Whatever happened to the damn good guy? I liked the damn good guy, the damn good guy was a…Damn. Good. Guy.

You’re probably wondering what I mean by “the damn good guy”. What I mean is pieces of entertainment that aren’t huge, massive, world changing, innovative behemoths that somehow seem to fail living up to the expectations of the creator. The damn good guy refers to pieces of media that are just enjoyable because they’re well put together, well written and don’t try to cast a net so wide and cast that they can’t possibly hope to be considered a success.

Example, Tomb Raider 2013. That was a good game, really good in fact. Solid gameplay/mechanics, great voice acting, very good atmosphere and was a nice long length. Square Enix however deemed the game a failure despite it selling a whopping 3.4 million units worldwide. Seriously Square? How big were your expectations of the game that you needed to re-release it for Playstation 4 and Xbox One just to beef up the sales? How much was the budget for this endeavour?

According to an article from Eurogamer.net the budget for Tomb Raider was $60 Million…HO-LY FUCK!!

I think we can all agree that’s pretty tall order to fill, a really tall order to fill. And there’s my point, set the bar too high and the chances of you hauling your arse over it decreases, don’t get me wrong I really enjoyed Tom Raider, but to have it deemed a failure due to unreasonable expectations just seems rude (for the lack of a better word), I’m no game designer but even I can see effort when it’s right in front of me.

Square sadly seemed to act like EA is constantly acting with their Battlefield franchise which ends up with a game that makes a huge amount of money and sells an insane amount of copies but is deems a failure anyway. Instead EA just end up aping Call of Duty in order to try and win over their audience, which they seem to keep failing at. These developers can clearly dominate in their fields of work but they’re tunnel-visioning so hard that they forget that they’ve still made a metric fuckton anyway. There’s nothing wrong with 2nd place is what I’m saying and there’s also nothing wrong with not releasing a game every fucking year, yeah I’m looking at you Assassin’s Creed, I love you but slow the hell down, you make tons of money with what you have maybe you should take the time to enjoy it? You know make some use of that company yacht you undoubtedly have, maybe take it for a sail and unwind?

See, this is why I love the damn good guy. The damn good guy gets their budget and knows exactly what to do with it, the damn good guy thought process I imagine would be something akin to this:

“Ok, I’ve been given $25,000,000 to make a piece of entertainment”

“My piece of entertainment will be about this”

“I will spend the money accordingly in all the necessary areas in order to make this piece of entertainment as appealing to its target audience as possible”

“The product has been released, sales figures are strong and we’ve made the budget back plus a little extra, even the reviews are positive I’m going to spend some time with my kids as I’ve been coming home late recently” 

The damn good guy thought process probably does not resemble,

“OHDEARGOD, WE’VE BEEN GIVEN $70,000,000 TO MAKE A PIECE OF ENTERTAINMENT, WE MUST BE BETTER THEN EVERYONE ELSE IN ORDER TO BECOME ANY KIND OF SUCCESS”

“But sir we’re making a ton of money anyway…”

“DAMMIT HENDERSON NOBODY WANTS TO HEAR YOUR INSANE RAMBLINGS ABOUT THIS MYTHICAL MONEY NONSENSE, WE MUST BEAT THE COMPETITION OR BE BRANDED AS FAILURES AND BE CAST OUT FOR ALL ETERNITY BY THE HUMAN RACE”

“Sir we’ve been getting ratings up in the 90% range…”

“WE NEED TO TRY AGAIN AT BEATING THEM, WE’VE ONLY GOT A FEW MINUTES”

At this point Henderson has defected to a Studio that isn’t staffed by impatient tunnel-visioning weirdos who scream a lot.

This is why we need to support the damn good guy, the damn good guy takes their time, evaluates their options and sets themselves a reasonable goal and when all is said and done, the result is damn good. The result is

• Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
• Solomon Kane
• Dishonoured
• Darkman
• Hellboy
• Dredd
• The A-Team (2010)
• The Grey,

Do you see what I’m driving at? Not to say that giant bits of game changing innovation are a bad thing, they can just get out of hand fast and end up bloated, fat and always hungry for more.

Bottom line, support the Damn Good Guy. Because he’s a damn good guy.

A post that isn’t a review? Yep, time for a good old fashioned opinion piece, allow me to go all White Goodman on you fine readers and hit you with some knowledge.
OK that sounded stupid. (just a little 😛 ~Lone)

A thought struck me recently: Why do we get so up in arms about sequels? In fact not just sequels; remakes, reboots and franchising in general.
Immediate Answer: Well we as fans of entertainment, don’t like to think of our favourite films/characters/heroes/intellectual properties being used solely for profit. We want new and original content and not just the same things rehashed and reused every so often.

OK, that’s fair enough. New ideas should be sought after and praised, of course they should. Humanity probably wouldn’t have gotten very far if we didn’t take advantage of new and exciting ideas (Christ knows where we’d be if the wheel hadn’t caught on), and don’t get me wrong, I am all for new ideas in films and entertainment but if I like that new idea why is it so bad that I want more? I’m always the first to ask for seconds and thirds at the dinner table when pasta is being served.

This train of thought really struck me when I saw a news article about Disney and how they’re going to extend the life of the Frozen Brand (Yes I know it’s a giant film and you probably can’t escape it, yes I know Let It Go is everyone’s favourite song right now, yes I can understand how so many people find the film overrated, just hear me out). The comments on the link to the article were what you’d expect,

“They’re just trying to make as much money as possible”

“Why can’t they come up with anything original?”

“Frozen was overrated anyway”

“Hey everyone, lets all just Let It Go”

Yet all I could find myself thinking was,  “You’re all surprised? This is Disney we’re talking about”
This is the company that bought Marvel because they were raking in so much dough with all of their really, really good adaptations of their superheroes and we’re all surprised that they want to make more money of their most successful animated film ever? But I’m not here to talk about Frozen, not when I already did for my dissertation, (it made me enjoy the film even more).

Look I believe you can make a good film out of anything, if that means I get to return to Arendelle or fight some more Xenos then sweet, bring it on says I.  BUT, having said that, I can completely understand why sequels/remakes etc etc are frowned upon. We all know why, say it with me everyone, “They’re never as good as the original”

Now that phrase is as subjective as it gets, how could it not be? But as for sequels never being as good as the originals? What about Aliens, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Toy Story 2, Toy Story 3, Die Hard with A Vengeance, Hot Shots Part Deux, Blade 2, Empire Strikes Back, Shrek 2, Desperado, Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, Revenge of the Sith (Don’t give me that look), Spider-man 2, Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, Star Trek II: Wrath of Kahn, Superman II, Back to the Future Part II, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior or X-Men 2. We can probably agree that each of those are superior to their predecessors or at least on par with them.

But of course those are only a few, and a debatable few at that. But still proof that it can be done, it just majorly sucks that not many people took notice of how a good sequel is made, and more of how much money they brought in. Foul play indeed I think we can all agree. But saying that, we still shouldn’t be surprised (trust me I’m especially not trying to put myself on a pedestal here, I am as guilty of bitching about sequels and money grubbing studios as the next person), last time I checked the whole point of Hollywood was to make money wasn’t it? That’s why Film Studios have marketing divisions and accountants isn’t it?

In fact going back to Disney, people are annoyed that they’re going to be franchising Frozen right? Well why are we angry at that and not the Marvel Franchise? That’s one of the biggest franchises out there at the moment yet when Captain America 3 or Guardians of the Galaxy 2 gets announces nobody says a thing. Well that’s because the Marvel Franchise is praised as unanimously good of course. But so is Frozen, at the very least people thought it was good when they saw it, that’s half the reason it was so well received (aside from all the money it made of course).

In fact if you are so sick of a certain franchise, why not just stop giving it your attention? Turn the radio station over next time you hear Let It Go or turn it off altogether, this is sadly more difficult for parents since their kids are the target audience, sorry parents everywhere.

So when a large studio decides to make money off something popular we collectively smack our foreheads and bemoan it. Yet when they’re in the midst of franchising the shit out of something else that’s very popular…we all clam up? I guess I’m just yelling at a larger beast here, after all I’m just one person with a keyboard, hardly going to make a difference right?

I wish we would stop committing the above offence. Sequels and franchising are not inherently bad, it’s their execution that can be viewed as bad. But hey, this is all amazingly subjective and I’m sure a lot of people disagree with me on this. Do you disagree? If so I’d love to hear how. (Politely, mind you this isn’t YouTube.)

The best summation I can give is this, if you don’t like the look of something, be it a sequel, remake or whatever, just don’t give it your time of day, you’ve undoubtedly got better things to be doing.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments below.

~RattlinMan

Cheltenham, in the leafy Cotswolds of England, has a long history of Music, Art and Gaming. It was the home of developers Acclaim, way back in the day and artists like Jimmy Hendrix, The Beatles and more, over the years have regularly played at the various venues and events held at the yearly festivals the beautiful spa town holds.

It’s also the home, of course, to Sanitarium.FM and lots of great business’, and has been the venue for Guinness World Record attempts over the years too. This weekend will add to that list as Joe Kelly, of Flaming Paper, a local video production company, is attempting to beat the CURRENT WORLD RECORD for playing Minecraft. The current record for this stands at 24 hours and 10 minutes. Joe hopes to beat this, and will be streaming his attempt live online from the Holiday Inn Express in Cheltenham. It all starts this Saturday at 8:30am and I will be standing as an expert witness to the record attempt aswell, which I am immensely proud to do.

Joe is attempting this record in order to raise money for Cancer Research UK. You can visit his Just Giving page for more information, plus Sanitarium.FM will be donating any of the station’s monthly donations (for October)  to this cause aswell as it’s a great cause.

Joe will be livestreaming the record attempt to his Youtube channel over the weekend while he plays, but he has also made a series of films on his Youtube channel about the difficulty of record attempts and how to not only prepare for them, but survive the attempts

Once again, myself and the Sanitarium.FM are very proud to be supporting this attempt and we wish Joe every luck possible with it!

~Lone

IO Interactive show us the latest installment of their hit assassination’em up, Hitman!

The developer session kicked off showing us some pretty standard gameplay for a Hitman game, however there are options, lots and lots of options. It seems that as per the words of Travis and Sven, the two employees of IO Interactive who took us all through the Showstopper Level of Hitman,

“You will experience a rich and detailed sandbox, every person has a name”

It certainly looks like they’re correct at least on the rich sandbox part of that statement, the level is very densely populated, the crowds move, mill and mingle around as one would expect a large crowd of posh twats to and the level itself is pretty bloody expansive, including a large manor house with two floors, large garden grounds, numerous balconies (with vantage points of course) and plenty of staff members and civilians with nicely tailored clothes to steal.

Keeping with the whole options angle I mentioned earlier it doesn’t stop there. We’ve been given numerous types of poison, the ability to have weapons and equipment dropped into the level before the player begins and even ways to smuggle weapons and equipment past security checkpoints. Which is something I look forward to utilising, even Metal Gear Solid doesn’t have a feature like that and that’s pretty much the franchise that wrote the book on stealth. We’ll undoubtedly have the usual staples of the series however, I’d hate to see 47 without his Silverballers and Garrotte wire.

But there is a ton to see and do in this level, it isn’t just kill one target, in this Showstopper level we have two. One is the man behind the fashion show and the other is his accomplice who is holding a secret auction to sell off “deadly secrets” to some very unscrupulous people and of course all these options can come into play. Maybe you’ll drop one of your Silverballers that’ll get picked up by a security guard, taken past a checkpoint which you will then bypass and retrieve your gun afterwards which you will then utilise in a trigger pulling fashion to silently kill someone…maybe. There’s even more than one escape option, a chopper or a speedboat though you will have to find the keys. You may decide to get a Sniper Rifle smuggled in, camp out on a vantage point and shoot your way out afterwards or my personal favourite, attempt to bypass everything in a disguise and get discovered almost instantly. Almost mind you.

So allow me to summarise. Options. You need to take out the target, pick a path and get to it.

You can watch the full developer session below, Enjoy!

This year’s EGX featured games of all genres and titles, and I was lucky enough to be assigned Hellblade. Presented by Ninja Theory’s Dominic Mathews, this developer session was as much about the process of creating a game as it was about the game itself. For their latest game release, Ninja Theory are taking the novel approach of allowing the audience to follow the production of Hellblade from concept to animation and story-building to completion. Whilst they realise this can leave the small team of 15 staff open to a lot of criticism, it also provides people outside of the games production industry a unique insight to how our beloved games come to be realised.

Another unique aim of the team who created ‘Devil May Cry’, is the type of title they want to release. Dominic detailed the main draw-backs of triple A titles being a set budget, spiralling costs and a loss of creative ownership in order to deliver a product expected from customers of triple A titles. Instead, the team are aiming for a title hallway between triple A and Indie, lovingly named “independent Triple A”. This will allow the developers to take creative risks and ensure an immersive storyline and gamer experience, without limited their production values.

The game Hellblade, follows the fantasy adventures of Celtic warrior “Senua”; a female protagonist plagued by psychosis and visual and auditory hallucinations. The thing that impressed me most about tackling such a controversial subject is the amount of research the team conducted to portraying the reality of mental illness in everyday life. Not only did the team interview people who deal with psychosis on a daily basis, but they worked with prominent psychiatrist Professor Paul Fletcher to create a truthful representation of psychosis. In this author’s opinion, mental illness is a subject that is only just receiving the attention it requires in wider media. The developers of Hellblade are striving to disband the usual stereotypes and to really help those with no experience, understand what sufferers all over the world have to cope with.

Continuing with the open development style, we were shown a ‘vertical slice’ of the game. This is a small cut scene created to demonstrate the sound, graphics and storyline standards the game will eventually be made to. To stay true to the Independent Triple A title, the team have created an in-house performance capture studio using materials obtained from Amazon and Ikea to keep costs down. Using Vicon 30 technology, not only have the actors portraying in-game characters been captured, but also rocks and trees in the real world have been scanned. The single environment artist on the team will be using these objects to create the background to Senua’s adventures, allowing a realistic environment for the player to experience.

The journey of Hellblade has already begun, and you can follow them at www.hellblade.com. Here you can catch up on developer’s diary videos, weekly blogging and Q and A sessions. All in all, Hellblade promises to be an immersive, creative experience, which I can’t wait to play.

To watch the entire developer session for yourself, click below: