leveledup.

The one thing that I accomplished this spring break -- aside from buying a house and obtaining a mountain of debt -- was finally completing Rise of the Tomb Raider and crossing it off my backlog. 

Thoughts...

- Visuals are terrific, gameplay is fine...it is a bit of a hindrance at times. Lots of cheap deaths and uneven difficulty...but, overall, a positive experience for the most part. It’s definitely a “beat it and delete it” game, though. 8/10

- While the franchise is obviously inspired by Uncharted in a lot of ways, I do think that the Crystal Dynamics have done a few things better than Naughty Dog. For one, I love the sense of true exploration with the environments. In Uncharted, you open a tomb that’s been sealed for thousands of years and you find that, somehow, bad guys are waiting for you in it nearly every time. Tomb Raider has these as well, but they’re more spread out if feels like. 

In between those encounters, you get to explore with Lara and actually raid tombs. Those are the moments that I enjoyed the most about the game. 

- The story didn’t do much for me at first, but once a few of the twists start to kick in, the plot does actually start to pick up.

Hi.

I originally took some time away from this site to think about the direction that I wanted to take it. We used to write full-length movie reviews, and we had a ton of success with that. 250,000 followers and growing (somehow!) I just didn’t think that was sustainable anymore. So I took a step back and tried to re-evaluate things. In the process of that, I ended up completely abandoning it altogether. 

I’m still not sure what the sites ultimate goal is. I have ideas, but I’m not sure how realistic they are. I’m also to this point to where I’m going to stop overthinking it and just write. 

With a full-time job and being a full-time student, time is short and I have so many responsibilities. But, also, I think I need an outlet more now than ever. I watch movies and play games now and I get so excited about them that I want to share my opinions on them. But as you start to get older, it gets harder and harder to find anyone that gives a shit. Now I’m not saying that you will, either, but that’s not going to stop me.

Hi!

Truth be told, I was never all that excited for Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. I’ll even go as far as to say that a small part of me was hoping that it would fail. I don’t even know why I wanted that. Aside from Man of Steel, I’ve dug Zack Snyder’s work since that Dawn of the Dead remake that he did back in 2004. Heck, his adaption of Watchmen remains as one of my favorite movies period. I guess a part of me just saw through the entire project and saw it as DC/Warner Bros. trying to cash in on what Marvel had done with their Marvel Cinematic Universe. Whereas Marvel spent a decade building this monumental creation, it appeared that DC just didn’t have the patience and wanted their dessert before dinner.

You see Marvel is Ramona Flowers and DC is Knives Chau. There’s nothing wrong with Knives Chau; a lot of people even prefer her over Ramona. But Ramona is unique, she’s colorful and she’s interesting. Rather than DC being okay with this and showing us that there is even more value in getting to know them, they’re just going to the local pharmacy, buying some hair dye and pretending to be Ramona. Hopefully that analogy works...I may or may not be watching Scott Pilgrim vs. The World right now.

Anyways, so, yeah, my interest in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice was lukewarm at best. When I read some of the reviews and feedback from early screenings and saw that the consensus feeling of the film was that it was a real shit show, well, that interest grew.

Having now seen it, the only real disappointment that I have is that I didn’t get the shit show that the internet had promised. In fact, I actually kinda enjoyed the hell out of Batman v. Superman.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some serious problems with it...I could sit here and talk about the lousy pacing...how annoying Lois Lane and Jesse Eisenberg’s Nicolas-Cage-as-Lex-Luthor impression is. I could call out that stupid nightmare sequence and talk all day about how unneeded it was. I could bitch about all the coolest moments from this movie being in the trailer. I could plea for someone to tell me why Batman breaking into Lex Corp wasn’t shown. I could bring up the fact that seeing Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman team up doesn’t feel all that special because they haven’t really established any of these characters on their own.