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Little Witch Academia:Enchanted Parade (2015)

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Now I am not a fan of Little Witch Academia, in fact until I saw this I had never even seen it. This just happened to catch my eye and I figured I would kill an hour watching it. It was actually pretty funny because the English subtitles did not at all match the words they were using, it kind of reminded me of the old Godzilla movies where people would stop talking but their lips would keep moving.

The story itself is a rather cute story about these magic students having to manage the annual witch parade. Clearly this show is meant for kids and teens, but its cute and fun and despite the childish nature of the show I had a lot of fun watching it. The local kids disliking magic and preferring their technology was also a nice touch of social commentary. It is definitely a series worth checking out for anime fans, best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Top 5 PS1 RPGs, Assuming Final Fantasy Didn’t Exist.

If you were to make a list of best RPG’s for the Playstation one, or even of all time you couldn’t do it without a Final Fantasy game showing up on the list. Hell you probably would have to include at least one of them in the top 5 if we are being honest, whether it be 7 for the influence it had, or 6 because for some reason I don’t understand people think it was amazing or even 9 because it was actually as good as people think 6 or 7 was. But what would a list look like if we pretended it simply didn’t exist? Well here is my top 5 list, for once from 5-1 as if Final Fantasy just didn’t happen.

Beyond the Beyond is a title many people didn’t seem to play and as such doesn’t get much love. Its also a typical RPG in every fashion. Your home kingdom is attacked, you set out to find your dad, you flee the country, you end up as the chosen one to fight evil. But with how its presented and it turns out better than most on PS1.

Long before Persona 5 practically perfected balancing a home, school and dungeon life and before 3 introduced the concept, we were given Persona. Persona didn’t introduce the idea of an adult philosophical RPG, but it certainly was the most in depth and best done at that point. With the power of the PlayStation starting to hit its stride we were challenged to ask which one is the real you, and even shown why you don’t mess with crossing dimensions.

Grandia is one of those games I don’t even know how I ended up with. I think my mom thought hey hey this looks like the stuff Matt likes and my dear dead dad went ” hey this chick has green hair” and bought it ended up as a Christmas gift one year. Be that as it may it wasn’t long before I was calling Justin an idiot for not knowing Feena was in love with him and wondering how the hell I was supposed to win that fight against Gadwin, which it turns out I wasn’t supposed to.

This game was damn near number one, but you will see why it wasn’t. Breath of Fire 3 has multiple endings, great battles, character customization to rival many games even today with its master system and ability to learn moves and transfer them to others and it even had dragons. Add to that an amazing story about a war between dragons and a god and a possible betrayal and its no wonder this thing is remembered so fondly.

Anyone that knows me knew Suikoden was going to be number one, that being said while I prefer one over two, they are pretty much interchangeable to this spot. Both are amazing games, with amazing stories and their sprite characters hold up well even in 2018. Both involve wars in their respective kingdoms that take place in the same world, just different kingdoms. In fact you will visit the kingdom from one in 2 and many of the characters show up in multiple games in the series. Regardless collecting the 108 stars of destiny is an amazing feat to undertake that is both manageable and challenging at the same time. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Slither 2nd opinion (2006)

Oh slither, Torsten showed me this movie a long time ago with the claim of ” hey you will love this horror movie.” In his defense he was right, it quickly became one of our favorite movies. The story is pretty basic stuff, alien life form shows up, takes control of people, people die. You all know the drill. Its how it is done that makes the movie great. The movie knows what it is, I wouldn’t say it is self aware, for example you won’t see any breaking the 4th wall moments. But it is aware it isn’t a AAA blockbuster and it does not try to be.

My favorite example of this would be early in the movie the first guy infected has what appears to be a rash and uses the excuse of poison ivy. Much later in the movie two twin girls actually say in unison “we’re itchy” in a subtle but nice reference once you start to find the life form has a sort of connected hive mentality. @torstenvblog and I actually have a small other reason for doing this movie today, the greatest love song of all time. Enjoy it below, best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Crazy Taxi (Sega Forever)

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Crazy Taxi is one of those games I played as a kid and finally got around to trying out the Sega Forever version. I won’t lie, I was worried about this one. Graphically it is one of the more impressive games they released and the sound is also higher end of the stuff they have given out. So how does it hold up?

Well honestly it holds up pretty damn well. Graphically my G6 played it very well and the sound played beautifully. Both of these things actually surprised me but not as well as the actual controls worked themselves. I was expecting this to be the worst in the series of Sega Forever games so far but in fact it functioned the best, so if you are a fan of Crazy Taxi give this one a shot. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

The Ritual (2018)

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The Ritual is a very odd movie. I don’t mean that as a bad thing. The movie starts out with a group of friends in Europe planning a guys weekend. Arguing about hiking and drinking and where to do it. But its time to go to the shop and buy some booze. They sadly pick the wrong store and some drug addicts packing a machete decide to rob the place. One friend is unseen and stays hidden, while the other gets brutally murdered trying to defend his wedding ring.

Later on they decide to honor their friend by going hiking, having a couple drinks and just remembering their friend in the way he would have liked. Its a nice thought, one that he actually would have loved. This is where the movie takes its odd turn, first they don’t hike anywhere near as far as they thought. Turns out they can still see the cabin they left from in fact. No big deal tho, in the morning they will head back. Or it would be if somehow they didn’t get lost.

This is where things get weird. while lost they find a dead body nailed to a tree, and yes this becomes important later. After traveling all day a storm hits and they find a cabin, a cabin they didn’t see earlier. There is some weird stuff in this cabin they spend the night in. As you can imagine it isn’t long before people in the group start dying and the last two end up in a village that worships an ancient god that kind of looks like a massive skeleton deer with hands near its mouth. The movie is interesting and while not great is a fun watch and I would suggest checking it out. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Happy Birthday Torsten

Today our good friend Tors gets a year older,and for those wondering yes he was born on a Friday the 13th which may explain his love of horror movies. Or not, who knows. Either way to the best friend a guy could ask for, Happy Birthday bro. Sadly like most of he must work today which made me laugh, mostly because I spent an hour hunting down a small tree climbing rodant in his house that didn’t exist yesterday. Best wishes bro, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

The Resident (2012)

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Being a guy I probably miss how scary this movie truly is, but it is creepy as hell none the less. Imagine moving into a new house and meeting a new landlord, nice guy by the way. Doing a lot of nice work. When suddenly weird things start happening. You start sleeping through alarms for example and you just have this eerie feeling of being watched constantly and just a general bad time. That is what this movie is about.

The movie isn’t great, its average at best and at times is very convoluted but the concept is good. Hillary Swank and Negan, I mean Jeffrey Dean Morgan, play their parts well but there is only so much you can do with what they were given. Still the movie is worth giving a watch if you have the time, but be aware the movie has some very trigger inducing moments that sensitive people may not want to see. They certainly do not shy away from the subject matter which honestly I do appreciate. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

The Cloverfield Paradox (2018)

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After watching the Super Bowl and recovering from celebrating the Eagles winning I decided to check this movie out. I will say this, its a fun watch. Don’t think about it. At all. Don’t think about the science involved, because the writers did not. Don’t think overly much about the plot to much either, it won’t be hard to find holes. Just accept it for what it is. Also do not expect this to be some scary horror movie, its pretty much a comedy with a couple semi creepy bits.

With all that out of the way, the movie is still pretty fun to watch. After being sent up on a space station to fire a sort of high powered particle accelerator into space in order to get an unlimited supply of energy ( don’t think about this) they end up in an alternate dimension and discover an Earth during a massive war ( again don’t think about this).

The movie is a fun little Netflix exclusive, but if it were released in theaters I am pretty sure it would have bombed to be honest. As it is, grab a snack and enjoy it. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Night of the Living Dead Resurrection (2012)

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Every so often someone decides to make a movie call it Night of the Living something in either an attempt to make a quick buck or as some sort of indy film. Now as many of you know, I love indy stuff. For example Preacher Six Preview is an indy film or Game Preview: Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark is an indy game that looks great.

But every so often there is something like Night of the Living Dead Resurrection. I don’t swear much on my blog but seriously, fuck this movie and fuck me for being dumb enough to sit through the whole thing. If someone ever says hey Savior how do you NOT make a horror movie, I no longer have to speak. I would just show them this movie. I won’t go so far as to say this is the worst horror movie I have ever seen, but I will so it is without a doubt in the running.

Before we get to this dumpster fire of a story, let me say the visuals will make it perfectly clear this is a very low budget indy film. And not in that fun way Romero did things, in that some guy that things he is cool making a movie but ran to best buy and bought a camera does things. Thankfully the special effects person knew what they were doing because that at least looked good enough to make me not want to rip my eyes out.

The story. Well first I encourage you not to watch the movie. Read this, and if it sounds like something you want to watch because it sounds good I am sincerely sorry, it was an accident. If it is out of morbid curiosity I encourage you to bring a friend and some booze. The main character for the first about 10 minutes is a black guy driving down the road listening to the radio. That is all he does. He will then call Barbara and tell her he is coming to get her. Ha Ha. Very clever. He will then drop his phone to show his screens background appears to be the poster from the original Night of the Living Dead. So there is our required nods to Romero. a few minutes later he will get to a farm house and be shot in the face.

Then much of the movie is people talking. Mom and dad, a girl and her husband and that girls sister. Who by the way the husband is nailing on the side. Dad will then at one point leave, mom will find out hubby is nailing both daughters after the wife dies in childbirth. Yes by the way there is a like 3 minute scene where he approaches a blanket to discover a zombie baby that you will never ever see. The movie has pretty much nothing in common with the original, even the ending the original did so well this went for a shock value ending. A militia type group shows up, shoots mom in the head because she was bit and the sister that the now dead husband was nailing gets tossed in the “rape trailer” amd the movie ends with her having a terrified/shocked look on her face and it freezes there. So even the ending isn’t original. Seriously, don’t watch this piece of garbage. Ever. Best wises, and may the gaming gods have mercy on the souls of the people that made this movie.

Odd Thomas (2013)

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Odd Thomas based , the books by Dean Koontz is a rather interesting movie. Odd, yes that it is actual name, has the interesting talent to see dead people. He uses this talent to catch murderers and on this occasion solve the potential death of an entire town.

With his long time girlfriend Stormy, Odd will explain some fry cook lingo as well as what these weird apparition that only he can see are. We will be lead on a journey of discovery, mystery and intrigue with plenty of twist and turns and even some surprises.

The movie is well written and will keep you interested and on your toes with each new piece of information leading into the next and in the end will all come together nicely but will leave you wanting more. More that sadly most likely won’t ever come thanks to the untimely death of Anton Yelchin. Not to say they could’t recast him, many people just wouldn’t want them to and I think the backlash would be bad. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.