Cobra Against Ninja (1987) [REVIEW] | Thai May Cry

Time to crush your flimsy hopes right away: sadly we don’t have ninja fighting a giant king cobra snake (or a giant James Latta), nor we get stock footage of snakes, the movie just has a guy that names himself “Cobra”, proper christian name as thai dudes called “Chester” and “Raymond”.

Why does he want to go against the ninja (♫ he will fight the battle to win ♫) ? The ninja of course being Ninja Master – read notes – Gordon (even though Cobra is also a ninja), this time also known as the “Red Champion”, despite his jumpsuit being red AND yellow for this specific movie.

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Ninja Champion (1986) [REVIEW] | Grindhouse Ninjas

As we already saw with previous reviews of Godfrey Ho ninja flicks, anything goes with ninjas, he could splice them and stitch them to any kind of foreign, unfinished and often obscure asian movie he could get his hands on.

Even so, it still comes as a surprise that he would also splice his brand of multicolored, bandana wearing, self-adverting ninja in a rape revenge movie. WHY?

I love how the italian dvd release has a sword with diamons on the cover, it’s extra hilarious considering how it implies that diamonds are important to the plot…. they fuckin aren’t, the sword is way, WAY more relevant.

It’s just that the rapists happen to be diamond smugglers, it doesn’t really matter what they smuggle, AT ALL, they could sell bootleg boglins and nothing would really change, and even the movie barely remembers at the last minute that yes, this should somehow tie together the new storyline and “ninja footage” with the existing footage, this time taken from the 1985 corean rape-revenge movie known as “Poisonous Rose Stripping the Night”, directed by Kim Si-hyun.

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[EXPRESSO] Free Guy (2021) | Life Service

So while we wait for the multiple movie projects spawned from that time online users deliberately made Gamestop’s share value drop (IF they happen at all), another thing that felt already dated the moment it was announced it’s finally out, Free Guy.

While it’s surprisingly not that out of touch as i expected (the fake in-game graphics looking like those crappy mobile ads for free-to-play games is a nice touch), i won’t deny it does sound like something that shouldn’t work as anything more than a sketch on Mega64.

So, what’s the plot? Ryan Reynolds lives his routine of bank teller nicely, until he decides to break it (inspired by a new woman player that he falls in love at first sight), gets They Live-style glasses, and learns that he’s just a random, generic NPC in a open world game called “Free City”. Or he was, at least. Guy then decides to become a hero for the city and its fellow virtual inhabitants, and becomes essential to the other protagonists, a couple of indie game developers trying to prove that a big videogame company CEO ripped off their work for his Free City game.

For a movie that takes many elements from other movies, ending like a weird amalgamation of Wreck It Ralph, The Truman Show, and The Lego Movie, it’s nice that is not as cynical conceived and executed as it may sounds, there’s actually some heart to it.. when the movie manages to focus and stop itself from doing weird “references-corporate pop culture flexes”, pandering to stereotypes, or trying to reach for super-safe narrative and emotional appeal.

It’s a decent movie, bit of a mixed bag, one that includes a slightly miscast Ryan Reynolds doing a Jim Carrey style character and a really overacting Taika Waititi.

Not bad.

Senran Kagura Burst Re:Newal PS4 [REVIEW] | Godfrey Hoppai

Expect to see more Senran Kagura reviews in the future, for now we’ll talk about the remake-port of the first game in the series, arriving in the west on 3DS alongside the extra campaign added in the “Burst” version, and later remade for PS4 and PC. I choose the PS4 version, but it’s also on Steam.

Having played the 3DS version throughly, i wasn’t opposed to a remake like this, unlike many fans that didn’t want to accept the fact the game was crap. It was. It had something to it, but like most of the Oneechanbara games (and overall a lot of Tamsoft’s output), too many flaws and a lot of repetition harmed the experience, and in the case of the first SK game, it didn’t help it tried to pull off a 3D style beat em up while having the set-up of a 2D beat em up. And being really long just to be long, without any variation and the 5/6 stages backdrops re-used again and again.

One thing that didn’t change is the story or it’s presentation, they just upscaled and used better polished assets, models and sprite from the more recent main Senran Kagura games, but even so most of the visual novel segments and illustrations are preserved, alongside the anime opening. Which is fine.

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Ninja Operation 5: Godfather The Master (1988) [REVIEW] | The Amaretto Ninjas

More from house of Ho…. and admittely Joseph Lai as well, who also directed and produced many of these, even if often Godfrey Ho was still involved in some way or co-directed, even if uncredited.

This one happens to be kinda of unknown compared to other flicks of the same “cut and paste” ilk by Ho, his associates and the company, and it doesn’t help i found it on Amazon Prime Video, simply called “Licensed To Terminate”, which made me waste 2 good hours in researching info, since it happens to be the subtitle for another Godfrey Ho ninja movie, Ninja Operation: Licensed To Terminate, better known as Ninja Operation 3: Licensed To Terminate, as evidently they distributed a good chunk of these by creating non-existing series out of similar films, like it happened for the Zombi non-series of italian zombie flicks made to cash into Night Of The Living Dead.

Doesn’t help the version of the movie streaming on Amazon Prime Video cuts out the title screen and all credits, while copy pastying the generic and non-descriptive summary of the other movie, that also just happens to be about ninjas AND “star” both Richard Harrison and Grant Temple, but no, the one we’re talking about it’s a different one, originally just called The Power Of Ninjitsu but better known as Ninja Operation 5: Godfather The Master.

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Ninja Thunderbolt (1984) [REVIEW] | Rollerskating Jumping Ninjas

Can’t believe that we didn’t cover yet (on this blog, anyway) anything from the masterful editing hands of Godfrey Ho and his empire of multi-colored caucausian ninjas, so time to rectify this with a… random one from the huge ninja pile, Ninja Thunderbolt!

A little introduction for those yet unfamiliar with Godfrey Ho’s legendary style of “cut and paste-kata”, as in he took various unfinished, unreleased or copyright dubious films (often from Hong Kong and Taiwan)…. and edited new footage of caucasian actors acting as ninjas in colorful jumpsuit to make a “new” full lenght movie, redubbing and rewriting the dialogues in order to make a somewhat connected – and sometimes almost coherent – plot tie together all the footage.

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[EXPRESSO] Ninjala NSWITCHDDL | Not Squids, Ninja Kids, Now

Ninjala NSWITCHDDL.jpg

GungHo Online Entertaiment’s ninja themed free-to-play answer to Splatoon, announced years ago, then delayed but now available.

Gameplay-wise….. it’s basically Splatoon, but built as a melee based score deathmatch affair (with respawns), with the ink gimmick replaced by the Ninja Gum, essential as you can throw it, use it to dash mid-air, to transform into an object, or to fashion a stronger version of your weapon. If you can get enough “gum energy” from the drones, that is, which can also be used to activate a super move, alongside regular abilities with cooldowns.

Given this is melee combat only, weapon clashes are frequent – if not constant – so it’s not good that despite tutorials with Youtube videos baked in, trying to gain the upper hand always feels messy. No wonder, since it basically boils down to a QTE guessing game. There is more to Ninjala, there are abilities and complexities to learn (like wall running), but after a confusing first impression (made worse by a completely unbalanced matchmaking), where you either keep winning or losing without knowing WHY, you realize there the cool ideas and mechanics are flawed regardless.

On top of that, there are only 2 maps available right now, two modes (battle royale or team deathmatch), but the game is already bursting with freemium bullshit: various currencies, gacha, battle passes, cosmetic stuff like hats. And a story mode..10 bucks/5 eurobucks for chapter. ALSO, there are consumable weapon skins.

Art direction obviously apes Splatoon and it’s pretty good (ditto for the audio department), but technically speaking is just alright, though fairly stable in my experience.Mind you, it’s fun, despite the messy gameplay (some really messy design choices) and lack of content at the moment.

I’d just buy Splatoon 2 instead, to be blunt, but it’s worth try as it’s “nominally free”.

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