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 Tyro's Critical Reviews and Opinions

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Common Nonsense
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PostSubject: Re: Tyro's Critical Reviews and Opinions   Tyro's Critical Reviews and Opinions - Page 4 Icon_minitimeTue Feb 14, 2012 6:34 pm

The movie basically took the climax of the first book and added it to the end of the third--that movie combined three books into one movie. Not only that, but they completely changed the way that the first book ended. Violet had a rather clever idea, if perhaps far-fetched, for getting out of the marriage, but they had Klaus save the day in the movie in a really odd sort of way . . . I'unno, I would have preferred if they had stuck a little more ot the books in those regards. Still, they captured the modern-gothic feel of it all quite well.

Artemis Fowl is also lovely. I don't want movies of it, though.
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PostSubject: Re: Tyro's Critical Reviews and Opinions   Tyro's Critical Reviews and Opinions - Page 4 Icon_minitimeTue Feb 14, 2012 6:49 pm

There's comic books of it though.

If done correctly, a movie might be alright but I can't see it happening.
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PostSubject: Re: Tyro's Critical Reviews and Opinions   Tyro's Critical Reviews and Opinions - Page 4 Icon_minitimeTue Feb 21, 2012 4:14 pm

The Indie Saga

Tyro's Critical Reviews and Opinions - Page 4 Screenshot_10

Shank


I'm not a manly man. Underneath this shiny coat beats the heart of a hero but the stomach of a bottomless pit and the muscles of a four-year old girl. A rather nasty little girl, but still not all that intimidating. I'm as threatening as a teddy bear if you've ever seen me. Bushy tails and fluffiness don't strike fear into the hearts of men, even with canines like these: it instils images of the Build-A-Bear Workshop.

But Shank, ah! Here is a world filled with muscled meat-heads that know only how to deal pain. And you play as the one that knows the most out of anyone.

Shank is a fantastically good fun 2D beat-em-up with a beautifully drawn world mixed with a challenging battle to save Shank's girlfriend. And that's the story explained. Shank has a genre-savvy, B-movie, revenge story that should be familiar to anyone that likes those kinds of 80's movies. Or something done by Tarantino, I guess. Your Shank, a one-man killing machine that has to fight a small army with nothing but a chainsaw, two pistols and two jagged knives. Your trying to cleave your way though to your girlfriend, meeting up with people from his shady past. And you get to kill them too! Yay!

Firstly, let's talk aesthetics. Sure, it's not graphically impressive, as is the way with indie games. Game's have been doing all this 2D lighting shenanigans for yonks now. However, Shank uses the lens flares and silhouetting along with a gritty, comic book art style that reminds me of Penny Arcade's Mike Krahulik than anything else. They capture the feeling of a move set in a desert. Sure, all the levels look gritty and dirty but the variety of location is more important. We get seedy night clubs, slums, cage fights and meat factories to smash through. Even a train, just because...The plot stitches this all together well enough as Shank searches for clues. And by that I don't mean walking down a very long corridor with a Great Dane. More on that in a sec.

But let's talk fighting. Shank has a combo system that depends entirely on what weapon you happen to be using and the direction your travelling in. Each of your weapons is attached to one of the buttons on the keyboard or joypad. To use that weapon, you push that button. To rack up a combo, you can smash that button repeatedly and you'll do a simple little combo. Its good for people just getting on the ladder of skill but the game starts to get harder quickly.

Now that nursery is over, try adding some of the direction buttons in to change the direction or type of attack Shank performs. That allows you to slash at someone behind then cut in front within three milliseconds. Or, get out your guns and fill one bloke in front of you with lead before sending a shell up the nostril of the guy approaching from behind. For the master class, try stringing weapons together. Go from knives as a starter, bullets as a main course then a chainsaw as a desert that by-passes your mouth and goes straight for the guts. Shank also has two extra moves to deal death with it. Move number one is the shock-and-awe Pounce. At the touch of a button, Shank will fart into the air - slow motion will make this look cool while allowing your a few seconds to plan your next move - then glomp your enemy to the ground. From here, Shank will do something unpleasant to your downed enemy at the touch of a few buttons. Weirdly, enemies will leave you alone while while your doing this. I haven't a clue why they appear to back off but I tend to deal with enemies too quickly to have then smack me round the head as I quote Dirty Harry. Next, Shank can be made to grapple enemies that are the same size as him and it's rather the same sort of thing, except for the psychotic-nutter leap so it's a quicker alternative. These two moves, however, cannot work on the 'far-larger-than-you' enemies that are built like a tower block rather than a brick shit-house. Which makes sense and balances the game nicely. Lastly for masters, you also get grenades. I don't know why either but welcome all the same. Now, they are not the terrible, pear-shaped nukes of screen-clearing they appear. Actually, their handy for causing lots of damage to a select group of enemies that are close to each other. Or just one, maybe.

