Adi Shankar planning R-rated Power Rangers cartoon
Originally this was going to be a reply to a post on Rangerboard under my Riderkid name but as I kept writing, I realized this would work better as an actual article. Be prepared. I get brutal. also thanks to DukeNukem 2417 for the original post I replied to.
Part of me just wanted that little toad to fade into obscurity with Dragonball Evolution and the rash of Anime live action movie in the mid 2000s but it seems he's back... again...
I love what you wrote BTW. It's actually what I would have wrote to say why this guys is completely insane! The problem with getting something 'Dark' and 'Adult' and anything like that is that you can't without weighing the risks.
With a series like Power Rangers in America, the risk isn't worth the reward. In Japan, merchandise at least is good enough that a risk for a 13 episode series was good for Kamen Rider Amazons and it did well enough that merchandise was commissioned, sold, made a profit, led to them bringing the series to Amazon over here and greenlighting a second season.
Power Rangers relies on merchandise and even if he got the series on Netflix or Hulu, It's gonna be an SFX nightmare without the budget to back it up. Shows like Amazons and the Netflix Marvel shows don't have heavy effects budgets and are well written enough and marketable enough that they made money back fast either through merchandise rights, Bandai's work with Toei, Amazon's Prime service or Netflix's service plans.
With an R rating, this would tank toy sales. It's now a year after the release of Batman V Superman and my local stores can't give the toys away. the prices on them keep lowering and lowering to the point that figures are 3 dollars and vehicles are getting removed for Kong Skull Island Merchandise.
R ratings are basically death sentences to some toys and an R rating to a toy line that's basically always been a Hard G bordering PG for over 20 years would basically be a death sentence.
The way Shankar is saying it, he plans on this being some sort of animated series and although that sounds like a way to make it cheaper, does that sound like a good idea?
Think about TV series like Spaceballs, Allen Gregory and more that decided to go animated. They went with the cheapest, sloppiest animation studios they could get away with and it showed. Cheap stilted animation, horrible flash animation, uncanny valley doll eyes. Stuff of nightmares.
And now onto part... What am I on? 3? 8? 4? Let’s say 4. On where Mr. Shankar will cut corners.
Voice acting.
Now obviously he won’t get the original cast from the first season seeing as some have left the industry, 1 would kick his ass and another is dead but in this day and age that isn’t a problem. Quality voice actors are available that can sound like the originals.
Now, take what I just said about the animation and post it here.
All you are probably asking why I’m so negative about this? Why am I being so rude to a guy I’ve never met? Why I would get this riled up?
This son of a bitch is in charge of Castlevania. He shoud be focusing on Castlevania right now. Not something he has no right talking about.
In fact, It’s been almost a year since I logged in. Welp, a good reason for that. I was asked to come back to Geimaku aka Gaimaku...
Then I was never paid...
nor given review codes to do reviews... nor even reimbursed for games I had to purchase out of pocket... nor given creative control on my articles as I was told not to be negative towards companies as to ‘not ruin a working relationship with them’... nor could I even go back and fix older articles that no longer had pictures, had dead links or just looked unprofessional now thanks to a year of downtime and loss of all the site assets.
Oh, then the site shut down again 2 weeks ago despite saying the site was fully paid for up til April... Smooth.
So yeah. I will be returning to here full time.
Starting the first Friday in February, I will be posting my new series, Silence is Golden. It’s a silent Let’s Play series built like a TV series. It’s a 10 episode series and will run until April with Bioshock 1 to run afterwards in Early June.
Review Wise, I will be returning with Resident Evil 7: BioHazard on February 14th.
After that, I will figure out what else to do but rest assured, I’m back. I am also working on a Patreon but instead of living expenses, it will be used to pay for reviews and such.
It's weird that I'm writing an obituary. I don't write these at all and the last time was for Satoru Iwata. This one feels a bit more personal...
I never met Eiji Ezaki. I never met the man that became Hayabusa. I never knew him. So why is it that when I heard about his passing I felt as sad as I was when I heard about the passing of Dusty Rhodes, Robin Williams or even, yes, Satoru Iwata.
The reason is that it was him who got me into Japanese wrestling.
I was a big Mick Foley fan in the early 2000s and bought anything with his picture on it and ended up buying a FMZ video called King of the Deathmatch. The main event was Hayabusa and Masato Tanaka Vs Terry Funk and Mr Pogo in a exploding ring deathmatch. I remember Hayabusa jumping a good 10 feet out of the ring over a barbwire landmine to take out Terry Funk.
At the time, I thought he was a Sabu rip off with the pants but the more I watched, the more I was intrigued. I wanted to see what he could do out of a deathmatch setting and I got my wish.
FYE was getting rid of a ton of VHS tapes and I was able to get more and more Hayabusa thanks to Tokyopop. I got to see his awesome championship matches with Mike Awesome, his emotional feud with Mr. Gannosuke, his brutal matches with Kodo Fuyuki and Team No Respect.
Thanks to sites like Off The Rop Rope, I was able to see his amazing Jushin Liger matches and many more. I got to watch matches with a man who could defy the definition of gravity, move his body like water and no matter what, never quit.
Sadly, he was forced to quit.
He suffered a career ending injury attempting a springboard moonsault in a match against Mammoth Sasaki. The injury led to 2 cracked vertebrae and the end of his career. This never stopped him. The rest of his life was spent not letting this stop him. He recently starting walking again with a cane and was the returning FMW's Executive Producer.
Sadly, a Subarachnoid hemorrhage ended his life this week at the age of 47.
Ezaki was the FMW Heart and soul like Sting to WCW and Tommy Dreamer to ECW. A wrestler who stayed loyal to the company until it either closed or he retired and sadly, the choice was not his.
Ezaki was a risk taker and was one of the greatest showman in Puroresu history. He took risks, made moves his own and like his nickname 'The Phoenix' he was gonna rise again and again to achieve victory.
Hayabusa is a reminder that no matter how bad the odds... you can achieve anything.
Eiji Ezaki survived by his Ex wife and 2 kids whom he still had a good relationship with.
Championships and accomplishments (Thank you to Wikipedia)
All Japan Pro Wrestling
All Asia Tag Team Championship (1 time) – with Jinsei Shinzaki
It's come to my attention that the word 'worst' might be overused to me. It seems last year I called tons of the games 'the worst things I've ever played' but to others they might be the greatest things ever.
This year, I basically bet my money on games that just sucked. To me, sucking is worst than being the worst. These games took my money, promised the world and hid that world behind microtransactions and $50 DLC packs. This year, we got taken for a ride and these games ruined what free time I had.
These are the top 5 games that sucked in 2015
5. Heavensward: Final Fantasy XIV
This is mostly just a loser by default moment. As much as I enjoyed Heavensward, I still think it was grossly underwhelming. This is why this a list of games that sucked this year and not worst games of the year.
Heavenswards gotten better but this thing was very, very underwhelming due to lack of content. We still haven't gotten the new relic weapons, most of the story content is still not here and the new 24 raid is just meh in some cases. Heavensward isn't bad but it IS a game that needs more fun stuff to do...
Also, why isn't there a Christmas Event this year? I mean, I always look forward to it every year! I even glamoured all my gear to Christmas themed for the Holiday!
Note: This list was written BEFORE the relic weapons AND the Christmas even were added last week. Still no excuse.
4. Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 (Xbox One)
Hoo boy.
I am going to get emails for this one. In 2010, I put Black Ops 1 on my top 5 worst list when I worked for MOD5569 and I regret that everyday. I never realized how bad the series would get at this point. I always look forward to a Treyarch entry of the series since they seem to try and make the games better but this year, they phoned it in.
Trying to play the game felt... boring. It's weird considering how insane Advanced Warfare was and how good Black Ops 2 was. The campaign was a sluggish, the multiplayer just not fun and Zombies, which is Treyarchs staple, was just not good this year. Every year we're promised a Zombies campaign with them and then we get the same thing with a different coat of paint.
