D. Hunter Phillips's Blog, page 4

Edge of my seat at the Edge of Tomorrow

[image error]

A movie made from a Manga? What?! I’d never heard of All You Need Is Kill but I can say that I am quite intrigued.

I saw the movie in IMAX-3D with a couple of friends and my girlfriend. If you’ve read my reviews before, you’ll know that I don’t care for 3D. This movie did not change that opinion, the 3D was really not worth it and with this particular movie, or maybe because it was IMAX at a not true IMAX theater, three of us got head aches.

That is the most negative thing that I have to say about the movie. I very much like when a Science Fiction or Fantasy movies that start at a point that is not the beginning of the setting. That is something that Pacific Rim did well. I enjoyed seeing all the posters of Emily Blunt’s character plastered on the side of buses.

Tom Cruise plays a quite smug military press specialist that gets “pressed” for service, and I won’t explain it any more than that.

There is actually an explanation for why he keeps jumping back in time like in Groundhog Day. I almost feel like it didn’t require an explanation, but I wouldn’t say it is a complaint.

The movie is filled with great action and just a tiny bit of emotional bonding going on between the two main characters and with the squad mates.

The ending of the movie is the thing that I would change most. It was a bad ending, no, I would just say that if I was the creative mind behind it, I would have taken the opportunity to do something that I felt would have been a little unexpected and different from the usual.

I know that this movie didn’t do fabulously in the theater, but I hope that it will do well after. I am so happy to see a movie that is not a remake or a sequel, and I hope that in the future, more people will start to support a movement for more movies that are original or based on original stories!

I’ll spend my watching future past today

First off, let me let some of you down. Rogue is in this movie for about oh… 5 seconds and I don’t think she even had a speaking line. Very silly to have her on the head liners.

I’ve been skeptical of the X-Men movie franchise for pretty much the entire time it has been a movie franchise.

One of the things that Days of Future Past did really well was something that Star Trek IV failed at. Going back in time to the 1970′s can allow a path to overusing theme. This movie threw in some old school technology here and there and just a couple of references. It was entertaining and enough to soak you up into the environment, but it didn’t make the movie about the 70′s instead of about the mutants.

I was glad that Bishop makes an appearance, even if I wished he’d been featured more prominently. Quicksilver was very entertaining and perhaps was the MVP mutant of the show. Wolverine being the star is getting a little tired at this point, but he was very different in this one as the voice of reason to the young emo Professor X.

This movie is the movie that makes me excited to see future X-Men films. That’s how good it was.

I hope I never experience an Iron Sunrise

The witty, unusual characters in Charles Stross books continue to appear in this hard sci-fi mystery tale.

I’ve grown more and more interested in books and stories that deal with the Singularity, the phenomenon where an AI gains so much sentience and computing power, that it becomes like a god. This book deals with the Galaxy, post Singularity.

At first, I thought that Wednesday, one of the main characters, was going to annoy me. I did like her style, but I thought her moodiness would bother me. By the end of the story, she settles down and grows up.

Another of the main characters, Frank, is a member of the press. I enjoy when alternate history or far future sci-fi use characters that have knowledge of the news to give information on the setting to the reader.

The villains of the book, are quite an interesting bunch, and I like how the story is covering the very fledgling beginnings of a possible conflict. A few times in the book, some of the characters speculate about what the far future holds, and I thought that was an interesting way to build suspense for the characters to stop the villains from completing their goals.

LOTR LCG: Making somebody a deck to love

I was surprised that even with the expanding card pool and the non-Star Wars LCG deck building nature of the game, when I managed to make a deck in about 10 minutes for someone that was pretty good and that they really loved.

Want to try to get friends into LOTR LCG? (Lord of the Rings, the Living Card Game) Perhaps, there are just a few questions that you need to ask someone in order to make that dream a reality.

Is there an iconic Lord of the Rings hero that you would like to play?

My friend replied with Samwise.

I quickly threw together all the heroes from the new Black Riders set.

Would you like to be a combat focus or support focus?

This just helped me choose some allies and a few events a little bit differently.

What kind of skill level of cards do you want to try and how thematic do you want the deck?

My friend wanted to stay very hobbit themed, so I threw in tons of hobbit oriented cards, even some that didn’t specify hobbit, but they just happened to sound very hobbit-like (I’m looking at you Second Breakfast).

