Gundam Breaker 3

Can you believe we’re already close to half of the way through June? That means were almost 50% done with 2016! Most years I’d write about how amazing it is we’re already this far into the year (and thus this close to Christmas) but this year has been, frankly, a slog. Between beloved entertainers dying, outright tragedies, the Trumpification of politics, and everyone’s personal struggles, I’ve got a depressingly large selection of reasons to wish we could just skip ahead to 2017, but a few compelling ones forcing me to focus on the here and now – like my video game backlog!

The Witcher 3 was such a good, long game that I’ve had a hard time since then committing to lengthy experiences since completing it. I’ve still barely scratched the surface of Metal Gear Solid V, and am paralyzed in fear of getting into the new Fire Emblem and X-Com games. Instead, I spent the winter and spring on lighter fare like Tom Clancy’s The Division (it was OK), Hearthstone (the new cards are fun), and VR games to go with that crazy expensive headset I bought. So it wasn’t until May that I saw the credits roll in a game. It was one I imported, a sequel to one of my favorite games last year, a crazy little gem called Gundam Breaker 3.

Gundam Breaker 3 is all about bringing the joy of building Gunpla (that’s the street term for Gundam plastic models) to the digital world. And they do that not by simulating tearing tiny parts out of plastic molds, but by letting you build, paint, and fight in a mobile suit made of all your favorite Gundam parts. This game features over 200 mobile suits broken down into their heads, torsos, arms, legs, backpacks, shields, and weapons. It’s up to you to pick the best combination, as pretty much everything is allowed, no matter how ugly things get.

The big change this time around is that stats for all parts are identical when they’re at the same level, so players aren’t forced to choose between their favorite parts and the most optimal build. To compensate, the game has added new optional parts which can be attached and positioned to the mobile suit’s body. These parts include various guns, missiles, grenades, swords, funnels, bits, reactors, and even the signature Gundam V fin, so all the most iconic stuff is available to you, if you want it. Even special moves, when used enough, will be unlocked for use without their default weapon type/part requirement. You even don’t necessarily have to migrate from the starter HG parts to the larger MG parts this time, as you can just keep leveling your HG parts and they will maintain stat parity.

Anyway, that’s the sell for people who already have tried Gundam Breaker games. For everyone else, here’s all you need to know: this is Gundam Diablo. There is a small set of levels which you will play over and over with increasingly stronger enemies. Every single one of them will drop parts, which you can take and use on your Gundam. So you kill a Tallgeese, you might get a Tallgeese head. You’ll do this over and over, as even if all you want is that Tallgeese head, parts have levels and you want to level yours up to the cap so you can have the strongest Tallgeese head possible. If that sounds good to you, go get this game now.

The story is actually a lot weaker this time around, as the melodrama of the last game is replaced with a lame story about a humble Gunpla shop trying to establish itself as the best team of Gunpla fighters in the world. It picks up at the end, with space elevator high jinks, but you can skip the whole thing. Which is a shame, because this is the first game in the series to be available in English (even though it still didn’t make it to North America). But being able to read the menus will be a big boon for those of us without the ability to read Japanese. And the game plays better than the last one too, so development effort was focused in the right area.

In the mid-2000s, I looked to the Armored Core series and dreamt of a Gundam game like that. We’ve got one now, just with a really light, cartoony tone. Which is fine. Gundams are toys, and my fantasy isn’t to fight in a real war against real humans who are trying to kill me. I just want to make the goofiest, most impractical war machine ever conceived.

Deadpool

It’s looking increasingly likely that Deadpool will become the highest grossing R-rated movie there’s ever been, so I should probably write something about it, even though it came out on Valentine’s day and we’ve already passed Easter. Will this success start a trend of R-rated movies? Yes, it already has. We’ve already been told that we’ll be getting an ultimate bummer edition of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice which is more than a half hour longer and totally hard R violent. I think the next Wolverine movie will probably go for an R as well. Basically everyone’s going to try to be cool by being more violent, except Disney, who will are quite happy with cute animals/Marvel/Star Wars, thankyouverymuch.

I’ve always thought of liking Deadpool as the comic book equivalent of being a huge Dane Cook fan. The people who like him seem to really like him, but only him, and have like zero appreciation for the actual art form. It doesn’t help that the character’s biggest champion for the last few years has been Ryan Reynolds, the Dane Cook of acting. In fact, I was downright wary of this movie. Not to a Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice degree, but the trailers didn’t do much for me and the outpouring of excitement from Reddit probably hurt more than it helped. What turned me around? Colin liked it. And Colin has little tolerance for super heroes these days.

So why would a man like Colin give a pass to a movie like Deadpool? For one, Deadpool exists to simultaneously celebrate and shit on comic book super hero movies. The timing couldn’t have been any better, with 2016’s slate of movies threatening to be a breaking point for fans who survived the various breaking points of 2014 and 2015. When Deadpool goes to Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, he quickly roasts the X-Men franchise and the limited budget of his own movie. He’s aware of tropes and often tries to subvert or at least mock them when they come up. Deadpool is a character basically free of consequence, and he revels in that freedom.

Basically, Deadpool‘s more like an OK comedy movie than anything we’ve seen so far, as the jokes extend from the opening titles all the way past the end of the credits. A lot of it’s referential, and not even necessarily to comic books or super heroes. I mean, that after credits scene is mostly funny if you know about Ferris Bueller‘s after credits scene. Even that hard R violence isn’t free of the funny, as Deadpool will either mock his enemies, kill them is grotesque ways, or get himself injured in a slapstick fashion. I’m starting to describe what comedy is now, so I’ll stop and just say the somewhat immature humor landed for me more often than not, and made the whole thing worthwhile.

Frankly, I just didn’t think the potential for a character that wants to be only vulgar, violent, and very aware that he’s in a comic was that great. That leaves no room for subtlety or genuine insight, for the human connection that makes Superman, Spider-Man, or Batman stories great. Yeah, I guess if the lampshading was extremely on point, Deadpool could have been the Airplane! of super hero movies, but realistically, I was expecting maybe a Spaceballs. It was in the ballpark. A good movie, with a game cast, if not necessarily one that will be memorable for me. But to you Deadpool guys (because I know you’re all men): hey, congratulations. You made it. Please take pity on us Superman fans.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

I’ve been writing Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice in my head ever since I got over mentally rewriting Man of Steel. By now you’ve probably read the reviews of this movie and maybe even seen it. So me telling you why it’s disappointing won’t help that much, I’d just be adding my small voice to a booming chorus. Instead, to help you understand why my heart is broken, let me tell you how easy it would have been to turn this into a good movie. I will be discussing the plot, so spoiler warning, I guess, but you’ve seen the whole story in the trailers anyway.

You start by combining the Bruce Wayne character and the Lex Luthor character into one person called Lex Luthor. He’s still allowed to have the bits of impotent, psychotic rage that Jesse Eisenberg brought to the film, but mostly he’ll be the angry, paranoid sociopath Ben Affleck played. We watch his journey as his self-importance gets decimated as he can do nothing when Zod and Superman destroy LexCorp Tower (instead of Wayne Tower) and slowly that helplessness turns into an insatiable need to prove how powerful he is, ultimately resulting in an obsession with destroying Superman.

A tragic Luthor, who starts out as a vicious, shockingly brutal vigilante? I think that fits the tone of this franchise and reinvents him in an exciting way, even though it still ends with his mania leading him to trying to kill Superman above all else. And you know what, the infamous “Do you bleed? You will.” line works as a delightfully ominous warning from a Luthor who is actually a threat. Superman movies always struggle with creating great villains, but that wasn’t the problem with Dawn of Justice. This movie’s problem was that it turned one of DC’s greatest heroes into the villain.

But the film needs Batman, right? There is a role for him in this movie too, it’s just the one that Wonder Woman was playing. In my version, it would be Bruce Wayne who’s snooping around Luthor’s business looking for information. He might even be checking out Superman too. Batman would be the no-nonsense character who avoids getting caught up in a stupid pissing match that Wonder Woman was. We would just catch glimpses of him through the film, but it would be enough to know that Batman was keenly aware of everything that was going on. Then, when Luthor is about to kill Superman with his Kryptonite spear, the Dark Knight appears and saves the day.

You see? Batman can be skeptical of Superman, even suspicious, but to actively try to destroy someone who has only saved people is just going too far. I want to see the heroes fight side-by-side, not with each other in a meaningless brawl. And so if Batman defeating Lex in isn’t enough for a finale, we can still have a big, CGI monster show up. Hell, it can even still be Zod’s reanimated body. Just instead of calling him Doomsday, we’ll call him Solomon Grundy. Since Grundy is literally a giant zombie, and a B-list villain who perfectly fits a limited, late-in-the-movie appearance. Doomsday and Superman’s death? Yeah, let’s save that for when it can actually matter.

If Zack Snyder had made this movie instead, it still wouldn’t have been perfect. It doesn’t address the dour, ominous tone of every Superman scene in the movie, or the ridiculousness of him being accused of slaughtering soldiers with a machine gun. But I see in the framework of this picture a worthy successor to Man of Steel. It just got so caught up in setting up a new Cinematic Universe it lost its way.