Noir Reviews Minute Maid Premium Cherry Limeade Drink With Other Natural Flavors

OHMYGOD!!! ITS LIKE DRINKING BATTERY ACID!!! WHY DOES IT BURN???!!!

Noir Reviews the Twilight Saga

*Stares*




*Looks away*




*Stares again*

Noir finally reviews the KFC Double Down.

This time, I forgo any attempts at assigning a score. My brilliance is far above arbitrary numbers. At least, unless people like numbers. Then I may make concessions so that your brains can be told how much I like or hate something using easy to digest digits.


Oh how dare they. How dare KFC decide that their sandwich is too good for a bun. How dare they saddle the consumer with an unholy concoction that will surely only serve to further fatten and kill them? The audacity! Damn you KFC, damn you and your machinations. If it wasn't so delicious, and if I gave a crap about any of that other stuff, I may have choice words for our good friend the Colonel.

So for those of you who live under a rock, the Double Down is two hunks of fried chicken, with bacon, cheese, and special sauce between them. It baffles my mind that anybody would order this thing, and write up a review about how the damned thing doesn't have a bun. That's just people looking for a reason to whine about something. And that makes me hate them.

And is it delicious? Yes it is. It's also expensive as hell. Mine cost me over almost six bucks, which is more than some of their value meals. So if there is a downside, it might be the cost. Some might argue that the nutritional value is another giant downside. But I call them weak.

Seriously, why complain about how the fast food sandwich has enough sodium to kill you outright? It's no mystery that fast food is pretty much lethal. You don't go there because it's good for you. You go there because it's food. Served fast. Hence, fast food. Don't be that guy who orders six cheeseburgers, then orders a Diet Coke because you're "watching your weight." Nobody's buying it. You are full of delusions my friend. Hell, some fast food salads are worse for you than this thing. Shut up.

So, it costs a fortune, and it's pretty much lethal. But is it delicious?

Yes.

I admit I don't know what the secret sauce tastes like, as mine was suspiciously without the secret concoction. It was also searing hot, spitting its flesh scorching juices at me with every bite. That's right, this sandwich is already at the height of audacity with its refusal to wear a bun, it also attempts to sear your tender flesh. How can you not like that?

Maybe I'll grab another one and try again, when I don't need to take out a home loan to afford it. But for the time being, I was impressed. And maybe that's the way it should remain. Like, forever frozen in delicious time. A memory of goodness that can never be revisited again, or I face tarnishing that memory.

So yes, I like it. Take your bunless meat prejudice and shove it.

Noir Attempts a Second Grilling.

So yes, you've read how the Uniflame grill is an unholy beast. Well, I tried it again a couple of days ago, and it grilled just fine. Though this was only after my daughter touched it and got burnt. I believe it truly does desire the flesh of the innocent to function. This is fine, because tomorrow is another grilling day, and I've got a freshly chopped up neighborhood kid to feed to it.

See? we can get along. I desire grilled meat, you desire human flesh. We'll meet each other's demands and have no problems. Burn my daughter again, and I will take a sledgehammer to you.

Noir Reviews fireworks in Hudson

Noir Reviews Fireworks in Hudson


So, like every super patriotic red-blooded American, we went out to gawk at fireworks on July 2nd. This is because only terrorists actually go out to watch them on the 4th. Or was it the other way around? Or maybe terrorists are the ones setting off the displays. Or maybe they’re the ones walking around selling sparkling LED Uncle Sam hats and faux lightsabers in an effort to drain Americans of their precious monies. Well, Mr. Terror Man, we don’t need your help throwing away our money. That just happens to be an area we already excel in. Anyway, ON TO THE REVIEW!



Location: (5/5)

The spot we ended up at was just outside of a company’s parking lot. The location was prime for firework viewing, with lots and lots of grass available for sitting. There was enough space so that everyone could be spread out, and for an antisocial hatemonger like myself, that can be a dream. I will watch my explosive money wasting display in peace, thank you very much.

Human Tolerance Factor: (1/5)

Oh my god. The people at this thing were so damned obnoxious and stupid that it baffles the mind. I mentioned that there was plenty of room, which was true. So why, pray tell, did we need kids playing football right next to our picnic blanket? There was SOOO much space to play around there without these two morons disrupting our personal space and trying to tackle each other only inches from our sitting space. There was also a guy standing around with a Nerf football posing like an idiot in front of his girlfriend’s camera, which isn’t so much annoying as it is sad.

