The Big Picture: Junk Drawer Rises

[Tireseas_v1legacy]

Another junk drawer? Another list:

Wreck-it-Ralph: How is it that I've never seen this trailer?

Mario-Retro-Revival: It really doesn't matter when these guys are making enough money to buy out small countries

Django Unchained: Again, how is it that I've never seen this trailer?

Brave: Standard Pixar fare based on a stock plot ("tomboyish girl to be wed attempts to show her independence by being as good as a man... blah, blah, blah..."), my hopes are high. Also, any sign of a villain in this one?

DC Heroes and DC/Arrow: If Slade is not in this show and voiced by Ron Pearlman, then that entire trailer is a waste.

Enough Batman?: No. We've finally gotten good movies that feel like they understand the core nature of the series and finally gotten two solid games out of it. Yes, I suppose we can take a few year break

 

[Frostbite3789]

Snip

And that applies to me how? I said none of those things. I don't care if new Mario games come out. I won't buy them, but apparently Bob feels the need to slam other franchises in order to validate his love of Mario games. Which I'm not board with.

Also, I'm not a Call of Duty fan. Not by a long shot.

 

[aaron552]

I am a great lover of Batman, but I do feel he gets WAY over used (and over crapped) because he is the ONLY FUCKING DC character who is both interesting and not a Red and Blue flying deus ex machina.

Batman isn't a deus ex machina? News to me. But I always found every other character associated with Batman (Nightwing, Oracle/Birds of Prey, the Robins, the al-Ghuls, etc.) to be more interesting than Batman himself.

Pretty much this. It's not so much Batman that I like, it's the other characters associated with Batman that I like. Hell, in AA, Joker constantly comments on how predictable and boring Batman is and I think the player is supposed to kinda agree.

 

[McMarbles]

NO! THERE CAN NEVER BE ENOUGH BATMAN!!!!!!!!

Um... yeah. Yeah, there can. There definitely can.

I'd honestly rather get a good Flash or Wonder Woman movie than DKR. And another season of Young Justice instead of yet another Batman cartoon. And a good Superman or Justice League game instead of the inevitable sequel to Arkham City.

 

[vxicepickxv]

Ha so true about the whole Zangief is not a villain debate. Also cool Desthstroke is going to be in that Arrow series? Lastly the day when we had enough of Batman will be the day when we had enough of Spider-man.

Marvel(and to a lesser extent Sony) is providing for us a variety of heroes for movies, so it's harder to actually burn out on one hero.

 

[RaikuFA]

Snip

And that applies to me how? I said none of those things. I don't care if new Mario games come out. I won't buy them, but apparently Bob feels the need to slam other franchises in order to validate his love of Mario games. Which I'm not board with.

Also, I'm not a Call of Duty fan. Not by a long shot.

I was just saying that's how a good chunk of CoD/Madden fans act. there are exceptions like you and maybe someone else but when they have a mental breakdown when you don't like them yet think they can bash anything else without being called out on their games, there's a problem.

 

[NinjaDeathSlap]

Heh, agree SO much on the Mario front.

Thing is, even if they are just pumping out side-scrollers, things shake up a bit. New powerups, new enemies, new ways to interact with the environment (or using modern tech to put a unique spin on the old stuff) and generally giving us a grand experience.

No matter what CoD fans claim, reskinning guns and 'new' perks is nothin to write home about.

Actually, I just want to go to town on that particular topic. Call of Duty has some of the most god damn BORING shooting in all of videogame history. I just had a quick look through my collection of First Person Shooters, and here's a couple of gems from the 'retro' (PS2 and older) section, in no particular order.

A shotgun that fires nails.
A shotgun that fires bouncing explosive shells.
A triple-barrel gatling gun where each barrel is a six-barrel minigun.
A frag grenade made out of flubber.
A self-guiding drill that homes in on brainwaves.
A gravity gun that lets you fire anything at anyone, and by extension can be used to kill zombies with paint cans.
A watch laser.
The Big Fucking Gun 9000.

In this list we have everything from the nifty but near useless to the outright insane. Does any weapon in 90% of modern shooters deserve to be anywhere near this list? Honestly, the only gun I can think of in FPS land that feels half as fun as this is... not in an FPS. It's the Patriot from MGS4 - an infinite-ammo SMG that plays the Snake Eater song when you shoot with it. Even then, however, it's just a less ludicrous (and thus less hillarious) version of the RYNO-V.

Why must the FPS genre be so damn boring now? No wonder I've played 100+ hours of Dragon Age (and its DLC / sequels) consecutively as of late...

Well perhaps there are people out there who would consider "A triple-barrel gatling gun where each barrel is a six-barrel minigun" for example, to be the ludicrous, over designed bastard child of a frustrated and immature developer with a compensation complex, rather than entertaining. Just sayin'.

 

[Bigwig]

Up until Galaxy each new Mario game was different enough from the last for the series to remain fresh. But look at the series now: New Super Mario Bros, New Super Mario Bros 2, New Super Mario Bros Wii, New Super Mario Bros Wii U...all these games look, sound, and play essentially the same. Why should Mario get a free pass to stagnate just because it innovated in the past? There have been 5 modern CoD games, and with 4 NSMBs Mario is quickly catching up.

It just seems like a double standard. Just as people are willing to play the same CoD game every year there are people willing to play the same Mario game every year. Neither series is bad by any stretch, they're all very well made games, but they're also cash cows for their respective publishers who treat them as such.

 

[hentropy]

I know I'm not the only one who is annoyed with the trailers for Brave so far. I'm surprised Bob seems to be giddy about it. I first watched the trailer for it when I saw the Secret World of Arietty, a beautiful movie by Studio Ghibli that was probably better on female empowerment than Brave will be.

Pretty much all of the major Studio Ghibli movies have female protagonists and heroes, and you know why they are so good? BECAUSE THE WHOLE DAMN STORY ISN'T ABOUT FEMALE EMPOWERMENT AND OVERCOMING ASSIGNED GENDER ROLES. They just show girls doing heroic and brave things and act like it's normal, which is sort of the goal of the movement. Even Mulan appears to be more challenging than Brave, and it came out 12 years ago, when I was in its target demographic.

It just seems like Pixar is behind the curve on this thing. It will probably still be a good movie but I thought we were culturally evolved enough that we could just start making movies about girls just being the hero and not making a big deal out of that fact.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Ha so true about the whole Zangief is not a villain debate. Also cool Desthstroke is going to be in that Arrow series? Lastly the day when we had enough of Batman will be the day when we had enough of Spider-man.

Marvel(and to a lesser extent Sony) is providing for us a variety of heroes for movies, so it's harder to actually burn out on one hero.

True but still Spider-man has always been the most popular Marvel superhero (when it come to newcomer) as it is to Batman for DC. I mean chances are you will have more Spider-man merchandise than the other Marvel superheroes (well maybe except for the Avengers at the moment).

 

[Tiamattt]

I have VERY fuzzy memories on this but I MIGHT remember some SF stories having zangief working for bison for.......well pretty much the same reason Balrog and Vega were. That or maybe it was just to help balance out the many heroes vs few villains numbers, I dunno. I haven't kept track of SF canon but I can imagine that being a villain would make him more interesting then adding him to the neutral fighters just looking for a good fight list. Either way I have no idea people were making a big deal about him being a baddie in the trailer, man what won't ppl complain about.

 

[LostintheWick]

I bet Mario shows up in Wreck-it Ralph

Also... after this next Batman movie, let's take a break. I hope he dies in the movie. I like tear jerkers and the final closure that a death of a character can provide.

 

[Wargamer]

Well perhaps there are people out there who would consider "A triple-barrel gatling gun where each barrel is a six-barrel minigun" for example, to be the ludicrous, over designed bastard child of a frustrated and immature developer with a compensation complex, rather than entertaining. Just sayin'.

Let's just assume for a moment that I don't really care about modern guns (which I don't). Most FPS games have such boring, boring, BORING weapons. Not just in terms of what they do, but in terms of how they look. Watching modern shooter videos it gets hard to tell what game you're watching, let alone what everyone is armed with.

Can you honestly tell me that you're going to confuse and triple-linked minigun with any other weapon on the battlefield? No you are not! You are going to see that weapon and think "Oh shit he's got a Minigun On Steroids!"

Even from the player's perspective, that kind of design is welcome. Yes, it might function mechanically much like the M3&3/4 assault rifle, but visually you have a very distinct firing firing animation as all three sets of barrels rotate on their own axis, and then rotate around each other as well.

 

[shrekfan246]

In this list we have everything from the nifty but near useless to the outright insane. Does any weapon in 90% of modern shooters deserve to be anywhere near this list? Honestly, the only gun I can think of in FPS land that feels half as fun as this is... not in an FPS. It's the Patriot from MGS4 - an infinite-ammo SMG that plays the Snake Eater song when you shoot with it. Even then, however, it's just a less ludicrous (and thus less hillarious) version of the RYNO-V.

Why must the FPS genre be so damn boring now? No wonder I've played 100+ hours of Dragon Age (and its DLC / sequels) consecutively as of late...

To be fair, Metal Gear Solid is about as far removed from reality as a "realistic" game can possibly make itself.

OT: Oh boy, this is going to rustle up a bunch of feathers.

I agree about the whole Zangief thing. Especially because not only is it a Capcom franchise, but it's a series of fighting games. That have, multiple times, crossed over with the universes of other fighting games. Canon doesn't exactly seem all that important to me.

Not touching the Mario subject with a ten-foot pole though, because that's just a smoldering flame war begging to be lit.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

Wreck-it Ralph: Zangief is in a Disney movie. Fuck, Nintendo has put one of their biggest icons in Disney movie. Let's think about that for a second.

Mario: All that Mario needs is perfect level design, which Nintendo always brings. You don't fix something that isn't broken and indeed you don't arbitrarily "improve" something that got it right the first time. There will NEVER be enough Mario. The face of gaming needs no breaks.

Django: It's awesome how Franco Nero from the original Django gets a cameo.

DC: I could care less; I actually think DC's character works fine in comics and cartoons, but not so well in film.

Batman: No, there is NEVER enough Batman. Dark Knight Rises is going to blow everything out of the water.

I bet Mario shows up in Wreck-it Ralph

He damn well better. I know there was official artwork of Ralph in a Mario color scheme.

 

[T'Generalissimo]

I'm not really sure how Mario innovating for 20 years and having a higher record of innovation than COD or Madden is a good justification for it stagnating now.

 

[Hindkjar]

This might be because I live in a country that isn't America.. But when I saw the Django Unchained trailer, all I thought was: "Quentin Tarantino doing revenge movie... AWESOME!" I didn't think of the reverse-racisme (for lack of a better word).

So now I'm looking forward to see wether it is "just" gonna be a revenge/grindhouse cowboy movie with the slave ownership as a framing device, or if there are gonna be some hints towards modernday social relationships between black people and white people.
With Tarantine bouth could happened

 

[omegawyrm]

It must be sad to not have a heart, but there's certainly no other explanation for not being able to enjoy a Mario game.

 

[malestrithe]

I am a great lover of Batman, but I do feel he gets WAY over used (and over crapped) because he is the ONLY FUCKING DC character who is both interesting and not a Red and Blue flying deus ex machina. So I agree with that point to an extent.

You do realize that Batman is also a Deus Ex Machina character?