Ocean's 12

A lot's been going on in my life, and it's not like anybody's actually reading these, so I apologize to myself, I suppose, for not updating. This will be short.

I'm a big fan of the new Ocean movies; enough to want to find the original, but that will have to wait until I have a bit more throw-around cash. Anyway, when this movie came out a few years ago, most didn't expect it to be as good as 11, and their expectations were spot on. The plot was stupid and seemed rushed. This was a huge disappointment since the cast is superb and with a little more effort, the writers could have made it gold.

See, the premise isn't too bad when you think about it: Andy Garcia's character seeks out Danny Ocean's crew to get back his money, girlfriend, and then some. Thoroughly caught, the team has to make a bigger theft to repay Garcia for the millions they nabbed. Not bad, right? That's essentially the entire plot, though, and while the humorous banter is still good, the movie begins to feel like roadkill dragging under a car for miles. The final straw is when Julia Roberts' character plays none other than Julia Roberts in order to draw attention away from the heist. It backfires, of course, for the plot's sake...which I'm so glad for. The amount of sickness I experienced while watching that part was massive. It caused a crash and burn effect so immense that even the good parts of that movie were caught in the flames of its awfulness.

Thank goodness that its sequel was almost as good as 11, because this movie could only be worse if it was nothing but shameless product placement, one-liners, and fan service quotes to other theft movies. If you must watch this movie, make sure you have 11 and 13 to balance out this vile excuse for cinema.

Spider-man: Web of Shadows

What can I say? Spider-man is probably the best Marvel superhero...I mean, everyone knows about him, and practically everyone likes him! His powers are awesome, his villains interesting (mostly), and he's actually a fairly believable character...if you look past the whole superpowers part. The guy has real problems and moral dilemmas, as well as a general failure at social interaction. In other words, Spider-man is the everyday man's hero on a grand scale.

Getting to the review. Web of Shadows is a sandbox game, or an open world game, where you travel the city to stop crimes and see all the majesty of a scaled-down New York City in CG in complete freedom. In a sandbox game you are not limited to roped-off levels; instead, you're able to go from one side of the island to another and beat up people to your heart's content. There are story missions, which you activate by entering a glowing circle or talking to a hero/villain, but there are optional missions you can pick up and do in the meantime. Sure, you have to do missions in order, but there's so much you can do between them. What makes it better, you ask?

You are Spider-man. With web swinging, wall running, and massive agility you can basically zoom across New York and hand gangs, armored troops, and symbiotes their asses with effortless ease. Why? Because for all missions, optional and story, you gain experience points with which you can buy new additions to your moves. One might be an extra swing in your combo, the other might increase its damage.
What's better is that you have two forms: regular Spidey and Black Suit. The differences are mostly number of hits vs. physical damage to begin with, but after you supe up each suit, you'll find the Red Suit is a combo master with aerial proficiency, whereas the Black Suit utilizes symbiote tendrils and hits way harder.

The story's ok, so I won't go into it here; I'd rather you experience the story, but I will say there are multiple endings depending on if you make Red Suit (nice - hero) or Black Suit (aggressive - villainous) decisions. Ultimately only two decisions you make matter, but the game has subtle changes depending on what you do and which suit you really choose to play. Of course, you can switch between the two at any time with the press of a button (analog button), so don't worry about being limited to just one.

Overall, this game is actually really fun. It has its flaws, and if you're not a big fan of bright, colorful, nerdy series' you might want to stay away; however, if you want to play a nearly perfect sandbox game, put aside Grand Theft Auto IV and pick this up.

The Terminator

What can I really say that hasn't been said a thousand times before? The Terminator is one of the most iconic movies of the last few decades.

Obviously, you've got Arnold playing the villain, which he does well, but the real lead roles are Michael Biehn and whatever Sarah Connor's actress' name is; I think it's Linda Hamilton. She might as well just change her name, because that's who everyone thinks of when they see her face.

Anyway, the plot is about a post-apocalyptic world divided into two factions man and machine. Man made the machines, machines learned to think, and we got bombed into oblivion. After the collapse of all governments and societies, one dude by the name of John Connor rallied humanity to battle the machines and their brain-computer Skynet and took back the world. That happens after the movie. What we get is Skynet sending back one of its elite troops (a robot who appears human) to kill John's mother before she conceived him. John gets wind of this plot, somehow, and sends back one of his closest companions to protect Sarah.

I laugh at the fact that, had Skynet not sent back a Terminator, Kyle wouldn't have arrived and -SPOILERS (Ha! Like you haven't seen the movie) - gotten Sarah pregnant with John.

See, what follows is a lot of chase scenes, blood, killing, and techno-political discussion. It's fun, and despite the movie's cheesiness, it's still a fantastic film. I mean, it's not T2, which is by far better, and dare I say one of the greatest movies in American cinema? As you can see, this review's short...there's just not a lot I can criticize, and a lot to praise, so just go out and buy this movie. It's definitely worth purchasing.

Warhammer 40,000: Winter Assault

My goal is to finish something before I review it for you. Due to the soon-to-be discussed nature of this game, I wouldn't be able to make the deadline if I decided to beat it before updating. I've played for 9-12 hours, so far, almost nonstop and I'm only about a third of the way through.

If you're not familiar with the series, then you and I are in the same boat. The intricacies of the plot that goes along with the tabletop model game is mind blowing if you try to absorb it all at once. But that's really not necessary to pick up this game. First off, it's an expansion to Dawn of War, which was an excellent game...second, it's one of the only real-time strategy games that has had me repeating levels due to failure after failure. I have not had to do that since I was twelve and first played Warcraft 2. This game is hard. It's not impossible, though I haven't tried out any difficulty above Normal. I won't.

On to the gameplay. It's a strategy game, so a lot of your time is spent micromanaging seperate units with their own varying statistics and specialties. Dawn of War game you a brief glance at the weak troops in a few of their missions, but once you can actually control them...they're more complicated, weaker, and over all some of the most obnoxious pixelated people I have ever dealt with. Your hero, of sorts, has his own troop, and they suck. Sure they can be amazing, but to make them so you have to spend time and precious resources to summon up his sidekicks. They are expensive and pretty quick to drop, so I typically let the hero buddy absorb bullets while my weak "Imperial Guard" soldiers fire off what has to be bean bags at the Orks with their nasty bloody axes and guns the size of panthers. By the end of every mission I've lost ninety percent of my forces and am struggling to push back the tide of superior enemies, and I honestly can hold my own in practically every RTS out there.

