Epic

Damn it Pixar, every time I go to the movies, you lessen your image more and more. Before seeing Epic at AMC, we were treated to the characters of Monster University shilling Swiffer, and Lowes. Just what children want, right?! Oy... You're starting to look like the Lorax here, especially considering you've given up all your jokes in the commercials, to the point where, regardless of if they are funny or not, no one will laugh, BECAUSE WE'VE SEEN IT A DOZEN TIMES.

Okay, triad against Pixar's poor decision-making over... Onto Epic.


It's about a 6.5/10. It's not bad, just not really good. It's fun in parts, but also rather stupid in others...

     Some may recall my love of Rio, which had a surprisingly good love story, and characters that had good qualities while still being comedic.
     This does not really apply here...
     Epic's characters are all bland. We got a bumbling professor, a down-to-earth teenage girl, a reckless speedster, a serious general, a loving queen, dumb comedy relief, one-note villain... The characters aren't interesting...
      The story is pretty standard as well; basic chase after a MacGuffin (trope name for a plot relevant noun), fight the bad guy, bad guy gets swallowed by a tree. (No, seriously. He dies by tree growth. This is a CG movie and, amazingly enough, that looked really weird and fake. Wrap your head around that...)
      And the voice acting... Why were big-name actors hired to do the voices? Why did the queen (by the way, love the fact it was a queen instead of a princess) have to be Beyonce, and why did a bit-part mafia toad have to be played by Pitbull? Colin Firth was okay as Rhonin, but it was somehwat standard acting, nothing really to write home about... You know something is wrong when I mention the actors; I never care about the actors!

     If you have children in need of entertainment, it is a good enough movie. If you're an animation fan, go see it in 3D, I hear the imagery is at least good; maybe get the movie's soundtrack and listen to that while the movie is playing and ignore the story altogether.


     As for how I would improve the story... One idea is to make the main human girl be the one who is interested in the tiny forest people, cut out the father and family story altogether. Then while small she could be gushing about how amazing it all is, basically fangirling it up. But, while she's doing that, make her Awesome By Analysis. She can be silly and a little goofy, but she should be able to fight the bad guys and learn the mechanics of their world fairly quickly; IE, she should be able to learn to fly a hummingbird and jump insanely high fairly quickly, and be effective in fighting. Basically think if Jar Jar Binks lost his clumsiness and became a Jedi.

You know The Phantom Menace would be the number one Star Wars film if Jar Jar was awesome.

     Also, remove all other comedy relief characters. The main character girl will more than make up for the loss of the slugs, and then some. (By the way BlueSky, the comedy relief characters sort of worked in Rio, but that's because more emphasis was put on the main characters; don't overdo the comedy relief, otherwise you are relieving us from comedy with comedy.)

     Finally, make the villain represent something different. In the movie, he represents rot and decay... which are a part of life, and feed regrowth. He should be more of an ally then an enemy, removing dead things to make room for newer things... like a garbage man.  One could instead make him a rival kingdom of the forest, vying for control. It could be that he wishes to remove the beauty of the forest and make it harsh and cold so that it may survive better, while the heroes want to it have beauty and freedom, at the risk of destruction. That is a philosophical disagreement there worth fighting over (wars have been fought for less).

     Other than that, stop hiring celebrity voice actors. get actual actors to do the voices, or, even better, get Voice actors and actresses to do it. (Cree Summer, who has done work in voice acting for over 200 titles, including TV, Movies, and video games, doing the voice work for Susie of the Rugrats and Foxxy Love of Drawn Together,  would've done a significantly better job at voicing the queen, than Beyonce.)

This has been Fixer Sue.

Oh, one more thing...

Imagine him as Anakin Skywalker.

...You really want a remake of the Phantom Menace now, don't you?

Star Wars: The Old Republic

     Recently, I have been getting into a game called "Star Wars: The Old Republic".
     Released in December of 2011, SWTOR (as it is known) was touted as being a "WoW Killer", and that it was going to change the landscape of MMOs as we know it... It turned out that it was as deadly a killer as a shrunken cotton ball. Yes, World of Warcraft was not killed by this game... Helped by the fact The Old Republic copied A LOT from World of Warcraft; from ability resources and stats to even the color of Player Nameplates when they are in PVP mode. It also completely copied WoW's old talent system (with some very minor adjustments).
      Looking at this game, whose development has been incredibly slow, and comparing it to World of Warcraft, which has gotten better over time, reveals some interesting facts about game mechanics that can make or break a game.


