Bladestorm Nightmare PS4 [REVIEW] | The Hundred Years Grind

Ah, yes, Bladestorm, the ginger step-child born of enabling Omega Force to once again make something that isn’t a Warriors game (it’s worth remembering they once did also do fighting games and RPGs, among others), yet isn’t one of Koei historical turn based grand strategy titles like Nobunaga’s Ambition or Uncharted Waters, but more like a real-time Kessen.

This time around we’re taking a break from the Three Kingdoms, Sengoku era Japan or Asian history in general, as we’re going back to the middle ages, yes, but Europe this once, in the 14^th and 15^th centhury, to revisit the events of the Hundred Years War between France and England.

And of course this comes with a big, gynormic “loosely based on” sticker, because it’s a videogame, it’s a videogame based on historic events by the Dynasty Warriors developer, so you already know historical accuracy isn’t gonna be on the table as the main course, or barely at all, because who gotta have historical figures like Gilles Rais and John Talbot interact, and also give them very flamboyant anime style design… why the fuck not?

The plot is told mostly in cutscenes (that develop the various character arcs and of course take a lot of liberties in terms of characterization for the historical figures represented, designs aside), as your player customized character is just another dude in a mercenary band that happens to be involved in the conflict at hand and participate in both “trivial” and important battles of the war, with the option to side with either faction and also save Joanne D’Arc, if you want.

This was true for the original PS3/360/PC release of the game back in 2007, but we’re tackling the expanded port for PS4/X-Box One/Steam, Bladestorm: Nightmare, the PS4 version specifically (as apparently the PC port of this that’s on Steam is shit on a stick, and being an older Koei PC port, yeap, i believe it), which adds some features but mostly a new fantasy campaign that gives this release its new subtitle, Nightmare, which we will tackle later.

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[EXPRESSO] Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning (2025) | MISSION ALL OVER!(?)

Dropping the “Part 2” from the title, Mission Impossible Final Reckoning is still the direction continuation of the previous film, Dead Reckoning (with a recap of that films events further making clear it was planned as a two parter), that had Ethan Hunt and his team having to go rogue in order to escape the grasp of an IA program (dubbed “The Entity”) that accidentally gained sentience and spread itself all over the globe’s networks, bringing the national networks into chaos, fanning the flames of war, etc.

After the agent working for the Entity, Gabriel, manages to retrieve the “counter program”, Hunt and his team are forced into a desperate gambit to try and retrieve the Entity’s source code (still lost in a sunken submarine near Russian waters), retrieve the counter program from Gabriel, and outsmart the Entity, before it hacks every major nations’ nuclear arsenal and sink the globe into full on nuclear holocaust….

Honestly, i’m kinda impressive how the formula still works wonders, keeping that specific concoction of high octane action, death-defying chases, occasional comedy and espionage extravaganza, straddling the lines between realistic and improbable action movie magic.

And of course, the reminder that Tom Cruise biggest superpower is not his defying the Reaper, but his ability to run on film.

It ain’t trying to revolutionize the genre, at all, but the plot does actually manage to resonate perfectly with today’ fears, without desperately trying to be modern, “hip”, and the execution is pretty damn good, making for a fun and sentimental sendoff of the series altogether, there’s actually a real sense of finality to it, as it ties or brings back events and characters from the older films, gives some closure, and honestly would be the perfect place to end it, or have Hunt/Cruise pass the baton.

[EXPRESSO] Thunderbolts* (2025) | Antiheroes’ Day Out

So we doing Suicide Squad now, but with a bucket of Marvel characters no one has ever heard before (Bucky aside)? I guess.

The question is this more like 2017’s Suicide Squad or James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad?

The question turns out it’s kinda incorrect, because it’s close enough but not quite that kind of story, and more surprisingly is the better Marvel movie i’ve seen in a while, which blindsided me entirely.

After her sister, the Black Widow in the Avengers team died, Yelena Belova feels depressed, but turns out her last job is a set-up by her employer, corrupt CIA director Valentina DeFontaine, whom is trying to remove all evidence of her shady illegal operations and experiments, and has decided to do so by setting up a trap for Yelena as well as other shady assassins and mercenaries.

The group of antiheroes (and a strange man in hospital garment that they found there, just called “Bob”) decides instead to collaborate in order to escape the trap laid out for them, and eventually have to team up against their will to save the day from a new menace, cheered on by Red Guardian (“Soviet Captain America” of the Black Widow film) and a concerned Bucky, whom is trying to empeach Valentina DeFontaine…

Nothing new, at all, it’s the usual “ragtag team of underdogs that are antiheroes of sorts and are gonna take this chance to do good for once”, but it’s pretty obvious that this time around there’s some chemistry, some effort, with actors that actually feel like they wanted to be there instead of anywhere else; heck, even the villain doesn’t suffer from most the usual problems of later Marvel films, making for an overall surprisingly decent flick, which is not how i expected “Phase 5” to end.

Dynasty Warriors Gundam PS3 [REVIEW] | #musoumay

I don’t think Mobile Suit Gundam needs an introduction, given its one of the more popular and old mecha franchises that are still around, arguably THE mecha franchise if there ever was one.

