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September 17, 2018

VGFlicks: Ready Player One (Part 4)

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4

Today: More spoilers as I explain the last 20 minutes of the movie, then my final thoughts - which are going to be pretty long.

Personally, I wouldn't sign unless it's a real piece of paper in the real world,
but I doubt that's the correct answer.

Yep, Wade used his real-life VR set-up to kick someone's
ass. ...Kinda impressive actually.
When we left off, ParZival had found the last key mostly unhindered, thanks to an Extra Life given to him earlier. He unlocked the last gate, discovering a room filled with riches, as well as a table with a contract. Halliday’s avatar, the wise Anorak (I still can’t get over the fact that his character is basically named “Winter Coat”), welcomes him inside and explains that by signing the contract, ParZival will be the sole owner of the OASIS and Halliday’s wealth. Outside, IOI’s forces are closing in on the van driven by Helen, with Nolan Sorrento’s henchwoman F’Nale even getting inside, but the team fights and kicks her out. I guess her name is lying, she’s not the villain of the finale.

With the threat removed, Wade sits and ParZival sets the pen to the contract, only to realize that something is fishy. Remember when I said that every challenge also included a part of Halliday’s regrets? This contract-signing scene is a parallel to what happened between Halliday and his business partner Ogden Morrow, of Gregarious Games. Halliday forced Morrow out of the company, and had his partner sign away his shares in the enterprise. After which, now lonely at the top, Halliday seemingly retreated into the OASIS for the rest of his life…

I mean, he seems integrated to the place much better than other CGI
characters in movies with real-life environments...
Having figured it out, ParZival tosses away the pencil. That was the right answer, as after confirming such, the place transforms to resemble a normal room in a live-action house, with Anorak now turned into the late James Halliday. No word is ever said on whether it’s a super-advanced AI or some kind of brain upload. The former seems more likely but then again, with all the mad stretches in technological prowess Halliday has accomplished - it's said he built the OASIS all by himself - the latter might not be so farfetched. Wade is walking around this room as his avatar, though, which is odd. This movie may be the first case of CGI characters in live-action environments where the animated characters aren’t supposed to blend in or pass off as real. We know it isn’t. This sequence is still in the OASIS. The room even has a child-aged James playing the Atari 2600 on an old TV set in the corner.

Halliday presents to ParZival the main feature of the room: A big red button which, when pressed, will release a worm virus that will completely erase the OASIS. Quick reminder that Wade is currently playing in a moving van, getting shaken left and right, with Sorrento now chasing after them in an IOI truck. “Try not to push it by accident on your first day,” as Halliday says.

Of course it's a big red button. The '80s loved that trope.

September 14, 2018

VGFlicks: Ready Player One (Part 3)

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4

(Spoilers abound here. Read carefully.)

"Wait, are you really Aech or..."
"I don't have my voice modulator on, just believe me!"
While Wade is fleeing the IOI people who have just captured Samantha, he’s grabbed by a person he recognizes as his best friend, the cyborg orc Aech… or rather the player behind Aech, Helen Harris (portrayed by Lena Waithe). There had to be a reason why that character’s voice sounded so modified. In the book, where her avatar is a tall white man, her decision to conceal her identity is better explained: As a black lesbian, she was disowned by her family and tossed out. Mind you, as far as avatars go, I’ll take the cyborg orc over a tall white dude any day. I’m not even getting into the unfortunate implications!

I still haven’t read the book, but from what I understand, in that version, your OASIS avatar can only look like a normal person. How did that ever become the best game ever? I’m more willing to believe the version in the movie, in which you can literally become any character, even an existing one.

Toshiro (Daito) and Zhou (Shoto). they're awesome.
Wade and Helen get to her van, but it’s being ID’d by an IOI drone. Out from it comes Daito’s player, named Toshiro Yoshiaki (portrayed by Win Morisaki), who smashes the robot with a baseball bat. Everyone gets in the van and flees in time. In there, Helen’s also got Shoto’s player… An eleven year old kid named Zhou, portrayed by Philip Zhao. That is one cool kid right there. Helen, being the technical smarts of the team (seeing as she builds mods for OASIS and hacks stuff), devises a clever plan to rescue Samantha. Thankfully, Wade remembers his earlier meeting with Nolan Sorrento, head of IOI, and knows what the man’s been using to log in… including his password.

It's like being trapped in the game, literally!

Crash through the ice in three... two...
Samantha is seen at the IOI, locked in a cubicle, a helmet attached to her head keeping her inside the OASIS, with electric ankle bracelets. She’s forced to act as a slave to the enterprise and its nameless goons. Meanwhile, Sorrento (still as evil Clark Kent) arrives at Castle Anorak on Planet Doom, where a long line of IOI Sixers is testing every single game on the Atari 2600, with each game being tried leading to the avatar of the person playing it, standing on ice, falling through and dying. Fairly quickly, might I add, barely a minute into some of those games. The IOI searchers are trying to figure out which game leads to the third key. Sorrento meets with I-R0k and makes him activate a legendary artifact gathered by IOI earlier, an orb that can create an impenetrable force field around a fairly large perimeter. The Orb is activated by a magic spell, and protects Castle Anorak.

First rule of the impenetrable fortress in a work of fiction:
Before the end, it will be penetrated. ...That came out wrong.

September 10, 2018

VGFlicks: Ready Player One (Part 2)

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4

(Once again: Spoiler Alert!)

