The Super Bowl was two weeks ago, which makes now a perfect time to revisit what has to have been almost everyone’s favorite part. The memes about the low scoring, “boring,” game are fading, and our attention has turned to the long off-season. In this downtime, there’s a chance for reflection on what might have been the best part of our Sunday experience. I’m in the minority in that I…
NinjaTheory, the game developer behind Enslaved: Odyssey to the West and the remake of Devil May Cry, developed and self-published a new game recently. They called it Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. This is not a particularly good title, but it is a remarkably good game. They released the game first on the PS4 and on PC via Steam in August of 2017, so this is not particularly new. But in April…
On February 27th, 1998, Dark City was given a wide release in theaters. While the movie won praise from critics for its visual flair, it tended to get much poorer marks for human elements. None of the actors was acclaimed for giving a strong performance, the story was widely panned and the film was not much of a financial success, earning a meager $27M worldwide. I was thinking about this…
The Black Panther of comics, real identity T’Challa, king of Wakanda, debuted in 1966 and was interesting and popular enough to make a few more guest appearances before getting his own feature work in “Jungle Action.” Earlier issues of Jungle Action starred such notable comic standouts as “Lorna, Queen of the Jungle” and “Tharn, the Magnificent.” Jungle Action became T’Challa’s own after his debut issue there, however, and that was…
Last year I took some time to review the advertisements in the Super Bowl. We saw that after a particularly divisive election many of the advertisements took on a particularly political tone. Would the same happen this year in the wake of #metoo? Or would advertisers tone down the social commentary and aim more for brand building and light humor? Weirdly enough I mentioned 2004’s “wardrobe malfunction” in my introduction…
The playoffs for any sporting league are a special time of year. Fans of the teams that made it are able to keep their dreams alive, and even fans of the teams eliminated are prepared to enjoy the spectacle. Playoffs famously attract attention even from casual fans and non-fans of the game, increasing viewership and excitement. Why is this? If we were to assume an equal distribution of fans, and…
I had an opportunity to play Dead Exit a few days before its launch on the Xbox One platform. Dead Exit is a zombie-themed card game that feels very much like it could have been printed as a more traditional “board game” style of game with significant card mechanics. In Dead Exit, every card has two sides: the zombie side and the regular side. The regular side can be a…
Knowing that I would be writing a piece on gun control in America after recent events, I started this blog with a working title of “The Gun Culture” and my fingers slipped as I typed, a common enough occurrence. But the typo resulted in the word “culture” being mangled, highlighting the “cult” portion of the word. I was never intending to take a trip down the rabbit hole of the…
I have been aware of Cory Doctorow for a very long time. In 2005 I read his debut novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, which was published in 2003. And even before then, I was aware of Mr. Doctorow as an agent provocateur of the intellectually anti-copyright fighters, though that is an unfair characterization. Doctorow was never anti-copyright; he was, however, against the concept of copyright as it…
When I took a couple of journalists to task last year, shortly before the election, I didn’t expect it to become a theme. Neither did I expect to find myself with any common ground with Donald Trump regarding the media. While he accuses them of being liars, dishonest, and purveyors of fake news in his repetitious fashion, I like to think that I’m more civilized and understanding of their task….