Star Trek Beyond Review - SPOILERS

All right, so, I want to spoil the living shit out of this movie, so I offer you a quick review of the movie for those who don't want to be spoiled:

Beyond is a fun Star Trek movie that has its flaws, but is the first movie in the Kelvin universe to succeed in feeling like a Trek episode. Funny and action-filled, Beyond is worth the price of admission despite a villain that is underdeveloped and too much shaky-cam.

For the spoiler review, click on "read more."

This Guy Gets It

This guy gets my complaints about yearly game franchises!

The Problem with Yearly Game Releases

So, let’s say you have a favorite burger joint (we’ll call it Bloody Birch’s Burger Bunker and Barbeque Barn, or BBBaB for short),  and you’ve been going there for years because they have a burger you absolutely love. It’s practically orgasmic. You moan heavily every time you take a bite, ignoring the strange looks from children and the elderly. The food fetishists give you a hearty nod and wink in approval though, so that’s cool.

Antonio Brown loves the Colostomizer!

You’ve probably eaten sixteen cows worth of meat, eating the same burger – the Colostomizer (1/4 pound chuck, blue cheese, yellow cheese, white cheese, black cheese [because you aren’t a racist], lettuce, tomato, four pieces of super crispy bacon and Colostomizer secret sauce on an toasted asiago cheese bun). But lately, you are getting tired of it, and even the restaurant seems to be getting a little stale. It’s not as good as it once was for whatever reason. Maybe you’re just getting used to it, but part of you thinks the restaurant is getting lazy. Lately the buns are dry. The meat isn’t seasoned. The lettuce is soggy. It’s almost like the restaurant is complacent. They have a new burger, but it’s not nearly as good. It uses an almond flour bun and mixes tofu in with the meat, and just tastes awful. It’s not the same anymore.

So you try out a new burger joint – The Slaughterhouse Five Burger Pad. You try the Dresden burger – a charred burger made to perfection – and you’re in love again. You leave BBBaB behind.

The analogy of burgers to yearly game releases probably isn’t a 100% match, but it certainly makes some sense. When you look at the glut of game franchises that are released on a yearly basis, there are two ways developers milk their cash cows to keep consumers playing. They either grow complacent, barely changing anything except the packaging and menus (every sports franchise, Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry to a smaller extent), or they go off the fucking rails and create a game that’s nothing like the original (Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare).

SPACE!!!!

It’s a tricky slope game developers climb when treading on known franchises. It’s expected the games will give you something new, while still maintaining a sense of familiarity. In my opinion, the problem has nothing to do with the development itself, and everything to do with the yearly release.

And I get it. If you’re a sports fan, you want the newest rosters for your favorite team, and why wouldn’t you want roster updates? If you own Madden ‘16 and you’re a Houston Texans fan, you want the Brock Lobster throwing the ball to Deandre Hopkins in Madden ’17.Lions fans may cry not having Calvin Johnson on their team though, but that’s beside the point. So what do developers do? Slap on a coat of pain and ship out the game with “updates” that cost the full price, just so players can get the updated rosters.

FIFA is another example of this. I own FIFA 15, and I recently bought FIFA 16 on sale. Their franchise mode hasn’t changed in years. It’s the same fucking thing essentially. There’s absolutely nothing different about it between the two games. The gameplay has barely changed. I will admit sports games require a gameplay that feels similar, but that doesn’t mean they can’t try and shake it up occasionally.  

Vardy points to where FIFA fans go to cry after buying
FIFA another year.

Assassin’s Creed? Yeah, they keep putting the game and story in new timelines in history, but it’s the 

same damn game. “Unlock areas of the map, stab people, hide in crowds, poison some dude, get some shops and make gold, etc.” Rinse, lather, repeat. Always, always repeat.

