[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it was still available to download… and yes, for some fuckin reason now it works, despite my smarthphone being fairly outdated, better late than never.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.

[EXPRESSO] Wish (2023) | “Feel the power of my MAAAGICKK!”

I was gonna skip this entirely, but since this is the animated film Disney chose to celebrate the company 100^th anniversary, i feel bound to cover it.

And it’s a special movie, but for the all the wrong reasons, as it’s a perfect crystalization of the company’s modern status, where the movie you’d rather see is the one lost in the original drafts, not the final product apparently assembled by focus groups and marketing than imagined by creatives.

The plot is about a guy named Magnifico that learned magic and created an ideal city, Rosas, on a island somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea, where he rules and fulfills the wishes his citizens entrust him.

But not all wishes can be granted, as her apprentice-to-be Asha founds out when the wish of his 100 yo granpa is still unfulfilled, then she accidentally summons a real star, making Magnifico paranoid enough to use a book of forbidden magic…

It’s a very arrogant movie that isn’t interested in pleasing its viewers, too busy up its own arse pulling a disgusting amount of Disney references and stuck wallowing in nostalgia to the detriment of everything else, while also exhibiting all the negative-cliched traits associated with Disney animated films, like overuse of musical segments, the talking animals, etc.

Plus it’s just plain uninspired, derivative, boring, the characters are utterly uninteresting and istantly forgettable, and while there was some potential, it’s all brought down by a senseless “magic system” that’s at the center of the story, even diegetically makes little to no sense and renders the final message moot.

The animation is good (even if the style reminds one of a 3DCG Netflix anime) and it’s a short sit, but this is just utter, recycled, cynical mediocrity that’s almost insulting coming from Disney, even modern Disney.

[EXPRESSO] Godzilla Minus One (2023) | WW Zilla

I was kinda apprehensive going into the new Godzilla movie (which is getting limited weeklong screenings everywhere outside of Japan), weirdly enough, due to some disappointed early feedback, so i decided to ignore most coverage after that and just go see it.

And i will address that indeed, after Shin Godzilla, going back to a period piece story set during WW II feels like a convenient move to avoid tackling modern political issues… but i will say that Godzilla Minus One does earn your attention and investment, thanks to one of the closest attempts at recapturing the spirit of the original Godzilla, to the point it’s almost a remake-prequel, and a great damn one that focuses on the human characters with great drama, punctuated by action scenes involving Godzilla (not the other way around), while also making Big G itself menacing again.

The premise follows Koichi, a man designed as a kamikaze pilot that, during the final years of WW II, fakes a malfunction of his airplane, and lands on the small island of Odo . There he is one of the few that survives the encounter with a giant dinosaur the locals call “Godzilla”, and with great shame, he comes back to the bombed ruins of his parent house, takes in a homeless woman and her foster daughter. In time the reconstruction begins, Koichi is on the verge of finally putting his nightmares of war to rest, but then Godzilla shows up again….

Honestly, even if not trying to push new boundaries, at all, Godzilla Minus One it’s a greatly compelling story with good characters, a solid period war drama at its core, and while the monster is CG, they pulled off a miracle with the effects looking so good for the tiny budget of 15 millions.

Highly recommended.

Pinocchi-O-Rama #9: The Adventures Of Buratino (1975)

For this month’s issue of Pinocchi-O-Rama, we’re going back to a “combo mix” of sorts.

We’ve seen live action adaptations, we’ve seen adaptations of the russian version of the novel, The Adventures Of Buratino/The Golden Key, we’ve seen musical adaptations.

So yeah, time to squish them all together for this 1975’s forgotten cult classic Soviet live action children musical TV movie adaptation of Buratino/Pinocchio shenanigans, made by Belarusfilm and released as a 2-parter, because media trends are cyclical after all.

Thankfully there’s no waiting for the climax as it’s almost a 50 yo adaptation, a fairly obscure one that thankfully can be found with hardcoded english subtitles on Youtube (fittingly spit in 2 parts, as well), and at the time of posting still is.

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One Piece Pirate Warriors 4: DLC Pack 4 PS4 [REVIEW]

Here we are with the first round of the new character DLC packs for Pirate Warriors 4, as heavily promised before.

The 4^th Character Pack is titled “Battle Of Onigashima”, and it features 2 “Onigashima variants/versions” of characters already available in the base game, with Battle Of Onigashima Luffy, Battle of Onigashima Kaido, and more interestingly, Yamato, the offspring of Kaido that has proclaimed to carry on the will of the late Oden in a very direct manner.

As for why now, well, it’s not real surprise that the Pirate Warriors games’ storyline are also made in a way to avoid accidental spoilers for the One Piece anime audience, so yeah, it makes sense they had to wait until the Gear 5 episode to introduce this powered up version of Luffy, after all that’s the reason Pirate Warriors 4 has an original story for the Land Of Wa arc, and Pirate Warriors 3 invented a new scenario for the Dressarosa stages as well.

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Pikmin 4 NSWITCH [REVIEW] | Enter The Dogbus

10 years after the last mainline game, the beloved Nintendo series about floral strategy and cutesy war PTSD is back with Pikmin 4 for Nintendo Switch, and i was even more eager to get my mittens on it after replaying for review & funsies Pikmin 3 in its Deluxe edition-port on Switch.

Who am i kidding, after devouring the demo, i was ravenous to get into the full game ASAP.

Story is fairly typical Pikmin, as in, you know the deal by now: people keep crashlanding on this damn planet. And by people i mean poor Olimar, that crashlanded on the planet, sent out a SOS call, but then the rescue team itself had troubles with the ship, so its up to you, as the new recruit of the Rescue Corps (an intergalactic rescue organization) and one of its few “non-scattered around” remaining members to get the whole crew back together, then find and save Olimar, whom also sent them various pages of its journal.

Someone seem confused in terms of when it happens, even confusing it for a reboot/remake of the first game’s story (i guess since Olimar here too used Pikmins to get back the scattered pieces of its rundown but beloved ship, the Dolphin)… dunno why, but yep, since Olimar and Louie are involved too, and we get the new group of cute potato aliens also discuss of Koppai, the planet from where the expedition group of Pikmin 3 came from to avoid famine, heck, even an inhabitant from that planet later becomes an important plot point.

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One Piece (Netflix’s) (2023) [REVIEW] | You’re My Treasure Box

It’s time.

I’ve been meaning to talk about this thing since we saw the first trailer (ok, let’s be honest, the announcement of this being greenlit), but i mostly held off because i didn’t want to speculate much but just actually watch the show and then judge it accordingly to what it actually is and NOT what it might or might not turn out to be, as much pontificating on widely distributed promotional material is the bread and butter of this job here, especially when you have to appease the “content God”.

And since we’re being more upfront than usual, yes, i was preparing me own buckets of tar and feathers, even as the trailers close to release did make one wonder if maybe this time we don’t have a huge manga-to-live action stinker, i mean, it comes from the same production studio that gave us the rightfully despised Cowboy Bebop live action shitwreck, let us not forget that.

The trust was not there, at least not for me, despite Oda being vocally supportive and letting it more than know this was not just a random gig he lazily supervised in terms of actual involvement, but that he indeed wanted this to happen for a long time and was excited about this thing, he really wanted for it to work.

I mean, after Franky’s timeskip design…and him helping rehabilitating colleagues (let alone his sensei Nobuhiro “Maybe A CP Ringmaster” Watsuki) of his that in a better world would not have returned with a new serialization on Jump.

Leaving THAT hornets’ nest aside, he was never gonna advocate against it, or something stupid like that, but i did question why he was so hyped about something everyone almost immediatly catalogued as a write-off thing that they’d bring up years later as a “that was weird” kind of story.

So at the very end of August the One Piece live action Netflix series was made available on the plaftorm, composed of eight 45 to 60 minutes long episodes composing the first season, which covers from the very beginning at Shells Town (with Foosha Village visited via flashbacks of young Luffy with Shanks and his crew) up to the conclusion of the Arlong Park arc.

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Pinocchi-O-Rama #8: Pinocchio AKA The Adventures Of Pinocchio (1911)

For the record, i absolutely detest how more than 60% (to be kind) of these Pinocchio adaptations are often called or retitled for international releases as “The Adventures Of Pinocchio”.

I get why, but still, at least opt for simply “Pinocchio”, makes it easier to search for even if we still have to put the decade after the title to avoid confusion, not that it would help too much because “Pinocchio (’11)” we’re talking about today was not made in “2011”, but the other “’11”, as in 1911.

We’re going back in time as hard as we can this time, since this is the very first movie adaptation of Collodi’s novel, an italian production as one could assume, and given its 112 years old, its no wonder it has been considered a lost film for decades, then in 1994 a negative was found, a 30-minute version resurfaced in 2022, and in 2018 we got a 50 minute version restored in 2K from the original negative with more footage taken from a positive nitrate copy and another negative (with different color tints), now both stored in a national Italian cinema archive.

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One Piece Odyssey: Reunion Of Memories PS4 [DLC REVIEW] | Overdrawn At The Memory Bank

For disclosure, i pre-ordered the super duper deluxe edition of the game that came with the big Lim & Luffy figure, and the expansion content also included in the Deluxe Edition version, so i didn’t cash out extra to access the DLC story expansion for One Piece Odyssey that released in May 2023, Reunion Of Memories. Otherwise, to buy the DLC normally the MSRP is 25 bucks.

Keep that in mind because it will come back later in the review, but before beginning i will preface by saying while i will keep this DLC review spoiler free… i’d recommend either reading my full review of the base game or finish the game yourself before reading, because some plot details regarding the finale are simply impossible not to touch upon.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

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One Piece Odissey PS4 [REVIEW] | Cube Memory

One Piece might not be a franchise that you would immediatly associate with RPGs, but like Dragon Ball its surprising how the genre is represented in their many videogame iterations, especially if we’re talking about older systems, and even more so if we’re talking about Japan-only releases, as the first One Piece videogame was a RPG on the old black-n-white WonderSwan, and more came out for both the Wonderswan family of consoles as wells as for Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, and even on the original Playstation.

But sadly most western fans are not familiar with some of these quirky GBC One Piece RPGs where (among other things) the Straw Hats are turned into animals, no, most likely you’ve yearned for years for a localized One Piece RPG, only to find out that it exists, One Piece: Romance Dawn, and that it’s sadly a very shit game, even worse as it’s a port from PSP to 3DS, and a cheap one too, because knowing this it makes all sense for the game to look that much like old ass.

I reviewed that one as well, but today we’re here holding hope to finally retire this status and have a big budget mainstream RPG that can make the series some justice instead of wishing they wouldn’t have bothered to begin with, with the long anticipated One Piece Odissey, developed by ILCA and published by Namco Bandai (who else?) in January 2023 to celebrate the series’ 25^th anniversary.

Available pretty much on all the platforms, old gen and new…. but not the Nintendo Switch.

For the record, this review is based on the PS4 version played on a PS4 Pro.

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