Mothergunship: Customize Your Way to Defeat!

Just because I am an independent video game journalist does not mean that I am good at video games.

Okay, not really. I’ve crossed paths with people who are worse at me, but I’ve also done so with people who are far better than me. It’s usually in the cases where I have no one with which I can directly compare myself. Probably the reason why I cling to single-player games like a blanket on a cold night.

This mostly works for my self esteem, until I come across a single-player game that actually poses a modicum of challenge…and it crumbles like the wet paper bag that it is.

Case-in-point: Mothergunship. Imagine, if you will, a rogue-like first-person-shooter where you run from room to room shooting robots with guns. Pretty straight-forward, right? Well, there’s the added mechanic of gun customization. You earn points by destroying robots and spend those points on new gun parts.

So, on paper, it sounds like really fun. And in practice, it’s really fun too. But I’ve stopped playing it.

You see, every time you die, you get kicked back to the hub area, with nothing. You lose everything when you die. Hence the “rogue-like” portion.

And did I mention that it’s a “bullet hell” game? You know, the game where bullets come from everywhere?

…

8/10 ~ Not my cup of tea. Maybe you’d like it. Maybe I’ll pick it up again some day.

 

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Stranger Things, but I have very little nostalgia for the 80’s

Well, I am working towards a review of Good Omens, but I got it in my head that I should read the book before watching the show, because I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve read of Neil Gaiman so far and I’ve heard a lot of good about Terry Pratchett. But, as light of a read as it is, I feel the need to weigh every paragraph of it theologically, so it’s going to take a while.

Until then, I caught up with Stranger Things, the show that is slowly getting more and more set in the 80’s the longer it runs.

(made on: http://makeitstranger.com/, awkwardly cropped because the download button wasn’t working)

Now, I feel the need to get this out of the way: my relationship with media coming out of the 80’s is pretty hit-or-miss. Maybe it’s because I didn’t sit down and start watching the quintessential 80’s classics until I was in my mid-teens and my sense of childlike whimsy was on its way out the door. In short: if it’s from the 80’s, I didn’t watch it as a kid, so I probably didn’t end up liking it, if I saw it at all. Sue me.

[I’m intentionally cutting that rabbit trail short before I launch into a multi-headed (probably spoken word) essay expounding every thought I have on every movie or media property to come from the 80’s. I’m doing this to protect your childhoods.]

Where was I? Oh, yeah. Stranger Things.

So, having exactly all the mixed feelings towards media from the 80’s (and just about none of the accompanying nostalgia), I try to focus on the plot of the show rather than the pace-breaking moments of the characters talking about New Coke-a-Cola. Whatever that was.

The show is, itself, multifaceted in a lot of ways. It will tackle a government conspiracy to conceal a lab full of psychic children and a transdimensional portal that sucked up a couple local kids in this small town, often in the same episode, and often with the same plot points connecting it. So from a storytelling angle, it’s a pretty good show.

But I can’t really separate it from the nostalgia it tries to bring up. Heck, I had to re-write the last paragraph a couple times to describe the show without saying, “it’s all the good parts of Stephen King’s IT mixed with all the good parts of E.T.”

All things considered, I like Stranger Things despite my mixed feelings towards most movies that came out of the 80’s. However, it does sadden me just a touch that a story as well-written and deeply woven as this feels the need to hide behind nostalgia.

Then again, I don’t know if everyone would have watched it if there was no nostalgia.

7/10 ~ Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be nose-deep in Good Omens for a while.

 

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@Isaac_Trenti

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The Twists [Spider-Man: Far From Home]

I often wonder what goes on in the pitch meetings in Hollywood…Georgia…wherever movies are pre-produced these days. Because of a slurry of stereotypes, I picture a room full of portly men, talking in gravelly voices while chomping on cigars. And no matter what script or screenplay crosses their shadowed, smoke-stained desk, they always have one question to ask.

That question varies from era to era. In the eighties and nineties, they would have asked about merchandising, wanting to know what toys can be made for it. And in the late nineties and early two-thousands, it would have switched over to something about CGI.

But now I picture them asking one question: “What’s the twist?”

Now, of course, the transition between the second and third act almost always has something jarring that brings the hero back down to their lowest point, but often that takes the form of a massive, world-flipping plot twist.

I bring all this up because I had a whopping one disappointment with Spider-Man: Far From Home.

Also, SPOILER WARNING for Far From Home, but not for the comics.

So Mysterio is the main villain of the movie, and–honestly, he was portrayed masterfully. But all the trailers–and even the first act–played it like he was going to be a new mentor to Spider-Man. Only to flip his character right-side back up and show that he is, in fact, the villain.

I have been torn on this twist for the last two weeks since I saw the movie. On the one hand, I’m a little disappointed that they didn’t go for an “anti-twist”, where Mysterio is, in fact, a hero throughout the whole thing. But at the same time, this is the first time Mysterio has appeared on the big screen, and they knocked it out of the park.

I don’t know. There isn’t a bigger point to this post. I just wanted to bring up the new Spider-Man movie without spoiling every aspect of it, which I would need to to properly discuss it.

8/10 ~ no other complaints.

 

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@Isaac_Trenti

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