Saint's Row 4: The Ideal Saint's Row Game

Welcome to the final Saints Row review until I tackle the original or Volition decided to make a proper SR5 game that isn’t Agents Of Mayhem. I remember getting hyped about this game back in 2014. I remember using Instagram to share my reactions to all the new stuff they have been revealed and how I lost my mind when they teased Gat’s return with the line “Gat Is Back”. I would later buy it in December right after I finish performing in a local Christmas parade where I represented my dance school. To say that Christmas was the best Christmas I ever had so far would be accurate. It is now nearly four years since its release and I finished this game fives times over by now so say I am experienced in the game is an understatement. I know everything about this game from where to get the hidden dildo bat, how to get the noisy cricket rip off and even how to farm cash easy which I made a steam guide for. I know this game as well as the back of my YuGiOh cards and I am more than ready to talk about this game so let’s get that plot summary done.

Totally not following the events of the true ending of SR3, the game leads us into a cold opening of a COD parody where we are introduced to Aisha, an MI6 agent and her handler, Matt "Cyberpunk Ass" Miller. After killing a bunch of terrorists and their leader, the now evil Cyrus from SR3, the player character disables a nuke while it’s flying in the air to that one good Aerosmith song. A couple months after the prologue, it’s revealed that the player character is PODUS now and he has recruited Keith David (the actor) and Benjamin “Motherfucking” King straight out of SR1 to be his chief adviser and yes, the Motherfucking part is required when saying his full name. After making a series of decisions where you either tell cancer to go kill itself or give everyone cake, punch a senate member either in the head or the “special area”and deciding high five Josh Birk or not (the answer is you always accept it), aliens called the Zin attack. After you run into the Oval Office and exercise your right according to the third amendment, you start killing aliens while you watch your crew get abducted. After utilising the world’s most American anti-air artillery array to take down alien ships, you confront the leader of the Zin, Zinyak where he continues to smack you around until you become unconscious. You wake up in a 50s styled nightmare world and after breaking that, it’s revealed you are in a simulation and Zinyak drops you into another simulation to where the Saints never existed. Kinze who helped you break the original simulation, tutorials you through some other stuff and helps you unlock super powers. After using the first set of super powers to escape to the real world, you wake up and escape from a matrix like pod and you find yourself on the alien mothership. After killing your way again through aliens, Kinze and Keith David saves you in an spaceship and you escape from the mothership to “Baby Don’t Hurt Me”, Zinyak blows up the earth, killing the rest of the people he didn’t abduct. The president actually having a morally right thought for once, decides to exact revenge on Zinyak for destroying the earth while rescuing the rest of his crew. Keep in mind, this is alone is only the first two-three hours of the game. There is still a lot more craziness to cover but that’s for later.

If SR3’s plot was a convoluted mess, SR4’s plot is a convoluted mess with parodies and references mixed in to make it it even more convoluted but this time, it’s the good kind of convoluted. You know, the kind of convoluted mess that Hellsing and the alike like to snort during their down time. What makes this better than SR3 is because it keeps one tone throughout the whole game and you know this because they set it up within the first hour of game play. You are the president fighting aliens in a simulated city where you have superpowers and you can use weird sci-fi guns to kill aliens. This isn’t SR3 where it wants be taken as a serious gangsta story while trying to cooky and wacky. This is straight up, balls to the wall, crazy fun from begin to end and I love it. It doesn’t want to be taken seriously because it wants you to be entertained and having fun instead. They filled this game with callbacks, references to other series and even straight up parodies of other pop culture icons. The missions where you rescue your homies are full of their worst nightmares which is either a segue to have more crazy fun or recall old elements. For example, Pierce’s rescue mission starts with you shooting mascots in the penthouse suite from SR3 and you end the mission controlling the giant statue from SR3 to beat up a giant can of Saints Flow called Paul. There is also Gat’s rescue mission where you play in a retro side scrolling beat em up which renacts the events of the Ronin storyline from SR2. Yes, it does have serious moments like when you renact the scene where you have to save Shaundi from Veteran Child again but that’s because you can’t renact these scenes in a non-serious manner but it’s necessary for plot progression so you can’t really fault it for doing this. I also think it doesn’t take away from the fun because I still think it’s a fun callback, tone issue otherwise but you only can view this as a fun callback if you are invested in the other games. The plot is very tied to the previous game due to all the references the game makes to the older games. There is a surprisingly a lot of SR1 callbacks which confused me as well when I first played it and still don’t know much about the characters who came from SR1. This also applies to the references like Keith David appearing in the game because he just seems really random without the context of him being the voice of Julius Little from SR1 and SR2 and it gets even worse if you never seen “They Live” to understand why he is friends with Roddy Piper. While the series has finally fixed its tone issue with this game, they just made another one in the form of alienating newbies and that can be a turn off. So that’s just another issue but remember last week, I said the plot is simply there to compliment the game play and unlike SR3, the plot and the game play go hand in hand.

As expected, the game play is the same as SR3 but they have added more features this time, mainly superpowers. You start off with the basic super speed and super jump and progressing later into the game, you can unlock blast, telekinesis, stomp and aura which comes with optional unlockables and variations if you spend the time to do the side missions for them or collect giant blue orbs to upgrade the abilities. The fun thing is that if you just avoid collecting them and focus on getting missions and activities done, you will still find yourself progressing to these unlocks since the side missions are just a checklist which you can do between main missions which is a great game play design choice. They also added a little more customisation options and no, they didn’t re-added layers. What they did instead is add more clothing options at cost of getting rid of some of them but they also added weapon customisation. While upgrading used to be a simple levelling system, you can now choose what upgrades you want to get first and you can also change your weapon skins. You can have sci-fi looking skins like making the rapid fire SMG look like the Robocop gun or you could just be silly with them like making your burst rifle into a water soaker which can completely the absolutely fun alien weaponry they added. Ignoring the dubstep gun because it’s pretty much synonyms with the game and needs no attention since we already know it’s great fun, there is a black hole launcher, a bounce rifle which makes any fight into a game of pinball, an abduction gun for abducting idiots, a rifle that decodes everything with a single shot. If you have the DLC, you have stuff like the Plunger gun, the ‘Merica and there is even a gun that launches knives at your opponent. The weaponry options are crazy but they are the fun crazy so it’s acceptable just like the new activities. While some are very boring like the rift ones, you have the fight club coming back as Super Power Fight Club where you fight old villains with superpowers. If punching people isn’t your thing, there is the returning Professor Genki activity in the form of “Mind Over Murder” where you fling things with your telekinesis into floating hoops. There is also the returning assassinations and chop shop missions from SR2 but they have been jacked up to suit the nature of the game now so the targets are super powered and often references to other games like having another time to kill that bellend, Julius Little. What I am trying to get at here is the game is just a really fun romp to play through and I do find myself booting it up time to time just to run around the map and have fun but I still do have some problems with this game.

I’m going to start with my most petty complaints and that’s the enemies. Since the game has became more of superhero sandbox than a gangster one, it has had to update the enemies so they can possess some form of threat to you and while I don’t mind some of them, the late game ones are can be very annoying and in some cases, pace breakers. The first one I want to complain about is the murder bots which are just T-800 rip offs and while they are easy enough to deal with, they can be annoying due to the fact if you don’t blow up the head, they will crawl at you and blow up. On top of this, they take a lot of bullets to deal with and they are often equipped with mine launchers which are annoying if you haven’t unlocked the no rag doll upgrade. There is also these annoying rolling robots which are pretty much invisible except for this one weak spot behind their head and it’s really annoying to position yourself behind them so you can shoot them there but they don’t compared to the Wardens. These guys are supposed to be the main mini boss in the story line and you can absorb them matrix style to acquire new powers but these guys can spawn in after clearing out certain data points or if you hit the max level on the wanted bar which I hate. If you are like me, you probably want to start shit and just have fun in a constant gun fight between you and the enemy but these guys spawn in and despawn all the other enemies so you have to one v one these guys and after you defeat them, your wanted bar is empty and you have to start again. It just ruins the fun of having the police on you all the time and I just found myself turning on the no warden cheat just so it can’t ruin my fun. So wardens are a piece of crap but they are much better than the ironic hellhole I am going to briefly talk about which Gat Out Of Hell (And I will be getting into spoiler territory here for both Gat Out Of Hell and SR4’s ending).

I don’t usually talk about DLC unless they are really bad to the game or offer more necessary content to the base game and guess why I am bring up Gat Out Of Hell. I hate this game with a passion because it killed off any chance of us getting a SR5 since this is our SR5 considering this retcons most of the series with its multiple endings and considering Agents Of Mayhem, they ruin any chance of the Saints Row series coming back. I hate it because one of the endings is God giving Gat (who has just killed Satan after he kidnaps the president) a bunch of fun choices and one of them was recreating the earth. Now, if you have read the setting section of the wiki article for Agents Of Mayhem, you will notice it says it takes place after God recreated Earth which means, what was teased at the end of SR4 is now impossible to do. For context, the end of the SR4 has them implying that Zinyak was so smart, he had the access to time travel. Now, I will martyr myself to prove my point that any form of time travel ruins any media since you can retcon anything you want but in the context of the Saints Row series, I could made SR5 a really fun game which can be full of even more fun callbacks and interesting scenarios and weaponry but they murdered that chance with this game. If they did the one where Gat got Aisha back, it would of been completely on the clear to do SR5 but no, we have Agents Of Mayhem and I haven’t played Agents Of Mayhem but I am actively mad at Volition for shooting themselves in the foot because they just ruined their own set up and guessing by Agents Of Mayhem’s score, it wasn’t worth it. You may argue that it’s standalone DLC and therefore shouldn’t be tied to the main game but you are wrong. If it was like Blood Dragon where it’s own little universe without being connect to the main series, it would be fine but Gat Out Of Hell isn't that because it’s a continuation of the series so it’s a part of Saints Row 4 and I have to review wants presented to me. Gat Out Of Hell ruined the end of the game and to an extent, the whole series for me just because it wanted to set up Agents Of Mayhem and I am not happy with it. Plus gameplay wise, it’s just a reskin of SR4 except everything is now themed to be demonic themed and the only thing I like is the fact they added a proper flying mechanic that the main game doesn’t have. They also brought dead characters and a chance to shoot Dex multiple times over so I praise the game in that aspect of it means if I have to put up with Dan Vogel’s shit again. Overall, it’s a piece of shit in terms of plot but gameplay wise, it’s just some more Saints Row patented fun.

Despite the cancer lump that is Gat Out Of Hell and the fact the series is alienating to new players from a plot stand view, I would still recommend this game hands down just for the game play alone. It’s a fun and weird sandbox game that you won’t see many AAA studios doing these days outside of Volition and I wouldn’t have it any other way so 7/10. It would be an 8 if they didn’t add the steam workshop and we all know how I feel about that from the L4D2 review. As for the remaining games I haven’t covered yet, Saints Row is right now a “break in case of emergency” game and Agents Of Mayhem is currently at a retail price of 30 USD so I might pick it up and review between all the manga reviews since I was hyped for this game because it seemed like they finely tuned the SR formula even more. As for everything else, refer to last week’s review for what the manga reviews will look like and link to my YouTube channel in the sidebar if you want to watch my own YuGiOh series and the occasional league replay.

Saints Row The Third: The Awkward Transition Game

I remember getting hyped about Saints Row The Third when it was announced. I was ten years old at the time and I was just so excited after seeing a dev video on it. I also remember making a sly remark about there being no difference in the graphics which got me schooled by my Aunty Sharon but that’s irrelevant. SR3 will probably remain my longest played game on my steam account (excluding any MOBAs) due to how replayable I find to be but that doesn’t mean I am blinded by nostalgia. If you were to ask ten year old me how I would feel about the game, I would say it’s an easy 9/10 and if you were to ask fifteen year old me the same question, he would probably say it has a different appeal compared to SR2 and give it an 8/10. The point is, I’m not going to be so easy on the game because if you were to ask me now, I think the game is just a streamlined SR2 which you might think is a good thing but it isn’t. I think the game losing some of its unique features and putting bit more of a “stupid fun” vibe then what the original had but we will get there soon enough. Let’s talk about the plot.

Following the events when you pretty much make the Ultor corporation your slave, the “Third Street Saints” gang has became a brand. Shaundi has cleaned up her act and is now a reality TV star, Pierce is selling Saints Flow and the player character is still being the boss. Following a promo heist which was supposed to train this guy called Josh Birk, they get in trouble due to Birk’s stupidity (he live up to his name at least), they get caught by the police who then releases them to the “Morningstar”. After revealing that the bank they tried to rob belong to them, their boss, the french bellend Philip offers them to work under him. Naturally, the boss rejects them and after killing all their gang members on the plane where the meeting is being held, Gat gets killed (and ready to be undone by SR4) and you crashed a plane and find yourself in Steelport. Philip, somehow surviving the whole ordeal then strips all control and money the Saints ever had inside the city so you have to climb back to the top and become top dog again. If that sounds interesting, don’t worry because most of that is undone two missions later and you kill off Philip four missions after that. This game’s plot is a lot less complicated and is more of a one way street with no freedom of choice. There is an illusion of choice from story tied unlockables with different cutscenes but it’s nothing game changing. I do think the plot does get better around the halfway act when they introduce STAG and their futuristic weaponry and we get a proper antagonist in the form of Killbane, masked luchador extraordinaire. I also think it becomes more of its own thing after the death of Philip since it feels less of a rerun of SR2 and tries to be its own thing with a somewhat “wacky fun” attitude but I think that’s a downside. While it is better, it feels like it’s trying to have the best of both serious gangster action and wacky stupid fun and it’s just makes this weird tone. Like, you can be doing one mission where you are hijacking this STAG plane and it’s all serious but then two minutes later, you are falling out of the sky in a tank and shooting at other tanks because you just blew up the plane’s cockpit and that somehow makes zombies. It’s stuff like that which stops the plot from being any form of engaging and just ultimately makes the plot feel like it’s been written by someone who doesn’t understand tone.

Character wise, this is also a weird gray area for me. Since they (temporary) killed off Gat, we now have Shaundi filling in his serious badass role which is a weird choice considering this is the same person who was doing drugs 24/7 in the previous game. I do kind of like new Shaundi but I still think old Shaundi was ultimately the more fun character. Pierce is still being Pierce so he gets the pass plus he also now does car karaoke with you so he is automatically best homie. Josh Birk is well, a berk and serves as nothing but plot device but he is kind of likeable as a character. There’s Oleg who serves as a reason why we have giant tanks called “Brutes” running around is fun to call in for a fight but that’s it. I think the best characters to come out of this are the two of three new lieutenants which help you take down the three gangs that make up the “Syndicate”. There is Zimos who is the sweet talking, autotune pimp who I find to be quite funny as a character with all his sex metaphors making the boss feel uncomfortable which is a fun combination. There is also Kinze who is just hard to explain as a character but I think she is best summed up as an awkward talking hacker and is so popular, she is one the few who got carried over to SR4 and I don’t blame them. The third one and only unlikable one of the lot is Angel who was Killbane’s former partner and is just the stereotypical grumpy old man who wants revenge type and therefore, isn’t interesting and that also applies to our antagonists. Like, Philip is just there as a figurehead for whole organisation who gets squished by a ball later so he gets no fleshing out. The DeWynter Sisters who pretty much run the Morningstar are there to have one killed off and the other to join the Saints later. Matt Miller was a cool character as a cyberpunk hacker who is in charge of the Deckers but he runs off like a pussy after you beat him up a bit. Killbane and the STAG commander, Cyrus, are pretty much the same. They are both bald twats of psychopaths with the only real difference being one is fighting for the good side and the other on the other side. So character wise, Volition kind of dropped the ball on it but the gameplay does make up for it but not very well.

The gameplay is still the same as we expected from Saints Row 2 but with some changes. To begin with, they have streamlined the character customisation options so there is no options to change your permanent facial expression or your walk cycle but they added a option to change the size of your junk. Yeah, that’s what I wanted, an option to change my junk, not all this other stuff you cut out. Thanks Volition for streamlining the player experience for no reason at all. I mean, they also got rid of layers so you can’t layer your clothing so I hope you like all these presets. This needless streamlining just seems a very stupid decision that only a executive would think was a good idea and talking about streamlining, they also streamlined the whole map. Steelport overall feels a lot smaller than Stillwater and top of that, they got rid of all the secret spots hidden around the map so there is no longer a mall to explore or hidden pathways to use as shortcuts. It just feels like they took out the fun out of exploring the map and talking about taking the fun out of things, they also cut out most of the activities. While story progression is no longer tied to the respect bar which is a god send, activities only serve to give you money and territory and think because the activities take a back seat now, they decided to cut out all the fun ones. There is no more Septic Avenger, no more Fuzz and what do we have in its place? Well we have Professor Genki's Super Ethical Murder Fun Time which is just you shooting mascots in a very linear obstacle course and that’s not a good replacement. I want to spray shit all over buildings, not shoot mascots because I wanted to do that, I would just walk out into the streets and shoot someone with my laser rifle. They did add more fun weapons like a giant dildo bat called “The Penetrator” and a gun that can call down an air strike but compared to SR4, it just seems mediocre. While the DLC adds a Chumgun that summons a giant shark to kill people and a bazooka that launches octopuses that can mind control enemies and explode at the touch of a button, it just doesn’t compare to SR4 and that’s the problem here.

As good as SR3 is, it just feels like a prototype for SR4 which does what SR3 want to do much better. I am going to say this again but SR3 is seriously tone deaf because it’s trying to have two different cakes and eating it at the same time. They want to be serious but also have silly, wacky fun times and it’s just horrible. I still think the game is fun but I don’t enjoy it for the plot because it’s just a mess. The plot does introducing interesting scenarios like fighting in a cyberspace which gives you the equivalent of the mega man mega buster but it just adds to the initial problem of tone deafness. This is the final formal complaint I have against the game since I still think the gameplay is solid and that’s the most important aspect of a game like this. The plot is simply there to complement the gameplay but the plot does still need to stand on its own two legs and that’s the stumbling point. The game just ultimately feels like a transitional point of the series as it streamlines the SR2 gameplay and acts as a base for SR4 which will achieve what SR3 wanted to do in a much better way. Is it the runt of the litter? No, because Gat Out Of Hell exists but that’s for next week. Still, SR3 was a sacrifice that had to be made for SR4 to exist as the whole plot kind of acts like it wants to cut off all the old ties the game had while setting up elements for new direction they want to take the series in. It is ultimately up to you to decide if the game did the last two games justice or not but I think this was a very messy transition due to the mixing of the two themes.

