MC Impressions is a family owned and operated screen printing and embroidery business proudly serving customers in Claremont, California and the surrounding areas.
After developing a site for my good friend and expert hairstylist Rickey Windust, I was referred by Rickey to this small business to re-vamp their Business website.
One of the owners, Christine, reached out to me and we got to work. MC Impressions was a dream client to work with! I highly recommend anyone looking for screen printing, embroidery, or promotional products in the Los Angeles, Riverside, or San Bernardino county area to reach out!
First things first…. 10/10 on how I feel about my Nintendo Switch purchase. I never thought a console could get me away from PC gaming, and certainly not playing the same games (less optimized, and with a controller – which I hate) on a PS4 or XBox One (that’s still the iterations, right?).
No, I don’t want to play Call of Duty 10 or God of War 15. Just looking at the lineup for PS4 makes me feel bad for people who were ripped off by these garbage games:
Really? That’s the lineup?
Aside from the fact that the only games on the list worth playing: Far Cry 5, GTAV, and Fortnite are WAY better on the PC, look how many numbers come after the games. It’s the same old crap, served up on a different plate.
The ones to come – look like the best ones yet. I’m talking about the new Mario Party, and the new Smash Brothers.
But there’s one title that makes the attractive $300 price tag of the switch worth it by itself:
BREATH OF THE WILD
Oh my gawd.
I’m an adult now, so I don’t keep up with these games like I used to – and I had no idea what to expect walking into this game.
5 minutes after booting up my new Nintendo Switch and loading the game, I knew I made the right choice. I walked out of the resurrection shrine (where you start) and I was 8 again:
I turned to my brother like a puppy in the pet store: “OHMYGOD IS THIS HYRULE? ISTHAT DEATH MOUNTAIN? IS THAT HYRULE FIELD? CAN I GETAHORSE? HYRULECASTLE LOOKS AWESOME, WHATARETHOSE MOUNTAINS BACKTHERE, CAN I GO THERE??!”
My brother had a simple answer:
“Yes, that’s Hyrule – and anything you see – you can explore. No unreachable terrain, everything has content.”
I was hooked already, but that was just the surface.
The game starts you off in the center of Hyrule, on the Great Plateau. This area is massive within itself,
That area alone takes a longgggggggggg time to navigate….
….Then you zoom out:
Holy shit.
See this speck in the middle? That’s the Great Plateau where you start:
So right away on this massive starting area, the game wastes no time – and does something I love and wish a lot of other games would do.
It gives you all of the tools that you’re going to have for the rest of the game, right away.
Then it says: good luck! And you’re off into the world, you can go anywhere you want, check out anything you like. Nothing is off-limits if you’re clever enough (my brother told me you can go straight to Hyrule castle and fight Ganon, although I didn’t try).
The world is massive, immersive, and beautiful. There’s content everywhere. Animals running around, creatures hiding under rocks. I was 30 minutes into the game leaving the great plateau, making my way to the first place I wanted to check out when a pile of rocks I walked by started moving.
World boss?! But I’m so new! The game doesn’t care. If you step into an area you have two options: fight or flight. Being 30 mins old in my starter gear, I ran like hell and it was so much fun.
Even the “trash mobs” walking around the game are challenging. The hints on the loading screen are there to help and are to be heeded:
“Every fight is likely winnable depending on the strategy you take.”
No fights are Slash & Dash here. You’ll be working in every engagement you come across and you’ll pay for it if you don’t.
The mechanics are also super smooth, everything feels great and fluid. If you hit a head, it’s a headshot. If a mountain looks remotely climbable, it’s climbable. I’ve come up with (and seen people come up with) some insane combinations for things.
The game seems to invite this and purposely allows everything to be beaten in a seemingly infinite number of combinations if you’re clever enough. There’s more than one way to do almost anything in the game, at any time, in any order.
The freedom is intense. With such a large map and so many places to go – you’d think there would be a lot of empty spots – there isn’t. I have no idea how this game was optimized on a console that’s literally a tablet, but it amazes me.
That’s the whole system
There are so many puzzles, fights, areas to explore, main quests, side quests, hidden quests, odd quests – I’m through the main quest finally but I couldn’t imagine how long it would take to 100% this game.
Here’s the icing on the cake – for the people who have 200-300+ hours to clear all the “vanilla” content this game launched with – There’s DLC. Are you kidding me?!
The fact that people fit arguably the best game I’ve ever played on a cartridge that is about the size of two of my fingertips is freaking incredible.
TL;DR –
Nintendo Switch – $300
Breath of the Wild – $40
A gaming experience that you’ll never forget – Priceless.
