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Tchia Review

Well, that was a strange game. I wanna call it “Assassin’s Creed for babies,” but it’s not necessarily an appropriate game for kids. If you read the Steam forums, people will have you believe that it’s not appropriate, because the main character is gay and at one point kisses another girl. If that bothers you, then I don’t know what to tell you except to get a life. For me, what makes it inappropriate is the amount of violence hidden behind the cutesy presentation. Like, the first time you meet the villain, she eats a baby! At the very end of the game, you do find out that all of the “eaten” children are actually okay, but damn, for 90% of the game I really thought that baby was dead! There’s also a scene where a bad guy gets his hand cut off, and the protagonist flips him off afterwards. It’s really weird to see things like that in a game that presents itself so innocently.

Gameplay-wise, Tchia is a pretty basic and easy open world that takes place across two small islands. I like this as a setting, but it’s just not that interesting to explore. The islands don’t have much to see/do on them, and getting around is a pain in the butt. Why even have a stamina bar that you can increase if you can’t run?! You have a boat that travels pretty fast in the water, but the docks where you would retrieve it aren’t in convenient locations. I liked the soul jumping ability, though, that lets you possess different animals and objects. To cut down on travel time, you can often soul jump into a bird and fly over the island until your soul juice runs out. The other limitation that I found really annoying was the map. They wanted the map to feel realistic, so it never shows your exact location, but you can still drop a pin on the map, and your compass will point to it. They should have just gone all in on the “learn to read a map” angle, or had a normal game map. This half-measure won’t make anyone happy.

I also need to point out that this has possibly the worst introductory section I’ve seen in a game since Tears of the Kingdom. There are so many cutscenes and minigames crammed into the first hour that I think many people would be justified in abandoning the game early on. I guess I’m glad I stuck with it, though, and played ’til the end. Not that this was an amazing game by any means. I haven’t said very nice things about it so far, after all. But I do like smaller scale open world adventures, and there are some fun moments to be had. For instance, there’s a series of treasure maps that don’t outright tell you where the next one is, so it takes a bit of thought and studying the overworld map to progress. And infiltrating some of the bigger enemy bases gave me nostalgic flashes of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. Of course, that is a far superior game, and also significantly larger. Tchia only has about 10 hours of content, excluding going for 100%, and that’s about all I was willing to put in, anyway.

Lumote: The Mastermote Chronicles Review

It’s been a while since I’ve played a puzzle game where I felt like the difficulty balance was… well… balanced. But Lumote was nearly perfect in that regard. There were several puzzles that had me stumped for a while, but I only ever got frustrated a few times, and in those moments, it was less about the puzzle being too obtuse and more about the platforming mechanics getting in my way. This is a 3D platformer at its core, so that means some jumps are easy to miss, or some of the creatures can’t climb over a step that didn’t look like a step at first. The rules of the world are also hard to wrap your head around sometimes, because the color of the creatures affects how nearby plants behave, whether they extend outward to create a bridge or grow upward to act as an elevator. It doesn’t help that, after you beat the main set of levels, the “New Game+” levels reverse the colors on you!

But I feel like I’m reaching for things to complain about, because I really did enjoy this one. I liked that the game world felt big and seamless even though it was broken up into obvious “rooms” with clear checkpoints. It made it easy to play as many or as few rooms as you wanted for any given session. Some rooms/puzzles can be beaten in a few minutes while others might take up to 30 minutes to figure out. It was interesting to see what new mechanics they would introduce, mostly in the form of new creatures that you have to move around, either directly or indirectly. This is a thematically and visually bizarre game that maybe lays on the bloom effects a bit too thick, but it’s still fun to take in the world they’ve created. I appreciate any game that’s not afraid to be a little weird, and a game where you’re guiding alien creatures around—creatures that change colors in ways that also affect their surroundings—is different in all the right ways.

King of the Hill – Season 14 Review

Man, I really needed this. The original run of King of the Hill is one of my favorite TV series, and nothing else has really captured the same humor and heart in the 15 years since it ended. I’m happy to say that this new season does, in fact, feel like King of the Hill again, though it is a bit weird in some regards. Like, the kids are young adults now and live in a different city where they rarely interact with their parents. The time jump is particularly jarring, because Hank and Peggy have apparently been in Saudi Arabia for the past several years, to the point where Texas has suddenly become foreign to them on their return. So did they just abandon Bobby during that time? And how long would they have needed to be away for things to change that drastically? It’s very confusing. I don’t think the Saudi Arabia backstory was necessary or adds any real value to the story. They could have just done a natural time jump, and I don’t think anyone would have cared.

The voice acting situation also takes some getting used to. Because Brittany Murphy and Tom Petty both passed away, their characters did not return and might never return if this reboot continues. And Dale’s voice is rough, switching between Johnny Hardwick (who also died during production) and Toby Huss. They even re-cast Kahn with Ronny Chieng, but he does a pretty terrible job and is easily the worst voice actor on the show now. Everyone else slid right back into their roles without missing a beat. It’s strange to hear what we’ve come to know as Bobby’s 12-year old voice being a 21-year old man now, but his vocabulary and mannerisms at least reflect his new age. In fact, all of the dialogue has matured up, and it caught me off guard when someone would say the word “shit” or a (bleeped) F-word. This is a reboot that was supposed to age with its audience, though, so it makes sense. Some of these characters (like Hank and Peggy) not only look and sound older, but they’ve also grown and changed as people.

Character growth is something this show has always done well, so it’s nice to see that they’ve continued to grow during the time jump we didn’t see. It would have been easy to write Bobby as an adult slacker or failed comedian, but instead he runs a semi-successful restaurant. And it would have been easy to make Hank a stick in the mud again, but he is much more open-minded now. One of my favorite lines from this new season is when he shuts down the conspiracy theory that Obama was born in Kenya by saying, “There’s plenty of reasons not to vote for him without making stuff up.” I can’t think of a better line that encapsulates why this show has always worked the way it does. Sure, Hank is a traditional conservative, which makes him an easy target for jokes, but he also has pretty firm morals and wants to do the right thing, even when it’s uncomfortable or undeserved. It’s a sentimental mixture that I didn’t realize how much I missed until this show finally came back.

The Studio – Season 1 Review

It’s unfortunate that Seth Rogen is the one who spearheaded this show, because with slightly better lead performances and slightly better writing, this could have been something really special. I’ve seen people compare The Studio to Curb Your Enthusiasm, but The Studio only wishes it were as good. Where Larry David might make one arguably justified social faux pas that derails the evening, The Studio’s Matt Remick continually digs himself into the biggest hole you’ve ever seen. It’s a bit of a turnoff just how incompetent he and his co-workers are. In one episode, Matt visits a movie set while they’re filming a very difficult long take, and he simply cannot stop making things worse. Like, how did this bumbling idiot become a studio executive in the first place if he doesn’t know how to behave?!

But, you know, maybe that’s the point. The Studio is trying to highlight that Hollywood is run by a bunch of morons with fragile egos. And that would be fine and all if the jokes were actually funny. But I simply didn’t laugh as much as I was supposed to. The first episode is about Matt being forced to make a Kool-Aid movie, which is a funny idea, and it’s certainly amusing how he tries to twist it into being a more prestigious film. But the acting from Rogen and co-star Ike Barinholtz is just too over-the-top and frantic. The Studio as a show wants to be prestigious itself but isn’t able to balance cringe comedy with good writing. In another episode, for instance, everyone at the studio is too afraid to tell Ron Howard that the ending of his movie sucks, but the way it plays out is corny and predictable and the wrong type of cringe.

I hate to be so negative about this show, though, because this is a great template, and hopefully it hits a better stride in future seasons. The Studio is as much a love letter to film as it is a satire of the industry, and that’s typically right up my alley. I love shows and movies that go meta. It is, in fact, fun to see so many Hollywood folks play alternate versions of themselves (a la Curb), and the cinematography and production value are impressive. That “long take” episode was also filmed as a long take, though they do occasionally cheat with a whip pan and even call this out in the onscreen story by saying, “Can’t you just do a whip pan and stitch the shots together?” So I do think this is a show worth checking out, especially if you have any knowledge or interest in the movie making process, but I also can’t help but notice all the ways it could have been much better.

Hell Pie Review

Hell Pie reminds me a lot of Conker’s Bad Fur Day, but that’s not necessarily a compliment. Like Conker, Hell Pie is a cutesy 3D platformer on the surface that revels in poop jokes, gore, foul language, and tasteless movie parodies. I don’t remember Conker’s Bad Fur Day being particularly funny as a teenager, though, so 20 years later, that kind of juvenile humor is even more wasted on me. However, I do like the premise. You’re a demon tasked with finding ingredients to make a birthday pie for Satan, and of course the ingredient list is ridiculous. A little too ridiculous, though, as it includes things like used tampons and stillborn chickens. See, it’s “funny,” because it’s gross…

If you can look past all that, the actual gameplay is really solid. This is a 3D platformer collectathon similar to all of the N64 Rare classics. Notably, you have a swing mechanic that allows you to swing mid-air at any time. You can also upgrade this skill to be able to swing multiple times before needing to touch ground. Soon, you’re zipping around the levels in absurd ways that feel like you might be breaking the game if you didn’t know better. It’s a lot of fun and really rewarding to swing over to some obscure platform that was hiding a collectible. It’s too bad the gross-out humor creates such a disconnect overall, because the core of this game perfectly scratches that 3D platformer itch otherwise.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Review

I watched the original Beetlejuice for the first time in like 30 years to prepare for the sequel. My takeaway is that the original still holds up really well, and the sequel does a pretty good job of matching the same energy. It’s not super schmaltzy, nor is it a beat-for-beat retelling of the same story. Though I am disappointed that the sequel ends with Beetlejuice once again trying to marry Lydia, and once again a sand worm appears to eat the villain(s). Note that I didn’t say it eats Beetlejuice, because this time around, Beetlejuice really isn’t the antagonist. He’s basically become a good guy and helps the heroes more than he hinders them. Which is fine, I guess. I vaguely remember the Beetlejuice cartoon being the same way. So maybe it helps to view this as a sequel to the cartoon, since the protagonists from the first movie, the Maitlands, are nowhere to be found.

I’m okay with the Maitlands not being in the sequel, whether that’s for artistic reasons or that they couldn’t get Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis to return. I also understand why Jeffrey Jones isn’t back (spoiler: he’s a pervert). But it is strange how much his face is still featured. Like, it’s funny that his character gets bitten in half by a shark, so you never see his head, but pictures of his face still show up everywhere else. Removing those wouldn’t have had any effect on the story. That’s also how I feel about the ex-wife character. She adds nothing to the story, and her motivation makes no sense. This is a movie that’s a little too overstuffed, and the first half especially could have benefited from some trimming. Still, the costumes and practical effects are great, and Catherine O’Hara is a delight, as always. If you’re at all interested in the movie, then she and Michael Keaton will make it worth your time.