Bloodborne review

    Bloodborne is one of the seminal Souls-like games and is something that was recommended to me if I liked “Castlevania, HP Lovecraft, and Ravenloft.” Which, by and large, I certainly do. It has been out for about ten years and pretty much the opinion has been decided on the game: it’s good, very good. Great even. However, there’s a decent chance you might not have played it even if you picked up Elden Ring. It was a PlayStation exclusive and remains so. I managed to miss it the first time around but as I did enjoy Elden Ring, I thought it’d be a fun excursion to try the game as an almost complete newbie. I would go in cold on the game and experience it as a player who was running it on the PS5.

    The premise of Bloodborne is left deliberately vague and the storytelling is primarily done through gameplay and inference rather than actual dialogue or narration. Still, it starts off as reasonably straightforward. In a Enlightenment-Era world of Muskets and Top Hats, you are a sickly man who has journeyed to the city of Yharnam to seek a supposed miracle cure. You take this cure but are forced to sign a strange contract before you do. You wake up in an abandoned clinic, find out the city is overrun with werewolves, and everything gets worse from there.

    While not quite the technical marvel that Elden Ring would be, you can clearly see where most of that game’s best parts came from. The big differences between it and Bloodborne are that you can’t jump, you don’t use a shield (but a gun), and that the open world is much smaller as well as more compact. Even if these come with caveats as you can fall on top of enemies from above, the gun is the chief parrying mechanic (you shoot during enemy attacks), and the maps are incredibly well-designed to make use of every bit of space.

     A comparison to Metroid or Symphony of the Night is warranted as much of the map’s use is based around the fact that you’ll discover shortcuts as well as ways to get around the vertical nature of the design. Much of a level’s exploration will involve backtracking but to discover hidden locations and secrets rather than simply as filler. For example, one of the earliest locations in the game is a multi-story clinic that you pass several gates to on your way out. Later in the game, you find a back entrance that will allow you to the second and third stories that have their own plots.

    The monster design is fantastic with most early game enemies being human mobs, Wolfman-esque enemies, and full on-werewolves. As the Hunter, you ironically find yourself faced with other monster hunters and the corrupt Church of Healing as often as nastier enemies. These give way to massive giant enemies as befitting Dark Souls as the only thing better than fighting a werewolf is fighting a giant werewolf. My favorite boss in the game is a giant werewolf nun and that tells you the kind of wackiness you’ll find in Bloodborne.

    Lore-wise, the world is extremely well-designed with the Lovecraft homages being a late-game addition that I won’t get into lest I spoil some of the enjoyment. Suffice to say, the game is best considered to be Gothic Horror for the first half and cosmic horror for the second. I love the NPCs as well with a definite “less is more” attitude with them: Gehrman, the Plain Doll, Eileen the Hunter and others are all awesome.

    The design is where I really give the game its highest credit because the levels are beautiful beyond belief and successfully invoke the horror movie atmosphere in a way that is distinctly Japanese. It’s simultaneously so over the top that it seems like anime but still serious enough to be taken as horror. Yharnam is a massive ancient city with mammoth constructions but is on its last legs due to the Beast Plague. From the highest towers to the lowest sewers, you get to enjoy its amazing world-building.

    The DLC, “The Old Hunters” is a fantastic expansion to the game and worth picking up if you enjoy the base game. It explains a great deal of the backstory to the game as well as provides context to the many Hunters who are mentioned throughout the game. It also contains a bunch of allusions to “The Shadow over Innsmouth” but with a more depressing take.

    In conclusion, Bloodborne was a fantastic game in 2015 and remains so in 2025. Perhaps it’s not quite as impressive as Elden Ring these days but its gothic atmosphere and surreal mythology are all things that make it worth playing. The game is punishing for beginners but gradually you will learn the rhyme and reason of the combat system. A lot of enemies are better run around getting to where you need to go than run through. Even so, there’s a lot of ways to make the game easier too if you know where to look. 

Available here 

Robocop: Unfinished Business review

    ROBOCOP: UNFINISHED BUSINESS is not quite DLC and not quite a true sequel to the excellent ROBOCOP: ROGUE CITY game by Teyon. I really love Robocop and he remains one of my all-time favorite cyberpunk works of fiction. OCP, Ed-209, the black humor, and a surprisingly nuanced jab at the idea of police to save us (where only Alex Murphy and Lewis do any good) stick in my mind decades later. Rogue City managed to capture a lot of what made the original movie (and to a lesser extent its sequel) great. Part of this had to do with getting Peter Weller back for the role and much like Robert Englund as Freddy, accept no substitutes.