Any Jedi playing will want to think about defence as well as offence. Shank's defective abilities are closer to a Super Smash Bros. character than anything else. You hold a button for as long as you like to sacrifice all other movement for not dying. And if there's anything that doesn't look like a block will do, you can slide either left or right to become like a ghost. You manage to slide around them, avoiding all damage for a few seconds. You even have a split-second to sit there and hack at their spine while they turn around. Now, I never could find anyway of working blocking into Smash Bros. without hours of practise and it's just as difficult to pull yourself back from mad-button smashing to then think of making sure Shank's face wasn't full of knives. On top of that, we have two flavours of jumping out of the way. The regular jump is all right. About as good as any normal fighting game character; just enough to jump over most enemies heads. It's not overly quick but it'll do if what you want to avoid armed maniacs but the Pounce is a slightly faster alternative. Your shot into the air then allowed to come back down on someone to relieve them of their entrails. This doesn't work with the larger lads though as they'll swat you back down no matter what.

So, a nice amount of levelling for a player to get progressively better at mass-murder. They can get the basics then move on upwards through the necessary skills. It's just that, the difficultly will jolt upwards at your first boss fight once you figure out how to fight him. They have the old style bosses here, where they are relentless in their efforts to pummel you into the ground. It's lucky they don't guzzle lives or money in this case every time they turn you to jam. The combos themselves are simple but using them is a tad awkward. Hammering new combos out seems to need a direction to attack in, for reasons known only to the developers. It's an odd quirk of the controls to have to move forwards constantly that blocks learning how to play.

As I said, the game recommends a joypad and it does make a world of difference. Hammering an important piece of equipment, like your keyboard, as thought your fingers are jack-hammers is detrimental for when you had enough and wish for the simpler life of chatting to your mates. If you've smashed your keyboard half to death, then your friend has only the conclusion that your under the effects of dentistry medication when your messages are full of missing letters. Lots of "pplogie" for not making any "ence". Furthermore, when they tell you that, it tends to mean that the game has been built for use with joypads, and then begrudgingly checked with a keyboard afterwards. This game seems to have been built with being made for a games console but saw no harm in putting it on PC's. Now, I'm fortunate enough to have joypads in the same design as a PS2 controller. After years of owning a PS2, I had no problems hammering buttons on mine but things might be different on other controllers. For the sake of your ability to make mincemeat of armed angry people with greater ease then to still be intelligible to your mates later, use a game pad.

And now we have the bosses. In a game where some of the enemies are twice the size of the main character, the only logical conclusion to make bosses dangerous is to make them five times larger than the main character. And their all really nasty. While Shank is a reasonably powerful battering ram of splashiness but the bosses tend to be more so. Their attacks and the amount of health they have mean they can take almost anything you can throw at the hulks with ease before smacking you into the wall with one fist. Your advantage is your speed and your guns. Each boss, even the super speedy (and as tall as Shank is) woman with the katana, has a situational, reaction move for Shank to deploy on them to inflict far more damage than knives, guns and chainsaws will. Generally, these reaction command attacks can be orchestrated by you. For example, a gentlemen by the name of 'Butcher' happens to be working in a meat factory when you find him. He will then come at you with a meat hook on a chain. To combat this, you lower carcasses hanging from the ceiling close to where Butcher is standing to then have him get the hook caught in the meat. Then, you leap on him, pulling the chain around his neck till he chokes. Spam that for all it's worth and there's your boss fight in the can.

That is my only problem with it. You spam that one reactionary thing for all it's worth and you win. You can try and beat them with knives and guns and chainsaws but you've got to be Jedi Master at least before doing so. While I makes the bosses a puzzle to figure out, it feels more gimmicky than a simple battle using all the skills you've used so far in a mano-y-mano fight. It's closer to bull fighting. You avoid them then go for their weak spot. It's a different way of fighting that the game never sets you up for in the rest of the game. I'm not saying it's a bad way of fighting, just not what I was fully expecting.

Story-wise, this is where you get told what's been going on and why your heading for this one person and that's usually for a clue. It seems more of the fault of the levels structure than anything else as we do get to see why these guys have taken your girlfriend and probably deserve the effort of fighting. It just that we get it the instant we meet them. We turn up then get an info dump. Why not use the screen in the corner more for filling us in? Occasionally to explain certain points of the plot and to get tension high, we get a small screen in the corner detailing what's going on like a train leaving the station of a phone call. Small things. Why not use them for exposition too? I know we're beating the hell out of baddies but I never felt too distracted when the information is in plain sight. But, fights made enough sense, when they were explained that I'm not horribly miserable about it as it's pretty good. I'm expecting a Valve-esque story that's omnipresent and that may not be possible.

And, to add to the complexity here, there are more than just one type of gun and...secondary choppy thing you can use. Things like shotguns and machetes. Nice! Each one has their own combos to bring to the table in roughly the same matter and their own methods of slaughter. Each has their own strengths, weaknesses and proper situations. Some are good for crowds, some are good for keeping people at bay and some are simply good at killing stuff. You'll pick them up through-out the game. Each feel balanced enough to be usefully and powerful but not over the top, making the bad guys a threat still.

One last mention has to go to the music. They have hit the nail on the head with all the horns, the crashing symbols and the slow, lingering guitar. Perfect for what this game is emulating.

Shank is a beautiful looking game filled with one super man kicking the shit out of hundreds of others. It's bloody and bloody good fun. You might need a wee bit of practise before you really get in it but you should be sailing along by the time you get around halfway past the second level. It's detailed and has the heart of an action B-movie. Right down to the fact that the main character gains health and sustenance from beer alone. That should tell you a lot about this game and how much of a ride your in for.

