When Harry Met Sally Movie Review

 

A review of When Harry Met Sally (1989) dir. Rob Reiner.

When I watch rom-com movies, I often see myself in the main character. See my review of High Fidelity (2000) dir. John Cusack for a prime example. But when my buddy Gabe showed me his favorite rom-com, I didn't see myself in Billy Crystal. However, I did see my ex-girlfriend very clearly behind the character of Sally. She's naive and fun, with a veil of professionalism over a frame that is anything but. Seeing her sad made me sad. What does this mean for my feelings toward Sally? The movie's theme focuses on the idea that men and women can never, in a vacuum, truly be just friends; with that in mind, I don't think relating the movie to my personal experience is a wise idea anymore.

The movie is pretty entertaining, but nothing blew me away. The scene where Harry explains his divorce to his friend at the stadium ruined the pacing and didn't impact the story much. Expo dump. Sad that Sally's ex got engaged. There's a dialogue section that reminds me of Kid Cudi's song "The Guide," which is a fantastic song. If you know the song and the movie, you'll know what I mean. Also a pretty gross scene in this one restaurant. This movie is not for kids.

6/10, I'm never stepping foot in Wisconsin again.

E3 Wishes and Predictions 2018 - Sega + Atlus

Well last year, most of the things in my "realistic" tier of wishes from Sega was answered. We got playable demos of Sonic Mania and Forces, a new All Stars Racing game was announced (albeit with only Sonic characters this time), and PSO2 is on the Switch. So now I have new things to beg for.

NEW CRAZY TAXI - I love Crazy Taxi. It's super fun. I would really love a new one for current platforms. I already made a potential soundtrack for it in Spotify. I would like if all the Crazy Taxi 3 maps and 2 new maps were included in it, but as long as it's Crazy Taxi and it has at least 1 good map and solid music, I don't mind.

PSO 2 LOCALIZED - Phantasy Star Online 2 looks like it would really fun. I don't have a Raspberry Pi, so I can't play PSO online on the Dreamcast. But the Switch has WiFi. I'd much prefer to play online. Thing is, I can't read Japanese so playing it in its current state is near impossible. I would love it if it came to the West. I would prefer an actual port over PSO2 Cloud, but I'll take what I can get. Also, put it on Xbox One. They have about 38 million users, so that's a lot of potential sales of PSO 2.

SATURN GAMES ON SWITCH - The Saturn is easily Sega's most collectible console. It has almost 1400 titles, and a lot of them are uncommon and expensive. Saturn consoles are also the most valuable of all Sega consoles. Genesises are about 30 bucks, Dreamcasts are around 50, Master Systems are upwards of 85, and Saturns are over 100 dollars. Long story short, Saturn collecting is expensive and I want Sega to just rerelease things on the Switch, sort of like Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection.

And since Sega owns Atlus, they could put Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner for the Saturn on the Switch. I've never played Shin Megami Tensei before, but I've always wanted to. Besides, I have to mention Atlus somewhere in this post. We'll throw in a Persona 4 Golden port for good measure.

Last year, I said that I wanted a new Sega console. Now I don't. If Sega had a new console, all their cool games would be exclusive to their platform, and I couldn't play them on Switch. We also can't confirm that a new Sega console would have good third party, so it would only be good for playing Sega games. No thanks.

So what I expect from Sega and Atlus this E3 is not a lot. Sega is going to be showing off All Stars Racing 3 and Valkyria Chronicles 4. I'm hyped for both of those, so this is a good show so far. I feel like Sega Ages is having some titles announced, plus an announcement for Sega Ages for PS4 and Xbox One. I just feel like that's gonna happen. Atlus is probably going to talk about Catherine and Shin Megami Tensei 5. That's all I think will happen. It sounds like a good showing this year. See you later for when I talk about Activision's set!

E3 Wishes and Expectations 2018 - Microsoft

I have more hopes for Microsoft than I do for Electronic Arts. But I'm not entirely sure why. Microsoft doesn't really do much as far as games go, and E3 is all about games. They make Xbox Ones and they make 6th-gen and 7th-gen games run on Xbox One. That's why I'll have a lot more wishes than I'll have expectations, but we'll get to that later.

