__Hello. I'm posting this the weekend after Shrove Tuesday. I hope everyone enjoyed their pancakes.🙂
__If this is your first time reading my blog, I always post on the first Saturday of the month, at noon on the dot, and my blog consists of very brief reviews of movies or video games I'm seeing/playing for the first time. They're compiled from my Twitter feed, which is always the first place I jot down my thoughts. I used to write much longer reviews, but I find that the more movies you see, the harder it becomes to think of things to say without repeating yourself. So I have the utmost respect for those who write long reviews on a regular basis!
__I'll be talking about both movies and video games this time. Obviously, the big release at the moment is The Batman, and I will actually be going to see it later today, but unfortunately just after this post's deadline, so you'll have to wait until next month to hear my thoughts. (This happened with a couple of cinematic releases last year as well.)
__The few movies I am reviewing this time are all sequels. You see, I usually watch a few TV show episodes in the evening (because I have a huge backlog of both video games and TV shows to get through), but I decided to spend March running through all the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies to refresh my memory for the three being released this year, and I didn't have time to start another show before then. As there were six days left in February when I finished the last show (which was Mr Bean, by the way), I decided to fill in those evenings with three film series consisting of only two movies, watching the original one evening and the sequel the next. In all cases, I'd seen the original before (which is why they don't qualify for these reviews), but not for a long time.
It feels like it's trying to match the gentle tone of the first movie, but in a much more colourful and supposedly action-packed setting that's completely at odds with the constantly downbeat music. Still, the effects are top-notch.
My rating: 45%.
I liked it a little more than the first movie, because it takes itself less seriously and the effects have taken a huge step up. One of my favourite scenes is when they mock how abrupt Kate's tragic story was in the original.
My rating: 65%.
Like Gremlins 2, it takes itself less seriously than the original (which, for me, makes it preferable), and yet ironically does several things better, such as the effects and the climax, as if the elevated fun enhanced them.
My rating: 65%.
__An additional note: what I enjoyed most about Babe: Pig in the City was the image of the city skyline, which is an amalgamation of several different cities. It combines New York with the Hollywood Sign, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Sydney Opera House, the Eiffel Tower, the Palace of Westminster, and others I'm sure I'm forgetting.
__Now let's move on to video games.
__If you don't know, I'm going through all my unplayed games, in a list arranged by year. I mentioned in my last post that I was in the middle of watching a short batch of longplays to sort of catch up before starting on 2004. Most of them are pre-2004 games I was previewing to see if they were worth adding to my library. So those are the ones I'll be covering first, before moving on to the 2004 games on my list whose rating has been blank up to now, the first of which is Doom 3.
It uses the Symphony of the Night formula again, including the dual castles, and it's starting to feel a little stale now. Highlights include the Skeleton Cave and the second forms of both Death and the final boss.
My rating: 70%.
A huge improvement on the first Advance, in terms of level design and music alone. I love how the characters ready themselves at the start like Olympic sprinters, and how Sonic has dropped the 3D games' pose of arms trailing behind him.
My rating: 85%.
Soma Cruz finds Dracula's castle contained in a solar eclipse in Japan. The music is much better than the other two GBA games, there's a great twist near the end, and Soma can absorb enemies' souls and gain their abilities.
My rating: 70%.
A huge step down from the first game. The story is paper-thin and kills interest by providing almost no context, the new characters are boring, and they scrapped Dante's cocky personality and turned him into a stoic straight-talker.
My rating: 45%.
This time, each zone has a central hub with portals to the three acts and boss fight. The characters are back to running with their arms trailing behind them, which bugs me. Is it me, or does Gemerl look like he belongs in Mega Man?
My rating: 70%.
From what I've seen, this is easily the best 3D Sonic game so far. It still has the odd bad camera angle, but it handles the characters' breakneck speed far better than the Adventure games. The theme of teamwork is a nice bonus.
My rating: 70%.
It reinvents the franchise as a dark horror FPS. I'm floored by the graphics and overall presentation, but not so much the gameplay loop. Maybe it's because all the locations are so similar, but it feels like you make no significant progress.
My rating: 75%.
