Dissidia 012 [duodecim]: Final Fantasy: The Revenge of Oppenheimer: Episode V: Part 2-A New Hope (PSP)

“Who’s the bigger badass; Sephiroth or Kefka?” This question that has plagued many fans of Final Fantasy for decades, and now, we Finally have an answer. Of course, we’ve had the answer for some time now; neither. Kuja destroyed a planet, and then destroyed everything that could possibly exist, but even for the homophobic, the answer came last year, in the form of Dissidia: Final Fantasy. This is the sequel. 

Except it’s a prequel.

And a sequel. A bit.

And the exact same game.

With a long title.

Or possibly the 12^th in the series. I don’t know.

Confused? You will be! 

The premise for the Dissidia games (and I’ll mostly be talking as though this were the only one, since it’s essentially a replacement) is deceptively simple. The goddess of Harmony is engaged in unending war with the God of Discord (Cosmos and Chaos respectively). To facilitate this, they summon up warriors from the world’s past. Or worlds’ pasts. Or possibly the future. And they may not actually be the same people, but copies. Deceptive. From a more meta viewpoint, it’s a fighter/RPG with Final Fantasy characters. The original Dissidia had one hero and one villain from each game, and Duodecim adds about eight new fighters; Lightning, Vaan, Prishe, Yuna, Laguna, Tifa, Gilgamesh and Kain. The first half of the game focuses on the “12^th cycle of Battle” (bare with me), which takes place before the events in Dissidia. It focuses almost entirely on six of the new characters, with most of the returning characters getting cameos at best. After that, the game starts to be a rewrite of the original, allowing for the new story points and features.

And now, about those features. In Dissidia, outside of battle, the gameplay was that you’d move your character around on a sort of chessboard, interacting with “battle pieces” to start fights. Now, you move around a world map (similar to Final Fantasy I’s), and enter into dungeons, where it starts to look a lot like the original game-board thing, but with a little bit more interactivity. 

Now for the fights themselves. Your characters need to be equipped, level up, learn and set abilities like in an RPG, although there is an arcade mode with preset characters. In battle, you have two sets of numbers to keep your eye on; brave and HP. Your Brave can be boosted by attacking with the circle button, which in turn reduces your opponents brave. When you think you’re brave is high enough, use the square button to attack there HP. As you might expect, the goal is to reduce their HP to zero as fast as possible. By collecting EX cores (wingéd bells), you can enter EX mode, and by performing an HP attack, trigger an EX burst, this game’s limit breaks. New to 012 are Assist characters; by filling up a separate Assist gauge, one can summon another character to perform an attack and depart.

The Graphics are pretty nice, although unlike the recent Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, you cannot increase the colour depth from 16-bit to 32 (this means that there’s a weird cross-hatching thing going on with the graphics, and characters with bright coloured models (e.g. Cloud’s hair) have weird halos in some scenes. You’ll also want to do a data install before you start playing, since the load times are long and frequent otherwise.

If you’ve already played the original Dissidia, you can import your save data. A nifty feature of this is that you can opt to not import character levels and abilities; you can start with everything you’ve already unlocked (in my case, this was 42% of 012’s  PP catalog), without having characters ridiculously over levelled, particularly since some of them have been given lot’s of new shiny moves.

Speaking of the unlockables, in the original, most of the unlockable outfits were disappointing palette swaps. Now, the majority of characters have at least one drastically different outfit, often designed to resemble the ingame appearance, since the default outfits are mostly based on concept art. We have a Warrior of Light with Red spiky hair, Exdeath out of his armour, Kefka in a Turban, President Laguna, and Marriage of Convenience Yuna (beard not included) to name but a few. There’s also DLC costumes and music. A few of these can only be obtained by buying certain square-enix products (the legacy edition of duodecim for instance), however they’ve been really smart here; there is a helmetless Warrior of Light costume for free on PSN right now (at least, I ASSUME it’s still there), which looks pretty badass, but it’s located right next to the other DLC for the game. If a new player goes to get there free DLC, they’ll notice the fairly cheap other items, and end up buying them as well. It’s the same reason why newsagents keep the mints and stuff at the counter.

