Got a new roommate

I work upwards of 8 hours 6 days a week. I don't have the time or space a dog deserves. I've seen what an apartment with lethargic owners does to a pit bull. It makes it a neurotic shadow of the rambunctious cuddlebug I know they can be. It's awful. I'd never want a pet that couldn't live a good life without me in it 50% of the time. But what could?

A green cheek conure. Quiet, friendly, they eat all the fresh fruits and veggies you should be eating, and they live at least 20 years. A little under $400 later and I got Panchito. He's as quiet as his reputation. Still a bit bitey, but he's comfortable in his cage, plays with all his toys, and likes it when I read to him. This was a great decision. This is an A+ birb. 

Patrick O'Brian does that to me too...

Peace in Andromeda.

It's taken 2 years and the heat death of Bioware's talent pool for me to take a deep breath and say.... "Andromeda was a deep, rock solid, single player RPG with some script/story problems." If anyone else besides Bioware made that game I would have given it a 9. Though some of the bigger worlds reek of asset scuttling in that it's just a bunch of finished locations vomited out on a bland canvas. Had I never played Inquisition and appreciated how all those areas felt like real places I never would have been as harsh.

But there's the game's biggest issue: lack of imagination. It takes place in a whole new universe yet the most interesting aliens came with you. There's only 2 new talking species and about a 3rd of the way through you figure out... there is only one species. This game needed to get Weird with a capital W but settled for doing a good job keeping the original trilogy's lore in tact. Krogan are still prickly battle toads, Salarians are still overly polite, arrogant, geckos. While I like Jaal, the angaran ambassador, his race is just kinda there. I can't sum them up like I can everyone else. Their "thing" is hiding from the Kett. That's pretty much it. It's a humongous wasted opportunity.

But the story itself, your reason for questing, is pretty solid. Your people are starving and need a colony to work. That's your gig, use your shmancy AI powers to make a home. Sometimes for your people, sometimes not. For a game that's mostly about shooting things there's a refreshingly constructive bent to it's narrative. You may choose not to be in Andromeda to make friends... but you probably should be.

Movie night on the Tempest.

As for Ryder him/herself I got a big ol' "meh." Ryder doesn't hurt but he doesn't help. Coming off of Shepard, the greatest speaking RPG protagonist ever, this is a criticism that still holds. I've seen worse but that doesn't keep him from getting a solemn C-. Though I will give the male Ryder the edge because the Nolan North impression he's going for is SCARY good sometimes. But the rest of the crew? Pretty good! Your salarian pilot gives a lively performance. Drak is an endearingly sarcastic Krogan grandpa and almost edges out Wrex on the incidental dialogue front. Liam sucks but that's mostly because his actor can't read a script to save his life. Helping him move a 600 year old cryo sealed couch is a hell of a scene-let. Natalie Dormer knows she's slumming it as your medic but she's still such a pro shes a highlight.

But the planets themselves are hit and miss. What's more, the 2nd and 3rd are easily the worst. The late game picks up with a desert Krogan colony and a space pirate paradise but I wouldn't blame anyone for bailing out before then. It's a 10 hour sprint to those places including a plodding trip to the angaran hideout that walk-locks you for 12 minutes. I know running NPC's make no sense but neither do pop up windows or inventory screens. Let me run!

If there was just one more Kadara (space pirate) planet in the mix I could have called this a good game at the time. But I digress. This game was built by mass effect 3's multiplayer team and while they may not have the strongest sense of place They. Get. Combat. The gun play is sublime and the gear crafting almost more so. You can make any type of weapon at any time. You just need the right materials. If you want stronger versions of that gear you need to research stuff. You need to finish quests for that. To keep your favorite weapons on the bleeding edge you need to do a bit of everything. This makes it the single greatest in-game economy I've ever seen. I haven't tried the new game plus but you would need that kind of time to level up different weapons and that's a pretty good excuse to keep grinding.

In light of Anthem, AKA Bioware's funeral pyre, I'm ready to make nice with my laundry list of Andromeda based quibbles. This is a fine 8/10. They did a good job. As long as you have it running on a solid state drive the load times are minimal and the patch jobs they did since launch let me run the best textures at 60 frames. If this is to be their last classic Bioware game... well it's certainly a better place to leave it than ME3.

We'll always have pirate planet...

Dead Space 2 is absolutely perfect.

It's taken 9 years and god knows how many playthroughs but I'm calling it. The first was larger but plodding, the third had the highest peaks (spaaaaaace!) and the deepest valleys (the other 2/3's of it). But the second is survival horror polished to a mirror sheen. I'm not used to playing a 9 year old game and saying it's head and shoulders above one that came out a month ago.

To be fair, Resident Evil 2 is a remake of an even older game but they share almost the exact same gun play. Cutting off limbs is just much more interesting than shooting a zombie upwards of 6 times in the face. It's weird how much fun DS2 is even though I've practically memorized it. I am trying a slightly different approach. The store is littered in free dlc weapons and armor that I will resist the temptation to use on zealot. Ammo is scarce, health packs a fleeting memory, and a half second hesitation in the face of a charging leaper is certain death. Isaac dies some pretty great deaths, here!

The game play loop of strategic ammo consumption with frantic shooting that turns to sedate loot scrounging is flawless. I'm not sure how it stacks up to it's granddaddy Resident Evil 4 because LORD has it been a while since I've been down that road. It's got to be close. Photo finish close. So yeah, re-download this gem and give it a whirl.


Also, PC folks! remember to disable v-sync in game and force it in the nvidia pannel. You're welcome!

Civ VI Gathering Storm Review: Prince of Tides.

I have a tendency to hate games I’m bad at for obvious reasons. Could never get the hang of any fighting game. Couldn’t get into multiplayer shooters either.  Not even when my buddy chance gave me one of the best gaming compliments of my life in overwatch by calling me a “scary zen.” But I still suck at them to the point where I don’t have any real fun. Then there’s civilization. Where I can’t play any difficulty over prince. Which is medium, I guess. No one who plays civ anywhere near the amount that I do would deign to start a game under deity. Which is an experience akin to making a souffle while dodging mortar fire.

But I still love civ because I can never fully understand it. Every time a trusted friend steals 5 turns worth of gold from me I’m shocked. Every time I knock down a jumped up warmonger I cackle. Every decent game makes me lose hours at a time. Even when I have one foot out the door or my coffee has finished brewing I can lose 20 minutes setting up the perfect starting map. It's a great bedtime game too as long as you can put it down before the sun comes up. But all that was true about vanilla Civ VI what does your $40 get you this year? You get the UN and floods!

When you try to settle cities now you'll get fun new icons on tiles that can be affected by tsunamis, floods, and volcanoes. When those hit, your farms will be out of commission for at least 8 turns. That's no death sentence but it will scuttle your expansion plans for a good while. The up shot is flood plain and volcanic soil becomes more fertile after the fact. Permanently. There's other stuff like drought and tornadoes that are less constructive but add to the natural disaster motif. I mean, it'd be weird if they weren't there, you know?

Close your eyes and try spell it.

Then there's the world congress which starts in the Renaissance era because mechanically it needs to. You now have political capital points which you generate 2 or 3 per turn at the start. It's not much but you can use them to trade for stuff you actually need before the world congress begins. Other players will trade their points with you too. Often in lieu of anything else. But once you get a pot of 100 or more you can get some really neat stuff done. Sure you can host Olympic games and world fairs but you what really want to do is ban a rival's critical luxuries, hamstring their citizen's happiness, and start them down the path of revolt! In Civ V all banning luxuries did was slow people down but add rise and fall to the mix and you can start flipping cities to you!

It's just that much sharper than V's WC so it doesn't seem like a copy paste but the 2 year wait to get it back was a but much. I'm not sure why it couldn't have launched with a lesser version, honestly. Aside from that there are smaller improvements and that's where GS really shines for me. They are small but they are legion. Natural resources have been balanced in a clever way. In 2016 if you wanted iron to turn your clubs into swords and you weren't lucky enough to find some yourself you had to sell the family jewels to trade for it. Now each deposit gives you 2 iron points per turn. You only need to build a mine if you want to double it to 4 points. It's also much easier to trade for it now so you never need to worry about your military upgrades.

On the flip side powering your cities fuels climate change so the more oil you use the more danger your coastal tiles are in. I haven't played a game yet where climate change bothered me much; but I hear of some folks who consciously hunker down in land locked areas and belch fire to drown their coastal enemies. You also don't have to make a beeline for neighborhoods to fix your cramped cities anymore. Dams become available during the renaissance that give you more space while blocking the damage of floods. New upgrades are available for scouts and horsemen so you don't wait forever for their industrial variants.

Gathering Storm makes every game of civ 20% more interesting. That will be true 5 years from now. I can't say I'm over the moon about it but I can't imagine going back. It takes a couple games to help you appreciate all the little quality of life changes (I actually despise the new flash java-esque main menu if I'm being honest) but this is totally worth the price in the end. I haven't even tried the new Maori civ. they start in the ocean and gain bonuses based on how much they land they discover before settling. That pulls everyone's first 50 turn strategy inside out and I am all about that! As much as I would love to see more expansions in the future, Firaxis's history says this is the last. In my heart of hearts I say this is a damn good place to leave my favorite epoch of Civilization.

This is Kupe. He's the sh*t.

Cruel Calculus

At an earnings call last week Activision-Blizzard posted record profits and a round of historical layoffs. 800 people lost their jobs because one of the biggest entertainment companies on earth didn't plan growth properly. That's sh*ty and it won't stop until a video entertainment union worth a damn sprouts up out of nowhere. That could take years, maybe more. What worries me most is what happened during the rest of the earnings call.

COO Coddy Johnson drew a line between what he believes were two halves of the company. One half were artists and programmers (development)  the other marketing and customer support (non developers) This was mostly for investors but a message was sent loud and clear to the peanut gallery. "We just sent 800 of your colleges packing. Don't ask any questions about Bobby Kotick's stock options and get in your designated box."

A-B has chosen to rule by fear. There's nothing illegal about it. Not even investigation worthy. Everything that company did was above board. That's what bothers me. We live in a world where your boss can make you petrified about your job security and if that person can prove it boosted sales that person gets promoted. Or gets a bonus bigger than most earn in a lifetime.

I ask you, reader, shouldn't that be a crime?

My Cherry Valentine.

And I didn't get you guys anything...

Hollow Knight is a masterpiece and Team Cherry is the indie dev team to beat. Even kotaku's intrepid investigative reporter Jason Scheier agrees. These guys are goddamn magicians. The 3 of them and a genius composer spent the last year giving HK free DLC while toiling away in secret on a sequel. They said Hornet was going to get a stand alone chapter and I'm so jazzed they changed their minds over how big that "chapter" might be.

Behold:

Hornet looks to be more of an engineer than the knight's black mage loadout. I see her launching buzz saw traps and bombs. I also see huge intricately animated bosses that they couldn't afford the last go round. This looks amazing. I could totally wait another year for it but I hope it's only a few months out. It's good to know that Activision and EA could burn to the ground tomorrow and Team Cherry would still be merrily plugging away at what will most likely be my favorite game of the year. I mean ya'll... this sh*t looks finished.

Hell of a Game

Lemme set the mood:

I am constantly falling in and out of love with Civilization. I loved V and remain impressed by VI but Civ unlike any other piece of entertainment can absolutely wreck my day. There’s a feeling you get when you’re 4 hours into a game (about renaissance era) that you’re completely effed. Your army survived your protectorate war but was it worth blowing half your troops saving a city state that only nets you 17 gold? It wasn’t and now you can’t afford a settler to find oil and aluminum so you’re about to be shut out of the late game too. You put Civ down emotionally and intellectually defeated.

It sucks.

But then there’s the other side of the coin. When you out think and outplay everyone on earth. Civilization is the only game that can make me feel like an evil genius. Such a game was one I played last weekend with Gorgo. A military terror early on (love them hoplites) her greatest strength is her late game capacity for culture. Her theater squares become acropolises which can be built in half the time of everyone else. Thanks to one of the governors from the rise and fall expansion I can make it so I have a near monopoly of all great writers and artists.

This is how I can make pure diplomacy work. Usually when you make too many libraries and museums the less civil leaders tend to sniff around your weakest links and pounce out of nowhere. But if you can buy them off with a piece of literature or two and make them dependent on your spices and dyes you can come out on top with a profit. In this run I was trying to see how many alliances I could forge at one time. I managed to max them out, you can only have 5, and went on to have the most blissfully peaceful game of civilization I can remember. I was everybody's friend and if anyone picked on me or my buddies they were bombed into the stone age.

He shouldn't have laughed at me... he shouldn't have laughed!!!

I made a point to cross the sea before everyone else and cornered the market on aluminum. Which meant that I’m the only one with an air force worth a damn and since I’m everybody's “friend” no one thought to put up air defenses. The last kerfuffle with my cranky roman neighbor was as brief as it was hilarious.

Near the end the tension kind of went out of the game. I had built a massive empire over three continents making 700 gold a turn. Money was no object and I had everything lined up for a science victory. Two cities with two launchpads makes it so I’m 50-ish turns away. But then came the sabotage. My fair weather friends had been biding their time and making spies. Suddenly parking my own spies on launch pads and neighborhoods wasn’t enough to keep my victory projects from resetting and mini boss quality tanks (spy made partisans) from popping up in the middle of my capital.

If I was in any actual space race I would have lost… but the beauty of the culture victory is that I sometimes forget I’ve already got it made. Within 20 turns I was the tourist capital of the world and I posted my best score in Civ since 2014. Hell of a game. I don't get a whole lot of self respect out this hobby so when it does happen I need to document it!

Oh and does the gathering storm come out tomorrow? ...I hadn’t realized.

Russian Doll Review: Stop Hitting Yourself.

I’m jealous of groundhog day. I can’t be the only one who is. It's a unique concept executed perfectly. If you try to drink from the fountain of Bill Murray’s best movie (come at me) you best have a damn decent show in mind. Thankfully, Russian Doll does. It is both darker than it wants you to think it is as well as more complicated. Groundhog day was essentially a sardonic morality play. Boiling down to the message of “Hey! Don’t be an asshole.” Russian Doll has a bit more on its mind.

While at its core it remains a relationship drama it also sits a nifty science fiction puzzle in front of your nose and gives you 6 episodes to figure it out. I did not. For once I got a bit more than timey-wimey hand waving and was disappointed I didn’t piece together the rotting fruit bit earlier. That’s just one piece. You get your first real clue after the initial death. You’d have to pause a lot and take notes but you could do it.

That is how you get your cake and eat it too. Do you have a good relationship story? Maybe about how turning your terminal self loathing into a lifestyle is a sh*t idea? Then maybe sprinkle in some time travel shenanigans to prove that it would take divine intervention to get some people to notice. Basically it only uses time travel to tell a better relationship story and that’s what I respect most. You can be as story driven as you want but if your characters and their choices don’t make sense episode to episode (SHERLOCK) I’m not going to be happy enough with you to bother with a write up.

