Halo 5: Breaking Down Act One

God bless Halo 5: Guardians for taking chances.

After 14 years, six games and two developers, Microsoft's flagship franchise could easily skate by on looks and nostalgia, but 343 Industries has opted to continue the series' tradition of bold risks in its first Xbox One outing.

Through six missions, roughly a third of the game's campaign, those decisions have thrilled, frustrated and baffled me - but I've never been bored.

Team Osiris isn't a complete success, but it's the kind of bold risk that keeps Halo fresh after six games.

Impressions of "Osiris," "Blue Team," "Glassed," "Meridian Station," "Unconfirmed" and "Evacuation" (minor spoilers):

• Graduating from Xbox 360 to Xbox One has benefited Halo tremendously. Guardians looks spectacular, as every Halo game has in its day, but it feels uniquely smooth, probably because it's running at a consistent 60 frames per second. That decision will stand the test of time.
• The big gameplay advance of Halo 5, introducing AI or co-op teammates for the player, fixes one of the biggest inconsistencies between playing Halo alone and with friends by making it possible to die and still advance. I'm a big fan of not losing progress, so that's a win.
• That said, it doesn't make any sense narratively. Everything we know about Master Chief suggests he doesn't need backup singers, and nothing in the first few missions of Guardians contradicts that. On the contrary, the fistfight between Chief and Spartan Locke that ends "Unconfirmed" loses some impact because each man has three bystanders who could easily help him.

• The biggest narrative shift, alternating perspectives between Chief and Locke, is also a swing-and-a-miss so far. The overall story of Halo 5 hasn't spiraled out of control (yet?) by any means, but any chance Chief's teammates would develop into complete characters is flushed down the toilet. Locke's team does a little better, but I can't tell if that's because I've spent more time with them or because Nathan Fillion is back as Buck from the extremely underrated ODST. I wish I could switch between members of Locke's team and get to know them better.
• I'm baffled by "Meridian Station" as a mission. Isn't it possible to give me this heap of exposition as a cutscene? Or, even better, during combat a la Bioshock? It seems like a cheat to call 15 minutes of checking the next destination, running there and pressing the "talk" button as a mission.

Other thoughts on Halo 5's first act:

• Guardians has a major interactivity problem, beyond "Meridian Station." The Chief-Locke fistfight is fun to watch, but it's significantly diminished because the player has no hand in it. (If that's to make me feel torn between them, I'm not. Chief is clearly wrong; his insane obsession with Cortana rivals Harry Potter's with Draco Malfoy) As Jeff Cannata noted on the DLC podcast, that scene is one of several bad-ass action beats relegated to cutscenes, including the opening sequence and the introduction of the massive boss in "Unconfirmed." OK, so there's no mechanic in Halo for dropping from an aircraft or holding onto a ledge. Why not make them? You can even use that shiny (and mostly useless) new thruster button! At least do quick-time events.
• The most memorable parts of my Halo 5 time so far were, as always, organic: charging an Elite and meleeing him off a ledge in "Blue Team"; directing my team to take down a complex of snipers in "Unconfirmed"; escaping the station in a Warthog in "Evacuation"; the lengthy elevator firefight that follows. Halo does unscripted confrontations better than any other shooter.
• Those encounters work in part because Halo 5 manages to put just enough ammo on the field that I'm constantly swapping weapons, looking for strategic advantages and planning ahead. It continues to be immensely satisfying.
• I dearly miss split-screen co-op. I understand wanting to optimize a system-selling game's performance, but I can't believe 343 lacks the resources to present the game as published and create a local co-op mode that sacrifices frame rate or screen resolution.

I really wish the other three guys could be my friends rather than computer ccharacters.

• 343 majorly nerfed the Light Rifle from Halo 4 to Guardians, but I probably wouldn't notice if it hadn't been a massively overpowered murder stick, so I guess I shouldn't be mad. The suppressor has quickly become my new favorite Forerunner weapon.
• I really liked the design of the Forerunner enemies in Halo 4, and they look even more spectacular in Guardians. They're bright, interesting and, most importantly, fun as hell to fight.
• The new Hunter-esque giant Forerunner enemies, however, are boring. I hope there's more to their tactics than I've discerned so far. This may be partially my fault for playing on Normal difficulty and spamming heavy weapons like lasers and rocket launchers, which tend to be planted nearby.
• ENOUGH CLOAKED ELITES WITH ENERGY SWORDS. Instant death is no fun.

E3 HYPE TRAIN: My 2015 Games of Show

With that messy "what it all means" business out of the way, let's talk about why we spend so much time on the Electronic Entertainment Expo in the first place: games.

Before the show, I ranked the top 10 games I wanted to hear about at E3, and I also put together a spreadsheet of the games on display that I'm most likely to buy. Here I'll focus on what during the show (specifically its press conferences) got me most excited to learn and play more soon.

With no further ado, my games of E3 2015:

Honorable mentions: Assassin's Creed: Syndicate, Dishonored 2, The Last Guardian, Mirror's Edge: Catalyst, Xenoblade Chronicles X

10. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5
My biggest pleasant surprise of E3 came between EA and Ubisoft's press conferences Monday when Tony Hawk appeared on YouTube's stream with Geoff Keighley to talk about THPS 5, which I've been waiting for since 2003 but somehow missed when it was confirmed last fall. Monday's gameplay video looked crisp and clean like classic Hawk, and the soundtrack will be bigger than ever but still alternative and metal, said the man himself. Sept. 29 can't come soon enough.



9. Star Fox Zero
I was taken aback by how much I dug what Nintendo showed of Star Fox, a franchise I deeply loved in the Nintendo 64 era but lost track of. Nothing in Zero - a "reimagining" of 64 - looks revolutionary save some dubious use of the Wii U Gamepad, but this seems like a chance to dig into what I missed before getting a new dose of what I loved so much to start. (It's damning with faint praise that this was the best thing Nintendo showed during the conference.)



8. Halo 5: Guardians
It's been far too long since I've played a combat-based first person shooter after the wait for Destiny proved to be a mistake. Like with Star Fox, I can't wait to pick up the Master Chief Collection to catch up on Halo 4 and then dive headfirst into Halo 5: Guardians, which appears - based on a short demo, so, fingers crossed - to retain the smart AI, creative weapons and satisfying feel of Halo's combat. I shy away from franchises after the creator leaves, but Halo seems a worthy exception.



7. ReCore
ReCore, on the other hand, is a case where I'm sticking with a creative team. Developers of Metroid Prime are working with Mega Man creator Keiji Inafune on an Xbox One-only game about a girl, her dog and the desolate wasteland they must navigate together, and while the details are still sketchy, ReCore looks like something special.



6. Cuphead
My best-case scenario for Cuphead turned out to be way off: not only was my fifth-most anticipated game of the show not released during E3, it was delayed into 2016. Furthermore, it appears to be a series of difficult boss fights rather than a full 2D platformer - still my favorite type of game. What Cuphead showed Monday was impressive, though: more bosses rendered ingeniously in Fleischer Studios style, a great sense of humor and two-player co-op. I can't stay mad at you, Cuphead.



5. Horizon: Zero Dawn
Horizon: Zero Dawn seems like ReCore's long-lost sibling: another game about a woman fighting a robot-driven apocalypse in third person, although Sony would very much like you to know this one is exclusive to PlayStation 4. It's also pretty far away, although Horizon showed actual gameplay at E3 - including stealth, which worries me the tiniest bit - so hopefully it will be for sale early in 2016.



4. Fallout 4
The second comment on my pre-E3 post was "No Fallout 4?", and for good reason. While I was too intimidated to dive into Fallout 3, I'd seen the trailer for 4 before I wrote that post, and I should have known its scope, art direction and mechanics would blow me away at the show proper. Sci-fi, RPG and FPS games are among my favorites, and I love virtual tourism, so exploring Fallout 4's bombed-out Boston should be a delight.



3. Star Wars: Battlefront
The biggest sci-fi franchise of all time (this list leads me to believe I really like sci-fi) is back in full force this year, and the best part of that revival is the return of the best Star Wars franchise based on a film (AKA non-KotOR division). Battlefront looks exactly how I hoped, from extra-pretty graphics to faithful sound effects and tried-and-true DICE combat. I'm proud to say I've picked up FPS skills since Battlefront 2 released, and I can't imagine a better place to ply them.



2. Uncharted 4: A Thief's End
Look, I get it: It's just more Uncharted. But GUYS, IT'S MORE UNCHARTED. The demo at Sony's presser Monday (after a glitched attempt that called to mind this excellent Patrick Klepek report) reminded me why Uncharted may be my favorite series of the PS3 generation: pulse-pounding action, sky-high production values and virtual tourism unrivaled by any franchise outside Assassin's Creed. I will buy a PlayStation 4 no later than the day Uncharted 4 hits the market.



1. Rise of the Tomb Raider
Take what I said about my Star Fox Zero surprise and multiply it by 10 for Rise of the Tomb Raider. I realized within ten seconds of the demo at Microsoft's conference how wrong I was to doubt Crystal Dynamics. Again, it's not revolutionary: unparalleled graphics and voice acting, a keen sense of place and exhilarating scenarios made 2013's Tomb Raider great, and they were even better in this admittedly tiny slice of its successor.

Sustained greatness isn't newsworthy, but it makes Rise of the Tomb Raider my Game of Show for E3 2015.

E3 HYPE TRAIN: The Best and Worst Trends

For the most part, I got what I wanted - and a lot more - from the six press conferences that kicked off this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo.

My spreadsheet runneth over with cool games, many of which - aside from looking awesome - represent the most interesting trends in the medium, good and bad.

Let's break them down:

They Cried "Gore, Gore, Gore"

E3 is full of games about shooting people. That's not news.

The surprise of this year's conferences was how brutal they looked. Doom, in retrospect, was the perfect game to kick off E3 at Bethesda's presser Sunday evening: its demo included several bodies blown apart by close-up shotgun fire and a monster ripping a person in half.

Fallout 4, which is a much brainier game and aspires to much more than Doom, squicked me out with copious blood minutes later, and many other shooters followed over the next 48 hours, from Gears of War 4 to The Division to Hitman.

I'm not asking for games to be PG. But hopefully there's an option in the menu of each game to make it a little less stomach-turning.

My face looked a lot more like his than hers after Sunday's DOOM demo.

It's Getting Hot in Here

Speaking of Fallout 4, imagine the following:

It's Nov. 10. You get off work and head down to your local game store to pick up a copy of Fallout. When you arrive, however, you see another familiar face next to it on the shelf.

That's right: Rise of the Tomb Raider and Fallout, two of the most-anticipated games of the year, release on the same day.

Forget the money - we're talking about leisure spending, which is malleable to begin with. How are you going to allocate time, your most precious resource, for a behemoth RPG and a cinematic adventure that also rewards hours of exploration?

A crowded fall isn't unusual for games, but it's still a problem. Can't we spread these releases out and give them room to breathe? They'll still be stocked at Walmart for Black Friday, promise.

VR Is the Future - But the Future Is Not Now

I debated editing my pre-E3 post to mention virtual reality (and to fix the name of Assassin's Creed: Syndicate), but now I'm glad I didn't.

Don't get me wrong: the biggest HOLY SHIT moment of E3 2015's pressers was Microsoft's HoloLens demo. The practical applications of the technology remain blurry, but it's a step closer to the Holodeck scenario I've always envisioned.



Microsoft execs also mentioned partnerships with Valve and Oculus for virtual reality, fighting back against Sony's Project Morpheus, which was mentioned during the PlayStation press Monday night.

Both comments were fleeting, however. We have no release windows, no prices and no reason to care about VR yet. Just a mountain of unfulfilled potential that will take years, not months, to be realized.

Look at These Cool Indie Games! Not Too Long, Though

Another future of games was also present Monday but hardly accounted for.

As risk-averse as studio games have become, I believe the fresh, innovative, trailblazing games of the next generation will come from independent studios. But you would never know it from this E3.

While I was thrilled to see my nos. 9, 7, 5 and 2 most-anticipated games coming into the show, all indie titles, appear at press conferences, that dissipated as each received very little time and, in the case of Cuphead, a delay to 2016.

I rage because I love.

What's more, Microsoft and Sony continued their practice of showing off indie games in sizzle reels rather than giving them prominent spots in their presentations. They never even had a chance from EA, Ubisoft, Nintendo or Square.

I went into E3 excited about a few indie games. I finished the show excited about those exact same games. That's a problem. These games are not second-class citizens, and they deserve better.

It's a Girl!

Enough cynicism. How about something positive?

From the presenters on stage to the characters on screen to the commentators taking it in, women have been out in force at E3 2015, and I couldn't be happier.

Aisha Tyler and Angela Bassett presented the latest Rainbow Six. Two of the show's biggest exclusive game announcements, for Armature Studios' ReCore and Guerilla Games' Horizon: Zero Dawn, feature women kicking ass. Bethesda specifically showed character creation options for a male or female protagonist in Fallout 4.

Not quite what you expected from the makers of Killzone, right?

Gaming still has a long way to go to achieve gender equality or anything close to it, and most of the women prominently featured at E3 this year were white. But this is definitely progress.

Revenge of the Vaporware

Fans, Sony has heard you.

Monday night's PlayStation press conference included a stunning trifecta of maybe/probably-not/don't-bet-on-it games: Sega's Shenmue III, Square's Final Fantasy VII remake and Sony's own The Last Guardian.

While each one comes with questions - none has a release date, Square is notoriously slow and Shenmue's KickStarter goal (which they met in less than a day) is hilariously small - simply seeing them on the E3 stage is a victory for optimists everywhere.

Now Sony reveals Half-Life 3 and the rest of E3 is cancelled because everyone's dead #E32015

— Derek Beigh (@derekbeigh) June 16, 2015

Coming Soon, Probably

That optimism will come in handy for the rest of Sony's lineup too.

By my count, PlayStation 4 will feature four exclusive games - truly exclusive, not "console exclusive," "first on," "best on" or other nonsense - showed Monday night: Media Molecule's Dreams, Horizon, The Last Guardian and Uncharted 4: A Thief's End.

Those games have something important in common besides looking cool. None of them will release this year.

Drake will emerge from the mist... eventually.

Nintendo's conference had a similar problem. Each game showed Tuesday morning is set to release this year or early next, and many of them looked cool. But some force - possibly the Wii U's successor, which will be discussed a year from now - left the next 3D console release for each of the company's heavy-hitters, Mario, Metroid and Zelda, on the bench.

It's cool to think ahead, but anyone looking for a compelling reason to buy a PS4 or Wii U needs to look in the past or significantly in the future.

Screw You, Metroid Fans

It's official: another Video Game Christmas with no Metroid under the tree.

But wait, you say. What about Metroid Prime: Federation Force? To which I respond: What about it? Federation Force has as much to do with Metroid as Link's Crossbow Training does The Legend of Zelda.



I should be patient. Nintendo doesn't release games until they're good, and it doesn't announce them until they're close to release. But I'm getting tired of buying off-brand Metroid products to convince Nintendo another proper release is worth their while.

