Archive for the 'reviews' Category

Lost in Blue: sexist game ever?

Published at 7:08 am on July 25, 2010 in Geeky Stuff, Random Stuff, rants and reviews.

No, that isn’t a typo, up there in the title. It really is the most sexist game I’ve ever played, not the sexiest.

The premise, in a nutshell: you are a teenage boy who gets thrown from a cruise liner (or it sinks, it’s not stated either which way). You wake up on a deserted island — but wait! It’s not totally deserted, because who washes up on the beach next door but a teenage girl from the same ship! She’s looking for her glasses, which you promptly step on. Whoops. So, taking her by the hand, you lead her to the conveniently located cave nearby.

She weaves. She feeds the fire. She braids rope. And, of course, she cooks. Here’s how it plays out: you talk to her. She says something like “Hi! How was your day?” or, “Did you hear my stomach growling? ^_^” (the emotion is basically how they drew that bit of artwork.) Then you tell her that it’s time to eat, you hand over all your food, and she says… “I’ll do my best! ^_^” Then while your character sprawls out in front of the fire, she goes over to the corner and cooks your meal.

The girl is useless. She serves an in-game purpose, I understand that, but they could have made her just tiny bit less like an ideal 1930s housewife.

You can take her for a walk outside if you want. There’s no leash, so you’ll have to hold her hand the entire time. Why? Apparently because she doesn’t have her glasses and is therefore completely blind. When you get to a knee-high ledge, your character has to pick her up, swing her around, and set her down. Then he jumps up beside her, takes her hand, and pulls her to her feet. She can’t climb any high ledges, like the boy can, and she can’t wade through swamp (maybe it’ll ruin her dress? Who knows!).

In short, she’s useless. And because of the game designer’s half hearted attempts at a plot, it’s hard to ignore her simpering brainlessness.

Dear game developers (and while I’m at it, Hollywood execs): we need more female heroes. Real heroes. Not a damsel in distress, not a love interest, not pure sex appeal. Heroes.

Thank you, that is all.

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Land of the Dead: a review

Published at 6:42 pm on January 30, 2010 in rants and reviews.

Somewhere in between Day of the Dead and Land of the Dead, George Romero was bitten by a zombie. It’s the only way to explain it.

Here’s some issues, big and small, that I had with the movie. There are spoilers, but that doesn’t really matter since you should avoid this movie like the plague — watching it will lower your IQ.

  • Skateboards. A few different people skateboard in this film. Problem: at the start of the movie, someone is skateboarding in a zombie infested town. Have you ever skateboarded? If you have, you know that you can’t skate gravel. Or dirt. Or mud. Or on a mass of leaves. In other words, all the things you’d except to find in a town that’s been abandoned for ten frigging years! (Or however long it’s been — it’s never actually stated in the movie.) But nope, I guess they’ve got functioning robot street sweepers!

    And let’s not forget when there’s a guy waiting in a shack. After he hears a noise, he gets up, jumps on his skateboard, raises his gun (does he not know about Newton’s third law?) and skates the five feet toward the door. He gets what he deserves.

  • Automatic weapons. It’s common knowledge that the only way to kill a zombie is to shoot it in the head, so what does everybody do? They fire on full auto toward’s the zombies’ torsos, and act shocked when nothing happens.
  • So this dude steals a APC-like vehicle that’s armed with middle launchers, and says he’ll blow up the city unless… he gets two million dollars in cash. The only thing I can say to that is: WHAT! THE! FUCK!

    What the FUCK are you going to do with money in the middle of zombie infested America, huh? Even IF there still was a functioning economy in the city itself (a pretty big if — more on that in a bit) he can’t exactly go back to the place he just threatened to destroy. Completely illogical.

  • Economy. Oh man, I’m not sure where to begin… In fact, I don’t think I can write anything on this subject other then “what the fuck!?” because it is just 100% the opposite of anything remotely plausible.
  • Leadership. The city was manged by a board of directors that did… absoultley nothing? Along with an upper-class group of citizens that likewise did nothing except sit around and drink fine wine? Another WTF is called for.

    • And then there are countless incidents where characters act like utter morons for no good reason… and by “incidents” I mean “the whole damn movie.”

    I’ve heard many people say that the “…of the Dead” movies are a metaphorical, satirical take on life and society.

    If they mean that life really, really SUCKS, then I guess they’re right.

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Death Troopers sucks.

Published at 12:40 am on January 30, 2010 in rants and reviews.

Should of posted this a long time ago, but whatever: Death Troopers is the worst Star Wars book ever. Well, maybe a close second to the Tales of the Empire (or was it New Republic?) short story collection, which was SO FREAKING BAD I puked all over it. Then quietly put it back on the bookshelf and slipped out of the bookstore. (Slight exaggeration.)

