Odd Thoughts

  Spiderman PS4 and Spiderman Miles Morales spoilers ahead  While it hasn't yet been officially announced or confirmed, it seems almost beyond a doubt that Playstation players will be receiving another entry in the Spiderman franchise in the near to mid-term future. 2018's Spiderman and 2020's Miles Morales were extremely well received, and both games served as anchors for a company that is still clinging to exclusivity in a much more traditional sense than its competitors. I can't imagine Sony forgoing the opportunity to add another Spiderman to its library of games. That's not to mention the sort of hints that a new game is coming that always pop up on Twitter, nor the mid-credits scenes in both games, which we'll discuss later. Long story short, Spiderman 2 is coming, probably by 2023. So what might it look like? And why do I think it has the potential to be one of the greatest superhero games ever made?  Well, to start, that's partly because Spiderman PS...

There's something about the lone rider on a quest through a beautiful apocalyptic wasteland that just screams video game RPG to me, and also immediately grabs my attention. Raya and the Last Dragon -  Disney's latest work of art - opens with just such a scene before expositing on how its titular character got to that point. It even calls out that lone rider motif in its opening narrative commentary, deliberately drawing attention to it. And it planted a seed in my head that would be watered throughout the entire movie, Raya's narrative is written like an RPG game, in some ways that I don't think are necessarily the case in other animated films.  As in any good RPG, our lone rider quickly picks up companions and the scope of her quest radically expands. At first she only has her animal steed - an armadillo-like creature named Tuk Tuk - and a single magical shard from a broken dragon orb. But soon she discovers another creature, a water dragon named Sisu, last of her kind...

Today, Disney is without a doubt the world's most prolific entertainment company. From ancient China to the MCU to a galaxy far, far away, the company funds and publishes some of the world's most recognizable movie entertainment properties, and it makes a ridiculous amount of money doing so. Current subscribers to Disney+ can find plenty of content, while the game world was recently intrigued by a slate of announcements which essentially boil down to Disney making its way into the AAA video game business (with games based on Avatar, Indy, and Star Wars, the company is poised to have its hands in a ton of new releases over the next few years). Let's give Disney its due, plenty of its recent properties have been extremely well received. Recently, WandaVision and The Mandalorian have brought a certain amount of top-tier respectability to the company's still young streaming service. But not everything has been so popular. Here I'm thinking of Disney's live action re...

It strikes me as rather ludicrous to think about the fact that audiences across the world have been intensely tuned into the outer rim adventures of sci fi's most eminent heroes for damn near 50 years, but that's where we're at, and I don't think we're really sick of it yet. Only months after pearl-clutching critics decided Game of Thrones  would be the last 'event TV' show before the streaming era, Disney Plus stormed onto the field with a new show for people all over the world to tweet about simultaneously. Per usual, it took me a year to actually get around to watching it.  The Mandalorian features our titular character, a Beskar-clad super-soldier belonging to an ancient and still mysterious religious creed, as he stumbles upon a series of misadventures in Star Wars' latest major outing. Between the Sequel movies, the Clone Wars animated show, and Fallen Order, I've been consuming a lot of Star Wars media the last couple years. It's cliché, s...

In 2011, Ubisoft Montreal released yet another Assassin's game in a truly commendable effort to keep up with their ridiculous annual release schedule. I can't imagine the kind of crunch that went into releasing an Assassin's Creed game every year from 2009 (Assassin's Creed 2) to 2015 (Assassin's Creed Unity). Revelations continues the story of Ezio Auditore da Firenze, taking the player from Italy to Anatolia. The main chunk of the story occurs in Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul), conquered capital of the fallen Byzantine Empire and center of the Ottoman Empire's centuries-long reign over Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) and at various times huge portions of the eastern Mediterranean. The game also features brief forays into Cappadocia, where the player explores a creatively imagined cave city which was one of my favorite locations in the game so far, as well as Masyaf Castle at the very beginning and very end of the game. Players of the original game wil...

Released just a year after Assassin's Creed 2, in 2010, Assassin's Creed Brotherhood has been aptly described as Assassin's Creed 2.5 ever since it came out. While that's a fair moniker, keep in mind that this is still a full fledged game. Where I spent 37 hours in Assassin's Creed 2, I spent 31 in Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, having finished the main stories and all of the side missions in each game. Brotherhood continues the story of Ezio Auditore Da Firenze, the charismatic assassin who spent the last game avenging the execution of his father and brothers, dismantling a Templar conspiracy, and retrieving the Apple of Eden. At the end of the last game Ezio made a fateful decision not to kill Rodrigo Borgia, the head Templar and also Pope Alexander VI, only besting him physically before taking the apple and entering an ancient temple. This game begins where the last game left off, with Ezio reeling from the odd visions presented to him in the temple and ...

Going back into the archives of large gaming journalism sites, it's evident that I wasn't the only one who wasn't quite impressed by the original Assassin's Creed. Between its clunky controls, repetitive mission structure, and uninspiring main character, it's quite the surprise that the game sold so well. That being said, I pointed out the game left a solid base to iterate upon. And in 2009, Ubisoft Montreal delivered a sequel that improved upon it's precursor in every way imaginable. Assassins Creed 2 follows the life of Ezio Auditore from his birth all the way until about his forties, when the game leaves off, to be picked up by the later titles Brotherhood and Revelations. From minute one the game is more cinematic, tone-conscious, and interesting than virtually anything its 2007 ancestor had to offer. In contrast to the first game's Third Crusade setting, AC 2 places the player in the midst of Renaissance Italy and its warring states, families, and...