For those of you who are unaware, Bennett the Sage is a gamer who does reviews for thatguywiththeglasses.com. He also does these videos that focus on the “very best of the worst in Fanfiction” where he reads the worst fanfiction stories he can find.

In his tenth episode he reads some of the “classic” works of Peter Chimaera. These really have to be heard to be believed…

And here’s the second part…

Great stuff. Great stuff.

I thought I’d post a picture or two of my Freddy Krueger figure. Scary stuff. And yeah, I know, his finger broke off. And no, there’s no need for any “Freddy got Fingered too much” jokes or whatever. Anyway, happy (post) Halloween everyone!!!

Every so often from here on out I want to do a new feature called “Spotlight On…”

“Spotlight On…” will be articles that will focus on a specific sort of toyline or toy company. My first “Spotlight On…” article here will be…

Hell Yeah! The Toybiz Lord of The Rings figures!!!

The Lord of The Rings toyline by Toybiz is honestly what I’d consider one of the best toylines of all-time for the great detail and articulation of the figures. All other “Movie Toys” that are out now just look like a step-backwards in comparison. The toys were so detailed and they looked so much like the actors it was scary…

Just look at Saruman here. This looks just like Christopher Lee and it looks as good as Sideshow Bust or Medicom figure but…nope. It was an $8 Toybiz 7” figure.

Another great thing about the figures was the paint applications. Toybiz could have cheaped out and just given us solid colors for the figures armor and clothes but they chose multiple color tones and more beaten up and realistic color tones for the figures so things like the weathering in Gimli’s cape would look really believable:

And check out Aragorn’s boots as well:

And let’s not even talk about how beautiful and detailed the Sauron figure was…

Again, this was just an inexpensive Toybiz figure but it looks as awesome as the Sideshow Sauron bust or any Medicom figure out there.

And I love how they put in the little details here and there like how Sauron has his ring:

Hell, even Aragorn has his serpent ring:

And look at how amazingly detailed his costume is and how his hand is “dirty.” I love it!!!

So…yeah. Expect this “Spotlight Review” of the LOTR figures sometime in the near future. It’ll hopefully be followed by a “Spotlight On…” review of…MARVEL LEGENDS!!!!

By the way, you can see larger versions of these images if you click on them.

Photo credit goes to my friend Sharma, by the way.

Why is it that the most awesome movie-related Transformers toys are the toys based on characters that weren’t even in the movie? Seriously. Mindwipe look badass. Of course, this could all be photoshopped to hell like Prowl was (I still have nightmares over how fugly that figure was). Still though, I’m looking forward to Mindwipe. I will be buying him if I see him.

So I finally got around to buying the new Leader Prime yesterday. As I said before, I pretty much have zero interest in picking up any of the ROTF stuff because:

A) I hated the movie

and…

B) If you bought the figures from the first movie there’s no need to buy them again because you’re more or less just buying the same molds from the first movie but with uglier and more innacurate paint schemes.

That being said, if you’re avoiding the new Leader Prime thinking he’s the same mold from the first movie just with swords and a new head you’d be wrong. This is actually a completely different mold with more points of articulation and detail and actually looks a lot more like Bay Prime than the first leader figure did. If you’re like me and you’re one of the rare people who actually liked the Bay Prime design I really recommend picking this guy up.

As I said, completely different mold and is more screen accurate.

Overall he’s a really great upgrade from the first Leader Prime and that’s coming from someone who actually really liked the first Leader Prime and thought it was one of the best Prime figures Hasbro ever made.

He’s not without his flaws here and there though. First off, unlike “Movie 1 Prime” the finger articulation is gone:

This means you can’t have him hold MP Prime’s gun or the Matrix.

So in this regard, the first Leader Prime actually beats the new version:

That's what I'm talkin' about

Also, it’s harder for “Prime 2″ to do a stoic “Superman Pose” without the damn swords popping out. They’re pretty hard to keep in place.

Other than the thing with the finger/hand articulation though, I think “Prime 2″ has the advantage as he seems to have more POA and can do more stances. I generally think a good judge of articulation comes down to whether or not a figure can do my favorite Power Rangersish karate pose I like to put most of my figures in at one point or another and you can do that with this Prime:

And that’s cool because Prime actually did a similar pose in the first movie.

Now as far as the “Alt Modes” are concerned, I couldn’t tell you which figure has the edge truckwise as I haven’t transformed him into the truck nor do I really plan to seeing as how I can just put Prime 1 in Truck mode and Prime 2 in robot mode.

Another cool thing about the new Prime is that his “backpack” is also more accurate. Movie Prime 1’s backpack was one of the only things I really disliked about the figure and now Hasbro has improved it and made it more “screen accurate.” Here are the comparison shots:

Movie Prime 1

Movie Prime 2

The new head is pretty awesome as well though I don’t think it’s necessarily new, as I think it was also used for the first Premium Optimus Prime (could be wrong though):

Compare that to Leader Prime 1 and you’ll see that the new Leader Prime is, as I said, more screen accurate:

That’s not to say that the first Leader Prime head wasn’t cool though. It is pretty awesome in a Powermaster Prime/original G1 Prime figure kind of way but it just wasn’t accurate compared to what Prime looked like on screen.

So all in all the new Prime is pretty awesome and is an upgrade from the first Leader figure in every way. He’s one of the only ROTF figures I really recommend picking up and getting. He’s also on my list of figures I’d love to give a longer and more detailed review of someday.

Yes, they're the Supermen of the Autobots

…But I actually think Jeremy Jackson from Baywatch could probably play a pretty awesome Marcus Fenix.

And yes, you’re reading that right. Hobie. From Baywatch. The obnoxious, fruity kid you wished the ‘Hoff would drown. Sure he was annoying and swishy back in the day but the the thing is, meth and ‘roids fucked up his face enough to the point where he could pull off that look.

Also, he’s gotten really fucking huge. I mean…seriously…

If that’s not your Marcus Fenix than I don’t know Marcus Fenix and after three years of playing GoW…trust me…I know Marcus. I mean, I would prefer to see a good actor with some chops playing Fenix but after all the fan rumors of that idiot Batista from the WWE playing the part I think I’d rather see Jackson in the role. He just needs to learn how to do the badass Marcus Fenix voice and get some acting lessons and I think he’d be good to go.

Judge for yourself:

Jeremy Jackson post-Meth and (I’m assuming anyway) ‘Roids

Marcus Fenix:

I’m telling you, it could work and I think it would be cool. And I honestly mean it (that it could be cool). I, as much as I hated Hobie as a kid, would support that as a GoW fan.

An update for all my fans (all one or two of you)

I have an epic review I’ve been hinting at here and here that I want to work on. It might take me a little while to get it done but I’ll get it done.

In the meantime I’ve got a couple of other things I want to work on. I’d really love to do a quick spotlight on a couple of Toy Companies that I think deserve props and recommendations, I’m working on my first video review and I have a big LOTR spotlight review I want to work on as well. Stay tuned for all this stuff.

Anyone play it? Is it any good?

So I just finished Batman: Arkham Asylum and I have to say that I once again, am the only person in the world who dislikes a Batman project that everyone else seems to love (I don’t care what you say, The Dark Knight is NOT a good movie).

I can’t believe the rave reviews this game is getting. I actually think this is one of those kinds of games that pretty much fails on every level. Yes, the graphics are amazing. Yes it’s Kevin Conroy as Batman and Mark Hamil as Joker. Yes there is some brutal fight scenes.

Really though that’s all the game has going for it. While it is cool to hear Conroy as Batman again Hamil’s Joker just gets more and more irritating the more you play through the game and you just wish that Batman would break his one rule and murder the shit out of Joker (and no, I don’t know what murdering the shit out of someone entails but I’m sure it wouldn’t smell very good). The fighting also gets monotonous and boring as the game progresses and it gets less and less exciting to see Batman pummel Joker’s cronies in slow-mo as you play through the story mode.

You would think that it would be pretty easy to make a Batman game, right? You give him some badass gadgets, you give him the ability to beat the shit out of thugs and you throw in a level or two of some awesome Batmobile sequences where you can blow shit up. Toss in some crime solving here and there and you got a great game. Pretty simple right? There’s no way anyone could screw that up, right?

…If life were that simple I think I’d be banging Hanna Hilton on a mountain of money somewhere while Stephanie Myers scrubbed my toilet and was laughed out of publishing houses…but…I digress.

Batman in videogames is like the Punisher in movies. It really should be a no-brainer as to how one could make an awesome Punisher movie or a badass Batman game but we’re graced with shit like Dark Tomorrow or John Travolta as a Punisher villain in a Punisher movie where Castle plays mindgames with his enemies instead of just blowing everyone away left and right.*

To be the Devil’s advocate, the first third of Arkham Asylum does pretty much give you everything you could ever want from a Batman game (minus an awesome Batmobile level or two). You get to do a lot of puzzle solving, you get to sneak around and hang crooks upside down from Gargoyle statues and you generally get to beat the shit out of stupid, annoying, cliched thugs.  So far so good, right? Thing is, the badass stuff gets really repetitive, really fast and the combat system never really evolves.

Basically combat boils down to two buttons. One button will counter the hits from the thugs and the other gives you the ability to just generally punch, kick and fuck up your enemies. And believe you me, that actually sounds a lot more awesome than it really is. Combat becomes annoying and monotonous because you really don’t have to do much to beat the hordes of enemies that come after you. I swear that you can just push the Y button (the counter button) every time Batman gets his “spidey sense” (and yes, I don’t have any good explanation as to why Batman has Spider-Man’s spidey sense) and that’s it. It’s either stupidly easy or ridiculously hard because the villains eventually get pipes and knives and stun batons so you have to counter their attacks in different ways which gets annoying when twenty guys with pipes are surrounding you. The puzzles, as I said above, are pretty cool but most of the good ones are few and far between.

The game tries to hide the fact that it’s padded with boring and repetitive combat by forcing you to suddenly switch genres and do some good old-fashioned platforming once you’re infected with Scarecrow’s fear toxin.

Thing is though, I fucking HATE platforming games so it pisses me off to be forced to play one when I signed on for an action/puzzle solving game and I hate how the Scarecrow is just turned into a cheesy third-rate Freddy Krueger ripoff.

Yes, this is probably how you’ll feel if you realized you paid $60 for this game

The lack of Batman’s most badass villains also really hurts this game in a lot of ways. Sure you get Poison Ivy, Bane and the Joker, but what about Two-Face or Mr. Freeze or even The Penguin? Nope, you don’t get them, you just get annoying, stupid, cliched thugs wearing Joker face paint. If I wanted to fight an army of big stupid people who look like Tammy Fay Baker I could just shop at Walmart on Black Friday. (Yeah, I know, not my best joke but it’s passable).

I’ve heard a couple of gushing fans claim they beat the game in a couple of hours whereas it took me a couple of days to go through. It’s not that the game is hard, see, it’s that it’s fucking CHEAP. There’s a difference between hard and cheap (insert gay prostitute joke here which is fitting when you consider how gay Batman and Robin really are) and Batman goes for cheap city so your rage is just barely subsiding by the time you beat the game. Your victory, in other words, feels pretty hollow. It’s funny how a game where you beat the living shit out of thugs actually GIVES you rage instead of releasing it but that’s how most generic, overrated third-person action games are these days (yeah, I’m looking at you Prototype). How is this game cheap? At one point you have to fight Joker’s Titan Soldiers (don’t ask, it’’s just as stupid as it sounds). These behemoths can’t really be beaten by you or your traditional weapons so you have to basically ride on their backs and pit them against one another so they’ll beat the shit out of each other until they’re exhausted and ready for you to finish them off. That, surprisingly isn’t really as hard as it sounds thanks to some idiotic AI. Problem is though, as you fight more and more of these monsters, you get to this point where you have to fight two of them as well as twenty or thirty Joker thugs at the same time so you really don’t have the time or the willpower to do the lame “counter your way to victory” fighting and take out the monsters at the same time so you’ll waste a good hour or two that you could be playing a good videogame on this cheap shit. The battle with Doc Ock at the end of Spider-Man 2, in other words, was hard. Getting raped by Joker’s armies of goons while you’re trying to battle giant thugs with supersoldier serum, is cheap. There is a difference.

While combat is boring and repetitive for the most part, I will say that the boss fight with Poison Ivy at the end is pretty awesome and it really saves the game from being a complete piece of crap. The problem is though, as cool as it is, it just feels like a ripoff of some of the monster fights that you have in games like Ocarina of Time (I won’t spoil it for you but let’s just say you have to fire your batarang at the “eye” of a plant and do a lot of dodging and shit like that).

For all of it’s faults and for all of the bashing I just did, I will say Arkham Asylum is a decent game. Not great. Not the worst piece of shit in the world. It’s decent. It’s worth a rental but you’re an idiot to pay $60 bucks for it.

So yeah, once again I’m on my own in disliking an overrated Batman media project that everyone else loves. That’s okay though, as far as Batman stuff goes I’m okay with living in my Keaton/90s Animated Series little world where Christian Bale never existed and we were never “treated” to the…uh…snicker…”badass” Batman voice we got from Bale in the Dark Knight. Bottom line, rent don’t buy. This will definitely be one of those games that’s just bad enough to warrant a video review sometime down the line once I start doing those.