We know that many media outlets have their own unique way of writing — e.g. Variety’s “slanguage” terms ankle, skein and kudocast come to mind — but, until today, were unaware of Rolling Stone’s take on the word “best.” For that mag’s purposes, “best” appears to mean “are” or “might be” or “could be in this category,” at least in terms of its “50 Best Rock & Roll Video Games of All Time” list. That may be evident by the first entry on the list, Simon. But once you get to KISS Psycho Circus: The Nightmare Child, you know that something’s rotten in Denmark.
Rolling Stone’s list of The 50 Best Rock & Roll Video Games of all time starts off well enough, but as you can see by the image accompanying this post, things quickly start to go downhill. The fact that they had to include Spice World for the PlayStation, Britney’s Dance Beat and the original 50 Cent title in their list just goes to show that maybe it’s just too soon for this list. For every Guitar Hero and Parappa the Rapper in the list, there’s a Wu-Tang Clan and KISS Psycho Circus lurking close by.
Some movie critics hate video games so hard. They fart in their general direction! But Rolling Stone magazine movie critic Peter Travers? He seems to like them! Disappointed at the recent spate of crap Hollywood summer popcorn movies, Travers writes:
Time to go interactive. That’s right, me the movie critic is actually telling you to switch to video games until Hollywood makes more exciting movies… [Grand Theft Auto IV is]a hell of a game (maybe not the Citizen Kane of the form, like many game reviews claim), and in terms of action, thrills, imagination and innovation, GTA IV has it all over the pablum currently passing for ingenuity at the multiplex… And let’s keep my game skills out of this as well. This is a review of Grand Theft Auto IV the M-O-V-I-E. And I have to say, it’s better than anything I’ve seen at the multiplex so far this summer, except maybe Iron Man. There’s plot development, character depth and moral ambiguity, stuff you don’t find in Speed Racer… It’s a rare video game that enters territory marked by Scorsese and Tarantino. But writers Dan Houser and Rupert Humphries have created the vid version of film noir with dialogue that crackles even in the film’s darkest shadows. And they take every shot they can at social satire.
That’s some big time movie critic praise! Nice to see that Travers is open to other (more interactive) forms of story telling.
Is Grand Theft Auto IV Actually the Best Popcorn Movie of the Summer? [Rolling Stone via The Chaos Fold]