You know it, you love it… i mostly kinda experienced it via osmosis, as i never fully bothered to be invested in any of its many iterations, be it the classic 0079 original, the Z Gundam one, the super deformed Three Kingdoms ones, the ones about milfs and kids building Gunplas.

Or the space tomato lesbian one. Or whatever the new Gundam series that will come out in the meantime of me posting and you reading this will be about.

I didn’t even plan to ignore Gundam, i just never really went deep into any of its iterations, as it happened, and – as i think i’ve said before – i’m actually way more familiar with frigging Sgt. Frog (yes, Keroro) than actual Gundam, so it both kinda counts and not really counts at the same time, meaning i’ve been told the series is about the horrors of war more than the cool robots… but the robot do LOOK cool, there’s no anti-memery (or counter arguments, and so on) to argue that at simple skin deep fact, them mobile suits design are legendary stuff.

So in a way i’m really not “qualified”… or i was, because this did serve as a gateway entry for me, sure i love them Dynasty Warriors, make them cool looking robots instead of superhero fantasy warlords, just as good, or even better, i will finally learn what the fuck the original Gundam and some other of its series are about with Dynasty Warriors Gundam, why not?

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Asterix & Obelix XXXL: The Ram From Hibernia PS4 [REVIEW] | ….Did Nothing Wrong?

Due to some unforeseen schedule issues, we’ll close out the entire XXL series with the latest one, Asterix & Obelix XXXL: The Ram From Hibernia, released in late 2022 by Microids and once again developed by Osome Studio.

This feel immediatly like a continuation of XXL 3, despite the original plot being about a welcome surprise: as in, there is another lone village that has managed to fend off the Roman invasion, outside of Asterix & Obelix’s. It’s not in Gaul, but Hibernia (aka ye olde Ireland), and the trick lies in the titular ram (being also the beloved pet of the Hibernian chieftain) that is able to inspire/enforce armies to fight even when fatigued with its magical horns.

The Romans though managed to capture the ram, which depressed the Hibernian chief and made him unwilling to fend off the invasion, so his daughter comes to ask for the help of the Gaul village, Asterix and Obelix obviously willing and able to go help them flip off Romans abroad…

It’s a cute premise and like the previous games they do get the tone and humour of the series right, its charm and all, but – like this game as a whole – it’s mostly underbaked and short lived, there’s no time to properly develop any of the new characters, as the entire narrative whizzes by too fast.

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[EXPRESSO] Sinners (2025) | From Blues Till Dawn

There are movies that are best enjoyed by going in “cold”, by i don’t know if Sinners is one of those, as i can imagine people being confused if they were not aware of From Dusk Until Dawn having been a thing for a couple of decades (alongside some sequels i keep forgetting exist).

Because it is that, but done less as a deliberately disjointed surprise jump in tone, direction and subject matter, as it made to feed into the themes of freedom, black heritage and racial tensions, with the first half being a thriller drama set in 30s America, where a couple of brothers in the crime business, Smoke and Stack, go back to their town in Mississippi, in order to try and make some cash by setting up a juke joint, and they involve their cousin, a budding bluesman dubbed “Preacher Boy”.

The second half is them being stalked and having to survive when vampires surround the juke joint at night, and yes, its indeed doing a “From Dusk Until Dawn”, turning things straight into horror territory, with pretty good effects too and some very nice musical bits, lots of carnage, really good acting as always, especially Michael B. Jordan as both “Smokestack” brothers.

I respect it’s ambition and willing to do some out there shit (like the “future and past” visions of blues music), but the editing at times is frustrating, it kinda keeps going even after what would have been a good time to end the movie… twice, which is partially due to close up some subplots.

At times it’s a bit too much and it’s a miracle it works so well instead of being the utter mess it sounds-could have been like, but it is still well done, bold and stylish, i do recommend it.

[EXPRESSO] Kaiju No. 8: Mission Recon (2025) | Kompilation Kaijus

I usually rag on compilation films for anime series… for the obvious reasons, but i did watch Kaiju 8 Mission Recon it because i was curious about the manga but i never had time to check that or the anime out,, so i guess compromise it is.

Speaking of, the premise it’s set in a sci-fi future where academies train young people into anti-kaiju troops to dispose of the endless hordes of big ass monsters attacking Tokyo on a daily basis.

The protagonist, Kafka, actually a man in his 30s, working on cleaning up the kaiju remains and debris, after he flunked his entry exam as a soldier, but one day, while on the job, he’s infected by a parasite that lets him turn into a humanoid kaiju…

Obviously one of these new series that rose up after Attack On Titan success, even if the similarities are only superficial , as Kaiju 8 is more inspired by Ultraman (and a bit by Patlabor) than anything else, and the tone is more akin to One Punch Man than AoT… and honestly i think it’s pretty fun.

Nothing we haven’t seen before, but done fairly well, the animation is quite good, the action is solid, the kaiju designs are pretty cool, the cyberpunk aesthetic is well done, and i do like the protagonist being an older man than usual (despite being a teenager at heart) not just used for comedy bits.

The new material is a post-credits slice of life bonus episode about the other characters’ day off duty, which i feel is needed because these recap films of shonen battle manga series usually sacrifice most non-action scenes, especially if they aren’t about the protagonist.

Hope i can set some time aside to see Season 2 when it airs later this year.

[EXPRESSO] A Working Man (2025) | Baba Yogurt

I know what you’re thinking, what everyone was thinking after seeing the trailer: why isn’t this The Beekeeper 2?! I mean, i’m sure there’s a sequel on the way for that one, but this plain isn’t, it’s just another Jason Staham movie where he’s some ex-soldier or super assassin that has retired but he’s pulled back into his older life of violence due to some criminals hurting someone close to him, etc.

This time around he’s a construction worker and they kidnap the daughter of the family that owns and operates the construction company he works for, so he swears to get her back… which would be fine but he also has his own biological daughter to look after, as his wife is dead and the grandpa believes Jason Staham (again, not bothering to remember his character’s name, nobody will) isn’t a good parent. His quest brings him to find out a human trafficking ring, piss off the russian mafia, and accidentally become a John Wick-esque figure to them….

Honestly it feels like they mashed two scripts together, now only due to the plot feeling like it should be less convoluted (it’s not complicated) as the new characters that keep showing up just increasingly feel like they should be in a completely different Jason Staham movie, even more as they keep getting more cartoonish, like the foppish pervert that “bought” the girl just missing a Dracula cape, or the psycho super assassins under the big russian mafia honcho giving off strong vibes of videogame minibosses.

It’s just kinda weird, untentionally funny, and yes, makes the whole thing longer than it needs to.

It’s not awful or the worse, but let’s be honest, it’s just a stopgag release until The Beekeeper 2 or Fast And Furious X Part 2 come out.

[EXPRESSO] Prophecy (2025) | Revenge Of The UberEats Boys

I’ve quite enjoyed Tetsuya Tsutsui mangas such as Reset, Noise, Duds Hunt… but i’ve never heard of “Prophecy”, that one sure eluded me.

So imagine my surprise when i saw this Italian live action film adaptation of his Prophecy manga announced months ago. Especially since they already made a Japanese live action film adaptation… back in 2015.

Sure the production studio, Brandon Box, notably also have been working on a Tiger Mask live action film (the anime was mad popular here back in the 80s)… but why this one specifically?

The plot involves a couple of young dudes trying to sell their stock market software, “Prophecy”, to a media mogul, but it fails spectacularly, forcing them to scrape by with odd jobs, until months later they find the mogul profitting over “Prophecy”. So they decide to moonlight as a modern, social media wise Robin Hood, the protagonist donning a mask made of newspaper and the alias “Paperboy”, becoming a viral sensation, things snowball, the police gets involved, yada yada.

It’s odd, because it’s not awful, acting is quite solid, i respect the attempt, the heart is in the right place, ….but it’s a tensionless thriller that comes off as weird step child of Mr. Robot and a crime caper comedy à-la Now You See Me (minus the magic), an action comedy thingie that touches upon modern problems like the rooted effect Internet has on our lives, social injustices like the UberEats style of “poverty jobs” forced upon people that were denied a better future… while also seeming stuck in the past on many pivotal plot elements like “hacking”, the characters are bidimensional cutouts, the script is kinda weak, full of unintentional anticlimaxes and just straight up forced plot developments.

Not bad, just kinda of a mess, but an okayish one.

Final Verdict: Americano

[EXPRESSO] La Città Proibita/The Forbidden City (2025) | Kung Fu In Roma

After delighting italian audiences with the superhero-anime inspired They Called Him Jeeg and then unleashing circus freaks against the nazis in Freaks Out, director Gabriele Mainetti opted for another type of modern pastiche with La Città Proibita (lit. “The Forbidden City”, not sure how much intentional are the similarities with the 1918 films of the same name ), blending in a kung fu drana film with an Italian crime-thriller.

The movie sees Mei, a chinese woman on a quest to find her sister, whom moved to Rome years ago, and as she fights her way through the criminal underbelly of the city, she meets Marcello, the son of an indebted restaurant owner that is thrown into this since his dead father was mentioned by Mei, the two eventually teaming up to find out the truth behind their shared woes….

It’s an impressive feat how this isn’t just a “cute attempt” or is “as good as it can get due to being an Italian production”, none of that, there’s actually a profound understanding of kung fu films as well as the kind of specific regional (Roman in this case) italian style of drama and comedy that would resonates with the audiences, there’s respect, hearth and good craft put to it, with professional, high quality brutal kung fu action, excellent coreography and tight editing.

The elements and plot beats are typical of the kung fu genre (it’s a vengeance story at heart, for one) but really well executed, and more importantly this doesn’t feel like two movies forced to coexist despite being at odds with each other, quite the opposite, as they both benefit/draw from this “culture clash” theme for the best, acting its quite good (mostly), it is quite captiving and enthralling if you’re willing to give the idea a chance.