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    Are you looking for a fun and enjoyable learning experience for children from the age of 4,...

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    At My Town's Museum, there is something fun and exciting in every room and something to play with...

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    * Unlock 18 mini-games and activities that will let your imagination run bug wild * Discover, learn...

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Literally.Laura (1763 KP) rated the Xbox One version of No Man's Sky in Video Games

Oct 25, 2018  
No Man's Sky
No Man's Sky
2016 | Action/Adventure
The game stated off simple enough, you find yourself crash landed on some foreign planet. The planet that I had the misfortune of landing on (not sure if it’s the same for every person) was an ungodly hot hell-hole filled with rabid, attacking plants and sparse resources. My initial introduction to the game seemed to be a little lackluster. I felt like I didn’t really know what I was supposed to do, as well as I wasn’t sure how any of the controls worked. After some time, I started to get the hang of how to move around and how to interact with the environment. Figuring out how to using the “mining pistol” to harvest resources was quite the revelation. After some time I came across my crash-landed spaceship. It was not in working order whatsoever. The game wanted me to fix said ship using a variety of different resources and pieces of technology to be crafted. I found the interfaces to accomplish this goal were a little vague and complicated. Unable to find the needed resources nearby, I set off on a little adventure. One glaring feature I noticed in the game was there was a resource drain on your “shielding” from environmental effects. My 60-degree Celsius planet played havoc upon this shielding, which required me to continually recharge it. I was not a fan of this. It seemed too often that my shields would be next to zero soon after I charged them. I imagine the searing heat might have had something to do with that, perhaps if I had landed on a tropical beach planet that wouldn’t have been much of an issue. Anyways, I meander along looking for my needed resources. True to my wonderful luck so far, I lose track of where home base was. Completely off track. I wander and wander in the hopes that I can find my way back. Through this struggle, I realize that I have the ability to harness my inner Neanderthal and am able to punch the local flora to death. This saved me considerable energy charges for my mining pistol. I forgot to mention everything I use has a drain, from the mining pistol, to my health, to the shielding from the environment. So continually you must fill these items up with different elemental resources you harvest from the planet (carbon, oxygen, etc etc). Beating all the plants and rocks to death proved useful, I was able to collect a large number of resources to help myself survive having no shelter whatsoever. Through my travels I encounter my first visit from the local fauna. They appeared to be goat-like creatures that dug their way out of the ground and wandered about. I was able to feed them carbon-based foods, to which they all started to crowd around me and beg for more. Luckily my jet pack allowed me to make a quick escape. After what seemed like an eternity of moving in the same direction (hoping the world was small enough to make this work), I fell into a hole. Inside the hole was a large cavern which I was eager to explore. There were many different resources that I had not come across yet, and thankfully there weren’t any angry plants or goats there to attack me. I travelled all the way to the end of the cave, hoping to find a civilization or something interesting. As I neared the end I was greeted by a giant wall of rock with nothing to offer, so I angrily turned back around and flew out of the cave. Crossing a few more mountain tops, finally I saw something of interest! There were four mechanical looking storage containers with some lights surrounding them. I took it upon myself to investigate. There didn’t seem to be any signs of life around the containers, so I figured there could only be one solution. I started to punch the containers down to collect whatever they were hiding. After the first container went down, alarms started to go off and the game told me I alerted “sentinels”. Not knowing what this meant, I saw a dog-looking robot approach and subsequently started lasering me to death. Apparently, those containers weren’t meant for sharing. Anyways, I ran off barely escaping with my life. In hindsight I wonder if death would have been an easier way to return to my poor, broken ship. I finally figured out how to seek out distress signals (which my ship had one), so my screen was marked with a true destination. Shortly after learning of this, the world decided to start up a fire storm which made the temperature jump up to 100-degrees Celsius. Needless to say, I was completely prepared and didn’t almost die on the way over to the distress signal. After finally finding my way to salvation I realized that the distress signal I followed wasn’t actually my ship, but some random, broken down building. I am a poor navigator.

Overall, I would rate this game a 7/10 so far. There are many features that I have not obtained access to yet, I imagine with upgrades and new resources my sad, sad, plight would be a little easier to manage. The visuals are beautiful, and from what I’ve read so far, there are many different worlds you can visit. Would not recommend the one I landed on.
  
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Sarah (7799 KP) rated the PlayStation 4 version of Jurassic World Evolution in Video Games

Jul 8, 2018  
Jurassic World Evolution
Jurassic World Evolution
2018 | Simulation
Highly addictive, but with a few slightly irritating features
Having a decent Jurassic Park builder is something I've been waiting for for a long time, and I'd say it does very well to live up to expectations.

The graphics in this game are very good, right up to zooming in as close as possible to the dinosaurs. They're not 100% perfect, but they're much better than you'd expect for a game like this. The gameplay itself is fairly straightforward and well paced. Unlike the freemium park builder apps, this game doesn't make you wait too long for actions to be completed, and there's lots of things to do in the meantime - so you're always kept busy and not sat twiddling your thumbs for ages. This could also be considered a drawback as it means you can play the game for hours without realising...

The variety of dinosaurs is good too, and they do keep you fairly busy. Each have their own character traits, and it's fun to work out what the best environment is for them and if they like living with other dinos. Hint - raptors are best kept on their own!

There's lots of missions too to keep you occupied, and it's great when you get to the point of unlocking multiple islands as it means you can try out different strategies for your parks on each island. Each of the 6 islands is different too, with varied weather or time of day. Isla Nublar also has the sandbox mode, which basically gives you whatever you want to build the ultimate park.

Sadly though there are some slightly irritating niggles. Firstly, there is no passage of time on the islands. Each might have their own default setting (e.g. night time) but they never cycle through a 24 hour day. Linked in to this, time never seems to pass when you navigate off an island to another one. If I set some actions going on Isla Matanceros and switch to Muerta, when I go back to Matanceros the actions haven't moved on. Whilst I appreciate that time can't progress while you're not playing the game at all, surely it can when you're just playing a different island? The final niggle is the missions and contracts. A lot of these are very basic and repetitive or similar, and it would be good to get a better variety or some that are more difficult.

All in all though, it's a very addictive and entertaining game and definitely worth playing if you like park builders. I'd love to see more like this be released on the ps4. There are a few issues, but nothing a few updates couldn't solve!
  
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Andy K (10823 KP) Jul 8, 2018

Thanks Sarah. Can't wait to try this.

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Darren (1599 KP) rated Allied (2016) in Movies

Jun 20, 2019  
Allied (2016)
Allied (2016)
2016 | Drama, Romance, War
Story: Allied starts as Canadian Intelligence Officer Max Vatan (Pitt) lands in Morocco to work with French Resistance Fighter Marianna Beausejour (Cotillard) as they pretend to be married as they complete their mission. The two fall in love for real and return to London to get married against the his superior Frank Heslop (Harris) opinion.

After a year of marriage Heslop comes to Max believing Marianna is indeed a spy, this leaves Max questioning, which side of the story to believe and what is the truth.

 

Thoughts on Allied

 

Characters – Max Vatan is Canadian intelligence working in Africa, highly skilled he can blend into his environment, but he does fall in love with his undercover wife. When he gets informed she could well be a spy, his life is turned upside down with doubts about what is the truth. Marianna is the French resistance fighter working with the Canadian Max as his fake wife, but she also falls in love with Max and returns to start a family with him. We don’t learn too much apart from that she is a loving wife and mother though.

Performances – Brad Pitt is good for the opening mission, you believe his every decision, but when he becomes the family man, he just doesn’t reach the levels you know he can. Marion Cotillard is good without being her breath-taking best in this role.

Story – The story here follows love and spies during World War II, we see how two people from different sides of the war fall in love and they must decide which side of the war they are supporting. This film doesn’t become as intense as it could be because seeing it from both sides could have heighted the experience and by the end it just doesn’t feel like it reaches the levels it should.

Action/Romance/War – The action during the film is tame with very little being used or looking overly real. The romance doesn’t feel whirlwind like you think it should be either, but the war side comes off strong as we see how the tension between the sides cause most of the issues in the lives.

Settings – The settings look authentic for the time, which does work well for the film.


Scene of the Movie – The truth.

That Moment That Annoyed Me – Just fizzles out in the second half of the film.

Final Thoughts – This is a war romance film that just never reaches the levels it should do, it just seems to go on and becomes one of the average films that you forget by the end.

 

Overall: Average and disappointing.

https://moviesreview101.com/2019/02/01/abc-film-challenge-oscar-nomination-a-allied-2016/
  
Salt (2010)
Salt (2010)
2010 | Action, Mystery
6
6.5 (15 Ratings)
Movie Rating
Angelina Jolie, as Agent Evelyn Salt, plays the sexy spy role well, but the charm she displayed in Mr. and Mrs Smith isn’t present here at all. This is unfortunate because her emotional ties to the rest of the cast are integral to the plot. As seen in the trailers, Salt is a CIA agent who is accused by a defector of being a Russian spy. Salt is forced to run and uses her training and skills to evade capture while trying to prove her innocence.

Her years of experience as a covert operative are supposed to make viewers believe that this slight woman can take down ayone, but some of her fight scenes expected too much benefit of the doubt from the audience, and didn’t feel real. It wasn’t very convincing having such a thin woman carry on in a full fight scene with heavier built men. Despite harsh sound effects and fast camera edits, it honestly didn’t look like she was hitting the baddies hard enough to hurt, let alone knock them out.

Salt has some great twists and turns that kept me entertained and guessing, but that wasn’t enough to keep the whole movie afloat. Before long, these twists began to feel forced, and because I was snapped out of the movie several times after realizing how confused I was, it began to be aggravating to wait for the film to give the audience its bearings again. Phillip Noyce, who also directed the 1997 Val Kilmer spy film The Saint could have imbued the movie with subtle foreshadowing, or at least some foreshadowing as it was nonexistent.

Liev Schreiber, playing Salt’s trusted colleague, did a great job. His imposing yet friendly and sly demeanor fit his part very well. Chiwetel Ejiofor did a good job as well, but his role as another fellow agent was too small. It needed to be bigger for him to really shine. After watching him in Talk to Me, I believe him to be a headline star who needs more screen time to show what he’s capable of. In this smaller role, he does the job effectively, but left me wanting to see more of him.

The special effects were effective and not distracting except for one particular “walk away from the camera during an explosion” moment. It’s not that it was cliche, it’s that any explosion (at that distance, in that environment) would knock someone unconscious. There’s pushing the boundaries of realism for artistic effect, and then there’s that step that’s one step too far.

Overall, the film was enjoyable, but I had higher hopes for this movie. If you’re looking for action with twists, this movie has them in spades.
  
    DoveConviene

    DoveConviene

    Shopping and Lifestyle

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    On Shopfully, you’ll find deals at Walmart, Target, Kmart, Dollar Tree, Bed Bath &Beyond, Big...