So I just watched the premiere episode of this show and that that it might be worth talking about.
In short, it's alright. The first episode was well done with nothing that bothered me but I'm not totally sold on it just yet. I liked the first one enough to watch a second episode but from there on out we'll see.
So the the people here from left to right are Gordon (future commissioner), Gordon's current partner, Alfred, Catwoman I guess, and Penguin.
I will say that maybe they could have picked a different actor for penguin. Penguin is supposed to be gross and ugly and perverted and fat. This guy has a little bit of a slimy side, and he has the pointy nose and some slightly messed up teeth so I guess you could say ugly. And in fairness he hasn't been around long enough for me to say if he is or is not perverted, but this guy trips really hard on the fat hurdle. He's a damn twig. Penguin is fat! He's fucking fat. Every damn interpretation of Penguin shows him as fat. Don't believe me? Take 4 seconds google "Penguin Batman". I was gonna put a bunch of pictures here to prove this point really really hard, but for some damn reason I'm having issues putting pictures where I want them. But seriously Penguin is fucking fat. The guy playing penguin is a damned twig. And that kinda bothers me. Like when the new guy playing James Bond was fuckin blonde. That annoyed me. But there is an arguable reason for that. But fine I suppose it doesn't have to be a perfect point for point retelling there's some artistic interpretation.
Very mild spoilers in this next paragraph.
The first episode is more or less what you might expect. There's the scene where a mugger shoots Bruce's parents. The rest of the episode handles the investigation of this crime. They show off some characters. Penguin (obviously) shows up, there's a small girl named Ivy, there's a catwoman-esq person who kinda hangs around in a few shots doing catwoman-esq things.
So yeah I see potential here. The first episode was fine. Nothing overly amazing, but it was well presented. So I'll watch the next one and see how things turn out. Anybody else watch it?
No review here either. Maybe next time guys and gals.
Indie games are awesome, I'm gonna talk about one.
This is Closure. Closure is a puzzle platformer. On the surface it's really just a platformer, the entire puzzle aspect revolves around the core aspect of the game, and this is that the whole map doesn't always exist.
Let me explain, each level has a predefined map with specific elements at certain spots, some are manipulable, some are not. But here's the trick, these things only exist if you can see them. You've likely heard of a physics based platformer, well Closure is a light based platformer. Yes there might be a path from point A to point B, but unless you can see that path, it doesn't matter, stepping out of the light will cause you to fall away into the dark abyss, even if there would be a platform where you stepped. If you can't see it it's not effectively there.
The above picture is a fairly good representative of the visual style of the game. That four legged creature with a hole for a face is you. Why are you trying to solve all these puzzles? I have no idea, I guess for the same reason that people climb mountains; because they're there.
One thing that is interesting is that the.... thing you are changes during some of the levels. I haven't done them all yet but the first section causes you to put on a mining helmet, and this causes you to turn into an (albeit somewhat strangely proportioned) approximation of a human. Why does this happen? Fuck if I know.
The sound is minimal, but I think it suits the game well. In some sense you could argue that the game as a whole is minimal. The entire screen is very very rarely actually displaying an image, usually at least half of it is just black. There are small amounts of ambient noise, but mostly it's just sound effects of things happening.
There is no story. If that wasn't clear. Or at least there is no story yet. Perhaps at the end there will be something of an explanation, but I'm definitely not holding my breath waiting.
There is a sort of collection quest. Some levels in the game contain little glowing moths. Apparently there are a total of 30 of these, and grabbing all of them unlocks a bonus section. So that's kind cool.
My feelings on it? Very cool idea, somewhat flawed execution. The default controls for jump and interact are shit, but these can be rebound, so that's not too much of an issue. Issues that are not fixable are that the exact distance the character can jump seems to be not quite dependably standard. The number of pixels of darkness I can safely walk over versus the number that I can fall into and die is also difficult to parse. It's perpetually annoying to do 98% of a puzzle correctly screw up at the end and be forced to do it all again. Light orbs can be smashed for really no reason other than to force you to restart the puzzle, but I suppose this might actually be used as a puzzle element later. Your character can also be killed if a barrel or box falls onto you from pretty much any height. This I can't say could be a mechanic later. I want to like this for the cool things that can happen, but I'm not really sure I can because of all the very uncool things that do happen.Gameplay: 4.5 out of 10
Story: N/A
Visuals: 6.5 out of 10
Audio: 5.5 out of 10
Overall: 5.5 light orbs out of 10
The demo is open to the public! It came out on Friday guys and gals, so in case you hadn't heard you can grab it now, totally free.
For those of you who don't know what smash brothers is..... wtf the fuck is wrong with you? These games are awesome! It's just a bunch of Nintendo characters violently beating the shit out of each other!
