrent here, still combative, and at most a bit angrier, though with good reason as Ramona dismisses her as just a phase.. and while in the comic Roxie brushed that off (and given they later made out a bit, she had reason to) here she’s GENINELY and deeply hurt as she could be. I mean killing her boyfriend over it is a bit much but being pissed at ramona isn’t. She’s one of the few exes in either medium that gets a decent amount of depth and i’m glad it was kept. Her fight is changed slightly, now being more with ramona, modeled on Ramona’s awesome fight with Envy in volume 3. This is for a reason as Wright consdiered making Envy replace Roxie but thankfully backed off. And while Roxie’s arc is cut down slightly the major bits, scott accidnetly punching her in the boob and preparing to die obviously, i’m a little bi-furious, and scott’s slow realization what’s happening all still made it. All in all out of the exes she’s easily my faviorite of the film versions. 

5 and 6 with Shota and Keita Satao two japanese actors who haven’t done antyhing in america that i’m aware of since and their wiki pages are in japanese so moving on. They do okay, they just don’t get to say anything really or emote so I can’t reaally judge their performance. 

And that is an issue with the twins here. THeir just.. not characters. It’s clear Wright didn’t really have time to sink into volume 5, going with an earlier idea of the fight. The fight itself is utterly gorgeous and awesome, using cg that still shockingly holds up for a fucking sound duel between both sides, amps face to face. It also gives Sex Bomb Omb a truly rocking moment in the fights, as most of the time in the books they were more color commentators than anything. Only kim ever got a sigfigant roll in any of the fight scenes, though she made the best out of it. So the fights good.. but the twins as characters are just there to do that, get wrecked and lead into the last act, having Scott loose everything before getting pep talks from his sister and wallace to go fight for what he wants.  The actors aren’t bad but instead of having them talk in japanese with subtitltes since they didn’t speak english they just had them not speak or really have a ny personality at all and it’s disapointing. These guys deserved better. 

Finally we have the grand white douche himself Gideon Graves. What a dick. Played to smarmy perfection by Jason Schwartzman. Schwartzman has lived an amazing life and I just found out this minute he was drummer for phantom planet. Those guys could really wail. He’s done fine for himself since the film, most notably appearing in every wes anderson movie the guy can stick him in. And given i’m a huge wes anderson fan and jason is fantastic, that’s dandy to me. 

Gideon’s roll here is about the same, a mysteroius shadow on the procedings though not built up as much, though he does sponsor a music contest our heroes take place in throughout the film which is a nice touch. Otherwise he’s still a possesive dick he’s just played diffrently by the script. In the book he is an absolute monster, a smarmy possesive nightmare who keeps women in jars, kills ramona for defying him, and gladly brags about hiding a sword in a dress because “that’s just the kind of guy I am!” Here he’s still a dick, but more in the classic final boss style more bradacio and hammy than slimy. His entire final act plays diffrent sooooo that leads us to our final portion of the review. Another Story Entirely:

At last we’ve come to our final section the plot of the film... as I said i’m not doing a full synopsis but I will break down the non-character related bits of it, what was changed and what works and what dosen’t. 

The first 45  minutes is a straight up adaptation, almost page for page, of Precious Little Life, simply with a few lines cut here and there or changed up, as well as an added scene of Scott playing Ninja Ninja Revolution with knives to better establish their fighting prowess which as you probably guessed is a stuido mandate. The whole thing with Matt bursting in and Scott, up to this point a complete and total fuckwit if a charming one, easily throwing hands is funnier if it comes out of nowhere and once it has you fully just accept this is how this world works. 

The rest though.. is a bit of a hurricane as what ends up being over a year in the comic.. is compresssed into a week. And while I don’t mind compressing the time scale a bit, this is way too much. By shortening things that much it makes the relationship with Ramona less meaningful and makes his decleration of love at the end come a bit too soon for me. The Power of love was something he EARNED in the comic, same with the later power of self resepect, born thorugh character growth. Here like everything i’ts just kinda sped up. 

The speed doesn’t HURT the movie as a movie on it’s own: the pacing is nice and brisk, with a decent amount of time betweeen most exes, even if the last few come fast and furious, and plenty of character stuff. The characters don’t really change in situation or anything, which while making sense for the shortened timespan, lessens the impact of the journey. It’s a NECESSARY sacrifice as Ed couldn’t pack that much character stuff into 2 hours even if he had all the volumes to work with, but it IS why I prefer the comics. They just have more of an arc to them. Part of why I did this retrospective is it feels like they take you on a complete satisfying journey and all the leads end up somewhere diffrent, minorly or majorly by the end. 

I will stress since it could be taken the wrong way, as is the internet’s international past time: I LIKE Scott Pilgrim VS the World. While it does strip back things I like, it gets the tone perfect, the casting is flawlesss, teh fightings are phenominal and the effects are damn fun. Ed had a tall order compacting 6 books, one of which he didn’t have access to, into one movie and did so well, and it’s well loved for a reason. But after revisiting these books for almost a full year and coming to finish this retrospective a year after the original review, I can’t help but notice all the holes in the film. It’s why I want a longer adaptation: this is great, but there’es more to be done, and so much that could be updated for the 2020′s, that I feel it deserves another shot. But this shot was a damn good one and if it’s the only adaptation we get.. i’m happy with that. It’s colorful, wonderful and it’s Scott Pilgrim. I couldn’t ask it to be anything else.  

I could end the review here but hey, wouldn’t be doing my job so yeah: a LOT of the slice of life stuff is cut, and the band performacnes are stremlined into a battle of the bands contest held by gideon. And that’s what ends up casuing the film to pivot massively in the last act, as again Ed didn’t have access to more than an early draft of the script for Book 6. So instead he went his own way. 

His own way still leaves scott in the same position as book 5: the band abandons him, Ramona leaves him and Gideons at his heels. The diffrence is HOW we get there> The diffrence is execution: INstead of slowly breaking up due to Stephen’s actoin, Sex Bomb Omb ditches scott when he refuses to accept the contract from gideon, having Neil replace him. Ramona also leaves Scott for Gideon leaving him in a bad place. It takes a sweet talk with Stacey, which I really DO enjoy as the graphic novels just forgot she existed because Brian got embarassed about basically writing his sister, not getting that she was still set up as important so ditiching her felt wrong. Wallace also gives him one.. while also telling Scott he’ll probably be throwing him out. 

