12 Days Of Dino Dicember #45: Jurassic Triangle (2024)

Ah, yes, the parody of Roben Ostlund’s celebrated english-language feature debut. FINALLY!

Imagine that, and that how it would require some wit instead of just any lack of shame, but instead what he have is just another low budget dinosaur film, distributed by Cork’d Entertaiment, a company offering stuff like The Amytiville Murders, Monsternado… and also the quite fun italian horror The Well, but mostly dealing with mockbusters or mockbuster looking cheap flicks, think it as an Asylum adjacent kind of film distributor, just marginally above Wild Eye Releasing that pumps out Mark Polonia films and the like.

So, it’s one of those that you see the opening scene, witness the god awful CGI for the dinosaurs (especially the pterodactyls look shit and seem to have framerate issues like it’s a Pokemon Scarlet/Violet asset), and 5 minutes in, you feel done already, that it would be better to stop while we’re ahead, and we could march to our inevitable grave without deciding to eat so much garbage.

Continua a leggere

[EXPRESSO] Metal Slug Attack Reloaded STEAM | Freemium Free

So, yeah, this was unexpected, not unprecedented, but definitely unexpected, especially due to how quickly modern SNK put out and closed these free-to-play Metal Slug spin-offs.

But yeah, now the second tower defense Metal Slug title (Metal Slug Defense was a bit too old and kinda left unsopported for years, so it made sense to bring this one out of the freezer) is back as a 10 bucks single purchase, no microtransactions, timers or limited energy to play, none of that.

I’ve actually played quite a bit of the game when it was free-to-play on iOS, so it’s both kinda cool and weird to see it back as an actual game, you know, the ones you pay once and are actually meant to be played without the serpent of Eden asking for your credit card info.

I find it’s actually playable now, as the original release was notable worse in fighting anyone that didn’t wanna pay up, incredibly aggressive, a lot worse than Metal Slug Defense was, too.

Still, it’s a fairly mindless tower defense title, somewhat enjoyable despite very little strategy and little depth to it (which was also true of Metal Slug Defense, btw).

That said, it’s not a remake and it serves as a testament that nothing is actually free in free-to-play, because the design is untouched, meaning that the game is still unbalanced, heavy on difficulty spikes and grinding, holdovers that make littles sense without the F2P monetization, like the gacha to recruit units for which you’re given a fuckton of what was the “premium currency”.

Kinda odd as they also kept in the PvP online battles, but i guess why not, it’s not like they were gonna even try to balance this thing, it would have required pretty much making a new game from scratch.

P.S.: This review was made after playing the game a little after launch, pointing this out because this review has been (coincidentally) posted just before SNK announced in late November a vague free update coming in the future.

12 Days Of Dino Dicember # 26 : Jurassic Domination (2022)

In a way, there’s little i can complain about a movie like Jurassic Domination, because i pretty much known what i’m going to get from a modern Asylum mockbuster of a dinosaur film, even down to them not really marketing them anymore so even trash buffs and cinema shit seekers like me end up finding out about them years after they came out, undermining the point of a timely release dor the mockbuster to leech off a big budget tent-pole release, in this case Jurassic World: Dominion.

And yet everytime i come out slightly disappointed because i’d like for The Asylum to at least try more with the plots, since their mockbusters are even more and more detatched from the movies they allegedly exist to profit off indirectly with their bootleg low budget offering, they could try to go utterly insane with the plots if they will never improve budgets and effects to any significant degree, but why would they put any more effort if people still watch their garbage regardless?

They know people like me will start combing the internet for these kind of movies, sooner or later, so why bother? They’re so cheap to be worth it from a financial standpoint regardless, so until the well dries up completely, they won’t stop, and it’s hard to fault them for that when the Jurassic World series exists and the difference between the contenders and the “champions” is how much money they can throw at the fx budget to cover up botched or flawed scripts.

Continua a leggere

Reptisaurus (2009) [REVIEW] | #giantmonstermarch

Cheap, direct to video shitfest from Fred Olen Ray, the final frontier for the franchise you’ve never heard about until this very moment…. or did you really?

If you’ve been lurking and watching all things monster movies from a good decade or more, you probably already know of Reptilicus from 1961, the only Danish movie monster that had the privilege of being remembered by film historians, and like some of the others “Godzilla inspired” films, managed to get a shlocky comic book series, one that eventually crossed with the one based on Gorgo, of all fucking things.

But since this is that kind of story, Reptilicus’ comic book only lasted two issues. TWO.

Then the publisher, Charlton Comics, waited for the copyright on the name to expire, redesigning the creature a bit and retitling it as “Reptisaurus”, which at least gave the series more issues and a special one-shot, and – as said before – got a cameo in an issue of the Gorgo comic book series, also published by Charlton Comics.

Continua a leggere

[EXPRESSO] Warriors Of Future (2022) | Robosuits vs Plant Alien Necrobugs

Dipping once again into Netflix exclusive selection of Hong Kong and mainland China by testing my luck on sci-fi action alien shoot em up Warriors Of Future.

Plot rolls the common “meteorite smashes into Earth” situation, and no, there’s nobody fashioning the meteorite pieces into arrows thousands of years later for cool superpowers, nope, this meteorite just had a lot of “grass alien invaders” in it launching a massive offensive.

The elite human forces (escorted by advanced war robots) are almost wiped out, minus a suicide squad with just a few hours left before mankind it’s completely eradicated…

There is a bit more to it, as the invasive plantlife ironically also happens to be beneficial to this dystopic cyberpunk world by converting the polluted air into breathable oxygen, so the evil government guy that dedicated his entire life into machines that do the same very thing isn’t too pleased and tries to sabotage the team, because he’s evil and that’s about it as “motivations”.

Not really a spoiler as he makes it clear he’s gonna do that, nor the heroes (say “hi” to the eyepatch guy) fare much better, like the plot they’re pretty much constructed with stock action sci-fi movie building blocks, heck, even the robosuits they don at some points feel like the result of a confusing laundry day with Iron Man, Isaac Clark from Dead Space and Oshii’s Kerberos Corps.

I do mention videogames because while the production values are indeed high, big screen high, the action scenes and the CG (especially for the feral plant monsters) feels very “videogamey”, a lot like high budget cutscenes, BUT even so i can’t deny Warriors Of Future it’s a very entertaining, quick moving, belly-filling serving of action sci-fi dish that delivers some decent fun.

And sequelbaits to the stars.