Tag Archives: video games

Movie Review – Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle

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TL;DR – This film is an hour and a half of pure fun, and probably the first video game film to work in a very long time, and some of the best casting I have seen in a while

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

Jumanji Welcome to the Jungle. Image Credit: Sony.

Review –

So to be honest right from the start this was a bit of a surprise. It has not been a good year for remakes in 2017, for example, The Mummy (see review) or the Ghost in the Shell (see review) all fell a bit flat on release. Add to this, it has been over twenty years since the first film, and all the information in the lead up to its release did not display Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle in a flattering light at all. Indeed, it felt like this was going to be another case of reheating an old franchise rather than trying to do something new, and we are getting a bit tired of this. However, none of this came to pass, instead what we got was a fun romp through the jungle, with superb casting, and sense of knowing exactly what it wanted to do and succeeding in it.

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How well did they create Indonesia and Khmer in Civilization VI?

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TL;DR – South East Asia is here, and it is a wonderful addition to the game, also a powerful one to boot
Civ 6 SEA Banner

Review –

Well, this is a pleasant surprise, when it was announced that we would be getting DLC for the South East Asian region I honestly was not expecting there to be two SEA civs in the game. Indeed, the first Civilization game to have two from SEA was only the last generation’s Civilization V and even then we had to wait for the DLC and two expansion packs before we got it. But I am so happy that we did both of them because both Khmer and Indonesia are fantastic additions to the game, because of their history and also for their civilization bonuses. So in today’s review, we are going to first look at the Autumn Patch that came along with the DLC, then take a moment to discuss the music, and then delve into both Khmer and Indonesia. Now, unfortunately, I just have not had the time to give the scenario a proper go, and I don’t think I will get the chance for a couple of weeks so I won’t be talking about it here. As well as this, this time around I still played on Huge, Continent style maps, but I did have to speed some of the games up faster than Normal speed this time around. Before we move on just a quick note that we have updated our Civilization Map (see here) and City Map (see here) to add Khmer and Indonesia.

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Video Game Review – Divinity: Original Sin II

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TL;DR – Both brutal and fantastic, it is a return to form for a genre that has not seen a lot of great games recently.

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

Divinity: Original Sin 2. Image Credit: Larian Studios.

Review –

Back in the day, I use to love Role Playing Games, escaping Taris, becoming the Dovahkiin, finding my favourite shop in the Citadel. However, over the last couple of years, I have found it harder to get into RPGs, into the wonderful worlds that would have ensnared me in the past. I never finished Fallout 4, Witcher 3, or Diablo 3, and I have to admit my love for Mass Effect Andromeda (see review) may have just been a desperate want to be back in that universe. So when I heard Divinity: Original Sin II was out I was hesitant to pick it up given my previous track record, however, I happened to watch Stephanie Bendixsen stream a little bit of it and it looked like a ton of fun. So twenty hours later, I have just left the introduction island of Fort Joy and I thought it would be a good time to put down my first thoughts. Now there may be some [SPOILERS] for the first section of the game, but we only talk about the events up to Driftwood.

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How well did they create Nubia in Civilization VI?

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TL;DR – Nubia is a great, if overpowered, addition to Civ VI, and the updates to the UI are really welcome, but the AI still needs some work.

Nubia Civ VI
Review –

So it has been a couple of months since we have been able to do one of these, but with the new Nubia DLC, and the accompanying patch, dropping it is time to delve back in to see how well they have created Nubia. So there are three components to the DLC, first is the Summer 2017 update, then the ‘Gifts of the Nile’ scenario, and finally the Nubian Civilization itself. So to put this review together I have played through the scenario once, and the base game a couple of times with Nubia, as well as trying them out on multiplayer. Also, because I was asked this question last time, all my games are played in the vanilla game (no mods), on the huge map setting, continents, with the difficulty set at King. If you want to read my other Civ VI articles, you can look at my review of Civilization VI, my look at Australia, Persia & Macedonia, and even Civ VI mapped out.
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Map-It: Civilization VI (Base Game up to the South East Asia DLC)

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TL;DR – Today we chart out Civilization VI in Map form the base game all the way up to the South East Asia DLC

Civ 6 banner

Map-It –

So today we continue with our Map-It series by looking at one of my favourite video games Civilization VI. Given the amount of content that Civilization VI has that you can map, and since I do love maps I decided to create two maps, the first map has all the civilizations currently released, and the second shows the locations of all the World Wonders, Natural Wonders, and the City States. So for today’s maps, we are including everything in the base game of Civilization VI, as well as what was include in the Poland, Viking, Australia, Persia/Macedonia & Nubia DLC packs
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How well did they create Persia and Macedonia in Civilization VI?

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TL;DR – Persia and Macedonia are great new additions to Civilization 6, even if they do raise some questions about ‘civilizations’

Civilization 6
Review –

So the Spring Patch and new DLC for Civilization VI has been out for a week and now that I’ve had a chance to give Persia and Macedonia a play through I thought I would look at how well they have been implemented in the game. So to do this we will first chat a bit about the changes made in the latest patch to the game as a whole, we’ll then look at Persia and Macedonia focusing at how well they have been represented as well as, how well they have been implemented in the game, and then finally we will take a moment to look at the issue of ‘civilizations’ that this new DLC raises.

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Video Game Review – Mass Effect Andromeda

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TL;DR – Andromeda takes Mass Effect in a new direction whilst still remaining true to its roots, though some areas did need a bit more polish.

Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars

Mass Effect Andromeda

Review –

I can remember the first time I ever got to play Mass Effect, it was back in 2008 and my brother had to trade his Wii for his friends Xbox 360 and we had only one week to binge through the first game before we had to give the Xbox back. We were looking for something to rise to the same standard as Knights of the Old Republic, and Mass Effect exceeded them in every way. Since then I have played through the whole trilogy a couple of times, I’ve played as Male-Shep and Fem-Shep, I’ve reunited the Geth and the Quarians, watched a galaxy burn because everyone ignored me, helped a despot reclaim control of a smugglers headquarters, fell in love several times, told Kaidan to go jump when they accused me of cheating on them when they were the one who said we should be on a break, found friendship in one who is many yet still one, brought more than one race back from the dead, watched a trusted crew member sacrifice their lives with a song on their lips to put right the demons of the past, and explored ever single planet that the Milky Way had to offer. So to say I was excited about a new Mass Effect is a bit of an understatement, and now it is finally here I was more than ready to jump back into this universe, taking one more ride into this great space opera that BioWare created. But even though I was excited, that excitement was measured with a bit of hesitation, Mass Effect 3 was brilliant, one of the few games that have ever made me cry¹, however, that final decision left a lot to be desired, now I know that a lot of people liked it, but for me it was a letdown. So I had this combination of emotions going into this new game, but now I have played through till the end let’s look at how well they did with Mass Effect Andromeda.

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How well did they create Australia in Civilization VI?

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TL;DR – So how well does Civilization 6 capture Australia with its new entry? Struth, it’s a ripper of a new Civ.

Civilization 6

Review –

Civilization is one of the pioneers of the strategy genre a series that has lasted six iterations, numerous expansions, and last year on its 25th anniversary launched the next entry into the franchise Civilization 6 (See Review). Since its release, there have been new Downloadable Content (DLC) released and this week it was announced that the next civilization to be added would be Australia. So Australia joins the large and expansive franchise as the 55th civilization¹ ² to be added, but the question remains: Is it any good? And then also is it a good representation of Australia? These are the question we will be looking at. Now there were three components of the Australia update The Australian civilisation, The Outback Tycoon scenario, and Uluru natural wonder, and we will be touching on all of these facets throughout this analysis.

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Movie Review – Assassin’s Creed

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TL;DR – The best movie adaption of a video game, but that was not really a high bar to cross and Assassin’s Creed kind of just stumbles across it.

Score – 3 out of 5 stars

Assassin’s Creed. Image Credit: 20th Century Fox.

Review –

It is one of those weird things of Hollywood that no matter how many times they try, no one has made a decent adaptation of a video game into a movie. Now part of this has been that people have been adapting video games without understanding what there were, and also there are a lot of difficulties condensing a long interactive experience (sixteen hours for the first Assassin’s Creed game) into a two-hour passive movie. To the point where the most successful and critically acclaim versions of this genre Wreck-It Ralph & Tron used video games as just the backdrop for their story. This can be complicated even further as video games are big multi-billion dollar industry so if you’re making a film, you’re gonna want to franchise the heck out of it, the big problem with last year’s Warcraft (See Review). So within all this mess comes the Assassin’s Creed film, based on the incredibly popular series of games that has the fascinating caveat that you could set it at any point in human history. So how does it go, well for a video game adaptation movie, it goes quite well, for just a movie, it is a bit meh.

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Movie Review – Warcraft (Warcraft The Beginning)

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TL;DR – A film with a lot of promise, held down by too many competing demands.

Score – 2.5 out of 5 stars

Warcraft (Warcraft The Beginning). Image Credit: Legendary.

Review –

So there is this stigma about movies based on Video Game franchises, that they simply will never be good, indeed Good Game did a whole episode on this very issue. To be fair, at best we have only ever got passable Video Game movies, and the only good film in this genre was Wreck-It Ralph and it only used Video Games as a setting, and of course the less said about Pixels the better. So with all this, is Warcraft the movie that will break the curse? No, no it won’t. So before we go on I should qualify that I never played World of Warcraft, so I am coming to this movie with only the knowledge that you get from being on the Internet, Alliance and Horde and all that jazz. That being said, for a movie to be good I should be able to understand everything without playing the source material, and a good adaption would make that happen.

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