Four Tips for Building a Better Alien Video Game

In the many months since of the Aliens: Colonial Marines video game, Gearbox attempted to fix a few of its many errors in the game by releasing a stream of upgrade patches and downloadable content (DLC). The latest DLC, which was released on July 24th, has been titled Stasis Interrupted and it is a complete campaign that depicts how Corporal Dwayne Hicks escaped the grim fate that was depicted for him in Alien 3. Click here to see a post on the AvP Galaxy site that features video clips that cover the entire campaign.

From what I've seen in the video clips provided, Stasis Interrupted really is the kind of story that Alien franchise fans were hoping for when Colonial Marines was first announced. It's not a perfect story, but it's a significant improvement over the original game's plot and mechanics. The cast of characters in Stasis Interrupted are much more interesting than the ones in Colonial Marines, the Aliens behave more like the stealthy, calculating threats that they're supposed to be, and returning Aliens cast members Michael Biehn and Lance Henriksen are given much more interesting things to do with their respective roles. Sadly, the fact that Gearbox has treated Stasis Interrupted as an insignificant afterthought by quietly releasing it six months after the release of the main game is just another line item to be added to the extensive list of everything Gearbox did wrong with its contribution to the Alien franchise. Click here to read my original post about the disastrous release of Colonial Marines.

With that in mind, here are a few suggestions that I have for game developers who will be developing whatever Alien games are commissioned in the future. For all of its improvements, Stasis Interrupted still treated the Aliens as nothing more than moving targets that are meant to be shot. Read on for four Alien attributes that game developers can utilize to make a superior video game experience.

1. The Alien is extremely resilient. As the franchise has depicted on many occasions, the Alien is ready and able to survive in even the harshest of environments. Thus, an Alien game could put players in a situation where they have to survive against an Alien onslaught while stuck in a hostile environment (e.g., a toxic atmosphere, frequent incidents of extreme weather, a lighter or heavier gravitational pull, etc.). Here's where developers could learn something from The Thing video game that was released back in 2002: In addition fighting against attacks from the titular Thing monsters, players also had to frequently find shelter from the relentless Arctic cold before they froze to death.

2. The Alien can rapidly evolve to meet changing environmental demands, such as new kinds of hosts and prey. As it was hinted at throughout the franchise and directly addressed in Prometheus, the Alien has a genetic plasticity built into its parasitic reproductive process that allows it to assume new shapes, behaviors and abilities. For example, the deleted cocoon scene in Alien suggested that the Alien could function as a solitary predator, while the hive present in Aliens suggested that the Aliens could organize themselves into a social hierarchy for the purpose of overtaking a large population of hosts/prey in a short amount of time. A future Alien game could take place on worlds with forms of life that produce a very different kind of Alien, or it could introduce a new Engineer artifact that would greatly influence the evolution of the Alien.

Imagine what an Alien video game would be like if it were set in the Avatar universe.

3. The Alien has acid blood. When considering what is known about the Alien, video games that are built around it should provide fully destructible environments that can be damaged by the Alien's acid blood. In most Alien video games, the acid blood that erupts from shooting an Alien at close range may damage the player, but it doesn't eat through floors, walls or other surfaces like it does in the Alien movies; thus, these games emphasize the shooter aspect of game play while ignoring one of the Alien's most distinct characteristics as a movie monster. When fighting a horde of Aliens in an enclosed space, shooting them by the dozens with a machine gun will be the last thing you want to do, since their blood would compromise the structural integrity of the building, space station or space craft that surrounds you. Thus, an Alien game should allow players to use alternate forms of weaponry--weapons that shock, cauterize and incapacitate rather than puncture, shatter and explode--which will put a greater emphasis on strategy and survival than firepower and marksmanship.

4. The Alien is very, very weird. I'll give Colonial Marines credit where credit is due: It expanded upon the designs of Weyland-Yutani technology used by humans, but it did nothing to provide something new and bizarre from the biomechanical world of the Aliens and their Engineer creators. There's much more to Alien and its sequels and prequels than claustrophobic spaces and heavily industrialized environments; at its most disorienting and intimidating, protagonists in each film are confronted by something unmistakably alien. Game designers for future Alien games should spend plenty of time reviewing the grotesque and erotic artwork of H.R. Giger in order to take gamers further into the universe where no one can hear you scream.