(Also, if Valve is reading, a new Half-Life, Portal of Left 4 Dead would be great too. My money is waiting.)

Screw You, Casual Fans

Speaking of money: For the first time, I'm pissed at Harmonix.

I was disappointed but not stunned the big Rock Band 4 price and release date announcement came not by press conference but email. What infuriated me was attempting to pre-order the game and discovering I had two options: the full band-in-a-box set for $250 or the game and guitar for $130.

Here's what followed:

@derekbeigh We’re focused on making sure people can get the hardware they need right now.

— Rock Band (@RockBand) June 15, 2015

I believe Harmonix is using the current pre-order choices to gauge demand for instruments. But even if that's the case, why not give consumers options? Why should I believe there will ever be a version of this game sold with the disc alone?

I've put up with a lot for Rock Band - I'm buying an Xbox One for it, for one thing - so, naturally, I've reserved my $130 package. But if that and the $250 version, which by the way is the price of a refurbished console, are it, this franchise reboot is dead on arrival. And that would be a damn shame.

E3 HYPE TRAIN: 10 Games I Want to Hear About

Video game Christmas is almost here, and it should be an especially fun one.

18 months after the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One hit the market, we're squarely in a new console generation, and it's time for the developers who started working on those machines at the beginning to pay dividends.

That means we're not only on the verge of tons of AAA sequels but in that wonderful window when projects like Grand Theft Auto III, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune and Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor spring from the woodwork and change gaming for good.

Note: I love a good sequel, but when I say "more of this," I mean "original properties with new mechanics."

Those and more should be shown, played and discussed at the 2015 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) next week. Here's what I hope will join those glorious surprises in Los Angeles:

Honorable Mentions
Wait and see: Assassin's Creed: Rogue, Halo 5: Guardians, Metal Gear Solid 5, Star Fox Wii U, Star Wars: Battlefront, Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, Abzu
Too close: Batman: Arkham Knight
Too far: The Legend of Zelda Wii U, Borderlands 3, Burnout, Crackdown, The Division
Probably not happening: Left 4 Dead 3, Pokemon Snap 2, Portal 3
LOL: Half-Life 3

We're at "Cubs win the World Series" levels of don't-hold-your-breath.

Top 10
10. Rise of the Tomb Raider
2013's Tomb Raider reboot is the only non-Portal game I played twice in the Xbox 360 era, so I'm definitely ready for a new installment. If Crystal Dynamics can combine the reboot's incredible feel for setting and gameplay with slightly more interesting characters and a much better plot, Rise might be my game of the year. It lands at the bottom of this list because, while an E3 demo is a stone-cold lock, it's probably not going to feature much character or plot, so we won't know about those things until long after the show.

9. Firewatch
Firewatch is one of a few indie-game enigmas I look forward to knowing more about soon, hopefully during E3. It earns this spot based entirely on a CO-OP segment from this year's Game Developer's Conference that leaves questions but makes me think this could be the next great successor to Myst.

How could you not be excited about a game this gorgeous?

8. BioShock
This is a complete shot in the dark, but, more than a year after BioShock Infinite's final DLC, it feels like it's time for 2K to make some more money from this franchise. (Irrational Games' closure was never going to stop this gravy train.) I'm tentative given series creator Ken Levine is unlikely to be involved, but BioShock is my favorite franchise of the last generation, and even a next-gen redux or lazy rehash would get me interested. Here's hoping for more than that, starting with a reveal in L.A.

7. No Man's Sky
It's not entirely fair to call No Man's Sky an enigma after it was featured prominently at Sony's E3 press conference last year and received a lengthy profile in The New Yorker, but it still feels that way. What, exactly, are this game's mechanics? Just how big will its world feel? How does something so big and ambitious fuel a cohesive narrative? Does that matter? The proof will come after release, but some of those answers should come on stage and in demos next week.

6. Dishonored 2
Another blind stab, but one I'm much more confident in. Arkane Studios has been very quiet since The Brigmore Witches DLC released almost two years ago, and Bethesda could use a third mega-franchise alongside long-gestating RPG behemoths Elder Scrolls and Fallout, so a new Dishonored is a no-brainer. The only question now is timing. Given the attention to detail Arkane showed in both mechanics and art design in Dishonored, I don't expect a full reveal this month - and maybe not even this year - but I'll be stunned if the words "Dishonored 2" are not said or shown at Bethesda's presser Sunday night.

Soon.

5. Cuphead
The fact that I know almost nothing about this game doesn't stop me from being very jazzed about it. In my head, it's a challenging-but-not-punishing 2D platformer in the Fleischer cartoons style with inventive boss fights and a variety of cool abilities for our eponymous protagonist. Cuphead's official website lists a 2015 release on Xbox One, so we should hear a lot about it, probably from Microsoft, and my true best-case scenario is an Entwined-style "go play it now!" showing.

4. Mass Effect
After a vague reveal at its E3 press conference last year, Electronic Arts must know fans are dying to see concrete evidence of next-gen Mass Effect, and I expect it to be on full display at E3. I don't expect them to call it Mass Effect 4 - because Bioware both has more imagination than that and wants people to forget the end of Mass Effect 3 as soon as possible - but they've have built a universe rich enough to support a huge variety of stories, and I'm confident we'll nerding out about one of them after EA's conference Monday night.

