Author: Shmee

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The Nut Job Is A Con Job!

Every now and then you make a mistake, and you let your daughter pick a movie because she thinks a purple squirrel is cute.  She tells you it will be silly.  With The Nut Job your daughter was wrong on all counts.  Well maybe the squirrel is cute, but it definitely isn’t silly.  In fact is, it isn’t anything.  It is just a collection of scenes with the run time of a feature film.  It is a waste of everyone’s time.

We live in an age now where most kids movies a parent can watch and still be at least mildly entertained, but that is not the case with The Nut Job.  It is an hour and twenty-six minutes of torture, and to cap it off, my daughter didn’t even like it that much.  It is a low budget cash in.  A job for everyone involved, but a disaster for anyone that was actually forced to watch it.

I would normally give a plot synopsis, or talk about the actors involved, but if they didn’t care about their movie, why should I?  Okay fine, but only for the sake of a complete review!  Animals in a park are hungry, so they try and steal nuts from bank robbers, and people of various fame levels voice the animals with varying degrees of blandness.

Somehow this movie got a sequel, which my daughter will not talk me in to watching.  Though to her  credit, I doubt she will be asking to watch The Nut Job again.  If you happen to flipping through Amazon Prime and your kids squeal when they see a purple squirrel, just keep flipping and pretend you didn’t hear them.  It will be better for everyone.  We need to keep our families safe from terrible movies.  Especially ones with Psy performing Gangnam Style.

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Do You Like D&D?! Let’s See If We Can Change That! (No Wait…)

So this Friday at 7:30PM, The Paladin will be leading Plumpy Thimble, Shaun, and myself though a riveting game of D&D!  Better yet, you can watch us on my Mixer Channel!  I know, who doesn’t want to watch grown men roll dice while talking about fantastical stuff, I mean I sure do, but sadly I have to play, so it is up to you folks to tune this Friday the 22nd at 7:30PM Pacific time to my Mixer Channel for me!  It will probably be a disaster since we have never done this before, but that will be all the more entertaining for all of you!  If you start tuning in earlier, you may see us setting up, how fun will that be?! (I don’t know the answer to that question) Anyway see you Friday!

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Trials Fusion Is Fun Until It Is Frustrating (But Then Still Pretty Fun)!

Xbox Live Gold has been kind of on a roll lately.  Delivering games that I actually want to play, and of course not charging me any extra for them.  A game from the service that I am currently playing is Trials Fusion.

In Trials Fusion you do crazy stunts on insane tracks while trying not to crash.  You do this over and over again.  The game is simple to start playing since it is 2.5 D, so you don’t have to turn.  You just hit the gas or brake to try to maneuver your way across the tracks.  Then they throw leaning in to the mix, still not bad.  You got this, and then tricks, fine.  Not a problem.  Finally comes bunny-hopping.  At first this is okay since it is mostly during the flat parts of the tracks, but then you need to bunny-hop while motoring straight up a cliff, and now you will want to throw your controller through your TV.  Still, you feel great once you manage to complete the track.

It is just that difficulty curve comes out of nowhere.  It is like being slapped in the face.  The easy rated tracks you can do pretty much just holding the gas pedal down, and the medium rated tracks just require that you are paying attention, but the hard rated tracks are scream inducing.  While once you get used to the hard tracks, you do get better, but Trails Fusion would have been better had they ramped up the difficulty in a more linear way.

All in all though it is a great game, and one that it is more than worth playing for the price of $0.  Though one other bummer is that they are constantly trying to shove DLC down your throat, but what they give with the base game is more than enough to make most people happy, so just do your best to tune out the constant advertising, and you will have a good time with Trials Fusion.

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Shmee Takes A Stroll With Oxenfree!

I didn’t know what I was getting myself in to when I fired up Oxenfree.  I knew it was an indie game that came out last year and that a lot of people really liked it, and it was known to have a lot of charm, but I was not prepared to be so completely enraptured with it.

Technically I am guessing you could call Oxenfree a 2.5D walking simulator since the gameplay is mostly walking around and solving lightweight puzzles, but really it is a conversation simulator because unlike most walking games in Oxenfree you are never alone.  There is always someone there to chat with, and the game’s three button, three dialog choice gameplay, is really fun.  Seeing how Alex’s (the main character) friends react to the things you have her say is constantly engaging.

Oxenfree’s story revolves around five friends who just wanted to have a fun weekend trip on one of the Pacific Northwest’s many costal Islands.  In this case the fictional Edwards Island.  Things obviously go sideways, but that is all that I am going to tell you.  However, if you liked Stranger Things, you will like Oxenfree.  Watching the story unfold was fascinating.  It was some of the best fiction I have watched/interacted with in a long time, and knowing that it all could have played out differently had I chosen to walk and talk to different people or said different things makes me want to play it again.

Right now if you are an Xbox Live Gold member you can download Oxenfree for free, and you need to download it.  Though it is worth the $20 it usually goes for on just about every other platform under the sun.  It is so fun and the story is so engrossing that I feel I should apologize for the couple of nights of lost sleep you are going to have while you finish the game.  Maybe even more if you choose to play it again to see things go down differently, but some things are worth loosing sleep over.