Injustice: Gods Among Us review

Wait what...There was a prequel comic which explained a lot of the events that took place before the game? Why was I not informed of this, I would have loved to have read it and got a heck of a lot more background information on the game and what was happening but hey...it sure as hell did not affect my enjoyment of the game whatsoever.

I recently bought myself Injustice: Gods Among Us which is a beat 'em up, a fighting game on a 2D plane in the mold of Mortal Kombat and personally asides Tekken and Super Smash Brothers I'm not really what you would call a fighting game enthusiast, I mean sure I got Marvel vs Capcom 3 but that was mainly because IT'S FREAKING MARVEL, why wouldn't I want to play as the likes of Iron Man, Magneto, Deadpool and FRICKING CAPCOM who had Christopher Redfield, Tron Bonne and Viewtiful Joe so I was always going to get it but hoooo boy, beginner friendly? I think NOT! It might have just been me but it also didn't help that the story wasn't that brilliant or that memorable.

I notice that I don't really know a single person that actually enjoys fighting games and perhaps that's due to the complexity of the games and things such as juggles, turtling, tech rolls, frame data, recovery frames and general advanced stuff like that, I think it can make it very overwhelming and not fun to play especially when you get matched up against someone that does know all about it and it becomes a bit of a mismatched competition.

I also think that fights can sometimes just not be aesthetically pleasing especially when you watch experts against each other, there are certain exceptions like if you've ever seen the ending of Daigo’s Ken massive comeback vs Justin Wong’s Chun-Li because that right there, that was a thing of beauty and understand the difficulty of what he did but for the most part the fights aren't that exciting and just resort to people dashing, cancelling and repeating the same few moves over and over when you’d want a little more variety and it just looks...like more of a game and less of an actual fight.

I don’t get this with Injustice, the moves and cinematic during fights make it feel like it's a proper superhero battle, the transitions between levels in stages all adds to the experience and makes it feel a lot more engaging as do the super moves that each character has, I especially love the whole over the top feel that they have to it especially Doomsday’s and Aquaman’s supermove, the clash battles also add to it as well but they do feel a bit gimmicky and I could do without it, I don’t remember ever initiating one, it was always the computer that forced one.

The story in itself was quite interesting and involves an alternate dimension which instantly gives you the reason why Batman is fighting the likes of Superman, Flash and Nightwing and similiar confrontations like that. Superman is pretty much running the alternate dimension with an iron fist after a major casualty and it does bring up some questions like what happens when the strongest entity isn't fighting for "your side" anymore. You do see some pretty interesting stuff and decisions taken by some of the characters especially Superman, I would have like to have seen how this world is viewed in the eyes of ordinary civilians but I suppose that’s something that can’t really be done in a game such as this without making the story mode feel long and dragged out.

There are a bunch of other modes like a S.T.A.R.S Labs mode which is like a challenge mode where you fight with certain stipulations which seems fun, I haven't really gotten that far into that yet but I enjoyed Super Smash Brother’s Melee’s challenge mode especially Super Mario 128 so I imagine I’ll enjoy the S.T.A.R.S Labs a great deal. There's a battle mode where you can do the classic fighting game formula and fight random 8 superheroes or villains before fighting the big bad in Superman and of course everyone comes with their own ending.

Finally there is multiplayer including online which I guess is very important to a lot of people but to me? Not really. Mainly because when it comes to fighting games, they require precision timing and being in exact positions to pull of successful combos and you missing a punch which keeps your opponent juggled for to you to do you next combo could make the difference between winning and losing and getting a good control on the match I feel is impossible due to the lag that this game has. The only fighting game I’ve ever been able to play online is Tekken because I don't suffer too badly from lag there, even Brawl online was woeful, so asides me going to local tournaments or playing local multiplayer and the likes there isn't really a way of me getting better at this because the AI are extremely limited in fighting games and just come across as being cheap which ruins the fun.

