Over the past 72 hours I have watched every Eli Roth film except Cabin Fever. Most I didn't care for, with the exception of Knock Knock and Hostel Part 2. While I think Hostel 2 is his most entertaining film, Knock Knock is his most interesting.

Knock Knock starring Keanu Reeves follows a 48 hour period in the life of a father named Evan (played by Reeves). Left alone for the weekend to get some work done by his wife and kids who abscond to the cottage, he gets visited mysteriously by two young women, seemingly stranded in the rain. He invites them and offers them dry clothes, tea, and a cab ride to their intended destination. As the three chat, the two girls become increasingly flirtatious. Although Evan rebukes their advances initially he eventually succumbs and participates in a threesome. The next morning he awakes to find the two girls cooking wildly in his kitchen. There’s food everywhere. His house is a mess.

Over the next 24 hours the two girls destroy his wife’s art, murder a family friend, and wreck/deface his entire house. We ultimately learn they planned the entire sequence of events days in advanced. As they publically shame Evan on Facebook with a video of him engaging in sexual intercourse with one of the girls (posted on his own account) they reveal their purpose. They describe how they’ve done this before; and will continue to do this until someone says no.

It seemed like a simple enough movie; and it is. The message is of course "don’t cheat or it will ruin your life." It is apt that his house is thoroughly destroyed as well; Evan is an architect, houses are his life. And yet as the movie comes to a close I was left with a profound sense of emptiness. I couldn’t help but think…that’s it? It all seemed like a whole lot of fuss over absolutely nothing. It was only after sitting with this feeling through the credits that the truth struck me: that’s the point of the film. It was all for nothing. Cheating leaves you empty. It leaves you with nothing.

It's not the most original message, but the way it's conveyed is bold. While most movies strive to make us feel good, this strives for the opposite; and does so with express artistic intent.

I want to talk about a film I watched last night. That film is called Exposed. Exposed is part police procedural and part social drama. Keanu Reeves plays a cop investigating the death of his partner while across town the only witness lives her life in a poor Latin community. Everything seems fairly straightforward…and then there’s this:

Note: the following quotes were taken from the IMDB trivia page.

“The writer/director fought to have his name legally removed from the movie.”

And

“The original story was a surreal bi-lingual drama, reminiscent of Pan's Labyrinth and Irreversible that focused on child abuse, violence towards women, mass incarceration, and police violence committed under the color of authority. However, the movie was sold to Lionsgate Premiere, who thought they had been sold a Keanu Reeves cop thriller. During the editing process Lionsgate changed the story's focus to center on Reeves' character and changed the movie into a generic crime-thriller. Gee Malik Linton is the director of the film, but is listed under the pseudonym of Declan Dale.”

Usually when I see someone on a message board ranting about how the studio ruined the director’s vision of a film I’m a little skeptical. Sure, studio interference can greatly damage a film – I’ve seen that before, but I’ve also never seen a film where the interference made the film unwatchable…until now.

In its current state, Exposed is a movie that I cannot recommend to anyone. It hints at great ideas constantly, but never takes them anywhere; and the final 3 minutes show the makings of what could have been a great movie. Certainly the editing is at fault here. Scene cuts are jarring; characters develop at what feel like set intervals – almost as though massive chunks of their story have been removed; themes of religious dependence, child abuse, rape, police corruption, racism, gang culture, coping mechanisms (for death), and many more are all present but never fully realized; huge storylines feel rushed or incomplete; information is revealed abruptly; scenes cut at times that make no sense – I could keep going, but I think you get the idea. There are issues.

The police procedural side of things represents the narrative issues pretty well. The way that arc unfolds, it is as if someone wrote a very complete and detailed story and then randomly cut out 1/3 to ½ of it. It’s insane.

The issue is that, in the face of the above quotes, it’s hard to tell where things went wrong. Maybe the director’s cut has just as many problems but is 45 minutes longer. Maybe it’s not; maybe it’s a masterpiece. The truth is probably somewhere in between. I’ve never wanted so much to see a director’s cut in my entire life. In its current state, Exposed glimmers with daydreams of a magnificent film. The problem is those glimmers are buried in shit.

Have you ever seen a film that was so ruined in the studio cut that it was unwatchable? How did the director’s cut fare in comparison?

