Shmee.Me

April 5, 2016

The Paladin thinks they named it Spectre because there wasn’t anything there

This weekend I had an excellent bag of toffee covered popcorn. It was in small bags, tasted fresh, was satisfyingly crunchy, and the toffee flavor was delightful. It was Cascade or River something. I don’t seem to remember the name, but the experience easily made up for it.

Unlike the movie we watched, Spectre. I can remember the name, but beyond that I can’t really think of much else. It was a James Bond movie? It had Monica Bellucci in it very briefly, which was as shame. Voldemort let Moriarty fall off a balcony. Stuff blew up and bad guys were dispatched in the usual ways.

I wonder if the new Bond films have the Star Trek movie problem where every other film is good.. Only they’re on the odds and not the evens? But Spectre is not like Star Trek V: Final Frontier bad; it’s just forgettable, a lot like Quantum of Solace. And its not Daniel Craig’s or the director, Sam Mendes, fault. Casino Royale and Skyfall were a renaissance in James Bond films, that were both more grounded and yet mindful of the past cinematic experiences. I think it was just the story, whatever it was, was just boring.

Really, I just want to talk more about my mystery bag of toffee covered popcorn. It was that good.

P.S. I do remember one thing about the movie – the opening title was THE absolute worst James Bond song ever; even beating Moonraker by a huge margin.

April 4, 2016

Batman V Superman Take Two!

So even though I had middling feelings about BvS:DoJ I decided to go and check it out again over the weekend, and I have to say I thought it was better the second time around. Understanding where all the plots were going really helped out. Plus I knew all the stuff I could tune out. Though I will say if I was the editor I would have taken a hatchet to Batman v Superman.

I love Amy Adams, but I would have killed her whole story arc. It never made any sense. Superman’s mountain walkabout? Gone. He already gets advice from Ma Kent there is no need for more soul searching. Justice League cameos? I would have just copied Marvel and thrown them all after the credits. That would have just left Wonder Woman (okay and someone else too), and that would have been enough. Then if there was anything left that would have smoothed out some of the main stories on the cutting room floor I would have re-added those clips. This movie would have been much better at two hours long.

Anyway like I said, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was actually better the second time, and I am now curious where everything goes from here. Obviously we know the big bad guy will be Darkseid, or at least a Darkseid minion for Part 1, and he brings with him a whole bag of trouble. I just hope audiences will not have to see the movies twice for them to make any sense.

April 1, 2016April 1, 2016

This Weekend Is The Big Test For Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice!

Two things happened with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice last weekend: One, It was panned by critics, and two, it made a ton of money at the box office. For some reason people were surprised that a movie featuring two American icons fighting made money hand over fist even though the critics hated it, but the first movie with Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman was always going to make a lot of cash the era of mega-blockbuster weekends. The big question is will it continue to make money.

Last weekend industry analysts (I wish I had a job I could be wrong at all the time) said Batman v Superman was going to make a little less than $150 Million, and maybe even less than that due to bad reviews. The movie went on to make $166 Million. There are some troubling signs for Warner Brothers/DC however. The movie made an enormous $82 Million on Friday (including all the Thursday previews), but it dropped all the way to $34 Million on Sunday. That is the biggest same weekend drop of all time. Now there are a couple of factors at play here: Thanks to reasonable Thursday preview show-times Friday numbers are getting very inflated. They need to start counting Thursday as its own day. Also Sunday was Easter. Which is a day for being outside hunting eggs, not inside watching hyper-violent superhero flicks. So analysts aren’t sure if that historic same weekend drop was due to bad word of mouth or reasonable Easter weather.

For mega-blockbusters a second weekend drop of about 60% to 65% is the norm, so if Batman v Superman is truly critic-proof we should see a total of $65 Million to $60 Million this weekend. A much bigger drop than that Warner Brothers/DC should be concerned about the future of their franchise. If it takes in more than that Warner Brothers should be very excited since they were able to not only dodge a bullet, but that they were able to truly start competing with Disney/Marvel.

