Games I Beat: Dragon Quest Heroes

Dragon Quest Heroes The World Tree's Woe and the Blight Below
Musou RPG
1 Player
System: PS4
Developer: Omega Force
Year of Release: 2015
Beaten: October 25, 2015

First of all, Square Enix is using this game to hold a beloved series hostage, that being the titular Dragon Quest series. Allegedly the future of that series in the West is dependent on sales of this game. Ironically, this game is basically nothing like a true Dragon Quest game, so this strategy is pretty fucked up. Dragon Quest is personally my favorite RPG series, and if you too are a fan of turn based RPG's I highly suggest seeking out pretty much any of those games to check out (namely I, III, IV and VIII are the typically recommended entry points). If you enjoy the series, think you might or love Dynasty Warrior style games I implore you to pick up this title new. I don't like that Square Enix is holding their own property hostage like this, but I'm willing to negotiate with terrorists. I want new Dragon Quest games, especially those 3DS remakes dammit. (Having written this in the past and having been sitting on this for far too long, DRAGON QUEST VII AND VIII WERE ANNOUNCED TO COME WESTWARD THIS SUMMER! AHHHHHH!)

Also, this game is pretty good overall, just to get that out of the way here and now. I would never recommend purchasing a bad game, unless the situation was incredibly dire. Like some insane man broke into my home and demanded I blogged about how great some terrible games were. Oh if only I were that popular of a writer.

Chronicles of Ivera - Fourth Session

What a day, what a motherfucking day. At least the rogue could lie through his teeth well. Today was almost the day we all died, it wasn't fate, it wasn't because of impossible odds. It came down to pure and simple terrible decision making. At least we live to see the light of day once more.

Games I Beat: Guitar Hero Live

Guitar Hero Live
Air Guitar Justificationer
1-2 Players
System: PS4
Developer: Freestyle Games
Year of Release: 2015
Beaten: December 6th, 2015

This one might run a little short, but I wanted to talk about it anyway. I never really got into Guitar Hero, in fact my first experience with it was doing an alright job on the normal difficulty in the third entry, after which a friend of my at-the-time-girlfriend showed me "how to play". He played one of the hardest songs on expert without missing a note and acted like some of god among us due to his mastery of plastic guitars. It was a little off putting. Furthermore, as I did play it more over the weeks I never really got comfortable with how the game played overall. Eventually Rock Band came out and I had the chance to play it at a friends house. The fake instrument genre finally clicked with me.

Chronicles of Ivera - Third Session

As I recovered from my death, near death, our barbarian friend from before wandered back into town. He apologized for wandering off, and we wound up grouping back up. Following him was another tiefling rogue, he asked to tag along as well, to which we agreed with some trepidation. It hadn't gone so well last time. After collecting ourselves we headed back to the Fey Woods to finish our business with Wandering Winds. We manged to make our way there with no real trouble. Winds asked if we would follow him to his druid circle, the Verdant Enclave. Of course we agree.

Road to Justice: Steel

Steel
Directed by: Kenneth Johnson
Starring: Shaquille O'Neal, Annabeth Gish, Judd Nelson
Released: 1997
Watched: November 25th, 2015

Thoughts Before: I have no idea how a Steel movie got made in the 90's. Steel isn't a bad character, but he's never really done much aside from assist around Metropolis when Superman is away, and honestly, after four Superman movies that all left me disappointed and a just as bad Supergirl movie I'm a little nervous when it comes to movie's starring characters revolving around the man of steel's city of choice. I never saw this, and aside from having seen pictures of how terrible his armor looks I have no idea what to expect.

Double Justice: Batman Forever and Robin

Batman Forever/Batman and Robin
Directed by: Joel Schumacher
Starring: Val Kilmer, Tommy Lee Jones, Jim Carrey/George Clooney, Chris O'Donnell, Alicia Silverstone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Uma Thurman
Released: 1995/1997
Watched: November 13th, 2015/November 20th, 2015

Thoughts Before: I watched these as a child, as such I've only ever really viewed these movies as more than cartoons. They've become known for being notoriously bad movies, and I have to agree. Forever sees Batman meet up with his ward who becomes Robin while fighting off Two Face and Riddler. Batman and Robin introduces Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy and even Bane for the dynamic duo to fight, and not only that, but Batgirl shows up as well! How could they possibly ruin this? Joel Schumacher.

Chronicles of Ivera - Second Session

We awoke, our barbarian companion had seemingly wandered off into the night. We shrugged it off, and continued on our way up the mountain. A dragonborn monk hurriedly made his way towards us, with the third dwarf brother in tow. After discussing matters we discovered that a group of cultists, including one of the two evil men we saw earlier, were up further summoning some dark force. Erik took his wounded brother and left for town. Our group was hesitant to go into battle having lost one of our warriors, but the other dwarf brother convinced us.

Double Justice: Batman and Returns

Batman/Batman Returns
Directed by: Tim Burton
Starring: Michael Keaton, Jack Nicholson, Kim Basinger/Michelle Pfeiffer, Danny Devito, Christopher Walken
Released: 1989/1992
Watched: October 30th, 2015/November 6th, 2015

Thoughts Before: At some point in my youth my mother made an awesome decision to show me all the great movie series. She wound up kind of dropping the ball (still haven't watched Back to the Future for example) but overall I ended up experiencing a ton of fantastic movie series'. The first series we went through was Batman, and damn, what a disappointment. I'll get to that over the next couple of weeks, but the first movie was fantastic. It was one of the first times I was subjected to the greatness that is Jack Nicholson. His Joker is one of my favorite portrayals of the character (don't worry Mark Hamill, no one can top you), even Heath Ledger's Joker couldn't compare (though I think he did great too). This movie still stands up, Tim Burton's vision shines through and really helped this film stand out. Returns on the other hand feels as though they turned the Tim Burton aspect up to eleven. It isn't the worst of the series, but definitely sets up the soon to come massive disappointments to follow. At the very least Catwoman is always entertaining in this movie.

Chronicles of Ivera - First Session

Recently my friends and I finally got around to playing some good old fashioned Dungeons and Dragons (well 5th Edition is decidedly new-fashioned, but whatever)! Currently four of us are playing together; Ivera is our dungeon master's own home brew world where we are journeying through. As far as I know it's an amalgamation of most standard D&D settings as we can use pretty much any rule book we can find. These chronicles are to record the happenings of the game, just because I want to, and possibly for a refresher depending on how long the game lasts. We're mostly amateur players, so I describe some fairly newbish shenanigans I apologize. Also, one of our teammates died immediately because he was being a dick. Maybe he learned his lesson?

DLC I Beat: Operation Anchorage

Fallout 3 Operation Anchorage
Reverse Engineered RPG
1 Player
 System: Xbox 360
Developer: Bethesda Softworks
Year of Release: 2008
Beaten: November 11th, 2015 (and sometime in 2008!)

Fallout 3 bastardized the series pretty hard. Going from a classic infinity engine inspired RPG to a post apocalyptic Elder Scrolls with guns. It did reignite a fan following for the series though, even if many still cannot get into, or flat out dislike the original two, either way, Fallout 4 is THE game right now. Unfortunately a day after release and I still haven't been able to pick it up. I'd been playing Fallout 3 prior to release because, well, I was pretty fucking excited to head back to the wasteland. Little did I know I'd still be playing after 4 came out, like a sad little drug addict.