     First off, I want to be clear: I am not a big Star Wars fan. I have seen all the prequels, but not the original trilogy. Believe it or not, I was actually once a part of the demographic that liked Jar Jar (yes, the annoying Jar Jar was liked. George Lucas wasn't wise, but he wasn't a total moron in that respect). I am not the guy to go to for information on Star Wars. Or Star Trek. Everything I know about them is mostly through pop-culture osmosis.
     Secondly, I would also like to note that I do like this game... To an extent. I like the story, especially the Republic Trooper one, but a lot of other things annoy me. Some are exclusive to this game, some are a part of MMOs in general. Either way, remember, my name is Fixer Sue if you disagree with my opinions, you have my name as justification. I will refrain from simply saying something is bad, and will give facts to back it up, so I ask that you at least give these thoughts the time of day.
     Thirdly, this is going to be pretty heavily focused on gaming, specifically on MMOs, and might go on for a while. If you have no interest in the genre, I suggest clicking away to another cat video... In the meantime however, let us consider the flaws in a previous WoW Killer...


     I suppose I should start with the good points.
     The game was developed by Bioware, the same company that made the Mass Effect and Dragons Age games; and it definitely shows in the story department. The story mainly takes place in interactive (and fully voiced) cutscenes, where the player has two-three options for what they want to say in response to the NPCs. This part of the game is a lot of fun. especially when one is playing a certain type of character (serious light-sided trooper, snarky dark-sided jedi... anything is plausible). And one gets opportunities for these in every quest, whether it be a main quest, or a side quest.
     However, I should note some things about this that are bothersome... First of all, the characters are always static, barely moving during the scenes... Anything tense about the scene is immediately lost when the enemy who is saying that they are about to attack, has sheathed their weapon and is standing rather calmly. Unless a scene is taking place in a rather calm area, this seems very out of place and rather silly. Not to mention their movements become repetitive. Adding some idle animations for the characters being ready to attack would've helped alleviate this; and they already exist! Just use the same idle attack animations as the player characters! Also, be more dynamic with the camera when they are speaking, cut to their eyes sometimes or to a far off shot of the scene, with the player character and the enemy ready to fight... These scenes are supposed to be cinematic, but feel very game-y and weird.
     Secondly, there is a problem with the dialog choices themselves... It can be very hard to tell what an option means at times. For instance, you might read an option as being a little snarky, but when chosen, you end up looking like a kiss-ass. This is because each option is a short phrase, supposedly resembling the full response... except that the intent of the response would be much more useful. Labeling a response as "Serious", "Snarky", "disrespectful", and so on, would pretty much eliminate this problem. It'd also reduce the amount of times a player accidentally asks "what's a paladin?" after spending 20 hours with a paladin. (Not an example within the game, the real equivalent would be rakghoul, but paladin is better known in pop-culture than some random 90's alien name.)


     Away from the story an into Game Mechanics, I also liked the space ship battles one could partake in. They are basically like the game Starfox, but with better graphics, and slightly less clunky movement than an old SNES game. It is a fun change of pace from the actual game itself, and it only lasts a few minutes, so it doesn't overstay its welcome.
     I would seriously pay for a class that does only spaceship quests, and basically play like the Enterprise.
Unfortunately, one has to pay to play much of the space battles at all... more on the business practices later...


     Now the actual meat of the game, the combat...
... It is long, dull, and repetitive. What you basically do is hit certain buttons in a sequence for optimal damage/healing/threat. Now, this is exactly the same as World of Warcraft... Except not. In World of Warcraft, not using the optimal rotation is still okay, as you still can do enough damage to survive without issue. In SWTOR however, the difference between not using the optimal build, and using it, is not only immense, it is game changing.
    I was dying quite a lot as my trooper. The enemies just would not die fast enough, and I was constantly confused about what attacks I should be using. So, I looked up the optimal build on the internet... and suddenly I am dying a lot less, and having an easier time with enemies. That is pretty significant.
     However, this difference isn't one of skill; my ability to press buttons has not changed with the rotation. What changed was knowledge... Specifically, the knowledge of what was actually worth using. Before looking it up, I was using attacks that were far outside the recommended rotation for my spec... but I was using them because they were the abilities I had since I started playing that character. This is not intuitive at all...
     Compare this to World of Warcraft... It has a lot of attacks that one can use, and they fill up a lot of action bars. However, the rotation is rather easy to figure out for each spec, helped by the fact that attacks you earn in the beginning are still used as a part of your primary rotation. The only possible confusion occurs when a new attack is more powerful than another, and should replace an earlier one. However, the game also has as a part of the talent specialization system, an info blurb about which abilities are important to one's attack rotation. This isn't making the game easier, this is giving assistance and explanation to those who need it.

