[EXPRESSO] Bleed PSN | All The Shakespearoes

You’re not a hero. You’re a girl with magenta hair, Wryn, and you do have pen and paper, so it’s time to write and draw yourself into a story where heroes aren’t relevant anymore, and you twin-stick shoot your way through the random cabal of ex-heroes, from the alien defender, the “Astrogirlie” robot, the dragon, etc. so you can indict yourself to the Hall Of Heroes in the story you insert youself in. And maybe think what would Travis Touchdown would do.

The story is non-sensical meta-narration there just to “excuse” the kitchen sink approach to enemies and bosses, complete with passable 2D retro style graphics and characters that remind one of early 2000’s webcomics. Here it’s cute because it doesn’t hide itself under some “high pretense”, and because it focuses on what it wants, gameplay, and to be honest it delivers, combining side scrolling action in a twin stick shooter style,with emphasis on style, since you’ll have to master the triple jump dash and a bullet time bar to avoid the fairly challenging patterns of enemies and bosses.

Controls fairly well, shooting is satisfying, it’s quite challenging even on the standard setting without feeling impossible and so becoming just pure frustration. It’s good fun, but it’s fairly short lived fun, by design drawing in from the arcade era with just 6 stages. This isn’t necessary an issue, since it is a small indie title sold for relatively cheap, but i can’t say it has as much replayability as it parades, as aside from harder difficulties and trophies/achievements, the extra modes are kinda lousy, and there isn’t much that much to unlock or upgrade.

I’d still recommend pickin it up for fans of the twin stick shooters and sidescrollers, especially when it’s bundled on sale with the sequel, Bleed 2.

Dino December #15: The Ghost Of Slumber Mountain (1918)

Let’s do something a bit different, and fitting, not only because this is one of the older movies i’ve ever spotlighted, it’s a silent film and it’s in the public domain (at least for the US), but it’s also a partially lost film as well.

As in we know the original runtime was 40 minutes, but for years the only surviving version clocked at 12 minutes, until a print of the film running 19 minutes was found. As for why half of the movie’s is still missing, Christopher Workman (citing a scene in the restored footage where Joe tries to convince Jack to take off his clothers and pose as a faun) suggested it was due to the homosexual subtext. Probably naming the hermit’s ghost “Mad Dick” didn’t help.

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Dino Dicember #14: GON (manga)

Today we’re doing something quite good and that could use more coverage, as the days of having him as a guest star fighter in Tekken 3 are long gone. Pun not intended.

Yeah, while it has a cult following and it’s revered by many manga (and comic book) fans, GON today is mostly forgotten, and the title will more likely make Gon Freeks, the protagonist of Hunter X Hunter come to mind in manga/anime circles.

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Dino Dicember #13: Jurassic Attack / Rise Of The Dinosaurs (2013)

Quite the functional, generic-ass title, i must say.

This one has TV movie and genre actor Corin Nemec of Stargate SG-1 and Beverly Hills 90210‘s fame, whom also was in Dragonwasps, Sand Sharks, Dracano/Dragon Apocalypse, and many more, including… Robocroc, which it’s exactly what it sounds. And will be quite likely reviewed here in a double feature with Roboshark. Eventually.

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That’s the sound of 10 years of Ken’s Rage

Sorry to “interrupt” Dino Dicember, but i wanna talk a bit about Koei’s musou series based on Fist Of The North Star, dubbed Ken’s Rage. If you follow any gaming news site, you’ve might already know of this, but since we do have some preview footage running around, i feel the time it’s right to talk about what Koei did to celebrate the 10th year anniversary of Ken’s Rage.

(images taken from Siliconera)

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Dino Dicember #12: Terrordactyl / Jurassic Wars (2016)

“Pteranoperil” was too bland, i guess, but feel free to use that one, if you want.

So yeah, i got this while hunting for dinosaur flicks on Amazon, and the UK DVD copy goes under the “Jurassic Wars” title, but at least the cover promises pterodactyls… and the movie is about pterodactyls. Checks out, not always a given with these kind of movie covers that promise more than the movie can actually deliver.

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Dino Dicember #11: The Eden Formula (2006)

Wait, this movie isn’t produced by Roger Corman, how it could it count as the second unofficial sequel/spin-off of the Carnosaur series?

Well, this time the connection is both direct and oblique, as it’s directed (and written) by John Carl Buechler, who worked on the special effects for the 3 Carnosaur movie, and – for whatever reason – he decided to crib stock footage from the first Carnosaur flick. Times.. never change.

Sorry for the screenshots’ abysmal resolutions and quality.

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Dino Dicember #10: Raptor (2001)

With a title that cuts to the chase and it being released 5 years after Carnosaur 3: Primal Species, first question is how and why you would consider it related to the Carnosaur series, at all?

I guess because is produced by Corman yet again under his company New Concorde… and due to the fact it uses stock footage from all the Carnosaur movies. Heck, even the DVD cover it’s also 40 % stock footage of the ones used in the american releases!

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Dino Dicember #9: Carnosaur 3: Primal Species (1996)

Remember when Carnousaur 2 script couldn’t definitely decide if to consider the first movie or not, so it just gave an explanation for the dinosaurs that could kinda link the two movies together?

Well, the third one doesn’t even try to follow one of the movies or both, so it’s no wonder it was released in the UK simply as “Primal Species”, might as well use the subtitle as the alternate title, since this one wasn’t even conceived as part of the Carnosaur series, originally.

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Dino Dicember #8: Carnosaur 2 (1995)

2 years later, following the rise of a new dino-human hybrid race… Wait, this is that type of sequel, just slap another number on the name of the previous movie, and do whatever the fuck you want with it, as long its about the same general theme and/or subject. Continuity, thy name is Corman.

This time we have a group of scientist that go a nuclear mining facility in Yucca Mountains (just missing an atomic Tor Johnson followed by gray, dull narration) to investigate a potential meltdown, but instead find dino eggs in one of the caves. Not, not radioactive dinosaurs, that would have been kinda fun, just the boring old cloned type of mutant dinosaurs. You can guess the rest.

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