looking at: Ridge Racer: Unbounded

Unsullied

cars only seem to ever come in one paint colour.

The nice thing about racing games is that you really only have to play them for about an hour or so to figure out what's going on with them. At least, that's the justification I'm going to use to write this review because honestly, after an hour I just don't want to play Ridge Racer: Unbounded anymore. This is easily one of the worst racing games I've ever played.

This is the first racing game I've reviewed here at LAATIAB, so I want to set a precedent here: I like racing games and racing simulation games. I love Mario Kart, Burnout: Paradise, and I really enjoyed GRID 2. I've played more Need for Speed games than I can remember, and I've likely logged over a 100 hours in Burnout 3 for the Xbox as a kid. I like racing games, I get racing games, and playing racing games is usually a good time for me.

Unless it's Ridge Racer: Unbounded.

Which is a stupid fucking name.

Off the Ridge

smashing through obstacles will give you shortcuts, often in the form of ramps.

The Ridge Racer series is huge, and stretches back to the early 90's as Japanese arcade and console games. Some of the old games are extremely well liked, and many of the PS2 entries in the series top out that console's best racing games list, no easy task considering some of the other games on that list. I can't say I've played any previous RR games, so it's perhaps unfortunate that Unbounded is my first experience.

This is the thirteenth console entry into the series, and by it's own description it breaks away from some of the conventions of it's predecessors. Judging by my experience with it, that number is rather unlucky, despite the pedigree going into it. Not even Bugbear, the company behind Flatout 2 or the upcoming Wreckfest could save this wreck.

Let's start off with what works. Graphically, RR:U is pretty good looking. There's an odd orange filter on everything, but reflections look good and the cars all look great, even at high speed. Even at high speeds my framerate was really good, and it's an overall decently optimized game. There's almost no graphics options whatsoever, so you better hope your system can run it.

The other thing I liked about RR:U was the idea of destructible terrain. This is something Bugbear seems to have taken from their Flatout games, and here they've gone above and beyond. Tracks will have destruction points that you can boost into, provided you have some boost saved, to create shortcuts or destroy several opponents at once. These are hugely satisfying to activate and I went out of my way to try and activate them if I could.

Cliff Diver

The game looks great, to bad it's all for naught.

Ok, that's the good, here comes the bad. That is, pretty much everything else.

First, and probably most importantly, are my issues with the controls. The actual layout was ok, but controlling the cars themselves was a chore. I wasn't stupid enough to try to play the game on my mouse and keyboard, but on a controller cars felt sluggish, and unwieldy. Trying to drift was a death sentence, and more often then not resulted in my completely spinning out, unable to recover easily and moving me way down the rankings.

I really want to make sure you understand how bad this drifting is. It's hard to explain accurately in words, or even video, and the only thing I can suggest is playing a really good racer, like Burnout: Paradise, then playing RR:U and you should instantly understand. Trying to use the handbrake as suggested by the game was a no-go, as it would send my spinning like a top. Trying to use the brake peddle wasn't much better because it didn't do anything to slow me down. Trying to take a turn well in RR:U was nearly impossible, and I'd either end up sliding into a wall or spinning out.

This all brings me to my second issue, the game is fucking hard. Coming from Namco Bandai, I was actually surprised not to see From Software's name on it, since it feels like it would fit in perfectly with their Dark Souls series. The AI kicked my ass, no matter what car I used or how I changed my tactics. It took me four tries to beat the first race, and subsequent races took even longer, to the point where I gave up completely to write this. I don't know if it's weird rubber-banding, or the bad controls, or both, but I was just never able to create a solid lead, the few times I did manage to get ahead.

Cars feel sluggish and unresponsive.

Maybe it's because all of the cars are just awful. It's usual for the starting cars in a racer to be junkers, everyone expects that. You have to earn the better cars, either by earning money and buying them or unlocking them through challenge. But it seemed like non of the AI had any problem, and they all started with top of the line racing machines while I was stuck with 1995 Oldsmobile Royal 88. Loosing a race still gives you XP that's used to unlock new cars, so maybe if I had farmed the same failure over and over eventually I could have placed, but that's a bad way to structure a racer.

Sound effects weren't bad, you could hear the rumble of the engines and the sound of squealing tires, but the music was just annoying. As far as I could tell there wasn't any licensed music anywhere in the game, likely because between EA and anyone else competent a lot of music was taken. Instead there's just endless techno music that made me feel like I was in a shitty nightclub with people I didn't like being around. There's no option to supplement your own soundtrack either, so if club music isn't your scene you'll need to alt-tab out to not want to kill yourself.

The map making feature is powerful and simple to use.

Mechanical Failure

This happened every login attempt.

Maybe one day I'll review a good racer here on this blog. I hope so, because there are a lot of racing games I really like, just this one wasn't one of them. It's worth noting that there are. or rather were, multiplayer features. I say "were" because every attempt to log into the RR:U servers failed instantly. The game is on sale right now, so it's possible the servers are overloaded, and you could still play single-player just fine, but I think the servers are probably just offline and no one is playing this game.

There's also a track creation tool that's actually pretty cool. It reminded me a lot of the create-a-park modes from old Tony Hawk games, only for race tracks. There's a lot of room to play around with it, and you can create some cool tracks, but it's nothing we haven't seen from Ubisoft's superior TrackMania series, and doesn't have nearly the visual charm.

Ridge Racer: Unbounded has the distinct honour of being one of the worst racers I've ever played. At least Diddy Kong Racing on N64 had a charm factor, but RR:U is just a bad, poorly made, and un-fun racer that pales in comparison to better racers. When it comes to fun racing games, this one doesn't even cross the start.

Looking at: PC Ports

Master Race

Once a joke about the expensive and elitist nature, the PC Master Race has come to embrace their higher standards

I've said before that, despite primarily playing games on my PC, I have very little hatred towards consoles. One of my all time favorite games, Red Dead Redemption, is only available on consoles, and RockStar have never even spoken about a PC port. It's not just RDR, but there are dozens of games I've enjoyed that never made their way PC side, some of which I've covered on this blog like Persona 4, Metal Gear Solid 3, or Mercenaries. Hell, the next article I'm working on is a look back at the Mario franchise, and there's only one PC Mario game and it's fucking terrible.

The fact is, though, I do prefer PC as my primary gaming platform, for several reasons. The first is just convenience, as finding games to play on PC is incredibly easy. According to my depressing Steam Calculator page I have just shy of 600 games in my Steam library, and something like another 120 in my GOG library. There are other third party services too where I have some games, and never mind titles that I've acquired through... different means. PC gaming has more game available then every console combined.

The other big reason I prefer PC gaming is that, more often then not, the PC version of a game is superior to the console version. PC's have always been able to preform better then consoles because they're not restricted like consoles are. For a long time the joke was that you had to upgrade your PC every year, and while that's certainly plateaued with the life span of most components being much longer then they used to be, there really is some truth to that idea. PC's got better and stronger much faster then consoles, and by the time the fourth generation of consoles was out the PC had far surpassed them.

No where is this more evident then in the last few generations of games, when the idea of multi-platform or PC ports has become more and more common place. With direct comparison the PC version almost always comes out as superior, running faster and smoother, and often with better graphics. So why is it that, in 2015, companies still don't seem to get it.

I'm the Batman

The official statement from Rocksteady explaining why Batman AK was pulled from retailers.

The reason, I'm sure some of you have gathered, I'm writing this piece is because of the recent release of Batman: Arkham Knight, the final part in the Rocksteady Arkahm trilogy of licensed Batman games. While the Arkham games were always meant for consoles, with both previous entries and the Origins spinoff receiving a PC port after the fact, these games at least worked on PC. Arkham City had some issues with PhysX and Direct X 11, but both of these could be disabled and the game ran fine without them till they were properly patched.

For Arkham Knight, Rocksteady decided they wanted the PC version to come out at the same time as the console version. In theory, this is awesome, since PC gamers often have to wait for their version. Most of the AssCreed games have taken months, Dark Souls: Prepare to Die edition took a year, and Valkyria Chronicles took six years to make its way onto Steam. So, understandably, the idea of getting to play one of the most anticipated games of the year at launch was fairly attractive to people.

Rocksteady should have made us wait.

True to their word, Batman: AK came out and it was really, really broken. Initial reports said the game was capped at only 30fps, and that was if you managed to get it to run. Many users reported that the game ran like shit, barely able to get above double digit framerates. Worse, there are images showing that the PC version of the game doesn't even look as good as it's PS4 version, despite superior hardware. Basically, the game was unplayable, with only a small number of people reporting few or no issues. Worse, it seems like Nvidia had been lying to people, changing promotional codes to no longer include DLC and speeding up footage to make the game look like it ran at 60fps.

The fallout? Overwhelmingly negative Steam reviews, massive boycotts, thousands of refunds thanks to Steam's new refund policy, and a massive blow to Rocksteady and WB Games PR. Exact numbers are difficult to come by at this time, but I'm interested to see how this affects the launch of WB's Mad Max game later this year. Batman: Arkham Knight has been pulled off Steam and other retailers pending patches, but at last check it had a user rating of 33%, placing it on the same level as 4 PM, a thirty minute long "game" about idiots doing stupid things, and RIPD, the movie licensed game that's literally a re-skin of a different mediocre game.

Steam Games with 33-34% user ratings

Any Port in a Storm

So what the hell happened? Well a few things:

The PC port team at Iron Galaxy

1) The entire PC port seems to have been farmed out to about ten people. Not that great games can't be made with less, but AK was not an indie game, it was a massive AAA title.

2) Reportedly, Iron Galaxy was given only two months to do the port. Even the COD games have over a year in development, and the worst game ever made had a development cycle of six months for one platform.

3) Nvidia. Nvidia has slowly but surely trying to create a monopoly for themselves by forcing developers to utilize their Gameworks API. The issues with this are A) Gameworks is terrible and barely works; and B) Gameworks simply DOESN'T work on AMD cards. Add to that Nvidia's recent issues with faulty graphics cards and Nvidia has been on some very thin ice recently.

4) A systemic history of failed PC ports. Despite the PC being more powerful then consoles, companies just don't seem to put that much thought into it as a gaming platform. Time and time again we see the PC version under-performing, be it be awful controls like the original 2007 port of Resident Evil 4 (which didn't have mouse controls until a fan-made mod added them) horrible optimization from both GTA IV and Saint's Row 2, or just a complete lack of understanding about the PC as a platform from an un-countable number of games.

But the past year and a half seemed to have turned a tide, with developers committing more and more to the PC as a platform. First, there's a slew of fantastic PC ports from games like Dark Souls 2, Valkyeria Chronicles, and GTA V. PC gamers proved they were willing to wait for their games, and all three games I just mentioned have sold fantastically on PC. Even better, it seemed developers were finally figuring out how to do a PC version, with GTA V, Borderlands 2, and Shadow of Mordor's exhaustive and impressive customization and proper optimization. The PC is a viable, and powerful gaming platform.

