GAME REVIEW: Trials Evolution

New review coming up as soon as I beat my best time.

 

The sequel to the huge XBLA success story, Trials Evolution comes with a lot of hype. Is it good? Does it surpass its predecessor? Will it make you want to break your controller, TV and burn your house down in exasperation and anger?

Yes, to all three.

 

At face value, it’s just a simple physics based time trial game; you have to race from start to finish over increasingly difficult obstacles with the least number of faults as quickly as possible to attain bronze, silver or gold. The mechanics of the game are incredibly simple, and a staple of many an online Flash game you’ve all probably played before, but it’s the presentation of this game that sets it apart from the others. 

The tracks themselves; rendered in a 2.5D environment all the tracks and locales are glorious to look at if you take the time to. Chances are though, you won’t be. You’ll be too busy screaming at the game and the ridiculous obstacles it has put in your way. At the start the tracks are relatively straightforward and once you’ve figured out how to tackle the things in your way you’ll fly through the level and finish with no faults. But before long the tracks up the difficulty, from beginner through medium, hard and then eventually reaching infuriatingly difficult tracks that’ll have you faulting 100 times on just one section of the track, never mind the whole race (my record for one of the extreme tracks is 289 faults; most of the others I’ve just given up on). However, before that the medium and hard tracks are a lot of fun to play and difficult enough to provide a challenge but not so much that you’ll lose the bap over them.

This will happen. A lot.

The game is easily one of the best/worst game for bringing out your competitive streak even before you move on to the multiplayer component. I’ve spent hours (hours) trying to beat my friend’s times so much so that getting gold is not the goal; beating your friend’s time even if it’s just by a few hundredths of a second becomes the main reason to keep plugging away at the single player tracks. 

Then, there’s the multiplayer component; easily, the most fun 4 player racing game this side of Mario Kart 64. Over Xbox Live, all 4 players can compete in 4 lane supercross tracks as well as the normal tracks from the main game. Watching your friend crash as you zoom on ahead and hearing their cries over your headset has provided me with some great laughs. It’s one of those great games that you’ll not mind losing because even then it’s still a ridiculous amount of fun. 

Ridiculous fun.

It’s a short review because there’s not much else I can say, and it’s really a game you have to play yourself to experience the joy and frustration. But the single player is great fun, the multiplayer is fantastic, it looks great, it runs great for the most part (the only problem I’ve noticed is that sometimes when you fault and have to restart a checkpoint the textures take a second or two to load up) and with skill challenges (like seeing how far you can get on a bike with no brakes, or seeing how well you can balance a ball on your bike) and the ability for you to make your own tracks, and download user created tracks for free (some of which are far better than the tracks from the actual developer) this is a game that I’ll be playing for a long long time. 

5 stars.

GAME REVIEW; The Walking Dead - Episode One

Game review coming up just as soon as the world ends.

 

Another zombie game, you may cry. They’re a dime a dozen these days; but The Walking Dead, from Telltale Games (of Monkey Island fame) is different. In many ways, it’s a lot like the TV show of the same name (cue “So, a lot of standing outside a barn with zombies inside posing absolutely no threat then?” responses) and definitely not just another zombie game in the vein of Left4Dead. By that I mean there’s a lot of talking. A lot of it. It’s more like an interactive movie or cut scene than a game really. That’s not a criticism by the way; I love a good strong narrative led game. In reality it has more in common with Mass Effect, than Valve’s co-op zombie shooter, as it’s essentially an RPG, albeit a walk, point and click one. But with added zombie smashing. The choices the game forces you to make at certain points affect later stories, and even the choice of words that you use could come back to haunt you further down the line. 

The main thrust of the story is that your character, Lee, is being transported to prison for murder he may or may not have committed but unfortunately the zombie apocalypse happens, and he’s soon free via a car crash. Before long he meets a little girl, Clementine, who’s parents are likely dead and takes it upon himself to keep her safe. And most of the rest of episode one is Lee interacting with the people he meets. I know it sounds kind of boring, and it depends on the type of gamer you are whether or not you get any enjoyment out of it, but I loved it. 

You'll see a familiar face or two along the way.

