Review: Lost Dimension (PS3/PS Vita)

Posted on July 28, 2015 by geelw

Platform: PlayStation 3/PS Vita
Developer: FuRyu
Publisher: Atlus
# of Players: 1
ESRB Rating: T (Teen)
MSRP: $39.99
Official Site
Score: B (80%)

He may be smiling outside, but he’s really going to kill you inside. The End.

Oh, how I do wish there were a Lost Dimension OVA or short-run anime series. Just so I could see the scene at the close of one episode when villain The End materializes outside that strange massive pillar he’s dropped in the middle of Tokyo to address some reporters who’ve popped up outside with their news vans and a moderately sized crowd of terrified (but terminally nosy) gawkers. In my somewhat addled brain, the English dub would go something like this:

REPORTER: Mr. The End! You’ve dropped this massive Pillar onto the city, killed over two billion people around the world and are threatening the human race with total extinction! What will you do now?!

THE END (dryly): Hmmm… I guess I’ll go to Disney World… and kill everyone there as well.

Whereupon The End would smirk, drift high up into the air and vanish as the crowd below gasps and chatters away. As that reporter is making some dopey closing commentary, the camera would pull way back as he or she is talking right before a huge chunk of rubble drops on top of everyone outside. Cut to The End looking down and grinning as we get a freeze frame shot of his face and THE END in big letters fading in before the closing credit theme kicks in.

Hey, I did say he means business, didn’t I? THE END.

Yeah, I’d pay real money to see that. But I’m a bit crazy.

Anyway, my poorly plotted final fan fiction fantasy dream aside, let’s talk about the game in question. Lost Dimension comes to you from developers FuRyu (with an Lancarse assist) and publisher Atlus as a solid, intriguing hybrid of visual novel and tactical RPG. It’s a game that takes a number of genre cliches (and the fact that JRPG fans love them) and flips them onto their heads as it asks you to kill off your team one by one in order to advance the plot. While that’s going on you also need to bond with as many of your remaining teammates as possible before the final showdown. And you need to do this twice in order to get that best ending.

I usually don’t do this, but I’m going to go and gently spoil some of the obvious stuff the game slaps you with hard just to make sure it’s understood how important it is to NOT automatically like the cast from the get-go.

Oh really? Well you’re still getting voted off the island, missy!

The game doesn’t care a whit how cute you think Himeno is or that Marco wears bangin’ headphones and has a snowman or whatever the hell that is on his outfit. In fact, going into the game with notions of “saving” characters you like is a really terrible idea. Not only will you be disappointed that someone you’re attached to is going to get theirs at your hands, you’ll end up in a frustrating loop of trying to reload saves that won’t matter at all as you try to salvage someone who needs to die anyway… Continue reading →

Bundle Stars Wants You To Be Quite Heroic This Week

Posted on July 28, 2015 by geelw

Oblige them, please (and help out assorted charities in the process). That 7-game +1 Expansion DLC RPG Heroes Bundle is from yesterday, but you can still grab it for $2.49 for about the next 19 hours. Among other gems, that bundle has the legendary Wizardry 8, a blast from the past that’s still quite a killer game experience. Meanwhile, in the future of today, this is what’s up for grabs for a song:

The FPS Heroes Bundle is another $2.49 deal for a nice set of eight Steam keys that will probably melt your PC thanks to all the non-stop action you’re about to get. There’s a nice and weird mix of games including System Shock 2, the star of this particular deal. It’s still an effective blend of sci-fi and horror that will creep under your skin and probably get a few of you new to it curled up under something not wanting to further.

As usual, there are also loads of single and multi-game deals to be found in the Bundle Stars store, so feel free to poke around there and back up your backlog with too many titles to try out. Hey, I just tell you what’s out there, folks. It’s up to you to decide what you need to do with it.

Lost For The Moment, Found Happens Tomorrow…

Posted on July 27, 2015 by geelw

I’m in the midst of writing my Lost Dimension review and a few other things, so there have been limited updates. Just pop back in tomorrow for something more interesting to read. Yes, that’s a screenshot from Wizardry 8, not Lost Dimension. One person will get the joke. Hopefully. Alrighty then, back in a bit.

A “B” I Need to See: Les Raisins de la Mort

Posted on July 25, 2015 by geelw

Poster courtesy Horrorpedia.com- GO SUBSCRIBE!

I’ve never seen Jean Rollin’s 1978 horror flick Les Raisins de la Mort (The Grapes of Death), but I do vaguely recall discussing the film with a friend a few years back in a conversation about foreign horror movies. I’d forgotten all about it until YouTube user Sleaze-O-Rama posted the trailer below:

(thanks, Sleaze-O-Rama!)

