Glad to see Norway dominate in Pyeongchang.Andrew Luck Wins Second Super Bowl In Bay Area Showdown
The San Francisco 49ers, led by quarterback Andrew Luck, have won their second Super Bowl in three years, knocking off their rivals from across the bay, the Oakland Raiders, in a 38-31 offensive shootout that saw Luck take home his second Super Bowl MVP. The game was close throughout, with the 49ers jumping out to a 10-0 lead early in what would turn out to be the biggest deficit either team would face all game. The Raiders would come back to tie the game at halftime, and would even take a 24-17 lead midway through the third, but the rest of the game saw San Francisco claw back, thanks to three touchdowns from Andrew Luck, two in the air, and one on an 8-yard-run. Super Bowl LII featured an unexpected matchup: though the 49ers were the #1 seed in the NFC, and rolled to the Super Bowl fairly easily, with their stiffest test being a showdown with the defending champion Atlanta Falcons in the NFC Championship Game, the Raiders, much like the Buffalo Bills last year, were underdogs in the conference, projected to win just six games. However, they were able to fight their way to a wild card spot on the strength of an 11-5 regular season, and beat out the division champion Denver Broncos on wild card weekend before knocking off the Jets and then the Pittsburgh Steelers to make it to the Super Bowl. The Raiders were led by 2014 Mr. Irrelevant Connor Shaw, who was picked up off waivers by the team before the season to began, and assumed the starter role in Week 5 after starter Robert Griffin III's devastating ACL tear. Shaw was 9-3 as the team's starter, though the Raiders' stiff defense and strong rushing game also contributed heavily to their success. Shaw had one of his best games of the season in the Super Bowl, throwing for 288 yards, 3 touchdowns, and only a single interception, but Andrew Luck's magnificent play was just too much for the overmatched Raiders to handle.
The Raiders had one of their best seasons in recent memory, but will still be moving to Las Vegas for the 2019 season. Next season will be the team's last in Oakland, though their success this year has led to a massive groundswell of popular support for the team, including a number of petitions and protests to call off the move and keep the team in town. Though it's too late for the Raiders to stay in Oakland, commissioner Howie Long hasn't ruled out the possibility of the NFL returning to Oakland in the future. The NFL won't be expanding anytime soon, however, so Oakland's only hope would be if they could lure another team to the city, and currently, the NFL has shown more of an inclination to move a team to London than they do to put a team back in Oakland. Raiders fans can only hope that the team's momentum continues and Oakland brings home a Super Bowl next year, but Vegas oddsmakers give the Patriots, Browns, and Jets more of a chance to reach Super Bowl LIII than they give the Raiders.
-from an article on Yahoo! Sports News, posted on February 5, 2018
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Japanese Athletes Shine At 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics, Though Norway Wins Most Medals Overall
2018's Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea was one of the most exciting in recent memory, and though Norway finished first in the overall medal count, with Canada and the United States second and third respectively, it was Japan, particularly the women athletes, who had the biggest highlights of the Games. Most notably, Misumi Nakamura, an 18-year-old snowboarder from Sapporo, won hearts around the world with her outstanding performance in the women's halfpipe event, and took home three gold medals overall, making her the Games' most decorated female athlete. She beat heavily favored and heavily hyped American snowboarder Shana Stephenson, who won two silver medals at 2014's Winter Games and was expected to win gold in those events this time around. Nakamura, a viral video star in Japan but virtually unknown in the West, became a star overnight with a near perfect score in the halfpipe event, while also taking home gold in the Big Air and slopestyle events. The men's snowboarding event saw two outstanding American gold medal winners, John Sanderson and Shaun White, compete in the halfpipe. Sanderson took the gold by a single point over White, who says that he'll be retiring from Olympic competition.
Meanwhile, in women's figure skating, Japan's Hana Itsumoto defeated American favorite Naya Alexander, who won gold in 2014. The two went head-to-head in the ladies' free skating and short program events, with Itsumoto winning both gold medals, and Alexander winning silver in the free skate and bronze in the short program. The free skating event was a nail-biter all the way through, with Itsumoto winning by less than half a point. Itsumoto and Alexander also drew praise for the exceptional sportsmanship they showed after the event, with Alexander shown joining Itsumoto in celebrating her win and embracing her joyfully in a picture shown on many news outlets.
Russia, which had been considered for a ban from the Games due to doping allegations, ultimately was allowed to compete, though several of their top athletes had been disqualified prior to the games, and Russia finished fourth in the medal count overall as a result. Russia was even defeated in the semifinal match of the men's hockey tournament by the United States, in what some considered to be a repeat of the Miracle on Ice from 1980. However, two of Russia's top players were suffering from injuries, while the United States fielded what many consider to be its strongest men's hockey team in many years. The Americans would go on to lose to Canada in the gold medal game, 5-2. In women's hockey, Japan made it to the semi-finals, but would lose to Canada, and would have to settle for the bronze medal, while Canada lost a dramatic gold medal shootout against Norway.
