The endless dream of No Man’s Sky gets a harsh reality check.

No Man’s Sky blew gamers away back in late 2013 with the promise of a staggering procedurally generated universe. More than 18 quintillion planets are available to explore, chart and claim for yourself. This staggering scale has created a devoted fanbase of players, many who feel No Man’s Sky could be “the last game they ever need.” But with the game’s release now a week away, the reality behind the fantasy is starting to materialize thanks to one very impatient gamer.

Reddit user daymeeuhn first made headlines for spending $1,300 on eBay to obtain a copy of the game two weeks prior to launch. But that was only the beginning for daymeeuhn, who followed up his purchase with regular streams and videos of the game’s content, which uncovered much of the mystery that has surrounded the title pre-release. His most profound claim is that he reached the center of the game’s universe (often touted as an endgame goal that could take hundreds of hours) in 30 hours of playtime, theorizing that it could be done in as little as ten.

These revelations have sparked a fair deal of unrest among No Man’s Sky devotees, who have started to question the depth of a game with infinite width.  Making matters worse, it also appears that no reviews of the game will be available before launch – meaning most players will be going in blind. The game will hit PS4 and PC on August 9th.

QuakeCon 2016 gives us a first glance at Prey and Quake: Champions

Id’s annual convention/LAN megaparty known as QuakeCon took place this week in Dallas, and gave Bethesda a chance to show first gameplay footage from two of the studio’s buzziest E3 announcements.

First up is Prey, the psychological sci-fi reboot from Arkane Studios (Dishonored). A singleplayer horror shooter set in a mindbending experiment gone wrong, Prey promises twisted puzzles and action aplenty. The first gameplay teaser is below, and boasts a retro-futuristic vibe that should stratch the BioShock itch in the back of your skull.

Next up is Quake: Champions, the PC-exclusive reinvention of Id’s retro shooter. For those who have never experienced Quake, it’s a multiplayer shooter at the speed of light. Twitch reactions are everything, with kills coming faster than the mind can process. Champions promises a modern take on the classic shooter style.

Follow Chris Berg on Twitter @ChrisBerg25

This year has been a challenging one for Batman fanatics.

After the wildly disappointing Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, the middling Suicide Squad and a downright awful adaptation of The Killing Joke – it’s hard to imagine getting excited about a new story featuring the caped crusader.

The story of Bruce Wayne has been told by our culture an uncountable number of times. It is an infinitely repeated story of loss, betrayal and justice that could be considered modern myth. It would take a bold developer to believe they have a new take on this well-worn character.

Telltale Games has been around for many years as a developer of adventure games, but found a new life in 2012 with the release of The Walking Dead. A uniquely cinematic take to the concept of interactive narrative, its original take on the zombie phenomenon created a new genre. Since then, Telltale’s style of story-based games (mixing quick time events, dialogue selection, and light puzzle solving) has been applied to numerous other huge franchises – from Borderlands to Game of Thrones.

Batman: The Telltale Series marks the studio’s bravest (and boldest) adaptation to date.

While not an origin story for the man himself, “Realm of Shadows” starts our story fairly early in the larger series of events that define Gotham’s history. Bruce finds himself propping up the campaign of a young D.A by the name of Harvey Dent, who has aims on the Gotham Mayor’s office. The mob boss Falcone is terrorizing the streets with an unbelievable scope of power. As Gotham defines their relationship with Batman, the player’s choices will define how the people see their Dark Knight.

Gameplay is minimal, with combat accomplished by pressing buttons in time with on-screen prompts. The real meat is in the dialogue, attempting to truly role play the man behind the cowl.

But with so many characters in this story having fates well defined by popular culture (namely the events of Nolan’s The Dark Knight), it can be hard not to play with impeccable foresight.

The key to Telltale’s past stories have been the illusion of choice, feeling like each choice could define the fate of our characters. That’s never been less of the case than in Batman. It’s all too easy to predict where this story ends up, which drains it of drama in key moments.

Instead, the choices presented to the player resolve around what style of hero you want to be for this forsaken city. Do criminals deserve a violent fate that matches their actions? Should absolute truth be delivered to the people, or allow them to believe a convenient lie? These are unique angles for the franchise, and raise my hope for what might happen in future episodes. Telltale has always shown a talent for the morally opaque, and Batman may just be the perfect canvas for these skills. Expect future episodes to hit on a monthly basis.

