Savior Gaming

(2nd opinion) Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice

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When we think of how bad ass it would be to see our favorite superheroes clash, what’s usually the first pair we come to think of? What two are so conflicting both in ideology but to an extent we can can sense the turbulence between man and god, night and day, a cold scowl against a kind smile? None other than Batman and Superman come to most minds: The Dark Knight and The Man Of Steel. In several comics they’ve clashed verbally over several issues, come to blows most famously in Frank Millar’s legendary graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns (for which must of this movie either references or tries to loosely replicate) as well as several others. And for better or worse, we got our silver screen version last year. So my good friend, partner, and brother from another mother Savior covered his thoughts on this and the follow up in the DCEU Suicide Squad, so I’m just gonna talk about some nerd shit with it and give my final thoughts on it.

So first thing I’d like to say is structurally this movie is a grade A clusterfuck. It is a sequel to Man of Steel, a solo Batman flick, a Justice League prequel, an adaptation of Dark Knight Returns and Death of Superman, with 20 minutes of Wonder Woman, Easter Eggs relating to Steppenwulf, Darkseid, some random Batman villains and Red Hood (we can only dream). This movie is stuffed like a turkey’s ass on Thanksgiving. If you are a hardcore DC fan you may enjoy some of this but it does come out bloated. On a positive, the movie is visually sweet, using a lot of dark imagery from the comics to paint one hell of a dark picture. Ben Affleck thrives as both a weathered but composed Bruce Wayne and a cruel, angry Batman. As Batman he has a truly threatening presence that would make me think twice before jaywalking in Gotham City. Gal Gadot is also great as Diana Prince and Wonder Woman; she plays Diana as very poised and ladylike while infusing a raw rage into her fighting as Wonder Woman, either way her segment was much welcomed and loved. Henry Cavill was fine as Superman but he was too brooding for my taste, losing a bit of the relatability I had gotten from his previous go in the iconic role. Though how they are presented was kind of lame, I enjoyed the files debuting Flash, Aquaman, and Cyborg. Jeremy Irons was a interesting Alfred while Amy Adams felt mostly tacked on as Lois Lane. Jessie Eisenburg played a good character in this movie but hot damn was that character not Lex Luthor; I feel Eisenburg would have been a great Riddler or Mad Hatter or, dare I say, a fair Joker, but not Lex Luthor. Finally, what kills the movie for me as well as I’m sure many others, was Doomsday. Dammit All, what the hell did they do to him? He looks like a Putty from Power Rangers on steroids. I understand Doomsday is a fan favorite but so poorly done it defeated the purpose. There is a lot of cool moments, great acting from Affleck and Gadot, and dark imagery but there are flaws. Apart, these characters are great; mashed together, well…clusterf#$k . Overall, it’s fair but you won’t watch it everyday, but hey it ain’t Batman & Robin so that’s a plus.

Batman Vs Superman

I heard a lot of bad things about this movie before I ever saw it. That being said some of it is exaggerated. Most of it was not. Jessie Eisenberg played his part well. The problem is he played a form of Luthor I don’t think ever existed, and if it did most people are unaware of it. Amy Adams had a performance that was uninspired to say the very least.

I do have to own up to the fact that Ben Affleck is probably the best batman/Bruce in decades, may even be the best not named Conroy.

The visuals were nice as was the music, but aside from that the plot was horrible and at times lacked any real sense to it. For example the very idea that anyone even knew to look for kryptonite? That’s not the sort of thing you stumble across. I would suggest watching the movie tho as it is fun and entertaining but don’t think to much about it. If you do you will wonder how batman used machine guns to get the jump on superman but somehow wasn’t smart enough to use kryptonite bullets. As always thanks for your time, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Fallout 4 Review

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2015 was a year of hype beyond many: we got the pretty sweet Avengers sequel, Star Wars came back with the awesome return to formula that was the Force Awakens, and Fallout 4. It’s a weird topic for me because I was so hyped for this game, it was the final straw for me getting a PS4, and yet I didn’t have nowhere near the infatuation with it as Fallout 3.

We begin at a time when all seemed well in Boston, a future when technology was at its peak and conflict was a murmur through radio and TV. We play as a young veteran living with his lovely wife Nora and baby son Shaun. A robot comes to the door and sells you a special kind of insurance, a spot for you and your family in a new vault nearby. You agree just as the broadcast comes out warheads were just launched, and in the distance you can see the the mushroom cloud appear. You all rush into the vault, tricked into going into cryo sleep. You wake up, seeing men the chamber, unfreeze Nora and killing her to take your son and flee. It’s up to you to search the wastes of Boston and find him.

For the positives, Fallout 4 is a beautiful game. The graphics have stepped up three times over. The shooting mechanics have vastly improved; there is a new level of weapon and gear customization; the game is far more cinematic and takes ques from Mass Effect on the dialogue options. The coolest thing is how the Power Armor works much like a Iron Man suit, making a kick ass new addition and extra hardship of having to find power cores to stay a little more afloat. Now for the negatives, the game may be more beautiful but besides the main quest I wasn’t much invested in the side quests. Also there is less variety in the combat options; there is a huge dependency on FPS mechanics and gameplay, making the game feel more like a massive shooter than a RPG. Still, it’s a solid game and worth a trek through but I recommend 3 more.

South Park, The Stick Of Truth

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South Park, The Stick Of truth, what can I say. My expectations on a South Park RPG were very very low. I was expecting a half assed story, a crumby battle system and some cheap laughs. What I got was a fun story of kids in the neighborhood LARPing with multiple groups spanning the entire town with a few of the adults even playing along.

The battle system itself while simplistic, involves various button actions to do moves and increase damage. There are few different classes to choose from as well as different story paths to take meaning there is some good replay value there for those that care to explore it all.

In typical South Park fashion there are plenty of adult oriented jokes from both the series and new. I was pleasantly surprised by how well this game is and truly can not wait for the eventual release of Fractured But Whole which seems to have a similar presence but this time its dealing with the super hero genre. Many thanks for joining me, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Fallout 3 Review

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“War. War never changes.” Nothing was ever more epic than Ron Perlman’s amazing narration. Fallout 3 was a break away from the old school turn-based gameplay for an RPG with some first-person shooting. The simple plot is that you grow up in Vault 101 after a huge-scale nuclear war, being raised by a loving scientist father voiced by Liam Neeson. You grow up in your bland, enclosed little world of the vault until one day your dad leaves, and it is up to you to break free of the vault’s grasp and find him in the wastelands of Washington, D.C. Along the way you get meet a group of religious wackos worshiping an atomic bomb the town was built around, another burg overrun with giant ants that can even breath fire, a rivalry between two superheroes “a very fun Marvel Easter egg in that” , and a old lady who just wants her violin back, all while getting pulled into a conflict by the Brotherhood of Steel and the Enclave that will decide the fate of the wastelands.

So the game is amazing, despite its flaws. The gameplay is solid if you rely on the VATS targeting system, but the shooting otherwise feels off. The plot and side missions are engaging and even creepy in some cases, like the mission about the kid who gets kidnapped and goes on a small killing spree thinking he’s a vampire (and don’t get me started on Tranquility Lane. Oh, that was fucked up.) Fallout 3 has some of the best DLC to a game I’ve ever played, with Operation Anchorage, which teleports you back in time to the conflict that led to the nuclear war, Mothership Zeta- you get abducted by aliens, as well as three other packs and a level cap increase. Besides some occasional glitches and the occasional pain in the ass location to maneuver through, I highly recommend this game as one of the best games of the last generation.

Destiny 2 beta

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The beta starts off with a short story cut scene which actually has a few funny moments. After the cut scene shows an attack we get into the action. Having never really played the 1st one I wasn’t sure what I should be expecting. Turns out of if you have played the Halo series you are pretty much capable with this from the word go. Now i’m not saying that as a bad thing by any means. The combat is fluid and the graphics are very nice. With that being said it was quickly apparent this game won’t be for anyone the beta itself was quite a bit of fun and the actual release should be a very well rounded and fun game. As always thank you and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Videodrome

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So I go to say from age 18 to 20 I was utterly obsessed with this movie after buying the old VHS at my local horror video store. I actually shouted “DEATH TO VIDEODROME, LONG LIVE THE NEW FLESH” not once, but twice during two graduation ceremonies and had a epic freak out when my friends thought it’d funny to hide the tape. It’s my favorite David Cronenburg film and probably in my top 10 favorite horror movies ever.

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It’s the story of a raunchy TV executive named Max Wren played by James Woods who’s looking for the next big thing to push the boundaries of entertainment. His channel plays soft core porn and violent exploitation films from the seventies. One of his contacts tells him about a new thing called Videodrome, which is more than Max can handle. Ratings hike and Max can’t get enough of it, until at the end he becomes it and the battle for Max Wren is being fought by The Videodrome and freedom of the New Flesh…so, as you can see, the imagery sells this movie. I mean when you see cable wires ripping through a man’s flesh and locking his fist around a gun, going to first base with a TV to have it begin to moan and it’s wood panels become flesh, a VCR slot grow in a man’s stomach, or shooting a man and watching the grisly scene of his body get torn apart by cancer tumors from the inside out. There’s tons of unforgettable imagery. The acting is solid and the score compliments the eerie tone of losing your mind by a technological force. The plot feels like a much more grounded precursor to the Matrix with a similar theme of mechanical mind control and freedom from it only it’s a way to talk about our over obsession with TV and stimulation which is all brilliant woven together with blood and some disturbing bodily scenes. Pick this up if you are looking for a smart horror film that has some weird, over the top crazy shit in it as well. So may the gaming gods bring you glory and

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DEATH TO VIDEODROME, LONG LIVE THE NEW FLESH!

The Conjuring 2

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The Conjuring 2 is another movie based off the allegedly true story of Ed and Lorraine Warren whom leave their chosen sabbatical to travel to Enfield, a place in North London to help Peggy Hodgson. One day a little girl is caught smoking at school, but during this her friend gives her a spirit board. Now kids being kids of course her and her sister play with it and now their family home is haunted. Now the movie isn’t bad really. In fact any horror fan should watch it. But visually this time around its not as good neither is the sound or acting. Many parts of the movie come across as trying to hard to be scary, for example the over use of things going thud or the chair sliding across the floor and into the kitchen in front of the police that immediately leave and tell the woman to contact a priest. There is also now a random nun floating around the Warren family home that Ed dreamed up then painted which seems like it was added not because it made sense or was needed but simply to help push the struggling story a bit. For all its faults however I would still absolutely suggest seeing the movie. Once again thanks for reading and may the gaming god bring you glory.

Terminator

Our best ideas come from the strangest places and sometimes are fears are the things right in front of our face the entire time. James Cameron’s Terminator is a prime example. Cameron had once had a fever dream about a metal skeleton crawling out of a hellish fire almost like a phoenix and the rest became history brought to horrific life by legendary special fx master the late and great Stan Winston. Terminator is the story of a war in the future where Skynet has brought man to the brink of extinction with their horde of advanced machines, the worst of which are the T-800 Terminators, flesh covered androids made for inflitration and damn near unstoppable. The resistance against Skynet is lead by John Conner. To stop John Conner, Skynet sends a Terminator back through time to 1984 to assassinate Conner’s mother before he is even conceived. So in response, Conner manages to send back his soldier Kyle Reese to protect Sarah Conner from the machine that doesn’t feel pain or remorse or fear and will not stop until Sarah is dead. Schwarzenegger is suburb as the Terminator, cold and emotionless as he hunts down Sarah Conner by killing his way through to find her. He tracked her to a tech club where Reese intervenes by blasting him down with a shotgun, only for him to get back up again. They loose the machine in a car chase, causing him to crash in a accident that would have certainly killed a normal man. Reese and Sarah are taken by the police who realistic start explaining away the events of the night, convincing her it was a normal man on drugs in a Kevlar vest and Reese is crazy. We cut away to the Terminator alone in his shitty apartment, face mutilated by a ruptured eyeball he cuts out of his own head, revealing part of a steel skeleton and a cold red camera. He arms himself and goes to slaughter the whole police station to get his target. While on the run, Sarah and Reese get intimate and begin falling in love. The movie pushes to a thrilling climax where we see the Cameron’s nightmare realized in the form of the red eyed robot skeleton revealing itself, and at the end it’s up to only Sarah to defeat it and protect the future.

So I won’t lie, I consider Terminator 1 and 2 almost perfect, timeless classics without a doubt. The plot is still solid full of great performances by our main cast and effects that hold up fairly strong today with downright bleak glimpses of the future that I feel are especially relevant today in our technology obsessed society. Pick it up and I will be back

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The Conjuring (2013)

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The Conjuring is the allegedly true story of Ed and Lorraine Warren and their investigation of the Perron family. The story goes the Perron family moved into a house that seems like any other house. But as time passes small odd things start occurring that would eventually lead to a full blown poltergeist or demonic possession type scenario. Now I am not saying the story is real or not, nor am I here to debate whether it is or isn’t. The movie itself is pretty well made and is easily one of the creepier movies I have seen in recent memory. The effects are very well done and add to the creep factor. The sound and music are also really well done and do a great job of adding to the ambiance of the movie itself. The actors alone do an amazing job of selling their terror. While far from a perfect movie any fan of horror movie would do well to check this one out. As always thanks for your time, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.