Gorilla Grodd vs Hinata

Posted on by
2




Suggested by iKnowledge Gorilla Grodd is a pretty powerful DC villain and certainly one of the most well known adversaries of the Flash. He has a strong intellect and some telepathic abilities, but those won’t be enough to stop Hinata. Hinata knows the Byakugan and also has great hand to hand skills to supplement this ability. Her speed is also great enough where she will be able to dodge Grodd’s more powerful attacks and counter with some moves of her own. No matter what Gorilla Grodd tries he just won’t be able to hit her and Hinata can disrupt her chakra to counter any possible telepathic attacks. Hinata wins.

Dragon Ball Z Collectible Card Game Review

Posted on by
Reply


It’s time to look at a DBZ game that I’ve had for a very long time. Part of why I kept it in the backlog is because the game just wasn’t very interesting. I would play it a bit from time to time but the controls were confusing and since there wasn’t even really a story I didn’t see the need to keep on playing. Well, I gave this one another whirl and the game is as confusing as ever. It’s hard to ever make any headway here.

The game is based on the actual card game. Unfortunately it is hard for that to translate well to video game format. Unlike Yugioh or Duel Masters this game feels very clunky with matches that go on forever. Literally almost all of my matched went to time, which is the full 7 turns that a duel can take. Matches should not be going to the equivalent of sudden death every round. That tells me that there is something at least a little weird with the game. Since I don’t get it then the A.I. should at least be able to beat me up pretty quick.

Here’s the gameplay in the simplest way I can describe it. When you start the game you draw 5 cards. If you go first then you get to play any non combat cards you have. After that you choose to attack or pass. If you pass then you discard all but one card and draw a fresh 5. Once the opponent has done so as well then they will attack and you will pick a card to defend with. You have to try and take down all of the Life cards that the opponent has and they will do the same to you. You can win in one of 3 different ways. You can take all of their life cards away which will be a complete victory. You can also win via technical win by exhausting the opponent of all cards or maybe you can even grab the Dragon Balls and win via super victory. A final way you can win is also by raising your power level and anger level to the max setting. If you do any of these things then you will have claimed victory.

The problem is that the opponent will never let you do this. They block all of your hits and always seem to have more cards than you do. They don’t run out despite playing so many and every time you raise your anger level they reset it back to 1 using a spell card. As a result you just can’t claim the advantage and the rounds take forever. I was somehow able to beat Krillin and the second guy, but Guldo is where I met my match. After dozens of fights I still couldn’t conquer him and that’s where my DBZ card adventures concluded. It was time to throw in the towel. After all the only way to improve your deck is to keep on re-fighting the first two opponents, but I was only able to beat them once after a ton of tries. Doing so again just to hopefully get a useful card to make a comeback feels like such a long shot that it is barely worth it.

Then you’ve also got the fact that the game has no real effort put into it. There is only one piece of music in the entire game which keeps on looping over and over for every action that you take. You can only hear the same song so many times before you just have to take a break for it. How is it possible that the game wasn’t able to get more than one tune? It’s just crazy to only have 1 in the entire soundtrack if you ask me. There’s not much to say about the graphics either since there barely are any. You’ve just got the one illustration for each character as the squares match up with each other over and over again. The cards don’t look all that flashy either.

This game feels like a total cash-in and that’s not too surprising considering how long the loading times are. Each match takes forever in part because you can’t go through the turns quickly enough. You can spam the A button to at least get rid of the drawing phase and it speeds up the attacks but it also skips card effects so then the catch is that you’ll lose further track of what’s going on. It’s a pretty unfortunate situation all around. The length of the game is quite long as a result although it feels artificial. In theory you can probably get a good 20 hours out of this one and maybe more depending on how often you lose. There won’t be any real replay value, but at this point you wouldn’t need any since the campaign is so long.

