adambenjamingibbons Reviews

Baby Reindeer (2024)

Abysmal

[1/10 · 18 May 2024]

A completely fake, load of nonsense where nothing makes any sense, or has any logic.

A guy stalks a woman, whilst trying to make out that the woman stalks him. Dates a hot trans that he apparently loves, then ditches said trans and goes for a cuppa and a hand job with his "stalker".

It's like someone (this failed comedian) watched a load of British films, watched The Joker and then combined it all with his weird sexual fantasies and turned it in to this episodic, cash grab of utterly rubbish TV.

Literally nothing likeable, not entertaining, not funny, nothing. It is just so contradictory over and over that it just comes across as stupid.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023)

Just bad

[2/10 · 27 December 2023]

To start off it was an easy watch for me due to the music as it was clearly compiled by someone who grew up around the same era as me.

The art style was really quite nice but for a poster, not for the film. It didn't work and a different style would have been much better.

It's not really an all ages thing. It just wasn't suitable for adults. The dialogue was really annoying for anyone age 10+. The script was the same, very immature.

I felt like there were lots of nods to different popular things to try and score brownie points with everyone, such as BTS and Attack in Titan.

The whole thing was just boring and fell flat. It was quite simply a bit of boring feature length cartoon.

Just nothing to like with a kids story that did nothing, kids dialogue that was annoying and a soundtrack and art style that didn't really work.

Yet another disappointment.

I'm actually getting so disappointed with Hollywood films that are complete rubbish, getting decent reviews that I am probably going to return to not watching films out of the US anymore. They just have no substance and keep getting worse.

City of God (2002)

Absolutely Brilliant

[10/10 · 19 October 2023]

Best gangster film ever made.

So to start I can't really put myself in the characters shoes because it is alien to me. I am not familiar with Brazilian culture, favella gangs, or Rio, that doesn't stop it from being captivating though.

The characters are fantastic. Very extreme but not crossing in to stupidly unbelievable territory. It is quite consistent with reality where the kids in the film depict reality quite well, where the nutters are souless people with nothing to their personalities other than violence, then you have the fun, cool tier that form the mutual friends of the nerds and the gangsters, then there are the nerds that hate being caught in the middle but have hobbies and ambition.

The story follows the life of residents in a poor area and their experiences growing up young, then as teens and the way their friendships, enemies and aquaintances develop over the years.

The film ties in everyone's stories in an understandable way but there is a lot to keep track of. I recommend trying to remember the names as much as possible when watching.

Overall it is just an incredibly well made portrayal of the village kids and the different paths they take in life and how their paths keep crossing. Starting as some normal kids and some pretty criminal kids, developing to some of them becoming high profile favella drug dealing, gun toting gangster and others just trying to better themselves and chase the dream.

Blue Beetle (2023)

Not worth watching

[2/10 · 21 August 2023]

Let's start by just saying granny with a neon automatic gun. That says it all, 600 characters not needed. 4DX was pretty bad too. Bumps and shakes that just didn't make sense. Like a thud in the back when the door got kicked. Really, 4DX is trying to put me in the shoes of the door. Although as the characters were all wooden too, it probably wouldn't make much difference. I literally didn't care about any of the characters. They could have lived, or died and I wouldn't be bothered. Personalityless shells. Really silly film but also not funny, just lame. Usual poor Hollywood dialogue and unmemorable performances, with no story other than good guy has thing bad guy wants, bad guy chases good guy.

Gran Turismo (2023)

7.1? On what planet.

[1/10 · 13 August 2023]

I would give this 2/10 cos the 4DX made it a better experience but even with the motion master chairs and blasts of vapour and wind, I still nearly fell asleep several times. The dialogue is so poor, it was hard to tell if the acting was any good. Exception being Ginger Spice. I think she acted pretty damn good. Other than her they all did a great job of making a true story very unbelievable. I couldn't relate to anyone, the character dialogue just didn't sound believable.

The direction was a bit poor, some very predictable parts and overall just incredibly boring. Had it not been for 4DX, the chance is I would have walked out.

