StarcrossedSouls streams of thoughts reviews

If you have talked to me at all in the last decade you probably know that some of my favorite games other than JRPGs are Immersive Sims. These kinds of of first person decision based RPGs among the likes of System Shock, Bioshock, Deus Ex, Prey and Dishonored. It's hard to talk about exactly what makes these games work because when you tell someone "oh yeah you don't really fully appreciate this game until you've played it at least 4 times" it comes off as really pretentious. But it's partially true. Your first play through with a game like this will be extremely different from your second and so on. So most of these games I have played SEVERAL times even as recently as last year I replayed Dishonored and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and had started another playthough of Prey 2017.  Recently, my wife and our two best friends have been doing a regular game night and it has been an absolute treat for us to share our favorite games with each other. It's been a re...

 "Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal..." ~Albert Einstein  So I saw Christopher Nolan's new film. It details the mostly true story of J. Robert Oppenheimer's career in physics and how he lead the Manhattan project, the development of the world's first atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, bringing an end to WWII. I'm a big fan of Nolan's other films. Inception is one of my favorite movies of all time and I enjoyed Dunkirk. The Dark Knight trilogy is mixed for me, I generally don't like to put it up on a pedestal like most people seem to do and I didn't hear good things about Tenet and elected not to see that one. I originally didn't know anything about this movie or that it was even in production until I saw the trailer at the front of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. Later it was revealed that it would be released on the exact same date as the new Barbie movie and the internet too...

So this is a bit of an odd one, considering I don't have a track record of being a huge DC fan. Not because I don't like the characters or the storytelling, because I do. But because like most long running comic series, it isn't obvious what good starting points are. The modern comics industry is...weird. It seems like it is designed to reward the types of people who are habitual comic readers and buy new issues every month. Unfortunately for me, it just wasn't something I grew up doing and I just missed the boat on comic reading being a hobby of mine. Maybe one day I will find an easily accessible way to get into more DC comics and learn about a lot more lore and whatnot. But with that digression out of the way, how come I decided to read this particular graphic novel? Well...Cassandra Cain's Batgirl is a personal favorite character of a very dear friend. I watched her nostalgically reflect on reading the original comic series staring the character than ran from 20...

S P O I L E R S Well, it's finally here! it's been 5 years since the Bumblebee movie and the Transformers are once again back on the big screen in Rise of the Beasts. It seems like Transformers the brand has been on a bit of a Beast Wars nostalgia trip recently with the recent "Kingdom" toy line proceeding the current "Legacy" line. I don't know all of the details but it seems like this film had at least a 3 year production cycle. I remember seeing articles around 2020 about the film being under production in South America and some of the production money of the film went to improving the local infrastructure (roads, etc) and the locals were, allegedly, incredibly grateful that the production came to their country and was a huge boom for their economy as opposed to a huge nuisance. I think a lot of time in the oven was definitely to this film's benefit, although who knows what aspects of it were left on the cutting room floor.  So what did I think of...

You may have noticed that Michelle and I love to do these year end recap videos where we talk unscripted about the games we've finished in that year. We have a lot of fun doing that, but sometimes it's hard to remember your raw, unfiltered thoughts upon finishing a piece of media months after you've finished it. That gave me the idea to create this blog in order to chronicle my raw, fresh thoughts about not just games, but any piece of media I consume throughout the year. The point of doing so is not only to remember how it made me feel at the time and be able to reflect back on it during the end of the year but also to preserve my experiences and put them into a format where they can be shared with other people. I'm a huge advocate of the mindset that life is short and if you enjoy something, it's worth sharing with other people. I'm sure there will be a very small number of people who will actually care to read these, but in the event that you do, I am excited...