Top Ten Skyrim Dislikes

As I said they would be, here are my top ten dislikes from Skyrim:

10) Graphical glitches in this game are few and far between, but they still happen.  The one that amuses me the most is when you mine.  When you activate a vein of ore, you just kind of slide into position to mine it no matter what's in your way.  I slid through mushrooms and even the floor to mine some iron ore.  Now that's dedication.

9) Dual-wielding is a bit awkward, and I know I mentioned it as something that I love, but there are parts that I don't like.  The power attacks are cumbersome and make you flail all over the place while the normal attacks are slow at first.  Of course you can increase the speed with a perk, but that's a different story altogether.

8) Giants; those fuckers are huge!  I don't mind big enemies, but the giants are just so damn difficult no matter what setting you're on.  The attacks shake your screen and cause confusion as well as a hell of a lot of damage.  Add that in with a herd of mammoths and you are just fucked.

7) The transportation in the game is limited and walking everywhere is just a pain in the ass.  Even when you get the Dark Brotherhood horse or buy your own at a stables, the only thing it's really good for is fighting!  I swear that the horses run out of stamina faster than you and run only slightly faster than you.  So when you're going to a location that you haven't discovered yet, have fun walking your ass there.

6) Food is a huge waste of time.  Sure it makes the game more realistic, and it's kind of fun making grilled salmon, but it's fucking worthless.  It's just dead weight in your pack.  Potions weigh less and pack a greater punch.  Now if food crafting was a skill and the food gave you some properties like potions, then it would be worth it.

5) There are so many Draugr and it gets boring fighting them.  I mean really, I know that they're a big part of Skyrim culture and tradition, but why the hell do I fight forty of them in basically every dungeon?  Give me some more variety.  Also, stop allowing them to Shout weapons out of my hands!  I lost some pretty damn good weapons that way.

4) I find that the weapon skill trees are disappointing.  I know that there's not much you can do with the weapon perks, but both the two-handed and one-handed trees are the same and offer very little in the way of variety.  You can either choose to continue to increase damage or level up your power attacks.  Lame.

3) The shopkeepers have absolutely no money.  It's ridiculous!  I can't unload even one dungeon's worth of items at three different shops that all buy different things!  I can hardly sell the potions that I make while leveling up my alchemy skill that I don't want.  There are perks to increase the money that the shops have, but why can't their funds scale with your level?

2) I was really hoping that now that we're in Skyrim, we'd see more of a variety of armor and weapon types, but I'm disappointed here again. We really only see the same ones that we've seen before with the addition of Ancient Nord, Skyforge Steel, and a few others, but really they're just palette swapped with other types in the game.

1) My number one complaint with this game is the goddamn dragons.  That's right, I really don't like how they are unscripted.  I could be just running along, minding my own business while killing some bandits, and a fucking dragon pops up and makes me sit there shooting at it until it lands and then I have to kill it.  This happens way too frequently to be fun and until you beat the main questline, you don't have a way to get the damn things out of the sky, you just need to wait until they land, if they ever do.  It's too bad that my main problem with the game had to be the major enemies, but what can you do?

All in all, I love Skyrim and even if I get bombarded with dragons every 15 minutes, I'm still going to keep playing.

Skyrim

During my time away from this blog, I've been playing a metric shit ton of Skyrim.  I'd love to do some kind of comprehensive review of the thing, but it's just too huge for me to compile at this point in time.  This is my busy time at work and I tend to have less time/want to write when I get home from the office.  In any case, in lieu of a giant review, I'm going to do a top 10 of things that I love and things that I dislike about Skyrim.

Also, before I get started, if you don't want any spoilers, don't read ahead, just look away.

Things I love about Skyrim

10) Acrobatics is gone.  I hated that garbage skill from the last few games.  It's just a worthless waste of stamina.  Now when you jump, you don't waste any energy whatsoever.  Granted this was a skill that I used to pick just to be able to level up by hopping all about and I have now lost that ability, but I've gained a sense of dignity.  No more hopping for levels for me.

