Secret Agent HD

Secret Agent HD 

Secret Agent Man 5/5

GAMEPLAY

The platforming and combat consists of you controlling a very floaty (in a good way) Secret Agent with his handgun as a weapon.You will be using said handgun against a large number of ninjas, robots, and sharks…..the typical enemies of every spy.

The levels are all fairly short maze-like designs that require you to pick up certain colored keys to access the same colored door, before you can finish any level you’ll need to destroy a satellite first, as well as find some dynamite to blast through the exit door. Dying or screwing up the right way out of a level happens often, and while this is mildly frustrating, you’ll usually end up being able to speed run the level by your second attempt, and that feels very satisfying. 

WHY I WENT WITH THE HD VERSION

I picked up Secret Agent HD while it was on sale, and I could have got it even cheaper if I went with the original non-HD version. I do prefer the look of the non-HD version graphically, and I could have saved a little extra going that route, but HD perks were well worth the extra cost.

Not having to go through the process of setting up my controller through DOSBox, and just being able to plug in my controller to have it instantly work was a treat. DOSBox always seems to force me to use this analog stick, but with the HD version I could happily use the D-Pad. Saving is also very easy in this version, whenever you are on the world map, just press Start, scroll down to highlight the save option, then click the bottom face button. I assume the non-HD version probably requires typing on the keyboard to save.

The HD version also has achievements! While I’m not the biggest achievement hunter in the world, you can’t deny that they do add a little extra life to a game, so that’s a nice bonus.

The Rise & Double Fall Of G4

The Rise & Double Fall Of G4

 

The Rise & Double Fall Of G4

***TECH TV/G4 THE GOLDEN ERA 2003-2007***

There was once a television channel called Tech TV that showcased programs about technology, and had a couple of shows about video games……...and it was great.

***X-PLAY***

A show about video games, co hosted by a lovable balding man child and a lovely buxom young lady. X-Play was a great way to see the newest video games before they came out. When the show started you really only had video game magazines to go off of, until you were actually able to play the game, so that was pretty cool. The show also features a lot of comedy bits and discussions about gaming.

ADAM SESSLER: 

I have nothing bad to say about what I saw of Adam Sessler’s appearances on Tech TV/G4 from 2003 through 2007. Adam was hilarious and likable in his skits and in conversation. He’s a full decade older than me, almost to the exact day, so I thought of him as knowing his shit when he talked about video games, I trusted Adam’s reviews. Adam and Morgan would always bash pro wrestling video games as being for losers, but that was the only time I ever rolled my eyes when listening to either one of them, which hey I get it, pro wrestling has to be extremely jarring to a non-fan. 

MORGAN WEBB: 

What I liked and respected about Morgan Webb back then was that she wasn’t a gaMEr GUrl, she was in fact a person who enjoyed playing video games. She wasn’t just some floozy playing “insert latest rube game here” in a tank top to drain the bank accounts of lonely men, but she actually grew up enjoying video games. Morgan did end up doing some photo shoots for FHM (For Him Magazine) which I had a subscription for. Hey look, I was young and impressionable or some such, and the subscription got me like 2 years worth of issues for 6 dollars, I have no shame. I mean a men's magazine photo shoot in 2004 was pretty tasteful compared to what you see some of today’s women posting on Instagram. She ended up appearing in a few issues and having her own articles for awhile, I appreciated it. Of the four horsemen of G4: Adam, Morgan, Kevin, and Olivia……Morgan is the probably the only one who has a soul and the only one I’d ever care to meet.

***UNSCREWED WITH MARTIN SARGENT*** 

A late night talk show format, where the formula of the show seemed to revolve around watching the host Martin Sarget make a buffoon of himself. I would usually roll my eyes when this show came on since Martin Sarget was a bit of a toolbox, but I had no genuine hatred for the guy, and would probably enjoy his show now if present day me took a DeLorean back to 2003. The show had a realness to it that I appreciated, if a bit bombed, there were no laugh tracks. Why did I watch this show you might be asking yourself? Well back in 2003, in an apartment with no internet connection, and predating smartphones, you only had so many options on a random weekday night, so it gave me and my roommate a little more hangout time directly following X-Play. 

