[EXPRESSO] Mass For The Dead iOS | Bossing Lich Mobile

Anime licensing is often weird as hell when applied to videogames (see the Attack On Titan or My Hero Academia releases for recent examples), but like that Overlord themed Picross game, previously release as “Lords Of Nazarick”… it was kinda necessary, since this popular light novel/anime/manga isekai series has one of the most generic titles ever, and there already was a a videogame series called Overlord (beloved if fairly forgotten nowadays).

Despite this, this new adaptation it’s well presented, with even an original animated opening by MADHOUSE and a track by MYTH & ROID to make it feel like the anime, with redrawn background, some good Live 2D sprites and decent 3D in-game models. The game start off with the general premise of the protagonist, that find itself stuck in the fantasy world of the VRMMORPG he was playing as his lich avatar, but offers an original story with some new characters.

Gameplay wise, it’s a RPG, fittingly so, but more like a proper turn based rpg, with some convenient options (and a mostly useless autobattle function) AND some actual tactical nuance for when enemies become more powerful than a fly…. which will take a while, and even so, you will be a bit too prepared for the boss battles, until they start using way specific “almost instakill” moves. Then you grind or just use premium currency.

To be honest, i arrived at the second part of the story just for the sake of review, it’s kinda boring, and doesn’t have any peculiar “hook” to make you come back to it (outside the usual ones, anyway), the gacha differentiates between paid and free/in-game earned premium currency, there’s VIP/battle pass equivalent, etc.

It’s.. alright, ok, honestly.

It’s something for Overlord fans to do until the 4th season of the anime, at least.

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[EXPRESSO] Coffee Crisis NSWDDL | Bronco Blend

Coffee Crisis NSWDDL

I’m doing an Expresso review of this one because it doesn’t deserve a full review.

Coffee Crisis is retro brawler/beat em up inspired by 16-bit classics, as so proudly says in the marketing and description, and sports all the mandatory “indie quirks”, from mediodre-decent pixel graphics, a throwaway story so we can weaponize it as “joke” despite being a lazy and unfunny mish mash of overdone references and cringey exchanges regardless, so bad the writers should tar themselves, but clearly no one is vaguely ashamed.

I mean, we have to shoehorne appearences from Youtubers AlphaOmegaSin and MetalJesusRock (and somehow the legendary band Nile), need something to bait Twitch viewers in, clearly the plot about baristas fighting aliens that want to steal our heavy metal isn’t enough random “for the lulz” by itself.
Thankfully you can skip dialogues by pressing B.

Gameplay wise, it’s so faithful to its ispirations it’s downright obtuse, a prime example of not understanding the very genre you’re trying to serenade, not evolving or improving the combat system, and even badly aping them, with finnicky hit detection making most of the extra weapon useless, blows that don’t stop enemies so they power through your attacks, when they don’t snipe you with projectiles from outside the screen. Most of the difficulty is obtained via cheap bullshit, and it’s unbalanced as well, with boss fights that are usually piss easy and just annoying.

Its main selling point, the random modifiers, are such a liability the game improves when you deactivate them. Sadly you can’t turn off or ignore the password system as the sole mean to continue, and the game also quickly outstay its welcome, continuing on and on instead of ending.

At least the music is decent-good… but 30 years later, Bad Dudes it’s a way better game.

Still.

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[EXPRESSO] Bleach: Immortal Soul iOS | Soul Whales

Bleach Immortal Soul iOS

As you may know, Bleach is coming back, with serialized and animated versions of the one-shot Burn The Witch, created by Tite Kubo and taking place in the Bleach universe, and the anime returning with the adaptation of the final arc, The Thousand Year War, expected for early 2021.

So time to milk this renewed interest in the franchise as soon as possible, like with a mobile free-to-play gacha game live service. Another one, Bleach Brave Souls (which is still going) was a hack n slash, this is one of those extremely basic kind of anime rpg for smarthphones, turn based, with most of the challenge and “strategy” being on timing attack to create combos… until the game itself points out the auto-battle function.

Then it becomes just a matter of upgrading stats and letting the way too efficient auto-battle do its thing, since the usual“rock-paper-scissors” system of types weaknesses and strenghts works only on paper, and the repetitive battles lack any depth, so they just become a formality, like how you can technically decide where to proceed in story stages… despite being no reason to do so.

All made worse by overly busy menus bursting full of things to “engage” with, in the hope of making you spend actual money on this cheaply cobbled together cash grab, that on top of recycling frames from the anime series and – somehow – managing to have typos on dialogue cribbed word for word, has laughably cheap and amauterish scene transitions.

At least it serves as a decent cliffnotes refresher for Bleach’s story from the beginning, but even so, a lot of the manga it’s available for free on the Shonen Jump app.
Complete waste of time and data.

I do hope we get a new proper Bleach videogame later, a musou, maybe?

