Category: Opinion

Doctor Strange: The Flight of Bones

Dr. Stephen Strange has overcome some tremendous feats not only as the Sorcerer Supreme, long-time hero, and renowned surgeon. Despite how much he’s overcome, his hands are failing him. While searching for help in man’s medicine, a new magical threat emerges when people begin spontaneously combusting and one of his dear friends becomes wrapped up in a deadly cult at the cause of the deadly pyres. Just another day for the good doctor, eh, true believers?

Ok, so first I gotta say two things about this book: the story itself is incredibly short and the art is the bizarre beauty I love about Strange’s stories. I was disappointed the Flight of Bones story itself is so short because I was getting pretty invested before it just…ends. There are quite a few other shorts in the book that are mostly good, all with different art styles that are wholly unique and eye-catching. When it comes to Marvel, Strange reliably has some of the coolest artwork and designs, and this book is no exception. Being under Marvel Knights, there is some adult imagery that might scare away the younger kids but many of the stories keep to a darker, bordering on horror edge that I love and I wish the MCU would embrace more with Strange. In the end, while not the best Strange story and not something that will make you fall in love with the Sorcerer Supreme ( I highly recommend Dr Strange & Dr Doom: Triumph and Torment ) it’s still worth checking out for some faster reads. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

The Fisherman

Grief is a terrible thing everyone needs to overcome in their lives. For widower, Abe, fishing is his great release. After losing his wife, fishing helped him get his life back on track. When his coworker, Dan, goes through an unimaginable tragedy, Abe extends a hand of friendship and offers to fish with him. While a quiet friendship blooms between the widowed men, Abe can’t help but see Dan drowning in despair…until they stop for breakfast on a rainy morning, going towards a spot Abe never heard of that Dan seems all too eager to fish at. Almost obsessively so. During this breakfast, they are treated to a folktale of the river, dark magic, the impossible, and Der Fischer who may have opened the gates between life and death. Desperately the men are on a course that might not just cost them their lives, but also their souls as Dan is willing to sacrifice it all for what he lost? Will Abe make the same choice?

So immediately when reading this I thought of a more Lovecraftian take on Pet Sematary . In many ways, I can see it but Langan weaves a pretty solid story telling the folktale of Der Fischer in between the main story. His writing story is very easy to get into and flowed very smoothly to me. Some will get put off by the story within a story aspect of the novel but he neatly pulls it off and neither story feels overstayed. I like his depictions of Dan’s rising mania and Abe’s internal battle against the abominations they face. I found myself wanting to know more about what Der Fischer unleashed and got to see more horrors from the other world. In the end, if you liked Pet Sematary and wished there was Lovecraft in it or wanted to get into cosmic horror but wanted something more modern, the Fisherman is a quick, well-written read I’d recommend. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Mary: An Awakening of Terror

Mary is a nobody in every sense of the word. Banking on the dreaded 5-0 and wading into menopause, alone in the world except for her “loved ones” (tiny little porcelain figurines she talks to, her life turns upside down once she loses her job. A job that barely pays her enough to get by as is. A sliver lining comes when her loathsome, dying aunt Nadine calls begging for help. After pissing off Mary’s cousin, Nadine is alone and unable to care for herself. Mary is soon left to journey from New York to the eerie desert town where she grew up. Returning home resurfaces not only her repressed hatred for her crass, despicable aunt by the layers of trauma she spent her life hiding as well as what might be the secrets of the town itself? With bodies piling up, visions playing Mary, and an obsession with a hospital that had been converted from an infamous serial killer’s home, the question becomes who and what is Mary?

So I read this book for my book club, going in completely fresh. I knew nothing about the book or author and was even kind of surprised it came out in 2022. As someone who sucks at socializing, suffers from a host of mental health issues, and is just awkward as hell, I felt for Mary. I found her to almost be an updated Carrie, someone shy, frumpy and pathetically beaten down who just wanted to matter. This story takes a lot of crazy ass turns from being a ghost story, to a psychological thriller, to some bizarre Midsommar levels of WTF. The book deserves to be experienced because it is fun as hell trying to figure out where its going. However fun that particular aspect is, it causes some issues towards the end. A character I hated got a half-assed redemption and the ultimate conclusion, while being fun and over-the-top gory, didn’t really satisfy me. The ending couple of chapters felt unnecessarily open-ended, but given how weird of a ride this story was, I can’t tell you if a sequel would work.