The soundtrack is just awesome. It’s a mix of new arrangements of familiar battle themes, and a few unaltered tracks thrown in for good measure. I love it, but then I love them anyway. More will be available as DLC packs. Or not. It’s hard to tell right now. For all we know, the PSN was downed by Skynet, and all our days are numbered. I hear tell judgement day just passed again recently.

In summation (which sounds damned professional), if you’ve not played the original Dissidia, but this instead; there won’t be massive gaps in your understanding of the plot because of it. If you have played the original Dissidia, this one’s just better. If you have already bought it, but didn’t know there was DLC, then make a PSN account and check them out posthaste. If by some fluke you cannot get on PSN, then there’s something wrong with you, and you are right to feel ashamed. 

You are right to feel ashamed.

Grandia II (PS2, PC)

Imagine a PS2 game, set in a world of fantasy, ruled over by a sometimes oppressive religion, the people kept in constant fear of events taking place a millennium ago. One day, an outsider comes, and meets with one of this faith’s devout. Though he seems a poor match at first, gradually, a love forms between the two. Together, they set out on a journey, with several like minded individuals, including a halberd wielding beastman. Together, they discover that their temple is based on years of deception, and the world is finally thrust into a new age of enlightenment after facing almost certain destruction. 

Okay, so I’m definitely not saying that Grandia II is a rip off of Final Fantasy X (particularly since it was released first). But there is a similar set of themes. So, basically, if you liked FFX, chances are you should give this a try.

The first Grandia has achieved a level of infamy right up there with Resident Evil. Personally, I think this is unfair, there’s only one truly atrocious performance, and he doesn’t get credited. But that’s enough on that. Grandia II has a superb voice cast, with names you’ll probably be able to recognise from virtually any anime or video game.

The gameplay is essentially turn based, although rather than stand in neat lines, the characters run around the battlefield constantly, so many spells have an area of effect that is crucial to the flow of battle. It’s way too complicated to explain here. So I won’t. Also, no random encounters. I don’t mind random encounters, but some people take umbrage, so make of that what you will.

Now, the juicy bit; the story. You play as Ryudo, a “geohound”, which is a kind of mercenary thingummy. It’s never really explained what a geohound is, and at first it seems like it’s a race rather than a job title. I guess the idea is that there people who will do any job, for the right price. As a result, most people hate and fear them. The plot starts when you are hired to escort a Songstress of Granas (the major religion in the world) to a nearby tower to perform an ancient ritual. Yeah, I think that will go as well as a particularly clumsy octopus performing open heart surgery on a conscious and irate wolverine. The songstress (Elena), ends up getting possessed by the “Wings” of Valmar (Satan), which take the form of a succubus who calls herself “Millenia”. So, obviously, you take her to the Not-Vatican to get Not-Exorcised by the Not-Spanish Inquisition (Weren’t expecting THAT now, were you?).

...And that’s about all I can really say. It's actually quite frustrating, since the best parts of the story are all earth shattering spoilers. Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's Dad. Young Anakin goes over to the dark side. Leia is Luke’s Sister. Soylent Green Is People. The Princess is in another castle. Jean Grey isn’t as dead as we were led to believe. Summoners don’t NEED luggage. All your base may not be in your possesion. Once you know these things, your view of the entire story is changed. I have quite a lot to say about this story, and may one day revisit it. But for now, I leave you with this; Grandia isn’t as bad as people say. Grandia II has possibly the deepest plot of any game I have ever played. Hell, I could write an ESSAY on the themes and symbolism on this thing. Plus, it has probably the best battle system of any turn based RPG. It couldn’t have sold very well, since subsequent Grandias never saw a PAL release, but it is definitely worth a shot.

Also, there’s robots. Did I not mention the robots?

