The Toys That Made Us: The Review!

I'm on like day 5 of Christmas vacation and the kids are starting to drive me crazy. Hats off to all you stay at home parents.

This afternoon while the kids decided to take a break from trying to kill each other (or me) I watched a couple episodes of Netflix's new documentary series The Toys That Made Us. As the title would lead you to believe it's all about toys. There's only a handful of episodes each devoted to an iconic toyline: Star Wars, He-Man, Barbie and GI Joe. I caught the GI Joe and Star Wars episodes. It had a lot of good info and was infotaining enough for me to plan on watching the next couple episodes.

The series is not without it's flaws, the historical recreations are kind of silly looking and the humor the writers try to interject through the narrator is not ideal. Still, I felt like I learned a bunch about toys that I didn't know, so mission accomplished.

On the GI Joe scale it wasn't quite a Snake-Eyes but it wasn't a Refrigerator Perry either. It's a solid Flint.

SOUL CALIBUR 6 Trailer

This new trailer for Soul Calibur 6 looks really good... Wait, that can't be right. Soul Calibur 6? When did 3, 4 and 5 happen? How old am I? What year is it?

Back in the day Soul Calibur was one of my favorite fighting games because even if you had no idea what you were doing you could still win a few rounds and look super cool doing it. I swear learning how to pull off moves in that game actually made you worse at it. Kind of like how Injustice is now. This could be a fun one to play with Logan, although I'm not sure I want Ivy or Sophitia kickstarting his puberty this early. That's a can of worms I don't want to have to deal with ever.

Death Star Construction Timelapse

If you have two minutes to spare today you could do a lot worse than watching this CGI animation of what assembling the Death Star might have looked like. It's a fun reminder that the Empire is enormous and pretty much has an unlimited amount of resources at their disposal. I mean when the first one blew up they were like "eh, lets make another one but bigger!"

Oh yeah, I saw the new Star Wars movie all the kids are talking about. It was good, very good. I'm not the kind of person to rank movies but it's in the top half I guess? I don't think I liked it better than any of the original Trilogy but I've only seen it once, I've seen the OT like a thousand times so it's kind of hard to compare it right now. I definitely think some of the fans upset over how any characters have changed or what you can or can't do with the force need to relax. It's a movie about space wizards, not a Chilton manual to repairing a car. There's a bit of room for interpretation over how everything works.

I'm excited to go see it again, maybe over Christmas break or something. I actually have a full week off from work for the first time in a year. Who knows how to party?

Not this guy anymore, I might take the bulk of that week on reorganizing my comic books.

The One Device For Everything

READY PLAYER ONE - Official Trailer 1

I could have sworn we've already seen the first official trailer for Ready Player One but Youtube is telling me that this new trailer is in fact the first one. Whatever. I AM NOT EXCITED FOR THIS MOVIE AT ALL.

I really, really like the book and had no idea that all the cool nerds actually hate it. I learned that fact via twitter and have pretty much been reminded of it since it was announced that Senor Spielbergo was directing it. My entire twitter timeline is filled with hot takes over why this is going to be terrible and how the book is the worst. It's depressing because.....

This movie looks terrible. I still love the book but yikes. The trailer like the everything the cool nerds say is problematic with the book turned up to 11. It's not a love letter to the 80s anymore, it's basically just "intellectual Property: The Movie". I don't even know if I'm going to be able to check it out in theaters. Maybe I should just read the book a couple more times. I can take comfort in knowing I'm not looking forward to the movie in a way more special way than all those cool nerds out there that just don't like the book. They think they're so cool with their fancy shoes...

Who Is The Fastest Man Alive?

Half Life 3 Portal 3 A new game confirmed!

I've never seen or played any of the Bridge Constructor games by Head Up games but they just announced a Portal themed game so it quickly caught my attention. It's not exactly Portal 3 or anything but it looks pretty fun. My son loves Portal and he loves these kinds of builder puzzle games on the phone and kindle so I'm sure we'll play a ton of it.

I don't know what it is about Portal and Glados but he absolutely loves that game and the whole lore behind it. He's weird that way, he just picks up these seemingly random fandoms and just runs with it. You should hear him go on and on about how Luigi is the real hero of the Super Mario universe or how the timelines in the Zelda games all work out. It's just weird, hopefully we'll be able to channel all that useless knowledge into something more than just being really good at trivial pursuit like his old man.

Is there an Issue?

My Xbox 360 is making a terrible noise lately. I think something is wrong with the disc player, if you're just watching netflix or whatever its fine but the second you pop in a game it's like a tiny little lawnmower. I don't want to have to get a new Xbox 360, that's ridiculous but my son has like a hundred games he still plays on it so I don't want to just throw it in the trash and forget about it either.

Maybe I should go on craigslist and see if someone wants to trade a stroller or a diaper genie for one? Of course then I'll end up getting murdered via craigslist all because I didn't want to spend $40 at gamestop. There's really no way to win here.

Thomas The Tank Engine: Extreme Stunts!

If you've never struggled for hours getting your wooden train tracks to match up just right you might not find this video that impressive. BUT LET ME TELL YOU HOW AMAZING IT IS.

I swear the person that put this together must have sold their soul to the devil to get Thomas to land that corkscrew at the 28 second mark. I'm totally going to try and do this tonight, only to get extremely frustrated after about 20 minutes and then I'll start randomly yelling at my kids. Sooooo essentially it'll be like every other Monday night.

Batman Ninja First Look

Looks like they're making a Batman anime where Batman gets teleported back in time to feudal Japan and becomes a ninja. Cool? I don't know, looks a thousand times better than Justice League does. Although I do have an issue that they're calling him a ninja and then dressing him up as a samurai. I don't know, Warner Bros does these big animated features a couple times a year and I never watch them. I caught the Dark Knight Returns one on an HBO free preview weekend and it was ok.

But hey it's DC/WB we're talking about "OK" might as well be 100% on Rotten Tomatoes for them.