6/10. That’s all I am willing to give this. It’s a game that had to happen but there was definitely a much better way of doing it and if they took the time to do that, this would of been a 8/10 easily but they didn’t so here's their 6/10. I would still recommend picking it up on steam if you want to experience the Saints Row series but just be wary if the plot gets too stupid for you. Next week will mark the end of this trilogy of reviews with Saints Row 4 and I can tell you, I am both excited and very sad because I get to talk about SR4 but I also have to talk about Gat Out Of Hell. That’s not going to be a fun paragraph to write but let’s talk about the plans coming after this. So after another round “The Undiscussables”, I have two mangas lined up for proper reviews in the form of “Bleach” and “World Trigger” so that’s fun for non manga readers. If that seems daunting, I am planning to review “Black Panther” and the new Mama Mia movie coming up so I will pad it in there for you lot who don’t care about manga reviews. For those looking for games, don’t expect that for a while since I am already feeling burned out doing SR2 and SR3 back to back for these reviews but if I was to do a game review, it might be on a real life game or on another MOBA depending on how I feel. Also for those who want to see some of my video content, there is a link to my YouTube channel in the sidebar where you can watch my own YuGiOh series and the occasional League replay.

Saints Row 2: GTA V Before GTA V

If anyone is wondering why I’m reviewing Saints Row Two instead of the original one first, well it’s because I didn’t have a copy of the game since it’s the only Saints Row game to date to not be ported to PC which is how I am going to be reviewing all of these games but that would be a lie. I did find a copy of the original game on Xbox 360 so I do own a copy now and after playing it ten minutes, I gave up because I found the controls very frustrating. I might review it at a later date but not very soon. I did want to talk about this game first anyway because this game is one of the games that got me properly into games during my younger years. I was playing GTA: San Andres as well whenever I went to my auntie’s house as well as other games but Saints Row Two would always be my favourite game to play when I’m there but we don’t want to hear about my childhood, we want to see me talk about a decade old video game and try to justify that it still holds up in this generation of consoles.

Saints Row Two is a 2008 video game made by Volition who are known for their series such as “Red Faction” and nothing else which is interesting. They might as well only be known for making the wonderful Saints Row series and the equally good Red Faction series because they do have other games but I bet no one has heard heard of “Freespace” or “Summoner” but I digress. The game play is simply like any other GTA game which means it’s a third person, open world sandbox where you play as a gangster and do gangster stuff which means lots of shooting and driving. What makes it interesting and not a simple GTA clone is in fact, a couple of things so let’s start with the plot (minor spoilers contained for both SR and SR2).

Set in the fictional city of Stilwater, following the events of SR where you were put into a coma by a failed assassination attempt by undercover cop, Troy and the former boss of the “Third Street Saints”, Julius, the player wakes up five years later in Stilwater’s maximum security prison and then continues to escape from the prison with Calos, a man who is only there to serve as a way to continue the plot but still has character. After you escape by boat with Calos (and killed many people during the process), Calos explains that the city was levelled by a earthquake during the five year period which let the Ultor Corporation come in and pretty much take control of the city. Calos also tells the player that Troy is now the police commissioner, Julius disappeared off the map and the saints have pretty much disappeared as a gang which let three other gangs to roll in again. After getting some clothes, saving Johnny Gat from a trail and recruiting three new lieutenants (including Calos), the player then becomes “The Boss” and continue to take out the new gangs and then Ultor to take control of the city as you rebuild the Saints legacy. A simple plot by all means but I still find it as a fun little romp to play through since the actual storylines is what makes the story one of the best aspects and yes, I did say storylines. In this game, you can jump between which gang related mission you want to do which comes with their own little storyline where we see the wonderful main characters develop in their own way but don’t worry, it doesn’t get in the way of shooting plus each story seems to have its own little theme behind it.

We have “The Brotherhood” which is a gang of tattooed freaks who is lead by Lieutenant Warf - I mean Munroe and who’s storyline is just one of rivalry and closest the game gets to proper street gang fighting but still depressing in its own right. We then have “The Sons Of Samundi” who are just a bunch of drug dealers who is lead by a guy who calls himself “The General” but I would say this storyline to be the weakest of the three available (excluding the main one) since it’s less gang fights and more disabling the trade of drugs but they did give us the seemingly immortal “Mr Sunshine” so I’ll give them that. The final gang is “The Ronin” which just a yakuza gang which is a bit out of place but they do offer some tear jerking moments and are traditionally the final gang you need to defeat. While you do have freedom to do whatever gang you want to do in any order, it feels like the game would rather have you do the gangs in order of “Brotherhood, Sons, Ronin” so it goes “depression, funny romp and then depression” but if you are like me, you do the Brotherhood because they are bellends and therefore deserve to die, the Ronin because they have the good vehicles and then the Sons because they are just boring. The plot does have some callbacks to the original game with old characters making their reappearances in each of the storylines so it can be confusing if you haven’t played the first game but in the end, it’s still a well written series of storylines and although it does go off the wall near to the end (which will soon become the norm for this series as you will see), it’s still a quirky gangsta plot which I still find enjoyable to play through, even if I know all the twists but enough of that. I think I should move onto some gameplay before I lose more readers with this massive wall of text so let’s talk characters because they are interesting enough for a paragraph.

The main ones I want to touch on here is the two of the three lieutenants and Gat since I want to talk about the player character when we reach SR4 . I only going to talk about the mainstays Calos only appears in this game for plot reasons and his character is prett pay standard so let’s talk about Gat. Gat is pretty much the badass of the series and is your right hand man and residential murder enthusiast so just think Trevor from GTA V but with more hair but unlike Trevor, Gat is far more relatable. While Trevor pretty much embodies every single GTA V Online player, Gat is relatable because he is grounded as a character and he isn’t depicted as an insane homicidal maniac. He is just a gangbanger who lives this life because it’s the only thing he knows and when the “dramatic moment” happens in the Ronin story line (I’m not spoiling it), he becomes even more relatable as a human being and that’s why I think he is well thought out and is why he brought back for SR4 despite the events of SR3. There is also Pierce Washington who is the most cocky of the lot and he is brilliant because of it. This guy has style and he is possibly the most sensible thinking person in this game which makes him a great comedical counter to the Player/Gat, even if most of the jokes is the Player dismissing Pierce’s plans for a full frontal assault. There is also Shaundi who is just a drug addict and while she can easily be the damsel in distress type due to her easy going nature, she pulls her weight around and can act as a foil to Player’s sometimes serious nature. There isn’t much to say about Shaundi since she doesn’t get more interesting in SR3 but this version of Shaundi is memorable enough that she gets brought back yet again for SR4. I think that’s enough plot/character analysis so let’s just get stuck into the game play.

The game play is like any other sandbox gangster game and I already described it two paragraphs before but what makes it different in this aspect is mainly two things: Customisation and Side Activities. You may think “Well, what makes customisation so good?” and the answer to that is quite simply, it’s best one around. In fact, I’m ready to martyr myself for the sake of this system being added to all games with customisation options for now on and it’s all because the clothing system has layers. You heard it right, layers. Now, this may not sound exciting since most games do this already but what SR2 do is let you have more layers than usual. Let’s compare it to this game’s predecessor who lost so much of what made this game good but we will get there next week. In SR3, you have two layers which is your underwear (if you want to have one) and then your shirt/pants with very minimal customisation of the clothing which is just colour alteration. In SR2, if we are just to look at the torso area, you have your underwear, you have your undershirt, you have your over shirt and then you have your jacket which all come with various customisable patterns, colours and logos if you desire them. The clothing system is so detailed, you can change the angle of a hat on your head if you want and there is even more to look at in the cosmetic surgery section.

You got the standard stuff like hair, eye colour and facial/body alteration but then you have options to change your walk cycle, what permanent facial expression is on your face and you can even change your melee fighting style. While you have to unlock the new fighting styles by doing story missions, it’s still something you rarely see in our more modern games and here is a decade old game, being more innovative with less processing power from a older console generation doing things better than games of our current generation are trying to attempt. The customisation system displayed here is arguably the best of its kind until someone in the game industry pull their head out of their ass and actually try to be innovative again and improve on this system but the likelihood of that happening is about as high as getting catgirls as pets (and maybe as wives) in the next year. There is of course some limitations like not being able to precisely decide what angles or what colours you want since this is an old game but this system is still the best of its kind which is just like the side activities available.