First Impressions: Unknown

I don’t really know if I should be reviewing this film, it’s been out for a while and it’s a bit of a minefield as far as spoilers are concerned. Oh well, I suppose you might want to rent it when it comes out on DVD or something so let’s dig into a very vague review of Unknown!

Unknown is that new film Liam Neeson is in that you probably saw a trailer for, thought “that looks quite interesting” and then immediately forgot about because it hasn’t been all that heavily advertised compared to Mars needs moms and all the other trash that’s come out recently. The trailer in question shows a confused Neeson being told by his wife that she has no idea who he is and that her husband is this other gentleman right here, so would you kindly piss off and be crazy somewhere else? And also the usual trailer white noise of car chases and the like. That’s a fairly good summery of the first act of this film. Neeson awakes from a coma after a traffic accident to discover that he has some memory loss and all the memories he does have appear to be contradicted by the facts. So he must be confused right? He suffered some more serious trauma in the crash than it at first appeared and so he thought he was someone he wasn’t. But hold on, didn’t he know a bit too much about this prominent bio technology expert he apparently isn’t for that to be the case? Hmm...

So it’s a psychological thriller then? Yes it is. It’s a pretty good one actually, the action moves fast, the characters never seem too stupid (something I think far too many films of this genre are guilty of) For example when Neeson storms the hotel at the start of the film to find his wife, the security don’t immediately throw him out but instead do things like check the website of the university he claims to be from to see if he looks anything like who he’s supposed to be. When He can’t prove who he is Liam phones a friend to try and get someone to vouch for him. When Neeson (I would call him something else to switch this up but I’ve forgotten his characters name in this film. I’ll call him Ra’s al Ghul from now on) goes back to the hotel later after he learns SPOILERS and goes to tell them about the SPOILERS he SPOILERS they don’t believe him at first but he tells them to check their SPOILERS and they actually give him a chance and see that he really is a SPOILERS and react accordingly.

People do things I would think of doing in this crazy situation and that makes the film hang together much better than similar films where far too often the protagonist is the only character with any sense. Also as is inevitable with these types of stories there is a twist and this one’s actually quite smart and fits in well with the rest of the story. Though truth be told I did guess it about 20 minutes before I was supposed to, But I put that down to the fact that if you’re paying attention to the plot and looking out for one you should be able to guess any given plot twist. And hey, at least I didn’t guess this one anything like as quick as in Righteous Kill (Robert De Niro and Al Pacino play the only two characters with any screen time and the entire film paints De Niro as the killer VERY OVERTLY. Guess who the killer is guys!)

Bottom line: Unknown is probably the smartest film on at the moment. It isn’t going to rock anyone’s world too much but it’s an intelligent and mature film (by which I mean it takes itself fairly seriously, not that it’s porn) at a time when the average Hollywood movie is about as smart as George W. Bush and as mature as any given star of My Super Sweet Sixteen.

Also its set in Germany for some reason but Ra’s al Ghul still plays an American even though he’s from Northern Ireland.

WATCH IT.

Lets talk Doctor Who :D Part 1

I don't know a person who hasn't heard of the magical man who is half-Time Lord, half-Human (on his mothers side(its canon guys, Wikipedia)) who can change his face and travels all of time and space in his magical blue box, the TARDIS (Time And Relevant Dimensions In Space). I myself have been a fan of Doctor Who from a very young age, like two or something, and I have forever been obsessed with it. I remember watching Tom Baker and wishing I had a REALLY big scarf as well. Ahhhh nostalgia...

What a lot of people may not know is that there was in fact a Doctor Who movie. Yeah a real movie.

It was made back in 1996 by the Americans after the show had went on hiatus in 1989 due to problems down at the BBC. Those bastards. They obviously didn't care about the show much in the old days, they even let loads of the old episodes in the 60's get wiped, presumably by giving the footage to some fucking coffee boy who left the tapes next to a big ass magnet.

The movie starred Paul McGann and Sylvester McCoy as the doctor. McCoy was the last incarnation of the Doctor before the BBC fuck up and was brought in for the regeneration (the process of the Doctor changing his appearance in order to surpass death). The movie also starred Eric Roberts (Julia's brother) as the Master, the anti-Doctor, a rival Time-Lord.

The movie starts with McGann's Doctor narrating while we look at ash planet called karo (home planet of the iconic Daleks, who sound pretty weird in this movie). The Doctor describes how the Daleks have put the Master on trial for all his evil crimes. They would never ever do this in the show, they have like no sense of justice or care about other beings they're ruthless metal-Nazis. This could be considered, if anything, a flying kick to the balls to all fans. McGann then states that the good ol' Daleks have allowed the Masters gooey remains to be taken back to Gallifrey (planet of the Time Lords) by the Doctor after they exterminate his ass. I won't even comment on how ridiculous this is.

The scene then cuts to the 7th Doctor living it up in his TARDIS which looks fully furnished and golden and awesome. Suddenly the weird urn thing thats holding the Masters remains breaks open and allows the Master to escape in a weird goo, plasma form and he goes right for the center column of the TARDIS making it malfunction and go into something called "Temporal Orbit" which basically means "emergency landing" and forcing the Doctor to pilot the TARDIS to San Francisco on the night of 30th December, 1999. Do you think the plot might have something to do with the millennium?

As the Doctor leaves the TARDIS he is gunned down by an Asian street gang. What the fuck right? This guy killed Daleks, almost wiped out the Cybermen and of course fought the ultra-gay looking Happiness Patrol and he is bested by some fucking gang in America? Thats horse shit.

member from a rival gang named Chang Lee calls the Doctor an ambulance and he's taken by away to the hospital by a paramedic known as Bruce who the Master's essence will take over and use to kill his wife, wear leather and mess about with Asian teens. That little scamp.

As the Doctor is operated on by Grace Holloway (his new, crap, American companion) he dies because she doesn't understand his vascular system (two hearts). He dies on the operating table and his body taken to the morgue, its there that he regenerates in to the young 8th Doctor (McGann).

Keep checking for Part 2, i'll try and have it up soon :)

Those Wii 2 rumours...

Are INCREDIBLY exciting. Speculation is abound on the internet that Nintendo's next home console (codenamed Project Cafe) will be announced at E3 this June, but not released until 2012. Not only is this much earlier than expected, the rumoured specs are intriguing in many ways.

First of all, it's rumoured to be running a triple core PowerPC processor designed by IBM, much like the 5 year old Xbox 360. However, more interesting is the rumoured graphics processor, which is significantly more powerful than those on the current Xbox 360 and PS3, suggesting Nintendo's new console may well have better looking games than those currently being released for those consoles, as well as benefiting from more third party support, given that cross platform development will become much easier, alleviating one of the problems with the Wii in recent times.

Even more bizarre is the rumoured controller for the new system, which will apparently feature a touch screen. Yes. A touch screen. I last heard that back when speculation was abound about the Revolution controller back in 2005. Apparently the 6-inch touch screen will be mounted on a much more traditional controller shape that will also feature d-pads, bumpers, triggers, and, interestingly, a front facing camera.

Normally, this might suggest that the new console features no motion control, but according to leaked information from third party developers, who have had development kits for months, motion control is also featured, with more fidelity than Playstation Move.

Other scraps of information include the possibility of games being streamable from the console to the controller, although it is not yet known if these are more stripped down games akin to iPhone or iPad games, or full console experiences.

How all of these rumours link together is still a mystery, but presumably one that will be solved at E3 in June, when Nintendo is expected to announce a raft of first and third party games for their new system, which sounds intriguing to say the least.

So I guess the next generation is here?

MYST (DS version)

Have you ever played a game and thought to yourself, “Do you know what could only enhance this gameplay experience? Microsoft Power Point”. 

Up until the massive success of the Sims (which has shipped more copies than WoW has subscribers, make of that what you will), MYST was the best selling PC game ever. Which I guess proves that Apple was good for something at one point. Not only did this game sell very very VERY well, it is also attributed to the success of the CD-ROM drive. It has been re-released and ported more than ten times, and there has recently been talk of a motion picture adaptation.

