TV Tropes Will Ruin Your Life

Disclaimer: Do not enter this site unless you have about an eternity of free time. In other cases it will ruin your life.

                TV Tropes started in the year 2004 focusing on extracting and listing tropes from TV series (most notably Buffy The Vampire Slayer) and films and throughout 7 years it emerged to being one of the biggest encyclopaedia on media.

                What is great about it?

It is an enormous almost unlimited source of information on tropes, motifs etc. Ranging from western animation, anime, comic books, fan fics, films, literature to music and sound effect, new media, print media, radio, sequential art, tabletop games, television, theatre, videogames, webcomics (this is just categorized under “media”). Of course it is not formal like some other wiki which name I won’t tell ;) TV Tropes takes what is best from collective knowledge of Net surfers. In addition not only does it function as an encyclopaedia but also as a forum for loads of fans, who are discussing whether trope should be put on the page and listed in some of the works there.  Even though TV Tropes unfortunately cannot be perceived as an academic source it can still help you when writing your degree paper etc. E.g. I couldn’t find a book which would list any kind of Death representation in English literature. But when I entered TV Tropes, typed “Grim Reaper” in the search box soon I was browsing through literature subcategory on the Grim Reaper. With no doubt it is helpful. However there is one observed downside of using TV Tropes. When I started reading it I stopped after 3 hours! Time passes by so fast when you browsing through it.  Moreover sometimes fans of one or another creative work think too highly of things they praise so better be on a lookout for them. It sometimes lacks the eye of the critic :D

Nevertheless TV Tropes is a great site containing much more useful information than any other online or printed encyclopaedia ever.

Final score 8/10

This Will Destroy You

This Will Destroy You was introduced to me by a friend of mine. The band originates from Texas, USA. They play instrumental rock music pieces. Chris King, Jeremy Galindo, Donovan Jones and Alex Bhore are the current members of This Will Destroy You. Their music is specific for being overlong atmospheric and instrumental. This Will Destroy You was formed around 2005 by guitarists Chris King and Jeremy Galindo, now former bassist and keyboardist Raymond Brown and drummer Andrew Miller in San Marcos, Texas. In the beginning the ban tried tracks with vocals but stopped experimenting claiming that it was “awful”. They focused on instrumental pieces and to this date they released two studios albums This Will Destroy You (2008) and Tunnel Blanket (2011); two EPs Young Mountain (2006) and Moving On The Edges of Things (2010); one split with Lymbyc Systym  - Field Studies (2009) and one single Communal Blood (2010).

What I found interesting about this band that made me write a review of them? I’m sucker for long pieces of music which are melodic. Sounds they produce come out of the speakers in a soothing way slowly encompassing my room. What the band achieved is conveying very strong emotion without singing them out in lyrics and tone. Just instruments. Certainly This Will Destroy You could be played all day long in my home and I wouldn’t even notice it. So perfectly fit to my mind. Bellow are two fanmade clips of the same song but with different interpretation. Enjoy! J

This Will Destroy You
Years active: 2005 - present
Genre:

• Instrumental Rock
• Post-rock
• Drone

Current members:

• Chris King
• Donovan Jones
• Jeremy Galindo
• Alex Bhore

Final Score: 8/10

Indolence

Because of my laziness I didn't write anything but in the coming week I will post two reviews (I hope) :D
Stay tuned for more ;)

Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped!

Sony Computer Entertainment America present, a Universal Interactive Studios production, created and developed by Naughty Dog!

 

These words opened one of the best platform game I’ve ever played on PSX. My adventure with Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped! started before I had a PlayStation. Once upon a time when I was at my grandma’s house my cousin brought a PlayStation over from a friend and on one demo CD there was it. Crash, which we mistakenly named it a fox (sorry did not know English at that time) because of his red fur and everything. But let us not waste space for an introduction.

Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped! is a sequel to Crash 2: Cortex Strikes Back! It is an action packed platform game featuring Crash and Coco siblings helping Aku Aku defeat evil Neo Cortex and even more evil twin brother mask Uka Uka by travelling through time and grabbing crystals before them. Well the plot isn’t complicated but hell, what do you expect from this game? Developers put their heart into creating interesting and engaging levels rather than to the depth of story. And it is good they did. Crash has great graphics even though it is now almost 13 years old. Stages have a number of themes: there are medieval, swimming, riding, prehistoric, pirates, arabian town, motorbike ancient Egypt, flying, the future and boss stages. Each of them apart from boss stages has a crystal and gem to collect. Although crystals are easy to get, to have a gem you need to crash all of the crates and sometimes it is not that easy. In addition some levels contain coloured gems that are even harder to get than the silver ones. There are about 32 levels to be played + 5 boss stages. And even when you finished all of this there is still more to play. Now to access levels from 26 to 30 you must collect relics – basically it means going trough levels 1-25 and beating time in time trials. It certainly elongates the time we spent playing Crash. What is more there are three types of relics. Green when you beat the normal time, gold when you beat even harder time and unlisted platinum when you speed through the level like Road Runner. With new installment Crash gains new moves – each with boss defeat. So now Crash not only spins, jumps, crawls or slides but super belly flops, double jumps, spins even longer, has a fruit bazooka and runs like aforementioned Road Runner. Music once more was composed by Mutato Muzika. It fits level because it is also themed according to stages. So we have medieval, oriental, arabian and many others pieces of music which I personally don’t remember because they went so well along with the levels. But all of this I’ve seen somewhere else. Perhaps the two first games? Riding on animals, escaping from animals, boat levels. But even though Naughty Dogs repeated their own ideas they did it in a good way. One thing I certainly didn’t like was the difficulty level. This game was so easy that only gold and platinum time trials proved to be challenge. My final score for Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped! is 9/10. If you have PS3 it is available from PlayStation Network. So what are you waiting for? Buy it! :D

Hello everyone!

This is my first blog outside social network blogs.
My aim is to review everything I've watched, read, played, listened to, visited and eaten (You name it!).
I hope people will like my reviews =D