Author: David Hogan

Castlevania: Nocturne – Season 1 Review

David HoganLeave a comment

The eagerly anticipated follow up to Netflix’s unexpectedly good Castlevania cartoon (or “adult animation” for those who are for some reason embarrassed by that term, though written by Americans and animated in Texas means it’s not an anime!) Castlevania: Nocturne sees lightly adapted bits of game lore sprinkled in amongst an original story set in revolutionary France. Now lacking the sometimes comically bad dialogue found in the original series but still occasionally trying to emulate the “banter” Nocturne does a lot of things right, especially the animation quality, but it’s not perfect. Let’s take a look!

Continue reading →

Doctor Who: Intelligence for War Review

David HoganLeave a comment

A seven-part full cast audio drama set during Season 7?! The crew at Big Finish would have to work pretty hard for me not to like this one and thankfully they delivered a really good story regardless. Fits the criterial of being entirely Earth based and having a cast of mainly human characters or human-looking characters even though budget obviously isn’t an issue here plus threw in plenty of fun twists and turns. Let’s take a deeper look!

Continue reading →

Star Wars: The High Republic – Tales of Light and Life Review

David HoganLeave a comment

Tales of Light and Life is a collection of short stories set both during Phase 2 and just before Phase 3, making this sort of an epilogue and a prologue at the same time, and like all short story collections there are some good ones and some bad ones, as well as some really quite pointless middling ones. Still though, I love me some High Republic so I couldn’t pass it up, even if it was mysteriously not available on the UK Kindle store unlike the rest of the series… Anyway! Let’s take a look!

Continue reading →

Bleach: Thousand Year Blood War Arc (Episodes 14 – 26) Review

David HoganLeave a comment

The anime adaptation of Bleach’s final manga arc (I guess that’s still technically accurate…) continued with 13 more episodes of the Thousand Year Blood War arc, not only adapting the manga faithfully but adding brand new scenes created by Tite Kubo himself to plug some plot holes and make sure to add more shine to the Royal Guard for good measure. The only issue is that this is where the arc in the manga took a dramatic down turn that it never corrected out of, instead just offering up some fun fights here and there, and while the new material helps it a bit, a lot of the narrative mistakes are still present here. Want to know more? Read on!

Continue reading →

Doctor Who: Once and Future – Time Lord Immemorial Review

David HoganLeave a comment

The first of two Once & Future releases this month (Yes, oddly Big Finish aren’t releasing one in the anniversary month itself…) “Time Lord Immemorial” is quite the muddled mix of things, which I know is a valid description of all the previous Once & Future stories but this time it REALLY is. The previous Tenth Doctor one was hastily crammed into the existing storyline and just about worked but now this was hastily crammed in between the previously hastily crammed one and the long-established end point and it really shows, and what’s even weirder is the plot if far more high-stakes then the overarching storyline yet its treated as a bump in the road. Well, enough rambling, let’s take a look!

Continue reading →

Final Fantasy XVI (PS5) Review

David HoganLeave a comment

I wasn’t sure about Final Fantasy XVI for a while, I knew I wanted to play it but I wasn’t sold on the visual setting and the more “gritty” style so I waited until it was a bit cheaper and I had the time to dedicate to it. Now I’ve played the game all the way through I have to say that it’s an odd one. There were times when I was thinking of either giving it up or just running through the main missions, then by the end I did every side quest and monster hunt available before hitting that final chapter, so it got its hooks into me at the end, but if someone were to say to me they gave up half way through I’d understand… Want more detail? That’s lucky, I’ve written a whole review, so let’s take a look at it!

Continue reading →

Ahsoka – Season 1 Review

David HoganLeave a comment

We finally get our sequel series to Star Wars Rebels and it’s weirdly in live action! Never would’ve seen that coming when Season 4 ended, that’s for sure. While I’m not sure how this series came across to those who weren’t familiar with the animated show I loved it, especially the back half where the story moved from “catching people up on our main characters” to “moving the plot forward”. The returning animated characters were really well cast as well, so it made for a smooth transition, which was handy (and again, really weird) So with all that being said, let’s take a look!

Continue reading →

Dragon Ball – Wedding Dress Filler Arc (Episodes 149 – 153) Review

David HoganLeave a comment

The original Dragon Ball series comes to a close with these five filler episodes, and while most of the time its perfectly normal to shudder at the phrase “Filler Arc” this one is actually quite entertaining. I mean I still don’t think it really adds anything beyond seeing Goku and Chi Chi’s wedding at the end (Spoilers? Though it’s sort of in the title of the arc… and my thumbnail…) but if you’re going to artificially add more episodes then this was at least fun and told a mini-story rather than random singular episodes or a really obnoxiously long arc. So let’s take a look and finally close the book on the original DB series!

Continue reading →

Doctor Who: Mawdryn Undead Review

David HoganLeave a comment

Doctor Who Season 20 was released on Blu-ray a short while ago so it’s time to look at the story I haven’t seen in the longest time off the set, in this case I couldn’t remember which out of this and the following story, Terminus, I hadn’t seen so I went with the earliest of the two *shrugs* I mean, I’ll review them all eventually… Mawdryn is an odd one, mainly because the role of returning character changed from Ian Chesterton to the Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart but the role in the story of “older teacher” wasn’t changed, making for an odd out-of-character rewrite for the Brig that infamously cemented the “UNIT Dating controversy”. It’s also the story that debuts companion Turlough and boy, he is not very likeable to start with… Let’s take a look!

Continue reading →

Fantastic Four – Origin (Fantastic Four Issues 1-10) Review

David Hogan2 Comments

Our next look at big Marvel comic releases in rough order is the chunk of comics that most point to as the start of the Marvel comic universe as we know it, with “Marvel’s first family” the Fantastic Four due to it coming out first (not including the 40s Captain America stuff I looked at last time, which wasn’t released by Marvel just absorbed by them later) What are they like? Well, they’re full of 60s comic cheese and lots of inner-monologuing, as you tend to get with, well, 60s comics. Is it still fun to read though, or is it just worth it for the historical significance?

Continue reading →