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

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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.

 

Mortal Kombat 4

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I’m going to go on a limb and say this was my first M rated video game and damn it was funny. I didn’t know all the moves or even how to do a fatality, because dammit it used to take like eight buttons to melt a face off. So why did I decide to review this beside the fact it was my first M rated game; well it was hugely inspired plotwise for the tenth entry, which was badass as hell. We got many our classic characters like Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Raiden, Lu Kang, and Johnny Cage to name a few but with four we also got Fujin, Tanya, and main antagonist Shinnok. I played it on the N64 so the character graphics are understandably crispy but the backgrounds are pretty well done for the time. For this game, every fighter is able to pull out  weapons which added a new level of awesomeness if you could bring it out or a new level of dick-it-try if you can’t. What’s harder than fighting a spry acid spitting reptile man? How about fighting the same bastard who’s packing a giant double sided battle ax. Also there were throwable items left around certain levels and a titanic fan that can be used for my favorite fatality of all time. The game is fun but damn if the combos aren’t easy and the 3 dimensional moving can be kind of annoying but so much blood and Wilhelm screams, who gives a shit, put on the bitchin dance track, grab a friend, and get ready for MORTAL KOMBAT!!!

Sword In The Storm

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Sword in the Storm is book one of the Rigante series by David Gemmell and is the story of Connovar, the son of a dead man many believe to be a coward. This drives him to do many foolish and downright stupid things at times, but like Legend that i discussed in a previews review it is the starting point for an entire world full of people, cities all with different morals and cultures.

This book will take Connovar on an adventure from childhood to being a young adult on his way to eventually becoming the leader of his people. You will meet a ton of different people including a witch and what is this worlds version of a god, tho there are many variations of them. This one grant wishes but those wishes won’t always turn out how you want and are rarely given away for free, sort of like an old school genie. This series however does have a set order to them and you really do need to stick with that order to truly understand the story. Thanks for your time, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.