DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV Series, Season 3)

“You can do it. I have faith in you.” “WHY?!”

When we last left the Legends, they’d accidentally broken time while stopping the Legion of Doom. Fortunately, Rip Hunter has spent five years of subjective time assembling a Time Bureau that is professional and competent and everything the Legends are not. Six months later, Sarah is bored off her ass and decides to get the band back together.

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Overall: While I'm sure the goofiness is not everyone's cup of tea, I've only liked this show more as it's gone on. I'm in for season four, you betcha.

Android Games Reviews: KEMCO Tries to Do Something Different?

Djinn Caster - An Arabian Nights-flavored action-rpg by new developer Chocoarts. A thief rebelling against an unjust Sultan lucks into a magic dagger containing a djinn, which leads him to going on missions to help people and discover more djinn. (The cultural sensitivity is...questionable.) This puts the pay-to-play nature front-and-center, including a play-time counter that you need to watch ads to refill, the usual IAP shop to make your character stronger, and a lot of randomization. The battle system is a lot of attack-button mashing, and I'd be lying if I said my accidentally using all my potions because they're right next to the “pick stuff up” button didn't play a role in my dislike of the game.

What Hadjane Says Goes! - In a homage/takeoff of Nippon Ichi games, the queen of Hell wakes up from a long nap to find that most of her minions have abandoned her. This was made by Hit-Point, and despite being an action-rpg, the need from grinding vendortrash shows it. The game is broken up into short stages in which you button-mash to kill monsters and summon minions from their remains to help you defeat a boss. Then you use the various dropped items to upgrade your stats, your equipment, and your available minions. All of the plot happens via cutscene in a central location, as Hadjane is domineering but incompetent and belittles her new, shrinking-violet maid and her competent-but-clearly-planning-to-betray-her demon underling.

Onigo Hunter - On a mysterious island chain, an up-and-coming monster hunter is recruited by a princess to help rescue the missing king and re-establish her birthright. (And they're joined by a sassy combat butler.) An Exe-Create game with most of their usual system trappings (weapon upgrading, bonus tickets, multiple currencies, etc) but with the twist that “energy” is both your primary currency and your MP, and you have a very limited wallet for it; and you need to capture monsters (“onigos”) to raise your hunter rank to go on better quests—the entire game is quest-based from one town and, because MP is also money and you get some after every battle, you're expected to take long forays into the field without returning to that town. Note also that while you need to whittle down monsters and use special attacks or traps to capture them, you don't ever seem to be able to do anything with captured monsters—you get your hunter points and they fill in your bestiary, but this isn't a mon-battle game.

Overall: I gave each of these about an hour, and none of them really won me. Part of it is my old-fashioned desire to have physical buttons for my button-mashing experience; but I think it's also that the play experience just isn't quite the right thing to hold me for obvious grind-fests. The fact that these are all IAP-driven and are likely keeping the more pleasant play experience behind their paywalls doesn't help, either.