Win a copy of LocoRoco Remastered for PS4

Win a copy of LocoRoco Remastered for PS4

Released in 2006 on PlayStation Portable, LocoRoco is a platformer where users control cute little round and puffy creatures called LocoRoco, rolling and bouncing them around to reach the end of the level using the L and R buttons. 

With its simple yet addictive controls, lovable characters, and popular soundtrack, LocoRoco became a hit and won multiple game awards from around the world.

This amazing creation is now available remastered on PS4! 

We’re all looking forward to going on another adventure with the cute and quirky LocoRocos in their refreshed and even more vibrant world.

To win a LocoRoco Remastered PS 4 Code all you have to do is enter simply email your details to this  address: darrensworldofentertainment@gmail.com or CLICK HERE NOW!

Include your name and address and title your email LOCOROCO!
Competition closes May 25th

Good luck!

Notes on Blindness: DVD Review

Notes on Blindness: DVD Review

If there's perhaps an irony that a film about blindness has committed some of the most beautiful and evocative imagery to celluloid, then Notes on Blindness would do well to embrace the irony.

After years of failing sight, Birmingham professor of theology John Hull became completely blind in 1983 and began keeping an audio diary. The ethos behind that was his singular belief that if he didn't understand blindness it would defeat him.

Using Hull's original tapes as well as interview material and with actors lip synching the tapes and taking part in re-enactments, the BBC Storyville strand documentary helmed by filmmakers Peter Middleton and James Spinney is simply put, eloquently mind-blowingly sensual (and has shades of the reflective nature of Terence Malick's Tree of Life).

It helps the source material from Hull is both insightful and honest, with aching admissions that he's begun to forget what his wife looked like, or places from his childhood are fading, as well as the ultimately depressing feeling of being unable to see his new-born children or hearing their cries of delight at Christmas without any visual context.

It's these tacit admissions that begin to give a view of Hull's mind's eye and the world within. But by using hauntingly lyrical imagery that serves as memory or snapshots thereof, what Spinney and Middleton have done in this eye opening film is to commit to celluloid something inspiring and in many ways, a visual representation of what you always imagine life will look like when it apparently flashes before your eyes before you pass.

Past recollections loop in and out, images of eyes close up and simple images of grass blowing in a field unencumbered by anything other than sound show an ingenuity in translating the material and helping inspire others. It's all held in by a wall of sound that emanates from the screen that breathes extra life to the world within.

While acceptance for Hull himself gradually brings clarity of vision and purpose, the filmmakers bring life to a world many of us would hope never to experience and an empathy to those who already do - it's bravura stuff, stylishly and simplistically set in motion.

In one scene, Hull reveals how standing by his home's front door and listening to the rain gives contours to the world around him and how he wishes there could be rain inside a house so he had ideas of depth and a sense of dimension. The following shots of rain pouring within are almost transcendant in their beauty and ingenious in their execution. (It helps the source material is so eloquent and thoughtful as you'd expect of a professor, but not once does it ever wallow in pity, offering a painfully intuitive view into the world of Hull and those around him).

Lyrical and insightful, honest and heart-aching in equal parts, Notes on Blindness is handled with sensitivity, with visual aplomb and with such shrewd astuteness that it's ultimately profoundly moving.

Yooka-Laylee: PS4 Review

Yooka-Laylee: PS4 Review

Platform: PS4
Developed by Playtonic Games

There's just something endearingly cute about the bright colours and simple aesthetics of Yooka-Laylee, the charmingly retro platformer unleashed by Playtonic Games.

Easily inspired by Banjo-Kazooie, right down to its camera frustrations, this story of a Lizard and his bat friend who set off to battle a baddie overlord who's stealing books is as silly as they come.

From your hub world to exploring others within in your fight against corporate baddie Capital B (who bears more than a passing reference to the Smurfs' eternal thorn in their side Gargamel), there's much to do of colourful inconsequence within.

From collecting golden quills to trade up skills from a nearby snake salesman to collecting pagies of a ripped out book to expand the world, the simplicity of this family game couldn't be more obvious. But blighted with a poor camera realisation, the game occasionally gets frustrating when you're trying to execute some precision moves.

As it swings wildly round and pivots in the most unlikely of places, it can make executing the simplest of moves a real bind and pain in the backside. But like most of Yooka-Laylee, the game's general enthusiasm and silly characters help overcome the downsides and failings of this retro piece.

From the collective way Yooka and Laylee work together to the interactions, this is a game that feels both retro and a little meta as it mocks the conventions of the newer games and collectibles. The duo amass a series of powers throughout and while nothing's fully devastating, the silliness of what transpires is patently obvious.

Spinning to fight creatures in the various worlds, opening up other worlds, collecting things - these are all archetypes and tropes of past games and while Yooka-Laylee doesn't exactly coat them all in a fresh coat of paint, it does manage to retain a great degree of playability.

Fun, family entertainment for all ages, Yooka-Laylee's bright breezy approach to everything will help you past its failings and its occasionally archaic gameplay. For all of that, it's actually a charmingly simple and stupidly silly blast of retro-nostalgia.

Alien: Covenant: Film Review

Alien: Covenant: Film Review

Cast: Katherine Waterston, Billy Crudup, Michael Fassbender, Guy Pearce, Danny McBride
Director: Ridley Scott

38 years after the original Alien film delivered the perfect blend of sci-fi and horror in space, director Ridley Scott continues to mine the world as he follows up the muddled pretensions of Prometheus, a film that looked to expand and explore the origins of the xenomorphs.

This time around, Scott tries to once again blend cod philosophy with abject moments of horror as he takes a new crew and plunges them against the perils of planetary exploration and the unknown.

Centring on the crew of the Covenant, an Ark-like project that's hurtling toward a new paradise home with 2000 colonists asleep on board, things start to go awry when the crew are awoken by the effects of a "random localised event."

With an uncertain newly-appointed captain at the helm (played by Crudup), the ship's taken off its course when it receives a transmission that hints at a better planet than the one they've had their sights on. Despite the protestations of Katherine Waterston's Daniels, the ship heads towards the potential new Eden - but on landing, survival becomes anything but certain.

Alien: Covenant mixes both the good and the bad as it tries to unspool its terror among the toe toe story.

But by shifting away from the claustrophobia of the likes of Alien and Aliens, the jump scares end up a little predictable (although nonetheless scary) and almost feeling like they're trying to hit beats and scenes we've seen before with more successful characters. It's a degree of fan service in the extreme, in some ways.

Continuing the prequel vibe that was so brilliantly realised in 2012's Prometheus, pristine white spaceship corridors and wondrous lighting give Alien: Covenant an inescapable sense of style while it's in space. But it's when the film shifts to the murky Milford Sounds that its darkness starts to come through, as large portions are swathed in muddied execution and lighting, as well as rote typical familial tropes.

It's also on the ground that the very familiar tropes of sensible people doing stupid things begins to manifest and the action, such as it is, takes a mind-dumbing turn. It's not massively helped by a a CGI alien that while modelled on HR Giger's original creatures, is less successful in its digital execution. (And subsequent scenes with the alien white make it look like a cross between Xenomorph and the Slenderman mythos, perhaps a nod to the internet sensation that's horrified many).

But to be fair, an early culling of relatively rote and underwritten crew members proves to be a blessing in disguise, an effective tonic to clear out the narrative chaff that would have undermined the story as went on. However, in doing so, the deaths prove to be inconsequential in terms of emotional heft, and serve only to showcase the body horror elements of the Alien's MO. There are nice apocalyptic touches (skeletal remains scatter the entrance to a city) that will fuel a lot of the fan debate after the lights have gone back up.

Elsewhere, while the cod-philosophical elements and talk of Byron/ Shelley/ Ozymandias et al continue to push the "Who am I, where do we all come from, playing God" debate that began in (and over-stuffed large parts of) Prometheus, it's Fassbender's continuing aloof and generally creepy synthetic that pushes a lot of the story forward (in ways that are many and spoilery here) as the story tries to build the myth of the Engineers and their place in Creation.

Fassbender works well as the nightmarish exploration vibe that's wrapped up in suspense and wilfully obtuse execution plays out, and Scott works his usual deft touches in the build-up of suspenseful moments that are peppered throughout. Waterston is initially quite fragile, a soul ripped apart by grief, but whose delicacy becomes hardened by the end, as she channels Ripley. (Though, this is also a problem, as there's really little else to do with the nuances of the character). And McBride does solid dramatic work as the pilot Tennessee, proving that Scott at least can turn expectations around of his actors - even if the script doesn't serve the characters as well.

