Neil Koch

The graphics and animation aren't great and the story is subpar from what I've heard.

I think he was getting tired of certain segments of the audience for quite a while, NeoGAF in particular. I tend to stay away from most forums and sites now, because the readers/posters as well as the writers/mods/editors really come across as entitled thin-skinned manbabies, and that's even before you insert politics into the mix.

The new selection of tables is pretty lackluster IMO but I'm probably gonna get Eight Ball Deluxe. It's the first pinball game that I remember playing a lot at the local dumpy pizza place back in the 80s when even dumpy stores usually had a few good video games and/or pinball machines.

I think maybe you can still get the episodes on Soundcloud. I don't really have a problem with PodcastOne besides the shows having commercial breaks. They still seem to think radio formatting really works.

There is one mission in a bath house where you see two dudes going at it that was kinda shocking. There is also one in a swingers club where I managed to force out the naked patrons into the street and use them for cover as I escaped. But probably the more extreme content is the violence (beat the game last night and the main boss gets killed in a very visceral way) and the language, especially if you are sensitive to racial slurs. It fits in with the game's context and doesn't feel exploitative but it is pretty jarring at times. Oh and there are multiple endings depending on how you handle your underbosses and the aftermath of taking out the mob. I don't think there's a way to do multiple save files so you kind of have to pick a path and stick with it. Also if you don't give territories to the underbosses in a specific way, I don't think you can fully upgrade your character.

You don't really see anything when you pick up the Playboys or Vargas posters. You have to go into a sub-menu of the options screen to see them. And you still have to flip through articles in some of the Playboys to see the good parts I think I'm pretty close to finishing the game. There is a mission thread that is around the Southern Union (their version of the KKK) that has some really brutal kills. The gameplay is pretty repetitive, but I enjoy the core and only play for 30-60 minutes at a time, so I don't mind. If you're binge gaming, I could see how it would get old.

I don't really see them dropping the price within the first 6-9 months. That'd actually be a sign (at least to me) that the system is bombing and I'd stay away. I can see them at least throwing some sort of pack-in game, though. I'm really surprised they're not doing that right off the bat. Edit - if you're talking about Zelda getting a price drop - never will happen unless they do some sort of Player's Choice reprint. Nintendo games on their systems are evergreen and never drop in price, even used copies still will go for near full price years after the games come out.

XB1 allows for external drives. I would just get one of those because file sizes are just going to get bigger.

I'm not sure if it's different on XB1 but on PS4 the game disc just installs the whole game anyway. Mafia 3 is about 45GB. Can't wait for the new firmware update that finally allows external drives.

I'm playing Mafia 3 now. It's good, but I can see where the criticisms come from. There is a lot of driving around because there is no fast travel. I get that they were trying to be more realistic, but then Lincoln can "call" in cars, supplies, and backup basically at any time, so why not some sort of taxi? The game's structure is pretty repetitive. You are taking over the city, so you go from district to district, and meet your cronie and then find informants/bust up contraband/kill enforcers and then go back to your cronie to unlock the boss mission. Standard side missions like racing and making contraband deliveries. There are a lot of good parts though. This structure gets little addicting to me, as there is an urge to do just one more mission since controlling districts raises the amount of cash you generate (lots of guns and upgrades to buy) and will unlock more/better abilities. I like the story, characters, and setting and the gameplay is solid for the most part - you can do some very violent kills on people. Really good soundtrack if you like classic rock/blues/R&B. There are quite a few collectable tchotchkes, including vintage Playboys so you can look at boobs (or read the articles, whatever floats your boat).

This is the only one I'm aware of. Not really a fan of some of the posters though (condescending know it all's). http://www.shaolinchamber36.com/kungfufandom/index.php?/ Most of the Hong Kong/kung fu movie sites have died and there's only a handful left that update regularly. A lot of people just lost interest due to getting older and having real life get in the way and the fact that there are only a few releases per year and most of them aren't great probably didn't help. Forums/message boards just got too costly and time consuming to maintain. It's a lot easier to just make a Facebook page for your site and many people would want to use that anyway.

Bey Logan's commentaries range from good to boring, but at least he doesn't spout out and out bullshit like Ric Meyers, who for some reason continually gets tapped as an "expert" even though he doesn't even know basic stuff like how to pronounce actor's names. However, Logan became one of the reasons DD went under. I personally have never had a problem with him; I actually used to email him semi frequently and he's sent swag like posters to me over the years. But I have heard stories about him ranging from not paying people for their work to sexual misconduct. Probably some of it is BS, but in the end not many people in Hong Kong or the US wanted to work with him, so he sold the rights to Miramax, who took a look at the sales numbers (some DD titles sold a few thousand copies) and promptly pulled the plug, save for the Jackie Chan and Jet Li titles like Supercop and Fist of Legend that were re-released via DD. As for why kung fu movies don't sell well in the US, there's a number of reasons. Certainly piracy is among the biggest. It's a big reason I don't participate in most Facebook groups any more, because the piracy is so blatant and people are so proud of it, but then they will still complain about no good releases coming out. You can't have it both ways. But also there's the fact that it's basically the same titles coming out over and over. How many times do we need to see the same 4 Bruce Lee movies? Most fans bought (or bootlegged) these movies years and years ago, and only the biggest nerds are going to buy new editions because now they have the "correct" colors or whatever. And yes, this is a niche of a niche. You have the occasional breakthrough movie, but for the most part, the general movie goer (even dedicated movie geeks) are going to pass most releases over, because frankly, to most people, they're all the same. So you can't really expect a company to release hundreds of these movies in HD with bonus features. I think the best we can hope for is something where a company will put things up for streaming/VOD and then give the option like Warner Archive to buy the physical copy.

