SCREEN DUMPSTER: THE WASTELAND SKY OF MAD MAX WILL ASTOUND YOU

Unfortunately, the release of Mad Max by Warner Bros. on September 1st 2015 was utterly eclipsed by Hideo Kojimas incomplete MGS 5. "What fuck-wits were responsible for slating the release date for this game?" I caught myself muttering after picking up copies of both games the same day. Mad Max is by no means a terrible game at all, so which marketing muppet at Avalanche Studios felt it was a fantastic idea to directly compete with one of the biggest game franchises existing today?! I'm sure they no longer have a job now. Or maybe Warner Bros felt that the incredible hype from the film earlier in the summer would be a grand enough pedestal for the game to sit on top of- waving solid gold scepters indignantly at established IP.

I dipped my toes in the tepid and murky waters of Mad Max out of respect for the doomed release date before i sunk my teeth into MGS5 and ended up with some sort of food poisoning or stomach virus. So it had been a few months of neglect since i played it last and was anxious to give it some attention. It found its way back into the digital bowels of my PS4 and i have been absolutely enamored with one thing in particular.

Look at this fucking sky!

Point form review of the game below the screen caps.

“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on a summer's day, listening to the wind, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.” 
― John Lubbock 

That goes doubly so for a simulated version of the horizon. I suppose the Devs felt that the barren wasteland needed something beautiful to contrast the hoplessness of a dystopia. But man did they ever outdo themselves. Every games sky from now on will be compared to this in my mind. Once you see something great its really hard to un-see it.

SO there i stood, which is something  i very seldom do in a game. Totally ignoring the mission prompts. Protesting the list of tasks before me to stare at this incredibly dynamic, show stopping sky Avalanche Studios has created. i left Max standing in one place and took screen caps every 5 min or so as i replied to emails over the course of about an hour and a half.

...and my view came to an extremely abrupt and violent end my friends.

Suddenly a 'mighty duster' tossed me like a cobb salad, to and fro. The car also landed onto of me.

I was attempting to not write a review of the game and simply show off some of the compelling eye candy it had to offer but i do have to share a few thoughts about the gameplay and the state of open world games lately. Point form i think would be appropriate here.

• The game ties in with the film quite well. keeping certain themes while creating a stand alone story which is where most movie based games go wrong. Its been a long time since a video game/ movie crossover impressed me as much as Mad Max did.
• There are War-boys and they do scream 'Valhalla' as they roll up on you. There are thundersticks and they are really fun to play with. Gas town is in the game as well.
• i never felt without in the game. There were too many resources littered throughout the game. i always had water, Dinkie-D dog food, and gazzoline so the mechanic of looting and pillaging fell a bit flat since the scarcity of essentials is the primary theme of the franchise.
• You'll do lots of driving and the cars feel awesome to handle. The customization and vehicle variety will keep you busy and hungry for upgrades. The trouble is the commerce system doesn't give you enough parts to upgrade much at all. You will find yourself a bit frustrated that you cant have the cool cars until you complete a lot of the mostly cookie-cutter side quests. 
• The first person view in the vehicle is my favorite part of driving. Shooting a War-boy off the hood of your car with the shotgun from a first person perspective...fergetaboutit! The engine is roaring away and the dust is kicking up everywhere, when you aim your shotty you can barely see the barrel in view but its there! 
• The major problem with open world games for me is the fetch questing. i know that's what most, if not all open world/ RPG games utilize and it would be very hard to subtract them entirely. But they all just feel the same to me and i've been loosing patience over the years, probably because they are the same. Fuck, our lives are a fetch quest so i understand the necessity. I would just like to see more variety and story behind the mundane tasks. That would require a lot more work but would hold any game that does this way higher and keep the audience captivated longer. Needles to say Mad Max suffers from this 'go fetch doggie' style. So i lost motivation to build my car collection because to get them you have to do the boring shit. Maybe have a few ways of approaching the commerce side of the game itself?
• The narrative is kinda forgettable. 
• The bosses in the strongholds throughout the wasteland are identical. Big dudes that look like Lord Humungus from 'The Road Warrior.' Pretty lame. Gives us no insentive as a gamer for variety.
• All that i was really looking for is for Avalanche to capture the feel of Mad Max and they did an outstanding job of that. So i would endorse spending about 15hrs with the thing. If you saw Mad Max last summer and loved it youll really enjoy yourself.

