Avengers: Endgame

There is only one way to win.

In this continuation of Avengers: Infinity War, the heroes band together once more to "avenge" what happened previously. It's safe to say you probably want to watch Infinity War first despite the decent Hawkeye opening that fills in what happened for new comers.

Like the previous movie, there are a lot of characters here and all but the main ones get very few lines or do one move then leave the scene especially at the end. I didn't mind it, and was quite entertained by the high budget "everything" that we've come to expect from the Avengers movies.

The gang's all here!

I did feel that there needed to be a higher body count though, especially on the good guys side. I guess everyone is wearing plot armor? Or perhaps they couldn't really dismember people (one exception that was sort of take backsies) viscerally on screen in a Disney backed film? Whatever the case, that weakened it a bit for me, and that bit where all/most of the female heroes manage to group up mid fight was literally bull-cheese. As if Captain Marvel needed back up anyway... lol!

All up I give this 4.5 power stones out of 5 and highly recommend to watch it (provided you've at least seen Infinity War). I'll definitely want to see it again. :)

Developer Appreciation: To the Moon / Fear not this Night

This elegant RPG Maker game is fantastically crafted and is my answer to last weeks prompts from Belghast of "a game that made you cry" and End Game Viables "favourite or most engrossing story delivered through a game". It helps that the music for it is also amazing, and I've actually semi-learned "Everything's Alright" by Laura Shigihara on piano with voice. Can't replicate her talent or tone though.

On the topic of pieces from games, "Fear not this Night" from Guildwars 2 is also amazing, especially since you get to listen to the whole thing in game after beating Zhaitan. It's another one I've semi-learned though there's no way I can reach the key change near the end (after already octaving it down), so I just skip it. As a friend once said, you know I really like something when I start learning the music for it!

It plays soon after this part. :P

About Me: More Viable Opinions

A continuation of prompts from End Game Viable - imagine if I only answered one of these a day! :P

What makes a game a “survival” game?

I'd say death mitigation, and not the type where you have to dodge out of "red circles" though that's possible too. More along the lines of, if your character stands still in a safe spot, with no hostiles of any kind around, they are still constantly dying. Something has to force the players to take action to survive, and idleness equals death.

How many different games can you comfortably play on a daily or weekly basis? What happens if you play too many?

Usually two at most. That way I still remember the story / controls / what I was doing or planning to do without requiring a "retraining" session. If I try for more, one just naturally gets pushed to the "play it later" section of my brain.

Do you prefer a silent protagonist or a voiced protagonist in your games?

I don't mind a silent protagonist but I always prefer a well voiced one. The key word is "well". If the protagonist is going to sound like a douche bag or woodenly reading lines, then it's better if they were silent to begin with. :P

I have a theory that most bloggers play healers or tanks in their groups, and a significant number of them are or were guild leaders.

While I was one of the founding members of my guild, I'm not the guild leader. We are both and have always been DPS classes though he's experimenting with tanking now (8 years in, lol).

Blaugust About Me: Viable Opinions

End Game Viable has a huge list of blogging prompts, so I thought I'd go answer a few today.

What are your thoughts on lock boxes?

Lock boxes are gambling, and are only in games to make the devs more money. I don't mind that people blow their cash on this, especially as it hopefully keeps the game alive, but I'm never going to buy them / or whatever is needed to open them. Ever.

In your mind, what’s the difference between an MMO and an MMORPG? Or is there any? Are you careful about which term you use?

No difference to me. The role playing aspect in most of the ones I have played are often broken by min maxers who are more interested in math than role play, or the people who like acting as sparkly space vampire fairy miniature giant hamsters in settings that clearly shouldn't allow for them.

Why don't you play Overwatch or Destiny 2? How many console-exclusive titles do you have to be interested in before you buy a console?

I guess they aren't free? I don't buy games (for myself). As such there's no way I'll buy a console to play said games that I'm not going to buy. :P

How much do you watch streams during the week?

I don't watch streams unless a friend shows them to me. Unlike sports, the barrier for entry to games is often just money. If I want to see how a game goes then I'll just play it to experience it myself. Also, if the cost is more than free, I won't play it anyway so... why would I bother?

Besides, reading a summary about said game is way faster than watching a video.

Are game reviews valuable anymore? Or are they just entertainment?

I find them valuable and I hope others do too since I actually write some of those on this blog. It does help if they're also entertaining though! :P Lastly, as I said, its much faster to read about something than watch something.

Highlander: Endgame

[Post #18 of the Blaugust Challenge!]

One problem the Highlander franchise has is with continuity on a few (but important) aspects of the overall story so for the benefit of this review I'm going to pretend none of the earlier films, series or cartoons exist and just base it on what I saw here. The story focuses on a bunch of immortals, aka people who have "a hard time dying" if they don't get beheaded, one of whom has a huge grudge to another that he has held for centuries, literally. Unfortunately the grudge bearer and main villain happens to also be stronger, so the two heroes of clan MacLeod have to combine their powers to stop him.

Throughout the movie there are various flashbacks to whatever time eras are called for. This is both cool and annoying. Cool in that the sets and costumes department did their job well. Annoying in that the characters speak with different accents (often humorous) within them, and that there are SO MANY of them sometimes strung one after another. Oh, did I mention that they have multiple flashbacks of things that happened earlier in the SAME movie? Well they do! It's like the director thought you would have forgotten at that point. Gahhh.

There's also a redundancy in characters. The entire bad guy group could have been reduced to main bad guy and main female. More importantly Donnie Yen's character could have easily replaced Bruce Payne's slightly overacted and much less skilled martial arts (actor wise) main villain. Well, the grudge would have been slightly shorter but it would have still worked. In truth the best part are the fights, especially with Donnie versus Duncan (Adrian Paul). I wasn't surprised to see Donnie acting as the combat choreographer in the credits.

Best yet most pointless fight in the movie.

In short, this is quite a flawed movie (I'm skipping a LOT of flaws such as obvious stunt doubles and reusing the same fight footage twice) - one that would probably only appeal to regulars of the franchise like myself. I give it one and a half katanas out of five.

Blaugust Bonus: I think I'm going to use another of Belghast's writing prompts today - "What is your favorite boss encounter in any game and why? What makes that encounter stand out in your mind and what can be learned from it?"

Like any gamer I have a pretty big list to choose from here, but I think I'll stick with the final Queen's Gauntlet match of Guild Wars 2 - a petite necromancer named Liadri. It took 140 attempts before I finally won the match against her, which is almost as bad as some of those Super Meatboy levels. Why is it my favourite? Because it was challenging (for me anyway, I'm not like Wethospu), solo only, and forced me to adapt. Don't know how many trait lines I switched between in all those attempts before I got one that worked.

Most importantly you could watch and cheer on others while doing so. I remember throughout that week meeting new people as we took turns laughing and advicing each other in between getting our asses handed to us in the various matches. Maybe that's why it sticks out most for me - it was the ideal social soloists setup. It was awesome.