Thursday, January 27

Game review - Rogue Warrior


    This is one of the biggest rip-offs in recent gaming history. Not in the sense that it rips off another game, but that it rips off the consumer.

    I’ve been playing a lot of crappy videogames lately. Sure, I’ve been playing good ones too, like Dragon Age: Origins and Medal of Honor (I liked it at least,) but I’ve also played crap like Kane and Lynch 2 and this…thing. Of all the bad games to release lately, Rogue Warrior is probably the biggest rip-off of them all. To sum it up, it’s less than two hours long and it released at $60 US. What the crap? Oh yeah, it’s a sucky two hours as well, and this coming from the publishers behind the 300+ hour long Oblivion is what really confuses me. Well, let's get this over with.

Thursday, January 20

Movie Review - Superman, the 1975 Musical


    Remember Superman 4? It holds nothing to the 1975 Superman musical in terms of pure, concentrated suckitude.

    “It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's Superman” was a broadway musical first produced in 1966. The show was generally well received but failed to catch on to audiences. Heck, it received several Tony Award nominations. It’s had several revivals since – most recently last year in Dallas. Easily the most notorious was this piece of crap, which seriously cut the piece down in length and removed much of the energy from the original production. But is it really that bad? Does it deserve all those scathing reviews it received over the years?

Friday, January 14

Movie Review - Star Wars Episode 4 Adywan cut


    Let me introduce you to the world of fan edits. Just like there's a culture for bad movies, there's also a culture for fan edits of movies.

    There are fan edits of the Superman movies, like one that combines Superman 1 and 2, an edit of Star Trek Generations that removes all the Caption Kirk scenes, fan edits that split the Lord of the Rings movies into six books like in the original novels, and of course the subject of this review, a very well done fan edit of the original Star Wars. I only know the creator of this version as Adywan, but he spent two years working on this version of the film.

    Adywan's cut is basically a combination of the original theatrical release and the special edition. Many of the controvertial scenes in the special edition and DVD edition were removed; for example, Han shoots first and the Jabba scene was removed. Despite all these removals, many of the technical improvements still remain. In addition, he fixed colouring issues that the DVD version ignored, he improved the destruction of Alderan, and he did this to the Death Star battle.



    Yeah, he went there! Not only does the climactic battle now feel like a battle, but he even added the planet Yavin in the background - something I never even noticed was missing from the original. Adywan made over 150 changes, both big and small. It just goes to show how dedicated the fan-base is for this franchise.

    In my honest opinion, this is the best version of the original Star Wars, and I recommend it to any Star Wars fans out there. For someone whose seen this movie at least 57 times, this version somehow feels fresh and new. Next week, a bad Superman movie most of you have probably never heard of.

Four Word Review - The Real Special Edition

Monday, January 10

School re-boot

    Well, my second semester just started, so once again I will try to post something big every week, but I can't guarantee anything. Movie and game reviews will be posted whenever they're finished, and I'll just have to post filler like poems I wrote for my creative writing courses a few years back, or maybe one of the first stories I wrote which is almost hilariously bad itself.

    By the way, I hate Mondays this semester. Having to wake up in the grueling hours of the morning just so I can make my first class at 2pm is torture and inhumane. What's even worse is that I don't have any tests or exams in that class or that I only have to buy 1 textbook this semester. OK in all seriousness, I'm looking forward to this semester. I have courses like broadcast performance and broadcast writing (hopefully they will help me make better video reviews, and help motivate me to make more.) I also have a photography course which I am definitely looking forward to, and a few others that won't be too bad either.

Until my next post, enjoy

Saturday, January 8

Game Review - M&M's Kart Racing


    I have one simple question - why does this game exist?

    M&M's Kart racing is one of many Mario Kart ripoffs for the Wii, along with Myth Makers Super Kart GP which I will review after I find it. M&M's racing is pretty unremarkable, save for the fact that gameplay footage leaked before it's release despite not even having an official trailer. Looks like fun, doesn't it. I could end my review right there, but that would be boring. Besides, it can't be that bad, can it? Of course not, it's worse! It's had a number of scathing reviews from various critics, the highest of which I can find is 3/10. Heck, Gamespot awarded it the flat-out worst game of 2008. So it's time for another scathing review of this game.

Saturday, January 1

Movie review - Manos: the Hands of Fate


    If Plan 9 from Outer Space was the best bad movie from the 50s and 60s, than Manos the Hands of Fate was quite possibly the worst. In fact, this movie was such a pain that I struggled to finish this review and missed the New Years mark. First off, the word “Manos” is Spanish for “hand”, and before you think about how redundant that title is, just remember that the title is the best part about this movie. Yeah…wrap your head around that one. Also, the filming of this movie was the result of a bet, and the first script draft was written on a napkin. That’s always a good sign, right?

    The camera used for filming the movie had to be hand-wound and would tamper out at the 30 second mark. The camera was rented because the filmmaker didn’t have enough money to buy one, so he had to rush every shot of the movie the same way Ed Wood always did by choice. The camera also didn’t record audio, so they had to dub in all the talking afterwards – fairly common these days. The entire cast was made up of local models and actors, and instead of being paid up-front, they were promised a profit share. Convinced that it must be a good movie yet?


    Most of the movie was filmed at night. Back then, a common method was to shoot during the day and darken the footage to make it look like night. The filmmakers instead decided to film at night, and moths were attracted to the camera lights. Sometimes you can see the moths in the movie, other times the moths reduced the lighting so much that the actors couldn’t see where they were going. Enough about the production though; let’s get into the movie itself and discover how dreadful this really is.