"Sweet birthday baby" is the new "Ned Ryerson"

I’m dancing around the story because I don’t want you to know anything going in. Are you a self loathing introvert or extrovert? This show is gonna say some things that might hit you in the gut. Stuff that’s quite a bit more heady than simply hating yourself is wrong. It’s also the rare netflix show feels exactly as long as it needs to be. The first few were so dense and delicious I wasn’t sure if they were 50 minutes or not. Not a second over 30 it turned out.

The best thing I can say about the writing is that every character has a point. Everyone. The jerks, the homeless, even a philandering jackhole has a point. Except the 3 minute scene where Nadia shows up to her programming day job. That was just a bad scene. A noticeably RARE bad scene, but there it is. It’s just nice to see a show about depression and self destruction where everybody's pain matters. Even the villain’s.

I can’t say you’re going to love Russian Doll. I sure as hell did, but it might get a bit dark for some and if you’ve never dealt seriously with depression it might be too navel gazy. But it’s got a good puzzle worth solving and if you start I’m confident you’ll finish it. You also may not like how it ends but again, I sure as hell did.

Out of Boredom

I’m bored. I’m so bored I’m doing that thing I do every 2 years where I try to get into an MMO. It almost never works. I’m not a fan of the theme park vibe and I only put up with it in Destiny because the actual gameplay was sublime. Not so in Final Fantasy 14. It’s funny how much it has in common with 12 what with the arrow that spews out of enemies that target you and the floating blue dots denoting the edge of an area. I just wish it had 12’s art direction. Or 12’s score…

I’m an archer. I’m not sure if I’m in an area for archers specifically or if all the newbies wind up in this forest. The music is a lazy synth hodgepodge of Newman’s Shire stuff. I’m not impressed. But it IS pretty and I’m not not enjoying it. Runs like a dream too. Not that a game made in 2014 that's also on a PS4 is going to knock my socks off but its still impressively crisp.

I’ll stick with it for a month. I had to jump through enough free trial hoops to get this far. You bet your butt I’m gonna get my un-money’s worth. Hey, maybe I like it so much I feel compelled to pay $12 a month for it. Maybe in the same month I find the one and we get engaged after winning the lottery. In an infinite universe many things are possible.

February Doldrums.

Chamberlain had the perfect word for the last week: “doldrums.” I hadn’t realized how long I had been stuck in it until he brought it up. It was time to start asking myself certain questions. Questions such as “do I like this?” and "am I actually having fun?" I don’t ask myself that nearly enough about what I’m playing. My screen time these days are more vanishingly small than ever and I feel like I’m stuck in a rut. A loot rut.

If I’m not playing Destiny 2 I’m playing Diablo. If I’m not playing Diablo I might be in Borderlands 2. There’s a few slay the spire runs in between those but suffice it to say I haven't seen any games I feel like playing that are coming out in the next 6 months. Well that’s not true. I see you over there Civ VI. Can’t wait to have the United Nations back in a week or so. But still I can’t say I’m ITCHING to play it. Sure The Outer Worlds and Psychonauts 2 are coming but neither have nailed down a date and I sincerely doubt both come out in November, let alone this year. Tim Schafer scares easy, is what I’m saying.

So I shuffle off to my digital casinos. That’s what it’s starting to feel like. That I’m no longer an active participant but just stuck in front of a video poker machine for 2 hours a night. Am I having fun? ...Yes. Yes with an asterisk. There is still way more skill involved in staying alive in all 3 games then I’m giving them credit for. Sure these games might share some aspects with mindless gambling but I’m not exactly just sitting there. Though I’ve played them each so many times it is starting to feel that way.

It’s not like I don’t have a pile of shame to deal with. I could give monster hunter world another shot. There’s got to be something about that game I keep missing. Far too many people like it way too much for it to only be the exercise in frustration I thought it was. I got options, I guess. I’m sure the winds will pick up eventually.

The Terror Review: Save our Souls

Do you ever get the feeling when you’re watching, listening to, or reading something and think that this might be your favorite thing? I thought that a lot watching The Terror. It also scared me off writing a full on review. I liked it too much. It had so many things I loved in one place. Great English actors on sailing ships, 19th century exploration, paranoia thriller plotting, and a solid idea for a cgi monster with the budget to make it happen. This review will not be objective. This is the only box set I’ve bought in a decade. I’ve watched it more than 3 times all the way through. I love this show and hope some of that wafts off me in your direction.


Your experience may hinge on how much you enjoy watching English people in uniforms arguing life or death stakes. Can you deal with hours of that? Can you put up with that for fleeting jaws-like glimpses of a demonic polar bear? If you were sold on this by the formula of Ridley Scott + arctic + cgi monster = Victorian Alien, I have some bad news. This is way more about the hubris of Sir John Franklin (Ciaran Hines) and the infuriatingly optimistic way he gets every man in his service killed.

Slowly.

Over 3 years.

His doomsaying second officer (Jared Harris) is driven deep as he can go into the bottle after pleading for The Erebus and The Terror to take a slower, steadier, route away from the ice pack. Instead they press on, becoming part of it, never to be rescued. That's just the first episode. This is just how it all starts.




