Reading Too Much Into Everything

Whelp, Devin Faraci has been accused of sexual assaults he had apparently done in the past. As I have said before , I never agreed with a lot of what he said, but I respected his opinions. Now I must withdraw my respect of him. Why? Because it's my personal choice to do so. The reasoning behind my decision doesn't really matter, but as a human being I cannot condone what he has done. And no, I will not discuss my reasons here. This is a nerd site, and I am determined to keep it that way. No politics & no religion. I created this blog to be a safe zone for us nerds.  However, one of my blog posts has dealt with Devin, and I felt I needed to address that. While it dealt with his profession and not him as a person, and while I believe in my readers' ability to tell the difference, there may be those who may choose not to parse out that difference due to personal belief.  So I wrote this so that I may assure new & longtime readers who come to this site that I don&

It has been 2 weeks since No Man's Sky came out, so let's look at the state of play in this particular part of the nerdspace. According to Steam, it was the top seller  before it came out, and player count topped 212,000 before it dropped to it's current 3,000 player count. I expect that type of drop on a game like Evolve or Star Wars: Battlefront, because both those games were multiplayer only, had only 10 maps, maybe, and not a lot of content to keep the player's interest. But this is No Man's Sky. It has 18 quintillion planets and procedurally generated wildlife (you can name the planets & wildlife), crafting mechanics, and a story that takes you to the center of the universe. These sound amazing. That is, until you found out that the names you give the planets and wildlife disappear after a while, the crafting mechanics are a little weird (you can feed iron to animals & you have an extremely limited inventory), and the story is dependent upon you kee

Niantic recently disabled the tracking feature on their PokemonGo game app. After a few days of silence, Niantic finally explained why, saying that the feature was “confusing and did not meet our underlying product goals”. They also said that they had “limited access by third-party services which were interfering with our ability to maintain quality of service for our users”. You can read the whole statement here . A lot of articles have been written about this, and I have a lot to say about a few of them. First, some context. Here is the original PokemonGo game trailer when it was first announced last year. Notice at the 25 second mark that the video promises that the app tracks distance to a pokemon clearly and accurately. That’s not what we got though. Instead we got the app showing how far pokemon were by how many footprints (called steps) was shown underneath the graphic. The more steps there were, the farther they were, as this article shows . But then the 3-step g

Recently Devin Faraci (columnist and Editor-In-Chief of Birth Movies Death) was invited along with other film critics to the Justice League set, currently filming in London. You can read the article on his visit here . According to him there was a subreddit on his visit, with people wondering why he was invited, despite the fact that he was a hater of the Batman v. Superman movie (hereafter called BvS). Devin says his reason right in the article that it was precisely because he was a hater of BvS that he was invited. It was to show Devin that Warner Bros. was learning the lessons that the last film taught them, and that those lessons were being implemented in Justice League.   I find this very interesting. Warner Bros. could have invited any of a hundred film critics who didn’t like BvS to the set, but they invited him. Sure, it’s because he’s a hater, but I think there are additional reasons that go beyond him being a film critic. Before looking at the reasons below, read his revie

It's a weird time to be a DC Comics fan. The movies based on those comics aren't all that great ; the constant albatross  that keeps hanging around the company's neck is bad for their PR image; the majority of the stories told in those New 52 comics aren't compelling ; and doing line-wide reboots  every few years keeps fans confused about which timeline to invest their money, time, and energy on (though DC is not calling this a reboot). But the big secret behind this Rebirth reboot-not-a-reboot is that Dr. Manhattan (from Watchman) was behind the creation of the New 52 DC Universe. This means that Watchman is now canon in the DC universe.  So the entirety of New 52 universe stories are a huge giant sequel to Watchman? Does this mean grim-gritty-grimdark New 52 DC universe? Will the Joker be the Comedian in disguise?  Will  Owlman in Earth-3 secretly be Nite Owl ? Will Silk Spectre kill Wonder Woman and take her place? Will Rorshach fight Batman (and w

I sit here, wondering why I'm so angry over Batman v Superman (hereafter called BvS). You see, I saw Captain America: Civil War (hereafter called CA:CW), and I thought it was a great film. I began to wonder, how could BvS be so bad, but CA:CW be so good? It's not like Warner Bros. set out to make a terrible film. I'm sure nobody there sat down and thought "I am going to greenlight this movie, spend money on this project, and produce a bad film that will insult not only the intelligence of the fanbase, but general audiences everywhere! This will produce a profit for us!" No sane person thinks this. But BvS comes out, then CA:CW comes out, and suddenly we have a basis for comparison that either amplifies the goodness of CA:CW, or amplifies the badness of BvS, or both.  How could this happen? A few theories come to mind. It may be any, all, or none of these theories. Pick whichever one that fits your worldview. Please note that I have no special knowledge or

It's amazing, in this current age of superhero movies, how many people who sucked in one superhero movie would be great in another. Just off the top of my head, here's some examples: Chris Evans Anybody remember him in the first 2 Fantastic Four movies made by 20th Century Fox, when he was the Human Torch? No, because everyone remembers him as being the awesome Captain America. Ryan Reynolds Wasn't he in that dumb Green Lantern movie? I don't know. I can't recognize him in his amazing Deadpool movie ( currently the 2nd top grossing R-rated movie ever ). Ben Affleck Say what you will about Batman v Superman ( I know I have ) but everyone now pictures Ben Affleck as cool-as-fuck Batman and not dumb-as-hell Daredevil. Amazing how good an actor can be when he has a good director bringing out a good performance from him. Or when the actor is reading from a script written by writers who know what a good story is. If all these actors did was their first superhe

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (hereafter called BvS) is not a good movie. Most of us have either come to terms with this fact, or have begun to forget about the movie entirely. The underperformance of the movie has had several effects, from rumors that Warner Bros. will release the R-rated version of BvS, to the director Seth Grahame-Smith leaving the Flash movie over “creative differences”. Blame for the movie is being spread around, of course. But the ultimate responsibility, for my money, lays on Zack Snyder. Hundreds of people worked on the movie, but he was the one that made all the creative decisions that made the movie what it was. The thing of it is, it’s not like we didn’t have ample warning. Let’s look at a Zack Snyder interview with EntertainmentWeekly, from July, 2008. When asked about if he was always a comics fan, he said that he had a subscription to Heavy Metal magazine, but when a friend tried to get him into normal comic books, he said “No one is having

Shamus Young, in his Twenty-Sided blog, talks about the different types of disbelief that forces a person out of the fictional work he or she is reading, watching, etc. For one person, it could be something technical. For another person, it could be some discontinuity in the sequence of events. For still another, it could be simple boredom. But they all have the same result; complete ejection from the fictional work into the real world. This happened to me while I was watching Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. One scene occurred that was so out of place, so unbelievable, that it violently ejected me from the movie and planted me squarely in the real world. And this scene is in a movie that has a guy that flies and shoots eye-lasers, a woman with a magic rope, and a murderous thug in a winged rodent cosplay. It was this scene: around half-an-hour into the movie, Senator Old Guy talks to Alexander Luthor (the young son of a far more interesting supervillain), saying “We can h

So I had a discussion regarding superhero movies in the wake of a certain superhero movie, and the subject of fun came into my head. A lot, and I mean, A LOT of the criticisms (mostly by moviegoers) leveled against that certain superhero movie claim that one of the reason it failed was that it wasn't fun. I was about to claim the same thing, but thought about this wonderful article . To be sure, it was a thought-provoking piece. Should superhero movies be fun to watch? Certainly fun would be inherent in the genre, isn't it?  None of these comics were "fun" in the normal sense: Watchman, The Killing Joke, Supergod, The Walking Dead, the later Daredevil runs...I could go on. And yet all of these are good ideas for movies and TV shows (and some are there already). Fun should not be the only metric for a superhero movie (or indeed, any movie). Granted, a big reason for going to the movies is escapism (because real life is boring AND it sucks).  Superhero movies have

This comment was made by Eight-Bit Hero, concerning the beginning of the Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice movie: Dear Literally Anyone Who Ever Makes A Batman Film In The Future, We DO NOT need you to re-tell Batman's "origin story" ever again. Seriously, even if, somehow, somebody is seeing your film without ever having heard of Batman before (right?), you do not need to show us Bruce's parents getting murdered in the street for a fourth (fifth? sixth? I lost count) time. Let them look it up. Convey Bruce's motivations in some other more meaningful way.  Sincerely,  Everyone (all bold text is the author's emphasis, not mine.) Marvel once again proves why they are better than Warner Bros. at this whole storytelling thing, by announcing last year that Spider-Man will NOT get an origin story in his next reboot.  How refreshing.

The embargoes have been lifted and the early reviews for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice are in the wild. But I will not comment on those. What I will talk about is a comment said about one particular review . This was said by ReburnsABurningReturns: I feel like people are watching these movies for all the wrong reasons. Like, turn off your fucking brain and enjoy the superhuman slugfest for what it is, and then turn your brain back on afterwards.  Or don't. (Cruising) through your day off in brain free (mode) is far more relaxing than worrying about being "cultured" or having complex social interactions with the most horrifically overrated thing on the planet, other people.  ( ) = edited by me for clarity This reminded me of an article posted by Matt Singer called Stop Telling Me To Turn My Brain Off During Movies.  For me, the most relevant portion of the article is this: "Turn off your brain" is less of a defense of a movie than admissio

DC Comics will print comics based on Hanna Barbera properties . To be fair, I actually like parts of this idea. To see some of my favorites (Space Ghost, Birdman, Galaxy Trio, The Impossibles) get the comic book treatment is a good thing. Some of these properties are a good fit for comics and in fact some of them have been in comics before.  But I worry about whether they will be handled correctly. We have been given almost no information, and what little information there is has been in pictures done by various comic book artists. And if you want proof of how badly they may be handled, let's take a look at what they have planned for Scooby-Doo: Scooby-Doo? Where are you? Because I don't see you here! Since I don't have any other info, I can only go by the picture presented to me. And I have a few questions: Are the gang ghostbusters now? Because in another picture Fred's guns suck a monster into what I guess is his proton pack? Was Daphne ever in the m

Youtube has responded to the #WTFU movement. It's the usual PR and doublespeak expected from a corporation. I will take it at face value and assume they are on top of this problem, but I won't be surprised if nothing gets done. So far there is no incentive for them to do so (one good incentive is that there is actually a rival for youtube, but there is none). Does this sound cynical? Yes. So, youtube, the ball is in your court. Prove me wrong. Surprise me by actually doing something about your Content ID problem.

Sony wants to do a Venom movie . There is nothing wrong with the idea of doing this movie. While I don't think this is a bad idea, there are indications that this idea will be badly executed. For one thing, the same producers that were behind the bad Amazing   Spider-Man movies will be attached to this movie. Remember, those movies made so little money Marvel had to step in to make him awesome again (just how awesome we will all get a chance to see this year in Captain America: Civil War). For another, Venom will apparently be divorced from the Spider-Man franchise. So, Venom will just be some guy with an alien parasite as a costume, instead of either Peter Parker's journalist rival Eddie Brock or Peter's former bully Flash Thompson? Both those guys are attached to the Spider-Man mythos, and are integral to Venom's origin and motivations (both the costume and the people in them). Given Hollywood's recent terrible record with origin stories  I'm willing to

The latest trend on YouTube is #WTFU (Where’s The Fair Use?). This refers to the content bots on youtube flagging videos created by content providers despite the fact that all the flagged videos follow the guidelines of the Fair Use doctrine . Better people than I have explained what's going on here. These people have also explained how the content bots hurt the content providers’ business model. I am not here to add to any of those conversations. What I will do is try to show how this may have affected content creators living in the fictional world of Star Trek in the 24 th century. I can already hear the cries of Wait, WHAT? Yes, I’m about to postulate how youtube’s draconian measures may have already affected a fictional future. Has anyone else noticed the lack of content creators in the world of Star Trek? Because I sure have. Think about this. They have the holodeck, which has the potential to be the greatest content creator ever, but very few people actually cr

Konami recently instituted a policy whereby all in-game money (earned in-game or purchased with real money) in Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain must be used within 6 months or disappear forever.   This brings up so many questions. Let me ask a few...actually let me ask just one: 1) WHY? No other game I heard of even does this. The closest real-life example was when Microsoft switched over from points to money . 2) WHY? Does this policy track each and every portion of the money earned or purchased? For example, if I earned 10 MB one day in-game and I bought 100 MB the next day, will the game tell me when each of these will expire? Will it be different dates, or will it be within a set 6-month window?  3) WHY? Will the money accumulated by players fill up the memory on the servers quickly, slowing them down and potentially crashing? Does 10 MB take up a gigabyte of memory? Does 100 MB fill up a terabyte of memory? Is that even possible? 4) WHY? Remember, someone actually to

This was for the Street Fighter V game recently released, said by Maomao on Metacritic: "Where's the game? I want to make a review but i just buy a disc with a promise, will be more useful if dropped my money on some underpants" There's more, but I'll stop here, since this pretty much says it all.

So, I've been threatened with 3 more Transformers films, and it turns out one of those movies' release dates falls on the same date as the Wonder Woman movie. Devin Faraci opines on the significance of these dates here: http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2016/02/12/paramount-has-declared-war-on-warner-bros So, my movie choice on June 23, 2017 is between: 1) A movie I have been waiting 41 years to see since I first saw the original Wonder Woman on TV? OR 2) The 5th consecutive bastardization of a beloved cartoon franchise whose last good movie is still the animated version from 30 years ago (Transformers: The Movie)? Decisions, decisions....

Here is another blog worth paying attention to, though in this case I may be preaching to the choir. Jim Sterling is very popular, having worked at Destructoid & The Escapist first, then striking out on his own. He praises games and games developers that treat him like a human being, and thumbs his nose at those that insult his intelligence (right now Warner Brothers seems to be his favorite target, and believe me, after Arkham Knight they deserve his rancor). He does game reviews, podcasts, youtube videos; the amount of content he puts out is truly amazing. You can find his main blog here: http://www.thejimquisition.com/

I recently talked to a friend about how the Legends of Tomorrow TV show is piling on the 2nd and 3rd tier heroes and villains. Before now, not a lot of people outside of comic book nerds would know Rip Hunter, Atom, Captain Cold, Heatwave, Hawkman & Hawkwoman or Vandal Savage. But now we live in an age where lower tiered comic book characters are viewed on TV and film. And now Hollywood is doubling down on this trend. On DC's Instagram account, they are teasing the appearance of other barely-recognized characters like Doctor Midnight, SGT Rock, Sandman, Hourman and Ma Hunkel (the original Red Tornado who originally appeared in comic books in 1939).  In the new 20th Century Fox film Deadpool, there is a woman hanging around the main character called Negasonic Teenage Warhead, who only appeared alive once, in New X-Men #115 before she was killed. What, did the X-Men movies burn through the more-famous mutants already? Oh, and Colossus is in this movie too. If you told

At this point, the comics went from just having comics to having various articles interspersed throughout, becoming a full-fledged gaming magazine. The Bundles have mostly comics but have other things, such as funny fake ads for Hard Eight products. Also, the stories have become denser. This requires a change in the format of these reviews. I will give the summary, then give my thoughts on each individual story. Issue 7 – The Dice Man Cometh Five Green Towels – the Knights grab everything from a dungeon that isn’t nailed down and split up the goods, and Brian takes advantage of the situation. Again we see how Brian treats life like a zero-sum game. He wrote down everything they collected in the dungeon in large letters, but the stuff he wanted for himself was in very small letters so no one would notice. It’s humorous, but it’s kinda sad that he would do this to his only friends. A Call for Heroes – the Knights head for the city of Krandaneer, where they save the city fr

I read an editorial in Knights of the Dinner Table about how a person rolled up bad stats for a character in a D&D game and was about to reroll, when he had what he called a "road less traveled" moment. Instead of rerolling, he kept the character and wrote in his biography "He is a coward". In his words, his character was mortal and damn well knew it. When a fight happened, he would drop his sword and run away, and would only come back when the fight was over and the spoils would be divided. Despite this, the other players liked this character.  I had a similar moment in Skyrim. I installed a mod that changed the standard beginning of the game (you're a prisoner about to be executed) into just dropping you into a random spot in the world and beginning the game from there. Well, after choosing my character, I was dropped into a dungeon with no way out. I was trapped, and had to go through the dungeon to get out. Along the way I saw the body of a woman. I st

At io9, there's an article about Zac Snyder defends his ending in the movie Man of Steel. Here's the link: http://io9.gizmodo.com/zack-snyder-will-defend-man-of-steels-miserable-ending-1754485965 I use this article, and the following video, as a foundation for the points I will make later, so read the above, and watch this: I get where Zack Snyder is coming from, and the article makes some good points as to why he's doing so, but I'm going to agree with a LOT of people that the ending to Man of Steel didn't work, because Superman caused a lot of damage, and because he killed Zod. Now, let's look at the 2 usual defenses people bring up about why the Man of Steel ending was good: 1) The Avengers had a bunch of people, while Superman was just one guy. You can't expect him to save people AND defeat Zod! 2) Superman was just starting out. He didn't know his powers, and the limits to those powers completely. Actually, yes I CAN expect Superman t

