Tag: review

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Arrow Season 5 Premiere Trailer: A Return to Form?

Shaun

God dammit, Arrow, with your amazing trailers.

After one subpar season followed by one plain bad season, I was about ready to give up Arrow. Coming from someone who has been a huge fan over the last five years, that’s saying a lot. But right when I’m on the precipice of peacing out for good, Arrow brings us this trailer in preparation for its premiere:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSPm978P99I

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Entertainment, Shaun, Site News6 Comments

My Problems with IGN’s Spirit of Justice Review

Shaun

Where have all the good reviews gone?

When I first read IGN’s relatively harsh review of Ace Attorney 6: Spirit of Justice, my heart sank a little. As a game I have been looking forward to since it was announced, and as an avid series fan, I wanted the score to be higher. I don’t know–maybe in my narcissistic bubble I just want everyone to love the game as much as me.

When I went to Metacritic, however, my disappointment shifted to relief….and then something more akin to rage. Turns out that Spirit of Justice is sitting pretty at a high 82 rating, and IGN’s review of the game was the lowest out there.

I took some time to meditate on my rage. Really let it percolate. Because as a fan, I know how I am. When I recommend something to someone, and they hate it, my first emotion is intense, world-burning hatred. But when I let it subside, I fall back down to the rationale human emotion of it’s their opinion, and they’re perfectly entitled to that, and not everything is for everyone.

So I gave it some time, and the anger did sort of melt away. But what was left was confusion. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I had some legitimate gripes with the review, and by extension, reviews as a whole.

I know the joke for years is that IGN has been horrible at….well, it would be faster to list what they do well. I think a third of that is troll fodder, another third is the expectations that come with being one of the largest entertainment websites out there, and the final third is IGN could handle a lot of their content better. My beef isn’t elusively with IGN; with that said, they really flubbed this review. Like “Too much water” 2.0.

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Entertainment, Shaun2 Comments

Pokemon Go Review: A Shallow, Aimless Experience

Shaun

It’s belated, sure, but I officially dove in to play and review Pokemon Go…and I officially I don’t get it. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.

Look, with something as huge as Pokemon Go has been, I cant help but recoil against the hype machine a little. I’ll admit that. It’s my human nature. But with what is now a cultural phenomenon, I was expecting more depth. More strategy. More heart. More fun. Just…more.

Don’t get me wrong – the first couple hours of Pokemon Go is stellar and fresh. The experience of walking around and interacting with Pokemon in your environment is the dream of millions of people who grew up on these games. Throwing Pokeballs, evolving your creatures, and steadily getting stronger is a pure treat, as was evidenced by how every person on the planet downloaded this game. You really begin realizing what tremendous potential something like this has.

Unfortunately, that’s the thing about potential–it exists as a what if that may or may not ever be realized. Just ask Cuba Gooding, Jr.

Turns out that as a brief experience, Pokemon Go is like cracking open that elusive treasure chest for the first time. And as a game, Pokemon Go is discovering the chest contains only pieces hot garbage–that is to say, it’s a shallow, aimless, and ultimately pointless exercise in redundancy.

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