Go! Go find it! Before he finds you! It's only about £7.

Now, it was important to get this review out because it's now got a sequel. This gives them a chance to fix anything that didn't work the first time and generally improve. To get some continuity and sense of improvement, I came up with a little list:

Tyro's Wish List for Shank 2

  1. Use the little window in the corner more for story further than what's immediately happening.

  2. Tweak the combo system so that it's less fussy about the direction your travelling in.

  3. More weapons please! Maybe some more unusual ones?

  4. Alternative costumes, characters or something for us to unlock over the course of the game.
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PostSubject: Dear Esther   Tyro's Critical Reviews and Opinions - Page 4 Icon_minitimeMon Feb 27, 2012 7:10 am



Tyro's Critical Reviews and Opinions - Page 4 Redo-esther

Dear Esther

Welcome to a game you have all likely hood to hate. Where to begin? If you like COD or something with lots of shooting like Jamestown perhaps then this is not for you. If you like carving people up Shank style then this might not be your night. If you like the audio-visual joy of Audiosurf or Beat Hazzard then your out of luck. If you like - Ah, Sod this!


Every single review you can find on this glorious piece of code will compare Dear Esther to everything it's not. The bottom line is that you will have never played a game like this. In fact, you probably would struggle to call it a game. It's much closer to a 'Interactive Story-Telling Experience'. However, I'd sound like a tosser if I spouted that every few seconds so I'm going to call it a '3D Book' because it's shorter and there isn't all that much interaction with what's going on either.

But this little mod is a favourite of mine. It appeals to a side of myself I strive to indulge; that which loves the moment when I am lost in a world. As though bathing in bubbling sweet shandy. The words tickle and tease my head with the next point of inebriation, sinking ever lower into a point of unity. My mind drinks greedily at the liquid, the synapses exploding like Catherine Wheels. Every cell is both buzzing and numb to my bedroom. I have drowned in the drink willingly, guzzling it's contents until only the drops I could not reach are left.

Zen has arrived to set up yet another nest for yet another influence on my works. It will come and settle me when roused, reminding me of the first time I was enthralled by the men who sought to travel in boats without bottoms.

Dear Esther is arguably one of the best written games you can find. The narrator is perfect for this material and, from a more technical stand point, is allowed to weave a story with a lessened emphasis on narrative building blocks. I mean the basics of a story like setting, characters, time and so on. They are all dealt with by the game itself. The location, the feel and the time is dealt with the map that you explore. It's not pretty here and that's the point, it would seem. It's an abandoned Hebredian island, not Skyrim.

There I go again; telling you what it's not.

My point is that the world you wonder and explore is connected to the wonderfully written sound bites your hearing. Your job is to understand what the narrator is talking about. To piece together his words and gain a greater understanding as you wonder through this small map. I implore you to explore every nook and cranny here in order to find every piece of the story you can find. The bizarre, haunting music will add layers of mysticism and magic to the jagged rocks, to the misty sea and to the strange symbols scrawled over the rock. It is a sublime way to spend around thirty minutes.

Now, this is not the perfect experience, of course. Little things are off, as are all source mods. Some will deliberately embrace them as part of the world like The Stanley Parable but they are mostly well covered here. The game lacks a little bit of occasional spit and polish, for whatever reason. Possibly to keep file size down but maybe the night time skybox could have used a higher resolution image. Maybe some of the images on the cliffs could have been updated to a clearer image. Nit-picks really.

One puzzling aspect is how the game occasionally whispers "Come back!" at you. This is confusing as you, a person trained by computer games to look for all the collectables, would likely turn around and see what you can find, believing you've left something. Except that you often haven't. Furthermore, you can occasionally see people standing around. They are ghostly silhouettes that just stand there, ignoring you. It brakes the magic when they suddenly ping out of existence. Lastly, you will need to mess with the sound on this game before playing. While both the narration and the music set the scene of this little island perfectly, the volume of the music can overwhelm the narration. I was wondering up a hill, struggling to hear the narration someone hitting a synthesiser with a hammer. I'd turn the music down to just enough to hear it and the game noises to maximum. That seems to work.

Something has to be said of the narrator. His voice is able to bring the material to life, adding to the already fairy-like world here. The story has a central theme of grief, if you listen carefully, and a world of pain, loneliness and forgiveness. But you have to listen. I will admit that his language may be impenetrable to some people. But, you are allowed to try then declare your distaste. That's fine by me. Dear Esther appears to be an acquired taste that needs an inherent love of books. For what you see here is not the emulation of that paper based story, but the first glimpse of their evolution.

I can see why other reviewers are likely to compare this mod to everything it is not because it appears to diminish the reputation of it when you discuss what this is. And it is a book you can walk around in. An epistolary of a man's loss and his attempt at over coming it. If you are the type who thinks that computer games can never be an art form then look at this. If you love books and just got a copy of The Orange Box (as you will need Source games to play this) to go with your new laptop, look this up. If you are looking to create a game, delve into this little world The Chinese Room has created and learn how you too might create the sense of mystery and fantasy in your own work.

That same sense of inebriated floating....



Tyro's Wish List for the other, larger version of Dear Esther.

