Category: Written Reviews

The Last Jedi… Meh.

My thoughts on the latest Star Wars film are going to be brief because going into too much detail might be dipping deep into spoiler territory and I’d like to give people who have seen the movie a chance to go in with a clean slate rather than be, well, spoiled.

With that having been said, the only thing that I can say about The Last Jedi is that nothing of note happens and it’s back to business as usual. And even that might be a bit too spoiler-y without being too spoiler-y, but for what is supposed to be the big, major Star Wars entry – the big middle chapter in the trilogy – it just felt like a filler episode of a television series rather than anything of great significance.

Don’t get me wrong; I liked the movie enough that there were brief bits to enjoy. The space battle at the beginning of the movie was pretty good, the battle on the salt planet wasn’t too bad, I enjoyed the brief character interactions between Rey and Luke, the cast in general does the best they could with the material given and almost makes me believe in it, and then there was seeing Luke Skywalker in action for the briefest of moments.

But for the most part, I was largely underwhelmed. Questions that have been set up in the previous episode are either brushed aside or given rather underwhelming resolutions, there are plenty of uninteresting characters that I absolutely don’t care about, some of the character motivations are pretty goddamn stupid, the humor (with some exceptions) was overbearing to the point of obnoxiousness and almost makes me wonder if Episode IX is going to feature a crossover with the Guardians of the Galaxy, and as far as the direction of one Master Skywalker… well, I can see why Mark Hamill would fundamentally disagree with that sort of thing.

All of this would’ve been forgiven if the story was worth a damn and unfortunately, that isn’t the case here. Say what you will about The Force Awakens, but that had a sense of scope and opened the door to many new possibilities and interesting takes. It’s a pity that The Last Jedi chooses to ignore or even discard these new things and just bring things back to business as usual. I daresay that the movie is more interested giving us random characters who only exist to check items off the diversity checklist that the media likes so much, rather than give audiences a story that’s worth a damn.

Contrary to the supposed rallying cry that a lot of people are going for – at least if you were to follow the plethora of user reviews on the IMDB, this didn’t kill Star Wars for me. But I can safely say with absolute certainty that this is the first time since Attack of the Clones where I came out of a Star Wars movie completely underwhelmed and just disappointed by the lack of vision.

For what it’s worth, it’s an alright movie… but the best since Empire Strikes Back? Not a chance.

That would be last year’s Rogue One.

COMIC REVIEW – Star Trek: Deviations (IDW, 2017)

IDW is at it, again.

They’re doing another round of their Deviations event – one-shots of various licensed properties being subjected to “What If?” scenarios. We’ve sampled a couple of these last year and this year… well, there was only one that piqued my interest and that was the Star Trek one. Took me a little longer to gather my thoughts on this one because… well, let’s be honest here. I’ve read three of these Deviations so far and we’re one for three at the moment.

Yeah, this isn’t very good, either… but this time, the blame falls on the premise, which seems to be all over the place.

The premise of this Deviation seems fascinating on paper; what if, instead of the Vulcans, it was the Romulans who were Earth’s first encounter with extraterrestrials. It’s an idea that has potential to be explored and possibly spin off an interesting alternate take on Star Trek lore before we get to the eventual “everyone dies” ending that a lot of these things fall back on because we’re uncreative hacks or something.

So what happens when the Romulans land on Earth before the Vulcans? They turn the planet into a Romulan colony and enslave the human race. Jump ahead to the 24th century and an eyepatched Will Riker leads a ragtag band of freedom fighters (who, coincidentally or conveniently, happen to be some of the old TNG crew in similar altered states or worse) to find a man who may or may not know the location of a Federation base… wait, what? A Federation base? How could there be a Federation base if the Romulans enslaved the human race shortly after Zefram Cochrane’s warp flight? If the humans never had a chance to develop space flight, how could there be a Federation? Hell, that Delta on the cover shouldn’t even be there if that were the case.

So IDW either lied about the deviation or nobody had a fucking clue. I’m leaning more towards the former because IDW has been doing Star Trek comics for years now and they’re usually on the ball with this stuff. I’d have to assume that, at some point, the Federation and the Romulans got into a war, the Romulans won, took control of Earth and enslaved the humans. That would make more sense and less questions would be brought up that we’d never get answers to. Approaching the story from THAT context rather than the premise it was sold on… eh, it’s not so bad.

For what it’s worth, it’s a fast-paced piece of business that doesn’t waste time on exposition since we don’t have time to waste in a one-shot book. The action bits are well-done and it was interesting to see the different takes on these familiar TNG characters. Would it have been nice to get more emphasis on the main players and how things have changed? Sure, but given what’s there… it was fine.

It’s just unfortunate that for all the good bits that this issue offered, I am left with more questions regarding anachronistic aspects of the story, including the final big reveal, which – had this been following the original premise of the series – should not exist in the first place. I don’t know… this feels like a sampler of a much larger story and if there’s more to come, I’d look forward to reading it.

As a one-shot, however, Star Trek: Deviations leaves much to be desired.

Random Thoughts On… Suicide Squad

So let me be upfront about this… I am not the biggest fan of the recent crop of DC films to come out of that camp. I’m talking about the Zack Snyder helmed stuff like Man Of Steel and Yawn Of Justice. Even going further back, I’ve also fallen a bit numb on what some would laughingly call the “holy” Dark Knight trilogy, of which only one of the films (The Dark Knight) holds up to any real degree. I’m not saying that I hate the films… well, Yawn Of Justice comes close… I just don’t think they’re all that good.

That having been said, watching the few trailers for this Suicide Squad film left me with some semblance of cautious optimism that this might be interesting at most and not completely worthless at worse. I was looking forward to this one; mostly to see how bad this might turn out.

Having just seen it and giving some deep thought, I can say with a clear conscious that Suicide Squad is perfectly average fare… and that probably makes it the best DC Film yet. Shocking, I’m sure.

Seriously, I actually enjoyed this one. It was simple, straightforward, no nonsense, no world building crap, just a bunch of bad guys doing bad things to even badder people. There was some decent gunfights, there was a couple laughs to be had at times, the mood was appropriately grim at times, and there was some attempt at making you care about these not-heroes, which is more than what I got out of the other flicks. In a strange way, Suicide Squad almost accomplishes the Iron Man affect; taking relatively lesser known characters and making people care about them in some form or another.

If there were any complaints to be had, I thought the drug-induced editing was a bit too much, what with all the “colorful” graphics and desperate attempt to infuse “livelihood” to a grim picture that was perfectly suited for the dark tone. The picture was dark to a point where it was difficult to see what was going on, The choice in music was absolutely dreadful, almost as if they just took whatever songs are or were popular and stuffed it in there without rhyme or reason in regards to tone (the actual score by Steven Price, on the other hand, is pretty good). And I’m particularly dismayed that they did very little with Katana (the one with the soul-stealing sword). Oh well.

Despite the quibbles, Suicide Squad was somewhat enjoyable and was completely terrible. Not a cinematic masterpiece nor a theatrical terror; just a perfectly average film that just happens to be the best film to come out of the DC Film Universe or whatever the fuck they’re calling it… and when “perfectly average” is the best you’re getting out of DC, it doesn’t paint a pretty picture.

Here’s hoping Wonder Woman doesn’t turn out to be a bust… sorry, poor choice of words.

Or is it?

COMIC REVIEW – Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Deviations (IDW, 2016)

Of the half-dozen issues that IDW put out for its “Deviations” event – essentially a take on the “What If?” concept of alternate realities and the such – I’ve bought and read two books; one on Ghostbusters and one on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The Ghostbusters book had an interesting idea marred by poop jokes, low brow humor, and just bad writing overall.

The Deviations on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, on the other hand? That fares a bit better. And that says something considering I haven’t been a regular follower of IDW’s (still ongoing) TMNT comic book… something that I eventually plan to rectify sooner than later, I hope.

This Deviation alters a plot point in the series, wherein the original narrative Leonardo is brainwashed into joining the foot clan, this narrative changes things by having all four Turtles brainwashed and in pursuit of their now-former master, Splinter. Although a familiarity with the original story in question may enhance one’s enjoyment of the story a bit, the book’s prologue provides enough of a backstory that bring those not in the know a little more up to speed. Who knows? Maybe it might entice potential readers to pick up back issues or the various trade paperback collections.

As for the issue itself, it’s not a bad read despite the story not being all that fantastic. The possessed Turtles almost become interchangeable caricatures of each other, with only slight hints of personality being shown and the lead up to the big battle at the end could’ve used a bit more meat. Regardless, I can’t say that I didn’t enjoy this book; the final battle at the end is certainly fun and the side story of Arnold Jones mulling over the loss of his son Casey (which triggered this whole thing to begin with) adds a bit of depth to a character that seemingly had none.

The art is fine, a bit messy at times, but it’s fine. I mean, as its own little thing, it’s a nice and somewhat believable story that’s saddled with a predictable ending (everybody dies, of course – hardly a spoiler if you’ve read a lot of What Ifs). An intimate knowledge of IDW’s take on the Turtles would certainly help, but this holds its own just fine as a standalone.

COMIC REVIEW – Ghostbusters: Deviation (2016)

Earlier this year, IDW had this event called Deviations, which is a concept akin to the old “What If…?” comics that Marvel used to put out. The premise was to take an established event and see what happens if things turned out differently?

What if Spider-Man saved Gwen Stacy from death? What if the first Death Star wasn’t destroyed? What if the Enterprise-D was successful in destroying the Borg ship? That sort of thing…

Nine times out of ten, the end result is usually “everybody dies” because that’s what happens when hack writers are given an opportunity to craft an alternate take (or alternate reality, if you will) on an idea and they can’t think of anything better to do with it. Sometimes, they don’t. But more often that not, these “What If?” scenarios are good alternate takes that can make readers think and wonder. And they’re usually good reads as well.

Ghostbusters Deviations is not one of those stories.

The idea was interesting; depict a world in which the Ghostbusters didn’t cross the streams to defeat Gozer at the end of the first movie (and spoiler: they never do) and see how badly things turn out from there. The answer, of course, is that things turn out pretty bad; not just for the Ghostbusters, not for the city of New York, but also for the hapless reader who decided to fork over the five bucks to read this tripe. If you enjoy juvenile humor, poop jokes, and outright horrible characterizations, you’ll probably get better quality material watching the Angry Video Game Nerd webseries than you would from this comic book. At least that will cost significantly less to suffer through. I don’t mind stupid funny, but when even that’s done poorly… good lord.

As I would flip through each page of increasing levels of utter banality, my hopes for this to be something worthwhile would slowly evaporate until all that was left was an utter contempt for human life. At some point, you have to feel bad for the Ghostbusters, who have some inklings of their original personalities but have somehow regressed into being complete and utter morons. Gozer, who was this menacing figure even when he/she/it/whatever was stuck in the Stay Puft form in the movie, has become an utter caricature of him/her/it/whatever-self that it’s almost painful. The rest of the characters, along with the attempts to try and sneak in references to contemporary times to a story set in 1984, can kiss my ass because they’re not worth mentioning.

I was initially not a particular fan of the art style – a sort of caricaturistic exaggeration of the cast of characters – but it’s my understanding that this is the art style used in IDW’s main Ghostbusters series, so in that regard, the art is consistent with what little I’ve seen of the main books. And eventually, it grew on me. I can only assume that the quality of the writing in those other books are a little better than what was featured here.

I can only imagine how diehard Ghostbusters fans have reacted to this book, but as someone with only a passing interest in the Ghostbusters franchise, I am flabbergasted by how bad this book turned out, especially when the premise has potential to be interesting and offer something worthwhile. Too bad that potential is wasted on pure crap.

BOOK REVIEW – Ghost Hunting 2.0 by Chris Bores (2015)

We’ve had our fun and games this past month with the newest literary tome from the Irate Gamer; a couple jokey video vlog things and a couple blips in a commentary… but Halloween has come and gone. The games are over and done with. It’s time to give my thoughts on Ghost Hunting 2.0 by Chris Bores.

Continue reading “BOOK REVIEW – Ghost Hunting 2.0 by Chris Bores (2015)”

BOOK REVIEW – SMB3: Brick By Brick (2013) (a.k.a. How Bob Chipman Ruined Super Mario Bros. 3 For Me)

Once upon a time, there was an online personality called Moviebob. He did a show on Screwattack called the Game Overthinker, where he talks about certain topics and brings up good points. Then he decided to add shitty storylines and skits to his videos and they started sucking. Basically, the same trap that befell other online personalities with the caustic reviewing angle.

One thing was readily apparently with Moviebob a.k.a. Bob Chipman; he believes that Super Mario Bros. 3 is the most important video game in the history of the universe. So much so that it became the focus of his life… and the subject of his first book.

Continue reading “BOOK REVIEW – SMB3: Brick By Brick (2013) (a.k.a. How Bob Chipman Ruined Super Mario Bros. 3 For Me)”

BOOK REVIEW – Journey Into Darkness: The Unauthorized History Of Kane (2005)

“I think you’d have to be on cocaine to enjoy it.”
Blade Braxton, Wrestlecrap Radio

So, 2005 saw WWE release a fictional book detailing the story of Kane, the Undertaker’s half-brother who debuted in 1997 and caused a big scene… and then bit by bit, that aura dwindled with stupid stories like Katie Vick, unmaskings, and corporate Kane. Fortunately, Journey Into Darkness was published long before that last bit took place and in fairness, I want to give the author credit in trying to reconcile all these different plotholes in WWE narrative into one cohesive story.

I mean, the poor bastard tried.

The book is poorly written… sometimes it reads fine, sometimes it reads bad, and then there are moments when it is unbearable (but those times are few and between). Here’s the thing, though; I enjoyed the book because I like the wrestling product. There’s a certain level regarding suspension of disbelief that you’d have to attain in order to follow wrestling. If you’re NOT a wrestling fan, though, then this book will do NOTHING for you. You’ll be reading this thing wondering, “What the hell is going on here?” And while the story is certainly readable for the most part and isn’t remotely terrible, it doesn’t make any attempt to make sense to the people who are picking this up without prior knowledge of the wrestling product.

If you’re a fan of the Big Red Monster and are remotely interested in his backstory, then Journey Into Darkness is probably worth a look. The story does its best to explain the various inconsistencies with the Kane backstory, but is marred down by generally poor writing and the fact that this is trying to make sense out of a narrative concocted by a company who didn’t give a rat’s ass about cohesive narratives unless it was convenient to them. There’s a “clever” attempt to try and make this grounded in reality by using real names here and there while maintaining their hokey fake story and for what it’s worth, you can’t help but admire the attempt.

I don’t know. If you’re into trainwrecks in literary form or want to know how WWE makes sense of its nonsense (and fail), then this is worth checking out. Otherwise, there are plenty of more worthwhile books to check out – either within the wrestling or fictional realms.

DVD REVIEW – Thoughts on the CGR Perks

(A portion of this text is taken from Episode 41 of the DTM-Cast, with some additions made afterwards.)

So about a couple weeks ago, I finally received the Best of Classic Game Room 15th Anniversary 2-disc set that was supposed to be out in December in time for Christmas, but that didn’t happen; it showed up in April and I’m guessing for those who didn’t donate, it’ll be available for purchase sometime this month if it isn’t already; I haven’t checked. I already got my copy; signed and delivered by the man himself. And also as part of the package that I had selected, I also received the Classic Game Room mockumentary film that was put out back in 2007 and personally, this was the big reason for my wanting to contribute. Not only because I was getting the new DVD, but if it came with the old DVD too, I’d figured; “Kill two birds with one stone and get them both.”

So I did a video showcasing my quirks that week and, you know, I don’t need to repeat what was said there, which wasn’t much; it was just showing off the printed materials and the coasters and the DVDs itself, but what I thought I would do is give some quick thoughts on the productions themselves and… I don’t want to call it reviewing because it’s not really that.

I want to talk about the 2007 documentary first because, well, that came first.

Classic Game Room: The Rise and Fall of the Internet’s Greatest Video Game Review Show was basically a humorous lookback at the history of Game Room, the show’s original 1999-2000 incarnation. And there’s a selection of Game Room episodes on display; some you’ve seen before, such as the Ninja Golf episode and the Seaman episode, and there’s a couple that are “officially” exclusive to this DVD, such as the Duck Hunt and Alien episodes. And in between the episodes, there’s the mockumentary portions which feature Mark narrating the history of Game Room and one has to decide for himself how much of it is legit and how much is over-exaggeration, but there are some bits of behind the scenes stuff and outtakes scattered about and it’s not bad.

Extras include a couple video blogs regarding the development of the documentary film, which are already on YouTube. There’s an alternate commentary track with Mark where he talks about the film and also some insightful and sometimes over-exaggerated observations regarding Game Room. But on a whole, it’s a fairly good mockumentary with a selection of choice Game Room episodes for good measure.

Now, regarding the Best of Classic Game Room… yeah, let me just set you up as to what to expect; you’re getting 50+ reviews worth of Classic Game Room episodes spanning from the original Game Room days in 1999-2000 to last year. Most of these reviews are already online, but there are a couple of them that are exclusive to this video. You’ve got an audio commentary with Mark Bussler, which is actually quite entertaining and informative in its own right. At one point, he even pokes fun of his monotone delivery during the HD era in 2008 when the show made its official comeback. There’s some behind the scenes content, some outtakes, and a conversation between Mark and former Game Room host David Crosson, which was a highlight.

So, speaking as a backer for this thing and speaking as someone who has enjoyed Classic Game Room since the resurgence of the show back in 2008, I have to say that I was satisfied with The Best Of Classic Game Room. In terms of the content on disc, there’s some good stuff there, some good choices for reviews to represent the show’s best, and presented in the highest quality possible on DVD format, the extra bits were pleasant, I enjoyed the segments between Mark and Dave – that made the DVD worthwhile in my book – but at the same time, there were bits of it that left me underwhelmed.

For one, I would’ve liked to have been able to skip to specific reviews rather than have to scan for them, I would’ve loved for some of the stuff, like the Mark & Dave conversional bits, to have been their own thing rather than scattered throughout the main program. And also, it would’ve been nice to see some reviews exclusive to this DVD; I know they advertised Super Metroid and Shenmue as DVD exclusives at one point, but those eventually made it to YouTube before the DVD’s release and so it just blows the wind from the sail. You’ve got a couple on there, though, such as the reviews of Arkanoid as well as Mark’s Broken Game Boy Advance SP that still works.

But, no, other than those minor bits, I’m quite happy with the way the DVD and the product turned out.