Also, STOP TAKING YOUR PETS TO THESE THINGS! I don’t get why you’d take your easily spooked dog to a display where giant loud bright things rock the sky. And I don’t recall any of the pet owners I saw wielding bags to clean up their precious poochie’s steaming shits. The place isn’t a bathroom, it’s private property. Leave our damned pets at home. No matter what you think, Fido doesn’t give a damn about our country’s independence. He doesn’t need to be there to celebrate it.

And free glowsticks are nice…I guess, but the attached advertisements for kids Christian Church are a bit subversive. If they actually did a competent job of glowing, I might have been grateful. I hope the glowsticks weren’t supposed to represent God’s light or anything, because they were very dim indeed. (Funny side note, I was told that they represented as much when I went to one of these things as a kid. God’s light was worn as a necklace, and was much brighter that year. What happened?)

Also, a special shout out to Hershey’s of Hudson. Way to ignore me while I stood in front of your stand to buy popcorn. I was the only person there when I arrived, and as soon as I stepped up to buy something, you ignored me and helped the people that arrived behind me. Not just once, mind you, but three times. I don’t know what your damned problem was, but I loathe you. Way to be professional.



Fireworks! (3/5)

The main event. The thing we came to see. And they were pretty meh. Small town fireworks aren’t the most impressive things you’ll ever see, but these were kinda phoned in this year. Lots of cities are cutting back on fireworks though, thanks to the crappy economy. The show started an hour later than projected, and the grand finale was pretty weak. That’s all. It’s a shame I couldn’t tell what half of the shaped fireworks were supposed to be.


Total: (9/15)


So there you have it. If there was an upside, it was being able to spend time with my family. This was my daughter’s first fireworks display, and she was enthralled. (Well, at least to the level a two year old’s attention span will allow. You can’t really put a score to quality time with your family, unless they’re a bunch of assholes. The family aspect was awesome. As for the rest….well the city of Hudson can go to hell. At least until we inevitably wind up there again next year. Oh, you clever terrorists, making it convenient enough for us to return next year. But I still won’t buy your glowing expensive crap. So your victory is bittersweet at best.

Noir Reviews Mega Man X6

Noir Reviews Mega Man X6


Oh X6. I’ve been waiting to get to this game for a very very long time. It’s been years since I first cracked the factory seal on it and put it through its paces, but now is time for a reckoning. It was at this point that I realized that being a Mega Man fan was like being in a relationship not unlike the kind you see in lifetime original movies. Mega Man X5 was a definite downturn in the series, but X6 will beat the ever loving crap out of you, taking cheap shots just to rub salt in your wounds. But you’ll struggle through it anyway, because your love blinds you to just how bad you’re being treated.

On with the review! It's a long one!

Today, we’ll be using four categories rather than three, because I’m finding I like it better for video game reviews. The max score is now 20 rather than 15.


Story
Graphics
Sound
Gameplay

Story: (1/5)

What a mess. The basic plot is the same as just about every X game before it. Virus has run amok. Bad robots are killing folks. That’s about it. What makes this one so damned awful is all the incomprehensible plot developments, shockers, and secrets. Zero was killed in the last game, but he’s all better now. He hid himself away so he could fix himself. FROM DEATH. This is great timing, as an evil virus Zero is running around killing folks, though we don’t know where he came from or why.

A reploid scientist named Gate is “investigating” the virus incident, but he really just wants to get his hands on Zero’s hot body. There’s his reploid assistant, Isoc, who also wants to get Zero’s body too, and claims he is intimately familiar with Zero. There’s a robot that works for them name Hi-Max, who looks like the unholy love child of Roger Smith AND the Big O. He just likes to float around and talk about how superior he is. And there’s also the minor baddie, Dynamo, from X5, who is out to get Virus DNA because its something to do. There’s also a bit of backstory between Gate and Alia, X and Zero’s navigator, but the game’s poor translation makes it impossible to decipher what their history really is.

Oh, and of course the series’ big bad guy, Sigma, is there too, but he’s not behind anything. He only shows up at the very end of the game to take you on, in a half-dead body that isn’t even capable of coherent thought. His most memorable line was “JUSDIE ZELOOOO!!!” Yep. That’s an actual quote.

I mentioned the poor translation. Almost none of the text makes sense in the game. It’s “A WINNER IS YOU” bad. There are also frequent misspellings running rampant as well. I know Mega Man isn’t known for its deep plotlines, but at least they were all simple, and made some sense. This game couldn’t even address any of the hanging plot threads from the last two games. It gets one point for um..continuing the plot anyway, I suppose.

