Streamlabs is getting coal for Christmas

 What's that? I can't hear your justified complaints!

So I don't partake in streaming. I've not reached that level of my descent into narcissism where I believe other people will want to watch me play games in their free time whilst I natter away at inconsequential garbage. But despite my tone, that's not born from any moral objection I have against those that do, but simply because I don't have a rig powerful enough to do so. Although with the absolute impossibility it has been trying to get my hands on those new consoles, I'm reaching the point where I'm bookmarking 'build your own PC' guides. The 3090 can't still be that expensive, can it? (Woah yes it can, nevermind. 2 thousand? What the heck? You want a lease on my soul and my firstborn too, Nvidia?) Still, I watch some streams every now and then, get involved in the excitement of watching gameplay from folk with more charisma than I, and so I am familiar enough with that sort of world to know what a seismic and unexpected shake-up it is to have Streamlabs get outed as a terrible platform that everyone with a conscious should abandon post-haste.

To be clear, I know enough about how important they are, not how they work. (Go to a streamer for that intimate knowledge.) But as I understand it, Streamlabs and OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) are platforms that facilitate video recording and live streaming. Which isn't to say that one couldn't stream without their help, but the standardised quality of what a stream should be and how it should work was set by the standards that OBS helped establish. They made it accessible to the everyman to create quality-looking set-ups with elements, integrations with the streaming platform and a streamlining of the fiddlier parts of running a professional stream. And as you can imagine for a type of media which has steadily become a profession for a few lucky people out there, such accessibility is literally essential for their daily lives. As such it should come as little surprise that these sorts of platforms are considered essential tools for the aspiring streamer out there, the thing they must learn how to walk with first before they can run and fly as a wisecracking, wit-spewing, internet streamer. (At least that's the norm for game streaming, I'm not as familiar with other... types of streaming...)

OBS is the OG in this regard. (or OBS Studio, as it is now officially known) It's free and open-source, which basically means that everyone who worked on it did so with the passion of wanting to make streaming more open for everyone and actively wants to encourage others to hop onto that mission with their own expertise. As you can expect, they survive off of donations on Patreon and don't try to skim anything off of the users or viewers. So you don't really need a degree in basic narrative composition to see where this is going right? I mean if life simulates art, and you know how any story goes, then you know where I'm going with this next, don't you? I'll give you a really big clue, OBS aren't going to the bad guys in this story. Which leaves only one other type of streaming platform that I've already mentioned, conveniently enough. Streamlabs.

So in comes TwitchAlerts, I mean Streamlabs. (Wow, that first company name was really short-sighted. That's probably the most well-advised name change I've seen in years.) They essentially are a company trying to do what OBS does but with more of a streamlined set-up, and here's the part where my knowledge falls away, because this comes down to preference from here on out. I've heard some streamers lament that Streamlabs is an overall lesser experience with worse functionality and even if you buy into it's premium subscription service, you can never get your hands on customer support. Again, I must impress, this is second hand and anecdotal, but I've heard voices who I respect enough to, whilst maybe not believe their every word to the letter, at least retreat to the old proven adage of "Where there's smoke, there's most likely fire." So Streamlabs isn't as lovingly made as OBS is. Good thing they launched StreamlabsOBS together then, right?

Not too long ago, another streaming service called Lightstream posted a meme pointing out the fact that Streamlabs appeared to have totally ripped off the design of their website and... yeah, if you look at the images it's pretty clear to see how that ain't no coincidence. Point in case, they even went so far as to copy the testimonials at the bottom of the page word-for-word only changing the context to make it about them. (That's... just impressively lazy for a plagiariser) It was on this day that another shoe dropped, on Streamlabs' one remaining good foot, when OBS, saints that they are, spoke up about the fact that StreamlabsOBS had absolutely nothing to do with them. Oh yes. Streamlabs had recognised the reverence that the streaming community had placed on OBS, all that trust, and decided to just steal their name out from under them. In the words of a demonic court jester- "Awow!"

OBS, being sweethearts far too good to be subjected to this nonsense, reached out to Streamlabs quietly in order to request they changed their name to prevent any mistaken collaboration, but were met with pure silence. This name change happened in early 2019, by the way, so Streamlabs had plenty of time to check their inbox. As a consequence, OBS' team have reported several instances of aggrieved customers calling up OBS to complain about their Streamlabs issues and then getting angry at OBS for the issues with Streamlab's software, how screwed up is that? It all worked out in Streamlabs' favour, however, because they managed to fool the entire world for a least a couple of years by just keeping quiet. Now, however, they've been outed as bullying a non-profit enthusiast project for clout... yeah, that's going whack your popularity a little.

Funnily enough, it wasn't too long after all of this came out that Streamlabs magically renamed themselves back to just 'Streamlabs'. (Funny how that happens.) But that hasn't really been enough for them to save face. Suspicions were already on the company due to the apparent unreliability of the service and way that the app does every legal thing in it's power to stop you from unsubscribing, from telling you that the service is down when you first press, to highlighting the 'keep me subscribed button' and greying out the continue, to throwing a giant screen of text at you on the final hurdle whilst scribbling the 'cancel anyway' button in small hyperlinked text that is coloured a very similar colour to it's backdrop, isn't contained in a button like every other option before it was, and is on the left hand side of the context box whilst every other option has been on the right hand side. (There's got to be some consumer laws against that nonsense.) But hearing this just confirmed the heavy suspicions that these guys are disingenuous and crude busybodies that none one with an informed view of streaming will want to associate themselves with.

The worst part of this, at least from Streamlabs' point-of-view, is that streaming isn't like Youtube or Tiktok, with their thousands of content creators all operating on their own little islands from one another. Streamers tend to be tight knit, and travel in their extended circles even when streaming by themselves, so news of a disreputable member of the typical streamer start-up pantheon is going to spread. Although I can't say that this is a miscarriage of justice given the generally mean and dismissive attitude that this company treated it's contemporaries with. This is literally how I'd expect Dick Dastardly to run a streaming platform. (That's 'Wacky Races and Catch the Pigeon' Dick Dastardly, not 'surprise 3rd act weirdo main villain in that scooby Doo movie' Dick Dastardly. It's mean spirited, but not cartoonishly evil just yet) So now this company is learning that most salient and heartfelt of moral lessons that has been passed down from culture to culture, hegemony to monarchy, theocracy to democracy, and now from individual to company: don't be a dick, man. Sheesh.  

Grand Theft Auto Vice City Review (The Original)

More like nineteen- but I digress...

As the legacy of the Grand Theft Auto Trilogy Definite Edition trucks on, so does my own personal journey in reminding myself what made these games so very decent in the first place and why exactly it is that they are deserving of all this hubbub. Whilst GTA III was never really my jam back in the day, and I imagine that's decently reflected in my review grading of it, Grand Theft Auto Vice City was actually a game I played quite a lot of when I could. We have a history, Vice City and me, and though it's not my favourite of the 3D era (that's coming next) that initial layer of bias has already cemented itself down into my brain and so that's something you should likely take into account if you're looking for a totally fresh take. You're not going to get it entirely with this review. Point-in-case, I bent over backwards to download the downgrader for Vice City so that I could listen to the original audio radio stations that had been patched out over the years due to licences running out. Was it worth it? For Billie Jean? Yes.

Another boon I modded in for myself was that of actual proper console controls, because I was not going to suffer through Vice City the way I did with III. (Back then I had to bind 'reverse in car' as the start button! What the heck is that about?) So in essence, despite playing on a computer, the experience I went through was about as close to the PlayStation 2 release as I could make it, which should tell you something about the quality of these ports. In large respects they are as faithful as a game like this can feasibly be, but in the most crucial ways they are embarrassments. (i.e. the controls) Games like these are clearly not designed to be played on keyboard and mouse and there's no reason why controllers should have been totally ignored in the control programming. At the very least the controllers still work with the game, which isn't the case for Bully's PC port, (without mods that I can only very rarely get to actually work) still these versions of their games remind us of an era in Rockstar's history where the computer was some strange alien piece of hardware they couldn't manage to wrap their noggins around. (Except, I guess, for the computers they made the damn games on.)

