Hearthstone: Why I Hate Online Trading Card Games

So I was playing “Shadowverse”, an online TCG (trading card game) while I was waiting for an recommendation from my friends for my next review when it hit me. I’m playing the game I should be reviewing so I instantly went “I’m going to review Hearthstone” so sorry for all those Shadowverse lovers but I want to talk about “Hearthstone” because I hate Blizzard and I hate Hearthstone for so many things. I will cover “Shadowverse” one day but I have to find a way to cover it without it becoming a rant about how stupid Havencraft is and why everyone who plays that craft is an idiot and also, I was referring to “YuGiOh” in my last review for anyone who was wondering.

“Hearthstone” is a free to pay, online TCG which you can get on PC or on mobile and features Blizzard’s “beloved” WoW characters as playable classes. The main gimmick of the game is to play a class which has its own little gimmick and build a deck that works with that style and play against other players online. In the game, there is currently Warlock, Priest, Mage, Hunter, Rogue, Shaman, Druid And Warrior and each one of them counters another deck in a way (unless you are playing Murlocs). If you were paying attention, you would of seen that I used the phrase “free to pay” which is yes, was coined by everyone’s favourite egotist “Jim Sterling” but it’s a term which should be accurately used when talking about most free to play games. “Hearthstone” is a grind game if you don’t want to stump up the cash to get boosters or in this case, card packs. I’m not going to be explain how the actual card game mechanics work since there is so many different ones, I would be wasting my breath and each class specialize in what it says on the tin (except maybe Warlock, Druid And Shaman if you haven’t played WoW before) so let’s just get this roasting done with.

So how you get card packs in “Hearthstone” is you either get them from doing special modes, free drops or turning in the gold you get from wins and quests. Of course, you can fork out real cash to get packs if you really want to and because of this, the game makes it hard to get packs other ways. For example, let’s say you went the old fashion way and just went by winning. You get ten gold for every three wins and with each pack costing 100 gold, you need thirty wins to get one pack of your choice. Yes, you can speed up the progress with doing daily quests but if you are unlucky like me, you are mainly going to be stuck with quests that require to play with classes you don’t like and haven’t invested as much time into making functional decks with. I also feel like this game will be very punishing to those who unwilling to pay, especially those who like playing one class. I mainly play Hunter in Hearthstone and since I utterly refuse to give these sort of games my money, I went through hell to get the cards I needed and very early on, if you don’t have a good deck to start off with, you are going to struggle to get the wins necessary to get gold and that is a major problem for newbies getting into the game. The game does say it matches you with “worthy opponents” but I refuse to believe that because when I started, I was getting thrashed by all sorts of players online and I wasn’t able to compete with them until my own deck became better over time with all the free stuff you get given to you over time if you are patient enough to wait for Blizzard to have mercy on the poor non-whales of their player base but there is a bigger fish to fry here so let’s talk about it’s biggest sin: the lack of a trading system.

If you can’t tell, trading is a very big thing in trading card games. I mean, it’s in the name and trading is the best way for any player to get stuff they want and if you ask me, makes it way easier on new players to get into a game if they already have a limited budget but online TCGs don’t have this which does have bit of a domino effect but we will talk about that once we cover it’s “replacement”. The closest we got to a trading system in this game is a disenchantment system which pretty much means you trade in your cards for puny amounts of essence which you can then use to get the cards you want and this system does has its flaws but let’s try to focus on the positives. This does make getting cards easier on players and allows them to dump any excess or unneeded cards as well as acquire cards from older sets but I feel like this is strongly discouraged due to both the daily quests as well set rotation (we will get to that later) but I hate this system because unlike a proper trading card game, this doesn’t promote player interactions. Player interactions is the biggest thing about TCG because it’s promotes a sense of community and that is the heart of a TCG but online TCGs lack that. Sure, you could just go to a forum or Reddit for the idea of having a community but that’s talking to people over the internet. It can’t be compared to actual face to face interactions and the expression of human emotions. Yes, this does seem stupid coming from an introvert but a sense of community is a truly valuable thing and this is what I mean by a domino effect. With the lack of a trading system, you lose player interactions which loses the sense of community which ultimately makes the feel of the TCG worse when compared to other TCGs and that’s why it’s a downside for this sort of game.

Personally, I wouldn’t even be writing this review if it wasn’t for two things so let’s talk about the first thing, set rotation. Some card games to use set rotation to stop people from using older cards and promote the usage of new cards and Hearthstone is no difference and I hate set rotation. Set rotation is just such a dirty way of pushing new products and this also means people who have either grinded or spent the money to get the cards they wanted, those cards are now useless because set rotation has stopped you from playing them in Standard. Yes, you can still keep playing in Wild mode which does the equivalent of telling set rotation to bugger off but I feel Hearthstone punishes you for playing Wild plus having to add Wild mode just so people can use their older cards seems incredibly unnecessary. Like, you could of just be like most other card games (and much better ones at that too) and not have a set rotation. This promotes not only new and interesting decks and play styles but also gives older cards a much longer life expectancy since they can’t really be power creeped in this sort of game so set rotation should just go and die but unfortunately, this is Blizzard and they need to keep finding ways to milk their player base for all the money they have. The other thing that I want to mention before ending this, I wanted to talk about how this game has squandered potential. I think this game could of been great but all the problems I have mentioned is what brings it down in terms of a trading card game. I feel like if Blizzard applied the same amount of care and dedication the company is known for and what help them turn games like Starcraft, Warcraft and Overwatch (we will get to Overwatch much later down the line) in global successes and turned Hearthstone into a proper trading card game with a focus on trading and community, I would say, without a doubt in my heart, that Hearthstone would be the future for TCGs but with its current issues, I think it can’t compare to other TCGs like YuGiOh and Magic The Gathering. Hell, I think Cardfight: Vanguard has more potiential then this and Vanguard has a ridiculously small community and hey, Shadowverse is better then this and that’s pretty much Hearthstone with Waifu bait.

I’m giving this a 3/10 since I think it can’t live up to the other games that Blizzard has produced plus it’s disappointing as a TCG on top of being full of methods to wring out the money out of the player and I already deducted points for the micro transactions which do feel intrusive at best. If you want to play it, go ahead because maybe you can see something enjoyable that I don’t see but if you want to play a good card game, try investing into something like YuGiOh or Cardfight: Vanguard because they are not only fun but are easy to learn and play and is a proper trading card game unlike this pile of trash being peddled by the new money giant which is Activision Blizzard.

The Undiscussibles: Things I Read Instead Of My Class Work

Hooray for another filler. So after writing the “Drifters” review, I had no idea what to do next so I was procrastinating while I thought about what to do next. I was recommended to play Celeste but the game was out of my budget and I was going to talk about a very specific trading card game but I couldn’t figure out a good title for it so here’s another filler, covering the things I read in class instead of doing my work. Hopefully by next week, I will have a game worth talking about or maybe even a movie if I bother getting an Netflix account.

First things first, we got “Bakuman” who is written by the same guy who wrote “Death Note” and I am 100% serious when I say this is better then “Death Note”. I was originally planning to do “Mangas Better Then Death Note” which would feature three mangas by the same creator but only “Bakuman” and “All You Need Is Kill” (which I will cover later when I get around to it’s movie adaption) was worth talking about but since “Bakuman” was still fresh on my mind, I might as well cover it now. “Bakuman” is a manga about two people who I forgot their names so let’s call them “Drawer” and “Writer”, trying to make it big as a mangaka duo and try to get published in Shounen Jump with their manga and while Writer is doing this because he likes manga, Drawer is in it to make up for his dead uncle who never got that far in the Mangaka business (I think so anyway) and also get an anime so he can marry the love of his dreams. Since this is in the filler review, you can guess I don’t have much to talk about here so let’s get it over with. What I like about this manga is quite simply is the way it conveys the struggles of mangakas, both for amateurs and pros alike and that is what got me in and kept me in and admire the two main characters for what they do and achieve in this manga as a wannabe mangaka. To me, it’s awe inspiring and is my favourite point about this manga but this manga still has some flaws and I think is a consistent problem with this mangaka and his ability to carry on a story. One of my biggest problems with “Death Note” is the fact half way through, it quite clearly has a end point but it continues to ignore that point and start a new arc which isn’t very good or interesting as the first half, bring down the whole thing for me and “Bakuman” has the same kind of problem. Granted, the transistion feels a lot more smoother then “Death Note” but I feel like beyond that point, it becomes far more dull. There is a forced introduction of an antagonist for the last half and the ending just feels standard. It’s nothing spectacular and it’s a disappointment. I do feel like the mangaka is not suited for long series such as “Bakuman” and “Death Note” since he does seem to lose steam as they go on while with something like “All You Need Is Kill” has all the charms of its longer counterparts but is also self-contained with its shortness so it doesn’t run out of ideas by the end. “Bakuman” is a 7/10 because even with its flaws, I still think it’s a great read but I don’t expect anyone to stick around for the end.

Next up, we have “Sun Ken Rock” which is by the same guy who was behind the “Trigun” series if the fact that all his main characters always have the same spiky blond hairstyle tip you off to that. The series follows Ken, a Japanese wannabe fellow who just wants to follow the love of his life to Korea and become a policeman except he fails and ends up being unemployed. After saving an old man from some gang members, he attracts the attention of another gang boss known as Tae-Soo and offers him a position in his gang which Ken naturally refuses because he is a “good person” and then continues to fight Tae-Soo but Tae-Soo surrenders and makes Ken the boss of the gang (which consists of 3 people at that point, excluding Ken). The story then continues to follow Ken as he becomes the strongest boss in Korea and I have nothing else to say about this. “Sun Ken Rock” to me is a just a great, well rounded series with very little flaws. I think it’s great all the way through until the end which is slightly sucky and a let down but I think the characters are great, the plot is well written with great twists and most importantly, the fights are fun and are great to read on top of looking amazing. My only problems is with the ending which I won’t discuss because spoilers and the fact this didn’t get an anime adaption already but that one is personal. Here’s the 8/10 so we can carry on with this review and make sure to read this when you get the chance.

