Disney Infinity

So because I like video games and Disney, I decided to get a hold of Disney Infinity back when it came out last summer. So you can call this my little review of sorts. Disney Infinity is a game for almost all platforms, it consists of individual worlds called playsets with short story-lines and a platforming/brawler type gameplay with light puzzle solving. The main hub of the game is called the "Toybox mode", where collectibles found in the playsets can be used to create custom stages to be played in by yourself or to be shared online. Personally I started out with the version for the Nintendo Wii, but quickly switched to the Wii U version once I got the machine. Why? Well yes at around $65 for the main game alone it might seem like a very poor decision economics wise however the Nintendo Wii version just does not live up to the steep price point. If I wanted any enjoyment out of the game, not to mention the additional characters I purchased, I would have to switch version. There are a bunch of notable differences between the Wii version and the other versions of the game, if you look away from the most obvious one (the lower quality of graphics and sound) you will quickly realize that the Wii version is one of the poorest ports of a game out there. Not only are certain sound effects condensed beyond recognition (The sound effect of a horse jumping in the Lone Ranger playset sounds like a bear growling), the worlds are significantly smaller, gameplay aspects have been removed from the games, the storylines are shorter and the Wii version does not support 2 player co-op outside of toybox mode. On top of that, the entire online portion of the game small as it may be has been removed as well for the sake of the port. Wii owners, unless you have children that wants the game and you just cannot afford another game system I strongly advice that you do not purchase this title. For the rest of you however, there are plenty of good times to be had. The artstyle of the game is streamlined and pleasant to look at, the voice acting is, decent, taking into account that it's impersonators and not the original actors in the roles. The story-lines are all entirely new and fits right into their respective established universes with some acceptance for plot-collision. 

The main draw of the game is of course, the characters. You play the game by purchasing plastic figures that you can place on top of a USB device. The individual figures are about $20 a piece, but also really well crafted considering the price. When not being used for playing, they make for nice decorations on the shelf. With the game comes three characters with their respective playsets. Mr. Incredible from Pixar's The Incredibles, Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean and James P. Sullivan from Monsters University. It should be noted that if you want two player co-op in the playsets you'll have to purchase matching characters. Disney has you covered with a "sidekick 3-pack" sold seperately for around $42. The pack consists of Hector Barbossa for the Pirates set, Mrs. Incredible for The Incredibles set and Mike Wazowski for the Monster set. With every character you'll also get a code you can redeem online for usage in an online game for PC and Smart devices. On top of that, you can also collect "power discs". You'll get one with your initial purchase of the game and then you can buy packs of three for about $10 each. These are like playing card value packs though, so you should expect to get doubles. The power discs either gives you character a boost during play or gives you items for use in stage customization in the toybox mode. There's really no reason to get the power discs outside of the realm of bragging rights though, do with that information as you wish.

When critics reviewed Disney Infinity back in summer, they had a habit of comparing it with the Activision Skylanders franchise - and while there's certainly noticeable similarities in the marketing and gameplay it should be noted that while Skylanders has an overarching storyarc for each game Disney infinity does not. Therefore, there's no "point" in Disney Infinity outside of casual fun. You're not saving the world or anything, and the game consistently reminds you of this by making everything resemble actions figures and toys. The in-game store for purchasing items for puzzle solving is called the "Toy store", the superhero headquarters opens up like a gigantic Mighty Max toy, the list goes on. These are "just" toys, however I still found a lot of enjoyment in the title. 

The Lion King Storybook

 This was originally going to be a rewrite of the number 7 spot on my top 10 Disney Interactive games. But I instead decided to make the following it's own thing and delete the former post all-together:

Review: Deadman Wonderland Season 1

Quick Info:

Title: Deadman Wonderland (デッドマンワンダーランド Deddoman Wandārando)

Written by: Jinsei Kataoka
Illustrations: Kazuma Kondou

Published by: Shõnen Ace
Anime adaptation: Manglobe

Reviewed: Anime version

Liscensing rights: Tokyopop/Funimation

Aired on: Crunchyroll.com

So let's talk Anime, shall we? Deadman Wonderland is one of those ultra-violent, ultra-dark series that comes along once in a while. It starts off with a very bleak tone, and while it may delve into typical Shõnen territory then and again, it manages to keep somewhat fresh. It's based on a actual dead-wood manga, but I've only had the anime available to me (No actual effort was put into tracking down the manga though, the anime version is legally free on Crunchyroll.)

INTRO:

So I sit down in front of my computer, ready to have the usual J-pop insanity thrown at me,

or at the very least some sort of death metal nightmare. Instead I'm treated to a pretty descent little New Metal song, In English no less. The song is best described as akin to Pre-Reanimation Linkin Park, though it lacks rap it's very similar to their normal metal. Listening to it, I can't help but think of songs like Runaway or Papercut. The actual intro video, while very bloody and dark isn't all that visually interesting to look at. It features the most important characters in different kinds of poses, obscured by darkness and bloodsplatter.

PREMISE:

While it may be decently cool, The premise seems mostly like something an angsty teenager would come up with. A high school kid named Ganta Igarashi is somehow spared when all of his classmates are murdered brutally by an entity known as The Red Man. He is blamed for it however, and quickly sentenced to death. He's sent to the privately owned prison/fun fair called Deadman Wonderland. Built in the crater that once was Tokyo, Deadman wonderland is known for putting their inmates out in display as entertainment in a giant theme-park. Ganta quickly gains two friends, a secretive thief named Yõ Takami, and a albino fanservi-I mean happy girl named Shiro. It's also pretty fast established that Ganta has been given a special power to shoot bullets out of his palm. How it works, and why he has it it's too much of a spoiler to reveal here. The characters are cool enough, but the author seems to forget the story is supposed to take place in a high security prison and not a High School sometimes. Because of this, I sometimes feel there's a blur between this and any other High School battle shõnen available.

MAIN CHARACTER:

Ganta Igarashi suffers from the I'm-So-Weak-Phenonemon that's become very popular among authors these days. His personality and even given voice is very similar to Tsuna from Katekyo Hitman Reborn or Sena from Eyeshield 21. Both decent anime in their own right. The voice actress Romi Park, previously the voice of such characters as Edward Elric from Full Metal Alchemist does a stunning job though. It does make Ganta kind of intolerable in the long run, as these kind of characters lack of confidence tends to take up most of the first couple of story-arcs. All in all a very typical Shõnen hero that struggles to find their place in the world. The other characters, though interesting in their own right, really suffers from being comparable to other manga stereotypes as well. Off the top of my head, The character Crow is similar to Roronoa Zolo from One Piece.

ALL IN ALL:

While nothing groundbreaking or genre-changing it's a pretty good Battle Shõnen. The action is typically epic and like with any other series in the genre it let's you root for the characters and have your blood boil in excitement when the hero saves the day in the end. If series like One Piece (or something similarily popular) were to end tomorrow, Deadman Wonderland would probably be one of the series that the torch would be passed on to.

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Review: Spiral Knights

Quick Info:

Title: Spiral Knights

Price: Free to Play

Platform: PC/Steam Client/Facebook

Genre: MMORPG/Top-Down Shooter/Hack N' Slash.

Developer: SEGA, Three Rings.

Players: Massively Multiplayer, 4 Recommended for Action sequences.

Recently, Valve decided to support Free-To-Play games on their ever so popular Steam Client. Among the titles re-released for the client there was a game called Spiral Knights. Like with any modern MMO worth it's gull, you start off the game designing your character. The choices are somehow limited with only 3 types of helmet or armor available to choose from, you also get to choose from a sortiment of colors. Choose wisely however, as the color is the only thing you won't be able to change later on, it will become your permanent health-bar color and eye-color and all of your future equipment will sport the chosen color in some way or form. Very akin to the Guild Wars games. A friend and I had a 'incident' where both of our characters looked exactly the same. Thankfully, a really early quest requires you to aquire new amor in tier 2, of which there is lots to decide between so the problem was shortlived.

When you start the game, you wake up in no-mans land. The Spiral Order, the Knights of which you belong have crashlanded on a distant world. You'll have to fight your way to the rescue camp, armed with a sword, a shield and a handgun. Now already here you can find two pretty consistent complaints. The hit detection is pretty shaky, only hitting your target with the handgun 7 out of 10 times making you constantly switch to your sword. Even when it's strategically undesireable. The other complaint is the netcoding, a problem which alot of these games suffer from is that if you don't have a pretty good internet connection, The game is virtually unplayable. I myself, are for unrelated reasons only able to have a wireless 3G internet connection with a 20GB monthly download limit, making playing this game after the limit has been exceeded pretty problematic. If you can live with that however, the gameplay is definetly worth it.

Another reason to download the game is the free hat, If you're a Team Fortress 2 player (and if you aren't, why not? The Game is FREE now! Go get it!) you get a neat little helmet for your Soldier character which actually looks pretty cool compared to the standard equipment.

When you get to the Rescue camp, you're almost immediately transported to the city of Haven. Haven is your new permanent home-away-from-your-own-planet, Here you will be able to shop for equipment, chat it up with your fellow players, use the auction house, and train in the Advanced Training Center. More importantly though, this gives you access to "The Arcade" the area in which you're able to go to the action stages. The action stages are explained as being "The Clockworks" a maze of underground areas, riddled with monsters and traps. To get down to the clockworks however, you need to spend Energy. Energy function the same way as most Facebook games do. You're given a standard amount of energy, and every action costs some of it. When you're out of energy you can either wait a few hours for it to recharge or buy something immediately via micro-transactions with real money. An interesting twist on the tried and true formula is the Energy bazaar in which you can trade energy with other players with the in-game currency known as Crowns. While it definetly would have been preferred to just do away with the energy system once and for all, it's refreshing to see a new take on it. While the art-style is pretty cute it's also very standard and seen-before, so it's understandable they didn't go the League of Legends route.

All in all it's a very enjoyable experience, (Especially for the price of absolutely nothing) and it's a nice way to pass those times you need to wait for other games to patch, or your pizza to arrive.

Star Wars, The New Trilogy

Star Wars, one of the greatest titles to hit the silver screen and one of the most parodied series ever. When i grew up, i wasnt as much into movies (and in particular Star Wars) as i am now. i think i saw the Star Wars movies whenever they were on TV and I didnt really care too much for the plot (because i didnt read subtitles all that well yet) i just remember liking the action sequences and the two robots.

Then, when i was about 9 years old Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace hit the theatres and I watched it along with my brother, what i saw was literally.. confusing. who were all these characters? I remember asking my brother if the kid was Luke and he just sighed at me and shaked his head in despair.

Before Episode 2 got out, i had a chance to watch the original three.. now in a state where i understood what in the world was going on in this universe.. rewatching the episode 1 after that just made me mad at George Lucas. Why did we need episode 1, 2 and 3? it didnt make sense to me.

i then watched episode 2, i thought it was even worse than episode one.. it felt like "HEY! isnt it called Star WARS?! Where the hell is the WAR at?!" of course there were battles but it just didnt cut it for me, i wanted a war like in the originals, not a love movie.

Episode 3 had redeeming features, more action, better story (still bad dialogue though) but the movie still felt unnessescary to me, why did we need to know how Anarkin became Darh? it was all explained in the original 3!

Suddenly, Darth Vader wasnt a bad ass.. he was an EMO..

it makes me wonder.. what will feauture generations think of Star Wars? Will it still be great to them? PLEASE.. if you readers have the power to do it, make your kids watch the original 3 first.. or else i think it will be runied to them..

Reptilicus

in the 50's and 60's the world was going nuts over the giant monster movies, monsters like Godzilla and King Kong had gained a cult following and it is therefore no surprise that the danish company Saga Studios attempted to jump on the bandwagon, the result is one of the most underrated movies in Danish film history.

The movie starts out in Lapland where a couple of miners led by a guy named Svend is drilling, suddenly they get blood and flesh on the drill and decides to send a sample to the Aquarium of Denmark.

The Professors there, concludes that it is the remains of a unknown species of Dinosaur, and after an error with keeping the specimen (being a tail) cold, it start to regenerate, turning out to become a fullfledged undestroyable dinosaur with wings!

Reptillicus (as it is named) starts flying around, first destroying Hamburg and Stockholm before attacking Copenhagen where it is defeated with a poisonus supergrenade shot into it's mouth.

The movie ends with a blown-off foot lying on the bottom of Øresund, which could regenerate to a new monster..

unfortunately, Danes are weird creatures who cant love something for the sake of the camp value, and Reptilicus remains the only one of it's genre to ever be made in Denmark.

I really like this movie, even though the effects are bad it could be made great, when my company gets bigger, i'm definately going to do a remake.

ONE MORE THING: This Blog has somehow turned into a place where i talk about lesser known popculture phenonemons and such. I think i'll just keep it that way.

Awesome Title is Awesome, Yes.

I've just reread The comic: Justice League of America meets The Avengers.

What do I have to say about it? probably nothing that hasn't already been said, it's a good story.. but not executed very well.. I mean sure, it's hard to think up a premise for clashing to separate worlds.

The book is pretty weird if you aren't a well-balanced DC and Marvel reader, you have to know what in the world is going on in both universes to understand what the hell is going on, and though I did my best to research (Wikipedia is your friend) I still had a hard time catching on. I guess the most hard part understanding was exactly WHO some of the characters were, I mean I'm familiar with them a little.. I know about guys like Superman and Iron man (and to be frank, who doesn't?) but when it came down to characters like The Vision or who the hell was dressed up as Green Lantern I got lost.

Silver and Weed

No, this post is not about how you can earn quick cash on illegal substances.

Recently, or well not that long ago I finished watching all of Silver Fang (Ginga Nagareboshi Gin) and its follow-up Weed (Ginga Densetsu Weed) and I gotta say both was pretty entertaining:

Ginga Nagareboshi Gin, or Silver Fang:

The Original Series evolves around a Akita Pup named Gin or Silver depending on what part of the world you're from. (I'll just stick to Silver from now on). The mountains of Ohu is under siege by the monstrous bear Akakabuto which has grown to an extreme size due to it not sleeping through the winter because it was shot in a nerve near it's brain.

Silver is the son and grandson of to great bearhunting dogs who both risked their life and died while facing Akakabuto on a one on one. Silver joins forces with the boy Daisuke but later leaves him to join an army of dogs who's seeking strong males to fight off Akakabuto and take back Ohu and the Twin mountain pass. This brings Silver in the company of strong dogs like the Great Dane mix Ben and the fighting dog Benisakura.

It's an old anime and it shows, the pictures isnt as clean as you see in most anime these days and sometimes in the dubbed version you can still hear remnants of the Japanese voice actors which actually gives the series a nostalgic charm. The Anime was never on TV outside of Japan so chances are you haven't heard of it if you didn't have it on VHS.. luckily it's rereleased on DVD so get going and buy it!


Ginga Densetsu Weed, or Weed the Son of Silver!:

Weed is the son of Silver! in this anime everything has been updated, even the artwork!

The story takes place 14 years after the fall of Akakabuto, The Twin Pass of Ohu is under attack by a monster dog and Smith is send off to take the pregnant bitch Sakura to safety who bears the child of Silver who is now the boss of it all!

6 months later Sakura is dying and her son Weed is desperately trying to save her by getting her tasty stuff to eat, he meets up with the english setter G.B. who names him and Smith, after saying their farewells to Sakura who sadly dies, Smith and G.B. takes Weed to meet up with his father at the dogs paradise in Ohu, but they run into many trouble on the way.

This Anime takes a sudden turn from the classic Silver Fang setup to something a little more chaotic, also it's pretty obvious to the audience that this isn't made by the same crew that made the original series. Nonetheless it's entertaining as a stand alone anime and shouldnt be seen with the old series in mind or else you'll get a little disappointed through most of the series as Silver nearly isnt in it.

All in all, it's two very interesting series that, if you haven't already you should definitely check out.

The Messiah Complex

Hoo Boy..

Denmark has started publicing The Messiah CompleX recently starting with issue 152..
Now, i'm a comic book fan but i haven't read a single issue of X-men for a long time.. actually i think the last x-men issue i read was "Ultimate X-men" back in 2004..
So let's look into it from the perspective of a "newcomer" shall we?

First things first, the Danish translation is put together by the different books the stories is compiled by, making it easier for us so we don't have to follow 4 different series at once, for those who don't know.. the messiah complex is put together by reading the original Messiah CompleX one-shot + uncanny X-men + X-factor + new X-men. which means to get the whole story you have to buy from all of them. Thank god for Kim Helt.

Anyway..

The book starts out with the original X-men flying through the air in the Blackbird, that's the X-men all right, you got Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Cyclops and Angel... but who's this? Emma Frost, appearently she's some kind of blonde Jean Grey.. so what? she stays dead now? that's good for a change..


a couple of pages further in we see Beast and The Professor using Cerebro, not bad.. classic X-men.. though on the artsy side I kind of can't get over Beast looking like a lion (I'm used to the old cartoon show).. we get established that because of the events of "The day of M" theres only like 2.000 mutants in the world.. but suddenly Cerebro explodes! it seems a new mutant with incredible powers has been born.. i turn the page two times aaaand.. What the fuck.. The Proffessor gets up off his chair and walks away.. granted I could have missed a plot where that became possible but i've only ever known the professor as a guy who couldnt walk because his legs were lame.. or something..

well the rest of the book is just a lot of new characters getting introduced if you're new but it guess newcomers could give this a read without getting too confused..

Still, This comic will make as much sense for you as if you read Angel: After The Fall without ever having seen the TV show.