Thanksgiving Special Supreme

It’s Thanksgiving and some people I know are doing that “What I’m thankful for” thing every day or every week of the month. I’ve been tempted to do that, but I’ve never done so because I always forget to the first few days and then when I notice the posts, I don’t want to feel like a copycat. So I thought I’d post something on Thanksgiving. The top twenty five things I’m thankful for. There might be an order to it. At the time of initial writing, there isn’t, but we’ll see what the magic of editing can do.

I want YOU... to help me out!

To make up for the lack of posts, we’re doing a double post day. But this time, I actually have a reason for this.

So I want to start making improvements to hopefully have this blog/journal/whatever reach more audiences. Larger audience means I might actually get someone to notice my writing and they might take me on for a job somewhere. That’s the hope anyway. So I’m going to reformat how this blog works over the course of the next week (holidays give me a little more free time to work with). And I need some opinions on how to make this better.

First, what do you guys want to see in the posts? I do personal stuff, commentaries, reviews, jokey fun stuff, and a few other gimmicks too. Is there anything you want more or less of? And of what I’ve listed, what could be done to improve the posts more and maybe interest more readers?

Second, I’m thinking of adding a website component to help organize the blog as well as leave room for additional content I can add later on. When I get a chance to get back into videos, then I can have a page for videos. Separate the personal posts from the commentaries and reviews so you can find what you want to see more of instead of having to look through EVERYTHING. In short, I want to streamline this process so YOU can find what you want to read/watch and enjoy it with greater ease. If you have suggestions on what you want done or know of ways I could improve I may not have thought of, I’d love to hear it.

Lastly, I’m wanting to dress up this page, a potential youtube page, and maybe some other bits with graphics. Especially designing a logo to help have some kind of signifier of who I am and what this is all about. That said, you all know by now I’m a terrible artist. I can draw stick figures and dicks and that’s about all I’m good for. So if anyone has some kind of art-talent and wants to lend a hand, that’d be great. I can’t offer money at the moment, but you will be credited on every page your work is featured and I’ll recommend you to others looking for artists should I be asked as well. It’s not much, but I’m asking for simple designs and ideas to start with, so I’m hoping it’s a fair offer.

This is a short post because it’s mostly housekeeping. I’m hoping to hear back from some of you one this. Again, any help you can offer (even just suggestions for content) would be great for future posts and updates. See ya later!

Reboot Review: Tomb Raider 2013!

Hey, it’s been a while. Sorry for the lack of posts (assuming that it’s really that big a deal to any of you). I’ve been preoccupied raiding tombs. Spent the past few days exploring ancient societies, finding lost artifacts, and, when I make time, blowing up old buildings and murdering waves of psychotic cultists. That’s right, I was playing Tomb Raider (the 2013 reboot) and now I’m going to review it. Don’t you just feel lucky?

Ashes to Ashes, Dust to "Dust: An Elysian Tail" - A Review

This review has been in the works for a long time coming. By that, I mean I haven’t really played this game since I first bought it upon release because of my schedule, other projects, girl(s), that guy who’s always trying to kill me with elaborate deathtraps in his moon base, and pie. But I’m finally here and ready to get around to reviewing Dust: An Elysian Tail.

Man of Steel 2 Speculation

Man of Steel 2… let’s do some discussion and prediction.

Spiderman 3 and Dark Knight Rises... They're the Same Movie

I made a facebook post not long ago about the similarities between Dark Knight Rises and Spiderman 3 and I thought I’d take time to elaborate more on that. See, the concept was born from a discussion with myself and the lovely and amazing Erin Casey. I’m not entirely sure how we got onto the subject, but it started with me calling out on of the characters in DKR to being similar in terms of plot functionality as another character in Spidey3. We then dove deeper into the topic and were blown away by how they were pretty much the same damn movie. Thus, I figured I’d post a more organized version of that conversation into a post-like thing that I sometimes do. Here we go.

Let’s start with the most obvious similarities between the two movies. Both are third installments of a trilogy that didn’t go over well with critics while both still were more financially successful than their predecessors. Neither hero has a desire to kill their opponents and, for the most part don’t. Any time a villain has died in either film it was accidental or not the fault of the hero. Both of which are persecuted at one point or another in their respective franchises (at least in the comics, in the films, it’s mostly just Batman, I think). Both trilogies peaked in their second and most impressive film due to having better villains and stories than their respective third installments. Both characters are orphans being raised by non-biological parents (aunts/uncles and butlers) all of which are old people. Both use a mixture of intelligence, science, parkour, and a variation of grappling and swinging around to fight crime.

Going a step farther, let’s take a look at some of the important relationships in the films. Peter Parker (Spiderman) loves Mary Jane and they get to a point where he is about to propose to her. About to, but suffers a radical personality shift due to an alien goo and he ends up being a bitch to her instead. On the darker and knightier side of things, the third film is the movie where we see Bruce in a relationship with another woman where they have sex. From what I can tell, we have no confirmation he’s ever been that close with a woman prior to that point in the series. But it seems like a one night stand and she ends up being a psycho in the end. So call the romance in both movies attempts to deepen relationships that ultimately fail.

What about the big bads? Both movies sport a multitude of villains (for the most part). You have your center-stage villain that does all the heavy lifting and steals the most scenes imaginable. In DKR you have Bane, who is the anti-Batman of the Batman universe since he was the one who not only broke Batman’s back but discovered who he was and was pretty much designed by writers to eliminate Batman the same way Doomsday eliminated Superman. Let’s websling over to Spidey3 where the center-stage villain is actually not the anti-Spiderman, but Sandman. Apparently he’s back after supposedly killing Uncle Ben in the first movie (more on that later) and now wanting to use his newfound powers of sand to get money to help his daughter.

Secondary villains come with both films and the flavor for this character is the frienemy. Or the sometimes enemy but sometimes ally malarkey that almost perfectly characterizes one of Batman’s few femme fatales, Catwoman. I’m sorry, Selina Kyle. Christopher Nolan can’t be bothered to have fun and use the goofy comic names now, can he? Selina makes an appearance in the film and is trying to steal from Bruce and then sets him up to be murdered by Bane, but she eventually sees the error of her ways and decides to help him and even save his life near the end. Flip the coin over to see Spidey’s frienemy, Harry Osborn. The movie starts with him wanting revenge for his father’s death. He gets amnesia from a fight they have, only to get his memory back, try to steal MJ from Peter, and then get his ass kicked again. But, when Peter is fighting baddies 1 and 3 to save MJ near the end, Harry jumps in to help him because friendship or some bullshit. Willem Dafoe’s Norman Osborn was spinning in his fictional grave.

Third round villains are the sleeper agents. These villains were hinted at earlier in the film (either subtly or it was just obvious from the get go) and then they appear within the last 15 minutes of the film and actually do something only to be killed without much effort anyway. Batman brings us Talia Al Ghul, the daughter of Ra’s Al Ghul (more on that later). She’s hinted at by the visit of Ra’s Al Ghul in Bruce’s head but I wouldn’t call it obvious because unless you are familiar with Batman lore prior to the film, you’d have no idea who the fuck that was with no reason to expect it. Meanwhile the plot of Spiderman 3 pretty much screams “Venom is showing up later in the movie” when an alien goo takes over Spiderman to alter his personality into that of a whiney emo bitch. That said, it takes damn near the entire movie for Peter to get rid of the alien goo before it can attach itself to Eddie Brock (more on that later) and finally get to the damn Venom saga (which needed more time to develop).

Moving on, both films have another aspect in common. They both ruin the earlier films in some way shape or form simply by having existed. In the case of Spidey3, it claims that Flynt Marko (Sandman before his pants became filled with sand) was the man who shot and killed Uncle Ben. Before we were informed that it was some nobody that Spidey had accidentally killed in the first movie in cold-blooded revenge. But now some new guy is randomly introduced and the police are only just now telling Peter and Aunt May that this guy is the actual killer? That doesn’t even make sense. How do they have proof of that and even if they do, why didn’t this come to light years ago when Uncle Ben was killed? Meanwhile, Batman’s is less offensive and more disappointing. In the first film, we’re introduced to Ra’s Al Ghul, who’s supposed to be immortal due to the “Lazarus Pits.” Take a dip and there and you gain youth and immortality (temporarily) but lose a dose of sanity in the process (or gain if you’re Joker). But the closest we get to the Lazarus Pit is a metaphorical hole that Bruce must climb out of in order to regain the life he lost when Bane broke his back. I was really hoping there’d be the eternal life water somewhere in there.

