#Fire Force bluray review

[spryfilm]

Blu-ray review: “Fire Force Season One” (2023)

[daleisgreat]

The Punisher (1989): Unrated Cut

This has been one I have been meaning to be covering for a few years now. Longtime readers here may remember my friend Matt I reference semi-occasionally when I review one of his gag gift movies here. Every now and then though he will legit surprise with me with an awesome movie gift as with today’s example. Matt knows I am a huge fan of the comic book character, The Punisher, and that all three of the live action Punisher movies are guilty pleasures of mine. Up until a few years ago I already owned both the Thomas Jane and Ray Stevenson Punisher films on BluRay, but the original 1989 Punisher movie I only owned a bare bones DVD release that I thought was the only home video version of that film. Matt surprised me a few years back by tracking down an international release of an unrated director’s cut of The Punisher on BluRay. Turns out in North America, right on the precipice of the film’s released it got traded studios as its original studio was in the process of being acquired. Turns out the new studio was not confident in the drawing power of Dolph Lungdren anymore so the 1989 Punisher film was among the first wave of movies to hit the straight-to-video market. Internationally, The Punisher received theatrical releases, and performed well, which is why it landed an international BluRay release. Thank goodness my BluRay player recognizes international regions, but my only nitpick with it is the lack of subtitles. So this version of the film on BluRay is the ‘Unrated Cut’ which is how the director, Mark Goldblatt, originally envisioned the film. The 80s were the era of the gratuitously violent action blockbusters with the likes of Rambo, Robocop, Commando, Terminator and countless others dominating the box office. The Punisher was shot for that demographic, and Goldblatt stated in the commentary how he had to take the film to the MPAA nine times before toning down the movie enough to earn an ‘R’ rating.

The film wastes no time with a lengthy origin story as it kicks off with a gang leader being acquitted of all charges for murdering Frank Castle (Dolph Lungdren) and his family five years prior. A news reporter recommends the gang to be on the lookout for ‘The Punisher’ vigilante, which the gang laughs off the journalist’s warnings, only for the gang to instantly meet their demise mere minutes after arriving home from court. The Yakuza arrive in town to capitalize on The Punisher’s fallout, with Yakuza leader Lady Tanaka (Kim Miyori) forcing replacement gang leader Dino Moretti (Bryan Marshall) to partner up with her after kidnapping the children of Moretti and his allies. Trying to keep tabs on this whole mess of a situation is the ‘Punisher Task Force’ consisting of Frank Castle’s former partner, Jake Berkowitz (Louis Gossett Jr.), and fellow detective Sam Leary (Nancy Everhard). Following all this setup, The Punisher is essentially 1980s action film 101, with Castle tearing it up against the Yakuza in a couple of entertaining shootouts in a casino and later on in a funhouse, complete with Yakuza members firing away at Frank while breezing down a curvy slide. Completing the over-the-top 80s action formula is the cheesy one-liners, with my favorite featuring Berkowitz grilling Frank on his vigilante warfare, “What do you call 125 murders in five years?” to which Castle dryly retorts, “Work-in-Progress.” Eventually everything comes to a head when Punisher and Moretti team up to rescue Moretti’s kid in the Yakuza stronghold, where the most intense fighting sequences emanate from in the entire film. The unrated cut pulls no punches, with the most gruesome fatalities transpiring as Castle and Moretti work their way to the final confrontation with Lada Tanaka.

When I re-watched the film with audio commentary from Mark Goldblatt he made sure to pinpoint which parts he added back in as he originally envisioned for this unrated version, and how he stands behind this version being the definitive cut of the film. Other interesting tidbits from the commentary was how the film wound up being shot in Australia, regrets of not having the Punisher’s trademark skull icon on his shirt in the film and informing in-depth on the film trading studios and going direct-to-video in America. Goldblatt also mentions in the commentary how there is a workprint cut of the film, which he stated he does not stand behind since it was cut before the core movie finished filming. Said workprint cut is included as a bonus feature, and is actually eight minutes longer than the unrated cut. The main takeaway I had with the workprint cut is it has a whole new 17 minute opening on the origin of The Punisher that happens five years earlier where it shows Castle and Berkowitz making a bust on a routine stakeout that clues the gangsters in to Frank’s family location where they ultimately make a hit on Frank’s family. That whole 17 minutes is briefly alluded to in the unrated cut in the form of a five second flashback of the family’s demise. This prologue adds a whole new dynamic to the film, but I can see why Goldblatt wanted it cut since it brings a snappier pace to the overall film. Also worth mentioning is that the workprint is presented in its original adapted 35mm form, and how the editors did a commendable job cleaning it up for the HD version on the BluRay.

Other extra features is a 21 minute interview with Mark Goldblatt. If you do not have time to invest into the commentary track, then this interview is a recommended alternative as it hits most of the same beats and goes into Mark’s other Hollywood successes. Also included is a quick five minute interview with Dolph Lungdren where he has fond memories working with the stuntmen in the fight sequences and wishes the movie would have had a theatrical run in America. For those who are fans of reverse box art, I recommend taking advantage of that here, as this BluRay’s alternative artwork is pretty remarkable. Rounding off the BluRay is a gag reel…..which would not load on my BluRay player, so that will have to be my loss. The Punisher: Unrated Cut BluRay was a surprise hit gift from Matt! I will stand behind Goldblatt by safely assuring his unrated cut here is the must-see version of the film. A solid slate of extra features only helps makes this BluRay the definitive home video edition of this movie. If you dig the over-the-top action films of the 80s, then odds are this 1989 take on The Punisher will be right up your alley. Other Random Backlog Movie Blogs 3 12 Angry Men (1957) 12 Rounds 3: Lockdown 21 Jump Street The Accountant Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie Atari: Game Over The Avengers: Age of Ultron The Avengers: Infinity War Batman: The Dark Knight Rises Batman: The Killing Joke Batman: Mask of the Phantasm Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice Bounty Hunters Cabin in the Woods Captain America: Civil War Captain America: The First Avenger Captain America: The Winter Soldier Christmas Eve Clash of the Titans (1981) Clint Eastwood 11-pack Special The Condemned 2 Countdown Creed I & II Deck the Halls Detroit Rock City Die Hard Dredd The Eliminators The Equalizer Dirty Work Faster Fast and Furious I-VIII Field of Dreams Fight Club The Fighter For Love of the Game Good Will Hunting Gravity Grunt: The Wrestling Movie Guardians of the Galaxy Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 Hell Comes to Frogtown Hercules: Reborn Hitman I Like to Hurt People Indiana Jones 1-4 Ink The Interrogation Interstellar Jay and Silent Bob Reboot Jobs Joy Ride 1-3 Last Action Hero Major League Man of Steel Man on the Moon Man vs Snake Marine 3-6 Merry Friggin Christmas Metallica: Some Kind of Monster Mortal Kombat Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpions Revenge National Treasure National Treasure: Book of Secrets Not for Resale Pulp Fiction The Replacements Reservoir Dogs Rocky I-VIII Running Films Part 1 Running Films Part 2 San Andreas ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery Scott Pilgrim vs the World The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Shoot em Up Slacker Skyscraper Small Town Santa Steve Jobs Source Code Star Trek I-XIII Sully Take Me Home Tonight TMNT The Tooth Fairy 1 & 2 UHF Veronica Mars Vision Quest The War Wild The Wizard Wonder Woman The Wrestler (2008) X-Men: Apocalypse X-Men: Days of Future Past

[posterclever974]

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Feb 13, 2014  mplayer2 is a command-line video player that was developed from the initial MPlayer, providing you with the original functions and more, along with various improvements of. Hi, what a long absence, I'm still alive, MPlayerX too. Now I'm planning some, relatively, big feature into MPlayerX for the next major release. It may cost some time. Before doing it, I thought I'd better release once. So actually 1.0.1 isn't a exciting release, just a little step forward. MPlayerX is armed by FFmpeg and MPlayer, which means it could handle any media format in the world without extra plug-ins or codec packages. Dance on your fingers. Pinch, tap or swipe, MPlayerX provides you the easiest way to control the playback. Click to download the Control Script for Sofa. Dec 13, 2018  Download MPlayer. MPlayer is a movie player which runs on many systems. Login Social Sharing. Tech news in your inbox. Get TechSpot's weekly newsletter Facebook.

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It plays most MPEG/VOB, AVI, Ogg/OGM, VIVO, ASF/WMA/WMV, QT/MOV/MP4, RealMedia, Matroska, NUT, NuppelVideo, FLI, YUV4MPEG, FILM, RoQ, PVA files, supported by many native, XAnim, and Win32 DLL codecs. You can watch VideoCD, SVCD, DVD, 3ivx, DivX 3/4/5, WMV and even H.264 movies.

Another great feature of MPlayer is the wide range of supported output drivers. It works with X11, Xv, DGA, OpenGL, SVGAlib, fbdev, AAlib, DirectFB, but you can use GGI, SDL (and this way all their drivers), VESA (on every VESA compatible card, even without X11!) and some low level card-specific drivers (for Matrox, 3Dfx and ATI), too! Most of them support software or hardware scaling, so you can enjoy movies in fullscreen. MPlayer supports displaying through some hardware MPEG decoder boards, such as the Siemens DVB, DXR2 and DXR3/Hollywood+.

MPlayer has an onscreen display (OSD) for status information, nice big antialiased shaded subtitles and visual feedback for keyboard controls. European/ISO 8859-1,2 (Hungarian, English, Czech, etc), Cyrillic and Korean fonts are supported along with 12 subtitle formats (MicroDVD, SubRip, OGM, SubViewer, Sami, VPlayer, RT, SSA, AQTitle, JACOsub, PJS and our own: MPsub). DVD subtitles (SPU streams, VOBsub and Closed Captions) are supported as well.

What's New:

After a long pause, we decided that it might be a good idea to make a new release. While we had our fun with the naming scheme with lots of 'pre' and 'rc' it seemed time to move on and with everyone incrementing major versions between weekly and monthly we hope to be forgiven for jumping ahead to 1.1.

This release is intended to be compatible with the recent FFmpeg 0.11 release. We hope it will be useful to distros and other users relying on FFmpeg 0.11. Everyone else is encouraged to follow Subversion HEAD to always get the latest features and bug fixes. You might still want to read the release announcement to get a short summary of any bigger changes and improvements.

Mplayer For Windows 7

Among the bigger news is that we found a maintainer for the X11 gmplayer GUI, so those holding out on it against our earlier recommendations will get a lot of bug fixes.

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As part of the code cleanup efforts, the internal libfaad2 copy has been removed since the FFmpeg decoder is working well. Also the internal mp3lib copy is no longer used by default since the many alternatives (FFmpeg, libmpg123, libmad) avoid its recurring issues like incorrect decoding with newer compilers. However it can still be forced at runtime for easier tracking of regressions. Please do not rely on this since it will be removed in the future. If you do not actually need it consider disabling it at compile time with --disable-mp3lib.

