Nathan

Yeah, thats why I purposely mentioned that it wasn't a who would win thing. The comics I mentioned actually have this awesome scene where Batman (wearing a kryptonite glove) beats Superman up (trying to beat some sense into him). I'm actually sort of interested to see how the Man of Steel is, especially when I first heard Christopher Nolan was involved in it since the way Bruce Wayne was portrayed (in terms of how much of a sook he was, and kept giving up on being Batman) is actually how I see Superman.

Now that you mention it I think its Nathaniel, but close enough. I heard about something at the end of the book that redeems him a bit but I didn't want to read a whole book through where I hate the main character just so that at the end of the book I don't hate that character. The Djinn were cool, it was actually the way the main character ended up treating them that made me dislike him.

Rincewind is awesome, in fact most of the characters are. I really like Death and the Night watch stories are pretty cool too. I didn't know that there were PS1 games but I had heard that there were some early games that was some kind of text based Discworld RPG or something that modern hospital computer systems are based on.

So I've been thinking about starting this topic for a while. Despite what the topic title might suggest this isn't so much about who would win, rather its about which is your favourite/ who you think is better. I far prefer Batman for a few reasons, firstly he has no superhuman abilities he just uses his own skills and money to do what he does. He has the same weaknesses as any other human. Superman on the other hand has superhuman abilities (he can basically do anything) and only one weakness (Kryptonite) yet he fails just as much as batman if not more. Superman is also way more of a sook than Batman and far stupider. I think even DC prefer's Batman, after all it is called DC (as in Detective Comics, which Batman appears in) rather than Action Comics (superman comics). Batman is also far more intelligent and can get by on that alone even when he is old and crippled (which doesn't really happen to Superman yet he is far more ready to give up on being a superhero anyway). Aside from the way I've been brought up (my dad is a big comic book fan, particularly Batman) a lot of my opinion on this is based on the graphic novel "The Dark Knight Strikes Again" (or DK2) by Frank Miller, which I highly suggest you read if you can. So yeah, you don't have to be a huge comic book nerd or anything just give your opinion and give reasons if you can, If this is popular enough we can probably ask similar questions like Marvel or DC for example.

I only just saw these comments, I thought I would get notifications about it but oh well. Anyway, I think maybe I ruined it for myself a bit by deciding I was going to write an article on it before I saw it. Maybe if I hadn't have done that I wouldn't have picked up on every single thing they did wrong or at least not have been worried about it. I still think they ruined the Mandarin character, and that the scene at the end with all the suits was cool to watch but kind of ridiculous. And although its not really a problem with the movie I would have liked to have seen some more Avengers tie ins or references. Also its a basic fact that is core to Iron Man that if the power core were to be removed he would die as its actually keeping the shrapnel in place (removing it is just going to kill him faster) also mind the unintentional pun.

I haven't read for a while but some of my favourite books are; [*]The Discworld Novels: By Sir Terry Pratchett (I've read about 6 of them and I have another 2 or 3 but I want to read them in order and since there's about 50 of them its really hard to find the ones your after.) Actually its probably a decent part of the reason why I haven't read much for a while, I kind of have a thing where I can't start something new until I've finished or given up on what I was doing and since I really enjoy Discworld but can't get the books...you get the idea [*]Harry Potter (I've read through the entire series about 3 times and I've read the first 5 about 10 times in total) [*]King Arthur Trilogy by M.K.Hume (quite a good Historical fiction series with an interesting twist on the King Arthur Legends, essentially that he had a wife and kid well before he became king, its based in the Dark Ages which is far more accurate than what most King Arthur stories are like (which are usually based in medieval times instead)) [*]The Inheritance Cycle (Eragon, Eldest, Brisingr and Inheritance) There's quite a few books I want to read (most of which have been mentioned above) eg. The Hunger Games, The Hobbit and LOTR, Game of Thrones, and I have also been planning on reading the Halo novels (I have most of them but have never read them). Like I said though I haven't read for a while, unless you count manga in which case I'm probably beating you all (I guess I could possibly count Sword Art Online as something I've been reading recently, but I've only read like one chapter of the online translation of the novel) That's the series that Amulet of Samarkand is part of right? I've read up until part way through the 3rd book when I got really fed up with the main character. I enjoyed it up until then though.

