ASM the Game

I just got Dawnguard for Skyrim, but I also just bought the Amazing Spider-Man game. It's pretty cool. The style reminds me a lot of the Arkham games, and I thought those were probably the best comic book games ever made. I consider comic book movie games a different category since they have to be tend to be less loyal to the comic books and often don't have that much to do with the movie. For that reason, it's harder to compare ASM to Arkham than to, say, Spider-Man 2. That was the best Spider-Man game until now, but I think at the very least it now has a challenger. I like pretty much everything about it, and I like that there is stealth combat, but I find it a little bit underdeveloped and slightly repettitive. It's pretty much just crawling on the ceiling and pulling people up one by one, or if you're skilled and have an upgrade, two at a time. But webbing people to the ceiling also needs an upgrade. So I suppose it evolves a little with each upgrade, but it's a little monotonous until you get the next one. But other than that, I think it's a great game and has brought Spider-Man games back from a path that I didn't like. I mean, an all indoors, not open world Spider-Man game? Come on. Spider-Man games have to have that flexibility of swinging around NY, stopping minor crimes until you feel like going to do your main objective. That's the other thing that made me not buy Edge of Time or Shattered Dimensions. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you can't just go around stopping robberies and assaults. The way this game works is that you swing around as much as you want, beating up criminals, taking photos and doing other challenges, until you go to wherever you need to go to start a level. And the levels are usually indoors, so once you start one, you have to finish it before you can go back to freely roaming the city. What I like is that it does a good job combining open world and level-based gameplay. Like I said, you go wherever, then go in some building or something to start a level (outdoor levels are rare). But once you finish a level, you can go to Peter's apartment and replay it any time. That solves my biggest problem with open world games, which is that often, once you're done with the missions / quests, you're done. There may be some minor enemies remaining, but to do the really fun stuff, you have to start all over. The same goes for a quest that was particularly fun. You can only do it once before having to start over again. This way, you can replay whatever you want, and you still can roam around beating up any thugs you see, which is fun in itself. The combat system reminds me of the Arkham games, but with the  Webslinger living up to his name. You can do a lot of standard Spider-Man moves like immobilizing an enemy with web, or using it to pull yourself towards an enemy, grab and throw enemies, and stuff like that. You can also press a button to retreat away from your enemies. That's useful because Spider-Man can't actually take that much punishment. He's all about dodging and avoiding it completely. One thing about the combat that may take some getting used to is the fact that you have no actual health meter. The closer you are to death, the redder the edge of the screen gets, so if it's very red, you need to retreat and give yourself a bit of time (not a lot) to heal. When I first started playing, I thought that was a weakness in the game, but now I don't think it takes anything away. It might even be a strength. Personally, I think the game has a lot of strengths, so if you like good Spider-Man games, you should get it.

Skyrim + Dawnguard = Skooma

If you're one of those arrogant PC gamers who looks down their nose at other platforms, then 360 players getting Dawnguard first serves you right. But chances are, you're not, so if you lack a 360, are a reasonable person, and want Dawnguard, you have my sympathy. But anyway: As some of you know, it wouldn't be entirely unfair to call myself a recovering Skyrim addict. Dawnguard is not helping. I pretty much just stopped playing for a while, but I picked it up again right before I got the Dawnguard dlc, and now I'm playing it kind of a lot, but it's so cool. If you side with the vampires like I did, you revive a vampire not unlike Selene from Underworld from a kind of stasis using blood, not unlike in Underworld, then become a vampire lord not unlike the one from Underworld Evolution. But also you can get other powers like turn into a swarm of bats, summon a gargoyle, turn into mist, and vampiric grip, wich is essentially force choke. So you have some of the powers of Marcus Corvinus, classic Dracula and Darth Vader. Plus you can feed on people while they're awake now, plus turn people into thralls and sleep in coffins. Joining the Dawnguard and hunting Vampires gets you some new weapons, including a crossbow, and some new armor, but I think that's about it. I expect the reason for most of the people that join them is so they can be a werewolf. And now both vampires and werewolves have perk trees, but you can go from vampire lord form to human form and back again as many times as you want, whenever you want, plus you can do awesome vampire magic and stuff, so I chose to prey on the innocent and become a vampire. And I heard that there was at least one more shout being added to the game, but now I can confirm that it's at least two. My biggest concern was that vampirism would mess up my character's face and make him look bad like in Oblivion, but my guy's face looks way cooler now, plus you get glowing eyes. And I'm not very far in the questline, but so far each one has been interresting and unique.