Robotech Double Shot: Love, Live, Alive DVD Arrives this Week, Robotech/Voltron Comic Book Crossover in the Development

Some franchises can be very, very difficult to love. Take Robotech, for example. For an anime series from 1985 that many fans love, it can't seem to catch a break. The sequel series The Sentinels never got off the ground, and Robotech: The Movie wound up being a forgettable mess. The last major entry in the series' canon was Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles, which was released on home video back in 2006. That particular release arrived with a bit of fanfare: It was preceded by a series of Robotech comic book miniseries by Wildstorm (a publishing imprint of DC Comics) that retconned a few key points in the saga to prepare for the new Shadow Chronicles addition. Adding to the hype was Toynami's release of a few expensive Shadow Chronicles vehicle and robot collectibles.

Shadow Chronicles finally arrived in the midst of the hype, promising a new series of adventures in the Robotech universe, and then ... nothing. No new animation, no new comic books, nothing. There were some releases for the Robotech role-playing game since 2006, but that meant nothing for fans who don't play RPGs. Now, after seven years, more Robotech stuff is on its way, although not all of it can be considered 'new'. Read on for a rundown on Robotech items that are scheduled for release for this week and beyond.

Robotech: Love, Live, Alive is going to be released this week on DVD. Love, Live, Alive will involve the New Generation cast of characters from the series, and it will focus mostly on Lancer Belmont (a.k.a. Yellow Dancer) and his memories of the Invid invasion of Earth, from the Invid's arrival to their later departure. Early reports about this release also hinted that the Southern Cross character Dana Sterling will appear in Love, Live, Alive; I'm assuming that, based on what was seen of Sterling in Wildstorm's Robotech: Love and War comic book miniseries, her departure from Earth will coincide with the early days of the Invid invasion.

I have mixed feelings about Love, Live, Alive. Even though it's billed as a new release, only one-third of the animation is actually new. The remaining two-thirds consist of recycled animation from the original Robotech series and animation from the 1985 Genesis Climber Mospeada home video release that was also titled Love, Live, Alive. I can only speculate how the animation from 1985 will match the more recent animation, but I doubt it will look good. Furthermore, Love, Live, Alive will not be available in the Blu-ray format, nor is it being released as its own feature. It's only being released on DVD as part of a two-movie set that includes a re-release of Shadow Chronicles. Thus, Robotech fans who already bought Shadow Chronicles will have to buy it again to see Love, Live, Alive. Ugh.

Nevertheless, I'll still give Love, Live, Alive a go because its producers went to the trouble of reuniting the original voice cast for the New Generation to record dialogue for the new release. It should also be noted that this American version of Love, Live, Alive was directed by Gregory Snegoff, who provided the voice of New Generation character Scott Bernard. In real life, Snegoff was married to Lisa Michelson, the actress who provided the voice of Dana Sterling; Michelson died in a car accident in 1991, so it feels fitting for Snegoff to be directing Sterling's swan song in the Robotech series.

While Love, Live, Alive isn't getting the same hype as Shadow Chronicles, a news release from last week indicated that new Robotech comics will be on their way sometime in the future. Dynamite Entertainment has picked up the Robotech license and it plans to begin releasing new Robotech comics soon. (I'm guessing the new comics will appear in 2014, since no publication date was provided in the news release I saw.) Dynamite's Robotech comics will launch with a crossover miniseries involving Voltron, another hit anime franchise from the mid-'80s. Click here to read MTV's exclusive interview with Tommy Yune, the current creative director for all things Robotech, about the crossover.

I don't have much of an opinion about the Robotech/Voltron crossover. I realize that this is probably Dynamite's way to stir interest in its readership about Robotech through Voltron, since Voltron comics are selling quite well for Dynamite. However, what I'm really concerned about is where Robotech will go once it gets its own comic book series again. Will the comic give fans interesting new chapters in the saga (which is what happened when Eternity Comics had the license from 1988 to 1994), or will we be getting more retcons that go nowhere, like the Robotech comics from Wildstorm?

