It appears that some laughably low-budget indie film called The Dark Knight (doesn't ring any bells with me either) stomped all over everything this past week. According to ComingSoon.net's box-office tally, here's a list of all the records beaten to a pulp (lest we forget interrogation room Joker, if you recall) so far. It seems Chris Nolan's grabbed up:
- Widest release (4,366 theaters)
- Biggest opening weekend ($158.4M)
- Biggest July opener ($158.4M)
- Biggest PG-13 rated opening ($158.4M)
- Biggest single day ($67.2M)
- Biggest opening day ($67.2M)
- Biggest Friday ($67.2M)
- Biggest Sunday ($43.6M)
- Fastest to $200M in five days ($203.8M)
.........You want fries with that?
If there was any doubt before, it's more than obvious now the Batman film franchise couldn't possibly be in better hands. At least since Mr. Burton's kinda tied up with other stuff lately anyway. Keep it up, fellas at Warner/Legendary/DC, Nolan Brothers, Mr. Bale (once you get that domestic assault stuff cleared up, that is), et al. We the viewers expect great things from you guys for part three (or seven, depending on how you count. ...Let's go with three). Just ask some of those theatergoers yourself-- Oh, wait! I already did! Episode three of The Rant is online now. Check that out for more...
Anyway...
Recently, another super-violent video game was rereleased for Xbox 360 by the title of Unreal Tournament 3. It's a textbook class-based shooter game that borrowed its single-player campaign structure from Shadowrun (i.e. it has no campaign; it's pure multiplayer against 4-8 enemy A.I. opponents with 3-7 A.I. teammates backing you up) and in the recent tradition of shooters done by Epic Games, it's got pretty darn good graphics, a regenerating health system visualized by how red your screen gets (Thank God! I'd hate to see Rainbow Six Vegas 2's "more damage = blacker screen = less chance you can see enough to fight back" again!) and super-tall walking death machines ripped straight out of a certain H.G. Wells book/Orson Welles radio show/Tom Cruise film. Original.
UT3, as it's called, is generally known less for the campaign, or even the built-in multiplayer, and more for the user-generated content. Players on the PC and PlayStation 3 versions can make their own maps, game mods ("I want a bigger hoverboard!!" "I want characters to talk backwards!!") and such by using special editing software and copying it into the right folder on their computer hard drive for PC, or save their "Frankenmaps" to a Memory Stick Duo to import over to their PS3s. Meanwhile, the version us Xbox360-ers got, eight months late I might add, is of course devoid of any customizing/uploading ability. Because Microsoft might find out about one of us using the game's upload-to-the-360-hard-drive ability to unlock using an external USB hard drive to store more game content we paid "money" for in Xbox Marketplace, since 20 gigabytes isn't what it was five years ago, and a whole terabyte (about 1,000 gigabytes, if you don't know) of storage is a whole terabyte too much for us.
So thanks to Microsoft's paranoia about allowing user-generated content, we're expected to shell out the same price the PS3 players pay for their "fancy-dancy" Blu-ray version, for 2/3 the game.
Oh, wait. We get Achievements out of it? and the PlayStation guys might be getting some trophies added to theirs soon also? Then our Achievements aren't very special anymore, are they?
Yeah, UT3 was a good MULTIPLAYER game, and a decent time-waster while we wait for Gears of War 2 to arrive, since this trailer that came from E3 last week did its job too well; we want to see more!
...But it's not the same without the custom content. I was listening to some podcasts from game review sites recently that came to the same Bottom Line: Either Microsoft stops blocking studios' ability to let users do their own thing if the game allows it on platforms besides 360, or developers really shouldn't bother making the port for 360. That game won't be reviewed very well, and people might bother to rent it (like I did...) for a couple quick Achievements, but the product won't be making nearly as much money as a scarce rental instead of a medium buy. Microsoft has to sit down, get their heads out of planning this new (ridiculous, but if we have to...) interface and figure out their own hardware. Security of platform, or freedom of developers. I guess even Bill Gates' company can't have it both ways.
...But that's just me.
Later.
-D.
