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carica-ficus · 1 month ago

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Review: Knot My Type

Author: Evie Mitchells

Date: 04/08/2024

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

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Another book I got during one of the "Stuff your kindle" days! Contemporary romances are not really my genre of choice, but this novel won me over with its witty title and cute cover. Moreover, the premise sounded really interesting.

The story follows Dr. Frankie Kenton, a sexologist with a popular podcast, that gets offered the opportunity of her life when she gets nominated for a renowned award for her work. Frankie is determined to bring out her A-game for her following episodes, so she decides to discuss a question from a listener, prompting her to delve into something she's not familiar with, so she decides to find someone with more experience - a local rigger called Jay Woods. Frankie soon finds out she's more than just fascinated in his work, and Jay finds out life has more to offer than a bland everyday monotony.

The first few chapters really bring the reader in with its interesting and diverse characters, lighthearted style, dynamic dialogue and unique relationships. Mitchells manages to portray their characters' every day lives, as well as their motivations, personalities and dreams, in just a couple dozen pages, which pushes the story forward and building up the base for a promising read.

Frankie proves to be a strong lead in the book. She is a defined, confident young woman who knows exactly who she is and what she wants from life. Jay, on the other hand, cannot let go of his past and has no idea what to do with himself, but there's a sort of whimsy to his character and a sense of wonder, so when he meets Frankie, both of them hit it off quickly. The chemistry between them is based on complementary personalities, although it does expand to their sexual compatibility and physical attraction. Mitchell adds on to their instant affection, building up a relationship between them that is romantic as much as platonic, which in turn makes the book quite enjoyable and their romance interesting to follow.

While Frankie's disability isn't one of the main focuses of the story, it does play a big role in her life and is an important element of her character. Mitchell doesn't portray her disability as a tragedy, only focuses on how it alters Frankie's everyday life. When she agrees to be tied by Jay in his class, Jay needs to accommodate for her lack of movement, but he doesn't alter his approach nor his process. Although there are several situations when Frankie highlights the difficulty of being disabled and the ableism she experiences from the people around her, Jay's and her relationship center around good communication and its merits. Sex and love are enjoyable for both parties when they listen to each other's needs.

The bondage scenes are very well written, with a lot of attention focused on the different sensations and emotions during the scene. On the other hand, aside from those at the very beginning of the book, there are no more instances of rope play. Instead, the sex scenes become pretty much monotone. It is a shame the author forfeited her chance at exploring their combined sexual preferences some more, especially considering that Jay holds a sex class and Frankie is a sexologist. In turn, the second half of the book loses some of its allure. The third act breakup doesn't do it any favors. It seemed a little forced and that both Frankie and Jay lost some of their specific personalities. Especially Jay who, although completely obsessed with Frankie in a cute way, hasn't been given the chance to shape into his own unique persona.

Furthermore, as Frankie and Jay start dating, the author switches her language during sex scenes. The characters thirst for each other since the beginning, but their thoughts become weirder with each page. There are quite a few weird phrases and sentences, ones that ruin the fantasy of the book and bring the reader back to reality. It almost reads like the author is trying too hard to make the characters appear quirky and relatable, so instead they turn into strange concepts one cannot connect to.

While the multiple insights about accessibility and ableism Frankie offers were interesting, they almost always felt forced and unatural. It was if the author didn't want to accidentally write something insensitive, so she resorted to info-dumps that read like a copy-pasted wikipedia article. It just didn't seem like realistic dialogue. While I appreciated that the book tries to educate, it manages to do so more effectively through Frankie's actions and life, than by dry, carefully constructed sentences.

Another issue I had is a personal one - I am not that into dirty talk, at least, not to the extent that is offered at some of the later scenes. Mitchell seems to have completely turned around the way Jay and Frankie sleep with each other. In the beginning, most of the sex centered on different sensations, later it all became drowned in dirty talk, so much so that the sex scenes mostly just turned into dialogue which made them bland and unenjoyable.

"Knot my type" turned out to be a fun and lighthearted read. Frankie and Jay are both lovable characters and their chemistry is interesting enough to follow throughout the book and to root for their relationship. While I did have some issues with this novel and do feel a little disappointed by the lack of kink that the beginning promised, I enjoyed it and would even recommend it.

#knot my type #evie mitchells #contemporary #contemporary romance #romance novel #romance book #book photo #book review #recenzija #moja recenzija

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alolanroy · 3 months ago

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2024 Watch Thread Part 5

part 4 https://www.tumblr.com/alolanroy/753737344319930369/2024-watch-thread-part-4?source=share

Berserk Boy: At a certain point I realized I hadn't played it in a month. I think the gameplay is alright, but that's about it. The sprite scaling looks weird and the character design doesn't gel with the Megaman ZX sensibilities. Terrible hoverbike section. 5/10

Warcraft: Putting the Mid in Middle Earth. Without the context of the series, I was never engaged by the movie. The humans were bland and the story felt less interested in a complete story than a beachhead for a franchise. 5/10

Half Life: Blue Shift: Glad I participated in the community event to boost this old game's all-time player count. As a game it didn't really wow me. I think it was overreliant on barrel pushing puzzles when barrel pushing doesn't work well in a few instances. Dispite a few baffling bugs that cost me maybe a combines 25 minutes, it was a quick and enjoyable romp. 6/10

Skyrim: Sirenroot: This may be the most atmospheric mod I've played thus far. This mod makes this one dungeon more gorgeous than anything in the base game by far, and the music sets a really spooky tome. I like that I didn't immediately catch what was going on with the multiple-character paths. While it doesn't equate to any kind of tangible reward, the characters are interesting enough that getting everyone to survive is intrinsically rewarding enough. 8/10

Skyrim: Wyrmstooth: It might be reductive to refer to it as just 'more skyrim' but that opinion congealed when I was stuck doing blackreach again. Some of the quests are fun, but some of the unmarked ones deserved to be marked quests. 6/10

DanDaDan (3 episode premier): I knew nothing about DanDaDan going into this since I was invited by a friend. PEAK. It's understandable how much hay the preroll interviews made about the direction and shot composition. 8/10

Iron Warrior: While I wouldn't say this film was altogether entertaining, the ethereal visuals and dream logic made it a unique watch. I'd like to watch a cut of this without any dialogue, since its story is mostly visuals until the lore-heavy last sprint. Honestly, we gotta put Trogar in a Star Wars, this guy is pure Sith. 6/5/10

Bleach Thousand Year Blood War S1-2: This all-killer-no-filler approach to a bleach adaptation is a real brisk shower after muscling through the Arancar arc. However, some of the fights feel a little too short. It betrays that some of them consist of a handful of attacks and prescribed reversals of fortune. Especially towards the end, I could feel the series sputter as characters the viewer aren't super invested in square off. Points for the great soundtrack. 7/10

Mars Daybreak: A great premise and fun initial hints at worldbuilding got me in, but the energy left my body as it went nowhere. We never really get to know the cast in any meaningful way and there's charitably one character arc. Nothing gets resolved only in the last two episodes to they rush to figure out what they're doing. The robots are sauceless. Theres enough endearing material, but I regret committing to finishing it 5.10

This is Spinal Tap: my watch group didn’t have context going in, so the first few minutes of trying to figure out of this was a mockumentary was a real treasure. While prone to dry spells, when it hits, it hits. 7/10

Adventures of Hercules: This movie really felt like a throwback to the old greek myth epics of golden age Hollywood. Great casting and no real pacing problems to speak of. On the funny side, collecting 7 thunderbolts that drop like a video game is pretty funny and Lou Ferrigno looks like how Bara artists draw men with tits. 7/10

Skyrim Mod: Katana, Journey in the Shadows: I picked up that these are supposed to be characters from some other fantasy series, but the 'Ow the Edge' readings are pretty high. Yeah, this is my OC. Her name is Katana, and she's a cool lesbian with a ninja sword and shes got a sick backstory and a secret shadow side she has to use a magic ring to control. Quest-wise, it felt like a couple of radiant bounties and an anticlimax ending. ambitious scripting for character interactions in the bars, however, there were some conflicts and I had to help it along. The companions themselves are pretty well realized, but to what end? 5/10

Transformers One: While it could never have really delivered on my sky-high expectations of adapting lore of pre-war Cybertron from the Aligned continuity or IDW, it succeeded on getting my partner hooked on Transformers yaoi. It was gorgeous, but maybe needed a teensy bit more sauce to get it over the edge into legendary territory. 8/10

The Wild Robot: My feelings on this are very raw as I'm writing this out. It felt like the golden age Pizar classics I've been missing. If the number of crying parents in my screening was any indication, this was a very heartfelt movie. Points for showing us a minimum of human civilization in this movie. We know exactly as much as we needed to. 9/10

Hard Rock Zombies: It satisfies the assignment of being a feature-length thriller video, but wasn't particularly gripping. The Italian feeling mood and editing was amusing, but my group got bored pretty quick. Bonus points for the best Hitler reveal in any movie yet. -6/10

Gundam Seed Freedom Re-watch: This movie still sucks.

Valor's Kids: A brief glimpse into the world where Niel Breen discovered Second Life. -4/10

Dual to the Death: Fun wuxia action and some really surprising twists and turns. I think this movie capitalizes how cool ninjas are more than most American or Japanese films. Any low points are worth it for the phenomenal final confrontation. 8/10

12 Angry Men: This film has more than earned its reputation. It balances subtlety and overt discussions on societal views on poverty, generational abuse, anti-black racism and xenophobia. It made me reconsider all my years of groaning at jury duty and think about the importance and power I have as a citizen. I can't really fault it for being a bunch of white dudes though, because their predisposed hegemony dictating the fate of an unseen black kid was part of the point. The presence of an unused women's restroom did call it into attention though. 9/10

Wallace and Gromit - A Grand Day Out: A real banger, though I find it interesting that a few parts I thought were scary as a really little kid. 8/10

Skyrim - Meridia's Order: Well executed, though I feel like it could have used a slightly wider scope. The side content to the main quest felt very limited, especially with how it draws comparison to dawngaurd. If it were a released expansion, I would say it lacks in scope, but has quest design above the usual Skyrim standard. 7/10

Skyrim - Hel Rising: I think it was a little rough around the edges and had a lot of character for a more complex dungeon. However, poorly signposted puzzles and gamebreaking bugs that nearly killed my game drop it down a few points. I also wonder how the version I played (TrueHel) stacks up against the old de-listed versions. 5/10

Megalopolis: Kinda like Zardoz, I watched this with a friend expecting a bizarre mess that twitter had promised me. Instead I was on the edge of my seat. I was enraptured by what was being cooked and had one of the most genuine bust-a-gut laughs at one of the jokes in recent memory. The joker posits that we live in a society. Cesar Megalopolis posits we live in a civilization. 9.5/10

Amityville in Space: Fuck this -4/10

Trump vs The Illuminati: The first movie made of default unreal engine assets and stock footage -2/10

Wizards of the Lost Kingdom: IDK if it was the reused footage, but I couldn't help but feel like I'd already seen it. -3/10

Attack on Titan (2022): This feels like if Serenity got like 23 direct to DVD sequels of diminishing returns. Incomprehensible/ -4/10

Ronin Mecha 4-Warrior of the Frontier: Not even good enough to finish. What a sad way to end this franchise. -31/0

Wallace and Gromit-The Wrong Trousers: Delightful. 7/10

Wallace and Gromit-A Close Shave: I think this one has gone up in my rankings. The childlike whimsey of the bike chase sequence and the plane sidecar put a real smile on my face. 7/10

First Blood: There's a really good anti-cop reading to the movie in the sense that its the text of the film, but I don't think the audience this series ended up with is ready to accept that. I wish they stopped here. 8/10

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zorilleerrant · 7 months ago

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DC's Heroes & Villains - a gacha game

(just using this picture because I loved it, and I wish the game had gone in for more full screen art like this)

don't play this game for the story. it doesn't even really feel like DC stories, more like very bland scripts written with no characters in mind, with DC heroes and villains slotted in at the last minute. it's not even that they're out of character; there's just no in character for them to be. no personalities whatsoever. anyone could've been saying those lines - and in some cases I think that's actually how the script works; whoever you have in slots 1-5 says lines 1-5, maybe with a little flavor by type. even as gacha games go, this story is bland, something that's kind of disappointing for such a story driven franchise. the events seem slightly higher quality, but if so, I think they should've spent a little more time on the main game.

the gameplay is like... fine. it's a match 3 game, and you certainly do. it's very unclear even within the story what your perspective is supposed to be? sometimes you're fighting heroes, or villains, or randoms. the rules of the game don't change but sometimes you're randomly going up against Nightwing. certain levels have you pick either the hero or the villain side, but the main levels seem to kind of throw you in at random. the dialogue, being pretty generic, doesn't help clarify things - essentially there are some bad guys who are so bad the heroes and villains have to join forces. normal fare, right? but who the villain is changes every few levels. for design reasons, i think, so it doesn't get boring to look at. there's no premise even.

it's also very buggy. I think it's new so they just haven't worked that out, but there are a lot of UI items shaped like links that are just not clickable, and the game freezes at random sometimes. also not always good at distinguishing when things are and aren't available. (it offered me a free pull for a while, but every time I tried to click it, it said I didn't have enough currency to use it.)

the art style here is kind of fun; it mostly uses familiar designs of characters rendered in a way that's recognizable as gacha genre, and I do like some of the designs, while having some serious problems with others. but the thing that really confused me about this was which characters are and aren't available.

there are multiple versions of Batman you can pull, which, okay, this is set in Gotham and branded as a Batman game, it makes sense that they'd load up Batfam members. except, wait. you can get Batman (multiple), Nightwing, and Robin (multiple, but both Damian)... but there's no Jason or Tim anywhere in here? Kate, yes, Selena, yes, Babs, yes, Harley Quinn, yes... not Steph or Cass, though. but! you can get Helena, for all you Helena fans.

another thing that's weird about it is. okay, so it's heroes and villains, but there's only like 100 options available at the moment. so obviously they haven't anywhere near run out of even very well known heroes and villains. so why are there so many randoms??? they don't even have names, they're just like "captain" "warrior" "royal guard" and certainly those exist within the wider DC universe but there are so many named characters I feel like you could've just gone for them? it wouldn't make a difference to the people gaming for high powered teams but it would be really enticing to people who just want to see Bao Pham their fave in a game.

especially with some of the designs. I mean, am I crazy or is this design based on Artemis? the hair seems oddly specific no?

and it's not even like they're worried people won't know because they put quotes up on screen attributed to all different characters (not all of them available at the moment, or possibly ever) including one from her. like honestly I feel like it would be more fun to name them even if they WERE supposed to be randoms unique to this game.

also I feel like if they'd had to name a character, they wouldn't have ended up with a final design like this...

it's pretty uncomfortable, right? like not giving them names is inherently dehumanizing but also I feel like someone should've been looking through the concept art. this one isn't as bad but I still think would've been caught if anyone was looking

and it's just kind of uncomfortable when there are named goons? every now and then someone writes a story about one and a lot of them are a lot of fun. and there's certainly no shortage of serial killers or other violent people. like you could've just used Zsazs. (Jackson, btw, is in here, but Garth isn't despite most of Dick's Teen Titans being represented... you could've just made any of the several Generic Atlantean designs Garth.)

I also object to so many cops on my team. like, yeah, I get it, the game wants to go with the genre fiction that cops are heroes and on our side... except it's set in Gotham, and it's well established that Gotham cops are corrupt, violent, and untrustworthy. even people who balk at the idea in real life accept it about Gotham! if you wanted cop characters anyway, I mean, there's several well known ones, and lots more to pick from. we could've had Detective Williams! we could've had individuals trying to fight the system! but no we get generic cop characters and also this line

I was lying when I said nothing was out of character. I just think the middle character might always say that no matter who's there. but still... Catwoman? the cat burglar????

like it's not all bad. we get some very cool designs for Joker Minions, which surprised me because usually they aren't interesting at all, even in the comics. the Joker isn't the main villain (or maybe he is? idk you fight a lot of things) but he's still there a bunch, I just really enjoyed looking at the designs of his goons. seem kind of Jokerz inspired, minus the cyberpunk tech

I did also really enjoy the Poison Ivy design. clearly from the movie, but changed to fit a mobile game. I don't feel like enough people incorporate plants into her design, so I really appreciated the fact that they took the time to give her bitey flowers. in the levels against her, she has even more plants as her minions! that was a nice touch. and I'm always a sucker for her costumes being made out of leaves and vines, which I think was done well here.

then of course, there's The Wall. now don't get me wrong she's my baby and I love it whenever she appears, and I do really enjoy this design. I feel like they managed to make her look both professional and like she's having fun with it - that expression is definitely plotting something. in line with my favorite Waller designs, anyway. but I'm also like... she's not that major of a character? I don't know why she'd get put in ahead of like. Booster. Static. Shazam. Steel? Black Canary??? Zatanna??????

I love that she's purple tho <3

in conclusion this game is bad and poorly planned out

#look i said something #batman #dc heroes and villains #gacha games #dcu #game review

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time-to-write-and-suffer · 3 years ago

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I wouldn't mind that post on VNs!

So I was gonna write three different lists, but then after writing the first part I realized this is very long and takes a while to write and nobody cares anyway so I’ll just post my recommended list only. Well, I mean, you asked, but I doubt you wanted all this lol. Thank you for giving me an excuse to talk about this stuff, though. Hope you enjoy my ramblings!

An explanation for what this list is: Sometimes I know a game isn't perfect in many aspects but I still had a genuinely good time playing it, hence why I'm recommending it. Also I should mention that I could talk for hours about some of these games so if anyone’s curious about more of my thoughts, let me know.

Alright, now that that's out of the way ...

How to Take Off Your Mask / How to Fool a Liar King / How to Sing to Open Your Heart (f/m): This is a trilogy of smaller, single-RO games where you can take one of two routes depending on how you act, and they’re all interconnected where you get to meet and interact with the previous games’ characters in the sequel games. I went into this expecting very little but what I got blew me away with how funny, charming and cute the games were. They don’t take themselves too seriously, at one point an angsty male character monologues deeply about some shit, and another one just slides into frame and starts mocking him. It was so fucking funny, holy shit. Also, a central theme is literally racism against catgirls? Which is monumentally stupid, and probably the games’ main flaw, especially in the final game where it pairs up a catgirl with a catgirl racist, but that one still ends with a literal bisexual queen literally making a man her malewife because she fell in love with his cooking, so like ... It speaks for itself. My favorite game of the three is the second one, where you get to play a punchy fake catgirl and romance a pink-haired prince. And honestly, all the female protags in these games are lovely and a breath of fresh air, and the male characters are fun and not abusive assholes either. There’s full Japanese voice acting, and two out of three female protags are literal catgirls who pepper in “nya” and “mya” into their dialogue, and it’s just treated as a quirk of their catgirl race. I AM NOT KIDDING. Yet somehow it never comes off as cringe, because it doesn’t take it self too seriously. These games are just cozy. That’s the only way I can describe them. Cozy and hilarious. Play them yesterday. Dream Daddy (m/m): Man tumblr did this game dirty. This is just a cute, wholesome daddy dating simulator with gorgeous art. Coming out on Top (m/m): So you know Dream Daddy? What if it was EXTREMELY, MAJORLY NSFW? Though I realize how bad the comparison really is, the only thing these games have in common is that they’re gay dating sims and don’t have an anime art style and oh, yeah, they’re both really well-written. Or at least, extremely funny. COOT (heh) is DDADDS’ horny older cousin, and I first encountered the game on a lesbian letsplayer’s YouTube channel. Yes I watched a lesbian play a gay porn game and it was GOOD. I was there for the cringe and fun and got surprised by how genuinely funny and sometimes actually touching the game was. I can’t give it my universal endorsement because it’s not a game for everyone, as I said, it’s extremely NSFW and the menu theme literally includes the singers screaming “SEX SEX” at the top of their lungs. There’s more to this game than the porn, but there’s just so much porn. It can be censored in the settings but it’s unavoidable. However, I still think it’s worth a look just because of how funny it is and how charming the characters are. If you don’t want to play it yourself, at least watch Anima’s playthrough of it. It hasn’t aged super well in some spots but I still go back to it every now and then. Akash: Path of the Five (f/m): This game markets itself as a more “professionally produced” western dating sim, and that’s accurate in some superficial aspects. The game is pretty poorly written, but it’s absolutely gorgeous and has really good English voice acting by actual professional voice actors. The premise is quite self-indulgent, but I genuinely respect that about it. You play as the only female elemental in a village with only men, and all five of your classmates want a piece of you. It’s clear the writers have put some thought into the lore and worldbuilding of this world, but barely any of it comes through in the actual writing and plot, which is basically just a vehicle for you to get together with your boy of choice. The ROs aren’t very well-developed either, and the plot is the same in every route with only minor variations depending on which guy you pick, up to the point where the protag has the same voice lines in some parts regardless of which guy she’s talking about. It also has one extra half-route that’s so bad and pointless I genuinely wonder why they wasted resources on making it instead of spending a bit more on the writing/adding some variations to the main plot. So why am I recommending this game? Well, it’s pretty, and it sounds nice. This game is a himbo, gorgeous but dumb as rocks. Enjoy it for what it is. I know I did. Get it when it’s on sale, I think if I hadn’t gotten it at half-price I would’ve felt a bit more cranky about it. Also Rocco is bae. Mystic Destinies: Serendipity of Aeons (f/m): Yes that’s the full title, no I don’t know what it means either. You may have noticed how most of the games so far I’ve enjoyed because they don’t take themselves too seriously? Well, this one does. It takes itself SO FUCKING SERIOUSLY. Like, way too seriously. It’s a little embarrassing at points because baby, you’re an urban fantasy dating sim. Calm down. But the game has gorgeous art and 3 out of 5 routes are very good. The last route, the one with your teacher, is both the most problematic yet somehow the one that breaks down the very concept of a dating sim within its own narrative (yes, this shit gets fucking META) and it got so wild at the end that 1) I still listen to the soundtrack for that route and 2) I still remember it to this day despite finishing it ages ago. My favorite route is Shou, he’s a sweetheart, but the mindfuck route is so buckwild that I think the game is worth playing just for that. There’s also a route that’s like a neo-noir mystery? I Do Not Know. This game is many, many things and it does them so sincerely and tries so hard, you can’t help but respect it. It doesn’t always stick the landing but man, just let this thing take your hand and wax poetic at you for a bit. Also get this one at a sale because it’s very expensive to get the full version. I got it for 9 bucks on itch.io and I felt that was a fair enough price, I’d say I wouldn’t have minded paying more for it because there’s a lot of content to enjoy and/or be baffled by. Arcade Spirits: This one’s a bit more weird from what I recall, and I honestly couldn’t tell you much about it, but I remember having a very good time with it and recommending it to a friend when she was going through some tough times and she said it made her feel better. I remember it making me feel better, as well. This is a VN about an arcade and the ROs are wonderfully diverse, with very real human conflicts that get explored in each of their routes. It can get quite existential and heavy at times, but in the end it’s a kindhearted game that I think everyone can enjoy. The main character was also, how you say, mood. It’s a game about getting possessed by a video game and then learning self-love. Ebon Light (f/m): This one’s free/name your own price on itch.io so go play it. It’s a weird plot where you play as a girl who ate an elven relic? And then the elves kidnap you because you’re the relic now. All the ROs are extremely pasty (like, literally white, as in literally the color white) dark-haired elves, except for one, who’s an extremely pasty blond elf, so ... diversity? I honestly don’t know what this game is aside from unique. I used to be a bit put off by the art style but now I think it contributes to the general atmosphere. It’s a weird game that technically doesn’t do anything groundbreaking but still left an impression of “huh. weird” in my mind and I think more people should play it. The ROs are all pretty generic dating sim archetypes but done well, with bonus points to Duliae who’s just a massive creep and I love him, and also Vadeyn who’s the only bitch in this house I respect. The worldbuilding is honestly a bit buckwild and I can’t give enough credit for how unique the elves’ culture is in this game. Definitely give it a go. Hakuoki: Kyoto Winds / Hakuoki: Edo Blossoms (f/m): These two are newer releases of an older Japanese visual novel. I wouldn’t call it a dating sim, it’s ... it’s more of a super depressing historical fantasy epic with some minor romance aspects awkwardly wedged in. It’s seriously some of the heaviest and most grimdark shit I’ve ever played in a VN/otome. I don’t understand why it’s a dating sim, it doesn’t read like one, it’s just historical fantasy based on real world events with characters based on real people, and they kill and they die and they grieve and they suffer. The games are literally about the downfall of the Shinsengumi, there’s no way of avoiding everything going to shit and you get to watch and be in the middle of it all as they struggle to stay alive and relevant in a world that doesn’t need them anymore. And there’s the protag in the middle of it all, being useless and submissive and bland just the way the usual otome protag is. I don’t think these games are necessarily fun, and the romance is certainly a lot more downplayed and deeply problematic just based on the age differences alone with some of the men, but the sheer amount of horror and sadness in these games make them stand out above its peers. It’s like watching a war movie. Since most of the characters are based on real people, they feel like real people instead of the usual otome archetypes, and they are so, SO flawed, it’s interesting to just watch them deal with the shit the world throws at them. It’s an Experience, and if you’re up for it, I think it’s worth the time. Cinderella Phenomenon (f/m): This game is free on Steam so go get it. You play as a really, genuinely shitty princess who gets cursed to be poor and forgotten and she has to help one of the ROs break his fairy tale curse so that she can learn about being a good person herself and return to her normal life. This game doesn’t look like much, but it has a genuinely well-written main character who’s actually at the center of each of the stories and in the overarching plot instead of just being around to make eyes at the real protagonists, aka the love interests. Aside from the main character, my favorite part of this game’s writing is how each route slowly but very smoothly expands upon the overarching intrigue. If you play them in a certain order, you get more and more info revealed to you that you didn’t see in other routes, gaps are filled in as you find out more about what actually happened and why, but every route also stands on its own as a full experience and none is more canon than the rest. There’s also some really heavy emotional parental abuse explored, which I found quite potent at times. The romances themselves were alright, I think Karma and Waltz were my faves.

#eff plays

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cherry-valentine · 4 years ago

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Summer 2020 Anime Season

What I’m Watching:

Deca Dence is one of the better shows this season, probably the best one that started fresh this summer. It has a very strange setup that I won’t detail very much here to avoid spoilers. It’s strange in that it’s a fairly unique twist and in that they waited until episode two to actually drop that particular bomb (whereas most anime would definitely try to cram it into episode one). The bare bones premise of episode one is that there is a huge, mobile fortress that contains some of the last remnants of humanity as they try to survive in an apocalyptic world overrun by monsters of unknown origin that range in size from tiny insects to huge kaiju. A young girl named Natsume dreams of being one of the warriors who fight the monsters, but is instead given the lowly job of armor maintenence, where she meets the older, gruff Kaburagi whom she learns was once a famed warrior. Natsume’s relationship with Kaburagi sets off the actual plot, but the story takes several turns that I honestly didn’t see coming. The series is quite violent, with literally tons of monster blood flowing and plenty of human death, but it maintains an overall upbeat, adventurous feel, with some well-done humor and genuinely touching moments. The art is colorful and bright, with some truly impressive animation. It clearly has high production values. Natsume is a fun character (even if we’ve seen characters like her many times before). She’s your typical optimistic, never-give-up, spunky sort of girl but she works really well as a hero in this kind of story and is generally entertaining to watch. Kaburagi is also a fun character that we’ve seen the likes of before (the stern former soldier type with a heart of gold). Overall a great series and very high on my watch list.

Gibiate is an oddity. It’s a series that had the potential to be top tier. I mean this show could have been not only the best of the season, but possibly the best of the year. It has gorgeous character designs by Yoshitaka Amano. The voice acting is top notch. And the premise is awesome: In 1600, a samurai and a ninja are both suddenly transported to a modern, near future Japan that has been completely ravaged by a disease that turns humans into powerful, grotesque monsters. They fall in with a small group of survivors that have gathered around a couple of scientists and a doctor who are working on a cure. Sure, it’s not 100% original, but it’s an exciting premise that results in some great samurai and ninja action. The problem is, for all the show’s great ideas, the execution is totally flubbed. For starters, the animation budget is obviously quite a lot smaller than it needed to be. What should have been thrilling battles of katana and shuriken on monster violence end up just being sort of bland. Too many cut corners. The writing also suffers, with often nonsensical dialogue and character behaviors that are so illogical that they end up being unintentionally hilarious. A good example of this is how practically everyone in the group of survivors just takes the fact that these two guys are time travelers from the past totally in stride. Hardly anyone is surprised at all or even questions it. The show tries to dismiss the stupidity of this by having one character say, “Well we have these monsters running around so why not have people traveling here from the past?” Which is still dumb because he’s a doctor who has been studying the virus and knows how it works, scientifically. But he has no questions for the guys who show up out of nowhere claiming to be from 1600? Another example would be how the samurai and ninja react to modern technology. Basically, there’s very little reaction. They don’t even react to a freaking helicopter! They should be losing their minds over this stuff! Still though, despite the show’s many shortcomings, there remains a small nugget of greatness. I can almost imagine how fantastic this show would have been with decent production values. And because I can see that potential, I’m still watching and I’m actually enjoying it very much. The characters, poorly written as they are, somehow remain interesting. The visuals, despite being sabotaged by clunky animation, are still appealing. I know it’s strange to watch and enjoy a series because of what it COULD have been, rather than what it IS, but here we are. Surprisingly high on my watch list.

Koi to Producer is an otome series with very pretty art and a supernatural plot. It’s based on a Chinese phone game that I’ve never played but sounds a lot like Mystic Messenger in how the game is played. It follows a young woman trying to produce a television show about various rumors, urban legends, etc. who gets mixed up in the world of Evolvers (humans who have developed special powers). Of course four of these Evolvers are handsome single men who are very successful and clearly attracted to her. She also ends up becoming a target of Black Swan, a shady group studying Evolvers. The show is somewhat plot-heavy, in that it tends to focus a bit more on the overarching story than on the romance. This is fine by me. The men are handsome, but two of them look a little too similar to each other, making it hard to tell them apart when they’re both in the same scene. It’s nice that the heroine is an adult and a big part of the story is about her career, but other than that she’s a bit bland and could be switched out for any other bland otome heroine and no one would notice. So far the series has hinted at an interesting back story for her so I’ll just have to hope it follows through on that. I’m enjoying the show because it’s pleasant to look at and not boring, but it’s the lowest title on my watch list.

Appare Ranman is my overall favorite of the season, which is ironic because it actually began last season. It was put on hiatus due to the pandemic and resumed this season. If you remember the old cartoon Wacky Races, this is basically the anime version of that. It focuses largely on two Japanese men who end up stuck in California after some crazy hijinks: Appare, an aloof and eccentric mechanical genius, and Kosame, a straight-laced but genuinely kind samurai who had been given the thankless job of keeping Appare in line. Broke and lost in an unfamiliar land, the two of them decide to enter a cross-country race and use the prize money to get back to Japan. Along the way they meet a whole cast of wild, crazy, and fun characters (including my favorite, the lovely, badass, and determined Jing Xialian, the only woman in the race, who had to fight against sexism and discrimination just to get the opportunity to drive in the race). The series has a very fun vibe, but has enough serious moments to keep it from being a straight up comedy (the aforementioned discrimination felt very realistic, and at least two characters are still suffering emotional trauma from losing family members to violence when they were children). One of my favorite aspects is Appare himself. He pays absolutely no mind to social norms and doesn’t care in the slightest what anyone thinks of him. This resulted in his family back in Japan being ashamed of him and everyone else viewing him as a weirdo. But Appare doesn’t mind any of that, and happily pursues his dreams. An interesting scene early on is when Jing is grappling with the fact that she’ll never be accepted as a racer because she’s a woman. She’s clearly in emotional turmoil. Kosame, who is the kinder, more compassionate of the two leads, can’t really help her. He can sympathize with her plight, but his own rigid regard for social norms prevents him from telling Jing to just go ahead and be a racer, society and their expectations be damned. It’s Appare, the guy who seemingly has very little regard for, or interest in, other people, who encourages Jing to follow her dreams. To Appare, there’s absolutely no reason why Jing can’t be a racer. The fact that society refuses to accept her means nothing. Jing has the skill to be a racer. She should be a racer. The scene did a lot to endear Appare to me. Aside from great characters (and there are so many that I can’t possibly mention them all here), the animation and design work are amazing. The characters as well as the vehicles look fantastic. The music is also great, with my favorite opening and ending themes of the season. If you want totally fun and wild romp, you can’t go wrong with this series.