Picking a quest that is complimentary to the deck you built them and playing on Easy Mode are also good ways to make sure someone falls in love with the game. Don’t even bother telling them that you are playing easy mode. Just go with it.

I have been amazed in recent months as to just how accessible this game is, especially to players of Magic the Gathering. The love of Lord of the Rings, the cooperative nature of the game, the amazing flavor that the player cards have, and the thematic quests really make this game something unique. I can’t help but marvel at it over and over.

Gencon 2013 Reflections Part III

This year was the first year that I actually managed to sign up for events before they were all sold out. I think I’ve said this on here before, but don’t bother to try to use generic tickets. Most of the time, games will be full, especially Fantasy Flight Games official events.

One of the random events that I signed up for was a game that I’ve been intrigued to try for some time, especially since it got a revamp.

I was fortunate enough to get to play the game and have it taught and run by one of the designers of the game. (Sorry I didn’t get your name to give you proper credit for your good game teaching skills!)

So without further ado, I dove in to Thunderstone Advance.

Playing Thunderstone felt a lot like playing an old school D&D dungeon delve campaign or Diablo. I played it one on one and the other guy and I both caught on very quickly. This one definitely has the case of “deck building” familiarity. After playing other games of that type, it is very easy to transition over to this one. Fighting the enemies did have a somewhat familiar feeling to the Resident Evil deck building game. I liked this one more than RE though, enjoying the fact that you could see what was coming up and had a couple choices of monsters to fight based on the amount of light you had to explore the dungeon.

If you haven’t picked up any deck building games yet, I’d say this one is worth the time to try out and buy. I’m not sure if I will add it to my collection as I already have other deck building games and I’m not sure if it really fulfills any further itch, unless you really love Diablo or old school dungeon delving.

—————————–

My Deck building game woes mostly build up around the fact that I’m not the hugest fan of fantasy games. Why can’t there be an awesome sci-fi deck building game? I guess there was Eminent Domain. That one was kind of neat, but it seems to have just made a brief splash last year, and that was it.

Until next time, intrigued gamers and con-goers.

80′s Sci-fi classic book: Count Zero

It is amazing for how short of a book this is that it takes so damn long to read. Every word has a purpose and there are almost no filler words. I can only imagine that editing this book must have been a painstaking process, but it is worth it. Count Zero is an unconventional and interesting book.

Reading William Gibson reminds me of the inspirations that led me to write my first published book. Though, I am no master of the craft as Gibson is, the short, abrupt approach to descriptions and moving through events is something that I did strive to emulate.

Can I also just say how much I enjoy the old cover of this book (shown above). I know this has nothing to do with the enjoyment of reading a book, but the pixelated face really just drives home the time that this book came out and a little bit of the gritty feeling of the book.

I can’t seem to get away from books with nuclear explosions in them lately. I’m not explaining any more than that.

The story follows three different characters in an amateur hacker, a highly skilled mercenary, and an art collector. If I read a description of this book, I might never have read it, but I am sure glad that I did.

The plot leads to an ending that I never would have expected and it had a very god in the machine feel to it. In a world where Hollywood just makes remakes, sequels, and predictable movies, the end of this book was a very welcome relief from most of the media I have soaked in in the last couple of years.

I felt I needed an Elysium from my boredom and confusion

I was bound to be utterly disappointed by a movie at least once this year. I didn’t think it would be Matt Damon and the guy that made District 9.

Despite my doubts though, Elysium was a pretty big let down after all. I should have expected it after what most of the people I knew had seen it. I actually hadn’t heard a single friend say they’d liked it.

At one point in the movie, the cool robot droids are completely absentee. They go from being everywhere and a serious challenge to literally just gone. No explanation or anything. They do briefly appear, but it still doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

The flashbacks to the main characters childhood are boring and I felt almost genuinely insulted, like I was being treated like a simpleton. The flashback was pretty much the exact same scene ever single time. I felt like they didn’t think that I could actually understand any more than that.

The other infuriating part is that there were actually some cool characters, i.e. mercenaries. The part that made me more angry about the characters is that they did NOTHING with them.

Also, the final fight of the movie was extremely reminiscent of Serenity. Not in a bad way, it was a fun little fight, though it was not enough to save the movie at all.

Skip it unless you love sci-fi and ran out of other movies.

GenCon Reflections 2013 Part 2

The problems for me of having GenCon moved two weeks later continues to plague me. My goal was to write about the convention a lot in the weeks after the Con, so it would be fresh in my memory. DragonCon happens to be 2 weeks later and I needed to finish my costume for it. So, writing about GenCon immediately after became a total flop.

Having those two conventions so close together does provide some interesting perspectives. The one thing that I find interesting that is always lacking from GenCon are a lot of costumes. The truly epic costumes are not usually there, and the numbers are a lot less. I guess, when we want to get our game on, we don’t want pesky props getting in the way of our fun.

Most interesting new game that I played at the convention

I’d never heard of the first Space Cadets game, but I was super stoked to hear about the idea of Space Cadets: Dice Duel. I was fortunate enough to be in line for the dealer room on the press side, Thursday, with one of the designers of the game. It just so happened that he had a copy with him. I started asking him all kinds of questions about it, and due to the short playing time, I convinced him to teach myself and a couple others in line, how to play. He was not hard to convince, you could see the passion for the game written all over his face.

I’d never heard of a real time dice game before, but it was one hell of a ride. My friend’s that have played my newly purchased, autographed copy have had mixed feelings. Some of them love the crazy pace and the excitement, while a few others were actually a little stressed out by the game and found it too frantic.

Still, it is so unique, it is definitely worth checking out if you want something new and unusual.

PS: The dice are also really freaking cool.

Noteworthy Events and Places

Keep your eyes open for flyers for dance parties that are specifically organized while GenCon is going on. My buddy and I went to a party on our last night there, and we had one hell of a time. If you want to get your groove on with a bunch of friendly nerds of both genders and of a middle age bracket, I bet you’ll find them at one of these spots. Thanks to those of you involved with making those events happen! They are a welcome addition, especially in the absence of the White Wolf sponsored Succubus Club night.

Calling all nerds

Anyone that attends GenCon and would like to share with me the events that they love, please tell me more. I am always on the lookout for new experiences that I haven’t latched on to before. Especially because I do have an idea for a book about GenCon in the works. We’ll see if that one actually happens. (since I already have two other books that need editors)

Gravity will make you wish you always have its namesake

I heard a few people say that Gravity was a really amazing movie. I knew nothing about it, I hadn’t even seen a preview. I had seen one or two 5-10 second teasers, and that was it.

So, when I took a date to go see the movie, I didn’t have much to tell her except “it has George Clooney in it, and it is in space.” Fortunately for both of us, she bit on that.

First off, this movie is totally worth seeing in 3d! Its actually the first movie I’ve seen in 3d that I thought was a worthwhile experience (I didn’t get to see Avatar in 3d). I did worry for the first few minutes that it felt like it was just going to be a bunch of action sequences that felt a lot like one of those 3d rides at Disney World.

Second, the performances by both George Clooney and Sandra Bullock were executed to perfection. I had confidence in George, but I really wasn’t sure what to think about Sandra. In fact, with the way the movie was executed, if either one had a weak performance, the movie would have been a total flop.

Third, the movie was so intense, I found my throat clenched and dry in worry for the characters lives. I haven’t felt that much worry and I haven’t sat that far on the edge of my seat for… well probably ever. I practically fell off the seat and flopped onto the floor at least twice.

Finally, GO SEE THIS MOVIE! There is no way around Gravity being one of the best movies of the year.

Evangel… no, Pacific Rim

Look, I love giant robots. I also tend to really love Ron Pearlman, especially when he does little bit parts. So when I saw the screenshots and previews for Pacific Rim, I knew I just had to see it in theaters before my time ran out to see robots in a truly GIANT way.

The costumes looked freaking awesome, and I can’t wait to see them at a convention (tis going to happen). The battle effects were much better than the nearest equivalent (the Transformers movies). I’d love to see a sequel to Pacific Rim, where I still haven’t even seen the third Transformers movie.

I really wanted this movie to be more like Mobile Suit Gundam, but it is, in truth, more of a Neon Genesis Evangelion. It feels like an Americanized Japanese movie. It brought back some pleasant memories of watching anime and getting introduced to characters for a long running anime. Its too bad it couldn’t have been a tv show, I think it would have actually worked better that way.

I wouldn’t rush to see this movie now that you can’t see it on the big screen, but it is worth seeing when you get around to it. You may even want to watch it a second or third time. This one seems like a movie I could enjoy just playing in the background while painting miniatures or something. No, that’s not supposed to be an insult!