"Dark Souls 3" Review

by Alex Hill

2.5/5

Dark Souls 3 is like "The Force Awakens"; It's the bare minimum of what it needed to be, a video game for the sake of a video game. It thinks fan-service, nods and references will carry it, because it offers little that's new or interesting enough to stand on its' own. It has more to offer than Bloodborne, but it's still a regression of the Souls formula. Someone shaved this wild, untamed thing, and whittled its' fangs down too far.

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"When Marnie Was There" Review

by Alex Hill

4/5

"Anna" (Hailee Steinfeld) lives in a fog. Her isolation is shown and told matter-of-factly. An asthma attack, puberty and self-worth issues all come to a tipping point. A lot of Ghibli protagonists seem to have everything figured out before the story begins, all the more convenient for them to save the day. Anna can barely stand being alive in this state. She doesn't even know how to save herself.

Tell me if you've heard this one before: A person with an illness is advised to go to the country for the "fresh air", which conveniently allows the animators to draw pastoral scenes. This is not exactly treading new ground. It's pretty much how "The Secret World of Arrietty" and "My Neighbor Totoro" begin. Maybe this would be more of a problem for me if it weren't so damned charming.

"When Marnie Was There" is a familiar story told with warmth and sincerity. It could have been told with more clarity, but I also think uncertainty is at the heart of it all.


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"Creed" Review

by Alex Hill

5/5

"Your legacy is more than a name."

“Creed” is perfect.  It is everything it needed to be.  It’s not the shameless, lazy hollywood cash-in on a respected legacy that it could have been.  It’s raw while still being a fable.  The people in this movie make sense, what they do comes naturally, if unavoidably from themselves and not simply from the demands of a script.  It's about the fight for a sense of self.

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"The Wind Rises" Review

by Alex Hill

5/5

Via kazetachinu.jp

Sometimes I see a movie with my mom on a Tuesday night, because it's cheaper to go on Tuesdays. As a movie plays, there are usually interruptions. She'll ask who an actor is on screen, or for a snack or something, since I'm the one holding the food. For the two-hour running time of The Wind Rises, neither of us made a sound. Save for the crunching of popcorn behind us, and some laughter at a specific character design, a peculiar quiet descended on the audience. For the most part, we watched in silent reverence.


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"Gears of War: Judgment" Review

by Alex Hill

I... think I like Gears of War: Judgment. But it's not a game that's trying particularly hard to be liked. I'm not sure what it wants to be. It's too big to be DLC for a previous game. The changes are both too extensive to be an add-on, but too grounded in the past to be its' own product. It's too small in focus to be the long-term leveling shooter that Gears 3 was. It doesn't invest in its' characters quite enough to be story-based. If you described it to police, it would be a fat, thin, tall, short, young, old person.



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"Halo 4" Review

by Alex Hill

1/5

Halo 4 is not the worst video game. It is the worst TYPE of game. An unbearable, spineless endeavour that can't even be bothered to be obscene. A design-by-committee Frankenstein's monster of cribbed video game fads, and franchise-destroying change for its' own sake. Not even Halo: Reach struggled to reconcile what its' audience needed from the most basic controller input. This is a travesty even for the people who made Windows.


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The Lorax: Review

by Alex Hill

2/5

What still strikes me now, fourty-two years after it was written, was how fair "The Lorax" was. It was a cautionary fable about the price of a cushier life for man. It had a strong, serious message explained in Theodore Geissel's clear and gentle brilliance. It has been challenged in the past by people who felt it was unfair to the foresting industry, but it wasn't merely a one-sided rant. Especially in the 1972 animated short, the profit-driven Once-ler shows remorse for the damage his empire causes, and The Lorax seemed willing to compromise. There is a cost to civilization, and to personal gain. But he also allowed the faceless Once-ler his human weakness, instead of painting him as a simplistic villain.

Geissel knew that it's easy to do wrong by our world. But it's also easier than we admit to do the right thing.

Which is why I understand the damage the 2012 adaptation does to the material. I'm sure Illumination Entertainment meant well when they shilled for gas-guzzlers and disposable diapers. That doesn't make this a bad movie. It means their marketing division is run by the Grinch.


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Chrono Trigger: Review

by Alex Hill

5/5

In 1992, two of the giants of Japanese Role-Playing Games boarded a plane, to check out the latest in computer graphics overseas. Hironobu Sakaguchi is the man behind the perpetual Final Fantasy series, and Yuji Horii is the brainchild of the intensely successful Dragon Quest series. Miles above the surface, they expressed mutual enthusiasm at the idea that they could, perhaps, achieve better results as co-workers. For years they were professional enemies, though not on bad terms. Siskel and Ebert were professional enemies too. Peanut Butter was once thought of as separate from Chocolate, until Reese's came and blew everyone's minds. They were excited at the idea of combining their strengths, and wanted to make a game that had never been conceived before.

When they reached the tarmac, they didn't have any solid ideas on where to take this enthusiasm. They had no clue that this would start the chain of events leading to a masterpiece. No one did. No one could have. No prospector truly knows when he is about to strike gold.


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"The Dark Knight Rises" Review

by Alex Hill

1.5/5

Some days, you just can't get rid of a bomb.

I still remember the enormous triumph of "The Dark Knight". I walked out of the theatre a drooling idiot. I couldn't remember where I lived, because that beautiful thing came and shattered my mind. I knew better than to expect the last installment of this Batman trilogy to surpass that. But I was not prepared for this. When we left the theatre, my friend and I looked at each other. He said to me:

"...Did that actually happen???".

I know I saw it. I know I've been waiting for four years to see it. I have witnesses who can vouch for my whereabouts. I have the receipt! But in many ways, I'm still waiting for that proper conclusion. This movie is a bad dream.



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"Katawa Shoujo" Review

by Alex Hill

4.5/5

Katawa Shoujo is remarkable. A love-letter not just to the disabled or to animu dating sims, but to the paralyzing panic of love. We know in our heads things we can't always come to terms with on the inside. We can know, but we can still be hurt or fearful. We can find ourselves hurting the ones we love without trying to, and not understand why. The goal here involves your character becoming romantically involved with one of several girls with disabilities. I don't believe Four Leaf Studios did this out of some fetish or pity, but because they believed in this project.  

It's an honest glimpse into the human heart.

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"Kirby's Return To Dreamland" Review

by Alex Hill

3.5/5

What can I say? I just like Kirby games. I just like Kirby. I like how they're mostly simplistic and fuzzy-wuzzy, and then in the last act there's some unsettlingly morbid final boss that cries blood or something. I like any platformer that has the guts to include a side-scrolling shooter section in the 3rd-act, for no other reason than because the developer likes those and wanted to include one. It's like the opposite of those cursed vehicle segments in First Person Shooters.

And honestly, I like any game that has the guts to be cute. Could any other video game series get away with having a pink main character on the box?

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The Sum Of Its Parts

Jason Schreier has written an article at Joystiq.com. He's done a commendable job at explaining not only the appeal of an often baffling genre of video games, but also sheds a light on shady reviewing practices. Namely, how we dissect and rate each individual aspect of a game in a shallow checklist.

You know:

GRAPHICS: 5/10
CONTROLS: 7/10
DAVID HASSELHOFF APPEARANCES: 4/10...

When I review a game, I will go into specifics, but for me it's about the overall experience. What condition the product as a whole left me in when it was over. I find my writing isn't very helpful to those who aren't familiar with how to operate them. And to that I say... GOOD! 

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"The Drawn Together Movie: The Movie!" Review

by Alex Hill

3.5/5

There is a reason why I like vulgar humour. Your Family Guys, your South Parks and its imitators. I respect Married, With Children for getting that ball rolling. I like these shows to varying degrees, but there is a common thread that ties them together: They will do anything, anything to get a laugh. A well-written show with "adult humour" will go to any lengths, and fish for jokes in the deepest, darkest places. So many programs are bound and gagged by restrictions. By networks with no sense of humour, and people with frail sensibilities.

I respect any writer willing to find where the line is, and then throw up on it. Even when it's not serving a point, or trying to attach social commentary. Even if the joke fails, I'm just glad they tried it at all. "The Drawn Together Movie: The Movie" is funny. It's crude, repulsive and mean-spirited, but it's funny. It's funny in the first ten seconds. But your mileage may very. Two people could collect reasons for why they like or dislike this show, and both lists would look about the same.

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"Halo: A Fistful Of Arrows" Review

by Alex Hill

4/5

Over the course of a year, a man going by the username "Leviathan" has been digitally painting a short fan-comic. It's called "A Fistful Of Arrows". His goal was to shed some light on the fate of a character the source material could not be bothered to care for. In the process, he has explored in unblinking detail why these characters and situations could have been something great. He took characters who were largely forgettable, and found out why they should have mattered. He wrote dialogue and events for the same characters from a multi-million dollar corporate turd, and did so with sometimes shocking precision.

One man on his own time did a better job with the same material, than people who were paid over the course of four years. Levi Hoffmeier paints circles around Bungie and Microsoft Studios. He rummaged through the hollowed-out carcass of a truly wretched game, and fashioned it into something valuable.

"Gears Of War 3" Review

by Alex Hill

3.5/5

The original Gears of War was as juvenile as it was artless. It stretched itself thin on gimmicks. It was barely coherent and largely stupid. Its' attempt at characterization resulted mostly in loud and obnoxious stereotypes. Its world was the result of an ugly obsession with polygons, and macho muscle-headed bullshit. The games industry has "borrowed" a lot from this series since E-Day. That childishness is the only thing they've managed to do better than Epic Games. Not even when their CEO openly mocks independent developers at conventions.

And then something curious happened: Every other game wanted to be like it(and to be fair, Halo, and Grand Theft Auto). It was warmly-received by critics and the public. Men and women, despite it's "NO GIRLZ ALLOWED" tone. It even landed the highest honour the Game Developer's Choice Awards can bestow. It was like watching the Best Picture Oscar go to Bad Boyz II. So not only was it successful, this turd was critically acclaimed(by people who I thought knew better). Something about this series turns reasonable men into sluts.