First of all, during National Novel Writer's Month I came up with a new book, Reign of the Nephilim. It's about Noah's sons, Shem and Ham, before the flood. The story begins with the family being told that the flood is coming and they need to build the Ark, but while collecting materials, the brothers, as well as their great great grandfather Enoch, and Shem's wife Nora, all get dragged away by the Nephilim who drag them into their holy war. With the protection of their guardian angel Kanjahiel, they struggle to survive the war of ancient gods from various mythologies which are all actually half-angels that are destined to be washed away from the world in the flood. I tried to make it a good action story, but it will probably need a bit more work before it can be published.
Then there's Final Fantasy XV, which has some cool DLC, the Assassin's Festival and the Multiplayer Expansion Comrades. The Assassin's Festival, like the Moogle Chocobo Festival is a time-limited, non-canon event in which a town in FFXV gets redecorated for some mindless fun. This time, Noctis brought his friends along which results in some fun dialog, and there's a fun combat story that uses Assassin's Creed style gameplay to pit Noctis against a Niflheim officer anmed Loqi Tummelt, placing the event in a particular point in the story between their first confrontation with Loqi and their final battle with him before leaving Lucis. The story is short, but good. I haven't played Assassin's Creed, but this event does make me interested. The festival is largely a tribute to the game, which, like Cup Noodles and Coleman camping gear, is inexplicably existing in the game's world in the exact same form as it does here. The weird part is, they also mention a legendary Assassin in the local lore of Lestallum, suggesting that it is both a part of Eos history and it's own fictional story. If you don't think about it too hard, it's a ton of fun. All the mini-games are back from the Moogle Chocobo Festival and we finally get the prize from the Dream Egg, an alternate costume for Noctis.
Then there's Comrades, which allows you to fill in the gap of ten years since Noctis went in the crystal. For this you play as your own original character, a member of the Kingsglaive turned Hunter, the Kingsglaive part is really just a way to explain why you have magic comparable to Noctis, including warping, summoning weapons, and magic that can be used for offense, defense and healing. There are a few tweaks, mainly that you no longer use items, except ingredients which strangely function like phoenix downs and if you don't use them in battle you get a bonus meal. Also you have some different weapons to work with, and overall it feels like FFXV version 2.0 with an overhauled system. I would argue the original game was better, but if you actually care about the story it's a great answer to what happened to the rest of Lucis besides what you see at the end of the game. Also, if you want to make your own character to visit Eos and play on your own this is fun for that too. The multiplayer part is actually optional, if you don't want to pay for PSN Plus you will be supplied with AI support, the multiplayer option is just if you want to play with friends or other actual people. The story to comrades is that Exeneris in Lestallum can provide enough power to sustain Lucis through the Long Night, but you need to collect meteor shards to get that power and then distribute it as you see fit to open options to customize your character. Everything from the beta went into the final game, but that just scratched the surface. While your main base is Lestallum, you also have to connect to four other outposts that you can visit. Familiar faces will come in from time to time and some play a somewhat major role, Iris runs the clothing shop, Cid upgrades weapons, Vyv collects and organizes your photos, and Monica and Holly are basically your new bosses. If you're wondering about Gladiolus, Prompto, and Ignis, they are busy but visit Lestallum from time to time so you get to see them and catch up with their activities. Going solo, it's a decent fanfic, if you've got friends it can probably be even cooler, but for now, I'm just playing through the story. Once I've got my act together, I'll go online and recruit people to play this game with me.
Not everything is gold though, King's Knight came out and it's kind of crap. It gets bogged down with the gimmick of collecting multiple characters which is awesome, except that it isn't long before your characters get overpowered and you can't move forward with anyone new. The original was probably better than this overmarketed update with a weak story and weak gameplay. Basically, it's just a vertical shooter, the screen scrolls up and you avoid obstacles, collect items and fight monsters. What sucks the most is that only a few battles in to the story mode, you can't defeat the enemies before you scroll past them, or worse, into them. Brave Exvius and Mobius have raised my standards for mobile apps from Square Enix and King's Knight fell short of those standards. If you're into shooters, maybe you'll enjoy it, but I prefer my good old RPGs. How many of these cross genre crapfests will SE try before they realize they need to stick to what their good at?
However, there are worse things, like the Michael Jackson Halloween special a few months ago. Thriller was a seasonal classic, so it would make the perfect basis for a full length Halloween special right? Maybe, but this was not it. The worst part is, not only is it nothing but one cliche after another, but the story is supposed to be about fighting conformity, both figuratively and literally as the villain is actually named Conformity who has outlawed dancing in her microcosm. I'm sure Michael Jackson would have been proud of the message, but the execution is flawed as we follow two cookie cutter protagonists, the heir of a family business who wants to pursue artistic dreams rather than follow tradition and an overworked assistant who has dreams beyond climbing the corporate ladder.Their adventure follows the standard series of three encounters including a generic introduction, and one dark mirror for each showing what their future holds if they keep on their current paths. Michael Jackson music plays in the background way too quiet and subtle for an eponymous star vehicle, all leading up to the climax of combining the three spirits back into Michael Jackson. So to recap, we fight conformity by combining three people into one and do a perfectly synced flash mob, because everybody following the King of Pop is not any sort of conformity. The irony hasn't been so bad since Captain Planet made plastic toys. I'm not trying to say anything bad about Michael Jackson, but perhaps Thriller should have been left alone, never has there been a better example of a remake gone horribly wrong, let this special go the way of the Star Wars Holiday special and never air again.
On the other hand, the David S. Pumpkins Halloween special was awesome, partly because it was only a half hour instead of a full hour so they had less time to screw it up, and partly because it didn't take itself seriously at all. Basically they just took the viral sketch, and redid it with enough filler to drag out the joke for it's own special. For a joke that made it's point by not making any sense, this one met expectations.
I also want to take a moment to talk about the Disaster Artist, a movie about the worst movie ever made, The Room. The reason I bring this up is because The Room was the running April Fool's joke on Adult Swim until Toonami came back and replaced it one year, but I got to hear Tommy Wiseau say "You're tearing me apart Lisa!" before Toonmai made it's epic comeback. Curiosity led me to figure out the context only to learn there really isn't one. The Room is so bad, it has become a cautionary tale in film school of what happens if you don't listen to anyone and make a crap project despite people telling you it's bad. This concerns me, because I'm afraid 7th Moon will become The Room, and I will end up the next Tommy Wisseau. On the other hand, he is the most famous maker of a bad film in Hollywood who's still banking off of it, so maybe it's not so bad.
Finally, coming back to Toonami, Dragon Ball Super has been coming along, Iron-Blooded Orphans returned, Stardust Crusaders has made me fall in love with Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, Outlaw Star and Cowboy Bebop are doing a Space Cowboy Showdown and now we have Black Clover, which looks promising in a "What if Naruto took place in a Western/European setting?" sort of way.
Follow ups to come soon, stay tuned!
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