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IT IS RARE FOR ME TO SEE A MOVIE WHEN IT’S STILL IN THEATERS BUT THANKS TO 20TH CENTURY STUDIOS I WAS ABLE TO CATCH UP ON A FEW THAT I MISSED!

Recently the fine folks at 20th Century Fox (now 20th Century Studios- their home page is here) had sent me codes to several of the movies I missed so that I could share my thoughts on them with you. Part 1 was all about Underwater and Part 2 focused on The New Mutants. Part 3 we talked about The Personal History of David Copperfield. Part 4 discussed The Empty Man. We’ve returned with Part 5 to talk about Nomadland and Speed 4K Ultra HD!

Nomadland

Francis McDormand plays as Fern, a member of a mobile community. They travel from area to area in search of temporary work. Her performance of Fern was fantastic and the film felt more like a real documentary instead of a film. The story though left much to be desired. It was slow with no real story other than just the unpredictable nature of life on the road, the trailer shows as much as you really need to see if this film.

Speed 4K Ultra Hd

This is Keanu’s classic action film from the 90s. Jack and his partner Harry thwart a bombing to only to have Jack work to do it again on a runaway bus. Keanu’s acting was always what you’d expect from the 90’s and at the time seemed less classic but having watched it again it is still just as fun and the improved visuals make it stand out from the DVD copy we watched it on recently.

WHICH OF THESE FILMS FROM 20TH CENTURY STUDIOS HAVE YOU SEEN? WHICH WAS YOUR FAVORITE?

Orbit Studio brings us Retro Machina, a game about finding beauty in a world where you are expected to conform.

Retro Machina begins with a your robot working on the assembly line as a butterfly flies in through the window. Distracted, your robot stops working and sets off alarms. With your newfound sense of adventure you seek an escape from the factory and soon begin your search for a machine to repair you entirely. This JRPG, or Junior Role Playing Game, takes you through a world where only robots and plant life remain.

The visuals are colorful and highly detailed but even when things are dire they give you a feeling of cheerful hope. Controls are simple to pick up but keep in mind that you can only hold onto one health item at a time so use them when you see another. Life and death is not a huge concern with this game as every time you you lose all your health you respawn at the point you entered the section of the same map section. Overall the game is quite a lot of fun, especially using the ability to hijack control of other robots and using them to destroy the others. The world is huge and I can’t wait to keep exploring it and not just to find all of the hidden references like the Tardis or Back to the Future’s Delorian!

Merge Games takes the ‘build a city’ game type to a new perspective- that of the buildings themselves with Buildings Have Feelings Too!

In Buildings Have Feelings Too players take control of a building who walks and talks along with other buildings. The intro to the game you see as several buildings discuss how they are falling apart, some due to negligence and your building decides to move to a new town. Upon arrival you meet two buildings that want to improve their own wellbeing and suggest you build a new structure and as you bring it to life determine that it will be a factory which upsets your new friends.

The rest of the game you must play a balancing act between improving certain stats by managing which buildings are near each other and what products they offer. What makes this easier is you can move the buildings back and forth without much consequence like moving the residences to be near the factory that is a giant smoke stack. This makes the residence upset but as soon as you use the move to upgrade the factory you can then immediately move one or the other immediately after, restoring the happiness of each building.

Controls are simple to master and the graphics are solid in this cute family friendly game about micromanagement and construction. The game itself was bit on the dull side but it takes a new look at building a city.

El Hijo is a stealth game about a young boy named, wait for it, El Hijo. He must escape the monks who are raising him and find his mother.

El Hijo and his mother live on a farm that is raised to the ground by bandits. Prior to the arrival of the bandits his mother teaches him how to sneak around and avoid detection, setting up a slowly paced tutorial that will serve you through each stage of the game. After the bandits have destroyed his farm, his mother leaves him with a group of monks in order to save him from the bandits.

Very quickly he decides to escape the monastery and begin his magical adventure through mythical land meant to resemble the American Mid-West. In the end all that matters for our little hero is that he find his mother.

Honig Studios created hybrid stealth adventure with about as many puzzles as as a Lara Croft game. Graphics are a little on the simple side but stop short of just the going for the retro 8 bit. The stealth aspect of the game is handled superbly. Each piece of the environment can help you if you time patrols right and use them to your advantage. Overall I found the game to be quite enjoyable with more challenge than I expected.

In Sir Lovelot your goal is to woo the girl by bringing her gifts and climbing through her window, seems a bit pervy to me.

The above is a rather simplistic summary of the Sir Lovelot and his overall concept but it’s not entirely wrong either. Each level you must find a list of items to give to your princess and by the time you start the next level your Knight leaves another princess broken hearted.  Pixel Games crafted a platformer that I can honestly say is unlike any other I have ever played before.

Be prepared to die a lot. Most platformers allow you to get injured and recover your health but with Sir Lovelot each time you touch an enemy or an obstacle it is instant death. The good news here is that you respawn and any collectibles picked up or enemies defeat remain in the same state. Each stage feels very much like Splosion Man in that it is a fast paced platformer that has some similar jumping mechanics but missing the meat explosion when you dispose of your foes. This knight is also armed with was equates to a gun.

Conceptually this is an odd title as you are using mechanics that don’t fit with your typical knight in shining armor, but the game style is fast paced and quite enjoyable. What makes it stand out though is the womanizing nature of our protagonist but done in a family friendly way. Very perplexing but still enjoyable as a whole.

IT IS RARE FOR ME TO SEE A MOVIE WHEN IT’S STILL IN THEATERS BUT THANKS TO DISNEY STUDIOS I WAS ABLE TO CATCH UP ON A FEW THAT I MISSED!

Recently the fine folks at Disney Studios (their home page is here) had sent me codes to several of the movies I missed so that I could share my thoughts on them with you. With Part 1 we were taking a look at the live action version of Mulan and have returned with Part 2 to discussed Soul and Raya and the Last Dragon!

Soul

Joe is a musician that dreams of playing the music he loves while stuck teaching it instead. One day he receives the call of his career, landing a gig with Dorothea and oblivious to the world around him, he falls to his death. Realizing he has passed he refuses to to accept his fate and begins an adventure to try to return to his body and along the way helps 22 find her spark. The story was similar to the film Inside Out it is a bit deep for a children’s film but manages to deliver a meaningful message, to enjoy the little things and that your dream isn’t always all that it is cracked up to be.

Raya and the Last Dragon

The timing of this film could not have been better, in a time where Asian hate is at a high delivering a wonderful film full of Asian characters and cast was a fantastic coincidence. The movie had been in production long before Covid but somehow managed to be released when it was needed. The story follows Raya in a world where creatures made of purple smoke turn any they touch to stone. She must find a way to stop them and bring he father back. Following tales of the last dragon being at the end of the river she searches for the one creature that might save them all. The film in it’s entirety was absolutely fantastic. Some of the best animation from Disney to date.

This is what my youngest had to say about Raya:

Have you had a chance to see this film from Disney Studios?

TinyBuild’s Kill it with Fire allows players to kill their eight-legged foe fire but so many other options as well including C4.

We have a saying in our house when we see almost any bug, but spiders and scorpions especially- “Kill it with fire” and with this game you get to do exactly that and more, at least as far as spiders are concerned. The folks at TinyBuild saw fit to share the game with us, not once but twice. We got to test it out on both the Xbox One and the Switch. Personally I only played the Xbox version while my son played both. I will speak to the game as a whole and mechanics followed by his thoughts on which platform is the better experience.

Each stage you must locate weapons, upgrades and of course the spiders themselves. Some allow you to smash, explode, shoot and burn them. I’m certain there are other ways to kill the spiders as well but I just haven’t found them yet. As you find ways to kill the spiders you’ll find each death counts towards unlocking various doors. Some will reveal new rooms, others will reveal hidden documents, a secret chamber or even a storage for ammunition. Visually the game isn’t the most gorgeous but with a game like this it doesn’t need to be. It feels like the goal was focused more on user experience than on a stunning visual and for most of us that experience is much more important.

I thought a traditional controller would be ideal for gameplay but my son, having played both versions, believed that the Switch version was the far superior method for the game. We will have to agree to disagree.

My expectation of the game was it looked like it would be fun but would be forgettable. I make it a point to play each title for approximately one hour, a testament to the quality of the game is how much time I spent after that hour. I played this for three to four hours so far and wish I had more time to invest in it. I can say that this game is not to be overlooked. I look forward to finding each of the hidden weapons and upgrades to use to kill those eight-legged bastards.

Games Workshop releases the first expansion for Kill Team in nearly two years- Pariah Nexus!

Kill Team has been a staple of the Warhammer 40,000 family for many years now and it wasn’t until a couple year ago that I gave it a try. The concept of Kill Team is quite simple, a small force for either faction tries to complete their objectives. Pariah Nexus is not quite the first step towards a newer style of Kill Team. Traditional games will play out like any other game of 40k or even Age of Sigmar where you play three dimensionally, where Pariah Nexus and Kill Team Arena before it were more two dimensional. 

One main item of note is that this truly is an expansion. It requires a rulebook for Kill Team itself for full gameplay. Other than the two dimensional rules this book includes six story missions and two scenarios for matched play. More importantly though is that it includes rules for nearly every (if not all) infantry types for both the Necron and Space Marine factions.

The biggest problem with this box is it’s natural imbalance. From the start (without modifying the lineups) the Space Marine forces make up nearly double the cost of the Necron force. However, the total number of models per side is comparable and the new sculpts look fantastic.

Gameplay for this style is reminiscent of the similar release for Necromunda a couple years ago where you had a face paced game that was a ton of fun but felt somewhat lacking without the third dimension. With a little imagination though this easily will feel similar to crawlers like SpaceHulk where you navigate corridors and all of your fighting requires your head on a swivel but there being no need to look high or low as everyone is one the same level. For value and replayability this box offers a lot especially for those that are already fans of the KT and 40K properties. My best recommendation though would be to homebrew a few extra scenarios and look to upcoming issues of White Dwarf for more.

Feel free to check out our live unboxing video on the official Table Talk channel:

Aeronautica Imperialis returns with it’s second starter box Skies of Fire with two new factions- Adeptus Militarum and Tau!

At this point Skies of Fire is more or less old hat having been released about a year ago now but we just love all things with Aeronautica Imperialis so here we are! We’ve talked about AI in the past, when we were with PopNerdTV, and gameplay-wise the game hasn’t really changed since then. Where similar games play on a two dimensional board and those two dimensions are the only ones you need to worry about it was a shock to consider my movements on third dimension. Height is a big factor in the game, too low and you’ll crash, too high and you’ll stall your craft.

The models have a lot of detail, far surpassing those of games like X-Wing and with comparable costs. With X-Wing I can purchase a single ship for about $10-20 where in AI I can purchase four craft for $40-60 and have more detail. The only downside to this comparison is that X-Wing models are preassembled and prepainted.

Verdict:

This game is a must play for fans of the dog fighting/space ship variety, especially if you are looking to improve on the basic mechanics of X-Wing. Whenever I played X-Wing I always wanted something more and variety wasn’t what I was craving, with Aeronautica we got it in spades. The complexity and realism of the fight makes this game a much more impressive contender in the genre and I hope we continue to see it in shops for years to come, some of us are still waiting on the Chaos releases.

IT IS RARE FOR ME TO SEE A MOVIE WHEN IT’S STILL IN THEATERS BUT THANKS TO PARAMOUNT PICTURES I WAS ABLE TO CATCH UP ON SOME THAT I MISSED!

Recently the fine folks at Paramount Pictures had sent me a code to some of the movies I missed so that I could share my thoughts on them with you. Part One discusses Overlord and Instant Family and Part Two focuses on Bumblebee and What Men Want! Part Three discussed Isn’t it Romantic, Pet Sematary and Wonder Park. Part Four discussed Rocketman, Addams Family/Addams Family Values Anniversary Edition, Light of My Life, Galaxy Quest Anniversary Steelbook, Crawl, Dora and the Lost City of Gold and Night Hunter! Part Five discussed Official Secrets, Playing With Fire, Shutter Island Anniversary Edition, A Quiet Place Steelbook, Gemini Man, Terminator Dark Fate and Beverly Hills Cop Triple pack! Part Six covered Like a Boss, Clueless 25th Anniversary Steelbook and The Hunt For Red October Anniversary Steelbook. Strap in and grab some popcorn and let’s get started! For our first segment of this series with NerdCultOnline we are resuming the series with a new numbering with Part 1 discussed the classic film Airplane and we have returned with Part 2 to talk about Jungleland and The Little Prince!

Jungleland

Jungleland follows two brothers, one is an amateur boxer and the other his manager, find themselves in debt to a local crime lord. Giving them an offer they can’t refuse they travel towards Jungleland, a bare knuckle maxing match and they are on the ticket. The only problem is they need to drop someone off on their way. As one can expect things go south rather quickly and the brothers learn more about family and sacrifice. The story itself is quite slow but very real. Acting was fantastic, both Charlie Hunnam and Johnathan Majors were brilliant.

The Little Prince

The Little Prince is an adaptation of the beloved children’s book of the same name but with some big changes. The story of the Prince himself remains the same but the telling is where this film takes root. The little girl meets her unorthodox neighbor, a retired aviator looking to repair his plane, who then tells her the story of the Little Prince leading to her own adventure to find the Prince. Visually the animation was top notch and covered some big feelings for children that not all can understand but did it in an way that allowed them to enjoy it despite their lack of understanding.

THANK YOU TO PARAMOUNT FOR SHARING THESE FILMS WITH US!

SO WHAT DID YOU THINK OF THESE FILMS FROM PARAMOUNT? LET US KNOW IN THE COMMENTS BELOW!