Even though I was hoping this latest Godzilla movie would be a much better effort than the 1998 fluke of a film, I kept my expectations to a minimum when I went into the theaters. However, by the time the ending credits popped up, I left the building thinking, "That was fun." But, I did have a few minor gripes with the movie, and most of these come off nit-picky, so keep that in mind.
-Not Enough Godzilla Screen Time
Now, this isn't going to be a "Godzilla should be all about action!" rant, because I have watched a fair share of Godzilla movies, especially the original Japanese version, so I'm very aware that a significant portion of these movies are focused on the humans. I accept the first-ish half where the monsters and Godzilla are rarely seen, just teased. I will even add that Bryan Cranston's acting made the first half watchable without the monsters, or kaiju, if you want to be specific. So I found it irritating that, when the film was in "monster mode" for the remainder of the adventure, the plot kept wanting to focus on the human interactions a little too much.
Like, every time something awesome was about to happen with Godzilla and the creatures, the direction would cut away, and the viewers would either never see the brawl, or see it briefly on the news in a distant monitor. Okay, I get it: there hasn't been a new Godzilla movie in 10 years, and this is an effort to reintroduce the big fella with build up and teases, especially for a new generation. I just felt they went a little overboard with it. But! It's a bit of a double-edged sword for me, because I did find the human side of the crisis interesting, helping to levitate the extremity of giant monsters causing chaos to everyday life.
-Final Showdown was Dark
Again, I want to start this off by saying that I really enjoyed the final fight at the film's climax. I just wish it wasn't constantly surrounded by darkness and dust. I guess they did it because it would have been too costly to do this with more visibility, which would force more graphical detail to go along with it? Maybe?
-Slowest Chase Scene
I'm typing this as I'm thinking about it, so excuse me, but now that I think about it, what really annoyed me about the second half of the film is how it was basically a pretty "slow" chase scene between Godzilla and the first creature. It was basically, Godzilla/military finds MUTO (the creature's name), fights him, MUTO flees and causes destruction along the way, Godzilla/military gives chase, and it repeats in modified form along the way. Sure, it's a nice way to show various destructive scenes, and trust me, this film has plenty of it, but I feel maybe if the chaos was a bit more concentrated and in less places, the second half could've had better coordination.
With all that said, Godzilla 2014 actually exceeded my expectations and managed to stay as faithful to the original source material as possible. There were numerous moments where I was thinking, "Yes! They kept it!", and always got excited when Godzilla himself let out a good, hearty roar. Unless you have a pretty bangin' sound system in your home, I personally think, if you're even a semblance of a Godzilla fan, that you need to see this movie in theaters just to hear Godzilla's awesome roar, regardless of how you feel of the film as a whole. And thinking back on the scenes of the MUTOs and Godzilla, I do like the subtlety of how the former were being aggressively destructive while the latter didn't show any intentional signs of wanting to cause any damage to humans or structures; it's something you kinda don't notice watching the film as it's happening, but when the end scene gives you food for thought, you realize and appreciate it.
I also feel that some people are being a tad harsh on Godzilla 2014 for not being so much more than what it is. My nit-picky issues aside, I think it's a bit ludicrous that some fans are saying stuff like, "The Japanese movies did it better and had more creativity with their monsters!" Is this really fair? They're basically comparing the Japanese's 60 years of combined experience with the franchise versus two American films (does the King of the Monsters! edit count?) that are pretty much one decade apart from each other. While there are obviously fans that have seen the Japanese films over the decades as they came out, I also feel that this seems to be an effect directed towards "newer" fans that have the advantage of a "readily"-available catalog of Godzilla films at their disposal: an entire library versus a neat 2014 reboot and a ridiculous 1998 farce.
But that's just my personal view on things. I liked it, and I hope we get another one, hopefully with an established kaiju like King Ghidorah or Mothra.
Sunday, May 18, 2014
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Dream Diary - #1?
Sometimes I have some really unusual dreams that I'd like to remember, but unfortunately forget by the end of the day. So I'd figure I write them down when the chance strikes.
I had a dream where I was with a group of people in some kind of building, and from what I could recall from small details, it was probably some kind of dinner party or a dress-up event held at night. Apparently, we were the last few remaining, and just as we were about to leave, a group of armed, masked people were attempting to kidnap us, maybe for ransom or something. We managed to seal ourselves off in a certain area of the building, but it was inevitable: they were going to get to us eventually. One woman tried to make an escape through a small window in a... bathroom (probably intended to be the restroom, but, you know, dreams), but one of the masked men were waiting outside, and even held her away by pouring a can of gasoline on the bathtub.
