Tembo the Badass Elephant

   Remember when I said I was going to talk about a further 3 games, well forget that. Yeah I played them but there's not really much to say about them, except that you should've bought 'Saviors' when it was 15p on Steam. I moved on to this game then, after all it is a Sega published 2D plaformer based around speed and you know my feelings on those.
   It's not like Sonic. Despite the gag I made just there and what lots of reviewers are saying. Just because it's published by Sega and about a fast animal doesn't automatically make it the same (can't think of a good analogy). They don't play anything alike. There's plenty of 2D platformers in the world and people just don't say they're all the same. This lazy comparison has annoyed me (clearly) as a massive Sonic fan (from the Mega drive days anyway), granted, it does welcome this comparison for the reasons listed above if you hadn't played this game, but if you have, you'd know there is no comparison to make.
   Hmm, that dragged on a bit. Anyway, getting to the actual game. It starts out great, speeding through the first area of levels, trashing enemies in well designed worlds and having a whale of a time, until you get to the fourth level where you have to have hit a certain amount of enemy kills to progress. Urgh. Then that happens on the fourth level of every wold so you have to keep going back to older levels and making sure you kill off as many enemies as possible to advance. Speaking of replaying levels, the fact that the game lets you replay levels whenever you want but doesn't give you infinite lives is stupid, and I'll tell you why. On level 1, you can easily pick up enough peanuts (you see, peanuts are the thing you pick up in this game to build up extra lives) to gain 2 extra lives every playthrough. That means you can just play level 1 as many times as you need to have enough lives to complete the game, all it does is waste the players time as I had to keep playing level 1 to have enough lives to get past the final boss.

   Speaking of final bosses, and I've spoken enough before about my dislike of bosses as a whole and how I think it's time to move on from them, but my point here is that just like Rogue Legacy a few weeks before it's got a double layered boss, where the first bit is pretty easy but you have to spend ages doing that first section of that boss over and over before you can get to the actual tough bit that you need to get done. Another waste of my time that I'll never get back and could have spent doing something more important like, watching TV or drinking.
   Going back to what I was saying before, the problem is the game kind of changes about 2/3 of the way through, where it becomes more fiddly and the speed element goes from the game so what the initial section of the game did so well vanishes and it becomes something else. It's still not bad though, I should point out, it's just a completely different game. While I'm talking about things that aren't so great about it, it's the start up time. When you fire up the game, it takes forever to load (on xbox one anyway).
   Sill though, it is a pretty well designed platformer, it's worth a play if you like classic 2D platformers, but for a non-fan it won't convert you. It's fine, but I won't remember it in a years time. Decent game, stupid name.

 
 

Massive Chalice/ Rogue Legacy

  At first I wasn't going to write about Rogue Legacy as it's 2 years old and also I was going to write about Massive Chalice last month when it was still free on games with gold so people could have got it free based on my lovely words. Then, over the course of the day I've bought a couple of other games and I have another to play, so I was going to put out a mega post talking about 5 games, but then I figured it'd take forever to write and thus forever to read. Of course, I haven't played those games yet either but suffice to say I've decide to split it in to two.
   Let's keep it interesting first with the more up to date game which is Massive Chalice. I noted down here early through the game to remember to refer to it as 'the poor mans Xcom' but time has proven that to not be true. I mean, for the battles it's true to an extent, I'm not saying these are the only two turn based combat that exist, but it's an easier comparison because half of the game takes place in the improving the future of your team by resource management. Granted this is more old timey than modern to futuristic like Xcom but it's the same idea.
   I have to say that I don't think I really 'got it' for the majority of the game, which mostly didn't cause an issue throughout the game as you'd have to be pretty terrible to fail completely but it did mean the final battle taking forever. Looking back at it, I feel stupid now for making it difficult for myself. You see, the main point of the game is you're trying to defend your nation against some evil monsters while a super weapon that will wipe them out takes 300 years to charge. Every few years you're attacked and have to defend the regions. On top of that you have to make families and grow children to become warriors despite the knowledge they'll get old and die (like all of us) or die in battle. On op of that there's research to be done and help needed to train the kids. Obviously as you level up your fighters in battle the kids they birth are better so you get better levelled recruits as you go on (because games). What I didn't get though, was the benefits of the variants of classes. It seemed you just needed archers (or 'hunters as they're called here) but it turns out alchemists and Cabrejacks (which are melee fighters) are amazingly useful, which I didn't fully appreciate until the final battle and probably could have saved the entire nation had I appreciated it more (see, it's split up in to regions which are attacked multiples at a time but you can only defend one and the others lose some health or whatever you like to call it (this is also just like Xcom)). I could also have levelled up the classes more evenly so the archers weren't super powerful (while still annoyingly inaccurate (but super powerful when connecting)) and the Caberjackers were frustratingly underpowered (although I accept it's my own fault).

