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.

Barbie and Renfield

Movies with affirmations.

Barbie

When stereotypical barbie (Margot Robbie) starts having dark thoughts, she embarks on a quest from her idyllic Barbieland to find the troubled girl passing these feelings onto her. Expect a high volume of pink and some excellent set designs (in Barbieland) coupled with strange effects and a messy, empowering plot. It has some funny moments and some nice speeches that then compete with some musical numbers (props to Ryan Gosling) and oddly crazier goons in the real world. While it was interesting learning about the toy line I can't help but feel a bit disappointed based on how "good" it was meant to be. It's not bad, it's just ok and maybe that's "K"enough?

Renfield

Dracula (Nicolas Cage) is a tough and evil task master and for centuries his familiar Renfield (Nicholas Hault) has been doing his dark bidding, but now finding himself in a self-help group for people in codependent relationships (he was looking for victims to feed his master) he finds himself wanting to change. This dark flick has some pretty funny segments as well as surprisingly good and gory/bloody action sequences that really tick the boxes for me. Bonus points that Nic Cage's Dracula is excellent for something that doesn't take itself too seriously. Recommended as I enjoyed this, certainly more than the Barbie movie. It's shorter too!

Drifting Dragons and Castlevania: Nocturne

A pair of animes with great art.

Drifting Dragons (Season 1)

In a world where dragons are just wild animals people have taken to dirigible "draking" (whaling) ships to hunt them. This one season story follows the crew of one such vessel and their trials not only against their prey, but also against the ship's budget and occasionally each other. There's also a lot of focus given to the butchering of said dragons followed by strangely specific cooking and eating sequences that involve dragon parts that have convinced me the dragons there taste great most of the time! The series starts of slow and gives almost all the crew on the draking ship some screen time and by the end it was getting some good emotional payoffs. That said I am not sure how some of these people haven't died a few times over already but I guess it's just not that sort of anime. Recommended if you don't mind a slow burn with very little thinking.

Castlevania: Nocturne (Season 1)

Set hundreds of years after the first series this one continues with the excellent art style and action pieces of its predecessor while introducing a new band of heroes to face off against more vampires and creatures of darkness. Getting used to the new protagonist might take some time, especially since his will and power levels fluctuate wildly over the course of the series and the main villain seems super bland when they appear because of the "they are in the background, so lets develop all the lieutenants instead" approach. 

Lastly wokeness seems to really be the theme inserted here with a true rainbow cast of characters and nary a weak female with a speaking role in sight. Alas, with all those powers combined that leaves this first season in a pretty weak state. Hopefully season two can bring out the big guns and focus more on a good plot rather than real life politics. (Spoiler: season two is much better)

Decluttering Day 9: Four broken umbrellas.

Castlevania (TV Series)

Because a whip is the best weapon against vampires.

Based on the video game series this four season adult animated series primarily follows the adventures of Trevor Belmont against the regular Castlevania nemesis: Dracula. The art style and animation is very good, with epic fight scenes being the highlight and the voice cast does a great job with the well written lines (warning: lots of swearing).

I really like the art style.

If anything it's the plot that is the weakest element here, mainly noticeable in the latter seasons where things just happen for no / poorly explained reasons. I was often wondering out loud why characters forget to use previously used skills or suddenly skill up mid fight. I guess I have to settle for "they needed to fill their rage/musou bar first". That said it is still a very good series and one I can easily recommend. I give it four morning stars out of five, and I would definitely watch it again.

Horrified (Board Game)

Save the town from some famous monsters!

In this cooperative board game, players (1-5) must work to defeat famous movie monsters - the likes of Dracula, the Wolf Man, Frankenstien and his Bride, the Mummy, the Creature from the Black Lagoon and the Invisible Man (who is somehow the worst). The difficulty is based on how many bad guys you are playing against - two is easy mode while four is the hardest.

You definitely won't win if all are in play.

On a turn, players will be moving and picking up items which are then used at specific places to defeat the two phases of each monster - who obviously have different requirements. Phase one for Dracula is running about and destroying his coffins while for the Mummy its solving a puzzle at the museum. Once the requirements for phase one are met, you can then do the phase two requirement of the enemy - which usually involves getting up to them (not really a problem as they keep hunting people) and using a variety of stuff to defeat them.

Interestingly there is no dice for phase 2. If its your turn and have the gear to defeat the bad guy you can reach, you instantly take him out of the game. Only the bad guys get some dice rolling when making attacks. They do this on their turn, which is dictated by the monster card pulled at the end of every players turn.

If you run out of monster cards, you run out of time and instantly lose. If you let the doom track reach the end (which means the monsters have either been killing the players or the NPC villagers you need to protect) you lose. Beat all the monsters to win!

This is a fantastic, easy to learn game with nice art and decent components but more importantly it sets up and plays blindingly fast, at around a game an hour. My party of four fit four rounds in the space of one evening. Highly recommended, I give Horrified five scarabs out of five.

Insight: The boon cards are usually worth the effort to do the escort tasks of each villager, if they happen to be on the way.

Dracula Untold

Beware: Small spoilers ahead!

This re-imagining of the classic vampire tale tells of how Vlad the Impaler came to be (in the first 5 minutes) and how he turns into the legendary Dracula (the rest of the movie). The plot is pretty straight forward and mostly predictable. Fortunately the special FX, action sequences, and main vampires (remember that Vlad starts as a human) are all above average making it pretty enjoyable to watch.

Beware my poetry. I mean, powers. I'm the original batman!

As Vlad powers up it's pretty fun to see the extent of his powers. A pity then that the vampire of the mountain keeps his hidden for most of the movie, the same for his agendas. He is one loose thread that leaves some room for Dracula 2 or whatever. The main enemy Vlad must contend with are the vast number of Turks invading his home. Not sure how or why so many would journey there but it's like the Sultan brought his entire army with him.

There are stupid parts though like blindfolding said army and trying to march them in formation across uneven terrain. Yep, this works in the movie but in real I suspect more than a few people marching in armor would have tumbled and caused a hilarious domino effect. Also I didn't take the Sultan to have a loud enough voice to adequately command everyone even if he was in the center of them.

Anyway it's a decent enough flick though it suffers from a somewhat silly final scene and the usual unanswered questions. Regardless, I give it 3 silver coins out of 5.

League of Angels

Much like Blood and Jade, this is a 2D based free to play (pay to win) browser based MMO which is really designed to sink its hooks into players through ease and accessibility. Basically it is an improved version of Blood and Jade without all the Eastern themes. Still present are the auto-pilot questing on a railroaded quest path, auto-combat systems but with more polish, and more musical tracks (pretty decent ones too) based on what you are doing at the time as opposed to the steady drone of the one track in the previous game. As a bonus though you can play both at the same time. Actually, you can let them play by themselves while you do something else! :P

Of course it still has the scantily clad hot chicks.

They added gaining EXP and gold through a variety of unlockable mini games, including fishing using a gun turret, a version of bejewelled, enslaving other players, and fighting other players in arena or domination modes (indirectly, you only fight their parties without actual player interaction). You also can gain gold from congratulating people on your friend list when they hit specific achievements and if that's still too hard you can literally stand still and just leave it alone and still gain EXP. Yep, it rewards you for just being logged in even if you aren't playing!

The best improvement though is the addition of a player "party". Other than your hero you can bring along up to 5 NPCs (once you reach high enough rank) who complement each other in various ways. Well, when I say "various" I actually mean "one", and it's usually a combo attack of some sort. It's easy to work out which units work best together, and throwing the various blessings of your guardian angel on top it can alter your party strategy. Usually though, you just pick the strongest of what's available to you and run with that.

All in all it IS a better game than Blood and Jade, but as a stand alone it is still pretty weak. You'll most likely find yourself to be grinding just shy of level 40 while trying to reach Dracula. Yerp, there were enough mini games to keep me busy up to that level! Anywho I give it a 2 out of 5 sexy angels, and it is definitely better enjoyed while playing Blood and Jade in a second browser window so you can alternate between the cool downs of the two. Or you know, you could just go play a real MMO. :P

Eurovision 2013

A musical post for a change! One of the guilty pleasures I have is watching this Eurovision stuff because most of the time the performances are just silly or flat. For the benefit of those who do not get it in their countries I've put numerous links in this post to give you a taste! This year wasn't as crazy as in the past as there were no Latvian pirates, singing demons, lucky Moldovans, or dancing ukranian alien crossdressers to leave us running scared but at least they did have a giant, a mellow Thor, Dracula, Asterix and leggy dames who wanted to either marry you or feed you their love. Still a fun watch, and as usual my favoured one to win didn't (I always pick the silly ones so Dracula or Asterix for me! :P) - leaving Only Tears which is a far cry from the Fairytale which was one of the more deserving winners in my book.

I guess I know what's in his flask now!

Not part of Eurovision but another song stuck in my head at the moment is Space Oddity version sung by astronaut Chris Hadfield (which is far superior to the original not just because of the setting) and going with the musical theme I guess it's ok to say that I'm trying to learn A Thousand Years now too (sans the Twilight parts). :P