Cube (1997)

So I’m on twitter the other day and this guy I occasionally talk to informed me this 1997 classic..yea I say classic its 20 years old,is now on Netflix. (I will get to the other movie when I have time to read a movie)

Cube is essentially the movie that started the whole Saw movie thing. Don’t believe me? Go watch it. Or just read the general plot.

The movie starts off with people waking up not knowing where they are, with people they don’t know. Quickly they discover they are free to roam their general area but must find a way out of the building they are in. The building is square rooms, that all look basically the same of various colors with numbers near all the hatch doors.

I am sure you are wondering where the Saw part comes in. Well certain rooms have various traps set up to kill you, for example one of the escape experts gets his face burned off with a sort of acid spray.

Yes I did say escape expert. There is also an ex cop, a doctor what can only be described as an idiot savant and an office worker that designed the shell of the cube itself.

Added to all this is their struggle to decipher the connection between the traps and the numbers between rooms and how to get out of this death trap. It isn’t hard to see how this could be the father of the Saw movies, best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Soma

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I tried man. I really did. The story is fascinating; the graphics are really good. But this wasn’t for me. The story revolves around a dude named Simon Jarret who was in a car crash that killed his girlfriend and left him with brain damage. He signs up for the new kind of experimental treatment that way save his life…he wakes up miles under the ocean in a broken down aquatic lab with machines haunted by the delusion they are really human. Many of the machines we come in contact with react just like people, but there are other things entirely. We discover from a mysterious Catherine that Simon was part of a group who had had there total consciousnesses fused to robot forms and the line between what it means to be man and machine becomes blurred…

As I said. the story is definitely there. Graphically it looks pretty and I could appreciate the nods to Bioshock and Alien in the environmental design. Gameplay wise is the killer. There is a heavy stealth base- no weapons, just hide or run. Everything I faced up to that point, I simply just had to outrun them. Most of my experience with the game was me trying to figure out where the hell to go. Overall, if you enjoyed Outlast or Amnesia (Frictional Games’s previous horror hit) give this a shot but if you want a horror game with stealth and bite, this ain’t your stick. As always thank you and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

The Haunting Of Whaley House (2013)

First thing first. I don’t want to waste any ones time. If you aren’t a fan of really slow movies that won’t get interesting until later, skip this movie. It wasn’t until around the hour mark the movie was anything much more than people standing around a haunted house.

With that out of the way, Penny takes a job at the Whaley House, the most haunted house in America. After some weird day at work and telling her friends they get excited and convince her to use her key to enter the house at night for a ghost hunt.

Yea I know, this is why friends are a bad idea. Anyway after calling a cousin with some ghost hunting equipment whom brings a pretty famous psychic and away we go….

Ok honestly at this point they mostly wonder around the house talking about ghost related stuff like cold spots and vortexes.

A bit later it gets a little more exciting and the ghost do more things and it really gets into the lore and back story of why this haunted house is even haunted in the first place. By all means if you like a good movie with some build up check this movie out, but I realise many of you like more excitement. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

R.I.P Visceral Games

visceral games

This will be short and sweet, R.I.P Visceral Games. EA officially announced the crew behind the amazing Dead Space trilogy is shutting down. This brought me down pretty hard. Dead Space was a game that, as a horror fan and sci-fi nerd, delivered everything I could really ever want and did it with love. Another Visceral game I find really underrated is Dante’s Inferno. The dark but alarming adaptation made me rush out and find my own copy of epic poem. To me, Visceral games were a huge part of my PS3 experience and some of the last games to really inspire me.

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R.I.P Visceral Games, you will be missed.

Jeepers Creepers 2 (2003)

What happens when a bus full of jocks, a few cheerleaders and a couple nerds get trapped on a bus with a demon type monster attacking it? Watch this movie to find out.

The movie starts on a farm with a father, his older teen son and his young son doing some work. The young son discovers one of the scare crows he was hanging wasn’t a scare crow at all. Of course every 23 springs for 23 days it can eat and humans are the main course.

After the young farm boy, our high school jocks are next. First the coach, then the bus driver, then the assistant coach.

Every so often we switch back to the dad building something in the barn, just hammering away with no clear indication as to what it is. I mention this because the pissed off farmer and his son are important later.

After awhile of being tormented and the bus being flipped and some implied racism the teens are forced to make a run for it. A few are picked off by the demon until eventually our farmer hero arrives in his trusty pick up being driven by his son. What was dad building? A modified stake driver to throw harpoons. The final battle is on. Who wins and who loses? Truthfully the people watching the movie win. A fun movie with some deep thoughts and some nice action scenes. One that is absolutely worth checking out if you have the option. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

IT: Stephen King Book Review

Title: It By: Stephen King Published: September 1986 (This Edition: January 5th 2016) By: Scribner Genre: Horror-Adult-Mystery-Dark-Paranormal To the children, the town was their whole world. To the adults, knowing better, Derry, Maine was just their home town: familiar, well-ordered, a good place to live. It was the children who saw – and felt – what made Derry […]

via Book Review: It by Stephen King — A Book. A Thought.

Jeepers Creepers (2001)

This movie has a special place in my heart. Not because I love the movie, tho it is a good one. The sound is nice the acting is solid and the visuals are good. No, see my ex wife ( Hello ex wife) used to be find the song really creepy. You know the one. “Jeepers, creepers where’d you get those peepers”..any way i’d watch the movie and creep around the house singing the song just to freak her out….also you probably understand why she is the ex wife.

Jeepers Creepers is the story of a demon/devil sort of monster that terrorizes a highway harvesting humans for body parts it needs to survive and may be one of the most under rated horror movies of the early 2000-2010 decade. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Saw 6

saw 6

So I already covered 5 a long time ago, but those of you that forget, here’s a brief recap: I hated that piece of armadillo shit. So why did you watch Saw 6, Torsten, you may be wondering? Well, why the hell do we climb mountains? Because they’re freaking there that’s why.

So Hoffman is Jigsaw now and the feds are starting to barrel down on his ass, the only accomplice left is Jill, John’s ex wife. Little does he know, Jill is there to discreetly take Hoffman down, because like Amanda, Hoffman is simply murdering people. Our main protagonist is a health insurance executive that must go through yet another Jigsaw gauntlet in order to learn a lesson. At the end, Jill subdues Hoffman, priming him for the kill by locking him in a rickety chair with the famed bear trap on his head; but the chair breaks and Hoffman escapes, scarred and pissed off.

Saw 6 isn’t bad but it’s goofy. The acting and gore is pretty laughably over the top at times; the story of how the series comes together becomes more and more convoluted each entry to where you stop caring by either 5 or 6. It’s got some fair social commentary on the healthcare system but in the end, the movie is just meh. As always, thank you and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Loot Boxes Good Or Bad?

There are two main questions when it comes to loot boxes. Are they bad for gaming, and are they gambling? Honestly both a matter of opinion. Companies will say no to the first one because it makes them money and gamers seem to be pretty split.

The gambling question weirdly has seen different answers, Americas ESRB has sad no since you get something for your money and the European equivalent has said only a gambling commission could possibly answer it.

However my answers are simple, loot boxes are becoming a cancer. What started as just a quick way for game makers to make some extra cash and gamers to get some cool stuff is becoming damn near pay to win and a pay wall to hide stuff behind.

As for the gambling question that one is rough. Yes you do get something so I get the ESRB’s point. You pay money and you get something, where is the gamble? Here is where it gets dicey. What you get isn’t always of equivalent value. If I said send me $20 and you I will send you random money back between $1 and $100 would you feel that was a gamble? I certainly would. Either way it seems loot boxes are here to stay, so we may as well get used to them. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.