It’s the kind of thing you don’t see much of outside of HBO. A real cast of thousands. 10 episodes is a lot of time from the right perspective. This is another ingredient to the secret sauce. It’s a movie not a series. These are 5 acts in 10 parts. This was originally planned as a multiple season series and it shows. Every episode makes significant changes to the status quo. There almost never is a “status quo.” Instead there is faltering leadership, starvation, madness, and mutinous designs.

Should I keep going? Spoil the breakout stars, the mid season twists, and the tuunbaq’s song? I kinda want to. But seeing everything and everyone in it fresh is one of the best viewing experiences I’ve ever had. Just know that there is a through line for every story from the first episode to the last. I’ve looked for them. The Terror is so dense that there are some characters I forgot about the first go round that I made a point to focus on the second time.

Everybody gets a beginning, middle, and end. Some certainly more than others, but everyone gets at least a little spotlight. Even the guy who becomes comatose after being mauled by a demon bear. Know that Henry Goodsir is the BEST sir. You can’t finish it without loving that sonofabitch. Paul Ready knows how to perfect the goody two shoes character so that you not only like him but actively root for him. That’s as spoilery as I feel like getting. 

The Terror got effing robbed at the emmys. A year out and it seems everyone forgot about it. There’s a new series in the works set in the California Japanese internment camps which sounds neat. But this season was a miracle of horror film making and more people need to see it. I bet it pops up on nexflix or something before the new season but the $25 I paid is more than enough for a show that captures an absolutely brutal feeling of dread and sustains it effortlessly over 10 hours.


$17 at wal-mart. Just. sayin’.

The world didn't deserve you Mr/Dr. Goodsir.

Slay the Spire Review: Three Aces

Thanks justaschema!

Card games. In all the many circles of nerdity in my brain none of them contain any of the card games that have popped up in recent years. Couldn’t even get into gwent even though I tore The Witcher 3 to shreds. Certainly couldn’t care less about Hearthstone and I’ve actively avoided Magic. Why?

No idea. It just isn’t my thing. Fighting games aren't my thing, card games aren't my thing. Which brings me to Slay the Spire. I played it months ago, got pretty into it too. But I didn’t love it and almost completely forgot about it. The art style was drab and uninspired. Also I was pretty sh*t at it. To the point where the game’s greeter (who appears to be an undead whale for some reason) was bemoaning the fact I couldn't even reach the first boss. Thanks Mr. Whale, I’ll try harder next time.

But then it got released for real and I thought to give it another shot. Maybe try out the other 2 characters and see how they feel. Well I tried out the rogue and came away a believer. For those in the dark as to what Slay the Spire actually is, it’s a card game. Kinda. Combat on the enemy's side acts as a classic turn based RPG. The player has a hand of cards. The biggest problem for me was trying to play it as another rpg instead of embracing it’s… cardiness?

In a word I was fighting too much. Leaving myself too open too often and dying halfway. I needed to embrace defense and let fights drag on a little longer so I could survive the bosses. I imagine this is where most of the press was won over. The boss fights are a showcase of game design where all the unspoken rules of combat are thrown out. Made it to the end with full health? You could easily be dead in 2 turns if you don’t keep your head on a swivel. You don’t need to read faq’s to figure them out, you just have to learn how to break a few rules of your own.

I give you my poison turtle deck. The silent character is able to pull hands of 6 cards or more with free cards that can help you shuffle in more useful ones should RNGsus forsake you. The trick to her is causing a lot of damage in one turn while biding your time behind shielding. She also has some interesting poison skills I've grown quite fond of. Say you have a card that can give a boss 6 ticks of poison over 3 hits. Say you have a relic that adds an extra tick for each hit. Then maybe you find another card that doubles that poison. Then you can just turtle up while the boss’s health bleeds away in 4 turns.

That ended up being my best run to date and the start of a beautiful friendship. Like the best rogue likes out there, you can’t guarantee success. But you can hold your own for a while when your luck turns just off of strategy. The only thing keeping me back are the relics. I have no idea how best to use the more common ones. Most of them have sentence long descriptions and seem too niche to be useful “the first time you lose hp in combat, draw 3 cards” great! I just pulled 3 cards I can’t use for the 4th time in a row. Thanks.

But I’ll get better. Most importantly I want to get better. I can finally parse its depths and find myself choosing it over most of my old favorites after work. I mean I liked it before but I get it now. I want to have a poison turtle equivalent for the other 2 characters and I won’t stop playing until I do.

Indeed it is, Mr. Whale.

Spider-verse Review: Miles Ahead.

This shouldn’t work. You can’t fit 5 main characters with 6 villains into one movie and expect it to make sense, let alone be coherent, and certainly not exceptional. There are countless examples of movies being watered down into sludge with too many plot lines. The best I can think of is the 3rd spider-man flick itself . And yet Into the Spider-verse is the most rapturously enjoyable movie I’ve seen this year.

