Tag: Blog

Hey Somethings!

A few weeks ago, Hatton posted some games still to come in 2022 that he’s looking forward to and, although my ‘wish list’ goes beyond the end of the calendar year, here’s a list of games I’m really chomping at the bit to get when they release…

Need For Speed : Unbound

We’re going big right out of the gate.  While some of the NFS games feel like they never get out of second gear, I’ve always been a sucker for them.. and with Unbound hitting on Dec. 2nd, I won’t have to rev the engine too much longer.  Cell-shaded graphics, comic book-like overlays and effects, Criterion.. my clutch foot is tingling with anticipation.

Sons of the Forest

The original “The Forest” game was one of the most fun AND terrifying games I’ve played in recent memory, and the ending is setting the bar high for what the sequel will bring.  It’s been pushed back until Feb ’23, but based on how awesome the first one was, I’m willing to have patience to get this one in my games library.

Bloodlines 2

The OG Bloodlines was brilliant IMO.  It gave you the feel of the TTRPG which, for an atmospheric game world like VtM with it’s many and varied Clans, is no small task.. so when Bloodlines 2 was announced, I was over the moon.  I had tried Bloodhunt (a VtM licensed Battle Royale game) but it didn’t feed the beast in the way I hoped.  With Bloodlines 2 “still in development” after a much postponed 2021 release date, I just hope I don’t end up in torpor before the release.

Warhammer 40k MMO

A pipe dream, I know.. but for YEARS (ever since I stopped playing WoW after Mists of Pandaria..) I’ve been praying… Praying to the Emperor of Man, Khorne, Kaela Mensha Khaine… I didn’t care WHO brought me one.. but I wanted one.  And no, I’m not talking about ‘Eternal Crusade’ or ‘Dark Millennium’.  A GOOD,  FUN, well  thought  out  MMO.  Is  that  too  much  to  ask?  I  guess  so…

What games are YOU looking forward to?  Hit us up on our socials and let us know!

– PCR

I was talking with a friend of mine the other day, and as we were talking about some of the cool things on the internet we’ve found, I realized that there may just be some folks out there that aren’t aware of the trove of weird crap that’s out there.  Now, I understand, those of us of a certain internet vintage are aware – but as we’ve all sort of fallen into the world of social media or Discord, it’s easy to forget that there is an entire universe of just cool crap out on the internet – out there and collected for our use!

So I thought I’d give you a few places you may have never visited, or possibly forgot existed.  Enjoy!

OLD TIMEY RADIO – Let me start with this one, because it is legitimately one of my favorite things on the internet. Back pre-television, radio programs and dramas were the talk of the town. Gunsmoke, Dimension X, General Hospital, the Outer Limits, Sherlock Holmes.. and legitimately hundreds more. Collected and curated, of course some are lost to the history of time, but I spent months just enjoying some of the precursors to modern entertainment – doubly fantastic because of how inappropriate the ads are!  Seriously, a must-check-out.

WORDLE CLONES – Yes.. we all got addicted to Wordle and because of it, we made some dude a millionaire. Go us.  Did you know there are like a gazillion games like this now?  Some are amazing. Some are impossible. Some are stupid. I’ve tried more of them than I care to admit.

WORLD CAMS – Sometimes, you just want to watch another part of the world. Specifically, sometimes I want to have a live-stream of cats on my screen.  Before there was Twitch, before there was MFC, you could just sit and relax and watch the zoo from your desk… and you still can, and it is wonderful.

GEOCITIES – Did you know you can download all of Geocities?  Like.. the whole thing. The place where people built their own website on their own street to talk about how much they loved that one character from HollyOaks, and it is a Torrent file that is shockingly small at 600 or so Gigs.  (A lot of that is because people hotlinked images instead of saving them, so there are ALOT of dead links) — but if you don’t want to have a piece of old internet real estate, you can go visit people that have put the archive of, I repeat, THE WHOLE GEOCITIES.

And lastly…

There are some parts of the internet, the old backwoods of the internet, that are still there.  Zombo.com is still live, and welcome to it. He-Man is still singing 4-Non-Blondes. JODI, one of the strangest websites I’ve ever spent a significant amount of time on – is still live, I still have no idea what it is. NotPron, a game that is, in fact, not pron – is a puzzle game that still gets updates!

Where do you still go visit online? Any cool secrets you’ve found? Let us know in all the usual places.