In the end, I enjoyed this book a lot but I didn’t love it. It’s very well written and really engaging but the ending as well as some plot choices fumble it from being great. Absolutely a good read worth checking out if you want a weirder kind of horror book. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

The Playground

Hey kids, have you ever heard of splatterpunk? Have you ever watched Willy Wonka and wished there was Saw in it? Well, Aaron Beauregard has you covered. Before I begin, the cover of this book tells you exactly what you’re getting into. Don’t judge a book by it’s cover, fuck that, here’s a good exception to the rule. This book is gnarly so if you have a weak stomach and the idea of children dying triggers you at all as well as some really, really WTF sexual stuff involving poop at one point, this book is absolutely not for you.

3 low-income families receive the chance of a lifetime from the reclusive billionaire and philanthropist, Geraldine Borden. She and her adopted son, Rock, have invited the families with their total 8 children to come and test some new state-of-the-art playground equipment in exchange for $3,000 per family. Not a bad deal, right? The parents even get to relax in their own private theater and monitor their children at play…until things go violently wrong. Ambushed by ravenous dogs, the children are chased through a razor blade-laced chute to a dungeonous series of macabre games where survival is the only reward. The parents, captive in places, are forced to watch there beloved children fight not only the horrific games but also themselves as Geraldine’s twisted games unfold…

Holy shit this book gave me whiplash. Is it a fun read? Hell no! Is it an exciting read I literally couldn’t put down? I really couldn’t. The kids are the superstars of the story and a lot of praise to Beauregard for writing thoughtful, authentic children instead of angelic Hollywood kind of kids. I felt for quite a few of them on their reactions and grisly fates while also cheering when the villain of the eight gets his just deserts. The games are eerie and pretty imaginative with some incredibly disturbing outcomes. I like that Geraldine is in no way a sympathetic or redeemable villain in a modern world of tragic villains. Rock is a really tragic character and his redemption at the end is well-earned. The flaw in the book is the parent sections which do drag the pacing down. The book is organized into 3 POVs: the kids, the parents, and Geraldine. The parents are literally locked in place and most of their sections revolve around reacting to what just happened to their kids. It makes the pacing a bit bumpy, especially around the middle.

So in the end I really enjoyed the book, though all be damned if I didn’t need a hot shower and a hug after. No, there’s no happy ending and yes this book is depressing and horrific but the ending lands and is self-contained which is cool. It’s honestly well worth a read and well written if you can get past the grotestuque subject matter. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Blood Meridan

What do you think of when you hear about the Old West? Cowboys, Indians, covered wagons, and dusty saloons where a shootout is a shot of whiskey and a whore away? John Wayne? Clint Eastwood? John Marsten? Well, like most people I did too. I heard many tales that this novel was one of the darkest, if not the darkest westerns ever written with one of the most fascinating villains in literature. Does it hold up to the claims?

The story begins with a young runaway referred to as The Kid who finds his way into the Glanton Gang, a crew of scalp hunters roaming across the west near Texas and Mexico in the 1850s. Normally I’d go deeper into the story but Blood Meridian doesn’t have much of a coventional plot. Much of the book is an experience in haunting philoshy and depravity. For real, this book is grim as hell so if you are easily triggered by racism, violence to people or animals, gore, or rape stay away from this book.

Cormac McCarthy (Rest in Peace) beautifully illustrates a hellish depiction of the Old West and the horrors of man left his own devices. There is some truly horrifying imagery and the way the book is written, I felt strained as the gang does getting worn down after dozens of bloody raids and losses in a unforgiving desert. Could this be a second hand horror story? I can see it in the way Dante’s Inferno could be seen that way. I really like that the Kid is not a good kid corrupted by the debauchery or even has anything close to a redemption- nope- he’s just as cutthroat and ruthless as Glanton and the rest. The standout, the man who does steal the show of the book, is the mysterious Judge Holden. He’s a huge, hulking hairless albino man that is almost inhumanly intelligent and depraved more than the rest; the sermons he gives are legendary and off putting as hell. Whenever Holden appears I was instantly griped and I think the praise he receives as a villain is well earned.

So is this book a masterpiece, yes, but that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. First, this is not written like a modern book. McCarthy is a novelist in the true sense of the word; ten pages in I said “oh shit this is one of them smart people books we don’t get anymore”. He won’t hold your hand. He has a pretty impressive vocabulary. You have to pay attention. One thing I admit irked the shit out of me was that there are no quotation marks but an awful lot of dialogue; do you see why I said pay attention? He also loves giant sentences with little punctuation so if you are trying to rush, things will blend together. The pacing is a double edged sword. 350 pages doesn’t feel like it.

In the end, this book is a masterpiece of dark fiction but be warned it’s not the easiest read and if the book didn’t hit you hard enough, the ending will. May the gaming gods bring you glory and like the Judge, you keep dancing on and on gleefully.

The Nerd Narrative

Many of you may have noticed I haven’t been writing as much lately. It has been unfortunate but it has been a rough year. I won’t say 2025 will be my year though, that seems to be a curse for people. I did want to let you guys know about the new podcast my buddy Donny, Nick,and myself have started. It is called The Nerd Narrative. It is basically all of us bullshitting about things like video games, movies and monsters. Either way check it out on Spotify.

Book Preview

As many of you know myself and @torstenvblog like to spend our time writing and watching horror movies. He hasn’t really put much up here in the last year or two because he has been hard at work writing another book. ( There is a link to his first The Flies Inside as well as my own at the bottom)

He did however send me a copy of it, which unknown to him I finally got around to finishing. It is only a beta version and he was editing earlier parts as I read later parts and others gave him feedback.

I won’t pretend it is the greatest thing I ever read, I won’t even try to convince anyone it is top 10. It is an unfinished book that still needs quite a bit of editing after all. What I will say is the potential for a great book is definitely there.

The story revolves around Pinstriker, a youth that has had a less than steller life and is about to get some special powers that won’t be making it any easier. As he struggles to come to terms with his new life in what I can only describe as a world that has undergone some sort of apocalypse I assume Pinstriker will be dragged into a brutal life of death and destruction.

Now I know you can find most of that on Netflix, but much of how it is done is what made it so interesting. One of the characters, Sid, is essentially a humanoid duck with superpowers and no not like Howard the Duck. Think a human that had duck-like features forced on him.

That is just a small preview of a book I read that has a long way to go before it is officially released, but has a ton of potential as well. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-flies-inside-torsten-v/1138929829?ean=9780578858821

https://a.co/d/cQB2rFf Ghost Stories of America

https://a.co/d/cRWBQaI More Ghost Stories of America

Princess Maker 2 Regeneration Review (Nintendo Switch)

I can say a lot of things about this lifesim from the early 90’s that has been redone for today,and I will. Right after I thank Bliss Brain and Gainax for tossing me a copy. It’s always a pleasure.

I won’t go into too much depth with the story, suffice it to say a god gives you a child free of sin to raise after you save a kingdom and you will make many choices that can lead to at least 70 endings. These choices will do things like raise any of I don’t know how many stats, probably around 2 dozen I never counted them. Some have real uses you will see in action like attack and defense for battles. Others are more like cooking or decorum which are things your princess does or how she behaves.

She is rather adorable

The game plays much like the first,you make a schedule and she will follow it for the month. Send her to work to make some money (apparently her father is a slaver as well as a hero) or send her to school to study things like fencing or horseback riding.

  As cute as the game is it does have some fundamental issues, nothing that ruins the game by any means but it does make it harder. I’m not crazy about the chosen font which in a bigger screen is no big deal but if you toss it in your switch lite does get a little harder to read (it is still perfectly legible) and the game doesn’t offer much guidance. For example it doesn’t tell you that the 30 gold it cost for classes or per day, and you can only send your princess to class for parts of the month not single days. It’s a very quick way to burn through your cash.

I’m sure the game came with an instruction manual back in the day,but today it does not. And while graphically it’s improved and the controls aren’t bad at the price they are asking I would have like more done to it. The game is still fun and is a 6 out of 10. Id pick it up on sale for fans of the genre. Best wishes and may the Gaming gods bring you glory.

Persona 3 Reload First Impressions

This is going to be far from a full review,but after spending about 20 hours with it I think it’s a good time to talk about how I feel about this one.

First,I loved the original and still count Persona 3 FEZ as one of the best JRPGs of all time. Reload obviously had a lot to live up to.

Now for starters the graphics look great. Not the best obviously but for a remaster of a game so old I didn’t expect some sort of ground breaking graphics simply an upgrade and it is a massive one.

Classroom shenanigans return

The gameplay is of course where this game shines,and the day to day activities of increasing social links or stats like courage, intelligence or charm. This is a very addictive loop,if you allow yourself to connect with the characters themselves. The old couple in the book store aren’t very interesting to me but my friend loves them because they remind them of their grandparents. On the other hand, getting to know the classmate dating a teacher is great to me not because I relate to him but simply because of how nonchalant the whole thing seems to be.

Always find the weak spot

Combat is fluid, tho not always very difficult unless you are playing on the harder difficulty setting where hitting weak spots and using Buffs/Debuffs along with negative status effects becomes very important. One of the first bosses was stomping me into the ground until I managed to poison them. A few rounds later they were dead.

This is where things get interesting tho, many people rush through the tower simply to get back to the story. Others ignore much of the side story stuff for the tower. I love that because it means the game has something for most people,or like me I will lose close to 100 hours trying to do it all. With the game on gamepass, there isn’t a good reason not to try this one out. Best wishes,and may the gaming gods bring you glory.