Patchwork

Video game movies have been struggling for years. They range from either horribly bad to mediocre. With the release of Sonic the Hedgehog, does the blue blur break the cycle of less than great video game movies? Or does it fall for into the same hole of it's predecessors? Well to begin - Let's discuss Sonic's design, both visual and otherwise. I enjoy his overall appearance. Of course, there's the controversy of what his old look was like- I won't cover that too much. Instead, I'll state that I like his cute design we see in the final release. He looks like Sonic and I feel he sounds like himself as well. Sonic in the movie is played by Ben Schwartz, that you may know as the voice of Dewey from the Ducktales reboot. Personally, the voice of Roger Craig Smith ( Sonic from the games ) is the definitive voice of the blue hedgehog. That is to say, Ben Schwartz does play a decent Sonic, even if his voice is identical to that of Dewey's. And as far as Sonic...

So I've been streaming the Mega Man games over on my Twitch channel (twitch.tv/BradicalRadical) and I reached a particular frustrating segment. Fair warning - this post may contain spoilers for various things. To explain the segment as simply as I can - There is huge bottomless pit that I must traverse using a special ability. This special ability has a finite amount of, for lack of a better term, ammo. In order to successfully cross the bottomless pit, I have to pick up a few ammo replenishment items along the way. Sounds simple and not terribly frustrating right? And this particular segment isn't that hard on it's own. I had no trouble clearing the gap. But I did have to still complete about 25% of the level - which consists of hard enemies and a boss. Standard Mega Man affair. Being horrible at Mega Man games, I died not terribly long after the pit. No big deal - I have extra lives and will just respawn and try again. I then realized why this is a particularly bad part o...

It's the general consensus that I've heard for quite a while. Mega Man 2 is often considered the best out of the entire series, both classic, X, and extended. Recently I've played through the game, as part of my retro game streams every Tuesday at https://www.twitch.tv/bradicalradical , as part of the Legacy Collection on Steam.     So what do I think? Is this the best one? It's certainly a strong contender. As of this writing, I am working my way through Mega Man 6 and I would like to reserve judgement until I've played all of them. But as it stands... I still enjoy Mega Man X more, but that game has the power of nostalgia, so it's certainly hard to compete with. But what makes Mega Man 2 such an incredible game, one that is often deemed as the best platformer.     Let's talk about the irrefutably good aspect – the music. From title screen to credits, the music is beyond fantastic in this game. Composed by Takashi Tateishi, every song is full of energy and...

A Nostalgic Intro A few weeks ago I started to play through the Mega Man series on my Twitch channel - twitch.com/BradicalRadical - as part of my Throwback Tuesdays. Every Tuesday I play a retro game and stream it live. I chose Mega Man, partly because I was craving that platforming style and partly because Mega Man Zero Collection was just released on Steam so it felt topical. Speaking of which, the version I played was the Mega Man Legacy Collection on Steam. What does this mean in regards to the review and my opinion of it? Not much - only that my viewers tend to give me grief for using the rewind feature during my play through, thus making Throwback Tuesday's nickname - Bully Brad Tuesday. I love my friends.  So starting the game up I was hit immediately with a wave of nostalgia. The classic Mega Man music almost overwhelmed me with memories of the past. The 8 bit soundtrack is still a masterpiece and definitely one that should be played on repeat. I am happy to say th...

Breathtaking Start Gris is an absolutely gorgeous platforming adventure game developed by Nomada Studios and developed by Devolver Digital. You play as woman named Gris, Spanish for Grey - yes this is relevant, who begins the game standing upon the open palm a giant statue of a woman. After attempting to sing, the statue crumbles and she falls to a world devoid of color. From here the player can began exploring the 2D world, collecting small orbs of light. Right away the player is never given any deliberate direction. The game uses it's beautiful art design and sound cues to encourage the player to explore and collect these orbs of light. These orbs of life are the clear objective of the game. Collecting the balls of light allows Gris to move forward through this colorless world, often giving her physical bridges to walk across. After collecting enough of them, Gris finds herself in a sort of hub world - an elegant fountain sitting inside of a dome temple. The lights sho...

Excuse my, more than likely, cringy attempt at using British slang. Pokemon Sword and Shield have been out for several months now, and just recently had it's first batch of DLC announced. I figured now would probably be the best time to go back and give my thoughts on the newest generation of games.  Before I dive into the game itself, let me briefly mention the controversy that preceded it. The biggest being the absence of the national dex. This was the first main series game where you could not catch every single pokemon. Game Freak has gone on record saying that this was an inevitability. It makes sense as well. I don't believe I could name a single game series that has this quantity of unique character models and animations. It would be like asking Final Fantasy to put all characters and monsters into a single game and expect the graphics to look how the Final Fantasy 7 remake looks.  Now that the expansions have announced an additional 200 pokemon being added,...

I have been apart of the Star Wars fandom ever since I was a child. I was introduced to the series ( and really started paying attention) when the prequels started. I was born in 95, so Episode 1 was really the only one I was old enough to start actually sitting down and paying attention to. From there my love for the series waivered a bit over the years. I was too young and the series was a bit too slow for my idiot kid brain to follow. But I started loving the series as I started to get more into the games. One of these being Star Wars: Bounty Hunter. The game had you playing as the incredibly awesome Jango Fett. I loved this game and it's no secret that Bounty Hunters in this series are one of the coolest things.  So it should be no surprise that I am enjoying The Mandalorian quite a lot. The series had a very strong opening. We see The Mandalorian, played by the incredibly talented Pablo Pascal ( Obyern Martell in Game of Thrones ) doing a few jobs that are easy work fo...

Happy New Year! Goo Morning, folks and Happy New Year! It's been awhile since I last updated this blog and I'm hoping to try to bring a change to that. What better time to bring change to my creative life than a new year? When will I get a cliche like this again? But to be a little more serious, I am hoping to bring about one big change to my career as a content creator - consistency. Consistency is something I've always lacked, unfortunately. Perhaps not necessarily in the quality of the content that I've released but in the frequency of said content. I've fallen into a comfortable loop of working really hard on projects for a block of time and then either seldom visiting my work or going on long hiatuses. I enjoy giving myself the excuse that my full time job prevents me from being able to be contently creating and releasing content. Truly, though, the real issue is poor planning. I honestly believe that if I made the time to schedule and plan my release...