Powerplay Blog

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noreply@blogger.com (Eyes & Smile) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 11:45:00 +0000

Visit me now at my new blog.

http://www.madeofgames.blogspot.com/

The same quality reviews you have come to expect from this blog.

Game Review: Tokyo Beat Down

noreply@blogger.com (Eyes & Smile) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 16:16:00 +0000

The sum of its fun parts couldn't save it from its overwhelming ambitions.

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TOTAL SCORE: 7.1/10

The Good:
Engaging plot * Colorful characters * Quirky dialogue * Nice variety of enemies * A handful of fancy moves and weapons * Combat segments and investigative sections make for gameplay variety

The Bad:
Unresponsive controls * Cheap enemy A.I. * Firing a weapon isn't as rewarding as it could be * Unfinished story
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Nothing screams fun like old-school. For most of us, our malfunctioning consoles from the 1990s may mean that we are no longer able to enjoy the classic old-school titles of yesteryear. Fortunately, the DS has risen as a platform for us to relive some of these old-school titbits. Tokyo Beat Down is the newest doctor yet to be trained and qualified to administer us shots of nostalgia. A side-scrolling beat-em-up, Tokyo Beat Down slides us down to the days where repetitive punches, enemies whose bodies blink away after defeat, and breakable crates and barrels containing food, health kits and ammo are still hip and trendy.

Tokyo Beat Down isn’t just a rehash of any random side-scrolling beat-em-up. Rather, it adds an engaging plot, colorful characters, and quirky dialogue into the mix. Couple the aforesaid with a healthy handful of fancy moves and interesting gunplay, and what you have is a formula for a truly enjoyable game. The fact is that Tokyo Beat Down is both fun and disappointing. It rises above expectations with its skilful blend of furiously-paced combat segments, investigative sections, and a suspenseful story that handles the action with much panache. Unfortunately, the sum of its fun parts couldn’t save it from its overwhelming ambitions. Tokyo Beat Down is a game which prefers to be distasteful rather than satisfying.

We are taught that in Tokyo, the cops would do anything to contain crime – and that includes punching, kicking, throwing, and shooting criminals. In a city where a mere ‘dine-and-dash’ incident can result in the cops beating the heck out of you, you got to be wary of the main cast of Yaseu police station. There’s Lewis Cannon, the cop who has adopted sarcasm as a habit, Rika Hyoda, his buxom love interest, and Captain Takeshi Bando, the moody leader of the band.

With such a basic premise, Tokyo Beat Down could have turned out dry. But it’s easy to appreciate the effort which the nice lads over at Atlus have put into localizing this entry in the beat-em-up genre. Each of the main 3 characters in the game has a personality as distinct as the humor in the dialogue. The cleverly scripted jokes and puns which are constantly being exchanged do well to suit the beautifully produced, if somewhat over-the-top, still artworks of the characters. It certainly speaks volume about how competently accomplished the presentation of a game is when I am compelled to flip through each dialogue in the cut-scenes as leisurely as possible.

When the cut-scenes pulled and the screen cut back to the action, I feared for the worst. Side scrolling beat-em-ups have the fatal tendency for repetitive gameplay since the concepts within it are very much simple, requiring close to no brainpower to play the game – that is, laying a brick down on any one of the buttons and spamming the same manoeuvre to victory. Good beat-em-ups always compensate for this genre shortcoming by pushing the limits on enemy and moveset variety. For a while, I believed that Tokyo Beat Down was heading down the same path as its failed predecessors, but the increasingly varied enemies and challenges, and handful of fanciful moves keep this game fresh throughout.

Your move set is pretty much standard fare: punch, kick, throw, punch combo, kick combo, block and equip-weapon-and-shoot. Spamming the punch move could guarantee your victories in the first level or so, but no longer than 3 levels in would the game have started overwhelming you with some of the more comically dressed, but capable, enemies. There’s the agile guy donned in traditional Chinese clothes, the singlet-clad fat guy, the rocket launcher guy, the terrorist, and the Molotov cocktail guy. The sooner you realize that a combination of moves is needed to bring down each given type of enemy quickly, the better. Various objects are also strewn around each level, including wooden planks, metal tubes, shotguns, sub-machine guns, rocket launchers, and Molotov cocktails, empowering you with increased attack options when picked up. Occasionally, the game switches up combat segments with investigative sections to break the monotony of thrashing criminals. Some require you to question random people in the streets while others press you to break the crates and barrels to uncover evidence. While the investigative components aren’t very imaginative, they work well into the plot and add a much welcomed layer of variety into the gameplay.

Unfortunately, Tokyo Beat Down decides to plot its suicide all too soon. Its unresponsive controls and cheap enemy A.I. could not sustain the action – it’s easy to call it a day if weren’t for the extraordinary presentation here that puts it above other games in its genre. More often than not, equipping a weapon to engage an enemy proves much of hassle – and hazard – than anything else. The draw weapon function has been assigned to the left shoulder button, and that’s fine by me. What’s not fine, however, was how the game spectacularly failed to recognise any of my initial taps on the said button – which means that if you want to draw a gun, you would have to tap twice (frustratingly) on the left shoulder button and wait for a few seconds for the game to finish with its equip-gun animation before you can register your first shot. In those precious few seconds, you could get hit. The right should button, for which the block function has been assigned to, was also stubborn to response to my request on every other occasion. Put the former and later together, and the result is a game in which you would get points docked off from your health bar unnecessarily.

The cheap enemy A.I. doesn’t help much either. During several points in the game, I was hit from off-screen, and even if I wasn’t, the enemies would fire at me the moment I got up. At times, all of them would fire at the same time, giving you close to no chance of survival. This is especially annoying in boss fights, where the boss character is usually accompanied by several other minions. In these instances, there’s a fine line between victory and defeat because whether you get to finish the boss character off or not depends on whether the minions gang up on you continuously or not. In other words, it’s more luck than skill – and that sucks. Firing a weapon was also not as rewarding as it could be. They do so little damage – this, coupled with the unresponsive controls for firing, means that you’re better off punching, kicking and throwing criminals.

Tokyo Beat Down has its story to thank for keeping me captivated, but quite ironically, the plot is the game’s biggest letdown. I played through the entire game despite some of its glaring flaws because I wanted to uncover the mystery – an element so expertly weaved by Tokyo Beat Down. Just when I thought that I had uncovered the real culprit behind all the incidents, the story did well to plunge me into greater mystery. It was of no surprise then that I was caught off guard when the credits ran after this sentence in the last dialogue: “So we couldn’t catch the real culprit behind the bombings afterall.” An unfinished story’s cool – so says Tokyo Beat Down, but I find it ridiculous. It’s like watching Spider-Man fighting Sandman in Spider-Man 3, but while the battle is still going on, the credits suddenly roll.

Final comments
Tokyo Beat Down fired up to a good start with an engaging plot, colorful characters and quirky dialogue. Intense combat, together with investigative sections, as well as a variety of enemies and moves do well to keep the gameplay fresh. But it got overly ambitious, failing to fix its unresponsive controls and cheap enemy A.I. The biggest letdown, however, is its unfinished story. Tokyo Beat Down had some really great ambitions, but somewhere along the line, its feet grew too large to fit the shoes.

Game Review: Fracture

noreply@blogger.com (Eyes & Smile) — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 15:08:00 +0000

Does terrain deformation give this game a facelift or does it sink it into a crater?

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TOTAL SCORE: 8.0/10

The Good:
Huge variety of weapons * Good use of innovative terrain deformation element * Graphically impressive

The Bad:
Poor use of cut-scenes * Distinct lack in enemy variety * Inconsistent enemy A.I. * Generic music * Some technical glitches
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The shooter genre can be a tough nut to crack – no thanks to the waves of run-of-the-mill titles released by the various publishers every year. A handful of games, including Lost Planet: Extreme Condition and Battlefield: Bad Company, have taken to environmental destruction to distinguish themselves from the others. Fracture works with this idea, but greatly expands on the concept. The result is an innovative and unique shooter built around the notion of terrain alteration. Does this imaginative element provide the game with a facelift or does it sink it into a crater?

Fracture thrusts you into year 2161. Global warming has arrived at its zenith and the ocean has conquered a portion of the United States, splitting the nation into half. The west (the Republic of Pacifica) has adopted genetic modification to better their citizens, while the east (the Atlantic Alliance) has decided that a brighter future can be achieved by technological advancement. You are put into the shoes of Jet Brody, an Atlantic Alliance soldier sent to the Republic of Pacifica base in San Francisco to negotiate with, if not apprehend, the Pacifican leader Nathan Sheridan after genetic modification has been outlawed by the government. Still bitter with the ban on genetic modification, Sheridan isn’t so keen on negotiations and proceeds to initiate an assault on the east. It’s now up to you to stop his rebellion, infiltrate his bases, find him and put an end to his ambitions.

The shooter genre is one that typically deals with perfunctory backstories – and Fracture does little to prevent itself from succumbing to the said stereotype. This is made more unfortunate because of the fact that Fracture does have an interesting premise which has lots of potential for plot expansions, but it expectedly succeeds in brushing its story aside once the gameplay begins. It’s like the developers have this really great introduction, but then they don’t really have an idea on how they could continue with their tale – so they shove in additional, if somewhat superfluous, phrases and sentences to embroider and expand the introduction. At the end of the day, however, there’s only this shallow script. The title of this script: Fracture.

You could mention that that’s all the details the game needs since the plots in shooters have always been about providing you with just enough reasons for you to go pop the heads off truckloads of baddies. I couldn’t disagree on that point, could I? But what startled me was Fracture’s exceedingly poor use of its cut-scenes. Never mind their clumsy execution which was demonstrated in out-of-sync mouth movements throughout the duration of the game. More noteworthy, however, were the cut-scenes’ excessively obvious failure to progress the plot. The said necessity was reduced to mere ‘Oh, they are attacking us!’ and ‘OMG! Look, they are using [insert threat here] to attack us!’ moments. Really, what’s the point of having cut-scenes in Fracture then? The game would be better off without them – and it would have been an improved product too.

Story and cut-scenes aside, Fracture is a rather enjoyable game peppered with a few easily-forgivable flaws here and there. Shooters have always been about providing a wide arsenal of weapons for the player to toy around with – and on that count, Fracture delivers. There are about a dozen of weapons to tinker with, among which are some of the standard ones like the sub-machine gun, shotgun, sniper rifle and grenade launcher and other more creative ones like the Rhino, which sends a electrically-charged boulder rolling to your enemies, the Lodestone, which pulls all objects in the target’s surroundings towards it, and the ALM-37 Deep Freeze, which freezes enemies temporarily. Being aware of the environment is essential to your survival in Fracture as different weapons can wield varying advantages in any given situation depending on the objects present in the environment. Some of the weapons are necessary for solving some of the puzzles in the game, but more on that later.

Besides equipping yourself with any of the 2 weapons, you will also be allowed to carry 4 grenade types. A tectonic grenade creates a lump in the ground, while the subsonic grenade, a crater. Throw a spike grenade and a spike which towers into the sky will rise from under the ground. A vortex grenade, arguably the strongest grenade type and the hardest to find, creates a vortex that will pull everything in its immediate vicinity towards it, sucking them and blowing up in a massive explosion. All in all, there’s a healthy variety of weapons in Fracture.

But the weapons aren’t the highlight of Fracture. Rather, it is the ability to alter the terrain. Marry it with destructible environments and what you have is a shooter that has a constantly evolving battlefield – and of course, dynamic gameplay. Terrain deformation is what the game calls it and it is this element that will set Fracture apart from the many run-of-the-mill shooters out there. With a suit function known as the Entrencher (or via using the tectonic or subsonic grenade), you can either raise or lower the ground. Basic uses include raising the ground to reach higher ledges and platforms, and create temporary cover, as well as lowering the ground to enter dirt-filled tunnels. Many commercial videogame journalists have criticized this feature as being underused, but I beg to differ. In fact, this raise/lower ground feature has made some really creative puzzles in the game possible. In one, you have to manipulate the terrain so that rounded mines can get to their targets (think of it as LocoRoco in 3D). In another, you can raise the ground to crush enemies into the ceilings. At other instances, you would be altering the terrain to dislodge pillars or sockets, and raising or lowering debris so that energy beams can be reflected onto their targets. Underused? Far from it.

Puzzles in the game aren’t necessarily limited to terrain deformation, though. There are some light platform sections where you have to use the Lodestone, a weapon which pulls all subjects in the target’s surroundings towards it, to move various platforms into jump-friendly positions. However, not all puzzles are as intelligent. The spike grenade seems to be grossly underused, almost to the point where it seems to be forgotten altogether. The spike grenade is only used in instances where you need to nudge something up, say a bridge, or in instances where you need to create a platform for you to be able to reach even higher grounds. Other than that, the spike grenade is practically useless. Disregarding the spike grenade, it is Fracture’s ability to allow you the freedom to screw around with your environments in any way you deem fit which makes this game such a satisfying and immensely fun one.

The same could not be said about the enemies, however. For all its variety in weapons, Fracture suffers from a distinct lack in enemy variety. There are only a handful of enemy types that you will get to face off against in the game: the sub-machine gun wielding guy, the rocket launcher guy that can leap to great heights, the shotgun wielding guy donned in a spacesuit, the grenade launcher wielding guy (also donned in a spacesuit), another variation of the sub-machine gun wielding guy who has teleportation abilities, the Half-Life 2 Antlion-esque bug and the Minotaur-like beast called Bolla. If you’re keeping count, that’s a total of 7 enemy types. That’s quite a number, but for most parts of the game, you would be encountering the sub-machine gun wielding guy, the shotgun wielding guy and the grenade launcher wielding guy; the others appear at very specific points in the game. This lack in enemy variety starts to drag the game down in the later parts when you start to encounter the same enemy over and over again.

It doesn’t help that the enemy A.I. is vastly inconsistent. In some instances, enemies take cover when shot at or switch cover if they find that their positions are being compromised but at other times, they display a blatant lack of common sense by staying riveted on open ground or failing to react even the slightest to your shots. Fracture compensates for this by planting enemies on every conceivable shooting angle and setting a generous number of enemy respawns. The result is a game that is challenging – though unfairly challenging.

On the technical side of things, the game does look good. Thanks to the terrain deformation abilities of the suit and the huge number of explosive-loaded weapons, Fracture has quite a number of opportunities to parade its impressive terrain alteration and explosion effects. It is even more impressive that the game manages the action with hardly a hitch in framerate save for slight drops at a select number of save points. The music, however, is very much generic, sounding monotonous at best. One of the most victimized portions of the game must be the driving mission. In it, you drive a futuristic buggy and must escape a facility before it blows up. The music fails to effectively convey any kind of intensity or dread, making the drive-and-escape mission feel routine. It is a pity, really, because a better piece of music could add layers of additional value to the game, especially for a highly-intense shooter like Fracture.

I also discovered a few glitches while playing the game. Most unfortunate was the instance where a boss character got stuck behind some crates. From my position, I could get several clips of bullets into its weak spots while it stood motionless. In another glitch, my health was unable to recharge even though I was not being shot at, putting me at a great disadvantage as I was in a near-death situation. Other minor glitches include enemies being stuck in animation behind barriers.

Like any other shooter, I was able to get 10 hours out from Fracture’s single-player. There’s some replay value here – mainly because there are data cells to be collected here. Some of these data cells are cleverly hidden, while some require more creative uses of your terrain alteration abilities to obtain. What they unlock, however, isn’t quite as rewarding as I’d like them to be. Depending on the number of data cells which you have gathered, equipments in the Weapons Testing mode may either be locked or unlocked. The said mode is unique, if very much pointless. After you have completed the single-player, there are the requisite multiplayer modes to toy around with.

Final comments
Overall, Fracture is a satisfying and fun game. It boasts a fresh and well-used concept in terrain alteration and has a wide variety of weapons that do more than just shoot – they solve puzzles. Fracture is one game that is easily enjoyable – if you can overlook some of its forgivable flaws and appreciate its greater offering – its innovation – one that actually works.