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[EXPRESSO] World Beast War iOS | Kaiju Klicker

World Beast War iOS

Sometimes i kinda miss the early days of mobile games on smarthphones, when the free-to-play plague hadn’t become the standard, the banal evil, and the market wasn’t infested with endless clones of what’s popular, insanely overpriced ports, a satured mess with extremely rare gems like Onion Hotel.

But still, once i a while i search or stumble upon some title on the App Store, and i give them a whirl. This one is about big ass monsters going on a non-trademarked rampage, all done in the cheap and frankly cliched “faux 8-bit” aesthetic, but whatever, the idea of combining monsters together to make new ones is always nice, and the main attractive.

The problem is even the “monster merging” is too basic to hold any interest even in the “short run”, because you can’t spawn the more advanced ones in the “lab area”, even if unlocked: you must spawn the very basic one and keep merging them manually. There is an auto-merge function, but it’s inefficient, and even seeing what monster you’ll get next gets boring and moot, because you just put them to automatically thrudge through dozens of identical levels.

Because this is actually a clicker game, the store page describes it clearly as an “idle rpg”, so it’s not fraudolent advertising, it’s just that even with more to it than just clicking on stats to upgrade so you can earn more money to upgrade stats some more, it’s boring and lacking any “hook”. Ironically, the fact that there is more to it IS an issue, as there isn’t enough depth added to make you overlook its nature, but enough to inadvertently expose the pointless “gameplay” loop at the core.

Even as a timewaster on the toilet it gets old too quickly, and bootleg Rocket Raccoon just isn’t enough.

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[EXPRESSO] Gato Roboto NSWDDL | Domo Domo

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I didn’t know what exactly to make out of Gato Roboto, but since it was on sale and Devolver Digital published it, why not, for 2 bucks?

And it’s not like the game hides or even tries to hide its ispiration, as the main image used for marketing is a cat exiting a black and white version of Samus Aran’s Power Suit. The actual robot suit doesn’t look like that (as one might reasonably guess), but it tells you exactly what this is: is Super Metroid with a cat.

That’s it. I was expecting to see an actual gimmick, but the “gimmick” is that it’s a really good Metroid style title, actually finding the good balance between contained world and Metroidvania style progression that Xeodrifter failed to capture, so you don’t get lost at all since the design pushes you in a certain direction, but you also need to find out how to progress with the obstacles each enviroment introduces, such as heat, lava, water, etc.

And the whole idea of “Metroid but you’re a cat” is actually used well, as you can leave the suit to swim (begrudingly so), jump-scale walls or navigate narrow passages, but you have no offensive capability… because you’re just a normal cat, as normal as a cat using a robotic suit can be. Some good, challenging boss battles too, for a ¾ hour (more if you want to complete it 100 %) experience that’s fun all the way through, and doesn’t overstay its welcome for the sake of pleasing insane logic such as “hour=price”.

And while the aesthetic choice of “black and white graphics with retrò pixel aesthetic” is as “indie game” as it can be, it’s actually pleasing to look at (which isn’t always the case), and the story isn’t half bad, too. Fun one, recommended!

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[EXPRESSO] Arknights iOS | Medicated Nation

Arknights ios splash screen.PNG

So yeah, Yostar’s new gacha game, looks a lot more like Girls Frontline (or an anime take on The Division) than Azur Lane but isn’t any of that, it’s a tower defense thingie with people befitted of the ever popular animal ears, because. The vague plot sees you as the amnesiac leader of pharmaceutical-commando company Rhodes Island, in a world afflicted by Catastrophes, bringing destruction and the precious mineral known as Originium, which infects people with the mysterious disease of “Oripathy” ( awakening powers but also being lethal in the long run), and you fight the other factions at play, the cultish Reunion and the military force of the city of Chernobog.

Plot is decent, character design good for this type of game, and gameplay wise – as i said -, it’s a tower defense affair: you put units on the available grid spaces to stop the enemy units from entering through the gate/s at the end. If anything, the surprisingly long tutorial-prologue will get you up to speed to the basics and Arknight’s minor but nice additions to the formula. The usual free-to-play bullshit isn’t that bad either, as the game gives you useful items to start with (not just crap), but of course wants you to roll the gacha for characters with an alluring design by using real money.

Aside from some inusual design choices, like characters who don’t receive exp directly from fights (instead you gotta use xp item received as rewards to level them up), Studio Montagne’s game is fairly good in itself, with a good introduction of new enemy types and objects to keep things interesting, using actual gameplay to keep you coming back, instead of just using the typical psychological hooks to make you log in something way repetitive that basically plays itself (hi, Azur Lane).

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Reviews postponed due to Coronavirus

Cells At Work.jpg

So yeah, i was expecting to see Lupin III – The First movie and at least review the new american The Grudge reboot/remake/whatever, but many screening are being delayed indefinitely (unless it’s garbage, a national production or was already screening/i’ve already seen it), so who knows when i’ll be able to see Leigh Wannel’s The Invisible Man, and i don’t feel the mass hysteria will have died down before the 5th of March, so yeah, sorry, but these are the circumstances for now. Not good.

