Kingsglaive Final Fantasy XV (Review)

Kingsglaive Final Fantasy XV is directed by Takeshi Nozue and staring Aaron Paul, Sean Bean and Lena Headey and it is set within the Final Fantasy XV universe and takes place parallel to the game, right off the bat you should understand if you are not going to play the game the movie wont make much sense to you, most of the story elements in the film is a set up to the events of the game so aside from some marvelous CGI work you won’t get anything else out of this film, but if you are going to play the game and interested in the Final Fantasy XV story this film is going to give you some perspective, be warned before we go any further I will talk about the various plot points within this review so if you want to go in fresh leave now.
The film with a spectacular battle between the Imperial Invaders and the Kingsglaive, they are the center of the story a group of magic welding soldiers who work as the king’s special forces, our hero Nyx voiced by Arron Paul is a hot headed strong young man who they call Hero for trying to save everyone, the main problem is none of the Kingsglaive members is interesting or deep enough for the viewer to actually care about, yeah we got some background about how they are immigrants and they feel used by the king who build a wall to keep them out and kinda made them pay for it but we don’t get much to care about any of that, sorry for the Trump rant. I think that is the main issue from the film the characters that are the center story of the film and likely won’t appear in the movie are lifeless and plain and paper thin but the game characters who will appear in the game are very interesting such as Ardyn Izunia who seems to play a key role in the game that I am very excited about.

Some critics complained about the story being convoluted and all over the place to those I say welcome to the Final Fantasy series, every story from this series is convoluted and all over the place and it is what most fans of the series love about it but the problem is while you spend 40-60 hours going through the game you get to see that world in a way a two hour movie can never make understand, no matter how much exposition and we get out of it and that is an issue with all movies that is based on video games, usually in games the directors and writers tell the story with the game play in the background you see what is happening and you interact with it which is something no movie can ever achieve hence why almost all of them end up failing critically.

Verdict : Kingsglaive feels like the pilot episode for a show like Game of Thrones if you only saw the pilot you won’t even know what is what, the film establishes some of the story elements that I believe will come into play in the later part of the game since the movie and the first half of the game takes place at the same time, with all being said it does suffer from having some characters that lack any depth to make you care about them, but the world of Final Fantasy XV looks to be very interesting and it is one I can’t wait to explore.

Why No Man’s Sky is so hated?

Hello Games’ 18 quintillion planets survival game is probably one of the biggest disasters in gaming this year, the game received lukewarm reviews and followed by a staggering 90% drop of player base then an even more devastating refund notice from major stores like Amazon, Sony and Steam regardless of how much you played it. From all the reviews and player impressions one thing is very clear No Man’s Sky is not a bad game it is however a game that was falsely advertised, what most people thought of the game was an endless and wondrous journey through the universe in an Epic sci-fi with a goal to reach the centre of the galaxy end up being a recourse management game with a little survival and a bad first person shooter combat paired up with a goal toward what appears to be a loading screen and nothing more, but we all know this is not the worst combination ever in an industry filled with Free to Play games that faver who ever pays money to annual games that change nothing yet we still buy them, so why No Man’s Sky is getting so much hate? Well I am glad you asked!

• Early announcement went wrong
  When NMS was announced the internet was shaken to its core, I remember that night everyone was talking about the undiscovered universe that we are going to explore some YouTubers ForceGaming made a video for the game right when the game was announced, but the was in 2013 obviously the game was in early development so the time that it had allowed the studio and Sony in particular to do a lot of press for the game to a point Sean Murray appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to promote the game nearly a year before its release, most AAA games with massive budgets don’t get that kind of press, this allowed the mainstream gaming audience to take so much note of the game and for an indie title that could be a huge problem.
• It was an indie title lost within the mainstream audience
  Most impressive indie titles has a limited fan base few loyal fans who talk their friends into the game and the developers keep adding features to the game to bring in more fans that wasn’t the case with NMS, NMS’s audience was so big at the beginning that for years it topped the most anticipated lists on millions of fans, a game with this much anticipation and expectation cannot be built by 15 people it just can’t, 15 people can be the creative force behind it but running it and maintaining it and debugging it will need a work force of hundreds of dedicated full time professionals that Hello Games just didn’t have to keep up with the mainstream audience. every year we see massive titles get shitted on by fans such as Destiny even though Bungie and their 500 employees and Activision’s millions was behind it, we saw that this year with The Division even though UbiSoft is one of the biggest on the planet and they were making it, what chance Hello Games has to compete with them?
• Lies.
  Ah the lies, so many lies! from the “The Mystery of No Man’s Sky is in the center of the Galaxy” which turned out to be a loading screen and start of New Game Plus, to the game’s Shared Online World feature that doesn’t exist even though they said it does to so many more lies like this and this there doesn’t seem to be an end to Sean Murray’s Procedurally generated lies this will follow Hello Games to the center of the universe gamers are not very forgiving people we still haven’t forgotten John Romero’s attempt at making us his bitch, that thing is so old I can’t even find a video of it!

that paired up with a bunch of other reasons is why No Man’s Sky is so hated, in my next post I will share some of my thoughts on how do I think No Man’s Sky can be fixed so Sean Murray stay tuned.

Enemy Explained-ish

Last night I watched the 2013 Denis Villeneuve masterpiece Enemy and upon the first watch I, like almost everyone who have seen this movie had only one thought “what the fuck was that?”, I could have just left it at that I usually like films with less explanations and exposure but I felt like this one deserved some more thought so I decided to write an analyse of the film based on what I think the film was about and I thought this could make a nice blog post and I end up putting it up here, before we go any further please note that this film has been explained to death by many film buffs and I am not reinventing the wheel here it is simply my take on the film and the meaning behind its mysterious story, also if you don’t already know spoilers ahead don’t continue reading if you haven’t watched the film, got all that? ok lets go.

before everything I would like to give some context to the characters and to simplify the rest of the post I will give each one of them a name that will ease things further :

• Adam Bell played by Jake Gyllenhall is a history teacher who is living a repetitive and boring life, he has a girlfriend and lives in an empty apartment, hence forward I will refer to him as “The Teacher”
• Anthony Claire also played by Jake Gyllenhall is a third grade actor who appears in small roles in some movies, he lives a good life with his pregnant wife and seems to be unfaithful to her, I will refer to him as “The Actor”
• Mary played by Mélanie Laurent is The Teacher’s girlfriend I will refer to her as The Girlfriend.
• Helen Claire is The Actor’s wife and I will refer to her as The Wife
• Isabella Rossellini who is Adam Bell’s mother will be known as Mother.

Plot : the film stars with a voice male message from Mother to The Teacher telling him that she is not happy with his apartment then we see a private club where men get to watch women perform some acts of sexual nature looks to be a very exclusive one, and then we get to see The Teacher give a lecture about dictatorship and how they just want control and then we see him meeting his girlfriend in his apartment and after they had sex the girlfriend leaves as if she wasn’t satisfied with the sex and The teacher is left in disappointment then the same day repeats its self and ends with the girlfriend’s disappointment in The teacher’s sexual ability, in another scene another teacher recommends a movie to The teacher and when he sees it he notices one of the actors look exactly like him, then he goes on a series of investigation on the internet and finds the The Actor’s agency and when he gets there the doorman greets him as if he knows him and we find out that he hasn’t been there for over Six months then he gets an envelope that is addressed to The actor with his name and number on it, he calls the actor’s house and the wife picks up and thinks that he is playing a joke on her, later we get to see them and she seems to be confused by that action, then we get another scene where The Teacher finally calls The Actor and confronts him and he hangs up after another call he asks him to meet up, when he hangs up we get a conversation between The Actor and The Wife about who was on the phone and she asks him “if he is seeing her again“, then the wife visits the school where the teacher works and he asks her how long she has been pregnant and she says Six Months when he goes back inside she calls him and as soon as disappears in front of us he picks up the phone, later The teacher and The Actor meet in a hotel room and they are both very surprised of how much they look alike freaking The Teacher out and he goes to his mother and tells her this even and she tells him “He has a good apartment, a good job, he should drop this actor fantasy and not meet strange men in hotel rooms since he already has enough trouble sticking with one woman” later the actor comes to where The teacher lives and accuses him of sleeping with his wife and makes a deal with him in order for them to get even The actor will take his girlfriend on a date and when he is done with her he will disappear in his life, as he leaves with her The Teacher goes to The Actor’s building, the doorman asks him if he can help him to get back into the private club that we saw at the beginning because they have changed the Locks and he hasn’t received a new Key and he tells him that he will do what he can, later the wife and the teacher sleep in the same bed and the wife asks him about what happened in school, the actor and the girlfriend have sex and she stops because she sees the sunburn mark on his hand where his wedding ring was, the actor and the girlfriend get into a huge fight after she tells him he is not a man and crash the car and both die, the teacher and the wife start to have sex and she tells him that she wants him to come home and stay and he agrees to it, lastly The Teacher finds the envelope he got in the talent agency that was addressed to The Actor and opens it to find a Key to the Private club, he tells his wife he has to go out tonight and he goes to the bedroom to find her turned to a giant spider, and we get one last shot of his face as he accepts what is happening.

if that is not a massive Mind-Fuck I don’t know what it is.

My Take : it is my understanding that this movie is all about one guy who is a history teacher and married to The Wife and he also have a dream to become an actor, when he stars as an actor he has a shitty apartment and his mother who seems to be a wealthy woman calls him and tells him how she is worried about his living situation, he pursue his teaching life even though it makes him miserable and he gets married and cheats on his wife on many occasion because he cannot commit to a single woman, but as soon as she gets pregnant he completely loses his mind and starts to have an affair with The Girlfriend in his old apartment but due to his emotional state he fails sexual every time, he stops going to the talent agency completely when his wife gets pregnant that is why I highlighted Six Months note that it is the same length, later when he breaks it off with the girlfriend he kills his unfaithful part in his mind with the girlfriend and goes back to his wife again, we do get that in the mother’s conversation she basically tells him what is happening in his mind, but after all that when he gets a new key to the sex club his unfaithful side takes over again and comes back to life. during one of his lectures he mentions a Karl Marx and Hagel quote about all the great world events happening twice, the reason why we see him accepting the giant spider that his wife has turned into at the end is because of that, the same events of the movie is happening again and this time he is accepting it. now lets address the Spiders I want you to understand there are no Spiders in this film it is a metaphors, our protagonist who is troubled with women in his life controlling him from his mom shutting down his dreams and his wife asking him to settle down and not do what he likes to do he starts to see women as spiders, Spiders put their prays in a web before they eat it and he is seeing them as that and in the end when he sees his wife turned into a spider probably because she was disapproving of him going out that night and instead of that the film maker decided to show us a giant spider, and our protagonist accepted his fate.

there you have it, my take on Enemy. oh and one last thing, who is Enemy you might ask? it is him, he is his own enemy.

Five upcoming 2016 games that I am excited about

2016 will go down in my memory as the year of Overwatch because lets be fair it is the best game of the year so far even though games like Dark Souls 3, Uncharted 2 and Inside are out. with that said the following are five games that I am very excited about that are coming later this year, I didn’t include games like Skyrim Remaster because that game is five years old and I also didn’t include DLCs or Expansions like Rise of Iron even though I will be playing that as well.

• Deus Ex : Mankind Divided
  
  Following 2011 amazing game Human Revolution the trilogy prequel to Deus Ex is coming out this August 2016, what I loved about Human Revolution was the steath gameplay and exploration of the enviroments it was a very amazing game set in a really good setting with a good story minus the boss fights. I hope they do a better job with the sequel when it comes to boss fights and I am very excited to play the game later this month
• Final Fantasy XV
  
  initially revealed as Final Fantasy Versus XIII the game spend a ten years in development and changed from a title within the Fabula Nova Crystallis Final Fantasy to a mainline FF game and it is given the number XV to carry with it, personally I only played a handful of Final Fantasy games and I am going to play this game being excited and trying to enjoy it as much as I can despite few things that I am not initially happy with from the demo that I played and the videos I have seen.
• Steep
  
