Holy Crap!

'N Sync at the 2013 VMA's!


That is all...

Video Game Reviews - Skyrim Mod: Falskaar

Everyone who knows Skyrim, especially modded Skyrim, knows Falskaar by now. This mod is like nothing that we've ever seen before from a free DLC. And it is DLC. While it is not an official add-on, it is on the same scale as one, to the point that it is being treated as one by the modding community. In fact, the mod, which includes its own landmass, voice-acting and questlines, is so large that it comes as a .esm file just like Dawnguard or Dragonborn, and is designed so that it never needs to be removed, like an official DLC doesn't. There are two areas within Skyrim which are altered by the mod, and neither change alters performance in the slightest, and while on the island of Falskaar the bugs never get any worse than those inherent to the Skyrim game engine. This mod is so huge that I'm still not 100% through it, though I have completed the main quest and a good majority of the more prominent side quests. However, because it is so big, I'm going to have to go about this a little differently. We're going to break this review down a bit and look at the design of Falskaar itself, from the land to the presentation, then the characters and acting, and then finally the quests.

My Rating Scale

So my rating scale might seem a little odd. I never give tens, and say that sevens are high and eight and nines are something special. I just wanted to explain this a bit for anyone who is confused. My rating system goes from zero to ten, not one to ten, scaling everything down. Also, unlike most people, great isn't a ten, perfect is a ten, so if something manages to be a perfect representation of itself it will then, and only then, score a ten, which doesn't happen often, if ever. In short the scale looks like this:

0: Not worth anyone's time, should not have been made, and, in my mind, doesn't exist (Jersey Shore, etc.)
1: brings something worthwhile to the table, but still pretty horrid
2: Your average crap
3: Not entirely terrible, but I won't be dealing with it a second time
4: A bit below average, but still worth paying mind to if it is part of a greater, better whole
5: Just on the cusp of average
6: Absolutely average
7: Better than average. You should take a look
8: Much better than average. You really should take a look
9: Exceptional. Definitely take a look
10: Perfection, at least within the sphere of its existence

I also place heavy emphasis on how much potential a reviewed material shows going forward within its own franchise. This can add anywhere from half a point to three points, but will likely never yield a score of ten.

Movie Reviews - Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters

Well this is it guys, this is the big one. This is my most anticipated movie of the year. I've said many times on this blog that I am a huge fan of the Percy Jackson series of books, but that so far I have not been a fan of the only movie release. Percy Jackson is a series that is not as well known in pop culture as Harry Potter, or even Twilight, but I really feel it should be (in the case of Twilight much more so). It builds a comparable world, and tells comparably grand stories, and while the stories are based very definitely on Greek myth and are therefor arguably less original than the Harry Potter stories, I don't think that this matters, as I feel that the art of expanding the myths into modern times takes a special talent all its own. Just as I largely attribute the widespread popularity and recognition of Harry Potter to its fantastic movie franchise, I attribute the lack of awareness of the Percy Jackson series to its poor first film. Many who saw the film and recognized it for what it was, a half-baked attempt at a cash-in, were driven away from the series as a whole. This is not my theory, this is a fact, backed by readings on several sites online. While Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief was pretty good as a popcorn movie on its own, it wasn't a good movie by any stretch. Now, don't get me wrong, what they did right they did right, but they got far less right than they did wrong. I understand that movie adaptations of books are going to be different, but the adaptation of book one was just unjustifiably too different. It reminds me of the movie adaptation of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: it simply focused most of its time on the wrong details.

Sea of Monsters fixes this, mostly.

Musings, Wednesday 8/7/2013

Six hours thirty minutes and counting until I go tonight to see Sea of Monsters. Gods of Olympus, please let it be good.

Musings, Tuesday 8/6/2013

Only one more day to go until Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters hits theaters. I plan to have family take me as a b-day present, as my 26th is this Friday. I really hope it's as much better than the first as the trailers have led me to believe. If it isn't it might ruin my b-day week. Either way, a review will be forthcoming.

Musings, Sunday 8/4/2013

There's this building on a distant hill that I see from time to time as I'm driving around. It looks like a castle, and I keep having this urge to go take a closer look. Of course that's because I really want to clear it of bandits...

Thanks, Skyrim.

TV Reviews - Beware the Batman

I loooove Batman. I love superheroes in general, but Batman is definitely one of my favorites. Naturally, whenever a new animated Batman series is announced, I toggle pretty rapidly between excitement and skepticism. Nothing, and I do mean nothing, will ever surpass Batman: The Animated Series as a TV Batman. Nothing. Ever. There have been other good TV Batman series. The old live action show with Adam West and Burt Ward was campy fun, and The Batman and Batman: The Brave and the Bold both had their good points and bad points, but Batman: The Animated Series is as close to perfection as we are ever going to get, and it spawned its Superman counterpart, Justice League, and Justice League: Unlimited all of which ranged from being better than average to being great. However, watching these old shows gets less exciting with time, and eventually a Batman fan just wants more Batman, and so now we have this new series, Beware the Batman, which, rightfully, has been garnering some pretty mixed reviews.

Musing, Friday 8/2/2013

I noticed earlier today that I really pay a lot more attention to the beauty of nature these days. To be fair though, it's because I have an unnatural desire to ground that nature down and mix it into a potion...

Thanks, Skyrim.

Movie Reviews (Sorta) - Man of Steel

So I've been wondering for a while, since basically the day that this movie came out, if I should bother reviewing it. I knew that this was the movie that everyone was waiting to analyze, and I genuinely wondered if I would have anything new to say about it. The result is this very late excuse for a review, which I'm going to make into more of a stream of consciousness about the movie. Maybe if I structure it a little less than most of my stuff, something profound will come out.