Upcoming Switch Games and My Thoughts on Them

My name is Keri and I'm so very happy to be talking about the Switch. I do it often, but it's a good platform, so can you blame me? Probably in the upper half of my Nintendo console rankings and in the upper half of my 8th-gen rankings (only below the Wii U), it's got a good library of strong titles coming out for the foreseeable future. So I'm gonna take a look at some upcoming titles for the platform and what I think about them.

That's the Japanese version of the box art. Sue me.

Minecraft - Minecraft was already released on Switch about a year ago, but I don't care because it wasn't physical. My siblings decided to buy it, so I tried it out. It runs very similar to how it runs on 360, which is good. But that doesn't matter. That's because the new release runs on Better Together's engine, Bedrock. 

OOF

I tried Bedrock on different devices (Windows 10 PCs and 7" tablets), and I noticed that it doesn't look as nice as it does through Java or on 360. It has a really bad OS, too. Like, the inventory system is confusing, and the menu looks like it was designed for 2-year-olds. And from what I've heard from Xbox One users when they got the Better Together update, there's a chance that your worlds will be corrupted when converting them from the 4J engine to Bedrock. I'll buy it so I own as few games digitally as possible, but I'm not too interested in it personally. Minecraft releases on June 21st.

Okami HD - The original Okami was released on PS2 way back when, and it was very well-received critically. It was released on the Wii and PS3 later, each bringing their own strengths to the game. The Wii had motion controls so the drawing technique worked better, and the PS3 version runs in 720p high-definition. At least on my TV it does. It's a 720p TV. But neither version features both of those enhancements until now. The Switch version is in HD and it features the motion controls that the Wii version has.

But I'm not sure if I'm going to buy it. It's not physical here in the States. It's a shame, because I would love to have it available on Switch physically in English, which isn't confirmed yet for the Japanese release, so I don't know whether to import it or not. If it has English, I might import it. If it doesn't, I'll be sticking with the Wii version. Okami HD releases on August 9th.

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus - I'm not too interested in shooters outside of the Wii and Halo 2 & 3. But I'd be lying if I said the story to Wolfenstein IX didn't intrigue me just a bit. The game isn't a particularly beautiful game (the only good looking Bethesda games as of late are Doom 4 and Elder Scrolls 5), but it looks like I would get a kick out of it. I might get it, but I'd need to get a memory card first. My Switch doesn't have the space for a 293GB download. Thanks, Bethany. Wolfenstein II is released on Switch on June 29th.

The 2 Mega Man games - Mega Man X Legacy 1&2 is coming out first. I'm not sure if I want to get it or not. Mega Man Legacy is already out on Switch, and despite the fact that Capcom could easily fit all 10 games on one cartridge, they decided to make the second half a download code. It seems they are doing the same thing with the X Legacy Collection. I don't like downloadable games, so I'm not entirely sure if I should buy it. But I think I will probably at some point just for the games on the cartridge. I might give the download code away, or sell it. Mega Man X is a cool franchise. And say what you will, but they could charge 100 bucks for the collection and I'd buy it long before I'd buy a PAL copy of Mega Man X3 on Sega Saturn. Mega Man X Legacy Collection comes out July 24th.

Mega Man 11 is coming out later, and I'm much more excited for that one. A new Mega Man game is much more interesting than ports of old Super Nintendo and Sega Saturn games. I'm really happy they're taking the direction they're taking with the art style, since the industry seems to be oversaturated with indie pixel art games right now after 9 and 10 and a ton of other, unrelated games. And it's only 30 bucks to preorder! I'm super excited for this game, and it's a guaranteed purchase from me. Mega Man 11 is out on October 2nd.

Flashback - This game was released last year on the Dreamcast for the same price, so I'm not getting the Switch version. I just thought I'd promote the Dreamcast some. Go support JoshProd. If you want the Switch version, it's out July 24th.

