The Summer Of EDF & The Shark Six

So, to celebrate EDF 6 finally releasing westward in late July, we are gonna have ourselves a little Earth Defense Force retrospective, covering all the games yet not reviewed here (EDF 5, EDF Iron Rain and EDF World Brothers – alongside the PAL release of the first game in the series – have already been covered, FIY), mostly mainline ones, with 4 reviews spread across June and July.

This was already planned as such before D3 finally put down an actual release day (after the delay from spring 2024 to summer 2024), and since those months will have the now regular weekly release/cadence for articles/reviews, i’m also bringing back the sharks with 6 selected films about these poor animals, with 3 reviews per month.

August will be a surprise. For now.

Also, an expresso review of Furiosa – A Mad Max Saga is coming up next.

Spy X Family: Code White (2023) | Alpine Capers

So, the Spy X Family movie, which feels kinda odd to see release in most territories (EU and english speaking ones) now in late April, as it debuted Dicember 2023 in japanese theathers, an and it’s very easy to notice it was meant as a winter/Christmas release, because of it taking place in a faux-Switzerland-esque city and the tone of a winter holiday vacation.

Not having watched further than Season 1, i was a bit worried to accidentally spoil myself, but this is a non-canonical original story…… that actually doesn’t even really need you to have watched Spy X Family at all, as it introduces the main characters and quickly explains the gist (which i won’t for time’s sake) anyway, you will miss some context for some side characters, but there’s nothing that you can’t catch on the fly by watching the movie.

The plot has the Forger family go into a vacation in the nearby alpine and Switzerland-esque town of Frigis in order to get the recipe for a cake that will make Anya pass the cooking exam at her prestigious school, in turn advancing her career and letting Lloyd get closer to the target of the secret operation he undertook and formed the family for.

But things go south when Anya accidentally gets imbroiled with the army and discovers their plan to undo the fragile peace between non-East Germany and non-West Germany…

It’s a fun time, but it could have been easily a 2 parts long special episode instead, very little feels “cinematic” until deep in the second act, but even in terms of animation quality there’s little (some brief dream sequences, mostly) that feels like this “needed” to be a movie.

Still quite cute and wholesome as is the series itself, but nothing really impressive either way.

Attack Of The Sabretooth AKA Primal Park (2005) [REVIEW] | I Ate Mondays

So, experience tells me i should be reviewing The Belko Experiment since it’s International Workers Day and all, but i have very little to say about it, it’s a fun “battle royale but office enviroment” from writer (as he didn’t direct it) James Gunn and director Greg McLean, but it’s shockingly devoid of any twist or variation to the formula that had already been done, there’s some good actors but the characters (especially the protagonist) are mostly – and oddly – forgettable, it kinda never evolves, shakes up or does the battle royale formula in a fresher or interesting way, and the second part lacks the flair or escalation it leads you to believe it’s coming.

It’s still a decent film with some good, bloody moments, and one i still recommend checking out, after adjusting your expectations, because its one of those case were a movie suffers from being exactly what it leads you to believe it will be, so it’s not surprising it’s mostly remembered as a kind of missed opportunity, one where the satire ends and begins on the obvious, for once.

and despite the film teasing a “Phase 2” (not of MCU kind), for better or worse a sequel has yet to materialized as there were no plans for it and – to most people’s knowledge – still aren’t, at least at the time of posting.

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One Piece Pirate Warriors 4 – DLC Pack 6 PS4 [REVIEW]

So yeah, this is the final DLC characters batch for Pirate Warriors 4.

Almost can’t believe it.

“Almost” because people datamined the game and basically were able to learn beforehand with great accuracy what the new DLC characters would be, which is especially true for the final pack, Legends’ Dawn, one that indeed is dedicated to the old guard of One Piece big cheeses characters, with Gol D. Roger, his second-in-command Rayleigh and “younger Garp”.

In a way, Roger does feel weird to have a playable character this soon, i would have reserved him as a post-game unlock for Pirate Warriors 5, as in we barely even know bits of his moves and fighting style, but he has been a fan favourite and it will be at least 5 more years (if more, given PW 4 released in 2020) until we see the next PW installment, so yeah it kinda makes some sense.

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[EXPRESSO] Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024) | Les dents du singe

Honestly, Godzilla fans have been eating good lately, because we both have great serious Godzilla movies like Minus One and then we have the Monsterverse delivering the funny cheesy , super silly Showa-era style kaiju clashes, crossovers and “monster royal rumble collabs”.

And i’m supposed to stand there and tell you i don’t love the high quality of monster movie silliness of Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, as if i can’t love both.

Following up after the events of Godzilla VS Kong, the two Titans have reached an equibrilium of sorts, with Kong ruling over Hollow Earth and Godzilla serving as a “protector” against other kaijus on the surface of the planet. But when quakes inside Hollow Hearth make way for a new menace, the Monarch foundation will have to make two rival Titans work together to confront it…

Sadly, Godzilla kinda plays second fiddle in terms of relevance to the story, which is mostly about Kong’s loneliness and longing to meet other apes of his kind, the human characters are still pretty much stereotypes deep as a puddle, but here they’re more fun and-or tolerable than they were in Godzilla VS Kong, we do get to learn more about the lore of the world and the creatures as expected/promised (there’s a lot packed into a 2 hours runtime), there are some cool new monsters, with the kaiju’s personalities coming through perfectly, all culminating into one of the more expensive tag team kaiju wrestling matches ever seen on films.

Silly as shit, and deliberately so, with Godzilla taking a knack to sleeping in the Coliseum you know what the tone is gonna be, and i can’t deny it’s a blast.

A silly, hugely entertaining blast.

Can’t wait for the next one, come on Legendary, work Gamera into this Monsteverse thing!

Godzilla GB [REVIEW] | Chibizilla Made A Maze

the lesser known but far funnier PAL cover of the game.

Yep, the one you might remember as part of the AVGN Godzilla episode, with the Godzilla chibi sprites, Puzzle Bubble-esque music, we’re doing this Godzilla game this Giant Monster March, because why not after downing shitty licensed affair such as – but not limited to – the PS3-PS4 Godzilla game?

Curiously, this isn’t an entirely random game, per sé, as this Game Boy title is actually a port of the MSX title Godzilla-kun by Compile (yes, the same company that would become Compile Heart and crank out Neptunia titles by the dozens), done by Compile themselves, and the game in turn was based on Godzilland’s merchandise line that had chibi versions of Big G and the various kaijus.

The only differences between the original japanese GB release and the localized American & European ones is the rescue target, as in the original japanese version various monsters kidnap Godzilla’s girlfriend, Bijira (which was apparently a thing), and the western one they kidnapped his son, Minilla, and trapped him in a maze.

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Ape VS Mecha Ape (2023) [REVIEW] #giantmonstermarch

As we all knew it, the adventures of “untrademarked simian monster” would continue after his debut against “copyright free atomic dinosaur”, after all Ape Vs Monster was one of the few new modern Asylum movies that people gave a shit aknowledging at all, as they basically resorted to rip-off themselves for the most part, but that’s another review, and with Jagged Edge Productions now outilining clearly their shared cinematic universe called Twisted Childhood (planned to end with Poohniverse: Monster Assemble in 2025) after unleashing the first Winnie The Pooh slasher, Winnie The Pooh Blood & Honey… the Asylum spirit lives on stronger and worse than ever.

For todays’ feature though we have to kinda go back to Toho’s handling of the Kong property during the 1960s, as after the first King Kong VS Godzilla there was a follow-up… as in, Toho made another King Kong monster film back in 1967, King Kong Escapes, again a Japanese-American collaboration, but not a sequel to King Kong VS Godzilla (which is even funnier considering that film too ignored everything but the first Godzilla film), that would make some sense.

No, instead it was based more around the animated children TV series The King Kong Show, a collaboration between Toho and Rankin Bass, co-produced by Videocraft International and Toho Animation, and featured – in the japanese kaiju tradition – a mecha antagonist version of the protagonist monster, called Mekani-Kong, created by an evil genius called Dr. Who, not fans of the BBC show, but more of the then common asian evil genius scientist-mastermind, as popularized in Bond films and spy flicks of the era in general, with the obviously attached racism.

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It Came From Beneath The Sea (1955) [REVIEW] #giantmonstermarch

It was another age. Another time.

The land was green but not good, as it was irradiated with radioactive sludge.

It was indeed the age of the atoms, the nucular spectacular of what new horrors science could do, and then eventually what kind of cinematic entertaiment companies could spun out of the Atom Age fad, monster movies being the more obvious one, as even the second Godzilla movie was more cheesy, and more in tone with other disaster flicks where the giant creature stomping and romping about was in some way born or mutated by radioactive fallout.

Before mutated anything, there was a man that already stunned the world of cinema with its special effect wizardry, Ray Harryhausen, having learned the ways of the magic known as stop-motion animation from his mentor, the legendary Willis O’Brien, whom worked on bringing the original King Kong to life, as well as the dinosaurs in the 1925 film adaptation of The Lost World.

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Rise Of Kong: Skull Island PS4 [REVIEW] | Unfinished Ape Works

It says something when, with 2023 almost finished and with the Daedelic Games developed Gollum game set to win pretty much all “Worst Games Of Year” lists, GameMill reminded the populace that they could be the bigger fiend, and live up to their name….not that it would take them much to achieve that since they pumped out a lot of Nickelodeon licensed titles, including 3 kart racers in the span of 4 years.

And of course, Big Rigs, as they did release the legendary western kusoge of “racing” decades earlier under their previous handle, Gamemill Publishing.

(Strap in, this is gonna be a LONG one, fellas)

This one is surprising in many ways, not because it pretty much signified the return of the licensed tie-in showelware tier garbage (they also released a Walking Dead game some months after, and it was about as good as you’d expect), giving us a whiff of how these games still used to exist in droves up until the late 2000s, but because the license itself sound a little too good for this type of publisher, i mean, the Monsterverse movies revived Kong to have him fight Godzilla.

So, how the fuck did GameMill got hold of the license for King Kong?

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[EXPRESSO] Godzilla Battle Line iOS | Army Mon’

So, you may or may not remember i tried to review this one alongside the other two mobile smartphone free-to-play Godzilla games Toho put out in 2021, the now (thankfully, as it was ugly and very, very shite) defunct Godzilla Destruction and the weird Uma Musume-ish training sim Run Godzilla.

Problem is that Battle Line didn’t work on my smarthphone, try as i might it would just crash after it booted, every single time. Almost 3 years later, with the prospect of the new Monsterverse film that will have Godzilla and Kong “collab” (and 2024 marking Godzilla’s 70^th anniversary), i went to see if it was still available to download… and yes, for some fuckin reason now it works, despite my smarthphone being fairly outdated, better late than never.

Godzilla Battle Line is actually a decent little RTS-thingie where you battle other human players by placing down what are basically toy-sized monsters, vehicles and weapons from the Godzilla franchise, all to overwhelm the other leader monster on the opposite side of the battle grid while defending yours.

Despite the cheapish production values, i do like the “playing with Godzilla toys on a diorama” aesthetic, there is some depth to it, over time it has had many updates (the latest adding Godzilla Minus One content), and despite the focus on versus matches, there’s also a single player mission-based mode.

Sure, its a gacha with a “battle pass”, some obnoxious in-game ads, i’ve heard cheaters are a thing…. hard to tell because right now the game it’s nearly unplayable, is THAT unstable, prone to crashes and costant disconnections at any time.

When it works, it’s actually a fun lil’ game, the free to play elements aren’t the worst, so if you’re into Godzilla it’s worth a punt at the very least.