  1. A slightly longer play time (but not too long so that the world gets boring).
  2. Graphical touches to make the world even more believable. And readable, in some cases.
  3. Any silhouetted people should not vanish out of nowhere.
  4. Tweaks to the sound balance between the narration and the music.
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PostSubject: Re: Tyro's Critical Reviews and Opinions   Tyro's Critical Reviews and Opinions - Page 4 Icon_minitimeTue Feb 28, 2012 5:30 pm



Tyro's Critical Reviews and Opinions - Page 4 2-4

The Poems and Prose That Happened When Savfantasy Put Fingers To Keyboard

I started writing this review and then found that, well...Savvy, your a fantastic poet. Don't be surprised if I make allusions to some of these and base RP's around them....It;s just that it makes it hard to write about them. I can only pick them apart to see how they tick. I can't say what needs to be improved though.

My Prince of Stars

An enigmatic, charming, possibly dangerous character talking to her love. Whether this is purely in a fantasy world is unclear but...It's perfect. No need to change anything. It's perfect as it is.

It's the way the poem seems to give me images of a woman charming this man into slipping down into her world. It sounds sinister with the imagery centring around darkness. To couple this with an idea of bliss or paradise gives a more snake-tongued feel to the character's words. It's good work!

I keep getting images of spider-queens and mistresses of the mist dragging some bloke into her embrace with black tendrils. But the poem itself could also be applied to a more mundane relationship in similar circumstances.

My Boy

Again. I don't think I can comment on how to improve it. It seems to be about a boyfriend and how it's cheered the narrator up so much. It's sweet and seems heartfelt. I likes it. It seems more like it should be a love song of some kind, which is probably the point, the home in on the idea of having found the right guy.

A Rose

I can see a pattern here. It's good, got nothing to help improve.

It's almost like a list of qualities for a person. That could be me trying to make up theories but these are not the qualities you tend to ask of a rose. In fact, you tend to never ask of any requirements from florists about their wares except that they might be alive.

But requirements for what? A lover? A warrior? I'd imagine it changes from person to person. The repetition of the adjective slows the poem down, possibly to emulate falling petals. It also brings a dream-like attention to them. It's like wishing or casting a spell.

Superman is my Idol

It's sort of cute that one. A pleasant little poem about doing what Superman does. It has that childlike innocence in both it's structure and it's language that's appealing. Even more so is the uses for super powers. Things like racing birds and saying hello to people on top of fighting bad guys. Lovely.

I disagree with Frozen here. I'm not sure a new sentence is required. I read that out loud perfectly fine. The thing about commas is justified though. A couple of places you might not need to add a comma. Like at the end of line 3, stanza 1. It just looks untidy, is all.

Dancing in my room

We've probably been there: that song is to good not to get up and jig around to only to find someone's coming. The quick, sharp sentences add moments of tension towards the end, contrasting in just the right way against the other, slower metre lines. The more sylabically-restricted lines towards the end also mimic the way someone would deny knowledge of something. Its a short and sweet encapsulation of a moment in life. It's silly and easily relatable.

Haunted House

My favourite part of this is the recurring mechanic of each stanza, which is where the last line rhymes with each other. It's perfect as the story has a natural stop in its beat whenever it rhymes, bringing greater emphasis on what is being discussed. Good work.

Furthermore, we've got a good amount of visualisation to make the haunted house come to life by instilling a few clichés in an interesting way. A good line is:

"Just the shadows playing with you
rub your eyes, they disappear."

The old monster trick of pretending to be simply nothing. Good. There's all the right boxes ticked here.

Winter Heart

Post-break-up perhaps? It's a vivid image of ice and cold and snow. It's woeful, lonesome stifled and bottled-up as though smothered by the snow as well.

It also doesn't move anywhere. It's static. There's no movement, no real life here. It's barren and still to further emphasise the core ideas of the poem.

Well done stuff.

That Christmas one

Again, not much to comment on other to say that it's a well put together poem that appears to be a charming enough. I dunno, it's my least favourite. Perhaps that something within me that lowers my opinions, maybe it's the centralisation of many Christmas themes but I can't get into this one.

Or perhaps it's the Haiku-like style? While it gives a snapshot like feel to the scene laid out for the reader, I'm not sure it suits the material. Maybe something more upbeat for a celebration? But a good effort none the less.

The Immortal

There's a reason this one is last; it's my favourite.

It puts me in mind of vampires. The original, voracious, powerful, animalistic creature of blood. Dracula and his vampiresses, crawling, snaking towards you. They kiss and tease and hypnotise before slipping towards the throbbing jugular.

Or something beyond time. A being of all hatred and revenge that will stork you to the ends of the earth. You have no power against it, for it not only know's who you are and where you shall go, but what it'll do to you when it finds you.

That's the sort of character I get from this. That calculation in the repeated lines:

"I will remain when all you know turns to dust.
I will remain when your hopes and dreams rust.
I will remain once humanity dies.
I will remain, alone under the sky."

It's a resignation of fact. There is no negotiation, only hammering out what is to be and always shall be. It's chillingly fascinating.

The idea of a monster is rife here. It asks whether you fear it. It tells you that it's sustained by it's affliction; the two parts of the statement countering each other to make a benefit with a dark sacrifice. It has notes of revenge and anger and of a monstrous being. I only think of a vampire due to the reference to graves.

