Saturday, June 26

Video review

Right now, I'm working on a video review. I've run into a number of hurdles along the way, so it probably won't be ready on Tuesday when I normally post my reviews. Nevertheless, it will be released whenever I'm done. I might as well say that I'm reviewing Spy Game: Elevator Mission. I know I reviewed it here two months back, but I figured it's an easy target and I've never seen any video reviews of it before. All the writing and video capturing is done, I just need to do the voice recording, video recording, and final editing.

Thursday, June 24

Why Super Mario is Evil

A while back, I posted here about how the Easter Bunny is a scientific experiment from an evil mastermind. Last month, I also explained how trees are evil. Now it's time to reveal the biggest shocker yet, Mario is evil. Yup, Nintendo's "family friendly" mascot is not the kind plumber we all thought he was.

    Super Mario Bros is undeniably one of the most famous games in existence. If it weren't for the Famicon/NES and Super Mario, we wouldn't be playing games today. That's right...Nintendo brought us out of the second game market crash. If you haven't played this game, even for a minute or so...you are not a true gamer. These days, it's hard to go to any store that sells games and not see at least one game about Mario or a picture (unless it's the Sony store or the newly opened Microsoft store.) Well, this note is not about how awesome the series is...it's fun, but it's also pure evil.

     Let's start with the original game. What's one of Mario's most famous gameplay elements? Jumping on goombas and turtles (called Koopas in the Mario universe.) This means that Mario is a serial animal killer and should be shot for his unmeasurable animal cruelty. Here he is stealing shells from turtles and throwing them at every living thing in sight. No wonder there are so many ghosts in later mario games; they're all ghosts of the millions of goombas and turtles he's massacred over the years. Sure, one may argue that it would suck being a goomba, being nothing but a head and feet. One may argue that he's doing them a favor by putting them down...but by crushing them under his feet? That's madness.

Tuesday, June 22

Movie review - Metal Gear Solid 4


     After four straight weeks of Land Before Time, I just needed a break from bad movies and games. So today I'm reviewing one of the best movies I've seen in a while, Metal Gear Solid 4!

    MGS4 is an epic, action packed CGI movie. For some weird reason, this movie is only compatible with the PlayStation 3, but if you have that you shouldn't miss it. It's loaded with deep, memorable characters, plot twists, and well choreographed action sequences. The movie includes themes of age and death, a changing world, and machines controlling too much. The story can get a little too complicated at times, and it helps if you've seen the previous movies, but MGS4 does a good job at explaining itself.


     The movie starts with a monologue by the main character, a war-torn old man named Solid Snake, who talks about how war has changed. War is now more controlled than ever before, and a computer program has pretty much taken over. While he is monologing, he is riding a jeep with a bunch of rebel soldiers resisting this movement. They are soon ambushed by a bunch of giant leg creatures with guns mounted on their heads...I don't know, they're just awesome. They take out a bunch of the other rebels and...wait, you gain control of Solid Snake? I thought this was a movie! Oh, so this is why it only works on the PS3, it's actually a game for the PS3.

Monday, June 21

Movie Review - Toy Story 3



Awesome! Definitely worthy of the Toy Story title. The third entry to the Toy Story franchise ties the trilogy together very well and may even be the best of the three. Pixar has done a very good job at staying true to the first two and continuing Woody and Buzz's adventures.

Two word review - Perfect sequel

Saturday, June 19

E3 This Year

    Wow, just wow. I have to say that E3 really surprised me this year. Usually it's either Microsoft or Sony who owns E3, but this year they both sucked. Sony was just plain boring, and Microsoft was as embarrassing as Sony in 2006 and Nintendo in 2008. Instead of talking too much about what anyone here has either already read plenty about or doesn't really care, I'll just list some of the games I'm looking forward to.

    Donkey Kong Country Returns - Holy crap! The Donkey Kong Country games were among my favorite games growing up, and the fact that DKCR is a throwback to those games is just awesome. It doesn't hurt that it's being developed by Retro, the company behind the Metroid Prime trilogy. Day 1 purchase for me.

    Gears of War 3 - Until I played Mass Effect 1 and 2, Gears of War was my favorite series this generation. Gears 3 adds 4-player co-op, Beast mode (like horde, but you play as various Locust monsters,) and a bunch of new weapons. Beyond that, a famous Star Wars novel author, Karen Traviss is writing this game's story (she's also written several successful Gears of War novels.) Definitely going to the midnight launch for this one.

    Metroid: Other M - Not too much to say here. It looked neat before, it still looks neat now. It's a very interesting combination of 2D side-scrolling and FPS, and it looks like it functions well. Getting this game for sure.

    Legend of Zelda: Skylight Sword - Still haven't played Twilight Princess yet, but I've enjoyed what I've played so far. From what I've seen, this one looks great. The fact that Skylight Sword uses the Wii Motion plus certainly doesn't hurt.

    The biggest surprise for me is how good the 3DS is. I don't have a DS and had very little interest in the 3DS until now. A 3D screen that doesn't require glasses? No idea how they managed that, but it sounds amazing. Not only that, but they revealed a number of good games for it. There are also tons of DS games I would enjoy playing, and the 3DS is backward compatible. A new Kid Icarus game seals the deal for me.

    Other games that interested me were Halo Reach, Kirby Epic Yarn, The Force Unleashed 2, the new Twisted Metal, Portal 2, and the Goldeneye remake. Halo Reach now has space combat and an updated firefight, which both look awesome. Epic Yarn might sound stupid, but it actually looks very creative. Considering Goldeneye will be a near-total remake, I'm reserving judgment for obvious reasons, that and I don't support Activision for a number of reasons including this.

Tuesday, June 15

Movie Review - The Land Before Time series part 4 (TV series)

    At last, the final review for the entire “Land Before Time” series (part 1 here, part 2 here, part 3 here.)  So in the last month I've reviewed every single Land Before Time movie made to date, but now I dig deep into how bad this series really gets. So far I've been pleasantly surprised - some of the sequels are actually pretty good. When I think about it though, how could it have lasted for 13 movies if there weren't any good sequels? They also created 26 half-hour TV episodes over a single season, which is what I’m reviewing today. Obviously I can't talk about every single episode separately, so I'll just sum up the whole show…HOLY CRAP IT SUCKS!

Tuesday, June 8

Movie Review - The Land Before Time series part 3 (movies 7-13)

    This is my third LBT review in my series (part 1 here, part 2 here.) This is a long one, and I've already done plenty of introductions in the previous two reviews, so let's just dig right into it. Here's my review of all the Land Before Time movies I didn't see as a kid.

Tuesday, June 1

Movie Review - The Land Before Time series part 2 (movies 2-6)

    A couple weeks ago I reviewed the first Land Before Time movie, and said I'd review the rest of the series (part 3 here.) Well, here's my second LBT review. Today I'm reviewing LBT two through six. Yup, I'm reviewing five LBT sequels in one week.

    Let's first take a break and talk about this series further though. Despite this being a kid's franchise, it actually has a fairly strong fan following. There are tons of fan-fiction writings, ranging from further sequels, stories of various romances involving the gang, crossovers, and even PG-13 versions of official material. The Land Before Time Wiki is actually one of the more impressive independent Wiki's on the internet, and the quality level almost rivals that of Halopedia. There are also several active fan forums despite that the most recent movie released in 2007. Considering how there are tons of closet fans of the franchise and it somehow lasted for 13 movies, Universal must have done something right at some point. Without any further introduction, let's kick this pig.