Romier S

I wanted to finally post about this game which has been out for some time. I bought and played through it a number of months ago and really enjoyed the hell out of it. It’s a mid-range AA production with AAA production values. I like to call it this years Hellblade in that regard. It’s a primarily stealth based game with a really well told story that veers into the supernatural. It has an fantastic sense of time and place and again visually it’s pretty stunning. Digital Foundry did a nice video of its technology here: What really reminded me about the game is that there is currently a free trail version available on PC, Xbox One and PS4 right now that lets you play the first stage. Again, I highly recommend it!

Boss battle with the Ifrit summon (the music wow)

Aladdin (2019) - I mean, I liked it? I didn’t see that coming. The main cast is pretty solid overall, really. Naomi Scott has to be one of the most gorgeous women walking the planet right now and she has a voice to back it up. “A Whole New World” is wonderfully executed here and Massoud does well with the Aladdin specific numbers even if “One Jump Ahead” (one of my favorite Disney numbers ever) didn’t entirely land for me. Will Smith is actually pretty funny/entertaining as the Genie. The problem is he has no business singing. Ever. The hip hop versions of the Genies numbers just don’t work for me at all. At least his performance otherwise is very good and there’s real emotion /friendship developed between Aladdin and the Genie by the end. I have my issues with the production and overly “green screen” feel of the movie and I’ll never choose to watch this over the orginal. However considering my view on these live action remakes, this is quite entertaining and there are far more offensive ways to spend two hours of your life. I dare say you may actually find yourself smiling now and again.

DF with new patch performance: Pretty big improvement. The base PS4 is actually pretty damned playable now.

It’s nice to come back from a work trip to find some Retro goodness waiting for me. Even if it took Terraonion a damned month to ship the thing. A match made in heaven: The entire Sega/Mega-CD library at my fingertips along with the whole Genesis, Sega Master System, Game Gear and Colecovision libraries between the two FPGA devices providing original hardware accuracy. It’s an amazing time to be a retro gamer. If you want to get a deep dive on the Mega SD, go here:

50 minutes of gameplay....

Briefing trailer.....

Release date here we come! (February 2020 is my guess) https://mobile.twitter.com/geoffkeighley/status/1171160948914061313

It Chapter Two - Tough movie. It was always going to be as the second part of the novel is significantly more difficult to adapt. The origins of Pennywise go deep and there’s a lot of ground to cover. I think the film does an admirable job in that regard balancing some hokey stuff with just enough character moments/commentary to sell it. They never delve into Maturin (the space turtle) or the more cosmic implications of the character but I think that’s for the best. It’s a bridge too far for mainstream audiences and frankly hearing “the Ritual of Chüd” was enough to make me do a double take as I never thought that would make it in. Neither did I think they would would include the Adrian Mellon assault from the book but there it was on the screen and well adapted for the most part. The film is exceedingly well cast. Seriously, you could not ask for better actors to portray these kids as adults and it’s because of that casting and the performances that the film ends up working. You *want* to spend time with these people. You intrinsically care about their fates. The scene in the Chinese restaurant is just perfection and you just smile watching these folks reconnect. I love that the movie includes plenty of flashbacks intermixed of the kids as well to fill in some story gaps. Pennywise is also more vicious here. Less concerned with “salting the meat” and just laser focused getting at his prey. There’s some gruesome stuff to say the least especially with some poor kids who get in the mix.:( The problems come in the middle of the film, really. When the Losers club separates to find their tokens, the storytelling comes to a complete halt in favor of scary set pieces. Mind you, these set pieces are mostly well executed. Some are very unnerving while others are a bit too reliant on jump scares. No matter the quality - they don’t serve to move things along much and by the time the finale hits, some of Pennywise’ “oomph” has been sapped because of these ongoing set pieces. Not to mention you have to wonder why Pennywise doesn’t just kill these folks outright? You could argue that he’s arrogantly toying with them but given the number of opportunities he has here, it’s a bit of a stretch. Especially considering the movie never uses Bowers properly to show that It actually fears them and after its initial defeat, it feels like it needs Bowers to kill them. Point though? The film could stand to lose a good 20 minutes of run time and it would be a better served for it, IMO. Speaking of the finale, I like the way they handled Pennywise’ final form. Going full on monster would be an egregious misuse of Bill Skarsgård. I might have wanted something a little more monstrous but overall, I love the execution of the dead lights and the way the losers finally bring him down (which is much more in line with the first movie). In the end, despite its flaws you’ll stick with the movie because you want to see how things work out for these characters and there are so many great moments of love, terror and comedy that it pays off the first film enough to overcome its (at times) laborious length. Chapter One is the better movie but there’s a lot to like here given that we live in a world where most horror movies feature characters you couldn’t give less than a shit about. It’s nice to be invested in the Losers club again.

Yep. Same with a bit of restoration love.

Found this cheap today and it’s in need of a bit of rescuing with the label on the label and someone marking a P on it for some ungodly reason. Goo Gone and a little (gentle) 99% IPA to the rescue. Before: After:

Agreed. I’ll not be paying Nintendo for further years and Ive been close to killing Plus subscription if not for my past Plus/Live games library and the additional cloud space for saves. Those still pay for themselves even with Sony’s more limited Plus selections. Outside of that, I just don’t play games online anymore. Gaming is a very singular activity outside of playing Retro games with the kids.

Rather love “Don’t Give A....” which is a fantastic little remix of the original River City Ransom theme.:)

It looks like Nintendo has at least updated the Canoe emulator to fix the visual glitch in Yoshi’s Island that appeared on the SNES Classic.... http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2019/09/yoshis_island_on_switch_fixes_the_glitch_found_in_the_snes_classic_version Very nice. It was one of the few emulation issues that stuck out for the Classic release.

Physical edition coming from Numskull games: http://numskullgames.com/project/deadly-premonition-origins/