The recent release of Red Dead Redemption 2 entailed a subsequent hoopla regarding the reportedly abhorrent working conditions in Rockstar Games. Just after that, the disappointing beta of Fallout 76 and its game-breaking flaws added more fuel to the AAA dumpster fire. While the debates on how to solve the various problems in the AAA space are still ongoing, I would like to prompt more focus on a different and often overlooked facet of the games industry. (more…)
With the passing of Anthony Bourdain last month, I thought I had to write a bit about how his work has influenced my view on “exploring experience”, as this blog’s tagline states. I want to focus on the memories he left behind with the travels he embarked on for his show Parts Unknown — a program I quite liked for how it packaged food and travel as a way to better understand the world and its people. (more…)
At the moment, I have a video project queued up regarding deliberate practice and the importance of stakes in competitive video games to incentivize performance improvement. Perhaps I’ll actually finish that video one of these days, but I felt like I should post something about what Overwatch had got me thinking as of this writing. As I delve more into topics related to competitive gaming, I hope to dig deeper into the attitudes and behaviors I’ve been observing first hand in games so far. (more…)
There has been talk lately about how video games may actually be underpriced these days, as unbelievable as that may sound since AAA games are quite expensive already. However, pundits are making their cases as to why the video game industry is now at its current state of having microtransactions and other predatory forms of monetization being shoved down consumers’ throats, as well as horrible working conditions for the rank and file in the industry. I’m no insider, but I’d like to try making better sense of the whole video game price debacle. (more…)
Less than eight months after its debut event, GameCon PH is back with a follow-up. The pressure is on as they’re expected to improve upon what they were able to come up with last June, and they’re doing more things to get more hype. I even got a call to attend their press conference on February 1, even if I’m just a two-bit blogger. Just like with the first event, I’d like to talk about what lies ahead in this preview. (more…)
The fifth season of History Channel’s Vikings hasn’t been exactly what I would call “riveting”. The initial post-Ragnar episodes were pretty good as most of them was about Ivar’s ascent and how the Great Heathen Army are getting the best of the English. However, the fifth season has been quite puzzling with how things have turned out and how relationships formed and fizzled in the blink of an eye. The mid-season finale of Vikings Season 5, entitled Moments of Vision, was both beautiful and bewildering at the same time. (more…)
After much deliberation, I’ve decided to make a full post to take responsibility for something I’ve gotten flak for. At the start of my retrospective video on Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven, I committed the gaffe of calling the game a “GTA clone”. Some may be puzzled at what may be wrong with that, and I’m still a bit on the fence on how wrong it really was to have done so. At first, I thought it’s like referring to caviar as “salty fish eggs”, which may upset connoisseurs, but is certainly true. But in this case, as I’ve found out, that would actually be a flat-out lie. (more…)
Welcome to a stupid idea i had to pull off to start the new year. It’s outdated, irrelevant, and dumb as all hell. However, I had to do it to open the year as it had been gnawing at the back of my head for so long and 2018 is the year I start cranking out videos. I had to take the challenge, and I started it by putting up such a stupid ass video that would then motivate me to quickly bury it with more videos. It’s basically political commentary disguised as a super late postmortem review of No Man’s Sky. (more…)
Nowadays, it’s obvious that Star Wars has one of the most fickle fandoms in pop culture. Putting movies out over a decade after the much-maligned prequel trilogy can do that to a franchise so beloved, yet so battered by disappointments over the years. The collective love is so strong that it borders cognitive dissonance, and being able to have something to say about a new Star Wars movie is the mark of a person wanting to be seemingly in-the-know, whether they do care or not. With this review of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, I shall add to that noise. (more…)
Pardon me while this blog post is a couple of weeks late, it’s still better than never. The controversy with EA’s Star Wars Battlefront II and its loot boxes made the rounds in gaming news, even culminating in governments condemning the game and loot boxes in general as gambling. While loot boxes had become the norm in games, especially free-to-play games with not that much room for monetization, publishers had been slowly but surely pushing it as far as it’ll go until the dam breaks. (more…)
This article on The Verge about how Marvel’s The Punisher on Netflix is a mess with how it tackles gun violence in America caught my eye. Since this blog is full of cobwebs and I recently got rejected by a client for my freelance work, I’ve written something here in response, partially to remind myself that I can still write. Also, I have been watching the show. I like it, and I think I’ve seen more of it than the author of that article. (more…)
If you really want a serious Jackie Chan movie that’s actually good, watch Shinjuku Incident. Otherwise, this film isn’t that surprising for him at this stage in his career. He has always done action-comedy hybrids, so of course he would want to take some detours as he gets older and his body becomes less resilient to the wear and tear he has put himself through over his career. In any case, at first glance, I see The Foreigner like it’s Taken on Prozac. (more…)
