First Impressions Review Diary 6-Aug-2022

__Hello.🙂 Today's list of "first impressions" Twitter-length reviews will be shorter than usual because I haven't really seen or played much over the past month. I'm still spending most of my time working on my top ten videos (I'm planning to release them all in quick succession, and working on twenty-two videos at once is taking quite a while), but that project has now hit a snag. One of the lists concerns the ending of Mass Effect 3, and I had planned to just play that section and record the gameplay footage, but somehow all my save data is gone, so I'm currently replaying the whole trilogy to re-establish it. Not that I'm complaining: it's one of my favourite trilogies ever!🙂 But it is putting my video editing work on hold and pushing the release date back even further.

__However, to make up for the lower number of reviews overall, there are a couple of full-length ones in this set.😀 About three weeks ago, working on the videos was getting mentally exhausting, so I felt like taking a break and playing the first two instalments in The Dark Pictures Anthology (I haven't yet bought the third one, House of Ashes) because I suspected they'd be a fairly short diversion. When it came to expanding on what I could fit into a tweet, I found I actually had quite a bit to say about them, so I gave them both the full 250-word treatment.

__But we'll save that for the end.🙂 First, let's go through the shorter reviews of the few movies I've seen, and the other games I've been watching as longplays.

First Impressions Review Diary 2-Jul-2022

__Hello again.🙂 We're halfway through the year; I hope it's going well for you so far.

__If you're new to this blog, I mostly post compilations of short reviews of movies I'm seeing for the first time. They're copied and pasted from my Twitter feed because the more movies I see, the harder I find it to write full 250-word reviews like I used to. For a while now, I've been focusing on video games instead of movies, going through all the ones I own but haven't played yet, in a list arranged by year. However, I said at the end of my last post on May 7th that I was taking a break from playing video games to focus on making video versions of the top ten lists I've written. Work is proceeding on those videos slowly but surely, but that hasn't stopped me from going to the cinema a few times.🙂

__Among the movies I've gone to see over the last two months, there were two recent releases that inspired me to write full reviews (partly because they both concern franchises that mean a great deal to me): Jurassic World Dominion and Lightyear. I did a word count on the Jurassic World Dominion review I wrote, and it totals 1,168 words! The last time I got passionate enough to write such a long review was for Artemis Fowl on my other blog, and that was about 1,500 words. My Lightyear review is far shorter, at 455 words, but still much longer than the aforementioned 250 that used to be my standard. I actually didn't think it would turn out that long, but once I started writing, I found I did have a lot to say. I guess Dominion got me on a roll!😀

__You know, it's just occurred to me that, in a way, today's review compilation will follow the same format as an old cinema programme: a few shorts, then the main feature, and a B-movie.🙂

__So, without further ado, let's start with the seven reviews I kept Twitter-length. As per something else I mentioned last time, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is among them.🙂

First Impressions Review Diary 7-May-2022

__Hello again.🙂

__Let's not beat around the bush. This month's set of mini reviews begins with a few movies I felt like watching. And no, I haven't seen Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness yet, so you'll have to wait until next time for my comments on it.

Turning Red (2022)

It's kind of like a teenage girl version of the Hulk.🙂 The transformation is a metaphor for her frustrations, mainly stemming from the pressure of putting other people's happiness before her own, which I myself find very relatable indeed.

My rating: 75%.

Another Round (2020)

A likeable drama that follows four teachers conducting an experiment to prove a theory about alcohol blood level. At first, it seems to benefit their work performance and social lives, but begins teetering closer and closer to alcoholism.

My rating: 75%.

Herself (2020)

A mother escapes her abusive husband and, failing to find proper housing, decides to build a home herself. The premise is enough to keep it engaging, and you feel the joy from her friends' aid and the frustration at the ex's continued presence.

My rating: 75%.

The Father (2020)

It cleverly simulates the effect of Alzheimer's on the father's mind in several ways, like playing events out of order due to his confusion about the passage of time, and replacing characters with other actors when he doesn't recognise them.

My rating: 75%.