I was just wondering whether there were any plans to dub the series so I looked it up and I saw that they announced early last month that they will be (no idea when though). Also I plan to update/rewrite this a little bit. There were a few things that I intended to write about that I forgot to put in and some of the writing I did was just a bit sloppy (due to me writing it for so long, trying to avoid spoiling it as much as possible etc)

glad to hear it was useful

Before I start I want to mention that any words underlined like this are words that have an explanation on my glossary page so you may want to have a look at that if you don't understand those words. So I've wanted to do this for a while, that is write about anime and manga, but it doesn't really belong as an article, nor does it exactly fit in with the theme of the rest of the site. Eventually it occurred to me that it would be perfect for a blog. And I recently started watching the perfect series to kick this off for this site since even if your not a fan of anime or manga if your on this site you're probably a fan of The Elder Scrolls series (which are fantasy RPGs) or your a remnant of the old Runescape Clan (which is an MMORPG) so Sword Art Online is a good fit. Sword Art Online was initially going to be Reki Kawahara's competition entry for ASCII Media Works' Dengeki Game Novel Prize, but he ended up exceeding the word limit so he published it online instead and ended up writing more volumes and a few short stories. He entered the competition again with a different work called "Accel World" and won the grand prize. ASCII Media Works asked to not only publish Accel World but also Sword Art Online, and so it was published as a light novel and was no longer available online. It has since been adapted into several manga series and an anime and even a game. At first I was confused by the order of the different versions and what differences in the story they had. It turns out its not that complicated. Basically the novel currently consists of 6 story arcs (across 12 volumes), there is a different manga series for each arc and the anime covers the first 2 arcs. The game is an original story on what might have happened if the first arc had turned out differently. Okay that sounds confusing, but its actually not as bad as it sounds especially once you're further in the series. The anime (which I have watched through completely) consists of 25 episodes and is fairly recent, having only started and finished late last 2012. Its yet to be given an english dub (if it does end up getting one) however it has been subtitled in english and is being streamed officially by a few sites at the moment (I know crunchyroll has the entire series and madman, which has the distribution rights for Australia, has begun streaming before they have a DVD release) which is great because it means you can support the creators of the anime (rather than getting it illegally) without having to pay huge anime prices for the DVD, in fact it shouldn't cost you a thing. So the story starts in the year 2022, when the worlds first Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (VRMMORPG) is released. If your like me you may have be thinking about how unoriginal the topic of Virtual Reality Games are, and how they've never really been explored that well, but bare with me, as I will explain in a moment this series actually does things quite well. Anyway Sword Art Online (SAO for short) is the worlds first VRMMORPG and has a very limited initial release to only 10,000 players after a beta test of 1000 beta testers. At the beginning of the first episode the main character Kazuto Kirigaya (more often referred to by his username, Kirito) is teaching another player how to fight within the game since he was one of the lucky people to be selected for Beta testing and has a better understanding of the game. Shortly afterwards they realize the log out button is missing. For a moment they assume this must just be a bug, and reflect on how such a big bug could impact on the future sales of the game, until there is a system announcement and they are force teleported to the center of the the Town of Beginnings along with all the other players. The creator of SAO, Kayaba Akihiko, appears and announces that its not a bug and that the system was designed to trap them in there, and the only way to escape is to clear all 100 floors and pass the game, furthermore if you die in the game you die in reality as well. Real life death in a virtual reality game isn't exactly a new concept, in fact its been the plot of several movies and books etc but I've always found those stories quite poorly thought out or at least poorly explained. For example they rarely do a very good job of explaining how death in the game causes death in the real world, however in this series they explain very clearly how the same system that reads and blocks signals from the brain (so that you can run in the game without running into a wall in the real world for example) and that sends signals to the brain to show the world, can just as easily trigger certain parts of the brain to deactivate it, thus killing you. The other issue I've always had is why doesn't someone in the real world just notice somethings wrong and remove the player, and sometimes they explain this by something like time isn't moving in reality (which is stupid) but again they explain in SAO that attempting to remove the device triggers the same response that kills the brain. Okay again, not exactly new, similar stuff has been done before but how do people in the real world know that removing the device will kill you and the thing is in Sword Art Online the general public don't initially know, but as Kayaba Akihiko announces 200 people had already died this way within the first moments of the game so people quickly learned. So basically I really enjoyed the way they explained the theory behind everything that's going on in SAO, but I also really like some of the themes they explore. Firstly I think its quite obvious that the author understood games on a personal level. There's also issues of prejudice (similar to racism) towards the Beta players by other players for supposedly not sharing information. Then even in this world where death is real there are still Player Killers (PKers) and people gradually work out how to exploit the system to do things like kill people in safe zones without them being able to put up a fight. The other thing is despite being a fantasy game, SAO doesn't allow players to use magic and they even mention in the series how risky that is for an RPG but it works perfectly and its something that is eventually explored in later story arcs. The graphics and design of the characters as well as the SAO world is amazing heck even the way the menus look and work is awesome. I was very quickly reminded of all the praise Skyrim got for its amazing expansive Mountain landscape when I saw all the landscape of SAO and just how massive that world is. The buildings and towns and even the dungeons all look amazing and like they really fit in as well as looking realistic and you can tell a lot of work has been put into it. One issue I had was that a lot of time seems to be skipped between episodes, they seem to clear about 10 floors between most episodes and within 15 episodes 2 years has passed. But its also understandable why they did it to quote the anime "Every gamer knows how boring it is to watch someone else play an RPG". This is possibly more an issue in the anime, rather than the novel and manga. I've only just started reading the novel but I feel like it's quite possible that it fills the gaps in a bit more. Something I thought was quite interesting was although SAO is such a short anime it used the extra side stories (which don't necessarily fit in with the rest of the series from what I've heard). Usually I really hate fillers but in SAO they work. They don't stand out from the rest of the series as being different like most fillers do and they actually add to the character development. Anyway I really enjoyed this series and highly recommend it.