I will say the climax is easily one of the best parts of the film. The chaos Theater here has Gideon in a giant pyramid throne, still getting the vibe of “rich kid asshole treat him as a villian” across. Scott charges him and we get a fun fight with Gideons goons as Scott gets the power of love. But Scott isn’t great at it and then we get a bit change as Knives, who honestly disappears after THEY PUNCHED THE HIGHLIGHTS OUT OF HER HAIR, challenges ramona and we get the films version of the fight from volume 2.. and both find otu Scott was cheating. 

The first part is decent.. but what truly makes it is the truly BRILLIANT touch Brian Lee O’Malley thought of. Like the book Ramona talks to scott though here Gideon has a control chip on her.. she literally can’t disobey him. That’s unsettling. But she reminds him of the one up. 

In the comic this just brought Scott back a second after he died. Here.. it’s WAY more intresting and really spices things up: Scott essentially starts the level over thus when he revivies he’s back at the gates of the Chaos Theater, with events not yet having happened. And much like any player who has to repeate a level he does it better, remembering to tie his shoes, quiping the guard better and making geninely heartfelt statments to his friends: He apologizes to kim for being a dick (which we get a cute smile for. Aw), stephen for walking out on them and dubs young neil neil and decides he’s fighting Gideon not for ramona.. but for himself. He  fights gideon better this time then apologizes to knives and ramona when they show up. While MOST of the characters don’t get as much of an arc scott still get sa decent one, taking responsiblity for his actions and thus winning as a result. It’s also REALLY fun when for the min on fight, which scott plows through this time, Kim shouts “We are sex bomb-omb and we’re here to watch Scott Pilgrim Kick this guys teeth in!” Wish that’d made it into a scene in the books truly great stuff. I just wholehearteldy love this concept and it nicely fits int the worlds video game logic. 

The only part I really don’t like about the climax, tha tisn’t tied to character stuff I mentioned earlier, is how Gideon’s beaten: ramona does nothing... while Scott and KNIVES beat him, which sets up the other ending instead and really just robs ramona of any agency: she just stands there while scott and his teenage ex beat up gideon. It’s not really satisfying or fits the plot that well even with the original ending. 

What does satsify me greatly...

Is after Gideon’s defeat we get Nega Scott.. and in EASILY the best gag of the film (the window one which I glossed over is also dope), the two square off while Knives and Ramona go outside.. and we hard cut to Scott and Scott laughing like old college buddies, leading to the best line of the film

“Oh we just shot the shit.  We have a lot in common actually. He’s actually a really nice guy, we’re getting brunch next week. “

Flawless no notes. The ending also works with Knives getting scott to persue ramona who tries to leave for his own good and we’re left on an ambigious but hopeful note for them. 

Final Thoughts:

I feel i’ve said all I need to say about the film: it’s higlhy compressed and while I love the books more.. this is still really fucking good and a godo adaptatoin, and I enjoyed it even more than I ddi 10 years ago when my loving brother took me to an early screening for it. And ironically just as I am now.. I wrote a review for it. Not good, timing and all and lost to the sands of time, but ... it’s kinda nice to come back all these years and do this for real.. and i’ts very ncie all you wonderful people have supported me doing this to the point i’ve GOTTEN to my second birthday on the blog. Thank you all. This retrospectie.. it’s been wonderful> The comic is truly amazing, the film spectacular and both have a place in my heart. I may of complained.. but i’ts because I care. Because everything ELSE is so strong the weaker points stick out like sore thumbs. But trust me if you somehow haven’t seen the movie do: treat yourself.. and thanks for reading. 

[drinstadiscourse]

klonoa is a good game and you all should play it right now . the first game is pretty easy to emulate the original is on the ps1 and it has a remake on the wii . if you want physical copies the wiimake is easier to find and the ps1 game will cost you an absolutely ridiculous amount of money

playing the 2nd game is much more difficult however bc its a ps2 game and ps2 emulation is very inconsistent, so like youd be getting graphical bugs no matter what you do with ur emulation settings

also even though its like a mascot platformer series its got a really good story, and its like SUPER sad at times

i would go into detail but that would be spoilers and i dont want random ppl to get spoiled for the klonoa series reading my post telling people to.play it.

the gameplay functions like a 2d platformer but with the ability to interact things with the foreground and background bc its in 3d .. 2.5d platformer

klonoa is also just cute look at him.

nobody knows what animal hes supposed to be. some ppl call him a cabbit (cat + rabbit) but i think this is taken from something else and is also not canon. hes a little guy with long fluffy ears and sharp teeth

i forgot to mention the main game mechanic... which is that klonoa can grab enemies with his ring he carries which shoots wind bullets. which is your only form of attack... you can do a double jump while holding an enemy and you can shoot the enemy at another enemy to kill it! theres also some enemies that have like propellers on them that you can use to float up

theres only 2 main series klonoa games, theres a decent chunk of spinoffs though. like a volley ball game on the ps1 released after the 2nd one (which released on the ps2...) as well as some gba games including an rpg which never made it out of japan

theres also a game for the bandai wonderswan which is a console kinda like the gameboy but different . its still in black and white tho

in conclusion:

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #497

Top Ten PC Games No One Talks About Anymore

Blimey, Quake is rather good, isn’t it? Have you heard about it? I really hope so, because it’s only twenty-five years old. I mean, Jesus. What’s up with that? Quake is meant to be the future. It’s full of true-3D polygonal texture-mapping and real-time dynamic light-sourcing. Fancy it being a quarter of a century old. That’s ridiculous. “Old” is for things like, I dunno, Space Invaders or The Godfather or I Wanna Hold Your Hand. Stuff that our parents heard about before we were born. It’s not – it’s absolutely not – used to describe something that people bought 3D accelerator cards for. It’s not used to describe a game that popularised online gaming.

