Movie Review: The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part

First off, quick update on the upcoming game reviews. I have two finished, one more than halfway done, and two that still have to be started. I will try to get them done by March, but I can't make much in the way of promises; the past week had the worst winter weather I've ever seen and following an unpleasant bumper-to-snowpile meetup, my car needs repairs and I can feel my wallet dying. So, as you can guess, reviews aren't exactly the biggest thing on my mind at the moment. However, I am still doing my best, and I'll try to have some stuff ready soon-ish. And hey, not all's grim, I could spare a couple bucks on the side to go see a movie in theaters.

The first of those two is The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part. I'll try to avoid spoilers as much as possible, yet again, since the film is still in theaters. However! The plot of this one hinges heavily on the plot of the original LEGO Movie, including the twist. It's referenced (more like replayed) in the very first minutes, so I HEAVILY recommend you watchg the first film if you haven't seen it before seeing this one.

(By the way, Warner Brothers did an awesome thing with promotion for this film, making the first movie available on YouTube for a full day last year, albeit intercut with ads for the sequel. I kinda wished that became a common thing in promotions, especially for sequels to films that were released a few years prior.)

The plot begins after the alien invasion of the DUPLO at the end of the first movie (don't worry, that wasn't the plot twist of that one). Five years have passed since, and Bricksburg has turned into an apocalyptic, Blatant-Mad-Max-Ripoff wasteland. The aliens kept stealing away every cute thing they could get their hands on, so the LEGO minifigs adapted their world to have nothing cute about it anymore. It's a gloomy desert of violence and edge that you could cut yourself on. In spite of all that, Emmet is still his jolly self, keeping his seemingly-unbreakable positivity even as everybody around him brood and tatto themselves with badass imagery. Even Lucy, the girl Emmet hooked up with by the end of the first film, thinks an awful lot about war and pain lately.

Delay for a buffer

Hello there. I have decided to delay the upcoming reviews for a while, until I have built a satisfying buffer of reviews that are completed.

I played a lot of games during one week of December, and I haven't recorded those playthroughs, so for a lot of future Steam Packs I'll need to replay these games and record myself.

As a reminder, Google+ is shutting down soon, so if you want to keep up with the blog, feel free to join the official Discord server.

EDIT: The delay is going to be longer than planned after all. Sorry about that.

Octodad: Dadliest Catch

I cannot condone the events of this game. I cannot side with the dissimulation, the camouflage of non-humans among us.

That's the most squidlike human I
have ever seen.

On January 30th, 2014, Young Horses brought to us Octodad: Dadliest Catch, the second Octodad game (I haven’t played the first). How to accurately describe this… well, it’s a family father going about his day, supporting his wife and kids, and following them around. You could be excused for thinking that this guy is normal, if a bit kooky. He speaks weirdly, and yet everyone understands him. Maybe he’s foreign and he has an accent? And his way to walk around…. So weird! But, let’s not make fun of him, maybe he has a physical disability. And that mustache looks bizarrely fleshy and squishy. But hey, who knows this man’s story, right? Asking would be rude. He almost got me fooled, too! But then I remembered: The game’s called Octodad, and the store page spoils that detail immediately.

This is an octopus hidden among us! How unacceptable! And he fooled a woman for ten years, even married her – that’s the very first level! Scandalous! This is also where you get to experience the controls.

That might not seem so complicated.
Good luck mastering this, though.

He makes a mess everywhere he goes. Even the clumsiest
anime girl isn't nearly that bad.

See, Octodad: Dadliest Catch is one of those games on Steam where the controls are poor on purpose; after all, you can’t have a squid walk on four tentacles without constantly losing balance! Everything in this game is done through the mouse. Octodad’s controls are split between Walk Mode and Interact Mode. In Walk Mode, each leg made of two tentacles is a button of the mouse. Move the mouse around to move Octodad, left click for the left leg, right click for the right leg, so on. In Interact Mode, you are in control of one of his hand-tacles, and move it around. The left button is used to grab an item or let go of it (and you can walk around while holding items), while you must press and hold the right button to change the height of Octodad’s tentacle, so you can grab items either close to the floor or located higher. The middle button on the mouse is used to switch between both modes.

Animal Kingdom: Wildlife Expedition

Everyone knows the “bargain bin” games; those cheaper titles that can be found, not only in the bargain bins of large stores, but also in cheaper stores and, sometimes, even at gas stations and the like. They’re usually pretty bad. But as I always said, just because something is inexpensive doesn’t mean that it’s trash. Hell, there are many lower-priced games that I love, either in my Wii/DS/3DS collection or on Steam. Today’s title is one of those. I’ve seen it in a lot of places, and I was intrigued.

Developer Natsume brings to us Animal Kingdom: Wildlife Expedition. Here’s another reason why I was interested in this game: It’s a photo safari game. I feel that there aren’t enough of those games out there. Hunting games are a dime a dozen (and of highly variable levels of quality, not to mention they often require accessories), but games in which you merely observe and snap photos of animals are very rare. I love Pokémon Snap and am still hoping for a proper sequel (the mini-game in Pokémon S/M/US/UM doesn’t count). However, I could settle for any game about taking photos of animals. It’s a relaxing genre.

I don’t know what to expect from this one. Might as well start the review now.

VGFlicks: Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (Part 3)

Part 1 - Part 2  - Part 3

The lit path is probably a trap.

This is it, the final level. Spencer, Martha, fridge, Bethany and Alex have found the path leading to the giant jaguar statue on the island of Jumanji, and it’s probably a trap. The night has fallen, and the torches light up for them, highlighting a corridor within the jungle. Spencer decides to cheat the path by climbing into the trees, which is clever as his avatar, Smolder Bravestone, has climbing as a strength, but early on he gets startled by a squirrel, falls onto the path, and gets killed by a hungry jaguar. Good thing he still has one life left!

Oh crap. With this turn of events, most members of the team are down to their last life. Spencer panics and takes Fridge aside to tell him how afraid he is to face the dangers, now that he has only one life, but Fridge reassures him. The two return to the group, and with his knowledge of football and team strategies, Fridge devises a plan that should allow the team to fight both the jaguars on the path and Van Pelt’s men, who are coming.

Martha is just killing mooks left and right!
That's okay, they're just programmed code.

Spencer walks the main path, with Alex as backup to serve as a distraction against the wild animals. Bethany and Fridge go separate ways, but Bethany is captured by Van Pelt while Fridge encounters the largest mammal on the land of Jumanji. As for Martha, she sets up a radio and waits for Van Pelt’s goons, then proceeds to beat them up while “Baby I Love Your Way” plays. Jumanji’s a good video game so far, but it’s severely lacking when it comes to the soundtrack. 4/10. They could have thrown in some Guns’n’Roses!

Her bio says “dance fighting”, but really Martha is just really good at fighting while there’s music playing, she’s not fighting while dancing. This game is bad at explaining things! 3/10!

Like wildfire.

"Give me the stone, or Professor..."
"Bethany..."
"...Bethany? ...Really??? ....of the Professor gets a bullet!"

Martha is caught and grabbed by one of the bike-riding mooks, all the way to Spencer who dispatches the goons. After Martha frees herself, Spencer takes the motorcycle to hurry to the statue. He’s soon chased by jaguars, but he traps them in a circle of fire using a flamethrower. He reaches the giant statue, followed by Alex and Martha, only to find Van Pelt holding Bethany at gunpoint, requesting the stone. However, it’s not in Smolder Bravestone’s possession… it’s Franklin “Moose” who has it. And in comes Fridge riding a freaking elephant. See? I told you! Zoology is the most OP power in this world!

ZOOLOGY POWAAAA!

Abusing the game's system to win?
Yes. All of the yes.

Van Pelt’s jaguars attack the elephant, and the ensuing scuffle causes Fridge to toss the stone. It’s located higher, so Martha elects to go get it, while Spencer scales the giant statue on his bike. Martha finds the Eye of the Jaguar, which landed in the middle of a nest of poisonous snakes. She jumps around the snake-free areas and reaches the jewel, but Van Pelt arrives to take it from her. She notices that Spencer is almost at the top of the statue and remembers that she still has two lives, so she stomps on a snake and gets bitten, exploding in blood since venom is her character’s weakness. But! She respawns in the air, jewel still in hand, and in her fall she hands it to Spencer, who just arrived at the top of the jaguar statue. Smolder Bravestone sticks the stone where it belongs, but nothing seems to happen… that is, until Bethany remembers that they have to yell the game’s name.

JUUU-MAN-JIIIIIIII!

"I WANT TO GO HOOOOOOOOOME! JU-MAN-JIIIIIIIII!"

Gee, what a narcissist, this game.

Also, they manage to do that just as the sun rises on the island. The shockwave caused from this victory makes Van Pelt explode into rats (somehow) and brings back the jungle to its original lush state. On the morning, when the team is back together, Nigel arrives in his jeep and thanks the group for saving Jumanji. Yeah, they did the job that you seemed perfectly able to do in the first place, Nigel.

Alright, alright, get us out of here, Nigel.

"It's good to be home; it's good to have hair again."

The NPC gives a hearty handshake to each of them. Alex simply shakes the guy’s hand and leaves. Bethany tells her current anatomy goodbye, and Fridge nearly rips the arm off Nigel with how hurried he is at getting his real body back. Spencer thinks for a moment of staying in the game with Martha, so that they can remain “like this”, but she tells him that they can be “like this” at home, and shakes Nigel’s hand. Spencer leaves last, and they wake up, back in their own bodies, in the detention room. Well, all but Alex. Going back to the boarded-up house, they see that it has considerably changed; decorated for Christmas, clear and lively, with happy people. The car that pulls up with a Christmas tree on top is driven by a grown Alex, who was sent back to 1996.

Of course he remembers them 20 years later. You don't just forget an
adventure like that one. ...all those hours of therapy... 

Okay, this is something that has bugged me about the first movie, and bugs me about this one. It’s been theorized that Jumanji seeks kids who need to learn things about themselves. It puts them through these trials so that they can learn the lessons they need. And both times, it either sucked in one or multiple people, or brought things out into reality, endangering these kids – and sometimes others. And both times, someone gets sucked in for two decades or longer (Alan Parrish in the first film was stuck in Jumanji for 26 years). So, let’s see… This game with reality-warping powers puts people through mortal danger, rewrites time and space over decades, not to mention its big ol' reset button, all to teach a handful of kids a lesson? Worst. Teacher. Ever.

Also, in the original Jumanji, the introduction lets us know that Alan had issues with his father and was afraid of facing his problems, traits that he both worked on throughout the film. The other characters also had issues they worked on when the board game resurfaced 26 years later. And the four teenagers in the sequel, in 2016, all had issues to work through and managed to do so while adventuring in the Jumanji video game. We get time to know them before Jumanji ropes them in. We don’t actually get that with Alex, at the start of this film. We don’t spend enough time with him to see why he had to be sucked in. Which is especially bad, considering the consequences of that disappearance.

And it's the teenagers who get to do the big Hollywood kiss.

Now in 2016, Alex is married and has two children, one of whom is a daughter he named Bethany to honor the girl who saved his life. The other four teenagers have grown a strong friendship, with Spencer and Fridge back as friends, while Bethany isn’t nearly as obsessed with her looks and social media as she used to be. Oh, and Spencer and Martha become a couple. Last but not least, they go back to the game console… and Fridge crushes it with the bowling ball found in the detention room. Bam! And may you never come back, stupid board/video game!

Roll credits, cue… Ah, there it is! Guns’n’Roses, I was worried you’d never show up!

Well! That’s the movie. It’s a lot better than I make it sound, really. It’s certainly a well-made movie, with great acting, great special effects and a nice soundtrack. On the topic of the actors, the “teenagers” of the movie play their roles quite well. I put that word between quotes because, while the actors for Spencer, Martha and Bethany really were teenagers, Ser’Darius Blain, Fridge’s actor, was 29 during production – actually older than Karen Gillan, who plays Martha within Jumanji. Dwayne Johnson, Karen Gillan, Kevin Hart, Jack Black and Nick Jonas offer very good performances not as the characters they appear to be, but as the teenagers embodying those characters as avatars. Dwayne acts all shy and scared, Jack Black had the tone and mannerisms of a teenage girl at the ready… you get the idea.

The special effects are almost absent from the film for most of the real world scenes, which almost gives the film a made-for-TV feel up until the four teenagers are taken into the game. I like the little touches, such as the teenagers getting detention for valid reasons (I saw too many high school stories where that isn’t the case). When the special effects kick in, they’re very well-done. I like that the characters figure out the details of their adventure as they go, such as how their lives work, how they use their abilities, and how to progress. Although for a gamer, it sure takes Spencer a lot of time to figure those things out for the rest of the team.

It’s also great that each member of the team grows into a complete badass by the end. Spencer and Martha already had the abilities, but use their smarts and wisely utilize the game mechanics to their advantage. Fridge takes full advantage of his zoology skill, even taming an elephant. Badass. Bethany is the first to lose a life, and is in the least physically-fit body of the group, yet she doesn’t lose another life for the whole duration of the game, merely gives one of them to Alex later. Speaking of, Alex becomes a badass too when he chooses to help the team, and does so spectacularly even though he only has one life.

As much as I do enjoy the story, I have slight gripes with it. Like I said, this Jumanji adventure doesn’t feel quite as crazy as the original Jumanji, in part because the original was so creative and had so many different threats for the heroes to overcome. Here, it feels a tad bland as the main threat is a psychopath, his henchmen, and whichever animals he has control of. It’s also pretty different in that this time around, the kids facing the game are given talents and abilities, along with extra lives to fight off the threats. These characters have obtained from the video game the talents to be awesome, while the characters of the original had no such advantage, which dramatically increased the stakes.

The story does take a chance at highlighting and mocking multiple video game tropes, but even there the jokes remain fairly tame. It pokes fun at the limited and often silly information players get, at the lack of responses from NPCs, and so on. It also notes the tendency for games to do fanservice, but doesn’t really expand on that commentary. Multiple missed opportunies, in my opinion. It does have moments of brilliance, such as the path Alex uses to bring the others away from the Bazaar leading into an empty area, like a secret place. And of course, it’s great when the characters get a hold of their abilities and use the situation to their advantage, in the climax mostly. By the way, this game would be terrible to play. Jumanji is a bad dev.

And like I mentioned earlier, what was it that Alex had to learn through his experience in Jumanji, which led to him getting stuck there for twenty years? The prologue isn’t long enough to explain this. The other four teenagers get a reasonable amount of screen time showcasing the flaws and character traits they need to work on, before getting sucked into the game.

But overall, I did enjoy the film. I recommend it. Arguably, the original film is not a necessary watch to understand this one, but it does help a lot in setting up the extent of the board game’s abilities, what it can do. Is it better than the first? Honestly, I don’t know, because they are so different. As a sequel, this film expands on the “mythos” of Jumanji, by doing its own thing rather than copying what we saw in the original. Perhaps not every change is perfect, but it’s a good attempt at putting a new spin on the formula, as a sequel doing exactly what the original did would not be seen as very creative. Good work there.

And hey… who knows, maybe this means we can have a Zathura sequel now! Give me this, Hollywood.

Next week… something else.

Meanwhile, join the Planned All Along Discord!