The Abyss

Spoilers:

The Abyss is a movie that I heard a lot of good things about. I heard it was gorgeous. I heard it was tense. I heard it brilliant. I heard the theatrical ending wasn’t as good as the director’s cut. It turns out only one of these things I actually agreed with. I still enjoyed the film, but not nearly as much as I expected.

I’d like to note that I had pretty high expectations. Some of that was definitely caused by the buzz, but some was a result of my history with other Cameron movies. I haven’t seen anything after True Lies, but I like The Terminator a lot and I really like Aliens. As a result, I was a bit bummed that The Abyss continues to explore a lot of the same themes as his earlier work.

The big one here is “evil/misguided authority.” It’s the same thing that provided thrust in Aliens: some self-centered authority/authoritarian power uses a bunch of good, honest, hard working people to achieve their own self-interested/greedy ends. That’s not a concept I mind seeing, but I thought it was handled a lot better in Aliens.

This time the evil authority comes in the form of Coffey, a navy seal trapped at the bottom of the sea with the rest of the good guys. While everyone else is figuring out how to contact the harmless, friendly aliens, he’s locked up in a room suffering from some hero complex delusion and plotting to blow everyone up for the good of mankind. There are a number of confrontations between him, his goons, and the rest of the crew that help build tension and even one particularly tense fight between he and main hero good guy Ed Harris. The problem is that none of this comes to a satisfying conclusion. By the end we really want to see this guy punished. That pay off is there – but it’s not as impactful as I would have liked.

Otherwise, I’d say this is just a boring movie. With a runtime of nearly 3 hours, it sure takes its time getting anywhere interesting. It’s not so much that any given scene is dispensable, but that these scenes need to happen faster. One moment early in the film has the crew scanning a downed submarine for radiation. They need to make sure it’s safe to explore. Because this happens in the first 15 minutes, we as the audience know it’s going to be fine. If it isn’t there’s no movie. But still it takes what feels like forever as they crawl along underwater in their mini-subs scanning the thing. That scene should have been thirty seconds long but it’s drawn out for at least five minutes. The movie is rife with instances like this; things that just needed to happen faster. With everything plodding along so slowly there’s very little dramatic tension.

At the very least, while things are taking forever to happen, there’s some real pretty sets to look at. All the design holds up pretty well, the cinematography is nice, and while the CGI is certainly outdated, it still looks pretty cool. I can see how that stuff would have easily blown audiences away in 1989.

But the worst thing about this movie for me is definitely the last 30 minutes. With so much time invested I was looking forward to a big pay off. What I got instead was…some corny bullshit about how human’s need to get along otherwise….alien’s will kill us with water? I don’t know. That whole ending fell completely flat for me.

With a title like The Abyss I feel like there are connotations of the power of “the unknown.” The fact that everything gets tied up so neatly at the end therefore seems out of place. I think a stronger film would actually not include aliens at all. A much more interesting film involves a conflict between the good guys and the bad guys over something that neither of them can really see or prove: whether there are aliens at the bottoms of the sea or Russian weapons. As the leading lady says at one point: “We all see what we want to see. Coffey looks and he sees Russians.” Some understated message about faith and the unknown would have been much more in keeping with both the title and the Nietszche quote that pre-empts the first scene: “If you gaze long into an abyss the abyss will gaze back into you.” In retrospect, that quote comes across as pretentious nonsense.

6/10

TinTin and the Golden Fleece:

I should start by saying that I’m a massive TinTin fan. The comics I enjoyed as a child but in particular it’s the TV show, The Adventures of TinTin, which has followed me my entire life. About once a year I go back and re-watch if not the entire series then my favourite episodes. I like it that much. I had never seen any of the live action TinTin films though. This was my first. I chose it for two reasons. One: I heard it was an original story. And two: I heard it was one of the best.

For those who don’t know, TinTin is a French reporter who solves mysteries along with his faithful dog Snowy, the drunken and out-burst prone Captain Haddock, and the deaf but brilliant Professor Calculus. Each adventure features some combination of these characters, but always TinTin and his dog, traipsing off around the world to foil drug smugglers, thieves, and all around bad guys while also pursuing the occasional treasure or self-interested goal, like saving a kidnapped friend or successfully launching a rocket into outer space. It’s seriously awesome.

