Alice: Madness Returns PS3 [REVIEW] | Swimming The Seas Of Sanity Lost

11 years later, American MacGee brought back his flawed cult game for a direct sequel with Alice: Madness Returns, and as EA (and other publishers) were big on fighting the used game market with the “online passes”, this time they wanted to discourage from buying the game used by inserting in new copies a code to redeem the original American McGee’s Alice, basically treated as DLC.

Thankfully now the older game is free DLC on both PSN and the X-Box store, you still need a copy of Madness Returns to access it, but still, better than on PC, now available only through Origin (it was on Steam as well but got delisted), it doesn’t seem to include the original American MacGee’s Alice game. At least not anymore. I’m not throwing cash away to find out for sure.

A re-release of both titles might be in order, i guess as soon as MacGee can buy back the rights from EA or when we’ll have some news about that hypotetical Alice: Asylum, who had a tentative date of 31 October 2021… but in 3 years we didn’t hear anything aside from the fact that the title is in pre-production, meaning clearly that release date is not gonna be final, so for the meantime these are the options to visit (or revisit) the series.

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American McGee’s Alice PS3 [REVIEW] | The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

Oh yes, American Mc Gee’s most well known work, his take on Lewis Carrol’s Alice.

The story is not really that original in retrospect, it’s the usual “let’s give fairy tales an edgy reinterpretation with a grim, depressing tone” applied to Alice In Wonderland, so here Alice is Alice Lindell, a british orphan that by chance survived the house fire that took away her family at the age of 10 (or something), and was basically raised in an asylum, mostly likely treated to a Richard O’ Brian-less brand shock therapy as well.

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The Spooktacular Eight Cometh

Tis the season again, but due to the cursed nature of time itself, this year we’ll have a small horror retrospective for the “month of Halloween”, with 8 reviews sporadically released during the month. Hope you’ll like the selection of movies, and yes, there won’t a set release pattern, but we’ll start tomorrow, so look forward to that.

Callooh! Callay!

Soon enough.

[EXPRESSO] Space Jam: A New Legacy/New Legends (2021) | Look On My Works, Ye Great Mighty Poo

Let’s get this over with, even if it’s pointless to review, as it’s just a WB corporate flex.

I revisited the original Space Jam just before seeing this, it was a corporate vehicle emphasizing cross brand promotion, spectacle, and references over story, with the “hook” of real life celebrities acting a cliched “inspiring sports film” formula alongside animated characters.

But in retrospect it had some laughs and some self awareness NOT weaponized to just suck corporate cocks in a proud cynical fashion, all the time.

And yes, this is just a new one, a “stand-alone sequel”, make sense since it has been in development hell for 15 years.

It has the same basic premise, with a basketball game deciding the fate of a real life person and the cartoon characters he mets in a new world. Obviously this one swaps Michael Jordan for James LeBron, but also tries to up the ante and modernize it, setting it in a virtual WB-verse where an evil algorhythm-IA has trapped LeBron and his younger son Dom.

Problem is it also quadruples down on corporate bullshit, to the point it’s way longer than it needs just to have countless references using WB owned IPs. Not jokes, references. It also takes itself more seriously for no reason, and it’s often more embarassing and awkward than funny or fun.

This is an official feature length shitpost filled with memes and references (not so much jokes), and while the animation isn’t bad, it’s a stylistically spineless affair, even the older Space Jam had a consistent style to the mixing of live action and animation.

The original was a product of his time as much as this new one is, but even the 1996 movie it’s still better than this specimen of pure corporate public narcistic wanking.

Horrendous.

Talking bout that new dang Nintendo Direct

So, as it’s customary and cyclical event by now, a new Nintendo Direct dropped at midnight today, and i have something to blabber on about without planning much.

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[EXPRESSO] World Flipper iOS | Pinball Isekai RPG Action

“Flipper” it’s a short-term for pinball outside of America, FIY.

And i’m fairly sure we didn’t have a pinball RPG gacha game before, i remember there was a spin-off of FF XV of sorts for smart devices, but whatever, it’s a far more alluring proposition in a overly satured market of idle games, mild rpgs, and everything in the middle.

The plot it’s basically an isekai tropes salad, but the faux 8 bit graphics are nice enough, presentation is decent, and doesn’t bombard you with too much plot or terminology right away.

Gameplay is a bit different than expected, as it’s not set up as a traditional pinball affair, with the heroes acting as single “ball” but also able to dash while launched to attack the nearest enemy, and launch skills with a pretty typical but pretty good control scheme for touch devices.

There is a bit of depth, with enemies exposing weak points at certain times, the more combos you get in a row powering up your shot to make the team spring a stronger attack, there’s Fever Mode, and overall there’s quite enough to keep it easy to play in short bursts but not mindless.

Of course, this comes with the inevitable free-to-play trappings, events, upgrade trees/maps, but the less annoying ones, just energy consumption and gacha for characters using the main premium crystals/gems, one with gacha advantages for using gems obtained by poning up cash.

But still, it’s not that bad, and honestly it’s good, good fun, way more captivating than expected, even disregarding the obvious methods to try hook you in, World Flipper it’s one of those free-to-play games that you end up back into because you actually wanna play it.

A rare sight, even aside it delivering to the underserved niche of pinball games.

Reflecting a bit on the new Shaman King anime for Netflix

So, a month or something ago the new anime adaptation of Shaman King dropped as a Netflix exclusive, and after watching the first 8 episodes, i think there is something to be said (in a non-elaborated, just “vomiting my thoughts without much editing or revision” way) about Shaman King and its legacy, and how this new adaptation is indeed trying to propose a very old shonen series to modern audiences, but staying as loyal as it can to the source material, which is nice but it also shows how old and fairly ancillary feels this series today, with many others Jump series that came out at the same time, later or before and still left a bigger, longer lasting mark on the genre.

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[EXPRESSO] Shang-Chi: The Legend Of The Ten Rings (2021) | Wuxia To The West

So, this is Marvel first attempt at doing more asian style action movie, introducing a new protagonist, the titular Shang Chi, forced to face his past as he was raised from infancy to be a perfect assassin by the criminal organization known as the Ten Rings, commanded by The Mandarin (connecting it to the Iron Man movies), and we also have Benedict Wong – as one would expect – is playing… well, the character of the mystic Wong, seen before in Doctor Strange.

YEAH, if it feels quite generic from the premise, and the idea of having Marvel “manufacture” a wuxia fantasy film while also doing a superhero movie and keeping their style of doing it.,…it’s not exactly that alluring, especially with the plot sounding really cliched as hell: the “face the master-father that’s also the boss of a criminal assassin ring so you can be free” thing, etcetera, etcetera

And while it a good step in terms of representation, it also just like the bare minimum by today’ standards.

It’s not a bad movie, but in a way it’s exactly what you would expect from a Marvel movie cramming asian martial arts, wuxia style fights and fantasy-mystical elements usually seen in Chinese (and chinese-related) cinema into their usual superhero mold, and while the action scenes are fun, it’s hard to care much about the story or the characters (aside from the sympathetic villain played very well by Tony Leung, outacting Simu Liu as the main character a lot), they’re mostly ok, but their arcs are brashly executed or not really interesting, given how token pretty much everything is here.

It’s a bit frustrating, as it could have been EASILY so much worse, but also isn’t quite decent, not helped by boring, cliched flashbacks and feeling a bit too long.

One Piece: Unlimited World Red (Deluxe Edition) PS4 [REVIEW] | Pirate Cruisin’

You know what, it’s summer, so a good excuse as any for more One Piece videogame reviews, even more as a coda to the One Piece TV Specials retrospective!

This time we’ll focus on the more recent entry in the Unlimited sub-series of One Piece videogames, Unlimited World R/Red, specifically on its Deluxe Edition re-release/port for PS4, Switch and Steam. It was originally released for 3DS, but it proved popular enough to see a release on PS3, PS Vita and Wii U. I’ve actually played (and reviewed) the Wii U version back in the day, but it’s been a while, more than enough for the experience to feel fresh again and for review purposes.

While the original version had cross-save (3DS to Wii U and PS3 to PS Vita respectively), i feel i should point out right away this Deluxe version… doesn’t for the PS platforms. I didn’t really expect it, but since even the Dragon Crown’s Pro re-release had it, it wouldn’t be absurd to have it here.

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