Posts

Posted on

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.

Posted on

James Corden Puts It in IT!

James Corden always has some funny bits, but this poor guy calling for It instead of IT is pretty great.  Please watch won’t you?  I mean I guess you don’t have to, and I can’t force you to entertain yourself, but I think you should.  Because honestly what else do you have going on right now?

Posted on

David Harbour Looks Begrudgingly Good As Hellboy!

I am still struggling with a Hellboy not being helmed by Guillermo del Toro and not staring Ron Perlman, but I have to admit David Harbour looks pretty dang good as HB.  If the rest of the movie can match the quality shown above, maybe, just maybe, they will get my butt in a seat January 2019, but they are going to have to keep showing me good stuff like this.

Posted on

Someone At Marvel TV Needs To Watch DC’s Legends Of Tomorrow!

For the most part Marvel’s Netflix shows have been pretty great.  Yes there have been some downer moments, but most of the time Netflix/Marvel has delivered a quality product.  However, the fight scenes on the shows have started go down hill, and nowhere was this more apparent than The Defenders.  This should have been the show where they pulled out all the stops, but instead it was generally just four people fighting in the dark next to each other.  There were a few decent one on one fights, but the group together was pretty meh, and getting the gang together was the whole point of this show.

Now on the other hand DC’s Legends of Tomorrow can sometimes have some pretty meh storylines, but holy heck, a few times a season the fight scenes are just crazy awesome.  Granted on Legends of Tomorrow there are a lot of heroes with different fighting styles and powers, while The Defenders mostly just kick stuff, but still, they could have found a way to feature them all in a better light (or just in the light).

Look, I believe in the writing team behind the Marvel Netflix shows, but they need to find a new fight coordinator, or at least one that watches some of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow.  I just want the action in the shows to be as good as the story telling.

Posted on

Shmee Floats With It!

It is hard to resist the siren’s call of a good blockbuster.  Let alone the remake of a TV miniseries that was a rite of passage for a lot of children.  If you were born in the 80’s it was almost a guarantee that at some point you would have to watch It, and even if you didn’t see It, all your friends no doubt filled you in on all the details.  Sharing with you their new found fear of sewer dwelling spider-clowns.  Which is why a lot of people questioned the wisdom of redoing a ‘classic’ (if you watch the original now, it isn’t that good, aside from Tim Curry), but let me tell you, director Andy Muschietti and crew made a film that more than lives up to how terrifying we remember the original It being.

At this point I am guessing we all know the basic plot to It.  Kids in the town of Derry are going missing, and just about every other kid in the town is being tormented with visions of a creepy clown (Bill Skarsgård) and whatever else they fear most.  After the disappearance of his brother Georgie (Jackson Robert Scott), Bill (Jaeden Lieberher) decides to get the bottom of what is going on with the help of his friends in ‘The Losers Club’.

Man, they made this movie so delightfully creepy and unnerving!  And It is not a slow burn either.  This movie is out to get you from the first fifteen minutes.  Not many films flaunt their monster the way It does, but Skarsgård is so good as Pennywise it would have been a shame if they hadn’t.  It is one frightful set piece after another.  I don’t think I ever sat in my chair properly.  The movie kept me propped up at strange angles.  It was as if my body was trying to find a configuration that could better process what I was seeing.

The Losers Club was great.  In a post Stranger Things world, all horror media involving kids in the 80’s is going to be compared to that show, and It compares very favorably.  The kids are snarky, funny and loveable.  It is easy to root for them.  While I am not a fan of putting kids in danger, I will say a horror movies about kids always makes more sense.  When adults make dumb horror movie choices, you roll your eyes.  When kids make dumb horror movie choices, it is understandable.

I never thought there would be a Pennywise that creeped me out more than Tim Curry, but Bill Skarsgård managed to do it, and now I don’t like to stand in dark rooms by myself.  It was scary even though I knew what was going to happen, and It will replace It as a horror classic.  If you are somehow still employed as a clown, you should retire now, because It is here to scare a whole new generation, and that generation is going to hate clowns even more than my generation did.  Which is saying something.