Hiatus Talk

Hiatus Talk
This is the end of the first season of King of Video Games (and you) on Blogspot. Just kidding. I must take a break from blog, it ends me. I need to make content that is informed, prepared, and edited. This is just a talk that is not that sort of thing. I will return. Most likely starting March 2018 with a few until the summer which is the biggest area of blogs. Just to have prepared and edited blogs. Different kinds will come out as well, I am looking into prospects such as TV reviews, History, and politics. The half year of the blog has been fun. I think it can improve. I'll try to "rebrand" with a logo or something we'll se how that turns out. There will be video game reviews that is my main thing here as well as Star Wars which is why my last real post is the last jedi impression. There was to be a christmas special, it never came to be, the idea must go on though and it will happen. That and many other blogs will be posts that are not the same as other blogs.! I remain the king. Also I will be happy blog review copies of games or any other material. Just comment below. Really everyone should comment their thoughts and I will consider for the later blog. Thanks, stay connected.

Last Jedi Impression

Last Jedi Impression
(I saw the last jedi a long time a go I will blog now, I blog when I want, I own this blog.) (There is also no spoilers in this blog.)

The Last Jedi is in my opinion a great motion picture. I really enjoyed it. It brought a lot to the world of star wars and had interesting new force abilities. I would rank it as my third favorite star wars film. There were some epic moments. I really want to learn about more of the lore. The characters were great, one of the best was the supreme leader, can't wait to see him in IX. There is talk of oscar nominations for Daisy Ridley and Mark Hammil as Rey & Luke. I agree and think Adam Driver should also be considered for Kylo Ren. The film is very divisive amongst fans, I don't get the hate and suspect it might be trolling. There was a bit of cringe and one moment that disappointed me. Other than that it was great. Also Canto Bight, I read and reviewed the book, so what did I think of it in the film. Many say that it was one of the worst parts, it's really not in the films that much but the book really enriched it for me and spotting the cameos of the characters was good. The point of the books is to zoom in on small things so I didn't mind it's brief appearance in the film. I enjoyed DJ, a new character at Canto Bight I would like to see him in episode IX. The porgs are not too bad, they aren't in the movie that much and have funny moments with Chewie. Andy Serkis is really good as snoke similar to his planet of the apes cg appearances he rocks it in his role. The movie rocks the name of Star Wars by being a continuous epic war. The battle of Crait is awesome. It goes without saying for every Star Wars movie the music was great. This is an epic blog, the last jedi is an epic film. Thanks for reading my compliment track. 11/10 Stay Connected
A nice video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9dk7LtrTbHM

Star Wars Canto Bight book review

Star Wars Canto Bight book review
Canto Bight is a star wars collection of 4 novella miniature short story books that takes place before the force awakens. The book however ties into The Last Jedi, with Canto Bight being a location that will be visited in the film. I would like to thank Del Rey for a digital copy of the book to read and review.
I'm going to go through each of the stories, give a small summary and my thoughts and review and overall at the end.

Rules of the Game- Saladin Ahmed;
Kedpin Shoklop is a over hundred  year old non human salesman that comes to Canto Bight on a won vacation from his company. He is very excited at first, but as a new visitor and tourist he gets scammed quickly. He realizes he is part of an assassination attempt and everything goes wacky. Read the book to find out more. I really liked this story. It showed a lot of Canto Bight and the whole world of Cantonica. An aspect mentioned often is fathier races which is races of centaur like horse creatures that are gambled upon similar to podracing in Canto Bight. The characters are nice and they are mostly nonhumans which is different even for most star wars novels. There are callouts to a small green fellow that was in the Star Wars films, very much appreciated by me. If I must identify something wrong with the story, it isn't the best Star wars literature I've ever read, but I didn't expect that because I really just wanted an early read about Canto Bight before the last jedi. It is also noteworthy that this story gives reference to the next in a manner that shows they both take place at the exact same time. Which I find great that the authors communicated and connected the novellas.

A fathier on the set of last jedi

The Wine in Dreams- Mira Grant;
Derla Pidys is a sommelier, wine seller working on Canto Bight with the Grammus sisters, Thrawn like identical twins that manipulate the whole situation into a star wars worthy wacky masterpiece. Read the book to find out more. I found it to be quite fascinating and bold to have the whole story about wine selling. That made it a little more chill, but that doesn't mean anything because this is Star Wars and it is all wacky. This story at it's height quite reminded me of Mos Eisley and the bar, Ubialla's is an awesome location that should be included in a movie. One complaint is that the story is somewhat too descriptive and drags on about one place, item, or topic but that wasn't very bad. Anyways how could the story be bad when it mentions the Yuzzum of Endor making wine with the Ewoks.

See Nothing, Hear Nothing, Say Nothing- By Rae Carson;
This story was about a masseur on Canto Bight whose daughter was kidnapped by Big Sturgg Gana and has to go wacky to get her back.
I thought that the story really was most interesting, with canon aspects about Canto Bight and Star Wars that were cool. It was shorter than the others so a little less of a story. I will be honest the plot is somewhat generic. That said, it really is enthralling and kept me entertained. I wouldn't expect any less from the best franchise in the galaxy, Star Wars.

The Ride- John Jackson Miller;
From the author of A New Dawn is a story about the main purpose of Canto Bight, gambling. Kal has lots of debts and must pay them off and he meets 3 brothers that are possibly force sensitive that help him with that. This is my favorite story of the bunch. It is also the longest. I really like how everything mattered and came back around as well as huge connections with the other stories and the canon in general. There isn't much more I can say without spoilers, but the book had me going ooooooh.
In all this was a very entertaining collection of stories. All of it took place during one night and showed the details of Canto Bight and Cantonica. There were flaws and the story of the characters is still up in the air, but it showed Canto Bight and is the most epic way to prepare for the last jedi. I would rate it a 9.3/10. Thanks for reading my blog and stat connected.
(As a side note the official star wars wiki confirms that all of the main characters of Canto Bight will be in the last jedi in some capacity. :)

Lego Indy

Lego Indiana Jones Original Adventures DS Review..
Lego Indiana Jones 1 for DS is a adaptation of the Indiana Jones movies in lego that came out in 2008. The game includes the original 3 movies with 6 levels for each. Sadly there is no Kingdom of the Crystal Skull with Mutt Williams, but fret not there is a sequel with an overflow of Shia Labeouf. I will no doubt review that at some point in this blog. This game though is a 3d action game where you have to go through all of the enemies and obstacles while collecting studs, which is the lego money. The game in reviews was often compared to the lego star wars complete saga, which is a really fun game that I have put a lot of time into. It came out a little after it and features new mechanics like cutscenes and just put an Indiana Jones spin onto the lego games

A classic lego that inspired and went up to these video games in the franchise

. While I'm comparing the games though they do reuse some sound clips and mechanics from star wars and other lego games. One example is in a cutscene a character has the same laugh as used by the emperor. Also the AI sidekick character continues to be a major annoyance. Some of the many positives though would be the amount of characters that are available for this game, and can be used during free play. The levels are long and have diverse environments.

The music is great, classic from the movies. One of the best things is how much is hidden in the background and everything that you an find, like little collectibles, but the best is weapon upgrades that you grab and use right there. Many leaves start off or incorporate a vehicle or race of some-kind going forward. These are ok, but are kind of ruined by having to take up both DS screens which when what is right in front of you passes to the next screen it makes it very hard to navigate. Another flaw of having it on the DS would be how much they want you to use the stylus, which fine but pointless unless they make you do it in a game like this. I got through fine, just had to use it to pick up blue bricks. The blue bricks are bricks scattered around that have to be picked up via stylus and dropped onto a platform to unlock or open something. There aren't many puzzles in the game which is a shame because those were a high light of Star Wars but were somewhat similar, just better in game puzzles is what it needed.

The graphics are actually really good and only look blocky (LOL lego joke) or move at a low frame rate at big moving objects. There are also some out of game activities in the college base which serves as a playable menu which is fun. In customizing a character you can attach a weapon and bring them in your game. Maybe it is just me, but I think that the Lucasarts Lego games had a higher standard than the other lego games pumped out at the time. Is it still worth playing, yes and it a very fun adventure though Indy's world in the shape of lego that adapted the great story of the films. I would give the game a 8.8/10. Is there any value to playing it since it was remodeled in the sequel? That remains to be seen, so stay connected!

Shia is on right, Mutt looks awesome.  I am very Hype to play this

Interesting Cancelled Star Wars Video Games

Interesting Cancelled Star Wars Games
In my last blog I talked about other game projects and I figured that I would clear some of that up here. This is some interesting cancelled star wars games. Where are all of the series games you might ask. It's a good question for another time.

Logos of many cancelled Star Wars games (Important!)

So without further ado here we go.

Project Ragtag
This is the cancelled project from Visceral that would have been canon and about a survivor of Alderaan on the run from the empire and take place on Tatooine. Officially it has been moved to a different studio, but it is likely that it won't be the same.

1313
This game was cancelled around the time of Disney buying Lucasfilm and would have been set it the underground of Coroscant. It was very anticipated and had test footage online. It had to be reworked from the ground up numerous times though. One of these iterations made Boba Fett the main character.

Battle of the Sith Lords
This game was also very far into being made and centered around playing as Darth Maul. The people who made it say that if EA wanted to they could possibly revive the game, so that is good.

Smuggler
Also called Scum & Villainy, this game would take you through being a smuggler in the Star Wars galaxy.
It was unknown if you would play as or meet Han Solo, but it was ultimately ended and like all of the games died.

Episode VII: Shadows of the Sith
Episode VII would have been the original sequel to Return of the Jedi, but in video game form. It would connect with the legends continuity with the player going as Ben Skywalker (Luke's son in legends) and training and getting new force powers to fight Jacen Solo (Han's evil son in legends) Had this happened what would the force awakens have been made? You decide

The New Emperor
After return of the Jedi the rebellion/republic wanted to know what was up with the empire. So, they sent in C-3PO as a secret spy. It is unknown if he would have been the main playable character, that would be strange. But we do know that they would have used real actors and blue-screen at some point in the game.

Outpost
Described as the Farmville of Star Wars by wookiepedia and as having "very hardcore" elements. It was a game in which you would build your own empire, it sounds pretty generic, but almost funny that this was a thing.

Dark Jedi
There is like no information about this on the internet. But it was on the page so it at least existed in development. It just sounded interesting because stuff about the Dark Jedi and all of that is making it's way into the new star wars canon and movies.

None of these games were ever made but we do have information about some of them and ideas and concepts were used in games that were made like The Force Unleashed or maybe future games, and who knows maybe some of these games could be revived. Lime and stay connected.

Links:

Project Ragtag Info:
https://makingstarwars.net/2017/10/game-story-viscerals-star-wars-project-ragtag-completed/

History of Canceled  games:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jKJYGNBk7Ec

 1313 test footage: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=erDCALIX52I

Wookiepedia Cancelled Games:
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Canceled_video_games

Battlefront rant

Battlefront rant
This was originally going to be a review of EA Star Wars Battlefront 1&2, but I decided to change it. This whole thing starts with disney acquiring Star Wars, they sold the video game rights to EA and closed the old publisher, LucasArts. EA than announced they were releasing a battlefront remake near the release of the force awakens. Then the game came out and... Crazy. People started getting mad that it was pay to win online (I don't even play online but that's a whole different thing.) The DLC was also a big issue that was very expensive. But the biggest problem was no story mode. Don't get me wrong it was a fun game and I really like Star Wars, but there wasn't enough content. Than EA announced a ton of projects; Battlefront II, Project Ragtag(visceral games), and a project from Respawn. Battlefront 2 might be the only one that happens, and not too well. The whole controversy about this is a bigger issue in the gaming community, loot boxes, micro-transactions, dlc, in-app purchases. Most being problems with Battlefront 2, now the dlc issue is fixed all of it being free, how good it is remains to be seen though. The loot boxes are power-ups and gear that you buy with real money and you can hardly win Battlefront 2 without them. It takes over 40 hours to unlock big heroes in regular gameplay. Now the hero-tokens were dumb, this is beyond stupid. You should have a meter and the hero be randomized or based off of your existing soldier-type. Is it that hard, EA? The company didn't respond very well, nothing against the developers, but only EA. Now full disclosure, I did request a review copy from EA's press team, no response. Not that I need one, but I won't buy the game until it goes on sale, only if to learn the continued story of Iden Versio and Inferno Squad continued from the novel. Well, I wouldn't be ranting if there wasn't a solution so here it goes. The Visceral and Respawn games probably won't get made due to firings and mergers by EA. So if I were an executive at Disney, I would end the contract with EA (you have lawyers), then I would re-establish Lucasarts and try to make more games and creative games. Although if EA can do that it's fine, just no Battlefront 3 at least until an original ip. And a message to Electronic Arts, this isn't art.

Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View Book Review

Starting as #operationbluemilk, Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View is a new short stories collection of 40 stories for 40 years since A New Hope. First of all I would like to thank Del Rey and Lucasfilm for sending me a review copy of the book, I am truly grateful. The book is from a certain point of view and is told from the viewpoint of background characters from the original Star Wars. The stories are arranged chronologically, which I appreciated, that way the book wasn't all over the place. The stories are great and really show attention to detail and respect for the Star Wars canon. That being said, there are a few inconsistencies, nothing too big but a lot of the stories occur in the same place and time so it was probably tough to line it up and the characters might just be telling their version of the story. I really liked the variety of authors they had, major star wars novel authors (minus Luceno and Zahn but they've done this stuff before and have other things to write), comic writers, and just a different mix of stories for the book. Some of the most unexpected were Tom Angleberger of Origami Yoda, Ian Doscher from Shakespeare Star Wars, and Jeffery Brown from Darth Vader and Son, all stories done in their style of writing. My favorite tales were The Sith of Datawork by Ken Liu,

Master and Apprentice By Claudia Gray about Obi-Wan, Not for Nothing by Mur Lafferty about the cantina band the model nodes, The Trigger by Kieron Gillen starring Doctor Aphra, and of course Verge of Greatness, about Tarkin by Lucasfilm Story Group's own Pablo Hidalgo. All of these stories were of course individual from each other and by separate authors, so unlike a regular novel it doesn't have plot-lines to talk about, but being during a New Hope many character meet the movies heroes and common theme is that while even some of them are imperial they are inspired to rebel by the characters and the force. Del Rey is moving more towards this style of book, with Canto Bight in December and a possible sequel for The Empire Strikes Back. If this happens Lucasfilm and Del Rey please include Jude Watson, Mortimer Jackson, and Ryder Windham, they are great Star Wars authors that deserve credit, all the authors deserve credit, but all of the authors for this book chose not to be payed in order for their money to go to First Book, a charity for children's reading. Another cool thing about this is that reading the about the authors section, numerous of them used to and still are bloggers (maybe I could write Star Wars someday?) From a certain point of view was a great book that was very full of info, funny, and entertaining. I would rate it a 9.75/10. Thanks for reading and stay connected.