Death Troopers had a lot going for it. Well, ok, just the cover… but the cover alone was enough to make me go blind from the sheer awesomeness of the thing. If I could get that thing as a poster, I would.

And the book even starts alright — the first chapter is pretty creepy. Then the characters open their mouths and it all comes crashing down. On top of bad dialog is the fact that everyone seems to be holding the idiot ball and not noticing when corpses start disappearing and shit. (The whole thing was a terribly contrived way to add suspense. I’m supposed to believe that these zombies are going to sneak around, carefully remaining hidden and avoiding the survivors just in order to… what, inflict psychological harm? Yeah.)

And so then some stuff happens, some people die (not as awesome as it sounds — I think the Lucasfilm people might have edited it down, or the author just sucks) some more stuff happens, and the escape, and everyone lives happily ever after. Mhm. Dawn of the dead this is not.

In summation: could have been so frigg’n awesome. Later on in my life I would not mind funding a low budget indie adaption of this, in the vein of Alien. With the script completely reworked my yours truly, of course.

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Review: Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor

Published at 1:07 am on November 26, 2009 in Games, Geeky Stuff and reviews.

Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor — for Nintendo DS

This game is, in some ways, very reminiscent of The World Ends With You. They’re both set in Tokyo, they both involve a 7-day countdown, they both have time limits for each mission, and they both have to do with the afterlife/underworld.

Devil Survivor, however, plays completely differently. It’s a tactical RPG with many layers of depth. You control a party of up to four humans. Each human is accompanied by two demons. There are no “action points” like some tactical games. Instead, you can take every action once per turn, in any order.

For example, you can cast a defense-boosting spell with one demon, and offence boosting spell with the other, then move towards an enemy, then attack the enemy, then cast a healing spell with the human.

Yes, all on one turn.

Demons are are like Pokemon, only cooler. But these creatures don’t come in poke balls — they’re bought and sold in a market. Any demons you defeat in battle are sent to the market. You then can buy them — bid on them, actually. Computer players bid against you, and can win if you’re stingy with your cash.

But not all demons can be bought — the really awesome ones have to be created. You can fuse demons together to form new type. This requires some strategy in order to get the best carry-over of stats and spells from you old demons to the new one.

Speaking of spells, it’s rather interesting how you learn new ones. Your demons learn them automatically, but your human party members have to fight for them. At the beginning of every battle, you can set the “skill cracks,” where you assign a party member to a particular demon’s skill. If you defeat that demon with that party member, you “steal” the selected spell. You can only assign three spells at once, per character, so your extra spells go in your skill folder. You can reassign them to your hearts content outside of battle.

Battles are interesting. You first choose what each of your fighters (your two demons and the human) are going to do. Then every body springs into motion and blasts the hell out of each other with crazy-awesome (and very pretty) spells. There’s six elemental types, to which every demon can be weak or strong against (or absorb, block, or reflect). Likewise, every spell is aligned to one of those elements.

After everbody finishes their move, each combatant gets a chance at an extra turn. These are awarded for doing certain things, such as scoring a critical hit, absorbing or reflecting a spell, or just being lucky. After the extra turn (if there is any) combat ends.

tl;dr: This game is awesome. If you like RPGs and/or tactical games, I suggest you rent/buy/pirate the game right now.

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Movie mini-reviews: round two

Published at 2:46 pm on September 4, 2009 in movies and reviews.

As promised, here’s another batch of my world famous movie reviews.

Kill Bill (Volume 1): Awesome. The cinematography is excellent, the music and sound effects fit perfectly, the action is well choreographed… if there’s one thing I don’t like about it, it would be that the final scene drags on just a bit too long. I’d give it a 8 or 9 out of 10.

Sphere: Rotten Tomatoes gives it 11%. Ouch. Nevertheless, I quite enjoyed it. The basic premise is that The US Navy finds an alien ship on the bottom of the ocean, and they send a team to investigate. Bad things happen. Very eerie, good acting, and a surprisingly plausible scenario. And I’m not referring to the whole “alien ship on the bottom of the ocean” thing when I say plausible — I mean the reactions of the characters, and the progression of the plot. I hate it when movies just don’t make sense. Like Stargate. That movie sucked. Anyway, this scores a 7 or 8.

American Psycho: Not all that great. Christian Bale is a good actor, but the movie was just kind of plodding. Which is rather surprising in a movie about a serial killer.

Borat: The disc was scratched, so I couldn’t see the whole thing, but off what I did see there were only a few really funny bits. He’s just a bit to much of an asshole for me to really enjoy it.

Team America: Somehow, this movie is serious while at the same time being ludicrous. I can’t really explain it. It’s pretty good. It’s pretty good — 7 out of 10, methinks.

8 Mile: Yes, Eminem can actually act. Amazing. What’s more amazing is that this movie is awesome. And while yes, there is a fair amount of rapping in it, even if you’re a rap hating foo’ I think you can appreciate it. I especially liked the ending, which was upbeat while at the same time down to earth.

The Cable Guy: Pretty funny indeed. 8 or 9, definitely.

Hot Fuzz: Shawn of the Dead, but with cops. Not as good as Shawn, but still pretty decent.

Live Free or Die Hard: Ridiculous amounts of explosions. Immortal hero. Horrendously bad representation of all things technical. Leaving out the computer bits, I’d give it a 6 out of 10. With the computer bits, it’s over 9000. In the other direction. Fucking Hollywood…

District 9: Saw the pirated version (with Russian subtitles) and I’m certainly going to see it in theaters now, because it was amazing. Three thumbs up.

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Mini-review: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

Published at 11:13 pm on August 21, 2009 in reviews.

I think I’m about 1/3 of the way through the game, so I thought I’d share with you some of my thoughts.

First: it grows on you. My initial reaction was one of “holy shit this game sucks!” The graphics were shit, the controls were shit, the AI was shit, the difficulty was insane due to the above complaints… but it got better. Sort of. The graphics are still shit, but I’ve gotten used to ‘em. The controls got a lot better after I inverted the mouse settings and remapped a few keys. The AI… as long as you don’t have to rely on it to complete missions, it suffices. Still pretty sucky. And the level of difficulty went down a lot after I realized that I could not play this game like I played other games. Going in Rambo style doesn’t work too well, primarily because you have a non-regenerating health bar, and almost no health pickups. Luckily, there are armor pickups scattered around.

The story is actually pretty awesome — well written, well scripted, and well acted. It’s a pity the art doesn’t live up it, though — the models look like they belong in a PS1 game, seriously.

The game world is huge. Friggin huge. I’ve clocked maybe 15 hours so far (note: I’ve beaten Fable and a few other games in less time then that) and I’ve just started exploring the second of three cities.

So, that’s my thoughts so far — I’ll probably post some more in a few weeks when I beat it.

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Slightly longer movie review

Published at 2:29 am on July 16, 2009 in Life and reviews.

Movie: Wanted

Review: To sum it up in one sentence, Wanted is an out of control, over the top, batshit crazy, Matrix inspired thrill ride that straddles the line between ridiculousness and seriousness perfectly. It is one of the few movies I’ve ever seen that leaves me with a euphoric afterglow of optimism. The feeling that I can change my life, I can stop being so apathetic, so devoid of self-discipline. I know this feeling won’t last long and I’ll spend tomorrow playing video games and eating Frosted Mini-Wheats, but for now… I’m happy.

This is the mark of a great movie. Watch it.

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Super short movie review

Published at 12:20 am on July 16, 2009 in reviews.

Movie: Pi

Review: Weird.

The end!

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The Daemon

Published at 11:11 am on July 13, 2009 in reviews.

I read a book called The Daemon a few months ago, but never got around to writing one of my world-famous mini-reviews. So here goes: The Daemon is awesome.

The basic plot is that there’s a malignant computer program killing people and wreaking havoc. A police detective tries to figure out what the heck is going on. There’s this drifter who fixes computers, a black hat hacker who’s addicted to video games, a hummer controlled by an AI, and a scene involving a marine making his way through a booby-trapped mansion that is quite possibly the most exciting bit of literature I’ve ever read.

And that’s just the prologue.

The coolest thing about this novel is the technology, all of which exists in one shape or form today. So there’s computer controlled cars, augmented reality, 3D fabricators, laser guided electricity, sound that appears from thin air…

Also, and perhaps best of all, the malignant computer program that gives the book it’s name is not presented as some skynet-esque AI. Rather, it’s simply a very advanced program with every contingency covered, carrying out the final will of it’s creator.

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Red Robin restaurant review

Published at 12:23 am on July 11, 2009 in Deep Thought, Life and reviews.

So guys, there’s this place called Red Robin, right? And it’s fucking awesome, mkay?

First thing I thought when I saw the menu: This is the ThinkGeek of restaurants! The food is totally crazy, in an awesome way. For example, I had a glass (well actually 4 and a half glasses — free refills ftw!) of freckled lemonade. It’s lemonade, with sliced strawberries floating in it and a slice of lemon on the side. It’s served in a variety of crazily awesome cocktail glasses that twisted in ways that didn’t make any sense.

The food was likewise unique — I ordered “Burnin’ Hot Love” — a hamburger packed with peppers. Even the bun and fries were peppered!

So seriously guys, you owe it to yourself to dine in such a fawesome establishment. Bring your friends, bring your mom, and most definitely bring your wallet, because the prices match the quality.

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