Rahul Shirke

Kevin Smith Vouches the Watchmen

Everyone’s having doubts about this. Zack Snyder is doing risky business by adapting to film the greatest graphic novel of all time. Will he succeed? Nobody can be sure, because you can’t have the film take too many liberties from the novel, and you can’t capture all the subliminal hints and qualities of the novel fully in the film.

In any case, Kevin Smith, dude extraordinaire, has watched the Watchmen (don’t worry, the use of that pun is going to increase exponentially as we approach March 2009). A paltry NDA stops him from saying anything, but he definitely has words to share about the experience:

“I saw Watchmen. It’s fucking astounding. The Non-Disclosure Agreement I signed prevents me from saying much, but I can spout the following with complete joygasmic enthusiasm: Snyder and Co. have pulled it off. Remember that feeling of watching Sin City on the big screen and being blown away by what a faithful translation of the source material it was, in terms of both content and visuals? Triple that, and you’ll come close to watching Watchmen. Even Alan Moore might be surprised at how close the movie is to the book. March can’t come soon enough.”

Now I am one of the pitiable souls who has not watched Sin City yet, but I can tell that the guy is saying that it’s going to be a great movie. I don’t know how many changes will be made to the movie upto release date, though. It’s still a good 7 months or so away, so you never know. Still, seeing Smith’s reaction, I think we can all expect something extreme.

Epic Making New IP with EA

Epic, impressed by their work on the Gears of War PC port, bought People Can Fly not very long ago. Now’s the time for action. Epic has announced that their Poland-based PCF studio will be working on a whole new IP to be released for the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3, all by EA. About time.

And we just got you excited on that, then sorry, we don’t have much else to report. That’s pretty much all that has been released upto now. No title, no hint of story, nothing. Still, being the keen industry analysts that we are, we’re guessing it will be a sci-fi first person shooter, involving either a dystopia or an alien invasion.

Epic seems to have been on a roll recently. While they have always prospered by selling their uber Unreal Engine to other devs, they took a walk out of the tent with Gears of War and are working on its sequel as we speak. They’re also doing great licensing Unreal Engine 3 and have a 4th version in the works.

Their flagship product, Unreal Tournament 3 didn’t do so well, however. This has left the franchise abandoned for the while, as no more news has been announced regarding it yet. Still, in an informal chat conducted by BeyondUnreal, an Epic employee (hehe) had said that Unreal Tournament will last as long as Epic does.

Should Rockstar Be Prosecuted For Thai Murder?

The murder of a Thai cab driver at the hands of an idiot teenager in Thailand has stirred up a controversy that is to GTA4 what Hot Coffee was to San Andreas. With global response to the incident, Rockstar seems to have riled up a bunch of video game violence critics.

In the latest chapter of this story, we have Somchai Jaroen-amnuaysuk, deputy director of Thailand’s Welfare Promotion, Protection and Empowerment of Vulnerable Groups Office going against poor old Rockstar, developers of GTA4.

He says that when a player “copycats a crime he or she sees in the game”, the makers of the game should be prosecuted. Prosecutions will force the game makers to act more responsibly, the director says. This is a pretty much WTF kind of idea, because till now, I’ve only heard these critics go against publishers, distributors and the like.

The fact that Rockstar is in good ol’ America is consoling, seeing as if it were a Thai company, it would probably have been “prosecuted” already. And speaking of Thailand’s legal system, let me remind you that the 19-year-old kid who killed the cab driver may be sentenced to execution by lethal injection. Not good news for the game makers.

J.J. Abrams doing Cloverfield: Earthquake?

After awing the cellphone-owning world with this year’s Cloverfield, J.J. Abrams will be looking into another disaster movie. Except this time, we won’t have any mysterious monsters. This time, it’s all going to be natural, ’cause Abrams will be doing an Earthquake film.

Signed on is David Seltzer, who will be writing the script with Abrams. Seltzer can be best known for his scripwriting expertise on all of the Omen movies (yes, even the crappy new remake). As usual, since this is a fresh announcement, we have very little knowledge of what the movie itself will be about other than earthquakes.

Abrams hints that relationships will be at the core, like in Cloverfield. While I can’t imagine a disaster movie that doesn’t involve emotions (Day After Tomorrow, perhaps?), Abrams did a decent job on Cloverfield, so I’m hoping for something here. Still, a notch higher than Cloverfield would be appreciated.

We’ve also no confirmation that the movie will use the handycam-style from Cloverfield, but that’s just some wishful thinking on my part. I mean seriously, that style makes all standard disaster movies look outdated.

Of course, still no info on Cloverfield 2. Perhaps Abrams is secretly developing it under the guise of this earthquake movies? Perhaps a viral marketing campaign will reveal clues? The mystery never stops!

Spanish Cabbies Want GTA4 Banned Too!

After being banned from Thailand, Rockstar’s infamous Grand Theft Auto 4 may also see a boot from another country: Spain. According to GamePolitics, the Catalan Taxi Federation’s secretary general Josep Maria Goñi has asked the government to ban the game.

Goñi states that the move has been triggered by the Thailand murder case where a loser kid wanted to know “if it’s as easy to hijack a taxi as it is in the game” and did just that. Kid will soon face execution by a lethal injection.

And GTA isn’t the only one on Goñi’s hitlist. He wants a ban on all games with “a high level of violence or which “celebrate” drug trafficking or prostitution”. Well, that isn’t something new, because there must be about a million people or more on this planet who want a ban on those.

Regardless, it should be noted that Goñi didn’t say anything about movies. Apparently, movies with a high level of violence and which celebrate drug trafficking or prostitution must be perfectly fine. But video games? Think of the kids!

While we don’t know how the Spanish Government has responded to this, we’ll just hope that they won’t. There must be more important matters in Spain that banning video games, dammit!

Lars Ulrich tries to be evasive about Guitar Hero: Metallica

Who is he kidding now? If a game called Guitar Hero: Aerosmith could work, what’s going to stop a Guitar Hero game on Metallica: one of the most well-known Thrash Metal bands ever? While we have almost certain confirmation that the game will be happening, Lars Ulrich was still acting a little cagey when asked about the game.

Talking to MTV News, he was caught saying:

“Let’s put it this way, [Our next album] Death Magnetic comes out in September, and the day it comes out, it will be available in the ‘Guitar Hero 3‘ format, which we’re obviously super-psyched about. As I’ve born witness to in my house, its all about the next generation. My kids play ‘Guitar Hero’ every day, and to be able to get the Metallica record the day it comes out, that’s super cool.”

“There’s an Aerosmith game out there that’s super successful, and if somebody’s gonna follow that up…we’re talking, and its exciting, and the people at ‘Guitar Hero’ and Activision are rapidly becoming our best new friends in the world. You can put the rest of it together yourself.”

Here at StuffWeLike, we’re hard at work putting the rest of it together, but our extreme calculations show that the result will be a glamour-filled, guitar-screaming, drum-killing title called Guitar Hero: Metallica! Or perhaps a variant on that name.