Blog Archives
sI throw out groundbreaking new concepts like every day, because that’s the kind of supergenius your humble host is. For today’s bite, let me introduce you to a little concept I came up with last night, called: “The Total Crap Realization Time Lapse” When you were 5, you liked a lot of crap. Crap TV, […]
Let me tell you what’s mystifying about Dragon Age: Inquisition—it’s not a fun game. It’s not an interesting game, not an entertaining game, not an evocative or moving game. It’s a boring game. But it SHOULDN’T be. It has all the hallmarks of a real computer RPG. There’s companion NPC’s holding conversations and arguments while […]
Seems like everyone wants to know what exactly this Pulp Revolution thing exactly is, and how exactly and precisely do we define it, and what stories are or are not included in the specific canon of this very specific bomb throwing literary book club movement thing. In the interests of clarifying nothing, and agitating everyone, […]
Ready Player One: A Billion Dumptrucks’ Worth of Worthless Crud
Monday , 31, July 2017 Book Review 74 CommentsReady Player One is a festering mound of garbage, with barely any redeeming features. Neal Stephenson did it first, and better, in Snow Crash and Nick Cole did it better, and with more human drama and emotion, in Soda Pop Soldier. Next to them, Ready Player One is a billion dumptrucks’ worth of worthless crud.
Cult Classic (noun): A movie liked only by a tiny group of unhealthily obsessed fans. Probably garbage, possibly repellent, the reason it failed commercially is usually immediately obvious to anybody who isn’t one of the unhealthily obsessed fans. See The Rocky Horror Picture Show. To be fair, cult classics are not always totally terrible. In […]
Look, it’s really hard to get passionate about just okay stuff. With great stuff, you can tell people “WATCH THIS NOW OR YOU’LL MISS OUT ON THE GREATEST THING EVER!”, and with bad stuff you can tell people “DON’T EVER READ THIS EVER OR YOUR CHILDREN’S CHILDREN WILL BE WEEPING TEARS OF BLOOD THEIR ENTIRE […]
Friends and neighbors, I’ve come to tell you this: there is discontent stirring across the land. Yea, behold, upon yon Facebooks the cry has gone out: “Why do you hate everything, Warpig? Why do you criticize the things I like?! HAVE YOU NO HEART NOR SOUL?!” (The answer is “No, I don’t.”, as it turns […]
Community is the Abed of TV sitcoms. The Fonz emblematized Happy Days, Scrubs was embodied in the form of JD, MD, but Community’s avatar is the emotionally blind autistic savant of popular culture, Abed Nadir. Like Abed, Community focused more on pop culture than people, and it blighted the show.
Hollywood is a big old pile of suck, and it’s not all the fault of the usual suspects: lazy writers, crappy directors, and incompetent studio execs. No, the MPAA plays a big part as well. The MPAA—Motion Picture Association of America—is responsible for handing out all the movie ratings you see. They, and they alone, […]
Electronic Arts (video game publishing superpower) is a pretty scummy company—voted “Worst Company in America” 2 years running!—but in the quest to milk every single dollar out of an increasingly alienated and cynical fanbase, they occasionally do something not completely horrible. (Or at least something marginally useful for the purposes of researching one of my […]
I had a terrible weekend. How about you? For my part, I spent almost four hours watching E3 press conferences, first EA’s, then the Xbox’s, then Bethesda’s. And after seeing presentation after presentation, and trailer after trailer, my response is this: Utter and complete stupefied boredom. Nothing excited me at all.
Fallout Shelter: A Terrible Game by Terrible People
Monday , 5, June 2017 Computer Games 22 CommentsFallout Shelter is a terrible game by terrible people. It’s completely awful, top to bottom, with nearly no redeeming features. “But it makes a lot of money!” So do crack kingpins. What’s your point?