Monthly Archive for March, 2007

God of War (PS2)

Published on March 31, 2007 in Video Games. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .
God of War cover

This past week I played through God of War for the Playstation 2. I had wanted to get it for a while now, except I’d always end up prioritizing other games instead. I’d been told by several people that the game is great, there was a lot of buzz surrounding the release of the sequel this past week, and recently it was placed as the “#1 PS2 Game of All Time” in IGN’s list. So, I broke down and finally bought it on eBay for $12.

At first I was enjoying the game, but I didn’t quite understand what all the fuss was about. As the game went on, I liked it more and more, until the second to last level finally sold me completely on the game. I’m not going to say what the level was, because I don’t want to spoil an unexpected twist for anyone who hasn’t played the game.

The combat was repetitive at first, but it becomes insanely fun as you level up your abilities, making you super powerful and badass. It’s easy to fight, but joining moves together in combo chains feels really rewarding. Your main weapon and all the abilities you have at your disposal as the game progresses are fun to use.

What really stands out for me is the game’s story and its level design. While the story is simple, it’s layered well, told in a surprisingly complex way for a game of this type. The backstory of the main character, Kratos, is revealed gradually, bringing depth to his motivations. The script isn’t awful, which goes a long way, and a stand-out performance from the narrator (Linda Hunt) brings a lot to the tone and quality of the game. The story is epic, but the scope is refreshingly narrow — nearly half of the game takes place in one location.

The game’s level design is excellent. While most of the puzzles involve moving boxes and hitting switches, a fair amount involve changing the structure of levels to create new paths, which is something I like a lot. The environment isn’t something you simply occupy and traverse, but is something you must manipulate to succeed. Traps and obstacles are varied enough to not feel repeated ad nauseam; some traps are even only used a single time within the game. Environments are richly detailed and well thought out. There is a fair bit of backtracking within specific levels, but it felt justified and never long enough to simply be an excuse to lengthen the game.

In all, I think my $12 were well spent. I wouldn’t call the game “#1 PS2 game of all time,” but it certainly is excellent, and I eagerly look forward to playing the sequel. Also, I can’t wait to see what kind of game David Jaffe makes next, since he’s announced he’s no longer interested in making game on this scale.

Shaun of the Dead (Wright, 2004)

Published on March 26, 2007 in Movies. 6 Comments Tags: , , .
Shaun of the Dead poster

Shaun of the Dead was absolutely brilliant. It’s the perfect zombie comedy film with just the right tone, and is very well written, directed, and performed.

My only complaint with this movie are the quick crash zoom sequences. There’s a couple in the movie, I think both in the first half. I could see why they’re funny — bringing action-film hyperimportance, style, and “cool” to mundane acts such as preparing a slice of toast with jam — but despite the humor, the sequences feel out of place.

As I watched the movie, I couldn’t help but imagine what a disaster it would have been as a big-budget American film. I was thankful that it wasn’t, because it’d been quite a while since I’ve seen a movie I enjoyed on this level. I just hate myself for not having seen it sooner.

TMNT (Munroe, 2007)

Published on March 25, 2007 in Movies. 0 Comments
TMNT poster

TMNT wasn’t, unfortunately, all I had hoped it would be. It was a fun movie, but not nearly good enough.

The first sneak peeks of the film seemed to promise a tone closer to that of the original comics, but each subsequent trailer strayed further and further. The original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics were meant to be a parody of Frank Miller’s dark take on Daredevil crossed with the X-title New Mutants. So, as you could imagine, the original run of the TMNT comics was pretty dark and violent. Though not seeing that in the movie was a huge disappointment, it wasn’t the film’s biggest problem. The film’s storyline was the problem.

In the movie, a warrior king and his generals return after 3,000 years to take over the world, and the Turtles have to stop them. However, this isn’t what the movie is really about. The movie is about the Turtles learning to get over their differences and function as a family, with the main conflict occurring between Leonardo and Raphael. The villain plot almost feels like an afterthought. They seem to exist simply to contrast with the Turtles; they also call themselves a “family,” but they fail in the end because they can’t see past their differences. I’m almost completely certain that the villains in the movie were original, not taken from either the comics or the animated series. The villains weren’t very interesting or menacing enough, and they weren’t exactly out to get the Turtles. They’re out to take over the world, and the Turtles sort of get in their way, and try to stop them. I assume the reason for the new villains was to bring focus to the family conflict story, and since they are unfamiliar they don’t distract us as much. It would have been far more effective and more fan-pleasing to see an interesting take on a classic TMNT villain, while spotlighting the family conflict. In the end, neither of the plots are really strong enough to carry the movie.

