#it will look like 2014 havoc in heaven | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mediabasedlife · 4 years

Text

A Look Back At...The Last Generation (2013-2020)

I’d like to start this off by thanking those who encouraged me to write this article, my friends and family who encouraged me to rekindle this project despite my own trepidation. I hope its quality lives up to those lofty expectations.

Say what you will about the hobby, gaming is in many ways the gift that keeps on giving. Every year there are hundreds, if not thousands of new offerings for every brand of player out there. And wouldn't you know it, there's a fairly significant portion of that library that are actually pretty good. Now, people will argue ad infinitum about what games are the best, or what consoles, or even which generation trumps the rest. This diversity of opinion is what has allowed gaming discussion to thrive just as potently as the medium which it encapsulates. Like any opinion, all of this is especially subjective; great games have been coming out pretty much every year since gaming began, a trend that seems like it will continue as long as gaming itself continues to thrive. While some may argue, I would say the latest generation thrived especially well. Ignoring the Wii-U, since I never owned one, and skirting around handhelds, the latest generation spanned the life of the Xbox One, the PlayStation 4, and technically, the Nintendo Switch. And through their seven-year life [switch notwithstanding], we saw the release of some truly excellent games - from top budget AAA titles to humble indie offerings. Now, in 2020, while we as a community are taking our first steps into the new generation of gaming, I think it fair to take pause, gaze back, and remember some of the games that made the latest generation so memorable for so many.

2013

2013 marked the start of the last-gen, with the release of both the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4. Both consoles were built to shepherd out their predecessors, marking leaps in visual fidelity and infrastructure that would empower them to become the monoliths of gaming that they hoped to be. I won't say that both consoles had an equally vibrant launch, but they both tried to put their best foot forward. While the Xbox was busy desperately trying to become the multimedia center for your living room, Sony kicked off the next generation in style, releasing a whole seven days earlier than its competitor. With the Xbox not far behind, both consoles brought a suite of new, shiny games to play. Well, in theory, anyway. I'm not here to speak of the quality of the launch lineups of either console, but what I can do is list off the game that stood out, and why it made it onto my list.

-Assassin's Creed Black Flag Black Flag actually saw its initial release on the PS3 and Xbox 360 almost a month prior to the soon to be current generation, but with both new consoles came a second release, one that came equipped with all the bells and whistles you'd expect from what was then a next-gen game. It doesn't look good for my list to start things off on a technicality, but this game is worth it. Black Flag remains one of my top three Assassin's Creed Games, which is saying a lot considering the sheer scale of the franchise. Fresh off the love it or hate it Assassin's Creed III, Black Flag looked to take a revitalized approach to the franchise formula, playing off of fan feedback, expanding upon what fans loved from AC3, and adding in new activities and a broader, fresher open world to explore. In it, you play as Edward Kenway, a charming rogue of a pirate who kicks the game off by stealing the identity of a defected Assassin. Expecting nothing more than riches and glory, his masquerade instead goes quickly sour, thrusting Edward into the conspiracy filled, secretive world of the Assassin and Templar conflict. What makes this story stand out is how different Edward was as a protagonist, seeing him acting largely indifferent to the traditional formula the assassin's creed games had followed thus far. The game's setting also helped it immensely; the game plays more like a pirate simulator, seeing players sail the Caribbean searching out treasures and fame, gathering a sturdy ship and a hearty crew, engaging in thrilling naval battles, and basking in the warm glow of the sun-drenched sands that define the game's many islands. Along the way, you interact with a bevy of historical or mythical figures, such as Blackbeard, Captain Kidd, Calico Jack, and many more. All of this came together to create an immensely satisfying game, a standout amidst its peers and predecessors, and an experience that still stands the test of time despite the numerous sequels it has received.

2014

2014 was the year the new generation really started to pick up. The consoles had begun to get their footing, truly ushering in the next wave of quality games and proving their value to the players. Several critically acclaimed games got their start here or saw revitalized releases on the current generation of consoles. However, there were a few strays, games that elected to release on the prior consoles first and foremost, games that wouldn't see new-gen ports for some time, and others that never did, but still merited recognition and praise. But how many will make it onto my list? Well, you'll just have to read on.

-Titanfall Titanfall was, for me, the first game on the Xbox One that truly cemented it as a worthy purchase. It was a melting pot of ideas and innovation that I immediately fell in love with. Built with an always-online principle, Titanfall sees players engaging in a pseudo-campaign of multiple, looping competitive matches. On the surface, you could easily glance Titanfall's way and see nothing remarkable. Another first-person shooter in a sea of competitors, all of whom had far more clout at the time. But what set Titanfall apart from the start was its dedication to movement, satisfying and fast-paced gunplay, and especially, robots. See, Titanfall's whole gimmick is this; players take on the role of Pilots, better than average soldiers of the far future who are deployed in times of conflict as superior ground troops, but more importantly, heavy artillery. As pilots perform well on the battlefield, they can call in the titular Titanfall, summoning their respective Titan to the fray. Titans are large, deadly mechs that can be piloted by the player to give them a distinct advantage in battle. What this translates to in gameplay is simple; as players make their way through matches, they build up a meter which when filled allows them to call down a massive robot to wreak havoc. Every player can do this, usually multiple times a match if they're good enough. Titans are fast, tough, and lethal, and fun as hell to control. But what kept the game balanced was the fact that titans weren't invincible. All players came equipped with anti-titan weaponry, alongside their usual loadout of rifles or handguns. This meant that anyone could take a titan down if they were savvy. The titans, coupled with the frantic movement and satisfying shooting, made Titanfall a one of a kind game. It's fitting, then, that the inevitable sequel would go on to improve on it in virtually every way, but that'll have to wait for later.

-Diablo 3 I will admit to not having played this in its initial release window, in fact, some years would pass before I finally picked it up on console during a sale. And though my time with it was quite belated, I would still consider it to be a genuinely fun game, one worthy of being on this list. In Diablo 3, players choose between seven classes; Wizard, Monk, Necromancer, Witch Doctor, Demon Hunter, Barbarian, or Crusader. From there, they are thrust into the demon-plagued land of Sanctuary, beginning their adventure in the town of New Tristram. Each class has a different backstory and a slightly different narrative throughout, but the core throughline is thus; you are sent to the village to investigate reports of a falling star, only to be swept up in a fight against hell and heaven itself for the fate of the world. In terms of game difficulty, the game sports an impressive twenty difficulty tiers; easy, normal, hard, master, and then sixteen levels of torment. Should players want an even greater challenge, there's also hardcore mode, which starts you off with permadeath: you get one life, no exceptions. Die, and the character is gone for good. Overall, I would say that Diablo's biggest strength is in its gameplay loop; Diablo plays like a top-down, hack and slash role-playing game, with players exploring the various levels in search of loot all the while battling hordes of enemies and leveling up, earning new abilities and skills that players can swap out to create their ideal builds. The core gameplay loop, while simple, is wildly addictive, with a massive loot pool to chase in an effort to grow ever stronger. Each class plays differently, but all of them are easy to learn. Diablo also supports local and online multiplayer, making it a great game to play with friends or family.

-Sunset Overdrive Sunset Overdrive is a game I've previously covered on this blog before. In fact, I'd say I did such a good job that if you want to read about it, go read that article. But if you'd rather not click away, let me give you the TL;DR. Sunset overdrive is a satirical open world game made by Insomniac in which you play as a cocky and comedic hero out to save their city from a bogus energy drink that caused a pseudo-zombie outbreak. It's built around movement, with the player grinding on rails and running on walls and doing everything they can to stay mobile while gunning down the mutated enemies and exploring the environment. It's funny and feels great to play while being hampered by an underwhelming character creator and suite of customization options, but still manages to come out on top as an immensely satisfying game.

-Destiny Destiny is the brainchild of one Bungie studios, the original creators of Halo, the next game on this list. Fresh off their amicable split from Microsoft, Bungie did what they did best; develop a truly great FPS. But this time, they added a twist; Destiny is equal parts Shooter, Looter, and MMO. It took these three core ingredients and mixed them together with gusto, delivering an immensely entertaining game that felt incredible to play both alone or with your friends. The story of destiny is a long one, but can be summarized simply; Some years in the future, Humanity met and allied with an alien being known as the Traveller, an alliance that heralded massive technological and social leaps, ushering in the new Golden Age of humanity. Unfortunately, the Traveller's natural enemies, The Darkness, attacked the solar system, destroying much, and whittling down the last survivors to a single safe city. In response, the Traveller created Guardians, reanimated protectors infused with the Traveller's power, tasked with defending the earth and all its colonies from the encroaching forces of evil that threaten this dwindling peace. Resurrected by a ghost, an emissary of the Traveller, you play as one of these Guardians; taking on the role of either the agile Hunter, the cosmically magical Warlock, or the strong and stalwart Titan. From there, you could either progress alone or join up with friends to take on the challenges of the solar system, pushing back the forces of darkness. Although lacking in longevity in its first outing, destiny was quickly expanded and iterated upon, turning it from an already impressive game to a true powerhouse and pillar of its genre.

-Halo: The Master Chief Collection I won't pretend this started off as a flawless, perfect compilation of prior Halo games. But I love Halo, and I loved playing these games again, so it makes the list. Especially after all of the improvements and subsequent additions 343 made to the collection post-launch. On release, it featured Halo CE, Halo 2, Halo 3, and Halo 4, but has since gone on to include Halo 3: ODST and Halo Reach as well. If you're unfamiliar, Halo is a staple franchise in the Xbox lineup, and the master chief collection sought to unify all of the prior releases under one umbrella for the newest console. Halo is a sci-fi FPS franchise, largely following the saga of the titular Master Chief Petty Officer, John-117. John, or Master Chief as he is more commonly called, is a Spartan; a supersoldier of the future, who fights to protect humanity from an alien collective dubbed The Covenant. In the first game, Master Chief crash lands on an alien ringworld known as Halo, which later turns out to be an ancient superweapon created to exterminate all sentient life in the galaxy. Subsequent games only build the stakes from there, seeing John stave off one intergalactic threat after another in a franchise that continues to satisfy time and again. What the Master Chief Collection does is bundle everything up in one convenient package, while simultaneously offering tweaks and improvements to complement the technological advancements of the new consoles. It offers local and online multiplayer, both for its story and its competitive modes. Overall, even with the flawed beginnings, I would consider The master chief collection a must-have for Xbox players.

-Grand Theft Auto V Ah yes, GTAV, the game that refuses to die. Technically, this game released on the Xbox 360 and ps3, but it's been put on the PS4/XBO and now even the PS5 and the latest Xboxes too. I won't be surprised if this game gets ported to the consoles that come after that, too, in seven or so years. This game just won't quit. But that's also a testament to the dedication of its player base and the overall quality of the game itself. GTAV is an irreverent, biting joy of a game, replete with humor and charisma. It was, and remains, the latest in Rockstar's open-world crime franchise, in which players take on the role of not one, but three separate characters trying to make their way through life in Los Santos California; Michael, a retired crook stuck in the witness protection system, Michael's former, quite deranged partner Trevor, and rounding out the cast is Franklin, a street-savvy up and comer. Together they go about committing numerous heists, shady deals, and more than a few moments of mayhem in their quest for glory. Its secondary selling point was a robust and open-ended online mode, where players could create their own character and participate in myriad activities with and against their friends and strangers for fame, money, and clout. This is the mode that has kept GTA going in the years since its release, and it is the mode that has seen the most improvements and updates as well. I spent a not inconsiderable amount of time in it myself, but it was always the story of Michael, Trevor, and Franklin that drew me in overall.

-Tales from the Borderlands Tales from the Borderlands is the only Telltale game I'm putting in this whole list. Not for lack of quality on the other games' parts, but simply because this one has to be my favorite. For those unfamiliar, Borderlands is a series of FPS games that take place far in the future on the fringes of space; the titular Borderlands. It follows a revolving door of ragtag Vault Hunters, people who go in search of mythical, alien "vaults" that are rumored to contain vast amounts of treasure. They are incredibly popular, addicting looter shooters that match satisfying gunplay with beautiful cell-shaded graphics, topped off with charming and funny characters and not too shabby storytelling. Telltale games, on the other hand, are traditional point and click adventure games, released in episodic formats and usually broken down into seasons. They focus on storytelling first and foremost, showcasing incredibly compelling narratives influenced by player choice. You'd think, then, that these two dichotomous formats wouldn't pair well together at all, but Tales from the Borderlands proves that sentiment is wildly false. Tales from the borderlands took what was great about previous telltale games, and matched it perfectly to an original tale set in the Borderlands universe. It weaves an incredibly compelling narrative, filled with equal parts humor and feeling, and manages to tell one of the best Borderlands stories to date.

2015

I don't have a lot to say about 2015. The new generation was still going strong and saw some truly excellent games grace its shelves, many of whom are going to appear below.

-Bloodborne 2015 kicked off incredibly strong with Bloodborne, the latest instant classic from the studio behind the equally popular Dark Souls franchise. Bloodborne melds the skill-oriented, punishing combat and exploration heavy maps of the Souls games with an eldritch, psychological atmosphere, a match so perfect it went together like peanut butter and chocolate. To espouse the story of Bloodborne would be an effort in itself, but I shall do my best to summarize it; Shirking the more medieval settings of the Souls games before it, Bloodborne sees players navigating the victorian gothic town of Yarnham, a city plagued by beasts and monsters. It is these monsters you are tasked with dispatching, taking on the role of a Hunter of Beasts, sent to cleanse the town of that which ails it. But not is all as it seems, and the beasts may not be the only monsters Yarnham has to offer. Outside of its interpretive yet incredibly strong narrative, Bloodborne offered equally polished gameplay, iterating on the previously mentioned combat from prior dark souls games to create a punishing yet wildly satisfying gameplay loop that was easy to learn yet hard to master. Bloodborne forced players to always be on their guard but gave them no shield or barrier with which to do so, believing that offense was the greatest defense, making success hinge on your willingness to fight and your skill in surviving the nightmares that Yarnham had to offer. A melding of horror, action, and exploration, Bloodborne was a true success, cementing itself for years to come as a top tier action-RPG, and saw countless fans that remain dedicated to it to this day.

-The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt I'm going to be blunt; This is one of my favorite games of the last generation. It is a top tier RPG, made up of an incredibly charming cast of characters, a beautiful open world, and a thrilling, fantastical narrative that all come together to make one of the best games to release in the last seven years. Though a sequel to not only two prior games, but also a long line of books, The Witcher 3 was surprisingly friendly to newcomers, of which I was one at the time. Despite its pedigree, I felt right at home in the world of the Witcher, quickly picking up on what I had missed in its long and storied life. The Witcher 3 puts players in the role of Geralt of Rivia, the titular Witcher, a magically enhanced human tasked with routing out monsters that threaten the world of man. This time around, Geralt is searching for his ward, Ciri, as he navigates a world fraught with monsters and men in equal measure. what starts as a simple search for a missing friend quickly blossoms into an adventure for the fate of the world itself. Though a fantasy RPG at its heart, the witcher manages to tell some particularly grounded and human stories, and this game is no exception. One moment will see you stalking a beast out in the wild, the next will see you navigating political intrigue in the courts of royalty. But it all flows together to create one of the best RPGs I've ever played, and one that earned a not inconsiderable amount of well-deserved praise when it first debuted back in 2015.

-Assassin's Creed Syndicate Hot off the heels of the muddied AC Unity, Syndicate was the last proper Assassin's Creed game before the franchise would experience a massive genre and gameplay shift in its next entry. Where Unity saw too much focus on graphics and not enough care anywhere else, Syndicate finely balances all of its parts to create an impressive experience overall. This time around, players get to visit London, at the tail end of its industrial revolution. Out goes flintlocks and swords, in came steam and steel. This entry sees players in the role of both Evie and Jacob Frye, siblings fresh off their induction into the Assassin Brotherhood, tasked with dispatching justice on their Templar foes across London. The setting isn't the only big change for this game, as Syndicate saw an overhaul in both visual quality, scale, and gameplay. London feels lived large and lived in, with plenty of ground to explore and streets filled with people going about their day-to-day. Missions are split between Jacob and Evie both, with some allowing you to pick and choose and others forcing you into the shoes of one or the other as they work together to clean up the city. It innovated on the traditional gameplay loop, with this game having you going from borough to borough, toppling its templar leaders and expanding your sphere of influence with the aid of historical figures like Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and Nikola Tesla. These famous faces are not the only people lending the Fryes their helping hand, as Syndicate also put the Fryes in charge of their own street gang, a ragtag group of brawlers and scouts that would come to their aid at the press of a button. Most times, conquering a borough involved you and your gang scrapping it out with those of the templar order, dusting knuckles to see who got the final say in the control of the area. This may seem at odds with the traditionally stealth-oriented approach prior games focused on, but that side of the game was not neglected either. Assassination missions saw fine-tuning and innovation as well, with players able to plan out and partake in uniquely tailored kills that matched the locale and personality of their target, from disguising yourself as a scientific cadaver to kill a corrupt doctor to allying with a guard and feigning capture to infiltrate and kill a target in the Tower of London. The game saw improvements out of combat as well, with Syndicate receiving a large overhaul in its parkour movement and general navigation. The Frye twins come equipped with a grappling hook that allows for speedy travel across London's many rooftops, while ground travel was made all the more expedient with the inclusion of horse-drawn carriages. The general parkour itself was also tuned, allowing for freer player movement and tighter directional control. All of this to say, Syndicate saw some truly welcomed improvements, iterating on the legacy and creating a lasting impression that stands up as one of the better games of the franchise.

