[EXPRESSO] Avatar: Fire And Ash (2025) | Cigarette Butts

Here we are again.

Somehow “disappointed”.

Sound silly, i know, the second one was admittedly a bit better than i expected and had some surprises in there… this one having a new Nav’i tribe of brutal savages (just short of being cannibals) isn’t enough to stave off boredom, but then again plot comes third or fourth more than usual this time around, taking a backset for just repeating almost verbatim the same plot beats of Way Of The Water, with some extra piles of new stuff that conveniently happens just because the script needs to -once again – free from capture these dumbass characters.

It’s pointless to be angry about an Avatar movie being another pile of shallow, utter nonsense, but this time around is even more boring dull nonsense that goes for a 3 hours equivalent of jiggling keys to infants, and it has framerate issues, which i don’t remember being a thing when i watched Way Of The Water in theathers just 3 years ago.

Maybe i got lucky back then, but regardless of how it looks that way, it’s distracting since it often fluctuates from looking like a big budget cutscene of a videogame, looking like we’re a HD camera feed from the set, looking actually cinematic, and so on.

It’s just insanely distracting and the added motion smoothing almost gave me a headache, and mind you, this was for a 2D screening.

I was reminded of something actually borderline unwatchable, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, but the sentiment is there, as i wonder why Cameron keeps making tech demo movies for proven tech (or telling a worthwhile plot with this astounding technological prowess), or he just doesn’t go make videogames instead.

Not that anything of this matters, as people will go see this on droves anyway.

Cyber Lip (Arcade Archives Neo Geo) NSWITCHDDL | Insain In The Main Brain

Before SNK dedicated itself to make a LOT of fighting games (with a lot of classics, admittely), their output included also action platformers, and run n gun, even before hitting the jackpot with their beloved Metal Slug series, which i’m a really tempted to do a retrospective on… again, since clearly modern SNK it’s more interested in F2P titles that often reuse a lot of assets from the golden age of the series.

So to quench my thirst i searched my Arcade Archives library on the ol’ Switch for some similar Neo Geo run n gun goodness… and noticed i had but didn’t actually play Cyber Lip yet.

It’s referred to as a Metal Slug “clone”, which is incorrect but there’s some truth to it, since Metal Slug itself was fashioned after Contra, so it makes sense a SNK pre-Metal Slug game in that vein does play like Contra, down to the latching into poles on ceilings and stuff, with a boss being a shameless rip-off, but i guess its fine since Contra Shattered Soldier later had a “giant eyed boss” you fight by hanging on a pipe like the one you fight here.

Poetry, indeed.

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Earth Defense Force: World Brothers 2 PS4 [REVIEW] | Gaia’s Wrath

Given the first World Brothers turned out quite well in terms of review and profits, D3 did the obvious, by greenlighting a sequel, simply called EDF World Brothers 2.

Obvious to a certain degree because EDF spin-off never received sequels, but i did like the first World Brothers, so i was more than happy to see Yuke’s (also behind EDF Iron Rain) come back for more voxel Earth Defense Force.

This is a direct sequel as well, and this time, after watching the skies so hard in case of another alien invasion coming from there, we get bitten in the ass by a monster that was inside our squared, voxely Mother Earth, Gaiarch, which erupts from its core and breaks the world apart, meaning it’s up to the EDF once again to make the planet whole by sticking back the destroyed pieces.

This is done by your team of newbies trying to find the more experienced EDF members scattered around the globe, and also new allies like an alien-esque amnesiac girl (that’s like an anthromorphized version of the Daroga enemies, since she loves the buggers and has a Daroga style hat of sorts), new and old bros and sisters, a time travelling Caesar (not the monkey), highlighted by odd giant replicas of the main EDF classes to fight as enemies before taking down a mothership.

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[EXPRESSO] Superman (2025) | Acape Anew

The long awaited Superman reboot by James Gunn (Tromeo And Juliet, Slither, Guardians Of The Galaxy) is here, after the whole reboot thing done with The Flash movie, so WB can cleanse their hands of previous promises and concept it didn’t want to committ to anymore (when it didn’t flush entire finished movies down the drain).

And indeed it’s a James Gunn superhero film, i mean that in a flattering way because it was the right choice to just point at him and say “fix our shit”, he knows how to do them good and this ain’t no exception. Plus i feel fans of the “Man of steel” have been clamoring for something different from Snyder edginess, and this definitely does change things for the sillier, which it’s a good thing because it acknowledges superhero films can be proper silly without having to be ashamed of some specific silly parts of the source material, which it embraces (Superman’s dog, Krypto, is actually a major side character, and yes he has the lil ‘cape on) but without being lazy about it.