The the movie was kind of a disappointment, it was still fun to see, especially the action sequences. I’m most excited about the potential for the next movie, because there’s a couple hints as to what the plot might be.

Bryan Singer’s Next Movie

Published on March 23, 2007 in Movies. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Last night Gabe sent me this bit of news from IGN.  The article says that Tom Cruise will be starring in Bryan Singer’s next movie, an untitled WII thriller.  I’m not terribly excited about Tom Cruise starring, but prior to reading that, I had no clue that Singer was working on a WII movie in the first place, and that I’m very excited about.  He’s directing the WII pic before the Superman Returns sequel, which makes me happy, because I’ve been wanting to see what sort of thing he’ll do with a movie that isn’t a comic book adaptation and it’s about time he does something else… especially since he didn’t give us X3.

Zodiac (Fincher, 2007)

Published on March 23, 2007 in Movies. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

Sorry to ignore my backlog of movies, but I just got back from seeing Zodiac and I feel like the fresher I have it in my mind, the less likely I’ll get lazy about writing it up.

Although it’s unusual for my reviews, there may be some light spoilers here, depending on your definition of “spoiler.” Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
zodiac poster

I really enjoyed Zodiac. I particularly loved the characters and their interactions, and by extension the cast that played them. I find the subject matter and these sorts of stories in general fascinating, and I love them even more when they’re told this coherently compellingly. However, Zodiac did have some problems.

I’d heard complaints that the film is too long, and this is definitely true. In the movie’s defense, I couldn’t pinpoint any particular scenes that could definitely have been cut, which is something that I usually can feel out in these cases. Part of the problem is that it feels like Zodiac is actually two movies. Somewhere in the middle of the movie, there’s a dramatic shift in tone. It isn’t something sudden and clear cut, but it isn’t that smooth either; around the time Avery (Robert Downey Jr.) stops being a prominent character, the transition is more or less complete — if not then, then definitely by the time Inspector Armstrong (Anthony Edwards) leaves the film. Despite the graphic depictions of the murders in the first half of the movie, the tone is fairly light, at least in comparison to the second half, thanks mainly to the nature of the interactions between characters and the faster pace of the investigation. The latter half of the movie is almost exclusively about Graysmith’s (Jake Gyllenhaal) obsession with solving the case as we works on his book, and the movie gets heavier as it delves more into his research; during the second half the plot is driven by Graysmith’s discoveries as opposed to being driven by the killer’s actions. In all fairness, this sort of narrative and tonal shift is very difficult to pull off, and despite the problem of length, David Fincher did a good — if not great — job.

Interestingly, the visual style changes slightly between both halves. In the first half of the movie, there seems to be a visual motif of “following.” Examples of this are when the camera is in the mail cart or following the mail cart during the sequence where the first Zodiac letter arrives at the newspaper, or later when the camera is placed in the back seat of Detective Toschi’s (Mark Rufallo) car. This visual motif completely disappears by the second half of the film, as far as I remember.

film leader still

The film leader frame depicting the Zodiac’s symbol.

Moving on… there’s a couple of details I really like about the movie. Movies and film are brought up a few times, becoming a running theme, as the Zodiac Killer’s favorite movie was apparently an inspiration for his motives. At one point, a character links the Zodiac’s symbol to a frame of film leader. I’m curious if the origins for this are in the book that the film adapts, or whether Fincher and the screenwriter added this theme. That movie was adapted from a short story the lead suspect admitted he read, but I’m not sure if the movie was actually brought up in the investigation, or whether it’s Fincher’s creative license.

The second detail I liked about the movie was something I noticed during the end credits. While Zodiac supports one specific theory as to the killer’s identity, Fincher cast three actors aside from the one the film supports as the killer. These three other actors play the killer during the scenes of the various crimes. With this the movie either acknowledges that there may be another solution, or it’s showing the crimes from the shifting points of view of the victims, which I would find more interesting.

According to IMDB’s trivia page, the movie was shot digitally.  I had no clue, and didn’t notice at all.  It looked great.

Despite being on the long side, Zodiac is another success for David Fincher, and I’d definitely recommend seeing it.

Opoona (Wii)

Published on March 22, 2007 in Video Games. 1 Comment Tags: , , , .
opoona logo

I forgot to post this video after GDC. It’s a trailer for Opoona, an RPG that’s coming to the Wii from Koei. I can’t say I’m as excited about this as No More Heroes, but it’s definitely a promising third party release. What’s interesting is the game is completely controlled one-handed with the nunchuck.

Watch the trailer for Opoona

Ghost Rider (Johnson, 2007)

Published on March 19, 2007 in Comics and Movies. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Over the last week I’ve generated a sizable backlog of movies that I need to write about, so hopefully I’ll write at least one review daily this week. So, without further ado…

Ghost Rider poster

Barely competent review for a barely competent movie.

Ghost Rider is Mark Steven Johnson’s latest travesty. Not only is it awful as a Ghost Rider comics-to-screen adaptation, but it’s just terrible in general. Johnson has again proven himself less than competent as a writer and as a director.

Ghost Rider is a horror comics series, but that tone is not evident in the film. Nothing comes off as horrific, and there’s too much humor, whether intentional or not. Any scene with the two “scary” characters, Mephisto and Blackheart, is just limp. Wes Bentley was just not meant to play a villain.

The movie doesn’t even work as an action flick. Action sequences were fairly bland, they didn’t feel particularly well put together. As mediocre as Daredevil was, I would have at least expected Johnson to do better after having some action under his belt.

In all, Ghost Rider simply isn’t memorable, aside from some hilariously bad moments with Nicholas Cage.

Bomberman Land Touch! (Nintendo DS)

Published on March 17, 2007 in Video Games. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .
Bomberman Land Touch box

Bomberman Land Touch! is a collection of mini-games loosely tied together with a simple RPG. In the game, Bomberman and his friends are invited by Giant Gold (the yellow Bomberman) to a pirate-themed amusement park for Gold’s birthday. The theme park is full of “attractions,” which are a variety of mini-games. To explore new areas of the park, you must complete the mini-game challenges to earn tickets and items used to unlock areas and solve simple puzzles.

The entire single player adventure is controlled via the stylus and touch screen. Control is intuitively simple, natural, and feels fluid. The variety of mini-games is broad and not repetitive. They range in difficulty, with a good balance, and even the most difficult mini-games can be mastered after a few tries. Most of them are fun.

The game features Nintendo Wi-Fi support for classic Bomberman multiplayer matches, which is awesome, but the main problem for me with the feature is that opponents are few and far between, and even if you manage to have a full four players, four computer controlled Bombers are added. Also, the game only features the most basic power-ups. No punch item? What the hell, guys?

The main problem with Touch! is that it’s yet another collection of mini-games, despite it being executed well. There’s a glut of these games for both the DS and the Wii, and more are coming. I’m quickly getting sick of the genre and I hope the trend passes soon.

Variety Calls Out Critics on Ignorance

Published on March 16, 2007 in Movies and Video Games. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

In the interest of reviewing 300 negatively, many critics have likened the film to a video game. Ben Fritz of Variety wrote an editorial condemning critics for this.

For today’s movie critics, videogames are the new MTV musicvideo, a shorthand insult for any movie deemed too heavy on effects and visual panache at the expense of plot and coherence.

Anyone who has spent much time playing videogames — a category in which, it seems safe to assume, few established film critics fall — knows the comparison is both artistically demeaning and substantively wrong.

First off: What’s wrong with a movie being similar to a videogame? While it’s a young medium compared to movies or literature, any culturally literate person in the year 2007 should be able to see that videogames are creative productions, not mere pieces of software.

Fritz makes excellent points, and I applaud him for standing up for the artistic merit of video games. He cites Grand Theft Auto, Shadow of the Colossus, and Resident Evil 4 as examples of excellence in the medium, in terms of audience affect, storytelling, and scope.

One of my favorite lines in the article:

Stereotyping games as based on a brainless, violent subset is as fair as dismissing the art of moviemaking based on “Wild Hogs.”

[via Kotaku]

Hellboy Animated: Sword of Storms (Weinstein/Stones, 2006)

Published on March 14, 2007 in Comics and Movies. 3 Comments Tags: , , .
Hellboy Animated dvd

While Hellboy Animated: Sword of Storms only clocks in at 77 minutes, it feels at least two hours long, and that isn’t good. The movie suffers from something I’ve noticed of a lot of cartoons aimed at kids: the pace is far too slow. This doesn’t just apply to the pacing of the overall narrative, but to individual scenes.

I first noticed this phenomenon when I recently watched a couple episodes of what used to be one of my favorite shows, Freakazoid. I used to find the show hilarious, and while it was still somewhat funny, the pacing of the show and the timing of the jokes just seemed very, very slow, especially when compared to an animated show like Venture Bros. — a brilliant show with perfectly executed rapid fire comedic timing — which I had watched just before. This leads me to conclude that the slow pacing is done for the benefit of a young audience, and I think kids are smarter than these filmmakers seem to think.

Despite the darker themes of Hellboy Animated, the movie was obviously made with a young audience in mind, as can be proven by the pacing and content, and that also bothers me. Part of the charm of the characters remains intact from the comics, but the tone and visual flair of Mignola’s art doesn’t really survive the transition to the same degree that it did for the live-action film.