-from an article on Yahoo! Sports News, posted on February 25, 2018
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"Where Stream Story really succeeds, beyond the gameplay itself, is in its realistic depiction of the kinds of people who typically like to watch girls play video games. Jessie has many kind and supportive followers, and her relationship with them is both poignant and heartwarming, but she also has THOSE kinds of streamers. You know the ones. The ones who are insulting, the ones who demand that streamers be more 'sexy'. Jessie has to deal with those kinds of people too, and in portraying them as, in many ways, the game's true villains, it puts everyone who plays the game in the shoes of the women who stream video games, both for fun and for a living. In Jessie's case, these people are actively impeding her from returning home (the ones who believe her story, at least), and Jessie has to deal with them just like how she has to deal with the beasts, dragons, and villains who inhabit the world she's fallen into. All too often, women who play games online, especially in front of large groups of followers, are subjected to threats and abuse, and when those threats and abuse physically manifest themselves in the world Jessie is trying to escape, it makes those threats all too real for the player, who must both navigate the perils of the world in front of them and also carefully cultivate Jessie's online fanbase. Aly Michalka's excellent voice acting really shines in scenes whereJessie has to deal with these kinds of people, and one can hear the frustration and sometimes even fear in her voice as she confronts these people in the digital realm. Psygnosis has knocked it out of the park with this game, which, in many ways, is even better than last year's Cyberwar 5, despite being made at a fraction of the budget. Stream Story succeeds where, in many ways, last month's Digiscape stumbled. In Stream Story, your phone isn't an all-powerful magical object conjuring up powers and terraforming the world. Instead, it's Jessie's only link to her home, for better or for worse, and as she gains more followers, the player is forced to take the good with the bad, living, in many ways, the online experience so many game streamers like Jessie face.
No doubt we'll be hearing more stories of harassment and objectification, in the wake of the reports coming out about Harvey Weinstein earlier this month. Stream Story, then, may not just be an outstanding and brilliantly written WRPG. It may be a painfully prescient title as well."
-from Sylph's review of Stream Story, posted on February 12, 2018
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The 90th annual Oscar ceremony was dominated by films based on recent events, with Three Day Night taking home Best Picture. The film, which centers around a family and their ordeal during the 2009 nationwide blackout, was expected to win Best Picture by Oscar prognosticators, though fellow "ripped from the headlines" film The Fall Of Rome, about a father grieving the loss of his children in the 2005 elementary school attack in Rome, New York, along with Guillermo del Toro's dieselpunk sci-fi romance The Shape Of Water, were also considered to be top contenders. Three Day Night also won three of the night's top four acting awards, with Best Actor going to Heath Ledger for his role as the family patriarch (beating out Jeremy Renner's performance in The Fall Of Rome in what was considered an upset). The ceremony also featured a particularly moving tribute to animator Hayao Miyazaki, who was killed in last year's tragic Tokyo massacre. Miyazaki famously won Best Picture in 2002 for Spirited Away, which remains the only animated film to ever win the award. Miyazaki was also prominently featured in the year's "in memorium" segment. His last movie, 2017's The Little Conductor, was nominated for Best Animated Feature, though it lost out to Disney's Gigantic in what was considered to be a close race, with analysts favoring Miyazaki's film after his death but by only a narrow margin.
Despite the success of films based on recent events, this year's Oscar ceremony was the least watched ceremony to date. While some attribute the lack of viewers to host Drew Barrymore, most critics gave her performance high marks, and cite the lack of interest in the Oscars in general as a reason for the decline in viewers. Of the films nominated for Best Picture, only one, Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk, grossed more than $100 million at the North American box office, with Best Picture winner Three Day Night coming in second with just $81 million, and The Shape Of Water projected to make a good portion of its money after its Best Picture win. Many are also criticizing the decision by AMPAS not to move the Oscars to avoid conflict with the Winter Olympics, instead airing its ceremony at the same time as the closing ceremonies of this year's games. The Grammy Awards were moved back to January, but the Oscars stayed put, and may have paid the price, even though a significantly higher number of people watched the Academy Awards ceremony.
