Tag: 2022

Hey all, PCR here.

A great disturbance was felt through The Force recently when Microsoft announced they were buying Activision/Blizzard in an all cash deal.  As a (former) long time World of Warcraft and Hearthstone player, I have a bit of a soft spot for Blizzard…  I met many amazing friends, some of which have become “in person” amazing friends I’ve had for years… and, (as one of those friends said recently) “I don’t regret one minute of the time I played.. but I also don’t regret the day I walked away”.

I have far less history with Microsoft (gaming).  I don’t have GamePass, and as far as consoles go, I had an OG XBox and a Series S (both of which I sold).

That said, this merger COULD be good for gaming, it could also be bad.

Here’s my thoughts…

Pros : With chip shortages still making consoles amazingly hard to find, this is going to get a LOT more games into a LOT more hands quicker.

: The offerings on GamePass are about to get a LOT more interesting and varied.

: Microsoft could do a lot to mitigate thoughts they’re becoming (more) of the “all-controlling, evil empire” by cleaning house at Activision and removing the personnel and other elements that plagued the company over the recent years

Cons : There’s ZERO guarantee Microsoft will clean house from problematic elements of Activision, which could/would be seen as rewarding that kind of behavior/environment as long as bottom line numbers are met.

: Could create a far bigger ‘Exclusively on…’ rift in the gaming industry.

: WIll Microsoft having that kind of control in the gaming industry stifle developers?

There’s a LOT that’s unknown, and I am far from having professional insight in the gaming community, but it will be interesting to see how this affects the overall landscape of gaming/cloud gaming.

What do YOU think?

We’re back with The Wheel – and where it stops, nobody knows… well, I mean.. we do, because we recorded it.. and you do because you can see the episode title. Look, work with me, ok?

Anyway, what do you think about artificial intelligence? What do you think about the idea that computers out there will one day take us over completely and we will be slaves to their machinations? Did Asimov have it right about making sure they can’t hurt us? Or is it all just a bunch of claptrap hooey for sci-fi writers and the 5g chip embedded in your mind?

Join us as we take a dive into a topic we honestly have very little right talking about, but that’s never stopped us before. It’s time for Mysteries of the Somethingverse: Artificial Intelligence

Ok, here we go – if the overlords allow us…

Full Episode

Happy New Year everyone!  It’s my first blog of the year, and given the entertainment I’ve absorbed the last couple of weeks, I thought I’d revisit the topic of nostalgia.

In the last week, I got a chance to see Ghostbusters: Afterlife as well as the most recent season of Cobra Kai and they are interestingly connected in that they both were born into the world in 1984 and here we are, over 35 years later, revisiting that well of ideas and pulling on the heartstrings of those that grew up on them. Yes, there have been tons of revisits to shows and movies over the years ranging from the campy (The Brady Bunch films) to the not good (Car 54, Where Are You) and a thousand of good and bad ideas in between.

Ghostbusters and Cobra have knocked out that formula we have gotten used to, but do so in two very different ways – both successful – but, I won’t lie.. I think one of them does it much better.

So here’s my reveal – I enjoyed Ghostbusters: Afterlife, and I sat there engaged with it in the way people my age were meant to. Giggling at the sly retelling of jokes, reminded of the scenes from the original that I loved, tearing up at seeing artifacts of the past… but tears aside, I don’t know if I will watch it again any time soon. Maybe it was simply because it only had 2 hours to fit so much in, but it felt like it didn’t have its own voice as much as it let the voice of the past dictate its journey. It had a list of things to check off, and each time it did it, it was fun, a giggle, a reminder, a wistful past-oriented sigh of memory, and we’re on to the next one on the list. It’s written well, but it feels like it would need another movie for me to even begin to understand who these characters actually are.

