I remember seeing a story on Gamespot about something going on in comics and all of the comments raged and poked fun at how comic book news is unrelated to video games. So here's a Saturday Night Live story....
This works out for me because I love video games and Dick Grayson is my favorite comic book character, but I knew what sort of comments there would be.
I think that it was a good movie, a solid 7.5/10 or so, but I don't think there's any way you can sugar coat the massive number of ideas that were lifted from the original and quite honestly I find it shameful that so much of J.J.'s defense is "well, George stole those ideas from other people so it's okay for me to steal from him too". For one thing, no. Even if George Lucas had virtually copied his whole plot from another movie that wouldn't make this movie better for cloning a movie that was already a clone, it would make it worse. Secondly, George took little bits of inspiration from multiple sources and cobbled them together with his own ideas to form a unique experience (a method that basically every creator ever does, whether they're consciously aware of it or not). JJ lifted large chunks of plot from a single movie, a movie in the same franchise as the one he was making, which made the similarities so blatant that they bordered on parody. I rather wish he hadn't even made this statement, because before reading it I imagined that JJ was aware of the similarities, owned up to them, and basically had a "yeah, this is a rehash, but it's just to get introductions out of the way and it's setting up a fantastic new and unique trilogy, I promise" attitude. Now I see that he doesn't feel there's anything wrong with what he's done. This is his idea of original and creative writing. Because of that I'll admit I've lost some respect for the man.
Honestly, the problem I had with the movie wasn't even in how familiar the plot was, it was in the Mary Sue writing of space orphan Rey being able to do absolutely anything without any explanation, in a powerful villain (who showed no signs of pain from the crossbow blast during or after the fight so don't give me that "he was severely wounded" garbage) being reduced to suckage so we can promote feminism, in a series with some of the coolest sword fights I've ever seen being toned down and made more "realistic" so that they fit in with the rest of the movie about telekinesis or mind control or laser swords or planets that drain stars to blow up other planets (you know, all that other realistic stuff we've always loved about Star Wars), and in the forced cameos that didn't particularly aid the plot but allowed us to squeeze classic actors into the movie together (R2-D2 didn't need to have the map and the story would have lost nothing, the movie could have ended with Rey going to find Luke and Luke not being in the movie and there would have been arguably more hype for the sequel since we wouldn't know when/if Rey would find him or in what condition she would find him, and C-3P0 contributed nothing at all to this movie other than exposition about R2-D2 that anyone could have supplied as well as the only joke in the whole movie that made me scowl with frustration rather than smile or laugh).
I enjoyed the movie quite a bit. Finn and BB8 were surprisingly funny and Kylo Ren (final battle aside) was an amazing villain that I absolutely loved, but do I think they could have made a better movie by not lifting the whole plot of the original and just plugging in different characters? Yes, I 100% do.
I'm all for gender equality, but every time I see someone say "our main character is a girl because feminism, YEAH!!!!" it already gives me a bad opinion of the game. Female protagonists are great, but too often when someone calls so much attention to the gender and tries to get consumers to buy it on that alone, the product itself (be it a game, movie, book, whatever) doesn't have much to offer aside from the girl power element.
I hate to say it but I think it's time for Sakurai to move on and someone else to tackle Smash Bros. He's already, on more than one occasion, talked about not bringing certain Smash games to the US. He's already expressed that different games would be the last one and that he was done. He's gone on and on about how stressful it is for him. He decided against putting cinematics in the newest game because... People watched Brawl's cinematics on Youtube (facepalm)... And now, he specifically cites Cloud as something that he's gotten nothing but negative feedback on. Does he not have internet access? Has he not seen the oceans of people who think Cloud is an amazing, albeit unexpected, addition to the roster? He's got a serious case of confirmation bias. He's conditioned himself to believe that all people do is complain, so he focuses solely on the complaints while ignoring all the (much more frequent) praise. It's like if someone built this beautiful house with all these wonderful rooms, and Sakurai just chooses to focus on this one ugly painting on one wall, and he fixates on that and keeps listing off how bad this one painting makes him feel.
So yes, I appreciate all that Sakurai has done, as many people do (though I doubt he'll notice), but if it's that much of a problem then I fully believe that someone else should take up the reigns for Smash Bros NX. He'll be free of the project. Someone with fresh eyes and a full head of enthusiasm will be in charge. The fans will get another game. Everybody wins.
I would rather see gameplay, because everything this trailer told me wasn't that impressive. It's a shooter (that's not new), there's a squad (been done), destroyed buildings and devastated population (seen it), and a child singing lyrics that sound like they were written by a much younger child (new, but I'm now less likely to buy this than I was before I watched the "trailer"). This is actually the first trailer/video I've watched for this game. Other than knowing the title this is my first introduction to the game. So, I can tell you from a fresh perspective that this isn't something that will sell copies.
Now, I've never played FF7 all the way through (and if the total cost of the remake's "episodes" tallies out to more than $60 I never will) so this article doesn't particularly apply to me, but the guy who wrote it is legitimately a dick. Why would someone so whiny who clearly doesn't like the topic be forced to write the article on it? This was awful. Why should an article on a video game site detailing cheats from a video game be about insulting the reader? It's kind of disgusting really. This site has always been my go-to destination for gaming news and I'd like it to stay that way, but if you feel so strongly against the cheats then why bother to make the article at all? It's unnecessary and serves no purpose aside from belittling players. That's not news nor entertainment. I'm genuinely disappointed right now.
GTA, a game notorious for hooker-killing, is sexist? Shocking!
Honestly i could type a 50 page essay on the sheer number of reasons it's stupid for you to have a negative reaction to GTA being sexist, but I'll keep it short and sweet instead.
1. GTA's pretty much always been that way. Expecting GTA to be a respectful story of empowered women is like expecting South Park to become a swear-free religious cartoon. Don't be stupid and don't whine because a highly popular series doesn't radically change its ways to please your needs. If the majority agreed with you the company would go bankrupt. The fact that they're still making games the same way and still raking in mass profits should tell you something. Namely: get over it.
2. This is blatant nitpicking. I've never EVER seen a review of a Mario game where they keep pointing out "sadly, this is an ugly sexist game where the women's roles seem limited to being captured and held hostage while the deep emotional roles of koopa troopas and toads are all filled by males". Why is it that other male-dominated games aren't de-scored over it but here you felt that it so strongly needed to be?
3. The character you harped on is a spazzy psychopath. I'm not saying I don't like such characters, but think about that. You repeatedly talk about how great this lunatic is and then PMS because instead of an equivalent overly violent female psychopath all the women are too sane for you or something. Do you at all realize how childish this is? The cast seems pretty diverse, but because the characters who just happen to be women don't fill any of the roles or stock personalities that you like you feel the need to complain about how unfair this game is to women (for not making them homicidal maniacs). When you mentioned "goofy new-age feminists we're meant to laugh at" the irony was not lost on me. I honestly laughed out loud.
After seeing this review that's basically "GTA is flawed cause it's not nicer to women" and your Arkham Origins review which amounts to "This game is every bit as good as previous games so it deserves half the score" I have determined that you desperately need a career change.
@AK1015 That logic is flawed. Not everyone has played every game that's ever come out. Suppose a new Final Fantasy game came out and they gave it a 5/10 because even though it was the greatest of the series it was only marginally better than the others and didn't use any new material. If I had never played any Final Fantasy games and used this review to judge the whole series I would assume it was a collection of 4/10 and 3/10 games. Furthermore, I'd be ignoring what could be a GREAT storyline simply because the reviewer had played a game with similar gameplay a year before (and before you say anything about a great Final Fantasy story raising the score take a minute to realize that Carolyn admits in this review that the story to THIS game is pretty good but it's the familiar gameplay that causes the low score). If we're going to reduce scores because something's been done before then basically EVERY fps game should be getting 4s.
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