First I think it's important to talk about combat, and how it actually feels like it function in Vice City compared to III. There are still problems, because Rockstar's war with decent third person combat only ever really succeeded with the jump to Grand Theft Auto V, but Vice City works and after III that's enough. The camera is still fiddly but the lock-on focuses you on what you're shooting at, which is nice. Shooting missions are typically set in eras designed for shootouts, unlike with III, so you can expect narrow corridors and waist high cover to take advantage of the new crouching mechanic. There's also three times the number of weapons here, because Vice City was the first time the series implemented their iconic 'three variants per weapon type', which allows a bit of customisability in firefights at the player's discretion. Free aim guns are still a pain due to the way that you can't move whilst aiming, and so you tend to get shot to pieces when using them, but there were a few heavy combat missions in Vice City that I genuinely enjoyed thanks to the combat improvements, making some set-pieces actually work this time around.

The many cars of Vice City have also been improved with their speed and handling being more consistent, and there being less of a tendency to immediately roll-over and explode upon the first sharp corner. (I even manged to save myself after rolling over a few times, which was way out of the question in the last game.) New is the ability to dive out of your car whilst it's moving so that you can escape a burning vehicle (I didn't realise that GTA III didn't have that until I played it) and the concept of cool unique cars that you can earn and keep throughout the game. All the unique cars from III were unique in properties alone (like the bulletproof truck) but Vice City gives unique patterns (like the leopard-print taxi) and totally unique models too! (Like the DeLorean-inspired 'Deluxo') Driving was always the best part of GTA, but this time around it feels like Rockstar finally landed on the elements that make it so attractive to come back to time and time again.

Here's a relatively small change in the grand scheme of things, that had a huge effect on my enjoyment of the world I was enduring: there's a map now, thank god! Now when you get an objective for a mission or a side quest, you can pause and look at exactly where it is and what roads you need to take to get there, instead of having to dig out an out-of-game map and work out some positioning conundrum. Improved too is the minimap which lists services in the near area you might need now, such as a Pay'n'spray. I can genuinely say that I almost never used the GTA III Pay'n'sprays, (it didn't help that there was only about 1 on every city island) but in Vice City they were my goto whenever I got into a police chase, which actually helped validate their existence and helpful-but-not-too-easy placements. And actually being able to find and stock up at an AmmuNation- man, that felt like an entirely different play experience with true, honest-to-goodness, quality of life features. What bliss. 

Being set in the mid 80's, the atmosphere of the world was going to be a big point of focus for the team at Rockstar and where the majority of their design decisions would lead. And with the incredible 80's soundtrack they managed to score, including tracks from Toto, Michael Jackson and Hall and Oates, playing this game sounds like throwback Thursday on the radio. Even the UI sports a hotpink-and-baby-blue hue that belongs nowhere else but the 80's, ensuring that you never quite forget what game you're playing at any point. A lot of the world references you hear during missions or in the many radio shows will place you right in the period, with excesses of drugs, clubs and sex mixed in just the right degrees to make this feel like you're very own kitschy period TV show or movie. (Kind of like Scarface, in that regard)  My only gripe was when one character of-handily mentioned Russia in a reference to the red scare, despite the fact that region would have been known as 'the Soviet Union' at the time, but I'm really pulling at straws there. I'll bet that most dumb Americans from the 80's couldn't tell the difference in all honesty, so it's probably more accurate then what I would have went for.

Vice City itself, Rockstar's own Miami, is the star of the show here, and whilst I liked Liberty City well enough, Vice City just breathes with this beach-party palm tree laziness that I can only imagine is characteristic of the real place. Seemingly smaller than Liberty City, nothing in Vice City feels an oppressive distance away, so that objectives are easy to get to and you don't have to spend mental gymnastic points trying to locate an offramp onto the bridge so that you can switch island. (God that stuff drove my insane with III) compacting the place down allowed for several distinctive landmark locations to really make areas pop, such as the Universal Studios mock-up in the north or the mansion-studded central island. Something else I appreciated were the way that the gangs of the city were scaled back into only two groups, instead of the six from III, meaning that you could actually come to grips with the balance of the street warfare. (Also, pissing off the sides through the course of the narrative doesn't mean that everyone shoots you wherever you go this time around, which is an absolute life-changer design choice from Rockstar.)

I read on the synopsis for Grand Theft Auto III how the voice acting performances was supposed to be 'stellar', and whilst that may have been true at the time and against it's contemporaries, time was less than kind on them. (Kenji's voice actor sounded like someone doing a bad Japanese accent, and considering the Asian American actor was born in Honolulu, maybe he was.) But for Grand Theft Auto Vice City the tag of 'stellar' doesn't just fit, it might undersell some of the performances here; this entire star studded cast did a brilliant job bringing humour and personality to their roles, such to the point that it's no wonder how many of these characters became iconic. Ray Liotta's Tommy Vercetti as the main character is pitch-perfect casting and I totally believed every word which came out of his mouth. William Fichtner as Ken Rosenberg, with his neurotic Jewish lawyer routine, is a total scene stealer. And Phillip Michael Tomas playing Lance Vance (Who is totally not a redo of his Miami Vice character. *Wink* *Wink*) was so good I just which there was more of him. (Which I guess is why they did Vice City Stories, which I've never had the chance to play.)

In narrative, Vice City is incredibly straight forward which serves the presentation and style the team were trying to emulate like a glove. You're an aggrieved mob jailbird from Liberty City caught up in a drug deal gone wrong and on a mission to get back what you owe to you family. That's a set-up which could go any number of directions, and I'll bet the boys over at RGG Studios could have turned that into an emotional power-house with enough time. But Rockstar pretty much just use that as an excuse to get you down by the beaches, because from there the story just gives way to exploring the vacation state and meeting it's various colourful residents, (many of whom have famous voices behind them) all plastered onto a vague 'control the city' meta narrative that no one really cares all that much about. It's all just about fun-in-the-sun, baby; and that relaxed sight-seer attitude is what makes this a game perfect for it's 80's setting. This game could have been a piece of media from that time, if gaming wasn't still so prehistoric back then, Rockstar nailed that presentation to the back of their limo.

And as the story does give way, in comes the simply great missions which you remember for the right reasons. The bank job mission, the one where you ride a PCJ bike across rooftops at night, the extended gunfight atop a yacht against the entire French criminal mafia, the helicopter assault on a burnt-out gang-run estate house, the chain-assassination mission, the roof-top chainsaw chase, the scarface-style finale. My only narrative gripe comes from that finale, incidentally, in that the story in no way builds up to it's payoff. For all the scorn I lay on GTA III, that game let you feel the weight of coming upon your vengeance in the missions leading up to it, they made the finale feel like a finale. Vice City just stops giving you mission without telling you why, then as you start to do various business missions the story rears it's head briefly before ending abruptly. That finale mission is fun, but it lacks narrative punch as the endpoint. Heck, in my playthrough I hadn't even completed all the businesses yet, which mean that in the post game I received a congratulatory phone call from a side character I hadn't even met at that point.

Speaking of businesses, that was one of the new things that Vice City bought into the formula and honestly, I forgot how well this game handled them. Each business is a constant revenue generator, but that only becomes true once you complete a small contained mission thread for each business after purchasing them. These chain missions have their own characters, which are all funny and memorable, their own little arcs, which are satisfying, and sometimes even their own mini/meta games. (My favourite is Sunshine Autos, I just love playing Pokémon with street cars) Collectibles are back, with the same 'items at your hideout' reward, and there are a few new minigames too. I particularly like the pizza delivery minigame for the way it makes you face a logistical problem as you gain more customers but can only hold so many pizzas. All in all, I came away from Vice City with that comforting sense that I enjoyed being there and could spend many more hours completing every inch of that game, which is leagues better than my sense of  'I want to move on as soon as possible' from GTA III.

