Platformation Time Again #2: Asterix & Obelix XXL Romastered PS4

I originally reviewed this game to celebrate the release of the latest Asterix & Obelix live action film at the time, that being Asterix & Obelix: The Middle Kingdom, but it was before i fully decided to reboot this rubric, and since i was gonna cover Asterix & Obelix XXL 2, i’d figured i would “remaster/remake” the old review, thought it’s so expanded and has more than enough and more in-depth writing it’s almost new one, BUT since the old review it’s quite recent, i didn’t feel the need to completely throw out everything, i’m pointing this out if this feels like deja-vu.

It is. Kinda.

Also, FIY, i will try to use both original and localized names for the characters, for clarity.

HISTORY

This is one of those series that is huge in many regions but since it never properly took off in North America, it may look like it’s a thing that’s “huge in Europe but nowhere else” (especially given how the perception skewed the US as the only place where things happen or matter), but Asterix & Obelix is one of the longest running comic book series and one of the most popular of all time, to the point its being only outsold and out-translated by One Piece, worlwide.

I grew up with these, as it was hugely popular in Italy as well (irony noted) as France, Belgium, the UK, and basically anywhere that wasn’t America, even though most of the later animated films did see some kind of US release (of the live actions one i think only Asterix And The Middle Kingdom, the most recent one, saw a Netflix release in US territories), and there’s a Netflix exclusive animated series adaptation of Asterix The Big Fight coming later this year, in the hope of feeding a US fanbase of the series that i’m sure is there and its fuckin starved in terms of official releases.

Just in case, let’s go over the basic premise.

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Avatar The Last Airbender: Quest For Balance PS4 [REVIEW] | Sokoban Benders

Cards on the table: i’ve never seen the Avatar animated series, always heard it pretty good, i know it had/has a big following, enough for a reviled live action film to exist, but i simply didn’t care too much because i didn’t grow up watching that, and i never felt like i needed to later, i mean, i spent my teens watching anime, why bother with a western cartoon (that wasn’t Samurai Jack) tackling asian inspired stories and themes, when i can read Naruto directly?

Can’t really say i learned much about the series through osmosis, as i’ve seen people discuss about it, and since i guess it didn’t grab much European markets, some of the games based off it did reach the PAL territories, but not when the series was wildly popular and discussed about, i feel, back then we also got the shitty Legend Of Korra game Platinum Games made, which i did play and review on PS3 but has long been delisted and never received a physical release.

So i’ve figured i’d grab this last one, as it was actually released in 2023 by Gamemill, got in a bundle with the infamous Rise Of Kong, because why not? Might as well stick my entire head into the garbo bin, to see what foul creatures are lying in wait below the surface.

And to my understanding, the games based around this beloved Nickelodeon show (and the spin-offs) are mostly crap or disappointing at best, and this i feel ain’t gonna be the exception.

This is to say i don’t know the story in any detail, but i know the gist… and i feel the people that developed the game did know less than me, and just skimmed some summaries online in order to write the story and dialogues..

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[EXPRESSO] Prophecy (2025) | Revenge Of The UberEats Boys

I’ve quite enjoyed Tetsuya Tsutsui mangas such as Reset, Noise, Duds Hunt… but i’ve never heard of “Prophecy”, that one sure eluded me.

So imagine my surprise when i saw this Italian live action film adaptation of his Prophecy manga announced months ago. Especially since they already made a Japanese live action film adaptation… back in 2015.

Sure the production studio, Brandon Box, notably also have been working on a Tiger Mask live action film (the anime was mad popular here back in the 80s)… but why this one specifically?

The plot involves a couple of young dudes trying to sell their stock market software, “Prophecy”, to a media mogul, but it fails spectacularly, forcing them to scrape by with odd jobs, until months later they find the mogul profitting over “Prophecy”. So they decide to moonlight as a modern, social media wise Robin Hood, the protagonist donning a mask made of newspaper and the alias “Paperboy”, becoming a viral sensation, things snowball, the police gets involved, yada yada.

It’s odd, because it’s not awful, acting is quite solid, i respect the attempt, the heart is in the right place, ….but it’s a tensionless thriller that comes off as weird step child of Mr. Robot and a crime caper comedy à-la Now You See Me (minus the magic), an action comedy thingie that touches upon modern problems like the rooted effect Internet has on our lives, social injustices like the UberEats style of “poverty jobs” forced upon people that were denied a better future… while also seeming stuck in the past on many pivotal plot elements like “hacking”, the characters are bidimensional cutouts, the script is kinda weak, full of unintentional anticlimaxes and just straight up forced plot developments.

Not bad, just kinda of a mess, but an okayish one.

Final Verdict: Americano

[EXPRESSO] La Città Proibita/The Forbidden City (2025) | Kung Fu In Roma

After delighting italian audiences with the superhero-anime inspired They Called Him Jeeg and then unleashing circus freaks against the nazis in Freaks Out, director Gabriele Mainetti opted for another type of modern pastiche with La Città Proibita (lit. “The Forbidden City”, not sure how much intentional are the similarities with the 1918 films of the same name ), blending in a kung fu drana film with an Italian crime-thriller.

The movie sees Mei, a chinese woman on a quest to find her sister, whom moved to Rome years ago, and as she fights her way through the criminal underbelly of the city, she meets Marcello, the son of an indebted restaurant owner that is thrown into this since his dead father was mentioned by Mei, the two eventually teaming up to find out the truth behind their shared woes….

It’s an impressive feat how this isn’t just a “cute attempt” or is “as good as it can get due to being an Italian production”, none of that, there’s actually a profound understanding of kung fu films as well as the kind of specific regional (Roman in this case) italian style of drama and comedy that would resonates with the audiences, there’s respect, hearth and good craft put to it, with professional, high quality brutal kung fu action, excellent coreography and tight editing.

The elements and plot beats are typical of the kung fu genre (it’s a vengeance story at heart, for one) but really well executed, and more importantly this doesn’t feel like two movies forced to coexist despite being at odds with each other, quite the opposite, as they both benefit/draw from this “culture clash” theme for the best, acting its quite good (mostly), it is quite captiving and enthralling if you’re willing to give the idea a chance.

Monster Armageddon/2025 Armageddon (2022) [REVIEW] | #giantmonstermarch

I’ve lamented the downright lethargic, nearly comatose state and distinct disinterest, so nested and in a rot The Asylum is with their output in this last period, i’ve done that before.

It’s clear whatever “magic” they summoned with Sharknado didn’t last long, and now just rest on their laurels, so to speak, as even the usual aficionados of trash got disinterested in the same way the company itself seems to be with whatever they cram out, they keep doing their thing but just because it’s what they have always done, and will keep doing until there’s not any money left off mockbustering.

I remember from a class in genre cinema i once took that – broadly speaking – a genre has reached a stage of severe stagnation when it starts becoming metatextual, to speak of itself more than anything else, as it can obstensibly find nothing else to iterate on, so it “turns on itself”.

And while it no longer hold completely true, as we’re now in a post-meta phase, if you will, there’s still a valid argument in there, because films like Monster Armageddon (released as 2025 Armageddon in trying to fool more people) validate the implied drying up of the “creative well”, and are a testament to this decade of post-irony, meta overdosing incestinal multiverse crossovers, of finding out there’s no bottom of the barrel, no real lowest of the low that can’t be “improved” upon.

I remember buying the DVD for this one for 5 bucks, sight unseen, on Amazon back in 2023, i knew it was an Asylum joint, and the cover art was nice, featuring a lots of monsters and creatures.

As with Monster Island (their mockbuster response to 2019’s Godzilla II: King Of The Monsters), the cover art is way better than the movie itself, but this time around it isn’t a complete lie like it was with that movie… as in it’s not technically a lie.

It’s worse… or is it?

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[EXPRESSO] The Electric State (2025) | Mr. Peanut, Break Down This Wall

VERY loosely based on Simon Stålenhag’s 2018 retro-sci-fi illustrated book of the same name and directed by the Russo brothers, The Electric State is set in an alternate 1990s where robots, gaining sentience after decades, rise up and engage a full on war, ultimately won by the humans using headgear controlled remote drone soldiers. After the war, the headgear/vr sets are sold commercially to pacify the masses, while the surviving robots are sent to a giant desert prison colony.

We follow a juvenile delinquent, Jessie (Millie Bobby Brown), whom lost her family in a car accident years ago and is now a foster kid, as one night she gets visited by a robot of Kid Cosmo, her beloved brother’s favourite childhood cartoon, which claims to actually be him, leading the two in a roadtrip-escape adventure…..

One that plays it super-straight, all in an attempt to get us invested into this world… hard to when there’s simply no charm, with the movie actively refusing to embrace its inherent sillyness AND doubling down on being “gritty”, which backfires on a nuclear scale.

There’s a palpable attempt at telling a Spielberg style tale, but there’s no soul or substance to it, just a Ready Player One masturbatory penchant for pop culture regurgitation (that makes NO SENSE in context, to boot), well known actors half-assing their admittely bad characters, and a plot being a senseless, meaningless hodgepotche that makes even less sense as it goes on, never committed to anything besides vague, overly basic metaphors, or Funko Pops-friendly character designs.

Those that aren’t already well known brand figureheads like fuckin Mr. Peanut (what is this, Food Fight?).

It’s not even boring, but it’s quite bad, stupid, mostly just so confounding you had to wonder “Why?”, especially when it had a 320 million dollars budget.

Trollhunter (2010) [REVIEW] | #giantmonstermarch

Aside from the 2022 Troll monster film on Netflix, there’s not much in the way of troll movies outside of the overcovered Troll 2 (and it’s “prequels” and “sequels” also mostly made by Italian directors and actors), even more so if we’re going for proper giant sized trolls, not the tiny ones, or the Dreamworks animated film series based on those old troll toys with the hair, for that matter.

Also, i had this on the backburner for a while, and it also lets me cover of my lest liked genres: the found footage mockumentary.

Directed by André Øvredal, nowadays better known for The Autopsy Of Jane Doe, Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark and The Last Voyage of The Demeter (with an upcoming adaptation of the horror videogame Bendy And The Ink Machine) here at his second feature lenght film, one more close to home for him, as it dwelves with the more well known beast of Norwegian folklore: the troll.

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[EXPRESSO] Mickey 17 (2025) | Hardspace Shipbreaker Multiplicity

From Bong Joon-Ho (Parasite, Snowpiercer, Okja), we now have Mickey 17, an intriguing original brew of comedy, drama, romance, sci-fi, takin place in the future, where a down on his luck guy, Mickey Barnes, finds himself – due to a huge debt – signing up as an “expendable” for this religious backed colony envoy led by a zealot ex-congressman (Mark Ruffalo), meaning that basically he’s used as a guinea pig to test viruses, be given deadly jobs in the cold of space and then the ice-laden planet they want to colonize, thrown against the wildlife.. doesn’t matter, as they keep back ups of all his memories and just 3D print him a new body when he inevitably kicks the bucket.

One day he’s just left to die in a icy crevice, but miracolously manages to find himself alive and travels back to the outpost, only to notice they didn’t wait around to clone him again…

It’s an interesting film because it can jump to having romantic comedy scenes to serious sci-fi drama, throwing blunt satirical boulders about class warfare, tense thriller scenes, and yet, despite it sounding like it should be a fuckin mess, it all comes together organically, as the star studded cast delivers an incredible range, making the characters believable, even with the wild swings in tone… minus the two main villains, the zealot fascist cult-leader and his fitting wife (Tony Colette), i get why they are so over the top, i do, but they stick out as way too cartoonishly evil (especially when everyone else has some complexity or grounding in this specific sci-fi reality), to the point they become a detriment to what is still a great movie.

It’s still a notable, engaging and interesting film that fully deserves to be seen in cinemas,

Pirate Warriors 4 Next Gen and somehow MORE DLC

I will admit, i completely missed this trailer, as i did with Warriors Abyss announcement, i was made aware by a newsletter while checking the mail, and for reasons i will explain, i’m a bit TOO late, but i also kinda had to, as i didn’t rule out a situation like this.

There just so many times i can write “i can’t believe we’re still talking about Pirate Warriors 4”, so yes, i can believe, and will, since we’re here again.

And yes, they will do about anything than actually make or even hint at a Pirate Warriors 5, or actually do a proper expansion, like and old school Xtreme Legends things, with redone old stages that were in PW3 but not in PW 4, as we already discussed in detail.

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Hex Maniacs, Shreks, and the Tecmo Koei Warriors From Hell (Deathstalker not included)

Time for more unasked general ramble posts, mother’s favorites.

So we finally got that Pokemon Presents (AKA the Pokemon Direct) a few days ago, and alongside them bringing back a successor of sorts for Pokemon Stadium (might as well, since the NSO rerelease of the N64 games are just emulated versions that can’t connect to any active Pokemon system/software/archive-bank in order to substitute the original “Transfer Pak and Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow cartridge” method to import , hence are truncated experiences), the highlight was undoubtly the first actual trailer and gameplay footage for Legends Pokemon ZA, which will bring us back to Pokemon X & Y region, Kalos, now expanded and incorporating wild/unkempt areas for the wild Pokemon to roam about.

And count on the Pokemon fanbase to find what’s likely the new design for the Hex Maniac trainer class in a ridiculously tiny smidge on the Kalos map image they revealed.

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