Awesome piece of work. Again, I might allude to this at some point....This sparks ideas...


An now we leave the poetry to look at Savvy's prose. Only one that I could find.


Jerry

A very human and friendly take on the mythology of the Grim Reaper. Instead of it being one skeleton in a raggedy cloak and a scythe as tall as the haunting creature is. The fingers of bone take you to the next world where you are destined to travel to.

Instead of that, we get an old man handing over a torch. The character of Jerry is a friendly, talkative sort of chap that doesn't seem to want to hurt a fly. You can't help but put all images of black cloaks out of your mind while enjoying the company of Jerry. You feel sorry for his lost, favourite bird and how he seems to have been clearly changed by experiences as the Grim Reaper. This is not a commandment from the maelstrom of chaos and nature where someone has been chosen to be Death. This is just some bloke in a pub somewhere, approaching you because you might be good for this job. No qualifications, just gut instinct. It's a tradition, not a lord-high pronouncement.

I enjoy that thoroughly. It's an inviting form of the mythology where Death is a more relatable character than the arrival of the end. Instead, he seems to be just some bloke on a job, something we can all relate to. The style of a dramatic monologue emphasises how mundane Jerry is under the cloak. He even has pets. Its how Death shouldn't be feared, but understood as an important task that someone has to do. As regular as a clocks tick.


Savvy, you are a fantastic writer that seems to write almost entirely without noticeable fault. Your work is high quality and interesting. Keep up the good work.

Now, I should comment on your art work at some point...
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PostSubject: Re: Tyro's Critical Reviews and Opinions   Tyro's Critical Reviews and Opinions - Page 4 Icon_minitimeTue Mar 20, 2012 5:17 pm

All right. Let's look at something that's been sitting quietly somewhere...hmm....

Tyro's Critical Reviews and Opinions - Page 4 Polychromatic-funk-monkey-1-3-1

Polychomatic Funk Monkey

Now that's a title!

Are you bored of Minesweeper? Have you filled up the score board on that little pinball game Windows XP has? Are you looking into a multiplayer version of Solitaire to liven things up? Are you growing ever more weary after realising that Paint brings you no greater joy than re-re-re-re-organising your desktop icons in order of usefulness, actual coolness percentage, file size, resemblance in relative to each other, resemblance to Jeremy Clarkson, tessellation potential, success in using them in a puppet show, proximity of the development team to Swindon, England and flavour?

What I'm trying to ask is whether your bored of the tiny games that come with Windows or not. Because Funk Monkey feels like one of them, but a whole lot better.

Polychromatic Funk Monkey is a very simple platformer game that has procrastination written all over it. The idea is simple: your a small white block with a monkey face on it and you have to collect small glowing circles the game calls 'telefunkers'. Well, I say have to but it's more of a kind suggestion. These are all dotted around the map and you get to them by building platforms for you to bounce up towards your preferred goal of either these circles or just seeing how high you can go. The circles happen to allow you to carry a greater number of the multicoloured blocks that you can pick up, make follow you, then place where you like. However, you have to take into consideration that you can only place a colourful blob of matter directly in front of you or in the position your currently standing in and can only jump one block high. Maybe two with momentum. Any of the white and black blocks can't be moved no matter how you pout. This is the challenge, ladies and gents. You have to get around these limitations to reach your goal of either greater carrying capacity or making a colourful smiley face. To help you collect blocks or help you get around the map faster, the telefunker-things are assigned to a number on the keyboard. Press that number and you get whisked back to that telefunker. The Alt key will take you back to the highest assigned telefunker automatically if your getting annoyed with the agony of choice. You can use this to help yourself out of tight spots or to back backtracking for blocks faster. It's vitally necessary for keeping your sanity.

All of this is very, very simple. You'll be up and running within a minute. You'll probably be making some good progress in less than thirty seconds of the ten second tutorial. It's really simple to pick up and play Funk Monkey. The challenge comes from how you build all the flights of 2D stairs to get to the next telefunker. Or get high enough to finish that tasteful phallic image your spending your lunch break making. You can't jump through blocks so you will have to make a gap in the steps to hop through whenever you change direction because your heading towards a wall of whites or something. I like that the puzzle here is simple. It's repetitive, yes, but I found the simple act of figuring out the most efficient route through the floating maze oddly more addictive than Solitaire. Also, I'm not sure whether there is an end point either. You can collect up to 10 telefunkers for each number on the keyboard, yes, but the map appears to go on forever. Your unlikely to run out of room on this game.

There's little chance for experimentation so people thinking that you can simply to what they tend to do in Minecraft and build a tower will run short of that plan quickly. The to-ing and fro-ing to make such a tower puts the plan at a stand still as you'd have to get off the top of the tower to get get more blocks very quickly. Stairs are the only way to go and you'll find that out soon enough. Building a straight path is very difficult too. To do so need lots of blocks floating in the general area of the area you want to build. You then build from there. It's awkward to say the least. Sometimes building straight is the best plan but the game makes the process sloppy.

The game will also come down hard on mistakes too. While accidentally falling off your construction is remedied in a nanosecond with a tap of the Alt key, unintentionally blocking a path to wherever your going is met with a the harsh punishment of a detour. The Fun Monkey cannot pick up blocks directly above it, meaning that it is possible to block of routes through to your destination. To fix this, you must now build your staircase in another direction to get around the blockage. You have to undo all your handy work before moving it where it's now needed.

The sound seems to be OK. The music appears to be a band jamming and, to me, it's inoffensive. You can easily tune this stuff out if you like, it doesn't really detract from the experience but does lend a lightly silly tone. What might get up the noses of players are the sound effects. You get dings for every block you pick up and place and a bass note every time the Funk Monkey jumps. And it's the same note every time. That can and probably will get annoying if I were to play the game for about an hour. It should be fine in ten minute jaunts though. Your sanity will be thankful for the mute buttons through. What I do like is how it will save the progress of the last game you played. Got bored or your Boss/Teacher come in the room? Hit escape twice and your game is saved. When your ready to play again, you can carry on from the point you left of. You only get one save, however. I'd accept such a thing from something like Pokemon Yellow, not a program that has a share of 650GB of hard drive space to roam around in. I don't mind, use as much as you need. Otherwise, I might have that horrible situation where I hit 'New Game' rather than 'Continue'. That's valuable effort and productivity going down the drain there.

However, complaining can only get you so far as the best part of the game is that it's free. You pay nothing and you get a nice alternative to Spider Solitaire. Unlike Spider Solitaire, you'll actually want to play this. It's a little like Super Mario Bros. meets Minecraft and you can pick it up for nothing. It's hard to make complaints stick after a sentence like that. Procrastination has gotten that much easier.
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PostSubject: Re: Tyro's Critical Reviews and Opinions   Tyro's Critical Reviews and Opinions - Page 4 Icon_minitimeFri Apr 06, 2012 1:01 pm

Gah! There's been too long a gap without a review! Right! Bad Tyro! Bad! Go and get another one out now! Now I say!



Tyro's Critical Reviews and Opinions - Page 4 Existenz

eXistenZ

A little while ago, JJWCool invited me over, telling me there were lots of really, really weird films that I needed to see and he started me off with Memento which I will get to but before I left to go home, he game me a handful of DVD's. This was one of them and he said that it was "The Canadian Matrix".

I think he's half-right; it is Canadian.

eXistenZ (spelt that way because....they can, I think) is about the idea of virtual reality. But, rather than being the housing unit for the human race, instead it's more like an Xbox 3600 or a PS1,000,000 because we're using these advanced technologies to play computer games.

What makes this cute for me is that we're not really treated to a virtual reality version of Gears of War or Batman: Arkham Asylum, we just get this elevated text adventure nonsense instead. There's not much else here that seems to scream 'Computer Game' at you except the fact that you can only progress by saying the correct thing and NPC's will just stare at you till you do. Also, there's scripted moments where your body will be made to do something to advance the plot. Otherwise, we're watching Jude Law and Jennifer Jason Leigh wonder around and talk.

Anyway, the plot! The only thing they could do to go against The Matrix was to have more levels of reality than a measly two. So, we're at the beta test of a new game system called eXistenZ, in a church some where. A famous game developer called Allegra Geller (Jennifer Jason Leigh) has come along to help guide people who have come along to play with this new game. However before they can begin, anti-game people turn up and start shooting. Christopher Eccleston is killed, irritatingly, and Ted Pikul (Jude Law) is a PR man that becomes Allegra's bodyguard. Him and Allegra escape to a safe location where she asks him to play the game they have with them. They enter the game world where things get weirder and weirder from there.

So, then we pop in and out of levels of reality for a while as some sort of plot unfolds with the vague hint of people being really against the virtual realities and 'The Realists' want to destroy them because they seem to think that humanity will be unable to exit them or something. That's sort of it for a synopsis without twittering on for too long.

Now, what I really like about this film is it's ideas. And my word does it have some mad ones.

Remember in The Matrix that the virtual reality is all done by massive computers and machine hardware? Does that seem a little odd to you that every human got a plug? Like an MP3. Silly, right? Well, eXistenZ thought it would have something that would work much better; organic machinery. Supposedly, all the machines in this film have been grown rather than built but manage to work in exactly the same way as a computer, somehow. The human has something called a 'Bioport' installed into their spine that connects your brain to a Game Pod via a fleshy cord. The Game Pod is skin-coloured and has a few weird bumps on it. It's a bizarre thing to see as it wiggles to the touch. There's even a gun that fires teeth and appears to be made from chicken bones. Man has made even flesh and bone a usable tool. The idea of humanity effectively turning organic matter into something like this is all rather interesting in its own right but is sadly relegated to the back of the plot.

Then there's the world we're thrown into. Well, worlds...

The first one is pretty interesting. We see the obvious dispute over these games and Gas (Willem Dafoe) is strange and welcoming. We do get to see the haters and the massive fans who've been touched by these games. Apparently, Gas' favourite game is the one where he's God. Apparently, it's very funny. I do like the fact that time has been put into the world, if only for a bit, to show how popular the games are as well as to cement the importance of Allegra. More so than shouting that she's a 'demon woman' by The Realists.

