__Welcome to my next compilation of Twitter-length reviews of what I've been watching/playing over the past month. And in this case, it's been quite a busy month for me!🙂
__As well as continuing with my list of unplayed games (I'm currently going through titles from the year 2001), I've once again started watching movies more frequently. I saw two movies at the cinema in September, and I've started another marathon at home consisting of a pair of movies per day. They're mostly other movies from 2021, but I kicked it off with two miscellaneous pairs: the two Inbetweeners movies because I'd just recently watched the show, and a rewatch of the first two Conjuring movies in preparation for the third one. (For the time being, I'm still avoiding the spin-off movies like Annabelle and The Nun.)
__Also, after I started said batch of movies, I decided to start watching a few other game walkthroughs in between. As I've been going through my list, there've been quite a few games that I've skipped over and left unrated. There are a couple of new additions that I've just recently decided to download, but most of the others are fighting games and Square RPGs. With the fighting games, watching longplays is my only option because I just flat-out suck at them; every time I try to play them, I just get clobbered! And as for the Square RPGs, I've said before that I think it'd be best to watch blind Let's Plays of them first, because they're so long and rambling that I quickly lose interest when I try to play them myself, and longplays without commentary don't help much.
__So, with all that said, let's get started.
__Section one: cinema releases.
The humour enhances the believability of the characters and, by extension, the situation. The characters themselves are fascinating. It's exceedingly funny and exciting, and definitely one of the best MCU movies.
My rating: 85%.
A fun movie about a video game NPC who becomes self-aware. I especially like how jolly and content he is initially despite being surrounded by mayhem and carnage, and I wasn't expecting the cameos from gaming YouTubers, including Jacksepticeye.
My rating: 75%.
__As it happens, I'm going to see No Time to Die later today, but my review for that will have to wait until next month.
__Section two: other movies.
Essentially an extended episode of the TV show, but the writing isn't as sharp. It maintains the awkwardness of the social situations, but the boys' witty remarks are spread much thinner. Still, it has its share of decent moments.
My rating: 70%.
It's a dud of a final outing for the gang, because it neglects meaningful character arcs and cranks the vulgar jokes up to a million. I wanted to shut it off after seeing a dog lick Neil's drooping balls less than five minutes in!
My rating: 45%.
Not terribly zesty, but it does its job in telling a story of self-affirmation after a devastating accident, with neat parallels in one disabled soul aiding another. It's pretty cool that the movie's real-life subjects co-produced it.
My rating: 60%.
The plot summary made it sound like a Rear Window rip-off, but it turned out to be distinctly memorable for all the wrong reasons. Everything about it is absurdly over-the-top, making it a loud and utterly ridiculous thriller.
My rating: 40%.
The conversations are pretty scatterbrained, with the subject often coming up for no apparent reason, but each one is captivating while it lasts. As well as personally analysing the two characters, they cover topics like messages in film.
My rating: 75%.
It's decent, but there's only so much a movie so bureaucratic in nature can interest me. Ken wants to help those affected in his own way, but the testimonies of the victims' families challenge the core question of how to put a price value on life.
My rating: 60%.
I probably would have found it touching if the movie didn't immediately present the characters (and itself) as loud, boisterous and obnoxiously annoying. That and I hated the frequent garnishes like Snapchat filters.
My rating: 35%.
It's predictable and nothing special, but Kate's desperate situation and solid action scenes are enough to keep it interesting. The makeup on her radiation burns is terrific, and some moments are so visceral and bloody that they're wince-inducing.
My rating: 65%.
Ruby can't abandon her deaf family who depends on her, but she feels they're holding her back from pursuing her passion for music. The dilemma is truly compelling, and drives an irresistible drama with a great editing choice in the third act.
My rating: 85%.
A quiet but intriguing drama in which each family member has their own story to tell. At the centre is Jacob's determination to start a farm and the friction it causes with the rest of the family. The ending implies the significance of the title.
My rating: 80%.
__Section three: video games. The last one on the list is the first of the bunch that I'm going back and watching for the sake of filling in ratings for them.
It's quite fun to play (when it's not being tiresomely repetitive), and the music is awesome. The story is good, but it seems more concerned with being a string of challenges to get a high score within the recommended time.
My rating: 75%.
One of my favourite Zelda games for its plot focusing on the seasons and, above all, the charming Game Boy Color graphics. Its ingenious method of telling an overarching story will be tested in the next game.
My rating: 90%.