Overall, Dragon Ball Z Collectible Card Game is the weakest of the DBZ games. It’s hard to picture any game losing to this one although since the DS also had a title based on the Card Game it is possible. What the title really needs is a better explanation of the rules and to speed up the gameplay a bit. I know the computer was able to use his avatar card at some points when the tutorial never even referenced how to do so. I tried using mine a bunch but every time I tried the game said that it wasn’t the right situation to do so. That’s not entirely helpful to be honest but it may not have mattered much. My deck simply wasn’t strong enough to beat my opponent’s so no matter how many times I would draw some cards it just wasn’t going to make up the difference. The only way you should get this game is if you are a really big fan of the official card game.

Overall 3/10

Beyblade Evolution Review

Posted on by
Reply


This may possibly be the weakest Beyblade title and the series hasn’t exactly been firing on all cylinders before. I thought that the series was on an upwards trend after playing the last game, but this one brings the series down once more. It takes away all of the strengths of Metal Masters and goes back into a control scheme that is even more obnoxious than blowing into the DS like the first title. Sorry guys but this is one game that you should stay far, far away from.

Beyblade Evolution doesn’t really have a story which doesn’t help matters. Effectively you are playing as a new kid who doesn’t know the first thing about the game, but wants to compete in the World Championship. He’s clearly not a main character who thinks things through all that well, but I suppose you have to admire his enthusiasm at the very least. You go around fighting people and playing minigames until the tournament starts. Win or lose you are sent back to level 1 to replay the entire game again…….

The game uses a day system which is one of my least favorite gameplay styles. Several games I’ve played have used this including Armored Core, Megaman Zero, Pikmin, and Yugioh GX Duel Academy. It’s never once worked out as a positive. I get that it is a bit more realistic this way, but it forces you to hurry through the game and you can’t enjoy it as much. While I’m not the biggest fan of Majora’s Mask, at least it doesn’t trap you in the days the way that the others do. Beyblade Evolution has 50 days. Each action you take aside from accessing the main menu counts as a day. You want to go to the shop to buy some parts? That’ll take up a whole day. Wanna play a minigame to earn money? Another day gone. There are only 50 days in the game so you’ll very quickly find yourself at the very end.

This title seems to be built on the assumption that you’ll want to play through the game multiple times because there isn’t enough time to do everything otherwise. There is little reward for beating opponents either since you don’t get any money or parts. It’ll help you unlock more people to fight, but why would you want to do that? The most efficient way to play through the game seems to be doing the minigames. Some of them are quite easy so you can S rank them on hard and get about 3800 points. With these points you can buy superior parts and build yourself a pretty great Beyblade. Keep on doing this until day 47. Use the next two days to clean out both shops. (Why are there 2 shops? To make sure you waste 2 days buying parts instead of one.) You’ll have to hope that RNG is on your side though as the shops cycle through inventory quite frequently so if you pick the wrong day to go in they will only have weak points and you’ll have to waste another day to go in and get what you want.

There isn’t an easy way to see what parts you do have though. Your best bet is to go into the sell window and look at your parts that way which is a lot of extra clicks. There isn’t even an inventory option to see how many total parts you have out of the full collection. There’s a lot of quality of life updates that just aren’t present in this game. When you think you have a good Beyblade, head to the tournament and hope that the force is on your side. Be careful…skill doesn’t play much of a role here.

I was surprised to see that you cannot move your Beyblade. Basically you launch the Beyblade by flipping your 3DS backwards (which is really bad for the screen so I’d recommend holding the screen in place but it will mess up your launch) and then you watch it fight the opponent. I couldn’t move it in the slightest with the stylus, D Pad, or by moving the 3DS. You just have to watch it roll around. The only support you can give it is by shooting energy into the Beyblade by aiming with the motion controls. After that you can watch grimly as the A.I. jumps off the track and you lose by default. In the big tournaments you need 4 points to win the match. Winning through survival is one point so you have to win 4 times while if the opponent knocks you out of the ring they get 3 points in an instant. It’s really not very balanced if you ask me.

There’s no fun to be had with the gameplay. I want to be able to move my Beyblade and feel like I’m actually doing something. Otherwise I may as well be watching two A.I.s going at it because that’s really what’s happening. Half the time sending energy to your Beyblade doesn’t even help much since they just spin out of control. I didn’t think the gameplay could get worse than the first DS one I played, but it definitely happened. I’ll even take the microphone gimmick over the motion controls. I already didn’t like motion controls in the Wii, I can guarantee you that they are even worse on the 3DS. The 3DS wasn’t made for motion, I don’t see why a game was developed with that as the intent.

Ah well, the graphics aren’t bad I suppose. The character designs are nice enough and we get some decent backdrops. There aren’t a lot of areas to see though as it’s the same locations over and over with the same re-used character models. All of the tournament cutscenes start out the same way. The amount of recycled footage is pretty staggering to say the least. As for the soundtrack, it’s fairly generic. There isn’t a lot of variety to be found here.

In terms of replay value the game is pretty light. You’ll be ready to leave as soon as the 1-2 hour playthrough to day 50 is over. After that you can keep on playing to either get a better ending or get all of the parts. Those are the only things left to do anyway and for the latter you’ll never know if you have anything because the game never gives you a place to check how many parts are in the game. With the shop constantly changing inventory it’s also hard to keep track of how many are left. It’s a bit of a tough predicament.

Overall, Beyblade Evolution is a game that I’d advise against purchasing. It’s just not very good. It’s barely even a game and more like you are just watching a demonstration among the computers who are fighting to see who is the best. That’s not very entertaining if you ask me. I now own all of the main Beyblade games from the modern era and I can see why they haven’t made any in a while. The series doesn’t seem to understand how to make the series fun which is surprising because it should be pretty clear. Look at the Gamecube Beyblade game as an example of how to do one of these titles. Now that was a masterpiece!

Overall 3/10

Dragon Ball Z Collectible Card Game Stats and Records

Posted on by
Reply

No stats this time. I wish it would at least show a win/loss column next to the opponents so you can see how crazy tough this game is. My record was something like 2-60. Kudos to anyone able to take out all of the fighters in this one!

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941) Review

Posted on by
2


It’s time to look at the remake of Dr. Jekyll. It’s pretty much a point for point remake as opposed to some which try to take a little more liberties with the source material. This movie should have tried to do that because the first title was pretty awful so the more accurately you re-create that the less chance you have of actually making a good movie. This one is on the same level as the original and ends up falling to the same errors. You may as well be watching the same film when you think about it.

The movie starts with someone going crazy inside of a church. Dr. Jekyll has the man escorted to a hospital and wants to try a new drug on him that will separate his evil and good side. Nobody bothers to ask where they could be transporting the evil side and instead they all mock Jekyll for such an outlandish theory. Jekyll’s crazed attempts to defend himself don’t help matters. After cheating on his fiancee Jekyll gains the courage to test the serum on himself. Since his evil side is already overpowering him and makes for a convenient excuse to do whatever he wants, Jekyll takes the plunge. He is now the evil Mr. Hyde and will bring a lot of terror to the town.

Lets start with the obvious problems of the film. One is naturally the animal violence here as Jekyll tests on a lot of animals before going to human testing. A lot of rats end up dying due to his tests which shows how careless he is. Jekyll should have made a better serum before testing on innocent creatures. If anything testing on himself should have been the very first thing he did. These scenes are all pretty terrible and don’t help to start the film off on a good note. Then we also have Jekyll not being a sympathetic character from the start. We find out that he didn’t help the crazy guy out of the goodness of his heart, but just so he could run experiments. Additionally he is awfully quick to cheat on his fiancee. In the original film he at least pretended to resist for a bit while here he seemed to be the one making advances.

Then we’ve got the obnoxious plot with Mr. Hyde and Ivy that drags the film all the way down. It’s a pretty bad plot that’s just here for edge and grit. It makes the film a lot darker to be sure, but doesn’t add any actual substance to the movie. Ivy also makes all of the wrong choices here in not telling the cops or attempting to leave even when given many opportunities to do so. In this version she actually has a reasonable support group with her two friends, but still chooses to be alone and things don’t go very well. Hyde is also not an interesting villain in the slightest as he’s just evil to be evil.

Jekyll’s friend is also pretty terrible. Once he sees Hyde that should have been the end of the adventure. It’s no time to feel sympathetic to this guy. Even if the friend doesn’t shoot him right then and there he should have at least taken him to the cops. Hyde should be paying the price for his crimes in a cell, not being allowed to roam the streets any longer. As the bodies continue to pile up you can directly blame the friend for this. If you don’t make a move to stop a villain then you are absolutely an accomplice.

As with the last film the biggest plot hole here is Dr. Jekyll’s entire experiment. The concept is that you can isolate the good and evil sides of the soul, but to do that you have to have somewhere to put it. If you’re locking them both in the same body then that’s really not changing a thing. Maybe you could make one side a little stronger temporarily but it’s not solving anything. If he was trying to implant one part of the soul somewhere else then maybe that’s something to be looked into, but otherwise this doesn’t make any sense in the slightest. Jekyll doesn’t strike me as a particularly intelligent character so I
suppose that makes sense, but it still sounds like a plot hole to me. The cast of characters are bland and the writing is pretty bad. The film drags on for eternity as you go through it so the pacing wasn’t good either. I don’t think there’s a whole lot more to say beyond that.

Overall, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a pretty terrible film. There isn’t really anything redeemable about it much like the first film. That’s because it’s really the same film just with a fresh group of actors and actresses. With no real changes to differentiate the films it would be easy to mix them up. When watching them almost back to back the issues become even more apparent. If you’re planning to watch a horror film soon then this is one that I would advise you to skip. It’s hardly one of the better horror films out there and is lacking in any real positives to keep it afloat. I’d sooner recommend watching the Son of Dr. Jekyll which wasn’t that great but still beats this one.

Overall 0/10

Beyblade: Metal Masters Review

Posted on by
Reply


It’s time to take a look at a Beyblade game that I’ve owned for a very long time. I had been waiting until I had Metal Fusion and now that I beat that one it was time to look at the other big Metal game. This one is a huge improvement over the other title. For starters the controls have been fixed and there isn’t a pesky leveling up system this time around. It’s an arcade mode type game so it only takes around 20 minutes to beat a story but there are a lot of different characters to help with the replay value.

The basic plot is that the main character has been offered an invite to the latest big Beyblade tournament. He decides to enter of course, but it turns out that there may be more to this tournament than it would seem at first glance. Yes, this is the plot of every Beyblade game but in its defense it’s a plot that is always quite solid. Who wouldn’t want a tournament? The fun part about the concept is that it’s a good excuse to get all of the big characters in the series to meet up once again. There are around 5-7 rounds int he tournament and then you’ll have completed the Arcade route.

This game is fairly easy unlike the last one. The goal is to knock your opponent out of the ring or smash him to bits. Gone are the days of using the stylus and the game even gives you a pop up at the beginning letting you know that the stylus will not be used at all. It was probably the best message I’ve ever seen in a game like this. I was pretty stoked right off the bat. So you use the D pad to move your Beyblade. Press the A button twice to use your standard dash attack. B is to jump, Y to shield, and X to use your super attacks. I couldn’t find out how to use the final smash but you won’t need it. My advice is to spam the dash attack. It does a lot of damage and also has a chance to push the other Beyblade out of bounds which results in an auto win. You just can’t top that.

The game does force you to think about things a little more towards the end though. One enemy has a flame tornado and another has a suction ability so if you just run into them then you’ll be defeated. In these cases it’s best to take a punish approach. Wait for the opponent to use a move and then hit them. At that point retreat and then start over from scratch. Rinse and repeat your way to victory. I don’t imagine any match will take you more than 2-3 tries to clear it. It’s not a game that was made to be super difficult or anything.

So, the game is pretty short as I mentioned. An arcade mode is around 20 minutes. If this game was still at full price then I’d say that it wasn’t worth it. You can get the game for 5-10 bucks nowadays though. It’s also worth noting that there are around 30 fighters here so if you multiply that all you’ve got a game that’s around 10 hours. That’s pretty good right? There’s barely a story though so there’s not a lot of incentive to playing the game with everyone. Most games nowadays I don’t do all of the Arcade Modes but it really depends. If it’s something like Marvel vs Capcom or Dengeki Bunko then you can bet that I’ll at least play most of the stories for all the characters I like a lot. For a game like Beyblade where there are no opening and ending cutscenes and I don’t know the characters as well..it’s less of an incentive. I didn’t even beat more than one story in Sengoku Basara and that’s a series I’m fairly familiar with.

It’s always nice to have the option though and so I have to say that the game has a fair amount of replay value. The gameplay is also just pretty fun so it is definitely a game you can have a good time going back to. In terms of graphics the game is also pretty solid. We get some cutscenes for finishing moves and the standard ones pop out well enough as well. Don’t expect a ton of detail or anything like that, but there’s enough to keep you pretty well satisfied all the way through. The soundtrack is about as bland as you can get though. There aren’t exactly a lot of choices to pick from here so you’ll quickly find yourself tuning it out. I wish we had gotten a rock theme or something like that.

I should mention that in the Arcade mode it’s a best of 3 set. You get to pick two supporting characters to help you out as each character gets a round. The first character you pick is the one who will get the story though so choose with that fact in mind. Each character also has slightly different special moves and controls so you’ll want to keep that in mind. You can also check the garage to equip new parts that you unlock as you unlock 2 for each round that you complete. There seem to be 86 parts in the game so at that pace you’ll get them all very quickly. I wonder if they’ll slow down at the end because otherwise you’ll have all of the parts long before you beat the game with every character. Hopefully it doesn’t go the route of giving you duplicates later on. I always thought that strategy was a forced way of adding length to the completion time.

Overall, Beyblade Metal Masters is better than the last DS game, but it’s certainly nowhere near the level of any of the home console installments. I’m not sure why the games aren’t trying to be more ambitious on the portable. I do have a 3DS game I’ll be playing soon so we’ll see how that one fares. Regardless, this is the definition of a pick up and play title. Even if you put the game down for years it’ll always be right there for you to play through again. It’s pretty good and accomplishes in what it sets out to do. If you see the game for a few bucks I’d recommend playing it. Who knows, maybe the arcade mode will be so much fun that you’ll end up watching the show as well.

Overall 7/10

47 Meters Down Uncaged Review

Posted on by
Reply


It’s time to look at the sequel to the original 47 Meters Down film. I can’t really say that it’s much different from the first film. In general I don’t think the plot leaves the movie a lot of room to be all that good. For starters there is almost guaranteed to be some kind of animal violence in a film with sharks all around. On another note the ocean setting just isn’t great. Give me the city any day. You more or less know what to expect in a film like this and I’d say that there are no surprises here so you really shouldn’t be surprised one way or the other after watching it.

The movie starts of by introducing us to Mia and Sasha. Mia was adopted into the family and doesn’t have a great relationship with her step sister Sasha. Mia gets bullied all the time in school such as being thrown into a pool and Sasha never steps in to help. Their parents decide to get them to spend time together by having them spend a day in one of those underwater shark tanks. Neither girl is excited about this, but orders are orders. Sasha’s friends end up appearing though and convince the two to ditch the plans and head to an abandoned underwater city. Despite being warned not to go anywhere near this place the 4 girls head down and promptly break the entrance so nobody can get back out. Now they are stuck underwater with some very large sharks and a dwindling air supply. Which girl(s) will make it out of this alive?

As per slasher film tradition you can more or less guess you will live through this film by the end. If you’ve seen enough of these films you’ll likely guess 100% correctly. The main thing to keep in mind for horror films like this is that karma hits really quickly and even an innocent mistake will be remembered and used against you. The main character typically has plot armor so the question is if the armor will expand to protect someone else or if everyone is doomed. I’ll let you make you guesses and think about it. This review isn’t for spoiler details like exactly who survives.

That being said, there isn’t a whole lot of fun to be had in this movie. I also think some parts randomly drag a bit. The intro is a good example of this. The film starts off with a nice atmosphere as we see a bunch of skulls and some good underwater visuals. Then…this scene keeps on playing. After a few minutes you’re waiting for the actual film to start. We then get a super slow shot of someone falling into the water before the film finally starts. The whole thing was way too long and destroyed the potential effectiveness of the scene. It was a little unfortunate because otherwise you do always want a suspenseful start like what the film was trying to go for.

Another thing hurting the film is the cast of characters. There aren’t really many likable ones to be found here. Sasha’s friends come across as rather fake as they clearly don’t like Mia but put up with her since they want to hang out with Sasha. They were quite willing to ditch Mia which would have left her alone with the bullies and no supervision. Those aren’t really the best friends to ave at the ready even if Mia seems oblivious at times or is just trying to make the best of the situation. It’s also hard for Sasha to recover from the opening scene. Even if she doesn’t like Mia all that much they are sisters so you’d expect her to at least help when the bullies are around. Letting Mia get pushed into the water like that was pretty bad.

The parents are good characters at least. There’s only so much they can do to get the two step sisters to get along, but they do their best. Their heart’s in the right place at least. Mia admittedly doesn’t make things any easier, but we can assume that this has been going on for quite a while so by now it’s easy to see why she’s pretty upset. You can only be bullied for so long before you start to feel pretty down all the time. Also the bullies do outnumber her 4-1 so it would be pretty hard to fight back as well.

As far as the writing goes, the film’s not great but I’ve seen worse. The characters are all pretty obnoxious and make all of the worst decisions so it’s hard to root for them. They are intentionally breaking as many rules as possible which isn’t great and one of them was mainly responsible for everything going wrong by swimming off by herself. Nicole is easily the worst character by the way. You’ll see why if you watch the film as she is directly responsible for just about everything that goes wrong here. The teenagers are the stereotypical ones you’d expect to see in a film like this. It’s a shame that teens have such a bad rep. No worries we also get the “teens always have earphones on” part so someone doesn’t notice people about to get eaten right in front of him. It’s all pretty tragic for all parties involved.

In terms of violence the film does get pretty intense so you’ll want to watch out for that. There is some shark violence as expected which is also a shame. This is why films like this should either go for Mummified Sharks which can’t bleed or robotic ones. That would go a long way to making the film a lot better. Otherwise you are guaranteed to hit this snag and that’s just not going to end up well for anyone. An underlining theme in the film is that you have to resist peer pressure or you may get eaten by a shark. It’s a pretty solid morale because while that may not be what literally happens to you in real life, peer pressure can often lead you into some pretty sticky situations. You really want to learn how to resist that early on.

Overall, 47 Meters Down Uncaged is not a film that I’d recommend. Having access to the rest of the ruins makes for a much more engaging backdrop than being stuck in a small cave, but being underwater was never great anyway. Having sharks as the main villain is a self defeating concept and the characters weren’t that good. Even Mia as the main heroine wasn’t all that solid. If you really like shark films then you should check it out. There’s a homage to Deep Blue Sea that you’re bound to recognize because it’s basically the exact scene copy and pasted into this film.

Overall 3/10

Martin Riggs vs Neo

Posted on by
Reply




Martin Riggs is one of those guys who gets the job done even if it may look a little messy at times. He’s not afraid of a whole lot, but facing Neo would terrify him. She wouldn’t even need a weapon to take him down since her raw strength is so impressive. A single punch would knock the fight out of Martin and I dare say that giving up is his best option. There’s just no way to take Neo down. Neo wins.