With that in mind, I came to this film as a fan of the series who understands that live-action films are rarely as good as their animated counterparts. I was not looking for something blind blowing from this film, but just something that adheres to the basic tropes, themes, and structures of the source material. In that regard I can’t say I’m at all disappointed. Those tropes, themes, and structures are all in place; and while the story itself isn’t all that interesting (it’s kind of a combination of two existing stories actually) it’s still engaging enough that I was never checking the time or wondering when it would all be over.

One aspect the filmmakers really nailed is the aesthetic. The costumes are spot on and the locations look like the kinds of places TinTin might find himself; a crowded foreign market place, a dingy prison cell, and a monastery atop a mountain in the middle of nowhere, just to name a few. All these settings are well realized thanks to detailed set design and clever camera work which makes every location feel bigger than it probably is but more importantly embedded in the world around it.

There’s not much to say about this one beyond that. If you’re a big fan of the comics/cartoon then check it out. If not, you’re probably best off staying away.

5/10 + 2 for excessive TinTin love = 7/10

Doom:

Gains a point for being functional at the most basic level.

Gains a point for involving a soldier who takes adderall to focus better on shooting.

Gains a point for having The Rock yell “Semper Fi Mother Fucker!”

Gains a point for having a relatively entertaining ‘final boss fight.’

Gains a point for having first-person chainsaw wielding action.

Gains a point for having a scientist named Carmack.

Gains a point for restraining itself to a sub-2 hour run time.

Gains a point for even attempting a first person sequence.

Gains a point for introducing us to the bad ass future weapon by having the camera circle around it.

Gains a point for having the Rock do wrestling moves.

Loses a point for across the board bad acting.

Loses a point for the creepy soldier who tries to strip search every woman he sees.

Loses a point for the religious soldier who cuts his wrist every time he uses the Lord’s name in vain.

Loses a point for the rookie kid who is so useless he might as well have not passed basic training.

Loses a point for having a bad first person sequence.

Loses a point for the Rock being a character who has to follows orders no matter what and then goes insane for no reason (to be fair he may have been insane all along).

Loses a point for bad monster design which is neither scary nor cool.

Overall: 3/10

As someone who spent the past 4 months and will spend the next 3 months backpacking across New Zealand and South East Asia, I don't have the time or the means to play games (other than that totally non-existent Pokemon ROM on my phone). What I can do though is watch movies. I have a lot of free time, and it can't all be spent seeing/doing new stuff, so I find I end up watching a fair number of movies. To give my self something productive to do, I've decided to blog about them here in these sort of quasi-reviews/critical articles.

Let the Right One In

I’ll start with this since I saw it last. Critical reception for this film was pretty good when it came out. While I have conflicted feelings, I do think it’s worth a watch.

The film follows Oskar, a shy, bullied twelve year old. His parents are divorced and he doesn’t have any friends. One night while playing on the saddest jungle gym I’ve ever seen, he meets Eli. Eli is the twelve year old girl who just moved in to the apartment next door. She and her caretaker live a quiet, insular life. He isn’t seen much around town and she doesn’t even go to school.

Romance ensues. But as it turns out, Eli’s a vampire. What follows is a cute love story paired with a decent horror flick.

The most interesting parts of the film revolve around what it has to say about consent. Vampires lust for blood and take it by force, but they have to hunt outside; they cannot enter another’s home without an invitation. If they do, well…I won’t spoil it, but the results are rather interesting and used to good effect to add a little twist of uneasiness. When Oskar invites Eli into his house, he does so as someone who loves her. He is not just inviting her into his house, but into his heart. As a vampire who has always taken what her body needs by force, it’s heartwarming to see her receive what her heart needs through mutual consent. It’s a nice moment.

The movie is full of nice one-off moments. Two of my favourites involve Oskar’s parents; one in which his father neglects him to drink with a friend and another in which he and his mom brush their teeth together. Neither adds much to the overall plot, but provides quaint moments of colour. These small, intimate human interactions are the focus overall, and keep us invested in between the big plot points.

I think the biggest problem I have, the one that keeps me from really loving this film, is that the first half is rather dull. There isn’t a lot of great character development and things move slowly. I don’t mind a slow burn, but there better be something important happening in every scene. Unfortunately, that is largely not the case. With a run time of 1 hour and 54 minutes, I think it could really benefit from some cuts – most, like I said, taken from the first half. I think at 90 minutes, or maybe even 100, this is much more compelling film, and easy to recommend.

The only other thing I’ll say is that the cinematography really didn’t do anything for me. It’s all kind of lifeless. For a movie about a vampire, maybe that makes sense, but it still doesn’t make it any more engaging.

Overall: 7/10

Mission Impossible 2

The only mission impossible I never saw. Now that that’s over with I can stop breaking out into cold sweats every time I see Tom Cruise’s face on a bill board or magazine or in my dreams or...

Anyway, I kind of liked this movie. It’s not as good as the other’s, as many critics have pointed out, but it’s still fun. The rock climbing scene at the beginning is really cool, and some of the action’s alright. The only real gripe I have here is that they tried to make Ethan a little too rogue-ish. For the first half hour of the movie he’s getting into all kinds of trouble with the leading lady, trying to both woo and recruit her. It detracts from the focus of the movie and, quite frankly, isn’t all that well done. During one opening scene Ethan races the leading lady in a race for love. If Ethan wins, she’ll come along with him. At multiple turns she out drives him, making him look quite foolish – and he actually looks a bit frustrated at times – but always he flashes that big, fake, overly happy Tom Cruise grin and recommences pursuit. It felt like they were trying to make the least cool guy ever seem really cool. I wasn’t into it. Ethan Hunt is way cooler when he’s doing dope spy shit, not woo-ing ladies. Leave that to James Bond.

I fell asleep during the last 20 minutes, but that had more to do with not sleeping for 36 hours before hand than anything else. I think.

Overall: 6/10

Interview with a Vampire

Two vampire movies in two days. And two movies starring Tom Cruise. Weird. Of them all, I think this is the one I enjoyed the most. There are many reasons, but the one that most immediately comes to mind: It’s hella sexy.

And no, I don’t mind big tits big ass porn sexy. I don’t mean ravishing, passionate love sexy. I don’t mean the girl next door sexy. I mean SEXY. I find it really hard to explain actually what I actually mean here by sexy, but the whole time I couldn’t stop thinking: this is hella sexy and I’m into it. Sure, Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise are in it, but that’s not even why I think it’s sexy. It has more to do with the sets and the costumes and the way the camera moves; with the acting and the character development. Every detail of this film is just so exquisite – so refined – yet so lavish. It’s a classy fucking film. Sexy classy.

That’s kind of all I want to say about it, really. I could go into more detail on a bunch of cool stuff but I don’t really want to. It’s definitely worth a watch. Check it out.

9/10

Regression (2015), starring Ethan Hawke and Emma Watson, is a film that, despite averaging 35% on Metacritic and 6% on Rotten Tomatoes respectively, I was not hesitant to watch. Part of that's because I like Ethan Hawke. I think he's a good actor. Another part of that is that I like Emma Watson. I think she's an okay actress. And the third and final part of that is that I like crime fiction. Even bad crime fiction. Those tropes just seem to work for me. So perhaps my enjoyment of this film is not surprising. However, I put it to you that I don't just enjoy this film; I put it to you that this is a good film. Here's why.

At its core, Regression is hard boiled crime fiction. There is no grizzled private eye, no self-destrictive tendencies, but it does rain a lot - and the overall tone is oppressively bleak. We follow lone cop Bruce Kenner (Ethan Hawke) as he investigates satanic cult rituals involving rape in a small rural town. The primary victim here is Angela Gray (Emma Watson). She claims her father and his cult friends raped her repeatedly, drugged her, and forced her to partake in cult-like rituals like slaughtering new born babies.

I have heard reviewers claim that one of the problems with this film is the point of view; specifically that the viewer can never tell if what is being shown is fantasy or reality. I would argue that this is actually one of the strengths of Regression. While at first it seems as though everything can be taken at face value, this changes at roughly the mid-way point in the film. Quite suddenly, nothing can be taken at face value. And the really brilliant thing about it is that I started to question if it was the movie fucking with me, or my own imagination fucking with me. That's a pretty powerful reaction, one which is intrinsically bound with one of the central themes of the film: the stories we tell ourselves.

A big part of Regression centers on the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of the world around us. It doesn't so much make a judgement on this fact as it presents it as such and explores the different kinds of stories we tell ourselves and the reasons we might tell them. Without giving too much away, there is one character whose every action is based around shame for mistakes from his past. Everything he does is in relation to that guilt. But other characters don't know that. He keeps that inside for most of the film, and so other characters interpret his actions through their own filters. I for instance began interpreting him through the lens of other characters. Two such characters are a priest and a scientist. Both have very strict ideologies. As such, they interpret the world around them, including the actions of the aforementioned character, in such a way that they conform with the stories their ideologies project.