Movie Review: Knowing

noreply@blogger.com (Eyes & Smile) — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 12:02:00 +0000

You need to know this.

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RATING: 5/5^{CHOICE WATCH}
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In my book, any movie with an aliens-arrive-on-Earth or end-of-the-world theme is worth the admission price. Regardless of the differences in creative interpretations, movies exercising any of the aforesaid themes pretty much guarantee a concoction of intriguing plotlines and explosive action with mostly impressive special effects. Knowing is the newest chief yet to cook us a tall tale about aliens and humanity being wiped out. After watching last year’s similarly-themed, yet disappointingly disastrous The Day the Earth Stood Still raze everyone’s attention to the ground, I have to admit that I was a tad sceptical about Knowing. But as I discovered, Knowing is a successful blend of elements from both themes as much as it is of a nastily intensifying and engaging production.

It is 1959 and students from an elementary school are asked to illustrate their predictions for the future. Rather unsurprisingly, objects like robots and flying cars are conjured up within the imaginative young minds of these children. Creepy little girl Lucinda Embry (Lara Robinson) thinks otherwise and goes on to agitatedly press a series of seemingly random numbers on her piece of paper.

The movie cuts forward to the present day, fifty years after the drawings are reposed in a time capsule and buried. We pick up with single parent John Koestler (Nicholas Cage) and his son Caleb (Chandler Canterbury), the later of who studies at the same elementary school Lucinda attended. As promised fifty years ago, the time capsule is unearthed and each student receives a drawing. Caleb is given Lucinda’s paper, setting up a plot point where John, a college professor specializing in astrophysics, becomes increasingly intrigued by the outwardly unconnected numbers on Lucinda’s paper. After an accidental discovery that one of the lines of numbers accurately represents 9/11 and its death toll, John immerses himself in more thorough research and comes to the conclusion that the other numbers on the paper are actually representations of various disasters which have occurred. 3 lines of numbers remain, and with the help of Lucinda’s daughter Diana Wayland (Rose Byrne) and granddaughter Abby (Lara Robinson again), both of whom John managed to track down, he must now find a way to prevent these supposedly predetermined catastrophes from happening – while also protecting Caleb from some eerie black-suited men who are seemingly stalking his son.

Alex Proyas’s prior directorial effort may have been the 5 years old I, Robot, but fortunately, his skills haven’t skidded off even by an inch. I enjoyed I, Robot tremendously and am certainly glad that the expertise shown in I Robot’s action scenes and plot turns have been carried over. If anything, Knowing is an impressive entry to the film library and is the perfect film to mark the return of Alex.

How am I supposed to know what these numbers are?

Alex’s penchant for suspense definitely shows in Knowing. Like any good movie should, Knowing tries not to give away too much from the start so that there’s a consistent layer of mystery and captivation. The most unique thing about Knowing is how it manages to tease audiences with subtle revelations ever so slightly every now and then hide it just as you finally decipher the cue. Quite intelligently, the smattering of clues administered throughout the duration of the film tend to inch you towards the side of certainty – meaning you are sure that what you have guessed based on the clue provided is what the movie is driving at – but then, your guess is almost always brutally deconstructed by the next clue. In other words, there is this constant balance between an ‘Oh, yes, I know what this movie is telling me’ ideology and an ‘Oh, wait, no, this isn’t what the movie is about’ ideology which never ceases to keep audiences at the edge of their seats for the next clue. And when all the ribbons which hold the box with the plot together gets unattached in a massive revelation during the last 15 minutes, it’s already too late for the audiences to realize that they have been rather cleverly manipulated into thinking otherwise all these while. This makes for a truly suspenseful film which takes much delight at plunging you into further suspense in the midst of an already intensely suspenseful moment. Knowing does this with a nasty and brutal whistle, butchering the minds of its audiences at every chance it has got. It’s like a magician revealing the beak of a parrot from his hat at one instance, the claw of a crow at the next instance, and the tip of a pigeon’s wings at another instance, but when the magician finally pulls out his pet from his hat, it’s neither a parrot nor a crow, or a pigeon, but a rabbit.

Serving as great accompaniments to the plot are the set pieces. Granted, the numbers on the paper are excuses for the movie to be able to provide its very own creative interpretations on how some fatal disasters could turn out, but that’s fine by me. (Mild spoilers) If you have watched the trailers, you would already have known that there would be an aircraft and train accident in Knowing. These set pieces are especially spectacular to watch, with visuals and effects that are aesthetically arresting. My favorite would have to be the aircraft crash. Tilted at a portentous angle, the airliner rams through electrical lines and crashes into a mushroom of flames on a patch of land adjacent to a busy expressway. As John helplessly rushes in to attempt to save the victims, portions of the airliner gets blasted out into the sky like rockets and the furiously expanding flames puff themselves up and engulf survivors, snatching them away from any hope they might have left. Images of this kind stay in the audiences’ minds long after the movie has ended, providing a topic for discussion among people who have watched the film before. Quite clearly, this is one of the demonstrations of how memorable Knowing is.

Final comments
Now, I’d have to begin with this overused line: Knowing is one of the best movies I have seen. But it’s true. Like any ‘one of the best movies’, Knowing goes about showing its stuffs to its audiences a little differently. When all the elaborate paragraphs are cut down, it all boils down to this sentence: This is the most intelligently suspenseful film I have seen yet, and its set pieces are nothing short of memorable. Now, you know you need to watch Knowing, don’t you?

Movie Review: The Unborn

noreply@blogger.com (Eyes & Smile) — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:05:00 +0000

The Unwatchable.

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RATING: 0/5
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A comparison between a horror film and a piece of fish wouldn’t be overly conspicuous. Like allowing that tender slice of fish melt in your mouth, watching a macabre tale unfold on the screen never gets stale. Part of this could be attributed to the fact that there are many ways to approach the development of a horror movie – just like how there could be many ways to cook a piece of fish. Depending on the way it is cooked – be it subtle or drastic adjustments in the atmosphere and the music, the story, or the gore and special effects, a horror film could either produce a mildly tantalizing or distinctively spicy taste. But what happens when you don’t even bother to add the oil if you want to fry the fish, start the fire if you want to grill it, or boil the water if you want to make steamed fish? The result is a lackadaisical showing that shows paroxysms of potential, yet ends up as an idea best described as misbegotten.

Casey Beldon (Odette Yustman) is just another ordinary young woman jogging in the park one day when she sees a kid staring at her with an eerie gaze. Her life turns topside soon after as the kid starts stalking her and gradually killing people around her. With the help of her grandmother (Jane Alexander), Casey discovers that a curse has befallen her family during the Holocaust. The curse involves an evil spirit being constantly in search of a new body to inhabit. Casey’s mother (Carlo Gugino) passed away trying to stop the vicious cycle and the time has come for Casey’s turn to halt it. Aided by her best friend (Meagan Good) and her boyfriend (Cam Gigandet), Casey must now rush against time to search for a way to break the curse before the evil spirit claims her life.

Suffice to say that there is already an established set of elements which are necessary for a truly intriguing and engaging horror film and we have come to expect this set of elements in every macabre tale we choose to listen to. The most fundamental problem with The Unborn which makes it so annoyingly mediocre and hardly watchable isn’t with its idea – in fact, it has a great premise – but with how it chooses to discard the basic ingredients of a horror film ever so clumsily and ignorantly.

One of most cardinal devices needed to manufacture a respectable tale of fright and thrill is the story. The plot as shallow as it is – it’s literally about Casey being SUDDENLY haunted by a kid and having to get rid of it. It is a rather interesting premise that has lots of potential for plot expansions and I was waiting to see if David S. Goyer could conjure up any surprises. But as I was watching the movie, I realized that he was just mixing unnecessarily elaborate exposition with random ‘Gotcha! I scared you, didn’t I?’ crap. It’s painful knowing that the movie will never shift into second gear with all those RANDOM nonsense, but even more painful understanding that there would be no surprises. Watching The Unborn felt like watching a game of Whac-a-Mole. It’s a straightforward concept made better only by a few random pops. The result is a movie that felt like a collection of boring scenes strung together. Not even once was I made to care about what would happen to the characters. The movie just kind of moved along languidly and it ended on an equally predictable scene that hardly qualifies as a climax.

Equipped with a hopeless story, the only way The Unborn could be salvaged is by scaring us senseless with its random ‘Gotcha!’ scenes. As expected, it cheerfully puts itself beyond redemption by having a PG rating stickered onto it. I really feel that filmmakers need to understand this: If you want to make a film that caters to families – toddlers, children, parents, grandparents, you make an animated feature or a family-friendly flick like Journey to the Centre of the Earth, City of Ember or Race to Witch Mountain – a movie where everyone can enjoy. However, if you want to make a horror film, you make one – not one that stays on the line between a family-friendly flick and a horror film. Horror films cater to horror fans, not to whole families.

Little boy scares the heck out of everyone.

The Unborn is just about as scary as a cockroach. There are only 1 or 2 legitimate scare scenes in the entire film. The remaining ones are so dumb that they will make you fall asleep in the cinema. The Unborn substitutes basic blood drips and splashes with stabs that result in wounds with no blood, truly hideous and terrifying flying faces with dogs wearing human masks that look as if they were stolen from a birthday party, a ghostly figure with a kid who has apparently been taught to stare blankly at people and dogs with wrongly positioned heads. What’s the point? The Unborn’s most hilarious effects come in the form of lame flickering lights – something which was used to such a huge extent that I began to wonder whether the movie was trying to introduce me the idea that I should be afraid of the dark – because the screening hall is dark! Let me teach the brains behind this movie a lesson in horror filmmaking: The dark is something you exploit for other scare tactics, not something that you expand upon by using it extensively. When there’s a line in the film that goes, “Do you believe in ghosts?”, you know that the film’s going to suck – and yes, The Unborn really sucks like vomit.

The lack of a deep plot and gore really hurt. But what makes this film the worst one I have watched besides the equally abysmal RocknRolla is the fact that there’s NO music in this film! NO music! The whole movie just felt like a board meeting where ideas are being passed around in an otherwise silent environment. How could a movie commit such a grave mistake like this? The total lack of music removes the atmosphere. Characters are really just lifeless cardboard cut-outs prattling away and scare scenes are there for the sake of being there because The Unborn was categorized into the horror genre.

Final comments
The Unborn is a grossly boring and tasteless movie – one that is annoyingly mediocre and hardly watchable. There is a very shallow story that consists of unnecessarily elaborate expositions and random ‘Gotcha’ crap, scare scenes that are too retarded to even make it into a made-for-TV film, and a total lack of music and atmosphere. That’s all the necessary ingredients for a horror film being disposed of. And so what do you have here? Zilch. That’s a perfect answer because The Unborn is one stinking pile of mess.

Game Review: Left 4 Dead

noreply@blogger.com (Eyes & Smile) — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 07:11:00 +0000

You can't signal perfection with a missing thumb.

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TOTAL SCORE: 8.7/10

The Good:
Distinctively-themed scenarios * Perfect mood and atmosphere * Adaptable enemy A.I. * Ingeniously-implemented elements that encourage true co-op play * Movie-esque presentation style

The Bad:
Inflexible friendly A.I. * Versus mode is unenjoyable * Lack of content
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Co-op play has always been that special sauce that provides a game with an appetizing look and a wonderful taste. From Halo 3 to Gears of War 2 to Call of Duty: World at War, developers have been attempting to implement co-op play as a feature of their games. But every so often, there is a dichotomy between single-play and co-op play. Built upon the foundation of single-play, these games are merely administered a little tweak to their single-play formulas for the accommodation of co-op play. When you are engaged in co-op play, the game still feels very much like a single-play experience such that you remain an individualistic player, slaying only enemies which pose a direct threat to your survival. In fact, you could still very much progress through the entire game by yourself despite the fact that it’s a co-op experience the game is selling.

Valve dares challenge this videogame convention, with its latest creation, Left 4 Dead, serving as a testament to the ambitions of the developer. Left 4 Dead blurs this dichotomy between single-play and co-op play, threading into a school of ideas never once explored – a move that is as creative as it is bold. Fortunately, the result is quite simply an amazing gameplay experience that seamlessly blends the ‘single-player’ campaign mode and competitive multiplayer mode into an exclusively co-op experience. Being created in such a way that the survival of your team members is essential to your survival, Left 4 Dead will transform the way you play a shooter. This revolutionary gameplay mechanic is complemented by yet another handful of original, genre-defining and outstanding gameplay mechanics and components, making Left 4 Dead one of the few masterpieces to roll off from the conveyor belts of game development in recent memory.

The co-op play in question here is set in the familiar territory of a post-apocalyptic, zombie-overrun world. Left 4 Dead borrows heavily from the several Hollywood zombie flicks of the past decade, featuring both rural and urban environments that have either been torn asunder by the rampages of zombie hordes or abandoned to resemble a ghost town. All but 4 humans have been infected by the zombie-spawning virus and you will play as any one of these 4 humans, struggling through a series of 5 stages to arrive at the final zombie standoff and await rescue. At the end of every stage, there is a safehouse for your team to restock on weapons, ammo and medical supplies. There are 4 scenarios available for play in Left 4 Dead, with each consisting of the said 5 stages. Each scenario features a distinct theme: No Mercy and Dead Air are urban-themed scenarios, with the former requiring that your team fights its way through a hospital to arrive at a rooftop zombie standoff with a chopper as an escape conveyance and the later requesting that your team pushes its way through an airport with a final resistance against the zombies at the runway and with an aircraft as a mean of escape. Death Toll and Blood Harvest are rural-themed scenarios, with the former insisting that your team make it to the docks for a ship rescue and the later forcing your team to take refuge in a farmhouse before an armored vehicle arrives.

All in all, there’s a good variety of environments for zombie-tearing action, but with only 4 scenarios in the package, each lasting about an hour to complete, there’s not nearly as enough content as desired, but more on that later. Left 4 Dead’s accomplishment comes in the form of its competent translation of the mood and atmosphere of a top budget Hollywood zombie production to the gameplay itself. The objective of each stage isn’t to eliminate all the zombies, but rather, to survive – and that pretty much guarantees the dread and intensity of the gameplay. Just when you thought that you have cleared an area of any tangible threat, yet another wanton stream of zombies come scratching their way towards your team. Thanks to the adaptable nature of the intelligent A.I., a consummate pacing is sustained throughout each stage. What this means is that when you are going strong against the hordes of zombies, the system would attempt to overwhelm your team by hurling more zombies, while scaling back on the number of zombies and providing randomly-placed medical supplies and ammo when your team is not faring as well in the presence of the zombies. The result is a game that consistently keeps your team on its toes, maintaining the much-needed sense of hopelessness and desperation which accompany any imagined zombie invasion.

The said is complemented by the game’s skillful reproduction of the atmosphere needed to discourage the resistance of the survivors, yet motivate them to continue fighting when the circumstances call for it. The smattering of fires within each area and decrepit structures serve as reminders to the survivors that there is a seemingly lack of hope derived from constant resistance against the zombies, while the occasional love messages scrawled on walls and lighted areas do well to spur the survivors to continue fighting for the sake of humankind’s love and soulful presence. The strategic usage of other subtle elements contributes to the circumspectly created atmosphere as well. Every now and then, you will hear and see a wimping zombie (do zombies even cry, anyways?) lie motionless in one corner, wallowing in self-despair. At other times, you would be able to detect a zombie from afar just by catching its grunt. And when the zombies commence their attack, they roar, their faces tauted in agony and fear. The survivors, too, covey their emotions via facial expressions and behaviours so vivid that you would be able to tell how they are feeling without the aid of any spoken word. When a survivor is injured, he or she hobbles and his or her sight becomes relegated to a (vaguely blurred) black and white view. Put two and two together and what you get is a desolate world that is supposedly bereft of personality – reanimated to become one undead world that is living and breathing every moment – so much so that it doesn’t seem like you are playing the game, but rather, living the game.

The success of Left 4 Dead in the creation of such an immersive gameplay experience is unquestionable, but beyond it, there are 2 modes available for play, namely campaign mode and versus mode. As mentioned, campaign mode features 4 scenarios, with each consisting of 5 stages. More noteworthy, however, is the refreshingly unique brand of co-op play this game sells. In Left 4 Dead, the promotion of co-op play isn’t simply about the addition of more enemies or the increase of difficulty, but rather, the ability to work cohesively as a team, co-ordinate roles and responsibilities, and change tactics on the fly. You need your team members to survive and the game uses several methods to reinforce this notion: If you are snatched by the Smoker’s frog-like tongue, you’re going to need to the help from another survivor to free you. And if you are pounded by the Hunter, you’re also going to need to the help of another survivor to get it off you. While this brings the importance of co-op play to the frontline, I find it a tad irritating that if I am captured by these 2 special zombies, I must enlist the aid of other survivors to be able to escape. I prefer the more subtle implementations of co-op play: The Boomer spits vomit that distorts your view and spurs other zombies into a feeding frenzy, but the other survivors can help you keep other zombies at bay while you readjust your perspective. The Tank is the game’s version of The Incredible Hulk and would require the combination of all the power of the survivors to be taken down. In both ways, you’re not entirely incapacitated when you’re hit by the Boomer or Tank, but would need the aid of other survivors in order to live. Against groups of these marauding special zombies and the cannon fodder hordes of normal zombies that pour in every other conceivable direction, your team would need to learn how to distribute assault and defensive roles evenly among all team members and know when to change strategies and cover each other when the going gets tough.

It’s this co-op aspect of Left 4 Dead that brings into picture the capabilities of the friendly A.I. You could play with up to 3 other human players, but if there are not enough human players, the bots can offer to fill in the gaps. Needless to say, playing with at least one other human player is recommended as human players bring forth the dynamism and social aspect of co-op play. However, the bots do a moderately good job filling in the shoes of the human players as well. They are especially attentive of your status, healing you when you are low on health and quickly helping you up should you be incapacitated. Unlike human players, they are careful not to hit you with friendly fire too. But there remain a few quirks when playing with bots. For one, bots are uncooperative – it’s near impossible to co-ordinate attacks and defenses with them. Playing with bots also eliminates the ability to switch team strategies on the fly, making your team that much more vulnerable to the many unpredictable zombie attacks. During my time with Left 4 Dead, I encountered a few instances where a bot remained stuck in a particular location as well, though that issue has more to do with the bugs in the game rather than the modus operandi of the A.I.

The other mode available for play in the game is the versus mode. In this particular mode, one team human players control the survivors while the other, the zombies. If you are playing as the zombies, the game randomly assigns you to any of the 4 special zombie classes, namely Smoker, Hunter, Boomer and Tank. Each team of human players alternate between survivors and zombies after every round. Playing as the survivors in versus mode is pretty much the same as playing the survivors in campaign mode: Make it to the safehouse at the end of every stage and survive long enough to be rescued and your team wins. The onus is on the zombies to preclude the survivors from doing just that. For some reason, only No Mercy and Blood Harvest are compatible with versus mode.

Unlike campaign mode, versus mode just doesn’t cut the mustard where enjoyment is concerned. Admittedly, versus mode offers a distinctively different kind of experience from campaign mode IF you are playing as the zombies, but the ability to play as zombies is arguably also Left 4 Dead’s weakest link. As zombies are MUCH MUCH more fragile than survivors, requiring only a few bullets to be transformed into a meat fountain, there is a need for increased co-ordination in attacks. The smoker can sneak an unsuspecting survivor away from under the noses of his or her team. After the survivor has been captured, the boomer can vomit onto him or her, unleashing the other zombies onto him or her. It sounds easy and fun on paper, but in practice, playing as the zombies is plain painful and ridiculous. Team strategies and co-ordination of attacks there can be, but it takes only one other survivor with a sub-machine gun or rifle to single-handedly disable both the smoker and boomer with a few shots – and with still ample bullets to spare for the other wandering zombies.

The game addresses the vulnerability and fragility of the zombies by providing zombie-controlling human players with the capability to be respawned whenever they die, but even the respawn mechanism is handled almost too thoughtlessly. When a zombie dies, it gets respawned into a soul near the survivors. From there, it must thread back a certain distance away from the pack of survivors before its bodily form is returned. I can’t really comprehend the need for this utter inconvenience: Why couldn’t there be fixed respawn points throughout each map? What’s the point of being respawned as a soul near the survivors? Why can’t we be respawned directly into our bodily forms? Not only does this introduce inconvenience, but also disrupt the flow of the gameplay. Versus mode isn’t fun.

Regardless of which mode you play, however, the game employs a movie-esque presentation style which is a really nice touch. When each scenario is loading, a movie poster showing the cast members will be displayed. Upon completion of each scenario, the statistics would be announced in the form a credit roll. These statistics range healthily from the number of normal and special zombies killed by each survivor, to the amount of medical assistance each survivor administers to others, to the amount of friendly fire each survivor delivers. These statistics are supplemented by the ‘Zombies Killed in the Making of the Film’ count and if there are survivors who did not make it to the rescue point, an ‘In Loving Memory of’ line would roll. All these inconspicuous elements drive the game towards a fine cinematic production value – something that is very much in line with what the mood and atmosphere in the game has been trying to promote all along.

Final Comments
Left 4 Dead is unlike any other shooter you have played before. Merging an exclusively co-op experience with high production values to great effects, Left 4 Dead is one creative, bold, genre-defining and outstanding game. However, the unpliablity of the friendly A.I. and the unenjoyable versus mode get in the way to deny this game perfection. Another point that needs to be considered is the seemingly lack of content. With just 4 scenarios to experience, the game could get a little dull after quite a while. Granted, the unpredictable nature of multiplayer and the adaptable enemy A.I. do give this game extra fingers, but 4 scenarios can only accommodate that much amount of intrigue and interest before the game is left to gather dust on the bookshelf. There is no doubt that Left 4 Dead is worth checking out – but just be prepared to accept its palpable flaws.

Game Review: Mirror's Edge

noreply@blogger.com (Eyes & Smile) — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 05:33:00 +0000

When innovation works, it produces splendid results.

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TOTAL SCORE: 8.5/10

The Good:
Incredibly innovative and immersive gameplay

The Bad:
Poorly-executed cut scenes * Inconsistent collision detection * Repetitive architecture and over simplistic color scheme
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Innovation is very much a double-edged sword. On one hand, it produces handsome results when fresh, yet competent ideas are fused with much thought and skill with tried-and-tested formula, while on the other, it tears a game asunder and sinks it much like the way Titanic was executed if the new elements are not implemented correctly. The former best describes Mirror’s Edge. Borrowing pages out from successful old-school platforming games, as well as from modern day first-person shooters, Mirror’s Edge is what one would call a truly innovative game. It does what other games haven’t in years – and for most parts – it succeeds.

Mirror’s Edge takes place in the near future – in a fictitious city simply acknowledged as Daily City. The ostentatious skyscrapers which dominate the city tell the story of prosperity, but the circumstances are anything but. Thanks to the totalitarian government, there are special couriers called runners whose job is to deliver deluges of information that would otherwise not survive were they relayed in the conventional way. Mirror’s Edge places you in the shoes of Faith, a runner whose sister Kate has been framed for murdering a politician. Now, Faith is both a runner and a sibling who must rush against time to clear Kate’s name before her sister is put behind bars.

Certainly, it’s an intriguing plot but unfortunately, it ends up as nothing more than a perfunctory backstory that does little to engage us in the world of Mirror’s Edge. Not surprisingly, the game has reaped several coveted benefits due to the healthy dose of innovation present here – and while the developer’s odd decision to eschew the traditional cut scenes which utilise the in-game engine and live action cut scenes for 2D animated cut scenes IS indeed innovation in exercise, the execution leaves much to be desired. More than demonstrating to us what perfectly terrible 2D animators the developer employs, the static and near lifeless 2D animation clearly severs us from the experience, removing any emotional ties that we may have developed with the characters in the game, and constantly reminding us that yes, we are JUST playing a game. The result is a story that IS intriguing, but not nearly as immersive as it seeks to be.

Luckily, in a game where the action is the emphasis, the story isn’t as important as it could be. And the action is where Mirror’s Edge truly shines. With gameplay of such unprecedented innovation, it’s hard to slot the game into the comparison charts with any of the games in the market today. Mirror’s Edge is quite simply this: Take the 2D world of old-school platformers, and give it a 3D spin. Now, replace the nondescript platforms with roofs of skyscrapers and bridges, and fit the structures with pipes, planks, air-conditioner units, cranes, scaffoldings and any other object which can be clanged on. Now add acrobatic moves to the abilities of the protagonist so that she can leap from location to location. Throw in some melee capabilities and weapon combat into her movelist. Now, refocus the camera so that we are seeing the world from the first-person perspective. That’s Mirror’s Edge.

Needless to say, maneuvering (or rather, platforming) in a 3D environment adds a whole new dimension to the gameplay. Unlike old-school platformers, players are no longer restricted to simple jumps from left to right, or down to up. What this translates into is the need for more convoluted controls to accommodate the more sophisticated platforming. What Mirror’s Edge has done is to streamline all the moves into just 3 buttons with wondrous results. The left bumper button and left trigger are allocated to moving up and down respectively, while the right trigger is allocated to melee. With the right combination of any of these 3 buttons, Faith has the ability to perform wall runs, slides, ground rolls, body curls, jump kicks and low punches. Stringing any of the combinations of buttons together produces more advanced moves like running up a wall and immediately turning around 180 degrees and jumping off it. The controls are really easy to master and in no time will you find yourself constantly leaping over or sliding under suspended pipes, skydiving off the edges of roofs and parachuting off insanely vertiginous positions and ending with a body curl in the air and a safety roll on the ground on a consecutive basis. That IS fun. Am I playing a more sophisticated version of a Sonic game? Perhaps I am.

And while you are at it, the game tries its utmost best to immerse you fully into what you are doing. The fact that the game is played in a first-person perspective already provides it with a level of immersion unlike other 3D platforming games which are played in a third-person perspective. The first-person perspective is complemented by an incredibly real sense of movement: Your environs slip to a blur and the camera shifts horizontally subtly when you run. Faith’s legs stretch out after a long jump and she shoves her hand at the door when you break it down.

The game’s not all about running and leaping, though. Occassionally, it throws cops, guards, and choppers at you to break up the monotony of platforming on a consistent basis. When that happens, you can either choose to ignore the threats and make it to the objective quickly or engage in weapon or melee combat with the enemies. While adopting the former approach gets you over each chapter as quickly as possible, it isn’t always the most pragmatic way to survive the level, but more than that, you would missing out on another enjoyable aspect of the game. Admittedly, having to engage in melee combat and gunplay does slow down the fast and furious (no pun intended) pace of the gameplay that Mirror’s Edge has been attempting to promote all along – but only by a little.

The basic process for combat goes like this: Disarm, take the weapon, continue moving briskly, gun down a few cops and guards, dispose of weapon, run towards the other enemies and administer them a few kicks and punches. Now, repeat the process. It works very much like Sega’s The Club where combat is less of a strategic element, but more of being able to gun down as many enemies as possible in the shortest amount of time – and as fluidly as possible. It’s distinctively different from what is offered in other first-person shooters and understandably so. This approach does work to Mirror’s Edge’s advantage as the whole combat component really blends in seamlessly with the general tenor of the entire game.

What disrupts the flow of the gameplay, however, is the rather inconsistent collision detection. On several occasions, I was sure that I caught hold of a zip line or an edge of an air-conditioner unit, but instead, I saw Faith falling to her death. What’s more frustrating is that the inconsistent collision detection almost always decides to bare its teeth at the most perplexing of jumping puzzles. What this essentially means is that some sections become nothing more than annoying trial-and-error portions – something so obverse to what Mirror’s Edge has been trying to accomplish thus far.

Throughout the course of the game, you get the chance to penetrate numerous buildings, subways stations in addition to roaming the streets of Daily City and traversing less desirable places like the city’s sewers and tunnels. The locales are interesting enough – that is, until you realize that you are running through the same area for the umpteenth time. But hey, it’s not the same area – it’s just the same austere architecture. Somewhere during the design process, the developer decided that it’s an appropriate decision to copy and paste the architecture of a particular building to other buildings. These same buildings, being swathed in the same few primary colors, offer little to few variations between themselves such that the environments become repetitious after a while. To an extent, both the unvarnished architecture and over simplified color scheme (ala Team Fortress 2) do support the theme of a city that is ruled by a totalitarian government, but I would prefer a more diversified offering as far as environments are concerned. The same simple environments worked in Team Fortress 2 because the said game was aiming for a more cartoonish style in its overall design, while in Mirror’s Edge, it doesn’t work because realism is the target here.

With a prologue and 9 chapters to play through, the game clocks in at approximately 9 hours. It isn’t very long, but after you have completed the single-player campaign, you can try your hands on the unlocked time trials and speed runs. Scores attained in time trials can be uploaded to an online leaderboard, but other than that, there’s really nothing much left to achieve in the game. That being said, Mirror’s Edge IS a short game, but is a fine example of how innovation has worked so well in favor of the material.

Final Comments
If you have grown tired of all the Gears of Wars and Call of Duties, and want to try something new, Mirror’s Edge’s the game for you. Blending the fast and furious pace of old-school platforming games, especially Sonic games, with the satisfying first-person melee and weapon combat of modern games, Mirror’s Edge is a game unlike any other. Unfortunately, its choice of static and near lifeless 2D animation for cut scenes and inconsistent collision detection serve the game no favors, and neither do the Team Fortress 2-esque environments. Nevertheless, Mirror’s Edge is one awesome game, with concepts so fresh that it is as irresistible as Subway’s sandwiches. You eat fresh – and you play fresh.

Movie Review: Dead Space Downfall

noreply@blogger.com (Eyes & Smile) — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 14:10:00 +0000

Put on your spacesuit and depart into space.

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RATING: 3.5/5

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As part of EA’s new multi media release approach, Dead Space Downfall is a rather fresh – and unique concept. In Downfall we see a thoughtful and impressive attempt at providing a prologue to EA’s recently released survival horror game Dead Space instead of yet another videogame to movie transition which fails to fill the boots of its source material all too often.

Downfall explores the last few hours of the lives of planet mining vessel USG Ishimura’s crew members as the freaking-fearsome-aliens-with-claws Necromorphs invade and attack the ship prior to the arrival of the videogame’s playable protagonist, Issac Clarke. If you have played the game, and are interested in discovering a little more about its plot, then you should definitely grab the DVD. If you have not played the game, but are interested to play it later, then it should be of no question that you grab the DVD as well so as to enlighten yourself before embarking through the game. If you have neither played the game nor intended to experience it later, then Downfall would be an entertaining watch too – if you don’t mind the plot loopholes and cliffhanger ending, that is. Although Downfall was crafted as a somewhat propitiatory fan service, the fact that the film appeals to both gamers and non-gamers is remarkable.

Gamers who haven’t played the game before and non-gamers shouldn’t be too lost in Downfall as the film does a great job at providing a reasonable amount of information from the get-go. The crew members of USG Ishimura uncover a strange huge pointed artifact while on its routine planet mining. Apparently, the artifact is mysterious enough to justify the Captain’s decision to bring the artifact abroad the ship and transport it back to Earth for research. Curiousity proves fatal as the crew members are unknowingly and gradually affected by the untold powers of the artifact – so much so that they start hallucinating and murdering others around them. In the process of mining the particular planet, one of the Necromorphs has also sneaked on board the ship, and began infecting others and turning them into one of its own. Both events spawn a series of disasters on the ship – a situation further exacerbated by the surviving crew members’ panic and rashness. The survivors are split among themselves and the truly good ones must now prevent the ship from becoming a space graveyard – which we all know, is impossible because there wouldn’t be Dead Space the game if things went right.

Like any respectable thriller-horror movie should, Downfall doesn’t give everything away from the start so that there’s a consistent pall of suspense and mystery throughout the duration of the film. Even after the film has ended, there remain some loopholes. And that’s one disadvantage of this film – though one couldn’t really put a finger on Downfall as it’s merely meant to a prologue. For example, it was never explained how the Necromorph species was born. And why the Necromorphs were afraid of the artifact. In this regard, it is unfortunate that non-gamers may never find out about unfilled gaps.

For today's Biology class: How to dissect a human

But the action here more than compensates for the loopholes. Downfall constantly dishes out spectacular gunfights and visually pleasing gore. Everything is executed with such sadistically satisfying precision: Crew members slice through Necromorphs with laser saws like skilled butchers and tear their limps off with buckets of bullets, while the aliens extricate the innards of the crew members and make jigsaw puzzles out of them. Additionally, bodies are given vertical dissections and jaws are stripped from their owners. The perfect pacing here lends itself to mass killings occurring seconds apart from each other – it’s a showcase of good and bloody entertainment – literally. How I wish this film could be animated in 3D (ala Resident Evil Degeneration) or shot in live action, but as it turns out, it’s nothing more than a 2D animated feature, but the action here is still captured just how it should be – unpredictable, intense and fun.

The incredulity of Downfall’s first scene hurts, though. For example, when a crew member discovers that his girlfriend is about to silt her throat, he does nothing more than to remain emotionless – content to stay riveted to the ground. And after his girlfriend has indeed silted her throat, he runs to her side and cries more like a wimpy child who has broken someone else’s window while playing baseball. It’s every bit unrealistic and removes quite an amount of believability from the film. Fortunately, this does not appear again in the remaining duration of Downfall.

The only other gripe I have with Downfall is its unnecessary religious subplot that draws a connection between the artifact and a certain Church of Unitology. The fact is injected – but yet, this subplot sees no further expatiation beyond the scene it is introduced in. This leaves me wondering why there was an effort to even bring the topic of religion into the film in the first place. While the fact that the writers seem to want to pave the way for more depth in Downfall is appreciated, the religious subplot ends up as nothing more than an incoherent piece of mess – something that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, and certainly something that shouldn’t even be roped into the film.

Final Comments
Dead Space Downfall is created for audiences who have played the game and audiences who have not played the game, but plan on playing it later – but it is surprisingly accessible to non-gamers as well – and that’s the selling point of this film. While the few loopholes in the plot here and cliffhanger ending might be disadvantageous to non-gamers, the constant suspense and mystery and the unpredictable, intense and fun action are more than ample in making this a really enjoyable watch for all. After watching Downfall, I felt a certain urge to play Dead Space. Put on your spacesuit and depart into space with this DVD.

Movie Review: The Day the Earth Stood Still

noreply@blogger.com (Eyes & Smile) — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 13:01:00 +0000

The Day That Should Never Have Come.

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RATING: 0.5/5

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As you may have learned from movie reviews elsewhere, commercial entertainment journalists might start to attempt to impress you with their all-too-facile knowledge of the entire film industry at this point of an article. As a result of this, I discovered that The Day the Earth Stood Still is actually a remake of a 1951 film of the same name. Unless you are a really fervent observer of the film industry or the lucky person who caught sight of the original on a VHS Tape at a garage sales, you probably wouldn’t have heard of the 1951 movie before. That being said, the trailers and posters are likely to be your only hope (sans spoilers) in your quest to conjecture what to expect in the film. Like you, I was misled into believing that this film’s all about balls-out massive alien invasion sci-fi action (ala 2005’s War of the Worlds), but it’s merely The Day I Sat Still at the cinema and realized that I should probably rush to the ticket counter and secure a refund after the movie ended.

Jennifer Connelly plays Dr. Helen Benson, an astrobiologist who is abruptly interrupted by government officials while preparing dinner for her stepson (Jaden Smith). Content to only divulge the fact that the US government requires her services, they proceed to transport her to a near-by military base. Upon arriving, she discovers that other scientists have been recruited as well. All too brusquely, it is revealed that an asteroid or otherwise would hit Manhattan in a little more than an hour’s time with unimaginably disastrous consequences.

Despite this, Helen and the posse of scientists are sent into the area where the impact would occur – so much for intelligence. The asteroid turns out to be a glowing green sphere of sorts and fortunately for them, it performes a rather smooth landing right in the center of Central Park. Soon after, an extraterrestrial being emerges from the sphere and is accidentally shot by a jumpy soldier. Wounded and taken into the custody of the US government, the extraterrestrial being soon adopts a human form, referring to himself as Klaatu (Keanu Reeves).

Helen sees a benevolent side in Klaatu and decides to aid him in his escape. It isn’t long before Klaatu makes his intentions clear: He has come to Earth not to destroy it – but to save it – from humans. Helen must now rush against time to change Klaatu’s mind before the aliens start to wipe humans off the surface of the Earth.

Unlike the 1951 original which focused on the Cold War paranoia, this remake shifts its emphasis to a more pressing problem of today: Destruction of the environment. The aliens are here to obliterate humanity so that the environmental destruction would cease, and the Earth, preserved. But for all its talk about environmental destruction, rarely has the film shown any connection between the aforementioned and the several scenes it consists of. Helen’s constant yells of “We can change. We can change. Just give us a chance” to Klaatu in an attempt to reverse the aliens’ decision to eliminate humanity do remind us of the film’s underlying political message from time to time, but it isn’t long before the lines get annoying.

It’s unbelievable, but true: Those lines are the only vestige of what this film is trying to tell us. On that count, it fails miserably, especially after having taken into consideration how another recently released political message-carrying film, Eagle Eye, managed to weave its ideas with its scenes with great panache such that the whole movie is a message by itself – its ideas not merely relegated to the responsibility of a particular dialogue.

Like a 70 year-old man assaying to lift a 50’ LCD TV set by himself, the film desperately struggles to draw attention away from the ideas it’s supposed to convey to how Helen can dissuade Klaatu and his fellow aliens from exterminating humanity. To accomplish this goal, the scriptwriters have been specifically instructed to allow Klaatu to follow Helen throughout the course of the movie. This is so that Klaatu can have more time to explore the relationship between Helen and her stepson, hence providing him with a reason to make his fellow aliens change their minds about destroying humanity. The problem is: The aliens came to Earth to take out all the humans and save the planet from environmental destruction, not negative human behaviour. In having scene after scene portray the relationship between Helen and her stepson, their courage and their confidence, the film has totally gone off the boil. And even that feels really rushed, with the film giving little or no explanation to why the characters experience a particular set of emotions in a certain scene.

By the hour mark, this film’s already in a mess: It has a political message to convey, but it doesn’t exactly understand how it can be put across to the audiences. The result is the haphazard use of the same irritating line over and over again to remind us that environmental protection is important – that if we don’t protect the environment, aliens will wipe us all out (wow!). It attempts to show how the humans’ deep emotions can alter the decisions of the aliens, but constantly fails to explain why the characters feel in a particular way. The result is a movie that consists of scenes that feel all too rushed and disconnected. And I thought that the action promised here could revive it from the ashes. I was wrong.

The aliens gave us the 8th Wonder of the World. Hooray!

It’s pathetic that the most interesting action involves a swarm of silver flies chewing up buildings by the hectares. Oh, that’s it? That’s how an alien invasion is like? Chances are that if you have seen the trailers before, you have seen all the action in this film. The glowing green sphere barely manages to qualify itself as something that would be associated with action – but rather, is something that would only intrigue children. By the time the silver flies start making their debut, the movie has already completely ignored the ideas it’s supposed to convey.

I walked out of the cinema feeling that the elements of the film were really disconnected and that the whole movie was just utterly meaningless. Instead of screening The Day the Earth Stood Still, cinema operators should have just displayed the words “Protect the Environment” on a nondescript black background – the portrayal of human emotions and alien technology and powers are just superfluous. That pretty much sums up the quality of this film.

Final Comments
Scroll up to the last fourth paragraph. That says it all. There’s a recession going on, people. Save your money. The film’s abrupt ending just tells us that the director wants to wrap up this embarrassing movie as soon as possible.

Game Review: Super Stardust Portable

noreply@blogger.com (Eyes & Smile) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 11:19:00 +0000

You're playing a PSP Game of the Year candidate.

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TOTAL SCORE: 9.7/10^{CHOICE PICK}

The Good:
Stunning amount of depth in an otherwise static arcade shooter genre * Multiple ways to build up high scores, increasing replayability * Amount of content offered is just right * Glitzy visual effects and matching tunes

The Bad:
Slowdowns in some areas * Unbalanced difficulty level
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Super Stardust HD blasted its way onto the PlayStation Network in June 2007 to positive reception. Best described as a cross between Asteroids and Geometry Wars, PS3 owners suddenly had an incredibly intense and addictive arcade shooter to pump up the adrenaline whenever needed. Just a little more than a year later after the success that was Super Stardust HD, the PSN welcomed its 2nd Super Stardust game – and this time, it’s for the PSP owners.

Super Stardust Portable is basically the same game as the PS3 hit so what you’re getting is essentially Super Stardust HD in the palms of your hands. Save for the swop between HD’s local co-op mode and Portable’s all-new Impact mode (more on that later), there’s almost nothing new here. That being said, I’d recommend that you give Portable a skip if you have played HD on the PS3 before, but for others who haven’t got the chance to experience Super Stardust in full 1080p glory, Portable is a great catch at only US$9.99 on the PSN.

As with the case with any arcade shooter, there is neither a convoluted story nor elaborate controls here. What remains is a simple concept of blasting an increasing number of asteroids, alien ships and parasitic organisms homing in from all directions by the second while piloting a lone spaceship. Due to the shallow objectives and often limited game mechanics, games in this genre often suffer from a lack of depth, quickly relegating themselves to a button-mashing fest of sorts within the first hour – if they are even able to keep players engaged till the hour mark.

Portable proves otherwise. Its ostensible pick-me-up-and-play simplicity is a certain draw factor, but once you start toying around with your spaceship, you will realize the impressive amount of depth this game possesses. For a start, Portable isn’t just about shooting your way through mindlessly – it’s about knowing when and where to use the right weapon. There are 3 weapons offered here, namely the wide radius fire green plasma gun “Rock Crusher”, focused rapid fire blue plasma gun “Ice Splitter” and auto-targeting flamethrower “Gold Melter”. Some weapons deal with specific enemies more effectively than the others, so knowing what weapon to use against what type of enemy is crucial. For instance, the Ice Splitter is best suited for floating icebergs, while the Gold Melter is more appropriate for the nefarious saw discs. What this translates into is that there is a surprising amount of strategy here, requiring you to constantly evaluate the situation and switch weapons on the fly – and this makes for a very intensifying gameplay.

Power-ups for each specific weapon can be gathered by blasting asteroids apart and digging into their glowing green cores, and again, Portable is going to astonish you with its depth here. Power-ups dished out by the Asteroids’ cores are random and they change every few seconds. For instance, you may see a power-up for the Rock Crusher one second, yet a power-up for the Gold Melter the next. What this means is that not only do you have to focus on dodging the obstacles, but also keep a look-out for the suitable power-up. In fact, the game constantly forces you to make decisions on which weapons to upgrade. If you have already maxed out a particular weapon to 100%, but yet collect another power-up for that maxed-out weapon, the power-up will provide a temporary boost for that weapon – meaning that weapon will become crazily powerful during that period of about 10 seconds.

Power-ups aren’t limited to those for the weapons, though. Some power-ups give you additional points, while others provide you with extra bombs and shields. That’s where the other capabilities of your spaceship come in. Not only do you have the 3 default weapons, but also the boost function and bomb attack. Your ship will become invincible when you boost, destroying any obstacles in your way, while the bomb will obliterate anything within its immediate vicinity, both of which help you to get out of tricky situations alive. All in all, there’s quite an amount of abilities for your little spaceship and it all boils down to knowing how to take advantage of each capability at the right time and at the right place. Personally, I dig the shield power-up. Say, you already have a shield on, but yet, you collect another shield-power-up. Upon collecting that additional shield power-up, your ship activates a bomb that has a slightly greater blast radius than the default bomb. Now, that’s a nice touch.

The frantic blasting and constant tactical decision making make for a really intense, fun and addictive gameplay, but I am at amazed at how Portable is able to draw me back into the game again and again even after I have completed all the levels. Part of this could be attributed to my desire to clock a higher score. But part of it could also be attributed to how the game rewards skills – and that means if you want to get a higher score, you’re going to have to invest some time into practising. I also like the way how there are several ways to bump up your scores: Getting a high score isn’t just about pulverizing as many obstacles as possible – it’s also about how rapidly you destroy them, building up score multipliers, and how fast you can clear a level. All these inject a great deal of replayability into the game.

As far as content goes, there are 5 worlds to blast through, with each world being further separated into 5 phases, bringing the total amount of levels to 25 here. At the end of each world, there would be a boss battle. Arcade mode allows you to go through all the worlds in a row, while Planet mode allows you to choose any unlocked world to play through. As mentioned, local co-op mode has been removed from Portable, but in its place is the all-new Impact mode. Impact mode disallows you to use any weapon, but instead, rely only on boosting and bombs to crush obstacles. It’s Super Stardust in a new flavor and it’s rather challenging and enjoyable, but there’s still no denying that there’s not a whole lot of content in this game. Considering that this is a US$9.99 downloadable title, this is a fact not questionable. In fact, for US$9.99, the amount of content offered here is just right.

Presentation-wise, this game is a showpiece. While it’s not comparable to experiencing Super Stardust in full 1080p glory on your big screen using the PS3, Portable still has quite an amount of stunning stuffs going for it. The visuals effects are generally very glitzy and with all the mayhem going on in your periphery, you can’t help but wish that there’s a feature that allows you to take a screenshot at that very moment. We just love explosions (that’s human nature!) and Portable certainly has lots of variety of them to keep us satisfied. My only gripe is that the game slowdowns when the action gets too thick – but that happens on a very seldom basis. Every world also has its own piece of tune as an accompaniment, and it’s all appropriate and great fare.

The only complain I have with this game is that it has a rather unbalanced difficulty level. The first world is extremely challenging, but you will find yourself steamrolling past the second and third world before the fourth world stops you dead with the requirement of god-like observation skills and precision dodging. The fifth and final world ramps up in difficulty, but is let down by an easy boss with some of the most predictable attack patterns. Regardless, all the worlds are still REALLY fun.

Final comments
Super Stardust Portable is a game that the PSP has been screaming for – a must-get title. You would get a console just to have a chance to play some games that are exclusive to that particular platform. Get the DS for Mario Kart DS, or get the Xbox 360 for Halo 3 and Gears of War, or get the PS3 for Metal Gear, and well, now I can say this: Get the PSP for God of War: Chains of Olympus and yeah, get the PSP for Super Stardust Portable too. Super Stardust Portable is simply THAT good.

Feature: State of Digital Media Distribution on DS and PSP

noreply@blogger.com (Eyes & Smile) — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 15:18:00 +0000

Neither Xbox 360 nor PS3 owners should be strangers to digital media distribution on their respective consoles. Xbox Live offers game demos, full Xbox games, add-ons for released games, trailers, movies and smaller-scaled games like the successful Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved and Hexic HD for download, while PS3 owners have the PlayStation Network to occupy themselves with. Nintendo has also recently jumped onto the digital media distribution bandwagon with the Wii, offering classic games for download.

There is no denying that digital media distribution has been more or less established on home consoles and it is going strong, with developers taking advantage of it and new content being released weekly. Home console owners are certainly getting the fun, but for handheld gamers, it’s a different story. Suffice to say, digital media distribution for handhelds is still relatively new. We are here today to look at the current state of the aforementioned on the DS and PSP and attempt to predict what the future holds for digital media distribution for the 2 portables.

