I take back what I took back last post. This Shonen Knife album is a bit of a bore. Again, they are trying to sound like the Ramones, and I guess I don’t really like bands that sound like the Ramones. There is no space in the production and the drums just sound like an (off tempo) drum machine.
I take back a little about what I said in my Pretty Little Baka Guy post. This record definitely has an obvious Beatles vibe and it works very well. I can remember the slightly out-of-tune vocals really annoying some of my roommates back in college. I really like them.
This is one of my wife’s CDs that made its way into my collection. Shonen Knife is one of those bands which you kinda laugh at when you first hear them and then they grow on you. They draw upon a lot of the same sources as The Pebbles—a band which I like much more—but they don’t quite have that 60’s girl group appeal. They are more a product of the Ramones rather than The Beatles.
This is the story of an American GI who returns to Sicily years after the war to find the girl he loved only to find himself held captive by the Mafiosi who run the town. The story is pretty good but it falters in the third act without ever really paying off.
Costume Quest feels like an off-hand idea thrown out there at a pitch meeting. I’m sure the designers had just taken their kids out trick-or-treating for the first time and thought to themselves, “Geesh, wouldn’t it be cool if there was a game where you were trick-or-treating and your costumes gave you superpowers!” Well, it might have been cool except for the fact that knocking on doors only to have repetitive battles is not fun at all. If there is one thing Doublefine Studios is good at is creative art direction and silly dialogue. Much like the critically lauded Psychonauts, this game is dripping with style and creativity. But, also like Psychonauts, the actual game play is just ho-hum. The game is just a lot of walking around, picking up candy and then having the occasional timing-based (ala Mario RPG) and strategy-free battles. This game was entertaining for about a half hour but got old really fast.
Syberia II picks up right where the first game left off with you racing by train into northern Russia in search of the mysterious island of Syberia. Of course there are plenty of obstacles along the way and lots of new and fantastical places to explore. The writing here is top-notch (with the exception of the completely redundant side story of Kate’s employers attempting to track her down) and I genuinely cared about the characters and their fates. My usual complaints about point-and-click adventures still apply here, but I never felt the game was (too) unfair with its puzzles.