Needless to reiterate, I liked Vice City a lot more than GTA III. Playing through it all again actually made me pick up on the reason why so many fans have been pestering Rockstar for a Vice City revisit for ages now, and though I think the original does a great job of holding up even today, I kind of want to see what a new version of this city looks like too. Honestly, if you've never had the time or inclination to play Vice City, but this whole 'Definitive Trilogy' has peaked your interest, let me give you my recommendation for the original version at least, because it's a classic deserving of it's title. It may look rough but I feel like the heart of the game holds up, and if you can get around the antiquated combat system, which isn't even that bad this time around, you'll have hours of fun. The wears of time and the evolution of the industry does weigh on this game's shoulders a little, as well as it's own narrative faltering near the end of the story, but that enduring GTA spirit keeps you smiling and entertained through it all as you gleefully run down pedestrians in a sleek sports car whilst crooning a second-hand yearning to return to 'Africa'. An easy grade of B+ even as old as this game is, as it reminds us all that the classics stick around for a reason. Now prepare for ultra bias as I move onto my favourite Rockstar game of all time, San Andreas.

Mass Effect TV show; Why god no

 Speaking of gaming on the small screen

The first I heard of this show was not the announcement of it's legitimacy by the sucker of a studio who just bought it's rights. My first shout was a pure reaction from a former writer for the Mass Effect games who felt it his moral duty to art and the world to claim how the very concept of this show made him 'cringe'. Now that's a lot more of a provocative title then what his actual comments read as, because that's what the journalism world lives off, slightly and intentionally misconstructions for the sake of sensationalism, because his views are actually voicing the same things that people like me always mention whenever talk of these grand garish game series adaptations come alive. But beyond the things that he and we know to be true, lies the pernicious hunger of the corporate world that cares not for where things belong and will take and take without recourse or punishment. Everyone else suffers for their greed, and at the end of the day there's nothing left to do but sit around in the refuse and say 'what the hell even happened'?

So 'Massively Effecting' the video game franchise is getting it's own TV show, that's a nice bit of security at the very least given that the game series itself is currently behind a video game studio so beleaguered that it recently lost it's second creative director for the same game in two years. (Dragon Age 4 is going to suck more than usual, isn't it?) To be clear, Amazon doesn't have their hands on the show yet, but they're in the "nearing a deal phase", which typically means leaking the deal negotiations to the public to gauge interest. Of course, at this early stage that also means we have next to no idea what this series would even contain were the forces that be lapse in their watch over the soul of humanity enough to let this through, so we don't even know if it will be an adaptation and why this is a story that needs to be told. However, we can make some educated guesses given the other properties that Amazon has gobbled up in it's desperate attempt to make it's streaming service worth a singular damn. (Wasn't The Boys enough? Why can't you be happy this that?)

Mr 'former writer' had the same impression that most had going into this news, that this would be a straight adaptation of the Mass Effect games. Now this does have a precedent with Amazon given that their Wheel of Time adaptation and Lord of the Rings remake is treading the same waters, although you could point out how both of those were keenly weaved narrative books whereas Mass Effect is a more loosey goosy video game storyline. I mean sure, we all pretend that it's some super intricate web of delicate interweaved narrative prowess, but anyone with passing familiarity with the games themselves know that the product is a lot less proud then that. (They let entire plotlines drop like flies in order to justify the finale) What I'm saying is that there's a decent chance this series idea is going to just take place within the Mass Effect world and tell connected stories, which I think would actually be super cool. of course, if it is the adaptation that everyone thinks it might be, well we can go ahead and call that the worst ending...

But why would that be so bad, why is everyone from your humble degenerate twitter commenter to your whiny atypical games journalist all throwing a fit to the same pitch? Well, it's because some (if not most) games just don't belong on the small screen. (or the big screen for that matter) Yesterday I touched on this with my analysis on the core fundamental reasons why an interactive medium creates stories that appeal on a completely different level to what a passive visual medium hopes for, and crossing the two over with an adaptation will often mean a complete rewrite of everything that made the original recognisable in the first place. (Or you end up with confused and unfocused mess like the Assassin's Creed movie.) Although to try and make see both sides of the argument here, I suppose that an RPG like Mass Effect might have some place being adapted into a TV show...

Remember that Mass Effect and other Bioware RPGs are story-heavy affairs, wherein the passive entertainment of watching narrative events unfold are sometimes just as entertaining as playing the game itself. (If not more so.) Whilst ideally for a video game you'd want a greater balance of the value proposition to consist in the gameplay, I suppose for sheer adaptation prospects these proportions bodes a bit better. I can see a politically charged drama with the fresh face of humanity trying to scour it's mark onto the well established alien councils of the discovered galaxy, as a solid concept for a TV show. And having a super solider proving the worth of humanity in a tense chase against a rogue secret alien agent that has plots to unravel the universe; this premise works without the game backing it up, is what I'm saying. And yet fundamentally something still feels off about all of this. What could that be? Well our former Bioware writer seems to have honed in on it.

With Bioware games, and most RPGs in general, you have that all-important moment where you make your character, and that is the key here. The protagonist of Mass Effect, the secret agent searching those stars and pushing this narrative, is your character. He or she is your Commander Shepard. That isn't just how this character was shaped, it was what they were designed for. Commander Shepard has little personality beyond 'military training' in their basic writing. (I guess he/she tends to be a bit patriotic no matter which way you lean, too) This is a character designed to be, as our writer puts it, "a blank slate", perfect for the player to impose their own personality upon. That is why Mass Effect is a video game, because it's very soul rests on the interactive act of the player putting themselves into the product. They decide Commander Shepard's gender, look, combat training, past, drives, personality, love life, everything about he/she. Therefore if this Mass Effect TV show is indeed a straight adaptation, they'll have lost one of the core appeals of Mass Effect the second they do casting.

Who wants to be told definitively what their title character should look like? Heck, that was one of the key problems with the Mass Effect marketing material, showing too much of the default male's face so that it influenced player's perceptions on what the idiot should look like. It was so annoying that they had to offer different box art for Mass Effect 3 showcasing the female lead, and for Andromeda they opted for a totally masked box art character altogether. Imagine that 'identity crisis' problem on steroids, and you have the potential disaster that Amazon would be in for whilst trying to choose a starring cast for some sort of adaptation. But then again, they've opened themselves up to the whole 'challenging established iron-clad imagery' thing with the very idea of remaking Lord of the Rings, so perhaps they enjoy hitting up against seemingly impassable walls and then... proving themselves? (I wait with bated breath to see how LOTR works out for them.)

So we come around to the same message I have for any and all potential adaptations of video game properties that are bumping around Hollywood; don't. The video game industry already takes too many of it's cues from the traditional passive entertainment industry for movies and TV shows to bring anything different to the table. Take the confused Tomb Raider movie from a few years back that smashed together different game plotlines and felt undeservedly rushed from start to end. The upcoming Uncharted movie that looks woefully miscast and steals imagery from key scenes in the game series only to do them worse because a computer generated figure can do more daring stunts than a real actor on a CGI background can. History screams at these people that 'video games' and 'small/big screen adaptations' do not go well together. It's like Anime and live-action Netflix adaptation, it's just a bad idea from start to finish. So if you really are gauging interest before taking this deal, Amazon, then allow me to say very clearly that I, for one, am very not interested. Unless it's not an adaptation; in that case it's cool.

Kojima starts a movie studio

 Seeking new horizons

Hideo Kojima is an... interesting figure to say the least. Starting off a career making games about penguins and going onto to create international superspy thriller games that do such a good job aping famous movie franchises that the latest James Bond movie literally stole it's super virus threat concept from 'MGS 4: Guns of the Patriots'. He's a lover of movies and will tell you so exhaustively, and that can be handily seen from any game he has got his hands on and the famous film maker techniques he brings into the development room in order to sell his oft fantastical and/or high-concept storylines. He has revolutionised video game storytelling mostly for the better, although in doing so he did (I assume unwittingly) embolden a generation of game directors considerably less talented and creative as him to try and copy his style, which has handed in abject disaster from time to time. And now, he's finally opened up a movie studio which honestly feels like it's been his endgoal all along.