  I have to tell you right now Steep could be my second favorite game of the year righr after Overwatch, I love games that you can pick up and play and have fun with it for few hours and move on (AKA Overwatch) till you get an itch again and go back to play it some more (Just like Overwatch), one of the things Steep reminds me of is my favorite activity in GTA V which drive a bike on top of a mountain and drive it back down in speed and style and I really hope Ubisoft nails that aspect of the game.
• No Man’s Sky
  
  No Man’s Sky has been on my radar ever since they announced it first in 2013 just like everyone else, this game is a big deal because it is doing something no one else has done before and it could reinvent the wheel for genres like Survial, Rogue Like and most RPGs this game could be it and I am very glad to be here to witness it, having said all that I will wait a few weeks before I buy it because I really don’t want to be one of those early adapters who will suffer through the game’s unlimited amout of bugs and trust me they will all be there.
• Pokemon Sun/Moon
  
  which brings me to my last entry, Pokemon Sun and Moon which is coming for Nintendo 3DS this year. I am a massive Pokemon fan and I am not talking about Pokemon Go here the actual RPG series by Nintendo and Gamefreak, I played through most of the series’s main games except for Black and White 2 and I really do love it and I can’t wait to go back to this, I am going to buy a New Nintendo 3DS for this game and there you go 300 hours of my life.

 

Uncharted 4 : A Thief’s End (Review)

Uncharted 4 is the fifth entry in the Uncharted series developed by Naughty Dog and it is exclusive for the Playstation 4, the game follows the series protagonist Nathan Drake getting out of retirement one last time to hunt down captain Henry Avery’s lost pirate treasure, Be warned that after this point I will talk about the various plot points and even spoil the ending so if you haven’t played the game I highly recommend that you do that first.

Perhaps Uncharted 4’s strength and weakness boils down to it is familiarity, the game plays it very very safe with the same gameplay and basic Uncharted story from the last four games which goes in this direction : Nathan wants to find treasure, Bad guy wants to kill Nathan and find treasure for himself, Nathan finds treasure, Nathan blows the treasure up and walks away with very little fortune, and I played the game expecting that from the beginning so I wasn’t disappointed at all by it unlike some of the Uncharted fans.

Like you would expect from a Naughty Dog game it is beautiful and detailed better than dare I say any other game out there, the facial expressions and details are just mind blowing and makes you wonder how far gaming has come since the days they had to make Mario with a hat on because they couldn’t draw hair, the voice acting is superb as expected from its  A-list celebrity cast such as Nolan North and Troy Baker, and again I played the game expecting that from the beginning. the game also adds some personal stories between Nate and the other characters which in a way made me remember Mad Men’s final season it just felt like a goodbye that makes you think about the journey that I had with these characters and that was a good to experience.

Now I want to talk about the story of Uncharted 4, in my opinion the game has two separate stories one of them is about Nate and Sam and their journey to find the Avery treasure, they spend a lifetime searching for this and the obstacles in their way is to get it makes it even more meaningful, I liked both villains Nadine and Rafe because they both had a good reason why they were looking for the treasure too. the second story was Avery’s and here the game shined in my opinion, the story is told through the background and the conversations among the characters and notes you find through the game and it is very well told I genuinely wanted to know where did they end up and when you get to the final point despite the fact that I predicted the outcome I was very satisfied and happy with that, for me this is one of the areas the game really was successful which was telling that story in a way that other mediums can’t do it, in a movie or a TV show something like this will be told through exposition which is very weak unlike what is possible in a video game, this style of storytelling that Half Life kicked off in the 90s and we have seen many versions of it like BioShock, Dead Space and The Last of Us is very powerful and Naughty Dog does it very very well in all of their games.

