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Star Wars: Episode VIII

If you thought Star Wars: Episode VII was bad then you might want to watch it one more time just to make sure you have all your facts right before you watch this film. I promise you, I will /NOT/ spoil this for anyone, but I will do what I can to inform you.

I really, really, REALLY enjoyed this film. It beats out the newer Episodes I, II, and III for me, as well as VII. It has so much potential that just doesn’t seem to be wasted, though I can’t wait for the deleted scenes when the DVD comes out. You have adequate time between EACH of the main characters, even Evil Ginger. You get to see advanced AT-ATs (I think they call them something else now), a new Tie ‘plane’, interesting other new vehicles, and cute little critters that should’ve been done in place of the Gungans long ago, not even including the Salt Foxes that still look bad-ass despite only really having a minor point in the film.

You get answers to some questions, and more questions. Yes, to answer one thing, there is a little bit of rehashing of what you had in the original trilogy, but believe me... this film is soooooo worth watching. What are you doing? Get up off your ass and head to the theatre now. I’m being serious.

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Call of Duty: World War II

I am probably not in the consensus here, but I can say this: Until this game, I was a major fan of Call of Duty. I’ve played almost all of the other ones, since the old 90′s ones and until Black Ops II or maybe the one after that. Yes, this game does depict World War II... but in truth, that’s really all it seems to do. The Multiplayer is the same as what it used to be, but with graphics upgrades and with microtransactions (I’ll get into that in a bit) you can change your appearance.

So, if you go Multiplayer you get the different branches of government(s): Infantry, Airborne, Heavy Gunner, Mountain (sniper), and Close Quarters. Now, I might have forgotten one or misnamed one, but in truth its the same old stuff as in the older games, but just World War II... which is how the game really started. Upgrade weapons by using them more or advancing in level and using an unlock token that you can use on other things.

The Single Player is actually fairly decent and I had fun until I ran into a bug on the third or fourth mission (the one where you fight through the Church and run outside it) and despite running through at least 20 smoke grenades and three reload checkpoints, as well as restarting the X-Box once... the smoke grenade (either thrown or from the rifle) would land where I was told to get it but it wouldn’t count it. One time I killed so many Nazis that it stopped spawning them, but even then it wouldn’t let me progress so I just quit the game.

Ah, now we get to the main hitch: Microtransactions. For those of you who jumped all over Battlefront II for Microtransactions, realize that there was only a certain amount of items you needed and you could craft most of them. In Call of Duty: World War II, you can’t craft them. It literally is a pay to get your collection ‘unless you just spend all the time in the world’ to get the in-game credits to do it. Still, this deserves even worse hype than Battlefront II for Microtransactions and yet I haven’t heard a peep from those who chewed out Battlefront II.

Overall, I think this game isn’t worth it. For once, I’m more likely to buy a Battlefield game (almost any of them) over this one, and sure as hell intend on buying Battlefront II instead of this piece of crap.

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Dawn of Andromeda

So, I looked at the trailers for this game and I was in awe. It looked like such a wonderful game, I mean it has the Terrans which almost any game has (or else a lot of people would quit if Humans never made it into space *ahemTrumpahem*), but it has a few unique concepts like a species made out of Ice who, unfortunately, look like the Silicoids from Master of Orion, though the most unique was a race of swirling Will’o’wisps who colonized Gas Giants. I thought that was awesome. So, I did what any other gamer would do when you have the money. I bought it.

That was a big mistake. It was laggy, it was choppy, it automatically had me set on Ultra which was nice for the first millisecond before the game’s zoom ability had my computer screen bounce around more than a pickup truck on an extremely bad back road. I went so far as to set my graphics to the lowest quality and it still did it. The races each have the same tech except for three individual techs each race has, which... guess what, you can customize your own race to own. I made a pretty powerful race that would give me the ability to, within ten years, convince almost anyone to do anything I wanted them to do.

I couldn’t see the space combat because it never happened within the two hours I owned the game and the constant bouncing that never even let me see my gorram ship.

Now, before you say it was my Laptop’s specs, I already checked. I am capable of running it on Ultra and worse yet was they had already had a new patch and it was a week ago so they shouldn’t have had that problem. So, I got a refund on my game. If you don’t see my hint, I don’t suggest you buy it. Pass it over until its dirt cheap ($5 or so) and then try it for yourself if you want. DO NOT pay the full $30 for it unless you really want to waste that money or hope for a refund.

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Star Citizen

You know, a lot of people are going to gripe at me about this because they worships the Roberts name and in the past I would too. However, I note first off that it is still technically in the Alpha stage, so things will change.

I’m going to keep this short and to the point. Don’t buy it now. Seriously, if you value my opinion at all... just don’t. This game has not been well-thought out as they think and project to people. They slow their servers down for players so that they can work on things, and in the process it’s too slow to do anything. I once spent a whole day just trying to get out of the hangar bay (16 hours) and I did it three times, of which only once did I /not/ crash into the space station but instead got a short distance out of the station before I was attacked by a non-lagged NPC Pirate and accordingly blown up.

Wait until this game hits release, or at the very least until they fix all that they have messed up. Until then, look into games like Elite: Dangerous if you are looking for Space Flight simulations. Otherwise, you’re going to waste your money and I wasted my Christmas money last year on this game, and I do mean I wasted it because if it wasn’t the lag for trying to take off, it was the lag in trying to do first-person-shooting like they advertise, or even just exploring the station. Heck, you can lag so hard that instead of getting into your ship (which is the size of a submarine drone), if you ended up on the space station that has the hanger on the outside you’re just going to fall into space.

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Planetside 2

Yes, this time it’s a video game instead of a series, and instead of being dead, this game is very much alive. As in hundreds of people playing it alive. It’s a fun, wonderful game that has three sides: The Vanu Sovereignty (my personal favorite) who use and worship Alien Technology (despite not really having aliens in the game, which seems to be a short-coming to me), the Terran Republic who was the original empire by which the other two factions sprung from, and the New Conglomerate which is ran by freedom fighters who left the Terran Republic to no longer be slaves.

Technology differs from each faction, though the VS has the most different tech than any other faction, while some of the TR and NC weaponry and vehicles. Other than that, the most important thing to know is this: It’s a LARGE version of Capture the Flag with... I think it’s up to four continents not counting the newbie area, and there’s constant warfare, though there is also now base building with the option to spend all of your time mining Cortium, though I don’t suggest it.

Now, there is more to it than just jumping into the game and blasting away with rifles. You’ve got 5 normal classes and one additional class that can be accessed after you get to a terminal: Engineer (my favorite), Light Trooper, Heavy Trooper, Infiltrator, and Medic with the sixth being a MAX ( Mechanized Assault Exo-Suit), and of course a range of weapons from Rifles to Pistols, Sniper Rifles, and even Sub-Machine guns, Rocket Launchers, grenades of various types, mines, and this is just the basic info. While there are currently no water vehicles (water = BAD, you drown, you die, no save versus death), there are land and air vehicles on all three sides though they differ.

If you thought that was as fun as it gets, I suggest you try being a gunner. Vehicle, Turret on a Fort, on the back of a Marauder... you name it, its glorious.

So, if you’re sitting alone at home on a PC with nothing to do and wanting to play a First Person Shooter than is free and a tremendous bit of fun, I do suggest Planetside 2. Unlike a large number of games, it is /NOT/ a pay to win game. You do get Certs in-game that let you buy and upgrade things, though there /are/ certain weapons that are more for cosmetic effect than capability that are only available with real currency.

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Firefly

A television series that ended waaaaaay too soon. A series that had so much support that I’m quite surprised that they didn’t continue it (damn you rich bureaucrats and Fox). Call it a Cult Classic if you want, but I wouldn’t really call it a Cult Classic. I’d just call it a Sci-Fi Classic. Yes, they made the movie Serenity where we lost a few members, no spoilers here, but this TV series despite the one season was a very lovely show that mixed Cowboys and Sci-Fi. Instead of the Railroad Tycoons you had the Alliance which was a conglomeration of Central Planets that became richer and richer while making the outer worlds poorer and poorer.

Give the ‘main character’ the role of Captain and a former member of a defeated military force that was the enemy of the Alliance, and his second in command is also a survivor of the same force and worked alongside him. The Pilot was a corny, yet very capable worker who was also married to the second in command, the Engineer was never trained as an engineer but lived on a farm and was just a natural at mechanics. Add a mercenary who had an occasional need to betray the team, a Preacher who had more secrets and knowledge of the Alliance to make you think he was an Agent of the Alliance until he realized the cause of the crew, a Companion... yeah, I’ll let you figure that one out on your own without getting in trouble, and then an ex-rich Doctor with a ‘sick’ sister who turned out to be an experiment into Psionics/Genetics.

Despite all of that information, it was a wonderful series and should have continued on. Unfortunately, Fox being who they were, find a series that works and cut it off at the head.

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Babylon 5

I know many of you have heard of this TV Show. If you haven’t, then you have never truly seen Science Fiction at its finest. It lasted five seasons, had two shows that tried to life off the ground from it, and a handful of Mini-Movies.

It was a series that accomplished what a lot of people wanted: Drama, Action, Military Issues, Politics, Personal Relationships, even heterosexual-acceptable romance. There were plenty of species, and most of all they usually just came to the station and weren’t having to be found elsewhere (in most cases).

And the Space Battles... this is the main thing I loved about the series, was the space battles. From what I hear, the miracles that we saw every episode were done on AMIGA machines. I don’t even know if you could call them Computers, because those things were so old, but everything was so many bits of beautiful that you would never have known they didn’t come from top-of-the-line technology.

I will admit, I’m one of those who felt that the first season didn’t really take off easily. I watched each episode, but felt forced into it by family. What my father watched, I usually watched. However, the moment Season Two began and even the Prequel ‘In the Beginning’, I was hooked. A new captain (the previous one had orders to go to Minbar as an ambassador) took over control of the station and yes, more hell reigned but every bit of hell that we loved. The barbarous Narn Ambassador G’kar would rant and foam at the mouth over this or that, while the Diplomatic and ever Narcissistic ambassador Londo whined about how not everything was perfect for him; Ambassador Delenn was mysterious, but never as mysterious as Ambassador Kosh, who was always in an encounter suit, supposedly because his species couldn’t breath the same air that the other species could. Almost every species has tried to visit even the space that Kosh’s people existed in, but none returned.

So, Season 2 is usually my suggestion, but if you are a completionist, watch Season 1 at your own peril. Season 3 only gets better, no spoilers here, and Season 4 is where everything hits its peak... but only because J. Michael Straczynski was informed that the show was being cancelled. Since he wanted to put everything in order, they rushed a lot of the plot and pretty much sealed and dealt the whole series. Then the problem came when they found out that there would be another Season. Season 5. The Captain of Babylon 5 was elsewhere (ahem, not gonna spoil that), so they put someone new in control. positions changed, people were added, people were lost, but most of all the plot went out of control. I think that they were improvising through their teeth on that season and finally it would be over.

Then there was Babylon 5: Crusade which lasted about half a season, I think, and Babylon 5: Legend of the Rangers (I think it was called) survived a Pilot episode before it was cancelled.

So, if you ask me if Babylon 5 should be revived, I’m about 50/50 on it. The fact that Andreas Katsulas (G’kar) and Richard Biggs (Dr. Franklin), 2 of the more important actors have passed away, I doubt you’d have the continuation you want without having to go much further into the future or dip into the past, or as a last suggestion and desperate measure, reboot... there was too much beauty to just simply erase.

“I believe that when we leave a place, part of it goes with us and part of us remains. Go anywhere in the station when it is quiet, and just listen. After a while, you will hear the echoes of all our conversations, every thought and word we've exchanged. Long after we are gone, our voices will linger in these walls for as long as this place remains. But I will admit that the part of me that is going will very much miss the part of you that is staying.” - G’kar.

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Space: Above and Beyond

“Looking darkly upon Hector, swift footed Achilles answered, ‘I cannot forgive you. As there are no trustworthy oaths between men and lions, there can be no love between you and me. Before then to glut with his blood, Ares, the god who fights under the shield’s guard. Now the time comes for you to be a spearman and a bold warrior. You will pay in a lump for all the sorrows of my companions you have killed in your spear’s fury.’” - Lt. Colonel Tyrus Cassius “TC” McQueen, quoted from Episode 15, 'The Angriest Angel’. This show had the potential of Star Trek (not Enterprise) but had neither the funding nor the correct time slot to last past the first Season. Like 'Firefly’, it was gone too briefly and while they knew it and resolved a few of their stories, were it not rushed and cancelled we could have had an epic Sci-fi series on our hands. I had put up on Change.org a request for them to remake the series or continue it, I even tried to contact the creators to get an answer from them without luck. I guess when you have such a marvellous dream and it gets torn down so easily you step away too. The series was about a number of things. A Lt. Colonel whose extra capable squad 'The Angry Angels’, loses everyone to a new alien species that does not want peace; a colonists whose love of his life he is separated from because a company needed to put in vitro into the project, which allows him to join the Marine Corp in order to have a chance at being stationed at the planet that she was going to be on, though everything fell through when the colony ship was attacked and some of the it’s colonists either killed or taken hostage; an in vitro who escaped the learning facility in order to be free, only tto be arrested while trying to get an honest job and being assaulted by his 'fellow’ man, who treat his kind as scum, leading to his arrest and not theirs which allowed him the choice to either go to prison or enter the Marine Corp; a Marine Corp woman who was raised by the Corp and whose parents were murdered by Artificial Intelligence resistance fighters before they 'took a chance’ and left Earth, and while she tried to take care of her sisters she had no inclination for leadership once she actually got into the corp; then the last two characters who would have had a better background if the show lasted longer. As usual, they aren’t the only ones in their Platoon (?), but sometimes they are assigned new characters into their squad as well. It’s a story that expresses the turmoil of human survival against enemies of their own creation (AIs) who have sided with the new Alien enemies, while maintaining hope of survival. And their Alien enemies on rare occasion show that perhaps War isn’t the only thing on their mind but I don’t spoil that for you. So, I highly recommend watching this series and assisting me in trying to get it re-instated.

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Andromeda TV Series

You know, a lot of people look at Science-Fiction TV Series with disdain, because there tend to be too many of them. Look at them now. Fallen Skies, Doctor Who, Star Trek: Discovery, The Orville, Legends of Tomorrow (technically more of a superhero, but a lot of Sci-Fi in it), etc...

One thing people dismiss is that there are a lot of good older shows. Today, I want to showcase Andromeda. Right now I only have the DVD for the first season, but I had seen 5 seasons of it back when it came out. A TV show about a Space Captain in a Commonwealth that accepted all species that fell because one of those species decided it had fallen into weak decadence. Captain Dylan Hunt was ambushed by (I think it was 500 Nietzschean) ships and his own first officer. While his crew abandoned ship, Hunt was left to fight off his first officer and after killing him they fell into the grip of the black hole, frozen in time and space for 300 years. When a salvage crew came to take the ship (not knowing if there would be anyone onboard) to sell it to a high bidder, they pulled the ship out of the edge of the black hole and brought him back to normal time.

The Commonwealth had fallen, and despite this band of misfits who initially wanted to take his ship, they were cast aside as well by their employer who they later made up with. They signed on with Captain Hunt in order to achieve their own agendas but worked with him to help restore the Commonwealth. Now, I recall the first two seasons being awesome, but after that it started to get progressively worse. Still, if you look at it as compared to some modern day Sci-Fi shows, I think Andromeda kicks their ass in all but FX. Revamp the show and I’m certain you would have something that people would be drooling over.

Well, kids, that’s my first blog of both the day and ever. I’ll do another one tomorrow on Space: Above and Beyond.