Pixar has been hitting the sequels pretty hard this decade. While I'd admit that outside of the Cars series not one of those sequels (and even the good dinosaur if I'm honest) are "bad." Hell, I'll defend Monsters University as having one of the most devastating coming of age character arcs... ever. But it seems Pixar's golden years are quickly fading even after coups like Inside Out. Which was tremendous. But the C+'s are staring to out number the straight A's it used to have and I've been worried for years. Disney's chief animation studio, quite frankly, trounced Big P this year with Zootopia. The best film about American racial tension I have ever seen.
We just have to muddle through Cars 3(...nah.), The Incredibles 2 (I'm down) Toy Story 4 (No. Why?!) to get to P's solemn pinky swear it will try as hard as it did in the beginning. Hey, I get it. If I was a creative company with a payroll I'd seriously consider sure bets like Toy Story sequels to keep the great Disney beast fed. But since Disney can stand on it's own 2 feet now, I'm so jazzed Zootopia did as well as it has, Pixar now has the means to fight the war to win the world's imagination. Again.
No matter how good we have it, people as a species are never satisfied. So what if there is a magical rectangle in our pocket that gives us immediate access to our friends, family, cabs, and the near entirety of all great works of literature? The battery life sucks. BALLS. Our garden variety lithium ion batteries break after only 7,000 charges.
If the apocalypse struck tomorrow nearly all electronic devices would be bricks within 2 years. But the intrepid researchers at UCI have found something. Using gold nano fibers in an electrolyte gel made of plexiglass... well let's just say they made it to 200,000 mutha fukin' charges.
This is still decades away from mass production, but I distinctly remember a TIME article years ago had scientists grumbling about it not being possible. Basically this is the biggest step forward for batteries since 1989.
The first episode of Outcast is on you tube for your demonic possession based pleasure. If nothing else (and this show is something else) the opening sequence is the best I've seen since Dexter.
After a little fun trouble shooting (one of the great joys of playing old pc games) I'm back in Darksiders II. Most forgotten gems will get a shout out from me but little else. You're on your own, "Xcom: The Bureau!" But Darksiders II is the underappreciated hill I choose to die on. Sure it hardly has any original ideas and the 2 games amount to what is essentially just Todd McFarland's Zelda. But it's made up of so many moving parts that all fit together so perfectly! It also helps that it's got just enough wit and humor to make the bog-standard sword and sorcery narrative go down smooth.
It's art direction is, quite frankly, age proof. It's loot, combat, and platforming are all flawless. If you haven't given 2 a shot, please do. What else are steam sales for?
I'm still holding out hope the new Ghostbusters movie will, at the very least, skirt by on it's amazing cast. But the audio production side is in CRISIS. This is a classic "what do the kids like these days?" reverse engineered disaster. Which is weird because fallout boy played ball with Big Hero Six a few years back and while it may not be that great of a song, it's got one hell of an instrumental hook.
Do you like Kirkland natural peanut butter? Really? You do? You seriously wished peanut butter was more like oily roofing tar? Because... Jesus I can't eat this sh*t. I'm usually on board for leaner, less sugary food. But not like this. Not like this. See, most food passes through one's mouth with relative ease. This crap establishes occupation forces. It took me almost 15 minutes to get through two pieces of toast.
It's like spreadable cardboard, gritty and flavorless. I've never ever thrown out $10 worth of groceries, but if you made me choose between finishing these two jars of super glue and a bullet to the brain, I'd really have to think about
Two well received comedies in the last couple months have been box office poison. Keanu could only scare up 9 million and Popstar... Popstar barely cleared 4. You know what? Fine. Who needs movies, Comedy? You've been amazing these last 10 years on tv. Parks and Rec, Key and Peele, Bojack Horseman, and way too many others to name here have all flourished under reasonable budgets. Plus the last best picture they gave you was in the 70's. The goddamn 70's.
The Academy never respected you, Comedy. Maybe this split is for the best.
The man I created a twitter account for the sole purpose to tweet at has been writing a big budget shooter. Prey is now officially a Chris Avelonne joint... actually it looks like he just punched it up a bit. Still! He's helping mold actual facial animation that isn't frozen in a dead eyed stare. I love New Vegas way more than the next guy and still... that facial animation aged like milk. I could NOT be more pumped for this sci-fi ground-hog-day shooter rigamarole.
50 years ago soviet scientists bred the aggression out of wild foxes to learn how dogs came from wolves. Though arcane and torturous international trade dealings some people have gotten their hands on a couple "domesticated" foxes. Half of a cat's hunter instincts with half of a dog's high energy playfulness makes a pet hybrid I didn't know I needed in my life. I would LOVE it if I came home to a dog that would play-stalk me like a delightful fuzzy kato.
For now I'll just have to settle for youtube videos...
BB may have a soft spot in my heart but my eyes are not immune to it's shortcomings. If you're having second thoughts, by all means, wait for a $30 price drop. That's fair. But I do want to talk about the loot because it's AMAZING.
They tweak everything from running speed, area of effect skill cooldown times, sprinting speed, shield piercing, healing power, just anything and everything. But you can only use 3 at a time and it's usefulness usually comes at an equal price. They all run on an in-match currency called shards. Low level loot'll run you about 300 shards. Epic loot like the generous refund policy up there is worth a whooping 1800! There is no way you'll be able to use it until about halfway through a campaign level and that can be an eternity. Even if you have the greatest possible loadout, if you're not "good" you're gonna get wiped long before you have a chance to use any of it.
But there is an opposite side to that spectrum. Most white loot is garbage, but some come with no shard cost at all! You can just boot em' up immediately. Like this one do-dad that gives me 1.5 healz per second at the cost of -15% reload speed. A harsh trade off for a sniper... but what about a melee character that has no reload at all? You could run the board early in a PVP match and I have done so!
The checks and balances with Battleborn's loot are polished to a mirror sheen. It's a shame not enough people are playing it. Or even talking about it... siiiiiiiiiiiigh.
In any given group of people... some are going to have a pretty cruel view of society. I'm done calling people "racist." I find "cruel bastard" far more appropriate. I also find there are entirely too many steam users with their panties in a bunch over the Watchdogs 2 protagonist being an African American. But hey, this'll sell 2 million easy and these f**kers will shut up. Because marketers have already figured out that they don't financially matter. As much as I commend Ubisoft for doing this, it had to have taken a mess of market research to prove this decision wouldn't hurt them. Then the bastards will internalize their impotence and we'll all go back to quietly ignoring the fact that too many gamers use this medium as a way to reinforce their sh**y world view.
