Category: Game reviews

The day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

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So I am screwing around on Netflix looking for something to watch and I come across this. Feeling nostalgic around Christmas, maybe because my dad died this year and I used to watch stuff like this with him, or maybe just because I haven’t really had the chance to sit down and watch some classic movies in awhile I popped this one on. I learned a few things. First, it felt weird not watching this on VHS and an old tube television. Second, this movie came out decades before I was born and yet I still enjoyed it more than most modern movies. And possibly last but not least, At least once a week I hear someone say ” I wish people would stop with all the political and social commentary in movies and on television.” Honestly, that has always been there. This movie is about a man from space that shows up with a giant robot. We as humans of course shoot him as soon as he tries to hand us something and his giant robot melts some guns and a tank. Space man gets fixed up and tried to get a meeting with the world and of course the world goes all high school stupid and starts with the if he goes I won’t go stuff.

So what is a space man to do when America locks him in a room and says don’t go anywhere? He leaves to see the city. News of course goes nuts, starts gets people all riled up and scared. See a pattern here? This movie was released in the 1950’s and if you replace the word spaceman with words like “Irish, immigrant, communist, Muslim” or any number of words you can change the year and it would fit the social commentary of a decade. The space man even comments about the media spreading needless fear.

Once we get to the end of the movie we hit another topic of social commentary that could hit any number of decades. Our space man finally gets a meeting, but not with world leaders but with scientist. Whats his message? That giant robot is basically the galaxy police force and they have ultimate power that no one questions or interferes with. They are so feared the rest of galaxy wants to trouble so they simply don’t have weapons. Since earth discovered nuclear energy they will eventually use it in a space ship and join the galactic community. Either do so in peace or the giant robots will destroy the Earth. That is a pretty damn severe message I would say.

All and all I have to say I was surprised by the the amount of social commentary in a movie from the 1950s, but more surprised how much of it actually stands true over 60 years later. Best wishes and  may the gaming gods bring you glory.

 

Star Wars: Jedi Starfighter

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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

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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”

Battlefield 4

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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.

Mickey’s Magical Christmas: Snowed in at the House of Mouse (2001)

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Oh Mickey you and that contemptible damn duck Donald. Wait this isn’t Kingdom Hearts so the duck is cool. Seriously watching this sense me into flashbacks of him not healing me when he was supposed to so I died. They better make him not a useless jackass in KH 3 or I will be upset.

Anyway on to this movie. It is essentially a series of short Christmas stories for the kids…..that  I watched without my kids. My favorite of course was their version of A Christmas Carol. My capitalistic hero Scrooge and those pesky ghost ruining his life stealing all his cash.

Now that I think about it that wasn’t how A Christmas Carol went, but I am sure someone out there thinks Scrooge was the victim here. The movie is about an hour long and is full of Disney characters from what people my age consider the golden era of Disney when everything was pretty much hand drawn. Cameos galore, over dramatic dancing. Its a great nostalgic blast from the past that everyone should take this Christmas. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 3

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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.

Kerbal Space Program (update)

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I have written about Kerbal Space Program a few times, and always about the console version ( I will leave the links below) this will just be a quick update and a little bit about my recent experience with the PC versions Demo that is free to download on Steam.

Kerbal On Consoles Finally Fixed?

Kerbal Space Program. Hardest game for PS4?

The last thing I can confirm about KSP on console prior to the January launch ( this come straight from a private message with their verified Twitter account) is that anyone that owns a console version is getting the updated version of the game free of charge, and they have yet to release any information on Trophies/achievement progression as to whether or not it will be new ones or just the old ones or even if they fixed the bugged one that prevented the rare person that could actually play the game correctly from achieving a platinum Trophy.

Now on to my experience with the PC Demo. Honestly outside of the controls being  little bit more responsive and easier to work with, most notably the maneuver nodes they play quite similar. I would consider picking it up to do a more detailed comparison if I had to cash flow ( hey Squad if you read this and want to hook an up and coming blog up, that would be cool)

Honestly if you have the PC with the power to play KSP and you need your fix right now, simply buy the PC version. If you prefer console wait until the reviews come out after the fix. It won’t take long, keep an eye out here.  I will be playing the day it comes out for a good long time to get you guys the info you need. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Civilization V (5)

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Civilization has always been the king of “one more turn” and that hasn’t changed here. I have been playing since Civilization 2, and while the game has changed massively since those days one thing has not. Every time I play this game i tell myself there is just one more thing I want to do, and one more turn and I am done. It never works out that way, that always happens for about an hour or so.

The basic idea here is you run a historical country as a historical ruler that has a massively long  life span of thousands of years. You would build cities and armies and interact with other countries. The options on what to do are damn near limitless, do you make peace? Prepare for war? Or do you simply buy everything you want with a booming economy and trade? The choice is all yours and yours alone.

The game play is fun and addictive but for many it is simply not fast paced enough and I can totally understand why. From turn to turn there isn’t much excitement, you will some times wait many many turns before a unit or building is even built. If you are patient and have the right mind set for it, you are looking at hundreds of hours of fun, if not you will be bored out of your mind very quickly. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

The Ref (1994)

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This movie is basically about the worst day a robber could have that didn’t involve the cops unloading 12 clips into your body. Dennis Leary as always plays himself playing a robber that trips and alarm. He then falls down a trap door and escapes as he gets bit by a huge dog.

He then holds up a woman, gets to her car to find that her and her husband are essentially always fighting about everything imaginable. Husband blows a stop sign and he lies about not seeing it just so he doesn’t have to say she was right, that is the level of fighting we talk about.

The movie is funny and hilariously well written. At no point in the movie was I not entertained, and while the story is very basic and you can see the ending coming a mile away most people won’t really mind. When the rest of the family shows up, the movie just gets better.

Christmas dinner being awkward has never been so much fun when it didn’t involve the Griswolds. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Sonic 2 (Sega Forever)

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Sonic 2, one of the first Sega games many children played as a kid. Also one of the newest games released as part of Sega Forever. But does it hold up on a cell phone? Like most of the Sega Forever games it really does. The sound is easily equal or better than its original release, and the controls translate quite well to a touch screen.

The only real issue is for most people there are better options out there for the Sonic games. Most of them can be purchased on the Xbox One or the PS3 and XB360 consoles. They work well on a phone but there really is no reason to play on one if you own one of those systems. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.