Making decisions that will affect future episodes really makes you think hard about what will be best for your own progression in the game; for instance, at one point a reporter girl who’s good with a gun, and a nerdy guy I’d been getting on well with were both being attacked, and I could only save one. I chose to save the reporter girl because of her firearms skill. But I felt really bad about letting my friend get eaten. Although, earlier on in the game, I saved a 10 year old boy over a guy who could possibly have been good building defences, because well, you have to save the kid, right? I’m regretting it now. Again, it depends on how much you get invested in the characters that will cause said emotional response, but it’s a testament to the game that in less than two hours (all the length of time this first episode lasts), it had me feeling sorry that I’d essentially sentenced someone to death by zombie. 

Our main character, Lee, also has a couple of lovely emotional character beats. Arriving in a boarded up store that used to be owned by his parents, there’s a scene in the back office where Lee finds a photograph of them and the music swells, and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. It reminded me of the scene in the pilot for the TV series where Rick returns to the legless zombie and puts it out of its misery; showing the real human cost of the zombie apocalypse really deepens the world and the emotional impact any further scenes have, especially SPOILER when Lee has to kill his zombified brother END SPOILER. And there’s a moment later on at a motel involving someone who’s been bitten that’s also incredibly engaging, so kudos to Telltale Games for that. 

However, if I ever feel like I want to save the nerdy guy and let the reporter get eaten, the great thing is that with three save slots I can start a brand new game and make completely different choices to those I made previously. So while in my original game, I tried to play the moral upstanding guy, as I do in all these types of games on the first playthrough, I’m probably going to be a right bastard on my second playthrough and just play for my own survival; no-one else’s. A nice little extra once you’ve finished the episode are the stats showing the decisions other people had made playing the game. Turned out 54% had saved the kid. They probably regretted it too. 

The art style in the game is nothing short of fantastic; it goes for the comic book-y cel-shaded look and looks incredible in motion, and gives the game a striking look and feel. It’s something I haven’t seen in gaming before, and really helps it stand out from the crowd. The voice acting as well is top drawer; even the little girl you’re looking after isn’t annoying. 

DIY gone very very wrong.

The action involving in the game is short but memorable; Bashing a zombie’s face in with a hammer, stabbing one in the face with a screwdriver, ramming one with a pick up truck. You don’t ever actually do any of the violence in a normal gaming sense, rather you just press a button and watch it happen but they’re gory and fun enough that it won’t bother you too much. Again, as said above it’s more about the story unfolding rather than the gameplay itself. 

Overall, it’s a short but wholly engaging two hours of gameplay and definitely worth your 400 MS points (about £3.50), and I will be picking up episode two (of five) the day it comes out, because I really want to see how the whole thing ends. 

Or how I choose to end it. 

4 stars 

CINEMA REVIEW: The Avengers

Because I refuse to call it Marvel Avengers Assemble. 

 

Well, it finally arrived. After 4 set up films, and a couple of Hulks, it finally hits our screens, and happily it doesn’t crumble under the weight of expectation. 

It’s pretty fantastic. 

 

It brings together everything from the movies that preceded it and turns it into a true ensemble piece. No one character hogs the spotlight and everyone (and I mean everyone) gets at least one moment to shine, but a certain green hued character walks away with the entire movie. 

After a quick glimpse of what will be our villains, and the return of the magnificent bastard Loki, we get to see each of the Avengers separately. The assembling of the team takes up most of the first third of the film, but doesn’t once get boring. Just seeing all these characters again, in the same movie, is a thrill. If you’ve seen all of the preceding films you’ll know what to expect from the characters but just in case, here goes; Tony Stark gets recruited as a consultant, Cap gets recruited as a service to his country, Thor doesn’t so much gets recruited but comes to bring Asgardian justice to his little brother, and Bruce Banner is there for his smarts (and also, off the record, to turn into the Hulk later on). However, just because the team is assembled doesn’t mean they get on. A lot of scenes are just talking (or arguing), yet it never becomes dull or uninteresting. Just watching these different personalities bounce of each other is a joy to behold; Cap sparring with Tony Stark, Stark and Banner’s banter, Thor and the Hulk. In fact, this film more so than any of its setup films, is much much funnier. There are literally a dozen laugh out loud lines and scenes, a lot of them coming from not just Tony Stark but Bruce/the Hulk. However, Thor had my favourite line of the film.

Thor: He’s my brother

Black Widow: He’s killed 80 people in 2 days

Thor: He’s adopted. 

 

But as I said earlier Mark Ruffalo just about walks off with the movie as the Hulk. He’s a softer, gentler Banner than Edward Norton, but he nails the tragic nature of the character perfectly; one early scene dealing with how he tried to kill himself, but ‘the other guy’ spat the bullet out. Even his big hero moment is tinged with sadness (“That’s the thing, Captain. I’m always angry.”), but he’s also the wittiest interpretation of the character we’ve seen so far. And the most smash happy. Honestly, in the final battle he kicks so much alien ass, and gets the most memorable move when dispatching puny god, Loki.

Ah yes, the action. Well, it’s superb. It feels epic in nature, which is a word I’m loathe to use, but there’s no other word for it. Taking place all over Manhattan it’s warfare on a massive scale, yet it never loses sight of what makes it so thrilling. Because we’ve had such a long time to get to know these characters, and have watched them begrudgingly become a team, we care about the stakes. Sharing battlefield banter makes them seem more real, despite being a god, or a super soldier. 

Interestingly, there’s not much in the way of fan service. No winks or nods to the audience which is surprising considering you could have had every character spin off their own particular catch phrase just for the sake of whoops from the audience. The only concession to that is an utterance of HULK SMASH! and it’s not even the Hulk who says it. 

Anyway, overall I thought it was brilliant despite a slightly saggy middle section, but once the battle starts you’ll not care. Also, the event that causes this merry band of heroes to finally become a team is actually quite moving and unexpected. 

As for a score, 5 stars.

Even More Gaming Annoyances

#11 -Parents playing videogames

 

Ok, this one is true of a lot of different groups, not necessarily parents but they’re the most frequent culprits. Sometimes you want to try and get you parents to play games. I’ve tried for manys a year. I first remember trying with Sonic back on the Mega Drive. My dad could play that no problem. It’s not hard. However, as parents are inclined to do, they moved the controller with the character on screen, in a vain attempt to move Sonic just that little bit further or jump a little higher. Rookie mistake. 

This is not usually what happens.

You see, parents just aren’t gamers. The majority anyway. And if something as straightforward as the run and jump mechanics of Sonic stumps them, then God forbid you try to introduce them to a modern first person shooter that requires you to use one stick for moving, another stick for direction and then you also have to shoot things. All at the same time!

The process goes a little something like this:

 

Me: Ok, move forward.

Parent: Ok.

[Moves forward]

Me: There’s a guy shooting you on your left.

[Stops dead, looks left, continues holding left and spins in a circle until they die]

 

[Respawn]

 

Me: Ok, look up.

[Looks up. At the sky]

Me: No, not that far. Look down again.

[Ground]

Me: No, look about halfway up so you can see the building.

[Sky. Followed by death]

 

[Respawn]

 

Me: Ok, jump over that wall.

Parent: Which one is jump?

Me: That one.

[Character jumps on the spot]

Me: No, you have to press forward and jump.

[Character looks up at the sky. Jumps]

Me: No, do it at the same time.

[Character jumps on the spot. Then upon landing looks up to the sky. Dies]

A little later, once we’ve got the sky/ground thing worked out.

 

[Respawn]

 

Me: Right, walk along to the end there. And take a left towards that building.

[Walks forward, gets to crossroads, stops, turns 90 degrees, then after some sky/ground action, walks forward again. Gets shot. Dies.]

My dad can however play Guitar Hero pretty well. On the easiest setting. But by jove it took some patience getting there. 

#12 - Gaming getting blamed for mental kids

 

So, just last week the story was in the papers of the kid who killed his mum. Horrible story, no doubt. But the following day in the papers the shocking revelation came out that this kid had a copy of some violent video game in his room (I can’t remember what it was, but it involved killing folk for points. Like most games then?). The story then went off on a sensationalist tangent about how these games are training our children to be murderers. 

No, they’re really not. 
 

And calling for them to be banned is just as stupid. 
 

Kids who kill their own parents are probably unstable to start with. I’ve played games my whole life and have not once harboured any murderous intentions once the console is switched off. I have plenty of violent DVDs and books. Should we ban those as well?

Games are rated just like films. If your 12 year old child wants to buy Modern Warfare 3, which is rated 18 and you do, you’re to fucking blame for not being a responsible parent. It probably wouldn’t have turned him into a killer though, but at least if he murders his parents they will find age appropriate games in his room, and blame the kid and not the game. 

#13 - Multi stage bosses

 

You’ve fought you way through countless drones and nameless baddies to reach the end of level/game boss. You persevere, getting your ass handed to you on multiple occasions but though sheer force of will you defeat the blaggard. He falls to the ground defeated. You are victorious. You bask in the glory of besting your foe. 

But wait…

 

He starts to get up again. In a seemingly larger form than he was previously. And inexplicably with a larger health bar. 

What the fuck, gaming? Seriously? I just kicked seven shades of shit out of this dude and he just gains some extra strength/arms/weapons from nowhere? The equivalent of every Power Rangers episode ever. Of course, you’re always nearly dead anyway from the previous fight, so now you’re expected to do it again, to a harder enemy, with less health than you had fighting the easier one. Fuck that. 

The most recent example of this. F*ck you, Poison Ivy.

Stop doing this games. Please. Or at least don’t have a little cut scene in between leading me to believe that I’ve actually killed him only to pull the rug out from under me, and causing me to die loads me times trying to kill the bugger. 

And don’t get me started on games that do this more than once.

#14 - Driving games

 

Now, there’s nothing wrong with driving games specifically, except for the fact that I’m shit at them. Honestly. 

 

I mean actual driving games now. Not one where you have to drift round corners and have nitro boosts. I’m awesome at those. But with actual driving games? Your Forza’s and your Gran Turismo’s? I suck. I just get bored with driving very very easily, and wish that the game would suddenly cause something to explode in front of me or give me a corner that I can drift around, instead of just having to brake slightly.

 This is my kind of racing game.

I mean, I can drive properly in real life with nothing exciting happening. Why would I want to do it in a game with other people who are doing the same? Often the only excitement in a racing game comes from someone doing something out of the ordinary, when that should be the norm. A game should constantly have you on edge, or at least excited. Trundling round a track never overtaking, and being afraid to crash just ain’t fun. 

#15 - Tails

 

What a dick. 

 

All he was good for was providing the occasional laugh when he accidentally died.

CINEMA REVIEW: The Cabin In The Woods

New review coming up after I read some Latin from a creepy book.

So, a lot of reviews have critiqued this film without giving away any plot details, as it’s best to go into this movie knowing nothing about it. I shall not be doing this; the blog is called Contains Spoilers for a reason.

The Cabin in the Woods, marketed as just another horror film…with a twist, sets out what it wants to do within the first minute. A creepy title sequence featuring all sorts of macabre paintings covered in blood smash cuts to a government facility with two shirt and tie wearing folks, discussing the success rate of their current experiment over a coffee machine. This isn’t your granddad’s horror film.

It transpires that the teens that are going away for a weekend at the titular cabin are the experiment in question. The teens are your standard horror movie stock characters: The Virgin, The Nerd, The Jock, The Slut and The Black Guy. So far, so normal. However, it’s the Cabin that’s not at all it seems. After not long at all the film plays it’s hand; the cabin and even the teens are all being manipulated by the aforementioned suits, for reasons that aren’t given away. Yet.



The best way to describe Cabin in the Woods would be half piss take of horror movies, and half loving homage to them. It embraces all the clichés of countless horror films and subverts them all; for example, at one point the characters decide to search the rest of the house together, in a group. The puppeteers are having none of it and pump in gas that gets them all to change their minds, and they decide to ‘split up, so they can cover more ground.’ It’s an obvious joke, but it’s still funny. And then there’s the scene which kicks the whole thing off, which is a treasure trove of meta-humour; the characters are lead down to the basement which has an assortment of creepy looking artefacts and items. Each character picks up something in their search, each of which in your usual horror film would trigger the plot (a necklace, a Hellraiser like sphere, a book kind of like the Necronomicon). The gag being…they all do. Each item relates to a different scenario that the puppeteers would visit upon the teens. They further pile on the meta references by having the employees behind the fiction run a sweepstake on what doom the teens will bring on themselves. The winner being Zombie Redneck Torture Family.

And in perhaps the funniest gag in the movie, the puppeteers get a phone call from the Creepy Gas Station man, the character who appears in every horror film, including this one, who gets our teens to where they want to go, who begins a long speech which would be a portent of doom in most horrors, but keeps getting stopped when he realises he’s on speakerphone and his warnings are being laughed off by everyone in the room.

The film has fun subverting all the clichés but eventually this kind of loses its fun factor and becomes another ‘oh look, we’re poking fun at this hoary old horror movie schtick now.’ Thankfully, at this point the film takes a drastic U-turn which again subverts everything that has come before it, and it becomes something fresh again. The two remaining characters, the Nerd and the Virgin, find their way into the underground base and discover all the monsters held below; any one of which could have been unleashed had they chosen a different artefact. In an attempt to get back at their tormentors, they release all the monsters in the facility against the puppeteers, leading to the most insane monster mash you’ve ever seen. And probably the bloodiest, goriest but also most fun scene you’re going to see in a mainstream horror film.

The final revelation (that the teens are being killed as a sacrifice to the Old Gods) is quite fun and plays into an old horror movie cliché itself; that it requires the archetypes of characters always seen in horror movies to work. And the addition of a horror movie icon as the person behind it all just adds more layers to the joke.

Overall, it’s not as good a post-modern horror film as the granddaddy of the genre, Scream, in that at times it’s not as clever as it thinks it is, but it certainly is a lot of fun. And thankfully something different than the slew of horror remakes that have been churned out recently.

And the Japanese version of the same experiment is a very very good gag.

3 and half stars.

GAME REVIEW: Alan Wake

A quick game review coming up right after I turn on all the lights.

So, Alan Wake is something of a gaming milestone for me. In two ways actually. One, it’s the game during which I finally pushed my Gamerscore over 20,000 which is either awesome or depressing depending on your viewpoint. And two, it’s the first horror game I’ve ever seen through to the bitter end, having previously shat out of all other horror games I’ve played before.

Hooray for me!

Anyway, the game itself is an absolute delight. Structured like a TV show (complete with cliff-hangers, and ‘previously on’s’), with a beautifully realised environment of a small-town community and a hell of a lot of fun to play. Oh, and it’s pretty scary too.

The premise is this: Alan Wake and his wife Alice go on holiday to the seemingly idyllic town of Bright Falls. Soon, Alice gets taken by…something and it’s up to Alan to find her. Unfortunately the thing that has taken her is the ultimate evil of all evil. Or The Darkness, as the game calls it whose minions, the Taken, have uh…taken over a lot of the townsfolk and are trying to prevent Alan from getting her back.

The core mechanic of the game is dark versus light. Playing as Alan, you’re hardly ever without your trusty flashlight which is as important, if not more so, than your pistol. The Taken a shrouded in darkness and are unkillable until you’ve destroyed it first. So blast them with your torch, and then shoot the bastards dead. That’s basically the whole game summed up as it doesn’t change much throughout the 8-10 hours it takes to complete. But saying that does it such a disservice. The game design is nothing short of breathtaking with stunning environments that while linear are open to some exploration (Apparently. I didn’t stray too far from the obvious path lest something unexpected caused me to scream like a little girl); the sound design with have you constantly checking around you to make sure you’re not about to get attacked (seriously, I lost count the amount of times a creaking floorboard has had me shitting myself) and the episodic nature of the game is like crack. I hardly put the game down this past weekend until I had it finished.

The set pieces are glorious, especially the ones where you get surrounded by a metric fuckton of Taken and have to decide the best method of taking them out. The standouts being an old abandoned stage from a festival, being swamped by Taken, however you have the rock bands fireworks and flamethrowers on your side. The other being the dash away from the police, with their cars and helicopters getting destroyed by The Darkness as they pursue you. In fact, most of the action is very well done. There’s nothing amazing or brand new about it but the two pronged attacking (torch the shoot) makes it different from just shooting everything that moves, and refreshingly the game sometimes gives you no option but to run away from fights you have very little chance of winning.

Anyway, I’ll not spoil any of the story, mainly because I don’t really know what happened at the end, but throughout the whole game its very Twilight Zone-esque mixed in with a bit of X-Files/Twin Peaks-yness mystery. It even has you collecting coffee thermoses for the achievement called ‘A Damn Good Cup of Coffee.’ Also throughout the game, you find pages of a novel that Alan has already written which foreshadows events to come. It’s quite an interesting device, which you’d think would spoil the surprises somewhat but it actually ramps up the dread.

Especially when you read ‘chainsaw.’

Overall, 4 stars. Highly recommended.

CINEMA REVIEW: This Means War

I posted this by mistake in my other blog (thanks for telling me, ardent readers of that(!)) and only just realised, so here it is in the right blog, about a month later.

http://jcsbrainstew.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/cinema-review-this-means-war.html

Enjoy!