This news came just as I personally was finally getting the chance to play his science fiction epic 'Death Stranding' for the very first time, so I can say for myself that it was hardly a seismic shock to my system or anything like that. Death Stranding is pretty much an otherwordly high concept (high budget) sci-fi TV show that borders on cheesy with it's premise but wows so much with it's creativity that you can't help but respect the whole package. And yes, I did just call it a 'tv show' instead of a 'game' because I'm just under 10 hours in right now and the actual game portion of the game feels like a pale shadow compared the world and story underneath it all. This feels like a small screen product haphazardly ported through the Chiral network into our home consoles, (or in my case: the computer) and given he's even arranged the story beats of this narrative into 'episodes', something he did in MGS V as well, it's no secret that the man holds tight his bias towards traditional viewed media. Making movies has been a long time coming.

And to be clear, I'm not saying that his games need to be moved into the film and television space, and in fact I think the many existing movements to do so largely miss the entire point of the property in question. Take the apparently still-upcoming Metal Gear movie that is in the works. I understand the appeal, since it's jump to 3d the Metal Gear games have been defined by their cinematic quality cutscenes which, oftentimes, are the primary way in which the narrative is carried forward. That cinematic quality comes from their framing, positioning, scene composition and even the nature of scripted language that leans closer to the dramatic. (With the iconic Kojima wordless exclamations thrown in there for good measure) A laymen might loom at all those elements and go "There's already a movie here, we just need to stick it on screen!" but they would be missing the point.

Metal Gear Solid isn't a series created to make a satisfying passive viewing experience to players, it's an active interactive experience bolstered by the trick and tips of cinema in order to justify it's narrative and make it seem more worthy, thus enriching and heightening the stakes behind the gameplay. All of those cutscenes with their dramatic angles and monologue-style-dialogues have no interest in satisfying the viewers desires, they merely tee up the gameplay sections where the real knock-out punch lies. Metal Gear would be nowhere as universally loved without it's gameplay, meaning that any attempt to translate that series into a movie format will need to figure out how to handle transforming all of that gameplay too. So what is the gameplay in question? Stealth? Yikes...

Here's my thing with that; watching someone stealthily sneak around a base is never going to be interesting to watch, because it's an action exemplified and rewarded by nothing happening. Sure, there's tension to be had for the 'will he get caught or won't he' portion of the stealth, but there's only so far you can stretch tension and I can only imagine a scene like that working maybe once in a movie. The promise of Oscar Issacs playing Solid Snake it at least a solid pick, but I can't help but feel if the K man himself were involved in the production of this film, he'd have picked a more visually interesting narrative to adapt, like Rising Revengence, or even just invented a brand new story to further the Metal Gear storyline. Not because he's a genius, but just because he understands what mediums are best served in what ways.

This studio is set to be a new division of the impressively forward-thinkingly named 'Kojima Productions', and it said to have a key interest in expanding the reach of Kojima Production's various games. I suppose that means despite my joking, Kojima isn't going to turn around and become an indie movie director out of the blue and leave gaming behind for good, but with his reputation I don't think such a career move would either be a surprise or even something that any would try to stop him from doing. His team would probably follow him into hell and back and Sony would still fund it just so long as they get to stick their production logo on the poster. Instead we can expect projects tied into current and future KP properties, maybe some wild projects here and there and probably a decent amount of production work for industry friends. Remember, Kojima and his people are respected artists, I can imagine their visual eye being sought by some of Kojima's many movie world friends from time to time.

But does this mean we're going to be getting a Death Stranding movie in the near future? I wouldn't discount a short movie, perhaps even an animated one, diving into the simply sumptuously dour circling-oblivion world-scape of Death Stranding. It would almost be a disservice not to return to a world this meticulously sprawled in some strange fashion. But I think what we're much more likely to see is a bunch of content for their upcoming projects, like that horror game we know they're working on. Afterall, horror sometimes has a hard time translating to gaming, but movies- pfff, that's a breeze. I wouldn't at all be surprised to see a small-scale movie project made to promote the company's upcoming Silent H- I mean, 'untitled horror game that we know nothing about'... yeah...

It's nice to see someone I respect coming into their true selves even after a career as fulfilling and wild as his has been so far, showing that one can never quite be content and the pursuit of happiness is a doomed exercise in never-ending voracious hunger that will rule you from death to birth in singular obsession. Hmm... there's probably a considerably more positive take away from that. How about a cookie cutter "You've never too far along to start something new and shoot for your dreams?" Yeah, that sounds boiler-plate and greeting's card worthy, doesn't it? Personally, I'm just excited to see a mind as provenly deep as Kojima's, and a staff as talented as his, getting their chance to spread their bizarre talents to yet another medium so that they make an entire new audience tear out their hair for the first act whilst screaming at the screen "What the hell is going on? What is that, why is their name so dumb, why is this narrative so unexpectedly sappy, and why have I seen Kojima's name pop up 5 times in the credits within the first ten minutes?" Indie movie watchers have no idea what they're in for...

Multiversus: That thing we all already knew about is real

 I am the night

What do you call a leak when it deposits so much about a project that we know it's name, it's weight, what it looks like, how it wants to present itself and even a greater list of it's participants than their initial reveal wants to put out? Well I think at that point we're looking more at a flood than a leak, but thus is the circumstance we face when considering Multiversus, Warner Bros. latest eye-rolling attempt to shove all of it's disparate properties into one almighty super project as though they've got themselves their own cinematic universe on their hands. Space Jam 2 was the first attempt to this end, and it earned a recoil in disgust at how ham-fisted and ungraceful the whole thing was, but then Space Jam 1 could also be fitted with those attributors, so no one was too taken aback. But a whole video game? Well that's something else entirely, and it leads to strange questions such as: how the heck will this all work together? How are they going to artistically envision this and- are they really going to make Ultra Instinct Shaggy a real thing more than a year after the meme petered out? Well wonder no more.

I genuinely wasn't expecting to see Multiversus revealed so soon, but in hindsight I suppose none of the leakers really specified how far along any of their materials were so I really should have been waiting with a Google alert out for the past few weeks. Then again, this was dropped randomly in the middle of November, and that's just a weird looking time to throw down games for anyone, but I guess with this new idea in their stable: weird is what Warner Bros. are going for. Yes, with the prolonged break that Super Smash Bros has decided to go on, it only makes sense that the void needs to be filled with something just as... explosive. Who could have figured that so many were rubbing their hands, eager for the moment the king put down their crown, so that they could seize the prize? And you know what? I don't mind it so much. I mean, it's better than everyone jumping aboard the 'battle royale' train. (Are you still on that, Battlefield? Give it up, please!)

My first biggest question has been sated right off the bat, and it's one I have only because I didn't go seeking out those leaked screenshots during the early reveal process. I just wanted to know how all these characters would be bought into the same artistic space, and I guess I shouldn't be surprised that they chose a cartoon-aesthetic close to the human proportions of modern Scooby-Doo and matched everyone else to that standard. Makes sense, although I would have been really excited for a game like this which smashed totally distinct and wild art styles together to highlight the diversity of the cast being gathered. Or heck, they could have done an old school Mortal Kombat stop frame live action set-up. (Nah, they never would have gone for anything as cool as that, unfortunately.) And as much as I hate to say it, given my icy perception of this entire project from the start, it actually doesn't look that bad. Both in artistic direction and in action, this thing is really eye popping.

Right away I think the people involved knew how to reveal a game like this in a satisfying manner, recognizing that this is the sort of title that fans are familiar with, and how a basic CGI fest wasn't going to swoon anyone from that crowd, they instead opted for a spoken walkthrough with lofty promises, but a least a bit of humanity to it. This also allowed the team to hone in on, off the bat, how this is a game catering towards cooperative play, which other fighters of this type have always had, but none have ever lauded this aspect as a key 'focus'. Already we're seeing how characters like Steven Universe are being fitted with abilities exclusively catered for team play, and (god how are these words coming out of my mouth) that sort of design decision is a major step towards distinguishing this game from it's competitors. They also mentioned how they wouldn't just be throwing solo play to the side (that's me) but I think it's pretty obvious where priorities will lie, and that makes it quite interesting to consider questions like; how will a cooperative infrastructure change the face of E-sports in this genre? (Rather considerably, I would think.)

