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Hellsing Ultimate

Hellsing ult

It’s been awhile but I’m finally back with part three of my best and worst of vampires thread. Let’s face it, if you caught my last two parts you can probably guess what part three and four of the worst will be. It’s quite obvious really. But the best parts likely aren’t. So I’m here to talk a little bit about my favorite interpretation of Dracula ever, Alucard. Specifically Hellsing Ultimate; I’ve never actually watched the first anime but I’ve been told by many that Ultimate, which follows the manga more closely than the first, is far superior. So Hellsing Ultimate is the story of the Hellsing Organization led by Integra Windgates Hellsing, descendant of the famous Van Helsing continuing to keep Great Britain safe from the creatures of the night. Her personal guard and secret weapon is Alucard, a very powerful, ancient vampire that has served the Helsings for ages back. Occasionally killing lesser vampires and fighting the never ending grudge with rival and nemesis Alexander Anderson, a catholic priest with grand regenerative abilities from a rival organization. Alucard, known for being cruel and ruthless, takes pity on a dying police woman named Seras Victoria and turns her into vampire instead of letting her die. We follow Alucard and the rest of the Hellsing Organization as a devastating plot unfolds involving Nazi vampires, a over militarized Vatican, an android and treason from within themselves.

Holy shit this anime is crazy but so incredible it has to be seen. Crispin Freeman as Alucard steals the show for me. In fact, the main characters are all deep and well developed. This series avoids a lot of modern day vampire tropes which is refreshing: Alucard DOES NOT fall in love wit either female lead nor is a “sensitive monster”, the female leads are strong, ground, thoughtful women- not damsels in distress, and Alucard isn’t creepy or brooding. He’s a fucking pimp but isn’t Bela Lagosi. I love that Hellsing Ultimate pulls no punches dealing with religious, sexual, political, or historical subject matter but keeps an elegance to it. Instead of standard 30 minute episodes, there is only 10 but each is like a mini movie which is cool. Definitely check out Hellsing Ultimate if you like Dracula, vampires, crazy shit, or bloody anime. As always thank you for reading and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Tales from the Borderlands

tales borderlands

The last Borderlands game before we finally get 3 and it’s from TellTale Games, king of point-and- click adventures with stories that keep you hooked. At first I was pretty against the idea of a different kind of Borderlands game but after the first twenty minutes I was hooked. Tales takes place after 2 and we follow our main characters Rhys- a Hyperion stooge with a cybernetic arm and eye looking to make it big along with his friend Vaughn and there stolen Loader Bot, and Fiona- a wanted con woman looking for a big score with her little sister Sasha. These characters all meld together along with others from the series as they venture to battle more bandits, and assemble a robot that will help them find the Vault of the Traveler, unlocking more of the universe then they could possibly imagine. Holy shit was this a fun way to get a platinum trophy. Because of it being Borderlands it’s a story full of the series trademark outrageous humor and sad drama. Towards the end, I freaked out with nerdgasmic glee at how epic it was. A few times the game felt a little slow but I could never call it boring. The characters were memorable while all the cameos were pretty welcome; at the end of the third episode there a freaking awesome 2 on 2 fight leading into the beginning in the Pre-sequel. Overall, Tales from the Borderlands is a great addition to the series and as I said, it’s a fun, easy way to get a platinum trophy. As always, thank you for reading and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Borderlands: The Pre-sequel

borderlands ps

What was Borderlands missing? How about Borderlands…IN SPACE! for the third game in the series we are lead into space to recount the downfall of the Vault Hunters and the rise of one of gaming’s greatest recent villains, Handsome Jack. For once we already know our characters we play as: Wilhelm the Enforcer (Jack’s cyborg bodyguard from 2), Athena the Gladiator (General Knox’s Atlas assassin from 1’s DLC), Nischa the Lawbringer ( Jack’s future girlfriend and tyrannical sheriff of Lynchwood in 2) and Claptrap (formerly the ninja-assassin Claptrap of 1’s DLC). Like with 2, there are two extra characters with the DLC. In essence, of the three FPS games, Pre-sequel is the shortest story and game wise. I redboxed it when it first came out, and avoided most of the side quests, I got half way through the game in less than six hours. The strongest pro of the game is the story. Jack is likable but we understand how his good motives turn dark and how the heroes we thought were good are just as guilty for the events of Pandora’s decline as Jack is. I love that by the end no one feels completely good or evil. The newest mechanic is the Zero Gravity and oxygen need. I’m fine with the oxygen completely, and I like the joke they make about Claptrap not needing air. The Zero Gravity both helps and hurts the game. Its a fun new challenge bouncing around the moon shooting at space bandits with your new lasers, but at the same time it becomes harder to find your way around and sometimes this gets really annoying. Probably the biggest flaw I got with this game is the side missions aren’t that great. 2 skillfully made them feel natural and a lot of them were funny as hell so we didn’t mind doing them; Pre-sequel has some like this but there is a lot of them that feel like busy work. Overall I liked the game and recommend it if you played the others but don’t let it be your first impression of the series. As always, thank you for reading and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Borderlands 2