    Unfinished Business is transparently an homage to the 2012 Dredd film, which was itself an homage to The Raid. Alex Murphy's home of Metro West is hit by a bunch of mercenaries that proceed to kill cops as well as steal his chair for their plan to create a device called the OCP Hijacker. This means that Robocop has to fight his way from the bottom of the massive facility to the top, going through a variety of mercenaries and drones until you can confront ex-cop, Cassius Graves. Along the way, you'll have some flashbacks to Alex Murphy's past as well as get to play a few other characters.

    Really, the best part of the game is the OmniTower itself. A massive arcology that is very different from what we've normally seen from the Robocop franchise, it is meant to be a place for all of Detroit's residents to be moved for Delta City. However, OCP didn't bother to finish the tower and massive numbers of people were doubled up in apartments that may not even have plumbing or living in unfinished levels. The environmental storytelling is fantastic and probably the thing to recommend most about the game.

    The gameplay is, unfortunately, just wave after wave of enemies in a huge number of arenas where you must blow away as many mercenaries as possible. The lack of gangs to fight is an issue because Robocop is one of the original colorful punk opponents. The Nuka gangs and bikers were some of my favorite part of Rogue City after all. Worse, there's no bosses and that is unfortunate since I really enjoyed fighting ED-209 and Robocop 2. Here, they could have made a tank or something but you don't even fight turrets--you just run around them.

    I feel like the villain is a bit bland as Cassius Graves being a ex-cop who somehow became a mercenary that thinks OCP isn't harsh enough on criminals (despite them wanting to exterminate the poor) doesn't really work as an enemy. It's extra weird given that Robocop 3 is next in the game world's timeline when they actively become Nazis. Still, I like the fact that the game deals with the fact that the criminals of Old Detroit have moved from being predators like Boddiker and becoming just the desperate that needs to resist.

    In conclusion, Robocop: Unfinished Business is an excellent game with a lot of value for your dollar. I'd buy that for thirty dollars, if I suppose. Still, it feels pretty undercooked for a sequel even if it's awesome for DLC. I'd say it has about eight to ten hours of content to play through if you want.

 7.5/10

Superman (2025) review

    SUPERMAN (2025) by James Gunn is a work that you certainly don’t need me to tell you to go see. Virtually the entire response to the movie has been nothing but positive and I’m not going to be a naysayer. After the controversial choices of Man of Steel, Batman vs. Superman, and Justice League, it’s interesting to see something go the other way to embrace goofy fun as an alternative.

    Of course, goofy fun is misleading because there’s a lot of darkness underscoring the wackiness in a way that James Gunn is a master of threading the needle for.mixing of both comedy as well as tragedy. This is something that I think will contribute to the longevity of this new incarnation of the DC Cinematic Universse as it is able to do incredibly dark stuff with Creature Commandos and Peacemaker but also moments of hilarity.

    The premise is that Superman has just lost his first battle fighting against Ultraman/The Hammer of Bulgravia after successfully preventing a war. James Gunn starts us in media res with the kind of comic book serialized storytelling that was the case when I was a child. Specifically, you picked up Amazing Spider-Man 203 and had to figure out what was going on as well as who was who. Superman has been a hero for three years at this point and it is a world full of superheroes.

    Basically, this movie is created with the explicit goal is making a world that can be built upon for future movies. We get seeds for the Green Lanterns, Supergirl, and possibly the Justice League as a whole. Characters like Guy Gardner, Mr. Terrific, and Hawkgirl not only make the world more lived in but they also answer an obvious question of: “what can threaten Superman?” In this universe, he might be the strongest superhuman but he’s not that by an overwhelming amount.

    The movie also jumps past the majority of typical drama with Superman’s supporting cast in a way that is very smart. Superman conceals his secret identity from the world as a whole but he doesn’t keep it a secret from Lois, Jimmy, or the Justice Gang. We also get a nod to the hilarious “Superman hypnosis glasses” that were a Silver Age explanation for why Superman couldn’t be recognized.

    The movie is surprisingly political but in a way that isn’t necessarily going to be noticed as such. The invasion of Borvaria, a United States ally, to a smaller “imperfect” country is something that occupies a lot of the movie’s conflict. Superman also has his immigrant status brought forward and his citizenship is revoked as an excuse by the government to imprison him without trial or rights. If you think this is against Superman’s values, well, you’re probably Dean Cain. I had a small issue with the handling of Jor-El and Lora-El but that’s mostly because I think it conflicted with the message.

    The handling of Lex Luthor is one of my favorite parts of the movie as they manage to elevate him to a malevolence that simultaneously feels believable but also grandiose. Ironically, this is the most human and least “savior”-like Superman but Lex Luthor does a good job as being a metaphor for Satan with his own underworld-esque Hell universe as well as an insane pride-driven motivation that will destroy the world if it means that Superman doesn’t get to save it. Given he’s a tech bro, that’s sadly also realistic.

    In conclusion, Superman (2025) is a fantastic movie and a great start off to the new DC cinematic universe. The movie “gets” Superman and the fact that it embraces its sillier side while also touching on darker themes (like Lex Luthor’s abuse of his girlfriends, threatening innocents, and the lack of respect for due process), makes it a Superman entry with something to say as well. I hate that the Engineer was used as a villain here but I think I’m probably like two or three who care about the character in the audience.

Book Updates for July 9th, 2025

 
I wanted to thank everyone for their support for these past year and apologize for not including as many updates as you guys have been paying for. We've got some great new updates that you deserve to hear, though.

• Jeffrey Kafer will start recording THE RETURN OF SUPERVILLAINY audiobook this August.
• TALES OF AN ELDRITCH WASTELAND is now available on audiobook. It is narrated by Gary Noon.
• We just finished on a new Books of Cthulhu Anthology, TALES OF SHUB-NIGGURATH.
• My next project will be the fourth and final Cthulhu Armageddon. 

I hope you'll check them all out.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga review

    Furiosa: A Mad Max Story is the prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road, one of the best movies of the 21st century as well as arguably the best of the Mad Max franchise. The movie was originally supposed to be filmed back to back with Fury Road, starring Charlize Theron, but events resulted in it being filmed a decade later with a new actress. The recasting and the long wait time may have contributed to its failure at the box office. There is also the question of how much of a niche property a Mad Max movie is without Mad Max.

    The premise is that Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy) is a young woman living in a desert oasis when she’s kidnapped by raiders and brought before wasteland warlord, Dementus (Chris Hemsworth). Dementus is a bizarre and flamboyant character, leading his biker gang as much on whim as anyone coherent strategy. Dementus adopts Furiosa, against her will, and kills her mother before her eyes. Thus begins Furiosa’s decade-long quest for revenge against the individual that involves rival warlord, Immortan Joe, and his army of War Boys. Furiosa also befriends a rig driver named Praetorian Jack, who may be something more.

    My opinion on the film? Well, it’s good but not great. A prequel is something that always has an uphill battle to win over viewers because a large amount of the tension is removed. We know Furiosa is going to live and eventually rebel against Immortan Joe. Thus it is on the movie to make side characters whose fates we care about or make the events compelling enough that we don’t care about knowing what is going to happen to them. Furiosa, unfortunately, doesn’t quite do either.

    Anya Taylor-Joy is likable enough as Furiosa but it is hard to believe she is the hardened protagonist of Fury Road. She is mostly silent throughout the film and while this is the case for Mad Max himself in most of the movies, this is a far more talky film than most of them. Some more scenes where we find out what she thinks of her Devil’s alliance with Immortan Joe and her relationship with Praetorian Jack would have been welcome. Indeed, the complete lack of romance scenes despite one being central to her relationship to Joe’s regime is unfortunate.

    As a result of Furiosa’s silence, Chris Hemsworth steals the movie for better and worse. The movie makes the bizarre choice to give him a fake nose and teeth, perhaps to distract from his natural good looks, as well as have him speak in an especially nasal voice that is just confusing. Dementus is perhaps the most interesting character in the movie, though, with a surprising amount of nuance. He does terrible, unforgivable, things in the movie but you understand his perspective. Indeed, part of the movie’s problem is Dementus is charismatic enough and Immortan Joe is so one-dimensionally evil that you root for the former against the latter. This despite Furiosa being on Joe’s side(ish).

    Really, the movie feels like a tamer and toned down version of Fury Road. Fury Road was in your face about its feminist message, contrasted with two hours of relentless action that, nevertheless, kept its message clear. Furiosa, at its worst, feels like the PG-13 Hunger Games version of the post-apocalypse. Furiosa is sold to Joe’s harem and it pretty much skips over that part (not that I wanted to see the trauma involved) despite the fact that seems like it is a pretty important part of her story. We also have only a couple of other women in the movie, none of whom really interact with Furiosa. She is, to quote a lot of bad fiction, “not like other girls.”

    Spectacle-wise, the movie also falls short. It’s a very pretty film, don’t get me wrong. Unfortunately, CGI is heavily relied on in this film to the point that it feels less gritty and grounded by a significant degree. Fury Road had some CGI, but it’s a lot more noticeable here. The characters pull off cartoonish stunts that make it feel like an anime at times. I think it says a lot about my opinion of the movie that some of my favorite parts of the film were the appearance of Mad Max video game characters like Scrotus and Chumbucket, canonizing them.

    It’s not a bad film, but if you want to know a single moment that defines it for me, it’s when Furiosa has been masquerading as a boy for years in the pits of Immortan Joe’s mechanics shop. The wind picks up at one point and reveals her beautiful flowing hair, revealing her to be a girl to Praetorian Jack, which says the movie didn’t think that Furiosa would shave her head to protect her identity. It’s the kind of thing that takes you out of the film.

Available here 

My small town protest

 
    I live in Ashland, Ky, which is a medium sized city in Kentucky (pop: 21,154) but surrounded by smaller towns like Russell (pop: 4000). Ours is a deep Red state but people who hate tyranny and the abuses of power going on in our country do exists. I'm a crazy leftist so I could be here all day saying what I hate about Trump but let's say I dislike deportations without trial to countries where we're paying to hold people indefinitely, the Medicaid cuts to pay for rich tax cuts, the cuts to foreign aid, and those damn tariffs.

    The "No Kings" protest is one of those things that are trying to show America that Donald J. Trump is someone who does not have a mandate to do the things he does. Only together all at once can you make a loud enough noise to actually make a difference. The fact it would happen on his birthday during his expensive parade misusing money that could be used to help Americans during these times of cuts was especially symbolic.

    Well the story begins with the fact that I wanted to attend this protest because, well, if I didn't attend this protest then any political beliefs I profess are just so much talk. You can't really claim to be an anarchist or progressive if all you do is talk smack on the internet. That's not activism, that's just being a troll. Everyone can complain on the internet but it takes the absolute BARE MINIMUM of effort to show up to a protest.

    I had multiple choices of places to go for my protest and considered Huntington because it was where I went to college. It would be a thirty or forty minute, which is nothing except for the fact that I am terrified of highways. Much to my surprise, though, there was one that was in my own city (okay, Russell) and I believed that I could do that one and if no one was there then I would go to the one in Huntington. I was annoyed it wasn't at my college, though, I shouldn't have been surprised since that isn't the kind of liberal activist school that loves progress but instead money.

    Unfortunately, the internet site that said where it was going to happen was rather frustrating in its directions and just said "outside the IHOP." I knew where this was because, again, I was going to the local one but it was weird they didn't say something more concrete. Still, I showed up and hoped there would be a modest crowd.

    Aiding me in this agenda was my nieces, all three of them from my wife's side (I have a niece from my late brother as well but she lives in Colorado). I have very little craft skill so they took the poster board I bought and made some very good signs. Notably, I wanted "NO KINGS, NO MASTERS" and "TRUMP IS A VILLAIN" for simplicity. They went a little further with their own that they wrote on the back including, "TRUMP IS A RA_IST" that isn't really my bag. They couldn't attend because their mother would kill them and also had made plans that couldn't be rescheduled due to not knowing about the protest.

    There was no one, which was not a good sign. Still, I decided to stay and hoped someone would show up. The stated protest time for this was only two hours and the worst I could do was simply display my niece's homemade sign for the good folk there to gawk at. I also debated going to Huntington anyway for what I hoped would be a larger gathering.

    One thing I did get as a benefit, though, was that I got a sense of how other Kentuckians who weren't as terminally online as myself were feeling about Trump. In this case, they had decided to join the protest because while they'd never been fond of Trump, it was the fact he was going after migrant workers they knew and businesses that employed them. The cruelty and pettiness of the administration was straight in their faces. Still, seeing only the three of us show up was something deeply deflating and they were debating going over into Ohio to another larger city (Ironton, population: 10,104). Given these numbers, you probably think that Appalachia is inhabited like Fallout's America with only a general store and some burnt out building frames. You'd be half-right.

    At this time in other cities, there were crowds of eighty thousand or more so I wondered if it was really worth it but saw, to my surprise, another couple arrive to join my one-man protest. They were from a neighboring church to mine and disappointed in the crowd side just like mine. We were a bit early but didn't have much faith things would change. 

    They did, though!

    While we were waiting for nothing to happen, much to our surprise, we started to hear a chant and discovered that the protest was going on! We just were at the IHOP itself and it was at the roadside where all the cars were passing. We were not alone! There were actually hundreds of people who had showed up that we couldn't see because we'd come in through the other side of the IHOP and the parking lot was full!

    An eccentric collection of people were present including a lady dressed as a Handmaid with the white bonnet and red dress. There was rain but the nice couple traded an umbrella for one of my signs. A lot of cars honked their horns in support and some shouted obscenities at us. In the end, it was a good experience. I was a part of something greater and I'm glad to have done something, however small.

Paradise (2025) review

    Paradise is a 2025 political thriller that shockingly diverts into a science fiction one after the first episode. It’s one of those things that is best experienced without spoilers so if you want to enjoy Paradise in the best manner possible, you should go and watch it without reading any further. It’s a good series. There are some flaws but it is a solid and serious take on the subjects it tackles. It also has a truly spectacular seventh episode. That’s about as much as I can say about the series without spoiling anything.

    You ready for more?

    Okay then.

    The premise for Paradise is that Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown) is the head of the United States Secret Service, protecting the President of the United States, Cal Bradford (James Marsden). Cal is assassinated and there’s a severe question of how the Secret Service could fail so utterly. A lot of allusion is made to things having gone horribly wrong as well as a once close friendship between the two that went horribly wrong. At the end of the first episode, we finally find at least one of those secrets out.

    You ready?

    No take backs.

    Specifically, the secret is that the two are living in a massive underground city and the rest of the world has been destroyed in some sort of unnamed catastrophe. The disaster was successfully predicted by a billionaire tech mogul, Samantha “Sinatra” Redmond (Julianne Nicholson) who used both her and their government’s resources to make a luxury bunker to ride out the apocalypse.

    Paradise basically takes the premise of Fallout and proceeds to do it completely straight. If I had to make a comparison, I’d say it’s what happens if you combine Fallout with Lost. Every character is carrying immense survivor’s guilt as well as dealing with a variety of tragic backstories. America was not in its best shape even before the apocalypse and what happened to the surface world is another driving mystery. We get a decent set of answers to most of the pressing questions but, like all good writing, adds more questions.

    Sterling K. Brown does a fantastic job at making a lead that isn’t necessarily the most likable individual. His wife didn’t make it down to the bunker in time for it to be shut and his hatred for both the President he’s sworn to protect is only matched for his own. The fact his kids depend on him to provide a semblance of a normal life and the remainder of what qualifies as military force/security in the 10,000 person community falls under him doesn’t relieve his stress. James Marsden also gets to show off his acting chops as Cal is a somewhat Bill Clinton-esque figure who has his vices but was, ultimately, a good man in a horrifying situation. Much of the series deals with flashbacks to his tenure as President as well as setting up his life in the bunker.

9/10 

If the episode has a highlight and lowest point, it will be the seventh and eighth episodes. The seventh episode finally provides concrete answers as to what happened during the End of the World and how everyone responded to it. It is well-written, dramatic, and even genuinely horrifying at times. Some of the best television I’ve seen in the past decade. The eighth episode, sadly, provides a thoroughly unsatisfying answer to the President’s murder.

Paradise has a lot of themes of class consciousness, environmentalism, wealth inequality, government corruption, corporate malfeseance, and more but they’re all very subtle. All of the survivors in the bunker are the “lucky ones” that get to live in a climate controlled Rockwellian community while the rest of humanity has gone extinct (maybe). However, society is set up so there’s still people who clean the toilets, pour coffee, and serve an elite that doesn’t make any sense to have anymore.

In conclusion, I strongly recommend this series. It’s some of the best science fiction I’ve seen in years and certainly deserves to have many more people talking about it than I’ve seen. I was a bit disappointed by the final episode but absolutely want to see another season of this if not several more.