Now of course this wasn't the first game to jump into the void left vacant by the departure of Smash, there was the Nickelodeon game that did the rounds and satisfied people to a degree, but that game has one huge downside that most people voiced, or rather didn't; the voices. All of these iconic characters had been bought to life in gameplay, but not in voice, which is insane when considering that these were voice actors who defined many of our childhoods, why not get their talents in on the action? Seems Warner Bros had the same thoughts, because Multiversus features a wide array of original voice talent including Kevin Conroy as Batman (I love Anson Mount, but Kevin is the original) and Tara Strong as Harley Quinn. (After watching The Suicide Squad, it's refreshing to hear that accent not feel so forced) Some may call this a small step, but it lends a legitimacy to the project, with just the names attached alone, so that this doesn't feel like the licence holders running rampant with their power but a genuine collaboration across their franchises. My god, I'm batting for a Warner Bros. video game; how did this happen?

But a multiverse is only as good as how multi it is, and for the characters we've had shown off to us so far... well I am already a bit disappointed. We haven't seen anyone truly wild or out there that makes us start to question our lucidity. There's Batman, as mentioned before via Kevin Conroy, Superman and Wonder Woman, who's voice actors are a mystery, Tara Strong's Harley Quinn, Garnet and Steven from Steven universe, Finn and Jake from Adventure time, Tom and Jerry (that's actually pretty cool, I like them getting in on the action) Bugs Bunny, Ayra Stark with a sword that looks a lot thicker than Needle should be, Reindog (wait, what the hell is Reindog? No seriously, what the hell is that thing?) and, of course, Ultra Instinct Shaggy. (Why won't your memes die!) You know, actually laying them all out like that makes the line-up seem wilder than I suggested, but I still stand by my assertion that Mutliversus is still missing it's big hitters. Where's Gandalf, Rick and Morty and the Pennywise? We need Pennywise! They could throw in character's from Shadow of Mordor, deep cuts DC picks like John Constantine or, and I love this idea, they could resurrect Terl from 'Battlefield Earth'! (I'm sure you could call up John Travolta to drop a few lines, what else has he really got going on these days, huh?)

Smashing all these names together into a Smash-type fighter is going to be very interesting, especially when it comes to grounding moves in actions that character's have displayed in their various pieces of media. (Terl could have a 'chew scenery' down-special, it would be so good!) Although it does seem a little, how do we say, hypocritical for a Warner Bros. backed game to be jumping on someone else's archetype for the fighting game genre. I mean, for any other game's company in the world this is a normal part of the creative process, but let's not forget how Warner Bros. are the guys who jealously copyrighted the innovative Nemesis system from 'Shadow of Mordor' in order to cut off the rest of the industry from one of the most interesting modern mechanics to be introduced to this long0stale gaming genre. Where exactly would you be with Multiversus had Nintendo done the same with their stock-based fighting concept all those years ago? Seems like a little bit of 'rules for thee are not for me', doesn't it?

There's no doubting that I was against this very concept from the getgo. There's something inherently icky about these crossover concepts that so quickly turns corporate and sterile once the dollar signs start to glaze over management. But I can't help myself and admit when my prejudices have been beaten, and for Multiversus that is exactly the case, they managed to worm into my cold heart and impress me, I like it. Of course, this is based on an initial look for everything and there's a huge chance that their promises 'best in class' infrastructure falls apart or the flow of the combat just doesn't feel right, but for the initial hurdle of a reveal, the team have crossed it admirably. The only hanging noose still clouding this project is the business model, free-to-play almost always means something dour is going to fall over this game in terms of monetisation and we just have to hold our noses and try to endure it. Hopefully it's only going to be just cosmetics. Hopefully.

Grand Theft Auto III Review (The Original)

You... You're just small time

Yes, that's right. Despite taking all the time in the world to remaster the 3D trilogy of Grand Theft Auto games to their utmost perfection in the 'Definitive Edition', Rockstar didn't manage to win over my money for all of their hard efforts. (I guess the problem must be me) For whereas I think we would all have been much better served with a port of the many little handheld platform GTA's to PC, completely and entirely nuking the original catalogue from all online stores is already pretty provocative as it is, I suppose. I, however, did buy a collection of all the Grand Theft Auto games that I wanted years ago, and hearing that they've been delisted only drove my curiosity to go and replay them. Luckily Steam is still abiding by something resembling an honour system, and as such the games I bought all those years ago are still available to me, thus I've been remembering my past with these games whilst all the time trying not to give into my fear over the fact that these versions of the games aren't going to grace the world ever again. It sucks and I really hope for sort of seismic regime change over at 2K so that their scummier elements can get more level-headed replacements.

But that's not the purpose of this blog today. Here I wanted to talk about my time playing through, for the first time, the one game in the Grand Theft Auto collection that I don't have a great recollection playing through: Grand Theft Auto III. (The 'one that started it all', so they say.) Liberty City as a location hasn't been some vague rumour to me or anything, I did used to play tons of Liberty City Stories back in the day, but the original implantation of that world was relegated to vague recollections drawn from the back of my mind that I couldn't accurately solidify. Until this past week where I gave myself a total refresher course and came away from the experience decently satisfied. So let's start by getting into the nitty gritty of the systems around the game, because I think this is important.

Lest you walk around with the idea that Rockstar were paragon's of their craft before the release of these Definitive dunces, let me assure you, these PC ports had their own problems. From removed music, III's inability to run on modern devices without compatibility mode and, most salient for me, the actual botch job they did with controller support. Yes, incredibly, despite the fact that many of these games were made for consoles, the PC ports have a bizarrely unfinished controller support set-up which doesn't register back triggers, ignores the 'looking' analogue and makes it impossible for players to pause using their controller. Also, the game doesn't even have console face buttons in it's database, so setting controls requires deciphering Rockstar's Sanskrit of 'Joy 1, Joy 4, Joy 10'. (What the heck is 'Joy 10'? Guess I've got to start changing things to find out.) There are, for the time being until 2K's dogs set upon it with their ghoulish bloodlust, mods that fix these controls, but I didn't know about them during my time playing GTA III so I was playing at a distinct disadvantage.

From the very beginning I was reminded of both the soaring strengths and wild pitfalls of Grand Theft Auto III, and they seem to come in great pairs that offset one another. The world is big and beautiful with the typical amount of Rockstar attention shoved into every nook and cranny so that secrets, jokes, and collectibles and be found in every corner; but the game has no built-in map, so you need to try and memorise points of interest in the tiny, unhelpful minimap. The driving of these games always feel so right, a mix between the floaty silliness that'll let you have fun and the heavy weight that gives cars impact and makes you feel like you're actually in something wrought in steel; but the game has a tendency to immediately explode cars when they roll on their back, and in this game, due to that very weight, if a car flips a single time you have a 50/50 chance of it rolling upside down and refusing to shift back to safety. Rockstar of the time seemed to recognise their strengths, and the name of the game, and based most of their missions around the use of cars; but that might because the combat is really pretty awful and difficult to control, with enemies that auto-lock and gun you down before you can even centre the lazy camera on them.

This game marked Rockstar's first attempt to try for an action-fuelled cinematic-styled storyline for their games, which would be a style that they stuck with for the rest of their career. And how was their first go of things? It was fine, entirely relative to the competition at the time. The camera angles are amateurish, the storyline is fed-by-machine and the voice acting is entirely serviceable. And I'm no bore, I recognise the age we're talking about in gaming and what the other titles of the age were doing. But by the exact same merit I recognise what Metal Gear Solid 1 and 2 had achieved, or Ocarina of Time, and this presentation doesn't really hold a candle to those classics. One thing I keep coming back to, and it really does stick with me the entire game, is Claude and trying to nail him down as a protagonist. He is by no means the only silent protag of this age of gaming, but I can sort of see why he isn't one of the much lauded classics like Gordon Freeman or Link. He has no personality or agency beside what other people put upon him. Sure, he is betrayed by his 'girlfriend' at the beginning, but from there it's just doing odd jobs for everyone around the city until she just sort of just shows up out of the blue again. If this was meant to be a revenge tale, I didn't realise it until pretty much the last 10 missions.