One aspect of it that needs to be addressed out of the gate is its animation style. It’s a lot. Sometimes it moves at a traditional 25 frames a second, often a mere 12 frames. It may bug you at first but I stopped noticing around 15 minutes in. If it bothers you I suggest focusing on the film's finer details, which are scrumptious. The dot painting fluttering around the edges of everything, the onamonapia when appropriate, and the individual animation style for each universe. Spider-verse is a film I would jump at the chance to see again. On mute.

This is still essentially a coming of age story for one kid about how intimidating greatness can be. Miles is enrolled at a boarding school for the rich and “gifted” only to drown in the unfamiliar sea that is his homework. He resents his dad for throwing him into the deep end and not letting him go to his more comfortable (and mediocre) public school.

Subtler emotional stakes than I expected from a movie with a talking pig-spider. What’s more is that his arc perfectly captures that agonizing feeling that comes from when a group of people collectively decide you’re just not “good enough.”

As character driven as it is, this is still an action movie. No fight ever devolves into a blur. Everything is crisply choreographed from web swinging, to dodging punches, to chuck jonesian mallet smashes. Credit is also due to each character design. The sinister 6 especially has been rebuilt from the ground up to take advantage of being animated. Norman Osborn has scarcely ever been this… cave trolly. Toss in a few earned character deaths and a eye melting art show caliber climax and you’ve got a film they’ll say was robbed of best picture down the line.

I sh*t thee not. Movies that are this fun, this dark, and this honest almost never get made let alone gross over $300 million. Good job America! Feels good to say that. If you choose not to see this in theaters you may well regret it. I’ll certainly respect you less. Just let go of that $12 wad in your pocket and I promise you’ll have a good time.

First Man Review: Good at Funerals.

If the internet was burning down and I could only save one thing I would choose the video of Buzz Aldrin in his 70's decking a 40-something moon landing denier. First Man is the only film about the Apollo missions that captures how singularly terrifying they were. I didn't think the moon landing kooks could make me any angrier but damn it if this movie didn't help me understand Buzz's righteous fury even more.

Neil Armstrong's life was hell. He lost experiential pilot friends as often as if they were in front line combat. He watched his 3 year old daughter wither and die from a brain tumor. I can't think of an actor more suited to capture his silent suffering better than Gosling. I've been back and forth on the guy for years. I used to think he slept walked through Drive but I've learned to appreciate how much he can do with someone as deceptively bland as Neil. If you're still hating on the man and you haven't seen The Nice Guys you should do yourself a favor and get googling.

The earth bound parts do sag a little. Claire Foy doesn't  get  much to do as Neil's wife/therapist. Though its something to see the emotional crow baring she has to do to coax a damn sentence out of her man. Dead daughter or no, First Man isn't afraid to portray its lead as a self involved ass. Speaking of, I really like the way the film handles the kids. They're fidgety, inarticulate, and always want to be somewhere else. They feel real kids. Also shout out to composer Justin Hurwitz for his sci-fi waltz score. Bonus points for his unironic, full-throated, use of a theremin. If you're not gonna bust that out for a space race movie then when goddammit?

What makes this Damien Chazelle's best film is his grasp of not just tension but horror. The fact he wrote 10 Cloverfield Lane was not lost on me when the Gemini spin out sequence made me physically ill. The score almost becomes a psycho homage with shrieking synth strings. It's amazing how much it grabbed me even when I knew exactly what was going to happen.

The moon mission itself is beautiful if a bit more relaxed than the rest of the movie. It pretty much went off without a hitch, not much for a screenwriter to do there. I'm also disappointed Michael Collins, as in life, gets no attention.  "If they fail to rise from the surface, or crash back into it, I am not going to commit suicide," he wrote in his book. "I am coming home, forthwith, but I will be a marked man for life and I know it." You're telling me you couldn't get some compelling screen time out of that existential crisis?! Booooo.

If you're into biopics and the space race in general, then you need to see this. Its different enough and masterful in spurts. If this isn't your bag it may come off as just another love letter to a dead white guy. Its not and it shouldn't but I can see how some could feel that way. First Man doesn't land smoothly, but it lands.

TV Drinking Game: You're Fired.

I've been flitting around some of my old favorite shows, Parks and Rec, Brooklyn 99, etc. It struck me how many times I found myself yelling at the screen (possibly drunk) "How did you not loose your job just now?!" I get that comedy has to have hyper personalities playing against the straight but almost every plotline about Gina from 99 involves her actively starting sh*t with her bosses.

So drink anytime a character should realistically loose their job! The Office should be a blur now.

The Smoking Gun.

I've long been puzzled by my fixation on Destiny 2. I played it to death on ps4 for a year. When it was free on PC I shelled out $40 for it's dlc all for the privilege to play it again in the glory of 60 frames. I can't say I have any strong affection for it. It never made my game of the year list in 2017 and I've scarcely written about it. Yet I can't go a month without playing it. Why this game? Why not Overwatch? I could pal around with Chance even more than I do already. But that game bored me away while Chance can't stop finding new and interesting facets to talk about.

