B- Movie review: The Archer and the Sorceress (1981)

So, Shitmas is over and the Jollyday season draws to an end. However I am back with a new review for this blog. This time I am looking at a TV-movie from 1981. It's name is The Archer and The Sorceress which mean it's about a dude with a bow. This also means the hero is a complete wanker, because everyone knows bows are coward's weapons. Anyways the movie start with a Narrator saying something like about A World That Never Was and a Time that has been or could yet be. WTF?? I don't understand a word of that, too fucking deep.

Anyway, the Narrator is boring and unfortunately narrates a lot. This movie could have worked well without him. So there are apparently a land with many warring Clans fighting each other but one man who's a king or something tries to unite them. The king is successful because he and the other Clan Chiefs get drunk, and diplomacy work berst while drunk. And then there are some Green People who wants to conquer them. They are evil because they're green. And their leader is not green, but he has a great laugh. Let's call him Evil Laughs. I like Evil Laughs because he laughs and all villains should do that. The king is played by a really bad actor (George Kennedy) who has some GLOOOORIOUS BAD ACTING MOMENTS!!!  It's a pity there aren't more scenes with the king.

The hero of the movie is the king's son who inherits a magic bow from his master. The hero is falsely accused for the murder of his father and sets out to seek his father's teacher named Lazalala or something. Then there is this Sorceress who has a blood feud with the hero's family, but decides to not kill the hero for none apparent reason. She still wants to kill Lazalala because she thinks he manipulated the hero's grandfather to kill her mother. (Yes it's quite confusing indeed). There is also a dude in a monster costume, but he gets killed of early. Then there are the comic reliefs, the Gambler and the Pigbearman. They are not funny, and unfortunately it's the Gambler who joins the hero on his quest and not the Pigbearman. The Pigbearman was indeed more interesting. They also meet a Mayor in a city they visit. He's great because he's overacting every line, and seems to have fun with it.

Since this is a tv-movie it's cheap like shit. It also seems to have too much plot for a short movie. Some subplots get disappointing resolutions, while others aren't resolved at all. When the movie end they still haven't found Lazalala and we don't know whether Evil Laughs survived or not. They were probably either hoping to make sequels or to use the movie to launch a TV-series. Thus the main plot remains unresolved. The bad acting isn't awesome enough, and the script seems mostly confusing. This one is not that great. It's not horrible, but neither is it really worth a watch.

Double Feature Review: This Ain't Conan the Barbarian XXX vs. Gonad the Barbarian and the Search fo Uranus

This duel is what all people have been waiting for for generations. An epic battle between two different Conan the Barbarian porn spoofs!!! We start with a quite recent Hustler porn spoof and then we take a look at a older Japanese animated one.

