Okay. It’s a video game based on a movie about toys including many that have been the subject of entire video games. Well, at least TT Games (the folks who’ve made all those successful LEGO video games for the last few years) is on the case and what’s here will no doubt LOOK and PLAY fantastically. I’m just still not at all sold on the need for a LEGO movie, period. Yeah, yeah – it’s going to be chock full of in jokes and references up the wazoo and sure, I did chuckle a bit when watching this trailer.
However, given that LEGO fans have made more interesting (and less celebrity-filled) movies for less money (a whole lot less money that what this is costing not counting the marketing), my inner cynic has been activated for close to a year ever since I got wind of the film being made. Oh, I’m SURE this will make its money back quickly worldwide, but at the end of the day, it’s going to be a hollow shell of an experience if it’s missing even what amounts to a plastic heart at the center no matter how many writers try to slap in some sappy moments to make you tear up a wee bit. In any event, the game should either do fine or really confuse the easily confused with too many game systems, as it’s being released on no fewer than EIGHT platforms (what, NO Wii version?!). Seriously. The funniest part of the trailer for me was seeing all those game packages at the end. Collectors alert, indeed!
Eh, we’ll see what happens – maybe I just need a hug or something…
Sure, it looks thrilling and all, but I’m not on board with the secret life of Peter’s dad, Andrew Garfield’s massive head with that massive pompadour (or whatever hair shape that is on his head) and a few other pesky things. The Rhino is a Transformer? Oh well – better than than Paul Giamatti in a smelly fake rhino hide suit, I’d gather. The film looks even more like a video game in those action scenes and while that MAY be a good thing to some of you out there, the fact is there’s a game in the works and the movie doesn’t need to go that route to keep my attention. But, hey… it’s what the people want and what they’re going to get no matter what grumpy guys like me grouse on about. Well, for all the stuff flying around and Spidey in peril shots, the only saving grace here is you can’t tell what the heck is going on with the story at all. Then again, this may simply mean this sequel is even more plot-laden than the reboot was (which is not a good thing at all). Oh well – as long as there’s no disco dancing in this one and Peter somehow loses the skateboard and attitude between now and the release date, maybe there’s something here to salvage into whatever the third film will eventually be.
Behold, adventurers! Or something like that. Okay, I got lazy and didn’t convert the LAST set of Dark Souls II screens from bitmap to JPEG (WordPress HATES bitmaps, it seems!), but thankfully, Denny Chiu at Namco Bandai still likes me (Hi, Denny!). Thanks to him, my inbox was blessed with these new screens I will more than verily happily share with you below:
There, that was simple enough, right? I’ll get those other screens up soon as well with an appropriately goofy post about why it took so damn long. I blame a faulty TARDIS circuit, a rogue dinosaur and a bag of shrimp chips past its sell date, but that excuse may change…
Aha! I didn’t forget about YOU, Raven’s Cry. This long awaited Topware Interactive published game has shifted development over from Octane Studios to veteran Polish developer Reality Pump Studios and has added even more pirate-y goodness in the process. Arrrrr! (sorry – I’ve had this stone in my shoe all day! Ahhhh, that’s better)…
No templars in this mix as far as I can tell, just the same seafaring tale of one man’s vengeance on those that did him wrong as a wee lad and set him to his life of crime on the high seas. Four new screenshots were recently set adrift by Topware PR, so here you go. Sorry for the delay in posting these, folks. Do you know how long it takes to air-dry screenshots? Longer that you’d think! Anyway, look up. Look down. PIRATES wherever (I tell) you (to) look!
As for a release date, well Happy Birthday to me, people! The game should be available May 7, 2014 at least on PC as far as I can tell. I know I’ve reported this earlier as a multi-platform release, but that’s because I had mock-ups of the cover art. I see now that no console logos are on the official site, so I’m gathering PC will come first and anything else may pop up later. But don’t hold me to that.
I didn’t like the reboot at all for many reasons and I don’t think I’ll like this sequel equally at all either (he said, intentionally mangling the language with relish). If this one’s as overblown and underwhelming as the reboot was, I’m only going to be smiling when the people who think this will be better get what they deserve when they pay up for that movie ticket. Now, I don’t wish Spidey any ill will at all, mind you. I just wonder how a TV series would do as a weekly show or series of monthly movies that might cost a lot less than what’s looking like a CGI-packed ego project (with Stan Lee popping up in a cameo again). Then again, other than bits and pieces, none of the Spider-Man films has ever really been my favorite. I think I’ve seen the first one three times, but every other one except for the reboot twice. That one I saw once on cable and I almost changed the channel when (yet again) Peter Parker was mask-less for too long as if it’s contractually obligated for his secret identity to be revealed to as many people as possible at the most inopportune moments.
Bleh. Anyway, all these days of “Ooh, here comes the trailer!” trailers and the resulting foaming at the mouth and pants from the usual suspects online only add to the sense of desperation I sense going on from folks who so want this to be bigger than it needs to be. These folks so want the movie to be better than it is that they’ll fool themselves that it’s much more awesome than it actually turns out to be. Of course, that’s Hollywood these days, so I guess I can take it or leave it as usual. Leaving it gives me more time to do stuff I care about a lot more than a film with what’s going to be a four or less month trip to Blu-Ray at the end of the day…
Well, now. That wasn’t hard or annoying after all except for two things. One quick download of an emulator, some fast configuring and popping in the demo disc I have here and boom – pictures of the first of three Omega Boost demos that appeared on Japanese PlayStation Club discs from 1996 to 1999. The game went through some major changes in those three years, but even as a 30% complete version in these shots it’s pretty darn interesting from a technical standpoint.
I believe the demo runs at 60 frames per second, it has three selectable viewpoints (first person/cockpit/third person), a full 360 degrees of freedom and is pretty fun overall for what it is. Granted, I took these screenshots at the library while dinking around on a keyboard because I didn’t bring a controller with me (oops) or else there would have been about 30 more images here. I also didn’t tinker with the visual settings on the emulator to make the game prettier because I like the look of many early PlayStation games.
Finally, I need to find out who made up Cyber Head, which seems to be the development team behind the first two builds. Based on some other games I’ve played, it seems that in the early days of PlayStation development, a few studios didn’t mind sharing talent to help each other out as the new hardware was being explored to see what it could really do. Hmmm… I smell a longer story here at some point. I wonder if there’s anyone still around from those days with some helpful info?
Somewhere before and in between Gran Turismo and Gran Turismo II, members of Polyphony Digital (seemingly working under the name Cyber Head) worked on a little game called Omega Boost which was released for the PlayStation in Japan in April of 1999, the US that August and in Europe a month later. Japan got the awesome and hilarious TV ad above for the game (the US ad was amusing, but not as nuts as the Japanese one) and when the game arrived at the small indie game shop I worked at, it spent a decent amount of time in the store play stack. Back then, the game was impressive to me and many others right away thanks to the opening movie that still packs a punch:
Thankfully, other than the slightly unwise replacing of the Queen-style rocker that opens the import with some alternative tune that’s OK in terms of it’s title (“Fly” by Loudmouth) but lesser than the original theme music in terms of impact, the US version got the same explosive intro:
By the way, note the “Marilyn Monroe/Norma Jean” autograph reference – I loved that tiny bit of fluff because it was a little detail only a film buff would latch on to right away and smile at. As far as the gameplay went, it was an arcade-style space shooter with 19 stages, some cool planetary and tunnel missions along with a number of intense boss battles and a ton of cool bonuses for the dedicated players out there. Some game critics unfairly compared it to Sega’s Panzer Dragoon games, which only made sense as a frame of reference if you were a PS owner who also happened to have a Sega Saturn in the house. There were some minor similarities, but Omega Boost was more a technical showcase for the PlayStation hardware than Panzer Dragoon ever was on the Saturn.