As a first for this release, the tarballs are available in two variants: compressed with xz and compressed with gzip. Please get the xz variant if you can to save bandwidth, the gzip version is for everyone that cannot use it. Should you never have encountered xz compressed files, newer versions of tar can uncompress it via 'tar xJf MPlayer-1.1.tar.xz'.

What's New:

Upgraded gcc to 7.3, enabled lto in FFMpeg

Enabled dash demuxer in FFMpeg

Enabled libopenmpt in FFMpeg

Updated gnutls to 3.5.18

Updated libvpx (git)

Updated openh264 (git)

Updated kvazaar (git)

Updated x265 (hg)

Apps similar to MPlayer 6

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Application/x-mplayer2 Chrome Download

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I needed a simple command-ling media player, and this was perfect! Extremely lightweight and very versatile. I use it for some custom clip management and window capture for streamers to use when broadcasting using the OBS Studio streaming/broadcasting software on Twitch. I take chat commands that create a text semaphore/trigger file, and when the script sees the trigger, it uses this Mplayer utility to play. I am just doing this for fun, and to help streamers offer a little something extra. if a streamer wants to rotate 8 different 'Hug' clips when a viewer runs the '!hug @somename' command in chat, there should be a utility that can launch the clips when the commands are run, then rotate the clips so if 4 or 5 people use the 'Hug' command to hug each other, it doesn't just play the same clip over and over. The fact that you can title the player window allows a streamer to have a few different windows captures set up. Maybe 1 for fullscreen clips with a chromakey filter, a regular fullscreen clip fo speciual event clips, and maybe ones for subscriber 'intro clips' they use when they join chat to announce their presence in style. Maybe another for 'accent clips/memes', so users can add commentary by launching clips at proper moments, like a '!rip' command that plays a rotation of funny 'I'm dead' clips when the streamer dies playing a game. The streamer just ads these 3 or 4 window capture sources to each scene they want clips to be available, then the script/utility launches each clip with the appropriate window title to have it play at the right size and location. I'd love to see someone actualy do this properly. I have it all working. I just needed a 'lighter' player that was flexible enough to support all the different clip types. I was using VLC Media Player, but it did noy play smoothly, often hitching/lagging for a split second when launching clips, making it seems rough and 'unfinished'. This gives a smooth and polished feel when playing the clips.

This is awesome. No more need to fire-up some heavy graphical user interface just to listen to audio streams! (Sorry I couldn't do this, due to a complete lack of free time here!) The only thing lacking, instructions how to install mplayer.exe and instructions concerning how to use with Cygwin. Basically, the mplayer.exe goes within your $PATH. I'm not sure where the other sub-folders should reside, but I simply created a symbolic link using Cygwin for my usage here. (ie. See below Cygwin Instructions) Initial execution of mplayer.exe seemed to search all of Windows fonts. Successive exections of mplayer.exe appeared to forgo the font searching, resulting in the usual quick start of the program. For cygwin users: 1) Unpackage the mplayer package to a folder. 2) Start cygwin and make sure you have a local bin folder (ie. /home/user/bin) within your path. If not, create the folder and modify your local $PATH to include your /home/user/bin folder, replacing the 'user' with your user name. 3) Type 'ln -s /place/where/you/unpackaged/mplayer/mplayer.exe /home/user/bin/' 4) If you prefer using .exe' command suffixes or are required to, and you have 'mplayer' aliases within you Linux bashrc and are copying the Linux bashrc over to Windows' Cygwin, then open the bashrc file within vim and type ':%s/mplayer /mplayer.exe /gc' without quotes. The command will aide in replacing the 'mplayer ' with 'mplayer.exe '. Most Cygwin users can skip this as Cygwin seems to recognize commands without the '.exe' suffix!

Nice work ! Version 37051 has not any more WMV bug. Really nice Job ! Don't stop working on mplayer, i use it everyday for a project i'll publish soon... Thanks again ;)

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[moviessilently]

When a railroad paymaster and the $25,000 in cash he was carrying disappear, returning WWI ace Billy Stokes is put on the case. This independent feature has an all African-American cast and is the only complete surviving feature of the Norman Film Manufacturing Company, a Florida-based studio that specialized in so-called race films.

Home Media Availability: Released on DVD and Bluray.

Up, up and away. Ish.

Richard E. Norman is not a household name these days but he left his mark on motion picture history. Like so many filmmakers operating outside the studio system, Norman tried various approaches until he found one that worked. He started with “home talent” pictures—that is, films shot by itinerant filmmakers in smaller cities and towns that made use of non-professional local talent (you can read my review of one such picture, The Lumberjack, here) but then discovered his niche in making films aimed at African-American audiences.

Poster for the film touting its cast.

Norman was a white Southerner but he did not seek to include the sort of insulting, dangerous, condescending stereotypes that D.W. Griffith was spreading in his films. Black audiences of the day were sick and tired of seeing white performers in blackface acting like monsters, fools or infants; they wanted to see themselves as they really were. There was a strong demand for positive African-American pictures and Norman sought to fill that demand. The Flying Ace is the only extant Norman film and it was the second-to-last feature he made. Like so many independent concerns, the cost of converting to sound proved to be a fatal blow.

Movies were mad for airplanes and Norman aimed to join the fad.

(If you would like more detail on Norman’s life, career and place in African-American film history, I recommend Richard E. Norman and Race Filmmaking by Barbara Tepa Lupack, which traces Norman’s career through personal correspondence and shooting scripts.)

