Thursday 14 August 2014

Review: Guardians of the Galaxy

First, really love this film. It's rare that I can sit and watch a film and then when asked the question, how it could be improved, be left with no response. The balance of humour and action in the film, I think, is perfect.The characters of the heroes are fantastic and they played off each other really well, and the conflict between them in the early part of film leads to some really humourous scenes, which still set me laughing even now when I think of them.

If I absolutely had to make a criticism of the film, it would be that the personalities of the bad guys/ antagonists feel extremely weak in comparison to the heroes. They really do act and feel just like your average comic book villains. It would have been nice if the richness of the characters of the protagonists could have been mirrored a bit with the villains, but it in no way ruined the film for me.

The overall story and plot is good, and strong enough to hold together the various humour and action scenes throughout the film. Yes, it is a little predicable but again, I don't think that really matters given the subject matter and the genre. There were enough surprises to more than keep my interest, mainly the thought of what wacky and crazy thing the team would get up to next. I particularly like the bit with the battery and the artificial leg.

Anyway, I really enjoyed this film and it has become one of my favourites. I will certainly be getting it when it comes out in store, a while away yet, I know. If you enjoy the Marvel universe then this film is a must and even if you don't, I would suggest you give it try anyway. It's one of those rare films where everything seems to have come together in just the right order and quantities, which has created something really special. I look forward to seeing if this will be matched in the sequel.

Tuesday 12 August 2014

Wildstar End Game Review

Yeah, I know what the first question on most people's mind will be, what end game? And I partly agree. End game in Wildstar, other than mindless farming dailies, is not easily accessible to any who does not have a good guild. The dungeons are generally too difficult to PUG. Adventures are doable but getting a gold may be a challenge without Vent or Teamspeak.

Let's hold off mentioning the attunement process for, a while; yes I know you want to swear about it. I personally, enjoyed leveling through the game. I do not get all of these whiners on the forums complaining of torrents of bugs preventing them from leveling. I'm a pretty serious completionist, and I only came across two bugs while leveling 1 to 50, only one of which was in a main quest chain and when I went back the following day the quest was un-bugged.

I think, overall, the quests and storyline up to 35 meandered a bit and didn't have a clear goal, which sapped my motivation, as it did feel a bit like working through my in tray at work, only not getting paid for it. This is corrected at 35 with the main questline kicking off and the rest of the leveling process  held my attention.

Anyway, back to end game. I am really enjoying doing the adventures with my guild. Nerfing the rewards was annoying, as on our  last nightly run we got three golds and not a single epic, which needs looking at when gold used to get three guaranteed epics. At least give two guaranteed and one for silver and just a chance of one for bronze. But I want my epics! As for vet dungeons, I've only tried one once and my connection was epicly bad so while we reached the final boss, we were unable to kill him. But I have no issues with the difficulty of the dungeons. Actually, I find it refreshing.

Now, attunement. I am certainly not a fan and would like to know when days of mindless rep grinding became hardcore? I wouldn't mind the attunement process if everything you did counted towards the whole attunement list. Before I had completed the rep grind, I had gained golds in all the advertures multiple times but I still need to do it again to advance, which is annoying. The only other thing I have to say about attunement is, sort it out! I'm not doing that multiple times for each alt, forget it. End of rant.

3 months in, I am still enjoying the game, but I do think that new endgame content is needed that aren't just lv50 replicas of the starting faction zones. Lets have more original areas please, or more adventures and dungeons. If you're going to make me grind for attunement at least make it less repetitive.