Since my previous review, life's been good to Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield), finishing both high school and armed street thugs, it's probably one of his golden days of youth, beside his on-off relationship with Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) there's seemed nothing that can stop his pretty beautiful days.from go on.
Of course there is always a but, while life's been good with both Spidey and Peter, it's not really had it going on with Max Dillon (Jamie Foxx), he's practically invisible, his boss stole his credit for his work, his colleauges doesn't even know about him, he's a nobody and he accepted that while at the same time harboring the growing need to be seen by the world, a really really unhealthy need. so it begins: The Amazing Spiderman 2
Being a sequel sucks, you must make sure you overshadow the first and deliver things that makes the audience said: "it's not a rehash of the first one", being a remake is even more sucks because you also have to make sure it's better in ALL things than the predecessors. So in this remake we've already knew that Spidey is a delinquent that enjoys spouting funny and catchy lines to the bad guys, and in this movie he also liked being in the spotlight and thrilled at every negative stigma of vigilantes labeled at him, Spidey made fun of the world while saving it, and that's cool, this movie is extremely optimistic and melancholic at the same time, Peter and Gwen has their share of optimistic love story, they're young, they're in love, and yes they can do anything....
Meanwhile: Max Dillon got into accident partially caused by the ignorance of his colleagues, while previously he has his issues with his obsession of Spiderman (after he got saved by Peter) when he finally returned as Electro he carried this unhealthy dose of his complex, so if you're bullied by almost everyone you met for God knows how long, what will you first do when you finally obtained a nearly unlimited power? revenge? unfortunately it's just a small prize, he's aiming beyond revenge, he developed a new obsession, obsession for his own power, and for that Spiderman must die since he's the only thing stand between him and his ultimate goal.
Spiderman and Electro are antithesis, it's the other theme of this movie, Spidey reject the statement of "the strong wins" while Electro accepted that, Spidey's aim is to protect while Electro is to rule, it's just like when the goblin said to Raimi's spiderman on the first movie: "they will hate you no matter what you do" Electro is that Spiderman if he accepted the offer to rule, and we can't really blamed him since Max was a broken man for far too long as the result of those who are strong, one more thing: the description of him in this movie never made the audience sympathizes with him, it's a perfect balance to split Max and Electro, when Electro lives Max is no more, while on the other hand just like the first movie we can't really split Spidey with Peter, with or without mask.
I know there are two other villain in this movie, The Goblin/Harry Osborn (Dan DeHaan) and Rhino (Paul Giamatti) but their appearance here is only a prelude for what is coming on the next sequel, and to be honest I'm afraid that it won't deliver, Amazing Spiderman 2 is a decent sequel and deliver a progress of both on Peter and Spiderman's life, it prepared him to face the next level with these baddies (and others) but I really don't think next level can be described in two hours length of movie because it can only focus so much on some character, Avangers did it with six heroes but each of them has their own prequel movie, what about six villain? I know there wll be spin off about them, but it will come after Amazing Spiderman 3, so what will spidey do on the third? Another Venom thing? I really hope it won't become another Venom-Carnage comic relief like in the cartoon series where only one of them is the villain and the other is just stand there to deliver Strascream's-minion-like cheesy monologue.
For this sequel, despite the review I'm gonna give it an eight since it's optimistic and light-hearted
The Sahagins has succeeded on summoning Leviathan as the next (hard) loot pinata, and so begins the lord of the whorl's saga (beside another plot twist). Patch 2.2 hits Eorzea a week ago and by my judgement (after playing it for twenty hours or so) it's.... enjoyable but I'm not here to talk about the things I enjoy, today I want to talk about everything not in this patch
Everything else vs mount
I dislike dismounting from my mount to talk to a vendor or quest NPC, or to teleport, or just to do anything, yes it's only a click away and give immersions in RPer's POV, and I agree not letting mounts inside capital cities, but really? every single time? they should make an auto-dismount option when they do anything, just an option so people can choose whether they want to manually dismounted or just automatically did it, I have heard reason that it was deemed exploitable but honestly that is up to SE to think a way out of this.
Cross-Server Duty Finder
My Free Company is a casual one, meaning we didn't even finish everything that patch 2.1 has to offer, and since we're small (like in a miniscule sense of view) and never not always online together so I spend my new nights searching for another clueless people on duty finder, but here's the thing: I played on a japanese server since their ping is more stable and below 200-ish, and I'm a tank so it's usually an insta-que IF I select all the language available, but Leviathan encounter needs clueless people to TALK to each other and guess what? I don't speak japanese and won't pretend that I do so I'm left with my 120 mins (and counting) DF queue, why? there's no cross server Duty Finder, it only search people from a cluster of Japanese Data Center server who queued with English as language selected
it's not mine!!
