27 Jul

Album Review: Overexposed – Maroon 5

Posted by vagrantesque in Music. Tagged: , , , .

The remnants of a truly fantastic June keep trickling through. This time I’m dealing with the latest studio album release from glamour band Maroon 5. I reviewed the Deluxe Edition, which features three extra tracks.

-◊-◊-◊-◊-
Released: June 2012
Label: A&M/Octone
Genre: Pop Rock
 -◊-◊-◊-◊-

With white bars

Now looks terrible on 3rd gen iPad!

.
TRACK LISTING

1. One More Night
2. Payphone
3. Daylight
4. Lucky Strike
5. The Man Who Never Lied
6. Love Somebody
7. Ladykiller
8. Fortune Teller
9. Sad
10. Tickets
11. Doin’ Dirt
12. Beautiful Goodbye
13. Wipe Your Eyes (Deluxe edition only)
14. Wasted Years (Deluxe edition only)
15. Kiss (Deluxe edition only)

The measure of a band’s quality does not, and should never, stop at the lead singer. It sounds obvious, but a band isn’t a band without a gaggle of musicians behind the person with the best-tuned vocal chords. They deserve to be heard just as much as their frontman/woman. Maroon 5 seem to have forgotten this basic fact for their latest effort, the aptly title Overexposed. For all the varied beats contained within its run time, it could quite easily have been released as an Adam Levine solo album. I mean, for crying out loud, the group is called Maroon 5.

This isn’t to say the album is complete rubbish, or anything else of the sort. It features some catchy tunes quite ably holding up the “pop” half of the band’s chosen genre, but there just isn’t enough flying the “rock” flag. Continue reading

26 Jul

Movie Review: The Dark Knight Rises

Posted by vagrantesque in Movies. Tagged: , , , , , .

It’s here. What almost certainly amounts to the most anticipated film of the year has finally hit screens worldwide. I’ve seen it twice and I will admit that the second viewing made me change the score I was going to give it.

-◊-◊-◊-◊-
Starring: Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Anne Hathaway
Director: Christopher Nolan (Memento, Inception)
Rating: M
-◊-◊-◊-◊-

TDKR_Poster

It is finished. The most critically lauded superhero trilogy of all time is done and dusted, wrapped up with considerable skill by visionary director Christopher Nolan, who rebooted the Batman film license back in 2005 with Batman Begins. The Dark Knight Rises is a visual, audio and psychological tour de force that demands to be seen by any self-respecting film fan. While it doesn’t quite reach the heights of the second film in said trilogy, 2008’s The Dark Knight, it comes incredibly close and won’t hurt Nolan‘s already very impressive resume. Continue reading

20 Jul

Too fast!

Posted by vagrantesque in Misc.

Things have been fairly hectic lately.

20120720-230907.jpg

Coffee helps.

After a crazily productive two week period in which I finished four games, more than I finish in most years, the combination of the flu and saving money for a weekend road trip conspired to rob me of opportunities to watch three of my most anticipated movies of 2012, Brave, Snow White and the Huntsman and The Amazing Spider-Man. Not seeing those films of course meant not reviewing them, which kinda sucks.

Nevertheless, I saw The Dark Knight Rises last night and I plan to give it a couple of days to stew in my head before I put words to a review.

I will also be starting a new series of articles soon called Rant Chasers, which will deal with any new things I may discover about a game/movie/album after I am done reviewing it. This might include downloadable content for games, extra perspective on movies and/or the discovery that I like a certain album track a lot better after some time has passed.

The second half of the year is packed with awesome entertainment releases and I’m looking forward to covering them on Vagrant Rant!

10 Jul

Game Review: Theatrhythm Final Fantasy

Posted by vagrantesque in 3DS, Games. Tagged: , , , .

Taking on a 3DS review now. This charming musical title came out on July 2nd and I’ve been tapping along to it ever since.

-◊-◊-◊-◊-
Platform: 3DS
Developer: Square Enix
Rating: G
-◊-◊-◊-◊-

Chibi!

Complete with slick pre-order bonus stylus. Aww yeah.

.
Twenty-five years.
.

That’s how long it has been since the first Final Fantasy graced the Famicom System in Japan, launching a franchise that would become a beloved worldwide phenomenon. Developer Square Enix has decided to honour the quarter-century landmark by releasing a quirky rhythm game celebrating the series’ incredible musical pedigree. This is Theatrhythm Final Fantasy.

Continue reading

4 Jul

Game Review: Pokemon Conquest

Posted by vagrantesque in DS, Games. Tagged: , , , .

Here’s the other game I was talking about in that June article. I’ve been playing this since it launched down under on the 21st, alongside Gravity Rush.

-◊-◊-◊-◊-
Platform: DS
Developer: Tecmo Koei
Rating: G
-◊-◊-◊-◊-

Just… I mean, where did this come from?

.
Uh, what?
.

