Forums > Contributor Zone > RotW: April 12-18, 2021 -- I did not write this on Monday. Or Tuesday. Or Wednesday.

This was going to be a really easy week, with there only being EmP's holdover review from his week, as well as my Arcania review, which is now a holdover for next week (HINT, HINT). And then, three people posted on Sunday and now I have to read four reviews. THANKS FOR NOTHING, GUYS!!!

Oh well, first, the movies. I've gotten on a bit of a giallo kick recently. Which is code for me saying that I'm totally into them and obsessively tracking them down on YouTube, while looking up lists of them on IMDB to find every one with some degree of popularity. So, in short.

A…For Assassin (1966): Played it close to the "classic mystery movie" template that was a primary inspiration for the genre; in fact, the plot is little more than an old guy was killed and all of his heirs, who hate each other, scheme and kill to get the inheritance. Was dull at times due to the focus on the police investigator interviewing people and this was a bloodless film, but it was short and a decent look at how these films were before they could be counted on to be illogical and sleazy.

The Killer Reserved Nine Seats (1974): This one also had the "bunch of interconnected people who mostly hate each other, but are stuck together" plot, but it was most definitely nowhere near "classic mystery movie" status. You have sleaze, nudity, supernatural stuff, a couple violent kills and pretty much any element you might expect to see in a giallo. I dug this one because it was pretty insane. Not every movie explains away the supernatural by saying it's a curse on a family because said family has a long and storied history of incest. There's also something inherently funny about watching people ranging from their mid-20s to their 40s and 50s creating the template for "stupid slasher teens" by constantly splitting up and regularly doing the least intelligent thing imaginable.

Bird With the Crystal Plumage (1970): The first giallo by Dario Argento. About the only thing keeping it from being a purely great movie from beginning to end is that the ending is a bit anti-climactic. The killer is disposed of instantly and the movie ends with a psychologist on an in-movie TV show explaining why that person was killing. Everything else was awesome. Argento was a master of working the camera and Ennio Morricone is as good of a soundtrack-maker as you can have. Super-highly recommended.

Red Queen Kills Seven Times (1972): Another really good one about a family curse that manifests itself when a dead member of the family seemingly comes back to life to, uh, kill seven times. Plays out like a murder mystery with the potential for the supernatural, as there also are a number of characters in the cast who have motivation to kill off the victims, as well. Fair amount of nudity and sleaze, too. Not as much as Killer Reserved Nine Seats, but enough to notice. Not that I was complaining, as Barbara Bouchet and Sybil Danning were in it!

The Fifth Cord (1971): A good movie that reminded a bit of Bird With the Crystal Plumage in that it was a more grounded murder mystery with a score by Ennio that also had some good camera work and a couple really suspenseful scenes, but just wasn't as good as that film. Those good scenes, though! Since Italians aren't known for giving plot armor to people just because they're, say, young children, it was really tense at the end when a small child was navigating a house where you knew the killer was at. Just one long "leave the camera running" scene of him going from room to room in a pretty dark place and activating the window shutters where you knew something would happen at some point, but not what, when or where.

And also, Demons (1985): Italian Evil Dead. Totally over-the-top and campy and I loved every minute of it. You can go from a creepy gothic vibe of the early minutes to a scene where a dude is racing on a motorcycle through a theater and slashing demons with a katana while heavy metal music is playing. Bonus points for the best product placement of all time: A can of Coke with a straw in it so that punk kids can snort coke out of it.

As for actual reviews:

vgc2000 did one for Alex Kidd in Shinobi World. There were a few errors, such as "fair" for "fare" in what should read "standard platform fare" in the third paragraph (you do have it correct a couple sentences later, though). Overall, this is a capable review for a game in a series that I've never played to date. However, as someone who isn't familiar with this series (or this game), I would have liked a little more detail on things, as I feel I have the barebones essentials here, don't really feel like I learned that much about the game, other than how it's mostly a standard platformer and that the graphics are a bit simple.

THIRD PLACE

Brian's Red Faction (PC)

Yeah, the "destructible environments" thing is a bit misleading, isn't it? I remember playing this game for a bit with a friend one day and in the early levels, it seemed to essentially be little more than taking classic DOOM's secrets where you tap on a wall panel to open a room with goodies and making it so you could blow up the wall instead. And then we reached a stealth-based level in, I think, an office setting and lost interest. As I generally note with your reviews, you do cover the game and its elements; it's just a matter of delving into the blog-style writing to get to that stuff. For me, I dug the part where you talked about the destruction by bringing up the limits of the weapons and how secondary fire is often better than primary. The "political message in the game" part was a bit less interesting, if only because it seems everyone is all about politics nowadays, so if it isn't something that's dominating the game and its gameplay…well, let's just say when I'm running around Mars shooting stuff, I'm not going to be overly concerned with trying to find parallels to our modern society. I did chuckle when I played the first XBox 360 game because I figured they made the Mars overlords so over-the-top evil to distract people away from coming to the conclusion that committing acts of terrorism is a perfectly acceptable way to not let THE MAN bring you down.