So This Ain't Conan the Barbarian is a 2011 Hustler porn spoof based on the original Conan the Barbarian movie (the one with Ahhnold). It pretty much goes through the sexy scenes of the original movie, but remakes them into hardcore porn. It begins with the scene with the slave girl, who is the sexiest girl in this movie, but unfortunately she just have a masturbation scene because Conan is dumb as an oaf it seems, because he doesn't bone her, even though she's practically begging for it. What's wrong with him? The guard wonder if he is blind or deaf, and so does the audience. Of course next Conan meet the witch, and fuck her good. Conan grunt like a Real Barbarian when he does the wenches, and fuck them so hard the whole screen shakes.  I'm really happy about these details, things like that makes me happy. The witch face was cool too, I mean it could have been worse. After the hard fucking and the scary witch face, the witch turns to fire and leaves for no particular reason. Conan meet mr. Sidekick outside, and he has his first line. And he does an awesome Schwarzenegger impression. I would have been really angry if they didn't. Conan isn't Conan without a retarded Austrian accent. The next scene is mr. Sidekick fucking a random wench they meet on the road, and then Conan and the Sidekick meet Valeria. Then we get to see some amazingly bad special effects when we see the snake, and shortly afterwards a scene where the sidekick falls from the roof. This is followed by some more hillarity when Conan get himself drunk in a tavern and fall asleep with his face in a bowl full of soup. THAT'S HOW A REAL MAN DOES IT!!! Even better next Conan, Sidekick and Valeria meet the king. The king is awesome. It seems he's gay, because he comment on Conan's balls, but he's probably bi, because he flirt with Valeria too. Anyways, the king is racist, and is angry because his daughter have ran away with a black guy. This king is great. So next is the Conan fucking Valeria scene, which is the best scene in the movie, as it should be. Then they meet fake Mako, who neither looks nor sounds like Mako. BOOO!!! I want a REAL fake Mako!!! And why doesn't fake Mako get to fuck anyone??? BOOOO!!! Next is Thulsa Doom fucking the Princess. There is a snake transformation, that actually is okay, but no orgy scene?? They must not have afforded enough actors for one.... but still, there ought to be an orgy scene in Thulsa's hideout. I liked the fact that since Thulsa is a snake wizard, he is good with the tongue though. The scene end with Conan, Valeria and Sidekick storming in and Valeria getting killed. Which is unnecessary, since she reappear as a ghost just a few minutes later. Why bother killing her, she could have delivered the same lines anyways. But I really like this version of Thulsa Doom. Everytime the Princess tries to say something he just goes: SHUT UP BITCH!! Now that's how YOU TALK TO A WOMAN!! Thulsa, you're a real man. And his speech is almost as good as the one in the real Conan movie. You can really see Conan getting confused by it. So did I like this move?? Yes, I liked it alot actually. I would have done a few things differently, but it worked well. And the porn was good too, it gave me a boner.

So Gonad the Barbarian and the Search for Uranus has nothing to do with Conan the Barbarian. Is a 30 minute short, and it's old, but I have no info from which year it is. The story is that the evil Gonad the Barbarian and his army of Sexbots are conquering the Universe. That's enough to get me hooked. Gonad's evil scheme consist of kidnapping, raping and torturing virgins from all over the galaxy. Where do I sign up to enlist in that army?? Frigging awesome!! But he's to be stopped by the American Secret Service (ASS) consisting of the agents Pussy Lamore (you gotta love the references), Doctor Jerkoff (lol) and Princess Layme and her boyfriend Dick (although he is not manly enough to be called Dick. He should be the one who's called Pussy). The best thing about this one are the lines. They are all hillarious. Like when Princess Layme first decline to rejoin ASS and says following classic: "No more fucking ASS for me". I love it. Her weapon is a Dildo Lightsaber by the way. Fuck Yeah!! Unfortunately Gonad doesn't look like Conan at all, and that's a little weird. The animation is horrible, and the sex scenes are bad, and there's unfortunately too little sex in it to really shine as a porn spoof. But the lines are hilarious and the movie is worth a watch just because of them. But yeah, This Ain't Conan the Barbarian is waaay much better than Gonad.

So that was the Conan porn spoofs. I might do more of these at some point, but next I'll probably review a B-movie again.

Stop the War against the Internet!!

In the magical far away land of the United States of America the forces of evil are gathering in Congress to pass two new bills aimed to cripple the Internet and stop the forces of progress. The SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and the Protect IP Act are two attempts to kill Internet forever. Both acts claim to be against piracy, but they are not. They are actually directed against normal Internet users and small businesses like Channel Awesome who make their living on making reviews and parodies of popular culture. If these acts pass it would be impossible for anyone to even use a few seconds clip from a movie, television series or video game. The worst thing is is that they allow a Corporation to define an act of piracy themselves and then just file a complaint to the Justice Ministry. The Justice Ministry will then just close the site, without giving the site owner any possibility to defend himself. This WILL be abused. Already today you can get fucking sued just if your basement band play some Metallica songs and you post them on Youtube, since the record companies claim full copyright on the song. Now it will get even worse.

Think about it, youtube is full of Hitler getting angry parodies, and while it's a German company that has the copyright claims on clips from Der Untergang, a lot of these parody clips with false subtitles are made in the US. Would youtube now have the responsibility to take them all down, or be closed down? According to these new acts: yes. Probably around 60% of all material on youtube break copyright rules somehow. As i said before, just having a small three second clip from a movie in a video that is really about something else is a breach of copyright legislation. Would this mean even big Google owned youtube is threatened? Yes, that what it means. How many of you enjoy watching Let's Plays, you know where you watch a person play a video game while commenting. If this legislation is passed all Let's Plays would be illegal, since the breach copyright legislation. The content of the video games are owned by the corporations that make them, and even if there's no playing, just watching someone else play, it would be illegal. And don't thing there will be no abuse. When it comes to Internet reviewers I'm sure those who gives positive reviews would not be in any danger, you give free advertising to the movie makers after all. But in the future, if your review is negative, your site will go down and you will be sued. This is the reality of those two bills. If they pass it's a declaration of war on the Internet.

So what does it mean for us not living in the Holy Americaland. Well, American companies can claim copyright grievances of your site anyways, and it could be closed down in the United States. We are talking about China like censorship here. And don't forget that laws from the US tend to spread to other countries fast. So if any Americans stumble on this blog, please write to your Congressmen and Senators and ask them to stop the war against the Internet.

B-Movie Review: Aztec Rex (Tyrannosaurus Azteca 2007)

So, this is a 2007 TV- movie made by Rigel Entertainment for SyFy. That already guarantee wooden acting and bad CGI. So what's not to love? Well, the acting is unfortunately wooden, and not awesome overacting. That's a big minus. Wooden acting is boring, bad acting is supposed to be awesomely ridiculous, not boring. So the story is that a dude called Cortes is exploring the Mexican jungles with the entire Spanish army in the New World, which apparently only consist of 7 men, because the king is a cheap bastard. The main character is called Rios and is one of Cortes' men. The Aztecs summon a T-Rex by the power of Kali-Ma from Indiana Jones (yes they rip of hearts from people, since dinosaurs apparently love human hearts). Then the best character (the horse is killed off screen). The story is simple Rios and Pocahontas (the Aztec chief's daughter) fall in love and then every storyline from Ferngully, Dancing with Wolves, Pocahontas and Avatar is repeated. The T-Rex is CGI is really bad, but I've seen worse. That it's a fake is unfortunately very obvious though. There are some great moments, like the Spaniards falling for the oldest trick in the book, when their ambush turn out to be an Aztec trap. And then there are the interesting lesson that teaches us that the best sex is to be had when hunted by a T-Rex. Congratulations to Rios and Pocahontas for being horny while in grave danger. The Aztec Empire is also just a small village in the jungle. But if the Spanish invasion force consist of 7 men, I am not that surprised. There's also that fat corrupt priest, who learned the natives to speak English (played by Jack McGee). He claims to be the one who invented Sangria, but I have a hard time believing him.

This movie is just meh. It's not terribly bad, and that might be the problem with it. It's not good, but it's not bad either. If it was really bad you could probably get some satisfaction out from it, but a movie this mediocre can't be anything else than forgettable meh. And the story has been told too many times already.

However a Hollywood adaptation of the Spanish invasion of Mexico with big scenes and high quality special effects would be welcome in my opinion. It's a fascinating time in history and to see Cortes and Montezuma battle it out on the big screen could be awesome. That's really all I have to say about this film. I was drawn to title, and hoped to get some cheap laughs out of it, but it just wasn't bad enough. They should have made it worse.

B- Movie Review: The Adventures of Hercules (1985)

The Adventures of Hercules is one of the many Italian movies that were dubbed to English for an international release. The movie stars Lou Ferrigno, and it's only fitting to review a Ferrigno movie after a Reb Brown film. Ferrigno is cast because he has muscles. That's all. He can't act, but he has muscles and thus he look like Hercules. The movie opens in space during the opening credits. A little bit confusing to see so much of space in a Hercules movie, but there will be much of it through the entire movie. This movie is actually a sequel to another film called Hercules (thus this movie is also called Hercules II), and I will try to find it and review it at some point in the future. During the opening credits you see a montage of Hercules fighting a bunch of robots, either cleaning the Augean stables or cause a genocide (unclear of which), growing to giant size due to a blinking device and finally fighting a Jedi King called Minos. I guess it's a recap of the first movie.

So the movie begins by a couple of duded dragging a woman in chains. At least they know how to treat a woman.. So the woman is sacrificed to a lighting gorilla, by a evil gay priest. This is bad news and two other women decide to do something about it. They ask the "little people", who are some kind of shining thing for advice. Not that they'd need to, it was obvious that what they needed is a MAN. Because women can't do anything without a MAN. A good thing is that the women wear quite skimpy clothes, so at least you have that, because there is loads of long boring dialog in this movie. So the story is that 4 Gods have rebelled against Zeus (Hera, Flora, Aphrodite and Poseidon). They have stolen Zeus' thunderbolts, so now the Moon will crush with the Earth for some reason. Of course that means Zeus have to send Hercules to Earth. Hercules is for some reason just hanging out naked in space. Except it seems he doesn't have a dick. How on Earth can Hercules bone women without a dick?? Boning women is after all part of his job description. Not that he do any of that in this movie, despite being around several beauties. Perhaps he really lost his dick. Hercules back story is also conflicting. In the beginning it's told he's son of the Goddess who created everything, but later he is referred as the son of Zeus, which is more in line with Greek mythology. Also at one point Hercules is referred to as Achilles, and I'm quite certain they were two different persons.

So the story is about Hercules and those two women running around looking for the lighting bolts of Zeus. Then for some reason the rebel Gods resurrect the Jedi King Minos, who then becomes the main villain. Hercules defeat several enemies, including a really hairy dude, a Medusa and Slime People!!! (lol)
Meanwhile King Minos get himself a new magic lightsaber from his ally Daedalus who apparently is the same person as the God Chaos, and is also a woman (none of this is in the Greek mythology I remember). They conspire to use SCIENCE!!!! to take over the world, but that just prove how stupid they are, since they are obviously using magic and not SCIENCE!!!. Anyways, the special effects in this movie are laughable, but on the other hand I didn't expect anything else from a cheap Italian movie from the 80's. And even if it looks bad, the King Kong vs. Godzilla light show still is awesome. And the music is epic. I think the music very well is the best thing in this movie. Because this movie is boring. A lot of bad dialog, that isn't so bad it's awesome, just a borefest. And the fights aren't that impressive. I think if any movie franchise would need a remake it would be Hercules. I mean this movie is boring and the Schwarzenegger flick is just terrible. Why not reboot Hercules with a big Hollywood budget, a muscle man with no acting talent, some ladies with big boobs and skimpy outfits, and some CGI monsters. You'd have a nice summer blockbuster right there that'd still be better than the Clash of the Titans remake. And bring back the Slime People!!!

B- Movie Review: Space Mutiny (1988)

Space Mutiny is one of those bad Star Wars rip off. This one uses stock footage from both the original Battle Star Galactica and from the real Star Wars movies for the space battle footage. That the movie want to be associated with Star Wars become obvious since even the music during the opening credits remind me of Star Wars. The movie is happening far in the future in Spaaaace, where humanity now live on large spaceships. One of these spaceships is the setting for the movie. However there is an evil mutiny plot masterminded by the ship's Security Chief Evil McNazi. Evil McNazi is actually only want to settle on a planet, but that is forbidden for humans, since Spaaaace, just like Earth has some really stupid laws. So he and his co-conspirator the Chief Engineer Mr. Lame plots to take over the ship and colonize a planet, and sell all those crewmates who resist them as slaves to pirates or something. However the ship has a Hero: Hero McPilot who is played by Reb Brown! Reb Brown is known for not being able to act, but always getting to play hero in cheap action movies. Hero McPilot also have an obligatory love interest: Doctor Blondie Bitch, who is the daughter of the ship's Commander. And then there are those telepathic psycho bitches that somehow are important to the plot but I haven't figured out how.

So, this movie has really bad acting, that some times get really hilarious, and other times are just lame and boring as shit. There are also lot of juicy symbolism, Mr. Lame has an SS-badge on his uniform, very subtle. Also for some reason the space ship has a nightclub, why I don't know. And we have a continuity error, a female officer who is killed: Lieutenant Curly Hair is seen working on the bridge after she's killed off. A Clone I say!! Well, at least the villain has a great laugh, and all good movie villains have that. And a lot of the scenes are really goofy, and there are a common theme of Evil McNazi's men being really stupid and incompetent. However the Space Bazookas, while awesome, are way to small. No way bazookas in space would be smaller than on Earth. In Spaaaaace everything is bigger. And yes, in several scenes it's plainly obvious they are not in space. Windows with sunshine for example (lol).

The movie is okay, some of the crappy acting is hilarious, but other times things just seem to drag a bit. The villains are the best. Evil McNazi and Mr.Lame are so juicy evil. And Mr. Lame wins the prize in Douche Baggery for killing his own men. If you like crappy SciFi and Reb Brown, then Space Mutiny (or Mutiny in Space as it also is called) is for you.

Double Feature Review: Bikini Girls on Dinosaur Planet (2005) vs. Dinosaur Valley Girls

So in this review series called Double Feature Reviews I will review too movies with similar names, that doesn't necessarily has anything to do with each other. They can even be from completely different genres, such as the two movies I'm reviewing today. However there are some similarities between these two: both have shitty stop-motion dinosaurs and both have BOOBS!

Bikini Girls on Dinosaur Planet is a 2005 soft-core lesbian porn. It's written and directed by William Hellfire, who has the coolest surname ever. I wish my surname was Hellfire. You know this is a porn from the cast and crew list since even the staff responsible for music and cinematography don't dare to use their real names in the credits. Instead we get amusing shit like Cream Tangerine and Joey Smack. No, I won't show you any pictures you dirty hounds, this is a family site (lol)!
So what this movie can offer are the worst stop-motion dinosaurs I have ever seen (obviously stock-footage) and some fake lesbian sex. Of course this is a soft-core porn, so the real question is of course: how good is the fake sex? Well, it's bad, you could often see how obviously fake it was, heck they even faked the kisses sometimes. Thes sex scenes also felt quite boring and repetitive and completely failed to turn me on. The "story" is that an anthropologist and her lesbian lover (assistant) watch a prehistoric lesbian tribe on a nearby planet from their spaceship (love nest). And the best sex scene is actually their scene and not one with the prehistoric lesbians, who are the stars of this flick. The assistant also has far too many lines of dialog, which is a pity, since she can't act at all. Although some of the sex scenes are pathetic when the porn actresses can't even act that they have sex. The most memorable line of dialog is when the anthropologist in the beginning of the movie says that "you shouldn't miss a moment since you might miss the goal you set for yourself when you purchased this movie". Well if the goal was to get a hard-on you'll miss it anyways! And did we really have to see the stop-motion dinosaur take a shit. Since that was like soo important. Also, there were not really any bikinis, so the title lied, you did get to see a fair share of female nudity though, so that's good. Unfortunately only some of the girls were really attractive.

Ok, so let's do the other one. Dinosaur Valley Girls is a B-movie from 1996 with a lot of sexploitation, BOOBS and stop-motion dinosaurs.so this one actually has a plot. The main character: Tony is played by Jeff Rector. He plays a action movie hero who has been criticized that he can't act and his action movies look fake. That is of course all true, since it is Jeff Rector we are talking about. He has a girlfriend who is the most annoying girlfriend ever, but she has nice tits and a nice ass, so he won't leave her. It also shows early in the movie that our protagonist indeed is a REAL MAN, since he smokes in bed instead of letting that cunt of a girlfriend pester him. Tony is plagued by dreams about some foxy naked women with big BOOBS. They will of course be introduced later in the movie. There's a running gag in the movie that get old quick that he promised his girlfriend and all the other girls he sleep with "little parts" in his movies. It's a sad joke, but I bet the large unnecessary female cast, especially those in the beginning of the movie that don't really add anything got their "little parts" from sleeping with the director. So magic finally get him to Dinosaur Valley where he meet the main love interest called Hea-Thor who is far from the most attractive cave woman in the movie, but she has the biggest BOOBS, and that's why he likes her the best. Tony is a living one-liner machine, who can't speak in anything else than cheesy one-liners. While this could indeed be awesome, most of his lines are depressingly lame. We also meet a pervy dino who rip of Hea-Thor's bra. Bad Dino (lol!). Anyways Hea-Thor introduce Tony to the rest of the tribe (Bar-Bee, Bran-Dee, Mee-Shell, Deb-Bee etc.) There he finally get to get intimate with Hea-Thor, but don't worry, he get to pork most of the rest of the tribe too. However the female tribe a splinter from a tribe that contained both males and females. The males are lead by the "kind of" antagonist Big Mac. Big Mac have several henchmen like Korn-Dag and Bro-Mo and so on. Well, the conclusion is a love conquers all thingy, that you could see from miles away. There are some really good stuff in this movie though. Tony's "Big Mac is the Disease and I am the Cure" line makes one forgive him from his earlier lame lines. There is a stupid, and terribly bad music number in the middle of this movie. I think it should have been cut, since it's not a very good one at all. Also Tony defeat an Allosaur by using movie quotes, and that is awesome.
SPOILERS: The movie end with the males and females moving back together and Tony and Hea-Thor living happily ever after. What a shocker!! /SPOILERS
Well. this movie is not that bad. It's a amusingly dumb bad movie, that you might enjoy if you want to see some bad acting, stupid dialog and glorious BOOBS. Best enjoyed with a 6-pack of beer.

So what did we learn from these movies? Well, that it's manly to smoke in bed for once. That one-liners can be painfully bad some times, but really shine when they have that extra spice of AWESOMENESS. And of course that Hellfire is a kick-ass surname. Well, that's it for now. More reviews coming up in time.

The Spoony One

One of my favorite reviewers on the Internet is definitely the Spoony One. Noah Antwiler does a review show where he reviews mainly movies and video games under the pseudonym Spoony. He is known for his Dr. Insano character, basically an archetype for an nutty evil scientist, and also for his hatred for Final Fantasy (seriously those videos are hilarious, check them out!). All his videos can be found on his homepage http://spoonyexperiment.com/ and on http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/ where he is just one of many talents.

However Spoony recently admitted he is suffering from a depression. This is seriously bad news. I can only hope he will recover from it soon. I would ask any lurker who happen to stumble upon this blog to visit his site and watch his videos. I fear he can only recover if even more people than before watch his videos, join his site and spread the word of the Greatness of the Spoony One.

Of course recently another thing happened that got me worried. After having watched the terrors of the new Twilight movie Spoony made a funny vlog about it, while getting drunk in front of the camera. While the vlog itself was funny, I don't think this made anything better. Sure, Spoony only have himself to blame, he should know Twilight movies are turds by now and avoid them like the plague. But watching a Twilight movie while suffering from a depression is definitely not a smart move. I would at least not recommend it. So in conclusion I can only say one lesson was learned: Don't watch Twilight.

Oh, and Spoony posted another video recently, at least he has sobered up.

Short Hard Rock Zombies update!

There is a kickass website dedicated to Hard Rock Zombies. Check it out!! http://www.freewebs.com/hardrockzombies/

B- movie review: Hard Rock Zombies (1985)

I decided to start my B-movie review blog with one of my favorite movies at all time: Hard Rock Zombies!! So with this in mind, this review will perhaps not be as much a critical review as a general praise for the awesomeness that is Hard Rock Zombies. The movie is about a crappy rock band and their manager who are on a tour in God forsaken Redneck Country (a country I think exist between Canada and New Orleans on the map). The lead singer end up falling in love with a local teenager called Cassie, but let's just call her Jailbait for simplicity. So Lead Singer and Jailbait's love story is interrupted by things you find in any God forsaken Redneck town, namely evil midgets, a werewolf granny and Adolf Hitler himself (yes, Adolf Hitler). It don't take long however before the curse of the undead is unleashed on the town, and we don't just have to deal with an undead Hard Rock group, but also Midgets, a Zombie Werewolf and Zombie Hitler! This movie even have a zombie eating himself. It's safe to say this movie is totally awesome!

The acting is cheesy, and it's safe to say the actors pretty much just have fun with their roles and the absurd setting. And that is usually what makes a otherwise bad movie good. If the actors are just allowed to have fun there will be a lot of cheesy dialog and weird jokes, and stuff like this really add to a movie meant to be cheesy and fun to begin with. There's of course some music in this movie too, it's about Hard Rock Hallelujah after all. Most of the songs performed is quite meh though, not really that good. However the love serenade is one of the better ones, and that is what matters, since only that one is really central to the story.

Here's a link to the IMDb page of Hard Rock Zombies: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089254/
Also here's a link to a trailer on Youtube uploaded by Deathdealus 1984. I think it's fan made (I wonder if there's a real trailer out there somewhere), but it's awesome so watch it and like the video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUEK6FlOmkY

Thoughts on Europa Universalis 3 and Paradox games in general.

Paradox Interactive is a Swedish Game developer that has specialized in grand strategy games. Titles like Europa Universalis, Victoria, Hearts of Iron and Crusader Kings are all examples of Paradox grand strategy titles. They all work in a very similar way, they are real time strategy games where you control either a country or a dynasty (depending on the game) and try to steer said nation or dynasty through the challenges that the time period featured presents. You play the games on a 3-d map where you have a couple of provinces under your control at start. Of course if you start as a large nation you might have a really big empire to begin with already. You can always pause the game in order to make important decisions, which help especially when you are at war. Of course in Paradox games wars aren't everything. You will probably not be able to conquer the whole map anyways. Diplomacy, economic policy, trade and your laws are as important. You have to make sure your people like you enough to not rebel every time and you always have to balance your budget to make sure your economy don't collapse. Also diplomacy is always important. If you just wage war all the time every other nation will hate you and gang up on you. In Paradox games creating alliance or other pacts are very important features, every nation need friends. It also always help to choose your conflicts, don't attack unprovoked too much. Try to get casus bellis (justification for war) or just make defensive pacts with your neighbors. Sometimes you gain the most from wars you enter to protect another nation.

Europa Universalis 3 is the third installment in the Europa Universalis series. It takes on the time period 1399-1820, from the Renaissance to the fall of Napoleon. It gives you the option to play as anything from great powers such as France and the Ottoman Empire to trade powers such as Portugal and Venice, and to small principalities of the Holy Roman Empire such as Bavaria, Luneburg and the Palatinate. You can also play as non- European powers such as Ming China, the Sultanate of Brunei, several Indian kingdoms, the Songhay empire in Africa and much more. Europa Universalis 3 has 4 expansion packs: Napoleon's Ambition, In Nomine, Heir to the Throne and Divine Wind. The expansions have added so much more to the game that I wouldn't recommend playing it without them. Vanilla EU 3 actually feel a little bit empty. I would therefor recommend people new to the series to buy the Europa Universalis 3 Chronicles package since it contains all 4 expansions (the Complete package actually only have the two first ones, since they hadn't planned to do more expansions when the package was launched). The expansions has actually added so much that it feels like playing a whole new game. If there's something to criticize Paradox for is that they have not really given Africa much love, which is sad. This also apply to other titles such as Victoria where Africa feels too empty and you miss many of the historical African kingdoms. But I can honestly say that Europa Universalis 3 indeed are one of my favorite games.

When you have familiarized yourself with the game you might want to try some user made mods. These can be found on the Paradox forums on the Paradox interactive homepage. Some of the mods like Magna Mundi and MEIOU adds a lot to the game and are nothing short of masterpieces on their own right. I would also recommend to always update to the newest patch of the game, since even the patches sometimes adds a lot of new goodies.

The Paradox Interactive homepage: www.paradoxplaza.com

The Nightmare Studio

My name is yourworstnightmare and you're all welcome to the Nightmare Studio. I will use this blog to comment on things I like and dislike. I will also review some B-movies and probably state my opinion on things happenign (expect annoying ramblings about politics now and then, since that is a topic that deserves rants now and then, I will try not to fill the blog with it though). Also I will probably review some strategy games from Paradox Interactive at some point.

So anyways, this is my blog if anyone is interested.