Also, both films have the fatal flaw of not having the hero in costume enough. Both films decide it’d be more fun to have the hero out of costume for well over half the movie. The problem being we don’t go to watch porn only to see the characters have awkward dialogue. And you don’t watch a super hero movie just to see the alter ego piss around for an hour and a half before putting on their ridiculously colored spandex outfits and beat up thugs and colorful villains. Spiderman spent most of his time as Peter and as dancing Emo Peter. Batman spent most of his time as crippled Bruce Wayne… not even joking. Earlier in the film he has a bum leg and needs a special brace made to help him actually be Batman and then he gets his back broken and needs to climb a wall to suddenly get better… somehow.

And the last similarity between them is how they end. In the case of Batman, Bat’s retired and “Robin” inherited the mansion and the Batcave, allowing him to essentially take on the role of being the next Batman should he choose to be. Thus, leaving it open for a sequel that will never come because Bale and Nolan wanted to move on and only one of them succeeded. Thus, Affleck will take on the role for the next film for no better reason than because Warner Bros. simply can’t live without a Batman somewhere in their belfry. Back over in New York, Spiderman beats Venom, but it’s assumed Venom isn’t actually dead and that he escaped (like in the comics, a lot). Peter and MJ make up, but still are awkward around each other, Harry dies, and Sandman goes to help his daughter. It’s an awkward ending, but enough is left open for a sequel… which will never come because the reception to the movie was so bad that Sony panicked. And instead of loosening their control on production of Spiderman movies, they took even more control in the production of Spiderman films, booted the talented Sam Raimi out and then made a god awful reboot that shouldn’t have existed at all.

And there you have it. Two super hero films that were the final episode in their trilogy that flopped due to a lack of understanding of the source material and too many villains that didn’t get fully developed. Both of which ended their trilogies only to then be rebooted with new versions that will likely be inferior because less actual effort, talent and heart is being put into their respective creative processes. However, we can only officially say that about Amazing Spiderman. Whether or not the new Batman will follow suit remains to be seen, but you can see why I’m not even the slightest bit optimistic. See ya next time. :D

Just Say "sNOw" to winter (Part 1)

For all my loyal readers and those who might just be joining us, I have a big confession I have to make. I know once I make it, my girlfriend might look at me differently. My family might just want to get rid of me completely. My friends will all abandon me just like they all did when I was in elementary school (but for different reasons, obviously). I’ll lose my job. They’ll take my degree away from me because I’ll be declared legally insane and they’ll lock me in a box under the sea on the moon and I’ll never be able to do anything about it. But, alas, I must come clean…

… I hate snow… winter… the whole damn lot of that mess. There’s a lot about winter I don’t genuinely like one bit. The only saving grace winter has is that at least when it’s too cold outside, I can just put on another pair of socks or another shirt and help warm up that much more whereas summer… well… once I’m down to my underwear, I only have one thing left to remove when it’s too hot outside and that would be illegal in most parts of the country.

So… yes… the first snowfall just happened at the time of writing and I’m really not looking forward to winter this year at all (then again, I never really am). But rather than dwell on all the things I don’t like about winter (because I could go on) let’s focus on the most important bit that’s affecting us all here and now. Let’s give the top ten reasons why I can’t stand snow and why it should just never happen (or I should finally just move to Texas and be done with it). To make it more fun, I’ll use examples from video games.

#10 – Inability to see
I’ve never had good eye sight. My glasses can pretty much prove that. So when outside forces do what they can to affect my vision, I’m not going to like them any better. White outs are the worst when trying to drive and you see nothing but a big blank whiteness until you run into the back of a semi. I remember strolling through Silent Hill and while I could see a bit around me, the snow and the fog made it impossible to see too far ahead, usually only maybe twenty feet at BEST, and that was in the day. At night, I couldn’t see anything. And when you’re in a town of eerie monsters and psychotics, you want to be able to see everything coming at you. And that’s snow good.

#09 – Slickery When Wet
Another issue with snow is that it’s really slick. When it melts it becomes ice and makes things EVEN MORE SLICK. This can cause many accidents and issues that make driving even more of a hassle. I can’t recall the number of times I’ve run into people, other cars, obstacles, turtle shells, bombs, and even a dinosaur because of slick roads. So many times I’ve raced through the courses on Mario Kart and it’s always when the track is covered in snow and ice that things become an issue. I’ll take Rainbow Road over that bullshit any day of the week… At least you’re in space.

#08 – Too Cold to Move
Here’s something else about snow you might not have known. It’s cold. When you get cold, you don’t quite move as well because you might be shaking a bit or maybe you’re frozen solid. Hell, you may have the frostbite and your leg is just a big black piece of shit that can’t do anything for you now, so you might as well cut it off. Countless times I’ve walked around Dokapon Kingdom and I can handle deserts, forests, jungles, caves, and the lot of it. But snow slows me down every time. I step in it and I can’t move for a bit. While I’m stuck in the snow, my competition is off saving more villages, getting more money, and being badasses. But here I am… stuck in some fucking snow.

#07 – Fuckin’ Up Me Crops
I live in Iowa. That dictates that I have to be a farmer according to everyone living in New York or LA. So, yes, I do farm. Depending on where we go, I have a wheat farm, pumpkin farm, carrot farm, potato farm, AND a sugar cane farm all in one convenient location. And I generally set my farm up whenever I enter a new Minecraft world almost right where I spawn. I don’t like wandering too far unless I have a bed available because, otherwise, I’ll just be back here again anyway if I die. But if I’m trying to set up a farm in a tundra biome (or near it) there’s a chance it’ll snow and then my tilled land is ruined because of snow falling on it. Meaning I have to till it again. Or, worse yet, my water freezes, letting the dirt around it dry up and ruin the crops more. How am I supposed to survive without food people? Just how am I supposed to do it?

#06 – Avalanches
While I don’t deal with this problem on a regular basis, the thought of being somewhere where this COULD happen is probably one of my top five nightmares right before vampiric-ghost-Nazis and right after a sharkidile. Remember that episode of The Simpsons where Burns and Homer are trapped in a cabin buried under mountains of snow? Or that other time when the school was under a mountain of snow… which was actually just them being snowed in, but same principle (Skinner) applies here. And I don’t have the skills at snowboarding that Sonic has in his many Adventures. I can’t just ride the avalanche like I did in Ice Cap Zone. I just can’t.

#05 – Abominable Snow Men (Or Women)
Most monsters aren’t real. Lochness isn’t real. Werewolves and Frankenstein aren’t real. And I’m pretty sure that John Ricotello isn’t real either. But Abominable Snowmen (and women) DO exist. I have proof. They are large white creatures with tree-like limbs for… well… limbs. I managed to catch a bunch in my Pokéballs while I was traipsing the mountains of the Sinnoh region. These things are terrifying as they have an ability to call out a snowstorm just by simply being there. While I fear for my life from these horrible creatures, I have found a way to weaponize them and use them to my advantage. Finally, I will be the one freezing all of you!

#04 – Jotunheim
Jotunheim is a fucking pit. It’s nothing but snow and ice. The only people that live there are violent jerks who look malnourished and psychotic. There are some giant snow monsters there, but I won’t even get into that. Thor was right to want to kill them all off in Thor 1 and Loki later wanted to blow up the whole planet as well! But, wait, that’s not a game! Shut up, there was a movie tie-in game so it counts.

#03 – Mr. Freeze
When winter is here, that generally means snow. When snow is here, that generally means cold. And when it’s cold, that generally means that Mr. Freeze will come out and try to make the world his own winter hellscape. There’s no way to stop him unless you’re Batman either. So when it snows we have no choice but to endure the snow, the winter-themed death lasers, and the awful shitty puns from this fucking whack-job that makes Dinklemen look tame by comparison until the caped crusader comes to save us from such a horrible fate. Fuck you, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

#02 – Generally Being Stuck Indoors
I’m not going to lie, I’m not an outdoorsy person. But I like being able to go outside and take a walk whenever and wherever I like. And I like doing so without taking forever to get on multiple layers and boots because it’s too much effort and boots of all kinds are just uncomfortable. So I generally choose to stay indoors rather than put on giant clodhoppers and stop around like I’m wearing fucking iron boots in the water dungeon in (insert any Zelda game here). And it sucks being stuck inside because then I generally get stuck sitting at a computer and pressing buttons all day. I press whatever buttons the computer tells me to press because of QTEs and I just generally accept such a Parable.