This is long delayed. I watched this film when it released in theaters last December, but as it recently pushed to Netflix – I decided to have another look. I hated it just as much as the first time, if not more. So without further ado, here’s everything I hated about Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
You get mastery of the force, and you get mastery of the force, and you, too!
Leia suddenly has mastery of the force, can survive space, and uses a combination of these two factors to will herself back to the ship.
After a direct strike to the bridge by Kylo Ren’s TIE fighter wingmen, every single member of the resistance leadership is killed, since – you know, they were all on the bridge of a single ship. All except for Leia, who is sucked into space from a hole created in the explosion – where she not only doesn’t die, but shows mastery of the force as she blindly wills herself to safety.
Stop it.
This is something I had an issue with in the original trilogy. In both the books and the latter movies (Episodes I-III) we see how young Jedi training begins. Remember how they didn’t want to train Anakin Skywalker (who was like, 8) because he was too old? Some folks trained for dozens of years without ever being granted the rank of knight, or master for that matter. At the height of the clone wars, even the Jedi council wouldn’t grant Anakin the rank of master, even though he was granted a seat on the council.
Yet, we see in the short time between Luke Skywalker using a lightsaber for the first time, ever, in Star Wars: A New Hope at the apparent age of 33, to just a short while later at the beginning of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, all of a sudden – Luke’s a Jedi Knight? To me, this was a fault of the original trilogy, but not a deal breaker. However, it came dangerously close to being a deal breaker in Star Wars: The Force Awakens when Rey, someone who had never held a lightsaber or used the force, was a total match for Kylo Ren, who received training from both Luke Skywalker, and Supreme Leader Snoke.
Okay – let’s say we can move past that. Let’s chalk it up to people having a natural affinity for the force, this doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the other problems this movie had.
Plot Holes- Plot Directions that make no sense
They set up The Force Awakens with the First Order and Supreme Leader Snoke as the primary antagonist. Not much is known about the origin, background, motivations, or power of this antagonist. We expect some of the mystery to unravel in The Last Jedi, when suddenly:
ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!
Could you imagine if they destroyed Darth Sideous in Empire strikes back? Or worse…. Attack of the Clones? We’re two movies into this new trilogy, and they Ned Stark him without ANY background?!?!
I’d also like to take this time to mention how severely I dislike Adam Driver as Kylo Ren.
I don’t know what it is, but the acting just feels so forced. I wish Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men) was like 30 years younger; he would’ve been a sick cast for the role.
Come on son.
I won’t even get into how much Luke Skywalker’s demeanor doesn’t make sense; he is super annoying throughout the film. Even Mark Hamill admitted he didn’t like Luke Skywalker in the last Jedi – and that’s been covered in depth, so I’ll spare you. I will, however, talk about how odd the ability to project a realistic hologram of yourself across planets seems. Even Yoda in all the films relied on communication devices or self presence across worlds. If he could have created an instant, realistic presence of himself – a lot would have been different in those films. Oh, then he dies.
Whatttttttttttt…..
Oh yea, Captain Phasma? What’s her story? Too late. DEAD.
Alright, back on plot follies – and I’m gonna wrap this up. There’s an old saying that goes:
“Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.” ― Pixar’s 22 Rules of Storytelling
There were so many times throughout this movie where the characters were presented with “the one choice to make this work” ….except it wasn’t. Finn and Rose travel to Planet Casino in order to find the one Master Codebreaker in the universe who can hack Snoke’s ship and get them on board… nope jk, the dude they find in their cell is just as good. Oh and P.S. they can track ships through lightspeed now.
Okay, can live with that, how about the biggest plot hole of them all?
HOW ABOUT WHEN HOLDO LIGHT SPEEDS INTO THE SHIP?
Seriously? This is a thing? Doesn’t this sort of change…. everything? Every protagonist in these films, from the rebels in the original trilogy to the “resistance” in the new one, could have just warped into shit?
Here are some questions:
Why did all those people need to die getting the plans for the death star?
Why was Rogue One a film?
Why did they need those plans to find the death star’s one weakness and put the bombs in the one hole that would blow it up?
Why was A New Hope a film?
So, yeah – they could have just filled up some ships, piloted by three people, and had a space 9-11 on the death star – job done. No need for plans, no need for crazy missions, just a warp warp, done.
Oh, then guess what – in The Force Awakens… The First Order built an Ion Cannon? No problem – warp warp warp.
Any problem in the universe….. I need one volunteer……
I suppose these two films in the new trilogy would have been alright if you’ve never seen the six other movies. Had Disney bought the rights to Star Wars, then re-named it Star Battles and said “Hey, these movies have nothing to do with those movies,” I’d be stoked, totally on board. The thread I was hanging by, however, throughout these two “Star Wars” movies snapped when they warped that god damn ship into Snoke’s ship to get literally every character out of trouble.