What about the biggest cash cow, Call of Duty? I will give credit where credit’s due in terms of changing the basic gameplay. Over the span of ten years, the game has gone from a tactical World War 2 shooter to what appears to be space battles with the upcoming game. I’m not a fan of the COD games, but I think it’s a cynical move by Activision to change the game so dramatically. It’s like they heard the complaints about stale repetitive gameplay and said, “Fuck it, we’re going to space!” The franchise no longer feels anything like the original.

So why do publishers release yearly games? The obvious answer is money. They know consumers will buy them anyway because of their loyalty to their franchise, or players want the updated rosters for their sports games. Where players once played for gameplay, now they play for remarkably cynical reasons. Activision could call their next game Call of Duty: Fuck You Players, and involve everyone fighting with rubber dildos, and it would sell millions.  EA could release a new FIFA game with the same cover, same menus, offer nothing but updated rosters, and sell millions. Wait, they do that already.

Assassin's Creed: Boredom

And that’s the problem. Players need to stop giving their money to cynical publishers who publish yearly franchises. Stop eating at BBBaB, and try new places. Ubisoft decided to not release Assassin’s Creed this year, which is a move in the right direction. It will allow Ubisoft to spend the additional time building something new and refreshing. Sports games should release updated rosters online and let the players download them. Hell, they could even charge $10 or $15 to do so, and people would be happy with that. I think this would provide developers more time to, you know, develop their franchises and keep things fresh while maintaining the core of what drew players to their games.

I’m not suggesting additional time alone will solve stale gameplay, as it’s all up to the developers to create something new and fun. There are plenty of examples of sequels that blew chunks like the kid in Stand By Me hurling blueberry pie everywhere. Something must change soon before everything is as stale or strange as the burgers from BBBaB. 

What are your thoughts? Comment below!

The Near Perfect Hunt - Bloodborne

You wake up to some old creepy dude with cheap-ass linen eye patches calling you a "Paleblood," an "outsider" or some such nonsense. He rambles on about blood ministration, giving you Yharman blood, and a contract. A contract to what? Is it a Columbia House CD contract? YOU HAVE TO KNOW.

Before you can ask which is the free CD of the month, you've signed a contract giving away your four livers (and your soul of course), and there's a blood transfusion starting. You black out to the soothing sounds of TLC.

You wake up again. Or are you dreaming? Awake? Are you an extra in a Game of Thrones episode, and Ramsay Bolton is coming to cut off your penis? Again, before you can process anything A werewolf-like creature crawls out of a pool of blood and reaches for you like an addict reaching for its next fix. Before he gets to you, he's lit on fire. Yay! Then some little demon dudes start crawling on you, trying to make out with your skin. Gross! You pass out again.

You awaken again, in some sort of clinic. You wander around, searching for any explanation as to how you woke up in Tim Burton's guest house, but before you can ask anyone for directions, or what the Hell is going on, a werewolf kills you because you interrupted its blood cocktail hour.

Starbucks has really let itself go lately. 

And that's when the fucking weirdness begins. 

Bloodborne - a game created by From Software - is the result of an orgy between an action RPG, Nintendo-hard combat, Dracula's castle, and a story penned by HP Lovecraft (safe sex was practiced of course - body condoms for all!) You're a hunter in Yharnam, an ancient city that is known for having magical blood which heals any ailment. You have been tasked with killing beasts - humans who have become infected with the scourge - during the Night's Hunt. As you slay the scourged beasts and bosses, you start to piece together what happened to Yharnam.

From is famous for creating games that are ass-punchingly difficult with storylines that are minimal at first glance, and require the player to peel back the onion to see the whole picture. In this case, the story is mostly secondary, but it involves a shitload of depth. Every item you pick up has a story. Every location has a reason for existing. Meticulous story details are hidden in the world, and it's up to the player to find out what the fuck is going on.

Some people may be turned off by this type of simplistic storytelling, but I find it refreshing. So many video games throw the story at the player's face, like a child throwing cake on its first birthday. Diablo 3 - which I love for the gameplay - is guilty of this. Diablo - "I'm evil! HA HA HA!.. Well, you thwarted me this time, but you can't possibly win that either until... well, shit, can I just give you another evil laugh and call it a day? Cool. Thanks. See you in the next expansion!"

Compared to Dark Souls 3, I find Bloodborne's story to be more engaging. Dark Souls 3's story is essentially, "Hey, these lords need to be here to light the flame again! Go get them back or kill them, lol." There's little care for the areas you are traipsing through aside from a desire to get to the next area. This is not the case in Bloodborne. I wanted to know what happened to Yharnam. I wanted to know why there are multiple hunters in the game, most of them hostile toward you. I was excited to discover where the magical blood came from, and why it harmed the humans. The dude who thought humanity's transcendence required more eyes? Yeah, what was that about? The simple-on-the-surface storyline evolves as the player moves throughout the world.

Amway salespeople have really let themselves go. 

And what a world. Yharnam's gothic architecture sprawls out across the screen. Lanterns, yellow fog windows, broken and destroyed carriages, bonfires, everything is impressively planted to give an atmosphere of a city gone to shit. The game also does a fantastic job of having wide open areas paired with sewers and narrow hallways, providing a varying array of locations within Yharnam to engage in the hunt. After getting sick of the city, You also get to wander through multiple woodlands filled with horrible creatures, and even nightmare areas filled monsters with four ballsacks on their legs. I already wrote a blog about the game's atmosphere, so I won't cover that here (read that post here.)

Dat atmosphere doe.

The game's combat system provides players a wonderful way to kill said ballsack-laden creatures. You get a gun (yay!) that doesn't do a great deal of damage (boo!), but allows you to riposte enemies (huh?). When quatro ballsack boy is about to attack you, you shoot him, stun him, and pull off a visceral attack, which is bloody fun (literally). The game's offerings for weapons is fairly small, but the weapons all act in different ways. Each weapon also has a secondary function. That cane you're using to beat people off your lawn like an old person? It's also a whip! That gigantic hammer that you flail around like Thor? Also has a short sword function in it! Neat! You can also upgrade weapons with blood shards/stone thingies you find around the game. You can also load gems in them, so that's also pretty spiffy.

"WANT SOME ESSENTIAL OILS?" "Why no, no I do not."

Speaking of spiffy, the game's armor is generally cosmetic, but it is some impressive looking threads you get to wear. There's a reason they call the game Fashionborne. That's not to suggest the different stats aren't important. There's this fucking level with a hosebeast of a baddie who keeps shining a light down, from an awful tower, triggering your character's frenzy (we'll get to what frenzy is shortly). Sure, I looked like a Goodwill Hunter, but the gear had extra frenzy resist. Saved my ass. Interestingly enough, certain armor sets change the way some NPCs react to you, so go run around and chat up the local populace in various clothes, and see what happens!

What an awful prank, to superglue that broken
grammarphone to his head.

So what about game mechanics? You know, the RPG stuff? Well, you have health. You also have Insight, which initially doesn't make much sense, but it's what's used to go into some awesome dungeons and buy stuff. Slain enemies give you blood echoes, which you use to buy more stuff. When you die, you lose your blood echoes and you have to get back to where you died to get them back. You die on the way to get your blood echoes back? TOO BAD. FUCK YOU. Lost em all. There's lanterns spread throughout the game which act as checkpoints. You have the standard health potions. When certain enemies hit you, you can rally by attacking them back quickly, and get some of your health back. This doesn't work for all enemies, so don't count on it to save your ass every time.  There's a safe house of sorts called the Hunter's Dream, where there's a human-size doll (which the game suggests has been used like a sex doll - creepy). Most of the mechanics are pretty standard fare for an action RPG.

So, I like the combat, the story, the atmosphere, and the mechanics, but there are some nitpicks to be picked. The first is pretty egregious. Your health potions aren't infinite, and also don't recharge after death. So, let's say you ran into a nasty boss with sixteen penis noses, and penis nose dude kills you repeatedly. Well, you just went through your forty health potions, sucker! You can always buy more, but if you've lost your blood echoes, well, FUCK YOU AGAIN. You have to go to a lower level part of the game and farm for health potions.