Oh yeah I'm sure I can watch youtube to learn the encounter and pretend I spoke japanese and after several wipe we could finally beaten it with the newly implemented Echo system (like those WoW fail buffs :P), but really? Moogle King was my evidence
Challenge Log
Oh wait it's in the patch, and I love it, I'll talk about it another time :D
Minor Spoiler about the Ending of The Raid 1 below, you can view my past review here
I tried to make this a The Raid 1 spoiler-free review but unfortunately I can't since the story is a continuation, so anyway Gareth Evans is back with a sequel of the highly acclaimed The Raid, it's called Berandal: The Raid 2, here's the story so far: on the last movie we saw Rama (Iko Uwais) left the villain-infested apartment with his found-corrupt-superior, long story short he's been reassigned to capture the bigger fish of the crime network, this time it was a shady businessman Bangun (Tio Pakusadewo) and a passive aggressive mild-mannered bohemian called Bejo (Alex Abbad), to get through them Rama's gone incognito to get close to Bangun's son: Uco (Arifin Putra) which his bratty tantrum landed in jail, and after that things gone haywire, fight breaks, bodies dropped and blood flows
Unfortunately it wasn't enough for me, because...
They Put A Story on an Action Flix
In the Raid 1 there's almost zero long dialogue, the longest dialogue is probably Tama's explaining how the network works at the end of the movie, however in the Raid 2 there is a story, there's characters, there's long dialogues, and they're so... awful, the dialogues seemed sporadic and disconnected one after another and there's a LOT of unnecessary story scenes and talks which makes my adrenaline have a significant down time, I seriously don't give a crap about all that conspiracy stories, it's a FIGHTING MOVIE, I want to see people brutally mutilate one another again and if I want a drama I'll watch Xenosaga (the FMV version) , you know what makes the Raid 1 so good? it because the story doesn't need a long dialogue, instead they replaced it with....
Not you Al, you're dead in #1
Oh S*it moment
I called this necessary, in the Raid 1 the first Oh S*it moment is when they encounter a kid in the one of apartment's hallway, this kid is a 'screamer', a living alarm that will alert everyone that there's cops abound, so he ran to tell them, and the cops go after him, what will they do? will they shoot the kid? will they captured him? will there will be another conclusion? even his status as an underage child makes every decision feels wrong, there's only bad and worse end here, what will they do? what will they do? Oh S*it. It's the first scene that get me into The Raid, the do or die, the wrong and horribly wrong case that can blows up everything in their face, also who will forgot those Easterners scene?
DAMMIT AL!!
In the Raid 2 there's nothing, no suspense, we already know Rama (or his incognito persona: Yudha) will gone through every scene until he find those bastards, you see... Iko Uwais mostly going solo in this sequel, so there's no scene risking his friend/companion/random passing people that he wants to protect, maybe that's why...
There's almost no creativity in the fight
A lot of people will kill me for saying this but the first fight scene made me questioning: Is this The Raid? it's so... plain... the second one is a mass fight, something new and it's good, but wait... where's the finishers? the movie's first half fighting scene made me yawn because almost all of it is unfinished and too many OFF SCREEN FINISHING!! fortunately the second half is better, there's at least five distinct fighters in this movie. First is Rama which has fast punch and kicks, Prakoso (Yayan Ruhyan) which has powerful hand to hand attacks, Hammer Girl (Julie Estelle) and Baseball Bat Man (Very Tri Yulisman) a couple who use their respected tools in fights, and the last is The Assassin (Cecep Arif Rahman) which has similar style with Rama but also using carok (spiked knuckles).
The fighters deliver better that the fight on the first half seems to be just a filler or appetizer for the movie's second half, it's stylish, it's new, but it's NOT satisfying, when every single Raid 1 fight scene has their own unpredictable finisher (which trigger audience's applause at the end of almost every scene) The Raid 2 seems to forgot all about it, the fights on Raid 2 are fatally choreographed and bloodied to the teeth but none (except one) deliver an unpredictable finishing blow, every fights are powerful and efficient but unfortunately not intense enough, I want the finishers to be more unpredictable than the Raid 1, more fatal, bloodier and destructive enough that we'll sure the dead stay dead, I guess it was my really high expectation talking
Endgame
There's one single moment which express my disappointment and disapproval of the movie, but since it will be a spoiler I can't talk about it. Until this time I can't still pinpoint the good about The Raid 2 because it seems scattered everywhere in the movie, I like some of the drama scene, the camera works are awesome, I like most of the fighting scene, I ABSOLUTELY LOVE THE FINAL BATTLE SCENE!! But despite everything I rant about above -- I will recommend it to everyone, it's a good movie, but it was nowhere near my expectation, whether I should lower it a bit or this movie needs a Director's Cut edition for people like me =))
This is a trailer for Wildstar, it came in 2011, this is a side dish for NC's big launch of Guild Wars 2, Wildstar is not overlooked at that time but they haven't give any promises yet, just a funny trailer.
Three years later, it blow the f*&^% out my mind, with this
and this
also this:
s***, right?
Never before i saw so much snarky and snazzy trailers on MMOs, so how about gameplay? trailers will go so far as to make you play them, but in-game gameplay is everything right? well fortunately I secured three chances to play in beta weekends, so let me just summarized everything:
The Beta Client Fiasco
Before I used my mind/guns/swords/claws/weaponized defibrillator to destroy everything in my path, first I'll have use my wits, guts, patience, and little chit chat to install the client right? And it turns to the first post I wrote at wildstar forum is that I can't install the client, Wildstar has the WORST beta client ever in my history with MMOs and betas, I tried everything suggested on dev's posts and everything else the player said, NOTHING WORKS WHATSOEVER, that my best efforts is to tried the -retries command which makes my client continuously tried to search for internet connection for downloading the client, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, it's a roulette anyway, still beta, whatever, I hate your client, Carbine.
Yes!!
After the dust from my rage settles down, the client is finished downloading and I'm ready to play, and... it runs smoothly, surprise, well okay, time to select a class... since I had totally zero knowledge on Wildstar Class (yes i've seen trailers and gameplays but that's not the same) I consulted a friend and ultimately selecting a medic, it looks awesome anyway with those Resonator, Mordesh is my first choice, who didn't like space zombies anyway?
Ah yeah, here's the story: Nexus is a recently found lost planet, it house the ancient civilization of Eldan, the most advanced beings on the universe and it will be a battleground for two faction: The Dominion is an alliance of interstellar creature which claimed Nexus as their birthright since their ancestors handpicked by the Eldan themeselves (before they disappear, why the hell is a ridiculuously advanced life-shaping ancient civilization have to disappear anyway?) to govern the universe. On the other side we have The Exiles: A band of labeled enemies of the Dominion (apparently you can't rule the universe without making a few enemies) so up their go in their respective spaceships, blow away each other in the planet's atmosphere and crash landing their refugees a.k.a us
The Fights and Paths
Did you just tired of auto attacks? well, Wildstar doesn't have that, for most parts Wildstar plays like Guild Wars 2 and some part: The Secret World, you've only got one type of weapon and your action bar has limited slot, it's up to you to mix and match your combo from your learned skills, Wildstar doesn't have global cooldowns and unless you've got CCed you're free to throw everything at the mobs, oh yeah and ALL your skills are AOE, you won't find auto target here, if a mob rolls out of your AOE field (a.k.a telegraphs, funny, some GW2 people are starting to use this word too) before you shoot them then you'll miss, and he/she/it can counter with devastating attacks, and they're smart, see that red area? get the f*** of it immediately!!! You can roll, dodge, blink, or sprint yourself out of it, and watch that you didn't run into another red, think there's only one type of telegraph? think again, think AGAIN!! GET OUT!! GET OUT!!! Combat in Wildstar is so fresh, dynamic and satisfying I have a hard time holding myself back to not engage some big a** elite mob alone
Mob also came in packs and after level 10 the fights can be exhausting, I got to tried engineer and esper too and IMO Espers is so so underpowered on solo PVE, it came close on playing warlocks on WOW cata age that I have to push probably every button available just to survive, I died a hundred times too and since Wildstar is unusual in every way the game TAUNTS me everytime I died with some snarky comments like "Somebody just doesn't know when to stay dead" or something like that, it can be frustrating sometimes, but I understand the path of the game will go the distance to, anyway everyone can ress you, just like Guild Wars 2, just hope that they will put some dead icon on the map since it's so hard to distinguish dead people from dead mobs
Speaking of paths you will be selecting your character Path on the creation screen, there are four: The Settler, Scientist, Explorer, and Soldier. What is path? well since I only tried scientist, soldier and settler I can tell you this: Path is the best thing that happens in MMO today, and I'm not exaggerating, Path enriches your experience (literally and figuratively) in the gaming world, with a soldier path you can start a holdout in some place, holdout means there will be swarms of big mother(&*^^*% trying to eat you alive, all you have to do is kill them all, sometimes the holdout contains NPC that must be defended and/or they contain experimental weapons with neat killing effects that you got to try, free EXp, free loot, free killing spree!!! OK, enough, let's talk about the scientist, they have numerous probe that can scan things to provide effects, buffs, lore, exp, and loots, remember the soldier? ok, there are some scan site near the holdout points, when a soldier started a holdout the scientist can scan the thing and it can provide buff to the holdout, exp, hp regen, might, damage, everything, and everyone can participate on the holdout, again, exp, reputation, lore, loot, and path EXP