SECOND PLACE

Jason's Astro's Playroom (PS5)

A quality review for a pack-in game where the only real reason for it existing seems to be as a tutorial for all the stuff you may or may not ever see any reason to actually use the controller for. While the intro had me feeling about the same way EmP seems to feel about my intros before I start actually talking about the game, I can see the purpose behind that when you take that into consideration. And you did a good job of setting this up as a fun game that happens to be non-essential fluff for most gamers. You did a good job describing its cool points, while also mentioning that it's short and easy. In other words, a good review with nothing to really object to.

REVIEW OF THE WEEK (aka: Overdrive Place)

EmP's Lost Words: Beyond the Page (PC)

So, here I am, typing this RotW on what is the first free day for doing this that I had this week and here's EmP, in my on-site mail box like a clingy ex, "Here's your reminder; don't forget my review; why don't you return my calls?!??!?" If I wasn't so lazy, I'd totally re-do the complete order for this week just to spite him. But I am lazy and I did really like this review. Like 90% of what EmP seems to review, it's the sort of game that, for me, makes a root canal done by a back-alley hobo insisting he's legit look like fun. But he did a great job with his writing and made this game seem intriguing. The tone was the big thing, as you did a good job of illustrating how the girl's real-life issues come through in the fantasy game aspect of it. This was a shortish review, but it said everything it needed to and I enjoyed reading it.


Off to wherever else today is going to take me. Odds are the bottom of a bottle, but you never know until you've drank your way down that far!

I'm not afraid to die because I am invincible
Viva la muerte, that's my goddamn principle

Look at it this way; had I not been there to nudge you for being slow, you might have had to talk about something other than yourself in the feedback.

Appreciate the win. It was looking for a while that I would run uncontested and that bloody Vacant fellow would rack up his first site king points of the year, but the last minute barrage did make me smile. Props top team weekend, and to OD for finally getting around to doing this thing and remembering a hold over for perhaps the first time ever.

For us. For them. For you.

Thanks for the commentary and for second place, overdrive!

I normally wouldn't begin a review with an outline of the control scheme. I go a lot of reviews without talking about that much, if at all, because there's not much that's duller to readers unless there is some sort of point in going over it. And of course, in this case, the controls ARE the point (of the game), so I felt like it was worth taking that risk to quickly make one of my points and then move onto more interesting discussion (with a callback to the intro where relevant). I'm glad you enjoyed the result!

Congrats to the other contenders, and especially to EmP for the win!

"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." - John F. Kennedy on reality

"What if everything you see is more than what you see--the person next to you is a warrior and the space that appears empty is a secret door to another world? What if something appears that shouldn't? You either dismiss it, or you accept that there is much more to the world than you think. Perhaps it really is a doorway, and if you choose to go inside, you'll find many unexpected things." - Shigeru Miyamoto on secret doors to another world2

EmP, look, me spending my entire RotW talking about myself while only giving vague, generic comments about reviews is part of my charm! And I don't think anyone can mock me for forgetting holdovers now, as I've gone a long time since forgetting one (even if I did forget them regularly for a bit) AND I did have that little period where I had to endure one of my reviews getting snubbed for like 17 straight weeks. Maybe 23.

I'm not afraid to die because I am invincible
Viva la muerte, that's my goddamn principle

I love both Demons and The Bird with the Crystal Plumage. Check out Four Flies on Grey Velvet, too, if you haven't yet.

The only thing my milkshake brings to the yard is a subpoena.

Because I'm mega-obsessive whenever I get into anything (I mean, I have like 560 reviews on this site, I don't know that needs to be said...), after I decided I liked the giallo genre, I might have started with going through list sites on the internet to glean the best. And then I might have gone through huge IMDB-compiled lists to find every one with a decent rating. And then I might have gone through other lists to find ones that may not have been on the previous lists, but some random internet person thought they were good. And now my list of "stuff to see if it's on YouTube" includes about 115-120 giallos. While I haven't watched Four Flies yet, it is there!

I'm not afraid to die because I am invincible
Viva la muerte, that's my goddamn principle