-from an article on Variety.com, posted on February 26, 2018
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Game Spotlight: The Adventures Of Anna Goldstar
The Adventures Of Anna Goldstar is a Western/shooter/action/adventure title developed by Naughty Dog North and published by Sony exclusively for the Nintendo Reality. It's a Western-themed game that tells the story of Anna Goldstar, a woman who came to the Wild West to seek her fortune, and who ends up becoming a bounty hunter and lawman in the town of Cactus Patch Creek, Arizona. A feisty redhead who speaks with somewhat of a cowboy accent, Anna was born as Anastasia Goldstein, the youngest child of a Jewish immigrant from Russia to America (and the only child of her family to be born in America, with her four older brothers all born earlier back in the old country). We learn throughout the course of the game that Anna is in open rebellion with her tradition-minded father, and escaped to the Wild West to get out from under his control (but still loves her family deeply and is still fairly observant of her religion, only working on the Sabbath because, in her words, "the bad guys don't rest, so I can't neither!"). The game is a mix of comedy and drama, fairly light-hearted even for its Teen rating. Anna does use a gun, and kills bad guys, but the violence is somewhat glossed over (sort of like in the OTL Uncharted games), with very little blood and a very upbeat aesthetic. It's not a gritty, realistic Western like OTL's Red Dead games. In fact, the developers say that they took a lot of inspiration from movies like Fievel Goes West and Back To The Future Part III, with the game leaning more into old-school, discredited Western tropes, while at the same time developing its protagonist and other characters heavily. It's a mission-based game, and can be somewhat compared to a smaller-scale Super Mario Adventure, though it's less open world than that title, and also takes some inspiration from the Kingdom Quest games in terms of its mechanics and world progression. As Anna explores and completes missions, the world outside of Cactus Patch Creek opens up, allowing access to more of the surrounding landscape and even eventually a large city. The player can use a wide variety of weapons and gadgets to take out bad guys, including Anna's trusty six-shooter, a lasso, horseshoes, improvised weapons, and even punches and kicks. The gun combat in this game is surprisingly well-developed, with destructible objects and environments, extremely accurate aiming, the ability to run and gun, roll around, and even shoot objects strategically, with tons of set pieces and mini cutscenes making fights even more exhilarating. QTE events are frequent, but rarely, if ever, do they result in a fatality for the player if failed, and instead are mostly used to get a leg up on the enemy or to see a different cutscene when killing them. As a Naughty Dog North title, The Adventures Of Anna Goldstar was made with a more traditional process (similar to the Dog Dash and Goblins games), and doesn't feature the cinematic mo-cap of the Naughty Dog Mothership titles such as the later Tales Of The Seven Seas games or the Mystic series. That being said, the game does feature extremely detailed graphics, with a mostly realistic but very very slightly cartoon-like style and extremely fluid animation. The game also features a strong voice cast, with Abby Trott as the voice of Anna (and also singing the game's main theme song), Brett Dalton as the voice of Johnny Red, the sheriff of Cactus Patch Creek, who clashes with Anna at first but later ends up being a loyal ally to her, Powers Boothe (in his final role before his TTL death later in 2018) as Vincent Creed, the game's primary antagonist, a ruthless senator who has been secretly running a criminal organization and a campaign of persecution against the nearby Native American population, Sara Tomko as Sparrow-on-the-Wind (or just Sparrow), a Navajo woman who becomes a close friend and ally to Anna, and finally, Topol as Anna's father Ivan, who plays a prominent role mostly in the second half of the game, as Anna's life as a heroine and her family ties collide when things turn personal. Ron Goldman has a small cameo role as the voice of one of Anna's older brothers, with the game developers spending a lot of time at the San Francisco-area Goldman's while developing the game and eventually offering the restaurant owner a role. The game was primarily written by the team behind Pokemon Order and Chaos, with many of that game's tropes appearing in this game.
The Adventures Of Anna Goldstar can be roughly divided into two halves: the first half, which is fairly lighthearted and sees Anna working as a bounty hunter in Cactus Patch Creek, hunting down mostly small-time bad guys while frequently clashing with Johnny Red and meeting some of the characters who will become her friends later on, most notably Sparrow. We get to really know Anna during this part of the game, becoming familiar with her high energy pursuit of justice and her eagerness to help people, while also learning a lot about her family history and about her relationship with her father and her older brothers. One of her older brothers (not the one voiced by Ron Goldman, but a different one, voiced by Travis Willingham) has become a prominent businessman in the nearby city of Fairleigh, which Anna eventually visits about a third of the way through the game, coming face to face with Vincent Creed for the first time as well. Though she's highly suspicious of him, she can't pin anything on him at first, and both her older brother and Johnny Red respect him highly. Anna has bigger things to worry about anyway, as she's tracking down the members of the Ditchwater Gang, who have been attacking Native American settlements and robbing banks. They humiliated her earlier in the game, even tying her to the railroad tracks (Johnny Red had to save her, which REALLY pissed her off), and she wants revenge on them, which she eventually gets by taking out the gang's leader in a high noon showdown. This leads into the game's second half, in which Vincent makes his move, and we learn that he was in control of the Ditchwater Gang, along with numerous other gangs in and around Cactus Patch Creek. Ivan comes by train to Fairleigh to help out Anna's older brother, and Anna reunites with him for the first time in years, though the two are still deeply estranged. During this time, Johnny Red begins to trust Anna more, and makes her his deputy, which she begrudgingly accepts because she's always wanted to become a legitimate officer of the law, even if it means having to serve under Johnny. Anna, Johnny, Sparrow, and their allies start to dig up more and more dirt on Vincent, whose grand master plan eventually comes to light: he plans to blow up Cactus Patch Creek in order to collect a huge insurance settlement and advance his political career by blaming the attack on the nearby Navajo tribes and starting a war. Of course, Vincent also makes things highly personal during the final confrontation by taking Ivan hostage (right after a poignant scene in which Ivan truly begins to accept Anna for who she is and arranges to meet with her to tell her personally). Vincent also arranges for some of his gangs to take Johnny hostage, forcing Anna to choose between her family and her passion. Of course, thanks to her heroism and her friends, she ends up being able to save everyone: her father, Johnny, and the town, and Vincent is exposed for his evil deeds, disgraced, and taken to prison. Johnny offers to step down and make Anna the new sheriff (and it's implied he loves her as well), but Anna, who knows that she saved Cactus Patch Creek and that there are other towns who needs her, declines the offer, deciding instead to move on to the next town in trouble... but first, she wants to make up for lost time with her dad by taking him and her older brothers on a Wild West adventure. Anna says goodbye to her friends (for now), and heads off into the sunset, as only a true Wild West hero can.
The Adventures Of Anna Goldstar is released on February 12, 2018, to highly positive critical reviews which praise both the gameplay and the character of Anna herself. Though the game does re-use some classic 3D adventure tropes that haven't been seen in games for a while, it does so with a modern flair and exceptional production values, and it's seen as a revitalization of an old formula for 3D games, probably the best in its genre since 2016's Super Mario Adventure. The game's multiplayer mode, which features characters from the game shooting it out in a variety of environments, is also highly praised (it can best be compared to a slightly sillier take on the online multiplayer in the Uncharted games). Sales are extremely good, and it enjoys the best opening sales week of any game in 2018 so far. Anna Goldstar herself becomes yet another popular Nintendo hero, and though it's too late for her to make it into Smash Bros. Reality, she eventually does get in to the next Super Smash Bros. game, as a DLC character beyond the scope of this timeline.
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Other Significant Titles For February 2018:
Light In The Darkness: A horror title with a heavy focus on VR, this Reality exclusive features a young woman who must explore a mysterious mansion with only a flashlight to ward off the terrible monsters within. There's also a shadowy ghost woman who roams the halls with a darklight that she uses to make even more horrors, though the protagonist can later upgrade the flashlight by siphoning energy from the darklight, giving it special properties that allow it to better deal with the evil within. This game is one of the spookier horror games of the year, and makes great use of VR, but is fairly short, making it a rather poor value for the price. Still, it appeals to gamers who find The Adventures of Anna Goldstar to be a bit too childish, and manages to carve out decent sales numbers, enough for a sequel.
Gundam X VS Arc: A Gundam-based tactical action-RPG for the Gemini, this game is based on a 2013 Gundam OVA series called Gundam X, and is centered around a universal tournament in which armies of mobile suits battle throughout the cosmos for supremacy. The game features cameos from Gundams from various series, and its combat can be somewhat compared to Zone Of The Enders. It's a fun game, and made it to the West due to the popularity of Gundam X here. It sells much better in Japan than it does in the West, but still finds a niche audience, and reviews are quite strong, making it the fourth best reviewed release of the month behind The Adventures Of Anna Goldstar, Into The Breach, and Stream Story.
Into The Breach: Another OTL indie that comes exclusively to Nexus on consoles (though it also has a simultaneous release on PC and Mac), this mech vs. monster strategy game is the company's follow-up to FTL: Faster Than Light (which also saw release ITTL). It plays mostly like OTL's game, but takes a bit of inspiration from the Mechatos series in terms of visuals and storyline. Otherwise, it plays mostly similar to OTL's game, and gets exceptionally positive reviews, becoming the year's second highly regarded indie game after Subnautica. It doesn't enjoy similar sales success, but it is a solid Nexus title, selling slightly better than it did IOTL.
Coffee Shop: A Squaresoft RPG (though mostly developed by a small sub-studio within the company, and got a fairly small budget, comparable to OTL's I Am Setsuna), Coffee Shop is a game about a young woman who runs a coffee shop frequently visited by adventuring heroes, who she can team up with on their adventures by mixing up different kinds of coffee to enhance both her skills and theirs. The game is equal-parts RPG battling game and coffee shop simulator, and the more successful the coffee shop becomes, the more powerful your heroes can be in battle, and vice versa. It's a quirky little title, and the Squaresoft name does boost sales, but it's nothing too special and mostly attracts a niche crowd.
Also love that Andrew Luck has had such a great career in San Francisco!
