Tag Archives: Just sayin’

REVIEW: Turbo

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Another two week session of no blog entries! I was working another camp session in Princeton, and thus had no time to write. However, now that I’m done working this summer, entries should resume their weekly updates! Let’s kick this off with a movie I saw a couple days ago: Dreamworks‘ Turbo!

Plot:
 
Turbo‘s premise is cool. Theo, a garden snail that dreams of being a racer comes into contact with nitrous (the stuff you see in racing games and the Fast & Furious series that gives racing cars a temporary boost of insane speed) and is able to utilize it, much to his brother Chet’s dismay. After some unfortunate events, he and Chet are fired from the garden they work at and shortly after Chet is taken by crows. Using his speed, Theo (who I will now call Turbo because that’s what he calls himself) follows the crows and saves Chet, only to be captured by humans and entered into a snail racing competition. Turbo shows off his insane speed, and is entered into the Indianapolis 500, where he competes with the best of the best racing cars.

The plot itself flows quite nicely. I was pleasantly surprised to see some real character growth in a film that looked, to me, like one of those silly and fun kid’s films.

Acting:
 
Let me just get this out of the way: the actors for voicing were amazing. Ryan Reynolds, Samuel L. Jackson, and Snoop Dog/Lion? Sign me up! The acting was great, the one-liners were funny. All the characters meshed together really well. I enjoyed it.

Atmosphere:
 
The atmosphere is, well, pretty much racing. The animation itself is nicely done, the effects are really cool, and watching a snail go over 200 mpg alongside formula 1 racing cars in an iconic race was really cool to watch. Also, the music choices and the definite reference to pop culture was very funny. It was nice to see an animated film that referenced remixes being made on the Internet (and the remix was actually pretty catchy!)

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If you’re looking for something fun and cool to watch, or you want to see a snail body formula 1 racing cars, check out Turbo! It’s a solid film.

Rating: 3 out of 5 (stars)
 
Just Sayin’.

REVIEW: Animal Crossing: New Leaf

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There’s a lot I can write about Animal Crossing: New Leaf; so much, in fact, that I could write an essay about it. I won’t be writing an essay, but I would like to skim some of the things that make this game an improvement to the series.

The very first thing is its premise. Instead of simply being a villager, the first player is the mayor of the town. That means that instead of having a fully developed town, you actually have an underdeveloped town. The buildings are scarce, there’s no great tree, and the museum being empty actually makes sense. As the mayor, it’s your job to start projects and develop your town, including the new Main Street that houses all the shops in town.

Almost instantly you can see the improvements. You get to choose the map of your town (of 5 given to you) in the beginning, and from there, you get to select where projects are built. Want a bench by the beach? Go for it. A park? Sure! The amount of customization of your town is a really awesome feature. No one town will ever have the same town buildings and similar layout again. To add to the customization tab, you now have male and female specific clothing, accessories, and shoes. Yes, you can buy shoes. You can even buy socks! You don’t even need to wear socks and shoes if you don’t want to.

The art is very Animal Crossing, very cartoony and fun, but you can see a higher resolution and attention to detail, and the 3D looks fantastic (although I barely play in it). The music is good, but I’m still a fan of the original’s music more. However, 8AM’s music is pretty fantastic.

Everything else is pretty much standard Animal Crossing. So why is this game so great? All the little things that show a nice attention to detail:

– Nook now owns his own real-estate agency instead of being a shop owner/real estate agent. He also has house customizations for your door, mail box, roof, etc… for sale. Lyle, the Happy Room Academy rep, also puts up shop there. The Nook kids now run the actual shop.

– Labelle, working for Gracie in Animal Crossing: City Folk, is now part of the Able Sister’s shop, selling you accessories.

– YOU CAN SIT ON TREE STUMPS

– YOU CAN SWIM! And there’s over 30 new deep sea fish you can only obtain via diving. Unfortunately, to swim you have to have a diving suit on.

– The animals wave when you leave, and they very frequently ask to come over to your house or have you come over to theirs. It’s cool because they actually go to every room in your house.

– You can hang stuff on the wall. It may not seem like much, but it’s cool to finally put clocks on the wall.

– The island is back, and while you don’t have a cool island cabana anymore, you DO have the ability to play cool mini games with friends and make $$$$$$ thanks to the rare bugs that come out after 7PM.

– There are now 6 island-specific fruit instead of 1. It’s nice to see lemons and bananas.

– CLUB LOL!!! Yes, there’s now a night life in your town where you can actually dance to what DJ K.K. is dropping’ down. Unfortunately, it takes quite a while to get Club LOL, and until then you have no access to K.K. Slider. It’s my only real gripe with the game.

There’s so much more to it, but I haven’t unlocked everything, so I couldn’t tell you. So far, the game has been fantastic. If you’re a fan of the Animal Crossing series, do yourself a favor and go pick this up. You won’t regret it!