Afterwards, the scene changes, and we as a group are being moved away, outside, by gunpoint, towards a black car in an alley. I contemplated escaping through a different alley, but since they supposedly all had guns... and it was a long alley, I just went in the car.
Scene changes again, and it's daylight, dunno if it's the following day or a few days later. I'm being driven around by one of my captures, and from the way he carried himself, probably even the boss. He was driving me somewhere, and it seemed like I was kidnapped for this purpose, whatever it was. Anyway, he got hungry, and parked in front of a hot dog-related fast food restaurant, and he wanted ME to go out, alone, and get him something to eat. Of course, I used this as an opportunity to escape, even if it meant they would hunt me down somewhere down the line. For some reason, too, I asked if I could use the restroom, possibly to give me some extra time, just in case he was wondering why I was gone for too long, and he was fine with it, oddly. So I went, and I couldn't find a restroom inside the restaurant, so I exited the building, in plain view of my kidnapper, and entered the connected building, a bank.
The empty bank had a ginormous window in, again, plain sight of my parked kidnapper, and at this point, I reconsidered running away. Here, I almost gave up, and slowly walked out of the bank, but then I had a change of heart. I marched back into the bank to see if there was an alternative exit, and there was: a stairway/escalator down to an underground mall center. I ran down the somewhat packed facility, and looked every which way for an exit that lead to an opposite end to where my kidnapper was. Dunno why I didn't just find security or called the cops at this point... After what felt like an eternity of searching, I was starting to panic, because I couldn't find an exit! Finally, however, I made my way into a huge clothing store, I think, and made my way to a certain segment in a corner.
This is where things got a bit odd.
In this corner of the store, I found a tiny elevator, enough to fit one person and it was, how should I say... flapped-based? You know how with escalators, the steps appear one after another, because it's tread-based? This elevator was like that, except it went directly up and down on what looked like black, unstable flaps. I asked a nearby person, who didn't even look like he worked there, if this elevator was even usable, despite the fact it was functioning on its own. He said it was fine, and that it lead to "the towers", but weirdly, it was a two-man system: one person had to press a button on the outside, and one person had to press one on the inside for it to start moving again. So we went ahead and did that, and eventually the elevator started moving up. Well, at least I assumed it was up.
As I was standing inside the flapped-based, one-man elevator, though, it eventually, after a few scene changes, became a cargo-style elevator that was made out of steel-like surroundings. Here I waited... for a very, very, very, very long time. It was a lengthy elevator ride, and at some point, I questioned whether it was moving at all due to a lack of noise. Eventually, the elevator made its stop, but the door didn't even open for the next few seconds, which made me worried, due to the earlier two-man system. Though, it opened on its own, and I entered into the following dimly-lit condensed room. There was no exit, just a yellow-plastered advertisement on the wall in front of me. I think it was a door shutter, however, since the wall had ridges on it. After some time passing, an announcement over some kind of speaker said something to the effect of, "This area is/has been closed off for some time", to my disappointment and surprise.
I mean, why have a functioning elevator lead to a directly-closed area? It was weird. So I stood there and thought about what to do next, whether to take the long ride back down and look for another way out, or wait... and hope that a worker would come up and find me, which is an admittedly creepy thing to gamble on. I also feared that, if I waited up there, that I would be found by my captures, through the guy that helped me earlier, and gunned down on the spot. Since it was a secluded area and all. And while I was thinking on my next move...
I woke up.
I guess I wanted to write about this mainly for the elevator ride sequence, since the whole thing came off super weird. Notable was how the elevator ride actually took a long time to experience in-dream; there was no cutaways or scenes that jumped forward... I was actually, really waiting on a dimly-lit elevator that led to a dimly-lit dead end.
As for possible reasons on why I had the dream, for the past few days, I've been reading up on The Twilight Zone, its history, some of its episode descriptions, and viewed its openings on YouTube. I even watched one episode, The Obsolete Man. A day before the dream, I was playing Metroid II, a game notable for its atmosphere, among other things. Prior to falling asleep, too, I watched the first three episodes of Ultra Q on DVD, the first series in the Ultraman franchise. However, as the first in the series, it didn't have Ultraman, and was more influenced by The Twilight Zone/The Outer Limits. The opening and closing narrations even reflected this.
Now I gotta go back to sleep after writing this up, since I gotta be at work in a few hours. So who knows what I might dream of next.
I had a dream where I was with a group of people in some kind of building, and from what I could recall from small details, it was probably some kind of dinner party or a dress-up event held at night. Apparently, we were the last few remaining, and just as we were about to leave, a group of armed, masked people were attempting to kidnap us, maybe for ransom or something. We managed to seal ourselves off in a certain area of the building, but it was inevitable: they were going to get to us eventually. One woman tried to make an escape through a small window in a... bathroom (probably intended to be the restroom, but, you know, dreams), but one of the masked men were waiting outside, and even held her away by pouring a can of gasoline on the bathtub.
Afterwards, the scene changes, and we as a group are being moved away, outside, by gunpoint, towards a black car in an alley. I contemplated escaping through a different alley, but since they supposedly all had guns... and it was a long alley, I just went in the car.
Scene changes again, and it's daylight, dunno if it's the following day or a few days later. I'm being driven around by one of my captures, and from the way he carried himself, probably even the boss. He was driving me somewhere, and it seemed like I was kidnapped for this purpose, whatever it was. Anyway, he got hungry, and parked in front of a hot dog-related fast food restaurant, and he wanted ME to go out, alone, and get him something to eat. Of course, I used this as an opportunity to escape, even if it meant they would hunt me down somewhere down the line. For some reason, too, I asked if I could use the restroom, possibly to give me some extra time, just in case he was wondering why I was gone for too long, and he was fine with it, oddly. So I went, and I couldn't find a restroom inside the restaurant, so I exited the building, in plain view of my kidnapper, and entered the connected building, a bank.
The empty bank had a ginormous window in, again, plain sight of my parked kidnapper, and at this point, I reconsidered running away. Here, I almost gave up, and slowly walked out of the bank, but then I had a change of heart. I marched back into the bank to see if there was an alternative exit, and there was: a stairway/escalator down to an underground mall center. I ran down the somewhat packed facility, and looked every which way for an exit that lead to an opposite end to where my kidnapper was. Dunno why I didn't just find security or called the cops at this point... After what felt like an eternity of searching, I was starting to panic, because I couldn't find an exit! Finally, however, I made my way into a huge clothing store, I think, and made my way to a certain segment in a corner.
This is where things got a bit odd.
In this corner of the store, I found a tiny elevator, enough to fit one person and it was, how should I say... flapped-based? You know how with escalators, the steps appear one after another, because it's tread-based? This elevator was like that, except it went directly up and down on what looked like black, unstable flaps. I asked a nearby person, who didn't even look like he worked there, if this elevator was even usable, despite the fact it was functioning on its own. He said it was fine, and that it lead to "the towers", but weirdly, it was a two-man system: one person had to press a button on the outside, and one person had to press one on the inside for it to start moving again. So we went ahead and did that, and eventually the elevator started moving up. Well, at least I assumed it was up.
As I was standing inside the flapped-based, one-man elevator, though, it eventually, after a few scene changes, became a cargo-style elevator that was made out of steel-like surroundings. Here I waited... for a very, very, very, very long time. It was a lengthy elevator ride, and at some point, I questioned whether it was moving at all due to a lack of noise. Eventually, the elevator made its stop, but the door didn't even open for the next few seconds, which made me worried, due to the earlier two-man system. Though, it opened on its own, and I entered into the following dimly-lit condensed room. There was no exit, just a yellow-plastered advertisement on the wall in front of me. I think it was a door shutter, however, since the wall had ridges on it. After some time passing, an announcement over some kind of speaker said something to the effect of, "This area is/has been closed off for some time", to my disappointment and surprise.
I mean, why have a functioning elevator lead to a directly-closed area? It was weird. So I stood there and thought about what to do next, whether to take the long ride back down and look for another way out, or wait... and hope that a worker would come up and find me, which is an admittedly creepy thing to gamble on. I also feared that, if I waited up there, that I would be found by my captures, through the guy that helped me earlier, and gunned down on the spot. Since it was a secluded area and all. And while I was thinking on my next move...
I woke up.
I guess I wanted to write about this mainly for the elevator ride sequence, since the whole thing came off super weird. Notable was how the elevator ride actually took a long time to experience in-dream; there was no cutaways or scenes that jumped forward... I was actually, really waiting on a dimly-lit elevator that led to a dimly-lit dead end.
As for possible reasons on why I had the dream, for the past few days, I've been reading up on The Twilight Zone, its history, some of its episode descriptions, and viewed its openings on YouTube. I even watched one episode, The Obsolete Man. A day before the dream, I was playing Metroid II, a game notable for its atmosphere, among other things. Prior to falling asleep, too, I watched the first three episodes of Ultra Q on DVD, the first series in the Ultraman franchise. However, as the first in the series, it didn't have Ultraman, and was more influenced by The Twilight Zone/The Outer Limits. The opening and closing narrations even reflected this.
Now I gotta go back to sleep after writing this up, since I gotta be at work in a few hours. So who knows what I might dream of next.
Saturday, June 8, 2013
Movie Review: A Good Day to Die Hard (2013)
I was very hesitant to watch Live Free or Die Hard, the fourth movie in the franchise released in 2007, for the first time a few years back. Considering the huge time gap between 3 and 4, I was concerned it wasn't going to capture the same spirit that made the first three movies fun action fests. So color me surprised when it turned out to be a rock solid entry, and I'll even say Die Hard 4 is BETTER than 2 and 3. So with that in mind, I was so willing to see A Good Day to Die Hard, the fifth film, despite all the negative reaction it got.
The first 30-some minutes put me in a state of worry and semi-panic, as the movie was doing a bunch of things I wasn't thrilled to see in a Die Hard film: John McClane's bizarre lack of screen presence and lines, a weird, stylized opening credits, and shaky cam! Sooooooo much shaky cam! The destructive chase scene that engulfs the opening act could have been so much better if the cam wasn't shaking every damn chance it got. To add insult to injury, the camera sometimes zooms in and out, apparently to give a sense of tension or whatever. It didn't work. It just added to the overall embarrassment to how the chase scene was handled, camera-wise.
But I still had hope, hope that the rest of the movie would still be a fun fest like Die Hard 4. Instead, I was welcomed to an ABSURD amount of padding whenever possible, dragging a surprisingly short Die Hard movie (98 minutes) out as long as possible. It's almost like, when it was time to make Die Hard 5, they only thought about the chase scene at the beginning, and started filming based on that. Once they finished those scenes, the crew was probably like, "Oh, wait... we gotta make 68 more minutes?" And from there, I saw nothing but pointless scene after pointless scene with next to zero tension, drama, or action. There's an "action" sequence during the mid-point, but it really involves both McClanes (oh yeah, his son's in this) hiding behind a bar, getting captured, followed by a long, boring torture scene, and then running from a helicopter for two seconds. They don't even TRY to fight it.
The most horrible thing about this movie is that John McClane doesn't even feel like the main character. For the first 60-some minutes of the film, John McClane is normally just standing in the background, usually asking something to the equivalent of, "What's going on? Huh? Who's this? Huhhh??", which is then followed by some person immediately telling him to shut his mouth. Sure, McClane has always played the unwanted underdog by stupid police chiefs or other officials in previous films, but they take it to the extreme here. And when McClane actually does something productive, the way it's presented feels like he's on auto pilot. When a Swat-esque team comes barging in a room, McClane doesn't dive for cover and spout a bunch of wise-ass comments, he stands completely still, picks up a rapid-fire weapon, and kills everyone while screaming, "I'm on vacation!!". Ugh. It truly feels like Die Hard 5 GUEST STARRING Bruce Willis.
Die Hard 5 also tries too hard to be more of a thriller than a straight action movie. Yeah, other Die Hards had a lair of mystery to the bad guy's motives, but Die Hard 5 wants you to keep guessing. Except this hurts the movie because you don't have a damn clue who the main baddy is, so you don't know who to root to be killed off. There's this old guy who doesn't have enough screen time.... but then there's this other guy!... who doesn't have much screen time. But wait! There's this woman! Except she doesn't have much screen time and her inner villainy isn't that great. But, but then! And that's EXACTLY what's wrong with this structure. By the time we know who the main bad guy is, I couldn't help but think, "I don't care... just end the movie in a respectable way."
