Long story short: United Front Studios were making a game called True Crime, but then Activision cancelled it. Square Enix picked it up and it was reborn as Sleeping Dogs. This jerry-rigged True Crime had the makings of a disastrous flop and yet has ended up a brilliant entry in the crime sandbox genre.
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Anime retrospective: Samurai Champloo
I caught Samurai Champloo as it aired back in 2004, and though I liked it enough, it didn’t impact me as much as I hoped it would. Though maybe that’s not entirely true, as the soundtrack did indirectly change my life, thanks to the composer Nujabes introducing me to instrumental hip hop and providing a soundtrack to my life for the next few years.
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Review: Throne of Blood
Kurosawa’s ode to Shakespeare’s Macbeth follows the tale beat for beat in a Japanese context, set during the warring states period rife with betrayal and shifting alliances.
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Slayers: a review & RPG discourse
This is both a semi-review of the original 26 episode first season of Slayers, and an observation of the mopey state of RPGs. The jist of it is: RPGs should be more like Slayers.
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Game review: Final Fantasy XIII-2
FFXIII got a lot of negative feedback upon release. By the time I got round to playing it I was expecting the worse. Instead, what I experienced was a passable and somewhat entertaining story told with style. Its major criticism was its linearity. The ‘corridor shooter’ of RPGs! Well, I’d rather that than an open world game with no story. (hello Dark Souls, ‘sup?)
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Review: Body of Lies
As this film began I wondered how I had missed a Ridley Scott film back in 2008, and by the midway point I remembered: there was nothing unique, compelling or memorable about it from the trailers, and by the end the same could be said for the film as a whole.
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Stop updating shit for the sake of updating shit
Every single website and software falls for the same trap. They decide to make a massive update. Not an essential update relating to security, but an aesthetic one that ruins the experience and sends visitors fleeing for the hills.
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Game blog: Playing after the dust has settled
This is increasingly becoming a tired topic, but worth bringing up to explain why this website’s game reviews are not for timely releases. I have a rule to not buy any game as soon as its released, and the reason for that is simple and painfully obvious when you look at the current gaming landscape.
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Review: The Hidden Fortress
Many things went through my mind as I began to watch Akira Kurosawa’s 1958 chanbara film, set during Japan’s warring states period.
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Review: Side Effects
Steven Soderbergh’s Side Effects is a hard pill to swallow knowing it’s his last feature film before his retirement from the cinematic medium.