benjaminburt

With a troubled production and a chasm of tonal difference, you can't really expect anything more from this film than what it is. From word 'go' it was doomed to fail.

I have a strong fondness for the prior animated feature, the Hobbit. Songs were well-incorporated, episodes of that grand book were well-translated to film, even if they were quite hokey or cheesy at times. Regardless, the Hobbit has timeless charm and is definitely worth your time.

Now, take that same formula, but instead of the vibrant, colorful scenes of the Hobbit, let's incorporate the desolate browns, greys, and reds of Return of the King. The film is just far worse to look at than the Hobbit. Songs were incorporated in the first film, so songs are present here, even though all the songs are significantly less memorable, oftentimes interrupting to the point of being disruptive.

Post-hoc reasoning and explanation are the bane of storytelling. If you want to foreshadow the confrontation of "Sauron's right -hand" and Eowyn, you have to set it up. You need to lead with "No man can harm him" and also inform the viewer beforehand of her plan. When she just shows up, and Merry is all like, "Oh, yeah, he're a little exposition about who she is, why she's here, and why you should care!" The same is true with Aragorn's appearance on the black fleet, and several other cases in the film. The story is thus disjointed and unsatisfying.

The fairytale / storybook tone employed by the 1977 Hobbit just does not fly in the epic, saga-ending world-ending scenes of Return of the King.

That being said, if you're interested in the movie, I'd say watch it. What are you doing with an hour and a half? It's got some unique portions of the books that weren't covered in Peter Jackson's film. The voice acting is good. "When there's a whip, there's a way" is the one pretty good song in the movie, and that's worth seeing. But on the whole, this film is not good.

When you start diving into the catalogue of Super Famicom games that stayed in Japan, there is a real set of absolute masterpieces over there, but in over 20 years since the last release on that system, it would seem that the cream of the top has risen to the top. After finishing the absolute cream of the crop, you start to pry a little deeper, and unfortunately, most games are just okay. Not great. Not terrible. Just okay. You start getting stuff like Laplace's Demon, Arabian Nights, Wozz, Emerald Dragon, and at the very bottom of the barrel you have the JoJo game *shudder*. So, you end up with this attitude where you think you've played them all, that nothing will ever touch the greats like Chrono Trigger, Terranigma, or EarthBound.

This game came as a shock to me. The team that worked on it was a group of eclectic people couple with a few eccentric personalities and industry veterans. I figured it would just be another one of those games. And then I started playing it.

Let me front-end this review with this: it's not as good as the greats. The combat is slow and feels unbalanced at times. The soundtrack is overall good, but has some stinkers and is unfortunately kind of limited.

That being said, G.O.D. plays like those aforementioned greats. It tells a dramatic and compelling story that stretches out across an entire world and lasts for over 30 hours. The story consistently keeps you on your toes and lets you know where to go next. There's no wandering around wondering where to go next to get the next story trigger. The humor in the game is sharp and consistently great. Honestly, this game rivals EarthBound as the funniest SNES game. It's got nonsense and absurdist humor, fourth-wall-breaks, real-world references, parody, it is really, really funny. The combat, while fairly unbalanced, is complex and challenging, with special powers and memorable bosses. The pixel art is consistently good. The characters are memorable.

Honestly, if you like EarthBound, you've already player Mother 3 and you're craving more, this is your next game.