Those about to Die, 1883 and 1923

TV dramas set during historical periods.

Those about to Die (Season 1)

Ancient Rome is cruel to everyone from its Emperors to its slaves, and underworld figure Tenax (Iwan Rheon) deals with both as he navigates the ladder of improving his own position. While there are gladiators its worth pointing out they aren't the main focus (at least in season 1) as the Coliseum is still under construction. Instead there are a lot of chariot races with budget CGI and maybe a few too many characters but at least the death count cleans them out a bit. Definitely one we enjoyed for the spectacle rather than for the plot, but we'll definitely watch a season two of it if it comes around.

1883

This Western focuses on an expedition from Texas to Oregon led by an old veteran (Sam Elliot), is filled with beautiful cinematography, and almost all the main actors are mounted on horses for most of the time. Story wise it drags a little at the start but picks up rather quickly along with the death count when we witness just how unprepared most of the settlers are as they go through very dangerous territories whose "laws" don't really protect anyone and just give people an extra reason to kill. There's so much killing, it's great! Recommended.  

1923 (Season 1)

The continuation of 1883 which focuses on the Dutton family led by an elderly but grizzled patriarch (Harrison Ford) as a locust plague causes violent clashes between his cattle herd crew and a neighboring sheep herd gang. That sounds really tame how I wrote that, but while the death count so far is lower than 1883 there's still a good amount of shooting with a side of lynching. Strangely, there are three plot threads going on here and one that starts in Africa certainly gets the "adventure" segment of the show and feels like its the main story. As such while we did enjoy it, it sure feels like season 1 was just setting up the characters with no resolution. We'll need to wait for season two to see how everything ties together.

Rise of Empires: Ottoman

Because the Roman's can't have all the fun.

Much in the same vein as Roman Empire, this docudrama narrated by Charles Dance focuses on the Ottoman Mehmed and his burning desire to conquer Constantinople from the Romans. Budget wise, this show certainly is in better standing as the sets and costumes aren't "recycled" like in that other show.

War is a dirty business.

Also, there's a decent amount of special effects and fight scenes which gets a thumbs up from me. Unfortunately their method of story telling is an annoying one with way too many flashbacks for my liking. Perhaps that's why there is only one season of it. Or maybe the big cannon blew up their treasury? Whatever the case may be, this makes it only just as good as Roman Empire. I give it two Janissaries out of five.

Roman Empire (TV)

Featuring emperors starting with "C".

This show turned out to be my first docudrama experience. For those who don't know what that is, you have actors and a script and scenes like a regular TV show with random cutaways to modern historians who talk about what was happening at that point in history.

That's one way to save on the budget!

This makes it both more interesting and a little jarring. Sean Bean narrates each of the three seasons which focus on the lives of Commodus, Ceasar and Caligula. It's very obvious that the budget is tight too as many filler shots are taken from previous shows and are repeated blatantly. Yes, even if you flip the shot its the same shot, you can't fool me!

The acting is also a bit weak at times, but hey I still watched the whole thing because its a subject that interests me. So in that vein, if you are interested in this sort of thing by all means give it a try. For everyone else, stay away. I give it two stabbing betrayals out of five.

Pandemic: Fall of Rome

The virus is barbarians!

For those who don't know, Pandemic has become a series of good, cooperative games that usually involve researching (and stopping) the spread of various diseases across the game board map. In Fall of Rome, the "diseases" are barbarian tribes who are marching their way into Roman territory and the players (Romans) must prevent this invasion by allying and/or eliminating all of them.

While there are many similar concepts from the other Pandemic series here, such as card matching to then cure/ally with a disease/tribe, there are new ones too - the most obvious one being the recruiting of legions and the dice rolling battles which is fast and enjoyable.

The components are pretty too!

Also the event cards now have a "stronger" optional effect in exchange for corrupting Rome a little more, bringing everyone closer to defeat. This makes for some great strategy on top of the "which tribes will we ally and which will we just kill?" question.

Yes you can win by wiping them all out, but good luck with that. :P All up this is a very enjoyable take on the series and currently my favorite one because of the fighting! I give it 5 out of 5 and highly recommend it! :)

Insight: Defending the front with forts and legions is a good way to keep the hordes at bay.

The Passion of the Christ

I hope you like blood and subtitles.

For anyone that celebrated Easter for the other reason beside chocolates, this movie basically follows the Stations of the Cross starting from the garden of Gethsemane and onwards. For everyone else, this story focuses on a man gifted with healing and prescience, and how (almost) everyone else condemns him to suffer and die, mainly because he claims he is the son of God.

I spend the whole movie getting beaten up!

While there is a LOT of blood and torture in this film, it doesn't go as far as the gorier movies I've reviewed before. It is also not in English, which actually works in it's favor I think as the Romans speak Latin and everyone else speaks in tongues I am not familiar with (Hebrew)? Costumes and settings are awesome and it also makes subtle use of CGI for things you wouldn't think of. Well, things I didn't think of. They do get a bit heavier handed towards the end.

Most of my problems come from expecting stuff from the story as I've heard it enough times. Little things like, I expected Herod to be an old dude (unless that Herod was succeeded by another Herod)? Jesus seems to only have four disciples? The inclusion of death / the devil was an interesting one but ultimately unnecessary as he too ended up just being a spectator. It was funny to see Jesus curbstomp a snake though. Didn't hear of that in any version! Lol! :P

If know about the Stations of the Cross and can stomach the blood and subtitles then you will probably enjoy this movie which I give three and a half bloody nails out of five. For everyone else, I'm not sure what you'd get out of it as the last scene would not make sense at all and probably provoke a "What was the point of all that?". Regardless, it's not something I'd be looking forward to seeing again.

Futuristic Medieval Fantasy: Atlantica Online

Finally a game where I can drive up to a centaur shaman in a bright yellow sports car and then whack it with my sword, magic and cannons then go pick up Joan of Arc, Anck Su Namun, Napoleon and the spartan Leonidas to take part in the Battle of Red Cliff in China. I think that sentence sums up the WTF time travel factor that's going on in Atlantica Online. Despite age consideration, almost everything in the game feels clunky and the constant popups of other people winning / doing stuff that have to be manually closed don't help. I do quite like the music though, and the combat system is... different.

"Different" doesn't always mean "good".

Each fight is an instance where you and your enemy take turns to command your team (of up to 9) to annihilate the other. There's a small level of tactical play to be had but I can't really say this is an improvement to the standard combat present in other MMO's. It actually reminds me a bit of the old Final Fantasy games complete with lack of useful terrain but with more importance on positioning. I understand that there's a second mode of combat that expands on this which hopefully is better but I haven't reached it yet being only level 56 (out of 150 I think) as of this post. At least leveling is fast, I mean you even get XP from idling. Powerup by going AFK?

Quests are as basic and grindy as you can get, with no branching paths (so far) most of which involve being a courier or to kill a number of fairies/robots/fairy-robots combination and a lot of long distance running. Huzzah for the auto move feature. There's even an auto fight feature if you want the game to play itself for you I imagine. I don't think Atlantica has a whole lot going for it, but for some unfathomable reason I keep wanting to follow that sparkly trail to the next quest just to see how much more whacked out the game can be. Still, I can't really recommend it. If you really want to play a F2P Nexon game give Mabinogi a try instead. It's way better. :)

Update: I just got to the main world map and it is hilarious. The map pretty much tries to emulate the real world (scaled down) with cities and all, specifically during eras of unrest. From Babylon, to Troy, to Yggdrasil, to Sydney and Uluru (yep, Australia is one of the hardest zones. Lol!). The overland zones are strangely very sparsely populated with enemies too (they make up for it in the hostile dungeon zones).

Also it's very funny to be selling stuff to Colombus and chatting with Caesar while an army of players mounted in tanks AFKs nearby. Similarly while wandering through the Troy battle field I turned a corner to find someone chilling in a Ferrari. Lastly there is a housing system of sorts but it looks a lot more like a customizable warehouse than an actual home, the one I went into anyway.