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Remembers those times where every game studio...
14 years ago
General
... tried to have their own timeless mascot character, which was supposed to be cool/extreme and the flagship title of their studios?
What ever happened to those times, huh?
Just made me think about it after reading a recent Penny Arcade about defunct flagship characters..
On a sidenote, been catching up on 3D animated movies I've been missing over the years.
Megamind? It was fun to watch, fun character.
Despicable Me? Eh, that one was alright as a first attempt, but it was still very much a kids movie with lots of pandering, obvious 3D glasses moments, but the scale felt very off. Sure, there was the idea of heroes and villians, but there was no sign of any heroes whatsoever.
Toy Story 3? Oh my god, fuck you Pixar. I watched this, I watched UP, stop with your succesful assaults on my emotions and get me teary-eyed! :( It was also interesting to see just how far their techniques have improved over the years, especially on rendering human characters. Remember the first Toy Story? Humans were abominations of plastic back then D:
Next stop, HTTYD.
What ever happened to those times, huh?
Just made me think about it after reading a recent Penny Arcade about defunct flagship characters..
On a sidenote, been catching up on 3D animated movies I've been missing over the years.
Megamind? It was fun to watch, fun character.
Despicable Me? Eh, that one was alright as a first attempt, but it was still very much a kids movie with lots of pandering, obvious 3D glasses moments, but the scale felt very off. Sure, there was the idea of heroes and villians, but there was no sign of any heroes whatsoever.
Toy Story 3? Oh my god, fuck you Pixar. I watched this, I watched UP, stop with your succesful assaults on my emotions and get me teary-eyed! :( It was also interesting to see just how far their techniques have improved over the years, especially on rendering human characters. Remember the first Toy Story? Humans were abominations of plastic back then D:
Next stop, HTTYD.
And I am still doing my best to avoid watching Toy Story 3, it left all of my friends bawling, dont wanna go through the same. And you may prolly enjoy HTTYD, I know I did. :D
I liked Gex in the first game, but then they decided to give him a British voice actor with a deep voice in the EU release of the sequels, and those really put me off.. :(
But it mostly felt like there was this insatiable need to have EDGY characters for the cool kids.
Heck, look at Darksiders. The puzzle gameplay borrows heavily from Legend of Zelda, combat and gore a-la God of War/Devil May Cry.. Titles which have sold well, so they wanted a piece of that pie.
Up and toy story 3 toyed with my emotions quite handily. curse them.
Mascots. mmeeeeh. I'm irritated by all the remakes they've done. Instead of a new zelda with link, for example, can we get an adventure game with different characters? I mean it's shamelessly the same concept, but give us some new heroes and villains.
It doesn't matter if they make a new hero/villian, in the end it'll always be compared to the original.
It's at times like these where I have a hard time comparing great games like Psychonauts to another one. It's a 3D platformer, it's not the first one in it's genre... but it does everything so well (well, maaaybe an iffy cam at times), and has such originality for its characters, I can't compare :p
I mean, gampeplay-wise it was merely a competent 3d platformer where you mainly walk around and collect breadcrumbs or get from point A to point B. The setting is reasonably original.
Character and humour-wise though is what really confuses me. You've got your mooks, your Saturday morning cartoon-style "cool" protagonist, your tired stereotype-centric secondary characters (such as the Patton-esque soldier or meek-but-powerful kid) with dartboard-decided appearances telling jokes with no punch lines which feel like they've been copy-pasted out of the least well executed installments of Monkey Island.
I'm not trying to troll but I'm curious to hear from a fan why you don't see any of that as being the case because I seem to be in the minority in thinking that Psychonauts was totally forgettable.
As for those movies, haven't seen Megamind or Despicable Me, liked Toy Story 3, loved HTTYD (yes, I liked HTTYD much more than Toy Story 3 - something I've been yelled at for before xD). Oh, and when you said "Fuck you Pixar", I immediately thought of Cars 2, which is on the level of a Seltzer & Friedburg shitfest (seriously, do not watch it.) Up was magnificent, and Rango was awesomely bizarre (mix a Morricone western, a kids movie, and Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, and you have Rango.)
And there's all the animated movies I've seen recently.
Another movie I'm trying to stay away from forever is Fly Me to the Moon. An animation studio who helped with it was showing off some clips at a reading some years ago, and their proudest moment was a shameless rip-off from Homer Simpson eating chips in space. Ugh...
Megamind was crazy, but it's a story that's been told a thousand times before. But again, the characters were a lot of fun to me. It also felt like it aimed more towards a slightly older audience, and after watching Dreamwork's favorite lovechild Shrek, it's also refreshing to see a main character who isn't constantly bickering or being moody about everything that happens to him.
Despicable Me, like I said before, felt very shallow and highly aimed towards the children. Not like there's anything wrong with it, but I like characters who have some impact.
He adopts 3 kids, one of which is the brainy one (imo a little smartass), the cute one who was.. being cute, and the tomboy girl who actually felt completely unneccesary to have in the movie. Seriously, take her out and nothing of value will be lost, holy trinity or not. Or maybe she was there to bring balance between the cute toddler and the annoying smartass.
Sometimes I just need to rant about the things that annoy me :D
Rango.. I don't know, I kinda want to watch it, same goes for Horton Hears a Who. But both of these movies already give me a feeling of "there's something I need to get before I watch this". I, for instance, never grew up with Dr Seuss. No Green Eggs and Ham, no Grinch, no Cat in the Hat. Heck, I tries watching the Grinch a while ago, but I mostly got annoyed by the outlandish items he kept describing in the beginning. I know Seuss had his particular style of rhyme, but again, that's the kind of stuff that makes me feel I need to understand something before I can watch it.
Megamind has taken a spot as one of my all-time favorite movies, as has How To Train Your Dragon.
I will forever be reminded of that scene whenever I hear "Welcome to the Jungle". YOU know the one.
Heeell yeah!