THE MAN WHO FELL FROM EARTH

The Starman’s returned home.

Yes, this is Evade Gismo, but Bowie had a big impact on my life. I reached a little, and found one thread linking David Bowie to gaming -- back in my DS days, I S-Ranked “Let’s Dance” on Elite Beat Agents.

I’m known to wax stoic on celebrity deaths. I heard the guy who wrote “Ace of Spades” died last week, and I had no response. I like the song, but it didn’t exactly change my life, and wouldn’t it be a bit pretentious of me to suddenly care about a man in death when I ignored his entire life? Seems to me that an artist’s death should be the least tragic death we can hear about -- because artists live to the fullest for the rest of us, and share their findings. They’re more alive beyond the limits of their meat-body than most anyone else; once an artist becomes well-known, they’ve already immortalized themselves beyond death. So while I’m not mourning Bowie’s death - he lived more life in 25 years than most people do in 100 - I’m taking time today to reflect on his career, and that in itself is all kinds of profound.

People have been going DaVinci code on Bowie’s cryptic lyrical allusions for decades now, but you don’t have to dig too deep to recognize that Bowie could have died at nearly any point in his lifetime, and it would have felt poignant. Everywhere in his lyrics, he equates the singular isolation of his fame with death itself. Each persona, from Ziggy to the Thin White Duke, underwent a full life-cycle, from birth to death, and reincarnated as the next persona: Starman’s Rock & Roll Suicide; Aladdin Sane, for whom Time was always “waiting in the wings”; as the Man Who Fell to Earth, he was sure to remind us that he was only ever  “just visiting”; but nothing more explicitly pays the two coins to Chiron than “Lazarus”:

“Oh, I’ll be free
Just like that bluebird,
I’ll be free;
Ain’t that just like me?”

— "Lazarus" (from Blackstar)

Bowie convulses behind Oedipal pinhole-eyes in the video for Blackstar.

Bowie lived his work, but never forgot to weigh its worth. His awareness of fame’s limits seemed to manifest through his constantly-changing performance identities -- and now he’s left them all behind, with us.

There’s something that sets him apart from his contemporaries, something more than boyish Beatles charm and Rolling Stones machismo. The further he flung himself into weirdo territory, the cooler he became, to the degree that maybe  we earthlings, too, could become proud of our weirdness - of suggestive androgyny, blatant sexuality, good-humoured extravagance, brooding self-obsession. Bowie colonized a crooked kind of glamour for music, in equal parts ravishing and ghastly, coining ironic genre jokes like “Plastic Soul” while charismatically advancing the boundaries of on- and off-stage sexuality. To date, no figure demonstrates masculine androgyny as proudly as Bowie. That influence changed my life as a white hetero-male -- I can only imagine how much he’s inspired his gay, genderqueer, and trans fans.

Intoxicated New Year’s Eves, long nights alone with my guitar, dancing with glowsticks under campfire sky, making out in the carriage-house loft -- the man’s been the texture of so many of my fondest memories, and will continue to keep us company long after he’s gone.

Stay freaky, friends.

GAMING AIN'T FILM

As I was playing through 2014’s Wolfenstein: The New Order a little while ago it occurred to me that I was playing a great movie. After a few fervent early missions killing robotic mega-Nazis, you enter a peaceful homebase area and interact with a small cast of friendly characters. As I spoke to each of the rough-and-tumble renegades, scoured their candlelit quarters for juicy backstory details, and trawled through countless newspaper articles describing the establishment of the totalitarian Nazi superpower across the globe through the 40s and 50s, I realized I was part of a story that desperately wanted to be told in full. Much like a movie, it felt as if Wolfenstein wanted me to see each minute detail of its story piece by piece until everything came together in my mind. The key thing here is that the game wanted me to SEE these details -- and not PLAY them…

Click here for Nazi-approved, German-language Beatl- *aherm* Die Kafer smash-hit, "Mond, Mond, Ja, Ja".