Sonic Mania Plus - Sonic Mania was released digitally last year. Now it's got a cartoon already available for streaming, a vinyl soundtrack by DATADISCS available for purchase, and a physical copy coming later this year. The physical copy comes with an art book and all upcoming DLC. The DLC includes 2 new characters, a 4-player single split-screen mode, an Angel Island extension, and some new sprites or something. I will definitely be getting this. Sonic Mania Plus is out July 17th.

So those are all the games I have for today. But soon I'll have my E3 predictions posts coming, and after E3 there will be more games to talk about. I can't wait to see what the conference brings us.

What Sonic Generations Should Have Been

This is less about the game itself and more about the surrounding details, okay?

Spoilers.

Sonic Generations was released in 2011 to pretty much unanimous praise. But do you know what platforms it was on? Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Nintendo 3DS. Do you know what platforms it should have been on? Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, Nintendo 3DS, and PS Vita (as a launch title). The 360/PS3 version is great, but the 3DS version? Not so much. And with the Wii and Vita also available, the game itself could have been so much more.

First of all, we'll start with the PS3 version.

It features levels from all main series Sonic the Hedgehog titles- Sonic 1, 2, 3K, Adventure 1 & 2, Heroes, Next-Gen, Unleashed HD, and Colors. Is this a bad lineup? Let's take a look at the levels chosen.

Green Hill
Chemical Plant
Sky Sanctuary
Speed Highway
City Escape
Seaside Hill
Crisis City
Rooftop Run Day
Planet Wisp

Yeah, I'd say this is a good lineup. It's missing a few key games, though; Sonic CD, Sonic Advance, Secret Rings, stuff like that. Now let's look at the 3DS version.

The 3DS features only 7 stages instead of 9. They are from Sonic 1, 2, 3K, Adventure 1 & 2, Rush, and Colors DS. We could've gotten more, but let's see what levels were chosen.

Green Hill
Casino Night
Mushroom Hill
Emerald Coast
Radical Highway
Water Palace
Tropical Resort

Oh, of the 7 levels, 3 are first levels. 4 if you divide up 3 and Knuckles. That's not the greatest.

So those are the 2 versions. What do I propose we do with the game?

For the PS3, not much. The game is very creative and has good control. What I would add is Stardust Speedway from Sonic CD, Hydrocity from Sonic 3, Westopolis from Shadow the Hedgehog, and Radiant Emerald from Sonic R as a race level.

For the 3DS, change the levels and the art design. The Modern Sonic levels looked good, but the Classic ones look too similar; they should have had more of a Sonic Advance style to differentiate it.

What levels would I pick? Here's a list.

Green Hill - Sonic 1 on Game Gear
Aqua Lake - Sonic 2 on Game Gear
Sunset Park - Sonic Triple Trouble on Game Gear
Cosmic Casino - Sonic Pocket Adventure on Neo Geo Pocket Color
Ice Paradise - Sonic Advance 2 on Game Boy Advance
Toy Kingdom - Sonic Advance 3 on Game Boy Advance
Water Palace - Sonic Rush on Nintendo DS
Haunted Ship - Sonic Rush Adventure on Nintendo DS
Tropical Resort - Sonic Colors on Nintendo DS

And then the Wii. Why wasn't there a Wii version released? Sonic Colors was probably finished in early 2010 or even late 2009; they could have had time to finish a Wii version of Sonic Generations. They even had an engine built for Sonic Colors that they could have used. All they had to do was design the levels and add Classic Sonic. And since it's on the Wii, it can have different levels and give people a reason to buy both, just like Sonic Unleashed. How would that be built?

Well it would work very similarly to Sonic Colors. Running in the same engine and having a few shared cutscenes with the PS3 version. The levels would be as follows:

Green Hill - Sonic 1 on Genesis
Mystic Cave - Sonic 2 on Genesis
Stardust Speedway - Sonic CD on Sega CD
Hidden Palace - Sonic 3&K on Genesis
Windy Valley - Sonic Adventure on Dreamcast
Pyramid Cave - Sonic Adventure 2 on Dreamcast
Egg Fleet - Sonic Heroes on Nintendo GameCube
Deep Woods - Sonic and the Black Knight for Wii
Sweet Mountain - Sonic Colors for Wii

The Wii version would support the GameCube controller and the Classic Controller, but they are not required. You know what would be required? The Nunchuk. Sonic Colors didn't require the Nunchuk and the controls suffered for it. D-pads are not good for controlling characters in 3D Space (except for games like Bug!). The controls for the GameCube controller is the same as Sonic Colors or Sonic Unleashed Wii. The 2 schemes can be swapped in the menu. The Wii Remote & Nunchuk controls are as follows.
The stick moves Sonic.
The D-pad moves Sonic in Classic Stages if you so desire, or rotates the camera in Boost Stages.
A and 2 are jump/homing attack.
1 and Z are boost/spindash.
C is to ground pound.
+ and - are to pause.

The Wii version also supports multiplayer modes like race and battle from Sonic Heroes. A nunchuk is required for both players.

And finally, the Vita version.

For the Vita version, I would make it the same as the proposed 3DS version from above, but with updated graphics and textures. It would also look nicer due to the 544p OLED screen on the Vita. Hopefully that's enough to get people to buy it. That's why I would buy LEGO Batman 2 on the Vita- It's the 3DS version that I like, but with a better resolution.

So what would you have liked to see for Sonic Generations? Tweet me @Icystorm9 telling me (if you care). Goodbye!

What The Wii U Should Have Been

I'm not going to act like I'm smarter than the dozens of people that were working at Nintendo from 2011 to 2014. But now that I have history to reflect on, I think I have a few ideas that would have helped the Wii U not only sell better, but have a better library in the long run. I also got these ideas from other people that I know.

First of all, bundles.

What they should have done is have 3 bundles. The Basic, Standard, and Deluxe. The Basic Set is red and comes with just a Wii U Pro Controller, AV Cable, HDMI Cable, and Mini-USB Cable. It would cost $250 at launch.

Couldn't find a good image of a custom red Pro Controller online, so this will have to do.

Because it doesn't include the GamePad (which cost either 60 or 80 dollars to make, I don't remember), the price could be reduced significantly. But as a result, all games would need to do one of two things.
1) All games need to support the Pro Controller in one way or another.
2) All games that require the GamePad need to be clearly marked.

I think the second one is the best option, so the games requiring the GamePad won't be restricted because of the Pro Controller requirement. And if the second one were the case, I'm sure many more games would support the Pro Controller from the start.

The Second Bundle is the Standard Set. It costs 300 dollars and comes with everything that the current Basic Set comes with. It comes in 2 colors- white and red.

Nice looking console, isn't it?

The memory would be 16 gigabytes because I said so.

Then finally we have the Deluxe Edition. That's the same. It comes in either Black or White, just as the already-existing Deluxe Edition.

So those are the 3 bundles. I'm gonna go make some grilled cheese and come back to talk about the next part, reaching out to 3rd party developers.

Ah dang, I'm out of cheese slices. Oh well. So as I said, this section is about reaching out to 3rd party developers. They had a good start by getting SEGA games Bayonetta 2 and Sonic Lost World as exclusives, but they needed more. If they funded more exclusives or ports of 360 games, then the Wii U would have had the same advantage the Dreamcast would have had. If they had given companies like Rockstar and Activision money to make exclusives and port their older games, then the Wii U would have not only had the new games, but the best versions of these older games, as well as exclusives. And I think that would have pushed a good amount of people over to Nintendo's side this previous generation.

Some ports they could have had if they paid a small amount to the game developers:

Madden 25 (Electronic Arts)

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (Activision)

(i honestly got lazy w/ this one) Dishonored (Bethesda Softworks)

Battlefield 4 (Electronic Arts)

(Didn't actually design this, blame someone else) Grand Theft Auto V (Rockstar Games)

Resident Evil 6 (Capcom)

So now that I've touched on ports that they could have funded, I'll talk about exclusives that they could have funded.

Yakuza 1 & 2 Remastered technically already exists and is an exclusives, but it's only available in Japan.

Jet Set Radio 3, boiii

Another LEGO game, like LEGO City Undercover, such as a LEGO Pirates-type thing, would be greatly appreciated. I would buy that.

Why don't they pay EA to be competent for once? That would be a sight to behold.

And finally, the thing that everyone whines about - marketing.

If they had advertised it correctly, then the Wii U could have been saved, even without the previously mentioned changes. I remember for Thanksgiving 2014 or 2015 (I don't remember), I went to my cousin's house. He has cable, so I watched The Simpsons on FXX. And do you know what I saw? I saw ads for the PlayStation 4. I saw them all the time that weekend. Do you know how many ads I've seen on TV for the Wii U? None. And that's dumb. The Wii U has many features that are unique to it, too. Like full backwards compatibility. And 5-player support. The Pro Controller, the best controller of the 8th generation. All of the great 360 games that are best on the Wii U. And most of all, all of the great exclusives like Pikmin 3, Splatoon, Sonic Lost World, and Runbow Pocket. With all of these great things, you'd think they'd advertise a lot, and you'd think they'd advertise smart. But that didn't happen.

But what's done is done. And the Wii U is done. Nintendo is likely not making any more Wii U things ever again. But that's okay. Because of the Wii U, we now have the Switch. Nintendo had to fall to learn how to make the Switch such a great platform. And I'm glad that they did.

E3 Wishes and Predictions - Sega + Atlus

Oh boy, it's my favorite company in the gaming industry, Sega. I'm going to talk about what I want from them and what I expect from them. Oh, and Atlus is there too.

So there are 3 "tiers", in a sense, of what I want Sega to announce at E3, each one being more believable than the last.

The thing I want the most is for Sega to announce a new console that's as powerful as the Scorpio with internal support for Dreamcast, Saturn, and Sega CD games, with the original controller ports and VMU slots on the side. The Saturn would need original hardware (since it's pretty hard to emulate Saturn hardware), but the Dreamcast and Sega CD games would run through emulation. It would also support Genesis and Master System cartridges, but you need to buy an adapter that plugs in through USB 3.0. This console would be just as popular as the PlayStation 4 (or at least the Xbox One) and feature some amazing first party titles within the first year. Jet Set Radio 3, Crazy Taxi 4, Space Channel 5 Part 3, Sonic Unleashed Remastered (both the PS2 and PS3 versions together), a new Panzer Dragoon, and Yakuza. Nearly all multiplats would appear on it; it would have tons of 3rd party support. It will be wildly successful and Sega's back in the hardware business; the price will be $409.99.

I drew one of these in the first post of this series. Go look at it if you want to see it.

So that's the most unbelievable of the 3.

If that doesn't happen, I'll settle for this. Sega announces a new console that's about as powerful as the PS4 Pro and supports Sega CD games through emulation, but you need to buy a new controller that looks like a Saturn controller, but wireless; there are no ports on the side for original contollers. It has a few Genesis games in the store and some of the Sonic games and Crazy Taxi 1 & 2 at launch, as well as Phantasy Star Online 2 and a bunch of 3rd party games as launch titles. It will be super popular and everyone will buy it.

I frankly think Project Dream is poorly designed, but I don't have a better design scanned to my computer right now. This one is the closest to what the lesser of the 2 planned consoles would be like.

That's more likely to happen, but it's still very unlikely.

Or, I'd be fine with this.

Sega announces a new Sonic and All Stars Racing game for the Vita, Wii U, PS4, Xbox One, and Switch. They also announce Jet Set Radio 3 for PS4, Xbox One, and Switch. There's more about Sonic Forces, and Sonic Mania has a playable demo. Phantasy Star Online 2 is getting a western release for PS4; Xbox One, Switch, and PC versions are coming some time later. I would be fine with that. That would be alright.

But what do I expect from Sega? More on that later.

And remember, Sega and Atlus share a booth at E3. So what do I wish from Atlus?

To be honest, I don't know a thing about Atlus. I hope for stuff from them and that's all I can say.

But what do I expect from Sega? What about Atlus? Well according to Sega Bits, it's going to be a boring E3 for the both of them. It's mainly stuff we already know about. There's stuff about Yakuza 6, Sonic Forces, Shin Megami Tensei, and Radiant Historia. You can read about that by clicking this link.

So what's next? Activision? Oh well. Show up later to read all about what I want and expect from Activision. Or don't. I don't really care all that much.