Not much to say, too much to do

So yeah I've been having to work my ass off this new semester so I haven't really been on the lookout for anything that doesn't land right in front of my face, at least weekends exist, too bad it's only Tuesday.

So there was this new Dr. Who game that was being made, the trailer looked awesome and really made me hype the game, recently a new trailer got released aaaaand... well you should see for yourself, all I'm thinking is I might check it out but it's not something I will be excited for.

Oh in some movie news, this teaser was released with Mathew Broderick and CHKCHKA and everyone was excited as fuck thinking Ferris Bueller 2, turns out it was just a long Honda ad, and while it was awesome for a moment to think about a second movie with a grown up Broderick pretty much all it did was excite a lot of fans and get them mad to Honda.

Also, lately I have been watching some twitchtv and playing some S.T.A.L.K.E.R, whenever I have at least a second of free time, and well let's say with Megaupload dead and a lot of movie streaming sites dead, watching speedruns and game streams has been quite enjoyable lately, well that's just some stuff I wanted to say, also trying to keep the blog updated and not dead, later.

Taken (2008)

Oh god I can't take this never-ending flood of classes and projects, and it's only the first week! Hey let's take a look at a movie I saw just recently:

So everybody knows Liam Neeson is a goddamn badass, and if you forgot that for whatever reason, this movie is there to make you remember it, I was seeing a list of movies that no one can hate, Back to the future, Pulp Fiction, you know the classics, then I found Mean Girls in there and at first I was astonished, but when I though about it, I've never met someone who hates Mean Girls, anyway after some more movies I found Taken, I heard a lot about this movie but it being in this list made me watch it right away, and boy was it good.

The whole movie feels great and gives you a sense of adventure and satisfaction every time Liam pull another trick off his sleeve, it's like he is always one step ahead of his enemies, some may call this a senseless action movie, well don't listen to those people, this movie is great because it's not afraid to show what it is, a great action movie with an almost super-human hero, seriously this guy is like the goddamn batman when it comes to finding clues and planning ahead.

So if you are looking for a "generic" action movie you better go see Transformers 3 or something like that, if you are looking for a good action/detective movie, this is for you, keeping the world realistic but making your character a genius is better than a universe where everything explodes by touch.

Great movie 8.3/10

TMNT new game??

So this week a rumor was spread that rocksteady (Batman Arkham series devs) are in charge of the latest installment including our favorite turtles, so far the rumor seems solid enough as there apparently a lot of details of the game:

- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Manhattan Crisis is the alleged name of the title.
- Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michelangelo are the four playable characters, each with their own varied move set and weapon of choice (sword, bo staff, sai, and nunchucku…respectively).
- Flashbacks are played as Master Splinter/Hamato Yoshi.
- Shurikens, smoke bombs, grappling hooks, and climbing foot spikes.
- Gameplay and story/stage progression similar to Batman: Arkham City.
- The game is expected to be more dark than slapstick, but the turtles themselves and their interactions with the Foot Clan, bosses, and story characters like April O’Neil and Casey Jones will still have comedy attached.
- Purportedly being in development for Wii U, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3.
- Careful selection of voice actors to bring the universe to life as well as Rocksteady did with their two Batman games. 


Those are a few of the details behind this rumor, see more here.

I see this as a potentially awesome game basing my opinion of the work they did with batman.

So many things, so little time and TRIBES

Welp I finally entered college again, so I will try to make long reviews on weekends and whenever I can in between but sometimes is just too much, since I can make a long review, here'ssomething to keep you entretained

Tribes: Ascend, now you may be saying, What a GOOD F2P that's not TF2? YEP

If you don't know about tribes I recommend you to see some frag videos and get hyped to play it, because it's gonna be completely free and is currently under closed beta, what's that, you don't want to wait? well then just go to Tribes Facebook page and like them to get a closed beta key.

Also, yes halo was based from the original tribes, so it doesn't look like halo, halo looks like it.

Resident Evil 6

Oh boy do we have something promising here, it's been a while since Resident Evil 5 which had mixed reviews, personally I didn't like it that much, because the game itself it was a pretty fun, specially with someone to do co-op with, but as a RE game it took a really bad direction, taking out even more survival horror and putting in more mindless action, making it easy for the player with loads of ammo and health, RE4 is one of my personal favorites of all times, by the trailer it looks like the game is going with the 5 direction, hopefully I'm wrong and it goes more RE4 combined with the classics, I would really love that.

Scream 4 (2011) Review

Oh boy is time for a horror movie, how about Scream 4:

 

 So, let me start off by saying, I'm a big horror fan, unfortunately being a horror fan in these days means you will have to put up with a lot of shit, since the genre is filled with bad cliches, predictable and generic plots, jump scares, bad acting, etc. And this has only got worse through time, the good thing however is that many good horror movies were made in the 70s-90s and even the ones that aren't good can be really entreating too.

So in 1996 the slasher genre was about to die, Halloween, the one who popularized the genre spawned hundreds of slasher films and by this year, they were pretty much dead, Wes Craven, the director of Nightmare on Elm St. decided to make one last horror film to get done with the genre, a self-aware movie that made fun of all these cliches and bad acting from the slasher era.

To everyone's surprise Scream was a big hit, and re-spawned the genre even creating the parody movie series scary movie, after this the sequels started, but they had to keep the whole self aware thing going, and I'm glad how they managed the sequels, they knew what we were expecting so they throw some twists at you.

The scream trilogy ended and everyone praised it for introducing all the classics to a new generation and for being the one movie that breaks the cliches by making fun of them, recently Scream 4 was released and wit was treated yet again with the same self awareness, knowing that it was a reboot and treating it like one, not too similar to the other ones, but at the same time not a completely knew thing.

The movie itself was not bad, and I genuinely did not expect the twist at the end, I think in fact that they did all they could to make this a good movie, the problem is reboots are mostly considered a bad thing, because you got a big franchise to live up for, after watching all of them together however, it feels like a nice addition to the franchise, but let's hope it keeps in 4.

The characters were good, the usage of technology and social life in the internet was well used, hell if they want to keep making reboots everyone should look on this one, and while I don't think it's better than the trilogy, I do think it's a pretty good movie, and a must see if Scream fan, furthermore if you haven't watched the original trilogy, then why are you reading this GO SEE IT!

I give it a 8.1/10

Super Meat Boy Review

Seems like I'm finally able to play online again, lets see how that goes.

Anyway, today's review: Super Meat Boy (AKA so hard you are gonna cry like a bitch).

So a lot has been said about SMB but I recently started playing it and holy shit is it hard, however there is a difference  in frustrating hard and fun hard, this game is hard but fun.

Back in the day, the hardware limitations in consoles like the NES and even some of the Snes made it so in order to increase the length of the game they would increase the difficulty, some of the games were so hard that the term "Nintendo hard" was born, because as the NES grew popular thousand and thousands of half-assed games came to the light, and what better way to make a short game seem longer than by putting impossible difficulties and hours of boring grinding.

So by every good, fun hard game we got like contra, where you can feel in  control of all your bullets and every time you died you felt like it was really your fault, we got 20 bad games where the bad controls and super strong enemies made everything harder.

This game is one of the good ones, the controllers are so tight that every time you die you know exactly where you screw-up and believe me you are gonna be dying a lot, other than the controllers we go the gameplay, the game moves so fast that you literally have no time to get frustrated, in other games if you die after a long lever you go "FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF-" while the "you are dead" screen ends and you can begin playing again, then after some dethas you go "FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-"
while the cointinue screen ends, from here the rage may vary, depending onhow many continues you get, how much did you lose, etc.

In SMB however if you die, you just instantly respawn at the start of the level, there are even no loading screens to get you mad, so if you die at the end of a level you go "FF- oh time to play again", the combination of great gameplay, perfect controllers and a great series of different levels really make this a great games if you are looking for a challenge.

Overall, if you are looking for a hard game that is not frustrating, this is for you, the game is still very hard and sometimes it can indeed get you mad, but this game is all about old school Nintendo hard gameplay, definetley don't get this if you are looking for a relaxing game.

It gets 8/10

Source Code (2011)

It seems like this shitty internet is never gonna end, hopefully I got my wii working again so I can just space off when it starts failing, anyway movie review time:

So let me start off saying that if a movie has time travel bor anything that involves playing with time, I am instantly interested, and while this movie doesn't have time travel itself, it does involve time loops, think the groundhog day but 8 minutes instead of a day.

This got me interested right from the beginning, having the opportunity to make everything perfect by knowing how shit goes down is a great premise.


Our hero is Colter Stevens a US air force soldier  played by Jake Gyllenhaal (AKA Donnie Darko) and the movie starts with him not knowing what's going on, he goes to the bathroom only to see another face in the mirror, he doesn't know what's going on and then the train blows up, BOOM (and we can keep seeing this awesome explosion throughout the movie)

Along the movie we learn that the source code is a program that allows someone to enter a recreated world of the last 8 minutes in someone's mind (supposedly like a black box of humans), this source code perfectly recreates our world and how things would've gone if people acted differently, he can literally go out of the train and the source code still works basically creating an alternate reality for 8 minutes, this however is not a time machine and everything that happens in the source code is just part of the program, this whole program is for Colter to find the terrorist and stop him before he blows up something else in real life.

Colter does the time loop over and over, and each time he learns new things about everyone in the train and at the same time grows more fond of the woman in front of him, at the same time he starts growing more curious on why is he there and where is his crew is, in the alternate world he investigates about himself and realizes he is dead.

Turns out Colter is dead and his brain is being kept functional with a chamber, some more time loops and then the end.

I would tell you the end but goddamn I don't want to spoil it, it is real good, so I recommend seeing it for yourself.

Overall the movie felt pretty good and the characters were likable and while the idea of the Source Code is a little far fetched it really comes out well as a Sci-Fi. If you like things that involve time shifting, this one is for you.

I give it a 8.5/10

Portal 2 Review

So far I'm liking this movie/game review so I think I'll be alternating between the two making a review once every 2 or 3 days, anyway today's review:

So, in case I've been too subtle about it, I fucking love TF2, in fact I pretty much love most games by Valve, so since the only problem I had with portal 1 was it's shortness, when this was announced I was pretty excited, unfortunately I couldn't buy the game on release, but I just had to wait a couple of months for portal 2 to get new DLC and be on sale, note that valve is the only company I can think of that not only gives free DLC but actually makes the game cheaper.


So I'll just start off with the things I don't like, a lot of reviews said "this game was too easy compared to the first one" and I don't agree, because while it was not hard, sometimes you could be stuck the longest time over the most stupid thing, that feel when you have been trying to do something for 15 minutes just to realize the answer was right in your face doesn't compare to anything, so no it's not too easy, but it's too linear rather. And I'm not saying going chamber to chamber linear because that's what I expected when I bought the game, I'm saying that the non-portable surfaces in this game are ridiculous sometimes the puzzle is just finding the white wall to make the portal, the first time I played portal 1, specially in the last chambers I actually feel like there are a lot of ways to do the same puzzle, in portal 2 it may take you a while to do it, but once you do you realize that was the only way to go.
With that being said, the last chambers, right about the time you get the white gel, starts getting a lot better, since you can actually make more portable surfaces so you feel more freedom, and with that I move on to the next thing.

Characters, portal 1 had Chell and Glados and.... that's it, Glados was really funny and I certainly didn't expect the part where she tries to kill you the first time, but you can't really say any character is brilliantly written in portal 1, in 2 however we start off with Wheatley, and god I can't help but to laugh at most things he says. He is just so well written and has a brilliant VA, some goes for Glados and Cave Johnson and that makes it so that at almost every part of the game you are hearing an awesome character, the story felt much more immersive and well written.

I've also heard a lot of people complain about the lenght of portal 2 saying it was still too short, and personally while would love more content, I really don't see how valve could make the game any longer without it feeling tedious and repetitive.

About the Multiplayer Co-op I only had the chance to play the first 7-10 levels with a friend, and I just haven't have time since then but it's really fun, you can just play with a random stranger but playing with a friend and screwing up together just had me laughing the whole time. 

And overall the game just feels good, even if you think some random chamber was too easy you still enjoy the game, or at least I know I did, definite well earned spot in GOTY and I would recommend buying it if you still haven't, the game went $7 on this Christmas sale so maybe you can trade a game with a friend for it.

I give it a 9.1/10

The Thing (2011) Review

I don't know if I'll ever be able to get out from this bad internet hell, at least yesterday I could play TF2 for an hour before it starting.
Anyway, while I can and probably will talk about new weapons, updates etc. and since this is the digital era I decided to post about movies too, every time I see a fairly new movie, or maybe even a classic, I'll try to make a short review about it. Today: The Thing

Ohh man, let's start by saying that this is the reboot of a movie that's considered one of the greatest horror films in history, just that has to make it a bit interesting, you also have to notice that I used the word "reboot" and that changes everything.

When you see a remake of an old, good movie you go to see it expecting to have a similar experience than when you saw the original, and since many few ones can actually manage to be as good as the first, they are usually conidered bad.

However when I went to see this movie I was fully aware that it was a prequel and I tried to go see it with the lowest expectations possible, the result is a fairly enjoyable and watchable movie.

While I like the original a lot more, this one is certainly not a horrible movie, and it really makes you feel isolated in a little shed in the middle of snow. The reactions were somehow believable and it had some good characters.

However it's not a perfect movie and the flaws tend to stick out more than the goodies, and the first thing you notice are the special effects, let's just say, it's not going to be nominated for an oscar soon, the first time you see the thing, the special effects make you feel like you are watching an Eddie Murphy comedy, sometimes the effects weren't THAT bad, but my god you just have to have some standards and this movie really went below them, other than that I really didn't like the main character and found myself caring more about some of the ones that were killed off immediately.

Well  that's really the only problems I had with the movie, but since the special effects stand out so much, it makes it look a lot worse, but in this times of horrible remakes after horrible reboots this one at least enjoyable and a must see if you are a fan of the first one.

I give it a 7.5 out of 10

Bastion

Well my internet has been REALLY bad lately, I can't play more than10 minutes without getting disconnected, even when I do, my ping is horrible, so I've been having to lay low on Tribes and TF2, but hey, hre's a new singleplayer game: Bastion

I heard a lot of things about it and finally decided to get in on this steam sale, and well, it wasn't bad.


Gameplay, kind of reminds me of diablo 2, but that's not the highlight of the game, story? nope.
Artstyle and soundtrack is where Bastion shines, I'm not  the biggest fan of hack and slash games because it feels like it get's repetitive too fast, but even if it's not your type of game, the artwork and graphics are still beautiful.
These days every game seems to be brown and bloom with blood everywhere, it's nice to see such a colorful and yet not childish game.

And about the soundtrack, well, you just have to listen it for yourself, but let me tell you, it makes up for anything else you don't like.

I guess it just comes to show how many layers a video game can have, and it's not just about the story or gameplay.

Batman Arkham City Part 2

I went in a full batman marathon, and it was worth it.
I just logged around 23 hours, and what can I say, everything I said stands true, I think this game is so good, not only because you like the hero, but you even feel it for the villians, not want to spoil anything but oh my god, the story is great.
Gameplay-wise I couldn't ask for more, every movement feels freeflowing, completing that 50x combo is just the most rewarding feel, the only problem is that after so many ours in a row, you kind of start noticing a pattern, I'm sure that it will go away in a few days.



This is a must buy in my list of games, and my personal favorite from the last few years, but now I probably go ahead and play some Tribes: Ascend

Batman Arkham City

Ok I might actuially stay updating this time, let's tart with Arkham city, my personal GOTY, everything in this game feels right, I just finished the main story and some challenges, I only got 40% done, with that kind of content alone it leaves a lot of contestants out, against skyrim, well I guess I like batman that much.

The thing about this game, it makes you feel in control, it actually makes you feel like batman, easily one of the best superhero games ever.