And now, the hunt begins for a DVD as I prefer to borrow or outright own my movies and not stream or steal them. It’s not an urgent “get” at all. But if I see this one in my travels and it’s affordable, I’ll be adding it to the library when I can.

Odin Sphere Leifthrasir: This Remake’s Not Plain Vanillaware At All

Posted on July 24, 2015 by geelw

Atlus and Vanillaware are teaming up to bring a very beefed-up HD version of 2007’s PlayStation 2 classic action game/RPG hybrid Odin Sphere out for the PS4, PS3 and Vita sometime in 2016. Take a gander at this gorgeous key art and set those calendars for whenever the game ships out next year:

Atlus has even made this upcoming release an educational experience in at least one way. Leifthrasir is pronounced “LAYV-thra-sheer,” and that weird-looking “d” in the poster above isn’t a “d” at all, but a thorn þ, meaning you’ve learned something useful and Nordic today! Hmmm. hopefully that weird letter turns out alright in the actual post.

Change the Fate of the World When the End of Days Draws Near in Odin Sphere Leifthrasir

The Perfected HD Project from ATLUS and Vanillaware Remakes the 2007 Original

IRVINE, Calif. – July 23, 2015 – Vanillaware, the team behind the hit side-scrolling title Dragon’s Crown is working on a new authentic HD project with ATLUS to recreate and perfect Odin Sphere – the 2D action RPG with Norse Mythology roots. Told in five tales from the perspectives of five unique protagonists, Odin Sphere Leifthrasir expresses the original game with glorious HD graphics in Vanillaware’s renowned style, expanded worlds with new monsters, fully voiced story scenes, and a fine-tuned refreshing combat and RPG system to perfect the gameplay. Odin Sphere Leifthrasir will be available as a physical and digital release for the PlayStation®4, PlayStation®3, PlayStation®Vita in 2016 in North America.

You probably want some screenshots to ogle that feature some of that new HD art, correct? Well then, here you go:

Lovely. I now have at least ONE game I can look forward to at some point in 2016 and thankfully it’s supporting old and newer Sony consoles.

Blu-Ray Review: Spider Baby

Posted on July 22, 2015 by geelw

Jack Hill’s amusing and mildly disturbing 1964 horror classic Spider Baby finally gets the feature-packed Blu-Ray treatment is deserves courtesy of Arrow Video and MVD and it’s a must for fans of the formerly forgotten flick that became a cult classic. “The maddest story ever told” still holds up today as quite the viewing experience as well as on original little low budget flick that still packs quite a kick in a few places.

The story of the Merrye family’s twisted offspring and their strange caretaker Bruno is, for all the creepy, unsettling antics taking place, quite an emotional tale at heart. Three siblings Virginia (Jill Banner), Elizabeth (Beverly Washburn) and Ralph (Sig Haig) live with Bruno (Lon Chaney Jr.) in a decrepit mansion well off the beaten path with a few other relatives. Thanks to inbreeding among the family, all suffer from a genetic condition that makes them regress mentally into primitive states that make them more than a little dangerous to be around. Bruno does his best to keep his unbalanced charges in line, but after a mailman (Mantan Moreland) is killed and distant relatives arrive to claim the mansion and surrounding property for themselves, things take a turn for the darkly comedic worse. Continue reading →

Onechanbara Z2 Chaos Now On Sale: Let’s Get Physical (But Digital Is Okay, Too)

Posted on July 21, 2015 by geelw

Let’s get this out of the way. You’re NOT buying Onechanbara Z2 Chaos because it’s anything close to AAA quality “Game of the Year” material. Nope, you’re buying because you’re a guy or gal who really like SUPER offbeat action games from Japan featuring under-dressed but overpowered ladies slicing and dicing hordes of undead creatures and creeps. That and the game is also pretty darn hilarious because it’s so intentionally over the top while being extremely accessible to about anyone who picks up a controller and wants to take it for a spin. XSEED Games has two versions of the game out today; a digital download for $39.99 that includes the game and rather sassy “Strawberries and Banana” DLC “costumes”.

Hey, both fruit are quite tasty and VERY good for you! Lots of vitamins and minerals and other good stuff like that there. So that LE has some nutritional and educational value. Get two!

If you want something to touch and show off (fear not, Aya, Saki and the other gals won’t chop your sweaty hands off), run like the wind to your nearest game emporium with $49.99 and get the yummy limited “Banana Split” edition shown above. That set nets you a soundtrack CD packed with almost 80 minutes of music from both this game and its Japan-only predecessor Onechanbara Z: Kagura, an 80-page softcover “Behind the Bikini” book loaded with artwork and back story from both games, and a code to download that aforementioned “Strawberries & Banana” premium DLC costume. Let’s see now: so far, Onechanbara Z2 Chaos is (according to me) nutritious, educational, “sassy”, and a few other things. That sounds like a buy to me. And probably XSEED Games as well.

Random Art: Lost Weekend Or Future Gold Mine? It’s Your Move, Hollywood

Posted on July 20, 2015 by geelw

A few years back I was sitting in a diner listening to some folks at a nearby table debating some recent Hollywood remakes that were terrible (what else is new?) because they were basically updated version of the original films with more modern jokes. One of the guys at that table made the point that it would be better to remake a film that kept the title for familiarity but yanked the concept into new territory. A light bulb went off in my nosy little head and later at home I whipped up a poster idea for an old film I hated, Weekend at Bernie’s, re-imagining it as a dead serious zombie film of some sort with some of the same cast just to mess with the minds of those who recall it as a comedy.

For some reason, this idea keeps popping in and out of my head every few months or so. Recently, thanks to more remakes that don’t need to be made at all getting some funky not so fresh trailers (like this one. Seriously? WHY?) But I’m not about to suggest any budding to veteran screenwriter tackle this for real. Well, unless you’re willing to deal with those who somehow hold this stinker “sacred” lining up at your doorstep (or on some message boards) to take you to task for desecrating their nostalgic memories of this flick.

Anyway, that first piece above is my latest revision of the idea, the one below that has a font I like better, the third is an old piece I just added some lettering to and this link goes to my horrible-looking original poster concept. I even worked up a plot outline at that time, but it didn’t have much of an ending. Or a middle for that matter. Hey, I just come up with ideas, ladies and germs. Someone toss me a sack of money and yeah, I’ll come up with the rest of that movie in a heartbeat. Inspiration comes from the strangest of places. Like a sudden sack of money, for example.

Tembo The Badass Elephant Says: “Don’t Forget Me… OR ELSE!”

Posted on July 20, 2015 by geelw

Is this new Sega-published game out tomorrow equal parts Rambo, Dumbo and Sonic the Hedgehog? Nope, not really… but it’s pretty darn close. But you probably want to buy Tembo the Badass Elephant because if you don’t, Tembo might get mad. And you don’t want to get Tembo mad at you because elephants don’t forget. Ever. Hey, I don’t know about YOU, but I don’t want to be in the shower or walking down the street on an other wise fine and dandy day when all of a sudden I hear a trumpety bellow and a wall comes crashing down on me that Tembo just burst through like a pissed off Kool-Aid Man. Seven and a half tons of fun on my head (not counting the rubble from building that just got crashed through)? Nope, not happening.

Anyway, the game in question SHOULD be bought and played not because of any unveiled threats, but because it’s from the geniuses at Game Freak, who brought Pokemon to the world for Nintendo consoles, a little VERY under-appreciated gem called Pulseman to the Sega Mega Drive back in the 90’s. So, YES. You need a little Tembo in your gaming life tomorrow. Or else you get a LOT of Tembo coming your way when you least expect it. PC, PS4 and Xbox One only. Wii U and handheld system owners? Well, I guess you’ll be getting a little big visit from some very angry elephant soon. And he won’t be playable. Carry a sack of peanuts and a live mouse with you at all times so you can distract him as you make good your escape.

Random Film of the Week(end): Bloody Birthday

Posted on July 19, 2015 by geelw

If you’ve never had children and are thinking of bearing your own brood, watching a film like 1981’s Bloody Birthday just might put you off the idea for a while. Like forever. This sort of obscure horror flick isn’t anywhere near as gory as many of the more familiar 80’s “B” movies at all. But the overall tone is more than a tiny bit disturbing as the film is more or less an unfiltered version of The Bad Seed without the tacked-on Hollywood ending.

The funny thing is from the opening moments you’d think the film was going to be somewhat supernatural in nature. But it’s not at all (which turns out to be a really good thing). In 1970, three babies are born to three different mothers at the same hospital during a solar eclipse and ten years later, all three end up as evil pre-teen murder machines. Who just so happen to live on the same block or at least within walking distance of each others homes. Yikes. The kids, Debbie (Elizabeth Hoy), Curtis (Billy Jayne), and Steven (Andy Freeman) manage to whittle down the population of Meadowvale, California while remaining undetected because who’d see such innocent little darrrrrrlings as a trio of mini-Manson family members? Well, perhaps Debbie’s dad, who happens to be the town sheriff? Nope. He’s more clueless than a headless Sherlock Holmes. Faster than you can say “There goes the neighborhood!”, well… you know the rest of that one, right?

Continue reading →