Biggs' Zone

A Geek's Cogitations, Conjectures and other Cortical Experiences

The Mandalorian: Chapter 16

The Mandalorian: Chapter 16Title: The Rescue
Director: Peyton Reed

Peyton Reed is back to direct the season finale. It’s another amazing piece of television! I was conflicted leading up to this week’s episode; I’m excited to see what happens but this is also the last episode. It’s hard to believe it has already been eight weeks; but what a wonderful and extraordinary Christmas gift from Disney, Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau.

Last week Din Djarin had a bit of a tongue-in-cheek message for Moff Gideon. Now it’s time to make good on that promise. The question is who helps Din rescue Grogu and what season finale predictions come true.

Also, THERE IS A POST CREDITS SCENE!

spoiler alert!!!

The following content contains spoilers for The Mandalorian S2E16.

Ten Star Wars Projects Announced!

Ten Star Wars ProjectsOn December 10th Disney held their investor day which is when the Disney Corporation announces it’s major plans and projects. Obviously Disney+ is about to increase its library, dramatically. In case you missed it, TEN Star Wars projects were announced!! I was inundated and overwhelmed with so much exciting information I could barely contain myself.

There are literally hundreds of posts and articles out there discussing these projects. I’m sure you can go read some of the other official posts but I’m writing my bit about it anyway because it’s my blog. I am using the official announcement as my source for these projects. I think most of these are all going to be limited series; probably one season of 10-12 episodes, but I’m cool with that.

The Mandalorian: Chapter 15

The Mandalorian: Chapter 15Title: The Believer
Director: Rick Famuyiwa

Well folks, here we are at the penultimate episode of season 2; next week will be the season finale. Rick Famuyiwa is back in the directors chair. In season one he directed episodes 2 and 6. Din has some new, unexpected allies and he’s calling in favors with some old friends. He’s a little ticked with the Empire so the rescue is in the works.

I enjoyed this one, though its a little slower when compared to the previous two episodes. However this is the episode that sets up the finale so you don’t want it to steal the thunder. There are a few surprises in this episode but before I get into those …

spoiler alert!!!

The following content contains spoilers for The Mandalorian S2E15.

Shadowlands: Torghast First Impressions

Torghast First ImpressionsThis is my first Shadowlands post since it’s launch. While it seems logical that I would first talk about leveling, instead I decided to skip to Torghast. This is a brand new game mechanic Blizzard introduces in this expansion. We saw something similar in the Battle for Azeroth 8.3 patch with the Horrific Visions. In fact, I almost suspect that the Horrific Visions were the “beta test” for the Torghast mechanic. I haven’t spent a lot of time in there yet but I thought I would share my Torghast first impressions.

An Ever-Changing Dungeon

There was a lot of build up about this place. Blizzard was pretty clear that it will be essential to our raiding progression. Initially I was skeptical. While the horrific visions weren’t terrible, eventually I became bored doing them every week (and, ultimately, I stopped doing them altogether). The engineers at Blizzard have definitely raised the bar with Torghast.

Basically Torghast is a type of dungeon divided into six wings, each with eight layers consisting of six floors per layer. You can complete Torghast solo or you can go as a group. Every trip into Torghast is different. Statistically you should never experience the same trip twice. As you progress each floor becomes more and more difficult until it becomes too difficult, for your current gear score, to complete. This has not yet happened to me so I don’t know if its actually true. If you complete the third layer on one wing, you can go immediately to the third layer in another wing. I’m not sure how this works when the remaining layer’s become available. Completing the layers awards you Soul Ash which you need to construct legendary gear. As far as I can tell, Torghast does not drop gear.

No Gear?? What’s the Point??

I, honestly, struggle with this concept. It’s probably the one negative to Torghast, especially for alts. Obviously, for my raid toon, this provides the ability to craft gear that will give me a significant advantage in the raids. The amount of Soul Ash you get is capped each week so going in weekly will help craft your legendary gear (and upgrades) sooner rather than later. I rarely, if ever, raid on my alts so getting a legendary for them is simply cosmetic. Does this mean I will still do Torghast on my alts? Probably, because the challenge could be fun, however its not going to be something I do every week on every alt.

So far I like Torghast; more than I thought I would. I’m glad there is a cap each week so I don’t feel obligated to do it every single day, each week. It would get pretty old, really fast if I had to do it that frequently. Granted we are just beginning week 3 so the question is will I continue to enjoy Torghast? Or will the interest wane over the next couple of months? It’s difficult to say. Perhaps I should consider a follow up post in the spring to discuss how its going. I’m also going to predict that something will change about Torghast in future content patches to keep it interesting. We’ll see.

What are your Torghast first impressions?

duke-nukem-sm If zombies attack the world, everyone will run and hide. Except for us gamers, of course. We’ve been waiting for this all our lives!

 

Biggs’ Top 5 Christmas Movies

Top 5 Christmas MoviesIt’s not a secret among my friends and family that Christmas is my favorite holiday. I love everything about Christmas. Therefore it makes sense for December to be the Top 5 Christmas movies. To keep things simple I’m ignoring the controversial Christmas movies: Nightmare Before Christmas and Die Hard.

I do love the Die Hard movies and I enjoy the humor of calling it a Christmas movie but this isn’t the time or place to discuss its merits as such. Nightmare Before Christmas has already made an appearance on a Top 5 list. The following Christmas movies are the ones I watch every year during the Christmas season (some more than once). So without further ado:

  1. White Christmas – an iconic Christmas movie starring the iconic yuletide crooner.
  2. Scrooged – this is an awesome retelling of the classic A Christmas Carol story.
  3. Home Alone – nothing says Christmas like a John Hughes Christmas classic.
  4. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation – another John Hughes Christmas classic.
  5. How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966) – Hollywood should stop remaking this; they can never do better than Boris Karloff.

Honorable Mentions

It was difficult to pick the top 5, just as it has been for several of the other Top 5 lists during this year. There are so many great Christmas movies from It’s a Wonderful Life to the 5 listed above. Don’t get me wrong, It’s a Wonderful Life is a … wonderful movie (see what I did there) but these are the honorable mentions that didn’t quite make the top five.

A Christmas Story is also a classic but seems to be a love-it-or-hate-it kind of movie. I have relatives that love this movie and will watch it’s 24-hour marathon on TNT every year on Christmas. I also have relatives that wish they never heard of Jean Shepherd; personally I don’t mind the movie and I’ll typically watch it at least once every year. It helps, I suppose, that I also grew up in northern Indiana.

A Christmas Carol (1951) is my favorite of the traditional version of this movie. There are so many versions of this film that its difficult to find a good one. Granted the muppet version is awesome but I still have to go with this version that stars Alastair Sim as Ebenezer Scrooge. If you haven’t seen this version, I would highly recommend you do.

Merry Christmas!

I Have Spoken!

 

The Mandalorian: Chapter 14

The Mandalorian: Chapter 14Title: The Tragedy
Director: Robert Rodriguez

Chpater 14 is directed by Robert Rogriguez, a new director to the series. He’s known for El Mariachi, Machete, Sin City (both movies), From Dusk Till Dawn (movie and series) and, apparently, someone is always shot in the head. Rodriguez does an amazing job, it’s a pretty intense and heart pumping episode.

Din Djarin is on his way to the ruins of an ancient Jedi temple as he continues his quest of uniting “the child” with his own kind.  The title is ominous, and rightfully so but I can’t get into that right now. In fact, it might be the time for this …

spoiler alert!!!

The following content contains spoilers for The Mandalorian S2E6.

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