Now of course this is a demo, so not all of the content is avaliable, there are only 5 playable characters; Link, Mario, Megaman, Pikachu, and the villager (What the hell is he from?) only one stage, and the only game mode is a two minute kill fest, but this is a really solid demo and it makes me feel that the game is put together well and will certainly be worth the money.
The demo does allow you to play with your friends, provided your friends are nearby. So that's pretty cool, and it does show an online mode that would presumably allow you to play with anyone in the world, and one would hope inviting registered friends to a match is somehow worked into that.
There is also supposed to be some means of connecting it to the wii u and using the gameboy as a controller. Which I guess would be kinda neat to do once just to see it, but I feel like in general if I went to my friends house to play the wii u with him, I'd want a damn controller. Though I suppose if you didn't have a second controller (or third or whatever the required number is) then being able to use the DS and play with your buddy would be nice so you wouldn't have someone left out.
There is a limit of 30 times that you are allowed to launch the demo, but considering that the real game is out in October, I don't see too many people actually using up all of those before it hits shelves. And if you do use up all 30 plays, then I think the demo served it's purpose quite admirably.
My favorite character thus far is link, which is unsurprising, cause I used to love him in both melee and brawl and he's pretty much unchanged, which I can get behind. Fox will be in the full release which is cool cause I liked fox. Marth will be returning but sadly not his bigger, better brother Roy.
All things considered I'm definitely looking forward to smash brothers. If you're on the fence, grab the demo and give it a whirl, if you're already on board the demo will give you a little bit to play with while you wait, and even if you don't think you'd like it maybe give it a try anyway, after all it's free.
This doesn't get a rating, cause it's just the demo.
That's the author there holding the first book of The Iron Druid chronicles. The novel was Released in 2011 and was published by Del Ray Books.
The novel's main character is named Atticus O'Sullivan, or at least, that's the name he currently uses. One finds it best to change their name a few times when they've been running from an angry god for around two thousand years. Summed up shortly the plot is that a long long time ago Atticus wound up in possession of a magic sword. A particular god named Aenghus Óg would really prefer that the sword was with him and that Atticus was laying somewhere six feet under the surface of the earth. The book explains how Aenghus tries to get that to happen this time and how Atticus manages to (spoilers not really) not wind up dead in the process.
What matters most, and what I think is done well here, is the cast of characters. Atticus is a druid and has the proper bravado to make himself a proper lead role, but he's not foolhardy or invincible. I really liked Oberon, Atticus' dog. Yes, his dog is an important character. Through some special magicness Atticus is allowed to mentally communicate with his dog. And his dog is... well more or less what you'd expect a dog that could talk would be. He's sort of like an excitable child and it fits very well. In addition to him there is the shapeshifting goddess of death who Atticus has made a deal with for immortality, The vampire and werewolf lawyers he employs, and the sexy redhead possessed by a witch.
I read this book because it was said to be similar to Jim Butcher's Dresen Files (By the way, go read those books. Now. Seriously, get out of here and go read the Dresden files if you haven't) and I can see how people would say it's similar. It certainly is similar in some ways. The main characters are actually pretty damn similar. The description of Atticus I gave applies very much so to Harry if you replace the word "druid" with "wizard." But that being said I do like this layout for a lead character, and I'm not saying that no two characters are allowed to be similar. Nor am I accusing the author of copying Butcher.
In short, I liked it. I'll probably look into getting the next one soon to see what new bullshit Atticus and his buddies will have to deal with. So if you're into modern fantasy mixed with a liberal splash of older lore and mythology then I'm sure you could do a lot worse than this.
8.5 iron talismans out of 10
In #ExplainAFilePlotBadly fashion, "Russian nerd films as his comrades getting killed one by one." I like that hastag, that hashtag is fun. Also "Insomniac punches self in ear, others join club." One thing I always wondered about that though, what was going on in the second guy's head? Cause in the film he asks for the next fight, but really he would have been asking one guy to fight him when that guy appeared to have been fighting himself.
So anyway back to Doc Frankie and his messed up pets. This is a "found footage" film. Which, normally, I fuckin hate. I normally hate these films cause the camera work is poor, intentionally yes, but intentionally poor is still poor. The filming in this movie is actually done very well by found footage standards, You could almost not know it if you started watching 20 mins in. And it's only really relevant a few times when the camera is dropped and one guy makes a messages to his parents. So this movie I'm okay with it being found footage style.