There are several terms in Japanese (like most languages) that don't really have a direct English equivalent and instead need to be explained a bit more. So instead of explaining the full thing every time I want to use such a word in my blog entries I'll just use that word an then have a list of all those words and what they mean here. I would recommend just using this to refer to words that you might not understand rather than reading the whole thing. Anime and Manga A lot of people who aren't very familiar with anime and manga probably don't know the difference so I thought it was worth mentioning here. Put simply manga are Japanese comics whilst Anime refers to the same style but with moving images, including but not limited to cartoons.Fillers Although fillers exist in Western media they aren't really known about as much as they are in Anime and Manga. A filler is an episode, or story arc that is not part of the original manga and are generally not considered as part of the "official" story line or "canon". Demographics Manga (and sometimes anime) is broken into several different demographics which target different audiences. This is useful for manga because various titles will all be published within a single issue of a magazine (such as Shonen Jump) and basically makes it quite clear how appropriate it is for different age groups. The demographics include: Kodomomuke: (or Kodomo) is aimed towards children, and are often very moralistic and teach children how to behave. Popular examples include Digimon, Hamtaro and Pokemon. Shonen: (or Shounen, ShÅnen) Which arguably is the most popular demographic is targeted towards young males (roughly between the ages of 10 and 18) but tends to be enjoyed by a lot more people outside of that age and gender group. It is categorized by high-action and often humourous plots and attractive female characters. It also often has a main character who has an ongoing desire to better themselves (or become stronger). Popular examples include Dragonball, Naruto and One Piece. Shojo: (or Shoujo, ShÅjo) is basically the oppopsite of Shonen and is aimed at young females (roughly between the ages of 10 and 18). They are often categorized by a strong focus on human and romantic relationships and emotions. Popular examples include Sailor Moon, Fruits Basket and Vampire Knight. Seinen: The word Seinen means "young man" and its target audience is males roughly between 18 and 30 (though there are some Seinen manga aimed at businessman well into their 40's). In my opinion this demographic shows the most variation between different titles with subject matter ranging from expiremental, to the mundane, to pornographic. Because it generally focuses on storyline and character development rather than action it is often confused with Shojo. Popular examples include Vagabond, Hellsing and Elfen Lied Josei: The word Josei means "woman","female" or "womanhood" and the demographic is generally written and targeted at women, and is essentially the female equivalent to Seinen. It tends to be written about adult women and is similar to a restrained and more realistic version of Shojo. To keep this as simple as possible I will add to it when I use new Japanese words in my blog.

I'm with you there.