That really does sum it up, very unbelievable, poor scripting. I have played 16 bit video games with tiny pixel characters that expressed a hell of a lot more personality, emotion and character. Well done though to Geri for her small part.

BlazBlue: Central Fiction (2015 Video Game)

Under scored

[10/10 · 13 July 2023]

I know 7.7 is good but this game is a 2D fighting masterpiece.

It looks stunning, songs and production quality are best in class, gameplay is technical, fast, fluid and fun. It is also easy to just pick up and play.

A real joy to play and easy to advance your skills. Crazy characters.

A very good tutorial, superbly animated finishing moves, variety of modes including a full feature story.

Inputs are really responsive, animations look great, colour pallette is very bold and light giving a great fantasy hero vibe rather than the dark trends from the likes of MK and Injustice.

Any fighting fan should own this.

Don't play with the dumbed down controls. It's easy to learn these 1/4 circle and lightning shape inputs and satisfying when you do. We all did it back in the day and it was easy enough and fast to learn.

Street Fighter 6 (2023 Video Game)

Good game

[4/10 · 13 July 2023]

So in comparisson to past Street Fighter's, 2 is aging a bit too much now. 3 and Alphas were a bit ugly and again feeling a bit old. 4 and 5 were shockingly bad, so this didn't have too strong of a task to stand out as one of the best Street Fighter's.

Honestly, a SF 3rd Strike remake and update would have been better. My reason for the low score is it just feels slow to play and a bit boring. The drive slows down the action, the special animations interrupt the action. The game all feels way too counter based, throw push backs, parry, rush reversals etc it feels like too much attack and defend gameplay has switched to counter attacks.

A major gripe is the AV design. The sound is awful. Some short snippets sound more like generic quiz show jingles, poor dated sounding music, character designs are awful. Ken's homeless look is ridiculous. Voice acting annoying, stories from uninteresting to outright silly.

Pricing is ridiculous and greedy although this hasn't affected my score. The small roster has. I only really enjoy around 6 characters. 18 to choose from is a bit lame these days.

The artwork unlocks come fast though and that is a nice little bonus.

I feel it has lost too much Street Fighter vibe now. Even when the game is fast, it still feels slow. I have had some input issues (PS4) where the down button isn't registering and I get standing kicks instead of sweeps. Small gripe but annoying all the same.

With its very dated design and sound choices and slow feel, it doesn't hold my interest for long.

I have several games that take preference for me over this at the moment. Mostly I find them more fun.

King of Fighter's 15 Mortal Kombat 11 Injustice 2 Blazblue Centralfiction Guilty Gear Strive Killer Instinct Garou Mark of the Wolves (IMO best fighter ever) Dead or Alive 6

I seem to chose one of these over SF6 everytime. I do prefer it to Tekken 7 though.

On the plus side, the three counters of throw, parry and drive, as mentioned earlier really do add a new dimension to gameplay. I just personally don't like that new dimension. It bores me a bit. Many people love it.

Is it worth £50, or £80 including DLC? No. If it was £10-£20 absolutely worth it.

Impressed and disappointed all at once here.

4.5 out of 10.

If they ditched the cheese, sped up the flow, fixed the slightly buggy controls, drastically improve the sounds and songs and lower the price and my score would shoot up.

Injustice 2 (2017 Video Game)

Just seems to work

[10/10 · 13 July 2023]

I can't recall the franchise, maybe DC. I don't like all this Hollywood junk but this is a brilliant fighter.

This really plays like Mortal Kombat. The story seems OK so far. It is presented very professionally and feels like a AAA title.

Had loads of fun so far. Haven't quite got a grip of the system fully yet as it plays very differently to the SNK and ArcSys fighting games that I usually play. It is still very enjoyable though.

Visually it has this darkness but it suits the game. The goodies and baddies roles seem to swap, which is nicer than a load of regurgitation of past outings with blurred lines between good and bad, it makes a good shame up of something that could have been bland.

Mortal Kombat 11: Ultimate (2020 Video Game)

Finish Him!!!!

[10/10 · 13 July 2023]

A fantastic story mode with player battles interwoven in the pretty long story is brilliant.

Mechanics are great and playing is fun.

I haven't any MK played since MK3 and this still keeps in line with that MK feel.

A few gripes but which don't affect my score are cheese. Very cheesy Hollywood feel instead of the dark vibe it used to have. Over complication of mechanics. It is like they merged too many different mechanics. Block on a button instead of a direction, combos like Tekken and DoA, inputs of Street Fighter, KoF etc, twin shoulder specials, it's a bit too much getting used to again after playing a standard fighter. Clever mechanics and balancing are better than a memory challenge.

It is still easy to get in to whilst getting used to all the mechanics but I would prefer it slightly simplified.

The important thing though is cohesion and fun and it all works together as a fun package. A variety of classic tower play options available. Varied cast and styles.

Absolute top class fighter.

Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014)

I think the score malfunctioned

[2/10 · 13 July 2023]

On what planet are people rating this highly.

It tries to be a comedy but fails as it isn't funny. I laughed a very brief laugh about 3 times in 2 hours. It tries to be action but that can't be good due to the characters being bland and cast being mismatched with characters they didn't suit, poor story, scripting, acting and execution.

Who thought Samuel Jackson with an awful lisp and dressed like the fresh Prince was a good idea?

Cheesy, boring and predictable. Really predictable.

I've just been playing MK11 and considering you don't expect a decent story with a fighting game, I would rather have watched that twice than this once.

Gorogoa (2017 Video Game)

Crazy game

[5/10 · 14 June 2023]

So the 5 isn't a bad score but it's just not a 10/10 even though it does what it does brilliantly. For example this was not as fun as Rime, yet way harder.

Gameplay works with 2 to 4 images in a 2x2 grid. You zoom in and out and match parts to access the next bit.

I got to halfway through and it got way too complex. Not in controls but the puzzles were pretty intense and I prefer light puzzles. It's a bit too much of a brain overload for me at times and my memory isn't that great either.

Really complex and well designed puzzles, a great and as far as I know, original idea.

It sells really cheap and you can't fault it for value. It's really a no brainer. Just get it.

Not sure I'll ever finish it but it was well worth the half I played for £3.50.

The game literally just throws you in without explanation and for 5-10 minutes you wonder what the hell is going on but then it clicks. Certainly no hand holding here.

Sausage Party (2016)

Just bad

[1/10 · 13 May 2023]

I went in expecting some silly, crude, easy watching adult humour. What I got was something that just wasn't funny at all. I turned it off after an hour, very bored.

It's a bit like if you go out in a group and there's an annoying person out with you and no matter how hard they over try, they just can't get a laugh. That's what this is like. A person with a lame sense of humour desperately trying to get laughs.

Now I did laugh a couple of times but considering the film had nothing else there and was attempting to be a comedy, and nothing but a comedy it was just an empty shell. No great sound, character design, character development, story etc. None of that. The jokes, puns and sarcasm were just not good enough to carry this rubbish.

Confessions (2010)

Surprised the score isn't higher.

[10/10 · 24 April 2023]

Let's start at the end.

One of the most satisfying endings possible. I love revenge films, cos I'm a very eye for an eye person and in real life justice never happens, so it's nice to see when some scumbag gets their comeuppance on the screen at least. With Confessions they do it and they do it well.

It does have a few bits where it got a bit chaotic and hard to follow but the overall film was not hurt by it.

This film although it was some good acting, is all about the story. It would be fair to just rename this revenge. What I liked is it didn't go through tit for tat motions of revenge. It was deep, thought out and well executed and heavily entertaining revenge.

So hard to review this and not give spoilers, so I'm going to stop there. One of my top 20 favourite films ever.

The Glory (2022– )

Could have easily been an 8/10

[5/10 · 24 April 2023]

So bloated. This could have had 5 episodes trimmed off and been a very good show.

The good stuff. Acting was pretty damn good. I am very hard to get positives from on this cos so many actors are bad but there were a few stand outs. If you exclude the main male role - the doctor, who could be replaced by a wooden puppet then the acting was good - excellent.

The quality overall was good. Well polished and felt modern. The writing though was not great. The characters were quite well developed but the story wasn't. It could have had some huge twists and turned in to this big ending but instead you just get trickle fed a revenge plot. As the synopsis reads very similar to that of Japanese film Confessions, where school teacher takes revenge, this was not even close to the scale of revenge satisfaction that film gave.

I guess my overall feeling at the end was I'd rather have watched Confessions again and saved 14 hours of my life.

To sum up it was really good but a missed opportunity and needlessly long. 16 episodes is standard for K-Dramas, so they should be experts at pacing 16 episodes by now.

Please no more Shamans too. It totally detracts by being too weird.

Sweet Home (2020– )

I couldn't watch anymore.

[1/10 · 24 April 2023]

So I started watching this and it was weird, suspenseful and was looking like a good scary series. Lots of creepy things that weren't scary but left you with that feeling you were about to get a fright any minute. To be honest I thought to myself this is going to be amazing. Then all of a sudden, half way through the episode it became an absolute cheesefest. It was like they just swapped out the writers, producers and directors with clueless people. OTT hit stupid levels. Plot swapped to full on zombie scenes and what a joke it was. By the end I was undecided but the last scene was so rediculous I just thought no more. They literally instead of making a consistent group of zombie characters tried to do one of every stereo typical zombie you could imagine, to the point it just looked like they had borrowed costumes, or CGI of every horror film ever made. You're talking axe wielder, chainsaw guy, guy with head split in half, woman upside down in crab position. Every cheesy, stereotypical horror creature possible.

Weird how something promising just flipped in to a disaster in seconds.

1/10 because it was a waste of time and although I enjoyed about 30 mins, it was pointless because I won't be sitting through any more of the rubbish that followed.

Persona 5 (2016 Video Game)

Lame

[4/10 · 10 February 2023]

All of a sudden old fashioned tat is cool?

If you like the soundtrack to 70's pornos, then the OST will be right up your street.

If you like annoying school children with personalities lacking any substance, then you'll love this.

If you like dated, old fashioned graphics with OTT GUI's, you'll love this.

If you like incredibly slow pacing then get yourself stuck in here.

In a nutshell it is boring. In fact whenever I discuss P5, I usually say P5 looks like an unbelievably well nurtured game, with an outstanding amount of effort put in by a team of very boring people.

A whole lot of effort to realise a game that is childish and boring and a total waste, of a fair bit of my time.

I will say the combat is OK but the whole game is very wierd, doesn't gel well and the scores just don't make any sense.

I have played much worse. At £5 I can't complain and that is how I am reviewing this but if I had paid £50 for this, I would be so annoyed and it would have got 1/10.

At £5 though. 4/10 is more fair.

The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi (2003)

Brilliant

[10/10 · 20 September 2022]

Years since I've seen this film but other than a very cheesy ending scene and a couple of meh bits dotted throughout, it is a very charming film.

So the film probably isn't 10/10 but the end song is probably one of the most memorable songs in any film I own. A very strange fusion of HipHop and oriental sounds.

It was fun and one of the few films I never part with, which as a habitual trader of video games and films is a sign I thoroughly enjoyed it.

It doesn't feel like your typical samurai film as it has this underlying silliness. Not to say this is a silly film. It isn't.

What a finale. I love the end. I have many a time replayed the end without watching the whole film again. Very much like 8 Mile.

We Can Be Heroes (II) (2020)

Kids film

[10/10 · 10 September 2022]

So it's a kids film and I only watched from half way in but it was no worse than Harry Potter's 1-6. Everyone raves about them.

At least this was bad and not pretending to be anything else. It was a silly kid film with kid humour. Whereas the Potter's attempt to be good but fall short left, right and centre, with forced set ups for every scene.

Based on taking it as what it is 10/10. At first it was a painful watch but it was cheap giggles for the kids and silly humour. For me as an adult 3/10. It was tolerable, just, but compared to that shocking Jurassic Park film I saw a few weeks ago it doesn't seem so bad. And some of the modern Star Wars films, again, so bad I would have happily switched them off at any point. At least this I was curious enough to want to watch to the end.

I think it is unfair to rate this film as an adult as I am not the target audience but it hit the mark with the kids.

Kiraware Matsuko no isshô (2006)

Brilliant

[10/10 · 24 August 2022]

I haven't seen this in years. I remember being blown away by it though. Simply because I don't like dark, desperate, sad stories, on paper I shouldn't like this. For some reason, MoM just works. A simple thing that makes most of my 10 scores is that the characters were likeable and played by someone that makes them believable.

There is no great plot, or twist. It's just a tale of an unfortunate person's life but it has been done brilliantly.

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (2012– )

Bad

[1/10 · 5 August 2022]

The characters are dislikeable. The writing is poor. Incredibly boring. The music is OK but I have plenty of good music without this Anime in my life. It is very typical Japanese stuff. Most of all it just wasn't fun to watch.

Jurassic World Dominion (2022)

Why

[1/10 · 5 August 2022]

I have recently played a 16 bit video game, total pixel art little sprites, where I was upset if anything happened to the cast of the game. After watching this film, I literally wouldn't have cared less if any of the characters had been killed at any point.

It was boring. No plot, poor script, poor acting, bad everything. I think one jump scare nearly made me twitch and that was my biggest excitement of the whole film. Everything felt out of place, unreal and even little details, like the super rich, dinosaur kingdom owner planning to take over the world wearing a £2 pair of home bargains reading glasses. I actually nearly nodded off in an action part it was that thrilling.

I guess as I am forced to give one star, then I will credit that one star. The effects for the dinosaurs was a very high quality bass rumble that really went through your body.

Props to the sound man. Other than that, I want my two hours back.

Tales of Zestiria (2015 Video Game)

Underated

[10/10 · 4 June 2022]

I will start by saying amazing OST.

The graphics are lovely. It's not a very busy world. People are obsessed with filling every detail but in not doing so, I felt more connected. The colour scheme is just standard bold animation and with some of the world being very sparse, it really allowed it to pop without being cluttered

Typical action RPG gameplay with a few extras. It was a bit overcomplicated but didn't detract from the game for me.

The characters were nice and simple. I hate grandiose unbelievable characters. These are actually very plain, with some annoying quirks. Again it works. Often games are over thought and feel forced. This was lovely and relaxed in vibe and atmosphere. I remember thinking to myself, yes, nerdy annoying people like this exist, just without superpowers.

Overall a game that gets massively over bashed for small flaws. Is it flawed? Totally. Did it affect my enjoyment? Not in the slightest. I loved playing this game. 10/10.

Tales of Arise (2021 Video Game)

So baffling

[1/10 · 4 June 2022]

People slag off Zesteria and then rave about Arise. Arise was just boring, lacked any character and felt fetchy.

I'm a fan of Tales, even if I don't like them all but this is just rubbish. Zesteria smashed this. Berseria was a step down due to being stale and slow but this is worse. It was a lot of money to have so little fun.

Standards are so low these days.

The Thundermans (2013–2018)

Some idiots.

[7/10 · 4 June 2022]

Who gives a 1* review based on bad jokes? It's a kids show and the jokes are really funny for kids.

It is just typical American junk but it is really good at what it is trying to be and that is good cheeky humour for kids with a feel good vibe.

I prefer them watching this to some of the other stuff they watch.

Sakura Wars (2019 Video Game)

Loved it

[10/10 · 12 March 2022]

I could not put this down until I finished. It is my favourite game since FE3H. One of my favourite games ever.

It's not for everyone but if you like anime, mechs, ARPG's and fan service to be tame and actual women rather than school girls, then this is perfection.

Play the story, pick the silliest choices for funny responses to dialogue, rinse, repeat. Story was brilliant, OTT at times but heart warming with a few twists and turns and beautiful animation videos. Graphics, OST, map, general flow and vibe. I loved it. 10/10.