Review: TT Isle of Man – Ride On the Edge 2 (Switch)

Posted on May 14, 2020 by geelw

KT Racing has clearly put a Kylotonn of work into bringing TT Isle of Man – Ride On the Edge 2 ($59.99) to the Nintendo Switch and it’s truly an impressive effort on the hybrid console. The developer has recreated the recent PC and console experience perfectly in terms of complete content on the Switch with a few very obvious concessions to the lower-powered hardware. On Switch, there’s a tiny bit of texture draw-in plus some low resolution textures such as bike shadows, some of the signage, plus logos on your rider’s gear, which can all be a bit fuzzy in static shots. Despite these flaws and some long loading times, the game completely soars when in motion, particularly in docked mode. In handheld mode, the game is fine, but as a simulation that requires zen-like focus (there’s no in-race music for a reason!), every little detail needs to be seen at the best resolution available.

Where TT2 impresses constantly is in the excellent bike detail and its thrilling overall sense of speed thanks to excellent visual representation in the various camera modes and some tremendous sound design. The sheer intensity when you get to flying down a course and don’t go flying off your bike is nothing but a pure adrenaline rush, and the game will make you appreciate the art of the learning process. That said, it feels like a bit of understeer is in play on corners and you’ll crash a lot as a beginner and a great deal less (or not at all when you get better) as you get accustomed to the controls, which can by fully customized and come in a few styles from amateur to professional. Got a first or third party Switch compatible controller with a Rumble feature? DO please use that over the handheld’s Joy-Cons. The game goes from trickier to control and a bit too shaky to one where analog controls make things more manageable. The game is playable with Joy-Cons, mind you – it’s just more difficult if you stick to the standard control scheme and/or if you have the dreaded left Joy-Con drift issues some users have experienced with the handheld.

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Review: OVERPASS (PS4)

Posted on March 26, 2020 by geelw

Grandma needs to move to a place less hard to get to…

There are a couple of ways to play Zordix Racing’s super challenging and very (very) methodical off-road game OVERPASS ($59.99). You can go into all the tutorials and learn the ropes, failing and retrying as you go, then hit the Career Mode’s many racing events in a few ways, earning sponsors, a team to manage along with race-earned cash to repair rides and purchase plenty of gear and upgrades. You can just hop into Quick Race, Custom Race, or hotseat-based Multiplayer and play on an assortment of tracks with any ride, learning as you play. Or, you can just mix in all the game modes and get an extreme and extremely lengthy experience that’s part driving sim and part puzzle game where you’ll need to successfully navigate some deviously designed courses that will test your skills and patience.

The game could use some patching to fix a few bugs with the physics and free up camera control (holding R3 down to look around is a pain), but even still, a warning comes for casual players: it’s definitely not for everyone, especially those expecting something purely arcade-like. This definitely isn’t a Motorstorm or Baja: Edge of Control despite its announcer’s twangy voice and a bit of genetic soundtrack action. When you approach the game from a simulation aspect, it’s a lot more enjoyable, although as they say, your mileage may vary when all is said and done. There’s definitely a LOT of game here for that money, although the day one DLC might be a bit of a pesky bit of business for some players resistant to that sort of thing.

“Where we’re going, we don’t need roads!”

Of the two disciplines, the assorted buggies are the most fun to drive here, especially once you get a few upgrades and start fiddling with crafting the fastest and better handling rides. You’ll need to try and damage your rides as little as possible in Career, as repairs stack up and get costly, affecting performance to often great degrees if you don’t repair. Quads are a totally difficult thing to get used to throughout as you need to control the driver as much as the vehicle here, adjusting his or her body on the fly lest you go tumbling down a slope or over a steep hill. The unforgiving nature of the physics here means you’ll feel as if a stiff wind could send your driver flying off that ride, but they’ll fall off before the wind starts blowing anyway. This is clearly NOT a game about stunts and flashy moves and it doesn’t pretend to be. Add in the manual transmission options if you like, and parts of the game get really teeth-gnashing even when you get better at them.

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(Not So) Random Film of the Week: Night Tide (1961)

Posted on March 7, 2020 by geelw

Sirens go off: A figure of speech, as it were.

Spoiler Theater: In Curtis Hanson’s beautiful, haunting and unsettling romantic thriller, it’s a case of Boy meets Girl, Boy gets Girl and Boy, Oh Boy, does Boy lose Girl, But That’s Sort Of A Good Thing? Night Tide is a dark and moody film set by the Pacific, with an old pier carnival and its seaside surroundings as the main setting and what could be seen by some today as a few problematic elements in some of its troubled characters. I still think it’s an excellent film, mind you. But after watching it with a few friends recently, I see it’s also a film where some viewers applying more modern thoughts to its story may find an issue with their overall enjoyment. You’ll see.

A young sailor on leave named Johnny Drake (Dennis Hopper) goes to a seaside amusement park at night. He pops into a jazz club where he sees a lovely woman (Linda Lawson) sitting alone enjoying the music. He crosses the room, asks her if he can sit at her table because he can’t see the musicians from where he is, then proceeds to sit facing the woman, not the musicians. He tries to strike up more conversation, but she asks him to let her listen to the tunes instead. He then tries to buy her a drink twice, but she refuses both times. Suddenly, a strange, middle-aged black-clad woman (Marjorie Cameron) comes into the club, approaches the other woman and starts speaking an untranslated foreign language (Greek?) to her. The young woman is upset by this and quickly hands Johnny some cash to pay for whatever she was drinking and rushes out of the club.

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DeepDiscount.com’s Sale Will Take A Bite From What’s Left Of Your Wallet

Posted on March 6, 2020 by geelw

Yipes, just when I post news of a sale, here comes a bigger one. Deep Discount.com is having a really killer sale where if you spend $40 on selected items (there’s a rather huge list here) you get $5 off if you use that coupon code below when placing an order on the site.

Don’t have a copy of JAWS on Blu-Ray in your house? Well go get one, I say!

This deal runs only for a very short while. so act fast!

Don’t sleep on those deals, as there are a few hundred thousand of them and the sale ends 3/9/2020 – it takes time to go through everything, but those who do will find some great bargains.

-GW

(Not So) Random Film of the Week: Fast Company (1979)

Posted on March 6, 2020 by geelw

I’m still waiting for the Slow Company movie, but I’m patient…

I think it was around 1983 or so and I’d seen four or five films by David Cronenberg when I found out he’d made the 1979 drag racing centered “B” movie Fast Company. At the time I had to search around for a video store that carried it because in the US, it wasn’t readily available as far as I was seeing. A friend of a friend got a copy of the film from one of his sources not too long afterward because he was just as curious as I was and its funny how that sort of thing works out, isn’t it? I recall liking the car stuff, but not liking the plot much, but overall it was a decent popcorn flick provided you didn’t take the story at all seriously.

Watching it again more recently reveals it’s still a pretty pedestrian (ha-ha) movie with a some great car action, a touch of sex and nudity not uncommon to the era and if you didn’t know it was directed by Cronenberg, you’d think you’ve gotten a pretty good made for cable flick from a time capsule. It’s not a badly made film at all, though. In fact, some of the drag race scenes and a later car reconstruction scene benefit from Cronenberg’s attention to detail and his real-life obsession with the sport. Hey, everyone needs a hobby, right? You could say “All body horror and no play make Jack a dull boy”, but that’s not true if you stop and think about it. Still, variety is indeed, the spice of life, so this one’s special like that.

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FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE Demo: ‘Scuse Me While I Kiss The Sky

Posted on March 5, 2020 by geelw

“I can’t believe it’s THAT good, right?”

It’s up… and it’s good!

Honestly, I’d deliberately not followed any development news, interviews, screens and trailers of the upcoming FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE because as I’ve said in the past many times, I prefer going into a game as cold as possible for the surprise factor and how that actually helps my sense of wonder continually activate, even if it’s a game that’s been re-imagined or has had multiple versions created over the years. In this case, the approximately 45 minute long Unreal engine-powered demo that dropped on Monday is visually, pretty spectacular stuff and the gameplay is a mix of styles old and new, with a bigger nod to the new. This bodes quite well for the final version we’ll see on April 10, 2020.

I’ll resister my EXTREMELY middling complaints about the demo here just to get them out of the way first. I didn’t like the variations in destructible objects. Those wooden Shinra boxes you should smash up when you find them go down with a weapon swing by Cloud or a few shots by Barrett, but cardboard boxes, some crate-like objects, and a few metal barriers bounce or just get knocked around with no visible damage? Eh, well. Although, some striped sawhorse barriers hide handy items you can find once knocked away (explore everywhere!). My other minuscule complaint is with the music, which is phenomenal, but I want a choice of the original tunes as well as the new remake versions. As I said, these “complaints” are tiny, but this was only a demo and it does note, the quality isn’t 100% representative of the final game at all.

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Two From Arrow In March Get The Memory Moving, Plus Some Apple TV News

Posted on March 2, 2020 by geelw

I remember both of this month’s new Arrow Video/Arrow Academy releases because I didn’t see either when they were first released (oops). Well, now’s my chance to finally see both, but I’ll be nice and fill you in on what you too, may have missed out on:

Kansas City (BLU-RAY, 3/3/2020)

The Passion Of Darkly Noon (BLU-RAY, 3/25/2020)

Apple TV owners, Arrow also has you covered with some nifty digital rental and must-buy treats, so check it out if you’re a user:

Go on, CLICK ME. I won’t bite…

That Apple TV sale lasts from 3/2 to 3/17/2020. so act fast!

-GW

OVERPASS Launch Trailer: Time To Get Really Dirty

Posted on February 28, 2020 by geelw

…And a roll or two in the mud is GUARANTEED:

Zordix Racing’s OVERPASS is now available on PC via the Epic Games Store, with PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch versions arriving on March 17. If you want a challenging simulation racer where learning the literal ups and downs of courses that will have you rolling in the aisles when you’re too careless, this game was made to suit you.

I’ll get a review up shortly, but from the hands-on time I had earlier, it’s clear that this isn’t some simpler “accelerate, pull off crazy stunts and win!” arcade experience at all. That’s going to he hard for some to swallow like a handful of pebbles when they’ve rolled over a few times too many, but I liked the hardcore challenge of the game when I played the demo.

-GW

inbento: When Life Gives You Lemons, You Have A Mom Cat Make Sushi For Lunch

Posted on February 27, 2020 by geelw

I bet you’re hungry right about meow.

Indie developer 7Levels and Afterburn Games (or Łukasz Spierewka, who created the brilliant Golf Peaks) newest title, inbento automatically made me smile today, which is a really good thing in this otherwise crazy week and world we’re in. All I’ll say about this upcoming Nintendo Switch-bound puzzle game ported from mobile is take a look at this trailer. The Android and iOS version is up now, while the new Switch version will be available March 12, so go wishlist it if that’s a thing you do.

Er, don’t mind the cat hair in your meal, either, meow!:

Some screenshots, as you now want sushi, I bet:

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I’m going to shut up here, go ask for a review code and do my thing. This looks like a keeper for sure.

-GW

Persona 5 Royal: Want To Be A Phantom Thief? Let Morgana Show You The Ropes

Posted on February 25, 2020 by geelw

With Persona 5 Royal just around the corner (well, March 31, 2020 is kind of creeping up fast), here’s a looks at the game with a little help from Morgana with an assist from Kasumi as they point out a few cool additions to the game. I’d say “Thanks Atlus!” for this video, but it seems they don’t know it’s missing yet. Well, I guess this post will double as a PSA, then. Hey Atlus? You need to hire more security, I think.

Get One!

Get Both!!

Still, I bet the game sells like hotcakes anyway, even with Morgana’s paw prints on a few copies. Wait. Now THERE’S an idea for an even more limited edition… Hmmm.

Say, Morgnnnnnaaaaa? – are you busy right now? I have an idea, cat.