3. Metroid
2D? YES! 3D? Sure! Universal Studios ride? ...That's cool. I don't care what form it takes; I just want more Metroid in the world. Please, Nintendo, smell the Samus amiibo sales and take more of my money with this glorious franchise. It's been too long.

The G.O.A.T. deserves another sequel.

2. Tacoma
The twin legacies of Minerva's Den and Gone Home combine with the promise of space adventure in its reveal trailer to get me very hyped about Tacoma. I have no idea what to expect from this game or even if it will appear at E3, especially given a 2016 release date, but I'll be looking for it next week.

1. Rock Band 4
Here's the game that will make me buy an Xbox One. From Amplitude to Karaoke Revolution to Dance Central to Amplitude again, I've been a loyal and satisfied Harmonix customer from the beginning, and everything announced so far about the next Rock Band is aces. Support for Xbox 360 songs? Check. A revamped campaign mode? Check. Support for old instruments and a chance to buy new ones? Check and check. The only questions now are release date and price. I believe those and much more will be revealed a week from today.

I can't wait.

No One Looks Good in Bulls-Thibs Brawl

Well, that got ugly.

After years of leaks, denials and - oh yeah - wins, the Chicago Bulls fired Coach Tom Thibodeau on Thursday, ending one of the strangest and most destructive power struggles in sports history.

Given the chance to finally let loose on Thibs, Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf issued as passive-aggressive a press release as ever there were, effectively calling his coach insubordinate, intractable and ineffective.

As satisfying as that might have been for Reinsdorf - and as accurate - it was also the stupidest thing he could possibly have done.

It's probably not a coincidence Thibodeau worked as an NBA assistant for 21 years waiting to get a head job. He proved abrasive and stuck in his ways, including neglecting to use young players and running his favorites into the ground to the point he almost killed former All-Star Luol Deng.

But we know this. It's not up to management to excoriate Thibodeau, especially when they're in the market for a coach who, regardless who it will be, is almost certainly watching their conduct and judging them accordingly.

More on this guy - maybe a lot more - soon.

For Thibodeau's part, he'll almost certainly land a new head coaching gig, but his reputation takes a major hit on the way out the door, and he's now lost the chance, however remote, to become the legend who brought the Bulls their first title since Jordan. A roster downgrade is an inevitability.

The roster, by the way, may or may not be culpable in driving away the best Bulls coach since Phil Jackson, so forget about the players looking like angels either.

#Bulls sources: at least three starters ripped Thibs in exit interview, said they'd avoid team facility this summer if he were still there.

— Dan Bernstein (@dan_bernstein) May 28, 2015

Ultimately, the only people connected to the Bulls who don't look bad today are the fans, who are left wondering why Mommy and Daddy can't stop fighting long enough to take one of the NBA's most successful teams over the top.

The only thing I can feel now is disappointment: that Thibodeau doesn't have softer edges, that the front office - not only Reinsdorf but Vice President John Paxson and General Manager Gar Forman - isn't more patient, that Derrick Rose's knees couldn't hold up, that the team quit in embarrassing fashion during a must-win home playoff game.

This should have been the core of Chicago's next dynasty.

The only thing that looks good is the prospect of a new coach, which points to Iowa State University Coach Fred Hoiberg and, if the Bulls are smart, part of my second-favorite almost-dynasty:

Didn't get this into today's story, but plugged-in source considers Alvin Gentry the favorite to coach Bulls. "The guy I'd put my money on."

— Howard Beck (@HowardBeck) May 15, 2015

EDIT: Hours after this was posted, Hoiberg became the choice. (End edit)

The question, as former Bulls coaches flood the market, is simple:

Or that they keep firing good coaches. I'm not sure. Let me think about it.

— Derek Beigh (@derekbeigh) May 29, 2015

Here's hoping it's the former. Our basketball lives depend on it.

These Bulls Can Contend Without Derrick Rose

Tuesday's latest in the Derrick Rose injury saga hit hard across the NBA, but it shouldn't in Chicago.

Of course it sucks that Rose, the Bulls' hometown hero and franchise player (if by contract alone), might miss the rest of the year after surgery on his knee, and here's hoping he makes a full and speedy recovery.

But for the Bulls and their fans, this isn't the end of the world, or even of the season. This team is still a championship contender.

For those of you keeping score at home, this is the third straight season Rose has sat out several games due to injury. The Bulls front office staff knows this, and they made sure last summer their team would still be competitive if Derrick's balky knees made it a hat trick.

It's turned out better than they could have anticipated.

• The Bulls' foundation is stronger than ever as Jimmy Butler has exploded to All-Star status; Joakim Noah, even in a down year, continues to be a top-five center; and newcomers Pau Gasol, Nikola Mirotic and Aaron Brooks have exceeded expectations. This is without a doubt the most talented Chicago squad outside Rose since the 2011-12 edition that went 50-16.

