2020 is almost done, I promise! Just a FEW more games to cover here and then a few more games in one last piece! You can look at the games I’ve already covered right here, so let’s continue where we left off!
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Motherload & Super Motherload (PC)
Developed by XGen Studios
Back in the old days when I could still call myself a youngster, Steam was still in its infancy, online gaming as far as I knew was just on Xbox Live, and Flash was the primary way we played games on the internet! There were plenty of standouts at the time (Cartoon Network had a pretty solid list of games under its belt) but one that still sticks with me to this day is Motherload; more or less the fore bearer of explorative digging games like SteamWorld Dig and Terraria. I only learned a month or two ago that the developers had gone on to develop a feature rich new version of the game called Super Motherload on Steam, and it even came with the full edition of the original Motherload to really hammer home the changes XGen made in the intervening years. Perhaps this is nostalgia talking, but the mechanics of the original game hold up AMAZINGLY well with a clear set of incentives and goals to work towards that are spiced up with well don RNG elements. Sure, you could spend an hour only finding Iron and Silver ore, but the random chance of finding an artifact that will get you that new upgrade you’ve been grinding for is what keeps the game compelling and prevents the gameplay loop from feeling overly repetitive. However, it’s also a game that could do with a few enhancements and that’s what makes Super Motherload such a great successor. Smoother animations, streamlined mechanics, and more bells and whistles manage to retain the brilliance of the original design without getting bogged down in the limitations of the time. Sadly I haven’t been able to delve THAT far into the new version to get a sense of its endgame (and if they retain the bizarre ending of the original) but it was kind of heartwarming to see something I enjoyed as a kid made for a new generation by the very same people who made that first game so much fun to begin with.
It’s finally 2021 which means it’s time for trying new things and making new goals for ourselves, and coincidentally this is ALSO the 20th anniversary of one of gaming’s most iconic franchises; Halo! The series has always been something of interest to me as it was one of the big NEW franchises to come up during my generation, though my relationship with it has been off and on to say the least. I am aware of certain things in the Halo universe and the first and third games are two of my favorite shooters of all time, but honestly that was about it. I never played the second game, I didn’t get far in ODST, and I remember buying Halo 4 for about five bucks yet never got around to playing it so the whole series just kind of faded to the background despite how much I enjoyed the parts of it I played. I was mostly content to leave it at that but a little over a year ago I managed to pick up a few of the novels on a whim without even any real plans to read them anytime soon, and it dawned on me at that moment just how much Halo stuff there is out there, and looking into it further revealed an astonishing amount of books, comics, lore guides, and even a few movies that slipped under my radar! So with all that and the 20th anniversary being right around the corner, I figure it’d be fun and interesting to try and unravel this franchise that has always been at arms-length, and perhaps it will give me a renewed appreciation for the games that I already enjoyed!
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Halo Is About Rings, Right?
The biggest hurdle for me has always been the narrative which never stuck for me. I always found the story to be confusing and I completely ignored it whenever I played the games, which is weird because I’m usually the last person to do something like that as I tend to follow things in order and dread the idea of getting lost in an ongoing story, but with Halo that just never was a problem. To this day, I’ve never played the second Halo game, and yet it didn’t stop me from playing Halo 3 because the gameplay and moment to moment action was so perfect that I could just roll with it; ignoring the story beats and just assume that I was kicking butt and winning the war! To that point though, this is definitely going to be a “Newcomer” perspective to the series as I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who’ve followed this franchise from the beginning and can give you a more comprehensive and detailed examination; and will probably be doing so for the twentieth anniversary as well. It’s also going to be a bit new for me to be reviewing straight up books as my closest experience has been reviewing comics, but I relish the challenge and frankly I could do with a bit more reading on books without pictures in them; even if they are sci-fi pulp novels.
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The Mission Objective!
For this series I’ll be covering as much official (and a few unofficial) pieces of media in the franchise, from the games and books all the way to some of its more esoteric entries like the podcasts and augmented reality games. The list, frankly, is daunting as I will pretty much have to cover two to three entries every week if I want this to be a twentieth anniversary retrospective and not bleed into a twenty-first anniversary as well, but hopefully it will all be worth it and I can at least make this strange little journey a little bit entertaining! The first post will be out next Saturday and I hope you all will follow me on this journey!
AEW Dynamite is owned by All Elite Wrestling, Tony Khan, Shahid Khan, and TNT
After things were so tragically derailed at the end of the year, it’s time for AEW to get things back on track and to hopefully start the New Year off with a bang! With a solid card, celebrity cameos, and a main event with Kenny Omega and Rey Fénix, do they bring enough bang for your buck, or is this a fireworks show that consisting of three sparklers and half a cherry bomb? Let’s find out!!
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Young Bucks & SCU Vs. The Acclaimed & TH2 – Eight Man Tag Match
This definitely feels like a filler match which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but despite there being a baked in storyline here with all four teams in some sort of feud it’s mostly just to show off some cool moves and for Kazarian to cut a promo at the end. There are some fun spots here (mostly from The Bucks who clear the ring at least TWICE in this match) and I like that they’re foreshadowing SCU’s promo by having Daniels be the one on the receiving end of the heat segments, but it also means that none of it particularly stuck with me. Jack Evans has a really cool looking spin kick from the apron, There’s a BTE trigger with Nick Jackson and Kazarian, and Angélico is definitely someone who should get more of the spotlight (much like Kazarian), and eventually Matt Jackson and Christopher Daniels finish off Jack Evans with a Meltzer Driver. Short, sweet, and to the point; certainly a solid enough way to start off a show. It’s then time for Kazarian to grab the mic and confirms what was announced on Being The Elite. The next time he and Daniels lose a tag team match, SCU will dissolve and they will be a team any longer. I’m pretty sure Kurt Angle had a similar deal going on in 2010 that eventually went sideways, but it was at TNA and I’m pretty sure AEW can do a better job than them with this kind of story. If nothing else, it’s a chance for Daniels to get the spotlight again before he puts his career to an end.
A year on this website wouldn’t be complete with a rundown of some of the games I managed to play in the preceding twelve months; almost none of which came out that year! Frankly unless it’s a big Nintendo release or something REALLY up my alley like a Hideo Kojima game, I rarely buy games when they come out and 2020 proved to be pretty anemic for big releases that caught my attention. Still, my backlog is enormous and it’s worth pointing out what games were really good (or really bad) even if they aren’t the freshest things out there. I mean heck, with Steam and online storefronts being what they are, who can even say what’s relevant anymore and what games can or cannot capture a bit of the spotlight? Probably not most of these games though as I tend to not have much in terms of “taste” but let’s see take a glimpse at what kept me entertained in the bad year to end all bad years!
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Batman: Arkham Knight (PC)
Developed by Rocksteady Studios
My big purchase of the year was a brand spanking new graphics card for my very old and out of date system, and one of the games I got to kind of benchmark it was this. The Batman games to me are kind of like Dynasty Warriors in that I ignore pretty much everything going on around them when they’re released and will just pick and choose the ones I want to play years after everyone stopped caring. To its credit, whatever bugs plagued this game on release don’t SEEM to be there anymore as I had a very smooth experience, and while the narrative is eye rolling tripe the gameplay was interesting enough for me to stick with it for a while. What kind of sticks out about the Batman games is that they do go the extra mile to make things feel like a “Game” and not just an open world sandbox of repetitive action. Sure, you can while away the hours picking off random things if you really want to, but the story missions aren’t just concentrated arenas for the same open world gameplay. The last mission I played before I put it down for a while (I’ll try to get back to it at some point) was the blimp level, and the fact that they bothered to introduce this shifting angle mechanic to give it something distinctive was very much appreciated. If you liked the Batman games and aren’t burnt out by them just yet then this is more of the same with a next gen sheen to it (though I guess at this point it’s decided CURRENT if not LAST gen) and one of these a console generation seems to be the right amount.
AEW Dynamite is owned by All Elite Wrestling, Tony Khan, Shahid Khan, and TNT
This is going to be a rough one, so forgive me if I’m not as “in depth” as I usually am with these things. With the untimely passing of Brodie Lee, AEW decided to put everything on hold; no angles, no storylines, no nonsense as we’re here to pay respect to a man who was taken from us all too soon. It’s still a pretty raw nerve and I’m sure the people who are out there tonight to have matches are fighting against a lot of sadness, but in confronting it and facing it head on with this show… well I can only hope it brings some measure of peace to everyone who now has to move forward without him. So let’s see what they did.
The show begins and the ENTIRE locker room is out on that stage with Tony Khan and Brodie’s family in the front. Justin Roberts calls for the audience to rise as they ring the bell ten time for Brodie as his picture is on the titantron. It’s simply haunting as the bell rings in utter silence and the grief stricken faces of everyone are on full display. At one point some people in the crowd start to try a BRODIE chant, but they swiftly realized it was utterly inappropriate and the bell continues to ring. Once the ten count is done, we cut to a video of Jon Moxley who is the first to speak on Brodie Lee, and while I’m not here to start rating things, his sad promos are just as believable as his fired up ones as the guy’s sheer authenticity (however much of it, if any, is just good acting) comes across whenever he speaks. And with that, we head back to the ring to prepare for our first match of the night. Jericho is on commentary and he is definitely on hand to make sure the air never gets too heavy because anytime there’s a moment of silence he starts saying the quiet part out loud which is that we’re here because Brodie is gone and we need to let it all out here in the ring; that people will be crying this night and that it’s okay to grieve. It’s an interesting form of levity that, along with the crowd, do a lot to keep this show moving despite how morose everyone is.
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Young Bucks & Colt Cabana Vs. Hardy Party – Six Man Tag Match
Cabana comes out with The Dark Order who all stand on the ramp and give the Dark Order sign as Cabana enters the ring. The state of The Dark Order in the wake of this is a discussion for another time, but one of the questions that will hopefully be answered soon is where Colt Cabana fits into them as he seems to still be a “potential recruit” rather than a full-fledged member. I guess the concern has always been that Cabana is such a sunshine-happy looking dude that “officially” joining a heel faction wouldn’t fit right, but we’ll see where everything stands in a few weeks. The match itself is good with a lot of high spots for The Bucks and Cabana while Private Party and Matt are bumping all over the place. They eventually start getting the heat on Matt Jackson by isolating him in the corner and taking turns bashing him with strikes, but he manages to get the boot up to kick Matt Hardy in the face and follows up with a cross body for a two count. Jackson starts crawling to the corner but Hardy keeps cutting him off until he takes a swing at Cabana which misses and eats a knuckle sandwich in return. Matt Jackson hits Hardy with a Twist of Fate and finally gets to the corner to tag in Colt BOOM-BOOM Cabana who lives up to his name with an amazing comeback that is probably his most impressive flurry of offense since he first showed up at AEW; ironically to help SCU fight AGAINST The Dark Order! Hardy Party manages to rally and Cabana ends up eating some offense from all three of them before Nick Jackson gets the hot tag and runs wild for a bit as well. He then eats a Gin and Juice from Private Party, a Twist of Fate from Matt Hardy, and TWO Shooting Star Presses, but thankfully Matt Jackson and Colt Cabana break up the pin in time. Matt Hardy is not satisfied with the way things are going and tries to bring a chair in, but Private Party refuses to play along and this gives Bucks and Cabana the opening they need to win the match with an Indie Taker on Quen followed by a Superman pin from Cabana to get the three count!
While The Bucks and Cabana are celebrating in the ring, The Acclaimed come out and it looks like they’re there to rain on everyone’s parade, but SCU run from the back and toss them into the ring to eat a few Superkicks from The Bucks and some BIG elbows from Cabana.
Now that we’ve got the bad movies out of the way, it’s time for us to focus on what was good because despite EVERYTHING that went oh so wrong this year, there were more than enough highlights to help us get through it all. With hope (and a lot of hard work) on the horizon, we’ll take one last look at the films that made 2020 more than just a dumpster fire before jumping into 2021 with renewed vigor and a spring in our step (and a few prosecutions against the outgoing administration wouldn’t go amiss either)! Let’s get started!!
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Honorable Mention: MOVIES IN THEATERS
In the US we got about three months of movies before everything shut down, and while there were some absolutely DREADFUL ones (particularly in January), it was actually shaping up to be a pretty darn good year! There were movies that looked good and lived up to those expectations like The Gentlemen and Birds of Prey, but we had a LOT of surprises; not in terms of movies that turned out to be five star classics, but movies that SHOULD have been terrible but were actually pretty decent! I mean think about it, can you imagine a world prior to 2020 where a Sonic the Hedgehog movie WASN’T going to be in everyone’s worst list or that a Vin Diesel vehicle would have decent writing? Sadly the COVID pandemic cut everything short; not just the big blockbusters we know about like No Time to Die, Black Widow, or Dune, but all the other movies that don’t get months of buildup and turn out to be great regardless. For years I had been seeing two to three movies a week and while a lot of them weren’t great there were more than enough to make it all worthwhile. Now that everything is either streaming or pushed back, it’s difficult for me to find that passion to just try and watch everything when I could just as easily watch reruns of It’s Always Sunny or The Simpsons with just as much effort and without spending an extra penny. Maybe the days of rushing to the theater every other day are gone for good and I won’t be returning to it even after this is all over, but that’s how I saw a lot of the movies I still love to this day and that’s how I saw some pretty darn good movies this year!
