Midnight Suns: The Big D

[Part of Superhero Stories]

The creepy castle was right where Deadpool said it would be, and while Blade was slightly disappointed that the merc gave the information freely he was still surprised by the sight he beheld as soon as he stepped inside. Hemalisks, bulky table sized egg sacs that these vampires hatch from, littered the main hall between which patrolled a good number of the already hatched blood suckers. Upon the throne sat a dark skinned beauty with long white hair who was instantly recognizable apart from the blood red color in her eyes that carefully followed the daywalker's every move.

"I heard the X-men are having it rough these days since the passing of Professor Xavier," Blade said loudly, "but it looks like you went straight to the bottom of the barrel, Storm. What's the matter? Needed to find a new daddy with a big 'D' to teach you how to suck?"

"My master Dracula will be most pleased when I bring him your head," she replied angrily as she rose into the air. "Storm is dead. I have been reborn as Bloodstorm!"

Don't ask how she spawns those Hemalisks...
Also I'm surprised Dracula does exist in the Marvel Universe!

Blade quickly dodged to to the side as she began sending tornadoes at him, destroying many of the Hemalisks and vampires as they gave chase. The ones missed by the tornadoes were caught by the vampire hunter's sword and glaive. Bloodstorm hissed as she changed strategy and nailed Blade with a lightning strike, sending him crashing into the throne. His response was to visibly click a detonator in his hand which triggered all the bombs he had been throwing near the supporting pillars during their clash.

As the entire structure began to shake, Bloodstorm glanced up briefly with worry. This distraction is all the time Blade needed to quickly boost forward and drive a stake into her heart as the castle started to crumble all around him. A harshly whispered "You lose bitch," was the last thing Bloodstorm heard as she died.  

Confident that the destruction would flatten all the remaining hemalisks and vampires, Blade sheathed his weapons, adjusted his shades, and calmly walked out the front door over Bloodstorm's ashes.

The New Mutants (Movie), Freshly Frosted & Redout II

A throwaway trio.

The New Mutants (Movie)

Taking place almost exclusively in a facility where (very few) teenagers have just begun manifesting their mutant powers, the teens begin experiencing their worst fears after their newest arrival. This might work for a standard horror but since it's X-men based its very hard to be scared for them as they each have freaking supernatural abilities to defend themselves. Outside of the very brief moments where they do, the rest of the film feels really slow which is bad given it's only got a 1.5 hour runtime. There are ways to have made this scarier and better, but this end result is not something I'd recommend watching.

Freshly Frosted

One of the strangest production line building puzzle games given that its just someone imagining it while staring at the clouds, I do like the simplicity of at least the first few levels especially since its all just about laying conveyor belts with super easy controls and nothing else. Very chill too, but obviously I'd prefer to be eating donuts than playing this. :P

Redout II

This futuristic roller coaster racer is the improved version of Redout as it now offers training courses, a campaign and competitive head to head racing against up to 12 players online. Obviously still not for me as I'm terrible at racing games and am still confused at the difference between turn and strafe and the combinations of the two, but I do like that they removed the explodey "temp death" for the virtual training tracks at least.

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy and Marvel's Midnight Suns

Two marvelous games!

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy (2021)

This very fun and very beautiful (graphically) take on a Guardians of the Galaxy adventure caught me by surprise a bit as it's quality is truly fantastic with top notch writing and voice acting to boot. While I do enjoy the "huddle" mechanic too (mid combat you can just call a time out to rally your team as the bad guys just stand around I suppose? lol) the fighting and QTEs are actually the weakest part of the game - yet the designers felt that throwing more and more fights was the best way to get filler to pad it out.  Still recommended, but expect a bit of a slog in some parts as wave after wave of the same enemy you fought before gets in your way of experiencing the next part of the story.

Marvel's Midnight Suns

When Hydra somehow raises the mother of demons it's up to a lesser known hero team to step up and save the world, but they've got help from more famous characters from the Avengers and X-men too. While the graphics in this one aren't the best it does also have a decent story, some excellent card and turn based combat, and a customizable "player hero" so that you can really feel you are with the more established ones. That might sound corny but it's actually done really well as it also ties into the story. Again the designers felt forcing you to do a "general" (extra) mission in between each story one was a good way to pad this out but I don't mind it so much here as the combat actually is very good. For long time readers who know how much of a scrooge I am with money, I actually enjoyed this so much that I bought (and finished) all four DLCs. Highly recommended!

Dark Phoenix

An accident during a space rescue sees X-Men member Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) gain a power surge which also leaves her quite unstable. It is up to the fractured X-Men to try save her, while others try to kill her. While this sequel to X-Men: Apocalypse certainly feels like a retreading of X-Men: the Last Stand, it is quite an enjoyable flick.

Effects, sets and action pieces are all good but the idea to make Xavier (James McAvoy) fill the role of semi-villain is an intriguing one, and we know the actor can certainly play villains. I was also quite impressed with Nicholas Hoult (Beast) as well.

Bend the knee?

As usual there are gaps in logic required in superhero shows to create drama and the "main" adversaries (because Xavier can't be fully bad) are rather wooden and not well defined but if you enjoy the X-Men franchise or just want an easy, turn off your brain superhero film (or just have the hots for Sansa Stark) you'll probably enjoy this. I give it 2.5 pieces of sharp wooden debris out of five, but wouldn't watch it again.

Wolverine: X-men Origins

The movie was good. The game is better!

Much like Iron Man, this is "based of" the movie - weaving in key plot points into the padded out story (filled with helicopters), but in this case the story is much more cohesive and quite interesting given the approach of having two interwoven timelines: the present day and a past operation in Africa with his old team.

It's also pretty wild!

More importantly, the game play is very engaging and visceral. Wolverine isn't as restricted as he is on film, bloodily executing and dismembering foes from the opening cut scene right through the entire game - and it is very fun! I especially appreciate that each new enemy is introduced as a "mini boss" first to let players figure them out before they start appearing as a regularly. 

I really liked this game and highly recommend it! 4 mutants out of 5.

Logan

Proves that old dogs are saltier...

It is the future, and mutants are dying out. Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) is tired, old, and not regenerating as he once did. His limo driving job is mainly just to cover the expenses of looking after an even older and now demented Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), who occasionally has seizures which he shares to everyone around thanks to the strength of his "gift".

It's a pretty dark and depressing state, simply waiting for the end. Fortunately having a little girl who is wanted by the "bad guys" (of course) suddenly thrust into their care, forces them to go on another adventure. It helps that the little girl plays her part well - always risky with child actors (she's better than Mowgli for sure)!

Thumbs up!

Visceral, on-screen dismemberment and gore is featured right from the get go, which is a big step up from just suggesting "he stabbed a guy / bloodlessly" from the rest of the X-men franchise and the action sequences are great, which makes up for the ok plot.

While people say this is a "dark" movie, I disagree as it still features some up beat parts. Perhaps I've just gotten used to the likes of Hotel Inferno and Adam Chaplin though. If you just want a more mature X-men film, this does a great job. I enjoyed it a lot and would definitely watch it again. But would I buy the DVD? Hmm, not sure. Three and a half comic books out of five.

X-men: Apocalypse

The first mutant... was a Goa'uld! What do you mean no one knows what Star Gate is anymore?

Continuing on from X-men: First Class (which I haven't reviewed, doh!), this is the story of how "the first" mutant, the titular Apocalypse, reappears in the world and then goes about trying to make it a better place... for mutants. So pretty much like any previous X-men movie so far where Magneto is the villain.

They do try to tie it in to a few of the other movies too, with some expected cameos and a healthy dose of hand waving in some parts. All those guys missing from this movie? "We're the only ones left," makes for a nice, vague response.

There is a lot of eye candy and good effects as to be expected with Quicksilver getting the best pieces of the pie, but the plot has some serious holes - bigger than the one Apocalypse crawled out of at the start, and that's even without trying to join this movie to the rest of the franchise.

Alas, poor Yorick. I wish this movie made sense.

Ultimately this outing is an ok action movie, but there are better ones to choose from within the X-men franchise to watch. I give it 2 horsemen out of 5.

Deadpool

A refreshing, hilarious and bloody take on a Superhero movie.

If only more "heroes" just nonchalantly killed their enemies eh? At it's core Deadpool is an origin story of how Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) becomes a nigh unkillable and more than slightly off-kilter hero. Again! Yes, because that previously happened in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. A fact they love bringing up throughout the course of the film.

You know you want to watch it.

Perhaps Deadpool's best ability is that of breaking the fourth wall, taking many opportunities to talk directly to the audience, often about things from other movies. It's very funny with humor aimed at adults. There's also nudity, sex scenes, action, violence and on screen gore which gets big thumbs up from me.

Despite having a predictable story, the way it's told is still pretty good and the acting, humor and special effects are great. All up it is definitely something I enjoyed and a film I'd like to watch again! I give it four and a half out of five fourth walls. Which is like... eighteen walls. It's that awesome. :)

Edit: Adjusted down from a perfect five. Why? Because I forgot my milestone marker was The Dark Knight.

Sacred: Mystdale

[Part of the Sacred Journey.]

Cave fish are big, slow moving ugly things that can easily be out walked in their natural state. However they have an attack where they leap like a heat seeking missile, leaving a trail of fire behind them, which always hits and always stuns. They were getting more and more plentiful as we progressed that it was becoming rather irritating to traverse the swamp. Fortunately, once we crossed the bridge to the lands of Mystdale the theme changed to that of undead and rogue mages (who of course have the paralysation spell, damnit).

Mystdale itself was home to non-hostile wizards, though they all came in different flavours with many types I've previously fought being present here. Most of the quests related to escaped experiments (collecting their brains), or slaying undead or dealing with accidentally summoned demons. Indeed, killing an ogre referee who accepted bribes to let teams win in the wizardry football league and assisting to stop a bunny plague were the off beat ones but most memorable of the area.

It would be cool if Gambit (X-men) was a referee. Exploding cards!

Once that was all done it was time to meet Shareefa at that castle itself to hand her those four elements that were a pain in the rear to collect. Her response is "you are late". I seriously want to slay this woman now, especially when she says we are missing the last element - the element of the Void and true to form she sends me to fetch it from the tower of the dufus from the intro who screwed up his summoning ritual. Fortunately there is a portal close to my destination in the woods nearby, and the Sakkara cultists and their undead cronies guarding it were easily dispatched with the four extra knights behind my back.