But old it is, getting silver anniversary cards and everything. No longer the angry, hungry young tiger, devouring its ancestors and growling at upstart rivals like Duke Nukem 3D – sure, you’ve got non-linear levels, interactive scenery, and toilet humour, but we’ve got grenades that bounce with real physics – Quake is now an aged beast of the forest, resplendent, battle-scarred, weary with gravitas. Quake is the game that shaped the now, but it does not represent the future anymore. In fact, arguably its greatest rival – Unreal – is the game with the lasting, living legacy, its progeny building the next generation of gaming with one of the most popular and impressive engines around, the framework underpinning everything from Gears to Jedi to Fortnite. Quake blew us all away, but arguably it ceded the conflict, secure in its status as one of the most important and influential games of all time. Quake II got plaudits for actually having a proper story and an engrossing single-player campaign (and coloured lighting!), and its immediate descendants such as Half-Life changed the nature of what FPS games could do, but in a funny way it feels like Quake has long since retired. A sleeping titan. It got old.

So it’s great that they rereleased it on modern systems! The version of Quake released last month is basically the game I remember, but tarted up a little around the edges, with texture filtering and dynamic shadows and other stuff that I couldn’t manage on my Pentium 75 back in the day. It plays great – it’s slick as anything, and you go tearing round the levels like a Ferrari with a nail gun, blasting dudes and ducking back around a corner before you get hit with a pineapple in the face. It’s the first game I’ve played in a long, long time that evokes the feel of classic PC first-person shooters of that era – which, y’know, kinda makes sense as it is a first-person shooter of that era. But that style of fast-paced run-and-gun, circle-strafing gameplay has gone out of fashion now, with FPS games usually favouring slow, methodical, tactical combat, or larger-scale open-world warfare usually involving vehicles. Whether it’s a straight-up no-frills blaster like Quake, or a game that takes you on more of a linear, narrative journey, like Quake II, or even just a multiplayer-focused arena shooter, like Quake III Arena, it does feel like a dying artform, like a style of gameplay that could do with a resurgence (and, to be fair, there are games on the horizon that look like they’re harking back to the era, so that’s cool).

But it’s not just first-person shooters like Quake that I feel have slipped from gaming’s shared consciousness. Maybe it’s my age (it’s definitely my age) but there seems to be quite a lot of games that were a big deal twenty or so years ago that are utterly forgotten now, whereas some – Doom, Duke Nukem, Command & Conquer, Age of Empires – are often namechecked or rebooted (even before the full-on 2016 reboot, Doom must have been one of the most re-released games of the last thirty years). But there are lots of others where sometimes I feel like I’m the only one that remembers it. And that’s where this list comes in: inspired by the excellent re-release of the Quake franchise, here are some other great PC games of that general era that I feel still need shouting about, even if I’m the only one doing the shouting. Maybe they don’t all need a full-on remaster or whatever, but it’d still be nice if they got a bit of modern gaming love.

No One Lives Forever (2000): coming at a time when most FPS games were still Doom-style blasters with little in the way of real plot, NOLF was different: stylish and funny, genuinely well-written (as in the dialogue), with interesting objective-based missions and a cool female protagonist. It skirted similar ground to Bond and the then-white-hot Austin Powers franchise. Two games were made and then, as far as I’m aware, it evaporated into a mess of tangled rights, hence no sequels or remakes. A shame, because it was great.

MDK (1997): the next game from the people who made the multimedia phenomenon that was Earthworm Jim, MDK was a really cool slice of sci-fi style, all sleek level design and intriguing features. It had a supremely bonkers plot which bled through into a game with a sense of humour, but mostly it was the run-and-gun gameplay and innovative use of a scoped weapon – possibly (don’t quote me on this) the first sniper rifle in a videogame. An even wackier sequel followed, but despite its cult status, that was it.

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Klingon Honor Guard (1998): it’s probably fair to say that Star Trek has not had as many great videogames as Star Wars, perhaps because Trek’s historically straightlaced earnestness just didn’t translate as well as bashing someone up the chops with a laser sword. Honor Guard shook things up by casting you as a Klingon, showering levels with pink blood and going Full Worf. It was the first game to licence the Unreal engine, and had a cool level where you walked along the outside of a ship like in First Contact. Also: shout out to the Voyager game, Elite Force (2000), which was another really good FPS set in the world of Trek, with intriguing gameplay wrinkles as you fought the Borg. It also let you wander round the titular starship between levels. Trek deserves more quality action games like these.

Earth 2150 (2000): the nineties on PC really saw RTS games come down to those who liked Command & Conquer or those who liked Warcraft, but as the decade drew to a close other titles chased the wargame crown (including Total Annihilation, which would have made this list, except I feel like the Supreme Commander franchise is a sequel in all but name). 2150 was notable for its Starcraft-like mix of three factions with contrasting play styles, and its use of 3D graphics and the ability to design and build weapons of war that could lay waste to armies and bases with spectacular results. I think the genre has ossified into something more hardcore, and this was probably an inflex point where idiots like me could still get a handle on things.

Midtown Madness (1999): Microsoft has a history of building up great racing franchises and then abandoning them, but their “Madness” line of games in the late nineties/early noughties was terrific and much-missed. Back when tooling round actual 3D cities was still new and exciting, this was a no-holds-barred arcade racer, with some gorgeous shiny chrome effects on the cars, and very nippy handling. It was great fun smashing up VW Beetles and the like. It was surpassed, I guess, by Project Gotham on the Xbox, and sadly the whole franchise was then forgotten, despite the ascendent Forza franchise mostly shunning city driving.

Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines (1998): part tactical war game, part puzzler, Commandos was famous for its gorgeously intricate graphics and its difficulty – I mean, it was way too hard for me. But its beautiful top-down design and its slow, methodical gameplay was compelling, as you evaded Nazis and solved missions with a team of unique units with special skills. Sequels followed, and western spin-off Desperados, but there’s not been a true follow-up for quite some time, despite promises; and few games have echoed its style or look.

