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Iain Lewis (2 KP) rated Golden Sun in Video Games

Jun 19, 2019

Golden Sun

Role-Playing

7.5

(4 Ratings)

Video Game Rating

Great classic jrpg

Top down jrpg made by Camelot and Nintendo for the Nintendo game boy, a well crafted story separated into two games. In the first you play as Isaac a venue adapt from the town of vale located at the foot of mt aleph. Game play for the first half hour to an hour depending on how you play can be seen as slow but helps set up the story of some key characters, some of which don't get payoffs until the events of the second game, a well thought out and crafted story with plenty to do including collecting all 28 elemental djiin which have the ability to change your magic in battle and on the overworld. Experience some top quality puzzles and fight some interesting monsters, accompanied by a high quality sound track made by motoi sakuraba more well known for his musical work on dark souls and the tales series of games.

This game pushes the limits of the game boy advance along with its sequel the lost age which as the way the story is paced and set up you need to play the second to get the full story

Kudos

David McK (3713 KP) rated Superman: Up, Up, and Away! in Books

Jan 30, 2019

This is one of those rare beasts: a Superman story that contentrates jsut as much (if not more!) on the Clark Kent side of the character than on the Superman side.

As it starts, Clark is powerless (apparently, following the events of an older story which I hadn't read), and has been so for the last year. With Lex Luthor once again released from prison, and with various other comic-book'y' threats (to coin a phrase) still popping up around the city, however, the need for theman of Steel is as strong as ever, even though Supergirl and various other Super-heroes (such as members of the Green Lantern Corp) are covering the vacancy, as it were.

If I'm honest, I also found these early sections to be a little slow, never really grabbing me all that much.

It became obvious, however, that these sections were laying the groundwork for the latter half of the book: the bit when Clark starts getting his powers back! Without those early sections, that particular bit (and Superman's battle - again! - with Luthor) would not have been anywhere near the same impact that it does.

Kudos

Awix (3310 KP) rated Dogora (1964) in Movies

Jul 20, 2019 (Updated Jul 20, 2019)

Dogora (1964)

1964 | Crime, Sci-Fi

5.3

(3 Ratings)

Movie Rating

Bonkers Japanese sci-fi from the Godzilla team makes most of those movies look like models of restraint and gritty realism. Odd things are afoot in Japan as seemingly random objects - coal, trucks, bank robbers, buildings - start spontaneously floating into the air. 'I never jump to conclusions but I think a giant space monster is probably responsible,' says the lead cop investigating the case. Of course, he is correct, and it's up to the usual team of cops, scientists, and soldiers to save the day.

The really weird thing about Dogora - and this is saying something - is that the giant diamond-eating monster element is not the oddest thing about this film. Most of it looks and feels like a particularly frantic cops-and-robbers thriller with the odd giant floating blob sequence edited in under protest. Still, the script has Shinichi Sekizawa's usual cheerful wit and the special effects are, believe it or not, excellent. Good fun if you like tokusatsu movies; the climax, in which wasp venom is used to try and petrify the monster and a gun battle turns into a dynamite-chucking contest, has to be seen to be believed.

Kudos

David McK (3713 KP) rated Blood's Revolution in Books

Feb 8, 2020

Blood's Revolution

Angus Donald | 2018 | Fiction & Poetry

8.0

(1 Ratings)

Book Rating

Second entry in Angus Donald's Holcroft Blood series (that started with Blood's Game) and, in many respects, you could be forgiven for thinking that this had a different central character.

Since the events covered in that novel, the young Holcroft Blood has grown up, and is no longer quite as naïve, perhaps, as he was before. The 'Merry Monarch' (Charles II) has also passed on, with his crown passing to his Catholic brother James II, as his Holcroft's father Colonel Thomas Blood (who attempted to steal the Crown Jewels in the previous novel).

The majority of this novel thus concerns itself with Holcroft being caught up in the events surrounding James II increasing alienation of Britain's Protestant political elite, while being hunted by a brutal French spy for his time doing the similar for Charles II in France.

I'm interested in seeing where this goes, and how Holcroft gets caught up in the later events, especially since The Battle of the Boyne (in which William, the Prince of Orange, defeats King James II) is still remembered every July 12th here in my homeland of Northern Ireland!