Wysp Review

Huh, a website review. Never thought I'd come to this, but oh well.
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As most of you may know, deviantArt is slowly descending to hell, which is something they've brought upon themselves. They simply don't have their users in their best interest. What started out as a website for professional artists became a cesspool of drama and faggotry. It's times like this where you need to find an alternative site to host your work, which may not be easy. SheezyArt is dead, Scratch is more or less for kids, Fan-Art Central is outdated, FurAffinity, InkBunny and Weasyl are limited to furries and Tumblr is still a prominent drama induced site.

But fear not, for there is a new alternative. Wysp.

Wysp is an independent website created by a fellow deviant. It's often toted as a very peaceful website. Let's go over the pros and cons.

Pros

• As opposed to deviantArt where anything goes, a lot of the content on Wysp is clean and, dare I say, actual art.
• The website provides inspiration to help you if you go through writers block.
• The community is friendly and drama free
• You have not only a customizable icon, but a customizable background image as well.
• You could fill out an interview which helps to better introduce yourself to newcomers.

Cons

• There seems to be an issue with the comments section, where replies may be mixed up.

Personal nitpicks

• There's a character limit when you fill out your info.

Overall

Wysp has potential, and I highly recommend it to anyone looking for an alternate art site.

Rating: 8/10

Final Rant on wwwarea

You can call this a user review, or whatever you prefer. Either way, let's get into this.

If you've seen the comments on my Alpha and Omega review, you'd notice some comments from a guy called lightbluediamond. Well, he's (most likely) wwwarea. Who is wwwarea? He's a man who prides himself on defending freedom of expression. Which translates to defending everyone and everything, no matter how little credibility they may have. He won't stop until everyone shares his, quite frankly, diluted mindset, and he'd do whatever he could to pass himself off as a victim, even when the odds are against him.

Whenever anyone criticizes him in a way that isn't sugarcoated to his liking, he tends to call people cyberbullies, and he'll try his hardest to give his opponents grief, even going as far as blackmailing people to get them to stop criticizing him. He's that desperate to continue his needless crusade.

He's a lot like TheOrionBroadcast, a grown ass man who also hates it whenever people don't share his views. Not to mention how the two have movies they fawn over. In wwwarea's case, it's Alpha and Omega. Whenever anyone dares to talk negatively about the art style used in the movie, you could count on wwwarea treating you like shit, and acting like a complete bigot. It's ironic since he calls people bigots most of the time because they don't think like him. Oh, one more thing, he's 21 years old. He's a grown man, getting butthurt over petty drama.

The internet isn't a happy place where everyone joins hands and sings Beatles songs, there'll always be people to criticize what you do. By defending any disturbing actions online, wwwarea makes himself an endearing target for everyone.

It gets better, he has an ED article too, and he stalks it 24/7 just to whine whenever it gets updated. By acting this immature, it really opens a window to wwwarea's insanity. It's been implied that he hardly goes outside and spends all day on the computer, getting worked up over nothing. He even claimed that the world is filled with, I'm not kidding, cyberbullies. A 21 year old man is worried about "cyberbullies" in the real world. How sad.

This has been going on for so long, that I now genuinely pity wwwarea. I'm not kidding. I feel bad for a man who has taken his obsession with me to near Chris Chan levels and refuses to realize why people go after him. To put this into better perspective, I recommended, twice, that wwwarea should go offline for a while, go outside and focus on his real life, and what do you think happened? He continued to act like an immature jackass.

I await the future. I wouldn't be surprised if he, say, goes on Dr. Phil or Oprah, or any of those talk shows and mopes about how people don't like what he stands for.

For now, aside from some occasional replies, I'm done talking about him. He is a lost cause.

Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric review

Sonic games tend to appeal to people in different ways. There're the good games like the Genesis lineups, that helped lay the foundation of the series, there're the Sonic Adventure games, the Sonic Advance, Sonic Rush games, Sonic Heroes and Sonic Unleashed that help to expand the Sonic universe with insuring lore, there're the questionable games like, well the rest, that only appeal to specific people, yet are still enjoyable in certain ways. It doesn't matter how good or bad a Sonic game is, just so long as it has some appeal to it, otherwise, you'd be stuck with a game like Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric.

Now I know what you're thinking, there's a time and a place for a Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric review. Yeah, and that time is while Sonic Boom is still a thing. To correlate with the news that Boom might last throughout the 2016s, I might as well take the time to redo one of my old reviews. But first, a little backstory.

Sonic Boom originally served as an off-cannon spin-off to the Sonic series. As part of the deal, Boom received its own show and two games to boot. Needless to say, practically every Sonic fan praised the shit out of this spinoff. However, skip a few months to the release of Boom, it pretty much spelled the end for Sonic.

Rise of Lyric was developed by Big Red Button Entertainment, an independent company managed by former Naughty Dog employees Bob Rafei and Jeff Lander. To put this into a more grim perspective, this was the only game BRB has ever worked on. I'm not kidding, and considering how the people behind the company has had experience with better developers, that just sad. The game utilized the Cry Engine 3, an engine that only works properly on more sophisticated game platforms (not low powered platforms like the Wii U).

Upon release, the game was met with overwhelmingly negative reviews, and combined with its 3DS counterpart, sold poorly, making this game, not only the lowest scoring Sonic game, but the lowest selling one too. Oddly enough, it got lower scores than Sonic 06, and it sold worse than even a bulk of the spin-off titles. Let that sink in.

The worst part about all this is that there're people who still try to defend this piece of shit, as well as Boom as a whole. Sonic Boom has bred the next generation of Sonicfags people. With that said, let's begin.
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For some reason, the game starts off with Sonic getting blasted by enemy fire before his friends, and getting crushed by rubble. I'd say its the perfect representation for how SEGA feels about Sonic these days. In all seriousness, why start off with this? It's rather pointless and it pretty much spoils the story (to a degree). We cut to an adobe after effects time card, and we're then treated to a massive decrease in quality, as Sonic and co. chase after Eggman. This is especially irritating, and here's why.

The game passes itself off as a prequel to the Boom series, a retelling of Sonic lore if you will. How did Sonic and co. know each other? Why are they chasing Eggman? Where are they? Why should I give a damn?  It all boils down to shitty writing. Something that has been apparent since 2010. Hey, you know how in every Sonic game, there's a great soundtrack to listen to? Even in 06? Here? They just use a generic orchestral theme. Believe me, when you fuck up something that even another catastrophe got right, you know you've fucked up hard. The chase continues on, as we're ambushed by Knuckles' now warped personality. shitty puns, and then we get a Metal Sonic cameo. I'd be more appreciative of this, had he not shown up only for fan service.

On to the voice acting, it's all the main voice actors from Colors onwards. Sonic's voice has slowly developed into that of an elderly Scott Menville, Amy sounds more bored, Knuckles is more or less the same as before, and, oddly enough, Tails' voice, Kate Higgins, doesn't appear for this game (I guess even she didn't want to take the piss), and instead, Tails is voiced by Charmy's actress, Colleen O' Shaugnessey. They're not terrible, but the San Diego and 4kids casts are still easier on the ears.

We're then treated to one of the major flaws in this game, the speed sections. While speed sections are always fun, they're brought down by the choppy framerate. This woudn't be a big deal, had it not been for the fact that the framerate can cause you to crash into obstacles, due to them appearing too late.

The chase continues until Sonic and Tails are lured into a pit, containing ancient robots Eggman dug up. We then receive the second fatal flaw in the game. The combat. The combat narrows down to endless button mashing, and it remains the same, all the fucking time. After defeating the robots, Sonic and Tails go exploring. I'd like to bring up how poor the environments look. They look bland and rather uninteresting. You know how in games like Sonic Adventure and Sonic Unleashed, you have this wide open and interesting towns to explore, let's get rid of that and make you beg for those Mario like map screens in Colors.

After some boring exploring, Sonic and Tails rejoin Knuckles and Amy, and another combat mission occurs. After that button-mash-fest, the four attempt to escape and they come across an ancient temple, where they see depictions of Sonic and Tails. Probably meant to represent better times. In spite of Amy warning him not to, Sonic opens the door and the four enter, just before Metal could get in. Here, we're treated to a kinda interesting moment with Metal, and him wanting to be the one true Sonic.

But enough of that, we have more worthless exploration to do, but before that, we need to get more of Knuckles' degraded personality. One thing you'll immediately realize about this game is that the characters are almost always talking, spewing out cheesy one liners and stating the most blatantly obvious factors no matter what.

The game from here is somewhat of a tutorial for the characters, as they try to find a way back out. Following that, Sonic and co. discover that they've accidentally released the title villain of this game, Lyric, who's about as threatening as The Deadly Six. He ties up the four and he escapes, planning to kill all life and replace it with machines. Hey, this reminds me of that one guy who wants to roboticize every living creature and kill all forms of nature.

The four manage to escape, and they make electric whips- oh I'm sorry, "enerbeams" out of the beams that trapped them. They exit the tomb and they travel to the excavation site where they meet their friend (at least according to this game, it's so well explained that I wouldn't be surprised if they just decided to have everyone live in pineapples under the sea). They meet Cliff and they tell him what happened. He tells the four that they need to gather five crystals in order to to take down Lyric once and for all.

Now we're introduced to another gameplay mechanic. Along with venturing to specific areas, you also get the option to help out the locals, which won't do much, aside from helping you upgrade your weapons, which is kinda needless, since you could still defeat enemies with no issue. They're first tasked with helping a group of trapped miners, which only serves as another tutorial. they are then sent to a chamber where they find the first crystal.

They soon head off to Bygone Island, where the same old song and dance occurs, with different missions each time. It's so similar, I'll just be focusing on one particular mission between Sonic and Amy, which has the luxury of horning in an unnecessary piece of Sonamy fan service.

After more of the same old same old, the four continue their search, and Sonic and Tails get separated from the others. They soon come across an ancient robot named M.A.I.A., who tells them of Lyric and how they could stop them. She then proceeds to send them back in time, (because it worked SO well eight years ago), but we have more fan service. Shadow makes an appearance and he attempts to defeat Sonic.

Ok, first off, why is Shadow suddenly the bad guy? The disfavor between the two has slowly died down over the years, so why change it now? Second, Kirk Thornton has yet to improve his performance as Shadow. Through more bland combat, puns and stating the obvious, they knock Shadow into an alternate portal, and our two heroes continue on to the past.

More bad gameplay later, they find Lyric and trap him, which would intimately prove to be bogus later on. The two return to the present, and Knuckles and Amy find them as well. Skipping more of the useless exploration, they reach a destroyed village and continue on their merry way. One thing I need to bring up is that throughout the game, it's shown that Sonic has more of a loner dialect, which is why he still hangs around his friends and often relies on their assistance, hello!? But enough of that. The two are then faced by Metal Sonic in an even more boring boss battle. They ultimately succeed and claim another crystal.

I know I keep skipping around in this game, but most of what happens in it is more or less the same as earlier events in the game. After a boss battle with Eggman, the two eventually make it to the Sky Citadel, where they face Lyric. He captures Sonic and forces his friends to hand over the crystals, which they do, but then we're treated to a replay of the very first scene, and of course Sonic survives, thus showing how pointless this scene is.

When 06 did a similar thing, at least Sonic was actually dead, and it provided some emotional weight for the rest of his friends. to put it simply, even if it sucked, it still worked a hell of a lot better than the scene here.

They escape the crumbling citadel and they go to Lyric's lair where they do battle. The two succeed, we're treated to one more Shadow cameo, everyone returns home and we're given a highly lackluster ending.
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*Sigh.... do you understand why this is the worst Sonic game of all time? The plot is poorly written and lacks logic, the graphics are horrendous, even by Wii U standards, the music is forgettable (and considering that Sonic is a series that always gears out great soundtracks no matter what, it's all the more insulting), the dialogue is painful to listen to and the gameplay is completely bland and rather schizophrenic. Oh, and like 06, there're plenty of glitches, such as the standard falling through the floor glitch and the more famous Knuckles jump glitch that allows you to skip through portions of the game, which is beneficial, since a bulk of the game is completely worthless.

The fact that many Sonic fans continue to defend this terrible game further makes me weep for the condition of a series I once kinda tolerated, and further confirms my fears over what the series has been reduced to since 2010, a shitty campfest that only idiots and Sonicfags could enjoy. Adding to the horror, Sonic Boom has been confirmed to continue airing, the sequel to Sonic Dash was made only to further promote Boom and another Sonic Boom game is coming out this fall, and this one has Ken Pontac and Warren Graff on the writing team. Great, now we have a bland platformer with writing on par with a Five Nights at Freddy's fan fiction.

It's made worse by the fact that SEGA not only uses Sonic Boom images on their social network accounts, but they're not even interacting with their fans to get their feedback, and are instead shelling out memes, further representing how much SEGA cares about their fans these days, and worse yet, SEGA implies that Boom will still play a key part in the Sonic franchise.

Oh, and to anyone who questions whether or not I'll review Shattered Crystal, I probably won't. There isn't much material for me to work with, and it might apply to the latest Boom game.

Overall, if you want a Sonic game that doesn't pander to the idiots who give fuck all about meaningful content, stick with the Sonic games from Sonic 1 to Unleashed, or just play Freedom Planet, or both.

I'm REM, and until we meet again, good day.
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Ratings
Gameplay: 1.5/5
Story: 1/5
Music: 1.5/5
Graphics: 1/5
Acting: 2/5

Total: 6/25

Alpha and Omega Review

CONTENT WARNING: The following review will be highly critical. If you're a devoted furry or a fanboy, this review will cause you to cry uncontrollably. If that happens, well, what did you expect?

Does anyone remember the 2010 animated feature, Alpha and Omega? No? Well me neither.

2010 seemed to serve as the Y2K of media in general. The TV shows took a massive nose dive in quality, Sonic games took on a comedic tone that sacrificed anything of value, which ultimately led to the very catastrophe that is Sonic Boom, among other things. To put it simply, now everyone had a reason to complain (and review)

I first heard about Alpha and Omega through the trailers, but when they stopped airing them, I immediately forgot about it. It wasn't until I came across it by random when looking up the film's production company, Crest Animation, and its less than positive reception.

The film was released by the king shit-meisters Lionsgate (infamous for releasing direct to DVD catastrophes of all kinds, including a Twilight parody that makes you pine for Seltzerburg's Vampires Suck), and was produced by Richard Rich's Crest Animation, best known for The Swan Princess and, more infamously, The King and I.

The film was directed by both Anthony Bell and Ben Gluck. The former had almost no experience in cinema, having worked on shows like The Wild Thornberries, As Told by Ginger, The Simpsons, Happily Ever After: Tales for Every Child and The Boondocks, all, no doubt, good shows, but not close to actual cinema. As for the latter, prior to directing this movie, he only really directed one movie, Brother Bear 2 (a direct to video movie). I personally hate the Brother Bear movies, but I won't say Ben had any impact on it (blame the writers).

My point? Making two directors who had no major experience in professional cinema work on a feature length movie is bound to backfire. The movie itself was a modest box office success, but critically? Not so. It currently has a 13% on Rotten tomatoes, and believe me, there's a reason for that. Enough beating around the bush, let's get into this.
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So we start off with a panning shot of the mountains, showing off the title, along with the stellar computer animation that wouldn't look out of place in an episode of Sonic Boom. What year was this made in again? 2010? Beautifulllllllll.......

After that, we cut to one of our leads, Kate, training with her sister Lily. Alongside, we see out second lead, Humphrey, screwing around on a bobsled with his fellow omegas. Considering what'll be shown later on, this'll be the most normal thing you'll see in the movie.

Before I continue on with the plot, one thing you'll immediately pick up from the movie is the designs. These wolves don't look anything like wolves, let alone appealing. You know those troll doodles that're meant to make fun of wolves? That's what the wolves in this movie resemble. It feels as if the creators of this movie merely went on FurAffinity and looked for wolf artwork, converted the designs and made the movie on the spot.

Now, I know what you're thinking "BWWWWAAAAAWWHHHH! REM DER ANTHROMORPIK! ETZ TEH ARTYSTZ INTENTYION!". Well, look at it this way. While in, well, every cartoon and movie ever (with anthropomorphic characters), animals are portrayed in situations outside of their own normal environment. In Alpha and Omega, they're portrayed in their natural habitat and they still act like wolves. Hell, they even walk on all fours, something that good anthropomorphic characters don't do. The way they're made makes them look completely out of place, and considering what they're going for, it's just pathetic.

Back to the movie, Kate and Humphrey come across one another after Humphrey crashes, and from there, a connection is formed. Damn, even in the animated Titanic movies (the first two at least), the main leads had at least one line of dialogue before they knew it was meant to be. Kate walks off and Humphrey attempts to follow Kate, but is stopped by his pack leader Winston, played by Danny Glover. Oh how the mighty have fallen. I guess if your last name is Glover, you're doomed to appear in any bad modern movie. Just look at Crispin Glover.

Winston tells Humphrey that he can't be with Kate due to her being an alpha and Humphrey being an omega. Sigh... two things!

1. I'm not a complete expert on wolves in general, but alphas and omega aren't necessarily separate packs, they're part of a hierarchy.

2. The reason they classify alphas and omegas as such is to, you probably figured it out already, base it on Romeo and Juliet. Think about it, two people loving one another, them not being able to be with one another due to the packs they're part of, the title. This is about as original as Gnomeo and Juliet.

Anyhow, we skip past a few years and we see Kate going on her first hunt. Her fellow alphas trigger a stampede, which they get stuck in, and Kate goes to save them Oh gee, I wonder if they're going to go beyond the traits of that of a normal wolf for no good reason. I wonder, I wonder, I wonder, I won- let's just show it. Through some parkour moves, which normal wolves couldn't possibly pull off, she saves the alphas. About as awesome as Sunny D.

Later on, we see Winston speaking with the alpha pack leader, Tony, played by Dennis Hopper in his final role, and to think that prior to this, he only had the Super Mario Bros. movie tarnishing his resume. They're talking about how the valley they're in is going through a massive famine. Tony threatens Winston to unite their packs (which wouldn't be the issue if the writers did proper research on wolves in general), or he'll likely slaughter the omega pack. Tony claims that the one way to unite the packs is by having Kate marry his son Garth.

Question, aren't both Kate and Garth alphas? How would having them marry one another make a difference, when the better measure would be to have an alpha marry ann omega (in that case, Humphrey)? Oh right, then the movie wouldn't have any purpose, and we further need to drive the point that Kate and Humphrey should be together.

Moving on, we see the wolves engaged in a moonlight how, which of course translates to OOC wolves dancing and singing like Christina Aguilera. Garth meets Kate, and Humphrey, not satisfied, drops down and makes an ass of himself. I'd like to bring up that Garth has yet to instigate Humphrey and Kate in any way. This isn't Beauty and the Beast where the main female is antagonized by a pig of a man. Oh how I miss Gaston.

Kate ditches Humphrey and goes to the peak with Garth, where he engages in a how. But, it doesn't go so well, with Garth making a less than stellar howl, causing Kate to bail. Let me get this straight, you'd rather watch as your tribe slaughters another, and likely die, all because a wolf's howl wasn't satisfactory? How shallow.

Kate rejoins Humphr- oh I'm sorry, he appears again to denounce Garth some more. I've seen people in Joe the King who were more considerate than Humphrey. Soon enough, both wolves are shot with tranquilizer darts, which leads to a scene that is certainly no Madagascar. The two are then taken away by a group of rangers. Their respective packs hear about this, and the alphas warn the omegas are then warned by the alphas that Kate must return by the next full moon, which shouldn't be an issue, since the next full moon is within about three- oh wait, the creators don't know jack shit about logic. The two wake up in a new valley, where they are greeted by two ducks, Paddy and Marcel. After a pointless chase scene, which proudly displays the creator's ignorance of physics, Kate and Humphrey learn that they were taken to help repopulate.

Ok, points for not using the humans are evil cliche, but you're still in negative numbers. The two attempt to make it back to their home valley, and they do so by hitching a ride on the back of a truck that belongs to a couple consisting of a biker and a librarian. Still makes more sense than Sean Penn and Madonna, I guess. In all seriousness, the odd coupling mentioned indirectly references how Kate and Humphrey are meant to be, differences aside. Not unlike, oh I don't know, every romantic movie ever!

Now, before I forget about it, as Kate and Humphrey try to make it back, we're treated to some bonding scenes between Lily and Garth. As opposed to the cliched and forced pairing between Kate and Humphrey, this romance plays out naturally. If they were the main focus, then I'd have no purpose criticizing this movie. But alas, the cliched coupling is what we're supposed to focus on here.

Following some more cliches, consisting of Kate helping Humphrey in certain situations, including one where Humphrey messes with a bear cub before getting confronter by its mother and other schlock, we get to- ah fuck it, I wanna see Lily and Garth again. Lily helps Garth to conquer his inability to howl properly, which they do. We return to Humphrey who howls also, which is enough to seal the deal with Kate. Hey, remember when connections could be formed without stooping to menial stuff and cliches? Can we go back to that, please?

The two eventually make it back, but not before getting confronted by Tony, because hey, we have a, quite frankly, needless marriage to get through. Kate agrees to it, and everything ends happily. Cut to the next morning, Humphrey claims that he's going to leave the valley to see the world, heh, good riddance, and Kate soon joins Garth. Unfortunately, before the two could get together, putting this movie to an end, Kate claims that she doesn't really love him. Thus causing the, quite frankly, schizophrenic packs to fight one another.

The fighting causes a stampede to happen. But wait a minute, there's a famine going on, how could there be a stampede if there're no animals, let alone enough of them to engage in one? Winston and Tony get trapped in it, and Humphrey, somehow making it back in time, helps as Kate goes to retrieve Winston and Tony. She does, but she ultimately gets trampled, even as Humphrey tries to save her.

And of course she survives, what did you expect? To the people who worked on this movie, logic is just an option. After all that has happened, Kate and Humphrey are allowed to be together, same with Lily and Garth, and they engage in another moonlight howl, where Kate and Humphrey howl together, thus putting an end to this movie.
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And that was Alpha and Omega, a true testament to how much originally has depleted. The framework of this movie is similar to past films, which have done a much better job at being different, the film ignores logic, it has no proper baring on wolves in general, and it's just a forgettable movie overall. The fact that this movie has earned a total of four sequels (each of them, thankfully, only being straight to DVD) makes me weep for movie viewers these days, especially considering the fanbase (one of which, being a documented lolcow) who supports it.

So in conclusion, you're better off sticking with romances that don't suck, nor appeal to only children and furries. I'm REM, and until we meet again, good day.

Ratings

Animation: 3.5/10
Story: 3/10
Acting: 4.5/10

Final Rating: 10/30

Welcome

I decided to get back into reviewing, and what better way to do it than with a blog? I'll cover everything, from movies, to TV shows to video games.