The problem here isn’t the money this young man is making with his videos… the problem is that there are 37 million souls watching him playing games instead of spending that time playing games themselves, which to me makes no sense at all.
It might be a sign that I’m getting old, but I rather play games than watching some guy doing it while screaming hysterically.
Bah! This kids today… <waves fist>
If you’re an old school gamer like me, you’ll know that one of the key aspects of retro gaming is the music. When remembering a really good game from the good old days, one of the first things that came up is the game’s theme, that memorable melody that’s carved into our brains.
Red Bull Music Academy has released a very interesting and well made documentary about japanese video game music, that covers a lot of untold aspects of the story behind the most influential music to come out of Japan.
You can check the several released episodes here.
Try it… you’ll never know when it might work 😉
This mock trailer for a 80’s style sci-fi movie is pure awesomeness! Awesome marketing!
This is sooooo 80’s! Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon is set to be released in May for PS3, X360 and PC as an whole game, as you don’t need the original Far Cry 3 to play it.
The awesome sound track is by Powerglove and it’s an entire trip to the 80’s electronica. You can listen to it here 🙂
Trivia: This beautiful sunset is only present in the original EGA version of Monkey Island.
It’s a sad day for us gamers in their 30’s and 40’s.
Today Disney announced that it’s closing LucasArts. The famous game studio that was part of LucasFilm, and included in the package that George Lucas sold to Disney, is being closed down after 31 years. I’m 34. I grew up with LucasFilm Games (that was the original name back then), the good old Maniac Mansion, Loom, Monkey Island, Indiana Jones and so many others. All of them made me a very happy kid. If I exceled at english in my teen years, I owe it all to these titles. Brillian graphic adventures, games unmatched even today…
In the past 10 years, LucasArts has been only a medium to release Star Wars games, straying very far from its roots. In this economy and with the lack of good titles, it was only a matter of “when”.
Farewell LucasFilm Games. I’m off to play some Secret of Monkey Island, hopping one day I might play Monkey Island 3, delivered directly from the hands of the creator.
If I could choose a single image to define my childhood, it would be this awesome painting by Rudy Obrero made for the Masters of the Universe Castle Grayskull box artwork… simply amazing stuff.
The title of this post is one of the most significant lines of David, one of the main characters in Prometheus and it’s perhaps the best way to describe Ridley Scott’s latest sci-fi movie.
First, let me get just one thing out-of-the-way. Prometheus is a great movie, one of the best sci-fi movies of the last 10 years, but it’s not supposed to be an Alien prequel, so for the critics out there that insist in comparing Prometheus with Alien and saying that it’s bad, FUCK YOU. Alien is one of the best exercises in fear and suspense, an excellent movie, so good that no other Alien movie (2,3 and 3) can live up to it, and those were supposed to be better. Prometheus is a whole new beast, it’s an action sci-fi movie that shares the Alien movies DNA and answers some of the questions raised 33 years ago, but it raises new ones, a lot of them, many beyond everything we learned about this universe in the Alien movies.
With this out-of-the-way, let me start my short review, hopefully without spoilers.
Let me start with the 3D. I’m not a very big fan of 3D movies, and when possible, I watch the 2D versions. Prometheus is the best 3D movie I’ve ever seen. The 3D usage has been meticulously thought, it works great and serves its purpose. It’s also the first 3D movie that didn’t give me a headache, that’s supposed to mean something. It’s a polished movie, the photography is amazing, the effects are sublime, very well done, almost an exercise in design, with each an every one of them serving their purpose. The days of the walls with blinking led lights are long gone, now every led, screen or hologram is there for a valid reason, so real that makes you believe it’s true. The creatures are amazing, we get to see more that we hoped for, everything done in a seamless way. Ridley Scott’s formula of real sets with CGI works ten thousand times better that the green screen shit other directors do. This only proves that RS knows what he’s doing from the beginning of the movie to the end.
The cast is good, but even with great names like Charlize Theron and Guy Pearce, it’s Michael Fassbender’s David that steals the show. David is a roller coaster ride of personalities. In a minute he’s a curious child exploring an alien world like it was a toy shop, in another he’s a calculating and mischievous bastard with the face of Peter O’Toole. David, Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron) are the strongest characters in the movie, all the others are there to enhance the plot or are “cannon fodder”, and that it’s perhaps Prometheus biggest flaw, the personality traits of the stereotyped movie characters, but even that doesn’t spoil the amazing story Ridley Scott tells us. There are a lot of topics covered in Prometheus. Life, death, religion, faith, humanity, all in a mixed bag of emotions that leaves a lot of room for at least two more movies, which I really hope RS makes them. The story is so good that you won’t want to leave the theater in the end waiting for more.
To finish, if you want to see this movie, leave your “Alien” baggage out the door, it will be more interesting that way because each nod, each piece of information related to the Alien universe you get to see in this movie, will be a better surprise. You can “connect the dots” later on when you arrive home and watch Alien, only to find that your memory of the movie was “sugar-coating” it a lot more that you were expecting it to be.
Prometheus can be, indeed, the small beginning for on of the biggest trilogies the sci-fi genre will ever have.
Journey is the latest title from the makers of Flower and Flow, ThatGameCompany, published by Sony for the PS3. It’s hard to review Journey without going into spoilers, but I’ll try. I won’t go on detail about the gameplay, the story or even the traditional review points that game reviews usually feature. I won’t tell you my experience here either, but if you played Journey before, I’m glad to share it with you, just mail me and tell me your experience as well.
Journey is not a game. Journey is a metaphor, an emotional subjective art piece and an exercise in minimalism, all wrapped in a beautiful package with one of the best soundtracks I’ve ever had the pleasure to listen.
Journey is about many things and nothing at the same time, it’s about life, death, friendship, civilization, science, evolution, spirituality and faith. Some will say it’s about religion, but I don’t think so, spirituality yes, but not religion. It’s all of this together bond with your emotional baggage. That’s right, you’ll find that Journey will move you, even more if you are an emotional person.
You’ll finish it several times, mainly because Journey is not a long game, it will take you about an hour or less the first time you play it. The second time, you’ll finish it just to see if it moves you the same way it did the first time, and the third and later times because you’ll want to explore even more, earn the entire trophy collection and the white robe 😉 or just to help some fellow red robes.
In Journey you’ll feel peace, you’ll feel fear and happiness, you might even find friendship in a stranger as he/she becomes a journey long companion. You’ll be surprised, but above all else, as I said before, you’ll be moved by this experience.
Do yourself a favor, buy this game, buy the amazing soundtrack, and enjoy your first time, your first Journey, because that will be the purest of them all.
I’m a Star Wars fan, angry but still a fan. I come to dislike the way that George Lucas prostitutes the saga with the low quality cartoons and lousy merchandizing… In September the six movies will come out on Bluray and I’ll probably buy them, but I stopped collecting figures and other items from Star Wars. Unfortunately, this is the way I found to keep the Star Wars saga close to my heart.
Today, I came across three fan made documentaries on youtube about the saga – Star Wars Begins, Building Empire and Returning to Jedi.
If you are a fan, you will definitely love them because they document the aspects that made us all fall in love with Star Wars in the first place: the story, the movies, the characters and the people behind them.