Horror – Page 2 – Savior Gaming

Monster Friday-Djinn-Jinn-Genies

Monster Fridays continues with a very misunderstood one. Genies, Djinn, Jinn. They are all based on the same creature that most people assume takes one of two sides. The Disney, rub a lamp and get three wishes, or the Djinn evil screw you over type. If you want a vast overview, Britannica has a great article to get you going that goes into great depth about its Islamic and pre-Islamic history. I am just here to give a brief rundown of what it is.

Djinn aren’t truly good or evil and are much similar to humans than people think. While humans were believed to be created from the Earth itself, Djinn were created from smokeless fire. They can live and die just the same as humans can and even have the same free will. Djinns, on the other hand, can’t normally be seen and take the shape of trees, animals, or other inanimate objects. This is probably where the myth of rubbing lamps comes from.

This also may be where the confusion of them granting wishes and screwing people over comes from. They do have a massive amount of power and could, in theory, grant wishes if they chose or cause great harm. They would also harm humans who hurt them. Trying to cut down a tree that was actually one of these creatures would probably get you punished; worse, killing one of their children, even by accident, could conceivably cause one to cast a plague on a village.

At the same time, helping one of these that was in trouble could see someone instantly become a king, recover their health, or any number of seemingly great wishes come true, and it is easy to see why they became known for granting wishes.

Djinns are very oddly misunderstood. Some of this is because of Western media and Disney, and some of it is because of time itself just passing. They are still a rather interesting thing. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Drive Thru (2007) Movie Review

Drive Thru, starring Leighton Meester as Mackenzie Carpenter, is not a good movie. It is, however, a competent slasher movie. They didn’t bother getting the simple Spanish right for the town name, though. Blanca Carne, meaning white meat, which should be Carne Blanca, is home to Hella Burger fast food. Their mascot, Horny the Clown, is about to go on a killing spree.

The story is quite simple. Mackenzie’s friends start dying just after her graduation party, and it is up to her to figure out why. She soon discovers, much like in The Nightmare on Elm Street movies, that her parents did some messed up stuff and now the killer is after her and her friends.

The two things this movie does have going for it are the great acting. Larry Joe Cambell playing Detective Crocker is fantastic alongside the star of the film. Larry is a guy you know, even if you don’t know him by name.

Second, and this is important for a slasher horror film, it has some great death scenes. This is honestly all I wanted, and I got it. So feel safe to check this one out if all you want is solid acting and some cool deaths. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Monster Friday-Mothman

Mothman is a very specific monster in that it only exists in one place, during a very specific point in time. In a small place, Point Pleasant, West Virgin,a from around November 1966 until December 1967, there were reports of a humanoid creature known as Mothman. It even has its own Museum.

That is a live YouTube camera, by the way, that shows the giant Mothman statue that is very popular at the Mothman museum. The sightings themselves have been explained by things such as the migration of birds in the area that don’t normally come through there such as sandhil cranes.

As you can see, the sandhill crane is a rather large bird with red/orange eyes, which lines up perfectly with what the Mothman reportedly looks like, a large creature with Red eyes and wings. If you were to see one at night out of season, you could, while scared and surprised, possibly confuse it for being humanoid.

Mothman has appeared in movies such as The Mothman Prophecies and is a staple in the Fallout games, and while I honestly belive there is nothing to this one, it is one of the more fun ones out there. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Monster Friday,Chupacabra

Chupacabra, of which there is, despite popular belief, more than one, lives across North and South America. The name literal means goat sucker in Spanish and is called this because of how they hunt and kill animals, which would be predominatly farm animals. They do this the same way as vampires, by attacking and sucking the blood of creatures.

A number of them have been supposedly found, but they are always later discovered to be a known animal, usually a coyote with mange or something similar.

That being said, it would be wild of some guy on a blog to say it doesn’t exist. I have clearly not traveled the continents doing research or memorized any sort of animal codex and cross-referenced anything. It does happen to be one of the few cryptids that I do believe has been pretty debunked at this point. Either way, it is a rather interesting one. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Monster Friday -Kappa (Japanese Yokai)

Welcome back to Monster Friday, today we will be discussing a popular monster from Japan the Kappa. This water spirit, or Yokai, is a creature of mischief. The Kappa have various legends surrounding them, but they are more intelligent than most other creatures. Their legacy can be traced as far back as the Edo era (starting around 1603) and since then they have been blamed for everything from the disappearance of children to the murder of adults near water. It is thought that they would convince men to get in the water drag them under and eat them.

Their general look is similar to an ape except with fish scales and a turtle shell. While being the size of a 6-10 year old child. The indentation in their held holds water it is believed if it is ever spilled, they lose their magical abilities. Many think you can force them to grant you favors if you can make them spill this water. They also believe you can gain their favor by giving them cucumbers or tossing cucumbers into their water to make them happy. I am not sure why something that feeds on humans would love cucumbers so much but weirder things have happened.

Weirdly, I couldn’t find any sort of Kappa festival. Most of these popular creatures have some sort of formal festival or day attached to them in Japan, but the Kappa doesn’t seem to have any widespread formal holiday. Kappa Matsuri is a festival held in some parts of Tokyo, Ushiku, Komaki, and Misawa according to Wikipedia but it didn’t supply any real information so I don’t consider it very reliable. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Graduation Day (1981)

Graduation Day is a movie about a track star from Midvale High School who dies during the school year, and when her sister comes home to receive an award she won, a deranged killer suddenly starts killing everyone that was on the team. Apparently, someone isn’t so happy that they won and plans on honoring this young lady’s death.

The movie has exactly what you would expect from a 1980s slasher movie, boobs, cheesy death scenes, a teacher that is very inappropriate with students, and a blatant killer who isn’t the killer, and a huge tirade I want to go off on but I refuse to spoil a movie even if it is closing in on 50 years old. I want to make this even more weird, check out the following picture.

That is not a joke, one of those women is, one of those women is a young Vana White before she became famous as the woman turning letters on Wheel of Fortune ( she also failed to get out of contestant row in a 1972 episode of The Price is Right as one of the first 4 people) See, I teach as well as entertain.

Back to the movie, as a horror movie in the 80’s it is the right kind of bad. We have the cheesy death scenes, the needless nudity that is done tastefully but tasteless at the same time that we all enjoy but know the horror genre is better off without, and most importantly it is entertaining. I had fun watching it and that is all I ask for. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Also because it was the 80s, do not watch the trailer below if you have a seizure disorder of any kind.

Scream 6

I am back today with Scream 6 and I have to say while Scream 6 revitalized the franchise, Scream 6 brought it to another level. The opening scene actually made me think the movie was ruined from the start when they revealed who the killer is from the start. This isn’t really the case, however.

Amber and Tara are now in college, much like in Scream 2. Yes, this movie is continuing to build off the idea that we are restarting the series while not restarting the series, and once again they are very open about this. Even when the killing starts and they get together with the group to discuss this the core 4 from the last movies even openly discuss this and how a franchise has rules and how they can’t count on the rules from Stab 2 (Scream 2) holding up.

Once again I have to admit, this actually has me excited for Scream 7. I didn’t think it would be possible for a franchise to die and come back like a horror villain but it actually has. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Scream 2022 (Scream 5)

Let us be perfectly clear from the start, Scream 4 was not a good movie. So when Scream was given a reboot/sequel (a requel as they call it in the movie) hopes were not high for many of us. The fact is I avoided this movie for years. I saw the original as soon as it left theaters back in 1996 in fact as I wasn’t old enough to see it while it was in theaters. It revitalized the horror franchise and is by many considered one of the most important horror movies of all time and I definitely understand the viewpoint, so watching the franchise decline after Scream 2 was a hit harsh.

This brings me to Scream 5. I went into this expecting a complete crap shoot and was greatly surprised. The gore and blood were back of course, but I loved that they completely steered into the concept that Scream itself spawned a movie in the world called Stab. With Stab falling off it made people want to reenact the movies to bring back better movies, hence why Scream is back.

Are you a bit confused? You probably should be, and that is what is great. Billy Loomis and his friend Stu went on a killing spree inspired by movies, which inspired a movie, which then inspired more killers obsessed with their movies.

This is what brings back beloved characters like Sydney and Dewey while introducing new characters Tara (Ortega) and Amber (Madison) which they fully recognize and say in the movie is the point of the movie because it’s what the killers want. Amber is of course the unknown daughter of Billy Loomis himself.

All in all, Scream 5 completely revitalizes what was once a dead franchise and it was done in an amazing way. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Day Shift (2022)

Day Shift from 2022 is a sort of horror comedy that doesn’t really manage to succeed at either one of them. What you end up with however is an oddly enjoyable movie.

Jamie Fox plays a vampire hunter that for reasons that quickly becomes obvious has been banned from the official channels of work. He keeps going however through less official channels that pay far less money. When he needs money to keep his daughter from being taken to Florida by his wife,he calls an old friend for help. (It’s Snoop Dogg for the record)

The big man at the Union however isn’t a fan and assigns Jamie Fox a party to make sure he does everything by the books. Dave Franco however while being kind of a sissy (he literally pisses himself multiple times throughout the movie) is easy to be pushed into ignoring certain things to help save Jamie’s family.

The movie honestly is neither funny nor scary, but somehow I found myself cheering for these guys to figure out how to make the money to save Jamie’s family and to rescue them from some vampires that Jamie pissed off.

That being said, outside of the extremely flexible group of vampires that come from a famous group of people who’s French name I won’t even try to spell,it’s really more of just the same. It is still worth watching tho. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

V Rising:PS5 Review

V Rising is one of those games I had my eye on for a while, and recently Stunlock Studios was kind enough to send me a copy when their game hit 5 million sales. The game always looked like a cross between Diablo and Conan Exiles. Just a classic kill-everything and survival game where you have to build your own vampire castle. A small part of me is always worried, however, how good can a game trying to do that much actually be? Even more so when you start tossing RPG elements into it?

The game starts out when you awake from your slumber, after years of hiding away from the humans that rebelled against their undead overlords. You enter a world that you can mostly control the difficulty of. Do you want to play alone? with your friends? Let just any random person enter? These are all things you can control. I recommend getting a feel for the game before you start letting unknown people rampage around your world.

You start out collecting some basic things to build a wall and a coffin to protect you. Be careful, though. While this will keep enemies and such out, the sun will obviously come over the walls and kill you. You can build special fog equipment to block out the sun, but if you don’t, find some shade or stay in bed until the night comes. Going out and hunting,materials, enemies for their blood, and even bosses to gain new abilities is important. This is the main way to progress through the game’s many chapters and how you unlock new things to build. Rushing however can be deadly. New armor and weapons will increase your levels.

The graphics are great. I enjoyed getting lost in the woods and admiring the scenery most of the time. I say most of the time because often, I would forget the world changes as days turn to night and night turns back to day. Once safe places suddenly had a vampire hunter in them that I found myself no match for. Bosses I once beat had migrated to new areas to attack me. While chopping down trees and smashing stones to build a staircase for my castle bandits would be out on patrol and I would find myself having a quick meal instead.

This brings me to the next thing I loved about this game. The ever-changing environment. Enemies go about their days even if you don’t. Animals will seemingly live their lives and stumble across your base, and not all of them are friendly. This extends to your work benches. If you need planks or iron you can just toss materials into your machines and they will produce them until they no longer have the materials. weapons are made at work benches the same way. Simply toss your materials in, tell it what to make and just leave until it is done. I love this quality of life and more games need to make this standard.

Not everything is great however. In fact nothing about it is truly great outside of the fact that it is fun. The story has potential but it never really goes beyond being a great concept. The building is good and you can do a lot with it, there are better builders out there. It also isn’t a great surviving game because while drinking blood helps you heal and in combat you dont really need it to survive. The conbat is good, but its not Diablo level great or deep.

The game is good and it is a lot of fun,I will definetly be adding this to my list of games I keep playing after I review it. It is also a game i encourage friends to pick up and play together. If you want a game that is the best at any one thing, this isn’t it. If you want a game that is good everywhere however, definelty get this one. 8/10, best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.