Beware the Batman Debuts on Cartoon Network

Last weekend was the premiere of Beware the Batman, the latest animated series about Batman that airs as part of Cartoon Network's DC Nation hour. It's the second DC superhero series to exclusively use CG animation, with the first being the recently cancelled Green Lantern.

When Beware the Batman was first announced by Cartoon Network, two details were emphasized: 1) that the supporting cast would include DC C-list heroine Katana and a revamped version of Alfred Pennyworth, Bruce Wayne's butler; and 2) that the villains in the series would consist of newer and more obscure members of Batman's rogues gallery instead of classic and familiar foes such as the Joker, Mr. Freeze and Two-Face.

So, how does Beware the Batman fare with its interpretation of the Caped Crusader? The premiere episode is a mixed bag, with some signs of potential and a few nagging problems. Read on for my complete review.

The best thing that Beware the Batman has in its favor is the CG animation. In terms of visuals, this series has style to spare, and the CG format allows for spectacular action scenes. If this series delivers nothing else in the long run, it'll at least provide many sleek and well-choreographed adventures for die-hard DC fans. I also noticed that Batman's suit has a dull shimmer to it, which reminded me of the sculpted foam rubber suits used in the Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher Batman movies.

The changes the series makes to Batman's supporting characters come off much better than many fans had originally feared. The Alfred in Beware the Batman is the burliest Alfred I've ever seen in a Batman story: with his imposing figure, square jaw and seasoned fighting skills, it seems like this Alfred could easily don the Bat cape and cowl in situations when Bruce can't do it himself. The pilot episode also emphasizes Alfred's connections to Britain's MI-6 agency, which is how Katana enters the narrative and it sets up a theme of international intrigue to contrast Batman's Gotham-based activities.

Where the pilot episode falters is in its characterizations of key characters. The villains in the pilot consist of Professor Pyg and his henchman Mr. Toad, characters who were created by Grant Morrison during his recent run on the Batman comic book series. Essentially, Pyg is a much more psychotic version of the classic Batman villain Mad Hatter. However, because Beware the Batman is on the Cartoon Network, Pyg's character has been toned down considerably and his more deranged attributes have been replaced with personality traits similar to those of the Riddler and Poison Ivy. The end result makes Pyg feel like just another unexceptional Gotham villain who has animal and literature fetishes, and Toad is even less defined than Pyg. If all of the villains in this series are going to be as diluted as Pyg and Toad, then Beware the Batman could become just as forgettable as they are.

Another drawback to the pilot is that the main character of Bruce Wayne is as stiff as a plank of wood. Once he takes off the Bat suit, his personality disappears with it. I'm hoping that Bruce grows as a character as the series progresses, and I suspect that the creators of the series brought in Katana as a way of developing Bruce--namely, by pairing him with a fighter who is just as skilled as he is so he has someone to whom he can directly relate.

It's hard to gauge how Beware the Batman will fare as a series based only on its first episode, but I think that the pilot provides clear indicators as to how it will succeed or fail as a whole. Right now, I’m not sure if it will have compelling multi-episode story arcs that made its DC Nation predecessors Green Lantern and Young Justice stand out from other superhero cartoons. I also don't understand the logic of pairing it in the same hour with Teen Titans Go!, another DC Nation cartoon that's aimed at a much younger audience.

Cartoon criticisms aside, I'm beginning to wonder if Batman is reaching a point of oversaturation. The DC universe consists of so many characters and settings, and yet DC's parent company Time Warner keeps going back to Batman as if he's the only worthwhile character that DC has to offer. From 1989 to the present, Batman has been the subject of seven live-action movies, the main character in four animated TV series and a supporting character in three, and has dozens of video games and straight-to-video cartoons with his name on them. Sure, Beware the Batman could turn out to be one of the best Batman cartoons ever made, but there's no reason why an equally impressive CG series couldn't be made for Superman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, or Martian Manhunter. We've already been through Batman Returns, Batman Forever and Batman Begins; if Time Warner doesn't devise a better strategy of what to do with the DC universe, then all we're going to left with is stuff like Batman Again, Batman One More Time, and Nothing But Batman.

V/H/S (2012) Movie Review

With V/H/S/2 set for national release this weekend, I figured that I should finally see the first movie in this fledgling found footage anthology franchise. I enjoy the horror subgenre of found footage, but anthology movies never appealed to me so I wasn't particularly interested in seeing V/H/S in spite of the buzz that it has generated in the horror fan community.

Regardless, I'll give V/H/S credit: It's the first film that attempted to combine the visual style of found footage with the anthology approach to horror. While the end result isn't a success, it has enough interesting ideas to whet the appetite of found footage fans for what a better film could do with the same approach. Read on for my complete review.

Anthology movies are usually hit-and-miss in terms of quality (some more "miss" than others), and V/H/S is no exception. V/H/S is divided into six stories:

* "Tape 56", directed by Adam Wingard. A group of criminals that record their crimes and sell the footage online take a job that requires them to break into a house to find and retrieve a particular video tape. When they arrive at the house, they find a corpse sitting in front of a stack of TV sets and VHS players. "Tape 56" is the framing narrative for the rest of V/H/S, with the other stories being represented by tapes the criminals watch during their search.

* "Amateur Night", directed by David Bruckner. Three friends set up a motel room and a hidden camera with the intent of making amateur porn video with the women they plan to pick up during a night of bar-hopping. Their plan goes horribly awry when one of their intended sex partners reveals that she isn't what she appears to be.

* "Second Honeymoon", directed by Ti West. A married couple's second honeymoon is disrupted by a series of increasingly strange events.

* "Tuesday the 17th", directed by Glenn McQuaid. Four friends go on a camping trip to an isolated location that was the site of several brutal murders the year before.

* "The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger", directed by Joe Swanberg. A girlfriend tells her boyfriend via video chat about odd noises she hears in her apartment during the night. She uses her laptop's built-in camera to show her boyfriend what happens when she decides to investigate the noises, and in doing so she learns that she's not alone.

* "10/31/98", directed by Radio Silence. A group of college students get together to go to a Halloween party, but wind up somewhere that is farthest thing from a party.

As with other entries in the found footage subgenre, the crucial detail is whether the movie benefits from using the found footage aesthetic. If you're going to shoot a movie as found footage, then the movie has to integrate that detail as a primary part of its narrative; otherwise, the movie might as well be shot as fiction films usually are and not as found footage. Unfortunately, the found footage style does not add much to the stories in V/H/S. Each of the protagonists use consumer-grade video cameras to document key moments of their lives in some way, but the cameras and the act of using cameras do not feel integral to the telling of the stories.

Further hindering the quality of V/H/S are the stories themselves, which are neither original nor engaging. I’m particularly disappointed that the film did not take advantage of one of its own recurring plot points--the idea of a collector who amasses a sizable inventory of footage of people in final days, hours and minutes of their lives.

Even though V/H/S won't bring any new fans to the found footage subgenre, it does have a few noteworthy moments:

* There's a chilling scene in "Second Honeymoon" involving video footage shot in a hotel room in the middle of the night. While this doesn't sound exceptional on the surface, director West sets it up to be the most memorable sequence in the movie.

* "Tuesday the 17th" is like an abbreviated slasher movie, but with two unique details: its "final girl" has a very disturbing idea about how to stop the killer, and it uses static and digital distortions in the footage to indicate the direct presence of a malevolent force. The distortion effect is unnerving to see--it's sort of like the Predator's cloaking device, only much more surreal--and it's a shame that the story didn't make better usage of it.

* "Tape 56" and "Amateur Night" play with the idea of sleazy digital voyeurism, although both use it as a plot device to set up the protagonists for their grisly yet predictable fates. Yet when I watched these characters plan and execute abusive, violent and exploitative activities for the sake of recording them for profit, I couldn't help but to think of recent all-too-real controversies surrounding high schools in Steubenville, OH and Saratoga, CA, where teenage rapists used digital media to document and brag about their crimes. With that in mind, I'm guessing that a found footage variation on I Spit on Your Grave is only a matter of time.

From what I've heard so far, V/H/S/2 is a better movie than its predecessor. In contrast, V/H/S is an intriguing but unsuccessful experiment with the found footage subgenre, and it thus would only be of interest of the subgenre's most devoted fans.

The Future Remade: A Terminator Reboot is Scheduled for 2015

I consider myself to be a huge fan of the Terminator franchise; thus, I have been closely monitoring what is going on with the franchise and what it might do next. Way back when this blog first started in February 2010, I did a post about how the rights to the franchise were up for grabs to the highest bidder. Now, over three years later, Paramount has announced that the Terminator saga will be rebooted into a new, stand-alone trilogy of movies, with the first film scheduled for June 2015.

As with most reboots, the new Terminator trilogy could be just what the franchise needs to stir interest in a new generation of fans, or it could be the final nail in its coffin. Read on for some thoughts about the reboot--what could go wrong and why, as well as what needs to be done to get the Terminator series back on its cyborg feet.

The current owners of the Terminator franchise are Megan Ellison, who runs Annapurna Pictures, and her brother David Ellison, who runs Skydance Productions. (Paramount will be handling the distribution of the Ellisons’ Terminator movies, but I don’t know how much creative input Paramount will have--if any--into the films’ scripts.) From what I’ve read since the Ellisons purchased the rights to the franchise, they planned to make more Terminator movies before the rights revert back to the franchise’s creator, James Cameron, in 2019. To me, this situation with the Ellisons is a bad news/good news type of situation:

The Bad News: The obvious reason why the Ellisons purchased the rights to the Terminator franchise is to make more Terminator content, which will in turn make money and contribute to the reputation of Annapurna Pictures and Skydance Productions. However, the problem with such a plan is that both C2 Pictures and the Halcyon Company both had similar plans and now both companies are defunct due to their poorly executed attempts at continuing the franchise. In particular, Halcyon produced Terminator Salvation with the intent of making a new trilogy of movies--just like what the Ellisons plan to do with their reboot.

It’s possible that the Ellisons could avoid the mistakes made by C2 and Halcyon. On the other hand, news surrounding the next Terminator movie under the Ellisons has so far included the return of Arnold Schwarzenegger, the possible involvement of director Justin Lin (Fast and Furious), the possible return of Terminator alumni Linda Hamilton and Michael Biehn, and a script set during the 1950s with a Terminator hunting down Sarah Connor's parents (!). With so many conflicting and inconclusive news stories surrounding the next Terminator film, I’m wondering if the Ellisons’ really have any plan at all for the franchise other than making money from it.

The Good News: Computer technology has come a long, long way since The Terminator appeared in 1984, so a reboot would allow the franchise to explore a completely new set of techno-fears. With recent news about military drone strikes and computer-based surveillance of civilian populations, the rebooted version of Skynet (Skynet 2.0?) could assert its dominance over humanity through deception, surveillance, sabotage, and surgical military strikes instead of through a global nuclear assault. New Skynet methods of attack could include nanotech-based weapons and Hunter-Killer units designed to imitate insect flight, heirarchy and locomotion. Given the heavy involvement of computers in genetic research, the rebooted Skynet could create Terminator units with a wider selection of biological capabilities (e.g., faster skin regeneration, the ability to host and transmit pathogens that are fatal to humans, etc.). The possibilities for a new Skynet are endless, and I hope that the Ellisons understand that and take full advantage of it.

Of course, the rebooted Terminator series would allow the Ellisons to avoid the franchise’s most egregious errors. I’m hoping that they’ll keep a focus on the human side of the story, and that we won’t get a different actor playing John Connor in each of the new films. I also hope that whoever plays the time-traveling Terminator in the first movie of the reboot trilogy doesn’t become the center of attention in the remaining two films. I've already argued why making Schwarzenegger such a prominent part of the franchise ultimately led to its downfall, so it would be painful to see the Ellisons make the same mistake again. When a franchise’s villain becomes more important than the franchise’s hero, you've got a serious problem on your hands.

If the Terminator reboot doesn’t work out, we’ll still have the original movies, novels, comic books and TV show. Furthermore, there’s also Continuum--another saga about a war for the future waged by technology-enhanced time travelers--and that TV series was just renewed for a third season.