Geekly News: November 2, 2018

Published on November 2, 2018November 1, 2018 by KyraLeave a comment

Elder Scrolls VI Release Window Announced

This bit of news doesn’t amount to much. It’s a slow news week, so eh. Bethesda announced that the Elder Scrolls VI Redfall will be a PS5 and Xbox (whatever they’ll call it) release. That’s pretty much what I figured. I said as much two or three weeks ago; this is just confirmation.

Starfield may have a chance of gracing current consoles, but there was little to no chance Redfall would make the PS4 or Xbox One. Fallout 76 counts as one of Bethesda’s flagship releases and the company likes to release one flagship title every three or four years. That means that Starfield should come out around 2021—maybe 2020 because they’ve been working on it for 6 years already and 2020 sounds like an awesome release year. Okay, there’s little chance Starfield will be a current generation console release.

Elder Scrolls VI should be released three to four years after Starfield, so that puts its release year at 2023 through 2025. Oh boy.

Guardians of the Galaxy 3 on Hold (Again)

Okay, maybe this is a pretty busy week of news. The third volume of Guardians of the Galaxy may not survive the firing of James Gunn. Here’s a quick recap of what’s happened. James Gunn posted insensitive tweets and was eventually fired as the director of Guardians Vol. 3. Some of the franchise’s actors back Gunn and Disney/Marvel has had a devil of a time finding another director they like. This has led to a stop-start every week or two.

MCU boss Kevin Feige announced this week that the franchise is on an indefinite hold. If the sides can’t find common ground (Bautista has no contract that covers a third Guardians movie), there’s a good chance that Guardians of the Galaxy 3 may not happen at all. Don’t worry. The gang will make an appearance in Avengers 4.

Boba Fett Movie Cancelled

Kathleen Kennedy confirms that the Boba Fett Star Wars spinoff movie is “100% dead.” While the cancellation of a Boba Fett movie helmed by Logan director James Mangold may upset some, the reason for this move is a shift to the Jon Favreau penned live-action TV series The Mandalorian. I couldn’t see both projects taking off, so a little focus for the Fett man may be in order. Let’s hope The Mandalorian delivers.

Andy Muschietti to Direct Attack On Titan

It director Andy Muschietti has just signed on to make a new Attack On Titan live-action film adaptation. The first one didn’t land well with manga readers. Why must every movie have a love story—especially when there isn’t a love story in the original work? Muschietti is a big fan of the original manga and if his work on It is any indication, the new Attack On Titan film will get the blockbuster treatment with plenty of chills.

PlayStation Classic Games List Confirmed

PlayStation announced that it’d join Nintendo with its line of diminutive classic systems with 20 preloaded games several months ago, but this week they announced the full list of games that’ll come with the system. They are as follows:

Battle Arena Toshinden
Cool Boarders 2
Destruction Derby
Final Fantasy VII
Grand Theft Auto
Intelligent Qube
Jumping Flash
Metal Gear Solid
Driller
Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee
Rayman
Resident Evil (Director’s Cut)
Revelations: Persona
Ridge Racer Type 4
Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo
Syphon Filter
Tekken 3
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six
Twisted Metal
Wild Arms

A lot of these are classic games or the first game in genre defining series. The PlayStation Classic hits shelves on December 5, 2018.

Video Games

Taiko no Tatsujin: Drum ‘n’ Fun! and Drum Session! (Switch, PS4)

Drum ‘n’ Fun (Switch) and Drum Session (PS4) mark the first time that a Taiko no Tatsujin game made it to the West. This series is a huge arcade/rhythm game in the East and it’s only a matter of time to see if the States and other countries will take to its catchy beats.

Movies

Bohemian Rhapsody

This is the big one this week for me. I’m a sucker for biopics and I like Queen. I don’t watch too many biopics in theaters, but I may make an exception for Bohemian Rhapsody, the biopic for Queen front man Freddie Mercury.

The Nutcracker and the Four Realms

Could this film be so bad that it’s good? I’m not sure. A lot of critics have called it “soulless” and “incoherent,” but the visual effects are good. It sounds like an impressive cast that includes Keira Knightley, Helen Mirren, and Morgan Freeman can’t help The Nutcracker and the Four Realms from becoming Disney’s worst reviewed film in history. Yikes!