By stripping out parts of the claustrophobia and trying to mesh parts of Aliens with Alien and mixing it with exposition, Alien:Covenant is a tonally jerky film. With moments of episodic action and sporadic exposition, it loses the primordial fear that the originals instilled, and while its technology and the execution thereof is second to none, the basics of what makes a solid Alien film feel lacking. The back half of it though, soars, with the confrontations that have been wanted and desired

While it's fair to say the Alien elements have teeth once again, the very essence of what made their virulence so terrifying is only slowly coming back to what makes the Alien franchise such a benchmark in sci-fi horror.

At the end of the day, it's simply a case of man versus the unknown that made the first films so iconic; by just adding layers of mythology and delusions of creators as well as their subsequent debate, is stopping the series from going back to its most terrifying basics.

MLB 17: The Show: PS4 Review

MLB 17: The Show: PS4 Review

Platform: PS4
Released by Sony San Diego

There's something about baseball that clearly resonates.

Given the Minor League Baseball series is now on its 12th iteration, there had to be something done to keep the game relatively fresh. And thankfully by adding in something similar to FIFA 17's The Journey and NBA 2K's Path picker game, the concept's a little fresher than it was last time around.

Pave Your Path is the major plus side of the baseball simulation's outing this time around, adding in cutscenes to help you define your journey as you try to head to the top. Adding  in personality to the simulator is always a good thing, and many a sports sim has simply fallen by expecting the game mechanics and their relative facelessness to save the day.

But thankfully, the game mechanics are also impressive this time around, with a better representation of the AI and an improvement in the ball physics, the game plays easier than it should. And complete with a comprehensive list of teams and players, major fans of the game will be satiated with their desired choosings. The game's also more welcoming to non-baseball fans this year, ensuring that accessibility is also as important as the regular fans.

All in all, for a sports simulator to come out swinging as much as this one does nearly a decade on is a great thing. For those a bit reticent to the charms before, it's now time to step up to the plate.

A Dog's Purpose: Film Review

A Dog's Purpose: Film Review

Cast: Dennis Quaid, A golden retriever puppy, KJ Apa, Britt Robertson, Peggy Lipton
Director: Lasse Halstrom

Mixing sappy family film and a fluffy dog tail should be movie kryptonite, but A Dog's Purpose feels like it slightly misses the mark.

Adapted from the 2010 W. Bruce Cameron novel of the same name, the Amblin Entertainment flick follows the story of a dog that's reincarnated several times, before discovering what his reason for life is.

Starting in the 1950s, Josh Gad is the voice of the dog in this live-action fare that feels like a Saturday morning TV-movie writ large.

After a very brief and shockingly terminated life, Gad's dog is reborn as a golden retriever named Bailey who's saved from a hot car in 1961 by Ethan. As the pair bond, Bailey discovers Ethan is his soul-mate and the pair get into the sort of scrapes you'd expect from a fluffy story of its ilk.

From romancing a girl (played by Britt Robertson) to dealing with an abusive father, the 1960s set story is perhaps the more successful of the film, but also the one which showcases the most of what to expect of this film.

Tugging on heart-strings, touching on well-worn tropes of animal films and the familiar scrapes the plucky pair find themselves in, the Nicholas Sparks for animal lovers flick, A Dog's Purpose is likely to find favour with audiences looking to get their quota of sappiness filled.

And while Lasse Halstrom's film may have been dogged with some negative pre-publicity over the apparent treatment of its animal leads in one sequence that's since been debunked, it's more than likely to curry a great deal of favour with anyone who's ever owned a pet or shared a bond with said animal.

This is not a film that skirts over the heartache and heartbreak of losing a pet, and it's here the film takes great strides to really avoid milking the sentiment and hitting some of the emotional moments more successfully than many would want to admit to.

The reincarnation angle of the film is handled without fuss, and while its edges could have made for Nicholas Sparks' style tear-jerker territory, it simply gets on with it happening and lets the poignancy of the moment drown the work. But the rest of the film is predominantly every other film you've ever seen of its kind - coming of age mixed with family tension, all nicely brought to life in the world that's been created.