boderlands 2

This really is no place for a hero; I love Shortchange Hero by The Heavy, seriously awesome song. Borderlands 2 is one of the best games I’ve ever played. Set five years after the fall of the Atlas Corporation and the first Vault was open, the sequel begins with 4 new Vault Hunters being commissioned and betrayed by maniacal head of the Hyperion Corporation, Handsome Jack. Our new heroes are Axton the commando, Maya the Siren, Salvador the Gunzerker, and Zero the assassin. Together they must journey to Sanctuary, where most of the lovable characters we came to know and love from the first game, rejoining the old Vault Hunters and rebelling against Jack before he can reach another vault and unleash the devastating power of the Warrior on Pandora. Borderlands 2 masterfully improves on everything that was great about the first game and expanding on it. The gameplay is just as fun but now every character is amazingly OP ; every character is fun and funny but this is a much darker story. A few scenes hit me square in the heart while others made me nearly piss myself in laughter. I’m happy to say the game has a hell of a lot of replay value- I’m on my sixth play through and not bored yet- and both great solo or with friends. If you never played it, pick it up today. You’ll fall in love with the residents of Pandora and there badassness. Thank you as always and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Borderlands

borderlands

There really is no rest for the wicked when you’re a Vault-Hunter. Borderlands is a fun first shooter, open world RPG revolving around four strangers searching for a legendary alien vault on planet Pandora: Mordecai the hunter, Lilith the Siren, Roland the soldier, and Brick the Beserker. Each character has there own play style and special talents. For example Roland is a expert with a assault rifle and shotgun that can deploy a turret that can upgraded to fire rockets as well as attach an elemental damage onto the gunfire. All four characters are fun but they don’t really have an identity. The game is fun but repetitive and man the final boss sucks. I had a lot of fun gathering loot in the form of guns, shields, grenade mods, and class mods and leveling up. The downside of leveling up is that it drags a bit. Borderlands has some of the best DLC I’ve ever played and in it comes more of the crass humor the series becomes known for. If you ant a heads up to be a epic badass, choose Lilith, who becomes OP as hell real quick (a tip from Torsten V). In the end, Borderlands is fun but kinda meh but with some decent humor and a cool intro cutscene. Cage the Elephant anyone?

The Disappointments Room

dis room

Well, the title lives up to it’s name; I’ve seen reviews on YouTube for the this, all scathing and so I thought I might be that 1 guy that found something nice to say since I famously like many movies most people conventionally hate. Well, this sure as shit wasn’t the case here. This movie sucks.

So the Disappointments Room is about a family with the a troubled past is moving into a new house because the wife Dana (Kate Beckinsale) is a architect. Her husband stays home and plays XBox all day. We piece together the family of three used to be four but there baby died. Oh and typical ghost shit is happening to Dana and maybe there son Lucas too. She finds a hidden room one night and the ghost shit gets more intense but we start finding out Dana is probably crazy because we learn she tried to kill herself once and she decides to flush her meds down the toilet. She finds out the room was went for the original owner’s deformed child, who he killed with a hammer because people were total dicks back then. Oh and Havok from X Men is in this shit stack, and he tries getting in Dana’s pants with dialogue straight out of a porno but I’m pretty sure she just uses his ass for smokes…Ok, screw this movie. If it seems I half assed this review, well they half assed this movie. The acting is dogshit all around. The premise could have been really good and I do have a certain affection for those kind of stories abound freaks and deformed kids but that’s like an after thought throughout the movie. The “scary” shit doesn’t feel threatening at all and there are some dumbass jump scares when it seems nothing is happening. The ending is laughably bad too. Skip this stinky ass shit waffle of a movie and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Soma- day one

