Month: May 2020

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They say that truth is often stranger than fiction. Behind every bizarre story told in the movies, TV, and books we read, there’s a little known reality that inspired it. But what about an entire realm of weird, where not just a single oddity is contained, but an endless stream of bizarre stories that shake the mind and heart. Something like… the Twilight Zone?

Well, it turns out there is a very real inspiration for the Twilight Zone and, as with most of the subjects we cover on True Fiction, the source of it lies in the personal history of a person. That person is Rod Serling, who lived through war and was irrevocable changed by it. The impact his life experiences had on him were given life in the stories he told–real-life traumas explored through the science fiction of a strange alternate realm.

When it came to telling his story in True Fiction, writer and presenter Kurt Indovina leveraged his own love of Serling’s work. Kurt is a huge fan of Serling, and as longtime watchers of True Fiction will no doubt have noticed, his presenting style has striking similarities to Serling’s. So, it only made sense to hear from Kurt on how he approached this particular story and what it was like to work on an episode of True Fiction about Twilight Zone.

For more True Fiction, head over to the YouTube playlist, where you’ll find episodes on Twin Peaks, Jackie Chan, Star Wars, and more.

Kurt: There’s no greater influence on my hosting style for True Fiction than Rod Serling–the creator, writer, and host of The Twilight Zone. I knew the moment I started working on True Fiction that I wanted to emulate Rod Serling, the way he wrote, the way he spoke and articulated every word, and the commanding presence he brought to the intro of every episode. Oh, and of course, to wear a suit. So when the opportunity came to adapt his real story into an episode of True Fiction, the task was a little daunting.

My admiration for Rod stretches far beyond just his on-screen presence, how he spoke, or how he wrote. His unrelenting obligation to speak against the injustice of mankind has left an imprint on me. Rod was a World War II veteran who came back mentally and physically scarred from the horrors of war, and somehow managed to channel his inner torment into his writing. As a result, he created some of the most iconic pieces of television ever written. All of which served as Rod’s commentary on race, war, death, and man’s inhumanity to man. His fiction is the greatest reflection of his views on reality.

It’s remarkable that Rod’s legacy is known as the black and white face of an anthology science fiction, but his principles and the topics he addressed ranged in an endless spectrum of grays. And with this episode of True Fiction, I hope to broaden the view of one of the most important faces in the television medium.

The Wonderful 101 is the latest in a long line of Wii U games to get a second chance at life on the Nintendo Switch. Platinum’s wacky Sentai superhero story was a true-blue made-for-Wii U experience: Using a combination of traditional buttons and hand-drawn symbols, you corral and control a mob of up to 100 characters who fight through beat-’em-up arenas, navigating reaction-based puzzle-platforming challenges and a litany of setpiece minigames. But something feels off about The Wonderful 101 Remastered. The seeds of Platinum’s best games are there–the snappy dodging and parrying, the clever writing and design, the demand that you hone the craft of controlling your characters–but it’s hard to appreciate them in a game that demands mastery over its complex mechanics without taking the time to properly explain how they work. Combined with new technical issues, The Wonderful 101 Remastered doesn’t just fail to make the generational jump, it forces us to question whether it warranted a second look.

The Wonderful 101 tells the story of Earth’s costumed global defense force, the Wonderful 100, who fight off an alien invasion. It’s a light, peppy romp across secret labs and cities under siege by aliens. Though there are 100 members, the narrative focuses on a few core, color-coded characters–trope-borne personas who exchange quips through their adventures.

Though the deeply campy storytelling creates some amusing moments, the story indulges a little too much in Sentai’s penchant for stretching out dramatic moments with sudden but ultimately inconsequential plot twists. Many a boss fight ends with you defeating your opponent and declaring victory, only for them to get up so you can beat them two or three more times. The jokes, good and bad, always overstay their welcome.

Thankfully, both the story and gameplay move at a very rapid pace. Levels jump from action to cutscene to puzzle to recurring setpiece minigames, including spaceship shoot-em-up sequences and Punch Out-style mech boxing. This is a game that’s supposed to move quickly and overload your brain with its massive scale, punchy wit, and great gameplay variety.

In theory, the blend of traditional action control and touchscreen gestures helps maintain that frenetic pace. You control a single member of the Wonderful 100 crew, who leads the entire group around in a mini mob of Pikmin-like pixel-people.

The team moves through each level, bouncing across platforms and fighting off waves of gigantic-looking aliens using the Wonderful 101’s curious, touchpad-controlled superpower, “uniting” the mob into giant weapons and tools for the leader. To build up your strength, you can rescue and deputize civilians into the Wonderful 100, increasing the maximum charge of your attacks. Like so many aspects of this game, the concept works well when you understand its mechanics, but it’s only explained in the broadest terms. It’s also used in puzzles, often without explanation, which creates unnecessary confusion.

Each of the core story heroes has a different weapon, which you summon by drawing a quick symbol, either using the right analog stick or the touchscreen in handheld mode. (Technically, you can also switch among the heroes using the second screen menu, which you can bring up picture-in-picture-style in the lower-right corner of the screen when you want it.) Each of the weapons has a number of uses in and out of combat. Wonder-Red, for example, summons a giant hand that can punch, but also turns giant gears and often grabs ledges and things in quick-time events. You also draw a large number of utilitarian abilities, like a hang glider, and contextual symbols for specific moments. Suddenly switching from thinking about pushing buttons to drawing shapes always manages to incite a small jolt of panicked excitement, whether you’re asked to do it mid-cutscene or to switch up your tactics during a fight.

The mechanic still feels very clever, especially in combat. Once you get past the early-game grunts, each enemy has specific weaknesses to exploit: Learning how to hit enemies hardest and how to counter their attacks makes for fast, but very tactical combat. Though there are a limited number of enemies, each level brings new combinations and environments to make situations more challenging and keep the intensity up, even when you have the tactic down for a specific opponent.

Unfortunately, though, the drawing mechanic becomes a liability in the Remaster. If you play on your TV, you have to use the right analog stick to draw, which isn’t precise. Even with plenty of time, it can take two or three tries to get the game to detect the criss-cross “claw” symbol instead of the similar wavy “whip” sign. Drawing is much easier in handheld mode, since you can use the touchscreen, but the small screen makes it harder to tell what’s going on, especially when the camera pulls way out to accommodate a very large enemy. It can be tough either way, though, as the size of your drawing is determined by how many characters you have on your team. It’s pretty easy to get carried away and run out of runway.

That said, it’s hard to tell what’s going on no matter what. The camera constantly feels misplaced. It gets too close during platforming sequences, making it hard to see where you’re going, and pull back too far during combat, making it hard to keep track of the character you control among the mass of tiny heroes running around.

Unfortunately, the drawing mechanic becomes a liability in the Remaster.

And sometimes, the game is too clever for its own good. Outside of combat, many of the rules and visual cues for how to address its puzzles, which are almost always timed, are unclear. Wonder-Green, who carries a gun, destroys a water tank in an early segment to put out a fire. From that point on, you are expected to know that, when you see anything hot, you use the gun to destroy a tank to put it out. Many hours later, when faced with an oncoming lava flow during a chase sequence, I didn’t think to shoot an unmarked tank to cool it before I was killed. While there is a logic that connects these puzzles, it’s a stretch to assume that I would see fire and think “shoot tank to put out the fire,” especially without any indication that the tank would cool off the lava. Wonderful 101 is littered with these kinds of logical leaps, often in puzzles that need to be solved under pressure. There’s nothing more frustrating than charging into a situation full-speed and dying without any idea of what you did wrong.

Many of The Wonderful 101’s issues–unexplained mechanics, finicky drawing controls, and so on–are exacerbated by the less-than-polished state of the Switch port. Technical issues with the save system, hit detection, camera controls, and drawing all created enough doubt in my mind that, when I experienced a problem or got stuck, I wondered whether I was misunderstanding the game or if something wasn’t working.

