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Matthew Krueger (10051 KP) rated A Nightmare on Elm Street in Video Games

Feb 26, 2020 (Updated Feb 26, 2020)  
A Nightmare on Elm Street
A Nightmare on Elm Street
Action/Adventure
Why?????
A Night on Elm Street- based on the movie franchise turned into a video game. A video game that is both awful and hard as hell. So this and the Friday The 13th video game, came out around the sane time. With Friday The 13th coming out first in 1989 in NA and A Nightmare on Elm Street in 1990 in NA.

So what do think the genre for A Nightmare on Elm Street should be then? Platformer, you say. Yes Platformer, you heard that right. A platformer, for a horror film thats now turned into a video game and whats the first thing you think when you think of A Nighmare on Elm Street? Platforming, no, well tell the people who made this video game then.

The plot: "The game manual contains the following synopsis...

You ARE Freddy Krueger. A horde of obnoxious teenagers is trying to get rid of you by finding your scattered bones and burying them. The only way to stop them is to kill them. You can travel along Elm Street through the electrical and plumbing lines or step into a mirror and step in another room.

The kids have weapons to battle you with and some of them even possess powerful "Dream Alter Egos" ...but if you can strike before they wake, they'll trouble you no more. So sharpen up your finger razors and get ready to slash, 'cause Freddy's here!"

Gameplay:

The player takes on the role of an ordinary teenager. 7 Additional teenagers can be controlled by up to three other players with the use of the NES Four Score. The objective is to scour the vicinity of Elm Street, collect the bones of the supernatural serial killer Freddy Krueger and dispose of them in the local high school's furnace.

The game takes place in the neighborhood of Elm Street and is played from a side-scrolling perspective.

Being attacked a certain number of times will cause the player to lose a life. Because the game takes place around midnight, certain areas are initially locked off from the player and require a key to be collected for later access.

When all the bones are collected, a boss battle with Freddy will commence. Defeating Freddy will both allow the player to exit the area and earn the player a key that allows access to a new area.

A game mechanic unique to the title is the "Sleep Meter". The meter indicates how close the player character is to falling asleep. If even one of the player characters falls asleep, all of the player characters will be transported to an alternate version of the environment referred to as the "Dream World", where the player is more vulnerable to attacks from Freddy. The Sleep Meter decreases automatically, but does so at a slower pace when the player character stays in motion.

I have played thia game, time and time again and overall, i would rather watch the movies than this game.
  
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Charlie Cobra Reviews (1840 KP) rated the PlayStation 4 version of Samurai Warriors 5 in Video Games

Sep 14, 2021 (Updated Sep 14, 2021)  
Samurai Warriors 5
Samurai Warriors 5
2021 | Action/Adventure, Fighting
Revamped art style and character designs (1 more)
All new weapon system
Character animations are a bit stiff in scenes with dialogue (1 more)
Battle music can be repetitive
Fantastic Return For The Warriors Series
Samurai Warriors 5 is a 2021 hack and slash, action, "Musou/Warriors" game developed by Omega Force and published by Koei Tecmo. It is available on PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PC, with current gen consoles not featuring an upgraded version yet. The fifth installment in the series, it is a re-imagining as almost everything from art style to character designs has been revamped. The story has been redone as well, focusing mainly on Nobunaga Oda and Mitsuhide Akechi, up to the events of the Honno-ji incident.

 Play as the legends of the Sengoku Era of Japanese history in this epic "Warriors" game. Samurai Warriors 5 has been revamped with a new art style and an all new weapon system allowing characters to utilize any weapon in a large arsenal as you mow down hundreds of soldiers from opposing armies. Every weapon has special moves to use in combat and can be upgraded in the blacksmith menu. Characters have a simplistic skill tree and some also have ultimate moves. A stable menu is available to upgrade and train horses you acquire as well. There are two game modes: Musou Mode, which is a mission based story mode and Citadel Mode, which is an extra game mode in which you defend a base while completing different objectives to get the highest score you can.

 Utilizing new character designs and a new art style based on Japanese paintings, Samurai Warriors has never looked so good. Musou attacks look great with some ending in a character posing for a painting. Character animations are great in battle but a little stiff in scenes with dialogue, however, the cutscenes are well done.

 Battle music can get repetitive but if you love the "Warriors" series it's what you've come to expect. Classic "Warriors" style music with epic rock/metal guitar riffs are mixed with the traditional Japanese style music, although with more emphasis on the latter. Overall the music is very enjoyable. The sound design for weapon combos gives you a good sense of impact too and really makes you feel like you're doing damage.

 Samurai Warriors 5 is the tale of Nobunaga Oda, the legendary Japanese Daimyo (Lord) on his quest to unify all the lands of Japan and bring peace to it's people. This game is based off of historical records of Nobunaga's life and that of Mitsuhide Akechi with many liberties taken to romanticize real life historical accounts. The plot follows them through their lives, up to the incident at Honno-ji.

Verdict: [7/10]

 A fantastic return to form for the "Warriors" series after the abysmal Dynasty Warriors 9. The new art style is a refreshing take and gameplay innovates while simultaneously not alienating lovers of past games in the series.
  
The Purge: Election Year (2016)
The Purge: Election Year (2016)
2016 | Action, Horror, Mystery
Deathly Dull
The Purge series has set itself as one of the front-runners in modern horror. The first film, starring Ethan Hawke, was a huge success, bringing with it one of the best stories seen in the genre for decades.

Its successor, Anarchy, was warmly received – namely for its greater focus on the night of crime itself, rather than the plight of one family. Naturally, another sequel was always going to be on the cards and Election Year continues the franchise. But does it continue the positive trend?

With only one returning cast member, Frank Grillo’s brooding Leo Barnes, The Purge: Election Year goes for a more political approach than its horror-rooted predecessors and director James DeMonaco was brave in altering the formula. He gets through it – but only by the skin of his teeth.

As a young girl, Senator Charlie Roan (Elizabeth Mitchell) survived the annual night of lawlessness that took the lives of her family members. As a presidential candidate, Roan is determined to end the yearly tradition of blood lust once and for all. When her opponents hatch a deadly scheme, the senator finds herself trapped on the streets of Washington, D.C., just as the latest Purge gets underway. Now, it’s up to Leo Barnes (Frank Grillo), her head of security, to keep her alive during the next 12 hours of mayhem.

The first major stumbling block Election Year faces is its lack of originality. Yes, the basic formula goes for a more political tone but the story itself is a near carbon copy of its predecessor. It’s unfortunate that once again, despite the plight of fans, the production studio continues to overlook the most fascinating part of the Purge, its inception.

Once again we are forced to sit through the hack and slash killings, only this time the acting isn’t as good and the majority of scares are signposted from the off. The ones that aren’t; well they’re in the trailer. It’s such a shame that a series with such promise has resorted to rehashing the same “tricks” to sell tickets.

The cast gel together well but the acting is below par and the dialogue is at times, dreadful with the same three expletives doing the rounds from character to character. Frank Grillo is underused with Elizabeth Mitchell’s preachy politician mistakenly put in the foreground. By far the most interesting person throughout the course of the film is Mykelti Williamson’s deli owner Joe, but he is lumbered with shockingly bad catchphrases.

The cinematography is very plain and the city setting isn’t utilised well at all. Washington should’ve been an exceptional place to helm a film about a night of legalised murder, but instead the audience is confined to its dimly-lit backstreets and alleys.

Overall, The Purge: Election Year is a step in the wrong direction for a series that showed such promise. Creating a film that, despite its intriguing political intentions, is exactly the same as its predecessor is sheer laziness and I don’t like to use this word when reviewing films, but it’s just completely and utterly boring.

https://moviemetropolis.net/2016/08/26/deathly-dull-the-purge-election-year-review/
  
TD
The Demon
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Also read my review here: http://bookbum.weebly.com/book-reviews/the-demon-by-hubert-selby-jr

<i><b>Behind me theres a house, a beautiful house with a loving family, and my guy is filled with rats and maggots that are chewing me up alive.</b></i>

I feel like the aim of this book wasn’t just to shock, but also as a reminder that wealth, sex, admiration and success don’t necessarily lead to a happy life.

I found, to begin with, this was so great at flowing along with the story. There were no sections that seemed overly long and boring, it was just exactly what we needed to know about Harry’s life. Then we came to after Harry’s marriage, where the demons within him couldn’t be kept down and he was frequently going out and sleeping with random women. Now, I was expecting this to happen in this book, Harry’s known as “Harry the Lover” so it’s pretty obvious that he’s going to be addicted to sex, but it went on for too long. It felt like half the novel was about Harry going out and shagging anything that moved, all the while, his lovely wife was at home looking after their son, and she had no idea what Harry was up to. The thought of my boyfriend / husband cheating on me one of the worst things I can imagine, so having to read so much of it had me seriously wanting to put the book down and move on.

Thank God Harry moves on to other things to fulfill his desires, because it definitely helped me get back into reading this. Once I was back into reading this, I was really hooked with the story. I kept wondering how far Harry was going to go to hold down his madness.

People get annoyed with the way Selby Jr writes his novels, but I think it’s cool. He doesn’t use speech marks, paragraphs and sentences ramble for ages and he uses a forward slash instead of a apostrophe (it’s closer to type than the apostrophe), this way, he doesn’t ruin his idea and writing flow. I like this raw style of writing, though it can sometimes get confusing to understand who is speaking. Selby Jr is also known for writing about some quite strange, manic and disturbed characters, so his rushed, and a little hectic, writing style does an amazing job as getting you inside the mind of the narrator.

This so could have been a 5 star read for me, but I read it during a reading slump (one that I’m kind of still in), plus the topic of infidelity cropped up too much that everything just fell apart and I couldn’t enjoy it as much as I had wanted to. This is definitely <i>not</i> an easy read but also not a read you should pass up if you get your hands on it.

<i>p.s. I didn't accidentally miss out the apostrophe in the quote, that's how it's written in the book.</i>
  
Two For The Road
Two For The Road
Alexa Milne | 2019 | Contemporary, LGBTQ+, Romance
10
10.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
I loved this bookj!
Independent reviewer for Archaeolibrarian, I was gifted my copy of this book.

Dylan saw Riley when he was just 15, Riley was suited and booted and Dylan fell in love. At 22, Dylan manages to wrangle to lift to work with Riley, in an effort to get his man. Because Riley is HIS: Riley just needs to see it too. But Riley is 20 years older than Dylan, and Dylan's dad's best fried, even if a bit estranged. Coming back to the village he was born to spend time with his dying father was a shock to Riley's system, but a much needed one. Leaving his partner of 20 years not so much of a shock as a revelation of just what had been going on behind his back for the bigger part of that relationship. Dylan is a breath of fresh air to Riley, who is lonely after his dad passed away. Chatting on the 45 minute drive to work every day brings the two men closer, and when Dylan finally declares his intention to make Riley his, all Riley thinks about is what would Dylan's dad think. Can Riley get past the age gap?

I started reading this and I was liking it. It was shaping up nicely for a 4 star rating. Not loving, just really enjoying it. And then SOMETHING! I've no idea what happened, or who said what, but something happened and I began to LOVE this book! I loved it from that point!

Dylan is young, yes, but he is old enough to know what he wants, more importantly, WHO he wants, and Dylan WANTS Riley. Riley is his and no one else's and Dylan will fight for Riley, even if Riley is scared and worried and all those negative feelings. When Dylan finds out why Riley is scared (not cos of the age gap, that's mentioned a lot!) Dylan steps up his advances a notch and poor Riley doesn't stand a chance. But Dylan's dad catches them, and Riley pushes Dylan away, running at the first hurdle. Dylan though, he doesn't. He'll wait til Riley comes round, cos he WILL come round, just as Dylan's dad will. And they do, wonderfully.

This is one of those books that you just fall into and inhale, you know?? Not too complicated, but you have to pick up the clues about Riley's past relationship. It's not overly explicit, but it is incredibly sexy, especially when Riley's experience is bought to light, even with being in a 20 year relationship (I did NOT like that man!) There is angst and turmoil, but it's not too heavy. Just enough for you to shed a tear when Riley breaks down and cries for what could have been with Dylan.

This really is a warm and fuzzies slash too stinking cute book! It also seems to be the first I've read of Milne, so my wish list is now a little longer.

So!

5 full and shiny and COLOURFUL stars (because after 20 years of white, Riley needs colour)

**same worded review will appear elsewhere**
  
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Gareth von Kallenbach (968 KP) rated the PC version of Chivalry 2 in Video Games

Jun 13, 2021  
Chivalry 2
Chivalry 2
2020 | Action/Adventure
Gamers looking for some blood-soaked fun in a Hack and Slash game will be thrilled with the release of Chivalry 2. The game allows up to 64 players to battle in a series of battles to create as much carnage as possible.

After an optional tutorial that goes over everything from lunging, blocking, throwing, and special moves and abilities; players will select from various classes and wade into battle. There are the Archers who attack from the distance and have a blade for up close and personal attacks. While they do not have the armor or impact of a Knight; they can do damage with a well-placed shot and when they upgrade their Bow or earn a Crossbow; can be deadly.

There are also the Knight, Vanguard, and Footman classes who can use weapons ranging from swords, axes, and pikes to take down the enemy. Weapons can be thrown in some instances and players can gain times power-ups to use things such as flaming pots or enhancements that can turn the tide of a battle.

Missions are in stages as players usually have to push a cart, storm a fortress, steal an item, destroy an item, etc. in order to advance to the next stage. Victory or failure is determined by completing or stopping a task within the given timeframe.

Should a player fall in battle which is a frequent hazard; they will have the option to change classes or continue with their current one and return to the battle after an amount of time has passed.

Maps offer players weapons at times from Catapults, Ballistas, Fire, and other weapons ranging from tools to even fish to help turn the tide of battle.

The game has some Gallows humor in it as the blood liberally flows all over characters and the ground as it is not uncommon to see multiple players on a team hacking away on a player.

While the graphics may be a bit dated for gamers; being able to improve your characters and their weapons as you advance in rank and skill is key as aside from an overall rank, each class has its own skill levels so players will have to work their way up in a class to advance rather than succeed in a class they are stronger in to build up one that they are weaker in.

There is a nice mix of maps, missions, and weapons and while some may wish for a bit more variety; I am sure that additional content and features will be coming down the line.

While the game can be frustrating at times as getting killed is a frequent event; as your skills grow and you find new ways to eliminate enemies and creative ways to hone your skills; the game becomes an ideal diversion.

The sound in the game is great as the clash of metal combined with screams and other ambient noises gives the game fun and immersive quality.

While it is not going to be for everyone; Chivalry 2 won me over with its fun and immersive gameplay and irreverent humor.

4 stars out of 5