The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt

   I said I'd write something about it and here we go now that I have finally finished after spending just shy of 100 hours in the game. There's so much to do, plenty of which I left, yet much of which I did do. I could have spent another 50 plus hours in the game finding all the locations and killing all the beasts but I find these days that games can be too long (I never used to feel like that).
   I should say before I start that I never played the other 2 games in he series. I was going to go back and play number 2, but I heard that it was hard to understand without playing the original, which now is really outdated, so I didn't bother. I did then hear not long after I started 3 that you didn't really need to play the first one, but I couldn't be bothered to go back by that point. Point is, I'm not 100% sure what the history of the series was (I also hadn't read any of the books) and just reading the plot of the first 2 on Wikipedia doesn't tell you who these million characters that tun up throughout the game that you're supposed to know are. Of course you can look them up but I felt that I was missing out on the full experience by having not played the others. It would be like watching Jurassic World without Jurassic Park. That said, I'd still recommend this game to someone who'd not played any of the previous games.

   Before I go too deep in to my thoughts though I will say that in my mind no massive open world RPG will ever live up to Oblivion/ Fallout 3 to me now. These were the first RPG's I spent triple figures of hours in (no I never played FF7 (but I may in the near future now...)) and they blew my mind with how much there was to do. Nowadays I feel like there's frequently nothing new, or at least similar ideas are repeated frequently. That's not to say that I feel games like this, Skyrim and so on are bad, far from it, I just find that my sense of wonder has gone now. It probably doesn't help either that spending 100+ hours in a game now is a serious commitment of my time, whereas when Oblivion came out I was at university and essentially had very little else to do with my time (hence why I now work for Tesco).
   Okay, the story as a whole is great. The main story does drag on a bit, but the characters are good enough and there's enough involving side quests in the game to keep you interested throughout. I never really found myself getting bored during story quests. I will say though that sometimes witcher contracts could get samey and the combat can get very repetitive at times, mainly during periods in the game where they're clearly trying to drag it out a bit. Unfortunately there are several points in the game where it is very noticeable that the game is being stretched. Sure, this happens in many games but in a game where there is so much you can do anyway, when unnecessarily chucking in sections add half hour on to the game it makes me less interested in trying to get 100% completion.
   Still though, make sure you do the major side quests. I'm referring here to the quests that tie in to characters in the main story. They'll hand them out to you while you're more interested in doing something else at the time, but make sure you go back for these. They add a lot more of the history of the series in and make the world feel far more alive for you. They change the ending massively and as a whole tend to be some of the best quests in the game. The other thing to take note of is Gwent, the game within the game. It's a card game that at first doesn't seem to make much sense, but in actuality it's genius and is probably the best game within a game I've ever played (take that geometry wars). It's a great little addition and the tournaments going on through the world keep it exciting. Unfortunately I wouldn't say the same about the boxing in the game though, which is basically treated the same but isn't really interesting at all.

   The upgrading of weapons and armour as well as resource management is all treated well and all the classic RPG elements of the game work well, arguably apart from the 2 specialist craftsmen you need to 'unlock' to make the best armour in the game. There is also some nice sections of the game where you get to play as Ciri (who's story this really is, forget Geralt) that mixes up the gameplay a bit and I would be very interested in some DLC where you get to play as her more.
     Of course, this being a classic pc game series and with me playing it on console I'm accepting that the game could have looked better than it did, and I've certainly heard enough criticism from people at me not being part of the 'PC master-race' but it still looked pretty good anyway.
   Ultimately I'd say if you, like myself have a relatively large amount of free time then definitely pick this up, but If you could only really commit the 30(ish) hours it would take just to do the main story then I well and truly wouldn't bother. For me though, Game of the year so far up to this point, that Said, I haven't started Arkham Knight yet... (hmm, forgot to this post that funny)

Jurassic World

They say Jurassic Park is the Star Wars of my generation and I can certainly see that. I Remember seeing it in the cinema when I was very young. I'd like to say my first memory of the cinema but I remember seeing Aladdin first. Aladdin may have had a better video game but Jurassic park stuck with me more. It's an important part of my generation and knowing the film is vital to so many things in the 90's. It'd be like not watching game of thrones and then trying to understand 90% of jokes of the Internet.
   Let's forget 2 and 3 existed and here are my thoughts on this great sequel to the original, so hold on to your butts because spoilers are ahead.
 

   Okay, so this is basically  love letter to the first film. They keep the same theme tune they talk about John Hammond a lot, that guy from new girl is wearing a 'tasteless' Jurassic park t-shirt and of course they go to the original visitor centre complete with slow, sad piano version of the theme tune. As a lover of the first film I, and hopefully you dear reader would love this. Granted there's no equivalent scene to Jeff Goldblum posing topless for no reason but they do find the night vision goggles the kids have in the original.
   Apart from me just going on about how many references there is to the first film I guess I'll say what else was great in it. So, I loved the cliche teenager who's just interested in girls. He can't let go of his girlfriend but when he gets to the park he spends his whole time eyeing up every equivalent aged female in the park. Chris Pratt is great in the film too. As someone who saw his come to fame as Andy (what a great name) on Parks and Rec it's so weird to see him becoming a big action movie star. He's got in shape so much and he's always so likable no matter what he's in, this included.
   Back to love and the kiss between Owen and Claire was so cliched and had me rolling my eyes, but just a few minutes later they brilliantly turned it around by having a perfect set up for another classic cinema show of love between the guy from New Girl and the guard from Orange is the new black, but she totally stopped him in his tracks and it was great, I guess the Jurassic Park T-shirt was bad luck afterall.
   The kids weren't s annoying this time either, there was no constant screaming, which was nice (though, to be fair, the little one kept being upset and their parents upcoming divorce, but I'm with the elder brother as someone who's actually been through this. You do get 2 of everything and it's sick). The sub-plot was fun too with a secret operation between the head of research and some army guy to make an army of dinosaurs. Have these people not played Turok? I wouldn't blame them, but still it was a classic feel good moment when the 'raptor killed him.
   It was great to see the raptors back too. In the original they were the stars there after it was expected the T-Rex to be, and here it seemed like the Indominus-Rex was going to be the dinosaur star of the show, but the raptors came into their own again. I loved the great 'cawing' sound effects of them back again too.
   I have just read some RL dinosaur experts were angry that the dinosaurs weren't accurate to what we now know of them when the first one was so good for the knowledge of the time that was made and this is a jumped up monster movie. This has made me angry. Firstly, it's a sequel to a film made in the past so if they looked completely different to that original film it would make no sense, AND they made reference in the film to how the dinosaurs would look different if they weren't full of reptile DNA. Experts man, what a bunch of knobs.
 

   That's what Raptors think of paleantologists. Anyway,it had the great element of building disaster from the first movie too. So, the Indominus-Rex gets out and it's like, 'oh no'. So, to stop him an inexperienced helicopter pilot crashes one into the pterodactyl cage so they get out, so they set the 'Raptors loose to try and practise this Dino-army plan and save they day, but of course they turn and attack. It's a great disaster movie.
   Igonring all the rest of the greatness in the film the ending just takes the biscuit. So, Chris Pratt gets his team of Raptors to turn on the Indominus-Rex again and join team humane, but oh no, the bigger one beat they crap out of them. So, off runs Claire to set the T-Rex free as that will obviously just kill it and then walk back in to it's pen without doing any other damage. Stupid as it is, in the ultimate call back to the first film where the Raptors and the T-Rex are the big bads of the film, between the Rex and Blue, the beta Raptor, they save the day (with a little help from the sea-monster). The T-Rex gives the knowing nod (in my mind anyway) and everyone goes home happy, obvs.
 
   I know now I'm going to be watching the original tonight and despite the fact that I've still got hours and hours left in the Witcher 3 (I swear I'll write about it at some point) plus Batman and Yoshi coming out next week, I'm pretty sure I'm going to buy Lego Jurassic world tomorrow. It's not the best movie I've ever seen, but it probably is the best sequel I've every seen. I'm just wondering who the next Sam Jackson is gonna be.