Flash Gordon (1980)

This came out the same year as Empire Strikes Back and has a few noticeable similarities, like the swamp landing and the fall down the chute, which is ironic because Star Wars was heavily inspired by the original Flash Gordon serials.

My rating: 65%.

__Interestingly, those were the last few 2020 movies on my watchlist, so I've now seen everything I want to from that year! Except for the Demon Slayer movie, but that'll have to wait until I've seen the show anyway.

First Impressions Review Diary 2-Apr-2022

__Welcome back.🙂
__Today's compilation of mini reviews starts with The Batman. Like I said before, it just missed out on its chance to be in last month's entry, because I'd be going to see it mere hours after it was time for me to post that one. So finally, after all the hype and countless delays to the film's production, what did I think?

The Batman (2022)
It has some plot elements I've seen before and done better in other Batman stories, so it's far from the best Batman movie, but certainly the darkest and most downbeat. The highlight is the terrifically disturbing version of the Riddler.
My rating: 75%.

__And now on to the video games that continue to occupy the bulk of my time.🙂
__Over the past month, I reached the end of my games from 2004. I decided that would be a good time to post a list of all the games I'd covered so far, which you can check out here.

My Full Game List So Far

__If you've been following this blog for a while, you'll know that video games have been occupying almost all my time. I've compiled a list of every game I own, be it legitimately or as a ROM for an emulator, and I'm going through them in order from oldest to newest (or rather alphabetically within each year). I've mainly been focusing on the ones that I haven't played before, and whose rating on my list is therefore blank.

__Now, I never claimed to be a good gamer, so typically what happens is that I try playing the first few minutes of the game, and if it becomes clear that I can't progress quickly (whether it's because I can't see the way forward or I don't feel like putting in the necessary practice), I switch to watching a longplay on YouTube so I can at least see the rest. After all, I have so many games to get through that I don't want to get hung up on each one for days or weeks at a time. Still, there are exceptions where I have actually played the whole game myself, like Super Metroid, Chrono Trigger and Super Mario 64.

__I've been at this for over a year now. I first made the inventory and started playing some of the older games (or at least trying to) towards the end of 2020, but it wasn't until February the next year that I started writing reviews for them. And guess what. I'm still not even halfway through the list! That's partly because the schedule keeps getting interrupted by other games that I decide to preview to see if they're worth adding to my library. At the moment, the prime examples are the Sonic and Castlevania series, of which I'd only played a select few before, but now I've decided to catch up on all the rest.

__Anyway, now that I've finished with the games from 2004, I thought I'd write up a full list of all the games in my collection that I've covered up to this point. As I said, most of them are new to me (and you can check the backlog for my "first impressions" comments), but there are a few old favourites mixed in there, including some educational titles that were among the cornerstones of my childhood.

First Impressions Review Diary 5-Mar-2022

__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.

__So let's comment on those three sequels first.

First Impressions Review Diary 5-Feb-2022

__Hello.🙂 How's your year going so far? I've been keeping my head down and sticking with my daily routine of going through all my unplayed video games (sorted by year) and, in the evening, watching a few episodes of TV shows I'm crossing off my watchlist. Welcome to my latest batch of brief Twitter-length reviews of what I've played/seen for the first time over the past month. (TV shows are exempt because I'm not quite sure how to review them.)

__Before we get into today's list of video games, let's start off with a movie. Among the shows I watched recently was Animaniacs, which did have a direct-to-video movie spin-off called Wakko's Wish. I remember seeing ads for it on Cartoon Network when I was young, but never saw the film itself until now.

Animaniacs: Wakko's Wish (1999)

It's kind of an animated version of It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, with the whole cast racing to the wishing star. It feels a tad unfocused juggling all the characters, but I like how they're a chorus on almost every song.

My rating: 75%.

__I also watched the Flash Gordon serials for my latest evening viewing. Now, I group my DVDs by category – movies, TV shows and miscellaneous – but I wasn't sure where to place those serials. They are episodic, and I guess they were sort of the TV shows of their day, but IMDb and all other sources categorise them as movies. I've now decided to swap them from TV shows to miscellaneous. In the meantime, if you're curious, here's my brief thoughts on them: