The Dark Souls remaster was recently released, but it doesn't make enough [single player] improvements for me to really care to buy it. I might pick it up for the Switch when that gets released, because portable Dark Souls could be fun and interesting and fresh enough to warrant another purchase. However, the Switch version is being developed by another company, and it doesn't even support 60 fps, so I may not bother getting it anyway.
In the meantime, I decided to try out another "remaster" of sorts, and I got some friends together for some jolly cooperation in Steamforged Games' Kickstarted Dark Souls: the Board Game. This is a co-operative dungeon-crawler. I think the closest comparison that I can make is that it's a Dark Souls-themed variation on Descent: Journeys in the Dark. Unfortunately, Dark Souls: the Board Game doesn't seem to hold a candle to Descent.
Opening the box sets the tone of the game right away.
YOU DIED
The big mechanic that is imported from the video game is the inclusion of the video game's bonfire and respawn mechanics. Like in the video game, resting at the bonfire (or dying and being returned to the bonfire) resets everything. This includes all enemy encounters, as well as all the players' resources (such as the Estus Flask, Lucky Coin, or Pendant -- which actually has a function in the board game). However, a bit of the sense of attrition is also lost in translation, as your HP (and stamina) fully resets after each encounter. I think I would have preferred if the Estus Flask had a certain number of uses, but only restored a subset of your damage. That way, you'd retain some of your damage from encounter to encounter.
All the party's souls are dropped
on the spot where a character died.
Nevertheless, the Bonfire mechanic is probably the one mechanic that is most successfully translated from the video game source material. Despite the lack of health attrition, the desire to conserve as much resources as possible for the upcoming boss fight pressures the players into riskier play. Trying to conserve resources can lead to a lot of deaths.
Just like in the video game, if you die, all your souls are dropped on the floor where you died. If any one player dies, the whole party "dies" and is transported back to the Bonfire. The deeper into the dungeon you died, the more you have to fight through [again] in order to reclaim your souls. If you die again before reclaiming your dropped souls, all those souls are lost.
As I understand the rules, you can't leave an encounter once it's started, so you won't be making any "soul runs" to pick up your souls and then run back to the bonfire. You also can't open treasure chests until the encounter is won, which means you can't make suicidal "loot runs" either, which are a trademark strategy of the Souls video games. If you need to level up or buy new equipment in order to beat the encounter that killed you, you'll have to risk losing your dropped souls by farming against other encounters... [More]
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Tags:Dark Souls, Dark Souls: the Board Game, Steamforged Games, Kickstarter, From Software, board game, dice, miniatures, grinding, co-op, David Carl, Alex Hall, Mat Hart, Richard Loxam, Hidetaka Miyazaki
I had a lot of trouble buying into the concept of the movie from the start. After all, didn't The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park III already establish that there is another island populated with dinosaurs that are living without cages or fences or human intervention? If so, then the re-extinction concerns feel more than a little over-inflated. Did the writers of Fallen Kingdom forget about The Lost World? Clearly not, because so much of Fallen Kingdom's plot is lifted straight from The Lost World: Jurassic Park. Are the writers trying to retcon The Lost World out of canon? I don't think so either, because they pulled out a line of dialogue from John Hammond in that movie to act kind of as a thesis for this movie.
I guess I might have missed a throw-away line stating that all the dinosaurs on Isla Sorna ("Site B" had died). Even if that is the case, then what makes anyone think that the dinosaurs on Isla Nublar would survive regardless of the volcano? Isla Sorna was larger and had even more dinosaurs (and a wider variety of dinosaurs) on it. If they all died off naturally, then surely the smaller population of dinosaurs on Isla Nublar would also be doomed to die off. And since there doesn't seem to be any problem with simply cloning them again, what's the point of a rescue op? Oh, well the point is to sell the dinosaurs off to pharmaceutical companies and military contractors. Gee, didn't see that coming!
The bulk of Fallen Kingdom's plot [LEFT] is a shamelessly ripped straight from The Lost World [RIGHT].
To compound the problem of the main plot being lifted almost verbatim from The Lost World, Fallen Kingdom makes frequent references and callbacks to Jurassic Park and Jurassic World. In fact, almost every set piece in Fallen Kingdom makes deliberate references to scenes in those two movies. The quality of these references ranges from homage to blatant rip-off, and the sheer volume of these references created (for me) a constant predictable "been-there-done-that" feeling that deflated any tension that the scene might have been trying to create.
The whole movie almost comes off as a collection of "best of" scenes from the previous movies, stitched together like a [particularly high production-value, but poorly-thought-out] Youtube fan edit.
Almost every set piece in Fallen Kingdom feels ripped from either Jurassic Park or Jurassic World.
In addition, the characters all feel like they're jogging in place from a character development standpoint. Seriously, does anybody in this movie actually grow as a character? Even the villains are all cardboard-thin Saturday Morning Cartoon bad guys.
... [More]
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Tags:Jurassic World, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Jurassic Park, The Lost World, dinosaur, velociraptor, Indominus Rex, Indoraptor, animal rights, genetic engineering, genetics
This one snuck up under the radar for me, and was a real pleasant surprise. Upgrade is a Blumhouse Productions film made by some of the same people who make Insidious, The Purge, and Saw, so the previews didn't really sell me on the idea of a clever sci-fi thriller. I was expecting more of just a gore-fest. There's some really over-the-top violence and gore, but the movie is paced well enough that every single graphic kill feels legitimately earned. The choreography is exceptional and creative, and might have been worth the ticket price alone, even if it weren't attached to such a well-made movie.
Where Upgrade surprised me, however, is the way that it is filled with small world-building details that really help to sell this idea of slightly-dystopian near-futurism, and the almost luddite level aversion that some people might have to the inevitable automation of our lives. It does this by being a small, simple story that has a sinister undertone, but which doesn't feel like it's trying to be too grandiose or overblown. This is basically a hard-R-rated feature-length episode of Black Mirror.
Upgrade has some very slick choreography, and some gruesome (but well-earned) violence.
The twist was, admittedly, very easy to see coming after about 10 minutes into the movie, and so the build-up to it makes the bulk of the movie feel kind of predictable. However, there was a second twist that did catch me off-guard. I'm not sure if the movie really builds up to that second twist properly, but maybe that's just me... [More]
I recently wrote about the game at E3 2018 that most caught my interest. But there are other things coming out of E3 that I also paid peripheral attention to. One of the few reasons that I anticipate E3 each year is that it is also around the time that we start to get the first substantial looks at the upcoming Madden game.
Madden 19 E3 trailer.
The first thing that I noticed about Madden 19 previews is the focus on player movement and locomotion. Specifically, I noticed the fact that they seem to be re-selling us features that were supposed to already be in the game. Didn't Madden 25 already introduce this same mechanic? Yes, it was called "true step" back then. If it was so important to gameplay back in 2013, then why was it ever removed?
Player locomotion and runners getting through gaps in the line are focuses of Madden 19.
We're also seeing the return of a variation of the "get skinny" mechanic that dates all the way back to PS2 versions of the game, but which had been subsequently removed. Hitting the right gap in running plays has been a problem for a long time. It's good to see EA addressing it with the "hit the gap" and "push the pile" mechanics, but they've supposedly addressed this issue several times in the past, and it's never solved the problem.
They've also claimed that defensive coverages have been improved, and that defenders will now do a better job of playing the first down marker in coverage. That mechanic was also supposedly implemented back when Tiburon revised zone coverages for Madden 17, but apparently that didn't work either, so here they are, promising to fix it again. Unfortunately, I haven't seen any of these promises play out in the small bits of gameplay that I've seen so far -- let alone improvements regarding block-shedding, defensive coverage, or general A.I.. So I'm tempering my expectations.
I did not see any of the promised new gameplay features pan out in the gameplay previews from E3.
EA's dev blog has also stated that tackles will now factor in momentum, speed, and player weight. Wasn't that what the Ignite, Infinity, and Frostbite engines were supposed to have been doing for the past five years or so? Admittedly, I did see a few improved-looking group tackles and broken tackles in another piece of gameplay footage, but not much regarding the advertised features. Don't get me wrong, if all these features work, then I'll be happy. It's just not very reassuring to hear the same promises year-in and year-out, and then not see them in the advertised product.
Also, what's the deal with Terrell Owens being featured so much (as the cover athlete and in the trailer)? Is he coming out of retirement or something? Does Owens actually have anything to do with the content of the game?!
A long overdue Franchise overhaul?
In any case, it looks like Franchise Mode is a large focus of this year's game, which is good news considering that the mode was almost untouched in Madden 18, which seemed to focus almost exclusively on MUT... [More]
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Tags:Madden, Madden NFL, Madden NFL 19, E3, EA Sports, Tiburon, ultimate team, franchise, draft, draft class, locomotion, scheme, e-sports, Rex Dickson, Carlos Guerrero, women, gender equality
I don't generally give a damn about the corporate circle-jerk that is E3 (or any trade show for that matter). It's usually a bunch of cringe-worthy presentations of lofty promises and over-hyped trailers and tech demos that are rarely (if ever) representative of the final product. However, there is one game announcement that caught my attention this year, and that is From Software's Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. That's right, it has been confirmed that the mysterious Shadows Die Twice teaser is not a sequel to Bloodborne or Dark Souls, or even to Tenchu, as many fans had speculated. It is a new IP that takes place in a feudal Japanese setting (similar to Nioh).
Sekiro does not have a firm release date, and is slated simply for "2019". So it may still be over a year away.
Perhaps I'll hold myself over with the Resident Evil 2 remake ("REmake2"? "RE2make"?), assuming that the RE4-style over-the-shoulder camera doesn't ruin it. The REmake of the first Resident Evil is, after all, quite extraordinary, and Resident Evil VII was a surprisingly-solid return to form, so I am optimistic that REmake2 will be of similarly high quality. But I digress...
As much as I love Bloodborne, I am actually pleased to see that this is a new IP rather than a sequel to Demon's Souls, Bloodborne, or Dark Souls. FromSoft always seems to thrive when introducing a new IP, even though all the Souls-Borne games share many themes, plot elements, and mechanics between them. FromSoft's track record with sequels has been ... shaky at best. Neither Dark Souls 2 nor Dark Souls 3 are "bad" games. I still sunk something like a hundred hours into each -- with no regrets. Neither of them, however, comes close to touching the brilliance that was on display with Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, and Bloodborne.
Besides, the Lovecraftian cosmic horror nature of Bloodborne makes a direct sequel risky. A sequel would almost necessarily have to further expound upon the Old Ones, the Pthumerians, the Healing Church, and the relationships between them. The more we know about these entities, the less mysterious and unknowable they become, and the less horrific the cosmic horror becomes. A sequel that removes the mystery surrounding the Old Ones, and which further empowers the player character would not only result in a weak sequel, but would also retroactively damage the first Bloodborne by providing answers to questions that were best left -- not only unknown -- but also unknowable.
E3 Announcement trailer for From Software's new IP: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.
Implications from the trailer
Fortunately, a direct Bloodborne sequel is not in the works -- at least not yet. Instead, we have a samurai-inspired hack-n-slash that looks like FromSoft's direct response to Nioh (which is, itself, receiving a sequel and some additional competition soon).
Sekiro seems to put a lot of emphasis on sword play, including parrying with your sword (rather than with a shield). It's unclear if the player will have access to other types of weapons besides a katana, or if the katana will include multiple stances or combat styles similar to Nioh. In any case, I expect the swordplay in Sekiro to be much more technical and precise than in the Souls game.
Sekiro seems to use the sword for parrying, rather than a shield.
This may be a further fulfillment of the design philosophies of Bloodborne... [More]
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Tags:Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Shadows Die Twice, From Software, Activision, eBay, E3, Gravelord Servant, PvP, Japan, samurai, ninja, katana, Nioh, micro-transaction
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