Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities: The Viewing [Film Review]

If you ever want to watch something mesmerizing that captures the essence of cosmic horror, I’ve got something special for you: The Viewing. The Viewing is part of Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities, which is a horror anthology on Netflix. It only got the one season, and despite being quite entertaining, Netflix sadly decided not to renew it for a season two. The collection got a few horror gems, but the stand-out is definitely The Viewing, so I’m glad we at least got that story before being axed like a slasher victim.

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Jagged Alliance 3 – Abandoned? [Video]

One of the best franchise revivals in recent times was Jagged Alliance 3, which had its release three years ago. Time flies, huh? Jagged Alliance 3 was a good game, so naturally most of us expected that the franchise wouldn’t go dormant again so soon after such a strong resurrection, but it did. And honestly, it’s a complete and utter waste, considering how cool the series is, and how good a job the developer Haemimont Games did. Not one DLC, not even a single word about the future of the franchise. In this excellent video by Kordanor’s Gaming Lair—Kordanor (he kinda looks like a JA merc) talks about these issues: why things stalled, and what to expect.

It’s mostly speculation, of course, but he does clear up a few things. Such as who owns what now (IP, dev team), a fact that makes this much more complicated than one thinks. The future isn’t looking too bright though… Video after the jump!

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The lack of Stealth in a Vampire game…

I have been trying out the newly released RPG The Blood of Dawnwalker, and the lack of any kind of stealth in this game is an incredibly missed opportunity that would have added an excellent thematic gameplay mechanic. Instead, if it’s scripted not to do so, you will have to fight your way in or out of a situation every time.

While this is clearly a skill issue from my part, I find the combat incredibly awkward. This is mostly due to a spastic camera and the brutal action‑based combat, where you are supposed to block, dodge, and kill multiple opponents on a regular basis. And well, it’s just too hard for an old fella like me, yet I can play Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord without trouble using manual blocks. I’m not sure what is going on here, outside of having a difficult time focusing on what’s happening in a skirmish, visually. Anyhow…

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The Journey of Marvin Mobuto [Halo Animation]

It has been a while since we watched a fan animation of a game, so here is NotPipi with The Journey of Marvin Mobuto. It’s a tragic, but also slightly amusing tale of a marine onboard the Pillar of Autumn—the lone survivor of his squad after crashing into Halo in his escape pod. Now, this guy is badass, as shown in the film, yet his fate was sealed as soon as he ran into 343 Guilty Spark. If you understand what I mean. Watch it after the jump!

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Grading System Explained

After four years of writing for this site, I figured it was finally time to explain my grading system, a.k.a. the skulls with sunglasses. It’s scaled from one to five, where one is horrible and five is an extremely rare experience of total bliss—to me, that is. By that I mean, it’s a highly subjective rating that has no basis in any kind of objectivity, as it’s an ENJOYMENT rating, and not a rating on the quality of the game from some kind of made-up list of “objective points”—for example, a criterion for gameplay, visuals, etc.

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Shower Thoughts – Was Microsoft’s Approach to Gaming Wrong?

While sitting on my balcony, taking in the sun and sipping on my coffee, I started to think, like you do: Could Microsoft’s approach to gaming have worked? As we now know, all those billions they spent on legendary studios didn’t really pan out in their “kindergarten” experiment. Kindergarten, since giving these studios infinite time and money didn’t produce any cultural milestones, which I assume was the intention—but instead gave us a bunch of mediocre titles just to fill Microsoft’s requirement to remain under the sweet money-tree. Let me explain.

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