Another guard can join Jimmy Butler, Mike Dunleavy, Pau Gasol and Joakim Noah in a still-stacked Bulls starting lineup.

• The Eastern Conference is ripe for the picking. Atlanta - who, by the way, is going to fail the "who has the best player in the series" test to almost any other contender - has dominated an extremely weak crop as Toronto, Washington and Cleveland have struggled to get it together. Cleveland might be the biggest threat to the Bulls, but this is the time to strike as the second LeBron era gets rolling.
• Frankly, losing Rose might help the team. Chicago's dirty little secret is Rose hasn't been very good this season - his 16 PER is about league average and only .9 above Brooks - and doesn't seem to be improving as he recuperates. While peak Rose would make the Bulls the favorite, they could be better off trading his terrible 3-point shooting and absolute refusal to drive to the basket and draw fouls - Rose's best skill in 2010-11 - for a little peace of mind this year and improved shooting and confidence when he returns to the court next season.

Chicago's dirty little secret: Derrick Rose hasn't been very good this season and doesn't seem to be improving.

The odds remain squarely against Chicago winning a championship this year - the postseason is always a crapshoot, and the loaded Western Conference means whoever emerges as Eastern Conference champion will have a huge challenge in The Finals - but the Rose-less team's chances aren't much worse than they were with him 24 hours ago. We're still in this thing, Bulls fans.

"Kingsman: The Secret Service" Is Bloody Brilliant

Colin Firth's Harry "Galahad" Hart is a believable British bad-ass in the finest Bond tradition.

Kingsman: The Secret Service is the silly James Bond movie I've been waiting for.

Since Casino Royale, 007 has deliberately avoided the whimsy that made me fall in love with the Roger Moore era. Kingsman, however, shows there's room for a British bad-ass who lives in the real world but doesn't need to escape to the beach for weeks to brood about his own mortality¹.

That man is Colin Firth's Harry Hart, a seasoned Kingsman agent code-named Galahad who brings back the bravado of late-70s Bond but abandons the troubling sexual politics. (Don't worry - he has some major violence issues to make up for them.) Almost immediately, Director Matthew Vaughn begins playing with the trope: our first look at Galahad² is at the end of a mission he's botched, demonstrating that Hart is a super-spy but not super-human.

After an 18-year time jump, the rest of the film takes place along parallel tracks spawned by Hart's mistake. He investigates the brutal murder of an agent code-named Lancelot like the one he let down in the opening, and that agent's son, Eggsy, becomes Hart's latest recruit to Kingsmen. Like the modern Bond at MI6, Hart recognizes he can't stay a Kingsman forever.

Eggsy's story, as portrayed wonderfully by relative unknown Taron Egerton³, feels less like Bond than it does X-Men: First Class - Vaughn's previous film, which also wore its Bond influence on its sleeve⁴. Composer Henry Jackman returns, this time with collaborator Matthew Margeson, to give Kingsman's score a familiar feel as the recruitment plot follows a familiar path⁵.

Colin Firth is the undisputed star of Kingsman, but Taron Egerton threatens to steal the show.

Firth and Egerton fill Kingsman with a buoyant, irreverent tweed energy that sets it apart from Vaughn's other work⁶. I was impressed when Vaughn made me love Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr more deeply; the affection I feel for Galahad and Eggsy feels new and refreshing, and I wouldn't mind at all if it's the launching point for a new franchise⁷.

Hopefully future installments would address the one lingering Vaughn issue in Kingsman: unjustified gratuitous violence.

At its worst, Kingsman reminds me of Kick-Ass, another Vaughn film that shows a boy struggling to become a young man and something like a superhero at the same time. The first hour or so of struggle is fun; the second, in which the main character becomes a pretty terrible dick and helps slaughter scores of people, is not.

Eggsy starts and pretty much remains a charming dick, but he and Galahad get away with some majorly questionable conduct⁸. Kingsman makes it look exceptionally good⁹, but its body count is the one thing that makes me hesitate before recommending the film to anyone and everyone.

Nonetheless, if you're interested in an extra-bloody, irreverent spy adventure, you won't do better than Kingsman. Rejoice! This is the first great geek movie of 2015.

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1 Sorry, Skyfall. I still love you.
2 Immediately after a delightfully inventive and funny opening credits sequence.
3 Just compare that movie's end credits to these.
4 Shout-outs to Full Metal Jacket, Men in Black and The Hunger Games for their obvious influence as well.
5 Who will probably continue to do so for basically no money over the next five years before doing any more meaningful work.
6 Honorable mention to Samuel L. Jackson as slimy, lisping Bond villain caricature and eco-terrorist Richmond Valentine and Michael Caine as Kingsman leader and (SPOILER) somewhat predictable traitor Arthur. 
7 This is reportedly why he chose to do this project for Fox rather than X-Men: Days of Future Past, although it's still an adaptation of another work - like Kick-Ass, Kingsman is based on a graphic novel by Mark Millar, although Vaughn consulted on the source material here.
8 (SPOILER) The world is literally ending if Eggsy doesn't activate devices that kill hundreds if not thousands, all of whom are to some degree complicit in the villain's evil plot. Galahad is a little less guilty in that he's under mind control when he murders an entire church of deplorable conservatives, but he still has plenty of blood on his hands.
9 It also sounds great: Vaughn pairs the film's most brutal sequence with "Freebird," which I will never hear the same away again.