For our last manga of this review, we have “Accel World” which I loved so much but of course, there had to be one cameo which just ruins the whole thing for me but we will get to that. The plot follows Haruyuki, a fat little piece of meat who is constantly bullied and takes his frustrations out on a squash game until he becomes friends with this girl which introduces him to the program, Accel World which in they enchance their brain power and capabilities at the cost of having to play inside this brawler game and duking it out with other users. I think the concept is cool and unique and it looks amazing but this being from the same guy who brought us the infamous SAO, this is has an SAO cameo. It’s completely out of left field and this doesn’t belong in the SAO canon. If it was to promote SAO, they should of made it a spin off and not part of the official canon. “Accel World” is just in a way, different from SAO and is implied that “Accel World” is far more technologically advanced then the SAO canon so why do this? I’m just disappointed with this series so here’s the 5/10 because apart from the SAO crossover, there is still some other issues in terms of plot and characters so I guess read it if you want some more of that Kirito action and you still think SAO is better then “/Hack”.

Here’s the usual end of review banter which is nothing this time because I used all of it in the start so see you guys next week if I can finally decide what to do next and I really hope I won’t need to do this again for at least a month.

Drifters: Japan's World War 3

It feels so nice to finally talk about “Drifters”. Although it’s not my number one pick for best manga, it is definitely one of the top mangas and just like the manga, the anime is also top quality but I’m getting ahead of myself here. “Drifters” is a manga written and drawn by Kouta Hirano and if I haven’t drilled it in there from my last reviews, he wrote and drawn “Hellsing” and if you were paying attention during the “Hellsing” review, you would also know I called it “Drifter’s Prototype” and I hope by the end of this, it will be more painfully obvious then the main antagonist’s identity.

The plot is super simple. We follow Shimazu Toyohisa, a samurai (and also a real life person by the way) as he pretty much mortally wounded while trying to kill Ii Naomasa during the Battle of Sekigahara and after trying to chase after them on foot, he is suddenly teleported to this room with a guy (it's hasn’t been explained properly yet) and he pretty much throws poor Toyohisa through a door and into the fantasy setting of this manga. He is then saved by some elves and brought to two other people of his kind who are “The Demon King Of The Sixth Heaven, Oda Ufu Nobunaga” and the legendary trap “Nasu No Suketaka Yoichi” who then very shortly start their conquest of an country by saving the elves from the oppression of the Orte Empire which we later learn, was made into the powerful figure it was by the one and only Adolf Hitler so there’s that classic “Hellsing” charm and if you think that’s the only thing that’s so left field, well you are wrong. This manga might as well be called “Out Of Left Field” because there is so many things that come out of left field, it’s ridiculous but yet again, this makes that ridiculousness seem sensible and makes a very interesting and surprisingly grounded storyline and I think that’s one of the many factors why this is better than Hellsing.

If you are still wondering what’s a Drifter, well it’s simply someone who has gone MIA if what we got on it by hints since this is yet to be expanded on but it seems like they only pick historical figures as Drifters. I mean, that’s the only explanation I can think of the fact the man at the desk choose mainly people who are known for some form of war experience, from ancient tacticians such as Hannibal and Scorpio Africanus to WW2 Kamikaze Pilots but this being Hirano’s work, of course he took liberties. As many liberties as he wanted in fact because he takes these figures from history and then twist them to fit his comidical needs. Like, we already talked about how he made Hitler a good guy but then he also makes Hannibal a senile genius with a obsession with raspberries, the Count Saint Germi a wannabe drag queen with a hard on for elves and he even makes the french saint, Jean De Arc a pyromaniac who wants to burn everything. This isn’t “Hellsing” who jabs at religious and political bodies for fun, this is its own form of twisted humour where each liberty the mangaka takes on a historical figure, they become far more interesting to watch but also makes them into far more believable people (for the most part anyway) plus the fantasy setting is just great for these people to be thrown in as well. We see them interact and get used to things that they are unfamiliar with, either it being magic and technology that’s beyond their time period and the same applies to the inhabitants. The inhabitants of this world, even though they are pretty much glorified play pieces for the Drifters who are in turn, play pieces for the man at the desk, they are just like the Drifters when it comes to new technologies and we see how they adapt with the new technology like how Dwarves went from not knowing what a musket is to mass producing the things for war against The Black King. You can see there is a message about how technology is a dangerous thing somewhere in this manga but I don’t care because that would get in the way of my fun but that unfortunately doesn’t mean it has other ways.

To be perfectly fair, this isn’t perfect to say but yet again, nothing can be truly be perfect but this series does has it flaws, two to be precise. Let’s start with The Black King’s identity because if you didn’t get it soon as you saw him, you are blind. Like, Hirano doesn’t even try to disguise the fact who the king is truly is. I won’t spoil it here since I would just be being an ass then but there is so much hinting at his identity but Hirano is still going “It’s a secret” when it’s so bloody obvious. We get it, you like secrets but you kind of let it out of the bag very early on. You just can’t stuff it back into the bag and still play it like a secret after you went parading it around like this super amazing thing. It’s just so annoying to watch after a while and it went from bothering me to just annoying the hell out of me. My other problem is more of a self-worrying one because as the story is going, I feel like this series is going to end quickly. This series is only 70 chapters long at the point of writing but with “Hellsing” ending at 95 chapters, I feel like this story is going to be short. I mean, at the point we are at now, the Drifters are getting ready to finally fight the Black King head on in a final battle but unlike Hellsing, who ended with the no loose ends or threads to continue with, I feel like Drifters has the space to expand beyond this chapter. I mean, they made a somewhat temporary peace (if the manga is to be believed) with a Merchant nation the Orte empire was at war with and the Drifters has Orte in their hands now so those two loose ends are tied up but to be perfectly honest, I want there to be a way for the Black King to escape this battle and then hope that this Merchant Nation turns heel and now use the guns they acquired from this “peace treaty” to start the war anew. For me, I don’t want “Drifters” to end so early so I’m just hoping that I’m wrong and that the series will continue.

