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.
Monday, 14 December 2015
BOARD GAME REVIEW- LORDS OF VEGAS
Lords of Vegas is a game I enjoyed the first few times I played it. And then it started to be less enjoyable. This isn't to say it is a bad game, but there are games out there which I prefer for a board-gaming experience.
In Lords of Vegas, you are trying to build up your Casino's along the glittering strips of Las Vegas. To do this, you draw a random tile, then can decide to construct at this location, sprawl to another location, and gamble to try to get more money (or takeover a casino). If you draw a certain type (colour) of casino, players who have developed that type of casino get points.
The game looks great for what it is, and I think that may be what attracted me to it originally. The random drawing kept the game tense the first few times I played it, especially the choice to do an expensive sprawl just to be taken over by an opponent. Of course, my brain then decided it to compare to Settlers of Catan.
To me, if you took Settlers of Catan and compared it to Lords of Vegas, Lords of Vegas does not stand up well. Instead of trading, you now gamble (roll a dice and see if you or your opponent gets more money). Instead of choosing how to expand, you randomly get told where you can expand. To sprawl, you pay allot and another player can randomly take it without earning it at all. This wouldn't be a problem if sprawling wasn't so expensive to be randomly taken away from you (costs twice as much).
The whole game seems to have party-game type mechanics but, unfortunately, it seems to be far too long to be a party game. There is also an artificial score limiter that seems designed to help the party flavour and to address balance issues (this being that there is limited point to building more than single-tile casinos if they, once again, don't randomly fall on your lap). This keeps scores artificially closer, but once again seems to Band-Aid the game balance rather than truly addressing the issue.
Some people can argue that Lords of Vegas is meant to be this sort of game, but I don't play board games for this much randomness. This may simulate the gambling aspect of Las Vegas, but at the expense of player skill. There is some timing and player luck mitigation, but with so many more games out there that have done this thing better in the past (right back to Settlers of Catan), I will be trying to avoid this where possible.
1 out of 5 glitter-strip waffles.
In Lords of Vegas, you are trying to build up your Casino's along the glittering strips of Las Vegas. To do this, you draw a random tile, then can decide to construct at this location, sprawl to another location, and gamble to try to get more money (or takeover a casino). If you draw a certain type (colour) of casino, players who have developed that type of casino get points.
The game looks great for what it is, and I think that may be what attracted me to it originally. The random drawing kept the game tense the first few times I played it, especially the choice to do an expensive sprawl just to be taken over by an opponent. Of course, my brain then decided it to compare to Settlers of Catan.
To me, if you took Settlers of Catan and compared it to Lords of Vegas, Lords of Vegas does not stand up well. Instead of trading, you now gamble (roll a dice and see if you or your opponent gets more money). Instead of choosing how to expand, you randomly get told where you can expand. To sprawl, you pay allot and another player can randomly take it without earning it at all. This wouldn't be a problem if sprawling wasn't so expensive to be randomly taken away from you (costs twice as much).
The whole game seems to have party-game type mechanics but, unfortunately, it seems to be far too long to be a party game. There is also an artificial score limiter that seems designed to help the party flavour and to address balance issues (this being that there is limited point to building more than single-tile casinos if they, once again, don't randomly fall on your lap). This keeps scores artificially closer, but once again seems to Band-Aid the game balance rather than truly addressing the issue.
Some people can argue that Lords of Vegas is meant to be this sort of game, but I don't play board games for this much randomness. This may simulate the gambling aspect of Las Vegas, but at the expense of player skill. There is some timing and player luck mitigation, but with so many more games out there that have done this thing better in the past (right back to Settlers of Catan), I will be trying to avoid this where possible.
1 out of 5 glitter-strip waffles.
Wednesday, 25 November 2015
BOARD GAME REVIEW: KEYFLOWER (2012)
Keyflower is a bit of a funny game. On the surface of it, it shouldn't work. It is part worker placement, part bidding and bluffing, part city building, part resource management, part randomiser. And somehow it does, being a relatively fast paced game that combines just the right amount of these elements so that nothing feels too tacked on.
Keyflower is the story of you trying to establish your colony. Every season, new resources come in and new buildings are available to build. Players then either have the option to bid on these tiles or utilise them. Once everyone is out of moves, winning bidders get to place the tiles in their villages to be utilised and upgraded by themselves (or others) later by moving resources to them. At the end of the 4th season (winter), most points is the winner.
This game has allot of cool mechanics going on. For example, you can move your bidding pieces if you are the losing bid, and your 'secret' victory point conditions are actually things you can choose to bid on (rather than automatic bonus'). For a game with so many disconnected elements, it comes together really well.
There are only two criticisms I have with it. For the most part, the theme of the game comes through really well. However, some mechanics are (by balancing and gameplay necessity) slightly disconnected from the theme. For example, why can you utilise tiles before anyone has built them and why don't workers return after utilising opposing players tiles?
The other criticism is that if a player is prone to 'analysis paralysis', there turn can drag out. This is also true if someone is the first player, not paying attention and planning during other players turn, or if there planned move is taken away at the last minute.
However, these complaints are minor. For the most part, the artwork and elegance of the game match the theme (new workers arrive every turn). The game flows really well and their are allot of paths to victory and options you can take on your turn. The game doesn't drag with allot of players
5 out of 5 Penal Colony Waffles.
Keyflower is the story of you trying to establish your colony. Every season, new resources come in and new buildings are available to build. Players then either have the option to bid on these tiles or utilise them. Once everyone is out of moves, winning bidders get to place the tiles in their villages to be utilised and upgraded by themselves (or others) later by moving resources to them. At the end of the 4th season (winter), most points is the winner.
This game has allot of cool mechanics going on. For example, you can move your bidding pieces if you are the losing bid, and your 'secret' victory point conditions are actually things you can choose to bid on (rather than automatic bonus'). For a game with so many disconnected elements, it comes together really well.
There are only two criticisms I have with it. For the most part, the theme of the game comes through really well. However, some mechanics are (by balancing and gameplay necessity) slightly disconnected from the theme. For example, why can you utilise tiles before anyone has built them and why don't workers return after utilising opposing players tiles?
The other criticism is that if a player is prone to 'analysis paralysis', there turn can drag out. This is also true if someone is the first player, not paying attention and planning during other players turn, or if there planned move is taken away at the last minute.
However, these complaints are minor. For the most part, the artwork and elegance of the game match the theme (new workers arrive every turn). The game flows really well and their are allot of paths to victory and options you can take on your turn. The game doesn't drag with allot of players
5 out of 5 Penal Colony Waffles.
Thursday, 29 October 2015
MOVIE REVIEW: THE MARTIAN (2015)
The Martian is a movie that goes for 2+ hours and yet feels very short. It is also a movie that has no business in being as good as it is especially seeing as it eschews allot of the modern trappings of current similar movies.
Set sometime in the future, humanity is doing manned missions to Mars. However, during one of these missions, Mark (Matt Damon) is left stranded on Mars after his crew departs. Now it is up to Mark to survive on Mars until he is rescued. And if that sounds simple, it is because it is.
Jumping between NASA and Mark on Mars, this story is a very simple one. It doesn't have a big villain or mystery. All it comes down to is a bunch of people each trying to do their best to save the life of Mark. It also has no tragic backstory or the like, with the filmmakers correctly guessing that surviving on Mars alone is a big enough villain for this movie. Gravity and San Andreas should've taken some notes.
All the actors in the movie bring exactly what they need to. In fact, this whole movie is a bunch of parts (music, acting, etc.) coming together and doing exactly what they need to for the whole to be good. And it ends up being very good.
By the time I got out of the cinema, I was feeling like the movie was very short. This was until I checked the time and discovered it went for 2+ hours. The pace and story of The Martian were that good that it kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time. And that is saying something because this is the sort of movie where the result is never in doubt.
5 out of 5 International Watered Down Martian Waffles.
Set sometime in the future, humanity is doing manned missions to Mars. However, during one of these missions, Mark (Matt Damon) is left stranded on Mars after his crew departs. Now it is up to Mark to survive on Mars until he is rescued. And if that sounds simple, it is because it is.
Jumping between NASA and Mark on Mars, this story is a very simple one. It doesn't have a big villain or mystery. All it comes down to is a bunch of people each trying to do their best to save the life of Mark. It also has no tragic backstory or the like, with the filmmakers correctly guessing that surviving on Mars alone is a big enough villain for this movie. Gravity and San Andreas should've taken some notes.
All the actors in the movie bring exactly what they need to. In fact, this whole movie is a bunch of parts (music, acting, etc.) coming together and doing exactly what they need to for the whole to be good. And it ends up being very good.
By the time I got out of the cinema, I was feeling like the movie was very short. This was until I checked the time and discovered it went for 2+ hours. The pace and story of The Martian were that good that it kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time. And that is saying something because this is the sort of movie where the result is never in doubt.
5 out of 5 International Watered Down Martian Waffles.
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