BOARD GAME REVIEW: SHADOW HUNTERS (2005)

Shadow Hunters is a weird game for me. I didn't really like it, but it took me awhile to pinpoint exactly why. When I did, it was so obvious that it took me awhile to accept that I didn't see it sooner. At its heart, Shadow Hunters is a dice chucking, social deduction game.

In Shadow Hunters, players are secretly assigned one of three factions and are either on the team of the Hunters, the Shadows or a Neutral (sort of like individuals). They then roll dice to move around a board, pick up random cards from there location, and then roll dice to attack. In amongst all this, players are trying to figure out who is on who's team to eliminate them for there team to win.

And that is my problem. There are so many elements of the game where the game feels like it is playing you, and not much way to gain more control. Your options are often to either attack or don't attack, A certain dice roll and 2 locations give you options of what to do, otherwise it is mandatory to play the card you draw. And you can reveal your character to activate your power.

So this ends up being a social deduction game where the main thing clouding peoples judgement is random chance. Other games have things such as alternate objectives (i.e. Dead of Winter) or potentially choosing from bad choices after trying to help (Battlestar, Dark Moon), but this feels much more random. This effectively just makes the start of the game extremely slow as people draw random cards to help determine who the opposing player is.

Add to this that it is effectively a dice chucker, with some hilarious final encounters sometimes when 2 players can't seem to land in the same location, with extremely swingy combat, and the fighting misses (when you get around to it). The game definitely gets too long for what it is. Especially with more than 5 players and the lack of player agency here.

Overall, Shadow Hunters is a good concept. However, it is let down by substituting a good set of rules for what is effectively role and move. The luck based combat that can be extremely swingy and the social deduction just serves to draw the game out. It is extremely dependent on luck to even achieve any agency by the end of the game. Overall, it is just alright but definitely prefer allot of other games.

2 out of 5 Shadow Stepping Waffles

MOVIE REVIEW: WAR DOGS (2016)

War Dogs follows the story of David and Efron. Former high school best friends who drifted apart, they get back together at a high school friends funeral. After catching up, they become business partners in selling guns to the war in Iraq.

While things start out smoothly enough, things get more complicated when they land bigger contracts. The movie then follows them as they get more involved as things keep going from bad to worse and they discover that the world of arms dealing isn’t as safe as when they first started.

Predictably, some deals go wrong. David learns a valuable life lesson about how exciting isn’t always good, and the friend everyone warns him about ends up being a jerk. So this is a standard morale story that tries to inject some Wolf of Wall Street into it.

At the end of the day, this is perhaps its biggest and most unforgiving flaw. It follows the most boring character to tell the most generic story. It takes no risks and wraps everything up with a “what lessons did we learn here?” final tag in the closing scenes. And somehow everything kind-of ends up okay for David.

This movie might have been more interesting if it followed Efron and left an audience surrogate behind (or confined to voice-overs, like Wolf). It is the equivalent of if Wolf of Wall Street followed one of Leonardo’s junior employees. Doesn’t quite sound very interesting, does it.

At the end of the day, it was an interesting premise. It was definitely better than the DC worst-of series this year. But it has to have a hard pass for being too generic for its own good. If you want a pretty generic story done extremely well, Kubo and the Two Strings is worth your time much, much more.

1.5 out of 5 dog-eared waffles.

MOVIE REVIEW: GHOSTBUSTERS (2016)

Ghostbusters is a movie that seemed to come around with allot of controversy. And most of this controversy seemed to be for controversy's own sake, as most people I talked to weren't too concerned about it being made with a bunch of female protagonists. As it turned out, the movie actually turned out to be pretty good.

The movie is about a bunch of scientists who go around capturing ghosts. One of them starts as being reluctant (not because of skepticism, but because of the damage to her career in academia it may cause), but becomes part of the group after she encounters a ghost. After forming the group, they get an office, find a fourth member (a non-scientist subway worker), hire a sexy dumb male intern (Chris Hemsworth, looking like he was born for comedy), and start capturing ghosts.

This is a pretty standard Ghostbusters movie. And it is a good one at that. It constantly goes around with tongue-in-cheek-style humour in its approach to situations and lets defined characters (in the ghost busters) react to situations in a believable manner. The only stumbling block this movie has is the ending or the more dramatic moments. Here, the movie stumbles. When the movie tries to get too serious, it doesn't work.

Unfortunately, the climax (involving someone killing themselves to set-up a master plan, to let you see serious) feels like it drags for the sake of having a big ghost battle climax (ala Marshmallow Man). Chris Hemsworth, despite being a good thing, is also over-used. It is like they realised how good he was and then doubled the length of all his scenes so the joke is slightly overblown as opposed to being appreciated.

While not as good as the original, this movie is definitely worth a watch. The comedy and characters are really good, the story is good and the effects are good. It did stumble by putting a bit too much a good thing in and also not nailing the change from comedy to serious well, but still highly enjoyable.

And the only reason I remember the Chris Hemsworth actor is because he is an Avenger.

3.5 out of 5 Ghosted Waffles

MOVIE REVIEW: SUICIDE SQUAD (2016)

Suicide Squad starts poorly, has a few isolated moments of mediocrity before ending poorly. It once again proves how much the DC cinematic universe tries to take shortcuts. It has all the markings of executive meddling as they try to follow the “make-it-fun” formula.

