Adam Wallace
Bio
I put up pieces here when I can, mainly about games and movies. I do also write poetry & short stories. I'm also writing movies, writing a children's book & hosting the gaming channel "Cool Media" on YouTube! Enjoy & find me on Bluesky!
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Stories (143)
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My Top 100 Favorite Games of All Time: #100 - 76
I used to write for a website called PressA2Join.com. While there, I published a list of my 35 favorite games of all time. Since then, that website has shut down. Because of that, I thought about republishing my list here. However, that list was two years ago, and my opinions have changed since then. I also wanted to go big for the holidays. So, I went back over my list and expanded it to 100. That may seem like a lot, but I've been a gamer since the Atari 2600 era. I've played thousands of games over the past four decades. A hundred is a drop in the bucket for me.
By Adam Wallace6 years ago in Gamers
'Friday the 13th' Vs. 'Dead by Daylight'
Hello, and welcome back to The Great Debates where Freddy and Jason are getting the long awaited rematch. Asymmetrical multiplayer games are nothing new. One of the coolest modes in the early Halo games was "Juggernaut" where one player would actively hunt the others. However, it was in this console generation where that one mode would become the focus of entire games. The first major attempt at that was Evolve, which drowned its cool concept under tons of corporate crap. That could be forgiven as two much better examples came to consoles in 2017. Those games are Friday the 13th: The Game and Dead by Daylight.
By Adam Wallace6 years ago in Gamers
'Devil's Advocate' - Demons Go to Court
Hello, and welcome back to Second Chances where the maligned and forgotten get their day in court. It's October, and I spend the whole month celebrating Halloween. While most people spend Halloween partying and wearing costumes, Ally & I celebrate with horror movie marathons. It was one Halloween a few years ago that I showed her one of my favorite mostly forgotten horror movies, 1997's The Devil's Advocate. While it was profitable at the box office and won some awards when it was first released, it's a movie that has largely faded from public memory. It isn't regularly mentioned in "Best of Horror" articles like The Exorcist, The Shining, or Scream are. However, it deserves to be remembered. It provided a unique genre mash-up, it's as enjoyably over-the-top as The Omen, it's as atmospheric as Silent Hill, and it featured my favorite performance from the legendary Al Pacino. There are reasons I named it #26 on my favorite movies list. Court is now in session.
By Adam Wallace6 years ago in Horror
'Silent Hill'—Atmosphere Is Everything
Hello, and welcome back to Second Chances where I shine a flashlight on the maligned, forgotten, and ignored. If there's one genre of film in which professional critics seem to disconnect the most from the general audience, it would be horror. I've looked up reviews of many horror films and seen many of the same complaints crop up over and over again like unlikeable characters, overreliance on gore, and lack of concrete stories. While those things can be problematic in other genres, they're much more forgivable in horror due to the nature of the genre. Unlikeable characters getting killed off is seen as karma in action. Gore taps into primal fear very effectively (though, to be fair, a little goes a long way like with the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre). Finally, if a story is too solid and explainable, it stops being scary. To illustrate this, I'm going to talk about a horror film that didn't deserve to be critics' tortured gimp, 2006's Silent Hill.
By Adam Wallace6 years ago in Horror
'Cloak & Dagger' - What? A GOOD Video Game Movie?
Hello, and welcome back to Second Chances where I'm loading up the maligned and forgotten and pressing the "Start" button. As far as I'm concerned, the 1980s were one of the greatest decades in movie history. I'm not saying that just because of the spectacle that came from new special effects or because of more chances being taken on crazy ideas like a time-traveling DeLorean (Back to the Future) or ice cream that eats people from the inside out (The Stuff). The 1980s were great because the movies of that decade (for the most part) respected their audience. That was especially true of family films. Unlike family films today which, outside of Pixar's stuff, tend to treat kids like little idiots with spines made of jelly and attention spans of moths, family films of the 80s actually challenged kids, got them to think critically, and weren't afraid to scare them a little. Look at some of the all-time classics from that decade including Labyrinth, The Dark Crystal, Return to Oz, The Secret of NIMH, and especially The NeverEnding Story (which is my #3 favorite movie of all time). Another movie that deserves to be on that pedestal is the 1984 suspense thriller Cloak & Dagger.
By Adam Wallace6 years ago in Gamers
No Begging: 10 Game Companies Worth Supporting
Hello, and welcome back to Silver Linings where the worthy (hopefully) get their just rewards. I follow a lot of video game commentators on YouTube like Jim Sterling, YongYea, and Angry Joe. Because of this, I've been overloaded with news about the various controversies surrounding the outright sleazy ways the big publishers have been using to try to squeeze more money out of the players who already paid at least $60 for a new game. The schemes had gotten outright ludicrous from Ubisoft releasing so many versions of Assassin's Creed Odyssey that spreadsheets are needed to tell what you're getting (unless you're willing to pony up $200 for everything) to Namco Bandai releasing three season passes for Tekken 7 to the infuriating emphasis on gambling in NBA 2K20.
By Adam Wallace6 years ago in Gamers
Have a Blast Without More Cash!
Hello, and welcome back to Silver Linings. This console generation has had plenty of problems that go way beyond a lack of great current sports games. One of the biggest problems this generation is the overmonetization of games. These days, the big publishers seem like they can't just make and release a game anymore, not without including too much DLC which ends up costing more than the base game, micro-transactions that belong in free-to-play games, and loot boxes that actively prey on gambling addicts (as revealed in this expose by Jim Sterling). First- and third-person shooters are a couple of genres that suffered greatly due to this.
By Adam Wallace6 years ago in Gamers
Playable Cinema: 20 Good Movie-Based Games
Hello, and welcome back to Silver Linings where I'm ready to roll the maligned and forgotten. One of the oldest truths in the games industry is that games based on movies suck. In fact, it was a game based on a movie that gets all the blame for nearly collapsing the whole industry in 1983, that being E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial on the Atari 2600 (though I found its reputation to be worse than the game itself, as seen in my review). The reason for that is simple: games based on movies are designed more to be marketing tools for the movies in question than as enjoyable games in their own right.
By Adam Wallace7 years ago in Gamers
Chilling Digitally
Hello, and welcome back to Silver Linings where I chillax with the maligned and forgotten. Let's face it; gaming can carry stresses of its own. Whether you're getting your face stomped in by a Dark Souls boss, or getting teabagged by some jerk in an online round of Halo, gaming these days provides the kinds of headaches that can almost be worse than the normal crap in the real world. Even I experience that kind of thing often. Hell, last week, I almost felt my brain snap when I lost my last life when I was close to getting a tough star in Super Mario 64.
By Adam Wallace7 years ago in Gamers