It feels like I was watching this scene only yesterday

On November 16th, 2021, G4TV was officially relaunched as both a cable channel and a twitch channel.. and I couldn’t have been happier.

Less than 12 months later, the returned G4 is no more.

The fall of the old G4 felt more ‘out with a whimper’…. non-stop airings of Ninja Warrior and Cops, the shows themselves feeling fewer and further between.. but THIS, this version felt different, and yet.. familiar.  Back were shows like X-Play and AOTS.. new shows like Invitation to Party, Ask Donna and Name Your Price joined the ranks, yet still had that ‘old school G4’ feel about their pedigree.  New hosts joined the ranks of returning hosts Kevin Pereira and Adam Sessler, the latter of the two being more ‘occasional host’, but having them on board always felt to me that it was giving the relaunch a legitimacy; a passing of the torch until the newer hosts found their comfortable footing.

And find their footing they did.  Watching AOTS and Vibe Check felt like putting on a forgotten but favorite sweater you had nearly forgotten about… all comfort and familiar while feeling new.  Invitation to Party was just brilliant.  B. Dave Walters brought his A game and, as the consummate DM that he is, brought the A+ game out of the players.   Ask Donna showed Will Neff at his best.  God of Work was a labor of love from Jirard and that passion showed in the sketches.

It wasn’t without rough spots though.  Some shows didn’t stick around…  Boosted, which focused more on the eSports side of things, left the ‘show’ and became a YouTube exclusive.

And then there was “The Frosk Incident”.

Indiana Black, better known as Froskurinn or Frosk, did a segment on X-Play (which, you can watch here..) where she talked about sexism in gaming… and things went off the rails.

Let me be perfectly clear.

Everything she said is 100% correct.

Everything.

Gaming and the gaming industry has a sexism and misogyny problem that, unfortunately, is not going away.  Can it be minimized?  Shunned into the darkness? Yes, but only if WE minimize it and shun it when we see it.

That being said, the trolls came out of the woodwork.  Online harassment and sexist comments blew up on not only Frosk’s, but G4’s socials by those ‘offended’ by her comments.

It was called a “rant”.  A “meltdown”.  “Maybe, in 2022, we be a bit nicer, a bit more self reflective, and we enjoy the fact that people are working hard to make free content for you.   If you don’t like it, don’t watch” was how she ended the segment.. but all mouthbreathers heard was “IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT, DON’T WATCH!” and that became their rallying cry.

Was Frosk the reason for G4’s demise?  Not at all.  Inept management at Comcast not knowing what to do with their talent was the reason for G4’s second demise.. but not if you frequent the internet.  a never-ending number of YouTube videos, blogs, TikToks, articles and the like blame Frosk for G4’s collapse without at all realizing that by blaming her, they’re behaving in exactly the same sexist and misogynistic way she called out in her segment.   It’s unfortunate and wrong, yet not unexpected.  “Fandoms” have become louder and louder in their entitled toxicity against things they don’t like, and this was no exception.

What destroyed G4 was Comcast.  If any proof was needed, consider that more than half of the hosts/writers/producers and creators found out about G4 being cancelled from articles about the cancellation being tweeted out.   How shitty does a company have to be to have employees find out via Tweet they no longer have a job?  And not even BY Tweet.. but reading an article.

Will I miss G4?  100 percent. I loved the content they created.  Hell, we even got mentioned on Vibe Check (no.. really!  The story of how and why is for another day…).

My sincere hope is that the amazing people from G4, on both sides of the camera, reconnect in some way in the near future.. be it Twitch, YouTube.. whatever.  The cast and crew are far too talented to NOT be working with each other.

G4 may be gone again, but it will not be forgotten.

– PCR

Does that say ‘Predictive Algorithms’?

Yes it does. You see, when you are an old internet hand like myself, you’ve seen a few generations of how material is fed to you.  Traditionally, forums, bulletin board systems, usenet, even LiveJournal would feed you data in a very organized fashion… by date and time. You stopped reading at 6pm last night, so now you can go look and read everything up until that point… and then you’re done. Do that once or twice a day and you have a source of balanced internet…

Then someone had the great idea that if you show people things out of order – they don’t know when to stop reading…. and it worked. Hell, if you throw in the occasional thing they have already seen, you can get them to stay even longer because that means you can feed them more advertising. Then, someone thought, what if we shorten the amount of content so they can absorb EVEN MORE!  So now long form posts turned into Tweets. Youtube videos turned into Vines. Vines turned into Tiktoks. I, personally, find no joy in them, but if someone shows me something very funny.. I can even get caught in scrolling through 10 or 20 before I realize I am not enjoying it.

The sad thing is, you can’t put this genie back in the bottle. Video sites predict which videos you want to see, and knows the right time to show you a video you saw already and liked so you watch it again. News sites show you the information that you interact with, using the old Howard Stern truism ‘The people that like him listen an hour, the people that hate him listen for two’ — so it feeds you opposition to enhance your engagement.

What’s your point, Hatton? 

Would you believe it’s simply that this is a perfect place to bitch about how the modern internet is built on giant companies feeding you unending redundant oppositional information in an attempt to keep you angrily watching advertisements and it makes me nostalgic for days where I could just see what’s happened since 6pm last night? And that this whole thing was spawned off the fact that Youtube won’t allow me to NOT watch ‘Shorts’ which are just another variety of staccato 30 second lipsync videos and it’s driving me nuts?

That’s my point. I’m old and grumpy and miss the old wild west internet…. and if you do too, please sign our guest book below and join the Something Podcast Webring brought to you by Angelfire.

Yes, I know…  “Sports???”

We don’t delve into Sports here very often (if really at all) as Hatton isn’t much of a sports person (no judgement, just stating facts), but I myself have been a Steelers fan since Bradshaw.. through the good and the bad.. and when it comes to the current season… I have thoughts….

Currently the Steelers are 1-3… 0-2 at home (terrible), 1-2 on the road, and 0-1 in their Division.  The Patriots and Raiders are just as bad with only the Texans worse currently.

Recently, the Steelers named Kenny Pickett as the starter after a very dubious start to the season by Mitch Trubisky.  Is Pickett the answer?  In the short term, he kind of has to be as Trubisky isn’t and never was going to be the answer.  The unfortunate thing is the team just came out of 18 years of Big Ben (which, not-so-coincidentally is 18 years of non-losing seasons), and that is a tough act to follow.  An act that almost never happens without some bumps in the road.

The Steelers have always been a “Draft and Develop” sort of team, especially over the past 18 years.. bringing in talent, letting them get reps and practice in, and not just throwing them to the wolves.  I’m sure they would have loved for Trubisky to hold his own better and let Pickett grow into the role, but desperate times call for desperate measures… so the Kenny Pickett era has officially begun.  Will he be the long term answer?  Possibly, but having lived through the Bubby Brister/Kordell Stewart/Neil O’Donnell/Tommy Maddox eras… it’s difficult to get your hopes up off of his performance so far.  The team’s defense isn’t what it used to be (I mean.. when you lose Polamalu.. what defense will be?), even factoring a healthy T.J. Watt, and the offensive line has been suspect for a few years now which means Pickett is going to have to keep his head on a swivel more than normal.

My prediction?  As much as I’d love to say Pickett grows into the role super fast and the team manages to finish above .500, I fear their “Winning Season” Streak comes to an end this year as they finish 7-9 (at best) and miss the playoffs.

Did you know I have a Saints Row tattoo?

I do – and I have a rule about any of my video game tattoos, and that is I’m allowed to buy games before they go on discount if I have something grafted on my body from them.  So when a new Final Fantasy comes out, a new Portal game, Tron, Bubble Bobble, etc… I’m allowed because I’ve got them inked into my leg.

Do you know what game I don’t own? The new Saints Row game, and that’s because the reviews have been beyond ‘less than stellar’ and moved into ‘godawful bad’.  It sucks, because Saints Row is, as proven by the winged fleur de lis on my leg, one of my favorite franchises of all time, but sadly, when it comes to games that were cutting teeth on edgy sarcasm and hysterical inappropriateness.. you can never go to Steelport again.

So what’s left in 2022 if I don’t have Saints Row to look forward to anymore? Aside from the impending heat death of the universe, here are some of the games slated for 2022 releases I have interest in… it’s a crapshoot if they come out in the next three months though.

HARVESTELLA – Oh, hello there Final Fanta-Stardew Valley.  I expect you to suck hours away from me with your gorgeous seasonal landscapes and, guaranteed, untold secrets that can only be found on weird days of the year when the moon is in the proper phase because Squeenix likes its fans rabid.

GOTHAM KNIGHTS – I think people treat Arkham Knight too harshly. The driving and missle parts of the game were UTTERLY out of place, but they were kinda fun. So now, I get to play as Nightwing, Robin, Batgirl, Batwoman, Batmutt, ManBat, BatBat, and Azrael?  Hells yes, albeit there is no reason to buy this game day one. It will be a buggy mess and 6 months GOTY edition will be a much better game.

GOD OF WAR: RAGNAROK – The God of War games were never important to me — but be damned if the 2018 relaunch didn’t help me get through the opening fears of the pandemic.  My fingers hurt from killing angels and birds and boating from one part of the world to the other, which was exactly the distraction I needed. I hope this game can live up to the hype.

MARVEL’S MIDNIGHT SUNS – I kinda don’t expect this game to come out on time… and if it does, I am super concerned about it being good.  Marvel’s been doing better than its previous world of ‘MATCH 3, BUT WITH SILVER SURFER’ gimmicks… and the line-up in this game feels shockingly wide.  Turn-base Tactical Comic Game where I can play as Nico from Runaways… plug it into my veins.

So what games are left in the year that you want to see!  Let us know!

Hey all, PCR here.

So, I recently re-activated my Netflix account to catch up on some things I hadn’t seen yet, and one of those things was Season 4 of Stranger Things, and while I was a huge fan of the show when it started, the luster has worn a bit for me… to the point that Season 4 in general was…’meh’.

Don’t get me wrong, the Eddie stuff was cool, and the backstory into 1 was intriguing, I felt too disassociated from the whole thing to really care too much.

Season 3 came out in July of 2019, and Season 4 was finally released in May of 2022, nearly 20 months later.  During that time, some of the kids had Walt-ian growth spurts while others stayed looking remarkably similar.  Maybe it’s just me, and it’s taking more to ‘wow’ me as I get older, but the main thing I walked away from Season 4 with was “Wow, episodes are a lot longer…”.

My question to The Somethings is… ‘How long is too long’?  How long can shows (and movies) push between seasons (and sequels) and still have us give as much of a shit as they hope we will?

Let’s look at some other notable time delays…

Stranger Things S4 – 20 months

Westworld S4 – 25 months

Ghostbusters to GBII – 5 years

Heroes : Reborn – 5 years

GBII to GB Afterlife – 32 Years

XFiles – 14 years after original TV finale

Twin Peaks S3 – 26 years

What are some of YOUR favorite TV Shows or Movies that have had extended time between seasons/sequels?  We want to know!

ALSO!

Want to help support our show?  Our Patreon is live once more!  New tiers!  New content!  Early access!  Go check it out and help us bring you even more great stuff!

– PCR

There is a lot of buzz going on about the Little Mermaid remake – which is something we will be talking about a bit more in depth in a future episode, so I’m not going to here. To be clear, anyone who gets upset about the skin color of a live action cartoon movie about fictional mythological Danish creatures, or can’t seem to wrap their head around the fact that Lord of the Rings doesn’t actually take place in Medieval Europe and elves aren’t real… your opinion is pretty much voided on principle.

Not my point tonight.

What I DO wish to discuss is WHY you should care about The Little Mermaid live action (and other ‘why are they doing this’ movies) and the number one reason you aren’t hearing more about this point:

1. Disney doesn’t want to talk about it.

This year, there is a Winnie the Pooh movie coming out that has nothing to do with a rumbly tumbly hunny lovin bear, and has everything to do about a cannibalistic monster and his piggie friend on, what I assume, will be a horrifying murder spree. The original A.A. Milne stories have reached public domain level, so you can go do a Winnie story, but you must be assuredly certain that the version you are utilizing is THAT version and not anything close to the Jim Cummings voiced silly ol’ bear. Next year, Steamboat Willie finally gets to public domain after Disney has destroyed our copyright law to save him.

That’s why there is a new Little Mermaid, a CGI Lion King, a Maleficent and Cruella film. Disney is thrilled if they do well, but if they don’t.. eh, that’s ok, they’ve served a far greater legal purpose of continuing to push a variation of a character they can hold on to.

The best thing you can do next year when the lifeless, like a doll’s eyes, black and white mouse finds his way into all of our legal hands – much like when Winnie The Pooh: Blood & Honey comes out, is support the endeavors of these people who are throwing our public ownership into the face of the beast that has continued to push laws that allow them to own things forever. And this is Disney we’re talking about.. the company that owns everything, anyway.

