Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn

birds of prey

Ok, warning right here and now: this review will have some harsh language in it. Since Savior saw IT Chapter Two (Review) with me, he’ll understand why I ask then as now WHAT THE FUCK did I just watch. To paraphrase a quote my friend Ben “This movie is like dropping acid and watching fireworks go off” The man is not wrong…

The day has come ms Harley Quinn thought never would; Joker dumped her and now she’s all alone against a pissed off Gotham underworld that has a bone to pick with her now that she isn’t under his protection anymore. Reinventing herself as a mercenary (among a shitload of other traits) she finds herself caught hunting a diamond for cruel gangster Roman Sionis aka Black Mask. Aligning herself with disgruntled cop Renee Montoya, hapless club singer with a killer voice Black Canary, crossbow wielding vigilante Huntress, and young pickpocket Cassie Cain as they must come together to kick Mask’s ass.

Well, if you hated Suicide Squad  you’re going to hate this movie and even more if you were a fan of the source material. The movie is definitely fun and the fights are pretty damn cool, using the hell out of the R rating. The characters are cool and the actors are definitely having fun, especially Mcgregor as Black Mask. What gets me is the utter batshit editing and narrative structure; Harley is our narrator and going through her mind is like going on a drug trip and can be hard to follow at times.  The music, while all not bad gets annoying and is overused a lot. Besides the pop music being overused, the gratuitous language and bird references get old quick too.  While not a huge issue, I just feel like I have to say the title is misleading as hell; there is hardly any Birds of Prey in Birds of Prey and should be seen as a Harley movie first and foremost. In the end, if you wondered what would happen if you threw Suicide Squad and the Deadpool  movie in a blender, added glitter and meth with some liquid girl power and hit frappe you’d get this movie, a fun, entertaining WTF mess. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

 

Faeria Free on Epic Store Starting Today

Independent video games developer Abrakam in partnership with indie publisher Versus Evil are pleased to announce that digital collectible card and turn-based strategy game Faeria is FREE for a week on The Epic Store starting from today through to February 27th. During the free week, The Epic Store will be offering two DLC bundles.

The Epic Launch DLC Bundle for $24.99 (represents a 40% discount) Full Price – $41.65 and includes The Chronicles of Gagana, Fall of Everlife and Resurgence DLC’s.

The All DLC Bundle priced $59.99  (represents a 40% discount) Full Price – $99.99 and includes the entire catalogue of DLC’s available for Faeria including Elements, Avatars, Orbs, Cardbacks and more.

Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Ultimate Edition (PS4) Review

Before we get this one started, as always, I want to take a minute to thank that guys and gals over at Plan of Attack, Obsidian Entertainment, and Red Cerberus a huge thank you for the review code so we could play what I can only describe as a masterpiece of its genre. It is truly an honor to be chosen to play a game to review, and while I fully plan to bash this one a bit, it deserves plenty of praise as well.

First the story. I will start by saying you do not HAVE to play POE1 to enjoy POE2, it is however very helpful. Depending on what choices you make there are returning characters and they will make comments and mention of the last game as you return to the role of the Watcher and Eothas awakens from under your home at Caed Nua.

Eothas is a god, and a god that decides people need to die, and your soul, at least in part, belongs to him. Now why this occurs I won’t be talking about, you will have to chase him down across the world of to find that out yourself, which leads to what I believe is the best addition to the series, your boat.

The boat works as your main form of transportation around the Deadfire Islands, and you can not have a game with islands and boats without pirates. What do pirates do? They attack ships.

download

Ship fights require you to have a crew, cannons and so much more. The better the crew, the better your ship will operate. Have a big ship and a skeleton crew? Things won’t go so well. Have a well-trained crew with plenty of cannons and food but forgot to buy cannonballs? You are still in trouble. You will always need to make sure there is food and shot for everyone to avoid a mutiny, and if things go bad, prepare to be boarded. This all works both ways tho, and you should feel free to do the same to anyone silly enough to annoy you.

The battle system is also a strong point in this game if you like Isometric style RPG’s. From the start, you have two options, real-time with pause where the action is always going and you can pause it when you need a second to make some choices. The other choice (and the way I played it most of the time) Turn-based. This was added in the 5.0 PC version and will be familiar to those that play Xcom 2. Regardless of how you choose to play it, you will never be at a loss for strategy and things to kill. On the lower difficulties, you can make a mistake here or there and be fine but at the higher ones, the small mistakes mean certain death.

Speaking difficulty there is truly something for everyone. If you don’t have a lot of time but love the story, there is a difficulty for that. Do you want to go all out and see if you can survive the hardest challenges possible undefeated? They got you covered.

Now earlier I did say I would bash the game a little, and here are the bad points. Nothing was a deal-breaker for me, but there were a few things that got to be pretty bad at times. For example a few times I got stuck on what seemed like absolutely nothing and couldn’t move my character. This was easy enough to solve by switching characters and letting the stuck character come over to me on his own. I will also note there was a patch while I was playing that may have patched that out since it hasn’t happened since, but be aware it did occur.

Another thing that got to me was the occasional frame rate drops and slowdowns. At no point did they affect gameplay, they just exist and bother some people more than others. For me, I don’t care if they don’t last more than a second or two and these didn’t. My last complaint is my biggest tho. Even on a PS4 Pro, this game has some significant load times. They are far from the worst I have run into, but when you have to sit through a few in a row it gets to a guy.

Bottom line tho when push comes to shove, this is early 2020 PS4 game of the year candidate for me. The game is beautiful, the story and world are well crafted and the sound and voice acting is top-notch. 9/10 must-play for RPG fans.

The Mist ( book)

mist book

What can I say, Stephen King is a legend. I’ve read short stories and 1,000+ page books alike and even those I wasn’t in love with, still weren’t god awful. The Mist is a novella previously from his collection Skeleton Crew that in recent years has been made sold separately more, which is how I read it; the movie is a pretty damn good adaptation with a much more heart wrenching ending that I recommend watching, even if some of the creature effects haven’t aged well ( a mini review, look at that).

David Drayton and his family feel lucky to be alive after a massive storm tears through there lakeside home. The damage is heavy but everyone is safe; just a nasty summer storm after all. Dave and his son Billy, along with his despicable neighbor go to the local town grocery store as a fog emerges. The fog is heavy and reaches seemingly everywhere. Understandably, the store is pandemonium from the storm of like minded folks who wanted to move on with there lives. Someone emerges that there is something in the mist. It’s not long before they see a series of ungodly horrors roaming the mists and the deaths that accrue when anyone ventures out. Trapped, another threat looms from within as people turn on each and a mini cult rises claiming the end of days has come leaving David with the choice of venturing out or get sacrificed to the monsters outside…

For the most part, The Mist is a simple but effective quick horror story. It’s nice to see King switch things up and do a first person story, which he does well and I’d like to read more of from him. There wasn’t any characters I disliked and I thought they were all solid. I like the variety of monsters and the gory kills throughout the story. The biggest problem I have is the first few chapters, I’d say first 3 to be more specific drag, and the story doesn’t really pick up until a decent ways in so the story feels longer than it should. Regardless, it’s a pretty good creepy shorter story from the horror master if his gigantic works put you off and honestly, the movie was a pretty faithful adaptation as well, just with a way more bleaker ending. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

fallen order

Hell may have frozen over because EA gave us what I’m saying is honestly the best Star Wars gaming experience I’ve ever had. Remember EA? The ones who crushed so many souls with such disasters as Anthem, Star Wars: Battlefront as well as the catastrophic Battlefront II, and Mass Effect: Andromeda. It was looking like EA had gone to the Dark Side without a sign of redemption, but here we have it…

Years after Order 66 decimated the Jedi and the Empire conquered the galaxy, the Inquisitors under Darth Vader hunt the last remnants of the Jedi. Cal Kestis was a child padawan when 66 dropped; he’s grown up in hiding, living job to job in secret and afraid of the day when he’s found. One day, he uses the force to save a friend and the Empire comes, lead by the Second Sister, a powerful Inquisitor. Saved by a runaway Jedi master and a ex scoundrel, it’s up to Cal to recover his power, face not only the demons of his past as well of those of his new friends, and find a artifact that could reinstate the Jedi or damn the universe forever armed only with his lightsaber, the Force, and his helpful droid BD-1.

Despite the hugely positive reviews, I was hugely skeptical but for the most part I was blown away. Gameplay feels like a healthy, fluid mix of Souls and Uncharted while feeling unique on it’s own. Shockingly, especially in this day and age in gaming, the bulk of the game is story with a ton of collectibles ( many a which are parts to build your own lightsaber from scratch). The story is damn good and adds a lot to Star Wars lore without beating you senseless with aimless nostalgia like Star Wars The Rise of Skywalker tried doing. I got invested in the characters more than I have in Star Wars in a while, and I was rooting for them as the plot thickened, even sympathizing with the tragic Inquisitors. I do have some issues sadly. On certain worlds, the graphics do get muddy; whether the graphical dampening is because I’m not playing on a 4K TV matters or not I’m not sure. Also another problem I have are the frequent, long load times as well as the hard crashes that made me go back a ways. Despite some issues, this is a great game I can’t recommend enough and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

 

Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius

jimmy neutron movie

The other night I was feeling old as hell, recently turning 29, and I needed to feel like a kid again. I remember seeing the trailer for the first time and being perplexed by this new CGI animation. So almost two decades later, did I still enjoy a old childhood favorite or did it die with much other nostalgic things?

Retroville is a quiet little suburb that would be a run of the mill town if not for the chaotic inventions of Jimmy Neutron, 10 year old boy genius. Jimmy is mostly a normal kid with normal parents, has friends, and a robot dog named Goddard and has a desire to communicate with extraterrestrial beings. After sending a probe into orbit, a race of egg based aliens finds it and heads to Earth for the adults because of Jimmy. At first, the kids are living a dream that becomes a nightmare once reality sets in- they need there parents. So the kids of Retroville have to ban together and save there parents before they are sacrificed to a Kaiju chicken god!

I’m pretty surprised how much fun I had with Jimmy Neutron as an adult. The movie has a good blend of humor and heart with a solid story and characters behind it. Patrick Stewart as King GooBot is a pretty nice touch as well. The animation holds up well enough but I have to admit the pop music makes the movie feel dated as shit. In the end, I’d say it’s a pretty good movie the whole family can enjoy. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Brahms: The Boy II trailer 2

First, I gotta give the studio credit for posting this trailer on Make A Friend Day. Besides that, I still haven’t stopped asking why this movie exists. I guess Brahms possessed a kid, even though he wasn’t a ghost, this just gives me a hard kind of generic vibe. I can’t say I’m waiting it. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

The Possession

possession

You ever watch a movie and think to yourself  “Damn, this actor is way too good for this movie”? Well that was me throughout the entirety of this movie with Jeffrey Dean Morgan.

Clyde is a basketball coach who is recently divorced, taking his daughters Hannah and Emily for the weekend. During a casual trip to a yard sale, Emily comes across a cute wooden box with some carvings in on it. They buy the box. Emily becomes infatuated by the box and starts becoming distant, ravenous, and eventually hostile when not without it. What’s her obsession with the box?

Everyone, I have to be honest, this is one of those times I felt bad for the actors involved. Jeffrey Dean Morgan tries his ass off to make something out of this movie and the cast is pretty solid around him with a decent horror score. BUT this is pretty much every by-the-numbers haunting/ possession movie ever. There aren’t really any curve balls but there is some spotty CGI  and unnecessary jump scares. Honestly, I think this could have been a better family drama because all the horror elements bring down what could’ve been a alright movie.  In the end, this is totally skip-able and generic. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

28 Weeks Later

28 weeks

28 Days Later is hands down my favorite zombie film and one of my all time favorite horror movies. The sequel, many consider to be a superior sequel or at least of the prestige few horror sequels achieve by being near as good as the first.

We join a family torn apart during the Rage virus outbreak in Britain. John and his wife were hiding out until a massive swarm descended upon them; he watched his wife seemingly get devoured and instead of trying to save her, he ran. 28 weeks after the outbreak, NATO declares a small part of Britain is clean to re-inhabit and the Rage virus has been cleared out. John is reunited with his kids Sam and Andy, who discover that there mom is still alive after breaking quarantine. In her blood is a natural immunity to Rage but she still is a carrier and highly contagious. And with a single kiss, the hope of that the Rage virus was destroyed comes to a violent and bloody end…

That last part I can’t stress enough, 28 Weeks is way bloodier and more disturbing than the first. There were a few times where I felt my eyes pop open in surprise how far it went. While I admire the choice, I also feel the gore became too gratuitous for it’s own good ( the helicopter scene as an example). I will say, the movie continues the original’s legacy of good characters and being filmed really damn well as well as being genuinely scary. What’s nice is this is a completely standalone sequel so you don’t need to have watched the first one. The opening is expertly done and one of my favorite opening horror scenes. Something I regretfully have to say unfortunately besides the overuse of gore, I hate the couple jump scare scenes they add in but, to the movie’s credit, only one is just totally fruitless. In the end, 28 Weeks Later is a damn good sequel I’d highly recommend and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

“The Batman” Bat-suit reveal

This is going to be a quick post, but a juicy one for the Bat fans out there: our first look at Rob Pattinson in the iconic Bat-suit. I love the Batman: Arkham Knight kinda vibe with the armor and I love the idea of the symbol being forged from the gun that killed his parents. I’m excited to see the coloring on the suit, but so far the look is brooding and realistic and a welcome sight so far. May the gaming gods bring you glory.