Invalid characterset or character set not supported Recent Stuff 6: I'm Still Here! Edition





Recent Stuff 6: I'm Still Here! Edition
June 08, 2015

Well, May felt like a weird month for me. Tried to get some reviews out, but by the time I actually attempted to stick with a game to review, the month was over... Something tells me that might be a reoccurring theme in the months ahead. Who knows.

"Current Games"

In quotation marks because I either stopped playing these weeks ago or barely touched at all.

Lovely Planet: After trying the somewhat confusing but charming demo on Steam, I immediately purchased. You know how games like Bit.Trip Runner or Super Meat Boy play like, right? Where you go through a sequence of events that kill you in one hit, and instantly respawn to try again? Well, imagine a game like that in first-person view, and that's what Lovely Planet is like. Not gonna lie, it actually felt kinda hard to get into at first, but I got the hang of it after some time.

There's supposedly a total of five planets (each with their set of stages), but I stopped playing once I finished the third. It was meant to be a brief break, but I unfortunately never returned. The game gets pretty intense, as it demands you to think outside the box in a few instances, and it doesn't help that your bow and arrow doesn't have a reticle on screen. Still, I enjoyed the challenge, but it did leave me fatigued after marathons of stages. If there's one major complaint, it's that I think they should have shuffled the second and third planets around; the second planet feels like an absurd difficulty spike after the first, and the third planet is like a breeze in comparison.

Also, Lovely Planet has some really, really catchy music. Planet one and three are my favs.

To note, this was the first game I was trying to review in May, but yeah, never returned...

Thunder Blade: Sadly, only played one session of this. Still, if you have a 3DS and your only exposure to the Thunder Blade series is the abysmal Genesis port (Super!), then play this and never return to that version ever.

Heart Beaten: I have a review of this I'll be submitting after typing this blog entry up (edit: just noticed a listing with pictures. Hope I'm not intruding on someone else's possible review!), so don't want to give too much away. Just gonna say it had some good hitters. This was my second attempt at writing a review in May, but kinda fell away from it at some point. Though, instead of starting anew with another game, I still went ahead with this one, since my thoughts on the game were still fresh at the time.

???: Now this is actually a game I'm playing at this very moment, though I'm on the fence on whether I wanna review this, so I'm saving my comments for the review itself. If not, you'll see this game revealed in the next blog entry anyway.

-Movies!- (spoilers, just in case)

So I was like, "Screw it, let me watch some movies this month (May) in theaters."

Avengers 2: I already said my piece in Janus' entry, but I'll repeat it again. It was an alright slugfest of a movie. Nothing particularly bad except for the fact it felt more like an intermission than a complete movie. Instead of focusing more on the plot that's actually going on within the movie, it kept veering to the side to set up plot threads for upcoming films. I thought this was the most disappointing thing, since it ended up downplaying Ultron as a major threat, unintentionally setting It up as a "pushover".

Mad Max Fury Road: Just one ginormous chase sequence. And it was fantastic. Absolute lack of shaky cam made my day, as well. If you want to watch a modern day action chase movie where 99.99% of the stuff is actually happening on screen, then you need to watch this movie.

While Avengers 2 was average-ish at best, it did help push me into seeing most of the Phase 2 movies that I skipped out on these past few years, and watched the following:

Guardians of the Galaxy: Very fun adventure movie. Makes me upset that I skipped watching this in the theaters, as it seemed like it would've been a hoot watching on the big screen.

Iron Man 3: Odd pacing, but it was alright.

Captain America Winter Solider: Dude. Dude. I was pretty blown away at the intensity of this film. It never seemed to run out of steam, and when you thought that would be it, the movie just keeps throwing stuff at you. I was exhausted by the time the end credits popped up. My exposure to MCU's Captain America prior to this film was the two Avengers movies, where he comes off more like a dork than anything else, so when I watched this, I was like, "Man, Steve Rogers is the truth. This guy's legit."

