Inspired by my love for Uncanny X-Cast and the daddies over at Turtle Soup Podcast, I’ve decided to throw my hat into the ring of X-Podcasts!
I hope to join the likes of Comic Book Queers : Legacy, the X-Wife Podcast, Oh Gosh Oh Golly Oh Wow, and my latest favorite, Simply Amazing – a Nightcrawler focus podcast.
Simply Amazing is finally the podcast where I had the thought, I should do this, I’m a huge Kitty Pryde fan, I should legit be getting out there and lending my voice to the conversation. Maybe I can buy new trades and just really commit to this.
Plus, it is my podcast so I can play around with the format. I have a ten episodes up already and if you would like to subscribe and provide a review, even if it is simply providing those sweet five stars, I would really appreciate it.
Thank you everyone for the continued support and happy listening!
I am beyond excited and just hearing Brian and Rob’s voices is amazing!
Player FM did not notify me of new episodes of my podcasts for a week and a half, so I am now crazy behind on all of my podcasts, including two episodes of Turtle Soup (209 and 210) so I have a lot to catch up on but I might have to resurrect my policy of listening to the X-Cast twice prior to moving on to another podcast.
I am mostly upset about the lack of notification for Turtle Soup, I may have to seek out whoever is Player FM’s direct competitor who is not iTunes.
I miss Brian and Rob so much and I am glad they are enjoying Jonathan Hickman’s run on the titles! I may have to start collecting the trades, just out of thanks. I was already thinking of getting Gerry Duggan’s Marauders title for that sweet Kitty Pryde and Lockheed content.
Comic Book Queers Legacy finally got some X-Competition!
I have seen the first two episodes and they are amazing! The songs are great.
At first, I was trying to align the second season with the first season but I am pretty sure it is a completely different timeline, which is pretty fun!
I am already planning on rewatching season two immediately after I finish it and then, of course, do a marathon of all of the entire series!
Season One had ten episodes, ten minutes each, and Season Two has six episodes, twenty minutes each, so you can definitely sample the series without it being a giant time commitment. Please please, if you are going to give the series a chance, give it until the third episode of the first season as it has one of my favorite songs from the series.
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I finally got the V8 in Mad Max! It does not seem that much different from the V6, but I suspect I need to upgrade the engines and maybe the tires and everything else before seeing it become the beast mode (do people still use that term?) that I suspect it should be.
I completed Act III and I earned the trophy for completing a race in an Archangel. I wanted to go back to the previous three races I have completed, for the “complete every race in the required Archangel” and “blow up one car in each Archangel” trophies but I am so scrap for scraps that I have to get a surplus of scraps again before all of that is possible. So my magic number will be 5,000 scraps and then I will start working towards those races. Races are so easy once you destroy the competition with the Thunderpoon. So I was looking forward to that before I realized how scrap poor I was.
My next story mission is to free Hope’s daughter, Glory. It seems Max has married Hope in his mind but physically, he is still being rather rude to her. I have no idea what Act IV is going to be like but I am going to stick to that path until I get the 5000 scrap and then I will busy myself with those races. I know which ones I have completed at least once, as it has a handy gas tank icon next to the Death Race icon. But I want to use that icon to mean that I have completed the race in the correct car so now I have to do those races again.
I’ll add my voice to the news that Supermassive Games has announced that The Dark Pictures Anthology is no longer a five game franchise. There will be . . . eight games! I can only imagine their preorder sales have been incredible and they just are fully committing to making these games. I’m going to preorder as many as I can!
I’m intrigued about the multiplayer games, playing the game with someone else sounds like fun. I’m not sure how that would work as I could never commit to playing for five hours, even in the middle of the day on a Sunday.
I’m hoping it isn’t like Beyond : Two Souls where there is only one ongoing save file so you had to either play solo or with a partner. I want this to be like Portal 2 where there will be options to play single, multiplayer or party mode. Which now I’m trying to think if Hidden Agenda had different tracks, I want to say it didn’t but that game was super short at barely three hours, a length of a full length movie these days. Five hours feels just a tad long to be in front of the system, at least to this 37 year old. If I was in college, then heck yeah, but I got adult responsibilities now and barely no time to play as it is.
I really want to platinum this game so I’m really hoping I can do that and not be held up by the multiplayer mode. In that case, I guess I’ll have to figure out how to operate without any sleep the night before.
Sounds like the second game must be in near completion mode as the third one is filming soon. So maybe they can make two games a year work?!
The fourth and fifth games are in the game design mode and they have story concepts for games six, seven, and eight. This is such an exciting time!
PlayStation has a little more information on the game too!
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Thanks to Dave and Rosie of PlayStation Access for hosting their video containing multiplayer gameplay!
They even got to experience a real life ghost ship! So lucky! Poor Dave, at least he had Rosie there.
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For July 2019, the PlayStation Plus games were changed from Horizon Turbo Chase and PES 2019 to Horizon Turbo Chase and Detroit Become Human.
