The release date for Blizzard’s upcoming World of Warcraft expansion, Legion, has been leaked online just a day before BlizzCon kicks off. The date was spotted online in an image hosted on the Battle.net website which reads, “Expected game release on or before September 21st, 2016.”

The image also details some pre-purchase bonuses, including a Level 100 character boost and early access to the new Demon Hunter hero class. A standard edition of the game will be priced at $49.99 (£33.17).

On top of that, the digital deluxe edition will include an in-game mount, pet, and digital content for Diablo 3 and StarCraft 2 for $69.99 (£46.44).

World of Warcraft: Legion was first announced at Gamescom in August this year.

The expansion will raise the level cap to 110 and introduce a new class called the Demon Hunter. Legion will add a host of new content including a new continent titled The Broken Isles, new customisable artifact weapons, and new dungeons and raids.

The expansion will also revamp the player-versus-player progression system.

The beta for World of Warcraft: Legion starts this year. Players can sign up to participate on the Battle.net website.

This past weekend, I was privileged to play an interesting new indie title named Mushroom 11.

When I watched the trailer of the game, I was instantly interested in the unique mechanic in controlling your ‘character.’ Of course the design of the character you control is absolutely worth mentioning. You play as an amorphic green blob, with no name that I was able to discern. I had no issue with the lack of description or simplicity of the character model, in fact, I applaud it. Mushroom 11’s tutorial instantly begins to show you how to control your blob, and the game becomes completely about the game’s mechanics.

The mechanics of the game appear shockingly simple, you essentially use the 2 mouse buttons to delete parts of your blob to move it. Except when you delete blocks, the blob replaces these blocks randomly out of different sides of itself where the level allows. The mouse gives you 2 types of control: a large sweeping deletion type, and a fine tuned deletion tool. The large sweeping tool, bound to the left mouse button, allows for rapid movement and easy size reduction. The fine tune deletion tool makes it much easier to delete smaller portions of your blob which becomes essential for some of the tougher puzzles as the levels progress.

During the hour I spent playing this game, I easily encompassed the tutorial and enough levels to start to need several tries to clear an area. I was even able to conquer 2 boss fights. It is definitely fair to say the game has a steep learning curve. Rather than being frustrated while playing, and failing several times, I started to see the brilliance in the game. It is the first game where I found myself not having direct control on my character and it’s movement through the game. We are allowed only indirect control, and it’s an absolutely fresh and fantastic idea for a game mechanic. I find myself more and more interested to see how the game will show me to stretch, bend, curve, and express the flexibility of my little blob through the future levels. With the modest price tag, this game is an absolute steal for hours of mind-bending gameplay.

A Solid 9/10

The only reason it’s not a 10 is because I really like a story and it has none. But Otherwise, this is an amazing game!

Whatever happened to the damn good guy? I liked the damn good guy, the damn good guy was a…Damn. Good. Guy.

You’re probably wondering what I mean by “the damn good guy”. What I mean is pieces of entertainment that aren’t huge, massive, world changing, innovative behemoths that somehow seem to fail living up to the expectations of the creator. The damn good guy refers to pieces of media that are just enjoyable because they’re well put together, well written and don’t try to cast a net so wide and cast that they can’t possibly hope to be considered a success.

Example, Tomb Raider 2013. That was a good game, really good in fact. Solid gameplay/mechanics, great voice acting, very good atmosphere and was a nice long length. Square Enix however deemed the game a failure despite it selling a whopping 3.4 million units worldwide. Seriously Square? How big were your expectations of the game that you needed to re-release it for Playstation 4 and Xbox One just to beef up the sales? How much was the budget for this endeavour?

According to an article from Eurogamer.net the budget for Tomb Raider was $60 Million…HO-LY FUCK!!

I think we can all agree that’s pretty tall order to fill, a really tall order to fill. And there’s my point, set the bar too high and the chances of you hauling your arse over it decreases, don’t get me wrong I really enjoyed Tom Raider, but to have it deemed a failure due to unreasonable expectations just seems rude (for the lack of a better word), I’m no game designer but even I can see effort when it’s right in front of me.

Square sadly seemed to act like EA is constantly acting with their Battlefield franchise which ends up with a game that makes a huge amount of money and sells an insane amount of copies but is deems a failure anyway. Instead EA just end up aping Call of Duty in order to try and win over their audience, which they seem to keep failing at. These developers can clearly dominate in their fields of work but they’re tunnel-visioning so hard that they forget that they’ve still made a metric fuckton anyway. There’s nothing wrong with 2nd place is what I’m saying and there’s also nothing wrong with not releasing a game every fucking year, yeah I’m looking at you Assassin’s Creed, I love you but slow the hell down, you make tons of money with what you have maybe you should take the time to enjoy it? You know make some use of that company yacht you undoubtedly have, maybe take it for a sail and unwind?

See, this is why I love the damn good guy. The damn good guy gets their budget and knows exactly what to do with it, the damn good guy thought process I imagine would be something akin to this:

“Ok, I’ve been given $25,000,000 to make a piece of entertainment”

“My piece of entertainment will be about this”

“I will spend the money accordingly in all the necessary areas in order to make this piece of entertainment as appealing to its target audience as possible”

“The product has been released, sales figures are strong and we’ve made the budget back plus a little extra, even the reviews are positive I’m going to spend some time with my kids as I’ve been coming home late recently” 

The damn good guy thought process probably does not resemble,

“OHDEARGOD, WE’VE BEEN GIVEN $70,000,000 TO MAKE A PIECE OF ENTERTAINMENT, WE MUST BE BETTER THEN EVERYONE ELSE IN ORDER TO BECOME ANY KIND OF SUCCESS”

“But sir we’re making a ton of money anyway…”

“DAMMIT HENDERSON NOBODY WANTS TO HEAR YOUR INSANE RAMBLINGS ABOUT THIS MYTHICAL MONEY NONSENSE, WE MUST BEAT THE COMPETITION OR BE BRANDED AS FAILURES AND BE CAST OUT FOR ALL ETERNITY BY THE HUMAN RACE”

“Sir we’ve been getting ratings up in the 90% range…”

“WE NEED TO TRY AGAIN AT BEATING THEM, WE’VE ONLY GOT A FEW MINUTES”

At this point Henderson has defected to a Studio that isn’t staffed by impatient tunnel-visioning weirdos who scream a lot.

This is why we need to support the damn good guy, the damn good guy takes their time, evaluates their options and sets themselves a reasonable goal and when all is said and done, the result is damn good. The result is

• Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
• Solomon Kane
• Dishonoured
• Darkman
• Hellboy
• Dredd
• The A-Team (2010)
• The Grey,

Do you see what I’m driving at? Not to say that giant bits of game changing innovation are a bad thing, they can just get out of hand fast and end up bloated, fat and always hungry for more.

Bottom line, support the Damn Good Guy. Because he’s a damn good guy.

A post that isn’t a review? Yep, time for a good old fashioned opinion piece, allow me to go all White Goodman on you fine readers and hit you with some knowledge.
OK that sounded stupid. (just a little 😛 ~Lone)

A thought struck me recently: Why do we get so up in arms about sequels? In fact not just sequels; remakes, reboots and franchising in general.
Immediate Answer: Well we as fans of entertainment, don’t like to think of our favourite films/characters/heroes/intellectual properties being used solely for profit. We want new and original content and not just the same things rehashed and reused every so often.

OK, that’s fair enough. New ideas should be sought after and praised, of course they should. Humanity probably wouldn’t have gotten very far if we didn’t take advantage of new and exciting ideas (Christ knows where we’d be if the wheel hadn’t caught on), and don’t get me wrong, I am all for new ideas in films and entertainment but if I like that new idea why is it so bad that I want more? I’m always the first to ask for seconds and thirds at the dinner table when pasta is being served.

This train of thought really struck me when I saw a news article about Disney and how they’re going to extend the life of the Frozen Brand (Yes I know it’s a giant film and you probably can’t escape it, yes I know Let It Go is everyone’s favourite song right now, yes I can understand how so many people find the film overrated, just hear me out). The comments on the link to the article were what you’d expect,

“They’re just trying to make as much money as possible”

“Why can’t they come up with anything original?”

“Frozen was overrated anyway”

“Hey everyone, lets all just Let It Go”

Yet all I could find myself thinking was,  “You’re all surprised? This is Disney we’re talking about”
This is the company that bought Marvel because they were raking in so much dough with all of their really, really good adaptations of their superheroes and we’re all surprised that they want to make more money of their most successful animated film ever? But I’m not here to talk about Frozen, not when I already did for my dissertation, (it made me enjoy the film even more).

Look I believe you can make a good film out of anything, if that means I get to return to Arendelle or fight some more Xenos then sweet, bring it on says I.  BUT, having said that, I can completely understand why sequels/remakes etc etc are frowned upon. We all know why, say it with me everyone, “They’re never as good as the original”

Now that phrase is as subjective as it gets, how could it not be? But as for sequels never being as good as the originals? What about Aliens, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Toy Story 2, Toy Story 3, Die Hard with A Vengeance, Hot Shots Part Deux, Blade 2, Empire Strikes Back, Shrek 2, Desperado, Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, Revenge of the Sith (Don’t give me that look), Spider-man 2, Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, Star Trek II: Wrath of Kahn, Superman II, Back to the Future Part II, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior or X-Men 2. We can probably agree that each of those are superior to their predecessors or at least on par with them.

But of course those are only a few, and a debatable few at that. But still proof that it can be done, it just majorly sucks that not many people took notice of how a good sequel is made, and more of how much money they brought in. Foul play indeed I think we can all agree. But saying that, we still shouldn’t be surprised (trust me I’m especially not trying to put myself on a pedestal here, I am as guilty of bitching about sequels and money grubbing studios as the next person), last time I checked the whole point of Hollywood was to make money wasn’t it? That’s why Film Studios have marketing divisions and accountants isn’t it?

In fact going back to Disney, people are annoyed that they’re going to be franchising Frozen right? Well why are we angry at that and not the Marvel Franchise? That’s one of the biggest franchises out there at the moment yet when Captain America 3 or Guardians of the Galaxy 2 gets announces nobody says a thing. Well that’s because the Marvel Franchise is praised as unanimously good of course. But so is Frozen, at the very least people thought it was good when they saw it, that’s half the reason it was so well received (aside from all the money it made of course).

In fact if you are so sick of a certain franchise, why not just stop giving it your attention? Turn the radio station over next time you hear Let It Go or turn it off altogether, this is sadly more difficult for parents since their kids are the target audience, sorry parents everywhere.

So when a large studio decides to make money off something popular we collectively smack our foreheads and bemoan it. Yet when they’re in the midst of franchising the shit out of something else that’s very popular…we all clam up? I guess I’m just yelling at a larger beast here, after all I’m just one person with a keyboard, hardly going to make a difference right?

I wish we would stop committing the above offence. Sequels and franchising are not inherently bad, it’s their execution that can be viewed as bad. But hey, this is all amazingly subjective and I’m sure a lot of people disagree with me on this. Do you disagree? If so I’d love to hear how. (Politely, mind you this isn’t YouTube.)

The best summation I can give is this, if you don’t like the look of something, be it a sequel, remake or whatever, just don’t give it your time of day, you’ve undoubtedly got better things to be doing.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments below.

~RattlinMan

Director: Ralph Hemecker
Starring: Grant Gustin, Candice Patton, Danielle Panabaker, Carlos Valdes, Tom Cavanagh, Jesse L. Martin, Rick Cosnett, Robbie Amell, Victor Garber

Major Spoilers Ahead

The Flash: Season 2, Episode 1 – “The Man Who Saved Central City”
It’s back. Finally. You know that phrase “waiting with bated breath”? Well I have been waiting with bated EVERYTHING!! I love this show, I really do. Ever since minute one I’ve found it to be so much more enjoyable then Arrow, which of course deserves major kudos for starting this DCTU (That’s the DC Televised Universe, trademarked I’ll have you know, maybe). But Season 2 has finally started and Episode 1 is off to a…well not stellar start exactly but about the same level that Season 1 started off with.

So after the Cliffhanger ending of Season 1 where Central City was being ripped apart by a black hole, we learn that Barry Allen aka The Flash has, for the last few months, been defending Central City all on his lonesome for fear of his friends getting hurt. The reason you ask? It turns out that Firestorm (a superhero formed from the merged personas and bodies of supporting characters Ronnie Raymond and Professor Martin Stein, don’t ask because science) flew up into the vortex and separated their bodies in order for the resulting bullshit techobabble to destabilise the wormhole and close it permanently. Thus Barry, who has been receiving a huge amount of media attention due to the endeavour has secluded himself from his friends and family because this is what every superhero does when their close friends step on anything bigger then a drawing pin.

Let’s all be honest here, does anyone actually enjoy this trope in superhero fiction anymore? Did we ever? To my knowledge Spiderman tries to pull this shit on a regular basis and look where that’s got him, retcons up the wazoo, tons of dead family and friends and an instance where he made a deal with Satan. Yes that actually happened! Now the Blue Beetle, there was someone who could protect his loved ones. Speaking of which when are we getting Ted Kord in the DCTU?….ANSWER ME DAMMIT!!!

But back on the topic, Barry throughout pretty much all of this episode is being your a-typical grump who keeps rejecting his friends offer for help even though its left him completely alone in Star Labs and most likely unable to operate any of its equipment which has usually been instrumental in defeating….every bad guy if I remember correctly. Even when it hasn’t been some do-hickey of the day it was probably some science babble given to him via radio from Cisco or Caitlyn, at the end of the day what we’re left with is that Barry clearly needs his teams support. The problem is that in order to convey that sentiment, the script states it through the filter of the aforementioned really tired superhero trope of “I must protect my loved ones by not letting them help me”. If they really wanted to put a new spin on this trope, throughout the episode we should have seen Barry gradually make the decision by himself to go solo and then right before the finale his friends grab him by the shoulders and convince him to go the other way, it would have been a very gradual progression that felt natural…and then would have subverted the trope entirely by having Barry see things from their point of view.

Having said that however, the rest of this episode is SOLID. The best kind of enjoyable in my opinion. You can really tell the effort that went into it from an acting standpoint. Despite the tired old trope that was utilised all throughout the episode (other tired tropes include starting with a dream sequence that includes everyone whose “died”, because lets face they ARE coming back) everyone was on top form for the start of Season 2. ESPECIALLY John Wesley Shipp, Jesse L. Martin and Danielle Panabaker. We also get some great cameos from Rick Cosnett, Tom Cavanagh and Robbie Amell, tons of great chemistry between Carlos Valdes and Victor Garber, who is fast becoming one of my favourite characters and to everyone’s surprise I’m sure, a really great turn by Adam Copeland as Atom Smasher who brings a tremendous physical talent to the role as well as being intimidating and able to make the word “Zoom” sound really foreboding. I really hope we see him in other things or just straight bring him back as Atom Smasher, he’d be a great recurring villain.

We also get some lovely starting points for the Season Requisite story threads that will develop over the coming few episodes. Zoom is name dropped, a very prominent Flash villain in the comics, we also see that the Particle Accelerator may not be the sole reason for all the meta-human activity, Atom Smasher reveals that it was Zoom who turned him into a meta-human. How you ask? Well you’ll have to keep watching won’t you. BUT the best reveal comes in the form of JAY FUCKING GARRICK!!! The Flash of Earth 2 made his debut in this episode and as cool as that is…it was actually really underwhelming. Ok that’s actually mean, I’m really freaking happy that this show is introducing the alternate universe angle this Season because that’s always been one of the most enjoyable facets of Superhero Fiction, what rustled my jimmies about his introduction was that it’s just him walking onto the scene and stating who he is. I was really hoping he would have blitzed onto the show in a spinning cylinder of lightning and speed, in fact the show really looked like it was going that way.

The final scene is after Atom Smasher gets defeated and the band is back together all congratulating Barry on getting over himself and welcoming his friends back into the fold, as well as getting his Dad out of prison. But the point is that Cisco and Caitlin start stating that Star Labs now includes upgraded security systems that should keep anyone out who shouldn’t be there, that’s when the lights should have started flickering and we hear this really ominous noise, a noise that almost sounds like Barry when he’s running, that’s when a swirling pillar of lightning appears in the room that seems to be draining Star labs of its power, we all stare in confusion until BOOM a man clad in red leather, a tin hat with wings and boots is standing there, he looks up at the cast and announces,

“My name is Jay Garrick and your world is in danger”

God…DAMN that would’ve been awesome. But alas we can’t have everything, if that were possible I’d be living on the moon in a bunker made of solid platinum being served an endless supply of milkshake by my staff of monkey butlers. Was there a point to that? Maybe, I don’t know, it’s very late. But the point I’m making is that even though it wasn’t as great an entrance as I wanted, it’s still great to have Jay introduced here. I seriously can’t wait for more Speedsters to start being introduced (Bring on Jesse Quick!) I’d also be stupid to not mention that we get two genuinely touching scenes in this episode, both towards the end that left me with a very big smile on my face, I won’t spoil those ones for you though, but trust me when I say that both are very well written and bring a good balance of light-hardheartedness and relief to that particular plot thread.

So in summation, whilst this episode gets dragged down by a tired and very overly played out trope, what really holds it together is the performance by the cast, a great villain to start off with and some killer reveals for the series to move forward to.

So anyway… FORWARD!!!!