Welcome to another "This Week in Gaming" update. Unfortunately I couldn't get a gaming update put out last week, and I apologize for that. To make up for it, instead of covering just the games from last week, we will cover games from the last two weeks. Game ReleasesHere are the games released in the last couple weeks. Games Released on the 21st [*]Lego City Undercover-The Chase Begins (for 3DS) (previously released in the US) Games Released on the 22nd [*]Chernobyl 3:Underground (for PC) Games Released on the 23rd [*]Star Trek (for PC,Xbox360 and PS3) [*]Poker Night 2 (for Xbox360 and PS3) [*]Panza: Forged by Chaos (for PC) (previously released in the US) [*]Dust: An Elysian Trail (for PC) [*]Draw Slasher (for PSVita) [*]Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen (for Xbox360 and PS3) [*]Don't Starve (for PC) [*]Dead Island Riptide (for PC, Xbox360 and PS3) [*]Black Rock Shooter (for PSP) [*]Assassin's Creed III: The Tyranny of King Washington - The Redemption DLC (for PC and Xbox360) (later released on PS3 on the 24th) [*]Probably the biggest release of the last couple of weeks. The Tyranny of King Washingon is the much talked about DLC pack for Assassins Creed 3, in which the player experiences an alternate history where George Washington becomes a tyrannical king of America. Games Released on the 24th [*]Monaco: What's Yours is Mine (for PC) (soon to be released on Xbox360) [*]Dyad (for PC) [*]Cry of Fear (for PC) Games Released on the 25th [*]No games seem to have been released on the 25th Games Released on the 26th [*]Star Drive (for PC) [*]Mars: War Logs (for PC) (to be released on Xbox360 and PS3 at an unconfirmed date) Games Released on the 29th [*]Zack Zero (for PC) (previously released on PS3 Early 2012) Games Released on the 30th [*]Zombie Tycoon 2 (for PS3 and PSVita) [*]Zeno Clash 2 (for PC) (to be released on Xbox360 September 2013) [*]Strike Suit Infinity (for PC) [*]Soul Sacrifice (for PSVita) [*]Leviathan: Warships (for PC) Now for the first games of May 2013... Games Released on the 1st [*]Ragnorok Online 2: Legend of the Second (for PC) [*]Fez (for PC) (released on Xbox360 April 2012) [*]Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon (for PC, Xbox360 and PS3) Games Released on the 2nd [*]Might & Magic: Heroes VI- Shades of Darkness (for PC) [*]Angry Birds Friends (for iOS and Android) [*]Dark Avenger (for iOS) [*]Lego Star Wars: The Yoda Chronicles (for iOS) [*]Paper Titans (for iOS) [*]Zombies Ate My Friends (for iOS) Gaming NewsNews from around the industry. [*]Mozzilla has revealed that it is working on a high end gaming experience for Firefox which will allow similar games to consoles, and has even released a demo of what it will be like. [*]Google recently hired veteran game developer Noah Falstein as "Chief Game Designer" [*]In China a 20 year old woman almost died after a 40 hour gaming session. She complained of leg pains and when she was taken to hospital she was diagnosed with possibly life threatening Deep Vein Thrombosis, a condition normally associated with flying. Weird Gaming News and FactsHere are some tidbits sure to make you scratch your head. [*]An employee at ESEA has recently been caught using computers connected to the Counter Strike servers to mine for bitcoins for his own personal profit. The good news is though that ESEA has said they will donate its employees bit coin profits to the American Cancer Society and will match the donation with its own funds. [*]There is a gene in the human body named after Sonic the Hedgehog. [*]In the original "Animal Crossing" for the N64 (unreleased outside of Japan) you have to input the time and date every time you boot the game. Click here to view the article

Welcome to the site, I look forward to seeing you around on the site.

I completely agree, like I mentioned they show the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier but S.H.I.E.L.D. isn't involved at all, the first 2 movies atleast had some SHIELD involvement. I had seen that The Winter Soldier is meant to focus a lot more on SHIELD, so hopefully they do that much better.

Yeah...sorry about that. You did a good job though. I noticed a typo though (not sure whether it was me or you) where it says "...manipulate me ..." it should be "...manipulate metal..." Yeah, I was trying not to get into that too much but it just kind of kept relating to it. I only use it to add to my argument (other than in suggesting that they could have chosen a much better story to adapt). Well, I wouldn't say I know a huge amount about the Marvel Universe, but I've kind of just been exposed to it enough that I just know the basics of it. If I didn't have even that knowledge though I would say it would be easier to enjoy the movie (which I still did, just not as much as I could've) but even within the movie they work so hard to set up this major villain that you're meant to really despise and then all of a sudden they just turn away from that completely. There was just a whole lot of stuff that really didn't make sense for the characters just from what they'd set up in the other movies and even the rest of the movie. Yeah, I kind of get that, my thought's on it though were that being held hostage for months (possibly years I can't remember), and the feeling of hopelessness that come with that should surely be at least somewhat psychologically damaging, whereas the aliens yeah they do a lot of damage but they also stop them with minimal casualties within a day. JARVIS (the electronic helper thing you mentioned) says the same thing in IM3