All in all I found this game to be very fun and enjoyable especially learning about superheroes and villains that I didn't know too much about before like Shazam, that being said...Deathstroke...eurgh...I have problems against that guy what with his guns and him being impossible to approach normally. I definitely enjoyed this and I’d put it in the 80 to 90 out of hundred bracket if I were to do ratings and that but I don’t. Still, great game.

That’s about it for my Injustice review the next game I shall be playing is going to be Tomb Raider as in the 2013 edition but until then this is the Silver Assassin signing out, over and out.

So why see the world when you got the beach

Like I said, Frank Ocean literally shits on other R&B artists, I can't believe that at one point I actually preferred The Weeknd to Frank at one point but I suppose that was understandable due to the fact that The Weeknd had just come out with House Of Balloons and Thursday which my goodness I got lost into them. However with Echoes of Silence things started changing.

I found that while Echoes of Silences was good it just didn't grip me as much as the previous two mixtapes. There were certainly more high points on there in comparison to the third mixtape which was a tiny bit disappointing. Then came the features on blockbuster albums, The Weeknd on Drake's Take Care and Frank Ocean on Watch The Throne.

No square shall enter in the circle of winners

Curren$y would no doubt probably be one of my favourite artists if I smoked weed or something simply because the production he has on his songs and his flow and rhymes just is so amazing, laid back and is so chilled but as it stands I don't smoke weed but I still love Curren$y and his flow.

I don't remember the first time I heard him, I suppose it might have been Grown Man by Lil' Wayne featuring him but I didn't really pay much attention, even had Scared Of Monsters on my iPod for a long time and I still didn't think anything of him.

Zetta cool!

"Listen up, Phones! The world ends with you. If you want to enjoy life, expand your world. You gotta push your horizons out as far as they'll go."

Ahhh really do have to stop playing Fifa as I'm wasting time that I could be playing other games. Okay granted handheld games are probably best played when I'm not at home as I could be playing something on the television or online and all that but The World Ends With You was really a wonderful experience and the battle system uses both screens at once and makes for interesting battles.

The Fullmetal Turtle

Fullmetal Alchemist, something I've been missing out on for quite some time but recently I've managed to read the whole manga series and watch half of the Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood anime and I actually love it. This will go down as one of my favourite manga of all time (but seeing as I haven't really read all that much really I don't know if that's saying much).

Just the whole storyline had me hooked from start to finish, okay there were some parts that I just wanted to get through quicker but they even had their moments of awesome.

As for the characters, the one thing that I noticed was that no two characters were actually similar and that everyone had their own distinct personality and it made everyone......except maybe Sloth interesting (then again the screen time certain characters get does make a difference). But I realised that I could actually sort of relate to Edward Elric and I see similarities between us despite the fact that very rarely the main character of a story is someone I like and quite often I get annoyed with them a lot.

With Edward he has an automail arm and while it has its uses and that can be seen in several instances where if he had a real arm he would have been in real danger so really just making do with what he has and utilising it the best he can. That's how I feel about my hearing aids sometimes, the ability to switch off sound is one that is a pleasant gift at times. It's not like sight where you can "switch" that off with a simple muscle action of moving your eyelids. My hearing aids allow me to switch off sound at a whim but the downside of this and the downside of Edward's automail arm and leg is that we are completely at the mercy of it and me at least, I feel completely vulnerable if something happens to it and I'm exposed to the world of silence involuntary then it frustrates me because I know it was never my choice to be there in the first place.

It's why I can empathise with him and the loss of his arm and leg.

Anyway I'm pretty much just watching the anime and I'm loving every moment of it and I cannot wait to finish it...well, when it's over it's going to be sad that there's no more but ah well.

You and I, we were born to die

I actually love how this happens, I'll just be oblivious to all the hype about a particular artist and then I'll decide to give it a listen before deciding HEEY This is reaally good!

Today or rather a few days ago I experienced that with Lana Del Ray and her "debut" album Born To Die. I say debut but really there was an album before apparently and was pulled or something like that.

