Posts Tagged ‘Games’

19 Mar

Ahead: 2013

Posted by vagrantesque in Games, Lists, Movies. Tagged: , , .

Here are two more lists for you to disagree with at your leisure.

So just over a year ago year I got all excited about the pile of new movies and games that were coming out in 2012 and posted a pair of top ten lists to order my anticipation. As it turned out, I didn’t even end up watching some of the movies on the list and an embarrassing amount of the games I wrote about didn’t even come out in 2012. Here’s hoping I’ll be a little more accurate with this year’s equivalent.

For the sake of neatness, I’ll only count movies/games that are coming out after the month of March has run its course.

MOVIES

10. jOBS (Teaser)
I’m curious, OK? I don’t actually think Ashton Kutcher is the worst guy in the world and, even if his turn as the late great Steve Jobs sucks, this movie is still going to be talked about quite a bit and I want in on that conversation.

9. World War Z (Trailer)
Zombie movies can be great, they can be decent, or they can be so bad they’re good. In my lifetime I have never come across one that is just bad, and so I will happily watch the eerie World War Z when it hits.

8. The Great Gatsby (Trailer)
Baz Luhramann’s latest pulls out so many Moulin Rouge stops in its trailers that it kinda demands to be watched on style factor alone. Which I suppose is Luhrmann’s deal in the first place. Leo DiCaprio and Michelle Williams sweeten the deal.

7. Pacific Rim (Trailer)
On face value I can’t really believe that this movie is actually happening. It looks like Battleship meets Real Steel, and while the latter movie was surprisingly decent, the former, well, it kinda sucked. Everything changes, of course, when you realise that Guillermo del Toro is directing. Colour me hyped.

6. Despicable Me 2 (Teaser)
If there was ever a non-Disney, non-Dreamworks animated feature that surprised me enough for me to rate it among my favourite animated movies of all time, it’s the hilarious and heartfelt Despicable Me from Illumination Entertainment. Now a sequel is well on the way and while it will struggle to top the first one, you can bet I’ll be at the cinemas in week one to make that call for myself.

Continue reading →

28 Dec

Best of 2012: Top 10 Games

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2012, Games, Lists. Tagged: , , , , .

YouLoveIt

This is where things get serious. It’s the home stretch of my top ten lists covering 2012’s finest entertainment media.

Of all the lists I put together in my head for posting on Vagrant Rant, this one was the least clear-cut. Partially due to the motivation of having a blog to write, I finished more games in 2012 than I have in any calendar year before, which gave me a pretty sizeable pool of experiences from which to draw. Ordering them was a real headache. Seriously, I adore every one of the games in the “Honorable Mentions” section at the bottom of this page and it’s hard to believe I had to cut any of them. Of course, there were some critical and commercial gems I didn’t play at all in 2012, which is a bit of a shame. Sorry, Farcry 3, Mass Effect 3 and Journey.

Unlike when I review a game, I decided not to let the fact that I haven’t finished a certain title stop me from including it on the list. This is ultimately a list of games I enjoyed playing this year, after all. However, to make the list a little fairer, at least in theory, I decided to disqualify any game I haven’t played for at least five hours of game time. That gets rid of some truly high-quality 2012 titles, most notably Uncharted: Golden Abyss, New Super Mario Bros U, Dishonored, Paper Mario Sticker Star and, yes, Call of Duty: Black Ops II. Regardless, it does mean that I’ve had at least a half-decent look at everything you’re about to read about.

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VR BEST OF 2012 DISCLAIMER
This list represents my opinion only. I am not asserting any kind of superiority or self-importance by presenting it as I have. My opinion is not fact. If you actually agree with me 100%, that’s scary. You have been warned, fanboys.
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10. Kid Icarus: Uprising

Uprising was fighting it out with Mario Tennis Open for this spot on the list, but despite all the multiplayer fun I had with the latter, it was just too hard to discount the entire package that the latest Kid Icarus title offered 3DS owners in 2012. Combining some of the best graphics and craziest stereocopic 3D available on the portable with a clever difficulty system, addictive multiplayer and a host of content aproaching Smash Bros levels of ridiculousness, Kid Icarus: Uprising is a marvelous game, even if its controls take some getting used to.

