Oxenfree

Pardon the brevity - just trying to get this one posted while it's still July. I have half of an intention to make a longer write-up over at gametimebro.com but even if I don't, well, we're still all waiting for Webber to finish giving his thoughts on A Link Between Worlds, aren't we?

"Teenage conversation simulator" is an apt description of this game. So is "radio static horror mystery." Have fun!

Stan's Movie Dump: June/July 2016

See that? After going hard as hell on movies earlier this year to the tune of two dump posts a month, here's a two-month dump post. Slowing it down. Slowing it down so hard, you guys!

Once more, I'll be giving each movie a three-part rating of sorts - "Anticipation," "Enjoyment," and "In Retrospect," each ranked on a scale from 1-5. Thanks again, LittleWhiteLies, for lending me this concept.

Horrible Bosses
3-2-2

Always figured I'd see this one day, and that day happened to be a day when I flew across the Atlantic Ocean. This is really five years old already? Damn. The one thing I'd heard about it was how raunchy-dirty-sexy Jennifer Aniston was. Lo and behold, that's also the one thing I'll remember about it. The jokes were fine and the plot wasn't nearly as formulaic and predictable as it could have been, but it never all came together into anything special. 

The Heat
2-3-2

What's worse than watching a movie on a plane movie? Watching an R-rated movie that's been hilariously and terribly edited for television on a plane. Actually, I take that back - the two dozen "piece of scums" and "frick yous" might have made this a more humorous experience. Nothing bad here - it's a standard Paul Feig-Melissa McCarthy collaboration - and the biggest pleasant surprise may have been Sandra Bullock's knack for physical comedy. (Then again I did see Miss Congeniality all those years ago - maybe this shouldn't have been so surprising.) Spy - which I saw earlier this year, but which came out later than The Heat - was much better.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
2-5-4

A real unexpected treat. This is the best I've ever seen Robert Downey, Jr. - yes, including in Iron Man - and it's also the best I've seen Val Kilmer. If you asked me to describe the plot I'd shrug, but it's a dark comedy and also an almost-sort-of-earnest noir thriller. Just a delight to sit through, and to watch, and to listen to. Absolutely makes me want to see The Nice Guys, the latest from Shane Black.

Sunshine
2-4-3

A crew of six astronaut-scientists is on a perilous mission to "jump start" the sun with an enormous nuclear bomb. The sun has grown cold and stagnant, you see, and everyone on earth is freezing. I liked this a lot, but could never shake the feeling that it was a slightly lesser version of Europa Report, a similar movie about a mission to Jupiter's ice moon that I saw last summer. (Yes, Sunshine is the older movie by seven years or so. But still!) This came flying off the rails in the third act, transitioning from an eerie-but-pretty science fiction flick into a full blown - well, another genre entirely, and even sharing which one would spoil it almost entirely. I liked this!

Not Another Teen Movie
3-4-4

How hadn't I seen this one before? And why was it so critically panned? This was - shockingly - hilarious. The 2000s saw a glut of shameless "parody" movies that got progressively lazier and less creative. Date Movie, Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans, all of those sequels to Scary Movie. But where those were all content to hash together cheap pop culture references and stale jokes, Not Another Teen Movie was clever more often than crude and it was subtle just as often as it was blatant. Loaded with visual gags and tropes from what felt like every single high school movie from the '80s and '90s - and there were tons, you may recall - this thing just worked from start to finish. Maybe the fifteen years between when critics saw this and when I did have given me a rosier, forgiving, nostalgic perspective or something like that, but I thought this was absolutely great. Disagree? Consider how the high school movies that came out after this one (Mean Girls, She's the Man, Super Bad) were markedly different in tone and self-awareness than the high school movies that came out before it (American Pie, She's All That, Never Been Kissed). This movie so thoroughly deconstructed the genre that it had to be rebuilt from scratch. You know, either that, or 9/11 obliterated our collective ability to apply meaningful stakes to clique-crossing high school romances even in our fictional narratives. Or maybe it was a little of each? Regardless, oh man, Chris Evans was great here. Everyone was.

The Iron Giant
3-3-2

All kinds of hype preceded this. I remember seeing ads for this way back in 1999 and just having no interest at all. Seventeen years later I'd heard "ugh so underrated" and "it'll make you cry" and "the last great non-computer-animated movie ever made" enough times to finally go see what all the fuss was about. And folks - I'm still not seeing it! I'm sorry. Yeah, there's a certain tone here somewhere between '50s nostalgia and Cold War paranoia, but at the end of the day I have to call almost everything about this movie generic and formulaic, from the characters to their conflicts and right down to the resolution. Maybe a tad darker than most animated kids' movies, but only by half a shade. It just wasn't anything more than I assumed it was when I was eleven - and I didn't care back then, either. It's fine! Just fine, though.

That's all for now.

Inside

Was struggling to find a new game to get into (despite the rest of the games that are already staring me in the face filling me with guilt for ignoring them -- yes, I see you Witcher 3), and then Stan suggests this title. Inside. The spiritual sequel to Limbo. (Or was it a prequel?)

All that aside, it's from the same makers as Limbo and the game is built in roughly the same design. It's a linear platform within a dazzling minimalistic 3D environment. You solve clever little puzzles to move along and as you progress, you slowly begin to piece together a the game's very abstract story. 

I'm of two minds of this game. The first is that I loved it. It was both visually beautiful and psychologically morbid, and the game didn't waste a second at sucking me into it's dreary, stunning ambiance -- piquing my curiosity to where I was and what I was suppose to be doing. Inside starts with a little boy (your character) tumbling down a hill into some woods and before you know it you're off running away from some unknown men and are seemingly trying to survive in some sort of dystopian society of mindless slaves serving... someone or something. I... I've already said too much. 

While I loved playing this game and thoroughly enjoyed the puzzles, I was left somewhat unsatisfied with how everything ended. Without spoiling anything, the story really left me with a lot of unanswered questions. (I even took to the internet and found an endless slew of theories for what the story could have possibly meant, meaning no one knows for certain what the fuck is going on.) Not to mention I felt as though the gameplay ended way, way too soon. Stan warned me ahead of time that this was maybe a 3-hour game. To me, it felt more like 90 minutes. And at $20 to purchase it, I feel like I should have got a bigger bang for my buck. Just saying...

However, if you liked Limbo (or just enjoy the idea of playing through a series of morbid-yet-brilliant brainteasers), then definitely check this title out. My only suggestion: maybe wait until the price drops to about $10 before you spend your money on something you'll likely beat in a night. Despite it's accomplishments, Inside does not have the heft to warrant the price tag it currently carries. 

XCOM: Enemy Unknown

Just a few months ago, I was ready to buy this title on PS3 for ten bucks or so. It's one I've had my eye on for a little while, but ultimately I balked - not now, too many games to play, etc. Fortunately, two weeks later it was free as part of Xbox's Games with Gold deal. I jumped on it, started playing it a couple weeks ago, and here I am today.

XCOM is a turn-based tactical battling game not unlike Final Fantasy Tactics or Advance Wars or Fire Emblem. You equip your guys and make upgrades and such from a headquarters screen, then you send your guys into battle and control them during firefights in isometric grid environments. What it reminded me most of all was a zoomed-out Valkyria Chronicles; enemies could shoot you from cover while you moved and perma-death was always on.

I liked it! At first. But chalk up another unfortunate tally in the "long and repetitious" category. In addition to being real damn hard, even on easy mode, XCOM was real damn long, even without doing much of the optional content. No, I take that back - it was too hard unless you grinded through a lot of "optional" content - so it was either very hard or very long - or more realistically, a combination of both. Gah!

For real though, I did enjoy the concept and the gameplay here and I'd be interested in checking out XCOM 2 at some point.

Band of Bearded Brothers

Did you hear? The Sox won the World Series in 2013. It was great!

Murder on the Orient Express

A man lies dead in the sleeping car of a snowbound train, stabbed a dozen times. But which of the thirteen passengers could have done such a thing? Fear not, for legendary 1930s detective Hercule Poirot is on the case! Let's listen in as he runs over the facts and the evidence with his colleagues...

"So, you see, sir, he couldn't have done it. Tonio may be a foreigner, sir, but he's a very gentle creature – not like those nasty murdering Italians one reads about." 

"This is the act of a man driven almost crazy with a frenzied hate – it suggests more that Latin temperament. Or else it suggests, as our friend the chef de train insisted, a woman." 

"A miserable race, the English – not sympathetic." 

"It is a woman. Depend upon it, it was a woman. Only a woman would stab like that." 

"I have the little idea, my friend, that this is a crime very carefully planned and staged. It is a far-sighted, long-headed crime. It is not – how shall I express it? – a Latin crime. It is a crime that shows traces of a cool, resourceful, deliberate brain – I think an Anglo-Saxon brain." 

"He is an Italian, and Italians use the knife! And they are great liars! I do not like Italians." 

"She seems a very charming young lady – the last person in the world to be mixed up in a crime of this kind. She is cold. She has not emotions. She would not stab a man – she would sue him in the law courts.”

Oh boy, wow!

Seriously, I actually found Agatha Christie's characters' antiquated but earnest prejudices kind of charming. Look at this eccentric little investigator, putting as much weight behind the idea that Italians are stab-happy thugs as he does behind key pieces of evidence like a dropped handkerchief and a broken pocket watch. The whole book made me feel giddy imagining some sort of Professor Layton spin-off where phrenology and sexism are Layton's modus operandi. "Now Luke, a gentleman never bothers a lady during her blood week. That would be a decidedly Greek thing to do."

At any rate, this one's a classic, and I can see why. A car train stuck in a snowstorm provides an almost too-perfect murder mystery set up, and while the ultimate solution pushes the limits of what's believable it doesn't quite break them entirely. And Poirot is so polite and calm while treating everyone around him like an idiot that you hardly notice the bigoted arrogance baked into his deductions. I didn't like this as much as And Then There Were None but Agatha Christie is now two for two on my end.

Inside

The short of it: Yep, this is Limbo all over again in the best possible way.

The long of it: To say anything specific about this game would lessen the experience of anyone about to play it. I went in without expecting a thing and I was constantly intrigued and creeped out and amazed and entertained. It takes a certain level of game design to be able to make something this unique and reaction-inducing using low-end graphics and no more buttons than an NES controller uses, but Playdead is up for the task. Limbo felt like lightning in a bottle, and yet without changing much about that formula at all, Inside might be even better. How'd they do it all over again? Gah! Play this. No Limbo experience is necessary but, hey, play that one too if you haven't already.

Zero Time Dilemma

I've gushed twice already on this blog about the Zero Escape franchise. First there was Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, which consumed all the non-celebrating parts of my Christmas week in 2011. Then came Virtue's Last Reward, which occupied me for another week-long chunk, this one causing me to arrive late for work. Here and now, in this crazy busy summer of 2016 where all logress has slowed to a standstill, leave it to Zero Time Dilemma to get me going again. This one was also beaten in the span of a week, which is maybe more impressive when you realize that said week included stays at two different hotels. What can I say? These games are addicting as all hell!

I'll tread lightly and promise no spoilers since I know Sween is currently busy with Virtue's Last Reward (yes, finally!) but the way that game ended absolutely screamed for a a sequel. And then a year later Aksys was like, "shit, sorry guys, no one has any interest in a third Zero Escape game. We're pulling the plug." Crushing! But then just last year out of the blue Aksys was like, "hey guys, it turns out we're absolutely making that third Zero Escape game." And roughly ten thousand peoplegot, you know, hype. I was one of them!

Zero Time Dilemma once again combines escape the room puzzles and branching "choose your own adventure" decision trees to weave an elaborate and intricate visual novel that isn't afraid of getting philosophical or pseudo-scientific.

Unfortunately, this was easily the weakest game of the bunch, not only failing to resolve a few of the threads left dangling in the second game, but also kind of wimping out on its own internal loose threads. Not helping matters is the switch from text-based character interactions in the first two games (visual novels) to cutscene-based storytelling this go-round (so, basically just movies). And with four of the nine characters in this game being returning characters from the previous two games (June and Junpei from 999; Sigma and Phi from Virtue's Last Reward) we're left without a whole lot of mystery surrounding the five newbies. Two of them fall horribly flat, in fact - talking Mira and Eric of course - and at one point the game pulls a bait and switch that probably would have made for a great twist had it not left me so utterly confused.

Okay, so both the story and the characters are the weakest they've ever been. The good news? Zero Time Dilemma contains the hardest escape the room puzzles yet (either that or I'm getting rapidly dumber with age) and this is absolutely the scariest and goriest and mind-bending-est game in the bunch as well. Comparisons to Saw have always come easily to Zero Escape, but here they've really kicked up the gore a notch and even the central nine-person game is pretty stark and bleak; once six people have died, the remaining three may escape.

All things considered, I'm stoked and jazzed and tickled to bits that we got a third Zero Escape game at all, and even though it doesn't quite live up to the first two, it's a great game in its own right.

Stan's TV Dump: May/June 2016

TV has slowed down something substantial here in the summertime, but it's also finally getting really good. #MakeTelevisionGreatAgain... Oh man, sorry for that.

New Girl: Season 5

When New Girl didn't start airing last fall because Zooey Deschanel was pregnant and the fifth season had to get delayed, I found myself mildly missing the show. And that's good! But when Zooey Deschanel was absent for several episodes early on due to said pregnancy, I thought the show got a lot better. So did everyone else I know who watches New Girl, which is like, six whole people. And that's less good! Look, it's no secret that TV shows of all stripes tend to get a little stale and repetitive as they age; the shows that stay good the longest are the ones that know when and how to mix things up without irreparably ruining whatever worked so well in the first place. And frankly, New Girl could use a lot less Jess, who is no longer even, you know, the "new" girl. All in all, a good season of a good show.

The Last Man on Earth: Season 2

I have no idea how I feel about this show anymore. What started out as an interesting idea with a talented cast (a comedy in a post-apocalyptic world with only a handful of survivors) quickly turned into just the most mundane sitcom (this guy's juggling two love interests! that lady can't get pregnant!) in Season 2. Was that the joke? If so, not the sharpest satire. It's sadly believable that the last five or ten people in the world would just kind of hang out and bicker instead of attempting to rebuild society, but I'm not sure how well it works on a TV show - particularly one with so much potential like The Last Man on Earth had. A poignant finale saved this season from falling off entirely, but I want more from Season 3 than people drinking wine and killing time.

Modern Family: Season 7

Even among the small percentage of sitcoms that last more than a year or two, nothing gold can stay. If we're being honest, most comedies that make it to their seventh season aren't nearly as smart, funny, clever, or relevant as they were back when they debuted. That makes sense - you develop a certain show with a certain idea in mind and cast it a certain way, and seven years later the show shouldn't really look or feel like it did during its pilot. Change and adaptation are hard. What am I even getting at here? Modern Family kind of feels like it wants to be the same show it was seven years ago, introducing new child characters to fill in for the old ones who've turned into teenagers and so on. But this show just isn't funny anymore! Or topical, really - which is a good thing! The idea of two gay men getting married and adopting a baby may have been a conversation starter back in 2009 but it just isn't anymore. I guess what I'm trying to say is that there's really no compelling reason to watch Modern Family anymore. If you love "hanging out" with these characters, fine - that's reason enough, and always is when it comes to sitcoms. Me? I could take or leave the Pritchett-Dunphy-Tuckers. We'll see if Season 8 draws me back.

Bob's Burgers: Season 6

As so many Fox animated sitcoms before it seemed to do, Bob's Burgers has faded into "Sunday night afterthought" status for me. That's fine! This is still a funny and creative show worth recording and watching every week. It just isn't appointment viewing for me these days by any stretch.

Archer: Season 7

Maybe it was the shortened season - ten episodes instead of thirteen - but this was the first season of Archer that ever ended and left me wondering, "wait, that's it?" This is still one of the steadiest and most consistently funny shows I watch, and even a relatively down season of Archer still qualifies as pretty good television, so I'm not concerned or disappointed. Curious to see what comes next, mostly.

Daredevil: Season 2

Meh. Consider me unimpressed. Several friends of mine love this show but I just couldn't find myself caring for more than an hour or two this season. That's par for the Marvel course, unfortunately. I can't see myself continuing down this particular path - which might be fine, since a third season of Daredevil hasn't even been confirmed yet.

The Americans: Season 4

There's no show I want to love more than The Americans - a barely-watched, super-tense, critically-beloved Cold War spy thriller. It's sexy! And patient. And just excellent in general. But it's also just a tad too slow - too unwilling to really step on that gas pedal - and as a result, four seasons in, I still haven't been able to rank this as one of my "top five shows" in any given year. I really do like this show, and I like it a lot. But I don't love it quite as much as I want to. Is that on me, or is that on The Americans?

Lady Dynamite: Season 1

This was great. I'd never even heard of it until it came out on my birthday and Netflix was all, "hey, you might enjoy this." I did! I enjoyed this a lot! Mitch Hurwitz and Maria Bamford teamed up for this very specific and unique semi-autobiographical comedy about comedy and mental illness. It's absolutely not for everyone, but I dug it and it sounds like Sween does too. Like, make no mistake, this is Maria Bamford's show first and foremost, but... Mitch Hurwitz! Arrested Development!

Game of Thrones: Season 6

Probably the biggest TV show in the world - maybe ever? - when Game of Thrones stumbles it stumbles hard. It's such a vast and epic undertaking that it can't possibly be tightly written and elegantly paced; ten-episode seasons with enormous budgets for locations, costumes, a sprawling cast, and all those special effects, I mean, it's just such a fast-paced show at this point. Character introductions - and more importantly, characters getting written out or relegated to the sidelines - might be a little clunky. Plots might end or shift abruptly. Fine! So be it. It's all worth it in the end! No other show is capable of the things Game of Thrones is capable of. And that's why, half way through the year, it currently stands in the pole position as my favorite show of 2016.

Silicon Valley: Season 3

HBO was absolutely on fire with its springtime Sunday night lineup, following Game of Thrones every week with two of the best comedies on television. Silicon Valley didn't really improve in its third season, and narratively speaking it sort of spun its wheels in order to leave the Pied Piper boys in the same situation they'd already been in. Still, that's cool - great show! Great cast, too. Even if it wasn't quite as good as it was in its second season, Silicon Valley remains one of the funniest shows on TV.

Veep: Season 5

God damn, this show is great. I've probably outlined my history with Veep before here, but for the first two seasons I fell firmly into the "like it, don't love it" camp. All of that changed in Season 3 when the show hit a new level for me and it just hasn't looked back since. You'd think after five seasons, a political satire would either grow stale or get absurdly over-the-top, but, no, Veep is as good as it's ever been. The way this season ended, it could have been a series finale (it wasn't) and I have no idea where the hell the writers will go - hell, even can go - next year. But after the last three years I feel like I've got very little reason to be worried.

Damn, hefty lineup this time around. Too early to tell, but each of the last five shows on this list could easily wind up in my year-end top ten. But we'll get there when we get there. For now, enjoy the rest of your summer!