Reviews – Page 71 – Savior Gaming

It (1990)

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The 1990 version of It has been a classic since, well since 1990. When the remake was announced people kind of lost their minds. Who could possibly play Pennywise better than Tim Curry? Well this isn’t about all that, but if you are interested we did cover that you can read more here.

Watching this movie made me remember that this wasn’t truly a movie, but a made for t.v. series. This does show by the lack of swearing and blood, something the 80’s and 90’s usually didn’t shy away from. This being made for t.v. tho, they did have to find a way to tone down what is actually a pretty violent and disturbing book. This is where they succeeded quite well.

In fact this may actually be the most successful part of the whole thing. When I was younger this movie actually was pretty freaky, but as an adult there were things that actually annoyed me more than anything. For example the constant jumping back and forth between childhood and being an adult as they introduced characters seemed completely unnecessary. It was also a 3 hour series that easily could have been two hours with much of it being feeling stretched out for no reason I can think of.

That isn’t to say the whole thing is bad, each character is played magnificently and Tim Curry still plays an amazing Pennywise the clown. I also feel comparing the two may be a bit unfair seeing as how one is made for t.v. and the other is a full-fledged movie.

At the end of the day however I have to admit, the 1990 version of It just doesn’t hold up very well for me. It’s still solid enough but it just doesn’t compare to the remake for me which I would much rather watch. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Twisted Metal:Black (PS4)

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I have been a fan of Twisted Metal for a long time, ever since the original. My favorite like most people has actually always been Twisted Metal 2, but I wasn’t going to pass up the chance to pick this one up when it was on sale.

The game itself is exactly what it has always been. You pick one of the characters, each with their own story and vehicle. You then drive around picking up weapons on different levels killing the other people. The controls are nice and the graphics aren’t bad for an old PS2 game remastered for the PS4. The game also now has trophies which is nice, tho none of them are really all that hard to get. The game is worth picking up for fans of the series, and it’s really not a bad spot to jump in. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Set It Up (2018)

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Set it up is one of the new movies from Netflix, and as such I of course sat down and watched it. I actually didn’t expect much.I can’t say why, I just didn’t. The concept was good tho. Essentially it comes down to A female sports writer isn’t very nice to her female assistant. They work long hours, she never has time, and she never gets the chance to write which is all she wants.

A important VP also has an assistant, and he also pretty much gets treated like crap,also works a ton and has no time for his beautiful model girlfriend. One night they both forget dinner,and have a chance meeting. Not much longer later on another late night, they end up having a few drinks in the office and a drunken plan jokingly takes place. One she takes a bit seriously when she misses another date.

After he almost gets dumped he also gets on board. The plan is simple, since they have their bosses entire lives planned out meticulously. They will use this to get them to hook up, so that when they are sleeping together they will have some time off to go do what they want. This of course has varying degrees of success. For example getting them stuck in an elevator goes horrible since a claustrophobic delivery guy ends up stuck with them. The Yankees game however goes well, because as well all know a Yankees game is the sexiest thing ever. Read that with heavy sarcasm.

The movie does have plenty of funny parts to it. This is actually the part that surprised me. The actors are all funny enough, but usually these types of movies just don’t end up being funny. This one however is and that made me happy. The movie isn’t great, but its fun. It is also funny. It is very much worth watching. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Beholder Complete Edition (PS4)

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Beholder Complete Edition lets you authoritarian types live your life long dream of spying on your neighbors and sending them to prison. The game is pretty simplistic on the surface. You manage a building, and use cameras and a skeleton key to spy on your neighbors to make sure things are on the up and up. When they go out you can sneak in and rummage through their stuff to make sure they aren’t hiding illegal stuff, and use the cameras to see what they do when they are home.

The game is pretty in depth tho, you will be fixing up apartments and taking care of your families needs. My daughter actually died from an illness when I couldn’t come up with the money for medicine. My wife was a complete pain in the neck wanting pots for cooking and candy. Seriously lady, I got stuff to do and people to get locked up.

The graphics are nice but nothing special and the controls are a bit stiff but work just fine. The game is fun, and at its price point you can’t really go wrong with such an odd but inventive game. So if you are looking for something new to check out, definitely give it a shot. It isn’t amazing or world changing, but it is interesting. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Metal Gear Survive

I was real late to the party on Metal Gear Survive. I heard a LOT of stuff on this game by the way, pretty much none of it good. Then I got to play this game when it was free to play on Xbox recently. The real question is, was the game actually bad?

Well to start the game actually looks really good on my One X. The controls also work really well. This is short and to the point on what I like, because quite honestly I am about to crap all over this game, just like most other people.

First, the story is ridiculous. The game basically starts as an alternate reality after a certain point then you create a character that is dead then you are basically tossed into an alternate dimension. The dimension is pretty much a point that sucks in stuff from a bunch of dimensions. This is where you will try to survive, as your hunger and thirst drain way to fast to the point it kills pretty much any fun I might have had with the game.

The wanderers used to be human, and apparently have occasionally ended up in our world. They were of course transformed by some sort of disease. Your job while survive is to track down old computer information to figure all this out. Now I know much of this information is quite vague and some isn’t quite accurate, mostly because I would still like for you guys to still be able to play it yourselves. I wouldn’t suggest playing this train wreck, because even for free I felt robbed.

The combat by the way, is not fun. After about 20 minutes of an intro where you don’t even control anything you get a gun, which you lose a few minutes later, you then get a make shift pipe spear. This thing is pretty annoying to use and it is your for the foreseeable future. Hunting food with it is a chore since most things are as fast or faster than you or dives thru you to attack you. Setting up fences helps, but that requires resources and time, which is also making your food and thirst gauges drain.

At no point did I have any fun with this game, and I wanted to. In fact the potential for me was there, the concept is sound and could have been fun. It just isn’t, and may actually be the worst AAA title I have played this year, best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Sudden Strike 4 European Battlefields Edition (Xbox One)

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Sudden Strike 4 European Battlefields Edition, is one of the few RTS games I have played this console generation, and is the ultimate version of the game containing both the game and the extra maps and such. I should also throw a quick thank you to Kalypso for tossing me this review copy.

The game itself on the One X is beautiful, and despite the old days of RTS’s not playing well on a controller, I had no issues with controls on this game. The game also heavily focuses heavily on real life battles. This is actually my favorite aspect of the game. Each battle has some sort of explanation and as you play the game you unlock historic videos.

The game however isn’t perfect, in fact anyone familiar with command and conquer will remember the missions where you get a set number of units and a set mission to accomplish? These were my least favorite missions, and that is essentially the entire game. This is 100% a preference however. The missions are fair, yet challenging and function just fine and do have some nice variety. You may be securing a gas station to refuel your tanks or securing a bridge. That being said if your favorite part of an RTS is base building like me, this is going to be a bad time for you.

The game also makes it VERY easy to create and switch between groups of troops. I found myself creating groups of tanks and infantry simply because I could and then using them as separate entities to back each other up. The RTS genre is slim on console, but if you are looking for one, this is your chance. The game itself is a 7/10 for me, and I have no issue telling you, if you want an RTS, this is worth checking out. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Real Genius (1985)

Real Genius is one of those 80’s movies that for some reason most people I know haven’t seen, and that greatly upsets me. The story is simple. Mitch is recruited to a school for super smart people, he works with Chris the smartest person in the school turned slacker. They are tasked with a school project to build a laser. They aren’t the only two doing this but hey they are the main two.

As the story goes on we see all sorts of shenanigans, from the turning an entire section of the school into ice for a winter carnival.

To throwing a massive party with the local beauty school.

The movie is first and foremost, a comedy. This starts out pretty early with the scene where Mitch meets Chris, and he asks about him being prepared for gravity reversing itself and even trying to convince him the antenna on an odd remote control is in fact a penis stretcher, and offers to let him try it.

The movie does eventually take a more serious turn however, as early on you the viewer will discover the laser is actually being developed by the school for the government as a weapon to be used from space to assassinate targets. Mitch and friends eventually find this out as well, but not until the laser is finished and in the hands of the government.

They will of course go on a quest to put an end to the weapon and take revenge on the dean of the school for lying to them in the fist place, which will involve filling a house with popcorn. He hates popcorn. Regardless the movie is currently on Netflix, go check this out. The movie is amazing and has a great soundtrack. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

American Hero (2015)

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American Hero is the story of an alcoholic and drug addict man who as spent his entire life doing the wrong thing. The wrong thing for himself, his friends, his wife and his son. Well I should say now his ex-wife and son he no longer gets to see. There is a twist, he was born with a sort of power, a super power if you will. He can lift things up and move objects with nothing more than a wave of his hand.

Being the slacker that he is however this has mostly gone to waste with the exception of using it for fun and to make some money when he needs it for booze and drugs, and occasionally to stop small time criminals so he can steal their stolen stuff. This all changed when he has a small personal issue. By that I mean a heart attack. Then his best friend for his whole life gets shot by the local drug lord over something he did.

He then attempts to turn his entire life around and go straight, we are also treated to a scene of what his powers can actually do. The movie itself however has very little action which surprised me. With a name like American Hero I was expecting a lot more action and much less drama. It is all well thought out, well planned and well done. At no point do you ever get the feeling that it is forced or even forced.

This is a mixed bag however. I was disappointed in the movie for its lack of action, but I did enjoy its story of redemption and watching the main character, Melvin, grow from loser to less of a loser. The movie isn’t for everyone, in fact I would bet most people won’t enjoy it. Drama fans will enjoy it, everyone else should probably avoid it. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Bad News Bears (2005)

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As a kid I loved the Bad News Bears, the 1976 version. I wasn’t old enough to see the original release, I wasn’t born for almost a decade after, but I still loved the movie when I saw it. I grew up playing baseball, and while I was never on any teams like that I have seen some bad teams, most of which got better over time and I always would have liked to have seen a story like this. I always liked a good underdog story. I was always wondering how this stacked up to the original but I was always kind of out off since I was never really a fan of it being remade. That being said I finally got the chance to watch it especially since I do enjoy Billy Bob Thornton.

The opening scene did fill me with some hope, as Billy Bob comes out of a basement drinking some beer rats crawling out behind him, and he tells the lady there are indeed a shit ton of rats down there. He then simply leaves, door wide open and rats escaping, and tells her he has a thing to do and to just call for a follow-up. We then end up at the field where we meet the team.

The team is about what you would expect, we got the token black kid, the nerd, kid in a wheel chair, two Latino twins that don’t speak English,or so we are lead to believe and of course we have the kid with the mom that makes him do all kinds of ridiculous stuff and sued the league to let the kids play in the first place, after all it is the 2000’s and everyone gets a trophy. That is actually one of the main sticking points in the movie between The 2 main coaches, one wants a pay check ( Thornton) and the other thinks the bears shouldn’t even be in a serious league.

The movie is odd to me, I can’t say I don’t like it. Billy Bob plays his role amazing and the kids do an honorable job replicating the roles they are given. That is where my issue comes in, the movie barely counts as an updated version of the movie. Many scenes are practically copy and pasted from the original. The ones that aren’t are pretty much the same scene just slightly changed. While this isn’t truly a bad thing, honestly the original is a classic and it does for the most part equal the original in my eyes, it doesn’t give fans of the original any reason to watch it really. The movie is by no means bad, just not very different. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Sonic All Stars Racing Transformed

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Of all the Mario Kart clones out there, this one was one of my favorites. Its pretty simple and straight forward. Take a bunch Sonic and Sega characters, toss them in karts that occasionally become boats or planes, toss them on tracks and away you go. You get a nice amount of people to choose from, nothing really all that surprising tho.

The tracks are pretty varied as are the power ups, they are all pretty standard tho, things that speed you up or hit your fellow racers like bombs or blow fish. One lets you go “all-star” that basically makes you go faster and not let you get hit. There is also one that will out a big catchers glove behind you to catch weapons used against you for you to then use yourself.

The game however is blatantly a Mario Kart clone. If you are familiar with Mario Kart,you have pretty much seen everything this game has to offer except it isn’t done as well. The only thing new here is the transforming and that is really just a gimmick to make it different, and it many times comes across that way. Its one lap here or there on a board to change a track after you get used to it and that’s it. The game is fun and worth buying, but it isn’t as good as what it is clearly copying.