Even if the technical hiccups get fixed in a patch, though, the Wonderful 101 doesn’t stand the test of time. Remastered or not, I constantly felt like there were missing steps or if I was figuring things out too slowly to keep up with the hyperactive story and its multifaceted gameplay. What’s more, the transition to the Switch, even with its touchscreen capabilities has only exacerbated the game’s core problems. There’s a great concept and the good combat mechanics we know Platinum can achieve in there, but you’ll need a lot of patience to find them.

When you think streaming services, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Hulu immediately come to mind. However, aside from those most notable services, there are plenty of others you may or may not be familiar with. And GameSpot’s sister site CNET has decided to rank over 100 of them. Yes, 100.

Using a tiered system–from F Tier to S Tier–CNET’s Ashley Esqueda gave each of the services a total score, based on five categories: Price, Originals (quantity not quality), Back Catalog, Variety, and Accessibility. The opening example used in the video was YouTubeTV, which scored a 1 in Price ($50 a month), a 5 in Originals, an 8 in Back Catalog, a 10 in Variety, and a 10 in Accessibility. It scored a 34 in total, which lands it in the C Tier.

Below, you’ll find the full video where CNET breaks down these streaming services, which included plenty of ones you’ve probably never heard of.

There are a few notable services missing from the list. First is Plex, which at one time was just a way to share content from your computer with friends. However, it’s now shifted gears to be an ad-supported movie site, almost exactly like Crackle or IMDbTV. Because of this, it would land itself in the D Tier, using CNET’s ranking system.

Then, there’s the WWE Network, which is amazing if you love cheap PPVs. However, since the recent redesign, the UI is a bit rough, it’s not accessible on all Smart TVs since thew upgrade, and while the original content WWE produces is fantastic, it’s not making it as much anymore. More than likely, it would land in the C Tier. Also missing are NJPW World, Fite TV, and a few other very niche services.

Now that you know the ranking system, you probably need something new to watch. Consider listening to GameSpot’s weekly TV series and movies-focused podcast, You Should Be Watching. With new episodes premiering every Wednesday, you can watch a video version of the podcast over on GameSpot Universe or listen to audio versions on Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, and Apple Podcasts.

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If you’re in the market for a new laptop, TV, or monitor, Best Buy is always one of the best places to look. The retailer regularly offers big discounts on some really great tech products, and Best Buy’s latest one-day sale features 20 products across computing and home entertainment that are worth checking out. We’ve highlighted a few of the best deals below, and you can see the full sale at Best Buy. The deals end at 10 PM PT / 1 AM ET, so grab what you want as soon as possible.

MacBook Pro 15.4-inch

$2,900 ($3,800)

Regularly $3,800, you can save $900 on one of the highest-performing MacBook Pros. Equipped with a powerful Intel Core i9 processor and AMD Radeon Pro 560X video card, this MacBook Pro is excellent at multi-tasking, video editing, and even gaming thanks to 32GB of RAM. It also comes with a 1TB solid-state drive. The Space Gray model is the only one on sale at this price, but if you really want the silver model, you can pay an extra $100.

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TCL 65-inch 4K Roku TV

$1,000 ($2,000)

With most people spending more time at home, it’s probably not uncommon to want to upgrade your TV. The best TV deal at Best Buy right now is this TCL 65-inch 4K Smart TV with Roku built in. With true 4K and Dolby Vision HDR, you can be sure that you’re getting incredibly sharp images whether you’re watching a movie or gaming. It also has Dolby Atmos, so you’re getting surround-sound quality audio out of the box. As a Smart TV with Roku, you can easily access all of your favorite streaming services without needing anything else.

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Asus TUF gaming monitor

$200 ($250)

Asus makes some of the best gaming PCs and monitors on the market today, and right now you can save $50 on a gorgeous gaming monitor. This 24-inch IPS display has lighting fast 1ms response time to prevent lag and keep your games running smoothly. With a 144hz refresh rate, you can play at unlocked framerates. It also has AMD’s FreeSync technology, which is particularly helpful to stabilize framerate when paired with an AMD graphics card. For more monitor options, check out our best budget monitors for under $200 roundup.