The actual plot, explained a little better, is as follows. During WW2 a small Russian scout team is out on recon when they start hearing a distress call from another group of Russians. Their radio then begins malfunctioning, but the sarge insists on moving to help the other unit. They wind up entering a town where the only inhabitants are some weird half-living, half-dead, half-robot.... things which the film actually calls "zombots." And despite how fucking silly that sounds, it's actually a fairly accurate name. The zombots, are the creations of "the doctor" a crazed nazi scientist using bizarre machinery to animate half corpse half metal abominations almost all of which are extremely hostile, and difficult to kill. From here things go roughly the way you'd expect. There's a reason pulled from a hat to prevent the guys from doing the sane thing and saying "fuck this, I'm out" then dropping the mic and heading to literally anywhere else.
The film is not great. It's not bad, but all in all it's just not terribly interesting either. It kinda just meanders around for an hour and half doing stuff. The film has a 2.9 average rating on netflix, and that's about right for this. It does get a small allotment of credit for being strange and not fucking anything up. If weird horror films are your thing, then maybe try this movie out. If not, well maybe skip this one. What this film would probably actually be really good for, would be a mystery science theater style joke fest with a buddy or two. It's well done enough that it's watchable and silly enough that it could provide some decent fuel for jokes.
5.5 mad scientists screaming "IT'S ALIVE" out of 10
The sixth guy just said it, he didn't scream it.
Cool album cover guys, but what about the music, does it suck? Oh it doesn't. Alright then. This album was released Nov. 8th 2011 and is the 4th album released from this band. It is the first album I have listened to from them. Track listing is as follows.
One Life
Invincible
Heaven's Gonna Wait
We Are Unbreakable
Young
Beautiful
Bullet For Your Dreams
Hot Mess
Stormy
Last Call
I Won't Let You Go (Darling)
------------------- Bonus tracks below
Hiding Place
Carry On
Heaven's Gonna Wait (Acoustic)
The first thing I'm gonna say is that the deluxe edition is probably not worth it. I did think this was a decent album, but the stuff I liked was not the bonus tracks. So I wouldn't bother going out of my way or spending any additional money on the this version over the normal.
There are a few songs off of the album I think are worthy of note. The first track, One Life, is a nice little anthem about living your one life (see what they did there?) to the fullest. My thought is, they have no proof. Hmmm what proof have you that I only get one life Hedley? None! For all you know I could have had 73 lives by now! I also quite like young, a fun upbeat song about being young and partying, though in a sense this song carries a rather wistful tone, cause he says "we were young" and talks about the fun things they used to do, implying that such things no longer occur, at one point he mentions being a zombie and feeling like he's 45 so the song (while not instantly apparent) is in a way kind of sad and nostalgic of better times.
Stormy and Hot Mess I'm kinda on the fence about. Stormy I only really like the chorus of, and Hot Mess I got back and forth, more mood dependent I suppose.
But all in all I'd say this is a decent album. I find it's not common for me to like more than 2 songs off an album. Maybe I'm just hard to please (Ladies) but that's average for me. I did find another song by the band that I liked called Kiss You Inside Out (Side note: Hands up for people that this is your fetish I know you're out there) which was on the re-release of this album in 2012. That's probably the version of this album to get, say "sod it" to the sucky deluxe edition content and grab the one other good song.
7 upended ships out of 10
This album is so old I actually once owned the cd for it! I may still have the cd around somewhere. Dragontown was released in 2001 and was Alice Cooper's twenty-fucking-second album. 22 albums! Shit most bands you hear on the radio have less than ten. And I would bet that most bands that have existed have less than ten albums released. Track list is as follows.
Triggerman
Deeper
Dragontown
Sex, Death and Money
Fantasyman
Somewhere in the Jungle
Disgraceland
Sister Sara
Every Woman Has a Name
I Just Wanna Be God
It's Much to Late
The Sentinel
From that list the songs I think are worthy of note are the title song, Dragontown, Disgraceland, and I Just Wanna Be God. Dragontown is a good classic rock anthem nothing particularly special, but well made. Disgraceland is neat because Cooper (at least I think it's him) actually does an Elivs-like voice for some of it, after the song it's title is very clearly a reference to. And I Just Wanna Be God is.... well exactly what you'd expect. It's a song about wanting to be god. The only other song that I can think of being as relateable is Billionaire by Travie McCoy which the very first line of is "I wanna be a billionaire so fuckin bad." Seriously though, if you haven't heard it, and you like rock music https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-kkXVcxoxI Go there, listen to the song.
On the whole the album is what I consider fine. I'm indifferent to most everything here. Like 2 of the songs, but honestly, that's a decent album in my books. It's rare for me to find an album with more than 2-3 songs I like even from bands I consider good. Blue tells me I don't like any music, and that I'm way too picky.
6.5 applications of strange/creepy facepaint out of 10
Oh and on the subject of Sex, Death and Money
I know it's considered option people but...... just fucking do it. It helps avoid confusion.
