How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966) Review

December 18, 2014 ragglefragglereviews8 Comments

How the Grinch Stole Christmas might be one of the greatest Christmas specials of all time.

The special is based on the book of the same name written by none other than the legendary Dr Seuss.

The story follows the Grouchy old Grinch who hates everything about Christmas, He lives in a cave in a snowy mountain above the Town of Whoville. The Grinch hates the Who’s of Whoville because they love Christmas, The Grinch decides that he has had enough of Christmas and decides that he will dress up as Santa Claus and will take away all of the presents, the Christmas trees and all of the roast beast from every Who in town.

After taking away everything Christmas related from the town, The Grinch waits and listens for the angry parent’s and the weeping children but instead he is surprised to hear the sound of the Who’s coming together and singing.

After thinking long and hard about what happened the Grinch realises that maybe Christmas is not about the presents and the magnificent feasts but is instead about bringing people together and appreciating each others company.

The Grinch is voiced by none other than Boris Karloff who is most famous for playing the role of Frankensteins Monster in Frankenstein (1931).

No one could have done this role any better than Karloff did, he really helps show how evil the Grinch really is by providing the Grinch with a very sinister but angry voice, Karloff also narrated the entire movie and again he did a fantastic job.

The animation is very interesting because most children’s cartoons adapted from books tend to have an animation style which is more traditional and popular for that era but surprisingly this movie does not do that and instead the animation looks just like the book but with a little more polish, I think this works really well because it helps show that no changes needed to be made to the original illustrations and it helps give more life to the story the book is telling.

Here are some images from the book compared to some still shots from the special.

Book

special

I wasn’t super impressed with a lot of the songs in this special, I just didn’t enjoy them enough that I wanted to sing along, but one song I absolutely loved and that song was of course “Your’e a mean one Mr Grinch” which was sang by the amazing Thurl Ravenscroft, This song is so famous everyone from your little sister to your Great Grandmother probably knows some of the words.

To wrap things up (not an intended Christmas pun XD) How the Grinch Stole Christmas is a wonderful Christmas Special, It’s especially great for children as it helps show them the meaning of Christmas without shoving it down their throats and I really appreciate this

Its a fun and interesting 25 minute special that the whole family can enjoy

I hope you enjoyed this review

if you respect my opinion I will respect yours

By Padawan

Kings Quest 3: To Heir is Human Review

November 14, 2014 ragglefragglereviews23 Comments

I feel that I am on a Quest to find a Kings Quest game that I will love, I am yet to find King Quest Gold but I may have found some very fine Silver with Kings Quest 3: To Heir is Human.

You don’t play as King Graham this time around, instead you play the role of Gwydion a slave of the evil wizard Manannan, the wizard has a habit of adopting children at birth and raising them to be his slaves and killing them as they reach adult hood on their 18th birthdays. I gather that Gwydion figured this out and now has to escape as he is nearing his 18th birthday.

The plot is a little more complex this time around but not so complex that it may confuse its younger audience, again there is a more in depth look into the plot located inside the games manual.

Just like in kings Quest 2 you are not able to use the mouse at all within the game but using just the keyboard to move and communicate with game works perfectly, I had no issues at all with the controls during my playthrough.

Kings Quest 3 surprisingly has a similar yet also rather different game play style to the first two games.

for example it is still very heavily fairy tale based having the player deal with characters such as

Medusa

and the Three Bears from Goldilocks

the game is also time based, during the game you will have a certain amount of time to perform certain tasks, the most important of all of these tasks is getting rid of the wizard, when the clock reaches 5 minutes the wizard will embark on a journey and then you have 25 minutes to leave the house to collect the ingredients for a transformation spell.

Time based tasks like this work really well and help add a lot more challenge to the game but there are times when the time based sections of the game don’t work at all.

For example one section of the game has you hiding in the hold of a pirate ship until it reaches land, there is noting to do in the hold and you have to wait for at least 10 minutes, this section really sucks and could have benefited from a mini game of some sort.

