Tag: Happy

Geekscape 470: Getting To Know Happy!’s Carly Sullivan!

by Jonathan

Carly Sullivan may not be a household name to some of you Geekscapists… but she should be! As one of the stars of SyFy’s new comic book adaptation ‘Happy!’, based on the hilariously deranged series by Grant Morrison and Darick Robertson, Carly is making a name for herself as a comedic force… and a big nerd that you’re sure to love! We talk about her origins in Florida, working through life hurdles and self-doubt and how Happy! came at just the right time! I also sit down with my good friend Tobin Addington to start the episode to plug his brand new podcast ‘The Contenders’, all about women in film! It’s a pretty packtastic episode so enjoy!

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Geekscape Games: ‘Dance Central Spotlight’ Takes A Familiar Stage

by Josh Jackson

While everyone was talking about Halo this and Master Chief Collection that after Microsoft’s E3 presentation, all of that was drowned out for me by the announcement of a sequel to the best game for the Kinect in Dance Central Spotlight. After moving on to Fantasia: Music Evolved, (which was great in its own right if our E3 preview from last year has anything to say about it), and publicly stating that Rock Band and Dance Central were on hold for the time being, I was expecting to have to wait A LOT longer before we’d see the dance game take advantage of the Xbox One’s upgraded tech. Though on a smaller scale, I was excited to see the game make a comeback, and was one of the first I took for a spin at on the show floor.

Featuring five songs on the demo version, including Wake Me Up by Avicii, Talk Dirty by Jason Derulo and 2 Chainz, Show Me by Kid Ink and Chris Brown, Counting Stars by One Republic and Happy by Pharrell Williams, (as if you couldn’t escape that song as is), each one has all of the full body choreography you’d expect from the series, with old and new moves alike to put your dance skills to the test. While playing, I didn’t notice any real performance improvements based on the reportedly superior Xbox One Kinect, there were never any points where I felt like the game wasn’t picking up my movements, especially with so much going on in the background.

Dance Central Spotlight Screen 1

What I did notice however, was a dip in frame rate compared to its prequels. I get that this is a download title instead of a full release, and is a much smaller game, (promising 10 core songs on top of weekly DLC instead of the 30+ from before), but it was distracting to notice the game looking so choppy in comparison to the fluid animations I was used to. It doesn’t affect game play at all, but its a noticable downgrade compared to the games released last generation. While this game isn’t the only guilty party, this seems to be continuing the trend of supposed “next-gen” games that perform worse than titles released years ago.

Having said that, this may either be the case of a smaller title having a smaller budget or pre-production kinks that need to be ironed out. In the end, all I really care about is solid dancing with catchy songs that get my feet moving, and even with half the songs available on the demo, Spotlight has that in spades. Even with a smaller playlist, a larger emphasis on fitness routines and eight routines per song promises that we’ll get a lot more milage per song than in the prequels.

Get ready to plug your Kinects back in! Dance Central Spotlight is coming exclusively to Xbox One digitally in September.

E3 2014: ‘Dance Central Spotlight’ Returns To Center Stage!

by Josh Jackson

A few months back, the developers at Harmonix had stated that they were putting Rock Band and Dance Central on the back burner to focus on other projects such as the upcoming Fantasia: Music Evolved, (which we previewed at last year’s event), essentially signaling that it could be a long time before we see either game make a return. But while the former is still sitting firmly in retirement after the industry got over saturated with peripheral based music games, I’m thrilled to say that the latter is making its current gen debut, giving us a reason to plug our Kinects back in in the process.

From Harmonix’s press release:

The core Dance Central Spotlight experience comes with everything you need to kick off your dance party – best-in-class gameplay featuring fun and authentic choreography for up to two players, along with 10 hit songs to get you started. Customize your party soundtrack with more than 50 chart-topping hits, with new hit songs1 arriving each week.

Now with eight different dance routines per song to choose from, Dance Central Spotlight is the most accessible, customizable Dance Central yet! With an all-new voice command activated* “Practice That” mode, it’s easier than ever to master your moves. Simply say “DJ, practice that!” during a song to hop right into an improved rehearsal mode and perfect your dance moves alongside a real-time dance mirror of yourself to make sure you’re nailing even the trickiest choreography. Dance Central Spotlight also features an expanded Fitness Mode, with special dance routines authored to focus on Strength and Cardio!

The core 10 song soundtrack will include all-new tracks to the franchise, including:

  • “Wake Me Up” – Avicii
  • “Talk Dirty” – Jason Derulo ft. 2 Chainz
  • “Show Me” – Kid Ink ft. Chris Brown
  • “Counting Stars” – OneRepublic
  • “Happy” – Pharrell Williams
  • …and more to be announced soon!

This September, step into the Spotlight. Dance Central Spotlight, only on Xbox One.

With the title being a digital release, I definitely expected it to be smaller, but only 10 songs? We’ll need to find out more information on pricing as well as whether or not the 50 + songs I downloaded across the previous versions will somehow carry over to the new game. But even with fewer songs, promising eight routines per song, an improved fitness mode and a more seamless practice mode makes this package seem promising, and I’m thrilled to see the series make its grand return.

Will Spotlight be enough of a reason for you to play with Kinect again? Dance Central has consistently been the best, and well… the only game I’ve played that uses the Kinect as it was promised, so I’m hoping the supposed improvements of the Xbox One model make it even more of a blast to play. Check out the E3 trailer, and let us know if this will be in your download queue come September.

RZA Set To Direct Grant Morrison’s ‘Happy’

by Shawn Madden

It looks like Quentin Tarantino’s protege The RZA, who is set to make his directorial debut with next month’s The Man With The Iron Fists, has already lined up his next project. He will be teaming up with Grant Morrison to bring Morrison’s latest comic, keep in mind that only one issue of the mini-series has been released, Happy to the big screen. The comic debuted last month featuring art from Darick Robertson.

The script will be written by Morrison himself so don’t expect it to be too far off from the actual comic. But then again…none of us actually know what happens in the series past issue one so far. RZA is attached to direct and would produce with Hudlin, a producer on Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained. If you haven’t picked up the first issue of Happy, and after this news it’s probably not going to be easy to, you probably should. The book is kind of like if you took bits of It’s a Wonderful Life, Sin City, and Care Bears and mixed them all up into one neat little Grant Morrison package.

The synopsis for Happy:

Happy! centers on Nick Sax, a scummy corrupt ex-cop and hitman. After a hit goes bad and Sax is left gravely injured, he is suddenly able to see Happy, a cheerful little blue horse who won’t give in to adversity, no matter what unpleasant obstacles come in the way. Days before Christmas, Sax teams up with the saccharine horse to the save the life of a troubled kid and maybe find redemption amid the squalor of his city.

Source: THR