    Speaking of talents, we should look over SWTOR's talent trees...

Oops, sorry, that is a World of Warcraft talent tree from Wrath of the Lich King, here is a SWTOR talent tree:

The difference is that one runs downward, while the other one goes up!

For reference, here's a talent tree in WoW right now:

     Yeah, one thing people complain about WoW lately is that the talent trees are too small, and that there is barely any difference between player characters. Except SWTOR demonstrates why Blizzard was right to change the talent tree system.

     SWTOR's talent tree has the same problem as WoW's old system: there is one optimal build for each spec, and deviating from it means you will suck. It takes a very long time to climb the tree, and you barely see any results from it. Meanwhile, under WoW's new system, while you only get a new talent every 15 levels, you get something interesting for it, usually in the form of a new ability. The reason this works so much better, is because these abilities are tangible; they affect the gameplay in a big way. SWTOR's trees are made up of empty percentages that increase damage... whoopie. I prefer the option to choose something cool to play with every 15 levels, rather than plugging in points in a chart so that I can deal optimal damage, and hopefully beat the enemies without dying. I may still die with the cool ability, but at least it does something tangible.

    Speaking of tangibility... What do you imagine when you think of  a light saber fight? probably someone getting their limb chopped off right? Not only does that not happen in the game, light sabers feel more like glowy bats than swords. They deal damage, but apparently some random thugs on the street have torsos that are immune to being cutoff. What I'm getting at is, is that the attacks have no impact or weight behind them. Guns shoot BB pellets, light sabers smash instead of cut, and lightning is just glowy. They all deal damage, but they feel weak. This is, of course, gameplay and story segregation... But it just seems absolutely ridiculous to shoot a guy with over 4 dozen plasma rounds to the face, and have him still able to calmly stand there and shoot you. Now, this is also true in WoW, where one can throw balls of fire that act more like one is throwing a rock at them, but there is still impact behind it.


I suppose SWTOR is a WoW Killer in some respect... in that I stopped playing MMOs for a while after I realized they were all like this. Press buttons until the enemy is defeated, if you are using the optimal build it will go faster, and the attacks barely have weight behind them. I have only recently gotten back into the groove of MMOs, mostly through accepting that they will just be this way...

But, it doesn't have to be like this. There doesn't need to be any of this nonsense about rotations or talent specs... What I'm basically saying is, screw rotational abilities, just go the route of hack and slash. Make it a bit like Diablo; where you have some abilities for attack or defense, that you activate as you see fit. Except, put some real weight behind attacks; make successful light saber strikes actually kill, rather than simply damage the target. Same with the guns and force abilities; make them be powerful, because they are supposed to be powerful.
    The game sort of is designed like a hack and slash, considering there are densely packed groups of enemies that block your progress until you defeat them. If they were much easier to defeat, I'd have less problems with them. As it stands, every molehill is a mountain.

     Of course, there is a reason everything is so hard and takes so long... it's because of the dinosaur known as leveling. Leveling is basically a measure of progression, and a limiter, keeping one confined to certain areas. And it is an extreme pain that really needs to go away... Levels are one of the reasons we can't have one-hit kills in MMOs. It is honestly fake longevity at this point; story says I should be able to kill anyone because I have a plasma gun, but levels says I can't even hit a guy because he's 5 levels above me. I look forward to an MMO where there is no leveling, only playing in a massive world.

     But, no leveling won't ever happen... because the people who created the game want money. Fair enough, it costs money to create the game... Just as it is also fair that people don't necessarily want to pay to grind levels.
     SWTOR was originally a subscription-based game (like WoW). SWTOR recently went free-to-play, meaning that anyone can play it for free, all the way up to the level cap. Or, as far as you can take their restrictions... Usually, when a game has a free mode and a subscription mode, there are some restrictions on the free mode that are lifted from the subscription mode, along with some additional benefits added to the subscription mode. Most of the time however, the free mode does not dip below normal levels. You see, free players earn XP at a reduced rate... they are 75% of the normal exp rate. So, and already slow and grindy process is increased. whoopidy hopidy. But wait, there's more! Subscribers earn bonus exp! So, no one earns the regular amount of experience. Why would you reduce the amount of exp non-subscribers get? It doesn't make them want to subscribe, it makes them want to leave! Here is how it normally works: free-to-play is basically the normal game, subscription adds neat benefits, and unlocks some content. Restricting F2P content is not how you get people to subscribe.
     But, this is EA. If crushing a puppy could earn them a dollar, they'd buy a kennel.