#01 – Other Drivers
This complaint is my general complaint of life. If other people weren’t on the road, the world would be a happier place because then I could go from place to place without wanting to run people over or off the road for their stupidity and slowness. Winter comes, snow falls and everyone suddenly gets shittier at driving and slower at everything. I get slowing down for the slick roads (as I mentioned before) but there’s also times when you’re slowing down entirely too much. I mean, seriously. How the fuck am I supposed to get from one side of Steelport to the other to make sure I can deliver the whores and the drugs to the Saints in time before I have to deal with Trevor or Dog-Eyes? I can’t when it’s snowing out. I can barely do that when there isn’t snow, but this just makes it impossible.

And there you go. My ten most legit reasons why snow is bad and why winter is not great and why we’d be better off going to Australia or Jamaica for a few months instead of dealing with all of this snow bullshit. That’s all for today. I’m off to go find Frosty the Snowman and make sure he doesn’t live to see next winter. See ya again real soon, alright. :D

Ponce Upon a Lime

I love good stories, fun characters, and worlds filled with imagination. What I hate is when things lack any real logic and sensibility, making the story almost unbelievable or just outright silly. Let’s take some television shows for example.

In the most recent episode of Once Upon a Time, my bullshit meter went off the chart. Let’s start with the love-triangle between Neil, Emma, and Hook. Neil and Hook are both adults. And while I understand their desire to be with someone you love (or perhaps their acting on more baser instincts and just want to “tap dat ass”), they go about it like they’re in high school. Part of the plot requires them to light a candle. Rather than just do it, they get into a dick measuring contest via “who can light the candle best” and then they lose the lighter because they start having a tussle. Um, guys, the girl whose affections you are vying for is missing her son because he’s kidnapped. By solving that problem first your quest for love (or booty) will surely end better than by fighting over something trivial like a fucking candle.

Yes, I get the plot was to make it so that Emma would use the magic she learned and create a new subplot and new level of tension. But this was just a pathetic excuse at best and I’m not really enjoying the weakening of Neil or Hook’s respective characters. Hook was finally starting to get interesting this season and I felt like I was only just getting to know Neil. But this is just throwing so much of that build up out the door because these three can’t just agree to have a threesome and leave it at that. And as I speak it, I guarantee there is fan art or some nonsense out there of that.

Now I’m probably not the only fan annoyed at this shitty love triangle. Because we all know Hook doesn’t stand a chance. The fanbase wouldn’t accept that result in the long run and the writers have to stick to the clichés the original stories started in the first place. I’m not saying Neil is going to be the final result, but I can’t see it ever being Hook at all. This is the same bullshit that happened in FRIENDS when Joey accidentally proposed to Rachel when she just had a baby. A new love triangle formed there and it wasn’t necessary because we all knew Joey wouldn’t be with Rachel. We all knew it would be Ross the whole time. This is all for ratings. Artificial tension merely to get attention from people who are… already watching the show… hm… I don’t quite get that.

All that said, a romance storyline in an American television show is probably the lowest common denominator for good storytelling. That’s like going to a vending machine filled with candy and hoping to find something healthy. But I wouldn’t be complaining at all if I didn’t have other issues with this episode to bring up for examples.

Let’s focus on the co-star of the series thus far, Henry, Emma’s son. From the beginning he’s been characterized as a smart kid who can figure out when people are lying pretty easily and also figure out what kind of situation he’s in well before anyone with even twice as much life experience could figure out there’s even a situation to figure out. He’s clever, resourceful, a tad naïve at times, but that’s because he’s optimistic and hopeful. However, the latest season has begun to paint him differently. Now he’s filled with doubt or being exposed to elements that cause doubt, but that is a reasonable change. He’s separated from everyone that loves him has pretty much no way to contact them or see them because of Peter Pan. So if he wants to doubt that rescue is coming or doubt that he’ll get out of this situation in one piece, I wouldn’t condone him for it. It shows that he isn’t perfect and it gives him a more human feel.

HOWEVER…

In the most recent episode, after having communicated with Emma and Regina for something around a minute, he is filled with hope once again and has started to distrust Peter Pan who had almost convinced Henry that he wasn’t all that bad. GREAT! So Pan decided he had to trick Henry into trust him again and he does so with what is, in my opinion, one of the most obvious tricks/traps in the history of the series and perhaps even all of television (though that last one is an exaggeration).

Pan tells one of his associates to go do a task and specifically says to make sure that Henry doesn’t find out about it. That raises several red flags right there. First, Henry is right near them behind a tree and hiding to spy on them. And we’re already told that Pan can see and hear everything in Neverland. Even Henry is well aware of this fact, given that he’s read the books and seen what Pan can do first hand. And Pan isn’t even being quite about these orders. He’s not whispering. He’s just talking like a normal person, if not a little louder. Anyone with a functioning brain can tell that Pan WANTS Henry to follow this lackey to find whatever “secret” Pan has because it’s all a trick to get Henry to believe what Pan tells him.

Furthermore, Henry has already been told by his mother and… um… adopted mother, that they are coming to get him. They are on the way and everything is about to go down. If I was told rescue was on the way, I’d hang tight and just wait for them because me moving around, getting lost, and just being where they aren’t expecting to find me is only going to make a rescue operation harder. I’m surprised Henry hasn’t thought of that yet.

More red flags spring up when he actually arrives to find a little girl (Wendy) in a bed in a cave and she’s sick. First off, the room looks really nice and the bed looks really nice. Everything looks really clean and neat and organized. Why? It all looks set up. It all looks like it was just placed there from out of the store and into the… cave. Tinkerbell’s place looks like shit compared to this, and I thought her treehouse looked alright when we first saw it. The Lost Boys and Pan don’t really even have a home or real beds. So why does Henry not question this set up in the slightest? Also, why is there a girl on the island who has no connection to magic? Tinkerbell at least used to be a fairy. So her being there has some logic there. But this is a regular human girl. And we’ve already established that Pan and the Lost Boys are a boys only club.

Then she gives us a bullshit story about how she’s sick and that Pan is trying to save her. While that might be true that she’s ill (it could all be an act), I wouldn’t buy, for a second that Pan is willing to save anyone other than himself. He’s all about power and control. He’s all about keeping things where he can manipulate them and know how to manipulate them best. So why would Henry believe that Pan is willing to save this little girl who shouldn’t be on this island at all in a room that looks suspiciously nice and clean compared to everything else on this island?

But he does believe the story and he plays right into Pan’s hands. Pan feeds Henry more lies though, because it doesn’t stop there. The story the girl (and then Pan confirmed) is that the magic on the island (which can save her but probably won’t) is dying and fading away. But (as mentioned earlier in the season) Henry is the savior of magic (which is likely another lie) and is the only one who can save the island, the magic, and the little girl. Pan then leads Henry to a smaller island just off the cost of the big island they’re already on, saying that what Henry needs to do lies in that island. And the island is shaped like a fucking skull.

Really? You’re going to tell me that Henry, a boy who was not only raised on Fairy Tales but, for the longest time, held all of them to be true stories and was proven to be right all along is going to believe this bullshit? You expect ME to believe that Henry isn’t smart enough to figure out when he’s been tricked or when he’s being played like a fiddle? Grant you, if this is all a counter-trick by Henry to simply discover Pan’s full plan and use it against him, then Bravo. You’ve succeeded in actually making it interesting. But, let’s admit it. That’s really the only way this can really go. You either have Henry use this all to his advantage and trick Pan into getting the information he needs or Henry is now an idiot and is falling for the most obvious traps in the book.