The Pandora Directive (1996): okay, so really this is just a placeholder for an entire subgenre of game that appears to have been forgotten: interactive movies. I know, there are flirtations with this from time to time; and many of these games featured obtuse puzzles and relatively little gameplay strung between FMV scenes. Pandora was great though; a first-person 3D game with loads of old-school adventure aspects, as well as FMV, it was a noir-tinged detective story but set in the future. The Tex Murphy series (of which this was the fourth instalment) has had sequels – the most recent one was sadly cancelled only this year – but many other games of a similar ilk, such as Phantasmagoria and even Wing Commander – have fallen by the wayside. With in-engine graphics now allowing the fluidity and expression of cinematic renders of old, shooting movie inserts doesn’t seem like it’s worthwhile; but I still always loved a point-and-click game that featured digitised actors milling about. Toonstruck, anyone?

Marathon (1994): before Halo there was… Marathon! Back when I used to lug my Pentium round my mate’s house so we could play different games on different machines side-by-side, he’d bang on about this Mac-first series of games, like Doom but better, with an intricate plot and complex levels. And y’know what? He was actually onto something. There’s a style and an earnestness to the Marathon franchise, along with many concepts that would be refined in Halo years later. With Bungie now seemingly committed to Destiny, and Halo in Microsoft’s hands, I’m not sure what could possibly become of this, their forgotten FPS forebear, especially as it shares so much DNA with its offspring.  

Outlaws (1997): LucasArts are famous for two things, really: their Star Wars games and their adventures. But they made loads of other stuff too – including this intriguing Western shoot-em-up. Back when Western games were rarer than Western movies (which were rare at the time), this quirky and difficult cowboy-em-up saw you rounding up outlaws in typical oater locations such as saloons, trains, and mines. It had great music and a really intriguing set of weapons, including (don’t quote me on this) the first sniper rifle in a game. Sadly Outlaws’ success could be described as “cult” and it never got a proper sequel. and, weirdly, despite the success of Red Dead Redemption, we’ve never had a bit Western-themed FPS again. Which is really odd.

Soldier of Fortune (2000): I pondered whether to include this one, as if I’m honest I’m not sure I want this licence brought back. But I can’t deny the game was a huge deal and has seemingly been forgotten. A relatively gritty and realistic combat game with a huge variety of excellent real-world weaponry, its big hook was its incredibly detailed damage modelling, that could see you blowing limbs off enemies, or splitting open heads, or disembowelling them. Whilst its OTT violence made headlines, the granularity of its systems meant you could be more tactical, shooting weapons out of hands. But really its biggest controversy should be its association with a big old gun magazine.

There are many, many other games that nearly made the list - I almost had a Top Ten of just FPS games, for instance. Little Big Adventure was here, till a sequel was announced the other day. Hexen and Heretic I think still have a place in FPS history. Toonstruck, although without a sequel, was only really a cult hit at the time, and I feel the people who’d love it already know about it. I do tend to overthink these things, y’know.

So maybe not all of these could make a comeback, but all the same I don’t think they should be forgotten, and it does make we wonder what games will fall by the wayside twenty or more years from now. That game about the big green space marine dude in a mask – what was that called again…?

[scottymcgeesterwrites]

Final Fantasy VII Remake Review

Year: 2020

Platform: PS4

I finished this game shortly after posting all my main single-player series Final Fantasy reviews. I was still digesting it and thinking about it to put together my review.

Synopsis:

The Shinra Electric Power Company rules over the city of Midgar, and the eco-terrorists AVALANCHE stop at nothing to try and prevent the life essence of the planet from being used as energy. Barrett, leader of AVALANCHE, hires a mercenary named Cloud Strife for their bombing mission on a Shinra Mako Reactor. Cloud doesn’t care much for the greater cause and only wants his pay. But then, after a mission goes awry, he meets Aerith, a flower girl who is the descendant of the Ancients. He quickly finds himself wrapped up in the greater conflict against Shinra.

Gameplay:

Final Fanatasy VII Remake has one of the best gameplay styles of any Final Fantasy game. It’s that good. It seems like after all these years, this is what Square really wanted to do. Since this was released after Final Fantasy XV, it’s pretty much the successor to its gameplay. While Final Fantasy XV has you more or less spamming the attack button with occasional spell casting and item usage, Final Fantasy VII Remake has you much more involved with the Materia system, abilities, and guarding/evading. One notable example is that Final Fantasy XV always told you when you should guard in order to counter, but Final Fantasy VII Remake has you figure that out on your own.

The abilities are so goddamn flashy and cool during gameplay. Tifa’s moves are quite possibly the most awe-inspiring.

My only complaint is locking onto the enemy during battle. You have to press down on R3 to lock onto an enemy, and I sometimes found that jarring with the camera controls. Sometimes I accidentally disengaged from an enemy and missed an attack. Since your moves are dependent on an Active Time Battle system, you can waste a turn if you get hit while conjuring a spell or taking out an item. That sometimes made me go “REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”. But in the long run, those were very small gripes. The battles are so much fun.

Since the game follows only the Midgar portion of the story, it’s linear. But you reach sections where you are free to roam around and do sidequests before continuing with the main objective. I’m sure the later releases of the remake will feel much less constrained. But this remake does a good job at expanding upon Midgar without feeling too redundant.

Graphics:

Jesus Christ. This game is gorgeous.

Both in-game graphics and pre-rendered cutscenes. The switch between a pre-rendered cutscene and in-game cutscene has become much more seamless than ever before.

If you remember my Final Fantasy XV review, I mentioned how NPCs and other in-game animations seemed stiff and stilted. Final Fantasy VII Remake takes steps to remedy that. Characters have more fluid movements and everyone’s lips move a lot more. However, lip movements can come off as awkward. My friend was watching me play, and during one in-game cutscene they said “Something looks weird with their lips.” At times, lip movements seem too dynamic when the character is standing relatively still, which comes off looking like Mr. Ed the horse trying to talk.