The game was actually in production as early as 1996 (or perhaps sooner), as a series of Japanese demos I have here shows the early work on the game back then was making for a very different-looking experience running at 60fps with simpler polygon visuals and a few more viewpoint choices. Oh, you want some videos of that for proof? Well you’ll need to come over if you want to see them, silly. I’d thought someone would have posted them on YouTube already, but nope and nope so far. Get on it collectors who never open your stuff, I say!
Oh, all right. One day I’ll get off my butt, dig out those PlayStation Club demo discs and have someone shoot footage of me playing them, but I just haven’t had the time to get onto that and some other projects. As usual, I digress. Anyway, the game wasn’t exactly a “blockbuster” in terms of sales or review scores, but it’s definitely one of those side projects where you could see the quality right from the beginning. Of course, with Polyphony so darn occupied with the vastly more popular Gran Turismo series of games, it’s hard to even think of a new OB rolling out from them any time soon. That’s not to say that is SHOULDN’T be done at all, folks. I’m just hoping that if there is a follow-up or remake, it gets the attention it should on a few fronts the original certainly didn’t.
Eh, perhaps I’ll bite the bullet, download a PlayStation emulator from somewhere and figure out how to record some gameplay. It shouldn’t be that hard to do, although I generally dislike using emulators over an actual console…
Thanks to Xseed Games still dropping DLC for Valhalla Knights 3 on PSN and me deciding to try out a bunch of it. I have not yet gotten around to polishing off the review I’m almost done with. Then they go an release Ys: Memories of Celceta and I’m suddenly seeing the rest of my year gone with the wind once I get around to picking this game up. THANKS, guys! No, really. It’s not like I have anything better to do than to prove that the Vita isn’t dead as some say (or hell, dead at all!), and it’s always a pleasure to play a new JRPG that’s actually an old JRPG redone with some spiffy new visuals and even more fun gameplay than the original. That said, as I keep stressing… someone REALLY needs to create a means of stopping or slowing down time so that I can enjoy more of the games I buy and play. Anyway, you should add this one to your library if you haven’t already – I’ll get out a review in a bit…
EDIT! Guess what, kids? The game is now part of the big, big Steam Autumn Sale and is a WHOPPING 50% OFF unitl December 3, 2013! That’s right, a measly $12.49 gets you the game all patched up and ready to go! Woo-hoo!
Hoo-ray! I think I’m the ONLY one that doesn’t mind the game’s non-adjustable resolution (*the main thing some still want to whine about who may not think the patch fixes EVERYTHING), but as someone who plays primarily console titles (well, there’s about a 70-30 mix), no controller support was a big pain in the wrists and lower for me. Anyway, the list of changes is HERE, so if you’ve been on the fence about this one, it should at least be easier to control if you’re coming from a console background. NOTE: You’ll need an official wired Xbox 360 controller for best results. I guess a wireless pad will also work, but I used my wired controller so I don’t need to recharge or replace any batteries. Also, this is currently only for the Steam version, but I’d gather a gog.com patch is also incoming.
Okay, okay… so I almost did, thanks to the huge flood of movies rolling into theaters this year and some other distractions major and minor (alright… it was too many games, mostly). Anyway, at least Neill Blomkamp’s sci-fi epic took longer to hit home video than other flicks that came out, disappeared faster and sprung up on discs sooner. Yeah, I liked District 9 a lot and Blomkamp’s visual stule, so I’ll be snapping this up at some point. I rarely take the reviews of others into consideration because I’m old and cranky enough to know some people who review films and games approach them from a completely incorrect perspective, but you can’t stop them from presenting their opinions no matter how wrong-headed they are. Anyway, I’m looking forward to finally checking this out without any hootin’ and a’hollerin’ from the peanut gallery as well as seeing what this very talented director has up his sleeves for a next project…
"DESTROY ALL FANBOYS!" 