Shmee.Me

March 21, 2016March 21, 2016

Daredevil Is In An Enjoyable Holding Pattern!

The second season of Daredevil launched on Netflix last Friday and my wife and I have been doing our best to binge-watch straight through it. We have made it about halfway through, so I figured I would give my thoughts. Which is kind of what I do on this blog, so it would be pretty odd of me not to. While the show continues to be good it is disappointing that the main characters don’t seem to be progressing.

Foggy is still a brilliant layer that continues to doubt himself and his partner’s night job. Murdock still can’t seem balance being Daredevil and a lawyer even though his firm desperately needs him, and Page still has a mysterious past and her relentless digging in to things endangers her and the others around her. In other words they are all doing the exact same things they were doing last season.

Another bummer is that this is all supposed to be part of Marvel’s connected universe, but they can’t seem to say that New York was attacked by aliens, and even more baffling is that the only hint so far in the show that Luke Cage and Jessica Jones even exist in this world is that Rosario Dawson’s Nurse Temple said that she helped out some big strong guy. I mean not to spoil any of Jessica Jones, but it wasn’t like that at the end of her season she kept any of her exploits secret. People should be aware of her, especially red vigilantly ninjas trying to ‘save a city’.

Luckily the fight scenes and the new characters make Daredevil well worth watching. While Jon Bernthal’s Punisher started out looking like an out and out bad guy as the series progresses you start to feel for him and understand his quest, and my wife is now firmly on team Punisher. Meanwhile Élodie Yung’s Elektra is shrouded in mystery. You have no idea what she is up to and whether she is good or bad, and Matt Murdock can’t seem to think straight when she is around. Pretty much she is the Elektra fans have been waiting for.

It is a shame that the main characters don’t seem to be exhibiting any growth, and that Marvel can’t quite seem to figure out how their connected universe fits together even on their Netflix TV shows which are meant to be even more connected, but great fight choreography and wonderful new characters make Daredevil season two well worth watching. I still can’t wait for all the Netflix shows to combine in to The Defenders, but for now I am happy that Daredevil is as good as it is since we know thanks to Ben Affleck and crew that it could have been much, much worse.

March 18, 2016March 18, 2016

Are We Seeing The Death Of Free2Play?

After almost a year of silence since PAX Prime 2015, LawBreakers the new asymmetrical arena shooter by CliffyB’s new studio Boss Key Productions has not only changed its logo and character art, but it will no longer be Free2Play (F2P). They have not said how much it will cost, only that it will now be a premium purchase only available (at least initially) on Steam.

One game changing its monetization scheme wouldn’t be that big a deal, but recently Blizzard also announced that their shooter Overwatch would also be ditching F2P, and they will be releasing their tittle for $40 this May. It was speculated that Battleborn from Gearbox would be F2P as well, but Randy Pitchford made it clear that they only release AAA full price tittles. It seems, at least with bigger studios, that the money just isn’t there for F2P unless you are a MOBA (Think Dota 2 or League of Legends) or an MMO (Star Wars: The Old Republic or The Elder Scrolls Online).

I for one am quite happy about this change. As much as I have enjoyed Dirty Bomb by Splash Damage it is annoying to not have all the characters, or at least a good portion of them, and even if you do drop the money to get all the characters you still need to spend money to outfit them properly. Meaning that you are most likely only going to get a couple of characters and then just outfit them which is a shame since half of the fun with asymmetrical shooters is playing with all the random different play styles.

We will see if this trend continues, but I kind of hope it does. I will be keeping an eye on Epic Games’ Paragon to see if it follows suit. If Free2Play dies, I don’t think anyone will morn its death. It works for a few games out there, but not for everything.

March 17, 2016

Watch Out For Trigger Warnings!

You know what is better than one Neil Gaiman story? Several Neil Gaiman stories. Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances is his latest collection of short stories, and like everything else he does it is pretty darn good. There isn’t really a theme with this collection, other than that tales are short and untrue, but they are so fun I think we can forgive Mr. Gaiman this one time.

The stories range from horror to mystery to Sci-Fi and all parts in between: There is a Dr. Who tale, a nice Sherlock Holms mystery, a spin-off of American Gods, his Sleeping Beauty revamp The Sleeper and the Spindle, and the rest of the tales I would say fit nicely in Gaiman’s fantastical light horror box. The size of the stories range quite a bit in size as well from a couple of pages to a couple of chapters.