Your team (when playing as the good guys) is a pathetic United States National Guard-ish faction who are known for merely running and shooting, and then having those corpses turn into a barricade against tanks and the like. Maybe I exaggerated, but I've been told I'm not far off. I can't decide if the British company who created the series was taking a jab at America, or if they just felt like having a miserable group to make the other, more expensive faction models seem that much better. Regardless, the Guard is like a colony of ants up against spiders...scratch that: bears.

Anyway, the story for this expansion sucks. I'm not trashing the series as a whole, just this expansion. I know, I know, it's an RTS...how many variations of "build things and kill the other guys" can you come up with? Dawn of War made missions with the same objectives feel unique, though, and that game's story was intense, if simple. In each level you got story to accompany the build-kill format that was pretty cool and dark. It was all about the defense and reclamation of a besieged planet, and gradually became a fight against an impending resurrection of a demon that could lay waste to galaxies. It won't spoil anything in telling you that, as a whole, you win and lose at the same time.

Winter Assault shares no characters and the story is pretty much identical, only without any of the motivating forces of its predecessor. Your hero is dull, the enemies unnamed and generic, and then there is the whole brutal difficulty. I can't say I recommend this game to anyone but WH40k die-hard fans who also like getting their pc gamer egos crushed repeatedly.

Resident Evil: Outbreak

Sorry for the delay in posting. I'm way behind, but I've been really busy. And yeah, yeah, it's a Friday...

As I've written before, I love zombie stories, games, movies, and anything else that can be about the living dead. Resident Evil is wonderful, its sequels just as good, and so today I'm going to cover one of the debatably canon spin-offs: Outbreak.

This game is unique as far as Capcom's superpower series is concerned. While the setting is the same (Raccoon City), none of the characters are. Instead of getting a highly trained S.T.A.R.S member to play as, you have a large cast of regular Joes who have managed to avoid infection and are now working together to escape the city and all of its terrifying monstrosities. Also, instead of having one lump story, the game is divided into chapter-style levels.

What really makes this game so good in my opinion is how it's delivered. You have many characters to choose from, all of which share the story of the game, but each have different sidestories that change events and give you a different perspective of what's happening. Also, each have different stats, though that ultimately changes very little; flavor stuff mostly, yet some are really cool.

Everyone I've met has their favorite character (or two), and you are rewarded for sticking with them throughout the game. You see, because of the way the game is designed, chapters give you points for avoiding damage, how quickly you completed the level, items -key items, which I will cover shortly-, and how many of your team survived. THAT is another thing that is awesome about this game. You aren't forced to go it alone: you have two other characters to traverse the deadly locales. What's more is that the AI-controlled teammates don't feel like escort missions that litter other games; instead they play as slightly stupid, yet very helpful players. It's kind of like playing with somebody who's not quite used to the game, but knows the mechanics. What helps is there's a set of "talk" commands to relay distress or warnings, as well as an ad-lib button to hear some "conversations." Another apect of this will be covered later.

These guys and girls will protect you, heal you, gather ammo, etc. Their main function when I play is being a portable storage box. Since you're not Leon with a magical shrinking atache case, you can only hold four items, unless you play as Yoko (my favorite) with her bookbag. Your allies, too, have open spots that you can hand over story items and herbs, though you have to be careful, since they will use healing items and ammo...it's a risk you sometime have to take.

Back to the rewards system. There are key items and files scattered about levels that take up no space in your inventory, as well as character-specific key items that you can read while playing. Everyone has a different text when you read it as them, which is pretty cool and entertaining. There are also events you can witness if you hit a mark at a certain point, kill a super tough enemy before they're supposed to die (big mistake, usually), or have found a secret item. These events range from an extra cinematic for the items or speed run, to an entirely different and challenging new end-level boss, though sometimes they merely result in one of your teammates dying in an un-canon fashion...here's looking at you Yoko.

Now, these points add up as you complete levels and you have to be able to do something with them, right? Resident Evil 5 took a note from this system, in fact...there's a large shop in the menu screen. At the shop you can buy new costumes (everyone has at least one), high resolution portraits, cinematics, music, and new characters who are just re-skins who share a main character's story-- that being said, the characters do have different stats than their base's.

Stats are pretty simple, though there's no way outside of just messing around in levels to find them out...no listed place to see them in-game.

1) Health: How many hits your character can take

2) Strength: damage you do with melee weapons and how quickly, if at all, you can move items to barricade doors or brace a door from the bashing arms of zombies (yes, this was the first RE game where a door between you and zombies did not mean safety).

3) Accuracy: how much damage you do with firearms and, in Kevin's case, if you hold the ready position button for long enough to charge up and hit HARD.

4) Relationship: Some characters have conflicting personalities, so you have to earn trust and help them for them to reciprocate. I've actually had Kevin fall to his death because Mark refused to help me up a ledge. I didn't work at getting him to like me. Don't make the same mistake.

5) Resist: This is arguably the most important stat...it's how fast the T-Virus spreads throughout your system. This leads to...

You are infected, or perhaps your body is slowly losing its will to fight off the virus. If you open your inventory (which does NOT pause the game) you can see your heart rate (health) and a climbing percentage of infection. When that hits one hundred percent it's game over. Yoko, has miserable stats in every other field, but she has the absolute slowest rate of degeneration; Jim has the fastest...it's sad, but he kind of sucks at everything except being a whiny, yet amusing character. So, in essence, the levels are timed.

If you couldn't tell, I love this game despite its numerous small flaws which are associated with the good stuff I covered; however, none of the problems are game breaking. What you get is a classic-style Resident Evil game which focuses on the citizens rather than the heroes. It makes you re-examine those bullet fodder enemies from RE2 and 3...or, it did for me.

The Day the Earth Stood Still

Ok, to preface this entry I have to say I have not seen the original, which may or may not be a better movie.

One of my guilty pleasures is Keanu Reeves films, as bad as most of them are, so I popped the DVD into my player practically the moment I got my hands on it. Keanu is one of the most wooden actors I've ever seen, yet he makes up for it with his decisions in roles. How does this work? I don't really know, but the fact that he chooses terrible movies to associate himself with alone makes him awesome in my book.