Those who have played previous Telltale games already have a pretty clear picture on Batman, and likely already know if it’s worth their time. A few major improvements can be observed though, namely the in-game engine (which is still a tad ugly, but miles better than previous buggy games) and the ability to make choices as a group (with each participant voting with their smartphone or laptop).

For everyone else, Batman: The Telltale Series is looking to be the best Batman adventure of the year.

Follow Chris Berg on Twitter @ChrisBerg25

Horror is a genre that is obsessed with rules, both spoken and unspoken. The ghost on the mysterious VHS tape will only kill after seven days. The vampire must always avoid sunlight, garlic and crosses. The black couple will split from the group first, drawing the ire of the masked slasher.

Lights Out presents the simplest set of rules ever seen in a horror film, and arguably cribs them from every other tale of terror: keep the lights on and the monster keeps away. That’s it. It’s a basic premise, one that drove a short film so excellent, horror master James Wan (Saw, The Conjuring) produced it for a full feature. While such a simple idea could’ve been dragged out into a thoughtless experience, director David F. Sandberg, in his first film, accomplishes exactly the opposite. Lights Out is smart, subtle and one of the year’s horror highs.

The film follows Rebecca (Teresa Palmer) and her young brother Martin (Gabriel Bateman) who are attempting to remedy their mentally unstable mother. Even worse is a mysterious figure who appears only in shadow, identifying themselves only with solemn whispers and ceaseless scratching on the walls. Realizing that light is the one thing keeping the murderous spirit at bay, Rebecca and Martin fight to survive the long dark night.

What makes Lights Out stand apart from most horror pictures is the fact that every character immediately understands — and obeys — the basic rules of their situation. Rather than filling the screen with unlikable walking tropes that pratfall into an easily avoidable death, the characters of Lights Out feel effortlessly human. Even with occasionally stiff dialogue, everyone makes smart choices that increase the stakes. Surviving the shadow seems like a fair fight, rather than a series of jump scares.

The original Lights Out short saw viral acclaim, particularly for the simple visual trick of a shadowy figure that moves only between flashes of light. With a full 90 minutes to play with, Sandberg finds countless ways to play with this concept — new light sources, contexts and angles. It’s a film of fiercely creative ideas, all wonderfully shot. This movie demands to be seen in the pitch black of a theater, with a soundsystem that puts every paranoia-inducing noise right behind you.

Sometimes, a horror flick doesn’t need to innovate. As great as a major reinvention can be, sometimes the most basic ideas still have juice. There’s no phobia more primal than a fear of the dark, and no horror film this year more delightfully simplistic as Lights Out.

Follow Chris Berg on Twitter @ChrisBerg25

In 2009’s Star Trek, J.J Abrams reinvented a sci-fi classic for a new generation with a phenomenal ensemble cast and a smart excuse for revisiting classic Trek lore. It felt like a perfect reintroduction, one that Abrams struggled to build upon with Star Trek Into Darkness in 2013.

Bagging the hopeful sci-fi series down with themes of war, and overplaying the notion of homage, it turned many fans off the rebooted tales of Kirk and the USS Enterprise. Now, with the director’s chair handed over to Justin Lin (Fast & Furious), the Enterprise crew embarks on a more traditional journey in Star Trek Beyond. As a result, fans will be delighted to see this series come back to the fun, inspirational side of the great unknown.

Moreso than the two previous Star Trek installments, Beyond feels like a standalone episode in the ongoing adventures of Kirk (Chris Pine), Spock (Zachary Quinto) and the crew. Three years into the five-year voyage that began at the end of Into Darkness, Kirk has found himself lost in the emotional duties of being a Starfleet captain. While attending to a distress call from a distant planet, the Enterprise is compromised and the crew stranded upon a wild planet dense with secrets. Among them is the fiendish Krall (Idris Elba), who threatens to upset the peace beneath the Federation.

The setting lends itself to a more diverse dynamic. Our heroic team is split in the crash, which allows each character to get a bit of screen time. Spock and Bones (Karl Urban) steal the show and play off one another with perfect comedic chemistry, as other characters find themselves in the presence of new allies. It’s a welcome change of pace. It also highlights just how phenomenal the cast for this series has become, a who’s-who of young actors who bring new life to familiar faces.

Justin Lin became known as a master of action set pieces during his tenure with the Fast & Furious franchise, and brings that sensibility to Beyond. The action on screen isn’t constant, but happens in explosive bursts. Each one is unique, but not all are great. A sequence of the Enterprise collapsing in battle is immense, but stretches out far longer than necessary. A motorcycle chase through a prison camp feels like a stunt show at Universal Studios, painted up in CG colors.  The film really hits a stride in the final third, however, which includes a music-focused sequence that is hysterically huge.

For the first hour of Beyond, die-hard Trekkies may find themselves cursing at the screen upon watching an intelligent sci-fi franchise turned into such a bombastic action flick. Yet as the story progresses, Beyond starts to reveal itself in subtly profound ways. The philosophical arguments at the core of this franchise are very much present, though concealed until the final act. It’s a shame, because the ideas presented are worthy of more extrapolation than they get.

Star Trek Beyond is an imperfect movie, but presents a very hopeful future for this tale of the Enterprise. Even with Abrams’ direction now in the rearview, his re-imagination of Roddenberry’s utopia has found solid footing. Where the crew goes next, nobody knows. But just like the world presented within Star Trek, it’s a very optimistic future.

Follow Chris Berg on Twitter @ChrisBerg25

’80s nostalgia is a genre of pop culture that’s so saturated, it seems impossible to escape.

All around us are remakes, reboots and revivals of life from a bygone era. One of cold war paranoia, bold neon pop music — screens dense with Steven Spielberg, Stephen King and John Carpenter. Netflix’s new eight-part thriller Stranger Things may not be the first to throw viewers back to this era, but it proves more effective than most in its execution. Series creators Matt and Ross Duffer haven’t just nailed the look of a prime ’80s classic, they strike a deeper connection.

Set in a small Indiana town in fall 1983, Stranger Things centers on the mysterious disappearance of a small boy named Will Byers and the many community members who fall into the resulting conspiracy. The boy’s best friends risk their lives to track him down. A small-town cop hits roadblocks as he chases disparate leads. His mother Joyce (Winona Ryder) descends into madness over the scant, subtle signs of her son’s survival. In the center is a small child with no past, identified only by the tattoo of the number eleven on her arm.

The resulting weave is the stuff memories are made of. The slice-of-life moments drive the audience back to a simpler time, before shocking them to adulthood with genuine horror. Stranger Times revives the feeling of watching The X-Files when you were just a tad too young for it, watching through a blanket in horror, but nonetheless entranced. Excellent cinematography, visual effects and smart editing are the key tools to this result, and also where The Duffer Brothers are wise enough to step away from retro trappings.

While the first handful of episodes in Stranger Things could be mistaken for a lost Spielberg film, the world onscreen starts to mutate in distinctly modern ways. Rather than treating the entire show as an ’80s time capsule, it uses that aesthetic as a sense of home. A calm center to which it can return after the darkness dissipates. Yet with each episode, that home gets further away from the viewer. It’s a smart use of nostalgia, a compliment that can’t quite be payed to the show’s script.

Clichés are a classic part of any ’80s thriller. After all, this is the era that invented the slasher flick — and heroes who are too moronic to run in any direction other than into a killer’s blade. Stranger Things never hits those comic levels, but its characters do have a frustrating habit of always making the wrong decision, keeping the action going for another hour of chills and thrills. The story of Stranger Things could be told in six hours by a more succinct team, but The Duffer Brothers are intent to make us linger in every moment. The result is a strong start with a long trail, hitting a climax that mostly satisfies.

Netflix has made a habit of releasing remarkable content on the regular, and Stranger Things is no different. It’s a wonderful tribute to the golden age of sci-fi thrills that emulates the highs and lows with no distinction.

Get some popcorn, a couple spookable friends and turn out all the lights. Stranger Things is an easy summer favorite.

Follow Chris Berg on Twitter @ChrisBerg25

One of 2016’s most fiercely debated films, Ghostbusters has been a lightning rod for online controversy and earnest think pieces for everyone. Now with the full film out for the world to judge, the time has come to step away from conversations of ‘ruined childhoods’ and perceived misogyny.

When separated from the cultural context, Paul Feig’s reboot of Ghostbusters is an otherwise normal film. At times flawed and often clichéd, it ultimately triumphs through a slick sense of style and a dynamic cast.

Set in a separate continuity from the original series, the 2016 Ghostbusters come together when Erin Gilbert (Kristen Wiig) is reunited with an old college friend (Melissa McCarthy). Their shared passion for the supernatural bumps heads with a series of spectral sightings across NYC. With few willing to believe their story, fate forces them to take matters into their own hands. The team is rounded out by Jillian (Kate McKinnon) and Patty (Leslie Jones), who form an outstanding comedic ensemble. Feig’s past projects (Bridesmaids, Spy) prospered by translating natural chemistry in improv to the screen, and Ghostbusters may be his finest achievement yet. Laughs can occasionally stray into the blue, but are mostly driven by honest, fun energy.

At first, Feig’s snappy editing style can be disorienting. Major plot beats feel skipped over, only to be retroactively answered later in the film. But surely enough, the cartoonish mix of snappy dialogue and neon-tinted spectacle will win over the audience. In a world where all major blockbusters feel obsessed with defining their universes, and laying out franchise ground rules – Ghostbusters is willing to eschew it all for the sense of comedic timing. The result is a film that can be difficult to penetrate at times, but very rewarding when the jokes hit.

This supernatural spectacle is at its most fun when largely ignoring the formula established by Reitman’s original. New ghosts follow a fun historical theme, giving a twisted neon vision into New York’s deceased ancestors. This bustin’ team takes a more aggressive approach to eliminating specters, employing proton-powered shotguns, fists and grenades and very little ghost trapping.

The result is a zany delight of an action climax, with some of the most cartoon-like combat since Scott Pilgrim. It’s hell of a lot of fun to watch, but begs the question: is this really a Ghostbusters film?

Ultimately, the most damning aspect of Feig’s Ghostbusters may be the baggage brought on by the name itself. Almost every major cast member from the original classic makes an obligatory cameo, each more distracting than the last. Iconic characters like Slimer and the Stay-Puft Marshmallow man are effectively brought back into the fold, but distract from original ghost creations, which are decidedly more interesting. Considering the aforementioned tonal differences brought on by Feig’s style, every reminder of the original just serves to widen the gap. Yet taken as an individual piece, it’s an enjoyably frantic piece of genre comedy.

Follow Chris Berg on Twitter @ChrisBerg25

Double Takes is a series in which two Emerald writers compare notes on a recent piece of media. In this installment, Emerald writers Chris Berg and Mathew Brock share their thoughts on the new app Pokémon Go.

Watch the Pokémon Go Super Bowl spot below.

Chris’s take:

It’s hard to deny that Pokémon Go is an objectively bad app. The game’s augmented reality effect (wherein it transposes a 3D Pokémon on a live camera feed) looks shifty, the location tracking is often inaccurate, and the servers have been hilariously unreliable from the start. Not to mention the lack of any meaningful features from the core series, like training, battling outside of gyms or trading with friends.

But what can be so easy to miss, is that Go perfectly captures the spirit of this franchise. At the core of the series has always been a simple desire – finding tiny monsters, collecting them, and boosting their skills to become the very best that ever was. Combine that with the social hooks native to the app’s design, and it becomes a natural fit. That’s why it’s attracted millions of players in less than a week, and returned Pokémon to the forefront of pop culture. I’ve never seen anything like this, in terms of getting ordinary people to unite over digital incentives. Other GPS-based games like Ingress (whose development team would later spearhead Go) have had deeper features, but lack the magnetic charm of Nintendo’s creation.

I don’t know if Pokémon Go has a future. Nintendo’s last app Miitomo had a similar spark of interest, only to quickly fade from a lack of depth. It’s hard to say if this will see the same fate, but for now we can all appreciate this one-of-a-kind phenomenon as it unfolds.

Follow Chris Berg on Twitter @ChrisBerg25

Mathew’s take:

It seems like everyone, young and old, has caught the recent Pokémon bug and have all been thrust abruptly back to their childhoods. As a long time fan of the series, this is great news for me; I finally have an abundance of people with whom I can talk about Pokemon, without it being incredibly awkward. I’m sure you know the old saying: gotta catch em’ all.

Pokémon Go captures the essence of the Pokémon franchises by boiling it down to its most basic elements and mixing in some elements of the rather niche augmented reality genre of mobile games. Traditional fans of the franchise might be a little disappointed in the game’s simplicity, but it still provides one of the best experiences the emerging AR genre has to offer. It definitely fulfills that childhood fantasy of traveling around a world filled with magnificent creatures and collecting them in a pocket-sized menagerie, exactly like the original Pokemon games were intended to do for children living in cities.

The game focuses primarily on the collecting aspect of Pokémon, since battles are restricted to gyms and streamlined to tap-to-attack and swipe-to-dodge motions. It’s a little disappointing but perfectly understandable, given the scope of a mobile game. Collecting new or more powerful Pokémon never fails to feel satisfying, whether you’re catching a herd of Eevees to evolve a Flareon or hatching dozens of eggs until you get a Snorlax.

Overall the game has everything a traditional Pokémon fan needs to enjoy themselves, while also being accessible enough to attract a whole new audience of smartphone users. If nothing else, the game will continue to prove to Nintendo that the mobile phone market is a perfect place for them to thrive.

Have a good Pokémon Go story? Share it with us here!

It’s hard to paint The Purge: Election Year as anything but a hit. Having grossed over $45 million in just five days on a $10 million budget, it stands to be one of 2016’s most profitable investments for Universal studios. The action-horror sequel outgrossed a new Steven Spielberg project, The BFG, and the sequel to Independence Day over Independence Day weekend. America has spoken—they’re ready to Purge.

For those outside the pop culture bubble, The Purge is a thriller franchise that paints a dark future for America—one includes the annual Purge. For 12 hours a year, all crime is legal, allowing people to “purge” the hate and anger from their systems. Despite a bland first film, this crime spree has exploded in popularity. The Purge: Anarchy took the action to the streets, which put the chaos on full display. The resulting parade of violence is engrossing, dusted with a healthy serving of social commentary. Anarchy is an action film shot from the victim’s perspective, resulting in a unique horror blend.

With Election Year, the world of The Purge looks to politics. Senator Charlie Roan is a fresh upstart running a presidential campaign that seeks to end the annual tradition. She argues that the slaughter is little more than a profit making scheme to kill off the poor, thus cutting costs on welfare. Her message resonates with the affected and enrages those with power. On the last Purge before election night, a betrayal leaves the senator out on the street with her trusted head of security (played by Frank Grillo, reprising his role from Anarchy). The audience follows them on this deadly night, as they seek to survive–and end–the Purge. Yet at this premise lies an awkward truth. The narrative says the audience should be rooting for the Purge to end. If that’s the case, would we really be flocking to the theater to watch it on display?

Director James DeMarco’s vision for this slaughter is a carnival of horrors, with citizens treating the event like a combination of Marti Gras and the worst riot known to society. Teenagers prowl the streets with AK-47s, dressed like punk-rock ballerinas. International “murder tourists” don masks of the founding fathers, peppered with blood. The action is a constant and happens in visceral detail. DeMonaco has an eye for subtle panning shots that detail combat in 360 degrees, reminding us that danger could come out of every corner. More so than in either previous Purge films, our heroes are willing to take up arms and defend themselves against attackers. Gun combat is tremendously fun and frantic, flowing with smooth choreography and smart framing. Carnage is why we come to The Purge. It’s the center of every bit of marketing and the reason these movies are hits.

Typically, I’d give an action movie a pass for this sort of tonal disconnect–it’s something to be expected from the genre. Yet Election Year is a film so blatantly political it’s impossible to avoid holding it to a higher standard. The film’s marketing campaign has heavily leveraged the looming public disarray of the Trump campaign, even boasting the hoisted tagline “Keep America Great.” These real world connections extend into the plot, which plays heavily with social and racial divides amongst Americans. These ties push The Purge into parable territory. It’s the story of an America that may someday be a reality, pushing past our existing social boundaries. But when a parable glamorizes the same violence that it calls to end, doesn’t that render the parable inert? Perhaps the contradiction of The Purge is a reflection of something deeper in American politics.

The 2016 election has been the most viewed in history. Primary debates drew the sort of TV ratings typically reserved for major sporting events. Candidate rallies on both sides of the spectrum have seen massive protests, aggressive online discourse and tribalism that divides us without rational thought. It’s destructive, evil and actively degrading our country as we know it. 

Yet it’s also entertaining as all hell.

We are creatures of controversy, eager to post our latest perspective on this hour’s outrage. Our better judgment tells us not to engage with online trolls or drag our personal beliefs out into the open. Yet some primal desire for conflict keeps us in the loop. We focus on what makes us angry, upset, or offended–because in a world of constant stimulation, feeling content is as good as being dead. This misplaced passion is wrong, though it feels so perfect. Sometimes we try to rise above it, only to find ourselves reveling in anger at the system in which we remain trapped. There’s no escaping the contradiction.

There’s no escaping The Purge.

You can follow Chris Berg on Twitter, @ChrisBerg25

Tuesday, July 5th – 2016 Olympic Team Trials – Single day tickets range from $43-$88 – Every day until July 11th at Hayward Field

If you’ve managed to avoid the entire campus beyond the EMU, you may not have noticed the colossal installation around Hayward Field and the REC Center fields. The Olympic Trials have come to TrackTown USA, and there are plenty of ways to get involved with the festivities. As of this writing, single-day tickets are still available for July 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th — ranging from $43 to $88 depending on seating. If you’d rather avoid the ticket madness, Nike has also set up a FanFest with free admission on the REC center fields, streaming the events live.

Wednesday, July 6th – Whisky Shivers – Tickets are $10 – 10 p.m. at Hi-Fi Music Hall

Fresh out of Austin, TX — Whisky Shivers has been breathing fresh life into the world of bluegrass since 2012. The quintet boasts a traditional folk country arrangement with a determined spirit that breathes in live performance. You can’t pick a better way to spend a scorching summer night than with some live Americana and a cold beer.

Thursday, July 7th – Buckethead – Tickets are $20, $25 day of show – 7:30 p.m. at WOW Hall

Legendary guitarist, frequent collaborator with Guns N Roses, and performance artist Buckethead will be performing live at WOW Hall on Thursday night. An act that best speaks for itself, Buckethead incorporates “nun chucks, robot dancing and toy trading” into his stage performances. His stage presence is “a character that was ‘raised by chickens’ and has made it his ‘mission in life to alert the world to the ongoing chicken holocaust in fast-food joints around the globe.’”

Friday, July 8th – Open Studio at the Emerald Art Center – Free – 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

The Emerald Art Center invites all creatives to bring their favorite paintings or other pieces of art-in-progress to work in the company of other local artists. This is an opportunity to see great work, socialize in an environment where you can learn and talk about art and have a great time with individuals who share a common interest of creating beauty with their respective mediums.

Saturday, July 9th – Movies In The Park: James and the Giant Peach – Around 9 p.m. at Peterson Barn Park

Get a fresh hit of ’90s nostalgia under the cool summer night sky with this public presentation of Disney’s “James and the Giant Peach.” The stop-motion animation classic was directed by Henry Selick (also known for “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and “Coraline”), based on a story by Roald Dahl (author of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and “The BFG”) — following the story of a young boy who befriends a group of bugs living inside a massive peach. The show will start once darkness sets in, so bring blankets and lawn chairs for a movie night under the stars.

Sunday, July 10th – Taste of Chaos: Dashboard Confessional, Taking Back Sunday, Saosin & The Early November – 6 p.m. at the Cuthbert Amphitheater – Tickets are $70-$145

Revive your shameful love for the moody world of emo rock with some titans of the scene. The sold-out outdoor show will be a stacked affair, bringing together some modern legends for a night of bouncing, trashing and all around good times.

Monday, July 11th – Eugene Emeralds vs Hillsboro Hops at PK Park – 7:05 p.m. – Ticket prices vary

Nothing beats a summer evening with a cold drink, some good friends and baseball under the night sky. The Eugene Emeralds will take on the current league champions, the Hillsboro Hops, in the final game of a three-game set. It gets even better with Good Karma Mondays, which give fans the opportunity to name their price for admission — with half the cost going to charity.

Follow Chris Berg on Twitter, @ChrisBerg25

It seems like everyone has an axe to grind with Paul Feig’s reboot of Ghostbusters. Whether you find the notion of an all-female cast pandering, or considering the use of African-American stereotype to be uncouth, negative emotions have prematurely surrounded the film. This week, the cycle of outrage extended to the movie’s title track. Fitting the spirit of reinvented 80’s classics, Fall Out Boy and Missy Elliot collaborated on a cover of Ray Parker Jr.’s iconic Ghostbusters theme.

I am on the record as an unabashed Fall Out Boy fan, from their pop-punk roots to their current top 40 efforts. I’m also a presumptive defender of the new Ghostbusters, holding out hope in the face of bad trailers and relentless social media cynicism. But when the track dropped online this week, my faith was shaken. I expected a take on the iconic funk track that would frustrate the online masses while still delivering an enjoyably corny experience.

Fall Out Boy’s cover (“Ghostbusters (I’m Not Afraid)”) certainly accomplished the former. It’s been called everything from “pure cancer” to “hauntingly bad.” Typically I’d write off such press reactions as par for the course, pieces of clickbait to elicit attention. Unfortunately the critics have a point. “I’m Not Afraid” is a disappointment for Fall Out Boy fans, a wasted opportunity for Missy Elliot fans and arguably a declaration of war against Ghostbusters fans. For everyone else, it’s just a remarkably bad song.

To start, calling “I’m Not Afraid” a “cover” isn’t entirely accurate. Lead singer Patrick Stump does backing vocalists through many of the iconic lyrics (raising questions of whom should be contacted when strange things occur in one’s neighborhood) but ditches most of the original song structure. Ray Parker Jr.’s composition is treated more like a sample, referenced and built upon for a larger pop-rock construction. If you’ve heard past FOB hits “Centuries” or “Uma Thurman,” this is nothing new. While those songs lift only a single element (like the vocal work of “Tom’s Diner” or the surf-rock twang of the Munsters theme) of their source material, “I’m Not Afraid” repurposes entire lyrical sections. All while wiping them of the ’80s funk guitar that makes the original song such a perfect earworm. The chorus adds insult to injury, with Stump repeating a single line “I’m Not Afraid” in mosh-friendly meter.

Missy Elliot also drops in for 30 seconds of instantly forgettable rapping and settles for the most generic rhymes about ghosts this side of a Halloween novelty record. The whole three-minute experience is downright unpleasant. It’s too heavy on Ghostbusters references to work as a Fall Out Boy single, and too entrenched in FOB’s signature style to work as a theme track. It’s a failure on just about every metric. Yet while I don’t care for the song, that doesn’t mean I stand by all the criticism being sent its way.

For all the bad decisions that led to “I’m Not Afraid,” it’s never going to deserve the seething online vitriol. The song has been accused of being both a “dubstep tire fire” and a relic of 2000s pop. There’s no consistency to this criticism, which boxes me into a corner. This song should be rallied against, because it’s terrible. Yet the criticism applied to it has been nothing more than cultural sandbagging. The insults levied against it don’t bother to surface what is actually going wrong.

The fact is: most people made their decision at the headline “Fall Out Boy covers Ghostbusters.” The band has always been a shortcut for critics to dunk on the guyliner-smeared emo-rock movement of the 2000s. They’re an easy target, and deserve to be hit hard for this confused remix. But it seems most people would have dragged them down regardless of how the final product would have turned out. Nobody gave this song a chance, and it turns out it didn’t deserve one. As a result, we’re robbing ourselves of something important. Can’t we at least offer something this bad a set of legitimate complaints?

There’s no more fitting movie for this song than Ghostbusters. Like its title track, the film has been dogged with online criticism, despite nobody having seen the actual final product. The complaints are not against the movie, but rather the existence of it. Just as Fall Out Boy must be tried at the public square for daring to cover the work of Ray Parker Jr., Paul Feig and company have been dragged through the streets of nerd media for touching the franchise in the first place. Presumptive conclusions do nobody any good. If the work is good, then the critics find themselves with egg on their face. But if the work is bad, critics are free to pat themselves on the back and walk away without ever really measuring how a bad idea went so wrong.

Follow Chris Berg on Twitter @ChrisBerg25