Warhammer: Boltgun Review

Holy fuck am I ever late in writing this review, fuck I finished this game probably 3 months ago? longer? but regardless I feel like I remember enough to make a pretty distinct review.

This game is a pixel art based game on the war hammer universe, you take control of a space marine captain as he shoots cuts and blasts his way through the forces of chaos to retrieve a chaos artifact. That explains the entire game. To be a little more specific, I would regard this as a doom-like game, in that the story is very small and mostly comprised of combat, Finding Keycards, and shooting demons. I would love to tell you how this game stacked up against doom, but frankly I've never played it.  Lol. 

As for my personal thoughts on the game I will start with the gameplay itself. The controls themselves are super tight, actually they're fantastic I'd say. The guns are fun to shoot, the movement lets you pull off some interesting stunts and the lock-on chainsword is just a ton of fun to use. Though I have to admit I wish close combat packed a bit more of a punch.... The rest of the weapons vary in "fun-value" I'd say that I remember the shotgun, lasergun, and heavy bolter being pretty enjoyable while some of the heavier guns like the plasma gun feeling kind of underwhelming. The only gun I would consider true heavy damage was the grav-gun, which was kind of like the BFG from doom, in that there was not a lot of ammo, but a ton of damage per shot. I sort of overall just wish I enjoyed the weapons more. I wish they were punchier, because a lot of them are pretty underwhelming.

The gameplay itself is also fairly meh I would say, I dont have a bunch to say about it. You walk into a room, the room closes, waves of enemies spawn, you kill them, rinse and repeat. New enemies aren't common enough to make each level feel particularly unique buut for 15 bucks its sort of hard to complain. 

So the movement was good, and the weapons and gameplay were meh, what about the FEEL!! 

So, for this sort of transient "feel" value I would say it does very, very well. If you are a warhammer fan I feel that you will love the setpieces, the exploration, seeing your favorite demons in pixelated form as you rip them apart as a space marine. Its just sooo thematically enjoyable. The game LOOKS great which helps a lot. See these images from the steam page: 

I hope from these you can see images that the thematic feeling of the game is great. 

Overall I Would say, if you already like warhammer or doom, you'd probably get your money's worth. I think I beat the game in like 8 - 10 hours. If not? this might be a pass.

Arcadian/ yojimbo Review

Arcadians:

Just watched the arcadians with nick cage, it was not so good. 

Basic plot is similar to a quiet place where its a post apocalyptic movie in which monsters have killed everyone, except this time its based on the idea that they come out at night and not that they hear sound. Unfortunately it does literally everything worse than a quiet place, so...

The start of the movie is pretty alright, actually, I really enjoyed the initial monster design, they had something super interesting going with the monsters morphing, sometimes having hands, sometimes big heads other timese on four legs, it was cool! and honestly if the movie was JUST about a singular weird monster that could morph into crazy things and was terrorizing a family at night, I think this could have been something a lot cooler! unfortunately, it becomes an action thriller where the plucky girl sidekick helps the two brothers kill a bunch of monsters who basically do nothing but yell at our cast. 

The big problem is I dont really care about anyone in the film, nobody is particularly interesting or impactful, and so the big events that DO happen have no real weight. The film only had a budget of around 7 million, so I guess I can understand why it was somewhat lackluster, but I feel like they could have done a lot more with what they had if they had just scaled back the action a bit, and focused more on a singular shapeshifting monster. kinda like babadook.

Yojimbo:

This is a pretty famous movie from the director Akira Kurosawa in which a samurai (Who I think is supposed to be masashi miyamoto or at least inspired by him), a master swordsman and do gooder. the best way I can describe it is a Japanese western, tbh its pretty good so I dont wanna spoil it too much.  

I think my favorite thing about the film was the use of wind, the wind grew as the action did, eventually dying down literally allowing the dust to settle.

Overall? its a slow paced classic, no real wasted shots and super focused on building up the important characters and the town around them. I liked it! 

Wolfs Rain Review

Wolfs rain:

Wolfs rain is a 2003 anime directed by none other than Keiko Nobumoto, who is known her other work such as cowboy Beebop, Akira, and Space dandy (need I go on?). Based off her previous work, I had pretty fucking high expectations going in! 

The show itself is about a dying earth in the far future, with only pockets of humanity left, usually living in large cities ruled by "the royals" a mysterious class of people who seem to be somewhat otherworldly. In these cities hide the remnants of wolves, who have been presumed extinct for almost 200 years, but have actually been living among the Populus disguised as people. 5 of these wolves are drawn together by the cry of a figure known as "the flower maiden" and set of to find paradise.

The characterization is, as usual for Ms. Nobumoto, exceptionally well done, which is one of my favorite things about her work across the board. Each character feels distinct and specific, with independent goals alongside the goal of getting to paradise. This good characterization is especially important because the show is primarily about the small and large interactions of the characters and the world around them. 

Speaking of the world around them, Keiko has a magical ability to produce a very living world without explaining too much about it. A lot of work is done by the landscape artists to ensure that things feel real and inhabited (except when they want it to feel desolate.). One of my favorite parts of the show is seeing the different cities in wolfs rain and inherently understanding their differences without having to be fed information about them, the original city feeling dirty and poverty stricken, while jaguras city feels clean and hypnotic, but also cold and foreboding. The world at large falls apart as the show progresses, slowly becoming a snowy wasteland, its genuinely quite beautiful all around. 

While a lot of care is put into the quiet moments, there is quite a bit of action as well, which is also very well done, the action scenes do get a little repetitive, and they reuse some shots (one of them enough times to make me giggle) but the suspense is there, ESPECIALLY whenever Darcia is involved.



The ending is one that will be familiar to anyone who has watched Ms. Nobumoto's work in the past: tragic, poignant, and poetic. The ending left me feeling distraught, but also hopeful for the future, which I think was the intent.

While for me this show was not as memorable as something like cowboy beebop, I think that I personally found it very engaging. Its a show that made me think a lot about why we fight and why we move forward, and is drive enough to entertain our goals without a broader reason. I would really recommend this one to be honest, I think if nothing else the art style is very popular at the moment, and you'll get a lot out of it from that alone :)