Don’t get me wrong. I really enjoyed New Order overall, and I’d recommend it. But as a game it’s just mediocre. Strip away all these rich story details, tense dialogue exchanges (which you don’t control; you just sort of watch your character talk), and lovable characters, and you’ve got a fairly inarticulate dual-wielding run-and-gun corridor FPS game. If the writing had been weaker, I don’t think I would have been motivated to grind through some of the more tedious “DO THIS THING HERE!” challenges that the game inelegantly chucks you into. But it carries so well as a movie you want to know the ending to, that the anemic gameplay passes as fun a lot of the time. And this identifies a blurring line between games and film as the former continues to balloon as an industry -- what other entertainment medium has grown so large, so quickly?

In the wake of the financial success of consoles in the 90s, the largest budgets for videogame production are rising to compete with Hollywood films, with the star talent, CGI, and marketing campaigns to match. A co-worker of mine told me he’s interested in gaming: he moonlights as a foley guy for TV and commercials, and he suspects that videogames are where the real money is nowadays -- even for an industry as film-niche as sound production.

However I think this is a mistake. I think the real similarity between movies and gaming pretty much ends at budgetary magnitude. To treat gaming as just… home video in a different type of VCR sells it short of its potential, and leads to exploitative licensing cash-ins like the new Star Wars videogame. I do appreciate that some games work well as kind of surrogate films (looking to aforementioned Wolfenstein and Metal Gear Solid) but these linear narratives really feel like they sprawl too wide and deep to be contained in the silver screen; they take advantage of the affordances of gaming to tell a bigger story. And in the rare cases where the depth of gameplay matches the depth of story, nothing’s more fun. These days, many AAA titles aim to awkwardly recreate the cinematic experience through a controller and the result is usually a deadened game and a dull movie. I played through Hitman: Absolution and Deus Ex: Human Revolution when I built my PC last year, and both games seem to sacrifice so much of their well-loved gamey-ness for a dull, mass-appeal movie-ness. No player sits down and hopes not to push any buttons in a 10 minute interval. The difference in appeal between literary depth, and interactive depth, should be respected.

I mean, even in name they indicate something radically different. The whole activity of film isn’t called “movie-ing.” It’s too passive. As a medium, it’s called film or cinema - a simple noun. As a whole activity, the other medium is referred to as gaming - a present-tense verb; something that is being done. There’s plenty of room for flexing the semantics of this distinction but regardless it can be agreed upon that gaming needs to take a different industrial arc than film does, so those massive pools of resources can fuel innovation and interactivity, and not just mass-appeal spectacles.

STAR WARS: UNSPOILED

As a fan It's practically impossible not to get excited for another Star Wars movie. With Lucas finally locked away in hybernation we can finally get on with telling a story with some sense and cohesion....right?!  Sometimes barricading your feelings against a steel reinforced wall of objectivity is the only available option. Hype is a disease that must be exterminated on site and without mercy, it served us in our younger days just fine, we called it hope but allowing it into a conscious mind now is a death sentence for any film or property 'carrie-ing' the thing around. Attempting to avoid this hype was a tall order. Every other post in the past week has been a review, a meme or a hype post from a friend. The biggest question is this: how do you get excited about something with out getting too excited about something?

It sounds dramatic. When something is loved so intensely by so many how can it not be.

Last night Star Wars: The Force Awakens was released. Millions of cloaked nerds attended  sold out shows across the country and we were right there among them. The movie felt very familiar, which was a good thing, but something felt like it was missing. 

Spoiler free thoughts below.

From the trailers we extrapolated some information. The young newcomer dressed like a stormtrooper was in fact a stormtrooper. One aspect of the plot that felt difficult to digest was that this trooper just snapped out of his mind-trick and fucked off. Really!? So the troopers aren't clones? So who are they?  Individuals who seem to think the empire is an awesome place to work i suppose. There was a line from Kylo Ren  to the General stating: You should have used a clone army, much more loyal." Or something of that ilk. So would this Finn character be the only exception, the only sheep ever to have turned black....yes i realize the symbolism here; its pretty much fed to the audience. A white storm trooper who emancipates himself from the 'slavers'. Removing his 'mask' to reveal a young black character. It wasn't wrong for them to add this to the plot, the problem is we as an audience have been conditioned to believe stormtroopers are a means to an end. They look cool and say shit sometimes and that's it. This excerpt from 'Wookeepedia' explains it.  

"As the clones' accelerated aging process began causing their physical skills and abilities to deteriorate, they were replaced by non-clone volunteers and conscripts. Nonetheless, several clone troopers would remain in service to the Galactic Empire."

Ah, ok. Its a hodgepodge then. Films are much like video games, and a film series more so. You have to lead the audience or gamer by the hand for a bit and show them the world and develop the dialogue to fill in the spaces. When you teach a 'participator' something within the world you've invented for years then simply change it, it feels cheap and nonsensical. To begin a new Trilogy of a beloved franchise with fanatical fans with this stormtrooper story is an interesting choice. Guess mofuckers love stormtroopers.

At the mercy of the reader this comparison could seem like a bit of a dick move but hear it out. The world of Star Trek is fully realized. The advantage of Star Trek is they had episodically contained stories and a hell of a lot more time to explore their ideas. Star Wars has had a battle with storylines from the beginning. The lore is there but there but its burried in off shoot novel series, comics, games and cartoons. So there  has been very little screen time to explore them further,  we give the franchise a bit of a 'free pass' with a lot of things that Star Trek would never be allowed to get away with. This is a theme with Star Wars and something that many of us unconsciously abide by. What then has to be done is to 'show' the movie. To use all the visual elements to help tell the story without dialogue. This could turn ugly if investigated further so well just move on to the cool stuff..

The coolest and most badass part of the movie by far is Kylo Ren. The first moment he began to speak you could sense everyone in the audience  holding their collective breaths hoping he hadn't suffered from 'Bane syndrome' but he hadn't. Thankfully that virus was contained within the Milkyway Galaxy. This Sith will certainly end up being a fan favorite. His voice is perfectly done, his costume is instantly as iconic as his lightsaber. He is definitely the most emotionally conflicted and juvenile villain to come along in quite a while, which works very well and gives the antagonist a great amount of depth and by the end of the film his transition is clear. 

Approaching this series from another (JJ Abrams) perspective seems all too easy. The world is built, the characters are established. Its not hard to imagine the round table creative conversations surrounding this next trilogy. "Just give the audience what they want" or "Yeah, whatever you did before...do that again but newer." must have been  popular phrases. And that's what we got. Keeping it safe with the first installment was a very good move the more its considered,  but the fan service was overwhelming and almost too much to take. So many things that have happened already have miraculously happened again. Like watching any comedy sequel. "Well that was funny so lets do the exact same thing again, it'll be great." Not so much.

Simply put, Evade Gismo had a great time watching The Force Awakens. At the very least it an excellent setup for the follow-up films. What felt like it was missing from this film was an individual identity. But maybe that was the point. 

We will have a no holds bared 'VENT' and 'SPOILER FILLED' version of the Force Awakens review during the holidays. In the mean time, do your best to enjoy your families company and have a drink on us!

E-FIX NAILS IT: FALLOUT 4 PREDICTIONS REVISITED

Before this article gets moving i'd just like to preface it with something. Blogging is hard, a feature article at +1000 words with links to references and great images with an intriguing well researched idea takes lots of time; on average probably about 4 or 5 hours. It's also not enough just to be accurate, it needs to be funny, engaging. This isn't our job it's our hobby. Typically it's a one man show. We don't boast 15 posts a day, more like 15 posts a month if were lucky.

Enter Nick, who runs another blog from the East cost of the good ole USA. We thought cross posting each others material would benefit us both by increasing content and reducing some of the 'invented' stress we create for ourselves. So welcome to the fam. I'd call you a sister blog but you might get insulted. 

One of my favorite articles of his was this post from over a year ago. He predicted some spot on shit here. I've added the follow-through of his predictions below each image. There's a hyperlink attached to his name below to his Blog. Enjoy.

NOVEMBER 5, 2014 NICK DEMARCO

Starting way back since 2012, there have been numerous rumors, as well as some clever internet memes, surrounding the next Fallout, Bethesda’s post-apocalyptic RPG.  A midst all of the rumors, one common word seems to keep popping up; Boston.  It’s been pretty safe to say that the next Fallout game will be taking place in Boston, however it still hasn’t been confirmed.

However, it seems that there might be another piece of evidence that makes Boston seem like a lock.  Today, there was a trademark application filed for the brand “Fallout: Shadow of Boston” in Germany.  The application marks the trademark as “computer game discs” and “Downloadable Computer Game Programs”, which makes it seem like this might be the new name for the next Fallout.  It is seen that Bethesda Softworks LLC of Rockville, MD is the owner of the new trademark.

Up to this point, there has been little to no information about the game.  Bethesda has not talked about it, but they have mentioned that there will be one coming in the future.  This trademark sighting might just be the final nail in the coffin that will get them to announce the game officially though.

With that being said, let me just assume that Boston will be the next location for the famed Fallout franchise.  This is a great pick in my opinion, given the rich history of the city, as well as the surrounding landmarks and locations.  There is a lot that Bethesda could work with, and this gets me excited for what is to come.  So, what are some places that I would want to see in the next Fallout game, assuming that it takes place in Boston?

Well…

1. Fenway Park

Now this is probably one of the more iconic, and by far the oldest, baseball park in the U.S.  It is home to the Boston Red Sox, and there is a rich tradition that surrounds the park.  There is also the big Green Monster that takes over left field.  Now, who wouldn’t want to see this place in a post-apocalyptic atmosphere?  Yeah, it might be a little sad and depressing, but I am sure that I would get over it.  I could picture the park as a stronghold taken over by an enemy faction.  It would probably stand as a good “home-base” for any faction in particular.

He wont say i told you so but.....he fucking told you so! 'Sad'- check. 'Depressing'- definitely, but we got over that.'Home-base' - well the house that can be purchased in Daimond city is called 'home plate' so Nick, well give you that one! It was certainly taken over but not by enemies...although i pity the fools who get caught stealing here. They will run you out of town 

Im no baseball expert. But i believe this was the 'big green monster' that nick was talking about. Oddly enough there is a mission to retrieve green paint for this guy to restore the wall. 

2. Back Bay, Boston

This is the site of the affluent.  This area is a neighborhood of Boston and it is known for it’s Victorian brownstone homes.  The area looks really nice at night, especially next to the Charles River.  I would love to walk through these streets in the aftermath of a nuclear fallout.  Speaking of the Charles River…

Looks like the water receded a bit or i captured this at the wrong angle. One things for sure, Nuclear war shure sucks the colour out of the world. But its pretty damn accurate.

3. Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge

Assuming that the Charles River would be in the game, it would be safe to assume the magnificent Memorial Bridge would be crossing it, however, it would be a rundown version of the bridge.  I picture an Arefu situation (the small settlement located on a bridge over water) from Fallout 3.  There would probably be a small group of individuals taking advantage of the bridge.

Nailed this prediction too! Completely run down. I got jumped by some super mutants holed up in th station to the right. Newsflash; they died.

4. Old State House

This quaint looking building, now a museum, was the site of the Boston Massacre.  The building may not look all that interesting, besides that fact that it is from the Revolutionary Era, but there is a large chunk of history that surrounds the building.  It would be a surprise if this building survived a fallout, but perhaps it’s ruins could make it into the game?

Oh it survived. Found my bro Hancock inside. The settlers built a city around the historic site called 'goodneighbour' 

5. Harvard

One of the most highly recognized colleges in the U.S., known for it’s academic excellence, as well as it’s beauty.  Now, picture it in apocalypse mode.  Imagine walking through the buildings, peering into the classrooms, walking it’s grounds.  There would be a creepiness factor to the area, but it would be cool to walk through.

This was the closest i could get to the real thing. The campus is there and Harvard square comes up early in the game. There was an administrative building around the corner but this particular building is inaccessible.

6. John Hancock Tower

Here we have the tallest building in Boston.  It’s a modern marvel of engineering as it shoots up into the skyline of Boston.  However, given that it was finished in 1976, it may not appear in a Fallout game, considering that the fallout happened in the 50’s.  Still, if the team behind the game decides to take the series into the future a little bit, I would love to see what a hulking tower would look like in a game like this and what purpose it would serve.

Hancock tower is now an unrecognizable pillar that somehow survived the explosion. The only reason i thought this was Hancock tower was from pictures of the Trinity church right next to it. Got two birds stoned at once right here.

7. Logan Airport

Two airports, both Searchlight and Camp McCarran, appeared in Fallout New Vegas and their was only a brief mention of the Washington D.C. airport in Fallout 3, which was near Megaton.  So, naturally you would think there would be an airport in the next Fallout.  Logan Airport would fit the bill pretty nicely.  It’s a pretty spacious airport that could serve as a pretty nice camp.  Even if Logan Airport is not featured in the game, you can probably assume that there would be an airport of some kind.

This was the best shot i could get from the Brotherhood blimp. Almost unrecognizable, but its there!

8. MBTA and South Station

Subway stations seem to be a common staple in the Fallout games.  In Boston, the MBTA is the transportation authority that connects the city from below.  It would once again, act as a fast travel location to get around the world.  Boston’s South Station would probably be the hub station that connects them all together.  There were also elevated tracks back in the day, so perhaps those could be scattered around the world as well?

Nick almost nailed them all. But the South station was no where to be found. Guess something had to bite the dust. This shot was from what i could decipher by correlating an actual map of boston to the in game map. strangely it looks a lot like this

odd resemblance to ground zero

9. The Bar from Cheers?

Now this definitely will not appear in the next Fallout game, but it sure would be neat, huh?  The famous bar is the location and backdrop for the classic TV show Cheers.  There is definitely a lot of history that surrounds the bar, including a lot of famous people who have visited.  Maybe the bar won’t be called Cheers, but there could be a unique bar in the game?  Probably shouldn’t get my hopes up…

The bar is called 'Prost' which is German for Cheers. This might be one of my favorite easter eggs of all time.  You should have gotten your hopes up Nick...all the hopes! Your on fire here

The layout inside is quite accurate

Even Sams back office is very close to the real thing, boxes everywhere. It doesn't say Boston Redsocks but there is a catchers mitt. The filing cabinet is even there. 

Even Cliff and Norm are assuming their positions at the bar...amazing Bethesda, nerdy but amazing.

10. The Freedom Trail

Last, but definitely not least is the Freedom Trail.  The Freedom Trail is a 2.5 mile journey through the city that visits some of its most iconic and historic locations that have to do with the Revolutionary War.  Now, this is probably not the most exciting thing to have in a game, but it could serve as a cool little side quest for the players.  If they “check-in” at all sixteen spots on the trail, they could get an achievement or a trophy, almost like the “City Hot spots” feature in Watch Dogs.

The freedom trail IS in the game. In fact its a pretty huge part of the game. The quest begins here in the Square, and you do follow the trail, although worn and broken, still functions and many of the monuments are still there. No achievements to speak of but hell, ill give him the point.

There are probably a ton of locations that will appear in the game that I haven’t even thought of, but I am sure they will all be great to discover.  One of my favorite parts about the Fallout games is the atmosphere and a empowering sense of discovery that comes with it.

I look forward to more news about “Fallout: Shadow of Boston” and what the story will be like.  I also really hope that the location is Boston, because if that is not the case, then the whole second half of the article is irrelevant.  Lets all hope that doesn’t happen.

Nick Demarco Nov.5.2014

By E-Fix