Resident Evil: Village

Welcome to Barovia?

Having some bad experiences in the USA (what with all those horrors set lose), Ethan Winters moves his family to Europe where they find a short period of peace before being abducted and taken to a run down village beneath the shadow of a looming castle in a valley full of monsters! No, there's no Strahd here but it's pretty close!

Expect to do a lot of running.

It's a strange setting for the Resident Evil series, but its done very well. There are shocks, scares and awesome terror especially at the start of the game. Later on when you can fight back effectively, the horror level drops a fair bit but its still quite enjoyable. Honestly, the only thing I didn't like is that the protagonist monologues a little too much at the worst times but otherwise, I highly recommend it!

Spiderman: Far from Home

Marvel's new flagship? Stark thinks so.

Following the events of Avengers: Endgame, Peter Parker aka Spiderman (Tom Holland) is looking forward to a class trip to Europe in hopes with hooking up with his crush MJ (Zendaya). Of course that would be too easy without some superhero level bad things happening which involve one Quentin Beck (Jake Gyllenhaal).

Congratulations, you've been promoted.

The effects, acting and comedy all get the thumbs up from me here. I have to say my previous dislike about Zendaya's MJ is gone now since the plot let her shine a bit more. More so, Jake Gyllenhaal is fantastic... up to a point, but that's probably more a writing problem and possibly the biggest plot hole of the story.

You'd think SHIELD would know who works for and with people right? Especially for their important assets like those who are part of the Avengers? Yeah. That's what I thought too. Anyway, enough its still fun and crazy stuff happens to look forward to the next Spiderman outing, so it's best if you watch this regardless. I give it 3 Edith's out of 5.

Evil Overlord: How to Fix the World. Evilly!

Warning: Dark rage post ahead!

Everywhere you turn these days there are people protesting things - most recently stuff in Hong Kong, Brexit, and climate changers.

This is mainly dealing with the last group, who at least have a solid goal in mind, unlike Brexit. LOL. Just want to say, what's the point in voting if your vote has no point right? NICE ONE BRITAIN! No one should vote there ever again coz you've proven it just DOESN'T MATTER!

Regular people don't actually have any say. Either the people who voted to leave (and won) are ignored or the masses protesting this decision (who lost because they... didn't vote? Voted incorrectly? Stupidly believed politicians/evil overlord?) are ignored. UTTER GOVERMENT FAIL.

Better yet, each time the EU agrees to delay the "result" also makes the whole lot of them look like spineless limp dicks who don't have the balls to actually cut ties. HAHAHAHAAH! "Oh, please come back Britain, we can't function without youuu!" WHAT WORTHLESS LOSERS!

Back to the climate changers - how do they propose we fix stuff? Save the trees, eat less meat, go green. Hell, make half the planet green (as long as it's your half and not mine right)? Those are all weak sauce solutions.

The main problem isn't emissions or sciency shit they spew. The main problem is people. Or to be politically correct: "OVERPEOPLIZATION". Yes, that's a word (a made up word, but its still a word). You want to have less of all those sciency shit problems? The solution is to have LESS PEOPLE. How? EASY!

KILL THEM!

Start with the old - a mandated death day of I dunno. 80 years. No too generous. 45... no, 40 years. Yes. Perfect!

Then go the Nazi route. Kill those who are unproductive to society. Those who are inefficient.  Any who are different. Any who are the same. In the end you'll just be killing almost everyone anyway so the order doesn't matter.

To get behind the whole recycling thing, there should be no more cremations or funerals either. Everyone should just EAT CORPSES! Trust the Evil Overlord when he says THEY ARE DELICIOUS! Hey, we already do that now, people are just another form of protein.

All because you want to save the PLANET right? Because the PLANET is more important than PEOPLE'S HAPPINESS? "Oh noes," they say "but we want all the peoples to live. Their pets too because of CUTE! Anything cute or sentient surely doesn't count towards carbon pollution! We just want everyone to live UNHAPPILLY!"

Now the EVIL OVERLORD is sad because the world's space programs aren't advanced enough to send these double-standard crazies off to the sun. Or, you know, colonize a new planet.

Obviously there will be no killings as above, just the killings that happen when people begin warring over dwindling farmable territory. Or food. Or passable internet connections. Warhammer 40K was right all along.

"Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war."

Oh well, future problems for future people. As San Goku wisely once said "Fuck it, Gohan can deal with it."

Now lets all feel better by watching footage of the "peaceful" Hong Kong protests. Oh so peaceful. Even the gangsters are peaceful! Can you feel the peace? THE PEACE BEING SHARED AMONG ALL THE PEOPLE!?!?!

Ironically, this is the perfect time for them to SAVE THE PLANET! They just have to START THE KILLING! I mean, they're almost there or in the government's case, possibly already there but doing it all hush hush and making people vanish which is silly. Evil Overlord would just kill all who disagree as public entertainment and be done with it. None of this pussy footing around.

What, you think another country will actually step into it? It certainly won't be the limp dick "please come back Britain" EU. What about a USA led Trump? Unlikely if he wants to get re-elected. Even so, its still a win for the climate changers! Remember, LESS PEOPLE MORE PLANET!

>>> experiment end <<<

So, this stemmed from a post (the Seven Questions) to see if I can make people feel something from a post. Let me know if it worked! Did I manage to trigger anyone? It was certainly rage inducing to write so I don't think I want to do that again any time soon. :P

Today I Smiled: Eurovision 2017

Ahh Eurovision - it's been awhile since I posted about it last but  this was definitely fun to watch last weekend. If you missed it, don't worry - I've got you covered! This year had male models (5th place), yodeling (7th place), a dancing monkey (6th place), a guy in a horse mask (14th place), some dancing Moldovians (3rd place), an anime kid who is pretty damn good (came 2nd place, worth a watch) and these guys (10th)...

Can you guess why I liked them? :P

My faves of the more "normal" variety included a trio of chicks who blend really well (11th), the UK songstress (15th), this happy moon guy (16th), and this jolly Croatian with a great vocal range (13th). I have no complaints about the actual winner though.

I didn't understand a word of his song yet it was fantastic. You can tell how awesome it is when other competitors are crying while listening to it. He even earns bonus thumbs up for letting his sister (the one who composed it) take the stage and sing it with him in his encore.

Hope you enjoyed at least some of those links, if not here's something a little more mainstream. Similar to D&D devils, if you sing someone's song there's a small percent chance they will appear for an impromptu duet! :P

MMOs: Stale Worlds

[Part of my MMO Design Folder]

One of the things I miss most about the free shards of Ultima Online are the GM's and their impromptu quests.

Yes, some were incredibly silly ranging from "catch the talking cat" to "suddenly - SKELETON ARMY!" while some were obviously just there to kill you, like "A pit fiend pops out of hiding... in your house!" Most were still very well thought out and actually did have storylines running behind them, and given the nature of the game all of them were just one time events that you had to be at or miss them entirely. Half the time there weren't even notices to let people know that something was happening. It was always a surprise, and that is actually what made them so good. Their random encounters that could happen along any part of the map, even the middle of the ocean, was what made constant exploration fun. Sure you could fast travel to spots, but odds are you risked missing out on stuff in between.

Not all random encounters are hostile.

Compare that to modern day MMO's. There's a main quest everyone can do, at anytime they choose. The spawns pretty much stay in the same place. The "dynamic" events, if there are any, are looping on timers. Special events are held in major populated hubs or are specifically announced to the world. Sure, I appreciate the theme park nature of getting everyone to come try out your new ride but with that system it somewhat of kills the adventuring part of the game and the uniqueness, the story of your character.

Despite being unable to attend, I didn't mind the one-time event karka finale in Guildwars 2. I felt they were on the right track for that (apart from overestimating their server capabilities). Where they fell off though was when they declared that they would only run events to their highest populated time zone. That's a big nope right there. Simple rostering is all that's required to cover multiple events for global time zones, or they could have just said the next one time event will be at a favourable time for Europe, then China, etc. The backlash they got was so severe they've not had a one time event since.

When was the last time you encountered a unique quest or event that was just for you or your party in an MMO, which no one else got to experience?