[One Piece: Side Pieces | Retrospective] Cross Epoch (manga) [REVIEW]

To close off this little retrospective, there was no other choice, given the recent passing of Akira Toriyama, the author of Doctor Slump & Arale (and nothing else), may he rest in peace.

We’re also going back in time more than with the previous spin-offs (Monsters aside), as Cross Epoch was a 20 pages one-shot manga done by both Oda and Toriyama in 2006, apparently because they wanted to… actually yeah, that’s about the extent on the “why” this came to be.

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[One Piece: Side Pieces | Retrospective] Dream 9: One Piece X Toriko X Dragon Ball Z Super Collaboration Special (2013) [REVIEW]

Oh yes, this one, i held back on tackling it while i covered the One Piece TV Specials also because i never read nor did know much about Toriko as a series… that has changed, as i’m almost halfway through and quite liking it, and yes, i’m aware of Mitsutoshi Shimabukuro “canon event” that happened in 2002, but unlike Oda’s other acquaitance, Watsuki, an actual pedophile that had terabytes of child pornography (and suffered for it just a hiatus for its Rurouni Kenshin follow-up series, after the charges in 2018, which is even more insulting since recently the author of The Apothecary Diaries got punished far worse for tax evasion), it seems to have been a mistake he owned up to, he really paid for it in terms of being ostracized by the industry, actual consequences of his actions, plus it been 22 years, so i feel it’s pointless to still hold it over the man.

Had to get this over with because i didn’t want to talk about, you didn’t want to learn about that for a review of a special crossover about 3 popular Jump anime series (which already appared together in some of the Jump crossover videogames but not in anime form) colliding in a TV special, many couldn’t care less either way, but some might not have known or still held some incorrect info on the matter (like i did myself), so i had to make things clear(er) and to address the question.

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[EXPRESSO] Borderlands (2024) | Money does grow on trees

Despite “Randy BoBandy” reminds us this thing was actually coming along and not going the way of the Bioshock film….i kinda wish it did, as it’s hard to believe this thing actually exists, not helped by lack of any real promotion for a 100 millions budgeted movie with actors like Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart and Jamie Lee Curtis.

The plot follows the one of the first Borderlands but also borrows some characters from the sequel, with a bounty hunter, Lilith, tasked by the CEO of the Atlas corporation to get back his daughter, Tina, lastly seen on Pandora, a wasteland planet overrun by thugs, monsters and mercenaries, where is said to reisde Vault, a fabled crypt that allegedly contains the artifacts of a long lost, technologically advanced civilization.

Lilith then inadvertly becomes a Vault Hunter and is forced to team up with a gaggle of renegades, weirdos and psychos, including a robot unit called “Claptrap”.

Having played up to Borderlands 2 and some of its expansions, i will say that at least the Borderlands movie looks the part, and this might be one of the more apt videogames to film adaptations… shame the source material was not really good to draw inspiration for an action comedy film, given the puerile, meme-ridden and often more annoying than charming “sense of humour” the games had, which was tolerable at the time and didn’t quite age great…but heck, even the games were funnier, overall, thanks to their “throw shit at the wall” approach.

It’s a movie 10 years too late, and for an Eli Roth directed film based on a hyper violent videogame series, it’s a PG-13 affair, but the main issue it’s the movie just being a boring, unfunny, honestly kinda lethargic romp, where the weirdly casted A-listers half-ass it big time.

Earth Defense Force 4.1: The Shadow Of New Despair PS4 [REVIEW] | #summerofedf

2017 passed, and the alien menace was repelled… for 8 years, as in 2025 the Ravagers returned with a vengeance, striking from within the depths of Mother’s Earth crevices.

I’m cheating a bit as i’m not reviewing the original PS3/X360 release of EDF 4, called Earth Defence Force 2025 in the west since EDF 3 was retitled as EDF 2017, and not randomly as this is a direct sequel of the storyline in EDF 3/2017, which – as we learned by now – the series does every 2 mainline titles before rebooting itself.

Which also means it’s also a remake of sort of EDF 2/Global Defence Force, aside from bringing back some enemies from that entry (and introduces some the very same way in some missions), it also features very similar key plot beats, like the mothership being destroyed halfway through after being teased as the final boss to introduce the actual new, bigger menace.

