Why Yes, I Do Believe We Need A New God. I Vote For This Guy

I don't even know what to type here. Just please, watch this video. It's..beyond words.

So What Should Be Done About these “Women” Then?

See, there are these things called “women.” You are probably familiar with them as a concept. Maybe you’re friends with one, or even married to a member of the apparent “fairer” sex. I’m not here to judge.

The thing is women like to play video games. This was once considered a myth derided as heresy by the video game playing shamans, but these days there are more women interested in games than ever before.

The ESA has found that as much as 40 percent of the current video game audience is female. Some women might even like Facebook games more than sex! Keep in mind that last study was carried out by Doritos, who are not fully licensed sexologist examiners.

The Little Kids at CLU are Awesome

Yahtzee almost wrote Duke Nukem Forever

Apparently at some point Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, the Australian maniac behind the excellent Zero Punctuation reviews, was approached to write a script for Duke Nukem Forever when it was still with 3D Realms.

He had the idea of the game taking the piss a bit more, where Duke is essentially a more obvious 90's action hero parody with some much needed irony. Sadly 3D Realms wasn't too keen on this idea and turned him into the misogynistic idiot the game desperately tries to pass off as genuine.

All we can do now is imagine how amazing a Yahtzee penned Duke Nukem game could have been. And hope someone finds the audition script.

You can read the rest of the story on escapistmagazine.com. For some reason I can't post links.

Adventures in Drunk Gaming: Cthulhu Saves the World

There aren’t enough games that feature Cthulhu or the other works of H.P. Lovecraft, the spindly, racist nerd that introduced the world to cosmic horror.

There also aren’t enough games that feature Cthulhu reluctantly stepping up to save the world as opposed to destroying it, like a tentacled John McClane facing down a German Alan Rickman. This is so he can then destroy said world, because fuck German Alan Rickman. That bastard killed Dumbledore.

Thankfully, the world now has Cthulhu Saves the World.

If it’s not obvious by now, I’m writing this while consuming just enough Jack Daniels to be Charming. This is also how I played the game Cthulhu Saves the World for my new column Adventures in Drunk Gaming that I will probably never revisit because while writing this sentence I leveled up to Angry Drunk and FUCK THE NEW TEEN WOLF, FUCK IT RIGHT IN IT’S FAT NECK!!!!

But I digress. Cthulhu Saves the World was developed for the Xbox Live Indie Marketplace by Zeboyd games, a small developer that has so far specialized in old school RPGs that fill nerds with nostalgic juices. These juices are potent and if harvested correctly, can be used to make Marmite.

The game sells for less than $5 when you convert it from Xbox Live Fun Money, which isn’t too bad for a game that actually feels more polished than something like Final Fantasy XIII.

The game opens up with Cthulhu doing stuff. Then he for some reason decides to become a hero so he can get back his powers and destroy the world. A girl also becomes his groupie along the way. He might have tricked the bad guy by taping a gun to his back at one point, but I think that’s Die Hard again.

Anyway, the game plays like absolutely any old school RPG ever made. What sets it apart is that you can actually drive enemies insane for different strategic effects. This can also backfire as some enemies become stupidly more powerful while insane.

The dialogue is also legitimately funny, not just drunk “laugh at everything” funny. Cthulhu is a fish out of water that desperately wants to eviscerate everyone around him, but he can’t because of a curse that is never explained. Comedy!

Cthulhu Saves the World is pretty great considering the price and that three people made it. As a drunk man that’s currently regretting a lot of life decisions, I give it a B out of 10.

Sucker Punch: Geeksploitation at it’s Finest

Imagine if Zack Snyder came into your house one day and took an anime DVD, a comic book and a Battletoads cartridge and put it in a blender. He would take this fine paste of extreme nerdery and spread it onto a scarf, which would be wrapped around his right fist.

He would then read aloud “A Scanner Darkly,” and just as you are about to ask him what the hell is going on, he cold-cocks you across the room.

This is the experience you get from Sucker Punch. It is, with so many grating imperfections, ridiculously exhilarating.

Emily Browning’s Baby Doll, a girl who initially looks so fragile she would shatter in half if a butterfly bumped into her, is sent to an insane asylum for accidentally killing her sister.

Shortly after she arrives the asylum shifts to a Moulin Rouge-esq brothel where the girls dance to entice clientele. Here Baby Doll learns that she can slip into a realm of action video game insanity by dancing and is instructed by the appropriately named Wise Man (Scott Glenn) to collect a number of objects that would allow her to escape.

The biggest strength here is that the script doesn’t do the tired dance of asking the audience to constantly question what is real or what is just Baby Doll’s psychosis, ala Shutter Island.

It’s all real for her, so it’s good enough for the audience.

It also helps that the transitions into the different realities are handled so well. Snyder manages to create a unique atmosphere and aesthetic for each of them. The fact that he can take us to them on a whim without any it of feeling jarring is commendable.

It’s when we get to the third stage, the one initiated by Baby Doll’s dancing, where Snyder’s forte is put to it’s limit.

The action is loud, full of detailed CGI and most importantly, smooth as butter. Lesser folks such as Michael Bay fill their action with nauseating amounts of camera shake and lens flare, but this is to hide the simple fact that they have no idea how to make things flow.

In Sucker Punch the fights are swimming in flow with no sense of self-restraint. There are Gatling gun touting samurai giants, steam punk WWII Nazi zombies, power armor straight out of “Starship Troopers” and even a Tolkien-esque dragon.

It’s like instead of an outline for the story, Snyder wrote a list of things from nerd entertainment he wanted in an action movie and worked up from there.

With all this visual insanity you would hope that the acting is just as sublime, but this is where the movie nearly kills itself.

To be fair Browning is competent and Abbie Cornish’s Sweet Pea has a few moments where she isn’t completely terrible.

Oscar Isaac’s turn as Blue Jones is pitch perfect even, with him giving the movie a villain to hate and sympathize with.

But everyone else, especially the group of girls that follow Baby Doll into the insanity world, might as well just be looking into the camera and repeating “I’m acting.”

Cornish has no subtlety with the bulk of her performance, giving over emphasis to what should be tender moments.

It’s also unfortunate that Jena Malone’s Rocket is a central character as she exemplifies how some of these girls should kill more robots and never talk.

The actors aren’t really helped by the dialogue though, with some lines drenched in cheese.

Thankfully Sucker Punch is just barely able to redeem itself with a genuinely surprising and entertaining overall story.

An argument could be made that there are some profound messages here, but I don’t think Zack Snyder ever really intended to have any kind of deeper meaning to the script.

He just wanted to make a movie with everything he loves and geeks out to, like Quentin Tarantino or Robert Rodriguez.

That’s what makes Sucker Punch worth taking the plunge; it’s a film made by a big nerd that looks amazing. It has some serious problems, but thankfully it has enough to overcome the major stumbles.