Suspiria

This one won’t be for everyone. If this movie follows the 1977 original, Suspiria tackles some heady material, and its trailer depicts vampires who let the blood flow even more. This lends itself to multiple watches, once to get over the gore and the second to dig deeper into what the film is about, but a run time of two and a half hours may be a little long.

Nobody’s Fool

This is the latest Tyler Perry comedy. In this one, Tanya (Tiffany Haddish) is released from prison and is reunited with her family. The family learns that she’s in an online relationship with a mystery man who may be “catfishing” her. It’s a fun premise, so I may watch it. It also doesn’t hurt that Whoopi Goldberg, Amber Riley (Glee), and Mehcad Brooks (Jimmy Olsen from Supergirl) are in the cast.

Bodied

Eminem produces this odd fusion of comedy, battle rap. Eminem has a knack for the theatrical and it looks to continue here. Bodied has received a lot of praise and high marks, so it may be worth a watch.

The Front Runner

This one starts early next week. It’s another biopic, this time based on Matt Bai’s All the Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid. In short, it’s Hugh Jackman portraying Senator Gary Hart during his 1988 presidential campaign where he’s caught up in an extramarital affair with Donna Rice.

TV

Friday, November 2, 2018

Homecoming (Amazon)

I’ve talked about this one in the past. Julia Roberts stars as a caseworker who helps military members transition to civilian life. Years after she starts a new life as a waitress when a Department of Defense auditor questions why she left the program. There may be more to her being placed as a former caseworker than she realizes.

House of Cards (Netflix)

Today marks House of Cards’ final season. I lost interest a long time ago, and the Kevin Spacey scandal didn’t help, but hopefully Netflix’s first original series ends on a high note.

The Other Side of the Wind (Netflix)

This film may be the biggest thing Netflix has ever produced; it’s one of Orson Welles’s lost films. Being locked away in a Paris vault (due to legal issues) for decades didn’t prevent The Other Side of the Wind from influencing other films that came after it. It all but created the Mockumentary. What’s even better is that Netflix plans to release a follow up documentary on the film’s history which may be just as interesting.

Watergate (History)

History beats The Front Runner (Gary Hart) to the punch with this series about Watergate. This scandal may have marked the United States’ loss of innocence; it definitely gave birth to scandal journalism.

Sunday, November 4, 2018

Mickey’s 90^th Spectacular (ABC)

Mickey Mouse made his first appearance on May 15, 1928 (Plane Crazy), and Steamboat Willie was released around Thanksgiving of the same year. Mickey’s 90^th Spectacular is a special that celebrates Mickey throughout the decades.

Outlander (Starz)

Based on the historical time travel book series of the same name, Outlander returns for a fourth season on Starz. The premise sounds interesting and it’s received good ratings, so I may give it a try.

Board Games

Betrayal Legacy

I may be a little late with this one, because tabletop games are difficult to track down with their new releases. Betrayal Legacy holds my interest with a death grip. Rob Daviau was involved with the original Betrayal at House on the Hill (think of a Joss Whedon’s Cabin in the Woods in board game form) and he adds his patented legacy game mechanism to the mix. For the uninitiated, legacy games are games that change the board through multiple plays, so Betrayal Legacy should play out more like a movie and the choices players make will have lasting consequences.

I may pour a little cold water on this writeup with saying that legacy games aren’t always executed as well as they could be. Gamers may want to wait and read a review (a spoiler-free review as this board game will play like a movie) before purchasing it.

That’s all we have for Geekly news this week. Be kind to one another and stay geeky.

My Favorite Game Mechanics: Fallout Shelter

Published on October 18, 2018October 21, 2018 by KyraLeave a comment

Old Uncle Geekly is trying a new trick. This week’s favorite game mechanic comes from video games, Fallout Shelter in particular.

On the surface Fallout Shelter shares a lot of commonalities with other free-to-play games/apps like Clash of Clans. Players download it for free and it offers in game purchases for players to get better at the game faster than they would by investing only time. But the one thing that separates this game from other free-to-play games is also the one thing that makes it uniquely Bethesda. The player competes against the game, not other players.