Carry Over Shows From Previous Seasons: Black Clover Ahiru no Sora Major 2nd Season 2

Best of Season: Best New Show: Appare Ranman Best Opening Theme: Appare Ranman Best Ending Theme: Appare Ranman Best New Male Character: Appare (Appare Ranman) Best New Female Character: Jing Xialian (Appare Ranman)

#Anime #Anime Reviews #Seasonal Anime #Anime Recommendations #Summer 2020 Anime #Appare Ranman #Deca Dence #Text

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blubberquark · 5 years ago

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The value and place of “good game design”

Last year, noted game design theorist, developer and podcaster Keith Burgun softened his stance on the theory of strategy games and game design as a discipline. I wrote 90% of this as a response to his podcasts back then, but when I read my own words it felt too negative. I don’t want to dunk on somebody for a commercial failure from the relative safety of not even having tried.

I’m posting it now though, because it ties into my ideas about Jam Games and Short Games, which I want to develop further, as well as my previous post about starting with simple games like Pong, Flappy Bird, and Minesweeper: Starting with simple ideas might not be enough. Top-down game design might be important after all.

Why not Game Design?

Part of Burgun’s change of heart was for what I would call “political” reasons, and I try to avoid politics on this blog. I hate how the conversation around game design grinds to a halt when some troll says “Aha, this looks like a game a Communist would make!“, and then the designer tries to explain himself and his politics and we stop talking about game design or the game itself altogether.

It’s one thing to talk about the politics, the political ideas and implications of a game, and quite another to look at the author and to try to read the authors politics into every game developed by that author. This is especially important when the author is outspoken about politics. People can be politically active and have strong convictions and just plain fail to convey their ideas through their game design.

Another reason for this shift was trying to give people more space for self-expression. Maybe you want to make something new and exploratory, or something short and poignant, or some “experience“ or “virtual installation” that is game-adjacent, but not even meant to be a game. Trying to ground “game design” in lessons learn from existing games, or trying to be precise with your terminology might be counterproductive. There is little overlap between the mechanics, dynamics, aesthetics, or affordances of Smash Bros and Firewatch (unless you count The Quiet Man, an artsy game that manages to combine worst of both worlds into a buggy mess). This difference between Command & Conquer and Bioshock is huge, and you can only find commonalities in the individual disciplines like graphics, UI design, or programming, and in high-level psychological and narrative principles of pacing and world-building.

Lessons in game design implicitly tell you how games should be. General statements about “game design” are bound to alienate some people. Artists who make short interactive pieces that are both experimental and personal at the same time, like Tale of Tales, Robert Yang or Anna Anthropy, are most susceptible to this particularly easy to disparage by accident if you don’t choose your words very carefully.

Lastly, it looks like the long development of Escape The Omnochronom, with many iterations on the game design and player feedback in early access, has informed his new approach to game design - just like Auro was the game that embodied the Clockwork Game Design theories. This quick look back on the development of ETO is interesting and sobering: https://keithburgun.net/escaping-the-omnochronom-and-moonshot-game-design/.

Wasted Design?

From a commercial point of view, it looks like a lot of the game design effort on ETO has been mis-spent: More than about interesting decisions and carefully balanced gameplay, players on Steam seem to want tons of content, random loot, and an epic, tragic backstory.

Most indie developers probably wouldn’t have completely scrapped all four prototypes, but released some of them as stand-alone games or as prototypes - either on itch, on Newgrounds, or a on mobile app store. One iteration of the concept - then called “Push The Lane!” - looked and felt more like a puzzle game, and might have been developed into a somewhat successful puzzle game on a mobile app store.

I might be wrong about this. There are many old, failed prototypes of mine that just didn’t work. True artists hate to see their practice pieces, and I don’t want to polish my all of old failed ideas that didn’t work until I can release them. I know why they don’t work. I’d rather try to make the ones that already work better. I’d rather start from scratch than working on a game idea when I know that it won’t work and why.

If you’re looking at somebody else’s failed prototype, you may think it warrants further exploration, or that it can ba salvaged, when the dev has already tried most of your suggested easy fixes and found that they don’t quite work. Ideas and game mechanics that work well in a short game, interesting based on their novelty alone, often cannot sustain a long-form game on their own - and that’s where game design as a discipline comes in.

If you’re just starting out, I can only urge you to fail faster, within days or weeks rather than years. Get feedback from players and other developers! See what works and cut your losses early! Don’t try to make a failed design work if you can use a better one! Try to start with a small game that works!

But if your goal is to make a long-form game, maybe the jump from a small jam game to a larger one is not just quantitative, but qualitative. You can’t just keep adding more stuff to Flappy Bird and hope it becomes Half-Life somewhere along the way.

Maybe the commercial bottleneck is not game design, but market research. The cool kids are all playing Fortnite now. By the time you finish developing your Fortnite clone, the cool kids will probably have moved on the the Next Big Thing. (I wrote this before the current wave of Auto Chess games. The next big thing only took half a year.)

Who needs Game Design anyway?

So Good Game Design(tm) seems to be only relevant once people have started playing the game. According to conventional game marketing wisdom, iterating on a part of your design can be all for nothing if you realise late in the cycle that the core loop has to be re-worked, and you need to create new content for the new mechanics.

According to conventional game marketing wisdom, a mechanically bland action platformer with good graphics can sell better than a well-designed strategy game with abstract black-and-white graphics.

An accessible multiplayer game can outlast a well-balanced multiplayer strategy game: You need your player base to grow beyond the critical mass to sustain online matchmaking and a competitive scene in the first place.

A game idea that is a great fit for a mobile game, small prototype, demo, or coffee-break browser game cannot always be turned into a long-form game. Many long-form games are impossible to distil down into a five-minute slice.

All that doesn’t mean that there is no market for good game design. There is certainly a market for well-made games, for good design in games, and for carefully designed games. These are not the same as game design though, if you go by the ideas from Burgun’s podcast. Game design is more fundamental, more about mechanics and interactive feedback loops, not about visual design, game feel or intuitive user interfaces.

The bigger your game gets, the more urgent a concern the actual game design becomes. If you’re aiming for a big commerical release, you need to make a long-form game. If you’re making a long-form game, you need better game design than you can get away with in a shorter one. When you start with a small core and add content and features, game design can sneak up on you, and you may end up with No Man’s Sky or Anthem.

My Funnel Model

First Impression: The first thing a player sees of your game is probably a pithy description of the game, and then screenshot, maybe a short video. What gets him interested in installing is a novel, clever premise (like ”puzzle MOBA” or “you play a crazy cat lady”), and your promotional screenshots.

When your potential new player looks for reviews of the game, only opinions, sound-bites and screenshots will reach him, because good game design cannot be easily captured in words and pictures. If the game design is hard to explain or doesn’t translate well to trailers or screenshots, you already have a problem. Labels like “fantasy“, “noir“, “battle royale“ or unique visual aesthetics can give you a way in, or they can turn players off.

Accessibility: This does not mean accessibility to people with disabilities in particular (which is ”Barrierefreiheit” in my native German, the freedom from barriers which exclude certain groups of people), although that kind of accessibility is also important. Accessibility in general means how easy it is to get into the game, in a similar way to how certain books can be very inaccessible by starting off with weird jargon you need to get used to, or fifty pages of dry exposition before the plot gets started.

Tetris gets difficult quickly, but stays accessible, whereas Dear Esther is impossible to fail, but quite dense and inaccessible in its own way. Whenever possible, it makes sense to introduce complexity and difficulty only gradually.

Innovation: Next you have to compete with all the other games in the user’s game library. If the novelty of the elevator pitch doesn’t translate into innovative gameplay, your player might just go back to playing Minecraft, Fortnite, or Hearthstone again. If the game is not accessible and engaging early on, then the player might quit early and not even get to the novel or innovative part. The innovative part must be accessible in itself, without feeling forced or tacked on, and it must feel natural to use it.

Some AAA games try to solve this by early on giving the player “a taste” of what’s to come, for example by giving all the spells in the magic system to the player during a flashback sequence in the first level. Then they take away the innovative game mechanics and proceed with a bunch of boring third-person action adventure RPG shooter things for half the game.

Core Gameplay Loop: This is where the good game design comes in. This is also the part that makes your players recommend the game to their friends.

In addition to good game design, adjacent qualities like responsive control design/game feel, clear visual feedback, legible game state, and quality-of-life features also become relevant when the player goes through the core loop a couple of times. Even when the controls and mechanics of your game are easy to learn, they can still be boring, tedious, or distracting.

Earlier this year, a game with an interesting premise, cool visual aesthetic, and some innovative mechanics on top of the classic JRPG formula was released on the Nintendo Switch. Unfortunately, neither the mechanics of combat nor the NPC dialogue were very engaging, or fun. The game got a lot of attention, but that attention culminated in mixed to bad reviews.

Getting the steps up to here right will give your game more eyeballs, and will get people to try it or even write about it. Getting the core gameplay loop right will make people enjoy and play your game more after that.

Scope: The more content there is - that can be quests, levels, guns, monsters, puzzles - the longer you can keep the core loop going. The amount of meaningfully “new” content you can put into your game is limited by the game design though. Just adding “two billions of guns“ won’t cut it if the gameplay difference between different pieces of content is not meaningful. The value of additional content also depends on the game design. Some games get more value out of their content. Mario Kart 8 for the Nintendo Switch has ten pre-arranged tournaments with for racetracks each. That doesn’t look like a lot of content, but the game gets a large amount of replay value out of them.

Sometimes the scope of a game is limited by the design and the core loop. Some puzzle game mechanics have only a handful of interesting puzzles in them, and are more appropriate for a one-off puzzle set piece in a larger action game than for a dedicated puzzle game.

Some game genres, like point-and-click adventures, are mainly constrained by the scope of the content, and a piece of content can only be used once. Puzzle- and strategy games can often squeeze a lot of value out of content by re-using the same units and mechanics in a new context or a different combination. RPGs are somewhere in-between, by re-using monsters, dungeon architecture, loot, and crafting elements, while quests, NPCs and villages must be uniquely crafted.

“Elegant” game design is not only good for its own sake, it also allows you to add more stuff into your game in a cost-effective way.

There is a flip side to this: Prototypes, jam games, mostly story-driven games, and demos don’t really need good game design at all. One can build a small game prototype based on novelty alone, without a way to expand the scope, maybe even without an engaging core gameplay loop. The core gameplay loops two or three times and then the game just ends.

If you want to make a long-form game, you have to think from the beginning about scope and longevity.

Grand unified theories of game design(tm) become more applicable the larger the scope of your game is. In a small game, individual aspects like game feel, visual design, music, “funny/edgy” dialogue or characters, and novel mechanics outweigh balance, level design, world-building, and well-written characters.

Depth: I am using “depth” somewhat loosely and colloquially: Depth is what keeps players coming back, and talking to each other. That can be endgame content, high-level competitive play, lore, or a modding/mapmaking scene. Depth can be speedrunning, or finding new, clever solutions to puzzles. Depth is finding new meaning in content you already know or played.

After I beat Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP, or after Waking Mars, I uninstalled the game and moved on. Nothing is making me come back to Mark of The Ninja, Dear Esther or Thomas Was Alone. I don’t think I will ever want to revisit Torchlight, the first or the sequel. I enjoyed each of these games - or in the case of Dear Esther at least I appreciated it, on a detached, intellectual level. I played Nuclear Throne until I had beaten the game, unlocked every character, seen every gun, and gone to most of the secret stages. Then I quit playing. I have no interest in looping.

I played a lot of StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty. I played custom matches with my friends, I played on the ladder, I looked up strategy tips on TeamLiquid, I watched live streams of competitive games, and then I watched Day[9] analyse competitive games in-depth.

Back when I was a child, I played lots of multi-player games of WarCraft 3 and Worms: Armageddon. It never got stale for me. I played some multiplayer matches of Swords & Soldiers, but there is not a lot of variety, and it got stale rather quickly.

I know this evaluation of games and my concept of “depth” are both rather subjective. In content-heavy games, this kind of “depth“ can be hidden content, endgame content, side quests, and lore. In mechanics-focused games, depth and longevity are facilitated by game design(tm).

The recipe for popularity?

The funnel goes like this: First Impression > Accessibility > Innovation > Core Loop > Scope > Depth. At every stage, you lose some players, or potential players. If a potential player doesn’t hear about your game, that’s it. If a player looks at a let’s play or a review, and doesn’t understand what the game is about, that’s it. If your game is reviewed by a professional site, you can expect that they play through the main content. The longer players stay with your game, the more relevant game design(tm) will become.

Depth is beyond the scope of a review, but it will make people stick with your game for longer, and can make players show or recommend it to friends.

Depth and scope will make people stick with your game for longer, and make your game show up in Steam and Discord friend lists.

An engaging core loop will lead to good reviews and probably also good user scores.

Unfortunately, good game design is usually not the limiting factor, because we live in a word where we are bombarded with new game releases every day, and we have to decide which ones to buy, which free ones to download and play, or even which reviews to read, because there are just so many games that the limiting factor is time and getting attention in the first place, not how good - or “fun”, or “engaging” - the game actually is.

AAA studios already have our attention, or at least the attention of big gaming news sites, so they can compete for making the game with the best shooting or the biggest open world. AAA studios have an easier time getting a consistent player base for online matchmaking. In contrast to this, indies have to compete for attention in the first place.

However, once you have the attention of players and reviewers, you still have to convince them that your game is any good.

#game design #longpost #clockwork game design #game development #indiepocalypse #are games art

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joyofcrime-elinorhigh · 6 years ago

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Watamote Review: (Oh, The Cringe)

"Beware that, when fighting cringe, you yourself do not become a cringe lord yourself.. for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche: 1886 -(Probably) -(Don't Google it)

Hello there, everybody. My name is JoyofCrimeArt, and the word "cringe" is definitely thrown around a lot these days, to the point where some say that the word is starting to lose all meaning. "Oh, you like some band or movie that I don't like? That's so cringe, lol." No, Damn it! I'm sick of all of it! I'm looking for true, unadulterated cringe, in it's purest form! The type of cringe that makes you unsure if you should laugh or cry. The type of cringe that makes you question if our species evolutionary process is going backwards or forwards. That is why I am on a quest to find this cringe, for the good of science! So today in my journey to find the most cringe thing ever created (other than myself, obviously) we will be diving head first into the deep end of the cringe pool, as we head to Japan once again to talk about the 2013 anime series Watamote. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWOTQRduHeA

(Yes, I'm using the ending credit song here. I know people love the shows opening, and while I think that the song on it's own isn't that bad and the visuals are really nice, the heavy metal doesn't really match the show in my opinion. Couple with the clever lyrics here, I find this song a better representation of the show, and much catchier.) Watamote (Aka: No Matter How I Look at It, It’s You Guys' Fault I’m Not Popular! Aka: No Matter How I Look at It, This Series Really Needs a Shorter Title.) is a twelve episode anime series based off of the manga by the same name written by two writers who both go by the pen name Nico Tanigawa. The series follows the misadventures of main protagonist Tomoko Kuroki, a very socially backwards teenage girl who's about to enter her first year of high school. Being unpopular in middle school, Tomoko decides that high school is going to be a fresh start for her, as she decides that she will not only become the most popular girl in school, but will also get a boyfriend as well. Things do not turn out that way and hijinks ensue. Seems like a fairly standard, if not somewhat bland premise, right? Well you might assume that at first, but what if I were to tell you that this show handles the subject in such a unique and creative way, that it was actually able to became one of my personal favorite animated series of the decade so far? Why is that, you ask? Well, let's dive in and find out. Let's start by talking about our main character, Tomoko Kuroki. Tomoko is a first year high school student who dreams of becoming popular and getting a boyfriend. However, there are two big things that makes this hard for her. The first thing is that she is not a very friendly person. She's bitter, cynical, and even a bit demented at points. She has her soft moments, but in general she tends to assume the worst in almost anybody, and holds a lot of resentment for people who are more socially skilled than she is. The second thing is that Tomoko is HEAVILY implied to suffers from a surprisingly fairly realistic depiction of social anxiety disorder. At the start of the series Tomoko is completely unable to talk to anybody outside of her own family. These two facts, particularly the latter, are what makes Tomoko's goal of becoming the most popular girl in school such an enormous challenge, and Tomoko trying to break out of her shell serves as the main arc of the series. Social anxiety disorder is not a topic that I've seen covered very much in other forms of media, and I can't think of any other series that covers it in the way Watamote does. But I'll get to that a bit later. There are some other side characters, but honestly there aren't that many. There's Tomoko's younger and stoic brother Tomoki, who has to put up with Tomoko's annoying antics. There's also Yu, Tomoko's only friend from middle school who now goes to a separate high school. While she too was unpopular in middle school, unlike Tomoko she actually was able to reinvent herself when she entered high school by dying her hair blond and hiding her love of anime. She acts as a good contrast to Tomoko as a reflection of what Tomoko wants to be. There's also one other character who comes in near the end of the series, but I can't really talk about her to much without getting into mild spoiler territory. All of these characters are good in there own right, but other then them the show is mostly about Tomoko. This is clever as by keeping the cast of side characters small, it helps drive the point home about how lonely she really is due to her social anxiety. Resulting in about eighty five to ninety percent of the shows "dialogue" to actually be Tomoko's internal dialogue, as she talks to herself about whatever situation she is in. I've never seen a show do something like this before and it's really an interesting thing to do. It ties the audience much more into Tomoko's struggle by truly making the series her story, and her's alone. However, this means that the entire series does rely on you liking Tomoko as a character. If you don't than there isn't much else to latch on to. Episodes of the show are pretty formulaic. They almost always center around either Tomoko coming up with some kind of hare brain scheme to get more popular or involve her being forced to act in some kind of social situation. Often times the plots do not act as much of a "linear plot" as much as a series of short vignettes that center around a theme. Like episodes four, where the plot is that "it's raining" and we get several different segments of Tomoko doing stuff while it's raining. Or episode seven, where the whole plot is just Tomoko doing several things during her summer break. It's a pretty unique format that I haven't seen many other times before and makes the episodes feel less like a coherent stories and more like just moments of Tomoko's life. I really enjoy this way of storytelling, as it makes the stories seem a lot smaller. That might sound like a bad thing, but I think it helps ground the world and the characters, and makes it feel more relatable. It makes the stories feel like something that could actually happen in real life. Now despite how depressing this show might sound from my description of it, it is still a comedy. It's just that it's a very dark comedy. Most of the jokes in the series coming from Tomoko's failure to understand the way that people are suppose to act socially, or the leaps in logic she makes when it comes to her schemes to become more popular. This often results in what is known as "cringe comedy" or as what I like to call it "Oh God, please stop." comedy. This is a style of humor that this show has perfected to a t. Every situation that Tomoko finds herself in is uncomfortable to watch, in the best of way. It's actually a great show to watch if you are socially awkward, cause then you can say, "Well hey, at least I'm not THAT bad." Unless of course you are that bad, in which case you really need to question your life decisions.

THIS IS THE STUFF WE'RE DEALING WITH, PEOPLE! Tomoko's plans are always doomed from the start, to the point where failure is an inevitability. This actually provides an interesting viewing experience in a strange kind of way. Most of the time in good stories a character will think of a plan that is just crazy enough to work. You as the viewer will be unsure of whether or not the characters plan will work or not and that's how the series builds suspense. But Watamote's plot structure doesn't work like that. The plots of Watamote function less like conventional stories and more like a car driving into a brick wall. What I mean by this is that whenever Tomoko comes up with any kind of plan to become popular you know form the very beginning that it's going to fail. The schemes are so disconnected from any kind of reality that it's obvious to anyone who isn't Tomoko that the plan won't work. An example of this in the episode six where she tries to become more attractive by playing dating sims game, due to the fact that she believed that by being aroused by these games, her body would create more feminine hormones, and those hormones would make her more attractive. And that's not even her dumbest plan she has in this series! You know from the start that this plan makes absolutely no Goddamn sense, but then you have to sit there for the next six to ten minutes and watch it fail. You have to watch the metaphorical car crash unfold. The show definitely has a niche style of humor that won't be for everyone, but I personally can't get enough of it. Now, while the show has gotten mixed to positive reviews from fans and critics, those who do dislike the show site a major problem with the series being how it deals with the topic of social anxiety. Many say that the show does not tackle the topic with much tack or grace, as the series is basically about laughing at how miserable Tomoko is because of her illness. Not to mention the fact that pretty much no adult in the series tries in anyway to actually help Tomoko through her problem. Not even her parents. Many argue that this show is taking the subject to lightly. Honestly though, I disagree with this analysis, and honestly I have no idea where they would get this idea from.

Oh, Tomoko! You're so CRAY CRAY! Ha Ha! You see, it's funny because social anxiety is hilarious! Okay, in all seriousness, I can get that complaint. Heck, now that I think about it, I honestly don't think this story would have been able to air if it came out in America due to the way it handles the issue. So the question becomes "is this show offensive to people with social anxiety disorder"? Well, I don't think so. The show does play a lot of the social anxiety stuff for laughs, but it is also played for drama as well. Tomoko's whole character arc is about her learning to cope with her condition while also trying to conquer it. And while I don't have social anxiety disorder (Though I am EXTREMELY introverted, so take of that what you will.) I think that the story would be very inspiring for someone who does have it. Watamote is a lot like an TV-MA rated version of the comic strip Peanuts, (hear me out, here!) Like Charlie Brown Tomoko is a character that the world is just out to get. She tries her hardest, but from the very beginning we know that failure is inevitable. But Tomoko never stops trying. And when she does have even the smallest of victories it feels all the more satisfying. Because Tomoko does change over the course of the twelve episodes. The change is very gradual, but as the series goes on she does become more and more confident speaking around other people, and it feels like a real accomplishments, even though it's clear at the end of the series that she still has quite a way to go. Even her motivations change over the course of the series, going from "Wanting to be the most popular girl in school and having a boyfriend" to "Just wanting a boyfriend" to "Just wanting to have a friend." It shows the struggles that comes with anxiety, but it also shows that with hard work you can rise above it, even if it's only one step at a time. For a comedy driven show it actually has a lot of heart behind it. And it's this heart that I think keeps the show from being just a show that uses social anxiety as a punchline, into a series that really treats the issue with the respect it should be treated with, albeit in a comedic way.

The show treads a careful line into dipping into "torture porn" territory (Which, for anyone who is not aware, is a term often used to describe a show that features one character suffering over and over again for no good reason. BTDubz, we also learn is one of Tomoko's kinks.) What I mean is that as an audience member you want to watch the main character succeed in there endeavors. However, Tomoko fails ninety nine percent of the time. The series could easily dip to far and end up becoming too depressing and mean spirited. But luckily there able to carefully avoid this my making almost of Tomoko's suffering is caused by internal forces, not external. No one actually bullies Tomoko for her condition, or anything. it just that most people don't know she exists. If Tomoko could actually just talk to someone instead of overthinking things she wouldn't have a problem making friends at all. This stops the series from coming across as overly mean spirited. Because it is Tomoko, or more specifically her condition, that makes her life hard. Not anyone or anything else. Tomoko life is separated from all of her peers, and the show cleverly illustrates this by having a lot of the background characters being drawn without faces. Because, to Tomoko, there just a faceless mob. That and it probably helps cut cost on the character design budget-

Also, the fact that Tomoko is such a jerky character also helps the series feel less like a torture porn. Cause while obviously you don't want Tomoko to suffer, it is a lot easier to watch a lovable jerk suffer compared to someone who did nothing wrong. I mean seriously, look at the way Tomoko talks about her only friend Yuu in her internal monologue!

She's such a jerk! But because we know what she goes through it stops her from becoming to unlikeable...For the most part. That leads me into some of the flaws with the show. While I do really love this show a lot, I believe that everything has pros and cons to it, and it deserves to be talked about. Just keep in mind though that many of these flaws are kinda nitpicks, that don't distract too much from the series as a whole. Sometimes Tomoko can come across as to mean spirited and unlikeable. The bit before the train scene in episode four is probably the worst of it, though there at least she does learn that she was wrong. The show also has a tendency to reuse music from previous episodes, which while not that bad does get fairly noticeable as the series goes on. The series also has a lot of references to both Japanese pop cultural references and references and Japaness culture in general. For some reason a lot of the Japanese brand names or anime series that are names dropped in the series are censored out in the sub? It's weird because there not removed like they are in the dub, but they'll have one or two letters blocked out. I don't get the point. But yeah, a lot of those jokes went over my head, and would probably work better if I knew more about day to day life of a Japanese youth. Also the ending of the series is kinda lackluster. I'm not going to go into spoilers, but Watamote is based off of a manga. A manga that is still running today, so they didn't really have an ending they could adapt. And it's kinda clear from the feeling of the finale that the people behind the anime didn't really know what to do when they got to the end of there twelve episode run. The finale isn't really that bad to be completely honest, but it does feel like a very abrupt end written by people who where just kinda guessing what the ending of the manga might end up being like. Also, while I don't see this as a flaw, this show will not be everybody. This show will make you feel uncomfortable. A lot of scenes are really hard to watch, just due to how intentionally awkward they are. I kept out A LOT of the really cringy moments from the show out of the review as not to spoil them, but trust me. It gets truly hard to watch at some points. This is Butch Hartman's YouTube channel levels of cringe! (Okay, that's a lie, nothing is that cringe. Sorry Watamote.) It's both the shows greatest strength and greatest weakness. The humor is both very unique but also very niche, which is why while this show was fairly successful when it came out, I would find very few people other than myself who would call it one of there favorite anime series. Now, it's time to talk about the age old debate. How should you watch the series, Dubbed or Subbed? Well, honestly, I don't really care. It's your life man, As long as you're not hurting anybody what do I care? But if you wanted my opinion, I'd be happy to share it with you! Since most of the lines come from Tomoko she'll be the big deciding factor. For the sub we have the performance of Izumi Kitta. Ms. Kitta nails the role of Tomoko in my personal opinion. She has such a meek and high pitched voice that it really sells the emotional scenes in the series. When Tomoko is forced to talk to someone in the sub her voice is at a near inaudible whisper, which really does help give you the sense that Tomoko is truly unable to communicate with most people. In the dub Tomoko is played by voice acting legend Monica Rial. Her take on Tomoko's voice is less cutesy and is a lot more nasally, which does work as an interpretation. She captures the comedy moments really well too. However, I feel like she isn't as good at capturing the moments of anxiety as well as Kitta, and due to Kitta managing to pull of the comedic and the touching side I think her take is the better version. No offence to Monica Rial though. I do love the fact that her version of Tomoko sounds like a cross between Renge from Ouran High School Host Club (Who she also voices in the dub) and Peridot from Steven Universe. THAT'S A MATCH MADE IN HEAVEN I TELLS' YA!

So in the end, should you watch Watamote? Well, I think it depends on who you are. The series won't be for everyone. It's brand of humor is very unique, and will likely turn a lot of people off. But I think if you're the type of person who likes weird, uncomfortable humor they'll be something for you here. ESPECIALLY if you're shy or introverted. There will definitely be a part of you who will be able to relate to the show, even if you're not exactly proud that you related to it. The series is also only twelve episodes, so it isn't that much of a commitment. It's really a shame that it's only twelve episodes though, as they only ended up adapting about three and a half volumes out of the still ongoing ten volume run. They could of done more if they wanted too. But then again, leave them wanting more as they say. (That way you can force them to buy your manga set...) The series can be found subbed on Crunchyroll for free, or on Hulu if you already have an account. Unfortunately the only way to find the series dubbed legally is on DVD or blu-ray sets, and those are about thirty bucks on Amazon here in the US. However, depending on your financial situation it may just be worth it...(But God knows I don't have that kind of money!) If this review got you at all interested consider checking the series out. So that's my review of the anime series Watamote. What do you think of the series? Which moment was the hardest to watch for you? Tell me all that in the comments down bellow. I'd love to start a conversation, even if you don't necessarily agree with all of the points I've made. Please fav, follow, and comment if you liked this review, or if you have any suggestions for any other reviews in the future. Have a great day. (Interesting fact. Whenever I'm at work during my lunch break at work I will either go to the bookstore that's right by my work establishment or I'll just sit in the break room reading my volumes of Watamote mangas by myself while trying to make it so my co-workers can't see what I am reading. THIS SHOW IS SO ME AND THAT'S NOT A GOOD THING-) (I do not own any of the images or videos in this review all credit goes to there original owners.)

https://www.deviantart.com/joyofcrimeart/journal/Watamote-REVIEW-Oh-the-Cringe-698766244 DA Link

#Watamote #no matter how i look at it it's you guys' fault i'm not popular!#anime #review #cringe

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jinjojess · 6 years ago

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Opinion on each zanki zero character?

While I’m here, I should also answer this fantastic ask:

Anonymous said: Are the Zanki Zero characters names as stupid as Danganronpa character names? ‘cause one of the characters is named after a type of tractor

I also need to post my feelings on ZZ in general, but so far it’s pretty cool. The characters aren’t really out of their introductory shallow stages yet but they show promise. I don’t care what the haters say, I find Extend TV amusing. The game’s premise is cool, the 3D character models look nice, and the system of exploring new islands that wash up as dungeons to gather resources and get story beats is cool.

This may be the closest thing I get to DanRon Mystery Dungeon.

While I normally don’t like stories where death is impermanent, this seems like it will tackle more the psychological strain of immortality and the goal will be to get your zanki (extra lives) to zero, linking the end/goal of the game to the way it started: with suicide. If so, I’m here for that.

Anyway, my thoughts on the characters.

Minor Spoilers!

Higurashi Haruto - Basic SpikeChun VN protag so far: kinda bland, ahoge, etc. I do like his glasses, though, and the fact he was an editor. That’s a unique detail. Aside from oversleeping once, hasn’t exhibited much slothfulness, unless you count his inability to act when he and Susukino took a ride on the Tentacle Express. As for his suicide attempt (completion?), I suspect that’s true of everyone, not just Higurashi.

How Stupid Is That Name?Low. Higurashi means living hand-to-mouth, which is very on the nose for this situation (also likely a reference to that other VN series…). Haruto, like all the given names in this game, doesn’t have kanji, so it’s a bit tough to assign specific meaning to it. You could write it as 温人, for instance, which would mean “warm person”. Both names are real names, and fairly common at that.

Hirasaka Sachika - All I can say is, thank god she has a side besides “adowable widdle gurl!” because I am not a fan of that. It is cool to have a disabled character though. So far aside from Higurashi being a bit tactless and presumptive, it’s been handled fairly well? Sachika’s clearly extremely intelligent, likely playing everyone (she’s the one who urges everyone to go inside Mashiro Garden Tower), and appears to be the only character who doesn’t age. Since she’s original sin, wouldn’t that make her knowledge? Interesting…

How Stupid Is That Name?Moderately stupid. Hirasaka is a real name, but if it’s written that way, it’s pretty rare. The kanji used are “compare, good, hill” which you could take as comparing how well the others reform and atone for their sins. Sachika is indeed a name, and it could include a bunch of different kanji, including the ones for “happiness” or “knowledge”. Sachika’s name is what I’d consider to be the DR standard level of stupid.

Mikajime Ryou - His design was one of the ones I was the least interested in, but so far he’s been pretty amusing. I hope he doesn’t end up typecast as the “protag’s best buddy” type from DR. Real jealousy explored in a game like this would be pretty dope though.

How Stupid Is That Name?Well, as far as I know, Mikajime is not a real name, so we’re already treading pretty silly waters. The kanji basically come out to read “three flowers tied up” which is fitting the theme. Ryou is a very, very common male name, though if I had to hazard a guess here, I’d say it’s in reference to 量, which means “quantity” (as in, how much you have in the way of resources, and could feed into the envy theme).

Susukino Rinko - As is often the case with things like this, I like her design but her archetype is one that puts my teeth on edge. Please shake this Yamato Nadeshiko BS please, girl. Also, assign Lust to the beefcake dude, you cowards! I did like that I chose her and Higurashi as my least faves that I’d be cool with killing to complete the cloning mission, and lo!

How Stupid Is That Name?Susuki is the Japanese name for Chinese Silver Grass/Zebra Grass, which is already pretty silly given that she’s a florist. The “no” part means field, so duh on that, but it often gets used in dumb animanga names to stand in for the particle の which will make it a possessive. The reason I bring this up is because susuki is sometimes called “maiden grass” and Susukino’s sin is Lust. While Susukino isn’t a real surname as far as I can tell, it is the name of a neighborhood in Yokohama! Rinko’s a pretty normal lady name with the ko almost always being “child” while the Rin part can be all kinds of stuff, like forest, cold, and interestingly enough, ethics. …it also rhymes with one of the Japanese words for “penis”.

Kubota Zen - I am sad that this guy will likely become the Cursed Character of this game, because I actually find him pretty interesting. It’s always great to have a wild card in the mix, and while he’s being a little too openly Komaeda/Ouma-like in this instigator department, it seems more clearly to come from a distinctly different place than either of them. I dig it.

How Stupid Is That Name?Look at this fucking normal-ass name. Sure, the Ku part of Kubota isn’t the usual one, instead being swapped for the legal version of 9 (…suffering…), and yeah, Kubota is a brand of tractor, and okay, it’s a bit openly ironic to have your Wrath character named Zen, but honestly this is one of the least surprising names here. (It could also be one of the other zens, like the one from nature or something.)

Setouchi Minamo - The only thing stopping me from fully embracing this character as my fave is the fact that Nate likes her best. Design? Fantastic. Lady cop? Hell yes. Speaks in Osaka-ben?! FUCK YEAH. I like that she’s Pride, too, which is considered the worst one of the bunch (aside from knowledge, I guess) since she seems like she’s so…Asahina-like. Setouchi is a fucking cutie and I love her, the end. Pride Month, baby.

How Stupid Is That Name?I swear to god, her last name has to be a reference to the Seto Inland Sea since it’s written in Japanese as 瀬戸内海 and is even colloquially referred to as “Setouchi”. It also just so happens to be located…in Kansai! In fact, it feeds into Osaka Bay and is a major transportation hub around the Kansai region. Minamo is a common girl’s name, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen it written with kanji before. I mean I guess the Mi could be “beauty” which might fit the Pride theme? Or you could read it as a pun that means “and everyone else too” or something? The jisho is telling me that it can be an alternate way to read the word for “water surface” which could fit with the theme of being named after a sea.

Ichiyou Mamoru - Right now he’s leaning a bit too hard on the Gonta gap-moe thing, where he’s an intelligent sciencey type who’s also mega buff, but I like the idea of him being actually really anxious underneath his go-with-the-flow exterior. As long as he develops into a more round character, I will like him a lot. Also, he’s tied with Setouchi as hottest character. Not really sure how the Greed thing comes in yet though. Ugh, he should’ve been Lust, SpikeChun, get it together.

How Stupid Is That Name?Not very. Ichiyou means “one leaf” which evokes (in me at least) the idea of an Adonis statue with a single leaf over its groin. Ichiyou is a real surname, and Mamoru is very much a real given name. The most obvious meaning being 守る, “to protect” which in this case can mean his patients or maybe his dragon horde because Greed.

Mashiro Yuma - She is my favorite character right now, because hot damn, do I relate. This game is so fucking diverse for a Japanese game–a disabled girl and a chubby chick?! God, it’s like Togami and Celes had a daughter who was raised by Sagishi and I fucking love her. The Gluttony thing is pretty surface level right now, though I suspect that she’s going to be fairly relevant to the story given how important the Touwa Mashiro Group is in this world. She’s right behind Setouchi and Ichiyou for character I’d be most attracted to irl, cause I like thicc girls. Not a big fan of her fashion sense, but everything else is fucking great.I especially appreciate that she’s not really that spoiled or nasty, either? Like she’s snarky, yeah, but not the full Togami. Anyway I love Mashiro.

How Stupid Is That Name?Mashiro means “pure white” which could refer to a lot of things–being free from sin, being ironically NOT free from sin, etc. Pretty sure Mashiro is a real last name. Yuma is pretty uncommon, though. The kanji that you can use for it often include ones for “freedom” or “friend” or “kind” and so on for the “Yu” part, while the “ma” could be “center” (making her name end the way it begins), “hemp/cannabis”, or “jasmine”. It would be really funny if her given name was written as “freedom cannabis” since it would be like “free to be high”.

Terashima Shou - He’s a boke and I think his unnervingly Tezuka-like art style is kind of fun. I dunno, like I said, I don’t care what you kids think, I love manzai.

How Stupid Is That Name?I need to assume that they intend to write the surname as 照島 (illuminated island) considering the catchphrase and the locale, though I guess you could also interpret it as like “tereru” for “embarrassed”? Shou’s usually written as “soar”, but I suspect that this is just a pun based on the English word “show” (as in, TV show). Might also be a little nod to best friend Genocider.

Mirai - The straightman of the manzai team. I like her too–I think she does a great job of being expressive and her comedic timing is pretty good. She’s also fairly cute, so like Nate said, I wouldn’t mind merch of her.

How Stupid Is That Name?tHe jApAnEsE wOrD fOr FuTuRe

#ask #anon #Zanki Zero #ZZ #names #stupid names #long post #minor spoilers #just for the prologue

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maddie-kungs-emporium · 3 years ago

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Coyote and Crow Review

Coyote and Crow is a TTRPG by a company of the same name, and was the brainchild of Connor Alexander, who describes himself as a writer, photographer, gamer and member of the Cherokee Nation on the Coyote and Crow website. The basic thesis of the game is “What if the Americas were never colonized and developed independently?” It’s honestly a really interesting idea, and definitely an interesting premise. Naturally, I had to check it out, since those ideas are really interesting to me.

So, as a special disclaimer, I am not of indigenous descent and, while I like to believe in indigenous right and sovereignty, I do not claim to have expertise in indigenous cultural concepts and issues. Therefore, my methodology going into this review was to only critique what I can understand and appreciate, and therefore, I wanted to review the game without focusing too much on how indigenous culture is presented in terms of real-world relation.

Rules

The rules are fine, and work well enough. It’s pretty standard system based around d12s that explode (interestingly separated into Standard Dice and Critical Dice), and the basic system seems pretty workable. Honestly, my biggest problem with it is that it doesn’t really grab my attention, and because of that, it almost feels a little bland. The game feels like the mechanical details were constructed as an afterthought, which is okay, but just makes the game a little boring for me.

Lore

The lore of Coyote and Crow is definitely the game’s strongest point. I found the world of Makasing to be quite provocative and to be constructed in a very interesting way, and what makes it unique is it nails having a mindset different from other games without having to be contrived or illogical. I also really like the approach taken in blurring science fiction and fantasy, which is naturally very appealing to me due to my love of abstract art and media. The designers even went so far as to create a functional constructed language for the game, which greatly impressed me and even gave me a few ideas for my own conlangs in the future.

My only important criticism of the lore is that there aren’t really many prominent antagonists. While there are definitely tools to create antagonists and room for good villains, sometimes, GMs will be frustrated by lack of a clear “antagonist” group. I acknowledge that the goal was to prevent a universally evil group, but “antagonist” doesn’t necessarily have to mean evil. There’s an argument that the rival nations that aren’t Cahokia could be construed as antagonists, but that feels a little reductive and doesn’t really mesh fully with what I understand to be their intended role in the story.

Gameplay

This, for me, is the weakest part of the game. There’s a really big problem with “Where do you go? What do you do?” that this game faces, with the worst one being “I have no idea what the game’s core gameplay loop is.” TTRPGs have a relatively freeform narrative structure, yes, but I feel like there isn’t enough guidance as to what players are actually supposed to be doing in Makasing. There are ideas for the GM, such as having players be part of the Suyata (kind of a peacekeeping group in Cahokia), but the mechanics aren't really built to accommodate a specific playstyle, meaning players have more of a general toolkit than a specific application. I will say, the Three-Path Concept is a good thing to outline for the group, since it allows more dynamic interactions, but my issue is that a lot of groups will end up confused on how exactly to play Coyote and Crow. Because of how little guidance exists here, I have to give a low score, because I myself am still a little unclear on what exactly the intent is on how to play it.

Recommendation and Score

The reason I’m not giving this game a discretionary point is that I would never play it, and I would only really recommend it to someone very passionate about indigenous culture, to a degree most casual roleplayers aren’t. I would say that if you have people who are indigenous or interested in the lore, you might want to show this game to them, even if you don’t end up playing it. I personally cannot think of a time I would actually play Coyote and Crow, and while I like the concept, I severely doubt I could actually create a group of people who want to play Coyote and Crow.

Rules: 2/3

Lore: 3/3

Gameplay: 1/3

Discretionary: 0/1

Overall: 6/10

#ttrpg #native lives matter

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thenichibro · 7 years ago

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Spring 2018 Anime First Impressions

Two weeks into the season - basically on schedule by my standards! This season, as always, has ups and downs as well as popular shows I’m not watching (Megalobox) and shows I immediately regret starting (Devils Line). As a further point, I don’t do impressions of sequels, and in this case I’m including Steins;Gate 0 as a sequel because it is so based on the events of the main show. Regardless, here’s what I’m watching with MAL links and original shows marked:

Legend of the Galactic Heroes - Die Neue These (MAL) Look, I'm not going to immediately say go watch the original LOGH, but I'm kidding that's exactly what I'm going to say. LOGH is a masterpiece in every sense of the word. My issue with this series is not that they will not represent the characters badly, but that 110 episodes shoved into 12 episodes and three movies is simply not enough. LOGH has a scale, a grandeur, a weight that is conveyed as you invest yourself into it for hours on end, from bombastic space battles and the minutiae of day-to-day politics. You need both scales, the imperial and the individual, to really experience LOGH, and I feel like 12 episodes isn't enough time to have both. The LOGH remake looks and sounds fine (though with way too much CG and a bit of same-facing with Reinhard and Kircheis), but I am incredibly nervous about the pacing. This is a first impression, and if Production I.G. pulls this off it will be a classic reimagined for a modern audience that deserves it. But I simply don't think that's going to happen. I'm hopeful, but apprehensive. And again, watch the original. It is pure class.

Persona 5 the Animation (MAL) Play the game first. Please.

Devils Line (MAL) A world where vampires exist under the guise of normal people and some lose control and kill under cover of night. Basically Tokyo Ghoul with less of a vampire "society" and more just individual threats, with more of a sexual twist. Tsukasa is our helpless college heroine, adrift as she finishes school, when she finds out the guy who likes her is a serial murderer who wants blood! So wacky! She's saved by Anzai, a calm, collected member of the agency tasked with dealing with vampires, before unintentionally revealing himself a vampire. Yet we are expected to just accept Anzai forcing himself on Tsukasa because he's the savior? Right. Background sound design isn't bad, art/animation are bland and at times awkward. Devils Line is trying real hard to be a new Tokyo Ghoul, but now with more sexual undertones for whatever reason. Pass.

3D Kanojo: Real Girl (MAL) Ah, otaku love. At least it can't be worse than Saekano, right? That'd be a serious challenge. 3D Kanojo follows Tsutsui, an otaku that suffers the typical ostracization of anime, when he meets Iroha, a blunt girl who for once doesn't ostracize him. The first episode has plenty of the classics - falling into a pool, talking about "3D women" being out of his league, heroics when he knows he can't win. Everything you'd expect. By the end of the episode, things progressed a helluva lot more than I expected, in many ways. It seems thus far that the otaku thing is the impetus for Tsutsui's low opinion of himself, rather than anime being the point of the show. More introspective than I would otherwise think, I think 3D Kanojo holds a lot of slight surprises. It's interesting, for sure, and I hope it continues that way.

Tachibanakan Triangle (MAL) One of two short anime I'm watching this season, Tachibanakan follows a girl who moves into a girls apartment complex and gets more yuri than she bargained for. We've got the fang-sporting short one, the quiet one, the onee-san, the blonde foreigner, you name it. I don't expect a lot of character development or anything similar, but three and a half minutes of yuri sounds just fine to me.

Uma Musume (MAL) First off, props to the show for making the horse girls' names just as stupid as those of real racehorses. I mean, I know it’s because the girls are named after real racehorses, but still. Uma Musume involves a world where horseracing is hugely popular, only the racers are anthropomorphic horse girls. Our main girl is Special Week, a newbie transferring to a popular racing school in Tokyo. She's your typical genki type - eager, energetic, bright-eyed. Enthralled by one of the top girls Silence Suzuka, she aims to become one of the top horse girls in Japan. Oh, and the top horse girls perform as idols after each race. This sure is a mobile game adaptation, god damn. P.A. Works' art looks solid as always (props to the flowing tail animation); the OP and ED are pretty standard idolish stuff. I prefer the ED. Anthropomorphic racing is fine, yet for some reason the idol part is what makes it weird for me. This show is strange, but if it's not much more than cute horse girls doing cute horse girl things, I'll keep paying attention.

SAO Alternative: Gun Gale Online (MAL) I hate SAO. I have a laundry list of reasons that I despised both seasons of SAO. The reason I'm giving GGO a chance is because the main charater is a girl playing a cute chibi girl in-game and she just wants to make friends. Hopefully, that will avoid the terrible pitfall that was anything relating to Kirito. GGO starts right in the action, with a topical Battle Royale mode putting our pink girl and her partner right into the action. The tactics are good and help set up the basic premises of the gametype, if that necessitated a bit too much monologuing by M, the partner. Also, plenty of pouts. Always a bonus. As always the invincibility of the protag is annoying, but I don't really expect breakthrough plot changes from an SAO spinoff. I mean, SAO S1 was good for the first 10 episodes too. Keep this cute girl and not-harem, focus on connecting with others through video games rather than shanking perverts in a parking lot, and it'll be solid.

Hinamatsuri (MAL) A super-powered middle-schooler falls into the life of a nicer-than-normal yakuza. Nitta is the yakuza, with a penchant for fancy porcelain. Hina is the middle-schooler, your typical otherworldly killing machine set into an unfamiliar world. Hinamatsuri puts a lot of good spins on the taking-care-of-a-supernatural-girl trope, with the main character being a yakuza rather than an "average high schooler." Furthermore, there are some nice father-daughter vibes going between the two, though it's clear Hina maintains the upper hand. Won over by Nitta's refusal to use her as just a tool, their life together begins. The comedy is your standard boke/tsukkomi, but the lightning-quick delivery of the lines had me cracking up regardless. Hinamatsuri looks like it could go darker any second, but if it doesn't I'm perfectly content to stay around.

Comic Girls (MAL) Probably the most classic cute girls doing cute things show this season, Comic Girls follows a group of mangaka girls living in a dorm together. Moeta is the worrywart crybaby, Koyume's the genki blonde, Ruki is the less-than-secret pervert, and Tsubasa is the tomboy. There's plenty of nice compliments between the girls' personalities, and Koyume and Moeta seem like a great fit as the newbies in the group. Furthermore, their personalities being informed by the manga they draw allows for a nice exploration of manga cliches through their interactions. This looks to be more on the character-driven side than a deep dive into the logistics of manga production, but that's just fine. Animation and sound aren't really anything special, but they're by no means bad. As a slice-of-life fan I'm all in, even if this show doesn't turn out to be anything super unique.

[ORIG] Tada-kun wa Koi wo Shinai (MAL) Tada-kun follows, well, Tada-kun - a student and photographer who runs into Teresa, a rich European while taking pictures. Tada-kun, following the show's title "Tada Doesn't Fall in Love," has a calm, somewhat stoic demeanor, while Teresa is your bright, beautiful girl finally in the Japan she'd only seen on TV. After meeting multiple times as Teresa wanders lost, Tada helps her out of the rain before she finds her hotel, right next to his family's coffee shop. And then, of course, she transfers into his school along with her bodyguard, the fiery-tempered Alec. The art is crisp and animated well, and both the OP and ED have their charms. I personally like romance focused tightly on a single pair (Tsuki ga Kirei and Ore Monogatari are two stellar examples), and I hope this delivers. With a single couple development becomes the key, but if this show keeps it up - increasing interactions leading to discovered feelings, all starting from a photo (sounds a bit like Just Because, don't you think?), this will be a emotionally engaging experience.