   If i were to play it again I'm sure that it would be a breeze as it took me bout 200 in game years to finally figure everything out. Up until that point I'd won every battle without much thought until suddenly the difficulty shot up and from having to mindlessly walk through the battles, serious attention was needed and I needed to have planned my improvements and families better, but I made it through in the end anyway, but I made it difficult for myself. It may seem I'm giving out mixed messages here, but the point is, with some thought put in, the game would be a fun time with a decent challenge, but underestimate it like me and it'll be a challenge where you're archers are so frequently inaccurate that you have to shout in to a pillow.
   Despite all of that it was a good game in the end and i would've recommended it to be played if you could still get it for free. Is it worth however much it actually costs? I'm not totally sure, I know I had a good time with it, but I probably won't remember it a year from now, so take that how you will.

   Okay, I normally hate, hate, hate grinding in games. It's put me off JRPG's for years but the indie darling love this game has been getting over the last few years, and the fact that it's a platformer gave me enough motivation to give it a go. That and the fact that I bought it about a year ago to play on my Vita while I was on a long plane journey, only for for my Vita to break and the game to sit on my hard drive for a hard year and me waiting to be bothered to start it. I'm so bad at starting not new games. I don't know what it is about me, but unless a game had just come out I find it difficult to start a game for he first time.
   That's the back story for you, so I better say something about the game. Basically you're trying to conquer a castle, defeat all the bosses and claim the glory for your family, but you ain't gonna cut it, you will die and have to start over, several times. That's where you bloodline comes in. You've gotta collect gold to help train your family and learn the traits of the enemies and bosses if you're ever going to get past them. At first it seems like an impossible task, and when you go on to every new area you will feel the same, but after time it become possible.
   It's more than just that though, because there's pros and cons of each heir. Firstly there's the type of fighter they are. There's charcters with better health or attacks, or speed or agility or mana or so on, but you'll find out what you prefer and then ultimately, and most importantly, which is more appropriate for each boss. On top of that there's the side weapon/ spell which is more of a personal preference. Beyond that there's weird things like being giant or a dwarf (or, y'know, normal height), being unable to see colours, everything being upside down, being 'the one' (which makes everything futuristic looking), being bald (which makes no impact on gameplay) and many other useful and/ or silly things.

   Beyond that there's challenge rooms to unlock items that can help you throughout the game, like double jumps, sprint dashes, health leach and many more which you can stack up or mix up, depending on your play style, or yet again, what boss you're on. On top of that there's hidden weapons throughout the world and bonus games to help you win more gold and mini bosses to unlock more bonuses.
   It should be noted that the castle randomises on each new entry (unless you use the architect to lock it down but you'll miss out on a lot of gold, though it is useful on bosses) so you'll never know where to go which makes exploration vital, which means you need to get good. I should note though that you only need to beat a boss once and they'll remain dead for good.
   The art style is great and looks like a 16 bit classic but more importantly the game plays great. At some times enemies firing through walls can be frustrating but the platforming is perfect and the combat, though basic, is spot on for this kind of game. Going in I really didn't think It'd live up to the hype, but it honestly did, every great thing you've heard about this game is true, for even the biggest sceptic, like myself.
   You do have to stick with it though, as I said it seems for the first few hours like you'll never be able to do it and hell, by the 4th area, I still couldn't do it, I just had to run through to the boss room because I could barely survive 2 rooms in the dungeon. I'd definitely say this game is worth  try, especially if you're a fan of Metroid-vania types and as long as you have some patience.

Rocket League

   Okay just a quick one today, I just really want to recommend Rocket league. It's football with cars. That's basically it, but it is genius. The ball is massive, there's boost pickups, the car can do flips and stuff and teamwork seems non existent. This seems the kind of game I'd have never stopped playing 5 or so years ago when online gaming was all I did with my time because I imagine if you were playing with a group of friends and communicating you could easily beat the cluster that randomly put together teams usually turn in to. Not to say it's not still fun joining a random team online as everyone seems to play like madmen, there was one noticable time I came up against a group playing together as they were frustratingly organised but usually it's just crazy.
   You can go from 1 on 1 up to 4 on 4 and there is local multiplayer and offline modes with bots too. There's a simple season mode in there that you can play alone or in local multiplayer as well as the usual exhibition mode plus training modes to practice (and man do I need to, I appear to be dreadful at it). The cars are customisable, you can change they type, the paintwork, the flag you fly, wheels, smoke and car-hats (naturally). The game also keeps track of all your stats which is fun to see how many games you've won, goals you've scored etc. XP is easy to come by for things like clearances, assists, goals, overhead kicks, saves and just generally completing a match without quitting so you tend to unlock something new for your car after every match

   The only real problem I have is that it's a bit Americanised, so there's no draws, you go to 'overtime' until you get a winner in case of a draw at full time and in season mode it's not simply done on a league table, you HAVE to go to a playoff at the end of he season. It's football damn it, not soccer!
  These personal annoyances aside, I can't put this game down, there's so much stuff I have to do around the house but I'm just losing hours to Rocket League, hell, writing this was difficult enough (at least there's some Scrapheap Challenge on to keep me entertained). The best part though is if you have a PS4 with PS plus, it's free throughout July (it's also on steam for non ps4 owners). Get it now!

Batman: Arkham Knight

   2 games in (well, 3 technically but let's ignore Origins as it's a spin off) and the Batman: Arkham series already showed promise of being one of the best game series ever. Those first 2 games were just that good, but now after several years and a jump forward in console generations the trilogy is complete, and here's what I thought (spoilers for Arkham Asylum and City to come).
   You know a game is going to be good when the voice of Mike Ehrmantraut opens it up. The ominous beginnings that threaten the life of Batman, a threat which unless you collect 250+ Riddler trophies (and come on, who can be arsed with that? not me!) you'll never see (apart from anywhere on the Internet). This leads on to what proves to be a great story, led on brilliantly by the Joker, who died in City, but is now in Batman's mind, leading him astray and putting a light hearted view on a game that at times becomes somewhat too serious given the subject matter.
   Anyway, to the game and it must be said that yet again the hand to hand combat and predator fights are as good as they always were. They haven't really been improved much though, you could argue why change something that works so well but at they same time, come on. Especially given what they do seem to have spent so much time on and how tedious it is and I'm talking of course about the much maligned Batmobile.
   Oh dear, what happened with the Batmobile? The amount of tank missions in the game is ridiculous, they're forced in to the game frequently. I can understand them wanting you to play their new addition to the game frequently, but it is the worst part of this game, or any of the Arkham games by a long way. Basically the Batmobile turns in to a tank and you have to hold off a bunch of other tanks as you defend whatever thing it may be, a bomb you're defusing, a chemical plant worker, Poison Ivy, yourself or dozens of other excuses for this. It just seems like a gameplay mechanic that would have felt at home on the PS1. I don't want to go on and on about it, and I will say that it's fun to leap off a building and call in the Batmobile and land in it, and it is a much faster way to get around if you, like me, begin to get bored gliding around and wish there was a fast travel system. The Riddler races are pretty good though, as are the APC chases, though if I never have to do vehicle platforming again in my life I'd be delighted.
 

      Moving back to the story then and the big question throughout the majority of the game if who is the Arkham Knight? I won't give it away here but suffice to say that they make it very obvious, if I can figure it out then it must be simple (joke, I'm actually highly intelligent...). I have to question the set up to the game somewhat as well, sure, Scarecrow (Joker's replacement as main bad guy in this game) scares everyone off with his poison gas leaving just Batman and the emergency services, so the criminal element can take over Gotham, but why not attack a city that isn't guarded by a Superhero? I'm clearly not a comic reader and am probably looking too much in to it, but why would dozens of super villains lead this attack on one city that's guarded by 'The Bat' If they all split up and took a city each chances are some of them would be successful.
   I will say though that on top of the good story there are a nice mix of side missions. They mix up all the different types of gameplay well and there's always something different to do. Unfortunately with the bomb diffusing there is yet more tank combat but this is really the only time you have to do it outside of the story. The only real issue is that you have to complete all of the side missions to get the 'proper' ending (as I reffered to back at the start) including all of the Riddler trophies and frankly, after just spending so much time playing The Witcher 3 I can't be bothered now to spend dozens of hours in another game doing side missions. I already know that's coming up in Metal Gear and Fallout later this year and I already want tighter games that are more focused, I understand People want more content, but I'm beginning to want less. Anyway, that was quite a tangent, all I was trying to say is, good variety in side missions.

   I'd just like to point out a few other bits, like how the game froze about a dozen times for me (playing on Xbone) but fortunately the game autosaves frequently so it wasn't too much of a worry. The game apparently doesn't work on PC either. Plus as just another silly comic thing, I find it hilarious when things just have 'bat' put in front of them to refer to them belonging to Batman, like 'Bat-Computer' (made me laugh anyway).
    All in all though it's another good entry in the Arkham series, but I would say it's the weakest of the 3 purely thanks to the Batmobile. The rest of the game remains as good as it's ever been (though it's starting to touch on being stale) and the story is fantastic.

Yoshi's Woolly World

   For once living in England actually means that something has come out here before North America. Anyone reading this from over there will still be waiting until October until this game lands over there, but here in Europe, and indeed most of the rest of the world the game has already been out a few weeks. Of course there is the issue that barely anyone actually owns a Wii U, but I'm choosing to ignore that and go on about this game anyway.
   First things first, this is the most stylish looking game I've ever played. The Wii U may not be the most powerful system out there but just as always Nintendo gets the best out of its machines and the wool effect is stunning. The way the game looks, the little animations from when you gobble up enemies, the way lava is made out of wool and every little thing in the game is stylised in wool, it's not just that things in the game are made of wool, it's that the game IS wool.

   For me though, it hasn't fully captured style down though because I found the music pretty disappointing. As someone who grew up playing 8/16 bit platfromers (albeit Sega) I love the music that goes with these style of games and normally the more modern 2D platformers, be they indie games or bigger budget games (like Mario) the music is normally nailed on and awesome. What I'm obviously building to here is that I found the music boring in this. It wasn't cheery or threatening or iconic. It was just there and frankly about 1/3 of the way through the game I muted it and listened to other stuff instead. The music in 2D platformers is commonly one of my favourite things in them and can turn what is frankly a mediocre game in to something I'll happily play just to listen to the soundtrack, but unfortunately not here.
   So, I'll cover the basic story. Everything is wool for some reason and Kamak comes to Yoshi's island and murders a load of Yoshi's to collect their wool for some never explained evil scheme. But the remaining few Yoshi's aren't happy, obvs, so chase him down to get the wool back (I do wonder though, why Kamak doesn't collect the wool from inanimate environments so he doesn't have to do any murdering, nor will he be chased down).
   The actual game then I guess. To be honest, by the time I'd finished world 2, I was ready to give up. It was slow and gimmicky constantly and I had lost interest. If it wasn't for this blog I wanted to write that literally dozen of people read then I may have given up. I pushed on though and was glad. They took a long time to introduce many of the systems to you, but by the time you get to world 4 the game is fantastic. The challenge picks up and the feeling of reward grows massively. The feeling you have when you complete a well crafted  level of a 2D platformer has always been special to me and the last 20+ levels of this game all gave me that feeling.
   I normally hate boss battles in anything, it's always felt to me like a hold on from a time of arcades where they were desperately after your 20p's, or a way to artificially make a game seem harder than it is. Sure, I get that games like Dark Souls do just bosses and people like that, but then you just have to think of Deus Ex: Human Revolution to see the opposite side, and that's the side I stand on. But here they are some of the best I've played. They have the classic Mario 3 hit boss style, but with each hit the movements and attacks slightly change and become more difficult, but as long as you're paying attention you can get them without a sense of the game screwing you over as I so often feel with Bosses. The one thing I'd like to say though is that maybe Kamak should change his name to Rita Repulsa as he's constantly making his monsters grow.

      There is plenty more to go back and collect too, hidden balls of yarn and sunflowers to unlock different coloured Yoshi's and secret levels if you can be bothered (I can't). There are helpful 'badges' you can buy on levels that are proving too difficult for you, such as not hurt by fire, run faster, magnetic pick ups and many more that you pay for with the gems you collect in game, and are occasionally given handily for free. Can't say I ever needed them, but I did use them when free, why not? (was very easy then though).
   As long as you've got the patience to slog through the slow start to the game, then this becomes a very good game and well worth a play (provided you like 2D platformers (frankly if you don't then you're wrong)). It looks so stunning it's untrue as well, but I do wonder If Yarny will out do it though (although it has a slightly different style).

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.