Fix what isn't Broken

So what can everyone learn from this experience? Well, developers should learn that PC gamers will not and will never settle for a broken, second rate port. They will, however, wait patiently for a proper and well made port.

Historically, when the PC version of a game sucked, PC gamers just had to suck it up. For that matter, whenever any game on PC sucked, PC gamers have had to suck it up. But thanks to Steam's new refund policy, gamers don't have to. This might single handily be the nail in the coffin for a few of the PC's less desirable problems, but chief among them is shitty PC games, be it second rate ports or just bad unplayable games. 

Whether people, or even developers, like it or not the PC is a more then viable tool for gaming. Japan has jumped on board, with countless ports to the PC of varying quality, and we're seeing games that ignored the PC come over like Metal Gear Solid 5, Gears of War, and No Man's Sky. If companies want their games to be bought and played on PC they have to learn how to do a proper port.

The big thing is graphics options. More then anything else this can make or break a good port.  I'm not saying every game needs to be Serious Sam levels of customization, but just having a list of resolutions isn't good enough. The best and worst thing about the PC is how customizable as a machine it is, meaning that hardware configurations are going to vary wildly, and you're game should accommodate that. This is also relevant to frame rates, and while the current generation of consoles continues to completely disappoint in this area, PC's are more then capable of obtaining and holding at 60fps. The simplest solution is to not cap your game, or barring that make uncapping it easy. Field of View is the same thing, make this a simple thing to edit, even if it's in an .INI file, and people will accept your game with open arms.

There are other things, like proper net codes, modding tools, and good and/or customizable control schemes. The point is, you can't half ass a PC version of a game any more, and now we see why. The issues with Batman AK are so bad that, as of this writing on 6/25/2015 has been completely removed from digital retailers on PC until it's fixed.

Cynics once said the PC gaming market was dead. If that's true, then there's a lot of angry zombies out there.

image source:
http://i.imgur.com/wscLiCX.png

Looking at: The paid mods debacle

The poster child for paid mods, The Shadow Scale armor.

Punching the Sleeping Bear

Steam's full page ad and FAQ about the program.

What is modding? It's a lot of things. It's an art form unique to the world of PC gaming, for the most part. It's a form of expression for those with the talent or the time. It's a gesture of affection to a particular game, either in the form of additional content to bugfixes the developers may have missed. Lastly, it's one of the last truly open sector of the gaming community, unchecked and unregulated and completely anarchistic. 

Or at least it was. 

On April 23, 2015, Valve, the creators of the Half Life games and the immensely popular Steam digital distribution platform, and Bethesda, creators of The Elder Scrolls series and one of gaming's biggest publishers, launched a new program through Steam's Workshop service. The Workshop was a way for modders to upload their mods and the community to download them, and while it might not have been quite as popular as other mods sites, it was convenient and innocuous enough for no one to really care. 

But suddenly there was a new banner on the homepage, along side a sale of Skyrim. The banner read:

The Steam Workshop has always been a great place for sharing mods, maps, and all kinds of items that you’ve created. Now it's also a great place for selling those creations.

With a new, streamlined process for listing and selling your creations, the Steam Workshop now supports buying mods directly from the Workshop, to be immediately usable in game.

Discover the best new mods for your game and enable the creators to continue making new items and experiences.

The idea was to allow mod creators to sell their work in exchange for real money. On paper, this sounds great, since some modders have put hundreds of hours into their mods, everything from complete overhauls that change the way Skyrim is played to entire expansion packs rivaling those from Bethesda themselves. Certainly these people deserve to be rewarded for their hard work right?

Cloud of Greed

A number of mods available, checked by Checktilda.

Whatever Valve/Bethesda's original supposed intentions were, the truth was obvious. They had found a way to make money selling DLC to players without any work on their part. Bethesda would get more DLC then an entire factory of coders could churn out and keep their game running well past it's shelf life (Morrowind, Skyrim's grandfather, still has an active modding community a full decade post launch). Valve, meanwhile, would get attention to their Workshop and another selling angle for any game that had workshop integration, including titles like Cities: Skylines, ARMA 3, or the recently updated Dying Light.  Meanwhile, modders that have put dozens of hours of work into something will finally receive a fair pay for their work. 

Except they get ripped off the most. 

See, Valve and Bethesda decided they needed to get paid too, and why not? Bethesda made Skyrim, along with the mod tools people use, and Valve were putting up their server space for hosting. Obviously they needed to get something out of this deal. The valuation they came up with:

30% of profit goes to Valve
45% of profit goes to Bethesda
25% of profit goes to the modder. 

That means for every dollar a mod makes, the modder is only seeing 25cents, kind of screwy considering their the ones actually doing all of the work here. There were other limitations too, like how a mod had to sell at least $400 before the modder made a cent. This is in stark contrast to the supposed Apple store split of 70/30, with 70% going to the content creator. While it could be argued that App creators are making original content and modders are just creating derivative work, that valuation is still incredibly low for a lot of people, and it's obviously just Valve and Bethesda trying to pad their pockets. 

The God is Bleeding

One of the many protests. The petition to kill paid mods reached 130,000 signatures at Change.org.

It's impossible to get an exact time-frame, but it's clear that the paid mods were almost immediately unwelcome. The first I heard of it was through panicked and angry messages on a board I happened to be reading on the toilet, and I rushed to my computer to confirm the rumors. It was true, paid versions of things that had been free for ~20 years. Obviously there was going to be some upset. 

Upset might be underselling it a little bit. 

At first there was the confusion. People couldn't believe that something like mods would be sold for money. Sure, there were mods that evolved into full games, like Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, or countless others, but these were the rare case that stood out. 