Over-all, the reason why I have so many problems with this game, is because everything listed and discussed after the story content, gets in the way of the story. The Story is the best part, and the rest of this bogs it down. If I could ignore everything else, and just do the class quests, I would. But, since I have to level up, otherwise my weightless attacks will be useless, I have to do everything but the fun stuff, just to move forward. Yuck.

    SWTOR is no WoW Killer. It is a WoW clone, with genetic defects that make it feel worse, with a couple good points.



    WoW Killer is an old phrase now... It has been applied to almost every single new MMO to come out. Honestly, the only time I will be able to say that WoW is old and some new MMO is the future, is when they basically make a medieval/sci-fi life simulator, with no levels, and no health bars. Elder Scrolls Online comes close, but isn't exactly it... Read "Tom Clancy's Net Force: The Deadliest Game" to get my idea of what a WoW Killer would look like.


Back to SWTOR... I play it because I like the story and the characters. I tolerate the gameplay because of it.
Oh, I forgot to mention... I get consistent lag and connection timeouts. I know my internet is fine, and my graphics settings are quite low. Normally, I wouldn't care too much... except that this usually means that I can't move forward (imagine an invisible wall blocking your path, and you have to wait an indeterminate amount of time for it to disappear), and am likely to die. Not fun, especially when death is also a pain.

My personal rating for SWTOR: 6/10. Some good points, but it is mostly bogged down by bad design and mechanics choices. Had they made it less gamey, and more like the movies (IE, light saber no care about yo'r armor...), then it probably would've been a whole lot more fun. As it stands, I'm just likely to continue playing, just hoping that the game decides to allow me to have fun.

The Kite Runner

This review will be rather short... Recall that in my Halo: Legends review, as well as Treasure Planet's review, that I reserve my right as a consumer to stop watching a movie before its completion... This is another one of those times.
Mind you, I have to watch this film all the way through for my film class, but it reached a point where every time I think about continuing to watch it I think "I do not want to watch any more of this..."
Though I will be watching the entire film (as much as I REALLY do not want to...) I shall be reviewing it at this point because if I was not being forced to watch it, this is where I would have stopped.

The Kite Runner is set in Afghanistan, and follows Amir, a bit of a coward and pessimist, who only friend is Hassan, who is a servant of his father's. They go to the movies together, fly battle kites... and Hassan acts as a protector for Amir when some nazi-wannabes come and harass them (I'm serious about the dude being a nazi wannabe. This is set in 1960 by the way).
Amir's mother died giving birth to him, and he blames himself for it (He's worse than the Lannisters in this regard; at least Tyrion does wallow in self-pity all the time), and his father is one of those "well done son" guys, who only shows interest or care when they do something amazing. So winning the kite battle tournament is a big deal for Amir.

After Amir and Hassan win the tournament, Amir sends Hassan to retrieve the kite (there is an earlier scene where Hassan shows an almost psychic ability to know where the kite will come down, and he can collect it). And it is about this point that I do not wish to continue the movie.

Everything up to this point was fine; it had a couple good humorous moments, and some good drama...
But that disintegrates in the next scene.
Amir notices that Hassan has snot returned with the kite, and goes looking for him. He finds out the nazi-wannabes followed him, and cornered him in the alley...

Now, in any normal film or story, one would assume they were going to beat him up, "teach him a lesson," and leave him.
No. They do something much more heinous, stupid, and awful. And I don't mean the characters, I mean the writer.
The Nazi-wannabes gang rape Hassan.
...and Amir sees it happen, but does nothing out of fear. Thus the Nazi-wannabes get away with it...
And when Hassan comes out, Amir is waiting on steps outside the alleyway, and goes up to Hassan... Not even asking if he's okay, just pretending that he was looking for him... Meanwhile, blood is dripping from Hassan's pant legs into the snow.

