Category Archives: Articles

How well did they create Persia and Macedonia in Civilization VI?

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TL;DR – Persia and Macedonia are great new additions to Civilization 6, even if they do raise some questions about ‘civilizations’

Civilization 6
Review –

So the Spring Patch and new DLC for Civilization VI has been out for a week and now that I’ve had a chance to give Persia and Macedonia a play through I thought I would look at how well they have been implemented in the game. So to do this we will first chat a bit about the changes made in the latest patch to the game as a whole, we’ll then look at Persia and Macedonia focusing at how well they have been represented as well as, how well they have been implemented in the game, and then finally we will take a moment to look at the issue of ‘civilizations’ that this new DLC raises.

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The X-Men Movies Ranked from Best to Last

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So Logan came out this weekend and it was fantastic, oh spoiler alert for the list. But it had me thinking, one of the big issues with the X-Men films is how scattershot they are in terms of their quality, from fantastic to utter trash and everywhere in between. So I thought I would work out for me at least, where I place all the films on that spectrum, and why I put them there.

With these lists, I don’t rank them 1-10 as I feel that does not adequately reflect my feeling about each of the films and where they fit in relation to each other. What we do is the group the films into categories Fantastic, Great Good, Ok, and Trash. Fantastic are those films which get as close to perfect as we can on this side of Heaven, with compelling characters stories and visuals. Great are those films which I thoroughly enjoyed but they did not move me emotionally. Good are solid films that while they have some issues they still work and are still enjoyable. Ok are films that work, they have some good moments, but you can start to see some of the flaws that almost scuttle the film. Trash are those films which just don’t work, whether it is the story, the characters, the visuals, or a combination of all three, they are simply letdowns. Also within those categories, I have listed the films not in a ranked order but in chronological order.

Now for me personally I’ll always be comparing the X-Men films to the X-Men Animated Series, because for me we didn’t get the comics where I lived so this was my first and best experience with the franchise, also it has the best theme of the series. Which led to it becoming my yard post to compare anything X-Men related to. So this, and the fact that personal preference is subjective means that I might have a different order than you, but that is the good thing about reviews because this is where discussion lies. Now there may be some spoilers for you in the list below, but then most of these have been out for a while, so it should not be much of a problem.

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How well did they create Australia in Civilization VI?

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TL;DR – So how well does Civilization 6 capture Australia with its new entry? Struth, it’s a ripper of a new Civ.

Civilization 6

Review –

Civilization is one of the pioneers of the strategy genre a series that has lasted six iterations, numerous expansions, and last year on its 25th anniversary launched the next entry into the franchise Civilization 6 (See Review). Since its release, there have been new Downloadable Content (DLC) released and this week it was announced that the next civilization to be added would be Australia. So Australia joins the large and expansive franchise as the 55th civilization¹ ² to be added, but the question remains: Is it any good? And then also is it a good representation of Australia? These are the question we will be looking at. Now there were three components of the Australia update The Australian civilisation, The Outback Tycoon scenario, and Uluru natural wonder, and we will be touching on all of these facets throughout this analysis.

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Lego Batman, John Wick, and Game of Thrones oh my: factors that lead to increased Australian Piracy

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TL;DR – Staggered release dates, lack of competition, geoblocking and the Australia Tax, and lack of government want to fix.

John Wick. Image Credit: Lionsgate.

At some point this week because of either John Wick 2 or Lego Batman there will inevitably be a news story about the high rate of piracy. It is something you hear about every year like clockwork when the next Game of Thrones season starts, or when film companies stagger release dates like they are doing here. However, why is Australia such an outlier when it comes to piracy? We are a prosperous country, with a good economy comparatively speaking, we have laws against it, and our internet is not even that good making piracy that little bit harder than it is in many other countries, but inevitably any conversation about piracy generally ends up focusing on Australia. So today we are going to look at the factors unique to Australia, or at least not as prevalent in other markets, that have led to this high statistic. Now of course just to be on the safe side and to make sure there is no confusion when we talk about piracy we are not talking about the boarding and stealing of naval vessels for commercial gain, we are talking about the acquiring of copies of digital media (movies, TV shows, music, and video games) without purchasing the product, usually through peer-to-peer torrent networks.

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Analysis – John Wick is a Masterclass in Visual Storytelling and Worldbuilding

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TL;DR – John Wick is a masterpiece of balancing storytelling and worldbuilding without resorting to multiple exposition dumps or clunky dialogue exchanges.