Save your money or better yet, buy Advanced Warfare. It's cheaper, more fun and has Kevin Spacey.
Remember how I called you the worst MMO I ever played? How I wished you'd die a painful death? How it took less than an hour for me to quit and delete you to get my money back? How you are honestly the biggest, blatant cash grab ever made. My brother, who's a die hard fan of The Elder Scrolls, said the game is a piece of crap.
To give you an idea how bad this game is, Bethesda is having a contest to a player to win a million dollars.
I wouldn't pay 10 bucks for the game.
2. Star Wars Battlefront (PS4)
WHY! WHY! WHY! WHY! WHY! WHY! WHY! WHY!
I basically played the whole game in an hour and ended up regretting paying full price for this. This was so small and didn't feel like Battlefront. I feel like this was a cash grab to cash in on the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Not out at the time of this writing). Instead of taking another year and giving us a game that respects Battlefront Classic fans, we get a game for Battlefield fans instead.
I remember Battlefront 1 (not 2. 1) Had tons of maps, good gameplay and was downright fun. Battlefront 2 was even bigger with space battles, map playlist and everything available at launch. The worst this is that Battlefront 3 was in production before this and instead of using those assets, they made this.
Not worth $60 while we can still do private servers on Battlefront 2 on PC.
And now, the dishonorable mentions.
Devils Third (Wii U)
Did not play it but reviews are... bad.
Godzilla (PS4)
Still have too much respect for the big G and will a new movie next year... I didn't play it out of respect knowing it would suck.
Destiny (PS4)
Look at my entry last year. Did not feel like recycling it at this point.
Jem: The movie (Depths of Hell)
Alvin and the Chipmunks 4: Road Chip (Depths of Hell)
Ok... I'm now delaying. I'm sorry but this game made me realized how advertising LIES TO US!
1. Halo 5
No ones gonna take me alive but this game took my damn wallet for a ride!
This game lied in it's advertising in the worst way. In my opinion, this is the time to pass to torch to a new main character but they played it safe and kept Chief the good guy by default. A change of pace would have made this game a bit better but that's just the tip of the iceberg.
The same game. Over and over, nothing changes. If Black Ops 3 is boring then Halo 5 was anger inducing. Here's something I said in the review for this game.
Bungie’s last Halo game, Reach, should have been an epic swan song to the series that opened the door to new heroes and characters and instead it seams like I entered a holding pattern for Master Chief in Halo 5.
I was looking forward to Locke being the new hero of the series but instead it seems it will be like ODST: A bunch of cool new characters being thrown away for Master Chief.
Wanna know whats worse? I said something ELSE in that review that led to to me putting it on the top of this list.
Remember Halo 2? Remember how Bungie set EVERYTHING up to a great finale and then just abruptly ended cause they wanted it all to happen in the sequel? How Bungie decided to rather than build it up and have a great finale but instead held out for another sequel that was sort of in the air considering how no one knew if it would sell well?
Of ALL the things 343 could have taken from Bungie… That was what they took from them.
The ending sets up an epic story that will take almost 3 years to be made and we have to wait and by then, I’m gonna forget WHY I waited. It’s kinda sad that in this day of DLC add ons that we’ll have to pay 60 bucks for what should be an expansion of Halo 5.
That's about it.
That's Halo 5 in a nut shot. Wanna know whats even worse? I gave them too much credit. This wasn't a great story. This was a generic story. This was a by the books, generic, boring plot with AI betraying humanity, fighting aliens and a Face/Heel turn so bad that I decided to go watch some 80s wrestling for some better story telling!
This game was a holding pattern game. We'll be playing as Master Chief in the next game with Locke and his team thrown into the trash or killed offscreen and it leasing to an 'epic' conclusion.
Halo 5 sucked more than any other game cause I thought it would be different but instead, it's just the same game with the same protagonist with the same assets being used to make the same game with an extra set of skins.
Thanks for reading. Hoping that 2016 is better than 2015. Let's hope I have an actual writing job again.
feel like I've said this before but I feel torn. Oh wait... I did say it once.
...Before the nightmare child.
This time it's different since I like this game. I didn't have high hopes, I didn't think it would be perfect. I didn't expect a masterpiece.
At this point, I would have been happy if it actually worked. With the amount of games being released broken, buggy or without files on Steam and yes, that happens, A game having less bugs than it's price tag is amazing and especially with multiplayer.
The weird thing is the story is not really what you'd call amazing. After apprehending Doctor Halsey from Covenant insurgents, Spartan Locke (from the Halo: Nightfall series) leads a team to Meridian to find Master Chief. Meanwhile, Master Chief months after losing Cortana leads a team from his training days (Blue Team from the novels...Yes, the novels are canon) to secure a derelict ship before the same Covenant insurgents can get it. This leads to a pretty decent parallel story where you play as both the Chief and Locke.
The weirder thing? The marketing for this game paints Chief as this huge traitor selling out the UNSC and humanity... This is a bold face lie. Yes, the Chief goes AWOL. No, he did not do it to sell out humanity. I cannot tell you WHY he goes AWOL as I cannot spoil anything but at the same time, the marketing is really misleading.
It makes Chief in some ways seem like a monster but in reality he is a military man through and through. He will go that extra step to fight. In fact, the characters are pretty well thought out... If you've read anything else in the canon.
Problem 1 this game has is that all and I mean all the backstory for characters is in other material.
Spartan Locke: His backstory is in other stories.
Osiris (Buck, Tanaka, Vale): Other stories.
Blue team (Kelly, Fred, Linda) OTHER STORIES!
I usually have issues with games doing this. This is why I cannot recommend the Kingdom Hearts series since it requires a ton of games to play but it's made easier now with most of the games now on PS3 as remix sets. To know who all the characters in this game are, you need to read or watch 26 different pieces of fiction to know who most of the character are. For me this is simple, I know who Blue Team is from the novels and Buck is from ODST but it would be nice to know who anyone else is!
Whats even worse is that we only get tiny blurbs about the characters later in the game... near the end of the game... as intimidation tactics... from the new antagonist... that I cannot tell you who it is... cause it's spoilers... Ugh.
I've spent a whole page of this review just talking about the story and yet I have not gotten to the actual game itself yet.
Graphically, the game is amazing to look at. The skies are amazing to look at and have so much happening in them. Weapons are pretty cool and have all been redesigned and I'll get to why in the gameplay. Each area is fun to explore and some levels are all about exploration rather than combat.
It helps as the previous game (Halo 4) had more enclosed areas throughout most of its game. It's welcome and shows that 343 have come a long way since... Master Chief collection.
I really have nothing to say since the graphics are on par with Halo 2's remake from last year. I never reviewed that game since at launch it was so broken that it felt bad kicking something while it was down... plus, I was still playing through Sunset Overdrive. That game was fun.
Audio is well done and I will say this now: Everyone does a good job but Nathan Fillion is the best thing in this game. He makes it a fun experience whenever he speaks and he is the biggest highlight.
The best thing is the music. The classic Halo theme is reworked with what I think is the breakout track from the previous game (117). The music is well designed and fits many different situations. I recommend hunting the track down on Youtube as there are many recreations of the song. It's a stand out track... I really have nothing else to talk about on these 2 fronts.
I know. Weird huh?
Let's jut get to the game play and talk about the good, the bad and the why did they do that?
The Good
Gameplay is more traditional to the Halo series. After all these added special abilities, modules, It's just nice to come back ti simple Halo with Assault Rifles, Battle Rifles and overpowered Magnums. The games Multiplayer is more skill based as well but in a good way. What happens is you play 10 rounds of a certain mode and the game takes your Kill/Death/Assist ratio and assigns you a rank. Every 10 rounds it judges if you're good enough to upgrade but you never go lower so you can't go from Silver to bronze.
It's a great way to make sure that newer players aren't thrown into a nightmare house and killed en mass by a bunch of legendary players.
Another new addition is the 24 player Warzone mode. Essentially a horde mode meets large scale battle mode, This allows for the use of REQ packs. These packs give the players weapons, armor mods, XP and RP boosts, Vehicles and boosts. The victories can change from the simplest item brought onto the battlefield.
A few new weapons are added but are not really important to talk about since one of the them is a redesigned version of the SMG without the dual wield which makes no sense and the rest are just not worth talking about.
Multiplayer is still fun but that's all that matters to me.
The Bad
The games length. I enjoyed the game but it clocked in under 8 hours on normal. For me, that's OK. I didn't expect it to be that long on normal anyway but I can almost guarantee that some people will complain about the length. The other thing they'll complain about is the ending.
Without spoiling anything I will just say this: Remember Halo 2? Remember how Bungie set EVERYTHING up to a great finale and then just abruptly ended cause they wanted it all to happen in the sequel? How Bungie decided to rather than build it up and have a great finale but instead held out for another sequel that was sort of in the air considering how no one knew if it would sell well?
Of ALL the things 343 could have taken from Bungie... That was what they took from them.
The ending sets up an epic story that will take almost 3 years to be made and we have to wait and by then, I'm gonna forget WHY I waited. It's kinda sad that in this day of DLC add ons that we'll have to pay 60 bucks for what should be an expansion of Halo 5.
Why Did They Do That?
The Multiplayer is gutted. Only an handful of modes to start and they are basic modes. Wheres Infected? Grifball? Only a small amount of modes are in the game to start with 343 saying that they'll add more later. I don't want later. If I am paying 60 bucks for this game then I want to be able to play some awesome game modes on custom maps... also, no forge. One of the series staples since 3 is nowhere to be seen and that seems just wrong.
I loved just seeing what stupid things I could do in forge in terms of explosions but now I can't do that.
But it pales in comparison to the biggest change to the series. A change that might as well divide the fanbase.
Microtransactions
Instead of working your ass off to get the helmet and armor pieces you wanted and mixing them up to make your own unique spartan, you now have to pay with either in game currency or real money for REQ packs. The only way to get armor now is through these REQ packs. Worse? The only way to guarantee armor is through Gold packs with cost $2.99/10,000 points.
Even worse? You can't mix and match armor pieces. One of the biggest staples from Halo 3 onward, something that was possible on the Xbox 360 in 2007 is not possible in 2015 on the Xbox One! This ruins of of the coolest things and the biggest reasons for me to play on and on til 5 in the moirning with only 4 hours until work.
Instead you have helmets and armor sets to swap. That's it. I want to be angry but I can guarantee the reason for this is the MLG circuit and making people more identifiable. The problem is that when you take someones unique look away and have it be a 50 percent of it being a different person.
Am I blaming 343 for a lot of this? YES! I AM BLAMING THEM FOR THIS! THEY MADE IT!
Do I hate them? Not really. For all I know, these came from corporate and they had no choice in it.
Not even gonna mention the split screen thing as they stated that they will be trying to get it in Halo 6 and maybe by the time this review goes up, they'll announce forge will be up in January along with more MP modes and maybe in 2016 they'll add armor pieces so people can have more personalized spartans.
Then again, maybe to me means shit.
This game was fun. I won't lie about about. I just wish it was MORE fun. Like Heavensward ( I really don't have a god turn around for reviews this year, huh?) I am being sold on the PROMISE of more things later. Unlike Heavensward, I didn't get tons of added content and some fun moments. I got Halo. I wanted more Halo.
Bungie's last Halo game, Reach, should have been an epic swan song to the series that opened the door to new heroes and characters and instead it seams like I entered a holding pattern for Master Chief in Halo 5.
I was looking forward to Locke being the new hero of the series but instead it seems it will be like ODST: A bunch of cool new characters being thrown away for Master Chief.
I'm being honest but I would wait. It's plenty of fun... Just not enough of that Halo we've come to expect.
Rating: 6/10
Pros: New characters are fun, story is decently put together, multiplayer is fun to play.
Cons: Not enough to warrant a day one purchase, feels like a holding pattern game.