After a week or so of thought I think I have the answer. Destiny's loot is dynamic while Overwatch's is static. As much as I love my cthulhu zen, that skin will never fundamentally change the way I play that game. But say I get a couple days off and hunker down on a reasonably long and difficult end game quest. Say I get over my hatred of Destiny's multiplayer, say I get reasonably good at said multiplayer. I would then get a hand cannon that's 30% more useful than anything that could possibly drop anywhere else in the game. I frikken earned this gun and naturally I appreciate it and this game more for it. After all the behind the scenes BS and the rocky first year this is one of the best looter shooters in existence. Here's hoping Activision doesn't put a bullet in its back like it has so many other games and companies.

Hitting the Mother Lobe

The game industry can be a funny thing. Sometimes the best games you've ever played don't meet their sales markers and are banished to the dusty nether regions of steam. Sometimes a crowdfunding miracle* happens and a game you've been waiting 13 years for looks like everything you could have wanted.

If you've never played Psychonauts, fix that. Wonky combat aside it's story and art style still holds up. If you have, it's good to know that A. Loboto survived long enough for Sasha's interrogation and B. It looks like we'll finally get to punch at least one member of the Galochios.

Mr. Mcconnell's score remains delightful throughout:

*crowd funding miracle AND shadowy fig investors.

Narcos Mexico Review: "You f**ked up, man."

Netflix has fallen on some hard times critically. It's mediocre productions (Hill House, Adam Sandler's movies, latter Kimmy Schmidt seasons) has begun to outweigh it's successes. But then there's Narcos. Yes, it pretty much tells the same story every season. Yes, season 2 was 40% Escobar moping around his prison. Yes, it's female characters are either window dressing or haranguing wives. But... but if you can get past those details, no judgment if you can't, you'll see one of the most gorgeous and addicting Spanish language shows in the world.

If you watch only one season, I say make it Mexico. It's brutal honesty about Mexico's jaw dropping depths of corruption alone make it the best story the series has told. There's a civil war raging south of the border these days. The line between the military and the police no longer exists. You can draw a nearly straight line from the 120,000 deaths in the last 20 years to one man: Miguel Gallardo. Played admirably, though a bit too softly, by Rogue One's Diego Luna. I say softly because I don't buy the toughest drug lords in the world trusting his sheepishly boyish gaze with all their product. The real Gallardo has a more manic Charles Manson thing going on.

 It's a good performance but it's firmly in the shade of Wagner Mora's coolly unsettling Escobar. I'm actually a bigger fan of his lieutenants Ernesto and Rafa. The both of them getting high at a safe house and giddily hopping up and down to test their state of the art CD stereo ("It doesn't skip! It doesn't skip!") is my favorite scene in the entire series to date.

Peña needs an emmy for this.

But what about the cops? As much as I love Pedro Pascal they've never been the stand out part of any season. But thanks to Michal Peña that has changed. He's a lovable prick with a nasty habit of getting in over his head. As bad as the Colombian drug war got under the Cali and Escobar they only ever managed to buy off a Judge or two. Gallardo eventually runs the table on Mexico's entire government. Even the American diplomats start giving the DEA a Chinatown shrug.

This is the secret sauce that makes it my favorite season. As an American I've become a bit sensitive to corruption in high levels of government. So I'm eager to see how the system... works so to speak. If I have one major complaint it's that Narcos: Mexico is very much a two-parter. Most of the major story lines reach a decent conclusion but it also has the most agonizing tease for next year. I want it right the hell now.

If you can avoid googling the names involved I promise you won't see where this story goes. That's a tall order being that Peña's Ki Ki Camerana was on the cover of Time and all that. But I was floored at several moments in the last quarter. Narcos knows the last season got wrapped up in a pretty bow for the most part and it's got some absolutely nasty surprises for you. The fact they were able to do this with what is 80% verified history (certain folks involved are still in the higher echelons of Mexican politics and are redacted) is nothing short of Olympic level story telling. I won't be canceling my subscription anytime soon.

Castlevania Review: Go for Baroque.

Lemmie set the mood...

I am not an anime guy. I've liked a few well enough but that was mostly in my insomnia laden teens where I was watching toonami at 3 in the morning. Bebop was great, Champloo too, but that's tourist stuff. For a genre that can barely afford to make mouths move or eyebrows twitch I find the vast majority of them unwatchable. I'm aware that this particular project is Japanese in style only, being written by Warren Ellis and all. Part of me feels guilty about that, but then no other anime has made me laugh out loud as much as this.

Castlevania's got jokes. Whedon style quippy jokes which I understand aren't for everyone; but you will never see them coming and that's what makes it work. This show is Gothic with a capital G but it still lets nearly every one of its characters be human. Even if they're slightly undead. This is key because if you're reaching for your phone every time this cast starts walking and talking you won't make it to the end. Lotsa' prowling around in the betrayal garden in season 2. Know that.

3 quid for a pint?! Bollocks.

But lets talk about the cast and how much frikkin' fun they're having. Richard Armitage has a high spot on my "hey, its that guy" list but I couldn't place his voice until I looked it up. I remember him from the end of Hannibal doing Ralph Fiennes proud as Dolerhyde. He lights up here as a vagrant demon hunting drunk. The dude can just say things funny. The biggest laugh from me for the whole run is just the way he reads the line "I like stories." Do you want to see an English Indiana Jones? Because that's what he accomplishes here.

Then we have Graham Mctavish as Dracula by way of King Lear. A immortal broken hearted mad man who is too self absorbed to kill himself before wiping out all life on earth. He's fantastic. His mopey monologues that boil over into barking madness are almost better than the script deserves. Its such a good performance I'd bet the man has wanted to play the big bat for a really long time.

Hope those of you out there aren't too catholic. Blasphemous doesn't even begin to describe the gore.

Oh. The action scenes are pretty good too. I'm sorry, they are crazy good. They aren't written so much as choreographed. No mindless clanging of swords here. Every movement from each character is trying to go for the kill. Big budgeted this show is not but all the action still has the tension of a boxing match. You're never quite sure who's winning until its over.

Fans of the games (hi there!) will get a kick out of the references to the series reoccurring levels. The laboratory, the library, clock tower, etc. One of Drac's maguffins is the weird polygonal save point from symphony of the night. The second to last episode even has a wall chicken if you look hard enough. Not that anyone would be lost if you're not in on the gag. Their Easter egg game is strong.

I'm glad I waited until the second season to hop in because it reaches a solid conclusion the first 4 episodes (season 1 is barely 2 hours long) couldn't even set up. It won't end there but it could have and that's the nicest thing I can say about the writing. The structure of the story is alloy steel. There are twists, turns, betrayals, and sucker punches all decently foreshadowed. It won't win any prime time Emmys but that's not what its going for. This is a bloody good time and I hope ya'll give it a shot.

Hello, Marc Simonetti.

Soul Music

Art posts are usually Chance's thing but more Discworld fans need to know about him if I'm not somehow the last fan on the train. In the last 2 years I have discovered and devoured Terry Pratchett's Discworld. I've come across the original covers of his books and they're... well... interesting. Its really busy and gives off a manic vibe that doesn't fit the author's voice at all. Pratchett is a lot of things but he's no more manic than a stiff cuppa'. I'd say I'm a big enough fan to want to hang a cover or two of his books on a wall but nothing seemed worth it.

Then I stumbled across Marc and his portfolio gushing with what is now the definitive visualization of Pratchett's work in my head. Compare small god's cover above with Marc's:

He says he's freelance and that's a tragedy. There's a city watch series in development and he's not making them concept art. A tragedy I say. I mean, they're calling it a "punk rock thriller." Its a show about high fantasy medieval cops so I don't know what the hell that means. I'd feel much better about it if they gave Mr. Simonetti here a call.

A free conundrum.

Destiny 2 is free on pc today. A game I've played to death that has finally, after a year, finally gotten rid of it's second job equivalent of a level grind. It's never been better and I've never seen it run in 60 fps. Or seen it load a menu in under 7 seconds. Those 7 seconds add up when you've been playing a game every 2 months for a year.

If only everything was for free... I paid $40 for it's last expansion in September, why would I do that again? Because the other dlc is bundled with it for a limited time? Oh, Bungie. This is evil and you know it. Evil.

Update: So seeing it in 1080 instead of 720 for the first time was like putting on a perfect pair of glasses. I knew I liked it before, but now? Now with twice the frame rate so aiming is twice as easy? Now I'm punching 20 levels above my weight screaming through the campaign in about 4 1/2 hours.

There's no going back.

XCOM 2's legacy pack will be up for sale after Dec. 3. and it deserves to be.

Well... damn.

Polygon really buried the lede when they told me about XCOM2's surprise dlc. I see that you get a couple one off missions where you fight the early stages of Advent's Orwellian state. I get that there's 20 new maps. I understand there's new weapon skins and other cosmetic clap trap. But what the people really need to know is that a re mixed homage to the 1994 original soundtrack has popped into the audio menu.

So synthy it hurts. Its cheesy, but like a fancy cheese. Cheese you ultimately respect because you can't stop eating. I would pay $8 for it alone.

The world is magic and I have proof:

When we were kids we never actually believed animals could talk but I never imagined them to have inner lives rich enough for a seal to hate a kayaker so much it hits him in the face with an octopus. Thanks to everyone on the planet having recording devices on them at all times we now know how petty seals really are.

Well that sure is neat.

So I finally checked out remote play. Now I can have podcasts in the background of destiny in my headphones instead of my cell phone. In a cup. The streaming is a little hitchy, but there's a lot to be said for being able to get blogging done while waiting for a match to queue up.

It works. Doesn't blow me away but its free and it works. Wouldn't play a new game this way. It'll keep me from getting the pc version, though. Possibly forever.

UPDATE: So plugging my ps4 directly into my router has had pretty drastic results. The hiss and pop are gone and everything's a lot smoother. I'm not gonna jerry rig this up all the time but it's nice to know it works.

Goddamn, Destiny 2. That's good stuff.

Say hi to Michael Salvatori!

Maybe it's just because I've been putting up with mediocre synth for the last 56 hours of my off time but I heard a piece of music in Destiny last night that is just so good. Share with my cello playing dad good. I had to tell him it was from an Israeli indie film or he wouldn't have bothered but he liked it. 

Here's Our New Beginning from Curse of Osiris: