This is long overdue, as I've been meaning to make this, for... checks date literally 10 months. I'm gonna go through the categories I use, what they refer to, and what tags are used for them, and then under a cut I'll go more into what certain specified details mean, mainly relevant to shows, comics, and games.
The Categories
In general, I group the things I review into "Movies", "Shows", "Comics", and "Games". These are mostly self-explanatory, but I'll get into the details hence:
Movies are fairly self-explanatory, and I don't feel any particular need to clarify anything on this.
Shows includes any recurring audiovisual experience that doesn't otherwise fall under the banner of movie, including those that may be associated with other terms first, such as anime.
Comics includes both traditional western comics, manga, and webcomics.
Games includes anything that can conceivably be fit under the umbrella of "video game", whether it's purchasable or not.
Generally everything I review will fall under one of these four categories, but may also be subcategorized in the tags where I feel it's appropriate, such as with notable subcategories (anime under shows, for example) or recurring reviews for works within the same franchise (such as Pokemon).
Each category has its own tag, as well as my overall reviews being tagged alike. The tags for each category can be found on relevant posts, but for convenience, here's the full list:
"hex reviews things" is the general tag for my reviews
"hex reviews movies" is the general tag for movies
"hex reviews shows" is the general tag for shows
"hex reviews comics" is the general tag for comics
"hex reviews games" is the general tag for games
None of these tags are probably surprising.
Next I'll get into some of the general details of how I review things, mostly the auxiliary details I provide at the start of reviews (for everything except movies). For the sake of post length, these'll go under a cut.
The Deets
I have a standard format I try to keep to for the header of reviews; the title, a silly quote relevant to the review, and then a block of information about what I'm reviewing. What exactly is included in this will vary depending on what I'm reviewing, so let's get into specifics:
All Reviews
All reviews will include a line specifying whether or not I recommend what I'm reviewing; this will typically be a yes or no, but may sometimes include a bit of clarification, or sometimes me just screaming. I do color-code these; green and blue are both unambiguous yeses, with the latter being an especially enthusiastic yes, while yellow is used for recommendations that come with a significant asterisk. Orange and red are used for no. There's theoretically a rare and elusive purple, but this may wind up never being seen, as it's hard to get me to be that enthusiastic about something.
This particular detail is the only thing present in the information block for movie reviews, as there's not really a whole lot worth clarifying otherwise.
Shows & Comics
Being explicitly serialized media, these actually have a lot in common, so most of the details to be clarified in the information block are shared between the two.
The big thing for these types of media is Structure. Specifically of the narrative kind. In general, I categorize shows and comics' narrative structure in four ways:
Episodic refers to shows/comics in which individual installments are largely self-contained; outside of the occasional storyline that covers a couple consecutive episodes/issues/strips, these have no overarching narrative structure to speak of. There might be an occasional call-back, there might be some mild changes season-to-season, but there's otherwise no real sense of continuity.
Continuous refers to shows/comics that have a conscious sense of continuity, and have actual overarching narrative storylines, usually built over individual seasons/runs. There might be more episodic-style hijinks thrown into the mix here and there, but the story is mostly continuous and rolling constantly.
Semi-Continuous is a weirder category; this specifically refers to shows and comics that are distinct hybrids between Episodic and Continuous, featuring a large amount of episodic content but also moving the status quo on a semi-regular basis. This is mostly relevant for shows, as a lot of cartoons will often start like this.
Epic is Continuous on steroids. These are shows/comics with one long, continuous story, with a very specific endgame. This isn't just long things (though that is one of the criteria I use), but also things that have one consistent, defined story from start to finish. Continuity is very important.
These of course are not necessarily rigid categories, and often a show or comic will start with one structure and transition into another; as mentioned under Semi-Continuous, this happens a lot with cartoons, which may start as Semi-Continuous and transition later into proper Continuous. I'll usually note if something like this happens.
There are two other relevant things to this: Format and Paid. Format is moreso relevant for comics, but it's generally distinguishing between web media and non-web media. This is also where "Paid" comes in; if it's paid, I'll specify details about it, and if it's not, you'll just see "free". If it's on TV primarily, it counts as paid, even if it's technically available for free via an antenna.
I will also usually specify Length, in whatever format is relevant for the specific work; if it's ongoing, I'll also specify that.
Games
This is where things get more complicated; for games I specify four main things: Genre, Platform, Price, and Length.
Genre is fairly self-explanatory; it's what genre I feel most fits the bill for whatever this game is. Generally I go with whatever the common consensus on that particular game is.
Platform is a bit more nuanced; for this I specify what baseline platforms the game is officially available for. Platforms that are technically available through backwards compatibility are not counted. For PC, I generally try to specify what operating systems the game is available for; if I just specify PC, assume it's only available for Windows. This is unfortunately a very common thing. I will however generally mention if the game runs well on Steam Deck, with a link to the game's ProtonDB page.
Price is exactly what you think it is: what the price for the game is officially, as of when I reviewed it. This is always in USD. I will usually just specify the price, but I may add in other details, such as relevant DLC, or a snide remark about how games shouldn't cost $70. For free games, I will specify whether the game has secondary monetization such as microtransactions, and to what extent they exist.
Finally, Length is just a rough guess at how long a single playthrough will take. This is usually based on my own playtime as of when I wrote the review, assuming I actually kept track properly. Notably, a "single playthrough" constitutes going from the start of the game to the end; I don't include postgame content or replayability in this estimate, but will specify an additional estimate if it's relevant. For roguelikes and similar, this will instead be how long a typical run takes; for continuously-operated games such as MMOs, this will typically be omitted.
The Fancy Number at the End
Final thing to talk about: my final ratings. It bears noting that the numbers I specify should not be taken too seriously. I'm just one guy with some fairly specific preferences; I tend to be very verbose with my reviews precisely because I think my actual outlook on the details is more important and useful than the actual number on the end. Accordingly, the final rating should only be taken as a rough gauge of how I personally feel about the piece of media I'm reviewing.
That said, I do have some mild criteria about how I assign the numbers:
I am theoretically willing to hand out 0's, however this is pretty much reserved for things I loathe with every fiber of my being.
1-2 is, as you'd expect, bottom of the pile. I really don't like this thing.
3-4 is for things I personally dislike, but not strongly enough to outright condemn.
5-6 are average. Usually I have no strong opinion either way, or I have a strong opinion one way that's hampered by a lot of caveats.
7-8 are what I genuinely consider good; 7s are appreciated, 8s are well-liked, but in either case it's not necessarily a strong appreciation. (If it is, I have multiple caveats attached to it.)
9 is for things I really like. Anything that earns a 9 from me is something I have a strong appreciation for, and usually comes with relatively minimal asterisks.
10 is illustrious; if something somehow earns a 10, as far as I care it's one of the greatest things I've ever experienced, no notes. This is not something I hand out lightly, and in fact as of writing I haven't given anything a 10 yet. No, Pizza Tower doesn't count, I've retroactively revoked its 10. Anything that warrants an asterisk (beyond things like trigger warnings) doesn't get a 10. End of story.
As noted, I'm very stringent about handing out 10s, and it is very likely you won't see many at all. Also as noted, don't take these numbers as gospel; they're heavily-generalized statements of my opinion.
Notably, for shows and comics, I may include multiple ratings for different portions of their runs. This will usually be by season or by arc. (For example, for Symphogear you might see me rate by season, with something like an 8, an 8, a 6, an 8, and a 9.)
Hex Reviews The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
I really hope that last trailer's back's okay, because it fucking carried this game.
Genre: Open-World Sandbox/Action Adventure
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Price: $70 for some fucking reason
Length: 4-200+ hours
Do I recommend it? Yes, but not for $70.
This game had a LOT to live up to. In the pipeline for six years after the last one, and the last one basically hard carried the Switch off its success. You literally could not have asked for a better launch title for a console. Breath of the Wild is one hell of a predecessor to follow up.
Tears of the Kingdom wound up having a bit of a rocky road to release, from an initial teaser in 2019 that in retrospect was all custom footage, another in 2021 that showed actual gameplay footage, but no actual name for the game yet, and then finally an actual trailer declaring the game's name in 2022, and a pushed-back release to 2023. 2023 itself was a bit rough for the game, with an unpopular price tag increase (more on that later) and an underwhelming gameplay showcase, which together did the game little favors, especially since it was just looking like Breath of the Wild with extra stuff taped on top of it. Which, not unreasonable for a direct sequel, but with such a dev time and a price hike... yeah, there's a reason people were making jokes at the game's expense.
But the game would ultimately have a couple more trailers released, with the mid-April trailer being by a country mile the best the game received, and I strongly suspect playing a non-insignificant factor in reviving interest (hence the subtitle above- which, yes, I'm planning on doing that more in the future). And I don't think I have to tell you how it was received on launch; I'm pretty sure the entire Internet knows the answer to that question.
And to Nintendo's credit, having played the game extensively (currently in excess of 70 hours), I very much understand now why it took so long. Adding functionally two entire new layers to the world (1 1/2 if you feel like being petty) takes a lot of time, but the big thing lies in the new systems; adding a building mechanic as freeform as Tears of the Kingdom's into a game is a very involved process, and from my understanding the game was basically feature-complete a full year before release, and they spent that entire time polishing everything. Time that was clearly well-spent, because these systems are astonishingly well-integrated.
Before I really get into singing this game's praises, though, I really need to re-touch on one key point, and the single biggest caveat with this game: No game should cost $70. I hated it when Sony started doing it, I hate it here. To preempt the obvious argument, no. Nintendo does not need that extra $10. With the numbers these games pull they could easily sell it for $10 and still make all of the money. The decision wasn't made because Nintendo needed the extra money to justify continuing to make games, the decision was made because Nintendo's executives and shareholders wanted to pad their already-obscene bottom line. Also their wallets. None of that money is going to the people who actually did the work!
I am very much of the general opinion that pirating Nintendo games is morally okay; this goes for ANY supermassive video game company, but especially Nintendo, given how much of fucks they can be. And that especially goes for Tears of the Kingdom.
That point out of the way: frankly, Tears of the Kingdom makes its predecessor look like a feature-length tech demo, and that is not to disparage Breath of the Wild. That game did what it did well, Tears of the Kingdom does it better, on nearly every level. One of the most unpopular aspects, disposable weapons, becomes almost a plus in this game because of the Fuse system, as it encourages you to fuck around and find out, and boy can you really do both. Ultrahand is Magnesis if you put it on some seriously wacko steroids and handed it gorilla glue and duct tape. Cryonis kinda sucked and is accordingly gone. Stasis was overpowered and has been replaced with Recall, less powerful but with more opportunities for hilarity. Remote bombs were... also, probably a little too powerful, and are also gone, but bomb flowers are back!
Tears of the Kingdom's tone is notably less immediately dire compared to Breath of the Wild, and this is reflected in both gameplay and story. The world is even more alive than before, and it feels less like surviving in the wilderness after an apocalypse and more like exporing the wilderness with a toolbox continuously strapped to you. Accordingly, gameplay is even more prone to slapstick than Breath of the Wild was. That game already had a tendency towards slapstick, but having the ability to build shit and strap all sorts of random things onto your weapons just amplifies it. You can glue a bomb to your sword! Is it a good idea? Probably not! Can you do it? Absofuckinglutely! The shrines are also notably a bit more consistently better, and there's NO APPARATUS SHRINES, THANK FUCKING GOD.
There's also notably more... well, story to the game's story. Again, this isn't to disparage Breath of the Wild, but its story was by nature a bit barebones. Tears of the Kingdom's is a fair bit more fleshed out, though this does come with the caveat of making the timeline significantly more confusing. I'm at this point on the side of "BotW and TotK are their own continuity after SS" simply because it makes things vastly simpler.
To get more into the specifics, though, we'll need to get into spoilers, so you know the drill.
Champion abilities are no longer around, as the spirits of the champions moved on 6 years ago. (In-universe, not just a joke.) In their place are, a), ACTUAL DUNGEONS, FUCK YES, and b) sages, who both provide an ability to be used in-world, as well as providing phantoms of themselves that help you in combat. They're generally less powerful than the champions were, and their abilities can be very awkward to use (as outside of certain situations for 2 out of 5, you have to walk over to their phantom to use the ability), but having up to 5 extra characters helping you in combat is immensely useful, and makes even poor Sidon, whose ability kind of sucks, still actively very helpful.
Regarding the extra layers to the world, there's the sky islands of course, which were very heavily-advertised, but the layer less advertised is the Depths, a massive, very dark underground layer spanning the entirety of Hyrule. From corner-to-corner. It can be a bit annoying to navigate, and does have generally less to do than the surface, but it certainly has its purposes, and has a crucial role in making the dragons a bit more interesting.
There's four now, with the original three from Breath of the Wild still being around, and a fourth that now hangs out high in the sky. Unlike in Breath of the Wild, the dragons are always on the map, following a continuous loop; Farosh loops the southern part of the map, Naydra loops the eastern part of the map, Dinraal loops the northeast, and the mysterious new Light Dragon does a full loop of Hyrule high in the sky. Crucially, a) you can now land on and ride the dragons, with conditions around them corresponding to their respective element, and b) besides the Light Dragon, each of them spends roughly half their route underground, passing through one chasm on the surface, travelling through the Depths, and emerging elsewhere later. You can ride them the entire time, and getting materials is now on a 10-minute cooldown rather than being per-appearance. (I personally feel like this cooldown should be significantly shorter, but I digress.)
As for building and Fuse, there's a ton of options on both fronts, and in exploring the Depths you can unlock Autobuild, which lets you save things you've built and automatically build them on-demand, either from parts-on-hand or using Zonaite ore gathered in the Depths. Fuse, meanwhile, can be used with arrows, shields, and weapons- for arrows, it's just attaching things to the arrowhead, which can do things as simple as adding special properties like elements, to things as wacky as placing floating platforms for you to use. With weapons and shields, though, we need to go a little more in-depth.
You can attach a lot of different materials to both; with shields, they'll mostly just increase defense power and durability a bit, and often add a damage component if you feel like swatting enemies with it. With weapons, you can essentially attach a single material to make a custom weapon; depending on the material, you could end up with a thing impaled on the end, which is kind of comical, or as is the case with some of the horns in particular, replacing large parts of the weapon with the material, resulting in some VERY cool-looking hybrid weapons. The real wacky shit though, that comes with Zonai devices.
Zonai devices are, of course, devices built by the Zonai. Mostly these are meant for use with Ultrahand for building contraptions, but they can also be glued to your shield and sword. (Also arrows, but they're less notable there.) And this is no small part of why I understand why the game took so long, because there's a lot of unique attractions here, particularly with shields. Attaching a device to a weapon will typically cause it to activate briefly when swung, with generally very predictable results, but with shields, they'll behave differently between guarding with the shield and shield surfing. Three good examples of this.
One, the Zonai Cannon. Strap it to your shield and you have, well, a portable cannon. Guard with your shield, blast your enemies. Two, the Zonai Cart; a big flat platform with integrated wheels. Strap it to your shield, and it's now a fucking skateboard when you shield surf with it. No, I'm not joking. It'll even let you grind on rails! And three, the Zonai Rocket. Strap it to your shield and you have two options. Guard, and you'll rocket upward for a couple seconds, giving you a mini-Revali's Gale. Shield surf? You can fucking fly.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg here. You can do some wacky shit with Fuse! Try fusing a bomb to your shield and shield surfing sometime, you'll see what I mean.
All told, this game's combat sandbox is absolutely apeshit on a level Breath of the Wild wishes it could reach. If you've seen clips of this game, you've almost certainly seen some of the hilarity you can get up to with Ultrahand, and I just described what you can expect from Fuse. Combat is even more diverse than ever before- albeit just as likely to kill you repeatedly early on. That never went away! And compared to Breath of the Wild, the rest of Tears of the Kingdom is also just generally more refined than even its already famously-polished predecessor.
I think the price tag's bullshit, but I'm not going to pretend Tears of the Kingdom isn't a really good game.
Genre: Manic 2D Platformer
Platform: Windows & Steam Deck
Price: $20
Length: ~4 hour first playthrough
Do I recommend it? IT'S FUCKING PIZZA TIME
QUICK NOTE: This review was originally written before I recognized some of the more questionable decisions made in Pizza Tower, most notably the notes of racism (and also McPig being kind of a prick). Most of my thoughts on the gameplay itself have not changed, but this is a significant enough thing that I felt it warranted mentioning retroactively. (This is also why I've revoked the 10/10 I previously gave it.)
I've never played any Wario Land games. Hell, I've never even touched Wario games period. 2D platformers generally aren't my thing, either; the most fun I've had with one was Celeste.
Up until this past week.
Pizza Tower is, for lack of a better way to put it, completely apeshit, in the best way possible. By this point, if you're reading this, you've probably seen how unhinged the art style is, and let me tell you: the rest of the game is just as unhinged. And it is a fucking blast.
You have a dash. Actually, given Celeste's existence, "dash" might give the wrong impression- you have a sprint. One which goes increasingly fast the longer you hold it, can turn on a dime, and will fucking destroy anything in your path. Really get going and you'll see enemies react in fear at the fat Italian charging towards them at Mach 3, for about a tenth of a second, before you barrel them over like a freighter rolling over a water bottle.
The thing with Pizza Tower is, I used "manic" as a descriptor for very good reason- the pacing of its gameplay is breakneck. The running mechanic already heavily encourages you to be moving fast as much as possible, given you're basically nigh-invulnerable at mach 3 and 4, and reaching the end of a level triggers an escape sequence. You have a timer. The layout has changed. Time to get the fuck back to the entrance before a sentient flying pizza comes to kill you.
And if you've cleared the level before, there's a floating pizza portal near that entrance. That sends you back to the end of the level again, to rush through again. You know, just to style. It's hard as hell, as the timer doesn't reset- whatever time you have left on it when you enter that portal is the time you have to complete the entire second lap. But by god is it satisfying to pull off.
The levels also have a ranking system; you get a ranking based on your score, which you get from miscellaneous collectibles throughout, but also from killing enemies. There's also a combo system- your combo increases with kills, while score collectibles extend it, not making the number bigger, but giving you more time to find something else to kill. This also plays into ranking, by way of giving you more score.
The highest rank you can expect to get on a first run through a level is A. But there's two ranks above that, which is the reason why I specifically clarified "first playthrough" on the game's length, as this is where the real meat of the game comes in- S rank requires you to reach a much higher score, which usually entails collecting every Toppin (major collectibles), completing every secret (there are three in each level), collecting the level's treasure, and often doing a second lap on top of all of that. All quite difficult, but doable.
The coveted P rank, however? You have to do all of that. Without dropping your combo once. Start to finishing lap 2, all one continuous combo. It doesn't even count towards 100% completion, as you'll likely accomplish everything that does during your S rank instead, but pulling it off comes with some of the greatest bragging rights in gaming short of being a speedrunning recordholder.
And you'll be doing all of it to some utterly fantastic music. Pizza Tower features a healthy mix of chiptune and electric guitar in its soundtrack, and let me tell you, this shit is fucking candy for the ears.
Altogether, this game's gameplay is extremely robust, and the game on the whole just oozes personality and passion out of every orifice. It really is hard to beat a game like this.
The opening. Oh my god what the fuck was even going on in that fight...? It was horrible. Absolutely horrible. I don't have a hard time following fight scenes, but you could literally not tell what the fuck was going on, with flying water everywhere and haphazard movement.
Charlie Hunnam as Becket was terrible. His delivery was terrible. His expressions were terrible. He could fight, and that was nice. But yeah. Would have cast several other people before him. I think it would have strengthened the movie a lot.
Idris Elba is flawless as Pentecost. I have a hard time finding flaws with Elba in any role. He could play a stick figure and make it in depth and involving.
I am really lukewarm/have mixed feelings towards Mako. I liked her more, closer to the end, but found it difficult to empathize with her at several points. Did enjoy her relationship with Pentecost. Their interactions had her showing the most emotion and displaying the most of her character. Was probably intentional.
I liked the Australian team the most. Daddy issues are always a win.
I did like the lack of romantic subplot. No time to moosh faces when your kicking alien monster ass.
Speaking of the alien monsters, they looked cool, were creative, and I liked the whole dinosaur idea. Felt that could have been integrated better into the plotline.
Thank God for Charlie Day and Burn Gorman doing their thing.
Same for Ron Perlman.
I loved the designs of the Jaegers, and the concepts behind how they were powered and how they worked.
However, after the ad campaign, and seeing how many different Jaegers they came up with...was excessively disappointed to see that only four made it into the movie...and even then only two were featured...and even then only one got a lot of attention...Because I'm a big Gundam fan, man, and I wanted to see more robits.
I literally 100% do not understand Tumblr's fascination with the Russian team.
The pacing was really painful at several points in the movie. It almost felt like it should have been split into more than one film so they could have taken more time with several things.
And finally...I felt like I might have enjoyed this more had I been more of an oldschool Kaiju monster movie fan...? I don't know, just several aspects of it didn't appeal to me, and some of the dialogue was downright painful...though that might have been because Becket was a nuisance.
All and all, C+. Visually stunning (when not confusing as fuck), and decent entertainment. Will not buy on dvd or blu ray. By far certainly, absolutely, definitely not Guillermo del Toro's best movie.
Also that tumblr post that says Eren Jaeger from snk would have taken care of that portal in fifteen minutes?
Bullshit. The little punk likely would have been eaten/drowned in five.
The Dark Knight Rises: A brief review, because I'm fucking tired as all balls.
Now hear ye, hear ye.
This review contains spoilers, right after the cut.
So don't click the read more if you don't want spoilers.
There are SPOILERS.
MOTHERFUCKING SPOILERS OK DO YOU GET THIS OK I HAVE SAID SPOILERS ENOUGH TIMES IF YOU FUCKS DON'T UNDERSTAND SPOILERS THEN DON'T CLICK--
Hex's quick review of:
The Dark Knight Rises: Or How I Survived a Nuclear Blast and No One Fucking Knows Why
But we'll get to that little detail.
I think I'll just post some bullets, because I don't have the mental capacity to type paragraphs right now.
Bruce Wayne...cut your hair right now, young man.
I don't give a singular fuck what anyone says, this was a flawless Catwoman. I loved this Selina so much. It was nice to see a strong, sassy female, that, whilst she shared a kiss with the BattishMan, she didn't have a romantic connection to him. It was a hatebroweirdshipthing, like it should be. I now laugh in the face of those who doubted miss Hathaway's skillset.
The pacing for the first half hour, maybe a little more of the movie felt horrendous. Was this just to me? I mean after the planejacking. I don't know.
Talia being Talia...was kind of obvious, I suppose, to those of us who know what's up when we saw the scar on her back during her schmoozing with Bruce. I actually sort of wish she would have been revealed slightly earlier. Just slightly, not much.
Ooooooooooook. Bane. BaneBaneBane. I love Bane, which is why.......ok. Tom Hardy is brilliant. He's fucking phenomenal. He even built up the correct physique for the role. He didn't look like a body builder, he looked like a man who would walk up to a bear in the midst of the mountains, punch it in the face, and completely invert its body structure. I enjoyed his generally apathetic attitude, and to some degree the change in his backstory. I was...a little bummed out that Bane was, once again as he has been before, used primarily as a tool by another character. I really wanted him to be running the show entirely, but once again, with the reveal of Talia Al Ghul (the moment we saw her scar, and the child climbing the walls of the prison and during which I gave a tiny sigh), there was unfortunately no way of getting around it. I guess I will deal with this willingly. Final scene with him was also extremely lacking.
I loved JGL's character but felt the Robin reference unnecessary. Was that just me? Probably was. Ok. (Though he would be a fucking sexy Nightwing...yeah, I thought about that for a minute.) But I actually would have liked to see the Bat's cowl passed to him instead of the idea of Robin, which meeeeeans--
I really would have loved to see Bruce Wayne die. There was really no reason to resurrect him at the end. I don't bear a grudge against the man, at all, but the whole carrying-a-nuke-over-the-ocean-to-confront-destiny-and-finally-be-a-hero-to-himself-and-his-city thing seemed generally inescapable. And it was not explained how exactly that whole surviving thing worked out, you know? Who walks away from a fucking nuclear explosion likes that and just kind of...goes back to life? OR FUCKING LIVES AT ALL? I don't know. It felt like catering to the fans, like a cop-out, and I wanted Michael Caine to make me sob. But he didn't and I was just kind of left blinking. Were we...supposed to believe that the joked-about autopilot was still there after all? Ugh, no subtext to be read. Might need another viewing to think about this.
Sooooooo...yeah. All in all, it started explosive, then went completely dry, then built and built and built and built and then ended with a lukewarm splash.
It's not a bad film by any means. It's rather good. It's just...not great. In my eyes.