The Settler can build everything all over the place, most of them are buff stations on some town and hubs for exp and reputation, hey, remember the scientist and the soldier? well okay, let's imagine a settler, a scientist, and a soldier stumbled upon a big holdout points, which means bigger monsters, there are build site all around it and a scan site, the soldier started the holdout, scientist provide buffs, and the setllers will build a nasty laser cannon to provide support, after that it's FUN TIME, settlers also can repair some ancient Eldan structures littered all over Nexus which the scientist and explorer can activate to provide loots, ancient mining droid is one of them they provide resources for settlers and path EXP for scientists. What is path EXPs? it's a separated exp that leveled up your path, at some point it provide you with special skills, Settler for example: can build a bonfire that will provide HP regen buff for everyone who used it and since battle in Wildstar is exhausted it's nice to relax and gained some buff from it
The Lore and Conclusion
I mostly love Wildstar for their free-spirited attitude and funny (although some of it are dark humour) moments, the Dominion are ruthless psychopats and the Exiles are backstabbing bastards, but some of Exiles early campaigns hit my soft side since it was so bittersweet and makes me want to kill every Dominion in front of me, including a big mecha that vomits laser on me, Dominion campaigns have an interesting side (in a very sychopantic POV) where you escort a noble-celebrities for her quest of glory on nexus, including massacred a whole village of natives. The whole idea of Nexus settlement project is pictured so perfect all over the place and if you made a settler you'll get the gist of it as if you really helped the settlement project
I probably will preorder Wildstar if it's not because of a fatal flaw on my country's internet connection, Wildstar is so dynamic where in a battle you must dodge and sprint that a slight lag will kill you and hinder your role, I'm sure Carbine can fix bad FPS spike, client issues, nametag bugs, disappearing NPCs, and bugged events but when it's on your side (unlike FF ability lag which is a server side issue) I have nothing to say, it's a grat game, it's fun, it's guild wars 2 where you don't lose senses of role since tanking, healing, and DPSing like mad still exists, it could be greater than Guild Wars 2 if not many people getting put off by Wildstar cartoony-superdeformed design,I'll probably will played some Open Beta to see whether this issue continues to be a hindrance or not
The thing on the right picture is a patch of begonia sp, if you're not familiar with begonia you might want to look at your sixth grade biology textbook, it's one of the most complex flower family, also a common one (and yes, a nightmarish version of them exist on all fantasy media, like those man-eater plants). this flowershrub on the picture have nautilus style, pretty slick and awesome IMO. So anyway what's a picture of flower doing in my blog?
Let me get back a bit, a few weeks ago I stared at my Steam folder and found out that I have like ten unplayable games, and a quick look at my folder reminds me that I just bought The Secret World and have no time to play it alongside Guild Wars 2 and Final Fantasy XIV, I have a project on SWTOR to ensure whether their f2p style is a trap or just a plain hindrance, apparently I only racked three days worth of my game time to it to reach level 30, (I finished it yesterday), not to mention I also have to sacrifice FFXIV for it, long story short: what happened? PS: I just remembered that I also had Defiance and only played it for like 5 hours
I guess I was burnt out, more likely I was burnt out not because of the games, but of my activity around it, like hunting news, beta testing, give some feedback to devs, forum trolling, blogging, and so on, I have done this since three years ago with occasional game-jumping and sub-continuing (on WOW), I took a break on WOW and other games for a year due to real life situation, but this one is different since i have so many things to do, so many games to play and review that I don't even know where to start, or ends, or whatever. Also i noticed that I can only stay awake for two hour at nght, probably from work or I'm just not that fit anymore.
So as we continue, last week I met a friend, I don't usually make new one since my job and all gaming stuff prevent me from meeting people (which doen't have anything to do with work) and I was asked: "When was the last time you go out?", I hopelessly tried to rack my brain to find that information, I know that I must go out at a time, and embarrasingly: the only thing that I can remember is that a year ago, our Guild Wars 2 guild met offline (an annual event), after that everything was like work-related or something similar, family affairs and such.
