Whodunnit? There's An App For That!

Hello, WORLD!! Smokkee Singleton here, back again after fighting a losing battle. As much as I love trying new apps, sometimes I have TOO much fun with them. One of my favorite genres of movies, books, and games is mysteries. I grew up reading Donald J Sobol's Encyclopedia Brown and Agatha Christie's Poirot and Miss Marples. I also maybe the only guy who thinks that Clue is better than Monopoly too.

I still love mysteries to this day. Some of the best mysteries these days can be found in video games. Square Inc even has a game coming out for the PC, the XBox 360 and the PS3 where you get to solve your own murder. Using that logic, I knew there had to be at least 1 good mystery smartphone app I could play but since I haven't found one in 5+ years I was starting to give up hope.

Til I found one. Then that one app opened a floodgate.

Turns out there's a slew of great apps for people like me. I've been totally distracted lately playing a few of them. The first mystery game that I played was Murder Room although the one I ran across first was Ellie.....Help Me Out Please, both created by ATEAM, Inc. I downloaded both at the same time.

That tablecloth will come in handy.

Murder Room (for Android & iOS) starts you off locked in a room with a another man who has a chainsaw wearing a pig's head and a little girl that, well, play the game and find out. The object is simply: try to escape the room and/or the chainsaw. The puzzles rang from simple to WTF but I got several bad endings before I got what is labeled a "True Ending" It kinda reminded me of the Choose Your Own Adventure books in that regard. Even more, after you get the "True Ending", you're then able to purchase "Another Room", it's the back story concerning the guy in the pig and the events that happen prior to the events in the first story (maybe). Both games are equally fun to play but the plot of both halves don't add up totally, a minor flaw.








Ellie (Android, iOS) has a different mystery to solve. You're watching a monitor of a room that has a the titular character locked inside. Your objective here is to help poor Ellie escape the room. I haven't finished playing this story yet, but I believe their is a 2nd mission here too. And it isn't as dark a story as Murder Room so the experience isn't quite as good to me as MR but it does have some tough puzzles to figure out nonetheless.

This dream sequence may hold the answer.

Now for my favorite mystery app so far, Who Is The Killer (Episode I) (Android, iOS)! In this game you're an unnamed detective that is the house guest of a lady named the Baroness. She's one of 7 other people who are there besides you. You're only here for 7 days but not without excitement. You see, every day you're there, somebody dies! Now, this game differs from the above two because THIS is my idea of a mystery. You have to obtain clues to figure out who the killer is and there's various ways to do this. One such way is to talk to the other guests. In this sense, it definitely reminds one of the board game Clue. There's several mini games, including dream sequences and anagram puzzles, that also help you solve the mystery. I think. I haven't solved it yet but wait til I get done with this review. Of course by this being Episode I it's safe to assume there's more chapters and so far I think it there is an Episode II and III already.

Like I said, I ran across TONS of these apps but a lot of them are those boring point n click games that make you sick after about 10 minutes of play. These games haven't made me nauseous yet though. Well, that's it for now WORLD.   Let me know if you found any of these games enjoyable.

As always, you can catch me on Twitter as @MrGBIZ.







   

SmokkeeOn... DJANGO UNCHAINED

Hello, WORLD!! Smokkee here to talk about Quentin Tarantino's latest masterpiece, DJANGO UNCHAINED. If you haven't seen this movie, stop reading this and go do so ASAP. If you want to read my review first, look up my Rotten Tomatoes or Gofobo review. I'm not reviewing it here. I want to discuss the controversy surrounding this movie.

And why it's unnecessary.

Now, unless you've been in a coma for the past 2 years, you gotta be lil familiar with this movie. Set in the days where slavery is alive and well in America, DJANGO tells the story of the titular slave (played by Jamie Foxx) who not only becomes a freeman thanks to a deal he makes with Dr Schultz, a bounty hunting dentist (played by the always great Christopher Waltz) , he also finds employment as a bounty hunter himself. Now free Jamie's Django sets about finding his beloved with Broomhilda (Foxx's costar in RAY Kerry Washington) and manages to find her at a plantation run by Lenardo DiCaprio.

I understand that race will always be a touchy subject but to be offended by any of that would be inane. First, if you had no idea that a movie about slavery would have racist undertones in it, then I'm not sure we should be having this conversation in the first place. Second, if you've seen Alex Haley's ROOTS, the movie many people consider THE movie on slavery, then nothing in this movie should have offended any African American. That movie was brutal in it's portrayal of slavery and it's language was just as harsh. There's no scene in DJANGO that can mirror any of Toby's torture scenes.

Stephen, the most racist character in DJANGO UNCHAINED.

Now Quentin Tarantino DOES seem to be infatuated w/the "N" word. He himself has used it on several occasions in almost every one of the pictures he made. So NOW it's offensive? It's a tad bit too late for that. Lastly, I want to point out Samuel L Jackson's Stephen character. If anything, the Caucasians in DJANGO use the 'n' word only because that's how they were brought up. What's the deal with Stephen then? He clearly is another freed slave, like Django, but his attitude is more like a slave-owners than any other slave owner in the movie. To make a movie about slavery and have the most racist character actually be an African American was genius! And it was fairly obvious genius at that, unlike given Schultz a first name of King (Dr King, get it?).    

Like I said, just some observations. It's a great movie, well worth watching. Only people with nothing else better to do with there tiem will find anything wrong with it. At least that's what I think. Let me know what you thought about it, WORLD. I'd love to hear from you.