And now the question that you’ve all been bursting to hear answered; why then, is it so shit?

Well, part of the problem is that it’s on the DS. But let’s start with the cover. The box art is fine, but turn it over, and we see a fairly major warning sign; the back blurb is in English AND Dutch. This would be fine, if they were just trying to appeal to broad demographics, but the DS only has options for English, French, Spanish, German and Italian. And then there’s the blurb itself; “All source code has been re-written specifically for the Nintendo DS performance and gameplay”. Wow. How generous. I’d hate to think that I was purchasing a game that had been coded for a pocket calculator and stuck on a DS flashcard. THIS was what you used as the most IMPORTANT feature of your game? That’s not to mention that malarkey with the words “performance and gameplay” seemingly tacked on there for no logical reason.

Of course, it wouldn’t be fair to judge a book by its cover. So I’m going to judge it by its manual instead. It’s in greyscale, which is a real pet peeve of mine, especially when big companies like EA and Ubisoft, who so obviously have the money and resources to print in colour do it, but I digress. The content isn’t actually all that bad, it tells you how to use the interface, and even has few hints to get you started (believe me, you NEED them). The only reason I bring it up, is that the content is only about twelve pages long. So, they repeat it all in two other languages. Again, fair enough, this is the European version after all. Except that the languages chosen are Finnish and Swedish. Again, why? I am genuinely asking why those ones? And why not Dutch, since you seem to want to hook them in as much as the English speakers? THIS MAKES NO SENSE!

So, FINALLY, we get on to the game itself. And you know what? It’s not terrible. Yeah, kinda threw a curveball there. MYST is a very good game. It would take quite a bit to ruin it totally. You start out on a mysterious Island, and that’s pretty much all the info your given. By exploring the island and experimenting with the various books and arcane machinery, you can teleport to new areas, to collect special pages which can be put into one of two special books with a person trapped inside, and the plot is gradually revealed as you go along, mostly through inference. There’s surprisingly little exposition, but a TON of backstory. You’ll need to take notes as you go, and by about halfway, I started to find myself writing as though I really were exploring these places, writing down thoughts and feelings about the three characters in the game. But it was very difficult. Because this game should NEVER have been on the DS.

The DS screen is too small for this game, since most of the plot and puzzles are based around information in special books you find. Midway thoughtfully provide a magnifying glass button that lets you read them. VERY slowly. But then there are the machines. It’s very difficult to work out what you can and can’t operate, or indeed if you have done so correctly. This can make the already difficult puzzles just plain infuriating.

And now, onto the Big point I made at the very start, a problem common to almost ALL versions of MYST apart from the original on the Apple computers of the time. Whenever you move, there’s supposed to be a subtle fade from one still image to the next, the idea being that, since all worlds in MYST are contained in books, you are turning the page. I  imagine this would also evoke a more Dreamlike feel to the whole game. Instead, the stills cut from one to the other, with absolutely no transition, which makes everything incredibly disorienting.

So, to some up, MYST is a very good and incredibly immersive game. MYST DS however, is a pale echo of this. I didn’t even finish this game. I finished realMYST, the recent PC version that, rather than using pre-rendered stills, renders all the worlds in real time 3D. And it is stunning. The graphics are a far cry from...well, from Far Cry, but it’s a thousand times better than pre-rendered stills, squashed and distorted to fit the DS screen. Perhaps they should have spent less time on the source code after all.

The Elder Scrolls: Arena review

Bethesda Softworks, entering the market in 1986 with "Gridiron!" and continuing with hockey games (and licensed Terminator games, along with home alone and Where's Waldo?) until they entered the fantasy RPG industry in 1994 with a new series: The Elder Scrolls, beginning with Arena. Although that would seem unusual given their video game history they were successful enough to make 4 squeals and 2 spin-offs. But I'm here to talk about Arena.

