Suggested by Sonic A Yeti is a powerful ice monster but that’s not going to be enough to stop Sabretooth. Sabretooth’s durability and speed mean that he will be able to just rush in and overwhelm the Yeti. Sabretooth can endure any counter blows long enough to secure the win, that’s why it’s hard to beat someone who is super powerful and has regenerative abilities. The Yeti never stood a chance here. Sabretooth wins.
Suggested by Sonic Nick Fury recently became the Watcher of sorts and may have cosmic abilities but unfortunately for him we can’t really be sure of his abilities. For all we know he really can’t fight beyond his normal abilities. Baron Zemo would have the edge there with his sword skills. Fury would be on the back foot the entire time and ultimately their super soldier serums cancel out. Fury would just need some kind of boost to win this. Baron Zemo (12th) wins.
Suggested by Sonic Spoutman is not one of the more powerful Megaman characters. The guy is always nervous and crying which is not a great combination of traits for a battle. Squid has decent super strength and some projectiles. While the ink may not be a good fit against Spoutman’s water blasts, I do think that he is fast enough to claim victory here. Spoutman will have a hard time landing any attacks here and will ultimately be defeated. Squid wins.
Suggested by Sonic A Zombie may be hard to destroy but the same can be said of Hidan. Hidan has his scythe at the ready as well and a single blow would take the Zombie down for the count. Zombies just aren’t very durable even if they are good at clinging to their undead life. Hidan is also a lot faster and more powerful than the Zombie so that would really put an end to things here. Hidan wins.
Ad Astra is a fairly low key space adventure. You’re not going to have a lot of explosions or anything like that but you do get to see space which is always fun. I do think the movie would have benefit a lot from some actual aliens and explosions though. Maybe have the humans turn into space apes or something. Still, it’s a fun film and it should keep your interest the whole time.
The movie starts by introducing us to Roy. He is one of the top astronauts and one thing that really makes him stand out is how he has no real emotions. Rather, he is so good at suppressing them that this comes naturally to him. He is the son of the legendary Clifford, an astronaut who was doing great work on the Lima Project but unfortunately died in space. The Lima Project was all about finding any aliens in space. Well, the government lets Roy know that Clifford may actually be alive. Unfortunately, it appears that as a byproduct of the Lima Project, mysterious power surges are rocketing across the cosmos and causing all kinds of dangers. Roy was almost destroyed by one of them. The government needs Roy to make contact with Clifford so they can ask him what’s wrong and fix this. Is that really all they plan to do though?
As always in these films, you have to take what the government tells you with a grain of salt. If they say they just want to talk…you have to assume there’s more to that than meets the eye. Of course with Roy not showing his emotions much, he’s not really going to talk about any of this. It’s not until we’re deep into the film that he gets to show off his emotions more like when the government tries to take him off the case. Roy’s a very capable soldier and proves his worth in several fights like when bandits nearly end his mission from the start.
Roy also seems to dislike the fact that space has become a really big retail mall. When you go onto the Moon the first thing you see are a bunch of food stores and things for sale. He mentions that his father wouldn’t have enjoyed this either. It’s clear that everything has been turned into a place for shopping and Roy figures humans will continue to wreck every planet they come to. It’s a jaded opinion but one that’s probably correct at this point. So yeah I liked Roy as a main character. He had to make a lot of tough choices but I would say he always made the right ones. He didn’t back down and aimed to complete his mission from start to finish.
He’s a good contrast to some of the other characters who are doing the whole “Just following orders” routine. Some of them really don’t think for themselves and just obey all commands even if they don’t make sense. There are 3 agents in particular who look really bad here as they are ready to instantly try and murder Roy. Fortunately for the lead he ended up being more powerful than they were and stopped them. It was a needless loss of life though and only serves to weaken their chances at completing the mission.
As for Roy’s father Clifford, he gets a decent sized role by the end. We get a few plot twists on the Lima Project and the extent to which he wants to complete it. Needless to say, this mission is really Clifford’s life. Now he hasn’t done a great job with some parts of it though like putting the whole universe at risk. Clearly there are some bugs with the project that need to be resolved. He’s not really addressing the issues though and by the end you could say he feels like a total villain. Same with the government here but at least their overall objective will protect everyone. Clifford seems willing to sacrifice the known for the unknown which isn’t good. Even if he were to find his objective, there would be nobody left to celebrate this.
The writing here is solid. The film can move a little slowly at times and it’s certainly not meant to be a thriller but you will be engaged. In some ways it feels like a very old school sci-fi adventure where it isn’t relying on action or explosions to get by. It’s just telling a story about space. Of course I’ll always take a more action packed adventure but when executed well this can certainly work and Ad Astra will end up being a good example of that. The dialogue is good throughout and most importantly, you won’t be bored. Even while plot developments are slowly tossed over to you, the characters are able to hold the scenes up well. At worst the emotional scenes just won’t land so much but they’re typically quick and then you get back to the adventure.
Due to the nature of the film there isn’t a whole lot to discuss though. The story is very straight forward with Roy needing to find the source of these power surges and stop it, even if it’s Clifford at the helm. Most of the film is about the journey there and realizing that space has quickly become the new Earth. If anything it’s probably even more lawless judging by how easily the pirates were able to show up and cause trouble. I wonder where the pirates live though, it must not have been easy to create another base on the Moon. Perhaps it started as a revolt and they overtook one of the sites. Either way you’d expect the government would be able to take them out then. The film’s not about that but I would have been interested to learn more about that.
Overall, Ad Astra is a solid Sci-Fi film. It’s not a game changer or anything like that but it’s just an all around quality movie. I could recommend it to anyone who likes Sci-Fi since it’s so accessible. One of the benefits of not being super deep or having a lot of foreign concepts is you could even watch this as your first sci-fi film and immediately understand everything. It’s basic and not in a bad way. I’d be up for a sequel that goes more all in on the action but they’ve shown that they could do a low key movie once so I’m sure they could do it again.
Overall 7/10
At long last it’s time to play the next big Crash game. It keeps the monster hacking from the last title but changes the mechanics of how it works a bit. The gameplay is solid but the game is held back by some questionable design choices like the fact that you can’t actually fast travel between lands. So effectively you have a giant hub world but have to actually walk back and forth between each level. I’m still wondering why they would do that but we’ll go into it in a moment. For now I’ll just say this is certainly the weakest Crash game but still a decent game overall.
The game starts with Cortex coming up with his latest scheme to take over the world. He has these VR goggles that will put you into an environment that is so realistic and top tier that you can’t help but get sucked in. Even Crash’s best friend Crunch and his sister Coco were not able to resist. Crash and Aku must now try to stop Cortex before it’s too late but what can these two do without some kind of backup? It’ll be tough but either way they will aim to give this their very best shot. After all if they can’t win…who can!?
So the gameplay is your average 3D Crash style for the platforming elements. You can run, jump, spin, and even dig in this game. You have to typically get to the end of a level or beat up enemies to proceed. There are quite a few sections for combat here but the battles are never too hard. It’s the kind of game where if you die, you appear close to where you died, so you never have to backtrack a whole lot. I definitely enjoyed that at least. Nothing’s worse than having to redo a large section. For the monster jacking, you can store up to 2 monsters at a time and switch through them at will. The downside to having two monsters is that you can’t play as Crash which makes some of the platforming impossible. So typically you will want to stick to one monster which is the perfect setup. Particularly if you pick the Hedgehog as one of them since he’s so fast.
When you’re going through all of the back tracking, it’s very helpful to have someone like this at the ready. When you defeat an enemy you are given the option to take control of it or keep on going. Don’t worry about not taking the right one, any area that needs a specific ability will warp an enemy to you in those instances. So it’s a fun enough gimmick although it feels like we’ve gone far away from the original Crash structure. It’s fun getting to fire off energy blasts and slow down time so the monster abilities are always fun. The slowing down time aspect is quite powerful so they make sure you don’t get to control those monsters until the end of the game.
So lets talk about the backtracking since this mechanic did not work. Basically the island is so huge that it connects to around 6 areas. I want to say in real time if you had to travel the whole island it would probably take you around an hour or so. Fortunately you never have to do that in one time but say you beat the desert world, you’ll be told to go back home. From there you have to head to the school then home, then back to the desert, etc. Most games would have a teleporter or something which would be incredibly useful here. Unfortunately this was not included for a gag. At the very end of the game one of the villains mocks Crash for running around the whole game and quickly whips up some teleporters.
Yes, you gain the ability to fast travel to any point at the final level in the game. By this point it’s so late that it doesn’t actually help out a lot. I suppose if there are some good post game content to play through then it would be nice but this should have been around for the base game. Trust me when I say this would have been incredibly useful to have had a lot sooner. It’s just tedious to run back and forth as well as being very time consuming. You’ll spend more time running around than actually playing the game which is really an issue here. The decision just doesn’t make sense to me.
There’s also a level up system built into the game which doesn’t seem to have much of a point. You get a little stronger and unlock new moves but I never noticed the difference and it takes a while to get level ups. So by the time you are stronger you’ll have beaten the game. I forget at what level I completed Crash but I think it was around 5-7. The game is easy enough where it won’t make a difference and so the whole mechanic may as well not even be here. As they say, if a mechanic doesn’t actually affect anything then you may as well have not had it in the first place.
Well, the graphics are good. During gameplay it all looks solid at least. The levels are colorful and everything is on point. My only issue is with the cutscenes that are going for a more experimental look this time around. Sometimes the cutscenes look like drawings where everything is as low budget as possible. Others use designs like something out of Jacob Two Two. The designs are always changing from cutscene to cutscene, Crash even looks like a Super Saiyan warrior at one point. Now that was definitely something that was a different experience. I’m not really into the experimental techniques myself so personally I think the best thing to do would have been to go with more traditional artwork. It would have just looked better.
At least you can say it does match the crazy plot though. The whole game is rather bonkers with how everyone falls for these goggles. A lot of the dialogue is so self aware it almost threatens to break the 4th wall. The characters aren’t very smart here and even the villains get humiliated by Cortex. The evil mask is certainly on the backfoot here. The scene where he is literally being milked by a machine while Cortex gloats and laughs is rather intense for the guy’s fans. Cortex is really the only villain who keeps his hype here. Perhaps this will even solidify him as the ultimate Crash villain for most. At this point, none of the others seem like they can keep up with him.
Overall, Mind over Mutants is a step down from the other Crash games but I would still call it a good game. Beyond the lack of fast travel, the rest of the gameplay is good and that’s the important thing. The soundtrack may not be too memorable but it works well enough. While the graphics aren’t very good, the story still has a good amount of funny moments and a lot happening at all times. I may not like Crash as a main character but Cortex has enough good lines for the both of them. If you need to complete your Crash experience then this is a good entry to check out. Otherwise you’re not really missing a whole lot though.
Overall 6/10
Stats time!
Game Complete 24%
The Shop Around the Corner is a pretty fun title for a movie. It does give you a classic rom-com feeling although you could also see this working for a horror title. It’s a fun little story although it is one of those times where the romance seems is hard to buy into because of how mean the main heroine is though. If she’s this mean to just anyone…well the main guy better watch out.
The film starts off by introducing us to Alfred who is the best salesman in the store. This store sells just about everything from music boxes to suitcases. Alfred has been exchanging letters with a lady and is starting to get serious about her but they are anonymous pen pals so they don’t even know what each other looks like. In comes the main heroine Klara who really wants a job. She and Alfred do not get along right from the start but she ends up getting the job. Fast forward many months and things have not improved between them. Each of them are getting ready to meet their pen pal but Alfred is distracted by the fact that the boss: Hugo has been turning on him as of late. Is Alfred’s job security in trouble?
Alfred seems like a nice guy right from the start. While the 6 month feud between him and Klara is mainly off screen, it seems like she’s always the one who starts it. A lot of her remarks towards him seemed rather uncalled for the whole time. She insults his intelligence, his character, and is always just taking any shot she can get. Even when he is being nice or at least trying to be, she just tears him down more and more. So it was hard to find her likable throughout the movie. Klara is someone who is only nice to some people and that’s not a good thing. When you’re conditionally nice, that just means you’re probably someone to be avoided.
As for Alfred, well he is a good main character. He’s put up with a whole lot on the job but kept on going. He’s the most dependable employee in the whole place. Alfred also does really enjoy the letters he gets and responding to them. In a way his life was going perfectly well until Klara stops by and the boss starts acting rather aggressively towards him. Alfred’s life is thrown upside down but at no point does he take it out on any of the other characters. He just does his best to stay professional and really does all the right things. By the end you’ll certainly be rooting for him.
I did not like the boss Hugo. So, Hugo finds out that someone is having an affair with his wife and so he jumps to conclusions on who it is before waiting for his private investigator to let him know who it was. Not like the PI was a lot of help though as the guy just narrowed the options down to an employee which was most likely anyway. Hugo goes in hard on burning the bridge with Alfred. Alfred’s a nice guy and still stays courteous but I don’t think many would overlook how Hugo treated them.
Pirovitch is Alfred’s best friend and he’s a loyal sidekick to have at the ready. Whenever Alfred needed help with anything, Pirovitch would help out. The guy also took things in stride and had a very laidback approach to everything. Whatever you needed to be done, Pirovitch would do it. Then you have Vadas, one of the more dicey characters. He is quick to agree with the boss on anything to curry favor. He’s not trustworthy or honest in the slightest as he can only think about moving up. There’s always someone like that and so you need to keep on high alert around him.
Finally you have Pepi and this guy was really entertaining. Pepi started out as an errand boy and gradually moves up the chain. The voice he uses for the phone calls is great as he trolls Hugo’s wife and he also really knows how to command the troops once he moves up. Pepi has a lot of confidence in himself and this really ends up paying off for him. I like his confidence and his will to win. Through rain or sun, you could always count on Pepi to get the job done. You can also tell that he is going to be a very strict boss. There’s no doubt about that.
The writing is solid here with a lot of good banter between the characters. You’re always glad when Alfred defends himself so that it isn’t just a one way smackdown as Klara destroys him. Fortunately Alfred rarely takes the comments to heart and just lets them bounce away. I’m rarely surprised to see good writing in these old films because if anything I’ve come to expect it. This one doesn’t disappoint in that area and the whole film flies by pretty fast. Really the only weakness as I’ve mentioned is the romance which doesn’t really work.
The concept itself is sound. The idea of two characters liking each other as pen pals but not liking each other in the real world is a fun dynamic. It’s almost like a Clark Kent and Lois angle where she likes Superman but in most continuities doesn’t like Clark like that and will even insult him at times. I think the problem here is that they just made Klara too extreme. To balance this out, they should have also had Alfred taking more shots. Maybe tone down the actual shots so it’s more like fun colleague banter as opposed to extreme dislike. that’s really the only aspect where touching it up a bit would have been really good.
Overall, it’s not enough to really hurt the movie or anything like that though. Either way I had a good time with this one. When you have good writing and a very strong main character, you’re likely going to succeed either way. I like the story’s premise and the execution was on point. The movie never drags on at any point and the side characters are also very memorable. I wouldn’t have minded Pepi getting to appear more but ultimately he served his role well. It’s a very charismatic store and you can see why they have so many sales each year with such a talented team. I’ll even give Hugo some credit there since he tries to lure in customers as well. His main issue is that he’s already too well known so his tricks don’t seem to work very often at this point.
Overall 7/10
Right from the title of the film I had a bad feeling about this one. The tricky thing about having an animal be the focus of anything is that it increases the risk of some animal violence being around. Let me tell you, that definitely gets awful risky and this film was not able to avoid the issue. As a result I would definitely say it’s a bad film that you should avoid. Most of the characters are rather mean spirited and the tough road that the dog had to travel was simply too challenging.
The movie starts with Wildfire explaining his life. He lives in the Bowery, a tough part of town. He owns the back alleys at least and chases out dogs who try to eat there. It’s just tough keeping up this lifestyle though and there are certainly no frills or benefits here. His life’s goal is to find and destroy his father for leaving his mother when she was still pregnant. Unfortunately for him, Wildfire’s mother will never even talk about the guy. One day his mother disappears so Wildfire is forced to start his journey early. He will end up being involved in dog fights and fashion shows, but will he ever get closer to finding his father? Will he even be able to locate him since he doesn’t really know what the guy looks like? The only thing he does know is the father’s title: Champion Regent Royal. That will have to be enough.
As soon as I mentioned dog fighting I’m sure your eyebrows twitched for a second there. Well, rightfully so as this is the weakest part of the film. So Wildfire figures that his father may have been a fighter based on the title so he doesn’t mind being in the circuit. In fact, he enters into the store to make sure that happens. Unfortunately it’s not a very pleasant sport and we see him get bruised up after each fight. Even when he wins you can’t feel good because you know that means that he beat up another dog. Eventually he is defeated and barely escapes with his life but the whole thing is definitely on the violent side.
Of course the injuries are just makeup and such but it looks quite realistic. This is the kind of film where you’d rather they just made them robotic dogs or something like that so you wouldn’t really worry about the injuries. His owner Patch is also an abusive guy. Both to humans and animals so you don’t like the idea of Wildfire working for him. All of Patch’s scenes are just hard to watch and his toxic romance really didn’t need to be on the screen for any period of time. The sooner that guy was gone the better.
The movie was really going for some rather serious themes here but it didn’t need them. This could have been a nice little Air Bud kind of story and that would have been really good. Of course with Wildfire wanting to take down his father from the start, it’s safe to say that this was never really in the cards. One way or another this was going to be a rather serious film with lots of danger around every corner.
Things start to get a little brighter for Wildfire when he meets a nice old man named Jeremiah. The guy works for the rich Wyndham who enters professional dog shows. The guy doesn’t see any potential in Wildfire but his daughter Dorothy disagrees and bargains that if Wildfire can win a show then Wyndham can’t throw both him and Jeremiah out. Wyndham agrees to the terms and Wildfire finally gets to see the glimmer of what it’s like to live the life of royalty. Certainly it’s far different from how it was in the Bowery.
You never have to wonder about what Wildfire is thinking of something either since the guy is constantly talking. It’s all as thought bubbles I should say but he never quiets down. Wildfire is always thinking about something and has a lot to say. There is pretty much never a moment’s silence in the film. The dialogue is okay though so that’s not too bad. Wildfire’s not a bad lead either. I wouldn’t call him super interesting or anything like that but he gets the job done as the lead.
As for the human characters, well Patch is obviously no good. Aside from him you have Jeremiah who is nice enough. He’s probably the first person who has Wildfire’s back which is important. He’s also loyal enough where he was willing to lose his job to stay with the dog. That’s definitely how a good character would act. Wyndham isn’t nearly as reasonable at first, particularly as he is the one firing Jeremiah. The guy slowly starts to come around but it was an extremely rocky start. To so easily get rid of someone that has faithfully worked for you for so many years? I can’t say I liked Wyndham after that because it was just far too drastic.
Dorothy was nice enough. She doesn’t have a huge role but is the one who preps Wildfire for the matches. Without her he definitely wouldn’t have stood much of a chance so she deserves a lot of credit there. If the whole film had been about the talent shows this would have been a winner. The second half of the film is more like what you would expect in a light hearted adventure. There is a moment of danger when Patch kidnaps Wildfire. I would have certainly cut that out since we didn’t need to bring this awful character back. It was nice to see him get punched out though as opposed to Wyndham falling for the usual blackmail scheme. Instead he just took the guy down a few pegs and showed that he could fight. Now that was a really solid moment.
Overall, It’s a Dog’s Life just really suffers from not being a very fun movie. When bad things are happening to Wildfire, there’s just no way to enjoy the scenes. You can’t enjoy any of the scenes with Patch in it either aside from him getting beaten up so that adds up to a considerable part of the movie. As a dog, Wildfire’s dialogue isn’t quite up to par with the classic writing of this era either. Mix all that together and this is a film you’ll really want to skip. There aren’t any big hooks to draw you into the story and there are much better dog films out there. Since this one loses as its main sub genre, that means it was doomed from the jump.
Overall 3/10
Suggested by iKnowledge Mileena is likely a more talented close quarters fighter than Asuna due to having more more experience on the battlefield. Even the 3 years in Aincrad wouldn’t put Asuna over that. That said, Asuna has more abilities than Mileena and her sword skills are far from normal. She should be able to quickly overpower Mileena in battle due to the big gap in their respective strength levels. Additionally, Asuna has greater speed and would be able to slice Mileena before the fighter could get her guard up. Repeat that for a few hits and it’s all over. Asuna wins.
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