Remember Vessel? Of course you don't, because no one listens. I keep pointing at these really cool things and people are like "No, thank you. I'd rather read Destructoid because boobs and explosions." Well, maybe now you'll see what your exploding boob fetish has caused you to miss.
According to IndieGames.com, Vessel will be released via Steam on March 1 for $15. I can't think of a joke to end this post with, so why don't you look at this distraction while I sneak away and finish watching Die Hard. This is daddy's me time.
Did you like Samorost and Machinarium or just have any idea as to what either of those are? Then you'll be thrilled to see this new video preview for Amanita Design's Botanicula, in which Mr. Twig is about to get his shit kicked in by some sort of clitoris monster. I've never seen a clitoris before, so I can only assume that it looks like a rotting peach with two musical antennae hanging from it. With teeth.
Ridley Scott's latest work hasn't come close to what he previously achieved with Alien and Blade Runner. Gladiator is all right even though I've never been able to stay awake through the damned thing, but Robin Hood was abysmal despite having an amazing premise in one of its earlier drafts (which supposedly followed the Sheriff of Nottingham as the hero before Scott told them to Hood that shit up). So, I generally don't get excited anymore when I hear about any new projects that the man is working on.
This is where I turn this post around and start talking about Prometheus and how it completely redeams Ridley Scott for G. I. Jane.
I love the Alien series and, as such, am also hugely excited for Prometheus. No matter what anyone else has ever said, Prometheus is undoubtedly a prequel to Alien and this trailer finally proves that. Even the title animation is the same, with each letter fading into view one line at a time. There's a pilot seat that's identical to the one in Alien where the crew of the Nostromo finds the Space Jockey, and even the vehicle designs are reminiscent of the Nostromo, Sulaco and the military ground vehicles from Aliens.
What is unknown is if this Alien prequel will have any of the titular xenomorphic aliens that have chased Ellen Ripley through space over the course of a few centuries. Personally, I don't think it will, barring some minor cameo where we briefly see a facehugger in stasis.
My personal theory about Prometheus is that the Space Jockey's ship seen in the trailer is a vessel carrying many different species (possibly contained in the pods which are placed before the giant effigy of a human face)—the xenomorphs and possibly even humans among them. The premise of the film, after all, is that the human crew is searching for the origins of their existence. Maybe the Space Jockey race went around scattering the seeds of life around the galaxy. It sort of ties into the theory that the Earth is just a big petri dish where a vastly superior alien race is experimenting with creating primitive lifeforms—sort of like what we're currently doing by creating synthetic organisms, which I think is an unbelievably cool scientific development.
Anyway, one last observation that I'd like to make is that the logo on Noomi Rapace's forehead (the actress playing Elizabeth Shaw) toward the end of the trailer looks a lot like the Y portion of the classic Weyland-Yutani logo (see the coffee mug to the right). In the Aliens vs. Predator films—which I'm hesitant to call canon, but they suit the purpose of my speculations—we're introduced to both Bishop Weyland (Lance Henriksen) and the head of the Yutani Corporation (Françoise Yip, credited as playing Ms. Y), indicating that a merger occurred at some point between then and the time that Alien is set in. So perhaps the mission in Prometheus is being funded by a pre-merger Yutani Corp, which gives some hint as to how long before Alien this film takes place.
The Twitter account @PeterMolydeux, a spoof of pretentious game designer Peter Molyneux (Fable, Black & White), is full of some really entertaining ideas and even a few genuinely good ones about game design. I'm starting to think, however, that Mr. Molydeux is less of a comedian and more like a really scary guy who genuinely believes in everything he tweets. Case in point: the trailer for Believe.
Obviously a play off of the real Peter Molyneux's aborted project Milo (and "aborted" is definitely the best word to describe it), Believe is about making a kid in a wheelchair cry. Or, more accurately, it's about what gamers gave up by not supporting Milo, which is in turn a game about a creepy kid whom you interact with via Microsoft's Kinect and the sort of thing only a childless spinster would love to own.