..........
NO.
No, no no...
I don't care if this happens in real life, or has happened, you do not do this. There is a reason why the "infant immortality" trope exists; it's because these kinds of actions are intolerable. Beating up a child is already heinous, but at least it isn't RAPE.
And, you want to know what else? This is actually a problem on a different level, not just on a moral level.
Earlier in the movie, Amir explains one of his stories to Hassan, about a man whose tears turn into pearl when they fall into a goblet. In order to get more tears, he kills his wife. Hassan asks the legit question: "Why didn't he just cut an onion?"
The obvious answer to Hassan's question is dramatic convenience. Which is what the rape scene is for; rape is more dramatic than being beaten, just as murdering one's wife is more dramatic than cutting an onion. That is already a terrible idea, as it reduces rape to something that gives shock value, but it calls to mind a different idea: Why not use another method for the same effect? Why not have the wife of the man be killed by another, rather than killed by the man? Why not use another form of assault upon Hassan, rather than rape? Assaulting Hassan with a crowbar would be less offensive than raping him.

Thus, I do not wish to continue. I actually hate this more than Titus, or Brave, or anything else... simply because of this awful dramatically convenient rape.
And don't think it gets better, more bad stuff happens to Hassan, some of it actually at the hands of his friend Amir.
It also doesn't get the excuse of "based on a true story." It is based on a novel written by Khaled Hosseini. I'm sure he cared more about the whole rise of the taliban thing that occurs later in the story, but I can't get past this one scene. I cannot get past the pedophilic rape. It was a stupid decision on the part of the writer. It doesn't matter what comes before or after, because this movie will forever be "The one where a nazi rapes a kid" (he actually rapes MANY kids, male and female, later when he is a member of the taliban) It doesn't matter if Amir tries to redeem himself; he will always be awful in my eye.

If you like the movie, fine. But I have presented my reason for why I do not want to watch any further. And I loathe to point out that any arguments trying to oppose this opinion, will have to explain why raping a child is good for the story.

This is more heinous than Spiderman making a deal with the devil, or Marvel's the Blob eating X-men's Bumblebee... At least they didn't involve child rape...


This has been Fixer Sue, discovering that I really hate movies where children suffer.

The Croods

Go see this movie.
No, seriously, go see it.
This was the one movie of Dreamwork's that made me think they might be going by the wayside again, but they have proven that thought WAY wrong.
There isn't anything in this movie that I thought was bad. There are one or two things I might've done differently, but on the whole it is just great.
I don't want to ruin any bit of it by explaining anything about it, just that it is incredibly funny, has fantastic and creative visuals, and has an animation style that doesn't look like pastel markers! There is dirt on those characters! DIRT!
Go see it! If you have children or are an animation fan, go see it! Don't believe the Rotten tomatoes rating for it, it should easily be in the eighties if not the seventies. (and parents taking your children; keep an open mind. The theatre we were in had none of the parents laughing, and I assume so because in their minds they were just watching "child silence fodder." This is significantly better than Brave! And more than likely going to be better than Monster University...)




Speaking of Monster University, there are previews to go over.
I'll shall speak of them in order of interest, those lower on the list are likely to be longer due to rants of hatred.

First up, Epic. Epic is the new one-off movie from Blue Sky. (Hopefully one-off. They do better with those. The series, not so much.) It is basically the Spiderwick Chronicles meets The Ant Bully, a teenage girl is shrunken down by magic and sees a fantastical new world filled with anthropomorphised plants. It looks interesting, to say the least, but it may get bogged down by its comedy relief slugs... But, as long as it keeps that to a minimum, I'll probably like it as much as Rio.

Next, Turbo. It is another DreamWorks movie. (I'm as shocked as you are. But, I guess with Madagascar over, they needed something for the second team to do.) It is basically about a snail who gains super speed, and wants to race in the Daytona 500. Okay, I see no real problems here. It isn't as fantastical as How to Train Your Dragon (which is getting a sequel. My fearfulness that they will ruin the series keeps me from squeeing), but it looks like it'll be decent at least. More power to DreamWorks.


Then there is the painful one... the one that may show the full decline of a giant... Monster University.
Before I begin, I feel compelled to quote something:
    "Sully and Mike are forced to work together on a project, either by sheer chance or their rivalry escalates to the point where the professors force it. They continually try to sabotage the other (and attempted hilarity ensues) until they run up close to the deadline, and have nothing. Thus they fake their entire project, and manage to get an A, building a grudging respect for each other. Oh, and Randal is the villain in there, because I really doubt Pixar is willing to give him any sympathy and make him a fallen villain in the original movie...
     "In the end, Sully is offered a job at Monsters Inc because of how mega-super-awesome he is, but says he can't accept unless Mike comes with him...
     "Mixed in there, Mike meets his love Celia, and Sully sabotages his date with her, and that's the point where Sully tries to make it up to Mike and become his friend."

That is from my Monster's Inc review 7 months ago. I continue to stand by it. The recent preview did nothing to change the problems I'm suspecting will be in that movie. In fact, there is actually a NEW problem: Overabundance of childish slapstick humor. It was present in Brave, it appears it shall be present here. It might be funny while you're there, but once you leave you'll have that empty feeling of having wasted over half an hour of your life watching people getting hit with things because it's funny.
Pixar, stop making sequels, and prequels. We see now that you got lucky with Toy Story. Cars 2 looked like a hiccup, but now it looks more like the cliff you careened off of.
My suggestion: do an animated romcom. You are good at the heartfelt stuff, and you are able to use comedy to supplement it, so do what you do best. Stop it with the bears and the cars and the monsters... It's starting to feel like you're DC trying to copy Marvel's success, only you're not copying Dreamworks, you're copying a bad era of Disney.

Apart from the three big animated films (all of which include snails or jokes about them. Strange world...) there is Smurfs 2. Yeah, not going to go see that, can already predict bad reviews and another review from The Blockbuster Buster (link). Though at least we get to have arguments again about how Blonde is supposedly "good" and brunet is "bad" because of Smurfette. I'm on the side of "Why da faq did her hair have to change?"


This has been Fixer Sue. Remember, go see The Croods!

Sonic Dash

Just take temple run, adds some skins, BAM! New Sonic game!


... Okay not really, but that is the general consensus for the game.

Sonic Dash is the "sequel" to Sonic Jump (which I reviewed recently) made by the same company, Hardlight studios. And it shows... because teh same problems I had with Sonic Jump are present here, but in a worse form.

First, the good:
People joke that it is like temple run, but the obstacles work differently... You are on rails, constantly moving at high speeds sure, and movements are done through swiping, but you do not have to swipe for the character to turn, he just does that automatically. The obstacles are more position based than timing; there are three lanes to run in, and one lane can be open while the other two are blocked or require you to jump or roll to avoid objects in the way. Some obstacles require you to jump or roll, while some will let you do either (later obstacles will require you do react in one way or you will fail). Hitting a solid object will stop Sonic, and cause a game over to occur (unless you purchase a certain item, but more on that later).
There is also some semi-solid obstacles in the form of enemies; hitting them while you have rings (collectible items gathered as you run) will allow you to continue, but will make you drop all your rings (regardless of whether you have 1 or 999). There are three obstacles like this: The crab, whom you can defeat by rolling or (if your timing is fantastic) landing on them after a jump, spikysnails which can only be defeated by rolling, and bombs which you can only avoid.
As a last mechanic, there is a dash meter to the bottom right. Collecting rings fills it up; when it is full, you get a double score multiplier, as well as the ability to use the dash, which allows you to run straight through obstacles at high speeds without worry.
All of these factors I have no problem with, and they are fun to play with. Sonic Dash is a good game. It is just the rest of it I find detestable...


As mentioned earlier, this game has the same problems as Sonic Jump, yet worse.

One of my main gripes about Sonic Jump was how the characters weren't well thought out, as they were almost no different from each other, and there was little reason for so many of them... Well, Sonic Dash has only 4 characters, Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy. When I saw Amy was in, I was pleased, as I have actually wanted her to have her own game for a while, and this is about as close as she can get to that... Now, the characters are locked, and can only be unlocked through Red Star Rings, which are earned through leveling up (I'll return to the problems of that in a minute). This is completely normal and understandable... However, EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER PLAYS THE SAME. No one is faster,  or slower, or jumps higher, stays in the air longer, rolls longer, or plows through enemies... They are all just skins. (A "skin" is a game term for a character's appearance. It can be anything from the character's actual skin to changing the model entirely, the core thing is that it is the same character/object, just with a different appearance.) Fewer characters, but no reason to unlock the characters at all unless you really want to play as them.

Now the leveling system... Sonic Jump did this pretty well, you completed missions and got stars to allow you to level up as you collected more. The levels were empty and mostly just granted free items when it wasn't being an unlocking barrier for new characters, but it wasn't painful. Sonic Dash on the other hand... The mission system is still in, but now it is 3 missions per level-up. Okay, it cuts down on the number of inane tasks one has to do... Unfortunately, the inane tasks chosen for the missions are MIND NUMBINGLY HARD.
I will use one mission as an example... There is a mission where you have to lose your rings 25 times. Okay, simple enough task. Oh, but it is far from simple... For you see, it is lose your rings 25 times in a single run. So it isn't like you can farm this, you actually have to plan in advance how you will collect rings and be hit soon after so that you can raise that number, in addition to dodging the instant-loss obstacles. I actually tried over 50 times to do this, and could not get over 18 for various reasons, including a ramping difficulty curve (again, return to it later). I ended up just using my Red Star Rings to by-pass it. Which brings me to the currency...