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So in preparation for what we at Saviorgaming consider Christmas minus the presents and cheer, replaced by candy, drunk people, and gore I wanted to play a horror game I never played before. Months ago I got Soma off of a PS flash sale and kept it for just such a occasion. I briefly researched it before buying it and watched a couple of trailers. Soma is a first person stealth horror game made by Frictional Games, makers of smash horror hit Amnesia: the dark descent. We play as Simon Jarret, a man suffering from brain damage after a car accident that killed his girlfriend (?). During a new kind of treatment I guess, Simon wakes up in a isolated underwater facility full of busted down machines that are in pain. And there’s a mechanical beast lurking the corridors. So from my first experience I got a strange Alien: isolation / Bioshock vibe. Once underwater the environments were beautiful and tense. It’s definitely a “where the hell do I go” game and like Isolation, be prepared to hide and take it slow. Unlike Isolation, you have no kind of weapon to defend yourself with. I noticed being near the first monster, my brain started glitching out, before it caught me which was a creepy effect. So far it’s interesting and a pretty game to behold, but it’s only day one. Thank you as always for reading and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Trigun

trigun

Admittedly when I watched this anime as first, I thought it was kind of stupid. Damn how wrong I was. Something I thought was goofy turned out to be pretty dark and cleaver and now I give it a lot of respect for a truly great lead character in Vash the Stampede.

Trigun is the story of the world’s greatest, most notorious fugitive Vash the Stampede, known for wiping out an entire town all by himself. He’s being pursued by Meryll Stryfe and Milly Thompson, two insurance agents trying to caputure him for the high insurance costs he causes as well as the slew of others who want to cash in on the sixty billion double dollar bounty on Vash’s head. He appears as a tall drifter in a long red coat, long buckled gloves, spiky blond hair, and amber tinted granny style sunglasses armed with a big ass revolver. At first glance he’s intimidating until we start to see him as a clumsy, childlike idiot that uses seemingly uses dumb luck to evade his captors. Slowly we discover Vash’s true nature as a highly calculated badass who refuses to kill. He forms a friendship with the ladies trying to book him and a lonely priest named Nicholas Wolfwood with a huge badass cross. In the end we discover vash’s true tragic origin and how he was forced into his horrible crime by the only person as mysterious and dangerous as Vash, his maniacal and bloodthirsty brother Knives…

I applaud this anime for tricking me so convincingly into thinking it’s something it’s not. As I said, I thought it was a western spoof in anime form. It is but isn’t. Vash is a deep well as character, both fun but tragic, and I’d say one of my favorite heroes in anime. I love the old west setting. The characters are memorable and with a second rewatching, the series gets better. My only real complaint is Knives is a little bit cookie cutter and underutilized but still great. Definitely check it out on Hulu and as always, thank you all for reading, special thanks to our old friend and Battlebuddy Sniperelitest for introducing me to the anime in the first place, and my the gaming gods be with you.

My Top 10 DC Villains- part 2

6. Black Adam (Shazam)- Before Billy Batson acquired the powers of Shazam, there was another from another time. Much like Marvel’s Dr. Doom, Adam uses his power to “protect” his people, even if that makes him a tyrant amongst them. I read the first book of Shazam’s new 52 and Black Adam stole the show every time he appeared. He was one of my top 3 favorite characters in Injustice to play as. Possessing super strength, speed, durability, magical lightning, and a vast intelligence, Adam is a good example of the road to hell being paved with good intentions.

Grodd 5. Gorilla Grodd (Flash)- Another tyrant, Grodd believes he is the rightful ruler of his dimension of intelligent apes, and in New 52, believes himself the rightful bearer of the Speed Force; in the CW show he is test animal subjected to the particle accelerator. Either way, Grodd believes man is an inferior species meant to serve ape in a interesting play of reverse Darwinism. Besides being very intelligent, strong, and agile like most common apes, Grodd has telepathic and telekinetic abilities and is a cruel military strategist. Grodd’s brutal and badassness earn him this spot…and he blocked the Supersonic Punch Man! How much more pimp do you get?

4. Ozymandias (Watchmen)- I know, I know, I know Watchmen ain’t part of DC canon but it’s still a DC publication. What gets me about Ozymandias is how good he really is compared to the flawed “heroes” of Watchmen. Aspiring to be a modern day Alexander the Great, Adrian Veidt dedicated himself physically and mentally to become the best hero he could be, but at the horrific cost he will go to save the world from itself. Smartest man in the world, only the infinite intellect of Dr Manhattan can challenge him, in physical combat he’s unwatched, even catching a bullet with his bare hand at point blank range, Ozymandias is the rare villain that not only succeeds but actually proves more heroic than our actual heroes, the very definition of a grey character.

