Author: Shmee

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PUBG Mobile Launches In The USA!

You know how I had to give all my info to China to play PUBG on my phone?  Well now if you live in North America you can just grab it from the Play or App Stores!  You will need Facebook to log in and keep all your data, but other than that just download it and go nuts!

If you are somewhat decent at using your phone for games or understand the PUBG concept it is a great time to start playing because most people are still just trying to figure it out right now.  It is kind of like PUBG on easy mode out there.  I have a few dozen  kills and a second place finish after just three matches.  Meanwhile The Paladin has already feasted on that sweet chicken dinner.

It looks like they have also upped the graphical fidelity a bit from the Chinese release.  The windows and house interiors are still gone, but there is more grass around, and the shadow draw is just a little further out.  Still not great compared to the Xbox One or PC releases, but pretty good for a phone game.  A matter of fact it runs so well, Bluehole may want to ask Tencent to give their other versions of the game a once over just to get some extra FPS out of them.

All in all this is a great mobile game.  I am amazed with what Tencent has accomplished.  Hopefully we will see the other maps and more content show up soon.

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Shmee Meets The American Gods!

The Starz TV show American Gods, based off the Neil Gaiman novel with the same name, asks the question, “What if people brought their gods with them when they immigrated to America? And what if those gods were fighting for scraps of favor from people who were rapidly forgetting them?”  The answer is, sexy, brutal, but most importantly, very strange.  The gods in question don’t behave in their own stories, so why would the act any different in this tale.

Much like the book, American Gods follows Shadow Moon (Ricky Whittle) as he tries to get a handle on the world Mr. Wednesday (Ian McShane) has dragged him in to, and what part he has to play in this war everyone is talking about.  If the story was just about Shadow and Wednesday it would be a little dry, so thankfully there is a diverse cast of crazy gods to spice things up.

If you were hoping that American Gods would be a straight adaptation of the book, you will be disappointed.  The series has taken several detours along its route, and while I am not a stickler keeping things the same between mediums, different forms of media require different forms of story telling after all.  In this case the changes are mostly not for the better.  Which is a shame since the source material has so much potential.  However, the parts they get right are really good.

Also bolstering American Gods is the great cast and Bryan Fuller’s incredible visual style.  There is always a good performance or insane set piece waiting in every episode.  Well, almost every episode.  There are a couple of filler episodes in the middle that kind of kill the momentum, but the first season starts and ends well.

Season one covers about a third of the book, and Starz has promised it is coming back.  However, the current producers, Green and Fuller, have been dropped and replaced by one of the show’s writers and Gaiman himself.  Which sounds like good news, but who knows how long it will take them to get things moving again.  Especially since Gaiman is currently producing the TV adaptation of Good Omens.  Regardless, American Gods showed a lot of potential in season one, and I hope it delivers on it in seasons two and three.  Whenever they come out.

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Netflix Resurrects The Soup! (Mostly)

While Joel McHale’s new show is actually titled The Joel McHale Show with Joel McHale (leaving the door open for a Joel McHale show not hosted by Joel McHale) not The Soup, it is almost exactly the same thing.  Except now he can drop an F-Bomb from time to time and Paul Feig hangs out a lot more.  Like a lot more (he is now an EP).  Watching The Joel McHale Show every week has reminded me how much I have missed The Soup.

I understand that E! got away from its comedy line up, so The Soup apparently had to go, but we all needed something to reaffirm that pop culture was actually as silly as we perceived it to be, and The Joel McHale show brings that back.  Once a week, for twelve weeks, and we are already four weeks in.  I hope that Netflix sees fit to pick up the Joel McHale show for more than just one season.  I am not sure that it is something I can loose again.

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Shmee Gets Folded In To A Wrinkle In Time!

A Wrinkle In Time is a favorite from my childhood.  It was read to me when I was very young, and then I read it by myself latter, multiple times, so it was never a mystery to me why it was never made in to a major motion picture.  It is a weird book, and it would take a lot of effort to get right, and it would probably not get a lot of return on that effort.  Unfortunately for Ava DuVernay, her A Wrinkle In Time gets so caught up trying to wow us with magic and wonder that it doesn’t tell an engaging story.

The plot for the movie is similar to the one from the book.  Meg Murry (Storm Reid) has been a troubled kid since the disappearance of her father (Chris Pine) four years prior.  A scientist who believes that you can travel the stars with only your mind.  It turns out that he was right, and he is lost in the stars, so Meg, her brother Charles Wallace (Deric McCabe), and friend from school Calvin O’Keefe (Levi Miller) will go out to look for him with the help of the Mrs.’.  A group of space traveling supernatural beings, and Oprah.

Obviously since I love the book, I have no real problems with the plot of the movie.  The problem is that it is a little threadbare.  We know that Meg has issues, and that she has to deal with them so she can be a ‘warrior’ and find her father, but I am never sure that she really does.  A Wrinkle In Time says Meg does, and she does get less grumpy, but really she just moves from place to place while a giant Oprah Mrs. Which tells her affirming things.  When in actuality it seems like only The Happy Medium (Zach Galifianakis) gives her any useful advice.  Letting her know that it is okay to be scared of the answers to life’s questions, but that shouldn’t stop you from asking them anyway.

You would hope that with the story having issues that maybe the spectacle would make up for it, and they tried.  A $100 Million budget allows you to do whatever you want, but not well enough to not look cheesy.  Someone should have come along beside DuVernay and told her that she should scale things back a bit.  Like maybe have Oprah be normal sized, so the visual effects artists don’t have to do a poor job of digitally painting her on to the scenery, and so she can better interact with the other actors.  It is not just Oprah though, nothing ever looks 100% like it should, which is a shame.

The actors are all okay.  Though they are not given a lot to do except smile weirdly or look amazed while caught in an extreme close up.  So close.  If a child’s face doesn’t fit on a movie theater screen, you need to back up the camera a bit.  Storm Reid does her best to show Meg’s transition from troubled to ‘warrior’, but she doesn’t quite get the scenes necessary to make it work.  However, they did manage to pull it all together for an emotional punch at the end.

I wanted to love A Wrinkle In Time, but instead it was merely okay.  It had parts that worked, but they get lost between the poor plotting and bad CGI.  Kids will probably still like this movie, and it is fine family fare, but this is not the classic that I am sure Disney was hoping for.  That way they could green light the next four books.  I am sure that in ten years Disney will try again, and maybe then they will get it right.

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Shmee Makes Hats Out Of Monsters!

I have had Monster Hunter: World since it came out, and even though I have played quite a bit of it, I have never posted a review because I felt that I had only scratched the surface of what the game has to offer, and I still feel that way, but I am going to let you know my thoughts on the title anyway.  It is massive and fun, but sometimes the thought of actually playing it overwhelms me.

Monster Hunter: World is a streamlined and much better looking version of every other Monster Hunter game out there, but if you have already played other Monster Hunter games, then you probably don’t need this review because you are knee deep in some Flying T-Rex’s flesh right now.  For everyone else, Monster Hunter: World is a game where you go out in to a varied landscape and hunt all sorts of large creatures, and then turn their parts in to better equipment, so you can fight even bigger monsters in cooler parts of the world.  You do this until you fight a dragon as big as a mountain.

That may sounds like a massive grind, and it is.  The whole game is based around grinding massive animals to get really cool stuff.  Of course when you go out and hunt those creatures, you will probably not get the bones or pelts you need, so you will have to do this a few times.  That may sound dull, but the monsters are awesome, and the world they have created is like a real place.  It is magical to see how all these beasts interact with each other.  They have created a really good ecosystem simulation for these mythical beasts, and they let you murder (or capture) all of it.

Another awesome part of the game is that every weapon in Monster Hunter: World, makes the game feel different.  You will have to drastically change your play style if you decide to move on from the weapon you are currently using (it is a good idea to YouTube the weapon before using it), and there are fourteen different weapon types, and each of those weapons has a myriad of upgrades you can grind from those poor, poor massive deadly creatures.  Then it gets even better if you play with friends (if you can figure out how to play with your fiends)!

This game will not be for everyone.  If you hate long drawn out battles versus boss type creatures, maybe you should skip Monster Hunter: World, or perhaps borrow a friend’s copy before laying down your hard earned cash, but the monsters are different enough that you will have to change your strategy for every monster you face, and that keeps things fresh.  You can also just start using a different weapon if you want change things up for a while.  I am having a good time with it, but due to the prep and the time required for fighting the monsters, I can only play at little bit at a time.  Others have not had that problem.  At all.  I recommend it, but just know what you are getting in to before starting Capcom’s most successful game of all time.