Mom and Dad Save the World

So i showed this film to my dawg. I'm seeing it probably for a fourth time already and it still holds up for me.

@темы: Mom and Dad Save the World, Кино

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Alchemy Mysteries: Prague Legends

Graphics are somewhat better than average in the genre, but some meta puzzles reminds of moon logic from old adventures, kinaesthetics are unpleasant for some reason and it's easier to use fast-travel all the time, small puzzles are often randomized which is not very good idea for casual play.

It's not that bad, but steam is flooded with superior artifex mundi games, which sometimes not look as good (for my taste, i can tolerate low-poly on 2d easier than deformative animation) but always offer more cohesive though not ideal natrrative.

@темы: Компьютерные Игры

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Robo Warriors (1996)

This is one of the coolest giant robot movies I saw. Practical effects are top notch.

@темы: Robo Warriors, Кино

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Victor Frankenstein

A very nice and light-hearted research science fantasy movie with a fitting cast. It is kind of a prequel to the original book, and explores the origins of the characters

@темы: Кинотеатр, Victor Frankenstein, Frankenstein, Кино

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Super Trench Attack!

WW2 "comedy" top-down shooter.

Hitboxes are awkward but overall game's fine.

@темы: Компьютерные Игры, Super Trench Attack!

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Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad

We played some multiplayer and it is kinda okay, outside of absolutely OP Sturmgewehr. But it's so bugged that each time we were stopping playing pretty fast. This time i decided to actually play through the singleplayer.

Calling a game "Heroes of Stalingrad" and starting it with a nazi campaign is a strange choice. The singleplayer is basically an emulation of multiplayer with bots. And that is not a bad idea in itself. You can play many old multiplayer games with bots to experience them. If a brain-damaged indie studio decides to create a multiplayer game — with bots it still will be playable. Every multiplayer game without bots is a living corpse and every multiplayer indie game is dead on arrival. Not a single one of them ever had any success and they just sell you an absence of a game for real money.

But the problem in this game is that they put bullet-sponge zerg-rush AI from CoD into the game where the player dies from one hit. And friendly AI is worse than useless.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUDs_A3BUBs

Russian AI soldiers eat 4 rifle bullets to the body. Nazi AI soldiers eat 3 rifle bullets to the head. When you make a game simulating multiplayer it doesn't need a difficulty curve. Especially not when you need to play the objective and friendly AI neither plays nor shoots. And even during the easy nazi campaign the enemy AI is still twitchy, spongy and is openly wallhacking.
I gave an enemy a bullet in the guts, he killed me with a strike of a wooden stick on my iron helm.

The soviet intro is made in the style of 80s holywood action trailers and i'm kinda ok with it. The gameplay with disposable player characters emphasizes the losses in the war, instead of the retarded CoD heroism with regeneration or medkits.

But the devs couldn't be arsed to use real cyrillic words, therefore i piss on their faces. I piss right in the nostrils of the entire Tripwire team. Who couldn't be arsed to spend 30 seconds in google or hire a hobo for a bottle of counterfeit vodka.
Also, their shitty VA is using the wrong accents. That besides them hiring caucasians over slave native speakers, which are plenty in their country. Fuck every retarded developer who can't be arsed to hire natives or at least research the actual native accents, instead of making a racist mockery. Fuck Ubisoft's Prince of Persia run three times, sideways and upside down. And these idiots even mixed up Iosif with Losif. Just how dumb does one have to be to make that mistake?

The squad controls are bad and they were done right in Sacrifice ten years earlier. And why is there no a dedicated right salute button when you play as nazis?

The game really lags for no reason (with high FPS and low hardware usage). The ladders i climbed before will randomly stop working. How you can break ladders? Everything is broken and buggy.

There are a couple of interesting ideas and the tank combat is nice, but overall this is a giant steaming pile of crab. It's better to just avoid anything from Tripwire.

@темы: Энтропия, Компьютерные Игры, Red Orchestra, Индустрия Развлечений

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Fallout: New Vegas

Shameful disgrace!



When Oblout was released everyone with half a brain cell was pissed. But the same people started to hype up this stand-alone add-on, and don’t stop to this day. Which says everything about the weight of their opinion on Oblout.

