Working Title 10.23.08: Working Scramble
Posted by Jordan Williams on 10.23.2008
The Rays are in the World Series and I partied a little bit too hard...now I only have 24 hours left to somehow string together a column. Time to scramble.
Welcome to the #1 column to be super psyched that Saints Row 2 is actually pretty damned good, WORKING TITLE. I was one of those people who 'turned' on Grand Theft Auto IV after I finally played it and I am fucking ecstatic to hear that Saints Row 2 is holding it's own against GTAIV. I haven't played it as deeply as I have GTA IV, and I am sort of disappointed at the lack of Blinged Out Ride in Multiplayer, but I can definitely say that at least when it comes to side quests SR2 definitely has GTAIV beat.
But now moving on to more important news, normally this column just jumps around from topic to topic with no rhyme or reason or I tend to stay on a focused topic for a few weeks. This week is going back to that "Talk about whatever the hell I want to talk about" type column I used to do about a year and a half ago. There's actually a reason for this...
A really good reason.
A super good reason.
Its 24 hours before I have to turn this column in and I have NO IDEA WHAT THE FUCK TO WRITE ABOUT. So I'm just going to jump from topic to topic in my head and hopefully string some sort of line of thought together to make some sort of column. I think I'm up to the challenge of completely bullshitting my way through a column. If I'm not up the challenge then I'll let Ocelot write the column next week.
Hell, I might let him write the column anyway.
This, ladies and gentlemen. Is the Working Scramble.
Working Title: Working Scramble
Wii (are) Fit
It's nothing new if you are a gamer. For the last 20 or so years we've always been portrayed in a negative light, or at the very least in some other form of stereotypical light. 30 year olds living in our mother's basement, hapless virgins who understand technology more than women, that one smelly kid who can name every Pokemon in alphabetical order. But with the turn of the century also saw a turn on people's perceptions about video games and gamers themselves. When we are still in the 'golden' age of 16 bit it was really hard to take a video game as a viable art form due to how it looked, but now that video game graphics and stories have sometimes even surpassed those of movies we are not being looked at as a hapless hobby for kids, but rather an industry shaped and used by young adults.
But how has gaming changed the lives of NON-gamers. How WILL it change the lives of non-gamers in the future? Would it be the Edutainment games we see marketed to pre schoolers that help them do simple things like math and reading? Or will it be an immersive 3D simulation that trains people to drive, fly planes or even do complex surgeries? Hell, what if gaming is still used simply for fun but as a more viable recreational tool to lose weight? Believe it or not a lot of these changes have already taken place some of them a little bit more subtle than you'd think.
Since the epic fad that is DDR and all of it's many spin offs, you've constantly heard stories about video games being used in schools to help children stay active. Most of us probably blew it off like some sort of small fad that didn't really work or was even true.
Well, you're wrong. DDR and now the more recent Wii Fit have actually changed the media's perceptions on these sorts of games. Sure, by large we are still seen as open-mouthed slackers who shovel cheetos in our mouths. But for some painfully and freakish human beings there are the ones that hover around the local arcade and stomp the ever loving shit out of DDR, Pump it Up, or In the Groove. Don't act like you haven't seen them, then again I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't given how much arcades have died nowadays.
Either way, the point I am trying to make here is that now video games are being looked at as a viable form of exercise. With our world being completely dominated by the digital contraptions we think of daily, it seems like its just a logical step that eventually we might want to some how use digital interaction in order to living things up. One of the biggest reasons people give for not exercising normally is a lack of time to do so. Maybe games like WiiFit are on the right track, maybe in a few years we'll have some games that are literally powered by body motion or something.
Starcraft 2: Turbo, Hyper, and Championship Edition
Okay, being a fan of the Starcraft series I was a little bit concerned about the news I heard last week that Blizzard is going to be splitting Starcraft 2 into three separate games. Then I had the news clarified and found out that instead of releasing them as three separate games that the second and third campaign are going to expansion packs that have a metric fuckload of content so they FEEL like games.
Usually I am the last person to point out the BIG EVIL SCHEMES of the gaming industry. You know, how they are apparently trying to screw us over with DLC, patches, and all other sorts of evil ways to make us part ways with out hard earned money...but this one just seems sort of odd for me. I can't tell if this was Blizzards original intention to split the games up into three packs like this or if they are just pressed for time or are rushing, but I don't like either idea. While PC gaming has largely become a multiplayer-only affair, there are quite a few people who still prefer to play alone. RTS games are fine for that sole purpose and I think having a wait between different chapters of the story might end up hurting the story overall in the long run. I am told that all of the races and so on will be playable in the original copy of Starcraft II, but something about having all of the bells and whistles without the story to go with it just irks me a bit.
It's not like Blizzard is hurting for money or anything, so I see no reason why they couldn't just pack the game into one solid copy instead of spreading it out among a predetermined length of time. Having the fans that care about the story wait between expansion packs might turn those who are loyal to only one race off until their respective expansion pack comes out so they can get the story behind certain units. Also Blizzard has a habit of holding ones hand during its campaigns. Whenever a new unit it introduced it's usually introduced along with a mission that needs that sole unit's special ability to succeed. While most people might not agree with me, I think the campaign is a great way to learn how to use the more complex units of the game effectively and thus help out players overall. But with not all of the campaign available at one point I think at the start of Starcraft II's life we are going to see a massive mismatch of races online. Most players are going to opt for Terran because they have been using them all through their respective campaign, and are thus more familiar and already have tactics worked out for them.
And on a less complex front there is the matter of pricing, expansion packs for PC games, especially Blizzard games aren't exactly cheap. And again while I am the last person to point out the BIG EVIL SCHEMES it just seems a little daft (blame my word of the day calendar for that one) that they really are expecting people to pay extra money for what may very well end up being just a series of extra maps and a story mode for their favorite race. All things that could've been packaged in the original game as is to make more room for a REAL expansion pack that actually fixes gameplay bugs and introduces new units and strategies like Brood War did, not parts of the core gameplay already available in the original box. Wow, if you think about it you might not even see an expansion pack of THAT type until after the release the original two...and you'd have to pay for that, too.
It's sort of like buying Street Fighter IV only to find out that you can't use half of the characters in story mode until next month when they release DLC to allow you to use them. It just seems pretty sour all around.
Video Game Movies: Is it really THAT hard?
With the recent release of Max Payne to mixed and below average reviews, a lot of us are wondering just what does it take for a video game movie to do good in Hollywood? I actually saw Max Payne and I was a little bit disappointed, but I thought it was a decent video game movie at the very least. But it seems like these video game movies either range from horribly and inexplicably bad to just being maligned my critics just for the simple reason that it's based off of a video game. It leaves me wondering just what do video game movies have to do? Is it REALLY an exercise in futility to keep trying to make one of our beloved video games hit big at the box office?
Look at the track record surrounding video games and it tells quite a story. There has been a sort of pattern of which the movies fit into. There's the movies that are hits at the box office, but have next to nothing to do with the source material (Resident Evil Series), there's the movies that stay true to the source material, but only the people who've actually PLAYED the video games understand and like them, and then there's the video game movies that just flat out flop.
So it seems that in order to make it big in Hollywood, the video game movie has to appeal to those who HAVEN'T played the game or hold the original games source material at an obscenely high regard, and if they somehow try to stick close to the material it either isn't well received or ends up flying over the audiences heads. So where is a comfortable medium? Where is that video game movie that can appeal to both gamers and non-gamers?
I honestly don't think we have it yet. Hollywood has pulled every trick out of its sleeve when trying to get video game movies to work. When action movies with martial arts were dominating the box office they released Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat which didn't do all too well. When zombie and horror films were the flavor of the month they put out House of the Dead, Resident Evil, and Silent Hill. One of them are downright horrible, one of them struck big at the expense of the source material, and the third was well received by fans, but not critics. And when Casino Royale made being a spy cool again they released Hitman which turned out to be just as boring as the video games themselves( Oh yeah, I went there). Now after The Dark Knights epic tea-bagging of the movie industry this year, the new flavor of the month is "Dark and Gloomy with a side of SAD" so they decided to bust out Max Payne and loo and behold it got epically shit out outside of its dark and gloomy atmosphere.
So I ask you, and yes, this is the Working Question for the week, what will it take for a video game movie to hit it big at the box office AND with critics? Do we need to find a game that has such great crossover appeal or will we just have to bite the same bullet the comic book fans had to and realize that unless some changes are made that we just won't be able to have our cake and eat it to, meaning that the most we can ever hope for are video game movies that are only video game movies in name only. What do you think?
Well, you wanna know what I think? I think it's about 3 hours before I need to post this column, so it's time to toss this fucker into spell-check and move on to...
Working Feedback
I hope to fucking GOD that that picture from Big Bang Theory is not the episode where they were playing Mario. If so, your talk about them doing detail work is complete and utter bullshit. There is NO POSSIBLE WAY they are playing Mario. Those are XBOX 360 controllers. Fucking details my ass.~Duncan
No, it's not from that episode. The episode I was referring to is an episode where Sheldon was playing a ROM on the stairs as someone else has already pointed out. The picture shown is from an episode where they are all playing Halo, which, by the way was accompanied by real Halo sounds and if you really want to get detailed look at how they are holding the controllers? The same way you would hold it when you played Halo.
haha. Sorry man. Never been much of a portable gamer. Not since the days of the green screen Game Boy anyway. So I didn't really have much to say on the subject of the DSI. My portable gaming now consists of a Gamecube with a tv screen and car lighter adapter for long road trips... Not exactly pocket sized. Now that Jessica Chobot... That is a working question I could get behind... or in front of... MMMMM. waffles.. Wait where was I?
Oh yeah, gaming pet peeves: Another great one from movies and TV, how about when the person playing is holding say... a nintendo 64 controller, and you get a glimpse of the game they are playing... and lo and behold, it is clearly not a N64 title, but like a Crash Bandicoot or something like that.
Oh, and how about the assholes in online games like Smackdown, who are clearly better at the game than you. they beat your ass from piller to post, non-stop, but they won't pin you or end the game. No matter what they just continue the beat down. So you put your controller down for a few minutes figuring they will get bored eventually. But they don't, so you pick your controller back up and by now you couldn't win the match if you wanted to but you are getting majorly pissed off. So you try to fight back, and get in a move or two, before the person you are playing finally decides, after you hurl mulitiple insults in the directions of their mothers and grandmothers that you have had enough, and end the match, not by pinfall, but by leaving the game, WTF!?! Still stuck on Smackdown, Your entire body is red from being tossed off the Hell in The Cell cage by some little bitch who climbs up there and waits. He doesn't go up there to dive off, or to put you rthrough the cage, no.. He goes up there because if he waits up there you eventually have to climb to get him. So as soon you reach the top, he stomps ya and throws you off, just to wait and repeat the process. He doesn't try to win the match instead he just wants to throw people off the cage. Both of these happened to me once when I was actively pursuing the jobber achievement, for losing matches online.
Now onto girl gamers. I can see your point about girl gamers drawing attention to themselves, but on the opposite side of the fence, even if they don't draw attention to that fact, once the pubescent bunch get hint of her voice, it's still on. I love the way that all the virgins seem to think that the only girls who play games.... Ah, Jesicca Chobot, licking PSP... sorry again, got off track, I hate how the virgins online seem to think that every girl who plays games has to be a fat lard of a chick, or extremely ugly..~Toddo
God damn you, Toddo. You're still the only fucking one who can come up with comments that I can't say anything witty to. Next
Here is an idea of working title, you break up the amount of time you play games and the pros and cons of that situation....*shrugs*~David
Again, elaborate?
Kudos to all who mentioned Spaced, one of the best fuckin' shows I've ever watched.
Genius.
If anyone can find the clip of the much more epic and longer version that takes place at the end up the episode, I'll love you forever.
Until next ti--
What the hell?
..Well would you look at that. Nice.
Anyway, Until next time I'm Jordan Williams...and Madman Mohinder is the coolest fucking motherfucker on Heroes now.
Saint's Row (1 or 2) > GTAIV is a no brainer, not for missions or side missions or anything like that, but for one reason only: Johnny Gat.
Posted By: Sinful Glory (Guest) on October 23, 2008 at 12:25 AM
-Pros/Cons of playing games and having a (insert anything here like job, girlfriend, social life, etc). You can discuss the problems of trying to balance both parts of your life. How it causes difficulties for you, and what are the strengths/weaknesses of focus on one or the other.
I hope that helps.
Posted By: David (Guest) on October 23, 2008 at 12:56 AM
The thing is, really good video games with stories tend to have stories that are 20 hours long, so it's a bit hard to condense that down to just 2 at the most.
That said, movies that are prequals/sequals to games might work on some level. Like, say, Portal, 10 years on when GlaDOS has rebuilt herself or some such. Maybe.
Posted By: Mathew Sforcina (Registered) on October 23, 2008 at 07:18 AM
I'm still not liking all the hate for GTA IV...but I'll deal with it.
Nice job on that achievement, what is your Writerscore now? Mine is 2000, yeah I know, call me an achievement whore, but you are just jealous.
Posted By: Drew Robbins (Registered) on October 23, 2008 at 07:52 AM
They were so close to nailing the video game movie formula with Max Payne.. They really did a good job of translating the story directly from the game... Where they fucked up was trying to make it come off like a Crime Epic in the vain of The Dark Knight, or Heat. When anyone who has ever played Max Payne knows it was about balls to the walls gunfights, and flashy visuals.. With the movie, they nailed the story, as it reminded me of the game, which I hadn't played since it was released, but the story of the game came flooding back to me. To me there are 2 key scenes that showed the biggest problem with this particular adaptation:
scene 1: the scene where Max is in Aseir, and the swat team comes up and shoots Chris O'Donnell's character. Instead of Max just laying waste to these obvious dirty cops, He runs from them, while shooting multiple bullets into a door he wants to dive through. Max should have at least had a longer shoot out with these guys before he decided to tuck tail and run.
Example 2: When Max finally finds Lupino, this big battle that is a BOSS battle in the game ends with an anti-climactic gunshot, not even fired by Max. So this fight that you can feel them building through the whole movie, never really happens.
Funny this is the working question, because I was thinking about how The Force Unleashed would translate to a movie. Mathew Sforcina kind of hit the nail on the head... Games have 10-15+ hours to move a story along... Condensing that down to a 2 hour format is going to be tough. But here is how I would try it.
The game easily offers about 45 minutes of between level cut scenes. Those should be your guidelines for writing a script. You take the stuff between level, because it is obviously the most important part of what is happening. There is your basic beginning, bullet points, and ending for your movie. I'm not saying I would film the movie frame for frame with the cut scenes, but that is where I would start to get the story right. There is a reason those cut scenes happen when you are not distracted by game play..
From here you have your basic outline for how the movie should go. Fill in the blanks with addition dialog, and some action scenes.
The important thing for these hollywood types to remember is that this is not their IP, this is something they are being payed to adapt to a new medium in a faithful manner. There is no reason for a director to change something from the game just to add their own twist.
When looking at what games get translated they are always million+ sellers.. If done properly, there is no reason they shouldn't translate into box office gold.
Posted By: Toddo (Registered) on October 23, 2008 at 11:14 AM
I'm loving Saints Row 2 (PS3) so far but the amount of bugs in that game are infuriating...The amount of times my game has crashed at a wardrobe or actually managed to merge two outfits together to create a Pirate-Doctor or something. And don't make me remember the time I was doing the Fuzz activity and the game told me to kill someone who was physically stuck in a solid piece of wall...I lobbed grenades and RPG rockets at that mother but to no avail...I just stood there, watching the time limit run out...It was horrible.
Posted By: Ben (Guest) on October 23, 2008 at 11:29 AM
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