Closer Links

No Man's Sky: The Kotaku Review. It's really hard to find a review for No Man's Sky that is able to separate the crashing of the hype train from the actual experience of the game. This Kotaku one does a pretty good job. Some might argue the review is a bit to generous. You could probably claim they're in the pocket of BIG VIDEO GAME but they're owned by Gawker so I'm pretty sure Hulk Hogan runs everything now.

A Closer Look At The Overwhelmingly Sexist Coverage Of Female Olympians. NBC's coverage in particular has been garbage. Yes, most of the sexist stuff has come from print and digital media but just the overall experience of watching the Olympics has been super sub par. Just a couple days ago there was one of the best Pole Vault duels in Olympic history, it ended with the hometown kid setting an Olympic record and the crowd booing the snot out of the French champion until he broke down and cried. NBC spent all of 3 minutes on it. Worse those 3 minutes were spaced throughout 4 hours of coverage. They didn't need to dedicate hours to it but 10 or 15 minutes dedicated to just that event would have done wonders. Of course the final was between a Brazilian and a Frenchman so I guess I can see why NBC wasn't interested.

One day NBC will learn that people from other countries can have interesting stories. In an international competition it's not a bad idea to actually address the rest of the world. If for no other reason than to put a face on the opposition. They're so focused on telling a "good story" they forget most stories have a good protagonist and antagonist.

I know the fact that they tape delay everything is a big hot topic but I don't care about that. I'd rather they show everything in primetime. If you want to watch events live you can find them on the internet or one of the other dozen channels they have. For me it's the almost zero effort, paint by numbers approach they've taken to the games. They could have just replayed their coverage from 2012 and I'll be no one would have noticed.

The Door to Hell, Turkmenistan. Cool little imgur gallery to someone's trip to the Door to Hell in Turkmenistan. If you've never seen or heard of this it's basically a mining accident turned eternal fire pit. It's pretty cool.

Comics Creators of 1995 Predict the Future! Wow, don't ever say that creative types aren't smart. A couple of these answers on what comic books will look like in 20 years are shockingly accurate. Doug Moench in particular with his prediction of an digital distribution model is eerily accurate.

Today's Consoles are an Amazing Value

I ran across this infographic of the original price and the adjust for inflation price of a few notable video game consoles. I have no idea if these are correct, but it was on the internet. I can't imagine anyone would like on the internet.

The first thing that jumps out at me is how ridiculous expensive the Atari 2600 was, $200 in 1977 was no small amount. I think your best values on here are the Dreamcast (natch), Xbox 360 and the Wii. The 360 had a ridiculously long life span (assuming you never got the RROD) and revolutionized the way you play consoles on-line. The Wii and DC fizzled out relatively quickly but considering how revolutionary both were AND how relatively cheap they were I can't not consider them great values. You can take your pick between the 3DO and the Neo-Geo as to which is the worst value. Both consoles were ridiculously expensive and never had a great games library. For the cost of a single Neo-Geo you could buy a SNES and Genesis and a TurboGrafx 16. Being able to swap memory cards with arcade games isn't worth that kind of money.

Smell Ya Later No Man's Sky

I'm sad to say that reviews for No Man's Sky on the PS4 are mixed at best. I'm even sadder to say that reviews for it on the PC are downright bad. There are reports of crashes, significant drops in frame rates, video card compatibility issues, stuff you generally associate with a half-assed PC Port. The game itself sounds alright, it's not like its getting raked over the coals or anything but most of the complaints I've seen is that it gets pretty repetitive, there's very little plot and the random world generator doesn't provide you with as interesting as a gameplay experience as hand crafted worlds do. I've seen a lot of gamers complain that this would be a great $19.99 indy title but it's nowhere near worth $59.99.

Sounds like the hype train has officially left the station, or did it arrive at the station? I'm not sure how that metaphor works. Either way it was fun while it lasted. I guess I'll just have to look forward to Overwatch Season 2. Maybe... and this is a big maybe, I'll pick up No Man's Sky on a steam sale after they work out all the bugs. Of course I still have Fallout: New Vegas, Bioshock Infinite and The Witcher 1-3 sitting in my library unplayed. Maybe I'll just wait for No Man's Sky 2.

