Nimble Entertainment Reviews Depot

Welcome back to the final part of my eagerly anticipated games list of 2020.  Let's get going! Rune Factory 5 for the Nintendo Switch. I do enjoy me some nice, peaceful farming games every once in a while, like Harvest Moon or Stardew Valley.  If you're not familiar with the Rune Factory series, it is basically Harvest Moon but mixed with a JRPG, so you have to explore dungeons and fight monsters at the same time as making sure your crops are watered and your livestock is looked after. This sort of game really works well on a handheld so it's a great fit for the Switch. Streets of Rage 4 for the Nintendo Switch. Whether or not this one actually turns out to be as good as the classic entries in the series for the Sega Megadrive remains to be seen, but at the moment I am looking forward to checking this one out. I quite like the art style that they've gone for - it's both modern and retro inspired at the same time. I hear that Yuzo Koshiro is only doing part of ...

Due to the rise of streaming services and the convenience they afford us for accessing high quality media, the poor old Blu Ray has gone into something of a decline over the last few years.  One great side effect of that is that they are now incredibly cheap and can be picked up for next to nothing.  I recently did just that, and The Butler was one of a dozen or so movies that I acquired. I had never actually heard of the film before, which is surprising, but I decided to take the extremely small risk of spending 50p on it as it sounded interesting.  What I discovered was a fascinating tale about a man who served eight different American presidents through their terms in the White House. The Butler is based on a true story, though it is a fictionalised version of events so certain things may have been exaggerated for dramatic effect.  As the film begins the main character Cecil Gaines (brilliantly played by Forest Whitaker) is just a boy, living and working in a co...

Welcome back to part three of my 2020 gaming list! Bravely Default II for the Nintendo Switch. While I find it very peculiar that Square Enix have chosen to ignore the fact that they already released a perfectly decent sequel to Bravely Default, called Bravely Second, I do welcome the idea of more games set in that world and with those characters.  If you're not familiar with the Bravely Default series, they are basically a call back to the earliest Final Fantasy games - turn based combat, a robust class system and gorgeous hand painted backgrounds are all staples of the series.  There are some nice modern touches as well though, such as the ability to speed up random battles so they go by four times as fast, or you can also decide to turn them off altogether. Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3 for the Nintendo Switch. I have thoroughly enjoyed both of the previous entries in this indie series, where you take control of a busy kitchen and via a series of different mini games, att...

The Personal History of David Copperfield is the latest project from writer and director Armando Ianucci, who has worked on other such hilarious movies and TV shows like Death of Stalin, The Thick of It and Veep. It is of course a brand new adaptation of the classic Charles Dickens story, a story that is no stranger to being constantly told and retold over the years.  Dickens stories have always had an element of humour and the absurd about them, even as characters find themselves beset by poverty and misery at every turn.  This version is no exception. The basic outline of the plot is that an older and wiser David Copperfield has written a play based on the many places and people from his eventful life and is now presenting them to an audience for the first time.  The film begins on the stage, but as Dev Patel as Copperfield starts to narrate what's going on, the film transitions into flashback scenes depicting what happened. The film charts his life from a young boy l...

It's time for part two of my 2020 gaming list, so let's get on with it! Doom Eternal for the Xbox One. The modern Doom reboot from a few years ago is getting a sequel, which is due out in March.  Journalists recently got to play the finished game for three hours, and it's looking pretty good.  The same fast paced, visceral combat from the first game returns, combined with new platforming sections and abilities for Doomguy.  Of all the games in this list this is actually one of the games I'm looking forward to the least, so I may not rush out to get it on release day.  I will pick it up eventually though. Persona 5: Royal for the PlayStation 4. This is a revamped and expanded version of Persona 5, much like Persona 4: Golden on the Vita.  It adds more story, more characters and more dungeons to the existing campaign, which was already over 100 hours long! I never actually got around to completing the original version of the game, so this is a good opportuni...

Jupiter Ascending is a bit of an older film compared to those that I've reviewed so far, but on the Nimble Entertainment Review Depot, anything goes.  I don't want to limit myself by just covering the latest releases, so here we are.  I've always thought that this film looked pretty cool from the trailers and the little bits and pieces of it that I have seen over the years, but terrible reviews both from the critics and the general public have put me off from seeing it.  At the weekend I picked up a handful of cheap Blu Ray's, and this was amongst them.  Not expecting much at all, I sat down to watch the film last night, and I ended up really enjoying myself. First of all, Jupiter Ascending looks fantastic in multiple ways - the design of the world, the special effects work, the choreography of the action sequences, and the attractive main leads. This film really pops in HD, though I have just got the regular Blu Ray version.  Out of interest I did check and s...

No gaming review for you this week - I haven't managed to finish anything lately or spend much time with retro games, so I'm not really ready to share my opinions on anything.  I am more than half way through Yakuza 3, part of the way into God of War and Watch Dogs 2, and I just started playing through Simon the Sorcerer yesterday.  In the meantime I'm going to share with you my list of games that I'm looking forward to this year.  If this gets too long then there will be a second part.  I'm also going to do the same thing for movies and TV so watch out for those articles if you're interested. Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore for the Nintendo Switch. I have just received my copy of this but I have yet to put it in my Switch and start playing.  This used to be a Wii U exclusive, one of the few that were left to be ported to another console, but now it's here and can be played portably, which is fantastic.  It's a JRPG which takes bits of the Shin Megam...

Lost in Space is the latest modern day remake of an old, venerated show.  The original Lost in Space took the concept of Swiss Family Robinson, in which the titular family find themselves stranded, and gave it a science fiction twist. I never actually saw the original 60's version (I'm way too young for that) but do know that there is a friendly robot whose catchphrase is "Danger, Will Robinson!". In more recent times there was a big budget movie made in 1998 starring Matt LeBlanc, aka Joey from Friends.  I remember that is was panned by critics at the time so I never ended up seeing it.  The revamped theme tune by Apollo 440 did hang around on the radio for a few months though. That brings us to this all new version of the story, which is a Netflix Original.  The first season actually came out a couple of years ago now but the release of season two prompted me to finally watch it. I ended up quite enjoying it, but there is certainly some room for improvement....

1917 is the latest film from the highly acclaimed director, Sam Mendes, who recently gave us one really great Bond movie in the form of Skyfall, and one rather bad one in the form of Spectre. The story for this new film is based on a tale that young Sam's grandfather used to tell him, of a vital World War I mission to try and prevent the unnecessary loss of thousands of lives. As Colin Firth explains to us all, another General believes that the Germans have retreated, but thanks to aerial surveillance photos Firth's General now knows that is a trap and they are lying in wait. ready to mow anyone down who is foolish to charge. A young soldier by the name of Lance Corporal Blake, played by Dean-Charles Chapman, is given the task of travelling through previously occupied enemy territory to try and reach the other General before he sends his men into certain death.  Blake is told to choose one other soldier to help and support him in this task, and he chooses Lance Corporal Schof...

Yakuza Kiwami 2 is a comprehensive remake of Yakuza 2 for the PlayStation 2, and to be honest it was sorely needed. The first two games were really starting to show their age but the story in each of them was still worth experiencing, so Sega took the new Dragon engine that they built for Yakuza 0 and Yakuza 6 and used it to build these remakes.  The director of these games has gone on record to say that if Yakuza 0 hadn't performed so well in the west then these games wouldn't exist at all, but the series has experienced a well deserved increase in popularity outside of Japan since the prequel game was released.  Being able to experience the entire Kiryu saga on one single console is fantastic. As usual for this series, the main protagonist of Yakuza Kiwami 2 is is Kazuya Kiryu, an ex Yakuza with a heart of gold who always manages to get mixed up in their clan squabbles and whatever schemes are going down.  This time a group has split off from the Omi Alliance in Kansa...

The Art of Point & Click Adventure Games is the sixth book that I have bought and read by UK publisher, Bitmap Books.  I have previously read through five volumes of their "Visual Compendium" series which show off the fantastic pixel art for various games from a given console or computer, such as the Commodore 64, Amiga, NES, SNES and Master System. These books are a mixture of double page spreads that show off the art from the game and lengthy, in depth interviews with the creators of some of these stone cold classics. This new book takes the same approach and applies it to a genre of game rather than particular system - which is of course the point and click adventure genre.  The book takes you all the way from the early days of the genre with games like King's Quest and Maniac Mansion from the two powerhouses of the genre, Sierra and LucasArts, through to games from a few years ago.  Pretty much all of the big names from the world of point and click adventures ar...

The Witcher is the latest big budget endeavour from Netflix, and it is of course based upon Andrzej Sapkowski's reasonably popular book series. Many other people will be familiar with the series due to the games rather than the novels though, so if they are expecting this series to reflect the games they may come away a little bit disappointed.  Really it's best to treat this series as its own separate interpretation of the stories rather than something that's trying to 100% recreate them.  I think that if you approach The Witcher on Netflix from this mindset, you will end up enjoying it a lot more. Before I get into what's different and what's not, however, I want to touch upon Henry Cavill's performance as Geralt of Rivia, the eponymous Witcher himself.  I think that Cavill was the perfect choice for the role - it's obvious from his performance and from things that he has said in interviews that he was already a huge fan of the games when the opportunity...

Little Women is of course based on the classic novel written by Louisa May Alcott and was released towards the end of 2019.  It was directed by Greta Gerwig, who received a lot of praise for her previous film, Lady Bird.  The star of that film, Saoirse Ronan, joins the cast of this one as the protagonist Joe Marsh, alongside Florence Pugh (from Fighting With My Family and Midsommar),  Emma Watson (Hermione from the Harry Potter series) and Eliza Scanlan playing her three sisters, Amy, Meg and Beth.  The cast is rounded out with other acclaimed actors such as Laura Dern playing the mother of the family, Meryl Streep playing Aunt March, and Timothée Chalamet playing the main love interest, Theodore "Laurie" Lawrence. One of the major changes that Geta Gerwig has made in her version of the story is to alternate between flashbacks and flashforward sequences, which I found to be a little confusing at first. The very first time the film jumps ahead about a decade, i...

Hi there, thanks for checking out my brand new feed! I would like to take a few minutes of your time to explain why I have launched this and what I plan to do here.  While I have had my own gaming blog for over a decade now, I have often felt a wish to also review other forms of media, such as movies, TV and books (not so much music, but that may also happen from time to time).  I go to the cinema frequently, in fact more than I have ever done before thanks to the fact that my local cinema only charges £2.50 per ticket on a week night and £3.50 on the weekend (it is the Picturedrome in Bognor Regis if you're interested, and it's well worth a visit). I also watch lot of different TV series via Netflix, Prime Video and fairly soon, Disney+ (the service will be launching in March in the UK).  I haven't really read a ton of books over the last few years, but that is something I hope to rectify.  I've just started the first volume of the Witcher series, The Last Wish an...