Shadow Warrior 2 is a fast and wild shooter that continues in much the same vein as the first reboot game (which I never got around to reviewing here). The game is irreverent and revels in its 90s roots but does its best to avoid the politically incorrect Asian stereotypes of the original game. There is a really visceral quality to the combat, especially when focusing on swordplay and melee attacks. You are constantly surrounded and relying on spastic special attacks and super powers to thin the onslaught.
The story is nothing special, but the one-liners and goofy tone keep it interesting enough to not skip the cut scenes. There are tons of monster types and tons of weapons. In a lot of ways it feels like Borderlands as you constantly upgrade and modify weapons with random enhancements. Apparently there is also a good co-op mode which I have not tried. The levels are huge, but there aren’t too many of them and about halfway through the game you realize that you are constantly revisiting the same levels over and over again. In the end that doesn’t really matter since the game isn’t really about exploration. The levels only serve as temporary settings in which to obliterate foes in to clouds of gore.
I’ve never used this word ever in my life, but the best description of this Sean Connery/Michael Caine adventure movie would be rollicking. Nowadays I suppose it would also be called problematic from it’s depiction of foreign cultures and the ease by which they accept Westerner’s bullets in the belly.
Epic Biblical story which was partially directed by Mario Bava. Joan Collins is a bride to be who is stolen from the altar then falls in love with her captor, the king of Persia. It’s mostly a love story and the action is few and far between.
Sam Raimi directed this serviceable bit of 90s noir in which a trio of Minnesota lads discover a gym bag full of cash and make a plan to wait for the heat to die down before splitting it up. Of course they are idiots and do everything they possibly can to screw things up. These sorts of stories are so frustrating to me. This is basically every Walking Dead plot line (and why I stopped watching that show).
All these Ubisoft open-world games (Assassins Creed, Watch Dogs, etc.) follow the same basic formula. Main story which you can take your time completing, lots of side activities and missions, and collectible stuff that gets you nothing in the end. Each is enjoyable up to a point, but then they wear out their welcome and become tedium. But despite the flaws, I genuinely enjoy the Far Cry games. I am a sucker for the FPS/stealth mix in which you can approach any conflict from a large number of paths. Each outpost I conquer without tripping the alarms feels like a real achievement.
This is essentially the exact same game as Far Cry 3 but in an alpine environment. The story is nowhere near as engaging as that game, but it suffices. You get introduced to the eccentric baddie and then he disappears for 90% of the game. Instead, you must contend with some annoying rebels, a couple of drug smoking idiots, and a bible quoting gun runner. Of course the dialogue comes out sounding like something a high school freshman would think is cool. The radio DJ is particularly annoying. I wish you could go on a rampage without negatively affecting your karma score.
All that is moot. The real focus here is blowing up animals. Any game in which you can blast a pack of cute, cuddly dholes into oblivion with a grenade launcher is okay in my book.
Published in 1964, this book presents itself as a scientific analysis of swinger culture. The opening chapters are filled with various statistics about the numbers of couples who participate in swap clubs, their social class, education levels, etc. Of course none of this data is cited so who knows if any of it is legitimate. Surely the, ahem, Breedloves are thoroughly committed to scientific rigor?
The core of the book is mostly comprised of racy anecdotal accounts of couples discovering that their hot young newlywed friends are also liberated modern marrieds. The whole thing seems like a cheap attempt to rationalize extramarital relations and, even worse than that, party games. For me an evening of Scattergories and Apples to Apples is too hefty a price to pay for even the most transcendent night of wild, unfettered lovemaking.
The authors devote the last several chapters of the book to their conclusions as to how swingers will fit in with American society as contemporary culture advances. Apparently, by 1984 swinging would be a commonplace and accepted lifestyle. They also predict that science is on the verge of eliminating the need for humans to go to the bathroom, so maybe they aren’t the most deft futurists around.
The only thing this game has going for it is its art direction. There’s some wonderful hand-drawn characters and evocative music. However, like a Doublefine game, this one is all style and no substance. The highlight is supposed to be the various boss battles in which you spend a ton of time chopping at these giant character’s heels. Every swing of your axe removes about 1% of the enemy’s health. It’s just an exercise in tedium. The controls are sluggish and un-responsive . It’s like fighting in a bowl of molasses.
Between these boss battles you have to wander through several immense and mostly empty levels looking for the keys to the bosses. These levels are pointless and super-boring. Free might be a bit too much to have paid for this game.
The chapters on Free Masonry and The Golden Dawn were pretty informative. I think my big takeaway about these sects was not so much that they are dark subcultures that secretly control the world, but rather, that well-to-do people will come up some really goofy extracurricular activities just to feel out of the ordinary (the 19th century equivalent of a polar plunge or costumed 4K fun-run). Oh, and Aleister Crowley was a big, pervy jerk.
A murder mystery on a sparsely populated planet where each person lives isolated from everyone else and all the work is done by robots. Since the robots must follow the first law and nobody can stand proximity to other humans, who committed the murder? Turns out, the answer isn’t all that interesting and neither was this book.
Another cult movie which I’ve known about forever, but never bothered to watch. I didn’t expect this to be as cheap as it was. Fortunately the story is just crazy enough to keep it very entertaining and the terrible monster effects add a lot of charm. This would make a good double feature with The Oily Maniac. There’s an overly long expositional flashback in the middle of the movie and some cringey male nudity that leads up to the finale.