MARTIN SARGET: 

A “wacky” 20 something who they randomly gave a TV show to, that’s all I got.

LAURA SWISHER: 

The “comedic” sidekick, that’s all I got.

***CHEAT!***

A show that gave tips, tricks, and cheats for video games. Not a bad idea for a show, but it would have made more sense during the NES - PS1 era when games were harder and cheat codes were more common. I would mostly just have this show on in the background instead of sitting down to watch it.

KRISTEN HOLT:

The lean, tan, dark haired TV personality that hosted Cheat!, no complaints from me.

***ATTACK OF THE SHOW***

What made Attack of the Show awesome was that it sort of felt like how you would binge watch YouTube today. Yes, YouTube was technically around back then, but people didn’t live on it like they do now. I loved 2007 Attack of the Show’s energy, segments, and skits like you wouldn’t believe…..I’d dare to be so bold, as to call it my favorite TV show at that time.

KEVIN PEREIRA: 

I started to get into Attack of the Show after Sarah Lane left, when the hosts were Kevin Pereira and Olivia Munn. I initially thought that Kevin was a bit of a tool, but ended up warming up to him, I think a lot of the show’s success has him to thank, without Kevin there is no Attack of the Show……simple as. 

OLIVIA MUNN: 

2007 Olivia Munn to this day still stands as one of the most desirable women I’ve ever seen on the TV. She later dropped the GamEr GuRL charade and went on to have an embarrassing film career. Hollywood Munn just wasn’t the same, too much plastic surgery and cosplaying as a Hollywood actress just didn’t fit her quite as well as when she was cosplaying as a gAmeR GurL. However, back in 2007 I bought her gimmick hook, line, and sinker…..I can even remember Netflixing (having a Netflix DVD mailed to you) some D-list horror movie she was in for 9 seconds because of how smithen I once was of her.

***G4 COPS/NINJA WARRIOR ERA 2008-2014***

Sadly I have little to say about these years, I only caught a few glimpses of the channel at other people’s houses, and the random YouTube clip here and there. Adam Sessler was axed from X-Play, and you can’t have X-Play without both Adam and Morgan. Olivia left Attack of the Show, and left Kevin with a revolving door of supermodels, until eventually Kevin left the show as well, and you can’t have Attack of the Show without Kevin.

***G4 NIGHTMARE WORLD ERA 2021-Present***

In late 2020, G4 held a reunion special on YouTube, which reunited the old gang of Adam, Morgan, Kevin, and Olivia…something I never thought I’d see again, the very idea of this made my heart swell with joy. I don’t remember much from the reunion special, but it had a few new cornballs thrown into the mix just to ruin any chance of a feel good show. I also kept thinking to myself, I wonder how much they had to pay Olivia to get her in this room LoL. Jump forward to late 2021 and G4 is officially back, so what has changed since fond memories of nearly 20 years ago, well we’ll take a look at some of the current roster down below in a moment. Television is a dead platform, and everyone under the sun has their own personal platform to talk about and play video games on. GaMer guRLS, and GamEr gUys (yes, they exist too) are too busy either tending to their own delusions of growing a gaming channel, or watching one of their favorite E-celebrities talk about games before they’d ever tune in to G4.

ADAM SESSLER NIGHTMARE WORLD ERA:

As to not ruin my love and nostalgia for the 2003-2007 Tech TV/G4 Golden Era, I have to try my very best to erase all of the tweets from this sociopath from my mind. I 100% know that this guy goes out on the street corners in San Francisco and takes shits on the streets. There is not a single doubt in my mind about this, Adam Sessler openly shits in the streets. Adam Sessler tweets his latest schizo rant on Twitter and then passes a hot log between his legs on to the streets of San Fran……...FUCK NIGHTMARE SESS, I HATE HIM.

INDIANA BLACK:

Indiana Black a.k.a. Froskurinn is a hybrid cross between Owen Wilson and an escaped lab rat, who we are now forced to look at over G4’s last lineup of hosts, which was filled to the brim with actual supermodels. I personally don’t care what she looks like, yes she is unattractive, and looks like she woke up in a trash can filled with discarded crack pipes and Faygo soda cans, that’s fine…..all that matters are her reviews on video games, right? Well bad news, turns out she is a massive piece of shit, who knows nothing about gaming, and is mad that she wasn’t born looking like Sara Jean Underwood, and boy oh boy are we going to hear about it now! G4’s relaunch was always set on a crash course to fail, but this gutter trash has  put a jet pack on it’s back to get there faster.

Tech TV/G4 2003-2004 gets a 🥞🥞🥞🥞🥞 out of 🥞🥞🥞🥞🥞

G4 2005-2007 gets a 🥞🥞🥞🥞 out of 🥞🥞🥞🥞🥞

G4 2008-2014: gets a N/A out of 🥞🥞🥞🥞🥞

G4 2021-Present: gets a LMMFAO OH NO NO NO out of 🥞🥞🥞🥞🥞

Ion Fury

 

Ion Fury

 

 

Bland and Broken 1/5

I was really looking forward to playing this game, I even got it while it was on sale for a great price, but sadly it had to be refunded. The game became unplayable at a certain point, whenever I was shooting at an enemy, I experienced what can only be described as having my character glitch around the level. On top of the game being broken, I could tell very early on that this game wasn’t going to be Blood or Duke Nukem, even if the main character was trying her best to cosplay as him.

Spider-Man: No Way Home

 

Spider-Man: No Way Home

THE AVERAGE SPIDER-MAN

I do not care about the Tom Holland movies at all, and to be honest I had a lot of criticisms about the Sam Rami trilogy (The Holy Trilogy) when they first came out, but looking back at those with my 2021 goggles on, good lord they have aged like a fine wine.

THE CAST:

SPIDER-MAN TINY (Tom Holland): First off you have Tom Holland who is 4’11, which is just way too short, there is a scene with Tom and Tobey next to each other and Tobey straight up had to take a knee to be on eye level with this small child.

MJ (Zendaya Maree Stoermer Coleman): Next you have the new version of Mary Jane…or…err…excuse me, it’s just M.J., if you are going to have a new love interest for Peter that isn’t Mary Jane….okay I guess……but at least make her hot, this potato head straight up looks like former President of Nintendo Reggie Fils-Aimé.

AUNT MAY (Marisa Tomei): In this universe Aunt May instead of being a shriveled up old sea hag is a bit younger, which hey…I get…..no one likes looking at old people. For this role they cast Marisa Tomei, which is fine, I’m still uncertain why Gen Xers go ape shit for her so much, I missed out on being a Gen Xer by about 2 years so I guess I just don’t see it.

FLASH THOMPSON (Tony Revolori): The bully/jock/popular kid who traditionally is played by a juiced up Chad type character, but nope….not in this nightmare cast, Flash is played by a 4’6 Bollywood child actor who’s never even been in the parking lot of a gym before. In a realistic fight even Tom Holland would be able to send this kid to the E.R.

J. JOHAH JAMESON (J.K. Simmons): J.J. is hands down one of the best castings in any movie ever, his role in The Holy Trilogy never fails to crack me up, he is right up there with Hugh Jackman as Wolverine as far as perfect castings go. With that out of the way, his role in this movie confused me…..is he from Tobey or Tiny’s universe? I get that he’s more of a Alex Jones type character instead of working for The Daily Bugle in this movie, since newspapers aren’t really a thing anymore, but why does Tiny’s J.J. look exactly like Tobey’s J.J.?

