Archive for November, 2013

M.L.P Review- S4ep3- Castle Mane-ia

Posted: November 27, 2013 in My Little Pony- Reviews
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Well, well, well! From good, to amazing! This has to be yet another classic for this cartoon show! Just like “Lesson zero”, “Party of one”, and “Sleepless in Ponyville”, the recent episode Castle Mane-ia treads in new waters, and just like the episodes above, it succeeds in almost every way. Let me just say, right off the bat, this has to be my favorite episode since “Sleepless in Ponyville”.

So let’s get started. Twilight Sparkle is trying to find the keys needed for the secret locked box (WHAT’S IN THE BOX?!) that was revealed in the season premier, Celestia sends her to her old palace and… hijinks comes! One of the only nitpicky thing I can mention about this episode, is that the ONE cliché that they did not succeed in, is providing a convincing reason for the mane 6 to find their way to the same exact castle that Twilight is searching with Spike.

However, all of them are in there, each one in understandable pairs (Dash with Applejack), and the place seems sort of odd and scary. Applejack explains some sort of ghost story, and soon enough so many odd things are happening that it is hard to follow. Hard to follow, mostly due to the brilliant laugh-fits you are sure to be experiencing.

Every cliché that is utilized in this episode is used for comedic effect, everything from scoobie-do episodes, to more modern clichés, we see them all. I was having a ball noticing all of them, and laughing at them as the colorful, cute ponies of Equestria trek around this dangerous place. Of course, in the typical cartoon-horror fashion, they all find each other and they realize that the haunting was just Pinkie playing a rigged pipe organ. And in typical (and hilarious) fashion, they all shake their heads and yell out “Pinkie!” as if it’s a recurring thing.

I don’t think it’s hard to tell that I absolutely loved this episode, everything from its unexpected and less-childish nature, to its wall-to-wall action and comedic timing. Subtle things like the unknown interacting Rarity gets to have with dash (through a glory hole in the wall, it seems), make this all the better. And the fact that it is revealed that there IS something haunting/living inside the castle, is even more unexplored and fascinating.

For a show like this, of course it would be Pinkie Pie causing all the drama. Maybe it’s the fact that I was loving this entire episode so much that I didn’t even bother guessing. All I know is, every single bit of comedy (From angel to fluttershy to rarity to everypony) was gold or at least silver. The pacing was fast and in your face, but not to the point where you couldn’t follow the plot either. Each character was utilized very well, receiving multiple lines of dialogue jam-packed with both references and well-timed deliveries.

All I did at the end was giggle and clap, because this was something I always want to see this show do. An episode that places the characters in a unique location, with unique dialogue and a unique story, only to end with them being even close to each other than before. Brava Castle Mane-ia, welcome to my Top 10 list!

Pros:

–          Extremely well-paced

–          A comedic use of clichés!

–          Pinkie pie being ADORABLE

–          Wall-to-wall humor!

–          Great character pairings that succeeded without a doubt

–          A unique and pretty setting to explore

–          Lest not forget brilliant voice acting!

Cons:

–          Twilight acting more like a “mother” than a character experiencing this fantastic story

–          The “Dear diary” Thing was a little forced…

Grade: A

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FrogFinest MLP Review – S4E1&2

Posted: November 25, 2013 in Other Peoples - MLP Reviews
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Well it’s about time Season 4 arrived.  I will be doing these reviews along side Awkward on this site, but instead of using his system I will be using a 5 star rating system.  So let’s begin.

The premiere of Season 4 is acting as the first impression for the fan base and everybody else viewing, so the importance of this episode being good goes without saying.  And the reality is, it actually is pretty good, but it goes on an up-and-down roller coaster of quality throughout each act, making plenty of room for improvement.

The episode starts off rather lighthearted, as usual, this time with Rainbow Dash giving Twilight flying lessons.  I’m not even going to state the inconsistency with the Season 3 finale since it’s probably been played down to death. That scene pretty much declared that the tone of the show would remain the same through season 4, which I’m rather glad for.

The first portion of the episode, mostly deals with Twilight addressing her newfound responsibilities as a princess and dealing with them, mostly through an expression of stress (glad to see she hasn’t changed yet).  This makes for a rather touching scene with Celestia later where they recap on the Summer Sun Celebration and it’s definition, establishing a relatable connection with Celestia and Luna.  It was a rather fantastic part of the episode for now the two main princesses are actually being built up, and in a good way if I might add.

However, random chaos eventually ensues when thick black vines each with a sense of consciousness kidnap Celestia and Luna and wreak havoc throughout Equestria.  Of course these vines originate from the Everfree Forest, and the reasoning why is addressed later on in the show.  This leads to the Main 6 trying to solve the problem to no avail, as the vines continue to command and conquer.  The main 6 then claim Discord to be the problem and try to get him to fix everything.

Now Discord is reintroduced again, and throughout the episode he is actually executed rather well to atone for the pathetic attempt the writers made at reforming him in Keep Calm and Flutter On.  Throughout the episode he is still as free-spirited and taunt-full as ever, while still retaining some control over what he can and especially cannot do in Equestria.  He is practically the prime source of humor throughout the episode and the animation for him is still as imaginative and funny as always.  He was overall a fantastic addition to the episode.

Zecora then comes in with a potion that, when combined with alicorn magic looks like milk or some other white liquid that certainly won’t be taken out of context, and allows Twilight to see into the past to find a solution to their problem.  This leads Twilight to witness the battle between Celestia and Luna during Luna’s corruption as princess a thousand years ago, and ultimately in the most intense action sequence this show has had.  This revealed nothing useful for Twilight, so she takes another swig of the substance and is shown the confrontation between the princesses and Discord that also took place a thousand years ago.  After that, Twilight is zoomed out into another event of the past where Luna and Celestia approach the “Tree of Harmony” that brings forth the origin of the elements and suggests several things about the nature of the elements and what they overall represent. Overall, a huge plus to this episode was the world building aspects it brought up, elaborating on past events that were only talked about but never shown.

However, beyond this point is when the episode begins falling on it’s face.  Twilight is convinced the Tree of Harmony has something to do with it, so the Mane 6 begin their quest through the Everfree.  Here the pacing is insanely poor where every attempt at creating emotional and sentimental moments with the Mane 6 is rendered weak and useless.  Not only that but that lead to pointless backtracking that lead to wasted time that could have been used to develop the sentimental moments properly rather than throwing them at us, expecting us to bite.  Basically the biggest problem with these scenes was that they wasted a huge amount of time doing hardly doing anything eventful and failing at whatever they tried to do.

From there, Twilight and Spike begin searching for the others (they got separated in the mix of the backtracking) and in the end of the search Spike ends up finding the rest of the Mane 6, but renders Twilight vulnerable to a set of giant facehugger-like plants.  These plants emitted a blue gaseous substance that KO’d Twilight, leading Spike to get the others to rescue her.  In a disappointing fight sequence the others manage to deal with the facehuggers to save Twilight before said facehuggers could eat her.

I’m going to shorten the rest of the events beyond this to save space on here because frankly I see that this review is getting a bit big.  They reach the tree, another weak attempt at a sentimental bonding  occurs between the Mane Six, Twilight saves the day by sacrificing the elements of harmony to kill the vine monsters and save the princesses, the Mane 6 receive a box with 6 locks that nobody knows how to open, and the Summer Sun Celebration occurs with Twilight miraculously and randomly performing her own version of a Sonic Rainboom.  These scenes did both good and bad, where yet again potentially fantastic moments were rendered unimpressive, while on the other hand the rest of the season has a new story arc to work on.

So overall, this episode was pretty good for a premiere.  Much like the one from the first season, it set up the rest of the season in a lot of different ways, acting like a true premiere unlike the previous two.  It had a decent first act and a fantastic second act, but it’s third act was simply pathetic, hurting this shows grade dramatically.  The unnerving amount of plot holes and inconsistencies this episode were more than present, but the majority are certainly overlookable by the quality of the acts they were presented in.  In general, this episode did a lot of good and a lot of bad, but overall a lot of the bars this episode had are rather forgivable.

Overall Grade:3.5stars ~FrogFinest

M.L.P Review – S4ep1&2 – Princess Twilight Sparkle

Posted: November 24, 2013 in My Little Pony- Reviews
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Hello and welcome to season 4 everyone! I’m thrilled to be here and doing these reviews of a show I’ve come to enjoy over the past few months. But, I don’t plan to keep the introduction long, let’s jump right into the review!

Season 4 starts with a hectic two parter that does more good than bad, in fact, I don’t have TO much to say about this episode that isn’t generally praising it for its robust and continues quality. Everything was sleek and animated wonderfully, voice acted believably, and was delightfully light-hearted in some areas, and grim in others.

The episode starts out with Twilight (seemingly both forgetting and remembering how to fly simultaneously) “learning” how to fly from her friend Rainbow Dash. It doesn’t take long for her to air her complaints about being Princess and how difficult it must be. Although the entire “we can’t spend time with you because we must help ponyville” excuse the other five friends tell Twilight is decently believable, I can’t help but groan at the forced lesson I’m sure to be treated to by the end of the episode.

