Short and Sweet: Game Review: Spaceteam

Over the weekend, I was hanging out with some friends and somebody suggested we play Spaceteam. I had never heard of the game, and I'm not going to spend a lot of time explaining it because it's something you kind of have to play to understand.

But basically it's a phone/tablet game that's also cooperative. So you are running it on your device, and 1-3 other people in the room are too. Commands flash on the screen, and they may be things you can do in your game, or they might be things somebody else has to do. So you're telling each other what has to be done to "fly" your spaceship.

The commands are often hilarious. We had "Discourage mutiny" for one, and "Plan weekend." As you go further in the levels, they start using pictures instead of words for the command buttons, which makes it harder but also funnier. There's a lot of little things that make it harder as it goes, and the commands are faster and weirder so you start yelling louder.

Overall, I really enjoyed it but I think it's going to be more fun with at least three people rather than two, and you already have to be in kind of a fun party atmosphere to get the full effect. But if you have a regular game night with your friends, you should definitely check it out.

Battle of the Labyrinth at Winged Reviews!

My latest review of the Percy Jackson series is up at Winged Reviews, just in time for the new movie this week! Read the review of Battle of the Labyrinth here, or check out Sea of Monsters before you see the movie!

Red

Since Red 2 was coming out in theaters, I thought it might be time for me to finally watch the first film. I had been interested in it because the original trailers were rather funny and it was a movie full of actors that I always enjoy. Just having Bruce Willis usually means I'll at least give it a try. I'm also a pretty big fan of action films, in general, though there are some tropes of the genre that I'm getting more than a bit tired of. Excessive chase sequences being one of them (just wait until I review Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, I'll rant about it then). But I was really pleased to see that Red didn't really fall into very many of those cliches. It was pretty refreshing, and made it a really enjoyable evening.

The story gets going quickly, and while some of the action sequences are really not at all believable, at the same time I was willing to let them get away with it because the characters were so much fun and the actors are really into it and giving it their best.

Pretty much everything comes together well, from the direction to the cinematography, and the special effects are especially well done. The plot itself is almost secondary, it's kind of a standard "the secret agents have been betrayed by somebody taking over the government behind the scenes." It's sometimes pretty predictable actually, but there's a great sense of sarcasm and fun to everything that happens. The writing isn't good because of the action things that happen, but the clever dialogue and excellent characters, it makes me wonder how much of that came from the original comic and how much was the screenwriter or even the actors.

I don't have too many specific things to day because so many things worked well. It's a great film, anybody who likes action films should give it a shot. I'll definitely be watching the sequel, though I wonder if it's possible for the next movie to even approach this kind of experience. It seems like the first one was a great contained piece, so I don't know that I even wanted a sequel, but I'm not unhappy that it exists.