City Hunter Review

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It’s time for a fairly wacky comedy film. This one definitely does not hold back in terms of how out there it gets. That said, the humor doesn’t really land very well most of the time. There are some good moments but on the whole the film ends up dragging itself out and whenever you think a hype scene is about to occur, your hopes get obliterated right away. This is basically what happens if you make a film with someone like James Bond as the main character…

The movie starts off with City Hunter’s partner getting extremely sloppy as he is gunned down by a group of villains. He quickly tells the hunter not to get together with his sister and City Hunter vows to live up to those words. He’s busy flirting with every girl in town anyway but his days of slacking off have come to an end as he is hired for an important job. He must locate a girl named Kyoko who is with the wrong crowd and her father wants her back. The City Hunter vows to complete the mission for all of the wrong reasons and after fumbling the operation, follows her onto a fancy cruise. What he doesn’t realize is that the boat is swarming with so many terrorists who can fight in hand to hand combat far better than he can. Is it all over for him?

So here’s the deal, I’m all for some good slapstick and I don’t even mind a main character who is completely unable to fight. Someone who is out of his depths the whole time can be a lot of fun with some sarcastic humor. The important point is that he has to be likable and unfortunately….that’s where he falters big time. This guy is just too much of a flirt who prioritizes that over the mission. I won’t say he’s as bad as James Bond but any scene with this guy is extremely annoying.

The film certainly does a good job of incorporating a lot of harem type antics into the movie to make this as authentic as possible but it comes at the expense of the movie being any good. City Hunter should have leaned more into his goofy nature and how he couldn’t find the police office let alone any crooks, but instead it focuses on what a perv the guy is. You’re rooting for the villains to take him out most of the time.

Also most of the film’s humor basically revolves around this which gets old fast and doesn’t come across as clever. There’s quite a lot of fanservice here which bogs down the movie. It’s not quite Charlie’s Angels territory which still takes the dubious crown in that department but it’s fairly unrelenting here. Even when viewing the film under the parody lens, you’re not really going to be sticking with this one for very long.

Kaori isn’t really a great heroine either. She is always jealous of the other girls that City Hunter is with and so she pouts a lot but a better heroine would have really been beating him up all the time. She imagines doing so, but actually tackling him more would have been better. I want to see some confidence and charisma. Instead she goes as far as to pretend to ally herself with the villains at times to get a reaction out of the guy…although it never works anyway. Why would she even want to be with someone who is clearly not going to be loyal in the slightest? City Hunter would drop her in an instant as soon as another girl talks to him.

Now they probably could have let up a little with how many times Kaori gets knocked to the ground though. It just gets sad after a while when you see how often she is the film’s punching bag. Kiyoko gets into a fair deal of trouble as well but unlike Kaori, Kiyoko was basically seeking this out the whole time. I don’t think Kiyoko played this very smart at all from the start but intelligence isn’t the strong suit of just about any character here.

Okay lets talk about some positives. For what it’s worth, there are a few good fight scenes once in a while. There’s a solid fight in the theater where City Hunter mainly gets dominated but eventually churns out a win. It’s still part comedy of course but it works well enough. The best fight is against the main villain’s bouncer though. Both characters move so fast that they keep on missing each other. See, this is actually a pretty good gag that is parodying how good of a fighter they both are. They’re so good that they both actually end up looking weak. Now that’s clever. There are a few other good jokes in there as well.

The effects are so bad that they go all the way around into actually being funny as well. This may not be intentional but I wouldn’t even be surprised if that’s what they were going for. This film is trying to be as silly as possible which is why it’s a shame that it’s not better. Usually I’d be a sucker for a film like this but it just didn’t have the right humor approach. Humor can be very difficult to land of course but at the same time it’s rare to mess up this badly. Seriously just make City Hunter less of a two dimensional character and you could be on to something! A film like this should never feel like its dragging and yet that happens at times. It’s a flurry of activity but sometimes it feels like nobody is going anywhere which doesn’t help matters.

Overall, City Hunter is a movie that just tries way too hard. It ends up being more cringeworthy than funny most of the time. Having a better main character would have helped a whole lot. Ultimately it’s probably for the best that most people don’t remember this one. Why would you adapt City Hunter instead of the original Gundam or even Astro Boy? Trust me when I say there were plenty of other manga titles you could have adapted before this one even entered the conversation. You may as well call this guy the City Hunter by the end of it with how much he’s getting wrecked the whole time.

Overall 4/10

Bomberman Max 2: Red Advance Review

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It’s time for another Bomberman adventure! This is one fighter that you can’t keep down. Well, it’s definitely a cool idea to have Max get his own sub series here. Bomberman gets a cameo at the beginning and he does help out in some puzzle levels but that’s really about it for him. This time it’s Max’s show as you go through the levels and try to defeat all of the enemy robots.

There isn’t much of a story here though. It starts out with the villain turning Bomberman and his friend Max into a mini size. It’s definitely put them in a very dangerous position but fortunately the villains run off rather than pressing the advantage which worked out for the heroes. There is surprisingly not an ending cutscene so it seems to get that you probably have to 100% the game or something like that. Each world does have a ton of levels and most of them aren’t actually required but it’s not like you’re skipping them. So let me explain the setup of how this works.

When you complete a level, 2-3 portals appear. Each one will take you to another level within the world but they don’t say which ones they are. So you will go from 1-1 to 1-4 for example. Then after that you go to 1-6 or 1-3. Some portals take you backwards while others take you forwards. As a result it’s pretty much luck based. The portals themselves don’t change but at least on the first playthrough you wouldn’t know which is which. When you complete a level, the portal taking you back to that stage turns red so at least you don’t run the risk of beating the same level twice by mistake. Now that would have been annoying.

The game actually remembers your progress so if you do have to go back to an old level, the portals are still there rather than having to clear the objective again. That’s definitely a good feature, it means that at least if I ever did go back to try and 100% clear it, it wouldn’t feel like an impossible challenge. Of course this is all me assuming that there is a bonus ending. For all I know it’s just an illustration or it unlocks the credits although I’d be willing to bet that it is a true cutscene.

The graphics here are pretty good. The character models are on point and the artstyle for the GBA was good. The soundtrack is also fairly good. I wouldn’t say it’s anything too noteworthy but at the same time it’s fast paced enough to work with all of the explosions. The game itself is fairly short at around 4 hours or so. I actually went ahead and beat it all in one shot, mainly because my game’s save feature was busted. So I’m actually a bit lucky that it wasn’t longer at 10 hours or something like that.

Naturally the game will usually have a working save file so I wouldn’t hold that against the title. Also I didn’t talk much about the gameplay yet. Like I said, it’s basically a puzzle title. Each level will give you an objective like find all of the food or destroy all of the spiders. Once you do that then the portals open up which will take you to the next level. You start out with all 3 of your stats at 0, speed, bomb range, and # of bombs that can be used at once. As you blow things up you get power ups to make your stats stronger to a max of 4 in each stat.

when you get a game over your stats go back to 1 in all categories on the retry. So while it’s great that you have unlimited continues on the same level, it does mean that it can be tough at first. One level had me stumped for a long while because it was super hard to win with 1 stats but eventually I pulled it off. For the most part the bosses are a lot easier than the levels because of how huge they are. It’s really easy to tag them with explosions but the final boss is an exception. He has so many different forms and power ups that it’s really hard to stay one step ahead of him. That one took me a few different attempts.

So in the end the gameplay was good but not quite enough to make up for the game basically skipping the story entirely. The way the stages have randomized objectives each time is interesting and I like the idea of level trees where you don’t know what you’re going but not if it means that you’ll miss out on an ending. There should at least be a basic cutscene after each world. Also the game feels unfinished in some ways. The main example I have is the monsters that you can summon.

They actually have levels and stats that increase as you pick up collectibles and defeat enemies but they don’t seem to matter in the actual gameplay. Each monster does have a special ability like letting you pick up extra bombs but the ability doesn’t change or improve as you level it up. So I couldn’t figure out what the level ups were doing. They seemed to be completely pointless which is odd. Maybe it’s for a different mode but in that case there’s not much reason to include that in the story. The Gamecube game had “Pokemon Battles” mixed in with the bomb puzzles so it made sense there but that doesn’t happen here. Guess it’s a bit of a mystery for now.

Overall, Bomberman Max 2 is a good game but one that could use some quality of life updates. I think you should get a proper ending when you beat the game even if you get a true ending of sorts for doing everything. Having unlimited continues is great but having to get the power ups again can be a little rough. Still, the puzzle gameplay is on point and the levels are designed well. You really get to make the most out of the bombs that you have and it always feels satisfying to complete the levels. It’s not an easy game by any means so you really have to work for it.

Overall 6/10

Rayman Legends Review

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Rayman is one of those titles where I’ve played quite a few of the games but I haven’t found it to be as memorable as most of the other big titles. Well, it’s fair to say that Legends is definitely a game changer for the series and it is by far the best installment. It handles the collectathon aspect of the title very well and makes more use of the platforming genre than almost any other title I’ve seen. Ultimately the gameplay is so strong that it does help to make up for the lack of a story here.

The game starts off with some evil magicians deciding to make a mess of things. They’re kidnapping people and so Rayman will have to free everyone and save the world. All in a days work for someone like this though. Rayman has dealt with his share of threats over the years after all. Unfortunately that’s pretty much it for the story. There’s not much of an ending and each world just has the same recycled cutscenes over and over. You don’t expect a whole lot more from a platformer and yet I do think they really could have done a better job here. At least give me new cutscenes for each world. The story is absolutely the weakest part of the game by far.

Fortunately we are here for the gameplay at the end of the day. The lack of a story would hurt its chances of my getting the game on opening day compared to other franchises but at least once I do get around to it, I’m always happy to see solid gameplay. At its core the gameplay is fairly simple, you run and jump your way past obstacles as you try to get to the goal. Occasionally there will be a boss battle for you to go up against.

Where the game shines is in taking this simple gameplay and making a lot of intricate levels out of it. In a way it reminds me of Mario Maker a bit. For example after every boss battle, each world ends with a music themed level where you have to run quickly and hit enemies at the right time to follow the beat. This is used in a subtle way to let you know when to make a move as well as making the level fun to listen to. Likewise in the normal levels there are always a lot of visual and audio cues to let you know when to make a move.

The game allows you to jump between worlds at will so because of that every level even has tutorials at the ready through on screen prompts which are nice. They aren’t intrusive but are a great idea particularly if you’re going back to play the game after putting it down for a long while. You won’t really need it while playing through the game but I can absolutely see it coming in handy a year from now.

The game has a ton of replay value through unlockable characters (Basically costumes though tbh since they play the same) and extra levels that you unlock by getting more of the blue orbs. The best part though is that you can still beat the game without getting them all. There are 700 in the game and you need around 300 to complete the story. That’s a good ratio if you ask me because you can have a good time enjoying the levels without being stressed about the missing collectibles. The level designs are really good so you will find a lot of them naturally but if you want all of them you will have to work for it.

A solid quality of life feature here is that you have unlimited lives and the checkpoints are very consistent. So even when you lose you don’t end up getting sent too far back. That’s perfect and I can’t stress enough just how important that is. These levels could very easily turn from awesome to annoying if you had to start from scratch every time. This way you can appreciate the difficulty and creativity without any annoyance setting in.

Make no mistake, the game can be rather difficult at times. I died quite a number of times but I was always ready to revive just as quickly. I ended up blasting through the game rather quickly as a result. It’s a bit on the short side to be honest but I can’t even remotely consider that as a negative because of how the game handles it. There are tons of levels but the game just doesn’t force you to play them all and I can respect that. Each level is also so unique and filled with fun features that I’ll take this over a ton of standard levels.

The game even has a gimmick with a little frog moving things around that somehow doesn’t get annoying. I was prepared for this to be super annoying but it’s actually a really fun mechanic. In terms of pure platforming I dare say the game even has more life than some Mario titles and that’s saying something. If we’re only looking at gameplay this is one of the best games to ever do it.

Meanwhile the graphics and soundtrack are definitely impressive. The soundtrack in particular is awesome with a ton of different songs everywhere and remixes of popular ones. Then the graphics have aged really well with a colorful style all the way through. The character designs are on point and the levels all stand out.

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised at just how good the game was. Of course I was expecting it to be pretty good but to be great on this level? That was a surprise. The story holds it back a little bit considering this game has some of the best platforming I’ve ever seen. Imagine pairing this with a big budget story? It could have really made history and so I do eagerly await seeing what the Rayman franchise does next. This will be a tough title to top but of course there’s always a chance. If you haven’t played this game yet then you should definitely fix that!

Overall 8/10