Then down a level, we get all the game stuff introduced. Games within games and the idea of talking to NPC's. It's like being in Mass Effect but without the option wheel. The thing which messed with my head was whether the camera cuts were diegetic or not now.

By 'diegetic', I mean whether something is happening within the fictional world I'm looking at or not. If you can clearly see the music playing is coming from a stereo on screen that the characters can see, then it's diegetic. When it's just put over the top of a scene, then it's non-diegetic. It was one exchange from Ted that made me wonder whether they were aware of camera cuts too. Ted remarks about the transition from one reality to another as being very sharp and quick, which was the editing choice too. Then Allegra mentions that there were other transitions too, like wipes or fades. Which are all editing techniques. It may be small but that kept me wondering.

And then further down, we have some sort of fish factory with some sort of espionage thing going on. People are secretive and there's all these plots to prove something or some such to some guy. Ted and Allegra have to kill someone with a tooth gun they make from the bones of some fish and kill their waiter. Some how, this let's them gain Realist street cread but he's actually a spy that got Ted to kill his contact and then the bone gun comes back again and again from no-where. Then there's a revolution, bullets fly. At that point, I barely get it.

Look, there's a massive problem with this film: it's 2012 currently and this means that there is a far better film that exists. This:

Tyro's Critical Reviews and Opinions - Page 4 220px-Inception_ver3

To be perfectly honest, Inception is a far better film than eXistenZ. Why? While eXistenZ is a far more mind-expanding film, Inception is more coherent. You care about Cobb's mission to get to his children through staging this elaborate ruse. The characters are stylish and well-rounded and cool. You wanted to give this dreaming malarkey ago. I'll be willing to bet a tail that you'll be more interested in Shared Dreaming than the Virtual Reality games of eXistenZ.

But it's not that they didn't try. eXistenZ has too many ideas flying around. It spends a lot of time trying to explain about these game pods and how people are attached to these games, sure, but there's no ultimate point to anything. We're just messing around, there's no clear cut goal. The only excuse or going into the game is just to make sure everything works still. We see very little point in being shown any of the worlds we enter as we progress through the film. Why did we visit the fish factory? It's mentioned that they make game pods there but I doubt it's the actual place. The only use was to spout all that philosophical stuff then vanish till the very end.

Inception has one central idea and seems to centre around a more classic sci-fi premise of "here's a technology of some kind and here's how everything goes wrong while using it". Like The Time Machine, maybe. But you could get behind and understand the motivation of Cobb, that he was a man haunted by guilt, searching for a way back to his family. And the supporting cast are bright, interesting and well-written. You want to see these guys succeed. And we have a singular idea and theme going through everything that's happening. All that stuff about the sub-conscious being dangerous but powerful. That was shown to us in the form of Cobb's wife. How the mind could wreck everything in this world that was created.

eXistenZ never really did that. We didn't see any danger from playing the games except that you might be gunned-down by militant wierdos. Things were too complicated in eXistenZ.

I never really cared about the characters. I never got much of a moment of wanting to like, or root for any of the characters involved as the film carried on talking about the blobs of meat that are central to the story. Inception had things the other way round and was far more engaging. We got a story about how one man gambles everything to get what he dreams of. eXistenZ just feels like a guided tour and isn't half as engaging as Inception. Or it's main rival, The Matrix. There's no arc for these characters and no change in them. Only plot twists and weirdness.

In short: Inception is more worth your money than eXistenZ as it explores the story is far more interesting. But if you looking for something to try and make your head explode, then be my guest. You might make more sense of it than me.
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PostSubject: Avengers Assemble and Battleship   Tyro's Critical Reviews and Opinions - Page 4 Icon_minitimeTue May 15, 2012 7:43 am

I'm a little behind on this....I know! MOVIE ROUND-UP!

Tyro's Critical Reviews and Opinions - Page 4 220px-TheAvengers2012Poster

Avengers Assemble

Let me put it this way (because it's relatively short): it's remarkably awesome.

It's fun, exciting, well-written and arguably one of the most faithful to the very feeling of a comic book that you are ever likely to experience. Characters play off each other nicely. The action doesn't feel like it doesn't belong or shouldn't be in the places it's in. Loki is a good villain, I thought, even if he's not the main focus of the story. Hulk is awesome. Iron Man has some fantastic bits in this. Captain America becomes an important, if slightly ignored character in the presence of the other, stronger characters. Thor does some pretty cool stuff. Infighting, arguments and Samuel Jackson in an eye-patch....just...because...

If you haven't seen it, then their's always the DVD, I guess. Marvel have managed to bring continuity to a big screen while also doing a pretty bang up job. If you like super-hero movies, your in safe hands. If you have kids that like super-hero movies, your in safe hands. It's not mind-blowing or clever, it's just a whole lot of fun.

Tyro's Critical Reviews and Opinions - Page 4 Battleship_Poster

Battleship

A little bit of research tells me that this hasn't come out yet in the U.S.A but has done over here in the UK. And Japan before that. So, in one part of the world, my review will actually be ahead of time, for once.

Wow...I do believe that's the sound of Beelzebub shovelling snow.

