video game – PopCult Reviews

Patron Pick – Gran Turismo

This special reward is available to Patreon patrons who pledge at the $10 or $20 monthly levels. Each month, those patrons will pick a film for me to review. If they choose, they also get to include some of their thoughts about the movie. This Pick comes from Matt Harris.

Gran Turismo (2023)
Written by Jason Hall, Alex Tse, and Zach Baylin
Directed by Neill Blomkamp

2023 feels like an apocalyptic year for Hollywood. The labor strikes, which the studio execs refuse to approach in good faith, stretch into the future. Rumblings of AI-generated films & television abound. The content coming out often feels like it was already written by AI anyway. The mainstream has never been such a void of humanity, and that’s saying a lot. The brand movie and video game adaptations have been hot commodities as trends shift in a disturbing direction. These two horrible new late-stage capitalism genres come together in the mire that is Gran Turismo. “Based on a true story” but clearly embellished and overly dramatized, which doesn’t help the picture to become more compelling. Not since Black Adam have I felt such a sinking sense of doom watching a movie that this medium I love so much is being strangled in the States, everything that made it worth engaging with melting away (thank god for world cinema!).

TV Review – The Last of Us Season One

The Last of Us Season One (HBO)
Written by Craig Mazin & Neil Druckmann
Directed by Craig Mazin, Neil Druckmann, Peter Hoar, Jeremy Webb, Jasmila Žbanić, Liza Johnson, and Ali Abbasi

Media has conditioned us to think the “end of the world” will be explosively catastrophic. Think of the movies of Roland Emmerich or the Skynet awakening of James Cameron’s Terminator films. The reality is collapse is a rolling event; it begins in the corners of the developing world and inches its way toward the imperial core. This could take place over any amount of time, but it is guaranteed that all civilizations collapse at some point. The Biblical story of Noah’s flood, an event that also pops up in various other cultures, was probably just a localized flood that devastated the region. Over time it was exaggerated, and details were added. If the collapse hasn’t reached you yet, when it does, you might not even notice it. When you take in the weight of it all, you may wish for some big explosive moment instead of the dull, soul-crushing march that lies before you.

Movie Review – Mortal Kombat (2021)

Mortal Kombat (2021)
Written by Greg Russo and Dave Callaham
Directed by Simon McQuoid

I was never a Mortal Kombat fan. In our house, we had an NES for the longest time and only upgraded in the late 1990s to a Playstation. I haven’t really enjoyed the fighting games I have played. It’s a genre that doesn’t appeal to my sensibilities. I get bored with those kinds of games a few minutes in but can click away for hours at Civilization or some tycoon management sim. However, because I was the right age for it, I know a decent amount about Mortal Kombat just through culture osmosis. I can’t say I had any expectations for this adaptation, and it definitely met the bar I set for it.

Nintendo Switch – One Year Later

It’s been a full year since I first purchased my Nintendo Switch, and I thought it would be a good time to reflect. I’ve never been a big console video gaming person, and even when it came to the PC, I was a casual player of things like Civilization and The Binding Isaac. I just don’t get caught up in first-person shooters or even the stories of games, really. However, if something is just an open playground, I get bored easily. Roguelikes have quickly become my favorite game genre as they encourage replayability, and I love unlocking new stuff. That’s sort of who I am as a “gamer,” which informs my decisions in what games I purchase and spend the most time playing.

Video Game Review – Nintendo Switch

At the beginning of my summer break from teaching, I purchased a Nintendo Switch and have spent the last two months playing it quite a bit. Here are some of my thoughts about the device and the games I have for it.

Steam Summer Sale 2019 Recommendations

It’s that time of year again and here are some games I’ve played in the last year that I would encourage you to check out during the annual sale.

Forager
Sometimes you want to resource grind without all the annoying narrative in the way. Forager is just the game for that and brings together core elements from other games like Minecraft and those clicker style games. You are a little guy who is just trying to build things to get to the next thing, so you make the bigger thing. I guess you could say the purpose of playing Forager is, so you don’t have to play Forager anymore. The more you develop, the more automated your resource gathering becomes. There are lots of satisfying sounds and flashing things on the screen so that your dopamine centers will be lit up continuously. If you want an easy pick-up and play for a couple of minutes style of game, then Forager will scratch that itch.

Steam Sale 2018 Recommendations

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Another year, another Steam Summer Sale. Here are my recs for this year. If you want to see my previous years’ pics you can check them out here.

Steam Sale 2016 Recommendations
Steam Sale 2017 Recommendations

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Favorites of 2017 – Video Games & Tabletop Games

My Favorite Video Games and Tabletop Games of 2017

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Video Games

Dead Cells
From my Steam Summer Sale write up on this one:

“Dead Cells is an Early Access title, but one that overcomes the stigma that label can sometimes bring. Like a side-scrolling Dark Souls, Dead Cells drops your nameless protagonist in the middle of an island dungeon with no knowledge of how they got there. As you run, jump, and kill enemies, you collect the two currencies of the game: gold and cells. Gold helps you purchase items in the shops and unlock treasure doors during play. The cells are spent at the end of each stage to upgrade and unlock new weapons and abilities. When you die you start over with your primary weapons, but everything you unlock carries over from playthroughs, able to be discovered and purchased. Addictive, smooth gameplay.”

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Steam Summer Sale 2017 Recommendations

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It’s that time again. Gabe Newell opens the floodgates and lets loose the sales. Here are some of my recommendations for games I’ve spent a lot of time on in the past year and thought you might enjoy. If you missed my list from last year, check out my Steam Summer Sale 2016 Recommendations for more titles.

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2016: My Favorite Video Games, Music, and Books

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My 10 Favorite Video Games I Played in 2016

Civilization VI – For some foolish reason, I didn’t think I would get hooked on this sixth installment in the series. How wrong I was. 36 hours may not be most for some people, but for my more restrictive gaming schedule that is quite a bit. I have barely scratched the surface of Civ VI but I know it will be a game that eats up my life in big chunks.
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