Geekly Review #196

Another week passes by and we’re slowly creeping closer to the silly season of Autumn where new AAA game releases become a weekly occurrence. This week Gamescom also takes place, so expect plenty of news throughout the week.

Here’s a roundup of a our week and weekend activities.

The Defenders

Friday 18th August saw the release of Marvel’s Defenders on Netflix. This is a show I’ve been damn excited for so plans for Friday night after work were to simply eat pizza and snacks and marathon as many hours as we could of this show. Fortunately the season is only 8 episodes rather than the 13 from the previous shows leading to the Defenders. Initially reading reviews and such I’d been made aware that our hero’s don’t properly interact with each other till the 4th episode in the series. While that sounds rather annoying, the first 3 episodes did such a great job of re-introducing you to everyone and catching up on what they’d been doing, it wasn’t a problem that they weren’t all yet interacting. Plus the teases and build up to their eventual meeting was handled really well. The final moments when the pieces fall into place and you know each member of the team is heading to the same location gets you pretty hyped. Luke Cage and Danny Rand’s initial meeting and interactions are hilarious. As noted in previous Marvel / Netflix posts here I’m not overly keen on “The Hand” and the use of them as enemies in DD season 2 and Iron Fist. Unfortunately for the Defenders, it’s much of the same in that the Hand are the main enemies and organisation our hero’s are teaming up against. In a sense Defenders actually kind of felt like a season 2 of Iron Fist. Elektra too really does nothing for me in terms of enemies. Considering these shows have featured the like of Fisk, Killgrave and Cottonmouth, Elektra is nothing compared to the 3 listed.

And another thing that is a slight frustration is that this show is set in a universe where the Avengers exist. So the residents of New York are fully aware that Aliens, gods and robotic menaces are actual things that can exist. So why the hell can’t Misty accept that there could be a secret ninja organisation, that sounds lot’s more believable than an alien portal opening in the sky and an alien army coming through controlled by a Norse God. But nope, Misty just doesn’t buy what Jessica, Luke, Matt and Danny have to sell. Did frustrate me a lot.

That aside though, the season was awesome, while I would have rather the Defenders tackled something else other than the Hand, it was still awesome to see them all together in this finale to 4 seasons building up. The ending episode was incredible and honestly left myself and my wife legit shook. Now we have another season of each of these 4 to look forward to as well as The Punisher. Assume there will be a season 2 of Defenders once all these individual characters get there latest seasons out. I now wonder if they’ll have any interaction in individual shows now? Will Jessica Jones head to Harlem for a coffee with Luke? Will Danny Rand and Matt Murdoch strike up a friendship with Danny asking Matt for legal advice?

No Man’s Sky

For the past few months No Man’s Sky had been marketing an ARG for what we assumed was the next update for the game. Turns out that’s exactly what it was as Hello Games released patch 1.3 and confirmed additional features for the game. Given the news of this 3rd patch, and the updates from the previous 2 patches, Will and I decided maybe it was time to give the game another go. As you might re-call we both wrote rather scathing impressions of the game after it’s initial launch last year. Would these updates finally make us enjoy the game?

So far for me it’s not really any different to the game I remember from last year. I’ve started again completely clearing all my saved data for it before restarting. The storyline seems alot clearer this time round giving you objectives within the menu screen to focus on. So that’s new and definitely helps. The beginning phase of repairing your tools and ship is the same as it was, although it did feel a little easier to do this time round. Once done and you’re following the objectives given the game does start to make progression feel a little better. New things happen such as discovering a crashed freighter ship. The way to attain warp drives is also different from the initial game and is more story based to do this. I’ve been completely spamming the photo mode of this game taking some extraordinary screens while approaching planets and such. As it is now, I’ve got the warp drive and progressed to my next solar system. The first planet I’ve come across in this new system is lush with blue grass, plentiful oceans and bright foliage. Potentially going to be my “home planet” as it’s much nicer than the planets I was first discovering. As i’m still nowhere near the point of experiencing the true improvements from the 3 patches (base building, vehicles and improved story) as it stands I can’t really give a definitive impression on if the patches have made the game more enjoyable. I can say that it appears the random planet and animals are improved, and visually the game has very noticeably improved. So I’ll get back to it and plug some more hours into it with the hope of eventually affording a freighter, with a fleet of ships, with an awesome base on this luscious planet I’m currently on with a range of planetary vehicles.

WWE NXT Takeover Brooklyn 3

What feels like the first time in a long time, myself and the 2 other lads that participate in the “Book It Vince” section of Shoot Talk stayed up to watch a WWE PPV Live. Well, I say stay up, But from the amount of snores and head bobs from passing out, it might be that only I stayed awake to watch the PPV live. I scored a perfect 5 from 5 results. Asuka retaining her NXT championship without a doubt the highlight of the night. The match made Asuka look vulnerable and beatable for the first time in her NXT career and did a great job of propelling Ember Moon as a legitimate contender and future champion. That said I’m glad they opted to keep the belt on Asuka and hope they continue her streak of wins and domination of the division. Can only assume someone from the Mae Young Classic will eventually dethrone her. Also very awesome to see the rumoured ROH invasion of NXT. While not officially a ROH invasion by name, having ReDragon and Adam Cole faction up and taking out Sanity & Drew McIntyre moments after both won their respected match and title opportunity was a great and exciting statement. NXT is once again on the rise with some really exciting talent now on the roster. Alister Black, Cassius Ohno, Adam Cole, Almas, Itami, Roderick Strong all going for McIntyre’s NXT title is going to be awesome.

As well as Takeover Brooklyn, We also watched Pro Wrestling Chaos in Yate Leisure centre. It featured their first cage match, and a triple threat for the king of chaos title. Additional stipulation for this match was whoever was pinned would be leaving PWC. The match featured Flash Morgan Webster, Eddie Dennis and local hero Alex Steele. As Alex is soon to be married and with Eddie and Flash more professional we’d taken a guess that Alex would be leaving, but we were swerved massively as Flash took the pin. Didn’t expect that. Also in an awesome side note, when coming out of the toilet (while wearing my New York Knicks jersey) former WWE Superstar Paul London was chatting with a fan in the corridor, noticed my Knicks jersey featuring Carmelo Anthony on it and began a conversation with me about Melo’s future and if Knick’s would keep him and how I felt about it. The convo moved onto other American sports as he admitted his support for LA Clippers and being disappointed that Oakland Raiders are moving to Vegas. I asked for a picture with him after and he was happy to do so. One awesomely friendly dude.

– Murr

No Man’s Sky

As Murr said recently No Mans Sky received an update that added and changed some things in the game. Seeing as it’s been getting a lot of positive reception I thought it was time to jump back in and see how different it was compared to when I first played it.

There were some things that I enjoyed about NMS when it released, the first few hours were a lot of fun, discovering new worlds, flying through space, meeting weird aliens. But it quickly became apparent that it wasn’t going to change all that much from planet to planet. Most planets quickly became desolate waste lands with nothing to explore, the grind for resources just to keep your tools working was monotonous and underwhelming. I got bored pretty quickly.

It was clear the game wasn’t finished.

Fast forward one year and what do we have?

Well, it seems like the quests are a little more fleshed out at the start, helping you to get to grips with fixing all your gear and there were a few new items to help you search for resources etc… on your planet. My new starting planet also seemed a little more interesting, lots of creatures roaming around, interesting vistas, and a few nice looking moons nearby. Night time also felt quite different too, my planet had a nice summer feel to it during the day time but at night everything changed to a darker red which felt a little sinister, although I didn’t notice anything evil roaming around.

I’m still annoyed that you have to hold down the mouse button to basically confirm any action, it’s such a stupid design, just get rid of it – I’m just going to download a mod to remove it. Ambient sounds still seem a little odd too, I could always hear animals even if there were none nearby and quite frankly it became a little annoying.

It seems like No Mans Sky is heading in the right direction, but like Murr, I’ve still not got to building any bases or anything like so I need more time to really see all the changes, so far it’s still made me want to keep playing it, I guess that’s a good sign?

Escape from Tarkov

I’m still pretty hooked on Escape from Tarkov and put out a video on my channel the other day from a recent session. Damn this game is intense!

-Will