One thing though: this is a film with 'ISN'T THE NAVY WONDERFUL?' emblazoned across the side. Battleship, even more worryingly, has the same glossy look of a Transformers movie. Most of the action is done with special effects, you don't care about the aliens, everything has that really bright colour pallet but is covered in scratches and holes, blah, blah, realism-meets-80's-cartoon-blah-blah. It's got loads of the same beats and flourishes of any Michael Bay Transformer's film which isn't really a good thing...

The plot is simple. Some lazy moron turned Naval Captain (eventually) called Alex Hopper get's trapped on a Destroyer class Navy ship that's trapped within a several mile wide bubble created by aliens, in Hawaii. The Aliens want to take over Earth because their planet sucks... I think...and so uses their more powerful ships to kick the humans out. That's sort of the jist.

How about I sum this up with three questions:

Am I going to enjoy this movie?

Errr...Yes and no.

What I found to be the most respect I had for the film was it's ability to come up with a way of adding an actual game of Battleship to the film that didn't seem overly stupid. A Japanese Captain comes up with the idea to use a grid of buoys that measure the strength of waves and happen to be neatly laid out over the stretch of ocean the alien bubble covers. They use that to track where the alien ships are moving to when their boat get's blown to bits, rendering all their radar devices and the like useless. It was a moment I genuinely didn't expect and was actually impressed.

Everything else? Clichés! Clichés everywhere!

Hopper only get's to a position of power after most of the officers on-board are killed. He then has to rise to the challenge of being a great commander. The veteran soldier trying to over come some disability has his own hero moment, overcoming his disability, inspiringly. The hero wants to marry the Admiral's/General's daughter but doesn't get the chance until he saves the world. An asian man and battle tactics are present in the story, so "The Art of War" must be brought up at some point. The back-story for the aliens is explained in a Mind-Meld-like, memory-montage when the alien touches Hopper. Rihanna - yes, the singer - is playing this character from Aliens:

Tyro's Critical Reviews and Opinions - Page 4 306186-pvt._vasquez

That's the least of the films possible problems. There is this one part where there are no more ships for Hopper and his crew to use, except the USS Missouri. They get the help of the elderly and retired servicemen you see from earlier. They run this antique battleship so that the good guys can blow more things up. On one hand, it's kinda fun to see these old geezers helping out, laughing and joking as they relive past glory and such like.

On the other hand, the film tries so hard to make them look awesome. They get a dramatic reveal and a slow, sweeping shot of these guys just sitting around on the boat like naval Batmen that have arrived from nowhere, with their own swelling orchestral music. The film constantly waves it's little flag as the Disabled vet kicks an alien's behind or we get some inspiring speech or these old men are hero-worshipped through their portrail. All armed forces do good work, I won't disagree, but it always seem really cheesy when the film tries to show these guys as amazing.

The most cheesy part of the whole thing is Hopper's arc. He's this direction-less idiot that get's transformed by the Navy and war. I can't help but feel like I've watched a recruitment film. I liked the explosions and idiocy but I felt like the Navy only let Hasbro and Bluegrass Films borrow and blow up their ships if they were really, really nice to them.


Yeah, but it's it better than Transformers?

Yes.

Most things are better than Transformers films. Punches in the face, ferret bites, shovelling snow in Hell; all better in comparison. Battleships has loads of the same beats but I never found myself getting particularly bored, like I was with Michael Bay. You could see what was going on, for starters. The CGI did look pretty cool and the design for the aliens was different to what you'd be expecting. They still seemed a sort of cutesy, Disney-esque sort of monster where they had big, wide eyes. They don't look right if your trying to make these your bad guys. I can only imagine the time that should have been spent on a tragic back-story that motivates the aliens to invade was spent shooting up Hawaii some more.

Bits of the dialogue pointed towards the idea that you shouldn't take any of this seriously and so jumble up what is usually not overly special back and forth of navel terms. "Just shut up, stuff that pop-corn in your face and watch the fire and pretty lights" says the Film, "It's about a board game, who cares?!"

Transformers was always expected to be more than that base-line explosion festival and place the aliens in the fore-front of the story to then be characterised and shown off so that new fans could be created and old ones could be gratified. That never happened and so garnered the hatred that has sprung forth.

Battleship hasn't got any pre-existing characters because it's a board-game. You can do whatever the hell you like as long as there's ships and they're battling. The film is almost entirely a rip-off of Transformers except we don't care about the aliens and were never expected to. This ultimately works better because we're more inclined to focus on the humans that get most of the screen-time. The aliens are targets so do nothing but advance the plot. It would have been nice to get a little more explanation on what they why they bothered to turn up but by inner 6 year-old is to distracted by all the gun-fire to care. No-one is likely to be up in arms about Battleship which means that it seems to get away with it.

Isn't Avengers Assemble already out?

Well, yes. Go see that instead. Avengers Assemble is superior to Battleship in almost every way. If you have some kids with you and need to keep them entertained for a while, go see Avengers. Battleship is not worth your time. In fact, neither was this review. I doubt you need me to tell you to go see something else when this comes out, American members of The Path. Your smarter than that. I only saw it because Liam Neeson's in it. And as a devout Neesonite, I was compelled to see this film.

Robert Downey Jr. in a flying suit of mecha-armour fighting the Norse god of Thunder or a group of people shooting stuff with cannons? No brainer right?

Now, if Hasbro were to put some money towards an Fallout: Equestria film...
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