01) Legacy of Kain: Dead Sun (32min HD video of the cancelled successor to Soul Reaver)
What a shame that this was cancelled…
…I forget the name of the engine…but this is clearly the same game engine used in the Mordor/Arkham games.
I enjoyed Shadow of Mordor, a lot…which is crazy, because I haven’t been that big on action RPGs, over the years…but it’s a ton of fun, slaughtering Orcs.
…The Batman series I just recently purchased the set on sale…I’ve played the first a bit…and I’m looking forward to playing through the entire series.
Dead Sun looks like it would have been fun…and they badly need to get the Legacy of Kain back off the ground…the main storyline has been languishing in limbo, since 2003…for crying out loud…They need to at least complete that.
It’s crazy to know how many games were originally planned in this franchise [at least ten]…realizing that at least half of them got canceled…The LoK universe was supposed to have been much wider.
Blood Omen was a wonderful game [one of my all time favorite games]…total joy to play…
…It was the Soul Reaver games that killed the series, in my opinion…As games go…they were too big of a change from the first official release…and the fighting/puzzles were mind numbing…We went from a beautiful, dark “Zelda” like game…to a 3D world, where you had to be jumping and landing on narrow platforms…and dying when you fail…and fail…and fail…and fail…I was no good at this, and quickly learned to hate these games.
To my mind…there’s only been one good Legacy of Kain game released…and it was the first one…Though, curiously…there was a predecessor that never got released.
I wish they would have carried on the primary storyline, through games more like the first Blood Omen.
All the same…I probably would have purchased Dead Sun.
01) Andrew Lincoln Will Return As Rick Grimes In 3 Walking Dead Movies
“Andrew Lincoln is returning to The Walking Dead universe as Rick Grimes in three spin-off movies. The Walking Dead’s Chief Content Officer Scott Gimple officially announced the news on Talking Dead following Andy’s last episode on the AMC drama. “This is not going to be the end of Rick Grimes’ story,” Gimple said. “We’re going to continue telling Rick Grimes’ story in a series of AMC original films. There’s a lot of story to tell.”
…
In September, AMC Networks’ President and CEO Josh Sapan said at a Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference, “The Walking Dead is a universe…and we have a plan to manage over the next decade, plus.”
01) Venom is a hit, so is Spider-man Finished in the MCU now?
“In its first weekend of release, Sony’s Venom defied the lackluster reviews from professional critics, and opened to 80 million at the domestic box office, and to the audience consensus that it “wasn’t that bad”.
But the downside with Venom scoring this kind of boxoffice, is that it gives Sony every incentive to yank Spider-man out of the MCU, and put him into their own budding Sony Marvel universe, alongside Venom, Morbius and Kraven.
In this post-release analysis (not postmortem, as the movie didn’t bomb), @AndreEinherjar will explore just that further. To do so, the Venom boxoffice numbers will be put into context, where the movie stepped wrong and what it did right will be dissected, and then finally, what this boxoffice result could mean for Sony’s own Marvel Universe, and by extension, Spider-man’s future presence in the legitimate Marvel Cinematic Universe.”
Looked at on its own…
…I think he’s correct, that Sony would be more incentivized to unite it’s successful Marvel properties…
…Which would be bad for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, should this mean Spiderman will no longer appear in their movies…They’ve invested a lot in him, already…He needs to stay and develop.
No doubt…this is why he’s been made, and kept, a minor character…Marvel didn’t want him to get too big, in case he ended up getting yanked out of their movies?
I can understand Marvel not wanting to recognize movies made outside of their control, as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe…but part of me wishes they would give their blessing, and allow the crossover[s].
01) Imminent Xbox One Conan Exiles has to put underpants on in America
“Multiplayer barbarian survival game Conan Exiles launches on the Xbox One Game Preview programme this week, on Wednesday 16th August. But because of regional age-rating organisations, the game won’t be quite the same in America as in Europe.
In America, the ESRB has rated Conan Exiles M for Mature; in Europe, PEGI has rated Conan Exiles for ages 18 and over. But in America there will only be partial nudity allowed whereas in Europe there will be the full monty. And in Conan Exiles speak, full monty means willies.
Conan Exiles rose quickly to fame on PC for showing full male nudity in all its jiggling hilarity. The game even has a customisation slider to increase or decrease willy size, resulting in lots of, ahem, very-accurate-to-real-life representations. Conan Exiles also displays a woman’s nether regions but in no real discernible detail.”
The All Mighty Authoritarians have spoken!…
…No Virtual Penises!…No Virtual Vaginas!…
Kneel before their Glorious Supremacy, and Obey!
Europe gets to have the customizable twanger, however…
…This is just pathetic levels of social power exhibition…and social manipulation…
…It’s a penis!, for crying out loud!…
…Where do all these mentally ill clowns come from, who cannot take anyone under a certain age even seeing the virtual representation of a natural body part, which roughly half of them already own…and much of the other half has already seen?!
…And…’Gasp!’…a large many have already interacted with?…
Blood, guts and violence are fine…even bare breasts!…
…It’s the all important twanger, that they have an issue with.
Why…oh, why!…could I not have been born into a world, “ruled” by at least moderately sane people?
You know what I think?…
…I think…these authoritarian clowns know [as we all do]…that some portion of “the underaged” will see that representation of an adult penis…and think to themselves…”That looks so good!…I wanna get freaky with that!”…
…And they just cant stand it…So, they try to stop the exposure…stop the natural enticement.
If you cannot see or speak of the representation…you cannot so easily communicate the desire…Pure Manipulation.
01) The Walking Dead cast shares thoughts on Andrew Lincoln’s departure
“Norman Reedus, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Lauren Cohan, Danai Gurira, and Gale Anne Hurd tell EW’s Dalton Ross what they’re going to miss about Andrew Lincoln.”
What Andrew Lincoln’s Departure Means For The Walking Dead:
“If there’s one thing The Walking Dead has proven over its run, it’s that no one is safe. From Lori’s disturbing demise to the gruesome fates of Abraham and Glenn, the AMC series has made it pretty clear that in Robert Kirkman’s zombie apocalypse, the stakes are high. One character that has felt untouchable through all of it has been Rick Grimes. From the day he woke up in that Georgia hospital, Rick has beaten the odds quite a bit. On the heels of Carl’s passing, though, it looks like the show on the verge of an overhaul, and now it’s been reported that after season 9, Andrew Lincoln will leave the series that made him a household name. So, how might the end of the Ricktatorship impact the show moving forward? Here’s what Lincoln’s departure probably means for The Walking Dead…”
I’ve still got several episodes of season eight left to watch…but I have to say…I’m really welcoming a new direction, and the show being in new hands.
Season eight is worth watching, if you really are a deep fan of the show…but it is not an effortless watch…
Things which were senseless, lazy decisions every here and there [starting a few seasons back], have grown into lack of creativity, terrible lazy editing…and beating things to death [no…not zombies!], well beyond the point where they’ve worn out their welcome.
They destroyed the first two episodes of the season [and wasted a lot of time], by almost endlessly showing nothing but loud, disorienting gun battles…to the point of being obnoxious…I had to turn the volume up, to hear the calm, talking scenes that divided up the battles…then turn the volume down, when the guns started blaring…up down, up down, up down…
If they’d have shown two battles and represented the rest of it with a montage, it would have worked beautifully…I think.
Consequentially…the first two episodes are a virtual wasteland of loud gun fire…with very little story development going on…I can’t even imagine, why anyone thought this was a good idea.
Thus far…there’s not much character/relationship development in this season…let alone, story development…and what does happen, feels shallow and weird…
Carl’s death…after all these years building up his character as kind of weird, and not just a tad psychopathic [IE: the kid he murdered in season four]…he suddenly gets a [not overly interesting] “redemption” angle, from a sense of “social responsibility” that just cropped up out of nowhere…and he dies for his egalitarianism…Nothing you’d explicitly anticipate, given his past…but, it quickly morphs him into a hero, and drags his decline and death out, over about three episodes…
…If you can take something like the death of Carl Grimes [and I’m talking about the singular “death” episode, itself]…and you can drag it out so bad, and in such a way as you manage to annoy the hell out of the audience…you are doing something very, very, very wrong.
The death of this character was handled badly…To many factors were at play here [IE: Chandler isn’t that strong of an actor], which should have clued them in…it’s a mistake to drag this on, and on, and on…and freaking on…
And some of these cuts from one scene to another…it’s as if they entirely forgot how to mark that one scene is concluded, and a different one has begun…It’s crazy, how some different scenes blur into each other…Again, it’s disorienting…
I’ve still got disk four to watch…maybe there are episodes on disk five, I don’t know…but this has been a really weak season…which is a total shame, given everything that’s been covered this season…It should have been way better…
Even Rick and Daryl, given their long history, have somehow been saddled with a schizophrenic relationship…one that abruptly erupts into a fist fight, and a fallout…which is isolated, and never referenced afterwards…[thus far]…
So…this show needs to do some serious house cleaning, where it comes to people setting the direction, and overseeing things…
…I’m looking forward to seeing what they can do, with a soft reboot of sorts…At this point, it needs to happen.
If we still had the strong cast of established characters which we had in season six…I think it wouldn’t be quite the quandary, to replace Rick…But, they’ve not established a strong character for a while, now…They’ve just been killing off established characters…Most of the new characters in season eight, are meaningless to the audience.
Just reminiscing a bit…
Season two was always my favorite…It was the strongest the show ever offered, in my opinion…and the show was never quite so consistently good, afterwards. I know they eventually had to pull the show into an “action” direction…but the true heart and quality of The Walking Dead, always rested with the strong character stories and development…As the show kept distancing from this…it kept going down hill…slowly, but consistently.
Again…it needs to be in fresh hands…The people making decisions for season eight, did not know what they were doing…and it’s damaged the series.
01) The Predator – Final Trailer [HD] – 20th Century FOX
“From the outer reaches of space to the backwoods of southern Georgia, the hunt comes home in Shane Black’s explosive reinvention of the Predator series. Now, the universe’s most lethal hunters are stronger, smarter and deadlier than ever before. And only a ragtag crew of ex-soldiers and an evolutionary biology professor can prevent the end of the human race.
In Theaters September 14, 2018”
Looks great!…I’m instantly stoked!…
…until that second, where they drop us into all the cliché, modern day movie tropes…
I fully agree…the original Predator movie had low level cheese in it…
…It was still unique, and had a formula that worked…It built it’s own core fan base, off of what it had to offer.
Core fan bases usually hate these types of tinkering we see in so many old film franchises, because it perverts what they’ve come to expect out of [and love about] that long established franchise…
…It’s like a bait and switch…
The film makers want the massive name recognition of the franchise, to help guarantee the film’s success…
…The core fan base goes in expecting one thing…but gets served up with something…that isn’t what they were expecting…
And the thing is…they can still make their movie…and maybe it works beautifully as a film…as it’s own thing…
…But, no…they want a “holy grail” of a franchise, to release this new spin…”re-imagination”…”reboot”[?] under…
The trailer looks really cool…but something feels really, really off…and lame…and lazy…about what I’m seeing in the story…
…A series like this does not need cliché comedy bits, you can find in every other modern movie on the market.
It’s just a trailer…Who knows what the movie is going to be like?…
…This trailer suddenly makes me want to see the movie…and then quickly snatches that desire away.
They can make movies as they like…and no fan base has a right, to tell them they cant…
…But I do understand, why core fan bases hate when people do this.
Hopefully…the trailer is misleading…and the movie is better than it’s representation.
01) Star Trek Discovery gets CBS sued over Plagiarism, and #StarTrekToo
“Paramount has lost their access to Chinese capital, and are forced to find alternative funding for their upcoming projects, like Star Trek 4. Paramount’s track record, plus the track record of the recent Star Trek movies themselves will make investors wary, and very sensitive towards negative press – such as both Chris Hemsworth, and worse yet, Captain Kirk himself, Chris Pine, dropping out of Star Trek 4.
The last thing license holder Paramount needs right now, is more bad press associated with Star Trek, as that may cause more investors to pull out, threatening future projects.
Alas, more bad press is what they got.
In this video, we will first explore just why negative press is particularly bad for Paramount and Star Trek 4, before going over the most recent negative press, namely CBS being sued for plagiarism over Star Trek Discovery; and the most recent #MeToo scandal – which involves a Star Trek actor.
