This week, Pokémon Go finally added a friends system. You can now add people as friends and there are fun little bonuses for working together. You can also trade Pokémon back and forth, assuming you both are in close proximity. It’s a wonderful addition and I look forward to checking it out in depth. But… Continue reading Social Experience
Author: Joshua Tong
Adaptation By Someone Else
One game that got some press at last week’s E3, the game industry’s annual event where games are announced and/or demo’d, was the upcoming Total War: Three Kingdoms. Apparently it was announced back in January, but I hadn’t heard of it until now. And I am intrigued. The Total War series are strategy games that… Continue reading Adaptation By Someone Else
On Rose and Trolls
The internet is often a place as terrible as it is wonderful. This past week, Kelly Marie Tran, who played Rose in The Last Jedi, left Instagram (and social media in general) after months of sexist and racist harassment. Months. This isn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened. Daisy Ridley (aka: Rey)… Continue reading On Rose and Trolls
Genre Bending
Altered Carbon is an oddball of a show. It’s got a science fiction setting, but primarily draws on noir for a lot of its narrative structure. Beyond that, though, it draws on a whole host of other science fiction media for inspiration, to varying effect. The show is science fiction noir in the stylings of… Continue reading Genre Bending
Space Cowboys
I’m honestly surprised I didn’t stumble upon Cowboy Bebop earlier. It’s got a lotta my favorite things (cool ships, genre blending, a ragtag crew) and it is a maddeningly good show. It also bears more than a few resemblances to another show about space cowboys that I love: Firefly. Or more Firefly resembles Cowboy Bebop,… Continue reading Space Cowboys
Motivated Acceleration
I am endlessly fascinated by mediums. No, not people who claim to talk to ghosts; rather the forms that stories can take. Why does this story work better as a novel? Why this a video game? Why that a play? It’s usually adaptations where you can see the cracks that are the chasms between mediums.… Continue reading Motivated Acceleration
Between a Wookie and a Hard Place
A recent trailer for Solo, that new Star Wars movie about, uh, Han Solo, ends with a bit of a cliffhanger. A (space) train hurtles along its tracks around a mountain as a battle rages atop it. It comes close to the cliff side and hanging out the train is none other then Chewbacca, and… Continue reading Between a Wookie and a Hard Place
Top Nine Movies of 2017
So it’s almost halfway through the year and I’m finally putting together my year end list. For 2017. Yeah. Kinda forgot about it. And by forgot about I mean procrastinated. Anyway! Here we go! Top Nine; leaving a space just in case there was something amazing I missed. 9. Logan This one edges out Thor… Continue reading Top Nine Movies of 2017
High Stakes
For a reason that can be tracked back to one specific thing that won’t be discussed due to spoilers, I’m thinking a lot about stakes. There’s this idea in a lotta stories that really good stakes are “will they die?” It was Game of Thrones’ modus operandi in the early seasons, and it was the… Continue reading High Stakes
Letting Lara Down
I was pretty excited for the Tomb Raider movie that came out a couple weeks ago. I’m a huge fan of the game it was based on, the Tomb Raider reboot that came out in 2013. The game was an origin story for Lara Croft, one that gameplay-wise took cues from the Uncharted series it… Continue reading Letting Lara Down
Essays, Not Rants! 