20 hours into Pokemon Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl

An EXPRESSO review would be pointless, arguably even a regular full lenght review would be not that useful, because people have been pleading for a remake of the 4th gen Pokemon titles for years, and given this remake has already sold like 6 millions units, i’d say there was not much convincing to be done about it anyway, it’s frigging Pokemon after all.

So let’s just talk about it after 20 hours spent into my Shining Pearl copy.

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The Abominable Snowman (1957) [REVIEW] | Tibet Climbing, Joel

While i teased a Shriek Of The Mutilated review in the Snowbeast’s one…. i’m gonna keep teasing it a bit more, i’m not yet ready to rewatch and talk about that “fine specimen”, but i’m willing to keep the “yeti train” goin’, so let’s defrost a Peter Cushing film from the old Hammer catalogue with their 1957’s “The Abominable Snowman”, itself derived from their BBC series “The Creature”.

The plot sees antropologist John Rollason (Peter Cushing) and a scientist friend of his going to Tibet and being welcomed in a buddist monastery. The head monk questions them and he’s not convinced by John claiming to be there in order to study the local flora, and as soon as an american climber by the name of Tom Friend (Forrest Tucker) joins them, the actual reason for their travel becomes clear: they plan to climb the mountains in a quest for the legendary snowman, the yeti.

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Snowbeast (1977) [REVIEW] | TV Yeti Jaws

(This Is An Enhanced Rewrite-Revision)

1975. Jaws hit theathers, proving to be a massive success and establishing the idea of the “summer blockbuster film” for Hollywood and the big cinema industry at large, launching the career of Steven Spielberg and going down in history as one of the best “b-movies” ever made, inadvertly spawning the absurdity of what amounts to a full fledged subgenre now, the “shark movie” one.

Why i’m even talking about sharks when tackling a movie about yetis/sasquatches?

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[EXPRESSO] Cruis’n Blast NSWITCH | LETS GO CRUISINNNN

I knew the Cruis’n series was a fan favourite since the N64 days, but i never played one until the recent Cruis’n Blast, developed by Raw Thrills… and boy i played the shit of the arcade cabinet in these years. One of my favourite arcade racer ever, and i don’t even particularly care about racers.

Guess i wasn’t alone since an updated expanded version arrived on Switch (boxed to boot) for Halloween 2021, costing 40 bucks as MSRP.

In terms of content, it has the 5 tracks found in the arcade version, plus 24 brand new ones, now all laden with extra collectables necessary to buy and unlock new cars, also coming in more variety, regarding both regular vehicles and the triceratops n stuff.

Obviously stuff like the helicopter isn’t given away immediatly but will require getting gold trophies, collecting a lot of keys and money, levelling up cars and stuff, but there a good amount of content for the single player experience and gameplay it’s still such pure mindless arcade racer fun.

The controls and mechanics have been slightly altered and improved from the arcade version, but it won’t take much to discover how to “wheelie” over other cars, spin in the air and drift to collect a boost (Mario Kart style). Just remember that the original cabinet didn’t have a brake pedal, it’s that kind of uber arcade experience, with lots of spectacle and shit happening on the tracks, like the London Eye breaking loose, Yetis, etc.

More importantly, it’s indeed the absolute “Blast” the subtitle claims it to be, the IA isn’t bad even at Normal difficulty, and obviously it’s even better with 4 players.

I can’t recommend it at full price to due some performances hiccups and no online multiplayer, but i do recommend it, absolutely.

Resident Evil Vendetta (2017) [REVIEW] | Remote Zombies

As Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City was released in theathers earlier this week (in most countries), let’s take a look at the final Resident Evil CG animated film, Vendetta, which is also technically the last of the “CG trilogy”, as in all three movies have Leon Kennedy as the main character and are set in the same universe of the Resident Evil games, to contrast with the live action film series (as previously said).

The biggest change – but not the most noticeable – is the animation, with this film produced by Marza Animation Planet instead of Digital Frontier, the studio behind all previous Resident Evil CG movies and even the short film Biohazard 4D Executer that we started this little retrospective with.

The name might not say much, but it’s actually a studio that started by providing CGI cutscenes for the Sonic The Hedgehog games, and eventually for both anime TV series and even full lenght features, working alongside japanese animation titans like Toei for the 2012 3D CG Space Captain Harlock movies, even Lupin III The First, and more recently being one of the production companies for the new Sonic The Hedgehog movies, in a kinda poetic turn of events.

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Biohazard: 4D Executer (2000) [REVIEW] | Parasite Evil

While we wait for the new Resident Evil film reboot, i’d figure we’d take a look at the other forgotten Resident Evil film series, the CG animated one that basically most people don’t remember, know or care to do any of that.

But before tackling the movies you’ve might actually vaguely heard about, we need to go deeper and unearth the first actual 3D animated Resident Evil movie, 4D Executer, so unknown and so “important” it never got the Resident Evil title, so it still uses the japanese title for the series.

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[EXPRESSO] Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop (Season One) (2021) | It’s time we blow

I was gonna make a full review, but then realized it wasn’t deserving of it.

Often you see people wondering who the hell is the target for live action adaptations of anime series that etched theirselves as classics, even more when it’s a series that become a hit even outside the anime circles, so you can’t really pull the snarky excuse “no normal people have seen the thing”.

In this case, i feel no one, because it’s incredible how they managed to create something that not only the fans will despise but newcomers will just find bad, and wonder why the hell people liked Cowboy Bebop to begin with.

An adaptation of an anime that should actually work better than most in live action, but manages to be a genuine complete wreck.

It’s also a live action adaptation made by and for people that scoff at anime, because that sentiment it’s made pretty much manifest by the many changes made to excuse, justify or alter many elements and expand on stuff regardless if it makes sense or if it’s good.

This was always gonna be different from the original, but this is such a witless, soulless, boring, badly paced and barely recognizable adaptation that fundamentally misunderstands the material and it’s willing do any random garbage with it, hypocritically treating the original as gospel but without really respecting it, or even understanding it, not really caring too much to anyway.

The fairly cheap CG it sparely uses to remember you it’s technically set in space doesn’t help. I seriously hope the budget for the One Piece live action they’re also working is higher than this.

The cast it’s quite good and does an unbelievable job, but they can’t save this pitiable, hackneyed, utterly ill-conceived trash from itself. Don’t even bother hatewatching it.

Ninja Phantom Heroes USA AKA Ninja Empire (1987) [REVIEW] | To Survive Ninja, You Gotta Become Ninja

OK, ok, this is really the last one for this november!

Where will the magic of carthwheeling ninjas takes us today? Under which fake names will we have to see Godfrey Ho and crew credited? IDF Film and Arts or Filmark International?

But nowhere else that inside a prison labor camp…at least the new footage does, alongside crediting Bruce Lambert as director and Duncean Bauer as writer (who are you trying to kid, Godfrey Ho?).

Also, yes, this under their “Filmark International” company name, and it happens to also be one of theirs non-Richard Harrison ninja films, instead having Danny Raisenbeck (as usual billed as Joff Houston), and being the (uncredited) film debut of Sophia Crawford, later famous for her stuntwork on Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Power Rangers and Kung Fu – The Legend Continues.

You can also find this on Youtube, also uploaded by “The Wu Tang Collection”, their copy having the “Ninja, Phantom Heroes USA” title and japanese subs. A classic, as we learned.

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[EXPRESSO] Contra Returns iOS | Better than Rogue Corps

This isn’t technically new, since it has been available in China for years, but i guess someone at Konami woke from their slumber and figured out they didn’t release it westward yet.

I mean, this is the same company – among OTHER things – that wanted to release 3 Silent Hill games in the same month, cancelled a project involving Junji Ito, Norman Reedus and Guillermo Del Toro, and keeps embarassing itself even with the few things it still peddles as videogames, instead of pachinko and/or slot machines.

Who the hell knows.

And i wanna stress that, because i’m almost surprised by how this is actually decent, fun even, and furious since Konami decide to release that abomination of Rogue Corps and ask full price for it, when the older free-to-play mobile game by chinese developer Timi was miles better.

Sure, it looks cheap, the art direction it’s kept familiar to the Contra bombast even if you can still kinda tell it was handled by a chinese team (as in, it’s solid but kinda generic), but it’s actually proper Contra devoid of bullshit (like overheating mechanic for weapons in a shooter)), and it’s actually playable enough with touch controls, while it supports (and plays better with) gamepad.

There’s the gacha, the power level bullshit and all the upgrading n equipping and shit that comes as standard with the mobile free-to-play model to get you hooked and all the usual crap we fully expect from this business model.

It even leans big into the nostalgia for the olden days, but it actually backs it up on the gameplay department, nothing great in terms of level designs, but considering the trappings of being on mobile and free-to-play, Contra Returns it’s definitely fun enough to waste some time on it.

Didn’t expect that.

Ninja Operation 4: Thunderbolt Angels AKA Ninja Power Force (1988) [REVIEW] | Gangsta Code Of Ninja Honour

Ok, one more, and yes, this is a brand new review, we’re just “going backwards” in the non-existent Ninja Operation series, as we previously talked about Godfather The Master, a ninja flick that was released as “Ninja Operation 5: Godfather The Master”, and now we tackle “part 4”, aka another Ho ninja potpourri that was originally titled Ninja Power Force (or Powerforce, whatever floats your boat), and eventually got the alternate title of “Thunderbolt Angels”.

Despite not featuring any of those, as we all could guess by now, pretty easy to do.

One thing that i did not fully expect it’s the absolute scarcity of informations on what film had Ho “hijacked” for his ninjas means this time, IMDB has no info on the matter, thankfully the Hong Kong Movie Database came to the rescue and i was able to determine it’s a 1986 taiwanese action drama called “The Return/Return Home”, not to be confused with another taiwanese movie from 2016, also called “The Return”.

Don’t say you never learn anything from these reviews.

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