Gaming Annoyances

Little list of gaming annoyances. I'm going to try and do a hundred. Enjoy!

#1 The oversimplification of Press Start

You’d think it was a hard thing to do. Pressing one button. I like the ‘Press Start’ prompt. It’s console gamings equivalent of ‘Insert Coin’ yet with so many recent games, you can more or less press any button to move to the next part of the menu. The start button is on the controller for a reason. SO PRESS IT WHEN ASKED. Don’t press A; don’t press X; press that lovely Start button. You wouldn’t try and insert a turnip into an arcade machine when it says ‘Insert Coin,’ so just press Start when the game tells you to.

#2 – Ridiculously good gamers that make your feel inferior

I like to think I’m an alright gamer. Not great, but good enough to hold my own online. Every so often though this thought is shattered, with a disheartening display where I get killed more often than Lemmings do if a sociopath were playing it. I hate good players. They are bastards, simply because they’re better than me. Often, after a particularly humiliating game, I’ve remarked to friends I’m playing with that I don’t feel that bad because I have a life outside of gaming whereas these super gaming robots do not. I never sound convincing because I always feel broken afterward. A broken man; angry, bitter and nursing a sore hand because I’ve “accidentally” punched the radiator.

#3 – Public Enemy No1 in Road Rash

The way this twat would always always catch up with you on the home stretch in any race in Road Rash no matter how many cars/cows/bushes you had knocked him into with your fists/baseball bat/chain. And the dick would always make me panic and I’d swerve violently to try and knock him off course, which inevitably caused me to come crashing off my bike once I hit a car/cow/bush.

And then I’d have to watch him swan off over the horizon to win the bastarding race.

And I’d finish 7^th.

#4 – Lag

Often used as an excuse to compensate for squinty shots and the like, lag is the bane of any online gamer. There is nothing more infuriating than sneaking round a corner to find your enemy facing the opposite direction to you and emptying what seem like an entire clip of deadening killerific bullets his way, only to have him turn around and shoot you.

Once.

With a spud gun.

And then, when you watch the kill cam it turns out you weren’t firing at him at all, but doing a little spinny dance hoping that you’d somehow break dance him to death. Once again, the radiator takes a beating.

#5 – Sonics impatience

“Fuck off, Sonic. I’d had to pee.”

Guilty Pleasure Movies

Recently, I had a discussion (albeit a drunken one) over whether or not you should feel bad that you like a certain type of song. I argued that you shouldn’t and put forward several suggestions deemed worthy of being ashamed of. Most of my suggestions were pop music. I posited that you should never feel bad for liking whatever songs or bands you like. With music, everything is fair game.

With films though; yeah, you should feel bad if you like awful ones.

And I do.

My guilty pleasure film, or rather franchise, is Resident Evil and all its sequels. I’ve seen and enjoyed them all, even though deep down…actually not even that deep down, I know that they’re terrible. In fact, the second one (Apocalypse) is probably one of the worst films I’ve seen, and perhaps one of the worst films of all time, and films 3 and 4 (Afterlife and Extinction) are just about passable. Yet I love the series.

Here are some of the problems with the series:

- It’s not very scary, which you’d think would be a pre-requisite of a horror film.
- Most of the acting is…not great.
- Despite being an ongoing franchise there is no coherency between films, besides “ARGH! ZOMBIES!”
- There is nothing original in them at all.
- Every scare is telegraphed a mile away taking away any shock value.

I should point out at this juncture that I’m not a rabid fanboy of the Resident Evil game series; I’ve played them and liked them but, as you may have guessed, I don’t really care that the movies don’t follow the games at all, which is why it isn’t on my list of problems. In fact, I quite like that they’ve taken the basic premise of the series (the T-virus) and ran with it in a completely different way to the games. In the films, there are nods to the games, most notably by adding in the game series’ most memorable monsters, such as the lickers, the Nemesis and the Executioner, as well as having characters who have been in the games (Leon and Clare Kennedy, Jill Valentine) but these are just recognisable elements of the franchise as a whole and not really anything else, like George Lucas sticking Chewbacca in Sith even though it’s beyond pointless.