Despite those small awkward things, the rest of the game is extremely polished. Remember how blocky Final Fantasy VII was? We now finally see these characters and the world of Midgar brought to life in beautiful HD graphics.Like holy shit. Everyone looks so beautiful.

Before I played this game, I was a Tifa stan, but now, ho man, they made Aerith so much more appealing.

SO.

MUCH.

MORE.

APPEALING.

And Tifa shines better than ever. I’m very tempted to just gush about her but here is just a couple enticing gifs.

Imagine playing this game and still thinking gamers are oppressed.

Story:

Final Fantasy VII Remake follows from the start of the original game up until the party leaving Midgar. Square plans to release the rest of the remake later.

I have to say, they made the story a lot more engaging than the original. That may seem like blasphemy, but the dialogue and voice acting was just so damn good. Some of my favorite moments included the banter between Aerith and Cloud. Like I said, I wasn’t into Aerith that much until I played the remake. She’s just so damn cute and charming. One of my favorite parts was when she said, “Shit” and almost fell, after mentioning how she didn’t need help climbing a ladder. Her voice is so lovely and amusing to listen to. The growing romance between her and Cloud doesn’t come off as forced or cringey, because we now spend so much time with Aerith.

Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie have much more important roles in the story. This gives us a greater sense of Avalanche as a ragtag group.

Entire chapters focus on them, especially Jessie. I cringed a bit at Jessie to be honest, despite her popularity. She now comes off as a copy of Aerith in the sense that she comes on strong to Cloud. But really strong. Like “I want that D right now” strong. Cloud has officially become your usual anime boy who is good at everything that can make any woman magically fall in love with him. So that whole thing made me roll my eyes.

There are some new characters inserted, such as the SOLDIER Roche. I thought they were going to do more with him but, apparently not. The new characters can be a bit “meh”, such as Chadley. Johnny isn’t a new character but may as well be since his role is so expanded. He was probably the most annoying, constantly calling Cloud “bro”. That gave me some bad flashbacks of Prompto’s modern-speak in Final Fantasy XV.

The remake adds a certain new plot element that you’re not sure at first where it’s going until it’s revealed at the very end. The ending can be a bit out there, as the original storyline is changed significantly. SIGNIFICANTLY I was curious if this game would make sense to first-timers, but, probably not when you reach the end. The ending heavily relies on you knowing the original game.

My only complaint about the story was how they started the motorcycle chase cutscene. That was my favorite cutscene of the original game, with Cloud driving down the stairs and the group getting into the car. I liken it to the barrel scene in the original Hobbit novel. But like the Hobbit movie, they made the motorcycle scene pretty outrageous. Like so over-the-top that my initial reaction was to scoff at it. It also struck me as awkward, because there were many moments when the bad guys could have shot them but just. . .stood there watching Cloud kick their asses.

Some people may be upset by how the remake ended, while others find it cool. I thought it was cool. But at the same time, now I want an official “remastered” Final Fantasy VII too. Just a game strictly like the original but with vastly improved graphics.

Music:

The music was pure eargasm. There were many moments when I fanboyed screaming “THIS IS THE SONG! YESSS!” They remixed the songs so well, from the battle theme to the Shinra theme, and the Wall Market theme. Everything you loved about the original soundtrack but MORE gusto, more pomp and circumstance.

A couple complaints though.

1 – I think the focus on making the music more orchestrated takes away the mood of the original music. I missed some of the synth and electronic from the original game because it related well to the technological city of Midgar. The synth and electronic featured in the original game gave off a brooding, darker mood.

2 – I didn’t like what they did with the Crazy Motorcycle music.

Notable Theme:

It’s difficult to find pieces of the original soundtrack as of today, because Square is taking them down from YouTube. Still, some people have managed to keep up some of the coolest tracks from this game. Unfortunately, the videos have gameplay footage, which could be spoilers, technically.

I’ll just leave it as this:

The Jenova battle theme is a much longer piece in this game, but it pays off at the final quarter of the song.

Trust me.

Verdict:

The remake does the original justice. We waited so long for this game and it delivered, unlike Final Fantasy XV.

I don’t think a first-timer would really appreciate it though as much as a fan of the original game would. Sure, there’s nothing stopping you from just going into it without knowing the original game, but there are things that one wouldn’t understand unless you played the original game. In that sense, the word “remake” is a bit misleading. Maybe they’re “rebooting” the entire Compilation of Final Fantasy VII? It seems like they’re going for what they did with the newer Star Trek movies, if you catch my drift. But I can’t say for sure exactly where they’re going with it until the next game comes out, but it seems that way to me.

[cosmic-navel-gazin]

This is something a bit different from me, but in light of the recent announcement from Ubisoft that there’s going to be a remake of Prince of Persia: Sands of Time coming out in January 2021, I thought I’d share some thoughts.

(This started out small but got outta hand so super long post incoming, no spoilers for the games)

So first off, a bit of my history with the original game.

 I’m a big fan of the Prince of Persia (PoP) franchise, and I’ll fully admit that nostalgia plays a big part in it. You see, in many ways this 2003 classic was my real entryway drug into the world of videogames.

It wasn’t the first videogame I had ever played. My friends had consoles, there were some games on the school computers, but I didn’t own games as a kid. As far as my parents were concerned, these were all the spoils and soul damning devices of Lucifer himself. You know how it is, every generation goes through this thing of blaming all the world’s problems on a new artform: rock and roll, comic books and then videogames.

So yeah, a gaming console or buying games for the home computer was a BIG NO-NO! 

But of course, the more an authority figure says you can’t have something, the more you want and crave it. It was only a matter of time until the opportunity presented itself to me.

And then the day finally came.

It was just me and a couple of friends, going to this new magazine store near the school. And there it was: the dvd case that came with a gaming mag for like 5 euros if I remember correctly, stupid cheap for such a great game. 

There was doubt, there was fear, there was anxiety. I didn’t know much about the game, only the old 1989 DOS Prince of Persia:

This had the same name but looked different. I was seduced immediately.

The case stared longingly at me:

 It’s not my fault, I was bewitched and I bought it.

My symbol of rebellion, my first big transgression, and my first real treasured posession that I bought with hard earned money.

