It was a dark and stormy night... Alright, it was actually sunny afternoon, but I'm trying to sound DARK here! As many know, the New York Comic Con ticket system has gotten a little more difficult to use each year, due to a large increase of people trying to get tickets. Last year was already crazy enough: The website completely crashed at 12 noon, the minute tickets went on sale, leaving the people who didn't already have the ticket link bookmarked in the dust. After finally getting in, you were placed into a queue and put on somewhat of an e-line with other people, to organize everyone by the order that they each log in. Eyebrows started to raise when people saw 3 and 4 day passes already sold out after being in said queue for over an hour. Compared to last year (2013 at the time), this was INSANE! It took over a week for tickets to sell out the previous year, and here they were selling out in less than an hour! I settled for a Saturday pass, bowed my head in shame, and called it an afternoon.
Surely things would be better this year? Well, right off the bat, we all knew that was highly unlikely. The popularity of events like these only increases from year to year, and boy do people LOVE to get in on NYCC! But still, even with more people trying to get in, I figured I had a shot. After last year, they probably prepared their servers for the worst, so it all had to be good this time, right? RIGHT!? Holy freaking salamander on a stick Batman! How WRONG we were!!!
So the process was more or less the same. You click on the ticket link they provide at 12 noon and they place you into the queue line. Page loads, little squiggly circles move around the screen, and we play the waiting game... until...
Dun Dun DUNNNNNNNNNN!!! Well, that one's new. Will reloading help? ... No? Okay... Now what? I decided to check the Facebook page with the ticket link, to see if any other unfortunate souls were having this issue. Turns out, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM was having the same problem! Now, before going all screwy on us, the queue page did say that our place would be held in line, even if we did get an error message. But that error message just didn't sound right to me. And on top of everything else, it had the NERVE to blame MY browser for this problem! How rude!!! I will have you know my Google Chrome browser is a motherf@#king BEAST, thank you very much! The queue page also had one more little gem of a quote: "In the unlikely event that you get an error page..." HA. Ha. Haa... *sobs*
So how did all of THAT turn out? Was I still in the queue after all of this pandemonium? Turns out, I actually still was! About an hour and fifteen minutes later, I finally reached the ticket selection page... Or so I thought. These people had the nerve to put in a survey with questions I HAD to answer! Why the hell does it matter whether I'm a male or a female NYCC? I just want my damn tickets!!! And on top of that, the page kept crashing every time I entered the information!!! WRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!
Okay, okay... So after about SIX MORE F@#$KING ATTEMPTS at reloading the survey page and refilling in the questions, I finally get to the ticket page. The moment of truth, I shout vehemently!!! We have at last arrived on the ticket page, and lo-and-behold! It still lists 3-day passes are available! I click the link for two 3-Day passes and rush to checkout, in the hopes this will somehow not give me a problem. Unfortunately, my life never quite works this way (as you may have noticed by my incurable CANCER and misadventures with Cable over the years). There was another error, and I had to reload the ticket page yet again. But OH NO!!! Now it says the 3-Day passes are sold out!!! ASKDFHKHAKDSNJDHFKAJNDKH123KHDAHRKJ!!1!!1!! What now!? Are there still 4-Day passes? Yeah? Okay, fine, let's just click that then. ANOTHER ERROR!!! WTFWHYISTHISHAPPENING!? Wait, now 3-day passes are available again!??? Okay, click... ERRORED!1! ... Aaaand, it's gone again. 4-Days again? Okay...
After doing this at least five more times, I finally got to the "payment method" page. "How can THIS go wrong?" I once again thought to myself, apparently causing the worst set of jinx's in the history of jinxing. First time, I clicked the Paypal option. PayPal is generally the safer route to go, so I of course clicked it. ERRORED B*TCH!! What now!? Back to the page. Click credit card?... SUCCESS! I had no idea why, but I'd run out of questions by that point and my arms were getting tired from all the flailing around.
SO, finally.. finally... FINALLY!!!! It freaking worked. After all the turmoil, the errors, the near heart attack, and my arm (literally) falling off from all the flailing, I finally obtained the coveted tickets!!! I was very glad that what I had read on the queue page was actually correct, and that my place in line WAS in fact held during all of the e-riots. However, I had heard that not all soldiers came out of this one alive, as many were unable to get tickets, and some even claimed that their friends (who logged into the queue later) got to the ticket page before people who logged in at 12:00 noon, and were still waiting. WAT!? I seriously hope this was not the case, but who the hell knows? Certainly not I.
I would like to thank the people at NYCC for making me feel such a crazy rush of emotions all at once. I don't remember the last time I felt anger, grief, anxiety, nervousness, and immediate relief all in the same few minutes. And those are the things that remind me I'm still a human being, let alone an ugly decrepit one.
5 Scalper-Sold VIP Badges Out Of 10
Now I can truly flash my tickets around town and look like a true bad-ass, and also have the joy of not having to have bought from scalpers! They're going to think I'm rich or something!!! Would suffer again.
It took me a while to get back to this (as Bloodborne kind of took over my entire life once it came out!), but it was all very worth it. I'm planning to use footage from this for a new series I'm starting, called "Indie Corner." I hope to work on my video editing skills more, in order to make something truly fun and memorable, focusing on indie games (some famous and some not so famous). In the meantime, enjoy the playthrough footage here! This game was no cakewalk!!!
