OK, Ubisoft's turn on the stage. And they started out with the crazy rabbits teasing the partnership between Nintendo and Ubisoft with Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battles. Of course who better to share the announcement then Miyamoto. The game is a tactical turn-based adventure battle that involves hand held cannons. Can you save the Mushroom Kingdom from the rappids that accidentally invaded your dimension?
Read MoreMicrosoft is out the gate as the second company to have their conference. Lets look at what all they presented, shall we?
First off was the elephant in the room, Project Scorpio, or as it is now known, Xbox One X. Would it kill them to use the code names for actual product names? I really like a lot of the code names. The system will be out on 11/7 world wide at $499. The system has a 6 tereflop GPU at 1.172 Ghz, 12 GB of RAM, and 32GB/s of bandwidth. What this basically comes down to is the system is super powerful and supports 4K in the truest sense of the word. Also the accessories and games will be backwards compatible with the the new system. They are also reporting that if you don't have a 4K TV games will look great on a 1080P TV. In order to keep the infamous red ring of death at bay they have introduced a liquid cooled vapor chamber. And the blasted thing is also pretty small. It is barely bigger then the controller.
Read MoreHi readers! I've had meetings three nights this week, which has prevented me from doing a large number of geeky things. However, I did manage to have a little bit of fun, so let's talk about that.
I found some time to watch Dr. Strange during the week. This is likely my favorite Marvel movie to date. I felt like there was a more realistic portrayal of a hero's journey, with a person who is obviously brilliant and studious, but not an expert at the new thing he is trying to do. Which was a bit refreshing compared to the typical white savior complex. It does continue the Marvel tradition of well shot action scenes and some creative special effects. The reality bending scenes were especially effective. And, by the mid-point of the movie, I managed to forget that Benedict Cumberbatch was playing the lead. That is, the character was showing through more than the actor.
Also, Volume 1 of the Steven Universe soundtrack was just released, and I am immensely enjoying having access to those songs at all times.
That's all for this week. Game on!
Today E3 was thrown into full gear by the EA Play Conference. There were some impressive announcements made, the biggest being the the most expected. So lets jump into things.
I am going to start with the last thing they announced as it was the one that I was looking forward to the most, and the one that almost made me forget about the rest of the conference, Star Wars Battlefront II.
Read MoreHey everyone! Carebear here sharing a few thoughts about my hopes for E3 this year. The convention is in less than a week and it looks like we are in for a treat! So, to start I thought I’d take a quick look back at some of the things we saw last year that are now a reality and then look at some of the things I either want to see or think might have a presence based on what I saw last year. Let’s start off by taking a little trip down memory lane and look back at games that were demos a year ago that we have now spent countless hours playing.
Read MoreA few months ago Nintendo released their most recent console, the Nintendo Switch! This new console, if you can call it that, blurs the line between home console and mobile hand held. But does it work well? Short story, yes. Long story, kinda.
Read MoreHi everyone! I don't have much to talk about on the geeky front this week, since I've been busy travelling again. My limits of video gaming in the past week has been a few minutes on Breath of the Wild and trying out the Nintendo Switch version of Minecraft. I've read a little more of A People's History of the United States, getting up to the early stages of the American Revolution.
In non-geek news, I ran in the Bolder Boulder on Memorial Day and achieved my goal and a personal record of 49:30 for the 10km race. So, I'm very excited about that still and looking forward to pushing myself harder in running for the rest of the year. I'm thinking about running a marathon next year. Readers, have you recently had your hard work payoff? Tell us about it in the comments.
Hi everyone! I'm taking this weekend off from preparing any article. I hope you all enjoy the Memorial Day weekend. Catch you next week.
Hi readers! This has been an interesting week for weather in Colorado. We are past our usual last frost date, but ended up with some significant snow on Thursday and temperatures in the mid- to low-30's. This gave me a great opportunity to watch a movie that has been on my list since it was released. I've also finished one book and am starting with another one. Let's talk about Kubo and the Two Strings.
Read MoreHi everyone! There still isn't a whole lot to report on my end. I've been running a lot this past week to get ready for the Bolder Boulder which will be coming up in a few weeks. This hasn't left me with a lot of time to very many geeky things. I've spent most of my evenings watching Crystal play Breath of the Wild and finishing Ouron High School Host Club. I'm not ready to start talking in depth about BotW yet, so let's talk about Ouron instead. Although the rest of the series is largely a clever satire of shoujo tropes, there are some problematic parts to the series. Let's take the points one at a time.
First, let me lay out some assumptions, since these things are not well defined within the series itself. Ryouji Fujioka's gender identity and sexual orientation are not explicitly defined in the anime; therefore, I will be assuming the Ryouji is a straight (or possibly bi) male identifying person who enjoys cross-dressing. Having gotten through that, other characters referring to him as a "tranny" is highly offensive. Even if "tranny" is the most straightforward translation of the Japanese used in series, the adaptation staff could have spent a few minutes to explore alternatives. Perhaps, "queen" or "drag queen". Maybe the intention was to show that although the Host Club is tolerant of Haruhi cross-dressing, they are not accepting of a man cross-dressing. But without a moment in the script of someone (especially Ryouji or Haruhi) pointing out that this is a slur, this comes off as both the original creators and the English adaptation staff condoning transphobic language and attitudes.
After a leisurely pace in the middle of the series, taking full episodes to develop most of the members of the host club more fully, the end of the series is incredibly rushed, with a bunch of new characters, completely new plot lines, and character developments that come out of left field. This leads us to the last issue:
Kyoya and Tamaki's fathers are introduced in the final episodes. They are initially portrayed as very hard-nosed, thinking only of the family reputation and profitability of their companies. By the end of the final episode, however, they are joking about how they were actually nice guys after all. Eclair is a similar case. She's comes out of nowhere in order to cause trouble for Tamaki and the host club, with no real defined motivations. She seems to just enjoy jerking people around, but even this is not established as a trait that has some grounding in a personal history. Nope, she's just a jerk cause she likes to be a jerk.
I think I've talked enough about that at this point. Come back next week and see what I've been up to. Game on!