The climax of A Good Day to Die Hard is filled with even more padding, with McClanes sneaking around and clocking guards behind there backs, followed by half-assed gunfights against people we don't care about because the movie doesn't allow these people to flesh out to a degree for us to care about. John McClane shouts "I'm on vacation!" one more time, the main bad guy falls off a building in slow motion, supposedly to mimic the iconic moment from the first film, and a helicopter crashes in a nice special effects sequence. Both McClanes survive, hugs and kisses for all those involved, I guess, and the credits roll with a Rolling Stones song...
After Die Hard 4, I thought it was impossible to make a BAD Die Hard movie, but I guess Die Hard 5 proved me wrong with its endless amounts of shallowness. If Die Hard 6 is really going to be Bruce Willis' final film in the series, then whoever writes and directs that movie will have to blow me the hell away after this amazing waste of time. In fact, I refuse A Good Day to Die Hard as an official sequel, and have instead replaced it with 2010's Red as Die Hard 5. If you didn't like THAT movie, then that's a good indicator of how dreadful A Good Day to Die Hard is.
The first 30-some minutes put me in a state of worry and semi-panic, as the movie was doing a bunch of things I wasn't thrilled to see in a Die Hard film: John McClane's bizarre lack of screen presence and lines, a weird, stylized opening credits, and shaky cam! Sooooooo much shaky cam! The destructive chase scene that engulfs the opening act could have been so much better if the cam wasn't shaking every damn chance it got. To add insult to injury, the camera sometimes zooms in and out, apparently to give a sense of tension or whatever. It didn't work. It just added to the overall embarrassment to how the chase scene was handled, camera-wise.
But I still had hope, hope that the rest of the movie would still be a fun fest like Die Hard 4. Instead, I was welcomed to an ABSURD amount of padding whenever possible, dragging a surprisingly short Die Hard movie (98 minutes) out as long as possible. It's almost like, when it was time to make Die Hard 5, they only thought about the chase scene at the beginning, and started filming based on that. Once they finished those scenes, the crew was probably like, "Oh, wait... we gotta make 68 more minutes?" And from there, I saw nothing but pointless scene after pointless scene with next to zero tension, drama, or action. There's an "action" sequence during the mid-point, but it really involves both McClanes (oh yeah, his son's in this) hiding behind a bar, getting captured, followed by a long, boring torture scene, and then running from a helicopter for two seconds. They don't even TRY to fight it.
The most horrible thing about this movie is that John McClane doesn't even feel like the main character. For the first 60-some minutes of the film, John McClane is normally just standing in the background, usually asking something to the equivalent of, "What's going on? Huh? Who's this? Huhhh??", which is then followed by some person immediately telling him to shut his mouth. Sure, McClane has always played the unwanted underdog by stupid police chiefs or other officials in previous films, but they take it to the extreme here. And when McClane actually does something productive, the way it's presented feels like he's on auto pilot. When a Swat-esque team comes barging in a room, McClane doesn't dive for cover and spout a bunch of wise-ass comments, he stands completely still, picks up a rapid-fire weapon, and kills everyone while screaming, "I'm on vacation!!". Ugh. It truly feels like Die Hard 5 GUEST STARRING Bruce Willis.
Die Hard 5 also tries too hard to be more of a thriller than a straight action movie. Yeah, other Die Hards had a lair of mystery to the bad guy's motives, but Die Hard 5 wants you to keep guessing. Except this hurts the movie because you don't have a damn clue who the main baddy is, so you don't know who to root to be killed off. There's this old guy who doesn't have enough screen time.... but then there's this other guy!... who doesn't have much screen time. But wait! There's this woman! Except she doesn't have much screen time and her inner villainy isn't that great. But, but then! And that's EXACTLY what's wrong with this structure. By the time we know who the main bad guy is, I couldn't help but think, "I don't care... just end the movie in a respectable way."
The climax of A Good Day to Die Hard is filled with even more padding, with McClanes sneaking around and clocking guards behind there backs, followed by half-assed gunfights against people we don't care about because the movie doesn't allow these people to flesh out to a degree for us to care about. John McClane shouts "I'm on vacation!" one more time, the main bad guy falls off a building in slow motion, supposedly to mimic the iconic moment from the first film, and a helicopter crashes in a nice special effects sequence. Both McClanes survive, hugs and kisses for all those involved, I guess, and the credits roll with a Rolling Stones song...
After Die Hard 4, I thought it was impossible to make a BAD Die Hard movie, but I guess Die Hard 5 proved me wrong with its endless amounts of shallowness. If Die Hard 6 is really going to be Bruce Willis' final film in the series, then whoever writes and directs that movie will have to blow me the hell away after this amazing waste of time. In fact, I refuse A Good Day to Die Hard as an official sequel, and have instead replaced it with 2010's Red as Die Hard 5. If you didn't like THAT movie, then that's a good indicator of how dreadful A Good Day to Die Hard is.
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Shame of the Week - A Video Game Review Incident
Hey, I finally posted something new! I actually wanted to express my feelings on something that's been happening for the past few days, and it felt like this was the only place I can think of to spill it at the moment.
I like Thunderbolt, I think the website has a bunch of interesting articles and reviews, and I like frequenting its forums because its users normally have interesting things to say about the current state of gaming. One of the things I always find the most amusing, though, is reading the comments section for certain reviews, due to how silly some of the complaints are. A recent example can be seen in this BioShock Infinite review, where two comments (as of this writing) trash the review because of the 8/10 score. "The score you guys give this game is sickening." "Oh come on. 8 out of 10? It’s sad when some don’t realise the importance of this game claim to be an authority on video game quality. Gamers aren’t all 13 year old boys." Priceless. Some reviews get a stronger reaction than others, and I always took the Thunderbolt's staff lack of response to these comments as a sign of the obvious: that these comments are amazingly stupid.
However, something of note has happened within the past few days, when a Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes review was posted on May 22. The days that followed the review's release has seen an influx of comments denouncing the review. No surprise there. BUT, I started taking real notice when the lot started complaining that the review was hurting the Metacritic score, and that they all started begging for the review to be either taken down or rewritten to accommodate a higher score, so that the Metacritic score wasn't "damaged". Just in case this review happens to disappear (I doubt it, but you can never tell with human nature), I took the liberty of capturing some choice comments on the matter:
The first time I read that comment in the first image, my jaw nearly dropped. REGARDLESS OF THE QUALITY OF THE REVIEW, for someone to tell a reviewer to change the score or remove a review just so a game can sell better is an amazing statement. He's not even trying to sugarcoat it. Also, "It's completely different from my experience playing the game." Really? You mean a completely different human being, with different tastes and views, happen to have a differing opinion of the same game than you? And he expresses this in a review, aka one guy's personal view of a product, AKA A REVIEW? So I figured the Thunderbolt staff was gonna do their usual silent treatment of the comments section, but the reviewer in question posted a few times, and actually took the comments like a champ. However, another staffer chimed in:
So that's it. You get a few nerd-tantrums from the Internet and you cave in. What, were you afraid of bad publicity, afraid that Metacritic is going to remove you? So much for sticking to your guns, and not to mention letting one of your writers out to hang like that. I don't know what the submission process is like over at Thunderbolt, but if one or two people oversee what gets put up.... then why was this put up in the first place if you feared such a "backlash" as the one demonstrated in the comments section? You let the whiners win, and from now on, every time there's a low-rated review on the site, they'll think that enough bickering is going to get the review removed or re-rated for the sake of a Metacritic score.
Damn you, Metacritic. You'll be the death of us!
I like Thunderbolt, I think the website has a bunch of interesting articles and reviews, and I like frequenting its forums because its users normally have interesting things to say about the current state of gaming. One of the things I always find the most amusing, though, is reading the comments section for certain reviews, due to how silly some of the complaints are. A recent example can be seen in this BioShock Infinite review, where two comments (as of this writing) trash the review because of the 8/10 score. "The score you guys give this game is sickening." "Oh come on. 8 out of 10? It’s sad when some don’t realise the importance of this game claim to be an authority on video game quality. Gamers aren’t all 13 year old boys." Priceless. Some reviews get a stronger reaction than others, and I always took the Thunderbolt's staff lack of response to these comments as a sign of the obvious: that these comments are amazingly stupid.
However, something of note has happened within the past few days, when a Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes review was posted on May 22. The days that followed the review's release has seen an influx of comments denouncing the review. No surprise there. BUT, I started taking real notice when the lot started complaining that the review was hurting the Metacritic score, and that they all started begging for the review to be either taken down or rewritten to accommodate a higher score, so that the Metacritic score wasn't "damaged". Just in case this review happens to disappear (I doubt it, but you can never tell with human nature), I took the liberty of capturing some choice comments on the matter:
The first time I read that comment in the first image, my jaw nearly dropped. REGARDLESS OF THE QUALITY OF THE REVIEW, for someone to tell a reviewer to change the score or remove a review just so a game can sell better is an amazing statement. He's not even trying to sugarcoat it. Also, "It's completely different from my experience playing the game." Really? You mean a completely different human being, with different tastes and views, happen to have a differing opinion of the same game than you? And he expresses this in a review, aka one guy's personal view of a product, AKA A REVIEW? So I figured the Thunderbolt staff was gonna do their usual silent treatment of the comments section, but the reviewer in question posted a few times, and actually took the comments like a champ. However, another staffer chimed in:
So that's it. You get a few nerd-tantrums from the Internet and you cave in. What, were you afraid of bad publicity, afraid that Metacritic is going to remove you? So much for sticking to your guns, and not to mention letting one of your writers out to hang like that. I don't know what the submission process is like over at Thunderbolt, but if one or two people oversee what gets put up.... then why was this put up in the first place if you feared such a "backlash" as the one demonstrated in the comments section? You let the whiners win, and from now on, every time there's a low-rated review on the site, they'll think that enough bickering is going to get the review removed or re-rated for the sake of a Metacritic score.
Damn you, Metacritic. You'll be the death of us!
Saturday, October 13, 2012
A Bluberry Request
"finally, re: your blog, seems cool but I'd like more titties."
This blog now has tits.
This blog now has tits.
Monday, September 17, 2012
Nerd Stuff
Well, it's been a while since I posted anything in this blog. The reason? I simply keep forgetting.
To follow up on my last entry, though, I HAVE played Sonic 4: Episode II, and I was actually surprised it turned out better than expected. The game fixes a number of gripes I have with Episode I, but I wouldn't go so far to call it fantastic. It's fun and playable, but I'm just dissatisfied that it still simply wants to remake stages from previous games. You can read more in this review I wrote. As for playing Rayman on Sega Saturn: I have not. I dunno why, but I'm just very hesitant to jump into it, even though the allure of playing a 2D platformer sounds fun. I guess I'm concerned that it might be too much of a collect-a-thon, the type of action game that turns me off the most. I could easily play the game to find out or just do some fact-checking on the Internet, but I'm just REALLY that lazy.
Now for current nerd activities!
For the last two months, I've been going out of my way to collect every US-released Lupin the Third DVD available, sans re-releases. A few years back, I actually attempted to do this, as well, purchasing the Pioneer/Geneon second series DVD releases, but I gave up after the 6th volume. How come? Because I also was collecting the Funimation releases of the annual TV specials and theatrical movies. And the ones I picked... really sucked. That was pretty much the reason I went on a hiatus with the purchases. The only reason I resumed buying the DVDs is thanks in part to the release of a new DVD collection containing all the episodes of the first TV series, which has never seen a US release of any kind until now! This reignited the flame to complete my DVD collection, and continued collecting the Pioneer/Geneon and Funimation releases. Nothing's changed, the former is still good and the latter still sucks. It boggles my mind how they have an entire year, every year, to come up with ONE story, and 90% of the time, it turns out to be crap. Then again, the blame probably falls more on the directors, each year normally containing a new one, for the lack of "oomp!" I mean, there's a lot of stuff out there in the medium that has a lot of plots you see coming a mile away, but some still manage to be entertaining as all heck thanks to fun direction, pacing, and character development. I seem to be more of a fan of the pre-90s Lupin stuff thanks to this, I think, because the stories and pacing still feel energetic, like the people making still believed they can make awesome and off-the-wall material. This feeling is mostly gone from the "newer" stuff.
I'd write more, but I'm tired of typing this entry. Hope it doesn't take another four months to make another blog entry.
To follow up on my last entry, though, I HAVE played Sonic 4: Episode II, and I was actually surprised it turned out better than expected. The game fixes a number of gripes I have with Episode I, but I wouldn't go so far to call it fantastic. It's fun and playable, but I'm just dissatisfied that it still simply wants to remake stages from previous games. You can read more in this review I wrote. As for playing Rayman on Sega Saturn: I have not. I dunno why, but I'm just very hesitant to jump into it, even though the allure of playing a 2D platformer sounds fun. I guess I'm concerned that it might be too much of a collect-a-thon, the type of action game that turns me off the most. I could easily play the game to find out or just do some fact-checking on the Internet, but I'm just REALLY that lazy.
Now for current nerd activities!
