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Minnesota’s Emerging Writers: An Anthology of Nonfiction — The Past Due Review

I have some very exciting news to share today (hence the special, second Monday post); last month, I had a piece accepted to be included in the upcoming book, Minnesota’s Emerging Authors: An Anthology of Nonfiction! The book will be available to buy through Amazon and Z Publishing’s website on August 21st, but you can […]

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A long time friend of Savior Gaming has some exciting news, so please go show him some love and check it out.

FINDING NEVERLAND (2004) MOVIE REVIEW. —

Introduction Finding Neverland is a 2004 historical fantasy drama film based on Allan Knee’s play ‘The Man Who Was Peter Pan’. Directed by Marc Foster best known for films such as ‘Quantum of Solace’ and ‘Machine Gun Preacher’, the movie centres on a playwright in J.M Barrie (Johnny Depp) and the ups and downs of […]

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The Voices (2014)

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The voices is a 2014 movie Starring Ryan Reynolds, Anna Kendrick and Gemma Arterton. Ryan plays a man who hears voices, not the typical voices you and me hear tho. The type that we know are just us thinking things like grab milk at the store or hey thank god for yoga pants. No he hears his dog and cat talking to him, just like his mom thought she heard actual angels.

Ryan’s character, Jerry ( it should be noted he does the dog, cat, a deer and bunny monkey character) meets and falls for Gemma’s character, Fiona. Fiona is English and admittedly isn’t fond of Jerry and honestly isn’t very good at hiding it Jerry is just sort of slow and naive. One night after she stands him up for a date she didn’t quite want to hurt his feelings by turning him down for, she gets caught in the rain when her car won’t start. Jerry upset and driving around in the rain legitimately by chance drives by where she left her car and she flags him down and he gives her a ride.

Now they are talking and they get to talking about angels in the bibles with names, now before he can finish the 4th angel with a names actual name they hit a deer. With blood everywhere in the car and Fiona freaking out and a deer begging to be killed Jerry dispatches the suffering creature, turns to Fiona and tells her the 4th angel is Lucifer. This freaks her out and she bolts into the woods. Jerry being the naive and carry man he is, is also an idiot and chases her into the woods yelling about how he told her to do it not thinking about how insane this sounds. Yea, this ends badly. She falls, and of course he falls on top of her..with the knife. Whats an insane man to do but end her suffering? Yup that’s right we get to see Ryan Reynolds stab a chick about a dozen times whole saying sorry in the woods.

When Jerry gets home his dog,Bosco, tries to convince him to do the right thing and go to the police. It was an accident after all. His cat however, Mr. Whiskers, disagrees. This is a horrible idea and he will be locked away because he is an insane murderer. The best option is to do something with the body so nobody can find it and carry on like nothing happened. Jerry being Jerry, and because we need a movie, listened to the cat.

This is as far as I will go with the story except to say we end up with talking human heads in a refrigerator. The movie is quite demented and weird, and not at all a horror movie. It is a dark comedy at best and an interesting take on how schizophrenia affects some people. The acting as you would expect from this cast is rock solid, you never get less than 110% from them. The script is great and the concept is an interesting one. The movie however isn’t for everyone, many simply won’t care for the subject or how it is covered. The movie randomly goes from comedy to serious and back again, with Anna Kendrick as Lisa putting on one of the best scenes in the movie in the only scene we really see from a perspective that isn’t from Jerry. You also won’t get your typical Reynolds wit and charm here. He dove WAY out of his usual comfort zone, which I enjoyed and he did great, but I can see why many wouldn’t be happy with it. All in all tho an enjoyable movie, tho the ending musical number was a bit disturbing. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Father of The Year (2018)

Father of The Year is a 2018 Happy Madison production Starring David Spade and Nat Faxon. The story is about two college graduates go home and end up having a debate about who’s dad would win in a fight,and the story of what happens when their fathers decide to find the answer.

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Father of The Year is another one of those Happy Madison Production movies that people are going to watch and enjoy, but will get pretty bad reviews. I’m not kidding, when I checked it was at 53% on rotten tomatoes, Roger Ebert gave it a 1.5/4 and Allocine gave it a 3.1/5. I have seen people call it hilarious and others call it garbage. For some reason they always seem to divide people.

The story of the movie was. Two college students graduate and come home for a few weeks before they move to New York. One for work and the other to find himself. The problem is one day they get to talking about which ones dad would win in a fight. Since Ben’s dad, Wayne, is a raging alcoholic and life long color blind screw up and Larry’s dad Mardy is a science nerd that has never been in a fight in his life that gets abused by his 8-year-old son constantly the entire debate is actually quite sad. Mardy of course claims he would win and takes the question as a joke. Wayne however is insulted by the question and later gets black out drunk and goes to Larry’s house to prove he can beat up Mardy.

The resulting spectacle results in a chase thru the house and Ben and Wayne falling off the roof and crashing through the neighbors green house as if they were some sort missile. This of course results in a prison sentence, which results in Ben losing his job.

There is also a love story involved but I don’t want to the entire movie away. The movie has its moments of being pretty funny and pretty mediocre. The movie offers nothing new and nothing fantastic or special. The best way I have heard it put is the movie isn’t bad, it just isn’t all that memorable. I don’t regret watching it, I just can’t say I would watch it again. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Star Ocean Anamensis (Mobile)

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Star Ocean Amanesis is a mobile game from Square Enix and developed by Tri-Ace for android and iOS. Like many mobile games this one is free to play and features the characters from the Star Ocean games of the past. It follows the events of Integrity and Faithlessness and involves being attacked by pirates and memory loss. I won’t spoil too much since the game is free to play so i won’t spoil it to much.

The game board basically alternates back and forth between story tiles and battles where you collect items and such. As per usual you progress thru the game and collect characters and more powerful weapons. You don’t need to you money to do this, but as always it will make things much easier and more powerful. The game so far for me hasn’t come across as pay to win, but the best stuff isn’t easy to come across either and I would much rather play the more traditional Star Ocean games. Suffice it to say I will be playing it, but I won’t be sinking any cash into it. The game however does look and sound nice. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

NEW THE SECRET OF MARROWBONE REVIEW NEW — The MAD MOVIE RANTER

A secret worth finding out? From the writer who penned The Orphanage . . . I will admit I may have set my expectations a little high. To see a low key period horror pop up during the summer blockbuster season was a shocker enough. A young man and his three younger siblings, who have […]

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Empire In Ruins, Revisited.

Empires In War is an Indy title for PC getting ready for release in the coming months from the company Hammer and Ravens.

Many of you may remember a while back when we first looked at the game Empires in Ruins (Preview) The guys over there have been hard at work getting things together for release and the EGX event in September. Sadly living in the United States I won’t be attending the event to visit them and check things out. They were however kind enough over the weekend to hook me up with a beta to check out.

A few things to note, the beta is on whats known as a workbench map. It is basically just there for test purposes and isn’t in the full game. Another thing is pretty much everything started out unlocked and there was no tutorial. A bit of fooling around tho and I got the hang of it. I just wanted to say up front, I didn’t play anything close to a full version of the game. I can honestly say tho, I am already impressed and looking forward to more.

The game itself looks good. Fantastic in fact. Each character and building carefully created with care.

This is just one example I swiped off their Twitter page. I do recommend you check them out over there, they are pretty good about posting updates about what they are doing.

Another part of this I absolutely loved was the music. I rarely say this about games, the music for me is usually just there for me but I actually found myself looking forward to the next wave simply because I liked the music that sounded to me like a sort of hybrid bagpipe rock music sort of deal.

Now the part why most of you are probably still reading, the actual game play. The beta itself. It only showed the real-time combat portion of the game, and none of the story. You start with a small amount of resources to get you started. You can build what you want to survive the first wave or two, it’s up to you really. I won’t tell anyone what to do here that is on you. You two builders will get these built pretty fast, then you can get to the action. As your towers protect your main building from enemies you will get some gold to help you build new ones. The first wave for me consisted of these guys.

Now I have to admit, I loved reading the descriptions for these guys simply because they made me laugh. I will include a few of my favorites below. As a general rule each wave gets a little harder than the last, with a few easy waves tossed in to give you time to repair or just introduce you to a new enemy. One way consist of a new flying enemy that was pretty easy for me to kill because he was alone, but later multiple showed up and they pretty much ruined my life for a bit. They designed the came in such a way that if you understand how it works and set things up right you can be prepared for anything, if you just randomly toss things down like I did my first go at it you could really do a number on your future. That isn’t to say the game is unforgiving, it is quite fair. The game will just reward you for knowing what each unit does and how to prepare for it.

A good example of this is late game my main building was practically dead, I think I was on wave 18 or 19. I wasn’t prepared for this unit that can use the water to swim around and avoid the roads and it used that to attack me. Game over for me. I couldn’t be mad, this was in no way unfair or cheap. I made a mistake and paid the price.

I must say I have played my fair share of Alpha and Beta versions of games, many with varying degrees of quality. Some being damn near broken to the point I question why they would even let them be played, others they were perfectly playable and I was happy to give my feed back and look forward to seeing how they turn things around. This one however falls into a class all its own. I have never before played a beta where I really didn’t have much to say. I played it for a few hours and never ran into bugs. I never thought the game was unfair towards the player, and even when I thought that dude with the giant hammer or the guys with the muskets did more damage than I liked, it didn’t do anything to stop my enjoyment. They are just stronger units you need to account for,and once I did I was back to killing things. This game is definitely on my must own list when it comes out. Check it out in the Steam Store. Best wishes and may the gaming god bring you glory.

Stephen King’s Thinner (1996)

Stephen King’s Thinner is based on the novel by the same name and is the last novel released under King’s the pseudonym Richard Bachman. Released in 1996 by Paramount Pictures.

Stephen King’s Thinner is based on the novel by the same name and is the last novel released under King’s the pseudonym Richard Bachman. The story is about an over weight lawyer named Billy Halleck. Billy is what you would call less than honest.

After winning his most recent case and discovering his diet still isn’t really working he goes out to celebrate with his wife. On the ride home he is enjoying some extra driving activities with his wife and runs over an elderly gypsy lady and kills her. There of course is an investigation to determine if there is any wrong doing and the investigation is a complete sham. The investigator lies about having even done a breathalyzer test. Billy wasn’t drunk, but he still lied in court. The judge also pressures people into lying about the old woman running out of a store instead of walking.

After Billy is found to have done nothing wrong in the disgrace of a trial the husband and daughter decide to take justice into their own hands by setting a gypsy curse on Billy. This curse will make him lose weight. This doesn’t sound bad, except for the fact that he will lose weight until he dies.

At first Billy and his wife doesn’t seem to realize that anything is even wrong. Then they think maybe it is a sign of cancer. Billy is the first however to think maybe something is wrong when he notices the judge also has a skin issue and coincidentally right where the old gypsy man touched him as well. Of course he will see multiple doctors and end up at the mayo clinic, because who would believe gypsy curses are real? I mean would you think this dude could curse you?

Seriously nobody would think this guy is going to be serious. It isn’t more than a few weeks tho before our 300 pound friend however is down to about 150 despite eating thousands of calories a day of whatever the hell he wants.

The movie itself is interesting but suffers from the same issue pretty much every King book adaptation does, you will see most reviews come down to “The book was better.” Honestly this may be true, I personally haven’t read the book. The movie itself was fun and had an interesting concept. It also played pretty much every stereotype on every person in the movie. The lawyer had no morals, the cop and judge were dirty, the gypsies were basically magical nomads that lived a long time and seemed to have no morals and are hated by everyone. Pretty standard stuff. I did enjoy the movie and the ending tho, and would happily watch the movie again. It was never scary or really all that funny, it was just interesting. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Pokemon Quest (Mobile)

Pokemon Quest is a free Mobile and Nintendo switch game from Game freak released in 2018.

Pokemon Quest is a cute little game for Nintendo Switch, Android and iOS. I decided to check out the Mobile version on Android since its free and admittedly I don’t have access to a Switch or iOS device. I am curious if there are any differences between the Switch and Mobile versions so someday I hope to find that out, if I ever do I will be writing another one of these.

The game is quite simplistic, you go to an island to discover treasure and befriend a pokemon for help. You will choose from one of the three original starters of Charmander, Squirtle or Bulbasaur. There are also 2 additional choices of Evvee and Pikachu. There is a small twist tho, they are all little block creatures.

The game is mostly just your pokemon walking around on their own, they also attack on their own but you choose their special attacks. The game is quite intuitive on its own. I never had an issue with them getting stuck or anything like that.

The biggest issue I had with the game was the cooking mechanic. You need to go thru 4 or 5 levels until its done cooking, then you get a pokemon based off what you cooked. While this is interesting it can take a while to get the pokemon you need for where you happen to be. It’s not a deal breaker it can just be pretty annoying at times, tho there are enough guides online to make it less time-consuming. It is also worth noting you can play the game without spending any real money, tho as always it will make your life much easier.

At the end of the day tho you have to ask yourself what you want from a game. Pokemon Quest is basically a cute time sink for the more dedicated pokemon fans. I think your more average fans won’t really put enough time into this to collect the pokemon or the equip items to get far enough to enjoy it. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Amateur Night (2016)

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Amateur Night is the story of Guy Carter, loving husband that is unemployed that needs some money to keep the health insurance going just long enough for his wife to have the baby. So when his wife convinces this out of work architect to take a job as a delivery guy why what could possibly go wrong?

Guy Carter doesn’t know karate or carry a weapon, which is kind of unfortunate since he is delivering women. Yup, that is right, Guy is essentially delivering hookers. At first just Nikki to a mans house that turns out to be a doctor with some rather interesting taste in head ware and rope. When Guy thinks Nikki is being attacked he causes doc to hit his head. This leads to an explanation on bondage.

After this they are off to pick up two more women ,Fallon and Jaxi. As all this goes on of course guy is freaking out more and more about becoming a father, but discovers if tonight goes well he could walk away with a cool 2 grand. More than enough to keep the insurance.

As the movie goes on there will be a bachelor party plenty of dancing and implied sexual things. None of which is actually showed so don’t go getting too excited. It actually isn’t even all that important besides to explain what they do for a living.

The movie is fun but quite predictable. There will be the usual tropes of the ladies being more than what they are, one being rich and great with money and them all being friends. Guy will learn he in fact has what it takes to be a great dad with a few random surprises as well. Predictable isn’t always bad tho. While the movie won’t show you anything new or special, it is fun and entertaining and that is really all you need. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.