SPIDER-MAN THE HOLY TRILOGY (Tobey Maguire): The actual Spider-Man Tobey Maguire dons the red and blue for the first time since 2007. Tobey does about as good of a job as a 46 year old tired actor wearing Spider-Man pajamas can do.

SPIDER-MAN AMAZING (Andrew Garfield): I actually really enjoyed The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) and Andrew Garfeild did a decent job in his movies, but I didn’t mark out for his return like I did for Tobey.

GREEN GOBLIN (Williem Dafoe): Dafoe returns and nails it.

DOCTOR OCTOPUS (Alfred Molina): Molina returns and nails it.

SANDMAN (Thomas Haden Church): Exit light, enter the guy from Wings.

THE LIZARD (Rhys Ifans): Okay.

ELECTRO (Jamie Foxx): No thanks.

DAREDEVIL (Charlie Cox): Netflix boy shows up for a cup of coffee.

DOCTOR STRANGE (Benedict Cumberbatch): I am so sick of this guy.

THE STORY:

In between jokes being told, Dr. Strange opens a portal for Peter Parker to fix something, when all of a sudden….UH OH BIG BOO BOO….now there are many Spider-Mans. 

PROS:

-I never thought that two decades after seeing Spider-Man (2002) that I’d be back in a theater seeing Tobey Maguire return as Spider-Man, so that was pretty cool.

-The Green Goblin and Doctor Octopus are fantastic villains and steal the screen whenever they are on.

-The one scene with all three Spider-Men swinging towards the villains at the end looked really epic.

CONS:

-WAAAAAAY WAAAAAAAAAY WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY TOO MANY JOKES. I made this comment on social media and some rube replied with….

“Yah, jokes in movies, what a bad idea.” 

…and I replied with…

“I've already got Step Brothers Unrated on blu-ray if I want to crack a LoL. I get that a action movie needs a few jokes, but the let's make an awkward joke every 2 minutes was pretty cringe. It was even worse than the Joss Whedon Justice League.”

Seriously though, the movie felt like I was watching a sitcom and needed a laugh track. It was extremely painful watching Tobey have to force his MCU comedy bits. The Holy Trilogy had several few well thought out comedy moments sprinkled about and they all worked, it wasn’t a total comedy movie like No Way Home was.

-No return of any of Spider-Man’s other love interests.

I would have really liked to have seen Kirsten Dunst return as the actual Mary Jane and share a moment on the screen with Tobey’s Spider-Man, a massive feel good moment missed out on there. Maybe it would have overshadowed the current Peter and MJ’s romance, that’s the only reason I can think of as to why they didn’t include her.

It would have been nice to see a glimpse of Bryce Dallas Howard’s Gwen Stacy as well, while she is sort of forgettable in The Holy Trilogy, she’s so breathtakingly beautiful, I’d never complain about seeing her on screen.

Emma Stone’s Gwen Stacy returning would have also gotten a massive pop out of everyone, but again I think it would have overshadowed the current Spider-Man and MJ’s romance.

-Bruce Campbell could have easily been used for a thirty second cameo as ANYONE in the movie since he played a different character in each of The Holy Trilogy movies, and was even supposed to have played Mysterio in the canceled Spider-Man 4. 

-A lot of the action scenes in the movie were filmed in very dark locations or during night time, which kind of takes away from the entire point of the movie, which is being able to see thirty different characters on the screen all at once.

OVERALL THOUGHTS:

-As a lifelong Spider-Man fan, and as a fan of The Holy Trilogy, it was worth watching on the big screen to see some old favorites return, outside of that……it was just your average monthly Marvel movie.

Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) gets a 🥞🥞🥞 out of 🥞🥞🥞🥞🥞

Postal 2

 

Postal 2

 

Insert random Postal Dude quote here 5/5

Postal 2 is hilarious, it’s “inappropriate” without trying too hard, which is why I think it works so well. I had wanted to play this game ever since I first saw the review on X-Play back in 2003, last summer I finally got around to playing it on Steam and was not disappointed. The game was so good that I wanted to actually own it, so I purchased it on GOG as well.

PROS:

-A game made before everyone pretended to be offended by everything on Twitter.

-A game made before Twitter.

-Features my hero Gary Coleman.

-Paradise Lost DLC is worth playing as well.

CONS:

-The controller support is pretty dodgy.

Worms Armageddon

 Worms Armageddon 

 

Concrete Donkey your way to victory 5/5

I used to own Worms Armageddon on the Sega Dreamcast back in the day, me and my friends probably put in a couple of hundred hours passing around that Dreamcast controller. A top 10 favorite game of mine easily. Glad I own it on GOG now, I’m going to have to get a Dreamcast usb controller rigged up for maximum nostalgia feels. 

Being A ∆IK - Season 1

 

Being A ∆IK - Season 1

 

 

I like red heads 5/5

THE VERIFIED BEING A DIK OWNER

-Bought the game because he thought the red head was attractive.

-Spent money to help support GOG and the game developer DrPinkCake.

-Enjoyed the game and then moved on to enjoy another video game.

VS

THE NON VERIFIED BEING A DIK OWNER

-Owns every single Leisure Suit Larry game, but won’t play this game which is literally Leisure Suit Larry with modern graphics, because OH HECKIN NO, MUH MORALS all of a sudden.

-Instead spends money on the latest Funko Popperino and Monster Energy Zero Ultra.

-Hasn’t enjoyed a video game in years.

Fight Angel Special Edition

 

Fight Angel Special Edition

 

PROS:

-I unironically enjoyed this game more than Street Fighter IV versions 1-7,000. 

-Great create a character mode.

-The game looks beautiful. I would highly recommend installing the free Fight Angel SE Realistic Pack if you’d prefer the characters to look like they are out of Tekken instead of Deep Space Waifu, but that’s a personal preference thing.

CONS: 

-The only big flaw of the game and sadly it’s a big one, is the characters seem to be moving like they are underwater during combat. If the developers can ever fix this issue, the game would be solid gold. I’d still recommend this game, but just know what you are getting yourself into.

-I’m not big into online multiplayer with most fighting games (Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike and Mortal Kombat X being the only online ones I could ever win at lol), but from what I’ve read the community is small and the netcode is trash.

MAINS:

-It’s most fun to play as your create a character during the game, so I mostly just use her with Ilham’s moveset.

-Wu May is the town drunk, so obviously she was my favorite from the main roster, with Ilham and Una following close behind.

 

Sonic Mania Plus

 

Sonic Mania Plus

 

SONIC 2 ON STEROIDS 

If you had higher testosterone levels like myself back in the day, you most likely chose the Sega Genesis over the Super Nintendo, and if you had a Sega Genesis, then you almost certainly played the masterpiece Sonic 2 at some point, and this game feels like Sonic 2 on steroids. 

The Sonic series took a dark turn during the Dreamcast era, while Mario was able to make a beautiful transition into 3D, Sonic was just never meant for the 3D world, Sonic’s fan base also became EXTREMELY bizarre after the 90’s. Sonic Mania feels like it’s straight out of the Genesis era which is why it works so well.

PROS:

-Sonic the Hedgehog, Miles “Tails” Prower (my main), and Knuckles the Canoeenchilada all return.

-Excellent level design.

-Excellent boss battles.

-Dangerously charming.

-Debug mode with level select is available by using a code. 

CONS:

-Flying Battery Zone level has some pretty cheap deaths.

-The new characters were pretty unexciting.

Mighty the Armadillo who at first I thought was Shadow the Hedgehog, looks like Sonic with a red mullet and his ground attack is the worst special move of any of the characters.

Ray the Flying Squirrel looks like Super Sonic, if Super Sonic had aged in real time over the years and was now a bloated dumpy looking version of Super Sonic. His special move is sort of like Knuckle’s gliding ability except you can move up or down while gliding, it’s not terrible, but it makes more sense to just play as Knuckles since Knuckles can also climb up walls.