The B-movie storyline is as fun as ever, as are the hilarious dubbing and insane dialogues shouted by the soldiers, or by some utterly cuckoo operator or scientist that almost orgasms when an air raid is carried out, as somehow this series manages to have even more ridiculous and batshit hilarious exchanges and plot points every entry, as it’s basically not really competing with anything else on the market, but itself, so – as already said by a very peculiar medical student/gaming Youtuber – it has to push the kaiju-alien ants-robots-alien robots-ufo consommè of B-movie delirium even further, and as EDF 5 later managed to, so did EDF 4/4.1 in upping its predecessor.

I’m not gonna spoil how, because the dialogues are really a trashy treat of over the top voice acting and really evoke the old 70s english dub jobs of kung fu films, just for a 50/60s sci fi style romp about aliens that might be ants, robots, both, none, and might be working in tandem.

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Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon PS3 [REVIEW] | #summerofedf

The EDF wasn’t quite new to spin-offs, as EDF 2 got a tactical turn based spin-off, developed by thinkarts and released westward as a PAL only release under the Global Defence Force: Tactics title, but it’s fair to say this is the more well known one, as it released globally after EDF 2017 as a sort of “fail safe” title, just in case the mainline titles were too niche and “japanesy”, here’s another more tailored to western gamers of the time, developed by now defunct Vicious Cycle Software (Robotech: Battlecry, Puzzle Quest: Challenge Of The Warlords, Dead Head Fred – which i really should review, it’s an interesting little game – The Matt Hazard games, the Pac Man and The Ghostly Adventure duology, alongside a dozen or so of licensed and-or tie-in games about kid oriented IPs like Ben 10, Flushed Away and actually ended their run on a Kung Fu Panda licensed title).

Basically EDF 2017: USA Edition, as willed by D3, which i can’t blame them for, not in retrospective, as it the late 2000s-early 2010s saw basically a giant racist crusade against anything gaming related coming from Japan sweeping the industry, i lived through it and remember too well, so yeah, not surprised D3 went for this option just to be sure it got some footing for EDF.

That aside, the premise is basically EDF: USA in terms of plot as well, very B-movie stuff as expected and desired: aliens, bringing in tow robots and giant insects (and giant robots, which also include giant robot insects) invade the city of New Detroit, and is up to the Strike Force Lightning, a team of elite soldier from the Earth Defense Force, to blast them aliens bastards to bits and save the day.

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My (Almost) 2 Hours With The Metal Slug Tactics DEMO on Steam

I promised i would make a hands on first impressions about the demo for the Metal Slug strategy RPG spin-off, Metal Slug Tactics, and i knew the demo was gonna be available to grab for a limited time… though i misread the news article posted by the developer, Leikir Studios, because i assumed it was gonna be a limited time release to get… but it was actually always meant to become unavailable after June 17th.

It was eventually extended until June 27th, but i didn’t know that, i just assumed i could keep using the demo, but again, i’ll take some of the blame, as the announcement article said “will be live until June 17th”, the dev team could have made it more clear this was a demo meant to self

As i didn’t know that i put off finishing the demo until i had some free time for that, only a week too late, and to find the “play” button for the Metal Slug Tactics demo in my Steam library turned into a “Purchase” link redirecting to the store page… even when you can’t actually buy the game yet, in any form.

This means i didn’t play and finish the final maps of the demo region, but i did write 2 pages of impressions, notes and clocked 96 minutes into the demo, which is more than enough to get the feel for the game, so, instead of a proper hands-on article, you’re getting this “salvage write-about” thingie, because i do have something to say about the game, even in this early demo stage, which show the game is far from being in the “larval” stage, despite some features not available, like controller support, as the devs clearly stated both in the Steam store page news and in the demo itself.

Compromise is a bitch but i do wanna keep my word, so here it goes, fellas.

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Earth Defense Force 3 AKA Earth Defense Force 2017 X360 [REVIEW] | #summerofedf

When of i think of when the series officially, globally managed to “hit it big”, Earth Defense Force 3 is when it actually happened, after word of mouth did its thing and helped reach the audience for a more arcadey and un-serious gaming experience, almost a pure one, if you want.

Sorry, Earth Defense Force 2017, as it better known, which is a fitting title for another reason besides keeping in tone with the 50/60’s style of sci-fi cheese, and the obvious hiding of this being the third entry of the series (the main one, anyway) to make the new potential audience of the previously Playstation centric IP not feel like they were missing out.

The reason being curiously a story one, as with EDF 2017 will start what would become a recurring approach to the plot, as in this does not follow up from the events of EDF 2, nothing from that game is ever mention, because EDF 2017 it’s a remake of the first EDF, which was set in the…. back then still not that far away year of 2017.

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Earth Defense Force 2: Invaders From Planet Space PS VITA [REVIEW] | #summerofedf

To kick off the Summer Of EDF, we continue in chronological order, after having reviewed the original Earth Defence Force on its PS2 debut, more specifically the PAL version that was released by Agetec as “Monster Attack” and now it’s rare to get, so much it’s cheaper to import the japanese PS2 version instead, also because it never came out in America.

And to be clear, while i do have the PAL release of EDF 2 (since it was once again not published in US back then), handled by D3 via their own label, Essential Games, made specifically for export to Europe their Simple series low budget releases) titled Global Defence Force (yes “Defence”, i’m fairly sure they never fixed the typo because i doubt they bothered to issue a reprinting just to fix the title), and i’m also aware of the japanese-only PSP port that also added extra classes.

Buy i’m choosing instead to review the PS Vita enhanced port-update-remake, Earth Defense Force 2: Invaders From Planet Space, not only for the hilarious title (or the fact it was the first time the game was released in US markets), but because it’s basically the definitive EDF 2 experience, and – alongside pretty much every mainline EDF game – also the version ported to Switch, only in Japan even on the digital storefronts at the time of writing.

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Seven Samurai 20XX PS2 [REVIEW] #meleemay

Technically this is a re-write, because i did review this game years and years ago in italian, but time gave me the distance needed to realize i could actually write an entirely new review from scratch for Seven Samurai 20XX still based on my experience of like 7 plus years ago, since the hatred i felt for this one never actually went away, and i guess festered on the back of my mind.

But i did replay it, and i can futher confirm that there are indeed many reasons to istinctually hate it, if nothing else for the fact it had the brass balls of being the closest to an actual videogame adaptation of Kurosawa’s seminal samurai film, as it actually had the rights by the Kurosawa production, and i wanna make it clear it also has Moebius (yes, THAT Moebius) as the character designer and music by another legend, the late Ryuichi Sakamoto.

So yeah, it’s kinda impressive how Sammy (an arcade publisher that by the early 2000s fused with Sega in order to enter the home console videogame market, which i will always associate with my beloved Metal Slug clone called Dolphin Blue) got permits from the film studios, rounded up people of incredible caliber from different industries, and then managed to deliver such an obvious, steaming turd that was destined to haunt the 5 bucks bargain bins for a good decade.

So much for a product meant to celebrate the movie’s 50^th anniversary, as it did the anime series Samurai Seven, both curiously fiddling with sci-fi re-imaginings of the film but actually unrelated to each other besides both meant to attract younger audiences to Kurosawa’s story.

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Mitsurugi Kamui Hikae STEAM [REVIEW ] #meleemay

Since i did already cover The Initial and the “sequel” hasn’t yet gone on sale on Steam, i feel it’s time to revisit (so yeah, it’s technically a rewrite in the sense that some of my opinions didn’t change over time, but it’s also a revision i wrote from scratch) another Oneechanbara adjacent title from the indie tier of Steam “famous” japanese hack n slash games heavy on the “school uniform cum swords” anime-derived aesthetic, the kind where you’d expect the dutch wives looking characters to randomly start fucking in a robotic, unappealing fashion, if you didn’t already know this was just a fan service-y hack n slash.

This was actually a fairly popular release, as in it was a smash hit when released during Comiketto 84 (AKA the 2013 august edition of Comic Market, that huge japanese only event) by his developer-creator Zenith Blue, and in March of 2014 PLAYISM picked it up to distribute and localize it in English for a worlwide Steam release.

It received a limited physical PS4 release via Limited Run Games and it’s also available digital on PSN and X-Box systems, FIY, but i got it in a bundle playable via Steam years ago, so i’m reviewing the Steam release alone, sold at a MSRP of 10 bucks.

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