Many of us aspire to greatness…and many of us fail. But sometimes, in failing, we still manage to do something good. It’s something I thought about while playing the ambitious but underwhelming and yet still engaging fantasy first-person shooter Immortals Of Aveum (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC). While it falls short of what would seem to be its lofty goals, what Aveum does offer is exciting combat in interesting places against competent enemies, and that’s enough to make it kind of fun.
If I had a dollar for every TV show that was unceremoniously cancelled, and with a cliffhanger no less, I would start my own network and give all a reprieve. Or at least a satisfying conclusion.
But no abruptly cancelled TV show hurt as much as The Venture Bros., the irreverent and intelligent Adult Swim ‘toon that came to an unexpected end in 2020.
Thankfully, I wasn’t the only one bothered by this, as fan outcry led Adult Swim to give the show the send off it deserves in the form of a finale movie, The Venture Bros.: Radiant Is The Blood Of The Baboon Heart, which has just been released on Blu-ray and digital. And while it didn’t make me okay with the show coming to an end, at least it gets to end, and in an interesting way.
When it came out on Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and PC in December of 2022, the snarky sci-fi first-person shooter High On Life immediately became one of my favorite games of the year. But it was also a “must play” for fans of Rick & Morty because one of the main characters, a talking gun named Kenny, was voiced by Justin Roiland, who’s the voice of both Rick and Morty, as well as the founder of High developers Squanch Games.
A month later, though, it came out that Roiland had been arrested and charged with felony domestic battery and false imprisonment, which prompted other people to come forward with accusations about his behavior. Roiland was subsequently fired from Rick & Morty, and his other sci-fi ‘toon, Hulu’s Solar Opposites, and he resigned from Squanch Games. And while the criminal charges were dismissed, and Roiland has denied any wrongdoing, he has not been rehired by Adult Swim, Hulu, or Squanch Games, nor has he been forgiven by the public at large.
Now, some people believe you should not equate the art with the artist, especially when said art is a collaboration with other people, like, say, a video game. Other people believe you cannot separate them. Me? I believe you’re innocent until proven guilty, but also that where’s there’s smoke there’s often fire, so you should do what feels right for you and leave everyone else to do the same. So, if you can’t play High On Life because of Roiland’s voice, or involvement, fine. If you can, fine. To each his own.
That said, as someone who was still able to play it, even with Roiland’s problematic accusations very much on my mind, here is my review of the newly released PlayStation 5 / PlayStation 4 version of High On Life.
Though he seems to record a new album with pianist pal Matthew Shipp every week, and has also recorded a bunch with bassist Michael Bisio, violinist / violist Mat Maneri, and drummers Whit Dickey and Gerald Cleaver, jazz saxophonist Ivo Perelman seems just as comfortable working with new people, too. Of the nine piano players he teamed with for 2021’s duets boxed set Brass And Ivory Tales, for instance, only one was someone with whom he’d previously collaborated.
Which brings me to his new album, Prophecy, on which he teams with cellist Lester St. Louis for the first time, and pianist Aruán Ortiz for the second after…well, what do you know? Brass And Ivory Tales.
One of the things that always kills my enthusiasm for multiplayer games is how some people take them so seriously. Maybe I’m weird, but I don’t like being yelled at because I didn’t do something exactly right or don’t have the skills of a professional gamer. It’s one of the reasons why I enjoyed Crash Team Rumble (PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One), which is such a weird, goofy, cartoony game that you’d have to be a huge dick to take it seriously.
While a lot of people were upset when The Venture Bros. was cancelled in 2020, there were also a lot of people who asked, “Who the hell are the Venture brothers?”
It is for those people — and Venture Bros. completionists — that we now have The Venture Bros.: The Complete Series DVD, which presents every episode of the TV show…well, sort of.
Expectations can be tough, especially when a lot of time has passed. Just ask George Lucas about The Phantom Menace. Or Axl Rose about Chinese Democracy. Or George R.R. Martin — no, don’t bother him.
Or, you could just ask the good people at Blizzard who made Diablo IV (PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PC), which comes eleven long years after 2012’s Diablo III (and, well, a year after the wrongly convicted Diablo Immortal). Especially since Diablo IV is not a huge jump forward the way Diablo III was over 2000’s Diablo II.
But while Diablo IV may be more of a refinement than a reinvention when it comes to this series’ third-person hack & slash / bow & arrow / magic spell action, it still ends up being as effortlessly addictive as the most recent installment. And Diablo III.
Like other game developers who’ve made co-op games in the vein of Left4Dead — including the people who made it and its spiritual successor, Back 4 Blood — the good people at Arkane Austin who made the vampiric first-person shooter Redfall (Xbox Series X/S, PC) assured us that we could play their game solo. So, as someone who doesn’t play well with others, I decided to test this theory, and found that while it has some issues, I actually had a lot of fun playing this supernatural shooter on my own.
Of all the questions I had after reading J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings, not once did I ever wonder what Gollum was up to in the years between them. Mostly because I just assumed he’d spent them in his cave, eating sushi, listening to Led Zeppelin, and lamenting the loss of his precious. But having played the deeply flawed third-person stealth action game The Lord Of The Rings: Gollum (PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Switch, PC), which covers this time period, but is a complete fabrication and not based on anything Tolkien wrote, I find myself even less interested in Gollum’s sad little life.