I have to admit I was surprised the trailer didn’t drop during Pet Sematary 2019 but after an extremely tough week, it was a nice surprise. I adore the choice of starting the trailer with adult Beverly and the old woman and slowly letting the suspense build. Like the first part, I’m glad they aren’t showing much, which helped immensely the first time. I can’t wait to float this September with Pennywise again, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.
Category: Opinion
Crawl Trailer (July 12th)
This July we are getting exactly what we need in 2019, a movie about alligators that show up during a hurricane in Florida. Honestly, I feel like most of the movie was given away in the trailer, but hey who knows, judge for yourself. I personally think the movie looks pretty bad. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.
Final Destination 3
It’s been a while since I dug into the Final Destination series and why not resume with the entry that was originally in 3D. From the mid to late 2000’s, 3D made a decent comeback for one reason or another and with Death’s wacky antics, 3D was perfect.
Wendy and a group of her friends and classmates are at a carnival before graduation. Wendy is taking pictures of everyone having fun and all is well. Finally they decide to hop on an intense roller coaster. Wendy has a vision of how things will go horribly wrong and after getting kicked off the roller coaster, they come to find out it was true. Death is coming for the survivors but can the photographs she took help save them?
Final Destination 3 is pretty much the same formula as the first and Final Destination 2 . Much like the others, it’s not going to scare anymore. You are basically coming for goofy deaths and over the top characters and it delivers. Whether it’s watching 2 Paris Hilton wannabes getting cooked in a tanning bed or getting crushed by a falling sign after a villain speech. I can’t say I liked any of the characters and without Tony Todd’s cameo, there was 0 dread. You can’t really notice the 3D except for a few brief moments in the roller coaster sequence. In the end it’s a forgettable sequel but is fairly humorous. May the gaming gods bring you glory.
Mass Effect 2
There are very few times in life when lightning strikes twice, especially during story telling. Mass Effect was an epic space adventure with fascinating lore, great characters and cool side stories woven throughout. The first game ended with Shepherd preparing to set off to fight the Reapers, and here the saga continues.
Right after the events of the first game, the Normandy finds itself under attack by a new threat: the Collectors, a race of creatures feared and forgotten with time. There weaponry is far more advanced and there attack swift, the Normandy is destroyed and Shepherd is dead…but not for long. Years later Shepherd is recreated and brought back through scientific means by the Illusive Man, the head of the human elitist group known as Cerberus. Cerberus is widely known as the terrorists and villains but the Illusive Man can’t deny the threat the Collectors and the Reapers possess. Shepherd must reunite with old allies and search out new scientists, convicts, soldiers to face the Collectors while under the flag of Cerberus…
While I admit I wasn’t a fan of the death and resurrection of Shepherd, the game is superior to the first in almost every way. Martin Sheen is fantastic as the Illusive Man and steals the show for me. Game play is drastically improved with more options and a great variety of allies to help you make some awesome combinations. The Collectors are a creepy enemy with a cool origin. The new characters are awesome while the old characters grow in some fascinating ways. Mass Effect 2 is an outstanding sequel I can’t recommend enough. May the gaming gods bring you glory.
HBO Watchmen teaser
When I heard HBO was rebooting the Watchmen, one of the most important graphic novel stories ever, I was pretty intrigued. While I had no issue with the movie and actually thought it improved some things, I was curious what could be done. The first teaser looks interesting and the dark tone is there. I’m curious if this is meant to be before or after the events of Watchmen, considering the cult of people wearing Rorschach’s mask, I’m leaning towards after. I am curious what they’ll come up with. May the gaming gods bring you glory.
More Thoughts on Imperator Rome
So I have decided to do this less as a review and more as a series of post on my thoughts as I play. You can find my first one Imperator Rome First Impressions.
I have bounced around a bit, played a few countries, got killed, started over and finally settled as playing Carthage because I wanted to create New Carthage and destroy Rome. It is probably a pretty standard goal I admit, next I will use Boi to take over a bunch of stuff cuz reasons.
Anyway, I am still having a ton of fun with the game but there are a few things bothering me that others have also brought up. This is mainly the games mana system. You get certain powers such as religion and military and others which let you perform certain actions, and I spend a lot of my time simply waiting for these things to build up. This is by no means a deal breaker, and I get they needed a way to balance things, but maybe they could boost it a bit so I spend less time sitting around waiting.
Aside from that, I really enjoy spending time planning wars, who I want to attack and when, forging new alliances and deciding what I need to trade the most. Changing history is always a good time for me and I can see myself playing this long into the future even tho I know paradox will probably screw us with DLC. A lot of other people have complained that many of the aspects of the game just don’t go deep enough, for example, you can interact with characters like Crusader Kingdoms 2, but not as in depth and by combining so many aspects of games but to a lesser degree you take away from the total experience. For me tho I simply don’t see it. While I can agree where they are coming from the enjoyment is still there and none of it seems overly watered down.
The game is still having bugs fixed tho, and it seems like this will be a bigger process than many expected so it seems like there will be more of these updates. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.
Spider-man: Far from Home trailer 2
I have to say I had to chuckle that they start the trailer with a spoiler warning for Avengers: Endgame from Tom Holland, who was notorious for spoiling stuff during Infinity War. I have to say, being a long time Spidey fan , I think I figured out the plot from this latest trailer but I’ll call it out in the review. Mysterio looks great and the monsters look pretty cool. I think it’ll be a cool movie and it has the potential to be a great sequel. May the gaming gods brig you glory.
Looking For Alaska
I’d like to dedicate this review to the only girl who ever gave me a chance and understood why I loved books. In a strange way this book reflected one of the most painful times of my life, the before, the cataclysm, and the aftermath. We always cling to the before when after falls when all we have is a billion questions and wet, crushed petals of what could have been…
Miles Halter is a smart, quiet young man who is fascinated by last words. He isn’t an outcast but just doesn’t seem the need to stand out. He is sent to Culver Creek, a prestigious boarding school in Alabama, all the way across the US from his native Florida. At Culver Creek, he finds himself amongst a host of snotty rich kids but he finds friends of his own in the prank loving group lead by his his roommate Chip ” The Colonel” Martin and Alaska Young. Alaska’s eccentric ways and mysterious past fascinate Miles, now dubbed “Pudge”, and he can’t help but be drawn to her. Maybe even love her. Hi-jinks ensue when they pull a epic prank on the rich kids and they spend a night drinking to celebrate. Life seems to be going great for Miles until Alaska storms out one night and the After begins, and Miles is left to watch the belonging and life he loved break apart…
For those who read the book, you’ll understand why I pretty much couldn’t talk about the second half of the book. I have to say I really enjoyed this book. The story is well paced and the characters are really likable. The way Green writes is very natural and I have to admit, it was pretty easy to lose a few hours inside of it’s pages which is one of the best compliments I can give a writer. I give him credit on the ambiguity of the ending and for not copping out with a forced happy ending. In the end I highly recommend this book as a good read but also to young inspiring writers too. I’d like to thank my dear friend again for sharing this story with me and I’d like to wish her a happily ever After in a new chapter of her life. May the gaming gods bring you glory.
Star Wars Battlefront (EA)
Games, like all forms of media entertainment, have expectations and as part of life, sometimes our expectations crash and burn. Star Wars: Battlefront 2 was one of my favorite Star Wars games and one of the games that got me the Battlefield franchise. You can imagine my joy when I found out the makers of Battlefield were making there own Battlefront game…
EA’s Battlefront first and foremost has no actual story mode. It stays exactly within the original trilogy of Star Wars , The Empire Strikes Back , and Return of the Jedi . If you got the plain $60 copy, you essentially got a game with a small hand full of repetitive maps played with basic game modes. The game looks great and sounds great and the gameplay itself is solid but my friend Autobot and I sat down and played every mode this game had to offer in about 3 hours. The heroes, to which each side has only 3 each, are clunky but wreck infantry easily enough. There was a huge lack of vehicular combat, let a lone being able to seamlessly jump in. Flying was serviceable but clunky.
Let’s keep in mind however, this game was released in 2015, around the time The Force Awakens was coming to theaters. While I have access to the DLC maps and two bonus heroes, just from sight I can say it doesn’t seem like much considering what the season pass originally cost. Finally, we come to epic problem: because this is a strictly multiplayer game with a bad reputation to begin with, it’s hard as hell to get a game going. I waited 10 minutes to play a game at 1:00 pm on a Tuesday in 2019 and got nowhere. As far as I can tell at the moment, it’s nearly a dead game which is why I can’t recommend it at all, even for dirt cheap. May the gaming gods bring you glory.
Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween
Goosebumps (2015) was a strange thing for ole Torsten: seeing iconic monsters from my childhood on the big screen lead by the freaky talking dummy I fully admit scared me as much as Michael Myers and the Xenomorph when I was a kid but knowing damn well this movie wasn’t meant for me. It was meant for a generation of young kids who barely know what the hell a book is let alone a Goosebumps book, and that tears my heart out I must admit. So if the first disappointed and made me kinda sad, why watch the second- I’m a glutton for punishment, that’s why.
Goosebumps 2 begins with a small family in the quiet suburbs. Sonny and his best friends are normal kids trying to earn a buck but cleaning out houses and such, and one day they are called to a abandoned old house said to be haunted. They are told they can keep whatever they want, just clean it out. Inside is a old, unfinished manuscript that just happens to belong to R.L Stine. They also find Slappy the dummy and accidentally bring him to life. At first the dummy seems to be a friend but that changes when his intentions become clear- to unleash the power of Stine’s monsters and take over the town. Its up the kids and Sarah, Sonny’s big sister, to take down Slappy before it’s too late.
I have to say I kinda like this movie more than the first but it’s still far from great. This movie doesn’t try to feed you as much nostalgia and does in a lot of ways feel like a more modern episode of the show. The effects are better and the CGI has improved. Jack Black is better both as Stine and Slappy; the kids I wasn’t a fan of at first but they grew on me throughout the movie. This movie, pretty obviously, wasn’t made for the old fans and there are a few scenes here and there that made me groan, and much of the plot feels retold from the first. Honestly, it feels more like a soft reboot than a sequel. In the end, it’s not a terrible movie for kids but its absolutely not a substitute for anything that came before. May the gaming gods bring you glory.
Savior Gaming 