MeekinOnMovies On....Wolfenstein: The New Order

Game: Wolfenstein: The New Order
Platform: Xbox One (Also available on PS4, Xbox 360, PS3, and PC)
Price: 59.99
Did I Pay For It: No.

Wolfenstein: The New Order out Duke Nukem Foreveres Duke Nukem Forever. No offense to the developer, but this game had zero buzz before release. Then it came out roughly the same time as Watch_Dogs, and the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. Why?

Because Wolfenstein: The New Order wildly exceeds low expectations. The graphics are pretty, the story is coherent and creative, the controls are tight, and while pretty standard, the first person shooter gameplay has a couple of tricks up it sleeve to keep things fresh. But beyond that, New Order takes what was a typically one-note franchise and expanded it in a way that doesn't betray it roots. While Duke felt stuck in the past, Wolfenstein: The New Order, feels a little ahead of its time.

MeekinOnMovies On...Godzilla (2014)

Godzilla

Directed By: Gareth Edwards, 

Starring: Godzilla, Bryan Cranston, Ken Watanabe, and Aaron Tyler Johnson

Between the Roland Emmerich comedy...thing, and the Japanese movies that haven't aged well, for a time Godzilla was most valuable as an idea. We saw movies that aped Godzilla's genre for low-fi horror movies like Cloverfield, or big budget, tonally bizarre flicks like Pacific Rim. Even watching "Godzilla 2000" requires accepting it as a cheesefest and not so much as an actual movie made with dramatic intent.

However,  thanks in part to director Gareth Edwards and some deft directional choices, it's clear the King of Monsters is back, and anyone who wants to take his crown better bring their "A" game.   

MeekinOnMovies On...Retro City Rampage

 Retro City Rampage

Did I Pay For It: No

Platforms: PSN / Vita / Windows / Xbox 360 / WiiWare / 3DS

I’ve been gaming for two and a half decades. If I think about it, I haven’t even been potty trained that long. I played games before I rode a bike, kissed my first girl, danced my first jig, or wrote my first word. A controller is as familiar to my hands as a rifle to a rifleman. 

Because of this, I’m intimately acquainted with video game lore; the princess being in another castle, that guard in “Metal Gear” who “feels asleep”, the hollow and oddly chilling whisper of the “Mario Brothers 3” warp whistle (and accompanying tornado), and the nearly limitless list goes on and on. “Retro City Rampage” — a thoroughly enjoyable top-down open-world sandbox game using 8-bit NES style graphics — is fluent in game lore from the 8-bit era.

And I mean fluent. Sure, using a retro graphical style is nothing new these days. Besides “Retro City Rampage”, “Fez”, “Megaman 9” (and 10), “Cave Story” and the so-pretentious-I-shopped-at-whole-foods-for-a-week-after-playing-it “Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP”,  all used sprite-based graphics to varying degrees of success. However, “Retro City Rampage” does things a bit differently, drawing (more or less) from the same 64-color palette that the NES had, which is really quite neat for the geekiest game fans among us.

MeekinOnMovies On....Smooth Operators: Call Center Chaos

Smooth Operators: Call Center Chaos

Platforms: XBLA, iOS
Did I pay for it? Yes (XBLA) No (iOS)



When’s the last time your job was the focus of a novel? What about a movie? TV Show? How about a video game? Lets face it, unless you’re living the incredibly exciting life of a cop, drug dealer, vampire, teenage mother, surgeon, space Marine, work in a restaurant of some kind, or are Mark Cuban, your career is probably underrepresented in terms of representation in media - “Pro-Bono Video Game Critic 2014” isn’t happening anytime soon folks. 

But that tide is changing. Farming simulators, truck driving simulators, and even robot vacuum simulators (seriously) are gaining word-of-mouth buzz, and some critical praise too. It seems finding the joy in the mundane is what’s hot in gaming right now, a “new wave” of interactive experiences that ditches the laser guns and damsels in distress for something a little closer to home. 

Case-and-point: “Smooth Operators”, a charming-as-hell call center management simulator, that for iOS. 

MeekinOnMovies On...Super Meat Boy

My relationship with “Super Meat Boy” isn’t unlike an early 90’s romantic comedy starring Meg Ryan. Despite spending years in my peripheral vision, and being told over and over and over again how great of a guy “Super Meat Boy” was (Yes, I’m Meg Ryan in this scenario), I didn’t have the special kind of feelings a lass needs to warrant a commitment. You can’t blame me, right girls? I mean, by design “Super Meat Boy” is the very definition of a high maintenance relationship. It’s a flabby, 2D, sprite-based side-scroller in a world of sexy 3D beach-body graphics and man-scaped polygons. It prides itself on its socially awkward high difficulty level and trial-and-error gameplay.