The craziest race is about start again!

Did you know this movie’s 140 minutes long? And there’s a lot going on. I’ll try my best to keep this review at four parts. When Part 1 ended, ParZival (Wade’s avatar) and Art3mis were at the starting line for the race, ready to try again, after Wade Watts had a revelation on how to win the race.

The craziest race? Yeah, right - you can only win
by cheating!
When the race starts, instead of racing with the others, Wade drives the car backwards. This opens a pathway that he drives his Delorean backwards into, which takes him through a secret passageway under the racetrack, from which he gets to watch all the action going on above him. Then, with ridiculous ease, he pops out at the Finish line, behind the very angry King Kong who’s been foiled for the first time in five years.

I suck at solving Rubik's, but I still want this.
Upon reaching the plaza past the finish line, ParZival is greeted by an invisible orchestra and Anorak, James Halliday’s OASIS avatar, congratulates him. And so, he gets the first key - as well as a clue towards the next key. With the victory came a huge amount of money, which Wade proceeds to spend around the in-game store on weapons, outfits - even items for real life, such as the full-body VR suit that will replicate on his real body the sensations of his avatar being touched in the OASIS. Sounds cool as long as there’s no fighting going on. Getting hurt IRL when your avatar gets hurt sounds like a bad plan. He also gets a Zemeckis Cube, a Rubik’s Cube with some ability. Considering what film series Zemeckis is most famous for… it’s probably time-based.

I-R0k is never given a real life name. Nolan Sorrento is never given
an avatar name. Nobody cares anyway. Especially for I-R0k.
Nolan Sorrento, CEO of IOI, goes into the game (and he keeps his password on his VR seat! That’s not safe.), and meets with his henchman I-R0k. When I first heard the name, I thought of Eyerok, that boss from Super Mario 64. But no, it’s just some guy with a skull for a body. For the record, I-R0k is voiced by T.J. Miller, and we only hear the guy, never see the player behind the avatar. Which I consider a good thing nowadays. I don’t expect to see him in other stuff anytime soon. I-R0k is very useful to Sorrento, getting an almighty artifact for the man on Doom Planet of all places. It’s an orb that can protect a large area from all attacks, and whose effect can only be turned on or off by reciting a spell.

September 8, 2018

VGFlicks: Ready Player One (Part 1)


Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4

This movie is very, very recent; it was released this year! So if you haven't seen it and don't wish to be spoiled, I suggest you go see it before reading this review, as I reveal everything that happens. I make comparisons with the book as well. You can skip this review if you don't want to have the film spoiled to you.

On the topic of VR: I haven’t tried it all that much. My first attempt at using VR was last year, and the game was Surgeon Simulator, but at the time I didn’t know the procedure to beating the first level, so I didn’t get much out of that. I played some more VR this year, at a convention, and tried Job Simulator. It was a lot more fun, and I kept coming back to play it some more. Would have played again, but other people wanted to try it as well.

These two short experiences haven’t changed my mind on three things I believe regarding virtual reality gaming:
-That the price tag is not nearly approachable enough for a lot of players, considering the growing yet still limited library of games that can be played with it (though maybe I’m not up-to-date on that). Also, not every VR game can be played on every VR set;
-That VR takes a LOT of prerequisites (computing power, a large empty room, maybe someone monitoring as you play so you won’t trip or fall);
-And, most importantly, nobody looks cool playing VR. Silly and dorky? Perhaps. Cool? Not at all. I’ve yet to see someone play VR and look cool doing it. This meme is basically me:


Ready Player One, directed by Steven Spielberg and adapted from the novel of the same name by Ernest Cline, prominently features VR gaming. And I can’t imagine the mental gymnastics required to give some semblance of coolness to that form of gaming, but they make a damn good case for it.

Now, on the topic of the story: I haven’t read the book. I have, however, been told that it’s really not that great. The base concept is interesting: What if one video game became the only solace for a mankind that refuses to acknowledge the state of the real world as it stands? It’s interesting because, like a lot of science-fiction stories and other futuristic satires, we’re actually coming closer every year to this situation. It’s a worrisome thought, and science-fiction has always explored humanity and society through its stories, which can be framed as cautionary tales or allegories.

However, a great concept can be brought down by poor writing. A key element of the story is that the creator of the video game in question had immense nostalgia for the 1980s, and as such has peppered that game with thousands of elements of that decade’s pop culture. From the DeLorean to Stayin’ Alive, passing by the old arcade games… And Cline describes each of his passions from the ‘80s in grand detail. There’s geeking out, then there’s “spending pages and pages talking about old media just because you can”. The author also uses the book to rant about other things, such as how religions and their believers are stupid and there’s no God. So he sounds like the worst kind of atheist. The book also seemed to revel in the gatekeeping and elitism that is all too present in many fandoms nowadays, a sickening trend in my opinion.

And the less I say about this the better. This post is just plain awful.

Even if it's a joke... it sucks as a joke.

Adapting the story of Ready Player One for the silver screen had this author working with one of his idols, Steven Spielberg. The director himself was quite prominent in the pop culture of the 80’s, so working on this adaptation allowed him to revisit some of his older works. Has Spielberg managed to turn a mediocre book into a good movie? This intro has been long enough, let’s get into this already. Just be aware that I will talk primarily about the film, but I will occasionally talk about elements I have read about the book.