Personally, I don't think abandoning Milo at the carnival to be raised by sideshow freaks was a big loss, and I actually support the "notgame" movement forewarded chiefly by Tale of Tales, the development studio behind The Path and The Endless Forest. So there are some really pretentious games that I do enjoy, and I don't actually know why I hated the whole Milo concept. Perhaps it's Peter Molyneux's constant hyperbole and hype-speech that preludes every new Lionhead game, followed by the inevitable failure of each game to live up to it; or maybe I just don't like children. Whatever it is, Believe is probably a good place to start analyzing it.
This is a trailer for the upcoming film Chronicle, which is about a group of average, ordinary, super-powered college guys who use their abilities to be assholes. It's presented in the same handycam style employed by The Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield and Diary of the Dead, and seriously? Fuck all of this. Do you know why film studios use the shaky, handheld camera technique so often? Because it's an easy way to create believability without actually trying to make shit believable. That's why it's seen so frequently in horror movies: because if the director can trick your brain into thinking that the footage is real—even if, consciously, you know it's not—maybe you'll be more easily scared by whatever retarded-looking monster they throw at you whenever they strike a violin chord.
Now they're apparently using it in lieu of effort in other film genres, and they can go die for it. This is what happens when art becomes an industry. Even good ideas (which Chronicle might have the potential of being if it weren't about frat boys who listen to "Jessie J") are ruined by people who would rather employ cheap tricks than a deeper understanding of human psychology. It's no wonder why everyone thought that Inception was the smartest thing since goddamn T. S. Eliot when the only thing competing for your attention is bullshit like Chronicle.
I think I finally understand what's going on in Arkham City. It's a leper colony, which would make Batman sort of like Jesus, I guess. There are a lot of similarities now that I think about it, like that time Batman healed Alfred when he was sick in Batman & Robin and that time Jesus became the rodent-themed superhero known as the Easter Bunny.
This is also the first time I've heard the new voice for Harley Quinn and it sounds exactly like her old voice, so what was the point in changing the actress? Did the new girl cost less? Because in my experience you don't necessarily want to go with the best bargain when it comes to women.
It was a good call on Sunday when I said that this week would be all about the indie games. Proving that I'm some sort of prophet, independent studio Strange Loop Games has released a new trailer for "Vessel," a side-scrolling platformer where you use various fluids to create puzzle-solving automata. Need to put out a fire? Use water. Need to burn the faces off your enemies? Try lava. Want to host a bitchin' rave party? Fluorescents would be the obvious choice.
I'm really digging the indie games lately. As you may recall, the last mainstream title that I bought was Epic Mickey: a game that not even a child would enjoy, and children are fucking retarded. Before that it was AVP, so big studios don't exactly have the best rapport with me anymore. You could blame it on me for playing anything other than Call of Duty, but then I could in turn blame you for the systematic degradation of the entire games industry by supporting Activision's yearly bullshit model (YBM). If I want to play a first-person shooter I'll reinstall Doom or Quake. The biggest innovation to the FPS genre since then has been vehicular combat and CoD doesn't even have that.
I really hate to be the one to break it to you, but your parents and I agree that you have shitty tastes in games. I recommend playing "Vessel" when it comes out this winter.
Anyway, one last observation that I'd like to make is that the logo on Noomi Rapace's forehead (the actress playing Elizabeth Shaw) toward the end of the trailer looks a lot like the Y portion of the classic Weyland-Yutani logo (see the coffee mug to the right). In the Aliens vs. Predator films—which I'm hesitant to call canon, but they suit the purpose of my speculations—we're introduced to both Bishop Weyland (Lance Henriksen) and the head of the Yutani Corporation (Françoise Yip, credited as playing Ms. Y), indicating that a merger occurred at some point between then and the time that Alien is set in. So perhaps the mission in Prometheus is being funded by a pre-merger Yutani Corp, which gives some hint as to how long before Alien this film takes place.