It's a decent shooter, but even though it teaches stealth mechanics at the start, I find that tactic rarely works. The absence of a map is a common problem, too. The story isn't very interesting, but the tropical scenery and locations look great.
My rating: 60%.
I have no interest in the multiplayer that made it such an icon. The solo campaign is divided between Master Chief and a disgraced member of the Covenant, the Arbiter. But despite a strong start, neither story held my attention for long.
My rating: 55%.
This time, you can play as all of the lead trio, and each has their own unique spells and abilities. It draws more from the book than the film, but still treats the main story as secondary to superfluous quests.
My rating: 50%.
Easily the weakest of the series so far because of its scatterbrained plot. In between cutscenes following a job gone wrong, it recreates past missions via flashbacks with barely any context; the present-day events are left incomplete.
My rating: 60%.
Like the second game, it takes itself so seriously (which clashes with the exaggerated animations) that it loses all charm. Perhaps due to my apathy towards the story, I saw no logic or momentum in the series of events: just endless random missions.
My rating: 45%.
Definitely one of my favourite Zelda games. The music is among the series' best, and it adds its own new abilities like shrinking to the Minish's level and creating copies of yourself to assist in certain puzzles.
My rating: 90%.
It's not exactly good, but far better than X6 and X7, if only for the fully animated cutscenes. A couple of third-person levels break up the typical side-scrolling action, and one of my favourite stages is the gravity-shifting Primrose.
My rating: 55%.
It starts out discouragingly slow-paced and exposition-heavy, but then escalates to a thrilling climax. The big innovation in the stealth department is wearing camouflage, and The End is one of the best boss fights ever.
My rating: 75%.
It's a lot better than the first game because of its clearly defined narrative and goals, but Metroid as a first-person shooter still isn't my thing. One great new power-up is the Seeker Missiles that allow multiple targeting.
My rating: 55%.
An absolutely stellar remake! Thanks to adding a map, easily distinguishable rooms and extra power-ups, it's almost on par with Super Metroid. Then, after the familiar ending, it adds a new section on the Space Pirate Mothership.
My rating: 95%.
__Again, I have a few extra notes on some of those games. Yes, there are times when my thoughts can't quite fit in a single tweet, so I write a follow-up one.🙂
__Something that bugs me about all three of the GBA Castlevania games (and Symphony of the Night, apparently): why are the bull-like enemies called gorgons? That's not what a gorgon is. Medusa was a gorgon.
__In Devil May Cry 2, where did the enemy names come from? Some of them are unpronounceable jumbles of letters.
__The longplay of Sonic Heroes that I watched was the GameCube version, but it was the PS2 one that I ended up buying. Not only was it cheaper, but that's probably the console I would have favoured anyway.
__What I found most impressive about Doom 3 was the seamless integration of computers and keypads and such, which would normally get their own sub-screen.
__Like the first Halo, I was playing 2 in The Master Chief Collection on Steam, with classic graphics enabled to try and simulate the original experience.
__Bizarrely, all the spells in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban are nonverbal, even though they didn't start learning that until year six. Even the PC version got that right. So sadly, Harry's epic "EXPECTO PATRONUM!" is absent here.
__I seriously cannot overstate how much I loved Metroid: Zero Mission! It marks the second time that a 2D Metroid game has come out in the same year as a Prime title and absolutely killed it as far as I'm concerned!🙂 I just think Metroid works far better in 2D than as a first-person shooter.
__And now let's end with the one game from my longplay watchlist that I decided not to get because I didn't particularly like what I saw.
A very average game that I wouldn't be surprised to see compared unfavourably to Devil May Cry. For the first time since Belmont's Revenge, you tackle the bosses in an open-ended manner before opening the final door.
My rating: 55%.
__This game came out the same year as Aria of Sorrow, so I watched longplays of both back-to-back. It's funny how I jumped straight from the end of the Castlevania timeline to the very beginning.🙂 This one is set in 1094 and explores the origin of the long-running battle between the Belmonts and Dracula.
__And that's all I have to say. I hope you enjoy the rest of March. I'll be seeing The Batman in an hour or so, and spending the rest of the month watching one MCU movie each evening, in an exercise I'm calling Marvel March.🙂
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