Then there was the anger at Valve. "How could they do this?" "Why would they do this?" For the longest time Valve could do no wrong, and all of a sudden this was happening. In internet terms it was like watching a cute kitten suddenly transform into Hitler, Third Reich and all, and this was it's fuzzy, cuddly kristallnacht. 

Then there was the anger at each other. "What kind of greedy bastard would expect money for a mod?" "Well, why should we work for free?" There was bad blood boiling on both sides, like the creator of Garry's Mod Garry Newman stating:

Garry Newman @garrynewman

Valve broke the modding community... by revealing that most of them are cunts.

2:16 PM - 24 Apr 2015

Meanwhile one member of the Skywind team (a mod to inject the entire game of Morrowind into Skyrim's engine) stated:

"if you got into this activity with the explicit purpose of making money, you’re delusional. And if, when presented with a completely exploitative method of achieving it, you jumped on it, you’re a fool. Nobody owes you anything for time you yourself chose to expend."

Modders began to feel like they were entitled to a decent pay, while gamers felt they were asking to much of a community already nickeled and dimed to the last cent. The media was worse, with sites like Polygon praising the program (although that particular article seems to have disappeared), and other sites like Forbes calling it a disaster. It was a war between groups that had been friends for a very long time, and we're likely going to see repercussions from this for an even longer time. 

People began to take out their anger on Steam, taking to the forums to insult anyone who bought mods, anyone that put their mods up for sale, and anyone that supported Skyrim. Skyrim's user approval rating dropped from a 98% percent to 84%. That might not seem like much, but Skyrim's positive ratings were a mountain, and that mountain just shifted a long way. This drop has taken Skyrim from the top 10 games on Steam, down outside of the top 1000 games. 

There were the protest mods added to the workshop, everything from an in-game version of Gabe Newell, to just simple protest signs to... horse testicles for $99. Modders began to pull their work wholesale from both the Workshop and Nexus, either in protest or to protect themselves. 

Steam had been the god of PC gaming, an untouchable pseudo-monopoly towering above. And that god just bled. 

The Issues

Animated fishing, the first mod to be taken down due to infringement. Had the program continued, it would not have been the last. 

Like I said, on paper the idea of allowing people to charge money for mods isn't a bad thing. Some teams create content that's definitely worth money. If the rise of Youtube celebrities or independent bloggers (this writer, sadly, not included) taught us anything it's that if people are willing to pay you, then you can get paid for your work. But there was a host of issues with the program that prevented it from ever being a good idea:

1) Tradition. Mods have always been free, whether or not people liked it. Trying to change a decades old tradition can't happen overnight, and even if we create a system that works, like the much proposed donation button, it's unlikely that the vast majority of people will be able to turn this into a living. 

2) The split. People on both sides, save a few outspoken individuals, agree that the split between the modders and the companies is outrageous. Valve and Bethesda were making bank doing very little work and it didn't seem very fair. 

3) the legal issues. Mods have always existed in a legal grey area, allowing their creators to use otherwise copywritten work because no one was making money off it. It's why there's a Game of Thrones mod for Crusader Kings, because the mod wasn't taking money away from GoT's copyrite holder. Now that these mods were being sold as products the grey area turned dark black and it was only inevitable before lawyers got involved. 

4) Other mods. This is a two pronged issue: 

First was the brutal civil war within the mod community itself. Modders called paid modders sell-outs and accused them of ruining their artistic integrity, while paid modders called the unpaid a bunch of unambitious idiots holding back progress. It's created a lot of tension it what used to be a tight-knit community. 

The Second issue is that of mod compatibility. This might be an issue unique to Skyrim, but it's the only game affected so it's what I'll run with. See, Skyrim mods often require a lot of work to run, and sometimes, especially complicated mods, require other mods to run. Less then 24 hours after it's launch we saw two mods taken down because the creator hadn't gotten permission from an animator to use the animator's work. Then there were infrastructure mods, like UI overhauls or script modifications that were necessary for a lot of different mods. These infrastructure mods either didn't get a kickback from any sale that required them, or worse, would require users to buy additional mods to get one mod to work. 

Here's the breakdown:

ModA needs ModB to work. ModA is for sale, but ModB isn't. ModB's creator never sees a cent of ModA's sale. 

ModA needs ModB to work. ModA is $.99, ModB is $9.00. ModB is necessary to run mods C-F and is free to charge what they want because in order to run any other mods, people need to buy ModB. 

5) Mod piracy. This was a new threat, created almost overnight. There were two versions of mod piracy going on. The first was people stealing free mods from other sites and trying to sell it as their own. Thankfully no mods outside the original 19 were ever added, but it's likely this would've been an issue in a very short time, as many of the non-protest mods under review were stolen. 

The second issue was the idea of normal piracy. People didn't want to pay for content they felt should be free so they took to illegal torrenting. I won't link it here, but I have confirmed reports of the paid mods appearing on The Pirate Bay and other torrent sites. 

"It takes a big man to admit he's wrong." 

Community reaction was... less then stellar.

People raged over the weekend. The PR wasn't working, and even the media was turning against the idea. Gabe Newell himself tried to diffuse the situation on Reddit, only to be disgraced and embarrassed. It was clear something had to break, and the community wasn't going to back down. 

PC gamers are entitled, but it's an entitlement that comes from tradition. For the longest time they've held themselves far above the console gamers with things like regular sales, better graphics, higher framerates, and a much larger library of games. Whereas console gamers have grown to eventually accept the worst things about their platforms, like paid internet connections, graphical downgrades, and almost constantly paying full price for games, PC gamers rage against their machines, often until something changes. 

In the evening of April 27, less then a week after it's launch, the paid section of Skyrim's workshop was taken down. It was a hasty retreat, with many of the links pointing to the paid mods still being active as of this writing less then 12 hours later. Representatives from both Valve and Bethesda made statements, which I'll include below, in full. 

Valve:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/3435tu/paid_mods_in_steam_workshop/

We're going to remove the payment feature from the Skyrim workshop. For anyone who spent money on a mod, we'll be refunding you the complete amount. We talked to the team at Bethesda and they agree.

We've done this because it's clear we didn't understand exactly what we were doing. We've been shipping many features over the years aimed at allowing community creators to receive a share of the rewards, and in the past, they've been received well. It's obvious now that this case is different.

To help you understand why we thought this was a good idea, our main goals were to allow mod makers the opportunity to work on their mods full time if they wanted to, and to encourage developers to provide better support to their mod communities. We thought this would result in better mods for everyone, both free & paid. We wanted more great mods becoming great products, like Dota, Counter-strike, DayZ, and Killing Floor, and we wanted that to happen organically for any mod maker who wanted to take a shot at it.

But we underestimated the differences between our previously successful revenue sharing models, and the addition of paid mods to Skyrim's workshop. We understand our own game's communities pretty well, but stepping into an established, years old modding community in Skyrim was probably not the right place to start iterating. We think this made us miss the mark pretty badly, even though we believe there's a useful feature somewhere here.

Now that you've backed a dump truck of feedback onto our inboxes, we'll be chewing through that, but if you have any further thoughts let us know.

Bethesda:

http://www.bethblog.com/2015/04/27/why-were-trying-paid-skyrim-mods-on-steam/

After discussion with Valve, and listening to our community, paid mods are being removed from Steam Workshop. Even though we had the best intentions, the feedback has been clear – this is not a feature you want. Your support means everything to us, and we hear you.

It's damage control at it's worse, because it was obviously damage control. It's so rare for companies to admit they were wrong, and even rarer for them to completely 180. Even Micrsoft only removed a few of the "features" of the Xbox One, and that was before it's release. This wasn't backpedaling, this was... this:

Uneasy Silence

As of now, April 28th, the paid mods section is down. Neither company has made further statements and Skyrim is slowly rebuilding it's review score. It's unlikely Skyrim will ever have paid mods again. 

That's the thing about this though, is that "Skyrim" won't have paid mods, and it shouldn't. But Valve didn't say they were removing the option, just they were removing it from Skyrim. Other games have already admitted their interest in paid mods, including Space Engineers and, considering his inflammatory statements, Garry's Mod.  

Paid mods could, possibly, work. Yes, there's certainly the unpleasent idea of being sold a constant stream of DLC when games already cost an arm and a leg, and yes there are numerous uncertainties about the system that will need to be addressed, like a longer refund period in case of a mod-breaking update. A donation system is prefereable, certainly, and the experiment has failed, but there is the grounds for a system in the future. 

This has been pointed out elsewhere, but it's likely we'll see this idea re-attempted in the near future. The best avenue for this would be a new release, and Valve admitted that their biggest misstep was trying to invade a well established community, some of whom have been around since Morrowind. We'll likely see this attempted again in a future Bethesda title, and their upcoming E3 appearance will be more telling when it comes. 

It's over for now, and everyone is slowly slinking back to their holes, awaiting further news. We've seen the face of paid mod content, and it's an ugly, disgusting beast. Whether or not it'll ever rear it's head again, that remains to be seen. 

Image Sources:

http://ec0c5a7f741a6f3bff65-dd07187202f57fa404a8f047da2bcff5.r85.cf1.rackcdn.com/images/X6BdGgoKIdT2.878x0.Z-Z96KYq.jpg

http://i1-news.softpedia-static.com/images/news2/Steam-Workshop-Now-Supports-Paid-Mods-Skyrim-Gets-Premium-Items-Free-Weekend-479223-2.jpg

http://static1.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1535/15354745/2854228-2832875602-28535.jpg

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--NfRXhIti--/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_636/1227696896714866095.jpg

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--ViZoOzKN--/1227897868503046504.png

http://techgage.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Current-Thoughts-On-Valve-680x445.jpg

Looking at: Age of Ice

Cold Front

Literally the only picture I could find of this movie, seriously.

I've been drinking. I recently got a tooth pulled and the experience has left me in a lot of pain. Alcohol is a disinfectant, and my dentist didn't prescribe me any antibiotics or painkillers, so I've been using a little Jack Daniels and Alexander Keiths to help me out.

That's neither here nor there, but it did make my experience watching Age of Ice, from "director" Emile Edwin Smith somewhat more tolerable then I think it's supposed to be.

In the Madhouse

Not even remotely close, but a way better movie.

See, Age of Ice is another movie shat out by The Asylum. Anyone who's into bad movies, like yours truly, is quite familiar with The Asylum. They fill a hole once occupied by Troma Entertainment, namely that of low budget straight to DVD movies that confuse people into buying them.

It's been said that The Asylum spends a million dollars on a movie on the hopes that it sells a million dollars worth. If an Asylum movie breaks even they consider it a win. They have had a few minor successes, and the Sharknado franchise has turned out to be a big hit for them, but they're main bread and butter is crappy knock-offs of popular movies (such as a version of Marvel's Thor where the Asgardian wields an Uzi), shitty softcore porn (often about cheerleaders), or terrible disaster films.