This is the part where I usually talk about how I personally feel about the topic but outside of talking about how amazing the drawings are (trust me, it is amazing) and how good the anime adaption is, I have nothing else to add. To me, Drifters isn’t something I shouldn’t be talking about so much since I feel like if I say anymore, I would ruin the fun for you guys so here’s the mandatory 8/10, obligatory summary of all the points and the compulsory comment about reading/watching it and where you can do so. See you next week for probably more manga reviews if I can’t find anything interesting in terms of games or movies to talk about because I’m both broke and in the dry season for anything noteworthy coming out unless people want to hear me rant about the MCU.

The Undiscussables: Insects, Weebs And Depression

I might as well start explaining why you got this instead of Drifters. So I was going to start writing the Drifters review right after the L4D review since I’m not a big movie person and there was nothing in cinemas interesting to watch (until that new Mama Mia movie comes out that is) but then through sheer boredom, I find out that Drifters has an anime and I knew I couldn’t review Drifters without watching its anime adaption but I also didn’t want to leave a large gap in my reviews so I was thinking what to do then it hit me. I remembered that there is a lot of stuff I would love to talk about but there is not much to discuss in a long review so I thought about stringing these small rants to make one large review so welcome to “The Undiscussables”, the new series of reviews where I talk about three things that may not be related together but oh boy, they are sure hard to talk about in a 2K word review (Also, expect spoilers for this series as per usual).

First up is “Arachnid”, a manga created by Shinya Murata and Shinsen Ifuji And if I’m to be frank, it has the “Death Note” problem of that it becomes crap after the first half. We follow Alice Fuji who after witnessing her Uncle’s death and being taken in by an assassin called Kumo (Japanese for Spider) who then trains her to succeed him. After succeeding him and effectively killing him to take his title, she is now on the run from “The Organazation” which then sets up the “Arachnid Hunt” in her school which makes up the second half of the series and is what makes this disappointing for me. The series only has 75 chapters so it’s considered to be a short run in terms of serialisation (in my mind that is) which is why I hate these shorter serialisations. When a series is completed within 100 chapters, I know some things will be rushed and not expanded upon if the writer doesn’t know how to make a tightly written story with those restrictions in mind and unfortunately, this is one of them. To its credit, the first half is pretty good as we see Alice develop into the person she is, meet new friends in the form of Goki and Geji as well as enemies like the school nurse who we will call Scorpion and the P.E teacher who is pretty much a Water Strider. Also, if you couldn’t tell, everyone in this manga takes after an insect which pretty much represents their fighting style which is also very interesting and does add some uniqueness to what would be a generic action manga and that’s all the praise I have for this. If I was to start the bashing, I would start with the second half AKA The Arachnid Hunt because this is where it becomes confusing. This whole second half is just a mess. For an example of this mess, let’s start with the start of the hunt. It starts with Strider trying to drown Alice in a pool but it doesn’t work because “special technique” (that’s pretty much the get out card for everyone in this manga) and then suddenly, an assassin who is a Tiger Beetle who nearly kills Alice but then Geji comes in with rip-off Kamen Kick but before he kills Tiger Beetle, Beetle run offs but then gets his head punched by this other guy and then those two have a fight while Alice runs away. Did that confuse you because if it did, good job, you just got a feel for the whole of the second half. The second half is full of one off characters who are either then killed off or just disappear off the face of the earth as well as some very big shifts in terms of plot. Like before the second half, all the assassins have shown to have some insect like traits which suits their insect E.G Alice has a thread and fang combo weapon like a spider and Goki is quick and unpredictable like a cockroach and the only thing you are supposed dispense from your self-belief is that Alice and some other characters has this special condition which allows them to be pretty good at fighting as well as the occasional feat of super strength which is all fine and dandy but near the end, they just take it too far. Like, how are we supposed to believe that the Queen Ant character has the ability to control everyone she seduces with just pheromones? There is many other cases of this but in the sake of saving time, let’s just say everything gets crazy by the end and talking about ends, lm just going to say this: The ending was trash. The ending is vague, has some set up for a possible series sequel (which hasn’t magic itself into existence yet since its ending in 2015) and is just so bad. It feels like rushed ending with a sequel set up so they can hope to bait fans into demanding for a sequel so they can continue on with this project and for that part, I don’t blame them. If “Bakuman” taught me anything, publication companies usually have final release dates set for these mangas who don’t generate that much promise so the writer has to end up quickly tying up all the loose ends into a ending so if this ending was like this in the hopes they can continue this story, I don’t blame them but I do have to criticize what I was given so it’s just a 5/10 for me. Although it does go all pear shaped by the end, this is still an action manga and it’s action is more then satisfying.

Next up, we have “Otaku No Musume-san” and if “Archanid” was my main section, this is just the cliff notes. Let’s get this out of the way, this is a slice of life manga and I like slice of life mangas but this is a very boring slice of life manga. The general idea is that an Otaku gets confronted with his own child which he never knew he had and now he spends time learning how to be a good dad for the next 63 chapters while being an typical Otaku and oh boy, it’s cliche as hell. Like, cliches aren’t inherently bad but they are bad when you don’t do something interesting with them and for me, this is what the manga is to me. Just a bunch of cliches that aren’t shown in any showy way. The gags aren’t fun, the ending is a bit out of no where because someone went “we need drama” so some unnecessary drama happens, everyone gets a happy ending and I won’t remember any of this so here’s your 4/10 and I’m going to go now.

Finally, we have “Naze Toudouin Masaya 16-sai wa Kanojo ga Dekinai no ka?” and unlike the title, this is going to short. The plot revolves one guy called Seiya and his quest to get a girlfriend and unlike me, he is so motivated to get one that he does so many cringe worthy things. Like, I haven’t even got past chapter 40 and I have put down this manga more then ten times because this manga is just so cringe worthy and when it’s not Seiya doing something stupid, it’s something that gives me depression. While it only gave me depression during the start because you generally feel for him but after a while, it felt like it was becoming harder and harder to relate to him because he just becomes so desperate for a girlfriend, he not only caused an accidental love triangle and then ruin it, at the point I am at, he is now doing the equivalent of stalking a senpai who he knows is in a relationship with someone else just to get a date. The closest I got to relating to the guy is around the time he was doing a double date with his less attractive friend, he was so close to getting a girlfriend but after finding out that they were trash talking his friend, he not only declined but slapped her and I still hate the guy. I mean, I like the fact he has at least some morals but you just slapped her. You just not only ruined your chances with any girl in your school, you just hit a woman which is so morally wrong and with that, I now effectively hate our protagonist. I’m not a SJW and I usually don’t care about hitting women but that’s only if it’s the sense of self defence so this is just so wrong to me. I’m just going to give this a 3/10 and tell you to read it if you take enjoyment in others misfortunes in a non humorous way.

See you guys next week for my Drifters review and I can promise you that it’s going to be better than this half-baked excuse of a filler

Left 4 Dead 2: Left For The Mods

I was initially planning to review Lollipop Chainsaw but since my only copy of the game is still on loan to a friend and despite the fact I have played dozens of times over, I’m still not confident about the idea of reviewing something without the subject not being there to double check so I’m doing the next best thing which L4D2 and if you are wondering how a gritty, somewhat realistic zombie apocalypse is even similar to the hack and slash glory fest that is Lollipop Chainsaw, Well one; there’s Zombies and two; you can mod the game to have Lollipop Chainsaw assets in it but enough about my love for chainsaws.

Left 4 Dead 2 is a game by Valve which you can purchase on any last gen console or PC (I will be covering the PC version) which places you as one of four survivors as you fight to one end of a map to another to reach a safe room until you escape and what you are fighting the undead and not of the Nazi kind. This is your general, fast running zombies with a couple variations chucked in of the normal zombie and couple mutations to spice the game play. You also have access to weapons because you aren’t about to fight the zombies with your fists because this isn’t Resident Evil 7 now (insert laugh track and money woes here). You always start with a pistol and access to a shotgun, a SMG, more pistols for dual wielding and a melee weapon if you are a sensible person. Later on, you can also get better weaponry like chainsaws, AKs, auto shotguns and even light machine guns if you get lucky. There is also throwables like pipe bombs, med kits and consumables like pills to help you survive and this makes life a breeze if you are being a pussy and playing standard mode with the easy difficulty. Yes, the game is a breeze when you play anything like easy or normal difficulty on the standard mode since everything pretty standard and you can enjoy the slaughter of the undead with ease with only annoyances being the special infected. I would also say the same for the Advanced and Expert modes once you have learnt the layout of the map and the standards for the AI’s actions and how to use your ammo and consumables appropriately and have proper teamwork but if you have been paying attention, I used certain words which is where I will use as my main points so let’s begin with the survivors.

I didn’t bother describing the survivors for a reason and that’s because each one is just bleh to me. I mean, we got the level headed woman, the redneck, the shady as hell con man and the fat guy who is also ironically a PE teacher (going by his name) but it doesn’t matter because all they do is change your voice over you hear because in a gameplay aspect, it doesn’t change anything at all. All the characters carry the same amount of ammo, can use all the weaponry options and have the same amount of health so there is no point in choosing a character and just go with a random option because they are all just variations of the same standard model and talking about variations, let’s talk special zombies because even though they are slightly different from each other, they actually have some change although it’s very minimal. Depending on the map, there is a variation of a zombie so for example, in “The Passing” campaign, we get riot zombies who can only be shot in the back and in “Dark Carnival”, there’s clowns with squeaky shoes that can attract hordes but yet again, none of them are major threats and serve to just be slightly more difficult cannon fodder to deal with and are ultimately gimmicks which is the same thing you can say about these campaign maps.

