Why love the “grays” of Marvel

I wanted to do something kind of different today and talk about something that really changed my outlook on how super heroes and villains are portrayed. Marvel has given us such great examples of gray characters, characters that ride the line between the borders of good and evil. Granted, while characters like Spider-man or the Red Skull are purely good and evil, many are unclassifiable.  Magneto wants safe refuge and rights for mutant kind after witnessing man’s cruelty first hand as a holocaust survivor; Doom just wants his people to prosper and be a good ruler, hoping he can see his dead mother again; Venom wants to protect the innocent; Hulk is just a beast that yearns for peace; Punisher kills, mams, tortures those who do the same to innocent people. The list goes on and while Doom ultimately is a villain, Hulk is ultimately a anti-hero, and The Guardians of the Galaxy are ultimately heroes, the verdict is out on the characters of Marvel as it is on us all in our everyday lives. Are we really good, are we really the villain we appear to be to those who trespass against us or the hero our loved ones take us for? That perspective always drove me in my personal work, and I think that’s why Marvel’s characters resonate so deep with us. May the gaming gods bring you glory, and as the epic Stan Lee would say, Excelsior!

 

Division 2 Preview

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If you are anything like me a while ago you had a friend that was all aboard the hype train for The Division. Talked about this game like it was going to be ground breaking, even showed you the trailer where the guy closed the car door, which at the time was amazing. The problem is, while good the game didn’t go beyond that. The dark zone was cool but it had a lot of issues and the game itself ended up being a love it or hate it kind of thing. The DLC helped a lot tho.

Now comes The Division 2. The game looks amazing ( there will be a video below) Taking place after the virus has died down while humanity tries to rebuild we have a new problem. That problem is each other. Trying to survive people have formed bands of people willing to rob and steal. Now agents have a seemingly new task. There will also be 3 episodes with new stories and places to explore. Oh, and those 3 episodes? 100% free. The game looks good and it sounds like they have learned some valuable lessons. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Trials Fusion

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Trials Fusion is free this month for Playstation 4 along with XCom 2. Which of course means I am going to play and review them.  Trials Fusion was up first since it is the easiest and quickest to get into. The first few levels are training stages, but they mostly don’t even feel like it.

You will ride a bike (or a little later an a 4 wheeler quad) across a track and have to guide your bike across jumps and various obstacles. It varies from pretty simple to I wanted to throw my damn controller through a window. Fusion is however fun, and at the great price of free you should try it. I love seeing my friend’s name alongside my bike going through what their trials and trying to beat them as well, a great feature that I am glad to see. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Unfriended: the Dark Web trailer 1

Why is this a thing? I know we live in a digital age and there are plenty of opportunities for horror in that age but I give up when you have movies based off social media or Skype. I will say the second movie has a interesting premise and I’m glad it’s not a ghost story, but I can’t the trailer really wowed me. I’d watch it on Netflix or something like that but wouldn’t pay full for it. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Just Friends (2005)

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Oh Ryan Reynolds, you wily bastard. This dude pretty much always makes me laugh, and just friends is no different. From him starting out as a nerdy fat kid that can barely talk to his best friend and woman he loves to player that warns a friend that once you enter the friend zone you become a total non sexual object, like a lamp. He plays his role perfectly.

After being humiliated and swearing to become someone, and a pop star accidentally setting a fire and grounding a plane in his home town in New Jersey he must spend a night at home where he hasn’t been since. Of course we have the usual runs into girl, tries to date girl, things go bad, hilarity ensues. It is a rom-com, we know the routine. There isn’t anything new here, and honestly do we every expect there to be? The movie is funny and the story good but it is cliché. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

The Devil Inside

devil inside The tagline directly above is true, I’m sure the Vatican doesn’t want you to see this movie but I have to say after seeing it, it’s Ok to follow there advice.

Maria Rossi murdered three people during a failed exorcism in 1989. In 2012, her daughter, Isabella journeys to the Vatican to try getting answers after not seeing her mother for all those years. The first act dives into the teaching of priests as exorcists and how the Vatican declares demonic possession from mental illness. Isabella reaches out to two students who privately practice exorcisms, and some interesting ethical questions are raised concerning the Vatican’s involvement with exorcism or lack thereof. To understand, she accompanies them on a trip, deciding she wants to try on her mom to disastrous results that prove fatal..

The Devil Inside is a good example why I don’t like the sub genre of found footage. There are good questions brought up in the movie and it looks alright enough but its a pretty forgettable horror movie. The interesting questions disappear and we get the same possession cliches redone. I never actually believed or felt immersed in the found footage experience like I was in The Last Exorcism or the first Paranormal Activity  It was a lot of little things how the lead actress always looked perfectly made up the whole movie or how people seemed really lenient waving a camera through the streets of the Vatican, a high security mental institution, a basement where a girl that is clearly dangerous is being held. The ending is an absolute insult I’m going to spoil- it’s a advert for a website that isn’t even still running. That’s it. If you were enjoying yourself, that final minute will turn your pissed meter to 11. In the end, it’s fine to skip the Devil Inside and the gaming gods will bring you all the more glory for doing so.

Graveyard Keeper (Preview)

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Graveyard Keeper is an odd game. It starts out with your character going to the store and getting hit by a car. You then talk to what I assume is death and him telling you that you are now in charge of a graveyard. The game gets so much weirder. You are told to dig up Gerry and he will help you out. Gerry is a bouncing talking skull, that happens to be an alcoholic. He wants you to sell meat for beer. Where are you getting the meat? Well the meat is being dropped off by a talking donkey. Well he isn’t dropping off meat, he is dropping off dead bodies.

Your job is to fix up the graveyard so you can reopen the church. The alpha build is nice, and looks a lot like Stardew Valley. It functions nice and I haven’t hit any major bugs but admittedly there are some HUGE parts of the game missing, but they do warn you about this.

The game is well made and quite hilarious. The decision of what to do with the bodies is also interesting, you have limited space in your graveyard and I found myself occasionally ditching bodies in a nearby river to save space. This did however cost me valuable money. I am very much looking forward to the full release which should be in August. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Alien: Ressurection

Mr. Bobinsky's uncle's avatar

alienDirector: Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Ron Perlman, Winona Ryder, Dominique Pinon, Brad Dourif, Gary Dourdan, Michael Wincott. USA, 1997. Budget: $60 mln. Box office: $160 mln. IMDb: 6.2. RT: 55%. My rating: 3/4. Xenomorphs… shaken & stirred.

– Hey, Ripley. I heard you, like, ran into these things before?
– That’s right.
– Wow, man. So, like, what did you do?
– I died.
(a dialogue from the film)

It may seem strange and irrelevant to write about ”Alien: Ressurection” more than 20 years after its release, especially given that it’s mostly known as a faulty sequel abruptly suspending the franchise for 15-20 years. Or less, it depends how you count. Plus it is the lowest rated movie of the franchise. So why even bother?

PopularOccasionalBasilisk-size_restricted

Honestly, I think there was some misunderstanding. Mostly it happened for two reasons:

  • 1997…

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Oculus (2013)

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Gonna break up the gaming stuff with a horror movie that I watched a bit ago and never got around to reviewing. This one was actually pretty cool. This mirror throughout the years has killed many people and been lost for various reasons. Each time reappearing killing plants in the home, the dog and the people.

In the modern age a man tortures his wife and to protect his sister, his son murders him and is locked away until he is 21. But is this what really happened? Well after being released his sister brings him to the family home with a huge set up of cameras, food, alarms to remind them to eat and a weight set up rigged with no electronics so if they don’t reset it every half hour it would swing down and smash, you guessed it, the mirror.

The plan is to stay in the house and record the entire thing, and when this mirror attempts to kill them this will prove the brother is no murderer and the father was not the man everyone thought he was. The weight was to protect them, with the mirror needing them alive to reset the alarm the thought was it would be unable to kill them.

From here on out we see the brother and sister slowly start fighting as the brother insist the sister is remembering events wrong as they attempt to talk about what happened. She attempts to remind his of the truth. It doesn’t take long for the plants to die. As things get more weird things get more weird. What they think they see isn’t always what is real, and what they know to be fake sometimes is very very real.

The movie is well done, and at times in the movie as the viewer I actually wasn’t quite sure what was and wasn’t real, but I was never actually confused as to the plot of the movie. It was easy to follow but disturbing enough to be interesting with a very nice ending. I would very much suggest watching it. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Pink

power rangers pink Who the hell didn’t love the Power Rangers in the 90’s? The kick ass theme song, the weird mix of monster fighting, giant robot dinosaurs, and American kid sitcom- the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers is still a good time twenty some years later so I was glad Boom brought us the same Rangers, new stories.

Pink follows Kimberly Hart, the original pink rangers years after leaving the group as an up and coming pro gymnast. Life is totally different than that, happy, but she misses the thrill of being a Power Ranger and saving the world with the rest of her friends. Well, Kimberly is about to get her wish when a outbreak of monsters takes over the village in France where her and her family now live. People have been taken by old nemesis Gouldar and turned into monsters to serve Rita and Zed by a new monster. Desperately, she contacts Zordan to find out the Rangers are off planet getting there asses kicked by Rita and Zed. Things aren’t looking good. Zordan, sacrificing his own power grants Kim a weapon to partially restore her power, because she was of the first to touch her coin, the power of pink is still inside. But she’ll need help- so she enlists help from Zach and Trini, the original black and yellow rangers as well as the help of new friends to face a quickly devastating threat with severely limited resources. Can the former pink ranger rise to the challenge?

As a old school fan of the show, the book is a very welcome epilogue. Kimberly is older, more mature but still the girl we knew and it was cool and heartwarming to see her reunite with her teammates. The narration brings a bit of weight which is pretty welcome. Essentially it feels like a reunion special that sometimes feels a bit too lengthy at times but its damn good special I’d recommend to fans. May the gaming gods bring you glory.