The currency is problem one of my biggest problems with this game. For starters, while you get red star rings for leveling up, you always only get 3. You only get 3 every level, while the cost to bypass a mission continually goes up. There is no other way to get red star rings. Well, apart form paying real life money that is...
... Hardlight, that was a terrible decision.
I mentioned everything in this order for a reason... The Characters are merely skins, the leveling system is quite bad, and the red star rings are quite difficult to obtain. Characters are bought with red star rings. The cheapest character, Amy, costs 30 red star rings. That'd be ten levels without spending a single red star ring on anything. For a skin. An aesthetic change.


No.
No, you do not do that.
You do not make a skin cost that much! You do not make something that hard to obtain that meaningless! Oh sure, it isn't hard to obtain if you pay for the rings... But that is 4 dollars for a skin, 7 dollars in the case of Knuckles (who is 60 RSR, which is 20 levels without spending any). But you want the purchase to be gratifying for the player, you want them to be like "Wow! This is so cool! I'm glad I paid for this!" not "It is exactly the same! Why did I have to pay for this?!"
It is awful business to make something that worthless cost that much. With the same amount of money, one could go to Team Fortress 2, purchase some new weapons, and see immediate gameplay change because of it. (True they also have cosmetic options like hats, but with hats you know what you're getting, which is a worthless item. Plus they can be gotten for free, given enough time, with zero effort, so TF2 wins out there.)
Not to mention, the power-up which allows you to continue after a collision is bought with Red Star rings. This makes Red Star Rings the most valuable item in the game, and it can only be obtained through painstaking work, or by paying for it. Screw that.


Also, for all those saying the game is like Temple run... In temple run you don't have to duck then immediately jump and duck again in the span of a second. What I'm talking about is Sonic Dash's hardest obstacle, which begins appearing after about the second island, which is about 2000 meters into the run. It is incredibly difficult, and best avoided with the dash... The timing is very precise in order to succeed in it, and failure to do so is a game over. Add that to the difficult missions, and you have a painful experience.


I absolutely hate these downside to the game... because if it was just a regular sonic game, without these additions, there would be no gripes to be had about it other than it being rather simple and flat.
But, the thing is... These problems can all be fixed with a very simple patch.

First, the currency; there is another currency besides the RSR, which is the regular rings. Give an option to trade in 500 or even 1000 rings for a RSR. Problem solved; I actually have no problem grinding rings for that, it is really the nigh-impossible missions and the real-money cost that make red star rings so infuriating. Adding another way to get the currency would fix it easy.
Second, give some variation to the characters so that they are not skins. For instance, make Tails hang out in the air for longer than the others. Basically make his airtime the length of the dash, and shorten his dash so he can only take out one enemy or roll under and obstacle. For Amy, you could give her a double jump, at the cost of a quarter the amount of dash time. Or for Knuckles you could give him the ability to break through all obstacles if the screen is tapped in time, at the cost of the dash meter (and the score multiplier) entirely. This would actually give different playstyles and interesting gameplay to the characters. The other three wouldn't have the same problems as Sonic when it comes to obstacles, but would have their own draw backs. This would solve the issue with the ramping difficulty, as well as make some of the missions easier.

I realize the second would require a lot more time and effort, but considering this is still a problem since Sonic Jump, it is necessary for Hardlight to hear it.
The first solution however should be in the game right now. I know it cuts into the amount of people paying for the red rings... However, I am now coining a new term: wallet rape. Taking people's money under false pretenses of them getting something useful in return. You don't want to be a Wallet Rapist, do you?


This has been Fixer Sue. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a small project I'm working on...

Memento

All. Of my hate...


Art does not excuse wasting people's time.

Here's a good rule of thumb about audiences, and their relation to characters: they tend to feel what the character is feeling. If they're happy, we're happy.
If they're sad, we're sad. The same can be said for negative emotions. If a sympathetic character is acting annoyed, the audience will be annoyed as well. You don't want the audience to be annoyed, so remove the annoyance, regardless of what you think it is suppose to do (be funny is the most common one... thank SpongeBob for making that main stream).
There is also something that should be avoided at all costs: characters feeling like they've wasted their time, and they actually have (I mean that sitting on their thumbs is equivalent to what they've accomplished). Because it works the same way. If characters waste their time they waste ours.
And Memento is extremely guilty of this. The entire movie turns out to be a waste of time, where our minds are taxed by an unreliable narrator and the guy who made the recent Batman movies. Making your audience think a little is alright, but don't make them put the scenes in the correct order. It is extremely taxing to try and make sense of the film, especially when a new twist is thrown out in every scene that is enough to make M Night Shyamalan say "Woah cool it with the twists!"

*sigh* a well-worded criticism of the Christopher Nolan films is that they require a flowchart to understand them. A flow chart would be very helpful for this movie...

But, what makes me hate this film more than the inane number of twists, waste of time it makes it self be perceived as, or the headache I garnered after watching it... Is the terrible story.
The film is about a man whose wife is dead and he wants revenge. However, he apparently got his revenge a year ago, but he doesn't remember it. Thus a dirty cop is having him kill people with the name John G, and getting money off them. The dirty cop tells the man this, but he doesn't want it to be true, so he decides to let himself forget it, and go after the cop. Except, all that is in the last scene, which is supposed to be the middle. It is at the end that we learn that our hero is a psychopath, who is being used by every person he meets. Oh and there's more, because we don't actually know his past because there are conflicted facts and stories. One of them is where his wife is raped and killed, and he is hunting for the man who got away. The other is that he got the man, and he killed his diabetic wife because she didn't understand the illness. All around, I regret watching it... Art movies, they are painful...


Oh and by the way, the character states quite often that he doesn't have amnesia, he just can't store new memories...
That is Anterograde Amnesia. The traditional amnesia that most people know is Retrograde, as in retroactive, past. He didn't forget his past (one interpretation, the one I prefer, otherwise the movie has been an entire waste of time), but he can't remember past the immediate present. That is still Amnesia. If you're going to be scientific, at least learn what types of Amnesia there actually are. I learned that in just my third week of introduction to psychology, a course required in a ton of ASU majors, so there is very little excuse for a movie trying to be scientific about the disorder not bothering to check if his disorder is actually classified as a type of amnesia.



This has been Fixer Sue, ranting about a movie people in their right mind don't want to watch.

Life is Beautiful

     Despite the similar title, this is not "It's a Wonderful Life." Many an internet hair has been pulled over remembering the name of the movie, but people correcting it as "It's a Wonderful Life."


     Think back to the 1999 Oscars... If you weren't a young child back then, do you recall the man who, upon winning the Oscar, jumped up form his chair and climbed on the one in front of him in elation? That was Roberto Benigni, who directed and starred in Life is Beautiful. He also wrote it. He only falls short of Tommy Wiseau by virtue of not being the producer as well.

    The story is about an Italian man in Italy who falls in love with a high-class woman, but she's engaged to be married to another man, and hilarious hi-jinks ensue where the man tries to woo her to his side. They then get married, have a little boy with a silly hat, and go to a camp where they play a strange game where the winner gets a tank! The military kind, not the containment unit kind!


...
Actually the first half of the movie is incredibly painful. It is like a bad Jerry Lewis or Adam Sandlar movie. It isn't romantic, it isn't even funny. It is a series of contrived coincidences that work in the main character's favor. The movie doesn't actually improve until they go to the concentration camp.

Oh yeah, the main character's Jewish. I forgot to mention it, because the movie didn't desire to make that apparent until the family's horse was graffitied with and anti-Semitic phrase. There was a sign earlier in the movie, when the main character's uncle is beat up and robbed by some thugs... Except that incident is promptly ignored, and we are instead made to assume the uncle is nuts.
Once the movie actually makes it clear that the man's Jewish, the movie begins improving...

The main character's goal in the second half of the movie is keeping his son innocent and safe by pretending the Internment camp is a game; convincing his son that all the terrifying things are lies trying to make him lose the game, and that hiding and not allowing himself to be seen will garner him the most points. This was significantly better than the first half, because the goal is understandable and noble... and the same man that was comparable to Adam Sandlar in the first half, actually becomes funny in the second. The second half is a good movie, but makes the movie tolerable thanks to the awful first half.

For improving it, I recommend cutting up the first half a lot. It runs for 40 minutes, but it could be reduced to 20, removing more of the idiotic scenes. (Case in point, he impersonates a school inspector in order to surprise his romantic interest. He makes an utter fool of himself, and risks execution for his stupidity.) Then leave the second half as-is; it is fine. I would recommend removing the first half entirely, but there are a couple good moments that require knowledge of the first half.

In short: If you can survive the first half, the second half is much better. It would be better if the first half was much shorter.