Predators

I love Predators ( these ones    ). They're just so awesome. I often group them together with Aliens, but I like Predators more. Aliens just indiscriminantly kill everyone they see, while Predators have a culture. They have pride and honor, not to mention some of the coolest weapons there are. I can't remember if I've done any posts about wanting their weapons and armor, but I do want pretty much everything they use. I would just need to get a slightly different shaped mask to fit my human head. The only problem is that I don't have dreadlocks, so it wouldn't look as cool. And FYI, I prefer the classic double wrist blades to the Predators style single wrist sword, but I would happily accept either. I also like the AVP style throwing disk with all the blades sticking out more than the Predator 2 type. For their spears, I'm pretty neutral, but I have a replica that looks more like the AVP style, so I suppose I'm a little partial to that one. The other thing I like about them is their hunting style. They don't kill defenseless prey, so I suppose they can't be that bad of people, even though it's probably more so as not to look weak. Also, the trophies that they take are cool. For example, as I write this, there are two Predator figures on my desk, one of which is wearing the jawbone of some creature on his helmet, and the other is holding a human spine and skull. And the last cool thing  about them is that they taught ancient humans to build pyramids and stuff, and kinda sorta created a bunch of advanced primitive civilizations. I wonder what would happen if they fought terminators. Assuming there are equal numbers and the terminators have energy rifles and the Predators are armed with all their battle gear. It would be a close fight, and I don't know who would win, but the Predators have wrist nukes, so whatever happens, I think the terminators would lose. Unless they hid behind a pile of dirt like Arnold, because according to the Predator 1, that can protect you. In my opinion, that's one of the movie's 1.53 weaknesses. The 0.53 of a weakness is the Predator laughing. It bothers me just over half the needed amount to call it a weakness in the movie. I still liked all three movies though.

Thor

Thor has to be one of the coolest guys in the Marvel multiverse. I even think my least favorite version of him, which is Ultimate by the way, is awesome. And I know a lot of people like Ultimate the best, but he has no helmet, his Mjolnir is completely wrong, his tunic doesn't look as cool, and he's part of the Ultimate universe, which I don't like nearly as much as the mainstream universe. But even he's cool. Thor is a god who kills stuff with thunder storms and a hammer! What about that isn't awesome?! I liked the movie, but it could have been awesomer. I mean, it was a good movie, but he pretty much only has two fight scenes, one near the beginning and the other near the end, and spends the rest of the movie as a mortal. But there were a couple subtle things that they put in there for true hardcore comic book guys like myself. There's a scene that starts with the camera in the air looking down on the city. In the city, there's a billboard with an ad for some kind of travel thing or something, but at the bottom, it says Journey Into Mystery. That's the title of the comic book series that Thor first appeared in. It wasn't until later that Journey Into Mystery, featuring the Mighty Thor was replaced by The Mighty Thor. And the other thing is when they're walking through the Asgard trophy room where that blue ice cube weapon was, and if you look closely, you can see that one of the items in there is the Eye of Harokin. It's a magical artifact that was used in a few Tales of Asgard stories. If you haven't read the old Thors, you should know that after the main story in each issue, there's a shorter story titled Tales of Asgard, and that sometimes they were independent of one another, but sometimes a few of them connected to tell a larger story. The one with the Eye of Harokin was one of those. Anyway though, I have yet to carefully rewatch that scene and look for more familiar items.    -abrupt subject change-     Loki is a great villain. He has character, depth and in the earlier stories before his promotion from god of mischief to evil, his crazy schemes were kind of funny. I'm a little bit sad to say that if I were in his position, I would probably do similar things. For example, turning cars into ice cream and stuff like that. Not to mention that he has one of the best villain lines ever. Seriously. Ever. You ready for this? Are you? Make sure you're ready. I'm not sure if you are. But that's largely because I can't perceive you in any way while you read this. But ok, are you ready? Stop reading if you're not ready for this terrifying, petrifying, mortifying, stupefying line. I admit I was stalling a little bit, but that was to give you time to psyche yourself up for this line. Some people probably got tired of my time wasting and either went to go do something else, or just skipped ahead, but if you made it this far, I applaud you. Really. Well done. But even you're probably wanting me to just tell you the line already, so here it comes. Without further delay (this time I'm not lying), the line is .............. "Begone, pidgeons!" Yep. And he was actually saying that to pigeons. So, after all that buildup, are you satisfied or really disappointed? Now that I think about it though, a good bit of the disappointed group probably left this page as soon as they read the line. So thanks for either appreciating it, or fighting through your disappointment to figuratively hear the rest of what I have to say. And I say figuratively because you can't actually hear my words unless you copy and paste this whole post into one of those programs that says whatever you type into it. And if you have been or are going to do that, then that's awesome. Figuratively see you later.

Prometheus

Ok, first of all, sorry I haven't been posting this last week, but I was away. While I was away though, I saw the movie Prometheus, and it was pretty cool. They did a good job making it like Alien, but still its own movie and not just Alien 5. But it did have some things that were pretty similar to the Alien series, especially the first one. There was an android who was kind of evil, and got people killed, the main character reminded me a lot of Ripley, and the weird part is that it was on a different planet, but it looked like Alien(s) could have taken place there, if not for a few details. The environment was hostile, there was a derelict spacecraft with what apparently would later become facehugger eggs on it, and small spoiler: at the end, an early xenomorph shows up. Its hesd shape and inner jaw were a little different, but not too much. I like that it finally  explains how the aliens were created and settles all the disputes over people's different theories, so that was cool. It also explained who the other aliens were that owned those ships and the crew of the Nostromo finds a dead one sitting in that telescope- looking thing. And there was an early, unevolved version of a facehugger that I've affectionately named the Quadropus, because at first, it looked a little like an octopus, but with four tentacles. The movie itself was very stressful, but actually less scary than I was expecting. But there were a few moments when you just say "Ok, he's gonna die." or "You fool! Don't do that!" And of course, everyone except two people (one of which is an artificial person, or to be less politically correct, android) dies. But there's still room between the end of Prometheus and the beginning of Alien where they could (and should) make a sequel. They could probably do a couple more actually. I don't know if they could be with the same characters, since they all either died during the movie or were probably going to die soon after, but maybe they could make a sequel about a different crew that goes back to that planet or something. So to summarize using poor grammar just for the fun of it: movie good.

If I Were a Transformer

If I were a transformer, I would probably side with the Autobots. They always seem to win, and I'm pretty mad at the Decepticons for causing the war that destroyed Cybertron and trying to eradicate the human race. I don't do that kind of stuff. The only problem is my alternate form. I would love to be one of those guys who has two alternate forms. I'd scan a fighter jet and a tank, so I could fly around, then switch to tank form just as I land and destroy Decepticons and stuff. the only problem with that is that Autobots tend to not be tanks and military vehicles. But I'd much rather be one or two vehicles that are equipped for combat. This is indeed a problem.  But really, I suppose any vehicle form(s) would work. I'd just be much happier with the two I said. Maybe I could just break the trend and be the awesome military Autobot. Or short of that, I'd be satisfied with an APC, since that's basically a tank with no guns, even though the guns are one of the biggest reasons I want to turn into a tank. On to other matters though, I can't decide whether or not I would be willing to be a combiner. I'm not sure I like the idea of being an arm or a leg or something instead of my own guy. Plus, having a collective mind is a little bit off putting for me. But the created giant Autobots and Decepticons are so powerful that it might be worth it. Either way, I just hope I would have a cool voice and not get stuck with a lame one like some versions of Starscream. If that happened, I think I would either try to modify my voice circuitry and change it, or just keep the dialogue to a minimum. Oh, and I almost forgot to say what kind of weapons I want. I want big guns on my arms like G1 Megatron or Michael Bay Ironhide, plus any and all weapons from my vehicle form(s). Also, I'd like some mele weapons. I'd like one of my hands to turn into either an energy sword or an energy axe, and the other to turn into a big swingy morning star thing like Megatron's. Well, now that I've covered about everything I wanted to, I leave you now.

If I Were a Vampire

If I were a vampire, I would be a good one. Shortly after turning, I would probably be annoyed about the thirst sunlight thing, but I think I would get over it considering how powerful vampires are. And at first, I would probably try to satisfy myself with animal blood and eat my meat extra rare. This would be good for a while, but I'm guessing I would eventually learn to use my new talents to fight evil. I would spend a lot of time training and practicing my fighting skills, then use them at night to feed on evildoers. And I would also need some kind of really cool and menacing clothes to wear. Well, actually, I suppose that's not necessary, but it would help. I think I would be like a combination of Blade and Morbius. Although if I'm gonna be them, I would have to be a daywalker, which would be really nice. The weakness to UV light is the one thing about vampirism that would really continue to irritate me. I like to go outside on sunny days. I'm often too lazy to do a lot, but I'd rather not give that up. I wonder if  ton of sunblock would do the trick......? Also with the whole immortality thing going, like I said, I would spend a lot of my time practicing and learning martial arts, but I would try to learn other things too. One is that I want to become fluent in a lot of different languages. It would help to blend in around the world. Also, I'd like to join a vampire order. But one that's all good vampires like myself. That would give me some added security and some people to talk with that understand me, plus it would be nice to have some allies in case of a confrontation with Blade, Van Helsing, or anyone like that. I don't think they understand good vampires. I'm pretty sure they just kill all the ones they see. And I don't blame them. That's what I would do as a vampire / monster hunter. .... Genius. Idea. Becone a vampiric monster hunter. Use the powers of vampirism to kill evil vampires, werewolves, demons, and so on. Yes. Ok, that's totally what I would do. Sounds fun.