It’s a reboot that also understands it doesn’t have to restabilish the whole mythos by redoing the same things as previous Superman films, people know the character, and the script demonstrates Gunn does too, so it cuts some vestigial superhero film traditions of old for the better, by demonstrating instead of telling or expositioning to death, the plot (itself plucking a lot of characters and plot beats from well known iconic iterations and classic storylines) centering on the public perception of Superman after he’s already established as a hero, despite also ignoring pressing geopolitical matters in order to do the right thing, and Lex Luthor’s efforts to undermine his actions and antagonize the whole world against him.

Good, fun stuff!

Tank! Tank! Tank! WIIU [REVIEW] | The Tank Defence Force Deploys?

Nintendo ported the shit out of the Wii U library, reasonably so, hence there are very few exclusives that are “trapped” on the Switch precedessor… most are crap like Devil’s Third and Sonic Boom: Rise Of Lyric, Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival, some sports-fitness games or party games, and somehow STILL the HD ports of Wind Waker and Twilight Princess.

Tank Tank Tank is technically not an exclusive, since it’s a port of a 2009 arcade game published and developed by Namco Bandai internally (itself a spiritual successor on a previous arcade game by Namco, 1996’s Tokyo Wars, according to Wikipedia), rereleased in 2012 on Wii U, serving as launch title for the console in North America.

It was initally released digitally as a free to play thingie where you could play the single player campaign for free but had to buy the various multiplayer mode as DLC (which it eventually reverted to 1 year later) but it was also released physically as a complete package, which its the version i own and i’m basing the review on.

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[EXPRESSO] M3GAN 2.0 (2025) | Panzer Kunt

2 years after the M3GAN killer robot was destroyed, her creator, Gemma, moved on and kept working in robotics while advocating for more cautious laws about IA, while taking care of her niece Cady, but unknown to them, someone stole M3GAN technology and created another killer robot, AMELIA, which has gone rogue and start killing anyone involved with the project.

M3GAN, whom has been hiding in their home cloud network, springs back to alert Gemma she could be next, and that if they want to have a chance of stopping AMELIA killing her and her niece, they need to graft M3GAN a new robot body, even more as the stakes quickly escalate…

Yeah, it’s not really a horror movie anymore, the gore is still pretty graphic but the tone is completely different, going basically for a ubercharged pastiche that skips a lot of modern narration to go for satirical and autoironical, which still has that 90s sci fi-horror aesthetic, as it’s a bit Robocop, a bit Ghost In The Shell, Matrix, Terminator, heck, you can even feel drafts of Alita Battle Angel, with M3GAN basically needing a new berserker body to fight.

It does manage to develop further the characters from the previous film, especially M3GAN herself, and it all does work since she’s indeed “the bitch”, “the slay queen”, she is incredibly fun to see in action and sells it.

If you expect a more in-depth critique of modern use of IA, or a more conservative sequel that’s actually a horror film, you might detest this one, which is understandable but honestly i do commend the effort to keep it fresh and not just rehash the first film, since it does embrace his deliberate sarcastic detour into action sci-fi, and for what it is, it’s a riot, hugely entertaining.

Earth Defense Force 6 PS4 [REVIEW] | All You Need Is Kill

As with what is now tradition, after a reboot follows a direct sequel, so Earth Defense Force 6 picks up some years after you killed God (or an alien God), with the global population reduced to a 10 % of what it was, but hey, you won, and reconstruction begun, as it always does.

You play as one of the elite soldiers from Team Storm that succeded in saving the planet years before, sent to a base that needs manpower as while the aliens retreated after… well, the “Hell Comes To Frogtown” ones were left abandoned on Earth, so they kinda still kick around in pure desperation, and you’re sent to deal with these poor bastards after a speech from EDF bootleg (and surprisingly nice) version of Sergeant Hartman from Full Metal Jacket, during the tutorial mission that continues the more attention given to presentation that started with EDF 5.

Then some old teleporting devices start teleporting monsters on Earth again, the monsters start laying down eggs to up their numbers, so it feels like you’re stuck on a loop of exterminating the hordes to avoid the enemies gaining more ground, and it feels like this stalemate is gonna keep going… until the biblical accurate alien mothership comes back, transports and un-transports another mothership kind of vehicle, then drops an entirely new kind of alien foes, very 50s/60s scifi style android enemies that launch their grabby knifed claws from afar.

So shit was already a desperate fight for a ruins filled Earth, NOW it’s basically a desperate struggle to fuck with a 0% chance of winning against super alien Hitler with a box of green army men as actual troops…. until you fight the biblically accurate ring shaped mothership again, fuck up something… and then you’re literally in an early mission of EDF 5.

That’s true, because after this – as the game itself puts it – “The Earth Defense Force 6 begins now”.

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Dynasty Warriors Gundam 2 PS3 [REVIEW] | #musoumay

As promised, here we are again with more Dynasty Warriors Gundam, though don’t worry, Koei had an habit of making their old Warriors games in a sub-series obsolete or needed when making a sequel back then, and they mostly kept at it, since they also did this with the Attack On Titan hunting games by Omega Force they published.

So if you never played the first DW Gundam, no need to fret, my boy, as Dynasty Warriors Gundam 2 is basically a revised and greatly expanded follow up, with more Gundam series covered properly in Story Mode, improved graphics and performance (while still retaining the same art style, for better or worse), and a revamp to the old content, with new systems added for good measure.

The game covers/retells canonically most of the same Gundam series already featured in the first title, though now with Char’s Counterattack added and the previous anime storylines redone and expanded in terms of events narrated and details, and even more of the non-UC series represented in the non-canonical stories offered in the secondary mode, with Gundam Seed Destiny, Gundam F91 and Gundam Victory and their characters featured in this non-canon mode.

We’ll talk more about that later, as there are some changes and additions to gameplay, one of the more welcome ones is how you can just keep dashing instead of the “start & stop” finnicky dash of the first DW which required you to spam the jump/dash button, balanced out by a fuel/stamina bar that takes a bit to recharge once depleted, and while there are still robots (hence they still have that weight to their movements), the MS feel more fluid to control here, and there are more enemies on screen too.

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Dynasty Warriors Gundam PS3 [REVIEW] | #musoumay

I don’t think Mobile Suit Gundam needs an introduction, given its one of the more popular and old mecha franchises that are still around, arguably THE mecha franchise if there ever was one.

You know it, you love it… i mostly kinda experienced it via osmosis, as i never fully bothered to be invested in any of its many iterations, be it the classic 0079 original, the Z Gundam one, the super deformed Three Kingdoms ones, the ones about milfs and kids building Gunplas.

Or the space tomato lesbian one. Or whatever the new Gundam series that will come out in the meantime of me posting and you reading this will be about.

I didn’t even plan to ignore Gundam, i just never really went deep into any of its iterations, as it happened, and – as i think i’ve said before – i’m actually way more familiar with frigging Sgt. Frog (yes, Keroro) than actual Gundam, so it both kinda counts and not really counts at the same time, meaning i’ve been told the series is about the horrors of war more than the cool robots… but the robot do LOOK cool, there’s no anti-memery (or counter arguments, and so on) to argue that at simple skin deep fact, them mobile suits design are legendary stuff.

So in a way i’m really not “qualified”… or i was, because this did serve as a gateway entry for me, sure i love them Dynasty Warriors, make them cool looking robots instead of superhero fantasy warlords, just as good, or even better, i will finally learn what the fuck the original Gundam and some other of its series are about with Dynasty Warriors Gundam, why not?

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Rabio Lepus/Rabbit Punch (Arcade Archives) NSWITCHDDL [REVIEW] | Cho Usagi

This year we won’t review crappy horror no-budget slockfests about killer rabbits, i’m quite fed up with killer easter bunnies and we can done those next year, anyway.

So we’re instead digging up a fairly obscure 2d spaceship shooter/side scrolling shoot ‘em up from the late 80s arcade resurgence, and as i guess it’s almost mandatory for forgotten games of this genre, its only home console port was on the PC Engine… in Japan, North America did get this released in arcades, localized as Rabbit Punch, but we Europeans never did in any shape, not until the recent Arcade Archives rerelease, in this case the Switch one (it’s also available on PS4).

The plot is fairly simple and starts off the “ol’ fashioned” (as in “putting cats in bags and throwing them in the river to drown” ye old fashioned) royal kidnapping by a mechanical army of space aliens that come down to the peaceful planet of Bunnyland, taking awat the rabbit themed king (he has a rabbit onesie), the princess and her sister (which are just Playboy bunny girls… to commit to the theme, yes), so it’s up to the rabbit shaped mecha unit to save the monarchy.

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