While some stories are better than others (obviously) the quality of all of them is quite high, and he can create worlds and in a few paragraphs that other authors would struggle with for chapters. I had forgotten how much I like short fiction. The story can hit you and then disappear leaving your imagination to fill in the rest. Unlike longer works which do their best to fill in all the gaps. It is the gaps that stick with you allowing your mind to wander and play long after you have finished reading.

I am guessing you a figured out that this book has earned my recommendation, but there was hardly a doubt that it would considering my love for the author. Biases aside Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances is a fun book that is worthy of your time, and since it is a collection you can read it in little sips which is kind of a rarity these days. Neil Gaiman has produced another gem.

March 16, 2016March 16, 2016

Sony Manages To Fumble Their Mic Drop!

A couple of weeks ago I said that Sony needed to launch Project Morpheus now known as PlayStation VR for $499, but they did one better and launched it for $399. Well except that they didn’t. You can get it for $399, but to use it you will need a $59 PlayStation Camera, and for a quite a few of their 50 launch titles you will need a couple of Move controllers for $40 each, so the grand total will be $540. Though for now you can get PlayStation Cameras and Move controllers cheaper than MSRP if you look around, so not so surprisingly the total would be about $500.

Now Sony’s reasoning for launching the VR without any of the necessary accessories was that most of their first adopters will already have the Camera and the Move controllers, which is probably true fanboys tend to buy everything (ask me about my Kinect), but the $399 price was still pretty bogus. They should have just announced two SKUs at their event, $399 for the base headset, and $499 for the bundle. Boom! Problem solved! They still get to have their VR solution be $200 cheaper than the Rift which also doesn’t come with motion controllers, and even with the bundle they still would have been $100 cheaper. It is all win.

Now later in day after Sony was getting hammered for their misleading $399 price point they did say that they were going to announce a couple of PlayStation VR bundles. One with headset and all necessary accessories, and one that also includes the PS4. I can understand not saying anything about the PS4 bundle because by October the PS4’s price will have dropped, so to announce the price of that bundle would giveaway how much the that drop will be, and that announcement is usually saved for the lead-in to the all important Holiday buying season, but not announcing the Camera and Move bundle was just odd and ill-advised.

Sony still got to drop the mic as far as price goes for their VR solution, but instead of getting to enjoy it they had to deal with the wrath of a lot of confused and angry gamers. Now granted confused and angry seems to be the native mental state for a lot of gamers, especially ones that hang out on the internet, and people were always going to be mad that the PlayStation VR was ‘too expensive’, but they could have saved themselves a lot of grief by just acknowledging upfront that the PlayStation VR was going to be more than $399 for a lot of people. You know, more like $499 like a certain blogger told you it would be.

March 15, 2016March 15, 2016

I Spy!

You know when a movie shows all its best clips in a trailer? Spy managed to do the opposite. Nothing about the advertising for Spy sold me on the movie, and I had completely forgotten about it until the Golden Globes where it was nominated for Best Comedy or Musical (it lost to The Martian). After watching Spy I am shocked at how unfunny the trailers were considering I laughed non-stop through its complete running time. Even the ending credits were funny.

Melissa McCarthy plays Susan Cooper who is over-watch, a person who provides intel from headquarters, for the CIA’s top spy played by Jude Law. When her agent is killed and all the other identities of active CIA agents are compromised, Susan Cooper will have to become a spy to save the day! It turns out she is pretty darn good at it.

There have been a lot of spy movie spoofs over the years, but Spy is one of the best. The jokes are great and non-stop. I should have guessed that would be the case since it was made by the people who created The Heat and Bridesmaids, but I think the terrible trailers and McCarthy’s Tammy scared me off a bit. I will know better next time.

While McCarthy is the star of this film and delivers most of the laughs, the rest of the cast is top notch too. Law plays the perfect 007 stand in, and Statham plays his overdramatic yet terrible spy with such zeal you can’t help but chuckle every time he is on screen. Rose Byrne is an excellent evil yet funny villain. What I am saying is that Spy is a group effort that really delivers.

Paul Feig is becoming one of the great comedic directors, and while I was worried about Ghost Busters being rebooted, after Spy I know the film is in more than capable hands. It seems like every movie he directs is comedy gold. Which is a trend that I hope continues.

Spy is an excellent flick. Though a bit of warning since it comes from Feig and McCarthy the language can get a bit blue, so it is definitely not family fair, but if you are of age this movie is hilarious, and in retrospect it probably should have won the Golden Globe considering The Martian wasn’t really a comedy anyway. Now I am really excited to see the new Ghost Busters!