Salty Truth's E3 2017 Top 5

By Corey Floyd

Last week we were graced by E3 conference. The gaming world comes together in the Ultimate pissing contest to see who can shit on who for the next year. Sony vs Xbox while Nintendo does their own thing. It's always very a wild time and thing you will see is always golden. I Just want to talk about a few things I liked in no particular order.  

5 Cuphead. A few years ago they showed a reveal trailer of this game and I fell in love. I look at the term gamer a little differently than most. I don’t think it just means you play this one particular game really well and you don’t play anything else i.e Madden, COD, Overwatch. When i here that there gaming is just whatever the hot item is I cringe mainly because It has no originality to it. One of the reasons I love Xbox is because they give indy companies a chance to show what they can do. Cuphead is great example of that. It’s a arcade style run around shoot em up like Contra but it’s looks like a old school cartoon. It looks really fun and family friendly. Which is a rarity on any list of mine lol. Here's the Trailer for it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TjUPXAn2Rg

4. Assassin's Creed Origins . Now the quality in this series has been called a fall from grace. Since it got to a point they were putting out a games every year. Plus the Unity game failure and subpar sales of their last installment. They went back to Lab took their time and revealed this. One of the things I really enjoyed was they are telling the origin story of the assassins after 7 installments and DLC we never heard how it all began and I wanna know. The gameplay mechanics have been changed. Over the years the mechanics never changed they were too easy. In a gameplay trailer you see they took a few pages from the Dark Souls series. Lucky for us not too many pages. Dodging looks paramount also there's a falcon you can use to look at the terrain ahead kind of like a drone. Also this was the first time we have a Black protagonist and it’s not  DLC or a poorly made PSP title so Hooray !!!!!The trailerr will be put right here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2iBAPsQRto

  

3. Anthem. This is supposed to be their answer for Destiny. Which in my opinion was lackluster due to the fact they did not give you a full story on release and 75% of the DLC was trash. Anthem from what has been shown is a single or multiplayer game where you build and customize these exo suits and fly off and explore the world and take out baddies. Now Luiggi reminded me that it was a EA game so I will tread cautiously on the title. But I’m still excited. Don’t fuck this up EA.

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Here’s the trailer, what do you think?. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQhbHwkMSA4  

2. Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus

I’ve always enjoyed the Wolfenstein series personally. Not many games out there where you can take out the worst people in the world. Unless there a game about the KKK. Anyway, the trailer gave us a very bleak America where they took over. From the trailer, it looks like they did some more world building as well as interesting characters. Its definitely the most brutal installment a shotgun blast to the face leaves quite a mess in this game. Plus there’s a giant robotic bog you can control that shoots flames. The trailer right here of course   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZwU5Xil0sA . Is it just me or does this make me feel like one of the Inglorious Bastards in this game?

1.  Beyond Good and Evil 2 was one of the best moments at E3. The sequel to acclaimed playstation 2 title has been in development hell for almost 10 years. Th3 second installment of this Ubisoft title does not have an official release date. From the game developer of the project who was holding back tears after the trailer reveal we learn this will be a prequel of sorts for the series. I say of sorts cause we have not seen Jade who was the main character from the last one. Little else is now for now but if this trailer is of thing to come I cannot wait. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrofwDfzZBk

You may have noticed I did not choose any console exclusives. I Did not want to shun anyone from this convo. But Mario Odyssey does get a special mention. Also We talk about everything else at e3 on our podcast pleases download and check us outhttps://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/amerime-junkies/id1212151606?mt=2  .  Till then peace.  

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Comic Cancellations

By Courntey Dunn

Cancellations are a part of the comic book life cycle. A twist on a character or a new storyline will either be met with the rallied cries of fans or the sad sound of a cancellation announcement due to lack of sales. Marvel has been steadily cranking out titles of old, new, and rebooted characters. Though recently, they have been slowly reeling back the production of a lot of the popular titles that they’ve released. They haven’t even all been officially canceled, just not available in the July solicitations. Well, Mosaic, Patsy Walker AKA Hellcat, Star-Lord, Power Man & Iron Fist, Rocket Raccoon, Kingpin, Thunderbolts, Silk, Nova, Black Panther: World of Wakanda, and Elektra have all been officially canceled.  

Now, we all know that sales are important to any business, especially this industry. That being said if about half of your goods are selling at a low, but consistent level, is it worth it to just scrap all the products that are low selling? That seems to be what Marvel is doing despite fan interest. It’s as if they forgot how readers work. Some people need time to warm up to a new character or a new iteration of one. Some people wait to see how well received a new title is before they hop on. Some people wait for the trade so they can get as much story at one time as possible! There’s a lot of reasons why the numbers for these titles hover around the cancellation line, but maybe the cancellation point should be adjusted.

Another criticism that has been making its way around is that Marvel’s attempts to be inclusive and politically correct are killing their sales. I mean, what’s so crazy about expanding a possible reader base? I do admit that some bits of dialogue have been a bit ham-handed, but there’s nothing wrong with passing the torch of power onto someone different. I bet people lost their shit when Mar-vell accidentally shared his powers with Carol Danvers to make her into Ms. Marvel. Oh no, a woman with power! So what if there’s some brown people, women, or even brown women in the books we read? Are they not present in everyday life or is the superhero world supposed to be this magical all Anglo utopia? The idea that Marvel is alienating their “main” demographic is uninformed at best, and just plain bigoted at worst. Becoming inclusive is probably the reason they’ve been able to keep up the sales on certain titles.

With that argument, it makes it especially surprising that the new run of Black Panther is being canceled. Especially in the wake of him joining the cinematic universe. Some readers say that the writer, David Liss, didn’t do the character justice, but does Marvel really care about anything but the numbers these days? Though he doesn’t have a whole lot under his belt comic-wise other than Mystery Men and The Spider, he is a highly acclaimed novelist. I also, personally, really enjoyed what I read of the series. At least a third of ongoing Marvel titles are selling below what they prefer, but hardly any of them have the rolling ball of building star power like Black Panther does.

Honestly, if the only reason for these cancellations is sales, maybe Marvel should start listening to the fans more and less to the out of touch people at the head. Attempting to bump up sales with mega crossover events, tie-ins, and limited release series do not create long-term readership. If they actually let the books with excellent creative teams and a solid but small readership finish a story then they may have more luck keeping people interested. When I see a new event happening, I’m really just wondering what books to read that won’t be entirely based on ending up at this big showdown. Sometimes people just want to read a good story and maybe Marvel has forgotten that’s what it’s all about.

Hopefully, I will talk to guys again. But until then Cheers

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