It's this later that The Asylum seems to find a particular niche, in that most of their catalog consists of damn-near unwatchable disaster films, often with bizarre or oddly specific disasters. There's the aforementioned Sharknado franchise, a mashup of Shark movies and... well just Twister really. Then there's there seemingly endless supply of 2012 based movies, with at least five different scenarios ranging from meteors to the sun exploding. There's a series of Toho-esque monster films with titles like Mega Shark VS Giant Octopus, Mega Piranha, Mega Python VS Gatoroid.

They make bad movies is the point I'm trying to get across. Anyway, it was this bizarre combination of heavy drinking and unfiltered access to Netflix that lead me to watch Age of Ice, The Asylum's answer to the question: "What if it snowed in Egypt and a bunch of dumbass Americans, and also the prince of Jordan or something had to escape why not?"

Snow Capped Pyramids

Never read it, probably better then this movie.

Our film opens with fighter pilots failing to land, strangely reminiscent of this clip. Then someone mentions seismic activity, then the whole aircraft-carrier sinks. Strong opening.

Then we're in Egypt, where a family are checking out the pyrimads, or at least as close to the pyramids as a bunch of Mexican laborers can assemble from plastic bricks, which are clearly visible. We're introduced to the Father (Barton Bund, no seriously) his dumb-as-fuck son Dylan (Joe Cipriano, fucking idiot) and his daughter Amber (Bailey Spry) who instantly falls for some random Muslim dude (Owais Ahmed?). They head back to Cairo, shit starts getting weird, they meet the Mother (Jules Hartley) and all of a sudden life sucks. A wall breaks and they decide they need to get home.

Then it starts snowing, and Egypt starts looking an awful lot like northern Connecticut, complete with wide open fields with deciduous forests. The gang mysteriously acquires a bunch of towels and blankets, then sets forth across the frozen Egyptian wasteland in search of a mysterious evac point. Along the way they meet some people, form bonds, and perform endless acts of unbelievable stupidity.

There was the time Dylan fell of a train for no good reason, or the time the same stupid little fucker fell down a pyramid for no good reason, or the time the SAME STUPID LITTLE FUCKER fell down a cave for no good reason. It's not just Dylan fucking up though. At one point they use a heavy duty truck's winch to lower people down, which sounds reasonable. Except that somehow this two-ton truck got pulled over the side of a cliff by a ~110lb woman. At one point the group steals camels, rides them for a few moments, then abandons them and suggests (and I quote)

"[cutting] them up for warmth like in The Empire Strikes Back"

Oh the antics of those wacky, fucking stupid Americans and they're brown guide. An oil refinery gets blown up by hail, but at that point you're so far gone that it barely registers.

Brain Freeze

This is from a Newsweek article on Ice Ages, read it here!

"The special effects in this movie were taken from the Sega Mega Drive on-board graphics circuitry."

That's a direct quote from the IMDB page concerning this movie. For reference, the Sega Mega Drive  (also known as the Genesis) was released in 1989 and officially discontinued in 1999. Age of Ice was released in 2014. I didn't grow up with a Genisis, but my research indicates that the best looking game on the system, at least graphically speaking was this:

That's the level of graphical fidelity you can expect from this film. That's the level of graphical fidelity you deserve from this film. 

It's unfortunate, given that The Asylum can, at times, generate... passable graphics. Thanks to Sharknado and some other work they've done for SyFy they've stepped up they game considerably, but not here. No, Age of Ice was spit out, waging a visual war on it's audience, daring you to keep watching. 

Sound design barely fares better. There are enough sound effects, and most of the characters are discernible. There's one person I couldn't understand, but that was due to his heavy accent. The music is The Asylum's standard of royalty free stock music they bought en-masse ten years ago. Nothing special, but it doesn't hurt your ears either. 

The camera work is shoddy at best, but it is stable. I suspect that's because spending money on something like a dolly rig, or even a slider, is decidedly outside The Asylum's budget. It's all bearable, save for one shot where you can clearly see a second camera team in the distance. 

What isn't forgivable is the editing. Shots jump around for no good reason, and the whole film has a sort of mashed-together feel that make some projects I've worked on look magnificent. I'm no editor, and I've never claimed to be, but I think I understand enough about the art to know how bad this movie fucked it up. 

It should be pretty obvious I didn't enjoy Age of Ice. It was an extremely bad movie, even by The Asylum's standards. I know it's not really indicitive of their normal stock, and that they can actually produce movies worth watching every once and a while, but Age of Ice isn't even worth it for the paltry entertainment value it accidentally provides. Leave this one in the back and let it get freezer burn. 

Image Sources:

http://maxcdn.dardarkom.com/files/uploads/14222180481.jpg
http://akmmovies.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Age-of-Ice-2014-screen-1.jpg
http://images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/22600000/Ice-Age-Cd-ice-age-22617740-1502-1127.png
http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1369085840l/16130312.jpg
http://www.newsweek.com/2014/08/22/why-were-definitely-not-headed-another-ice-age-264633.html

looking at: The Legend of the Titanic

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Nearer my God to Thee

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Elizabeth learning that she can speak to animals, as well as one of the, apparently flying dolphins.

On the evening of April 14, 1912 the Titanic, long thought the greatest vessel ever built, struck an iceberg and, over the course of almost three hours, sank to the bottom of the Atlantic ocean. 1500 people lost their lives in the dark, icy abyss and it remains, even today, one of the worst nautical disasters in history.

Except apparently that was all just a "misunderstanding" and none of that really happened because a couple of talking mice, a super intelligent dog, a British heiress and her Gypsy prince lover, along with talking magical dolphins and the goddamn Kraken managed to save everyone from the evil whaler and his scheming shark friends.