9) Enchanting is much easier; I mean MUCH easier.  Instead of having to clear an Oblivion Gate just to get a damn stone for enchanting, you can just disenchant the garbage equipment that you get and use those same enchantments on your new weapons.  The level of your enchanting skill, the perks you've chosen for that skill tree, and the level of the soul in your soul gem are all factors that determine the power of the enchantment.  So much more user-friendly.

8) The third-person view is much improved.  Okay, this one is pretty minor, but it made this position because it's just that damn important to me to be able to see my character move fluidly when in 3rd person.  I don't want to see Gastalf, my dual-spell wizard, running like a damn robot.  I want to see him move like a human being...or Argonian, whatever.

7) Dual-wielding, 'nuf said.  There's a love and dislike factor here for me, which is why it's so low.  The fighting is a little awkward if you use two weapons, but spell and sword is still pretty great.  What I'd like to see are combination attacks with what you have in your two hands further than just having more powerful spells when you do dual-casting.  I want to shoot some fire on my sword, stab a Skeever, and then loot Charred Skeever Hide after it's dead, not just a Skeever Tail and a gold.  (How the hell did it get a gold in the first place?)

6) Bethesda kept the story consistent.  We aren't seeing the same old garbage rehashed though, we're seeing a brand new game with ties to the older games.  Everywhere you see references back to Morrowind and Oblivion.  Each time I see one I have a nostalgic memory of game times gone by.

5) Spell Tomes are much easier to use than the clunky magic system from Oblivion.  Gone are the days where you have to find someone to train with to get spells.  Now you just find Spell Tomes, or buy them, everywhere.  There are a limited number of spells, but with access to all of them via these Tomes, the spell system is much better overall.

4) Blacksmithing is a great way to get new weapons for cheap and level up.  I love being able to go mining in a creature-infested mine to get ore of all types to make my own shit.  Armor, Jewelry, and Weapons are all craftable and improvable in Skyrim and combining the Blacksmithing skill with Enchanting is just one of the ways that your character is able to command their entire environment.

3) Followers are so much better than in Oblivion.  They react to what weapon you have and what weapon the enemy has as well as what distance you are at.  For instance, Aela the Huntress will shoot her bow until the close range game starts and then whip out a shield and sword.  What's most impressive is that I can command her to move to a different location or activate a lever while I fight or activate some other part of a dungeon by a simple command.  I just remember that my old followers in Oblivion would get demolished instantly, while here in Skyrim, they seem to be able to think and strategize.

2) The leveling system has been much improved upon since Oblivion.  Rather than choosing your major and minor skills and leveling up by increasing the former, you now level everything equally.  Sure you start with some skills that are higher than others based upon your race, but that's alright because each skill increase brings you closer to that level 50.  Each increase isn't equal though, as those skills that are lower and higher go up with varying speeds and add to the overall level differently, so to get to level 50 you need to grind hard and vary your skill base.

1) My number one love with Skyrim has to be the environment.  Everything just fits.  The trees you see, the plants, the mountains, the creatures, everything just feels like it belongs in Skyrim.  When I see an elk run by me in the game it feels like I just saw one while on some hike in the Rockies.  Not that I know if there are elk in the Rockies, but that it feels like you are in Skyrim.  It feels like you are the character you created and are going on an adventure to save the land from the dragons.  That's what I'm looking for in an RPG, I want to feel like I am the character, that I'm invested in Skyrim's people and care about saving them.  This is why Skyrim is fantastic.

Tune in tomorrow when I go through my top ten dislikes.  Yeah, not hates, there's nothing I hate about the game yet.  Also, these two posts are kind of a diversion while I finish up my first TV series review.  I'll give you a hint on what show it's on:  Adult Swim presents a solar-powered superhero turned lawyer.  That may have been too much of a hint...

Card Game Review: Scrabble Slam

I fucking love Scrabble.  It's a game that I do well at AND enjoy.  It's like my Holy Grail of competitive, intelligent board games.  So when I found out that there was a Scrabble card game, for on the go and quick Scrabble action, I just about shit my pants.  I was so very excited to get it and play that I bought it based solely on the fact that it says Scrabble on the front without investigating it much further.  Unfortunately my excitement turned to bitter resentment that has kept Scrabble Slam to one lifetime game.  This is literally the second time that I've opened this box to the hellish mockery lurking underneath.

The box itself is pretty cool: red an black with some nice gradient effects that catch your eye.

Looks enticing, right?

The cards are also decent, but the visual stuff isn't what breaks the game, it's the actual gameplay.  One player comes up with a four letter word that becomes the base word.  The rest of the deck is then handed out to the rest of the players.  The guide then says to say, "Ready, Set, Slam!" to begin play, but I find that you can play even without saying that.  Lying bastards!  Play proceeds in that each player can just yell out the word that they are changing the base word to and play one side of one of their cards down on the base word.  The winner is that player that finishes up their hand of cards first.  There are no rules besides acceptable, disputed, and repeated words...What the hell kind of game is that?!  You just yell out a four letter word, there are plenty that I can come up with I assure you, and play one card on top of the other?  There aren't turns or rounds or anything resembling an actual game, it's just chaos.  Chaos dotted by immaturity.  Whether we like it or not, everyone is thinking the same thing when playing this game, "I can spell damn and shit, but are those 'accepted' words?"  Let me tell you, if you're talking about how damn shitty I think this game is, then yes, they're highly acceptable.

All in all, I guess this isn't a terrible game to being with, but when they slammed the name Scrabble on it, Parker Brothers and Hasbro gave it expectations that it couldn't live up to.  Why name a game after another game that it has nothing to do with?  That's just poor marketing.  If you're wanting to play some quick Scrabble action either on the go or at home, my advice is to get it for your phone or iDevice.  Avoid this thing like the plague that it is.

Lazy Post

I'm tired today and don't have the brain energy left to bother with some type of review or rant or anything.  Instead just take a look at the funny links.  Funny if you're a gamer, that is:

http://www.somethingawful.com/d/photoshop-phriday/wrong-end-bosses.php

http://www.somethingawful.com/d/photoshop-phriday/wrong-end-bosses2.php

Here's one for Star Wars fans and fans of classic art:

http://www.somethingawful.com/d/photoshop-phriday/star-wars-art.php

Tomorrow or Thursday we should see another "normal" post.

Card Game Review 1: Skip-Bo

When I was a kid, my family used to play board games a lot.  I mean a lot.  Rather than having family meetings or talking with each other a lot, we would play board games and things would just naturally progress from there into stories of our days and all that jazz.  In my opinion it's the best way to get a kid talking and learning and I'd happily use this the same tactics on my own children.

In any case, I want to review a card game from my childhood called Skip-Bo.

In all it's glory.

Fist off, I want to address the name.  What the hell does Skip-Bo mean?  I did a bit of research and found out that the game is sort of a commercial grade Spite and Malice card game.  Well, that's disappointing.  I was really hoping that it had something to do with some kind of ancient sect of Bo fighters.  What a ripoff.

The idea is that you're playing competitive Solitaire, you build up the center piles while reducing your stockpiles.  The first one to get their stock to zero is the winner.  At least that's how we play it.  According to the rules there's some sort of scoring bullshit.  I guess that the winner of each game get five points for each card remaining in the opponent's stock and 25 points for winning the game.  Why the hell would you do that?  Just play each game seperately and don't keep track of score, it makes things a lot easier on everyone involved.

It's a pretty simple game, but it's highly addictive.  The center piles are empty at the start of the game, and play goes until someone has a one or Skip-Bo to lay down as a foundation. From there, you and your opponent(s), the game is for 2-6 players, alternate turns building each pile up to the 12 card.  Once a center pile is at that point, a new one is started until all of the stockpiles are gone.  As a twist to the original Solitaire, the creators introduced a card that allows you to skip a number; that's the Skip-Bo.  The game's directions indicate to you that it's "wild".  Well, it was wild when I thought it meant an ancient fighting style that use a Bo Staff like Donatello!  Now it's just some kind of skipping crap.  Now there's an image, skipping crap over Lake Superior.  Enjoy that for just a moment.

I'd love to know why Donatello looks like somebody just skipped crap in front of him.

So there's not much left to say about this, but I do find a few things just a little odd.  Why do the Skip-Bo cards have to have the copyright symbol twice?  Did Mattel think that we were going to forget that they copyrighted the phrase and the game?  Why can't they just have it on the damn box and call it good?  The last irk that this game has for me is that in the directions, every reference to something in the game is in capital letters like we wouldn't know that it's referring to what we just read.  Here's a great example:

4. Discard Pile: During play, each player may build up to four DISCARD piles to the left of his STOCK pile.  They can build up any number of cards in any order in the DISCARD pile, but may only play the top card.

Whatever, it's just a game.  My final and favorite thing about this has to be this phrase: "Also SKIP-BO cards are wild.  This is important."  Yeah, it's important alright, but can't we make that determination on our own?

Anyway, besides a few nitpicky things that I found while rifiling through the game, Skip-Bo is a great game, and I'd reccommend it to anyone.  It's fun to play with two players, and even more fun to play with six.  Either way you play it, I guarantee you'll have fun; and always remember...This is important.

First Movie Review:

Brain Twisters is the name of this "classic" from 1991.  It's part of a 12 movie set that I got at a rummage sale for a dollar called Gorehouse Greats.  I've watched a few of these and I haven't seen any gore, just a little blood and some breasts.  What kind of title is that misleading?  It's not great, and there's no gore; hell, there's barely even a house.

The DVD's box describes the movie like this, "A mad, sci-fi thriller about an experiment in computer-generated mind control that gets out of control...and the body count is building!  So the movie itself is mad, or is there a mad scientist?  Also, mind control is killing people?  This small plot reveal really doesn't do anything for me.  It just seems worthless because the information is too vague.  If this were a movie that I actually wanted to gain some information on before watching, the back of the box wouldn't do me any good; and the company has the same format for each of the 12 movies on this set!  I guess you're just supposed to buy this thing on a whim and hope for the best like I did.  The only difference between you and me is that I got it for a dollar and you had to buy it for retail.  Sucks to be you.

One other nitpicky thing I hate about the physical aspects of the box and DVDs themselves is that the movies don't go in order!  So, reading from the back, the movies are in alphabetical order, makes sense, right?  Then, when you open up the damn box you have four movies to a DVD, two on both sides, but they don't follow the same order from the case.  So instead of scanning the back once and counting which DVD will have the movie I want to watch I have to go through the painstaking effort of looking at each disc individually.  When did convenience become too difficult for companies to produce?  Oh yeah, and take a look at the cover picture:

It's just so misleading it's not even funny.  The picture makes you think that some of the movies on here will be worth the $5 that you find it for at Wal-Mart because it looks decent and modern, but it's just a trick.  Anyway, enough with that, let's just get into the freaking movie.

As the pre-movie credits roll I hear this familiar droning song.  After about ten seconds, I finally figure it out: it's the music from all of the DVD menus!  Why is it taken from this one film?  Is this the seller's personal preference from this set of movies?  Was this one song just that good?  Unfortunately I couldn't find this song on the internet so the reader's ears cannot be graced by it, which is just dandy for them.

The first scene is a car crash that's never referenced again, or wait, it is, just too far into the movie to really matter anymore.  Some guy is driving down the road while the camera flashes back and forth between that and some girl running with headphones.  Both the music in the car and on the headphones reminds us that it's the very early nineties.  We see the car come close to the woman and then we see her headphones go flying straight up into the air.  Of course that's what happens when you get hit by a fast moving vehicle; and that's really our only indication that the woman was hit.  Who are these people and why do we care?  Long story short is that we don't know and we don't care.

We flash to some crazy video screen with pixelated images and flashing colors.  None of it is impressive.  I know it's 1991, but Nintendo was in full swing at this point in time.  Couldn't the production team get something better than some rejected Atari images and vector graphics?  The only redeeming quality of these video portions are the sounds.  It really does sound like someone was playing some old game on an Intellivision and they recorded the audio for the movie.  Now pull up a quick video of Mario and watch it for thirty seconds.  Go ahead, I'll wait.

...

Each of those thirty seconds are 1000 times greater than every second of this movie.

So right, there are two women watching the screens in some crazy space pod with delorian doors, remote controls, and keyboards.  They're hooked up to diodes and all they do is stare at the flashing colors.  Eventually the stuff stops and one girl gets out.  I think this one is Yvonne; I really don't remember.  All of the characters in this film have names, I just didn't care enough to learn them really well.  She gets out and gets some money for the test while the coordinator is on the phone with a corporate guy.  Something about terminating the project because of no progress with the research.  No progress is right, Nintendo is pumping out 8-bit games with a vengeance and they're definitely dominating these gimped Atari games.

As Yvonne leaves she sees the janitor.  Why is this significant?  There's no dialog!  The janitor is a recurring character with very little dialog, but we just know that he plays some part at the end.  The director force feeds us that fact every time we see the guy.  We establish some of the other characters in a lecture class; there's a slutty girl who comes in wearing a bra/bikini thing, Denise, and Lori.  The only interesting thing that happens here is that Denise asks Lori about going to aerobics and then later asks her boyfriend, Ted, if he wants to go to the carnival.  Did she forget about aerobics already?  She said that she wanted to lose weight but she also wants to go to a haven for fried food?  Not smart.

Denise and Ted leave the class and run into the janitor, who's also the gardener.  Does no one else do any type of maintenance at this University?  At least I think it's a school... They've established the characters but not the location.  I just assumed it's a college because of the class.  Whatever.  Then Ted looks off into the distance and Denise asks him if he's alright in this weird echoy voice, over and over again until you just want to hit something.  The slutty character implies about how she got her "B" average by having sex with her teachers.  She must not be very good in bed if she only got "Bs."  Maybe she should try a course in Kama Sutra.

Our first scene with a death involves Ted and Denise coming back from the carnival, I think, and going to Denise's place where they say goodnight.  Ted gets pissed and complains about not getting any.  He leaves and Denise gets ready for aerobics in her super-chromatic dorm apartment.  Also, for some reason she takes her stuffed teddy bear into the bathroom with her.  I really don't know what that's about.  Why would anyone take their stuffed animal into the bathroom?  While she's cuddling her bear in front of the mirror there's a killer's POV while random sounds play; yawn.  There's no killshot or violence of any kind.  All we see is Lori popping in and her finding Denise hanging by her neck from a towel.  Lori runs out of the room and uses a payphone to call the police.  Why the fuck didn't she use the phone in the room?  It was right there and she saw the door shut when the killer left!  Why pay the change to use the damn payphone when you can call from two feet away?!

We shoot to the Professor at home where the slut comes over to talk about her paper.  Prof. Rothman gives her a glass of wine and she asks if he has, "Any suggestions on how to improve it," or "any pointers that he wants to give her."  How freaking blatant can you be?  Rothman says yes and flat out tells her she should drop out of school and be a whore somewhere else.  He decides to put her into a work study for "nerve stimulation."  She looks confused for a bit and finally says that it's kinky.  There's also a detective, Frank, that questions Lori and Ted that night about Denise's death.  The questioning is too intense for Ted, I guess, because he kills himself while a pinball machine, dart machine, and a Commando arcade machine blare in the background.  His body is taken to Rothman's lab where the Professor takes off his head and puts it in a jar, which we don't get to see.  Classic mad scientist without the mad or classic.  The detective questions the professor about the body and gets it taken to the morgue for an autopsy.  During the whole scene, everyone is so concerned about the neuroscientist having a brain in his fucking lab.  Why is that so strange?!

There's more random lab footage with Atari sounds and graphics.  Blah, blah, blah.  The slutty woman goes to the work study and runs into the janitor.  What does this movie have against janitors?  The only exciting thing here is that the girl's screen looks like the original tempest game.  After all that crap we see some girl staring into a pool for a minute.  Is this some sort of dream or simulation?  She looks like the slutty girl, but apparently she's Yvonne?  This is where the movie gets insane and starts becoming super disjointed.  Yvonne, Lori, and Yvonne's boyfriend go get food and a car wash.  For some reason the boyfriend wants to have a threesome.  I have no idea where this dialog comes from.  The scene just starts and he brings it up.  They laugh it off, but haunts you for a much longer time.  Also, why are they getting a car wash when the car is spotless?!

Yvonne has some kind of reaction from the car wash that's supposed to be linked to the work study.  We watch her stretch for a few minutes and then she runs out of the car and away into the daytime.  The insane thing is that she's perfectly dry afterwards.  Did she have some kind of invisible force field or umbrella?  Then we flash to a Halloween party where Yvonne has a psychedelic experience in the tub, grabs a scissors, slices the throat of a guy, and stabs her boyfriend in the back twice.  Both of them die and no one tries to stop her.  What the hell?  It's a goddamn scissors, not an axe!

Later we go to Rothman at the bar and he has a talk with the company and wants to stop the killings.  Halfway through the call he just stops talking because of a song with flashing lights and shit.  He propositions a girl and then smashes her boyfriend in the head with a glass bottle.  Then for some reason he shows up on like forty monitors in the bar.  Am I the only one that doesn't understand what's going on?  I reallly hope not.

There's also this scene where Detective Frank asks Lori to come over for dinner.  It's been established that she hates him, but she accepts anyway as some kind of disjointed plot device.  The dinner is really odd; he makes a salad and noodles that he claims is olive oil, clams and fresh garlic.  Of course when he explains this he asks Lori which of those items she is.  What the fuck kind of question is that?  We jump to them doing dishes and she makes fun of an apron he's wearing.  At this point I'm just confused and feel like I'm out of my mind, like I'm being subjected to the work study myself.  At this point the whole original plot feels so far out of scope that it's pointless to even refer back to it.  Lori then turns on the TV and Uncle Ted's Monstermania is going to start playing but some agent of the company in a truck turns on a machine that does the work study software shit.  Lori stares at it like it's a freaking movie...Why doesn't she change the channel? It was never established that you can't move when you're watching it.  She comes after the detective with a knife and she starts making out with him like a crazy person and then shoves him off.  Again, what the fuck does this have to do with the original plot, and why is it so crazy?  Then she tells him to leave?!  I thought it was his house!  She throws food at him and yells.   Whatever.

There's another lecture?!  Why are we watching everything these people do, little to none of it pretains to the damn story!  The professor leaves his dog tied up to the stairs, and then the dog runs away from him and he just lets it go?  What an asshole!  Some time later, or at the same time (I really can't be sure), Lori calls Frank and apparently she's not mad at him anymore for her being insane at him.

Rothman questions Lori about being frank's lover and puts his hand on her shoulder, talking about how big of a help she is and how he'd hate to lose her. What the hell is going on?!  We have never seen her help him, nor has he ever expressed himself to her in this way.  Why is it happening now and if it's not built up to, why should we care?  Then he looks outside and asks if she wants an ice cream from the ice cream truck below...Lori wants vanilla and the professor tells her that she should be more daring.  She has him pick the flavor and looks as fucking confused as I feel right now.  The actress was probably thinking, "Oh good lord why in the hell did I take this role, it's going to ruin my career that hasn't even started yet."  Anyway, the meat of the scene is that Lori snoops around while Rothman is smiling and humming while bringing in two ice cream cones with blood red ice cream. What kind of flavor could that even represent? Oh, right, he tells us it's Raspberry Twirl.  Great.  Before Rothman can get back, Lori finds a notebook of his where he drew bleeding breasts, spider webs, and things dying with sharpies.  That's exactly what I expected.

The slut goes back to the work study, finally some continuity, and does something that we've never seen before.  She turns up the "LEVEL OF STIMULATION" on the machine and watches some crazy shit while grimacing.  When she comes out of the machine her boyfriend tells her that they should leave, but she wants to have a little "fun" first.  They kiss and she stabs his carotid with her acrylic nails.  For a stupid bimbo, she sure knows how to hit an artery.

Rothman follows Lori to her house and begs to be let in.  He goes crazy and starts pounding on the door; where we get our first real swearing and emotion of the entire movie, but after that the professor gets in and starts mumbling at Lori while she slowly walks backwards.  He strangles her while talking about how she's the same as all of the other shit on the planet.  He leaves and gets shot by the janitor, who was working for Biotronics the whole time.  Ah, there's the connection.  It's not fun that I found it, like it would be in other movies.  Instead it's just there.  There like a shit stain on the underwear of this movie.  The janitor goes to kill Lori but Frank hits him with his car and squishes him into a tree.  Kind of cool, but there's no blood or gore, and we barely see anything happen.

Flash to the CEO of Biotronics, and his driver, killed in the car by the loose girl's nails.  Why don't the people fight back?  They get strangled a little bit and then freeze while the girl uses her acrylic nails to kill them.  What a bunch of bullshit.

Lori and Frank find the slutty girl back at the lab staring at the ceiling.  Lori is supposed to be shocked, but doesn't seem so.  She then makes some connection between when she tried to get into Frank's pants and the company.  There was one there, she's right, but how in the hell could she make that connection without any evidence?  Even an inkling couldn't have formed, there's no evidence of a connection whatsoever.  As Lori comes to this conclusion, we see loose girl coming for her through the glass window of the swinging doors.  Frank pulls Lori away as the nails come crashing through the glass.  And then...nothing.  No climactic fight scene or something, just nothing.  We hear noises, look at loose girl's eyes and she just stands there.  Why doesn't she come through the SWINGING DOORS?  She could come through, kill the both of them and call it a night.  I'd like that.  The end of the movie we see some kid playing a video game called Brain Twisters.  His mom calls him down, but he angrily screams at her, "I'll be right THERE MOTHER."

So this was all about video games and how noises and colors stimulate your mind to make you crazy?  Why would I have ever thought about that until the end?  There's no connection here.  That's what this movie is all about, connections from violence to video games.  If the movie is about one type of connections, why can't the fucking scenes actually relate back to the main plot?  Couldn't the director keep one string of thought throughout the entire film?  Maybe he was playing too many video games.

Back into the Swing

So I haven't posted in basically forever.  I figured I would stop for a week or so after my wedding and then come back immediately, but I haven't had much to say in the last couple months.  In any case, I am going to start posting again, hopefully as soon as next week.  I don't think I'll have as many posts as I did when I first started, but I'm hoping that they will be of better length and quality.

To that end, I'm adding some content to the blog that's not video gaming.  I'd like to branch out into other types of games, card, board, and tabletop.  Also movie and TV reviews will be coming into the fold while and one should expect more retro console and game reviews.  Essentially I'd like to provide a broader multimedia experience to the user and keep things fresh for myself.

For now though, I'll get back to Skyrim, but come Monday, I'll have my first real movie review for you all to enjoy.