E3 2016: What Didn't Suck

Anothe E3 came and went. This year's E3 has been basically about one thing basically: games, games, games. Noone really left me surprised as each press conference and Nintendo Treehouse was all about giving gamers a ton of games and content to keep you entertained for the next year. What didn't suck? Let's see.

Crash is Back

Nostalgist of 90s video games rejoice! After all of the internet wishing and maybe thousands of mail Sony has gotten from you, they have finally caved in and Crash is finally back! Not in a brand new game, but instead his first three games are going to be remastered for the PS4. I remember playing these games on my PlayStation so I'm just as excited to play these remastered games as well. It's going to be interesting to see how everything will look. Hopefully this would lead to a revival of new Crash Bandicoot games in the future and the remakes would be Sony testing the waters to see if how he will do in this new generation. Until the remasters come out, you can get your Crash fix

Sea of Thieves

Rare is back with this game which was announced last E3. This time around we got to see actual gameplay. You get to see characters interact in town, swim in the sea, and of course drive and fight in pirate ships. It's nice to see a glimpse of what the game is about and what you can do. Hopefully no bears ruin this game, birds too.

Final Fantasy XV

We've seen the battle system before. It is moreso like the the battle system of previous games but a bit more fluid as you a switch between combat and weapons. This time around the is based on how you make combos switching from different attacks. This time around we actually got to see a boss battle against Titan. To see it the party battle something as huge as the Titan boss is something impressive.  Bottom line it does look cleaner and gorgeous just like everything else in the game. That and over 100 hours of gameplay I'm completely stoked to play this when it comes out.

Resident Evil 7

Much to everyone's surprise we're getting another Resident Evil game. It looks very different from the other games, especially the recent ones, as it's not so much action-horror. It seems to be going back to its roots, which is a good thing. A really good thing. The game is covered in so much mystery with Capcom just giving you a demo of you wondering around in a spooky old house. Regardless with what we've been giving and not knowing how this will fit into the main series, it does look cool. It is giving the series a new breath of life, after choking on Resident Evil 6.

God of War 4

As you can guess this E3 was full of surprise announcements. One of these was a new God of War. So this time around Kratos is a new daddy. The gameplay was pretty much new. Everything has been reworked including the Spartan Rage-timed ability. You gain knowledge points on weapons as well as craft resources. This game seems to be as Kratos said in the demo a new beginning as not only is the battle mechanics are new, you are in a new environment. This time around you'll be battling Norse gods and monsters, you know because you killed all the Greek ones. This overall looks great. Can't wait to see more.

The New Spider-Man Game

The teaser trailer looks crazy. The game is a joint project with Marvel, Sony, and Insomiac games. All we got was a teaser, but it showed a lot. The game does have a lot of potential that we're excited to see how it turns out.

The Last Guardian

We got to see another trailer of The Last Guardian. We got to see a bit more this time around. The art looks more colorful. Aside from looking at gorgeous scenery your character will be encountering other birddogs, which may try to eat you. Overall it looks beautiful.

Pokemon Sun & Moon

Nintendo decided to show us some gameplay of the upcoming Pokemon Sun and Moon. They tweaked the battle gameplay a bit. If you battled a previous trainer or another pokemon in the wild, you have an indicator of what moves work were really effective against that pokemon. We also got a peak of how the pokedex will work and it seems to be more organizing even indicating the evolutionary family of the pokemon you caught. We were also treated to our "Pidgey", "Rattata", and "Caterpie", of the Alola region: Pikepek, Yungoose and Grubbin.

Death Stranding

We got a stunning trailer without any gameplay. Even though the trailer didn't show any gameplay you can get some ideas of what the game is about. It looks to be another game where you scavenge for thing like Far Cry Primal which isn't a bad thing. It does seem nice to see that a collaboration between Kojima and Norman Reedus work after all after the cancellation of Silent Hills and PT. It looks great and we can't wait to see actual gameplay footage. Afterall we know it will be amazing since Kojima is involved. We get treated to a naked Norman Reedus so that's also a big plus.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

We finally got to see the new Zelda and it holy crap does it look good. This time around the new Zelda seems to be more technology based as Link will be going around all over Hyrule with his Shiekpad Pro accessing towers and dungeons, called trials. As true to Aonuma's word everything you see you can have access to and climb. They also tweaked clothing around this time gaining some RPG-ish rules to it. Some clothes help you in some environments. Also Link will have to forage and hunt this time around so he can have maximum health. You do get items as well as finding and crafting items to help you on your quest. There is a stamina meter that when low or out it limits Link. Breath of the Wild is giving a new spin on the franchise with it being vastly different than the other Zelda, also with Link jumping for the first time. The demo Nintendo provided as grand as it was was barely one percent of the game. Can't wait to see more.

Was there aanything I miss? Leave your comments.

Who You Gonna Call When You Hate the New Ghostbusters?

     The Ghostbusters reboot just around the corner. We haven't had anything Ghostbusters related in a while with the last movie, a sequel, made in 1989, a couple of failed projects to get a third movie made, and a video game made almost 6 years ago in 2009. With the smell of nostalgia in the air, you can can feel the excitement or better yet the hate.
      The new Ghostbusters has been the subject of internet hate. Fanboys have taken to repeatedly  down vote trailers and have even gone as far as to harass director Paul Feig and cast members. It's has gone pretty much downhill ever since it was announced that who was directing it and that the reboot would feature a mostly female cast. The most recent of the negativity has come from YouTuber cinemasscre. Cinemasscre, real name James Rolfe, has pretty much made a 6 and a half "non review" discussing about how much he is not going to see and review the Ghostbusters movie. I could talk about how absurd, childish and the lack of professionalism that a supposed amateur movie reviewer on YouTube would go to make a 6 minute rant about how much they're not going to see a movie, but that's another day and another topic. This inspired me to finally talk about the movie and address the hate that the movie has brewed.
     Some opponents of the movie claim that the movie is just another cash grab for the studios to make money off a popular franchise. Hollywood has been the culprit of doing this for the past years and this could spark a debate on truly if Hollywood should should stop the trend of making remakes or reboots just to make quick cash instead of coming up with new innovative ideas and concepts and that is a actual problem. Whether that is the case for this particular movie or not is up to debate. One thing is for sure is that issue will not be resolved with giving the director and cast death threats and harassment.
      Bottom line it's just a movie. It's no need to get this worked up over a movie. No movie is worth this much hate. No movie is worth sending the cast and director harassment and death threats. For the people citing nostalgia and claiming that the movie will ruin the franchise, if one reboot is capable of doing that, then your childhood nostalgia and the franchise itself had nothing to stand on. If this is truly bad then I think the franchise is be just fine, it survived Ghostbusters 2. You can still watch the original Ghostbusters movie and enjoy that. You can even watch Ghostbusters 2 which wasn't as charming and funny as the first one. The new reboot doesn't take anything away from those movies. The new Ghostbusters reboot might be fine after all, then again you wouldn't know that if you're too busy downvoting trailers and making "non review" videos.

P.S. Harold Ramis probably wouldn't be upset over the new reboot. We tried contacting his ghost but reportedly its held in storage in a firehouse in downtown Los Angeles.

What are your thoughts on the negative wave of hate on the new Ghostbusters reboot. Is it justified?

Captain America: Civil War vs Batman vs Superman: Who Did It Better?

 
     Captain America: Civil War is out and you know what that means. No, not comic book nerds flexing their comic book knowledge and pages of feuds of Team Captain America or Team Iron Man all over forums and Twitter. Review time! Instead of doing a typical review like I always do I'll do a compare and contrast putting Civil War up against another superhero movie that was similar to it: Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice. Civil War was suppose to be Marvel's answer to Batman vs Superman with the plot being almost identical: Superheroes fighting each other and the world being pissed at them. With both movies having the same story and theme, which one did it better?

     Both movies touched on a similar subject: Should the government keep superheroes in check? In both cases you had issues where superheroes while trying to save the day cause accidents where casualties are taken.

