Don’t Breathe

Don't Breathe A lesson from Torsten V and the makers of this movie: breaking and entering is a very bad idea. Also the general point of Don’t Breathe in general. I don’t have much to say about the movie’s plot except that besides the trailers giving you everything you need to know about the plot. Three petty thieves plan one seemingly easy last score by breaking into the home of a old, blind army vet who’s holding onto a fat settlement from the people who killed his daughter in a drunk driving accident. What was supposed to be a easy task turns into a live or die game of cat and mouse when they quickly discover this old man is extremely dangerous. He’s attuned to his other senses quite well, being a formidable shot with a 9MM and a brutal hand to hand combatant, along with one mean ass seeing-eye rottweiler. Besides a very disturbing revenge plot from the old man against the woman he’s holding captive in his basement, the same woman who killed his daughter, this cat and mouse is the bulk of the movie. It is paced well and the movie is overall good. Stephen Lange is great as the blind old man, a very good villain in his own right and damn right creepy once his true intentions are known. The suspense is good throughout most of the movie but the The ending overstays it welcome by going on an extra 5 minutes longer than it should have. My biggest gripe about it is that theirs alot of fake outs with the other male lead. With most horror movies, it’s acceptable and pretty much expect once, maybe twice. But I swear it happens four or five times with this poor bastard throughout the film, finally killing him with twenty minutes left and feeling kinda lackluster because it got annoying. Lange had his share of fake outs too but he’s the villain so I can cut the man some slack. Overall I liked it and loved the concept but I can’t say I’d own it but worth some netflix watchings in a dark room with a chickenshit friend

Animal Farm

Animal farm1 “Four legs good, two legs bad.”- the summary of the ten governing commandments of Animal Farm. George Orwell wrote this disturbing parable about communism when tensions between The US and Soviet Union were at there peaks and the Cold War was in full swing. On a personal note, I didn’t begin reading books until after high school when I decided to take writing more seriously and Animal Farm was the first book I ever read without a report or school’s curriculum, though it was taught to me in the 8th grade. The story is short and sweet but effective. The Animals of Manor Farm live under the drunken neglect and tyranny of Mr. Jones. One night, an old respected pig named Old Major calls a meeting amongst all of the animals where he tells them his time is near an end but he had a dream where they would all be free, without man. A day or two later Major dies and life goes on. Finally comes the day when the  animal’s rebel and overthrow the Jones’s and cast them out. The word spreads; Jones tries to recapture the farm to no avail. From the ashes of Jones comes the rule of the pigs, Snowball, Napoleon, and Squealer. Snowball goes about trying to improve the animal’s lives and slowly they form there own laws, abilities to read and write, and eventually formulate a plan to build a windmill to power the farm. Suddenly Napoleon breaks the peace by unleashing a group of dogs he’d been hiding away on Snowball, chasing him out and taking control with Squealer manipulating the limited intelligence of the animals. History becomes distorted by false facts and promises; resources deplete to shit; and in the end with the heartless death of Animal Farm’s most loyal worker, the spirit breaks and suddenly the realize they became what they hated to begin with. The story is short but powerful- definitely a great book if you don’t read much or you want a more modern fairy tale. Do not expect a happy go lucky story for the kids.

Killing Floor 2 Review

killing floor 2

Killing Floor 2 is a game I got for free from the playstation network and admittedly i was not expecting much. It looked like a standard first person shooter that was basically a horde mode. While i admit that’s basically what it is, it is also pretty well done. Far more gory than i was expecting the controls are pretty fluid and the depth of weapon customization far surpassed what I thought we would get. I only played the multiplayer online mode and it was a nice mix of challenging and fun tho the boss did pretty much annihilate my entire team pretty quickly. One guy was caught alone and unprepared and the rest of us had no where near the team work required to beat this thing. There were a few things that got me tho. For example there is an extremely limited time to find the upgrade station that moves each round and upgrade your weapons which seems pretty daunting for new players. Another issue is there doesn’t seem to be a clear cut explanation of what each character is good for even tho a few of them are pretty self explanatory. All in all its a solid game that i would have been more than happy to have spent money on, and for free that makes it all the sweeter. Once again thanks for joining me and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Sega Forever

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Some times something is announced that both excites me and confuses me. This is one of those things.

Sega forever is, for all intents and purposes, games made by Sega free for your cell phone and tablet. With a few games already out including Phantasy Star 2 and Sonic the Hedgehog more will be added periodically until every Sega system is represented. I know some of you are going to be wondering, how does Sega make money on this? Well there will be adds when you start the games up but for a small fee ( $1.99 i believe) you can remove the adds from a game. As of now i have not gotten the chance to play any of them but as we speak Phantasy Star 2 is downloading on my cell phone, look for my review this weekend or early next week. As always thanks for joining me, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

 

Ride to Jla

jla  Hey everyone, it’s Torsten V here telling you all about a line of DC comic, TV, game and movie reviews I’m doing before the JLA movie hits theaters this November. I’ve already begun with my Green Lantern stuff beginning with the movie and Secret Origin review, culminating into the ENTIRETY of Blackest Night and Brightest Day as a finale. Next I want to cover Green Arrow: Year One, followed by a detailed review of seasons 1-4 of Arrow, and maybe season 5 if I see people are responding to my posts. I’m starting with the prominent members that aren’t going to be in the movie, leading into each of the movie’s six; eventually ending with a bang with the final sets being those for the man of steel and the dark knight themselves. I just want to say I will be doing other reviews too and oh don’t worry Marvel fans, next year is your turn and who knows, the Savior may help me with those. I am financially limited so I’m only able to cover what I already have at my disposal, which is a shitload of graphic novels and a redbox at work. But if anyone has a request when I get to your favorite, please leave me a comment below any of my posts or follow@Torsten V  on Twitter. May the Gaming gods be with you all, keep supporting us, and enjoy. Thank you all from me and Savoir

Green Lantern: Secret Origin

gl2 If you caught my previous review of the live action Green Lantern movie, you’ll realize I sorely don’t recommend it. This book, Secret origin, is a much more cohesive , better told story of Hal Jordan’s coming of age into being one of the most powerful Green Lanterns of all time. The story begins much like the movie with the story of young Hal Jordan; a young boy who dreams of growing up to be a pilot like his father. After he dies in a tragic plane explosion, his life begins a slow, lonely spiral of trouble making, straying further from his living family until he joined the air force at 18 at which point his mom disowns him until the day she dies because of his choice to follow this father’s footsteps. Hal is a natural flyer but his smart mouth and rebellious nature cause him to hang onto his job for dear life…Light years away, the great Abin Sur- greatest of all Green Lanterns- is transporting the savage Atrcitous of the five Aversions across the galaxy to interrogate him. Abin has been uneasy and paranoid unto the clasps of utter madness over a prophecy the Guardians of the universe and creators of the Green Lantern Corps may have been hiding. He fears the coming of the Blackest Night. Atrcitious breaks free and because of Abin’s fear, he’s weak to the attack and becomes mortally wounded, and there ship crashes to earth. Atrcitous escapes. Abin commands his ring to find a suitable replacement- Hal Jordan. The story after stays fairly close plot-wise with the exception of Parallax. Inside a rookie Jordan and now dubbed greatest Green Lantern Sinestro must put there differences aside to defeat Atrcitous, whose armed with a weapon fueled by the power of their rings, before he murders young William Hand who he believes is the key to Blackest Night.

Between the live action movie and Secret Origin, I’d would say the general plot is 65% similar. The difference comes with Geoff Johns’s fantastic writing.  The story is fast paced but were able to get attached and sympathize with Jordan, get to see the beginnings of his stormy but true love for Carol Ferris- his childhood friend, old boss, and future Star Sapphire (pink lantern) and well as his tragic relationship with Thal Sinestro- mentor, partner, and rival that would one day turn his back on willpower’s green light and embrace fear’s golden light as the Corp’s greatest threat. The world is more flushed out and what I enjoy about much of John’s writing is it’s a extremely easy book to follow, even if you never knew anything about Lantern lore or even comics in general.

Final score:  9/ 10

May the gaming gods be with you all and til next time, I’m Torsten V and I’ll be back in a few days with my review for Green Lantern: The Sinestro Corps War.

Grand Ages:Medieval Review

Grand Ages

Grand Ages Medieval is a world simulation game by Kalypso that seems to fit a nice niche that PS4 is missing. The game has a campaign mode as well as a sandbox mode with the campaign largely acting as the tutorial. The game takes place in a beautiful work that represents Europe and the basic idea is to reach the rank of emperor through the use of war, diplomacy and most importantly trade routes that you can either use to trade between your own towns, rival towns or like me, a combination of both. The controls work pretty nice on console, which is no surprise since Kalypso has plenty of experience bringing these types of games to console having done so with both Port Royal 3 and the Tropico series. Speaking of Port Royal, if you enjoyed that game, this game s basically that without all the boats. As always thanks for joining me, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Digital vs Disk

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This has been a debate for years in gaming, and just to be honest at some point the question will be moot and companies will simply require digital downloads and disk wont be an option. However for me i still prefer the disk whenever possible. Part of the reason for that is honestly its rarely cheaper for the digital version. Another issue is its usually quicker to install off disk for me than it is download an entire game. On the flip side digital is pretty convenient, I don’t have to wait in line at the store, which on midnight releases is pretty much  a blessing.  I also don’t have to worry about my disk getting scratched by the kids or my cat ( yes that happened once) Now it sounds like digital is the way to go, but here is another issue for me. With suck limited space I spend more time uninstalling and reinstalling than I would like, and on rare occasion companies remove games from the stores, which means i can’t reinstall said game. All that being said the question really has many ways of looking at it, and as i said at the start eventually it will be the only way to buy games. Once again thanks for joining me, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Elite Dangerous, day 1

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So I started playing this morning for a bit, and quickly got sick of my starting Sidewinder. So I did a few boom missions for enough cash to buy an Eagle. Figured I’d upgrade it a bit and fo bounty hunting.

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That’s a random planet I found while t traveling to find some action in my eagle, which about 4 seconds after i found it i’m running away back to a station so I wouldn’t die. (I didn’t)

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That last one was just another planet i found, was pretty far away sadly. Eventually I worked my way up to a Cobra Mach 3 which in my xbox play was basically my standard ship.  Hoping to work my way up to an exploration ship and get some good pictures. Oh, and one last thing. That big blue star? Don’t go near them, they will blow you up pretty quickly. As always thanks for joining me, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Final Fantasy 7 retro review

FF7

So lately I have been getting into some older games, and that of course led me to Final Fantasy 7. This review was actually quite hard for me to write since I want to be honest, but many times nostalgia gets in the way. For example, one of my favorite scenes from FF7 was Sepheroth walking through the fire.

FF7 Seph.

But hey as long as we are being honest, by today’s standards, the scene, like many from FF7, doesn’t exactly hold up very well. Honestly, the story itself holds up pretty badly. Sure, 20 years ago, I didn’t notice that the whole story with Zack was so far out of the way without a strategy guide, you could easily miss it. Recently going to the temple after Wutai ( rocket town if you don’t recruit Yuffie) I noticed the game never actually told me I needed the keystone at the gold saucer unless you happen to stop at the weapons dealer in the random cabin that also isn’t mentioned. Stuff like that aside, all these years later the materia system is still quite deep and engaging, while chocobo breeding and racing is still one of my favorite parts of the game.

The battle graphics also do not hold up very well, and looking back, I’m not sure they were ever as good as most of us thought.

FF7 enemy

That being said, the battles themselves are still fun and many still pose a pretty good challenge. If somehow you managed to not play this game, I would still recommend picking it up on PlayStation 4 since it is pretty cheap, tho I would advise you to avoid the cheats that are enabled. They d,o however, make that grind for limit breaks so much easier, and that was always the part I hated the most. All that being said, thank you for joining me, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.