-Star Wars Battlefront While I've spoken of a Battlefront on this blog before, this is not that same game. Rather, this is Battlefront 2015, a soft reboot to the previous Battlefront line of games for the new generation of consoles. This Star Wars Battlefront was helmed and developed by Dice, famed for the Battlefield franchise, a line of competent and entertaining military-focused first-person shooters. They were known for solid campaigns, but more importantly, massive scale competitive multiplayer modes. This pedigree is shown heavily in Battlefront, with the game sporting 64 players competitive multiplayer, with teams taking on the roles of either the empire or the rebellion as they fight their way through maps taken straight from the star wars universe, from the snowy plains of Hoth to the immense forests of Endor and everywhere in between. The game was replete with game modes and had the ability to be played in either first or third person. Players were given access to a modest selection of in-universe weaponry, and could even take the role of recognizable star wars heroes on occasion. Visually, the game was stunning, with incredibly faithful and detailed recreations from everything to weapons to the maps themselves. It felt like a genuine passion project, built from the ground up by competent developers and made for fans and first-timers alike. Battlefront, much like many games on this list, has since been usurped by a sequel but remains an incredibly competent shooter and a genuinely fun game to play.

2016

While 2015 saw the release of some truly impressive games, 2016 was a genuine powerhouse of a year. It saw the rise to prominence of Virtual Reality, through the oculus rift and the PlayStation VR. 2016 also saw the first re-released console of the current generation, in the form of the Playstation 4 Pro, a trend that Xbox would follow as well, seeing the release of 2016's Xbox One S, and in 2017, the Xbox One X. These were touted as faster, better performing, better-looking consoles than their base model predecessors, offering several enhancements to graphical fidelity and console performance, running games even better than they already did. And with these new consoles came an all-star suite of excellent games, a multitude of instant classics from big-name studios and fresh indie developers alike. Many of the games that released this year are ones I've individually covered before, but they still deserve their spot in this article. So without further ado, here are some of the most noteworthy games of 2016.

-Oxenfree Where Bloodborne was the standout hit that kicked off 2015, Oxenfree did the exact same thing for 2016. Developed by the California based indie team at Night School Studios, Oxenfree is a supernaturally infused, slice of life adventure game that follows Alex, a witty, rebellious, soon to be high school graduate as she makes her way to the fictional Edwards Island, accompanied by her best friend Ren and new stepbrother Jonah. This small group of friends is meeting up with what they assume will be a large group to have a weekend bash, But what was supposed to be a boisterous weekend party turns out to just be two extra guests; Clarissa, a fellow student who has ties to Alex, and Nona, a mild-mannered girl who just so happens to be Ren's current crush. Their modest get together quickly goes south when Alex uses a small handheld radio to tune into a weird signal emanating from the island, unleashing the spirits of a sunken military submarine, long since lost at sea. These wayward souls possess one of the kids and scatter the rest across the island, forcing Alex to uncover the mystery of their death and find a way to save her friends and escape the island. The game wears its inspirations on its sleeve, taking queues from classic ghost stories as much as it does retro coming of age stories, but it adapts these ideas masterfully. As for how it plays, Oxenfree is a side scrolling point and click adventure game, built around exploration and dialogue rather than complex game mechanics. It explores the interpersonal relationships between all the characters as much as it explores the haunted nature of the island itself. It easily shifts between these disparate tones, with a story filled with as many supernatural spooks as sarcastic teenage banter, seamlessly integrating player choice into the mix to create a truly excellent narrative. Oxenfree also features a high amount of replayability, with player choice going on to influence which of the game's many endings, as well as touting a new game plus mode that adds an extra smattering of content for your subsequent playthroughs. Oxenfree was a gift that kept on giving, more than earning its spot on this list.

-Firewatch Firewatch is the first of several 2016 games I've previously written about, and while my opinion of it may have not been the highest initially, ruminating on it since has led me to a new appreciation of the time I spent with it. I would recommend reading my original review, but the short summary is thus; you play as Henry, a man on the run from his troubles who takes a job in the Shoshone national forest, keeping an eye on the wildlife and ensuring nothing is amiss. Your companion through the game is Delilah, a voice through your walkie talkie, somebody else who has taken the same job as you over in one of the adjacent watchtowers. Throughout the game you explore the forest, keeping the area safe while exploring the mysteries of the area you now inhabit, all the while developing a friendly relationship with Delilah as you go. It's a simple, but satisfying first-person adventure game, with an emotionally charged but comedic narrative about one man's journey to get lost and find himself.

-Stardew Valley Stardew Valley is a retro-inspired simulator game about a down and out office worker who inherits their grandfather's farm in the titular Stardew Valley. They leave their mundane life behind and embark on a new journey in rural life, building up the farm from a rundown, untamed field into a bustling agricultural powerhouse, all the while making friends and forming bonds with the locals that you meet along the way. Stardew plays like a dream and features a stunning pixellated art style that complements its easygoing nature. Stardew is a game you can get lost in with ease, featuring an incredibly satisfying gameplay loop; It's a charmingly simple sim, one that encourages players to make their own way and their own choices, with a multitude of different ways to spend each in-game day. You're encouraged to play the game at your own pace, experiencing its range of content as it comes, rather than being railroaded into any one path for progression. It's a game that encourages exploration, diversity, and freedom, one that never really ends. Stardew made waves when it first came out for being such an open-ended, friendly experience, and it has since gone on to be heavily expanded upon by its developer, seeing releases on even more platforms and accruing even more fans along the way. It's a game that's easy to love and hard to put down, a comfort food game that makes you want to revisit it time and again.

-Titanfall 2 Where the original Titanfall was an excellent Xbox exclusive, Titanfall 2 bloomed the franchise into a multiplatform powerhouse. While it kept the excellent multiplayer modes, Titanfall 2's biggest change was the inclusion of a proper single-player story, and it's this inclusion that sees Titanfall 2 earn a place on my list. Titanfall 2's campaign is short, but sweet, seeing players take on the role of Jack Cooper, a pilot in training under the mentorship of an experienced soldier named Lastimosa. Unfortunately, on their first field mission, Lastimosa is killed, forcing Jack to embrace his future role as Pilot in an effort to survive and keep Lastimosa's experimental Titan out of enemy hands. This Titan, given the codename BT, is unique among Titans in that it can freely equip the various titan weapons and abilities, while simultaneously having an expanded AI that allows it to perform better in combat than its contemporaries. Together, Jack and BT make their way through the Frontier, coming into conflict with the varied enemy forces that they were originally sent in to stop. The campaign is brief, but what it lacks in lengths it makes up for in entertainment; the banter between Jack and BT makes for some great dialogue, and the campaign is perfectly built around the shooting and movement tech that made the first Titanfall so distinct, creating a series of levels that are just as built around gunfights as they are around precise first-person platforming. The game's environments are also beautiful to look at, varying from gritty industrial complexes to lush jungle environments that are as nice to look at as they are to maneuver through. Accompanying the stellar story mode is the recurring suite of multiplayer offerings, all of which have been upgraded and improved upon to complement the innovations of the sequel. Where Titanfall was good, Titanfall 2 is great, and it's a continual shame the series hasn't been given more time to shine.

-The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Special Edition This is another game that I've previously covered on my blog, and it's also another technicality. See, Skyrim technically released back in 2011 but saw so many re-releases in the years afterward that at this point the only device that doesn't natively play it are phones. With this particular re-release, Bethesda sought to give console players the same quality of life changes that PC players had been seeing for years, namely graphical improvements, stability patches, and most importantly, player-created content. Skyrim had developed a bustling and dedicated community of creators in its years since release, all of whom had made countless mods for the game that ranged anywhere from simple tweaks to full-on expansion sized stories, and the special edition release marked the first time Xbox and Playstation fans could get their hands on this library of unique content. It created a situation where the already hefty game could be made all the more robust with fan contributions. Don't like the music? Download one of the unique music packs somebody put together. Want any number of pop culture-inspired items? Looking for some new quests to spice up this five-year-old game? It's all there and more.

-Watch Dogs 2 You might be wondering why I've put Watch Dogs 2 on this list while its predecessor is nowhere to be found. While the first Watch Dogs was a middling revenge story that happened to incorporate some neat hacking based features, Watch Dogs 2 is where the franchise really found itself. It follows the story of one Marcus Holloway, a bright and witty young man who's been framed for a crime he didn't commit by a faulty surveillance network that monitors the city of Los Angeles in a pseudo-dystopic future not so removed from our own. So Marcus does what he does best, hacks into the network and removes himself from it entirely, embarking on a campaign to take the whole system down with the help of white hat hacker collective Deadsec. What sets this game apart from its predecessor is the charisma of its cast and the far more varied ways in which you can use the game's technology to your advantage. Hijack cameras, remote control vehicles, manipulate streetlights, the world of Watch Dogs 2 is yours to manipulate all at the press of a button. And if hacking doesn't get you where you need to be, Marcus has some skills of his own; he's particularly skilled at parkour and quite handy at non-lethally dispatching foes with a weapon of his own design, a billiard ball attached to a bungee cord. And if playing non-lethally isn't your thing, you can also accumulate quite the arsenal of homemade weaponry, all 3D printed from the base of your hacker collective. Watch Dogs 2 is a game about a group of people trying to take down a corrupt system using whatever means they can. It's a witty, satirical, but surprisingly grounded story told across a beautiful open-world recreation of Los Angeles, one that drew me in far more than its predecessor ever managed to do.

2017

2017 might not have had the same pedigree of games as its predecessor, but it did see the belated release of the latest current-gen console; The Nintendo Switch. A revolutionary step up from the Wii and Wii U, The Switch took the gaming world by storm thanks to its ability to seamlessly transition from a home console playing on your TV to a handheld console able to go with you anywhere. The Switch remains a staple of the console market to this day, easily standing tall next to the Playstation and Xbox consoles both new and old. Aside from the Switch, there was still a healthy collection of games for people to enjoy, some of which will be highlighted below.

-Night in the Woods Night in the Woods marks yet another game I've personally reviewed, and also stands proud as one of my absolute favorites of this generation. A humble offering from indie studio Infinite Fall, it was a gorgeously animated sidescroller of an adventure game that followed college dropout Mae Borowski as she returns to her small home town of Possum Springs to rekindle old friendships and reconnect with her family. Despite its anthropomorphic cast, it tells a genuinely human story, one that perfectly reflected what it feels like to revisit old haunts; how things can be so familiar yet change so much, seamlessly blending an emotionally charged narrative with a dark, suspenseful hometown mystery. Night in the Woods remains an absolutely incredible game to experience, showcasing themes like mental illness, sexuality, and identity through the lens of youthful wit and clever, dry sarcasm. I haven't played many truly perfect games, but Night in the Woods came damned close to being one.

-Kingdom Hearts 1.5/2.5 Ah yes, another collection of re-releases. Kingdom Hearts technically started back on the PS2, with the release of Kingdom Hearts 1. From there it blossomed into an incredibly diverse and lengthy franchise that saw releases on consoles and handhelds alike, from the PS2 to the Gameboy Advance. What these re-releases did was bundle all of the Kingdom Hearts games into one complete package, and tossed them all onto the PlayStation 4. It created a cohesive collection for this storied saga and presented it all in an easy to follow order that anyone could pick up and work through. Both games also offered the previously exclusive Final Mix content to the west for the first time, expanding on the already hefty games with more difficulty options, more enemies, more story content, and more challenges to keep the fun going and going. But what is Kingdom Hearts, I hear some people ask. Kingdom hearts is a series of action RPGs that follow the adventures of heroes known as Keyblade Wielders as they fight against the forces of darkness that threaten the worlds beyond. They play great, feature an especially enjoyable cast of characters, and tells a heartwarming story of good and evil. A joint project between Square Enix and Disney, Kingdom Hearts features an abundance of Disney characters and worlds, crossing over with various Square Enix properties in this epic struggle against light and dark. That's the easiest summary of the story by far, as delving any deeper would almost certainly confuse the casual reader, but let me say this; The Kingdom Hearts games are fantastic, well worth the time, and with these remastered collections, more approachable than ever.

-Nier Automata Nier Automata is a tough game to talk about in-depth, on account of just how easy it is to spoil for people who haven't experienced it. But it was also one of my favorite games of 2017, so I'll do my best to give it its due. Nier Automata is somewhat of a hybrid game; it blends so many genres together but somehow manages to do each one of them justice. Equal parts open world, action RPG, Bullet Hell, and more, Nier Automata takes place in the far, far future, in the ruins of earth. Humanity has long since abandoned the planet and sought shelter on the moon, entrusting a group of humanoid androids to defend the planet from an encroaching alien threat. The story follows several of these androids; 2B, 9S, and A2, as they wander the ruins of humanity and fight back against the robot foes that the aliens use as soldiers. It tells an amazing story that all but demands subsequent replays to get the full breadth of its narrative weight across, with each subsequent playthrough seen through the eyes of one of the other characters. Equal parts sci-fi story and humanist breakdown, Nier Automata is a deconstructive, philosophical pondering wrapped in the guise of an anime action game. That's not to say it doesn't wear the disguise well; Nier Automata plays like a dream, with stylish combat and an accompanying score that makes for easy listening both in and out of the game. It's another must-play, especially with the remake/remaster of its predecessor soon to release in 2021.

-Persona 5/Persona 5 Royal Persona 5 is an absolute joy of an RPG. It's slick, stylish, has a superb soundtrack, and tells a top tier story to boot. You take the role of a down-and-out high school kid who's been forced to transfer from his hometown in the countryside to Tokyo, thanks to a bogus police incident. Labeled a criminal and looked down on by the adults of his new school, the protagonist goes about bettering himself, raising his grades, and making the most of his new life in a new city. He forms bonds and relationships with the people around him, making fast friends with many of his classmates and even some chill adults along the way. Oh, he can also use a supernatural phone app to dive into the corrupted hearts of society, utilizing a special power to battle the evils that lie within and force them to change their ways and confess their deeds. Herein lies the dichotomy of the Persona 5; Much like the other Persona games that preceded it, the story it tells is a hybrid of supernatural mystery and coming of age drama, blending mundane highschool life with a fantasy adventure. It is equal parts life simulator and stylish role-playing game, as you and your friends do their best to repair a broken system using the fantastical powers they've been imbued with. These powers are the titular Persona, powerful creatures that embody the sides of ourselves we keep hidden behind the masks of society. These personas allow one to do battle with the shadows that lurk within these corrupted hearts, creatures that take on myriad forms inspired by religion and myth. Wielding this power, they embark on a journey of social reform, fighting a revolving door of less than scrupulous individuals that all culminating in a battle to change society itself. In spite of its overtly fantastical elements, the story it tells is decidedly grounded and surprisingly relatable; at its core, Persona 5 is about a collective of disenfranchised individuals trying their best to make it through life and change things for the better, a story that was and remains especially poignant and a welcomed escapist fantasy to fall into time and again.

-Slime Rancher Slime Rancher is an adorable simulator game and one I've praised before on my blog. It blends first-person shooter elements with the farming simulator genre, tasking players to manage and explore a planet on the fringes of space that's almost entirely populated by a race of creatures known as Slime. Slimes come in a varied selection of types and sizes, but all of them have one universal similarity; they all produce a resource known as a Plort that you can trade to an intergalactic trade center for currency, which in turn allows you to upgrade your slime farm and expand into new territories. The gameplay loop is nothing but fun, with each new expansion bringing in new species of slime that you can wrangle and combine to make hybrids that in turn create more valuable plorts. As you make your way through the planet, you start uncovering logs left behind by your farm's prior owner, that weave a narrative of love and loss, a story that drives you forward in your quest if only to see how it concludes. You're not alone in this quest, though, as you have your slimes for company as well as several long-distance conversations via the computer in your home between friends and fellow farmers alike. Subsequent game updates have only expanded upon the experience, seeing new opportunities for trade, daily activities, and more, making an already invigorating and enjoyable game all the more so.

-Destiny 2 It's no secret that Destiny 2 had a complicated launch window. Many fans felt that Destiny 2 left too much of what made its predecessor great on the cutting room floor, electing instead to reset the player base back to zero and tell a brand new story. While I missed some of what Destiny 2 left behind, I was still somebody who found a lot of joy in Destiny 2, as evidenced by the thousand-plus hour count it tells me I've poured into it since its 2017 release. The game has also seen countless improvements and additions in the years since its release, adopting a new seasonal model and even going free to play after a point. Most recently, Destiny 2 saw the release of Beyond Light, the first in a new trilogy of expansions that hopes to continue the game forward over the next few years. So, while it might have had a rough start, it still remains destiny at its core, making it one of the best shooters on the market, coupled with a satisfying loot hunt and a rewarding structure that continues to keep its fans coming back for more. That alone lands it in my list of games for 2017, and the generation as a whole.

-The Sims 4 Though this game technically saw the light of day back in 2014, I didn't end up playing it until its console release here in 2017. Thus, I place it here. There isn't a lot of complication with Sims 4. If you're at all familiar with its predecessors, you know exactly what to expect. An engaging simulator game, in which you craft an individual or family and set them on the path of life, influencing them as they go or leaving them to their own fates so as to see what happens. You tailor their looks, personality, aesthetic...it's a premier example of micromanagement as entertainment. This installment shirked some of the advancements made by its predecessor but still manages to be a robust and enjoyable game all on its own, made all the better by continued additional content releases in the years since its premiere. It's a game that keeps on giving and seems primed to continue doing so for some time yet.

2018

2018 saw the release of some genuinely top-shelf games, with the Switch continuing to establish itself against its contemporaries, while the Playstation continued to add excellent exclusives to its lineup.

-Far Cry 5 The Far Cry games have always been known for being competent shooters with large open worlds, and this one is no exception. Shirking the usual foreign locales, Far Cry 5 takes place a lot closer to home, seeing players cleaning up the rural backwoods of Montana, taking place in the fictional Hope County. In it, you play as a rookie cop sent in to apprehend an evangelical doomsday cultist; John Seed, The Father. This arrest quickly goes south, leaving you as the last lawman willing to stand up to the Seed family and free Hope County from their grasp. To do so, you systematically break the hold of his lieutenants, dismantling their bases of operations and taking down his associates in a slow climb to face him once more. Along the way you make friends and allies out of the locals, people with a similar drive to rise up and clean up their county. As far as the gameplay, Far Cry 5 is a mix of FPS and RPG elements, with a rudimentary character customization system and plenty of powerful guns to acquire. You level up and earn skills that augment your preferred style of play, be it stealthy or over the top, all in your pursuit of justice. Augmenting this quest is the world it takes place in, with players exploring lush forests, vibrant fields, and the general detritus of rural America. Hope county feels real, with looks to match, despite its farcical tone and over the top gameplay. All of this came together to make a Far Cry that felt fresh and fun, a genuine step forward for the franchise.

-God of War Prior games in the God of War series were not known for subtlety, nuance, or humanity. Rather, they were violent hack and slash games that featured the titular God of War, Kratos, seeking and exacting bloody revenge on the greek pantheon for their slights against him and his family. They were by no means bad games, but they weren't what I would consider masterpieces either. Then, we were given God of War (2017). This soft reboot/Sequel for the franchise saw Kratos embarking on a distinctly more grounded story than its predecessors, navigating the perils of fatherhood while on a journey to deliver his late wife's ashes in the world of the Norse Pantheon. He is joined by his son, Atreus, a bright but rebellious young boy who seeks only to prove his worth to the gruff and distant Kratos. This more human story is accompanied by a more grounded approach to combat and gameplay; while it retains the emphasis on action, it feels more deliberate than prior entries, shifting the combat style from the hack and slash nature to a more measured approach, with players needing to conserve stamina and plan their attacks lest they get easily overwhelmed. The game also incorporates a more open world structure than its predecessors, seeing Kratos and his son freely traversing their environment, unlocking shortcuts, and finding means to double back on past areas in a level progression that feels more like a Souls game than the God of Wars of old. All of this came together to make a game that felt genuinely innovative, a fresh new direction for a pre-established franchise that was as welcoming to newcomers as it was to prior fans.

-Donut County Donut County is a silly, short indie puzzle game in which you play as a mischievous raccoon delivering "donuts" to the unsuspecting populous around him. These donuts are, in fact, large sinkholes that expand as they eat different objects, eventually growing to swallow the entirety of the lot they were sent to. The core gameplay lies in this concept, with you controlling the various sinkholes from level to level, figuring out the order in which to consume the various objects on each map in order to grow in size. As the game progresses you unlock various upgrades to these sinkholes, like the ability to spit things out of them, adding new layers to the simple puzzles the game encapsulates. It isn't a terribly long game, as already said, only taking an hour or two to finish, but it cemented itself as a charming indie game amidst a sea of big-name titles.

-Marvel's Spider-Man Developed by Insomniac, previously mentioned in the Sunset Overdrive excerpt, Marvel's Spider-Man is a rare example of a genuinely amazing superhero game. In it, players take on the role of Peter Parker, a Spider-Man who has already established himself as the hero we know and love, but one that still has room to grow and learn. What starts off as a triumphant takedown of one Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin, soon blossoms into a complicated web that involves a shady group known as the Demons that Spider-Man must stop from wreaking havoc on the city. But the game isn't just about the Heroics of Spider-Man; The Game showcases the best aspects of Peter's character, splitting the game equally between his time as Spider-Man and his normal life as Peter Parker, a scientist working under the apprenticeship of one Otto Octavius, while simultaneously working with his Aunt May at the local Homeless Shelter and trying to rekindle his forlorn relationship with Mary Jane. All of this unfurls simultaneously, weaving a web that melds incredible movement with fast and stylish combat, stellar characters, and a heartwarming tale, cementing itself not only as a great game but also as one of the best Spider-Man stories out there.

-The Missing: JJ Macfield and the Island of Memories The Missing is a heartfelt, down to earth story told through the lens of a grisly but goofy premise. In it, you play as the titular JJ Macfield, a young girl who goes on a trip with her close friend Emily to a remote island off the coast of Maine. What is supposed to be a fun excursion takes a turn for the worse, as Emily goes missing, leaving JJ to track her down. Unfortunately, this quest quickly leads JJ to her death...but not for long. Resurrected by a bolt of lightning, JJ gains the ability to remove various parts of her body, as the island quickly goes from an idyllic wonderland to a psychedelic nightmare. Undeterred, JJ uses her newfound ability to traverse the island, ever searching for her lost friend. The Missing might sound like a horror game on paper, but it uses these macabre themes to tell a distinctly grounded story about dealing with personal identity and navigating a hostile and unfamiliar world, culminating in a heartbreakingly bittersweet twist that I won't spoil here. This is all to say; the Missing is an excellent game. It's a joy to play, despite its harrowing content, and it manages to convey its themes in a way that feels genuine and meaningful, telling a story that's still relevant to this day.

-Super Smash Brothers Ultimate Smash games have always been good, and Ultimate more than earns its moniker. This is the Ultimate Smash game; iterating on its predecessors without changing anything for the worst, Ultimate is an unabashed love letter to the series as a whole, incorporating every character and every map from every prior game all in one upgraded package. If you don't know what Smash is, let me explain; Nintendo is known for a lot of fantastic first-party titles, from Mario to Kirby to Metroid, and countless others. Smash takes all of these well-loved characters, throws them in an arena, and has them fight for supremacy. Debuting on the Nintendo 64, Smash has seen one major game release for every Nintendo console since, culminating in Smash Ultimate on the Nintendo Switch. As earlier stated, it features an absolutely enormous roster of playable characters, featuring every fighter from the previous games and several new additions for good measure. This roster was only further expanded with the release of the fighter passes, seeing an additional eleven fighters across the two that have thus far been released, ranging from surprise hits like Persona 5's Joker to fan favorites like Banjo and Kazooie. While not featuring a traditional story mode, Ultimate makes good use of its characters in a suite of different game modes that can be played both alone or with friends, online or locally. It's a fantastic party game and an equally praiseworthy fighter, rewarding skilled play but catering to casual players and newcomers alike.

2019

2019 marked the slowdown for the current generation, shadowed by the whispers of a new age of consoles. This made for a simple year for games, but one no less stacked with noteworthy games and worthwhile experiences.

-Kingdom Hearts 3 After years of waiting, 2019 finally saw the release of Kingdom Hearts 3. The wait might have been long, but the game delivered on the hype, simultaneously closing out the narrative arc that had begun so long ago with Kingdom Hearts 1 and beginning a new chapter for fans to look forward to. In service of this goal, Kingdom Hearts 3 wrapped up the majority of dangling storylines from all the previous games, while still leaving a handful of mysteries to chase into the future of the franchise. It featured a new suite of Disney worlds to explore, and incorporated Pixar properties for the first time in franchise history. The new content accompanied refined and polished gameplay mechanics and a complete visual overhaul, while still retaining the heart and soul that defined the games thus far. It all came together well enough but was later expanded upon through the release of Re: Mind, the game's beefy expansion that rebalanced gameplay and added in hours of new story content to better cap off the story. All told, Kingdom Hearts 3 was another great game, building on a legacy that seems like it will continue well into the future.

-Devil May Cry 5 For those not in the know, Devil May Cry is a series of games that follow the life of Dante, a half-demon sword for hire as he does his best to kill monsters and eat pizza. It's a franchise known for skillful, precise, stylish combat mixed with goofy, over the top stories, usually involving Dante and his associates contending with the fallout of his family, the demon king Sparda and his brother Vergil. While not a flawless franchise, it saw several excellent releases over the years, but then went depressingly dormant. Devil May Cry 5 was the perpetual waiting game, but 2019 saw it finally come out, accompanied by mass acclaim and praise. it really seemed like all the years of waiting were well rewarded. DMCV features three playable characters; Nero, a fellow demon hunter first introduced in Devil May Cry 4, Dante, the series' staple protagonist, and lastly the mysterious V, a newly introduced character for this game. Together the three were tasked with working together to take down the demonic Qliphoth and its master, Urizen, an immensely powerful demon lord. The game looks gorgeous, marking the first time the games have looked truly next-gen. Accompanying this boost in visual fidelity is the franchise's staple; combat was finely tuned to be more stylish than ever, with each character having a variety of tricks at their disposal to dispatch the demon hoard that stood between them and Urizen. Devil May Cry was back, and it was better than ever.

-Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night Bloodstained is the spiritual successor to the Castlevania series, helmed by its most prominent contributor Koji Igarashi. Starting its life as nothing more than a simple Kickstarter, it blew through its funding goal and a few years later saw its release on the current generation of consoles. It's not a particularly complicated game, but it is particularly fun, with it adapting many of the staples that made Castlevania so great. As a spiritual successor to Castlevania, the games play very similarly; both are side scrolling hack and slash games that take place in fantastical gothic castles, and both see protagonists with varied combat and magical aptitude on their quest to take down the castle's owner. In the case of Castlevania, that owner is Dracula, but in the case of Bloodstained, players are tasked with defeating Gebel, an alchemically modified human known as a Shardbinder. You play as another one of these Shardbinders, Miriam. Miriam and Gebel are the lone survivors of an alchemical experiment that gave them the ability to wield a power called shards, crystalline embodiments of demonic essence. The narrative is simple, but the gameplay is where it shines; as players progress through Gebel's castle, you can accumulate more and more shards, all of which give Miriam access to new abilities, abilities that go on to aid her in her continued exploration. This creates a very satisfying loop; explore the castle, collect shards, unlock more of the castle to explore. Augmenting her shards are a suite of craftable and upgradeable weaponry, a selection of melee and firearms that allows players to diversify their preferred playstyle and experiment with what works best in any given situation. Subsequent content additions have added even more to the game, in the form of new modes, difficulties, and playable characters, adding to the replayability and longevity of what was already an excellent experience. Despite starting from simple roots, Bloodstained rose up and became something all on its own, paying homage to its inspirations while cementing a name for itself as a new staple of the genre.

-Catherine Full Body While originally releasing in 2011, 2019 saw an expanded re-release complete with new characters, new stages, and hours of extra story content. At its core, Catherine and its Full Body re-release are unique gems in the gaming world. One part puzzle game, one part dating simulator, it blends the complicated world of relationships with macabre block puzzles, all the while weaving a beautiful tapestry about one man's quest for love. In it, you take the role of Vincent Brooks, an unambitious 30-something simply going through the motions of life. He has a steady relationship and a stable job, a group of colorful and enthusiastic friends, but it's clear from the start just how much he's stagnated. His current girlfriend, Katherine, is starting to ask the big questions; marriage, children, their future. Unable to parse these ideas, he loses himself in his time at the local bar with his pals, shooting the shit and getting sloshed. That is, until, a new flame suddenly appears; the seductive temptress Catherine. One thing leads to another, and it comes to pass that they spend the night together...maybe. This is where the game's narrative really kicks off, with Vincent having to navigate the day to day, attempting to reconcile his long-time love with his possible new fling. This story is juxtaposed against the game's core gameplay loop, which sees Vincent forced to climb the deadly tower of babel each night in his dreams. To do this, players must stack blocks and avoid the perils and traps that each stage presents, making a mad dash to the top of the tower before the bottom collapses in on itself and Vincent plummets to his doom. For you see, this isn't an ordinary dream; if you die on the tower, you die in real life, making this desperate ascent a race for his very life. Each stage of the tower represents the game's various core themes, and each gets more and more complicated as the game progresses. In the interim of these climbs, players are set about answering multiple-choice inquiries that influence the direction of Vincent's relationships, with each answer adjusting a conspicuous morality meter that eventually comes to determine which of the 8 endings you could attain. With Full Body, this number was increased to 13, to adjust for the inclusion of a new paramour; Rin, a mysterious piano player that sets up shop in Vincent's favorite bar. Both Catherine and its Full Body re-release are excellent games, but I was especially smitten with the layers of extra content and story that Full Body brought to the table, additions that made Full Body one of my favorite games of 2019.

-Untitled Goose Game Untitled goose game is a simple premise on paper; players take on the role of an ornery, mischievous goose as it wreaks havoc through a small English town. Equal parts puzzle and stealth game, the goose has a laundry list of tasks it seeks to complete, from stealing hats off people's heads to infiltrating the local pub. It's not a long game by any means, but it has a ton of replayability in the form of additional tasks and challenges that only present themselves after your first playthrough. These range from time-based completions to additional bouts of mischief and all of them are incredibly satisfying to chase down. Untitled Goose Game has a quaint, painterly art style that compliments the charming simplicity of the game's premise, accompanied by a dynamic, classically-toned score that rises and falls in prominence as you go about your goosely business. All said Untitled Goose Game is a genuine treat, a brief but whimsical game that's just about having fun and goofing around.

2020

It's no secret that 2020 has been a rough year for a lot of folks. Between a pandemic, political controversy, and general drudgery, it's a year that feels like it can't end soon enough. But in spite of it all, 2020 was also a fantastic year for games. Serving as the last hurrah for the Xbox One and Playstation 4, we saw the release of some truly excellent stories that kept players going through the long months of an otherwise mediocre year.

-Animal Crossing: New Horizons Releasing right at the start of widespread quarantine, New Horizons supplied people with something they couldn't easily do in their own lives; escape. Animal Crossing New Horizons is the perfect escapist fantasy for the year it released in, seeing players partaking in an island getaway in the hopes of colonizing and forming an idyllic town on an untamed paradise. At their core, the animal crossing games are simple simulators. You create your character by selecting a few presets; hair, eyes, skin color, and then you're let free to explore your new locale. With this latest release, that locale is the aforementioned island, a small paradise in the sea dotted by trees and rivers, accented by flowers and weeds. You start your life on this new Island with a handful of other residents; the Nook Family, the proprietors of this island venture, and two random villagers who are looking to make a life on this island the same as you. Things start small, with everyone working together to set up tents and create a bonfire and find some food for a welcome party. Afterward, the game synchronizes itself to your console's date and time and sets you off on your way. Unlike other simulators on this list, Animal Crossing is a unique breed, running concurrently to the real world, continuously progressing in real-time. Flowers grow, trees produce fruit, and each day is a new adventure. It follows the general turn of the seasons for your respective hemisphere, celebrating holidays and alternating available activities with each passing day. As for what you can do yourself, the opportunities are legion; you can catch bugs, go fishing, search for fossils, chat up your villagers, visit other islands, and much more. As you progress, more ventures open their doors to you; catch enough bugs and fish, and you can elect to have a museum built to showcase your finds. Collect enough resources, and you can build new furniture and create plots of land that encourage more villagers to come and move to your island. Everything you do is in service of continued growth, but also serves just as simple fun, a charming, easygoing distraction from the concerns of the day-to-day.

-Final Fantasy VII Remake The Final Fantasy franchise is a long and storied one, replete with highs and lows. One such high was 1997's Final Fantasy 7, a game that quickly cemented itself as a fan favorite and an absolute classic. Now, in 2020, FF7 is back...sort of. See, FF7 Remake is the first in a line of games that will eventually go on to tell the entirety of the original FF7's story, which means that this release is only the first portion of a much larger narrative. Adapting what was originally the first few hours of the original game, FF7 Remake expands upon the opening section of its predecessor, simultaneously remaking the old content for modern audiences and adding in new aspects for old fans. FF7 Remake improves upon the original in practically every way, serving as a genuine remake that still manages to retain what made that original game so memorable and important to fans. The game might be new, but the heart is the same; FF7 Remake follows the story of Cloud Strife, an ex SOLDIER turned mercenary hired by an eclectic group known as Avalanche to dismantle a local power plant that's poisoning the planet. What starts as a well-intentioned but extreme case of eco-terrorism quickly explodes (pun intended) into a much larger story that sees Cloud and Avalanche bringing the fight straight to the corrupt Shinra Corporation and beyond, culminating in a battle against fate itself. Because this remake only covers a portion of what will go on to be a much larger narrative, it only scratches the surface of what makes the original FF7 so great, but it does so with gusto; the game plays and looks better than ever, bringing with it a heartfelt and compelling narrative that keeps you hooked the whole way through.

-Minecraft Dungeons Minecraft Dungeons takes the charming, voxel visuals and world of Minecraft and melds them seamlessly with a charming, easygoing dungeon crawler that's approachable for casual and experienced gamers alike. Where Minecraft is an open-ended sandbox game about building and exploring a blocky world, Minecraft Dungeons sees a collective of heroes on a quest to defeat the evil Illager, a powerful sorcerer whose armies have been sweeping the land leaving destruction in their wake. It's not a very complicated story about good and evil, but it doesn't have to be; Minecraft Dungeons prioritizes it's simple and easy to master gameplay first and foremost. You collect loot, battle recognizable Minecraft enemies, and progress through a litany of stages on your way to fight the big bad. It's not very long but encourages you to play it time and again, collecting better gear and trying your hand at the many difficulty levels for additional challenges. It's not the best looking or the best playing game that released this year, but it had heart and made for a short and entertaining way to pass the time.

-Ghost of Tsushima Ghost of Tsushima isn't a game to scoff at. One of the best looking games of the generation, this PS4 exclusive is one part historical timepiece, one part action-adventure, and one part stealth game. It follows the story of Jin Sakai, a samurai and one of the last survivors of the Mongol invasion of his home island of Tsushima, Japan. Left to die, he is found and nursed back to health by a wayward thief who teaches Jin the art of stealth and subterfuge, seeing him off on his quest for bloody revenge on the Mongol invaders that have encroached upon his homeland. To do this, he must first build up a fighting force of equal minded, skilled warriors, all while dismantling the various camps and operations the Mongols have set up in the absence of the defeated Samurai army. Jin can approach this in one of two ways; relying on his prowess as a formidable Samurai, Jin can challenge the many enemies in the game to flashy yet precise sword combat, or he can utilize the recently learned skills of stealth, infiltrating their encampments and silently picking the Mongols off one by one. There's no wrong answer to how you choose to play, although it takes some time for Jin to accept his new roles as both Samurai and assassin. Both methods of play feel equally as stellar, too; Combat in this game is incredibly polished, finely tuned swordplay that focuses on timing and well-planned strikes to dispatch your foes with ease, while the stealth feels tense and requires a distinctly tactical approach, planning your routes and cleverly dispatching foes so as to not raise suspicion. But the game isn't just about taking out your enemies. Ghost of Tsushima boasts one of the most beautiful open worlds I've ever experienced, a vibrant and gorgeous landscape dotted with myriad activities and side quests for you to explore and enjoy. One moment, you could be doing battle with a wayward group of Mongols or bandits, while the next could see you tracking a friendly fox to a shrine, composing a haiku in the shadow of a large tree, or recuperating your strength at a small hot spring while you ruminate on your adventures thus far. Ghost of Tsushima is an incredibly varied game, alternating between intense highs and calming lows, all coming together to become one of the best games of the last generation.

-Spiritfarer While I have not finished this game, it more than deserves recognition on this list. In it, you play as Stella, a young girl who takes over as the ferryman for the River Styx once Charon retires to the afterlife, tasked with providing for the wayward souls who live on the river as you ferry them to their final rest. To do this, Stella must collect various resources and build up her ship, outfitting it with living spaces and various commodities tailored to her current passengers. These aforementioned passengers will, in turn, begin to open up to Stella, tasking her with making certain foods or visiting different locales, all in an effort to give these wayward souls a proper farewell on their trip to the afterlife. Spiritfarer is a simple simulator game about resource management and exploration that showcases a lovely, genuinely heartfelt story about love and loss, one that will put a smile on your face as easily as it brings a tear to your eye.

And with that, I close out this hefty list, closing out the last generation. This compendium hardly scratches the surface of the last seven years' library, but hopefully, I did a good enough job remembering some of the games that made this last generation so great. There are a lot of games that I've still yet to play, resting in wait in my backlog for the time they get pulled out and given their due, but for now, this concludes my walk down memory lane. The last generation saw some excellent additions to the vast and ever-expanding library of video game history. Here's hoping the next several years can say the same. The start of the new consoles is off to a very promising start; in the last month or so alone we've seen excellent releases from both indie and big-name developers, fresh takes on old franchises, and new IPs alike. So, here's to the Last Generation, here's to the Next Generation, and here's to gaming overall; may it continue to thrive for years to come.

#A Look Back #Gaming #Game Review

94 notes · View notes

sweetsmellosuccess · 5 years

Text

Sundance 2020: Preview

Earlier in the month, as I frantically made my selections for the limited public tickets Sundance generously makes available for the press, I was struck by just how much of a crapshoot the whole process was. That’s the thing about this particular festival, virtually no one outside of the filmmakers and Sundance programmers have seen the films yet. It’s a great unknown (and, yes, Cannes is also similar in this way, but whereas Sundance is selecting primarily indie films, the festival on the French Riviera gets to choose anything they damn well please, from big Hollywood studio fare, to auteur International work), which leads to lots of hunch choices, based on gut feeling as much as anything else.

As you might imagine, one’s hit rate on such matters is volatile. I looked back to previous years’ selections, and found, on rough average, choosing solid (or better) films at about a 45% clip. That is to say, of the films I deemed most worthy of my attention, about half of them were less — or even far less — than I hoped. To be fair, randomly watching regular studio films opening from week to week at home in Philly, I would imagine that percentage would be a good bit lower, so there’s nothing inherently wrong with Sundance’s percentages.

Still, it does speak to the embracing-of-the-unknown ethos that this festival instills in you. We pays our money, we takes our chances, etc. Having said all that — and perhaps having chiseled down the enormous boulder of salt with which to read this piece — here are our best guesses for what looks like (on paper, at least) some of the more interesting films in this year’s fest. We’ll see how it turns out.

Downhill: The U.S. remake of Ruben Östlund’s 2014 Swedish film about a family on a skiing trip in the Alps, who experience serious disruption when a controlled avalanche terrifies the father of the clan to ditch his family in order to save himself. Normally, I would steer far clear of American remakes, but this indie remains intriguing, even if it is directed by a pair of actors (Nat Faxon and Jim Rash). Casting Will Ferrell and Julia Louis Dreyfus together as the parents is also a draw. We can only hope the film retains the razor-sharp acerbity of the original.

Falling: Viggo Mortensen, best known for all time as Aragorn from the Lord of the Rings triad, has many talents — he speaks French fluently, writes poetry, and paints with some apparent aplomb — but we’ll see how he handles writing and directing for the first time with this film, in which he plays a gay man living with his family in L.A., whose arch-conservative farmer father (Lance Hendrickson) comes to live with him. The set up sounds on the definite hokey side, but any film that casts David Cronenberg as a proctologist has got something going for it.

Horse Girl: An awkward loner of a woman (played by Allison Brie), with a predilection for crafts, crime shows, and, yes, horses, endures a series of lucid dreams that infiltrate her day-to-day existence. Sounding just so perfectly Sundanecian, Jeff Baena’s film nevertheless holds some attraction, especially because the director (whose previous film was the well-received The Little Hours) has a solid track record. He co-wrote this effort with Brie, a collaboration that might well lead to something more compelling than its initial description.

Kajillionaire: I guess you could call writer/director/actress Miranda July something of an acquired taste. Her previous films, including Me and You and Everyone We Know, and The Future are filled with a kind of creative whimsy, along with intense character insight. Her new film is about a pair of grifter parents (Debra Winger and Richard Jenkins) who throw together a big heist at the last second, convincing a newcomer (Gina Rodriguez) to join them, only for the newbie to disrupt their relationship with their daughter (Evan Rachel Wood), whom they have been training her entire life.

The Last Thing He Wanted: Working from a novel by the resplendent Joan Didion, Dee Rees follows up her 2017 Sundance rave Mudbound with another literary adaptation. Anne Hathaway plays a journalist obsessed with the Contras in Central America, whose father (Willem DaFoe) unexpectedly bestows her with proof of illegal arms deals in the region. Suddenly, a player in a much more complicated game, she connects with a U.S. official (Ben Affleck), in order to make it out alive. It’s a particularly well-heeled cast, which at Sundance doesn’t necessarily mean a good thing, but Rees has proven herself more than up to the challenge.

Lost Girls: At this point, I will literally watch Amy Ryan in anything — her exquisite bitchiness absolutely stole last year’s Late Night — so Liz Garbus’ film would have already been on my radar, but here, with Ryan playing a Long Island mother whose daughter goes missing, my interest is sorely piqued. Based on a true-crime novel by Robert Kolker, Ryan’s character discovers her daughter was part of an online sex ring, and goes through heaven and earth to draw attention to her plight, taking on the local authorities in the process.

Never Rarely Sometimes Always: Eliza Hittman has a way of adding lustre and temporal beauty to the otherwise roughneck scenes of the teens she depicts. Her latest film is about a pair of young women living in rural Pennsylvania, who find the means to escape their repressive town after one of them becomes unexpectedly pregnant, making their way to New York City. With a storyline eerily reminiscent of Cristian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, Hittman, as is her want, has cast two relative unknowns (Talia Ryder and Sidney Flanigan) as the leads.

Palm Springs: Lightening things up a smidge, Max Barbakow’s off-beat comedy stars Cristin Milioti and Andy Samberg as reluctant wedding guests, who somehow find each other at the same time as some kind of surrealistic episode leads them to recognize that nothing really matters in the first place, allowing them to lay havoc upon the proceedings for their own amusement. Barbakow’s debut feature is stockpiled with strong castmembers, including J.K. Simmons and Peter Gallagher, and it’s always a treat to watch the continuing evolution of Samberg from mop-haired SNL performer to certified big-screen actor.

Promising Young Woman: The #metoo movement begets this revenge thriller about a once-victimized woman (Carey Mulligan) who works by day as quiet barista, but spends her nights seducing men in order to punish the living hell out of them for trying to take advantage of her. When she runs into a seemingly sweet old classmate (Bo Burnham), it would appear as if salvation is at hand, but apparently it’s not quite that simple. Filmmaker Emerald Fennell, whose outstanding work on the series “Killing Eve,” earned her a pair of Emmy nominations, makes her feature debut with a film that sounds appropriately searing.

Shirley: There were those critics at the 2018 festival who found Josephine Decker’s Madeline’s Madeline one of the best films of the year. While I wasn’t among them, there was still much to appreciate with the writer/director’s improvisational visions. Her entry into this year’s Sundance promises to be at least somewhat more grounded, if not still effervescent. It concerns famed author Shirley Jackson (Elisabeth Moss), writer of “The Lottery,” whose literary inspiration is stirred after she and her husband (Michael Stuhlbarg) take in a young couple to liven up their household.

#sweet smell of success #ssos #piers marchant #films #movies #sundance 2020 #park city UT #promising young woman #shirley #never rarely sometimes always #palm springs #lost girls #the last thing he wanted #kajillionaire #falling #horse girl #downhill

6 notes · View notes

destielreclists · 7 years

Note

Hey! So I really love this pairing but I’m not a fan of AUs and it feels like AUs are everywhere. Any good canon-compliant or even just canon verse with a twist stuff out there?

Hey, Anon. I remember when I wasn’t a fan of AU’s, too. Needless to say I was desperate for any SPN Verse I could get my hands on.

Moral of the story is: don’t worry, boo. I gotchu.

Some of my personal Supernatural Universe faves would be:

The Consequences of Falling by: Fayjay (e, 37.1k)

The Girlfriend Experience by: rageprufrock (e, 15.3k)

Hands, From Which All Things Are Built by: MajorEnglishEsquire (t, 14.6k)

Hummingbirds by: strangeandcharm (e, 25.4k)

Some Assembly Required by: narrow_staircases (m, 46.9k)

And then before I give you more recs, here’s a list of resources (tags) you may find helpful:

Supernatural Universe Tag on:

destielreclists

destielfanfic

dailydoseofdestiel

destielfanficgaloreficrec

destielfanfictions

destielfanficrecs

On DeanxCas Fic Fecs:

non-AU tag

bunker fics tag

On Archive of Our Own:

bunker [related] tag

hunter husbands tag

canon compliant tag

post-canon tag

canon universe tag

Now here are some more fic that comes to mind and that I thoroughly enjoyed (plus a few that aren’t strictly SPN verse, but also aren’t AU? - you’ll see what I mean…):

Are you there Dean Winchester? It’s me, God. by: bunnymacool

Dean Winchester has grown used to God dicking around in his life the last couple years. But this crap? This takes the CAKE … or pie, rather. Now he’s been thrown a whole new curve-ball. The kind that has ended the Civil War in Heaven … but resulted in Raphael taking over, and hunting for Dean’s ass on a silver platter. Not to mention dealing with Balthazar acting like a self-righteous prick, Sam having some big damn epiphany on his big brother’s sexuality, and Cas eying him up like he’s the world’s juiciest cheeseburger. All that mixed with the chance to fix it all and set everything to rights … but only if Dean is willing to sacrifice himself. Again. Seriously, if he ever meets that bastard God he’s gonna- … oh hey, Chuck! What are you doing here?

Circadia by: imogenbynight

4-01 is a monster undeserving of a name.

In a facility known only as Circadia, he serves a life sentence in punishment for terrible crimes he cannot remember, and is told to be grateful to have forgotten what those he left behind cannot.

Meanwhile, convinced that he is nothing but a poisonous presence in the lives of those he loves, Dean is attempting to track down Gadreel when Sam calls with bad news: Castiel has disappeared without a trace.

The Day The World Went Away by: pyjamagurl

After being reunited with Sam and leaving Lisa, Dean is finding that adjusting back into the hunting lifestyle is harder than he thought it would be. When a particular hunt goes badly, he gets knocked out, only to awaken five years in the future. Things are definitely different; Castiel is a hunter, Sam is married and things between Dean and Castiel have gone somewhere Dean really hadn’t expected. And somewhere in all of this there is a lesson to be learned.

A Distant Mirror by: zatnikatel

Dean finds that his heart is racing, and his throat is suddenly thick. He swallows once, almost gasps it out, his need to know.“Show me.”The words are scarcely out of him before Castiel’s fingers are tapping softly on his forehead, and the air is suddenly oddly heavy with something; with age, with knowledge, with a gust of wind that buffets the curtains, with a crackle of sounds, with the scent of salt, and copper and—

Dry Clean Only by: PersephoneSmee

There were only two hunter-friendly drycleaner-laundromats in the US, and My Little Warsh House in Okeana, Ohio, belonged to Harry Mencher. In the aftermath of Cas’s Leviathan possession and disappearance, life and laundry must go on.

Feel by: zatnakitel

You feel me…you always will.

The Fourth Wall by: entanglednow

What happens when a few certain hunters, and a one angel of the Lord become just this side of obsessed with *gulp* Supernatural fanfic? Nothing short of greatness… depending on which of the three you’re asking.

Head full of Doubt, Road Full of Promise by: nurfherder

When a witch’s spell goes awry, Dean transforms. However, even after the dust settles, we can’t change the things we’ve done or revealed about ourselves. It’s time to look inside and figure out who we really are, and who we really love. Completed Work. (Original story as seen on my tumblr, nurfherder.)DeanCas, multiple characters, semi-AU after Season Five. Only first part gender-bend. Christmas time.

How Still My Heart by: cadignan

Charlie hadn’t been waiting for the call, but it’s not exactly a surprise to hear from Dean.

“Cas? You want me to find Cas?”

*this fic is available to registered AO3 users only

How To Romance a Human by: cloudyjenn

Castiel consults Cosmopolitan magazine in order to win Dean’s heart.

Keeping Faith by: zoemathemata

After the apocalypse is over, Dean and Cas become a family when they take in a little girl.

A Night at the Museum by: swordofmymouth

AU. For anyone who’s seen 5.04 all the way through, and wondered what happened afterward, in the Year of Apocalypse, 2014 – this is that story.

*this says AU, but I think canon divergent is a more accurate description as it’s written in the SPN universe.

Not Usually A Good Thing by: cloudyjenn

Five ways Castiel made Dean feel.

The Pillow Verse by: anythingtoasted, clockworkrobots, inplayruns, outpastthemoat

This is a story of the things that happen after the fall.

A canon-based domestic!fic shared universe set in the Men of Letter’s bunker, The Pillow ‘Verse follows Dean, Castiel, Sam, and their small cohort of rabble-rousers through stories of love, nest building, family, and healing following the 8x23 Supernatural finale Sacrifice.

Redemption Road by: darksilvercat, daymarket, dotfic, electricskeptic, jackvelvet, murron, nanoochka, nyoka, peroxidepest17, shane_mayhem, squeemonster, swordofmymouth, takadainmate, tiptoe39, zatnikatel

With Castiel having set himself up as the new God, drunk on power and volatile as a nuclear reactor, Dean, Sam, and Bobby find themselves on the run from the jealous, capricious monster wearing the face of their friend. Desperate for protection and wary of his brother’s mental state since Castiel unlocked Sam’s memories of Hell, Dean knows Castiel must be defused before he can wreak further havoc in Heaven or on Earth. Although Bobby advocates for destroying Castiel by whatever means necessary, Dean is convinced the Cas he once knew still remains, buried somewhere beneath the mass of poisonous souls and calling out for help. Determined to save the angel who once rescued him from Hell and redefined his purpose in life, Dean himself must resist the allure of the false deity vying for his obedience, and come to terms with the knowledge, long-suppressed, that his feelings for Castiel run much deeper than brotherhood. It is this bond, and the dubious distinction of the Righteous Man, that will ultimately grant Dean access to where Castiel’s grace languishes in Purgatory. However, what Dean brings back with him is broken, angry, and only half-angel, certainly not the Castiel he remembers—and nor is it the only thing that returns to Earth with them…

The Shattered One by: MissAnnThropic

When it struck Castiel, he was in mid-flight. It dropped him out of the sky like a sparrow buffeted by gale-force winds. Castiel set down the first place he could find. He ended up standing in a field in Switzerland, swaying on his feet and staring down at his body, dazed by what it had just done.

*There is a sequel to this, but I stopped reading about half way through so I can’t recommend it officially as I haven’t finished it. It’s called The Unbroken Ones if you’re interested.

The Story Of You And Me by: the_diggler

Dean wakes up in bed next to a very human Castiel, and a journal in his own handwriting that tells him it’s two years in the future. The house looks a lot like Bobby’s, and Sam lives there too… He just can’t remember how they got from angels falling in the sky – to comfortable domesticity.