While some activities are somewhat standard like drug trafficking where you just protect a dealer while you keep enemy gangs and police off your back and there is different kind of races but we aren’t here to talk about that. You are probably more interested in the activities like Septic Avenger where you drive around in a septic truck and spray literal shit all over houses and people in order to rack enough property damage to complete the mission. If spraying sewage on people isn’t your thing, what about pretending you are a cop and continue to bring “peace” to the streets with some very violent methods for a TV show in “Fuzz”, or what about being a bodyguard for some celebrity and just spend time throwing fans into scenery. For every race and equally uninteresting activities, there is a Septic Avenger or a Destruction Derby and I really like these sort of things. Sure GTA V has golfing and skydiving but that’s boring and don’t give me the realism excuse. I play video games to escape reality, not to be constantly reminded of it and that’s what the Saints Row series does best and SR2 is the peak of that within the series. It's also a good thing that these activities are fun because they not only tied to other unlockables but also story progress and oh no, I just passively aggressively started the criticism. Time to unpack the rest of the criticism because despite how good this game is, it has its downsides so let’s start by talking about the respect system.

The respect system is a double edge sword on this game. While the next two entries will tie the respect system to a leveling up mechanic, the respect system here is tied to story progression and depending on how you feel about the activities, you will either not mind this system or want to shred it to pieces. Since I love most of these activities, you would think I wouldn’t mind but I do because I think it’s a bit of a pace breaker. You see, you gain respect from doing all sorts of things like killing people and all that jazz but you get the most by doing the activities and story missions require at least one bar of respect to start them. While this mechanic forces the player to try out everything else in the game, I think it’s a poorly thought out idea which will be better done in the upcoming game. This forces players to either spend the start of the game going around and doing activities in the hopes they get enough respect to get through the whole game without having to stop and grind again or just do activities between missions which breaks the flow of the game. You can increase your respect gain rate by spending cash on getting cars, clothes and cribs but that requires cash and the missions have the highest payout rate and they are locked behind the respect system so it becomes an endless loop. The respect system in this game is just bad in general despite being an interesting idea and if we are going to talk about bad things, let’s talk the graphics because they are dated.

This game is a PS3/Xbox 360 title so it’s just baffling that this game looks and plays like a PS2/Xbox game. This game looks like crap and it plays like crap. The game just seems horribly dated and it doesn’t help that it’s sequel, SR3, would be released on the same hardware a few years later and actually look and play like a proper PS3/Xbox 360 game. The controls are awfully stiff and the graphics are just horribly done and if we are talking about horribly done things, let’s talk about the PC port. Yes, I am smooshing in the PC port section here because I’m not making a separate paragraph for it plus it’s about as buggy as any early bootleg PS1 game is. The PC port is a buggy pile of ass and it makes you wonder if they actually hired people to port it or got some chimps from the local zoo to wipe their arses on the keyboards to make it. It’s full of crash zones, it has out of sync cut scenes, there is speed up bugs everywhere and it was so bad, Volition and Deep Silver didn’t even try to fix it and left it to modders to make pretty much an unofficial patch to fix the whole thing for them. Because of this, I would not recommend the PC port to anyone unless they have some basic knowledge of modding but I will say, the PC port with the mod might as well be the definitive version of the game due to it adding even more content on top of the bug fixes and that’s just black mark on Volition’s record.

Even if the game is dated piece of crap, I still think to this day that this is the best Saints Row game in the series by far and has the most appeal to a general audience. It went from being a GTA clone to trying to do its own thing which is crazy gangster shenanigans so here is an 8/10 for the game. If you want to play the game, track down a copy for the consoles for maximum consumer friendliness but if you want the best experience, get a copy for the PC from Steam or Good Old Games and learn how to install the Gentlemen Of The Row mod since it fixes a lot and overhauls the whole game with a load of new stuff as well as adds replayability. I'm sorry that I didn’t upload last week but I had a lot of assignments due during that week so I didn’t have enough time to write this up. I already have some plans for the reviews after this series of reviews so get your body ready for the manga double feature coming up after this. I will also be covering the Black Panther in the future and the new Mama Mia sequel because I can’t resist ABBA and you might get lucky, I might rant about Infinity Wars because I think it’s a good enough excuse to murder a fandom. Also for those looking for video content, I have started editing and uploading my own videos on my YouTube channel so link down below (and on the side bar if I sort it out) but anyway, see you next week for Saints Row 3.

Atlas Reactor: MOBAised X-Com

Atlas Reactor. I remember seeing ads for this on YouTube back when it was first released as free to play game although Wikipedia said it was a “trail until you buy” game which I think is just a more complex way of saying free to play except comes with a few changes and it apparently went properly free to play at the start of season two. I didn’t get into the game until the start of season four when one of league friends was like “Mate, we should try playing Atlas Reactor” and I was like “Oh, is that the one with the robo dog?”. So we started playing it and after like a month, I was the only one who was still playing it on the side and it over took Smite as my “break MOBA”. At time of writing, it’s nearly the end of season five and the player base is pretty god damn small. I mean, check the steam charts for this and at its peak in 24 hours at time of writing, it had 228 players online and that’s just bad for a MOBA to have such a low player count and this is why I am writing this review. I mean, I hope can generate some form of interest for the game but yet again, I am just a wannabe reviewer with zero readers so I’m just banking on the fact someone is going to read this and consider playing the game. I care a lot about this game and I been sitting on the concept for this review for a while now so I think it’s worth talking about it plus I thought I would get it out of the way now rather than later so let’s get stuck in or should I say get stuck like a pig? (Sounded a lot better in my head)

Atlas Reactor is a turn based MOBA where four players on each team take control of a freelancer where the goal of the game is to either hit five kills before the enemy team does or have the most kills by twenty turns and the phrase “turn based MOBA” sounds pretty weird, right? I checked and I don’t think there is any other turn based MOBAs in existence at time of writing but you are welcome to correct me, non existent comment section. I do like the turn based approach because unlike other MOBAs, you actually have time to think and communicate with your team during combat situations but it doesn’t stop it from being as stressful. For each turn, you have fifteen seconds to dictate what you are going to do and the game allows an extra five seconds two times per a match if you really need it but it’s something I personally rarely have to dip into it but it’s nice it’s there. Each turn is split into five phrases. You have your decision phrase which is where you decide what to do, prep phrase which is mainly just applying stat changes like might, healing or just shields. You then have your dash phrase which is where you can move out of danger or as a repositioning tool and then you have your blast phrase which is pretty much the combat section of the turn which is then leads into the move phrase where you move to where you decided to go during decision phrase. The only time you can do something in these matches is in your decision phrase of each turn. So that’s just the base mechanics of the game and we haven’t touched the freelancers but I’ll save that for next paragraph. I am a fan of the turn based tactics mainly because I can’t think in the moment so having that time to think is nice but yet again, fifteen to twenty seconds isn’t enough for me. I’m the sort of guy plays Civ VI and continues to take one to two minutes per a turn to even consider something and you are asking me to condense that thinking process into a small time frame but that’s something inherently wrong with me and I can’t fault the game for that. It’s just a slight turn off for me or anyone who is like me but it ultimately doesn’t subtract from the game so let’s just go and talk about the other main selling point which obviously the characters.

So the playable characters in this game are known as “Freelancers” and I honestly don’t know why they are called that. There is an actual ongoing plot about different trusts and necrolancers but if you are like me, you won’t give it a second thought because this is a MOBA, not a narrative driven story but it’s there if you want to read something during the long queue timers. All the freelancers are divided into three groups for ease of understanding. We have the firepower lancers who are the main form of DPS (or DPT in this case) and are mainly ranged but there is some melee ones and then you have frontlines who are pretty much more tanky firepower lancers with a focus on just harassing the enemy team or protecting the team, depending on the lancer and finally, you have supports who’s job is to keep everyone on the team alive with a combination of shields and heals. Now this sounds like a very basic line up for any MOBA set up so like any good MOBA, each lancer has a gimmick and a unique personality but I think that would only apply to half of the lancers. There is some real bores of characters that are just really standard like Asana who can be described as a chick that has a reflective shield and can fly across the map and Kaigen if you like teleporting ninjas and then you have Tol-Ren who is just a samurai who sliced people up (although, he has one of the best taunts in the game) and then you have Blackburn who is just like every sci fi soldier. I do find them boring because they don’t bring anything unique or fun to the gameplay formula but they are still solid picks for any newbie but for every Blackburn, there is a Nev-3 so let’s talk about the interesting ones starting with Nev-3. Nev is a cat girl that throws rings and that’s all you need know and she is only my second favourite character because the one I enjoy the most is Grey who’s main gimmick is she is pretty much a hunter with a drone called Rio and although that does sound standard on paper, in practice is arguably more fun than playing someone like Asana since you can just have fun using Rio to scout the map and get low health enemies. There is a lot of interesting characters but if they were to be grouped by their Trusts, I would say the Evos trust is the best trust in terms of interesting characters. Each trust has its own little gimmick and Evos gimmick is animal themed champions since they gave us Nev, Dr Finn who is pretty much a talking fish and every line out of his mouth is a sea pun, Gremolition Inc. which is pretty much two gremlins flying around in an hovering artillery unit and launching mines everywhere, Isadora who is pretty much a evil squirrel who shoots people with twin laser cannons and their boss is a cyborg dinosaur who is pretty much The Godfather and I love it. There is other trusts like Hyperbiotics who is pretty much robots as their gimmick and their only notable lancers are Oz and Rampart but that’s only because they are robots with attitude. There is Helio Corps which just seems like a way to dump “unique” characters that can’t fit into any other group and the only notable ones who work here is Lockwood who’s only gimmick is “I bounce bullets off walls and I’m the puckish rogue type” and PuP who is a robo doggo. And finally, we have the Omni Corporation who have nothing notable about them. Like, I looked through the list of Omni freelancers and none of them were interesting since their main gimmick seems to be martial arts but I don’t know anymore. If anything, they gave us Asana and Kaigen but they are classified as wildcards so they technically don’t belong to them. There is other stuff to mention like there is mods that allow you change the different abilities of your lancers to have different effects and the fact that they have abilities but one of them is a given for any MOBA and the other is just too boring to discuss so let’s just move onto the rest of the criticism I have.

I know I said that I want to do this review because I care about this game but since I care about the game, I need to give it criticism in order to make it better plus if I didn’t do it, this review would be extremely bias and I’m not a IGN reviewer so let’s move onto the first bit of criticism which is the content or rather lack of content. For a game that has been through five seasons and approaching its sixth season at time of writing, it really lacks a lot of content and it almost feels like the game is pretty much abandoned at times. Unlike other MOBAs like League who get patched every two weeks, we are lucky to get one every month and when that patch drops, it’s not much in terms of content. It’s usually just some changes to stats and bug fixes and actual new content is rare. Barring skins which shows up in most patches, we are lucky to get a new freelancer or even a new map in these patches. Within its current lifetime, it has dropped only dropped 6 maps and one of them isn’t even complete yet and that’s just poor and the same applies to new freelancers. The latest lancer called Vonn was dropped at the start of season five and it seems like new lancers only drop during the start of new seasons and with seasons only lasting half a year, we are pretty much getting two new freelancers per a year. I mean, there has been cases like Isadora who got dropped during the middle of the season but that was long ago. The devs has been trying to improve their release rate on terms of maps as they recently held a suggestion thread on the Atlas Reactor subreddit for new maps which is progress but it’s not enough in my opinion. If they were to aim for the league standard of a new champion every two-three months, that would be nice but there is still other issues so let’s tackle the grind.

Atlas Reactor is very much like Smite which is a game that I like to call “Thirty To Actually Play” since in both games, they feature grinding to get new characters or you could just drop thirty to unlock all current and future characters but unlike Smite where the grind isn’t that bad, Atlas is just horrible and it got so bad, I actually forked over money to get the character pack because the grind section of the game is just really badly implemented like the micro transactions (we will get there soon). There is two factors to this problem and the first one is the drop rate of the standard currency known as Flux. The drop rate of Flux is really poor since you get an average of three hundred flux per a match and in a game where the mods cost five hundred, it’s really not that bad but the factor is the main issue and that’s the pricing of flux related items. There is some items that cost ridiculous amounts of flux but they don’t really do anything in terms of gameplay so they are just there for bragging rights and the mods are pretty cheap which is good but the main problem stems from the pricing of Freelancers because seriously, it gets expensive. The pricing tiers start around ten thousand flux which is a bit of a grind but isn’t too bad but then they jump up to twenty-five thousands which is a bit of demand in grind but then it doubles to fifty thousand and finally, seventy-five thousand for only the newest of the newest champions and reaching that point is ridiculous. Granted, when starting the game as a newbie, you can get a free freelancer of your choice after filling the requirements and after that, you can get other bonuses on top of that and there is somewhat generous flux drops from just leveling up your account during each season and playing champions and yes, there is a weekly free freelancer rotation but it’s still a grind and even if you are enjoying the game, it’s still not a fun experience. You can point at Smite and say “Well what makes Smite different?” and the answer to that is quite simply “Because Smite fixed both factors to not make it feel like a grind.” The drop rate of favour (Smite’s standard currency) is higher without too many bonuses needed and the pricing isn’t too high unless it’s a newly released god with the normal price at five thousand five hundred so if we were to compare them to an average play time of someone like me (five hours during weekdays and ten during weekends and yes, I did time myself for this), you can get a new god in Smite per a week (two if you are lucky) while in Atlas, it would take you one to four weeks, depending on the price of the desired freelancer. Keep in mind, this was compared to my own stats over two months so if you are skeptical of my data, I don’t blame you and encourage that you do your own research as well but in the end, my point still stands. Atlas Reactor can be a grindy slog for those who aren’t willing to at least pay thirty bucks and I do feel like this puts people at a disadvantage for ranked games with a limited pool of freelancers and can serve as a turn off for anyone who wants to play ranked (other turn offs includes massive gap in skill and long queue times).

I could also just waste the rest of this paragraph talking about the microtransactions but it’s just the standard Overwatch model. You have your loot crates which give you cosmetic stuff and you can get by doing quests and leveling up and if you really want to, you can buy batches of them for real money and they do have the standard system of dupes giving you a special currency which is used to buy the cosmetics you want and blah blah blah, I am bored of this sentence. The only real difference is the fact new release skins can only be brought with real life money for a very long time and I am completely unsure about the fact they even available in loot boxes since I haven’t seen one yet but I can’t find any data for it so I can’t really comment on this but as per usual, when a game features microtransactions, I am going to be deducting points based on how intrusive they feel and what they offer in exchange for your money so just keep that in mind when it comes to scoring.

Despite the flaws I pointed out, I still stand by the fact that Atlas Reactor is a underrated MOBA and it does deserve some attention and unlike Smite, I think Atlas Reactor is a game that can be enjoyed not only by newbies but also by veterans of the genre. I am giving Atlas Reactor a 7/10 with no score deduction because unlike Smite, the microtransactions aren’t over the top expensive or excessive and unlike Overwatch, it’s not a pointless system for publishers to grub more money out of their player base. Atlas Reactor is like any good MOBA: it’s unique in it’s own way and can be enjoyable by yourself or with friends so why not try out Atlas Reactor, it is free to play after all and if you are already a player of the game and need a way to convincing others to try it, why not show them this review if you found it convincing.

So next week, I am going to be starting that Saints Row series of reviews as promised and afterwards, I do have a new instalment of “The Undiscussables” for those who want more manga reviews, I got your back and maybe after that, I might be talking about a Japanese comedy or I might actually tackle some good marvel movies and for those who think it’s going to be Infinity War, it’s not and for those who want me to talk about Infinity War, my response is simply “HA HA HA HA HA, AS IF! Here’s your 6/10.”

Steven Universe: Not This Generation's Teen Titans

Ahhh, Cartoon Network. I grew up on cartoons and Cartoon Network was always there to fill the desire for toons for me when I was still in primary school. I still think the old stuff they used to show like “Dexter’s Laboratory”, “Teen Titans” and “Samurai Jack” is going to be the best stuff they will ever air in their life span so it should be no surprise when I say that their newer stuff has definitely been hit and miss for me. I will try not to mention the bastardization which is “Teen Titans GO” or that new “Powerpuff Girls” reboot but their newer IPs like “Adventure Time” was definitely one of those misses although I do like what they are doing so maybe one day. “The Regular Show” was closer to a hit but still missed since I feel like it lost some of its adult charm from its original concept video “2 In The AM PM” but “Steven Universe” was a hit for me right off the bat before it slowly became a miss and no, it’s not because of the lesbians that form Garnet. We will get to why I think this show is worth talking about and why I consider it a hit but first, we need to give that basic as plot rundown so if you haven’t seen the series yet, go watch at least the first season to have an understanding of the show and plot because this is going to be full blown spoilers as per usual with these reviews. Now with the spoiler warnings out of the way, let us move onto that Garnet Rule Thirty-I mean plot summary.

I’m about to summarise five seasons worth of “Steven Universe” for you all so prepare for this. “Steven Universe” is about a kid called Steven Universe who is part of a group of gems known as “The Crystal Gems” who consist of Garnet, Pearl and Amethyst with Steven also being part gem. A gem is alien humanoid being from a different planet who are based on a gem and have superficial powers like weapon creation and fusioning with other gems to make bigger and unique gems. The series follows these four as they protect the earth from hostile gems but for only 20% of the time because the remaining 80% is boring slice of life crap where they have to do some form of character development with Steven being a childish idiot. Most of the series up to season four is just Steven learning new gem powers, telling backstory through flashbacks or fleshing out characters, important or not. You can actually probably just skip a lot of these episodes because most of them is just pointless filler for side characters because it feels like the series’s creator, Rebecca Sugar, has a serious allergy to plot development and deliberately avoids any form of progression in most of the earlier episodes. Around to the end of season 2, you can see there is bit of a shift to more the plot side but still has a massive inversion to it and when it does do some form of plot progression, it’s mainly so the writers has a new character to use as an excuse to procrastinate do more character development with. When it actually decides to stop procrastinating and actually continue with the plot, it’s not boring but it’s not really exactly interesting but it’s still the best part of the series since it builds the universe the series is set in, which is the best stuff in this series and is the only way I can justify having the flashbacks padding out the seasons. Worldbuilding is an incredible tool if used properly and I am fortunately able to say that “Steven Universe” gets it right. While some of it is the fluffy backstory for characters, there is a lot of little worldbuilding moments scattered across the series, through either interactions with other characters or in plot progress and although this method is slow, being a tv show does have its benefits so they can afford to take the time to establish this “universe” (hehehe). The only time the worldbuilding moments bothered me is when they take up the whole episode or it’s done through heavy handed exposition and while the latter is rare, the former happens a lot more often and it’s usually just more pointless character backstory. I do have more complaints about how the plot is handled but let’s move onto the characters that they so love to flesh out.

Contrary to my previous paragraph, I don’t mind the characters or their backstory junk that much but that’s only when it’s for the main cast. If I was to praise anything character related, I would begin with how Garnet was handled. If you didn’t get it from my intro, Garnet herself is a fusion of two female gems known as Ruby and Sapphire and it’s both heavily implied and said out loud that the two share a romantic relationship. You may call this “SJW bait” which I’m not deny the possibility of it but I think it’s a remarkably large step for progression in our media culture. We are allowing far more progressive social trends not only in our kid shows and I think that’s a good thing at least. If I was to say anything else, I do like how Garnet was handled with her being the makeshift leader of the group and pseudo mother to Steven since his real mom gave herself up to give birth to him. Pearl is also good but my gripes with her are simply the fact that pearls aren’t gems since they aren’t minerals found in the Earth’s crust and the fact she acts a second mom. We already have Garnet being the cool and trusting mother to Steven so we don’t need her being the opposite to that and she loses even more purpose in the group when Peridot joins and takes over the role of engineer from Pearl, leaving Pearl with “weapon instructor” which she can’t even do right as we see in the episode covering that topic. Pearl ends up just being there so she can act as the “accidental hindrance” which is taking another role from another character known as Amethyst. What I like about Amethyst starts and ends with how she acts as a older sibling figure to Steven to complete the figurative family cliche. She is the most carefree of the Crystal Gems and because of this, she becomes the other cause of problems in the slice of life episodes just like Pearl. There is Peridot but after they befriend her in season two, she goes from an asshole villain to an asshole midget helper who serves as nothing but more characterisation fodder. I also nearly forgot Connie is a thing but she is simply love interest and the foil to Steven’s stupidness so just think Pinky and The Brain but Brain is replaced with a tanned loli. There is other characters like Steven’s dad who is fun to watch on screen and Lars who is not important until the newer seasons but the only character I liked was Lapis Lazuli. Well, admittedly this was before she was rescued from a forced fusion with a Jasper in Season 2. She was pretty much a generic depressed, sad archetypal character but I found her relatable enough but after the obligatory “character development” episode, she turns into a sarcastic asshole and as much as I am a sarcastic asshole, it just ruined the character for me. It just feels like each character was written by someone who had zero contact with the rest of the character team so it leads to unnecessary and sometimes, conflicting character designs and this wouldn’t be such a problem if most of the show focused on the action and plot side of things but the writers want us to feel for these characters most of the time and that’s just a flaw that leads into another flaw. Conflicting characters aside, I think the characters are still kind of likeable and I guess they can be relatable enough for their target audience but as a seventeen year old with a slight nostalgia for cartoons, it doesn’t cut it for me.

Animation and style wise, it’s fine. I don’t find the art style interesting or cutesy but it’s definitely an improvement from the older days of the network and I would say it definitely looks better than Teen Titans but that’s because the Teen Titan look was pretty much a western anime look so it’s easy to beat it. The animation is pretty smooth and there isn’t any weirdness throughout the series. I honestly don’t know what else to say because it’s the standard Cartoon Network look. If it’s not done in CGI, it’s this look. Should I just stop here and just roll out rest of the criticism because I think I should. I mean, what else is there to say apart from it's kind of colourful and I do like how the characters are designed but that’s about it so let’s stop floundering about and just get the rant section out of the way.

First, let’s talk about the run times. The average episode length for a “Steven Universe” episode is ten minutes and I am not a fan of this decision and this mainly because I feel like the episodes are too short because of this. I feel like they were to do the standard thing and extend the runtime to twenty minutes per an episode, they would be able to have their character development moments and still have time to advance the main plot but I guess if they did that, they would exchange the main plot section and stuff it with more pointless sub plots and talking about pointless subplots, I hate them. They serve no use to the plot most of the time and when they do, it’s very little setup things and it’s just contrived at points and there is so many subplots I hate. The first one that comes to mind is the one with the watermelon Stevens. The first episode, “Watermelon Steven”, only served to go “Look at Steven’s power to give life” as he made an army of sentient watermelon lookalikes which of course turns into chaos but don’t worry, it’s gets worse with “Super Watermelon Island”. This episode is just a mess in my opinion because it just raises so many questions around the watermelon Stevens like “Why is there male and female Stevens?”, “Why are they growing baby watermelon Stevens in fields?” And “Why is there a watermelon dog?”. It’s just a mess of an episode and only serves two purposes: Bring Lapis into the main cast and actually seeing the triple gem (or quad gem I guess) fusion of Alexandite do some combat this time since the last we saw Alexandite in “Fusion Cuisine” which was also pointless filler and only serves to introduce Connie’s parents and talking about Connie, let’s move onto “Beach City Drift”. Why am I talking about this? Because it’s an example of absolute pointlessness and plot filling. It would of served a purpose if they didn’t reveal the Stevonnie fusion in a much earlier and slightly better episode “Alone Together” but it serves no purpose to the plot and therefore it’s simply just stupid filler. There is so more things I rip into in terms of pointless, horrible filler but then we would be here all day and all the Steven Universe fans would be either crying tears or wanting my head on a pole depending on how much I offended them with this review so let’s just move on before I also become very frustrated.

I feel like there is nothing else I can say about this series. It’s certainly a Cartoon Network cartoon but I don’t like it and I guess my nostalgia can be to be slightly blamed. To me, it just doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel like it’s has that same brand of quirkiness the older cartoons like “Samurai Jack” and “Teen Titans” had but yet again, this is made for a new generation and not mine so I guess there is that appeal for these younger kids and I could probably recommend it them but someone of my age, I’m unsure about it. When one of my friends heard that I was planning to talk about this show, he was excited so I guess there is an appeal for this in my generation but I guess it’s just not for me. Despite the criticism I gave it, it’s still a solid cartoon show so here’s your 5/10, Rebecca. You deserve it but please, stop with the fillers because you are making me go insane here with them.

Next week may not be the start of the “Saints Row” reviews mainly because I did get my hands on a copy of the original “Saints Row” game and after playing ten minutes of it, I threw my hands up in the air and gave up on it. What does this mean to anything? Well it simply means I’m delaying the review for a week for “Atlas Reactor” because with another friend of mine being interested in the game and how small the player base is, I think it’s worth talking about if it would help promote the game so I am sorry to zero of my readers who were looking forward to me talking about “Saints Row” and frankly, screw you, I’m gonna review Atlas Reactor and you aren’t going to stop me.

Berserk: The Beauty Of Gore Filled Horror

I think I had enough of sitting on this. I wrote the initial review of this nearly a month ago and I made myself sit on it because I didn’t want my blog to be overflowing with manga reviews but “Berserk” is too good to sit on plus “Berserk” has gotten a more recent anime adaption with a very controversial animation style so I think it’s prime time I talk about the cover boy for gory violence and dark imagery.

“Berserk” is originally a manga that started back in 1989 which is only two years after the debut of anime’s memelord, Jojo Bizarre Adventure (don’t expect me to talk about Jojo for at least a couple of years) and spawned two anime adaptions with the first one being in 1997 and ending in 1998 and the second series still ongoing since 2016 and yes, that is considered recent. In this review, I will only be talking about the manga and the second series since I only want to talk about these because the manga is the original source material and I think the second series does have more to cover. Also, I am completely aware of all the other stuff that falls under the Berserk umbrella but I will not be covering them here. Maybe at a later date but for now, I want to focus on the manga and its second outing as an anime.

“Berserk” follows Guts, a mercenary since birth who has been marked as a sacrifice by the “Godhand”, a group of demonic gods, and we follow him as he slays chasing demons with his arsenal of weapons, including his massive sword “Dragon Slayer”, in absolutely utter gore-ious fashion (yes, I’m bring back the puns) and gains the infamous title of “The Black Swordsman”. On the way, he ends up getting new allies and eventually the pseudo name sake of the series, “The Berserker Armor” as he fights his old friend, Griffin who has joined the group of demonic overlords known as the “Godhand” and if that didn’t sell you on Berserk, I don’t blame you. When summarised, the plot seems simple but in reality, the plot is just more than a guy slaying demons with a massive sword. This manga might as well have defined a genre in how dark it can be from demonic sex orgies, religious crusades and oceans worth of blood being spilt. This is a horror manga for a reason and although the imagery isn’t exactly scary, it’s full of dark and creepy imagery and the series is more representative of “Gore Horror” (although some could say it’s more seated in the monster subgenre of horror) which comprises of 80s Slasher movies or if we were to use anime references because we are good little weebs, Hellsing except with a lot less of whatever Hellsing was doing. It’s just brooding with a dark, gloomy atmosphere and love it just so much. If you ask me, Berserk is more then just demon guts being splattered across the floor because there is much more like when Griffin reveals his new Band Of Hawks turns out to be demons in front of all his human followers which includes the pope of the series’ religion, they aren’t exactly shocked but being subdued by the idea that Griffin is their equivalent of Jesus Christ, they see the demons as the servants of their saviour and accept the demons as their friends and I love this because it can mean so much in the context of the series and to a degree, our real world. There is so much other philosophical sub text to cover in this series and it’s just hard to touch on when I’m so pressed for time so let’s just say there’s two themes of religion being used as a farce for evil and the nature of beauty in violence which the latter was the subject of a video on this YouTube channel called “Wisecrack” so I suggest watching that if you want to get into this series and want a deeper understanding of the series’ deeper messages but let’s move onto the technical sides of things.

Visually speaking, the manga probably one of the greatest looking mangas to exist which I can’t say about the anime but we will get to that. The manga might as well be an art book in manga form since the manga uses the limited colouring mangas have of black and white and use it effectively. While some mangas do benefit from colour, I feel like colouring this would do injustice for the material since Berserk is at its best when it comes to the many spreads where we can see how many points come from this. These spreads is the reason why the topic of “Beauty In Violence” is a underlying theme, they are the reason why the world depicted is terrifying and they are the reason why Guts looks like a badass. The spreads also takes the rough yet gore-gious art style and runs with it which is just wonderful in every way and I will use Berserk for now on to tell people who say manga isn’t art is that they are wrong and that anime not only just hot anime girls doing erotic stuff. Manga and anime do have their more edgy counterparts and Berserk is representative. Yes, this series does still have erotic scenes but it’s usually because it’s representative of the nature on demonhood and I think they add to the world building of the series. The only real complaint I have about the art style is how smooth the later chapters look. Earlier chapters had this subtle roughness in how it’s drawn and now with the more later chapters, everything looks far more clean, which is ironic considering it’s Berserk we are talking about but with the far more smoother look does make it feel like it has lost some of its charm but it’s a barely noticeable thing if you are reading the series from the very start and since I already started with the complaints early, I might as well roll out the remaining complaints.

Let’s start with the massive prologue. The prologue known as “The Golden Age Arc” is about 94 chapters long since it covers all the backstory you need to know. We get to know the conditions of Guts’ upbringing, the relationship he had with Griffin, how Griffin turned into a demon god and why Guts fights these hell spawned demons. Unfortunately, as much as I love how they did that instead of using rather intrusive flashbacks during numerous chapters to serve as padding out in chapters, the prologue takes forever and is without a doubt, the most boring point of Berserk for me. The Golden Age Arc is disappointing because it feels like Guts isn’t at his peak of awesomeness and performance during this arc since he hasn’t gotten his arsenal of weaponry and his unique brand of berserk (Hahahaha) isn’t in this arc until the last chapter where we see him slay his first demon with Dragon Slayer. What also doesn’t help is the fact that this is following up after another prologue which is pretty much just set up for the world and the character of Guts which does a much better job then the actual prologue at being a prologue. For me, the first prologue should of been the actual one and the series carry on from there since I feel like Guts should of been a lone wanderer type who just wandered town to town, killing demons as he got closer to killing Griffin so we wouldn’t have this whole Scooby gang which just seemed just to be there for character development but only one of them only really helps him which is the witch who makes sure that the Berserker Armour doesn’t fullly consume Guts but yet again, I feel like Guts’ sheer force of will should of done the job without some magical plot device. The only other one who I think serves her purpose is Guts’ love interest since that’s just more motivation for him to go out of his way to kill Griffin but that’s all she is, motivation. She does nothing else but be a motivation and occasional handicap and although the latest chapter is following her and may lead into making her into a more useful character (at the time of me writing this, of course) but she still feels useless.

I am quickly tacking on the anime section but this is mainly going to divulge into more complaints. So the new anime series starts off at the “Convection Arc” which happens right after the “Golden Age Arc” and there’s our first problem. This new anime acts like the viewer has been reading the manga or at least watched the original anime because there is no flashbacks. It’s just straight out of the source material and it expects you to know what’s going on. What I also hate about the anime is the art style or rather, lack of one. This incarnation of the anime is done in CGI like RWBY and just like RWBY, it’s a piece of crap. I hate it when anime does CGI because they usually don’t have the budget like other animation companies to make it look nice so it’s usually just really stiff and lifeless in terms of animation. The only benefit that CGI has for anime is adding more depth to the fight scenes which is the only praise I will give to both this and RWBY when I eventually want to die from outraged fans.

You should know what goes down by now. This is the part where I talk personally about how I feel about the overall series but I have really injected that into my other paragraphs so there isn’t much. If my “Hellsing” and “Drifters” review hasn’t got the fact that gore makes me a very happy weeb, let me say it again for you. I love gore and Berserk is just that but now also soaked in some horror elements which makes Berserk my ideal dark fantasy manga. There isn’t much else to add apart from that so overall, Berserk is without its flaws but I still think it’s a stand out amongst both manga and anime as proof that the anime culture doesn’t just revolve around hentai and harems. I’m giving the manga 8/10 even though it’s so tempting to give it a 9 or even a perfect 10 but that’s would just be my inner weeb talking then. The anime is getting a solid 5/10 for the horrible animation but since it’s the closest we are going to get to a Berserk anime in this generation and it’s still the same Berserk story without any needless stuff attached so I guess it’s passable.

That’s my thoughts on Berserk so just go watch or read it, I don’t know anymore. I should really stop relying on manga reviews to fill up the weekly slot so next week, maybe I will talk about either movies or a game, depending on what one I finish first or maybe I’ll just get around to uploading those old reviews I keep mentioning and for the next manga review which might be a while, I might be talking about a certain pirate with the series that seems like it never wants to end but next week is Steven Universe because I felt like it and for anything after the Saints Row reviews, might be a movie review if I can find anything interesting but I will admit, “Black Panther” is lining itself up for a ran- I meant review. I mean, the movie has a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes so maybe it’s time I pull out all the stops and just see if this movie is really worth that 97% or maybe it’s just the fandom culture hyping nothing again like they always do.

The Muppets: The Nostalgia Connection

Well, I wasn’t expecting two reviews in a row covering my nostalgia but circumstances led me to this. I write these reviews in at least a week advance and occasionally two weeks advance since it usually the structure of the review I write out first and then I just edit it if my thoughts change on the subject or I have more to add to the initial review but unfortunately, I wasn’t able to upload last week’s review of “LiEat” on a week earlier as planned since my internet company decided to cut all of our connections for a week with no reason at all. Now, it doesn’t mean in this dilemma, I have the right to slack off so I gave myself the option of doing my school work or watching movies and if it wasn’t obvious, I chose the latter (after I did my school work) so I got a stack of movies and spent the spare time watching DVDs that we have stashed around the house and writing reviews to see if I can get anywhere and you are looking at the result of it. Yeah, “The Muppets” was the only one to inspire me to write something and that’s already a lie. “Mama Mia: The Movie” also inspired me to write on the basis that I have seen it so many times that I can talk about anything in the movie but I don’t believe my audience consist of 40 year old women yet so I’m stashing it for later down the line but for now, let’s go fishing for some nostalgia with puppet bait and WARNING, there is going to be numerous callbacks to “The Greatest Showman” so be prepared for more bashing as well spoilers but who would care about spoilers for a seven year old movie.

“The Muppets” is a live action Disney film and with this being a live action Disney film, you bet this a musical with a childish plot and characters because this was pre-Frozen Disney so they haven’t realised that their musicals belong in award winning animation and everything should be said with a sense of ironic self serving and not in horrible live action and whoops, I just showed my hand too early. Yeah, I’m not going to give this movie that much praise because this is flimsy and seems like an excuse to try and see of the old Muppet boat will still float or in layman’s terms, see if it can still rake in lots of money to justify keeping the series alive and because of this, the plot is very basic. We follow Walter and Gary who are massive Muppet fans (with Walter being the actual Muppet so guess what sort of connection that makes) who decide to visit the Muppet studios with Gary’s girlfriend, Mary. After Walter discovers that the bad guy’s plan for drilling oil in the studio, they decide to go and visit Kermit The Frog to convince him to gather the old gang and put on one more show to raise money to save the studio and we just checked off several check-boxes on the cliche list. I mean, I think the plot is played for laughs at most because the story has this very meta feeling plus the main bad guy’s name is Tex Richman so it has to be taking the piss. It just feels way too silly to be a straight faced kids movie so this has to be an ironic self parody which I believe is what all the critics saw in this movie because that’s the only way I can justify the 95% Rotten Tomatoes score or maybe the critics are just stupid. I grew up on the old Muppet movies and it seems like it’s just kind of ripping off that format but I’m not exactly sure. I’ll let you decide if the movie is just copying the old format but to quote myself from my “The Greatest Showman” review, “The plot is secondary as it’s simply there to string each musical piece” and I’m nothing if not consistent so let’s talk about the music. 

Well the music isn’t exactly terrible and the singing from the actors isn’t that bad either. I personally found the songs pretty catchy and fitting for the overall tone of the movie and still better than the soundtrack for “The Greatest Showman” but that’s not much of a compliment. This song apparently has 5 original songs but I only remember 3 of them (unless we counting the “Tex Richman Rap” which is way too short to be a song) and I saw that people saying that “Man Or Muppet” or “Life’s A Happy Song” being the best songs in the movie but then we would be denying the greatness which is “The Rainbow Connection” which kind of acts like the end song for the whole Telethon arc in the movie but of course it comes short so we can have Walter show his wonderful “talent” but I’ll save that for the nitpick/rant section of the review. The Rainbow Connection is just overall a great song and embodies what the Muppets were during their heyday but feels very nostalgic in that way which can come across as pandering to an ageing audience which this movie feels like what it’s doing for half of this movie. To go back to the plot for a bit, the whole movie feels like it’s just a revising of the Muppets formula and is full of call backs to the original show and this is best embodied in the whole telethon arc which does make sense since they are using their own talents to save the studio but now in a more modern style because the 80s is far beyond us now. I will go into the plot even more soon enough but let’s quickly touch base on the technical side of the movie.

I think the movie looks good for a live action movie especially with the Muppets. I think the puppetry displayed is good as it always has been in any media featuring the Muppets and it’s definitely better then the midget’s puppetry in “The Greatest Showman”. The movie is also well shot and the CGI is pretty good for a 2010 production but you have to remember that this is Disney we are talking about so they can afford to splurge on stuff like this. Also none of the actors feel like they are phoning it in for the whole movie. Jason Segal as Gary is good enough for the whole movie and Amy Adams portrayal of Mary was also pretty decent. Chris Cooper as Tex Richman was meh to me. I kind of wished they got someone like Christopher Walkins or Kevin Spacey to play Tex since they have proven they can play villains before but then you remember that Tex’s so called maniacal laugh is literally him saying maniacal laugh so maybe this was too cheesy for them (let’s forget Nine Lives ever existed). There isn’t much else to say about this side of the movie since well, it’s a Disney movie. Disney movies rarely flop and when they do, it’s rarely deserved but it’s because they are always the best of the best working on these movies to make them look as good as they do. I think I gave this movie more than enough praise so let’s move onto the bashing I promised four paragraphs ago but it’s not going to be directed to “The Greatest Showman”. 

If we were to start criticising this movie, I would start with Walter who is supposed to be the latest addition to the Muppet line up and he is so spectacular, his appearance both starts with this movie and ends with its somewhat average sequel (I am excluding any non-movie appearances) because he is quite clearly too good that he shouldn’t of have been created in the first place. Yeah, Walter is just unlikable as a character. If we are to not question the logic of two human parents giving birth to a Muppet (or the logic behind Muppets breeding or even Muppet/humans breeding), we can just jump right onto how annoying his character is. He acts like a childish fanboy for the whole movie and expects people to care about him because he is different and therefore he should be treated like a special and unique snowflake. I mean, he pretty much secretly guilty trip his own brother to take him to L.A which was originally planned for Gary and Mary where Gary could propose and then once in L.A, takes control of the whole trip and ruins the whole trip for both of them (mainly Mary though) because he wants to save the Muppet studios from a businessman who wants to make money for his business so his company may actually expand and open up employment opportunities but this is all stopped because a Muppet fanboy couldn’t let the Muppet legacy die even though it has a big enough legacy that could probably have the studios destroyed and there would be minimal impact. Walter might of been good on paper but in practice, he is just a knob and while we talking about knobs, can we talk about the character of Tex Richman? The guy is supposed to be the main villain for the whole movie but all the way until the end, he has a decent motivation. He wants to get oil found under the studios for money and as a businessman and owner of a business, it makes sense but then someone read the script and thought he wasn’t evil at all so he has a 90 degree turn and becomes even more stupidly evil for pretty much no reason. And if I am to continue with pointless crap, why is there so many unnecessary celebrity cameos in this movie? Like, the only ones that make sense is Jack Black’s appearance as Jack Black since he does get kidnapped later into the movie to make a forced appearance in the telethon arc but then you people like Zach from the “Hangover” trilogy showing up as a hobo called Hobo Joe for no reason and does nothing to advance the plot. Did they have some spare money from their $45 million budget so they decided to pay some A-listing celebrities to just randomly show up throughout the movie to fill in for extras. This is all just stupid to me but nothing truly frustrating because what’s frustrating is what goes down in the final ten minutes.

Before we dive into this, I will say this again, there will be spoilers and this section will spoil the final ten minutes of the movie so do whatever you want to do avoid the spoilers, just don’t say I didn’t warn you. So after the Rainbow Connection falls short of pulling in the money they need, all the Muppets start panicking about how are they going to raise the rest of the money but then Walter shows up in the middle of stage and ready to show off his talent of whistling. Yes, whistling is his talent and this has no set up during the whole movie so this is literally out of the blues and this nearly saves the studio until Tex steals and drives a car into a telephone pole, cutting off all the phone connections to the studio meaning no one can send in money by the phone and they are now only short by a cent and there is two things wrong with this. First things first, Tex shouldn’t of been able to even walk yet alone hijack a car and drive it considering he was thrown off the top of a building and landed flat onto a concrete floor couple of minutes ago so you would at least expect him to have broken some bones but nope, he only has a couple of scuff marks on him and he is A-ok so Tex is now quite clearly a terminator. The second problem is the fact they are only a cent short but they have this massive audience in the theatre. Sure they could of just donated a little bit more to make the 10 million dollar mark but nope, they just sit there because screw saving the studios, we need to have more cliches to happen. After a long and boring speech from Kermit about restarting their careers as a family or something like that and then they walk out of the studio to be greeted by all their fans because it’s totally not predictable at all. Gary finally proposes to Mary and Walter gets accepted into The Muppets but then, Tex shows up claiming that he owns the Muppets name and likeness now because of that stupid plot device of a contract but don’t worry, Gonzo shows up, still spinning his arm around after failing to let go of the bowling ball he was supposed to throw earlier in the telethon, claims that he has figured out how to let go and then throws right into Tex’s chest which sends him flying to the ground where he supposedly bangs his head and now has become made another 90 degree turn and is now a good person and just gives the Muppets their studio back. I don’t feel like I should be explaining what’s wrong with all this but I will anyway just in case you don’t understand. First, Gonzo just committed assault which should see him in big trouble but nope, he gets away with it. Secondly, Tex should be either seriously injured or dead after that, even if he escaped being seriously injured by falling off a building. The bowling ball should of easily cracked some of his ribs and there is a highly likely chance of his lungs being punctured by said broken ribs but nope, he just suffers a minor percussion which leads us to the final problem: They just used a Deus Ex Machina and I’m not talking about the critical acclaimed game series for the same name. For those out of the loop, a Deus Ex Machina is something that just happens to solve what seemed previously like a unsolvable problem and this whole “accident” is just a massive mess of Deus Ex Machina. Who can read that part and approve of it, thinking that was a good conclusion for this movie because Jason Segal and Nicholas Stoller who are the writers for this had to somehow fit in both the Muppets getting back their studio and also have the typical encouragement speech that all Disney movies need to have and thought writing in a Deus Ex Machina which is the first thing any writer learns to avoid doing in any plot since it suck out all the tension and conflict out of a scene and maybe even a movie faster then any vampire can suck out blood and lets not forget that then the director, James Bobin had to check off on this. It’s just stupid on so many levels and so frustrating but then you remember that Jason hasn’t written anything that spectacular with the same applying to Nicholas and right now, Nicholas and James are working on a live action Dora The Explorer movie in conduction with Michael Bay’s production studio, Platinum Dunes, I think the answer is very clear that these three are quite clearly incompetent. I think that’s enough bashing so let’s end this before I devolve into poor man’s Angry Joe.

The Muppets in general, has been part of my life since childhood. I grew up on “The Muppet Show” reruns and “Muppets Tonight” and their movies are always fun to watch but this? Ehhh, I don’t think it holds up to the Muppet legacy. As a kids movie, it’s fine but anything without gore is fine for kids these days but for an older audience, this is a very pandering film. I mean, this movie is full of call backs to the original show and righteous 80s references, dude (I promise I won’t do that again) and because of it, it feels like a right up nostalgia trip. As much as I beat it up, it’s still a passable movie by normal standards so here is your 6/10, Muppet movie. You may not live up to the Muppet standard but you are definitely entertaining at times for someone of my age (despite being very frustrating because of your plot) so if it ever pops up on tv or you find a disc copy on the cheap, pick it up because it’s still a nice and happy time for everyone, even if the numerous references leaves feeling either old or befuddled and to be perfectly honest, I wouldn’t mind seeing more Muppets in the foreseeable future but considering “The Muppets” TV show was canceled after one season which seemed like a very promising adult take on the Muppets and their last appearance was last year at the Super Bowl, maybe they are just relegated to making cameos these days which is a shame. Disney seems like they have forgotten that they own The Muppets ever since getting their hands on Marvel and LucasArts so they can just print money with Star Wars and The Avengers for now. Maybe later down the line, they will give The Muppets another crack and if they do, I wouldn’t mind seeing it even if it means they have to dumb it down even further for kids since it seems like they are getting increasingly more stupid with each generation.

So this might be my longest review to appear on this so far at double my standard. I mean, I’m hitting around 3060 words right now but anyway, next week will be the Berserk review which I have been sitting on for over a month now and after that, it’s going to be Steven Universe as my first TV show review because I wanted to see what’s the hoopla behind the possibly culturally sensitive yuri stuff and then we are moving onto the Saints Row trilogy of reviews so hooray for us. I’m going to have so much fun playing Saints Row 2 again. Unmodded, PC port of Saints Row 2. Mmm, so much fun.