SSFF Media Consumption Blog 11/10/17

Hello supporters! Another week in the bag let’s talk about MEDIA! Delicious, delicious MEDIA. Grace has been maddeningly busy with school lately. I know she’s been playing Destiny 2 and watching The Good Place when she has a free moment but she wasn’t able gather her thoughts for this week’s blog. So you're just stuck with Derek!

Thor Ragnarok 

My most recent bout of superhero movie fatigue has lasted longer than previous bouts. The last Marvel films I’d seen were Deadpool and Guardians of the Galaxy, and neither in the theaters. But I actually really liked both Thor movies (or at least I remember liking them the one time I saw them), and the Marvel Cinematic Universe seemed to be producing non-stop hits while I was away, maybe it was time to head back to the theater.

Jumping back into Marvel films with the extremely well-reviewed new Thor movie, my first reaction was “wow, they have absolutely figured this formula out”. Because while I couldn’t really nail down any serious complaints, I didn’t leave the theater all that satisfied. The acting was great, the dialog was sharp, the jokes at times frantastic, but really the whole thing was fine. Not amazing, not terrible, but fine. Knew when to toss in an action scene but also knew exactly when to pull in some drama. A lot of great jokes. It was fun, I enjoyed it, and then immediately forgot almost half of the film. Seriously, I’ve been sitting here for like 20 minutes trying to remember how the movie actually played out from scene to scene.

The man who really steals the show is Taika Waititi. The episode he wrote and directed for Flight of the Conchords, “Driveby”, is maybe my favorite episode of that very fine series, but his roll in Ragnarok as Korg, the soft-spoken gladiator made of rocks, is utter comedic brilliance. He steals every goddamn scene with amazing timed and subtle, awkward dialog. There’s at least a dozen scenes with Korg and it’s unfortunately hard to find clips online but I did manage to find one that’s not in the trailers,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kb1ztV93dsE 

Ragnarok’s ending had some pretty big implications for the greater marvel-verse so if you’re big into that, you’ll probably really enjoy yourself. And if the reviews and box office returns for Spider-Man Homecoming and Guardians of the Galaxy 2 are any indication, this series is in great hands. But if you’re like me and has had their fill of superhero blockbusters, don’t expect this one to convince you you’re really missing out on very much. That is until Korg get’s his own tv show to shorts series, then I’m all in!

The Evil Within 2

Got a lot to talk about with this one! We’re currently working on a video for this I’ll have to skip a lot of the finer details I got cookin’ up in my brain. 

The first Evil Within had moments of brilliance, but these moments were so painfully brief. It was announced to the world as Shinji “Mr Resident Evil” Mikami’s big return to horror and it was a goddamn mess. In many ways, the most “Mikami” game he’d ever made, just a hodgepodge of mechanics and systems with almost no regard for story or narrative. Mikami is a brilliant game designer, we’ve made a few videos about this topic, but The Evil Within 2 is such an incredible improvement over the first, it’s almost proof that Mikami needed to be saved from himself. As far as I’m concerned, with Part 2, Evil Within has gone from a neat horror game, to an extremely promising new series for horror. Dead Space and Silent Hill are gone but Evil Within has come to fill the void. And it might have had everything to do with Mikami acting instead as Executive Producer allowing for young talent into the trenches. The smartest thing he did for the series is start it then get the hell out of the way!

Maybe the most striking thing about Part 2 is its story. It does such an amazing job of both fleshing out the story from the first game and expanding the universe for future installments that I’m convinced they actually had it all planned out from the start! Part 1’s story probably was fleshed out, they just did such an incredibly terrible job telling it. It’s not necessary to play Part 1 before jumping into Part 2 but there’s enough stuff you’ll miss that’d I’d recommend it. Part 1 is a frustrating and unnecessarily hard (so many one-hit-kill boss fights!!), buy it for cheap, play it on easy and then get to the good stuff with Part 2. 

The story drew me in (hey, it’s actually about Sebastian this time) but the gameplay completely hooked me. Where Part 1 was almost completely linear, Part 2 features dense, enormous areas ripe with side missions and collectables. I slogged through Part 1, but I couldn’t put Part 2 down. It’s the best collect-a-thon I’ve played all year (I’ll get to you eventually A Hat In Time). Did you think the first half of Dead Space 3 was great? Then you'll love this!

I’m not quite ready to say I liked TEW 2 more than Resident Evil 7. Need to sit on that thought for a while, but that I’m even considering it should say enough. TEW 3 and RE 8 may prove to be a grudge match for the ages. But for now, I cannot recommend The Evil Within 2 enough.

Again, Grace wasn’t able to participate in this week’s blog so that’s it for now. I leave you with an amazing song that’s my good friend Eric Lappe recommended me that's been keeping my powerful all week, Adventure by Snail’s House 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBgAicpP_c0 

Stay Powerful!
-da