Friday, January 2, 2015

Bottom Eleven: The Worst Of 2014

Everybody sit back, grab a drink, and be thankful that it will take you less time to read this than it will take me to write it.

I'm going over the bottom eleven of 2014.  These are the posts that I wrote that either just left me angry, frustrated, or wanting to stop in the middle and seriously reconsider what I was doing with my free time.

These aren't in any particular order, but I'm sure you could arrange them into something resembling a "venom scale" if you tried.




Number 11:  Oneechanbara The Movie Vortex

I blame myself for not realizing this was a sequel to a movie I hadn't seen before going in to it.  Who would've thought a movie about a young woman in a bikini fighting zombies along with her schoolgirl sister would be popular enough to warrant two films?

However, that still doesn't excuse terrible writing, bad pacing, poor lighting, shoddy cinematography, detestable sound effect work, cruddy wire-fu work, bland acting, and an overall lack of respect for the audience watching it.

Going back and rereading it now, I can remember every single scene of the movie as I'm complaining about it, but here's the weird thing: every time I mentally envision it, it's in sepia tones.  I can't even remember if there were any colors in the movie other than "dirt" and "darker dirt."

This movie almost broke me.  I really didn't think I was going to be able to finish watching it because I had to keep going back and re-watching bits to figure out what happened and why I should care that it happened.

Number 10:  Sex Gangsters

The fact this website exists makes me depressed.  And I don't mean like "darn, my favorite sports team just lost this inconsequential game" depressed, I mean "it really makes you wonder what the point of human existence is" depressed.

The fact I found it is bad enough.  The fact I played it, even for a short time, is something I feel I'll be confessing to a priest and hoping for redemption for on my deathbed.

"Do you have any final confessions?"

"Well, I played this really terrible and soul-crushing game online called Sex Gangsters an-"

"Yeah, we can just stop talking now.  Hurry up and die so the torment can begin."

Number 9:  The 10:10 Campaign Ad

I forgot how bad that was.  Watching it again, I need to go lie down.

If, at any time in your planning stage for an advertising campaign, the phrase "making children explode onto other children" comes up, fire whoever you hired, follow them home, block all the doors and windows, and light their place on fire.

Trust me, you're saving the world from some other, bigger grisly headlines in the future.

Number 8:  Uncharted: Drake's Fortune

That's right, this game is on my "worst of the year" list.   I predicted it would, and it is.  I hated this game so much.  I almost broke a controller in the rage I felt towards it.  Everything I wanted to complain about I already said before, so go read that instead of hoping for an essay here.

Man, just thinking about it makes me hear Sully complaining about something and my jaw tightens.

Number 7:  Ninja Blade

Speaking of terrible video games, we have the one where 90% of the game is filler for cut-scenes.  I hate it when a game designer thinks that cut-scenes and Quicktime Events (QTEs) are the solution for a weak story, bad acting, and buggy game play.

Take all of my frustrations towards Oneechanbara, then add in the idea of needing to press a specific button every fifteen seconds on my remote during the movie in order to make it progress further.  If I didn't push the right button, it rewinds to the start of the scene on the "scenes" menu.

Number 6:  Sandra And Woo

It takes a lot to get me to stop reading something.  For example, at one point in my life I was reading dozens of online comics once I realized that a majority of the ones in newspapers, well, sucked.

A lot of them I just stopped caring about, but I continued reading out of force of habit.  What got me to finally stop reading them?

My hard drive in my computer died and I lost all of my bookmarks.

Sandra and Woo, on the other hand, I quit intentionally after I was subjected to several stories that just made me want to find the author and kick their soapbox out from underneath them while they were still screaming from it.

Number 5:  All of the missing posts.

I slipped quite a bit this year on posting.  Between job hunting, apartment hunting, getting the new job, and everything else going on, this blog became a bit of a non-priority for me.  I hate this, because writing this blog is so many things for me.  It's an outlet for ideas and frustrations, it's a chance to keep flexing my mental muscles and keep my language skills up, and it's a chance to share stuff that people might not know existed, such as Obama Sonic backpacks.

This year, I'm going to do everything I can to post every day, including building up a buffer of posts that, in case of a crisis, I can fall back on and post.

Number 4:  Frosted Cheerios

Eating that cereal made my teeth hurt.

Number 3:  Xbox 360 Indy Games That Barely Qualify As Not Being Porn

I know the cheapest way to make a buck is to slap a pretty girl onto the cover of something because SOMEONE will likely buy it for the picture alone.  That being said, when a game development company decides that the sole purpose of creating a game is to take some (downright terrible and horrifying sometimes) artwork and slap together some really basic coding in order to be a "real game company" I find myself pitying them.  Sure, Nintendo got its start as a playing card company, but you know what?  I'm pretty sure they were some really nice, quality playing cards.

Number 2:  I ate your Halloween candy. And shot Bambi's mom.

I j- seriously, if I told a group of people "man, I played the greatest prank last night...I told a small child that I took away something that was theirs and destroyed it just to watch them cry" I'm pretty sure they'd call me a monster.

The fact that this was encouraged on national television is just mind-boggling, and I think it provides us with proof that stricter rules need to be in place before people are allowed to become parents, because they'd fail the "decent human beings" portion of the quiz.

Number 1:  My disappointing end of cartoon episode reviews.

I really wish I had stuck with the Carmen Sandiego reviews, or even just skipped ahead to some of the better ones, like when they tell the "secret origin" of Carmen Sandiego.

I plan on getting back in to episode-by-episode reviews of shows.  I have a bunch I want to go back and re-watch, and the shows I did before still have more episodes left to do.  It's not like there isn't ample opportunities, I just have to make sure I have the time to get it done.

So that's my bottom eleven.  Not everything was as soul-searing as some of the worst from 2013, but man...there were some things on this list that if I could go back in time and warn myself about, I'd be tearing open the space-time continuum so fast I'd make Back To The Future look responsible.


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