torstenvblog

Star wars: The Clone Wars (game)

clone war game

Too many things named after Clone Wars. Not saying it was a bad game, not at all, but damn so many damn Clone Wars.

Clone wars, in this instance, is a follow up game to Attack of the Clones. It primarily focuses on Obi-wan, Anakin, and Mace Windu as they try taking down a doomsday weapon. Besides a couple of instances, the game deals around vehicular combat, being able to command tanks, gunships, and speeder bikes and wreck some droids.

This is a really underappreciated Star Wars game I wish got more credit than it did. The vehicles handled solid and never really felt cumbersome except for the droid skiff at times. My favorite was the clone gunships, those things were death machines that were fun as hell to fly. The jedi parts weren’t anything special but were just fun little bits added in for flavor. I can’t say the game brought a really memorable story, especially given the advantage of the time span to work with. In the end, this Clone Wars experience is a real fun time if you enjoy vehicle combat and blowing stuff up. Best wishes and may the force be with you.

Star Wars: Bounty Hunter

bounty hunter

So let’s pretend we cared half as much about Boba Fett’s dad as we did him and gave him a game all his own.

Star Wars: Bounty Hunter is a prequel to Attack of the Clones about Jango Fett and how he got recruited by Dooku. It’s up to us to traverse huge and many times epic landscapes, collect bounties by either taking scum alive or killing them with your famous dual pistols, wrist mounted flamethrower, snare cord, poison darts, missile equipped jetpack, and a bunch of other sweet shit.

This game is a mixed bag. For the time the environment is huge and breathtaking, especially Cloud City and Coruscant. Essentially the game boils down to platforming and run and gunning. At first, you feel pretty legit in your badassery. Around chapter 7 this game unloads a can of Grandma’s cream of whoop ass on you. You’re agility equals old school Tomb Raider, which get used to barrel rolling and flipping like a mad man. Flying is cool but the damn thing burns out quick, and it is really weird that your flamethrower runs on the same power as your jetpack. By the way, that flamethrower is freaking awesome sauce!Shooting feels kinda automated, just hold down square and let Jango do the work. You can manually aim but that requires you to stop and that usually means you’re dead meat if you do. In the end, it ain’t great but worth checking out on sale. May the force be with you and may the gaming gods bring you epic loot and glory.

Star Wars: Jedi Starfighter

jedi starfighter

So leading into the premier of Last Jedi, I’m going to cover some Star Wars, including the 7 movies leading into it, I previously covered Rogue One and here’s a link down below to check that out.

Star wars: Rogue One

So Jedi Starfighter takes place after Attack of the Clones and as the title suggests you command one of two ships, one of which is a Jedi pilot as you fight the Trade Federation forces. Adi is a jedi master in a experimental craft that allows her to use the force to augment her ship’s capabilities like slowing time, causing concentrated force lightning, creating a force shield around your ship and a shockwave attack. We also pay as Nym, a freedom fighter who’s ship does heavy damage with an array of heavy artillery.

This game is flawed but fun. You don’t get to choose which character you play as on each level and sometimes its a challenge, sometimes it’s a royal pain in the ass especially if you crank the difficulty. There isn’t much variety but it’s fun to fly around and blow shit up. I like playing Jedi because her ship is more agile and the force powers really come in handy- lightning is badass. I have to say the A.I companion commands actually work surprisingly well, set a command and they get carried out pretty well. The graphics are great for the time and turn out pretty nice on PS4. If you want a quick retro Star Wars buzz, I recommend picking this up on a PSN sale. May the force be with you and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

san andreas

There hasn’t been a game that made my jaw drop or make me laugh like GTA: San Andreas until I played Borderlands 2.

San Andreas is the story of Carl, a young man returning to the old neighborhood after his mom dies and discovers his old crew is being wiped out by the cops and rival gangs so it’s up to Carl to get the Grove Street Gang back together and retake there hood from shit going down, but in true GTA fashion, is it ever that simple?

While not perfect, the game is pretty damn good and in a lot of ways holds up pretty up well over a decade later. Driving feels really solid and as an open world game it was seriously ground breaking at the time. I love being able to go to the gym and working out to upgrade you’re body and increase you’re stamina, sex appeal with the ladies, and get stronger or eat a bunch of crap and become a fat bastard, that was a awesome feature. The gunplay is hugely improved from the older games. The characters are some of my favorites of gaming, being memorable and also damn right funny at times. Samuel L. Jackson is awesome as Officer Tenpenny.

Overall, it’s a great classic that recommend picking up on sale. May the gaming gods bring you glory and “all you had to do was follow the damn train CJ”

Reefer Madness

reefer madness

Holidays got ya down and need a free laugh? Don’t buy reefer, watch Reefer Madness.

This infamous 1930’s anti-pot film recounts a hilarious downfall a group of American youths at the allure of a couple who get them addicted to marijuana. When I say hilarious, I do mean hilarious from over the top acting, a clear ignorance to the nature of the shit, goofy old time dialogue, whacky scenes that are attempting to be serious you can’t help but laugh your ass off. There’s a scene where after toking a joint a kid guns his car at like 80 miles and hits an old guy crossing the street, but the dude literally just lays on the ground and you can tell the car is being sped up on film. There’s scenes of teens wildly dancing the Charleston while getting high and the guy in the business suit laughing Joker style at nothing. Also, apparently pot makes you go insane and makes you prone to rape, murder, and random violence. Okay doky. This is some shit that has to be seen to be believed and thankfully it’s on YouTube for free in perfect quality so I highly recommend it for a good laugh this holiday season. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Battlefield 4

battlefield 4

Ah the memories.

Battlefield 4 is an epic ass multiplayer experience where you and a lot of people are dropped onto a massive map full of vehicles and breakable environments. Seriously, it’s mind blowing playing a map where you can blast the foundations of a skyscraper and watch the whole thing collapse or being on it when it does, leaping off, parachuting off with a grenade launcher into the water and jumping into a gunboat with your buddy. Even in the prison map, it is freaking awesome going into full scale war with over a dozen people, it’s freaking sweet. The weapons handle well and graphically for a 4 year old game, it looks and sounds great. I do have a couple issues though, like sometimes the matchmaking sucks- sometimes me and Savior or me and Sniper ended up all alone on a map all by ourselves and again, like Black Ops 3, I can’t give a rat’s ass about the campaign.

Overall, this is a great game to get lost in and my favorite I’ve played in the series. Definitely worth the $20 bucks and most of the DLC is free now so all the more reason. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 3

black ops 3

I remember playing the original Call of Duty demo on PlayStation. It was really cool at the time, a realistic WW2 era shooter. Three console generations later, we got robots. Wtf Call of Duty.

So for the story, there are robots. You get mutilated by them and get new cyber implants so there you go. I can’t lie, I lost interest in the plot pretty damn quick, despite the Christopher Meloni voice over. It’s not excruciatingly boring but not memorable. Multiplayer is clearly the focus. Essentially your standard game modes with you and other players. The maps are pretty small but there a lot of routes to take which is nice but you get kinda bored with them quick. In general, multiplayer can be quick fun until you get wrecked by assholes who bought god-level gear or people that spam you with combat perks or just general cheap shot bullshit. But mechanically and graphically the game is solid all the same. I didn’t touch zombies at all for the same reason I avoid most zombie packs now, they all feel the same to me after a while.

This may seem like a lazy review but in a lot of ways this game feels pretty lazy. Story just feels like a tutorial to play the Multiplayer, which is fun enough to kill time quick but will piss you off when you keep getting dicked by other players and some microtransactions but it ain’t a bad time with friends. I’d recommend it for $20 or less. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

The Amazing Spider-man 2

electro

And of course we come to the sequel and premature end of the Amazing Spider-man series. I’m saying this right now, theatrically in 3-D this movie is freaking awesome. Without that? Eh, let’s get into that.

Picking up almost two years later, Peter and Gwen are graduating high school, Spider-man has gotten experience under his belt but the memory of Gwen’s father haunts him as well as the mysteries of his parents and the fear for Gwen’s safety. His long estranged childhood friend Harry Osborn reappears after his father passes away from a genetic disorder and the two reconnect until Harry comes face to face with the same infliction. Spider-man also finds himself put to the test when villain Electro appears after another Oscorp based accident occurs when Spider-man obsessed fan Max Dillon falls into a pit of genetically altered electric eels after being shocked- nope I ain’t making that up…oh and Sinister Six shit too…

If you really loved these movies, I’m deeply sorry you won’t get no kind of conclusion to the multiple plots left open because this movie is primarily world building fluff, sequel bait. Garfield is much better a second time around and the supporting cast does well mainly. My favorite part is Jaime Fox as Electro, accompanied by a interesting score I can’t get out of my head. The fight scenes are much cooler. My biggest problem is the amount of shit is crammed into the film which makes it feel bloated, and because this was the end of it and wasn’t continued, it feels largely pointless. Also, Rhino. Oh I don’t know what the hell made them think anything about Rhino was a good idea. I can’t tell you if Electro or the Goblin to be is supposed to be the main villain. Overall, in my opinion, it’s not a terrible Spider-man film but the overuse of universe sequel bait kills it.Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Amazing Spider-man

amazing spiderman

Well, because I O.Ded on DC for a bit, I’ve been covering miscellaneous Marvel movies like every Fantastic 4 movie and Daredevil. Today, bumming around my other job, I flipped a coin to either talk about Spider-man or Punisher. Guess who won?

The Amazing Spider-man is the 2012 reboot of the beloved wallcrawler, but in a darker, more grounded tone that tried to be more true to the comics. Essentially we get another origin story, only this time having a thread focusing on Peter’s parents and Peter’s search for answers about them, leading him to Dr. Curt Connors, his father’s old partner and soon to be Spider-man’s first enemy, the Lizard.

Ok, this is a tricky one. I like that Spidey has web-shooters and we have Gwen Stacy as his love interest, not Mary Jane. I love the supporting cast, especially Emma Stone as Gwen and Rhys Ifans as Connors/ Lizard, though he is under used. I like the use of P.O.V shots when Spider-man is being Spider-man and the acrobatic stuff is pretty sweet to watch. That’s about it for me. Rest of this movie pissed me off something fierce. I do not like Andrew Garfield’s take on Peter Parker- I felt he was too whiny and kinda emo nor his take on Spider-man- I felt he trash talked too much and was a wuss when it came to fighting. I get it, he’s not a huge brawler but dammit you got insane reflexes and you’re twenty times stronger than your average guy, I don’t think you need to run from a couple muggers. Oh, and I love how he pretty much says Fuck it trying to find Uncle Ben’s killer after a five minute montage. And oh the costume. Savior won’t allow me to use the language I require to describe my dark, black hearted disdain for that costume. Lizard looks ok but I think they could have used a better design. Honestly, this movie feels like Spider-man for the YA Twilight crowd in a lot of ways. It took multiple viewings but overall I’m ok with it but I prefer the Rami trilogy much more. I haven’t seen Homecoming yet. I know the debate is out on McGuire vs Garfield as better Spidey so I recommend watching both series and deciding for yourself. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

The Exorcism of Emily Rose

emily rose

Earlier today I talked about a movie that was totally crap, so I thought I would get some balance by talking about a truly underrated horror flick that actually got me and proved PG-13 could pack a punch in horror.

The Exorcism of Emily Rose follows the trial of a priest accused of aiding in the death of young Emily Rose during a exorcism gone wrong. During his accounts, we see the dark events of Emily’s possession.

Much like Salem’s Lot, it is a simple plot but it is followed through excellently. The actors are very down to earth and the use of practical effects leaned a much appreciated touch of realism VERY few films in this genre. The way Emily’s body unnaturally contort and the expressions of her face are damn effective and creepy. This movie has one of my all time favorite scares, which is a huge compliment I can’t often say. The only real flaw I can say is I didn’t like the ending personally, but that is strictly an opinion thing dealing with the subject of beliefs, so hell, to reach his own. Overall, I seriously recommend this as what I would call one of the best underrated horror films of last decade. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.