I'm embarrased to say that I'm a complete shut in
Playing all MMORPGs was my very goal, it won't matter if I like it or not, just play them all, review them all, see them all, follow them all, it gives me something to do beside work which I also have several similar set of goals, MMORPGs is a life that I discovered and build from scratch when I was still a lone beach wanderer on Anarchy Online six years ago. Building a gaming community is also a nice touch, although it will be constantly changing by trends, some people stay, some people go, I still believe a good gaming community transcends the game itself but what happens when the game itself wear you out? I'm not expecting this, I though the constant stream of MMORPGs can prevent something trivial like boredom, but what happened wasn't boredom, it was "too much of a good thing".
So, the flower picture was sent for me, per request, The other picture is a photo I took on my trip to Bali several years ago (see? I did go out) I think it's time to take a break from gaming, I don't know what I'll do though, before I met MMORPGs I have nothing to talk about except works, and probably hobbies I never did anymore but I think I found that the outside's getting more and more interesting...You know, I met a lot of nice people online, I also a witness of how anonymity can bring the worst of mankind, ingame it's nice to see guildies pulling their weight for you. It was just like someone offgame that barely knows you, spent five hours on each and every day going to and from work, and still found some time to meet you, it was wonderful act and deserves your outmost gratitude, why? Because they're good people, that's all.
If you're not familiar with Gundam franchise you should know that it's a long running anime series about mass-murdering adolescents who piloted giant robots, every installment of Gundam deals with war and their effects to the people involved in them, at least until a failed effort called Gundam Age failed to deliver these things and make the show a joke. There's an HD OVA (mini series) called Gundam Unicorn (out on bi-three-monthly schedule) which still retain the premise. But unfortunately it's not enough, so former Gundam series creator and developers created a new series called Valvrave which embodies all past Gundam's niche.
Valvrave opened with familiar setting, fancy schoolboys and girls hangong out in their school, then war shoved in front of them in form of an invasion, giant robot appears and they have no choice to pilot it or their loved ones die, in this one Tokishima Haruto takes the helm of a suddenly appeared giant robot called Valvrave, unfortunately (formerly) unknown to him that it has dire consequences for him (and become more dire as the series progressed), the situation get more complicated when a genius calculative invader called L-Elf Karlstein suddenly switches side and join his forces. The story revolves around the survival attempt and consequences Haruto and his cohorts did to keep their independence.
There are a lot of going on in Valvrave as it borrows many elements from hit series, the cold and calculative L-elf can be related to Lelouch from another sunrise series: Code Geass or L of Death Note, Haruto is the narrow-minded straight good guy with little development but realistic, Haruto's schoolmates (lots of them) are supportive characters with their own reason to fight and support. There's also elements of mystic/supranatural as a balance of this story . But the one thing about Valvrave is that every elements of this series plays right, there's almost zero anticlimactic feeling after each episode, also there's always something going on with these kids and it's not here by itself or suddenly appeared, but surfaced as a result of their own doing in the past. As the series progressed more Valvrave are discovered and these kids despite knowing the consequences decided to pilot it, the thing is that it keeps the audience guessing who's the next pilot as a part of the series' appeal, and when it finally revealed it's not from a single scene of private episodic heroism but a clever chain of events from past epsiodes which it's plot twist can be shocking and unpredictable up to the borderline of controversy, it's not really subtle but it works.
Love story exist in Valvrave as a support plot, it takes form of impossible ones, nothing from these stories can be considered 'worked out' due to another elements of the plot: Lies/Truth and Indifferences, it can be considered harsh at some points, it's not a main dish of the main plot but it served as a foundation of expanding it. Indifference also plays major part in the global conflict as the little struggle of survival becomes international incident and ignite all out war between nations, and it was executed nicely without have to shove the audience an episode of just a laser battle between Gundams... i mean Valvraves
Element of Strategy plays a pivotal role of Valvrave since it's not only the Valvrave fighting out there, the transition of the naive schoolkids into battle-hardened veterans going on smoothly without making their original personality disappear, L-elf as the mysterious genius plays battle of wits on almost episode not only with the enemy but with his allies, and for each battle more of his personality begins to open up without leaving his original cold calculating self gone.
Valvrave is Gundam, I can give you that but it has it's own story, it's own design, it's own twisted imperfect sense of justice, turmoil is the Valvrave series main engine even when there's episode of peace, there's many plot in this series that has the potential of becoming a sequel even when it has been resolved, it's only a story about several schoolkids which the world altered between rejecting and accepting them, back and forth regarding of a global situation. Valvrave made everything logical, as it's slogan: "The system that unveils the world", exposing the truth can be harsh, sometimes people can't accept it, but acknowledging that people is different than you doesn't mean they held a gunpoint to your head, but when fear of differences has gripped you... you'll see guns everywhere and you'll shoot first.
