#style of visual humor. it infuriates me to no end

[univiresque]

there’s such a specific style of 3d animation that i despise and it is the way disney animation looks. really cannot fucking stand it. i think it’s because i have such an intense hatred for disney as a corporation and so the more entwined something is with their public image the harder it is for me to judge objectively without the looming knowledge of which company it was made under. but also i feel like that specific type of animation is seeping into other, non-disney works because the companies that THOSE are made under see the success of disney products and want to recreate that success to generally middling at best results. it’s an endless loop and it makes me so viscerally angry

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 10/18/22

look i originally typed "placeholder" which somehow typo'd into "placegilder" and now i'm fascinated by what that concept could possibly be

listening

Romance Without Finance, covered? by? Charlie Parker. for something by one of the founding fathers of bebop it's remarkably difficult to find info on this song.

"wait a minute kay we didn't know you knew anything about jazz" i don't! just enough to be dangerous!

it's been stuck in my head bc of the lyrics

You so great and you so fine You ain't got no money you can't be mine It ain't no joke to be stone broke Baby you know I ain't lying when I say Romance without finance is a nuisance Please please baby give me some gold

cheers i'll drink to that bro

-

reading

sat by a river and read one and a half chapters of Mervyn Peake's Titus Groan, bc people keep telling me i would like Gormenghast and this is the first book in the trilogy. after which i threw it in my bag and forgot about it for the rest of the week. this is not a dunk on the book this is just how distractible i am. the style/voice/etc of Mervyn Peake could diplomatically be described as an acquired taste. not sure if i've acquired that taste yet. not that i am unfamiliar with a longwinded fantasy, i've just been reading very short things lately and am experiencing some whiplash.

god we love a font. GOD we love a series of covers that link together. these come to me courtesy of a very nice old man's moving sale, which i happened upon in august? early september? at the end of the day when everything was free. ended up dumping the milk crate of tools in my trunk into the trunk proper and carrying off an overflowing milk crate of paperbacks like this.

-

watching

three! tv shows i like are dropping on a weekly basis im in hog heaven (andor, the vampires, chainsaw man)!!!

instead we're going to talk about Werewolf By Night, which was Fine. it's a little marvel halloween special starring one of the eleventy billion comics characters you've never heard of, directed by their longtime composer Michael Giacchino.

i am going to damn it with lukewarm praise and say it's Fine! it's automatically in the top tier marvel products for me bc the fact it is so clearly filmed on a soundstage works in its favor, bc it is one big nod to classic horror. not a pastiche, not a love letter, but many many many visual references. there was only one Joss Whedon Humor Marvel Moment (TM) which i appreciated. i have spent far, far worse hours with this franchise.

excellent opening credits tho. not worth watching if you're a classic horror fan bc it will probably infuriate you, maybe worth watching if you've dropped off the marvel bandwagon and want to check and see if you still like it or not. this is up there with winter soldier for me as far as like. coherence of artistic vision and the ability to confidently tell one story, and it's still Just Okay as a whole.

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playing

this was originally going to be a diatribe about human experimentation in fallout 4. yes yes we all know the vaults are human experiments. that's not what i'm talking about. i would like them to connect the dots between pre-war people vanishing off the street for military human experimentation and post-war vanishing off the street for...industry? experimentation a little more explicitly.

INSTEAD, i did something i never do, which was look for a game to play specifically for the tuesdaypost bc i wanted to talk about something in this slot. so off i went to the New & Noteworthy page.

i played The Looker, which is a parody of awardwinning but insufferable puzzle game The Witness. i have not played The Witness bc i find it insufferable, but i have watched roommates play through chunks of it. The Looker is insufferable in a different way, where (spoilers behind rot13)

vg vf na ubhe ybat ohvyqhc gb n pbpx naq onyyf wbxr.

some of the puzzles are genuinely clever. the laser unfolding in a long sequence that felt like a real life hour made me cackle.

i don't know who this streamer is, or if he's secretly garbage or anything, but this video does contain some of the best bits of the game

it's about an hour and a half and it's free, what more could you want? the way its mechanics unfold is a successful parody of the highbrow puzzle game genre as a whole (imo), not just The Witness, so if you play this without knowing anything about The Witness do report back in pls

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making fallow week. lots of things simmering away in the background, not a lot of photogenic things happening, many things that are easier to explain as a whole once they're done.

[miloscat]

[Review] Chibi-Robo: Let’s Go Photo (3DS)

A failed experiment.

I’ve tried a Chibi-Robo game before, the DS title Park Patrol. I gave up on it shortly as it didn’t include the fun “explore and clean up a house as a little robot” factor, instead focusing on managing a large outdoor space. This gimmicky, tedious 3DS entry (sorry, am I showing my hand?) does technically contain these mechanics, albeit relegated to a small corner of the experience.

The bulk of gameplay is doing repetitive minigames to earn Happy Points, which are used to buy individual film units. You then cash these in for a chance at a camera-based AR minigame. Using the 3DS’s underpowered and low-res camera, you line up an outline with a real-world object, trying to convert it to a “NostalJunk” for display. This is a notoriously finicky process, requiring the lighting to be just right and for maximum contrast around the outline of the object. I ended up using an outside resource for most of this, a gallery of the templates from the game that are more likely to give a successful match, although some are missing or were changed in the localised version.

Clearly this is a novel attempt to use aspects of the 3DS’s unique hardware, it’s just too strict. Trying to actually engage with it as intended often results in a less-than perfect match, which has a RANDOM CHANCE of giving you a dud, which means all the effort spent gathering points, all the loading screens and endless dialogue and confirmation boxes, are a complete waste of the player’s time. And if you have preferred minigames, well that’s too bad: your selection is determined by which job offers the game deigns to throw at you, if there’s any at all. Sometimes you just have to visit the gallery, or do an “area explore”while waiting for the more lucrative minigames to become available.

These exploration segments are what I really wanted, the closest thing to the mechanics of the first (GCN) and third (DS) games. Only here, the areas are miniscule and barely worth exploring, the camera is way zoomed in and finicky, the usual energy mechanic is unbalanced (you run out way too quickly at the start, and you can only recharge in the hub), and by cleaning up and talking to people you get a paltry amount of Happy Points. There’s only five tiny areas to choose from, disconnected from the museum hub setting, and they just left me wanting more.

The game is set in a nebulous future, with the AR feature being a way for people to reconnect or reminisce about everyday objects from the past. It’s a decent premise that lets them do some Pikmin 2-style humorous descriptions of these objects in the gallery, but it’s a little vague and unclear since the actual locations you visit just seem prosaic and present-day. As usual for the series, there’s an eccentric human you have to help out, an overly chatty assistant (this time a talking smartphone), and a cast of living toys to interact with who all have bland, one-note personalities, although I got a few smiles from the camp sauce bottles. It’s these toy characters who give you minigame missions, which range from tedious to infuriating (the success of one relies on a literal one in eight RANDOM CHANCE).

These minigames are things like shooting galleries, judging the length of a measuring tape, a really bad car one that is just pressing one button at the right time, etc. The sauce bottles one involves picking the right ingredients from a fridge, which is either mindlessly trivial or brain-meltingly obscure (some of the eggs in the carton are hardboiled—signified by a very minor visual difference difficult to discern on a 3DS screen—and thus unsuitable for a full English breakfast). A sponge animal asks you to clean a room, which is the same as exploration with the same problems. The characters also pop up in the exploration areas and sometimes quiz you, although how you’re ever supposed to know some of the answers is beyond me.

So a lot of the game is an exercise in frustration, only exacerbated by the typical Nintendo-isms of interminable tutorialising and textual waffling, not to mention the poor framerate and muddy textures. It’s just not a good game, although there’s some decent ideas in there. The main point I want to make is about the follow-up 2D platformer, Zip Lash. I heard complaints about game design choices there where you’re unable to choose which level to play, rather it’s assigned to you by a roulette wheel. Having RANDOM CHANCE be a core mechanic wasn’t an innovation of that game: those issues exist here, with your efforts being randomly unrewarded and only being able to do the missions the game decides to let you, along with mechanics that are a crapshoot, or feel like it due to dodgy implementation. Avoid this.

[autisticmuse]

Around the time I started this blog I was humoring numerous potential avenues of expression to get ideas out of my head and to have a sense of creation/completion to gratify myself. I am a very visual thinker so I tend to have strong imagery and movement associated with my thoughts. Sharing random dreams and thoughts doesn't really gratify me or make me feel accomplished but among writing in general, animating, coding, and music I also wanted to seriously look at what kinds of art inspired my creativity and emotionally connected with me the most. Impressionism, as it turned out, was the clear winner. I went through the literal 4000+ pictures I had saved as desktop backgrounds and isolated the ones I loved the most and out of 89 I pulled out 70 were impressionist style. So at that point I wanted to commit to learning to paint.

But then I quickly realized art courses are almost exclusively overwhelming to me; too rigid, teaching methods that infuriate and agitate my mind and ruin my ability to focus. About the only thing that really made sense to me was studying anatomy and shape language, and of course using reference. So I decided if every tutorial and class I was seeing wasn't working I would just teach myself. While incredibly slow every so often I make a leap and it feels right. It took me months to finally start doing human anatomy studies casually and I go weeks without doing any drawing at all because I do not force myself to practice something when I am not mentally able to focus. But between those moments I do watch tutorials, speedpaints, and study, absorbing information and techniques that I apply the next time I sit down to draw. Even without rigorous practice the improvements are dramatic each time.

Just recently, about a week ago, I finally was able to crack through the barrier I was having with coloring. I was struggling to understand how to properly blend and mix brush strokes and it was incredibly demoralizing every time I sat down and tried to color a picture, especially because I was usually already mentally drained from doing lineart (which I detest). That was when I realized I don't need line art for painting. That revelation made a huge difference. I could go from sketch straight to blocking in colors (which I see plenty of painters doing in speed painting, if they even have a sketch at all, as they can block in or paint over things as they adjust their perspective) and the only thing holding me back now would be familiarity with brush stroke techniques, blending, good layer usage, and color theory.

I sat down happily and just started playing with brushes without even sketching, using photos of my bunnies to practice with and just learn how the paint functions. It's far from perfect or refined but I feel really good about them. I also found it particularly fun to do these using a brush that was called Grass because their diet is 95% hay.

Anyway, I know this is a deviation of the norm for my blog but had to talk about this, for myself and maybe for other neurodivergent people struggling with learning something you really want to do. For me at least learning at my own pace and teaching myself rather than forcing myself to abide by established methods is what works best. If you are struggling to learn something forcing yourself may not be the answer. Perhaps what you are struggling with isn't the lesson but how it is being taught. You know what the end result should be but find your own way to it if the way presented drives you away. You'll have so much more confidence figuring out what works for you. Not just in academics but hobbies as well.

You do you, the world will appreciate it.

[bluerosesonata]

A Window to the Soul: Game Mechanics and Characters in Ai: the Somnium Files

Spoiler-free!

Ai: The Somnium Files is an adventure game/visual novel for PC, PS4, and the Nintendo Switch by Spike Chunsoft in September 2019. Written and directed by Kotaro Uchikoshi, known for his Zero Escape Trilogy (999: Nine Persons, Nine Hours, Nine Doors (DS), Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward (DS), and Zero Time Dilemma (DS, PS Vita, PC), also available as the Zero Escape Trilogy on Steam and PS4), this game once again displays Uchikoshi’s signature combination of suspense, humor, and ludonarrative harmony that fans of his previous games are familiar with, alongside a cast of complex, compelling characters you’ll absolutely fall in love with.

For all my fellow Zero Escape fans, you probably remember the issues the series faced with financing, which ultimately lead to Uchikoshi helping to establish Spike Chunsoft and the eventual release of Zero Time Dilemma. In AitSF, more than ever, the fruits of that partnership are apparent. It feels we finally get to see a complete picture of Uchikoshi’s vision; Featuring fully animated 3d models, fully voiced dialogue, and some incredibly goofy and self-indulgent dance sequences, this murder mystery (and yes, it is a murder mystery) is absolutely worth it’s full price and your time.

The game has multiple endings (About 5, without checking), all leading up to and feeding into the true ending. One notable feature is that the timeline allows you to jump into previous played sections at any point of the chapter, and even provides summaries of the events that happened in each “node,” so unlike in the original 999,  you don’t need to replay through every scene of dialogue to get to each ending.

Rather than spend time analyzing the story itself- something that can’t be done to a satisfying level without spoiling the whole thing- I’ll just say that the way Uchikoshi literally has us get inside the heads of characters by “syncing” with them is a great story device, and is realized extremely well in the gameplay. For me, the Sync was used in all the right places to push me into genuinely caring about some characters, that, without the sync, I would be sympathetic to, but not feel a real sense of attachment towards.

What follows is a breakdown and analysis of how well the gameplay is designed, and some non-spoilery discussion of characterization and character design:

Mechanics:

The core gameplay loop can be broken into two parts: dialogue and investigation, and “syncing.”

The investigation portion of the game is similar to most adventure visual novels- investigating crime scenes, talking to NPCs to advance the story, examining your surroundings, and in my case, clicking on scenery over and over again to get funny flavor dialogue.

The flavor dialogue does not disappoint- and for me, the best minor feature included in the game ties to this. When you click on an object, you get an initial string of dialogue- but the indicator with the name of the object will only get grayed out once you’ve seen all the text related to that object. For some people, this might ruin the “fun” of clicking over and over again- like in 999, where some bits of dialogue would only display on the 9th time examining an object- but for me, it was a godsend, because I didn’t spend any time wondering if I missed anything funny.

The Sync gameplay loop is also mechanically brilliant. Part of the in-universe rules, which are emphasized over and over, is that the main character, Date, can only spend 6 minutes within the subject’s “Somnium”- the internal dreamscape of their mind- and that staying any longer could result in disastrous consequences. As such, each Somnium loop attempt can (hypothetically) be experienced in chunks of about 8-10 minutes. This set time frame makes it a breeze to play the game in small sections at a time and let your mind breathe a bit. The time limitation is challenging, but never infuriating; even when I messed up horribly and knew I had to restart a sync from the beginning, I would just use the time I had remaining to try out the goofier actions available to try out as puzzle solutions.

Somnium Files’ adaptability to being played in long sittings or in short bursts, while still maintaining an engaging, tense narrative is an incredible strength that not all games can boast of. Not a single part of the game felt like a slog or a chore to me, unlike a few puzzles in Zero Time Dilemma, where I ran into the perennial adventure game issue of  “okay, so I have this item, but where do I use it?”, “how the hell do I even solve this puzzle without a guide” (I didn’t), and “what do I need to do to unlock the next sequence?”

Characters

So let’s talk about these good characters. Some of you probably recognized the art style for the game’s key visual as the work of Yusuke Kozaki, best known by many as the head artist and character designer for Fire Emblem: Awakening and Fire Emblem: Fates. Even in his work for the Fire Emblem franchise, you can tell he doesn’t care much for drawing armor- which puts him in the same club as literally every artist I know who draws Fire Emblem fan art. His designs really shine in a contemporary setting, with modern clothing, and really give the cast a unified, unique aesthetic. Moreover, the designs are beautifully translated into 3D as well.

For a game that was most likely well underway in development several years prior to the boom of the subgenre, the design for A-set, (AKA Iris), an in-game internet idol and streamer, is incredibly in line with those of many successful “Virtual Youtubers”- for that alone it deserves some accolades. Fittingly, as part of online promotion for the game, Chunsoft posted a series of video blogs starring  A-set, as if she were posting to her own channel. (I missed all of these, and that’s a real shame, because I think they would have gotten me excited for the game if I had been paying attention.)