The Grudge–also known as Ju-On–was one of the key movies in the wave of Japanese horror of the 2000s. There have been no fewer than 12 Japanese movies and four American versions to date, the most recent of which, The Grudge, was released in January this year. The franchise is now making the move to the small screen as a new Netflix series. The first trailer has been released.

The show is titled Ju-On: Origins. It’s a Japanese production and is set to focus on the evil house that supposedly inspired the original movies. The trailer delivers everything that fans love about the franchise, including terrible curses, creepy kids, and weird noises, plus some scary-looking stuff involving a deformed baby. Check the trailer out below:

Ju-On: Origins hits Netflix on July 3. The streaming giant has released a synopsis, which reads, “The J-Horror classic franchise Ju-On was actually based on real events that occurred over four decades–and the truth is even more terrifying. Can the people haunted by this house escape from its curse? And what kind of grim incident occurred in this cursed house in the past?”

In a recent interview with Moshi Moshi, series producer Takashige Ichise spoke about what drew him to the new show. “I’ve long had thoughts of wanting to write the part of the story that can’t really be adapted into a film and make it into a drama series,” he said. “But there are too many restrictions in Japanese television so I haven’t been able to do it. Even when I made horror for TV before, I was told to not make it too scary. So when I got the call from Netflix to do this, I responded immediately with a ‘Yes!'”

For more check out GameSpot’s guide to the biggest upcoming horror movies of 2020 and beyond.

Robert Pattinson isn’t a typical leading man, in many ways, and in an extraordinary new interview published by GQ shows off the oddball energy he is bringing to The Batman (which has halted production) and Christopher Nolan’s next film, Tenet. Here are some of the highlights from the long, strange interview.

While Batman has typically been a pretty muscular, bulky screen presence, Pattinson admits in this interview that he has not been working out during his isolation in London. “I think if you’re working out all the time, you’re part of the problem,” he tells GQ. “No one was doing this in the ’70s. Even James Dean–he wasn’t exactly ripped.” Pattinson says that while co-star Zoe Kravitz has reportedly been working out five days a week, he is “barely doing anything,” ignoring his trainer’s advice.

This could mean that we’ll see a different kind of Batman in the upcoming film, one with less muscle–and perhaps quite unique, judging by some of Pattinson’s comments. “I kind of like the fact that not only are there very, very, very well-done versions of the character which seem pretty definitive, but I was thinking that there are multiple definitive playings of the character,” he says. “I was thinking, it’s fun when more and more ground has been covered. Like, where is the gap? You’ve seen this sort of lighter version, you’ve seen a kind of jaded version, a kind of more animalistic version.”

“And the puzzle of it becomes quite satisfying, to think: Where’s my opening,” he continued. “And also, do I have anything inside me which would work if I could do it…In some ways it’s, I don’t know… It makes you a little kind of spicy.”

He admits that he tends to be quite candid in interviews too, saying this his publicist regularly asks after interviews if there are “any kind of fires” he has just set with his words.

Pattinson also talks about Tenet, Christopher Nolan’s new film that he stars in. The film remains fairly mysterious, with little revealed outside the one trailer, and Pattinson doesn’t have much to add. “Even if I had seen it, I genuinely don’t know if I’d be able to,” he says, asked to describe it. “This thing, it’s so insane,” he continues, before talking about how the crew travelled the world to shoot it. “And in each country there’s, like, an enormous set-piece scene, which is like the climax of a normal movie. In every single country.”

He also adds that the movie, despite appearances, features no time travel. “That’s, like, the one thing I’m approved to say,” he adds.

But all of these insights pale in comparison to Pattinson’s stated plans to start a pasta fast food restaurant, Piccolini Cuscino (Little Pillow). You absolutely need to read the full piece to enjoy this story the way it’s meant to be enjoyed, but it involves valuable lessons about not microwaving foil and using a lighter to burn messages into your food.

Tenet is still scheduled to hit cinemas on July 17 (although that date is looking increasingly unlikely as the COVID-19 pandemic continues), while The Batman has been delayed until October 1, 2021.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.