Beystiman It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Ezmae Chang This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Scotty Burke It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Edwin The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

N. N. "Hands of Fate" is quite an endeavour in terms of telling a story that people might not like to listen to, but it is a very good film.I liked "Dorkness Rising" better, pretty much like most people prefer youth to old age. The first two films were only slightly exaggerated reports on role players, this on the other hand is a fantasy, that is a parable that is supposed to make you dream as opposed to grin, about meaning that people build up for themselves, and about letting go of that, when it's all just mere self indulgence, i.e. this is not a film about how ridiculous gamers are, but how sad it feels to let go of this world.Now, in my case, it's some 25 years back that I went through this, so I'm not troubled by this anymore and can look at a rather clever film in an observing way, for there are some good points to behold: 1. That RPG made room for LARP, although the latter is far more restricted.The reason for this is, and it's a bitter one, that humans will work together when you make them accept the rules first, even when the rules are somewhat dumb, but will be unable to come together, when you give them too much freedom choosing the rules themselves.In the film this shows in the contrast between being able to design your own character and play characters written on cards. But it is the latter standardisation, which allows a common universe to grow.This is truly meaningful, one of the most depressing things of human existence, people throw themselves into chains and progress and you as a free person never get involved in anything, at least not how you'd want to.2. The absence of meaning in modern life and the addictiveness of the drug to create your own in your head alone, resp. in the heads of a collective.And this is even more bitter. At least the RPG folks can eventually silently acknowledge the futility of it all. But the LARP guys are in stronger chains and drive themselves into insanity, as the Ninja Dragon episode most overtly shows, but it's also in other things, like when the bleeder gets punched in the nose in a situation that any sane person would understand as asking for a fight.And again, it's quite general. You stand alone, you might resign like Schopenhauer would suggest, you're part of a group, you defend Berlin until the end.3. Selling you your humanity.Giving you a chance to build up meaning for a buck as is the theme of the whole Legacy episode.In real life that would be states, telling their "citizens" their respective narratives. So you can be a good Communist, American or what have you.Well... that's all bittersweet, bitter because of the designs you can't choose, sweet because of the life that you spent in them.To be honest, I can't give these kind of films 10/10, no matter how good. Hitchcock's "Shadow of a Doubt" for instance or Tarkovsky's "Offret" and this film is even better than those.I mean, what would that be? An excellently depressing film? There's a hint of perversion in that notion.

siderite From the forty-five minute The Gamers, through the one hour and a half The Gamers: Dorkness Rising, we get the two hour long Hands of Fate. It starts with the same team as in the second film, all happily playing their D&D game, only to be thwarted by cell phone rings "from work". It made me think that it will be a continuation of Dorkness, made in the same vein: the mature gamers who can't really play their game with reality intruding. I was wrong.Soon enough we realize that reality has intruded way too much. They are not able to play the role playing game anymore. They are barely meeting once a year and then they never manage to end the game. Enter Natalie, a CCG player with a real passion for a card game with a storyline and a real nice face. Cass immediately falls for her and proceeds to learn to play the game. The entire movie is then about the fantasy land of the CCG game.I don't want to spoil anything, so I will not reveal anything more about the plot. Enough said that the ending is reminiscent of the first Gamers film and that, even if at first I thought it was going to turn into a sort of weird documentary of what happens at Gen Con and I really really hated the Gary subplot where he is trying to kill the mascot of the show that replaced his childhood favorite, I ended up liking it.I especially appreciated that Cass is as much a noob at card collectible games as I am and has the same disdain towards them as me, but as the movie unfolds, he gets to understand and respect the game, so I get to identify and evolve with the character while I am watching. I loved that.Not that everything is dandy dory: most of the acting is completely over the top and some scenes did make me cringe. However the overall feel of the movie, the fact that most of the geekiness made sense and the subtle humor made me like the experience. A bit too long (just make a Director's cut without Gary's story! :) ), but enjoyable nonetheless. I do miss the free fantasizing of the D&D game, though.

John Cathcart One of the things that made the first two movies in this series great was that I could identify with the characters in the movie. I saw bits of myself and other gamers I've known in those characters. I also understood the game and the rules the movie was based around (Dungeons and Dragons) which only further pulled me into the story.When I originally heard that there was to be a third movie in the series, I, and my entire gaming group were immensely excited about it. We couldn't wait to see where they took their characters next or what kinds of ridiculous things might happen... then we all saw it and a resounding sense of disappointment set in.Now the movie wasn't about a group of gamers playing a game that we recognized or understood with characters we could identify with. It was about a single gamer playing a fictitious game that no one could ever really identify with on the same level as the other movies because no one has ever played that game. Even if we have played other card based games like it, we haven't played THAT game and have no understanding of the rules or reasoning behind it.There was no roleplaying, no game to recognize and laugh about or think that the players were using a clever twist on the rules, and no connection to the story. Ultimately, while it had better production value than the previous movies, I never connected with the movie in any kind of meaningful way and generally which left me feeling disappointed.I'm not saying it's a bad movie, because it isn't a bad movie. It just was just missing everything that I found fantastic about the first two movies.

Kalyarin I was astoundingly disappointed with Hands of Fate.With Dorkness Rising I remember feeling like I was making so much noise laughing that the neighbors would wonder what was going on. Hands of Fate wasn't totally without laughs, but there were so few that it was not worth the boredom waiting between laughs.I mean, they have 2 previous movies and both are based off RPGs, both movies are a bunch of people playing D&D, then you see them playing their characters for "real". HoF was based off of a fictional CCG. The scenes in the CCG weren't played by the person playing the game (one of the things that made the other movies fun) because the cards were all being played by Cass, the biggest jerk from the first movie. So basically, they took 95% of what made the first 2 movies great, threw it out the freakng window, and went a whole new way, and tried to convey some messages that I really didn't care about.I was at Gen Con 2013 and was really sad that they didn't have copies of Hands of Fate for sale there. Now I'm glad they didn't, because I'd be mad if I'd blown money on that boring movie.The only redeeming thing about the movie, in my opinion, is the ending. The very end left open the possibility that the 4th Gamers movie might be what the 3rd should have been. I certainly won't be spending any movie on it until after I've seen it though.