It was also $15.99 at the time of release, and, if we’re being honest here, who needs the cow when you can get the milk for free; “Super Meat Boy”’s less super predecessor, “Meat Boy” is available completely free, completely legally, in a variety of locations across the world wide web.

Simply put, In today’s day and age, “Super Meat Boy” is no woman’s idea of a man.

MeekinOnMovies on....Splinter Cell: Blacklist

A part of me likes thinking that somewhere in the Middle East, an American like Sam Fisher is prowling. Clear and present danger abound, mind racing with a dozen different ways the next few seconds could play out. A guard wanders close to his hiding place. Does he take them out with a silenced bullet to the head? Show mercy and knock them out - or simply let him walk by?

America’s security rides on these so-called patriot games, this man’s ability to make the brutal choices correctly, and without remorse. For this man, at this moment, there is no geneva convention, and are politics as far away from his mind as Bradley Manning, a Quarterback for one of those NFL football teams he doesn’t have the time to care about. In a world of gray, his mission is as black and white as it gets. This is about us vs. them, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

Freebie Alert: Card Hunter is everything you never knew you wanted.

As a tween, I would bound into my local “Scholars” collectibles store, owned by a guy who I’m pretty sure was Sonny Bono, and ponder the tabletop RPGs. It was daunting in the coolest way. Crazy elaborate terrain setups, paint kits, and magnifying lenses, all for a board game. I would marvel at the pewter Ogres and Dwarves and Warriors, wondering what sort of life I could inject into their little tin hearts. But it was not for me. There were video games to play, you see, and somehow fifty dollars for a game I could play by myself felt better than fifty dollars for tiny creatures I’d need a cohort to enjoy. But still, I wondered.

So upon discovering “Card Hunter” on Youtube personality Alzorath's channel, I kind of fell in love. My precious creatures, sight-lines, and complicated terrains had come to life, little pewter hearts transformed to digital paper stand-ups that had me wondering why my tween self never thought of that. Sure, I had played tactical RPGs before but “Card Hunter” wasn’t just a tactical RPG, it was a Tabletop Tactical RPG with a mainline to my childhood that was free to boot.

Freebie Alert: Pixel People Pleases Passively

Pixel People

What happens when you combine the city building of “Sim City”, the art-style of “Pocket Planes” and the pointless, but still somehow fascinating Commodore 64 game, “Little Computer People”? Well, despite a fairly hard-bitten premise involving the destruction of the world as we know it, and the daunting task of rebuilding it via cloning and splicing of human genetics, you get “Pixel People,” a new free-to-play city-building iOS game that’s adorable as it is compelling.

Freebie: Galaxy on Fire 2 HD for iPhone and iPads

I’m a Trekkie, tried and true. While not as obsessed as some, I enjoy the sciencey bits, the theoretical discussions between space and time, and the way “Star Trek: The Next Generation” employs real scientific consultants to fact check all sorts of data and concepts that were subtly inserted into the show. So as a kid I was always a Jean-Luc Picard kind of guy in a Han Solo world. 

Of course, it became a tough choice as time went on. Classic space games like “Elite 2” and “X3: Reunion” with almost-limitless-as-space depth whisked past my peripheral vision - too obtuse to truly dive into.


Which brings us to the completely free “Galaxy On Fire 2”, the first game in the space pirate/trader genre that I’ve truly sunk my teeth into since the Sega Genesis’s “WarpSpeed”, and I’ve enjoyed it quite a great deal. 

Freebie: You Don't Know Jack (Mobile / Facebook)

In this world, there are few places for B-type personalities to massage their egos. You can write a 13,000 word diatribe defending the “Star Wars” Prequels, get a PHD, get a writing gig, kick-start that graphic novel you’ve been kicking around, but the ability to have an honest-to-goodness pissing contest is the privilege of the macho. So we play trivia. 

But once people know you’re good at it, they don’t want to play with you any more.

Until...you meet a pretty girl. Well, pretty is a disservice. Imagine if you took Rolf the Muppet’s personality and curly hair and put it into a sexy possibly Latina chick. I wooed her with a trip to the giant Dave & Buster’s trivia machine, the sly maneuver of giving my prize tickets away to a kid (after getting her an adorable stuffed penguin - Gerald), and not much else. Trivia came up again, and I mentioned owning “You Don’t Know Jack”. Her eyes lit up, and I was suddenly inviting a girl back to my place to play video games. She was serious about this too. That competitive spirit that had eluded all my friends and most of my acquaintances, was present in this angel of a woman. I needed to win, and she did too and that was freaking sexy.

This is why I fondly refer to the 'old' You Don't Know Jack as the game that got me laid.