Spidey's Home: Early Hype, Narrative Possibilities and The Future of Marvel Comics After "The Deal"

Let's start with the good great AMAZING news: Marvel is making Spider-Man movies.

It's hard to process exactly what that means to webheads like me. For years, we've been resigned to the fact that Marvel forever lost the ability to put its most popular character on the silver screen thanks to what started as a savvy business move - pawning off film rights to its characters that it would never use - and blew up in their faces TREMENDOUSLY. We enjoyed the Raimi trilogy, we ate up The Avengers and we tolerated the reboot, but the whole time this image remained:

This hurts way down deep. RT @devincf: Poor Spidey pic.twitter.com/af9VTpuUUz
— Derek Beigh (@derekbeigh) October 28, 2014

Even when rumors started last year that Sony might let Spidey out of his cage (hat-tip to Ben Fritz of the Wall Street Journal, who was on top of this from the start), I didn't believe it. Couldn't. The idea that the studio behind The Avengers and both Captain America films would make Spider-Man stories was too powerful for me to consider without immense pain unless it were true.

So, now that it's true, let's consider what "The Deal" (I've decided this is what I'll call it) really means:

1. "The new Spider-Man will first appear in a Marvel film from Marvel's Cinematic Universe." Smart money is Captain America: Civil War, the next big team-up movie to go into production. (Some are speculating about a post-credits scene for Avengers: Age of Ultron, but that would require superhuman speed or an immense amount of corporate foresight/hubris to pull off.) Spider-Man is a huge part of that comic-book arc, but Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige previously said the creative team won't hesitate to move pieces around. I expect a small cameo.

2. Feige will be a producer alongside deposed Sony exec Amy Pascal on a 2017 Spider-Man film with "a new creative direction," which probably means bye-bye to The Amazing Spider-Man star Andrew Garfield, co-star Emma Stone and Director Marc Webb - who, aside from having a very appropriate name, never seemed to excel at (or even like) making Spider-Man movies. So much the better for all of them in their freedom to do other, likely better, things, and for us to see new blood and a fresh start. (Side note: Leave Donald Glover alone. Dude has got stuff going on, and not every talented person needs to play a superhero.)

3. "Sony Pictures will continue to finance, distribute, own and have final creative control of the Spider-Man films." This is, in real-life terms, the most important sentence in this press release. Spider-Man is Sony's golden goose, and not only do they have no intention of letting him get away, they're in no way interested in sharing the eggs. This deal is a straight-up service trade: let us use Spidey in a movie, Marvel says, and we'll help you fix this brand. The real dream, Marvel Studios using Spidey when and how it pleases, remains elusive and probably impossible. (My dream, Joss Whedon directing a movie with Spider-Man in it, will apparently be an agonizing near-miss.)

4. Speaking of the brand: Sony's new Spider-Man movie is slated for July 28, 2017, without any other details attached. (Which is a problem in itself, but let's just grit our teeth and move on.) This will almost certainly be the start of a new franchise - hopefully with Feige on board all the way - and mean delays if not outright cancellations for Sony's Spider-universe projects, including the interesting-but-odd Venom movie, strange Sinister Six film and downright baffling Aunt May solo joint. It's hard to care too much about those, but I will legitimately miss the Amazing series, which was narratively sloppy but well-produced and acted, especially by the leads and Green Goblin Dane DeHaan. A lot of the discussion since Marvel and Sony's announcement has been about Marvel saving Sony from itself, but let's not insult a ton of hardworking people who put together two immensely-profitable movies that, while never as good or interesting as Raimi's trilogy, rose above the vast majority of Hollywood drek that gets released every summer. The Amazing team deserved a chance to finish the overarching story (so aggressively shoehorned) in Amazing Spider-Man 2 on their own terms.


No more tomorrows, Amazing team.

5. "Marvel and Sony Pictures are also exploring opportunities to integrate characters from the MCU into future Spider-Man films." Potentially some exciting crossover opportunities here, especially given Marvel's enormous slate of already-announced projects, but cool your quinjets: many of the most-interesting Marvel characters, including the also-New York-based Fantastic Four, remain siloed at other studios - mainly Fox, which holds the Storms and the cash-cow X-Men franchise. We're not getting New Avengers. (At least not yet.) More likely is a big-screen crossover with the The Defenders, another Big Apple group to be set up in a series of collaborations between Marvel Studios and Netflix.

6. Perhaps the most important part of this agreement: for the first time, I have faith in the future of not only Spider-Man comics but X-Men too. Consider what Marvel has to think about from a corporate standpoint with that endeavor: comics make money, sure, but the most profitable part of the Spider-Man brand is controlled by Sony, probably forever. Disney didn't pay $4 billion for Marvel to increase visibility for another studio's characters, and while stopping production of Spider-Man comics would produce a massive backlash now, slowing them down and letting Sony continue to twist in the wind is a realistic way to take us down that road. This deal shows Marvel is willing to make compromises and not shut out any property it doesn't 100 percent control. If Fox is willing to let X-Men characters appear in Marvel films, my nightmare scenario of watching Marvel cancel that comic and promote the living daylights out of Inhumans instead will become nothing more than a paranoid delusion. It may be already - but The Deal reassures me anything is possible.

The Cubs Won't Win the 2015 World Series, and It's Mean to Pretend They Will

Let's get this out of the way up front: as a born-and-raised Chicagoan, I want the Cubs to win the World Series every year. No February goes by without me staring at their MLB.com depth chart and saying, "you know, if X, Y and Z break right, this team might have a chance."

That's why it hurts me so much to say it won't happen this year, and why it hurts when you say it will.

Unlike a lot of winters, this year a lot of folks are saying that. The Sporting News picked the Cubs to win the 2015 World Series. Sportsbook.ag lists the Northsiders behind only serious contenders - among them the favored Dodgers, powerhouse Nationals and rival Cardinals - in World Series odds at +1500. Pop-culture enthusiasts won't stop beating us over the head with Back to the Future II demands it.¹

(Heads up, genius: Back to the Future II also demands Miami move to the American League so the Cubs can meet them in the Fall Classic. We get it. Decades-old predictions are funny. Shut up.)

In more-analytical corners, however, folks are speaking the truth. Fangraphs projects the Cubs will finish in the middle of the pack at 83-79. Buster Olney of ESPN omitted the boys in blue from his offseason top 10 starting rotations and top 10 batting lineups. Members of the team aren't talking about the World Series; they want to win the NL Central, itself an ambitious goal for a 73-89 team that, even after a strong offseason, still lacks rotation depth and established hitting.

I know what you'll say: Be flattered. Enjoy the attention. It's all in good fun.

It's really not, though. For fans like me, who know that 2015 is going to be a .500 season or close to it, hearing so much talk about the Cubs bathing in champagne this fall isn't fun. It's depressing. It's patronizing. It's bitchy.

It says "the Cubs are so enduringly terrible I can't think of anything more implausible than them ever doing well." It shouts "I can get a bunch of traffic by catering to these sad sacks!" It ignores the forward-thinking approach this fanbase has clung to through the longest Cubs playoff drought since the late 1980s - six years and counting - in favor of the "next-year-is-here" idiocy that got us here.

So, please, as a long-suffering Cubs fan, I beg you: Have some class. Give some compassion. Show a little basic human decency and leave us alone.

We know this team hasn't won a World Series in 106 years; we know it's getting better; and, rest assured, we'll be the first to know when a championship is coming.

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1 No, I'm not linking to any of these hacks.

Big Hero 6 is Sloppy, Underwritten and Super Fun

Big Hero 6 doesn't care about a lot of things that make good movies.

The plot is sloppy. Major characters make very stupid decisions for no reason other than "because the script said so" (spoilers behind these footnotes)¹, important revelations are withheld until they feel perfunctory² and the entire enterprise feels driven by narrative tropes.

The script needed a lot more attention. Clunky info-dumps pepper the first several minutes, most of the characters are razor-thin stereotypes and many of the film's most entertaining moments are nakedly stolen from better movies.

But damn if it isn't a great ride anyway.

In the first moments of the film, the colorful skyline and landmarks of San Fransokyo - a near-future amalgam of San Francisco and Tokyo - put a smile on my face, and it seldom left during Big Hero 6's almost-brutally efficient 102 minutes. Just when a moment feels bland and forgettable, something else rockets onto the screen to wipe it away.

Hiro and Baymax save Big Hero 6 from its script.

It all starts with Hiro, a preteen prodigy who could easily be an insufferable know-it-all but shows so much life, humor and compassion that he's likeable in his darkest, most pubescent moments. He's an unlikely but compelling quarterback for the titular hero team, which adopts him in a believable way.

Hiro's biggest problem might be that his story, which is as predictable as it is well-executed, shoehorns out anything interesting his teammates could do with some screen time. Each has a memorable nickname; a costume, most of which work; and his or her own powers that make great set-piece moments, but only one, Fred, has any backstory to speak of. (Hang around after the credits for more from him.)³

The film's biggest star, though, is Baymax, a cuddly "health care companion" who emerges as both a consistent comic presence for what could have been a bland action film⁴ and a marketing orgasm waiting to happen. The latter has its own drawbacks⁵ but I'm certain millions of kids will join me in finding a plush version to alternately hug and take for adventures.

Simply-put, this is blockbuster filmmaking, animated or no, at its finest - so energetic, so beautiful and so clever that a generic storyline and half-baked writing can't sink it. Sit back and enjoy.

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1 Really, Tadashi? You're running into a burning building? Callaghan is right to call you a moron. (Side note: Pretending this is equivalent to venturing into a collapsing portal is ridiculous. Firefighters are a thing.)
2 Would have appreciated knowing Callaghan's backstory BEFORE he was revealed behind the mask, thanks
3 And Stan Lee!
4 No, Fred doesn't count.
5 This is a franchise-starter, a Disney movie, a Marvel movie and a robot character. OF COURSE HE'S NOT DEAD.