    Civil War only touched on the subject a couple of times. It was talked about a couple of times, but completely took a back seat to fill the movie with more action and Bucky's story.  The whole let's keep the Avengers in check felt more like a ploy or excuse to have everyone fight for the last leg of the movie. It wasn't very coherent as it went to can we trust the Avengers to handle thing properly to a basic story of revenge.
    BvS did a much better job dealing with this issue. It was more of the plot behind the movie. It was better handled as it was a common issue throughout the whole movie. The issue affected almost every character. You got a idea of how it affected Superman, Batman, and the people proposing the idea of if we can trust Superman and should we regulate him.
     Piggybacking off of the topic of story, Civil War's pretty fluid. Aside, again, from the issue of regulating superheroes and just trying to make that issue a catalyst for a revenge story, nothing felt out of place or weird. For the most part the plot was woven well compared to BvS where its director, Zack Snyder, was for the most part tried to fit concepts in that weren't executed as well. Especially using the movie as the introduction to a vast DC universe, where Civil War and Marvel did exactly right (no shock).      
     The introductions of new characters, Spider-Man and Black Panther and old ones like Ant-Man were done well, especially how the introduced Spider-Man without the long origin story, at least not yet. BvS didn't do that well as they just did a "five minute oh, here are the guys we're putting in the next Justice League movie at around the end of the movie, fun times lol?"
     So who did it better? Civil War was a cookie cutter superhero movie and there is nothing wrong with that as a lot of them are good and they know what the fans want. A lot of action, testosterone, and a little bit of comedy in the mix. I do respect BvS more as it was trying to be a bit different.  It didn't work out like Snyder hoped it did, but I can see what he tried to do. It probably was trying to be the Manturian Candidate of superhero films. I did like the fact that BvS had a theme of can we really trust these superheroes and it kept if throughout most of them movie, which Civil War didn't really do that much of and it got messy a bit.


What are your thoughts?

Why Releasing the Nintendo NX and Zelda Wii U in 2017 Doesn't Suck

We all heard the news earlier that the next console from Nintendo, the NX, would be officially released in March 2017. We also heard that Zelda Wii U has been delayed and is coming out sometime in 2017 instead of 2016 as well, but hey we get a new official artwork of Link cool right? The recent news has been a total bummer, or is it?

     The biggest reason behind the delay is also the obvious reason why the push back is a good thing. Nintendo has pushed back Zelda Wii U and the NX possibly due to not having anything to show us. We know exactly nothing about the NX and Zelda Wii U. The only thing we have gotten from the up and coming Zelda game is just a teaser trailer and a couple of artwork. We have no story or anything to see if game mechanics. The thing about the NX is just rumors of what it possibly can do and false rumors of how the controller might look like and work.

     Adding the the fact we know and have nothing about Zelda Wii U and the NX, the idea of them both being released this year, even in the fall quarter would've been bad. We have to have an idea of what we're buying in order to buy it. Nintendo can't expect consumers to buy based off of why and speculation. Even if they supposedly revealed anything at E3, it wouldn't be enough time to get people excited to buy these products.

      Luckily we are expected to have a playable demo of Zelda Wii U this E3. That does give us sometime this year and possibly next year to get an idea of not only how Zelda Wii U looks and plays, but more importantly what the NX can do. Until then, there's Miitomo. Don't know whether if that's a good thing or not.


What are your thoughts?

Live Action Pokemon Movie: How It Can Be Super Effective?

Rumor is that there will be a live action Pokemon movie. Nothing is official yet, however The Pokemon Company is selling the movie rights in a top secret auction. It seems that the Pokemon Company has been trying to make Pokemon as real as possible as they can with the new Pokemon GO app and hopefully this. There is no possibility that this could be done. After all we did get a small taste of this with the Super Bowl commercial. The commercial does make it seem that a live action Pokemon movie isn't as bad of an idea as it might seem. But what would a live action Pokemon movie be based off of? These are a few thoughts as to what they can go with it.

     First the idea to make a live action movie based around the anime. That would be the worst idea. I feel like the anime and the possible universe of the live action movie should be kept separate. It's in its own realm as the games and the manga are. Also, the anime already have movies on their on so this wouldn't make sense. Also the thought of a live action Ash is cringe-worthy.

     Another thing is possibly who or what the movie could center around with is the game universe. Since Ash is completely out of the picture, literally, the next candidate could be Red, right? Wrong. I feel that Red as a character would be too old for current fans to identify with. He's our first and second gen hero. The new protagonist in X and Y and possibly Sun and Moon would probably be too new for the old fans to identify with as well. 

     The answer of how to do the movie justice could rest in one of the games. Not the main ones, one of its spin-offs, Pokemon Colosseum. No there shouldn't be a live action movie based off of Pokemon Colosseum, but the fact that it is in a completely different universe is exactly how the movie should be done.  It could make sense is if they could make a movie universe in of itself that is separate from the anime and the games. A separate movie universe, with a different region, and a completely different protagonist. It would be good for whoever gets the movie rights to give us something completely new to identify with as well as setting the movie as something new and separate from the games and anime. Now them pulling a Resident Evil with occasionally dropping video game characters like Red, Professor Oak, and Giovanni is a different story.

What are your thoughts on a live action Pokemon movie and what should it be about? 

Batman v Superman: Does It Suck?

The most anticipated movie of 2016 was just released over this Easter weekend: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. The hype and anticipation for this movie was and still is crazy and for good reasons. For one, this movie is suppose to be the first film of many that will start the DC movie universe. A lot is riding on this movie, especially considering that it is a follow-up, not a sequel (sort of) to Men of Steel that was favorably a disappointment by DC fans and critics alike. Will it rise above our standards and expectations? Does it suck?

Story

The premise of the movie is that it takes place a couple of years after the events of Man of Steel. Superman has become a polarizing figure. You have people who trust him thinking that he is here to help humanity meanwhile you have people who think that he is a problem that needs to be dealt with or be put in serious check. One of these people is Bruce Wayne/Batman. Lex Luthor also has that issue, but to those who haven't seen it yet I don't want to spoil it too much. The movie did feel like a mix-up of The Manchurian Candidate, an episode of Homeland, and the last season of Smallville (only written better. Slightly)
     Batman v. Superman for a majority of the movie had this sort of political feel to it and deal with the issue of Superman in a political way. There is a lot of action in it, but what director Zack Snyder tries to do is mainly focus on how the world would react to a being like Superman if he did exist.
     For the Batman parts it did feel like Snyder try to make things Christopher Nolan-esque, but he didn't execute it properly. Another thing that wasn't executed properly was the DC Universe tie-ins. Batman vs. Superman is suppose to be the first movie that launches the live action DC movie universe. The film did feature a few cameos from other heroes that will be in the upcoming Justice League film, but these cameos were too blatant and didn't offer anything to the storyline other than oh look here they are. Wonder Woman was the already and most obvious tie-in they have and it would've made more sense if they would've just stuck with her and subtlety include the other heroes in other DC projects. Snyder should've taken notes of what Marvel has done to construct their movie universe more carefully.

Performance

The movie is sort of a sequel of Man of Steel so I'm not going to discuss Henry Cavill and Amy Adam's roles as Supeman and Lois Lane. For the most part it was a continuation of their roles in the last film so it you loved/hated it then, you probably will in this movie. The standout of the movie was Gal Gadot. Not much was known about her and her acting chops before she was cast as Wonder Woman. People were worried about whether or not she would deliver the role and she did effortlessly. Another person that did good was Ben Affleck. When we heard that he was going to be Batman people flipped, almost like how they flipped when Michael Keaton was cast as Batman in the 1989 film. I kept an open mind about him playing the character and he didn't disappoint. Affleck played a different Bruce Wayne than what we normally seen in the past live action films. His Bruce was more of a person who was haunted and troubled by the death of his parents and moved by vengeance that it almost driven him to insanity. Jesse Eisenberg was good in most parts. The movie's version of Lex Luthor was pretty much a paranoid almost in the same way of Superman turning against humanity as well as Bruce was, but on a more extreme way. Eisenberg played brilliant militant genius well, insane brilliant militant genius not that much.

Final Verdict

Did Batman v Superman suck? Not that much. I respected the script and its topic, however there were parts that were poorly executed and were unnecessary. A lot. It wasn't a bad movie at all, but it's nothing precisely to write home to, especially considering how other superhero movies fared better. Snyder made a much better film than Man of Steel but he's no Christopher Nolan, and that was apparent with what he tried to do with Batman. It gets a 2.5 out of 5.

Will the Nintendo NX Use VR?

VR is turning out to be a big thing this year. A matter of fact, a lot of VR devices will be released this year. Consumer versions of Oculus Rift are coming out in mere days as well as Playstation VR's release date and price has been revealed recently. It is becoming a trend. Everyone seems to be catching on to it. Will Nintendo catch on the trend? Will the NX support VR?
      Ever since the NX was announced Nintendo has been very tight lipped about it. There was a supposed leak about what the controller could look like and work, but we can take that with a grain of salt and brush it off as being fake. They have announced what it will support, including the 3DS, PC, and smartphones but not exactly how. We basically know nothing. Could it very well support VR as well?
     VR seems like it's going to be a big thing in gaming with a lot of companies interested in it as well as people who are looking forward to it as well. It would be a terrible thing for Nintendo to pass this up, especially if they want to undo the errors of the Wii U. President of Nintendo, Tasumi Kimishima did promise that the company would do and try plans that were outside of what they normally would do. However if they do decide to go the VR route, the NX shouldn't be solely VR. They should however do something like having the NX support a VR device, pretty much like how the PS4 supports PlayStation VR. Also hopefully they learned their lesson with the Virtual Boy.