The Big Picture: Junk Drawer Revisited

Wolfenbarg

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Oct 18, 2010
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Everyone though Duke Nukem was going to be an ironic, classic shooter. Basically, if you took Serious Sam, put him in the modern world and then put in a story that is either a complete throwback or thematically asks the question of why we got rid of so many fun mechanics from shooters, that's what people thought DNF was going to be. It wasn't going to shake the world and be the greatest game ever, it definitely wasn't going to justify its development time, but it should have at least justified its own existence.
 

Jabberwock xeno

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Oct 30, 2009
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randomguy425 said:
Hey I am legitimetely upset that Duke Nukem Forever sucks as hard as it does. Surprised none, but upset.
This. I wanted it to be good, but I knew people wouldn't like it. I like it though.

Bob, I still want to know how you could say that nobody plays Halo for the story when the fact that every one of the Halo Books have been on best sellers lists, and there are entire sites dedicated to making crazy theories about the universe.

I don't know why, but that line you said really got to me.
 

Nerdstar

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Apr 29, 2011
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well said, bob,well said patecurly about the DC reboot/reimaging/rewahter any truly medium savvy comic nerd knows that big comic changes are almost impossibly rare (like maybe one in a billion stays permanent)and that things tend to go back to the way they were before more or less
 

Gildan Bladeborn

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TheSchaef said:
theguiltyone said:
This is my feeling exactly. As much as I wish Nathan all the success in the world, I love him just the way he is.

Besides, him becoming a big time movie actor means less opportunity to stalk him at conventions. SO. That settles that.
Frankly, I think Castle is subtly his most cheeseball role yet, and that's with the two ginned-up supermen included. Never mind the thinly-veiled references to Firefly, never mind the poker games with cameos by real-life mystery novelists. I thought it was clever and amusing when they had the books mentioned on the show actually written and published. But they one-upped my amusement by having Fillion GO TO BOOK SIGNINGS for books written by his character.

And now they have a movie coming out. Based on a book. Based on a fictional character in a TV show. And then on the SHOW, they had the actual actress playing Nikki Heat in the actual movie, make a guest star appearance as a fictional actress playing in a fictional film version of the same novel. ABC has singlehandedly redefined the term "meta".

Oh, and I think they solve murders sometimes, too. I don't really notice.
Okay, I saw those episodes about the fake movie without realizing they were making an actual movie starring that same actress (based on real books purportedly written by a fictional character), so that's awesome, but I don't think I'd give ABC the "crown of Meta" just for that. After all, they're competing with the likes of Supernatural, where in one particular episode you have the two principle actors getting cast into an alternate dimension wherein they are actors on a set filming a television show called Supernatural, so they're on a television show pretending to be themselves on the set of the television show that they're already on, while playing the role of themselves as if they were their respective characters from the show and not themselves, tasked with pretending to be themselves playing their characters.

I thought it was hysterical enough when they tackled the subject of tie-in novels and fan-fiction by having the Winchesters discover that a prophet has turned his visions about their lives into a series of novels with a "dedicated cult following" (the episode where they're tricked into attending a "Supernatural convention", complete with people LARPing as the Winchesters and complaining about plot holes, was just brilliant), or when the trickster god trapped them in "TV land" (they really skewered Grey's Anatomy and CSI: Miami, heh), but I was pretty much doubled over laughing the entire way through that episode.

Meta humor is awesome.
 

bojac6

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Oct 15, 2009
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TheSchaef said:
theguiltyone said:
This is my feeling exactly. As much as I wish Nathan all the success in the world, I love him just the way he is.

Besides, him becoming a big time movie actor means less opportunity to stalk him at conventions. SO. That settles that.
Frankly, I think Castle is subtly his most cheeseball role yet, and that's with the two ginned-up supermen included. Never mind the thinly-veiled references to Firefly, never mind the poker games with cameos by real-life mystery novelists. I thought it was clever and amusing when they had the books mentioned on the show actually written and published. But they one-upped my amusement by having Fillion GO TO BOOK SIGNINGS for books written by his character.

And now they have a movie coming out. Based on a book. Based on a fictional character in a TV show. And then on the SHOW, they had the actual actress playing Nikki Heat in the actual movie, make a guest star appearance as a fictional actress playing in a fictional film version of the same novel. ABC has singlehandedly redefined the term "meta".

Oh, and I think they solve murders sometimes, too. I don't really notice.
I can't find anything on there being an actual movie coming out. Where did you hear that?
 

velcrokidneyz

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Sep 28, 2010
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thank you for the nathan fillion thing. yes hes not bad, but ppl need to just stop with the "he should be in roll x because he is awesome!!!" the bigwigs will make the decisons on casting regardless.
 

penguindude42

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Primus1985 said:
WTF what the hell is wrong with Youngblood? I own many Youngblood comics including the first five issues. I like the style, the grittiness, and compared to other titles of the time was a bit more mature.

Must be his whole "The 90's sucked" mindset. I'll grant you not a lot of good came out of the 90's but not everything that was from that decade sucked.
Case in point: Sonic SatAM.

And somebody needs to watch more AT4W.

~Tom<3
 

Penguin_Factory

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Sep 13, 2010
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I have to admit, what we've seen of Mario 3D has kind of killed my enthusiasm for it. The game seems to be based entirely on nostalgia, and if the hoards of people shouting "SWEET CHRIST ON A STICK HE HAS A FUCKING TANUKI SUIT" are any indication, it's working.
 

Ian S

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Aug 31, 2009
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Glad to see I'm not the only one here who liked Duke Nukem Forever. I myself didn't expect it to be a be-all, end-all great game. But my expectations for it weren't exactly sky-high either. You want some perspective? I'll give you some perspective:

Not to pull age on you, Bob, but I've got at least a good 10-year lead on you lifewise, so I think that allows for a little more life experience. Anyway, when Duke Nukem 3D came out, I was 25; old enough to know better, but still immature enough where that game's crude sense of humor still appealed to me. It was also around that time in the 90's that was really the golden age of FPS games (the 90's didn't totally suck). Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Heretic, Hexen, Dark Forces, Rise of the Triad, all of them came out at this time. All of them were fun and none of them were hampered by realism or the dark and gritty attitude that the genre has become since. And DN3D was the perfect example of that. Is it a relic? Yes. But I wouldn't have it any other way.

Considering how you ripped on modern FPS games on your "Worst Person" GameOverthinker segment, I would have expected you to have been a little more kinder to DNF. In my opinion, both DNF and Bulletstorm have been like breaths of fresh air. I tend to regard DNF the same way that a zoologist would marvel at the sight of a living Dodo bird or American Passenger Pigeon in this modern age: something long thought extinct that you would never have thought you'd ever see again. I had a feeling that when it finally came out, that the younger whippersnappers who've been raised on Halo and Call of Duty and Medal of Honor would probably shrug their shoulders and wonder what all the fuss was about. And as it turned out, I was right. But for me and others in my age bracket, this was pretty much the game we had been expecting since 1997. And I don't consider that to be a bad thing. The game is what 3D Realms promised us initially 14 years ago before they fell into the trap of one-upping themselves with the latest graphics engine. If today's gamers find fault with its now-antiquated game design, that's their problem, not the game's.

As for its humor? Well, I found myself laughing out loud at points in the game. While I'm very educated and well-spoken, I'm not so self-righteous as to think I'm above adolescent humor. There's still a part of me that's very much a quintessential guy: I like going to strip clubs and listening to Howard Stern every now and then, and it's that part that DNF appealed to.

As for Nathan Fillion, I wholeheartedly agree with you. The guy's a good actor, but just because he starred in what turned out to be the original Star Trek of the 00's (a genre series that struggled in the ratings, was unfairly cancelled and achieved cult status because of it) doesn't mean he has to be in EVERYTHING. He's doing fine like you said. And if he does get a role in anything else, more than likely it'll be for the exact reasons you gave.

As for Green Lantern, haven't seen it yet. I've talked to a few people I know though who said they really liked it and who are at least familiar with the mythos. So I can't believe that it's totally wretched. Still, I think you're right that it probably won't get a sequel, and you're spot-on with how these things tend to go (although I hope that won't be the case for any sequels for TRON: Legacy).
 

Smackerlacker

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Jun 15, 2011
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I heard that Duke Nukem Forever was great and that only pretentious critics with unreasonable expectations and a desperate need to chill out and have a little fun, were unable to overlook it's flaws.
It wouldn't be the first time the critics were totally wrong. For the record, Battlefield Earth is one of my favorite movies and has nothing to do with Scientology, Uncharted is a pile of steaming blah, I liked both of the Transformers movies, and Arkham Asylum is good, but not nearly as great as everyone thinks because their expectations were so low.
That being said, I agree with almost everything else Movie Bob says. It just goes to show, it really does take all sorts.
Also, the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has awful graphics, boring, tedious gameplay, a magic system replete with scads of useless, slow moving direct-damage spells, a ridiculous, labyrinthine plot and some of the worst artificial intelligence I've seen since the advent of 3D graphics.
 

REPTILE 0009

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Sep 26, 2010
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About Duke Nukem Forever:
Believe me, FPS multiplayers got better, when they started requiring players to play with actual skill and teamwork, rather than just memorizing where all the weapon spawns were.
 

ace_of_something

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Sep 19, 2008
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You're last junk drawer was awesome and one of my favorites.
This one I felt you were being kinda generally preachy and scolding everyone.

That's what random musings sometimes are I guess.

I hate deadpool. I feel like he's a holdover from Youngblood and all that crap. For someone who worked in a comic shop in the late 90's... it... it just was an awful time all around.

Also, Youngblood is not like duke, because Bloodblood the bloodinator and all hits compatriots are not being ironic or anything of the sort.

Which makes it sadder.
 

maninahat

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Nov 8, 2007
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Perspective here means not being disappointed by a cult game 12 years in the making, but being utterly enraptured when another crusty old franchise reintroduces a fucking racoon outfit. I wouldn't mind, but functionally Duke and Mario are both from a bigone age in which female characters (or "chicks") are just something to be rescued from weird monsters, so to be praising one whilst railing against the other is a bit short sighted. Mario is in many ways more primitive than Duke, which at least is somewhat self aware and developed in character (the health bar, being referred to as an "ego bar" etc.)
 

grigjd3

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Mar 4, 2011
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Kind of refreshing to come to a gaming website where the feature writers and staff writers realize that Duke Nukem wasn't likely to be any good in the first place.
 

TheSchaef

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Feb 1, 2008
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bojac6 said:
I can't find anything on there being an actual movie coming out. Where did you hear that?
I can't discount the possibility that it was a publicity stunt but there is this announcement on richardcastle.net:
http://www.richardcastle.net/news/production-begins-heat-wave

Which followed on from this trailer that showed at the previous Comic-Con:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmkkEuNMde0

Now it's entirely possible that the IRL stuff was just to promote a Laura Prepon guest spot on the show, but that seems a little TOO meta after publishing the books mentioned on the show and then showing this trailer.
 

The Random One

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May 29, 2008
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That 'stern' face matched Bob's 'Just stop it.' extremely well. It's like he hired an alternate reality British Moviebob just to do that line.

I was legitimately excited for a new Duke Nukem and continue to be so, as my thought has always been that even if DNF sucked, it would mean someone could start an actually good gime now that it's no longer clogging the franchise pipe. Maybe one that actually gets satire. But more importantly one who gets frantic multiple weapon FPS gameplay. And if that doesn't come to light, Serious Sam 3 isn't going to suck (It... it isn't, right?)
 

PorkChopXpress

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Aug 8, 2010
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Big Trouble in Little China = my favorite movie of all time (hence my handle).
A little strange you just threw that in there. Not that I'm bitching, just was odd.