The follow-up to 2016’s Doom reboot is an absolute blast featuring some of the most fluid FPS mechanics ever implemented. Narrative takes a backseat to action set pieces in which you must keep moving and shooting. The primary challenge beyond FPS aiming skill is being able to manage when you perform “glory kills” to replenish your health and when you chainsaw fodder enemies to gather ammo. This is the closest thing you can get to a 3-D version of Robotron 2084 and that’s some of the highest praise a game can get.
Cynthia Rothrock directed this western that features just about every aging early 90s American martial arts star. Unfortunately, despite the cast, the movie does not feel as “action-packed” as it should. It’s very low budget looking but tries to invoke every epic Western motif you can think of. Tighter editing and a less serious tone would have probably made this easier to recommend. Case in point, the desert hallucination sequence was great, goofy fun.
Also billed as Metroid 4, this is the follow-up to the much lauded SNES Metroid entry. I don’t think it’s quite as good as that one but it’s very similar in feeling. There are way more hidden secrets than I expected so a 100% completion is out of the question for me. The game was pretty easy going until I hit some of the later boss battles. After you defeat a boss, it morphs into a blob that keeps attacking you until you shoot 4 or 5 missiles into it. It’s so frustrating. Otherwise, it’s exactly what you expect from a 2-D Metroid game and you already know if you’ll like it.
Corey Yuen’s American directorial debut is one of the cheesiest pieces of garbage you could possibly watch. It sets itself up as a karate dojo vs. the mob story, but immediately becomes a teen drama after the opening scene. Our humiliated dojo instructor moves to Seattle and his son befriends a Michael Jackson impersonator. He is soon the target of the local bully and does exactly what you’d expect: conjures the ghost of Bruce Lee and trains to fight the ultimate exhibition karate fight against Jean Claude Van Damme. The only bit of competent direction is final fifteen minutes of karate matches, The rest is pure 80s cheese.
Quinton Tarantino spoke highly of this film and it’s okay, I guess. A killer hand movie that doesn’t really deliver any thrills but does have the benefit of the leads playing this as if was as serious as Shakespeare.
Take 25% all the artwork in my Etsy shop! Sale runs through Dec. 4th, 2025!
Order early to avoid holiday shipping delays. Free shipping on orders over $35.
It’s a Dishonored 2 stand-alone expansion pack! If you liked that game you’ll probably like this too. You play as the Billy the ship lady from and do all the usual sneaking around and save spamming that you remember from before. Most of the game centers around a single section of town with one unique zone (like a residence or bank) to explore in each chapter. I spent most of my efforts trying to complete a no-kill play through. Turns out there is no real penalty for killing until you fget to the final choice of whether to kill the “Outsider.”
This is probably the most underrated entry in the Zelda series. While most folks would rank A Link to the Past higher, I think it’s the best of the 2-D games. The mere fact that you can move diagonally is enough for me. In addition you have all the usual tropes of a Zelda game: you must save the princess from the evil wizard, a cutesy sidekick that guides you on your quest, lots of puzzle-based gameplay, and each dungeon gives you a new ability.
The main hook here is the ability to shrink down and explore the world from a bug’s eye view. In the end, this feature is not used to its full potential. It becomes just another limited-use dungeon solving ability rather than a way to explore the same environments in from another viewpoint. Nevertheless, the way in which you are depicted as a dot with a word bubble icon is very clever.
It may not be the most groundbreaking game in the series, but it is one of my favorites.
A space-future guy, considered one of the top players of board and card games in the entire galactic civilization known as “The Culture,” is recruited as an “ambassador of fun” to play the ultimate board game on a primitive, war-loving planet. In the process we get a good view of a less-advanced culture as we root for Gurgeh. Banks is making up goofy game rules as we go along, but whatever. The whole sporting-event framing of the story makes it move along quickly as we wonder how he’s going to be victorious despite the ever increasing stakes. Reminded me a bit of Ender’s Game just in its setup and structure.
AKA School of the Holy Beast, this is a Japanese nun-sploitation in which I assume the writer’s only knowledge of Christianity was learned from other nun-sploitation films. There’s a point where one of the head nuns tells the students that Jesus said adulterers should be “arrested and killed.” I could be wrong, but I don’t think that’s in the spirit of the New Testament. Anyways, this is about as sleazy as these movies can be with its share of floggings, naked skin, and a creepy priests. Yet, the movie is shot in an incredibly artistic style that makes the whole affair seem more high-brow than it actually is. I think it’s a good movie, but you’ll surely need to go to confession after watching it.