PoP:The Sands of Time was my original sin so to say:

Accurate representation of what happened that day

I furiously installed the game as soon as my parents left the house. Played it for a couple of hours and stood in awe at the thing - the cinematics, the cool parkour moves, the arabian nights setting, the time manipulation to undo mistakes when platforming or in combat, the Prince breaking the fourth wall saying:”no no no, that’s not what happened, let me start over” whenever I died and got a game over…

You have not experienced true fear if at some point in your life you didn’t feel the cold sweat running down your back as you hear the very distinct sound of your parents’ car arriving when you’re doing something “prohibited”.

 As soon as I heard that sound, I quickly quit the game, uninstaled it (I could not run the risk of them finding out I had tainted their machine with a videogame *gasp!*), and ran to my room to hide the game before opening the door for them. 

Neetheless to say, I never made much progress since I had to start over every time after quitting and uninstalling the thing. I would just play those first couple of hours over and over, never knowing how the story progressed, but I was happy all the same. At one point I knew every line of dialogue, every music cue, every sound effect of that beginning part. It would be some years before I got my first laptop and finally managed to complete it. 

All of this to say that the game means a lot to me. Not just as a product or piece of entertainment. This wasn’t casually playing on someone’s gameboy advance or PS2 to have a bit of fun and pass the time.

 This was more intimate.

 It was just me; the game; a dark room and a blanket; and a sincere and charming, simple but compelling story told seamlessly through mechanics that only enhanced it. This was me witnessing gameplay and storytelling going hand in hand in a way that even many of my other favourite games don’t do, or don’t do as well (there’s usually some disconnect where a game only manages to really excel at one but not the other).

Ok, so on the announcement and trailer:

As a big fan you might think I was super hyped for this. 

But I gotta say…no, not really.

I’m not super angry, but I’m not really excited either honestly. And I don’t think it’s just the rough and uncanny character models and animation that people are pointing out all over (although that doesn’t help).

I guess to talk a bit on that, I should stress out that my problem isn’t that it doesn’t look realistic enough. To be honest, and this is going to sound rich from a big Witcher 3 fan, I think that the gaming industry overall, moreso big tripple A titles, seem to have this unhealthy obsession with photorealism. Like, I don’t need to see the characters’s pores to care about these polygon people. Strong art direction is what I feel is more valuable. I just don’t think this arms race to photorealism is sustainable. Games are taking longer to make and fund, and I’d rather have dev teams spend more time polishing and refining the games’ mechanics and/or story if the trade-off is less “realistic” graphics.  

It might just be personal preference, but I wish we were getting more stylized character and world design. Go look at some screenshots for Pathologic 2, a game that came out last year that hits that sweet spot between full-blown cartoony/caricature and realistic by today’s standards:

And I think that is somewhat what they were going for with this remake’s character models (or I hope it was). But it’s still not quite there, hopefully they’ll work on improving those so they can hit that sweet spot also.

(in defense of my hipocrisy and love of The Witcher 3, I think the more realistic look was appropriate for the world they were portraying, it benefits from it. However I don’t think I would love it any less if it had less detailed models and environments)

One last thing on the graphics.

I will say this though, at least from the footage we see in the new trailer the team seems to be capitalizing on colour. Big vibrant reds, blues, whites and yellows in the environment look great, and really captures the 1.001 nights/arabian nights feel that I absolutely love. I appreciate that since there’s always this tendency for remakes to suck all the colour and life from the original (in both games and movies), regardless if it fits the setting and tone or not.

Anyway, I think the reason I’m very much without a big reaction is that I believe the 2003 original is a true classic, a masterpiece even - I guess I should stress out that when I say masterpiece, I don’t mean it’s perfect. Just that the whole is bigger and better than the sum of its parts, that the things it does right, it does so right, that it completely overshadows the flaws. 

The story, the art direction, the gameplay (the holy trinity of platforming, combat and puzzle solving), the brilliant introduction of the dagger of time as a gameplay and story mechanic (one of my favourite mechanics in all of gaming), the music, the charming duo that is the Prince and Farah, the tight pacing with the game being just the right length and not overstaying its welcome, the outstanding level design where you’re never stuck doing one thing for too long (the game is always juggling between combat, story, platforming and puzzles, mixing and matching)… 

Looking at all these things, I just really don’t think we need a remake because I don’t think there’s that many glaring terrible flaws that could justify it. 

Adding more scenes and content could be good, or it might backfire: bloat and ruin the game’s already excelent pacing and fluidity (which I think is the main keyword that better describes the original, everything flows superbly). The original was only 6-8 hours long and it is better for it. I’m not confident that adding dozens of hours of gameplay like the big tittles today would help at all.

The only real improvements I can see are: 

tweeking and perfecting the combat (I’ve seen it mentioned that they’re implementing a targeting system which sounds good); 

perhaps also better Farah’s A.I during combat when you have to help protect her from swarms of enemies;

Maybe throw in a couple more enemy types? The cut sand tigers for example? 

usual things like adding the option of subtitles, add the ability to skip cutescenes;

But other than that…

I don’t even think the graphics of the original look bad. They’ve aged of course, with the game being 17 years old, but still. I installed it last night and played through the first hour to take some screenshots and I think they’re still good:

I can understand the MediEvil remaster, the Spyro remaster or the more recent FFVII remake in terms of wanting to update the graphics. I can understand that not everyone can easily go back to these low poly lads:

 But this game? I know I’m influenced by nostalgia and all, but I don’t think it needs that makeover that badly, especially when compared to these other remakes and remasters. Funnily enough, I just noticed that these examples I just listed were all PS1 games. PoP: SoT was a PS2 , PC and Xbox game. PS2 era games have aged far better visually and don’t need that big a makeover in my most humble opinion.

It would be one thing if the original was out of print like a Rule of Rose scenario ,where you can’t find the game unless you go to ebay or something and it’s stupid expensive. Or if it was a pain to get running on modern systems like it was with Grim Fandango, until it got a remaster. 