Which is unfortunate as I don’t own the Special Edition of Detroit but I did get the regular edition for Christmas. I was also really looking forward to playing PES 2019. I was really hoping Konami was going to pull a NBA 2k19 and make their game $2.99 to take advantage of the hype and disappointment loads of people felt. As I would never buy the game for $30 but if it was $3, heck yeah! Especially as PES 2020 is coming out in September and then, no one is probably going to buy 2019, except for me, once it is way cheap. I can hold out, of that, I’m sure.
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Thanks to YouTuber TN_Spicyapples33 for hosting his video of the San Francisco cup!
I’ve only played and completed the San Francisco cup of the World Tour. This is a pretty fun and relaxing game. I can see this becoming a nice chill game to play after completing a night’s worth of playing whatever my main game is. The tracks do not take long and once you understand how the rubberbanding works in the game, I rarely stressed about winning. The only playful stress I had was trying to get all of the coins and come in first place to earn the Super Trophy. Whenever I grabbed all the coins, I wasn’t in danger of coming in second but when I came in first, I often didn’t get all of the points so I had to do some replays.
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Before I can start a playthrough of Detroit, I really want to complete my first playthrough of Beyond : Two Souls. It is silly but that’s just what I want to do. Except I’m not really doing it. I finished the Separation chapter and I started the Dinner chapter. And that was a week ago.
Still a fun game but I’m just addicted to playing Dead by Daylight right now.
My goal is to play a level of Lego Marvel Superheroes 2, then play Dead by Daylight, and then the next night, play a level of Beyond : Two Souls, and then chill (if that’s even the word, as unwind sure isn’t!) with Dead by Daylight.
Instead, with some nights I only get to play for like 30 or 45 minutes, I’ve just been playing Dead by Daylight and completing my dailies (or trying my best!). I’m still no good at it but I’m learning and feeling like I’m getting better.
In Lego Marvel Superheroes 2, I completed the first Inhumans story level and it seems I have one more but making nice progress in the story as well as doing the side content.
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Over on the Spider-Man side of my life, Walker Dennis is still super obsessed with Spider-Man!
The excellent team over at Insomiac added the two new suits from Spider-Man : Far From Home!
The Upgraded Suit
and Night Monkey!
So much fun!
The suits look great in the game too! I started The Heist DLC on Ultimate New Game Plus mode but I just did the first mission as I have other games to make progress with.
I can’t believe I’ve never done a review for 201 or 211, that can’t be right but it must be as they don’t come up when I did a search.
201 is the amazing Cyclops vs Storm issue. 211 is an incredible issue from the Mutant Massacre story. 266 is Gambit’s first full appearance. I have never read 266 but 201 and 211 are some of the best comics!
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We got to watch Spider-Man Far From Home on July Fourth and the theater was barely full, people must have been out of town or something silly.
Such an amazing time!
Like with Endgame, this at the end of the post and there will be spoilers but also, nothing else but Far From Home commentary so you should stop now if you haven’t seen the film!
Serious
Please
Stop
Now
Here
Comes
Some
Spoilers!
Such a spectacular film!
Jake Gyllenhaal did an outstanding job as Mysterio! My favorite scene of his has to be after he’s given the glasses and he’s alone in the bar and there is that half minute of silence and then the entire bar explodes with applause. So great! I sort of want to rewatch the entire movie again just for that one moment of stillness.
I thought before the movie was how does Mysterio trick super spy Nick Fury into thinking there was a multiverse? I mean, there could still be one but with Fury’s resources, how does one fake one? Then the post credit scene, we finally figure out how Mysterio did it. It wasn’t Nick Fury! Though how Mysterio still tricks everyone else working for Not-Fury, I’m not sure. Also, who is that agency? Is it a side SHIELD? Seemed like a missed opportunity to use the Agents of SHIELD team. Or are these guys just private soldiers of Fury’s? But then how does he pay those soldiers? Or are they all human agents of SWORD from Fury’s actual appearance in the film? We really need to watch Captain Marvel.
I got the word “Night Monkey” spoiled for me with the costume reveal but it was a minor spoiler but that was all I got spoiled by, so that’s nice. We also saw it the day after it came out, so that helped too.
We finally got Ned Leeds and Betty Brant together! So great!
Martin Starr was amazing as always and they got JB Smooth too! Such a fun combination.
Peter Tingle, and I kept waiting for it to be called his Spider-Sense.
Nice how the three Lego sets were all actually in the movie proper, that was great. We still only own the Hydro-Man set but we’ll probably snatch up Molten Man, if we can ever find it again.
The biggest day away though was the mid-credits scene. Someone had the genius idea to bring back J. Jonah Jameson AND to have JK Simmons come back and portray the character!
I mean, that voice, that face, that’s everything I want! I imagine they had him bald to separate him from the Tobey Maguire movies and I’m fine with that.
Though, as big of a shock as it is to state Peter Parker is Spider-Man on a popular news outlet, I still don’t feel like it is that big of a deal. Right? I mean, the Stark Foundation can help settle this misinformation. Sure, it’ll follow Peter Parker for a while but if the Stark Foundation or SHIELD can just say it isn’t true, have a nice Skrull appear as Peter Parker standing next to Spider-Man, I just feel the stakes are not that high. It makes for a terrific ending but I don’t anticipate Peter being hounded by the police or Interpol. Especially as the next movie won’t be out until 2021 at the earliest. Funny how we don’t know the next slate of films but it’ll probably come during or right after San Diego Comic Con or D24.
Plus, if Peter is just going to be under the employ of the Avengers or Stark, then he’ll be fine. Sure, he’ll have to go to a different school or getting his GED through the Avengers, but he’ll be okay.
But such a great ending!
Also cool that they actually got Peter Billingsley to come back from the first Iron Man movie. And I was reminded that Billingsley is Ralphie from A Christmas Story! Apparently he was also an executive producer for Iron Man but not for any of the other Marvel films so I wonder how that came about?
Apparently he is friends with Jon Favreau so that explains so much! Favreau is so deep in Disney’s pocket that I can only assume now that he is a majority shareholder in the company. He ought to be with how much money he has made for Disney and Marvel!
Marisa Tomei and Favreau were also great in the film too! Such fun chemistry together.
Always great to see Cobie Smulders in these movies.
Zendaya got a lot more to do in this film and she was super fun. I really like seeing her and Holland together. Also, super realistic how swinging around New York City has to be extremely terrifying!
People are saying the four Elementals are based on Spider-Man villains, which makes sense with Molten Man and Hydro-Man but I don’t remember even seeing the Earth/Sand Elemental. Was he only shown on screen during that exposition map scene? People say the Wind Elemental is Cyclone, which sounds like a stretch as well as he’s mostly just a dude who whirls. But I completely get that if two of them can be identified as Spider-Foes, then let’s label the other two as well.
So much fun that opening montage of our fallen heroes! Makes sense the world at large just assumes Captain America is dead.
That’s another thing, with two years between films, we’ll most likely get Peter’s subplot resolved in whatever next film he shows up in.
Apparently the Russo Brothers are teasing that on July 19th, there will be an announcement at San Diego Comic Con.
Apparently D23 is named after Disney 1923, the year the company was founded. That Expo is to be held on August 23, so expect big news to continue.
We know to expect Black Panther 2, Captain Marvel 2, Spider-Man Home Run, and one day, Avengers 5. Plus, Fantastic Four and X-Men announcements.
I’m not sure if I really need Doctor Strange 2, I feel like the character, much like Thor (and Superman), works better in a team environment or on special guest star status. But who am I kidding? I’ll still watch his movie, I will just have to remember to do so.
Oh, and Deadpool 3 has to happen too? The jokes that movie will have to address will be fun to watch.
Peter David’s run of X-Factor (any of them, really) is really great and I liked the detective agency angle that the third volume had.
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I finally finished NBA 2K19’s prelude within the proper game and I’m finally a member of the Phoenix Suns. I haven’t played an actual game as a Sun, as I’ve been running around the Neighborhood earning trophies, but it feels nice to finally start feeling like I’m accomplishing something in the game. I then tried to do the story mode in MyGM and I was not ready for all of the reading. It definitely is 90% reading, so know that as you are going into it. I lost the Summer League bet as I thought I’ll take a chance an sim the tournament. We won the first round but lost the second so I didn’t earn that trophy and I just feel done with the game at the moment. I’ll probably jump back in eventually but a break is needed.
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I picked up Lego Marvel Superheroes 2 again and that feels good to be completing story missions again. I finally unlocked all of Chronopolis, I haven’t explored everything yet but at least the green barriers are gone. I immediately went and completed the race to unlock Scarlet Spider and I did Spider-Ham’s mission to unlock him.
Apparently, we already had the x2 multiplier Gwenpoole pink brick, so I’m not sure when that happened. So all of that time I was saving 800,000 studs, I could have have had 1,600,000 studs if I had just turn that on from the beginning. I would have sworn that it wasn’t there earlier but that’s okay. I now see I can buy all of the multiplier ones, so I’m going to have to save up again to buy those but it should be easier once i get the x4 multiplier, which turns into an 8x multiplier as these bricks stack.
I also did Agent Venom’s sidemission to unlock him, which opened up my first Gwenpoole misison which is going to be the next thing I do in the game. That way we can earn Carnage and proper Venom. Then I have everyone I need to do the Free Play version of the level, so I might as well do that to unlock the Lizard.
I saw ahead that Carnom is an option to unlock after beating the symbiote main story mission. Carnom is the combination of Carnage and Venom, and Walker Dennis is going to lose his mind once he seems that as an option.
Walker Dennis really wants to get cut-in-half Spider-Man Deadpool so he’s currently saving his money for him. He saved up money to buy cut-in-half Peter Parker Venom so he’s maybe learning the value of a dollar.
Walker D also has saved up his dollars and bought Spider-Claus off of eBay.
So that’ll be coming to us from China and will be here around July 19.