Despite Iris’ obvious and engineered marketability, I think my favorite design of the game is Aiba, the AI partner of the main character, whose human form only appears in Somnium and in the realm world as an AR projection imposed in Date’s cybernetic eye. The way her arms fade into glowing, electronic “nerves” at her arms is a subtle reminder of her artificiality, but her design also doesn’t make her more playful and goofy behaviors jarring in the least.

As far as personalities go, I would say that Date, our protagonist, manages to hit the perfect median- maybe even fusion- between the past male protagonists in the Zero Escape trilogy. Junpei, Sigma, and Carlos were all likable in their own ways, as the narrative character, but all had a level of blandness to them. To me, they served more as vehicles for us to participate in the Nonary Games.

In contrast, Date feels very much like his own, established person, and that’s not only a huge strength, but central to the overall narrative. (For all non-ZE fans reading this review- I apologize for the heavy use of ZE comparisons here.) Like Sigma, Date is a bit of a perv, but unlike Sigma in Virtue’s Last Reward, I didn’t feel squicked out by his behavior; Like Carlos, he cares immensely for the people important to him, and puts their wellbeing first; Like Junpei, he’s, also, a loveable moron.

There are other characters- Mizuki in particular- whom I can’t speak too much about without spoiling some of the enjoyment of their character arcs, but all of them have incredibly good and complicated interpersonal relationships both with and outside of Date.

Lastly, there’s Aiba. A good companion character is worth their weight in gold. After all, most of the time, they’re who you spend most of your time with, and for that reason, the more “annoying” ones always catch more flac for being so. For me, Aiba easily slides into my top 10 favorite companion characters of all time, along such members as Maya Fey in the original Ace Attorney trilogy and Midna from Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Most of the goofiest sequences in the game are instigated by her, and every time she’s on screen there’s bound to be something fun to do, not to mention the fact she’s our avatar used within Somnium. Combine that and her telepathic banter with Date, and you got a recipe for a dynamic duo.

In closing, every aspect of AitSF is absolutely delightful; It has tightly woven narrative gameplay, wonderful and complex characters, a storyline that, despite my best efforts, I couldn’t unravel the details of before they were revealed- and I didn’t even get into how great the voice acting is. If you’re looking for an enjoyable, self-contained game that you can beat in under 35 hours, Ai: The Somnium Files can’t be beat.

[aion-rsa]

Immortals: Fenyx Rising Review

https://ift.tt/39stySp

A few weeks ago, I demoed Immortals: Fenyx Rising and liked what I saw: a new IP from Ubisoft with colorful visuals, an expansive open world steeped in Greek mythology, and a comedic story that presents the Olympian gods in a new way. Sadly, the game’s strengths quickly waned, and its plethora of weaknesses began to wear on me over the 25 hours I played Immortals for this review. While I have no intention of picking up this game again, that’s not to say I didn’t have fun with it at times.

The adventure is set in the Golden Isle, where Fenyx, a shipwrecked warrior (male or female), discovers that every mortal but them has been turned to stone by a monstrosity named Typhon, who was once banished by the gods but has returned for revenge and seemingly wiped them from existence. Only Zeus and his disgraced cousin Prometheus remain, and to his dismay, Zeus must listen to Prometheus as he narrates Fenyx’s journey to restore the gods’ power.

The game’s story and dialogue are amusing at first. The banter between Zeus and Prometheus is fun, and Fenyx’s interactions with the handful of characters she encounters are written well enough. But there’s an underlying issue with the material that becomes increasingly evident as the story unfolds. While the writing can be funny, the story aims for comedy way too often, which is to say none of the story beats feel sincere because the humor is so incessant. And because the humor is so incessant, the dialogue stops being funny rather quickly. Every character is made to look like an idiot in one way or another, which undermines any drama or stakes the story tries to introduce. I appreciate the Saturday morning cartoon vibe, but I would have liked to see a little more depth.

Another issue with the storytelling is the fact that there are, as previously mentioned, only a handful of NPCs to talk to. This makes the game world feel empty, lifeless, and lonesome, despite its beauty. All of the island’s denizens have been turned to stone, of course, but I would have still have preferred for the game world to be populated with more characters to talk to, especially since the game is so dialogue-driven. In open worlds I love, I find myself exploring just to explore because I simply enjoy being there. But in Immortals, I never took the long way to objectives—I fast-traveled like crazy because after the island’s beauty faded there wasn’t much left to draw me into the world.

The lack of NPCs is a shame because the island is so spacious and scenic. As you explore its six zones (each dedicated to one of the Olympian gods), its vastness is immediately striking, largely due to the near-limitless draw distance. You can see for miles and miles around when you climb one of the gigantic statues of the gods, and the game’s visuals pop with color. At times, the environments can lack a little visual depth due to the passable lighting system and the cartoony aesthetic, but overall I found the environmental design to be appealing.

As with every other aspect of this game, the more time you spend with the visuals, the more blemishes become apparent. The character models look okay at a glance, but the facial animations are woefully wooden and inexpressive to the point where they undermine the dialogue and look borderline silly. This comes as a surprise since artists typically choose a cartoon-like aesthetic to allow their characters to be MORE expressive. Sadly, Immortals’s characters look like they’re two console generations old.

Release Date: Dec. 3, 2020 Platforms: PC (reviewed), PS5, XSX/S, PS4, XBO, Switch, Stadia, Luna Developer: Ubisoft Publisher: Ubisoft Genre: Action-adventure

Immortals’s gameplay is—surprise—a mixed bag. There are several ways to traverse the island. You can climb almost any surface (limited by a stamina bar), tame a mount, or glide around with Daedalus’s wings, which you acquire early on. These all work well enough, though the gliding mechanic can be finicky. There’s no way to move backwards, which can become incredibly frustrating during the game’s many air navigation puzzles.

Speaking of puzzles, let’s talk about the Vaults of Tartaros, which are scattered across the game world in great number. These challenge areas can be combat-based, navigation-based, or puzzle-based, and the latter two are just awful to play. I can’t tell you how much I loathed spending time in these vaults, and there are so many reasons why that I don’t care to list them all for fear of popping a vein in my forehead.

But here are a few. Worst of all is the look of the vaults. They all look the same: stone structures suspended in a generic-looking cosmic backdrop. Everything is blueish or purplish, which makes clues almost impossible to see at times due to the lack of visual contrast. And everything is square—virtually every component of the structures in Tartarus is a cube or a square, which becomes mind-numbing and frankly infuriating.

And then there are the puzzles themselves, which are inelegant and uninspired. You’re pushing blocks, pulling blocks, breaking blocks, shooting targets, rolling spheres. The puzzles are mostly physics-based, and they almost always feel janky in some way. Without going into detail, I’ll just say that 90% of the time, when I solved a puzzle, I was unsure whether the solution I arrived at was the intended result or if I’d randomly stumbled upon a wonky way to cheat my way through. And on too many occasions I had no clue where I was supposed to go next during a puzzle. I’d hit a switch and I’d hear a sound, but the camera never moves to show you what the switch actually activated.

In games with good puzzles, you’re stumped for awhile but you’re compelled to solve them because they’re visually attractive, or the puzzle is designed in a way that captures your imagination and pulls you through to the end. Immortals’s puzzles feel like putting together a jigsaw whose pieces don’t quite fit flush, or a jigsaw that comes with extra pieces just to troll you. Really messy stuff.

Read more

Games

Watch Dogs: Legion Review

By Chris Freiberg

Games

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Review

By Bernard Boo

Thankfully, the most prominently featured aspect of gameplay is pretty great. The game’s combat reminds me of Darksiders, which I consider a huge compliment. You use quick sword attacks to chip away at enemies’ health, sweeping axe attacks to rack up stagger points, and bow attacks for ranged damage. The action feels quick, responsive, and dynamic most of the time.