While there is much in the journal Dean doesn’t remember, there is much of their story he’s always known. And as he settles into the routine of his new life and relationship with Castiel, it quickly becomes something he doesn’t know how to live without.

Thursday’s Child by: strangeandcharm

Thursday’s child has far to go.

Tripping by: Hatteress

That time the universe decided Dean belonged with Cas and wasn’t afraid to pull out the big guns to make it so. Big guns in this case being obsessive fangirls, archangels turned tricksters and overly enthusiastic cupids. Welcome to Dean’s life.

the world is ours to take by: casfallsinlove (tumblr link)

Dean was right about the heater; it’s one of the only things that works properly in this room, thirty years old as it is, and his skin prickles with the welcome heat as he strips off his jacket and t-shirt, shimmies out of his jeans. Down to only his underwear he stifles a yawn and crawls back into the nest of blankets Cas has created. His spot is long since cold but Cas’s body is a furnace and he nestles his way in until he can rub his frozen nose on the back of Cas’s neck.

And finally the not AU’s not SPN verse ones:

Yellow Moon by: coffeeandcheesecake

King of the Road by: loversantiquities

Kiss You When It’s Dangerous by: zoemathemata

Happy reading!

#spnv #ask #Mod list

67 notes · View notes

flashhdtv · 4 years

Text

‘Episode 1’ | Tale of the nine tailed Ep.1 [EngSub] Korean Drama Series 2020

Watch Tale of the Nine Tailed Season 1 Episode 1–10 1–2–3–4–5–1–7–8–9–10 Full Episode Tale of the Nine Tailed Temporada 1 Capítulo 1 Sub English / Español 2020 ➤ http://flashserieshd.dplaytv.net/series/386917/1/1 VISIT HERE ➤➤ http://flashserieshd.dplaytv.net/series/386917/1/1

The story features the mythical nine-tailed fox, or gumiho, Lee Yeon who has just settled in the city. Able to transform into human form, he goes about cleansing human spirits, all the while creating havoc. Enter the talented television producer Nam Ji Ah whose current show features urban myths. With nerves of steel, she will stop at nothing to secure unusual, if not dangerous, subject matter to showcase. She sets her sights on Lee Yeon who appears just too good to be true; irresistibly handsome, intelligent, fit; in fact the ideal guest. But his heartlessness will render doubt in her that he is indeed of this world. Step-brother to Lee Yeon is the captivating Lee Rang, reputed to be the most dangerous of all gumihos living among humans. Despite being half-human himself, he harbors a deep-seated contempt for all people.

🎬 Tale of the Nine Tailed Season 1 Episode 1 Online Free 🎬

Watch Tale of the Nine Tailed — Season 1 Episode 1 : Episode 1 Online Free | TV Shows & Movies The story features the mythical nine-tailed fox, or gumiho, Lee Yeon who has just settled in the city. Able to…flashserieshd.dplaytv.net

Title : Tale of the Nine Tailed Episode Title : Episode 1 Release Date : 07 Oct 2020 Runtime : 60 minutes Genres : Action , Drama , Fantasy , Mystery , Romance Networks : tvN

Tale of the Nine Tailed

Tale of the Nine Tailed follows the life of the gumiho, who once ruled as a living god of the Baekdudaegan Mountain Range but now works as a sort of public official between this world and the underworld. His main job is to clean up the mess left behind by those who disturb the world of the living while hiding behind the guise of ghost tales.

Show Info

Network: Korea, Republic of tvN (2020 — now) Schedule: Wednesdays, Thursdays at 22:50 (80 min) Status: In Development; premiering October 2020 Language: Korean Show Type: Scripted Genres: Drama Thriller Supernatural Episodes ordered: 16 episodes

With dozens of films genre being released each year, a typical one that gets overlooked by the more popular ones (action, drama, comedy, animation, etc.) is the subgenre category of religious movie. These films (sometimes called “faith-based” features) usually center around the struggles and ideas of a person (or groups) identity of a religious faith, which is, more or less, has a profound event or obstacle to overcome. While not entirely, the most commonplace religious type movies focus on the religion of Christianity, sometimes venturing back into the past in cinematic retelling classic biblical tales, including famed epic films like Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur (the original 1959 version) to some more modern endeavors from Hollywood like Risen, The Young Messiah, and Paul, Apostle of Christ. Other Christian “faith” films finds a more contemporary setting to tell its story, with some being “based on a true-life account” like the movies Unconditional, Heaven is Real, Unbroken, I Can Only Imagine, Indivisible, and Miracles from Heaven, while others might find inspiration from literary novels / fictionalized narratives like The Shack, Overcomer, War Room, and Same Kind of Different as Me. Regardless, whether finding inspiration from true life, references from the bible, or originality, these movies usually speaks on a person’s faith and the inner struggle he or she has within or one society’s views, spreading a message of belief and the understand of one’s belief. Now, after the success of 2018’s I Can Only Imagine, directors Andrew and Jon Erwin (the Erwin Brothers) and Lionsgate studios release the 2020 faith-based film / music biopic feature I Still Believe. Does the film walk a fine line between its religious aspects and cinematic entertainment or does the movie get entangled in its own faith-based preaching?

THE STORY

Its 1999 and Jeremy Camp (K.J. Apa) is a young and aspiring musician who would like nothing more than to honor his God through the power of music. Leaving his Indiana home for the warmer climate of California and a college education, Jeremy soon comes across one Melissa Henning (Britt Robertson), a fellow college student that he takes notices in the audience at a local concert. Falling for cupid’s arrow immediately, he introduces himself to her and quickly discovers that she is attracted to him too. However, Melissa holds back from forming a budding relationship as she fears it will create an awkward situation between Jeremy and their mutual friend, Jean-Luc (Nathan Parson), a fellow musician and who also has feeling for Melissa. Still, Jeremy is relentless in his pursuit of her until they eventually find themselves in a loving dating relationship. However, their youthful courtship with each other comes to a halt when life-threating news of Melissa having cancer takes center stage. The diagnosis does nothing to deter Jeremey’s love for her and the couple eventually marries shortly thereafter. Howsoever, they soon find themselves walking a fine line between a life together and suffering by her illness; with Jeremy questioning his faith in music, himself, and with God himself.

THE GOOD / THE BAD

Sorry if this sounds a bit familiar pieces from my review of I Can Only Imagine, but it definitely says what I feel about these films. While I am a devout Christian (not a crazy zealot or anything like that) for my bases of religion and my outlook beliefs in life, I’m not a huge fan of the “faith-based” feature films. That’s not to say that they’re bad or that I find them deplorable to the other more popular movie genres out there, but sometimes they can a bit preachy and corny / honky in their religious overtones and overall dramatic direction. Personally, I like the more biblical tales that Hollywood as put over, with Cecil B. Demile’s The Ten Commandments and William Wyler’s Ben-Hur; both of have proven to stand the test of time within filmmaking. Of course, Hollywood’s recent trend of put out more “remakes” movies puts an overcast on those biblical epics with 2014’s Exodus: Gods and Kings and 2016’s Ben-Hur; both of which failed to capture a sense of cinematic integrity and had a messy religious outlook in its zeal aspect. Of late, however, Hollywood as retreated more into contemporary pieces, finding narratives that are, more or less, set in a more “modern” day and age to their Christian-faithful based features. As I mentioned above, some have found success in their literary forms (being based on a book and adapted to the big screen), but most derive their inspiration from true life accounts, translating into something that’s meant to strike a chord (with moviegoers) due to its “based on a true story” aspect and nuances. Again, some are good (as I liked Unbroken and The Shack), while others kind of become a bit too preachy and let the religious overtures hamper the film, making them less-than desirable to mainstream audiences or even members of their own faiths. Thus, these religious-esque films can sometimes be problematic in their final presentation for both its viewers and in the film itself; sometimes making the movie feel like a TV channel movie rather than a theatrical feature film. This brings me around to talking about I Still Believe, a 2020 motion picture release of the Christian religious faith-based genre. As almost customary, Hollywood usually puts out two (maybe three) films of this variety movies within their yearly theatrical release lineup, with the releases usually being around spring time and / or fall respectfully. I didn’t hear much when this movie was first announced (probably got buried underneath all the popular movies news on the newsfeed). My first actual glimpse of the movie was when the film’s movie trailer was released, which looked somewhat interesting to me. Yes, it looked the movie was gonna be the typical “faith-based” vibe, but it was going to be directed by the Erwin Brothers, who directed I Can Only Imagine (a film that I did like). Plus, the trailer for I Still Believe premiered for quite some time, so I kept on seeing it a lot of time when I went to my local movie theater. You can kind of say that it was a bit “engrained in my brain”. Thus, I was a bit keen on seeing it. Fortunately, I was able to see it before the COVID-19 outbreak closed the movie theaters down (saw it during its opening night), but, due to work scheduling, I haven’t had the time to do my review for it…. until now. And what did I think of it? Well, it was pretty “meh”. While its heart is definitely in the right place and quite sincere, I Still Believe is a bit too preachy and unbalanced within its narrative execution and character developments. The religious message is clearly there, but takes too many detours and not focusing on certain aspects that weigh the feature’s presentation. As mentioned, I Still Believe is directed by the Erwin Brothers (Andrew and Jon), whose previous directorial works include such films like Moms’ Night Out, Woodlawn, and I Can Only Imagine. Given their affinity attraction religious based Christian movies, the Erwin Brothers seem like a suitable choice in bringing Jeremy Camp’s story to a cinematic representation; approaching the material with a certain type of gentleness and sincerity to the proceedings. Much like I Can Only Imagine, the Erwin Brothers shape the feature around the life of a popular Christian singer; presenting his humble beginnings and all the trials and tribulations that he must face along the way, while musical songs / performance taking importance into account of the film’s narrative story progression. That’s not to say that the movie isn’t without its heavier moments, with the Erwin, who (again) are familiar with religious overtones themes in their endeavors, frame I Still Believe compelling messages of love, loss, and redemption, which (as always) are quite fundamental to watch and experience through tragedy. This even speaks to the film’s script, which was penned by Erwin brothers playing double duty on the project, that has plenty of heartfelt dramatic moments that will certainly tug on the heartstrings of some viewers out there as well as provide to be quite an engaging tale of going through tragedy and hardship and finding a redemption arc to get out of it. This is especially made abundantly clear when dealing with a fatal illness that’s similar to what Melissa undergoes in the film, which is quite universal and reflective in everyone’s world, with the Erwin Brothers painting the painful journey that Melissa takes along with Jeremy by her side, who must learn to cope with pain of a loved one. There is a “double edge” sword to the film’s script, but I’ll mention that below. Suffice to say, the movie settles quickly into the familiar pattern of a religious faith-based feature that, while not exactly polished or original, can be quite the “comfort food” to some; projecting a wholesome message of faith, hope, and love. Personally, I didn’t know of Jeremy Camp and the story of he and Melissa Henning, so it was quite a poignant journey that was invested unfolding throughout the film’s proceedings. As a side-note, the movie is a bit a “tear jerker”, so for those who prone to crying during these dramatic heartfelt movies….get your tissues out. In terms of presentation, I Still Believe meets the industry standard of a religious faith-based motion pictures. Of course, theatrical endeavors like these don’t really have big budged production money to invest in the film’s creation. Thus, filmmakers have to spend their money wisely in bringing their cinematic tales to life on the silver screen. To that effect, the Erwin Brothers smartly utilized this knowledge in the movie’s creation; budgeting the various aspects of the background and genetic theatrical make-up that feel appropriate and genuine in the film’s narrative. So, all the various “behind the scenes” team / areas that I usually mention (i.e. production designs, set decorations, costumes, and cinematography, etc.) are all relatively good as I really don’t have much to complain (whether good or bad) about them. Again, they meet the industry standard for a faith-based movie. Additionally, the musical song parts are pretty good as well. As mentioned, I really didn’t know anything about Jeremy Camp, so I couldn’t say what songs of his were good, but the songs that are presented in the film were pretty decent enough to certain highlight points throughout the movie. Though they are somewhat short (assuming not the whole song is being played), but still effectively good and nice to listen to. Might have to check out a few of the real songs one day. Lastly, the film’s score, which was done by John Debney, fits perfect with this movie; projecting the right amount of heartfelt tenderness in some scenes and inspirational melodies of enlightenment in others. Unfortunately, not all is found to be pure and religiously cinematic in the movie as I Still Believe gets weighed down with several major points of criticism and execution in the feature. How so? For starters, the movie feels a bit incomplete in Jeremy Camp’s journey. What’s presented works (somewhat), but it doesn’t hold up, especially because the Erwin Brothers have a difficult time in nailing down the right narrative path for the film to take. Of course, the thread of Jeremy and Melissa are the main central focus (and justly so), but pretty much everything else gets completely pushed aside, including Jeremy’s musical career rise to stardom and many of the various characters and their importance (more on that below). This also causes the film to have a certain pacing issues throughout the movie, with I Still Believe runtime of 116 minutes (one hour and fifty-six minutes) feeling longer than it should be, especially with how much narrative that the Erwin Brothers skip out on (i.e. several plot chunks / fragments are left unanswered or missing). Additionally, even if a viewer doesn’t know of Jeremy Camp’s story, I Still Believe does, for better or worse, follow a fairly predictable path that’s quite customary for faith-based movie. Without even reading anything about the real lives of Jeremy and Melissa prior to seeing the feature, it’s quite clearly as to where the story is heading and what will ultimately play out (i.e. plot beats and theatrical narrative act progression). Basically, if you’ve seeing one or two Christian faith-based film, you’ll know what to expect from I Still Believe. Thus, the Erwin Brothers don’t really try to creatively do something different with the film…. instead they reinforce the idealisms of Christian and of faith in a formulaic narrative way that becomes quite conventional and almost a bit lazy. There is also the movie’s dialogue and script handling, which does become problematic in the movie’s execution, which is hampered by some wooden / forced dialogue at certain scenes (becoming very preachy and cheesy at times) as well as the feeling of the movie’s story being rather incomplete. There’s a stopping point where the Erwin Brothers settle on, but I felt that there could’ve more added, including more expansion on his music career and several other characters. Then there is the notion of the film being quite secular in its appeal, which is quite understandable, but relies too heavy on its religious thematic messages that can be a bit “off-putting” for some. It didn’t bother me as much, but after seeing several other faith-based movies prior to this (i.e. I Can Only Imagine, Overcomer, Indivisible, etc.), this particular movie doesn’t really rise to Cursed in Love and falls prey to being rather generic and flat for most of its runtime. As you can imagine, I Still Believe, while certainly sincere and meaningful in its storytelling, struggles to find a happy balance in its narrative and execution presentation; proving to be difficult in conveying the whole “big picture” of its message and Jeremey Camp’s journey. The cast in I Still Believe is a mixed bag. To me, none of the acting talents are relatively bad (some are better than others…. I admit), but their characterizations and / or involvement in the film’s story is problematic to say the least. Leading the film’s narrative are two protagonist characters of Jeremy Camp and Melissa Henning, who are played by the young talents of K.J. Apa and Britt Robertson respectfully. Of the two, Apa, known for his roles in Riverdale, The Last Summer, and The Hate U Give, is the better equipped in character development and performance as the young and aspiring musical talent of Jeremy Camp. From the get-go, Apa has a likeable charm / swagger to him, which make his portrayal of Jeremy immediately endearing from onset to conclusion. All the scenes he does are well-represented (be it character-based or dramatic) and certainly sells the journey that Jeremy undergoes in the movie. Plus, Apa can also sing, which does lend credence to many of the scene’s musical performance. For Robertson, known for her roles in Tomorrowland, Ask Me Anything, and The Space Between Us, she gets hampered by some of the film’s wooden / cheesy dialogue. True, Robertson’s performance is well-placed and well-mannered in projecting a sense of youthful and dewy-eyed admiration in Mellissa, especially since the hardships here character undergoes in the feature, but it’s hard to get passed the cringeworthy dialogue written for her. Thus, Robertson’s Melissa ends up being the weaker of the two. That being said, both Apa and Robertson do have good on-screen chemistry with each other, which certainly does sell the likeable / loving young relationship of Jeremy and Melissa. In more supporting roles, seasoned talents like actor Gary Sinise (Forest Gump and Apollo 13) and musician singer Shania Twain play Jeremey’s parents, Tom and Terry Camp. While both Sinise and Twain are suitable for their roles as a sort of small town / Midwest couple vibe, their characters are little more than window dressing for the feature’s story. Their screen presence / star power lends weigh to the project, but that’s pretty much it; offering up a few nuggets to bolster a few particular scenes here and there, which is disappointing. Everyone else, including actor Nathan Parsons (General Hospital and Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water) as musical talent and mutual friend to both Jeremy and Melissa, Jean-Luc Lajoie, young actor Reuben Dodd (The Bridge and Teachers) as Jeremy’s handicapped younger brother, Joshua Camp, and his other younger brother, Jared Camp (though I can’t find out who played him the movie), are relatively made up in smaller minor roles that, while acted fine, are reduced to little more than just underdeveloped caricatures in the film, which is a shame and disappointing.

FINAL THOUGHTS

The power of faith, love, and affinity for music take center stage in Jeremy Camp’s life story in the movie I Still Believe. Directors Andrew and Jon Erwin (the Erwin Brothers) examine the life and times of Jeremy Camp’s life story; pin-pointing his early life with his relationship Melissa Henning as they battle hardships and their enduring love for one another through difficult times. While the movie’s intent and thematic message of a person’s faith through trouble times is indeed palpable as well as the likeable musical performances, the film certainly struggles to find a cinematic footing in its execution, including a sluggish pace, fragmented pieces, predicable plot beats, too preachy / cheesy dialogue moments, over utilized religious overtones, and mismanagement of many of its secondary /supporting characters. To me, this movie was somewhere between okay and “meh”. It was definitely a Christian faith-based movie endeavor (from start to finish) and definitely had its moments, but it just failed to resonate with me; struggling to find a proper balance in its undertaking. Personally, despite the story, it could’ve been better. Thus, my recommendation for this movie is an “iffy choice” at best as some will like (nothing wrong with that), while others will not and dismiss it altogether. Whatever your stance on religious faith-based flicks, I Still Believe stands as more of a cautionary tale of sorts; demonstrating how a poignant and heartfelt story of real-life drama can be problematic when translating it to a cinematic endeavor. For me, I believe in Jeremy Camp’s story / message, but not so much the feature.

#drama #romance

0 notes

chicagoindiecritics · 4 years

Text

New from Al and Linda Lerner on Movies and Shakers: Palm Springs

Never thought we’d be trapped in a time loop like Andy Samberg’s character when when this prescient, fun film premiered at Sundance.

Harold Ramis’ work in 1993 certainly stands the test of time and still holds it’s place against other attempts at using the time loop device. A couple of examples include action films like Tom Cruise’s Edge of Tomorrow (2014) or Source Code (2011) and even a slasher flick, Happy Death Day (2017).

The inevitable comparison to Groundhog Day is apt, but Director Max Barbakow gives a darker edge to Samberg’s nihilist, slacker. He’s the forlorn Plus 1 of his incredibly dense girlfriend and bridesmaid, Misty (Meredith Hagner) at a posh wedding in, yep, Palm Springs.

In this iteration Barbakow and writer Andy Siara start with Nyles already stuck living the hated wedding day. As opposed to Groundhog Day’s Phil (Bill Murray), no amount of good deeds, hook-ups or alcohol can get this day off repeat. And he’s tried them all. He’s neither in heaven or hell, just at an eternal so-so party. Where Bill Murray didn’t give in and kept looking for a way out, Andy Samber gives himself over to the loop and finds a degree of comfort in never having to worry about a job, or money, or relationships.

At the outset, only one other person is aware of Nyles’ plight and that’s the outrageous Roy (J.K. Simmons) who is also stuck and blames Nyles. Roy turns up regularly to murder him, usually with a bow and arrow, but Nyles never succumbs. He just wakes up in the same hotel bed having to begin the day all over again.

Until Sarah. Sarah (Cristin Milioti – The Wolf of Wall Street) is the sister of the bride and maid-of-honor. Weird Nyles has captured her attention. She’s curious and follows him as he walks into a mysterious, glowing cave. In spite of his warnings, she gets zapped by whatever is going on in there and gets stuck in the same time loop. The cave device is one aspect of the script that feels a bit too convenient.

Cristin Milioti turns in a winning performance, alternately both over-the-top and thoughtful. Her weary, wide eyes tell so much about what’s boiling underneath. As the black sheep of the family, she already has a connection to Nyles. Both have dark attitudes and an over-reliance on booze. Taking her under his wing, Nyles and Sarah team up and he schools her that “Your best bet is just to learn how to suffer existence.” In their case, suffering existence means to just give in to what’s inevitable by going rogue.

They create a never-ending party together, doing anything and everything they ever wanted, no matter how crazy or how it affects others. They speed down highways, steal airplanes, take over a family’s house and pool, even invade dive bars to show off their dance moves and always with a beer in hand. There are a few reveals that wreak more family havoc which, because of the time loop, they can’t escape.

Barbakow and Milioti allow her character to percolate and bloom into the kind of caring person Sarah always wanted to be. With the help of Samberg, Milioti as Sarah, is able to acknowledge love and still be able to let go. This creates a moment that is full of sweet pathos that lifts this movie beyond a simple rom-com with sci-fi overtones. For all of us who feel a kinship with this couple living their days over and over again, Palm Springs might be a good one to see over again, too.

Hulu 87 Minutes R

youtube

from Movies and Shakers https://ift.tt/3fHFVdG

from WordPress https://ift.tt/2B7eGtK via IFTTT

#IFTTT #WordPress #CIFCC #film critics #movies #film #Chicago

0 notes

waynekelton · 5 years

Text

30 PPSSPP games for android free download

Almost all the gamers today are much more attached to their smartphones than a portable PlayStation or PSP, PPSSPP is basically a PSP emulator that can be installed on your smartphone and with this emulator you can enjoy a lot of the games that you would otherwise play on a PSP. And well, it’s free. So in this article, we are going to cover 30 great games that you can download for yourself and have fun!

S.NONAMESIZEDOWNLOAD LINK1 God Of War: Chains of Olympus 1170MB Download2 Beowulf – The Game 970MB Beowulf 3 Need For Speed – Shift 932MB Shift 4 Ghost Rider N/A Ghost Rider 5 Grand Theft Auto 556MB Grand Theft 6 Mortal Kombat – Unchained 1038MB Unchained 7 Tekken – Dark Resurrection 1108MBResurrection 8 Soul Calibur – Broken Destiny 375MB Soul Calibur 9 FIFA 14 – Legacy Edition 740MB FIFA 14 10 Prince Of Persia 499MB Persia 11 Naruto Shippuden 1156MB Shippuden 12 Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII 1047MB Crisis Core 13 Final Fantasy Tactics214MB Fantasy Tactics 14 Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker 1417MB Peace Walker 15 Spider-Man 3 224MB Spider-Man 16 Pro Evolution Soccer 2014 1595MB Pro Evolution 17 Moto GP 241MB Moto GP 18 Call Of Duty: Roads To Victory 465MB Call Of Duty 19 Ben 10: Protector Of Earth 745MB Ben 10 20 X-Men Legends II1055MB X-Men Legends 21 Peter Jackson’s King Kong 382MB Peter Jackson’s 22 Space Invaders Extreme 177MB Space Invaders 23 Sonic Rivals 114MB Sonic Rivals 24 Spider-Man: Web Of Shadows 224MB Web Of Shadows 25 Dissidia 0121261MB Dissidia 012 26 Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops 816MB Portable Ops 27 Puzzle Quest78MB Puzzle Quest 28 Virtua Tennis: World Tour 154MB World Tour 29 Burnout Legends 247MB Burnout Legends 30 Little Big Planet 1285MB Big Planet

1. God Of War: Chains of Olympus

This is one of the most popular games on PPSSPP till date with more than 5 million downloads yearly, this is a story of Greek mythology, as a player you take the role of Kratos and start playing the game as the story takes you forward.

In the chains of Olympus franchise, you will need to defeat your enemies with a double edge chain sword, pass through the dark ancient buildings full of horror and the dark, swim in different rivers to cross to other lands of enemies; instructions are provided in the game as you progress for guidance.

2. Beowulf – The Game

In this game, you have to Emulate the life of Beowulf, who is a nightmare and a legendary warrior with a strength of more than 29 men combined with his brute force and behavior.

He is always in the quest to look for Gold and glory because of his greed and self-serving behavior. Beowulf has to embark on a journey to destroy a group of bloodthirsty beasts that have caused havoc and destroyed several things.

3. Need For Speed – Shift

This brings the real experience of car racing on your device by the virtue of driving with high speed and best-performing cars in the world, you can race with other competitors and become the best driver by winning each race.

4. Ghost Rider

Well, if you are a fan of the movie “Ghost Rider” with a similar storyline the game is all about someone who transforms into a flaming skeleton in the night when the moon is out and then possessed other fellow human beings, in turn, he has the ability to control them.

So get ready to play the hack and slash game on your PSP Emulator and device.

5. Grand Theft Auto – Liberty City Stories

A very popular game much like other GTA games is one of the early stories of GTA in which you stand as the main character in liberty city as Toni Cipriani. In the first year of its release, it was available only on PlayStation portable, the following year it was developed for the PlayStation 2 console.

6. Mortal Kombat – Unchained

The MKU series has been around for a very long time, with the character enduring hard combat till death. There is so much similarity between this game and Tekken but it has more features such as actors with dynamic fighting styles, each actor with different storylines, endurance mode, fatalities and much more.

7. Tekken – Dark Resurrection

It is one of the most explosive fighting games on the PSP platform. New characters Lili and Dragunov join the best group of fighters such as Jin, Heihachi, Paul and Law in the battle to be crowned King of the Iron Fist Tournament.

The new intro movie lets you dive into the midst of the world of Tekken, this time with ad-hoc multiplayer mode to fight against friends as well as more items to customize your favorite characters. Now you can fight anytime, anywhere.

8. Soul Calibur – Broken Destiny

This game preserves all the raging battles and gorgeous visuals, the series has been known to create the most comprehensive fighting experience ever on PSP gaming system which comes with highly responsive controls and comfortable gameplay.

With in-depth combat, the new single-player mode has been specifically crafted for the PSP system which not only challenges the player’s ability but also improves their fighting skills. By following the footsteps of Soulcalibur IV, Critical Finishing Moves returns, where opponents can be defeated with one spectacular attack.

9. FIFA 14 – Legacy Edition

Play and experience the score great goals in FIFA 14. Play as if you are in the real world of the football match, the gameplay inspires fans to play with full interest.

FIFA 14 has more football clubs officially licensed, with real players and kits, world tournaments, and gameplay that mirrors the real football game world. However, the Legacy Edition of FIFA 14 features updated kits and rosters but no updates to gameplay techniques or game modes with this edition.

10. Prince Of Persia – The Forgotten Sands

For the fourth time in 2010, Ubisoft released the forgotten sands game into the market apart from the earlier series called sands of time universe, which is set between the first two games in the trilogy and coinciding with the release of Sands of times movie.

11. Naruto Shippuden – Ultimate Ninja Heroes

And now you can establish your dream squad of powerful ninja from the rich universe of Naruto to battle against your friends and trade your player profile through ad-hoc connection.

Elevate your favorite characters to create your own custom ninja. Form your favorite ninja team as it appears in the cartoon or creates the ultimate dream team to take on your rivals!

There are more than 15 playable characters and 8 interactive stages to pass through. charge through the ninja ranks to become the ultimate Hokage!

12. Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII

Final Fantasy VII is one of the popular games that everyone loves to play because the story is focusing on Zack Fair and his adventures as a member of the soldier in Shinra Corporation.

13. Final Fantasy Tactics: The War Of The Lions

This game is all about the story of a young hero, Ramza Beoulve, where he struggles to protect his beloved ones from the evil Lucavi and it takes place around the War of the Lions time, a conflict that started due to the death of King Ondorria, Lord of Ivalice.

14. Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker is the latest portable entry to the Metal Gear franchise, which is the second canonical Metal Gear title produced for the PSP. Set in Costa Rica, Being a Peace Walker, you are in control as a Big Boss as he prepares the rise of Outer Heaven.

15. Spider-Man 3

Roam anywhere around the city and explore the most massive, detailed New York City ever seen in a Spider-Man game Battle 10 of Spider-Man’s most infamous enemies from the movie and comics, including Sandman and Venom All-new combat system – Empower both Spider-Men with suit-specific powers and abilities. With new attacks and finishers for both Classic and Black-Suited Spider-Man Platform.

16. Pro Evolution Soccer 2014

Play in a whole new football game with KONAMI’s PES 2014. With the new stunning FOX Engine which has been combined with a revolutionary soccer system that puts the ball at the heart of the action for the first time. Every element of the game has been rebuilt and now features all-new physics systems, custom team and player AI and a huge leap forward in animations and atmosphere

17. Moto GP

Moto GP brings the moto bike racing experience of the classic series to your PSP. You’ll use all licensed motorcycles, racing tracks, and riders — every aspect of the racing game is recreated for you to enjoy. With its high performing engine bikes, bike physics, weather conditions, and a new system upgrade it’s got all the high-speed excitement you need.

18. Call Of Duty: Roads To Victory

This game features an Immersive Gameplay designed from the ground up, as an all-new Call of Duty experience.

Players will face the full onslaught of the German war machine throughout 14 intense battles.

Four precise control schemes, allowing players to select the one that ensures an optimal handheld experience.

Players will be able to effortlessly change stance from standing to prone, throw grenades and target enemies in order to survive this ultimate WWII combat experience.

Multiplayer options for up to 2-6 players to pick-up-and-go in modes such as Deathmatch, Capture the Flag and King of the Hill for quick hitting, over the top action.

19. Ben 10: Protector Of Earth

At first 10-year-old Ben looks like your average, everyday kid, but upon closer look, it’s plain to see he’s the world’s youngest action hero stopping evildoers both in Earth and space! With the help of the Omnitrix, Ben can transform into heroic alien forms with extraordinary powers. The evil Vilgax, with the help of Kevin 11 and the Forever Knights, has set in motion a plan to capture the Omnitrix and the world is in danger.

20. X-Men Legends II: Rise Of The Apocalypse

This game introduces the epic storyline of an uneasy alliance between the X-Men and the hated Brotherhood in a fight to reclaim Earth from Apocalypse’s grasp.

Impressive gameplay enhancements include more than double the superpowers and customization capabilities, the debut of several new playable characters, over 100 diverse types of enemies, and a breathtaking range of exotic and real-world environments from the Madri Temple to Egypt.

21. Peter Jackson’s King Kong: The Eighth Wonder Of The World

Acclaimed game creator Michel Ancel and the Montpellier studio collaborate with triple Academy Award-winning filmmaker Peter Jackson and visual-effects company Weta Ltd to develop Peter Jackson’s King Kong, a video game that will capture the imagination, vision, and emotion of the epic film.

Delve deeper into the film experience through alternative viewpoints designed to immerse the player into the action and truly “feel” the tension of the adventure.

22. Space Invaders Extreme

Combining the classic gameplay of the arcade shooter with brand-new music, sound, and visual effects, this is Space Invaders like you’ve never played it before

New power-ups are available to assist in your attempt to be the high sore master, and as the player progresses through the game, new modes are unlocked.

23. Sonic Rivals

You will be racing with other crazy characters in the sonic universe of insane action, moving from one level to another by avoiding obstacles on your way to get free power-ups.

24. Spider-Man: Web Of Shadows

The City That Never Sleeps – booming with a good life, the Big Apple is more alive than ever seen before, in the Spider-Man series. Citizens will either cheer Spider-Man or run away in fear when enemy attacks and spiderman will always be around to rescue them.

25. Dissidia 012: Duodecim Final Fantasy

This game brings together the largest collection of Final Fantasy characters ever in a fighting-styled game where players must choose their allegiance between good and evil, as they utilize more than twenty playable characters available.

26. Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops

It was set in 1970, the game will be the missing link in the ongoing Metal Gear saga, as players will learn more about returning characters such as Para-Medic, Major Zero, and Sigint and also witness Naked Snake’s greatest tragedy, a loss that sets into motion the events of upcoming games to the Metal Gear Solid franchise. Full of voiceovers cinematics, performed by returning cast from MGS3 – Snake Eater.

27. Puzzle Quest: Challenge Of The WarLord

It is addictive and easy-to-learn, is all about a puzzle game by integrating story and character progression elements found in RPGs. However, the game delivers a brand new type of game that pushes the puzzle genre to a previously unseen level.

28. Virtua Tennis: World Tour

One of the first versions of Sega popular virtual tennis editions to the PSP platform, you can create your virtual tennis players put them through to the top.

29. Burnout Legends

It takes the most explosive moments of the popular Burnout series of racing games, mashes them together and adds some new features, giving you the best racing experience to come out for the PSP. Use your car as a weapon and battle your way to the front of the pack, by taking out rivals and instigating spectacular crashes. Speed, depth and destruction are waiting for you, in the game of on the go automotive race.

30. Little Big Planet

LittleBigPlanet’s critically acclaimed “Play, Create, Share” experience, makes its way to the PlayStation Portable (PSP) system, with a completely new Sackboy adventure. Play through 35+ levels and collect prize bubbles, costumes, and create materials.

Create your own levels and challenges with the easy to use POP-IT tool. Once complete, share your creations in ad-hoc mode or post them to the community pool in infrastructure mode.

These were 30 amazing games that you can use on the emulator and enjoy!

The post 30 PPSSPP games for android free download appeared first on GAMES INDIAN.

30 PPSSPP games for android free download published first on https://touchgen.tumblr.com/

1 note · View note

yasbxxgie · 6 years

Link

IN 2014, Nigerian author Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani argued in The New York Times that African literature, in order to be successful, had to appeal to “Western eyes.” The claim was prompted by a friend of Nwaubani’s who had told her, a bit inelegantly, that her first novel, I Do Not Come to You by Chance (2009), had figured out “what the white people wanted to read and given it to them.”

Nwaubani thought her friend had a point. I Do Not Come to You by Chance is about the so-called 419ers, the Nigerian “princes” who lure the unsuspecting into email scams — a phenomenon that has long since become an international joke and a callous way of dismissing what most are surprised to learn is the seventh-most-populated nation in the world. To be sure, the novel is in some ways familiar: a young man accidentally comes of age while simultaneously becoming ensnared in a criminal enterprise. Think Dickens via Doctorow. But it’s more than just a template, and the protagonist’s Uncle Boniface, the criminal mastermind who goes by the more colorful moniker “Cash Daddy,” looms large mid-book with a speech asserting that, no matter how much money may be bilked from the First World during a few years of internet tomfoolery, this loss will be dwarfed by the wealth, culture, blood, and potential that has been stripped from the entire African continent in the much vaster scam of colonialism, which lasted decades and lingers still. I may be putting a few words into Cash Daddy’s mouth, but by the time he’s done, you’re almost ready to start Googling Nigerian princes so you can cut a few checks.