And then, to a much lesser degree, we have the many narrative fallacies of the game, which don't unravel the seams of the game but still manage to irk at me. For one, there's the issue with mission givers seemingly tracking you down all the time without any vague link to your previous mission outlets. Which basically makes you the most easy-to-reach criminal on the streets whilst simultaneously becoming the cities most wanted criminal. (How is that sustainable?) Then there's the way that the story seems to frame Claude as having literally no morals or loyalty and for no decent reason. He'll do missions for a mission giver one time only to turn around and stab them in the back 5 mission's later simply because someone told him to. And finally, there are logistical fallacies that prove Rockstar of this age weren't quite on the ball when it comes to the bare basics of open world games; finding a basically reasonable excuse for your mission. What's that, your high-ranking Yakuza member was recently arrested and you want me to blow a hole in the prison to get him out? So then what... the Police can make the simple jump in logic to figuring out who ordered this, roll up to the Yakzua casino and arrest him again, this time with vastly more severe charges, and now you too for being complicit? Did anyone think about that mission description for more than 6 seconds? And don't even get me started on the sheer amount of late game missions that saddle you with a timer for no good reason whatsoever! I know that I'm kind of poking holes in a inherently silly game, but these are the sorts of things I think about.

One of the main characters of any Grand Theft Auto game is, of course, the city; and Liberty City's take on New York is nigh-on iconic. It's a great microcosm of the various islands with distinct feeling areas and islands as well as even some distinct traversal terrain nearer the latter half of the game world. Unfortunately, exploration is hurt by the lack of a map as well as the fact that traversing through the story has Claude steadily piss off everyone to the point where you are shot at no matter where you go. And allow me to hammer in the absurdity of that fact for all of you a little bit. You get shot at  All The Time. There was perhaps a single mission in the game where the developers were smart enough to turn of passive hostiles (because the mission required the transportation of a car with no damage) How am I supposed to take in the sights when every gang member wants my head? And it gets pretty bad, the mafia have automatic weapons that can destroy most vehicles in about 3-5 seconds, making certain places like their area of Portland pretty much inaccessible once the story kicks you out of there.

There are some collectibles and minigames also available in the game for those who find the city worth exploring enough to endure the roving death squads, and those are rather basic but peaceable in that simplicity. Taxi driving is always my favourite in it's discount 'Crazy Taxi' presentation, the Vigilante missions are, as always, far too demanding in expecting you to have basically unlimited ammunition and an explosion proof car. The Hidden packages dotted around the world map are only really worthwhile for the free weapons they discharge at your hideouts for finding them, but seeing as how that's more than modern day Assassin's Creed do with most of their collectibles, I'll call that a positive. I was a little disappointed, and I realise that this is a bit of applying modern expectations on an old game but I can't simply ignore my disgruntlement, by the lack of really unique vehicles to find. All I could get ahold of was a bullet-proof car (which proved invaluable for that final mission due to combat being so weak) and I really wish the minigames had some more special vehicles of their own to make those modes worthwhile.

Finally, there is atmosphere, which for these sorts of games is a mixture of the game's presentation, the story and, importantly, the music. I never felt relaxed or at home in Liberty City, which I think is indicative of the poor controls and general feeling that the game was actively antagonistic against me. A sense that is intentional in some games, but for a sprawling open-world affair, that feeling can get exhausting fast. It sort of reminded me of the Assassin's Creed Origin's Egypt wherein the ambient world felt so busy all the time that I never had the opportunity to just take a break and take something in. Maybe that's a consequence of me not exploring every area fully before undertaking the missions that would then make that area uninhabitable because of the violent gangs that rule it, but should I really be punished for progressing through a game? I think not. The music track was at least top tier, as any Grand Theft Auto game has to be, and that ambient measure does an always surprisingly powerful job of dating the world. (I guess that's why it's the one world building tactic of Rockstar's that has never changed all these years later)

So the final question is thus; does Grand Theft Auto III hold up after all these years? And in my opinion the answer is kind of no. Don't get me wrong, the spirit of Grand Theft Auto is recognisable here, but it's far too tarnished for me to even squint through the muck at the gem that used to be here, and a large part of that comes down to the shoddy port. This game sucks with the way that Rockstar delivered it on PC, whilst I'd imagine that with decent controls (the only thing that Definitive edition did for these games) it would only be a mildly frustrating title. It isn't a terrible game, and I'm sure that people who share interest in it's historical significance will have a field day looking over the title, but after playing through the storyline I can say that I don't feel like enduring the campaign was worth it, and practically all of the set-piece moments were disappointments. I don't want to play through it again and I'm not even really feeling like recommending it, but for the good few turns I've mentioned in this blog the game saves itself from being a total mess. Still, given that I'm grading this game a D+, none of those positives proved themselves too transformative for my experience. But don't lose faith in old school GTA, or my respect for it, just yet; because I'm already headfirst in Vice City and let me just say from the 5 or so hours I'm into it so far- this is where GTA really begins!

Sonic Mania and how it loves it's influences

 Smile!

Sonic Mania is by many people's standards the only Sonic game to come after Sonic 3 & Knuckles, because everything in-between was just a bad fever dream that slowly spiralled more and more out of control without sense this way or the other. I don't quite subscribe to that brand of total fatalism, I think there were some pretty good Sonic games here and there, but I do know what people mean when they say this franchise lost itself in the jump to 3D and couldn't find it's way back for so long. The closest they ever got was with Sonic Generations, and even then that game was lauded because it piggy backed off the success of the original Sonic games and the new stuff it bought to the table wasn't really all that great. (As evidence by the fact that when the new stuff took over, for Forces, the game turned into another 3D era disaster show.) But what is it about Sonic Mania specifically that makes it a game which both relies heavily on nostalgia and yet proves itself a worthy successor in the same breath?

I think it all comes down to the way the game handles and cares for it's influences. In the same way that games like Sonic Generations tried to recapture a lot of those old maps and remodel them into the new style, Sonic Mania did feature a best-of run down of classic Sonic maps, but the difference in my eyes comes from the way that these levels weren't some attempt to usurp the originals, but celebrate them alongside the new game. Take one of the most interesting conversion levels the game reintroduced, Oil Ocean zone. The original game had this strangely middle eastern sounding soundtrack which they slapped onto a level that looked like an oil rig and called it a day, even referencing that level seems like a strange choice for the Mania team because I doubt it was anyone's favourite. But the team saw an opportunity and recreated that level with a whole new unique mechanic in this suffocating cloud that players need to periodically find a way to filter out in order to continue traversing the level. Talk about respecting the originals, but not being afraid to try your own thing as well.

There's a certain love for all things Sonic that you can feel emanating off the very essence of this game, and that likely comes from the way that Christian Whitehead and his magnificently early 2000's hair was involved with this project. That's the same man who helmed the simply fantastic mobile ports of the original games which I still think is easily the best remaster these games have ever received. (And which still isn't accessible on PC) So with this sort of talent on board, talent born from genuine love and worship of the originals, it was obvious that this would be a game seeped in that childish fascination for the Sonic brand. But even entering the game with that express knowledge, there's so many more references inside the Sonic Mania world to get all nerdy over. I've picked some of the most interesting out to me.

The first comes from an absolutely classic Sonic level, Chemical Plant zone, and the way that this game copied and then changed it with their own special little twist. Replacing the rather straight forward end boss of this zone is a completely brand new section where the player is shoved into a round of Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine. Mean Bean Machine being a reference to a spin-off Sonic Game most notable for it's bizarre title, the game itself plays out exactly like Puyo Puyo. I wouldn't call this the deepest cut ever made, but that still far outside most people's recollection of classic sonic games and thus speaks to a heart deeply ingrained with old school sonic. I mean, it's not a Sonic Eraser Easter egg, but it's baby steps.

The next reference I called up is actually a rather subtle-one that I'm sure a decent number of people out there didn't even take the time to think about unless they already had prior knowledge of this reference. Classic Sonic villain Metal Sonic shows up for his own themed level in Sonic Mania, which makes sense after his breakout role in Sonic CD. However, a team that loves Sonic lore this much wouldn't have missed out on a opportunity like this to explore one of the most hotly contested issues in the Sonic canon; the history of Metal Sonic. You see, a mechanized version of sonic is by no means unique to Sonic CD, that game just represents the title who's Metal Sonic design endured in several revisits of the concept. There's also Mecha Sonic and, for the purposes of this reference, Silver Sonic. Yes, those little silver enemies who pop out to attack you during the Sonic Mania Metal Sonic fight are actually an old forgotten version of Metal Sonic from Sonic The Hedgehog 2. (8 bit version) That's a game which shares the same name as Sonic 2, but is almost entirely different in stages, zones and bosses and thus isn't widely known about by most general Sonic fans. (These guys knew, however)

And then there's the big one, the reference so big it spawned a whole new DLC to represent it as gloriously as they could. Mighty the Armadillo and Ray the Flying Squirrel were included as fully developed playable characters wrapped into their own remixed campaign in the Sonic Mania Plus DLC, and a grander love-letter to the Sonic community there has never been. Both of these characters were once co-stars of SegaSonic the Hedgehog, alongside the blue guy himself, before disappearing into relative obscurity for years. Mighty has a brief appearance in the oft-forgotten classic era sonic game; 'Knuckles Chaotix', but Ray didn't even get that ignoble honour. For all the years since their debut, the most these characters ever got was a cameo appearance on a 'missing' poster from Sonic Generations, which honestly feels more like a mockery of them rather than a loving refence. That was until Mania when they came back in a big way to be unique members of the classic team Sonic once again, much to the delight of deep-cut Sonic fans everywhere.

Of course those are just three of my personal favourite references, and the coolest thing about Sonic Mania is that there are many others dotting the walls and draped over chandeliers, hanging from lampshades and stretched over banisters; this game's bodily content consists of 90% reference, and I love it. The term 'fan service' is often dripping with negative connotations, slapped with the implication that it represents a terminal inability to exercise restraint and respect your art, which in turn means you don't respect your audience. I don't hold such prejudice, and I think any who does merely look at a game like this, making up for over nearly two decades of Sonic content that either just didn't hit the spirit of the originals, or was a plain insult to it's respective audience, in order to see where I'm coming from to some small degree.

Sonic Mania is a game, if you'll forgive the appropriated quote, built by fans in order to enter the hands of fans everywhere. Whereas Sonic Team are caught in constant war with themselves where they cannot please 50% of their fans with any one of their games and decisions, the Mania team managed to slide in and apply a soothing balm over a decade of frayed nerves. Forgotten are the sins of Sonic 06, Sonic BOOM and Sonic Forces when we're wrapped in the nostalgia of good old Sonic bought to life and celebrated with such style. My only enduring shame comes from the fact that this isn't going to be a bold new dawn for the Sonic series, because as I wrote about earlier, Sega managed to chase away the team who made Sonic Mania by being their own damnable selves. Guess that means the majority of Sonic fans can retreat back to their distinct cubby holes into to resume verbal discourse over everything for the next 15 years until the next spectacular project that unites the sides.

Bye Bye Bobby

 Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

So by the time this blog comes out I know one thing for certain: Incredibly Bobby Kotick, CEO over at Activision, will still have a job. But I entitle this piece 'bye bye Bobby', because I think it's not hard to see that the writing is on the wall for this embattled public figure, as his tenure as one of the highest paid executives in entertainment burns down to ashes in the ruins of his credibility. And it wasn't the years of hack-job games that did the killing blow, nor was the general dislike that many had for this ghoulish little gnome, no, instead it was the very real cost of keeping a tyrannical sycophant in the headseat of your multibillion dollar company without placing the slightest amount of leashes or checks on his position to make sure your little dog was barking as intended. Yes, I do blame the Activision investors to some degree for what has come out over the past few days specifically, perhaps even more so than Bobby, because it's hard to attribute blame on a literal muck-monster; they just act as their nature demands.

Bobby, who tried damn hard to get that same distended Cheshire grin on every single odd photo of him perhaps in some grand plan to convince everyone that he is actually human, (not buying it) actually started out life as an enthusiast developer for early Apple. And even reading that fact astounds me. Can you imagine someone like him going the distance of actually doing something out of passion? Wild, the people some of us used to be. Of course, as any tech-giant supervillian story goes, he did this in conjuncture with college until he met Steve Jobs who convinced him to drop out. Sounds like the kind of thing that would happen in a bad biopic, but apparently that's accurate according to an interview of Kotick himself for the Wall Street Journal. To my utmost surprise, his early career was actually embroiled with gaming to the hilt, he's not one of those who made it big in other entertainment and just warped over here where the money was at. He did buy his way into Activision however, which was nearing bankruptcy at the time, so at least he can't claim this whole company as his 'labour of love' that he 'nurtured from an infant'; I hate when CEO's get to hide behind that excuse and do the whole Norman Osbourne routine. ("Do you know how much I sacrificed!?")

In the years that Bobby helmed the company, Activision rose from a sickly beast on it's way out to pasture to a regular mainstay of the gaming industrial complex, regularly scouring big licence deals and hit games. Heck, Activision even managed to kick out EA's stranglehold over the then-popular World War II genre in order to institute their own replacement series, Call of Duty, which would go on to gorge up and bloat like a soaked cadaver. What I'm trying to say is that Bobby was a big earner for Activision, which only goes to fuel his bubbling superiority complex eventually leading to a day where he'd feel so above the mere mortals who worked for him that their plights and concerns would devolve into nothing more than the nattering of ants to his god-like ears. He minted his reputation on the hard-won millions he scoured year in and year out, and I'd imagine that's what fuelled his desire to pressure the board of directors for more bonuses until he was one of the highest paid sleezeballs in a suit. 

Does that make the price of financial success on the entertainment scene the loss of one's basic morals as a human being? Well I wouldn't go that sweeping with a conclusion, (although that's obviously not below me to suggest) but I think there's a potential case study to be made for the amount of folk who find themselves in similar mindsets and positions. In fact, the past few years alone have established many parallels across the gaming world between what has happened at Activision and other big-roots studios. Yves Guillemot's Ubisoft have been struck with allegations of rampant sexual harassment, bullying and a fratboy-esque miasma clinging to the whole place wherein every executive is each-others chug-buddy from college. Activision's partner Blizzard is reeling with their own allegations, which they spent the past year deftly avoiding with surface level changes to their games to remove any content with even the slightest reference to sexuality, because that was the problem apparently, and not the real life conduct. (Better luck next time, Blizzard)

But Activision as a whole is said to have been full with debauchery and unethical work conditions for years, maybe even decades, and all under the protective gaze of one Bobby Kotick. It's actually been somewhat darkly amusing to watch the many circus antics of this Bozo-the-Clown impersonator, as Bobby has tried to move the earth and heavens to make everything not his fault. Yes, in typical entitled spoiled rich kid fashion, Bobby wants all the praise and rewards which comes with helming one of the highest paid positions in gaming, without the responsibility of actually being at the head of a company. Many times Kotick has insisted that he knew nothing of the years of unsafe work environments for female employees, nor the incredibly serious accusations that have spawned from those terrains. He was just- what- on holiday throughout his entire CEO tenure? Never once did Bobby hear of any wrongdoings? He never passed an aggrieved employee in the hall? Never got a letter in his digital inbox? Nothing? Oh to have no responsibility and still make over 100 million in bonuses a year, talk about living the dream, eh.

If only the people under him would actually believe his expertly crafted defence of 'it wasn't me.' (Shaggy and Rik Rok proved incredible councillors for this tough time in Bobby's career.) But alas, we're seeing rampant write-in campaigns and the first of what I can only assume will be many demonstrations, if the obvious end is not reached. The message is clear, Bobby is bad at his job, actively bad for the employees and needs to go. Whether he actively hid the many scandals and crimes of his higher paid staff or he truly is so monumentally pitiful at his job that he really did not know anything about this for all these years; either way he's woefully unqualified for his position. Like many of the lucky idiots reigning over this industry, his value to his company dried up long ago and now his influence persists as this gangrenous, gelatinous stain that's going to take a great amount of effort to scrub out completely, but the process can at least be started with the removal of the original offending growth.

And you might be saying 'an employee revolt is hardly enough to dethrone Activision's golden boy', and I would be inclined to agree, however the high profile nature of this whole mess has made sure that the writing is on the wall for this man's career regardless of which way his workers lean. Both Sony and Microsoft have lambasted Activision under his leadership, with Microsoft subtly implying they're intending to revalue their partnership with the company and Sony just throwing their iconic shade at the man himself. (They're deeper in bed with Activision, afterall, so they can't really just start throwing around business related threats willy-nilly.) That's pretty much the death nail for Kotick, you can abuse and fray the trust between management and employee all you want, that's literally the how-to-guide for management, but the second you start threatening the bottom line with your mere presence- you can bet the investors are currently in the midst of constructing a rocket to eject Bobby directly into the sun as we speak.

So good riddance to bad rubbish, as the saying does go, for soon Kotick is to be no more and Activision will find itself under the purview of someone who is destined to be just as bad but in different ways, because gaming companies have a revolving door of factory-grown Satan-spawn executives just waiting to play musical chairs at high office. Whether or not this replacement will get their hands on even a fraction of the bonuses that Bobby was seeing is another matter entirely, afterall the man still has to fund his several retirement homes after he's kicked out, and seeing as how the board of directors over at Activision consists almost entirely of Kotick's friends, you know his severance cushion is going to be their chief priority. Let this whole sorry affair be a lesson to any and all that bad people may get what's coming to them, but if you're bad enough you'll still come away with a mint, and so take that for what it's worth... 

Scarface: The World is Yours

 Throttle wide open like a bat out of hell

Scarface, another entry on the long list of movies loved and enjoyed by people who seem to have left halfway through the flick and didn't seem to grasp any of the salient messages held within. (Just line it up next to Goodfellas and The Wolf of Wall Street) This movie marked Al Pacino's other biggest role after that one crime movie he did that one time, and I guess Heat was pretty big too. It followed the endeavours of one Tony Montana as he entered a world of crime and organised hard drug selling, becoming steadily more infused in the fake glitz of dirty money and tainted pleasures of corruption, all leading him to a violent and brutal end brought around by his own greed with a tad of slipping out of his depth without ever realising. It's a fine movie, I like it, but do you know what I've never said whilst watching Scarface; Huh, I want to play the game of this.

And that might just be because the game of Scarface already existed, and it was called Grand Theft Auto Vice City. Seriously, playing that game after having just watched the movie, you'll be wondering how Rockstar can walk down the street without getting picked up by that warrant they must have for their terminal sticky fingers. Not only did they nick large chunks of the visuals, some of the premise, and a bit of the character, they even kept entire narrative arcs practically verbatim from Scarface and even 'homage' to it's dialogue with their own. So we don't really need no video game adaptation of that movie anymore... and we never got one. (That's right, I fooled you with the title of this blog, it was all a trick! Well, not quite.) There is actually a game bearing the name 'Scarface: The World is Yours', but it's not an adaptation.

Spoilers for an almost forty year old movie (which some consider a classic, but honestly no one is going to flip a table if you never watch it for as long as you live. It is very dated) but Tony Montana freakin' dies at the end. In a movie that is already decently bloody throughout, the finale goes full on action movie as our 'hero' has an extended heavy machine gun fight with the entire Colombian drug empire before some lone totally-out-place weirdo sneaks behind him and blasts him in the back with a shotgun, putting an end to his violent cocaine fuelled reign over Miami. (Parts of Miami. The drugged parts) This mysterious figure manages this somehow and was never seen before or after, so I guess Tony died to a rando. (Seriously, how did he get behind Tony? Only his office was behind him. This guy must have pulled out a Dimension door or something) So that's how the story pans out. To quote an angry Pinkerman agent: "You people venerate savagery and you will die savagely." So what do you think could possibly happen in the game based on this movie, bearing in mind what I now tell you; it's a direct sequel.

If you answered 'they obviously devise a clever way for the legacy of Tony Montana to be carried on by another character, thus mirroring the moral dilemmas of the movie whilst leaving ample space for the writing to grow past it's roots and branch out in new directions', then you have a lot more faith in the gaming industry then anyone else did back then. No. Instead this game just starts with that exact final shootout and basically says, 'what if Tony was a video game protagonist?'. So yeah, you start off gunning down armies until a hit marker tells you that someone is chipping away at your backside so that you can swoop around and dome that shotgun guy. Tony Montana lives. All the ethos of the movie, getting your just desserts, completely waived. Tony is now free to become an even more violent, terrible human being than he already was. (Yay.)

'Scarface: The World of Yours' tells the rather straightforward, but still pretty fun to experience, tale of Tony Montana going around and restarting his cocaine empire, only this time with as few middle men as humanely possible, (given that he literally sells it on the street himself) and a little bit of rampant revenge thrown in there too. I found and played this game back in the days when I was a Nintendo Wii kid and so yes, this and Dead Rising were games that I played  on my Nintendo Wii. And just to hammer home how weird that is; this is a game with rampant swearing, wherein the currency of missions is 'balls', and for which the signature feature is to activate a first person rage mode wherein the player's gun somehow starts shooting bullets powerful enough to blow off limbs. Nintendo welcomed a port of that game to their consoles. (And yet a proper 3D Grand Theft Auto had to wait until current year, why?)

Back in those days, when I was on the most dire of Grand Theft Auto draughts, Scarface was my everything, and it's commodification of the 80's drug dealer lifestyle is always going to go down in my hazy memory as that one special little open world experience that no one else quite remembers but me. Whatsmore, when I squint my eyes and peer just through that fog of ages, I can actually recall this game not being all that bad at all, but in fact coming together as a half decent and enjoyable title with it's location changes, gambling  cock fights, mildly customisable home, (Rockstar still hasn't introduced home customisation in any of their games) and by-the-books but still kinda dumb fun shooting combat. I just... don't feel like picking the game up again anytime soon in order to prove those elements are as good as I remember them to be.

And if there is one boon I can say about Scarface the game which cannot be said about 90% of other open world video games on the market; it's that the soundtrack freakin' slapped. I don't know what it is or why, but typically whenever anyone other than Rockstar goes shopping around for licencing deals, they come back with bargain bin crap that only five or six other people in the world has even heard of before, yet alone like. The only notable exception I can think of is Saints Row, and even then only most Saints Row games. (I don't know what 3 and 4 were on.) Maybe it was because of the pedigree of the name attached, disillusioning the contract negotiations, or maybe it's simply because the setting of this game meant that the developers could shoot for more old school tracks that weren't as hotly contested on the licencing scene, but this game has some true bangers. Super Freak, Push it to the limit (obviously) and freakin Planet Rock by Afrika Bambaataa.

Unfortunately, like a good many games out there, this is one of those ones that has slipped into obscurity once the team didn't have the ability to host it anymore. Nowadays you can't even find it on any online storefronts, and there was a PC version released so I guess this just means people aren't interested in buying these rights and hosting them on Steam or GOG. (Heck, who even holds the rights at this point? Is the thing just left approaching public domain? Online data laws are so stupidly antiquated that I don't even have a clue, to be honest) But if, through some means I shall not name, you magically come across some way of playing this game, then I would definitely recommend it's rough, sometimes bad taste, but always flashy gameplay for it's appeal to that inner juvenile somewhere in us all.