The plot's super simple, so you really don't need a paragraph to explain...an alien orb lands on Earth in the middle of Central Park and the government sends scientists and a tenth of their forces to investigate. As the alien emerges and is on the brink of shaking hands with Jennifer Connely's character (a scientist. Like she could be a soldier...) he gets shot by a sniper three thousand yards away on a sky scrapers. I'm not sure which gun could reach with that level of accuracy, but I won't say there isn't one...movie logic states it's possible ninety-nine percent of the time, anyway. Then a behemoth of an alien robot struts out of the orb and disables every electronic thing in the park and pretty much gives the finger to humanity.

Skip forward a bit and we see that alien buddy has morphed into a human to better convey what the balls is about to happen. If you couldn't guess, they're here to save Earth by eliminating the plague that is humanity. Connely helps Klaatu (Keanu) to escape military captivity without the knowledge of his plans, and we get Children of Men's story mixed with some stereotypical Black-White cop duo cliche. I'm not trashing multi-racial teams, but every movie that features that pairing seems to do the "learn about each other's problems/life" crap while the bigger picture is tapping its toes to get a move on.

The big problem I had with this movie is it feels way too long for it's hour-and-forty minute mark. I mean, I've seen movies twenty minutes shorter that had characters you grew to like and wished you could see more of. Here you have six people you barely cared about, and they're constantly on the screen. Connely's character was boring, her stepson (Jaden Smith) was angsty and made decisions that a multiple personality disorder individual would acknowledge jarr, and the others were so unimportant that they could have been one character. For his ten or fifteen minutes on screen, John Cleese was excellent, and so was James Hong. In fact, Hong was the most believable character in the lot of them, and he was one of the Klaatu aliens!

Despite all of the trashing of it, this movie had some very nice special effects. Maybe they weren't exactly subtle or non-C.G.-looking, but they were cool to watch and one was actually kind of creepy. There is also one scene in the film that is supposed to add depth to the stepson character and in any other movie it would have been wonderful, yet it felt disjointed; however, it was still a touching moment that was sad in a way that anyone can sympathize.

I wish they had given this cast better material, because with Kathy Bates, Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connely, and Jaden Smith you really should do better! It's hardly worth renting, and definitely not worth buying, though I do suggest you grab it if you have Netflix or if it pops up on a movie channel.

S. Darko

I'm going to have to break my own rules here and post out of the Thursday slot, because I've just watched something so absolutely terrible that I cannot not write about it right now.

S. Darko, aka Samantha Darko, is a sequel to Donnie Darko: a cult hit that happens to be one of my favorite films of this decade. Now, I'll preface this whole review by describing a complicated facet of the "series" in a simple way...There's a ghostly apparition who says the world's going to end, and afterwards the titular character experiences crazy visions involving bubble-like paths extending from peoples' chests, among other things. In Donnie Darko this was handled extraordinarily well, with a well-crafted, scientific and pseudo-religious explanation that ultimately left much to the viewer to contemplate. S. Darko takes it one step backward...

S. Darko was -to put it crudely- a steaming pile of shit. Everything they did, minus casting decisions (which were all surprisingly good), was garbage riding the coattails of an infinitely better movie. Don't let my love of its predecessor lead you to believe I'm biased merely because of that. No, I gave this movie a fair chance, ignoring the shoddily put together beginning as well as the lack of any character development. I tried so hard to look at it as a standalone movie with loose connections to Donnie Darko-- you know, like a spinoff where a character goes off and has zany adventures; like Fraser did when he got his own show, or Joey (though I've never seen that show). S. Darko is more like if Claire's son Aaron from Lost got his own show where, after growing up, was kayaking on a river and ended up in a junkyard with no way to escape and there were Others there, as well as grey sludge (as opposed to black mist) that nobody fully knows what it is. The kicker: no questions are answered because no legitimately interesting situations/problems arise to spark your interest. That's a lot of little television references, but that's what this movie felt like. Honestly, I could find a better plot on an episode of Cheaters, and that would still feel less trashy than this film.

Story-wise, it's been seven years since Donnie Darko and Samantha, the youngest of the three Darko children, has run off with her buddy on a cross-country road trip to California. Car breaks down and Chuck Bass picks them up and takes them to a Podunk town where the citizens are all suspicious and on a manhunt for Nathan Scott, who is extremely P.T.S. syndrome. A meteorite crashes into a windmill, which mirrors the jet engine scene from the first, and then everything goes to Hell from there. Jasper Cullen buys the meteorite (and he's a complete geek) which leads to his eventual decline as an interesting character in the movie, and slowly the plot goes from "potential" to "why am I watching this?", though, I should warn you: when I say slowly I mean a velocity so fast that it appears stationary.
Oh, also the tag line, or even the freaking title should have been "how many times can we rip off and sodomize things from the previous installment?" Wait, "how many times can we kill, then bring back Samantha in ONE movie!?" works, too.

Anyway, I really do need to stop there. If given the time and means of sustenance, I believe I could rant on just how abysmal this movie is for days...if you paid to watch it, I'm sorry. If you haven't gone to see it yet, or are a hopeful fan of the awesome of Donnie Darko carrying over into a sequel: stay away, for the love of God, stay far away

The Game Plan

Well this is an odd addition to my list of horror and sci-fi films, isn't it?

The Game Plan is fantastic for modern-Disney, I must say. While it doesn't break away from the twenty-first century conventions for "humorous" situations, it does a darn good job at making you look past them. See, Disney really seems to have given up on writing good, new-ish stories; instead, they pump out sequels to movies that by all rights needed none or throw a new coat of paint over a classic film, meanwhile systematically ruining it with cheap slapstick jokes. If you couldn't tell, I'd normally rather watch eye surgery footage of the operation needed after watching new-Disney than the garbage they're selling to the masses.

I've deviated from the topic a bit, so now I'll return to what's important: The Game Plan. This movie is wonderful and charming. Not a new story, but a charming one which had my eyes a little watery in the last quarter of the film.