At least when Mako (from Legend of Korra) gets tricked, mislead, and framed by Vareck, it’s all actually a really clever plan that involves a lot of money and people to a scope Mako can’t deal with alone. Him being tricked is actually believable because while his character is smart enough to figure out when he’s been had, he’s merely being outdone by the fact Vareck has so many connections and ways to make people do what needs to be done to get Mako out of the way. It shows the strengths of BOTH characters equally and makes for a much more compelling narrative whereas Henry and his mental struggle with Pan is not as impressive.

Another GOOD example would be the game Portal. I know that every gamer on the internet who wants to make a good point will use Portal, but for a game with such a minimalistic approach to telling a story, it outshines so many others in their attempt to capture the attention of audiences with a compelling world and characters. In the game, you’re a lab rat, or so you’re told. You’re given the idea that you’re in a legitimate facility and that everything is fine. Eventually things seem unstable and things aren’t quite what they appear to be, but you progress anyway because you need answers as to what’s going on and expect to get out alive. Then the rug is pulled out from under you when you are thrown into a giant oven and awaiting your death. It was all a lie, not just the cake.

“But wait!” I hear some of you saying. “Portal’s protagonist didn’t have a character. She didn’t speak. So her story is nothing like your other examples, you fucking twit!” Fair enough, but you’re still wrong. You can take one of two concepts from this argument. Either, one, Chell (Portal’s protagonist) is supposed to represent you, thus it’s your personality and intelligence facing against GlaDOS. Therefore the example works because you’re smart enough (hopefully) to know when you’re being lied to and tricked and thus this was a believable struggle.

Alternatively, you can accept that (much like Samus, Link, or Gordon Freeman) that Chell actually does have a personality based on her actions, clothing, what she surrounds herself with, how other characters perceive all this, and the scenario in which she’s in. Granted, there isn’t MUCH to go on, but we have enough to know she is a smart character. Clearly smart enough to enter in the Aperture “Bring your Kids to Work Day” science fair AND smart enough to not only understand how to use a Portal Gun right away, but also to solve every puzzle thrown her way with it like she’s done it all her life. So, clearly, she must be smart enough to not trust GlaDOS and smart enough to know she’s being tricked, and thus, is willing to play into her hand only to get information and find a way out. And, thus, a perfect example of whatever I was talking about several paragraphs ago.

I’ll still watch Once Upon a Time but if it keeps up this bullshit all season long (among other things) I might end that with this season. Walking Dead is almost walking that line, but that’s for different reasons entirely. I hope it gets better. I hope this is just an episode that stood out as being fundamentally bad. But now I’m bored of complaining about it. And hungry. So I’m going to go eat… and maybe play some PayDay2… which you should totally join me in because I want to play some of the harder missions but soloing is just … well… ya know. So see ya next time and maybe I can complain about another show not being so good. Yeah? 

Orth, Anita, and Internet Animosity

 There are times I just don’t get the internet and the way it behaves. At times it is a force for good and a resource of a vast amount of knowledge. Other times it is a force of pants-on-head retardation that uses the insane power it has for the cruelest and most horrid things I can imagine. I have yet to experience true internet backlash myself, but I look forward to the day when I start getting the death and rape threats towards me and my family. That will be a sign I finally made it big on the internet… or I truly did something awful, in which case, I deserve SOME of that backlash for my insane hubris at the time.

A recent article has been going around where the now infamous Adam Orth speaks out about the way the internet treated him in light of what he did. For those who don’t recall, he was the guy who, when asked about whether the XboxOne (Xbone) would be an always online device responded with the comments of, “Even if it is, deal with it.” Adam Orth was a guy who worked in Microsoft and worked close to the XboxOne. He was considered to be a source of reliable information on the subject. His response to the questions got a tone of hate.

But that shouldn’t have been unexpected. When a customer asks about a product you have information on and are responsible for and you act dismissive, disrespectful, and genuinely unhelpful, you deserve to get what’s coming to you on that regard. If he didn’t know, he should have said so. If he did know but wasn’t allowed to discuss it in public forum, he should have said so. Instead he dodged the question, made a flippant remark, and genuinely acted like what most of us would call, “a stupid asshole.” When I call up a store or contact support for information or assistance on a product, the last thing I want to hear is “whatever your problem is, deal with it.”

His little response became memetic and was the first stumbling block the Xbone would hit in the many announcements to come. And it wasn’t even the fact the device was a bad device, it was that the PR surrounding it, starting with Adam Orth, was conceited. They held back information, dodged questions, and kept being as vague as possible until the last minute (E3). All of which led to much wild speculation on the internet, massive rumors (some were true), and just a media frenzy that exploded into sheer chaos. Had they just given us information and not been so secretive about it (regardless of reason) their device might not have received all the animosity it earned and the people responsible for showing off the device might have come off in a much better light instead of all looking like pompous asshats who are trying to imitate Steve Jobs (the king of pompous asshats).

I engaged in a discussion on the comments of one of these sections stating “That while I disagree with the level of backlash Orth got, I feel no sympathy for him since he brought it on himself.” Death and rape threats on the internet are the work of trolls and pinheads who like to use their animosity-megaphone to hurt people and that shouldn’t be allowed. But a backlash of a lesser magnitude, at the very least, was very much deserved. I then go on to compare Adam Orth’s situation to that of Anita Sarkeesian. (Which got me some arguments about how I’m wrong simply for mentioning her name).

This prompted an amusing question in my mind, why are people on the internet so violently against her and what she does? I don’t always agree with everything she says. I don’t think the amount of money she earned or claimed she needed was necessary to make the product she is putting out. I don’t think she’s delivering her information in the best way possible, as her videos are too long and not quite as punchy or eye catching as they need to be for the short attention span of the internet. But while I still feel she’s entitled to voice her opinion on the internet about negative female tropes in games (or any medium) there are many out there who still react like she’s a cancer of the gaming world.

Common arguments I came across generally boiled down to how she won’t have a discussion with people on the topic. This gives people the impression that she believes herself to be completely right and that her arguments are without fault. First, guys, that’s a very large assumption that ignores a pretty big and important factor. During her initial launch of the kickstarter and videos about the Women Vs. Video Game Tropes she allowed comments and discussion. The reason none of her videos allow for such discussion anymore should be clear based on all the comments she got there. When people are attacking you based on your gender and potential faith (many calling her a “filthy jew”) as well as getting constant rape and death threats, yeah, I think she’s entitled to turn off comments if that means she can sleep soundly at night.

Some consider that to still be wrong. Saying she should have to endure the hate in order for the conversation to happen. Mind if I ask why? Yes, I’d like to have the discussion about the facts she presents in a meaningful manner, there are quite a few who would. But why she should give up her own peace of mind simply to please your ego? Some people can brush off that kind of online bullying and torment because that’s the person they are. Some confront it (for good or ill) with their own brand of arguing and bullying because that’s the kind of person they are. In this case, she chooses to just walk away from the people acting like four-year old rapists and murderers because rather than deal with that level of immaturity, she took the smarter approach and just stayed away from it and blocked it out entirely. I may not agree with her entirely, but that’s a legitimate way for her to deal with those people.

But, back to the original topic because I got horribly off the wall there. In comparing Adam Orth to Anita Sarkeesian in terms of the internet backlash, we have two very different cases here. In one corner we have a guy who made a dumb mistake because he tried to be funny or coy or because his stupid bosses at Microsoft game him the go-ahead. In the end, he got what he deserved for being a jerk to his curious customers (and then some). I don’t agree with how bad it got, but that’s the internet’s mob rage storm. As for Anita, she was initial proposing an intellectual discussion based on gender roles in games. Had the animosity for her not happened and the bullying never existed, she would have done her videos and then never been heard from again because she isn’t that big a deal in the grand scheme of things. Yet the incident made her bigger and more noticeable. The negative kneejerk reaction to her proposal worked against the angry mob and while I wish it hadn’t happened because she didn’t deserve that, I’m glad it worked out better for her in the end. I wish it could be a lesson to all that you have to pick and choose your battles. You can’t just act like violent children towards everything that you disagree with on the internet. But that’s not likely to happen now, is it.

So where to from here? I guess we just sit back until EA makes another dumb mistake that we can spend hours calling them out for. We wait until another person proposes a discussion on a serious topic in gaming, only to be harshly criticized and threatened for suggesting such a “horrible thing”. It’s this kind of bullshit that makes me wonder if I still want to be known as a gamer or not. :/

By the Power of Asgard: A Thor Dark Worlds Review

One thing everyone asked after the runaway success of Marvel’s The Avengers was whether the individual heroes could sustain themselves in their own separate franchises to still be worthwhile? Could Tony Stark really be compelling enough to keep people coming back for more when he just fought a God? Could Thor hold his own movie without the ability to have witty banter between Tony, Banner, and Cap? Will Cap be fun without the colorful supermen he was palling around with only a movie ago? Will Hulk even get a sequel?

Iron Man 3 gave us an answer that the post-Avengers films can, in fact, be good and functional on their own. Granted, it came in with mixed reviews, but that was due to a choice with the writing. The spectacle, the Robert Downey Jr, and the general premise of seeing more Iron Man was still something that kept drawing people in. Had the Mandarin plot twist not been so… well, bizarre and outside the comic book canon, I imagine it would have been more universally loved. Though, personally, I loved that twist as it gave the character and the mythos a much needed tweak to keep fans surprised and make the film have its own voice instead of just repeating the stories and concepts from the comics verbatim. Say what you will about Iron Man 3, it was probably the perfect ending to a trilogy we haven’t seen happen in a super hero film yet. No, Dark Knight Rises was the weakest of its trilogy and one of the least fun comic book movies in recent memory that was still at least well-made.

This brings us to Thor: The Dark World. This movie not only follows up Thor but also Avengers (which shouldn’t be surprising by any means). But I bring that up now because if you haven’t seen EITHER of those, you’ll want to because they’re both kind of pivotal to understanding a few elements of this film. T:DW does its best to follow the same path as Iron Man 3 in making connections with the established Avengers universe building that’s taken place so far, reminding us that all these films are still connected, while trying to stand out on its own as well. It tries the same attempt to balance playful humor with some well-design action. And, the real kicker is, Thor: The Dark World actually pulls it off in a way that exceeded my expectations.

I went in pretty much thinking that it would be a revisit to how Thor was. I was pretty much expecting a solid B-film about characters loosely based on Norse-mythos like the predecessor. But the writing was better. The CGI was better. The fighting was MUCH better to a point where I could actually see what was happening during each sequence instead of having the camera being too close and mobile to see anything at all. The plot had higher stakes, greater villains, lots of surprises I won’t spoil here at all, and one of the best ending scenes for a movie I’ve seen all year. The fact that Marvel/Disney can pull this off with such grace and style while Warner Bros/DC can’t even think of a good script for Wonder Woman is actually really depressing.

That’s the general opinion on Thor before I get into the plot and any possible spoilers. If that’s enough to convince you to go see it, do it now and come back for the rest later. If you’ve already seen it or don’t care where I go from here because (like me) you just like hearing analysis, then I guess enjoy the rest of this crazy ride.

The plot starts with a history lesson on the universe. First there was darkness ruled by the Dark Elves. When light appeared, namely in the way of the other eight realms, war broke out for control. Malekith (the Dark Elf leader) fought to regain control and submerge the universe into darkness again. Odin’s Father stopped him and sealed his greatest weapon away in hopes that Malekith and his kind would never have a chance to use it again, which would only be when the realms align since that’s when his weapon would have the strongest impact.

Meanwhile, on Asgard, Loki is being put away in jail for what he did in Avengers and Odin probably isn’t happy over what he tried to do in Thor either. Then the movie goes to Thor fighting monsters on Vanaheim in hopes to quell the chaos in the other realms that was apparently started during all of the commotion Loki caused on Earth.

Speaking of Earth, Jane Foster is relevant again and so is Darcy. Darcy found a strange anomaly but can’t figure it out. Without Dr. Selvig (who does show up later) she went to Jane for some help on figuring it out. Gravity and other basic physics laws are being broken in a small area without any real explanation. Just when things can’t get weirder, Jane steps into portal that takes her to that aforementioned weapon. The evil energy of the weapon (the Aether) then possesses her and she starts having weird visions.

This, in turn awakens the remaining Dark Elves from their slumber to hunt down the Aether (which is now in Jane) and purge the universe into darkness once again. Thor gets involved when Heimdal says he can’t see her (because of that portal she went through). When Thor goes to get her, she has suddenly returned back to Earth, but something is clearly wrong. Thor takes her back to Asgard so she can get help from his people who would be able to understand her condition best.

I won’t go farther than that because the rest gets into spoiler territory and I feel like just giving the setup is more than enough to give you a clue as to what’s going on. Eventually the Dark Elves attack Asgard looking for Jane. Thor eventually has to turn to Loki for help (not a spoiler since that’s mentioned in the trailers). And there is an epic showdown between Thor and Malekith that is actually really good.

Acting wise, everyone brought their A-game this time around with Tom Hiddelston stealing the show as Loki whenever he is on screen. Bringing in his completely vile attitude with the charm of being a cunning trickster makes for a fun package. He also has some of the best lines and interactions with characters that he deserves some kind of prize. I don’t expect him to get an Oscar for it, but something just to recognize how damn good he was in this movie. I think I’ll leave that for the internet since it still has a love obsession with him. To think he was almost the guy who would play Thor. I still wonder how that would have turned out.

In the previous movie, I thought Darcy was annoying and I didn’t quite like her. She was funny at times and I didn’t hate her, but I didn’t quite like her. She definitely redeemed herself here by actually being useful, funny, and (at times) clever. Selvig has lost his mind and it is hilarious to see just how batshit Loki made him from Avengers. I still wanted more of Sif and the Warriors Three, but they did have more to do in this film than before. It’s just a shame they keep getting pushed aside and not really doing much.

Malekith was a great villain who didn’t get a lot of screen time, which was surprising. He got enough, sure, but given how much screentime Loki has gotten in three films, I’m a little shocked they didn’t try to build Malekith more. Then again, I doubt they plan on him returning anytime soon or nearly as frequently as they plan for Loki. But the villains of this film have some cool designs and it is definitely nice to see a credible threat that even Loki seems to struggle fighting against. It makes for some good tension that you wouldn’t expect from gods or god-like heroes (looking at you Superman).

Speaking of comparing to Superman, I also love how this film was more serious than the previous film but managed to still maintain a level of fun, charm, and humor that Man of Steel was sorely lacking and desperately needed. Marvel has demonstrated twice this year how they have talented writers keeping a fine balance between goofy fun and intense, serious action. And this film, in my opinion, is probably the most perfect they’ve gotten that balance yet, more so than Avengers (though I will say Avengers had the additional task of balancing out roughly six main characters into a two hour film).

For me, Thor: The Dark World isn’t the best super hero movie of all time, but it is certainly the best super hero film of this year, only edging out Iron Man 3 with copious amounts of Loki and a really good villain to keep things tense nearing the climax. If this is a sign of things to come, I’m confident that Captain America: Winter Soldier will be a solid film in its own right as well. I’m looking forward to seeing next week’s Agents of SHIELD to see the post-Thor follow up they apparently have planned to do. And I’m very interesting in seeing what Guardians of the Galaxy will do next year too since there’s a post-credits scene that hints towards that and, presumably, Avengers 3. Also, there’s a second post-credits scene. Make sure to stick around for both.

That’s all. Again, to summarize: great movie, best super hero movie of 2013, and more Loki is always a good deal when it comes to the Marvel films. See ya next time. 

Legit Games: The Haloz

A completely 110% legitimate summary of a game/movie/book/thing that is totally accurate and not made up in anyway. We’re legit and keeping it real, so that’s the truth. Let’s get started with one of my favorite games ever, The Haloz: Combat Evolved.

Halo is a game that clearly takes place in Greece or Rome or some shit because the protagonist, Master Chef, is a Spartan. He gets thrown into the battle much like he throws hot spices into excellent cuisine when some aliens with penis-shaped heads (not to be confused with the penis-headed aliens from the Alien movies) calling themselves the Condiment, attack them for some reason. I guess there’s a war going on. Apparently there’s a prequel, but I didn’t have time to look into that because there’s no time when you have to save Greece from the Condiments. Go Master Chef!

So you escape your ship because we’re actually in space over Greece, not just in Greece. So more like Greece-Airspace. Also in Greece-Airspace is a giant ring from that movie Elysium, which was a really good movie and you should watch that instead of playing whatever it is we’re talking about because Matt Damon. Anyway, so you are Matt Chef and you land on the giant Elysium ring because the Condiment put it there for a raisin. Matt Chef leads a crew of cooks through various environments, looking for just the right spices to kick this battle to the next level, BAM!

