Over the course of their fifteen years together, the good people at Evolution Studios have made nine racing games, including 2001’s WRC: World Rally Championship and its four sequels, and 2006’s MotorStorm, its two sequels, and a spin-off. Which is why it’s so odd that their latest, DRIVECLUB for the PlayStation 4, has such fundamental flaws that it seems like it was made by a studio with far less experience.
Seth MacFarlane’s day job usually keep him behind the camera, be it as the co-writer, producer, and voice actor on Family Guy and American Dad; the co-writer, director, and voice actor on Ted; or the producer of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. But in the live-action Western comedy A Million Ways To Die In The West — which Universal Home Video have issued on Blu-ray and DVD — he’s not only behind it as the film’s co-writer and director, but he’s in front as well, taking center stage as our hero.
By taking a slightly different approach to the story of Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s 2004 novel All You Need Is Kill, and pairing it with the gritty tenets of such World War II movies as Saving Private Ryan and some dark comedy, the sci-fi action flick Edge Of Tomorrow became one of this past summer’s better movies. But while it didn’t ignite the box office the way it lit up the imaginations of people who saw it, Warner Bros. Home Video have still done a good job presenting this engaging movie as a Blu-ray/DVD combo pack, a 3D Blu-ray/DVD combo pack, and on DVD.
In 1999, the co-writer of Alien, the late Dan O’Bannon, told me that once you’ve seen the movie, you should never watch it again. “It simply cannot be as effective,” he said. “We are afraid of the unknown. When it is known, it’s not as scary.”
But O’Bannon might’ve changed his mind if he’d gotten to play Alien Isolation, a very scary first-person stealth action survival horror from Creative Assembly that Sega are bringing to the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC.
As a fan of both nine inch nails and experimental instrumental music, I’ve never listened to The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo or The Social Network albums by n.i.n. mastermind Trent Reznor and his composing partner Atticus Ross as if they were soundtrack CDs. Instead, to me, they’re sonic soundscapes, instrumental collections just like nine inch nails’ 2008’s ghosts i-iv. And so it is as well with Gone Girl, their third instrumental collaboration (CD, vinyl, iTunes, digital).
Whenever you buy a movie on Blu-ray, the most important thing is, of course, the movie itself. The extras are just that: extra. But let’s be honest, we’ve all bought new editions of movie Blu-rays just because it has more extras than are on the version we already own. Which brings me to the Ghost In The Shell 25th Anniversary Edition, which Anchor Bay have released on Blu-ray. While the movie looks better, it has absolutely no extras, not even ones that were on previous Blu-ray editions.
What’s a fan to do?
In 2011, when Turn 10 Studios added optional braking and steering assists to Forza Motorsport 4, they changed their serious racing sim into, well, a still serious racing sim that could also be played as a less realistic racer. But while this was much appreciated, for fans of the latter (like me), it didn’t quite go far enough. Now Playground Games, under the supervision of Turn 10, have improved things further with the Xbox One version of Forza Horizon 2 (the Xbox 360 version of which was made by Sumo Digital, and not provided to me for review). Which is why, despite having some rather irritating issues and a structural problem, Forza Horizon 2 leads the pack as this generation’s best racing game.
Throughout the course of human history, seemingly incompatible elements have often come together to make something great. But for every Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup there’s Mary J. Blidge covering a Led Zeppelin song. And then there’s Hyrule Warriors, a new action game for the WiiU that falls somewhere in between by mixing aspects of The Legend Of Zelda and Dynasty Warriors games.
