With all the comic book adaptations hitting the big screen these days it is hard to get excited about all of them, but holy smokes Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets looks fantastic. It is a like watching an ice cream sundae. I just want to dive right in! Now I am hungry and excited. July can’t get here soon enough! While the last trailer gave us a glimpse of all the crazy stuff we were going to see, this trailer gives us Valerian’s mission: to stop something… Oh well, it looks too good to get too concerned about a generic ominous plot.
Let’s Watch Some Trailers Today!
First up the new Spider-Man: Homecoming Trailer!
For the most part this trailer just gives us a better look at what we have seen before: a longer chat with Tony, a longer glimpse at what happens on the ferry, more Michael Keaton, and more time with Peter’s best friend. All in all it looks pretty good, though nothing knocked my socks off.
Next up the first official Justice League trailer!
I know this came out a couple of days ago, but sometimes things move a little slow on my blog. This trailer pretty much features all the footage from last year’s Comic Con, but with better editing and more Aquaman. Which is great because Aquaman steals the show. Finally a DC superhero that looks like he is having fun! I thought that it was going to be up to Barry to deliver all the jokes, but it turns out Arthur has a sense of humor too. Other than that, this movie uses the same blue and brown color pallet as Batman V Superman, so I am sure that will disappoint quite a few fans. It is a good trailer, but not a great one, and trailers have never been a problem for Warner Brothers. Scripts on the other hand…
Tale As Old As Time….
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And now for something a completely different, today Mrs. Shmee wrote the following review for Beauty and the Beast, and spoiler alert, I think she liked it.
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I recently went to see the new Disney adaption of Beauty and the Beast. I wanted to see it but wasn’t dying to see it. However, everywhere and everyone I talked to said YOU MUST SEE IT! I am so glad I did!
We all know the story. I won’t recap that, but the actors playing each of their characters were fantastic. I love (am obsessed with) Emma Watson. She is and will forever be Hermoine, and she was wonderful. The girl can act, no doubt, but she can sing too! The other actors, including Dan Stevens as the Beast, were great as well. Many British actors lent their voices to the notable household objects.
Besides the acting, the costumes, sets, cinematography and music were unbelievable! Next year during Oscar season I can see costumes, make-up, hair, etc being nominated. I thoroughly loved the costume changes.
Then there is the new music. We all know the original songs from the movie, but they added more. I am so glad they did! I will be ordering the soundtrack today. The Beast has his very own song, and it is beautiful. Dan can sing very well.
And our favorite baddie, Gaston (Luke Evans), was just down right perfection! The hair, the smugness, the cockiness and attitude was spot on! I loved Josh Gad as Lefou. He is just fun! I do like the changing of his character. I will just leave it at that.
Also, I might add that I do like that there is more of a back story for the main characters. Not many or any Disney movies offer this information. It was nice to see. Everyone will enjoy this movie. Please go see it.
And again…WELL DONE DISNEY!
Shmee Begins His Exploration of Andromeda!
You know when people keep telling you that a movie is bad, so you go in with low expectations, but because your expectations are so low you end up enjoying the movie? I think the same thing is happening to me with Mass Effect: Andromeda. All the reviews kept bashing it, but I have nothing but enjoyed my first ten hours with the game, and the first ten hours are supposed to be the worst. In a lot of ways it is reminding me of the first Mass Effect game. It just takes its time to get started, and instead of elevators there is a tram.
In Mass Effect: Andromeda you play as either the male or female Ryder twin as you seek to colonize the Andromeda galaxy. You leave right before the events of the first game, so none of Commander Shepard’s adventures factor in to this game. Which makes sense. Given the different ways the first trilogy ended it would have been hard to write a story that made sense for all those outcomes. I am sure more than a little hand-waving would have been necessary. Needless to say things do not go as hoped when you get to Andromeda, and the former residents of the Milky Way galaxy are counting on you to get things put right so they can start their new lives.
As a small spoiler, you were not supposed to be in charge of this mission. Your Dad, a former N7 agent, was chosen to be the Pathfinder (person in charge of making the new worlds habitable), but he dies and leaves the task to you: a young kid with no real qualifications. This is a big change from the previous Mass Effect games where Shepard was the best of the best. In Andromeda you are receiving on the job training and just trying not to get everyone killed. I like the change of perspective. It allows me to truly play a different role instead of a Shepard clone.
I also like that there are no longer any locked skills. As I level up I can choose any Biotic, Tech and Combat skills that I want. There is a reason for this that I am not going to spoil, but it is an interesting concept. What it means however, is that I can send out my Biotic Shockwaves and then turn around and hit people with my wrist mounted flame thrower. To help you with these skill combinations are ‘Profiles’. Profiles are built around trying to get the most out of your play style. If you are going hard core Biotic you can choose that Profile, and it will lower your cool-downs on your powers and give you a couple of buffs. Though if you have a Tech power selected, its cool-downs will be slower and slightly de-buffed, so it would be best to choose the Tech/Biotic Profile. Though the Biotic buffs will not be as good as the all out Biotic one.
The combat is the best in the series. It is fast and hard hitting. You can no longer control your squad, other than giving them locations to guard, but at least it makes Mass Effect feel like the action game that it always wanted to be. The only small issue is the cover system. When you get to cover you automatically crouch down behind it. In theory this makes the combat smoother since you are not always spamming the ‘A’ button. In practice it means that Ryder will just sand there getting shot because you are not standing behind the rock quite right. It usually works, but it seems to fail when you need it the most.
I am also enjoying my new team quite a bit. They have been called out for being generic, but to be honest, so were the first and second Mass Effect squads. They are not perfect, but they all fit their roles, and they are fun to talk to. Even if the animation system is a bit janky, and sometimes the writing isn’t quite up to par.
Which leads me to this game’s flaws. Of which there are quite a few. As I said the writing and the animations could have used some more polish. The character creator is the worst BioWare has ever created. The bad guy is uninteresting, and I do wish they would have taken a few more risks with the BioWare formula. There are too many fetch quests, but I got some good advice before I started playing, “If Ryder doesn’t take her helmet off for the conversation, you can probably skip it.” This game just feels rushed. Like they created these worlds, but then they needed to fill them in a hurry, so they used a quest generator or something. Everything just feels like it could have used another year. This makes me wonder if there was another Mass Effect: Andromeda before this one that got trashed, so they rushed to create this one.
I am really enjoying Mass Effect Andromeda, but it is far from perfect. The flaws that other reviews are pointing out are there, but they just haven’t been bothering me. For five years I have wanted more Mass Effect and Andromeda has given me that. It also gives me hope that they can build off this game and make something truly special, like Mass Effect 2. If you have been scared off by bad reviews, I would say that if you liked the other Mass Effect games, you will like this one. Just give it some time and don’t focus too hard on any of the human faces.
Can You Have Too Many Micro-Transactions?
A Reddit user recently posted that in order to unlock all of For Honor’s gear it would cost you over $700, and in order to unlock it all without money you would need to play one and a half hours a day for about two and a half years. He obviously thought that was too much. Now I am not defending For Honor, but fighting games generally have tooooons of micro-transactions for different outfits and whatnot, and you generally only unlock the stuff for the characters you play. Also, all this gear is purely cosmetic, so the purple samurai will not fight better than the default gray one. Still, two and a half years and $700 are big numbers for a game that you already paid $60 for.
My question is, is this a bad practice or not? Honestly, I am not sure. On one hand I love getting random little unlocks for playing games. They are like little achievements, but on the other hand it is frustrating to never get what you want, and all the people that fork over the cash look awesome. Overall I tend to be okay with it if:
- The gear is purely cosmetic.
- They are not always advertising it to me. I already bought the game once don’t sell it to me again.
- If there is still a “free” way for me to get what I want for my character.
- Or if the game fails the first three criteria, the game needs to be free to play and that is how it makes its money.
For Honor fits the first and third of my criteria, but where it fell flat with me was that it was always trying to get me to fork over cash. I hate that. Save your adds for the TV. At worst send me a note that you are having a sale, but then never mention it again. Trust me, we are all aware that we can spend real money for checkered hats. For Honor would have done better launching for like $30 and then skipping the single player campaign. Then market it as a fighting game, since that is what it is, then they could have charged whatever they wanted for cosmetics and no one would have cared. Not only that I think it would have been a hit. Oh well, maybe it will serve as a warning to other games. We shall see. For me, it worked out anyway since I didn’t buy the game. What do you think about games with a lot of micro-transactions?