However, I can’t help but love them. Milla Jovovich is a fantastic action movie babe, and eminently watchable in each film, even though all she has to do is look good and shoot guns which to be fair she does with aplomb. The villains ham it up a lot, and are a lot of fun because of it, especially Afterlife’s Albert Wesker. The series always has awesome final shots (the standout being the end of the first film, which pulls back through an entire decimated cityscape). The action, for the most part, is really quite good, notably the shootout in the ruins of Las Vegas in Afterlife. There are some really cool little touches, the laser grid moment for instance in the first film. And in possibly the franchises greatest moment there’s a point in the first movie where the heroine, Alice, kicks a zombie dog in the face. It’s enjoyably batshit bonkers, and is the epitome of brainless cinema.

And I bloody love it for that.

But I feel so bloody bad for doing so.

In fact, I'm fairly certain that I have a copy of the first film in my collection. I've never seen any opf these films in the cinema, but you can bet that the second the forthcoming fifth film in the series comes out, I'll damn well wait for the DVD. I should feel ashamed.*

*(...but I don't)

Cheers, JC

DVD REVIEW: A couple of quickies

Been watching quite a lot of films recently, trying to catch up on a lot of the films I missed at the cinema in 2011, so instead of in depth (ha!) reviews of each one, I thought I’d give you a quick mini review instead.

Enjoy!

Super 8

A loving homage to the movies of days-gone-by, this monster mystery caper is brought to life by engaging child actors, and a wholly convincing portrayal of a blossoming friendship/romance between the two child leads, as well as some great natural chemistry between all of the child stars. The slightly rushed final act can’t spoil the build up and intrigue of the majority of the film, even if it isn’t anything we haven’t seen before.

4 stars

Super

An irreverent take on the ‘ordinary bloke becomes a have-a-go (super)hero’ story, which despite brilliant performances from Rainn Wilson and Ellen Page, never truly becomes anything more than average. That is, until the final act when the film is infused with such pathos that it took me completely off guard, and I found myself incredibly emotionally engaged, but then wished that the whole movie had been just as good as the final half hour.

3 stars

Drive

A super cool mood piece, with Ryan Gosling in the role of Driver, a getaway driver for hire that gets caught up in a much bigger plot when he falls for his neighbour. Again, nothing new, but it’s the direction and music that sets it apart, nailing the 80’s neo noir thing it’s going for. And I defy you to find a film with a cooler cold open than this one.

4 stars

Kill List

Bit of an odd one this. As a straight up hitman movie it works for the majority of the running time, with the protagonist pulling off the tortured psycho with aplomb. But when the film takes a turn for the Wicker Man, it starts to lose focus under the weight of its ambition. Demands a rewatch once you see the ending though.

3 stars

Hanna

More of an arthouse movie than the expected assassin action thriller I was expecting. Solid turn from Saiorshe Ronan as the titular Hanna, but a muddled plot bogs down the voyage of (character) discovery. However, a three minute long tracking shot in the middle is a thing of beauty.

2 stars


Submarine

I wanted to love this, but come the end I’m afraid to say I was a bit bored. It seemed to be trying too hard to be as cool as possible, having an all knowing narrator, but comes off like an even smugger version of High Fidelity. Filled with mostly unsympathetic characters and crucially not that funny.

2 stars

Cheers

JC

CINEMA REVIEW: Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

The sequel to the 2009’s flawed but fun original blasts onto the screen with all the bravado and spectacle we’ve come to expect from this irreverent take on the great detective. This installment properly introduces Sherlock’s arch nemesis Moriarty as chief villain this time, instead of having him orchestrating things from the shadows as in the first film. Promising, right? I thought so too.

The problem this time round is the plot. While the first film’s plot wasn’t the greatest it was at least interesting (the villain apparently able to cheat death), the sequel’s is essentially Moriarty trying to profit from war by becoming head of the weapons companies. It’s basically Moriarty killing his way to the top of the corporate ladder. It’s not fun, it’s not really exciting and doesn’t ever mesh with the bloke-y laddish nature of this iteration of Sherlock Holmes. It’s a serious component in a silly movie, and as such feels tonally out of place with everything else, such as Holmes in drag. The first movie was silly and had fun with it; this one tries to be serious, and still be silly. But it doesn’t work. Case in point, the way Holmes ultimately beats Moriarty is by stealing his notebook and seizing all his money. Yawn. And when the thrust (and especially the climax) of your story isn’t interesting all the gun fights and fisticuffs can’t ever make up for it.

However, that’s not to say they don’t try, and some of the action sequences are great. I particularly liked the scene on the train, with the welcome return of mini flashbacks to show how Holmes has tweaked things to his advantage. I loved that the methodical nature that Holmes employs to his detective skills also applies to his fights, anticipating every possible outcome (again, another great holdover from the first), which is used to great effect in the final showdown with Moriarty. But chances are, by the time you see that (non)fight you’ll have lost interest in what’s going on. I know I had. The best (sort of) action scene is a spoken game of chess, which has more tension and intrigue than the previous 100 minutes before it, which says it all really.

I was planning on writing some big review on what I disliked about the film, but I can honestly say I didn’t dislike it however it just bored me for most of the running time. A lot of reviews are saying that you should just go along for the ride, and be secure in the knowledge that even if you don’t know what’s going on that Sherlock does. But if I’m bewildered about what exactly is going on throughout, all the enjoyment gets sucked out too.

So for me, the best recent Holmes is played by Mr Cumberbatch, and as for this movie…?

2 stars

The Year in Review 2011

So, I've seen quite a lot this year, but as always not nearly as much as I'd of liked, but that's a pitfall many of us fall into. But anyway, here is my review of the year. I've tried to keep the reviews to one line and there'll be links to any movie I've reviewed earlier in the year. Enjoy!

NOTE: Some of these films are not 2011 films, but films I have watched for the first time in 2011. Before y'all start bitching. And it's not a complete list either, there's still time for some 2011 viewing.

The ones in bold are cinema viewings.

The Green Hornet – Better than expected, with a few nice visual flourishes.
Paul – Not bad; funny but not as much as you’d hope.
Sucker Punch – Absolute failure on all levels, aside from eye candy.
Source Code - Fantastic, zippy, timey wimey, sci-fi caper.
Your Highness – Sweary, stoner comedy that runs its one joke into the ground.
Fast Five – Most fun I’ve had in the cinema all year.
Thor – Fun light origin that suffers by being an Avengers set up.
Scream 4 – Ends up doing all the things the original made fun of.
Bridesmaids – hilarious film, with great performances all round.
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides – dull fourquel with no excitement or adventure.
Kung Fu Panda 2 – Stunning fight choreography and genuinely affecting story, an improvement on the original in every way.
X-Men First Class – Pace-y, fun origin story with some fantastic action.
Transformers: Dark of the Moon – Big dumb fun, but awful at the same time.
Captain America – see above, re: Thor
Rise of the Planet of the Apes – Excellent reboot with the most sympathetic lead character this year.
The Inbetweeners Movie – Extended episode of the TV series but still reasonably funny.
Contagion – Excellent mood piece with fine performances, and a terrifying plot.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part II - fine end to an entertaining franchise.
The Tournament – Ludicrous actioner, but a lot of fun.
Faster – kind of dull, but a nice departure from kiddie movies for The Rock.
Never Let Me Go – fantastic understated British sci-fi film, with a standout lead performance.
Easy A – tries so hard to be uber-hip, but the story never engages.
Megamind – fun first half, loses steam in the second.
Tangled – hugely enjoyable Disney animation, with some truly memorable characters.
In Time – Nice idea, flawed execution but with a solid turn from Timberlake.
Due Date – Coasts on the rep of Galifinakis, but the laughs aren’t there.
Machete – Somehow makes action scenes really dull.
Morning Glory – frothy, predictable, forgettable.
Tron Legacy – Looks and sounds amazing, that’s about it.
Monsters – Not at all what I expected, but a great movie nonetheless.
Let Me In – virtually identical to its Swedish counterpart, but something gets lost in the translation.
Resident Evil: Afterlife – Not as bad as you might think, but still pretty bad.
Buried – Great central performance, but predictable ending.
How to Train Your Dragon – visually sublime, sweet coming of age story. With dragons.
The Social Network – Gripping account of a potentially boring subject.
Batman and Robin - awful, on every level imaginable.
The Expendables – DTV actioner somehow gets A list stars but has Z list thrills.
Black Dynamite – Hilarious highly quotable pastiche of 70’s blaxploitation flicks.
The Other Guys – remarkably laugh free mess.
Date Night – decent enough slightly OTT comedy with likeable leads.
[REC]2 – Just as good sequel to the terrifying original.
Attack the Block - Unremarkable Brit flick, means well but never quite kicks into gear.
Bronson – Blackly comic biopic with an amazing lead performance.
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs – a little too kooky for my liking, but fun while it lasts.
127 Hours – oddly uplifting survival tale with a tour-de-force lead turn.
The Thing – pointless but enjoyable enough remake, with some good monster effects.
Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol – fun actioner with some of the best stunts you’ll see all year.


