Hijinks Inc.

Category: Hijinks Reviews

  • Hijinks Reviews: Flight Control

    Publisher: Firemint
    Platform: iPhone, iPod touch, iPad
    Cost: $0.99 [iTunes Link]
    Updated: June 22nd, 2010 for iOS 4
    Version Reviewed: 1.8

    Before I get started, I’d like to point out that Flight Control is by no means a brand new game, I wasn’t able to find an exact release date, but  it’s been out for at least a year. Although some of you may have played this game already, it’s new to me; so there you go.

    This game is one of the most simple and challenging games I’ve played on the iPod touch. It’s a simple and obvious premise. There’s planes and helicopters flying around, and you are flight control, you have to find a safe way for them to land, and they must land on the correct landing strip. (more…)

  • Hijinks Movie Reviews: Invictus

    Whoa! What’s this? 2 movie reviews in 2 days? Sweet googly-moogly! That’s what you get when I am on a holiday weekend and have a bit more time on my hands to watch some extra movies. But enough intro mumbo-jumbo, let’s get into the review.

    Invictus first grabbed my attention because of Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman, 2 of my favorite actors. Then again, it’s easy to like guys who are great in everything they appear in. I honestly sat down to watch this flick based on that alone, I hardly knew anything about what the movie was actually about… other than the fact that Nelson Mandela and rugby were somewhere in the storyline. Obviously, what I ended up getting was so much more than that.

    Maybe I’m not cultured enough, but I didn’t know that Invictus is actually the name of a poem, the poem that helped Nelson Mandela through his time in prison, inspiring him to “stand when all he wanted to do was lie down”. The movie, however, is based on a book called Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Changed a Nation. Invictus was released in theaters December 11, 2009, and on Blu-ray and DVD May 18, 2010. I’m a Netflix guy though, so it was only available to me this last week. (more…)

  • Hijinks Movie Reviews: Toy Story 3

    I’d like to begin this review by saying I actually went to the 3D version of this movie. This was my first experience with the new digital 3D movies and I must say, I don’t see what the big deal was. Maybe this movie just didn’t take full advantage of the 3D (it seems everything is hyping the fact that they are in 3D these days, do we really need this many?), but if this is what a regular 3D experience is like in the theaters, it’s totally not worth the extra money. Yeah, the movie trailers at the beginning were really cool because it was this brand new experience and my eyeballs were all like, “Whoa! I can see things in a whole new way, this is fantastic!”, but as the movie went along it quickly started to look like the regular version. It was at this point that my eyes were like, “Alright, why did I pay the extra money for this? I can hardly remember this thing is in 3D in the first place until I pay attention to the added depth, but then I’m not paying attention to the actual movie anymore, just the novelty of the 3D.” Maybe I just missed it, maybe I’m not evolved enough to truly enjoy the 3D experience, but I digress.

    The movie itself was fantastic, but what I really walked away from the theater with was an appreciation for the short that Pixar included before the movie, as they do with all their flicks. This one was called Day & Night, here’s the official write up for it:

    “When Day, a sunny fellow, encounters Night, a stranger of distinctly darker moods, sparks fly! Day and Night are frightened and suspicious of each other at first, and quickly get off on the wrong foot. But as they discover each other’s unique qualities — and come to realize that each of them offers a different window onto the same world — the friendship helps both to gain a new perspective.”

    At this point, my eyes were still on their visual joyride and I was really digging the 3D experience. It was such a simple little film and I was busy laughing at how these two animated little guys were showing off and trying to one up each other, and next thing I knew I was being hit by this really touching, meaningful story about friendship and overcoming each other’s differences to grow as individuals and work together. It was pretty cool.

    But anyway, on to the actual review of Toy Story 3 after the jump. Possible spoilers included. (more…)

  • Hijinks Reviews: Command & Conquer Red Alert for iPad

    Red AlertPublisher: Electronic Arts
    Platform: iPad, iPhone, iPod touch
    Cost: $12.99  [iTunes Link]
    Release date: April 1st, 2010
    Version Reviewed: 1.00

    Let’s jump right in, is it worth $12.99 you ask? Good question. I really have mixed feelings about its price point, though I suppose when you consider that I paid more than $13 for almost every game in the Command & Conquer series for the PC it seems a little more reasonable. That said, unless you’re a die hard Red Alert fan and someone who finds these types of campaigns engaging, you might want to hold out for a lower price. This isn’t a bad game, but as in introduction to the series it’s not that impressive, and it really could use an update to fix some serious bugs.

    When I first heard Red Alert was coming to the iPad I was pretty excited, I’d downloaded the Lite version for the iPhone in the past, but didn’t buy the full version because of screen size issues. So I figured the iPad would be a perfect platform for an RTS game like RA, and I still think that’s true, but EA needs to get their act together before someone else comes out with a better RTS for the iPad. The controls in this game are sloppy at best, unit highlighting isn’t precise, selecting buildings often results in accidentally selling them (how hard is it to add a “Are you sure you want to sell this building?” dialog?), and the build interface in general could use some tweaking.

    Other than using a touchscreen interface, the game hasn’t changed much from its PC counterpart. Your goal is still to destroy everything in sight, all while managing the mundane tasks of generating enough money and energy to keep everything running smoothly. Graphics are nice, but not awe inspiringly so, and they suffer from the occasional stuttering problem when there’s a lot of action going on. (more…)

  • Hijinks Movie Reviews: Shutter Island

    Welcome to our first movie review! (Well, technically the 2nd movie we’ve reviewed I guess, but the first from our ‘new look’ Hijinks Inc. And even then, that movie was reviewed twice as you’ll find here and here… and I’ll be wrapping up this rabbit trail right about…. now)

    Shutter Island is based on a book by the same name and was released in theaters February 19, 2010 and on Blu-ray and DVD June 8, 2010. A quick lookup on Wikipedia will give you this blurb:

    Shutter Island is a 2010 American psychological thriller film directed by Martin Scorsese. The film is based on Dennis Lehane‘s 2003 novel of the same name. Production started in March 2008. Leonardo DiCaprio stars as U.S. Marshal Edward “Teddy” Daniels, who is investigating the psychiatric facility on Shutter Island.

    I’ve always had tepid anticipation for pretty much every Leonardo DiCaprio movie because I still kind of hold it against him that a crappy movie like Titanic (the boat sinks people! We all knew that going in and it STILL held the box office record!) sat atop the box office mostly due to little girls repetitively attending and fawning over Leo. However, he’s been in some really good movies lately, The Departed being my favorite, so maybe I need to re-evaluate my opinion of him. The fact that this was another Martin Scorsese film also grabbed my attention, but still, it looked like it was just trying to be the next creepy horror-ish type movie, probably with a twist at the end that nobody was supposed to see coming. I guess, to an extent, this holds true, but it’s done very well. More after the jump, including possible spoilers.

    (more…)