She-Hulk: Attorney At Law – Season 1 Review

I’ve followed all of the MCU movies so far, but this is the only Disney+ TV show I’ve had any interest in. I just really like Hulk as a character and feel he constantly gets done dirty in the movies. So a TV show centered around a different Hulk sounded promising, especially with all of the other subtexts it has going for it. She-Hulk not only has to live in her cousin’s shadow but has to navigate life as 1) a woman hounded by incels, 2) a superhero whose identity is not a secret, and 3) a superhero living in a world that, frankly, has as much superhero fatigue as we have MCU fatigue. I also appreciate the show’s attempts to give us a more lighthearted side of the MCU. And not lighthearted in a “Thor + screaming goats” sort of way but lighthearted in that Jen/She-Hulk doesn’t have to save the world every week.

Alas, She-Hulk sometimes suffers from the same critiques I threw at Ted Lasso. If the stakes are too low, it’s hard to stay engaged. Like, there’s an episode where Jen goes to a wedding, and that’s… it. That’s the conflict. These weaker episodes also highlight just how pointless and dumb the B stories are. I really don’t care what Jen’s co-workers are up to when they aren’t interacting with Jen. The best parts of the show are when Jen still has to do her normal job (lawyering) but in a superhero-driven world. It’s fun to see her take on super clients and try to rein in their ridiculousness even as she, herself, is seen as a ridiculous “monster.” Speaking of, the episode where she loses her temper and “Hulks out” to stop a sex tape from playing highlights the kind of stakes this show can and should do.

Of course, there’s a lot that doesn’t work. The CGI is distracting, which is not good for a show where your main character frequently has to be CG. A lot of the humor falls flat, too. I understand the She-Hulk comic frequently broke the fourth wall, but the show doesn’t do it enough for it to feel natural. I think some episodes only had one quick aside to the audience and that was it. So it felt particularly silly when—major spoiler, by the way—the finale sees She-Hulk literally climb out of the Disney+ menu screen and into another thumbnail, where she berates the writers of She-Hulk. It’s funny once you get onboard with what’s happening. The self-digs at the state of the MCU are cute, after all. But we needed to be eased into this over-the-topness, much like how Jen needed to ease into her new alter ego.

Very Very Valet Review

In the wake of Overcooked, there’s been a rush to capitalize on what I like to call co-op busywork games. That is, games that sensationalize otherwise mundane tasks like cleaning a house or, with Very Very Valet, parking and returning cars. Very Very Valet is actually one of the better entries in this genre, though. You don’t have to juggle and mix a bunch of small objects or ingredients, as is usually the case. It really is just about managing parked cars, and that simplicity does wonders for the game. Even in the more chaotic levels, it never gets overly stressful, because the job itself remains so focused: park car, eventually return car. And they get a lot of mileage (ha!) out of this simple idea, too. Levels continue to introduce new gimmicks and obstacles, and each world has a completely separate trial area where, for example, you’re picking up garbage instead of being a valet.

The controls have had a lot of thought put into them, too, which is surprising when you consider that “wonky controls” are frequently a selling point. The default driving controls are pretty intuitive, and I envision non-gamers being able to pick it up quickly. As a seasoned gamer myself, the default controls felt a little odd, so I switched to the more traditional “use the triggers to move” option. After only a few minutes, I went back to the default mode. It just works so much better for what this game is. Seriously, these are developers who know what they’re doing. It’s refreshing to play a game that doesn’t mistake gamified busywork for actual busywork. Sure, parking cars might not sound exciting, but the exaggerated physics and overall silliness of it still make it fun. My only issue is that the four worlds are way too short. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the developers did that on purpose to prevent us from tiring of a good thing.

Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers Review

This was a very strange movie, but not for the reasons you might think. It honestly felt like whoever wrote the script was taking the piss out of older animation styles. In the movie’s universe, 2D animation is seen as outdated. One of our main characters, Dale, even gets “CGI surgery” to keep with the times. But it doesn’t stop there, as our heroes visit the “uncanny valley” and meet a 2000s era, Beowulf-looking character who repeatedly gets made fun of for the remainder of the film. In theory, I don’t have a problem with lampooning how far technology has come. But they really did not do 2D animation justice in this movie. Most of the “2D” characters are actually 3D models that have been cel-shaded. And their attempts to make the actual 2D characters look like they’re interacting with the real world are extremely lazy, especially when you consider how well Who Framed Roger Rabbit pulled this off thirty years ago!

Story-wise, it’s fine. I like the idea of going meta and having the Rescue Rangers characters simply be actors who struggled to find work after the original cartoon ended. Unfortunately, the real rescue mission that they now find themselves involved in has hardly any meat to it. The Rescue Rangers movie suffers from Ready Player One syndrome, where references to other pop culture are the sole point of its existence. And yeah, it’s fun to see some of the cameos—like Ugly Sonic and a handful of DreamWorks characters—but none of them are used in any creative ways beyond just, “Look who we got!” There is still some decent humor in the movie, but the script has a habit of over explaining its better jokes. For instance, a clay-animated character smacks his head on a newspaper, which leaves an imprint of the words on his face. Funny, but then he says, “Hey, it’s stuck on my face like Silly Putty. You remember Silly Putty?!”

I really want to know what headspace the creators were in when making this, because, on one hand, it feels like they didn’t trust the audience enough to get some of the references. However, they overstuffed each frame with so many other references that you have to pause the movie to catch them all. Then for other things, they didn’t even get the references right. Pogs, for example, are a plot point, but they keep referring to the missing “slammer” from the Rescue Rangers set as just another “pog.” Like, did you even 90s, bro? And, of course, there’s the general disdain for all animation that isn’t cutting edge 3D. Maybe the oddest choice of all, though, is that they made Peter Pan the villain. If you know the story of Peter Pan’s original voice actor, Bobby Driscoll, then this comes across as being in very poor taste. So the creators either didn’t do their homework (and don’t care about animation history), or they were being purposefully cruel. Not a good look either way.

What We Do in the Shadows – Season 4 Review

I’ve never been a huge fan of this show, but I thought the first two seasons were fairly amusing and the third season rocky but still funny at times. Season 4, however, felt like a huge misstep. The only stuff that worked for me was the relationship between Baby Colin Robinson and Laszlo, which was oddly sweet to watch unfold. But I don’t think rebooting the Colin Robinson character as a rapidly growing child was the right trade off. Regular Colin Robinson brought so much more comedy to the table in how his dry vampire lifestyle clashed with the others’. When the real Colin Robinson returned in the finale, it was immediately obvious how much better he works in adult form. So, hey, at least he’ll be back in Season 5, though I don’t think I will bother tuning in after such a disaster of a season.

The bigger problem I have with the show is just how ridiculous it’s gotten. These are not vampires that “do things in the shadows” anymore. Like, yeah, of course you have to suspend disbelief to enjoy a show such as this, but they’re not even trying to keep a low profile at this point and rely on hypnosis too often to fix their mistakes. I mean, these are characters who murder celebrities with impunity and openly advertise a night club for vampires, and the world is none the wiser. Nadja’s sudden obsession with having a night club was pretty obnoxious, by the way. Every joke with her this season was basically, “LOOK HOW LOUD I CAN YELL.” And Nandor bringing his previous wife back from the dead and then slowly wishing away her personality was a little too icky, even for what is supposed to be a dark comedy. Alas, What We Do in the Shadows has totally forgotten how to do the comedy part right.

Cozy Grove Review

I’ve never been able to get into Animal Crossing, despite normally loving these kinds of casual, slice-of-life collectathons. However, I do think Cozy Grove is better for people like me who, for whatever reason, don’t care for Animal Crossing. The art style is great, movement and dialogue are fast-paced, and the concept of helping ghosts is pretty engaging. But it’s still not quite there. The game’s insistence that it is like Animal Crossing is actually its biggest detriment, because the real-time clock adds nothing of value. I can max out everything there is to do in a day in 30 minutes, and then I have to wait (in real life) until tomorrow for new quests to become available. And when I do boot the game up the next day, my character will abruptly fall asleep to signal the passing of time. It’s such a little thing, but this blatant “you started a new day” animation totally breaks any immersion I was supposed to get from a real-time clock. At the very least, my character should already be asleep!

I think Cozy Grove would have worked better if it behaved more like another game called Farm Together. In that game, your crops still grew in real time, but you were not beholden to any day-to-day schedule. So you could play the game in the morning, water all your crops, and then check back in the evening to harvest everything. Yes, Cozy Grove has things that can supposedly be harvested ’round the clock, too, but any actual missions are timeboxed to the day, not the hour. It also doesn’t help that the majority of the missions are simply “I lost something; go find it.” This feels like a glorified hidden object game at times, though I do like being given clues (e.g., it’s near a tarp) that guide me towards where to look. Unfortunately, as your island starts to fill out more, these hidden objects become harder to spot amid all the clutter.

There is simply too much junk in this game. Yes, I praised the art style earlier, but that doesn’t absolve the fact that trees, houses, statues, etc. frequently block your view. It’s also not easy to interact with the object you’re intending, at least with a controller. My character would constantly go into her tent instead of petting the nearby bird or run over to a tree to shake instead of mining the ore deposit sitting next to it. And, of course, all of this leads into having a bunch of stuff fill up your inventory. Why do these games always give you such a small backpack? So, yeah, there are some annoyances, but when played in 30-minute chunks, I guess it’s okay. I’m still enjoying logging in every day to see what’s going on. But considering it takes roughly 100 real days to complete everything, I will probably tap out long before then.

Mail Mole Review

Mail Mole isn’t a bad game, but its biggest design decision, its whole gimmick, is just really baffling. This is a 3D platformer where you play as a mole who spends 90% of the game underground. You only pop out of the ground when you jump. This feels so backwards to me, though. Part of the charm of any 3D platformer is to see your character running about, so why hide him underground like this? In fact, why bother “rewarding” the player with different costumes if you rarely get to see those costumes in action? And yeah, I get that this is a mole, and moles like to be underground, but any other 3D platformer would have made “going underground” a usable skill to help you solve puzzles or avoid obstacles. In any other 3D platformer, going underground would be like “ducking,” but in Mail Mole, things can still hit you when you’re in this underground state. The only way to avoid spikes, etc. is to jump out and over them.

Jumping is another odd choice that Mail Mole makes. You can tap to jump, but this default jump is so weak and small that you’ll rarely find it useful. To really jump, you have to hold the jump button for half a second first to power up. Again, any other 3D platformer would base the height of your jump on how long you’re actively holding the button down. I realize it sounds like I’m penalizing Mail Mole for trying to be different, but it’s breaking conventions without providing a good reason to do so. These backwards mechanics only work in the levels that are more speed-driven, where you’re either fleeing a rolling obstacle or being propelled forward by zip pads. Had the game been purely this style of gameplay, it would have been fine. But the slower-paced, find-the-secrets type levels just don’t feel right when your character keeps trying to reinvent the 3D platformer for the worse.