Anyway for me music isn't about being the perfect singer or anything as for me the delivery and how you come across on the microphone and the lyrics will mean more to me than singing in perfect tune and melody ever could. I think that's why I'm hooked on artists such as The-Dream, The Weeknd and their kind of music as opposed to people like Usher because of the picture they can paint with their delivery and words.

Anyway with Lana Del Ray, I came into the album without any expectations and was...pleasantly surprised. Her breathless delivery, haunting melody and times of ecstasy just sends me into another world and has me hypnotised from the first verse of 'Born To Die' all the way to the last note on 'This Is What Makes Us Girls' (and even through the bonus songs as well) and I really enjoyed it.

I'm still not feeling Video Games but maybe sooner or later it will grow on me as it was the only single that I knew from her, in fact it was the only song that I knew from her and I hadn't even heard the song, simply saw it in the Top 40 one week and that was it, I didn't think I'd actually listen to the song but yeah it hasn't grown on me but there is still time.

She reminds me of Ellie Goulding and Marina and The Diamonds in that I'm eagerly awaiting their next album and that I want more of them but knowing that it will not be anytime soon if ever...and now I wish I hadn't reminded myself about Marina and The Diamonds as I reeeeeally enjoyed The Family Jewels...I think I need to give that another listen now.

So Born To Die is definitely is going to be my contender for album of the year and several songs will make my shortlist of top songs but hey, there's still the rest of the year to go

Yes you totally are a bi- I mean witch

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh, choo. Freezing cold weather isn't cool whatsoever.

The weather has gotten colder than usual as of late which quite frankly makes mornings a bit of a pain seeing as the heating in my room doesn't actually work or anything so yeah.

I really ought to go to sleep earlier and thus wake up earlier because there is always so much to do in the day and waking up earlier would solve a lot of these...timing problems but the problem is not much really happens until night so up I stay.

So what else has been happening? Not much just the same routine really. Found out Phoenix Wright 5 has been confirmed so I look forward to that but it's probably going to be a continuation of the Apollo Justice story which I'm not too pleased about seeing as I found his story to not really be all that interesting but I guess we'll wait and see.

Finished the story of Bayonetta so that's another to my list but now it's all about getting the achievements if I can before locking the game up away forever like Dante's Inferno, Final Fantasy XIII, Sonic Generations and other 100% completed games.

I had heard about Bayonetta and it had received critical acclaim so I decided to try it (plus the fact that I purchased it nearly a year ago and just hadn't gotten round to playing it) and I wouldn't say I was surprised but it really was enjoyable fun.

The controls were easy and simple to get used to and could lead to many combinations while fighting and thus getting into it was incredibly easy. Torture sequences and Wicked weave attacks were glorious to watch and fun to execute and the dialogue and cut scenes were another thing of beauty with all their references to other games and that.

If there was a downside to it from my experience was that the story wasn't exactly easy to follow when starting and a lot of the times I was thinking "what on earth is going on? Wait, what's my journey about anyway" and the questions aren't really answered until the final chapter and by then it was a bit too late to really care and simply just wanted to complete the game especially when I was sooo close to it (incidentally, why is it I only ever seem to finish games late at night, why can't I finish a game at a nice time like in the middle of day or something).

So yeah asides from that it was really fun to play though some of the Alfheim chapters were frustrating as hell and I haven't even finished them all yet. I look forward to trying to complete the game on the hardest of hard mode (Climax mode) and no doubt that will be my last achievement on the game so then I can put the game down.

I just hope that on the final boss it isn't too frustrating and I end up physically not being able to complete it a la I Want To Be The Guy. I'm still annoyed about that to this day.

Lost…literally

Lost. So my sister brought the entire boxset and I've pretty much been watching it the last few days and I'm currently finished Season 3 and sorry but...WHAT THE BLOODY HELL IS GOING ON!? And I don't mean that in a good confused way either.