The highlight of the first episode comes shortly after, however, when Celestia visits Twilight in her room and describes that the summer sun celebration is somewhat of a fresh slate for Celestia. How she wants to remember this ceremony as the return of her sister, and not the banishment of nightmare moon. The entirety of this scene was surprisingly heartwarming and felt natural. This is of course until a letter from Twilight’s friends arrives and Twilight (stupidly) ignores it for whatever reason.

Queue chaos! The everfree forest begins invading Ponyville and we soon find out that it won’t stop until the entirety of Equestria is under its leafy tentacle-ey grasp! The five other ponies try to help but it’s pretty useless, and after Twilight finds out from the hilariously voice-acted Canterlot guards that the other two princesses are missing, she fail-tastically flies over to her friends in Ponyville.

They of course bring in the seasonal guest star “Discord”, whom is brilliantly voice acted by John Delancie, and from then on the hilarity ensues. We see Zecora bring some random (seemingly out of no where) potion that conveniently needs an Alicorn to activate. Twilight drinks it, and then we get my favorite bits of the episode in sequential order.

We get a whole dollop of Princess and Equestrian lore that I just ate up. Needless to say, I loved every moment of it. We saw Luna’s transformation into nightmare moon (animated to perfection), the stunning battle between her and Celestia (surprisingly intense for a show like this), and then we saw discord stealing Celestia’s tail.

Twilight finds the special tree of harmony from where the elements came, and we get on a less-than-epic mini adventure. Here is where I can pick a serious gripe with the show. The five characters all tell Twilight to bugger off back to Ponyville, while they find the tree. And when she unwillingly accepts, they find that they are quite literally screwed without her. The five ponies are literally hopeless without their “savior” Princess Twilight Sparkle. Something I find absurd and silly as she was just as easily cornered by those perfume-spewing plants.

However, I suppose one could argue that without each other they are less-than-capable on such an adventure… but there could have been much better ways of showing that. Then the gang re-unites, and they easily stop the infestation of the black-scary-plant-tentacles.

As I said in my reaction, I believe that the third act is where the episode began slipping down and down, and it ended up with a hackneyed and downright dumb ending. The defeat of the infestation was underwhelming at best, and the entire idea of Discord “teaching her a lesson” was forced and stupid. Of course unless he has some ulterior motives, which should be interesting. May I just add that I’m surprised at how much I enjoyed his presence as sort of the “Anti-hero” of the show, it’s refreshing and fun.

We did get left off on what seemed to be a “seasonal arc” involving some random tulip-like flower sprouting from the ground and blooming in front of the ponies (and rescued princesses). A chest appears with six keys, and an obvious mystery pops up. In my opinion, we’ll be seeing an episode of each pony from where they gain one of these keys, and for the season finale we will have them open it and I’m sure something big will occur (Hopefully all of them DON’T turn into alicorns).

Overall, this episode succeeded in where it needed to. It needed to be an entertaining forty minutes of light-hearted pony goodness. It succeeded in providing the (unexpected) intensity and drama with flying colors. And the only honest missteps involve the third act being downright lazy compared to the rest. This is most definitely a good start to the season, one that I was very worried about. And I was pleasantly surprised to see the entire gang get enough screen time, and not having Twilight completely dominate the show. Make sure you stick around for more reviews to come, everyone, because if this is any indication for the rest of the season, we are still in the same good and comfortable hands that we were in previously!

 

Pros:

–          Princess Sparkle wasn’t as infuriatingly boring as I thought it was.

–          Discord makes a welcome return as the lovable anti-hero we see him as now.

–          Pinkie pie is present… that should be enough to warrant a “pro”

–          Each one of the characters got a decent amount of screentime.

–          An interesting concept for a villain in the episode.

–          Awesome princess/Equestrian lore

–          Great intensity and even sadness mixed in with decent humor

Cons:

–          Too much backtracking

–          The pacing was decent at best.

–          Unnecessary scenes that did more harm than good

–          The gang being useless without Twilight

–          The third act fumbled too much to be considered a success

–          Sonic Twi-boom? What the…?

 

Grade:

Episode 1: B+

Episode 2: B+

Game Review- Sonic: Lost World

Posted: November 18, 2013 in Game Reviews
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Well if this is going to be my first review here, I might as well make it a good one.  The Sonic the Hedgehog series is a very bumpy tale, having plenty of ups, downs, and everything in between.  However, recently with some of it’s latest games, Generations and Colors, it seems that Sonic Team has been on a smooth track for the better.  With their most recent implementation, Sonic: Lost World, the consistency of their success is brought even further into question, so it is my job today to explain to you my feelings about the game.

Story:  For the many who have played games from the Sonic the Hedgehog series, it’s pretty clear that the story is not a huge focus for the developers.  Even in it’s more successful games, the stories have proven to be nothing special or unmemorable at best.  Sonic: Lost World changes this trend up by implementing a large variety of cutscenes that drive the story in different directions, rather than prove it to be stagnant and/or linear.  This is actually very well appreciated because it makes a strong use of previously bland characters, such as Dr. Robotnik (Eggman) and Tails, while still staying on focus.

However, the newest set of the antagonists, not so rightfully named “The Deadly Six” (Zavok, Zazz, Zeena, Master Zik, Zomom, and Zor) aren’t nearly as welcomed of an addition.  Each of them follow a specific archetype, and stick to it until the very end hardly changing once so ever.  Their dialogue is painfully predictable as a result, deteriorating whatever charm they had to begin with.

What probably caught me most off-guard about this game was the overall writing.  The main characters: Sonic, Tails, and Dr. Robotnik are all excellently written and made complex.  This drove the story in so many different directions and allowed characters (most notably Sonic) to express character development, something which hasn’t been done well in God knows how long. Dr. Robotnik’s dialogue was hilariously brutal at some parts and he was generally an extremely likable character in this game.  Tails was a minor character throughout all of this, though he still played a major role in the progression of the story as well as had some quirky and charming dialogue moments.

Gameplay:  Now this was a big talking point in many of the rather mixed reviews it has received.  Sonic: Lost World uses a completely new gameplay style that focusses primarily on skilled platforming rather than getting from one place to another at the blink of an eye, and as a result it became a hit-or-miss for many who tried to play it like the latter.  Personally, I love the new gameplay style.  It’s overall very smooth and fun, allowing you to take in the beautiful and creative environment, as well as allowing you to experiment with the many different ways you can complete a level.  And that’s another thing, it’s level design allows for you to clear through the same area in a large variety of ways that creates a strong sense of replay-ability for many of the levels.

With this new renovation, there are also some new implementations into the gameplay.  The game has parkour mechanics, that actually act as lifesavers at times and as ways to get to new parts of the same level.  This game also reintroduces the Wisps from Sonic Colors, and the mechanics around them are creatively used, albeit clunky at times with the WiiU’s control scheme.  And finally a new kick feature has been introduced where you can kick an enemy and send them flying towards other enemies.  Some bots require you to use this attack in order to get past them, but it is not exclusive to them.  Overall, the new implementations are a very warm welcome to the game.

However, it does have it’s flaws.  It’s gameplay structure is slightly contradictory.  This increased emphasis on platforming makes it rather difficult towards the end of the game, but the problem here is that you do not earn a life for every 100 rings you collect, so you will typically find yourself getting “game overs” on the trial-and-error based levels.  However, the most notable flaw is the “Deadly” Six themselves.  Throughout the game each Zeti acts as a boss, and rather pathetic ones at that. Some of them are beatable within less than a minute while others run a pattern that never changes once so ever.  So yes, the boss battles are total jokes and major disappointments for the hype the game received.

Consensus:  In conclusion, this is a fantastic game.  The story is very entertaining, the levels are fun and extremely creative, and the gameplay is challenging and innovative.  This game certainly lived up to it’s hype, despite having some notable problems, and has plenty of replay-ability in my book.  Despite disappointing in some areas, the flaws are overall neglectable by being overshadowed by everything else this game had to offer.

Sonic Team has yet again, made a memorable and well-crafted game.  The future is looking bright for the blue blur.

Grade: B+

~FrogFinest

Game Review- Battlefield 4

Posted: November 16, 2013 in Game Reviews
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Battlefield has always been a series that I found to be fascinating, everything about it screamed “just another FPS!”, this is of course how it looks like. However, there are a few crucial factors about a Battlefield game that separate it from the title of “just another FPS”, and that’s its massive maps, and vehicle based combat.
Battlefield 4 is not exception to this rule, ever since battlefield bad company, the game had fantastic destruction to go alongside the great vehicle warfare. Although this game isn’t something revolutionary and new, it still improves on almost everything Battlefield 3 included, and it’s the better game for it.

Campaign: The campaign is fairly unremarkable… it spans just about 4-6 hours, and that in itself is weak. However, unlike the god-awful battlefield 3 campaign, this one strives to tell a more personal story about a squad of soldiers. This was a great choice by whoever wrote the story, as I by the end I could remember all the characters names, and even like a lot of them.