For the last two months, I've been going out of my way to collect every US-released Lupin the Third DVD available, sans re-releases. A few years back, I actually attempted to do this, as well, purchasing the Pioneer/Geneon second series DVD releases, but I gave up after the 6th volume. How come? Because I also was collecting the Funimation releases of the annual TV specials and theatrical movies. And the ones I picked... really sucked. That was pretty much the reason I went on a hiatus with the purchases. The only reason I resumed buying the DVDs is thanks in part to the release of a new DVD collection containing all the episodes of the first TV series, which has never seen a US release of any kind until now! This reignited the flame to complete my DVD collection, and continued collecting the Pioneer/Geneon and Funimation releases. Nothing's changed, the former is still good and the latter still sucks. It boggles my mind how they have an entire year, every year, to come up with ONE story, and 90% of the time, it turns out to be crap. Then again, the blame probably falls more on the directors, each year normally containing a new one, for the lack of "oomp!" I mean, there's a lot of stuff out there in the medium that has a lot of plots you see coming a mile away, but some still manage to be entertaining as all heck thanks to fun direction, pacing, and character development. I seem to be more of a fan of the pre-90s Lupin stuff thanks to this, I think, because the stories and pacing still feel energetic, like the people making still believed they can make awesome and off-the-wall material. This feeling is mostly gone from the "newer" stuff.
I'd write more, but I'm tired of typing this entry. Hope it doesn't take another four months to make another blog entry.
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Preparing for Sonic 4: Episode 2 + Other Talky Stuff
I decided to play a little bit of Sonic 4: Episode 1 today to get ready for the coming release of Episode 2. The game still really stinks with its awful controls and deaf-inducing soundtrack. As I said at the end of my Episode 1 review, there's really no point in purchasing a game with crappy remade stages of the Genesis titles, since you can download the original games on Xbox Live Arcade together for almost the same price. It's just pointless. I'm not really thrilled about playing Episode 2, honestly, but I'll keep an open mind when the time comes.
Anyway, I finished and submitted my review of Cho Aniki on HonestGamers a few days ago, which reduced my gaming backlog a little bit. Currently, I have Rayman and Mobile Suit Gundam for the Saturn to play through, and I'm not even sure I'll bother with the latter. The reason I got Rayman is.... surprisingly, I have never actually played through any of the games in the series, the closest being the Rayman 2 demo for Dreamcast. Since Rayman Origins came out last year, I've been itching to play it, but I have this thing where I don't like jumping into a game late in the series if I never played previous ones. In most cases, not all. So I just wanted to play the game that started it all. Dunno if I'm gonna play any of the 3D titles, though. I wasn't too impressed with the pacing of the Rayman 2 demo all those years ago, and Rayman 3 appears to be a forgettable title, since I rarely hear people talk about it.
Also in my backlog are games that aren't even in my possession yet! There's the upcoming Episode 2, and then there's the new Xbox 360 shoot-em-up release Akai Katana that I should be getting at the end of the week. While I'm not sure I'll have time for the shooter this weekend, I figure I should support the release, since we're rarely getting new shoot-em-up games nowadays... if you don't count the thousands of zombie shooters on Xbox Indie.
Anyway, I finished and submitted my review of Cho Aniki on HonestGamers a few days ago, which reduced my gaming backlog a little bit. Currently, I have Rayman and Mobile Suit Gundam for the Saturn to play through, and I'm not even sure I'll bother with the latter. The reason I got Rayman is.... surprisingly, I have never actually played through any of the games in the series, the closest being the Rayman 2 demo for Dreamcast. Since Rayman Origins came out last year, I've been itching to play it, but I have this thing where I don't like jumping into a game late in the series if I never played previous ones. In most cases, not all. So I just wanted to play the game that started it all. Dunno if I'm gonna play any of the 3D titles, though. I wasn't too impressed with the pacing of the Rayman 2 demo all those years ago, and Rayman 3 appears to be a forgettable title, since I rarely hear people talk about it.
Also in my backlog are games that aren't even in my possession yet! There's the upcoming Episode 2, and then there's the new Xbox 360 shoot-em-up release Akai Katana that I should be getting at the end of the week. While I'm not sure I'll have time for the shooter this weekend, I figure I should support the release, since we're rarely getting new shoot-em-up games nowadays... if you don't count the thousands of zombie shooters on Xbox Indie.
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