Fumikiri Jikan (MAL) The other short show I'm watching, Fumikiri Jikan is about conversations while waiting for the train to pass. The first episode ran the gamut all the way from peppy slice of life to romantic character drama. Being so tightly focused on conversations and with limited time, a show like this needs to nail the dialogue to set up the characters each episode. I felt like I almost watched a movie in three minutes this time, and that's a good thing. The main sticking point is that with individual stories each time, quality can vary wildly. This show is a bit strange but equally interesting, but it will certainly depend on the story being told.

Wotaku ni Koi wa Muzukashii (MAL) Ah, otaku love. It can't be worse than Saekano, right? That would be a serious challenge. Wotaku ni Koi puts a spin on the genre by situating the main characters as adults who met each other in middle school and just now reconnected. The main cast of four and especially the banner couple Hirotaka and Narumi are uniquely quirky and their personalities gel so well with each other. Despite the long gap in meeting each other I feel the chemistry immediately between the two, and as episode one ends with their relationship actually beginning I'm all in. Not only does Wotakoi change things up by having the main characters as adults but it also gets past all the roundabout bullshit that often bogs down high-school romances. Furthermore, the true enthusiasm with which Hirotaka and Narumi can nerd out about what they like is refreshing, kind of like Animegataris before it became the Matrix. Combine that with a crisp art style and great musical themes, and maybe Wotakoi can provide the grounded otaku love story we've been waiting for. Oh, and fuck the Saekano shout-out. Not that I'm going to let that cloud my thoughts on Wotakoi - I just really, really don't like Saekano.

Golden Kamuy (MAL) This season's "a popular manga is finally getting an anime" show, Golden Kamuy is the story of a soldier and an Ainu girl suriving in the north of Japan in the Ruso-Japanese War era just after the turn of the 20th century. The pair aims to find a hidden treasure, stolen from the Ainu and stashed by a criminal somewhere, with the location hidden on tattoos of various escaped prisoners. I enjoy historical shows, and Kamuy is great in that it is more than just feudal Japan or something similar - the snowy, late-Meiji Hokkaido setting is undoubtedly unique. Sugimoto, the soldier, has earned his nickname "Immortal" due to his war exploits, and his personality shows it - confident in his skills yet cautious of threats. Asirpa, the Ainu, is the resourceful, collected partner Sugimoto needs in the wilds of Hokkaido, and shares Sugimotos motivations, having lost her father to the criminal who hid the treasure. The art is clean, and while the main characters look good there needs to be mention of the awful-looking CG of the two bears and the wolf that make appearances in the first episode. It just looks horrible. The dynamic between Sugimoto and Asirpa is great - the contrast between violence and peace especially - and I look forward to see where they're going. I only wish the overall tone was more consistent - the first episode is a great solemn look at the task in front of them, while the second episode inserts a whole lot of "comedic" moments that seem out of place with the action and Sugimoto himself. Regardless, quick shout-out to Man With a Mission for the OP - one of my favorite bands and this song is no exception.

#legend of the galactic heroes #persona 5 #devils line #3d kanojo #tachibanakan to lie angle #uma musume #sword art online alternative: gun gale online #hinamatsuri #comic girls #tada-kun wa koi wo shinai #fumikiri jikan #wotaki ni koi wa muzukashii #golden kamuy #spring 2018 anime #my anime reviews

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weekendwarriorblog · 4 years ago

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The Weekend Warrior Home Edition 7/31/20 – THE SHADOW OF VIOLENCE, SUMMERLAND, THE SECRET: DARE TO DREAM, SHE DIES TOMORROW and More!

As I started to gather what’s left of my wits for this week’s column, there seemed to be fewer movies than usual, and I was quite thankful for that. Then, a few of the movies scheduled for some sort of theatrical release this weekend were delayed and I discovered a bunch of movies I didn’t have in my release calendar to begin with, so this is a little bit of an odd weekend but still one with 8 movies reviews! I went into most of the movies this weekend without much knowledge of what they were about, probably was the best way to go into many of them, since it allowed me to be somewhat open-minded about what I was watching.

The first surprise of the week is that we’re getting another decent film from the one and only Saban Films, so maybe the VOD distributor has been using the pandemic to step up its game as well. Directed by first-time feature director Nick Rowland, the Irish crime-drama THE SHADOW OF VIOLENCE (Saban Films), based on the book “Calm with Horses,” stars relative newcomer Cosmo Jarvis as Douglas Armstrong, known as “Arm,” the enforcer for the drug-dealing Devers family. Douglas also has a young toddler with local woman Ursula (Niamh Algar), but when his handler Dympna (Barry Keoghan) orders Arm to kill for the first time, he’s forced to rethink his career.

Much of the story revolves a member of the Devers family caught making a lurid pass at Dympha’s 16-year-old sister, leading to consequences, as Arm is sent to beat the crap out of him. For head of the family, that isn’t nearly enough and soon, Arm is ordered to kill the man. (This aspect of the story reminds me a little of Todd Field’s Little Children, particularly the Jackie Earle Haley subplot.)

As I mentioned above, I watched this film with zero expectations and was taken quite aback by how great it was, despite not having been that big a fan of Keoghan from some of his past work. On the other hand, Cosmo Jarvis, in his first major role, is absolutely outstanding, giving a performance on par with something we might see from Thomas Hardy or Matthias Schoenaerts, at least in their earlier work. Barely saying a word, Jarvis instills so many emotions into “Arm” as we see him playing with his young autistic son, Jack, trying to keep his jealousy over Ursula under control, while also being there when Dympna needs him. Even as you think you’re watching fairly innocuous day-to-day stuff, Rowland ratchets up the tension to an amazing degree right up until a climactic moment that drives the last act.

Despite the film’s title, The Shadow of Violence isn’t just about violence, as much as it is about a man trying to figure out how to change the trajectory of his life. If you like character-based films like The Rider, this movie is definitely going to be for you. Another surprise is that the movie will be available only in theaters this Friday, rather than the typical VOD approach Saban Films generally takes, so check your local theater if it’s playing near you.

The faith-based drama THE SECRET: DARE TO DREAM (Lionsgate), starring Katie Holmes and Josh Lucas, is directed by Andy Tennant (Hitch, Sweet Home Alabama) and adapted from Rhonda Byrne’s self-help book, The Secret (which is based on a 2006 movie also called The Secret). Originally planned for a theatrical release, it’s now being released as PVOD, which seems to be the way that so many movies are going now. In it, Holmes plays Miranda Wells, a struggling widow living in New Orleans with three kids who on a stormy night meets a kind stranger (Lucas) who tries to pass on his philosophy of using positive thinking to get whatever you want in life.

Mini-Review: I don’t usually buy into some of the faith-based movies that are released every year, but that’s mainly because I rarely get a chance to see any of them, so why bother? I was ready to go into The Secret: Dare to Dream with a healthy amount of skepticism, because it seemed to be another movie about grand miracles… but in fact, it’s just a bland movie pimping Rhonda Byrne’s New Thought technique from her New Age-y self help book.

The idea is that positive thinking is all that it takes to get anything you want, something no less than Oprah quickly glommed onto. While the movie doesn’t hit you over the head with such a message, and “God” is only mentioned once, it also just doesn’t seem to offer much in terms of storytelling to maintain one’s interest.

Katie Holmes does a fine job playing an amiable single mother who meets Josh Lucas’ Bray Johnson as a huge storm is about to hit New Orleans, and he seems like a nice enough fellow as he helps her replace a broken bumper (after she rear-ended him, no less) and then fixing up the house after the storm. But Bray has a secret (hence the title) and it’s in an important envelope that he hesitates to give to Miranda.

The film’s biggest problem is that there never is much in terms of stake when it comes to the drama, because Bray seems to be there to fix everything and make everything better. Miranda’s only other real relation is an awkward one with Jerry O’Connell’s long-time (presumably platonic) friend Tucker, which only gets more awkward when he surprises her by popping the question. She says “Yes” without talking to her own kids first. The whole time while watching the film, I was expecting some sort of big Nicholas Spark level romance between Miranda and Bray, so when Tucker proposes, it throws a real spanner in the works, but only for a little while.

Incidentally, the “secret” of the title that Bray resists telling Miranda until pressured isn’t particularly groundbreaking either. I won’t ruin it. You’ll just be annoyed when it’s finally revealed.

The Secret: Dare to Dream is as generic and bland a tale you can possibly get, one that really doesn’t accomplish very much and feels more like a Lifetime movie than something particularly revelatory.

Rating: 6/10

Jessica Swale’s WW2-set SUMMERLAND (IFC Films) stars Gemma Arterton as fantasy author Alice Lamb, quietly living on the South of England in a small beachside town when she’s presented with a young London evacuee named Frank (Lucas Bond) for her to mind while his father’s at war. Alice lives alone but many years earlier, she had a friendship with a local woman named Vera (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) that turned into something more, despite the taboo of their relationship during those times.

This was another nice surprise, and as I watched the movie, it was hard not to compare it to last week’s Radioactive, since they’re movies intended to appeal to a similar audience. This one seems to be more focused, and Arterton does a better job being likeable despite being as persnickety as Pike’s Marie Currie. Although this isn’t a biopic, it did remind me of films like Goodbye Christopher Robin and Tolkien, and possibly even Finding Neverland. (Incidentally, the Summerland of the title is a mythical place that Alice is writing about, which adds to the fairy tale angle to the film.)

As the film goes along, there’s a pretty major twist, of sorts, and it’s when the stakes in the film start to feel more dramatic as things continue to elevate into the third act. The movie actually opens in 1975 with Penelope Wilton playing the older Alice, although I’m not sure the framing sequence was particularly needed for the film to work the way Swale intended.

Summerland is generally just a nice and pleasant film that stirs the emotions and shows Swale to be a filmmaker on the rise.

Another really nice indie film that might involve a bit more searching is director Sergio Navaretta’s THE CUBAN (Brainstorm Media), written by Alessandra Piccione. It follows 19-year-old Mina (played by Ana Golja), a Canadian pre-med student who lives with her aunt, Bano (Shohreh Aghdashloo), who pushes her career in medicine, although Mina would rather be a singer. At her part-time job at a long-term care facility, Mina meets Luis (Louis Gossett Jr.), a quiet elderly patient who sits in his wheelchair never talking to anyone until Mina discovers his love for music, and the two bond over that, although Mina’s employers don’t think she’s helping Luis despite his obvious change in nature.

This was just a lovely film driven by Golja, who is just wonderful in the lead role with an equally terrific cast around her, and while it gets a little obvious, I can’t imagine anyone not enjoying this film that harks back to some of the great earlier work by Thomas McCarthy, as it follows a touching story that mixes a number of cultures in a surprisingly fluid way. It turned out to be quite a pleasant and unexpected film in the way it deals with subjects like dementia in such a unique and compelling away, especially if you enjoy Cuban music.

The Cuban already played at a couple Canadian theaters, but it will be available via Virtual Cinema and in some American theaters Friday, and you can find out where at the Official Site.

I was pretty excited to see Amy Seimetz’s new film, SHE DIES TOMORROW (NEON), since I was quite a fan of her previous film, Sun Don’t Shine. Besides having played quite a fantastic role in recent independent cinema through her varied associations, Seimetz also cast Kate Lyn Sheil, a fantastic actress, in the main role. It’s a little hard to explain the film’s plot, but essentially Sheil plays Amy, a woman convinced she’s going to die tomorrow, a feeling that starts spreading to others around her. I’m not sure if you would get this just from watching the film, because it’s pretty vague and even a little confusing about what is happening despite the high concept premise.

For the first 15 minutes or so, the camera spends the entire time watching Sheil as she cries and hugs a wall, while listening to the same opera record over and over. When her friend Jane (Jane Adams) comes over to check on her, she finds her vacuuming in a fancy dress. Amy tells her friend that she’s going to die tomorrow, and she wants to be turned into a leather jacket. Soon, after we’re watching Jane, a scientist, going down the same wormhole as Amy. That’s pretty much the running narrative, although the film opens up when we meet some of Jane’s family and friends, including Katie Aselton, Chris Messina, Tunde Adebimpe, Michelle Rodriguez and more. Soon after we meet them, they TOO are convinced that they’re going to die tomorrow. Incidentally (and spoiler!), no one actually dies in the movie. Heck, I’d hesitate even to call this a “horror” movie because it takes the idea of a pandemic that we’ve seen in movies like Bird Box, Contagion and others and sucks all the genre right out of it, but it still works as a character piece.

The thing is that the film looks great and also feels quite unique, which does make She Dies Tomorrow quite compelling, as well as a great vehicle for both Sheil and Seimetz. Even so, it’s also very much a downer and maybe not the best thing to watch if you aren’t in a good place, emotionally. You’ve been warned. It will open at select drive-ins this weekend, but it will then be available via VOD next Friday, August 7.

Next up, we have two fantastic and inspiring docs that premiered at Sundance earlier this year…

In recent years, Ron Howard has made a pretty amazing transition into respectable documentary filmmaker, and that continues with REBUILDING PARADISE (National Geographic), which takes a look at the horrible fires that struck Northern California in November 2018, literally wiping out the town of Paradise and leaving over 50,000 people homeless and killing roughly 85 people.

It’s really horrifying to see the amount of destruction caused when a spark from a faulty transmission line ignites the particularly dry forest surrounding the town of Paradise, destroying the hospital and elementary school and displacing the homeowners. This is obviously going to be a tough film to watch, not only seeing the fires actually raze the town to the ground but also watching these not particularly wealthy people having to contend with losing their homes. (It’s even tougher to watch now since you wonder how COVID may have affected the town as it’s in better shape now then it was last year.)

Using a cinema verité approach (for the first time possible?), Howard finds a small group of people to follow, including the town’s former mayor, the school superintendent, a local police officer, and others. It’s pretty impressive how much time this doc covers, and often, you may wonder if Ron Howard was there at all times, because it seems like he would have to have been embedded with the townspeople for an entire year to get some of the footage.

As I said, this is not an easy film to watch, especially as you watch these people dealing with so much tragedy – if you’ve seen any of the docs about Sandy Hook, you might have some idea how hard this movie may be to watch for you. But it is great, since it shows Howard achieving a new level as a documentary filmmaker with a particularly powerful piece.

Produced by Kerry Washington, THE FIGHT (Magnolia Pictures) is the latest doc from Weiner directors Elyse Steinberg, Josh Kriegman, this time joined as director by that film’s editor, Eli B. Despres. The “fight” of the title is the one between the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Trump administration that began shortly after his inauguration in 2017, his Muslim travel ban that quickly followed, and going up until mid-2019 when a lot of obvious civil rights violations were being perpetrated by the U.S. government.

This is a particularly interesting doc if you weren’t aware of how active the ACLU has been in helping to protect people’s rights on a variety of fronts. The doc covers four particular cases involving immigration, LGBTQ rights, voting rights and reproductive rights, and we watch the lawyers involved in four important cases, including a few that are taken right up to the Supreme Court. In following these four particular lawyers, the filmmakers do a great job helping the viewer understand how important the ACLU is in keeping the conservative right at bay from trying to repeal some previous laws made to protect Americans’ rights.

Of course, this film is particularly timely since it covers a lot of dramatic changes, including the nomination of Justice Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, which ends up being ironic, since he was the judge presiding over an earlier ACLU case involving a pregnant teen immigrant who isn’t allowed to get an abortion. The movie doesn’t skirt the fact that often the ACLU is called upon to help the likes of white supremacists and potential terrorist factions, since they’re about protecting everyone’s rights. I would have loved to hear more about this, but it does cover the backlash to the ACLU after the Charlottesville protests went horribly wrong in 2017.

Be warned that there are moments in this film where the waterworks will start flowing since seeing the ACLU succeed against oppression is particularly moving. If you’ve been following the country’s shifting politics keenly and want to learn more about the ACLU, The Fight does a great job getting behind closed doors and humanizing the organization.

The Fight will be available on all digital and On Demand platforms starting Friday, and you can find out how to rent it at the Official Site.

Vinnie Jones (remember him?) stars in Scott Wiper’s crime-thriller THE BIG UGLY (Vertical) about a pair of British mobsters who travel to West Virginia to make an oil deal in order to launder money. Once there, they encounter some troubles with the locals, particularly the sadistic son of Ron Perlman’s Preston, the man with whom they’re dealing.