Its story isn’t half-bad either, something that’s both exhilarating and touching in some areas. And I can’t say there was a single moment in the game where I was downright bored. I feel that around six hours is an understandable length for an “on the rails” shooter like this one.

I can’t continue without mentioning how spectacularly beautiful the game is. I can easily say it’s the best looking game ever to be released, and the frostbite 3 engine is a technical masterpiece. It not only improves the textures of the ground, buildings, and even weapons tenfold over Battlefield 3, but it also makes the lighting and shading impressive.

Although you are placed head first into a “map”, during the single-player, the game still gives you enough room to explore and approach the target the way you want to. It utilizes the destruction much better than Battlefield 3 did.

Multiplayer: This is what we have all been waiting for, the multiplayer is the TRUE reason to buy a game like this. And it does not disappoint in the slightest.

Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s not revolutionary or a far cry away from Battlefield 3. But every single little tweak that it adds, every single little perk and pickup makes the gameplay experience THAT much better.

The levelution system that they added was simply music to my ears. I have to say, apart from the massive game-changing events that you can trigger, like sky-scrapers collapsing, or dam’s breaking and flooding the map, my favorite bits of levelution are the smaller changes. For example, you can switch off the lights, making true “in-the-dark” combat that you can utilize to sneak up and kill your enemy. This is the biggest, and most welcome change.

It isn’t the only one either, the game comes with a plethora of new and old weapons. Each one feeling slightly different than the last. Also, the customization system has been improved as well, making you able to add more attachments to your weapon. On top of all of this, they added a smoother UI to the PC version of the game, making navigating the screen easier.

All of this accompanied by a solid “battlelog” system that they implemented in battlefield 3, the game is more than just an upgrade, it’s a pleasure. As soon as you enter the game you will feel the similar feeling you felt when you first played battlefield 3, however, that feeling will triple when you see the massive buildings collapsing as the destruction gets bumped up five notches.

The multiplayer is something that I will be playing for months to come as I fight my way to the highest rank, having a blast the entire way through.

Consensus:

                Overall, the entire product is solid, the campaign, although short and a bit unremarkable, offers enough visuals to sustain you for the time being. However, the multiplayer is once again the gem of the series, blending almost photo-realistic visuals with 64-player vehicular combat with such fluidity and precision you cannot help but snicker and laugh at the failed Call of Duty title that launched this year.

This is a great title, from a great company, with a great life-cycle. All I can say, in this time of great joy, is see you on the battlefield.

Grade: B+ 

M.L.P Fan-content Review- Mentally Advanced Series (Episode 1)

Posted: November 16, 2013 in My Little Pony Fan content-Reviews
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So this is what Mentally Advanced series is, huh? They always say to never judge a book by its cover, what about judging a book by its cover BUT also its first few pages? Fine fine… I won’t judge the entire series on this one, introductory episode. As we have seen, FiW had the same shoddy beginning to the abridged series, I just hope this one improves more dramatically.

The voice acting in this series is understandably sub-par (even compared to FiW’s), but understandably so, when there is only one person voice acting all six characters. However, I must say that he does his job well with Spike (the seventh character) and Pinkie, who are definitely the more diverse and funny of the bunch (thus far).

The issue lies not with the voice acting, but with the whole product in general. It was done in a slightly unprofessional manner that detracted from the viewing experience greatly. It had issues with the sound effects, the background music at times was way too loud for the dialogue, and there was some visible lip-sync issues. Now I know the lip-sync is usually expected to be off in abridged series’ (even in the best ones), but here it was noticeably and unforgivably off.

Negatives aside, this episode still had a fairly good amount of laughs, particularly derived from the revised Rarity character, and Rainbow Dashes honesty about how petty and attention-whore-ish she is. Apart from that, however, we had Pinkie and spike speaking in funky accents, and fluttershy being rape-y, what more is there to ask of?

Oh I know… how about something that isn’t so shoddily edited and produced? If I had some advice to give, it is that the creator should have practiced more with editing. I know it was his first time, and for a first time it is good work, but still, practice practice practice!

I can forgive this episode for most of its flaws, mostly because it was only done by one person, and that by itself is impressive. Now it’s no .MOV… in fact, it’s a few gigaparsecs away from being even near .MOV in its hay day, but it’s still nice to see someone doing more MLP fan content! Stay tuned for more upcoming reviews!