This shit is filled with bugs. Besides the errors and all the crashes, some of the main quests are unplayable. I had to open the developer tools and issue progression commands one by one. Or how about a random dude just running up to me on a street, punching my face, after which every NPC in the entire game became hostile. The only thing they were chasing with this release is Metacritic score, with zero care for the quality. It was released many years ago and to this day they’ve fixed nothing. Also it’s divided into ghettos, so my steam version which i bought with my money isn’t integrated into steam properly.

So, yeah. Oblout 2 is just more of the same Oblout. Claiming that this has anything to do with Fallout is quantifiably false. Like, absolutely nothing, and i’m not even talking about isometric view.
Fallout is a unique combination of different mechanics. It takes classic CRPG structure with overworld map-travel and random encounters, uses deep turn-based tactics combat instead of line-fight or two-phase one, imbues dialog trees with stat-checks and integrates RPG elements into them, and on top of all implements P&C puzzles and structure into the whole thing, with a ton of alternative solutions.
This garbage is obviously not an adventure game. It’s an extremely bad FPS game, of that Serious Sam paradigm, where the enemies just run at you in a straight line. But with no according kinaesthetics or gunplay. WATS is created for people handicapping themselves with tractor controls and it is not just useless, it actively makes things worse. While you just shoot everyone — most of the guns have pin-point accuracy, but once you open WATS it calculates your stats to have 5% chance to hit. Why would you ever use it, if you can just run backwards and plink at deathclaws with .22 Or just climb something which they can’t reach.
The dialogues are crap too. The game openly tells you all of the stat-checks. In some cases you can even just leave, eat some drugs and pass the stat-check. And of course Oblout uses the terrible Oblivion talking heads system of dead puppets staring at you with empty eyes.
This shit is not here nor there. It attempts to have some hawdcowe realism and hides enemies’ levels. So you can see two hobos with shotguns, but one can be lvl5, the other lvl50, because you are not supposed to go there yet. This Oblivion Lost wannabe is not S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and is not Borderlands. And it’s worse than both. And yes, naked dudes with a shotgun are superior to you wearing Enclave armour (which is a painfully ugly rubber leotard instead of an iconic power-suit walking tank) while wielding an end-game energy rifle. Having such conventionalities in a CRPG is okay due to you taking the role of a hand of god, looking down from the sky. But in a first person game it was painful even back in the Arena, when it’s guns instead of sharpened metal sticks it’s even worse.
Since it’s a The Elder Scrolls game, you are role-playing as a hobo collecting garbage on a street for all your hobo crafting needs. And the game is littered with the crap you want to collect. Because in the past hundreds of years no one did pick the world clean. Not just empty tin-cans, but even food. Which somehow is still okay to eat. (Also all timers for drugs do not run while you sleep for days.) You are always running over-encumbered, and since there’s no hard limit there’s no reason not to, all you lose is the stupid fast travel. You can collect hundreds of tons of garbage in a location and then run backwards to your base, since it’s faster than forward. The whole instant travel is already a terrible thing in a wannabe RPG, but there’s even a skill opening you the entire map. Which is tiny. Really, really tiny map. And how the hell you can have Pip-boy 3000, when last one was the peak of pre-war technology and was so miniature it could fit into a giant suit-case?
Level cap is really low, you hit it way before the end of the game and then don’t have even this Skinner incentive to force yourself to suffer through this shit.

The characters sometimes are mildly interesting for a second, but that passes really fast. Lilly despite\because her concept is so stupid is the only memorable one. The whole writing is obviously garbage, and the story is terrible with terrible narrative. With NCR basically rebuilding the society even more, they had to move action into another border territory with wilderness left. But somehow people went back to using the bottle caps. Near the factory of bottles. Independently of first Fallout’s society. There’s a ton of currencies floating around to no point. They are not a part of narrative (which is absent) and only waste space of the already terrible cramped one-dimensional interface. If it was only NCR and Legion currencies with their value changing because of your decisions in critical plot-points to take one or other side — that would work. Or since this whole village is under the influence of New Vegas it would be cool to have only casino chips as currency, and both NCR and Legion ones being devalued and marginalized. Bottle caps are cargo cult.
Half of the quests and story-lines end with nothing. The whole fight between NCR and Legion over New Vegas is garbage, both factions are presented by tiny outposts, your contribution is meaningless since you can’t wipe or subdue through politics one or another. If you kill Caesar there's the whole legion left. The whole game says that it has minimal impact. Then what’s the point? You can do nothing in this story. Any your action is meaningless diegetically. And what’s up with the whole legion? NCR has restored civilization and industry, and a bunch of naked hobos with spears are supposed to pose a threat to it? An army of slaves who don’t want to fight for their captors against a trained military. All these cartoonish factions are just so fucking bad. If you ask me what is worse, this story or this gameplay, i’d say that games are not movies.

The graphics are disgusting, since this is Oblivion everything is intolerably ugly and all the characters are revolting. It already looks like a game from the previous century with its low-res textures, but also the whole art-style is piss-yellow brown. Desolate Fallout at least used bold dull colours, not this pastel-poop rape-bloom. All the art-assets are ugly, the things which looked good in Fallout were changed to look as hideous and humanities as possible here. Well, at least you can run it in UWS UHD Surround if you edit enough files.

Courier's Stash

This thing adds some junk items into the game, and the canteen makes the whole drinking “mechanic” obsolete.

Gun Runners' Arsenal

Adds a stall selling new weapon-mods and new weapons. Also adds stupid challenges.

Dead Money

Stupid heist side-story unrelated to anything, which has a separate set of companions. Allows you to rob a vault and get tons of money you will have trouble spending.

Honest Hearts

Abysmal unmemorable side-story about tribesmen.

Old World Blues

Disgustingly terrible side-story making fun of ye olde sci-fi pulp. So it’s basically Boredlands, but even worse. The story ends with nothing, there’s zero motivation to the villain. A “role-polaying game”.
It’s filled with naked hobos with worst shotguns in the game, who still are better than your end-game loot because their level is higher. At least you can make yourself at home in the tower — it has most of the workbenches, lockers, big money shop and you can grow plants in plant beds.

Lonesome Road

The only DLC actually related to the game. You go after the guy from the campaign, to shoot nukes from a hundred steps and suffer no consequences. The guy wants you to listen to his tryhard edgelord school-shooter manifesto something something. It’s as dull and unmemorable as Honest Hearts. His words are so stupid they make no sense, he only whines about his blues and you are somehow to blame.

@темы: fallout, Fallout: New Vegas, Энтропия, Компьютерные Игры, Индустрия Развлечений

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Massive Chalice

The release of the XSOM marked the degradation of the IP compared even to the Enforcer. We went from 90s complex TBT to 70s two-phase combat with no refunds. And because modern gaming lives of stealing — that rotten cancer has spread everywhere. Damn, i hate XSOM. Casual cancer for filth. There is just no new actual TBTs anymore. And that dumb combat is the reason i got bored with the Renowned Explorers after just one run.

2undeep4me

So, yeah, this is another clone of that. The combat is just the same couple of maps, two separate phases for movement and for attacking and squares. There are several different classes, but i don't see any reason to not go five stealth hunters. The doods don't even stop on "spotted". That's not "hardcore" that's being a dick to the player.

The global map has random events, for example, a ton of accidents. And these global mechanics, unlike in UFO\XSOM, which this game is very similar to, make soldiers much more expandable. The UFO and the reboot were made with soldiers being just a resource in mind. But everyone ends up babysitting the teams. This game tried the exact opposite with the low recruiting rates and inheriting stats. The goons are supposed to be your friends to care about. But that just didn't work. Besides the constant accidents out of players' control, why should you care about grandpa squad? They'll die next time on the global map anyway — a fatal misfortune or old age. And young kids will mary and have a lot of children with big levels. So, solitary men and ladies are expendable, while baby factories make better soldiers.
Also, in real life married people were going to wars, that was the point — they have something to fight for.

Devs handled everything poorly from the start. Maybe the game even has complex systems, but it's not narrated in any way so it falls into IDGAF. It's all too random and not even near to Wiggles or Creatures breeding. Since all the GUIs are awful you can't really tell what would happen. Again, console garbageness in play. If they wanted to create such a complex thing, they should have made a proper excel simulator with tooltips and mouseovers. Players just have no information on traits, on what would happen, on inheritance, on children or anything at all. So breeding is just a random gimmick instead of a core of the game.

Creatures 2 had a dementia bug that makes all your Norns retarded after some age. But the systems in place are so complex that players used eugenics to fix a relatively game-breaking bug by the means of the game's systems themselves. Unlike games these days.

Now your hero sits there for 40 years and doesn't make any children! And neither it does any adultery, it refuses to make healthy bastard heroes! The game goes against polygamy! Against freedom! But the devs will close their eyes on menopause, because "equality"! Even despite the RNG and the low gene pool, menopause would make better gameplay. You don't just marry goons and forget about them. You have to choose if you are gonna find your inseminator bull a young wife to have more soldiers, gaining in turn discontent from his ageing but powerful wife. Or you want more political points by keeping her happy? Is this even moral? Does active war allow you to ignore morality for the sake of survival? Also, menopause would synergise with adultery. You can breed required traits inside the official marriage for a short length, after which males are locked from the controllable breeding pool, but will leave tons of totally RNG bastards, take them or leave them.
And here are some quotes from the devs on steam forums:

...chances are VERY GOOD that we will NOT allow incest in the game...
...but as the voice over says, they're not just a pile of numbers...

Well, it's either one or another.If they are not just numbers then what Double Fine has against a sister's love for her brother? Some right-wing sentiments there, aren't they? And especially when we are talking in the context of breeding games. This is probably the first time i hear about a ban on incest in a breeding game. Some of the games build their whole brand around it.

I chose to piss in the chalice and leave everyone be. Because more kids are exactly what i needed to win.

The writing is garbage. Obviously. It's an epiphany of degenerate writing. The chalice faces often spew embarrassing lines.

The GUI is absolute garbage, the tutorial is cancer, and damn the controls are bad. The game goes for the low-poly art-style and flat shading. It mostly looks okay, but the lighting and the choice of AA and the optimization are awful and buggy. The music is quite ok; the sound design is understandable but rather irritating.

Yet, after all, the game is entertaining enough. I blame the unconventional weapons and classes for that. See, if you have at least a spec of imagination your game can stand out from the crowd. In the end, i did actually finish it. And then bought it with 64% discount on GOG. I think that's a fair price, at least in ₽ (7,5 white loaves of bread).

Instead of promised second coming (of something), it's just a weak dynasty system (no genetics) glued to a run of the mill XSOM clone. It's a simpleton game in a simpleton husk of a genre and almost everything about it is mediocre.

 

@темы: Энтропия, Компьютерные Игры, Индустрия Развлечений

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The Postman (1997)

Well it's not on the same level as a book, it's of modest budget and doesn't have same core events and ideas, but in itself it's an okay post-apocaliptic adventure with some quirky characters.

@темы: The Postman, Кино

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Hotel Transylvania 2

Повторение старой темы про монстров\людей, несмешные шутканы и небожественная анимация от некого Геннадия, который подаётся как демибог анимации.

При том же мусоре, первая часть имела вторую тему "control-freak батя", хотя бы немного выделяющую картину из месива dreamworks & Co (или проще сказать всего что не disney\pixar).

@темы: Мультипликация/анимация, Кинотеатр, Hotel Transylvania, Индустрия Развлечений

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ファイアボール (Faiabōru)

ファイアボール (Faiabōru)
ファイアボールスペシャル メイキング・オブ・ファイアボール (Faiabōrusupesharu meikingu Obu faiabōru)
ファイアボール チャーミング (Faiabōru chāmingu)

English subtitles.

Short form CGI cartoon, where nothing happens. The designs are quite eye-catchy though.

@темы: Мультипликация/анимация, Энтропия, Faiaboru, Индустрия Развлечений

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Crimson Peak

Official russian translation. Where are all the live ghosts bro? Somewhat classic gothic horror film with jump scares, made in a style of undetective. It’s not terrible and sometimes it does work. But it’s nothing to write home about. It’s bland, it’s entirely anglospheric and is not something hispanic.

@темы: Кинотеатр, Crimson Peak, Кино

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The Last Witch Hunter

Official russian translation.

Riddick 2000 bc.

A movie which feels like it has direct input from Vin Diesel and it's another of his stoic D'n'D characters. It's basically Riddick, just not Riddick enough. And those do fit action cinema genre rather well. It has some opposing PoV stuff, which makes this world more fun.

@темы: Кинотеатр, The Last Witch Hunter, Кино

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Heretic (1994)

Now that was unexpected. This game is basically just a re-skin of Doom, but also it's just not. While the exact subgenre, the feel and the flow are nearly identical, the animation is even juicier and the sound is even more impactful. The art-style is a peach, the level design is comprehensible and thematically nice and as an addition to the mechanics we have an inventory with a selection of items, most of which are actually useful. This is a rare fantasy FPS and we don't really have much of them to this day. This game is a thing to experience and is one of the best games i've experienced, even (or especially) in the context of 2010s.

Shadow of the Serpent Riders
Just like almost every other expansion of that era it offers more of the same as the base game, but with an instant difficulty spike due to (intentionally?) poor balance and inferior maps. But also it doesn't add new enemies or weapons.

@темы: Heretic, Компьютерные Игры

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Message Quest

Short casual linear adventure game with jigsaw puzzles and word-fighitng mechanics. Unconventionally for the genre, player and narrater both are the part of diegesis, so there is a lot of fourth wall breaking (help dora to slack from work). Storyline starts really good but then get strangely paced and tangled at the end.

Sound design is amazing, and game easily plays on nvidia surround. Also artstyle is scaling really well to higher resolutions.

Overall this short cheap game reminiscent of samorost by amanita design, though not as polished or rich for optional events.

@темы: Компьютерные Игры

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Shinryaku! Ika Musume OVA Episode 3

Он не просто снова бессмыслен и забывает о способностях персонажей, но на этот раз пал даже до упорного фокусирования на желеобразных сиськах.

@темы: Мультипликация/анимация, Shinryaku! Ika Musume, Энтропия, Индустрия Развлечений

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食戟のソーマ (Shokugeki no Sōma)
Сезон 1.
Несмотря на довольно вялые первые минуты, под конец первой серии сериал всё-таки раскрывает свою сущность. По-сути это типичные соревновательные школьники, только перенесённые из антуража нинзя, зомби или боевых искусств на кухню, что добавляет новой остроты клишировавшим персонажам и ситуациям. К тому же присутствует немалая часть "фан-сервиса" с мужикам, что балансирует типичный "фан-сервис" со школьницами и переводит его немного в другую контекстуальную плоскость. Перенесение фокуса именно на еду и описание её вкуса и эстетического удовольствия, с бросанием псевдонаучными названиями и терминами, изрядно выделяют данный сериал из толпы.

モンスター娘のいる日常 (Monsutā Musume no Iru Nichijō
Сезон 1.
Наитипичнейший сериал в жанре, который спасает только использование демилюдей, что даёт немножко новой жизни заезженным одинаковым шуткам. К тому же опять - используется псевдонаучный подход с описанием их физиологии.

俺物語!! (Ore Monogatari!!)
Сезон 1.
Благодаря использованию нетипичных для жанра персонажей и сюжетных отрезков, данный сериал умудрился зацепить немалую мужскую аудиторию. Он - сверхчеловек который и выглядит подобающе, а не как типичный женственный школьник. Она обладает своим вкусом и точно знает чего хочет, вместо стандартного блеяния и неспособности выразить мысли. Благодаря внедрению внешней силы, решающей все проблемы в первой половине сезона, сериал получился очень прямолинейный и довольно смешной (можно ли перевести слово "awesome", редуцирование для обозначения "крутых" моментов, как "потрясающий", несмотря на то, что "потрясающий" так редуцирован не был и по-прежнему содержит больший удар?). Однако автор видимо не смог или не захотел выдерживать тот же тон и вторая половина сезона вернулась к стандартной для жанра ДРАМЕ и является не самым приятным зрелищем. Что, к сожалению, в целом оставляет впечатление некого bait and switch.

旦那が何を言っているかわからない件 (Danna ga Nani o Itteiru ka Wakaranai Ken)
Сезон 1, 2.
Коротенький slice of life в котором не происходит ничего, кроме очень медленного продвижения основного сюжета. Впрочем, даже отсутствие приевшихся ещё десять лет назад одних и тех же шуток придаёт данному сериалу некой свежести.

下ネタという概念が存在しない退屈な世界 (Shimoneta to Iu Gainen ga Sonzai Shinai Taikutsu na Sekai)
Сезон 1.
Пытаясь сатиризировать состояние цензуры в японии (да в прочем и в остальном мире, так или иначе), сериал сам остаётся частью проблемы со своими незрелыми персонажами избегающими любого серьёзного поведения.

お兄ちゃんのことなんかぜんぜん好きじゃないんだからねっ!! (Oniichan no Koto Nanka Zenzen Suki Janain Dakara ne—!!)
Сезон 1.
One of these is not like the other. Затесавшись в список воспроизведения совершенно случайно, данный сериал из него выделяется абсолютным отсутствием в нём чего-либо оригинального или интересного. Уродливая стилистика конических сосисок сочетаяется с убогой анимацией, абсолютным отсутствием сюжета и дичайше убитыми "шутками". Притом в комиксе стилистика хоть и не блистает, но намного лучше чем здесь. И проблема даже не в поджанре, お姉ちゃんが来た (Onee-chan ga Kita) умудрилась при сверхнизком метраже всё-таки выстроить под конец подобающий контекст к происходящему. Здесь же нет ничего стоящего.

@темы: Мультипликация/анимация, Энтропия, Oniichan no Koto Nanka Zenzen Suki Janain Dakara ne!!, Shokugeki no Soma, Shimoneta to Iu Gainen ga Sonzai Shinai Taikutsu na Sekai, Danna ga Nani o Itteiru ka Wakaranai Ken, Ore Monogatari!!, Monsuta Musume no Iru Nichijo, Индустрия Развлечений

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Crash and Burn (1990)
The movie is vaguely connected to the Robot Jox, but all of the connections seem to be non-diegetic. In itself, this film is not about giant robots, but it's a funny slasher nonetheless.

Robot Wars (1993)
This is the movie i wanted to properly watch since childhood. The scorpion bot looks so damn cool, it's both a fighting machine and a public bus.

But the fighting scene is shorter than a minute and the plot is an incoherent mess. Pity this film is so weak, especially compared to the Robot Jox. But on the plus side, we do actually have Robot Jox and that is good.
/2015/09/26/

@темы: Crash and Burn (1990), Robot Wars (1993), Кино

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The Martian

Official russian translation.

Gravities of Galaxy.

A simple light-hearted movie with a scientific pretense. It's cool, and obviously much more superior to stupid dull Interstellar.

@темы: Кинотеатр, The Martian, Кино

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Quake 4

This game is broken beyond any recognition. For starters it refuse to work on modern machines, so you have to manually rewrite cfg. Then if you managed that, game will have worse textures and geometry than quake 1. Go back to cfg. Then it'll refuse to save any changes in settings menu. Go back to cfg.

And after all that it still runs at 15-30-60 FPS randomly on 2x GF970 in SLI. Add to that random crashes and long freezes.

And even if we forget all that - the game is still utter cowmanure. Level-design is boring repetitive corridors, movement is sluggish, enemies are dumb and boring, weapons are dumb, boring and ineffective. Half of guns utterly useless and you will run close quarters with shotgun till the final boss. Everything else is console-bethesda levels of awful too. But on the other hand being cowmanure become industry standard, so this game is just mediocre. And it smeared so much crab all other me so i kinda liked it in the end and it had its moments. Stockholm syndrome, obviously. Q4 is like little mentally challenged relative of prey, who crab under himself. They share a lot of similar themes, UI and types of guns. But this one starts with telling player how good Q2 was and then take all the worst part from Q2 and amplify them and take all the best parts of Q2 and throw them away. Even horrible voice acting with fake accents really tired, in the end actor who explaining you what to do nest is so disengaged that he almost yawning all the time.

There would be a chance that i'll let it pass, but horrible state as a product and overall brokenness is a no-no.

@темы: Энтропия, Quake, Компьютерные Игры, Индустрия Развлечений