Captain America The First Avenger: Watched it for completionist sake. The pacing was a bit shaky. Wasn't thrilled that they skipped a whole bunch of stuff via montage once Cap started fighting in the war.

-Comics?- (some spoilers)

So, this in turn renewed my interest in my on again, off again relationship with comics, specifically Marvel. And I'm wondering how quickly this habit will die off again, especially with what's currently happening to the Marvel universe with their take of Crisis on Infinite Earths. I dove into a few "Event" paperbacks that I've been meaning to read for the last ten years, like Avengers Disassembled (Hawkeye's death was absurd), House of M, and Civil War (surprisingly quirky, but I hated its non-ending that requires you to read other comics).

After that, I decided to just stick to a "solo" series instead of events, and since I enjoyed the Winter Soldier so much, figured I would make my way through the Captain America series that started up after Disassembled, its beginning issues being the Winter Soldier story arc. So far, I've completed issue 21, which is heading into the Civil War leg of the series. My "goal" is to reach around the 50th issue mark and its subsequent issues, as the stuff afterwards doesn't appear to be interesting, though I wouldn't know for sure without reading spoilers.

That's it. That was my month and eight days.

Most recent blog posts from Wendell B...

Feedback
JANUS2 JANUS2 - June 09, 2015 (09:46 AM)
I was really pleased with the lack of shaky cam in Mad Max. Plenty of times he just stuck the camera in one place and let the action happen. Lots of long shots of the landscape as well. Hopefully directors will take note. Many mediocre action films could be improved by better camera work.
JoeTheDestroyer JoeTheDestroyer - June 09, 2015 (05:57 PM)
^^^The same goes for a lot of genres, really. I think the first time I noticed shaky cam was when I saw 28 Days Later, and I was already sick of it after that. The movie would have been immensely better without it.
dementedhut dementedhut - June 09, 2015 (10:10 PM)
The biggest and most noticeable thing I hate about the camera shaking during action scenes in movies, besides the camera shaking, is how a lot of the time, the action isn't that good or intense to begin with. It's almost like these directors are basically using the gimmick just to cover up their poorly choreographed scenes.

But yeah, a ton of movies would end up being much more bearable if the camera wasn't shaking in the first place.
Suskie Suskie - June 11, 2015 (09:25 PM)
Action scenes are just hellishly difficult to put together, and yeah, shakycam is typically used to cover up the filmmakers' lack of finesse. Having said that, I'll maintain to my grave that Paul Greengrass's films demonstrate just how valuable shakycam can be if it's employed skillfully. Imagine United 93 and The Bourne Supremacy with steadier camera work. Just wouldn't be as effective.

Speaking of good action scenes being difficult to stage, did Winter Soldier have some kickass action scenes or what? Best of the Phase 2 movies by a country mile.
dementedhut dementedhut - June 12, 2015 (12:37 AM)
As strange as it sounds, I've never fully watched any of the Bourne movies, Ultimatum being the one I saw the most for a good 20 or so minutes when it was on TV once. Though, like you've said, I've heard that the Bourne movies are those instances where the camera shaking does lend to an action scene. Might have to check them out someday.

But yeah, Winter Soldier has solid, great action scenes. By the time I was midway through the film, I was genuinely impressed!
JoeTheDestroyer JoeTheDestroyer - June 14, 2015 (01:36 AM)
I finally caught Fury Road and loved the hell out of it. Yeah, it blew Age of Ultron out of the water. I didn't mind that movie, but, as you said, I didn't like that they made Ultron out to be such a pushover. I think they should have upped his capabilities a bit and had him cause a little more damage.

eXTReMe Tracker
© 1998-2024 HonestGamers
None of the material contained within this site may be reproduced in any conceivable fashion without permission from the author(s) of said material. This site is not sponsored or endorsed by Nintendo, Sega, Sony, Microsoft, or any other such party. Opinions expressed on this site do not necessarily represent the opinion of site staff or sponsors.