Michael Rosenbaum concluded his two week Smallville run of episodes and listening to them all really made me want to watch some Smallville episodes. Now I’m hooked all over again! I asked on reddit for some Bottle Episodes, as I couldn’t remember any and got a few suggestions:
Season 5’s Lockdown
Season 6’s Static
Season 7’s Traveler
Not really bottle episodes but it gave me a start. I’m going to watch the one where Lionel and Clark switch bodies, Season Four’s Transference. I also snuck Season Two’s Precipice.
I’ll probably bounce around some more and watch more Lois episodes and maybe end on an Alicia Baker marathon of her three episodes.
Season Three’s Obsession
Season Four’s Unsafe and Pariah
She’s mentioned in two other episodes and as a photograph in two other episodes, so I might try those as well. I was also thinking of watching the six episodes Tom Welling directed as well. Michael Rosenbaum directed Season Six’s Freak, so I should add that to the list too.
I rather bounce around along themes instead of watching every episode. Or start with Season Four when Lois shows up but that’s still a lot of television to watch.
Erica Durance was so great as Lois as was Sarah Carter as Alicia.
The free games for May 2019 are : What Remains of Edith Finch and Overcooked!
I’ve been wanting Edith Finch for so long so I’m thrilled to finally get to play it! I’ve seen PlayStation Access play Overcooked and it looks like a lot of fun too!
Edith Finch is one of the best walking sims out there and Overcooked is a four player coop game where players try to get meals out and not set the kitchen on fire.
PlayStation Access :
PlayStationGrenade :
Platinum Chasers :
I like how Adam and Ben are still commenting on the lack of games as we used to get six games and now we only get two. I’m part of the camp that wishes they added a VR game as a third title.
I’ll be pretty happy if they just found a few more crossbuy titles that used to work with the PS3 or the Vita and give those to us on the PS4.
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Most of the discussions on the two subreddit pages I follow for this type of news are going on about the lack of quantity of games and the two games are being praised but they are both older games and relatively cheap on their own.
What Remains of Edith Finch is $19.99 and Overcooked is $16.99 but has a Gourmet edition for $19.99 that I imagine comes with The Lost Morsel, an add-on for $4.99. THere is a free The Festive Seasoning level that I’ve now downloaded.
So a overall value of $37, when sometimes it can be over $60.
The games are going to be available to download on Tuesday, May 7, and I can’t wait!
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As Ben states in his video, neither game as a platinum trophy, which seems unfortunate to pair the games together. I think that is one of the other annoyances people have, is that both games are indie titles so one game being offered in May and the other in June, would have been nice for some people. Some speculation is being written about how, even though Sony is skipping E3, we might get some stellar games for June. Time will tell.
Since neither game has a platinum, I think neither of them gets a proper playstationtrophies.org page but on the forum, both are represented.
Of the 11 trophies, I’m going to commit to three of them, for sure. Play a versus mode game, extinguish a burning kitchen, and complete the tutorial. It’ll be nice to get the other ones, which the bulk seems to be, get one star in at least one kitchen per five hub worlds.
I’m going to see if my beautiful wife and Walker Dennis will want to play with me, if not, I’m going to have to solo the game but I should be able to at least do those three trophies on my own. I’m going to be attempting this game first.
This is the game I’m going to 100%, for sure. There are seven missable trophies but reading the descriptions, it seems like just knowing which story you are in, check the guide real fast, and make sure you accomplish the goal. It doesn’t seem like any of the trophies’ descriptions spoil the plot. At least, I don’t feel like I have any proper context but time will tell.
Apparently, during a second playthrough, most of the trophies can be obtained except for finding the first peephole which is to the left of the garage on the fence as we approach the house for the first time. We don’t ever get a second opportunity to do that, so if you are trying to get all nine peepholes and 1 telescope. Which, stuff like that, is the reason why I look at trophy guides. Never too closely, as I’m mostly just looking for the word “missable.”
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Walker Dennis and I earned our 18th Platinum!
The first Lego Movie is so good and so many mechanics were used in Lego Dimensions so it just felt comfortable.
I went out the very next day and bought the Lego Marvel Collection! At first, I was going to be an old fuddy duddy and only let Walker Dennis and myself play one game at a time. Then I warmed up to the idea of just completing the story and then allowing us to move on to the second game. Then Walker Dennis’ big brown eyes and hearing myself say it for a fifth time, I agreed to playing the games until we got Spider-Man unlocked. Which it took a long long time before we could access the open world in Lego Avengers. With the game, the Spider-Man DLC is free, but we didn’t have access to the blue terminals that have the option to switch characters, until after the fifth mission, Helicarrier Havoc. We’re four percent done with that game. Lego Marvel Superheroes 2 is pretty quick and it only took two missions and we had Spider-Man, who is freely given.
Going to the individual games’ PlayStation Store pages, we still had the option to buy the DLC, which made me suspect we didn’t get a code for the season passes but once we could open the character page, all of the DLC characters were on the bottom but I checked all three times. It would have been nice, since once you load the disc, we had to individually download each game, so it would have been nice that the prices on the store page changed from the dollar value to the download option. That would have given me some peace of mind.
So I’m cool with whatever game Walker Dennis wants to play, he can play but at night, I’ve been doing one mission of Lego Marvel Superheros 1 and I’m currently just passed the X-Men mission and the Fantastic Four one is next. Which I’m excited about as that means I can defeat 100 enemies using the Thing, as that’s one of the trophies. I’m not sure if I’m going to platinum any of these games as they are massive! I’ll definitely strive to do so but ooof, there are a lot of characters and gold bricks floating about. Plus, those races are pretty hard! I can’t seem to get a feel for webslinging either.
I’m so happy we got Scarlet Spider in Lego Avengers and I know there is a race to unlock him in Lego Marvel Superheroes 2 that once I can, I’ll commit time to unlocking him. Spider-Ham is also an option in 2 so I’ll have to get him there too.
1 has Emma Frost and I made a point to do two missions from Professor X to unlock her, and then I did a third mission to unlock him as well. I sought out Archangel so I now have all of the original X-Men. I’m having a blast!
Playing Lego Avengers makes me want to rewatch the first two Avengers movies. We sold our copy of the first one to upgrade to a digital copy but we haven’t done that so I might have to pull the trigger as that movie was fun to replay. We have Age of Ultron on BluRay but I’m tempted to buy that through VUDU as well. I’m just ready to stop buying physical movies and buy everything through VUDU but then VUDU still doesn’t get all of the special features so here I am buying the combo packs just for the digital copy and a few extra materials.
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My plan is to play one level of Lego Marvel Superheroes 1 and then play Batman The Enemy Within until 11:30pm, and then play until I get to another save point. Which I’ve been able to do for the most part. Last night, I finished the X-Men level, so I went around gathering all of the X-Men I could and unlocking Carnage as I’ve been waiting to get Iceman to unlock Carnage. Walker Dennis turned on the game, and I wanted him to buy Carnage, Superior Spider-Man and a Symbiote Hazmat fellow. Which he did but we went from 1.5 million studs to less than 150,000 studs in a matter of seconds as he started unlocking everybody.
On my list of characters I want in the first game are:
Agent Coulson, for the trophy
The Lizard, Walker got the first Amazing Spider-Man movie for Easter – and Hop – so he’s in a real Lizard mode, he calls him Dr. Connors, which I love)
Howard the Duck, also for the trophy, it is the last one listed and I’m obsessed!
Magneto, he’s needed for so many items in Free Play
Scarlet Spider isn’t an option. I would have held off for Colossus until the very end but he was needed for the Fastball Special trophy so I bought him. I wish they would make a Lego X-Men game, it would be awesome and super cute!
Anyway, this section was supposed to be about Batman : The Enemy Within! I’m in Episode Three and Catwoman showed up! So I want to romance her like crazy as Bruce is going through some stuff. Harley wants to flirt with Bruce but Joker’s man crush on Wayne makes me try to flirt with Harley but keep pushing Joker to keep him happy. I read a great article in GameInformer on how Episode Five is essentially a compilation of our choices so it really depends on everything we’ve done during the four other episodes.
Thanks to finishing the second episode, I’ve finally reached my Gaming Goal of 2019 by reaching Player Level 15, I’m 6% into it, and I have 18 Platinums, 102 Gold Trophies, 355 Silver Trophies, and 1163 Bronze Trophies, for a total of 1638.
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Apparently there is a really great deal going on right now on the PlayStation Store. I saw something about villains spotlight but nothing jumped out at me but PSPrices makes the deal look very worth checking out!
Zero Escape : Zero Time Dilemma is $7.99 for PS+ subscribers, down from $40, and I might actually buy that as that’s my Vita white whale!
Witcher 3 Complete Edition is $14.99, down from $50 (though I rarely ever see it at full price now)
Lego City Undercover is $8.99, down from $30
Batman : Return to Arkham is $7.99, down from $20, if I wasn’t knee deep into three games and a Batman game, I would it now, but I probably would once it is eight dollars again.
Final Fantasy XV Royal Edition is $20 at GameStop, and I love how PSPrices tells us retail sales as well!
Lego DC Super-Villains Deluxe Edition is $44.99, down from $74.99, I wonder if that includes the latest batch of characters like the Phastasm and the Shazam characters?
Kingdom Come : Deliverance is $13.53 on Amazon! Is that right? Looks like it is sold out right now. In fact, there is a Royal Edition coming out on June 11 for $40, so I need to change my version on PSPrices once they have a link for it.
Injustice 2 Legendary Edition is also $30 at Gamestop, down from $60, but this is another game that is usually on sale too.
Batman : Arkham Knight Season Pass continues to be solid at $20, one day it’ll dip to eight dollars, then I shall strike!
I got to add Lego Marvel Collection to my . . . collection so that’s one less game! I’ll be taking off What Remains of Edith Finch in a week, so that’s exciting too!
I’m looking at Zero Escape : Zero Time Dilemma and it is stating it is a cross-buy title?! Was that always the case?! How did I miss it then?! So many questions! I had the Vita version hearted through the store but I’m going to take a chance on buying the PS4 copy and I hope I end up with both! Alright, that means I now only have 49 games on my wishlist!
