Month: June 2022

Good Morning Friends! Over the weekend I wrapped up the series Only Murders in the Building and I thought this morning I would talk a bit about it. I used to talk about the media I consume quite a bit but have not really in a while. I have to be honest, I am very late to the punch here because this is a show that was the talk of the town… last year. It is one of those shows that I filed away in my brain not by name, but by the cast of actors. Instead of remembering it was called Only Murders in the Building, I remembered it as “That Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez show”. So when my wife was hunting for suggestions of things to watch, and a friend of hers suggested this show… I had no recollection of it. A quick google produced a flood of “oh yeah I wanted to watch that” feelings however and here we are having consumed it over a few nights.

I would not exactly call my wife and me true crime junkies, but we do consume quite a bit of it. I think in part this is due to the fact that our taste patterns do not have a ton of overlap, and true crime is one of those topics we can always both agree on. When we take a long trip it is often our entertainment to throw on a podcast as we drive and have absolutely consumed shows like Serial and S Town while doing this. I actually got bit by Serial when I co-worker suggested the show, and caught up about halfway through the original run. We’ve also been drawn into a number of Netflix series like Making a Murderer or The Staircase. I think honestly the attraction to these shows is less about the experience of watching them, but more about the experience of having the conversations for months after the fact positing our theories.

What makes Only Murders in the Building interesting is it has a self-aware quality to it. Instead of being a mystery, a dark comedy, a crime drama, or a documentary on the creation of a podcast… it is all of these wrapped up into a quirky package. It is both a show for fans of the true-crime podcast genre, but also a show that pokes gentle fun at those same fans. The entire show centers around an unlikely trio of characters played expertly by Selena Gomez, Steve Martin, and Martin Short. The latter two of those are extremely foundational characters in the mythology of my childhood. The Jerk is still to this day one of my favorite movies, and for whatever reason, as kids, we latched onto The Three Amigos as an epic film that we parroted lines from constantly. The thread that brings these characters together is their shared love of a podcast set in Oklahoma that seems to be referencing S Town. When a murder takes place in their building, they get the idea of turning it into a podcast.

Charles-Haden Savage

Steve Martin plays Charles-Haden Savage a washed-up actor whose major claim to fame is playing a hard-boiled detective character named Brazzos. I did not realize until I actually looked up the character that the hyphen was in the wrong place on his name. He lives alone in his apartment and laments the loss of love as well as a general loss of relevancy. The universally likable character that you end up feeling a bit sorry for over the course of the show.

Oliver Putnam

Then you have the Martin Short character of Oliver Putnam who is a failed Broadway producer. I always associate Martin Short with these deeply manic characters, but while highly neurotic this is actually a subdued portrayal. Oliver is most well known for a series of failed musicals including Splash!… where he got the grand idea of converting the stage into a giant pool which caused many injuries. He is a man looking for the next big thing, so when the podcast idea comes along he grabs hold with both hands for dear life.

Mabel Mora

Then we have Selena Gomez’s character of Mabel Mora, who is in the building refurbishing the apartment of her aunt. Mabel is really the centerpiece of the show and is the character that changes the most over the course of the entire experience. Additionally, she is the most nuanced character, and to talk much about this… would give away way too many plot points. The portrayal of the character by Selena is phenomenal and her dry wit effortlessly upstages the more physical comedy styles of Steve Martin and Martin Short.

The entire show centers around the idea of trying to solve a murder that happened in the building, while at the same time recording a podcast. This plays with the notion of the true-crime podcast nature being a slow reveal of details when the producers understood the conclusion from the very start. Serial doled out information in pieces specifically to build tension, but I clearly feel like all of the evidence had already been gathered well before the first episode was released. Only Murders in the Building also plays with the notion of super fans, who end up being camped out in front of the building hoping for a glimpse of the cast of characters set forth in the show. I am being purposefully vague in talking about this show because it takes some turns, and I wouldn’t want to spoil the experience.

I seem to have chosen the ideal time to get into this series. On June 28th the second season of the show is premiering on Hulu, and I am certain that my wife and I will be tuning in. The first season runs 10 episodes with runtime for each episode of roughly thirty minutes. I am largely throwing this out there in case anyone else missed this show so that they might have time to catch up before the next season hits.

Diablo Immortal potentially has one of the worst game announcements I have ever experienced. Fans like me were hoping to see the next chapter in the storied Diablo PC franchise and instead got a mobile game. That said while I was disappointed… I remember talking on Twitter about how I was interested in a phone-based Diablo game. The app stores are chock full of Diablo clones, some of which are actually really good. The thing is… none of them really FEEL like Diablo and I hoped that Immortal would package up the gameplay that I really enjoyed on Diablo 3 into a handheld format. Then all of the bullshit happened over the last two years with Blizzard and it made me significantly less interested in playing any of their games. In fact, I had not touched anything Blizzard-related since April of 2021 until yesterday when I gave Diablo Immortal a spin because I figured at some point I would want to talk about it based on what I had been reading.

If you want my 500 ft view of the game… it looks like Diablo and sounds like Diablo, but does not FEEL like Diablo. There is just something missing about the way the game functions that pushes it into this uncanny valley of not really feeling like the game I was looking for. It is little things like breaking objects… if they are breakable at all… doesn’t really do anything. I’ve been smashing barrels for fun and profit since Diablo 1, and while there are a handful of breakables early in the game… there seem to be way more vases and jars that are untouchable. That is by no means a fatal flaw, but just indicative of the sort of thing that I am talking about here. Something just feels off about the game and I will dive a bit further into that.

At a core level, Diablo for me is about building resources, spending resources, and the interplay of abilities. Diablo Immortal instead is a game about pressing buttons whenever they come off cooldown, which is ultimately the problem with every mobile phone Diablo clone I have experienced. You could have told me that Raziel or Lineage was having a cross-over event with Diablo, and I would have believed you. Essentially Diablo Immortal feels at a fundamental level like every ARPG I have played on a phone. There is something missing in the interplay of the abilities that makes it feel like I am just whacking buttons when they come off cooldown without a larger goal in mind.

The other aspect that makes it feel like every other ARPG on the phone market is the inclusion of ultimate. There is a meter that is slowly building over time through you taking actions, that ultimately unlocks an ultimate ability. When this ability is active you essentially shift into all powerful god mode which allows you to completely decimate any encounter. However, the end result of this is that you feel weak and useless any time the ultimate is not active, making it feel like you need to gain power in order to compete with this borrowed power system. Based on my brief research, there are apparently gems that you can slot that will build this ultimate bar faster allowing you to have this “borrowed power” up more often and burn through things more quickly. To be fair, Diablo has always had borrowed power in the form of the shrines, but I specifically call out ultimate only because they seem to be bog standard for all phone ARPGs and not something I have traditionally associated with Diablo in the past.

Then there is the monetization. Upon clearing the first dungeon and taking down King Leoric yet again in a Diablo game… I unlocked the Mad King’s Breach Trove. This wasn’t something I got as a loot reward but instead something that I can now purchase on the in-game store for only 99 cents. For that low price, you get one legendary crest, two basic crests, six gems, and 60 eternal orbs. It seems like the “crests” are this game’s “gacha” currency and allow you a chance at pulling legendary gems. The orbs are the currency for purchasing more of these crests or the various cosmetic items available in the game store. However when I looked through the store there was nothing that you could actually purchase for 60 orbs, and instead, you would need to add another 60 to that in order to get to the price for the cheapest item… a single legendary crest for 120 orbs.

This sort of thing is what is referred to as “predatory monetization” and I get that it exists in so many forms now. However, the fact that you get an amount of currency in one of their “cheap” packs that they are telling you is a phenomenal deal… but that is not capable of purchasing ANYTHING in the store by itself feels real bad. All cash shops are notorious for doing the thing where the amounts of currency that you can purchase never quite exactly map to anything you can buy in the store so you either have an amount left over or are just short. That sucks too, but this is a case where you are given an amount as part of a bundle and there is absolutely nothing that I could see in the shop that you could actually spend it on. The above video is one that keeps getting referenced over and over by various talking heads discussing this game, and if anything they say is true… it would cost tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy your way to a completely maxed out character.

For a very long time, Blizzard games have been riding a line when it comes to monetization. While lots of folks complained about Overwatch loot boxes or Hearthstone card packs, I thought those were mostly fine. Overwatch gave you nothing but cosmetics and Hearthstone more or less modeled the same sort of thing I was used to in purchasing card packs for Magic the Gathering. This however feels like another significant line has been crossed, and in doing so… it takes Blizzard into a whole new category of a games company. Genshin Impact is a DEEPLY predatory game when it comes to monetization, and if there is any truth to the rumors about what the endgame of Diablo Immortal looks like… then Genshin actually seems generous.

If you are enjoying Diablo Immortal however then by all means awesome. The combination of it mostly just feeling like every other phone ARPG I have played combined with the aggressive monetization ended up being a massive turn-off for me. I’ve tried both the Mobile client and the PC client and they feel fine enough. Both mobile and PC feel much better with a controller than they do with touch or keyboard/mouse. Touch screen interfaces still largely feel like garbage to me so I am not going to hold that against this specific game when ALL touch screen games feel like trash to me personally. If you are grabbing it for your phone prepare to have about 2.6 GB of free space all told once the many downloads finish. Other than gameplay problems, I still do not feel great touching anything Blizzard-related right now so long as Kotick is still in power. I am hoping that the Microsoft purchase goes through and that sweeping changes are made within the company.

Instead of playing Diablo Immortal from the bed as I had originally planned on doing, I decided to use Steam remote play and give Torchlight III another shot. I have to say I kinda dig the ghost captain class so far though I did not make it terribly far before sleep claimed me. I really need to do the whole steam remote play thing far more often because with my phone and the Gamesir controller it was a phenomenal experience. I need to probably sift through my game library and look for more similar controllers/bed-friendly titles. All of this said I really do hope you are enjoying the launch of Diablo Immortal. It was not for me but that does not mean it is not a game you are going to be interested in.