All I’m asking is for you to go see THOSE pieces of entertainment, if anything, because it really will tick the mouse off.

Hey all, Podcast Rob here!

BIG news for you all today….

We’re re-launching our Patreon!  New Tiers!  New Rewards!

At just $2 per month, patrons get the “Somethingscription“!  By helping support our show, you get Early Access to listen to our episodes on Saturday instead of waiting for Tuesday! PLUS you get the unedited/unfiltered version!

Want more?  Like… say… a voice in the decision making process?  Our “SomethingExtra” tier is for you then!  Along with your Early Access, Give us a topic and we’ll add it to the list AND give you a shoutout when we cover it! Patron topics go to the front of the line of our ideas, so let us know in the following categories! Something To Review, The End, Mysteries of the Somethingverse, VS, Elevator Pitch, Dreamcasting/Recasting!

For those who want the perks of SomethingExtra without a monthly subscription, we have a workaround of  “SomethingAwesome“.  You can check our Patreon site or DM us through Facebook or Twitter for details!

For 9 years we’ve been making content we hope you’ve been enjoying, by supporting the show you’ll enable us to do even bigger and better things with the show!

– PCR

I originally had an idea that I was going to discuss some of the public domain stuff that is going on right now (like the Pooh Bear horror movie) – but I’m going to save that for a bit.  Instead, I would like to babble about the horrible nature of modern social media.

WHAT A FUN JOURNEY THAT WILL BE, HATTON!?

Yeah, I know – sorry.

So here’s a list of internet and social media trends that drive me cuckoo bananas:

CHANGING THE YEAR ON OLD CONTENT

Go into your google machine and type in, ‘Best Puzzle Games of 2022’ and you will get pages and pages of lists. I guarantee you that 90% of those lists will say they were written in the last two months and most of them won’t have any modern content in them.. some won’t have games from before 2020.  That’s because internet content on surprisingly popular websites simply repost their own blogs every few months with updated dates. A few will change the headline to be less shameless, ‘Puzzle Games You Should Play In 2022’ or ‘Some of the Best Puzzle Games (2022)’ but the fact is they are garbage lists by garbage people and won’t help you with your search.

REACTION VIDEOS

I brought this point up on Facebook and got a range of responses, so let me clarify… if you have knowledge on a topic and are reacting to it like ‘Opera Singer Comments on Heavy Metal Music’ or ‘CGI Experts Watch The Scorpion King’, that’s fine. You are adding something to the conversation. If you scroll through TikTok and see a post of a guy watching someone make ice cream….. and then… he goes ‘Wow’ or makes approving gestures, or the worst of it, is over-excited about someone at Coldstone folding fudge.. why?  Why is watching people watch things interesting now? Why do I care about your facial expressions?  (Spoiler: I don’t.)

PADDED “TROLL” VIDEOS

This is a bit of a niche, but there is a surprising amount of Facebook videos that have an interesting sounding premise ‘This woman opened a box and you won’t believe it…’ By and large, that title is clickbait incarnate, but hey, I can spend a minute while she opens a box… until she realizes there is twine that she needs to get scissors… that don’t work… so she pulls at the string… finally it snaps… under the first wrapping is more wrapping… with more string.  At this point in time, you look and see that this video is 20 minutes long.  You click to the end, see the ending sucked, and leave.  Why does it exist? Is it just a troll?  Nope. That “creator” (a loose term at best) just got ad revenue for you being sucked into that garbage.

– STAY TIL THE END

This is a newer trend. First, let’s address that it is mighty sad that your content is so bad on Tiktok that you need to tell people to ‘stay to the end’ because you are afraid you can’t hold their attention for 80 seconds.  The second part of that is that you are probably right, your 80 seconds of content is garbage. It is rare a video that feels the need to tell you to stay gives you any actual reason why you should stay.  This follows along with the reaction videos listed above, and sometimes are in the same video.

Imagine if you were watching the Godfather 2, and sometime in the middle of DeNiro squishing olives, a big banner flashed on the screen ‘STAY TIL THE END’…

CONCLUSION

I’ve been on the internet longer than most… which makes me feel old because it is a statistical truth. With the advent of short-attention-span videos/stories/reels/vines/tiktoks, I have finally reached the spot where I don’t get it.  #OldManYellsAtCloud