There are mythical boss fights to be found all over the island as well, and these legendary encounters were enjoyable not just to play but to find. I loved spotting a hulking cyclops in the distance and making my way over to them, readying my inventory for the epic battle at hand. The combat is a huge plus for a game that suffers in most other areas.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

You have myriad god abilities at your disposal to help you in battle, like a massive hammer swing that breaks through shields; Apollo’s arrows, whose trajectory you can guide manually; and Phosphor, a bird ally who can attack baddies alongside you. Potions play a major role as well: You’ve got health and stamina potions, and attack and defense potions that increase your stats. All of these tools and skills can be upgraded via the game’s central hub, the Hall of the Gods, where you can spend various currencies and improve your Fenyx as well as complete rotating tasks for Hermes (essentially the same as the Vault challenges). 

Unfortunately, for every one thing Immortals does right, it does five things wrong. The various armors that you collect are all pretty cool looking and come with unique stat buffs, but unlocking them often requires you to solve tedious puzzles, which again, are no fun for a litany of reasons. I really wanted to like this game—it reminded me of ’90s games like ActRaiser with its art style and arcade-y action. But over time I was bludgeoned by the game’s shortcomings and came away seriously disappointed.

The post Immortals: Fenyx Rising Review appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[framedepth]

The Killing of a Sacred Deer and the Horror of Justice

I find so many horror films these days draw their inspiration from Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 masterpiece The Shining, mostly in aesthetics and specific shots. While it is completely understandable to want to emulate and reference a classic of the genre, I feel there isn’t much of a point to doing so besides wanting some credit from horror-buffs for acknowledging that that movie is good. Director Yorgos Lanthimos, now known for his critically-acclaimed comedy The Lobster, has come the closest in The Killing of a Sacred Deer to the incredible tone, mood and pacing of The Shining while also managing to say so much itself about the human body, forgiveness, and truly having empathy for another human being.

Steven Murphy (Colin Farrel) is a heart surgeon and family man who takes it upon himself to mentor a young man named Martin (Barry Keoghan) since the tragic death of his father. He introduces Martin to his family, his wife Anna (Nicole Kidman), his daughter Kim (Raffey Cassidy), and his son Bob (Sunny Suljic), who all seem to take a liking to him despite his awkward and frank manner. Soon, Steven starts to become worried as Martin behaves oddly around him and his family, and as a strange disease inexplicably strikes his children. Steven learns what he must do in order to save his family, but it may be a price too high to pay.

The progression of the plot and how everything plays out is masterful. While not a long movie (it clocks in and just a minute over two hours), the inevitable ending seems to creep towards us at an unbearable pace until we can barely stand it anymore. The movie begins fairly lightly, and seems like it will be another surrealist comedy much in the vein of The Lobster, but after a certain conversation almost all comedy is appropriately sucked out of the movie except for a few key scenes. By the time the climax does roll around, I was barely able to look at the screen. It reminded me so much of how The Shining builds towards its climax, starting somewhat innocuously before getting much more serious, and ending with Jack chasing Danny as Wendy experiences her horrifying visions. Of course, it does start out with a feeling unease that lingers throughout the film by showing us a real heart surgery being filmed and with its emotionally bereft dialogue, but the comedy lulls us into a false sense of security until its haunting score takes the film in a completely different direction. Lanthimos is also smart enough to leak out plot details and characters backgrounds rather slowly, always leaving a bit of mystery for us to wonder about, even at the very end of the movie. Characters lie about their past and very important plot details are never fully explained, which may infuriate some viewers but left me not knowing just enough to remain curious about the story.

Just as he did in The Lobster, Colin Farrel delivers Lanthimos’s purposefully-stilted dialogue as it was no doubt intended to be, which means it is strange, often emotionless, and awkward in the best way. In the scenes in which he must show some emotions, he is so vibrant that the scenes become unforgettable. He has one of the most expressive faces in film, and his huge beard proves to be no obstacle in letting him show this asset off in this movie. Every character speaks (or sings, in the case of Raffey Cassidy) in this way, and there isn’t an actor that doesn’t make it fascinating. Kidman plays her character fiercely, and takes on an interesting angle once she learns what is happening to her family. Her marriage to Steven isn’t exactly normal, but she never seems too distressed about what her husband asks her to do. When she is tasked with helping to save her children, she gains a motherly fury and dedication that Kidman really sells. But the best performance (and maybe my pick for best supporting actor this year so far) is Keoghan as Martin. He had already impressed me in Dunkirk as George, the poor boy who bumps his noggin, but his performance in The Killing of a Sacred Deer is next level great. Lanthimos uses his rather unusual looks and delivery to great effect. Even in the most dense of scenes, Keoghan can make you laugh with just how weird he is. In one of the hardest scenes to watch in the movie due to its graphic nature, he has an extremely odd line (”It’s a metaphor. What I just did is a metaphor.”) that broke the tension so hard that my entire screening laughed for an extended period afterwards. Talking any more about his character may be too much of a spoiler, but just know that this performance has many surprises and I don’t think could have been played by any other actor.

If there is one criticism of this movie that severely holds this movie back, it is how its female characters, of which there are only three, are all treated in terms of what they must do sexually. Each of the movies female characters all offer themselves completely to a male character (three times, for one character), and while Steven is portrayed as having some extremely peculiar sexual hang-ups, he is never made to perform some of the things Nicole Kidman is, for instance. The actresses are not totally humiliated, and the actresses (besides one) are given other things to define their characters, at least. It also helps that they all play these parts especially well, but I just wish that it at least balance the scale by adding some female gaze to the film or changing at least two of the sexual encounters in the movie to be less one-sided.

The film is good enough that it may overcome that criticism, especially in how it handles its visual metaphors. Very early on, the motif of watches and hearts (both “tickers”, of course) are established right away, and reoccur visually across the movie at its most vital points. In a very Cronenberg-esque way, the human body ends up providing a lot of the horror of the film as Steven’s children are stricken by their strange disease. Most of the movie has an oppressive empty feeling, which is beautifully highlighted by cinematographer Thimios Bakatakis and his choice to have so much negative space dominate just about every frame. That emptiness can maybe the absence of emotion in the characters (and the film in general), but I maybe see it as the absence of justice, something the film is really concerned with. It asks the question of what it means to truly empathize with somebody who is wounded, either physically or emotionally. How do we really know what a person is going through unless we go through it ourselves? If you have wronged someone, what length are you willing to go to in order to demonstrate that you are sorry for what happened? Lanthimos shows us the hypocrisy and futility in telling a person “I’m sorry, I know what you’re going through.”

The Killing of a Sacred Deer is a dour and pessimistic movie, but Lanthimos’s surreal style makes its fascinating to watch. The humor of the first half is never forgotten, even when it becomes more of a tense, disturbing horror movie and the shift between the two is absolutely seamless. Even with the issues I have with the treatment of the female characters does not overshadow the sheer genius of a lot of the film. I sincerely hope horror is a genre that Lanthimos keeps tapping into in the future.

[deltaengineering]

spring anime 2017 part 2: girlfriendship is magic

I can’t believe Maidragon was so powerful it brought the entire 90s back.

See also:

• spring anime 2017 part 1: woke up late

• spring anime 2017 part 3: comfy and easy to wear

• spring anime 2017 bonus round: things you already knew were good

Clockwork Planet

Yes, forecasts this season predict heavy showers of magical girlfriends.This time the dude afflicted by this sudden precipitation is a clockwork nerd, who gets a clockwork gothloli dropped on him. This may be less of a coincidence than it sounds because for spurious reasons the entire planet has been replaced by clockwork – if you thought this show was mentally capable of having a metaphorical title, I have bad news. So basically this is teen schmuck + robot superweapon having fights in a city that looks like a lazy steampunk cosplayer’s top hat, in between erotic misunderstandings. I’m regretting that I called Macchiavellism’s fights bad because a couple good action cuts are already a lot to ask for, as evidenced here: It looks just terrible, and obviously the content itself is even worse. Nuh-uh.

Eromanga-sensei

I love Hiro Kanzaki’s character designs. There, I said it. I just wish they weren’t attached to bullshit like OreImo or Eromanga-sensei, which, being by the same author and all, is more or less the same thing. It’s pretty bad when the implied incest fantasy is the least revolting thing about your celebration of otaku shittery: So a schlubby light novel protagonist who also writes light novels (and who happens to be surrounded by hot bitches that just love people who write light novels because that’s so cool) finds out that the mysterious porn artist he’s collaborating with over the internet is actually his hikkikomori little sister, who reacts to this revelation like any girl would: being tsundere. This means it’s full of mildly self-deprecating nerd humor, the infuriating kind that makes it abundantly clear that if the author meant any of it, he wouldn’t write this crap. Even worse is that the sibling relationship is played for sappy family feels, which I would be more willing to give the benefit of the doubt to if this wasn’t OreImo 2: The Sequel To OreImo. And the main guy can’t keep his eyes from wandering anyway, so it’s not like there’s a mystery here. I’ll say it looks real good, obviously there’s money in the OreImo market and it’s well made as a result, plus the aforementioned character designs. But if I want more Hiro Kanzaki I’d rather watch Go! Go! 575 again.

Hinako Note

There’s actually no Manga Time Kirara adaptation this season, but worry not, Hinako Note is indistinguishable from one of those (that one being GochiUsa). So it’s Kirara at it’s most basic too: 5 girls with mild, generic quirks hang out and cute things take place. You get your shy one, you get your hungry one, you get your tiny maid one, etc. Ostensibly this is theater-themed, but as of episode 1 it’s less about theater than K-ON is about music, and that’s saying something. Now, these shows are always extremely inoffensive by design, and if they do nothing fundamentally wrong they just come across as dull. Since this does nothing fundamentally wrong, it just comes across as dull. Congratulations, Hinako Note, you pulled it off even while being born in the wrong magazine.

Kabukibu!

The easy hook when writing about Kabukibu is that it’s another DEEN show about a classic Japanese performance artform, but it’s blindingly obvious right away that Kabukibu is no Rakugo Shinjuu – it being about a school club is right in the title after all, and it has the requisite spurious punctuation too, so everything else falls into place from there. The main innovation is that this is about cute guys doing cute kabuki. As always, our main dude has to gather the five members to bring the school club back to life first. So it’s unimaginative and honestly rather bad, but I still like it. For starters there’s the bit where our lead is such a nerd that he spends every conversation clearing up common misconceptions about kabuki, which is hilarious, since it resembles weeaboo Richard Stallman wanting to interject for a second over and over again. Secondly, the comical cast of misfits does seem to have potential, with a rock singer that can’t sing, an obvious woman that is actually a woman, and so on. Overall it reminds me of Cheer Danshi, an obvious C-list production that gets by by being earnest. If I can learn to not be annoyed at the yodelling kabuki inflection, I might actually watch this for a lark.

The King’s Avatar

This may be completely outside the “Japanese cartoon” purview of this post since it’s 100% Chinese and doesn’t even have a Japanese dub like the Haoliners productions, but it’s on MAL so it counts I suppose. Also, it’s rather... good? The King’s Avatar is about a legendary MMO pro gamer who gets kicked off his team and has to give up his account, which afflicts him with a multitude of sads. After a bit of soul-searching he starts playing the game again on a new server, starting from level 1. What makes this not as bad as it sounds is that it’s not an isekai bonanza, but a sports show where the sport happens to be visually interesting, and it’s a slow and contemplative sports show at that. The whole “starting from level 1" thing is a topical twist on the sports comeback story, and it looks fairly nice too, a few bits of unfortunate CG aside (but that’s common, so whatever). Yeah, I like this, and if fansubs turn out to not be a huge hassle to get hold of I’ll give it a try.

Love Kome - We Love Rice

Back in Japan, please enjoy this short comedy about rice crop gijinka, boyband edition. It has atrocious character designs and is painfully unfunny. So nothing new there.

Re:Creators

Girlfriends keep falling in my lap, and that might mean my eyes will soon be turning red. Hey, this is the old “reverse isekai”, where some nerd gets to live with a bunch of characters from his favorite anime that inexplicably became real. Brace for domestic hijinks and fish-out-of-water comedy - and a lot of action, because this is Ei Aoki working with offbrand Fate material. He may be this show’s saving grace, because I’m willing to forgive dumb action anime a lot if it at least manages to have some actual fucking action in it. The idea that these anime characters think they’re in the “realm of the gods” (i.e., their creators, you see) also has some storytelling potential, if it doesn’t get buried under stuff blowing up and comedic trips to the konbini. And it doesn’t have a “walking in on the girl naked” scene, which probably counts as “classy” in this field. I don’t know, it sure is stupid as hell but it might be a good time. We’ll see.

Renai Boukun

Renai Boukun is a comedy’s comedy about a very silly cupid that ships people, and herself. As a real anime comedy, it is of course chock full of people acting wacky followed by reaction faces, which is my kryptonite. I do have to admit that this show at least goes all out with it, it’s fast and furious and never lets up. Some of the jokes are even okay (mostly the more absurd ones like the unsettlingly bizarre cat with a human face), though most are just repetitive, like the yandere girl being constantly jealous. Yeah, this is just totally not my thing, but if I give it any amount of praise that probably means it’s a good one?

Seikaisuru Kado

Never say that bureaucrats don’t get no respect, because this is the second season in a row where we get an anime about pencilpushers being totally awesome. The main difference between this and ACCA is that ACCA was roughly 80% style, and Seikaisuru Kado has no style. It makes up for it with conviction, because this is a show where some desk jockey assigned to wind down an electroplating business spends a night googling, with the result being him developing a new electroplating procedure that saves the company and impresses physics professors – and that is the intro before the science fiction aspect comes into play. Oh yeah, there’s a science fiction aspect. So after a job well done, Super Bureaucrat Man is taking a flight from Haneda airport when a Borg cube unceremoniously drops on the plane. The rest of the episode is spent with scientists trying to figure out what happened, mostly by shooting tank shells at the cube and so on. Guess they just aren’t bureaucratic enough, because by the end our hero emerges from the cube, having apparently come to an agreement with the proprietor. Uh. Yes, this is an extreme amount of nonsense, and I have no idea where this is supposed to be going. With the amount of military hardware on display, it makes me think “GATE, but not for total assholes”, but who knows. It looks very weird too, it’s a CG show that cuts a lot of corners by using 2D animation (I know, right?). Usually CG characters are good when you have a lot of action because it enables a fluid camera, but this has no action and they still could have done their special effects in CG like everyone else. So it ends up as an anime where the important characters look worse than the unimportant ones they couldn’t be bothered to build a CG model for. The whole thing is bizarre enough to be intriguing, but I don’t have high hopes for it, especially since the slots for shows I actually want to watch are now filling up.

Tsuki ga Kirei

Case in point: Tsuki ga Kirei is a romance about a bookish nerd dude who loves to quote Dazai at his most morose, and a neurotic girl. Needless to say, it is very awkward, but also kind of cute. This may seem like a slim synopsis, but that’s pretty much it: Tsuki ga Kirei is the sort of show that has the potential to be great if it pays off, but just becomes boring to infuriating Mari Okada clone #3879435 if it doesn’t. So it’s a risky proposition, and not one you can call based on the first episode. On the execution level it seems to do it right so far, it’s well directed, sticks to its slow, sensitive tone and looks pleasant and detailed – the only distracting thing are regrettable and robotic CG background characters all over the place. Overall, this is a show that demands at least three episodes, which it will get from me. Ask again later.

Twin Angel BREAK

Finally, if you’re looking for some basic-ass mahou shoujo shit, here’s the new Twin Angel spinoff. It’s indeed some basic-ass mahou shoujo shit (two-girl team aka PreCure version). The genki red one and the reserved blue one go around fighting evil by the moonlight or whatever, while being cheered on by their one-gimmick-each friends. I somehow doubt this thing is setting itself up for a subversion of any kind, so yeah. What you see is what you get. The only memorable thing is that the action is more than merely bad here, it’s comically bad. Seriously, it’s somewhere between Astro Fighter Sunred and Ninja Slayer. Too bad the rest of the show is just unambitiously competent, so watching it for production pratfalls seems like it’s not worth it either.

[samwritesabout-blog]

WHOSE GONNA SAVE THE PAGIES, IT’S THE DUO CALLED YOOKA-LAYLEE

(Disclaimer: This review was of the game patch 1.02, revision for patch 1.03 added below)

Plot Synopsis: While enjoying their peaceful everyday lives, chameleon Yooka and his bat friend Laylee are thrusted into an adventure when local evil corporate head Capital B steals a book known as the “One Book” from their home. Yooka and Laylee couldn't care less about why he wants it, but nevertheless the duo head off to climb his tower so they can get back what’s rightfully theirs.

I’ll admit, even if I know that these older collect-a-thon platformer games have not aged gracefully. I still did feel some excitement when I first saw the Kickstarter announced for Yooka Laylee. I have a pretty soft spot in my heart for the old Rareware games, such as Banjo-Kazooie, Donkey Kong 64, and Diddy Kong Racing, and seeing Playtonic Games, a studio of formed of former Rare veterans from the 90s era, was an exciting prospect. Their games always that felt that they were coming from an earnest place, they seemed to know what made games fun and had an ambition to their designs seen in all of their outings. Some of their ideas worked, some of them failed, and while their games may not have stood the test of time, they never faltered, and they succeeded in making some very prominent early gaming memories, seeing a game that echoed Banjo-Kazooie’s 3-D collect-a-thon design definitely struck a chord of nostalgia in me. I knew I was being pandered to, but I was still curious to see what they could deliver on.

           The 3-D collect-a-thon sub-genre of platformers was defined by the obsessive compulsive action of collecting everything in sight. There are items are scattered throughout all of the game’s open-world like levels. All of your actions are in service of gathering as many of the main collectible, in this game’s case “Pagies” and exploring each world to the fullest to do so. You collect these by doing a large variety of tasks within each world. Some of the tasks are simple, such as completing a platforming challenge, or collecting some finite thing scattered across the world. There are many more minor missions in each level however, to add some flavor to the adventure, be it a race against a go-getter cloud, searching for treasure with Shovel Knight, defending the life of an old skeleton explorer from enemy waves, or perhaps a boss fight against an octopus too lazy to leave his own home to fight you head on.

There's always a nice variety of things to do in Yooka-Laylee and while some of it can end up being conceptually charming, a large number of the missions end up feeling either unsatisfying, or can be infuriating to actually do. Either because of what is asked of you, or because the act of playing Yooka-Laylee itself simply just isn't very fun. Basic controls such as movement jumping and attacking all work perfectly fine. Yooka’s light and quick on his feet without ever feeling floaty or awkward and while his attacks are pretty close range, they’re also easy enough to spam and clear out threats no problem. Whenever the game gets any more complicated, such as needing to move in a direction other than forward however, there are some snags.

The camera is the most immediately obvious problem, with it doing a terrible job at following your actions. Often requiring the player to manually over-correct it to allow you to see where you need to go. Veterans of the genre may be used to this shortcoming, however it is simply inexcusable that it remains this sloppy. In all honesty, it isn’t so bad when just leisurely walking around, but when you have to jump from platform to platform under a time limit or perhaps use any of the movement abilities at your disposal, they are much more difficult to control. It’ll make even the simple act of just getting between areas a complete headache.

Just like Banjo Kazooie, there are abilities to be gained with each new world you enter. Spending your coin-like Quills, that you’ll also collect in each world. You can purchase a pool of skills from Trowzer the Snake, of which both the pun and the character stop being amusing by the end of the first world. This is an area that exemplifies where Yooka-Laylee misses some of the integrity of the design of Banjo-Kazooie. Since you purchase these skills in one place on the map, it can be hard to understand how the game expects you to use each of them. The point of the spread out molehills, the way to obtain skills in Banjo-Kazooie, was that they were always placed next to an area where the power was necessary. It gave you context for how to use the ability and an immediate situation where it was useful. With Yooka-Laylee some powers (such as Yooka’s invisibility being able to reflect lasers) are not conveyed to the player in any meaningful way, they are just dumped onto you at the start of each world and you are told figure it out yourself.

While the concepts of each of the five worlds in the game can be fun, the design of each landscape can leave a lot to be desired. The five worlds that you traverse through are greatly varied in themes and terrain, but it reaches a head with exploring and combing over those levels. The worlds are just way too large for their own good, and a lot of the vastness is wasted on empty space not occupied by anything, and segments of the levels can have trouble distinguishing themselves from one another. Some of the worlds can feel rather barren whereas other parts such as a tiny island can feel with too busy with collectibles and NPCs. This problem gets compounded and made actively worse when the game gives you the ability to expand worlds. The expanded levels sounds like a fine idea on the surface, to get more out of assets already made and to incorporate earlier game motifs with later gained abilities, but the end result is akin to adding another bale of hay to the stack you were already scouring through and tasking you with finding ten more needles.

On the level of an indie game made through Kickstarter, it’s easy to sympathize with the limitations that Yooka-Laylee was trying to work around, it would’ve been a larger undertaking on all fronts to create eight or nine unique worlds, so instead it was easier to make five worlds and stretch them all as far as they possibly could. However, its compromises work against the simple enjoyment that they were trying to evoke through the game. Banjo-Kazooie’s formula worked because it gave you a fair number of tasks in many compact levels. While Banjo had a max of 10 major collectibles per World, Yooka-Laylee instead has 25 Pagies in each. As a result it leads to every level long overstaying their welcome.

Unfortunately gameplay is not the only place where Yooka-Laylee misses the mark, as the writing of the game also fails to stack up. There’s definitely a lot of creativity put behind the characters and concepts here, but the writing itself always falls flat on its face. Coy references to other franchises and self-aware game humor can get a chuckle or two when used sparingly, however Yooka-Laylee’s writing doesn’t even try to hold back, thinking that referring to locations as “World 4” or addressing in universe contrivances for the sake of being a game is just the most brilliant new thing, and will always result in making a dialogue instantly hilarious. It makes sense reading into the credits that the writer is the only new member that Playtonic Games has on for this game. It all feels like the type of jokes that a fan of Banjo-Kazooie would think up, but lacks the refinement or charisma to actually make it into any of the games proper.

It wouldn't be so much of a problem if the game didn't make you have to endure the writing so often. You are given no options to speed through the dialogue easily, giving you nothing to save you from the heaps of text boxes you’ll have to read through for objectives and progression in levels. It can make even simple actions like going to the shop just fill you with dread.

           For the presentation at least while Yooka-Laylee isn't perhaps technically impressive, it does manage to come out looking pretty nice. Thanks to its art design characters and environments in Yooka-Laylee are at least visually memorable and distinct from one another. There is something that can feel stiff when in motion though, something weirdly lifeless and robotic in how characters and objects move. They can feel as though they’re divorced from the world surround them. Everything can still run at a consistent framerate and can be visually inspired. That is of course, when it works properly, as at least on two occasions I encountered the game outright crashing on me. Both of which were after a fair amount of active use of the system to be fair, however it should still be wary of the possibility.

Its disappointing to walk away from this game so negatively, because it is clear that Yooka-Laylee wants to have ambition, and yet, all of its ambition rings as hollow. Yooka-Laylee never feels that it wants to be inspired by Banjo-Kazooie, but rather it feels like it wants to outright be Banjo-Kazooie. It gets so caught up in its misguided attempt to chase the ghost of what already was there, instead of attempting to find what it could become. So it results in a game that has no identity of its own, and feels inferior to the identity it wants to claim. There are some points where the game can be enjoyable, but it's often muddled in a sea of external frustrations. With more refinement, more focus, Yooka-Laylee could’ve been a fun return to a style of game that had fallen out of favor, but as it stands, it feels like nothing more than a shell of what had already come before.

5.5/10

+        Diehard fans of Rare will enjoy the familiarity of the adventure

+        Bright presentation and delightful creativity can still shine through

-          Completing the game 100% can prove to be a tiresome test of patience and willpower

-          The dialogue of the game is groan inducing and filled with many more misses than hits with its jokes.

-          The archaic nature of the game design is more cumbersome than enjoyable.

 Addendum: Yooka-Laylee received a large patch 4 months after its release referred to as the “Spit ‘n’ polish” patch, supposedly addressing many people's complaints with the package. This patch improves many aspects such as the camera, the load times, and allows you speed through dialogue and skip important cutscenes. You can even reduce the amount of gibberish voices that you hear if you do choose to let the dialogue play out. It also includes many little quality of life touches, a moves list is now available from the pause menu, there are now huge signposts all over the hub helping you find your way to each world in the still confusingly laid out, but at least now more manageable Hivory Tower. Even little touches I wouldn't expect like removing the need to crouch during invisibility in order to reflect things, or making the flight controls smoother are very welcomed changes. A little improvement can go a long way and it shows that the developers really cared about how people could enjoy their game.

           While these improvements may still not fully make up for the game's overall design, it can improve the core experience and can allow you to appreciate what is there to enjoy quite a bit more. I would still never recommend going for 100% in Yooka-Laylee some objectives are still repetitive, some minigames that you’ll end up having to play remain to be just an obstructive bore rather than a nice change of pace, and scouring the levels for minor collectibles like Quills can be a nightmare. But the majority of your time will be spent in a more enjoyable environment than before. It isn’t perfect, and it wasn’t ever going to be, but the foundation it's on is much more stable. Playtonic Games care for their own property is plainly visible, and it can't help but make you respect their efforts on this outing a little bit more than before.

           Updated score: 7/10

[costperclickadverts-blog]

Top marketing ideas

Growth your marketing and advertising expertise: Inside the system of my six several numerous several years turning out to be a Search engine marketing and advertising and marketing, there occur to become occasions when I've questioned the worth of Search engine optimization for customers. The reasoning guiding this was that typical non-brand phrases are previously not going to push group, or in particular situations, the area marketplaces concluded up dominated by aggregator planet vast net web sites, just the area men and women want variety using the providing, comparatively than any individual design. Comprehending was routinely backed up by generic paid out lookup generating an unfavorable return and eventually receiving switched off. You may find out continuously extended tail phrases that may make a return but in the end, that's undoubtedly not what this publish is about. Solution problems are vital concurrently as in the majority of predicament create far more earnings than sizeable sum generic phrases, specifically for big model title names, however, tend to be dismissed on the basis that a website ought to rank for them. Additionally, you will discover probabilities that aren't strictly related to the company discover by itself which may usually be dismissed. Finishing up complete at OMD has uncovered me to managing several of the most significant aids make inside of the market and my complete is acquiring caught in within the course of the chunky items of labor. Dealing with existing media clientele, it could not sound correct not to supply the help, and it wouldn't clean to argue the toss for not ending up Lookup motor optimization. Towards the very same objective, integration with other electronic and over the highway channels is crucial also. Offline advertising and marketing types in no way at any time are quite probably to understand digital also to be practical, there exists undoubtedly most likely a mutual misunderstanding even so the two channels need to carry out jointly to your higher outstanding and co-ordination is crucial between groups. 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[battleborntap]

First Person Shooters as a genre have been around since Doom was released in 1993, and ever since, it has been widely considered one of the most liked genres (at least by Americans). With a wide variety of games and an even wider variety to the genre itself, let's take a look at some of my personal favorites!

Please note, these games all take place in the first person perspective, and have one of their main mechanics involving firing a gun or weapon of some kind. Games like Mirror's Edge and The Stanley Parable are omitted on the grounds that they are more First Person Puzzle Solvers rather than shooters, despite having the ability to shoot in these games. Also, I will only be doing one game from any given franchise, simply because I could pack this list with four or five sequels easy with all the games I've played. And finally, I can't say this enough, this is all based on my personal favorites and opinions. If you don't agree, that's fine! We all have our favorites, but this is simply a way for me to talk about mine!

So, without further delay, here are my Top Ten Favorite First Person Shooter Games!

#10. CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS (2010)

Of course a Call of Duty game made it onto this list, and MAN what a game it is! Call of Duty: Black Ops released on Ps3 and Xbox 360 in 2010 to much fan praise, and is often considered one of the last good Call of Duty games. While I am quick to argue that point (Advanced Warfare brought a focus to story for the first time in years and Black Ops 2 had probably, in my opinion, the best multiplayer in recent history), The original Black Ops had all three main modes (Story, Multiplayer and Zombies) on point for the launch of the game.

While the Multiplayer may not have aged well for the game, the Story mode is simply wonderful, and unlike the rest of the Black Ops series, YOU CAN UNDERSTAND WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING IN THE STORY! If you have to read a plot summary to fully understand what the hell happened in it, it's not a good story. As for Zombies, simply letting players become former presidents and fighting time traveling nazi zombies...what more do i need to say?

Overall, it's an impressive game by all accounts. It helped to prove that Treyarch had what it took to keep delivering on the CoD formula, and while it wasn't World at War 2 like me and several others had hoped for (Still hoping for it, personally), it was a great game to play all the same.

#9. DOOM (2016)

Doom is the grand daddy of all First Person Shooters, and the latest iteration into the franchise really does not disappoint. With brutal carnage kills, impressive graphics, and a return to what made the franchise fun in the first place, DOOM (2016) is easily one of the best games of that respective year.

The story is as basic as it comes; Hell has invaded Mars, and you were about to be sacrificed when s**t goes sideways. You escape, get a Master Chief Power Armor ripoff, and fight through rooms and hordes of Demons to try and prevent Hell from getting to Earth...You know, like the last three Dooms!

The combat in this is where it truly shines, giving you the ability to kill enemies when they are weakened with brutal finishing attacks. The weapons are all fantastic, and the enemies are tough, but manageable. The real problems are outside the story; Multiplayer seems tacked on and rushed, while SnapMap, the mode I was really excited for, is basically just Corridor maker, the more. Still, the story itself is fun as all hell...

#8. BIOSHOCK (2007)/ BIOSHOCK INFINITE (2013)

This one might seem like a bit of a cheat, but hear me out...I personally feel that these games are very much the same thanks to something called "Service to the Brand."

Let me ask you this. Why do people in Bioshock use plasmids? They are a part of a world where everything has gone to Hell, and now they need to do whatever they need to survive, including injecting themselves with chemicals to give them super powers! Now why do they do it in Bioshock Infinite use vigors, which are basically plasmids?...There's really no reason is there? The reason they use them is because the last two games released had Plasmids, and it wouldn't be the same game without them!

This is a common problem with sequels that differ from their original game, and honestly, the only reason I decided to lump them together is that, aside from story and some situations you encounter, they are basically the same game. Well crafted gun play with elemental magics, expertly written dialogue and story, and an all around impressive and fun universe to explore, these games fill me with a sense of wonder each time I play them. If I had to choose one, it would have to be Infinite, but it's by such a slim margin that I felt it best to lump them together. My list, my rules...

Also, We don't talk about Bioshock 2...just...no.

#7. STAR WARS: BATTLEFRONT (2015, Fight Me)

I know the original Battlefront games are well regarded and adored. I know many of the people who played this felt betrayed and hurt by the micro transactions and lack of content. I know it just feels like Battlefield with a Star Wars skin...But you know what? I don't care!

Star Wars: Battlefront is the Star Wars game I wanted to play when I first put the original Battlefront into my PS2. Was I disappointed by the lack of content? Sure. Did it feel like a cash grab on EA's part because they has acquired the license? Of course, it's EA. But I still enjoy the hell out of it.

The game play is fun and engaging, as well as more balanced than some large scale shooters. The available content, while infuriating that it's behind paywalls and a slow progression system, are rewarding and fun. The Heroes are overpowered, but not too much. Overall, I feel the game is good for one simple fact; for the first time in years, I felt like I was in the boots of a Stormtrooper.

Also, you occasionally get a Wilhelm scream to occur when you kill someone...so there's that.

#6. LEFT 4 DEAD 2 (2009)

How do you make a sequel to a decently balanced multiplayer zombie shooter? Change only who you play as and what their main quest is, then add more! That's exactly what Valve did with Left 4 Dead 2, and it worked great.

Playing as four new survivors with fun personalities, the game introduced three new special infected to deal with on top of the five introduced in the last games, the addition of choosing melee weapons instead of pistols, and helped to balance old issues and new ones that made the game well rounded and just plain fun to play ,whether you were with friends or a few randoms online.

Then Valve went one step further; They added in new content through DLC, some of which included the original five levels from the first game, where you can play as the first four survivors in the first five campaigns from the original game, but with the new enemies, weapons and everything! In general, Left 4 Dead 2 is just a damn fantastic game is you AXE me! HAHA!!

            I'm sorry...

#5. HALO 3 (2007)

Bungie hit pay dirt with the Halo franchise, and the third installment in the game is where all that effort peaked. Great gun play, multiplayer modes, and engaging story line that (mostly) resolved the conflicts of the last two games and more, the game was damn impressive on Xbox 360 when it came out, leading to it becoming the fifth best selling game on the console!

This was one of the big games me and my friends played for days on end, sometimes literally. It's one of the first games to give me a true love for shotguns in first person shooters, and the rest of the games since haven't felt as impacting to me. They've been fun to play, but this was the last game that made me truly enjoy the franchise in a nostalgic sense.

Maybe I'm just getting old? Maybe...

#4. PORTAL 2 (2011)

Portal 2 is much like Left 4 Dead 2; change little to nothing about the game, but improve the writing, add more content, and fix some bugs from the previous game. Unlike Left 4 Dead, however, this game didn't have a multiplayer mode in the original, so this one added one!

While the first game was a series of puzzles linked loosely together by an uncaring, vindictive god/computer named GLaDOS yelling at you and calling you names, the second game is a series of puzzles linked loosely together by an uncaring, vindictive god/ computer named GLaDOS yelling at you and calling you fat before you overthrow her and put a mentally inept ball in her place who slowly begins destroying everything around you, shoves GLaDOS into a potato and sends you both into a 1950's version of the labs you were exploring to be yelled at by a 1950's style billionaire voiced by J.K. Simmons!

The puzzles introduce familiar and new concepts, keeping them fresh well into the game. The dialogue is on point through out, with minimal dialogue feeling out of place or forced. The humor is even better than the first, allowing for visual gags more than the first game did and a few running jokes to boot. Ultimately, an impressive sequel to an already impressive game.

Also, this game made me fear/ hate certain birds...just sayin'

#3. BORDERLANDS 2 (2012)

how do you top a game that had literally a bajillion guns, a rapid fire sense of humor AND a cell shaded art style set in a semi-unique world? MORE GUNS! MORE HUMOR! MORE CELLS SHADED! AND A VILLAIN!

Yeah...if you really think about it, the first game didn't really have a main villain. Sure you had some minor ones, like Baron Flynt and Mad Mel, but they were more like sub-bosses than anything. Borderlands 2 had plenty of sub-bosses, but also gave us MOTHERF**KIN' HANDSOME JACK, OTHERWISE KNOWN AS THE BEST VIDEO GAME VILLAIN OF ALL TIME EVER PERIOD! With an actual story to get through, a villain to thwart, tons of fun new characters and old returning ones, as well as giving personality to the playable characters and the first games characters who act as NPC's this time around, the game did everything it needed to and then some.

This game established Borderlands as a franchise that's here to stay, and with follow-ups including The Pre-Sequel (Not bad, but not great) and Tales from the Borderlands (Fantastic Story, weird execution thanks to it being a TellTale game), there's no doubt in my mind that Borderlands is here to stay...

Can't really say the same for Battleborn...which is sad cause I kind of liked that one...

#2. OVERWATCH (2016)

Honestly, how could this one NOT be on this list? What is easily one of the best new franchises in YEARS, Overwatch brought exactly what it needed, and we keep getting more! With new characters and game modes being added, as well as regular balancing updates and more, the game shows no sign of slowing down.

If I had one complaint, it's that the game doesn't have a story mode. That said, we get plenty of information about the world and its characters thanks to digital comics, animated shorts, in-game dialogue and costumes, and a few other means. The roster is rich with diversity and ranges from easy to play to hard to master, and overall just is a fun time for everyone.

Hell, hte game hasn't even been out for a year yet and already we have three new characters, a new map, a new game mode and additional features like being able to make your own game mode ADDED IN FREE OF CHARGE! That's doing it right!

HONORABLE MENTIONS

The following five games are all fantastic in their own right, but didn't quite make my top ten. To save time, I'll only do a quick sentence or two for each, so please enjoy!

COUNTER-STRIKE: SOURCE - One of the first first-person shooters I played. Good combat and lots of customization both in game and in the variety of game modes.

GOLDENEYE 64 - A fun multiplayer title with an okay story mode. Best played with friends split screen...No Odd Job, please?

KILLZONE - I like to think of this as Sony's answer to Halo, but with space Nazi's instead of aliens. Regardless, it really made you feel like a soldier in an army instead of a lone wolf like most FPS games.

DESTINY -  Bungie's follow-up to Halo after leaving their flagship behind, the online, MMO hybrid was engaging, but didn't have much staying power if you didn't have a dedicated group to play with. With that and a lack of a real story, it felt like this was a half bake idea that will hopefully be more fleshed out in the sequel.

TITANFALL 2 - Improving on some of the pitfalls of the first game (Like console exclusivity), this is fun, fast paced, and in general a good game to play, especially if you have a friend or two in tow. Also, the story mode grabbed me with it's tutorial mode...so that says something.

Now, without delay, Here's Number 1!

#1. TEAM FORTRESS 2 (2007)

What started as a Quake mod eventually became the military themed hat simulator free-to-play sequel that Valve won't let you forget about. Tons of games release on Steam with some tie in to this, usually being a hat themed after whatever you're buying.

That said, once you get past the confusing as all hell economy the game has, there's a fun and engaging "Hero"-based shooter underneath. With nine classes to choose from, nearly limitless combinations for cosmetic customization and weapon loadouts. The story to the game is don similarly to that of Overwatch (Animations, comics, in game items, etc) but unlike Overwatch, many of the comics, animations and such contribute to the overall story of the game instead of just add little references to it.

The story itself is long, convoluted and silly, and perfect for the style of game it's trying to be. Overall, it's the game I've spent the most time in since I bought it back in 2007 (That's right, some of us PAID for this game), and it's easily my favorite First Person Shooter!

Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed! Wat are some of your favorite First person shooters? Let me know in the comments below, and until next time, I'm McNutty891! Have fun!

source : http://ift.tt/2oGhx4Q