Andrea's Emporium of Movies and TV (and comics, and video games and books)

"Marvellous." - Conker the Squirrel Conker's Bad Fur Day was this game that was originally meant as another platform game that Rareware made before drastically being restructured into this very subversive and sophisticated mature audience oriented experience. Vulgar humour abounds, but then the collectathon elements present in the likes of Donkey Kong 64 and Banjo Kazooie/Tooie are heavily streamlined, where the puzzles seem direct and straightforward, and all you do really collect in this game is these wads of cash lying about - which you need to access certain parts of the game. Some puzzles are reduced down to these "context-sensitive buttons" where Conker is granted special abilities literally before the puzzle begins, so there's not really that much in the way of fumbling about or feeling like it's a game stretching itself out as much as possible. Everything here feels way more compact and linear, like it feels less like this giant world to explore,...

In 1996, the game Duke Nukem 3D was released, showing the capabilities of the Build Engine and was distinctive as being an FPS game where there was a bit more in the way of interactivity compared to something like Doom. Sure, it was mainly a game where you shot things and collected key cards but one of the core selling points of that game was how there were these more lived-in environments, as well as a distinct charm and character which heavily differentiated it from Doom. Although not the first Build Engine game (predated by 1995's Witchaven and William Shatner's TekWar), it was the game that showed the capabilities of the engine to a great potential. Naturally a bunch more games followed it and there's three of these games that are cited as must play FPS games which are Duke Nukem 3D, and 1997's Blood and Shadow Warrior, which respectively stylised themselves after testosterone fuelled action movies, horror and splatter films and martial arts films. Sometimes this li...

 CW: Spoilers for the Arfenhouse Series Sometimes you watch stuff when you’re a lot younger and you enjoy it for being irreverent and random and so forth, that it feels like a mystery when you get older and wonder how you’d react to it now? Does it wind up losing its impact or does it still somehow managed to hold up? What kind of surprised me in particular about the Arfenhouse series was that it still felt really fresh and funny in a way that I really didn’t expect it to, having a strangely incisive edge to it that felt like it was digging at a lot of insanely online stuff. Arfenhouse, for people who aren’t aware, was a series consisting of three RPG games released from 1999 to 2000, then followed by a flash animated series from 2002 onto 2006 – both of which were stylised in a way that involved intentionally crude graphics and characters who talked in some sort of bizarre amalgamation of leet speak. I remember this series being really random and having a sense of humour where...

The title menu of the game Cruelty Squad Warning: Mild Spoilers for Cruelty Squad Cruelty Squad is probably one of the best games I’ve played in a long time, and probably one of the most original and unconventional things that I feel like more video games should be like this. Simply put, this is one of those rare games that feels so precise and where it tests the absolute boundaries of what can really be done with a game. People often get the impression from the screenshots that it’s just not a good game, that its reception just feels like part of an elaborate joke, just with all these garish and unpleasant visuals – like the initial presentation and the visuals of it is of something that no good game designer would ever think of making, but the whole game really feels like some sort of strange vortex, the type of thing where you find yourself lost in a trance and you just keep playing it for whatever reason. The visual design itself is actually incredibly inventive, often very parti...

  Author's Note: Another long form pieces of writing that I felt really proud of. This is of two segments, the first of which was published on June 22nd 2020, and the other one was published on July 23rd 2021. Liked what I wrote here, probably one of the pieces I'm most proud of in terms of how much I captured the sense of alienation this movie attempts to communicate.   Part 1 - June 22nd 2020 Trust centres around the intersecting lives of a high school dropout named Maria who is kicked out of the house because of her increasingly abrasive attitude as well as a surprise pregnancy where the shock of the incident kills her father, and a young man who is very skilled at fixing electronic devices and is shacked up with various jobs from his domineering and abusive father – but his obsessive behaviour as well as his distrust for authorities and an attachment towards producing the best quality work means that he can’t really find a job anywhere, because so many of the businesse...

Author's Note: Originally written June 2nd, 2020. Wanted to write some really long form thing about this movie, and just showing that it's way more than how people present it like a "random movie" - connecting it to childhood fears and so forth. Probably one of the pieces I'm most proud of, but there are definitely with structural issues with this review, as well as a slight verbosity to it. House centres around a schoolgirl named Oshare or Gorgeous/Angel who  decides to spend her summer vacation down at her aunt’s house with six of her classmates, who lives alone after her husband was killed during World War II. But, as it turns out that the house is haunted and their aunt subsequently disappears like a ghostly apparition, and it turns out that the house is actually out to physically consume each of the girls until none of them are left – so the girls try to find a way to escape the house, and find an explanation for all of the bizarre occurrences that are happ...

The Simpsons - Five Important Episodes about our Homer Homer Simpson is a complicated character, probably more so than would be assume by obvious traits such as his love of donuts, beer and his slobbish and arrogant, often rage-induced behaviour. Those are definitely key components to Homer – but there’s also a whole lot more about his paranoia, well-meaning but often exacerbating behaviour, impulsiveness and so much more which make him a really unique character in his own right. From, I felt like detailing five key episodes which reveal deeper insights into Homer Simpson as a character - which are as follows: 5. Homer’s Enemy Homer’s Enemy is credited as being an episode about how a “realistic person would react to the insanity of someone like Homer Simpson” – but I find it’s way more about the feelings of discovering that a person you’ve either been nice to or is otherwise just a stranger to you, who for some inexplicable reason, hates you and everything you represent. This is prob...