The standby plots for most kids' movies is a short list. You can have a family trip, a new pet, a long lost relative, or a school year, all of which will be filled with zany hijinks and one-liners so devoid of "dirty language," well, that they're unbelievable. Not only that, but the situations are so often entirely implausible, and the parents are either massive control-freaks or so goofy and incompetent it's a miracle they achieved adulthood and a massive salary. Whether this is some subtle prod at society or if it's merely some idealized vision of how life should be in their eyes...actually, what's most likely is some squeaky-clean way to make millions off of suggestible children and their never at home parents. Again I've gone off on a rant of why networks marketing to kids are my least liked.

This movie is about a star football player bachelor finds out via shock value that he has a daughter from a failed marriage when said little girl shows up at his pad. Of course, they cast Mr. Football with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, which I really found myself enjoying. I was never a "wrestling" fan, but some of those actors went on to do bigger things. Why, the list is...short. Dwayne, however, surprised me with this (along with a few of his other roles) and I'm now a big fan of his. His character is self-obsessed and cocky, inept at handling a seven or eight-year old daughter, though he finds in himself a side he never expected. From throwing aside his belief that he can only be a football player, abandoning his protective bubble of cool guy by playing along and encouraging his daughter's whims. It's a cute movie, and one that I would not feel bad purchasing in the very near future.

Summary: great movie, good cast, rarity among Disney's most recent additions to their library. Watch this if you're in a sentimental mood-- you won't regret it.

The Matrix

As you can probably tell, I've changed the updates to once a week. Thursday seems better than Mondays due to the fact you all are fully into the work-week schedule and not recovering from an end of the weekend blowout.

Anyway, The Matrix. When this movie came out, it was revolutionary in a special effects sense and told a tale that many became infatuated with. The premise is cool, I won't lie...the world we know is nothing more than an illusion developed and pumped electronically directly into our minds by intelligent machines growing us in tubes as a source of energy. Wow. Impressive and ambitious definitely. Then we find out that we created the machines and, over time, drove them to the superiority mindset because of our conceited idea that we were better and that everything should obey our will. The robots rose up to defend, ended up enslaving. Of course, this is all backstory introduced through canon spin-offs, but still.

The story kicks off with a gravity-defying fight and chase, then we are introduced to the main character Neo, aka Thomas Anderson. Geeky hacker who is searching for the mysterious Morpheus, and in doing so finds just how messed up the world has become. See, it's not 1999...it's 2999 or so, and the "modern" world is a program. The robots aren't cruel to their crops; their first world was a Utopia, but our inherent desire for chaos caused human minds to reject the program and subsequently die. So the robots recreated 1999 and let us at it. Everything's mental in The Matrix, and outside it's steampunk future. But, as you all guessed, there are ways to plug back into the program via a backdoor, eliminating all of the laws of the program.

This movie was every computer geek's blissful dream; it made programing, hacking, and that whole deal cool. The main characters were all savvy with terminology and with information discs stored aboard their ships could practically instantaneously learn all forms of martial arts, vehicle operation, and languages. Mind over matter and the acceptance that what is around you is, in fact, an illusion could allow for huge jumps, wall-running, etc. I loved the movie, even without the hacker bias. It was cool and the cast was excellent, even Keanu.

Over all, it was fun, entertaining, and full of pseudo-Buddhist messages. Highly recommended; however, stay far away from its sequels. Where the first was good, they were bad. The story developed into a Messiah tale that became preachy and convoluted, but not in a good Lost sort of way.

Bloodsuckers

What's with my fixation on reviewing horror movies, right? I like 'em, so bear with me.

Bloodsuckers is a weird movie. I mean, it's not a Wes Anderson weird, nor is it like Pink Floyd's The Wall, it's just weird. The premise is that humanity has been expanding its control into the vast reaches of space and, in doing so, have encountered lifeforms that can only be described as "vampires." I laughed when I saw the description on TV, but moments after I flipped to it mostly out of lack of anything else being on, I honestly starting liking the film.
It's one of the myriad of SciFi channel movies, but this one took its humble and, let's be honest, taboo backer-channel start and rolled with it. There's nothing that really makes it stand out in the movie world, yet it's got a charming quality that inspired me to give it some props here.

The setup is that with all of the vampires (and there are many different kinds) finding ways to attack and feed on the human colonists, the government has formed a branch of the military whose sole purpose is to fight back. We're not talking about full-force, guns blazing, large scale battles (though there was apparently a Vampire War preceding the events of the movie...) but small crews of soldiers the military would probably have kicked out otherwise. Basically this branch is comprised of zealous militia who take pleasure in wiping out vampires...the main characters being the prime examples.
*You've got the captain: stoic and an all-around good veteran who leads his crew like a dysfunctional family.
*There's the redneck guy whose family was butchered by vampires.
*An Asian lady who's reminiscent (note: blatant rip-off) of Pvt. Vasquez from Aliens- she and redneck are super loyal to the captain.
*A vampire who joined with humans to help them out. She's played by the same actress who portrayed Rayne in the second movie in that miserable series, giving her another chance to wear borderline bondage gear and pretend to drink blood.
*New guy. He's got a history with the military, and the only place that would take him in is this division...guess what: he's the main character.
*Villain vampire. Michael Ironside...enough said.

What makes this movie so entertaining is the fact that, while the actual story is drab and over-played, the entire package comes together to make an honestly enjoyable experience. You've got this amalgamation of Firefly (gold!), Nosferatu, and practically any conspiracy and betrayal movie, and where it should ultimately fall flat on its face, Bloodsuckers had me chuckling at some of the worse lines and worrying for the fate of characters when things began to look bad. I have to suggest this film to you all, I really do, because it was a lot of fun.

Assassin's Creed

Ubisoft is known for its quality games, and Assassin's Creed doesn't let them down. Well, mostly.

The good of this game makes up for a few slight issues I have with it, so I'll start with them. Altair, the protagonist of the game, is pretty cool. He's not a good man, technically, but his ideals are surprisingly noble- killing those who are responsible for greater evils is justifiable, if not required, in order to maintain a peaceful society. By joining this guild of assassins he's trying to protect the nation (what will become Israel) at the expense of his life of freedom, because the guild really ends up being militaristic and almost prison-like in order. So, the story's pretty good and the majority of the characters are figures from this age in history...very neat.

Free running and parkour are the core mechanics of the game, allowing for a fluidity of movement previously unseen in a large-name game. This allows for rapid movement with the simple and effective controls they give you: large effort/attention moves are done by holding the right trigger, whereas the more relaxed and inconspicuous moves are done without it; I have yet to find a game with a better setup, honestly. It takes a minute to get used to them, but in five to ten minutes you'll be leaping from rooftop to rooftop, eluding guards with ease, because you will probably be spending most of your time trying to escape the scene of a crime.

Combat is incredibly easy to handle. You attack with the X button, guard with the right trigger, and if you tap X while guarding when an enemy nearly hits you, you'll counter. The counters are flashy and usually involve instantly killing the enemy. Altair moves deliberately, wasting no time or energy with a dramatic flourish; instead he strikes ruthlessly, though the moves are sometimes serpentine and always morbidly fascinating. As you finish lesser missions such as helping out a citizen being pushed around by guards, you'll complete requirements to unlock the assassination missions, and if you do more than required you get health upgrades.

Now we get to the big problem with the game...as nice as the controls and over-all visual appeal are, the game is repetitive. There are four types of lesser missions: save the citizen, eavesdrop, quell propaganda, and help out a fellow assassin. You have to do more than a hundred by the end of the game, since there are three massive cities that you jump between as the story progresses. In order for it to remain fun, you've really got to make things insanely tough for yourself before even beginning the event. For instance I stepped in to help out an old woman from being hassled by four guards, threw a knife and killed one, ran around the corner to pick up a super guard (a Templar - crusader dudes), then spent minutes dodging their attacks and picking off one or two so that more arrived. By the time I decided to wrap things up I had to take out about 15 guards and the Templar, using -by choice- the little short sword/knife. That kind of mission can be made fun, but collecting enemy flags for a fellow assassin is ridiculous and impossible to spruce up.

That's it, though, the rest is great! This game is not worth buying new, but if you see it at a local used game store, such as Gamestop or whatever, for less than thirty dollars, grab it. You can always sell it back if it ends up becoming boring after completion.

Riding the Bullet

Another Stephen King story, but this time I'll go with a movie.

While this film is based off of relatively decent short story, it's considerably better in its movie format. Shocking, I know. I'm one of the elitest jerks who rarely gives such an adaptation a chance, lumping them in with the made-for-television SciFi Channel programs before ever giving them a chance. Sometimes this saves me from immense pain, other times I've found I miss out on some true gold quality stuff. Luckily I have friends to convince me to check things out.

Riding the Bullet, the movie, is about Alan Parker, a college student in 1969, who has to hitchhike back to his hometown to see his mother who had a stroke, hospitalizing her. Along the way he's picked up by a ghost whose job is to carry souls to wherever, and that night he's been sent to make Alan choose whether he or his mother is going to die. It's a simple story and what they added to drama it up to movie standards honestly works. I won't say it's a really deep plot, but the concept is excellent.

As for the cast, the mother is familiar but I can't place her in anything I've seen recently...Alan is played by Jonathan Jackson, best known for his soap opera stuff and Tuck Everlasting, and he is fantastic in the film. The real star of the movie is the ghost, played by none other than David Arquette. He's serious, creepy, and goofy all at once, and by the end you really can't be sure he was actually a bad guy. His and Jonathan's performances were great, the dialog above average, and the cinematoghraphy was much better than I expected. It surprised me that this was in theaters, as I might have actually given it a shot had I seen it on the local dive's marquee.

All in all, it's worth watching, maybe even worth buying if it's your cup of tea. Check it out.

Spaced

Simon Pegg is awesome. Enough said.

Spaced is a television series that aired over in the wonderful nation of England. It's about two people who have recently been dumped or done the deed, and are out of a place to live. After a chance meeting in a coffee shop the two find an advertisement in a newspaper for an apartment. The catch: it's for professional couples only. So, with some clever doctoring of photos and a shoddy story, they get the apartment. What follows is shenanigans of epic (well, not epic) proportions.

The characters in Spaced are great and, since it's a small cast, we get to see a lot of who they are. You get your easy laughs at some of the situations, but you also see a level of depth in their decisions that are nearly unseen in shows today. Apart from the depth and all that, the situations themselves are quite funny and odd, and Simon Pegg typically puts a satirical spin on it. He rarely outright makes fun of them; instead, he honors them by showing that you can laugh at the ridiculousness of things and love them all the more for it.

I feel bad making this entry so short, but with it being a television show I would have to explain entire seasons. Rather than that, I suggest renting or buying this show; recently they've released it in a box set at a modest price.

Stubbs the Zombie

Another zombie entry...sorry. Anyway! Have you heard of this game? Very few people have, and most have forgotten already.

Stubbs the Zombie (Rebel Without a Pulse) was a failed Bungee-offshoot game, released shortly after Halo 2 (maybe before, but whatever). In it you're a stylish zombie with an abnormally good IQ for a rotting brain-eater who infects and leads your brethren to complete destruction of a 1950s themed Utopian metropolis. When I read about the game, my eyes grew wide with eager anticipation-- it was an original idea! Where your buddies would be blasting zombies in some other game, you're gnawing on throats or eating brains.
Outside, with feet sliding on the rain-slicked driveway, I ran to my car and drove to purchase it, and before long I was at the main menu. So it began. In a matter of moments you've found vibrant colors and stylized, humorous citizens just waiting to be partially consumed, so you shamble rapidly in their direction only to find out a horrifying truth: this game is awful. The controls are good, and familiar, but don't seem fitting for this game...the reason why is that they're the exact same controls as in Halo.

Moving in Stubbs reminds me of the Ice Temple in Link to the Past, where your feet skitter aimlessly and unnecessarily as you cross the zone. Attacking is primarily melee-based, and we all know that Halo featured the awkward B-button swing whose only purpose felt like to appease the cries of "He's right there! Why can't you just hit the bastard!?" many people shout in first-person shooters. So you can swing your hands, grab people, and that leads to biting heads to infect your victims.
The other moves you can do...well, you can throw your spleen as a grenade. Shocker. The other move, however, caught me off-guard: your hand can skitter around on the ground in an excellent imitation of Thing. This is actually a pretty cool feature, but ultimately fluff in the long run. Only the spleens and infection are important, because your human opponents carry guns and you don't run. By infecting nearly all the unarmed civilians, you've built up an army of seven to fifteen zombies all under your command. I'm not saying you can exactly order them to attack the enemy of your choice, but their numbers are overwhelming to all but the most well-armed, and because it's by our Halo-makers vehicles have to be included. Maybe I'm wrong, but I believe the only real difference with the vehicles is a re-skinning and slight frame editing. That's where the spleens come in handy...there and large groups when you're outnumbered.