Out of all the games under the Elder Scrolls title, Arena was by far the biggest. The main storyline spanning across the entire continent of Tamriel. And as all the landscape was randomly generated, there was essentially unlimited space available to you (you could be walking in the same direction for hours and never come out of the city you were in), so you could only travel to other locations by fast-travelling. And as all NPCs and quests are also randomly generated, you could find work almost anywhere.

Being released just a few months after DOOM, you could say it was among the first games to use first-person 3D graphics (Although nothing was rendered in 3D, it was simulated by scaling, skewing and distorting textures to make it look 3D. A method known as pseudo-3D or 2.5D)

Combat in Arena is used by holding the left mouse button and dragging in the direction you want to swing your sword (using swords as an example) so it is very difficult to use with a laptop's trackpad, as the keyboard needs to be used too. However it is a very nice system and allows you to swing in any direction you want (but there is only basic swing attacks) and certain creatures can only be hit by swinging in the correct direction.

When you begin Arena, you have the choice of your race and class. Your race is determined by which province you select as your home, as a result of this there are no Orcs (Choose high rock and you will be a Breton) and the create-class system is non-existent this early in the series. Once all the is done, you are given a briefing by the ghost of Ria Silmane, an apprentice of Jagar Tharn, an Imperial Battlemage of the Empire who betrays the emperor, trapping him in an alternate dimension, so Tharn can take the place of Emperor of Tamriel. Once the briefing is over, you begin in a minimum-security prison cell, which has the key in the corner of it. just outside the cell in a tutorial dungeon, with a small amount of loot just outside the door to the cell and an abundance of rats and goblins. At the end of the dungeon is the Shift Gate, which will take you out of the dungeon and transport you to your home province. When you leave the dungeon, it is your quest to find the eight pieces of the Staff of Chaos used to trap the Emperor in the said alternate dimension. The eight peices are scattered all across Tamriel, the location of each piece will be revealed to you by Ria's ghost when you sleep. However she will not tell you the province, it is up to you to ask around town and get the information you need.

All-in-all, The Elder Scrolls: Arena was a great game for its time, and is a necessity for any Elder Scrolls Fan and a classic for anyone else. It's available free from the Elder Scrolls site, however being as old as it is, a DOS emulator will be required to play it.

Thank you, goodnight

Pixie

Review: Pokemon Black and White (Nintendo DS)

Pokemon. Ever since it appeared in the late 90's it has been a favourite of kids and geeks everywhere. Its unique brand of RPG mechanics that expertly combine simplicity with depth, which also succeeds in itching every gamers propensity for collecting things has seen it become wildly popular, with enough merchandise to stretch to the end of the universe coming along with that popularity (OK, I exaggerate, but it often seems that way). Along with the merchandise there has been a steady release of a new generation of paired releases every few years that add a new geographical area to the franchise and also around 100 or so new Pokemon. Black and White is no different in this regard, but developer Game Freak has done wonders making these new games feel much fresher than the description implies, whilst also still keeping to the series rich heritage and gameplay mechanics.

In common with other Pokemon games, your journey begins in a small village in a secluded area of the game's region, Unova, where Pokemon Professor Juniper just happens to be based. Along with some friends, you pledge to journey across the land, searching far and wide to find and understand each Pokemon, cataloging them in a sort of Pokemon encyclopedia, the Pokedex. At the same time, as a trainer, it is your goal to fight and defeat the 8 gym leaders in order to challenge the regions Pokemon League and become Pokemon Champion of Unova! Of course, starting off in a lonely and secluded village means picking one of the three well designed starter Pokemon (Snivy, the grass snake, Tepig, the fire pig and Oshawott, the sea otter Pokemon) and leaving home to begin assembling your awesome team of Pokemon to help carry out this task.

So far so similar. But as you begin to play the game you'll realise that compared to previous iterations, the battles are lightning fast, and for the first time, the Pokemon move in battle as opposed to previous static sprites. As a result of this, battles are more exciting and engaging. Whilst the mechanics of the battle system remain the same as previous entries, Game Freak have added wild double battles and triple battles to spice proceedings up a little. All these innovations combined with infinite use TM's meaning you can tweak and tinker with your Pokemon as you see fit makes the already winning formula battle wise even more compelling.

The 'making things fresh again' mantra has extended to the choice of Pokemon themselves. No longer will going into a cave result in an endless string of Zubats and Geodudes, oh no, because all of the Pokemon featured in the main game are entirely new, and very well designed they are too. This extends beyond aesthetics - long time Pokemon players have derided the sameyness of fighting the same Pokemon time and time again and knowing their quirks and weaknesses. Gone are the days of instantly knowing a Pokemons typing from previous experience - this makes you think again and experience the wonder of learning and finding them for yourself.

Game Freak has also worked hard to improve the aesthetics since the last generation. 3D graphics are used with much more gusto than before, and in certain parts the camera swoops around and shows a true 3D perspective. Seasons also feature - every month the entire look of Unova changes, from green to brown, and from rain to snow. A long time weak point of Pokemon games are confusing, ugly and badly designed menu screens - this has been improved and everything looks cool, and more importantly functions well, which is essential in a game with so much micro-managing to be done.

Connectivity options have also been vastly improved. No longer is internet trading only available in one building - it's integrated into every Pokemon Centre. In fact, for local battling and trading, there's no longer any need to trek to a Pokemon Centre, as thanks to the C-Gear on the touch screen, Infrared can be used to instantly connect to other players and get that battle itch on.

So Black and White is an evolution then, not a revolution. It plays better, looks better and integrates with other players better, but it's still the same old Pokemon underneath the flashy surface. That said, when a game has such a sheer amount of content and plays so well, it's no mystery why millions of people still want to catch them all.

BUY IT

Power rangers super legends PS2 review

The power rangers. that epic 90s franchise of spandex , stock footage and multi coloured badassness

So a side scrolling beat em up based on the power rangers . What could go wrong ?

Yeah it was bad really really bad . Dull boring and repetitive , probably one of the worst ps2 games I have ever played . still kinda liked it though.

I know that doesn't make any sense but bare with me . The games got a lot of things wrong with it well almost everything wrong with it actually. it has you playing as different rangers teams through

there respectively themed levels battling there own set of mooks with some plat forming in-between and ending in a boss battle . not bad you say ?

Well it is . The levels well some times pretty to look at just get bland a repetitive after five or so minuets. The mooks do come in a few different flavours like basic hand to hand , shooter , flyer and the like but you don't have to fight them you can just run past them for most of the level until the plot traps you into fighting them . That's kind of a big damn flaw for a beat em up to have .

If this wasn't a power rangers licence id have to complain about the enemy AI being bad but hear it works the mooks of this game are putties after all and watching them line up single file to fight you , fall off platforms , walk in to the paths of explosives and at one point stand around waiting to get hit by cars just adds add an unintentional power rangery feel to the game.

Now the big reason to hate on this game is the the zord battles . If there's one thing you remember about power rangers its the zord battles , giant multi coloured dinosaur robot vs the giant monster of the week battering the crap out of each other hell yeah that's awesome . Sure it was just 2 guys in rubber suits but did anyone care ? No because it was the best part of the episode and it happened every episode ! But hear in this game the beauty of robotic armed combat the very soul of the show is reduced to a quick time event . A QUICK TIME EVENT . super legends succeeds ware others have failed in making giant robots boring. that shouldn't even be possible. the worst part is its not even hard it just happens press a few button , repeat the pattern and your done .

Now all of that could be forgiven but there's one thing stopping that one main flaw in the game the one above all others the one that takes away basically the game part . You cant die . When your health bar runs out the game just re spawns ware you fell .this just takes all of the challenge out of it which is a shame , zord QTE's aside boss battles do try to mix things up and with set lives this could have been a fun little game.