Graphics: (3/5)

As this is a PS1 era game, it obviously can’t be held to the same graphical standards as games today. But compared to other PS1 games, the Mega Man games weren’t exactly graphic powerhouses. This one is no exception, but for some ungodly reason, this game has a fetish for weird nonsensical backdrops and background images. The level that comes to mind the most is Gate’s Laboratory, the final stage of the game. The background is littered with giant, squatting robotic demons. They’re not enemies, or obstacles, they’re just chilling in the background looking like they’re squatting to take a dump. It’s like they couldn’t come up with anything decent to toss in there, and somebody in the art department screamed “FILL IT WITH GIANT SHITTING ROBOT BAPHOMETS!” The other stages are just as guilty of this, like the junkyard stage with gaudy children’s television show colors, or the giant flickering robot in the background of the weapons lab stage. This thing IS actually an obstacle, but its mere presence is distracting and makes the stage far more difficult as a result.

Sound: (2/5)

This game gets a 1 in the sound department, but only because the sound effects are pretty much the same as they have been since X4. The music is a whole different story. Mega Man games tend to be known for their infectious tunes, but this trend started to die when the series hit the 32 bit generation. For an action game, X6’s soundtrack is strangely mellow. Of the eight main stages, only two of them don’t come off sounding like narcolepsy inducing elevator tunes. And those six background tunes are so mellow and muted that they’re practically buried behind the other game sound effects. The two stages where the music isn’t mellow have obnoxiously hyperkinetic tunes that sound like someone wailing randomly on an electric instrument. The theme for Gate’s Laboratory is pretty good, and is infectious enough to remain in memory. But that’s one song out of many. I guess I'll give it a two for that song alone.

Gameplay: (1/5)

This is going to be a long one. Get some popcorn and get comfy,

This game is so freaking broken it hurts. The difficulty, the controls, and the stages themselves are all a gigantic cluster of bad ideas.

The controls are essentially the same as every other X game. But Capcom, in their infinite wisdom, decided that the game’s obstacles weren’t difficult enough , so they screwed with the control settings so that you die every time you push a button. The game has multiple ladders and wires to grab onto, which require only holding the up button on the directional pad. But the second you need to attack an enemy, you push the attack button only to have Zero scream like a lunatic and launch himself downwards towards the nearest bottomless pit. Apparently the most commonly used button in the game, the one you use to go…UPWARDS, can be combined with an attack button to send you DOWNWARDS. That’s just bad design.

The difficulty of this game is off the charts. It’s bad enough that there are millions of bottomless pits to navigate, each stage seems to want you so dead, they decide to throw even more crap at you while you attempt to make those jumps. I’m going to touch on each stage briefly, just to highlight this tomfuckery.

Commander Yammark’s stage: There are unkillable enemies that hover over huge chasms. They can be disabled temporarily, but when you try to jump past them, they like to resurrect themselves and nail you mid-jump. Oh yeah, and there’s a cave full of blind jumps where there are spikes always just offscreen, and you need to land on the backs of microscopic moving enemies to proceed. And this is the easiest stage.

Ground Scaravich’s stage: There are literally balls of shit that appear randomly, swiftly, and out of nowhere that WILL collide with you while navigating some tricky ass jumps. Oh, and the stage’s layout itself changes everytime you play it.

Blaze Heatnix’s stagel: The entire stage is a boss fight against multiple giant red metal donuts. They’re hard enough by themselves to kill, but combine them with rising lava? Fuuuuuu...

Blizzard Wolfang’s stage: This level is home to ice avalanches that suddenly scream down from above while trying to jump between slippery platforms, and there are areas where ice falls from above, and you need to climb up them mid-fall to escape. Imagine trying to jump on Tetris blocks to go up.

Rainy Turtloid’s stage: Oh lord. This stage. The entire area is a huge bottomless pit with tiny moving platforms no wider than your character. Enemies pop out of the hole to attempt to collide with you. And there’s no time to plan or time your jumps, because there’s a constant acid rain that chips your health away.

Metalshark Player’s stage: The ENTIRE stage is a trash compactor, where the ceiling constantly goes up and down, forcing you to scurry into hidey holes to stay safe. But a lot of those holes have insta-kill spikes. In fact, pretty much all of them do. And in the second part of the stage, the screen auto scrolls the whole time, pushing you to the right.

Shield Sheldon’s stage: Not that bad, actually, this stage can be finished under a minute, providing you can figure out how to redirect a giant laser beam using mirrors to open doors. Oh, and don’t let that giant laser hit you..

Infinity Mijinion’s stage: Tricky platform jumps are bad enough. Combine these with a giant robot in the background whose mere presence obscures your vision. It also constantly shoots at you, and releases drones that shoot unavoidable lasers at you. WHEEE!!

Gate’s Laboratory: The final stage. EVERY hazard I mentioned in the last eight stages is in here at once. This stage is broken up in three segments, each of which needs for you to have a different armor to get through them. And once you finish one, you can’t leave the lab to change armors without having to replay the last stage, which you screw yourself out of finishing because you just changed your armor again. If you screw up, it is actually impossible to finish this level. Good luck.

Oh, and if that’s not enough to make you cry, any of the initial eight stages can adopt properties from the other stages, adding their hazards to its own. They call this the “Nightmare System.” A very appropriate name.

To get through these stages, you’ll need power ups. To get these power ups, you need to rescue reploids you’ll find floating over bottomless pits, or hidden in secret places. There are also enemies that hunt down and infect these reploids. If a reploid gets infected, that power up part is gone for good. If you’re not quick on the trigger, you will find that, yet again, you have just made the game impossible to beat.

And if you end up in a battle with Hi-Max, who can show up randomly at the end of the stages, and don’t have his weakness, he’s impossible to kill.

That’s far too many impossibilities for my taste.

Overall: (7/20)

This game is awful. Pure and simple. Masochists are in for a good time. I highly suggest self-flagellation while you’re playing to enhance the experience. If you have a sensitivity to games that are stupid hard, or are prone to bouts of rage, stay as far away as humanly possible. If you’re a huge Mega Man nerd, you’ll play through it anyway, just like I did.

What? Oh…hi Zero…I was just talking to my friends, and not about you! Honest! OH GOD! NOT THE BEAM SABER!! NOT AGAIN! I’M SORRY!!!!

Review: The Uniflame Deluxe Square Charcoal Grill

Review: The Uniflame Deluxe Square Charcoal Grill



For Father’s Day, we went out to find a cheap grill so we could have some delicious charred animal flesh. We found one for 35 dollars at Wal-Mart. This is our tale:



Assembly (1/5)
This thing was a bear to put together. While the general assembly was simple as hell, the whole thing started when the parts packet wasn’t accurately labeled. How the hell was I supposed to know that screw H shouldn’t be screwed into the lid? It looks just like screw Q! And the screws that are there don’t go in snugly, leaving the legs and lid a floppy mess with zero stability. Add to that the fact that most of the metal rods were warped, and you get a lot of bending bars precariously to reach their holes. What should have taken maybe ten minutes became closer to forty, thanks to the useless instructions and the parts that weren’t clearly labeled. This can be a total nightmare when there are dozens of screws of varying lengths in the packet.

Durability and/or Safety: (1/5)
The air vent handle melted. Seriously, within five minutes of lighting the damn charcoal, the plastic handle for the top air vent melted. Who the hell thought that an easily melted part should be attached to an incredibly hot surface? UNIFLAME! Thanks to the rickety parts and bendy legs, I half expect the lid to fall off its hinges when I open it, or the whole damn thing to pitch forward, dumping its red hot payload on anyone stupid enough to venture near. It has wobbled a couple of times.

Let’s examine an average family cookout: “Hey dad! Can I have another hamburger? OH MY GOD! A SHOWER OF HOT CHARCOAL DEATH! I AM THIRD DEGREE BURNED!”
It could happen to you. This grill was forged by sadistic freaks who would love nothing more than to kill you and your family.

Deliciousness (3/5)
Well? Does it cook meat? Of course it does. It’s a grill. Though the burgers were a bit overcooked, I can hardly blame the grill for that. It took almost two hours to make enough burgers and hot dogs for two adults and a toddler. But this could be the fault of the charcoal, or the fact I put too much in and it took forever to burn. But no. I blame the fucking grill. The bastard compelled me to use too much charcoal. It purposely overcooked my meat , likely to be part of some burnt offering to its twisted masters. But I stopped it. Oh yes, I stopped its plans, and the meat was still more or less yummy. SUCK ON IT UNIFLAME! I (kind of) WIN!

Overall: 5/15
Will I use you again Mr. Grill? Yes. Despite your shitty construction, you are my grill, and I will break you. We will grill many times, and you will attempt to kill me just as many times. But I will survive. And if you piss me off, I will smash you with a sledgehammer and buy a better grill. You will be an example for all the other unruly Uniflame grills out there. Once I am finally forced to destroy you, I will hang you from a light post in front of the Wal-Mart I purchased you in.

But seriously folks. Buy a better brand. Unless you like dodging flaming charcoal briquettes.