Suicide Squad follows the story of Amander Waller. She puts together a team of bad guys who are meant to take out meta-humans (like Superman) if they go bad. And this is where the dumbness starts. What on earth is Captain Boomerang, Harley Quinn or Deadshot meant to do against Superman.  I am not sure and the movie never bothers to try to explain it either.

Their first mission is then a self-created problem (stopping the Enchantress and her Brother). Here are where the moments that try to pull it up to mediocrity. There is a scene at a bar where the characters actually have some personality and interaction. The first fight scene shows people using their skills and abilities. And the scenes with the Brother always make him feel like a threat.

But every time that the movie threatens to find its feet and be mediocre instead of awful, you get the dumb parts. The Joker’s scenes are forever annoying. Him and Harley Quinn mostly remind me of the people that try far too hard to be eccentric, with the I’m So Random tag thrown in. El Diablo deciding he wanted to fight was unexpected and shocking. The great scene from the trailer where Harley steals a bag, stating they are bad guys, feels like it was cut and thrown in so randomly it feels like whiplash.

This all feels like it was cut to make it fun. Suicide Squad feels like a mess. Where they should have made a dark comedy movie, they tried far too hard for a fun movie. The DC Cinematic Universe once again falls over into a pile dog faeces, after everyone had such high hopes. I guess DC once again waits for the next movie before becoming at least mediocre.

1 out of 5 Suiciding Waffles.

MOVIE REVIEW: DR STRANGE (2016)

As (I believe) the last major sueprhero movie release of 2016 and touted Marvel's most ambitious project to date (although I think that is arguable at best), Dr Strange ends up being a pretty good way to finish the superhero year. However, the movie is marred by some of the imperfections which have started to become common in the Disney Marvel cinematic stable.

Dr Strange follows the story of, well, Dr Strange. This feels like a step back in the Marvel universe, but a good one at that. This feels more like an Iron Man origin story than a galaxy-threatening story. Dr Strange is an arrogant surgeon, he can't do surgery anymore and instead becomes a sorcerer after learning some lessons which lead to him stopping the bad guy. Al

In fact, the story is very simple. However, it seems to be in such a rush to get to the big set-piece battles that Dr Strange's education and character development seem a little rushed. I am not sure if they cut some scenes out but I could have done with less big battles and more introspective moments of him learning magic and humility.

If they cut out one or two battles (no spoilers but I have two definitely in mind) for some more learning time, I think this would have been one of the best movies Marvel has produced. As it stands, it is just really good and I am looking forward to exploring the Sorcerer's universe more.

4 out of 5 Strange Looking Waffles

MOBILE GAME REVIEW: REBEL SKY (2016)

Rebel Sky is a semi-unique game that I played. It is a free fee-to-play game that is a mixture of real-time strategy and lane attack/defense (similar to Clash Royale). It does some nice and interesting things but, full disclosure, I have already uninstalled it.

In Rebel Sky, you choose a commander from one of three factions (Marines, Junkers and Robotic Angels or something like that) and then build up a deck of units from your faction and mercenaries. During a battle, you cycle through this deck and use energy (like elixir in Clash Royale to deploy your units). Once deployed, they march towards the enemy, attacking targets and the enemy base until they or the opponent die.

The first interesting thing is how you deploy your units. You can either deploy straight out or construct as a factory (takes 30 seconds) which would then spawn a unit every 30 seconds. It is an interesting choice for instant units versus long term gain. The other interesting change is when time runs out, it comes down to last unit standing. All this would make you think that the game would be interesting.

However, the progression and paywall hit this game way too soon. After unlocking some basic units, the rate of unlocking slows down to a crawl. When you keep facing higher end units, and you keep trying to use the weaker mercenary units to plug the holes in your forces, it starts to grate. Although, like with Clash Royale, you can mitigate this with skill to a certain extent.

For those who don't mind paying and advancing on the semi fee-to-play, then this game is a unique game I have played that has an interesting mix of mechanics. However, the paywall came far too soon for me and the grind was too much.

3 out of 5 Rebellion Waffles

MOVE REVIEW: MAGNIFICENT 7 (2016)

The Magnificent 7 is a remake of an old western which is a remake of an old samurai movie. The original movie is considered a classic, and the new movie is quite long. The question is if the new movie is any good. The quick answer is: yes, it is really good.

For the sake of brevity I won't bother comparing it to the originals but let it stand on it's own merits. In this, Denzel Washington is a bounty hunter (warrant officer) who gets involved in a battle against a mining magnate who is trying to take over a town and killing people in cold blood. In his quest, he recruits 6 other highly-skilled men to help take back the town.

Of course this is achieved through violence. And the cast does not disappoint. All the seven are really good and get their own personality and style of fighting. They also all have their demons and pasts, but this movie doesn't make the mistake of dwelling on these. Instead, it simply alludes to them and keeps the movie going at a good pace.

The gun fights are where the movie is best, but the movie recognises that having weight behind each shot is what makes them stand-out. The only weak character is Chris Pratt, but this is because the writers rely on him to get by on his charm and maybe give him slightly too much screen time compared to the others. This is not the fault of the actor, but outside of one random line about being haunted (which isn't followed through by his actions), the character he plays is perhaps the weak link in the movie.

However, even with this weak link, the rest of the movie is exceptionally strong. This is definitely a movie worth checking out and not just another remake relying on nostalgia. Yee-ha.

4.5 out of 5 Gun-slingin' Waffles.