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The Fast and Furious franchise at the time of me writing this as spanned 8 film's with two more in the pipeline and at least one spin-off in the form of Hobbs and Shaw.

I’m a big fan of the franchise and for me, it started many years ago in 2001 I was a big fan of modified cars back then and dreamed of cruising the streets much like in the Fast and the Furious with a modified car and street racing, though a lot of that was put to rest as I wasn’t too reckless and insurance was very expensive. I got my fix through the Need for Speed Underground games though.

Whilst the main franchise continues to keep things around the ‘Toretto family’ the spin-off Hobbs and Shaw takes things in a different direction by taking two characters who were both introduced as bad guys in previous films with Hobbs being the main antagonist to Brian and Dom in Fast Five and Deckard Shaw being the main villain who was out for revenge in Fast and Furious 7 who took out fan favourite Han (because he was a fan favourite Fast 4, 5, 6 and part of 7 were all set before Tokyo Drift which was the 3rd film produced but sits somewhere in between 6 and 7).

Both these characters were fan favourites since Hobbs turned up at least 4 times in the main series and Shaw 2 times. And they turned from villains into anti-Heros.
The Fate of the Furious (Fast and Furious 8) had established that both Dwayne Johnson and Jason Stratham had good chemistry so giving them their own buddy cop style film was a no-brainer.

The film picks up an unspecified time after Fate of the Furious and initially follows Hobbs and Shaw doing their respective things ie: kicking ass in their own little way before keeping true to the Fast and the Furious theme of family with us seeing Hobbs and his daughter and Shaw and his mum and also establishing that they are both in some ways estrange from family before both being recruited by the CIA to do a mission.

The main plot begins establishing key characters such as a woman who is responsible for securing the virus, an unstoppable villain with enhanced strengths and abilities and lots of action, comedy, and fast cars. The key thing aspect of family is strongly touched on through this film and the ending is especially touching and despite the hatred for each other Hobbs and Shaw do learn to tolerate each other which makes for some good action and laughs later on.

There are some cameos from Hollywood actors playing agents of sorts and can be especially funny and you hope for them to make an appearance in the sequel.

If you’re looking for some mindless fun that you can turn your brain off too it well worth watching and if you’re a fan of the franchise, definitely go watch this to see what happens to some well-loved characters and for a different take on ‘Family’ and Fast cars.

If you followed my last article you may have read about my return to Destiny which took place at the start of Bungie adding cross saves into the game and in some ways making it free to play for the original main campaign “Red War” and the DLC “Curse of Osiris” and “Warmind”.

My subsequent return as you may have read allowed me to carry over my characters from the first game. Unfortunately due to me having to complete the original base game on the PS3 (which I had only done with my Warlock and Hunter characters it meant that I currently didn’t have a Titan character on my account. I’d like to think the Titan was lost during the start of the Red War (Spoilers coming up though if you have not played it yet) when the Cabal attacked the Tower forcing everyone to flee the now destroyed tower and setting into motion the story for Destiny 2.

For the Red War campaign, my main was the Warlock with the Hunter remaining as a secondary character on my account which I levelled up using gear that I had unlocked using my Warlock and also from the Season of the Undying where Guardians faced the Vex and were able to level up and unlocked various items at different tiers.

I quite enjoyed the story for Destiny 2 though I don’t think it beats ‘The Taken King’ which was one of my favourite stories.

Being stripped of all our powers and gradually having to work our way back up whilst finding the Shard of the Traveler to gain our powers back was pretty fun but because there had been changes made to Destiny 2 in ‘New Light’ the rest of the story saw me basically have everything I had unlocked and carried over from Destiny 1 which mean most of the time I felt immensely overpowered. I suppose in the original campaign it would have been more fun to gradually unlock these abilities but I settled for just progressing the story.

I quite enjoyed exploring the EDZ (which I believe is one of the biggest zones in Destiny 2) and meeting Hawthorne and seeing the struggle of those outside of the Tower and eventually getting the band back together, tracking down Zavala on Titan, Cayde-6 on Nessus and Ikora on Io before storming the old City and saving the day and watching the heroes on the newly constructed tower look at the Traveler.

The voice acting was on point especially Nathan Fillon injecting his usual humour and charisma into Cayde-6 and cast of supporting characters were pretty good with a favourite of mind being Failsafe on Nessus.

I did feel though a lot of the impact in some places of the story was lost due to the changes that Bungie made for ‘New Light’. But I think making things more accessible in the long run is probably better and allows for a new fan base to take hold to support the game alongside the existing one as evident by steam downloads, etc.

Next time I’ll be venturing into the DLC Curse of Osiris which is a lot shorter and quicker to complete than the original campaign but continues to add to the lore and history surround Destiny.

Till then “Stay Safe Guardian”.