300: Rise of an Empire

I love 300, I haven’t read the graphic novel yet but the first movie was full of superfluous violence and it was brilliant. The plot or what passed as a plot was solid, army invades Greece and 300 Spartans leave their home knowing they will never live to see it again, so they can deliver the mother of all beating to the invading army. Simple and the movie stuck to it. 300: Rise of an Empire on the other hand did nothing of the sort. Not even trying to nitpick it was one of the hardest things to watch. From horrid special effects to a story that a 3 year old would have problems with. I watched this movie last night and was less than half way through before I turned it off to watch Just for Laughs. So, with my limited knowledge of the movie I’m going to review it. The main villains were all Greeks. They were using Prussian army to invade Greece because they felt that a Greek army killing a town of Greek people 20+ years ago when one of them was a child is justifiable reason to invade all of Greece and kill millions. That’s it. The Prussian God-King Xerxes from the first movie was a 7’2” bald black guy with a solid gold codpiece, who Imdb claims was played by Rodrigo Santoro, a 6’2” guy from Brazil with a full head of hair and a beard.

 http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0763928/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm.  Clearly the man is a good actor. We know that Xerxes is at least 7’2 because in the first 300 movie he puts his hands on King Leonidas’s shoulders  and still towers over him.

I think this bothers me mostly because for the beginning of the movie he plays Xerxes as he really is, but after a traumatic event goes for a swim fully clothed in a penis shaped pool he found in cave in the middle of the dessert full of pale humanoid things. As he swims the length of the shaft he sinks until he is fully under water then when he reaches the tip bursts out of the water as the 7’2 black guy covered in gold, complete with banana hammock. As he turns around to leave the pool he starts climbing out of the water to walk on it’s surface like Jesus on his way to some kind of BDSM themed rave.

So far all I have really talked about is my displeasure regarding Xerxes but I assure you I thought the special effects of the movie paled in comparison to the first 300. It just feels like the Xerxes issues were bigger since they had to do with the story of the movie and not just visuals. If they were explained later in the movie I really don’t care.

A review of Payday 2.

Having never played Payday 1 I bought number 2 on sale from Steam thinking I would have a smart FPS where tactics and teamwork were used to complete a heist. Since it’s every guys fantasy to be part of  a heist I thought id love it, I do.  The main menu is easy to navigate, there are a variety of different jobs and difficulty levels for each job that reward players accordingly. Each mask can be customized with colours and patterns and different guns have different add-on, some work on some guns and not on others. The game play is solid and the AI is fairly responsive. My issues stem from how hard it is to unlock the masks, colours, patterns, and gun add-ons. Each is found in a card game after the heist, players are given a choice of 3 cards and once a card is selected it reviles what that player unlocks. Prizes range from $20,000 - $90,000 of in game money to masks, experience to level up the player so they can unlock different skills, gun parts, materials, designs and 2-colour palettes to colour the patterns.

I find this process both tedious and unnecessary.

My other main disagreement with the game is how few players are able to play stealth jobs. Since no one can control when they get suppressors many people just play the game as loud and violently as possible because they have no other way to play.  I enjoy the stealth aspect of the game very much, and found it was a much more involved experience.

All things considered I enjoy the game very much, it has a good community and I have only met 2 or 3 people I could not bring myself to play with again and that was largely due to their lack of skill in the game and their decision to play a very hard mission, on very hard difficulty where stealth is the only way to play and survive, without and stealth. I wish I could use voice chat in game but every time I do my game freezes and crashes when compared to how fluid the game is and how much I enjoy it these issues are dismissible.

8.5/10