But no, you can find the Sands of Time trilogy and the PoP (2008) reboot on GOG and Steam (on Steam only there’s also the PoP:The Forgotten Sands midquel). So there isn’t the usual problem of the game no longer being accessible to people who want to play it, which helps justify the need for a remake.

The original still plays nice, sounds nice and looks nice, so I guess this all goes to show that at the end of the day, this remake just feels a bit unnecessary to me, at least from what little the trailer showed (I would love to have my bitter cynical ass proved wrong though!). 

 Maybe I just have a superhuman tolerance for older games and how they look, I really don’t have that big a problem if the game itself is good or interesting, so I don’t always think older games need remakes.

Maybe my falling out of love with Ubisoft in this last decade has curbed forever any hype I might have for their announcements, even when they pull out my  son, my baby boy Prince of Persia out again.

 Maybe I’m just burnt out and too pessimistic about remakes, remasters and adaptations (although game remakes usually do better than film ones).

And this makes me a bit sad because I don’t want to sh*t all over the first piece of “new”  Prince of Persia content we’ve had since 2010??? Oof, it’s been a while.

Especially knowing that Yuri Lowenthal is coming back and excited to voice the Prince again. And I also don’t want to be too harsh since we’re looking at an alpha of the game. But so far I’m just very numb to this, I do seriously hope it turns out good and that they don’t rush it out the door. But I’m not convinced we need a remake in the first place. The original is a milestone, a game changer. I’d rather see a game that had great ideas and poor execution being remade than something people already love and consider a masterpiece.

 Guess we’ll see how I feel once more news and footage come out.

Oh and feel free to share your own thoughts on this remake. I’m curious to know what both fans and newcomers alike think.

small edit: I can’t believe I was just watching this Sands of Time playthrough on youtube and at one point it is said: “Another game that is designed similarly to this is Soul Reaver actually.” 

Of course! I didn’t even see it! All of my favourite things are connected!!! Maybe that detail was another thing that helped me getting really into Soul Reaver as I was first playing it.

[srhunt]

Extraordinary Tales

I was browsing Netflix for some horror or halloweenish things to watch this season, when I stumbled across Extraordinary Tales, an anthology film with segments based on the works of Edgar Allen Poe. I don’t consider myself a fan of Poe’s work, but it was always a pleasure when I had to read his stories for class. So I turned it on and...oh my god.

Animation people, why aren’t we talking about this?!

This was fuckin’ gorgeous! Incredibly haunting and disturbing, yes, but gorgeous!

Each segment has its own unique style, and each one is narrated by a different person.

I’ll just go through one by one.

0) Poe and Death

To start, the thing that connects these shorts together. We see a raven flying around a cemetery, whom we learn is Edgar Allen Poe. He has a converstaion with the personification of death, who says he’s obsessed with her. Each story is being retold as Poe tries to show his writings were more than just love letters to death.

1) Fall of the House of Usher

This story is narrated by the late great Sir Christopher Lee. I will admit, I’m not super familiar with this story (I read it for class, but I’ve slept since then), but nevertheless the presentation in this story is amazing. It has an almost Burtonesque look to it, and you can see the cracks in the building grow larger as the story progresses. Also, the narrator reminds me of human Blinky from Trollhunters. I don’t know why.

2) The Tell-Tale Heart

Now this story I do remember. I read it in 9th grade, and it’s a chilling story I never forgot. It’s probably my favorite story from Poe. And this short has reignited the fear the original story stoked into me. Using archival audio, the segment is narrated by Bela Lugosi (If you don’t recognize his name, he’s best known for his role as Dracula in the 1931 film of the same name). This audio is not digitally restored in any way, so it sounds crackily and warped with age. And his narration paired with the visuals is incredibly unnerving. The short is mainly in black and white with no blending. The only other color used is red, and even then it’s used very little, it never fills the screen. This makes the short even more creepy looking. The Old Man, even though he’s the innocent victim in all this, is terrifying to look at! He’s really creepy! It’s just all around creepy, and it’ll probably keep me up tonight.

Speaking of keeping me up tonight...

3) Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar

...This will also haunt my nightmares! I had never heard of this Poe story before, it feels more like something Mary Shelley might’ve wrote! This segment is narrated by Jullian Sands (whose most notable movie from what I can see is Arachnophobia). The style takes after comic books, almost reminiscent of the animation used in Telltale’s games (ah hah, Edgar Allen Poe, Telltale, hardee har). The narrator of the story is very obviously modeled after the late Vincent Price, which made me wish he was the narrator. I mean, there’s so many recordings of Vincent Price reading Poe’s stories that they could’ve had him narrate one of these segments (I distinctly remember hearing him read Pit and the Pendulum while on a road trip, but I’ll get into that later...) But, for what we got, Sands is a pretty good narrator. This was my first time hearing this story, so I was not prepared for what was in store. Monsieur Valdemar’s lifeless body acts like it’s in the Exorcist (minus the crucifix masturbation, spider walk, 180 degree head turn, and the pea soup). And did you think the way Magica possed Lena in DuckTales ‘17 was disturbing? Oh ho! take that, ramp the graphicness of it up to 11 and you get what happens after Valdemar is snapped out of his “trance”. It is horrifying!

4) The Pit and the Pendulum

This is the only segment that tries to look realistic. The other segments go for more stylized looks, which are incredibly affective. This one looks like a video game. I’m not saying it’s bad, that’s just what it reminds me of. Anyway, this story is narrated by Guillermo “Where’s-My-Haunted-Mansion-Remake” Del Toro, which is good casting. The story takes place during the Spanish Inquisition, so his accent helps illustrate that. I didn’t even know this story took place during the inquisition, I only heard Vincent Price narrate part of it during a family road trip. I don’t remember if I plugged in my headphones and zoned out or if I asked my dad to change the station (random fun fact: I’m really unnerved by audiobooks and radio dramas. It doesn’t matter if the story is funny or not, they creep me out. Probably stems from a creepy audiobook we listened to in elementary school or my dad listening to disturbing radio dramas late at night during long road trips) Only thing that doesn’t work is that Del Toro’s words don’t match the visuals. He says that following the wall didn’t help him figure out his surroundings, but the visuals show him looking out a barred window. How did that not help you figure out your surroundings? I think this short might’ve benifited from cooler colors. The story is meant to take place in a dark cell, the narrator can barely see anything. The animation is very red in this segment, not conveying this sense of darkness we should be feeling. It only goes to blues and cooler colors when night falls, but I think it would’ve been better if the rest of the short was like that.

5) Masque of the Red Death

The final segment of the film. This one is unique from the other ones because it has no narrator. There are only two lines said in this short (one spoken by Roger Corman), the majority is told visually. And...I don’t think it works very well...? I have never read this story, the most I know is that it’s about the Plague and that the Phantom of the Opera has a killer Red Death cosplay. You kinda get what’s going on...? The poor are dying from the plague, the rich are hiding behind a wall to keep them from getting infected, but the Red Death gets in and kills everyone. Most of the short is just watching these people party. It’s like you’re the only sober person at this shindig and you’re antisocial as fuck (so... in my case, real life). It doesn’t get interesting until the Red Death shows up, then it’s like Oprah. “You get the plague! And you get the plague! EVERYBODY GETS THE PLAAAAAAGUE!!!” And then, it ends. Uhh, okay?...what was I suppose to gain from that? I mean, the animation is pretty, made to look like a painting. But outside of eye candy, what else is there...? Maybe if I read the story, this would make more sense to me and I wouldn’t be so harsh towards it, but a film should be able to stand on its own. I shouldn’t have to read the story to understand what’s going on, that’s your job! You’re suppose to tell the audience the story! Not rely on them to have done their homework that they didn’t even know was assigned! That’s basically how this last segment felt; it felt like when I forgot to do the reading assignment for class and the teacher starts discussing it like everyone has read it, while I’m sitting there going “...whut...?”

Conclusion

This was a mixed bag for me. The segments were either hit or miss, but the ones that hit, hit really damn hard. And even the ones that miss still had some redeeming qualities, whether it was the animation or the narrator.

If I had to rank the segments from my favorite to least favorite, it’d be like this;

😄Tell-Tale Heart

🙂Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar

😐Fall of the House of Usher

😕Pit and the Pendulum

☹️Masque of the Red Death

Maybe my opinions would be different if I had read all these stories prior to seeing this film, but as someone who’s only dabbled in Poe’s work for school, I still really enjoyed this. I mostly appreciate it as a fan of animation. Each segment does something different, giving each story a unique style.

If you’re looking for a macabre film to watch this Halloween, give Extraordinary Tales a watch...

...just make sure you do so with the lights on...

...Goodnight, and pleasant dreams...

[sbcafe]

When I was starting out and tinkering with Game Maker, I also realized that I had to make some sprites.

Technically, I could have gone the whole Thomas Was Alone design and made them all squares, and typically that’s what most people do when they first create!  They want to get the gameplay working first so as to not waste time on graphics that might not be used.  (I have a whole slew of graphics that never made it to the final game, I’ll share those at some point.)

I have been using Piskel all this time for all my graphics as it’s basic, simple to work with and has an easy-to-use animation tool.  There was only one time that I used GIMP for some quick editing, and that was for the final boss’s mask gradient. 

One of the very first sprites I drew up was the player’s Ship, of course.  It became my flagship icon for everything (icons, branding, etc) so I never really changed its design after creating it.  I’m silly-proud of the little red flashing lights that remind me of radio antennae at night.

When I first was tinkering with the Game Maker engine, I actually didn’t even have scrolling or an end-level boss!  It was a one-screen shooter (many people compared it to Galaga when I showed it off) and I had nothing but the Green Enemies in random waves and that big grey ship.  I’m really proud of the 3D sprite effect I made on that, but I never really used that effect that often.  It has a charging-laser effect that actually took me a long time to figure out correctly, as I hadn’t figured out “Parents” yet.  That will be another article.

The little red enemy was the first time that I started working on rotation with the enemies. I wanted him to trace my path and fire directly at me.  He had to be slow-moving but still difficult, so he had higher hitpoints than the rest of the enemies on the first stage.  Its programming is actually very simple.  It moves towards the player’s ship with a slow speed, but its direction (and the rotation of its sprite are literally pointing from its origin point to the player’s Ship.  No matter what you do, that little red ship has a bead on you.

However, I continually found out new things along the way with the game.  Destroying the red enemy was fine, but I forgot to check what would happen if the player’s ship got destroyed instead!  Halfway through my testing, I came across this and I got confused, and I had to start learning how to read the error log.  As the red enemy looks for the player’s ship every frame, the very moment that the player is destroyed, the game crashes, as the red enemy no longer knew what angle to point itself.  (In previous iterations of Game Maker, if the game made a call like that and didn’t have an answer, it used to return “0”, which if you think about it, is good to prevent crashes, but horrible for debugging and poor practice in programming in general.)

So what do you do when the game can’t find something?  Lucky, Game Maker has a simple “if object exists” check.  So I have the red enemy check for the player’s ship, and if it exists, it angles itself towards it.  If the ship does not exist, the red enemy gently hovers backwards and holds its angle.

Something I look at when I’m programming is efficiency.  I can only imagine that Level 1 of my game is not very optimized as it was the first stage when I was just starting out, 2 years ago.  Levels 4 and 5 are much more streamlined in their programming.  Considering that I’m programming, I’m always concerned that I’m putting too many “if-then” statements into the game, as the game has to constantly check for these conditions and act upon them.  However, we are dealing with mobile phones that can handle thousands, if not millions, of checks every second.  That doesn’t mean that I can literally run “if then” all the time, but, just like my code, I can work on learning better techniques to optimize how the game is run.

This might be a little premature to say, but I called Space Shooty with the “2016″ moniker with the thought that maybe down the line, I’ll remake it to see how far I’ve come.  Maybe I’ll release “Space Shooty 2024″ and that one will only take me 2 months to make instead of 2 years.  However, I already have a lot of ideas in my head and Id love to share them all with you, so we’ll just have to see what comes up next!