Twist Street

You, a Fool and a Child: I'm going to vote to change things and I'm going to call my representatives and I'm going to sign people up to vote and I'm going to make sure the Democratic Party wins to stop Ol' Donnie Trump from cheetohing up the white house, Robert Mueller would be proud.

After the James Bond game was as much fun as it turned out to be, I said let me try the Indiana Jones game, which had got some bad reviews but I remember noticing there was an enthusiasm to the ones that liked it.

I see why but I don't like the game at all. I don't think they get the fundamental appeal of Indiana Jones at all (it's not sneaking around and hitting people with bottles!), and I find it a pretty tedious game. A lot of puzzles, the action doesn't work, the 8 foot Tony Todd character made me sad, and the structure (a series of smaller open worlds to explore with their own mysteries to solve, side stories, etc.) is a nice idea-- I think that's what people like-- but I think it just drug everything out timewise, pacingwise, and isn't full enough to really work. A Yakuza small open world is full of sub-stories-- they couldn't figure out how to make this not feel empty while still doing an Indiana Jones story. And the voice actor on Indiana Jones is doing a terrible job-- it's that one famous voice guy but he's too busy doing an impression to do a performance.

But that said..

This has one of the best villains I've seen in years in anything in it.

It's this character Emmerich Voss who is supposed to be a bog-standard nazi Indiana Jones antagonist. But they wrote and performed the hell out of this character. He's constantly hilarious-- the voice actor is noticeably killing it-- he has a whole side relationship with one of the nazi henchmen that's a little delight. And I like that he wants Indiana Jones to respect how smart he is and how much they're alike, so they had to write him as a smart guy and not some stupid moron. Even the animators / performance-capture gets into his performance.

They've given up on great villains in the movies-- Marvel never had a single good villain, and the rest have been "what if Donald Trump" or "what if 9/11 was an inside job". I mean, name a good villain since, what, Javier Bardem in Skyfall (and I don't really dig that movie). This list is pretty dogshit (I could see an argument for Sean Penn in One Battle, but I didn't really like that character, how PTA diverted from Pynchon there, etc.). Maybe Gladys from Weapons? Her whole deal was a little vague, but.

There are people on Reddit saying he's the best Indiana Jones villain. I like Belloq a lot, as a character, though I don't think of him as a classic villain. I don't think the franchise really had great villains besides that. The guy in 2 was misunderstood, the guy in 3 wasn't memorable, etc. Voss is a cartoony, very funny character but wouldn't fit in a more serious thing.