Then and Now

I'm Taking my Talents to Rose City Comic Con

Welp, it finally happened. I just bought tickets to a comic book convention that isn't Emerald City Comicon. Yes, I'm only headed a couple hundred miles south to the fine city of Portland, but this is still sort of a big deal for me. The last year or so I've been thinking about how much fun it would be to travel to a bigger con in some other state. Rose City isn't exactly a bigger con, but I can drive there so my out of pocket cost isn't that crazy. I'd have to check but I'm pretty sure two days at Rose City plus a hotel for a night in Portland was less than I paid for tickets to ECCC this year.

Should be fun, Rose City Comic Con had a partnership with the old owners of Emerald City. The website and logo, even the way they distribute tickets via local comic book shops, is very much what ECCC looked like two years ago before they were bought out by BIG COMIC BOOK CONVENTION.

The convention is about a month away so I have a good amount of time to obsess about driving down there and eating lunch alone. Hopefully its a good time. I've never put a bird on anything, so that will be fun.

Prophets of Rage Bulls on Parade Live at Jimmy Kimmel

Did you know that Rage Against the Machine is currently on tour with Chuck D and B-Real as their new frontmen? They call themselves Prophets of Rage and have a new song out but if you look them up on youtube you'll find a ton of video of them performing old Rage Against The Machine songs. Sure they've gone on record saying this is a completely different thing, but this is definitely getting into Vanilla Ice "bum bum bum b d bum" territory here.

This is probably old news to some of you given that they've been on Kimmel and are getting radio play for their first single but I've been living under an Overwatch sized rock and haven't taken notice to anything in pop music for a while.

I never was a HUGE Rage Against the Machine fan. The song writing on their earlier albums was pretty terrible (Killing In The Name Of has barely one verse) but the later Albums including the cover album were really really good. I am however a HUGE Public Enemy fan so pretty much anywhere Chuck D shows up I'm willing to take a listen. He sounds as good as ever here, sure he's basically rework old Public Enemy songs into new verses but who cares. You can do a lot worse than old Public Enemy.

Everything's fine at the WB

Yikes, an anonymous letter to Warner Bros CEO Kevin Tsujihara was posted over on Pajiba yesterday implies that the upcoming Wonder Woman movie is a mess. I mean it does a bunch of other stuff too but I'm only worried about Wonder Woman. For anyone that's seen the last 2 or three DC movies none of it is very surprising. It's a former employee of WB blaming the big boss for all the failures of the studio. I'm not sure why the internet is treating it like it's such a big deal?

I blame him too. I think everyone does. I don't know, go ahead and give it a read yourself. I don't see a whole lot of substance to the letter just a lot of vitriol.

Sure Batman v Superman wasn't as big of a hit as expected and it bombed with the critics. Is anyone surprised they're sticking with Zack Snyder? I mean the movie still made a bunch of money and there are fanboys out there that will defend it to their deaths. At this point I doubt Warner Bros (and to a lesser extant DC comics) have a back up plan if these movies start bombing.

Back to my original point and reason for writing this. I'm bummed to hear that there are rumblings that Wonder Woman might be a mess. The trailer was SOOOOOO good and I think a lot (and I mean a lot) of fans are excited about a female hero soloing finally soloing a film on the big screen. You think people were upset at Superman's portrayal in Man of Steel? You do not want to get Wonder Woman fans angry.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story Trailer

Boy howdy was this new Rogue One trailer a sight for sore eyes last night. It was a rough day at work, then when I came home the kids were terrors and I had a soccer game I didn't really feel like going to. After getting home late last night, injured and mosquito bitten, I sat down and watched a couple minutes of NBC's terrible Olympic coverage and low and behold Ryan Seacrest was premiering the new Rogue One trailer.

It's a great trailer but knowing they had to do a ton of reshoots and having just seen Suicide Squad (another movie that had a ton of reshoots) I'm a bit nervous. I really really want these Star Wars spin off movies to actually be good and not just Disney cash grabs.