Iron Man (2008)

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“The best weapon is the one you only have to fire once”-Tony Stark

Ok so thats a bit paraphrased, but still I always liked that one. Tony start, billionaire, philanthropist, all around genius, whats not to love? Well he is kind of an egotistical jackass and it turns out his company is selling weapons to terrorist. Tony doesn’t know that, well until after he is overseas helping out the United States military and captured by terrorist and forced to build a weapon for them. Instead he builds what will eventually become the first Iron Man suit.

The movie is considered by many to be the movie that launched the juggernaut that is the Marvel cinematic universe. The story is great, the visuals spectacular and I am pretty sure when Stan Lee and crew created Tony Stark and Iron Man they did so specifically with Robert Downey Jr in mind.

The only real issue I ever had with the movie was the villain. Obadiah Stone just was never an interesting bad guy for me. Sure he was good enough, but he was just kinda there. The story of a father’s friend trying to take over the company just is no longer interesting to me, and I wish they chose a different route. But as far as an origin story goes, it worked. Most importantly tho with the ending while most heroes hide their identity we get Tony Start just saying yup, I’m Iron Man. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Captain America: Winter Soldier

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With Infinity War coming to us in a few short months, I thought it would be only fair I cover the MCU as well as I can thus far. For the fourth of July I already talked about Captain America: the First Avenger and Savior covered both Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) films as well as Doctor Strange ( 2016) , so I thought it would be fitting to finish talking about Cap. In this case, I have read the comic too so I got some extra insight on this story.

After the Avengers, Steve Rogers has found a routine in our modern day, working for S.H.I.E.L.D taking down terrorists with Black Widow and being a badass, but it’s not easy being out of your time. He begins discovering quickly how all isn’t right at S.H.I.E.L.D and how a ghost from his past has essentially come in and is trying to kill him after leading to the fall of Nick Fury, a metal armed assassin called the Winter Soldier. It’s up to Captain America to stop this threat along with Falcon and Black Widow and try to bring Hydra out in the open…

Winter Soldier is the definition of a superior sequel. Captain America is much more badass in this film, even from the get go. The fights with him and Winter Soldier are some of the best hand to hand fights I’ve seen in my life. The plot is fairly strong as is the acting and cast. The graphic novel goes into a much greater detail around the backstory of Bucky Barnes during WW2 and his hero/ sidekick relationship with Cap but is still a great read if you like a good spy thriller. Either book or movie, it’s a great story and definitely worth checking out. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Tera (PS4)

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I don’t normally play MMO’s to be honest, a little guild wars, some World of Warcraft and a bit of Neverwinter. Now I know that sounds like quite a few, but I haven’t put a lot of time into them. Maybe 60 hours across them all and that is high balling it. I am far from an expert on the subject.

With that out-of-the-way, I am having fun with Tera. The game looks nice and plays pretty well. Admittedly inside of cities the game does suffer from some lag issues, but that is more annoying than anything that messes with game play. The combat is similar to most action RPG games where you are free to move around and your skills all have cool down times associated with them, all of which is pretty par for the course.

All the MMO staples are here as well, you can get mounts and pets, many that will collect items for you. There is no monthly fee and the game is free to play, as such cosmetics and skins cost a decent amount of money and there is a $15 a month upgrade you can buy that gives you a 100% boost in experience and gold as well as a discount on the micro-transactions.

The story is a bit cliché, starting out next to a special tree. Helping some special kids you quickly find out you are also special and will be chosen to help save the world, of course. It is still quite interesting, but nothing new. With the game being free to play tho on PS4 and Xbox it worth a try even if you aren’t big on MMO’s. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Spider-man: Homecoming

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This movie brought millions of nerd’s dreams come true, Spider-man’s first true film inside the MCU and we finally got the Spidey movie we’ve been asking for. Set after Captain America: Civil War, Peter Parker returns to high school with big dreams of being an Avenger as well as asking the cute captain of his high school quiz team out. With the suit given to him by Iron Man, Peter goes around just trying to be the best friendly neighborhood Spider-man he could be, but suddenly a real threat comes his way when a gang of disgruntled workers emerges with experimental alien hybrid weapons led by Adrian Toomes, The Vulture. Suddenly Parker’s world suddenly find themselves crashed together and only he can stop it, a teenage kid…

First, special thanks go to my friend Hatter for awesome movie night. Tom Holland is the perfect Spider-man in my opinion, being witty but not mean spirited, heartfelt but not sappy and just the right amount of badass. The supporting cast is surprisingly strong, especially Michael Keaton as Vulture which is one of the better villains of the MCU. Something I give the movie credit for is being very simple, not diving into mountains of foreshadowing like The Amazing Spider-man 2 meant to set up other movies. Spider-man was fit into the scheme of things just fine. In the end, its a fun superhero movie and it’s well worth a watch. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Daniel Craig Confirms, Bond 25 is Next.

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As of now very little is known about it, tho you can find some of the details here at screenrant.com. However what is known is that Daniel Craig has confirmed his next movie will be the Bond 25. For bond fans this may be a bit bitter-sweet since the last one was a bit underwhelming,but hopefully for Daniel Craig this will be the one that turns it around. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Star Wars: Battlefront 2

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A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away there was a epic video game called Star Wars: Battlefront 2. It was and perhaps still is one of the greatest Star Wars games next to Star Wars, Knights of the Old Republic but sadly, there was a disturbance in the Force and so came the dark lords at EA.

Classic Battlefront 2 was a massive game for the time. Released on the heels of Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith, the story revolving around the memoirs of a retired Clone Trooper as he recounts the Clone Wars, the downfall of the Republic, and the rise of the Empire. We got to enjoy enormous third person battles straight from the movie, visiting beautifully done and films accurate maps. Vehicles, space, and almost 20 of our favorite characters throughout the series like Luke Skywalker,  Yoda, Darth Vader, Darth Maul, as well as more minor but still awesome characters such as Ki Adi Mundi and Aylah Secura. What made this game loads of fun was Galactic Conquest: capturing worlds for credits used to buy new advantages in battle like health regenerating troops, extra garrisons, or even having a hero commander join you for example. The classes were fun, each faction had 7, the last two custom to the faction, whether getting a stealthy Bothan spy or the Droidieka murder machine and your weapons and characters were upgraded by a fair prestige system for simple achievements in match. For war game fans and Star Wars nerds alike, this game is a must play and I can’t recommend it enough…but alas my friends, there is a dark side as I said.

With my pal Autobot, I tried EA’s Star Wars: Battlefront 2 and well…WHAT THE FUCK EA? Given my extreme disappointment over the first attempt at Battlefront, I was desperately optimistic to the point Savior wanted to kick my ass as was the case with Justice League (2017)  or Power Rangers So I’m going to say the game is stunning to look at visually with damn nice character models and great score. Other than that, I can’t find much I liked. I hated how space combat felt, the controls felt too off and I found there to be a major lack of variety of ships and functions. Speaking of, despite playing a little bit through all three trilogies, I couldn’t help feeling a lack of variety in the ground trooper classes: assault, heavy, sniper, and other. That’s it. Heroes are far less plentiful and nowhere near as fun to play as. What was the cherry on the shit sundae were the hard crashes we experienced; of 10 matches we crashed 3 in a row over two pretty boring game modes. I can’t recommend this reboot at all and friends don’t let friends play this damn game.

May the gaming gods bring you glory, and please take this away from this: graphics don’t mean everything, effort and love will always shine through.

Have Movies Changed, or Have We?

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Every so often I get into a conversation about how much movies have changed, or even tv shows. Whether it be how the classic Alien holds up better than the new Covenant, or how many of the hold horror movies are scarier than the new ones. But are they really? Or have we as a society simply changed? See the scary part of horror movies really is partly the fear of the unknown. Could something like a Xenomorph exist? Someday will humanity reach out into the starts just to find a creature we can not defeat with our technology that is simply a damn near unstoppable hunter?

The problem becomes what happens when you have seen so much that things no longer seem original? When does the unknown stop being unknown and the unpredictable become predictable? I think that is where we are now with movies. We have reached the point where we have seen most things in horror. Where ghost and monsters used to be enough, for many of us it no longer is. Stories have become predictable not because they aren’t good, but because we have seen so many we now have the experience to predict the next event.

This happens in other genres as well, Star Wars and Star Trek as well. Hell even Professional wrestling many times. Younger fans still see the fun and excitement that many of us miss. I am now starting to think movies haven’t changed, we have. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Kingdom Hearts 3 Release Date Leaked?

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This one should be chalked up to something taken with a huge grain of salt, but Target has leaked a release date of November 1st according to comicbook.com. Now target has been known to do this quite often and compared to many places has a pretty high ratio of being at least close, but honestly lets see what E3 brings. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Hits (2014)

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Every so often I watch a movie that leaves me wondering what the hell did I just watch. This is one of those movies. The movie wasn’t bad, it was just weird as hell. Katelyn wants to be on The Voice and be a music star. She loves to sing and practices and even borrows money off her dad to get a guy to record a demo to send in, and does some less than lady like things in the process.

Speaking of her dad, he just wants the damn pot holes in the roads around town fixed. One of them is about to become a YouTube star, and it isn’t Katelyn. The movie has its ups and downs, with some fun moments and some serious moments. It also isn’t a great movie and is far from terrible. It simply exist. Dad has some less than memorable rants about the government where he sounds paranoid and Katelyn sounds like the usual stuck up brat. It is however entertaining at times. Realistically tho, there isn’t much incentive to watch this movie unless you are curious, there is simply better comedies out there. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Matilda

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There are times in life we have to go back to go forward. While writing I keep this in mind. As a kid Matilda was one of my favorite movies as a kid and twenty plus years later this movie holds up pretty well.

Matilda WormWood is an incredibly smart little girl living in a family that doesn’t really care, appreciate, or understand her. She finds knowledge and solace within the pages of books, becoming smarter than most adults around her; a gift emerges in the little girl. Matilda can move things with her mind. She finally gets her dream come true when she’s finally enrolled in school, bu that dream becomes a nightmare. Enter the maniacal, cruel, monstrous TrunchBull that runs the school. Her teacher Miss Honey however is the exact opposite, a sweet, kind lady that actually understands her and grows to love her as she does all children. It becomes clear to Matilda after finding out TrunchBull’s dark story that it’s up to her and power to stop her and free the school and Miss Honey from her tyranny…

In many ways, Matilda is the kid’s version of Carrie by Stephen King and it was written by Roald Dahl, writer of such WTF dark kid’s classics as James and The Giant Peach, The Witches, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. There’s a lot of charm and while bleak as hell, there is always a ray of light. I was genuinely glad it had a happy ending. Mara Wilson was especially good as Matilda, being incredibly smart but lovable. I seriously recommend this to pretty much anyone, kids or adults alike. May the gaming gods bring you glory.