I’m nearly positive that of all 6 Alien shorts, Alone may be my favorite of the 6. Trapped aboard a dying, abandoned vessel in the middle of space, an android deals with the prospects of dying alone, but when she finds a “friend” of sorts, how far will she go to help her friend survive? I love the twists the story takes, especially putting the Alien in a role I admit we haven’t really seen before. There is a great moment at the end where you see her and her friend united that was really cool to see. The pacing is slower but I liked the final product so I didn’t mind much. I definitely recommend it for the fans and may the gaming gods bring you glory.
Category: Opinion
The Bye Bye Man
It’s been a long time since I saw a movie quite like the Bye Bye Man. Once in a great while I see a horror movie so bad it’s funny, which is why I’m regarding it as a comedy too. All the better is it’s not like Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn , which know it was goofy and this movie basically tries to be as serious as it can be with a hack premise. But the question is, how bad are we talking?
In typical horror cliche fashion, three college kids rent a old house near campus. While cleaning out the old furniture, they find a old nightstand with a bunch of deranged carvings on the the inside reading ” don’t say it, don’t think it.” and the words the Bye Bye Man. From there, the teens being seeing things and a tall man with a dog stalks there’s minds but they can’t stop the urge to spread the madness of the Bye Bye Man…
As a horror movie, Bye Bye Man is utter crap but as a ” so bad its good” movie its freaking awesome. The imagery behind Bye Bye man isn’t explored at all like the train images or what’s up with him and his dog. The acting was hilarious, especially from the lead actress and one particular scene from the lead character in a car that had me in stitches. The effects are laughably bad. The movie doesn’t really drag so that’s a positive. In the end, stay away if you are looking for scares but looking for unintentional laughs, step right up. May the gaming gods bring you glory.
Avengers Endgame Review (Savior)
As usual, @torstenvblog an I went to check out the new Marvel movie, and I will, of course, this will be spoiler free.
I won’t say much about the story because I feel saying pretty much anything about it will be a spoiler. Obviously tho it covers what happens after the Thanos snap and how they all deal with it. Some of them obviously will deal with it far better than others. The general tone of the start of the movie as you can imagine has the team feeling pretty down. Admittedly this never changed.
For a three hour movie, it never felt like three hours, and even tho the first hours pacing felt a bit off to me and some of the decisions felt a bit odd at first by the end of the movie they all made much more sense. The end of the movie left me very satisfied and the final act was nothing if not extraordinary. It had everything you would want it to have, action, intrigue, explosions, and even a few tears.
I can’t say it was the best or even my favorite in the Marvel universe. It wasn’t even necessarily the ending I wanted to the whole Infinity War or what the last over a decade was building to. It was, however, the ending I needed. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.
Avengers: Endgame
11 years have come down to one final bout against Thanos, the Mad Titan. If you paid attention to Age of Ultron, you’ll remember the line that inspired the title of a movie that is definitely the end of an era.
Beginning days after Thanos wiped 50% of the universe’s living creatures, the last remaining Avengers mourn for there fallen and there loss. After being reunited with Iron Man and Nebula, they plan a final attack on Thanos, but to no avail. All hope seems lost. Years go by and they try to live there new lives but then hope comes from an unlikely fellow that gives them an idea what to do, but there is no guarantee it will work and could destroy what little they were able to rebuild. Can the Avengers rise to face failure, loss, and fear and bring down Thanos one last time?
It takes a lot to make me speechless during a movie and even more to choke me up and I was choked up hard here, especially the ending. I’m not going to spoil anything but Savior and I agreed it closed the door to this particular saga while keeping some new doors open. The acting is fantastic and there is a very good mix of levity and sadness throughout. The pacing is slow for the first hour or so but it doesn’t feel 3 hours. There are minor story complaints I have, but sadly I can’t discuss them without spoiler territory. In the end, Endgame is a great end to an amazing saga that is long, but well worth the wait for an insanely epic climax and highly recommended. As is customary for my reviews for Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron , here’s a list of phase 3 and it’s movies leading into Endgame. May the gaming gods bring you glory, whatever it takes…
Captain America: Civil War (Cap side) / Doctor Strange ( 2016) / Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017) / Spider-man: Homecoming / Thor: Ragnarok / Black Panther / Avengers: Infinity War / Ant-Man and the Wasp / Captain Marvel / Avengers: Endgame.
Happy Alien day 2019
Happy Alien day everyone and what a strange year it’s been for the Xenomorph, finding a new home with Disney ( a fact that still gets me to scratch my head now and then but laugh knowing the Queen is now a Disney princess). While we haven’t got any concrete news of a new movie, we have Fox helping to release some awesome fan films including Alien: Containment , Alien: Specimen , Alien: Night Shift , and Alien: Ore . This year is the 40th anniversary of the classic Alien , a icon of horror and science fiction that has nothing but my love and respect that proves in space, no one can hear you scream. May the gaming gods bring you glory.
Imperator Rome First Impressions
There are a couple of things I want to get out of the way first. One, shout out to my friend @codyaparis for picking this up for me. I wouldn’t have been able to get this one without him. Second, this is in no way a full or even partial review. This is just my initial impressions after the first three or four hours for the people that may be on the fence about picking it up.
