November Man is a spy-offering starring Pierce Brosnan. Following the exploits of an American spy agency in Russia, it weaves an web of twists into its story. However, despite the twists and turns present in the story, it failed to resonate.
November Man begins in the past with Pierce Brosnan acting as a decoy and his protégé shooting someone who tried to take him out. Flash forward and Pierce Brosnan is ordered to extract a Russian official who he has a history with. However, he appears to be acting rogue and then has the CIA chasing him as he attempts to sort out his mess.
At the end of the day, November Man is passable. November Man's main failing is that it you can both see the twists coming but at the same time the twists don't emotionally resonate with the story. For example, Brosnan is quite happy to sacrifice an innocent girl to test a theory (fatally wounding her to test his ex-protégé's reaction) but is haunted by the collateral damage of one innocent bystander. The actual twists and double crosses also fall back to familiar cliché's about who is behind it all.
At the end of the day, the story is just a miss. For less running time, you could watch an episode of Burn Notice and probably enjoy it much more. The idea is good but the writers should have been a bit more risky with how it all played out.
2 out of 5 Calendar Thumbs Up.
Saturday 30 January 2016
Saturday 23 January 2016
ANIME REVIEW: HUNTER x HUNTER (FIRST 15 EPISODES)
Hunter x Hunter is a really good show so far. It follows the story of a group of students (Gon as the main character, a 12-year old boy) as they go through an exam to become Hunters (an elite police force). During this trial, they are put to the test by the examiners and other students. Oh, and there are giant monsters and magic powers.
Hunter has a good cast of heroes, a villain who they are building up well and an interesting story premise. The characters are an interesting mix of typical tropes with twist and humanity to keep them interesting and wanting to see where they go. Even the side characters have unique powers and looks to make it interesting.
The animation is also beautiful in this. The colours and fighting is vibrant. Although there is some teleportation style combat, it fits in with the theme of the show. Everything about this show is nice. It is highly recommended and I hope it continues to be as good for the remainder of the series.
5 out of 5 Hunted Waffles.
Hunter has a good cast of heroes, a villain who they are building up well and an interesting story premise. The characters are an interesting mix of typical tropes with twist and humanity to keep them interesting and wanting to see where they go. Even the side characters have unique powers and looks to make it interesting.
The animation is also beautiful in this. The colours and fighting is vibrant. Although there is some teleportation style combat, it fits in with the theme of the show. Everything about this show is nice. It is highly recommended and I hope it continues to be as good for the remainder of the series.
5 out of 5 Hunted Waffles.
Sunday 10 January 2016
BOARD GAME REVIEW: TINY EPIC GALAXIES (2015)
The third in the tiny epic series of games (kingdoms and defenders were the first 2), Tiny Epic Galaxies takes players into space to see them conquer the galaxy. It does this by, once again, using a totally new system than the previous two games. This time, dice are involved.
In Tiny Epic Galaxies, each player gets to roll a certain amount of dice and get actions based on these dice. These include flying ships, earning resources or trying to colonise a planet. Once a player has earned enough victory points, the game ends. Any goal cards completed are then scored and the final victory points are scored to see who the winner is.
At it's core, this game has a push your luck mechanism with rolling dice. Do you spend resources to re-roll or try to make do with what you have. Even though there are no real bad options, there are definitely better options depending on which planets you are exploiting. The other consideration is that opposing players can follow dice that you have used on your turn. This introduces a bit of gamesmanship (sometimes) and maybe makes you second guess using a valuable action (especially in a 2-player game).
Although it is a tiny game, there is allot of thought needed for each move in this game. Player interaction isn't very high in the base game (as it effectively is each player racing individually) so opposing players turns can be slow. This is a problem when the game goes to 4 or 5 players (but even 3 players if the players take turns slowly). This means that the game often overstays its welcome as a short game (probably by 5-15 minutes), but there is a nice sense of escalation as your empire becomes more powerful.
There is also no real way to attack other players (past some planet abilities and following) in the base game. Fortunately, the Satellite and Superweapon expansion adds in Superweapons that you can use to give more direct confrontation between players. If direct confrontation isn't your thing, than you can just leave them out as well.
The components for this game are excellent. However, the player mat should definitely be larger (or I might scan and print a larger one out on some good card stock). Larger boards can fit in the base game and the player board is so cluttered that I would have preferred it to be larger and clearer, with maybe bigger resource trackers as well. But you get cool sheep meeples and custom dice so all good.
This is a solid game. However, the small player mats and the slowdown of the gameplay on other players turns means that it is not quite an excellent game, but it is solid.
3 out of 5 tiny epic waffles.
In Tiny Epic Galaxies, each player gets to roll a certain amount of dice and get actions based on these dice. These include flying ships, earning resources or trying to colonise a planet. Once a player has earned enough victory points, the game ends. Any goal cards completed are then scored and the final victory points are scored to see who the winner is.
At it's core, this game has a push your luck mechanism with rolling dice. Do you spend resources to re-roll or try to make do with what you have. Even though there are no real bad options, there are definitely better options depending on which planets you are exploiting. The other consideration is that opposing players can follow dice that you have used on your turn. This introduces a bit of gamesmanship (sometimes) and maybe makes you second guess using a valuable action (especially in a 2-player game).
Although it is a tiny game, there is allot of thought needed for each move in this game. Player interaction isn't very high in the base game (as it effectively is each player racing individually) so opposing players turns can be slow. This is a problem when the game goes to 4 or 5 players (but even 3 players if the players take turns slowly). This means that the game often overstays its welcome as a short game (probably by 5-15 minutes), but there is a nice sense of escalation as your empire becomes more powerful.
There is also no real way to attack other players (past some planet abilities and following) in the base game. Fortunately, the Satellite and Superweapon expansion adds in Superweapons that you can use to give more direct confrontation between players. If direct confrontation isn't your thing, than you can just leave them out as well.
The components for this game are excellent. However, the player mat should definitely be larger (or I might scan and print a larger one out on some good card stock). Larger boards can fit in the base game and the player board is so cluttered that I would have preferred it to be larger and clearer, with maybe bigger resource trackers as well. But you get cool sheep meeples and custom dice so all good.
This is a solid game. However, the small player mats and the slowdown of the gameplay on other players turns means that it is not quite an excellent game, but it is solid.
3 out of 5 tiny epic waffles.
Friday 1 January 2016
MOVIE REVIEW: THE GOOD DINOSAUR (2015)
Pixar's latest animation offering is The Good Dinosaur. It is promoted as exploring what would have happened if the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs didn't happen and dinosaurs and humans co-existed. In reality, it doesn't really explore this question at all.
The story follows the child of some dinosaur farmers. One day, a human child appears and scares him. This indirectly causes his father to die. When the human child shows up again, the dinosaur chases him and gets lost in the wilderness. While he is the wilderness, he meets new friends and enemies and must learn to conquer his fear.
This movie is a solid movie. it shows the characters developing (mostly). You follow the journey of the dinosaur as he learns to overcome his fear. The human child is not really developed much, being instantly trusting of the dinosaur. Also some cool characters (such as the triceratops) are put in and never show up again.
However, this movie never really does anything risky. It treats dinosaurs as part of an old west type society (farmers, ranchers, scavengers) with no real twists on the formula. The human child acts like a dog. It might be that they wanted to play it very safe to make this a holiday movie for the family.
It has to be said that the animation and landscapes are superb, with sounds to match. The Pixar team also did a very good job on the dinosaurs. They really thought about the difficulties in how they are meant to do some things without hands and show some inventive ways of how they do things.
In conclusion, this is a solid movie with some beautiful animation and sounds. However, the actual story behind it is very generic. If you replaced the dinosaurs with humans, you wouldn't have lost much in the movie, which is unfortunate.
2 out of 5 prehistoric waffles.
The story follows the child of some dinosaur farmers. One day, a human child appears and scares him. This indirectly causes his father to die. When the human child shows up again, the dinosaur chases him and gets lost in the wilderness. While he is the wilderness, he meets new friends and enemies and must learn to conquer his fear.
This movie is a solid movie. it shows the characters developing (mostly). You follow the journey of the dinosaur as he learns to overcome his fear. The human child is not really developed much, being instantly trusting of the dinosaur. Also some cool characters (such as the triceratops) are put in and never show up again.
However, this movie never really does anything risky. It treats dinosaurs as part of an old west type society (farmers, ranchers, scavengers) with no real twists on the formula. The human child acts like a dog. It might be that they wanted to play it very safe to make this a holiday movie for the family.
It has to be said that the animation and landscapes are superb, with sounds to match. The Pixar team also did a very good job on the dinosaurs. They really thought about the difficulties in how they are meant to do some things without hands and show some inventive ways of how they do things.
In conclusion, this is a solid movie with some beautiful animation and sounds. However, the actual story behind it is very generic. If you replaced the dinosaurs with humans, you wouldn't have lost much in the movie, which is unfortunate.
2 out of 5 prehistoric waffles.
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