John Wick. Image Credit: Lionsgate.

When you are making or adapting some form of narrative medium, whether it is a book, video game, TV show, online video series, or a movie, two of the most important narrative facets are storytelling and worldbuilding, however, they can often find themselves in conflict with each other. I think we have all played that video game that is crammed full of lore, around every corner is another audio log sitting there for you to digest and thus the story gets lost in at that worldbuilding. Conversely, people fall in love with the worlds you can create, as much as people love Harry Potter, they are also enraptured with the whole Wizarding World, #HufflepuffForLife, so if you focus just on your story and don’t build the world around you, you’re going to have a shallow narrative and a missed opportunity. So how do you rectify this issue, well you could do what Snowpiercer and others have done in the past and gone with an opening newscast, or narration, or like the grandmaster of it all Star Wars, and have it all in your opening crawl. Or you could go with the Game of Thrones route and hide your exposition in sex scenes hoping that nudity will keep people engaged, and indeed you may even coin a phrase with ‘sexposition’ in the process. Or you could follow John Wick’s lead by crafting a strong narrative while also building a fascinating world. Now as we will be dissecting John Wick for this analysis, and since we will be focusing on the story, there is no way we could do that and not have any spoilers, so if you have not seen it yet, firstly go watch John Wick, but also you may not want to proceed any further, or do, I’m not your boss.

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Analysis – Rogue One is a Case Study on the notion of Death

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Rogue One (Rouge One: A Star Wars Story). Image Credit; Disney/Lucasarts.

Before we start I need to make it clear that this blog will be full of spoilers for the recent Rogue One and Suicide Squad, as well as last year’s The Force Awakens, and all of Star Wars in general, so proceed cautiously if things like this concern you.

So when I was watching Rogue One yesterday for the third time, at which point instead of watching the broad strokes of the story you instead focus on more of the details, it occurred to me that not only is Rogue One interesting in the fact that it kills off its entire leading cast (yes I said there were spoilers don’t complain that I didn’t warn you) but also how it kills them. Now of course, as most people know, there were extensive reshoots with Rogue One which may have drastically changed the outcome of how characters died, but that is a discussion for another day, today we will just be focusing on the movie as it is in cinemas.

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Analysis – Does Star Wars: The Force Awakens Hold up Over Time?

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Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Image Credit: Disney.

So it has now been six months since the release of the seventh Star Wars film, and indeed given that it is now out on DVD/Blu-ray/Digital Download etc, and also given that today is the May the Fourth, I think it is a good time to re-engage with Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Given the low bar that was the Prequels, where we just caught up in the notion of “it’s better than them, well that means it was a fantastic film”, or now with some distance and time (and the dulling of nostalgia) will we find it does not live up to the hype we placed on it? So of course just to be clear there will be full spoilers in this article, so if you have not watched it then now is the time to go make some tea and contemplate the universe.

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Analysis – Captain America Shows the Flaws of Batman v Superman

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Captain America: Civil War

So within the space of a month, we have two films from two competing companies based on the same premise and one was amazing and the other was a bit crap. So the question is what Captain America Civil War do better than Batman v Superman, and why did this make such a big difference?

My Review of Captain America: Civil War
My Review of Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice

The first thing is Captain America is the 13 film, and only now are they starting to get their main characters to fight each other. With BvS it is literally the second film in the series, Batman and Superman might be classic characters of cinema but you have never really had them interacting with each other before. Because of this, there is no history that gives the battle between Superman and Batman any weight, meanwhile, we have gotten to know Captain America, Iron Man and the whole cast so when they fight it means something.

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Video Game Retrospective – Spec Ops: The Line

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TL;DR – Why do we play Shooter Video Games?, Why do we want to be a hero?, Can we understand?

Spec Ops: The Line. Image Credit: Yager/2K.

Spec Ops: The Line was billed as a middle of the road shooter, which was released in 2012 to not much fanfare by its publisher. It wasn’t technically impressive, the only really new thing was sand physics, which were, well something a bit new. The controls were clunky, and even for its time the presentation felt old, enemies appearing from monster closets (or in this case monster shipping containers), the guns and action felt not as refined as its contemporaries, the level design had some issues ‘look a bunch of chest high walls, looks like we are going to have to fight now’ and it does not hold up as well on a second play through (which I did to put together this retrospective). Yet this semester when I have been teaching Media and War at University I have had many long conversations about this game and the profound impact it had on me and the impact it had (or should have had) on the genre.

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