Thursday, June 28, 2012

Russian Fantasy: Alye Parusa (Scarlet Sails) 1961




This is movie from the hands of great Russian fantasy maker Aleksandr Ptushko, it is one of his more realistic films. It's based on Alexander Grin's 1923 adventure novel of the same name. It is happening in the late 19th century, and it is beautiful story of true love and adventure. The setting is a small fishing village. The former seaman Longren raises his daughter Assol alone after losing his beloved wife, making a meager living by selling the toy boats he carves from wood. As a child, Assol encounters an old man who claims to be a wizard and promises the girl that one day a prince will come on a ship with scarlet sails to carry her away. The villagers scoff but Assol believes her dream will come true one day. Arthur Grey is a nobleman's son who breaks away from his cruel father to pursue a life at sea, and eventually becomes the captain of a merchant vessel. Having set to port at Assol's village, he spies the young maiden sleeping in the forest and falls in love. After inquiring in the village he learns of Assol's dream and sets about to make it come true. This movie has a beautiful surroundings, I cannot resist such great nature landscapes and old Russian villages. Whole movie has this fairytale feeling in it. If you're into fantasy, and like those magical movies of old, be sure to give this one a watch, it's really awesome piece of Russian fantasy filmography.

rating:10/10

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Russian Fantasy Movies Reviews


I got a large collection of old Russian Fantasy Movies, I'm great fan of those old magical movies, so I'll be doing some series of reviews on those, every time when I see one of those I'll post a review, so stay tuned! Those movies are really beautiful and worth watching, especially if you're into fantasy.

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Game review: The Witcher: Enhanced Edition (PC)



Witcher series have started with books written by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski. First witcher story was written back in 1990, game adaptation was released in 2007, and as I hear was not so smooth and had various glitches and bugs. I myself never played original release, I'm now playing Enhanced Edition, where whole game is redesigned, characters, enemies, NPCs, everything is redone and they also added 200 new animations. This edition was released in 2008, due to many complaints from gamers, on long loading times, and tons of problems while playing the game. Also original witcher was censured in USA, because game holds strong adult language, and every time Geralt has sex, you receive sex card which was too ''adult'' for their standards, so cards are redrawn for more softer taste, and also Dryads (protectors of nature) are whole naked, and they redesigned it so their hair covers most of their body. Now let's say something about Enhanced Edition itself. This game looks beautiful, graphic are awesome, colorful and magical, it uses Bioware engine, but I find this game so much more atmospheric and epic than Bioware's Dragon Age: Origins, which was released sometime later. I really like fantasy games, but I need something to captivate me to hold me to the gameplay and the game itself. It is usually a great story and gameplay, and graphic and atmosphere, this game has it all, It has some of the most beautiful environments I saw in the later new generation games, I saw trailer and gameplay from Witcher 2, it looks even more beautiful, haven't played it yet, will do sometime later. This captivating atmosphere made me wanna play and see what's next, and also story is great, and develops based on your decisions that you do, during your gameplay, it's a common stuff in modern RPG's and even other type of modern games, so you can play with one decision and play game again with new decisions and story would develop a little different, your allies and enemies will be different, and it will all lead to conclusion which is always the same I think just with different stuff going on before that. It's an RPG with heavy accent on story and talking and quest solving, not so much on combat and battles, you develop skills and magic and alchemy and everything, but there are massive dialogues and tons of quests to keep you entertained for a very long time. Whole game consists of 5 chapters, prologue and epilogue. It is very political influenced so you will take part in many schemes and scams and stuff like that. It reminds me heavily on Gothic game series which I also like very much, it has similar touch, many characters, quests and talking. Game itself is not so hard to finish, I played on normal difficulty, the real difference is usage of alchemy and potion making, on easy you don't need those skills to finish the game, which I find not so challenging, and on normal difficulty usage of alchemy is your choice, you can finish without it, but it is much easier to finish with the help of it, and on hard difficulty alchemy is necessary to finish the game because battles are much more tougher. I finished the game not so long ago, and now I'm playing additional story missions, which deepen the story around some characters. I will not talk about story, because it's big and complex and I don't wanna make spoilers or something. I'm leaving you to dive into rich and captivating world of Witcher games, and see everything for yourself. For me, I can say that I'm really proud to have this game in my collection, it's really one of the best games I've ever played. It is must have for any fan of Adult Fantasy RPGs.

Rating: 10/10