Shmee.Me

July 3, 2013September 9, 2013

Tour Albion in Fable III!

Having played both Fable and Fable II, I somehow totally missed out on Fable III when it came out in 2010, but thanks to Microsoft for giving it away during the end of June, I was able to rectify that.

The game takes place fifty years after Fable II, and your character has died leaving the oldest son, Logan you new character’s older brother, in charge. He is an evil king and you decide to do something about it by leading the rebellion, and then becoming the king or queen in his stead, queen in my case.

The games core mechanics have not changed that much, you still hit X to swing your sword, Y to shoot your gun, and B to launch your magic attacks, and you can mix them up as you see fit. Leveling up has changed, now you can open chests when you have gained enough followers to earn new skills and character interactions. They also got rid of the start menu, now it is a room that lets you walk around and pick your options.

The game is kind of the same old Fable in the beginning with the same fight mechanics, and the same graphics, and even the same landscape. It is still fun but feels very familiar, but once you become queen then all the fun comes in as you get to make choices that change the future of your kingdom.

Since the fist part of the game is the same as the other Fables it kind of drags in the beginning, but the game soon changes things up and gets much better, and since it was free I couldn’t have asked for a better price, but you can find it for around $10 on Amazon, and it is still worth it at that price.

July 2, 2013

Shmee Survives World War Z!

World War Z is a big budget zombie movie produced and stared in by Brad Pitt. Before its release it was known for its exploding costs and script rewrites, and then the ending tested so poorly that they had to totally scrap it and film a new one at the last minute, but it seemed to turn out okay provided that you didn’t want a movie that resembled the book.

The story follows a former UN investigator Garry Lane (Brad Pitt) as he travels the globe looking for the cure to the zombie plague ravaging the world, so that the UN boat that is looking after his family doesn’t kick them off.

The plot is simple, but since it is a zombie movie that is to be expected. The zombies in this movie are a mix between 28 Days Later and its PG13 sensibilities, so fast and scary looking but without being gruesome, unlike most of the creatures from their genre. The special effects are good with the zombies looking the part, and the huge zombie waves attacking human strongholds are well done.

It is interesting that parts of this movie that work the best are not the large epic fights, but the close quarters with zombies hiding in the dark scenes, and while the large set pieces do add scope, they loose a lot of the tension. There is nothing better than a person with their back against the wall trying to survive against these relentless foes.

I like this movie, and it says a lot about how the public feels about zombies these days that the market can sustain such a large scale project, but at the end the day the reason it works are the old school zombie scares.

July 1, 2013July 1, 2013

Someone Made Troll 2!

Troll 2 is one of those amazingly bad movies that it is so impossible to believe it got made and released. It is defiantly one of the worst movies of all time, and one of those rare treats that is so bad that it is good, especially when watched with a good group of friends. It was released in 1990 and directed by Claudio Fragasso.

The story is about a family that decides to go to a farming town Nilbog (goblin backwards) for vacation, only to find that the place is full of goblins, and that the goblins are vegetarians so the people have to eat some green stuff to turn in to plants so the goblins can eat them. Oh yes, and the son Joshua is haunted by his grandfather, who for some reason knows everything about goblins, and thus can help his grandson out. Notice I did not type the word “Troll” at any point because there are none in this movie, and it has nothing to do with Troll 1.

The goblins are supposed to be scary, but it seems that in most situations they pose no threat to anyone because they are slow and only have spears that they can throw at people, but they only do that once, and I would remiss if I did not mention that there is a scene in which two people make out with a piece of corn between them and it turns in to popcorn, yes that happens.

The fact that a studio paid someone to make this movie boggles my mind, at least with Manos: The Hands of Fate it was just a bunch of people getting together to make a movie, and then realizing that was something they did not know how to do, but with this it was supposedly made by professionals, and had real funding. Not a lot probably, but more than the bologna sandwich that saves the young boy at the end of this film.

Rarely do movies like this see the light of day, and if they do get published they land on the direct to video isle, or stuck on late night TV as a joke, but every once and awhile a movie this bad reaches the public at large and it is hilarious.