Shoot, it only registers as the PS4 version and the Vita version is still available to buy, that stinks but at least I can think that I own it too. I wonder if I should reach out to customer support and get the Vita version?
I’m chatting with Joseph of Customer Support right now. He couldn’t make the came crossbuy and now it sort of killed my enthusiasm for ever getting that game or any of the other Vita games I missed out on. Plus, I was never going to get a Vita. Once if that day ever came, I’ll reignite my desire for them. At least I got a refund out of it.
It is the first two chapters of the volume. Sean Wang is the writer and artist.
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TRIGGER WARNING!!!
AVENGERS ENDGAME DESCRIPTIONS AHEAD!!!
I actually got to watch Avengers Endgame! I don’t want to spoil anything as I was able to avoid all spoilers so I don’t want to spoil someone else’s good time but I think I can make some comments without giving away any real plot points but I have some thoughts I need to get out of my head.
So if you don’t want any spoilers or hints of spoilers, this is the final section so there isn’t anything else read, so come back once you have seen the film!
First of all, this movie is amazing! My wife complained almost immediately as we got outside, that she thought he movie was too long, like like 20 minutes, so that killed some of my buzz to talk more about the film. So we talked about how all of the third act needed to stay, but there were parts in the beginning that probably could have been trimmed or even during the quest portion of the second act that could have been parred down. I thought it was amazing, like, every minute of it, so I wouldn’t have wanted to shorten anything but it was a fun thought exercise.
We took Walker as he did pretty well watching Infinity War on Netflix. He ate too much popcorn and had too much of a Coke Icee so I had to leave two times in the beginning of the film so he can attempt to throw up but nothing came of it. I knew his belly would settle if he stopped eating, and after the second attempt, he sat in his seat and enjoyed the film.
He waited so patiently until Spider-Man showed up, which I don’t think anyone expected for him not to show up, or any of the vanished heroes, so I don’t think that’s a real spoiler (in case someone is trying to read these paragraphs until a real big spoiler shows up – I’ve done it that in the past as reader).
I like how, once the portal opens, there is a good beat of time before Spider-Man swings out, and then Walker would not stop talking about Peter Parker. He also started commenting on wanting to buy the movie, which I told him I really want it too. But he was so excited. Then there were non-Spider-Man moments that he just wanted Spider-Man to come back, so that wasn’t great but once he’s on the screen, he’s in the film and the center of focus.
I loved how, with how epic that final battle was, there is always time for a hug and what a great hug at that!
This entire movie was a celebration of 22 films and ten years of Marvel movie magic! Well, Endgame is the 22nd film so a celebration of 21 films!
As soon as Sam said, “On your left” I don’t think I stopped smiling for the next ten minutes.
Then the ladies all had a moment, that I’m sure someone is going to make posters of and screenshots of, once the film has been out for a month. I appropriated so much how the marketing campaign was so nice to avoid spoilers. Heck, even the Lego sets didn’t spoil anything. Captain America never got on a motorcycle and Iron Man never went to a room that housed all of his suits.
The Avengers Compound shows up, and that would be the one I’ll be tempted to buy if it wasn’t a hundred dollars. War Machine never gets a giant Hulkbuster sized suit. Rocket’s ship is shown but never does anyone ever get into a giant white plane, so of the five sets, only one is in the film. Not for long though, once Thanos shows up, but still, it is there.
The fact that all of Infinity War mattered as amazing! I thought for sure, the last five minutes wouldn’t matter but nope, everything happened and everyone has to deal with that.
Okay, now I have to spoil somethings to talk about some things. So final final warning!
I think most people know there is a time cut, and there is. Five years have passed since Infinity War. Earth has not really moved on. There are monuments with names like the Vietnam War memorial in San Francisco that I can only imagine are represented in every major city, if not every city probably did the same. I wonder if those come down post-movie as it would be haunting to see one’s name on a wall for all time. Plus, ever the first anniversary, they served their purpose and are taking up valuable real estate.
Also, high school reunions have be crazy right? Teenagers are back, half of their friends graduated and then you have to be replaced in your grade and now graduating with half the people you don’t even know. Also, half of your friends are five years older than you too. Except it seems all of Peter Parker’s supporting crew are in Spider-Man : Far From Home, so that whole class of recognizable characters vanished. Which is handy for film purposes. I wonder how much of that film is going to handle the ramifications of the world, probably just a few lines of dialogue.
I missed the line about Tony losing oxygen and we got a fun interactions with him and Nebula. For the life of me, I can’t remember what happened in the two minutes we missed the second time. It was during Black Widow’s debriefing scene.
Thanks to the time travel aspects, we got to revisit some favorite scenes. Which was so amazing to see again from a different angle! Also, so fun all of the movie titles being said and how they all got it wrong. The movie sort of handles it like how Marvel comics handles time travel. What happened happen, and if you change something, it just creates a new timeline so the present will always be the present.
I had to look it up and that is Ty Simpkins’ character, Harley Keener, from Iron Man 3, at the end. So nice how they paid homage to the first Iron Man film as this film closes an entire saga. It helps that Jon Favreau is a director and an actor, and super willing to be in these films. It probably also helps that he’s directing Lion King so Disney has his phone number.
I wonder what phase four will bring and what the overall plot focus will be. Perhaps an epic Doctor Doom plot or just Galactus coming? We have to be working towards Fantastic Four and the X-Men being folded in, right?
Heck, this movie gave us a Hail Hydra! So amazing! And America’s Ass! Captain America can do this all day! I must have been grinning so hard during long sections of the film.
We got two amazing parent scenes, with one’s mother and another’s father. Having a child really does put one’s own parents in a different perspective. Might be worst or better but an understanding does occur. There’s a nice balance, as all things should be.
This movie even went as far as to try to make Thor : Dark World matter! Which I would say is by far the worst Marvel movie, even the Earth portions were not great.
Thor : Dark World will be on the top of my ranking of the films. By a lot! But gosh, look at all of those films, all of them are pretty rewatchable! Which is super impressive and the cast of actors we get in this films are astonishing!
I love that if an actor had a free day to film, they got to be in the movie.
We still haven’t seen Captain Marvel but I’m hoping to sneak it in before it leaves theaters.
I was able to text old friend to the blog, and my oldest friend, Greg, some of my thoughts so that was nice to talk to someone about the movie who also loved the film.
He made a comment about the homeless problem probably skyrocketed but I wrote back how with half the population gone, they probably became homefull.
I was on a track about identity fraud and how my chances of being accounted for, even though I vanished, I would still come back five years later to all of my debt still intact, knowing my luck. It would be like 911 times a hundred.
Does Manifest actually get into the minute details of being gone for five years and definitely being declared dead?
Thor was amazing in the film!
They found a way to keep Loki alive that is super clever and the plot to find Gamora is probably going to be the basis of Guardians 3. I love that they got a new team member, the reuniting of Groot and Rocket was super nice too.
Cap back in the 70s, so great! Cap in the finale, was so heartbreaking and beautiful. I love how Agent Carter : Agent of SHIELD mattered with original Jarvis being shown. No hard references to Agents of SHIELD or the Netflix shows, from what I could tell.
There are all of these news reports to a Black Widow movie and I want that to happen too but I’m not sure how. I knew it was going to be her to take the soul stone.
When Thanos’ missiles were firing into the sky, I had forgotten about Captain Marvel and I thought we were about to get a crazy entrance but it was great to see her. Peter Parker introducing himself to her was amazing, as Walker always refers to him as “Peter Parker” so having the name said by both characters made him so happy.
Greg was wondering if the line about earthquakes was a hint to Namor which would have been cool. Otherwise, it was just a line of dialogue for dialogue’s sake.
I imagine besides lines of dialogue, the time jump and real world ramifications are not going to be reference again. Maybe that would be the plot or the backbone to the Disney+ shows.
We knew Hulk was going to be an Avenger as we saw the Pop Vinyl character.
Okay okay, now we’re getting into major major spoilers territory!
oh my! We finally got “Avengers Assemble!” and it was everything I ever wanted! Then we got Captain America holding Mjolnir! I was so happy!
Fun how we got two more Community alums added to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Yvette Nicole Brown (who looks like she lost a lot of weight!) and Ken Jeong.
When they were in the 70s, there is this great song by “It’s Been a Long, Long Time” by Harry James and his Orchestra that I just loved the old timiness of it. Apparently, it is their cover to a 1945 song.
Nice to see Hiroyuki Sanada in the film, he was Shingen Yashida in The Wolverine and Akihiko in the film.
The film has a great balance of comedy and drama, and so many people and characters got a moment to shine. They definitely got their moneys worth from Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans. Both get such wonderful sendoffs.
We even got Gwyneth Paltrow in the Rescue armor! So many things paid off from previous films.
I know it won’t take any awards besides MTV and Teen Awards and a few technical awards but it really does deserve to be acknowledged next year. Not like it matters but it’ll be nice for the box art.
We really need A Time to Die Hard now!
Just overall, I loved the movie and I want to see it again but I won’t until I own it.
Next stop will be Spider-Man : Far From Home but I can’t imagine we’ll watch it July 5 opening weekend.
I beat Cosmic Star Heroine, thus earning my 16th Platinum!
Such a fun game! Turns out, I was playing on Agent difficulty, which is Normal. I was just minding my own business, I beat Prime Evil to complete Psybe’s side quest and I marked off the trophy on my list and realized I never earned the trophy. I looked it up and turns out, some trophies are glitched, and most of them are the boss battles. So I panicked as just three hours earlier, I had earned the Recruit 20 Crew Members gold trophy, which took some time. So I was debating about regathering those folks or not when I realized the PS4 had backed up my save file when I turned it prior to eating dinner. So all I had to do was refight the arcade boss for Dave’s side quest and get back to Prime Evil. I was tempted not to redo the arcade but that’s how we got Dave’s best weapon and that guy is a beast once he gets that weapon.