Sometimes, as a film critic, you wonder how a movie that has so much potential can turn into such an unmitigated disaster, but then you watch a movie like The Big Ugly, and you realize that some bad filmmakers are better at talking people into doing things than others.

That seems to be the case with this film in which Jones plays Leland, who comes to West Virginia with his boss Harris (McDowell) to make an oil deal with Ron Perlman’s Preston, only for the latter’s son “PJ” (Brandon Sklenar) causing trouble, including the potential murder of Leland’s girlfriend. Of course, one would expect to see tough guy Vinnie Jones out for revenge against the endless parade of sleaze-balls he encounters, and that may have been a better movie than what Wiper ended up making, which is all over the place in terms of tone. (It was only after I watched the film did I realize that Wiper wrote and directed the absolutely awful WWE Film, The Condemned, also starring Jones. If I only knew.)

Jones isn’t even the worst part of the cast, in terms of the acting, because both McDowell and Perlman, two great actors, struggle through the terrible material, though Perlman generally fares better than McDowell, who doesn’t seem to be giving it his all.

There’s a whole subplot involving one of PJ’s friends/co-workers (recent Emmy nominee Nicholas Braun from HBO’s Succession) and his relationship with a pretty local (Lenora Crichlow) that goes nowhere and adds nothing to the overall story. Once PJ is seemingly dealt with, there’s still almost 35 minutes more of movie, including a long monologue by Perlman telling a sorely wasted Bruce McGill how he met McDowell’s character. Not only does it kill any and all momentum leading up to that point, but it’s probably something that should have been part of the set-up earlier in the film.

The fact this movie is so bad is pretty much Wiper’s fault, becuase he wrote a script made up of so many ideas that never really fit together – kind of like Guy Ritchie doing a very bad Deliverance remake before deciding to turn it into a straight-up Western. Wiper then tries his hardest to salvage the movie by throwing in violence and explosions and leaning heavily on the soundtrack. (The fact that both this and the far superior The Shadow of Violence used a song from the Jam was not lost on this music enthusiast.) Regardless, The Big Ugly is a pretty detestable piece of trash that couldn’t end fast enough… and it didn’t. (It played in drive-ins and select theaters last Friday but will be available on digital and On Demand this Friday.)

Available through Virtual Cinemas (supporting Film Forum and the Laemmle in L.A) is Martha Kehoe and Joan Tosoni’s documentary, Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind, about the Canadian singer-songwriter who changed people’s impressions of Canadian culture, covering Lightfoots’s greatest triumphs and failures.

Film at Lincoln Center’s Virtual Cinema will premiere Koji Fukada’s Japanese drama A Girl Missing (Film Movement) on Friday, while New York’s Metrograph Live Screening series continues this week with Manfred Kirchheimer’s Bridge High & Stations of the Elevated starting today through Friday, and then the premiere of Nan Goldin’s Sirens (with two other shorts) starting on Friday. You can subscribe to the series for $5 a month or $50 a year.

Premiering on Disney+ this Friday is Beyoncé’s Black is King, her new visual album inspired by the lessons from The Lion King, as well as the new original Muppets series, Muppets Now. Since I haven’t seen either Lion King movie, I’m definitely looking forward more to the Muppets returning to "television.”

Launching on Netflix today is Matias Mariani’s Shine Your Eyes about a Nigerian musician who travels to Sao Paulo to look for his estranged brother and bring him back to Nigeria, as well as Sue Kim’s doc short, The Speed Cubers, set in the world of competitive Rubik cube solving and the friendly rivalry between two young “speedcubers.” Also, Season 2 of The Umbrella Academy will premiere on Netflix this Friday.

Premiering on Shudder tomorrow (Thursday, July 30) is Rob Savage’s Host, the first horror movie made during the quarantine about a group of six friends who decide to hold a séance over Zoom.

Amazon’s drive-in series continues tonight with “Movies to Inspire Your Inner Child,” playing Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Hook.

Next week, more movies not in theaters!

By the way, if you read this week’s column and have bothered to read this far down, feel free to drop me some thoughts at Edward dot Douglas at Gmail dot Com or drop me a note or tweet on Twitter. I love hearing from readers … honest!

#TheWeekendWarrior #SheDiesTomorrow #Summerland #TheCuban #Movies #Reviews #TheFight #RebuildingParadise #TheShadowOfViolence #VOD #Streaming #TheSecretDareToDream

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zzdrkzz · 7 years ago

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Mass Effect: Andromeda

This is going to be one big rant, about similar to my X-files one a year ago. Structure.

The background: Been a long time fan and player of all things Mass Effect. Played through all 3 games with all dlc more times than I can count. This isn’t some heartless, soulless, one sided rant, this is addressing an insult to long time fans of the ME series.

Foreground: Leading up to this game, I was starting to get hyped about it, the gameplay looked promising, the premise had me intrigued. I was going to buy it day one, but then school got crazy. During that time I read reviews about how bad the game was, as always, I’m skeptical of reviews and 9 times out of 10 I never trust them. I hesitated on buying it when school let out and decided to wait until a trial was released, which it was a month ago. I played the trial which ends about 3 hours into the game. I “acquired” the full game soon after since I had some interest in the game, which had me restart the game. Then the anger started to build up as I loaded the game...

Rant: The main menu of the game is very true to the previous Mass Effect games, you create your own character/choose trait/choose background/choose name/hit start game. PLOT: After that, the cracks in this game reveal themselves within the first 30 seconds. It starts off with some quote that should get you pumped about the lore and then delves into what is going on. Essentially your on an arc that is meant to go into deep space (about 600 years of cryo sleep) to explore and find habitable planets. For about as long it took for you to read that previous sentence was about as long as they took to explain all of this to you. They completely spit out the plot.

I felt no emotion yet, wasn’t even intrigued, mainly because of how fast they presented the lore to you, but how bland the voice actor was. VOICE ACTING: Every SINGLE FUCKING CHARACTER has the BLANDEST voice ever. Not even remotely kidding on this. It truly is amazing how bad the voice acting is by everybody. At first I thought the animation was causing it to seem bad, but nope, the voice acting is utter garbage. The dialogue makes it worse. Back on topic, so you wake up from cryo sleep, find out your twin brother is stuck in cryo sleep because of plot device. Your character doesn’t even give a shit that your brother could die (OH PROBABLY BECAUSE THEY SAY HE’LL BE SAFE), basically killing any tension for me to care about him. So we brush over the fact I have a twin brother and go to the nearest planet.

SQUADMATES: You scout out a planet with your squadmates and your father (he dies, don’t worry it’s so goddamn obvious). The planet is pretty interesting, they introduce you to an alien species (main villain) that immediately want to kill you. Whats weird here is that your squadmates talk as if you guys are best friends and just say weird lines in combat. Let me give you some contrast. In the first game you are slowly introduced to your squadmates and over the course of the first game you start to form bonds with them. You learn their quirks, emotions, background and makes you understand their combat dialogue more. That way by the 2nd game (Mass Effect 2) when you have your squadmates back and they’re cracking jokes you understand why they would do that because you know that character so well already. This game just assumes that you know everyone right off the bat and are best friends. It assumes that me as a player fully understands this character based off their 5 second screen appearance and bland voice acting. (WELL I FUCKING DON’T AND IT’S INSULTING).

DEATH: So you get to the cutscene where your dad dies, it has no emotion and no purpose at all besides making you the leader of everything. There is no emotional applied here since you’ve only seen your dad on screen for about 15 seconds in total. He honestly just feels like a squadmate than a father since your characters interact so weirdly with one another. Not going to talk more about this, it was so pointless.

LEADER: Your character is meant to be this leader of everything, a strong leader that is meant to sacrifice herself for the greater good. The issue is, she just kind of nonchalantly wants to be a leader. Her dialogue is constantly talking about “we’ll see what happens” or “I guess we’ll give it a shot” or even better, “this will be an adventure!” She doesn’t seem like a strong leader at all, more like a spoiled teen in high school driving a hot pink mazda with “PINK” on the bumper that dad bought for her. In the original Mass Effect your main character was just a soldier that learned about this great threat to humanity. He began to take matters into his own hands and didn’t back down from anything or go “THIS WILL BE AN ADVENTURE” like a kid going to the zoo.

ANIMATIONS: I know, I KNOW, this topic is done to death. The animations are terrible. The reason why I have this section is to talk about this: The entire Mass Effect games are most known for their facial animations. Hell, the first 3 games have the best animations an NPC could have in an RPG, you can read their emotions easily. The animations helped amplify the voice acting and it even made it so that every alien species in the game was unique. Compare to these krogan voice actors from Mass Effect 2: https://youtu.be/9Q9acaCQAlU To this very odd choice in voice modulation for this Krogan in Andromeda: https://youtu.be/WKxk1LEyYyc?t=1m29s You see what I’m getting at? And why I was completely dumbfounded when I first saw that reveal of the Krogan species in Andromeda? That brings me to my next topic.

EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING IS HUMAN: Every species in this game sounds human. Its oddly crisp, flat, and has no inflection at all. My breaking point was a result of this. I was initiating dialogue with a character when I got so sick and tired of hearing every character sound so clean with their dialogue. It was strange, it was just so bland. Their was no inflection, every species sounded the same. I didn’t even quit out, I got so pissed I just turned off my computer because I was not about to sit through a 40 hour game listening to the same monotone voices.

USER INTERFACE: It’s very clunky, annoying to navigate and not very responsive. There a lot of micro managing within the menus and the game is nothing but menus. It’s annoying to navigate and just cumbersome.

FINAL THOUGHTS: The best way to put this game is like reading a fan fiction story on some website. It doesn’t feel like it was ever meant to be a unique game, the story is boring and very predictable. You can already assume how the story is going to go early on because they use plot twists that have been done to death. You are never fully immersed into the world at all or why you should even care about saving anyone. There are not any high stakes that can compel you to stay with this story. They should of just dropped the Mass Effect title and just called it “Andromeda.” They should of made the plot more intriguing like what if you found out the initiative was never meant to succeed. What if it had a more sinister approach like how Fallout Vaults worked? To the public it was a safe haven, but on the inside, it was just a big science experiment. I’m glad to see that Casey Hudson has returned to the studio and that this series is put on hold for awhile. They should scrap the initiative story line all together and just start anew.

#mass effect andromeda #mass effect #pc #zzdrkzz #docsrealization #rant #just being honest here fam

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entergamingxp · 5 years ago

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Persona 5 Royal Review — This Palace’s Treasure Gleams Even Brighter

March 17, 2020 9:00 AM EST

The long-awaited Persona 5 Royal is finally upon us, with tons of new content and gameplay overhauls to create a more robust experience.

Persona 5 Royal is the upgraded version of the immensely popular JRPG that originally released in Japan back in 2016. With this definitive edition of the game comes a variety of new changes which include two new characters and Confidants, a brand new semester and Palace that culminates in two new endings, new gameplay mechanics, and reworked dungeons and boss battles.

There are also a variety of new minigames, gameplay balance fixes, expanded character scenes, and so much more. While it might still share much of the same DNA as the original Persona 5, Atlus has packed P5R full of new content that is sure to delight newcomers and veterans of the original with a far more robust experience.

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“Atlus has packed Persona 5 Royal full of new content that is sure to delight newcomers and even veterans of the original with a far more robust experience.”

Royal starts off with a bang as it brandishes two of its biggest additions in the prologue. The protagonist, codenamed Joker, ends up using his grappling hook to reach a new area of the stairwell during his chase scene. Afterward, he encounters a mysterious and masked young woman, who wields a Persona, and aids him in battle. She departs just as abruptly as she arrived — with parting words hinting at her relationship to him — and Joker continues on his way.

Following this opening, we delve into the story proper: a tale of high school students who band together with the help of a cat-like ally named Morgana to dive into the hearts of rotten adults. Known as the “Phantom Thieves,” they slowly become infamous both online and in the real world and are soon pulled into a much greater and more sinister plot.

While the main premise from the original Persona 5 remains intact, it soon becomes apparent that the story has been tangibly altered due to the added presence of the two new characters. First is the mysterious girl, Kasumi, whom we met in the opening. The second is the psychologist Maruki, brought in by Shujin Academy after the infamous events of Kamoshida occur. Both newcomers are as interesting and nuanced as the rest of the main cast and it’s clear that plenty of effort went into reworking both the general writing and the spoken dialogue to ensure that they fit in with the plot seamlessly.

Both characters even receive their own Confidants (Faith and Councillor respectively), giving the protagonist time to cozy up and learn more about their backstories and motivations. I found their Confidants to be engaging, funny, and well-written, particularly Maruki’s, as his methods of counseling mirror how real-world psychologists and psychiatrists’ sessions run. There’s even a tangible perk for ranking up their Confidants. For each level, Kasumi awards the hero with a 5 HP increase while Maruki provides him with a 5 SP increase. But even ignoring these benefits, the quality of writing alone places them as two of my favorite Confidants, only beaten out by Toranosuke Yoshida.

Just as Kasumi and Maruki are intertwined with the protagonist, they’re also deeply connected with each other. This all comes to a head during the new semester and final Palace, which spirals into an emotional reveal and conclusion that contrasts well with the beautiful aesthetics of both the dungeon itself and the true final boss designs. Without going into spoiler territory, I found the resolution between Kasumi, Maruki, and Joker to be wholly satisfying, if not somewhat predictable.

Receiving some much-needed love is the ever divisive Akechi, as his entire Confidant route has been completely overhauled. As a result, his route is slotted in at a different point in the story to go along with more screen time and importance in the bonus sections of the new endgame content. While my opinion of him is still rather lukewarm, I found myself appreciating his character more due to these improvements.

“Both newcomers are as interesting and nuanced as the rest of the main cast and it’s clear that plenty of effort went into reworking both the general writing and the spoken dialogue to ensure that they fit in with the plot seamlessly.”

The main cast also shares in the glow of additional screen time. Throughout the game, there are new holidays featuring brand new cutscenes and voiced dialogue, new conversations that lead to special team-up moves being unlocked, new portrait artwork giving each character a more dynamic range of expressions, and a third tier of Personae that are unlocked during the new semester (similar to Persona 4 Golden), among other features. Even the last party member, Haru, receives slightly better treatment, though her late introduction to the Phantom Thieves still hurts her overall development.

The infamous scene at the end of the drug trade investigation in Shinjuku has also been altered in the English version of the game. The two gay men, who in the original attempted to sexually harass and assault a teenager (AKA Ryuji), have had their dialogue changed to instead mistakenly believe that he’s into the drag scene because he’s been standing around their club and attempt to help him out. While not perfect in its execution, it’s a far more genuinely funny scene than the one in the original Persona 5 and is much less painful to watch in action. Not to mention, it’s a very natural change that fits much more nicely; if you weren’t aware of the original scene, you would be hard-pressed to notice any difference.

Gameplay gets plenty of fixing as well. Each dungeon has been reworked to incorporate the grappling hook mechanic, which at first feels limited due to its fixed uses. Players will find that the hook not only serves as a far better way for Joker to traverse through each Palace but also lets you access brand new areas where Will Seeds can be found. Each Palace contains three seeds and finding them all unlocks a special accessory that, when equipped, allows that party member to permanently access a certain useful skill.

Then there’s Showtime, the brand new super moves that are unlocked throughout the main story via conversations between two teammates. This allows for two party members, whether in the active or backup party, to team up and unleash a Showtime attack that deals massive damage to the enemy. Though incredibly fun to watch and even more useful, they’re extremely powerful and destroy the balance of each battle as they’re much stronger than All Out Attacks. Luckily, they’re optional, so you can simply ignore them when they crop up.

Boss battles have also been revamped to either provide more of a challenge or to better connect them with their respective Palace. For instance, Kamoshida’s battle now involves two new “slaves” that help him set up his special attack. Madarame’s battle features a new stage, and Kaneshiro’s fight now requires that you toss away an item to avoid his most powerful attack. While small changes, they make each boss feel more fleshed out and memorable from a gameplay perspective. Though, my one complaint is that the connection between the Palace boss and their corresponding story arc could have been stronger and made more personal, resulting in a more compelling conclusion.

The side quest dungeon, Mementos, sees its fair share of upgrades as well. The dungeon portions have been expanded and the randomized floors are often much larger in size, lending itself to more exploration. That said, why couldn’t they change the music sooner? Only the later sections of Mementos play an excellent remix of the main theme. Most of the dungeon is still filled with that unfortunate, bland track that’s stuck on an infinite repeat, which is personally disappointing to me, especially considering all the enhancements to the dungeon design itself. The brightest spot in the host of changes comes in the form of a strange young boy named Jose who appears before your party the first time they venture into Mementos. This is the same boy from the Thieves’ Den.

“While small changes, they make each boss feel more fleshed out and memorable from a gameplay perspective.”

Jose opens up a special shop that sells battle items based on the number of flowers you collect for him within the dungeon. And if you located special stickers scattered around platforms, you can use them to change gameplay properties inside Mementos which can lead to more rewards from battle, higher encounter rates, and so on. It doesn’t hurt that Jose is adorable and his shop UI is literally the most gorgeous thing you will see in the game (considering how polished the UI is in general, this is extremely high praise).

Even the Velvet Room hasn’t been spared from improvements. One of the major new features is called Challenge Battles. By speaking to the wardens, you can fight foes using your current party to aim for the highest score by dealing as much damage as possible. You’ll receive a reward from the wardens based on your score and because you won’t get a game over if you lose, it’s a fun and low-risk challenge.

Another added mechanic is the fusion alarm status, which occurs randomly after defeating enemies in a Palace. When fusing during this time, any resulting Persona will have greatly boosted stats and a chance to pass on new special skills. The downside is that fusion accidents are much more likely, which can result in wildly different and sometimes disappointing results. Despite the clear drawback, it’s a great mechanic that injects some much-needed excitement and vibrance in the otherwise monotonous grind of fusing.

Personae themselves — both with Joker and the other playable characters — have been upgraded with a brand new feature called Skill Traits. In Royal, each Persona possesses a unique trait that grants certain abilities, such as decreased SP cost for skills under a certain element or increased potency for spells that have a single target. These special traits can also be passed on just like regular skills and can also be passed on during fusion, allowing for even more customization options. Their general existence, especially skills that cut down on SP cost, are so useful during dungeon runs that I found myself wondering how I managed to traverse Palaces in vanilla P5.

It’s also worth mentioning here that another major change to Royal sees Morgana cutting back on the number of times they make Joker go to bed early, which has a tremendous effect on how quickly players can rank up their parameters. Even on days in which venturing outside isn’t possible, you can still engage in a multitude of tasks that raise your social stats. For instance, in my own playthrough, by the middle of July, three of my stats were already rank three and the other two were rank four.

More minigames make their debut in Persona 5 Royal and not only are they a welcome break from the intensity of the main story, but they also provide players with gameplay advantages.

The Thieves Den is an example of the former as it lets players use collected P Medals, the currency of this base, in order to purchase artwork for your gallery, soundtracks, and trophies depicting major story events to decorate said base with. You win P Medals either by obtaining awards or by playing the card game Tycoon with your party members. I’ve spent so much time playing Tycoon that it often feels like its own separate (albeit much smaller) game and the enthusiast voice work and expressions from the characters really immerses you in the experience of sitting back and playing a fun round of cards with your friends.

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The last minigame comes from a new district that Ryuji opens up, called Kichijoji. The area itself, bustling with tons of eateries and shops selling unique wares, is the largest explorable location in the game. It’s also home to the Darts and Billiards lounge, which features a darts game reminiscent of the one from the Yakuza series in that it utilizes the motion controls built into the DualShock 4. The darts minigame is fun, fairly easy to master, and best of all, it can be used to rank up a team member’s Baton Pass. The higher the rank, the more benefits that party members will receive whenever Baton Pass is used in a turn, which includes dealing more damage and HP/SP recovery.

Graphics have been noticeably upgraded in Persona 5 Royal as they’ve been optimized for the PS4, resulting in a crisper look to the character models and 3D environments. PS4 Pro owners haven’t been left in the dust either, as there’s a 4K setting to choose from.

There are also several new music tracks in Royal and for the most part, they’re quite enjoyable, particularly the new battle theme. That being said, I wasn’t too impressed with the true boss theme; while a great track on its own, it lacked the weighty presence and punch that a final boss theme should have.

“If you never got around to playing vanilla Persona 5, then Persona 5 Royal is now the perfect starting point.”

If you never got around to playing vanilla Persona 5, then Persona 5 Royal is now the perfect starting point. Filled with a plethora of new story and gameplay content to go along with all of the DLC from the original, this is without a doubt the definitive edition.

However, what if you did sink over 100 hours into the original? Then the question becomes, how much did you enjoy Persona 5? Because make no mistake, even with all the shiny new things included here with Royal, this is still Persona 5. That means you will absolutely be playing through the same 100 hours of the base game since no effort has been made to fix one of the most egregious issues of the original: its pacing. First time players discovering each twist and turn will most decidedly find Persona 5 Royal exciting and fresh. However, veterans may have a difficult time staying engaged the whole way through, even with all the bells and whistles.

Regardless, for an updated re-release, Persona 5 Royal is certainly worth the price of admission for newcomers. And if you enjoyed the original and are eager to jump back into the fray, then there’s certainly more than enough new content and improvements to justify a second purchase.

March 17, 2020 9:00 AM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/03/persona-5-royal-review-this-palaces-treasure-gleams-even-brighter/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=persona-5-royal-review-this-palaces-treasure-gleams-even-brighter

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recentanimenews · 5 years ago

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ONINAKI Lets You Confront Grief in a Unique Way

In all my years of playing video games, I’ve found that the games I enjoy the most fall into one of three categories. First, of course, are the big budget AAA games―the attention grabbing titles forged from having millions and millions of dollars funnelled into their development (and marketing). It comes as no surprise when these games are good after months and months worth of footage and impressions have already circulated. Next are the beautiful disasters. These are the games so erroneously awful that they somehow loop back around and become outrageously entertaining. A rare breed of game for sure, but a fun one nonetheless.

The types of games that make up the third category, though, are the ones nearest and dearest to my heart. These games release with little fanfare and acclaim. Their graphics and gameplay are rarely anything to write home about and their fan bases are quite small. The fans they do have, though, are passionate ones. Whatever they might lack in polish and development funds, to their fans they more than make up for it with their ambitious ideas and unique stories. These games are the raw gemstones of the video game industry. Underneath all the rough, jagged edges a captivating game can be found. ONINAKI―the latest game from Square Enix and Tokyo RPG Factory on Steam, Switch, and PS4―is one of these games.

Death is held in high regard in the world of ONINAKI, such so that grief is strictly forbidden. Grief shackles the spirits of the dead to the world of the living. Unable to reincarnate, these spirits are known as the Lost. Should the Lost continue to wander in this form, they’ll eventually transform into monsters known as the Fallen. Rare individuals who can travel between the worlds of the living and the dead are known as Watchers. These Watchers aide in the cycle of reincarnation by eliminating the Fallen and ushering the Lost onto their next lives. It’s in this world that ONINAKI sets its sights on Kagachi―a stoic Watcher well-acquainted with grief. A chance encounter with an ageless girl named Linne and the vengeful spirit pursuing her sets Kagachi off on a bloody journey to discover the truth about reincarnation.

From the outset there are noticeable conflicts happening within ONINAKI. The first is between the game’s art style and its actual content. The game is presented in a beautiful 3D quasi-chibi style not unlike Bravely Default. It’s textures can look rather flat and its environments angular, but there’s a certain quality to the lighting that gives it a realistic sense of depth. This combination gives its world and characters an overall cute, toy-like appearance. Imagine my surprise, then, when the game’s tutorial chapter concluded with me executing a pair of grief-stricken parents who were mourning the death of their son.

ONINAKI is a game that’s infatuated with death, and as such treads in some rather dark territory. The Watchers’ order exists less to protect the citizens of the realm than it does to uphold the tenets of reincarnation. This can mean anything from stopping “unsanctioned killings” at the hands of monsters and serial killers to euthanizing the sick and assisting the hopeless in committing suicide. The game never clearly attempts to comment on these controversial topics or the debates being held over them around the world. It instead simply presents them as the natural result of a religious order that worships death.

Death and reincarnation as objects of worship are central to the other major conflict within ONINAKI. Though there are specific, named enemies Kagachi finds himself in conflict with throughout the game’s story, the ultimate conflict Kagachi faces is between himself and his faith in reincarnation. That much is fairly obvious from the beginning, but the twists and turns that take place throughout the story and the conclusions he’s ultimately led to are best left experienced by oneself.

My feelings on the story by the end were honestly pretty mixed. ONINAKI’s premise is novel and intrigued me instantly. The game’s gradual worldbuilding felt like a breadcrumb trail made up of bits and pieces of truth about the world that led all the way to the story’s final big reveal. It was a rewarding experience that had me constantly on the hook for the next morsel of information. It unfortunately fumbles, though, when it comes to writing Kagachi. He’s a bland and boring character in a game that lacks a party of lively personalities to make up for his lack of one. It’s hard to ever understand what he’s thinking, so his eventual moments of “character growth” come across less as believable actions and more things he has to do because he’s the hero. That combined with some pacing issues in the game’s second half are the biggest issues in an otherwise pretty good story.

Still, though, a good story on its own probably isn’t enough to recommend. Luckily, it doesn’t have to be, because ONINAKI is actually pretty fun to play too! When not experiencing the story, players will be running around 3D areas battling hordes of Fallen with spiritual weapons called Daemons. Daemons are rare beings who were unable to reincarnate yet too strong-willed to become Fallen. Only elite Watchers are able to possess and wield a Daemon. You start off with one sword-wielding Daemon in ONINAKI, but as you explore and progress through the story you’ll find many more each with their own unique weapons and combat styles. Up to four Daemons can be equipped at a time and can be cycled through as you please during battle.

Every Daemon starts off with a basic attack and one special skill that can be triggered on a cooldown. As you continue to fight with that Daemon defeated enemies have a chance of dropping upgrade items called Soulstones unique to the Daemon you’re using. Each Daemon has a unique skill tree where these Soulstones can be exchanged for new skills, passive buffs, and even memories from that Daemon’s past life. Each Daemon has their own set of stats separate from Kagachi’s increasing stat levels and Soulstone drops are rather generous, so upgrading a newly acquired Daemon to the level of your very first is a fairly easy task.

The Daemons are easily one of ONINAKI’s best features. Unlocking new Daemons adds a lot of variety to the game’s combat. In the interest of time I mainly stuck to two Daemons―one for fighting normal enemies and another for boss battles―but had I more time I would have tried to grind out the skill trees of the rest as well. While grinding out these skill trees is nowhere near a herculean task, it isn’t a very fun one. A few of the passive skills locked away in every Daemon’s skill trees are features that simply make combat less fun to be without. The simple ability to cancel out of skills, attacks, and a Daemon’s unique mobility option is essential to a satisfying combat flow, so it’s rather frustrating to have that feature locked away behind multiple upgrades. I’d say it takes about a full level of forcing yourself to use the Daemon you want to use to be able to upgrade them to a point where they’re actually fun to use. Stick with it, though, and they can become absolute wrecking balls.

The various Daemons found throughout the game are also, surprisingly, the game’s best characters. Not only are their designs all quite captivating, but also their individual stories are some of the best writing in the entire game. Each Daemon was once a living soul within the world of ONINAKI, and as you go through their skill trees you’ll receive pieces of their backstory and find out how each one of them died. In addition to being well-written side stories in their own right, they tie in to the central narrative and themes of ONINAKI as well. At a certain point, I found myself wanting to upgrade my Daemons less for the combat benefits and more so I could learn more about them. In fact, once I finish this review I plan on going back and doing just that. Given how much time was put into fleshing them out as characters, it’s an honest shock that Daemons never factor into the story as anything other than a weapon.

Looking back on my time with ONINAKI, I think it can be best summed up as a game that’s more than the sum of its parts. It’s an odd patchwork of concepts and ideas―weird, ambitious ideas that don’t always make a lot of sense or even feel like finished thoughts. It’s a conflicting game that strikes conflicting tones, a decision reflective of the many dualities presented in the narrative. There are two sides to this story, two worlds to jump between, two names for our heroes, two choices to make at the very end, and two moments I’ll remember most from my time with ONINAKI. The first was a moment of loss; the other an inconsequential choice. ONINAKI may not be my favorite game, but it is my favorite type of game, one I’ll be recommending for years to come.

REVIEW ROUNDUP

+ Beautiful soundtrack

+ Good character designs and well-realized art style

+ Daemon side stories contain some of the best writing in the game

+/- Novel premise and strong ideas that mostly carry on to a satisfying conclusion

+/- Gameplay is varied and interesting, though some boss encounters are altogether frustrating

- Essential quality of life combat features are locked behind upgrades

- Kagachi is a really dull protagonist

How does ONINAKI compare to your favorite Square Enix RPGs? Let us know in the comments below!

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Danni Wilmoth is a Features writer for Crunchyroll and co-host of the video game podcast Indiecent. You can find more words from her on Twitter @NanamisEgg.

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: [email protected]

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

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terryblount · 6 years ago

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The Grand Tour Game – Review

You watch Jeremy Clarkson as stepped out of the BBC building, Grabbing a cabbie as he head towards the airport to catch a flight bound for Los Angeles. Once there, he enters a Fisker-Galpin Rocket Mustang and then… you take control of the car.

This is basically the premise of The Grand Tour Game by Amazon’s Game Studio, an Arcade racer that puts us into the shoes of their presenters. But other than the show’s popularity, does The Grand Tour hold on its own as a game?

Presentation

For Starters, the game in itself looks cartoonish, which is expected for an arcade racer. Though the car models themselves are pretty solid due to the devs getting help from the guys who made rFactor 2, where even the challenge vehicles (RV, a bubble-wrapped covered Jaguar) have their own damage model and such. To be frank, I never seen an arcade racer with this level of car models since Ridge Racer Unbounded.. for good reason.

But one thing that I really dislike is the usage of motion blur (which you can see throughout the pictures of this review), which is suppose to make the game look smoother, I guess but it looks awful when it’s static like in screenshots. And another gripe is the audio being pretty bland for something this grand of a project, but it is Amazon’s first racing game so these types of non-issues hopefully be made better in a future installment.

As mentioned in the intro blurb, the game will transition players from an episode of the show into gameplay, almost seemingly and it fits quite well due to the developers pacing of turning the show’s car segment into gameplay, think of it as an FMV game with driving elements.

And I think this is a great usage of the Live Services model because content is (as of writing this review) is arriving weekly in tandem with the show’s episodes and they even have a cheeky way to bypass licensing issue, like with a certain McLaren or Jaguar car, by showing something else from their show or creating something else entirely. A nice touch and a good way to not skip out of content.

James May explaining some stuff on their game, thanks “Fortza”.

Gameplay

Now, the most important thing about a racing game is the handling and I’m glad to say that it’s quite solid for an arcade racer, they have this weighty feel to the cars when drifting in tight corners (There is a button specifically to drift too).

Drift everywhere really

Besides driving, there are a few mini-games scattered throughout the stages, like for instance an on-rails shooting segment during one of the episodes set in Wales. These types of stuff help deviate from it just being just a racing game but more of a party game that you could play with friends.

There were shooting segments in the old arcade racers, right?

Speaking of friends, the multiplayer is couch co-op only and I think it’s a good idea because the game’s uniqueness of having races with power-ups (akin to Mario Kart) is more evidence that TGT Game is a fun game with friends over.

Content & Longevity

Content-wise, if you are fans of the TV series (or the old Top Gear), then this is quite a package. Heck, it’s cheaper than paying for Amazon Prime to only watch the show. And while the constant updates will end in May (the end of Season 3), I think they could add in the old episodes as extra stages, who knows.

But for those just wanting an arcade racer but not a fan of the series, this game doesn’t have the stuff you normally expect from this sort of game (you know,open-world or customizable cars), nor bring anything new to the table. But it could be a good purchase when on sale.

Maybe post Season 3 we’ll see more content?

Verdict

The Grand Tour Game is an interesting title, blending in arcade racer with FMV and party games influences within this 60 Ringgit title. As a long-time fan of the trio, it’s a great game to play and it helps to fuse together what makes the show fun into a nice playable package.

I even believe that those that aren’t even fans of the show could find some fun within it too, so give it a try.

Played on a base PS4, Review copy purchased by reviewer.

The Grand Tour Game – Review published first on https://touchgen.tumblr.com/

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