Posts tagged Tanya Tuesday's

If you’ve not seen this film get up walk away from the computer (or maybe not) and watch this film. Seriously I am telling you as a reviewer to watch this film. So do as I say. Now for some of you, your probably sat there wondering why I’m suggesting this but seriously this film is HILARIOUS. The Super Mario Bros (Jankel & Morton, 1993) film is actually really rubbish but it’s so bad it’s funny. If you don’t take this so seriously and don’t get your panties in a twist by the fact it ruins the Mario name it’s a funny watch. It’s by no means a good film, it’s suffers from a terrible script and narrative, the acting is terrible (this could be because of the script rather than the cast, please note the bias because I have a crush on John Leguizamo) and the effects are shameful even for a nineties film.

So maybe I ought to go into the story for those of you who didn’t watch it despite what I advised at the beginning. So the basic story develops when Luigi’s crush Daisy is kidnapped. She is taken through a wall underneath her archaeological dig site which takes her to an alternate world. So Luigi convinces his brother Mario to join him on his rescue mission. This alternate world is ruled by King Koopa, now the majority of the people in this world are evolved dinosaurs. Essentially before humans were on the Earth a meteorite came down hit the Earth wiped out most of the dinosaurs whilst moving some into an alternate world. A part of the meteorite chipped off and this was given to Daisy upon her birth. It looks like a seedy underground city, which I suppose it is. So the story is basically Mario and Luigi saving Daisy from King Koopa who wants to broken meteorite so that the human world and world of the Dinosaurs will overlap and King Koopa can become ruler of all.

See the narrative is really bad, I don’t see why they had to have such a stupid plot it’s ridiculous. Watching this film it’s even more terrible than what I’ve discussed, however it’s comic moments are genius. You can pick this film up for around 3 quid don’t bother looking on amazon, so it’s well worth those 3 quid. It’s an unforgettable film. If you have a sense of humour you will get some pretty big laughs from this film.

The effects and make-up/costume design is insanely bad. It looks like a much older film than it actually is. The film doesn’t receive any points for doing anything right or good. The film in fact only has one good point and that’s because Yoshi is in it and looks semi-cute. That’s hardly an argument for a good film. So I may be sending you mixed signals with this, I’m pointing out how terrible it is whilst saying its a brilliant watch because of how hilarious it is. Truth is I suppose the decisions down to you. Some people probably wont find this film as hilariously bad as I did but seriously I don’t expect anyone to saying this is a good film I’m trying hard to avoid saying that. But your missing out if you don’t watch this because of how bad it is. If I had to give this film a rating it’d have like a 1 star or something but still go watch it because it will keep you amused for an hour or so (just don’t spend loads on it).

So little update before I get into the review Tanya Tuesdays has obviously returned regular Tuesday updates starting from this one. So what can you expect from Tanya Tuesday’s well the odd regular gaming review like this one. I shall also be doing film reviews of video game based films. If you’ve read my DOA review or Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva then you know what to expect, unfortunately for me I’m going to be watching some pretty shitty films. Then from end of December or early January I’ll be introducing a new feature video games for a penny. In which I’ll be reviewing video games that I can get for a penny expect plenty of shit games for that. So that about covers it so I’ll leave you with my review of Dead Island.

So recently I completed playing Dead Island with my sister on the PS3. I got this game because the adverts looked really good and compelling. Plus it had the option of online co-op which was a big factor for me since I hardly play games with my sister being so far apart. You select your character from one of four people, Logan, Purna, Sam B and Xian Mei all of whom have their own special abilities and skills. Once you’ve done this your pretty quickly thrown into gameplay. The first few minutes of play allow you to become accustomed to the controls before finally coming across your first crowd of zombies. I like that, it may sound stupid but I hate games that either don’t give you a tutorial or don’t give you a chance to get to grips with the controls.

The story revolves basically on the four characters trying to find their way of Banoi Island after a zombie outbreak. Your not introduced to how or why this has happened, that mystery you have to unravel yourself through the game. The story is pretty good, it’s what you’d expect from this sort of game. The ending was very predictable though but did this ruin the game?, no not really. The game’s strengths don’t lie in it’s story but when you play a game like this story is not always important. Sure a great story always helps but when your main focus is just finding new ways to hack of limbs, enjoying the gore and bloodshed the story can really take a back seat. Throughout the game you explore four different areas starting with the beach moving into the city, then to the jungle finally ending up at the prison. This was a very creative idea because as you progressed through the game and the outbreak developed and progressively got worse the settings reflected that by getting darker and more intense.

So as stated I played this game co-operatively with my younger sister who as previously mentioned in another review is much better than me at games, heck she should be writing this review but she’s not. We played this game trying to complete every side mission we came across in order to extend the amount of time we could play the game. Overall it took 38 hours and I believe we completed like every side mission. We might have missed a few but we really made sure we completed the side missions before progressing with the main story. The side missions were generally all the same, mostly being fetch quests but I was happy with doing this as it helped me and my sister to explore more of the island and gain more mod’s for weapons. I bought this game in the hopes of spending a bit of time on it so there’s probably a lot of bias in my reasons but if you really didn’t want to do fetch quests then don’t do them. The main storyline has some fun quests though. I enjoyed playing this game and encountering different groups of people who had different ideas or objectives or ways to survive and get of the island which I thought was really nice. It made me think if there was a Zombie outbreak not everyone would probably follow the same route, path or idea as me.

Visually this game has some truly stunning settings seriously you could turn this game on, face out over the beach and sea and just stare. The scenery is really just that amazing. The water is spectacular and it certainly convinced me that I wanted a holiday abroad. Visually you can’t fault the settings. The graphics elsewhere, such as the characters, are still up to scratch but not anything I would ever rave home about. So aesthetically the games pretty good.

So lets talk about weapons, the weapons work in a similar way to Dead Rising. You can modify sledgehammers, knifes, guns and tools with bolts, nails or electrical equipment to create odd new weapons and strange combinations. Which is a lot of fun mainly because me and my sister would just look at each other and be like what the hell is that!. The weapons deteriorate after time which isn’t too much of a problem because money isn’t too hard to come by and throughout the game you come across stronger variants of the same weapon so it can be easy just to switch them. There was only one point in the game when I was struggling to repair my weapons which was when I was completing a sidequest, which I had been struggling on so my weapons were all just about broken down by the time I had completed it. There are some pretty cool looking weapons within the game, some weapons require more stamina than others so choose your weapons wisely. I always carried a gun, some knife or sharp based weapons which did not use too much stamina and about two heavier weapons like a sledgehammer. That way you cover all your bases, the gun for humans, sharp knifes for mass kills and the larger stronger weapons.

There is another aspect to this game which can be both annoying and hilarious, the glitches. Now this game can be really buggy we had zombies falling through walls and buildings  and also attacking through them. I’ve no idea how a Zombie manages to hit through a cement wall without knocking through it but in Dead Island it happens. Now for the most part its generally amusing for this to happen but when a zombie kills you by hitting you through a wall and your not expecting it, then it can be infuriating. So yeah keep a look out for these.

So my overall opinions of the game, Dead Island is a good game you cannot deny it, I imagine it’s a lot better and easier when you play it co-op which is something I would suggest, although you might end up arguing over who drives the car. I’m not annoyed that I paid £37 quid for it but with all the good games coming out at the moment your probably better off buying them and waiting to buy this pre-owned.