Sausage Party is an animated film that takes a simple premise: have a Pixar-like animated movie but with "adult" themes. The story is that a bunch of food items in a supermarket are sentient and believe humans take them to heaven when they pick them up (not knowing they just get eaten).
The movie is just a vehicle for Seth Rogen and company to make crude, sex-themed jokes throughout in an effort to make it "mature". Sometimes this works. However, in this case, it definitely doesn't work. The overall story is too weak and seems to rely on the crutch of deliberately thinly-veiled religious and racial characters to try to make any of its narrative interesting.
It is an interesting contrast comparing this to Pixar. Pixar often uses child-like things to tell a mature story. Here, the use of more crude jokes is used to try to make an animated movie that is "mature" and touches on current events. This approach worked allot less successfully than many other Pixar (or for that matter, other good animated movies) approach.
This movie is a hard pass for me. They should have spent more time working on a compelling story than trying to take shots at society and religion to make this more appealing.
0.5 out of 5 stars (simply because the animation looks okay).
Tuesday 26 September 2017
Friday 8 September 2017
BOARD GAME REVIEW: 7th CONTINENT (2017) INITIAL IMPRESSIONS
7th Continent is a new board game that was released on Kickstarter and has surged up the board game rankings. It is a game that aims to take the old Fighting Fantasy Games or Choose Your Own Adventures of old and translate them to a board game set on a sprawling map. This is just must my initial impressions and I will update this later.
The aim of the game is to break a curse on your character after they returned from an expedition to an unknown land (the titular 7th Continent). You complete this by exploring the land and hoping to work out the mystery before your life-force (deck of action cards) runs out.
The game is played over a set of numbered cards split between maps and events. Each revealed card related to a number and uncovers the map and events that you can interact with. These are resolved through a push-your-luck mechanic with your action deck, with more cards drawn increasing your chances but also using up your time more.
The game is amazingly fun. It builds on your knowledge between games as you know where and when to explore and what are red herrings for your current curse. There are multiple curses and the map is quite large. The only concern is with replayability as the map doesn't change, but each of the curses starts you in different locations.
Everything in this game comes together well. The sense of exploration and choices as you uncover the map and work out the mini-puzzle that each curse gives. The life deck introduces a push-your-luck mechanic. And that isn't even going into how the exploration and the item crafting is implemented and how it interacts with the map.
Overall, this is a hearty recommendation. If you like story-driven games or exploration-type games, this is nearly a must-get. A new Kickstarter is coming for another module for the game and will offer the base game if you don't feel like paying secondary market prices.
5 out of 5 Continental Waffles
The aim of the game is to break a curse on your character after they returned from an expedition to an unknown land (the titular 7th Continent). You complete this by exploring the land and hoping to work out the mystery before your life-force (deck of action cards) runs out.
The game is played over a set of numbered cards split between maps and events. Each revealed card related to a number and uncovers the map and events that you can interact with. These are resolved through a push-your-luck mechanic with your action deck, with more cards drawn increasing your chances but also using up your time more.
The game is amazingly fun. It builds on your knowledge between games as you know where and when to explore and what are red herrings for your current curse. There are multiple curses and the map is quite large. The only concern is with replayability as the map doesn't change, but each of the curses starts you in different locations.
Everything in this game comes together well. The sense of exploration and choices as you uncover the map and work out the mini-puzzle that each curse gives. The life deck introduces a push-your-luck mechanic. And that isn't even going into how the exploration and the item crafting is implemented and how it interacts with the map.
Overall, this is a hearty recommendation. If you like story-driven games or exploration-type games, this is nearly a must-get. A new Kickstarter is coming for another module for the game and will offer the base game if you don't feel like paying secondary market prices.
5 out of 5 Continental Waffles
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