That just might be your response to seeing Pokemon Conquest on store shelves, just as it was mine to finding out that it was getting a western release. The portable curiosity combines the money-printing worldwide popularity of the Pokemon series with the previously Japan-exclusive turn-based strategy franchise Nobunaga’s Ambition. The result of this unlikely marriage isn’t for everyone, but it represents a pretty bright future for crossover games of this kind.

Continue reading

30 Jun

Album Review: Living Things – Linkin Park

Posted by vagrantesque in Music. Tagged: , , , .

The latest major offering from the ever-present Linkin Park came out last week and I’ve been listening to it pretty heavily so I could form a proper opinion on it before the end of the month.

-◊-◊-◊-◊-
Released: April 2012
Label: Warner Bros
Genre: Alternative/Electronic Rock
 -◊-◊-◊-◊-

Mummy... thing

Typically abstract stuff here.

.
TRACK LISTING

1. Lost in the Echo
2. In My Remains
3. Burn It Down
4. Lies Greed Misery
5. I’ll Be Gone
6. Castle of Glass
7. Victimized
8. Roads Untraveled
9. Skin to Bone
10. Until it Breaks
11. Tinfoil
12. Powerless

I have been a Linkin Park fan ever since I started buying music. My first musical purchase of any kind was Meteora back in 2003, an album I still revisit from time to time without as much as a second thought. That would make me a fan of the band for the better part of a decade, so I’ve been used to their relatively slow release schedule for a while. When I heard that the band was set to release their fifth studio album a mere eighteen months after their fourth, literally half the time they waited between their previous major releases (2000, 2003, 2007 and 2010) I was a little shocked. I didn’t have much of an opportunity to psych myself up for it and in what seemed like no time at all, I had the first track of Living Things blaring from a pair of speakers. I was confused yet pleasantly surprised by what I got. Continue reading

28 Jun

Game Review: Gravity Rush

Posted by vagrantesque in Games, PS Vita. Tagged: , , .

It has been a long time since I did a game review, mostly since the games I’ve been playing lately are on 3DS and grabbing screenshots of those games is a nightmare. I’ll still get to them in due time, but for now, here’s a review of the recently-released Playstation Vita game Gravity Rush. It came out on June 14th.

The PSN delay made this a long one.

-◊-◊-◊-◊-
Platform: PSV
Developer: Sony Japan Studio
Rating: PG
-◊-◊-◊-◊-

Is she sideways?

The case is a lot smaller in real life.

.
Yes, it’s that game.
.

The one I ranted about as the primary reason why I wanted a Playstation Vita. The one I complained about when it was absent from the system’s launch. The one I’ve been waiting for since, well, since I first heard about it almost a year ago. That game. I’ve almost set myself up to be disappointed by Gravity Rush just due to the sheer weight of expectation I’ve placed on it over the last few months alone. Well, now I’ve played it, and yes, now I’ve finished it (something I rarely do at all with games these days, let alone in under two weeks). Read on to find out how it fares. Continue reading

25 Jun

Technical Difficulties

Posted by vagrantesque in Games, PS Vita.

So I was supposed to put up my Gravity Rush review today, but neither my PS Vita nor my PS3 want to connect to the Playstation Network at the moment. The Vita needs to be online to transfer screenshots to my PC, for whatever bizarre reason. In the meantime here is some fan art of Gravity Rush from deviantart that I am currently using as my iPod Touch wallpaper.

Credit to *Niking

20 Jun

The Other Ones

Posted by vagrantesque in Games, Lists. Tagged: , , .

This is the second of my two E3 articles for the year. Then on to some more reviews!

The press conferences of the Electronic Entertainment Expo are usually the most hyped part of the show, and for good reason, but they’re only half the story. The show floor invariably reveals a few uncelebrated diamonds in the rough every year and E3 2012 was no different. A great many games that were absent from the five press conferences showed up on the floor and tried their best to impress.

Here are five of my favourite non-conference games from this year’s show, in no particular order:
.

Project P-100
Completely absent from any of the Nintendo press conferences, this incredibly quirky trans-genre… thing looks surprisingly fun to play on the Wii U. Best described as a cross between Pikmin and a drawing-based superhero game, it came as no surprise to me that the sheer hectic pace of the cartoony action was engineered by none other than Platinum Games, developers of the excellent MadWorld, Bayonetta and Vanquish. Bring it. Continue reading

18 Jun

Conference Call

Posted by vagrantesque in Games, Lists. Tagged: , , , , , , .

My internet connection has been giving me real problems of late, which has made this piece a little later than I would have wanted. Alas.

That magic week in worldwide gaming news has already come and gone for another year. The Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3 for the affectionate/professional/lazy, delivered less surprises than in past years, but there was still plenty to talk about. The aftermath has been dissected a million ways already. Chief among the topics of conversation, as always, were the five big press conferences. Here I throw in my 2c on them by ranking them in terms of how strong I thought they were, from least to most.

Continue reading

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »