Tag: Reviews

Christmas Vacation

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Another classic Christmas movie from my childhood that honestly I would probably never forget honestly. The story of the Griswolds will live on in..well infamy may be the best word. Cousin Eddie draining his RV and yelling “The shitters full” while drinking  beer or oiling the bottom of a sled that would fly down a hill and pretty much catch fire will forever. And lets not forget that classic moment of chopping down a nice big pine tree only to be attacked by a rouge squirrel.

The movie is obviously a comedy and not meant to be taken seriously. But it is great fun, from the starting point of finding out there is no Christmas bonus to the insane scene with Christmas lights. It is a wild and exciting ride of hilarity that should be enjoyed by all. Best wishes, Merry Christmas and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Red Christmas (2016)

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This movie for me was the definition of mixed feelings. Not because it was bad, which it was. It was bad in that B movie sort of way tho. No, I had mixed feelings for a different reason. See the movie starts off with what seems to be a nice wholesome family on Christmas.

We switch to a man in a hood stumbling in the snow towards a man chopping wood. Of course this guy is going to be a dick and end up dead. Jumping back to the family we discover this wholesome family aren’t so wholesome. The granddaughter may be suicidal playing with nuts she is supposedly allergic to. Her uncle is happy to let her and after being scolded dumps a flask full of liquor into the punch bowl after protesting about why can’t she have the nuts. The pregnant woman and her husband both happen to be on drugs, the priest doesn’t even hide the fact that he is gay and of questionable morals and the grandmother is worst of them all. The only decent person in the family is the son that happens to have down syndrome. Or is he? More on that soon enough.

The man in the hood from sooner knocks on the door and is invited inside. He also obviously has some sort of medical problems both mentally and physically. He doesn’t understand what a gift is and needs it explained, but he does want to read the letter he brought for his mother. After realizing the letter is discussing an abortion clinic he is violently grabbed and thrown out of the house, into the cold wearing nothing but a hooded cloak where he very realistically may die. This is when he decides to kill everyone. Now as this goes on we discover our son with down syndrome happens to be quite bloodthirsty and can’t wait to kill this guy. There is not a single decent person in the entire group. It can actually be argued that the killer is the best person in the group, by the end of the movie you will understand why he is there, why he is angry and that he actually has a very good reason for being upset in the first place. I ended up with mixed feelings because honestly, the killer may not even have been the bad guy. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

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I have heard a lot about this movie since its release, but I never had the urge to watch it. My biggest issue with this movie was going in we all knew the ending. Finally however after watching The Last Jedi I sat down and watched Rogue One.

Much of what I heard came down to two main things,one the best part of the movie is the last about 5 minutes when Darth Vader looks like a total bad ass and the CGI for Princess Leia looks like complete garbage. We will get to those two points in a bit.

First, K-2SO is the best character in the movie. Robo dude is just great, he is well written and well acted. He alone made the movie for me. I think many people are far to harsh on this one, don’t get me wrong the movie is far from great but it is solid. The story is fun the characters are pretty interesting and at no point did I really feel like anything was being forced. The movie only suffered from one thing that sadly nothing anyone did could have fixed.

At the end of the day, this was a story fans never asked for because it never needed to be told. We knew how it ended already. There was no way this movie could have been done in such a way where the audience could truly be invested in any of the characters because we knew by the end they were all going to die and the plans for the Death Star would end up with the rebels and that it would later be destroyed by Luke Skywalker. Felicity Jones played Jyn Erso amazingly and Diego Luna was great as Cassian and even how much I loved K-2So and how well Alan Tudyk played him it didn’t matter because going in, I knew this was the end of them.

As for Darth Vaders bad ass moment, it wasn’t all that bad ass. It was cool, but we have seen better from the Franchise and Leia did not look as bad as people made her out to look. Many people seem to have hated this movie because it was a cool thing to do. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Krampus Unleashed (2016)

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Krampus Unleashed is one of those movies that falls between being a horrible B movie that I love and legitimately just a poorly made movie. Usually they have low production value and they realize this, they embrace this. They don’t pretend to be more. Krampus however attempts to blur this line. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, the movie looks pretty good. The acting is solid as well. Where the movie falls a bit flat however is the pacing is off and the story itself is rather odd.

The movie starts off in what seems like post WW2 Germany when some treasure hunters late at night when they discover a small box with a black stone in it. After some fighting they unleash Krampus whom shows up to kill a few people. We then find ourselves in the future.

A family trip to gramps country home we get to know the family, mostly a pretty basic group, expect for one kid that wants to have sex with his cousin. Not a joke by the way. This is where the story gets weird. Turns out that scene at the beginning of the movie was on this country home farm as the family discovers the rock in a river.

I won’t go to much further into the story, feel to watch it for yourself. While the story itself isn’t great it isn’t horrible and the gore factor is rather nice with limbs being torn off and blood by the bucket full. It is a nice throw back to when horror movies were just awkward stories that were an excuse for a body count. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Merry Friggin’ Christmas (2015)

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This movie holds a special place for me actually, not because its great or horrible or anything like that. It is actually the first new movie of his I saw after he died. But was the movie any good? Well let me answer that.

The movie starts out with a man explaining that he sometimes over does things with his kids, namely Christmas. The reason for that, well his father wasn’t exactly great at that sort of thing. He didn’t like that his son wanted to paint instead of doing more manly things for example.

With this in mind Boyd never goes home for Christmas until his brother asked him to be god father of his child, but decides to hold the baptism on Christmas eve. While this in itself would be enough to ruin a holiday they also forget the Christmas presents at home.

In a last ditch effort to save Christmas Boyd attempts to rush home, grab the gifts and return in 8 hours. A trip that takes pretty much as much time as he has until the kids wake up, the perfect coincidence. Poof, car trouble. Dad (Robin Williams) for the save.

Honestly the movie isn’t that good, it is pretty much the stereotypical father and son don’t get along fight a lot and bind over helping the grand kids story. Williams himself is the best part of the movie tho even there it isn’t his best performance. It is far from the worst Christmas movie I have seen this month, but most people won’t be fond of it. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

The Hated (2017)

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The Hatred is one of those movies I am really not sure what to do with. The start of the movie is a bit odd and I wasn’t a fan. A dad seems to be possessed by something kills his daughter and is subsequently killed by his wife. We then fast forward to the modern day when some college students stay at the house years later.

The movie should have been great tho. There was cursed cult artifacts, a scary creature in the basement, a Nazi officer in hiding. The movie just never really took off and felt rather mundane. The movie wasn’t bad by any means and I wouldn’t go so far as to say don’t watch the movie. By all means grab a soda and some popcorn sit back and give it a go. Casual movie fans will most likely enjoy this flick, hardcore horror fans however will want to stay clear. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Miracle on 34th Street (1994)

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Miracle on 34th street. A movie that has been done a few times and always tells the same story about a man that claims to be Santa, works at a department store and a rival tries to ruin him and the store by discrediting him. Lets be 100% honest here tho, how the hell do you hear and old guy running around claiming he is Santa and not think this dude is bat shit crazy?

The movie honestly is amazing, if I had to choose between this and the original I am not sure I could choose. Both are well done, the characters are played amazingly the stories are damn near perfect and the people playing Santa look like someone ripped them from a Christmas book and stuck them in the movie. These movies are considered classic for a reason, and I dare you to see the court room scene with post office dragging in bags of letters to Santa and NOT cheer for the crazy old man. There are movies out there that just epitomize Christmas and this is one of them. But don’t worry, on December 25th I will be posting the best Christmas movie of all time. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Star Wars The Last Jedi Review (Savior)

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Tonight for my birthday me and @torstenvblog went to see The Last Jedi. Honestly it was a combination birthday gift, Savior Gaming outing and Dream of seeing a numbered Star Wars movie thing. Honestly we made a trip out of it. Hit the mall for some good old fashioned loitering got some pizza then hit the movie. So without further delay here is my spoiler free review.

First the movie starts off strong, the opening scene gets right to the action to suck you in. From there the movie shifts perspectives quite a bit. There are multiple stories going on that include one between Rey and Luke, Finn and a new character and one with Leia and Poe. While there is a lot going on it all comes together nicely and I never really felt that it was to much or hard to follow. I would have liked more back story on what Luke was doing all these years but there is enough to paint a pretty good picture and Kylo has mostly lost that whiny emo attitude from the last movie and has really come into his own quite a bit.

The movie is far from perfect, and I am still not sure how I feel about the sudden influx of comedy into Star Wars tho it was pretty funny. I also didn’t care for the fact that much of the movie felt like it was longer than it needed to be simply for the sake of being there. Certain scenes felt like they were there just to add some time and didn’t really do much. This was more of a personal preference and didn’t take away from the film, but it just may bother some people. All in all the movie was fun and well done and for me was the best Star Wars since the original trilogy. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

 

Titan Fall 2 (PS4)

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I had never really put to much thought into Titan Fall 2 honestly. It looked like just a standard shooter with some giant robots. I mean that sounds fun enough really, I just didn’t want to spend money on it. A few weeks ago Torsten brought it up and I said it looked good enough. Fast forward a bit and he shows up at my place with an early Birthday/Christmas gift. Two copies of Titan Fall 2. Obviously one for me and one for him.

You guys won’t believe this, or hey maybe you will. A fast paced shooter that involves huge robots, is a hell of a lot of fun. The game looks nice and the controls are fluid and responsive. Whether running across walls or sliding across the road gunning people down while launching a grappling hook onto the side of a Titan to escape you never feel like you are out of control or limited in what you can do. You are encouraged to keep moving. The Titans however, control mostly like you would think but are still maneuverable enough to make battles strategic and fun. Each Titan also has their own strengths and weaknesses.

The game is far from perfect obviously, the match making is horrible and time consuming some nights and its usually easiest to just let the game pick whatever it wants to send you to. But regardless it is fun and easy to pick up, but challenging to master. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Monster Hunter World Beta

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For those with a PlayStation 4 and a PSN account this weekend was a treat, we got to take part in the open beta for Monster Hunter world. But how was it? There are a few negative things you could say that would all be fair. I will say those now real quick just to get them out of the way. First off, it was pretty small really. There were only  three missions with very limited ability to really upgrade anything at all. The match making was also a nightmare even for a beta. At one point on Saturday it took me almost 45 minutes to find a game. Those missions could all be beaten pretty quickly as well. Also on a minor control issue certain attacks being mapped to the controller how they are would result in messing with items instead if you were too close, which almost got me killed a few times.

Other than that my time with the game flew by. The graphics looked great on my PS4 pro. I didn’t have any issues with frame rate tho i should note when given the option I did choose to prioritize that over anything else, an option the game tells you is only given to pro owners.  The controls themselves felt nice and fluid and easy to use with combinations working as one would expect and each weapon felt different. The game will definitely be a treat for fans of the series come January. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.