At least one of the dog's lives, the one with a police partner, is over so briefly, its inclusion seems relatively pointless, other than to showcase another relationship with a dog. But such is the film's MO; it simply passes over the middle part of the film to skip back to Ethan and Bailey's bond.

It's here that the heart of this film lies deep within the connection that's shared with a canine; and while Gad's occasionally childish narration distracts, the sentiment is clearly there from the beginning.

A Dog's Purpose is not a movie for critics, nor a movie that goes deeper or tries to do anything other than push a fuzzy, feel-good agenda.

It'll give comfort to many a pet owner who's believed their current furry charge has similarities to their previous ones, but the human elements of the film will remain infinitely more forgettable than the doggy goings on long after the lights of the cinemas have gone up.

Meat: Film Review

Meat: Film Review

Director: David White

David White's lovingly shot documentary purports to be the modern story of the animals we eat.

But what emerges from this 75 minute amble through bucolic life, is an often philosophical look at life on the farm and in the hills, with differing points of view on why their chosen lifestyle's the best.

Covering four different meat producers, from a hunter who kills and eats his own, a retiree who is a chicken farmer, a pig farmer who's produced around 400 tonnes of pork a year and a one-woman farmer, this is an amiable look at what goes into creating the food chain that New Zealand's been so famous for at times.

And while White's got an eye for the perfectly beautiful shots (it's no surprise to find he's grown up on a farm), be it rows of chickens in the farm or a drone shot of pigs being carted off to the abattoir that makes them look like packed sausages on the back of a truck, the doco's desire to be provocative and make people think about where their meat comes from never quite scratches below the surface.

Part of the philosophy of the film is clearly to educate, and perhaps, it's a reflection on current society that many grow up not knowing where the food they eat comes from or how it's produced. Certainly those who've had a modicum of education and are a bit wiser (and maybe a generation older) will find nothing new in this, which plays like an extended episode of TV long-stay Country Calendar.

Although, perhaps, that's part of the film's raison d'etre, what emerges more as the film goes through its 75 minutes cycle, are the philosophies of those who till the land and rear the creatures.

With a choice of four fairly similar characters, it's in the subtleties that Meat beats its own drum as it casts an eye into the world within and the attitudes of the farmers.

This is no hard-hitting expose of farming practices, and does, for the large part, feel like an extended advertorial for the Meat sector, with the various particpiants extolling the virtues of their varying practices and in Ian, the pig farmer, refuting some of the claims levelled against their industry. Certainly, for those fearing a full-on trip to the abattoir, complete with screeching animals as the death blow rains down, Meat doesn't deliver the goods.

It's a sensitive piece that handles deftly (or perhaps too tentatively and lightly) the final process of the chain - it's only the chickens whose fates are shown to the camera as White interviews one of those who's made it their livelihood to kill for a living. There will, however, be some who feel the view of a pig being killed and kicking and twitching as it dies may be a step too far, but in all honesty, White simply lets the camera capture the reality of what happens on a farm - and if you're going to educate, you can't hold back. Though, equally, claims can be levelled against the doco for not presenting a fuller picture of what happens once the meat moves on.

That said, as ever with New Zealand's docos, it's the characters within that stand out once the cameras are turned on.

From Tony, the chicken farmer who only hires retirees because they won't go anywhere (and who, in one of the more wryly Kiwi iconoclastic moments by our film-makers, has a group of people shown on screen and titled Ian's Death Squad to much amusement) to Josh the hunter who's determined to pass on his practices but whose hunt is him alone, it feels like there are moments that could have been explored further and a little deeper.

That said, there's a humanity on show here that's showcased in the intricacy of the connections within and the worlds that collide. From espousing different philosophies on their respective places within the food chain or in the pig farmer's case, railing against the perceptions of their industry, White's gone to great lengths to ensure that everyone's got their moment in the spotlight.

But there's a nagging sense of doubt that a bit more could have helped Meat in its post-film discussion.

Whether it's talking to the families about the decisions made or the stresses placed on others, there's a very real feeling at times that the movie's been slightly missing some elements for mass consumption and while that's not a major mark against it, it does leave you with the belief that Meat is not quite the full platter you'd have expected.