You eventually find a ship attacking your friends somewhere. You and your buddies get into a car and drive around a bit to stop the ship and find other ships and penis-aliens to save the day or something. But the Condiment are tricky and will stop at nothing to get… um… wait, did they say what their goal was yet? No? Okay, well, they’re after Wheatley, from Portal 2 because they loved how Steve Merchant voiced that character and they wanted him to do that voice for their interstellar smartphones… I think. Which doesn’t make sense since Wheatley didn’t exist until 2012, but who cares, video games!

So Matt Chef must go and stop the Condiment from getting the Wheatley and making their smartphones more entertaining. But, along the way, Matt Chef pulls a dumb and opens up a room on the Elysium where FLUDD comes out and makes everybody wet because it’s looking for Mario to go clean up more poo like in Super Mario Sunshine. Yeah, it’s a weird crossover, but it happens. So Matt Chef must stop the FLUDD from ruining the Elysium as well as stopping the Condiment from getting the Wheatley to improve their smartphones. Matt Chef had a lot of work to do.

Luckily, Matt Chef found the Wheatley first and he said he could stop all these shenanigans if Matt Chef listened to him. But the Wheatley is a liar. Much like he betrayed Gordon Freeman in Portal 2, so too did he betray Matt Chef in The Haloz. Once they fought through waves of the Condiment, the Wheatley plugged himself into the machine and he became the matrix. But he used its power for evil and decided he had enough of Matt Chef and wanted Jeff Goldblum instead. So he tries to mur-diddly-urder Matt Chef, while simultaneously killing everything and everyone else because Wheatley isn’t kind of dumb and stupid. Did you see those franken-turrets? Those things were just… ARGH

So then there’s a big scene at the end that The Haloz use in almost every game where Matt Chef must run down a really long corridor to escape an exploding building. Just think Sonic the Hedgehog, but less colorful and fun and more futuristic and with Matt Chef. Then the credits roll and Cortana tells Matt Chef it isn’t over because the agency will keep hunting him down. But don’t worry because Jeremy Renner will play the Chef in the fourth game because the studio couldn’t afford Matt Damon a fourth time. And that is The Haloz!

Nintendo Does a Silly

As the gaming industry grows, so too do the methods which we get games. Steam was, if I recall, the first to really bring the digital distribution concept to life. It was rough at first as Steam wasn’t the streamlined process it was today. But it was the first and it allowed PC gamers to get their games easily, sometimes cheaper, with automatic updates and patching, and was generally a good thing to bring into the world of gaming. Following suit, other PC digital distributors emerged like GreenManGaming, GOG, Origin, Amazon, Desura, etc. Each having a different kind of offer or deal to incentivize you buying through them instead of Steam. Lots of great competition on a single space to try and get the most for your dollar (unless you buy through Origin… more on that in a moment).

The console market, always behind the PC, eventually caught on to the idea and copied it move for move, mostly. Digital distribution became a bigger aspect to the PS3 and the Xbox360. XboxLive Acrade and Games on Demand allowed gamers to download smaller indie games as well as triple-A titles without the need for a physical copy. This was aided with the ability to save to the cloud, allowing players to access their account on any device and then play their game on said device, not being locked into a single entity. Again, like Steam, it wasn’t perfect at first (and arguably still isn’t) but it’s certainly come a long way from when the features were first introduced.

Now that we’re currently starting the next generation of gaming with the WiiU and following with the PS4 and Xbone, we have to wonder where it will go from here. Well, if Nintendo’s recent quote tells us anything, we’re still in for the same bullshit we’ve been getting with no real changes. It’s good to see a new generation of gaming means the same garbage as before. :D

The quote was in response to being questioned why their digital games aren’t cheaper. Nintendo’s response was, <When people see a Mario or Zelda game, to expect a certain level of quality. We don’t want to lower the value of that quality, which is why the games are priced the way they are>. While that’s all well and good, we (and I) called out EA for saying pretty much the exact same thing almost a year ago and none of us agreed with such anti-consumer logic back then either. Valuing your product more than your costumer is a flawed concept. Because without the customer, you’re product has no value. Thus, such value should be determined by the consumer itself.

What I’m getting at is that while I don’t mind if Mario or Zelda are more expensive than what I’d expect the average digital game to be, charging full retail price for a digital copy of a game on ANY platform doesn’t make any sense whatsoever and here’s why.

First, there’s no resale value. I can’t sell, share, or trade a digital game. Ergo, it should be cheaper simply for lack of what I can do with it after having purchased it. Second, there’s no shipping, manufacturing, packaging, or even shelving costs for the game. You put it online on your server and people download it. With that much less work involved in getting the game to the consumer, the cost should be down from that as well. Let’s also not forget that the WiiU sales are hurting right now… like, a lot. By making your games on the WiiU that can be bought digitally CHEAPER, you could improve sales and balance out the cost of the WiiU people feel the need to bitch about (despite it being the cheapest NextGen console on the market).

But let me take this backwards logic a step farther. Nintendo has an XboxLive Arcade set up as well called “Virtual Console” which is much better than the arcade services of either other console simply because I can play my old NES, Genesis, and SNES games without the shitty cartridges from the old days. Games on there are generally between $5 -$10. That’s not a bad price. Some have complained that it might be too expensive, but I don’t mind paying such a small amount for games I find more engaging and missed out on when I was a kid.

HOWEVER if Nintendo truly believes the logic behind not wanting to devalue the games by cheapening their prices, then these games should be the most expensive products they own. They weren’t always $10 or lower, costing $40-$50 back when they were originally released and money was harder to come by because of lower minimum wage. Many of these games are often MORE VALUED than Nintendo’s more current games simply for nostalgia, but also because, in some cases, they were just better or more interesting than what we have now. Chrono Trigger, Super Mario Bros 3, Link to the Past, Donkey Kong Country, Final Fantasy VI (or 3), Secret of Mana, Megaman, Sonic the Hedgehog, and many many others are games people love and continue to hold high over their current gen counter parts (or don’t have any current gen counter parts).  Hell, Earthbound and Chrono Trigger alone should be damn near $60 by that logic because they are some of the best games in the stable. The former of which is also rare as fuck outside of Japan.

They don’t charge insane amounts for digital copies of their virtual console games though. So do these games that many people prefer and enjoy not have value? Or is this just exposing what I’ve pretty much been hitting at this whole time, that Nintendo’s quote is just the same bullshit EA was spewing. In truth, they just won’t lower prices for their newer digital releases because all they want is to make money, like any other company, sure. But the fact they can’t just say that point blank is insulting. The fact they have to lie and make it a secret damages Nintendo’s image to me more than anything else they could have said. It doesn’t damage my image of EA because they were already the lowest shit on the totem pole anyway. But Nintendo had some good will among it. It was doing some good out there.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate Nintendo. I don’t necessarily hate them either. Like every other company out there with the exception of the few who really are more geared towards providing a better customer experience, they only care about their money and their product. We knew this when they were trying to sue websites for hosting images of upcoming Pokemon before the game was released back in Generation V. We knew this when they threatened to sue sites hosting fan-made games of popular Nintendo games without any plans to profit from those games. We knew this when they kept making updates for the Wii to remove the homebrew app, which I know many people used for modding Smash Bros Brawl because that game was kind of shit and needed mod improvement.

That’s all. I really don’t have suggestions or comments beyond what I’ve said. If Nintendo really wants to make sales for their console and really show they understand digital distribution, lowering their prices to a more reasonable amount is the first step. Giving us sales and incentives to buy those games digitally would be the next step, all of which could be aided by an account system. But they’re stubborn and I don’t see them changing their mind anytime soon. If anything, I just brought this up for everyone to think on, because I know I am. Going to see Thor in about 13 hours. It’s going to be hype. 

The Novel Ender's Game: The Film: The Review

If I had a dollar for every time someone has told me to read Ender’s Game because they think I would enjoy it, I’d probably have enough to buy a snowcone or maybe a bucket of popcorn to the new Ender’s Game movie that just opened last week. Then again, given today’s economy, I probably wouldn’t be able to even afford a stick of gum that’s already been chewed and spat onto a plate for me. But I guess that’s what I’d get for having such strange tastes.