All of this perspective swapping is stabilized by Bruce Kenner. He has no ideology. He is the "truth seeker" - the moral center of the film. He is a lone wolf of sorts who appears to derive from a Rand-ian tradition; a lone thinker set against the world to make sense of it on his own, his purpose derived from seeking truth and happiness by expressing his own individuality through his work. It is with him as a centerpiece that the rest of the chaos is able to unfold. Sure, he loses his way; that is part of his character arc. But watching him return to that independent status evokes the tried and true message: think for yourself. Most crime fiction evokes some kind of parable, and even though this one isn't the most original, at the end of the day Regression leaves you with a nifty little thriller: rainy day entertainment with a little something to think about.

Is it Oscar-worthy (whatever that means)? No, probably not. It's not the kind of film that deserves to win any awards. But its pretty damn solid. A fun watch that's certainly not one of the worst films of the year, as some critics might have you believe.

For the first half of Pupetter I thought the story was overbearing. Each level begins and ends with lengthy exposition and the Narrator constantly quips semi-witty one-liners while you play. On top of that, I thought there was too much happening on screen - too many bright, moving pieces to keep track of, each beautiful but creating chaos rather than one coherent image which drew my eyes from each important object to the next.

My brain could only handle one thing at a time; play, listen, or look. As such, I missed a lot. To mitigate this problem, I'd stop moving when the narrator spoke. That worked for a while, but eventually slowed down the pace of the game so much it became boring.

A friend of mine who watched me play some of the game's later levels had the same problem. I'd catch him out of the corner of my eye vigorously blinking and shaking his head and shortly thereafter hear him say something like, "What the fuck is going on? This game is so disorienting."

If you are like us and have/had this problem, I have no active solution for you. Eventually, after about half - or maybe even two thirds - of the game my brain acclimated to Puppeteer's deluge of sensory stimulus. I could lie back and, in what felt almost like some drug-induced/meditative state, soak everything up all at once. If I have any advice, it's don't try to make the game intelligible; just let it happen. Eventually, you'll figure it out.

Puppeteer is a great game for many reasons, but the one that stands out to me the most is its grandiose boss fights. Part Legend of Zelda and part Shadow of the Colossus, a boss fight concludes each level of Puppeteer that tests both your pattern recognition and manual dexterity - and on a scale so impressive because so large and so beautiful.

One of the early bosses, for example, flies above you and pounds, one at a time, several of the seven or so bongos which, side-by-side, comprise the floor. As he hits a bongo, it falls away leaving a gap in the ground. To survive, I had to first memorize which bongos he would hit from one of the safe areas situated on either side of the stage and then scurry beneath him before his final move, leaving a bomb in the process. Hurt by my explosive, the boss would fly high into the sky. To reach him, I had to platform up his body and attack his head. Three rotations was sufficient to dispatch this boss, although each round his patterns became more complex.

Although each boss fight follows the same basic formula, they never grow stale. I relished what pattern would come next and took great joy in executing the proper moves. Watching Kutaro dash through the air and cut up his foes in some of the boss fight ending quick time events had me rocking back and forth, grinning hysterically like few QTEs - hell, like few gameplay experiences of any kind - ever have. As a game that felt highly overlooked around GOTY time last year, I recommend giving Puppetter a chance, especially if you can pick it up for $40 or less.

The atmosphere in Condemned is genuinely creepy. I played most of the game at night with the lights off because I like to maximize scary-ness in horror games and movies when I can, and in this case I could not play for longer than an hour without taking a break. The game got to me. It was so scary it was stressful.

Now, what makes Condemned truly masterful at its craft is how it incentivizes exploration. Because the atmosphere is so scary, I found myself compelled to rush through the levels as quickly as possible. However, when I took the time to explore each level thoroughly, and consequently subject myself to more perturbation than I wanted, the game greatly rewarded me. I'd find better weapons - usually guns.

Guns in Condemned contain very little ammunition and cannot be refilled. You can fire a gun until it's empty and then beat fools with it, or trade it for another gun (or weapon) that has more ammunition. Guns in Condemned are therefore seriously empowering. Finding a gun is like activating super sayain mode with the caveat that it can't last forever. That kind of power surge is addictive in itself and fueled my exploration. Not only did I want to make the game easier, but I wanted to feel powerful - and if subjecting myself to more emotional discomfort was the only way to accomplish that, then I would.

I recently had the pleasure of playing through first Dark Souls and then, immediately afterward, Condemned: Criminal Origins. Before playing Condemned I had thought Dark Souls one of a kind – its brutal difficulty and animation priority forced me to master mechanics; conversely, most games only require mediocre skill to complete. But then I played Condemned and realized that Monolith had done the same thing several years before.

Condemned prioritizes animation, which is not so unique to it or Dark Souls. However, both games use animation priority to make you feel helpless. When a giant crystal dragon or raving hobo violently attack you, leaving only a brief moment to swing in for one hit before defending again, you don’t exactly feel empowered. You don’t feel empowered at all. However, if you can defeat that giant crystal dragon, or defeat that raving hobo, all of a sudden you feel like, given enough patience and practice, anything is possible –and nothing, I mean nothing, is more empowering than that.

While Dark Souls is a great game, it’s odd to me that people praise it as such a singular experience. Condemned elicits the same sense of triumph. Condemned contains areas that, while not as breathtaking as those found in Dark Souls, brim with equal levels of despair. Condemned’s weapons all animate differently, and each requires its own mastery to wield successfully, just like those in Dark Souls….

More people should play Condemned.

(Note: I’m not trying to rally anyone behind some ghost rider video game cause, I just had some ideas and felt bored so I thought I’d take to my keyboard and see what happened.)

I have never seen Ghost Rider. Nor have I read the comics. But today I watched Ghost Rider 2: Spirit of Vengeance. I walked away thinking, “That wasn’t so bad, but man would it make a cool video game.” Now apparently there were some Ghost Rider video games on the PS2 and Gameboy Advance, but since I thought of this before I knew that, I’m going to pretend they don’t exist. Rather, I’m going to tell you that there should be a new Ghost Rider game; and here’s what it should look like:

The Ghost Rider fights by swinging around long metal chains, which immediately reminds me of Kratos from God of War. So I guess this game would be in that vein. Not everything that borrows from that series needs to be a clone though, shamelessly plugging in its character design to that series’ mechanics. Instead, it could be a starting place. The Ghost Rider game I propose is a third person action game where you rack up combos by slaying dudes with your giant metal chains. Sounds boring? Well hold on, there’s more.

The other neat thing about the Ghost Rider is that when he gets into a vehicle, it transforms into some flaming, stylized version of what it once was. In the movie, whatever the Ghost Rider’s riding doesn’t drastically change. The bike kind of just bursts into flames and…well that’s it. Same with the crane (THAT’S RIGHT.DUDE KILLS DUDES WITH A GIANT CRANE!). But there’s no reason to keep things so tame in a video game. Why not have every vehicle you get into reconfigure itself, Transformer’s style, into a crazy, unique vehicle-o-death? Why not have dozens of vehicles? “Because I hate fun,” is the only acceptable answer.

If you hate fun then you’ll almost certainly also hate this next suggestion, which really distinguishes in my mind a potential Ghost Rider game from any other kind of God of War clone. Here it is: Day and Night cycles, with time limits on each. Look, just, hear me out, alright? So in the movie Nicolas Cage cannot control when he transforms from a normal dude into the Ghost Rider, but it only happens at night and he seems to be able to know it’s going to happen a few hours beforehand. Taking that into consideration, I propose that during the day there is no combat. Instead you run around talking to dudes, finding things, and driving places. Maybe during the day it’s more like an adventure game, or a plat-former. Regardless, what you do during the day determines what you can do at night. Maybe you make inaccessible areas accessible. Maybe that means you can find some rad upgrades. Maybe you get a whole bunch of cool shit you otherwise wouldn’t have had. Maybe it even makes you choose between that shit. One guy wants you to do something and in return he’ll leave a rocket launcher somewhere, but another dude is offering a new car; and you only have time to do one before night falls.

Other than some half-assed boring ideas about an rpg-lite upgrade system, that’s all I have to say about a potential Ghost Rider video game. I think the day and night cycle is what would really distinguish it from other similar games, but only if it was as central a mechanic as death is to Dark Souls. Any game could do it, but the Ghost Rider conceit provides a perfect reason to do so.