Earlier I mentioned spell casting, casting spells is a really important part of the game you can cast spells by collecting certain ingredients and following instruction for the spell in the wizards secret laboratory.

These spell instructions are actually located within the games manual and this is really cool because it makes it feel like you are reading an actual spell book,this was also a really clever way to prevent people who pirated the game from reaching the games ending and eventual plot twist.

Kings Quest 3 provided more audio than the previous games, sure it wasn’t much more but it was enough that it kept the game interesting, my biggest issue with the first two games was the lack of audio because honestly it made them a little bit boring, because of this I really appreciate the extra bit of love from the audio department for this instalment of the Kings Quest series.

Overall this is my favourite Kings Quest game so far, the inclusion of a new character, a new game play style and the extra effort put into the audio was much appreciated, also it was really cool that Sierra had the player use the manual to communicate with the game.

Kings Quest 3 was really fun and I had a great time playing it, but sadly it suffered from some really annoying issue with a couple of the timed events and this prevented the game from not just being a good game but a great one and that really sucks 7.5/10

I hope you enjoyed this review of Kings Quest 3

if you respect my opinion, I will respect yours

By Padawan

Kings Quest 2: Romancing the Throne Review

November 12, 2014November 12, 2014 ragglefragglereviews64 Comments

After being a little disappointed with the original Kings Quest, I jumped straight into Kings Quest 2 hoping to find a more interesting and satisfying experience. I have beaten the game and here are my thoughts.

Yet again you take control of Sir Graham who is now the king of Daventry, Graham is lonely and wants to find a fair maiden to become his Queen who will help him rule the kingdom.

after many failures of trying to find a bride to satisfy him Graham consults the magic mirror to help him find his one true love, The mirror shows him a mysterious tower located somewhere in the Kingdom of Kolyma which holds a beautiful girl waiting to be rescued, Graham now sets off to rescue his future bride.

Again we are given a simple to follow plot, and again I really appreciate this as the game does not need an in depth story line to be interesting and a simple to follow plot is going to benefit younger players of the game. Of course if you want a more in depth look into the games story consult the manual because Sierra did expand on the plot within the manual.

Kings Quest 2 has much better controls than its predecessor, this time around you cant use the mouse at all within the game, but using just the keyboard works really well. I complained that the first game had clunky controls when you tried to move but luckily this time around not once did I have that issue. The controls were smooth and it was easy for me to walk around and communicate with the games environments without stress.

instead of three treasures this time you need to find three keys, that will unlock three doors allowing you to travel through a portal to where the Princess awaits.

You have to ride a seahorse to Atlantis to find King Triton who will give you a key

One key you can only reach by flying high in the sky on a magic carpet

And the final key is inside of Dracula’s castle

Reaching these keys is not easy because as you might expect there are a lot of puzzles to solve within the game and your not just dealing with these three NPC’s.

You also need to steal from a gnome, rescue a woman’s pet bird from a witch, help heal red riding hoods sick grandmother and so much more.

Sadly just like the original Kings Quest, Kings Quest two also lacks in the audio department with very few audio samples within the game.

Overall I am still to find a kings quest game that I will truly love, Kings Quest two was an enjoyable experience, It was more interesting than the original and in my opinion it had more enjoyable characters and puzzles.

Again it lacked in audio but on the bright side it was full of detail and it looks fantastic considering it was released in 1984. Also the game is full of really cool Easter eggs and secrets to look out for.

In my opinion Kings Quest 2 was slightly better than the first game but not by much.

I give kings Quest 2 a 6.9/10.

and with that I say, Bring on the Third game.

I hope you enjoyed this Review of Kings Quest 2

If you respect my opinion I will respect yours

By Padawan

Food Fight (2012) Review

October 22, 2014January 26, 2015 ragglefragglereviews47 Comments

Following the success of the Toy Story movies Director Lawrence Kasanoff (True Lies, Mortal Kombat film series) founded his own animation studio and called it Threshold Entertainment.

Director Lawrence Kasanoff

Kasanoff wanted to make a film about American Food icons living in a city within a Super Market.
The movie had actually been in development since 2002 but during the development the hard drives containing the films footage were stolen, this meant that Lawrence Kasanoff and the rest of the development team had to start the production again from scratch.

During interviews Kasanoff promised that he got the best voice talents he could find and that some of the best animators world wide would be helping with the development of the film, but sadly the film was never released and was instead locked away in a vault never to be seen by the public eye, until 2011 when it was advertised in a Hollywood news paper. The movie finally got released In 2012 but instead of going to theatres it was instead released straight to DVD.

So with all of the years of development and a wopping budget of 65 million dollars, the final result is one of the worst animated movies of all time

ladies and gentlemen may I present Food Fight

The movie follows the adventures of Dex Dogtective (Charlie Sheen) who has spent six months in a deep depression after his girlfriend Sunshine Goodness (Hilary Duff) went missing.

Things move on for Dex and the rest of Marketopolis until a villain called Lady X (Eva Longoria) and her army of Brand X Minions arrive to take over the store. It is now up to Dex and his best friend Daredevil Dan (Wayne Brady) to save the supermarket.

Food Fight is often referred to as the animated equivalent of The Room but the sad thing is that the movie actually had potential and could have been at least decent but unfortunately everything went wrong.

Food Fight has no redeeming factors, the voice acting sounds like something out of a school play, when characters talk their lips don’t synchronise with the vocals, the characters are all generic and not very interesting, the animation is badly put together and there is a huge error which makes the characters limbs jolt about making it look like the entire film was made on Microsoft Kinect.

My biggest question is where did that 65 million dollars go? because it definitely didn’t go towards the graphics or the visuals because I have seen less disturbing imagery in some horror flicks.

Food Fight is a horrifying mess of a movie it is literally the worst movie I have ever had to sit through and it should not be seen by any one.

I hope you enjoyed my review of Food Fight

Due to a broken computer this was written using my IPhone so I hope it all turned out ok, I am working on PC repairs and everything will be back to normal soon

If you respect my opinion I will respect yours

By Padawan

It’s the great pumpkin Charlie Brown (1966) Review

October 12, 2014October 12, 2014 ragglefragglereviews4 Comments

I think everyone has a tradition when they come to decide what scary movies or shows they will watch during the October Month, Personally I watch John Carpenters Halloween and I also enjoy sitting down and watching some of my favourite episodes of the Twilight Zone which was created by the Fantastic Rod Sterling.

A popular tradition in the USA is to watch the Peanuts Halloween Special from 1966, I have seen a lot of peanuts episodes over the years but I always managed to skip this one. I have finally sat down and watched it and I am ready to share my thoughts on It’s the great pumpkin Charlie Brown.

I absolutely loved this it was hilarious and it really carried that charm of the original peanuts animated TV series. The special stars the majority of the main cast of the show but it really focuses on three characters in particular who are each spending Halloween in different ways, you have Charlie Brown who goes trick or treating, Snoopy who spends Halloween pretending that he is an aeroplane pilot and the Linus who stays up all night waiting for the arrival of the Great Pumpkin and all of these are very well written and cleverly directed. I will now give a brief summary of all three of these characters stories of the Halloween special.

Charlie Brown

If it wasn’t obvious enough Charlie Brown does play a big role in the special, Charlie Brown and the rest of the peanuts have been invited to a Halloween party, but before they go to the party all of the peanuts (apart from Linus and Sally) decide to go trick or treating.

Charlie Brown decides to go as a ghost for Halloween but he has a little trouble cutting out the holes for the eyes and ends up just wearing a holey sheet over his head. This leads to one of the most famous running gags in any TV special ever, while trick or treating all of the children are given candy and chocolate bars apart from Charlie brown who is just given rocks.

Eventually they all go to the party and Charlie Browns head is used as a drawing board for the design on pumpkin, Charlie Brown is used due to his big round head and his baldness.

Snoopy

Snoopy decides that he wou lucy-and-snoopy ld like to be a world war 1 fighter pilot for Halloween this year. Snoopy’s story line in this special really isn’t anything to get excited about. Snoopy sits on top of his dog house and pretends that he is a fighter pilot in world war one and he is gunning down planes, eventually his plane is shot down and he has to walk to the Halloween party, this part is very well directed as it seems that snoopy is in world war 1 trying to find safety but he eventually walks through a river and rises out of the punch bowl at the party showing that this was all his imagination.

Linus

This is Linus Great Pumpkin where The Great Pumpkin comes in, Linus is first seen writing a letter to The Great Pumpkin who he believes flies over all of the houses of the good boys and girls and delivers them presents. Every Halloween Linus sits alone in a pumpkin patch waiting for The Great Pumpkin to rise from the soil. This year he isn’t alone because he manages to convince Sally (Charlie Brown’s little sister) to wait for The Great Pumpkin with him. The final outcome really surprised me because The Great Pumpkin doesn’t appear and most likely does not exist, This leaves Linus having to deal with a very angry and upset Sally who missed Halloween due to his ridiculous beliefs

The final part of the episode is Charlie brown and Linus talking about how crummy Halloween was and I promise the outcome of this conversation is hilarious.

To sum it all up It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown is a fantastic Halloween special, It is very well animated, it has that wonderful peanuts charm and it is absolutely hilarious. I have a strong feeling that this will become part of my Halloween Tradition for years to come and I highly suggest that everyone should sit down and watch this.

Thank you for reading my review of It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown

If you respect my opinion I will respect yours

Any suggestions on other Halloween specials I should check out?

By Padawan

Ecco the Dolphin (Megadrive) Review

October 6, 2014February 24, 2015 ragglefragglereviews4 Comments

Halloween 2014 is really close now and since it is already October its time for the traditional Raggle fraggle Halloween blogs.

This years theme is games and movies that you would not expect to be scary but in reality they are.

Lets begin with the first game of the season with the adorable Ecco the Dolphin for the Sega Mega Drive

Released in 1993 Ecco the Dolphin is in my opinion Sega’s response to Nintendo’s popular game series Metroid

The plot of Ecco the Dolphin is that your family mysteriously disappears in a storm and Ecco travels through the many dangers of the ocean to reunite with his family, while on on his travels Ecco is told to travel to the Artic to speak to a blue whale called Big Blue. Big Blue explains that these storms appear every 500 years and Ecco is directed to the oldest creature on earth the Asterite.

The Asterite agrees to help Ecco as long as he travels back in time to an ancient atlantian city so he can retrieve one of the Asterite’s globes that is missing (Globes are those multicoloured circles that the Asterite is made of) After receiving the globe Ecco is told that the storm was a harvest of Earths waters and this is a tradition committed every 500 years by an alien species called the Vortex. After learning this, Ecco travels 55 thousands years into the past and finds the Asterite and is forced to battle, after defeating the Asterite, Ecco is granted a power which turns his Sonar into a deadly weapon which he can use against the Vortex, Ecco is then sent foward in time to the hour of the harvest and this time he also gets sucked into the storm and ends up in the Alien space ship, Ecco then fights his way to the queen to save his family.

Thats right Ecco is a time travelling Dolphin who fights Aliens, That is freaking awesome

Ecco the Dolphin has really awesome game play, The game is level based, each level gives the player a new objective to complete but unlike traditional level based games Ecco the Dolphin feels a lot like Metroid, the player is going to get lost at certain points of the game. This is due to all of the different paths you can take to help you find your your objective and sometimes you need to solve puzzles in order to move forward for example you may need to push a rock to block of a strong water current in order to take a new path or you may need to use clever strategy to sneak past an angry octopus.

Ecco the Dolphin is surprisingly a really difficult game, this is due to the fact that just like a real dolphin Ecco can’t fully breath underwater and while playing through the game the player will need to find air holes in order to keep Ecco alive, Personally this was the most difficult aspect of the game for me, because finding air is not easy and Ecco runs out of breath really fast.

Also Ecco can easily take damage from enemies as well as taking damage from bumping in cave walls, luckily eating fish replenishes your health so this aspect of gamplay is not something that people will have too much trouble with.

What is an issue is the games controls, due to Ecco being able to move in a 360 degrees pattern the D-PAD on the Mega Drive controller became a big issue as I found controlling Ecco to be very clunky and awkward. I believe the game could really benefit from the use of an analog controller.

Ecco the Dolphin has a really awesome soundtrack, the music really makes the player feel like they are in ocean and the music changes depending on the scenario of the stage, at first the music feels really relaxing but as the games plot unfolds the soundtrack evolves into something more hardcore and dark. I love this soundtrack, it really helps the player feel the atmosphere of the game.

it is one of my favourite game soundtracks on the Mega Drive and I love every minute of it.

Here is a link to a playlist of every track in the game

Ecco the Dolphin is a really awesome game, apart from the not so great controls it is definitely a game I reccomend to retro gamers but I do feel that it would not be popular with the modern gamers of today.

I also feel that the game would be a turn off to male demographic simply because you play as a dolphin which is most likely why the game did not do as well as the developers hoped it would back when it released.

I may not have enjoyed Ecco the Dolphin as much as I have enjoyed a lot of other Mega Drive titles but I do feel that is an underrated gem on the system and I recommend it to all retro gamers .

A cute little game which is surprisingly a little bit terrifying 7/10.

I hope you enjoyed this review of Ecco the Dolphin

if you respect my opinion I will respect yours

By Padawan

Shadow the Hedgehog (PS2,GC,XBOX) Review

September 21, 2014January 9, 2016 ragglefragglereviews4 Comments

Shadow the Hedgehog is one of the most hated games in the entire Sonic franchise, almost everyone I spoke to told me to avoid it like the plague, but very few people said that the game was a fun experience and that they think the game is underrated, so I had no idea what to expect when playing this game, a Sonic game with guns? This is either going to be awesome or its going to be extremely stupid. Now that I have played through the entire game I am ready to share my opinion with all of you in the style of a review. Could it really be that bad?

There are 22 levels in Shadow the Hedgehog Unlike traditional 3D Sonic games which have individual character stories, Shadow the Hedgehog uses a path system allowing the player to create their own story. Depending on what path you take you will either end up being a Hero or a villain at end of the game.

Almost every stage in the game will give the players three objectives one dark objective, one neutral objective and one hero objective depending on which objective the player finishes will determine which stage they will get to next. If the player finishes a dark mission they will move up on the path system, if they finish a neutral mission they will move forward on path system and if they finish a hero mission they will move down on the path system.

During one play through of the story mode, the player will play six stages depending on whether they do the dark or hero mission on stage six they will have to fight one of two final boss fights for the path they are on, earning the player one of ten endings.

The path system could have worked out really well if Sega didn’t mess it up, the problem with the path system and my biggest issue with game is that in order to unlock the final story you need to get each ending, which means playing through the majority of stages a number of times and yes you need to beat the game TEN TIMES!!!!. I didn’t mind the first few runs of the game but after a while I got sick of seeing the same stages over and over again especially Westopolis because with it being stage one I had to play this stage during every single play through of the game.

On a lighter note the game controls were perfect I didn’t have a problem with game once even when Shadow was moving really fast I was still able to have really smooth control over him, this is something that I don’t often find in 3D sonic games so it was nice to play a game that when I died it was my fault and not game glitches or bad controls.

Let’s talk about guns

For some reason Sega thought that giving Shadow the ability to use guns to kill his enemies would help the game appeal to the older demographic, but it just looks really silly and ridiculous, seriously no one wants to run around shooting aliens with an AK-47 in a Sonic the Hedgehog game. As silly as the guns are, they are not my issue with this gameplay style, the problem is that the game auto aims once Shadow gets close enough to an enemy which is great but it becomes an issue when you get surronded by enemies and you cant shoot them all usually resulting in your death. If Sega gave the player the ability to aim they could take out enemies using clever strategy and skill and in my opinion the use of guns would have been a lot more constructive and would work a lot better to the players advantage.

Shadow the hedgehog does have a pretty good sound track, it does lack in vocal tracks but some of the level themes are really catchy, my personal favourite level theme is Circus Park.

Circus Park theme

All of the vocal tracks in the game are really good, I love All of me by Crush 40 (intro music), credits music for beating an ingame path is ok at best, but Never turn back by Crush 40 (the credits music for the final story) is by far the best track in the game and is one of my personal favourite vocal tracks in any game ever.

All of me by Crush 40

Never turn back by Crush 40

So we have determined that the game has good controls, an ok path system that gets repetative and boring after the first few play throughs,terrible gun mechanics and for the most part a pretty kickass sound track but how does it look?

images (1)

Wow this game is ugly, from looking at the pictures you wouldnt think that Shadow the Hedgehog was a PS2, Gamecube and Xbox game, The graphics are flat and blocky, the colours are ugly and bland, when characters talk the lips dont sync to what they are saying, the voice acting is cringeworthy, the enemy and level designs are very basic and not very interesting to look at and I am not kidding but I have played Dreamcast and ps1 games that look better.

Jet Set Radio (Dreamcast)

Croc Legend of the Gobo’s (PS1)

Final Verdict

Shadow the Hedgehog was an ok game, it had really good controls for a 3D Sonic game and a really enjoyable Soundtrack but it fell short due to its bad game design, ugly graphics, and a lame path system which makes you beat the game ten times just to unlock the Final Story. The Final Story has Shadow saving the world in the end of the game and this essentially means that creating your own path was a waste of time making the entire game completely pointless. Shadow the Hedgehog had things going for it, but it wasnt enough to make it a good game

3.8/10 This game sucks.

I hope you enjoyed this review

If you repect my opinion I will respect yours

By Padawan

Walt Disney’s Frozen (2013) Review

August 10, 2014November 20, 2016 ragglefragglereviewsLeave a comment

Lets talk about Disney’s Latest number one hit Frozen

Am I the only person who thinks this movie is overrated?

I’m not saying that Frozen is a bad movie, I actually find it to be very entertaining, but the fact that I really enjoy a movie doesn’t mean that it has no flaws and in my opinion frozen has quite a few.

Ok so lets start by talking about what I like

Frozen is a beautiful movie as the animation is really good, Arendelle is in my opinion one of the best looking towns that Disney has ever had in a movie and the character designs are near perfection.

For the most part it has an amazing soundtrack, the songs in this movie actually helps us understand the characters and the emotions they are feeling for example during “Do you wanna be a snowman” we see Anna’s Desperate attempts to get her sister Elsa to talk and hang out with her during her childhood and teenage years and this shows us the upsetting emotions and the struggling battle that both Anna and Elsa are going through, it also helped the movie progress childhood to their adult life in a well structured manner.

Another Favourite song of mine “First time in Forever” allows the viewer to really connect with Anna by showing us her extroverted and playful personality and also teaching us that Anna is fed up with being separated from the rest of Arendelle and we learn that she wants to find love and she’s excited because she now has the chance to do this because Elsa is going to be crowned Queen.

Frozen is based on the book “The Snow Queen” by Hans Christian Anderson. I have never read the book but if the story is as good and well structured as the story of Frozen, then I will most definitely be getting the book at some point. Without giving away any major story details Frozen is very well put together, it never really seems rushed and as much as I have issues with this movie none of them are to do with its structure and pacing. Almost all of the characters have good reason to be in this movie and any loose knots are eventually tied bringing the movie to dignified and well put together ending.

Get ready to hate me, here are my issues with frozen

Prince Hans could have been a really great villain, Disney took the Gaston approach making what seemed to be the town hero or in this case the handsome prince eventually becoming the villain and having to be stopped. The problem I have is that Frozen didn’t need a villain at all and Prince Hans is hardly ever in the movie. First few scenes we see him in he’s a good guy, he’s very charitable and overall a very nice person but then through no character building he just turns out to be the villain.

You could argue that he needed to be in the movie so that Disney could show the morale that love at first sight does not exist and yes I do realise that this was Disney making fun of them selves in the past with Snow White, Cinderella, The Little Mermaid and Sleeping Beauty, but still they should have done more with Prince Hans maybe they could of shown his character becoming more power hungry in some of the scenes, this would of helped explain the sudden change in his motivations and maybe given his character an actual purpose, I personally feel that the movie would be hardly any different if he wasn’t in the movie at all.

The Duke of Weasel Town actually has a purpose to be in the movie, we learn early on that he is in control of trades between Weasel Town and Arendelle and that all he wants to do is discover the secrets to Arendelle’s Fortune. He may not be in the movie that often but at least he has a dignified reason to be there, unlike Prince Hans who I don’t recall even mentioning why he is in Arendelle in the first place.

As much I love the music in Frozen one song I cant stand is called “Fixer Upper” the Rock trolls for some reason get a song and as much as it is a pretty funny song I do find it annoying, I don’t know why but this song just isn’t really that good, put it this way where as everyone has “let it go” and “do you wanna build a snowman” on their I-pods I don’t know a single person who owns “Fixer Upper”.

Lets talk about “Let it Go” this song has had a huge financial success and is even in the top of the charts. Thats right a Disney song is in the Top 40 and with good reason, “Let It Go” is amazing it may be one of the best songs ever written for a Disney movie and I love it

I do have one small issue unlike most of the other songs in frozen which felt like they were written for a Broadway musical, Let it Go is a pop song and you can tell it was recorded in a studio and in my opinion I find this to be very distracting.

Also the song doesn’t really feel like it needs to be in the movie as they could have just had Elsa run off and then Anna goes to find her. It does seem like the only purpose the song had was so that Elsa could accidentally build Olaf and to be fair I don’t really see how they could have brought him into the movie in a different way. As much as I love frozen I really wanted to talk about some problems I feel the movie has that I feel are getting overlooked.

Of course this is just my opinion and I’m not in any way stating anything that I say as facts. I just really wanted to review Frozen and I could only give a fair review by also pointing out what I feel are some of the movies flaws as well as it’s obvious wonderful and perfect moments.

Thank you for reading my review of Frozen
If you respect my opinion, I will respect yours
By Padawan

Sonic the Hedgehog (1991) (Genesis/Megadrive) review

July 29, 2014January 21, 2015 ragglefragglereviewsLeave a comment

Sonic the Hedgehog was the first video game I ever played, those of you who know me personally will know that I was first introduced to video games when my Uncle handed me down his old Sega Mega Drive when I was about six years old. When I received the Mega Drive it came with a fuck load of games some of titles I remember were Mortal Kombat 3, Street Fighter 2, Alien 3 and both Sonic 1 and Sonic 2.

I don’t know why I chose Sonic as the first game I was going to play but if I was to take a guess I would say that it was most likely the box art which caught my eye

The cover art looks great Sonic is adorable but he also has a cocky attitude to him and this really helped Sega reach a wider audience.

Putting the box art aside, does the original Sonic the Hedgehog hold up 23 years later

HELL YEAH IT DOES !!!!!

First of all lets talk about the visuals, this game is beautiful and everything is pretty well animated, every enemy is unique in the way they attack and move, sometimes even the background objects will move but the best example of this is in Green hill zone as sometimes the grass and plants move about in the wind. The game has seven zones and each zone has three acts, at the end of act three is always a fight with the games antagonist Doctor Robotnik (Egg man)

Each zone is a new area of South Island (Where Sonic lives during the first few Games) The Zones are

Green Hill Zone- Forest Area, lots of plant life and bug like enemies

Marble Zone- An underground lava themed stage, lots of cool secrets and an awesome part where Sonic needs to run away from flowing Lava.

Spring Yard Zone- This Zone kinda Sucks, nothing really unique apart from there is a lot of springs and also these extremely annoying blue robots which are almost impossible to avoid.

Labyrinth Zone- By far the most challenging part of the entire game, Labyrinth Zone is an under water themed zone,this makes sonic extremely slow, making it hard to avoid enemies and too reach checkpoints and also he can drown which means annoying your going to die music. Have Fun

Star Light Zone- My favourite Zone in the game, it has cool music, its based in space and in my opinion the level design is very well done as sonic can take multiple paths to help him beat the zone in different ways, also star light zone has one of my favourite audio tracks from any sonic game ever.

Scrap Brain Zone- What I truly consider the Final Zone, Scrap brain is very challenging in its platforming and enemy placement, Sonic is now in Doctor Robotniks lab and everything is out to kill you even the background objects. Also Scrap Brain Zone 3 is labyrinth zone with poisonous water which means half the amount of time to find air bubbles.

Final Zone- This zone is just the Final boss, a lot of people struggle with this boss but for some reason I have always found him to be pretty easy. just stand in a safe spot, avoid the electric balls and hope that he appears close enough for you to hit him, eight hits and he’s dead but don’t forget to hit him while he flies away otherwise it counts as a death.

While you are playing the game, getting 50 rings in either act 1 or act 2 of a zone will allow you to play secret stage so that you can try to collect a chaos emerald, these stages are really annoying and kind of pointless unless you just want to collect enough rings in the secret stage to get a continue. The idea is that if you get all 6 chaos emeralds you will unlock the best ending when you beat the game, This is great but the only problem is that the best ending is the same as the normal ending apart from their are happy dancing flowers, no im not making this up.

The Original Sonic the Hedgehog is a great game, Sega did a fantastic job, it has great visuals, an awesome soundtrack, unique level, enemy and boss designs and overall its just an awesome piece of nostalgic gold. My only real complaint is that the getting the chaos emeralds is pretty much pointless and that’s not good considering that the idea is to get the chaos emeralds. Overall Sonic is great it is one of my favourite games of all time and it
still holds up pretty well today 9/10

I hope you enjoyed this review
If your respect my opinion I will respect yours
By Padawan

Walt Disney’s Bambi Review

June 2, 2013November 20, 2016 ragglefragglereviews2 Comments

Released in 1942 by Walt Disney, Bambi really is one of the most beautiful films I have ever seen. Just looking at the first few frames of the movie really helps show the amount of effort Disney put into Bambi and the animation they produced really helped bring the movie to life.

Bambi is about a young fawn (Baby Deer) called Bambi, The whole movie is pretty much the story of Bambi growing up but the movie really does make the audience feel like this is a real wild animal and before you complain that the movie is too cutesy at the beginning I have only one thing to say ITS A BABY OF COURSE ITS GOING TO BE CUTE !!.

Bambi provides its audience with some beautiful background work and some very good character development all the animals really do seem like their real animals for example Bambi has two main friends in the movie A rabbit called Thumper and a Skunk called Flower which turned out to be a dude which was a big surprise. Thumper is very similar to an actual rabbit because of the way he acts and because he thumps his foot just like a what an actual rabbit does when feeling certain emotions such as excitement or fear. Flower is very shy and hardly comes out to play, as you may know skunks are not very sociable creatures and feel threatened very often so its not often that a skunk will come out of hiding, Disney decided to make the skunk very bashful I guess this was so that children watching the film didn’t feel like the skunk was afraid or upset.

At the moment the movie may seem very girly but I can assure you that by the second half the movie really starts to pick up with some very well designed action sequences. This mostly happens after that infamous scene which made children all over the world cry

By far apart from the animation my favourite part of Bambi is most definitely the music, The character Bambi actually has music for everything it does as if the music is part of Bambi himself as a baby the music is very soothing and almost comical but as Bambi grows up Bambi’s music changes to a more intense level and this helps show the changes that Bambi has to make in order to survive by himself in the wild. Even the rain and the wind has its own music my particular favourite is the song little april showers which plays during the raining scene, each drop of rain is a new note in the song and this helps give of a really cool and rather clever effect.

Bambi is beautiful movie but I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone only to people who can appreciate cinema for other things other than story. Don’t get me wrong Bambi has a great story but I feel that everything else deserves more appreciation from the critics because of how well it is all executed. You can clearly tell that this is a Disney movie and personally I think its one which is definitely worthy of being called a classic

Hope you enjoyed this blog

This blog was written by Dan (Padawan)

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Tag: Review

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