This article contains a great deal of spoilers of the film; if you haven't yet seen Iron Man 3 be wary! Readers who have not yet seen the movie may prefer our spoiler-free Iron Man 3 review. Overall, I enjoyed Iron Man 3 but it certainly wasn't amazing by any means and in my opinion it could have been if not for the following issues. I'm going to be up-front: I reference the comic books a lot here, and I understand that there are changes that need to be made when adapting something to another format. However, there were a lot of changes from the comics that made the movie worse rather than better; many of them weren't necessary. Face Your Demons! ...Or just make some different ones.Iron Man in the comic books really lacks decent villains; they are almost all rich business people who are competitors to Stark Industries. Their objective is one of two options: try to steal his suits to make there own, or compete with versions of their own power-suits similar to Iron Man's. Besides Mandarin (who we will discuss later), Tony Stark's main enemy in the comic books is... Tony Stark. Oh, and his alcohol addiction. I had only seen one of the earliest trailers before seeing the film and I had heard that Mandarin was going to be in it to explore the "Demon in a Bottle" story line. Demon in a Bottle was a nine issue story arc published in 1979 and has been described by critics as "the quintessential Iron Man Story," and "one of the best super hero sagas of the 1970's.' With praise like that this is obviously a really amazing story, but even before the first movie came out fans were excited that Robert Downey Jr. would be playing the character of Tony Stark. After all, Downey has gone through similar issues with drug and alcohol addiction in his past thus - who better to play Stark? From very early on in the film, the theme of "facing your demons" is mentioned. This may have piqued the interest of some fans, but did we get to see Iron Man at his darkest moments in the series? No. In fact, he doesn't drink a sip of alcohol except during the flashback to 1999. Instead, the phrase has been re-purposed to refer to the creation of two villains that would appear later in the movie (mainly Aldrich Killian) and to his anxiety over events of "The Avengers". Stark has never been shown to suffer from anxiety in the comic books. Sure, its an adaptation so they don't have to stick to the events exactly, but it just doesn't make sense for him. So he deals okay with being held hostage by terrorists in Iron Man 1, but then suddenly gets post traumatic stress disorder after the almost-catastrophe in The Avengers? Really? If anything, surely those events should reassure him that the world is in capable hands, and not stress him out to the point of having a nervous break down any time "New York" is mentioned. The whole anxiety thing is clearly just a way of exploring some of the elements of "Demon in a Bottle" without showing any alcohol abuse. The only reasons I can think of to avoid that is to appeal to children more. This is a theme I noticed a lot in this movie... There's a palpable effort made to avoid complaints made by overly conservative parents. Surely people know what they're getting into when they go to see Iron Man 3, right? Tony Stark is, and has been shown in the previous movies to be, someone who loves women (he is a "genius, billionaire, philanthropist, playboy" after all) and alcohol. He even deals with his issue... So if anything it should show how much addictions can ruin lives. Besides, they're happy to have other people drinking and abusing drugs. We'll get into that in a minute... Spitting on a Warlord Mandarin is the primary antagonist of all the Iron Man stories. He is Iron Man's arch-enemy, and Stark's worst nightmare... And apparently nothing more than a British drug addict actor being played like a puppet. It was odd that they had so much back-story set up on Mandarin and the Ten Rings despite him clearly not being Chinese.Although probably not a close descendant of Ghengis Khan, Ben Kingsley initially did quite well at playing the role... Then in an instant he's turned into a cheap source of comic-relief. Really? Imagine the outrage if they did the same thing to the Joker. Imagine if Magneto couldn't actually manipulate metal with his mind and he just carried around a giant magnet. Imagine if Catwoman turned out to be a dude... Sure, these things might be funny, but they come at the cost of completely destroying the original character. It's exactly what they did to Mandarin. Just imagine if this guy (the real Mandarin) saw this movie. It wouldn't be pretty. Similar to the legendary Batman villain the Joker, an interesting thing about Mandarin is that his true identity is unknown. Well, according to this movie his name's Trevor Cassidy. A purposely inappropriate name for a villain like this. You may recall that the name of the organization that captured Tony Stark in the first movie was known as "The Ten Rings." Mandarin traditionally get his various powers from ten rings (and of course in the film he doesn't have any powers). The leader of the Ten Rings organization in the first movie makes frequent references to Ghengis Khan. This is meant to reference Mandarin, who is a descendant of Ghengis Khan; this is supposed to reflect his strength as a Warlord. I couldn't tell when watching it, but apparently the organization in Iron Man 3 is the same Ten Rings from the first movie. It just shows how differently they are depicted in this film. ExtremisIf you've seen the movie you will know that the plot revolves around Extremis. Extremis is actually a comic book arc that the movie was based on; however, it's a rather recent comic having been published from 2005-2006. Of course, both the writer and illustrator admitted they knew next to nothing about Iron Man... Despite the fact that it is a fairly popular story, I don't think it was a good fit for this movie. For one thing the story is based just after the Avengers Disassembled story line; this not only obviously leads to the breakup of the Avengers, but also several key members of the Avengers are killed during it (including Hawkeye). It leads to further chaos amongst superheroes and eventually begins a civil war in which Iron Man causes the death of Captain America... So yeah, not the best story to choose to lead up to another Avenger's movie. It's also a new origin story for Iron Man, but we already had an origin story in the first movie. Adding another one only serves to confuse things. Further changes were made that made the film worse and caused inconsistencies and limitations for the overall Marvel Cinematic Universe. For starters, the main villain in the movie, Aldrich Killian, is a very different character in the original story. He co-developed Extremis with Maya Hansen, and kills himself after he gives it away to terrorists. Maya is also not working with Mandarin on purpose as she is in the movie; instead, she is tricked into giving him samples of the drug. Extremis does give superpowers in the original - but it doesn't cause explosions - and Stark actually asks to be injected with it to save his life. Two of the people in the movie who were injected with Extremis were actually existing characters: Eric Savin and Jack Taggert. They are, of course, the super-villains Coldblooded and Firepower respectively. However, they don't even have the same powers... Coldblooded is a cyborg mercenary while Firepower has a highly protected suit of armor. It's air conditioned and equipped with a vast array of sensors and weapons; neither of them were introduced by Extremis. In fact, they were introduced to the series nearly 20 years before the Extremis arc... In my opinion, they would have been far more interesting characters to see and could have added a lot more to the movie than they did in their "human bomb" forms. S.H.I.E.L.D. Help Something I was really disappointed in was the lack of involvement by the rest of the Marvel universe. Fine, it's an Iron Man movie; not an "entire marvel universe movie,".... I get it. But why do they show the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier when Stark first breaks out before meeting up with Rhodes? They did nothing at all in the movie. Why were they even there? Couldn't they have maybe lent some help to fight Mandarin? Surely that was the intention - I mean why else would they be there? Everyone Should be DeadThe part where Iron Man is saving everyone falling out of the plane is really inaccurate... In so very many ways. I don't know a whole lot about physics, but I know this. So he just manages to catch everyone before they hit the water (firstly I'm pretty sure he would have died or at least fainted from falling that far from that high without anything to slow him down) and then he only moves slightly away from there before dropping them. He barely loses any speed or velocity. Again, I'm not great at physics and I guess he probably lost a fair bit of velocity by changing direction, but still I'm sure those people would all be seriously injured if not dead. Before going after them, he stops for a moment and works out which one to get first. Why on earth did he choose that woman first? Surely he should get one of the stronger people who is capable of holding everyone, no? Or maybe he would go for the president first in case things didn't go according to plan. "Which one will I wear today?"So we very quickly learn that Tony Stark is up to MK 42 armor. The comics never really seem to go past about MK VII (8), so what were the changes in the different versions? We see all of them towards the end and some of them clearly have very different features (such as a larger, bulkier one that shoots heavier weapons and misslies), but for the most part they all seemed to do the exact same thing; they just looked slightly different visually. Then obviously the whole situation ends up being resolved when all of the suits, which are being remotely controlled, arrive. Yay! Problem solved. But why the hell didn't he do that earlier? He could have done that immediately, or at least as soon as he found out where Mandarin was. What was so much better about this one anyway? Sure he could put it on remotely, but couldn't some of the other suits do that anyway? I'm sure he did that in the Avengers: falls off of the building and the suit deploys and flies after him as he equips it in mid-air. Anyways, he proves how useful it was to keep all those suits; even Pepper said she could understand now. Then.... Then he blows them up for no reason other than to reassure Pepper. What if the next day a new supervillain arrives... They would be doomed. Where's the harm in keeping them? Pepper had already said that