Piece By Piece Movie Review

 A review of Piece by Piece (2024), dir. Morgan Neville.

They did downplay Chad's impact, but not as much as I was anticipating. They definitely downplayed Pharrell's relationship with Timbaland. He's like, "Yeah we went to the same school," when they're cousins. 

Timeline was a little confusing, like, they pretend that "Drop It Like It's Hot" is the first Pharrell / Snoop collab, but they acknowledge "Beautiful" later in the movie. And they talk about "Blurred Lines" (from 2013) (🤮) before Clipse's Till The Casket Drops (2009).

Speaking of Clipse, where is Malice?

5/10, not enough Cudi.

 

LEGO Series' That I Want to Return

Lego Series' That I Want Back and Why: A Thread

— Josh (@Icystorm9) August 22, 2017

LEGO Pirates of the Carribean is cool, but it provides a much darker tone than what LEGO Pirates always did in the past.

— Josh (@Icystorm9) August 22, 2017

Of course I spelled "provides" incorrectly.

The LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean sets always tried to replicate the movie, and there's nothing wrong with that,

— Josh (@Icystorm9) August 22, 2017

but the LEGO Pirates themes were always plain fun. They're much more bright, colorful and interesting.

— Josh (@Icystorm9) August 22, 2017

You know what? I'll just write a blog post about this.

— Josh (@Icystorm9) August 22, 2017

The Brick Bounty is one of the greatest sets of this decade.

So I've already talked about LEGO Pirates, but now I'd like to talk about LEGO Castle. LEGO Castle is a series that was launched in 1978 and ran until it was discontinued in 1997. It was then revived as LEGO Kingdoms (my favorite of the Castle themes) in 2007 and was renamed to LEGO Castle in 2013. LEGO Castle was discontinued AGAIN in 2014 to make way for LEGO Nexo Knights, a theme that I frankly think isn't that appealing. LEGO Castle was always a great series, but now we have Nexo Knights, which is okay at best. Since I'm not sure if Nexo Knights and Castle can coexist, cancel Nexo Knights. Castle has always had interesting sets. The sets where you build an actual castle have always been my favorite.

Take a look at this beast of a set that I incorrectly named when downloading.

An often overlooked set in the past is the LEGO Space. Despite having a main character from this series in The LEGO Movie back in 2014, The last dedicated Space series was LEGO Space Police, which was discontinued in 2011. And that's unfortunate, because there is a lot of potential for this series with different designs for space ships and the moon and the launch pad and stuff. And that leads me into the next one.

The LEGO City Set "Utility Shuttle" is actually in my Amazon list right now.

Alien Conquest was awesome. I really liked the design of all the spaceships and all of the aliens. There are nearly infinite possibilities for sets here as long as there are creative people at LEGO. I don't know if Alien Conquest can coexist with Space, but if I had to pick one, I'd mash them both together and call all of the sets LEGO Space. Nice and simple.

I actually built the Alien Mothership with my cousin back when it was released. It sits on a shelf in his game room now.

Next we have LEGO Western. LEGO Western was an awesome theme. I would pay 80 bucks for Fort LEGOREDO if I had the option, despite the fact that it should realistically be 70. Every set in LEGO Western is unique and creatively crafted. Sets like Rapid River Village and Sherriff's Lockup are so cool and look nice, not to mention the fact that you can do so much with the sets. Here's a picture of Fort LEGOREDO just to show you how great it is.

Who wouldn't want this set?

Pharoah's Quest was also a cool series. The sets had lots of detail, especially in the decals and printed pieces. The mummy figures and vehicles were always great. I still have my mummy minifigure from the Cursed Cobra Statue and it's one of my favorites in my collection. One thing that Pharoah's Quest did better than nearly every theme is that it felt grand and large, despite the fact that it wasn't, honestly. The few sets released for it made it feel like it went on for much longer than it actually did.

I wish I could've afforded this back in 2012.

And finally, can we all agree that LEGO Atlantis was awesome?

What The Wii U Should Have Been

I'm not going to act like I'm smarter than the dozens of people that were working at Nintendo from 2011 to 2014. But now that I have history to reflect on, I think I have a few ideas that would have helped the Wii U not only sell better, but have a better library in the long run. I also got these ideas from other people that I know.

First of all, bundles.

What they should have done is have 3 bundles. The Basic, Standard, and Deluxe. The Basic Set is red and comes with just a Wii U Pro Controller, AV Cable, HDMI Cable, and Mini-USB Cable. It would cost $250 at launch.

Couldn't find a good image of a custom red Pro Controller online, so this will have to do.

Because it doesn't include the GamePad (which cost either 60 or 80 dollars to make, I don't remember), the price could be reduced significantly. But as a result, all games would need to do one of two things.
1) All games need to support the Pro Controller in one way or another.
2) All games that require the GamePad need to be clearly marked.

I think the second one is the best option, so the games requiring the GamePad won't be restricted because of the Pro Controller requirement. And if the second one were the case, I'm sure many more games would support the Pro Controller from the start.

The Second Bundle is the Standard Set. It costs 300 dollars and comes with everything that the current Basic Set comes with. It comes in 2 colors- white and red.

Nice looking console, isn't it?

The memory would be 16 gigabytes because I said so.

Then finally we have the Deluxe Edition. That's the same. It comes in either Black or White, just as the already-existing Deluxe Edition.

So those are the 3 bundles. I'm gonna go make some grilled cheese and come back to talk about the next part, reaching out to 3rd party developers.

Ah dang, I'm out of cheese slices. Oh well. So as I said, this section is about reaching out to 3rd party developers. They had a good start by getting SEGA games Bayonetta 2 and Sonic Lost World as exclusives, but they needed more. If they funded more exclusives or ports of 360 games, then the Wii U would have had the same advantage the Dreamcast would have had. If they had given companies like Rockstar and Activision money to make exclusives and port their older games, then the Wii U would have not only had the new games, but the best versions of these older games, as well as exclusives. And I think that would have pushed a good amount of people over to Nintendo's side this previous generation.

Some ports they could have had if they paid a small amount to the game developers:

Madden 25 (Electronic Arts)

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (Activision)

(i honestly got lazy w/ this one) Dishonored (Bethesda Softworks)

Battlefield 4 (Electronic Arts)

(Didn't actually design this, blame someone else) Grand Theft Auto V (Rockstar Games)

Resident Evil 6 (Capcom)

So now that I've touched on ports that they could have funded, I'll talk about exclusives that they could have funded.

Yakuza 1 & 2 Remastered technically already exists and is an exclusives, but it's only available in Japan.

Jet Set Radio 3, boiii

Another LEGO game, like LEGO City Undercover, such as a LEGO Pirates-type thing, would be greatly appreciated. I would buy that.

Why don't they pay EA to be competent for once? That would be a sight to behold.

And finally, the thing that everyone whines about - marketing.

If they had advertised it correctly, then the Wii U could have been saved, even without the previously mentioned changes. I remember for Thanksgiving 2014 or 2015 (I don't remember), I went to my cousin's house. He has cable, so I watched The Simpsons on FXX. And do you know what I saw? I saw ads for the PlayStation 4. I saw them all the time that weekend. Do you know how many ads I've seen on TV for the Wii U? None. And that's dumb. The Wii U has many features that are unique to it, too. Like full backwards compatibility. And 5-player support. The Pro Controller, the best controller of the 8th generation. All of the great 360 games that are best on the Wii U. And most of all, all of the great exclusives like Pikmin 3, Splatoon, Sonic Lost World, and Runbow Pocket. With all of these great things, you'd think they'd advertise a lot, and you'd think they'd advertise smart. But that didn't happen.

But what's done is done. And the Wii U is done. Nintendo is likely not making any more Wii U things ever again. But that's okay. Because of the Wii U, we now have the Switch. Nintendo had to fall to learn how to make the Switch such a great platform. And I'm glad that they did.