As for me, as much as my review of Batman v Superman was mixed, I kind of hope that it is able to truly shrug of critics and become a massive success. I think critics often get an overinflated view of themselves. They feel like they are they are the gatekeepers of entertainment, and that they are the reason movies, books, music or whatever live or die. When honestly their job is to simply inform the public of their professional opinion and then let the public decide, so sometimes it is great when the public just completely ignores them. I will say that Batman v Superman has some really great big-screen moments that will just not be quite the same when it comes out on video, so the public may be right in ignoring the critics because some things, good or bad, you just need to see for yourself.

March 18, 2016March 18, 2016

Are We Seeing The Death Of Free2Play?

After almost a year of silence since PAX Prime 2015, LawBreakers the new asymmetrical arena shooter by CliffyB’s new studio Boss Key Productions has not only changed its logo and character art, but it will no longer be Free2Play (F2P). They have not said how much it will cost, only that it will now be a premium purchase only available (at least initially) on Steam.

One game changing its monetization scheme wouldn’t be that big a deal, but recently Blizzard also announced that their shooter Overwatch would also be ditching F2P, and they will be releasing their tittle for $40 this May. It was speculated that Battleborn from Gearbox would be F2P as well, but Randy Pitchford made it clear that they only release AAA full price tittles. It seems, at least with bigger studios, that the money just isn’t there for F2P unless you are a MOBA (Think Dota 2 or League of Legends) or an MMO (Star Wars: The Old Republic or The Elder Scrolls Online).

I for one am quite happy about this change. As much as I have enjoyed Dirty Bomb by Splash Damage it is annoying to not have all the characters, or at least a good portion of them, and even if you do drop the money to get all the characters you still need to spend money to outfit them properly. Meaning that you are most likely only going to get a couple of characters and then just outfit them which is a shame since half of the fun with asymmetrical shooters is playing with all the random different play styles.

We will see if this trend continues, but I kind of hope it does. I will be keeping an eye on Epic Games’ Paragon to see if it follows suit. If Free2Play dies, I don’t think anyone will morn its death. It works for a few games out there, but not for everything.

March 16, 2016March 16, 2016

Sony Manages To Fumble Their Mic Drop!

A couple of weeks ago I said that Sony needed to launch Project Morpheus now known as PlayStation VR for $499, but they did one better and launched it for $399. Well except that they didn’t. You can get it for $399, but to use it you will need a $59 PlayStation Camera, and for a quite a few of their 50 launch titles you will need a couple of Move controllers for $40 each, so the grand total will be $540. Though for now you can get PlayStation Cameras and Move controllers cheaper than MSRP if you look around, so not so surprisingly the total would be about $500.

Now Sony’s reasoning for launching the VR without any of the necessary accessories was that most of their first adopters will already have the Camera and the Move controllers, which is probably true fanboys tend to buy everything (ask me about my Kinect), but the $399 price was still pretty bogus. They should have just announced two SKUs at their event, $399 for the base headset, and $499 for the bundle. Boom! Problem solved! They still get to have their VR solution be $200 cheaper than the Rift which also doesn’t come with motion controllers, and even with the bundle they still would have been $100 cheaper. It is all win.

Now later in day after Sony was getting hammered for their misleading $399 price point they did say that they were going to announce a couple of PlayStation VR bundles. One with headset and all necessary accessories, and one that also includes the PS4. I can understand not saying anything about the PS4 bundle because by October the PS4’s price will have dropped, so to announce the price of that bundle would giveaway how much the that drop will be, and that announcement is usually saved for the lead-in to the all important Holiday buying season, but not announcing the Camera and Move bundle was just odd and ill-advised.

Sony still got to drop the mic as far as price goes for their VR solution, but instead of getting to enjoy it they had to deal with the wrath of a lot of confused and angry gamers. Now granted confused and angry seems to be the native mental state for a lot of gamers, especially ones that hang out on the internet, and people were always going to be mad that the PlayStation VR was ‘too expensive’, but they could have saved themselves a lot of grief by just acknowledging upfront that the PlayStation VR was going to be more than $399 for a lot of people. You know, more like $499 like a certain blogger told you it would be.