Gameplay: 10/10

Atmosphere: 8/10

Final Score: 9/10

Just Sayin’

2 week hiatus

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My dearest readers,

I apologize for my two weeks of not posting, but I was working for internal Drive‘s programming academy, a two-week program where kids go to learn how to program while also experiencing a camp atmosphere. I have to say, being an instructor was challenging, but very fun. I now have a lot more respect for my professors in terms of physical endurance and patience. I walk to DePaul and back every day during the school year and I dance; I think it’s safe to say my legs have pretty high endurance. That’s not the case when I taught. The first day of teaching, I was giving lecture and after 3 hours my legs were killing me. It was painful to walk and they hurt the rest of the day. After a couple days I had to sit down and let one of my co-instructors give lecture because my legs just couldn’t take it. Professors have to have the legs of gods. It’s the only reasonable explanation! I don’t know how they do it.

I worked at Lake Forest College the past two weeks, and I can’t wait to work again in two weeks when I go to Princeton University! As a forewarning, I will not be posting entries for that two-week session, as well. I work almost 15-hour days, so there’s just no time for me to be writing. That window of free time is used for sleeping and sleeping only!

But let’s move on to something a little more relaxing… VACATION!!! It’s that time of year where I take a trip down to Florida with my family, and I couldn’t be more excited. To celebrate, I’ll be reblogging my Vacationing 101 entries from last year in the next couple of days.

Expect a review of Animal Crossing: New Leaf next Monday!

Just sayin’.

Smash 4 thoughts

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So, last week was E3, and with it came a lot of really awesome stuff (my favorite of which was probably Sony sniping Microsoft about everything people were complaining about the Xbox One), including a trailer and a Nintendo Direct with Sakurai about the next installment of the Super Smash Bros. series. As a long-time fan and past competitor in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, I was excited. My thoughts:

– Villager is INSANELY hype. This was, by far, my favorite addition to the game. This man alone has spawned a ton of hype around the Internet at large depicting him as some sort of demonic figure, which I think is hilarious. I will definitely be using him as my main character or a secondary after Kirby.


– MegaMan was also a big surprise, and I think it’s cool they secured him He looks really cool, and I think he’ll be shaking up the metagame competitively. Of course, he won’t be able to do anything against Villager.


– In what is probably the most ridiculous thing Sakurai has done (in a good way), the trainer from Wii Fit is now a character. While a lot of people have been complaining, I LOVE that Sakurai decided to put in such a well-known but obscure character. She looks really fun.


Before I head into the more mechanical side of the game, let me say what I want to be in this game. I like every Smash game. Brawl is my favorite, but it has some very noticeable flaws (as does Melee). This game, I’m hoping, will aim to correct some of those mistakes.


The three big things I want out of this game:


     – Brawl ledges with Melee ledge-grab mechanics.


Let me explain. In Brawl, there’s something know as “auto sweet spot”, which means a character doesn’t need to be perfect about recovery, and will instantly snap to the ledge and grab it. In Melee, this isn’t the case. You have to sweet spot the ledge yourself. However, in Melee, if you roll off the ledge and are CLEARLY off the ledge, your opponent cannot grab it until your roll animation has ended. That’s dumb. Combining the good parts about both games’ ledge mechanics will make for a better ledge-game.


     – Bring back hitstun


In Brawl, you can cancel your hitstun with an air dodge or move. This makes DI less important and combos nigh-impossible. Basically make it what Melee does, and give the characters real hitstun.


     – No grab armor


I don’t know if this is true in Melee, but in Brawl you can grab through a move so that you take the damage but get the grab. This is ridiculously overpowered and can ruin competitive play when it happens by chance since no one attempts to grab armor moves. Take it out so that grabs aren’t overpowered.


Luckily, I got to see a video of an actual match at the Nintendo show floor at E3, and luckily, it looks like at least one of my three has been met. There’s hitstun.


What I also noticed:


– No auto sweet spot


– Brawl’s air dodge


– No tripping


It’s been confirmed that there’s no tripping, which is good (although it never bothered me to begin with) for those who hated it. I’m very happy they kept Brawl’s air dodge. I think it’s way better than Melee’s. Overall, the game looks faster, too.


The art looks amazing. Even on the 3DS the game looks crisp, but on the Wii U it looks fantastic. The move particle effects are really nice, too, as Smash games have never really had particles come out with their moves. You can definitely see Namco’s influence, there.


The new Smash is really looking good to me. Hopefully my other two big criteria are met. Even if they aren’t, the game’s looking good enough for me to jump back into the competitive scene, so I’m very excited for its release. If you’re a Smash fan, I’d go check out smashbros.com for more info about the characters and some videos. It’s lookin’ hype!!


Just sayin’

REVIEW: Epic

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A couple weeks ago, instead of going to see The Great Gatsby, my girlfriend and I decided to see a movie called Epic. To be honest, I thought it was by Dreamworks or Disney at first until I did some research on Blue Sky Studios, and I have to say, their production value is really good. 

Okay, on with the review!


Plot:
 
The plot here is interesting, but not something I haven’t seen before. There’s a secret society of miniature people (the human-like Leafmen, the monster-like Boggons, and then the plants and animals are all living as well) that live in the forest, with the Leafmen and Boggons engaged in war that will determine if the forest lives or dies. Mary Katherine (or M.K. for short) goes to live with her eccentric father (who is trying to find the tiny people) due to a request made by her late mother, but after that goes awry, she ventures into the forest and is transformed to a mini size by the Queen of the Forest, Tara, and gets caught up in the war. It’s definitely an interesting angle for the way a forest lives and dies.


The characters all have pretty noticeable arcs, and they’re all pretty solid, although, like most of these movies, love between M.K. and the obvious male love interest happens ridiculously fast. I think it’s sad that that’s something I’ve become accustomed to, but given the relatively short length of the movie (about 90 minutes), I can see why it happens so fast. I wish more movies would take it slow, though.


Acting:
 
The acting is actually pretty good. Nothing really amazing, but nothing bad, either. Not much to say, here. It’s just really solid (except for a few parts, but they’re negligible).


Atmosphere:
 
The animation to build up the atmosphere is really, really good. The way they depict the forest and its secret inhabitants is really nice, and Queen Tara’s control of the forest was really cool to look at. They depict her walking over water with lily pads that instantly move to be under her feet as she moves, she can make tree branches attack with the flick of her wrist – really, the animation is superb. Also, the way things decay is pretty cool, too.
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If you’re a fan of animated films (or Ice Age) check Epic out. It’s a neat little film that’s really solid. It’s not incredible, but definitely a solid choice if you’re looking for a film to go see.
Rating: 3 out of 5 (stars)
 
Just Sayin’.

Frozen Yogurt Tier List

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1

DISCLAIMER: This tier list reflects my opinion on how good these shops are, and are in no way based on any sort of statistic or research.

A couple summers ago, I had never really been into the whole frozen yogurt scene, until one day when my girlfriend took me to a local Red Mango and changed my world forever. Since then, we’ve been constantly looking for new frozen yogurt shops to rate. We’ve been to so many that I think it’s time for my very own frozen yogurt tier list. And so, in true tier list style:

FROZEN YOGURT TIER LIST

S-TIER

1.Berry Yo (local)

A-TIER

2.Red Mango (chain)

3.Orange Leaf (chain)

B-TIER

4.Cherry Berry (chain)

5.Cocomero (chain)

C-TIER

6.Yogurtland (chain)

D-TIER

7.Menchie’s (chain)

F-TIER

8.Chill Out (local)

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And there you have it. Let me explain the placement criteria:

Price: How expensive was the yogurt? (in cents per ounce)

Quality: The quality of the yogurt against others in the tier.

Toppings: Were there a wide selection of toppings?

And now, for some explanation of placement.

1.Berry Yo: Berry Yo is a local shop about 5 blocks from my house. I was skeptical at first, but it turned out to be a fantastic shop, easily stealing the #1 spot away from Red Mango and earning itself its own tier. It’s cheaper than most shops on the list, has a high quality when it comes to its sweets and fruit flavors, and has just as much toppings as the next yogurt place. Really, you can’t go wrong with this place. The ONLY thing going against it is its peanut butter flavor.

2.Red Mango: My first yogurt shop, and one that holds a dear place in my heart. I have yet to experience a bad flavor at Red Mango, and its peanut butter is the KING of peanut butter flavors (that I have experienced so far). Their seasonal flavors are amazing, and their toppings are fantastic. The only thing that keeps it from taking back its #1 spot is its vanilla and chocolate plus it being more expensive.

3.Orange Leaf: I actually tried this shop not too long ago when I visited my girlfriend for her graduation, and let me tell you, it took me by surprise. Not only was the entire interior decor orange (my favorite color) but it is the only other yogurt shop with a good peanut butter flavor beaten only by Red Mango.

4.Cherry Berry: Cherry Berry is cheaper than Orange Leaf and Red Mango, but it just doesn’t cut it when it comes to its quality. Simply put, I think Red Mango and Orange Leaf are better, which is the only reason why Cherry Berry is a tier below them.

5.Cocomero: Cocomero has the best fruit flavors I’ve ever had, but it falls so far because of its price and its rather limited topping bar. I’ve been to two locations, both of which had limited toppings. This could easily be an A-Tier shop if not for those two factors.

6.Yogurtland: Sitting a block away from Berry Yo in my neighborhood, Yogurtland is basically a more expensive Cherry Berry. Medium-sized toppings, decent flavors. I will say that their nutter butter flavor (or whatever their thanksgiving flavors were) were fantastic.

7.Menchie’s: I’ve only been here once, and for good reason. The flavors are okay, the toppings are less than Cocomero’s, AND it’s as expensive as Cocomero.

8.Chill Out: a local yogurt shop in Bloomginton-Normal. Some of the yogurt is good, but most of it is not. I’ve given this shop 3 separate chances, and it’s always been a let-down. The topping bar is pretty large, the price is very good, but the flavors…ugh.

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And there you have it. If you’ve got any frozen yogurt places I should try that aren’t on this list, tell me! I love trying out new shops!

Just Sayin’