Each of the campaigns in these maps has a little gimmick to it which does help to not make them feel the same barring the aesthetic changes between each map. The first one, “Dead Centre” acts as your tutorial in a way as it lets you get comfortable with everything the game can throw at you and it nothing really special for a city level. It’s follow up, “The Passing” is a short filler campaign where you met the original survivors from the first game and does nothing much apart from introducing night levels. “Dark Carnival” is next and for me, this is the best one by far out of all the L4D2 campaigns. Yes, it doesn’t teach you anything new but it really takes its carnival aesthetic and run with it since we get to play carnival games, fighting zombies on attractions like coasters and end it with the survivors fighting off zombies on a stage as they signal a helicopter to pick them up with stages lightshow, all while we rocking out to the rock music that’s playing. It is followed by “Swamp Fever” which pretty much let’s fight zombies in a swamp and it’s nothing special. I mean, there is a special kind of zombies that can just crawl under the water as you wad through it which does prove as an annoyance but apart from that and the end area where you fight in a run down mansion waiting for a boat, it’s nothing spectacular. It’s followed by “Hard Rain” which is pretty much going back and forth from a gas station except in the second half, everything is flooded so it becomes an hassle on the way back. The final campaign is “The Parish” and it does nothing special. It feels like “Dead Centre” and it’s only redeeming part is the final chapter where you have to run non stop across a bridge to get to the heli. There is the “Cold Stream” campaign but it’s just set in a forest and it’s nothing special yet again. Apart from these aesthetic changes and new slight annoyances, they are just simply backdrops for shooting zombies which is great since that’s what it should be but when it comes to replayability, it doesn’t take long until you figure out all the spawn locations for items and zombies and you can only find replayability in either doing it with new players, going for the special achievements locked to those maps or doing it on a harder mode but that’s where I think it falls which is why I think you should get the PC version of the game and that’s because of glorious mods.

I mean, there is other benefits with the PC version such as getting all the DLC as well as the old campaigns from the original game for free but its biggest benefit is the addition of the Steam Workshop which means you can play the game with user made content (and they don’t charge money for it like Bestheda did) and this is both the metaphorical poison and cure that the game needs. On the bright side, this adds that much needed replayability from the addition of new campaigns and maps to play on which means you always have something new to play plus there is also mods that can change in game models and texture so you can make the game more suited for your tastes which is great for larger audience appeal but also has downsides. Let’s begin with quality of the mods. Yes, there is a large quantity of mods to use but yet again, many of them lack quality so it’s hard to get good stuff that doesn’t look like it’s been shat out of the unity engine. I mean, it’s hard to find a good original campaign which isn’t a remake of another game and a boring asset flip and this leads into another problem which is supporting your game on community made content. It doesn’t matter if that content is good or not, if you have to use community sourced content to add more to your game, you have no faith in that game to keep the audience entertained beyond the original experience. Yes, it is a fan’s way of showing their love for the game but it’s still a lack of self confidence which is unfortunate since these mods are the only way you can get past 20-30 hours of playing the game. I have ~280 hours in this game already and ~260 hours of that comes from mod usage so you can’t deny that mods adds replayability and is in fact, the only reason why I keep playing this game now. The game does have some fun as coop game and as a solo game if we were to look at the base game but without mods, it would not succeed past the 30 hour mark, yet alone 200 hours.

For me, this game is at least a 6/10 since it hard to find any enjoyment beyond the first 30 hours but even if it has to use mods to hold up now, it still a solid coop FPS and holds up with today’s standards and if you ask me, I think it’s still great to play. Just make sure to get the PC version since the console versions don’t have mod support or all the extra free DLC unless you want to fund more of EA’s micro transactions.

Hellsing: Nazi Vampires!?

I did want to talk about Drifters but I felt like it would be easier to discuss the topic with context from the mangaka's previous work which is pretty much laid down the groundwork for his writing style and made a name for himself: Hellsing. Now, I know Kouta Hirano's (the mangaka) first published work is the 4 part one shot "Gunmania" which did get a continuation in the form of "Assassine" but Assassine has not be translated any further then 6 chapters and I'm not a fan of Gunmania plus Hellsing is pretty much his break out title as a big name so that's my reasoning.

I will be talking about the manga and its proper anime adaption, "Hellsing: Ultimate" and I was planning to discuss the original Hellsing anime but it is a FMA issue anime (don't worry if you don't get it) and therefore is non-canon and its been a while since I watched it and all I can say for it is that I vaguely remember liking it for being more horror focused unlike Ultimate's over the top action and ridiculousness.

The general synopsis for Hellsing is simple: Hellsing is a anti-supernatural organisation who has a vampire called Alucard (very subtle, I know), Alucard makes a virgin girl called Seres into a vampire after saving her from another vampire and makes her his servant, their main base of operations gets raided by two "vampires" working for another organisation who is quickly to be revealed to be the nazis who then continue to raid England with their Nazi Vampires and Hellsing has to stop them and while this all happens, the Catholic Church is being a bunch of knobs as per usual since they are coming to do another crusade on these poor heathens. Now, if that sounds incredible stupid, well; 1: Welcome to Japan, 2: It's get way more stupid then that, and 3: that's what makes Hellsing great.

Point number 1 is obvious to anyone who watches anime/read manga but point number 2 might not. I mean, my synopsis was pretty brief for a reason and that's because I can't describe everything that's just so downright stupid to the point of being unbelievable in a rough 2K word review. Like, when one of the heads of the church watched London burn from the distance on a lounge chair, casually has a nap who then continues to assembly an army to have a crusade on the "heathens" who are currently being slaughtered by the Nazis (who are still vampires and maybe also zombies) while electing himself as the new pope which he then leads the crusade from his pope mobile which is getting airlifted by a attack helicopter and is screaming catholic insults into his mic as his forces mow down everything in their way. Oh yeah, did I mention that everyone in the crusade is dressed like the KKK? Hellsing is over the top and it rebels in its silliness and that's why I think this is what makes up one half of the greatness that is Hellsing.

To finish off point three, we will need how it looks or in short hand, its style. Being a wannabe manga writer, I like analysising manga, especially mangas made by the same mangaka to see if I can find their comfort zone which can be referred to as their style which can vary from the writing, over lapping character types and even their drawing style. Sometimes it’s easy to see right away and sometimes it’s harder to find if they haven’t developed their style yet. Hellsing is in the latter category since Hellsing is where you can see his style coming which is over the top action with gorgeous art which is then cut with bad drawn joke scenes which is complimented by the surreal predictions of real life figures which is a style that doesn’t really stand out until Drifters, but I will save the Drifters praise for the review on it so back on topic. When I say gorgeous art, I seriously mean gorgeous art or to be accurate, Gore-geous art because what’s more better then to pair with the ridiculous concept then the ridiculous amount of gore. I am a massive gore fan since when done right, the splatter of blood is so beautiful in manga’s black and white stylings and considering this manga started its publication back in 1997 and still looks amazing compared to both 90s and modern manga because of its drawings and predictions of gore, it’s just gore-ious which gets even better in the anime where the action is just at the max of goreness, it’s just fun to watch which is where I have to end my praise because I do have some personal problems with this series.

I feel like to address my problems, I should give a little history lesson. I was first introduced to Hellsing with the original non canon anime series which I all remember being a very creepy take on the manga, it didn’t have the Nazi Vampires or the church being knob ends, it was Alucard and Seres solving supernatural mysteries as part of their job as a agency made to deal with the supernatural. While yes, the ending was bonkers, it wasn’t on the same level of bonkers of the entirety of the source material. I did immediately jump onto the Ulitmate version right after the original but ended up stopping at episode 8 because it just got so confusing and stupid for me to watch. Admittly, this was still in my early phrase of weebdom and I wasn’t use to this sort of stuff. I didn’t jump back in and start enjoying the series after I finally got used to it all and I remembered that the series even existed when I watched the hilirious “Hellsing Ultimate: Abridged” by TeamFourStar which finally convinced me to read the manga and rewatch the ultimate series properly and you wonder what’s the point of this little story, it’s my long way of saying the series is isolating to new people, especially the ones who still don’t have the mentality of “Anime/manga is gets weird at times” and is why I have a hard time recommending this to anyone who is a casual viewer or don’t have that mentality yet and the other problem I have with Hellsing is the fact that Drifters just one ups this whole manga. This is a point I will be explaining in much more detail in the Drifters review but in short, everything that Hellsing does that can be considered to be good and unique, Drifters takes it and improves on it, leaving Hellsing in the dust with the title of “Drifters Prototype”.

Despite all that negativity, Hellsing is still a solid series which is why I’m giving it a 8/10 and I am willing to come back to and read/watch again and again and recommend to any anime veteran who still hasn’t watched it and hey, I even would recommend it to you, the reader if you this review peaked your interest and you can read the series or watch the animes on various websites but it’s always good to support the creators (although I do sense a bad omen with a rumoured 11th episode). If unfortunately you don’t find the series appealing, don’t feel bad because anime/manga is a broad sea and I will be crossing it to review more of this wonderful sub genre of animation. After all, this is only the start of my anime reviews and I already have plans to talk about many popular series but first, I think it’s time to go back to games so next time, I will be talking about a certain Valve game so I hope you like gore-ious fun (I should really stop with the puns).

The Greatest Showman: More Like The Greatest Hack

I would like to first like to apologies for how long it has taken me to write this review since the last one. I was originally planning to talk about “Hellsing” as our first dive into Manga and Anime but I then watched “The Greatest Showman” four days after the Smite review so I postponed the Hellsing review so I can dunk on this movie a couple times but I then decided that I need to at least watch some more musicals before I do so and yes, I did say musicals because this hot garbage of a Oscar bait is a musical, don’t ask how. Nearly two weeks on and I still haven’t had the time to watch stuff like “La La Land” but I do still have experiences with musicals (as long as “Mama Mia” and “Pitch Perfect” counts) so let’s get this done already so I can get this trash out of my life.

The Greatest Showman is a “musical” about a guy (I forgot his name but I do know he is portrayed by Hugh Jackman so I’ll just call him Hugh) who looks for a way to provide more for his family so he decides to find all these “wonders” (they are really just outcasts of the 19th century society) and make the first circus but in the context of the movie, he might as well made another thertre group. If I want to get all the praise out of the way, I will say that the first couple opening minutes of this film is great fun. It gets you pumped and gets you hooked which is such a shame when this leads up to the main song of this “musical” which absolutely ruins the tone of this movie for me. This is a movie that is set in the 19th century so why the hell are they singing the equivalent of pop songs for this whole movie. I mean, other musicals have the excuse of being set closer to the modern era to have these ditzy kinds of songs but when they don’t, at least they try to stick to the tone and theme of the era. I mean, look at “La Miserable”. They do the more dramatic and orchestrated pieces of musics and that’s not because they just felt like it. It’s done because it fits the tone and theme and then comes stuff like this which just reeks of low effort and I’m not only talking about the music.

Plot wise, it’s probably more bog standard then the music. I found this movie to be extremely predictable and by the numbers as you can pretty much guess each beat of the movie easy. It goes from the initial problem to solution to new problem to the climax of the problem to the solution and each plot point is dull and boring. Now, this wouldn’t be something I would draw too much attention to because in a musical, the plot is secondary as it is simply there to string each musical piece together but when the music is dull, it can’t be helped that I would be drawn towards the plot in the hopes of the entertainment I paid for and if the plot being generic wasn’t bad enough, they still somehow produce major plot holes and unnecessary scenes. Let’s begin with the first one where Hugh gets a check to fund his plans from the bank and he only convinces them with a deed to some trading ships which he somehow got from his old job before he was fired. Now, it was set up in the past scene that these trade ships have sunk to the bottom of the sea so you would expect the bank to show up later in the movie after finding out the truth but nope, this never happens and feels like ineffective use of Chekhov’s Gun (its a writing principle of when you put a plot device in a earlier act, you should make use of the plot device later down the line). Another problem with the plot is that there is this critic character who is set up as a pseudo-villain for the movie because his reviews pretty much the cause of one of the main issue which is a group of protesters barring the “circus” for some reason I forgot but after the protest get out of hand and leads to the burning down of the main building they perform in, he shows up to console with Hugh in a way to redeem his character, he admits he should of written it as “A Celebration Of Humanity” and you can’t be helped but to think “So why didn’t you do that in the first place then?” I mean, so much conflict could of been avoided if you wrote that to begin with but it seems like they only wrote it like that to just to have more conflict for the climax but it’s just so stupid as a plot device. There is more to rant about but then this paragraph would just be a massive wall of text of me ranting about this annoying plot so let’s just move on.

Speaking about the technical side of things, it’s as good as the movie’s plot which means this is so bad in terms of production value. The back drops are so obviously 2D painted backdrops and it doesn’t even try to hide the fact. I mean, it would be acceptable if this was a theater production but this is a Hollywood movie with Hollywood standards so they could of at least tried harder but nope, we get the most obvious painted backdrops for most of the scenes and if we want to talk about low effort production values, let’s talk the CGI usage. Granted the movie doesn’t use too much CGI but when it does, it’s so obvious and most of this is directed at the midget of this movie. Early on, we are introduced to this small person and you would at least expect them to hire someone real to do the job but nope, they decided that it would be easier to CGI someone’s face onto the most obvious puppet body they could find and call that their midget. Yes, it’s not that obvious to begin with but it starts to stand out quickly like at the first main song they sing at the start of the circus, Hugh sends out the poor guy in a horse and there is a tracking shot of the horse going around the little ring they have and it’s just so obvious that the horse and the midget riding it is CGI. I mean, we live in a world where Hollywood has mastered the art of CGI to the point it’s becoming uncanny to see something so real that’s just been computered generated but here, we see the equivalent of early 2000s CGI and that’s an insult to early 2000s CGI because early 2000s CGI is much better then this. For examples, look at any Pixar movie who are made completely of CGI.

 
If I was to get on a more personal opinion and take off my critic hat, I would still not enjoy the movie. I mean, apart from the starting part of the movie, the only other enjoyment I got from this movie was both Hugh Jackman and Zac Efron’s performances. For me, these two are the stand outs of this movie because they not only have proven their musical prowess before in early productions but the best song of the whole movie is sung by these two in a duet and that was the highlight of the movie for me which is a shame the rest of this movie kind of sucked. I had zero expectations going into this movie and I was only going to watch it because my mum wanted to see it for her birthday and I thought I could do a quick little review on it so when this movie revealed itself to be a musical, I was ready to hunker down because musicals aren’t my favourite thing in the world (which is ironic when one of your favourite movies is “Mama Mia: The Movie”) but this was more disappointing then usual. I mean, everyone who left the theatre, even my mum who loves musicals as much as she loves Princess Diana, came out with the most mediocre look on their faces and for a movie to provoke such a facial expression on the audience, that’s a bad omen.

 
This gets a 2/10 from me because this movie is just so dull, it’s bad. The whole thing reeks of low effort trash which serves no other purpose but to fill in a release schedule slot and leaves no impression on the audience which is why I had such a hard time writing this. It’s just so dull, the notes I made in my mind just kept slipping out and I think it’s better if we just let it sit on the shelf. If you are into musicals and I’m talking border line obsession here, you might get a kick out of it but for anyone else, there is nothing to here to watch unless you find horrible CGI, bad songs and horrible production values appealing which in that case, you must be a Oscar Voter so hello there, I hope you don’t let Chips get a Oscar nomination because if it does, you are officially too old to watch modern movies.