It’s certainly been one heck of a year, hasn’t it? Well it’s finally about to end so you can stop hearing me prattle on about it (we’ll see how 2021 goes), and before we end any year we must take one look back to reflect and see what we can learn. This year more than most, there’s SO many important lessons to take away, but in my little sphere of film criticism it’s feeling less and less important to rage against the disappointments that were had; especially considering the circumstances that everyone was trying to work around at every turn. Like last year this will hopefully be more of a CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM list than a merciless spanking of movies I didn’t like, and I decided to post this one first because I’d rather end this year on a good note with the BEST OF list instead and using this space to scream one more time at everything that went wrong in 2020. Let’s get started!!
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Honorable Mention: ALMOST ALL THE COVID ERA RELEASES
Yeah, let’s just head butt the elephant in the room right off the bat! With COVID shutting down theaters it was one big game of chicken as studios with more to lose tried to hedge their bets on later releases while those with less confidence were more apt to let them go on streaming services. Because of that, a lot of the mediocre movies we would have gotten parceled out throughout the year were frontloaded in the summer and a lot of the movies we were most looking forward still haven’t come out yet. We still haven’t seen the new James Bond movie or Black Widow, but Scoob and Trolls World Tour? Sure, why not give them twenty bucks to rent it? Even the bigger movies that eventually limped their way to the home market like Mulan were hardly worth all the fuss, and even the one movie I saw this year with the nerve to sneak out to theaters (I saw it at a drive thru) was New Mutants; a movie destined to fail whenever it came out so why not make it an even bigger joke by releasing it when it’d be dangerous to do so? We have the vaccine now, but it’s looking like it will be almost another year before things get back to normal, and with Warner Bros getting into fights with production studios over releasing movies on HBO Max it’s not clear if everyone will be on board with calling 2020 films a wash and just letting them come out so the next slate of movies can have their time shine. There were a few highlights here and there but 2020 was pretty much a nightmare across the board, and while 2021 seems like it will be no less… interesting, hopefully it will be the start of something better for everyone.
AEW Dynamite is owned by All Elite Wrestling, Tony Khan, Shahid Khan, and TNT
There was zero chance of me getting this recap out in a reasonable amount of time considering they put the episode on Christmas Eve Eve, but with the tragedy that happened over the weekend it got even harder to just sit down and get this recap done. Heck, I didn’t even finish watching the episode until last night with less than 2 days to go before the next one! Still, AEW Dynamite, even during the times where it’s hardest to sit down and watch, is still a genuine highlight of my week and they’ve definitely had a solid string of shows during the holiday season. Is their Christmas episode so good we’ll want to revisit it every Christmas, or is it one of those OTHER Christmas specials we only watch once and try to pretend never existed like Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer or December to Dismember? Let’s find out!!
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Top Flight (Darius Martin & Duante Martin) Vs. Jericho & MJF
Jericho is accompanied to the ring by Jake Hager
I’ve been a bit down on Top Flight, but it looks like AEW has a lot of faith in them to carry the company if given enough seasoning; otherwise why would they have been put up against not just The Bucks but JERICHO within weeks of debuting on Dynamite? Jericho to his credit gives A LOT up to Top Flight right off the bat as they beat the ever loving crap out of him with a series of flippy moves, but they’re not about to outmatch the Demo God just yet because despite the relentless assault they can only manage to get a one count. That’s perhaps what makes this match a LITTLE bit weird. Jericho and MJF will bump all around for these two, but as soon as its time to get the heat it’s a complete 180 reversal; and they’re the dominate heels again bullying the fresh faced youngsters. Sure, there’s SOME of that in any tag team match, but the turns feel a bit more jarring. The ending was also a little bit much for me, but I guess I can buy it. Top Flight are on the verge of winning the match after Daunte takes out Jericho by the time keeper’s table and Darius has MJF to himself, but Jake Hager manages to sweep Darius off the apron and smash his face on the way down; giving MJF the chance to pile drive the man and get the three count. On the one hand, Jericho and MJF, two of the most protected people in the company, had to cheat to beat these two. On the other hand, they are untested as a tag team so perhaps a lack of cohesion here or a strong defense against this kind of tag team is to be expected. It wasn’t bad or anything and it definitely had some great spots; I just found it a bit curious just how hard they were trying to make sure EVERYONE looked good even if it made the selling look a bit silly.
After the match, Hager grabs the mic to congratulate his fellow Inner Circle members, but there’s something that’s been perplexing him for two weeks now. WHERE IS WARDLOW!? He’s upset that Wardlow has been away on “family business” and so he had Tony Khan schedule a friendly little spar next week on Dynamite between the two of them and Wardlow better show up! Hager actually has some good delivery here and it’s nice to hear him take the mic again, but I’d be cautious of using Wardlow’s absence in a storyline; especially if the family business in question is SERIOUS business.
On 12/26/2020, the wrestling world lost one of its best as Jonathan Huber, also known as Luke Harper and most recently Brodie Lee, lost his life to a non-COVID related lung issue. For years he had worked in WWE and was most recognizable as one of Bray Wyatt’s followers before spinning off with fellow Bray Wyatt follower Erick Rowan to form The Bludgeon Brothers. This is where I first took note of him as I started watching wrestling again right as Wyatt was winding down (eventually teaming up with Matt Hardy to form The Deleters of Worlds and disappearing entirely before reemerging as The Fiend) and The Bludgeon Brothers definitely stood out as unstoppable monsters that the Baby Face teams had to overcome. Despite having such an instantly recognizable look and an indelible presence, Harper wasn’t given many opportunities and he eventually left the company at the end of 2019 to join AEW a few months later. This is where he truly started to shine for a lot of people and made his big debut as The Exalted One Brodie Lee, leader of The Dark Order, but as luck would have it his debut was on 3/18/2020; the very week AEW started having empty arena shows due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Wonder Woman 1984 and all the images you see in this review are owned by Warner Bros Pictures
Directed by Patty Jenkins
It’s been a WILD year that is thankfully coming to a close, but one of the big stories that will be with us throughout all of 2021 is going to be the distribution of films and what industries are going to survive this extended break from theaters. Everyone’s made concessions here and there, but Warner Bros recently took charge of the conversation (wisely or not) by announcing that all of their delayed 2020 films will be available on HBO Max at no additional charge. This has certainly angered a lot of filmmakers and production companies who were banking on the eventual box office offset costs so we’ll see if Warner Bros relents at some point in the future, but for now their first offering to the service is this movie; the sequel to Wonder Woman that was one of the most anticipated films of the year that time forgot! Was it worth waiting for it to finally come to the small screen, or is this something they should have delayed indefinitely? Let’s find out!!
It’s the mid-eighties and Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) has a new life in Washington DC as an Anthropologist at the Smithsonian. A bit unfair to crowd out the competition by LITERALLY BEING FROM ANCIENT TIMES, but she does her best to keep a low profile and does the occasional super hero save as her alter ego Wonder Woman wherever evil doers rear their ugly head. As charmed as this life seems however, she still carries the weight of Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) around her like an albatross around her neck. One day at work, the nerdy girl at the office Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig) is sent a bunch of reclaimed artifacts and one of them catches both her and Diana’s eye; some sort of wishing stone that looks like something you’d buy at Spencer’s Gifts. They disregard it at first, but Barbara starts to get super strength and super charisma while Diana somehow runs into none other than Steve Trevor; risen from the dead but not in a creepy zombie way! Seems a bit odd but she’s willing to roll with it! However, a local businessman named Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal) seems to know just what this stone is and needs it to save his failing business, but what no one seems to realize (or care about) is what the stone may be taking away from them as well. Will Diana discover the hidden dangers of the stone and stop Maxwell before he does something TRULY evil with it? What will Barbara learn about herself as she becomes more powerful and no longer has to be disrespected by others? I wonder what would happen if Batman wished his parents back. Is there any way we can add this thing to the Robert Pattinson film?
The Reviewers Unite 