Last Chance to See (TV series)

You might remember the book by Douglas Adams Last Chance to See, which was a funny and fantastic book about seeing some endangered species on the brink at the time, in 1989 and a little after.  Well, apparently Douglas had wanted to go back and see how they were doing, but, he died in 2001. 

Well get ready to see some endangered species, because there's a TV documentary made in 2009 starring Douglas Adams close friend, Stephen Fry, with the zoologist Mark Carwardine!  This is Last Chance to See, the TV series.

Time to go camping!  ...wait Stephen hates camping.  Oh dear.

The series is 6 episodes long, and yes, those who read my review will note there's more then 6 animals Douglas visited, but, some were left out for reasons I am unsure of, and one was left out for the reason it's extinct, the Chinese blind river dolphin.

The episodes themselves focus on the Amazonian manatee, the Northern White rhino, the Aye Aye, the Komodo Dragon, the Kakapo, and the Blue Whale.  All but the Blue whale were part of the orginal Radio broadcast series, and the Manatee was left out of the book Douglas wrote.

While I won't spoil the episode, each episode not only focuses on the animal, but also other animals and the people who live there near that animal, as well as issues facing that animals survival.   

While Stephen fry is not as funny as Douglas Adams, he's a charming and clever person himself, so this series is still entertaining.  While it's a little more 'shame on you Westerners' then the book was, it doesn't lean into that heavily, just enough to get the message across.  

Despite at times being dark and gloomy, some times rays of hope show through.  for example, the Kakapo at the time of Douglas Adams visit, were down to double digit numbers, and not big ones.  Now, when Stephen Fry arrives, they're up to triple digits. 

There's other examples of this, but the series was extremely fun to watch, even for my father, who is not a major animal lover like my mother and I.  It was fun, charming, funny, and informative all in only a six hour package. 

The best thing about the series, for me at least, is that Stephen Fry, even if he was lured on for money or other reasons, I got the feeling he started to really enjoy the animals and travel, genuinely.  Mark Carwardine, of course, loved it as well.  

Anyway, I give this a 4.5 stars out of five.  Very well done, extremely good nature documentary.  Would watch again. 

Anyway, see you all later!

Monster Hunter (2020 Film)

Paul Anderson.  If you've seen the Mortal Combat movie, or the resident evil ones...then you know who he is.  Buckle up kids, because he made a live action Monster Hunter film!

Flaming swords and triceratops monsters, what more could you ask for?  Plot and common sense? nah.

For those of you who don't know who he is, he's a director who makes really bad movies, mostly based off existing material, though not exclusively video game movies.  As someone who has seen his Three Musketeers film, I can safely say that it has little to do with the books, despite never reading them.  But the film has steampunk airships.  I'll let that sink in.

Despite the huge flaws of his films, I enjoy them, if only because they're so over the top and take themselves too seriously.  Basically, they're so bad they're good, in my opinion.  So when I heard a monster hunter film was in development by Paul Anderson, I was overjoyed.  I was even more overjoyed when I heard the basic plot.

For those of you who never played Monster Hunter, it takes place in another world where giant monsters roam and Hunters, well, hunt them to keep people safe but mainly to turn the monsters into cool looking armor.  The locations, monsters, and characters change throughout the series, and there isn't really a overarching theme except for the obvious one of hunting giant monsters.  The plots in Monster Hunter are also simple, to the point that really it boils down to 'monster bad and threatening village, you kill!' and that's it.  So how could they fuck up a plot of the movie?

I'll tell you how; by having the film take place in our world.  To be fair, the plot is that a squad of United Nations soldiers get teleported to the Monster Hunter world, but the first bit of the film takes place in our world.  This is like fucking up scrambled eggs, how do you do that?!

Anyway, I was filled with glee when I watched this movie, and it did not disappoint my...disappointing expectations.  

Oh, also, this film stars Paul Andersons wife, Milla Jovovich, and if you've seen the Resident Evil movies, you know she'll be doing super human feats of strength and just be so cool you guys.

The premise is that Milla Jovovich is leader of a squad of soldiers from the UN investigating the disappearance of a squad, when they get teleported to another world through a lightning storm plus some weird ruins.

First off: The monsters look fantastic.  I cannot explain the joy I felt seeing the main first monster, Diablos, on the screen.  They did shrink the Diablos wings, but, honestly?  It's a burrowing monster that in all the games in the series never flies, so it looks much better with vestigial wings. The CGI effects are nice, and there's some real stunts in there as well, which I appreciate more.

While the plot is not following any plot from Monster Hunter, time and effort was put into to make the human characters look like they came from a Monster hunter game.  This includes some armor made form monsters that you can make in the games, and some that just look like NPC's.  Either way, they did a good job making this movie feel like a monster hunter movie.

The acting...well, let's just say it isn't great, but isn't like, terrible either.  Decent job all around, really, I guess.

The music...is nothing note worthy, which is a shame since the series has AMAZING music in my opinion.  I own all the music starting from monster hunter 4, and there's been 3 major games after 4.

Unfortunately, this movie ends on a cliffhanger.  Which, if you've ever seen any of Paul Andersons films, you knew this was going to happen.  Guy is seriously allergic to ending things.

I give this film...a 3 out of five stars, maybe 2.5 stars.  Sure, it's not a good movie by any means, but it's a good monster hunter experience.  While the previously reviewed Monster Hunter: Legends of the Guild is honestly better overall, it's not by a lot.

See you all next review, which probably be soon since I have a ton of finished reviews stockpiled up.

Bunker Punks

...Punks.  In Bunkers.  Let's go, this is Bunker Punks.

In the Apocalyptic future, everyone will be punks!

So, Bunker Punks is an old school shooter released in 2018.  It's a pretty simple and short game, so this review will be short.  It's a Rogue Light game, which means dying is part of the process of learning to win the game.

The story is simple: In the future, a bunch of cataclysmic events happened, and corporations take over the governments of the nations in the future.   It's not a distant future by any means, and you play as the Bunker Punks, who raids facilities to steal stuff to fund there movement to eventually overthrow the evil corporations. 

The gameplay is split between bunker building/strategy layer and the First person shooter run and gun levels.  You spend money earned during raids, on upgrading the bunker you live in, which upgrade damage, health, armor, or heals punks in certain instances during raids.  

During the raids, you kill drones, both the robotic and people kind, to collect money, tech, and new weapons or armor.  There's an elevator at the end of each level or floor, that is the exit point to the next floor, or the exit point of the raid, depending on what floor your on.  

When you inevitably die, you lose all progress...Except for the tech you earned, which you spend after you fail a play through, to unlock different armor,weapons, bunker base upgrades, and even more punks to play as so if you accidentally die as one punk, can continue as another. 

The weapons are split between pistols, shotguns, rifles, melee weapons, and explosive.  Pistols are generic medium range weapons, shotguns get a bonus to damage at short range, rifles get a bonus at long range, and explosive weapon have an area of effect of damage, meaning don't fire point blank.  I have never encountered a melee weapon yet, but presumably they do a lot of damage.

It's an okay game for what it is.  I give it 3.5 stars out of 5.  It's fairly solid, and I enjoyed it for what it was, and it was only 10-15 dollars.  I've spent more for worse products.

Anyway, see you all next time!

Slipways

I love 4X games. I also love Science fiction, so make a science fiction 4X game and I am there like a....a....very fast thing.  And that's how I ended up buying this game called Slipways that advertised itself as a 4X game you could play a session of within 30-60 minutes.

Slip on through to the other side!  ...wait it's Break on through.  Damn.

Slipways is a simple game: you colonize planets and then connect them through the titular slipways to level them up to make more money to repeat the process.  

To start with, you have just a wormhole to send probes through to scan signals for potential planets to colonize.  Some signals can turn out to be space station ruins, asteroids, or nothing at all.  However, near the wormhole there are tons of planets so at first you are spoilt for choice on what to colonize and what planetary specialization the colonized planet should be.

Each planet makes a certain export product but need a import product to go beyond the level 1 of 'struggling'.  Once they've got a import of the kind they require, for example mining planets require people to level up, they go to 'established'.  If you manage to export the product of the planet to 2 other planets and have two imports, plus supply the needed new products to level up, it becomes 'successful'  Level 4, the final level of a planet is 'prosperous', and it requires 6 imports or exports, and has to be connected to 3 'successful' planets as well.  

level 1 planets are a drain on your money and happiness of the sector of space your colonizing.  Not fixing level 1 planets means that the already bad situation will just get worse, but level 2 planets provide good income, level 3 even more, and level 4 the most.  They also provide more score, which is how your measured up at the end of the 25 years of the game session.  Luckily, time only moves forward when you do an action, eg, colonize a planet that takes 3 months, time move forward 3 months and then stops until you do another action.  Even better, most actions can be undone at a click of a button, except for scanning for planets, which can't be undone.

The game also has a tech tree, which you can research techs by building space station labs in the session, but the actual techs you can research are chosen by the council species you pick.  At the start of the game you pick 3 out 5 possible species to be on your council, which affects the techs you have, the types of starter perks you get, and what kind of missions you'll get to improve score will be given.  There is a science based council race, a industry one, a trade one, a food/ecology one, and a mining/resource gathering/exploration one. So you can somewhat cater to what playstyle you like.

The game starts with the campaign locked until you get a 3 star score rating.  And while the game is easy to play, it's extremely difficult to master.  My personal example, is that I didn't know leveling up planets was the way to win big points at the end of the game, as well as stop happiness from falling so far that the people in the sector kick you out before your 25 year term is up.  So I failed at least a dozen times my first dozen tries.

The game is also addictive in a weird way.  I have 10 hours on it at least, although some of that was in offline mode on steam, so who knows how many I played.  While it can be frustrating, I found it a relaxing in a way, and it became more so once I figured out the mechanics.  

Unfortunately it is not a 4x game, for several reasons, one of which is the total lack of competition ingame, but it's still a good game, so I give it 4 stars out of 5 for what it is.  Unfortunately it's a short experience, with most sessions being under 20 minutes for me, and I also don't see myself playing it again anytime soon, but it was only 16 or so dollars for me, and I think it's well worth the price.

That's all for now, see you next review!

Humankind

 I love Amplitude studios.  As I mentioned in Sid Meiers Civilization: Beyond Earth review, I like 4X games but hate civilization the game series.  Mostly it was just the setting I didn't like, so I was happy to take different settings with the exact same gameplay, but then Endless Legend from Amplitude was released.

A little backstory, before Endless Legend was Endless Space, which was a space 4x game, 4x games being where you control a nation or empire against other nations or empires.  Endless Space 1 was, honestly, safe.  It was good, but it didn't change things up much.

Endless Legend, set in the same universe but as a planet based fantasyish 4X game, did however.  It rocked my world, with each faction playing completely differently, eight to begin with, cities that actually expanded and grew into new tiles, and a research 'tree' that could have people select completely different techs but still be comparable in power.  I'll go into the details more when or if I ever review Endless Legend, but it was awesome.  Endless Space 2 was even better.

So when I heard Amplitude was going for Civilizations throne by making a historical 4x game, you bet I was interested.  I wishlisted that on steam so fast, and eagerly bought it when it was avlaible, and started playing.

Boy, was I in for some bad whiplash.  But more on that later, this is Humankind, the video game.

Whoa.  Someone broke the Time line bad.

Humankind starts with you making your avatar, and then starting a game immediately with no main menu in between, though there is one after you have started the game a second time.  As a character creator fanatic, I loved making my leader look good, even if I couldn't change the clothes.

Each game in Humankind starts with all players in the Neolithic era.  This means you just have a single tribe who will in this era look for food to grow and curiosity to understand the universe better.  Also you can kill animals wandering the land to earn fame stars as well.

Fame stars are in Humankind the way you get to the next era, one out of seven, including the Neolithic era.  While in the rest of the game you can get a total of three from each category of fame, those being researching new tech, growing population, building districts, expanding territory, making money, gaining the resource Influence, and killing enemy units.  In the Neolithic era, you only gain one star from three categorys, killing animals, growing more tribesmen, or finding enough curiositys in the game.  

This is my first problem with the game.  while it's nice to start off as a nomadic tribe and explore the area before setting up your first city, getting to the Ancient era, where game play properly begins, is extremely luck based in how fast you get there.  I wouldn't mind if I could skip the neothlitc era, but that's not an option in making a game session.

To win the game, though you can change how to win certain games slightly when you make one, you need to earn the most fame.  you usually earn fame through the aforementioned stars, but can earn them building great wonders of construction, doing a deed before other empires, and discovering natural wonders.  

When you get to the Ancient era, you pick a civilization, which gives one unique unit, one unique district to be built in your cities, and a unique passive that stays with your empire even when you change civilizations again at the start of another era.  On top of that, each civilization comes in a category that aligns with the categorys of fame stars I already mentioned, research, population gain, building districts, etc.  These, uh, ideologies come with their own set of bonuses, a passive and an active one you must activate.  For example, the ideologily of an expansionist not only gains more fame by grabbing territory, but also can enter other empires borders even when borders are closed. The Empires leaders won;t be happy about that, but you can do it.  

This brings me to diplomacy: Its works, but it's a bit...simple.  while it's nice you don't have to spend influence, a resource in Humankind that is gained in cities and used to make more cities and grab more land, when you are being diplomatic with other empires.  The feature I was most excited for is the badge system, which changes the empires AI personality and gives thme some passive traits that help in some way.  But it's a pain in the ass to get most badges, with me having to look up how to even unlock them.

Cities can build different districts to expand, along with building, well, buildings that don't expand the city but still help it.  Some districts, like the farmers quarter, only gives food and ignores forests or rock fields for industry, and you'll need a makers quarter to exploit those.  I liked the different quarters or districts you could make, and the unique ones were always a welcome addition to any city.

Unfortunately that's the last nice thing I have to say about Humankind.  there's two more major gameplay features I haven't even touched on yet, but I also found out they were entirely pointless to begin with.  That is Religion and Culture.  Culture is spread to other cities and territories even to enemy cities and territories, by building things that make influence.  Religion is spread through making holy sites once you unlock that feature.  The religion you follow and the culture/civics you follow gives you mild bonuses.  But, they don't give you fame or stars, or, really, anything at all.  The most you'll find is that if your culture is being subverted by another empire, you'll just have to get different civics occasionally from the ones you choose, but there so mild differences in them it's not even worth choosing civics or starting a religion most of the time.

Above all, Humankind, the magnum opus of Amplitude, as they've described it...strikes me as a very safe, kinda dull additon to the 4X genre.  I stopped playing and uninstalled Humankind after a mere 22 hours.  in Endless Legend, I have over a 1000 hours played on that game.  What happened?

I don't know, and I refuse to hypothesize, but I will give this a 2.5 stars out of 5.  but it was a close call to give it just 2 stars.  Anyway, hoping to get a new review out soon.  See you all next time.

Monster Hunter: Legends of the Guild

I love the Monster hunter game series.  For those who have no idea what that is, it's a game where you hunt monsters in a low magic fantasy setting, originally on the Play station series of consoles, and then Nintendo consoles, and now PC, finally.  It is mainly a Japanese game series, but they release some across the world as well, now much more frequently then in the past.

I will go on about Monster Hunter games once I review an actual game of the series, for now, this is Monster Hunter: Legends of the guild, a Netflix movie.

Hold up.  Why does that girl have butterfly wings.

This movie relies heavily on the fact that you've played Monster Hunter 4, and Monster hunter World.  Or at least a Monster Hunter game recently.  I made my mother watched this film with me I was so excited.  She was just left confused.

This movie also moves fast, both because it's only 60 minutes long, and the 'camera' moves too fast in fight scenes.  This is a problem even for me, who is young and used to fast moving cameras.  The fact that they're trying to cram and entire 2 hour movie into an hour is also a problem.  As you can see from the poster, there's six main characters in the movie.  All of them have a past and backstory.  All of them blurt it out in about a minute, because they don't have time to properly tell it.

If the film had been 30 minutes longer, it would've improved it greatly.  On the other hand, 60 minutes means I didn't have to stay long or suffer from Aidan, the main character with the weirdly floofy hair.  He is beyond annoying.  On top of that, he keeps making puns with monster names, that only Monster Hunter players would know, thus further isolating my poor mother into the confusion corner.

The plot involves Aidans village, who happens to be in the path of a migrating Elder Dragon on the mysterious Elder Crossing(A phenomenon that is investigated and solved in Monster Hunter World).  They of course refuse to flee, and he manages to convince the Ace Hunter, Julian, to help him and his village fight the elder dragon making a bee line for a land across the sea, no matter how many villages there are in its way.  The plot is basic, but it works for what this is and in the time frame.  For SOME reason, they also tell the story as a a story told by Aidan to the hunters on their way to the New World to investigate the Elder Crossing.  This adds more confusion to non-monster hunter gamers, and makes the movie ten minutes shorter to explain or develop characters.

For those of you who play monster hunter, the monster is a Lunastra, the female version of the elder dragon Teostra, who we just call Toaster for short.  While I'm on this, despite calling them dragons, they are not in fact, dragons.  Lunastra and Teostra are based more on lions then reptiles  So that further brought my mother to the confusion cliff.

But, the monsters and graphics and animations of the movie fit the Monster Hunter games -perfectly-.  Sure, it's cartoony, and humans can somehow jump twice their height and do incredible feats despite being human and not Olympic athletes.  They even included a Felyne from the games!  Who is the only 'good' character of the entire film, because he's actually funny.

While I was more disappointed of this film then the Live Action Monster Hunter film, I did enjoy it more.  I'd give it three stars as a Monster Hunter lover, maybe 3.5

Either way, I hope to review the live action  monster hunter film soon.  See you next time, peeps.

Last Chance To See

 Douglas Adams might very well have been the most amusing man in history.  I'm sure people who read the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy would agree, but I never have.  Sure, I've seen the BBC TV series a decade or more ago, but I barely remember it.  I mostly read non-fiction nowadays, due to crippling anxiety that makes me reading fiction a nightmare of emotions(don't ask for reason or logic in this, anxiety answers to no one).  Luckily, I recently found out Douglas Adams wrote a book of non-fiction where he toured the world for the most endangered animals at the time, in 1985 and 1988, and wrote about his experiences.  This is Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine.

Here be Dragons...and flightless parrots, dolphins, and a penguin

It should be noted Mark Carwardine is the biologist who travels with Douglas Adams.  Adams job is, as he puts it, is to know as little as possible about zoology and animals, and then write about them, a job which he is well qualified for.  

It should also be noted that the book I got was from the library, and its cover looked nothing like the above.  It had a simple green background, Douglas Adams name at the top in huge golden letters, four pictures of animals in the middle, small picture s at then, and then the title, Last Chance to see in also golden letters.  It looks like an extremely cheap cover, unlike the one above which looks expensive.

The books back describes basically what I already said, with bits of other reviews saying how good it is.  

The book is wonderful, even if at times the subject matter gets depressing and serious, Adams never seems to, always with a quip or joke to say about it.  While most of the trips are detailed enough to my liking, the starting chapter, about Madagascar's aye aye lemur, is extremely short, but is mostly used as a jumping off point for why Adams is doing this.  While Adams was the one who had the idea for the trip, Marks knowledge of endangered wildlife and the original trip to Madagascar is what gave him the idea.  

It should be noted that I think the Madagascar trip was supposed to be a one off, I believe, though I have conflicting info on that thanks for the internet.  They saw the Aye-aye, the Komodo dragon, Mountain Gorillas, the northern white rhinos, the Kakapo of new Zealand, the blind river dolphins of china, and some of the worlds rarest birds on the planet in Mauritius, as well as the Rodriguez fruit bat.  While they also visited the Amazonian Manatee, and the Juan Fernandez Fur seal, Douglas did not write about them in his book, but he did talk about them on the BBC radio show of the same name, I beleive.

While I don't want to spoil the book by telling you everything that happened in it, I will list some of my favorite interactions and scenes from it.  The interaction with the so stereotypical it hurt German backpackers/tourists  had me laughing a lot.  The Land rover hi-jinks (read: Near death experiences) in Mauritius was also put in an extremely amusing way.  The driver would look directly at you and away from the road when asking questions, and would not look back until you answered.  It was certainly a way to get quick and snappy answers.

I loved the book deeply, and it's only 200 pages, so its a quick read for people without anxiety.  There is also a 2009 documentary TV show where a friend of Adams, Stephen Fry, and Mark go back to some of the species they visited to see how they're doing, and I plan to watch that.  Unfortunately, not all of the species in the book are alive anymore, or at least are widely considered extinct.

While depressing subject matter, Douglas Adams manages to keep a smile on the readers face while enjoying his book.  I also felt that Douglas Adams shared many of my views on life and society.  I felt we could've gotten along, and I am sad that he died at the age of under 50.

Either way, if you like animals, if you like humor, or even just Douglas Adams, definitely pick this up.

Wildermyth

I have never encountered a game like Wildermyth.  Sure, on the surface it doesn't seem unique.  It's a game that describes itself as a party based procedural storytelling RPG with turn based combat.   So, fantasy X Com in terms of gameplay in a choose your own adventure story.  That doesn't sound like something truly incredible.  Something I'd love and buy, but, not one that would quickly become my favorite game.

But the descriptions above do not do it justice.  Wildermyth is a character building and myth making game.  Each randomly made character feels, not like a random name or even just a bunch of numbered traits, but a real character of their own.  But enough about that, let's get into the details.

First off, the graphics while easy to run on my non-gaming laptop, are fantastic.  They look like paper cut outs, in a great way.  They really come to life in the comic panels that act as cut scenes, and when in the tabletop like battles, where they do look like paper cut outs, and they hop around the board like an invisible hand just picked them up.  It's fantastic.

Whoa, guy in the middle must be a red bull addict.

There's no voice acting in this game, but the music, while good, is not great.  I'll admit I played part of the game with music off, so, yeah.

Anyway, at launch and the time of this writing, Wildermyth has five story campaigns in it.  This does include the generic three and five chapter campaigns, and while I hate to call them story less, they don't have an over arching story.  Each of the main story campaigns is themed around a main faction of evil monsters, and dear god, let me talk about the monsters.

I won't spoil anything here, but there are no generic undead, dragons, elves or vampires here.  No, instead we have the Gorgons, both serpentine, tentacled undersea creatures and horrifying nature corruption, the Morthagi, ancient clockwork machines that use body parts to create more of themselves, the Deepists, a cult of humans and creatures from deep below ground, the Thrixl, strange dragon/insects from another realm, and the Drauven, a race of earth dragons, that are more like a cross between Dwarves and dragons then pure dragons.  

The enemy factions are at the very least different then most other fantasy, and it could've been so easy to just flow into the mold of most fantasy for Wildermyth.  I'm so glad they didn't, and each enemy unit is a joy to look at and fight.  

But I haven't even talked about the characters yet.  Mechanically, a character is just a made up name, a class, which sometimes/usually you get to choose, and a set of numbers ranging from 1 to 100 for a set of personality traits, like Greedy, Leader, Hothead, and Intellectual.  But the comic like cut scenes have some characters say things differently depending on the personality traits, and different roles in story and events.  

I could continue talking about the mechanics of this, but instead I'll introduce you to Zarnoc, my aloof hothead and my fourth hero I created, counting the first three you make in any adventure.  He's appeared in two campaigns, and was always the first to do what needed to be done.  In the campaign that focused on the Gorgons, this usually meant going around killing anything that even smelled like corruption.  When the other party members held him back from doing so, usually this ended in disaster, so after that they let him have his way.  In the second campaign, he was mortally wounded by a boss controlling a Morthagi factory, and instead of being a COWARD and sneaking away to fight another day, he ripped that boss a new one!  And, died in the process.  I cried a little, it's true, when this happened

This is an example of what kind of character and how attached you can get, in the game of Wildermyth.  Also, this is  a showcase of taking one character and putting them in another campaign, turning them into a legacy character.  Legacy characters are required for some campaigns, and you can recruit legacy characters in campaigns instead of random peasants.  Legacy characters are characters who've survived one campaign in the past, and you saved them to become a legacy character to appear as a playable character in another campaign, albeit a younger one so they don't instantly die or retire from old age.

I see paper doll people...and they are fantastic!

On top of this, characters get into relationships, either on ones you choose, or via the luck of Random Number Generators, or the RNG god.  There's rivalry, friendship, and of course, romance.  And yes, gay is an option for romance sometimes.

While the storytelling potential of Wildermyth is god damn fantastic, what makes it even better is that if you don't care about storytelling (Get out of my blog, damn you), everything gives a boost to combat in some way.  Rivalry, for example, gives a high chance to 'stunt' or critical hit an enemy if your rival critical hits before you do.  Pets, which are additions to characters and not separate entities, give some extra damage or defense, and some events can physically transform your character, and you can choose how far the transformation takes and what abilities they get.

While I only played two campaigns of Wildermyth, both story ones, I feel like I got a good handle on the systems and can review it.  I was expecting the stories to be bland and generic and just be 'you hero, monsters bad, you kill!' and while this is true of the first one, the second one I played is not that case at all.  I won't spoil it, but it actually made me think about a topic that most storytellers make you think is pure evil.

Wildermyth is amazing. I will continue playing it probably until I reach the last of the story campaigns, if not longer.  It definitely earned a 5/5 stars from me.  It feels less like a video game and more like an storyteller telling you a story, or a tabletop RPG Dungeon Master letting you play with them.  In fact, it feels more like a tabletop game to me then most tabletop games converted to video games do.

Anyway, finally finished a review, will have a few more possibly -book- related reviews in the future.  Hopefully.

Jurassic World: Evolution

I love dinosaurs.  I mean, doesn't every little kid like dinosaurs?  I just never stopped loving dinosaurs and really animals in general, and I'm here still loving them.  I bet there's one franchise that really put dinosaurs into peoples minds...Jurassic Park.

Ah yeah!  Dinosaurs, here we go!

Do I even need to say anything?  I mean, it's -Jurassic- -park-.  THE ultimate science gone wrong, dinosaurs on big screens, lawyers getting eaten movie.  But I'm not here to review Jurassic park the film.

No, I'm here to talk about the Jurassic WORLD franchise and movies.  Which is....uh...well...okay, I've never seen them.  I stopped watching the Jurassic park films after Jurassic park three, which I liked but I was only a teenager at the time, so my opinion now might be quite different.

But as far as I can tell from what little I've seen and know about them, they're basically the original Jurassic Park film done over again, but worse.  I mean, the movie Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, ends with several hundred dinosaurs escaping into the world, and Malcolm from the original Jurassic Park just...showing up at the US senate saying it's a 'Neo-Jurassic' period now as dinosaurs now live with man kind.

Do I really need to point out the flaws in that?  I do?  Do I have to?  Damn it...fine.  One, all dinosaurs were female in the original film, right?  Sure, they got around that, but in the book at least, the 'disaster' of Jurassic Park was caused because everything that could go wrong, even if it was a less then one percent change of going wrong, went wrong at precisely the right time to make the disaster work.    In Jurassic World did they just...let all the dinosaurs breed whatever?  That seems like an incredibly dumb thing to do.  Two: The dinosaurs were made up of all separate species, so, the chances of a dinosaur even finding fellow dino of the same species are low.  three: They're all in a very small area, just, I don't know, bomb the area if your panicking about dinosaurs surviving in modern day.  And don't get me started on diseases affecting them, along with the whole lack of wilderness to survive on!

...Anyway!  I think that says a lot about my opinion about later Jurassic Park films.  Despite this, way back in or after 2003 I played the game Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis, which is a park builder where you remake Jurassic park.  I loved it, and though I own the disc still, I am unsure if it will run on windows 10.  But in 2018, another game came out, Jurassic World: Evolution.  And you better believe I bought that up as soon as possible.

Not again!

Taking place after the Original Jurassic World, but before Fallen Kingdom, you are tasked with building dinosaur parks across the Five Deaths, a fictional island chain in Costa Rico, or, off the coast of the country, rather.  

There are three major DLCS that add new gameplay to the game, and more that just add new dinosaurs, but, I don't own any of the DLC, so I will just talk about the base game.  

The base campaign starts off with Ian Malcolm complaining about life, you, and dinosaurs.   I'm not sure why Jeff Goldblum is here, but the character of Malcolm seems to be here just to tell you this is an incredibly bad idea.  The campaign is divided into five or six island locations to build parks in.  The reason it's five or six is because one was originally the only sandbox island you could play without worrying about money, but a later update made it so once you reached 4 stars out of five with any island you unlocked sandbox mode for that island.

Frontier, the game developers behind this game, apparently had 100 or so developers working on this game.  That does not seem like much, but I fully admit to not knowing how many people normally work on video games.  They also released updates after the games release, adding the above mentioned sandbox modes, challenge modes to reach 5 stars in the shortest amount of time, and other features.

I won't hide the fact that I admire and like Frontier, they make good games that allow a lot of sandbox creativity and freedom.  Unfortunately this is not one of them.

let's talk about the dinosaurs first.  You start off with one viable genome of a dino, and can send expedition teams to fossil sites to get more fossils to get more DNA so that one that's at or above 50% genome can be made into a living creature.  Annoyingly, you don't know what the creatures habits are aside from meat or plant eating until you make the first dino, so it's entirely possible to put in a forest loving dino with one that hates forests.

The dinosaur stats are put into 2 categories, health and comfort.  Health is put into thirst and hunger, self explanatory.  Comfort is more complex, divided into wetlands, grasslands, forests, population, and social need.  Wetlands means how much water is in the exhibit, grasslands is how much space -total- is in the exhibit, forests is how many trees there are, and social is how many animals of the same kind there are, and population is how many animals there are total. 

While it sounds confusing, it's actually too simple.  There's no difference in most dinosaurs aside form some like forests, some like open fields, some need to have one or two others of its kind, and some need to be alone.  There's no enrichment options, and when the game was released, no option to manually place trees and rocks, though there is now.  I fully admit that calling the need for total space, 'grassland'  is annoying.  And none of this is explained in the games very meager, and split up, tutorial.

Now onto the second most important thing in the game, the guests which...don't technically exist.  See, instead of making each guest a entity in the game, with needs and desires and money to spend, instead they focus on each gust building, hotels or viewing stations, needing certain buildings near it, food places, gift shops, restrooms, stuff like that.  While I fully admit this is a novel and new way to model guests in park games, I don't like it.  So I'm old fashioned.

 Another important aspect of the game is the Divisions. They are Entertainment, Science, and Security, and all three want your attention and to be number one in your inbox.  For some reason, doing a quest for one Division, means the other two now hate you, and will actually sabotage your park because they're having a temper tantrum.  But, leveling up one divisions meter will unlock cool stuff for you, and a special mission that unlocks more cool stuff.  There is nothing stopping you from leveling up one Divisions respect in you, then ditching them to get the cool unlocks in another division. 

It doesn't make sense that, the Divisions who you write the paychecks for, will sabotage THERE OWN EMPLOYER because...I really have no idea.  because they don't feel special, I guess.  And this would be a really easy thing to fix, call the divisions investors instead.  Everything could work the same way gameplay wise, just change some dialogue.  I feel like this was a decision made by Universal rather then Frontier, but I could be very wrong too.

So that's the game.  Take care of all way too similar dinosaurs, take care of guests that technically don't exist as individuals, and try to tell the employees that you love them all.  Once you finish one island, you move onto the next, unlock more dinos to research and make, and...that's it.  One island is very much like the next, and I got bored enough that I stopped played after island number three in the base campaign.

I have to say this was my first Frontier game, and they really dropped the ball on it.  I'm not sure why exactly, but I think it was a combination of small team or time frame to make a game, and also Universal making demands on what the game should be like.  I hate to say it, but this gets a 1.5 out of 5 stars.  I hoped that the free updates would liven the game up for me, but I did not get past even island one when I replayed it recently.

Anyway, that's all for now.  See you all, next whenever.  

I seriously need to set this to a schedule some time.  Oh well, later.

Reassembly

I love Legos.  I love spaceships.  I love Lego spaceships a lot.  

Surprisingly, despite my love of blocks that click into other blocks that then make buildings or vehicles, I never really got into games that are literally all about that, like Terraria or Minecraft, where you can build huge fortress and craft almost everything you can imagine.  I'm just not really a creative building designer, and most games crafting is rather dull to me.

But then I found Reassembly.  and I love it so much.

Avengers Assemble!  Wait, wrong franchise.

Reassembly has no plot, no lore, no story, or even any voice acting. But none of that matters because you have blocks that attach to other blocks that can become a spaceship and then can blow up other space ships.  There's weapon blocks, power generator blocks to power said weapons, thruster blocks that make you move, shield blocks and other stranger blocks that do other useful things.

You collect resources that are mostly found by killing enemy faction ships, exchange them for Credits at ships or stations with a factory and use the Credits to upgrade the power limit of your ship and unlock new blocks.  There's seven playable factions each with different blocks and aesthetics and weapons and the like.  There's also 'Agents' which are NPC's using other players ships that go around causing chaos.  There's wormholes, self replicating Fly-bots, and for some reason the Borg show up here as well.

And, uh, that's the game.  just going around building your ship and blowing things up.  It's not exactly a deep game, but it allows tons of creativity for making space ships.  you can take ship desgins and add them to your inventory, so they will be made by NPC factory ships, as well as yourself when you get a factory module.

I enjoyed this game far more then I feel like I should have.  I have 15ish hours on it, and might add even more.  The only problems I've encountered are that in my games Agents don't appear.  and I can't upload my ship as an Agent in other peoples games.  The third problem is most damning, all the factions play similarly.  This could be my fault, however, as I tend to go slow moving but powerful sheilds and long ranged weapons, no matter what faction.  Along with tons of fighters/drones.  

Either way, Reassembly is well worth the 15 bucks if you like space games, or building spaceships.  I would give it 4/5 stars, if not 4.5 out of 5 stars. 

The Karate Kid (2010)

Look, the only reason I watched this is because Jackie Chan is in it and I like Jackie Chan.  I'm...not sure why I opened this review with a defending statement.  But I feel ever so slightly ashamed I watched this film.  I'm not sure why, but as usual here's the movie poster.

Wait, is that Will Smiths son?

...Ah, now I know why I feel slight shame.  Jaden Smith, we meet at last...sort of.  I don't hate Jaden Smith, but I feel....slightly annoyed that he pretty much got gifted an acting career as a birthday present.  I never got that pony I wanted on my birthday.

Anyway, I've never seen the original Karate Kid, so I can't say how well or badly it is in comparison with the original.  But I have browsed the Wikipedia and know of the major plot points, so I can compare those.  Hopefully.

The premise of both films is that a kid moves to another area, having a single mom, and learns a martial art from a wise old teacher who appears to just be a old man at first.  there's several differences, but we'll talk about two right now; the move is from the USA to china, and the kids instead of being teenagers, are all under 14.  

Most of the film takes place in china, and I like it.  It's pretty cool to see the real places they set the film in, and it gives the main character kid real reasons to be unhappy what with now living in an entirely different culture.

The fact all the kids are under 14...is not to my liking however.  I found zero enjoyment watching the kids interact, mainly because the main character was written like an selfish idiot, even for his age.  

The acting...well, Jaden smith isn't actually a bad actor, nor anyone else.  the problem seemed to me not the actors themselves, but the direction they either took or didn't take their acting prowess.   

The shots and cinematography, are good.  I really liked it.  Jackie Chan was a joy to watch, both in acting and in the fight scenes.

Honestly, the films reverence of the Karate Kid original movie, harms it more then helps.  It follows some beats too closely, that if let go would make the film better.  the girlfriend parts, was excruciating to watch, to the point that I fast forwarded through those parts.  Keeping the bullies and the bullies martial art teacher as psychopathic jerks hurt the film rather then helped. The more the film strayed from the original movie the more I enjoyed it.

Despite this, I find myself giving it 3 out of 5 stars.  Why?  Well, Jackie chan saved this film from its writing.   One thing I have yet to talk about is that in this one, while both mentors have a troubled and tragic past, Jackie Chans character is still troubled and tragic in the present, and not only does the mentorship help the young main character grow as a person, it helps Jackie Chans character grow as well.  

Unfortunately I also fully admit I fast forwarded through at least one third of the film.  So I have to downgrade it to at least 2.5 stars, if not simply 2 stars.  I enjoyed it, but I also skipped a lot of the content of the film. 

Anyway, if the film had taken more risks from the original, and instead of a remake was instead a inspired by, I would've liked this film a lot more.  

Today is a two review day!  Above is another review, but both are kinda short, so I made them both today.

Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth.

I have always been in a weird place where I like 4X games...but don't like Civilization, the Sid Meier's Video game.  For those who don't know what 4X Means, it's a video game where you basically are contrlling a nation or empire, where you have to eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate.  ...could also be called 4E, but X sounds cooler.  Anyway, diplomacy, research, battle, and economy are all part of 4X games, along with several other features.

Anyway, nowaday disliking Civilization but liking 4X is easy. There's tons of different 4X games with different factions, stories, and most importantly, different gameplay mechanics.  

This was not the case before Endless Legend from Amplitude came out.  Before Amplitude, Civilization wasn't just considered the 'most popular' 4X game.  It was considered the be all and end all of 4X games.  Nothing could be better then Civilization, so everything was the same as Civilization, with just slight variations in gameplay, even if setting and factions were radically different.   I said this before in my Mandalorian TV show review, and I'll say it again: Don't think the current 'best' of something is the be all and end all, think of it as a starting point for something better. 

So I was an odd one.  I didn't like civilization but wanted to try 4X games and bought quite a few of them.  To be fair, it wasn't the gameplay that I hated about civilization, it was the setting and factions.  So I was easily pleased by just a change of scenery if not actual gameplay.

But then Endless Legend came out, and I realized how shamefully unfun Civilization had been.  I could go on all day and night about how much I love Endless Legend, but that's not what this review is about.

This is about Civilization.  IN SPACE.

Sid does seem to love his hex tiles...even the windows are shaped like one!

But any talk about civilization in space will have to start with Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, the original civilization in space, made way back after Civilization 2.  For reference, Civilization 6 is its latest installement.  But I know very little about it, aside from the fact that it has some very die hard fans and was apparently very good.  So Beyond Earth was said to be a spiritual successor to Alpha Centauri before Beyond Earth was released. 

Anyway, the premise of Beyond Earth is it's 2210, and earth is in bad shape.  So the current nations and corporations of the future-earth start building space ships to colonize different planets across the universe.  

You start the game by picking a sponsor, which include futuristic but familiar-ish names such as Polystralia, Peoples African Union, American Reclamation Corporation, and Brasilia.  That's only 4 out of 8 Sponsors in the base game, 12 total with the only expansion, Rising Tide.  

You might think picking a sponsor would completely change how you play the game, like Endless Legends did with its factions.  Nope.  instead you get a small  bonus to certain things, and that's it.  Really, the other options you pick before you start a game have just as much if not more impact, and none of them really change the game, only slightly change choices at the start.  As an aside, Sponsors also decide what leader you play as.  

Instead of  what you decide to be mattering, the idea is that what you do on the new planet matters more then what you were on earth.  While an idea I can get behind, they didn't go far enough with it.  While each building you build in a city get a permanent buff via a decision you make, the buff is small and only one option out of two.  What if it was three options?  What is, for example, you had the building the Rocket Battery be A: A orbital satellite slayer but weak against ground troops, B: An artillery platform that can decimate ground troops, or C: Somewhere in-between but not great at either.  

 Behold!  Beags Ville!

But I'm getting off track.  To bring home the idea of what you do ingame is more important then what sponsor you pick, there are quests that give you affinity levels in one of three groupings, Purity, Harmony, and Supremacy.   Purity ideology believes humanity was and is perfect, and anything alien should be rooted out.  Harmony believes to survive humanity must evolve with nature and become more alien like.  Supremacy is somewhat in between but believes that humanity can be perfected via machinery and that the new world must be dominated.  Different buildings require different levels of different Affinitys, and raising affinity levels are required to upgrade military units.  I will admit being able to pick different bonuses for military units is neat.

But this still isn't enough, it's not until late game that really differences in play happen, and even if Harmony, Purity, and Supremacy factions played completely differently,  that's still only 3 factions, a pitiful amount honestly.  

I do however, praise the tech tree, or rather, web, as it is a branching web instead of a linear tech tree.  The fact that two players can have completely different techs but still be the same 'power level' as it were is a nice addition, one I wish Civilization games had more like it.  

The base game of Beyond Earth is unfortunately, fairly bland and safe, even with the sci fi twist.  So I give it a 3/5 stars, at best.  Honestly 2.5/5 is more accurate.  But we haven't delved into Beyond Earth: Rising Tide.

Lady put your helmet back on!

Rising Tide is the only expansion to Beyond Earth, and as you might guess it revamped the games navy combat and water features, including the heavily touted floating aquatic cities.  But it also revamped diplomacy, added new sponsors, and added new 'artifact' system of gameplay.

Honestly Rising Tide's feature of upgrade water gameplay features was the least interesting and exciting upgrades to the game.  The diplomacy updates and introduction of a new currency used exclusivity in diplomatic international exchanges, were far more welcome, and in single player actually gives each NPC colony leader new life and lines and ways to react to what the player is doing.  

With Rising Tide, I give Beyond Earth either a 3 or 3.5 out of 5 stars.  It's a much better game, and a good intro to 4X games.  unfortunately, for a veteran at 4X games it's not that good.  I've heard it is a poor spiritual successor to Alpha Centauri, but having never played it, all I have is hearsay.

That's all for now, hopefully I'll put out some drafts soon that I've been (slowly) working on.  I'd say them here, but from those that remember my Evil Genius 2 review, I don't keep my word if I do. 

Howls Moving Castle (2004 film)

Dear Studio Ghibli, 

This is Werebeagle.  I am a new consumer in anime, having seen very little of it before seeing a major film of yours, specifically Howls Moving Castle.

I told you we shouldn't have let the scrapyard rednecks build a castle!

I have never read the book it is based on, but from what little I know of it, it's loosely based on the story, and explores different themes then the films.  Not that there's anything bad with that, a film adaption of a book can go a different direction then the source material and still be good in it's own right.  

The early 20th century technology yet still fantastical set pieces mixes familiar and new things to make a blend that is in my opinion, extremely refreshing and a wonderful setting for a fantasy story.

The basic premise of the story is that a young girl, Sophie, is cursed by the Witch of the Wastes into being an old woman.  So she sets off on a quest to find a wizard to remove the curse, and comes upon the titular Howls Moving Castle.  This story is set against the backdrop of two nations going to war over the disappearance of a prince.  This sets up anti-war themes for the film.

While I respect the anti-war themes and know you made the the film as a response to the USA invasion of the Iraq, and some of the metaphors I respect and understand (Like the wizards who turn themselves into inhuman creatures to fight in the war, and won't remember they were human after the war) but some seem to be a little confused.  Like Howl, who doesn't want to fight in the war in either side, ends up fighting both sides?  And this slowly turns him into a monster?  I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say here.

The plot and story, while slow to start, is pretty damn good...up until the second half of the two hour film.  then I start to get confused, and it seems like some scenes or pieces of dialogue were missing, which left it feeling rushed and me feeling confused.

It goes without saying the animation is beautiful.  Even for a film that is more then 15 years old, it is a joy to watch for animation alone.  It is gorgeous, and I could've watched it just to see things move, with no dialogue.

The English voice acting, is very good, with some big names for the time doing voices.  All but one of the voice actor (I won't name names, Blythe Danner, but I'm looking at you.) did a good job.  As I did not see the Japanese version, nor do I speak it, I cannot say how good it is in the original Japanese.

The music, while I hear got some awards for it alone, was mostly forgettable or unnoticed by me, sadly.  While pretty, it was at best unobtrusive.

While I give your film a solid four out of five stars, it did not make me want to watch Howls Moving Castle again, nor watch more of your films.  While I'm willing to try again some time, possibly with Spirited Away, I'm afraid for now I'm not a fan.

Your missed-chance-fan, 

Werebeagle.

Evil Genius 2: World Domination

Stop me if you've heard this before: An egotistical insane megalomaniac plans to launch a plan to become the most powerful man in the world, or even...destroy it.  It's up to the charming and plucky super spy to save the day and get the girl, whose name is...John Steele?  Wait, who...?  Where the hell is the right script...!

Apparently that was the right script, and today is not a James Bond film, but instead Evil Genius 2, a sequel to the 2004 game where you played as a cold war era...bond villain, pretty much.  And yes, John Steele was a James Bond clone.  As you might guess, you have to try to take over the world and become the most powerful criminal in the underworld, and keep the forces of Justice from stopping you.

I personally would trust this man who is holding a globe and grinning evilly.  Wouldn't you?

Evil Genius 2 does not deviate from this set up, although it takes place...uh...I really have no idea when it takes place, but enough time after the first one that a middle aged man turns into an old man and a child turns into a man.  20 years, I guess?

Anyway that's not important, what is, is the fact an Evil Genius did take over the world in 1, and then lost it.  I'm not really sure what's the point of that, but you can choose as four Evil Genius's, Maxmillion from the first game, the only genius returning, Red Ivan, a henchmen of the first game that is now a proper genius, Emma, an former spymaster for the forces of Justice, and Zalika, who...does...science?  

Despite my confusion on Zalikas motives, objectives, or why she does anything, (confounded even more by the fact I have an RP character by the same name.) each Genius does have a distinct flavor and even personality.  A weird thing is all the lines of the Evil Genius's are voice acted, but only the main mission ones have written dialogue just for them, all side objectives voiced dialogues all the same line, just different actors.  Anyway, Rebellion, the developers, claimed that each would have a unique play-style.  Do they?

Eeeh, not really.  Honestly I found the different choices of islands more game play changing then anything else.  But each island does feel, look, and force you to build differently.  For example, the firs toption island gives you ton of access on the first floor of the mountain, and you can safely build in a cluster keeping your rooms close by so minions don't have to run around so much.

In the second option, the island is separated into two islands that are bridged at the top, meaning you'll need to effectively make two bases of operation, but the corridor leading to second island can be filled with traps to kill or deter others.

The third island is called "The Donut".  And it is donut shaped, meaning I had to build three bases around it, because it takes FOREVER for minions to walk around it.  also unlike the others, I added a secondary door leading from my cover operation.

Yes, in Evil Genius 2 you get a cover operation, a casino, that starts off abandoned by soon will be filled with valets doing whatever you want them to do to keep the forces of Justice deterred and tourists clueless.

Minions are separated into four types, the basic worker, the Muscle minions, the Science minions, and the Deception minions that go from a simple valet all the way to a counter agent.  All minions start as workers and need to be trained up into one of the three types.

Anyway, onto my opinion on the game: The game is gorgeous.  It's stylized just right in a cartoon way, doesn't require too much space in the hard drive, and looks amazing.  While I can see why people would say the game took away the cold war super spy villain theme and feel, as to me it seems more like weekend cartoons now, I personally like it, even the bad humor, because bad puns and jokes are my jam.  

Building the base is also easy and much less of a hassle in this game then the first, as you unlock the ability to use the cover operation almost immediately, thus allowing you to plan your operation around that instead of it being unlocked after you've built your base in Evil Genius 1.

Unfortunately that's where the 100% good things in my eyes end.  The art style and base building are it.  The UI and hints and tips for how to do things are...extremely absent.  Despite the UI constantly going off and being very shiny and annoying, they do not tell you what to do much.  There were several times in the game I had to stop and think about what to do as the game never told me how to do it.

The tutorial also is extremely long, and that's okay, but, for some reason, the tutorial makes the game so much easier.  I had to restart one of my games because I failed at the start of it, my evil genius died. without the tutorial, your thrown into the deep end of the pool, with agents coming immediately after you instead of no agents until after the tutorial, and no way to defend your Evil self.

This loops into another problem, Investigators, the easiest to kill of all forces of justice, do not in fact, get killed easily.  they have 75 health to start with, that's 25 more thne your minion, they also take less damage then minions from attacks, AND they have guns that can kill a worker minion in one shot.  

Honestly I found it was much easier to just let the investigators go, unlike from what I remember from the first game, they do not summon tougher enemies, instead they just summon more investigators, which you can also let go.  Supposedly higher heat levels, aka, how prominent the forces of justice view you as a threat, mean more tougher enemies, but I have yet to come across anything.  Even soldiers are easier to kill then investigators.

This killed the game for me.  Why even bother if the forces of justice pose no threat?  But oh dear reader, there's so much more to complain about...

You might want to stop at the drink counter I built just for this.

The forces of Justice in both games are called silly acronyms, SMASH, HAMMER, SABRE, PATRIOT, and ANVIL...but in the first one HAMMER was obviously the soviet union, PATRIOT was America, ANVIL china, SABRE britian and most of Europe, and SMASH....was everything else, really. PATRIOT had all of north America and japan as well, HAMMER was eastern Europe and Russia, along with the middle east.  Sabre were all the British colones and western Europe.  Get the picture?  Well don't, because in Evil Genius 2, they just group them all by continent instead of by lore or political power like the last game.  So the British SABRE is now all in Africa, and HAMMER controls all of Russia, Europe, and Japan.  What is even going on?

To make matters worse, despite there being around a dozen henchmen in The original game, only two come back. This isn't a huge problem for me, but I could see why it would be for others: It feels like it's barely connected to evil genius 1 for some people.

Of course, I forgot the most important thing of EG2: The control room.  you use Radio relays to send minions out into the world, and this is how you get money.  The problem: The map quickly becomes cluttered and instead of being able to zoom in on an important missions, you have to manually look for one.  The lack of info on important things doesn't stop there, you are notified when a group of JUSTICE workers are coming, but never -where they are-, and sine there's no way to differentiate them aside from manually looking, unlike in the first game which had a mini map showing good guys trying to stop you, you just have to zoom in and look.

In original evil genius 1, the radio relays had to be manned to provide a bonus, but in 2 they do not.  I would be fine with this, if it weren't for the fact Minions will still man them.  and get tired from working on them, despite there being no benefit from it, and this stops them from working on things that DO give you benefit if a minion works there.

The simplifications of the evil genius formula, the ones not listed here, anyway, are hit and miss for me.  some work well, like not needing briefcases to carry gold around, some do not, like the above mentioned radio relay problem.

So why do I have 60+ hours on this game?  For one, the campaign is extremely drawn out, it took me at least 50 hours to complete it.  I didn't speed run, but I didn't dawdle either, and because of some insane reason, side objectives expire if you go too far in the campaign.  It's extremely annoying, and on top of that, the loot you get that is not just gold, examples being the Trojan Horse, a dodo, and godzilla's egg ,all are not worth the effort to actually get them.  this game is extremely grindy.

So, why am I still playing it?  Uh...well....shit man, it's merely because of Brian Blessed, okay?  He's the voice actor for Red Ivan, and he is amazing.  I mean, look at him!

I meant Brian Blessed, but this works too.

 So yeah, I'm playing the campaign for the second time just as a different genius, all for a voice actor.  Help.

Anyway, this is all for now, have fun and stay safe everyone.

Also, I plan on reviewing a bunch of games about evil characters being the protagonists.  While I have a lot more that I could use in the backlog of 500+ games I own, we're just going with Dungeons 1, 2 Overlord 1 and 2, Evil Genius 1 and 2, and Attack of the Earthlings.  I think 7 game is enough for now, and I am doing these in no particular order.

Anno 1800

Losing power for four to five days really taught me to appreciate electrical power more.  So what better way to celebrate electrical power then play a game during the time period it was invented in?   As such we move onto the latest game in the Anno series, Anno 1800 set during the industrial revolution!  And yes, in the late game you get to harness electricity, and it's an important gameplay element.

Such a beautiful image full of pollutants!

Anno 1800 has a story mode like Anno 2205, which after it completes turns into sandbox mode, or you can jump straight into sandbox mode and skip the story which is basically just anno 2205's story except in the past.  I won't spoil it, not that there's much you can't guess what happens yourself, but it involves you being a rich sibling, building a shipping company from scratch, the mysterious death of your father, and a sale of land to a rebel group against the British Empire.

Unfortunately, the story leaves many things unanswered, but acts like it had no loose strings after finishing.  Just like Anno 2205's forgettable story.  I completed it once, and now when I build cities I just skip to the sandbox mode.

Anno 1800 also took from anno 2205 the difficulty, uh, calculator and such.  By calculator I mean you can change various things, from the amount of money you make from taxes to the amount of fertilities on islands, to how aggressive and how many NPC opponents you have, and it tells you how difficult you just made the game, assigning one of three difficulties to you.  I always play on standard for two reasons, standard slash normal difficulty is how most game are usually supposed to play on, and I am also not good at economics or city building. 

Unlike Anno 2205, there are NPC parties trying to outcompete you in the game, and they can and do go to war against you.  Luckily, you can make warships and cannons and later even bigger and meaner weapons.  I am grateful for this, as pirates will always be a problem in Anno 1800, on both core game maps.

Yes, anno 1800 uses the same mechanic as Anno 2205, but instead of multiple maps, there are only two large ones with different islands on them.  They also bring back Fertility, meaning what plant or something can grow on the island, so colonizing different islands is a good idea and needed to even in the early game.

Anno 1800 also improves on the workforce of anno 2205, so each of the four tiers of residences in the city gives workforce, which is then expended in, well, factory's and farms and the like.  certain buildings need only farmers, for example, while some need workers or artisans.  SO you need to keep a stable of lower residences that might not net you a lot of taxes, but are needed nonetheless.

Each residence has needs and luxury items they want, and you'll want to fill all of them, since luxury items more often then not give cash as well as happiness, and happy citizens make festivals which make even more money.

You might get to Artisans rank, the third tier of residents, and think this game is pretty easy.  But then, you upgrade them to engineers, and I find my profit plummets, because they want things that need factory's that have -power-.  Those bastards.  Oil is used to make electric power, and it is only found on starter islands in the Old World.  in the New World, it's found pretty much everywhere, so you'll need to make trans Atlantic routes for your ships.

Shipping and making things is the main part of the game.  The mix of new mechanics from anno 2205, and the previous annos makes this a highly enjoyable game for me, and I already have...way too many hours spent in it then I want to admit.  The influx of DLCs that add more complexity and mechanics to the game is still ongoing as of this writing, and the 3rd year of DLC is still being made.  I Highly look forward to it.

Anno 2205

 Anno 2205.  It's...I mean....well...you know...

It's hard to put into words for me.  I both enjoy and dislike the game.  As you might guess, Anno 2205 is set in the distant future, but still on planet earth, but, the whole storyline is about going to the moon for colonization purposes.  So let's put on our dancing shoes and learn to moonwalk.

Look, you try to come up with something funny from this.

Anno 2205 simplifies the entire Anno premise from the previous games.  While I applaud the UI simplification and how some buildings work, they removed a lot of features from previous Anno games.  Most notably, all of the islands in a map automatically trade resources between them, including manpower, which is required to run buildings now, and power.  Fertilities between different islands are gone as well, meaning you can grow any type of crop on any type of island.  Other players, AI or human?  Gone.  having to protect your islands from pirates? Gone.

Before this sounds too depressing, you get more then nine maps to build cities in.  However, each maps is basically it's own island, meaning you trade between maps, and not islands.  To make things a little bit more depressing, the maps are divided into three, uh, biomes?  Types.  One is temperate, where your biggest cites are going to be.  Arctic is where you build specialized items to ship to the temperate maps, and Lunar maps are a late game addition that give you energy to transfer to temperate maps.  There is little diffrince between the differnt map types, meaning the same production chains adn goods can be made or grown on all of the maps of the same type.  IE, you can grow rice in all temperate maps, lunar crops in all moon maps, and fish farms in all arctic maps.

In the place of war between different players, we have instead 'crisis missions' where it's more of a classic RTS where you lead a small fleet of ships against inexplicable large fleets of mercs.  While I found these enjoyable, they are no replacement for the pirates and war hungry players in other Anno games.

Production chains are also simplified, except for very late game ones.  But, there is one thing Anno 2205 does well: statistics.  By that i mean you get a clear number representing how much demand of a product you need, how much your making to meet it, and the total you are producing after demand takes some away.  I sorely missed this ease when playing Anno 2070.

Overall, Anno 2205 is a poor entry into the Anno series, simply because it simplifies all that makes Anno a good game series.  But, depsite this...I really like it.  I'd give it a B rank.  Why do I like it?  Because it's a simple, easy going city builder.  Combat is completely optional, making produciton chains is easy, and all you have to worry about is having enough power so your citizens don't complain the TV isn't on 24/7.

So yeah, most people who are avid Anno fans wouldn't like it, but, I do because for me, it's what City Skylines is to a lot of people. (City Skylines is a modern day city builder, with less empathize on making goods and more on just building services and residential areas.)

Anyway, next time will be Anno 1800, which to me is the best on yet.

Up, 2009 Movie

As I am having a hard time putting Anno 2205 into words, let alone a review, instead have this review of the Pixar movie Up.

Yeah, we're not in for a serious journey here, people.

So Up is an 3D animated movie by Pixar and Disney, about an elderly man who, using balloons, flies his house to South America to fulfill a promise he made to his late wife.

Despite being a kids movie, Up puts some heavy subjects on the table, most notably failure and death.  But I'll go on about the plot and my theories about what its trying to tell the viewers later.

Up is fantastic to watch, both in the animation and the cartoony style they chose to create in.  The animation flawless, and even now, more then ten years later it still looks good. The voice acting is also excellent, writing is almost perfect, and otherwise your standard good Pixar movie.  Seriously, Pixar is scarily good at making movies.  The only downside I felt when watching this movie was that the final scene(s?) felt a little over the top, but, it's about a man flying his house with balloons.  How more over the top can you get?

I would be disappointed in myself if I didn't mention the first ten minutes of the film, or rather, after the first five but before the first 10 minute mark.  The first part of the film introduces Carl the elderly man, as a kid at this time in the movie, meet his future wife, also as a kid, and set up some backstory that seems meaningless but has a point later.  After they first meet, it shows them getting married, getting jobs at a zoo, and growing old together.  It's an amazing sequence, done entirely without any dialogue or spoken words.  I would have paid admission for the movie, shown just that scene, and go out satisfied.  

Well, satisfied, except for the fact Carls wife dies at the end of that little sequence.  Yeah, kind of a downer.  But her death ties nicely into the fact that Carl views that he failed her, because he never took her on an adventure to South America.  

See, in my eyes, this movie has three things at its core: The Little Things Count, Failure, and Letting things go.  If you want to see this film and haven't,don't look any further, because SPOILERS are being discussed now, though I will try to limit them.

The theme of failure continues with the villain, who was accused of fraud, as an explorer discovering undiscovered animals and things, and spent his entire life trying capture the bird that drove him to this extent alive.

Carl is also driven to the extreme of proving that he is not a failure, to his late wife, bringing his house to Paradise Falls.  But once there, he opens up her childhood 'Adventure Book' and looks to the back, the 'Stuff I'll Do' section is not blank as he thought it was, instead, it's filled with pictures of their life, and at the end, she writes 'thanks for the adventure, now here's to your future ones!'.  This proves to him that he never failed his wife, and starts the climax of the movie.

It also ties nicely into The Little Things Count category.  None of the things Carl and his wife did were big things.  they were all small, quiet things.  Heck, the movie has Carl's kid sidekick, who he picked up on accident, even says, "I think I like the boring things the most..." when talking about his dad and how they used to hang out before they divorced.

yeah, this movie deals with some heavy things for a kids movie.  I mean, it's not groundbreaking, but it's god damn refreshing.  

The final part of the themes of Up, is Letting things go.  The villain of the piece, never does.  He is willing to kill people to get what he wants, to prove to the world he was not a fraud.  Carl eventually does let it go, and when after the climax loses his house after too many balloons are shot from it, he says, 'it's just a house'.  There's a scene early on in the film where he is trying to protect his house and its possessions from a lightning storm, frantically trying to make everything isn't damaged.  

The antithesis of that scene is after Carl lets go of his failure, and starts throwing things, all sorts of things, out of the house to lighten it up so it can fly again. 

So yeah, I love this film.  it means a lot to me, and I think my theory of the what it means is correct, and the great thing about theories about what films mean, is they're ALL correct.  or at least relevant to the person who thinks them.

Anyway, hoping I'll be able to word what I think of Anno 2205.  See you next time.

Anno 2070

 This time, I'm going to go over the Anno games...all...three that I own.  That's 2070, 2205, and 1800 in order of release date.  There's 3 more before that, all historically based, but those three are the only ones I own.  and honestly all that I wish to own, so that's why we're only reviewing three of the six games.

Anno 2070 was the first Anno game I tried, quite a while ago.  And, despite still owning it, I can't bring myself to play it anymore, even with only 20 hours on it, though I have a suspicion it's more then that...

Why?  Because of Anno 2205, and more importantly, 1800.  Both, but more so Anno 1800, improve the game and add gameplay that appeals to me, so, trying to get into a now outdated and clunky game to me is really hard.

Back to the future!  Wait, shit, wrong franchise.

 

So I'm going by memory, though don't worry, I played the game recently in offline mode on steam for a bit, enough to refresh my memory.

Anyway, Anno is a series of city building games set in different time periods.  This was the first Anno series to be set in the future. It's a future where...I honestly don't know a lot what happened, but I do know Climate Change screwed things up.  Perhaps there's some lore in the campaign that I repeatedly ignore to instead play in sandbox mode. 

Yeah, there's a lot of features in this game before you even start the game.  There's voting, daily missions, annual missions, a story campaign as I mentioned earlier, and even account unlocks for reaching certain achievements ingame.

But the game is at heart a city builder, so I ignored all that and went to sandbox mode, easy of course since I was new at the series and game and just a noob in general, and started building for one of the two factions.

At start you pick one of two factions to play as, each with there own buildings, materials, and citizens to please.  One is the Global Trust, which thinks that the planet earth is there to be plundered, and that climate change clearly was not the fault of corporate greed.   The other is the Eden Project, who are environmentalist hippies, except they are willing to kill you to protect mother earth.

While they play the same, they are not the same.  I mean, Anno is at it's core a game about making simple to complex fabrication chains to please citizens so you can tax them heavily, so both factions are the same on that count.. But, they react to pollution differently, their buildings make different things, they require different fertility's for different plants to grow, and their buildings to power other buildings are radically different.  

I usually played Eden, since I too am an environmentalist that advocates murder.  Eden is all about making a heavy plant based diet for your citizens, using nature friendly power sources, and mines for minerals aren't nearly as pollution heavy as for the Trust.  Of course you need your citizens to be entertained or informed too, so you make the 2070 equivalent of smart phones for them.  

I'll admit I never got too far in the game, having only gotten to early Executives tier, level 3 of Eden citizens.  There are some problems with the game that were solved in future games, that I just can't get over though...

The user interface is clunky, but I don't mind that too much.  No, it's that all buildings do work automatically and don't need anyone to operate them.  I find the lack of needing citizens to be the work force annoying.  Also service buildings, like hospitals and fire stations and police stations have a pre determined radius around them requiring all buildings to get benefits from them to be in that small radius.  In future games they replaced that with a certain amount of road tiles leading away from the building.  ...If you didn't understand that, basically you could make your own, if limited, area of usage with roads in 2205 and 1800.

Also the quests are clunky and hard to understand for me, and come up rarely.  There's also an upgrade system with ships and the ARK, your homebase away from the multiple islands you can colonize, which I don't understand at all.  The graphics also look weird and just...off to me, but that might be the time, I'm not sure.

Anyway, there's also a war component to Anno, which since I played on easy never really used or saw much of.  But you can make warships to attack trade routes, make islands surrender to you, or just protect yourself from optional pirates.

I'd rate Anno 2070 a C+, honestly.  It -feels- like the devs were really trying to make this a good game, but only made a mediocre or average one.  But still, I-wait, there was an expansion to this game that I need to talk about?  Well, damn.

Yes, there was, and it added a new faction that you unlocked by playing the game as Eden or Trust, the brainy scientist or Tech faction.   The expansion is called Deep Ocean, and allows you to not only add these new citizens to your Trust or Eden ones.  But, the Techs require underwater resources, which you can only get from underwater buildings on 'underwater plateaus' or pretty much just underwater islands.  Techs also allow you to build more of the weird upgrade systems and temporary upgrades to production chains if you want, but I could never understand that stuff, even if I loved building underwater and the Techs.  Techs also expand warfare to allow better weapons as defenses or on ships, AND adds aircraft.

So yeah, with the expansion I'd give them a B- or even a solid B.  But I'll admit, I'm biased.  I love science fiction more then historical or fantasy games, and I love the idea of underwater cities.

Anyway, next time, Anno 2205.  TO THE MOON.  or more likely, to bed with me, it's god damn late as I finish this.