Since basically this screwed up my plans for EXPRESSO reviews, guess is time to get some use out of Netflix. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Stay safe, wash yourself (like you’re supposed to), and stop raiding supermarkets, this isn’t fuckin Judgement Day, fools.

[EXPRESSO] Cats (2019) | IDW DA NYA

Cats 2019 poster.jpg

Yes, we didn’t get this till now, and i was honestly looking forward to see this, to witness how bad it was, for someone that never saw or cared about the play or Thomas Steams Elliot book upon which the musical was notoriously based on.

Maybe it’s because of this, but i was expecting a mountain of weird and baffling stuff, and i wasn’t disappointed, actually found myself quite enjoying it as a “so bad it’s good” experience.

What’s the plot? A group of cats calling themselves “Jellicle Cats” find an abandoned new cat in the streets, they present themselves to her in musical fashion (as you’d expect), tell of their annual dance communion, which culminates in a contest to determine which Jellicle Cat will be sent to the Heavyside Layer in order to be reborn. But an evil magical cat (that seems to have eaten the Sand Sand fruit) wants to sabotage the ritual in order to be chosen for the “cat rapture”.

Why the human-cats hybrids’ size and proportions are constantly changing and not quite matching the size of streets and interiors? Why are they both naked AND clothed at the same time? Why do they look so fuckin creepy and uncanny, being frankly unbelievable in every sense of the word, despite the CG being not cheap by any means? Why is Ian McKellen here to basically mutter and meow like he’s just minutes away from dying? Why Tom Hooper (definitely not the right choice) decided to direct it?

Why Judie Dench is so freaky as Old Deuteronomy, and becomes even more uncomfortable to watch when she lays in the cradle, splaying and spreading?
Really, she’s uncanny.

Not that you’re supposed to ask many (or preferably, any) of these questions.
It don’t matter anyway.

Some nice songs, though.

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[EXPRESSO] Sonic The Hedgehog (2020) | Amish Paradise

So after Sega decided to let the internet hivemind make artistic decisions for its Hollywood blockbuster movie based on its most iconic franchise, after that FX studio fixed the ghastly design Paramount was originally gonne use for Sonic (and got axed, as proof that karma is a phantom under capitalism), after the delays from late 2019 to now, the live-action Sonic The Hedgehog movie hit theathers.

The premise here sees Sonic as an alien who escaped to Earth from his home planet after being hunted for his powers, and hides for years in a little town in Montana called Green Hills, until he accidentaly causes a power outage, prompting the authorities to send the eccentric genius known as Dr. Robotnik, and Sonic has to run for its life, helped by Tom, the local cop who accidentaly discovers him, in a quest to recover the lost magical rings.

I was skeptic and waiting for this one to be a regression after the Detective Pikachu movie, and it’s Sonic, there are legitimate reasons why the series has this sketcky (at best) reputation nowadays outside of the 2D style releases. … and sadly i wasn’t too far off. Mind you, it actually fairly good as an adaptation, with pretty much all elements associated with Sonic displayed or worked into the plot, but it’s also a very formulaic kids movie at heart (no “liar reveal”, thankfully).

And while having Jim Carrey back to chewing the scenery with mighty gusto like he did before is nice, he isn’t given very funny lines, and it all feeds into the 90 nostalgia this movie leans heavily on without trying much on anything else.

It’s not bad, at all, but i’m not gonna say it’s decent just because we are trained to expect weird baffling shit from Sonic as a brand.

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[EXPRESSO] Fantasy Island (2020) | Horror Spice

Fantasy Island 2020 poster.jpg

So this is basically a horror reimagining of a 70’s/80’s tv series, one i’ve never even heard before i stumbled upon the listing of this movie, but i guess if children shows like The Banana Splits can get remade as horror movies, it’s fair game for everybody.

The premise centers around the eponymous, remote tropical island, where the mystical Mr. Roarke (Michael Peña) makes the most secret dreams of his guests come true. But as the fantasies morph into nightmares, the captive guests have to solve to mystery of the island if they want to escape it, and the true reason they were all brought there.

I frankly don’t know or care if this is a “needed” or random remake of the source material, but even so, i could see this movie working even without the horror elements, which at times they do spice things up a bit, but on other occasions are so tacked on and clichè to the point of being just laughable, just thrown together into the supernatural thriller-drama cauldron, using the premise to link together scenes from different genres (a bit of Saw, a bit of war movie, a bit of heist movie, a family drama) in a coherent way.

And it works, it’s what i would classify as “movie meatloaf”, but it’s entertaining, fairly well acted, has decent characters, but it should (and could) have been shorter, as the last act drags on by using horror cliches, and it’s odd how mostly bloodless it is for a horror movie, not that this one actually needed Braindead/Dead Alive levels of gore, or horror elements to begin with. It’s not a case of “neutering for the sake of PG-13”, it just a story that could have done without being horror “flavored” and not lose much.

It’s alright.

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