Posts

Posted on

Shmee Gleefully Terrorizes Australia In Forza Horizon 3!

Forza Horizon 3 Horizontal Key Art

They say money can’t buy happiness, but they are wrong.  It can be purchased for around $60 on Xbox One or PC.  Forza Horizon 3 is the culmination of all the previous Forza games.  It is the game we didn’t know we were waiting for.  For everyone who doesn’t want to waste time reading this review, Forza Horizon 3 is freaking great, and you should be playing it.

In Forza Horizon 3 you take the role of the boss running the Horizon festival, and this time the festival is in Australia.  You draw fans to your festival by racing and doing crazy stunts.  The more fans you have the more venues you can open.  The more venues that you open the more races and crazy stunts you can take part in.  Or if you want, you can just dive around Australia at high speeds and do whatever you want.

Technically Forza Horizon 3 is a racing game, but that isn’t quite right.  While you will spend a lot of time racing in Forza Horizon 3, what actually is, is a driving game.  A game that strives to bring you the joy of getting behind the wheel of a fast car and screwing around and doing ridiculous things.  Things like driving a 1973 XB GT Ford Falcon Coupe (the Mad Max car) through the wine country, literally through it, while listening to Flight of the Valkyries and earning a crazy amount of skill points.  It is glorious.

I have heard some people describe Forza Horizon 3 as a CarPG because of the never ending loop of getting XP, unlocking cars, and gaining new races, but that description doesn’t quite fit.  Sure there are not one, but three different progression systems: XP to give you random cars and cash, fans to give you new venues, and skill points to give more ways to earn XP, fans and skill points, but in the end what Forza Horizon 3 is a joy machine that works better the faster you go.

Forza Horizon 3 isn’t perfect.  It doesn’t do a good job of differentiating between trees that you can mow over and ones that will stop you in your tracks, and the AI car pop-in can be slow to the point of randomly having mini-vans show up mere feet in front of you.  No doubt that at blindingly fast speeds cars can seemingly appear out of nowhere, but not out of thin air.  Also if you are going to get this for PC, you are going to need a pretty beefy rig.  Still in the light of everything that Forza Horizon 3 does well these are very minor foibles.

I don’t have the credentials to say that Forza Horizon 3 is the greatest racing game of all time, but I will say that it is my favorite racing game, and it is working its way up my all time favorite games list, racing or otherwise.  I still have a lot of game left to play with Forza Horizon 3, so my attitude about it may change, but I doubt it.  Go out and get Forza Horizon 3 for Xbox One or PC now!  You know, unless you hate fun.

Posted on

The Paladin rides with The Magnificent Seven

Mrs. The Paladin and I got a to go on a surprise date Saturday, so we had a romantic dinner at the French restaurant Costco, bought expensive candies at the Dollar Tree, and used movie vouchers from Christmas to go see Antoine Fuqua’s remake of The Magnificent Seven.

the-magnificent-seven

After 2 hours and 12 minutes we both left the theatre having enjoyed ourselves – The Magnificent Seven is an enjoyable movie. Is it better or at the same level as the original John Sturgis film or even Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai? No. It lacks the mentality of the time that allowed for sweeping pans, lingering shots, and stoic monologuing. Instead it has a diverse cast, that largely is ignored in a time period were racism was still very much alive, a lot of laughs, and a high body count.

Peter Sarsgaard’s bad guy spared no expense hiring his army, although I had to wonder why as the astute businessman that he was that he didn’t just choose to write the whole thing off after the first wave got murdered/slaughtered/curb stomped. Peter Sarsgaard is a fine actor, but I feel like he always plays the same bad guy, intellectual but moody. This bad guy called for more of a Proto-Rockefeller; stoic, controlled, and menacing with hate and contempt just at the surface. I would have liked to have seen Kevin Coster or Ed Harris chew up the velvet drapes and sagebrush of the old west.

The Seven of the Magnificent Seven were all excellent. You would just start to really like one and then another would capture your attention – I felt like the belle of the ball. Vincent D’Onofrio’s Jack Horner with his squeaky voice and crazy eyes and Ethan Hawke’s conflicted and dashing Goodnight Robicheaux were two that stood out as memorable. Denzel Washington is of course fantastic and Chris Pratt’s Josh Farady is a fantastic second-in-command.

The Magnificent Seven is probably the best modern Western I’ve seen since Kevin Costner’s Open Range but its still not the classics. However, if you find yourself on a surprise date with your significant other and you have free movie vouchers go see The Magnificent Seven you should… it was… MAGNIFICENT.

Posted on

The Paladin thinks The Finest Hours are fine

Alone one night I had the hankering for a good, sweeping rescue movie so I started up The Finest Hours on Netflix.

finesthours

The film stars Chris Pine, Casey Affleck, Ben Foster, Holliday Grainger, Eric Bana, and a host of other familiar faces. Chris Pine’s Bernie Webber is a Chief in the Coast Guard who failed to rescue the crew of a ship and that haunts him a little. At least Pine plays it that way and dialog tries to tell us that’s the case, but since this happens before the film I had no way to relate. He also starts a relationship with Holliday Grainger’s Miriam who is strong and independent, but fearful of the career Bernie has chosen. The film focus on this relationship at the beginning, before showing us the tragedy aboard the S.S. Pendleton that has shorn in half, trapping 32 members of the crew.

Eventually Bernie’s CO orders him to take small ship across the bar, which everyone knows is impossible, but I don’t because you haven’t shown me yet. Still it is an exciting scene and is fairly exciting. The rest of the rescue is fairly paint-by-the-numbers and then it ends, snatching a lot of the emotion from the part of the story.

The Finest Hours got me interested in the real story it is based on, but the film itself  failed to capture the excitement, uncertainty, and character of such a daring rescue. While flat, the film it isn’t terrible, so the Finest Hour is something I suggest you watch when you’ve got nothing else to watch.

Posted on

This Indiana Jones Cartoon Is Amazing!

You need to watch the fan made trailer above!  I will wait … Done? Good.  Disney needs to make this a show stat.  I would tune in every day that it aired.  Way to go Patrick Schoenmaker you are my hero for the day!

Posted on

The CW Superhero Fight Club Is Back!!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs1wD1kudCs

The CW brought back the Superhero fight club, and this time it includes Supergirl!!!  You can watch the YouTube teaser above, but for the full video you will need to download the new CW app.  Which with free access to access to all the CW’s shows I am guessing you were going to do that anyway.