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...