I have played my fair share of Paradox games and grand strategy games, I am by no means an expert but I have some experience. Enough experience to say while not the easiest one, this isn’t a bad place to start. The combat is easy enough to learn but deep enough that you will need to think before you act or build your army. I loved that unlike Victoria 2 if I took over an entire country I could simply take the whole thing rather than the original piece I wanted. There is a punishment for this tho. Do this too much and the countries around you will get pissed. It is a nice balance.
The tutorial was nice as well, better than most of the other paradox games in areas, in other areas tho it could have used some work. It has you build ships but it doesn’t do a very good job of telling you how to get on them. It works similar to other games so it wasn’t too big of a deal but there are other areas where they simply don’t explain things. Don’t worry tho, the Paradox community will happily help you out. I am writing this the day of release and there are already how-to videos, and I have watched them all week.
I will have a better review probably in a week or two, but as of now the game is fun and has very few problems and looks pretty damn good. If you are on the fence and have played other titles, the first few hours have convinced me it was worth the wait. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.
Jax Mortal Kombat 11 Ending Controversy, Sort of.
For those that don’t know and don’t want to know, now is the time to stop reading. From here on out there are spoilers for one of the endings to Mortal Kombat 11, and there is no way to avoid that.
Here we go, the ending to the classic arcade mode will see Jax going back in time to end slavery early by stopping the slave trade and getting his wife and daughter back into his life. (these 2 events are not related, he just does them both) This has a small number of people that are being quite vocal screaming racism. The argument goes simply like this, Shao Kahn also has slaves for generations and by not freeing them when he has more slaves from dozens of worlds, races, and species Jax is racist because he only cares about black people.
That is it, that is the argument in a nutshell. This is the most ridiculous argument for racism I have possibly ever heard. Forget the fact that he would need to do something multiple gods have failed to do in defeating Shao Kahn, you are expecting one guy to cross worlds and time to stop something while ignoring his own ancestors and planet. It is also a video game, why are people thinking so much about it? Just enjoy the game and realize that the vast majority of black people in the world would do the exact same thing with that power, and rightfully so. It was a horrible time in world history that humanity should be ashamed off not arguing over a fictional character for ending it. It is, however, a very small minority of people upset about it as far as I can tell, and I doubt anyone upset about it even reads this. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.
Imperator Rome (Preview)
Imperator Rome is the newest grand strategy game from Paradox Interactive, the people that made Victoria 2 (PC) and Stellaris Console Edition (PS4). Due to release April 25th (Yes tomorrow) this time the fine people over at paradox bring us all the way back to the classical era and the founding of the Roman Empire. It has many of the same characteristics of the others, a massive map you will spend most of your time looking at and a ton of menus but they all look much more crisp and clean. They also gave out copies very early for people on youtube so you know exactly what you are buying (I will share a couple videos below) which I love. Nothing beats a company that is upfront and confident in their product. They are hiding absolutely nothing about this which I appreciate.
If you like grand strategy games, this one is worth looking at but if you haven’t played one before I have to be honest, be careful. They have a huge learning curve. They can be frustrating and hard to learn but once you do you will wonder why you struggled. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.
This one is a bit long but gives a good idea of what you are buying and how to play.
New Rules In China Gaming May Cause Problems
China has started approving games again, this is about the end of the good news. Some of the most popular games, mainly based on their imperial passed are banned. Mahjong and poker are outright banned. They also now have a ban on blood and corpses as they are worried about violence in video games.
They actually have a new authority on that sort of thing called the State Administration of Press and Publication and they seem to be heavily concerned about violence and addiction in young gamers. It seems like devs and publishers got around this by simply changing the color of blood t other colors and a sort of loophole, which they have now closed and banned in all colors and have even gone so far to ban certain political metaphors. If you want more details engadget.com has an excellent article. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
I remember hearing about these series of books just as I got into reading in my late teens, mainly because of the disturbing nature of there subject matters. Going into them, I was excited as hell to read them, especially considering the David Fincher movie was right around the corner then. The question is, did it live up to the hype?
Mikael Blomkvist was a well off journalist, publisher, and co owner of a popular magazine until a lawsuit turned his life to shit and nearly destroyed his career overnight. With his career in jeopardy, he figures he has nothing left to lose when he’s summoned to a private meeting with Henrik Vanger, a millionaire with a task for Blomkvist: discover what happened to Harriet Vanger and in return he’ll get the evidence to win his suit and save his career. In this he isn’t alone, crossing paths with anti-social, strange hacker and researcher Lisabeth Salander, who’s dealing with her dark past and present. Can these two solve the dark mystery of what happened to Harriet Vanger?
Before I begin, I only read the first book and haven’t seen any of the movies so my familiarity with the series ends here. The book was pretty fascinating with two interesting lead characters and a lot of twisting back stories in the Vanger family. Salander keeps you’re attention because the first few chapters are slow. On the whole, the mystery is good and there is some really dark shit in it; the ending I feel was disappointing. Also I have to note something that was a bit disorienting. Like Let the Right One In it was translated into English from native Swedish and the sentence structures and wording feels odd and takes getting used to. In the end, I found it to be a solid book worth checking out if you like mysteries or dark thrillers. May the gaming gods bring you glory.
Savior Gaming 