I assure I did not just suffer a stroke. What I did just suffer was watching Italy butcher, not only one of the worst nautical tragedies of all time, but also the art of animation at the same time.

Mouse Overboard

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The adorable Kraken, sinker of ships and destroyer of all he sees fit.

The story is told by our main character, a mouse named Connors, telling the tale of the Titanic to his grandkids since he was on the Titanic. Basically, while the humans were boarding the Titanic, so too were a shitload of mice. Conners is a sailor of some sort, who falls in love with a girl mouse and becomes friends with her Brazilian soccer playing little brother who's name is apparently Ronny.

Meanwhile Elizabeth, the daughter of a British Duke, is lamenting at the idea of marrying a guy that looks an awful lot like Phil Ken Sebben. Also, there's a Gypsy prince hanging out with his super intelligent dog. Elizabeth and Don Juan (seriously) fall in love immediately too, but their love can never be because they are just two different people.

If this sound familiar that's because this is a really, REALLY messed up version of the plot of James Cameron's magnus opus from two years prior.

Anyway, some stupid stuff happens, and the mice learn that the whaling dude Elizabeth is supposed to marry is super evil, and Elizabeth gains the ability to speak to animals because magic, and then Don Juan learns to speak with animals because magic, and the Phil Ken Sebben looking dude is super evil. Eventually he does away with subtlety and hires his shark friends to sink the ship.

Did I mention that, for no explained reason, the American whaling magnate can speak to, and control, sharks? Sharks that all speak with a Brooklyn accent and wear prison clothes? No, good.

The sharks convince the Kraken, who looks suspiciously like a mouse himself, to hurl an iceberg at the Titanic and the ship does what it's best known for and starts sinking. Tentacles, the fucking beast of the abyss, feels bad and decides to save everyone on the Titanic from their watery graves. He apparently dies, and so does a character that we're supposed to know and love, but everyone else gets out ok.

Finally in New York the survivors (read: everyone because no one died apparently) gather for Elizabeth and Don's wedding, and also the mice have a wedding too because why not. Then it;s revealed that Tentacles, horror to every sea man and terror of the seven seas, is actually alive, and so is that mouse that died. Everyone is happy and there's a party and the end.

Che cazzo, anche?

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The look of slack-jawed horror mirroring my own.

"When I think of Italy the first thing that pops into my head is definitely their animation!"
Is a sentence that no one has ever uttered. The art style and animation are both clearly attempts at Japanese anime, but without any of the style or ability that the medium can provide. Characters don't look horrible when their not moving, which is unfortunate because they're constantly moving. Animation looks weird, like it was animated well below the normal 24fps of an anime, then sped up to match it, then had some frames removed for no reason.

There is no lip sync whatsoever. None. For the mice their mouths are wide open whenever they're speaking, making it seem as though their lines are just guttural utterances spilling from the endless void. Humans fair a little better, but it's still never correct. I realize that, like most anime, this movie wasn't made for English and that trying to match English lines over characters speaking a different language is difficult, but most animes, even shitty ones, manage to at least give it a try. Here the mouths just open and close randomly, no where near in time with what's being spoken, so half the dialogue comes out despite the character's mouth actually being open.

The plot, as recapped above, is obviously insane, but what's worse is the audacity this film has and the blatant disregard for anything factual about the Titanic. Listing the historical inacuracies would take me a whole other article, so let's just stick with the most insane:

* The explanation for how Elizabeth get's her ability to speak to mice is that her tear split a moon beam in half and the dolphins cast magic on it.

* Because of that Don Juan can speak with animals because "their souls are intertwined" or something.

* This is disregarded because for no reason Elizabeth's father can perfectly understand the mice later.

* The ship's captain is, at best, unqualified for his job. For no reason he tells the crew to reduce speed to half. When the ship hits the iceberg he immediately incites panic and does nothing to help.

* The mice decide the best way to stop a transmission from going out is to completely wreck all of the ship's internal wiring. When the shop starts sinking one of the mice decides to sacrifice himself to save everyone by acting as a wire (more specifically his mustache acts as the wire). He dies, but not really because he comes back with no explanation, even after the ship sinks.

* Despite jumping into the freezing Atlantic, none of the characters are cold, or even wet, when emerging.

* Accepting that everyone was saved by the Kraken -which is insane but ok- the film still has the audacity to have the band play "Nearer my God to Thee" which is what the actual Titanic band played as they sank into the ocean.

Sinking Ship

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HA HA! Whaling!

The Legend of the Titanic is an impressively terrible film, one that surpassed my expectations and resides in the depths of bad movie hell alongside Food-Fight for worst animated feature. It's an unbearable, uncomfortable watch and absolutely psychotic to boot.

What's worse is that while watching this movie and doing research on it, I was informed that, for reasons unknown, this is actually one of three different, unconnected Italian animations concerning the Titanic. It's the worst one to boot, but by how much remains to be seen. Join me again when the legend continues.

Looking at: Space Jam!

I've had this nightmare before.

C'Mon and SLAM...

One of my New Year's resolutions was that I was going to stop trying to review good or even mediocre movies on this blog. I find it difficult to talk about them because I don't want to spoil to much and I feel like I'm never quite explaining why I like them well enough. I saw Gone Girl and Battle of Five Armies recently and they were both great movies, but you won't see me talking about them here because I don't know how to explain why they're great. 

Thankfully Space Jam from 1996 is not a good movie. So suit up your Nike's, we gonna slam. 

Space Jam is an oddity, like it knows it shouldn't exist. There is no reason for Space Jam, it serves no purpose in the grand scheme of things, save perhaps to introduce a new face to the Looney Toons line-up. It's product placements are bizarre, it's casting atrocious, and even it's jokes vary widely from basic slapstick to meta-humor. It's a movie made by people that don't know what movies are, what kids are, and who exist solely  to produce bottom denominator crap for the masses and sell toys. 

...And welcome to the JAM!

Bill Murray is in this, because he wandered onto the wrong set.

Let's look at the setup for this ridiculous experiment. The movie opens on Moron Mountain, a shitty interstellar themepark run by Swackhammer (Danny Devito). The park sucks ass, so Swackhammer decides he's going to kidnap the Looney Tunes and make them perform. To accomplish this he sends his group of minions, who never get names and are all extremely short. Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Sylvester the Cat, Elmer Fudd, and Porky Pig decide the best way to beat the aliens is to challenge them to a basketball game, since they're short and can't jump. 

Seriously, that's the logic. In fairness to the movie, it kind of admit's its a really dumb idea, but the Looney Tunes are desperate. 

Meanwhile back in our world, Michael Jordan, one of the greatest basketball players ever, friend to everyone, world star parent, and loving father is doing terribly in his new career as a baseball player. This is sort of based on Jordan's actual short lived baseball career in the '93-'94 season, and oddly serves as a crux for much of the film. 

We return to Looney Tune world, where the alien minions have stolen the talent of five basketball players, and have transformed themselves into super monster basketball all-stars, the Mon-Stars if you will. For some reason Bugs and the gang decide to kidnap Michael Jordan and get him to coach their team to victory. Jordan agrees, reluctantly, and trains the team in a series of slapstick vignettes befitting the Looney Tunes style. 

I need to wipe my browser history now.

Then there's Lola Bunny, pictured above, a character that no doubt stirred up a lot of uncomfortable feelings in young men of the '90s. Her character is, at best, unnecessary. She serves as a sort of Mini Mouse component for Bugs, but she's also a strong willed independent woman. At least, she was in Space Jam, since apparently the character has now been relegated to ditsy obsessive girlfriend with a huge character design overhaul. Regardless, her and Bug's entire romantic subplot is completely wasted, with the film only bringing it up two, maybe three times with no real purpose. It'd be tempting to call her the reason for the film, but that'd be stupid. 

And you thought DayZ was the scariest game mod ever.

Besides, the real reason for Space Jam is all the marketing. The Looney Tunes may avoid being put on display in Moron Mountain, but that didn't stop this movie from become a real-world marketing machine. There are hundreds of product placements throughout Space Jam, culminating in this line from Wayne Knight's character Stanley:

"C'mon, Michael! It's game time! Get your Hanes on, lace up your Nikes, grab your Wheaties and your Gatorade, and we'll pick up a Big Mac on the way to the ballpark. "

That's the movie in a nutshell, selling as much shit to kids as possible. It might not be as bad as, say, The Wizard, but it's pretty clear this was written by a marketing team before the director got his hands on it. Hell, the damn website for Space Jam is still fucking operational if you want to see. 

'Cause it's the SLAM JAM!

Bugs and Lola's sideplot is one of the worst parts of the movie.

I will say this in Space Jam's favor: for what it's trying to be, it almost does it right. Michael Jordan isn't an actor, so Space Jam doesn't put him in any situations that really require acting. Even more in Jordan's defense his interactions with the Looney Tunes themselves are impressive, considering they don't exist. The Tunes themselves are faithful to their characters, and the story almost feels like it could work in the Looney Tunes universe. The characters are all in-character and they manage more then a few decent jokes. 

That reminded me, the jokes. They're strange. I've read that the Looney Tunes aren't really meant for kids, and that they used the slapstick comedy as a cover for their deeper motives. There's certainly a hint of truth to that, and watching a lot of the older cartoons as an adult it's easier to pick out the hidden messages behind the wacky humour. 

The animation quality is great, especially on the MonStars.

But in Space Jam, we're looking at a new age of Looney Tunes, one for the 90's. The jokes are weirdly meta, sometimes poking fun at the very nature of the Looney Tunes. In particular, there's a moment where Bugs and Daffy are discussing royalties from Looney Tunes merchandising, and lamenting at their lack of a cut. It's an especially weird moment in a kids movie.

Perhaps the crowning achievement for this is whenever Bill Murray is on-screen. He only appears twice, once to make a joke about being white, and another time to get confused with Dan Aykroyd. These are both jokes that the target audience for Space Jam just wouldn't get. There are dozens of these littered throughout the film, like Bugs making a boner joke, a Pulp Fiction reference, Patrick Ewing's sexual performance being questioned. Shit, the soundtrack for Space Jam features an R. Kelly song (I believe I can fly) and a Barry White Song (What the fuck am I reading?).

Actual image from the Space Jam comic book.

I have this theory about Space Jam. I imagine the production staff figuring out how shitty this movie was destined to be early in development, so they tried their absolute damndest to make it as weird as possible. Whenever they felt something was to normal, they'd knock it back with something completely weird. The whole movie is constantly revolting against itself, writhing in pain at it's own existence. 

There are people that will defend Space Jam as a good movie. Hell, like most shitty things from the 90's there's at least seven different Buzzfeed "articles" about it (I'm not joking). I once loved Space Jam, and I must've watched it at least once a week when I was a kid. Here's the thing though, when I was a kid I also hated wearing underwear and loved throwing boogers at girls I liked. Things from our childhood are never as good in retrospective, and Space Jam serves as a giant, confusing monument to that. It's all things 90's rolled into one, and a reminder of why that's a bad thing. 

image sources:http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.1678204!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/article_970/article-spacejamweb-0221.jpg
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