When one logs off of Clash of Clans or a Clash of Clans clone, logging back in allows them to see what other players did to their defenses while they were offline. This sometimes leads to players paying for repairs (tying up a worker to repair counts as “paying”) and regrouping. There’s usually a tournament included in games of this ilk and only the best players—or the ones willing to pay to win—fair well in these tournaments. There’s a reason people scoff at these games as “pay to win.” The only way to get ahead in a game like that is to pay something. Fallout Shelter eliminates that style of play.

Sure, you could pay to get better things faster in the game, but the only player you can see is yourself. Fallout Shelter allows players to do things at their own pace. It doesn’t apply the pressure of a tournament.

Now I’m not saying that I don’t enjoy the occasional competitive free-to-play game, but Fallout Shelter’s brand of leveling up your vault dwellers how you see fit and sending them out on missions or exploring the wastes fit with Bethesda’s gaming catalogue. This isn’t just a free-to-play game. This is a Bethesda free-to-play game.

Is it for everyone? No. Did some gamers download it because they saw the word Fallout? Of course. Am I a Bethesda fanboy? You know it. But it’s the Bethesda open-world RPG flavor of Fallout Shelter that makes me interested in the game, and I hope other free-to-play games follow suit.

Player versus environment may be my favorite game mechanic, but I promised at least one more mechanism and here it goes. When Fallout Shelter first hit the app store, it bragged about players not having to wait for construction. Again, games like Clash of Clans have players build items and then they must wait real-world minutes or even hours for those items to be constructed. It’s a time waster. Well, you could pay gems (which end up being real-world money) to instantly build an item, but that ruins the idea of “free-to-play.” Fallout Shelter doesn’t have players wait for construction. If you have the resources, you build the room within your vault immediately.

While immediate construction was a huge selling point for the game, it opened new game mechanisms: push your luck and managing vault dwellers. Players didn’t wait on construction, they waited on their rooms to produce resources like food and water that their people needed.

The more dwellers one sent to a room, the faster that room produced the resource. This is a clever way of adding yet another resource (workers) to the game system. One could also “push their luck” by rushing production in a room. If one succeeds, the game gives them more resources. If the rush fails, the game generates some crisis (radroaches, a room fire, or deathclaws) the player must resolve.

It’s subtle, but the push your luck and managing vault dwellers mechanisms are excellent additions. Come to think of it, they may be just as important as making Fallout Shelter player versus environment.

I guess I had more than one favorite mechanism for Fallout Shelter after all. I’m sure I got lost somewhere while I searched the wastes. If I did, slap upside the head with a radscorpion barb. Or you could always say something in the comments.

Geekly News: October 5, 2018

Published on October 5, 2018October 5, 2018 by KyraLeave a comment

Another day and another new content type. We’re trying our hat at Geekly News today. Even though your uncle Geekly could scour the internet for any type of Geek News, most weeks this post type will list new releases for the coming week. We’re lucky this first week features a major movie announcement and a leak at Bethesda’s parent company ZeniMax.

Elder Scrolls VI

People have been debating for years which Tamriel province will host the sixth entry in the Elder Scrolls main series, and ZeniMax may have given players their first concrete evidence. Sure, some internet sleuths found evidence in the short teaser trailer, but that’s more in the realm of speculation.

And this new information could be filed as that too, but there’s a more compelling argument to be made. The attorney who registered a copyright for Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim years before each game’s release just registered a copyright for a single-player game set in the Elder Scrolls universe entitled Redfall.

This development suggests that Elder Scrolls VI will be set in part or entirely in Hammerfell (home of the Redguards) and will feature a questline involving Redguards.

Why not call it Hammerfell? Many Elder Scrolls games aren’t named by the province in which they occur, Morrowind and Skyrim are the exception, not the rule, they’re named based on the game’s storyline. Sure, Redfall could pertain to something other than Redguards and the contested Hammerfell/High Rock border, but it’s likely that Redguards and Hammerfell will factor into this latest installment.

There’s still no release date for Elder Scrolls VI. If your uncle Geekly were to place a bet for when Redfall will be released, he’d go with a post Playstation 5, X-Box 2 (who knows if Microsoft will stick with this naming convention, but to the best of my knowledge it’ll be X-Box 2) release.