Basically, it had potential and threw it away by not bothering to work with a new control scheme. The game is incredibly charming, yet this hardly-tweaked recycle of Halo bothers me to no end. To be honest, I'm letting my disdain for all things Halo to skew my review; however, this game is NOT worth buying, and that's me stepping back and looking at everything as objectively as possible.

Resident Evil 5

When I first saw the teaser trailer back in aught-who-cares I was excited. Very excited. So much so that I had to restrain myself or I'd go on a zombie-punching spree in the streets. Luckily I have excellent self control...lucky for the innocent citizens on the prowl at that hour, I mean.

I'm a Resident Evil fan through and through; zombie outbreaks make for some of the best horror stories, and often they have a deeper meaning. Look at the Romero films! Those are about society changing into a mindless mob where those who use their minds and so on are the outcasts, left to fend for themselves in a deteriorating world or be torn apart and join the ranks of the "walking dead." Long. Sentence. I'm off-topic, sorry. Resident Evil 5 is awesome, but at the same time a little chunk of my soul was bitten off and gnawed upon forever. Without any spoilers I'll explain my likes and dislikes of the game.

The good: Chris Redfield's return to the series.
Chris is the kind of character you feel proud playing. He's a good man, a staunch defender of those who are wronged, and he's got the skills to handle anything next to a nuclear blast at ten feet. It's been years since we've had a good Chris game, since I don't really like the Code Veronica iterations ...and our boy comes back swinging full force!

The bad: Wesker.
I like Wesker more than basically any villain out there...he's cold and calculating. In fact, he puts those terms to shame. As the villain, Wes has got at least 3 games under his belt where, if he wasn't your antagonist, he played a major part in slowing you down. Thus we hit my dilemma: I love Wesker, but as the primary antagonist of this game...

The ugly: This incarnation of the weapon system.
If you played Resident Evil 4 you're no stranger to purchasing and upgrading your weaponry. It was incredibly fun in RE4, though it didn't feel like it this time around. Between missions you have access to a store and as you progress more junk is available. Sounds good on paper, yet in delivery there's not this overwhelming feeling of buying or upgrading out of necessity since you can just replay chapters and reap the diamonds and other loot from them. What it boils down to is that you can technically buy everything and upgrade it since, along with the store, you've got an infinite capacity storage locker.
New weapons in each of the firearms categories are nothing more than a rock-paper-scissors game: one will have the highest firepower, one will hold more ammo, and the third will reload quickly. What's sad about this is that only one of them will end up being used after you've beaten the game, and that lucky gun is the high damage one. With every level you get points, and with those you can purchase infinite ammo for each of the weapons you fully upgrade. This means that you'll never reload and that giant ammo capacity is useless. See where I'm going with this?

Don't jump to conclusions about my negative review on that, though! I love this game. It's excellent in almost every way, but if you're looking for the "best of the series"...stick with Resident Evil 2-4; they're all pretty evenly matched.
-RE2's story is delivered from two perspectives, giving you an interesting look at Raccoon City from both characters' eyes.
-Resident Evil 3: Nemesis is my favorite because of its sheer size. You see so much of the city, you truly feel helpless when it's namesake appears, forcing you to flee...guns really don't hurt him. Also, its main character is Jill, who is incredibly cool. Maybe my favorite of the core characters.
-Resident Evil 4 sends you back into the role of Leon S. Kennedy, the rookie from 2 who became absolutely hardcore. New controls, new weapon system, and its only problem is that there are no true zombies.

Anyway, I will one day review each of those, so I'll leave it at that. Rent RE5, decide if you want to buy it after the trial period.

The Mad

It's rare to find a semi-indie dark comedy featuring a big(-ish) name star...and zombies! The Mad is a fun flick about a dysfunctional family taking a little road trip and encountering more excitement than a good deal on gas prices.

From the start you're thrown into a new-age eighties synth-rock montage of cows grazing and looking ominous. Creepy farmer dude grinds up some beef and delivers a shipment of it to a Podunk diner and we've pretty much got the location for our movie. The family arrives and we see that Billy Zane (yes, The Phantom!), his girlfriend, and his daughter, as well as her kiss-ass boyfriend, are trying miserably to get along and failing. What better a way to relax from hours of driving than to stop at a small town during a festival. Woo-wee, kissin' booths and shootin' ranges gone done made this town a hoot. Anyway, they go into the diner, bicker, and then the fun starts.

The zombies in this movie are actually victims of a mutated Mad Cow Disease that ran rampant through creepy farmer's livestock, brought to its zenith by an unsanctioned chemical/medicine. What makes it better is that they're not mindless in the whole ravenous flesh-craving sense; instead they're just stupid to the inability to process higher thought. So far it really just sounds like a horror movie from my description, and a bad one at that...but it's not. The dialog, as well as the level of acting (some good, some laughably bad), makes this movie gold. In the middle of situations that, in serious horror movies, most would merely disolve into panic accompanied by a caucophony of dissonant music (or hard rock), The Mad features often-amusing conversations about whether or not the mob outside should really be called "zombies."
Billy Zane gives a stellar performance as the doctor dad. Don't get me wrong-- it would never be good enough to get any kind of award, but he plays the part excellently. From the generation-behind vacant stares he gives when others use modern lingo to the sometimes overprotective father reactions to his daughter and her boyfriend...I mean, he's awesome.

The gore's not too bad, but the language is. It's not a movie for the kids, but let's face it: no horror movie is truly intended for children. If you want to have a laugh while watching zombies swarm over hapless victims, and your copy of Shaun of the Dead is out on loan, check out The Mad.

Out of Town

I regret to inform you that I might be out of town on this upcoming Thursday, so you'll have to wait until the following Monday for my next review. Good news, though: I get to post my first suggestions entry.

For those of you who follow this, I want you to leave a comment with one book, CD, movie, etc. for both next Monday and Thursday. It can be anything (within reason) that you'd like to share or don't particularly want to buy until you get some feedback on it.

I know there aren't a lot of you (fingers crossed for more joining), so I don't exactly expect comments here, but you all know of other ways to reach me. Thanks.

The Shining

If I had to pick one horror novel to take with me to...let's go with a creepy old house...it would have to be Stephen King's The Shining.

A lot of people get snooty when it comes to horror-fiction. Maybe it's the crudeness of some of the characters' lines, the typical gore-factor, and jump out at you cheap scares that Hollywood has shoved down our throats for quite some time. See, a scary book is generally the opposite of its big screen counterpart. When you can't watch the scene unfold with eerie music wearing thin your already frayed nerves, well, you have to manipulate your audience through literary means into a state of edginess without losing the quality of the writing. The Shining does this perfectly!
While I'm a sucker for a scary anything, I'm more critical of my favorite genre than the others-- books most of all. If I can't enjoy reading their tale, I won't get to the creepy. If for some unknown reason I trudge onward just out of morbid curiosity, I usually feel disappointed when something happens. I really have to connect with the main character(/s) in order to envelop myself in the novel...even if they're flawed.

Stephen King shines with a small cast- it's a fact I could debate for who knows how long. In The Shining he has three and a half characters to develop and that's it. Some would think this is boring and won't lead to grizzly deaths or whatever, but you're wrong: all three of the Torrances are expertly crafted. Each of the parents (Jack -the main character- and Wendy) is not perfect, but that's what makes them honestly feel real! Their son Danny is gifted with a form of second sight, a staple King plot device, though he's not a brilliant adult-in-a-kid's-body sort of deal. When sections focus on his perspective, well, he has trouble connecting certain things and finds himself struggling to find a word, and you're along for the frustration/confusion ride with him...Enjoy it, because King was never able to create another believable child character. Lastly is an important character who doesn't get much page-time, and I'll leave it up to anyone who hasn't seen/read The Shining to find out on your own (ha!).

Anyway, you've all probably seen the movie, so I won't waste time on the plot; however, the Kubrick version deviates so far from the actual story that I can't watch it. The miniseries from '97, I believe, starring Stephen Weber was an accurate adaptation, and rather good sans the actor playing Danny. But I digress. In a nutshell: Jack takes a job as a caretaker for a massive hotel in the Rockies (The Overlook) and brings his family. Turns out it's haunted and the spirits want to add the Torrances to their roster. Especially Danny.

This is by FAR my favorite Stephen King novel, and I've read most of his work. I cannot recommend this book enough. The character development is superb, the setting claustrophobic, and has some genuinely creepy moments where my breathing became so shallow I was nearly, well, not. Read. This. Book. Now I'm going to down some medicine for my inexplicable headache and relax...Be back Thursday, folks.

World of Warcraft

A controversial pick, some might say. Who cares? I have no problem admitting I played arguably the geekiest game out there. This is going to be a tough one for me to stay polite, but I'll just let loose with my thoughts.

World of Warcraft, or WoW, is a joke. While the gameplay is solid and refined, it's essentially the same thing in repetition for hours and hours on end. You have ten species/races and two factions you can choose from. For the factions you get the Horde and the Alliance, neither of which is truly good or evil. The races are divided evenly between those two- on the Horde side you have Orcs, Trolls, Tauren (Cow-people), the Undead, and Blood Elves (think magic junkies); on the Alliance you have your staple Humans, Dwarves, Gnomes, Night Elves, and the Draenei (religious aliens). The thing about it is, that there's truly no difference between the races by the maximum level of 80, aside from maybe a tiny bit of damage done or health; everything else is simply a class issue.

The reason I mention all of that is because the factions are only there to create a false sense of camaraderie with whichever one you choose. In all honesty, it's foolish since with the "good" comes a form of childish racism towards people who play the other side. Who am I to judge Blizzard's decisions, but I'm just throwing in my two cents.

Down to business. The main problems with WoW in my opinion stem from its popularity. With x-million members worldwide playing, Blizzard has a steady stream of income flowing in and inasmuch they know they don't exactly have to pump out new things quickly. With each expansion has come a new continent and either a new race or class, but the core of the game hasn't truly changed much since the game first came out. Classes begin to feel stagnant almost immediately, and Blizzard handles this by introducing a number of monsters that give higher experience per kill...only the experience bar is considerably longer with each level. It's like the description of a heroin addict's fix. You know, the one about chasing a dragon and never being able to catch it? Only you CAN reach maximum level...it just doesn't feel that much different, and you're probably still using those starting-out spells more than the ones you purchase every few levels.
The more sinister problem is that WoW, being so profitable, is a big, shiny target for those who capitalize on exploiting it. Keyloggers circulating the internet are now being designed to steal your password, and with it your "hard-earned" gold and gear. Sure, that sort of thing has been around practically as long as the internet...but not as intensely. I'm pretty careful when browsing the internet, yet I've had my account hacked twice! At this rate, I wouldn't be surprised if the number of WoW-password keyloggers triples in the next year.

Overall, the game's fun...it's just not worth the money or time it takes to get to the fun stuff in the game. After a while (too long), I've finally quit it, and I feel much better now that I have.

Fable

Fable, Fable, Fable. How ambitious a game, and how dreadfully disappointing it ended up being. By now, most people who are into the videogame scene know about Fable's history, though I suppose I can elaborate for those who aren't.

Fable had an interesting premise back in the day: the life of a boy in a medieval fantasy setting. Sounds mundane and cliche, right? The creators, however, boasted the feature of the world shaping itself around the actions of said boy, though, which was amazing. A tree planted near, say, a pond would grow as the "years" progressed, eventually standing proudly at an enormous size. Not only that, but they promised your actions could change the cities' prosperity or general attitude of its citizens. Both of these turned out to be hot air. Fable, instead, was nothing more than a standard action-RPG with chapters focusing on parts of your character's life. Yes, you could make some people turn bitter and possibly evil, yet you never widely effected the world...you could be evil, but nobody really reacted that much differently to you. By the end of the game, regardless of your previous decisions, you could still choose whichever ending you wanted! Nothing like a horned demon (a sideeffect of making cruel choices and beating up innocents) saving the world by destroying a blade or whatever.

As much trash as I talk about how unimpressed I was by the game, it still looks pretty good! I mean, visually, it's a treat. Despite all of its broken promises, Fable is still FUN, which is what I count as a game's strongest factor. I play a good guy in nearly everything-- it's just so hard to deny a grieving widow a chance to secure her threatened farm from bandits and greedy mayors, which I don't think was actually IN the game, but that's a pretty common quest in the genre. Fable, though, through charming -if simple and sometimes crude- dialog makes making such a decision as torching the farm and cackling madly seem a little...justified. Hard to explain why, but you'll see if you pick it up.

Another good point to the game is the leveling system. To clarify: there is no typical leveling system; instead you get points from stringing together combos, much like a classic arcade scoring system with multipliers helping you get a high score. In Fable you have abilities which are divided into three schools. Magic, Melee, and Ranged which rack up points through their usage on enemies. Melee and Ranged have some other name, but that's basically what they are. The melee section is comprised of strength, health, carrying capacity, weapon proficiency, and devastating close-range move upgrades. Standard stuff, really. Magic is all upgrades for the spells and a mana pool thing. Ranged, oddly enough, focuses more on stealthy junk and crits, though there are some crossbow/bow abilities included, too. It's a simple system, yet it works extraordinarily well! With the weapon proficiency ability, you don't technically get any better with or have access to more weapons...instead your character puts on about 100 pounds of muscle at its maxed-out point and you can swing your massive 2-handed mace as if it were feather-light. Character tweaking was one of the few promises Fable delivered on, and quite adeptly.

The story's cliche, the characters unoriginal, the world small and obnoxious to navigate, but even so it managed to be fun enough for me to buy the PC "expansion." While I don't actually advise purchasing the game like I did, don't pass it up if you have a chance to play it!

Odd Thomas

I'm looking for suggestions on reviews, but until then I suppose I'll continue from my personal library.

Odd Thomas, by Dean Koontz, is phenomenal. One can dispute the seeing dead people concept's originality, yet Mr. Koontz finds a way to make it his own. The book follows a 20-year old man whose name is used -shockingly- for the title, and his life lives up to his name: Odd. I went in to the story skeptical as can be since my past foray into Koontz's work left me bitter and biased against anything he wrote...Odd Thomas changed my mind.

The characters are rich, though not numerous, and incredibly well-developed. From Little Ozzie to Rosalia Sanchez, you get an interesting and eclectic crew that really should not work, yet the small world that is Pico Mundo somehow makes sense and feels real. Then you factor in the ghosts, yet even they are so intricately crafted that they too feel real. Odd sees the dead, as well as having a few other slightly related gifts; however, he doesn't seek attention, nor is he particularly interested in being rich. All Odd truly wants is to live in relative peace with his soul mate Bronwyn "Stormy" Llewelynn, and maybe a change of jobs from a fry cook to something in the tire business.
The lingering dead complicate his life, but they also enrich it-- Elvis is often found loitering nearby when Odd has time to kill. Elvis, by the way, is given plenty of coverage and, even if you don't like his music, Koontz's version of his silent spectre is lovable for his support and general goofyness. I won't go into the plot very deeply, since it's terrific, but it's a race against time and exhaustion for Odd in an attempt to stop/minimize an event of intense violence. Of course, he's the only one who can for two reasons. 1)He's the protagonist; 2)his gifts give him the foresight and means to stop it.

I could write pages on why this book(as well as its sequels) are superb, but I won't; instead I beseech you to go buy them. They're worth every penny.

Redwall

Welcome, everyone, to my humble review blog. It's my goal to read, watch, and play an assortment of media and let you know if it's worth investing your time and hard earned cash to get. Now let's kick things off.

I'll say this: it's hard to find something worthy of a first entry. After a few hours I settled on a classic children's series which I was engrossed with for years. Redwall. It's a long series, most of the stories are fluff and unnecessarily written, but those came with the later years. Redwall the novel, though, is a glorious tale of perseverance, self-sacrifice, and sticking to one's beliefs when everything appears to be crashing down.
Matthias, the hero, is an ambitious youth stuck in an abbey of woodland creatures whose only goals are to make sure the harvest is abundant, and to promote peace and neutrality to all neighboring nations. The abbot is kind and fair, the people slow to anger and patient as rocks. Matthias on the other hand is energetic, worshiping the founder of Redwall (the abbey's official name), a mouse by the name of Martin. Martin is renowned for his skill in battle as well as a prodigious tactical mind in all aspects of life; a great mouse whose feats are still praised and respected by all creatures throughout this land. Matthias dreams of living up to and surpassing Martin...obviously he'll get his chance.
While Matthias is busy doing chores and daydreaming, a menace is headed his way. One that will threaten the very way of life that the citizens of Redwall worship: Cluney the Scourge. He's a rat feared "worldwide." Soon enough he and his horde of cutthroat and treacherous rats, ferrets, and weasels begin their siege and ruination of the abbey.

Redwall was unique when I became a fan; it was -and is- still quite an amazing novel. You have these furry little beasts teaching morals and values worth spreading during times of crises. Throughout Cluney's war, Matthias strives to find the fabled blade of Martin, hidden deep within the abbey, and with it he finds friendship in unlikely people. From the violent, nigh-barbaric sparrows to the jovial elite warriors of the hares, Matthias learns that being a hero is not only in fighting and winning despite insurmountable odds, but also in using your head and following your heart and trusting those around you. A hero, we learn, does not seek danger, but defends the things we love, be it ideals or people. Matthias grows, and with him I did, too.

Brian Jacques, the author of this fantastic book, created a tale I still treasure. The characters were given a level of depth seemingly unseen in its genre, so much so that with every loss of a likable mouse or mole, you feel it almost as strongly as the characters' peers. The plot is typical: boy rises to the occasion to save the day, yet it really feels different. It's like watching your favorite mystery/thriller film and getting caught up all over again-- You've seen it, you know how it will end, yet it's delivered so masterfully that you find yourself thinking it will be different. Most of all, this book is easy for anyone above the age of 9 to pick up and become a part of.

I can't guarantee that everything I review will find their way to my good list, but I'll give any suggestions a try. Let's see what you throw my way...just leave a comment with your choice!