This one's more of a slow burner than Oracle of Seasons, and I don't see what the Essences have to do with time. But its echoes of Link to the Past are certainly welcome, and the Switch Hook is way too much fun.🙂
My rating: 85%.
It's good classic spooky fun, and wrangling ghosts with a vacuum cleaner makes it feel like an unofficial Ghostbusters game.🙂 I like how the soundtrack is often Luigi humming to himself. However, the control is a major handicap.
My rating: 75%.
It tries to combine the grittiness of a film noir with the flamboyant action of a John Woo movie. Aside from the fact that I can't stand the latter, the two styles don't gel at all. Plus, the plot is dull, and the control is dreadfully clunky.
My rating: 30%.
I heard beforehand that this game was a rush job, and it definitely shows. The cutscenes are cheap – usually just a couple of still images – it has its share of bad translations, and neither the plot nor the bosses are all that interesting.
My rating: 45%.
It repeats its predecessor in many ways, but there's actually a narrative reason why.🙂 It has its moments – quite a few – but I never got that into the story overall because it's so heavy on political machinations.
My rating: 70%.
The name of the game is deductive reasoning. Sometimes I spotted contradictions easily, but other times, the steps required to advance are needlessly convoluted. I like the in-universe reason why the trials are so short.🙂
My rating: 80%.
The tournament spans five countries, and each of the ten opponents and locations is distinct. Still, nothing's all that remarkable except for the insane slowdown when someone gets knocked back, and the voices that sound like shit.
My rating: 55%.
__I have a few more comments to make about several of those games.
__I played Halo as part of The Master Chief Collection on Steam, with the graphics set to classic, so it resembled the original version that put the Xbox on the map.
__With Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages, it doesn't matter which order you play them in; you can link either one to the other with a password. I just went with Seasons first because I've always heard it mentioned first, in the Angry Video Game Nerd's Chronologically Confused About Zelda video and even on the Wikipedia page, so I can't help but think of it as the first in the set, like the Laurel to Ages' Hardy.
__Luigi's Mansion is my first GameCube game ever.🙂 I don't have the console itself, but luckily my Wii is the original model, so it's backwards-compatible with GameCube games. I couldn't resist buying a few once I found that out.🙂
__My experience with Max Payne was quite a fiasco! I started playing the PS2 version, but like I said, the control was unbearably clunky, and whether I set it to inverted aim or not, neither felt intuitive to me. I tried playing it on Steam instead, but there was no sound on the opening cutscene, so that wasn't going to work either. Now, usually with these games, I watch longplays when I can't quickly progress through the game myself, but with Max Payne, I took it a step further. I ended up watching Gamematics' "game movie" of it, because I found the game so fucking boring that watching a full playthrough was proving to be draining, so I felt compelled to watch a version that removed as much filler as possible.
__Yes, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney was originally released on the Game Boy Advance in 2001… but only in Japan. The rest of the world didn't see it until 2005, on the DS. I played it as part of Ace Attorney Trilogy on the Switch. Or rather, I played the first two cases, until the steps required to advance the investigations started getting ridiculously convoluted, so I let a longplay take it from there. I couldn't even be bothered to finish the fifth chapter, "Rise from the Ashes", because the case itself wasn't doing much for me, and the sheer length of it was really putting me off. Since that chapter was a brand new addition for the DS version, I figured it was superfluous anyway.
__And now let's end with a little additional section. Mega Man X6 was so short that I decided to fill out the rest of that day with a couple more short longplays of games I wanted to see but not necessarily play: Thunderbirds, which I'd briefly played before and wasn't very impressed; Ninja Gaiden, which has a reputation as one of the hardest games ever made; and Kid Icarus, because its 3DS sequel comes very highly recommended, particularly by Joshscorcher, so I thought I might as well check out the original first.
Its charm ends with the awesome 8-bit rendition of the show's intro. Between calling Brains "Dr Brain" and constant shooting frenzies with no rescues whatsoever, you have to wonder if the creators even knew anything about Thunderbirds.
My rating: 40%.
It's fast-paced action with some of the best music the NES has to offer. It's also an incredibly cinematic game, with stylised cutscenes that must have been revolutionary. Still, I don't need to experience its legendary difficulty first-hand.
My rating: 85%.
A prime example of a game that requires the manual or a guide, otherwise you'd have no clue what the items do. Not bad, but not the most exciting game in the world, partly because the stages are so long and unbroken that they become a drag.
My rating: 55%.
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