 

Grade: C-

Game Review- Call of Duty: Ghosts

Posted: November 15, 2013 in Game Reviews
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                I’m not one to have these rapid-fire reviews, for gaming anyway. Especially when a game has this massive expansive multiplayer that takes you hours upon hours to get accustomed to. So, it’s been just about a week and a half since I got “Ghosts” and after I beat the campaign, and played unlocked everything in multiplayer, I find myself ready to do a full on review. So let’s start off with the campaign.

Campaign: A call of Duty campaign has never been something I adored, all the “Modern Warfare” campaigns felt so benign and cliché, I wouldn’t have been surprised if the word “Bro!” popped up every so often to disrupt the endless explosions and shooting.

                So when I heard Infinity Ward (or whatever they are now) said they will be creating this “unique and touching” campaign experience. I was of course… underwhelmed. I tend to not get excited for video games as much as I used to. The entire engine looks shoddy, and even the campaigns choreography is less of a technical marvel, and more of a technical snoozefest. Nothing they do in this campaign is unique or exciting, most of it is just sub-par voice acting with a cliché story.

                The dog… oh how much you have been hyped! Was this hype worth it though? NOPE! We get to see the dog a few times, but mostly in the starting missions, and then he just disappears from the game for a while. So… that was sort of dumb!

                The games campaign is pretty unremarkable, it lacks whatever the modern warfare campaign had, and seriously lacks whatever the black ops campaigns had. I want to get it straight that the black ops (and black ops II) campaigns were surprisingly fantastic, in my opinion. The voice acting was gorgeous, the set pieces were spectacular (especially in the second one) and the stories were actually fascinating and very well written.

                So in the end, the campaign does its job in giving you an overlong shoot-em-up experience with little flare or visual finesse.

 

Extinction mode: Extinction is a mode Infinity Ward slapped onto this latest Call of Duty to combat the rabid “Zombies” fanbase that Treyarch created. Let me just say, I was never a huge Zombies fan, however, I loved the whole “upgrading” and “mystery box” system enough to play with my friends.

                In Extinction mode, they ditch all of that and set you on a linear path. It is once again, quite unremarkable and boring. However, I must say that the aliens look good enough, and they have this odd movement pattern that is somewhat refreshing to the zombies “roar and run” tactic of attack.

                I really can’t write too much about Extinction, it is drab, it doesn’t have much life to it. And after about ten or so games, I felt like I was bored out of my mind and just went back to the multiplayer.

 

Multiplayer: Here is where the “Ghosts” experience truly fails. I was never really excited for “Ghosts”, in fact, my expectations were just for the game to be somewhat interesting, with new guns, and new attachments.

                To my surprise, they have none of that. This multiplayer experience is absolutely dreadful. Not because it runs badly or anything either, it runs fine. It’s just the most hackneyed and lazy multiplayer I’ve played in years.

                I was a big fan of Black ops II, and perhaps my expectations were STILL too high. However, in my humble opinion, this is just heresy. The graphics were downgraded to an unbearable low, especially on the consoles where the game looks like the call of duty: Modern warfare Beta with a horridly ugly grey tint that covers every single map you play on.

                Each call of duty, while not completely unique and new, still managed to add new weapons and attachments and at least somewhat of a new enough experience to keep me entertained for a few months. But, if I’m honest, this was shocking to see. Instead of adding more weapons, more attachments, more customization. They added LESS!

                I cannot customize my weapon as much as I could in black ops 2, also, they removed that amazing Score-streak system in place for Modern warfare 3’s half-asses Point-streak system. The character customization is boring and not worth your time, and the entire concept of building your squad is dreadful as well. It hardly adds anything new to the experience, to the point where the game feels like an overly simplistic wreck that still manages to confuse me.

                They made every map large, for Call of Duty standards, so it takes a decent amount of walking around to even find an enemy. Every weapon has a shockingly similar shot sound to the weapons in modern warfare 3. It just seems like they truly failed at making this multiplayer experience anything but downright boring.

               

                Overall, the game looks bad, the multiplayer adds hardly anything worth noting. And every single feature that they said was new, ended up disappointing me to no end. The perk system was garbage and overdone, the soldier customization was horrible, and even the gunplay was worse than battlefield’s (a vehicle oriented game).

                The campaign was a clichéd “bro-fest” of childish explosions and bad dialogue. And the extinction mode felt too forced and one-timed that I didn’t feel entertained while playing it.

                In the end, this game does the bare minimum in a time where Call of Duty needed to assert itself. Next generation is being released, and this recent entry lagged behind the rest of the games, even more than I expected. Infinity ward, you have failed to provide anything but the barest of the bare, the most boring and dreadful multiplayer experience call of duty has put out in a while. And if I were to add one thing that I enjoyed about this game, it was the ability to finally set my controller down after I unlocked all of the pathetic amount of weapons in this disappointing game.

 

Grade: D

Music Review- Marshall Mathers LP 2

Posted: November 15, 2013 in Music Reviews
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eminem

After three whole years, the “Rap god” has returned to grace the mic with lyrics and metaphors that blow up any other rappers attempts to rhyme.

Let me make one thing clear, I am NOT a fan of hip hop/rap of the modern era, I stopped caring in 2004 whether one shitty rap song was better than the other shitty rap song. Nothing about modern rap appeals to me. It uses overly complex, stupid beats, with repeating choruses, and horrible rhyming schemes and lyrics that don’t deviate song-to-song.

The one saving grace of this terrible genre was Eminem. After Wu-Tang stopped making wide-release albums, and Big pun unfortunately passed away. We were introduced to what has to be the worst genre of music I’ve ever heard. The Lil’ Waynes, Drakes, and Kanye Wests of the world dominate the music industry, and it’s frightening and somewhat sickening.

So in 2009, once I saw that Eminem FINALLY released a new album (Relapse) after his stint in rehab, I was thrilled. I don’t think the three year wait was worth it then, although he wasn’t inherently bad (still miles ahead anyone at the time), he returned with a strange accent, and simplified lyrics. He ended up dropping the accent in 2010, when he released the follow-up album “Recovery”, and made it more serious. However, the trend of simplifying lyrics, making metaphors less prevalent and interesting, really hurt his abilities in my mind.

So was this three years’ worth the wait? HELL. YES.

It is clear that Eminem/slim-shady is not what he used to be, or… he is not LIKE he used to be. This is not a jab at his rapping abilities, not at all, I mean he uses a different kind of music. His creative choices were something to marvel at in this album. While a few songs didn’t particularly appeal to me, the album as a whole was technically, and most importantly, lyrically, fantastic.

“Marshall Mathers LP 2” isn’t just a simple rehash of “I’ma make fun of my mom”, this album is an honest and true example of a rappers maturity. Instead of shying away from his somewhat intimidating age of 41, he faces his mid-life head on, and even pokes fun at himself. Of course this is done in the typical Eminem fashion, with supersonic metaphors and lyrics that make your mouth open as you try to wrap your mind around the lyrical mastery that is unfolding in front of you.

I don’t plan to talk about every single song here in detail, but needless to say, this album is hilarious at parts, but extremely emotional in others. A great example of this are two of this album’s standout tracks, “Legacy”, where he discusses the troubles of being different, and “Headlights”. “Headlights” is perhaps his most resonant and touching track in a decade, something to marvel at.

After a decade, Eminem finally forgives and even apologizes to his mother. Stating things like his famous “cleaning out my closet” track is something he cringes at now, vowing to never perform that track again. This song, honest to whatever deity you may or may not believe in, made me choke up a little. I was a fan of Eminem ever since I was a little boy, and seeing him in this state of mind was both shocking and refreshing.

This album may don the name of his first album, but it cannot be more different. It shows a state of maturity from Eminem, while addressing some of his issues and problems. An album that makes you laugh uncontrollably, and perhaps even weep, it is a return to form by an artist that seemingly always had it in him to create some of the best rap/hip-hop tracks in the world.

Album highlights: This albums included many great songs, however, three of his best include “Headlights”, “Legacy”, and my favorite track “Rap god”.

I want to quickly note that “Rap God” is a masterpiece in its own right. If you have the time, I suggest you listen to it, and try wrapping your mind around the countless metaphors he throws at you… in supersonic speed.

Overall, this album was nothing short of a major success, after what had to be over six years of music I didn’t particularly LOVE. Eminem returns with one of his best albums. It’s different no doubt, but in this case, he changed for the better. And I can’t wait till his next one.

Grade: A-

M.L.P Review- Season 3

Posted: November 15, 2013 in My Little Pony- Reviews
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Welcome to my Season 3 review! I’ll start it off by posting the grades to each episode.

1.) B

2.)B+

3.)B

4.)C-

5.)A-

6.)A

7.)A-

8.)C+

9.)B-

10.)B+

11.)B-

12.)C

13.)C+

Right away you may notice that this season is pretty uneven, in some areas it shines providing episodes of stunning quality. And in other areas it stoops to an all-time low, following trendy clichés to progress a plot, and mostly just treading in the same water until the next episode.

The season highlight being “Sleepless in Ponyville” which I hailed as the best episode this show has ever done. A few honorable mentions being: “Wonderbolts Academy” and “Magic Duel”. There weren’t any inherently terrible, but they did have a lot of missteps dragging down the entire experience.

For example, the worst episode of the season (and perhaps the show) was “One bad Apple”, which trivialized bullying (not immensely, but a little), and missed a glaring opportunity. This accumulated in a below-average score and a disappointing episode.

This season also had a lot of “fluff”, it included episodes that weren’t bad, and they just weren’t as entertaining as I’m used to.

Overall, it was a disjointed and uneven experience, but a good one non-the-less. It had some fantastic episodes, and some that weren’t so fantastic. All I can do is chock it up to the shortened season (only 13 episodes) and hope that season 4 returns back into consistently good family entertainment, jam packed with references, good continuity, and great pacing.

At the end of the day, this season did its job in entertaining me. While it wasn’t up to par to lets say, Season 2, it still provided enough good episodes to keep me satisfied.

Grade: B- 

M.L.P Review- S3ep13- Magical Mystery Cure

Posted: November 15, 2013 in My Little Pony- Reviews
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Well here we are… the most controversial episode of the season. And I get to air my opinions about it before Season 4 gets released. It is clear that this episode pretty much split the fandom in half, half were saying it was great, half were saying they hated this episodes guts.

“Magical Mystery Cure” had one job to accomplish, to turn Twilight into a princess. Did it accomplish this? Sort of… the entirety of the episode was rushed to an abnormal extreme, it was jammed together to the point where one scene was comedy and the next was sadness. This provided a very unbalanced experience that dragged this episode down.

What occurs is that there is some sort of problem in Ponyville where the “Mane 6’s” cutie marks have all been shuffled, and they all suck at their new “jobs” (for example, Rarity controlling the weather). May I just say, this idea is AWESOME, I really loved this entire concept. Even if it makes cutie marks seem like destiny-controlling patches of fur, but I can let that slide.

Did this episode utilize this great concept? NOPE! Because in a split second it gets solved, and Twilight gets given two oversized wings, and then happiness and parades for the other six minutes of the episode. If only this episode was a two parter, it could have been a major success.

The entirety of it was done in a musical fashion, which is understandable because of the speed the plot has to progress. But does that excuse the fact that it was rushed? NO!

I must say, the songs were all great, especially the final one. However, the issue is that the story just begun (3 minutes in) and twilight is already knee-deep in figurative shit with trying to figure out what’s going on. The unfortunate bit is, we don’t have enough time in this plot to truly feel sorry for Twilight when she is sitting on her bed sad. Even the pretty song she sings (with a different color palette in the scene) isn’t enough to make me relate and feel bad for her, BECAUSE THE EPISODE JUST STARTED!

These are just some of the issues with the episode being rushed so much. However, it still provided an entertaining bit of TV that I sure as hell won’t forget. It wasn’t overly good, but it wasn’t overly bad either. The entire “Twilight is a Princess” change hasn’t really grown on me either. It’s still something that should have been postponed until the SERIES finale, not the season finale.

I say this because now Twilight has completed her circle (just like Dash, but in a bigger way). For example, when a “Will they, won’t they” couple finally gets married in a sitcom. That pretty much marks the end of their story, and from then on you can expect some repetitive malarkey. I’m hoping that they won’t resort to that with Twilight, but everything points to the fact that they will, because in the end, this show IS catered to a younger audience… and to sell toys.

Right after watching this episode, I already knew some of the stuff planned for Season 4. The entire cliché “oh no! I’m a new princess and I don’t know if I’ll be good!” Episode will probably be the season premier, and from then on they will explore what it’s like to be Princess for her. THIS. IS. NOT. GOOD. If I can guess how an episode will be done, and how it turns out, that automatically makes it BORING.

Now, I’m not saying the story in the premier will be bad, I’m just saying that the lesson (usually a big part of every episode) may be overdone and cliché, which is going to drag the entire episode down. The fact that this show was never truly “the Twilight Sparkle show” made me happy as well, the fact that she was put at the same level as all her friends made this somewhat of an ensemble cast instead of the other five being just supporting characters.

All I’m doing is just assuming, I don’t know anything yet. So it is to be seen soon, with season 4. But until then, I’m highly skeptical. As this episode would have made a decent ending to the show, it doesn’t really make a remarkable ending to a season.

 

Pros:

–          All songs were well sung

–          Applejack trying to make clothes

–          Pinkamena returns, for a bit

–          We get to see Celestia sing

 

Cons:

–          Rushed to an EXTREME!

–          Not enough time to relate to the characters problems

–          A worrying change that I’m not certain about

–          Six minutes of useless parades instead of actual story

 

Grade: C+

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