On the other side of things, we have Cobra Kai. To be fair, it gets a lot longer of a runtime to play its nostalgia card since it has finished up its 4th Season, but it does something so dramatically different that sets it aside in the realm of ‘member the 80s? ..we do‘ and that is that it takes your expectations and changes them. A villain is brought back from the past in Terry Silver, and it explores precisely why he was such a madman in Karate Kid 3. We get a moment that feels almost exactly like the ending of the 3rd film, and your emotions are built to recognize what’s coming… and then it doesn’t – in dramatic fashion.  Every inch of retread ground it walks, it is because these characters have their own agency and they are retreading steps of the past, but not making the same decisions.

Ghostbusters relies on its source for its skeleton, Cobra Kai is building a new skeleton that just happens to look similar… if that makes sense. I loved both, but I really think one shows a much greater care towards the universe that came before it.

What did you think? You know where to tell us… @STSTCast and @RevVoice, and we’ll see you next week.

…we have to go back….

No, not that island, you masochists – we have to go back to a land where computers fill the air, because computers invented the air.. and your desk.. and your headphones.. and possibly those hundreds of guys in nice suits running at you.  That’s right, we’re going back into the series that asked us ‘are we really here or are we actually in robot goo pods’ – THE MATRIX

Wire-fu, Bullet time, hot people in trenchcoats – The Matrix changed action movies forever, and made your friend with the wolf shirts look fashionable for a minute… does the new one hold up that high bar?

There’s only one way to find out – let’s go to the movies with Something In Review: Matrix Resurrections

Ok, here we …whoa… (i’m really proud of that one)

Full Episode

Hey Somethings!

The holidays have come and gone, James and I are rested up, and it’s time to get back to it!

This week’s blog touches a bit on some of my most enjoyable things from the end of 2021!

For starters, I got a new job.  Pay’s MUCH more than my previous job.  Feels like it’s even less stressful so… bonus all around!

I also did a fair amount of gaming towards the end of the year.  Forza Horizon 5 dropped and, while the launch was buggy, I still immensely enjoy the game and play it daily.  The big ‘sleeper hit’ for me was Inscryption.  Is it a deck building card/video game? Yes.  Is it SOOO much more than that? Yeeesssssssssssssss.  Can I say more without spoiling a lot of things for those who haven’t played?  Nooooooo.  What I CAN say, if you’ve listened to us, and you enjoy our style.. you get a good sense of the type of people we are and the things we enjoy.  If THAT entertains you, check out Inscryption… you won’t be disappointed.

For Christmas I set myself up with HBO Max and started going through a BUNCH of stuff I never got to see in theaters.  While “Matrix Resurrections” is the big one, I won’t discuss that here as we have an episode coming out about it in the very near future.  Besides Matrix, I also powered through “Godzilla vs Kong”, “Mortal Kombat”, “The Suicide Squad” and “Suicide Squad”.  All of them.. solidly “meh” to be honest, with the exception of “The Suicide Squad” (the most recent one).  Cena’s deadpan delivery as Peacemaker and Dastmalchian’s Polka Dot Man definitely elevated it above “meh” into ‘enjoyable’.

For TV?  End of 2021 brought us Hawkeye (which I loved, ranks 2nd tied with “WandaVision” for me in MCU D+ TV) and The Book of Boba Fett.  At the time of writing this, only the first episode has dropped so far but damn was it good and I loved how they connected it in to the greater Star Wars story and history.

We’ve got a bunch of new episodes lined up and we’re back to blogs every Friday.. stick with us!  2022 is going to be great!

– PCR

DIDJA MISS US?  We missed you – but most of all, we realized in our Retrocast journey how much we missed looking at some of the silliness that has gone out on the internet waves over the last year and wanted to talk about them. 

Did you know if you click through these 45 pages, you can find the mysterious answer to a question after a thousand short and unnecessary sentences that don’t actually add to the whole of the story at all and are just a giant run on to get you to click to the end of the story? 

Yeah, that’s a thing…  but that’s not what we do – we are talking some of the biggest stories of Snopes for the last year, and the debunks you have to share with your Aunt who believes her Alexa Funtendo has cancelled her episodes of the Home Shopping Network she saved on her DVD Toaster to upload later.

Ready? Oh, we sure as hell are…. Ok, here we go, again!

Full Episode