I really wanted to like this game. It feels almost like No One Lives Forever in it’s hip spy aesthetics but falls flat on almost every other level. First and foremost the controls and gameplay are sluggish and incredibly unsatisfactory. 90% of the time is just your character slowly reloading his weapons. It was sold as a stealth game but the stealth portions are just lame. They consist you you walking around with wooden chairs in hand, cocked to eventually smash on the head of your enemies. The story is focused on a set of super criminals who are all numbered. When number I is finally revealed you have no idea who he was anyway. Props to the cell-shaded graphics and Adam West’s hammy voice acting. Other than that, this is garbage.
Seems like they are scraping the bottom of the barrel with this MotU entry. The book is roughly divided into three parts. The first is a anthropological survey of how various cultures across history view the beginnings of time. I found this pretty boring. The second part is the strongest and it is a general overview of various scientific notions of time and space. A solid piece of history of science. The last section introduces us to the kooks. There are people who think they momentarily shifted into the past and others who can sense the tragic past of a certain location. None of it is even remotely plausible but is a good groundwork for a sci-fi time travel mechanism should you want one.
Phillip Marlowe has been hired to track down a stolen gold coin and, of course, it leads to murder. Like most mystery novels, ultimately the plot and characters are forgettable, but Chandler has a way of immersing the reader in a time, place, and mood that sticks with you.
I enjoyed this movie for the most part but there were a few plot points that felt off, and the flashbacks, although an important character point, seemed out-of-place. On top of all this the protagonist is sour and unlikable through most of the film which lessened his big hero moment at the end. Props to the The Jesus Lizard t-shirt which features prominently.
A goofball comedy about summer camp councilors created by the people behind the 90s sketch show, The State. Apparently this movie had enough of a “cult” following to warrant a Netflix series follow-up. I thought it was pretty good but I can see how drunk college kids would rate it higher than I do.
The title of this book would suggest that it is purely about having a hopeful outlook about world events. Rather, it is mostly a history of the rise and fall of the Soviet Union with a heavy emphasis on the level of depravity both within the U.S.S.R. and amongst the many Western apologists for the regime. None of this was new information to me (see this, this, this, this, and this. And let’s not forget Flappr’s Excellent overview: The Russian Revolution: Good Thing / Bad Thing) but this work is a much more condensed and to the point telling of the tale. What was most interesting to me were the final few chapters that document Reagan, Thatcher, Gorbachev and the eventual fall of the Soviet empire. The speed and totality of the fall is the great example of why one should be white-pilled.
Ion Fury is more than the nostalgia cash-in that its marketing might suggest. It an FPS that gets to the core of what a great FPS should be: a combination frantic firefights in environments that test a player’s skill and clever level design that rewards exploration. Missing from all this is a deep and thoughtful story but I didn’t really miss it. Too many games these days try to be movies instead of games. I appreciate the effort, but the writing in video games rarely is even on par with a Disney channel sitcom. Gameplay is king and Ion Fury has it in spades.
The game is built using an updated version of the 3D Realms Build Engine. It still looks like Duke Nukem 3D but the resolutions are higher, the controls a much smoother, and the sheer amount of stuff in the game is increased. You are still mainly just looking for key cards on your path to the final boss battle(s). And, you know what, I didn’t care. The levels are incredibly designed, the enemies are just smart and varied enough, and there are plenty of stat challenges to shoot for. Finding all the secrets without a walkthrough is probably impossible but when you do find one is a truly rewarding. This was an unexpected gem.
The only thing this Jess Franco movie has going for it is its score by Bruno Nicolai. The rest is a mostly incoherent mess cobbled together from footage from other movies. Shots are repeated, others linger for way too long. It’s all a means to pad the length. He does manage to give it a story but this was most likely made as an excuse to getting a lot of nudity on the screen and way too much nudity is Jack Taylor.
In Control you are in control of Jesse. She’s been plunked down into a giant, oppressively designed government building and there are glowy monster-men attacking her. Not much else is explained. Only after a few hours of playing do you start to get a feeling for what’s going on. Something about a long lost brother, a voice in her head, and a mysterious force called The Hiss.
It’s not terribly engaging but at least the combat mechanics can be fun. You have a selection of weak pistols but mostly enemies are taken down with Jesse’s multitude of psychic powers. The most useful of which is her ability to launch objects at enemies. It’s pretty much a gussied-up version of the Half-Life 2 gravity gun. There’s also a shield, a dash, possession, and levitation but those are only have limited use. It’s a bit of a Metroid thing where a few zones are only accessible with a specific power.
In the end I was mostly just frustrated with the third-person perspective and all the running around. Apparently there is some sort of Alan Wake tie-in and that would explain the similar game play feels. But there was just too much obtuse story telling for my tastes.