While reading about the glitches and the advice to hard save before each boss fight, I also received the advice to lower the difficulty to Tourism, the Easy mode. What this does is knock off a quarter of the health of the opponents as well as weakens them so they don’t hit the team for too much damage. So I still played the same, the fights were just faster, which was nice and I had made up that hour of playtime in 20 minutes.
I really really enjoying my team of Alyssa, Lauren, Psybe, and Dave – such a great combination of characters and abilities. I’ll put Chahn in the upper tier as well but we can only have four person teams. I’ll probably rank Sue even higher than Chahn.
Lita the Vampire of the Mines’ trophy also didn’t pop for me, but I was prepared for that one. All of the other trophies popped without a problem.
I still wished we could have beaten the main game boss and then had the post-game option to take on the optional bosses and quests, instead of being forced to do it all beforehand. I get the decision though and it makes sense with where all of the characters end up after the story is over but it would have still been nice to have.
If you have an itch for a Chrono Trigger / Old School SNES RPG game, this should satisfy that scratch.
I did like how the game forces us to play with all of the characters at least once. With 11 playable characters, there is bound to be a clear division of characters.
I’ll rank them as
Alyssa
Lauren
Psybe Dave
Sue, his counter attack is amazing! Chahn
Z’xorv
Arete
Orson Finn
Clarke
Clarke is just the absolute worst but he’s a fun dancer so he’s lighthearted. Z’xorv/Arete/Orson, I would just say are fine as is Finn, maybe there is just a clear worst character and a slew of also rans.
. . .
I’ve decided to get back to Spider-Man PS4 as my next game. I’m going to complete my Ultimate New Game Plus and be completely done with that game. I’m so close, I got drugged by Scorpion and had Miles run away from Rhino, and my next mission is Heavy Hitter. Tuns out, I only have four missions left before the end of the game. Heavy Hitter / Step into My Parlor (the Mary Jane level) / Heart of the Matter / Pax in Bello / Epilogue, which doesn’t really count as it is the ending cutscene, as bitter sweet as it is.
The Electro / Vulture fight was as hard as I remembered, as I just get lost in the night and I can’t track Vulture or his weapon he’s throwing around. So I’m really not looking forward to the Rhino and Scorpion tag team nor the final boss fight. Second to last boss fight, I don’t recall being as hard as the others. I’m not dreading Mary Jane’s level but I do want to just burn through it as quickly as possible.
I figure after that, I’ll finish Batman : The Enemy Within as that’ll be a nice plat to have and I just have to enjoy and play the game, there isn’t any side quests or hidden trophies to worry about.
After that, I’ll complete my first playthrough of Beyond : Two Souls and I’m not sure if I’ll actually beat Knack but I feel like that’s the only other game that I made a load of progress in and stopped. Oh, and SOMA, which I might just do what I did with RiME and just have a YouTube video at the ready to get me pass any obstacles.
There might be a few Uncharted 3 trophies I can clean up just to try to get to Rank 15, my only real video game related goal for 2019. I’m currently at Rank 14 with 70% but it took me so long to go from 13 to 14. From there, I’ll have to look at my games again and see which one I really want to invest in. Mostly just the Kill 30 enemies with the Dragon Sniper, RPG-7, Mag 5, and PAK-80, which is four more trophies and most likely pretty easy to obtain.
I really want to get the Lego Marvel Collection too, as Walker Dennis is way into Spider-Man and Legos and I keep wanting to play those myself too. Which reminds me, we still have the first Lego Movie to complete too but he has been way into playing with his actual Legos than wanting to play that game, I might have to secretly play it on my own. By the time we or I complete it, Lego Marvel Collection will have to be cheaper than full price $60. Even buying it for $55 would be a win.
I’m very much influence by the Trophies subreddit, with what game I want to play. Uncharted 4 keeps showing up, so that might be the next game I tackle. I probably should mentally plan on playing at least another playthrough of Heavy Rain and Beyond : Two Souls so I can get it Detroit Become Human but I’ll probably just jump straight to Detroit and do one playthrough of that and maybe make a fun game of having one playthrough and then marathoning a second playthrough of all three games in rabid succession.
Beating Beyond : Two Souls opens up Detroit and beating Uncharted 4 opens up Lost Legacy. Then I still have the two Life is Strange games to play. I keep being tempted to buy Ms. Pac-Man for four dollars and to get the Season Pass of Batman : Arkham Knight but I have plenty of games to play before buying new games or content.
Hellblade : Senua’s Sacrifice also showed up once or twice and I want to get to that game too, so there easily could be my next three games.
Turtle Soup played Walker and mine voicemail around the 50 minute mark, which felt pretty good. I hadn’t realized my pauses were so long, maybe it only feels that way to me but it is hard to record a voicemail with a five year old but it turned out pretty well.
Thanks to YouTuber 420 Romantic for hosting the video!
Brian McKnight’s Back at One is such a great song!
Shadow and Flame with Magik 