Escape Dead Island X360 [REVIEW] #deadislandretrospective

Since Dead Island 2 was just starting his first cycle of development and so there won’t be anything to show anytime soon, Deep Silver figured it was better to keep milking the franchise to keep it relevant in the public eye, so they launched a MOBA style spin-off with Dead Island Epidemic on Steam and a console & PC stealth oriented spin-off, Escape Dead Island.

Since Dead Island Epidemic never left open beta and by 2015 was discountined, i’m not that surprised that people even forgot it ever existed (i learn it was ever a thing only years later by doing some research), but you might have some recollection of Escape Dead Island, developed by Fatshark (Bionic Commando Rearmed 2, Hamilton’s Great Adventure, Warhammer: Vermintide 1 and Vermintide 2) and released for PS3, X-Box 360 and PC.

Playing the X-Box 360 in this case, though i understand the console versions are nigh identical.

Set as a sorta prequel-side story to the original game, Escape Dead Island wants to explain the origins of the first epidemic that kicked off into full zombie pandemic, and puts you in the shoes of Cliff Calo, a rich kid that wants to be noticed by daddy-o by going with two of his friends on the isle of Narapela and doing a report on the origin of the epidemic that spread from the island of Banoi, while also exposing the truth about the big pharma corpo Geopharm.

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Lake Placid Legacy (2018) [REVIEW] #sharksncrocs

While Lake Placid VS Anaconda ended by sequelbaiting “Crococonda VS Sheriffs”, they didn’t actually followed that up, at least not yet, as for the next (and at the time of writing, the last) Lake Placid installment we have a prequel.

A prequel, kinda. Sorta. We’ll get to that, but it’s not a prequel for the character of Jimmy Bickerman played by Robert Englund, nor any of the Bickermans, it’s a prequel for the original saltwater crocodile, explaining how the fuck a crocodile came to inhabit the lake in the first place.

Actually, not quite, but yep, every excuse is good to pump anything out with the franchise name. It always is.

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Don’t expect a Pokemon Legend Arceus review in a timely manner

Yeah, one more from the beloved series of “Don’t Expect Anything”, i wouldn’t wanna spoil you too much least you forget the cold, disappointing and cruel embrace of reality.

Gloom aside, the reason for today “episode-ramble” is that i simply haven’t preordered Pokemon Legends Arceus, and so far i’m kinda glad i didn’t, since there are rumors and various leaks about the game’s performance being crap enough to noticeably affect the exploration of the full-on open world this Pokemon game goes for.

To be honest, it looks not worse than Sword and Shield from the official gameplay trailer released some days ago, but also not as good as you would expect since Game Freak didn’t do double duty on this and the Pearl/Diamond remake, i guess they really haven’t got the memo that they can/should make technically polished titles, since they’re not developing for handheld consoles anymore.

And they really can’t pull off “first proper new Pokemon gen game on the system” excuse.

Still, since the game comes out at the end of this month, a day one patch (and most likely more following that) could fix the issue… to some degree. I mean, the game launches in 2 week and 1/2, so it’s simply absurd to expect the situation to be easily dealt with via patches, regardless of how many they will be, for obvious reasons.

Do i still look forward to eventually playing the game itself? Sure, but i’m not going down the mine this time, i’m still bummed by pre-ording Ultrasun/moon, so i will wait to see how the situation evolves over the months, i’m not offering myself as proverbial canary this time. Really tired of that.

That sure was a Pokemon ramble, see ya!

[EXPRESSO] The King’s Man (2021) | Tonal Clash Service

I quite liked the first Kingsman movie, even enjoyed the second one (even if it was uber cheesy, with the robodogs and Elton John and all), but i feel that maybe it would have been best if this didn’t became a series, as we are already going for the “origins of” storyline, but whatever.

The film – as you would expect – it’s about the foundation of the Kingsman’s intelligence agency, borne in Britain during the events of WW I by elite warriors that woved to silently defend humanity from its from villains and tyrants, which puts them against Grigori Rasputin and other conspirators led by a mysterious figure, intent in making Germany overwhelm Britain in the conflict.

This is not a bad movie, mind you, nor bad movies. I do feel like they had scripts for two different movies set in the Kingsman universe, and – maybe – afraid that with the current situation of theathers they couldn’t get another chance (also due to hypotethical series fatigue) at it, so here you go, you get the story of Orlando Oxford’s son wanting to enlist in the war to prove his worth, with a fairly serious war movie tone, and the over the top comic book style spy action fights that you’d expect from a Kingsman movie.

Both are quite decent and entertaining in themselves, which is laudable, but the tone (and the themes, honestly) doesn’t really match between the events on the WW I trenches and a delightfully excessive Grigori Rasputin using his mystical powers (which are somehow real) to cure a wound by licking it frantically, to say nothing of the charicatural characterization of the kaiser, czar and most of the villains.

Despite this, it’s definitely not a slog, cast it’s pretty good and overall it’s decent fun.

Resident Evil Damnation (2012) [REVIEW] | Slavic Struggle

4 years after Degeneration, Capcom followed it up with Damnation (i would wager they didn’t plan the titles beforehand, at all), made mostly to promote Resident Evil 6, released in Japan roughly 3 weeks before, as it acts as a prequel to that game’s storyline.

So yeah, it’s not really a sequel to Degeneration as there are no returning characters from that movie aside from Leon S. Kennedy and Hunnigan, and the events from that film don’t really ever get brought up or serve any purpose to the story of Damnation.

They just don’t.

Which i understand from a functional standpoint, you don’t wanna have people lost if they didn’t watch Degeneration, that movies was released 4 years prior and these CG movies didn’t exactly make people and fans drool over them en masse. But you could have tried to make some fuckin connections happen and try to build an overarching plot of sorts, if nothing else to artificially make the various plots seem more important and better due to the interconnection.

In hindsight it’s not a problem, so let’s talk about the plot of Resident Evil Damnation.

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Hyrule Warriors: Age Of Calamity – Expansion Pass PART 2 [REVIEW]

The final piece of Age Of Calamity DLC is here, and as usual i’m giddy at the prospect of more good musou content, as a remainder Omega Force can actually deliver when it cares (or when it feels it has to).

And this second (and final) piece of the game’s Expansion/Season Pass was easily the more appetizing to look forward, as it would add brand new story stages, alongside new abilities for existing characters, and new playable characters.

Regarding the latter, it was later revealed we would be getting Pruna and Rovely as a two-in-one playable warrior, and another one not revealed, nor hinted at in any way.

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Zombieland – Double Tap: Roadtrip PS4 [REVIEW] | Now without zombie idols

Like it often happens with tie-in games, if the first movie doesn’t have a branded videogame out in time, the sequel will. Though it took quite some time to see a follow up to Zombieland, enough time for tie-in videogames released as retail, proper videogames to feel almost fresh again, opposed to a very cheap freemium game for smarthphones or as promotional events into gacha garbage.

While it’s named after the sequel, Zombieland – Double Tap, and its main characters, the game has its own story set in between the two films, and it captures the spirit and humour of the series pretty well, even if it’s clearly a budget tie-in job, not only from in terms of looks, but as the cast from the movie didn’t provide their voices for the game, leaving other voice actors to do impressions… bad impressions, but i’m not angry as the Harrelson/Tallahassee’s and Eisenberg/Columbus impressions are so bad i find them hilarious and kinda charming, especially the Harrelson one. XD

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One Piece TV SP 11: Heart Of Gold (2016) [REVIEW]

Director: Tatsuya Nagamine

Writer: Tsutomu Kuroiwa

Runtime: 105 minutes

It’s not not a recap, it’s not an entirely original story, this time we have a TV special made for tie-in purposes. Like the title gives away, this is a special made to advertise the movie One Piece Gold, and it’s not even the first one, as there was also One Piece Gold: Episode 0 (which we discussed during last year’s retrospective), a featurette taking place before the movie that amounted to a sumo version of the Kintarou story and plenty of Nami bikini fanservice. And the Silver Mine filler arc.

This actually takes place before Episode 0 and can be seen without it (especially since the featurette predictably didn’t further any plot or set up anything relevant for the actual One Piece Gold film than this special already does), and it’s intriguing they actually got Tatsuya Nagamine to direct him, after his work on One Piece Film Z and before the pretty good Dragon Ball Super: Broly.

And indeed, we’re in pretty good hands. We are.

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Hyrule Warriors: Age Of Calamity NSWITCH [REVIEW]

After the success of the first Hyrule Warriors, it’s no surprise Nintendo become more involved in this seconda Zelda X Warriors crossover project when the idea came about. Actually, even more than expected, the choice to make Age Of Calamity a story prequel to Breath Of The Wild is bold, as in most Warriors crossovers of series like this are non-canonical excuses to get many characters from the franchise together and let them fight in huge hack n slash battles.

Now that i’ve played the base Breath Of The Wild game (so i could give a better assessment) and i know the story enough, i can get to talk about Age Of Calamity and address the first, big question, as in, do you need to have played BOTW before playing this prequel? And it is really a prequel?

“Not really” for both is the answer.

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Don’t expect an early review of Hyrule Warriors: Age Of Calamity

As much as i loved the demo of the game to bits, as much as i frigging love Hyrule Warriors… i’m not gonna review it just after launch. It’s not that i couldn’t, more a combination of “budget constraints” hitting hard this month (as for many, given the circumstances) and… the fact i really got around to get and play Breath Of The Wild in the last months (i held off for years hoping in a GOTY re-release of sorts), and i took my time with it, quite, so much i clearly won’t be able to finish it in time to review Age Of Calamity at the end of november. I just won’t.

Doesn’t help this has been clearly designed as a prequel instead of a spin-off where the story is the usual “portal bonanza” so we can have multiple characters and locations from different installments (and/or different timelines) of a series in Warriors style hack n slash format, and be enjoyed on its own, like Fire Emblem Warriors… even if that did casually drop some spoilers from FE Awakening. Just saying.

And even less reason to pre-order it since this time they didn’t bother to make any sort of Limited Edition with some tat. Boggles the mind why don’t bother to bring the Treasure Box limited edition outside of Japan, they did it before, hell, not even a nerfed version with just the scarf like we got with the first Hyrule Warriors in PAL territories.

So… have fun if you pre-ordered or are gonna get it on launch, the demo i feel it’s telling of the complete base game, we will soon find out!

It’s on my priority list, rest assured, i’m always planning more Warriors and musou games reviews, and something special is coming next month, so… look forward to it!