Mister Jack

So much for moving away from the grimdark! Holy shit, I'm actually stunned at how terrible this looks. It's almost like a parody trailer or something. This looks even worse than Batman v Superman did. Where to even begin on what they fucked up here? Everything, everything is done wrong. Starfire doesn't even have the right powers! That's not even getting into her laughably bad costume. If I talk about how they messed up Robin I'll probably fill up this entire page. Just shit all around.

I've been reading a book about anti-gravity lately. I find that I just can't put it down.

I'm just glad they're finally moving away from Zack Snyder grimdark. Shazam is probably the first DC movie since the Nolan trilogy that I'm actually kind of looking forward to seeing.

Time to finally give this series a shot.

But why?

This song was played at the beginning of the movie and I thought maybe they'd lifted it from some obscure album but no, they wrote it specifically for this film. Why are songs about summer such ear worms?!

Shaun the Sheep I've been a fan of Aardman's work ever since I was a kid since they're doing something you never really see any other studios do anymore, but for some reason I never got around to watching this particular movie. I don't think it was promoted very heavily in the states, and Shaun isn't a character I have great affection for in the same way I do for Wallace and Gromit, so I probably just figured I could give it a pass. However, I finally watched it at someone's recommendation and I think this might be the best movie Aardman has ever put out. The production is amazing, and I shudder to imagine how long it must have taken them to build all those little sets and vehicles for the city scenes, which is the majority of the movie. Something else that really impressed me is that the movie is really entertaining without having a single line of spoken dialogue. The human characters sometimes speak in grunts and mumbles like the Sims, but pretty much everything that needs to be said is conveyed visually and it actually works. I never found myself wishing any of the characters would start speaking English. In fact, I actually found myself hoping they could keep up the pantomime to the very end and they did it. This limitation forced the filmmakers to rely on visuals and body language to get their story across, which really brought out their cleverness and humor. For a movie with no dialogue, it's very funny and even manages to be heartwarming in a few places. I'm really glad I watched it.

Ant Man and the Wasp I mostly agree with what was just said. It's superior to the first film, and I think it was wise to make the stakes more personal as opposed to some global threat. After Infinity War there is just no way I was going to care about some evil businessman trying to make superweapons or something, but I can still get invested in a personal threat to the heroes. Ant Man and the Wasp make for a cool team and the action scenes are pretty damn entertaining when everything is just growing and shrinking all over the place. You can never quite know for sure what to expect. Even though some scenes are played dramatically, It's not super serious like Avengers or Captain America. It's just a good time at the movies.

GHOSTS N GOBLINS I did it. I've officially beaten them all, not counting spinoffs and mobile games which I have no interest in playing. This one was by far the most difficult of the trilogy to beat for a number of reasons, least of which being because my NES Classic cord extension doesn't come in for a week so I had to play it three feet away from a widescreen HDTV and that is not very comfortable, let me tell you. Even without factoring that in, the controls on this one are a lot more rigid than the other games. If you want to duck, you better be pushing straight down on the D-pad. Even a slight diagonal input will result in Arthur not ducking, which got me killed so many times. You better not push any diagonals by accident while you're running left or right either, because this will make him stop right in his tracks. I had to be much more careful and deliberate with where my thumb was on the D-pad compared to other games. Usually I can just push a direction and not think too hard about it but that just isn't allowed here. Honestly, most of the platforming and enemies in this game are actually not that hard compared to the sequels. They can still kill you if you're sloppy, sure, but despite a more limited weapon selection and fewer abilities to work with overall, there aren't nearly as many projectiles flying at you in the original game. Even the majority of the bosses are fairly simple once you get their patterns down. The only reason this ended up being the hardest game of the three was because of THESE mother fuckers. God damn it, I hate Red Arremers. They are so unpredictable and so much more agile than you, and while they do have an AI pattern, exploiting it is still a bitch and even then there's no guarantee they won't randomly change their pattern for seemingly no reason. The sequels scattered these guys here and there, but in the original game they're everywhere. Level 3 has no less than five of these bastards in a row that you're forced to deal with, and level six probably has twenty of them. I do not exaggerate when I say it probably took me about fifty tries just to get past level 3. Thank god for unlimited continues. While I did have a "no savestates" rule for this game like with the others (except at programmed checkpoints), I did end up utilizing a few speedrunner tricks to make things easier on myself. On top of knowing where all the extra suits of armor are hidden, there are also ways you can turn this game's own rules against it. Arthur flies backwards when he gets hit. There are certain areas where if you willingly take a hit at the right time and place, you can get an extra bit of jump height that will skip you ahead of certain sections. Not only that, but you can also exploit the memory limitations of the NES to prevent certain enemies from spawning. If you use one of those jump shortcuts in level five, it will result in the whole second half of the level being free of enemies (except the boss) because the game already used all its memory to spawn the enemies in the first half. Yeah, I used this trick and I'm not ashamed of it because a lot of this game is total bullshit. For example, it tries to bait you into picking up weapons that the boss of the level just so happens to be immune to, and once you pick up a weapon you keep it even if you use a continue, forcing you to pick up any other weapon, even a shitty one, just so you can progress in the game. I got stuck with the torch for most of level 3 because of this. Dirty pool, mister. As far as I'm concerned, I didn't use any cheat codes or any exploits that weren't already part of the original game, so I consider this a legit run.

I've got around 300 hours in the PS4 version so it's definitely a good investment. I might hold off a bit on getting the PC version unless they start doing exclusive collabs that I really want, though.

DOOM is easily my favorite FPS of this whole current console generation. Can't wait for Doom Eternal.

It felt like an exam the first time through. Although after I figured out my winning strategy I went through it again and got a lot of satisfaction out of breezing through the game that once gave me no end of headaches.

It's back! If you want one, now's the time!

Spider-Man and Venom: Maximum Carnage Yeah, I know it's an old game, but this is a special case. I used to play this game all the time back as a kid, and I even went back to it now and then in my adult years for one simple reason. THIS GAME IS HARD AS BALLS. In fact, it's so hard that I might actually say the game's quality suffers for it. It was made to be played by kids in the 90s, after all, but I never talked to anybody who was ever actually able to beat it. I know speedruns and such exist on youtube, but if you handed this game to a first-timer and told them to try it out, I guarantee they would never get past the fourth or fifth level at best. Many people never even get far enough to unlock Venom. I watched a Cinemassacre upload today where James Rolfe tried to play the game and I thought to myself "I've got this on my SNES Classic. I should really try to finally beat this bastard." While I didn't abuse cheats or savestates, I will confess that I used a guide of where the secret rooms and items are hidden. The thing about this game is that by default it gives you three lives and ONE continue, which is not even close to enough to beat it. Unless you're an utter god, the extra lives and continues are mandatory for you to have a fighting chance, and even then it took me multiple runs to beat it. More lives isn't even enough on its own. You really have to learn to carefully aim your attacks and not flail around like every other beat-em-up allows you to do. Getting a streak of hits with no misses is the only way to get power hits, which can instantly kill multiple enemies in one blow if you use it strategically. This isn't Turtles in Time and mashing the attack button thoughtlessly will not serve you well. You not only have to aim your punches, but you also need to constantly keep positioning in mind and use your web to zone the field so you never allow yourself to get surrounded. Unlike other beat-em-ups, getting surrounded here can result in losing half your life bar in a matter of seconds. A real problem with the game is that when you get close enough to an enemy, you automatically grab them and can either punch or throw them from there. This sounds fine except that you can't move or jump while you're holding an enemy, so if other enemies are around this just gives them free hits while you desperately try to drop the guy you just picked up. This got me killed more than anything else. Finally, some of the bosses are utter bullshit. They're cheap, they're overpowered, and they often attack you in groups. Trying to fight them fairly is almost impossible when they all gang up on you. However, before I started playing I learned that the hero summons you can pick up work kind of like Mega Man weapons. They can clear out a room of normal enemies, but certain bosses are also extremely weak to certain heroes. The right summon at the right time can either reduce a boss' life to a sliver or kill them outright. This let me hang on to most of my extra lives. Unfortunately, you can't use summons on the final Carnage fight, and Carnage is one of the most ridiculously overpowered bosses ever conceived. Even with the ability to switch between Spider-Man and Venom with 6+ lives, he still wiped the floor with me three times and forced multiple do-overs before I finally came up with a strategy to exploit his strongest attack by standing right in front of where the attack ends and forcing him to eat a combo. Trying to combo him any other time will result in eating a big chunk of damage with an unblockable counterattack, but combos are the only way to do any real damage to him. I tried just getting in one or two quick punches every now and then during one run and it took half an hour just to get his life bar to start visibly going down. Like I said, total bullshit. That's a lot of trouble to beat a simple beat-em-up game, so you can see why I'm proud of this one.

Oh good. I was one artifact away from getting the artifact trophy that I need for the platinum, but as it turns out there's a game breaking glitch that keeps the game from registering that one specific fucking bauble I picked up, which I just happened to save for the very end of my hours and hours of collectible hunting, so now I'm locked out of the platinum. God...damn....it.

Eh it's still a pretty good deal. I would have bought it just for 1, 2, and BBS honestly. As for the performance, I've only tried the first game so far but it's been running at a pretty consistent 60 FPS. I haven't noticed any conspicuous frame drops yet.

I'm feeling that Kingdom Hearts 3 hype and want to go back and replay the series. I got this for twenty bucks. Six games! You can't get a better deal than that!

Finally beat all those damn valkyries in God of War. After doing that, it's probably all downhill for the rest of the trophies. They were a hell of a challenge but damned if it didn't feel good to finally kick their asses after they'd been doing it to me for so long.

News reports are flooding in about the Nyko Pixelquest Arcade Kit bricking Switches! When reached for comment, Nintendo responded with "That's what you get for buying Nyko."

I'm really liking this new chat update. Now can they just update the damn mobile app, please? It hasn't been touched since last freaking year!

The Incredibles 2 Man, this was worth the wait. Incredibles is probably my favorite Pixar movie and it seems so obvious for a sequel, so I was always really frustrated that they never did one. This was a great follow-up that did a lot of the things I was hoping an Incredibles sequel would do. I'm not sure which one of the two I like better yet. I need some time to process the new movie, but I think I can say that it is at least as good as the first one. Elastigirl is more or less the focus character this time as opposed to Mr. Incredible, but at the same time the rest of the family gets more to do and more screentime compared to the original, especially Jack Jack. I don't think this movie had much of a theme like how in the first movie Bob was neglecting his family to live out his midlife crisis. Maybe I missed something, but on the surface this one seems more like just a cool action-adventure film. I could be wrong, but if there's a theme, it's more subtle. Either way, it's great. Go see it.

https://mobile.twitter.com/IronPineapple_/status/1006689767428325378?s=17 Preorder CANCELED!

Dying Light is pretty fun, but it's definitely unbalanced. It's a lot harder in the beginning than it is later on. Once you start getting purple weapons and some decent melee skills there's very little that poses a serious threat to you.