I watched most of E3’s press conferences yesterday, and I was not overly impressed. Square-Enix should have just skipped it, their 30 minute presentation pretty much only announced a new Dragon’s Quest game, and Ubisoft hit cut and paste from last year. Which left Sony, and while Sony’s show was at least interesting, and it had this awesome trailer:
The rest of it was stuff we expected or that we had seen before, but with Sony’s amazing production values that at least made the show worth watching.
I am not sure what happened yesterday, last years pressers were so good, but this year, barring Microsoft and Bethesda on Sunday, the shows could have just been boiled down to a couple of new trailers. It would have saved us all a bunch of time that is for sure. Oh well, at least there are a ton of good games on the horizon, and I can’t wait to play them.
2018 E3’s Pre-shows started this weekend, and for the most part they were pretty good, with the exception of EA who pretty much just said they were sorry for being greedy jerks, Battlefield would also have Battle Royal, and Respawn was making a Star Wars game with Jedi in it. This left the weekend to Microsoft and Bethesda. They did not disappoint.
Microsoft kicked off the show with Halo: Infinity:
Then ended with Cyberpunk 2077!
What was between those two massive trailers was non-stop game announcements. Most of them were not exclusive, but the message was clearly, “We have plenty of games to play!” Other big things were that yes they are indeed working on a new Xbox despite rumors, as well as a streaming service, and that they bought four studios (Ninja Theory!!) and are creating a new one. Also Forza Horizons 4 looks amazing!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmQNo8xtcAg
After all of that hotness it was up to Bethesda, and while they had less games to show, they were all pretty amazing.
New standalone expansions for Prey and Wolfenstein, Doom 2 Eternal (AKA Hell on Earth), more Rage 2 with excellent digs at Walmart Canada, more info about the biggest Fallout ever 76 (AKA Fallout: The Division), and they ended it with a one two punch of STARFEILD!
And THE ELDER SCROLLS 6!!!
Of course they said Starfield is a next generation experience, and that The Elder Scrolls 6 doesn’t come out until after that, so who knows when they are coming out, but with Microsoft hinting about the Xbox Two being around the corner, we could see Starfield late next year and TES:6 in 2020. However, it may be a safe bet to add an extra year to each of those games, so 2020 and then 2021 respectively.
I will be watching what goes down today, but Sunday was a good day for games, and I am expecting the usual fireworks from Sony, so today should be just as good if not better.
Thanks to John Wick the old school late 80’s early 90’s action revenge genre is making a comeback, though it is getting a few tweaks along the way. Upgrade stays truer to the formula than John Wick does, but it mixes in a cyberpunk setting and some horror elements for flavor. While its story will not blow you away, its great fight choreography and gruesome practical effects might.
Upgrade’s plot is basic: happy man and wife get attacked, wife gets murdered, and then man goes out and takes his revenge. The difference in Upgrade is that the man, Grey Trace (Logan Marshall-Green), becomes a quadriplegic, so he undergoes an experimental surgery that implants a cybernetic computer, STEM (voice by Simon Maiden), on to his spine to move his limbs for him. Then when he allows STEM to have complete control over his body he turns in to a cyborg killing machine.
What is great about this movie is that it understands what the audience is in the theater for: cool fights, and they are a ton of fun. Watching Grey watch what his body is doing without his control with a combined look of horror and amazement on face is quite funny, and Marshall-Green’s ability to make his movements look unhuman while making those facial emotes is uncanny. Then because Upgrade is billed as a horror movie, the ending to those fights are shocking. With really well done practical effects to sell what you are seeing on screen.
While no one is going to win any acting awards for this film, like I said before Marshall-Green really grounds this movie. His ability to make not quite robotic movements and still give his character some emotional depth is worth recognition, and Upgrade needs that good central character because there is almost no other character of note in this movie. Except for maybe STEM. Everyone else is just a roadblock to justice. Roadblocks that do some great stunt work.
Upgrade is barely over an hour and a half long including its ending credits, so it doesn’t outlast its welcome, and sophomore director Leigh Whannell does a fabulous job keeping it running at a fast clip. You can tell he reveled in bringing his horror background to the action genre, he wrote and co-created the Saw and Insidious franchises. While it won’t win any new fans to the action revenge genre, existing ones should find plenty to like in Upgrade. It is quite literally a bloody good time.
Valve for years has pushed back on content that it deemed too offensive for its digital storefront Steam. However, as time has passed the line for what gets let in and what gets banned has turned in to more of a sine curve that developers have had to try and calculate in order to sell their wares on gaming’s biggest digital store. Then after doing all that “math” some developers got notices that their games were going to be dropped from the store anyway. Which is a problem if Steam accounts for 80% of your sales. After a few weeks of silence Valve brushed it all off as a misunderstanding. The devs, as you can imagine, were not pleased, so to make everyone “happy” Steam’s forthcoming policy is that everything is permitted, and it is up to the users to build their own walls for what they see with tools that are forthcoming.
Here is the thing, those tools have got to be really effective and easy to use otherwise people are going to start seeing a lot of crap they don’t want to. It is like going to a video store in the 90’s and just pretending there was nothing behind the beaded curtain. Of course in that case at least the store put the curtain up. It wasn’t up to the perspective renters to hang the rod and decide the bead density. Valve should have just said they were creating an “opt-in” policy, and then let people check the boxes for what they want to see. That way everything stays beyond the wall until you say to open the gates. If someone searches for something beyond that wall, it could let them know that it exists, but that they would need to update their settings. Now however, it is going to be a free-for-all until you get your barrier setup correctly.
Then on top of that Steam has the audacity to say that even though they are letting every kind of game in that doesn’t mean they agree with the game in question’s content. Oh, well I am glad you don’t agree with what you are going to try and make a bundle of money off of. It is a like a nun working the front desk at a brothel, “It is a sin to step inside my child, but I will need $50 up front to enter the bar.” What?! Even more insane is that Valve will still ban games that are illegal and that are “outright trolling”. Illegal I get, but trolling? According to who? Why get rid of an arbitrary line to just add a worse arbitrary line?
I am glad that developers will now be able to make the kinds of games they want to make and host them on Steam, but Valve should still have a major hand in trying protect its users from the terrible stuff those devs are going to make. The wall should still exist, just make a gate and post some guards warning of what lies beyond, “There be adult content, gruesome violence and nudity past this point fair traveler!” Let it be a user decision, not a platform decision, and “trolling”? That should be more detailed, like no games replicating racist acts or school shootings, you know, an actual policy. Steam will soon be the Wild West, and I am not sure its users will apricate the change.
This is a pretty long trailer for a movie that isn’t coming out until February, but I am excited! It is a pretty epic looking apocalypse, and I am on board! Not to mention there is a pretty great Guardians of the Galaxy joke in there, so at least we know the tone of the movie is on point.
