Rob is out on vacation this week which naturally means we spend an inordinate amount of time talking about the Zach Snyder DC movies??? Then, Austin and Patrick bring us Adios, a narrative focused game where you spend time talking to your would be murderer. Austin has been checking out Mundaun, the Swiss folklore based horror game with fully pencil drawn textures which, alongside killer sound design, are used to great effect to unsettle the player. After the break, Cado checks in with Magic: Legends, the new free-to-play Diablo-like based in the Magic: the Gathering universe. Patrick has been playing Fatum Betula, a horror game that is also a love letter to PS1 era aesthetics.
The Snyder Cut proves the power of posting and the last half hour of Snyder’s Justice League might well galvanise that toxic and committed fanbase into demanding Justice League 2.
So between the discussion of Fatum Batula and the (somewhat inexplicable) HD rerelease of Stubbs the Zombie I’ve been thinking about how while I am 31 and theoretically of the ideal age to be nostalgic for fifth and sixth generation console games I have almost none. I think it might be that immersion is very important for my enjoyment of a game. Not just in terms of graphics but also tutorialization and other quality of life features. So while I enjoyed a lot of those games at the time I find returning to them takes a lot of conscious effort now that I’m used to the polish of modern games.
Same here. A big part of it in my case is that I wasn’t really playing console games at the time, but also the aesthetic a lot of these retro-PS1 games is just… bad? Fatum Betula actually looks really pretty, and obviously so does Umurangi Generation, but somebody posted this Time Crisis-adjacent first person dinosaur survival horror game on ResetERA and I looked at the screenshots and watched the video and it was just like… this is the sort of game we used to make fun of at the time for just being a bunch of different shades of brown.
I dunno, I’m all for indie games using this low-poly aesthetic as a way to make 3D games in a budget-friendly way, but some of it just seems like nostalgia for the sake of nostaliga. But I guess you could say that about a lot of pixel art games, too. And almost every thing else in our godforsaken pop culture landscape, for that matter.
The audio line that sticks in my head hardest is from Star Wars Pod Racer when the announcer goes “ITS A NEW LAP RECORD”
Also my favorite racer in that game is Ebe Endocott and I also still remember his race-finish line, which of course is an exuberant shout in an alien language “Oompah Noompoh Yahh!!”
Shoutouts to the dearly departed Deem Bristow for his amazing Eggman in Sonic Adventure 1 and 2. Not a single line phoned in. Every one drilled into my head.
I fucking hate Snyder but the last half hour of that movie promises some WACKY OUT-THERE SHIT and I’m kinda here for it.
I was fully Jokerfied by the end of those four hours. Fully Jokerfied.
PS: If you’re gonna suffer through the shitty DCEU movies, you need need to see Shazam!, it’s easily the best DC thing this whole decade. Aquaman is a ton of ridiculous fun. Nobody should watch Jessie Eisenberg’s horrible fucking Lex Luthor, reward yourself with Ewan McGregor in Birds of Prey.
But really, watch the cartoons. Lego Batman is the last true Batman now.
PPS: The way Patrick’s wife reaction to Suicide Squad is my reaction to all of BvS. I was so mad, so sad.
I watched Birds of Prey a couple of weeks and enjoyed it despite a lot of cringe. I made a joke that Harley shooting up a police station and voting for Bernie also makes it the most radical movie of the last 30 years. McGregor is a delight in it.
The last 30 minutes of JL was like a fever dream.
Aquaman was good as well. Probably the most competently made with the most charismatic lead. I could watch Jason Momoa shirtless all day.
The Snyder cut felt like it was four hours just to hurt me, and the last half hour was kicking me while I was down, but still probably my favourite of the Snyder DCEU films.
To brace myself for the Snyder Cut, I went back and watched BvS:DoJ the UE and let me tell you the things they added do not make that film any better. My expectations were very low for Justice League therefore, but 4 hours later - I actually quite liked it. It was less convoluted in the way BvS was, it let some of the characters breathe a bit more, such as Cyborg.
Take out all the slow motion, and you may have had a two hour movie.
I don’t know whether the plan is to build on this but I at least thought that the justice league got their moment to shine, in a way that felt more profound than the Whedon version.
I’m also not sure, how much of this was actually shot originally by Snyder and what was reshot. It feels like they used a lot of time to actually fix the movie but in ways that weren’t dictated by the suits. After the third act of Man of Steel, the main criticism was that it was needlessly destructive, which was all to set up the first act of BvS - but who’s to say if that was actually the original plan when they made Man of Steel?