5 years of owning a PS4, and I had no idea that it was REGION FREE! I could’ve been importing shit had I ever been aware of such a fact! OH YEAH, EDF IRON RAIN, HERE I COME oh no, it’s crap. 😦
OH YEAH, PSO2 HERE I COME oh no, it’s online only.
Well dammit! I didn’t expect to have the same amount of options as I do in America when it comes to vidya games to play. How my ass burns with the knowledge of PSO2 not having an offline mode. It ruined my whole year! All the pissing and moaning I’ve been doing for a whole damn decade, and I wouldn’t have the option to pop this bitch in and get what I have so longed for! OH THE DEVASTATION!!! THE INHUMANITY!!! THE HUMILITY!!! Oh well, there’s a cheaper version of Hyper Light Drifter I can try out in the future. 😛
Anywho, someone noted my review of Sundered and took me for a Met-… “exploration” fan with a penchant for hack n slash. He(?) spoke of a title named “Dead or School”. A game about a random Japanese School girl named Hisako who travels through zombie infested sewers and caves for the sake of going to school with friends! I wish I was making that up.
Course with a name like that, some of you might compare this to the likes of “Highschool of the Dead”. Understandable as that assumption is, this game is nothing like-
zzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Erm. Instances like this are not actually done out of fanservice, but merely to show battle dam-
Gah, that’s just her struggling against other zombies! I don’t know why her blouse is undone, but it’s not a game where the females constantly lose their clo-
dat a-What does having a big ass have to do with a torn up dress? 😛
Aww fuck it.
Lets just get this out of the way. Yes, this is a titty game. No, the developers do not hide it. Though unlike most Japanese developers, there is a surprising amount of restraint on the fanservice. It’s not all over the damn place that you’d be too embarrassed to play it, and the majority of the time spent will be actually playing the game rather than jacking off. The sex appeal is, at it’s core, just there to get you to notice the game… which is sad because it can easily be lost in the sea of sillicone marketing that is Japanese animation. Anyone who isn’t numb to the flesh peddling is either 14 or really lonely.
Dead or School was made by Nanafushi, an indie company known for making manga about big tittied robots. I know this because the game itself features pages from their works, and I can only assume this game is some alternate future from those comics. Anywho, it’s a post-Apocalyptic game (yay, another one) where, much like God Eater and Code Vein, the women all look like Super Models despite being in an environment that doesn’t exactly promote diet and exercise routines that would give them such bodies and faces. And unlike those games, Dead or School doesn’t have the excuse of super powered mutants who could get away with those bods. Even so, the main character can somehow fight against zombies with her bare hands!
Hisako hears from her Grandmother about the times before the Apocalypse happened, and how she in her younger years went to school and made friends. Hisako, who’s only ever lived underground in survival mode, thinks that sounds awesome, and decides to don her Grandma’s school uniform to find a way to cancel the apocalypse… and GO TO SCHOOL!
The motivation for her struggle is absolutely ridiculous, but the journey itself has a much better story. Mostly centered around everyone’s life sucking because of the Apocalypse, a man searching for his daughter, uncovering atifacts from before the Apocalypse (also known as “learning about Japanese Culture”), the age old “Man vs Machine trope, how random suriviving government officials wish to depopulate what remains of the human race, and ass shots.
Us prudes need not worry. Like I said before, the fanservice is infrequent compared to the shit I’ve seen over the years.
I feel it would be unwise to speak on the game’s aesthetics, though if they wanted sex appeal to be the selling point, the character proportions should’ve been more consistent. In some pieces (from the game), it seems like Hisako is about as thin as a brick, but in others, she’s filling in all the right places.
Audacious HisakoModest Hisako
Like… wha!? Maybe the artists were having some debate over how the character should be portrayed.
“You know what’d be cool? A samurai red head school girl who is thiiiiiic!” “Uh, can we not try to give the player a boner everytime they play the game? It still HAS to be a game, you know” “What are you, gay!? We can totally give her double D’s!” “We’re called “GAME DEVELOPERS”, butt munch! We need to focus on making the game play well, giving it great mechanics and a focus on strategy!” “You can’t motorboat great mechanics!” “Oh fuck off!”
Moving on…
Even the in-game portrait tries to distract you.
Dead or School should be thought of as a mix of Bloodstained/Axiom Verge and Dark Souls/Nioh. It combines the exploration aspect of the former, and the combat system of the latter. IE… you have stamina for everything you do… which sucks. The game claims to be an RPG to get around this complaint, but nothing excuses having stamina for everything you do. That said, the devs do try to alleviate the BS by having stamina increase rapidly, which you can speed up by crouching, but having stamina at all is a red flag. When you’re getting swamped by enemies, the Stamina will always, ALWAYS, get in the way. You have 3 weapon types that you can swap through on the fly. From a sword to a machine gun, and then to a launcer. The Sword is just a general term for all melee weapons (so you can use blades, axes, hammers, anything but your bare hands). The same logic applies to machine guns as rapid fire weapons (even shotguns and flamethrowers). Launchers aren’t as diverse as they’re often Grenade or Rocket Launchers, but usually never going outside of those distinctions. Much like Igarashi’s Castlevania games, you have an assload of weapons to choose from… to the point that your inventory will look like a giant clusterfuck by the end of the game. You will get so many weapons than you’ll know what to do with! The good thing is that there are no real “bad” weapons. They all have their pros and cons, but the lacking ability to beat whole ass is not a thing. Every weapon is effective in their own way.
HOWEVER… there’s a catch (of course there is). You see, just to pretend that the combat has depth, the swords have durability, and the guns have ammo. You will eventually run out, meaning that you won’t be able to use your guns, and your melee weapons will start tickling enemies, meaning you will have to find a save point (usually a vending machine with a white/blue light), and reset everything. The swords don’t become unusable simply because it runs out of durability, and the save points restore everything including health, so that’s cool. But having stamina and durability/ammo in the first place is fake difficulty for a game that, honestly, could do without. It’s just there to create tension and have it where you get nervous if you go through a long stretch of area, hoping you can find a save point before your weapons run out. Not to mention that different weapons also have their own set stamina rates. IE using a sword uses less Stamina than using an Axe. Same logic applies to the guns, so not only do you have to watch out for ammo and durability, you also need restraint so that you don’t run out of breath in a fire fight.
Don’t even bother using that Rocket Launcher
“So just avoid combat!”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA! That WOULD be a smart option… if battles didn’t lock you in a room to deal with almost unending waves of enemies! Yes, to further increase the tension, you get locked into rooms to deal with assholes that are often more tedious than they are hard. These battles exist mostly as endurance matches. How long you can hold out before you or your supplies start to dwindle. It’s easy to forget that you have a lot of shit to pay attention to… because the combat is pretty damn good! If you’ve played games like Sundered, Strider 2 (the real one, not the Sega Genesis bullshit), Murasame the Demon Sword, Dust an Elysian Tale, or any 2D hack’n Slash in the last generation, you know what to expect here. Combat is fast paced, and controls are ok for the most part. But again, because it’s pretty good, it’s easy to forget you have to micromanage your attacks. You don’t want to run out of stamina or durability/ammo by being too reckless. Enemies and bosses can be a bitch to deal with, but it’s not frustrating. Since this game treats itself like an RPG, you do have to grind a bit, and that grinding makes a world of difference. Just being 2 or more levels above the enemies and bosses will often make the game a cakewalk. And of course, higher levels means more stamina to work with, meaning less restraint is required. It DOES take a while to level up, though, the process pads the game out itself. Being at higher levels does have the interesting perk of NOT getting you locked into rooms full of enemy waves, so there’s more than just stat boosts to be obtained.
“Save a boy”. How vague!
And no, you can’t heal manually or by collecting any health drops. Only by save points.
While the combat sounds tedious, it really isn’t. Since this is an indie game, I suppose these guys have a heart to not make combat overwhelming and frustrating unlike Nioh 2 (FUCK that game, I swear!)
Save points give you several options that you’ve come to expect from RPGs. You’ve got fast travel, you have a shop, a weapons workshop, and skill trees. Everything you expect out of an RPG. Also typical of a quote “soulslike”, getting killed means you are sent back to the last save point… AND YOU LOSE AN EVER INCREASING AMOUNT OF MONEY!!! IE you might start off losing maybe 100 bucks, but if you get quashed more, you can lose up to thousands. It’s not difficult to get money in the game (killing enemies alone does it just fine) but it’s “easy come, easy go” as they say. Seeing this as a possibility, you might be tempted to retrace your steps back to the last save point, but that’s an even worse decision. You could get stuck in the same battles against the same waves of enemies that you dealt with seconds before. In other words, the only way to survive long bouts is to simply grind. The game doesn’t offer any other way around this.
It’s a vending machine, just find a brick, break the damn thing, and take all the supplies!
The Shops Inventory differs by RNG rather than the save points themselves, with higher leveled areas typically yielding better shit. Though all shops are limited to 4 items a piece, so the RNG crap doesn’t make a lot of difference. Besides, you’re better off saving your money as enemies often drop so many weapons that you’ll lose track of what you already have. I’ve bought shit only to be surprised that I had the same weapon several inventory spots from before. The money should be saved for upgrades in the workshop.
SONIC HEROES!
Workshop, yadda yadda, upgrade weapons with scrap you find from enemy drops, equip different weapons, equip perks that give you additional abilities like reduced stamina, faster attack, that kind of shit. Yeah, everything you come to expect out of RPGs are here. You might want to make a habit of selling off weapons that you are not using or planning on using because your inventory will be FUCKED as enemies drop weapons frequently, and for those who make it a habit of picking up everything they find (like moi), it will be a hassle to go through it all. There is no inventory limit, so you can go nuts. As for weapon upgrades, because the game is more lenient than you’d ever expect, it’s not difficult to farm for materials either. You got 2 gear types (Yellow for upgrades, Purple for making new perks), and the requirements for how much you need to upgrade or transmute anything is also super fair. It’s like the developers actually had a heart! Maybe Japanese Indies are better in this regard. Idk.
Where’d she get a chalkboard from?
So that’s just the gameplay… what about everything else?
Well I’ll say this. If you’re a 2010 baby or w/e, and you wanted to experience old PS1 games without actually seeking out a PS1 or getting the “classics” on digital, or that tacky classic console, then this game is by far your best bet. It looks and feels like a genuine PS1 game with a good frame rate. Graphically speaking, as it is an Indie game, it damn near looks authentic! Environments are dark yet colorful, reminiscent of old Castlevania games before the 2000s where they all started to lose their color in favor of washed out crap. Plus, for a Met-exploration game, being in an industrial setting feels unique. Mostly dealing with city ruins, subways, office buildings, concert halls, caves, and factories, it’s a nice change of pace from typical fantasy settings of most exploration games. On the other hand, the vast majority of the areas lack much in the way of distinctive qualities, so most of them look indistinguishable from each other, making it real easy to get lost when you’re backtracking for crap you missed. Even still, nice change of pace.
Ooooh red! That’s how you know it’s a bottomless pit!
That being said, holy shit is it hard to see anything! It looks like the game is rendered in high contrast where the darkest areas are dark as fuck shit! Hisako blends into most backgrounds as well as most enemies, so you’ll find yourself bumping into quite a few chumps along the way. It also doesn’t help that the game’s camera zooms WAAAAAAAAAAAY the fuck out to the point that your character is too tiny to even see! The developers seemed to be aware of this, so their only means of rectifying it is to have a green arrow point to where your character is… which is pointless because even the goddamn arrow gets raped by the scenery! The choice to zoom the camera out so far from the character is done mostly because some enemy swarms or mid bosses take up half or… ALL the screen, and it’s necessary for you to pay attention to how the enemies behave so as to attack and dodge accordingly and carefully. This was NOT a good decision, especially since most of these midbosses often have some strange blue aura surrounding them… which obscures your character and the arrow the comes with the bitch! It simply does not work, and makes the game harder by virtue of vision screwing.
Marco? Polo? Waldo?And they really thought that little ass arrow was gonna help!
Speaking of enemies, eh… I’ve seen worse. They’re mostly comprised of typical zombies and mutants (big zombies with super powers). Then they get into Resident Evil territory with plant based enemies, Licker wannabes, and even some Tyrant wannabes. You also gets bats, bugs, and robots along the way. All of which increase in tedium and annoyance! Most of the time, they’re easy to deal with. They all usually have the same kind of attack patterns, they’ll blink/flash before attacking at fixed intervals, so dodging and attacking them is piss easy. The problem is when you’re dealing with waves of enemies, you’d have to pick and choose which enemies to deal with first. The kinds of enemies you face in certain waves are fixed for the most part, and they often attack right after each other, so there’s no real chances of you getting dealt a bad hand where you’re ass deep in impossible enemy waves. Typically, you’ll want to deal with enemies that can shoot you from afar first, then beat down the rest of them. It feels overwhelming at first when you get buried with enemies over and over, but it’s honestly a cake walk. Again, leveling helps. The BOSSES are a different story. Again, leveling helps, but they’re often cheap and require a certain process to deal with (the tank bosses require you to dodge them for a Bayonetta slow down just to damage it’s backside, for instance). Kudos for keeping things interesting, but that often makes boss fights last longer than they need to as the means of killing them isn’t quite clear. Mutant bosses are fine, but it’s those robot bastards that’ll wipe their asses with you.
Ugh, not another life up attribute…
Speaking of length, I say this game threw me off as it is LONG AS HELL! This game lasts a while, having multiple LONG areas to get through, and it only increases via grinding that’s often required to get through the heftier areas. That’s not even counting all the so-called “replay value” it has. For an indie game, this seems abnormal! Indie games tend to be pretty short, so this is impressive in comparison!
Music…. er… everything is public domain crap, so none of it sounds good. None of the music even fits the areas in the game. This is by far the weakest point of the game. Soundwise, it’s… it’s ok. Having to hear Hisako’s high pitched voice for most of the game is grating, and some sounds will make your ears bleed from loudness and scratchiness, but otherwise… meh.
And no indie game would be complete without side quests and those damned fetch quests! Not really in relation to the main story (though in some cases, you’ll have to find keys to progress through a few areas), there’s a heft of bullshit you can complete collect that… only really fills up a gallery. This ranges from survivors to memorabilia that… ugh… teaches people about Japanese culture. But really, the only motivation to do most of these fetch quests is for images like the massive ass shot near the top of this review. Then they have the nerve to put puzzles and platform challenges on some of these side quests! I suppose it wouldn’t be interesting if all I did was beat every ass I came across, but damn do these “challenges” suck! They even have those shitty disappearing blocks from the damn Mega Man games!!! WHY!? What is wrong with Indies!? Why do they keep putting this shit in their games!? These damn blocks are NOT… FUN!!!
One of these sidequests require you to cook.
If I could just… get… the right measurements…. FUCK!
Drat! I can’t cook in real life OR the digital world! I’m still bewildered that so many J-Devs have side games where you cook shit.
Since this is a Japanese game, technical issues are practically nonexistent. Though you will get frame drops ocassionally, mostly due to the amount of enemies or the kinds of features a particular area has (most surface areas suffer from this), but otherwise, the game is pretty stable.
Drunk?
Overall, Dead or School is not an easy game to dismiss… or recommend for that matter. It’s got some good ideas here and there, mostly involving the setting and the overall plot so long as you can ignore Hisako’s very constant and very ridiculous ramblings about going to school and making friends, but the game is extremely long and, for the most part, repetitive as you find yourself grinding out most of the way to the end of the story. The worst part being trapped in an area to fight off waves of enemies as some endurance match with hard to see enemies that blend into the background.
Eh, tough call. I’d sooner say it’s an acquired taste. It’s not a bad game, per say. Just a mildly tedious one.
I think… we might need to come to terms with the fact that Yuji Naka… can’t do shit outside of Sonic. Nights, imo, is a dull flight sim at worst, tedious score attack at best. This random Wii game “Lets Tap” or whatever where you had to put a wiimote on the table and hit the table to do anything in the game was horrible, and now this. Yuji Naka has been showing he’s a LOT worse than Nintendo when it comes to trying to innovate things or keep things horribly horribly simple. This… sounds like yet again another example. Not to mention it sounds horribly horribly dated. Typical 3D platformer where you have to use powerups just to get through the most basic shit.
Yuji Naka’s… if I may… oddball game design really only ever worked for Sonic. Sonic’s ability to jump gave him 2 actions in one. Jumping and attacking. This worked because you had both movement and attacking in one function via spin attacks.
As well, being in 2D meant far more actions could be performed with just a single button. Spindashes, flight, gliding, bouncing, air dashing, all that good stuff. All of this was possible… because in a 2D space, you can do all of this shit with fewer buttons.
This level of over simplicity would cause problems later down the road, but most importantly, it worked with Sonic because it was in 2D. 3D, as I said years ago, requires far more complexity in controls because movement in a 3D space is limited with a Dpad or a Control Stick alone. In 2D, you can crouch, look up, move, dash, run, etc all with a D-Pad. But 3D, all you can do is move. These games require more buttons to do the same actions you could do in 2D without. Otherwise, you get situations where a single powerup requires you to remain stationary just to fire it’s cannons.
This isn’t something that Yuji Naka did just for little kids, this is something he does with practically all of his games. I don’t know why, but I guess having more controls scares him or something. 😛 But as I said, this style of controls simply do not work in a 3D space. If all you’re doing is jumping, and defeating enemies only necessitates jumping on them, then it would be fine. But needing to stand still just to shoot in… RANDOM directions as he says? No… just no.
Yuji Naka’s game design philosophy is, more or less, far too restrictive. We see how future Sonic games struggled to maintain Naka’s design in a 3D space, and far too often, they have to risk pissing off purists just to do something resembling practicality. It’d be more practical to look at the Spark Jester Games (Dammit, what are they called!?) for how to do Sonic games in the future, but eh.
To be perfectly honest, I never understood the appeal of Nights. I’ve only played the second game, and for most people, that isn’t a real Nights game. But I’m playing it, I fly around 3 times in a row, then I fight a boss with no clue on how to beat them. I tell yah, I’ve been stuck on the damn Chameleon… to this very day! I have no idea how to beat him! But.. all you do is fly around the same route 3 times, then fight a boss… again, it’s that weird ass over simplicity that doesn’t work for anything but Sonic the Hedgehog.
When it comes to content, Yuji Naka knows a thing or 2. Well… maybe not when concerning his other games, but for Sonic, he knew what the deal was. Gameplay wise, though, his style just doesn’t work in the modern era.
In the mystical land of IRL, there is a constant belief amongst the culture of pop in the modern era. Things are not good because they’re good; they’re good because they’re new. It is not only a logical fallacy, but it is a religious belief amongst the youth. Having been spoiled by a world of Computer Generated Imagery and modern technology, we are constantly bombarded with the thought process that, because of that modern technology, things will automatically be better than ever before. When Hollywood decides to take a hammer to old fan favorites from ancient times before the 2010s, they are often met with perfectly justified anger. I fear for the Thunder Cats in the hands of Wingart, for example. However, these same people are met with the Advocacy of Yurugu. “Come on guys! This is so & so with an actual budget! It can’t suck based on nonsense such as “good writing” or “engaging story”! No matter how often that happens, we are constantly bombarded with example after example of why such a fallacy is proven dead wrong.
Mortal Kombat is one such example. The movies from the 90s (at least the first one) are heralded as the primer examples of a good Video Game adaptation. No matter how much people tried to argue otherwise, comparative analysis often proves such. No other VG movie is held in high regard when compared to the first MK film. Some may point to Tomb Raider or even the Pokemon cartoons. Purely idiotic morons will even try to argue that the Sonic movie is one such example. But few would ever deny that the original MK movie has more highlights than any other vg film, dated as it may be. Until now…
Mortal Kombat’s 2021 reboot somehow convinced people that the old 90s film was no longer legit. Somehow, everything we praised about the old film was a lie we told ourselves just to feel comfortable enjoying mediocrity. These fools were so convinced that the modern reimagining of Mortal Kombat would undo the “travesty” of the 90s, therefore erasing the evidence of a decent, if flawed, VG adaptation, making way for the “proper” way to do a Mortal Kombat film.
Upon seeing the trailers of this train wreck, one could easily deduce how terrible it would be. The actors don’t fit the characters, the action (what little was there) looked subpar, the original character looked about as appealing as a wet teddy bear, and the costumes were less than adequate. Considering that the rebooted games did everything that people wanted out of Mortal Kombat (before fucking up and ruining the improvement within the span of 2 games), one would assume that the movie would automatically fail to impress based on that alone. But alas, people somehow held onto hope that this film would remain their savior to erase the “stench” of the original films.
Well, judging by how many youtube videos are taking a huge steaming pile on this movie, one can see that these poor and unfortunate souls have been crushed by their misguided expectations once more. “NO! HOW COULD THIS BE!? YOU WERE THE CHOSEN ONE! YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO ERASE THE ORIGINAL FILMS, NOT VALIDATE THEM!!!” Clearly, they did not have the tattoos necessary to understand that what makes something enjoyable isn’t flashy effects, but heart and soul being poured into what is created. How fortunate we were to be born in an era where flash was not the be all, end all to what made something spectacular. We can see beyond the surface of what makes quality which ultimately creates lasting appeal. Unlike today where things are made for the cheap, and then immediately forgotten, left to drift into the winds of obscurity. Afterall, in an era of short term growth, you get short term lasting appeal.
I… I went on another damn ramble, didn’t I? Ah well, letz git on wit it.
We open up in… what I assume is the 1600s, where Hanzo Hasashi and his doomed to be family were out fishing… or something. Hanzo’s family goes to their abode out in the middle of nowhere (why not in a village where the clan can at least set up a reasonable defense!?), and are immediately attacked by Sub-Zero and the Lin Quei. When Hanzo returns, he finds his Wife and Son incased in an icy tomb. What proceeds is… lets be honest, the only good fight scene in the whole fucking movie. Where Hanzo goes Rapetrain on the Lin Quei! Right off the bat, the movie, much like it’s animated counterpart “Scorpion’s Revenge” assumes the only reason you care about Mortal Kombat is because of the Gore Porn. The deaths are over the top and exaggerated to the point that blood will easily gush out of a dude’s skull and immediately drench his entire head in a matter of seconds. There’s so much blood that I thought I was watching one of those hyper gory animes where blood just splashes everywhere. It honestly looks… retarded in live action, but hey, the choreography is good, so I’ll roll with it. After dispatching the Red Coat Blue Ninjas, Hanzo finds Sub-Zero out in the woods, and they have a go at each other. Again, good fight, though it seems to be completely one-sided because only one of them has super powers while the other guy just has a dingy little rope dart. Obviously, Hanzo gets his ass beaten, and Subs kills him… by… stabbing Hanzo in the shoulder… with the rope dart?
Uhhhh… what!? Pardon me if I don’t understand biology, but… he dies from a stab wound… on his shoulder!? Hold on, lemme check something..
Mmm hmm… Brachial Artery, located in the shoulder and arm… shit, wrong one… Subclavian Artery, ok yeah, that’s closer to where he was stabbed… maybe he bled to death… gah, fuck it.
As much as I despise Scorpion’s revenge, the way Subs killed him in that movie made more sense. He doesn’t bother with a shit fight, he just overpowers him, murders his son before his eyes, and then just shoved a giant ice shard through his throat. It was fucking BRUTAL compared to this pussy shit. “Oh lets just stab him in the shoulder, that’s a hardcore fatality if I ever saw one!” Seriously, not even the spine rip fatality? Sub-Zero’s trademark finisher? No, just… stab him in the shoulder! SO MUCH BETTER THAN THE 90s FILM WHERE SCORPION WAS KILLED BY BEING BLOWN UP BY HIS OWN FLAMING BLOOD! RIGHT!? RIIIIIIGHT!?
Oh but it gets better! See, Raiden appears just when Hanzo dies, lamenting that the Shirai Ryu ninja clan (or just the family) had been wiped out with it’s clan leader. You know what could’ve helped? You taking your light bright ass down there to STOP the Lin-Quei from killing off the Shirai Ryu in the first place! But as we all learned from MK9 and beyond, Raiden isn’t the sharpest tool in the bunch. Infact, I’d reckon that he is the number 1 dumbest God in all of fiction! Funny, it’s one of the few things this movie gets right. Anywho, Hanzo apparently had another child which is wife hid away in a floor compartment. Raiden takes the boy and raises him… or gives him to a foster family, the movie isn’t quite clear on that.
Moving on to the future, we have either the son or descendent of Hanzo named Cole Young. And BOY is he unimpressive! Every review will tell you that Cole Young is the shittiest protagonist you will find in any movie. And that’s no lie! Cole’s personality is a ghost. It is so transparent that he is literally invisible. The scenary feasts on his ass every chance it gets. One wonders what the writers actually had in mind… if they had a mind at all when writing this character. Cole is a failed MMA fighter who constantly gets his ass kicked in matches. Despite this, he has a mysterious tattoo on his chest that resembles the Mortal Kombat symbol. Obviously, despite being shit in a fight, it means that he is destined for greatness! While he’s busy getting steamrolled in a cage, he is spied on by Jax Briggs, unfortunately not portrayed by Michael Jai White this time. They have a chat that goes nowhere while mentioning Ed Boon and John Tobias in the most forced attempt at generating trivia noise. That line of dialogue should be considered as contemptuous as the writers assume that new fans only get excited at the prospect of noting all the call outs, cameos, and easter eggs that movies have, only to show off their l33t knowledge of nerd mythos. Except everyone knows who Ed Boon and John Tobias are, so the forced trivia loses all glitz and glamor. Nothing will ever compare to my Shogakuken Trivia Noise, hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah
Afterward, Cole celebrates his asswhoopin at an outdoor restaurant with him family when all of a sudden, climate change rears it’s ugly head. Sub-Zero wreaks havoc on the surrounding block like a retarded saturday morning villain. He’s supposed to be a ninja, but he announces his presence because it’ll look good for the trailers and special effects team. After some time, Jax comes in to save Cole and his family in a jeep. He then explains that the tattoo is a mark of a chosen warrior, though he doesn’t elaborate what Cole was chosen for. Jax also mentions he has one as well. This is absolutely stupid for a number of reasons, but we’ll get to that in due time. First off, Jax instructs Cole to escape and find Sonya Blade while he deals with Subs. Even more idiotically, Sub-Zero hides in an old abandoned building instead of just killing Jax there and now.
People kept going on about how Sub-Zero was the best character in the movie, yet he keeps doing dumb shit like this, I don’t understand it. Maybe it’s cause he does “evil” really well or something, but I’m reminded of Mesogog from Power Rangers Dino Thunder. People like him because he’s so “sinister”, but in reality, he’s kinda stupid. Case in point, how he handles Jax. He spends the entire time just having fisticuffs instead of just offing him there. Then we get the trailer shot of Jax having his arms frozen… and then Subs leaves him there.
I’m just gonna say it because no one else will. Jax losing his arms over and over again is just a cheap way of having the black guy maimed in Mortal Kombat. Just sayin. In the old continuity (and Annihilation), Jax never lost his arms. He elected to have cyber implants because dealing with an invading army from Outworld was something he (reasonably) didn’t think he was prepared for, although in the Malibu comics, he got into a punching contest with fucking Kintaro (Tiger Goro) of all people. The reboot continuity just does everything it can to shit on Jax, and the “new” fact that he lost his arms to some bastard, whether it be Ermac or Goro or Sub-Zero, is just easy pickings. Sure we can say that it has more dramatic weight to his abilities, but it undermines his character. Look at how he turned into a sniveling little bitch in MK11.
Aside from that, Sub-Zero doesn’t bother to finish him off properly. No, he just breaks his arms and leaves him to stew on nothing. We’ll get to why this was a retarded act on his part later.
“Later”… Cole finds Sonya Blade in a… a trailer park. Dafuq? After being wrestled to the ground, Sonya invites Cole inside to explain the markings and it’s connection to Mortal Kombat. Those who are born with the markings are chosen to be the Champions for Earthrealm, Outworld, or where ever else these tournaments are held. As I said before, this is stupid for a number of reasons, but the one major reason is simple. Having Champions chosen AT RANDOM! Here’s the thing about Mortal Kombat. It’s a tournament that defines serious business. It is a matter of life and death not only for the kombatants, but as well as the people who live in these realms. The world that wins 10 consecutive tournaments has the right to merge the realms, and in doing so effectively enslaves one whole world to another. Interdimensional conquest. To the victor goes the spoils.
That is NOT something you want to leave to chance! If you have stakes this high, you are going to want the best of the best of the best fighting at your behest! The fate if your world and your species lies in the hands of the Champions! Having it where the Champions are chosen AT RANDOM leaves your fate up to chance overall! Case in point, Cole Young. He is a shitty MMA fighter who constantly gets fucked up in underground cage matches, tapping out after a few submissions! You think this weak fuck is gonna last the first round of a blood sport against DEMONS!?
Cole, weak fuck that he is, thinks it’s a joke despite a cryomancer’s attempted murder. Immediately afterward, Kano is introduced, strapped to a chair and wrapped in chains. In a weird twist, because Johnny Cage isn’t in the film, the writers decided that Kano should be the comic relief. Admittedly, he is damned funny, though to suggest he’s the second best character in the film based on that is to say that MK2021 is, at worst, a big joke. Anywho, Sonya explains that she has Kano tied up instead of.. you know, “dead”, because Kano himself has a mark. Though the reason he has it is because he killed the last guy who originally had it, thus the mark transferred to him.
So… so wait, the markings can actually be taken!? That… that’s not too shabby considering that the weaker Chosen ones can be removed in favor of a stronger candidate. But again, even a strong candidate can be taken out by an accident or some gunshot wound, or even disease. It’s still a flawed system because scum (like Kano), can be Champions because they got lucky and murked some random asshole for a quick buck.
Furthermore, this makes Sonya look like a complete moron! If she KNOWS this, she could just kill Kano, take his mark, and be the replacement Champion. Sonya HATES Kano, Sonya KNOWS Kano is a backstepping, disloyal terrorist who will do anything for money, and is the leader of a criminal organization. The worst thing he could do is doom everyone in favor of his greed. Killing him and taking his mark would’ve been the smart thing to do, but everyone’s taken stupid pills in this movie.
But no, she keeps him alive for some reason (Comic relief and the very next scene).
As they have their pissing contest, Reptile attacks them within the trailer! Of course, he has to operate on horror movie logic, so most of this scene is played out in the dark, with only a mere flare to luminate the madness. By the end of the retardation, I have to maintain my composure as I’m forced to endure Kano’s signature fatality. Fuck… ing…. gross. 1000 sins just because it happens. 😛
Somehow, this solidifies Kano’s spot on the team of heroes, and thus they head off… to a random desert. I guess this movie takes place in Vegas because otherwise, I’d have to wonder if they actually WALKED to the fucking desert! No van, no chopper, no nothing! Shit, I guess they DID make the right choices making them the champions with stamina that godlike! For some reason, Kano and Sonya get into a fight because… reasons. I guess they wanted to establish that despite the fact that he literally TORE A MONSTER’S HEART OUT, that Sonya Blade is nobody’s bitch. Much like the Nina vs Anna fights, I suppose it wouldn’t be Mortal Kombat if we didn’t see Sonya and Kano fight at least once in these movies. Anywho, Sonya wins, and then they just move on. Some how, they find Liu Kang in the desert who… randomly decides to shoot Kano with fire! Don’t worry, that’s how they say hello in Shaolin! Liu Kang then welcomes the trio to Raiden’s temple which just looks like one giant cave, and somehow, Jax is here with extremely thin bars masquerading as his trademark metal arms. But don’t worry! They’re small so something really stupid can happen. After that, the gang meets Raiden for the first time. They talk a bit about something known as “Akana”. Or was it “Arcana” like in Devil May Cry 2? Gah. Basically, the marks of MK Champions enable them to gain super powers so that they can compete against the otherworldly forces of outworld! In other words… Liu Kang and the gang… had to have these markings… before gaining their trademark abilities.
They try to sidestep how retarded this is by suggesting that Cole and Kano both have to train anyway. Before they can do that, however, the worst casting choice ever… I mean… SHANG TSUNG… attacks Raiden’s temple with Sub-Zero and Mileena… iirc. They both practically kick the shit out of Liu Kang and whoever else… until the best casting choice ever… I mean KUNG LAO… comes to save the day!
Damn does Kung Lao breathe LIFE into this movie! Damn near flawless costume, perfect moves, kicks the most ass, and knows he’s the shit! His actor literally embodies kung Lao in the best way imaginable! He’s one bad mother fucker!
After whippin ass, Raiden comes to stop the fighting between their groups. As it turns out, Shang Tsung is trying to eliminate Raiden’s Champions prior to the tournament just to gain an advantage. Well, they got that part right.
“These are your champions?!”
Uhhh… you know Raiden didn’t choose them of his own accord, the markings are just randomly attached to people at birth. Isn’t that what the movie was saying? Anyway, Raiden creates a magical barrier to prevent Shang Tsung’s forces from attacking them again. Damn does Kung Lao chew on the scenery, he’s so flawless!
But lets talk about Shang Tsung for a moment. He absolutely SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKS in this movie! He is so unthreatening and invisible, his outfit is atrocious, and that fffffffffffucking man bun gets on my nerves!!! The guy portraying him just… doesn’t work! There’s nothing imposing, sinister, or even evil about him that makes you think “yeah, they need to hurry up and kick his ass”. It’s like Mister Mind from Shazam took some random cosplayer and made him evil just for shits and giggles. Was there ANY reason they couldn’t get the guy from the 90s to reprise his role!? Hell, Shang Tsung can be both old and young, there’s no reason he could not come back. Especially since all he does is bark orders and spew generic dialog. At least from a guy who’s got more experience being fucking EVIL in his films, he could bring that dry ass writing to life! This dork just doesn’t do the role or the character justice.
Kung Lao basically tells the group that they’re pretty shit in a fight, and must train. Cole of course struggles because he’s always been shit in a fight, Kano is beaten up because comic relief, and Sonya is told that she can’t train because she’s a girl-I mean something something no mark no training something something touching moment with Jax. Jax is up and running, and tries to box with the little twig arms he was given, but feels absolutely weak no matter how much he punches a sandbag. Again, they have to make Jax a bitch in these films. But w/e, after several days of training, the Earthrealms crappy warriors all decide to have dinner.
“Haha, nice arms mate! Do they come in men’s sizes!?”
Ok, that was funny.
Kano gets into a pissing contest over some eggrolls where Liu Kang and Kung Lao… “eggs” him on into a southpark-esq tanget over why he’s the hottest shit ever. Unfortunately, this is the last time Kano is actually funny. But that’s not the important part. For some… strange reason, Kano’s rage filled rant… is what unlocks his “Akana”! His fucking eye laser from the games!
There are…. a million things wrong with this detail, but most importantly is this. Kano’s laser eye came from cybernetic implants! Not fucking made up stupid powers!
It’s at this point that people will begin to see the inner flaws where Kano’s eye lasers are the result of MK Champion markings! This despite the fact that the games have constantly shown that Kano’s laser eyes coem from a cyborg eye and metallic parts on his fucking face! This is beyond stupid. Right now, a million MK fans came to realize something. Hollywood simply doesn’t give a shit about the source material, and even with the most obvious evidence giftwrapped for them, they still came up with something equally as stupid to justify why the characters have super powers. Because maintaining or constructing a lore that makes sense and is respectful to the source material is not what was important to Hollywood. What was important was the name brand. Mortal Kombat is an extremely popular franchise. It brings in money even when the games are at their worst. New age fans of entertainment are easily pleased. They go for the glitz and glamour before they go for story and substance. Hollywood knows this. Hell, Hollywood deliberately lowered the bar for what is considered high quality to the point that people will say in one decade that movies like Spiderman 3 and Rise of the Silver Surfer are terrible films, but a decade later, they will praise the likes of Thor Ragnarok and Guardians of the Galaxy 1+2. People don’t know what they like about movies anymore, they’ve become Apple Jacks fans. You know those old cereal commercials where the kids couldn’t explain why they liked the damn shit!? They never said “maybe because it’s some good ass cereal!” I mean OBVIOUSLY they can’t lie like that, Apple Jacks tasted like ass in comparison to Fruit Loops, but the idea isn’t to advertise the quality and substance of the cereal, it’s simply to say “Eat it… because”. That is the mentality of Hollywood and the typical movie going audience. You watch it and like it… because. That is why Mortal Kombat 2021 gives so little of a shit about it’s content. They knew fans and movie goers would flock to this bullshit because it’s a movie, and it’s based on fighting games. Not to mention the undue hype of “it will be better because it’s new”. And for some reason, people bought into that shit! It is the primary reason the MCU was and still is the most popular film franchise of all time, but no one is actually going to go back and watch any of these films because deep down, they know they are glorified advertisements for the other films in the series.
Here’s the thing. A lot of people hate Hollywood adaptations because they frequently, constantly, and in this case DELIBERATELY, take a piss on the source material. People try to praise this and say that this is a good thing because it means Hollywood can do their own thing. Afterall, “you don’t want to see the same old shit, do you?” Except if you want to do your own thing, YOU DON’T RIDE THE COATTAILS OF ANOTHER WELL ESTABLISHED FRANCHISE! You… do… something… ORIGINAL!!! But Hollywood doesn’t do original because original doesn’t make money like latching onto other fictional properties! The problem is these established franchises have established audiences, and established audiences have set expectations. You can’t just go so far out of your way to distance yourself from the source material… just because! And the way they go about it in THIS piece of fuck film is just absurd! You replace technology with magic, and it doesn’t make sense. With Liu Kang and Kung Lao, they both have mystical powers and abilities that give them a sense of mysticism and dignity. Kano is just some asshole who has eye lasers! Lasers that only emit from ONE EYE SOCKET, might I add! Why not both eyes!? Why the limitation!?
“Oh, he has to do more training to get it from both eyes!“
Fuck you. It’s because “Well in the games, he had one eye laser”. But don’t worry folks! It gets even DUMBER later on!
So after Kano gets his stupid eyes, Raiden chews out Cole for being shit at fighting, and sends him back to his family for being shit. Nah, not really. I assume Cole was expressing doubt in himself for being a shit fighter. Maybe he’s jealous of the fact that Kano got his Akana earlier than he did despite the fact that Kano’s a biligerent asshole with no comparable combat ability. But w/e, Raiden shows he’s a much worse mentor than Splinter from Ninja Turtles.
In Outworld, Shang Tsung bitches that he can’t kill Raiden’s champions thanks to his special barrier. However, Kabal (who looks more like the Predator Aliens, but ok, he still looks cool) tells him that he can manipulate Kano into fighting for their sake. So… that’s what Kabal does. He just goes down to Raiden’s temple, talks a good game to Kano… and Kano EASILY betrays Earthrealm.
“That was Easy”
It feels like they just wanted to end this movie as quickly as possible because it took no REAL convincing on Kano’s part to betray his allies. “Because it’s accurate to the games”, OH NO! You assbags don’t get to have that excuse! You wanted the movie to do it’s own thing! Having Kano as a good guy would’ve been TAKING RISKS! But now we want to play it safe all after the fact! But this is only really done so that something really stupid can happen much later!
As soon as Kano takes down the Barrier, Shang Tsung wastes no time attacking the temple with Reiko (Really? That’s a random choice), Kabal, Mileena, and… Oh Amma, NITARA!? The vampire bitch from Deception!? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH, damn they spared EVERY expense on this bitch! All she has to look like the character from the games are those stupid bat wings! She was in a few seconds of Scorpion’s Revenge, and she had a better outfit than this shit! I’d accuse the studio of scraping the bottom of the barrel, but unlike the MCU, people know who most of these characters are, so they can’t get away with doing whatever they want with them thanks to a lack of obscurity. But whatever. While that happens, Goro is sent after Cole.
Once again, we don’t get a fight where Liu Kang can actually defeat Goro fair and square! WHAT IS THIS SHIT!? Every adaptation you can find outside of the actual games, we have to have this thing where Liu Kang is simply NOT ALLOWED to defeat Goro!
Lets get something straight. Liu Kang is a rather BIG DEAL in the videogames. He was the main character for the first 4 games up until Deadly Alliance. As the one who is based on Bruce Lee in a setting based on “Enter the Dragon”, this makes sense. Liu Kang’s importance comes from the fact that he managed to defeat Goro. Goro was the main reason that Earthrealm kept losing all of their tournaments. No one in Earthrealm had an answer to how they deal with such a monster. Liu Kang’s prestige came from defeating him. This solidified Liu Kang’s importance to Mortal Kombat clearly. Earthrealm would never have been able to stave off defeat in the 10th consecutive tournament had it not been for Liu Kang defeating Goro, and then eventually Shang Tsung himself. He then goes on to defeat Shao Khan twice, as well as the elder god Shinnok. So him getting killed by Shang Tsung and Quan Chi in Deadly Alliance LITERALLY spelled doom for Earthrealm as it meant that EVERYONE started to get crushed by everything that came after. All of this eventually led to Armageddon and Raiden having to restart the timeline in the first place. Liu Kang is fucking important to the series whether the producers want to admit it or not.
But somehow, in every fucking other medium, this is NEVER ACKNOWLEDGED! In the first movie, it was Johnny Cage who beat him. In the malibu comics, apparently they didn’t have a fight at all (I can’t remember). In Scorpion’s Revenge, Liu Kang gets RAPED and beaten to death where Scorpion has to come in and save him! And in this shit fest!? Goro is given to Cole as a mere catalyst for Cole’s Akana! Throughout the fight, Cole gets his ass beaten to the point that his wife has to save him with a beat up car. But, just like in MKX, Cole’s Akana awakens… VIA THE POWER OF GODDAMN LOVE!!! ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH!!!
BUT…. this brings up another problem. Earlier in the film, it was clearly stated that their Akana comes from training. Right? Right. But… in just 2 instances, we see 2 characters getting their Akana from strong emotions! So what we’re seeing was that the training montage with Cole and Kano existed primarily to pad out the length of the film and not do anything meaningful!
*GRUNTS*
… So… Cole’s Akana… allows him to activate some mystical armor that protects him from all forms of damage… which makes it impossible to feel any tension during his battle against Goro. Goro can punch and beat Cole as much as possible, but the armor protects him. So instead of… you know, going for the head as one Mad Titan would put, Goro acts like a brain dead moron and keeps punching him in the chest. I love how when the family attacks Goro with a car, Goro grabs an axe to try and break the car open instead of using his own strength. I mean wtf!? Why an axe!? YOU HAVE ARMS YOU FUCKWIT! USE THEM! TOSS THE CAR OVER, DO SOMETHING LOGICAL WITH YOUR NATURAL POWER!! DON’T BE A BITCH AND USE A TINY AXE THAT’S A FRACTION OF YOUR SIZE TO CUT A CAR OPEN, YOU FUCKING MORON!!!
Oh and get this! Cole can also generate bladed tonfas out of the armor. And immediately, he kills Goro! WOW! That was so earned! I feel like Cole has finally leveled up, and is now ready to take on his ancestor’s killer! Why am I supposed to give a shit!?
Anywho, Kung Lao shows why he’s the only real champion in this movie by kicking the god living shit out of Nitara, and performing his signature chainsaw fatality!
All the while, Liu Kang gets beaten by Kabal, Jax gets beaten by Reiko, and Mileena pins Sonya to the ground just so she can lick a sai sexually and proclaim that “Sonya isn’t worthy”. I guess this is a thing where Sonya apparently feels inadequate because she doesn’t have a tattoo? Was that ever conveyed in this movie for me to care?
At some point, Sonya gets trapped under a boulder, and Jax does all he can to lift it off of her. And this is where the Akana powers get really…. fucking… retarded! Remember, Jax only has small metal arms to work with because the medics in Raiden’s temple aren’t scientists. But… oh BUT… somehow, Jax’s fucking Akana… upgrades his arms into big… strong… hands! The best part!? They STILL LOOK MECHANICAL!
So lets get this straight. The Akana, the magical mystical source behind the markings of Mortal Kombat… can also grant technological upgrades!? Who knew the Elder Gods had engineers amongst their ranks!? I honestly don’t believe for a second that these assholes have played any of the games, even the shit that has all the cutscenes gift wrapped for these fucks. But also, again, Jax is all panicky, thinking his friend is going to die while trapped under a rock, so by lifting up the damn thing, screaming for someone to help, he gains his Akana infused upgrades which are still mechanical, btw. No elegant mystical design like the arms he got from Kronika in MK11, just the men sized mecharms. Again, the powers come from emotions rather than training and mastery. I know I shouldn’t get so hung up on the Akana lore, but it just… doesn’t.. make… any… goddamn… sense!
Anywho, after Kung Lao does all the ass kicking, Raiden tries to get his warriors to escape through a portal of his own making. However, Sub-Zero fires an ice blast at Cole, knocking him from the portal. AGAIN, Kung Lao, Boss that he is, teleports back to kick more ass and save him!
And then… the worst casting choice for the movie… kills… who was arguably… the best character in the movie. Kung Lao… is dead. RIP for the GOAT of this film. -_-
Shang Tsung steals Kung Lao’s soul as Liu Kang watches in horror. As this happens, the movie starts rushing itself. In some… weird realm, Cole decides that it’s best to play by Shang Tsung’s rules and kill off his warriors. So they all decide to split up and fight these assholes in… randomly teleported areas. Jax is in a cave fighting Reiko, Sonya fights Kano back in the trailer park, Liu Kang and Cole fight Kabal and Mileena respectively in… even more caves, and Subs is left to kidnap Cole’s family. Needless to say, they all practically succeed… except Cole who has to be saved by Sonya… who now has her own Akana after killing Kano. Remember that? The markings transfer ah who gives a fuck, because this bitch, WITHOUT TRAINING OR EMOTION, can IMMEDIATELY use her Akana power IE the special forces issued wrist mounted blasters… which in this case are just random forearm plasma blasts!
It’s nice to know I’m not crazy, Akana just does whatever the hell it wants! This entire sequence of fights jumps back and forth between contestants so much so that you can never get your bearings to enjoy any of them. I guess the directors just wanted to blind you with all the fatalities (all of which suck ass) because herpderp, selling point of the games! This whole segment assumes that all people care about is the gore… and they don’t even try to make it look awesome or, dare I say it, SENSICAL!
When Jax does his hand slap fatality on Reiko, his entire head explodes. Sure it shows how strong Jax is, but it looks too cartoony. It probably would’ve been more effective if the head was intact, but was flattened out, and his brain matter squirted out of the back of the skull to have added gross factor and shock value. Having the entire head explodes just feels cheap and lazy.
Kano being killed by a lousy Garden Gnome is only done because earlier in the movie, Kano called said gnome “scary”. Actually, now that I think about it, why the hell would a trailer need a garden gnome!? It’s a MOBILE HOME! There’s no yard to decorate!
Sonya kills Mileena with her hand blasters by blowing a hole into her stomach. What makes no sense is the fact that the spine was left intact. Why? Probably because if they had a complete hole, it wouldn’t look as shocking or as gross, but science says the spine should be gone! Also, if they cared that much, then Reiko’s death should’ve had the same level of effort. It just makes Sonya’s new and unearned power look a tad weak, is what I’m saying.
Afterall all this time, it’s likely that you forgot that Sub-Zero was even in this movie. Stupidly enough, he kidnaps Cole’s family, then teleports to where Cole is, shows off the necklace/bracelet one of his girls wore… all to lure Cole into another dimension. But… why?
Sub-Zero seems to spend most of the movie… fucking around with people. He kills Hanzo’s family and puts them on display for shits and giggles, he makes snow cones in a city block, he lures Jax into a building for a crappy fight in the dark… and now he acts like a cliche villain who kidnaps the hero’s loved ones to goad them into following him into a trap.
In the context of the movie, Subs job is to eliminate Earthrealm’s Champions. Out of all of Shang Tsung’s henchmen, Sub-Zero is supposed to be the most efficient. He’s treated as the penultimate henchman, yet… he doesn’t really show why he’s the most capable. He’s a ninja, right? Why doesn’t he just use standard assasination techniques combined with his cryomancy? Is making logical sense in this movie too much to ask for!?
Anywho, Cole follows Sub-Zero through a portal that takes him… back to the underground fighting ring, or… just the locker room, which Sub-Zero froze completely, and has Cole’s family locked in a cage, all being encased in ice, without the possibility of hypothermia conveniently enough. Sub-ero attacks Cole as he tries to free them, and it turns out Sub-Zero can bypass Cole’s bullshit invincibility by just… freezing his armor down. Now all he needs to do is stab his exposed head!
COME ON SUBS, YOU CAN DO IT! SHOW ME WHY PEOPLE LOVE YOU IN THIS MOVIE SO DAMN MUCH! COME OOOON, YOU CAN DO IT! DON’T BE AFRAID TO ACTUALLY BE EVIL AND EFFICIENT! COME ON BOY, BEFORE SOMEONE PULLS A DEUS EX MACHINA TO SAVE COLE AT THE LAST oh damn, Scorpion just arrived in the nick of time.
“GET OVER HERE!!”
How many people care about this catchphrase anymore?
Scorpion appears out of nowhere to fight Sub-Zero… because like with Sonya and Kano, it just wouldn’t be Mortal Kombat without it (but we ruin any Liu Kang vs Goro rivalry at every turn despite how important that shit is to the entire Mortal Kombat mythos), and… I guess Cole is watching with his thumb up his ass up until a certain point where he joins Scorpion to double team Subs. The fighting is as dull and as lifeless as you can guess, so much so that even writing about the fight is a chore. So, by the end of it, Scorpion does his little fire breath fatality, minus the skull head because we don’t want to be too much like the games. Respecting the source material doesn’t make them money, apparently. Cole’s family survives, and Raiden comes with the other Champions to pick him up (Damn Raiden doesn’t do ANYTHING useful in this whole damn film!). Shang Tsung arrives to express how salty he is over losing all of his Champions, and yet for some reason, the elder gods don’t cancel the tournament or kill Shang Tsung for trying to break the rules… which Raiden’s team also broke. But.. w/e, the Elder Gods have always been a bunch of spineless turds so I GUESS we’ll let that slide.
Finally, Cole decides to go to Hollywood to find Johnny Cage, much to the dismay of rabid Cage fans.
Ugh… you know a movie is bad when reviewing it becomes a chore.
MK2021 should serve as an epiphany for the audience. The horrors of the old days where adaptations never matched up with the source material… still exists to this very day. Nothing in this movie tries to be better than the old movies or even games. Hell, it barely tries to be the games outside of the gore. Hollywood just made an assumption of what people exclusively loved about Mortal Kombat, and decided purely to focus on that detail, much like Scorpion’s Revenge. We sacrifice story, characters, and a cohesive lore in favor of lame fight scenes, and poorly executed fatalities. The characters act like morons without a clue, the powers are poorly explained, and they don’t make sense in the context of the film’s lore. It’s just a movie made, again, for the glitz and glamour, purely for the spectacle. Here’s the problem. The reboot series… already gives us the Mortal Kombat movie reboot via their story modes AND the spectacle of gore and creative fatalities. Making a movie when you have 3 modern age games that do all of these things without Hollywood is a waste of time. But… again, they saw money to be made, and didn’t think about disadvantages.
Anyone hear this thing about Cole Young being invented because they didn’t want a white guy to be the main character? I’m like “dude, it’s Mortal Kombat, who gives a fuck, seriously?” And hell, if that was the case, you have goddamn LIU KANG right there! Because I’ll tell you right now, Cole is straight shit! He is boring,he sucks as a fighter, and the only real victoryhe had is against Goro… which is an insult to Liu Kang!
Speaking of which, Liu Kang is also dry on the personality. I can’t believe I’d prefer his Power Ranger personality at this point. It’s weird because… it’s close to his in-game counterpart, but damn if Robin Shu wasn’t superior in every way!
Knug Lao was awesome. That is all
Kano was indeed funny, but it felt like he was overexposed as a result. Because as we’ve learned, comedy is what drives people toward anything and anyone. We all just want to sit around and laugh at shit, then we assume it was awesome because we laughed so much. LAUGH, DAMMIT! LAUGH!!!
Jax was still a bitch.
Sonya was actually very disappointing, which isn’t surprising given how little of a shit this movie gives to characters, but you’d think with all the “girl power” shit going on, Sonya would have a little more material to work with, but I guess they cared about equality or something. As such, she just seems to be there to spout a little exposition until they get to Raiden’s temple.
Raiden was barely in the movie to matter.
Scorpion too.
They did Reptile dirty in this movie. I should be used to it by now, but seeing someone as bland as Nitara getting a little more grandiosity than Reptile feels wrong. He was the first secret character in all of fighting games, that has to count for something. Not to mention… he’s just a generic monster!?
Shang Tsung was awful. Hands down the worst character by virtue of being an unimposing villain.
Kabal was ok, I guess.
Mileena, same as above.
Nitara sucked. You know, all the Outworld villains were just there to be people to fight against, they never brought anything to the table other than to be fodder. That’s one of the things that I think was the result of the MCU. The MCU taught Hollywood that you don’t need a good villain to have a successful movie… which is asinine. The heroes are only as good as their opposition, and if they just “exist”, then what little motivation you have for the heroes to succeed will be minimal. Some of you were surprised when I said “Shazam” was a good movie, but it’s an example of a film that has a rather decent villain! Infact, I’d say DC movies often have much better villains than the entirety of the MCU! But if that’s the case, then how did Warner Bros fuck up the villains in MK2021!?
Goro is an idiot.
Sub-Zero, I still don’t see how or why he’s the “best character” in the movie. For a guy who’s supposed to kill Earthrealm’s warriors, he has failed in every instance. He failed to kill Cole twice, didn’t bother to kill Jax even though he had the perfect opportunity, and got murdered by the guy who came back from the dead. SHANG TSUNG killed more people than Sub-Zero. Oh but because the actor “enjoyed the role”, we’re supposed to overlook the fact that he was an utter failure of an assasin. But again, it proves Hollywood’s point. The shit doesn’t need to be good because on a “purely superficial level”, people will enjoy something. Sub-Zero is a perfect example. He’s useless in the grand scheme of things, but because he acted “evil”, he’s all good. But I guess I’m not too different in that regard, suggesting that Shang Tsung would be better if they had the original actor. >_>
Overall… don’t watch this movie. Go back to GvK or the original 90s movies. At least there, Liu Kang gets some damn respect! AND the music is sexy as shit! AND IT HAS JOHNNY CAGE WHEN HE WASN’T A JOKE!
Provided by Asia Catdog (Just post the URL by itself. I cannot see embedded videos in the app, thanks)
Oh look. A video confirming damn near everything we know! I love how gamers in the west have this thing about… respecting Japan’s tastes in games (not explicitly stated outright, but there have been times where people got defensive over anyone criticizing Japan’s tastes) but the Japanese can turn around and insinuate that people are stupid for liking Sonic outside of Japan. Puts those Asian protection laws into perspective, eh Bastard Devil Biden? Again as I said before, good taste is a sign of high IQ to people, so there’s that angle.
I’ve heard the motion sickness thing in regards to FPSs before, so that might be true. A lot of those posts sound like trolling assbags though. “His legs are too thin”? Dafuq? Then the other post about “he should be like Hello Kitty”, probably in response to the nontroversy of Yuji Naka’s old statements during the Adventure interview, and the Baby Sonic shit. It’s hard to get an actual consensus as they seem more focused on trying to be funny. Guess they aren’t so different from the west in that regard. 😉 Sounds like they despise Sega themselves in some way.
Heh, I forgot they called it “Sonic Toon” over there. 😛
Overall, though, it sounds both equal parts about tastes as well as lack of quality and consistency. Seems that they take reviews more seriously than we do, or maybe their journalists aren’t lying jerk offs, idk. They’re saying the exact same things we do, which really shouldn’t come as a surprise.
It also, again, shines a light on why Sega just doesn’t bother to make it any good. Sonic, by virtue of it’s gameplay and character design alone, simply does… not … appeal… to Japan. You get a few people here and there that like Sonic, but overall, nah. So there is no incentive for the company to give a shit.
Kinda sad that the first thing that came to her mind was Hatsune Miku in regards to Sega. Not even a single mention of Sega’s precious VIRTUA FIGHTER! Hell, not even Phantasy Star Online, the doggone non-Sega property, and a damn puzzle game! That… is… pitiful! What are you doing, Sega!? 😛
… Well, it DOES look good, but something about it seems slow….
Looking up news and information for Guilty Gear Strive has been quite interesting. For once, people are not sucking off ASW for “omg amazing graphics and gameplay”, and are finding everything they can to shit all over it. Mind you, the mere mention of any fighting game developer trying to make their games “less complicated” is always bound to rile up the FGC for they believe the gaps in skill should be so massive that their fun should never be spoiled by ever sharing the same arena as those they declare to be “teh scrubs”.
Frankly speaking, I don’t see the point of making the game “easier”. Aside from some execution complexity and apocalyptically retarded jargon for the most basic fighting systems, Guilty Gear is not a difficult game to pick up and play, especially if you’ve been playing fighting games for quite some time now, so making Guity Gear easier to play is like making DOA6 easier to play. It’s unnecessary unless you’re going to remove the execution complexity of… hell, almost every character in Guilty Gear. Soul Calibur 6 did this and suffered nothing from doing so… although they made Cervantes harder to use than ever before, and Ivy is still heavily reliant on dexterity overdrive, but aside from those 2, the majority of the cast is still easy to pick up and play to the point that the game balances itself out with everyone being so broken unless they have short range like Taki. The difference, however, is that in the 2D landscape, there are going to be moves that are just too powerful to be easy to use, which is supposed to be why execution complexity exists, but often times developers make even the most basic and useless attacks hard to use… just because. I still have nightmares trying to perform Guile’s Super Somersault from SFA3, that shit is absolutely ridiculous. Guilty Gear is no exception to this rule though I’m sure someone somewhere will find some way to justify it. “Oh, Baiken does too much damage with her attacks, so they have to be hard to use!” You could easily cut the damage of the attacks and thus have no reason to make them harder to use. I-No’s attacks from AC were retardedly hard to pull off, but they removed the execution barrier to her moves in Xrd, and that doesn’t make her a better character to use over someone like Johnny who has even less execution complexity in comparison. A lot of the characters are just gimmicky like that, having these little intricate systems to themselves.
Overall though, ASW makes easy fighting games that rely too much on gimmicks to have any thing interesting for their characters to begin with. The most egregious example being Blazblue, but the difference between that series and Guilty Gear is that Blazblue is fucking slow and boring, and is incredibly cringy to play considering how ridiculously over the top animu the characters and voice actors are. It gets even more awkward when the characters are constantly talking about lady parts all the time to the point where a cat girl gives the women nicknames based on their fetishized designs. “Boobie Lady” and “Lacking Lady” are still seared into my mind, and all attempts to repress any desire to inquire what in the fresh hell was going through the minds of the writers when they wrote that shit ends in constant failure. Blazblue is embarrassing for several reasons, but gameplay is the least of it’s problems.
I, and likely many others, told myself that I should be thankful that Guilty Gear will never be that cringy and retarded in a million years. And then… Xrd happened.
sighs
I’ve said it once in response to one commenter that mentioned that I flipped my opinions on more than one ocassion. Overtime, my opinions do naturally change. After you have enough time to reflect on something, yes, you might have a different opinion than before. Afterall, when people get older, they tend to look back on things they enjoyed when they were younger with a much more critical eye than usual. Their tastes have changed and so have their standards. Like when I talked about KOF13 and 14. Yes, I thought 13 was fine… at first. But… well… KOF14 was just more fun. I started seeing how much worse 13 was in comparison. The whole “special cancel” gauge was a lousy idea, the commands for certain moves were pretty damn strict, and while this problem wasn’t at all fixed in 14, half the roster was pathetic. Though I will say that 13’s music and aesthetic style was better than 14’s, actually playing the game was not nearly as fun. 13 is not a bad game, it’sjust that… 14 is more fun. So… maybe if I gave Blazblue a second chance, there’s a chance I won’t be as harsh as I was before… but I’m not going to.
So it goes without saying that whatever praises I had before are pretty much gone now. I… fucking… HATE… Xrd! Mind you, this has absolutely to do with gameplay despite how much slower and gimmicky it is even when compared to AC, and AC had it’s fair share of gimmicky characters. The difference is that none of the characters felt particularly restricted by their gimmicks as they are in Xrd. Most of the returning characters are ok, but the shit doesn’t hit the fan until you get to the new characters who are BEYOND restricted to their play styles… but that’s not what gets me. As always, I put content above gameplay because oftentimes, it’s what gets me to play a game… and will also be the one thing that doesn’t cause me to shelve a game or sell it off out of sheer annoyance. Xrd walks a heavy line in this regard, and it bugs the hell out of me whenever a cutscene comes up. But nothing as damning or as insulting to my intelligence… as this shit.
So here I am, checking out Guilty Gear Xrd Rev 2 (Should probably call it “Guilty Gear Absurd” at this point). I come to finish watching the After Story A (can’t believe other story “parts” have to be downloaded, but ASW is a scumbag company, we know this), and there’s this scene of Ky Kiske… beating the shit out of Sol Badguy… for the most obnoxious reasoning one can excuse online.
“He didn’t have a chance to use Dragon Install” “Power isn’t everything” “Sol was afraid of Ky for a GOOD reason!”
At this point, my mind is trying to wrap itself around how a guy with over 100 years of combat experience… can lose to what is considered “basic Holy Order Techniques”, but ok. Because Guilty Gear fans are overbearing jackasses who act like if you don’t kiss every inch of Xrd’s ass and accept what this game tells you regardless of logical conclusions given from the game’s own lore, there’s just something wrong with you. We can obviously see that, like with Dragon Ball Super, this is some new trend of Japan deconstructing their franchises and tearing down their own poster boys in order to make the rest of the cast look better as a result, but no.
“EET NAWT ABOUT POWER SCALING, EET ABOUT TECHNIQUE”
As a guy who is still relatively brand new to Guilty Gear, I’m probably not allowed to speak on this series, but dammit, I hate Xrd. When I saw videos of older Guilty Gear titles, what came to mind was a series that had this… idk, Gothic, Heavy Metal-esq Apocalyptic aesthetic, combined with all these major freaks of nature like Testament, Zappa, Zato, ABA, and what not. Course at the time, I wasn’t interested. I only wanted fighting games that took inspiration from old martial arts movies. Plus, the characters didn’t really look interesting. It was difficult to get a clear idea of who and what they were simply BECAUSE they all looked weird as shit. Well, except the human looking characters.
I didn’t give the series a chance until the Wii when people wouldn’t stop recommending the damn game. So I managed to find a copy of Accent Core and gave it a go. DAMN was it fun! Sure, my choices of characters were limited to Sol, Ky, Jam and Millia. Everyone else I didn’t know what to do with (for obvious reasons), but damn if this game wasn’t fun! It was like MvC but… better. No one felt particular overpowered unlike the unholy X-Men trinity from MVC2, and all of the character’s moves looked especially brutal, something that fighting games need but usually never have outside of Soul Calibur and Mortal Kombat. The game felt like a combination of those old 90s dark anime like X, Wicked City, a little bit of Devil Man, OEDO City 808, Vampire Hunter D… all mixed in with Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure and Mortal Kombat.
One thing I didn’t like was the button set up. I’m very… VERY anal when it comes to controls and button configurations, and when it comes to fighting games, I usually have the buttons set up with the Y/Square buttons emphasized as the ones I’m gonna be pressing the most. So for me, I usually have Y/Square as “Punch”, B/X as “Kick”, X/Triangle as… w/e “Strong” shit. So at first, I had the game configured as “Y s Punch, B is Kick, X is Slash”. Then I find “Fuck, there’s a HIGH Slash!?”. That threw me off because… how the fuck you gonna have 2 differently strengthed slash buttons, but just one Punch and Kick? Wait.. wtf!? “Dust”!? What in blazing fuck is a “Dust”!? That was my introduction to ASW’s BS jargon. 😛 After playing for a while, I had the buttons set up as “Y = Slash, X = High Slash, B = Kick, A = Punch”. This felt weird as hell having a fighting game with the Punch button de-emphasized. But then the sadistic fucks have some disorientating commands. For instance, take Ky who’s been my main for both AC and Xrd. You know how his fireball (I think it’s called “Stun Edge”) is activated on either Slashes, right? But then, his Super Stun Edge (it’s called “something else” edge, I just be arsed to recall)… on the damn Punch button!? I can’t count how many times I was doing double Quarter Circles on the slashes thinking “COME ON, DAMNED SUPER!! ACTIVATE ALREADY!!!” It’s like mortal Kombat, you think the commands are on certain buttons because “He attacks with his feet… on a PUNCH command!?” Idk why developers do that shit, it irritates the hell out of me. And that Dust shit has been useless for me thinks to it being slow to come out. Thing is the Slashes usually have all the special attacks to them while punches and kicks come with the bare minimum, so I wanted a control layout that emphasizes where the majority of the tools are, and that’s not particularly easy with how these games operate.
Still, AC seemed accessible enough, though the GG fandom swore the game was uber god tier technical as all fuck. They sounded like the old desperate Virtua Fighter fandom who figures they can sell you on how “deep and technical” a fighting game is. The only thing I can think of were the tutorial modes that indeed make the game seem harder to learn than it was. The next thing I thought was because of how gimmicky most of the characters were. Playing Testament or Venom meant having to play intricately (minus the EX versions of said characters) which translates to “fuck that noise” in a game this fast paced. The set up work for their moves were more trouble than it was worth. Then you get to characters like Faust and Zappa whose moves were far too random. Zappa in particular was a shit show. Imagine having to memorize moves for a character that randomly decides to give you a dog, sword, ghosts, or a thunder god to work with until you dispel the bastard for another round of roulette. Each mode coming with it’s own list of special moves and all. Most of the characters seemed far too daunting because there’s too much shit to remember for each and every single one of em. You don’t have a choice but to play a select few characters because if you try anyone else for the long haul, you will lose your fucking mind. This isn’t like Tekken or KOF where getting the hang of one character will take a week or so, you need to study quantum physics just to get the hang of more than 2 characters at worst. Then they have the nerve of shoving charge characters into the game.
But… w/e, right? The game was still fine. I figured people weren’t just blowing smoke when they said it was the shit. 😛
The version of AC I had didn’t come with a story as far as I’m aware (apparently, that’s in the +R version of the game which I’m sure costs more than a 5 story mansion by now), so I… kinda made up my mind of who the characters were based off what little info I had on the series lore. Sol Badguy being akin to Dante from DMC mixed with Jotaro Joestar, Ky Kiske being akin to every generic naive justice warrior you can find in anime, Testament being some Demigod of death, Chipp being a Goth Ninja Assasin, Axl being the rock star Billy Kain wannabe, Johnny being Zelos from Symphonia, Baiken being a generic Samurai, Potemkin being a giant dumb Robot, Venom being psychic (needs some excuse for having his hair cover his face with an eyeball over it.), Dizzy being some strange…angel succubus, idk. You hear about shit like a “Holy Order”, “Crusades”, and all other religious shit, you can’t help but think these people are fighting against the forces of hell (there’s even a stage called “HELL”, so yeah). You even have Vampires, and the aforementioned Zappa who is obviously possessed by malevolent entities. Guilty Gear was what Darkstalkers wished it could be.
At least that’s what I thought.
Upon playing Xrd, it felt like the game was constantly assaulting me for visualizing something completely different from what Guilty Gear actually was. Xrd wanted to compete against Blazblue chapped my ass as, again, it was a super gimmicky fighting game made for weebs. And no, I will not apologize for that. Blazblue wanted nothing to do with Guilty Gear, and seriously catered itself to that Bleach/Naruto/One Piece crowd with otaku animu shit stain characters that only exist to be memed to death on tumblr. Playing Blazblue was like watching an inferior version of Fate/Stay Night combined with an inferior version of S-Cry-ED, mixed in with an inferior version of God Eater… just all the inferior version of anime styled games that WEREN’T ass to play. But because most anime fans have bad taste these days, Blazblue was a massive hit… I assume. Why else would they RAPE Guilty Gear in the same manner!? Chipp being this goofy politician wannabe is just… weird. I suppose all the Assasins characters are appropiate personality wise. Axl Low was the most oddball character being a time traveler of some sort. I-No seems far more vulgar than I figured her for. Kinda assumed she’d be batshit crazy, but eh. Sin… ugh! With a name like that, I’d assume he’d be some brooding emo, but he’s basically Xiba from Soul Calibur 5. A friggin moron with a tape worm! Probably the most irritating example is from Leo. When he first appeared in Sign, I saw a major bad ass! Then the Revelator games came… and he’s comic relief. Him and the other new Xrd fuckers are also at odds with the old characters… mainly because most of them were designed around specific fetishes. Ramlathal has legs, Elphelt has tits, Jack-O has ass and hips, and Kum (uhhhhh) is a nerdy engineer girl who likes music… and drives around a robot Heihachi Mishima clone. As for Raven… well, he has a hoody and some claws… and Answer… the most creatively bankrupt character the entirety of Xrd. He’s a ninja who answers phone calls in the middle of a fight. Get it!? It’s supposed to be FUNNY! Xrd’s characters and characterization is so aggravating for a number of reasons, but most of all, it feels so contradictory to previous installments of the series. This coming from a guy who’s only played AC prior to Xrd!
The art style was horrible, probably done so that the animation work was more simplistic, but what I don’t get is the alterations to character designs where everyone looks like a generic anime character. Sol Badguy. He looked more akin to Kazuma the Shell Bullet crossed with Terry Bogard and with whoever the main character was from Battle Arena Toshiden. Looks like someone that should be voiced by Steven Blum, that was a missed opportunity. Now he just looks like some big brainless angry brute, something that this game wanted to get across immediately, but feels so contradictory to his previous portrayal. He wasn’t this abrasive in AC, and it feels like they exaggerated his personality just to make him look worse as a character. Then we get to the proportions. Idk what it is with fighting game developers that think they need to bulk up the characters, we see this all the time in Street Fighter where everyone is literally on steroids to the point that their arms look like shriveled up bratwursts, but Sol’s torso and shoulders look too damn big, and as a result just makes him look slower than he is. Hair also looks bigger than normal, but that’s a small gripe, I feel. He gets even more swollen in Strive, and that Terry Bogard jacket isn’t fooling anyone.
Ky Kiske… I don’t like his longer hair or shoes. And his new sword looks like trash.
Millia Rage, not a fan of the whole “Russian” look, or those gawdy high heels. Looks like a Russian Sonya Blade in Strive.
Potempkin…. Hate…. EVERYTHING… about his Iron Monger look. I have no idea why they felt the need to give him this shitty armor, and they kept it for Strive, ugh.
The rest of the cast looks the same (minus Venom’s… skirt… thing).
Aside from the character designs, the game’s tone and atmosphere is so contradictory to AC and before, it’s like it should’ve been a spinoff or a parody. It’s far more bright and colorful than the previous games, and it doesn’t even look like the apocalypse ever happened. It’s kinda how Devil May Cry 4 took it by taking Dante out of these dark and eerie locales and instead pits him and that shitty Nero in a royal kingdom. Only 50% more quirkier. Furthermore, I’m not one to shirk at levity, and I figure that was Faust’s thing, but the game seems like it’s trying to be wacky and slapstick more often than not, probably why the character designs are exaggerated. Most of the character’s instant kills are wackier and goofy more so than something that looks fatal…. I hate the tonal direction this shit took. I don’t know if I mentioned it about 3 times, but I hate it.
Story mode is so… stupid. There’s so much jargon and so much pretentious banter between most of the characters, and the one guy who you could count on to bring something else to the table (Sol) is practically non-existent for most of the ride, and gets shitted on. The attempts at humor for most of it is also laughable (pun intended)… I hate it. It’s like the games went from Mortal Kombat… to Sword Art Online, it’s just awful. The game is transparently geared (puns) toward otakus. This is not Guilty Gear. I’m not sure what happened between AC and Overture, but Axl Low needs to reverse time and change that shit. When you hear the name “Guilty Gear”, it’s supposed to invoke images of “Metal Apocalypse with super powered mother fuckers zippin through the air, beating the hell out of each other, demons throughout, and even hellenic imagery”. Instead, you get a gigantic tittied moron who’s super move involves a wedding cake… because she’s a literal waifu. Fuck Xrd. Fuck it in the ass. Oh look, May is no longer out of place for being a Cuteness Quota.
I was checking out trailers for Strive, and for what it’s worth, it looks… ok. Sorry, did I say “ok”? I meant it looks a helluva lot slower than both AC and Xrd because “OMG technical graphics and animation R teh sexy”, I don’t care about that shit. The redesigns for the characters look weird. Some of the faces work, others don’t. I’m not a fan of anime nostrals, I know that sounds weird, but seeing Japan go for those semi-realistic faces or w/e, it doesn’t do it for me. Sol is about the most normal looking character as a result. Axl Low is on steroids. Faust looks like he came out of Little Nightmares (honestly though, he looks awesome!), Chipp looked ok until you get to them hippie ass sandals. Still, I thought “Ok, they’re going back to the Gothic, Heavy Metal-esq apocalypse look of the older games and getting away from this animu bullshit that perverted Xrd”. Then I see Ramlathal and Leo, and I’m like “God… fucking…. dammit!”
Why is that shit canon? I’d rather not be reminded of that piss. But oh well, people want the “war against that Man” to be concluded even though they could’ve done that right in Rev 2, but the Xrd games spent so much time jerking people around and padding itself out between iterations, they’d be crazy to wrap up everything too soon. Afterall, gotta keep people paying for more of the same shit, this time with 4 characters per iteration.
Sorry, this is a fighting game, I’m supposed to be talking about gameplay. Fine. Xrd is slower than AC, and most of the characters got nerfed. Sol is all but useless, Jam tickles bitches, they reversed some of Venom’s commands for his supers and the Q5 is a useless substitute for his ball slapping… move from AC. Furthermore, seemingly all of the new characters have gimmicky or useless movesets. Answer seems like a character that was designed exclusively to be memed and nothing else. Xrd’s newest characters are probably the only reason why Nagoryuki and Giovanna seem fucking amazing in comparison since they actually look like they take shit seriously. Idk, could be Black Powah, could be compensating for removing Venom (btw, fuck you guys for doing so, Venom was a badass) and Slayer, but we’ll keep Leo around because Japan’s standards for valuable characters is about as low as America’s. If they’re funny, they’re worth keeping around apparently! Fuck interesting and slightly useful moves, lets bring out a business ninja and not even think about bringing back fucking Testament! Sure he dresses in drag, but he was fucking awesome! Literally the best damn character in AC alone… no wait, Xrd nerfed everyone that was useful outside of Ky and Millia, so Testament would also be shit in this series.
There’s no such thing as character preference in Xrd, is what I’m saying. Most of the good/awesome characters were either ruined or removed for bizarre reasons, and I can only assume it’s because (like with Street Fighter 4, MK9 and KOF13) Team Neo Blood or… Team Red was on yet another nostalgia kick, and wanted to reduce the roster to the core characters from the first game sans Testament, Kliff and Justice, hench why Axl has a remix of his original theme as well as attire that harkens back to his original design. Unfortunately, all this does is make it where the only choices I have are between Ky or Venom, and while I don’t hate Ky, Xrd makes this almost impossible to keep up. He’s comes off as preachy and self-righteous at the worst of times. Yeah I get that it’s a part of his character, but combined with how ludicrous his role is in the story, one can’t help but assume that the game is trying to tell us that Ky is God. And even if that’s not the case, the final scene of the story all but confirms it. Damn do I hate when Japan tries to tell me that a character in their series is awesome because they’ve proven they lack restraint in doing so. From Zero in MMX to Ken Masters, to Zelos from Symphonia to that unholy bitch Rose from Zesteria, and lets throw Milla from Xillia in there as well, there is no shortage of characters in which you are bashed over the head to think of as “perfect”. You know what? I’m just gonna throw Vegeta in there as well! I don’t care if he’s a poor example considering his history of jobbing, but the Super series is pulling the same shit as Xrd in destroying the image of the main character in order to make the rival look all that much better. Hell, even Sonic did this for a while when concerning Shadow the Hedgehog, and they continued this trend into Forces. You get the impression that Ky is infallible which does nothing but drive me away from the character. This is one of the reasons that Kirito from SAO is such a hated character outside of the fact that he’s a little prick. The final scene in which Ky steamrolls Sol is the most bullshit scene of the current generation, and it has nothing to do with Power Scaling at all, no no no! If you ever took a deep dive into the lore of Guilty Gear outside of the glossary it has in-game (they never give you the full story, anyway), you’d find that Sol Badguy has existed for 100 FUCKING YEARS! He had been a bounty hunter and had been fighting against various individuals and groups for 100 FUCKING YEARS! He literally has an entire century worth of combat experience! Fanboys will talk all this shit about Power Levels meaning that Sol would crush Ky regardless, but that’s not the issue at all! The issue is that Sol’s combat experience FUCKING DWARFS Ky’s by 80+ fucking years! He even worked/trained with the Holy Order during the crusades! You mean to tell me in all that time, Sol would never be hip to, or even have the battle instincts or even the common fucking sense, to see through ploys of deception that would end his life!? Are you shitting me!? Power Levels or Techniques or not, there is no excuse for this whole scene, and I can only assume they did just to make Ky look good and nothing else! Oh what? You gonna throw that BS glossary entry that states “Gears mental capacity or w/e degenerates overtime”? Sol is a “Proto Gear”. The normal rules shouldn’t apply! When Justice was mind fucking gears, he was the main one who was unaffected! This means that his status as a proto-gear gives him far more advantages over other gears. Hell, Sol is supposed to be a friggin scientist who was on the team that developed the Gears in the first place. Logic dictates that he should find a thousands to subvert the disadvantages of being a Gear. Hell, he made a headband that prevents him from tapping into his full power because otherwise, it would kill him or something to that degree! Actually, lets talk about that! The glossary in Xrd talks a big deal about how much Sol hates putting effort into anything. WHICH MAKES NO SENSE! It takes effort to be a damn good scientist! It takes effort to create a weapon like outrage to deal with Gears. It takes effort to manufacture weapons and equipment (which he did for his headband, and his bike if I recall). It takes effort to be a bounty hunter and wage a one man war against Gears for over a hundred years! It takes effort to be a fighter! Again, again, again, I can only assume this shit was put in to make Sol look worse as a person and as a fighter specifically in comparison to Ky!
I say this because this is something that happens OFTEN in Japanese productions when a rivalry exists. They have a bad habit of making one side look better than the other by leaps and bounds. If any of you have ever watched S-Cryed, you know all too well how one-sided that shit was! Kazuma the Shell Bullet vs Ryuho the Zetzwei asshole, Zetzwei beating Kazuma’s ass in every incursion imaginable, and Kazuma not getting a single victory in the entire rivalry unless you count the final fight which never had a victor! Pokemon as well when Ash was getting raped to crumbs by Paul in practically every battle they had up until the league. Voltage Fighter Gowcaizer had only one fight between Isato and Kash, but clearly the latter was doing all the ass kicking. Yugi Moto and Kaiba should be infamous for the amount of times that Kaiba has won a duel. 0%. I would count Kamen Rider Zero-One, but since they fucked up Gai’s character to the point of no recovery, it’s a relatively poor example. The only time this one-sided shit worked was back in Gundam Stardust Memory with Kou and Gato. FUCK that was an amazing grudge! It made perfect sense for Kou to get washed in most of their encounters because it was a literally noob vs a pro. Dammit, I’m rambling again.
Idk, it’s just something about Strive being a continuation of Xrd feeling wrong. Aesthetically speaking, it looked like it was going back to the style of the Pre-Overture games, and certainly the new characters don’t look like jokes, at least. But seeing character trailers with Ramlathal and Leo “comically” stumbling backwards after missing his throne, just tells me they’re going to double down on everything that was horrible about Xrd in all but gameplay. Idk if it’s the influence of the Blazblue series, or all the doujin fighters that came out over the last 2 generations, but something has had a horrible influence on Guilty Gear, and I figure it’s not going to stop anytime soon. I’m sure the gameplay will be fine even if people are crying bloody murder because they can’t juggle people into a corner like they could in older games or w/e, but the gameplay shouldn’t be the be all, end all of the game. Xrd was such a piss take that I’m all but turned off from ASW games for good. Blazblue has been shit, DBF gets boring a little too fast, and Granblue Fantasy Spinoff is too animu for my tastes. Persona Arena… ok, that was fine. This isn’t even going into their scumbag DLC which becomes ridiculous by the time they release another iteration of one game.
That’s another thing that chaps my ass. Because nowadays, developers drag out one single installment of a fighting game for a whole generation just for DLC mileage alone that you have to wait a whole goddamn generation just to get a sequel, and now we’re at a point where the PS5 and XBX/S are around, meaning that future iterations of a game that’s on both consoles will inevitably wind up with the final versions being exclusive to next gen. It’s happened with Xrd Rev 2, and again with MK11 Ultimate… w/e. I bet if Namco ever did ultimate editions of their fighting games, we’d be forced onto next gen as well. So Strive will have a shit roster, and for those who don’t have the internet or desire to spend money on the same damn game will be fucked in regards to getting a better copy, which chaps my ass even further because as Sony has shown, digital anything can be removed and lost to the sands of time, and they couldn’t give 2 fucks if you missed out. Almost as if Japanese developers screwed American markets by making most of their games digital only for Americans!
Ah well, sorry for another random and nonsensical tangent…
Some of you might be wondering “WHAT THE FUCK!? Godzilla vs Kong isn’t even a superhero movie, what the hell are you doing!?” Well dammit, there’s nothing gaming wise that’s worth talking about since the pandemic has all but fucked the Gaming Industry as we know it! Besides, I was really looking forward to this movie!
I don’t know what it was about this movie that seemed far more attractive than King of the Monsters since it was obvious that most of the problems I had with that film would inevitably be in this one as well, but I figure it’s probably best to embrace the “Rule of Cool” since Godzilla films would now go back to being about the giant monster fights that we grew up watching and waiting for.
And it certainly did NOT disappoint! This movie kicks copious amounts of ass! Even when it’s still pretty damn stupid! A lot of shit doesn’t make sense in this film and raises a lot of questions. But that’s what happens when you have another damn cinematic universe in the making. It’d probably make more sense if I paid more attention to that Skull Island film since that is supposed to have more useful information as it relates to King Kong… but you couldn’t pay me to sit through that bore fest a second time, it just felt like a cheap remake of the Peter Jackson Remake just over a decade ago. And honestly speaking, Kong himself is just a lame character. The only reason anyone would make a big deal out of a match up like this is because King Kong is an American made kaiju (probably the first one ever created in history) fighting against THE iconic movie monster from Japan.I’m aware there was a King Kong vs Godzilla movie that came out ages ago, but I’ve never seen it for the same reason I found Skull Island boring. King Kong just sucks. He’s a giant monkey with no cool abilities to look forward to. Yes, I’m that shallow, sue me. I grew up watching monsters with friggin awesome super powers going at it, so watching a regular fucking ape beat up more interesting monsters doesn’t feel as rewarding. With that out of the way, lets get on with it!
We begin with Kong… fucking around in a jungle for a while. A deaf and mute girl named whogivesashit carries a doll with the likeness of Kong… because she can hear Kong’s stress levels, and she tries her best to calm him down. I don’t know what it means to be deaf, but I don’t think that’s how deafness works. I know it’s here to establish she has this special ability to just “sense” things, but for the most part, she’s just there to… idk… “humanize” Kong and make him seem like the good guy of the film which comes off as manipulative.
A match up like this isn’t supposed to have it where one character gets a better rep than the other, especially with what comes up next, but overrall, this is a direct sequel to King of the Monsters, and Godzilla has been the good guy for 2 straight movies now. Don’t worry though, it’s pretty obvious what the movie does with this angle. The safety is on for the entirety of the film, but we’ll get to that when we get to it.
Kong makes a javelin out of a tree and throws it at the sky to reveal that he’s actually trapped inside of a dome. I can’t remember if this facility is owned by Monarch, their presence in this movie is quite low.
But we move on from this to explore a completely new organization. APEX! Immediately, I knew that these bastards were going to be the real antagonists because of the trailer that revealed that MechaGodzilla was going to be in the film, and instantly connected the dots. Anywho, one of the employees of Apex is a radio show conspiracy theorist who also happens to be the comic relief of the movie. Great, more “characters” than humans. I don’t know most of these characters names so I’m going to give them very kooky names to help identify them easily since they’re all pretty bland. This guy will be known as… Black Radio Host. Nah fuck it, we’ll just call him Radio. Anywho, Radio tries to use his position on the job site to gain some useful information about what his bosses have been working on in a facility that’s out at sea. But before he can gain anything of value, GODZILLA COMES!!
The action in the movie is a lot faster than the last 2 movies combined, which can be a good or bad thing depending on what style of monster movies you enjoy more. It does ruin some of the suspenseful atmosphere that the first 2 films had by constantly having the monsters under exposed for large portions of the films. On the other hand, it makes the movie feel faster paced. You don’t have to wait several minutes through boring human stories to get to what people paid to see… or pirated to see, take your pick. People want to see the monsters more than the humans, and you get plenty more of that throughout the movie, and the filmmakers acknowledged that for better or worse. I say that because most of the movie features the monster I don’t give a shit about, and I suspect it had more to do with ethnocentrism than overall popularity as I don’t believe for a second that people would want to see more of Kong than they would Godzilla. Godzilla is just cooler.
Anywho, Godzilla just trashes the place, giving Radio a good opportunity to find out what his employers are cooking up, and it turns out to be some cybernetic eyeball that burns a laser in the wall. I can accuse the movie of revealing it’s cards too early because it establishes that Apex is doing something sinister, and Godzilla was simply there to destroy it before any further development could progress. But it brings up a lot of questions. Godzilla, in the previous films, only responded to the presence of other monsters, seemingly popping up out of nowhere and finding a way to fight said monsters when people least expect it. This pattern of behavior establishes, however, that Godzilla knows a threat is around the corner before it even becomes a problem, and sought to remove that problem before it has the time to be a problem. If Godzilla has that level of foresight, how come he didn’t destroy the MUTOs in the first movie before they hatched? Or prevented the wannabe Red Bamboo eco terrorists from stealing the monster controller… thingie from KOTM? Because there wouldn’t be a plot otherwise? Gotcha!
Moving on, of course the news channels are pissed that Godzilla wasn’t their lord and savior, though this will be all you hear about it. For the rest of the movie, you won’t get any real news segments with how Godzilla is viewed by the public. Infact, you won’t hear much about Godzilla from anyone except for 3 characters.
First up is that idiot brat from KOTM, the one who stole the monster controller to draw King Ghidorah to the baseball stadium… and then decided to stand completely still and scream as Ghidorah was about the fry her with lightning. Yeah… “Screamer”. She believes that news outlets are wrong because… well, you saw the last 2 movies. After school, she goes to what appears to be a refugee camp of some sort that is actually set up by Monarch. Maybe their budgets got slashed between movies because regular tents seem to be all they have for this movie. And maybe that dome complex that houses Kong. I can’t remember, Monarch is barely in this movie to matter. Anywho, Screamer’s father, Mr.Angry, actually has very little to say about the matter, and just wants Screamer to stay out of trouble. You’d think with his personal vendetta from the last film that he’d have a little more input, especially since he lost both his wife and child to Godzilla’s battles. And yes, I’m aware he “forgave” him in the last film, but you’d think there would be more to his story. Then again, he had very little input in KOTM as well, focusing more on his suicidal family who thinks running into Kaijuu danger zones is proper thrill seeking.
Moving on, we’re introduced to another character who I’m going to refer to as “Fat nerd from Deadpool 2”. Or just “Nerd”. Because Screamer heard from Radio’s recent broadcasts about his findings in the Apex facility, she drags Nerd with her to find him.
But moving on, we’re introduced to even more characters. One guy who will be the “Hero” because he shares the same hairstyle as the last 2 male protagonists. Another will be “obligatory Asian token” or just “Token” because it can’t be a Godzilla movie without that element. And lastly “mystery fuck” because who cares about a random evil guy? The 3 have a long winded discussion about what I assume is “Hollow Earth”, the underground network of tunnels that allows Godzilla to get to one side of the planet to the next… or so I assume. I kinda zoned in and out around this part because it felt so detached and irrelevant to the rest of the movie up until the very next scene. But I did catch that they were looking for a peculiar energy source that’s found in this special area. Since these guys all work for Apex (I’m assuming), they figure it’s best to bring some sort of protection just in case Godzilla decides to fuck with them again.
So they go to Kong’s dome since… apparently, he’s the only other monster left in this world that they didn’t have to pay outrageous licensing fees for. Hero speaks with… lets call her “Nanny” since she’s always babysitting the def kid and looking after Kong. Hero tries to appeal to Nanny by saying that Kong needs to travel back to his natural habitat, that kind of shit, and Nanny tells him that Kong needs to remain in the dome because otherwise, Godzilla will come after him… which makes no sense. Again, in the last 2 films, Godzilla only really attacked monsters that were a threat to him or the Earth. Kong is a domesticated ape who is soothed by girls. He’s harmless! But that poses 2 more problems.
1. Again, we are making one of the major players look like the antagonist while the other is supposed to be the protagonist which kinda forces the audience to side with one character over the other based on morality. It does a poor job of this because the film revealed it’s cards too early with the reason for Godzilla’s sudden and unprovoked attacked. If they really wanted the audience to take Kong’s side, it would’ve been best to keep the reasoning for Godzilla’s brazen attack to be kept a secret until the second half of the film. Until then, you’re kinda left with a morally gray battle which… ironically works best for a movie like this, but it’s obvious that the narrative tries to cast a shadow on Godzilla’s once heroic image. Maybe if they skipped having Mr. Angry and Screamer appear in this film could they have actually made the narrative work in this matter, making it a self-contained sequel of sorts. But whatever, the narrative defeats itself. It just feels tactless, is what I’m saying.
2. They basically just said it. Godzilla would rape Kong to crumbs in a straight fight. Just sayin. You don’t hide a monster in a dome out of fear of it getting it’s ass whooped. 😉
Regardless of her reasons, Nanny eventually agrees to having Kong as a bodyguard for the Apex chumps. We get some “cute” hilarity with “deaf jam” (Amma, that was awful, I apologize) because using sign language to insult people is there to be inspirational to mutes everywhere! You too can secretly use your disability to be an asshole! We’re then introduced to yet another character, thirst trap, with a tight shirt that does a poor job of concealing her past Blackface routines. Yes, I ruin everything.
“Whore” is the daughter of Apex’s CEO, and is there… I guess to supervise the expedition and provide the unwarranted eye candy. Immediately, she comes off as abrasive and conceited, but the writers apparently couldn’t think of a less obvious way of conveying that the bitch is evil and not to be trusted. Her input is, thankfully, minimal up until the later half of the film, so we don’t have to endure her bullshit. Later that night, “Mute” (yeah, that works) somehow hears Kong’s heart racing (what’s with King Kong movies and heart problems? I remember a 90s King Kong movie where he had a heart transplant. And as a kid who was traumatized by Temple of Doom, that shit was terrifying), and realizes he’s about to destroy the ship out of fear. She manages to calm him down which Hero notices. So the next morning, she talks with Nanny about using Mute to control Kong, giving it orders to make Hero’s job a lot easier. Again, Nanny is against the idea, but because she has no spine, she’ll concede regardless. But AGAIN, Mute hears something that’s miles away, and realizes that Godzilla is approaching!
Again, this makes no goddamn sense. HOW THE FUCK IS THIS LITTLE KID ABLE TO DETECT ANYTHING!? Is she one of those psychic kids from “Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II”!? With that ugly ass Godzilla baby and MOTHER FUCKING RODAN?
Anywho, Godzilla pulls in fast and starts wrecking the entire fleet like the boss he is. And as an introduction, Godzilla SMASHES Kong in the face! There’s this whole sequence where Kong is trying not to drown from being submerged under water while Hero struggles to unshackle his chains and allow Kong to fight Godzilla by any means necessary. So, to get closer to him, Kong starts jumping on different vessels… destroying them in the process, one plane manages to get away. I guess we needed to see this from the cockpit, and Kong is such a douchebag that he takes one of the friendly pilots and uses him as a projectile at Godzilla! Who’s the real monster here? 😛
Anywho, Godzilla gets up in Kong’s space to see him with the hands, and Kong does a DK style charge punch from Smash Bros! But because Godzilla is too much of a beast, he bitch slaps Kong to the ground before being kicked away. Soon enough, Kong gets dragged under water where Godzilla tries to drown him (why work hard when you don’t have to? 😛 ), but Hero just so happened to have the idea of using… tiny missiles to somehow stun Godzilla long enough for Kong to get up for some air.
ROUND 1 DONE! GODZILLA WINS!
Like that wasn’t fucking obvious!
Hero implies that it’s best to fly to their destination next time.
Meanwhile, back with Screamer and Nerd, they find Radio in a bar to have some wacky banter with the Nerd of the group before revealing that Godzilla was potentially after something in the Apex facility. So using him, Screamer, Nerd, and Radio all sneak back into it to find that “nothing is what it seems” They find monster eggs all from Skull Island. I guess the expedition team didn’t need them for protection or something. Hell, with all the tech they have, they could’ve recreated Mr. Angry’s monster controller from KOTM, use it on the monsters to give… some feeling of protection. Regardless, the 3 get trapped and sent to another research facility via transport tunnel. Where to, nobody knows.
Meanwhile, Kong is transported by 4 choppers… and it never occurred to me until now, but… since Godzilla seems to know how to find these people, he could’ve easily used his Atomic Breath to shoot them all out of the sky. Considering what he does later on in the movie, that would be no problem. Anywho, they lay Kong out in the cold Antarctic where he seems to find a tunnel… that was already built.
This.. causes more problems. *sighs*. At the beginning of the movie, unless I missed something because, again, I did zone off at this part, Hero, Token, and whogivesafuck were discussing the “Hollow Earth” or w/e this next dimension skull island was, and how it has energy sources that are integral to their research. This scene makes it seem like they’ve never done this before, that they’ve never gone into this dimension. But in the Antarctica scene… THEY ALREADY HAVE A FUCKING TUNNEL INTO THE HOLLOW EARTH!!! They have everything set up for an expedition, the douchebag Hero even tells Whore that the experience can cause vomiting!
That scene fills me with confusion! Why were they discussing this shit as if it was theoretical concept if they’ve already gone into the damn Hollow Earth in search of this mythical energy source!? Actually, no, it gets dumber.
Going into the Hollow Earth, they allow Kong to fall in first (dick move, it’s a wonder his fragile ass didn’t die falling in) and they (with their flying cars, btw) explore a bit. They get attacked by some snake dragons, Kong defeats… and eats out the neck meat of one of em (yeck!), and they continue on to an area that might as well be called the Eridium Blight from Borderlands 2. Ok, here’s the dumb part. You have… flying rocks that have some purple shit in em.
BOOM! There you go!! There’s your energy source! Just take some of those rocks back with you, mine the bits and pieces with the purple shit in it, AND LEAVE!
Did no one think about this!? Why the flying rocks weren’t good enough!? Or did they just want the raw shit!? Later on, we see that they only needed to COPY, not take… but COPY… a sample of the energy source that was present within the hollow earth. If that was the case, wouldn’t there be just enough of that shit in the flying rocks!? Cause as the scene progresses, we see that Kong was needed to push open some stone doors (because an organization that has flying cars can’t utilize FUCKING EXPLOSIVES FOR SHIT!), place an axe in an indentation (again, advanced organization can’t use basic construction equipment like cranes), and then boom, profit… but none of this required ANYMORE trouble than it was worth! Flying rocks, possesses energy from the same damn material, that should’ve been good enough to copy, but no! We needed an excuse plot for why these 2 monsters fight!
Meanwhile, again, we go back to Screamer’s group where they find that the monsters they captured from Hollow Skull (I don’t even know anymore) were literally used for target practice by the biggest mistake this movie makes. Having Mechagodzilla in it at all.
*sighs* I’ve stomached a lot of stupid shit in this movie thus far merely because, yes, it is entertaining, but this shiny metal turd ruins the entire premise by having a “unifying enemy”. IE, the bastard who gets both sides to stop fighting each other so that they can work together to stop the real enemy. Mechagodzilla serves this purpose. I think this day and age, this is something that needs to be ditched. If you have a film whom’s premise is based on a crossover bout between 2 icons of any sort, your interest in the crossover is the bout itself. You care more about the icons duking it out. It’s more exciting when there is no real villain, and you can focus on a story that involves 2 good guys fighting each other. It’s fanservice, sure, but there’s something that is riveting about a crossover battle. Think about why Death Battle continues to get views even though they’re full of shit. Because people love the idea of 2 (mostly) related characters from separate properties fighting to the death without any sense of “story” getting in the way of that. The “why” they’re fighting is removed entirely… until later seasons of the series. But at the end of the day, the fight between the 2 is all that matters.
Much as I hate to admit it, and as stupidly as it was handled, Civil War maintained this element up to the end, even though it was a poorly done attempt at “subverting expectations” and made the entire film’s plot an unworkable piece of trash, it was still far more engaging because the 2 sides were fighting each other until the very end.
Then we get to Mechagodzilla’s design. It’s awful! Nothing says “last minute addition” than this mess. For a company that designs flying cars and virtual headsets, the fact that this ugly monstrosity is the best they can come up with is rather sad. What gets me, however, is that they could get incredible monster designs from the first 2 movies (Mothra withstanding), but here, they just threw whatever Bayformers bullshit they could into something that actually is comprehensible, but still very ugly. Nothing about this “thing” looks even remotely like Godzilla. It’s more appropriate to call it a Dinozord from Power Rangers.
I’m not at all a fan of Mechagodzilla. The idea of a robotic clone of Godzilla is pretty shallow, and while it works for the 70s and 80s where imagination was rewarding no matter what it was, it’s still a pretty unimaginative piece of shit. When I watch a monster movie, I want to see actual monsters because they’re the ones who will have the most unique abilities and attacks. A giant robot will just have generic weaponry that’s interchangeable with any other robot. Design wise, they’re never going to be as good or as interesting as the monsters. Mechagodzilla is no exception to this. Though I will say that the “Kira” design created in the millennium series is probably the best looking one of them all, especially with the sharper facial design and overall more elegant frame. I especially love the red streaks that goes down from it’s eyes. Probably what made Mechagodzilla work in the 90s and the 2000s was the fact that both iterations were piloted by humans, so there was a bit of a “Megazord” kind of thing going on where the humans could actually go toe to toe with the King of the Monsters with something that could actually compete… somewhat, and have a certain level of tension because as we all know, Godzilla is a tank.
You get NONE of that in this movie. Instead of basing Mechagodzilla’s design on any of the movies, they just created a robot body, give a generic looking T-Rex head, and attached cranes to it as arms. It is the laziest shit they ever created, and shows that they didn’t care what else they added to the movie because they knew the only thing people cared about was the big Hong Kong fight between Kong and Godzilla.
Anywho, the group keeps looking around the base where they managed to find the skull of King Ghidora being used as the cockpit for the VR MechaGodzilla controls.
*sighs*
*siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiighs*
I’m trying not to go on another tangent so soon after the last one…. but GODDAMMIT!! In the last movie, Meltdown Godzilla literally incinerated Ghidora’s body! There should’ve been no traces of the damn dragon left! No, I also took issue with the end credits scene of KOTM as well. We all saw Godzilla completely wipe out Ghidora with his stupid meltdown waves and a final Atomic Breath! Just what the… *sighs* calm down, Heru. It’s a movie based on “Rule of Cool”. Logic has been abandoned in favor of Coolness! That’s what I’m supposed to think, yeah…
Eventually, these morons get captured by security, so we’ll get to them later.
Back in Hollow Hell, the aforementioned progress of Kong pushing some doors open, finding an axe and placing it in an indentation on the ground activates the latent energy source within the… idk, Hollow Ruins or something. The axe is charged up with… “Hollow Energy”, and everything seems to be in order. Except now, the Whore decides to be a cunt and hold everyone at gunpoint because now, the Hollow Ruins and energy are “Apex property”. Because the excuse plot needs even more excuses to plot more excuses. I mentioned earlier that they only needed to copy the contents of the Hollow Energy, I assume it’s wavelengths or some shit, in order to fully activate Mechagodzilla… but it comes off as a means of saving money and rushing things. You can’t just copy an energy source and download it like data. That’s raw material! It needs to be transported! Because, and I know I’m getting ahead of myself, as soon as they copy that energy, or w/e, they immediately activate Mechagodzilla without any further processes. That goes beyond stupid, but we’ll get to that later.
While Whore is being a cunt to everyone just because her Daddy runs a corporation, Godzilla makes it to Hong Kong and figures it’s a good time to use his Atomic breath to drill into the core of the Earth, straight into another dimension in order to stop the plot from going any further.
Yes… you read that correctly.
GODZILLA USED HIS BASIC FUCKING ATOMIC BREATH TO DRILL INTO THE CORE OF THE FUCKING EARTH, STRAIGHT INTO ANOTHER FUCKING DIMENSION! GODZILLA IS A MOTHER FUCKING BEAST!!!
Just think about how long he was HOLDING THAT SHIT! His throat is a God of it’s own being! Holy shit! How the fuck did ANYONE think that Kong would’ve stood ANY CHANCE of fighting this beautiful mother fucker!? God… fucking… dammit!!!
Godzilla’s awesomeness disturbs some chicken bats that… I guess were just hanging around, being trapped inside the ruins and going hungry, so much so that they tear wholesale ass of the Apex goons. Kong does what he can to shake them off. Whore tries to escape in the flying car through the hole of awesomeness. But Kong catches them with his bare hand. So instead of doing the smart thing and crushing Whore with his bare hand, Kong chooses to… crush Whore… with his… bare hand.
Well I’m glad the writers had the same idea that I did! And it was SATISFYING!!!!
Taking his new axe in hand, Kong leaps through the hole of awesomeness to the surface to finally do battle against his nemesis, Godzilla! Gotta love how all the Asian cities in these movies are so bright and colorful, btw. Really brings out that Pacific Rim vibe.
But fuck all that! It’s time for the big fight! And honestly, holding your nose for most of the movie’s stupidity actually pays off. This is probably the best damn monster fight we will get in our lifetime. The choreography between both monsters is amazing, taking into account both the strengths and weaknesses of each opponent, and creating a highly calculated and meticulous fight scene. Kong uses his speed and agility to overwhelm Godzilla, and Godzilla tanks and adapts to Kong’s fighting style to adequately counter him! It’s that good of a fight! And it’s pretty lengthy as well, not that short shit you’d find in BVS or Civil War, this fight actually lasts a while!
Though I gotta say, Kong having that stupid axe is basically the writers admitting that without it, Kong’s chances of victory are even slimmer. While Kong constantly pummels Godzilla, the fact that Godzilla literally does not lose stamina for the whole fight, and STILL manages to win just shows how much of a fucking beast he is! Lets face it, Kong never stood a chance! Just because he’s faster, more agile, and more flexible than Godzilla doesn’t mean he’s actually better. Godzilla has shown himself to be a strategist with too many advantages to count. Nigh infinite stamina, Regenerator G1 biology, radioactive powers, can increase his strength via additional radiation sources, magnetic abilities, shockwave abilities, but above all else, he is a damn good strategist! While this aspect of his character was downplayed in the 90s and even in the “Monsterverse”, it was one of his best qualities in the Showa and Millennium eras.
Lets be clear! Godzilla managed to kill a monster who was so powerful, his entire presence created a massive hurricane as his aura. Godzilla managed to beat that! Yes, it was with a power boost from Mothra, but it counts. You wanna talk about power scaling, Godzilla got bombed once in the first film, bombed twice in KOTM, and was boosted by Mothra in the same film. Godzilla’s power by this point is too damn much as it is. On the other hand, Kong just has that axe that is just a cheap crutch the writers pulled out of their asses just to even up the fight, kinda like what Death Battle does by limiting the fight between Mario and Sonic to just their powerups because, realistically speaking, Sonic would rape that Italian shit to crumbs!
After pinning Kong to the ground and roaring in his face to establish who the biggest bad ass is, Godzilla just gets bored and leaves Kong to pass out and die. Yeah, I’m not kidding. Godzilla took a pounding while only dealing fewer blows to Kong… AND KONG IS THE ONE ON THE BRINK OF DEATH!!!! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! THIS IS FUCKING GOLD!!!!
By this time, the Apex assholes have already decided to awaken Mechagodzilla using the new energy source they copied and downloaded (UGGGH), but obviously, something goes wrong, and the CEO of the company is killed by his own creation. The Apex guards are also killed… iirc, and now Screamer, Radio, and Nerd all try to find some way to shut down Mechagodzilla, all the while, Godzilla (WHO STILL HAS ENERGY TO FIGHT, BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!) goes to try and destroy Mecha G. Unfortunately, because we have to use tropes, Godzilla gets his ass kicked, prompting Hero to use one of the flying to revive Kong. More dumbshit heading our way! So Mute hears that Kong’s heart will stop soon, so Hero decides to do… something with the flying car so that it acts as a defibrillator.
THE FLYING CAR IS NOW A DEFIBRILLATOR! THAT… IS JUST… DUMB!!!
But whatever, Kong is revived, the little punk, and he goes to Godzilla’s aid. And… takes another ass whoopin because he sucks. It’s only until Nerd decides to fry the control panel with coffee that Mecha G starts to malfunction, giving Kong the opening to destroy Mecha G limb from limb. Kind of a shallow way of trying to make Kong look good after almost DYING from a fight with the real King. Godzilla thinks nothing of it and just leaves. So, Screamer, Radio, and Nerd head for Florida to go back to Monarch and Mr. Angry, and Kong returns to Hollow Earth to be with his own… environment. And the movie just ends much like the first 2 films.
Honestly, the fight itself is worth it. It was a fun, fast paced battle between 2 icons of the monster world. Even though one of them was clearly weaker than the other one, and I can only assume they wanted to make Kong look better because the studio that produced the movie is American, so Kong looks better as a fighter. For anyone who saw Godzilla Final Wars, you are probably as insulted as I was because we saw Godzilla take on equally as fast opponents and steamroll all of them without breaking a sweat. Giving Kong an Axe that could absorb Godzilla’s Atomic Breath was cheap. But in the end, even they couldn’t bullshit this fight. Godzilla wasn’t losing to a random monkey.
Still, this is a movie, and if we’re going to sit through a movie to get to what we want, then the movie itself needs to be good. And… for the most part, it’ll do. The human story isn’t too boring or too long or drawn out, and you get to focus on the monsters more than the humans, even though most of the focus is on Kong himself. So for that matter, a lot of what goes on in the movie is negligible as it gets to the point faster than the last 2 movies did.
But it still doesn’t change the fact that most of the movie is pretty goddamn stupid. Not in overall acting or how characters behave. The humans in these movies are actually pretty intelligent for the most part, with the exception of Screamer, Nerd, and Radio. It’s actually due to the logic of the movie itself that is the problem, and it all comes down to the existence of Apex itself. Where did they come from!? How and why do they have the most advanced technology on Earth to the point that they can create flying car transports that run on weird energy, and create giant robotic death machines!? Monarch couldn’t get enough funding to even have viable weapons against the monsters (or didn’t want to because Serizawa was a hippy), and yet we have this corporation that holds all the cards. The fact that they just came out of nowhere and are responsible for all the events of this movie makes them all the more dumb. The Monsterverse, as it’s called now, had a very grounded reality. Technology wasn’t hyper advanced to the point that humanity could defend themselves from monsters, and had to rely on Godzilla to do most of the ass kicking. Apex tosses that logic out of a window, we have flying car transports, some dingy reference to the Super X3 from Godzilla vs Destroyah, and Mecha G! They also have robot spiders that can drill into rocks, copy it’s contents, and have it wirelessly downloaded by their servers BEYOND THE BOUNDARIES OF DIMENSIONS, btw! Apex alone shows that the writers for this movie… don’t actually understand the grounded nature of these movies, and decided that we just needed something to justify why these 2 monsters are fighting each other.
Another thing that bothers me about this movie is that, even more than KOTM, there’s no sense of collateral damage. Much like all the Godzilla movies, Godzilla destroys things, but we don’t feel the impact of that destruction. Again in the first movie, we find cities and townships in complete dissarray and ruble, people buried under collapsed buildings, citizens taking shelter, people being placed in refugee centers looking desperately to be reunited with their families. This aspect was stripped away in KOTM just for rule of cool, but even then, you still got a sense that there was plenty of destruction happening across the globe, namely the storms that occur as result of Ghidora’s aura. In this movie!? JACK SHIT! You feel no weight or impact by any of the destruction that goes on! Hell, you wouldn’t even know that Hong Kong has a monster event take place (probably to appease China because Hollywood). It’s just irritating! The first movie nailed this shit in a way that Godzilla never had. And as soon as they had it, they got rid of it! It sucks, and I hate that collateral damage is never a thing again.
Even so, it’s still a pretty fun movie so long as you can hold your nose for most of it. And always… “Long live the King”. Team Kong must feel pretty shitty knowing their precious ape lost the battle in the end! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHA!!
Man, when is Anguirus going to be get in these movies?
Gah, what the hell is Genshin Impact anyway? Hold on, lemme watch a few vids to see what this is about before I do my own “clout chase“.
Eh, sounds about the same as any other- oh, oh, there’s another one…
Huh, ok.
So this… thing looks like a slower, tackier version of any Tales of game, this time made by the Chinese, and is intensely popular which means that the Chinese now have a much greater foot hold in the gaming industry, meaning it’s only a matter of time before gaming becomes Chinese propoganda, teaching people that wet markets are the future of commerce, that a virus shouldn’t be “race coded” unless it comes from Africa, that we must stand united against violence that only concerns them, and that Dark Skin is inherently evil because they say so.
I kid (I think), but considering the last year in a 4th, I’m inclined to agree with Mr. Echelon guy. The fact that this game is immensily popular despite it’s national origins shows that people don’t really care that the Chinese are increasing their stranglehold over the planet, even after a global pandemic that has claimed far too many lives to count, and has contributed to the creation of deadly concoctions masquerading as “vaccines” to curb and control more of the population. I have yet to learn to stop rambling.
That’s a change in lighting, fuckhead.
So yet again, Twitter or… internet has generated yet another shitstorm. “Genshin Impact Racism”. Well, the assertion isn’t quite accurate (I think). This is a case of “colorism” which, lets be honest, is only 2 steps away from racism as it involves marginalizing people based on physical features, this time only being skin deep…. maybe.
I mean we could ignore the Li Min, the Wu-man, the “Black Dwarfs”, the Yi, Kunlung, Yueh & Qiang (the founders of the Xia and Shang dynasties) and the anthropologic evidence of Negroid skulls from ancient China that would suggest otherwise, not to mention the genocidal campaigns of the Huaxia (prototype Han Chinese) that practically ran them off to the south after 1500BC, all so we can entertain the… strictly colorist angle here. For now, at least.
I admit, it is amusing seeing how even Chinese users are trying to sidestep the issue while also posting counter-intuitive remarks in the process.
Not that it matters. Japan has been showing you how Asians view skin color in terms of preference, context, and desirability. You can go all the way back to The Legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time with this one. The Gerudo race (the dark skinned red heads) is specifically the one referred to as “a race of thieves“. Why is Ganondorf the unlucky bastard deemed the king of Evil just for being born with a dick?
How is it that Pokemon’s Brock, a respected Gym Leader who had to raise a dozen little brothers and sisters, is reduced to a fucking gag character?
Why is it that Rugal Bernstein from King of Fighters turns dark skinned when he invokes the power of the Orochi? Hell, half the villains from the NEST saga were a little more than sunburned.
Why is it when Ryu from Street Fighter embraces Satsui No Hadou that his skin gets darker? Why is Akuma so dark skinned? Why does Urien (the “evil” brother of Gill) turn dark skinned when he gets ready for a fight?
Why is it that in a game as shameless as Oneechanbara, Bikini Zombie Slayers is it that Misery is the only one of the playable characters that is undeniably evil?
Setsuna from Last Blade 2 is unmistakenbly evil.
Agent Aika uses the Lagu/Ultranate bikini that, if used too long, will kill her. I guess being turned dark skinned with blue hair is too great of an ordeal.
Say, why are most of the bust (Rasetsu = Evil) versions of Samurai Shodown 4 characters a little on the tanned side?
Don’t think I didn’t notice you, Uub, being reincarnated from a demon, and did nothing but get your ass kicked by Baby. Also, Turles from Tree of Might.
Ivan from Tales of Xillia is a butt monkey.
You know the best part of all these characters? None of them are “black”! But we see the same pattern of thought running around. Darker skin is associated with “evil”, negative, or just plain undesirable. While these are all examples taken from Japanese games (since gaming or anything resembling fun was practically banned in China for ages), I assure you that nearly all South Asian countries have this thought process running.
Pretty sure this is common knowledge, but fuck it. Complexion is a symbol of status. Basically, those who worked outside and did hard labor would get some tans from the sun, marking them as the labor class. Those who did not labor outside and lived comfortably indoors… wouldn’t. Thus, they remain pale and rich. This is, honestly, an incredibly stupid means of judging people, but such an overly simplistic distinction has colored, so to speak, Asian perceptions of complexion for generations.
But… why, though? And… why associate a color with “Evil“? That’s the shit that gets me. It didn’t make sense until I thought about why they’re called the “Indigenous”.
I mean… when you think about it, that kinda makes the Chinese sound like… idk, invaders? When you start digging deeper, you get to a distinction of “Han Chinese” and “non-Han Chinese”. The Han fucks are who we know as the “traditional Chinese”, whereas the “non-Han” would be the “indeginous tribes”. So… where the fuck did the Han come from if they ain’t indeginous!? Well, they used to be a confederacy (oh fuck) of smaller tribes known as the “Huaxia”, or just “Hua”. The Hua referred to the “Non-Han” tribes as “Yi” or “Barbarians, foreigners, ordinary others, wild tribes, and uncivilized tribes”. Hmmmmm, sounds like something that came out of Europe’s playbook. The general definition of Barbarian is regarded as a people that are alien and are believed to be “INFERIOR”. “PRIMATIVE”. Based on POPULAR STEREOTYPES! But.. but wait. If these Yi are actually supposed to be indeginous, then… why were they considered “alien”? And… why would this liken dark skin with “evil”?
Well, it seems to be the same story as with Christian Europe. Han/Hua/whatever the fuck China was a Sinocentric society. Meaning that they thought they were the hottest shit of all time. That they were the cultural center of the world. Everyone else to them were considered “uncivilized”. An idea that spread out to Japan, Korean, Vietnam, Thailand, and more. This is why they kept going on about their relation to Heaven. Mandate of Heaven, Heavenly Emperor, Son of Heaven, etc. Sounds like some “Chosen People” shit, eh? That idea that a group of people use to justify their mistreatment of other people?
“When this “cultural universalism” took a more racial guise, however, it could have harmful effects on those groups not considered ‘Hua’.”
Yah don’t say!
In the end, the outside tribes were considered to be barbaric and shitty… simply because they weren’t Han! So I’m like “well…. fuck, you can write off anyone simply because they aren’t you, that’s… that’s narcissistic.” That’s what this boils down to. “Fuck em because we’re perfect!”
I have not played Genshin Impact to see what the big deal is, but like the Nessa situation, it does seem a bit blown out of proportion by the twitter crowd, though the Chinese response to it is rather suspect. Given the sketchy history and impact on surrounding nations, as well as the attitudes they continue to have today suggests that the twitter crowd isn’t too far off the mark.
Oh look at Sonic Twitter having a meltdown over this because the game that came out instead was Sonic Boom!
It’s amazing how one detail can change the outlook one has for certain games.
I’m not one of them, however. Even if Sonic Boom is a mistake that should never be made again, its probably the lesser of two evils if this information is accurate. Modern voices AND the Pontaff writing staff being tasked to “re-imagine” Sonic Adventure!? That would be a STAIN on those games rather than a boon. Sonic Twitter, nowadays being no better than Sonic Stadium in terms of rampant idiocy, doesn’t seem to care about quality or the current state of Sega in regards to Sonic. Remaking the Adventure games under Sega’s current Sonic staff would’ve damaged Sonic Adventure. The reason people pine for these games is because they were not handled by the current teams. The current teams have no passion for this franchise. No ambition. They would only see the remaking of Sonic Adventure as “just a job” and would do nothing to preserve it’s essence. The only thing these “remakes” would succeed to do is retcon details that people keep bringing up (like the moon being half gone, or Tails’s bravery in the face of Robotnik… twice). They would also make Knuckles more idiotic than before to remain consistent with his current portrayal (*cough*Mania*cough*).
Remaking these games would’ve been a massive mistake, and I’m glad that Sega canned it before they could do any damage. Cause you see, if they remade the Adventure games, they would have no incentive to re-release the original versions for current consoles, meaning that being able to go back to older consoles to enjoy the older games would be virtually impossible without going broke. The adventure games are flawed, but not to the point of being infuriatingly broken where you cannot enjoy it on some level, so the need to remake them is not there. You’re better off looking for HD remasters with some tweeks in gameplay where certain parts of the game aren’t as tedious as they once were, maybe fix up some of the talking animations here and there, but a full blown remake (IE reimagining) is not the way to go. Far from it.
Sonic Twitter’s irritation over this is silly and unwarranted, especially since most of these people were clamoring for Sonic Boom (and having the stomach for it’s equally as retarded cartoon), and are now only finding something wrong with it since something that sounds more appealing could’ve been a reality. When Sonic Boom released, nobody wanted to talk about how shit it was as that would destroy their talking points, as well as give them something other than Sonic 06 to crucify on a daily basis. Oh how the times have changed! And last I checked, people simply wanted an SA3 rather than remakes, so why are people throwing a fit over something that they never had a demand for? Because they saw Sony, Nintendo, Insomniac, and Naughtydog doing it?
As I’ve said multiple times with Resident Evil, you don’t just want any damn thing they give you. Evidence of alleged remakes does not automatically mean they would’ve been good. And when you consider…. everything, the LAST thing you would want are remakes at this point.
