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Games Of Thrones Season 6: The Season Stuff Started To Happen!

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It is like producers David Benioff and D. B. Weiss counted up the remaining episodes and went, “Oh crap! We need to start wrapping things up!”.  Season six of Game of Thrones ran at a breakneck pace.  People were seemingly teleporting all over Westeros and Essos to meet up and make things happen, and to answer all sorts of remaining questions.  While all this action has been entertaining it has given the show a different flavor.  There is no time left to let things set and stew for a bit.

Though I understand the reason for the change.  Game of Thrones is going to be eight seasons long and we have completed six, and we still need to figure out who is going to rule Westeros to fight the White Walkers, and then of course they need to fight the White Walkers.  We all know that the end of Game of Thrones will be dragons versus the White Walkers, so season six did its best to clear the table of any remaining appetizers to get us ready for the main course.  The problem is that now we are ready and we have to wait just under a year for that main course to be served, and then a year after that for our frozen flambéed dessert.  There aren’t many big questions left besides how is this all going to play out, and I for one can’t wait to watch.  After all of the Starks’ promising, Winter is here!

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You Should Be Disappointed With Mighty No. 9; You Shouldn’t Be A Jerk About it.

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The Kickstarter funded Mighty No. 9 developed by Keiji Inafune launched this week, and the reviews have been less than kind.  Last I checked the game was sitting at 58% on Metacritic.  The people that teamed up to give more than $4 Million have been raging about it all over the internet saying things like, “He took our money and ran!”, or “People have created better games with a lot less money!”, but neither of the those statements are fair.

It is true that other games made with less money have been better, I could list several, but those teams were small being made up of one or two dedicated people, not full dev teams.  Large development teams like Inafune’s Comcept cost a lot of money, so if things go sideways they burn through money fast, and it seems clear from Inafune’s interviews that is what happened with Mighty No. 9.  Not many developers would ever utter the words, “It is better than nothing.”, if things went well.  Things went bad and Comcept pushed through and published a game for their backers.  Was it the game they wanted? No, but it was indeed better than nothing.  Which is more than a lot of failed projects produce.  Nothing.  Leaving backers empty handed.

I am not saying people should be happy with Might No. 9.  It is clearly not a great game, but they shouldn’t be so mad at Keiji Inafune and the rest of Comcept either.  They tried their best and failed.  A lot of good dev teams have created bad games, and I think that is the case here.  What people should be taking from all of this is to remember that backing any creative endeavor on Kickstarter can go sideways, even ones with a lot of talent and knowhow.  Which is why you should always spend your money and back projects wisely with the understanding you may end up with nothing, or something that is better than nothing.

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The CW Brought Back Wonder Woman For Supergirl But Not Superman?

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The new DCW TV shows have been doing a great job of bringing back actors from DC’s previous shows and movies for roles in the CW’s current offerings, so it wasn’t surprising to hear that Linda Carter would be coming to Supergirl to play the President of the United States (I would probably vote for her this year, and I still might), but was surprising that they decided not bring back Tom Welling to play Superman.

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I mean they already had a Superman ready to go and they went and cast someone else.  Now I have no doubt that Tyler Hoechlin will do a fine job as the Man of Steel, but it would have been great to close the loop with the original DCW show.  Welling may have been busy, or maybe they decided that if they do bring Welling in that he will play some sort of side character like all the other former cast members they have brought back, but it would have been great to see him in the suit, being the Superman that Smallville promised he would become.

However, focusing on the positives, Linda Carter is going to be back on TV!  That is exciting, and who knows with The Flash screwing up the multiverse maybe we will still see Welling fly in to save the day.  I would be in for some Superman versus Superman action.

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Adam Shows What Unity Can Do!

When people think of the Unity Engine, they usually think of small graphically un-intensive indie games, but Unity is trying to change that perception.  The video above is in-engine and rendered in real time, so no image capturing here.  While it may not quite be feature film grade it is still very impressive for a ‘free’ game engine, and it shows how far gaming software has come.  All I know is that it makes me want to buy a new video card.  Or possibly an Xbox Scorpio.

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HBO’s Westworld Looks Terrifying!

The original Westworld directed by Michael Crichton was a classic, so I was not super enthused about a TV reboot, but I have to say the trailer sells it really well.  Though it is still confusing to me, much like Jurassic Park, how anyone thought a theme park full violent androids was a good idea.  Sure they aren’t supposed to hurt humans, but we all know that is just a matter of time before their code glitches and there are a few dozen dead humans laying around.  I hope the show delivers on this trailer’s scary promise.