Thief

I’d been wanting to play this game for quite a while, but at the time of release did not have the funds or really the time to devote to it. And so ended up being loaned a copy.

For those not familiar with the Thief franchise, it’s a series of Stealth games where you play the Master Thief, Garrett who in-amongst all his nefarious deeds generally ends up being dragged into conspiracies and usually ends up saving the day as a result.

Underwhelmed

So a few weeks back, with finally some time and the urge to actually boot up the XBOX I finally got myself to finish Assassin’s Creed III. And it’s about time too as my last achievement date which I think was also my last play date was something like December 27 2012.

I don’t think I’ve ever left a game that long without playing it, maybe I have.

I’ve mentioned this before, but the AC series is one of my favourite game series to date, and I have enjoyed the games immensely. And found when I booted the game I was in the last sequence and so didn’t have that much to complete. And well when everything was said and done, I was rather underwhelmed.

I was also frustrated because although I’d finished the ‘In the Animus’ portion I had some elements to finish up in the ‘outside the Animus’ missions and did mange to get myself rather lost and then frustrated negotiating the map.

I’m not sure why, maybe because I managed to get spoiled on the ending pretty soon after getting the game, or had a rough idea of what happened. Maybe because I’d left the game so long that finishing didn’t feel like a compulsion or a thrill it felt a bit like a chore, a thing hanging over my head that had to be finished. Or maybe because of leaving it so long I’d forgotten a large chunk of what had happened over the course of the game.

I didn’t have much reaction, not the relief of besting the game, not annoyance at how the ending panned out, not joy at seeing that arc completed, not a sense of achievement, not confusion at what happened.

Just nothing.

I also found I had less urge to chase up after all the objects as I did in previous games and find areas and items to unlock.

Maybe if I leave it a while then come back and try and complete the game and try and do a bit more searching my reaction will be different.

Sabine of Star Wars: Rebels Initial Thoughts

So, there’s a new Star Wars cartoon on the way.

Image Source I09

And, we have a female lead character. Her name is Sabine, and she’s a Mandolorian. She’s an explosives expert and a graffiti artist.

And here is her sneak peak trailer so we can get to know a little more about her via Hollywood Reporter

Now, I admit she’s got my interest.

I like Mandolorians immensely. And I generally like her design so far and the idea of her being an artist, and a female explosive’s expert is also a nice spin.

But at the same time, the video itself isn’t doing much to endear me. As her character is summed up as ‘Spunky, a bit of a tomboy with an attitude’ which honestly is one of the go to archetypes for the ‘Strong female character’, which I believe I’ve mentioned before.(If you want a good weigh in on this term go here) As it tends to be a few archetypes, and some quips thrown together in an attempt to make a female character that ultimately is not that strong.  And by strong I do not mean ‘This character is physically strong’ strong in the sense of crafting a character that is well rounded, can carry their narrative and is someone who is a person.

And that video is not doing much to give much depth to Sabine right now, but maybe right now there’s not much that can be revealed without major spoilers.

Also, did you really have you have go on about how cool she is supposedly as a character by stating she’s ‘Not a prissy girl’?

Because really, I thought we sort of moved beyond that. Or I wish we would move beyond that, you can in fact praise a female character without trashing others.

It’s early days yet, so I’m doing my best to reserve judgement until we get more information.

Hopefully she gets some development and we get to know some more about her and she turns out to be a good character.

A truly strong female character does not necessarily have to be ‘one of the boys’ and a butt kicking warrior, she can be the ‘girlest’  and most passive never picks up a sword or raises her voice character in existence but proceeding they can carry their story and they feel a fleshed out person.

 

I Didn’t Buy Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag

So, Assassin’s Creed IV came out.

And I don’t own it, it’s not even as if I made a preorder and then when the time came I couldn’t afford to, I just never even got to that stage.

I’ve been a fan of the Assassin’s Creed series for years. And yet somehow I just couldn’t get up the same level of excitment about AC 4 even though it features pirates, which I have a strong interest in both their fictional and real life historical counterparts (Treasure Island was one of my favourite books as a child).

