 | Because there's just too much to write from memory... |
GAMES!
Crash City Mayhem: The ??? game from my last blog entry. It's so shockingly bad. I wanted to compare it to the numbing simplicity of Dreamcast games in my review, but even I thought that would have been an insult to bad Dreamcast games.
Ride the Bullet: A third-person view game where you guide a bullet down a linear path, hitting stuff along the way to your final target. It's not fun.
The Ship: First-Person stealth/murder game taking place on a ship. I only played a little bit of the single-player story mode, but from that, it feels way too convoluted. In order to keep your character in decent shape, you need him/her to do boring stuff like wash your hands, take a dump, read books, and take naps. Problem is, this stuff happens at least every five to ten minutes. Fun. But the one thing that really made me gave up was the poor mission structure. A very early mission had me doing favors for a bartender, who wanted me to follow certain customers out of the bar and kill them when no one is around. This went on for nearly 10 kills.
Escape Goat: I enjoyed this puzzle platformer way more than I thought I would. The solutions are challenging, but not to the point where your head is going to explode from thinking too hard. The puzzles make sense.
NFL Blitz (XBLA version): I dunno. I liked the original blitz games for their arcadeyness, so I downloaded this and played for a bit.
Skydive: As I said in my review, I came in for jokes, but left wanting so much more. Once I found out Gaijin Entertainment made this game, it made so much more sense, considering all their other games involved a surprising detail to natural environments.
Super Zaxxon: If you forgot, this was the ???????? area from my Recent Stuff IV entry. The question marks actually stood for words... but I completely forgot what the sentence was. Oh, yeah, game sucks.
Also, since I can't edit my review due to its freelance status, take this!
TEAM ZAXXON!
Btw, if you haven't read my Skydive review (bastard!), I've also recently purchased a PlayStation 4. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is too close for me not to upgrade. And yes, I said that non-sarcastically. I've already played two games on the system (three if you count a demo), and I already have a half-finished review for one of them. It's been a week since I wrote it.... so I should finish the rest within the next few days.
MOVIES
Jurassic World: I have yet to read or hear an opinion of this movie that thought it was decent or so-so; either people thought it's an entertaining film, or declared it as the worst thing to ever happen to movies in recent years. For me, I thought it was entertaining. Though, there's this one moment in the movie I thought was bizarrely violent, and it just took me out of the film for at least a few minutes when I was sitting in the theater. I'm not gonna spoil it, but damn, that was a rough death.
COMICS (some spoilers)
Yeah, like I mentioned last blog entry, I did some splurging on comic trade paperbacks, and it's only recently that I've felt the burn and slowed down.
Captain America Volume 5: Issues 1 - 50, 600 - 601, Others
-Winter Soldier "arc" (Issues 1 - 14): Volume five starts off very strong, as writer Ed Brubaker combines espionage, terror, mystery, flashbacks, and action in a sometimes 24-esque pacing, while Steve Rogers tries to figure out who the Winter Solider is amongst the chaos.
-Red Menace "arc" (Issues 15 - 21): We get a little bit of "down time" during this transition, as old enemies get reintroduced in volume 5. While not bad, it does feel kinda filler-esque and seems to conform to standard comic book story-telling.
-Civil War "arc" (Issues 22 - 24): If you ever plan on reading volume 5, you'll need to read the actual Civil War trade paperback, probably prior to issue 22; Captain America plays such a vital role during that event that it's really unavoidable, and continues beyond issue 24. 22 - 24 pretty much fills in most gaps of the Civil War event, mostly viewed from Cap's supporting cast point of views.
-Issues 25 - 42: If you know anything about the aftermath of Civil War, then you know issue 26 and beyond have huge shoes to fill. Surprisingly, Ed Brubaker continues an interesting pace that's similar in tone to the first 14 issues. There's a lot of strong characterization for most of the cast, except for one very specific character that I can't help facepalm at. I'll just say this: think of Samus Aran's bizarre change in tone from every Metroid game to... Other M. I mean, I understand it at first, but Ed Brubaker just drags it on to absurd lengths.
-Issue 43 - 50, 600 - 601: This is where the writing and pacing just falls apart. Issues 43 - 48 are basically a filler arc that doesn't... it doesn't feel like anything. It's just there. Ed Brubaker takes what made the earlier issues work so well and almost seems to turn them into sub-standard versions for these issues. Issues 49 - 50 are dedicated to characters sulking. Ugh. After issue 50, the numbering system reverts back to its original numbering with 600. Issues 600 - 601 are pretty much "celebration" issues. So if you were hoping for the plot to move along here, you're not getting it.
-Reborn: A fun mini-series that about wraps up an overarching story that's been going since issue 1 of volume 5. It has a really stupid explanation for someone's "return", though. Aka: comic books.
I also read some New Avengers (first series) so I can get a better grip on the Secret Invasion story event. The New Avengers issues I read are a lot of fun, but I could not get a good handle of the panel layouts in these comics. Something I thought were two or three separate panels were actually one big panel spread across two pages. This happened on multiple occasions, and I've never had this problem before when reading comics.
I'll say one thing about the Secret Invasion story: I really hated the climax of the final battle. It felt very out of character for, say, 90% of the Marvel characters that appeared, and it felt like it was done purely for dramatic effect.
I also read a Punisher trade paperback that took place after Secret Invasion. It sucked.
Anyway, that's that. I want to say I'll have another blog entry up sooner, but I probably jinxed it. So... I guess another three months?
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EmP - July 19, 2015 (08:01 AM) I'm an idiot -- I didn't think for a second that you'd not be able to edit that Zaxxon review. I've added the header now. Just so I can now be that guy, I too have seen Jurassic World. It was okay, I guess. I also watched Terminator Genesis last week, which was bloody awful. This week I'll hit up Ant Man, and that will be more trips to the cinema in a month then I bothered with all year thus far. |
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dementedhut - July 19, 2015 (11:36 AM) Oh. I thought you were joking when you sent me that >_>. Thanks. I never intended to see the new Terminator, but the more I hear people try to explain the movie, the more curious I wanna see this supposed trainwreck in theaters. |
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EmP - July 19, 2015 (12:13 PM) It has so many plot holes. It's the only film I can ever recall where there was literal collective groaning from the audience when some of it was rolled out. |
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