Now to my issues with the game, one of the things I really disliked about the game was the combat it was very shallow basically it is the same style of the previous uncharted games but it barely has any weight to it, sure u can increase the difficulty and have the enemies hit you harder and die harder but that won’t make it any fun it actually gives the game an inconvenience that I want to get it out of the way. my other issue is the fact that this game doesn’t make much sense, for some reason your rivals are always there when you arrive even though you are the one who solves the puzzles and figure out the location of the treasure but somehow they figure it out too and race u there with more resources if they could discover where the treasure was why did they wait for you to get there first?, lastly where was the supernatural twist? no pirate ghosts or something, I really did wish they were in the game because I did enjoy them in the previous games.

Verdict : despite a few flaws I think Uncharted 4 was a great game, a beautiful ending to a good series and I do wish Naughty Dog take the good parts of Uncharted 4 and add it to their future which ever that game maybe.

Suicide Squad (Review)

Suicide Squad is directed and written by David Ayer staring Will Smith, Jared Leto and Margot Robbie and it is the 3rd movie in the DC Cinematic Universe following Man of Steel and Dawn of Justice. the plot is an adaptation of the Suicide Squad comic books which is basically a group of villains are tasked with a very impossible mission in return they get reduced on their punishments. before you continue any further I would like to state that this review is not written to recommend the film it is written as a criticism of the movie so I will discuss the major plot points and if you haven’t seen the film I recommend you do that first then come back here.

Right of the bat (Tee Hee) we get introduced to the team starting with Will Smith’s Deadshot, he is the man that never misses and we get to see his human side with his daughter and I thought he was one of the best parts of the film he did a great job with his character his performance was really good like you expect from Will Smith or at least like I expect from Will Smith because I happen to like him and he is a real badass the fight scene where he single handedly kills a whole army is really cool and you do see his abilities fleshed out during the movie, then we get to Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn which brought most of the laughs of the film she is really crazy and her performance is really good, I love her looks and the make up and also she is the 2nd member of the team that we get a good look at her background and origin story, the rest of the team are all good none of them standout as much as El Diablo because he has that major fight scene and that flashback scene which was the most emotional one in the film, which brings me to my next character Jared Leto’s The Joker.

first of all I need to make this thing clear, I have been reading comics and watching comic book movies and cartoons all my life, I read both sides (Marvel and DC) and I have my opinions toward both of them but one thing I have always been clear about which is my favorite comic book character and that guy is The Joker, and I have read almost every story that he has been in it so I have a background regarding The Joker so when they hired Jared Leto and actor I personally was very excited because Leto is a very capable actor and he can bring a fresh take to the character and I was right for me The Joker was the best part of the movie but it was a very small part, I don’t think his screen time is more than five minutes in this movie but what we got was nothing short of fantastic his voice is so suited for the role and I really loved the laugh, personally I am very excited to see more of this version of the Joker in a more fleshed out role hopefully against Ben Affleck’s Batman.

Now to my issues with the film, despite the great characters that I just mentioned the main issue with this movie is the editing it is really really choppy it feels like a panic edit, I think after the reaction to Batman V Superman the executives at DC panicked and their panic resulted in this mess, they cut so many parts even from the trailers so many dialog that was available in the trailers that didn’t make it to the film which is a real shame, and I remember late last year there was talks of a love triangle between Joker and Harley and some other character we didn’t get that at all and I thought there will be way more Batman he is barely in it aside a few flashbacks over all way too much choppy cuts happened to this movie and they hurt the film a lot.

(Enjoy this gif because that scene is not in the film which takes place after his crash and that part is completely gone)

and this also brings me to the villain of the film Enchantress and her brother, they are paper thin I didn’t know anything about them or where they came from, that villain while visually very appealing she barely had any meat to her, she was just there to be the bad guy with a plan to take over the world that is it nothing else to her and I am sure they cut those too because I doubt she was written that way, otherwise the film is well directed and has a killer sound track that I really enjoyed.

Verdict : Suicide Squad proved once again that DC is in a really bad spot, they don’t have any clue what to do about their films and they are playing catch up with Marvel instead of trying to make a good movie first, it is too bad really Suicide Squad could have been a great movie within the Batman Universe having said that it is very entertaining and does introduce the most important DC character in my opinion to the Universe which I hope they take full advantage of in the upcoming films.