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10 Dec

Behind, Pt 2

Posted by vagrantesque in Games, Lists. Tagged: , , .

With last Saturday marking the last decent-sized game release of the year (Paper Mario), it’s about time to reflect on how misguidedly optimistic I was at the start of 2012 for game releases.

2012 has been an awesome year for video games, and even if it you are of the belief that it fell short of 2011 in terms of overall quality, it’s hard to argue that we’ve been treated to some fantastic titles. And a fair few delays.

So, just like I did with movies a few weeks back, I’m going to look back at that list I posted back in February, wherein I rolled out a list of my top ten most anticipated games of the year, without the knowledge that half of them wouldn’t hit in 2012 at all:

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20 Jun

The Other Ones

Posted by vagrantesque in Games, Lists. Tagged: , , .

This is the second of my two E3 articles for the year. Then on to some more reviews!

The press conferences of the Electronic Entertainment Expo are usually the most hyped part of the show, and for good reason, but they’re only half the story. The show floor invariably reveals a few uncelebrated diamonds in the rough every year and E3 2012 was no different. A great many games that were absent from the five press conferences showed up on the floor and tried their best to impress.

Here are five of my favourite non-conference games from this year’s show, in no particular order:
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Project P-100
Completely absent from any of the Nintendo press conferences, this incredibly quirky trans-genre… thing looks surprisingly fun to play on the Wii U. Best described as a cross between Pikmin and a drawing-based superhero game, it came as no surprise to me that the sheer hectic pace of the cartoony action was engineered by none other than Platinum Games, developers of the excellent MadWorld, Bayonetta and Vanquish. Bring it. Continue reading →

24 Feb

Ahead

Posted by vagrantesque in Games, Lists, Movies. Tagged: , , .

I looove lists. Especially top fives/tens. You’ll be seeing a few of them here on Vagrant Rant, starting here. Enjoy : )

Unless the end of the world comes on time according to the Mayan calendar, it is going to be an incredible year for entertainment media. There is just so much to look forward to. I won’t bore you with the album releases I am most looking forward to this year, but here are my top ten most anticipated movies and games of (the rest of) 2012!

MOVIES

10. Looper (Info)
Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis play the same character, but one is trying to kill the other. Sound intriguing? I certainly think so.

9. Snow White and the Huntsman (Trailer)
An epic reimagining of the classic fairytale with more violence and more Chris Hemsworth/Charlize Theron. Looks awesome.

8. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (Trailer)
I’m not the world’s biggest Lord of the Rings fan but I actually read The Hobbit, so I’m keen to see how it turns out as a film.

7. The Amazing Spider-Man (Trailer)
Hopefully director Marc Webb can deliver a version of Spider-Man that has its own unique identity. The trailers suggest he will.

6. John Carter (Trailer)
The 100 year-old inspiration for the likes of Star Wars and Avatar finally looks like getting a worthy movie adaptation. Continue reading →

19 Feb

On Reviewing

Posted by vagrantesque in Misc. Tagged: , , , .

We live in a world where entertainment media saturates our lives. Music, movies and videogames make billions of dollars every year and the vast majority of us are contributors to this in some way. As frequent consumers of this media living in financially troubled times, we often turn to the opinions of others to help us make a decision on what to part with our money for. They can make us feel more at ease about our purchasing decisions and, if things go sour, they give us someone to blame.

Stack it up

CDs and DVDs and Blu-Rays oh my!

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Whether the opinions we seek are those of our close friends, professional critics or random people on the street, the end result is some kind of review. From essay-length dissections to that old chestnut of eloquent wisdom, “It’s pretty good”, they can all be useful in their own way.

But because people are all so different from one another, opinions tend to vary quite wildly from person to person. Different experiences and personalities influence the way we react to the things we consume. Yet you might find that Continue reading →

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