Author: Sardoken

Meanwhile at Blizzard

By Sardoken on

Year after year, World of Warcraft has lost its popularity. There’s always been negative people but their voices were lost in the ocean of positivity that was surrounding the game. Expansion after expansion, the game has lost its identity, trying to satisfy too many different types of gamers. Victim of its own success, WoW entered a slow and painful descent, no king rules forever.

Keeping a good PR when only haters can be heard is a difficult job, especially when your product so heavily depends on its community. So, when a developer publicly calls one of the last big streamer “an a**hole”, it’s time for damage control. It never happened and, ultimately, the streamer left for another game, taking with him hundreds of thousand followers.

As one’s misfortune often benefits another, FF14 reaches now a total of 22 millions accounts. The store even has to place people in a queue, only to purchase the game.

As if it wasn’t enough, California sues Activision Blizzard over a culture of ‘constant sexual harassment’. I’m not gonna quote the entire lawsuit, but we’re talking about lack of support by HR to the victims, encouragement of this behaviour by the CEO, J. Allen Brack, and even Alex Afrasiabi being called the Bill Cosby of Blizzard. It goes as far as the suicide of an employee after a week-end/relationship with her manager and her bullying at a company meeting.

From in-game protests, massive unsubscribes and tons of flaming forums, I can tell you, internet reacted accordingly to the gravity of the situation. There can be no compromise toward this kind of attitude, there’s no place for frat boy culture in this world.

Since the departure of its former CEO, the Californian company has only shown disregard for its community and its employees. I remember the last Blizzcon of Mike Morhaime, when he said about J Allen Brack “You think you know him, but you don’t”. I often wondered what he meant… I think that I know, now.

I know that Blizzard isn’t the only company with an horrible behaviour towards women but, if we want the world to change, examples have to be made and Blizzard prepared its own gallows by first angering its own crowd.

WTF happened to Legacies?

By Sardoken on

Ok, Legacies was never destined to leave a mark on television history but it was a good show to watch with our Saturday evening Spaghettis. A teen drama in a school for kids with special powers, that’s almost as perfect as Riverdale (sarcasm or not, you decide).

But what happened to the third season? Was there a cut in the budget? Were the writers depressed? From the first to the last episode, everything is horrible! The effects are kitsch, the story is… Well, there isn’t even a story to talk about and the cast isn’t charming anymore.

It would take a miracle for the show to get renewed after that. Sometimes, it’s merciful to take the beast down.

Deep Sea Creatures

By Sardoken on

I’ve added the Deep Sea Creatures kit to my Pirate ship Lego Scene. It was nothing planned but, since we’re both vaccinated, we’ve visited the new Lego store that was recently opened in Brussels and I couldn’t help myself… At the store, they had a pirate scene and the boat was surrounded by small blue and white pieces to imitate the waves around the ship and I’m wondering if I shouldn’t order a few (hundreds) as well… As always, the kit was fun to build, especially the great white shark with all its teeth.

Farewell, Junk Food!

By Sardoken on

During the confinement, we often dreamed of eating junk food.

Last week-end, since we’re now both fully vaccinated, we ordered a Domino pizza and it was so disgusting that we both nearly had to throw up.

Today, after more than 20 months, we ate at McDonalds and it was horrible! It barely qualifies as food.

Junk food, were you always this bad or do all these months only eating the delicious cooking of my wife make you taste like crap? Anyway, I’ll never eat you again!

Mythic Quest

By Sardoken on

Of all the streaming services that we are subscribed to, Apple TV is probably the worst, in both quantity and quality. The App works fine, but the catalogue is filled with original content that really isn’t good. The fanboys will tell you that a few shows are worth watching, but certainly not worth a sub, not even at 7 euros.

Speaking about fanboys, well… We are both Apple fanboys! From the Airtag to the MacBook Pro, we have the entire ecosystem. This is probably the reason why we didn’t cancel our Apple One subscription yet, even though we only use Icloud and Apple Music.

Last week, after an argument on Reddit, I decided to try The Morning Show, it was boring (Jennifer Anniston is hard to look at with all the plastic surgery), and Ted Lasso is about soccer (I hate soccer). However, we’re having a blast with Mythic Quest, a TV show about a company developing an MMORPG. The cast is great, but the character that cracks us up the most is the “Lore” writer, CW Longbottom (portrayed by F. Murray Abraham).

Now, is a single show worth a subscription? No. Will we cancel our sub? No. It’s part of the Apple One bundle and we sold our souls to Apple long ago. At least, I don’t hide behind pretenses.

AHS: Freak Show

By Sardoken on

So far, Freak Show has been the AHS season that took the longest for us to watch. Not that we didn’t enjoy it, we just needed to find the right time to watch our weekly episode. Freak show isn’t for any time of the day, it’s not exactly the kind of thing to watch when you eat… So, late Friday night was our freak show time and we enjoyed it that way.

We both found this season heavier to watch, probably because watching human deformities for 50 minutes is something we’re less accustomed to than people getting slaughtered for 2 hours. I know, it’s weird.

However, the amazing casting, led by Jessica Lange brought an incredible level of quality to the entire show. Of course, Sarah Paulson is amazing and all the freaks were very convincing, but a difficult character like Dandy Mott is also perfectly portrayed by Finn Wittrock.

We particularly enjoyed the opening theme of the show and the stunning performance of Jessica Lange, singing a cover of David Bowie’s Life on Mars while the freaks run the set in the background.

So, it’s with mixed feelings that we move on to the next season. On one hand, we’re sad to leave behind those characters we’ve grown to love, but we’re also relieved to start a season that’s a bit lighter to watch.

Friday The 13th II (1981)

By Sardoken on

Jason’s mum is dead, and Camp Crystal Lake is shut down, but a camp next to the infamous place hosts a counselor-in-training program.

Let’s get this out of the way: starting a movie with a recap from the previous chapter is bad and useless. With that in mind, I already enjoyed the start of the movie much less than the original. As for the rest, I wish that I could keep in mind that it was 1981 and that slashers were a brand new genre… Unfortunately, I can’t. I write this post in 2021 and I’ve seen a lot of better movies since then. I can’t erase 40 years of horror just to write an objective piece.

The second part of Friday The 13th is not horrible but it isn’t good either, the new camp crew is boring, the kills are uninventive and unentertaining and the end is unsatisfying. This sequel is like its vilain, ever-decomposing and always returning to screw something that was fun.

Black Summer – Season 2

By Sardoken on

A mother and her daughter are trying to find safety in a world ravaged by a zombie apocalypse. (source: me)

This series is one of the best zombie TV shows I’ve ever watched. It’s fast and brutal but it’s also great at character development. Unlike The Walking Dead (which turned into utter crap), this show doesn’t rely on hours of useless dialogues to build its characters, it is mostly done through their actions.

Everything is on spot, the cinematography, the script, the constant feeling of impending doom. The zombies are only accessory to what’s really threatening: the human lack of trust and the focus on each individual’s own condition, regardless of other people’s lives.

Maybe should it have been titled “Black Winter”, since this second season mostly happens in the snow… It felt very refreshing since we watched it during one of the warmest day of this month of June.

Friday The 13th (1980)

By Sardoken on

Summer is here, the perfect time for a complete rerun of Friday the 13th… So, for more than 2 months, we’re going to rewatch a movie of the franchise every Saturday night. We started last week-end with the first instalment from 1980.

“In 1957, a young boy named Jason drowns in a lake near Camp Crystal Lake. The next year, two counselors are murdered. In 1980, a descendant of the original owners reopens Camp Crystal Lake with some counselors’ help. The counselors gets killed one by one by a mysterious person. Could it be Jason, out for revenge?” (source: IMDB)

This movie is a legend. It’s Friday the 13th before Jason Voorhees, it’s the first “ki ki ki ma ma ma”… After so many years of being a fan, I’ve just only read on Reddit that “ki ki ki ma ma ma” is meant to resemble Jason’s voice saying “kill kill kill, mom mom mom” in Mrs. Voorhees’ mind.

Even if the original Friday the 13th is not the first slasher ever made, since the movie is widely inspired by John Carpenter’s Halloween (and the movie Meatballs), it is the first slasher ever made where people get murdered while on vacations in the wild.

The movie nears perfection in many ways: the setting is amazing (Camp Crystal Lake, the first), the sex scenes, the booze, the stupid friend, the uninterrupted rhythm of the action, the absence of drama, the soundtrack, the amount of gore… In short, it is the perfect template for a slasher.

Friday the 13th is not only a genre defining movie, it is also at the top of our all-time favourite horror movies list.

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