Games

Marvel Vs Capcom 3 – ADD beat ‘em up, but if you don’t know the combos you’re screwed.
Bulletstorm – Totally mental shooter and a hell of a lot of fun.
Assassins Creed: Brotherhood – yet another AC game but with great new additions (the Assassins Guild) and an ace multiplayer component.
Portal 2 – easily my game of the year.
LA Noire – only just bought this but so far, a dozen or so cases in, it’s brilliant.
LIMBO – haunting puzzle game that sticks in the memory long after the credits roll.
Gears of War 3 – more of the same, but that same is awesome.
Batman: Arkham City – improves on the original in every way, except for the plot.
Battlefield 3 – dull campaign, never got to play the multiplayer (stupid EA online pass)
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 – nothing new, but for top notch gaming thrills, you can’t beat it.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – again, only just got it, but it looks ace so far.
Dead Island - creepy open world co-op zombie bashing, so far so good.

CINEMA REVIEW: The Thing

Ah, the prequel. A word that has become synonymous with the term ‘inferior cash-in.’

In many ways, a lot of them are. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t without their merits. This years The Thing, a prequel to the 1982 John Carpenter movie of the same name (just to make things extra confusing), was branded as inferior before it was ever released to the public, which is a tad unfair. After seeing it, I can tell you it’s not as good as the original but it’s not exactly a massive shitfest either. In fact, its only crime is that it apes the beats of the first film almost exactly; and let’s not forget that while the original is enjoyable it’s not the greatest movie ever or anything (but then again, it does come from The Decade That Cannot Be Badmouthed but I digress onto a personal pet peeve of mine). And besides, the 1982 movie was a pseudo remake itself, so y’all can get off those mutated multi-limbed high horses.

The new film is a retread of the original, filling in the gaps hinted at in that movie all with a sprinkling of CGI to enhance the beasties. And that’s pretty much it; which isn’t to say its bad, just basically exactly the same as the original. But it’s kind of neat to see how the things Kurt Russell et al discover came about; even if we didn’t ever need to know in the first place, as the shit-to-fan nature of what happened was pretty evident in the first place. But now we know how the two headed creature came about, as well as the axe in the wall, and the guy at the radios who committed suicide. Unnecessary, but cool to see anyway.

We even have an almost verbatim ‘test’ scene, except instead of a blood test there’s an ‘open your mouth and show us your fillings’ test (the alien can’t copy inorganic tissue, however that does bring up the how does it replicate clothes? plot hole), which much like the blood test, ramps up the tension nicely, and leads into the big effects showcase that continues for the rest of the film.

If there’s one part of the movie I didn’t like it was the last act in which the two remaining characters go inside the alien spaceship. Frankly it’s dumb, and takes away from the ‘realness’ a little bit. When we’re stranded in a snowy outpost it feels real even though there’s a parasitic lifeform assimilating people. Going onboard the alien spacecraft just took me out of the scene.

The whole CGI versus practical effects argument raised in head a lot before The Thing came out but just because the practical effects were so good in the original doesn’t mean the filmmakers had to go down that route again. The CGI beasties for the most part are really impressive with only one truly rubbish effect that brings The Rock Scorpion King to mind (funnily enough, it’s also the last big effect piece, much like The Rock was). And if we’re being honest here, the chest mouth from the original Thing was pretty naff too.

