Dynasty Warriors Strikeforce PS3 [REVIEW]| #musoumay

As most Warriors fans know, once a main numbered entry in the Dynasty or Samurai series is released, Koei and Omega Force don’t follow up them up with another numbered either, no siree, but basically squeeze the foundations and assets of the newly made entry for many spin-offs, alongside the expected Xtreme Legends and Empires versions.

And Dynasty Warriors 6 was no exception (thought the poor reception had a lot less derivative titles spun from it, not even a proper XL expansion), so back in 2009 they made another one, Dynasty Warriors Strikeforce (Multi Raid in its japanese release) to also ride on the “online co op” frenzy the industry was pushing wish during the PS3/360 era…. on the PSP, initially.

Then HD ports on consoles that touched up the graphics, added full in game voice acting for battles and non-battle events. Though worry not, most of the cutscenes are outright recycled from DW 6, with just a slightly different hue overlaid to disguise the fact it’s stock footage.

The story is basically the same as always, there’s really not much to discuss, aside that this time magic, mystical beasts and the such plays a lot more into it, leading to some alternate or new events alongside the classic confrontations like Chi Bi, Wu Zhang Plain, Xia Pi, etc.

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Touken Ranbu Warriors NSWITCH [REVIEW] | #musoumay

As i previously said while discussing the demo for it, i eventually did get the pricey ass retail North American version, since i wasn’t paying full price for digital, or 100 bucks for the game and one of the most desperate and worthless example of season pass content ever devised by a publisher.

Due to import taxes i paid the same anyway, but we’ll talk about that later in the review.

FIY the game is also available worlwide digitally on Steam.

Touken Ranbu Warriors story is set in 2205, about a group of Touken Danshi sent back in the Sengoku period in order to avoid timeline alterations by the History Retrograde Army.

What are Touken Danshi? But beatiful boys with the souls of legendary japanese swords (often as iconic and famed as their possessors/wielders) bestowed upon them, because nothing else aside “bishounen sword boys” would strike fear in those dastardly time travelling history revisionists.

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Dead Island: Retro Revenge PSN [REVIEW] #deadislandretrospective

So, we finally arrive at the last entry of the Dead Island retrospective, just in time for Dead Island 2 to finally release in stores, tomorrow actually, which sounds still kinda crazy to me after that memorable first teaser trailer with Pigeon John’s Da Bomb, but we’re almost there, for real this time.

The only game left is Dead Island Retro Revenge, which was originally released as a bonus game to entice people in buying the Dead Island Definitive Collection, with the main serving of that being the remastered/definitive edition versions of Dead Island and Dead Island Riptide, but can also be simply bought on Steam, PSN and X-Box Live for 5 bucks, and it’s actually well worth it.

Which is surprising, because while i do enjoy the Dead Island mainline games, i also fully understand why people hated them (i initially did too), but oddly Retro Revenge i’d say its the unexpected better one of the lot, as it keeps the series tradition of copying someone else’s shtick, but this time they chose One Finger Death Punch as the blueprint, and didn’t overcomplicate it.

But first, the plot, or the tiny narrative that exists to justify the game.

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[EXPRESSO] Super Mario Bros The Movie (2023) | Fungine Fun

Anteprima in una nuova scheda

So the new Super Mario Bros movie, the new animated one, is here, and i gotta say i’m pleasantly surprised, since it’s still handled by Illumination, which is… a prolific studio, let’s put it like that.

The plot is what about you’d expect and combines elements from both the previous film iterations of the Mario franchise, so you have Mario and Luigi as unsuccessful plumbers in Brooklyn that one day, while trying to fix a flood, get transported into the Mushroom Kingdom, where Princess Peach is preparing a plan to fight Bowser, as he got hold of the magical Super Star and is bent on world domination… after he pops the question to Peach, that is.

Yeah, there is the isekai element but the world isn’t the weird Blade Runner-looking dino society of the 1993 live action film, instead the one most audiences remember from the videogames, and i say “the videogames” because basically every popular iteration of Mario is represented, there’s even the karts and the Kongs play a not small role in it, as the movie crams a lot of action, varied setpieces and fuckton of references in every scene, making for a pleasing 90 minutes romp where there’s no downtime nor faffing about random shit to pad out the runtime.

Animation is top notch and the script (which is still very “Illumination”) it’s also a lot funnier than one would wager, so older audiences will get more laughs out of it than expected, instead of groaning their way through most of it.

If i went to see it when i was 12, i would have lost my shit, but even disregarding that, The Super Mario Bros animated film stands as a good kids movie, very fun indeed.

It’s better than the Sonic live-action films, i’d say.

Super Mario: The Great Mission To Rescue Princess Peach! (1986) [REVIEW]

Before this deal of an animated Mario movie was written between Nintendo and Illumination, heck, 7 years before the infamous live-action film with Bob Hopkins and John Leguizamo, Nintendo already had its Super Mario anime movie, with Super Mario: The Great Mission To Rescue Princess Peach, based on the seminal Super Mario Bros game, which was released just 1 year prior.

While not totally unknown, for years it had been quite the rare, obscure and elusive piece of forgotten Mario media, with some horrible VHS rips flying around the web of thing, until some absolute chads in 2021 came together to fund and execute a 4K restoration project of the film from a rare (possibly even the only surviving) 16 mm print secured by another madlad called “Carnivol”, and then put it on Youtube for free, with updated (and upgraded) english subs.

So you can easily check it out there, not gonna put the link directly because Nintendo, but the effort it’s more than laudable and the people behind the restoration deserve some money thrown at them.

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[EXPRESSO] John Wick 4 (2023) | Knights Of The High Table

Wasn’t sure if to review this one, but i eventually watched the first John Wick on Netflix for the first time, so yeah, whatever, gonna marathon this series days before seeing the new one in theathers.

So apparently the series as a whole has people kinda divided, but honestly i’m not quite getting the confusion as even the first movie was chock full of ultra stylish ultra violent revengeance that drew from many influences, indeed was a revitalizing kick in the ghoulies for the action genre, and already seemed like it was the best adaptation of a violent cult comic book that never was.

For the 4^th outing, it’s no surprise we get even more focus on the mythology of the assassins’ codes and the rules of this world that invites the same questions as WH40K does (“who cooks the meals without being bound via a blood pact to some finger collecting mob boss, etc.”), as we continue to see John Wick take on the High Table itself, after basically declaring war against it before.

Honestly i like these movies and how they try to up the ante every time, but if John Wick 3 seemed a little longer than necessary, Chapter 4 might result as downright bloated, as it pushes for a nearly 3 hours runtime, and could have benefitted to trim some of its many spectacular fights that sometimes go on so long they kinda start to grate on the audience a bit.

But i can forgive the excess as there’s plenty of very good action, and the pretty satisfying ending making it clear this is the intended end of the franchise, so hoping they will just stick with the already planned spin-offs, i’d say John Wick 4 it’s indeed quite “the blast” to end the series with.

Pinocchi-O-Rama #3: Geppetto (2000)

Yes, we’re doing a Disney Pinocchio movie, but not the ones you might think of, since we’re travelling back to the dawn of the millennium for the kind of Pinocchio film that’s actually more common than you’d think: the musical. One of them, anyway, we’re doing some of the more intriguing ones later this year, today we spotlight a fairly forgotten made-for-tv musical starring Drew Carey and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, simply called “Geppetto” and released in 2000.

The idea – as exemplified by the title itself – is a nice variation on terms of how to retell the story of Pinocchio, because one could reasonably argue how odd that the narrative prioritizes following a character who’s personality basically was “pre-loaded” since “birth”, while leaving mostly in the background the only character that has past and would feasibly benefit from an arc.

At least, that’s what a superficial analysis might lead one to believe, but there is some truth to it regardless, because Geppetto is important to the narrative, and after all he’s the one who wanted so badly to be a father, albeit not in the way the story does.

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Pinocchi-O-Rama #2: Pinocchio: A True Story (2021)

Let’s get the “meme boy” one over so we can kill any mystique it could possible accrue in time, by tackling one of the more recent adaptations, the Russian 2021 one that pretty much nobody would have cared about if the english dub had Paulie Shore delivery such a stock effeminate – and most importantly out of place – performance as the titular Pinocchio, especially notable in the clip you’ve seen of him talking to Gepetto of how he wants to see the world on its own, as he ready for it.

Tybald being Pinocchio’s horse, which he never had in the original story, but then again, it bound to be expected from your movie when it can’t even have the gall to call itself “THE true story”.

Just one of the many. Whatever.

I guess someone finally saw Tangled and wanted to have a funny horse character, so much it presents the movie as a story he’s telling you about, giving the basic gist of Pinocchio being carved by Geppetto, dissing the “growing nose” thing and then actually… preseting more than actually narrating the whole thing. Liar. And odd as a Jiminy Cricket replacement. Sort of. Not really.

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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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10 Hours-ish Into One Piece Odyssey

While i’m overburdened to even conceive putting out a full review for the game (since i’m still early into it, as the title may suggests, since it’s a JRPG we’re talking about) before Spring hits, i do wanna talk about it since i have been looking forward to it since the announcement, and i pre-ordered the collector’s edition with the figure and season pass and shit.

I mean, i have been expecting a proper One Piece RPG to wash the horrid taste Romance Dawn on the PSP/3DS left in me mouth for years, and i’m not feeling like digging out emulated and/or translated roms of those very old and very “Japan-only” One Piece RPGS on the Wonderswan and Game Boy. I do have some of those imported, but whatever, i do want to play something modern once in a while, you know?

Btw, these first impressions are based on the PS4 version running on a PS4 Pro (and there’s also a demo version available), so you know.

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