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The Lucky Texan Review

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John Wayne has returned for another big fight. This time his adventure will deal with gold and naturally includes those who would like to steal it as well. There is no rest for the weary and in the end what will really give him a hard time is his partner this time. At the end of the day, you are only as strong as your weakest link after all and so that can get tricky.

The film starts off by introducing us to Jerry and Grandy who end up bumping into a pile of gold. They are now going to be rich and so they decide not to stake a claim on it yet since that would mean that everybody would find out about it. Instead they sell off a little bit at a time to the nearby gold depository. The problem is that Harris and Cole run this shop and they have some big ideas to rob the heroes and get rich themselves. Jerry is good at losing a tale, but Grandy is older and not quite as wise in the ways of the world. This could get tricky.

The movie does a good job of covering a whole lot within these 55 minutes. It feels like something is always happening here and the pacing is good. The writing and script are also both very solid as always which will come as no surprise to anyone who has been watching the John Wayne films. These films have a good sense of humor while always providing action and this film is no exception to that rule. The only annoying character here will be Grandy because the whole time he will have you shaking your head. He falls for the easiest traps imaginable and just makes life a lot harder for all of them.

The villains are easily able to sucker him into signing the wrong paper and then he gets shot. Additionally, by the end of the film he has the perfect witness testimony to put them behind bars but wants to make a big show out of it which ends up backfiring. Someone trips him up and the villains escape again. The whole courtroom scene was pretty fun and I definitely saw the vision but with lives at stake, Grandy had to do better. These villains will stop at nothing in their quest to be rich.

Fortunately Jerry is always ready to claim victory and is really good at chasing his opponents down. One thing you will really come to admire about his character is how easy he makes it look. He just continues to outwit the opponents at every turn and even makes getting arrested look cool. He is constantly in charge of the situation and you would want nothing more from your main character.

The villains themselves are a bit forgettable but I do have to give them some points for being smart. Working at a shop that trades in gold is a great way to be in a position to steal some. I do wonder how they had enough money to be running the shop and having all of that cash on hand though. Surely if they are this well off then they don’t need to be living a life of crime right? I mean they could just be greedy but it was surprising to see that they had actually balanced out a real job for so long. That in itself could be a bit of a twist. If the villains had also not gotten too greedy, they probably would have won in the end since they kept on stealing Grady’s horses and were well trusted in the gold business. They could have just shorted the heroes on each transaction. After all, they had no idea what the gold was worth and that’s why they were asking the villains. Just give a fake number that’s maybe 70% legit each time and eventually you’d have a fortune as well. I guess these villains were not the smartest in the bunch after all.

Yes, there is a bit of a romance that shows up near the end of the film but it really comes out of nowhere and doesn’t really do much to enhance the experience. It’s here to check off a few boxes but that’s it. The film is strong for the fight scenes and everything, not for the romance. Fortunately when a film is good on all of the fundamentals, it doesn’t matter too much that the romance is weak. The film will still survive.

The special effects in the film definitely work well and on the whole if you like a classic hand to hand fight then you are in luck since the choreography is good. This is the kind of film that everybody can enjoy without any real issues. The more you enjoy it, the more you will probably wish that the runtime could have been longer though. Still, it’s long enough to give you a full self contained story. By the time you’re done with the film, you can definitely appreciate why a lot of the old heroes would fly solo in the wild west though. Less teammates means less weaknesses.

Overall, There isn’t much more to say about this one. If you have enjoyed the John Wayne titles then this will be another good one to add to the collection. It’s always fun to see the process of obtaining gold back in the day. The wild west was really a different time and nowadays even if you found some gold, good luck finding a place to convert it while trying to be inconspicuous. There aren’t many Wayne films left for me to check out on the shortlist but you can count on at least one more review showing up pretty soon.

Overall 7/10

Shining Force II Review

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You may remember my review for Shining Force I a while back, well I’ve been playing this one ever since and finally completed it. The game is definitely a long one so you get a lot of bang for your buck. I also appreciate that it really followed the template of what a sequel should be. It improved upon all of the weaknesses of the first game like long loading times and making it difficult to swap out party members. Everything has been streamlined quite a lot here which I really appreciate.

The general plot involves a group of devils trying to resurrect the ultimate evil once more. These beings can possess people which makes them rather difficult to stop. The main character’s kingdom is blown up so they are forced to relocate but now they are surrounded by enemies. The King dispatches him to make some alliances and take down the villains along the way but time is not on their side. With every step, he gets closer to danger.

The gameplay is a tactical RPG like the first one. You will have a squad of around 11 fighters and your opponent gets around 30. You have to maneuver around the map in a turn based system to wipe them all out or wipe out the captain of their forces. That means your strategy will often either be about winning slow and methodically or be rushing their king right off the gate. The latter will rarely work to be honest but there are usually a few minions you can skip if you play your cards right. Stay far enough away and you won’t activate their attention.

As you play through the game you will quickly get a feel for which units are strong and which ones are basically just meat shields. Sometimes you will even want to opt for launching into battle with a smaller group as a result. I would just bench the ones who weren’t contributing at all because then there are less turns to go through and that makes the battles go by a lot faster. Sure you could eventually get them strong enough with enough level ups but their growth rate was so bad that it didn’t seem worth it.

Meanwhile like I mentioned before, the game did a great job of really speeding everything up. The turns go by wayyyy faster than in the first game. The menus have also been simplified. You can also revive people with one click when at the priest’s house since it is the default option rather than having to select another option each time. So these were all pretty good quality of life features.

It goes without saying that the graphics here are definitely pretty good. The colors have aged really well and I like all of the various attack animations. It’s clear that the game spared no expense here and that’s really what you like to see as a player. The game did not hold back at all. The soundtrack is also good, although I would say it’s less memorable than some other titles I’ve played. They probably could have had a little more fun with that.

Outside of the battles, the game also has a pretty big hub world with a lot of towns to explore. You’re really rewarded for checking these places out as you can recruit more folks to your army and find rare weapons. The only downside is that the game added random encounters for some reason and these can be annoying since each battle in this game is rather long. You have to try and walk around the encounter zones but there is no way to tell which area will trigger a battle. This felt pretty unnecessary since the game already has a built in exp grinding mechanic with the main character’s teleport ability.

Maybe they just felt it would be easier to level up this way. It’s the only reason I can think of at least. It’s still a rather small detail though. The game’s story will hit you with a lot of different twists and turns as you go through the journey which is also fun. You will really have a hard time guessing exactly how things will turn out. Also if you stay on the credits long enough, you’re rewarded with a boss rush. I’m assuming this is still around on the Switch Online version but after waiting for a while I eventually exited. It’s a cool easter egg for those who wait though.

My main advice here is to make sure to always have the Phoenix in your party. He is by far the best party member and has absolute crazy range. Anytime he would die to a critical hit, I’d have to back up and try again. He is absolutely necessary for winning. Also, you will need to keep in mind that the RNG in the game can really change the flow of battle in an instant. Enemies will randomly hit you twice or paralyze you sometimes or you’ll flat out miss. That means no fight is really a sure thing. I wouldn’t mind if they dialed that down a bit, although of course it’s a lot of fun when it’s your side getting the lucky blows.

Overall, Shining Force II is a pretty fun sequel. I had a good time with it and the game is definitely very well balanced. The wild spawn mechanic may have been unnecessary but at least with rewind you can dodge that most of the time. Without that it would have absolutely been 10x as annoying. I can see why this game has such a strong reputation, it was really well made and I look forward to getting to play the third game someday. What other quality of life updates will they be able to add in there?

Overall 7/10

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) Review

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This is one of those games that is so obscure I hadn’t even heard of it before. They really should have added some kind of a subtitle to this one so it wouldn’t just blend in with every other game. Shouldn’t that be lesson 1 for any form of media? If you ask me it feels like a pretty obvious thing to do at least. Ah well….it is what it is.

The game starts off with Splinter being kidnapped so the Turtles have to grab their gear and find him. It won’t be easy though as the Shredder and his henchmen may be involved. The Turtles are used to being able to rely on their sensei and now that isn’t going to be an option. They haven’t had to deal with a crisis like this before but fortunately all 4 of them are really big talkers. You can expect a whole lot of smack talk throughout the game as the Turtles make their voices known.

This title very clearly does not have a high budget. Each character has 2-3 lines that they continue to spam at every point. The lines don’t usually make sense within the context of the scene but the game isn’t really worried about that. I guess I’ll take this over not having voice acting. The actual plot is fairly barebones but the bigger issue is the length. This is an extremely short game. You can knock out the main story out as well as most of the side missions in under 4 hours. You unlock a few more side missions after completing the game but that won’t buy you much time. So you better hope the game is fun at least.

Fortunately, I actually did enjoy the gameplay. It’s very unpolished but there was a good amount of combat here. Basically it’s styled as an overhead beat em up. You use your main attacks to take down the enemies and as you level up, you can buy new moves and passive power ups. Essentially you will continue to grow stronger and stronger as you play through the game. You may wonder what the point of these power ups are for most of the game but then the final level hits you like an absolute truck! The difficulty spike there is absolutely insane.

You have to defeat 8 bosses in a row with no save points or check points of any nature. Ultimately I did have to go back and grind exp for about 2 hours so I guess that did inflate the playtime quite a bit. I also used all of the money to buy a bunch of food packs and invincibility items. In a sense you could say I cheesed things a bit since each invincibility item protects you for 3 seconds and I bought 100 of those. I also bought 100 potions and I unlocked Raphael’s ability which gives him another 3 seconds of invincibility. You will need all of this to win.

While you can seamlessly switch between all 4 turtles and they all have their own health bars, if one of them dies then all 4 do. So that’s something to really keep in mind here. You could easily get a game over just because you got a little too overconfident. That happened to me a few times. Fortunately the game is pretty good about having constant save points at regular intervals. If I had to back track a lot then that would have been rough.

I wonder if the game was originally planned to be longer though. There are still new mechanics being introduced when you are in the final 5 levels after all. They’re also rather pointless with how unnecessary they were, like being able to break a store or climbing a ladder. Why even have those features in the game when they are only going to be used once or twice? I dunno, I guess that’s a little over my head.

The graphics are fine. Nothing noteworthy but you can always tell what is happening and fortunately the game isn’t laggy. The soundtrack is virtually nonexistent though, I would have liked some kind of a catchy song to listen to instead. That would have been pretty cool. So the gameplay is really on its own here. I like the style and of course having an EXP system is always cool since you actually have a reason to fight against the enemies. So the game did something right there. The power up system also means there are many different ways for you to fight as you try and figure out what the best combinations are.

By the end of the game, Michelangelo felt like the strongest since he was the only one with long range options that were spammable and dealt a whole lot of damage. You could beat anyone with him even if the battles would take longer. I definitely took advantage of that for the EXP grinding. Raphael also got really strong by the end and I think the final two would have followed suit. I’m sure if the game was popular you would see a lot of debates on who has the best build since the game did a good job of making them all very different but still powerful.

If this were a game boy title I’d be a bit more lenient with the length but on the 3DS? I think they definitely could have done better there so I really can’t hold its hand here. Ultimately the Ninja Turtles still have many more games for me to try out so eventually I’ll get to see how the others stack up. In the meantime, it’s difficult to take down the classic Gamecube titles. That was really the eras of TMNT.

Overall, This is one of those games that is fun but I probably would have felt differently if I had bought it day 1 for full price. Since I got it for around $10, it makes sense that I didn’t feel too bad about it. It’s a whole different situation at this point. With a little more polish and content I even think it could have been pretty good. Alas, this just was not in the cards. If you do see this game in stores I would pick it up but it is far from being the best Ninja Turtles game.

Overall 6/10

How I Spent My Summer Vacation Review

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It’s time for a movie that really nails the balance between being a full on parody and still keeping in a lot of tension. It’s not the kind of movie that you can really underestimate and I dare say it is also a rare atmosphere. You don’t see films with this style of humor too often and they always tend to be a success. I highly recommend watching this film and, in a sense, the less you know about it, the more effective it will be.

The movie starts out with a newspaper requesting a very specific kind of person for their agency. A mysterious guy appears who calls himself Jack and he is apparently who they were looking for. See, these people want to ask him some questions about how he spent his summer vacation. This leads into the rest of the movie as we find out that Jack liked a girl named Nikki but her father Ned was always defeating him at every event they played. Defeating is actually a bit too mild when you think about it. He would go out of his way to absolutely crush him.

Jack felt like he simply wasn’t good enough for Nikki by the time they were through and he spent ages training to get better….or that was the plan anyway. Ned continues to crush him at everything and so Jack is feeling worse and worse. His only hope is that he has reason to believe that someone is blackmailing Ned. If this is true, Jack would finally have the upper hand for the first time in his life! This is absolutely his chance but will he just end up messing it up again?

The first way in which the film uses the humor well is in how absurd everything is. Ned isn’t just a master at every game ever but he is mega rich and was able to have a ship built that has the games contained within the walls. His staff are all paid off as well and continue messing with Jack whenever he thinks he has some evidence. Even Nikki appears to be in on it as she almost clearly has disdain for him but will play nice to get him off the trail.

That said, how much of this is real and how much is in his head? We know that the big situation has to be real thanks to how the film starts which is why the film should never start in the future but for the rest you have to decide just how paranoid he is. Jack has every reason to have cracked down after all since his life is extra stressful. Still, in any film like this the most important thing to do is not let yourself be gaslit. You have to believe in yourself no matter what.

As a main character, Jack is so wimpy that he loops all the way around to being likable. Everyone pushes him around and e really doesn’t have much of a spine for most of the film. So it’s easy to root for him as the underdog although I have to admit past a certain point I was rooting for Ned and then the final boss instead. To Jack’s credit, he does continue to improve over the course of the film. By the end he is actually really experienced and even manages to get some really good gadgets in. Some plot armor is ultimately still needed but he did show up when it counted.

The main heroine Nikki wasn’t particularly likable but in many ways that was the point. She didn’t feel very authentic and to a point you could say Jack lost sight of her and just wanted to win against Ned. Perhaps there was a time when she really liked him but that time just ended up passing. It would be very reasonable given how bad he looked for a good chunk of the movie.

Then we have Ned who is naturally a whole lot of fun. The guy is so smug and always messes with Jack. Yeah, even he has people that outrank him, but Ned isn’t going to just roll over. He’s got a whole lot of fight to him and that’s how you make it in the big leagues. Somehow he still feels in control even when being held at gunpoint. That’s when you know that the character has true aura.

The best character has to be the final boss though and I can’t really go into much detail on who he is. Lets just say that he is so intelligent that he can predict and see through a whole array of traps that nobody would reasonably have even set up. This guy is always 20 steps ahead and the final speech he gives was completely epic. I have rarely seen villains in a live action film have this much foresight. The whole scene was brilliant, it’s worth the price of admission alone. As good as the film as a whole was, the climax just makes it even better. Sure, the very ending is cheesy but the rest of the film was a lot of fun.

It would be hard for you to not enjoy this film because of how masterfully it was handled from start to finish. I think the only way you could set yourself up for disappointment would be if you go in expecting a super serious spy thriller. Although I would argue that the film makes its intentions known within the first few minutes so it would really be on you by that point. Don’t mistake the genre for the film not being serious about what it is doing though. The writing, characters, and script are all first rate. I really enjoyed the low key humor here and the pacing is also a lot of fun. This is also a great example of how to write a main character who is essentially a loser but still manages to be fun to watch. That’s something that can be difficult to do but this movie made it look easy.

Overall, This was a pretty fun film. The climax was legendary and it’s really a blast. I highly recommend checking this film out whenever you have a chance. I guarantee that you won’t be forgetting it anytime soon. I’d be up for more titles like this, the main James Bond titles wish they were half as good as this one. If you’re going to make a spy film with a little humor thrown in, this should absolutely be the blueprint. You just can’t beat this!

Overall 7/10

Collide Review

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It’s time for a thriller but this one definitely isn’t going to be the next Taken. It has quite a few issues with the biggest one being the characters involved. I did like one of the villains but the film doesn’t use him as much as you would want. There was potential all around here, but ultimately I can see why nobody really talks about this film. It’s the kind of movie that just comes and goes with no real impact.

The film starts off by introducing us to Casey who works for a drug dealer. He basically does whatever the boss says. The job is certainly not a savory one but it pays the bills. His life feels rather empty though and he desperately wants a girlfriend. So while slumming it at the nearby bar, he noticed the bartender named Juliette. She agrees to become his girlfriend real quick if he just promises to give up the life of crime. He agrees…and surprisingly gets out of the business without being shot or killed. That’s a first. Well, it’s all going good until Juliette starts acting a bit extra crazy one snowy night but it’s not the cold that gets her…but a rare condition she has which involves a lot of seizures. She will be dead in a matter of weeks unless a really expensive operation can be performed on her. So Casey decides to go back to his old boss for one last job.

Naturally this job will be the toughest one yet since his boss Geran has been feuding with his boss Hagen. So he wants them to rob Hagen but the guy has a whole criminal network at his disposal and is also a lot smarter than Geran. Casey also realizes that this is likely a setup and so he decides to hatch a plan of his own. You’ve got 3 really big players running around here and of course the leverage against Casey will be simple. Whoever can capture Juliette, will have captured Casey.

The story itself is fairly straight forward so then it becomes all about the execution. Unfortunately this is where the film starts to fall flat. First off the romance is definitely weak. I appreciate the film showing that a lot of time has passed after they got together for their bond to be strong but those time jumps should have been used at the start. Instead of Juliette being convinced to be his girlfriend after a matter of minutes, make that part take weeks. It’s a rather simple fix and just like that you would have a compelling romance.

The film also goes out of its way to make both of the characters not all that likable. They’re the type of characters who are always getting drunk, going to suspect parties, and just don’t really seem like two people you’d generally get along with. Yeah Casey went straight for a while but working for the mob the way that he did, he’s certainly been involved in a lot of suspect stuff. You can write a solid anti hero but there just isn’t any real depth to the guy at all.

His big plan also revolves around the villains being absolute rookies at their own business. To stop the truck, they have to get the best hitman in the business to get out of the safety of the vehicle where they can knock him out. No way that should have happened but then it also revolves around the camera guy deciding to take a nap and not look at the truck for a few minutes. So that’s not a good plan, it’s just absolute plot armor at its finest.

I won’t fault Casey too hard for letting Juliette get captured since realistically there wouldn’t be much he could do about that but he does get the blame for the rest of the plan. Meanwhile his boss Geran is a little too quirky. He’s hard of hearing and constantly drunk. He doesn’t always make a lot of sense and yet he wants to be equal partners with the biggest crime lord on the planet? Yeah, I can see why Hagen doesn’t take him seriously.

Hagen is really the standout character here. I like how he just talks smack to Geran right to the guy’s face. He is absolutely confident that victory is around the corner and never falters. Hagen has a bit of a weak ending but for the most part he is always a few steps ahead. The last scenes just make him look sloppy, although I’d argue everyone looks sloppy there. When you’re a big crime lord, you’re probably not going to be going to a small diner without many escape routes unless you’ve either completely bought out the police or have a private army. It all just felt a little forced but I did enjoy the banter.

The best thing I can say about the film is that Hagen is so interesting that all of his scenes absolutely jump up a level. I love when a villain is really smug like this and he definitely made sure that the rest of the characters knew just how powerful he was. Now this does result in quite a bit of plot armor on his end too, but that’s just how these things go.

For example, at one point Casey runs into a small convenience shop and the villains chase him inside. The two owners both have guns and one of them is a really good shot. Despite this, they allow the villains to raise up their guns and fire. It’s probably the dumbest moment in the film. When an armed fighter runs into your shop, you need to fire quickly instead of waiting until they take their gun out. Obviously, the villains won’t hesitate so your hesitation will equal death.

Overall, Collide has a lot of action but not a whole lot of spirit. It’s going through the motions and could have been a solid emotional film but Casey and Juliette just aren’t likable enough to be convincing. The film’s got that Hollywood style of romance where there isn’t a whole lot of build up or getting to know each other as we jump straight to fanservice and action. It comes across as superficial and a single villain isn’t enough to hold this film up. You can do a lot better when it comes to action thrillers so I would say to skip this one.

Overall 4/10

Alligator II: The Mutation Review

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It’s time to see just how powerful an alligator can be! The first film was pretty terrible but maybe this one would be an improvement? I do think it was the better film although I ultimately still can’t say that it was a good one. The main problem is of course that with an evil alligator on the loose, you know that some animal violence will be soon to follow. The movie actually keeps itself a bit more tame than I would usually expect in this genre though so I will give it some credit here. Not a ton of credit mind you….but some.

The movie starts with two fishermen underestimating the terrors of the night as they are murdered by a giant alligator. This area has been heckled by the wealthy businessman named Vincent for a long while as he is trying to buy out all of the land and so they figure he had something to do with it. In a sense they’re right, but it’s not like they can prove it. So David decides to look into this as he’s used to doing things against the book as a cop. Unfortunately it’ll be difficult since Vincent has bought out the mayor and so now the cops are forced to be rather hands off. Vincent’s certainly not going to be of any help so David has to work with the rookie cop Rich in order to stop this threat. Meanwhile Vincent hires some pros of his own to do the job in the sneak. Which group will destroy the alligator first?

I guess corruption and evil millionaires are par for the course when it comes to these evil animal films. Vincent definitely carries himself well though. I appreciate all of the threats and he really did have the mayor cornered throughout the movie. Near the end he even managed to get him alone to finish the job. Vincent’s one of those villains who never let his guard down and by the end of the film it took quite a lot of people to defeat him. Most impressive I gotta say.

The mayor looked rather terrible throughout though. As soon as you let people blackmail you the way that he did, there is no way out. They’re just going to keep on doing it, over and over again until you are completely out of the running. I sort of expected that the mayor would do something but no, he just ended up staying scared all the way through to the end. His daughter Sherri had a lot more backbone as she was trying to fight against the injustice.

On the heroes side, we had the rookie cop, Rich. That guy wasn’t very good though. Letting himself get drunk is a terrible idea since a cop always needs to be ready. He also misses his shots when it counts so he’s not really the guy I would want to watch my back. He’s not a terrible character or anything but he is unreliable and that’s a really important factor in a mission like this.

David does well as the main cop. This is clearly not his first rodeo and he handles himself like an absolute professional. It’s what you would expect from the main character. He’s more concerned with justice than following the rules and that’s why he gets the job done. He has the respect of the people within the neighborhood for this same reason. The rest of the characters are definitely not able to catch him. Now the film does make it a point to show that he does take this a bit far to the point of obsession where he won’t be home much and that makes things tough on his wife and kid. He can probably find a better middle ground but at least he is getting results.

His wife also does well here as her scientist specialty helps her figure out different things like a possible weakness for the big alligator. It’s always nice to see both members of the main couple contributing like this. We also got some help from one of the local gator experts. He actually puts up a fight and lasts for a little while which is nice since initially his group was not looking very impressive at all. For a while there I was starting to think that they were all frauds.

The movie can’t avoid the animal violence in the end though as we do inevitably have to see the alligator get taken down. Additionally, it’s a shame for the gator since he doesn’t actually get a ton of screentime. Half the time when he’s eating people you aren’t really seeing him but at least his presence is felt throughout the movie. You may have been expecting a huge cliffhanger for this film like the first but surprisingly that’s not really the case.

The film also has a difficult time trying to make you buy into the main romance that is set up between the rookie and the mayor’s daughter here. I mean, finding the guy locked in the bathroom is not a great first impression and I would argue things only look worse for him from there. The main couple is already married which makes that romance a lot easier.

In the end I feel like the human plot was a lot more engaging than the animal stuff. I could have had fun with the whole thing being about Vincent trying to take over the neighborhood and shooting anyone in his way. He was clearly good at this and had the political power to pull this off. I’ll take the conspiracy stuff any day as opposed to the evil animal plot where the animal is really minding his own business and doesn’t want to fight. You feel bad for the creature.

Overall, Alligator II isn’t a whole lot of fun. It’s a decent adventure and another short film so the pacing is fine but it’s not really doing anything different with the creature. The alligator crawls around and looks menacing but that’s about it for most of the animal scenes. You are rooting for him to take down all the pesky humans invading his turf and it’s not nearly as bloody as something like Piranha. Still, the alligator is going to get stabbed and then blown to bits and you don’t want to see that. I’d recommend skipping this one. If you have to watch an evil animal film then it beats a lot of the alternatives, but it still doesn’t quite step into the realm of being a good movie.

Overall 3/10

Piranha (1995) Review

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This review is of the TV-14 edited version of the film. All thoughts below should be addressed as such as a review of the unedited version would be more negative

It’s time for one of those films that feels like a waste of time. Why would you make a film that is essentially a 1-1 adaption of the original movie? If you’re going to do a remake of something, it should be with what you envision as improvements to the source material or perhaps just fixing a bunch of plot holes. When you just copy over most of the script and everything, it comes across as just plain lazy. Unfortunately it’s not like the original film was any good either.

The movie starts with two teenagers deciding to share some bad decisions as they jump into a body of water and get eaten by piranhas. This takes us over to Maggie who has been hired to find out what happened to them. This area is in the middle of nowhere so she asks for help from Paul, a guy who prefers to be apart from humanity and their crazy shenanigans. Well, that’s not in the cards now as the two of them discover a huge conspiracy involving government funding and powerful piranhas. Will they be able to stop these creatures?

Yeah if you saw the first film then you basically know how this one plays out. Mainly this one is just edgier the whole time but that’s about all it has to offer. The deaths all tend to be extremely violent and brutal. Additionally, the film has to resort to cheap fanservice on multiple occasions. It really has nothing to do with the story so this is just here because the writers are not confident in their own scripts to pull this off. Additionally, they don’t even bump off the creepy director as he somehow lives through the experience in one of the film’s few gag scenes. Bit of an odd choice.

Maggie is a decent main character. She may come off as a bit hostile to start the film but considering that there are potentially dead teenagers around, I get why she would not be in a particularly good mood here. She doesn’t do well in the opening action scene against Leticia but the same is true of Paul. That was actually a pretty decent fight as Leticia cleverly used the surroundings to her advantage and was easily dominating the 2 v 1. She just underestimated them in the end.

Leticia’s definitely not a great character though as she easily could have explained things instead of immediately entering a murderous rage. While her character arc is meant to end on a rather heroic note, it fell flat for me because it just didn’t make sense. Hopping into the water was a guaranteed death and they were better off trying to paddle a bit faster to the kid who was still on the surface. If anything they could have destroyed him accidentally by tipping it over.

Then we have Paul who is rather jaded and you could argue that the film proves him right here. He doesn’t care much for people and then he has to enter a world where there are giant cover ups and lots of corruption everywhere. It’s no wonder that he wanted to live on his own so he could at least try and avoid it. In the end, he did his best once it counted so he was fine as the reluctant hero type. Not a character that really stands out but he wasn’t bad.

Finally we have the main villain Randolph and I actually thought that they did a good job with him. This guy doesn’t play around and embodies being as evil as possible right from the jump. Not every character would be able to pull that off after all. Yeah he’s a bit cheesy and perhaps over the top but that’s the best way to handle these rich types of villains. If they played him too seriously then it probably wouldn’t have worked as well.

He’s the right blend of competent and sarcastic throughout the movie. The way he goes out is rather underwhelming though. Of course, the film could have 100 amazing villains but it wouldn’t save it when you consider all of the prior negatives as well as the fact that they squeezed in a dog for a particularly violent death. Yeah that scene meant that the film was absolutely going to be doomed. There is plenty of violence everywhere in the film as it is, why add the dog to the mix? It’s the kind of scene that feels like it’s just there for max shock value.

I can’t say that there are many positives to be had about the film at all. The main villain might be the biggest rain of sunshine here. Otherwise, I suppose the film isn’t terribly long so it doesn’t really drag on. The pacing is all right and I wouldn’t say that the writing is particularly awful. It just has to throw in way too many distractions and annoying moments at all times that continue to chip away at the movie from start to finish. Hopefully one day we will actually get a good Piranha movie but I have my doubts.

Overall, Piranha is still a terrible movie. I would highly advise you to stay away from this one. It’s just too mean spirited and nothing about it ends up being a satisfying watch. Instead the longer the film goes on, the more you will end up shaking your head this time. There aren’t very many evil animal films that I can even recommend because almost inevitably they end up faltering. They just don’t have a whole lot of potential right from the start because the evil animals will usually bring a whole lot of animal violence with them. Then you have to factor in that this is basically a slasher film and those never end up being very good anyway.

Overall 1/10

The Trail Beyond Review

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Time for another John Wayne adventure and this one gets intense when the lead has to fend off against armed adversaries. It’s another solid adventure with good pacing and a lot of fun to be had. It may not be the most memorable adventure but it was fun to see different backdrops like a train rather than the pure wild west all the time.

The film starts with Rod riding the train when he bumps into his old friend Wabi. Wabi isn’t the sharpest guy around and decides to play some high stakes gambling with a bunch of folks. Turns out that one of them was cheating and this quickly gets violent. A gunshot is fired and someone dies so now Wabi is on the run. He and Rod jump off the train to escape but by the time they change into Cowboy gear, they are already wanted for murder. They’re going to need to lie low but trouble has a knack of finding them. See they find a treasure map in an abandoned house where two men have been dead for generations. They take this to the nearby shop to be locked up but are seen and now the villains want it. Guess Rod might have to test out his gun skills.

Now there is some drama to be had here. There’s a girl who works at the shop named Felice and poor Wabi thinks that they are dating or at least are informally together. Unfortunately he forgot to tell her that and she immediately falls for Rod because of how manly he is. She is so infatuated that she even gets jealous when the villains hire a girl to work at the store undercover and Rod shows some interest. It feels a bit soon to get jealous since they barely know each other but hey that’s how it goes. The villains also got lucky there since their plan involved getting the girl hired and even for back then that seemed a bit easy.

Throughout the film, Wabi mainly just seems to be here to make Rod look even better. Wabi’s not as good of a fighter and it’s Rod who is doing all of the planning and thinking. Without him, Wabi would have been caught and taken don near the very beginning of the film. I also can’t feel too sympathetic to him, at least in the romantic department because it does feel like he was taking everything for granted. You do need to formally confess and get things started if you’re hoping for a relationship.

As for Rod, I appreciate that he was on business throughout the film. While Wabi worries about love, Rod is busy trying to make sure they can get to the treasure map and as a side bonus, get the cops off their trail. Yeah the opening scene becomes less important as the film goes on but the ending deals with it real quick. In a sense, you didn’t need the first scene since the treasure map plot is almost completely different but it did make for a fun opening action scene.

The soundtrack is still as iconic as ever. As soon as the music starts, you now exactly what kind of film you’re about to get. The writing and script are both solid as well so on technical elements it passes as always. The films are very consistent and you always know that you will be having a good time. I guess the most annoying character would be the deputy/ranger who was following the leads. Even after the villains kidnap him and it becomes contextually obvious what is going on, he still says that he will arrest the duo.

He basically threatens them not to untie him because he will attack them right away and Rod has to point out how dumb that would be. This guy just doesn’t have a clue and it’s what happens when you’re so focused on your orders that you forget common sense. I was definitely shaking my head at him the whole time. I know he eventually saw reason but it sure took him a while to get there and that made the villains look smarter in comparison.

Honestly the villains were pretty resourceful this time around. Hiring the girl to be at the job site, having a guy in a good position to watch if anyone puts good valuables into the safe, arresting the heroes, taking hostages, etc. They were really busy throughout the film and you could find them around every corner. The main villain himself is a bit interchangeable so he’s not particularly memorable, but he was effective. Sometimes these crooks put in so much effort you think they may as well have just worked a real job instead to save time and effort. It’s not like people are depositing treasure maps all the time so they could have been waiting years for a big score. I guess they’d just go back to robbing banks or something.

Overall, This was a pretty good film. I like to think that the title is referencing how the trains are past the usual trail and that’s their way of saying it. That said, if I was recommending this to folks, it probably wouldn’t be my highest John Wayne recommendation. I feel like he has still had a few other films that were better like with Singing Sam. This one doesn’t have a big memorable villain and we’ve seen better sidekicks before. Still, the film has quality writing and a good soundtrack so it still passes the bill where it counts.

Overall 7/10

Yu-Gi-Oh GX Tag Force Review

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Yugioh has always been a great franchise for games. That said, the World Championship series has always been a whole lot better than the Tag Force titles and I would say that this one is no exception. Tag Force spends a little to much time on developing bonds and such instead of just jumping into the duel. Around this time period we had World Championship 2006 which I still consider to be the absolute definitive Yugioh game. This one isn’t nearly as optimized but is still fun in the end.

The game is divided into 3 parts which you load up almost as separate games. The first part gives you around 100 days to become best friends with at least one of the characters. If you don’t pull that off, then you’ll keep repeating the final week until you do. Every movement into a new area causes one hour to go past and you can end a day by going to sleep. You become friends with a character by dueling, talking (Which is 50/50 odds on increasing your friendship), and giving them sandwiches. The sandwiches are the most important factor to speeding this up but if t’s a flavor that they don’t like, then it won’t help.

Along the way you will want to get into standard duels as well to level up your character and give yourself money to buy new cards. Your initial deck is very weak after all so you want to change it as soon as possible. Personally I would recommend figuring out who you want to partner with and then creating the same kind of deck. I ended up teaming with Jaden so I built an elemental heroes deck since otherwise he would just keep on eating my cards to summon his weaker ones.

As you would guess thnaks to the name, this is really focused on tag duels. As a resut I would say it makes for a rather tough game because there are so many times when your partner will mess up your strategy. The A.I. isn’t terrible or anything like that but it is very stubborn and will absolutely do whatever it wants to do, regardless of whether or not it helps you. Yeah, that’s the kind of duel partner you have to worry about here.

Part 2 is a lot quicker as the two of you have to win the oturnament together. The length will just depend on how often you win. The main thing to remember is to talk to both partners before you accept a challenge since one will offer more tokens than the other. Since you need 90 tokens, you want to always go for the higher number to make this as quick as possible. I recommend knocking out all the Slifers first, then the Ra Yellows, and the final cleanup can be with one or two named characters or some Obelisk ones.

Finally Part 3 is about beating the Shadow Riders but by now your deck should be about as good as it’s going to get so this may not take quite as long. Most of the enemies will be using some broken cards but not a ton of them. Just keep on fighting and eventually you’ll win. The final boss of the game has an ultra cheesy deck where he basically relies on preventing you from attacking at all. It’s important to hit him as hard as possible early on to beat him before he can set up his traps. I actually got a bit lucky on this one as he got an awful hand to start on our second attempt and then that was a wrap for him.

I suppose you know what you’re getting into with Tag Force but I would have liked more single duels. In the 5Ds game there was absolutely a heavier emphasis on that so it is definitely possible. I would also say the gameplay is a lot choppier here than it would be later on. The game constantly asks you or confirmations on card effects even when it’s not your turn and there’s nothing you can do about it. It makes the game a lot longer than it needs to be. The sequels clean this up but it’s a bit rough for this one.

The graphics are solid enough though. I definitely enjoyed seeing the little animations for when you would summon a particularly powerful creature. The levels are good as well and so I have no issues here. The soundtrack is okay but not one of the sharper ones. That’s another area where the series would end up improving in the future. It’s good enough I suppose, you’ll be so focused on the game that you probably won’t really notice the music too much.

The parts system is a bit clunky as well but hey there is a ton of content here and the day system becomes a non factor after the first part which I appreciate. I never tend to be a fan of that and so the sooner it was gone the better. There is a ton of replay value here and a lot of different card packs so you could have fun here for a while. The price can be kind of high for this one but ultimately it does a good job of living up to it.

Overall, Yugioh GX Tag Force is a pretty good game. It has been rendered obsolete by most of the newer installments both in quality of life and in cards but on its own the game is still solid. It’s the kind of Yugioh game that still did its best to make sure you could have plenty of duels, even if everything else was put on the backburner like the story mode. There are a lot of ways that this could be better but at the same time, Yugioh is always easy to enjoy in any format. I still need to get the final Tag Force titles although their prices can get a little crazy.

Overall 7/10

Bâan: The Boundary of Adulthood Review

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It’s time for a really quick anime special. It’s under 20 minutes so it’s even shorter than some anime episodes so that means the pacing has to be really fast here. It’s a good story and I can’t say that I have any complaints here. I do think the world building is sound enough to make this into a full fledged adventure some day though. That would be a lot of fun to see.

The story takes place in a time where humanity has finally found a way to establish a teleportation station from Earth to a fantasy world. People can travel from planet to planet with ease and even start new lives there. A fair girl named Rinrada decides to travel to Earth while the human Daichi decides to try his luck in the fantasy world. The grass may look greener on the other side to each character but is this actually a good idea or are they about to regret this right away? Technically they can always go back through the gate again if things don’t work out but both of them have too much pride for that.

As a small aside, they probably should have showed a long line by the portal or a bunch of people at the landing zone because I imagine this is a really popular tourist destination. It’s hard to imagine that this kind of tech would exist and almost nobody would use it. This is a small nitpick though, doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. Personally, I’d be having a ton of fun in the fantasy world. Earth is cool and all but yeah it doesn’t have cool dragons and stuff like that.

Since the film is short, a lot of the background information has to be inferred rather than outright stated and I appreciate that. This is sort of a back to basics in visual story telling as you will be able to piece everything together if you’re paying attention. Whether it is a phone being passed around, a photo in the background, a character’s voice, etc. It all ties in well and so you get a pretty solid plot twist midway through.

Rinrada has a really hard time getting a job in the human world and so you have to imagine that she wasn’t leveraging her magical abilities well. I tend to think it’s because for whatever reason they are frowned upon or even illegal in the real world but maybe she just took them for granted. Regardless, she keeps a positive attitude and does her best even when she wasn’t able to get an elite job. She has the right attitude to succeed in life. By the end of the film she also realizes that pride for its own sake isn’t a great thing and so she gets a solid ending.

As for Daichi, well I’d argue he was having fun for the entire movie. As soon as he got to the fantasy world he wasted no time in showing off his culinary genius and making friends. Even when he was on his own initially, the guy showed a lot of creativity in finding things to eat and just surviving off the land. You could tell that the fantasy world was a great fit for him over the ordinary mundane nature of the real world. He just didn’t need any of that. You get the feeling that he could have left for the fantasy world on better terms with his Mom over the phone but as part of his character development we can see how he really matured after going to the fantasy world.

The animation looks solid enough here. We even get a quick action scene in there. It’s clearly not a top rate production but the important thing is that it doesn’t look stiff. The song at the end of the special was also good. So the technical elements here are around average. Nothing noteworthy but nothing that would hold it back either which is the main victory. There aren’t a lot of characters here so you can really focus on the main two and what’s going on. If the special had to cram a lot of characters in then that would have been a lot tougher. Even if we had another 20 minutes or so to play with, I’d like to use that to see more of the day to day life of our main characters. The call center seems like it would be a fun area for comedic shenanigans and of course Daichi being in an isekai world has a ton of potential. Maybe you could even squeeze in a scene of him defeating some orcs or something.

Overall, this is a good movie. I don’t think it’ll end up being super memorable due to the length but it’s a good accomplishment to come out with an anime of any size. Maybe with an explosive climax or something but that’s definitely not what this title was going for. So props to the Youtuber for making his dreams a reality here. It’s something that will always be out there as a legacy of sorts. It’s also extremely easy for me to recommend this one as a result because it’s so short that it’s not like you’re putting a lot of time at stake to watch it. Even if it doesn’t end up being your cup of tea, it was less than 20 minutes of your life. It’s not like this is a really ambitious adventure with a ton of stuff happening, but it’s a calm slice of life that just works well.

Overall 7/10