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Final fantasy 7: advent children, zombies ate my neighbors, ghoul patrol and battlefield redsec. final fantasy 7- advent children. advent children was my first experience with FF7, which is funny to think about in retrospect since it also mirrors my first experience with FF as a whole. my first experience with the series wasn't with any games, but with seeing final fantasy: the spirits within in theatres on opening day as a kid, i remember my parents were all over it, they thought it was going to be the future of movies and were shocked and impressed by Aki ross, i don't remember if i liked the movie but it always stood out to me, even years later when i found advent children in a bargain bin an in HMV next to copies of DMC the anime and ouran i still remembered the movie and took a risk on it to see if it was like spirits within, the cute twink on the box helped too. i liked the movie, i thought the characters were cool, especially the ones i recognised from their cool promo cgs being spammed on the net (anyone on places like DA and myspace at a certain point in time almost for sure remember those Vincent and yuffie renders), he music was amazing and the animation blew me away, even things like the story which i didn't understand had me curious to know more, though i was super offput at the time by the fact I'd have to *play a video game*, for as much as i loved the movie and watched it what had to have been almost 10 times, i just never went out and tried the game and never would until a good few years later, early life learned gendered gaming stigma sticks with you. that was what i thought of it back then, but what about now? it's been a long time since then, i was about 10 when i first watched AC and hadn't played any games, but now I'm.... not 10 anymore and have played tons of games including FF7 itself, I'd watched the movie again a few times over the years, it's became a comfort movie for me, same with spirits within, really and every time I've loved it, this time felt a little special though, it was right after my second run through of 7, at the start of a marathon of all the compilation games and it was also my first time watching the *super special* blu ray advent children complete edition, it almost felt like watching the movie again for the first time with all the new stuff, episode dezel and being able to see the movie in HD on a blu ray disc, naturally running on my ps3 for the most authentic experience, i actually watched it twice for this since on top of the normal BR i got for complete i actually went out of my way to pick up the Japanese version so i could have that killer Gerard way credits track and so i could check out that rad FF13 demo disc included, all I'm missing at this point is the UMD.... one day. complete to me is the best version and the one to go for, it does add a ton of new scenes that help flesh out the story and give more screentime to characters like dezel and elena and make it a little less confusing as well as fixing parts of the animation of the original that looked a little off, it's just the overall best way to watch, i mean it has more elena. the movie itself is great, the action scenes and animation are the standouts for sure, fast and cool with characters fighting in the air, a specific scene here the gang all fights bahamut and has to hoist cloud hundreds of ft in the air person by person is especially rad, the church scene which is probably the movies best looking scene or the cool bike chase with the final showdown with sephiroth, it's so iconic that these scenes would go on to define the series from that point onwards. dissidia, FF15 and 16, even 13 and versus 13 very much all take from this movie and its acrobatic mid air fights, it's hard to blame them too, they're some of the best in any movie. the character moments are great here with everyone showing up and at least getting a few lines and there's some fun interactions during the fights and on the highwind and it's cool as hell to even have previously optional characters like yuffie and Vincent show up (plus reno is hilarious in this, he might even be the standout, every scene he's in is amazing). though there is the issue with nobody beyond cloud and tifa really having a ton to do, a few characters like Vincent and Barret get a little extra screentime but even they do feel a little afterthoughty here, which is a shame, with how long the movie is you would have hoped to have a few extra scenes with these characters all interacting and at least you do get tons of great scenes with cloud and tifa, the latter of whom feels a lot more developed here than in the original game, i like cloud a lot here too, his more angsty energy in this movie is a nice change from how he was in the original and i think it works a lot, especially with his new design. all of the new designs are killer, i love new yuffie so much more than any other design the series has had for her and the Barret looks great too, same with Cid, tifa too, though cloud would be the standout, this is very much his best design for me and it's the one i think of when i think of cloud, it's just that good and his new modular sword for sure helps there too, the thing is just rad as hell. the animation is great too, i don't think it's aged as much as I've seen said, it just looks like the coolest ps3 era CG cutscene you've ever seen with cool effects like some fantastic rain and really cool lighting in some scenes, like the church and the forest, it looks great overall. The blu ray release looks super high quality which i think helps a lot, though i can't speak for the 4K version, i'm always suspicious of those releases since many are just poor quality AI upscales. admittedly the story isn't that great either, it's very confusing your first run through even just off of a fresh playthrough of 7 and i think focuses a little too much on the side cast characters like dezel and the child cast over the original cast, but it's still a fine sequel to 7 and i do like the whole plague thing they have going on, it gets way darker than you would expect too and the twist behind it is cool and seeing the world after 7 is really cool, same with the new setting the movie takes place in, the town of EDGE, built near the ruins of Midgar, it's very suburban Japan and i think it looks great, it's easily one of my favourite 7 cities and i love how it looks both here and in dirge of Cerberus, though beyond it and midgar not many other 7 places get much screentime bar the mountain, the forest of the ancients and a few of the deserty zones, which is a shame, dirge more than makes up for that though. the new villains here are a lot of fun and they have some killer action scenes, great designs too, especially the main guy, i love how his hair is rendered. the music though is pretty great, there's some fantastic remixes here with the main OST but the big show stealers to me are the vocal tracks, mainly the Japanese credits theme "safe and sound" by Kyosuke Himuro and GOD DAMN GERARD WAY, which automatically makes this the most 2000's movie in existance (helped by the fact cloud carries around gods coolest flip-phone, the movie just radiates that kind of energy which makes sense since it was one of the more iconic movies of its era) and that's rad as hell. the replacement for complete ""Anxious Heart"" is also pretty solid, but not as good. the movies rendition of one winged angel though might be its best track, it's more or less replaced the original entirely as *being* one winged angel, it has became the most iconic version of the song, easily, the guitars add to much to it. there's some bonus features too that are worth it like episode dezel, a short OVA that tells you who dezel is and why he's so important, it's really well done and actually got me to care about a character that before i just did not like, the thing even got me to tear up on my first viewing, it's a great little short and the animation there is fantastic. there's also a short called "last order" which seems to be a retelling of the zack nibelheim incident but animated, none of my versions seemed to have this though so i haven't seen it, it seems neat though. if you have that Japanese version you also have that cool FF13 demo, though I'd like to cover it on its own separately down the line, it's just too cool to squeeze into a page like this. the movie isn't perfect, the story is confusing and some characters get way too much screentime while others don't get nearly enough and it is looooong if you watch the complete edition, but it's also some of the most fun I've ever had with a movie, it has some of the coolest action scenes and animation out there, fantastic music and great character moments and that's really all it needed. the movie first and foremost is fanservice, it prioritizes that over even being a full on sequel to any real complaints you could have with it are kind of mute, the movie achieves the one thing it sets out to do pretty perfectly and i think that should be respected, especially since I'd say it succeeds on that front, the movie had me smiling from beginning to end and it's just so damn cool that any issues i could have with it just fade away when thinking about it and replaced by thoughts of how rad the designs are or how cool clouds multi sword was or how amazing the bahamut scene was and it's one of the few movies i regularly quote in my daily life, in my head anyway, I'm too self conscious to say "dilly dally shilly shally" to real actual people. flaws and all I'd take this over any Hollywood critical darling any day. zombies ate my neighbors is a game I really wish I liked, genuinely, I love the themeing and the music and the visual style and even the basic gameplay is pretty fun, it's a twin stick without the stick with you taking a pretty solid variety of weapons and running through mazes to find and rescue npc's before the monsters can get to them, I love the level themes and how much variety the game has in enemies and levels, but I just don't love the game as a whole, not really. I like the first chunk when levels aren't as impenetrably maze like and the enemies aren't total sponges, when it's fairly reasonable to beat the levels without dying but the game just, isn't like that for long. very quickly the game gets *hard*, like one of the hardest games I've played hard and not in a way that feels fair and the games not quite twin stick controls rarely leave you enough leeway with enemies for it to ever feel fair, especially with how much said enemies can take to kill like the ants or any of the bosses. the fact the port for current gen doesn't add anything like a rewind or real save states doesn't help either and it leaves you with a game that's just not fun for anyone but the kind of person with dozens of hours to dedicate and some serious skill and that's just not really me, I don't find the game fun enough to dedicate the time it really needs and the games password system just isn't good enough and doesn't give you enough to work with for the game to be fun even using it, I wanted to like it but it just didn't want me to like it back, that said for anyone that does enjoy the gameplay enough to dedicate the time or is super skilled at this specific brand of twin stick maze action game, yeah this probably is a real classic and one with a lot to offer since the game has almost 50 levels worth and will last you a good while (4-5 hours you're good, dozens if you aren't), just not one I find myself very endeared to, killer OST though, really enjoyed that. there is a snes and a mega drive version which are both relatively affordable but i played this with the ported collection on ps4, which gives you a save and quit to return to levels later but nothing in the way of real assists and will run you about £40 if you want the physical copy, so it's super hard to recommend, it does come with its sequel though which I'd also like to talk about since i liked it a ton more. now ghoul patrol i think is a lot better, it's not great and still has its issues but i think it fixes a lot of the first games issues for me, even though it has some of its own and is a lot less ambitious than its predecessor. the main thing for me is how much easier it is, sure it's still rough with how many lives it gives you and my first run ended around the ming dynasty level before i started using passwords, but levels in general are easier to navigate with less musou-like enemy counts and easier to use weapons, it makes things a lot more manageable and to me a lot more fun, it also i think looks a lot better with more detailed sprite work and very cool looking environments, though the game overall feels less colourful and there's a lot less variety in them, i miss the cool mall levels too but it's made up for with some neat places like a library, a hotel, ancient China, pirate levels and even a level set in hell!, but unlike the original it's a lot easier to see all of these levels now because of the password system that includes just about all of them bar a few medieval levels. the game doesn't have that same variety in general, it's weapons are also a lot more lacking which is a shame, though i did love the tracking laser beam that got me through most of the games encounters and bosses, but the bomb is downright useless here, i love the grim reaper powerup though, that was far better than the monster transformation from the first game. the gameplay is mostly unchanged bar one big issue it introduces, the physics, the game basically feels like you're walking on ice the whole game and it is a little bit of a problem, i don't think its game ruining and you do get used to it fairly quick, plus it makes the game feel super deliberate and unique in a way that i like a lot, so i don't think it's really as big a deal as some make it out, i think it might be had the game been as difficult as the original was though and the platforming the new jump introduces can be pretty annoying with the movement. they also changed the originals, very useful, radar system to having the survivors shout in your direction instead, which while less useful, i think still works fine and thematically i like it a lot more, it's charming. the music too i think is a lot worse, but still serviceable and i like how the game tried to have more of a story too, it's cute. I'd recommend it more than the original for sure, though I'd never recommend super going out of your way to play it, but i did have a decent enough time with it and it never made me as annoyed as the original tended to because of that easier difficulty and the game being a lot shorter (an hour or two at most) and more focused than that game was, if the original is more of a sprawling arcade game ala gauntlet then this is a more bespoke console style game experience and i think that's just more for me. the next game i played in this timespan was actually more modern than the other games I'm talking about here, it just came out and is the new big hotness online, or so my roommate tells me, i don't use social media so the fact a new battlefield (redsec/BF6) was the new hit thing was kind of a shock to me since i always saw it as playing second fiddle to games like call of duty and the last few didn't seem to do to well with the *mainstream gamer* (for what i assume are probably very silly reasons). what was more interesting to me was that at least part of the game was free, not the campaign or the multiplayer, but the BR mode similar to how COD does it with warzone, for the price of free, my roommate wanting to try it anyway and having nothing else to do that night i decided to give it a try and it was, fine, i guess. it's a pretty standard BR, teams, storm, big map but you do have some neat things thrown in like an objective system for getting better gear, some very fun vehicles to drive and some basic destruction systems that were pretty fun to play around with, but not as in depth as i would have liked, it's no "red faction guerilla" let me tell you, but none of it really stood out to me as being all that fun to me. i liked the maps, at least the city one with the big golf course and suburban housing but i found the desert chunk to be super bland, it felt nice to get a kill sometimes but the overly heavy realistic physics just weren't super fun for me, the vehicles were fun but not the main chunk of my playtime with it and moreso than most of these kinds of games I've played winning seemed super gear dependant, so sometimes felt super unfair when i unload a clip into a guy and it all just hits armour, that said the games systems are super emergent and silly so any frustration i did have was usually evened out by something funny happening like my killer getting ran over by a tank or something, i see the appeal even if this super is not for me, I'll be sticking to ultra rumble. LAST SECOND EDIT: during the span of finishing this and posting it the game was revealed to be using AI art on many of its cosmetics and game mode images, so yeah! gross, avoid this like the plague and play ultra rumble instead, also worth noting is this entire time i've been calling it redzone instead of redsec and i'm going to be honest that an ai slop game is not worth my time correcting it's stupid, generic name, so if you see an error like that just know that i genuinely do not care.