Okay maybe I'll need to watch the rest of it to gain a better understanding of it but for now I stand by my belief that Season 3 is just awful and eurgh...it's gone from being about people who crash on an island trying to survive and that. Sure throw in a polar bear or two to generate more mystery. Oh and mysterious cursed numbers that pop up everywhere? Let's have that too. People known as The Others? Ooh I'm curious? A massive missing statue with only a foot remaining and that foot has only four toes? What? Pregnant women who die if they conceive on the island? Walt mysteriously appear to people in illusions? Okay. I've had enough of this shit. You are not answering any of the questions really and the show is still persisting with this...this...urgh...man, the first few seasons were all I ever needed to watch in regards to Lost.

Sparkle sparkle

I really ought to watch films as soon as possible when I get sent them from Lovefilm rather than hold onto them for too long but ah well, anyways, I got round to watching Twilight: Eclipse…yeah.

Obviously I’m not oblivious to the Twilight hate and it’s extreme I should add. Not just on the anti Twilight brigade but on the pro Twilight side as well, I mean seriously?

So anyway I watched the third instalment of the Twilight Saga and I felt that it was the best of the three so far, I suppose that isn’t really saying much especially compared to New Moon…gosh that film was bad. That’s not to say that there wasn’t any cringe worthy moments, the portrayal of Bella is one that really grates as she displays absolutely NO emotion and while I’m not annoyed at the author for writing this character into existence, I find it really frustrating that the publishers and editors allowed it to get to the actual selling of the book in retail shops. I feel that somebody should have mentioned that along with millions of the other mistakes in the book (Brazilian west coast anyone?).

While you can’t really ask for a factually correct book in a story about vampires and werewolf shape shifters there comes a point where it becomes jarring to read mistakes after mistakes after mistakes.

So anyway I’m pretty much done with that film until Breaking Dawn comes out and…I’m just thinking, that's probably going to be a massive let-down and here’s why:

While I applaud the fact that for once in a story a confrontation was avoided with simple diplomatic discussion, the build up from the first part of the film (Breaking Dawn will be split into two parts not unlike the final Harry Potter movie) combined with seeing all these vampires with different powers and abilities and just the general feel of it will serve to be a MASSIVE anti-climax.

So I guess I’m going into the last film with extremely low expectations but now I think about it, the could change many parts of the movie to avoid that exact situation but for now it’s a wait and see situation. Though I’m not looking forward to the promotions when the release date approaches as the pro Twilight and anti Twilight groups come out in full force to defend/attack this series. I will just be glad when it’s all done.

We Are Lasers

Lupe Fiasco has always been one of my favourite artists in music, his storytelling, wordplay and metaphoric rhymes have always been one to make me actually listen and pay attention to his songs so of course I was going to be pretty hyped for Lasers (Love Always Shines Everywhere, Remember 2 Smile)...whenever it was going to come out.

On first impressions, I was always going to be disappointed with the album as it had release date problems and label issues meant I was worried about how exactly this would turn out. I heard Shining Down and liked it but it was obvious that it was a song for radio and all that, I also heard I'm Beaming which I also liked but again, was a song for the radio but it was all good, but I was still waiting for the album.

Then I got wind of the track list and such is the recent trend that's been going round, it was 12 tracks.

No. No. And no. Getting hyped up for this album for 12 tracks, I was somewhat disappointed as I don't know, I was expecting a 15+ album but what can you do. Upon further inspection of the track listing you had to note the complete lack I'm Beaming and Shining Down (later added as bonus tracks) and no Matthew Santos or Gemstones. This was going to be different, wait what. Trey Songz is one of the guests? Oh...kay, that's worrying. Sway is on it? Interesting, I was curious to hear how that goes as I want to hear how Sway's style would fit into it. This will be an interesting album.

Then Words I Never Said and All Black Everything came out and I had sort of learned from the My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy saga not to listen to it as it will spoil my listening of the album and there weren't many tracks on the album so I wanted to enjoy it as a whole. Anyway, after finally listening to the album, I felt slightly...meh, nothing special here, my most liked tracks being the bonus tracks, 'Words I Never Said', 'Never Forget You' and 'All Black Everything' and the others were okay, not brill but okay with lots of people slating 'I Don't Wanna Care Right Now' and the use of auto tune. I conceded that this wasn't a patch on Food & Liquor and The Cool but I think that was expected but was the album going to be consigned to the graveyard on my iPod along with others or would it be getting constant plays at various times?

It's not horrendous, no, not at all, in fact it's starting to grow on me, even that Trey Songz song 'Outta My Head' and that I do like some of the tracks but then when I give recent tracks like SLR (TEN FO'!), Fire, We Can Do It Now and Go To Sleep, I just think, it could have been better and that.

Here's hoping his next few albums are amazing again, right now I'm going to listen to it all again.

My Album Choices

Albums. They can be so many things, whether it’s just a collection of songs put together by the artist, whether it,s a story trying to be told or whatever, album fulfil so many uses.

Nowadays with the ease that you can pull apart an album, sometimes a whole album isn’t really listened to. There are songs where sure it’s not good and to your own tastes it’s pretty poor and as an individual song it’s not up to much but what it does have is that it fits in with the rest of the album which can boost my liking of a song for me. I like to think of an album as a journey and that I allow the songs on it take me on that journey, a good album for me is one that takes me there successfully while I’ve heard albums that have good songs, as a whole it’s meh.

Anyway I got to thinking about albums and despite my never having favourites in anything really I attempted with a top albums I like, I wanted to really think about it, really listen to it and decide what were in fact my most loved albums and not what the critics and the fanbase deemed the best albums. Never really understood how you can do that really as people will have different experiences in life which meant they would look at an album in a different perspective to another but anyway here goes.

Outkast- Stankonia

This is actually the last physical copy of an album I have ever brought…ever. Even when it was preferred that I downloaded my music so it could go on my iPod I still brought this album. I remember the scene so well, I had gone in HMV in Newbury and I had a five pound note in my pocket and wasn’t really planning on buying anything, I was just browsing through really and this caught my eye and I thought, “Why not?”. I am so glad I made that decision.

There is not a single song I hate on this album, all the songs with the exception of We Luv Deez Hoes have a 4 star or more and it would be a 4 and half star if I could do that but I can’t. It actually has the most 5 star songs (9) on the album than any other album I have, they all have a sufficient number of plays on it and I just love it to bits.

My favourite in terms of play count is Toilet Tisha but as I looked at that I thought wait…this doesn’t actually count the amount of times I listened to B.O.B on the CD’s, previous iPods and video games it featured in but that really would be another of my favourites on this album if not all time favourite song.

The whole album is just simply amazing, whether it’s the duo going back and forth on Spaghetti Junction, members of the Goodie Mobb also getting in on the action on Gangster Shit or whether it’s the final song Stankonia (Stank Love), this is just an amazing album to listen to and one I will never ever get bored of listening to at all.

My song choices

Yes yes, I’m years late to the party but every once in a while I will listen to a song and it will just grab me and I love it, this happens a lot of the times for all sorts of different reason which I probably explained in one of my earlier posts but anyway Between Me, You & Liberation by Common featuring Cee-Lo Green is a song that a few days ago I rated it five stars on my iPod and there it’ll stay. I guess for the first time I had the chance to really listen to the song and I mean really listen to it and you know what I love it. In the song he talks about sexual abuse, losing someone to cancer and his own homophobia and it’s an incredibly deep song which is always refreshing for me to listen to.

The Facial Bookcase

Watched The Social Network with Emily and Megan in the cinemas the other day and I found it to be quite an enjoyable film and one I’m glad I watched. Okay yes maybe when I first heard that they were making a film about Facebook, I couldn’t help but laugh and wonder exactly how it would turn out but I’m glad that it turned out to be a good film to watch even if they took some liberties with the truth in how it started and everything but hey, you’ve got to entertain haven’t you.