Review Bombing A Modern Moral Quandary

Reviews are constantly a hot topic in the gaming industry. Be it a well known reviewer giving a beloved game an imperfect score causing outrage, see Jim Sterling and the absurd aftermath of his Breath of the wild review. Or an employee doing damage to a large brand by plagiarizing their review from a small independent creator, see the IGN and Boomstick gaming debacle. Some even perpetuate wild theories about game devs and the gaming media partaking in scandalous activities just to secure good reviews. It seems there is always new drama to get into surrounding the scores attributed to these works of art.

2019 Oscar Nominations: Snubs and Surprises

Being a huge fan of Film, the day the Oscar Nominations are released is one of my favorite movie-related days of the year only behind the actual Oscars and whichever major Marvel movie is being released. I make an effort each year to see every movie nominated for Best Picture (except 'The Artist'. The Artist can kick rocks). This year I managed to take advantage of AMC Theaters "A-List" membership which allows me to see up to three movies a week for an incredibly low fee of $20 a month (sup AMC? You're welcome for the free ad. Please sponsor the blog), so I've been fortunate enough to see just about every major release this year. As always, the nominations bring some snubs and surprises that have the Twitter-verse big mad and big happy online. Usually, I'm pretty content with the Oscar lineup each year (Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Screenplay are the Big 5 I care most about). However, this year I got some problems (outside of my personal life). Though before we get into that, here are the 2019 Oscar Nominations: 

The Remake Renaissance

Everything that’s old is once again new in the video game industry and that’s a good thing. It’s true that in console generations past old games have been given a new lease on life via ports and “remasters”. Often times however these were straight ports with no difference to the gameplay or graphics. This method worked well enough for games originating on 8 or 16 bit consoles as the games didn’t look too bad and the demographic of gamers purchasing these ports grew up with the titles.

EA Cancels Open World Star Wars Game

As a child the company EA conjured warm feelings in my cold nerd heart. I give credit to their EA sports games, which if you grew up playing madden as I did you just involuntarily flashed back to the PS2 era while reading that line. On top of well made sports simulations they produced their share of solid licensed properties such as Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, a game I remember quite fondly.