The story opens with three disparate men standing outside a railroad station. Finley Tucker (Harold Platts) is a local sheik with a mysterious source of income, Dr. Maynard (Sam Jordan) is a respectable dentist and Jed Splivins (Lyons Daniels) is the buffoonish local constable. The trio observes the arrival of Blair Kimball (Boise De Legge), the railroad paymaster.

A dentist, a cop and a sheik walk into a speakeasy…

It seems that Kimball has decided to deliver the payroll early. Because no one will be expecting him, he has left his guards behind and is carrying $25,000 in cash all alone. Kimball waits for the next train with stationmaster Thomas Sawtelle (George Colvin).

The stationmaster has a charming daughter, Ruth (Kathryn Boyd), and she is just crazy about airplanes and flying. Tucker has been courting her and he offers to take her up in his plane but nefarious deeds go down while she is home changing into her flight suit.

He wants to get serious but she’s having none of it.

Sawtelle is knocked out by some mysterious substance and both Kimball and the cash disappear. This looks like a job for… Captain Billy Stokes (Laurence Criner)!

Stokes is an ace pilot who has just arrived back home from service in the First World War. Before the war, he was a railway detective and his old job is open to him; he heads over to Sawtelle’s station with orders to solve the mystery. He is assisted by engineer Peg (Steve Reynolds), a fellow veteran who lost a leg in the war. (Reynolds really was an amputee and his ability to still move with balletic grace was a popular feature of his stage show. It’s refreshing to see a disabled part played by a disabled performer, something that modern Hollywood would do well to learn.)

A decidedly unimpressed Stokes.

Stokes asks Peg to disguise himself as a hobo and reconnoiter the situation. Meanwhile, Stokes takes the more direct approach and introduces himself to Sawtelle as the railway detective on the case. Ruth is interested in the dashing pilot while Tucker tries his best to use reverse psychology to throw the blame on Sawtelle. You see, this is not really a whodunit as the film makes it very clear that the money was stolen by Tucker, Dr. Maynard and Jed. The fun is watching Stokes and Peg unravel the clues with tidy efficiency. These fellows are great at what they do!

Impossible in the real world but this is the movies!

The story of The Flying Ace can be viewed as existing in an alternate 1920s, one that contains no white characters, no racism and absolutely no content that would have been considered political (interracial romance, passing, Jim Crow, and so forth). Norman chose to avoid overt political statements in his films (and complained when other filmmakers, such as Oscar Micheaux, did) and instead sidestepped the topic entirely by attempting to portray aspirational African-American characters, heroes and heroines who would never have been allowed within a hundred yards of a mainstream Hollywood production. Captain Stokes certainly would not have been able to earn the title of ace in the heavily segregated U.S. military of WWI. Norman’s approach has been variously described as utopian, savvy and cowardly. Perhaps it was touches of all three.

Stokes knows his stuff.

Now we will compare The Flying Ace to other mystery/adventure productions of the time and see how it holds up in direct competition. First, the bad news.

When viewing any independent silent production, there are usually a few pitfalls to watch out for. In order to save money, low-budget films would often use an enormous number of title cards—it was cheaper to write more cards than to shoot more movie. The Flying Ace uses this trick with cards here, cards there, enough cards to open a casino. They also lack the professional snap of Hollywood intertitles and instead have stiff, formal sentences with plenty of semicolons and an honest to goodness, unironic use of the “I have you now, my beauty!” chestnut. Oh my. Further, there are clunky moments of exposition, like when the film screeches to a halt so that Tucker can show Ruth the mechanical workings of an airplane.

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While the title cards are about as poor a lot as I have ever seen, I am delighted to report that the actual plotting of the film is excellent, if hardly original. Far too many movie mysteries of the period would force their investigators to be stumped by a puzzle that the audience solved an hour before. For example, many mystery films would have had Stokes fret about just how Sawtelle was knocked out, stretching it out for a big reveal. Meanwhile, the audience is shouting, “The dentist! He has all kinds of drugs! The dentist!” Well, Stokes walks in, figures out that drugs were used on Sawtelle, finds a small vial on the floor, meets Dr. Maynard and puts it all together. It’s highly satisfying to watch a detective keep pace with the audience and even get ahead of us.

Don’t take your eyes off Jed!

I was also a bit worried about the characters of Peg and Jed as they are both introduced as broad comedy stereotypes. While this is not entirely done away with, both prove to have more depth than I expected. Peg is shown to be a clever gadgeteer who can innovate new uses for his crutch on the fly and ends up capturing two villains single-handed. Jed soon shows that his Keystone Cop routine is all an act and he proves to be the wiliest of the conspirators with his concealed handcuff key and trusty pistol. I would have preferred the dialect title cards to have been eliminated but at least the characters have some dimension to them.

Peg and his versatile crutch.

Norman had been in talks with Captain Edison McVey, a pilot who billed himself as the King of Stunts, and with famed aviatrix Bessie Coleman. However, McVey pulled out of negotiations and Coleman was killed in an accident before a deal could be closed. Norman finally cast a group of experienced stage actors to serve as the lead performers in the film.

A real charmer!

Without a doubt, the standout of the cast is Kathryn Boyd, who is a perfect charmer as Ruth. With her cute body language and infectious smile, she is exactly what the doctor ordered for a 1920s heroine: sporty, sweet, flirty and loyal. Laurence Criner (Boyd’s real-life husband according to Lupack) is fine if a bit stiff as Stokes, the two-fisted railway detective. He certainly throws himself into the fight scene with Harold Platts, which is always appreciated.

