7th Moon

Saturday, June 3, 2017

Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Dragon Ball Xenoverse and Grimm Everafter

I spent the last month working on a Grimm fan fiction and just finished it, all four parts are up on Grimm Forum but I did find time to watch Guardians of the Galaxy which I will review now.

The movie is ridiculous, but when the heroes are Chris Pratt, a raccoon voiced by Bradley Cooper and a talking tree that only says "I am Groot" you should expect nothing else. The movie opens with a great battle, half of which is off screen while Baby Groot dances around the edges of the battlefield to music provided by Peter Qwill. It's hilarious and sets the bar for the rest of the movie.Rocket steals some of the batteries which they were supposed to be protecting, which draws the ire of their employers and they have to make a mad get away. This leads them to an unlikely rescue by none other than Peter's father Ego, the celestial avatar of the eponymous living planet. While Peter gets reconnected with his long lost father, everyone else has their own family issues to contend with, most prominently Gamora and Nebula the latter of whom wants to make the former suffer for how Thanos replaced her body parts every time she lost a confrontation with her sister, but it turns out they have a sisterly bond stronger than hate. The other big one is Yondu who is action packed with issues, exiled by the Ravagers for abducting Peter as a child, relating to Rocket for being a lonely outcast and finally the revelation that "I'm Mary Poppins y'all"...but really he feels more like Peter's dad than Ego. The whole mess comes together in an epic battle that can only be handled with such nonchalant casualty as the Guardians of the Galaxy can pull off. The one weakness of the movie is that the theme of finding family is delivered a little too heavy-handed, some of the sub-plots seem forced to fit the larger narrative. Fortunately, despite the strain on the core story, the jokes, action and visual effects are so damn entertaining it's worth it.

I found time to finish Dragon Ball Xenoverse, months after the sequel came out and nobody cares about the original, but it's still good, so get it and play it before the servers get cut off. Xenoverse gives the Dragon Ball story a fresh take by working the future Trunks time traveler angle. After Trunks traveled through time in the Cell Saga he gets caught by the Supreme Kai of Time who employs him to fix time distortions. When his own timeline gets compromised, rather than tamper himself and earn more ire from Time Kai, he uses the Dragon Balls to wish for a third party to step in, and that is you. Pulled from some random point in time disconnected with the main story, you are a human, saiyan, namek, majin, or "Frieza Race" that is tasked with correcting time. At first you just go through the main story of Dragon ball Z starting with Radditz, but little details go differently, someone has changed the course of time so the story is not what we know. As you fight through these battles and set things right, you will return to Toki Toki City where you can train under the Z Fighters and take on parallel quests which are bizarre alternate realities that you can learn more techniques from. This is the ultimate fan fiction, you can create whatever kind of character you want to look any way you want and use any techniques you want, and most likely you will play a Saiyan, dress like Goku and spam kamehameha, and you can do that. In the Frieza saga things kind of go sideways as Towa and Mira show up a demon and her android who want to take over the world, but can't because the Z Fighters left a planet too powerful for them so they want to kill Goku before he raises the bar for Earthling fighters. Later you find out these two are just pawns for Demigra, a demon god Time Kai trapped in a crack of time and now he's trying to get out. Once you complete the known DBZ story, all that's left is to fight Demigra himself, and if you make it that far, Goku helps you and you get to finish off Demigra with a double-team Kamehameha, which is just so awesome, you HAVE to play this game because it is worth every headache to see your OC kamehameha with Goku. I mean really, it is a thing of beauty! As far as headaches, I'll be honest it took me a while because I rage quit multiple times. The worst hands down is a mission where you have body swapped with Ginyu which means no matter what awesome build you have going, you're stuck with Ginyu's presets, and even worse it's an escort mission with Krillin and Gohan. One thing that helped was I purchased one of the DLC, specifically the second one which allows me access to high level parallel quests and Nuova Shenron which means level up big time. Anyway, seriously, if you haven't done it yet, play this game and make your DBZ dreams come true!

As for Grimm Everafter, this is my fanfic for Grimm featuring Kelly, Diana, and the triplets twenty years in the future, and also when they are thirteen going through their first woges. It jumps back and forth telling a big story that involves a vibora dorada, a damonfeuerer, the Coins of Zakynthos, and the Royals. First Kelly uses a glove made from a damonfeurer by a vibora dorada to fight some geiers, and during that fight Diana finds the Coins of Zakynthos which builds up into a megalomaniacal scheme involving the Royals bringing her back home to Austria. Sound interesting? Check it out and maybe we can make this the spin off!

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