Despite its flaws its cheapness its desecration of the art of mecha , I still kinda liked it . Its not a game aimed a me its for kids. its cheapness just adds to the power rangery feel . Logically I should say avoid it but I cant if you can pick it up for under £5 you should ether for a cheap laugh at its badness or like me for nostalgia for the the legendary past.

The Lion King

For the past few days i have been ill. Like REALLY ill. So I've been in bed with a craving for soup and good films. Eventually during my search, I stumbled upon a film so awesome, so powerful, so goddamn crazy, that the so called powers that be have kept it from me for like, 10 years. I of course am speaking of the epic that is The Lion King. I haven't seen this film in AGES and it was a treat to see it in its VHS format. This film doesn't even need to be explained, it has everything; lions, Rowan Atkinson, Shakespeare, James Earl Jones, Lions, Hakkuna Mattata, Scar, Lions and of course, SIMBA. If you haven't checked it out in a long time why are you even reading this. Go watch that film. Go watch it right now. Hair of the dog. It'll make you feel better.

First Impressions: Sucker punch

Do you ever make chilli con carne? Have you ever made chilli and forgotten to season it properly? I have and I can tell you, it’s a strange and extremely disappointing experience to taste it afterwards. All the right things are there, the flavour is roughly similar and all but somehow it just isn’t anywhere near the standard of your usual cooking.

Can you see the parallel I’m trying to draw here?

The action in Sucker punch is bad, really bad, it commits the cardinal sin of action in film, it’s boring. It shouldn’t be, it has zombie Nazis, robots and dragons fighting unrealistically attractive and scantily clad women one of who rides a mecha suit. Not to mention it’s made by the guy who directed 300 and Watchmen, this film should kick ass but it doesn’t. Here’s why:

The zombie Nazis aren’t threatening at all, as the heroines can and do walk through them as though they were unnamed enemies in a dynasty warriors game.

The robots are just as ineffectual and have a bad habit of standing around and waiting for the stars to kill the last lot before trying to shoot them themselves.

The dragons cause a few more problems for the goodies but are ultimately both killed by one sword wound. Very anti-climactic.

The mecha, and all of the other military equipment one of the girls pilots (She seems to be the designated driver) are all very capable of getting the various missions done in seconds due to the sheer armour and fire power afforded to war-machines and so are forgotten about until they reappear as a convenient deus ex machina.

The girls, while unrealistically attractive and scantily clad, don’t have much character and never once let loose a quick badass one liner. So they don’t carry the film on the back of badass characters.

Overall it just isn’t very exciting. Remember what action films were like before the new Batman and James Bond films? Everyone jumping about on wires and ploughing through mooks without a thought (and not in a good way), none of the hits had any weight to them.

That’s what this is like and it’s a style of film I think Hollywood should really have moved past by now. There are a few nods to the Zach Snyder school of action, you know, the action slows down and speeds up you know the drill. Also, do you remember the first fight in Watchmen where the comedian gets thrown out of his window? Remember how when he gets punched in the face it goes slow-mo and his face gets all distorted and ripples with the force of the punch? That shot is in this movie and it kind of sucks. Probably because a twenty something year old actress probably has much better skin elasticity than Jeffrey Dean does.

So I don’t think Sucker punch is a very good action film. Or maybe to be clearer, I don’t think Sucker punch is a very good action FILM. Without giving out any spoilers the structure of the main bulk of Sucker punches plot structure is consists of the main character progressing though a comparatively realistic over world by going from area to important area and entering a symbolic themed world where the hero’s have to shoot, hack and slash there way though a selection of enemies usually culminating in a climactic battle.

This isn’t just me is it? That’s the plot of a video game right?

I love video games and all but when your high budget blockbuster’s plot is directly comparable to Pokémon red and blue you’ve made a mistake or two.

At the end of the day Sucker punch is the worst thing I’ve seen from Snyder, both in terms of screenplay and execution, it tries somewhat to do something a bit clever here and there but it uniformly fails. It ain’t great but it’s got tits and guns in it so it’ll probably make money right?

DON’T WATCH IT.