Happy 2018 Part 2

* All CE’s are complete ahead of schedule. Now I have the rest of the month to draw porn and learn blender. Hooray!

I had another sexy story fantasy in my head months ago. The story was about an ageing airfield where older jets went about their lives, some working, some in retirement. One day a Dire jet adopts a young infant child and raises her as his own. She grows up accustomed to living machines, and doesn’t see them as big dangerous hulks like some of the human population are want to believe. One day, She is courted by an old blue F4 who desperately desires to have a human in his life. Worried about how to tell her father, She waits for him to land home, and sheepishly asks if it is ok to be “good” friends with the eligible bachelor planes living on the airfield. The father asks if she has anyone specific in mind, and the human woman clams up.

Father plane, Then confesses to his daughter that he adopted her because “I’ve been trying for 20 years to get a human to accept me. As you know, It is hard to win the hearts of humans. After soo much failure, I thought that If I could raise a child around our kind, she would see that we are good people too. Maybe one day, she would be the human who accepts the machine no other person would spare a second glance at. I had to become part of the solution.”

Through some extra prodding, he found out it was the Blue phantom that liked her. He still had to be a dad, watch out for riffraff and all that..  but the story ends with her sleeping with that sheepish blue Phantom nesting in the hangar next door. His tail sporting a sharp edged mobius.

I think adoption is something many machines would turn to, in order to acclimate more humans to their cause. The humanists on the other hand, are probably pissing blood knowing that this could happen.

*Movies** Ive gone to 4 of the most recent blockbuster movies and I have this to say:

1) Unless you just want a popcorn kids movie, you should avoid “Ready Player One.” To quote Ingo, The movie doesn’t know what audience it is truly for. Essentially a movie about nostalgia for  30+ year-olds, in a movie meant for 12 year-olds who have never seen or heard of the Delorean or Gremlins.  While I at the time thought it was a fun movie, I knew going into it, it was going to be a video game movie. As we all know, video game movies are terrible. 6/10

2) Black Panther. If you don’t like cape movies, skip this.  I care about the marvel movie verse simply because I’ve watched like 12 of the movies and now I feel like I should see Infinity war through the end (not every movie needs to be a film school masterpiece). knowing nothing about the comics, I had very little faith in black panther movie only to have my expectations subverted.  What I thought I was getting was an sjw movie, what I actually got was a really fun movie with great costume designs and great actors mostly taking place in the fictional futuristic African city of Wakanda. This movie has less action then say- Captain America did, but the proof is in how much heart went into developing the culture around Wakanda. Lots of dream sequences and men on armored Rhinos ready to kick ass. Fuck it I don’t care, loved this movie. 8/10

3) Annihilation : I don’t have much to say about today’s sci-fi movies, other then they tend to be very samey while relying on common tropes to keep the plot moving. Someone who is supposed to know better, pokes an alien, and everyone except the cute main character dies. This movie at first- seems to be like your usual tropish sci-fi, until the characters delve into the shimmer. This is where the movie gets good. The shimmer is an original take on corrupted alien influence that takes the survivors only as far as they can meet the source of the invasion. You think the movie will resolve with the main character triumphing over the shimmer and its strange influence, but the final climax spells a different picture. I wont spoil it anymore, but Do go see it at least once. theirs some original shit in this movie. 7/10

4) Isle of Dogs by Wes Anderson. This is the best movie so far all year. I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets nominated for an Oscar in some aspect of its make. Its not easy to describe the subtle nuance of the this animated movie without seeing it or being familiar with the director’s other works. The story is about a rivalry between a an old wealthy Japanese family and the one thing is hates the most: Dogs. It sends all of the Dogs in the city to an island of trash to starve to death. A savior in the form of an Orphaned boy, flies to trash isle in order to save his childhood pet, and the k9 uprising begins. Go see this movie if you can. Its great. 9/10

**Games completed**

1.) HZD: Frozen wilds: Just a quick summary, this DLC was pretty nice to play, heavy on content with new machines to kill and an all new cauldron to explore. I will say though, that If you’ve already finished the game, its more likely to feel like more of the same. That’s not a bad thing really, unless you have open world fatigue like I do. Still, this extends the base game out by 16 more hours in an already beefy experience. I liked it.

2.) Southpark; The fractured but Whole DLC Casa Bonita.  I’m not sure how to rate this. One one hand, we are talking about a 4-5 hour DLC max. Was that worth 25$? I’m not so sure it was- even if I did have fun. You fight new bosses and get to use a new team member – one of the cigarette smoking Goth kids who can summon Satan as her special super attack. Kenny tries his hardest to save his kid sister from the vamp kids birthday party and the whole thing culminates in a (spoiler) fight with Micheal Jackson.  Ubisoft still owes me one more piece of DLC. Until I can play that, its difficult to judge the true value of the season pass.

3.) What became of Edith finch: This game was billed as an Indy art game of a story about this cursed family who’s members died off in horrible, and mysterious ways. The game looked good, and the story was well narrated. You can reach the end in about 2 hours, making this a very short game you can mess around with on a half day. I’m not sure this game was for me however. Cant put my finger on it. I think maybe it was because of all the hype it received in 2017 that I thought it would be better then it was. Wait for a sale on this.

4.) Divinity original sin 2: Quite possibly one of the greatest Crpg’s ever made. So bursting with combat, encounters, shit to steal, and people to help. according to steam I messed around to the tune of 234 hours (that cant be right- I must have fell asleep with the game running..) This is the best value per time spent you can get. The new undead class is soo fun to play along side the cannibalistic elves, and holier then thou lizard race. Theirs tons of secret treasure to find, and topography you can bend to your will with the right magic. My only gripe with this game, Is that the ending was almost non-existent compared to the rest of the story-rich maps you play. Why couldn’t they have made the ending semi playable like in the first game? This isn’t really a reveille, I’m too lazy to write a proper one. In the meantime, Ive heard this is coming to ps4 so console gamers can enjoy it. Good on you Laurian studios. keep making these kick ass experiences.  9/10

Quality pass on Atoll lab notes: