Tag: Raggle Fraggle

The Munsters (1964-1966) Review

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Does anyone recognize the goofiest and spookiest family of the mid 1960’s

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Created By Allan Burns (The Mary Tyler Moore Show) and Chris Hayward (The Dick Tracy Show) and both previously known for creating the popular sitcom Leave it to Beaver.

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The Munsters is an American sitcom about the life of an all American family of Monsters who live at 1313 Mockingbird Lane, The show is a parody of the classic monster horror films that came out in the 1930’s, they have a lot of famous faces of the day playing each of the family members but the most famous have to be Fred Gwynne who plays the Frankenstein father Herman Munster and Al Lewis who plays the vampire grandfather, other monsters in the house include Butch Patrick who plays Eddie the werewolf son, Yvonne De Carlo who Plays Herman’s vampire wife and Beverly Owen who plays Marilyn who is the only Munster who happens to be a regular human being, Beverly Owen was replaced by Pat Priest after the first 13 episodes of the show.markymunster247

The best thing about the show in my opinion is that its very similar to a lot of other sitcoms from back in the day, of course it does have a monster spin to it but that’s about the only difference, most of the comedy revolves around the Munster’s getting on with their everyday lives and everyone else freaking out when they see them, the shows longest running joke is that the Munster’s believe that they are the normal ones and they cant get their heads around why everyone else is terrified of them.

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The Munster’s ran for two seasons and it did very well financially until the live action television show Batman starring Adam West was put on air, Batman managed to attract a massive fan-base and unfortunately its popularity managed to allow it to take the Munster’s spot on CBS.

The Munster’s may have only lasted for two seasons but it was very popular when it was on TV, a lot re-runs were played after it was cancelled and sometimes around this time of year you may catch an episode or two being played on your local television network but until then the Munster’s will remain very important to its many fans including myself.

I hope you enjoyed this Review of the Munster’s

you can contact me at ragglefragglereviews@gmail.com

 

Book Review: Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie

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Peter Pan was originally written by Scottish Author J.M Barrie and it was published in 1911.

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(BTW he had a fabulous mustache)

The story follows the adventures of the Darling children including the eldest Wendy, John who was the middle child and Micheal the youngest, Wendy would always read stories to her younger brothers about fairy tales and adventures, the most popular of these stories being the adventures of a young boy who never grows up called Peter Pan.

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One cold and starry night a young boy breaks into the nursery looking for his shadow and when Wendy helps him find it, he teaches the children how to fly and he takes them all away to a magical world beyond the stars called Neverland.

(There will be a few spoilers beyond this point, but not enough to ruin the book)

The General plot summary you have just read may sound very familiar but let me assure you that the original novel of Peter Pan is very different to a lot of the modern stage plays and movies, for one thing the book is rather dark and at times gruesome, a fair few children get murdered in the book and there are a few adult themes discussed including faeries having group sex and Peter Pan himself being more “Sinister” than more modern audiences may know him to be, so please keep this in mind if you are planning to read the original unabridged version of the book to young children.

I own the unabridged version and it is filled with loads of old fashioned English words and spellings which some people may find hard to understand and if this is the case I recommenced a more modern re-print of the book but please keep in mind that modified versions will be modified for new younger audiences so some of the adult stuff I mentioned above will most likely be removed, even with all of the old fashioned English the book is still described well enough for the reader to understand fairly well what is going on and it is still very simple to read the text and visualize the story the book is telling.

The book is 230 pages long and it may take only 2-3 days to read for most people, for me this is great because just like my video games I prefer my books to be short as it means that I can read them over and over again many times throughout the year, but I can understand why some people wouldn’t want to pay a bookstore price for such a short story.

Peter Pan is an amazing story about Pirates, Mermaids, Faeries, and lost children who dress in animal skins and hunt Native Indians, honestly there is something here for everyone, its one of most iconic stories ever written and it has inspired so many people to begin a journey into the world of art including myself, Peter Pan is nothing more than a masterpiece of British Literature and it will always stand the test of time.

I hope you enjoyed this Book Review of Peter Pan by J.M Barrie

If you respect my opinion, I will respect yours

you can contact me at ragglefragglereviews@gmail.com

Sorry for the gap in reviews guys, I have been super busy working on another project but I promise I will try to get more reviews out soon, anyway I will see you in October for a month of spooky reviews.

Also I am taking requests this month so if there are any games, books or films you would like reviewed for Halloween please email me and I will place all requests in a random generator and I will be reviewing what ever gets selected so please send me any requests you can think of.

 

Assassins Creed (2007) PS3/360/PC Review

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The Assassins Creed games have come along way since its debut in 2007, over the past eight years several games have been released which have mostly had a very good reception minus one or two entries but its the original game that doesn’t get quite as much love and today we are going to talk about why that is.

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The plot is that a bartender called Desmond Miles has been made a prisoner to a top secret industry called Abstergo, he is being monitored by two scientists who force him to lie down inside of a machine called the Animus, the Animus allows Desmond to relive the memories of his ancestors each game follows the adventures of a different Assassin from Desmond’s past and in this games case that Assassin is Altair.

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Altair’s time takes place in the year 1191 during the third crusade, Altair is a member of a group of assassins called the creed, the creed assassinates dictators, templar’s, murders, rapists and genuinely bad people in order to try and keep peace and safety within the land, during a mission to find the apple of Eden Altair breaks the creeds code by killing an innocent person and trying to assassinate a target with brutality over stealth, Altair’s mistakes causes the death of one the other assassins and it appears that they lose the apple of Eden as well, his master is told of the creeds failure and he punishes Altair by stripping him of his rank and by confiscating all of his weapons, he tells Altair that if he wants to restore his status within the creed he will have to assassinate nine templar’s who are notorious for their evil deeds, Altair leaves to find information on all of his targets preparing for their assassinations.

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Through out the game you will be swapping between playing as Altair and Desmond Miles, when playing as Desmond you will walk around the Abstergo  building in which he is being kept prisoner and here you will slowly learn more about the Animus and why Desmond is so important to the company, playing as Altair is where it’s at though as this is where you get the best game play experience, as Altair it’s your job to take out nine assassination targets, you will need to travel between three major cities Acre, Damascus and Jerusalem, in these cities you will get a chance to experience a lot of the free running aspects of the game, the assassins have been trained to run really fast and are able to climb almost anything, they are essentially like monkeys.

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Climbing buildings is not only really cool but its also extremely useful, you may often find your self having to climb buildings if you are being chased by a lot of guards or if you are in need of unlocking a view point, a view point will help you find secret missions that you can complete while you are hunting for your main assassination targets, these missions can be anything from eves dropping, pick pocketing, assassinating archers or templar’s, beating up a prophet to gain information etc.

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Even though the object of the game is to be sneaky and to get on with your business without drawing attention to yourself their is bound to be time when you make a small mistake that could cost you your life and in these situations you may decide that instead of running from the guards to hide in a bale of hay or on a rooftop you will instead fight your honor and like any professional Altair is prepared for this situation, through out the game you will be awarded an arsenal of weapons  appropriate to the time period, Altair can fight his enemies in a traditional sword fighting style which he can use to successfully kill the guards with sword attacks and combo moves, he can use throwing knives to take out enemies from a distance, he can forget using weapons completely in the case that he’s the mood for a fist fight but by far the best weapon in the entire game is the hidden blade, the hidden blade is a small knife that is hidden underneath Altair sleeve and as he bends his wrist back the blade will erect from its hiding place, this is the best weapon for assassinations and my personal opinion is that you should only ever use it when the guards are not aware of your presence.

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The visuals of Assassins Creed are absolutely outstanding for a game that came out in 2007, the amount of detail that the game designers put into the game with effects such as shadows, light and clothes blowing in the wind, all of these things were mind blowing at the time and they really help give the game a more realistic feel, even the smaller details are quite impressive, a lot of people praise the game for its use of background characters, when you are walking around the cities the people around you are very intelligent, they will have have conversations together, they will shop at stalls and they will even notice you and may comment on your actions for example if you are running through the street with no reason the peasants will talk to each other about that and will try to figure out why you acting so strangely, another great detail is the use of beggars, drunks and crazy people, you will often find beggars getting up in your face asking you for money and far too often will you get punched by the local drunks and village idiots, these are a great edition to the game although I feel that they could have been implemented better and maybe not of been used as much as they were, I found them to be an issue during a lot of my stealth missions, I would often be following someone and then a drunk would punch me causing me bump into my target making them realize who I am and causing me to fail, also when I was trying to assassinate templar’s and guards sometimes beggars would get in the way of hidden blade causing me to kill them and the problem with this is that not only does it make a wanted murderer but I also lose health because I killed an innocent.

There really isn’t a lot of music in this game or at least there isn’t that many tracks that I thoroughly enjoyed or even remember, I don’t find this to be an issue because I don’t believe that music is even needed in a game like this, it was still fun and the lack of constant musical tracks only helped make the game feel more real and that’s something that I really love about Assassins Creed.

The game controls fairly well, the button combinations are easy to learn although if you play on a PC like I did you may want to change some of the controls to fit your playing style, the only time ever had a problem with the controls was when I was running from guards and trying to climb ladders, I cant tell you the amount of times I told Altair to climb a ladder and he instead ran into a wall causing me to get caught and a lot of the time killed but apart from this small issue the game controls almost perfectly.

The original Assassins Creed was a revolutionary game that would pave the way not only for more games in the series but it went to inspire other game series as well such as the new tomb raider remakes which are fantastic games, although it is revolutionary I don’t think many people would disagree when I say that it has aged a bit and compared to what the series is now its not quite as good as some of it’s sequels but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t a good game because it is, it’s just not as interesting as some of the other Assassins Creed games but its still legendary and it will always be one of the most revolutionary games in history. 6.9/10

I hope you enjoyed this review of Assassins Creed 2007

Most of these images I got from a you-tuber called Game Arrow please check him out

https://www.youtube.com/user/GameArrow

If you respect my opinion, I will respect yours

you can contact me at ragglefragglereviews@gmail.com

 

 

Spider Man (2002) (PC,PS2,GC,XBOX) Review

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In the past four years of writing reviews for this website I haven’t really delved into the world of super heroes, we’ve all seen the movies but what about the video games that came after them?, I haven’t really played many super hero games but after Sam Raimi released the first Spider Man film I remember begging my parents to buy me the game that Christmas, I recently repurchased the game for nostalgia but was it as good as I remember?

spider-man-the-movie-pcThe first thing that stands out with this game is that it doesn’t have much in common with the movie at all, the first stage of the game actually takes place long after Peter is bitten by the spider as its his mission to track down Uncle Ben’s killer.

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The rest of the game has a unique story line, Spider Man ends up taking on all of sorts of super villains including The Shocker, The Vulture, Scorpion and Kraven the Hunter (Kraven is only in the XBOX version of the game), of course the Green Goblin is still the main antagonist in the game but apart from one level every time you fight him its different to the movie, even the final battle doesn’t take place where it does in the film, I personally really like that the game is so unique but some people may be a little put off by its differences.

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Spider Man is a general beat em up game and it consists of 24 stages, most of the game is boss fights which are all really fun, some stages require Spider Man to hide in the shadows and sneak about but most of time you will be beating up bad guys and trying to complete a goal to finish the stage, Peter doesn’t just fight with punches and kicks as he can also use different fighting techniques by using his web, there are a lot of moves you can unlock but for me the most useful was shooting my web at enemies while I was swinging through the air, other useful moves include tying up bad guys with your web, pulling enemies towards you by lassoing them with your web and creating an exploding shield around your body, you do have to be careful though as you can run out of web and it can only be topped up if you find a blue spider, you can also top up your health by finding red spiders and you can unlock new fighting moves by finding gold spiders.

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The biggest problem I have with this game is that when you are outside you cant land on the street otherwise you will die, its kinda annoying because in the movie Spider Man is able to walk about in the street so why cant he here, it doesn’t make any sense what so ever.

The game controls pretty well when you are stable or fighting, I found the controls to be tight and responsive but when I was swinging I had a lot of trouble trying to make Spider Man go in the direction I wanted him too go, he just kept bumping into the sides of buildings and due to the way the game is designed sometimes he would grab onto a building when I bumped into it, this slowed me down and was a particular pain on levels where I had to chase the villains.

Graphically for a game that came out in 2002 it looks fairly impressive, I was very surprised with how smooth the animation was when I was playing the game, for some reason the cut scenes look quite pixelated which really sucks considering how great the game play looks.

I don’t remember any music in this game at all which isn’t a good sign because that means that it blatantly wasn’t that good and I cant really comment on it because like I said none of it was memorable to me.

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Through out the game you will gain points depending on your performance, these points will unlock loads of really cool secrets, the best in my opinion is pin head bowling where you can team up with a friend and can swing into bad guys to get points, other unlockables include secret cut scenes, being able to change Spider Man’s model so you can play as Mary Jane, a Police Officer, Peter Parker etc, you can unlock the ability to play a Green Goblin campaign if you beat the game on the Hero or Super Hero difficulty, this campaign is almost exactly the same as the main game and I recommend skipping it.

Spider Man is a pretty fun licensed game, it’s not perfect by any means but it definitely stands out with its unique story and different game play styles, it’s really cheap to pick up these days and if you ever come across it I recommend picking it up especially if your a Spidey fan.

6/10

I hope you enjoyed this review of Spider Man the Video Game 2002

If you respect my opinion, I will respect yours

you can contact me at ragglefragglereviews@gmail.com

 

 

Death Note Anime Review

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Death Note

I have reviewed many anime films on this website but have never gone over a show before, I suppose I have to start somewhere and what’s a better show to start with than the mind bending sadistic show that is Death Note !

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This is Light Yagami an intelligent high school graduate and natural genius, Light is the first human in the anime to find one of the famous note books known as a Death Note, a Death Note is a notebook owned by a Shinigami (God of Death) and if a human beings name is written in the Death Note that human being will die of a heart attack after 40 seconds, the author of the Death Note can choose the method of death if they write that in the Death Note within 30 seconds of writing the victims name, another rule is that they can only kill a victim with the Death Note if they know the face of the person they are killing the reason for this rule is that there may be many people who share the same first and last name

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Ryuk is the Shinigami that dropped the Death Note into the human realm, he did this for his own entertainment and he enjoys watching Light use the Death Note.

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Light originally uses the Death Note to kill criminals, his father is the chief of police and because of this he has been brought up with a strong sense of justice, unfortunately for Light his mysterious murders start a serious police investigation that is led by his father, he also gains a lot of support from followers who think of Light as a god and these followers refer to him as Kira which is the Japanese pronunciation of the word Killer, the police hire a private detective who is known as L, L suspects Light of being Kira and he sends people to investigate him this makes Light begin his journey towards madness and he begins to use the Death Note to kill anyone who gets in his way making him a very dangerous serial killer.

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Later on into the anime Light actually joins the investigation team that is investigating him, the show gets really intense the further you get through it and its really cool to see just how psychotic Light becomes when his evil persona begins to take over his life.

Without giving away too many spoilers that’s about all I can say about Death note, it is one of the most unique anime I have ever seen, the animation is amazing for 2007, it uses a great blend of shadow and light effects to help emphasize the dark nature of the show as well as to give the art a more realistic style, I thought the voice acting on the English dub was very well done its not often that you can notice the amount of love and effort that was put into every characters personality and style of voice, I cant say much about the music in the show, none of it was that memorable and I didn’t even enjoy the theme song that much.

Death Note is a very popular anime and it has reason to be, I don’t think it could be recommended for everyone due to how dark the premise is but if you like dark anime then you should give this one a shot.

They did release two specials after the show ended the first was Death Note Rewrite Visions of a God and the second was Death Note Rewrite 2 L’s Successors, apart from the first 10 minutes both of these are just a compilation of clips from the show and I recommend skipping them

I hope you enjoyed this review of Death Note

You can contact me at ragglefragglereviews@gmail.com
You can find me on miiverse by searching for draskafer

My opinion of the Disney live action remakes

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Why do directors feel the need to remake movies that have no reason to be remade?

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Unfortunately this seems to be the the problem with the Walt Disney Classics collection, the first of the classics to be remade was 101 Dalmatians in 1996, the movie was met with massive success at the box office and it has since become one of the most beloved Disney films among fans, the main reasons that the 101 Dalmatians remake is so beloved is because not only did it correctly follow the source material but it also added new twists to the story, one of biggest differences is that the animals don’t talk, not only that but the casting was fantastic Cruella De vil was played by Glen Close and they could not have picked a better actress for the job, she manages to be threatening but still hilarious and over the top just like the original, the rest of the cast are great too but none are more memorable than Hugh Laurie and Mark Williams who played Jasper and Horace they are hilarious and by far the best part of the movie.

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With the massive success of 101 Dalmatians we couldn’t wait for the future Disney remakes and so when Tim Burton announced that he was remaking Alice in Wonderland it created a lot of hype, and with an all star cast including Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter how could it possibly go wrong?

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Well we didn’t exactly get the dark Alice in Wonderland remake we expected and instead we got this horrible excuse for a movie, it wasn’t sure if it was remake, a sequel or a retelling of the original story, it wasn’t weird enough and it kept trying to bring logic into what is supposed to be a world filled with nonsense and it was just awful, critics panned this movie for its bad casting, terrible CGI and lackluster story telling, unfortunately the movie was still successful which was probably due to it having Disney’s name to it and because of this not only is there going to be a sequel but other directors saw the movies success and started to remake all of the other Disney movies.

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The next three movies to be released were Maleficent, Cinderella and most recently The Jungle Book, out of all three of the movies the only one I was really excited about was Maleficent because it was advertised as the story about how Maleficent became evil and I thought that would be the main focus of the movie but instead it was just a really bad retelling of Sleeping Beauty, it added some good aspects to the story by giving Maleficent a more understandable reason as to why she is bad as well as giving her a backstory, but apart from this most of the acting wasn’t very good, the film was pretty boring and the only part of the movie I really enjoyed was Angelina Jolies performance as Maleficent, Cinderella which is by far the weakest of the remakes was pretty much the exact same film but remade with less likable characters with the exception of the prince who gets more screen time than he does in the original and as much as I don’t like the new evil step mother compared to the original I have to give the remake credit for giving her a reason to dislike Cinderella, for the most part I  enjoyed the Jungle Book remake, I thought it was clever with the way it expanded the story of the original film while also sharing more similarities to the book, I hated the little boy who played Mowgli as I found him to be extremely annoying and honestly it didn’t feel like he was the right casting choice to play Mowgli in my opinion, the CGI was great and the animation flowed smoothly and worked well with the characters and the movies environments, the only thing I really disliked was the casting not only did I hate the little boy who played Mowgli but I also hated almost every voice actor in the film as I just didn’t feel that they were the correct choices to voice those characters but most of this hate goes towards Bill Murray as Baloo and Christopher Walken as King Louie, I think they shouldn’t have made the animals talk at all, it worked in 101 Dalmatians favor so I don’t see why it couldn’t have worked for The Jungle Book as well, with all that said and done I do feel that people should go and see The Jungle Book as it honestly is a pretty good movie despite some of my more negative opinions of it.

So as you’ve probably already guessed, I’m not a big fan of the Disney remakes, I have nothing against some of these movies getting remade or retold if the more modern versions follow the source material and at least try to capture what the originals did, some Disney movies in my opinion don’t need to be remade at all due to their not being much wrong with the original a great example would be Beauty and the Beast which is soon to be remade, if Disney want’s to remake some of their old movies then I think they should try to focus on the older classics that could use updating such as Snow White, Pinocchio or Bambi otherwise I just think that beloved movies should be left alone to be loved and not remade for modern audiences and as a quick cash grab.

Thank you for reading this article about my personal opinion on Disney remaking their movies, please remember that this is purely my opinion and if you disagree that’s fine.

You can contact me at ragglefragglereviews@gmail.com
You can find me on miiverse by searching for draskafer

 

Titanic the legend goes on (2000) Review

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ITS PARTY TIME, ITS PARTY TIME !!!

Ummm spoilers if you actually care

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You know sometimes directors will make movies based on real life historical events?

and sometimes those movies will have some small changes compared to the real event just so that it translates better to a movie?

well in 2000 an Italian film director called Camillo Teti decided to tackle the horrific sinking of the Titanic by making it an animated children’s movie starring talking animals and a rapping dog.

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The plot is fairly similar to the James Cameron movie that came out a few years prior to this, a girl who is supposed to marry some total douche goes on board the Titanic and meets a poor man who she falls in love with,the boat hits an ice berg and she eventually loses her new love to the icy waters after the Titanic sinks, the only difference here is that no one dies and there a sub plot regarding a detective finding a jewel thief.

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The animation is terrible, first of all the entire film uses these horribly dull colors meaning that nothing is really able to stand out, another problem is the frame rate is just awful, a lot of the time it looks like someone is flicking through a flip book and sometimes the animators don’t bother to animate things at all this is especially more noticeable in the background scenery, clouds wont move and sometimes background characters will remain still, this lack of flowing animation makes the movie feel less realistic than it already is.

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This is a musical and honestly the songs are not that bad, they don’t need to be in the film and do nothing to help the plot but they aren’t really annoying in any way and one song in particular is actually pretty catchy and yes I am talking about the rapping dog.

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The voice acting is really bad, just like Anastasia it just feels like no one wanted to be in this movie, every character sounds so bored and uninterested and I cant think of a single character in the entire movie that I enjoyed listening too, some times the English dub of the film comes across as really broken, some sentences get cut short due to editing issues, some of the characters are hard to understand and some of the dialogue is just genuinely bad.

People really hate this film and its not just because its bad, the biggest problem with this movie is that the director tried to make a light hearted children’s musical out a of major disaster which only happened just over 100 years ago.

To no ones surprise this is a bad film but I think everyone should watch this at least once because just like food fight its hilariously terrible especially if your drunk.

I hope you enjoyed this review of Titanic: The Legend Goes On

You can contact me at ragglefragglereviews@gmail.com
You can find me on miiverse by searching for draskafer

 

Book Review: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol

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Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is one of the most famous books of all time and its also one of my personal favorites, please follow me down the rabbit hole as I review this masterpiece of classic English literature.

So if you dont already know the book follows the adventures of a curious young girl called Alice through a magical world of weird and unusual things.

Alice is a very mature person but she is also very naive and she has unrealistic views on how the world should work.

One day she is sitting on the bank with her sister who is reading a very boring book with no pictures, Alice complains about this and talks about how in her perfect world books would be nothing but pictures, she ends up seeing a white rabbit in a waist coat run past the bank, this makes Alice curious and so she follows the rabbit down a rabbit hole and into the unusual world of Wonderland.

Without giving away any spoilers I will say that the novel is very different to the Walt Disney version of Alice in Wonderland, where the Disney film is very light hearted and comical, the book has a bit more of a darker tone and it also tackles a lot of adult themes including Puberty (Even though its written as a metaphor, its still obvious what the book is trying to portray)

I’m not saying that the book isn’t kid friendly but I would say that you may want to read this one with your child.

There are a lot of new characters in this book that you wont recognize from the film, the most memorable for me are the Mock Turtle and Gryphon.

Alice is a lot more bearable in the book as she is more independent and she is able to think for herself almost all of the time.

This is a fantastic book and overall I think it spreads a good message, that there does come a time to grow up and that life wont always go as we plan, the book is great way of showing people that living in a world with no rules and no consequences can be just as bad if not worse than living in a world that does have rules and consequences that follow.

Whether you like the film or not, I think everyone should read this book at least once, I have read the book multiple times and I’m not planning to stop any time soon.

Perhaps one day I will get around to reviewing the movie or better yet maybe even the second book.

I hope you enjoyed this Book Review of Alices Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol

If you respect my opinion, I will respect yours

you can contact me at ragglefragglereviews@gmail.com

 

Lets Take a Look at Miimoto

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So you may be aware that Nintendo recently announced a new line of apps they are creating for smart phones and tablets, this is in my knowledge the second app they have officially released with the first being the rather popular Pokemon Shuffle.

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After Pokemon Shuffle’s wide success Nintendo started to advertise a new game called Miimoto which allows players to create a Mii and to keep them inside of their phones or tablets.

Everyone was skeptical of this because Nintendo also admitted that a big portion of the game would need players to buy items with real money, this is very similar to the many online game scams out there such as Habbo Hotel and Club Penguin which are free to sign up for but everything else will cost money.

Miimoto got released today and i decided to download it to see what it is all about.

Please keep note that only some of these images are of my mii, this is because I forgot to take screenshots during the setup of the app.

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The first thing you will need to do is sign in with either your Nintendo ID, Facebook, Google Plus or just via the Nintendo Website, then you will need to create a mii for the app, my first complaint is that I couldn’t transfer a copy of my mii from my Wii U to my phone and instead had to start from scratch, this is something I hope they fix in the future

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After you have your mii you can either answer questions about yourself to go into polls for example I got asked my favorite food and how I deal with stress, you can buy some clothes for your mii, if you sign up today you get a free Mario hat, you can take photos of your mii which you can then send to friends over social media, email or snapchat, you can add friends either using social media or by scanning that friends QR code other wise they need to be sat right next to you and you can play some mini games to help you earn some free coins for shopping as well as some other goodies.

This is the games menu which is used for selecting multiple options

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From here you can view your profile, change clothes, change the way your mii looks, search through multiple greetings, take pictures of your mii and you can also store pictures in a gallery, complete some rather boring Nintendo Missions (Add friends for 100 points, create mii for 50 points etc) you can create a QR code which you can use to send your mii to multiple accounts and devices, look for gifts from friends or Nintendo, and change the apps settings.

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When taking a photo you can pose your mii in different positions and you can even change the images background.

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Finally what is by far my favorite feature of the app is that your mii can talk to you and they even have a voice which you can customize .

Pros

  • Free to download
  • Fun photo feature
  • Lots of choice for mii creation
  • Minigames are quite fun

Cons

  • Not much to do
  • Not enough freedom of choice
  • Adding friends is difficult
  • Your character seems to be stuck in the room and cant seem to leave at all
  • In game items are not cheap

At the end of the day Miimoto is an ok experience but it needs a lot of work, the biggest issue with the game is that you will get bored quickly due to the lack of things to do.

There are a few things I would do to fix some issues, first of all we need to be able to leave the building so that we can communicate with other mii’s, this could also be a new way to add friends, the shop needs work because at the moment you can only buy fashion items and very few furniture, instead of charging us to play mini-games how about we get one free game a day because at least then we would have more of a motive to boot up the app, giving us free rewards for registering Wii U/3DS games, finally Nintendo you need to add this to the E-shop there is no excuse and it would be much easier to play this on the game pad while looking at the game on the TV.

I know I haven’t been very positive regarding the app but please keep in mind that this is only day one of the apps release, yes it’s true that Nintendo should have given us more things to do before the app was released but that doesn’t mean that things wont get better in the future and when they do I will update this article.

If you would like to add my mii to your miimoto here is my QR Code

MIITOMOSHARE

 

I hope you enjoyed my look at Miimoto

Want me to review a specific game/movie/product or do you have a general question you would like me to answer? if so please email me at ragglefragglereviews@gmail.com

You can find me on Miiverse by searching for draskafer

 

 

Rayman 2: The Great Escape (PS1, PS2, N64, 3DS, Dreamcast, PC) (1999) Review

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After the massive success of Mario, Sonic and the Legend of Zelda making it big in the world of 3D gaming it was of no surprise that the rising video game star Rayman would soon be joining them and the result was one of the most beloved games of all time Rayman 2.

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Every resident of the Glade of Dreams including Rayman has been captured by an army of robotic pirates led by Admiral Razorbeard, the reason behind doing this isn’t explained very well and my only guess is that they are only doing this because they want slaves.

Rayman manages to escape the Prison Ship and returns to the Glade of Dreams, here he finds out that the pirates have destroyed the heart of the world causing Rayman to lose his powers,luckily a new fairy called Ly is on hand to help rayman regain his powers while he is on his quest to rescue all the slaves from their kidnappers.

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Similar to its predecessor Rayman 2 is an action platformer and the only major difference here is that this game is 3D and apart from that everything else is essentially the same, Rayman can run, jump, hover and grab and swing from pink rings, throughout the game you will sometimes run into Ly the fairy and when you do she will either give you a new power or she will enhance  power you already have making it more powerful and useful for example you can get a hover expansion which allows Rayman to fly in certain areas.

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The main objective of the game is that Rayman needs to find and collect four ancient masks in order to awaken the god Polokus, once awakened Polokus can help Rayman by destroying all of the Pirates who remain in the Glade of Dreams while Rayman returns to the prison ship to take on Razorbeard.

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There are still some fetch quests for Rayman this time around but luckily they are not required, one of the objectives is to find and collect all 1000 yellow lums (800 in the PS1 version) these yellow lums make up the heart of the world that was destroyed by the pirates, they are spread all over the glade of dreams and collecting them all gives bonuses in certain versions of the game in the PS1 version you will unlock the beta level of the original Rayman 2 before the game was made into 3D and in the pS2 and PC ports  you will unlock a minigame for each level that you collect all of the yellow lums, the PS2 and PC version also allow the player to purchase new upgrades and abilities using the lums you have collected.

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Another collectible in the game are the familiar spirits, these creatures have been locked in cages all over the land, Rayman can free these spirits in a similar manner to first game by simply punching the cages, in the PC and PS2 port if Rayman brings these spirits to Ly the fairy he can take part in different minigames that he can try to beat in order to gain a health expansion.

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In most versions of the game Rayman will travel throughout the Glade of Dreams via the Hall of Doors a magical portal to each stage in the game.

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The PC and PS2 ports of the game scrap the Hall of Doors for an open world environment that Rayman can use to access all of the stages while also using the hub world for access to new content such as the shop and Ly’s minigames.

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I have played a lot of 3D platformer’s in my time and out of all them this one has the best control and the smoothest frame rate, this was a big surprise to me because Rayman has so many abilities that it should make some of the games main mechanics quite difficult but instead everything is perfect and it feels great, this came out on the same systems as Mario 64 and Crash Bandicoot but it feels better than some of the more modern Mario Games and that is just mind blowing.

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The visuals in Rayman 2 are obviously going to be very different to the original game due to the leap into 3D, I like the visuals here but it’s hard to love them after playing the first game where its visuals were absolutely outstanding, the new look and style brought to Rayman 2 is nothing more than just ok and don’t get me wrong they are not by any means bad graphics, for the time they were up to par with the systems it had to work with, its just nothing about them is really unique or memorable which is more of a disappointment than an actual problem.

The soundtrack unfortunately has the same problem but in my opinion its worse, no music in this game made me sing along or made me feel any emotion, I’m sure there are people out there that love the soundtrack presented here but for me it was nothing more than generic and uninteresting.

Rayman 2 is a really good game but its not quite as unique as the original and that’s not really a bad thing especially considering that they are completely different experiences, the story is interesting, all characters are likable, it controls great and the only real disappointment were the visuals and soundtrack and even then that’s just a personal preference.

In my opinion I wouldn’t say that Rayman 2 is quite as good as the original game but I would recommend it out of the 2 of them its still a great game and the lack of needed fetch quests does make it a lot less stressful. 7.3/10

I hope you enjoyed this review of Rayman 2: The Great Escape

If you respect my opinion, I will respect yours

you can contact me at ragglefragglereviews@gmail.com