And on the subject of the monsters; if the 1982 Thing’s creatures were ‘holy shit, that is fucked up,’ 2011’s are more ‘holy shit, that is creepy.’ With the surprise element gone, as I figure most going to see this are at least familiar with the original, the filmmakers decided to make them as messed up as possible. And they succeeded. The standout being the French woman’s transformation into a multi limbed T-1000 post grenade lookalike, moaning a horrible moan. Gloriously effed in the head. [see above]

Anyway, The Thing (2011), for what it was, was highly enjoyable. If I had to boil it down to its core elements I’d say it was a slasher prequel to the thriller original.

3 stars

DVD's for Christmas? What the heck is that?

I can kind of understand how Christmas can be a stressful time of year. You’ve got meals to make, presents to buy and wrap and decorations to put up. Thankfully, I’m a bloke and only really have to worry about that middle one. And even then I don’t have to actually wrap the presents. Apart from my wife’s.

The most stressful part of Christmas for me is choosing the items I want to give as a present to my sister/mum/dad/anyone else that falls into that bracket of not really knowing what they want. The thing is my brain automatically goes to the one item that I think everybody will want, when it’s really just the item I know I’d be the most happy with if no one knew what to get me: DVD’s.

I love a good DVD. It’s probably my favourite thing to receive which is why whenever I’m stuck that’s my go-to gift to buy for someone. Surely if I’d love a DVD they would to, right?

Sadly, not mine.

Well, no. This year, thankfully, I’ve talked myself out of buying DVD’s as presents, (aside from one person, but that’s a boxset and it’s pretty awesome) because I have to remember that not everyone watches DVD’s the way I do. I like to watch and rewatch a lot of the films I own (I’ve lost count how many times I’ve watched Battle Royale or Little Shop of Horrors*); and I know for a fact that my parents and my sister probably wouldn’t. So buying them a DVD is basically a ‘here’s something for you to watch once and never again’ gift. Which frankly, sucks.

You may say ‘it’s the thought that counts.’ And in one way, it is. But in another more accurate way, it’s bollocks. Nobody wants a present they’ll only use once, unless it’s strictly a one use thing, like tickets to a show or edible underwear. If I really wanted to get them a one-watch DVD I’d get them one of those god-awful football foul ups DVD’s that get churned out every Christmas with Danny Dyer. And nobody wants one of those. Not even Danny Dyer. They’re just designed for exactly one viewing, and then get forgotten about by Boxing Day; they are disposable, last minute gifts with no thought put into them at all – “Hmmm, Jonny likes football. Jonny like laughing. He doesn’t like Danny Dyer, but then who does? Let’s get him this funny football DVD.”

"I'm a twat."

You could say the same for stand up DVD’s that there are a lot of around Christmas time, funnily enough. These used to be great gifts, and I have a good many of them (mostly Bill Bailey ones) but these fall into a similar trap as the football DVD’s. Although, you can usually get a few more viewings out of a stand up DVD and if you’re lucky it’ll be a few more years before it shows up on TV, thus rendering your DVD moot.

That said though, it is partly my own fault, as when I can’t think of anything that I want, I normally ask for such a DVD (stand up, not football gaffes) thus further perpetuating the myth that people actually want these for Christmas rather than they couldn’t think of anything else. So, if you’re stuck for a gift to get someone like me (male, 20’s, kinda nerdy), don’t go for the easy option of a stand up DVD; pick something out of leftfield. Go to the world cinema section and do a Countdown (1 from the top, and 5 from anywhere else) and I guarantee you the recipient will be happier with that than with John bloody Bishop.

Best. Countdown. Ever.

I went on a wee off tangent rant there, but I figure I should follow my own advice when buying for those who don’t want another DVD from me on Christmas morning. I should go mad in a gadget shop, enter a random number into the Argos price checker and buy that, pick the first thing I see on Amazon. Surprise them with something they’d never ever have bought themselves.

Like edible underwear.

Of course, if they actually want a DVD, you’re probably better off just buying them one.

Thanks
JC


*didn’t think I’d ever see those two films together in a sentence.