Ah yeah, I remember you. Hello! Miramax does (or did) indeed only hold the US rights to about 50 or so SB movies. They were releasing them through the Dragon Dynasty line before that went under. The releases were supposed to be special editions with commentaries, interviews, etc, but sales were not good so the last few titles they pushed were budget releases with no extras and terrible Photoshopped artwork that didn't match the movie. I don't think I've seen any of the SB Miramax titles on El Rey or any channel or streaming service for that matter ever. I have seen some of their non-SB stuff (Jackie Chan and Jet Li movies mostly, also a few one-offs like Infernal Affairs) on channels like This, Grit, Spike, and Cinemax, also on Netflix. I think the rights went back to Celestial (company that bought the SB library and remastered the films) and they put them with the deal of about 250 movies that El Rey has the US TV rights to.

The missions get a lot better later in the game. The gunfighting gets really good. I agree on the driving being not all that exciting. I usually fast traveled as much as I could, but I usually do that with most open world games. I'm playing through Mafia III now and there isn't a fast travel option and it's getting really old driving way across the map just to trigger a mission. I liked the hand to hand fighting - mostly I tried to use the weapons/environmental kills a lot - but you do get pretty overpowered, so there's not much challenge. The story is kind of meh, but TBH I don't really pay much attention to stories in games. If I want to watch a movie, I'll watch a movie. It works for what it is. It would have been more interesting if they had actually gone with real Hong Kong actors and storyline as was the case when it was True Crime Hong Kong.

If they were willing to show subtitled moves, it would open up a lot more for Shaw Brothers films. Some of the horror movies might be a bit too much for a basic cable station, even one that shows uncensored stuff. A lot of the old horror shows like The Night Stalker are already in syndication on channels like CLOO or on Hulu. Most of the other moves mentioned come down to who has the rights, which can be a mess for Hong Kong stuff. For Jet Li and John Woo films, the rights to a lot of those are owned by Miramax still and honestly I don't know what they're doing with them. They have sublicensed a lot of movies out to Echo Bridge (budget DVD label), Netflix, and even HD subchannels like This and Grit, but it seems really scattershot which places have which films. It is pretty odd that Rodriguez hasn't gotten these movies though, as he releases his movies through Miramax. I don't think any US company has the rights to the A Better Tomorrow films currently. There is a 4K remastering of the first movie being worked on, so I would suspect a company like Shout Factory would pick it up at some point.

You can do the hairpull, but I'm not sure about the throw. I've only done the hairpull a handful of times; some of the moves seem really random to pull off. Boring game overall. The moveset is limited, the game gets cheap in later stages, barely any weapons, and the graphics aren't very good. Nice music though.

I'm not sure about XB1, but the game is on sale pretty much every week on PSN for $30, usually with a Shark card thrown in as well.

I wouldn't worry about it too much. Those sorts of messages come up fairly frequently about cable channels. Univision is owned by NBC so I'm sure they'll eventually use their influence and the threat of pulling other channels to get Comcast to get on board.

I got bored of it after a while. The whole 90s FPS design of clear out a room of generic bad guys and then wander around looking for random switches/keys/doors got old to me. If it's only a couple of bucks though, why not.

Probably will get this, but it seems odd that they are using assets from the NES version of DD2 instead of the arcade.

GTA V is something like 65 GB with all of the updates. I'm sure there will be installs over 100 GB soon. What pisses me off is huge installs when you have the disc. I'm playing through Mafia III right now and it's 50 something GB.

xXx won't be released in most Asian territories until next month but will probably do well over there because of Donnie Yen, especially in China. He's featured almost as prominently as Vin Diesel in the promotional materials.

There are quite a few Shaw Bros movies on Netflix but they can be hard to find. The best way I found is to use the phone app and go into the Foreign section, from there, there is a Chinese sub-division (sometimes they have a Martial Arts one as well) where they are usually listed. They have a number of the movies released by Dragon Dynasty/Miramax as well, including some that never made it to DVD stateside.

It's because most of them (at least of the PS4 side) aren't that good. I let my PS+ lapse and don't really see a burning need to renew it.

Not 100% sure what's still on there, but they had Drunken Master 2 (aka Legend of the Drunken Master) up and that's one of the few 10/10's for me regardless of genre.