@timemasheen: You've got it mixed up. That was Nick Fury. He played Samuel Pulp in Star War: The Avengers (that's why he hates snakes) Phil Jackson in Fresh Prince of Bell Air (that's why he hates planes) and Samuel L. Fiction on Kingsmen: Blade Shaft (that's why he hates English).
@santinegrete: I don't buy games new either. I never buy anything unless it's $25 equivalent or cheaper.
I don't understand people who buy $70 games, unless they're, a) childishly impatient b) desperate to be up-to-date in a trendy, fashionable sense c) reviewing them professionally
Otherwise why pay more money for an inferior product with a dearth of online documentation and guides which may even softlock or corrupt your save?
“It remains, as it always was, maddeningly inconsistent.”
What on earth is “maddeningly inconsistent” about the original RE4 ? Zoey doesn't mention anywhere in her entire review. All she says at one point is that the antagonists are “shockingly out-of-place” (?)
A big fish monster is out-of-place in a lake? The chief of the village is out-of-place at the end of the village? The young infected heir of a castle is out-of-place in his castle? Krauser is out-of-place in the final third of the game? The main antagonist is out-of-place at the end of the game?
I honestly have no idea what she's talking about. RE4 had arguably has the best pacing of any game ever made.
No no no! Everyone! You don't understand! This is a re-make. That means it's basically the same thing again! Hey everyone! Save your money! It's just a re-make! There's no creativity here! Tell everyone you know to put their wallets away!
Those people. Like clockwork. There for the Dead Space announcements. Gone for the review. There for the Resident Evil 4 announcements. Gone for the review. If they had their way we'd be missing out on arguably the best game in the entire franchise.
Rage 2 - some genuinely fun shooting but mainly bland and lazy. 6/10 Serious Sam 1 - fun, mindless shooter if you're OK with old sensibilities. 7/10 Serious Sam 2 - same again. 7/10 Serious Sam 3 - the jank middle step between old and modern. 6/10 Serious Sam 4 - the perfection of a very simple formula with solid execution. 8/10 Warhammer 40K: Space Marine - very mindless, but satisfying. like if Warhammer did a PS2 Dynasty Warriors. 7/10 Blood 2: The Chosen - bad, janky game, and I loved the original. 5/10 Tower of Guns - indie. never played. I don't like randomisation. N/A Bulletstorm - very fun, wacky, solid game. it surprised me. 8/10 Shadow Warrior 1 - same vein as Duke Nukem 3D. wacky, fun game. 8/10 Shadow Warrior 2 - went the Borderlands direction. still fun if you like that. 7/10 Shadow Warrior 3 - went the Doom Eternal Direction. this is my favourite. 8/10 Sunset Overdrive - fun, colourful, light-hearted, arcady, child-friendly 3rd-person shooting. 7/10 Borderlands 1 - Diablo as a wacky co-op FPS. janky, fun with friends, not worth it alone. 6/10 Borderlands 2 - like the OG but bigger, better, no jank. still not worth it alone though. 7/10 Borderlands 3 - pretty much the same game but prettier. 7/10 Doom(1993) - a near-infinite number of high-quality maps available. use a modern engine like GZDoom to play, optionally with Doom Mod Loader to organise content. I still play 30 years on. 8/10 Vanquish - a 3rd-person electric chrome fever dream. very fast, very Japanese. 8/10 Binary Domain - not “mindless”. you have to manage a whole squad in fact. somewhere between SWAT 4 and Vanquish. good game but not my type. 7/10 Dusk - like a 2018 Quake 1 with more creative levels. 8/10 Amid Evil - like Dusk on LSD. went too abstract in my opinion. 6/10 Ultrakill - very fast, indie, style-rank FPS. I don't get the hype about it. 7/10 Far Cry 3 - open-world, explore, stealth or not, collect, craft, story, arcs, etc. 8/10 Far Cry 4 - same again, different setting. 7/10 Far Cry 5 - same again, different setting. 7/10 Far Cry 6 - same again, but just worse, and really getting tired. 6/10 Prodeus - fun, fast, hard, indie, dystopian sci-fi FPS. 8/10 Evil West - didn't play, but the execution seems a little off. a decent-looking but confused game. N/A Just Cause 3 - Like Far Cry 3 but 3rd-person, wackier, and little story. fun nonetheless. 7/10
“They've continued to add new fetishistic objects as signifiers of broad ideas--honor, loyalty, professionalism, you name it--as well as flashier sets. And in this gradual development and expansion of the Wickaverse, the filmmakers seem to have lost the thread of what makes the first and, at times, second film in the series work so well.”
“... but moments does not a well-told movie make.”
I haven't seen Chapter 4 yet, but I guessed this is how I'd feel about it given the trajectory of 1, 2, and 3.
The first was the only one in the series that felt like an actual film to me. It was the only one that had a protagonist in the traditional sense. I understand car. I understand dog. I understand wife. I understand pencil. After the first film though, everyone just... knew everything already. No need to talk about anything. Everything else is just the film telling me repeatedly how serious it is, without ever telling me why or what these people did to incite such terrified reverence. I can't help but compare it to The Matrix, which by comparison has three dimensions to John Wick's one.
The world in the first and second wasn't as realised, but it was more enticing. I wanted to get back into that universe. I wanted to see its workings. It deserves the title “World of Assassination” far more than Hitman ever did. But after the third I realised, Oh, we're never going to do that. We're just going to keep alluding to it. Giving each other serious/melodramatic stares and delivering short, dry, despondent dialogue and skipping across the surface from locale to locale sniffing out pretty new backdrops to cover in blood and brain matter. Endlessly hyping itself up but when the payout comes, it's always in cocaine instead of money.
(Also, Keanu is not as young as he used to be. Even in the third, some of the fights were so slow and gentle that it felt like you were watching a rehersal. The fight with the two asian guys at the end of the third totally broke whatever suspension of disbelief I had left.)
By the third film it was obvious that the series had caught the F&F virus. All they are interested in is more flashy peacock-ing, and every entry has to flash more of it than the previous, leaving no room for anything resembling a plot or characters or arcs. By the time a franchise reaches this point, it's a zombie. It can movie around, and you can hang jewelry off of it, but it's never going to say anything meaningful or even interesting ever again.
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