The lanterns are also annoying, because they aren't connected to each other. You use a lantern in Central Yharnam, the only place you're going is to the Hunter's Dream. This creates some groin-grabbingly annoying delays when you're trying to hop around from one area to another.

I'm not one to finish games (I'd like to apologize to Skyrim, Oblivion, Fallout 3, Fallout 4, and many others for my failure), so it speaks volumes when I complete a game. And I immediately wanted to play through the game again to get the different endings, and play the expansion. The game's brutal difficulty makes the victories that much more rewarding, and the game rewards patient players with a fascinating storyline that feeds off the game's atmosphere and creatures. If you own a PS4, you have to try this game.

Or not. Do whatever the fuck you want to do.

Why Atmosphere Matters in Games

Think back to the classic games of your childhood. Metroid. The Legend of Zelda. Super Mario Bros. Sonic the Hedgehog. E.T. These games (with the glaring exception of E.T.) won you over with crystal-perfect gameplay and solid world design. Really, that's all that was needed back then to build a fantastic game. I mean, come on, music and sounds were all completed by the only guy they knew who could play a keyboard. There were maybe twenty people who worked on the game. It was a much simpler time back then.

Fast forward twenty or thirty years. Games like Grand Theft Auto V, Assassin's Creed, Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3. These games have budgets that make small island countries jealous. With that budget (and leap forward in technology), gameplay and world design are only small portions of what makes a fantastic game. The atmosphere matters for these titles, and in a number of ways, it almost matters as much as gameplay or story.

What do I mean by atmosphere? Well, I'll give you an example. Here is a screenshot of Bloodborne (side note - Bloodborne is one of the best games I've played in the last 10 years - probably since Metroid Prime).

"Hey guys, is this the newest Pokegym for Pokemon Go?" 

Look at the littered streets, the decaying landscape. A creature is being burned in effigy surrounded by torch-wielding creatures. The sky burns an unnatural orange. The flickering flames loudly pop in your ear, as one of the creatures drags an axe almost too heavy for it to carry, scraping across the ground. As your character approaches, the scene's terror almost makes you smell the burning flesh. There is a tremendous sense of the unknown here, and you feel it, thanks to atmospheric game design at its best.

Grand Theft Auto is another prime example. As you walk through the city, people walk by chatting on their phones about useless shit. Billboards and advertisements are everywhere, bombarding you with a faux Los Angeles. The world itself pulls you in by making you feel like you are there, living the life of a Californian.

No Helmet? Dumbass.

Red Dead Redemption drew you in with a fantastic wild west setting. Assassin's Creed sets characters milling about in historical settings (though it's too bad they don't use the languages that would have been prevalent in those settings).

Video games thrive when the game's atmosphere and world are designed to draw the player in, and it makes sense that a poorly executed atmosphere can kill a game, regardless of its gameplay. Think about it. With movies, you're viewing another character's stories. Yeah, the world matters, but you're really along for the ride. When reading a book, it's all up to you to picture the character's surroundings, regardless of the author's style. With video games, you are the story. You are drawn into the world. The great game designers know the importance of atmosphere now more than ever.

That's not to suggest that atmosphere alone can save a game. The gameplay and story have to be appealing and fun as well. In this sense, Bloodborne and the Souls games are a tougher sell. Blooborne had some of the most fantastic combat I've ever had in a game, but the story was severely lacking, and it's not because it's not there - it is - but because it's not blatantly obvious. I would encourage any Bloodborne fan to watch this video

I'm sure there's nothing but sunshine and a unicorn this way.

 What other games have fantastic atmosphere?

Whatever Happened to Arya? [GOT SPOILERS]

As most of you know, I am a big fan of the book series A Song of Ice and Fire (ASOIAF) and the Game of Thrones (GOT) television show. Obviously the show-runners have run into a pickle, since Georgie is writing slower than a sloth avoiding being run over by a Zamboni. Without a guide, the show producers have had to either become more efficient with their characters, or make sudden swift adjustments to character arcs. As a writer, I found what they did with Arya this season to be lazy writing, not only because there were scenes which went against everything we know about Arya, but her overall character arc was jarring.

Stabbin' Folks with My Hobo Knife...

I'll start this off by admitting the last two ASOIAF books aren't nearly as good as the first three. Part of the problem was resetting the chess pieces, which required a build-up. Even then, Martin admitted he wrote himself into plot knots. Let's focus on Arya's arc.

Arya has seen some shit in the show and books. Her desire to enact revenge on those who have wronged her and her family drive her into the waiting arms of a strange religious cult who are paid to assassinate anyone who has the money to pay for it. They do this by literally taking people's faces, allowing assassins to look wildly different. The Faceless Men's goal is to drive away the individual and attachment to a person's previous life, something Arya struggles to give up. By the end of A Dance with Dragons, she has succeeded in her first assassination mission, but the lingering thoughts of her family and wolf dreams leave the reader wondering if she will succeed in becoming a full-fledged assassin for the Faceless Men.

With a short timeline to play with in the show, Arya becomes an assassin far faster than one would expect, but she still holds on to her previous life. She is trained by a waif who hates her (shouldn't her hatred for Arya be questioned by the Faceless Men?) Pressed with a choice between protecting someone she grows to care for or finish her mission, she chooses to save the person. Knowing the cult would come after her, she goes into hiding.

Now, here's where I grew frustrated with what the show runners did. Up until that point in the show, Arya is shown as being intelligent and a little fearless. She's a trained fighter. She can fight in the dark. She knows how to blend in with crowds, and is a successful liar when questioned who she is. She is cautious, deadly, and most of all, tenacious. She would know the Faceless Men would come after her, and the shot of her hugging her sword in the dark suggested she knew her life was in danger.

Grandma be stabbin'...

So the next episode, instead of trying to hide and quietly find passage out of Braavos, she's out in the open, tossing cash into any Braavosi ship captain willing to take on a passenger. She walks around without any fear or care, and without her sword. Stopping at a bridge to smell the air/reflect on how beautiful the sunshine is, old lady walks up to her and stabs her in the stomach. The waif was dressed as an old lady the whole time, utilizing an old lady's face to get close to Arya. Arya manages to escape the fight.

Now, here's what's wrong with this scene. The Arya we know would never do that. She wouldn't be stupid enough to go out in the open. She wouldn't go anywhere without her sword. She would be far more cautious in her plans to escape back to Westeros. The previous episode suggested she was scared, and being cautious was the best approach to take.

This scene was so blatantly anti-Arya that it led many to speculate it wasn't really Arya who got stabbed. That the Faceless Men setup the waif to see if she passes the test. That Arya was wearing a blood bag.That the waif and Arya were the same person, like in Fight Club.

In the next episode she makes a miraculous recovery from an awful stomach wound and manages to parkour her way back to her dark room, where she takes out the waif. It becomes clear Arya wants nothing to do with the Faceless Men's cult, and she is somehow given reprieve from her mentor to leave without penalty.

This is lazy writing, plain and simple. There is nothing suggesting Arya would have been that dumb. She'd survived numerous deadly situations, witnessed atrocities, and losing everything she held dear combined with everything she had gone through suggested a smart and deadly character whose only goal is revenge. Ultimately that's what we get when she kills Walder Frey, but it was shoddy writing that got her there.

Characters should be consistent. If they make a decision against their grain, it should be visible to the reader/viewer. This is something I dealt with personally with my own novel, Survive Well. I had a character make a major decision that went against everything I had written about her. It required some re-writing to make the decision more organic.

Overall the show has done an admirable job with character arcs, but Arya's was poorly done this season.

I will admit it was satisfying to see her gut Walder Frey though, so yay!