Following a grueling six-year legal battle, the video game industry has kicked the ass of California lawmakers who wanted to ban the sale of violent games to minors. The successfully appealed California Assembly Bills 1792 & 1793 would have made it illegal to sell excessively violent games to anyone underage. However, there is no similar legal penalty applied for including similar content in other forms of comparable media, such as books, music, movies, etc. While the legal battle is officially over, critics of the Supreme Court ruling are just beginning to raise their voices. Everyone from The Daily Show to the Washington Times has attacked the court’s position, without ever noting it would have separated video games into a unique category, while opening the door to further censorship and restrictions on all other forms of art, creativity, and media.
Despite all his super powers, the Green Lantern might not land the green light for a sequel. Reports had been floating around all week that the movie would be getting a follow up regardless of its horrible performance at the box office. However reports of a Green Lantern 2 were quickly dismissed as Warner Bros. waits to make the official decision. Likely, the studio is wanting to see its $200 million (plus a ridiculous $175 million in marketing costs) returned before they sign off on anything. It all comes down to the green, and the lantern’s light isn’t going to help him out of this one.
And as if this summer hasn’t had enough of overdone CGI, Transformers: Dark of the Moon will be releasing worldwide on the first of July. In the earliest reviews it looked like the critics had gone to the dark side as they praised the film. Many critics insisted it be viewed in 3D claiming it to be the visual rival of Avatar. The later reports weren’t as kind. USA Today hails it as being visually stunning, but lacking story line, and…
“The themes and narrative…are timeless.”
– American McGee
American McGee started his career in games working on projects like Doom, Quake, and their sequels. However, most of us first learned his name in 2000 when Electronic Arts released American McGee’s Alice. The video game took Lewis Carroll’s character away from the genteel, neutered Walt Disney version and took it in a darker, bloodier direction. Since then, McGee has moved to China and started a company Spicy Horse which has developed games like Grimm. Now he’s returned to the world of Alice with one of the year’s most anticipated new games, Alice: Madness Returns.
He spoke with SuicideGirls via e-mail about the new game, the accompanying art book (published by Dark Horse Comics), the future of gaming, and how living and working in China has affected his way of thinking.
Somewhere between the overabundant CGI and shoddy storyline, The Green Lantern lost the critics and its audience. Critics started bashing the movie early in the week, sticking it around 25% on RottenTomatoes. While the audience reaction has been…less harsh, it has consistently been ranked as the worst super hero movie of the year. Still it managed to take the weekend box office with opening sales of $53.2 million.
It looks like DC needs to stay away from the neon colored heroes and stick with something a little more traditional…and dark. The Dark Knight Rises has been picking up cast additions like they were on sale. The latest person to sign on the dotted line is Liam Neeson, who revisits the role of Ra’s al Ghul. This brings the total of villains cast to three with Bane, Catwoman, and Ra’s al Ghul (with high speculation of the introduction of Talia al Ghul). There is also a new ‘teaser’ for The Dark Knight Rises making its way around the web. The trailer was supposedly shown before the Green Lantern, but the official status of the teaser is still being questioned.
“Dungeon Siege is kind of a no-drama game.”
– Nathaniel Chapman
Obsidian Entertainment’s Dungeon Siege 3 is a polished and highly addictive button-mashing action-RPG that succeeds in creating a story-oriented co-op fantasy dungeon crawler for mainstream console audiences in the tradition of Secret of Mana or Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance. Though the Dungeon Siege franchise was originally developed by Gas Powered Games, Obsidian is known for taking on sequel projects from other developers, most notably the sequels to BioWare’s Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Bethesda’s Fallout 3.
SuicideGirls spoke recently to Dungeon Siege 3’s Lead Designer, Nathaniel Chapman, also a veteran of Neverwinter Nights 2 and Fallout: New Vegas, about where this sequel fits in with its predecessors, his design philosophy, and how Diablo is Diablo.
Last week the comic world was rocked as DC announced they were rebooting their entire universe. DC has since released more details, as well as first edition covers. The Batman universe is getting a lot of coverage, with Batman getting three titles: Batman, Batman: The Dark Knight, and Batman and Robin as well as appearing in the first issue of Detective Comics. Other Bat related titles include: Batgirl, Nightwing, Catwoman, Batwing, a long awaited Batwoman, and one of my personal favorites, Birds of Prey. Meanwhile Superman is starring in Action Comics first issue (wearing some farm boy getup) as well as getting his own reboot with Superman #1, both Superboy and Supergirl are getting renumbered in September as well. All of your favorite super teams including Justice League and Teen Titans are being released then as well. All the heroes are getting fashion updates, including Wonder Woman who finally gets a makeover and a pair of pants. [..]
Dungeon Siege 3 diverges from its forebears to such a degree that it should almost have had a different title. Players expecting the traditional PC RPG trappings of the first two games: character creation, large parties, pause-and-go strategy, mouse and keyboard oriented gameplay, will almost certainly be disappointed. That’s what this game isn’t. What it is, however, is a polished and addictive button-mashing action-RPG that succeeds in creating a story-oriented co-op fantasy dungeon crawler for modern console audiences in the tradition of Secret of Mana or Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance. In fact, the game’s lead designer, Nathaniel Chapman, mentioned both of those games by way of comparison in our recent interview with him.
Dungeon Siege 3 returns the series to the first game’s Kingdom of Ehb, a fairly generic fantasy setting once protected by a group of honor-bound warriors called the 10th Legion. At the opening of DS3, the Legion has been all but obliterated by the armies of a religious zealot called Jeyne Kassynder, who holds the Legion responsible for the murder of the former King of Ehb and has dedicated her life to vengeance against them. You and the other playable characters are part of a mere handful of surviving Legionnaires, and your quest involves reuniting the various splintered factions of Ehb with the remnants of the Legion. All this game’s talk of Legions actually led to a few humorous moments for me when NPCs would celebrate how, “The Legion has returned,” and I’d think, “Well, yes, but it’s basically me and this other guy.” The abstract arc of the story is superficially similar to that of Dragon Age: Origins: as a new member of an elite but dwindling order you recruit allies amongst the kingdom’s squabbling factions by doing quests for them until you have enough force to march against the Bad Thing. But what has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