3. Sinestro (Green Lantern)- once the greatest of Green Lanterns, mentored by the legendary Abin Sur, mentor to Hal Jordan, and greatest threat to the Green Lantern Corps is Thal Sinestro. Using his green power to retake his homeworld when plunged into bloody civil war by cruel force, Sinestro was cast out by his fellow lanterns. In exile he came across the means to harness there greatest weakness against them, the gold light of fear. Soon he built his own deadly corp of fear mongering maniacs and murderers gifted at instilling fear in others to battle the Green Lanterns. Sinestro is a master of wielding the gold ring as well as having detailed knowledge on his former corps, he is a skilled warrior and strategist, both cunning and cruel. Essentially, he’s DC Vegeta. When examined, he is a fascinatingly deep character I highly recommend reading more into.

joker 2. Joker (Batman)- He had to be here for 1 undeniable reason; I don’t think any villain has ever pushed a hero so far towards a breaking point than Joker has Batman. He crippled Batgirl, beat Jason Todd to death before blowing him up, killed Batman’s parents in the Tim Burton film, murdered thousands of innocents, helped turn Batman’s family against him, and even mentally tortured the shit out of Batman after his death in Arkham City. Crafty, reckless, brilliant, and heartless, Joker is the devil that came from nowhere really. I’ve read several origins for Mr. J, all different which is great, making him scarier and menacing. He’s been portrayed fantastically by Caesar Romero, Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger, but mine favorite will always be Mark Hamill. Same with Conroy as Batman before you ask. Yes, 9 of 10 of Batman’s classics are Joker stories, but it’s well deserved.

1. Doomsday (Superman) – plain and simple my friends, for a very simple reason: he killed Superman. With all of Superman’s power, he couldn’t withstand this enigmatic beast, nor could the JSA either for that matter. Doomsday doesn’t have a grudge, he doesn’t want to take over the world or get rich. He just wants to kill and destroy. He’s extremely strong and can take a huge amount of punishment. There’s reason to believe he’s immune to mind attacks, it’s cited in Death of Superman that the inside of his mind is blackness and hate. This creature brutally beats Superman to death fair and square, taking everything Sups had to put him down. I love how simple and brutally torturous Doomsday is, earning him my number one spot. I hope you enjoyed my list, thank you for reading, and may the gaming gods be with you.

My Top 10 favorite DC villains- part 1

What measures a great hero? Is it the trials they face or the selfless choice for the greater good…or the enemy that tests them? A few days ago I talked about my favorite DC badasses, so now I want to go all out and cover my favorite villains. It’s a pretty big list so I decided to cut this review in half. Starting from 10 to 7, listing each with there hero for the Dc newcomers out there, let’s begin.

hammond 10. Hector Hammond (Green Lantern)- This creepy bastard hates Green Lantern Hal Jordan with a passion. The handsome, charismatic, superhero has it so well; Hammond made contact with the power source of Abin Sur’s crashed ship, mutating him drastically. He now has telepathic and telekinetic abilities at the price of cripling physical malformation and delusions. What makes him a favorite of mine is how he feels a creepy desire to be Jordan and wants Carol Ferris sexually, pretty much the super perv of DC.

terra 9. Terra (Teen Titans)- this story is kinda sad. Once a Titan herself and romantically involved with BeastBoy, Terra betrays her friends for Slade. As her name suggests, she can control the ground and rock formations. Terra is a good villain for the simple fact for how much physical and emotional damage she causes the Titans and how she regrets the treason but continues.

8. Black Manta (Aquaman)- Aquaman’s arch enemy, I just find this character fascinating. Through out the years he’s had different origins, each strange and even controversial. A popular origin is Manta began as young autistic boy subjected to a test serum to cure him, succeeding but driving him mad and dangerous. His suit is adapted to deep sea for cold and pressure while increasing his strength and durability; his suit is weaponized with lasers and missiles and Manta is a powerful hand to hand fighter. Seriously, Manta with blades is a epic, bloody sight to see.

mr freeze 7. Mr. Freeze (Batman)- Freeze maybe one of the most tragic villains in all of DC. Victor and Nora Fries loved each other very much until Nora came down with a terminal illness. Victor, a cryo expert, put Nora under and in a sad turn Victor seemed to be killed in a accident. It mutated his body to where he can’t survive in any temperature under sub-zero so he built a armored suit to maintain himself, and designed the infamous freeze gun. Freeze is nearly emotionless, feeling only the desire to cure Nora. Everything he does is to restore Nora. He’s one of the few Batman villains that isn’t nuts or out for wealth or to destroy Batman, he’s there for his wife, almost not even a bad guy at all.

Rflash 7. Reverse Flash (Flash)- Eobard Thawne is the probably the biggest pain the Flash’s ass ever. In many versions, he’s the Nora Allen’s killer, leading to Barry’s father getting wrongfully imprisoned, setting off the rest of Barry’s life. Then we come to Flashpoint where he allows Barry to stop him, only to make the scarlet speedster responsible for the horrors that come, without the power to fix his mistake. What makes him a favorite is how damn determined he is to ruin Flash’s life, no matter how bad it rapes time and space and that’s badass.

To be continued…