Disney Infinity

So because I like video games and Disney, I decided to get a hold of Disney Infinity back when it came out last summer. So you can call this my little review of sorts. Disney Infinity is a game for almost all platforms, it consists of individual worlds called playsets with short story-lines and a platforming/brawler type gameplay with light puzzle solving. The main hub of the game is called the "Toybox mode", where collectibles found in the playsets can be used to create custom stages to be played in by yourself or to be shared online. Personally I started out with the version for the Nintendo Wii, but quickly switched to the Wii U version once I got the machine. Why? Well yes at around $65 for the main game alone it might seem like a very poor decision economics wise however the Nintendo Wii version just does not live up to the steep price point. If I wanted any enjoyment out of the game, not to mention the additional characters I purchased, I would have to switch version. There are a bunch of notable differences between the Wii version and the other versions of the game, if you look away from the most obvious one (the lower quality of graphics and sound) you will quickly realize that the Wii version is one of the poorest ports of a game out there. Not only are certain sound effects condensed beyond recognition (The sound effect of a horse jumping in the Lone Ranger playset sounds like a bear growling), the worlds are significantly smaller, gameplay aspects have been removed from the games, the storylines are shorter and the Wii version does not support 2 player co-op outside of toybox mode. On top of that, the entire online portion of the game small as it may be has been removed as well for the sake of the port. Wii owners, unless you have children that wants the game and you just cannot afford another game system I strongly advice that you do not purchase this title. For the rest of you however, there are plenty of good times to be had. The artstyle of the game is streamlined and pleasant to look at, the voice acting is, decent, taking into account that it's impersonators and not the original actors in the roles. The story-lines are all entirely new and fits right into their respective established universes with some acceptance for plot-collision. 

The main draw of the game is of course, the characters. You play the game by purchasing plastic figures that you can place on top of a USB device. The individual figures are about $20 a piece, but also really well crafted considering the price. When not being used for playing, they make for nice decorations on the shelf. With the game comes three characters with their respective playsets. Mr. Incredible from Pixar's The Incredibles, Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean and James P. Sullivan from Monsters University. It should be noted that if you want two player co-op in the playsets you'll have to purchase matching characters. Disney has you covered with a "sidekick 3-pack" sold seperately for around $42. The pack consists of Hector Barbossa for the Pirates set, Mrs. Incredible for The Incredibles set and Mike Wazowski for the Monster set. With every character you'll also get a code you can redeem online for usage in an online game for PC and Smart devices. On top of that, you can also collect "power discs". You'll get one with your initial purchase of the game and then you can buy packs of three for about $10 each. These are like playing card value packs though, so you should expect to get doubles. The power discs either gives you character a boost during play or gives you items for use in stage customization in the toybox mode. There's really no reason to get the power discs outside of the realm of bragging rights though, do with that information as you wish.

When critics reviewed Disney Infinity back in summer, they had a habit of comparing it with the Activision Skylanders franchise - and while there's certainly noticeable similarities in the marketing and gameplay it should be noted that while Skylanders has an overarching storyarc for each game Disney infinity does not. Therefore, there's no "point" in Disney Infinity outside of casual fun. You're not saving the world or anything, and the game consistently reminds you of this by making everything resemble actions figures and toys. The in-game store for purchasing items for puzzle solving is called the "Toy store", the superhero headquarters opens up like a gigantic Mighty Max toy, the list goes on. These are "just" toys, however I still found a lot of enjoyment in the title. 

The state of Nintendo

Recently a lot of speculation has surfaced around Nintendo’s announcement that 2013 was a very poor fiscal year regarding the Wii U. It should be noted though, that the 3DS on the other hand has become the best selling handheld of all time in the same period.

I of course have my own opinions on this, so I have actually compiled a list of what I would do to “fix” the state of the Wii U. But first I’d like to clear up 3 things:

1. This is not a loyalty post, I love Nintendo but I also have great memories surrounding Microsoft and Sony. I fully expect to also acquire a PS4 and Xbox One when I reach the funds necessesary to do so.
2. I consider the Wii U to be part of this “generation” of consoles.
3. This is not a rumor mill, I’m not going to concern myself at all with the Nintendo Fusion rumor.

Are we clear? okay let’s go.

• Re-brand the Wii U.

I love my Wii U, and so does anyone else I’ve talked to that has actually bothered to get one. However, Nintendo pulled a very stupid move in the naming department. It’s no secret that most of the impressive sales of the Nintendo Wii came from the casual market. Nintendo managed to create a console that scratched that itch between button pressing and joysticks that a lot of the population apparently missed. That friend you had as a kid that would move the controller along with the directional button? Yeah the Wii was made with him or her in mind and it didn’t hurt that you could actually lose weight by using it.

Let your kids play video games and still get a bit of exercise: BRILLIANT! However none of the people who thinks that way will actually notice that the Wii U is an entirely different machine. Why would they? And Why would they want a Wii U? They’ve got their Wii Fit board and their copy of Wii Sports. Here’s what to do: Bundle the Wii U with the Wii U Pro Controller.

The most off-putting part of the Wii was it’s controllers. Nintendo hasn’t exactly been traditional with it’s controllers for quite some time now but they’ve generally stuck to the two-handed approach. The Wii Remote and Nunchuck however was just way too far from the comfort zone of your general audience, they wanted something that felt familiar. So they went to Playstation and Xbox instead. The Wii U pro controller however is just “hardcore” enough, if you play your cards right you can still save some of the audience that takes itself far too seriously.

• Third Party is your friend

Nintendo, you produce some of the finest installments in the way of puzzle adventures, platformers and action experiences. What you don’t produce, is modern wartime shooters, realistic racers, stealth based horror games, or some of the other genres on which the best games of the last generation were based. So why does the Third Party not like the Wii U? Well if you ignore the fact that the Wii U is not as powerful as the competition, it’s that the Wii U Controller is a big hunk of a controller. I like it, but it’s not exactly similar to the competition. This is where the last point comes in, if you can guarantee third party developers that people who own a Wii U probably owns a Wii U Pro Controller, cross-releases won’t be a hassle.

There won’t be that big of a difference in programming to make up for, currently if a developer wants to release a game on the Wii U they have to take the Wii U controller and the ugh Wii Remote into consideration. That’s at least 10 extra hours of programming. Either take the Wii Remote out of the equation, or provide a coding skeleton they can copy/paste into the games code when doing a cross release.

• DVD/Blu-ray player

Okay so this one is a bit circumstantial, as I am not sure it’s possible to actually pull off on the current hardware. However you released the Wii Mini, didn’t you? - while no “gamer” will outright tell you this, and Sony will probably never own up to it, but a lot of the successful sales of the Sony consoles has been the fact that they doubled as media devices. The PSOne doubled as a CD player, to a lot of people from my generation the PS2 was their first DVD player, the same goes for the PS3. Even Microsoft tried to emulate this by being able to play HD DVD’s on the Xbox 360. Why you guys never decided to get on the media wagon outside of apps I have no idea, but it’s a small add-on that apparently means a lot.

• Use the 3DS.

This is a Super Game Boy. It allowed you to play game boy games on the Super Nintendo. The 3DS has two screens, one being a touch screen, so has the Wii U. Do I really need to take this argument any further? You even have advertisements for the 3DS online store ON THE WII U ESHOP. Take the next obvious step. Please. The DS literally prints money.

• Smartphone games

Speaking of eShop. Look at all that awesome creativity on the Google Play store and the Apple App store. Now if only you guys had the possibility of offering the people’s favorite app games in 1080p on their TV’s at home without having to try and find a comfortable spot over their tablets or smartphones. It’s not like you have a CONTROLLER WITH A TOUCHSCREEN THAT COMES WITH THE SYSTEM OR ANYTHING. Too bad, that would’ve been nice.

And that’s my suggestions, what do you guys think? If you liked this article please share it with your friends or try using it to open up discussion

(this is a cross-post from my tumblr)

I made a thing

Mortality

So after one day at school last month, I decided to head by a bookshop led by a major newspaper, aka, Politikens Boghal (The politics' hall of books in english, which is a stupid name for a bookshop but I digress). Whilst there, some kind of insanity took over my brain momentarily as I got out of there with 3 books - None of them fiction nor comic books. Trust me, that's not something common in my case.

The first of which I've recently finished: Christopher Hitchens' Mortality. In case you don't know who Hitchens is (or rather, was) let me fill you in: Christopher Hitchens was a journalist who took huge part in the ongoing religious debate. Something that has come to fill more and more in our age. Hitchens was one out of four pioneers of the "new atheism" thought, dubbing themselves "The Horsemen" (Named after the mythological four horsemen of the apocalypse, ironically). New Atheism is a more aggressive form of secularism, not content with merely not believing itself but also working to lessen religions grip on certain governments (most notably the influence of Christianity on America). Being a "follower" of this thought process myself I certainly sympathise with what they're attempting to do, rock on!. This book however, is something different altogether. I won't embarrass myself by trying to review it (It's out of my domain of expertise by far and Hitchens who reviewed books himself from time to time would be rolling in his grave if indeed such a thing was possible). So let me just vaguely describe what the book is all about.

Mortality in a nutshell is a compilation of the final published essays by the man Hitchens himself. Most of which were taken from the magazine Vanity Fair, of which he was a frequent contributor. The book has a morbid sort of narrative, his essays being about his worsening condition. All of these essays were written while he was treated for - and finally died of throat cancer.  It's a very self-reflective book, and no amount of opportunity for well-versed sarcasm is passed by. The man was adored by some and hated by others, and in some essays he answers some attacks on his person - all the while this reader could picture a smirk on his face over the keyboard. He also jokingly mentions the idea of writing a book about interaction between a patient and loved ones. All the things not to ask and all the things not to answer. The man knows his rhetoric, wielding it with great skill. Where the book is sort of off-putting, is the final chapter. The chapter is composed of loose notes found on the man's computer post-mortem, which makes it saddening. These were some of his final thoughts.

Reading the book has made me think of my own mortality and how little thought I've put into it, the last time I remember genuinely thinking about dying was a night in march 2012, where I after having drunk enough alcohol to slur myself through Tribute by Tenacious D on a Karaoke bar had gone home. On the walk home, as readers of the blog may recall, I was struck by a car because I didn't bother to look before crossing the road. One moment I'm crossing the road thinking about some personal issues when suddenly a jolt of pain hit my left side and I was sliding across the asphalt. Not thinking about pain for a few seconds, I jumped to my feet and looked to my right. A black station car's  red eyes were staring at me, I held up my hand confused to slap some sense into myself and the driver must've taken it as a sign to drive on as if nothing happened because that was just what he did. Drove on into the night, swinging down past the crossroad nearby and disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared. Then and there, I thought about death. Well, for a couple of seconds anyway before my left ankle gave in from what I would find out was (thankfully) just a sprain. Allowing me to confusedly hump my way into the sidewalk before collapsing before a light pole. Now, I haven't done anything great with my life, and I certainly hadn't then so the thought of how easily death can creep up on you scares me. Looking at the numbers of course, a lot of arguments could be made for the fact that no human has done anything meaningful with their life as of yet at all - but that is far too depressing.

I'm way too happy-go-lucky to let myself drown in that way of thought though, I may be an atheist but that doesn't mean I think humanity is meaningless. The thought that humanity is a mathematical curiosity in the universe, and the thought that we humans may one day make a true impact on the vast sea of the universe is way too beautiful. Do I believe in Aliens? Definitely. Do I believe that they have made contact with Earth? Not at all. But the thought that we should be alone in the universe strikes me as sad. On the other hand the thought that we, ugly naked monkeys, should be the chosen ones of some higher being strikes me as both arrogant, angering and silly.

First week

As I write this, it's the first saturday after my first week in my new classes. I'm taking Religion, Media and Psychology at an adults education centre in the middle of Copenhagen. The new classes seem nice, but as I said, it's only the first week so I can't really say that much about them yet. It's actually funny how fast people get back into routine, well, me at least. I've only gone there three days but already the trip in there is a total cakewalk. Not the trip home though. No, on my way home I stare stark into the entrance to Fantask, a comic book shop. So far I've had trouble not walking in a buying me something. I've bought:

• The Dennis O'Neil/Neal Adams Green Arrow-Green Lantern run as a trade
• The World of Flashpoint: Starring The Flash as a trade
• Flashpoint the main book as a trade

I've also ordered the rest of the Flashpoint trades online from the same store. 

Yeah, I need to teach myself self-control on the spending part. 

Needless to say, I'm big on The Flash but I haven't really read the solo-adventures till now and I'm loving it. I got into the Flash after watching the animated version of Justice League: The New Frontier (Which you can read my review of here)

Anyway, I'll keep you posted on any further developments

- Later Days

Current situation

Life has it's way of making twists and turns and as such I am now currently sitting in a center for competence and occupation. I had the misfortune of failing to finish my last class - resulting in my education not being valid. Because of that I couldn't go on to university and now I'm on government wellfare. Yeah.. it's bad. The center I'm at is meant for people in my situation. Or a similar one. It's meant to provide courses so that people can go on to their next attempt at an education or till they get get a job so they can provide for themselves - whichever comes first. I've been here before, in 2010. I'd been drafted for the military and was waiting for my 4 months to come up. I consider it a dark chapter in my life, but it was still a milder experience than what I suspect others have had to deal with. Back then, CKB (as it's called) was for all age groups. I've come to understand that, that is no longer the case. It's now only meant for people under the age of 25 without a education that qualifies for something on the level of university. As such I still consider myself luckier than most others, since I know what to do next.

The Carrey

Arguably one of the most popular comedic actors of our time, Jim Carrey has starred in numerous both critically and publicly acclaimed movies. When it comes to acting, he has a great amount of talent for both serious and extremely bizarre roles.

Carrey is a funny guy, yes. Personally though, I'd like to smack him across the head.

So if you haven't heard by now, Jim Carrey has taken back his support of the movie Kick-Ass 2. Carrey himself stars in the movie as a militant weapon-toting character called Colonel Stars and Stripes. Carrey stated on his twitter recently that filming for Kick-Ass 2 had ended before the Sandy Hook Elementary school massacre where several children and staff members where either shot to death or severely injured. Some of them crippled permanently. After the massacre, Carrey apparently decided that such violent movies as Kick-Ass 2 would be insensitive towards the victims and therefore he took back his support of the movie.

Now, this could have ended there. Carrey could have pulled back his support of the movie in light of the horrors at Sandy Hook, people (myself included) would have accepted his decision and that would be the end of it. However, the Sandy Hook shootings took place in December of last year. Kick-Ass 2 is set to release this coming August. Photography for Kick-Ass 2 ended in November. What this means is that Carrey has known how violent the movie was going to be for several months, known about Sandy Hook for several months but only NOW does he decide to pull back his support of the movie. This my friends, is what we in the business call a load of crap.

What this screams for me is that Carrey has felt this way for several months, but being the hypocrite this would make him, he waited for the paycheck to get passed. Thanks for the money suckers, Your movie sucks!

So why is this a problem? Why am I upset that a single actor suddenly changed his mind on a project - even if it is a project I have been looking forward to? Fuck it, right? Well, here's the thing. Mr. Carrey is, as I said, a very popular guy. Had it been a lesser known actor, I probably wouldn't have cared. But Carrey is likely to to completely ruin the sales for the movie on his name alone. Already mainstream media have printed articles with titles like "CARREY LEAVES VIOLENT MOVIE". Sure, you and I are reasonably invested in movies in general and we probably already decided whether or not to watch this movie. But the average viewer? The kind of people that only watch movies once in a blue moon? Let's just say that it's not going to be pretty.

I'm not saying that the average viewer isn't intelligent. Sure enough, they can be just as intelligent as anything. But unless you have a vested interest in movies you most likely aren't going to hear both sides of this argument. Most people will read the article "Carrey leaves violent movie" and decide not to watch it because an actor they like decided it was bad news. This movie is going to lose needed viewership because of a combination of ignorance and outrage. I can already hear the outraged soccer moms scream in disgust as I type this article.

Now, this isn't just about the movie losing sales. Carrey, to me at least, is also kind of insulting the viewer in taking back his support of the movie. What he is basically saying by doing this is that violence in media leads to violence in real life because the average viewer, in his eyes, isn't able to tell fantasy from reality. He'll still take money for appearing in it, so fuck that. 

So how can he win back my respect? By standing by the decision he's taken. Simply going back on his own words and saying "Oh wait, I changed my mind, go watch Kick-Ass 2 everyone!" would piss me even more off. One thing is making a stupid decision, that's annoying enough as it stands. An entirely different matter is going back on your own word due to peer pressure. That's just spineless. 

Mr. Carrey, You've fucked up. Now stand by it and stand tall. I'll keep defending your movies to my dying breath, but please take another minute to consider what you're doing and WHEN you're doing it. The when is sometimes, and especially in this case, more important than the what or the how.

- Later days.

Offspring Fling!

The game really isn't as creepy as the title may sound.

Sometimes it's nice to just sit down and relax with a nice puzzle platformer. This is exactly that. Lately I've not been one for big games but more something I can play for a bit and then quickly stuff away when I've had my fill. This game fills that purpose quite nicely. In Offspring Fling! you play some sort of bunny.. thing. You purpose is to get all of your offspring to the door in the level by flinging them through various obstacles, activating buttons and whatnot. There really isn't anything else to it. The artstyle is cute and fuzzy and the puzzles are just hard enough to keep you interested throughout.

I've had this game for some time now but I've not really played it before recently. Reason is that I got it in a Humble Indie Bundle and then just kind of forgot about it. Call it a pleasant surprise if you will. I even only booted the game when I did because I heard the game had become part of Steams Trading Card system. In hindsight, I'm kind of ashamed I didn't try this out sooner because it actually is pretty good. It reminds me of Braid, another puzzle platformer I just kind of bought and forgot about originally.

While certainly a good game art and game-play-vise,
the story for Braid was just kind of pretentious and confusing

This game is nothing like Braid though, it knows exactly what it is and it doesn't try to tack on some kind of artsy fart-sy drama on top of it that no one but the creator actually understands. The artstyle is cute, the music is cheery and simple, and the story is the most wayforward ever: Your family is attacked by a dinosaur, so your offspring scatters. Go collect them!

So why I am I talking about this game at all? Escapism mostly. There's some issues with my school-transfer endangering my entire livelihood (In my country, students are granted a monthly payment from the state). I'm expecting to have my grades put into the national exam database today so I can send out applications to the next stage of my education but I fear there may be some technical difficulties for various personal reasons. On top of that, my father has finally gotten told by his doctor that his liver is giving in after years of light-alcoholism so my life is kind of stressful. This makes me write as escapism, mostly reviews for Kaiser Critics. 

Anyway, I'll keep you posted.

Later days.

Batman

So I've bashed Christopher Nolan on this blog a couple of times. Needless to say I am not a fan of his methods nor his movies. But that's not exactly what I want to talk about. I want to talk about comic books.

Lego Batman the movie: DC Super Heroes Unite (2013)

Lego Batman the movie: DC Super Heroes Unite (2013)

Beginners Guide: Team Fortress 2

I've been playing Team Fortress 2 for quite some time now, considering myself a pretty decent player. However, some newer players make choices in the game that to me just defies logic. Therefore I provide you with this short list op tricks I've picked up for new players:

In General:

• Before choosing a class, please consider the setup on your team. If your team already has 3 Heavy, pick a Medic or at least another class.
• Don't let dying dishearten you, thankfully dying doesn't play quite as big a role in this game as in most others
• If you get an item drop, please wait to check it out or equip it till after the round is over. You're needed in the game.
• If you get a losing streak, don't take it out on your team mates OR your adversaries. Just carry on carrying on.
• Changing class rapidly helps no one, try to keep it to a minimum
• If you and your friends are on an English server but NOT native or at least adequate English speakers please consider not using voice chat and maybe using Skype instead, communication is awesome but listening to a language you don't understand can just be confusing and distracting. 
• If you ARE adequate at English or a native English speaker and discover someone not following the above rule, please hesitate to be in their faces about it. Be polite. Always be polite. Remember, you can just mute them if you're not using the voice chat anyway.

Batman (1966)

Batman (1966)

Lots of morereviews up since my last post :D

Read my reviews!

So, I've opened a new blog called Kaiser Critics. On there I expect to review whatever movies I see, shortly after I've seen them. So at the same time, you can follow my movie-watching habits (if you should be so inclined) There's both old and new movies there, from Rope to Iron Man 3. Right now there's 9 reviews up, so do me a favor and go check it out! Who knows, you might be inspired to watch some of these movies yourselves.

The collection of David

Today I went to see the collection of David and took a few pictures :) I know I'm not a super photographer so I'll strongly suggest you go see it yourself in Copenhagen!

just an update

It's about time I started actually updating my blog and now that I've installed this blogger app on my humble android phone I MIGHT get some incentive to do it just a tad more often.

The Lion King Storybook

 This was originally going to be a rewrite of the number 7 spot on my top 10 Disney Interactive games. But I instead decided to make the following it's own thing and delete the former post all-together:

ROCKS

Today I went to the Danish geological museum with class. I'd decided to take some pictures of this as it's my first visit.

Harlekin and the assignment

Kaiser had to take matters into his own paws to get attention.

I've turned in my major paper this morning, it counts for a third of my completion grade so here's having my fingers crossed, and my toes crossed. And anything else I can cross.

Buttons

Did I ever tell you guys how much I miss buttons on my phone? I mean really, aside from the aspect of "hey, we're able to" what is the purpose of only making the non-button phones powerful? Well. At least I dont live in Japan where they're still all about the flip phones.

A Whovians Plight

I've not mentioned this on the blog, but I'm actually pretty big on Doctor Who.