Interested in Film, Television or Video Game reviews, how about Music, Comics and general opinions on the above? Then you've come to the right place. Enjoy.
Super Smash Brothers, there's a reason why its one of Nintendo's biggest system sellers, and throughout the course of this week, I'll be posting why. So sit back, and enjoy the Week of Smash.
Super Smash bros has always had great songs playing in the background of stages. and with 618 songs, not including Super Smash Bros for WiiU yet, there's a lot to listen to. I guarantee there will be at least one song that you'll enjoy in these soundtracks, hell, it might be on this list. There are only three rules for this.
1. The song must be in the games themselves (Smash 64, Melee, Brawl or Smash 3DS). I'm going to do a separate list for songs exclusive to Smash WiiU when I get closer to reviewing it (when I can get a copy of the game (at time of writing, just after the ORAS review was published, the game isn't out in Australia). Project M also will not feature in any of these posts due to the lack of PAL version at time of writing. Smashing Live (an orchestrated version of some of the songs from Melee) also doesn't count.
2. The do have to be remixes made for the games (as far as I can tell). If they are game rips, they do not qualify for this list.
3. Goes without saying, they have to be remixes, original compositions for the individual games are also disqualified.
The way these are name shall be:
Eg. Song (Smash bros game) (Franchise it came from):
Age of Ultron, the sequel to the box office hit "The Avengers". To say this movie is building up a hype train is a understatement and for good reason. With the success of the first film, how could they top it?
To say that I was hyped for this game is a understatement. With Pokemon posts taking up a decent chunk of the content here, its safe to say that I'm a Pokemon fan and if you've read my review of Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald, then you'll know that I'm a Gen III fan boy. So of course I was excited for Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire (which for the rest of the review shall be referred to as ORAS). After playing it for just over a week, how well does it show off the strengths of Hoenn and how faithful is the remake? Do note, spoilers are plentiful here (unlike the IGN review).
What is there to say about Team Fortress 2 that hasn’t been
said? If you play First person shooters or have Steam, then you know of this
game. It’s one of the few FPS games that doesn’t try to take itself seriously
and never has. The trailers, the taunts in game, the weapons, the characters,
everything about this game is designed to be comical.
I was going to save this for when I actually reviewed the games but by that point, this ship would have sailed and sunk.
While I will say that I'm proud to be a Sonic fan, I've had my share of entertainment from the series, one of my biggest problems I have with the series is the fans and how they react to new games. When a new game comes out for the series, you either hear praise for it from the fans, or you get everyone saying "this is the end of Sonic games, the franchise is dead" and so on. That second one is the reaction to the two Sonic Boom games, and while I haven't played the games yet, from what I've seen of the games, the "critique" from the fandom is off by a mile.
When I created Blaster's Reviews, I intended for this to be a long term project that would develop and grow over time. However, for some of its aspects to grow, I do need to earn some money. I've always intended to create video reviews in the future and chose not to do it straight away due to lack of personal equipment (I can rent the equipment, but at the time, I didn't know if this would be successful, I still don't, so I chose not to do it).
I am enabling a feature called "AdSence", a feature that enables advertisements to be displayed on this site once the application is approved. This hopefully won't be permanent, should the application be accepted, but for the time being, its a necessary evil, I know its annoying. Once a reliable option becomes useable, I'll disable the ads, you have my word on that. But until then...
One note on Patreon, considering the main topic, my patreon account still exists and you can find it in the "About me" section to the right. If you do enjoy my content or want to see a specific form of content (it can be anything), Patreon donators will get the priority (though I do read all requests). If you enjoy the content but hate ads, please become a Patreon supporter for the two sites.
Finally, due to the way Adsence is set up, there will not be ads on Blaster's Projects, that remains untouched by this.
Next week is still the Team Fortress 2 review so stay tuned for that
On this day in 1995, I was born. On this same day in 2005, I received what would be the first of many games in this series: Pokemon Emerald version. And it is for that reason why I held this review back an extra day, to coincide with the 9th anniversary of me picking my first starter Pokemon.
Pokemon Generation III was a weird time for Pokemon. A large chunk of its fan base left the series as they thought they were to mature for it or they were "Pokemon'd out" due to the last two generations, while at the same time, a brand new wave of fans started to play the series. If you ask any older Pokemon fan, they'll tell you they either came in during the hype of Pokemon Generation I, or during Generation III more often then not. There were people who hated Generation III during its prime, but what about 9-11 years later? As with all my reviews, no nostalgia goggles here, time to pick apart Pokemon Ruby, Sapphire and in particular, Pokemon Emerald version.
As with Generation I and II, the formula for completion is still pretty much the same: Get starter Pokemon, defeat 8 Gym leaders, stop people who are trying to do evil things, defeat the champion and congratulations, you're done. However there are a few new things to this (for their time) along with gameplay that newcomers would find archaic. This is the list of new features from Bulbapedia:
To make up for not having a post on Wednesday (to be explained later, trust me there's a reason). I figured there should be something to make up for it, so here are my Top 10 Pokemon songs from just the games, but remixes from the anime are allowed. Yes there are a lot of Battle themes here as I prefer those over the other tracks, not that they are bad. Do note that these songs loop so you don't have to see the full video (assuming you actually play these videos...).
10. Battle Gym Leader (Kalos) from Pokemon X and Y
WARNING: This post has been known to cause connection issues due the the large size and large number of images.
Back in June, I did the Transformers Marathon to coincide with the release of Transformers 4: Age of Extinction (Revenge of the Fallen actually coming out the day it was released here). Do I regret the marathon itself? No as it was a learning experience, what I regret is saying that it ties in with Bayformers 4. But I am a man of my word, and I did say that I'd review Age of Extinction. In-case you couldn't tell from the title... let's just say I hoped you like Zeta and Omnicron's review.
Do I even need to explain the plot, as with the other films, while there are slight differences (more here then in prior), they are still the same film. Something happens to the Autobots, Decepticons come back, listen to whiny human character, cut to final battle. But if you want details...
That is correct, you get two opinion pieces today.
While I do investigate all different kinds of the mediums I review, all different genres, play styles ect, horror isn't one I investigate often. While I have my own personal fears and there are scenes in films that creep me out because they rely on those fears, when a movie, show or game is meant to be scary, I find that I'm even less scared by it. With all the talk about Five nights at Freddy's happening at the moment (maybe a review next year, I'm rarely topical, you should all know that by now), it has given me a chance to ponder the concept of True fear and why I'm not as easily scared by horror.
So what is the difference between horror and "true fear"? For me, its the human factor. The human imagination is powerful and it can scare you more then any movie of show could. What's scarier, a lifeless corpse in a dark hallway, or seeing someone shoot that person while they are alive? When you see a dead body, with blood around him, your mind instantly starts thinking "who did this? How did this person died? What did the killer look like?", it leaves more room for the imagination to take effect, and as such this person without a face seems more terrifying, the illusion itself is scarier then then this person is, and when done well, it can be truly terrifying. That's why I think books do this kind of horror the best because while it can describe the face, the imagination can still alter it, so in reality they still don't have a face, but instead thousands of slightly different faces. Fear of the unknown is a fear shared between most people on this planet, hence why people fear death, hell and the devil, and at a root, the imagination can be a cause.
This concept also lends itself to the concept of the Uncanny Valley, when something looks so realistic that it stops being realistic. As human beings, we're used to seeing common sites in society, we know what a human face looks like as a example. But when robots start being made with human esque aspects to them, human eyes, moving mouths ect. In trying to replicate realism, it actually stops looking realistic. In horror, the concept can be used to scare you. Look at Five nights at Freddy's and Slenderman as examples. If you look at the designs for the anamatronics in the game, they all have that Uncanny Valley aspect to them.
The same can also be said for Slenderman (before taking into account his other... features...). It's no accident that there's no face on him.
There is another aspect that these two concepts share for their games in particular, the shock value. You don't know when and where these characters will show up, and combined with the the atmosphere that the games have, it will get those jump scares out of you. I haven't seen enough of the gameplay of either of them to accommodate for the music (should it exist) but the dark colours, the lack of any other presence, and the lore the games have
A common problem though for shock scares is the lack of subtlety. a patch of blood every hour and a chilling theme is scarier then blood pools every 5 minutes... that I'd hope would be common sense.
Finally, a final excellent tool in horror is the lack of control, the lack of power. An army of zombies isn't threatening when you're a walking tank, that defeats the purpose of horror. The greatest horror monsters have all shared traits with the humanity of the time with their greatest strengths being the lack of strength you have to challenge them, but letting the viewer walk away wondering, questioning "am I really like that?" Even modern characters like the Nolanverse version of the Joker has that aspect to it. If you can master those tools, then you can create something truly terrifying. Until next week for Transformers 4.