Anyway, Ender’s Game is a film based off a book by a guy named Orson Scott Card. For those who don’t know, he’s apparently anti-homosexual to the point of embarrassment where he’s even shown up in TV ads for traditional marriage groups and the like. For some critics and even some consumers, this has been reason enough to look at this movie with more ire or just not want to bother with it in general. For me, on the other hand, I don’t care. He’s entitled to his opinions, however archaic and outdated they might be as I am mine. And, from what I gathered from the plot and characters of the film, that homophobic attitude didn’t leak into that fictional world. Maybe it was more noticeable in the book, but I didn’t read it, so who cares. This is a review from someone who has no prior understanding of the book so I can go in with a clear mind and total objectivity. You know, like when I forgot to actual read Eragon before watching the movie or when I was too young to really read Jurassic Park and saw the movie, though I might have been too young for that too.

So Ender’s Game is a film based off a book by a guy who is very homophobic and also very vocal about that same homophobia. The actual premise, on the other hand, is about a kid named Ender. He goes to school to learn to be a commander and lead an army to fight bug monsters. These schools teach the kids there how to lead armies into battle through the use of simulations that they call “games.” Oh, very clever, Mr. Card. I see what you did there.

During the course of the film, a convenient turn of events allows Ender to accelerate quickly through the ranks of classes almost as if they wanted to keep this film at a manageable length. Reminds me of Harry Potter and how they cut out many of the different classes that Harry takes in which we get some character building moments or just fun little side stories to help build the world up to feel bigger and more real. Granted, they do mention that they’re jumped forward in time during points of the movie, but I feel this could have been expanded upon more to give us a sense of some of the side characters. We only get to really know the girl/potential-love-interest but only because every movie has to build up one female character on their token character checklist. We also have a black kid, a Hispanic kid who grew up on the street, and an Islamic boy. Wouldn’t Captain Planet be proud?

That said we don’t really get a feel for any of them beyond basic side-character tropes. And those are just the kids that Ender is forced to team up with or battle against in the simulations. There are also the adults who run this shady operation. I won’t spoil anything, but they get a lot more screen time than they probably should since all their conversations and actions indicate there’s something bigger going on we aren’t being told. But since they put out all the money for Harrison Ford and Ben Kingsley, they might as well get what they can for it. Though I would have preferred if Ben Kingsley returned as Iron Man 3’s The Mandarin for some much needed laughs.

But, as I was saying, all the adults are characterized as being in on something. It gives the sense that they’re all hiding something (which they are). And that makes it really hard to understand what their characters actually are other than a bunch of two-faced puppet masters who are merely playing Ender like a sociopathic fiddle. Because that’s the characterization I get from Ender, though that may be due to some rather flat acting on his part. Not that it was bad if he was trying to be sociopathic, but it comes off as such for the longest time not only because of the acting, but also because of how his brother and his personality affects Ender’s personality.

That’s  all part of some ongoing bullshit about how his older siblings tried to do what Ender does, but failed for one reason or another. His brother failed because he turned out to be Jason Voorhees while his sister was just “too compassionate” to use Ender’s words. It gets brought up multiple times throughout the movie like it’s incredibly important, but it really isn’t because you only see both those characters one time that really matters and they don’t do anything all too terribly important either beyond live up to their already described character trait.

But, as for the general premise, we’re going to war with aliens and that’s what this school is designed to teach the students to do. Lead a battle against these aliens. The problem I kept having was that it was never explained why we had to fight the aliens. Yes, the aliens attacked us something like 50 years ago. But did we ever find out why? Did we ever have any kind of contact with them to figure out what was up? I know they said the aliens couldn’t talk, but did anyone ever stop to think of an alternate way of communication? From where I was sitting, we were going to war and attacking a bunch of bug people for no reason other than because “they started it”. I want to imagine most governments, military leaders, and scientists would actually take a more diplomatic approach to this situation. But that’s me being idealistic and the film/book is actually probably right as to how this would actually go down. Though I would imagine that we’d probably lose the final encounter with the aliens because we aren’t that tech-savvy nor are we that intelligent or skilled to beat aliens who managed to make space travel that much sooner than we did. Humans kind of suck in general when it comes to that.

I won’t go into it too much more, but the ending actually did answer some of those questions, though not exactly what I was hoping for. And there are some bits that felt rather cliché and token to the genre. For example (spoiler) they explain the reason that the legendary fighter pilot won was because he took out a single ship, a mothership, and the other aliens fell. I immediately thought of the Chitari from Avengers and I didn’t like how that worked there either. Kill the head ship and the army just dies because that’s how it works. While I know the book existed and did it before Avengers, I still want to call bullshit because either they invented the trope or it existed prior to the book and it just continued to spread that trope like the venereal disease it is to good story telling.

Beyond that, visuals were good and sound was fine. Nothing really important to discuss there, though I know someone will knock me if I don’t mention them at all.

But that’s kind of my general approximation for Ender’s Game. Not a terrible film by any stretch of the imagination, but not necessarily great either. Very middle of the road at best. Tune in next time when I talk about Thor: The Dark World, a movie I am actually excited to watch. :D

Review Time: Sonic Lost Worlds

It’s about time I got to reviewing Sonic Lost Worlds. I would have done it sooner, but I wanted to make an attempt to finish the game first. And I would have… had the game decided not to pad out the gameplay so much that it crossed the line between piddling about to wasting my time. That and I got distracted with FTL. A much better game. You can find it on GOG.com and Steam for a very cheap price and it’s worth every penny.

But since I’m a Sonic fan and wanted to talk about this game, let’s talk about this game. I’ll get the good parts out of the way early and move on to my itemized list of things that just don’t work well with this game. First, it has been years since Robotnik / Eggman has taken such a large role in the plot of the game. Yes, he’s usually the villain of the game, but this game he is removed from that role and pushed to the side to team with Sonic and Tails. Being a fan of Robotnik and loving the interaction between him and Sonic was some of the only entertaining bits to this game.

The soundtrack, as always, is a step above most games. Cheerful tunes matched to colorful stages, all with the pacing of quickness but not necessarily panicked or hurried in any way. Visually, the game looks fantastic and is probably one of the best looking games in the franchise. And one of the best looking games I’ve ever played. There’s so much color and vibrant image on display that it almost makes you want to forget some of the more annoying features the game brings to the table.

Okay… I think that’s that. Let’s move on to the rest.

Let’s start with the story. Sonic and Tails chase Robotnik down to a new planet where they encounter new aliens that act as his enforcers. Due to Sonic’s meddling, Robotnik loses control of these new alien associates, which, as it turns out, is bad for not only Robotnik, but Sonic as well. The aliens (known as the “Deadly Six”) then take control of Robotnik’s machines and turn against everyone. Then they use their newfound mech army to drain the planet below of life using Robotnik’s machine that has yet to be completed. The device, being completely unstable, will destroy the planet unless Sonic, Tails, and Robotnik can stop it. While that all sounds good on paper, there are some problems.

First, the “Deadly Six” are the least threatening enemies I’ve ever encountered in a game. They’re all trope-heavy characters, making them all one-dimensional and boring. They’re also not that intimidating when you boil them down to their tropes of: the crazy one, the glutton, the Debbie Thornberry, the imitation goth, the old sensei, and the very generic leader who wants to destroy everything to get revenge on whoever (Robotnik presumably). When you can characterize them as this and see how uninterested they are in YOU (the player/Sonic) then it becomes a game of enduring their stupid bullshit to get to the end.

But there isn’t a sense of urgency to the game at all, like the plot would imply. During cutscenes, Sonic, Tails, and Robotnik are just briskly walking along. You never see them hiding or moving at a pace that would imply they really give a shit about saving the planet or avoiding being killed. If they don’t care about the plight of the world this time around, why the fuck should I? And it doesn’t help the cutscenes are only there to either deliver blatant exposition or make a joke, and sometimes, a bit of both.

That said, the game’s mechanics also imply of lack of urgency. The game brings back a stupid mechanic that was last seen in Sonic Unleashed (as I recall) for the Xbox and PlayStation where you had to collect an arbitrary amount of bullshit collectables before you could unlock the next level. At first, progression isn’t too big a deal. But then the amounts of collectables (this time it’s small animals) drastically increases until you’re at a wall because you’re 1000 animals short of unlocking the next level. Nothing breaks a story more than having to replay levels because of a stupid gimmick like that.

There’s also the fact that Sonic has been slowed down in this game to aid with precision platforming. This both works and doesn’t work at the same time, leading me to believe that this gameplay decision was pretty much a waste of time. It works in that you COULD platform more easily, but you still have the other issue that the game takes place on a Mario Galaxy kind of environment in which the planet is no flat and the angle at which the camera looks on certain areas makes it difficult to discern where the platform you need to land on really is. If this was a feature that impacted the 2D gameplay, that would make sense since you could then see everything just fine. But here, it doesn’t really work as intended.

But wait! This feature didn’t slow Sonic down entirely. He can run faster if you hold down a button. Here’s the issue I have with that. I like to move fast through entire levels. That’s what I loved most about older games. Therefore, why is it that the population of people who can’t play Sonic games and need them slowed down have to be catered to over the existing fanbase? Why shouldn’t be that THEY have to hold the button to slow Sonic down and he can run naturally otherwise? Or, better yet, why not just make the button toggle his run speed high or low? No need to hold if it is just an on/off switch. Seriously, this is why SEGA should just hire me to help them make Sonic games.

What also doesn’t help with precision platforming is other changes to Sonic’s movement. For example, his homing attack his been altered again, and just when I was finally getting to appreciate it in Sonic Generations. First off, you have to have an enemy present for it to do anything. Otherwise the second jump is really pitiful and you don’t get any distance to cover the slightly bigger gaps you could have in the previous games. The ability to homing attack on rails in order for easier switching is gone entirely as well. While it was shitty in Sonic 06 (because it often wouldn’t work), it was perfected in both Colors and Generations to a point where that was just the way to keep it. Why bother changing it?

Oh, and the homing attack doesn’t lock on to items anymore, just enemies. Instead, you have to stop and jump onto the item (because if you run and jump at it, you’ll likely miss a bunch because I assume the hitbox on it is weird). Yes, I’m aware that’s how the item boxes worked in the first games. But, you know what? Fuck the old games. That was an old mechanic that needed to be improved, and it WAS improved. Since Sonic Adventure, you could either use a homing attack or simply run into the item bubble, allowing you to keep your momentum and progress at the same or greater speed. This game decides to fuck that notion in the face and squirt blinding nostalgia all over it, or just stupidity.

Also the lives system is still here, but utilized to the same pointless degree the NewSuperMario games do (or really, most Mario games). If you lose your lives, there’s no game over. There’s no continue counter to remind you of your shame at losing. There’s no penalty at all for losing all your lives other than you must restart the level from the beginning rather than at the convenient checkpoint. When you lose all your lives you just get four more and continue. This makes me wonder why do they even bother keeping this system around? I question it in Mario, but I question it more here.

And if you’re going to persist on keeping this stupid bullshit in the game, then at least explain to me why I don’t get an extra life when I reach 100 rings? I noticed this when I was almost out of lives at one point and also saw I was close to 100 rings. I made a bigger effort to collect more only to find out they serve no purpose other than to allow you to take a hit. Um… this mechanic has been around since SONIC THE HEDGEHOG IN 1990! If you’re going to keep the lives, YOU NEED TO KEEP THIS TOO! Otherwise we only collect one ring and won’t bother with the rest because they serve no purpose beyond that single ring. There’s no upgrades or Chao Garden to waste them on, so there’s really no benefit to collecting them all other than raising your score. But that doesn’t matter either because the grading system isn’t there this time, which I was surprised by since every other bit of bullshit is out on full display.

I better not forget to mention that when you get hit, the way you lose rings returns to the way it was prior to Shadow the Hedgehog (at least I think that’s where this started) where you get to keep a small amount of rings instead of losing all of them. While this isn’t a big deal, I did die because I had gotten used to it being the newer way of doing things and I still can’t fathom why they elected to change that back after having set things up the way they have. Maybe to see how many players die because they didn’t pay attention after losing their rings?

Wisps from Sonic Colors also make a return for… really no reason at all other than to add more puzzles to levels that require the use of powers Sonic couldn’t normally acquire. Presumably because Sonic Team wanted to make a game with these powers but were contracted to make a Sonic game instead, so they did a half-assed compromise and gave us a half-assed Sonic game with these pointless powers instead. Some old wisps return and some new ones are added. The new ones add nothing to the game that was needed. You have one that can send Sonic to secret areas, but no the good ones where you collect spheres and rings to find Chaos Emeralds, just a secret room with one of those new red rings to go presumably murder an Xbox. You have another that turns Sonic into a musical note and lets him bounce across other musical notes to get over large gaps of a stage… Basically just a slower and stupider version of the lightspeed shoes to do a light dash over a trail of rings. But the wisps aren’t in the story in any way, so I don’t understand why they’re even here to begin with.

Either way, I’d recommend only playing in the off-TV mode for this game. The wisps utilize the second screen for the most part and pull you away from the big TV. But if it’s all on the lower screen, then you don’t have to waste your time doing that. But, more than that, any hints or tips you receive in a level will also only appear on the bottom screen when you click the icon to bring them up (which also only appears on the bottom screen). So if you’re stuck an don’t understand why something isn’t working or how an element of the game works, it might be because the game doesn’t just tell you with Omochao like it has in previous games. I’m not sure why THIS of all things was changed. There isn’t even a tutorial level to explain the new controls, so it’s even harder to figure out exactly what the fuck is going on half the game.

Back to the “Deadly Six,” your boss fights are a mix of boring and just bad. You fight all the Deadly Six on a variety of levels, each having at least two boss fights unless they have some beyond where I’m at now as rematches. Both fights generally play the same, just a different attack they use or maybe it’s a bit faster. Regardless, the boss fights are just boring. It’s not nearly as creative as the Perfect Chaos fight they remade for Sonic Generations where it was just a stage that tried to kill you and you had to reach a point to hit the monster controlling the stage. Why couldn’t more fights have taken that approach or the approach of the giant mechs?

Also, and this is just a personal nitpick of mine, but the Eggpawn enemies (which have been around since Sonic Heroes) now require TWO strikes to take down instead of just one. I was baffled by that. Mario never changes how the basic goombas go down. Pokemon keeps Magikarp consistent. When you have a staple enemy in a game series for that long, you generally don’t mess with it like that and it was just weird to see that.

People have said Sonic hasn’t been good for years (namely since he went into 3D). I’m of a differing opinion in that all the 3D games have been one experiment after another to find the best fit for the Sonic series. While we had unmitigated successes (Sonic Adventure 2) and horrible failures (Sonic 2006) at least SEGA was willing to take risks with new ideas and hope for the best. That’s what got us Sonic Colors and Sonic Generations. But now we’re back to experimenting again, which doesn’t really make sense given that we struck the last two games in a row. It’s trying to incorporate a mix of ideas that don’t blend together well and it makes for a rather unfortunate aftertaste.

Is it the worst in the series? Not really. To make a film comparison, this is bad on the level of Amazing Spiderman where it has a couple of moments where it kind of works, but, overall, it doesn’t work period. But it’s also so boring and pointless that it doesn’t really make me angry at the game, more apathetic and depressed we didn’t get a threepeat to follow Generations. Meanwhile, Sonic 06 is much more like Green Lantern in that there are so many bad things going on and the game is so ridiculously stupid and frustrating that you have to just hate it without stopping it. But this also makes Lost Worlds worse, in a sense. Because at least I walked away from Sonic 06 after I beat it. I refused to let a shit game beat me because of how angry it made me. And it also a great example of bad game design at its worst. Sonic 06 is something you can learn from, but I feel like Lost Worlds really doesn’t serve a purpose other than a shiny paperweight.

But, again, I wasn’t expecting this game to be perfect. I never expect a Sonic game to be perfect. I was just hoping for maybe a little more effort than this. I was hoping for something with more teeth. With more purpose. Instead, we just got a boring stroll through some woods where generic cartoon aliens are trying to commit genocide. It’s Space Jam without the basketball and Michael Jordan is replaced by Dr. Robotnik. … actually, kinda want to see that happen now.