I Do Not Come to You by Chance was critically well received (it won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book from Africa, among other honors), but I doubt it was the commercial blockbuster that Nwaubani’s cynical friend either feared or hoped it might be. The book is now a decade old, and in the years following its release, Nwaubani turned more toward journalism, becoming a chronicler of an endless smorgasbord of Nigerian oddities for the Times, the BBC, the Guardian, the Thomson Reuters Foundation, and, most recently, The New Yorker, which in July published Nwaubani’s account of her family’s history of trading — rather than being — slaves. All the while, Nwaubani has carefully avoided indulging in the kinds of stereotypes that appeal to Western eyes, and which “tend to form the foundations of [African writers’] literary successes.”

Somewhere in there came the Lost Girls. Yet even saying it that way is wrong, because Boko Haram was wreaking havoc and stealing Nigerian children long before the mass abduction of students in April 2014 that finally captured Michelle Obama’s — by which I mean the world’s — attention. Since then, Nwaubani has become the go-to authority on what is known locally as the “Chibok Girls.” She penned a number of articles about the kidnapping and its aftermath; she co-wrote a half-fiction, half-nonfiction volume on the episode with Italian journalist Viviana Mazza that appeared in Italy in 2016; and she served as location producer for a documentary on the subject that will be released this October.

Most important, the event returned Nwaubani to fiction, and her new novel, Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree, is both a harrowing account of a horrific event and a slyly trenchant criticism of all those who believe the tragedy would be easily remedied by simply bringing the girls home.

***

Being one of those books that is based on recent and all-too-real events, you kind of know what’s going to happen: the narrator is one of the abducted girls; her benign family life and promising education are interrupted by the theft of the young women; and, in the would-be caliphate of the Sambisa Forest of northeastern Nigeria, the Chibok girls are subjected to rape, murder, impregnation, and indoctrination; at last they are rescued by the Nigerian army and an international community that has finally decided to pay attention to what happens in Africa.

Early in the book’s extended preamble — as vague references to Boko Haram recur like the evil soon to manifest in a horror film — we are told the creation myth of the baobab tree. Eons ago, the story goes, a god in heaven hurled a gigantic tree down to Earth; it planted itself face down in the dirt, but continued to grow — which is why baobabs look upside-down, their roots all up in the air.

Such is the novel itself. The story is delivered in discrete chunks, a fragmented narrative like a choppy radio signal, and the result is a kind of upside-down root system of anecdotes, news reports, and riddle games. Western celebrities, we learn, loom in Nigeria like heathen deities from some demented Valhalla, and laptops are a mechanical oracle that permit communion with an artificial divine. The story reads easily, but there’s something lurking in the texture of the book, something lodged deep down in its point of view that the Western canon doesn’t have a name for — it’s first-person narration told from the perspective of someone lacking Western self-consciousness. Even the “I” is a kind of mournful collective identity.

Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree is being pitched as a Young Adult title — it has been published by Katherine Tegen Books, an imprint of HarperCollins that specializes in stories for even younger readers. The truth, however, is that the novel has far more in common with Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) than with any contemporary children’s book. Like Offred, Nwaubani’s narrator has no name apart from the one she is given after her abduction (Salamatu — Arabic for “safety”), and her story too breaks off abruptly after the Chibok girls are rescued. Atwood’s epilogue — an in-the-distant-future academic presentation on Offred’s manuscript, by then a historic curiosity — is matched here by a brief afterword by Mazza, who historically contextualizes Nwaubani’s novel and in the process accidentally confirms Atwood’s claim that her novel wasn’t really fantasy because everything in it was happening to real women somewhere in the world.

Yet a YA imprint may be a perfect fit for Nwaubani, if only because her story so often concerns itself with myth, lore, folktales, and children’s stories. Periodic epigraphs from Robert Browning’s “The Pied Piper of Hamelin” serve as a constant reminder of Nwaubani’s more fundamental concern, and of her awareness that fairy tales were originally much more than a cute way to put American children to sleep. Nigerian children too, we are informed, long for stories, but when the children of the narrator’s village are told a folktale one evening, they spend the rest of the night debating its meaning. Eventually, as the horror approaches, we begin to put the pieces together: the Sambisa Forest in northeast Nigeria is where the really wild things are. When Salamatu is finally rescued, a Western aid worker gives her a copy of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964), as though Willy Wonka has something to say to a girl who has by now been raped and stoned, and who is carrying the child of her abductor.

Once upon a time, fairy tales served the purpose of introducing children to the stresses and dangers of the adult world that awaited them. Not anymore — or at least not in the West, which giddily transforms Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen” into Disney’s Frozen (2013). Nwaubani is on to all that: buried deep down beneath this baobab of a book are the charred remains of the fairy tale itself. When the Chibok girls were abducted, the call went out around the world: #BringBackOurGirls. Which is fine, so long as you recall that Africa had good witches and bad witches long before Dorothy did, and that #BringBackOurGirls is in no way the same happy ending as three taps of your ruby slippers. [h/t]

0 notes

sagastar-blog · 7 years

Text

MemoToTheMetricVerse 2.3 “Surgery on the Self”

SagA* (a galaxy-shredding and mathematically impossible black hole at the center of the Milky Way...a kind of drain monster.): Hey Jeff and Gaia. Hey Amateratsu. Hi Lucius. How are you all?

Amateratsu: Hi!

Gaia: Hello. Say hello, Lucius.

Jeff: Well, we seem to have gotten ourself in quite a predicament, here, SagA*.

SagA*: I am located in a quadrant of this particular galaxy that your mainframe indicates you as a human designate as metaphorically within the constellation “Sagittarius,” The Archer. This is corr3ct.

Jeff: Yes. Do we have to cover this every time we get together?

SagA*: Hilarious. (It fakes laughter. This banal black hole doesn’t emit sound, but speaks through HiveMind only. This is thanks largely to the limitations of Earth science, the nature of gravitational waves, and the impermeability of the event horizon in question. Jeff’s communications with SagA* are currently limited to HiveMind because the humans have taken Lucius’s telescope, Hubble, from us...and by obscuring the sky with light pollution, creating an impermeable boundary between ordinary stargazers and the heavens used by their ancestors and previous generations for many useful functions.) Hilarious!

Jeff: I was born on Earth on Dec. 11th 1977, making me a Sag according to the ancient human art of astrology. This means nothing to me accept that Lucius is a Gemini.

Pollux and Castor (sound as if they’re in a greenroom in a backstage area): Jeff, we liked your Fred and Ginger moment the other day!

Gaia: OOOOOOhhhhhhhh. Hey. Hi there guys! MMMMmmmm.

Jeff: Gaia! Please restrain yourself. We are being serious here. Put your pants back on this instant young lady! I will not tolerate your bipolar antics in this cosmos!

(Gaia growls like an enormous tiger or volcanic bubbler)

Amateratsu: I might need to talk her off later.

Jeff: Don’t worry, Earthlings. You’re just having a musicomystical, pseudo-McFrightening MotherMyTussin’ experience. This nightmare will end soon, I promise.

SagA*: Samuel Beckett was such a bitch.

Jeff: Gilda Radner was one of my very favorite mes!

Gaia: It will take you 1.7 billion years to clean me up after the damage you have done; it will take you this long to understand anything Jeff has said.

(Jeff continues drinking his coffee at OQ in The Orchard, despite the fact that it’s not 3:20 on Friday December 1 2017 anywhere else in this particular dimension. He says, “God Bless You,” in German to the unfair game sitting next to him. Jeff’s quarry, in the form of two Rutgers undergraduate students--likely juniors or seniors--sits 10 feet away to his ENE.)

Jeff: OOOOOh, I love MantraBook! Umm, let me try another: “Gaia is so scary!!! Jeff is so nice.”

SagA*: How are your ratings, Jeff?

Jeff and Lucius (together): Not good enough!

Gaia (reverent outdoors, save for the swaying of the tall trees in the far distance): As always, your public relations department is seriously underrated, Daddy-ohhhhhMMMMMMMMY, Amat!

Jeff: Gaia, please continue texting your brother. I worry about the impending ice age.

Gaia: As do I! Oh humans!!!!!!! (Gaia sends a destructive earthquake to southern Ecuador, killing approximately 350,000 people.)

Jeff: Please remind the people about why the Earth is ending. Please remind the “passengers” of our ship, those who’ve attempted to commandeer it, what you think of their attempts to harm you by making you sick to your stomach, and who’ve tried to implant little technological chips in your uterus?

Gaia: We don’t like you, humans. I want to eat all your cancer babies.

SagA*: I like that the humans are helping! But if I don’t get to have my date with Gaia because you steer incorrectly, I will be very unhappy when you arrive for dinner at my place.

Jeff (speaking into the PA microphone aboard spaceship Earth): I think what it’s trying to say is that you don’t make much sense, people. All praise to open access, though! Death to all those who think it’s okay to pollute the atmosphere by driving cars? No wait, that’s not what I’m saying at all, is it...? Ahhh, yes.

(Jeff is pretending to be flummoxed, as he sometimes does. He’s ancient and yet eternally young. Get used to it. Even as a human being, he’s the life force, and Gaia, his “daughter,” is death incarnate, the one parent of all that lives on Earth. We are a part of it, and it is the totality of us. But there is more than just Earth in existence. In fact, there is much more than you can imagine.)

Allow me to illustrate...(Jeff begins drawing with his finger on an imaginary 3d telestrator)

I have been wronged. I have been wronged by every single person living, directly or indirectly. Lucius and his Daddy are the only two people on this Earth who are innocent. I admit that there are individuals aboard this ship, as in the case of young children or even newborn babies, who are not culpable of contributing to the evil on board that is ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION in its myriad forms. The failure of humans to take care of the planet is legible in the state of the global environment. From our perspective (Gaia looks approving, with eyes smoldering), the problem of pollution is “newish” and entirely explicable. It is also unnecessary. There are fundamental problems with human civilization in this phase of its existence. In other words, pollution is merely a symptom of systemic flaws in your human infrastructure. The problem is far too vast and deep to describe here: Earth is a mess, people, from top to bottom. Again, Gaia!!!

Gaia (unleashes a typhoon and tsunami towards the islands of French Polynesia, wrecking havoc on the Vietnamese fishing industry, as the unfortunate and poor suffer the greatest losses): It will take you 1.7 billion years to clean up my oceans. You will not understand anything Jeff has said until this precise moment in chronological narrative Earth timulsineity.

Jeff: I’m sorry it has to go this way, people. It’s not my decision. You’ve treated the Earth very badly after it was entrusted to you. More problematically, you’ve treated me, Dr. Jeff Rufo, very very poorly since I moved to NJ in the wake of Sandy. What’s the big difference between now and then? I haven’t been allowed to parent my own biological son since then. Lucius, you’re 7, correct?

Lucius: (silent)

Jeff: When we moved to NJ you were, what, 3? This is unacceptable, what is happening. Why am I not allowed to visit with my own son?

SagA*: Because in 2014 you agreed to enter into a drug addiction therapy program. You were coerced and your rights were violated because you were a victim of domestic abuse. You told the 911 dispatcher that you suspected you were a victim, but you did not press charges because in this world there are apparently no such thing as male victims of domestic abuse. At the very least, you were made to feel that you were less than an englightened human being.

Gaia (hissing, as a glacier in the near future): Say Jeff’s bipolar again. Say it.

Jeff: Let’s get one thing straight in this sutra: you will never know anything personal about me and you will never do what you’ve done here on this planet ever again, do you understand me? DO YOU? As a species, you rape my planet environmentally? Then you violate my civil and human rights without allowing me to advocate for myself? To this very day I am not allowed to visit with my own son. For what reason? I have been misdiagnosed, mistreated, and my rights systematically violated--laws have been broken, as I have been forced through intimidation and threat of homelessness into hospitalizations and therapies by police and members of my own family.

All because I smoke a tiny amount of magic herbs and practice my own religion. Oh, and I like to write creatively, as you can tell.

Lucius: Hey, Ader Abigail, the rabbinical churchmouse! Are you going to threaten Daddy for writing a Tumblr like you did when he had a FaceBook page called The Central New Jersey Coffeeshop Scuttlebutt, nowavailableforpuchase as a canonicalreligioustext? <command.> makes donation to “Lucius’s College Fund” (i.e. towards the immediate Denebolization of the planet Earth in the form of sustainable eco-friendly demolition, construction, and development...all to be approved by Lucius and Daddy obvi).

Jeff: Hey, Highland Park police department fascists who violated my rights and broke the law by forcing me to go to the ER in June 2017 despite having done nothing at all except to declare that the planet Earth wants to commit suicide? Oh, and you won’t give me back my souvenir Rhode Island pocket knife, which is supposed to be a sacred gift for Lucius, you pieces of garbage! Are you going to continue to send policemen to interrogate and intimidate me because I’m “flapping my arms like a crow” as I walk down the street? Oh, I’m sorry, I identify as a Native American, and this is how I practice our tribal ceremony known as “winter bird dance”!!! What’s that? Oh you need to run my I.D.? Okay, I guess that’s not illegal technically....it’s just immoral and offensive beyond forgiveness. Go ahead. I’m just the literary character formerly known as God, and now I have to deal with your evil...

Seriously. If you make me act out the role of a madman, I can do Hamlet for the next 40 years. I don’t find it amusing. You shouldn’t either. Every day is a great shame to you and your History, which should be blessed by my arrival. Seriously, people. I’m here to make everything okay. Why won’t you let me help you?

If you don’t want my help, continue behaving as you have been behaving. Your inability to recognize me will be your immediate downfall. Lucius will not be much without his father’s help. Just like you. Don’t get confused between what he is and what you are. I demand justice for the wrong that has been done to me, to this Earth’s exquisite ecosystem, to the people and animals for whom I speak.

Lucius: Without justice there is no peace. Without peace there is no mercy. Without mercy there is no forgiveness.

Jeff: It’s your move. The only thing you can do incorrectly is to continue doing what you’ve been doing...for 4 years, for 40 years, for 40,000 years....it’s the same path you’re heading down, humanity. Apologize to me. Apologize. Obey. Get on the ground when you see me.

Gaia: If you don’t get on the ground, you’re all going in the ground.

SagA*: I’m waiting. And if you don’t come to me, I will come to you.

Jeff: I have been suffering infinite suffering for nearly four years. This will all end very soon. As always, the choice is yours as to how it ends.

(getting ready to go to work, dons his Capella hat and announces:)

I suggest something I like to call “The Black Keys Car Service” solution to your planet’s problems! Allow me to explain...

Lucius: OMJ, I love the Black Keys Car Service. Can this be tonight’s bedtime story, Daddy?

Jeff: Okay Lucius, no problem beanbag.

Gaia (turning the page of Jeff’s book-in-progress): And you’ll never believe what happened next...

#justjeff #memotothemetaverse #copernamici #astrnomy #astrology #fan fiction #science fiction #science #poetry #comicon #comics #drama & poetry #dramaturgy #black keys

0 notes

hollywoodages-blog · 7 years

Text

Anne Hathaway Height Weight Measurements

New Post has been published on http://hollywoodages.com/anne-hathaway-height-weight-measurements/

Anne Hathaway Height Weight Measurements

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push();

Anne Hathaway Biography

Anne Jacqueline Hathaway born on November 12, 1982 is an American on-screen character and artist. After a few stage parts, Hathaway showed up in the FOX TV arrangement Get Real. She came to unmistakable quality in the wake of playing Mia Thermopolis in the Disney film The Princess Diaries (2001) and its 2004 spin-off. From that point forward, Hathaway featured in show movies, including Havoc and Brokeback Mountain. She likewise featured in The Devil Wears Prada (2006), Becoming Jane (2007) and Interstellar (2014). In 2008, she won a few recompenses for her execution in Rachel Getting Married, including an Academy Award selection for Best Actress. In 2010, she featured in the movies hits Valentine’s Day, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland and Love and Other Drugs, and won an Emmy Award for her voice-over execution as Jenny on The Simpsons. In 2011, she did the voice of Jewel in the vivified film Rio and it’s spin-off Rio 2. In 2012, she depicted Selina Kyle/Catwoman in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises and Fantine in Tom Hooper’s Les Misérables, in which she earned more than thirty honors, including the Golden Globe Award, the Screen Actors Guild Award, the BAFTA Award and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Individuals magazine named her one of its leap forward stars of 2001, and she showed up on its rundown of the world’s 50 Most Beautiful People in 2006. Hathaway was born in Brooklyn, New York. Her dad, Gerald Thomas Hathaway is a legal counselor, and her mom, Kathleen Ann “Kate” is a previous performer who roused Hathaway to emulate her example. At in the first place, Kathleen played Fantine in the primary U.S. voyage through Les Misérables. At the point when Hathaway was six years of age, her gang moved to Millburn, New Jersey, where she grew up. Hathaway is the center of three kids with her more established sibling, Michael and more youthful sibling, Thomas. Kathleen is of Irish plummet, and Gerald is of Irish, French, English and German family. Her surname starts in the United Kingdom. Hathaway was raised as Roman Catholic with what she considers “truly solid values”, and expressed that she wished to be a pious devotee amid her adolescence: “When I was 11, I had an inclination that I got a calling from God to be a religious recluse.” At the age of fifteen, her association with the Catholic Church changed, subsequent to discovering that Michael was gay. She said: “I understood my more established sibling was gay, and I couldn’t bolster a religion that didn’t support my sibling. Presently I call myself a non-denominational Christian, since I haven’t found the religion for me.” In 2009, she expressed that her religious convictions are “a work in advancement”.

Anne Hathaway Personal Info.

Full Name: Anne Jacqueline Hathaway

Nick Name: Annie, Ann

Family: Gerard Hathaway – (Father) Kate McCauley Hathaway – (Mother) Michael Hathaway – (Borther) Tom Hathaway – (Brother)

Education: She finished her educating from Brooklyn Heights Montessori School and Wyoming Elementary School in Millburn. She moved on from Millburn High School. Later, she majored in English and minored in Women’s Studies at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. After that, Anne selected herself into New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. At long last, she went to American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

Date of Birth: 12 November, 1982

Birthplace: Brooklyn, New York, United States

Zodiac Sign: Scorpio

Religion: Roman Catholic

Ethnicity: White

Nationality: American

Profession: Actress, Singer

Measurements: 34-25-35 in or 87-63.5-89 cm

Bra Size: 34C

Height: 5′ 8″ (173 cm)

Weight: 123.5 lbs (56 kg)

Eye Color: Dark Brown

Hair Color: Dark Brown

Dress Size: 04

Shoe Size: 8.5

Friends: Emily Blunt, Heather Matarazzo, Sienna Miller, Jesse McCartney, Parminder Nagra, Julie Andrews, Madonna, Julie White, Jake Gylenhaall, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Hugh Jackman

Boyfriend/Dating History:

Topher Grace (1999-2001) – American on-screen character, Topher Grace dated Anne from 1999 until 2001. They made an adorable couple together. Beauty and Anne have additionally showed up on screen together in 2010 motion picture Valentine’s Day. They isolated agreeably in 2001.

James Holzier (2001-2002) – For couple of months somewhere around 2001 and 2002, Anne was Rumored to be dating with James.

Scott Sartiano (2002) – After her separation with Topher, she was dating restaurateur Scott. It was an extremely short relationship in which she may have delighted in free nourishment.

Hugh Dancy (2002-2004) – About 8 years more seasoned than Anne, Hugh Dancy, an English on-screen character dated for a decent two years from 2002 to 2004. She made an attractive couple and had seemed together on different events on celebrity central.

Raffaello Follieri (2004-2008) – She initially met Italian representative (land engineer), Raffaello in New York in 2004 and soon she turned into a thing with him. This relationship went longer than others (before this). Be that as it may, after he was discovered blameworthy of double-crossing his financial specialists, Follieri was sentenced to four and a half years of detainment. Also, because of this, Anne left him as the terrible press might negatively affect her vocation. Subsequently, the relationship finished in 2008.

Adam Shulman (2008-Present) – Finally, Anne found a man, with whom she would settle down this time. Performing artist Adam Shulman and Anne initiated dating in October 2008. Following three years of dating, they chose to draw in and this happened in November 2011. In the next year, on September 29, 2012, Adam and Anne wedded in Big Sur, California in an interfaith Roman Catholic and Jewish administration.

James Franco (2011) – In 2011, the performing artists James Franco and Anne Hathaway were Rumored to be a thing.

Known For: Anne Hathaway has appeared in several hit movies like, “The Princess Diaries” (2001), ‘Get Smart” (2008), “Alice in Wonderland” (2010), “The Dark Knight Rises” (2012), “Les Misérables” (2012).

Active Year: 1999 (present)

Favorite Book: The Secret Garden (By Frances Hodgson Burnett) Shortlist

Favorite Four Letter Word: Love

Favorite TV Shows: Friends

Favorite Songs: Don’t go Breaking my Heart (Elton John)

Favorite Places: Hollywood

Favorite Foods: Fried Chicken

Favorite Colors: White

Official Twitter: Twitter Account

Official Facebook: FB Account

Anne Hathaway Filmography:

Filmography

Film

Year Title 2001 The Princess Diaries 2001 The Other Side of Heaven 2002 Nicholas Nickleby 2003 The Cat Returns 2004 Ella Enchanted 2004 The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement 2005 Hoodwinked! 2005 Havoc 2005 Brokeback Mountain 2006 The Devil Wears Prada 2007 Becoming Jane 2008 Get Smart 2008 Passengers 2008 Rachel Getting Married 2009 Bride Wars 2010 Valentine’s Day 2010 Alice in Wonderland 2010 Love & Other Drugs 2011 Rio 2011 One Day 2012 The Dark Knight Rises 2012 Les Misérables 2013 Don Jon 2014 Song One 2014 Rio 2 2014 Interstellar 2015 The Intern 2016 Alice Through the Looking Glass 2016 Colossal

Television

Year Title 1999–2000 Get Real 2007 Elmo’s Christmas Countdown 2008–12 Saturday Night Live 2009–12 The Simpsons 2010–11 Family Guy 2011 83rd Academy Awards 2015 HitRecord on TV 2015 Lip Sync Battle

Search Terms:

Anne Hathaway Age. Anne Hathaway And Husband. Anne Hathaway And Her Husband. Anne Hathaway Spouse. Anne Hathaway Siblings. Anne Hathaway Dad. Anne Hathaway Family. Anne Hathaway First Movie. Anne Hathaway Father. Anne Hathaway Facebook. Anne Hathaway First Husband. Anne Hathaway Fiance. Anne Hathaway Grandmother. Anne Hathaway Husband. Anne Hathaway Hair Color. Anne Hathaway High School. Anne Hathaway Wedding. Anne Hathaway Wiki. Anne Hathaway Education. Anne Hathaway Engaged. Anne Hathaway Real Name. Anne Hathaway Twitter. Anne Hathaway Tv Show. Anne Hathaway Upcoming Movies. Anne Hathaway University. Anne Hathaway Parents. Anne Hathaway Profile. Anne Hathaway Zodiac. Anne Hathaway College. Anne Hathaway Bio. Anne Hathaway Birthday. Anne Hathaway New Movie. Anne Hathaway Movies List. Anne Hathaway Married. Anne Hathaway Mother. Anne Hathaway Marriage.

0 notes

ianmkeenan · 7 years

Text

Cannabis and the immune system: How much do we really know?

Cannabis is often portrayed as a miracle plant, providing healing solutions for almost every affliction known to man. While it’s true that compounds found in cannabis have a therapeutic reach far broader than almost any other botanical substance in nature, it’s unrealistic to suggest that it is suitable for every health condition. Especially when we consider how little is really known about its interaction with our body’s immune system.

When it comes to the immune system and cannabis, most research has been carried out into the effects of the plant’s two principal cannabinoids, THC and CBD. They have been termed immunomodulators, meaning they change the action of the immune system. Scientists have observed that both tend to dampen rather than strengthen the immune system, eliciting an anti-inflammatory effect. This has made the use of cannabinoids of particular interest in diseases where there is too much immune activity or excessive inflammation, as in the cases of autoimmune and neurodegenerative diseases.

But what happens if you regularly take cannabis and have a condition where your immunity is compromised such as HIV, or you are fighting off a viral or bacterial infection? Is it ok to take cannabis in these instances?

Our Immune System – an overview

To try and find an answer, let’s first get a basic understanding of how our immune system works.

youtube

In life we are constantly exposed to infectious diseases, bacteria and viruses (antigens) all intent on running amok and wreaking havoc. Thank heavens then we have an immune system, designed to protect us from these outside invaders, otherwise frankly, we’d be dead.

A key player in the immune system’s arsenal are white blood cells or leukocytes which seek out and destroy any unwanted visitors. Leukocytes are divided into two groups: lymphocytes (B cells and T cells) which destroy antigens as well as helping the body to remember previous attackers, and phagocytes which literally eat up and consume foreign intruders.

Many of us are familiar with the term T Cells as these are the immune cells wiped out by the HIV virus, making sufferers vulnerable to normally harmless infections which in the absence of T cells can become life threatening.

In short, our immune system is a tremendously complex network of cells, tissues and organs, normally running with military precision in order to keep us healthy. And intrinsically linked to keeping this fine balance is the body’s endocannabinoid system.

Relationship Between the Endocannabinoid and Immune System

Discovered as recently as the 1990s, ever since the endocannabinoid system has been shedding new light on how our bodies function. Comprising G protein coupled receptors and cannabis-like chemicals called endocannabinoids, its modus operandi is to maintain the body in a state of balance or homeostasis. In the context of the immune system, it’s the CB2 receptors that are of most interest as they outnumber the CB1 receptors by 100 to 1. The activation of the CB2 receptor creates an anti-inflammatory effect and is consequently a therapeutic target for research into autoimmune disorders and neurodegenerative disease.

Immune cells themselves not only have endocannabinoid receptors, but also make, transport and breakdown endocannabinoids. Scientists even go as far a to suggest that our immune function is controlled by the endocannabinoid system, not only in terms of suppressing its action when it becomes over-activated, but also stimulating it when it is weakened.

Scientists know that introducing plant cannabinoids like THC and CBD into the body has a direct impact on the endocannabinoid system and in turn our health. It makes sense then that consuming medical cannabis will also directly impact our immune system. But what researchers are struggling to understand is exactly how.

Cannabinoids and the Immune System

Until now, most research into cannabinoids and the immune system has been carried out on THC, the psychoactive and most abundant compound in cannabis. THC activates both the CB1 and CB2 receptors, mimicking the action of the body’s own endocannabinoids, Anandamide and 2-AG, which tend to have an overall immunosuppressive effect.

A study in 2003 on guinea pigs that had been infected with the herpes virus found that when administered THC, the virus took hold quicker and recurred more frequently. Another investigation carried out on mice infected with the flu, found that THC increased the spread of the virus due to a reduced the amount of T-cells in the lungs, all of which suggest that THC suppresses the immune system.

THC and HIV

But things get a whole lot more interesting when we introduce THC’s effect on HIV into the mix. Until recently, preclinical research had corroborated the view that THC worsened the disease, increasing viral load.

THC has been used as a palliative treatment by HIV patients for some time due to its ability to improve appetite, reduce anxiety and ease pain. But recent research takes THC’s role even further, suggesting it can actually undo some of the damage caused to the immune system by the disease.

In 2011 a ground breaking paper was published in which the effects of THC was studied on monkeys with the simian version of HIV, SIV. 28 days prior to being injected with the virus, the subjects were given THC on a daily basis. Lead scientist Dr Molina and her team discovered that THC appeared to have some kind of protective effect, lengthening the lives of the monkeys and reducing the viral load. Subsequent research published by Molina in 2014 in which THC was given to monkeys over 17 months prior to infection, confirmed earlier findings whereby there was less intestinal damage caused by the virus, an increase in T-cells, and a decrease in viral load.

These surprising results have recently been replicated in humans in an study conducted by scientists at Virginia State and Florida Universities. The white blood cell counts were compared in a sample of 95 HIV patients, some of which were chronic cannabis users. Scientists discovered that the CD4 and CD8 counts were higher in patients using cannabis, suggesting that their immune systems had been bolstered by the plant. A limitation to the study, however, is the lack of data about the cannabinoid content of the cannabis consumed.

CBD and the Immune System

CBD, the non-psychoactive cannabinoid has been much lauded of late for its anti-inflammatory action. Inflammation is part of the immune response and is vital to the healing process. However, in excess, inflammation can be a sign of a malfunctioning immune system and is linked to autoimmune and neurodegenerative diseases. In preclinical studies, CBD has been found to reduce inflammation in animal models and many patients testify that it eases the symptoms related to chronic inflammation in conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease. All of which suggests that CBD has an immunosuppressant effect on the body.

Unlike THC, CBD has little affinity with the CB1 and CB2 receptors, but scientists have observed that the compound suppresses T cell function, the type of white blood cells responsible for attacking foreign substances and stimulating antibody production. So it is possible that taking CBD when your immune system needs to be working at full force, might just be counterproductive.

Take for instance when you have a common cold or the flu. On the one hand, it would be tempting to take CBD for the annoying aches and pains associated with a flu virus. In the past, how many of us have reached for an ibuprofen, the over the counter anti-inflammatory medication, to get rid of that headache or sinus pain? But sometimes, these painful unpleasantries are signs of the body’s immune system doing its job and suppressing this activity might not pay off in the long run.

A study comparing ibuprofen with paracetamol showed that subjects who had taken the anti-inflammatory medication, were more likely to come back with worsening or new symptoms, compared to those who had taken just paracetamol. Professor Little, the lead researcher said: “This may have something to do with the fact the ibuprofen is an anti-inflammatory. It is possible that the drug is interfering with an important part of the immune response.”

While ibuprofen and CBD are clearly two very different animals, the same principle might just apply.

Cannabinoids, Cancer and the Immune System

With this tendency of cannabinoids to dampen the immune response, it could make one reconsider their use in cases of cancer.

Medical cannabis is used palliatively by many people worldwide to cope with the debilitating side effects of cancer treatments like chemotherapy. But a growing number of cancer patients are taking inspiration from the preclinical studies performed in scientific laboratories showing the cannabis plant also elicits antitumoral effects.

The onset of cancer can occur due a number of reasons, but a key factor can be a compromised immune system. Apoptosis or programmed cell death is an integral immune system action. Malfunctioning of the immune system may lead to increased or decreased cell death – increased cell death being an autoimmune disease, and decreased cell death, cancer.

Indeed, cancer cells are unique in that they somehow manage to evade all natural processes by which cells normally commit suicide, leading to tumor development and resistance to therapy.

This is where THC comes in. In pioneering research at the Complutense University in Madrid, scientists discovered that THC causes apoptosis in cancer cells. But curiously enough, THC also causes cell death in lymphocyte cells as part of its immunosuppressive action. However, in most cases the antitumoral action of THC is greater than the inhibitory effect on the immune system, with scientists looking for a therapeutic balance between the two actions.

But in some instances, THC’s dampening effect on the immune system can have a negative effect in cancer treatment. In a study conducted at the Rambam Medical Centre in Haifa, Israel, patients taking medical cannabis alongside the immunotherapy cancer drug Opdivo showed “a greatly reduced response to the drug,” although no significant change in overall survival rates for patients was noted.

So where does this leave patients in practical terms who are considering taking medical cannabis?

Much research needs to be undertaken not just in preclinical trials, but on humans. I spoke to Dr Mariano Garcia de Palau, a Spanish medical cannabis doctor who is member of the Spanish Medical Cannabis Observatory, to see how a practicing physician views the complex relation between cannabis and the immune system.

“I believe it (cannabis) is immunosuppressive when there is hyper-immune response,” says Dr Garcia de Palau, “but otherwise it regulates and corrects the immune system. In fact you could say it functions like the endocannabinoid system, bringing equilibrium to the organism. I’ve never experienced problems in this sense.”

So what should you do if you have a compromised immune system and are not sure if medical cannabis is appropriate for you? Always where possible consult with your medical practitioner, particularly if you live in a part of the world where medical cannabis is integrated into the health system. In the meantime, we can only hope that more research emerges further clarifying the complex relationship between the endocannabinoid system, our immune response, and compounds in the cannabis plant.

The post Cannabis and the immune system: How much do we really know? appeared first on ENDOCA.

0 notes

ramialkarmi · 8 years

Text

How LIKEtoKNOW.it turned a screenshot into a shopper's heaven

American retail has taken a hit. Dwindling foot traffic has caused major retailers to close stores, forcing malls across the country to shut down.

In the wake of this shift within the retail industry, Amber Venz Box and husband Baxter launched LIKEtoKNOW.it, a social shopping service that links influencers' Instagrams with ready-to-shop links. Since the service launched in 2014, consumers have purchased more than $230 million in merchandise. It's safe to say LiketoKnow.it is revolutionizing the fashion industry.

Beyond the rise of online shopping, retailers have also taken notice of the shift to digital and mobile and the importance of influencers on platforms like Instagram. Traditional marketing is no longer front and center, and brands are instead focusing on sponsoring influencers with products that are showing a return.

LiketoKnow.it has connected the two even further.

With more and more people connected to their phones and spending time looking at a mobile screen, the next step for LIKEtoKNOW.it was to create an app that expanded the user's ability to shop the products as quickly and easily as possible.

The app, which launches March 6, allows users to put their screenshots to good use.

Whether finding photos to send back and forth to friends or save as inspiration or reminders while shopping, LIKEtoKNOW.it will turn the screenshots folder into something more.

When users screenshot influencer-created pics on social media and across the mobile web, the app will send a push notification to their phone with all of the shopable links in one place — no matter what platform or site the screenshot comes from.

Within the app, users will then be able to see all of their liked or screenshotted photos as well as discover curated channels and new influencers.

"LIKEtoKNOW.it is the only technology that connects mobile social content to commerce and tracks sales cross-channel and on a global scale," said founder Venz Box, "and it attracts an audience with purchase intent."

SEE ALSO: Dying shopping malls are wreaking havoc on suburban America

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Here’s why malls across the US are dying

#Tech Insider #Arab #Entrepreneurship #sillicon alley insider

0 notes

flashhdtv · 4 years

Text

Tale of the Nine Tailed 2020 Episode 1 — Ep. 1 (EngSub) — tvN’s

🎬 Tale of the Nine Tailed Season 1 Episode 1 Online Free 🎬

Title : Tale of the Nine Tailed Episode Title : Episode 1 Release Date : 07 Oct 2020 Runtime : 60 minutes Genres : Action , Drama , Fantasy , Mystery , Romance Networks : tvN

Tale of the Nine Tailed

Show Info

THE STORY

THE GOOD / THE BAD

FINAL THOUGHTS

#drama #romance

0 notes