At Birth.Movies.Death.com, there was an article about a Die Hard prequel movie by Scott Wampler. He posits that this may not be the best idea in the world, to put it mildly. The best comment ever (this week) came from Jams: "If this movie isn't called 'Old Habits Die Hard', I don't even know" Funny, but dammit internet, what have I told you about giving Hollywood ideas? There's a good chance they'll use this! Here's the link: http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2016/01/21/heres-the-first-not-very-encouraging-details-regarding-the-plot-of-that-die

The purpose of the All Eyes On section is to expose my readers to other blogs that might be interesting. Today it's Bob "Moviebob" Chipman's turn. He is ostensibly a movie critic (and a good one) but he is also a nerd with a wide range of interests (Nintendo, comics, etc). But he comes off a few times as extremely liberal (even though, by his own admission, his political affiliation is "Whatever benefits me the most"). That rubs some people the wrong way. But he makes no apologies, and I can respect that. In any event, he is very interesting to me, and I enjoy his columns and videos.  Here is the link to his blog: http://moviebob.blogspot.com/ And look up his videos on youtube. He has A LOT, so there's plenty of content to go through. Here's a sample:

Issue 6: Plays Well with Others Luck of the Macaw – the Knights play HackBeard, the RPG about piracy on the high seas. B.A. Felton’s failure to railroad his players into his prepared adventure leads him to trick the Knights. Bob’s macaw Half-Pint gets lots of words in edge-wise. Can We Talk? – the Knights kill the only person who knows where the end of the quest lies, but Sara beats the odds (or so she thinks). Wherever You Go, There You Are – The Knights’ greatest enemy is Dave’s mapping skills. Silver Things Upon His Chest – Brian’s medals provide the Knights with a way to boost their gaming status (and egos). The Safety Lecture – B.A.’s lecture about player absenteeism leads to a story about Bob and his fight with Victor “Nitro” Fergueson. The Great Intervention – Brian’s girlfriend, Alexis Marie, sounds too good to be true. Carvin’ Marvin – Here we see the initial members of the Knights. B.A. is GM (after replacing Brian), Bob, Brian and Johnny Kizinski

How many writers wrote the story for Mass Effect 1? Including the lead writer, 5. How many writers wrote the story for Mass Effect 2? Including the lead writers, 10. How many writers wrote the story for Mass Effect 3? Including the lead writer, 9. Much has been written about the Mass Effect series'  stories. I will not reiterate them here. What I will focus on is the fact that there are stories in these games at all. When EA acquired Bioware, the intention was to make money off their intellectual properties and their reputation. This is understandable (from their point of view) but it has resulted in the loss of some of Bioware's reputation. Only the future knows if Mass Effect: Andromeda can save Bioware's reputation. Part of this reputation was built on the strength of their writing. Jade Empire, Mass Effect 1, Neverwinter Nights, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Baldur's Gate, Dragon Age. All great stories. All these games speak to their mastery of stor

Issue 5: Master of the Game Spaced Out – the Knights play SpaceHack, the sci-fi RPG. B.A.’s lack of scientific knowledge crashes against Brian’s rules-lawyering. Conquer and Deny – the Knights play the board game Risque (a Risk riff) with nuclear weapons, shaky alliances and Sara’s tactical genius coming to the fore. Beating the Odds – B.A. tells the story of Tar Markvar, an average PC with average stats, which sails over the Knights’ power-gaming heads. Can’t Buy Me Luck – Bob’s bad luck at dice-rolling prompts the Knights to do a dice-purging. Agent of Evil!! – The power of the Hand of Vectra tempts the Knights into a hand chopping contest, and only Sara can save them. For my money, this issue is one of the funniest ever. B.A.’s fear of losing control over his SpaceHack game comes to the point that he completely ignores basic science. Sara proves that when given the chance, she’s smarter than the other Knights. As for Agent of Evil, after the comic there i

Zack Snyder hinted at a larger mythology for Doomsday in the upcoming Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice movie (a title which, for my money, is no longer the silliest thing about this film).  The director said that we have Doomsday, who didn't just crawl out of the ground, he has his own mythology, and that has to be explored. He hastened to add that now that Doomsday is introduced, audiences need to think about a bigger world, and that just because he's introduced in this movie, doesn't mean we know everything about what the movie will be about. Okay, I have some thoughts about this. But honesty demands that I tell you where I'm coming from with this, so, upfront, let me say the following things: 1) I know a lot about comics and comic book characters, both DC and Marvel, and what I don't know I can look up on the internet and get a mostly correct answer, since comic book continuity is one of the most meticulous ever made by fans, even when compared to other i