I didn’t actually pay much attention to the publicity for AC 4 either so maybe that was part of it too, so I didn’t get any hype for it built up and it was more just ‘Oh there’s a new game’ rather than ‘The new game looks cool’ I haven’t really been keeping up with game news that much lately.

Maybe not finishing AC 3 had something to do with it, it wasn’t intentional but my brother and I’s XBOX gave out and needed a replacement disk drive and then for some reason we put off hooking it back up for months and then I just didn’t feel like gaming much or at least console gaming and so the game just sat there. I seem to go through sort of burnout periods with gaming where I tend to get drained out of wanting to play console games and just don’t game.

And it’s still just sitting there, the Xbox has been back with us for most of this year and I can’t remember the last time I opened up the game.

Personal circumsatances factored in too, and I wasn’t really in a state I could afford to drop money on a brand new game. And just the last few months have been a bit of period of upheaval as I’ve gone back into education and so I was sorting out that and now I’m at this point in time living of my ‘maintenance loan’ and so as much as I did have the money to drop on AC 4 I at the same time didn’t as I need to use that money for things like train tickets. And if I got AC4 right now I don’t think I’d have much time to play it especially as I’m sort of drowing in assignments and research.

Maybe, just maybe I’ve fallen out of love with the series, I admit I got very attached to Ezio and his story and so starting again with someone new was rather daunting, and now I’ve got to move on from Connor and go to yet another new character. And it feels like it’s dragging because as far as I know AC3 wraps up Desmond’s story so how it is meant to continue?

I probably will end up with AC4 eventually, maybe once it drops in price a bit.

Sea of Monsters

So, I ended up down the cinema with a couple of friends, and we went in to see Sea of Monsters.

Now, I don’t know much about the Percy Jackson series, so I have no idea how accurate this is compared to the books, so yet again I went in to the film with no real preconceptions about it.

Percy Jackson is a Young Adult urban fantasy series, basically based around Greek mythology. In this series most of the Greek gods and godesses have half-blood children and they have a refuge known as Camp Half Blood and the series follows the titular Percy Jackson who is the son of Poisiden.

New Starts

Update on my current situation

Dead Men Tell No Tales

So, I’m offically enrolled on my course. I am so glad of it, as it means I will finally be getting off jobseekers allowance and hopefully things start looking up. I’m not going to go off on a big psuedo-philosphical spiel but essentially the las year has just been rough, and I’m glad I’m out of it.

I also have my laptop back.

I’m making slight progress on the art front, getting back slowly

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Elysium

So, to be totally honest I had no idea about this film before I watched it yesterday. I’d sort of seen it mentioned a few times but never really caught any trailers, and well the poster doesn’t really give you much to go on other than it looks like an action film.

It’s not really a film I would have really picked to see on my own, I honestly don’t tend to watch much stuff that’s higher than a 12a rating. And I’m not really a big fan of distopic settings. Mainly as it just seems they are rather overdone.

But I had no expectations for this film, and I was pretty pleasently suprised by the end of it.

Please note: The following review contains spoilers, please proceeed with caution.

I sat through the Lone Ranger

I honestly had no intention of watching this film. But I got drafted into going by my family.

Simply put, the film made little impression on me.

I don’t even think saying the visuals are good is a saving grace since now there’s very few films with bad visuals. This was supposed to be a ‘birth of a hero’ film but it just flopped for me. I can sort of make it work as ‘crazy western buddy film’ but even so.

I mean right near the end it feels like how ‘The Lone Ranger’ is supposed to be but the rest of the film is just no.

There was some funny moments. mostly slapstick. I have to admit a lot of the humour was quite forced to me but the only thing I found genuinely funny was Silver the horse.

Now to be warned, I touch upon a few senstive topics, abelism, sexism and rape jokes so most of this will be under a cut. And there’s some spoilers ahead.

Short version: This may have turned out well, but it didn’t and has plenty of ‘Why? Why did you do this?’

To me The Lone Ranger was one of those nolstagic pieces that probably should just stay nolstaglic for a reason. And really isn’t something that can be made into a modern adaptation. Or if you do you need to be very, very careful in doing so.

Now of course, the main issue was the racism surrounding the casting of Johnny Depp as a Native American. I admit this is somewhere I personally can not feel I can speak much as I am not Native American. So I will leave this aspect to others to deal with. But yes I really was not on board with the ‘let’s not cast someone who is actually Native American’ in the film.

My Childhood is Sham! (Sort of)

Okay, this is going on about books. Not a usual topic for me but bare with me.

As a animal obsessed child (who turned into an animal obsessed adult) most of my reading material was animal themed as you could guess. Now one of my main staples was the Animal Ark series. The series set in Yorkshire of the adopted Mandy Hope, her best friend James Hunter and all the animal they meet.

Which I would tell you is a series of books written by Lucy Daniels.

This is not the case, to put it simply. There is no Lucy Daniels, at first I thought it was ghost written by an author called Ben. M. Baglio,  pseudonyms are not unusual in writing but this would be the first example I know of a male author using a female pseudonym.

But that’s not even right.

Turns out the whole thing was just one big publisher construct. Even the name was chosen for marketing purposes, as it would appear next to the popular Collin Dann (author of Farthing Wood) to encourage more people to buy the books. They made it convincing, if you look on the publisher’s site it will tell you a fictional biography about Lucy,  I even found a supposed interview with her although reading through it, it doesn’t quite seem genuine.

And the thing is, this doesn’t shock me.

I mean, I knew about the apparent pseudonym which didn’t surprise me, but then finding out that wasn’t the truth?

I’m not sure, I guess it’s not soul crushing as it’s not me finding this as a child, it’s me finding it as an adult. My first thought was honestly ‘Wait this is the plot of a Simpson’s episode…’

Part of me is wondering if I should be a little more outraged about this, but I am not.

 

Not So Super Best Friends Forever

Why hello everyone, it’s been quite a while since I’ve updated this blog.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And well, this caught my attention, when it cropped up on my Tumblr a few days ago. What is this? Let me explain

 

 

 

 

 

You see, there is/was a series of shorts developed by Lauren Faust who as most of us know is behind Friendship is Magic. She made these shorts under the series name of ‘Super Best Friends Forever’. Super Best Friends Forever featured Supergirl, Wonder Girl and Batgirl.

Notice, how all three characters are unique? They have unique faces, bodytypes and although you won’t know this from the image Wonder Girl has a distinctly Greek accent.

This had all the makings of a good take on a ‘Superheroes for Girls’ cartoon and with Lauren Faust behind it would have hopefully turned out like Friendship is Magic.

But then, this happened.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: The Nerd Signal

This is not directly the work of Warner Brothers/DC, it is the work of a company named Rubies who acquired the license to make costumes based around the concept.

And well, I feel they had a lot of potential with this idea but it fell short.

On the one hand the artwork is cute and the costumes are something that I wouldn’t mind a child of mine running around in but then they are just rather generic. And don’t really capture the character they represent.

Especially Supergirl, as her costume is meant to be similar to Superman’s instead here they just went for the ‘Pink’ look, and the fact all the costumes feature skirts even though in the case of Batgirl a skirt isn’t really practical wear.

And Wondergirls’ costume? To be fair without the headband and belt I would find it hard to match that up with the Wonderwoman look.

SBBF had uniqueness, which in many cartoons aimed at girls is something that’s lacking as even though they say change up the hairstyle and the clothes a lot of the characters come out looking the same. This is one reason I praise Monster High as if you look each character they are unique, this does extend to the dolls although certain things are not as noticable.

And this isn’t even touching on the issue that Rubies version of Wondergirl has been whitewashed when in the SBBF she had noticably darker skin and a Greek accent. And the fact they all have the same bodytype when SBBF Supergirl has a noticably heavier build, why wouldn’t she, she is a female counterpart to Superman after all.