*ahem* Ah, excuse me. Sorry. So I guess you may have noticed that the new Avengers movie is out and I'm just trying to regain my composure after seeing it. Marvel movie events (especially of THIS grand a scale!!!) are always a big big deal. It's no coincidence that Free Comic Book day also happens to follow it. Marvel knows how to hop people aboard the HYPE TRAIN, and it doesn't seem to be showing signs of letting up anytime soon. These movies are more than just stand alone products, but rather pieces of a larger narrative that always seem to come to a head around the time a new Avengers film hits the theaters. Now, let's be honest here; there was NO way a movie like this was going to live up to the hype that people set for it, especially after the first amazing entry. I guess what I'm saying here is people need to take time to enjoy things more and shut the hell up! Quit being so nitpicky all the damn time. Ah, language...
Okay, so I'm going to be a little nitpicky, as it's a review and that's just how these things work. Deal. Funny thing about this movie; it actually has NOTHING in common with the Age of Ultron comic of the same name. Why am I okay with this? Because that comic was actually disappointing as all hell for many readers, myself included! Joss Whedon only went with the title because he thought it worked well in the grand scheme of things. So if you're trying to complain that the movie doesn't resemble the comic in this case, you're likely just trying to sound cool or hipster-y, with your deerstalker hat and Starbucks coffee in hand at all times, like your life depended on it. You don't need that kind of hat in the spring time, damn you!!!
The plot to this movie is a bit more scatterbrained this time around, but it still works. After recovering Loki's scepter... again, Tony Stark convinces Bruce Banner to aid him in helping create Ultron, an alleged global defense program. This obviously does not work, because this movie would have been insanely boring otherwise. Ultron is alive and absolutely insane, hellbent on destroying all humans in order to "fix" the world. What's a superhero team to do!? That's for me not to spoil and for you to WATCH. (Seriously, why are not watching this already!? Is this part of that hipster-y thing I mentioned above?)
It wouldn't be big Marvel movie without NEW CHARACTERS to fit the bill!!! This time, we are curiously given both Wanda and Pietro Maximoff (ie. Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver). We've now seen Quicksilver in two movies (though I would argue his portrayal in this film was better than in Days of Future Passed), but this the first time we've ever seen the Scarlet Witch in anything live action from Marvel's side! Unfortunately, her character is actually pretty poorly depicted, though part of me is just happy to get her over-powered butt into these films finally. Their addition into this cinematic universe is weird as hell too, mainly because Fox still owns the rights to X-Men movies, and these two characters are clearly from the X-Men universe (as they are literally the son and daughter of Magneto himself!! CERMIC BERK TRIVIERR!!!11!!!!1!!). The Vision also makes his triumphant debut into the Marvel films with pretty positive results. His costume design and look are a little different from the original comic design, but it looks just fine to me.
This movie has some serious action; SO much action that you almost forget there's a plot from time to time. Thankfully, the plot that we CAN see in this is pretty good, albeit being more jumbled than a rubber band ball. Without going into too many details, you will feel like quite a bit is happening all at once, without feeling too overwhelmed from colorful superhero goodness at the same time. More elements were changed around from the comics books (Ultron's Origin, the birth of The Vision, the backgrounds of Wanda and Pietro, etc.), but this was to be expected. These things really don't have to be the same in order to be enjoyable, and I was still giddy like a 5 year old on Christmas morning despite.
The soundtrack is once again handled by mah boi Danny Elfman, who knows how to hit just the right notes and make these movies really sing. I can't even imagine these movies without his chops to back it all up. The visuals are also nothing short of incredible, as even I have a hard time figuring out when I'm looking at a green screen or actual scenery. I hope I can figure that out by the time I finish filming my own movie. When you stand in front of that screen, ANYTHING is possible! I could be running past dinosaurs with laser beams attached to their heads, while sliding across a rainbow into a bowl of Lucky Charms cereal, and wouldn't even realize!... And on that note, this now HAS to be a thing in the movie! It doesn't matter the reason. Dinosaurs with Lucky Charms, people!!!
People are going to have different thoughts on Black Widow's portrayal in this movie, but I don't really think they did her character justice in this one. After seeing a hell of a lot of great development from her in Winter Soldier, it was kind of disappointing to see Whedon take her back to the same place he had her around the time of the first Avengers film. I understand there's a lot of other characters you need to focus on in movies like this, but I wish we could have seen her as more than just that troubled woman throwing herself at a guy to make all her problems go away. One thing they did do right this time around was Hawkeye's development. After getting almost nothing about him information-wise last time, this was a great step up for his character, and the way that the rest of the team sees him.
So the movie has fights... LOTS OF THEM!!! Like, holy crap, martial arts movies would be jealous of the amount of fights this movie contains! If you came for action, you will not be disappointed. It was fast, frantic, but most of all follow-able (F to the third???). I can imagine people talking about the "Hulkbuster" scene alone for years to come. I'm still trying to figure out how Hawkeye mysteriously never runs out of arrows, but I really don't want to be "that guy." Trust me, you NEVER want to be "that guy." Something that made the action even more interesting was that unlike The Man of Steel, and other such comic book movies, the Avengers actually take the time to SAVE PEOPLE in this! I don't remember the last time I saw actual lives being saved in one of these, and it was refreshing to finally see for a change. Personally, I'll probably be doing the exact opposite once my awesome movie rolls around, but hey, that's to be expected. These people have a job to do! I do a different kind of work. It all comes with the territory (stabby stabby stabby).
8 Cap Language Jokes Out Of 10
At the end of the day, this movie was pretty boss, despite pacing issues and the other gobbledygook I mentioned above. Seriously, this is the stuff to see in the movies right now! You will not regret it, even if you do come out feeling a little underwhelmed. I'm more psyched about my own movie however. Now, how am I going to pitch to Fox that we need to throw in a dinosaur with a laser beam attached to its head in this?...