That’s gotta hurt!

Good though the cast turned out to be, the loss of experienced pilots meant that Norman’s options were limited. (Assuming he ever had the budget to include much airplane stuff, which is doubtful.) The Flying Ace rather famously shows no flying. Tucker and Stokes both taxi their planes around the airfield and then we are shown closeups of the cockpits against a sky backdrop but very few shots of planes in the air. It’s not really a dealbreaker but it’s another element that exposes the picture’s micro budget.

Totally up in the air.

In fact, Peg’s pursuit the villains on bicycle is far more dynamic than any of the airplane stuff. He peddles with his crutch and once he gets a good speed built up, he fires at the fleeing car with the gun he has concealed inside that same crutch. It’s exciting and the scene is unusually well-shot and edited for a budget picture. Great work there!

All in all, The Flying Ace is a fine bit of unpretentious silent entertainment and even without its historical importance, it works as a diverting detective yarn. This is a must-see for nerds and casual fans alike.

Where can I see it?

The Flying Ace was released on DVD and Bluray as part of the Pioneers of African-American Cinema box set. It’s accompanied by a fine score performed by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra.

The Flying Ace (1926) A Silent Film Review When a railroad paymaster and the $25,000 in cash he was carrying disappear, returning WWI ace Billy Stokes is put on the case.

[nazih-fares]

Announced at the 2005 edition of E3 as an exclusive for the PlayStation 3, Team Ninja’s Nioh have come a long way before reaching the Bluray players of our shiny PlayStation 3. Originally created by its mother company Tecmo Koei, Nioh was supposed to be a “simple” JRPG, with very classical elements, telling William’s adventures, an Englishmen based on a real historical figure (William Adams), who had come to Japan and learned the local martial arts way to become  the first ever Western Samurai. Sadly,as if it’s tradition with 1Japanese games, things when wrong and the project was transferred to the hands of another studio called Omega Force, known for turning everything into a Muso genre (Warriors, Orochi, Samurai and Dynasty series). After a few years of development, Nioh, unable to satisfy the demands of Tecmo Koei, changed for the ultimate time development team and started from scratch with the makers of Ninja Gaiden (and Dead or Alive): Team Ninja.

It was up for this studio to completely transform Nioh, and heavily influenced by Hidetaka Miyazaki, create a similar style experience, closer to a Japanese universe and lore. Were Tecmo Koei and Sony Interactive Entertainment (for the West mainly) right to put his baby in the expert hands of this Action game studio? Or was the obsession to create another Dark Souls too much to lose its core values? Let’s see in this review.

The first thing you’ll notice by booting the game and discovering its artistic direction, is the feeling of Nioh passing through several studios before landing in the hands of Tomonobu Itagaki (Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden’s creator), with remnants of work done by Omega Force especially on all historical aspect of the game. Nioh takes place in feudal Japan invaded by demons, yet doesn’t seem to prevent the local warlords to still wage war against each othters. These generals are the same historical figures that can be found in all the best Muso games in the world, character design included (visually speaking, very close to a Warriors Orochi). So forget the bootylicious bimbos of other Team Ninja productions, but Nioh’s character design are great nevertheless without being raunchy, whether it’s the main hero, but also for the heroines, monsters and bosses.

It’s in this Japanese era that William fights against forces of evil, stalling their march on their world domination, but also to save his loved one held prisoner. If this starting pitch is much more concrete than the riddles of Dark Souls, while being supported by cinematics at the beginning and end of each chapter, Nioh’s narration is as much a conundrum as a From Software game can get. The mission briefing is often a single page to read, with no real indication of your goals, and although easy to follow, the tribulations of William in the different regions of Japan are very conventional, with this duo of demons and civil war. In any case, the overall mood of game is greatly pictured, with a true feel of Japanese folklore, whether in the interpretations of Onis (the traditional name for Japanese evil spirits) or in the settings and surroundings. The soundtrack also demonstrates talent, both in terms of music and sound effects, composed by Yugo Kanno, mostly know for his work on Rain but also a hell lot of Anime composition such as JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Psycho-Pass and more. For those of you preferring original voice acting, you’ll be glad to know that Japanese voices are in the game, on top English dubbing, and numerous other languages in terms of subtitles and localized menu.

Now let’s jump in the heart of what matters in a game like Nioh: the gameplay. While Tecmo Koei as a whole had influenced the artistic direction, we will obviously find a lot of features from Dark Souls, but embellished with a whole lot of elements unequivocally belonging to Team Ninja original work. So let’s start by mentioning what Nioh really took as an inspiration from Dark Souls, to answer directly to the questions that most of you From Software fans want to know.

The first basic mechanics that can be found in this Dark Souls-like is the way how experience works, managed via camp fires. If the player dies, it loses all of its hard-earned experience (called amrita), which will remain there at the very place of your death, and finds itself in front of the last altar you visited. Your task then is to recover your precious belonging without dying, otherwise you will disappear forever in a limbo of ragequit and the frustration of having done all this for nothing. Because yes, the other basic principle of Dark Souls is that the game is one hell of challenge for players, and while not impossible, it pushed me at some point of almost rage quitting. Hell the slightest mob can send you to an instant death, the moment they feel a glimpse of confidence, an honest error, or have fallen into a trap, but that’s another story.

The fighting mechanics against various bosses, both in terms of size and design, relate as well to Dark Souls, and here it will often be necessary to go through a series of trials and errors to find the beast’s weaknesses, whether it’s in his evasion speed, the elementary damage or use of a particular item. On this front, the sensations in combat are closer to a Bloodborne than to a Dark Souls: the dodge is much more practical than a parry, as the latter consume more of your stamina (or ki) gauge, which can be bad when an enemy is countering you. The game is nevertheless more accessible than a Dark Souls for amateurs, since it offers a real tutorial where we learn more about the many subtleties of the gameplay.

True to any Team Ninja games, the fighting mechanics feel great (if not better than Dark Souls or even Bloodborne). The most striking aspect being the postures that one can adopt with its weapon, comparable to a “stance” in a fighting game: Medium is your standard mode, high stance to strike harder but become more open to attacks, and low stance to be more focused on defense but will do less damage. Another big subtlety, that reminds me of a bunch of Naruto games is the ability to recharge your ki faster by pressing R1 precisely when you’re done doing a combo, as your body start absorbing blue orbs around the arena. All these numerous and very demanding fights are already more exhilarating with the mechanics, and Nioh even inherited a feature straight out of Ninja Gaiden which are bloody dismemberment. Finally the last added feature is the living weapons, a sort of elemental powered attack where you are immune to damage and weapons deals extra damage, on top of being able to trigger your spirit guardian’s special attack.

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Level design wise, don’t expect the Metroid-ish world of Dark Souls, but arenas divided into different stages, which are more linear, yet still offering many shortcuts to unlock near shrines. It starts from a view of the map of Japan, where you choose your mission, main or secondary one, and teleport straight to the action… A big difference from the massive linked levels of Yarnam. Nevertheless there’s a lot of exploration to do in Nioh, but the overall level design are not as complex as I would’ve liked it to be from JRPG, even if really great to look at. Plus the game is a visual marvel, whether you play it on a regular PS4 or PS4 PRO (with 4K HDR resolution), locked at a constant framerate of 60fps with no slowdown in the time of my reviewing, just rare slow loading of enemy animations from a range.

On the front of gear and loot management, Nioh also stands out very strongly from its influence, as it’s closer to a Diablo than anything else, with insane amount of drops on a constant basis. Gear plays a big part as well as heavy load can harm your attack speed and will require William to spend more Ki to attack or do any sort of action.

When it comes to multiplayer, there’s only a coop mode for the moment, with a PVP planned later on as downloadable add-on. In any case, I briefly managed to play a quick multiplayer session, where you basically join yokai realm missions with other Williams that are harder and more rewarding. The other function is called Random Encounter where you make yourself available to anyone who is calling for help at a shrine. Add to this a really long game lifespan, thanks to its multiple challenge levels and replayability based on missions, you’ll have a lot to do, especially if you’re aiming for a Platinum trophy (crazy you).

Nioh was reviewed using a PlayStation 4 digital code of the game provided by PlayStation Middle East. We don’t discuss review scores with publishers or developers prior to the review being published

  Nioh is the kind of action-JRPG that we like, and even if heavily influenced by Dark Souls, has its own charm and original mechanics. A must have! Announced at the 2005 edition of E3 as an exclusive for the PlayStation 3, Team Ninja's Nioh have come a long way before reaching the Bluray players of our shiny PlayStation 3.

[daleisgreat]

Star Trek: The Next Generation: Season Six

-I am indefinitely grateful for your patience awaiting my semi-annual Star Trek: The Next Generation season recaps. Today I bestow upon you all my thoughts for the penultimate sixth season (trailer) of TNG. It is already a little jarring to realize I am down to one season left on this series I have gradually-yet-steadily been picking away at the past three years. Once again, all the screens here are courtesy of me pointing my outdated Samsung Galaxy S7 phone at the TV screen so you have my apologies for the questionable fidelity of the pics! -For notable cast changes, there are several I want to make sure to address. Transporter Chief O’Brien (Colm Meaney) departs midway through this season to be a regular cast member on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine which started in January of 1993. I knew of Colm’s switching shows during this season for a while now and was anticipating some big episode or climactic scene explaining his departure from TNG. While there was a crossover episode introducing some of the new Deep Space Nine characters right before its debut, there was never a scene this addressing O’Brien leaving the Enterprise….unless it was a quick passing line of dialogue that went right over my head! Another notable change is halfway through the season Counselor Troi (Marina Sirtis) gets chastised by a new interim commander for her unorthodox uniform and makes her fall in line wearing matching Enterprise uniforms with the rest of the crew. In the bonus interviews on the BluRay, Marina states how she had to fight for a matching uniform for many years and it was one of the few things the higher ups finally granted her.

-I am glad TNG compensated for the lack of a Q (John de Lancie) episode last season and had him in two episodes in season six. The first episode is a middling affair where he steals a Starfleet prospect who discovers she is a long lost member of the Q Continuum. The second Q episode fares much better where Q helps a stuck-in-purgatory-Picard (Patrick Stewart) after Doctor Crusher (Gates McFadden) has a return of poor doctoring and loses Picard on the operating table. The two travel back to pivotal moments in Picard’s younger days to see if he would change the past in order to get a second chance at the future in an investing episode. Speaking of Crusher’s poor doctoring, there is another episode this season where it feels like the writers are in on the joke and have an episode where Crusher is disbarred after some major bad doctoring again on her part….but of course Crusher manages to change that by the episode’s end. If my notes are accurate (no promises!), than I believe this is the first season with no appearance from Troi’s mother, Lwaxana (Majel Barrett)! I would not be surprised if she has two episode next season. Season six also does not feature an appearance from Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton), but I understand he will return in time for the series finale in season seven. A recurring character who does return is everyone’s favorite engineer, Reginald Barclay (Dwight Schultz), who is in a couple episodes this season, with him playing a key part in a holodeck episode with another long overdue returning character I will touch on soon.

Not only does Worf has some killer episodes this season, he also demonstrates his prowess at Yoga this season....while Crusher continues to demonstrate her prowess at poor doctoring. -There are a pair of excellent holodeck episodes this season. The first one is easily the best named episode of the entire series in “Fistful of Datas.” It sees Troi, Data (Brent Spiner), Worf (Michael Dorn) and his son, Alexander go on a wild west adventure where problems with the holodeck causes Data to take over nearly all the AI personas in the simulation. Swashbuckling hilarity ensues! The other holodeck episode sees the return of Professor Moriarty (Daniel Davis). This was long anticipated since Moriarty’s last appearance in season two as the Sherlock Holmes antagonist who became self-aware and whose consciousness became trapped in the holodeck in the following four years. In “Ship in a Bottle,” Moriarty attempts a master plan to connive his way out of the holodeck as a program and as an actual living being. The twists and turns that lead up to the gratifying resolution for everyone was a memorable ride and sadly Davis’s last guest appearance on the show. Daniel Davis and Patrick Stewart have a natural chemistry with each other that shines whenever those two share the screen, so I highly recommend tracking down and viewing both of his episodes!

-The flute that Picard was gifted in the previous season once again returns for a couple of memorable scenes when Picard starts courting another crew member who plays keyboard. Naturally this leads to the two having an emotional duet together that starts off kind of hokey, but by the end the pair had me reeled in all the way! Just click or press here to see for yourself. -Worf has a few notable dedicated episodes this season. A two episode arc sees him track down a long lost colony of Klingons imprisoned by Romulans that has Worf encouraging them to relearn and embrace Klingon customs. Another episode has Worf dealing with the fallout of seeing the return of the Klingon god, Kahless, and the fascinating drama that unravels with another satisfying conclusion for all conflicting parties involved.

-Even though by season six nearly the entire cast and writing team was firing away on all cylinders, I would be lying if there were not a couple clunker episodes. Riker (Jonathon Frakes) portrays a mental patient in a play he is rehearsing for, but the play starts going to his head and he starts losing it for real, but the way the plot unfolds is a mess and a half to follow along with. The other dud is TNG’s homage to The Thing which sounds promising on paper, but instead features lousy CG of its “Thing” and a groan-inducing twist that was not entertaining whatsoever. -As much as I enjoyed Leonard Nimoy returning to play Spock last season, I was delighted even more with The Original Series star James Doohan dusting off his communicator to portray Scotty. Watching him overcome his differences and exchange engineer expertise with Geordi (LeVar Burton) was a treat. The scene with Scotty and Picard sharing a drink on a holodeck reimagining of the original Enterprise gave me nostalgic goosebumps throughout.

-Season six started off with the conclusion to “Time’s Arrow” that saw the TNG crew time travelling back to the 1890s where they first encountered Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg) and were forced to alter the timeline to rescue Data, and win over an aggressive Mark Twain. While not on the level of the “Best of Both Worlds” two-parter season finale, it was still a highly entertaining two-parter in its own right, and as I alluded to earlier, I am all for seeing the TNG crew in an old west setting. Season six ends with another cliffhanger that sees the Enterprise encounter the Borg again, and they manage to convince Data to flee the Enterprise to seemingly join the Borg as their new leader. Suffice it to say, I am intrigued to see how this pays off in season seven! -I referenced a few times before here how I was keeping up with podcast reviews of every TNG episode with the show, Star Trek: The Next Conversation. It looks like I have finally caught up with where hosts Andrew Secunda and Matt Mira have recorded their latest shows just a couple episodes before the end of season six. It looks like they took a few extended breaks this season, and I cannot fault them for that at all when dealing with everything the pandemic has wreaked upon us all this past year. I still enjoyed their takes as usual, and plan on going back and listening to whenever they post new episodes to catch up with their remaining casts covering TNG. I understand they have a Patreon companion with exclusive podcasts dedicated with them marching through both Deep Space Nine and Voyager now, so who knows, I may have to start working my way through those series down the line.

-You know the drill by now, this BluRay is loaded with carried over DVD extra features and all new ones for the BluRay. Not including three commentary tracks for this season, there are just over three hours of behind-the-scenes interviews and documentaries. Almost all of them are informative, but I will only recommend a few of the must-see ones here. Mission Overview: Year Six has introspective reflections from Whoopi on “Time’s Arrow” and James Doohan on “Relics.” Bold New Directions has some fond insights on “Fistful of Datas” and fascinating memories from Stewart and Burton from getting their shot at directing episodes this season. Beyond Five Year Mission – Evolution of Star Trek: The Next Generation is the headlining all-new bonus feature. It is an hour and a half, and split into three parts. Part one has plenty of love for being the cast and crew’s personal favorite season of the show, debuting Deep Space Nine concurrently during this season and trying their best to work within Gene Roddenberry’s “no conflict” framework of the series. Part two is themed around TNG being more serious when compared to TOS, and highlighting how several episodes were scored. Part three stands out the most with an awesome story from Whoopi on what lead to her becoming involved on the show, Sirtis dealing with a lot of pushback from studio executives and Spiner’s love/hate relationship with the cat that played Spot.

There may be many hours of bonus interviews to sift through, but most of it is worth it for endearing moments above like Burton and Frakes sharing a laugh, and Spiner sharing his disdain for a certain feline. -Season six is a step up from the minor-yet-noticeable dip in quality from season five, and brings it back to the high bar established with seasons three and four of TNG. The highs were remarkably prominent this season with some standout holodeck episodes, memorable two-parters, and a scintillating season finale that has me anticipating the kickoff to the season seven. I cannot believe it, after a few years of starting this, I am finally down to just one season left of this legendary show. Please join me one last time here in a few months for my thoughts on the final season of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Past TV/Web Series Blogs 2013-14 TV Season Recap 2014-15 TV Season Recap 2015-16 TV Season Recap 2016-17 TV Season Recap 2017-18 TV Season Recap 2018-19 TV Season Recap 2019-20 TV Season Recap Adventures of Briscoe County Jr: The Complete Series Baseball: A Ken Burns series Angry Videogame Nerd Home Video Collections Cobra Kai – Seasons 1-2 Mortal Kombat: Legacy - Season 1 | Season 2 OJ: Made in America: 30 for 30 RedvsBlue - Seasons 1-13 Roseanne – Seasons 1-9 Seinfeld - Final Season Star Trek: Next Generation – Seasons 1-7 Superheroes: A Never-Ending Battle Superheroes: Pioneers of Television The Vietnam War: A Ken Burns series X-Men – The Animated Series: Volumes 4-5

[daleisgreat]

Eliminators

I know how much you have enjoyed my past WWE Studios entries from me so I aim to please and bestow upon you today with a review of their 2016 direct-to-video release, Eliminators (trailer) . Martin Parker (Scott Adkins) is in a witness relocation program in England after his cover got blown in a string of off-screen events that resulted in his wife’s death. Now him and his daughter are living a new life overseas until one day a burglary break-in at his home a few years later results in him killing a few intruders and putting his face all over the news. This results in his original American crime boss he betrayed, Cooper (James Cosmo) rediscovering Parker’s whereabouts. Cooper sends Britain’s most lethal hitman known as Bishop (WWE’s Wade Barrett) out on a hit to finish Parker but this winds up in a nonstop a cat-and-mouse chase instead. This is this first WWE film to my knowledge to have its guest starring wrestler no longer employed with the company by the time the movie released. Wade Barrett’s contract expired with WWE about a half year before Eliminators was released. I did not see much of any previews before seeing this film and was not expecting much out of Barrett since I recall him saying no more than five words as a forgettable henchman in his performance in a previous WWE film, Dead Man Down. WWE Studios had far more faith in Barrett here because the film sets him up as the deadliest assassin of all of Britain. He has a killer intro scene where he flawlessly takes out a gang without breaking a sweat, and he delivers all his dialogue with a flair of cunning that makes him look and speak the part. I was truly surprised at his big step up in performance in this film.

Scott Adkins is also on point with his role of the hero on the run. It was fun watching him try to break out of the hospital while cuffed to the bed because the film bizarrely sets him up as a vigilante who took the law into his own hands and paints Parker out as the villain instead. Luckily this does not last that long as the feds intervene and clear his name. However Bishop catches up to the feds and forces them to give Parker’s location to Bishop and the cat-and-mouse chase resumes with the duo engaging in a series of intense brawls throughout the film. A fun fight sequence in a sky lift had me cracking up, but their gritty, brutal brawls at a safehouse, docks and ultimately at a barn in their final clash had my adrenaline bumping in an old school 80s action movie kind of way. I wish Eliminators had some kind of better way to wrap things up as its ending was so instantaneous and over before you knew it. That is my main gripe with it, other than a few other minor characters not being that well casted. It is the standard low budget, direct-to-video film from WWE Studios, but the production does a decent job at hiding its restrictions with clever cinematography and getting a lot out of practical effects instead of CG. This is explained well in the two extras on the BluRay. They are nothing that in-depth and total for about 10 minutes, but they breakdown the major fight sequences and shows how they pulled off a few of the key stunts while another extra interviews Barrett on his experience in the film.

Eliminators will not light the action genre on fire by any means, but it was a pleasant surprise and is a quick watch at 90 minutes. I would highly recommend it on a movie marathon night as a quick pallet-cleanser in the middle of your movie binging! I think this will be the last WWE Studios blog for awhile, because it looks like WWE started making their films available to rent on disc from Netflix again. I checked and they are carrying WWE’s latest action thriller starring Seth Rollins and Wesley Snipes in Armed Response! Other Random Backlog Movie Blogs 3 12 Angry Men (1957) 12 Rounds 3: Lockdown 21 Jump Street Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie Atari: Game Over The Avengers: Age of Ultron Batman: The Killing Joke Batman: Mask of the Phantasm Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice Bounty Hunters Cabin in the Woods Captain America: The First Avenger Captain America: The Winter Soldier Christmas Eve Clash of the Titans (1981) Clint Eastwood 11-pack Special The Condemned 2 Countdown Creed Deck the Halls Dirty Work Faster Fast and Furious I-VIII Field of Dreams Fight Club The Fighter For Love of the Game Good Will Hunting Gravity Guardians of the Galaxy Hercules: Reborn Hitman Ink Joy Ride 1 & 2 The Interrogation Interstellar Jobs Man of Steel Man on the Moon Marine 3-5 Mortal Kombat National Treasure National Treasure: Book of Secrets The Replacements Rocky I-VII Running Films Part 1 Running Films Part 2 San Andreas ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Shoot em Up Steve Jobs Source Code Star Trek I-XIII Take Me Home Tonight TMNT The Tooth Fairy 1 & 2 UHF Veronica Mars The War Wild The Wrestler (2008) X-Men: Days of Future Past