It could also be that ZeniMax wants fans to talk about Elder Scrolls VI more. If so, mission accomplished.

Mega Man Live Action Movie

Capcom has announced that its Mega Man franchise is going to get the live-action Hollywood treatment. The press release came one day after Mega Man 11’s release and the movie celebrates the franchise’s 30^th anniversary.

The film is tentatively titled MEGA MAN (in all caps) and has writer/directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman (Catfish, Paranormal Activity 3) attached to the project. Capcom says it aims to “appeal to a diverse audience, including not only game players but action movie fans as well, with an adaptation that maintains the world of the Mega Man games, while incorporating the grand production and entertainment value that Hollywood movies are known for.”

Video game movies don’t have the best track record, but I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed with this title. It’s a safe bet that your uncle Geekly will be watching this film on opening weekend. There’s no release date set for this project as of this write-up.

And now for some new releases for the upcoming Week.

Video Games

Friday, October 5, 2018

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey (PS4, Xbox One, PC)

This is the latest of the Assassin’s Creed games and it’s set in ancient Greece. Be ready for a lot of “This…Is…Sparta!.”

Super Mario Party (Switch)

My family and I have had some fun with this title in the past. It blends roll, spin and move (roll dice to see how far you can go in a turn: for example, Monopoly) of tabletop games with minigames one might find in other Mario titles.

Movies

Venom

This one troubles me. Based on the trailers, the special effects are dated and that’s not a good thing for a comic book movie. I’m also concerned with how they pronounced symbiote.

A Star is Born

Lady Gaga (first major acting role) and Bradley Cooper (first time director) recreate this Barbara Streisand classic. I may not see this one in theaters, but I’ll probably see it when it’s out on video or streaming.

TV

Friday, October 5, 2018

Big Mouth (Netflix)

I’ve heard good things about this one. It’s a raunchy cartoon series centered around puberty. I haven’t gotten around to watching it because there are a lot of raunchy cartoon series to choose from.

Into the Dark (Hulu)

This one confused me a bit. Netflix recently released a movie entitled Hold the Dark. Hulu’s Into the Dark is an American horror anthology series for those who think American Horror Story isn’t enough. I’ll give it a chance.

The Man in the High Castle (Amazon)

I’ll have to finish the second season before starting the upcoming third. The Man in the High Castle is easily one of Amazon Prime’s best series.

Sunday, October 7, 2018

Doctor Who (BBC America)

The adventures of the first female Doctor Who begins today. Yes! Bring it on.

Star Wars Resistance (Disney)

There have been several successful Star Wars cartoons. The franchise almost redeemed the prequels with all the work Star Wars animated series put in. Resistance is set in the sequel’s timeline. It’ll interesting to see how this series builds Poe Dameron’s character.

The Walking Dead (AMC)

I wonder how long people can survive in a world with zombies. The Walking Dead endeavors to answer that question with nine years and counting. This year has the distinction of Andrew Lincoln (Rick Grimes) leaving the series.

Tuesday, October 9, 2018

The Flash (CW)

Ah, the Arrowverse. I might watch an episode or two just for old time’s sake. These shows are no longer appointment television for me, but it can be fun to watch certain DC comics characters grace the small screen.

Black Lightning (CW)

I never got into Black Lightning because I had all but given up on the Arrowverse by the time it was released, but Black Lightning is one of the first live-action superhero TV shows to feature an African-American protagonist (Netflix’s Luke Cage beat it by a half year), and from what I’ve seen, it doesn’t intertwine as much with the rest of the Arrowverse. I’ll probably give it a shot. Looks like I have some binging to do.

Wednesday, October 10, 2018

Riverdale (CW)

I never got into Riverdale, but I know that many folks think of it as something more than a fusion of Dawson’s Creek and Archie Comics. This may be one of those series I watch well into the show’s run.

Thursday, October 11, 2018

Supernatural (CW)

This CW standard enters its 14^th season today. Talk about your long-running television shows.

That’s all we have for Geekly News this week. May the geek with you and be kind to one another.