she understood. I QUIT!What the hell was with the end? You know, with Stark removing the power core. The whole reason he had it on all the time was because it's a risky surgery to remove the shrapnel. Secondly, it's the power for his suits. If he removes that, he has to redesign all the machines to include it within the structure of the suit. This is the thing that the villains of the first two movies were trying to get from him and he just throws it away. Sure, in the real world that would be completely lost, but your dealing with super-villains; I'm sure they can think to maybe go to his house and work out where he might have thrown it. Finally, I can't work out a reason why he would seemingly quit and suddenly get over his anxiety of an alien invasion just because he wrapped up one completely unrelated problem. Besides, apparently he wasn't even quitting... After the credits it says "Tony Stark will return". Before it even said that it was obvious, so why would they even pretend to not have Iron Man in the next Avenger's movie? There is no answer for that. The only reason I can think of for them to include that in the movie is to copy the ending of the Dark Knight Rises, which I absolutely hated for very similar reasons, many of which were detailed in this plot holes and problems article. Upcoming Movie SpeculationThis movie really added nothing to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so I don't really have any extra speculation on future movies. The only thing that I can possibly come up with - and this is only because I really want the post credits scene to mean something - is that Bruce Banner (played by Mark Ruffallo) had much more grey hair in that scene because of stress. This means... A new Hulk movie with Mark Ruffallo. Or that I'm just reading waaaay too much into it and really want a new hulk movie with Mark Ruffallo as Hulk/Bruce Banner. It is possible, though, but not until 2015. When/if it does happen, Tim Roth will return playing The Leader. Between now and the Avengers 2 (May 1, 2015), confirmed upcoming Marvel movies are (in order)... [*]Kick Ass (which is completely unrelated). [*]The Wolverine. Wolverine is sometimes part of some of the Avenger's teams in the comics, and it would be cool to see him appear in the Avengers 2, but the movie rights are owned by a different studio, so it's unlikely. This movie is about Wolverine in Japan, which I consider to be a very interesting story; it should bring out a gentler side of him. Hugh Jackman has also said that he has been a fan of the Japanese arcs in the comic books so he should be pretty good at acting in it. [*]Thor: The Dark World, the next movie in the MCU, with few details on the plot revealed. Loki does return and is shown in the trailer. However, I don't believe he will be the main villain. [*]Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the third movie in the MCU, which will involve other S.H.I.E.L.D. members including Black Widow and Bucky Barnes, who was Captain America's sidekick before he was frozen. It also shows Steve Rogers adapting to the modern world. [*]The Amazing Spiderman 2. I would also love to see Spiderman in the Avengers; again, he is sometimes a member of the Avengers, but the rights are owned by a different studio. The main villain is apparently Electro. [*]X-Men: Days of Future Past. Several X-men Characters are rumored to appear in the next Avengers film even though another studio owns it. I'm not really looking forward to this at all. I love the X-men comic books, but I really hated X-men: First Class and The Last Stand. Its apparently a sequel to both, which doesn't make sense to me. I get really frustrated about how badly the X-men films manage to conflict with themselves. [*]Guardians of the Galaxy. The 4th and last film in the second phase of the MCU before The Avengers 2. I'm rather interested in this as I have never really heard of this team and I'm sure many other people are in the same situation. However, it includes a team of super-humans and aliens based on the post credit scene in The Avengers. It seems like things are heading in the direction of the outer-space side of the marvel universe, which has quite a lot of potential. [*]Fantastic Four. Again, not an MCU project; it's actually meant to be in the same universe as the X-men films. It's a reboot; not a continuation of the previous Fantastic Four Movies. Aside from that there is an upcoming TV Series called Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D; Agent Phil Coulson - who apparently died in the Avengers - will be returning in the show. Rumor has it that he may appear as the android, The Vision or the Cyborg, Deathlok. The Vision seems more likely and is an important member of the Avengers. There is also an upcoming Hulk TV Series with very few details released. It was apparently meant to be coming out this year but it has obviously been pushed back if it is still planned at all. ConclusionThanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it. Please let me know what you think of the article by commenting below and joining in the discussion with us. Click here to view the article

Maybe its just that I went into it with a critical mindset and so I noticed everything wrong with it. There were some weird decisions though that completely ruined things a lot of people are looking forward to.