DS

DS owners didn’t have a platform for a digital media delivery service until March 2006. This could be attributed to some obstacles, including the lack of on-board memory and support for feasible content storage options on the DS. However, things changed when Nintendo of America’s President, Reggie Fils-Aimé, announced at DICE in February 2006 that Nintendo will start to offer all DS owners free downloadable game demos and other downloadable content at thousands of participating retail locations around the US.

For the DS Download Service to be possible, in-store kiosks beamed wireless demo versions of games and other downloadable content onto a player’s DS. All users needed to do was to stop by the store with their DS, select the option “DS Download Play” on their handheld and choose one of a variety of games they wanted to sample. The game will download automatically and users can play all they wanted until they turned their DS off. Among the debutants on the DS download service were the demos of Tetris DS, Brain Age, Mario Kart DS and a Metroid Prime: Hunters video clip.

However, the DS Download Service was far from perfect. Media ‘downloaded’ to the DS was only temporary; users didn’t really have the ability to run the demos and videos after they turned off the DS. In a way, it wasn’t a true platform for digital media download. Furthermore, players had to be at the store for the DS to be able to receive the media and this could be hassle. This leads me to the next issue with the DS download service: It’s not accomplished via the Internet, and hence, not many people around the world were able to enjoy the ‘downloadable’ content.

DS Download Service is accessible from the Nintendo Channel on Wii.

With the launch of the Wii, the situation became better. In April 2008, Nintendo launched the Nintendo Channel for the console alongside WiiWare. The Nintendo Channel wasn’t solely meant for the Wii, though, as DS owners got factored into the equation as well, as demonstrated with the offerings of game demos on the now more-convenient DS download service, accessible via the Nintendo Channel. Suddenly, DS owners didn’t have to travel to the stores anymore to get their fix of demos.

But Nintendo was and is still missing one demographic of gamers: Those who own the DS, but not the Wii. In other words, only those who have the Wii have access to the DS download service, and users who have only the DS (like me) are left stranded. To be fair, it isn’t entirely Nintendo’s fault. Again, this could be due to the DS’s technical limitations as both the original DS and DS Lite don’t have ample on-board memory nor content storage options. What this translates into is that even if Nintendo did have the DS download service accessible from the PC, DS owners wouldn’t be able to enjoy the demos.

Currently, digital media distribution on the DS is only possible for gamers who own both the Wii and DS. Content also consists mainly of game demos. As of the time of this writing, Nintendo hasn’t announced any further plans with regards to digital media distribution on DS.

Users can access the DS Download Service directly from their DSi in Japan.

However, hope has arrived in the form of the newly-launched DSi. Already in Japan, the DS Download Service can be accessed directly from a user’s DSi. This is possible not only because of the built-in web browser on the DSi, but also because of the ability to use the SD card as a storage option on the DSi. If the upgraded DS download service in Japan is of any indication, DS owners worldwide could be enjoying the same benefit come 2009 when the DSi launches in other countries.

Additionally, Nintendo could launch a PC edition of the DS Download Service and allow players to save content onto a SD card. This also allows media files that are greater in size to be played on the DSi. There’s the problem of piracy, though, as media files downloaded via the DS Download Service could be passed from individual to individual if there isn’t a proper security system in place. For instance, WiiWare games saved on SD cards can only be played on a particular Wii console now. A similar security system could be implemented for DSi. Indeed, an expanded DS Download Service looks very possible in the future.

PSP

For some time now, Sony has been offering PSP owners downloads of game demos, smaller-scaled games and movies via the PlayStation Network. These downloadable content for the PSP are accessible from the PS3, PC or even the PSP itself. By virtue of these facts, digital media distribution on the PSP is stronger than that on the DS – and more convenient as well. All you need is a PlayStation Network account and you’re good to go.

However, a recent check on PlayStation Network revealed that the amount of downloadable content for the PSP clearly pales in comparison to the amount offered for the PS3. What is offered for the PSP is acceptable at best and neglected at worst. There are still the usual game demos and films, but where smaller-scaled games are concerned, the situation is less than desired. The PSP isn’t exactly loaded with retail game releases nowadays, but downloadable games could ease the pain. But where are the downloadable games?

“We’re not interested in filling up our store with games that nobody wants to play, just so we can say we have the most games,” SCEA President and CEO Jack Tretton said recently when asked about the state of PSN games.

What Jack Tretton said is true as the number of games offered on PSN is far overwhelmed by that offered on Xbox Live Arcade. Bad news: There are few games on the PSN, but quality more than compensates for the lack of quantity. This is especially true for the PS3, with games like Calling All Cars! and Super Stardust HD receiving positive reviews from commercial videogame journalists, but does Jack Tretton’s statement hold true for the PSP?

Super Stardust Portable is one of the best games on PSN.

Given that there are already so few games on the PSN when put in comparison with the Xbox Live Arcade, and that most of them are for the PS3, we can already say that there are extremely few downloadable games for the PSP. There’s Enchorome, Everyday Shooter, Brain Challenge and Super Stardust Portable for download, and by that, I mean games that are exclusive to the PSN. Super Stardust Portable is an incredibly fun and addictive arcade shooter, but to expect a title of such quality every few months for the PSP is already deemed demanding.

A game like Super Stardust Portable is a great step in the right direction, but I would really like to see more of such titles being released more frequently for the PSP on PSN. Unlike the DS Download Service, the infrastructure is already in place, and all the PSN for PSP needs is an injection of creativity and content.

The social component of Little Big Planet brings hope for downloadable content on PSN for the PSP.

The future looks really bright, though. The recent of announcement of Little Big Planet for the PSP brings about a glimmer of hope. Little Big Planet on the PS3 is all about user-created levels and sharing the fun, and while I expect some of the elements from the game to be toned down when it gets ported to the PSP come 2009, the crux of Little Big Planet is still the social component and this fact alone makes certain that there would be more downloadable content on the PSN for the PSP come next year. However, Sony could also very well host an independent server for Little Big Planet for PSP and the PSN for PSP could remain in a similar state as today.

Regardless, there is no doubt that the PSN for PSP needs more content, especially smaller-scaled games. Additionally, there could be official applications made for the PSP, something which the increasingly popular iPhone is enjoying. Suggestions include a calculator, a weather forecast tab and a unit conversion tab – or even a specifically-built for PSP eBay site among others. The only hurdle is whether games and application developers are willing to invest their time and money – considering that the PSP isn’t as widespread as the DS and the iPhone. Sony could take the initiative, though.

Game Review: Need for Speed Undercover

noreply@blogger.com (Eyes & Smile) — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 03:42:00 +0000

Made for the trash can.

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TOTAL SCORE: 2.8/10

The Good:
Huge variety of race modes * Great selection of cars * Tight and responsive handling * Relatively deep tweaking options * Ad-hoc and online multiplayer extend replayability

The Bad:
Lack of open-world racing element although it can be accomplished * Story lacks any any form of cohesion * Lack of sense of speed * Cheating, yet dumb A.I. * City is too small that it barely qualifies this game as a street racer (smaller than DS version) * No hidden routes and shortcuts * Horrid framerate
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The recent Midnight Club: L.A. Remix worked its magic on the system with great panache, circumventing the technical limitations of the PSP and playing to the strengths of it to bring us an incredibly competent and tremendously fun street racer. L.A. Remix is a consummate example of how to accomplish an enjoyable street racing game for the PSP so much so that it has set the benchmark for future street racers. Not to be outdone by L.A. Remix, EA has given Need for Speed Undercover a run on the PSP, but it does nothing right even from the beginning, eventually stumbling, limping and crumbling to the ground in the most spectacular fashion imaginable.

Unlike the console editions, Undercover for PSP does away with the open-world racing element – as with any other iteration of Need for Speed for the portable. What remains is a basic event-based gameplay – complete a certain number of events and more events get unlocked. However, for certain race types like Cost to State, Escape, Hot Car and Be the Cop, there are no barriers and you are allowed to drive around the city freely. There’s nothing really wrong with the lack of an open-world racing element, but the inability to implement the aforementioned is questionable – especially after putting into consideration what L.A. Remix has accomplished.

Fortunately, the full motion cut-scenes from the console editions get ported over, but the story is void of any form of cohesion. You would be partaking in more than a dozen checkpoint-based events, circuit races and sprint races in between cut-scenes, but more often than not, the reason why you are required to participate in these events goes unmentioned. These periodically long stretches of events in between each cut-scene relegates Undercover to nothing more than a bland racing experience with a lack of story focus that Undercover is supposedly infused with. In fact, I don’t think the cut-scenes, or rather, the plot, has ever been necessary here.

Speaking of being necessary, there’s really nothing that warrants Undercover for PSP to be necessary. Being a street racer, the gameplay here is of utmost significance, but apparently, Piranha Games (the same guys who did Medal of Honor Heroes 2 for the PSP) doesn’t understand that – for the gameplay is easily one of the most flawed components of the game. Any notion of realism or even believability is hurled out of the window the moment you start the game.

Right off the bat, you will notice that the cars here lack any real sense of speed – it isn’t until I get into higher-end cars that I start to realize that this is a racer. The entire process of driving a lower-end car like the Mazda 3 MPS and Nissan 240SX (S13) or even slightly higher-end cars like the Ford Mustang GT and Chrysler Hemi 300C SRT8 through the streets of Undercover feels like I am playing a slideshow. To be sure, I booted up a copy of the brilliant L.A. Remix and compared the sense of speed in both games. The conclusion: Driving at full speed in a Mazda 3 MPS in Undercover gives me about the same sense of speed as activating slow-mo for a Mitsubishi Eclipse in L.A. Remix. That’s embarrassing.

Like the DS version of Undercover, a cheating A.I. is part of the package. During a few instances, I discovered that a rival can actually overtake me in a similar-powered car even when I am pumping the nitrous to pull away from it. The fact that my rival is not even using nitrous merely confirms the fact that the gameplay doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. It’s also unjustified that cops will only come after you and not your rivals in a circuit race or sprint race. As if to compensate for this shortcoming, Piranha Games has made the A.I. as dumb as it is cheap. The cops here are pathetic, constantly driving like blind fools and knocking into barriers or getting themselves stuck in one particular location. Civilian vehicles like to pull over, park themselves horizontally on the roads and block your way in a race or when you are attempting to escape from the cops, but aren’t intelligent enough to know that the developers have programmed them to be brushed away like cardboard cut-outs whenever you ram into them. In fact, knocking into civilian vehicles doesn’t even slow you down. All the said do nothing but to detract an overwhelming amount of fun out from the game such that you would be compelled to extricate the crap that is the Undercover UMD residing in your PSP and dump it into the trash can: It feels so much better and more polite to end its misery than to put it through its motions and let it suffer.

Undercover is an embarrassing attempt to get the latest Need for Speed game out on time for the PSP, but it’s humiliating that the city featured here is SMALLER than that present in the DS version. The city consists of 3 mini-towns linked by bridges and each town has a different theme to it, but each town is so small it barely qualifies the whole game to be called a street racer. Unlike the DS edition, there’re no hidden routes nor are there shortcuts, which makes the city one boring nonsense. What this translates into is that race types which feature the open-world racing element are less enjoyable because you cannot sneak away from the cops nor explore other strategic means to evade the authorities. Given that the PSP has more power under its hood than the DS, and yet not accomplish what the DS version has, this shortcoming is all the more unforgivable.

Undercover’s killer blow comes in the form of the horrid framerate – one which consistently shudders and sputters like blood spurting out from a Locust when Marcus Fenix chainsaws it in Gears of War. When you are driving a lower-end car at the start of the game, the game gives a great performance in the technical department. But when you get into a higher-end car, the framerate starts to dip. The flaw is made more drastic when there are more rivals and the cops start chasing you – all the on-screen action just halts the game to a crawl – so much so I thought I was playing Need for Speed Undercover Slideshow Edition. The poor framerate is so evident throughout almost the entire game that it destroys the street racing experience thoroughly.

There’s very little that can redeem Undercover for PSP. There’s a huge variety of race modes and a great selection of cars. But one minor gripe: Why can’t I sell my cars? Handling is tight and responsive, and unique to each car. Tweaking options are on the side of more and there’s ad-hoc and online multiplayer to extend the replayability of the game. But these are just minor triumphs – the ones which should be expected in any PSP street racer today. However, I do dig the EA Media Center option, which allows me to listen to individual tracks present in the game. You’re allowed to add in your own tracks in EA Media Center, but the inability for the game to play your tracks during gameplay defeats the purpose the feature.

Final Comments
It’s hard to recommend Undercover for PSP to anyone. It’s white-washed with so many overwhelming flaws that it’s virtually unplayable. It is a result of an unpolished game that can’t even get the basics right. If you are looking to play a good street racer on the portable, I’d suggest getting Midnight Club: L.A. Remix instead. Undercover is a game that’s made for the trash can, period.

Game Review: Need for Speed Undercover

noreply@blogger.com (Eyes & Smile) — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 14:37:00 +0000

Need for a hammer to smash this up.

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TOTAL SCORE: 3.7/10

The Good:
All Points, Scramble, Hot Car and Getaway are genuiely fun race modes * Suitable music * Local wireless play and online multiplayer extend replayability

The Bad:
Straightforward and predictable story * Poor vehicle physics * Short draw distance * City seems too empty * Car models look terrible (square wheels included!) * Cheating A.I.
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Firebrand Games seems to be the go-to developer for DS racing games, having already accomplished Cartoon Network Racing, Race Driver: Create and Race, Ferrari Challenge, Race Driver: GRID and TrackMania DS. Its latest project is Need for Speed Undercover, the most recent in EA’s long-running franchise.

It remains a mystery, however, why a developer with such vast experience in producing DS racing games has works with varying (often questionable) degrees of quality. Race Driver: Create and Race was a great racer – if you can forgive the slightly undesirable visuals, but Race Driver: GRID was an absolute nightmare to play, partly due to its virtually non-existent vehicle physics. TrackMania DS, one of the more recent Firebrand titles, was ridiculed with draw distances so short that it’s practically impossible to win on more winding tracks later in the game. This is a developer which produces a good game one moment, yet produces a pile of nonsense the next. Where does Need for Speed Undercover stand then?

While Undercover certainly has its share of positives, its shortcomings more than overwhelm any glimmer of hope that the few fun parts of this game present. The previous Need for Speed game for DS, Pro Street, was an achievement to behold: Excellent visuals, realistic simulation-like handling and an impressive variety of modes. Undercover throws out those achievements (though it retains the wide array of race modes) and adds in a few additional rotten tomatoes of its own and the result is a game that stinks more than it smells.

Unlike the console editions, Undercover for DS doesn’t feature an entirely open-world racing element. What you have here is a basic event-based gameplay – complete a certain number of events and more events get unlocked. But for certain race types like Hot car or Getaway (where you need to evade the police) and All Points and Scramble (where you are the cop and need to nab criminals), there are no barriers and you are allowed to drive around the city freely. That’s fine – especially after putting into consideration the limited technical power of the DS. It’s also perfectly alright that the cut-scenes from all the other versions of the game (including the PSP edition of Undercover) get translated to a load of strategically-taken still shots and text since the story still gets conveyed across really well. Speaking of the story, it’s a pretty straightforward and predictable one – save for a wicked twist towards the end, but otherwise, it’s merely a bland excuse to get you moving from event to event.

What’s not fine, however, are the poor vehicle physics. It’s not as bad as the one present (or absent from) Race Driver: GRID for DS, but the fact that each of the vehicles doesn’t really have any ‘weight’ is unforgivable. The handling of each car feels very loose and that contributes to the difficulty of taking turns. In fact, every car handles pretty much the same; the sole difference between lower-end cars and higher-end cars is that the former can take turns easier as they are less quickly than the later and hence, require a shorter braking distance. This brings me to the next severe issue I have with this game.

The draw distance is so short that it’s really hard to anticipate a turn. The short draw distance wouldn’t pose a problem if you are driving a lower-end car because by the time you spot a turn, there’s still much time to brake and take a turn smoothly, but for most parts of the game, you would be in a higher-end car and instances where a turn appears out of nowhere while you are speeding are frequent. Unlike TrackMania DS, there’s a mini-map on the bottom screen so you would be aware when there’s a turn approaching, but you know there’s something seriously wrong when a game constantly forces you to take your eyes away from the action to glance at the position of a turn on the lower screen.

The short draw distance isn’t the only technical issue, though. The city is populated with quite an impressive number of buildings, but the moment you start getting into a ‘Cost to State’ race mode (where you need to destroy property by ramming into objects with your car), you will notice how pathetic this game is – there’s barely anything to ram your car into (note that the buildings are barricaded away from the main roads and they cannot be damaged). In fact, the city seems so empty that it almost represents a ghost town.

On the graphical front, the game is acceptable at best – especially since last year’s Pro Street’s ground-breaking visual achievement. Note that I used the word ‘ground-breaking’ because Pro Street for DS really does feature one of the most impressive visuals on DS, an achievement that is only bettered by Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword. If you still have a copy of Need for Speed Pro Street for DS, boot it up and see the stark difference. The buildings here are incredibly detailed, but this comes at the compromise of the car models. Square wheels, anyone?

The poor vehicle physics and the load of technical issues have already detracted a lot from the experience, but in order to bring you this review, I have to suffer more than the aforementioned. This game cheats, period. It’s a problem that’s so frustrating that it would probably cause you to throw the DS game card into an incinerator before you have even completed the game. It’s atrocious that a slower car can suddenly speed past you when you are already driving the fastest car in the game. And just when you thought that you have caught up with a rival, consistently inching towards the competitor during the last few seconds, it suddenly zooms away from your sight when you are just one inch away from it – something that’s absolutely ridiculous. Civilian vehicles that ram into you (ala Midnight Club: L.A. Remix for the PSP)? Check. Taking turns at full speed? Check. Perhaps the A.I. here possesses cheat codes.

Undercover’s saving grace comes in the form of the wide variety of race modes. While circuit and sprint race modes can be quite boring (too many laps), the game gets genuinely enjoyable when you become the cop in All Points and Scramble race modes. Hot Car and Getaway are also equally, if not more, fun as the game constantly forces you to outwit the cops by exploring alternative routes to your target. At the same time, you are also obliged to drive slowly when the cops are approaching your vehicle in order to stay low and avoid detection, adding a much welcomed layer of strategic driving into the gameplay.

There’s a huge variety of vehicles to select from and the available tweaking options are rather sound for a portable racer (though they don’t matter since the handling is the same for each car and the A.I. cheats). The track list, while significantly shortened from the console editions, provides a suitable atmosphere for the entire game. Local wireless play and online multiplayer do well to extend the replayability of the game. These points pretty much round up the very few positives this game has. With the exception of the more creative race modes like All Points, Scramble, Hot Car and Getaway, there’s very little here that can compensate for the gapping flaws.

Final Comments
Poor vehicle physics. Tons of technical issues. A cheating A.I. These are 3 major reasons why you wouldn’t want to play this game. A great variety of race modes, among which are some that are genuinely fun – a reason why you would want to play this game. But before you even get the opportunity to enjoy this game, its severe shortcomings would have already caused you to take a hammer and smash the game card. What does this mean? This game is hopelessly bad.

Movie Review: City of Ember

noreply@blogger.com (Eyes & Smile) — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 04:05:00 +0000

An entertaining, if shallow, film.

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RATING: 3.0/5

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In an age where wars are raging or are threatening to happen and where the threat from natural disasters is very prominent, a post-apocalyptic world setting seems ripe for the picking. Such is the premise of City of Ember, which explores the survival of humankind in the future after the Earth is hit by a mysterious disaster capable enough of leveling entire cities. Earlier this year, Wall-E delved into a similar theme, where humankind survived by migrating to life on spaceships, but what we have here in this film is an underground city built with the sole purpose of housing future generations of humans, keeping them safe from the hazards of the Earth’s surface.

But the problem is: The underground city of Ember is only built to last for 200 years before the humans need to vacate the premises and start to live on Earth’s surface again. The builders of the city have passed on a box enclosing instructions on how to exit the city when the time comes, but the box would only open after 2 centuries are up. However, the box got lost at some point of time and the citizens are now oblivious to the ‘expiry date’ of their city.

The movie lays down the history of the city right off the bat, but that’s only for a few good minutes before it picks up at a time where the city has finally come of age. The effects are palpable: Resources are quickly running out, with rations allocated to each household significantly reduced overtime and blackouts are becoming more frequent and longer – due to the fact that the city’s sole power generator is falling apart.

It’s Assignment Day, a day where graduating students choose a job that they would do for their entire life in the city via lottery. Lina Mayfleet (Saoirse Ronan) picks out a job as a messenger, while Doon Harrow (Harry Treadaway) gets to work in the Pipeworks. As if by sheer coincidence, Lina discovers the long lost box inside her grandmother’s closet after becoming a messenger while Doon is increasingly becoming suspicious of the blackouts and strives to find some answers by working in the Pipeworks, where the generator is located. These facts alone draw them together and they find out that their great great grandparents attempted to escape the city before. With Lina possessing the clues to escaping the city and with Doon having the technical know-how, the pair of youths must now work together in escaping the doomed city and seeking hope for the people of Ember before it’s too late. However, the city’s corrupt mayor (Bill Murray) and his cronies (Toby Jones and Mackenzie Crook) stand in the way of the youths.

Can you count the population of Ember?

City of Ember is, quite simply, an opportunity to hop into an alternate universe – an elaborately constructed, beautiful and thriving underground city. This comes at a time where several films are exploring grimmer themes like sex and violence, so it’s safe to say City of Ember is produced with the family, especially kids, in mind. By virtue of its target audience, the film could be excused from its incredibly shallow plot, but for more matured audiences (like yours truly) who are seeking more than eye candy (the city is really gorgeous) and constant action, a little disappointment is inevitable.

While the beautiful city is certainly credible, the behaviour of the citizens here totally lacks believability. It’s puzzling how a city of people cooped up in an underground civilization for 2 centuries can live so harmoniously together – without greed and crime being existent. In fact, even when the there are obvious signs that the city is falling apart, the citizens still carry about their daily lives as if nothing has happened (save for our 2 main characters and the mayor, perhaps). The citizens are still cheerful with nary a vestige of anxiety and it’s difficult to believe that there isn’t someone greedy, or rather, megalomaniacal enough to cause some problems in the city. In other words, the film egregiously ignores the instincts of humankind and fails to portray the negative prospects of living in an underground city – secluded from the entire world – on a greater (and NECESSARY) scale such that the citizens of Ember seem more like inanimate cardboard cut-outs or pre-programmed robots rather than REAL people. There’s no believability in the plot.

But since this film is produced for the kids, it wouldn’t matter much anyway even if it explores the aforementioned – because the kids won’t comprehend them either. What families and the kids are looking out for is the action and on that count, City of Ember succeeds – with a formula that would prove entertaining not only to its target audience but also to more matured audiences. Great portions of the film are dedicated to telling the adventures of Lina and Doon as they attempt to escape from the city: there’s a distinct sense of dread as they work to solve the puzzles that the builders have left behind and there’s a tangible sense of intensity when they assay to stay one step ahead of the corrupt mayor and his equally thwarted task force. The film is concluded with a spectacular boat-ride escape that all but confirms the fun that audiences will experience when watching this film. An overgrown killer mole is added into the mix to ensure a never-ending spiral of action, but its existence was never really explained. This is clearly another result of a shallow film, but I will give its existence the benefit of doubt since this is a fantasy flick and well, there’s supposed to be fantasy in it (commercial movie reviewers who argue the lack of explanation for humans surviving on canned food for 2 centuries and question the availability of toilet paper and medicine, the burial of the dead are therefore invalid, ya, IGN?).

Final Comments
City of Ember is a city that is too shallow, though it’s admittedly a very enjoyable watch – but only if you can switch off your minds. Being a fantasy flick excuses it from its lack of explanation for many things, but the fact cannot tide it over the unbelievably naïve and gullibility of the citizens of Ember – no one mentions that characters in a fantasy flick can be stupid, right? But all in all, City of Ember does what it is supposed to do – have lots of action so that it is an entertaining film.

Game Review - Call of Duty: World at War

noreply@blogger.com (Eyes & Smile) — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 04:54:00 +0000

Significant improvement over Modern Warfare, but still lots of room for further improvement.

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TOTAL SCORE: 8.5/10

The Good:
Slick interface and menu * Consistent gameplay intensity * Stunning mission diversity * Very immersive aural experience * Perfect controls * Improved A.I. * More challenging * Slightly better visuals * Multiplayer now includes online play

The Bad:
Some events have already been played out in Call of Duty 2 * A.I. can still be greatly improved * Visuals are still relatively weak

- Suggestions for improvement listed at Final Comments
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Portable gamers were given a little surprise late last year when Activision decided to let loose its Call of Duty franchise on the DS for the first time. N-Space undertook the project and the result was Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, a game that was in equal parts impressive and disappointing. It was impressive because what portable gamers were getting was essentially a shrinked-down console version of Call of Duty 4 – which means the DS version retains the consistent intensity of the gameplay, incredible mission diversity and immersive aural experience. On the other hand, there were a handful of control issues that detract quite a bit from the overall experience and the graphics, while acceptable, weren’t anywhere near the quality of other comparable DS titles. The unexpectedly poor A.I. also took a considerable amount of fun from the game.

With the 2nd DS Call of Duty offering, World at War, n-Space took what Modern Warfare for DS did right and improved on those positive components. At the same time, some of the issues that were present in the aforementioned got fixed. Additionally, n-Space pumped in a whole lot more content. The result is a way better Call of Duty game for DS – a very polished FPS that while not as good as Nintendo’s own Metroid Prime: Hunters, is still a must-get for your DS games library.

Unlike Modern Warfare, World at War transports gamers back to the World War 2 era, with the DS version following the story of its console siblings loosely. While this means that both editions won’t share all the events, a large part of what is offered on the Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii can still be experienced here. The spectacular cut-scenes are understandably removed from the DS version, but the rather slick interface and menu that makes last year’s Modern Warfare for DS look more like a school project which n-Space has implemented more than compensates for the lack of the said. My only gripe is the decision to bring the franchise back to its World War 2 roots, especially since the previous game in the series has moved on. Instead, I found myself experiencing the SAME events from Call of Duty 2, though World at War has added jungle combat and naval warfare into the mix, so at least there’s still something precluding that ‘Why am I playing the same game?’ feeling from returning. But all in all, this is still World War 2 all over again and I hope that subsequent Call of Duty games would just move on.

But what has been done is done, so let’s make the best of the World War 2 setting. As mentioned, World at War, like Modern Warfare, has a VERY stunning amount of mission diversity going for it. The said is a Call of Duty franchise trademark and that is reflected very clearly here. Aside from the standard on-ground urban assaults, there are some really interesting scripted events. In one mission, you would be piloting a bomber attempting bomb drops on specific targets while fending off air attacks by constantly switching between manning the bombs and the machine guns – something that is consistently intense. In another, you would be taking control of an anti-air gun on a boat, all the while trying to put the darting Japanese Zeros out of commission. As per the de rigueur of Call of Duty games, the on-tank, on-halftrack, mortar strike, and call-in-artillery-strike-using-binoculars missions are all present, and so are the sniper levels. Again, like in Modern Warfare, all these are rounded off by a handful of enjoyable DS-exclusive mini-games that provide a breather from all the intensive running and gunning. However, I was disappointed to discover that the much-hyped flamethrower mission from the console editions was inexplicitly left out of the DS edition and there seems to be very few weapons offered here (where is the shotgun?).

Aside from the consistent gameplay intensity and distinctively diverse offering of missions, the engrossing audio experience from Modern Warfare was also retained. But World at War goes one up over its predecessor by filling out almost the entire game with memorable military tunes and offering more VO than you will ever find in another DS title. The former, especially, reflects the intensity of the gameplay really well and is complemented by equally, if not more, impressive, sound effects (I personally like the constant cracks of gunfire in the background and howling of wind in the later missions). This IS the game where you NEED to plug in your earphones, turn up the volume and allow the game to transport you into its world.

One of the components from Modern Warfare that had some issues was the controls. If you recall from the Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare for DS review that I wrote last year, bringing up iron sights required double tap on the touch-screen and this created a couple of issues as the game often misinterpreted the command as a quick turn. World at War addresses this issue by having a bar dedicated to the command of bringing up iron sights at the top of the screen, so to execute the aforementioned now, all you need to do is to tap anywhere near the top of the touch-screen, making precision-aiming gunplay more convenient and intuitive. Another issue that I had with the controls in Modern Warfare was the crouch command, which required a double tap on the down button on the d-pad, but that particular button input was also dedicated to moving backwards so there’s a propensity for the game to misinterpret a crouch command as a backwards move command. This set of controls remain unchanged in World at War, but the game interprets the controls more precisely now. The tight and responsive mouse-like touch-screen controls for aiming from Modern Warfare get translated perfectly in World at War as well – so what you are getting in World at War is DS FPS controls at its zenith.

Another problem that was had in Modern Warfare was the terrible A.I. While the A.I. is still far from consummate in this year’s offering, it has been significantly improved from last year’s, so there’s a lot to look forward to. Part of the reason why the A.I. in Modern Warfare was so bad was because enemies often spawned in illogically to their pre-programmed positions and ceased to move the moment they arrived at their said locations. What this translated into were enemies who did not take cover when you shoot at them and who did not dodge when grenades were hurled their way. It really took away a lot from the experience as the entire game felt more like a budget online-based pop-up and shoot game or rather, a cleverly disguised war-themed Point Blank or Whac-A-Mole. Fortunately, the A.I. has been tweaked and the result is a more adaptable A.I. which does take cover from time to time and which does hurl grenades back at you if you do pop a grenade in their way (though the A.I. still stays suspiciously riveted to their spots if a grenade is about to explode). Enemy A.I. also dodges around quite a bit now – this is a great improvement over Modern Warfare, in which the enemy A.I. does not move away from its pre-programmed positions at all.

Added to the overall challenge of World at War is the increase in the number of on-screen enemies. More noteworthy, however, is the developer’s ability to make the DS produce such huge amounts of on-screen action at any given point of time with barely a noticeable drop in framerate. The only ‘downside’ to the increase in World at War’s capacity to output so many on-screen enemies at once and at a rate that is so quick is an unbalanced difficulty level. At certain points, the game can be a breeze, but during some sections, the action can grow relatively brutal and unforgiving. Depending on your preference, this can either be positive or negative. I personally dig the easy-hard approach as it injects more variety into the game, forcing you to implement more stop-and-pop strategy into gunplay.

Another thing that was found going against Modern Warfare last year was the visuals. Given the DS’s limited technical power, it isn’t exactly ideal for such action-intensive games nor is it capable of outputting graphics that would match those seen on the console versions of Modern Warfare, but the tons of huge pixellated junk and muddled textures were stamped all over the game that any hope of ignorance was all but extinguished. World at War, unfortunately, shares the same visual engine with Modern Warfare, so there’s still quite a handful of muddled textures lying around the environments, but a slight improvement was noticed as the game progresses into more urban environments. Call of Duty on DS is still a considerably ‘ugly’ game, especially given the very smooth graphics accomplished on Metroid: Prime Hunters and the sharp visuals churned out by Dementium: The Ward, but generally, World at War ends up better than Modern Warfare in the graphics department (though it’s only a tad better) – all in all, it’s still visually passable, but that isn’t a compliment by any means. If there’s one thing that I would like to see further improved in next year’s offering, it would be the visuals. On a sidenote, I noticed that the graphics remain a little on the ‘dark’ side. I would suggest playing World at War on the DS Lite or DSi (if you are quick enough to get your hands on an import) over the original DS; the capability to adjust the brightness level of the screen does help.

On the multiplayer side of things, the game has been beefed up drastically. The list of modes from Modern Warfare, namely deathmatch, team deathmatch, hunter/prey and capture the flag, remains unaltered, but these game modes can now be taken online for play in addition to local wireless play. While the DS edition lacks the depth of the multiplayer of the console versions, the fact that Call of Duty multiplayer can only get better from here is comforting. Online play is a fantastic addition, and so is the statistics tracking. An achievement-like medal system and collectible stars that unlock bonus items scattered throughout each level also increases the replayability of the game – this, in addition to the 8 hours plus of action offered by the single-player campaigns.

Final Comments
There is no denying that the Call of Duty franchise has matured greatly on the DS, and the 2nd DS Call of Duty, World at War, is an amazing title. There’s the same consistent gameplay intensity, diverse mission offerings and immersive aural experience. At the same time, the somewhat problematic controls from Modern Warfare have been perfected and the A.I. has been significantly improved, though there’s still room for MORE polish for the A.I. The game is generally more challenging, but for this step forward, the game takes a step backwards with its visuals, which is still poor by today’s standards (the DS can achieve more than what is shown here – as demonstrated by Metroid Prime: Hunters and Dementium: The Ward). Multiplayer content has been shored up and replayability, added in the form of collectibles. Despite some of its palpable flaws, World at War on DS remains a competent offering that can stand on its own feet and if you have played World at War on the consoles, the DS version is a nice game to have on the go to complement the console action.

Moving forward, I would like to see next year’s DS Call of Duty offering to have a better A.I. (especially) and improved visuals. It is also possible for the multiplayer to include more modes and online chat, yet at the same time, support for more online players in any one match (only 4 per match now).

I would also like to experience a more emotionally appealing Call of Duty and that can be achieved via the use of character focus and sprawling cut-scenes. While I mentioned that it’s understandable for this game to exclude cut-scenes given the DS’s limited cartridge space, there’s no reason not to do it since Tomb Raider Underworld for DS has already accomplished those 2 aspects that I pointed out (character focus and sprawling cut-scenes).

When all these are put in place, we would then have the perfect Call of Duty for DS. I shall have my fingers-crossed, but meanwhile, do enjoy this game.

Game Review: Exit DS

noreply@blogger.com (Eyes & Smile) — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 05:34:00 +0000

Improves on PSP and XBLA editions, but retains fundamentally flawed level design.

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TOTAL SCORE: 6.7/10

The Good:
Utilizing items and exclusive abilities of each character to get over obstacles * Touch-controls prove so much more intuitive than the horrible button controls of PSP and XBLA verions * Fantastic visual style * Cool animations

The Bad:
Does not allow mistakes to be reversed, leading to a lot of trial-and-error * A.I. is still a little incompetent * Scaled-back visuals of DS version * Some animations last too long
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After making its debut on the PSP in 2006 before ensconcing itself in Xbox Live Arcade in 2007, Exit finally arrives on the DS. The DS version improves on the PSP original and XBLA edition in a few ways, but unfortunately, retains the fundamentally flawed level designs from the both the aforementioned, essentially keeping this title off the rankings of great DS puzzlers.

The premise is really simple. An escapologist by profession, Mr. Esc’s job is to evacuate people from dangerous situations. Throughout the course of the game, you will need to navigate a variety of 2D structures ranging from a sinking ship to a hotel struck by an avalanche to a hospital rattled by an earthquake to seek trapped victims and have them aid you in rescuing other trapped victims and escaping.

In order to get to each trapped victim, you will first need to get over a handful of obstacles, be it fires, smokes, blocked hallways or electricity. There are 100 levels spread over 10 areas (called situations in the game) and each area will introduce new obstacles (though some obstacles like fires are not unique to a particular area). For instance, levels taking place in the sinking ship introduces electricity in water, while levels occurring in the hotel features crates on ice that cannot be pushed unless special footwear is donned. To help Mr. Esc circumvent these obstacles, there are a variety of items scattered throughout each level.

More noteworthy, however, are the abilities (and inabilities) of the various trapped victims. Normal adults function very much like Mr. Esc, while obese adults need help to climb ledges and crates, but unlike the other characters in the game, can push bigger crates on their own. Children also need aid in climbing, but they are able to squeeze or crawl through narrow spaces to get items for Mr. Esc and are able to walk over thin flanks that would otherwise crack under the weight of other characters. Needless to say, the injured provide the most trouble as Mr. Esc would need to carry them. New to the cast of trapped victims in the DS version is the dog. A dog is unable to climb, but is the only character which is able to accomplish a long jump, hence being able to reach places inaccessible to other characters.

What Exit has done is to weave both elements together – the items with the distinctive abilities of each character – and create a puzzle which requires you to utilize each item and character’s ability fully in order to be able to make it to the ‘exit’ of each level. But then you realize that despite the ostensible ingenuity of the level design, the said IS in fact very fundamentally flawed – so flawed that it takes a whole lot of fun out of the game.

You see, to be able to make it to the escape of each level, you need to get over the various obstacles with items and the aid of the exclusive abilities of each character, but each level is designed in a way such that it’s more a matter of solving which obstacle first rather than planning how a particular character can be utilized. In each level, you would be provided with a mini-map and the ability to scroll through the entire environment so that you would be able to better plan your strategy. That’s a wise design choice.

But what’s flawed about this game is that mistakes are irreversible, so you really need to be reliant upon tons of trial-and-error to get through each level. For instance, if you accidentally move a crate against a wall, perhaps bearing in mind that you need the crate to be able to reach the ledge, but then realize that you need to move the crate to the other position on the right instead, you cannot pull the crate back and reposition it (Mr. Esc can push a crate, but cannot pull it?). It’s like allowing you to piece a jigsaw puzzle together, but if you put a wrong piece down, you’re not allowed to move, replace, or remove that piece. It’s simply preposterous.

During some instances, you may see an obstacle, and think that you may need to solve it first, but in fact, you need to go to the other obstacle and solve it first before being able to solve the initial obstacle. If you botched it up by ridding the initial obstacle first, there’s no turning back and you would need to restart the entire level. A puzzler in my hands, I understand that it’s supposed to be this challenging – I am not complaining about that. What I am complaining about is the game’s prohibition of mistake reversal, which is a fundamental flaw in any puzzle game.

Thankfully, there isn’t any major flaw beyond the level design. The controls could have been another significant blemish on the surface of such a cool-in-theory puzzler as demonstrated in the PSP and XBLA versions of the game, but the developers seem to have taken heed of the comments and so we have a DS version that boasts a huge improvement in the controls (though the controls still aren’t perfect).

That improvement can be attributed to the DS’s touch-screen as you now have an option to choose between button controls and touch-screen controls. I would recommend you to go with the touch-screen controls as the button controls are horrendous. Part of the reason why button controls in this game are terrible is because Exit has taken too much inspiration – perhaps inimically excessive – from old-school game mechanics. For example, if you want to jump, you cannot just walk over to the ledge and jump; you HAVE to stop at the edge before executing a jump. You cannot just walk over to a ladder or crate and climb; you HAVE to stop at the foot of the ladder or the side of the crate and execute a climb command. Such elaborate controls slow things down and disrupts the flow of the gameplay – certainly not advisable if you have a timer ticking off at the bottom of the map. But do note that these ill design choices apply only to button controls.

Select touch-screen controls and everything works wonderfully. For instance, if you want to jump over to the other side, all you need to do is to tap on the desired location and the game will do the rest of the stuffs. Mr. Esc still stops at the ledge for a moment before jumping and he still stops at the side of a crate before climbing onto it, but by selecting touch-controls and tapping on the desired location, you do not need to input any command in-between; if there’s something in the way, Mr. Esc will automatically navigate it. This saves a considerable amount of hassle and time, but perhaps more importantly, it makes the game a whole lot more intuitive. Simply speaking, a major flaw from the PSP and XBLA versions has been overcome.

But the A.I. is still a tad thick-headed. Inputting a command for a character to climb over a crate and go over to the other side of the stage may work, but inputting a command for a character to descend to a lower floor may not. You first need to command the character to move over to a ladder or stairs before ordering the character to use the ladder or stairs to move down to the lower level. It’s not a game-breaking experience, but it can get annoying during some instances.

The fantastic visual style of the game and animations round up the entire package. The DS version scales back a little on the visual style, but the overall game still looks pretty artistic and nice. Characters are featured in simple black and white, but the general character design feels really stylish – something refreshing, something that hasn’t been seen before in any other game. The stunning comic book-style design lends itself perfectly to the feel of both the characters and the environments.

My only gripe: Why have the graphics been scaled back on the DS? Instead of a mix of 2D and 3D elements in the levels, we now have strictly 2D environments. Construing the said to the DS’s limited technical power would be ridiculous as I have seen many other DS games, most notably Worms: Open Warfare 2 and Metal Slug 7, which feature environments that have a mix of both 2D and 3D elements. If those games are able to do it, why can’t Exit DS?

The animations, fortunately, are cool. Do look out for the animation where Mr. Esc suddenly changes direction while running. The animations feel really natural and inject a sense of human realism into the package. However, I find that some animations last too long and when you want to escape in the quickest time possible, they can get really irksome. I don’t like the idea of being forced to sit through some long animations when I am rushing against the ticker. Additionally, some of the long animations detract a little from the experience because it seems like Mr. Esc is taking a vacation in Hawaii rather than saving people from disaster.

Final comments
Exit DS improves on the PSP original and XBLA edition, but retains the fundamentally flawed level design. The prohibition of mistake reversal in such a puzzle game is punishable by death, really. Fortunately, new touch-controls make the terrible button controls of the PSP and XBLA versions history. The A.I. remains a little incompetent and the visuals and animations are a mixed bag.

Game Review - Midnight Club: L.A. Remix

noreply@blogger.com (Eyes & Smile) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 07:04:00 +0000

Register for this club.

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TOTAL SCORE: 8.1/10

The Good:
Both LA and Tokyo look fantastic * LA feels different from Tokyo * Dynamic weather effects * Strong visuals * Robust vehicle rooster * Deep customization options * Single-player game is long * Huge variety of race modes * Power-ups

The Bad:
Red-marked races, supposedly the hardest, do not scale accordingly to the vehicle you drive, making them easy if you have a very fast vehicle * Lack of cop element * Terrible marker placement * Ridiculously reckless civilian vehicles
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It has been a while since we loitered around the streets of Liberty City on the PSP, but in Midnight Club: L.A. Remix, Rockstar Games has returned to what it does best – open-world games. While L.A. Remix on the PSP is understandably not as big in scale as it is on the Xbox 360/PS3, the game still offers a rather impressive portable street racing experience – certainly one of the best on the PSP.

The premise is simple. You are a newbie who appeared out of nowhere in LA and as per de rigueur of street racing games, are forced to climb the ladder of reputation, with the goal of eventually becoming the champion of the city. Unlike Need for Speed Most Wanted or Carbon, there isn’t any intricate plot here (though it would be wonderful to have one), but when it comes to street racing, nothing really matters except the action.

On that count, L.A. Remix succeeds, but not with a few flaws that hinder it from becoming the perfect racer. The game starts out really easy, but as you progress, races get expectably more difficult. L.A. Remix is unique such that there isn’t any difficulty level to select from. Instead, the mission map throws up several races at once, with green-marked races being the easiest, yellow-marked races being trickier, and red-marked races being the most testing. Therein lays the problem: The difficulty does not scale to match the vehicle that you’re driving. In other words, red-marked racers may be hard at first, what with its several sharp turns that require precision driving, but if you get into a Lamborghini later in the game, red-marked races may not be that hard afterall since you would be speedier than any of your opponents and would easily win races if you take advantage of straight roads and pull far ahead of your opponents.

Part of the reason why red-marked races aren’t as difficult as they should can also be attributed to hardware limitations. I am assuming that these red-marked races get ported over from the Xbox 360/PS3 version, but what’s almost missing from the PSP version is the cop element – something which makes the red-marked races in the Xbox 360/PS3 rightfully challenging. Sure, they are still cops in L.A. Remix, but it is befuddling why they don’t give chase even after you have rammed through their road blocks. In fact, they don’t move at all, BUT that is not to say that the cop element is totally missing from this game. During a handful of races throughout the entire game, the cops do become aggressive and it adds a whole lot of fun to the race when that happens. It is a pity that the framerate dips when cop chases happen, though.

What I have done so far is just nit-picking, however. Both the aforementioned are due to the hardware limitations of the PSP – take, for instance, the lack of the cop element – considering that the framerate is already suffering minor hiccups when there are 4 to 5 cops chasing your vehicle, there is no doubt that the PSP wouldn’t be able to handle any more than that, so it’s probably a wise choice to keep the cop element to a minimum lest it impedes the enjoyment of the game. However, there remains one flaw that isn’t caused by hardware limitations and that COULD be changed.

In a step away from the conventional practices of racing games, L.A. Remix does not employ barriers (think neon barriers for street racing games like Need for Speed Carbon) to guide players on the right track for circuit races (or Point A to B races). Instead, in a circuit race in L.A. Remix, yellow markers with arrows pointing the direction to the next marker would be placed throughout the area to ensure that players stay on track for the race.

The problem is: There aren’t enough of these markers and some of them are placed very far away from each other. For instance, you see a marker at the edge of the mini-map and that marker makes it seem as if you need a turn at the next junction, but in fact, all you need to do is to follow the curve – and that would eventually lead you to the next marker. Why can’t there be a marker at the junction that points out that you need to go straight?

Furthermore, the placement of markers is terrible. Instead of having a marker at a junction to let you know that you need to take a turn, some of the markers are placed around a corner. What this translates into is that you need to keep your eyes on the mini-map at the top left hand corner of the screen while racing – so that you won’t miss a turn. And more often than not, you would be too fast that taking your eyes off the action for a second to look at the mini-map could mean a collision with either another vehicle or building (more on that later). It isn’t any surprise that I often make a wrong turn or miss a turn and speed past it. While markers mean that you are allowed the freedom to take any route to the next marker (so there could be plenty of shortcuts and alternative routes to take), I’d prefer neon barriers to keep me on the track rather than incoherent markers.

But what’s worse than unclear markers? The civilian vehicles, of course. While I understand that placing civilian vehicles on the roads of LA does make the city more realistic and lively, it’s just plain ridiculous the civilian vehicles act more like lunatics attempting to cut you off from your ride than like ordinary civilian vehicles. Civilians drive carefully, but here in L.A. Remix, reckless driving is all over the city. Imagine that you are approaching a junction and are supposed to drive straight, but suddenly, a city bus crosses the road perpendicular to yours, either blocking you off entirely or GET THIS, RAMMING straight into your vehicle! Or you could be at a junction, and a truck suddenly swerves into your lane. Or you could be taking a turn and you don’t know what’s around the corner, but when you realises what’s around the corner, it’s already too late because a pick-up would be ramming into you. Or you could be on a straight road, and suddenly you realise that all 4 lanes ahead of you are jammed by civilian vehicles, leaving you no choice but to crash through them. This is TRULY ridiculous – civilian vehicles are NOT supposed to ram into you. There is no denying that Rockstar is trying to inject ‘environmental hazards’ into the game, but this isn’t right – it is cheap.

But enough complains – because L.A. Remix does have some really sweet things going for it. For one, I have to mention that the city of LA looks fantastic. While it is smaller in size when put into comparison with the LA of the Xbox 360/PS3 version of the game, the LA here is still big enough to qualify this as a really open-world street racing title, and there are still plenty of shortcuts and hidden routes to discover. The feel of LA is not only captured via the distinctive roads and buildings, but also the impressive visuals which aid the city in being more realistic – one of the best I have seen on the PSP.

The surprise package comes in the form of being able to race in Tokyo as well. After you have reached a certain point in your LA career, the Tokyo career gets unlocked. Fortunately, rather than being a dumbed-down bonus city, Tokyo is as rich in details as the city of Los Angeles, if not more stunning. Both cities feel very different from each other: LA feels tighter and more urban, while Tokyo features more open areas and feels less urban. This fact alone provides the game with a much-welcomed layer of variety. Both cities are complemented by dynamic weather effects – it’s remarkable to view both cities in day and night, as well as in a rain – something which lends to the overall visual package of the game.

The robust vehicle rooster here also ensures that your ride matches the opulent cities. While the variety of vehicles offered here isn’t as great as that offered in say, Forza Motorsports 2, there’s still a pretty decent selection of vehicles. All of them handle great, with the higher-end Lamborghinis and Audis allowing tighter control, and the muscle cars sacrificing handling for speed. And let’s not forget that there ARE bikes here as well. But regardless of whether you are driving a car or a bike, fun driving is something that’s always present.

The game continues to surprise me with its deep customization options. In fact, the customizable options here are so deep that it would be hard – very hard – to find another racing game on the PSP that offers the same kind of customization aspects. In addition to tweaking the performance of your vehicles, you would be able to slap on decals, alter the colors and even swap the default bumpers, hoods and other parts for the various other fancy ones.

The single-player game is a long one. It took me about 42 hours over a period of 2 weeks to complete both the LA and Tokyo career, but there’s still an ad-hoc multiplayer option to jump into after the single-player game is complete. With power-ups like the ability to slow down time and go into slow-mo to make that all-important dodge and the ability to crash through traffic without damage at the expense of speed, races are all the more enjoyable.

Final comments
Midnight Club: L.A. Remix provides a solid racing experience on the PSP – albeit with a few flaws, both minor and major, that preclude it from being perfect. But nonetheless, it’s still a recommendable title as there are some truly impressive aspects such as the mind-blowingly marvellous production values of both LA and Tokyo, the robust vehicle rooster and incredibly deep customizable options. The long single-player is populated by a huge variety of race modes, including circuit races, Point A to B races, time trial, delivery (time trials with damage penalty), to name a few.

Movie Review: RocknRolla

noreply@blogger.com (Eyes & Smile) — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 02:16:00 +0000

Watch n Doze Off.

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RATING: 0/5
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Not since Unbreakable (2000), Brokeback Mountain (2005) and Right At Your Door (2008) have I seen such a boring movie like RocknRolla. But there’s certainly a difference between the 3 said movies and RocknRolla: Unbreakable, Brokeback Mountain and Right At Your Door were movies that managed to intrigue audiences with their underlying theories despite being more like overwritten tea break conversations, but RocknRolla is merely a piece of meaningless nonsense – something whose effectiveness exceeds that of sleeping pills dozen times over.

You know that there’s something very wrong with a film when you don’t even know what the movie is driving at even after it has ended. This is RocknRolla, a film that tries too hard to be as convoluted as possible – but succeeds only in leaving audiences befuddled at the end of the show. To summarize RocknRolla is impossible for it’s such an elaborate puzzle that only investigators and scientists can decipher what the movie is really about – but for the typical audiences (like yours truly and I), this movie does suggest that it touches on British gang culture.

But that’s about it. I didn’t have any idea what the film was prattling on about for the next 1.75 hours. I tried my best to stay awake to see if any interesting events would unfold – and I was rewarded – because there were! But perhaps it’s too obvious that some of these events were absolutely random and somewhat unnecessary. RocknRolla did attempt to introduce a gay character for some homosexuality-themed humor, but it was more trite than funny. In what seemed like a last-ditched effort to keep audiences awake, the movie threw in some supposedly laughter-inducing dancing moves, but all it did was to confirm that its humor was unequivocally random and mostly retarded – something which would only be entertaining to 3 year olds.

Final Comments
The result? RocknRolla is an extended tea break conversation – a VERY BORING one. RocknRolla is a film that attempts to be funny at points, but its humour falls all too flat. Bundle the pair of elements together, and what you have is a movie that you would find difficult to give a damn about, much less care for its cast of characters, which I feel are a number too many. Perhaps RocknRolla is a film best reserved for Britons for only the locals would (most likely) comprehend the gang culture portrayed here. In other words, if you are not a Briton, DON’T watch this movie because you will have NO idea what this movie is talking about. And no, the humor here is RETARDED. RocknRolla is the worst movie I have watched this year.

Game Review - LEGO Batman: The Videogame

noreply@blogger.com (Eyes & Smile) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 12:57:00 +0000

Immensely fun despite flaws.

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TOTAL SCORE: 8.7/10

The Good:
Original story * Almost every other charcater from the Batman universe present in this game * Batman and Robin have a variety of suits, each granting them different abilities * Villains are playable * Robust A.I. * High replayability value

The Bad:
Poor vehicular controls * Lack of co-op play
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LEGO games have always been about smashing objects mindlessly and collecting as many studs as possible while engaging in extensive puzzle solving. The occasional light combat and platforming segments do well to provide added challenge. Sandwiched in between the levels are cut-scenes that are laced with as much humor as there is creativity. This has proven to be a very effective formula that never ceases to entertain players in prior LEGO games. What Traveller’s Tales has done is to take this tried-and-tested formula and plaster it onto the Batman universe.

Little has changed since the first LEGO game, LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game, so if you enjoy the past LEGO games, you’re going to find LEGO Batman a blast. On the other hand, if you have always disliked the LEGO games, LEGO Batman isn’t going to make you change your mind. Having said that, flaws present in the past LEGO games are still here, but the fun that you’re able to derive from this game is more than capable of making you overlook its shortcomings.

Yes, little has changed, but what has changed is the adaptation of the story for the game. Unlike prior LEGO games, LEGO Batman doesn’t base its story off any of the Batman films nor television programs – so what you have here is essentially an original tale. Basically, all the villains – via one way or another – have escaped from Arkham Asylum and Batman must now go all out to capture them and put them behind bars once again. A tale not very imaginative, but certainly plausible – an intelligent excuse to throw every other character in the Batman universe into the game, including The Riddler, Penguin, The Joker, Two-face, Killer Croc and Catwoman among a host of other more well-known villains.

To cast that many characters in a game, yet not have them to be playable would be a pity. Fortunately, LEGO Batman allows the obverse. There are a total of 6 acts, each being further separated into 5 chapters. The first 3 acts put you into the shoes of the iconic Batman and Robin, while the later 3 acts pit you as the villains, with you playing as different villains in each act. This fact alone makes LEGO Batman a game that is choke-full of variety as different characters have different abilities.

You may be dismayed by the fact that you will only be playing as Batman and Robin in the first 3 acts, but as Batman and Robin, you will be able to rotate through a variety of suits. The demolition suit provides Batman with the ability to blow metal objects up, while the glide suit allows Batman to fly over a short distance. Robin is able to trade his reds and greens with a magnetic suit, which grants him the capability to walk up metal walls, while the water suit permits Robin to dive and activate underwater switches. Needless to say, this paves the way for some really creative and innovative puzzles, some of which ingenious. While there remain puzzles for which the solutions to them are in equal parts nonsensical and dumb, those instances are rare.

Playing as the villains, The Riddler can mind-control specific people, while the Joker can electrocute others with a handshake. Clayface has super strength and can double jump, while Catwoman utilizes her whip to full effect. But the later 3 acts aren’t just there for the sake of adding that welcomed layer of variety to the game. In fact, they tell a simultaneous story to that of the first 3 acts, detailing how the villains actually plotted to steal objects of desire and wreck havoc in Gotham City – something that is both unique and refreshing not in the world of LEGO games, but in the entire world of videogames. You will play through the similarly-themed places, but different locales.

Vehicular sections scattered throughout every act serve to inject more variety into the gameplay and introduce a change of pace from the many on-foot levels, but are severely let down by the horrendous controls more often than not. Navigation of vehicles is barely functional, feeling erroneously loose at best. Pushing the analog stick in the desired direction to steer your vehicle should warrant no less than an appropriate, if not perfect, translation in other games, but LEGO Batman doesn’t always understand what your action means. For instance, if you nudge the analog stick left, your vehicle will make a bewildering 360 degrees turn. This flaw relegates the vehicular sections here into a mess of brainless trial-and-error shooting – it gets worse when the game requires you to pull a mine to a specific spot. Amazingly, I experienced near perfect vehicle navigation towards the end of the game – a case of a lack of polish in the earlier portions of LEGO Batman, perhaps?

The need to wrestle with the controls to get your vehicle to an objective isn’t the only problem with this game, however. More alarming is the lack of co-op play – a move best described as contradictory since LEGO games have always been built upon the fun of playing with a partner. Neither local wireless play nor online co-op is offered – which means you’ll be playing this game alone on the PSP. Co-op play is all the more substantial given the infamously poor A.I. of LEGO games – and indeed, the A.I. has suffered in the home console versions of LEGO Batman (if online feedback by the gaming community is anything to go by). Fortunately, the A.I. here is far from being poor – robust, if you would. The solid A.I. is most evident when there are puzzles which require both characters to solve. However, it should be noted that the A.I. isn’t able to dispose of enemies.

While the lack of co-op and online play may make for provisional entertainment, that isn’t necessarily the case with LEGO Batman. Each act lasts approximately 2.5 hours, with the entire game setting you back at 15 hours. But this isn’t just about the length or content of the game, but the replayability. Studs collected in each chapter can be used to buy unlockables, including extra characters. Once you have completed a level in story mode, free play mode would be unlocked as well, giving you the opportunity to play as any of the purchased or unlocked characters for that particular chapter. And there’s good reason to replay each level as different characters: each level is scattered with hidden items that aren’t always obtainable with the default characters you play as in story mode, but instead, accessible only to specific characters.

Final Comments
Despite its flaws, LEGO Batman is still an immensely fun game. This is one of the LEGO games that you have come to play and love: Smashing objects and gathering studs, solving creative and innovative puzzles, light combat, mild platforming and the distinct sense of LEGO humor in each of the cut-scenes. Noteworthy is the fact that you also get to play as the villains for the first time. The robust A.I. and high replayability value of this game more than compensate for the poor vehicular controls and lack of co-op play.

Movie Review: Mirrors

noreply@blogger.com (Eyes & Smile) — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 03:29:00 +0000

What commercial movie reviewers won't tell you.

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RATING: 5/5^{CHOICE WATCH}
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One need not be reminded of the current ‘American-ized’ film predicament – and the fact that Mirrors is yet another one of those Asian rehashes makes it ripe for dismissal, but you would only be doing yourself a great disservice if you decide to let this film slip by. Mirrors is, quite simply, one of the rarest species in the film industry – a vestige of horror movies that used to be really hair-raising. Coupled with a story ever so intriguing and some impressive character development, Mirrors is thus far one of the best movies I have seen this year.

Kiefer Suntherland of television hit 24 fame stars as Ben Carson, an ex-cop who has been suspended from the force after he accidentally killed one of his colleagues. This incident sends him into depression and he is now a shadow of his former self – a man of alcohol and pills, and a man whose marriage and custody of his children are on the line. Staying with his younger sister (Amy Smart), Ben views the night-shift security guard job at Mayflower, a once opulent department store but now a derelict building ravaged by a fire which killed dozens of shoppers 5 years ago, as an opportunity for redemption and a gateway back to an ordinary life.

But it becomes certain that the almost countless number of mirrors inside the building have nightmares to tell when Ben starts to hear noises and experience preternatural visions during his regular patrols. Things aren’t as simple as they seem, however, as the mirrors everywhere start to become conduits – conduits which endanger the lives of anyone related to him, including his younger sister, wife (Paula Patton) and 2 kids.

The sinister mirrors in Mayflower want Ben to seek out one particular woman for them and he must now race against time to solve the mystery behind them and break the evil. Fail to accomplish the goal and his sister, family and even Ben himself could end up like his predecessor – brutally murdered in the most horrific way imaginable (ala Saw).

As a warning, I should say that Mirrors is not meant for the faint-hearted. Certainly, you could argue that Mirrors employs some cliché horror figures, from the ghost-with-the-gross-face-and-skin-tingling-scream to the mental person who behaves in the most hysterically nightmarish fashion possible, and some of the trite ‘Gotcha!’ moments and that you have already seen what is presented here in other horror films ten times over. You could also argue that this film isn’t fresh and that since it is merely recycling decade-old tricks, the said could grow really predictable after a while. While I do generally agree with many other commercial film reviewers with regard to this point (cliché horror figures and 'Gotcha!' moments) , I must say that they are totally missing the crux of the film.

To mention that Mirrors is nothing but a stale and predictable film is truly an understatement – no, let’s just say the understatement is an understatement of itself. Mirrors adds so MUCH more to the said horror elements that there is as much of an original, creative and innovative horror element-cum-trick introduced in this film as the usual stuffs other horror films use in vain to scare audiences out of their wits.

And that ‘original, creative and innovative element-cum-trick’ I am discussing about is none other than the psychological aspects of the horror present in this film. The fact that this film is able to adopt an everyday subject and TRANSFORM it into a haunting object is already impressive enough. But the film continues to toy with the psychological fear factor by making US, OURSELVES, into the scariest part of the film – the reflections of the characters in the mirrors in this film are truly the scariest – because they can make the characters do things to themselves they won’t want to do. In comparison to the typical physical horror aspects (for example, the woman-with-long-hair in the The Ring) seen in other films, the horror here is more relatable and believable. This is a VERY unique taste of horror, indeed – and one that won’t be found in other films.

Yes, as mentioned, physical horror aspects are still present in this film, but they are placed in such a strategic manner that they never seem forced or overused. Instead, they are woven flawlessly together with the psychological horror aspects such that the film isn’t just a horror film, but an art of movie-making by itself. The events here are really unpredictable – hence, a surprise every few minutes. It helps that the pacing is perfect, ensuring the movie is nail-biting throughout, right down to the conclusion of the film, which just throws me out of my seat – it’s that GOOD.

Part of the horror experienced in this film can be attributed to the addition of the Ben’s family in the story. His family is MORE than just extra characters in the film; in having Ben’s family in the story too, the director has just created more characters that you actually care and worry about. The fact that Ben has a family also aids in his character development, particularly the evolvement of him as a haphazard person to one who is truly responsible.

Final Comments
Mirrors is one really good film, and one really scary one. The film goes one up over other horror movies by introducing some psychological horror aspects in a move that proves to be more than rewarding as we are treated to a perfect balance of both physical and psychological horror aspects that ends up more than capable of scaring even the adults out of their wits. The addition of Ben’s family adds a much welcomed depth to the story and Ben’s character development. The film wraps up everything in one of the most suspenseful finales ever in what could only be described as sheer entertainment and surprise (YES, there is an ingenious story twist at the end). Mirrors is the MOST intelligent film yet in 2008. Go get your tickets.

Games Convention Asia 2008: The Experience

noreply@blogger.com (Eyes & Smile) — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 12:26:00 +0000

Organized by the same people responsible for the Leipzig Games Convention held just this August, Games Convention Asia (GCA) provides gamers in the Asia Pacific region with one massive game show that they can finally call their own. GCA returns to the Suntec Exhibition and Convention Centre in Singapore for its 2nd year and I had the chance to immerse myself in the gaming goodness today.

This being the 2nd GCA, there was noticeably more participation – and I wouldn’t be surprised if the attendance at this year’s GCA surpasses 2007’s number of 70,000 public visitors. As always, EA had the utmost honor of having the biggest booth at the show, showcasing an impressive mix of both recently-released and unreleased titles.

Recently-released titles being showcased:
- Crysis Warhead (PC)
- The Sims 2 Apartment Life expansion pack (PC)
- Spore (PC)
- Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (PC)
- Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 (Xbox 360)
- FaceBreaker (Xbox 360)

Unreleased titles being showcased:
- Red Alert 3 (PC)
- My Sims (PC)
- FIFA Online 2 (PC)
- My Sims Kingdom (DS)
- Need for Speed Undercover (Xbox 360) [*image above ]
- Dead Space (Xbox 360)
- Lord of the Rings: Conquest (Xbox 360)
- NBA Live 09 (Xbox 360)
- Mirror’s Edge (PS3)
- FIFA 09 (PS3)

Besides EA, Maxsoft also made its presence felt with the 2nd biggest booth at the show. Several Wii and DS stations were set up for the public to try out both released and unreleased titles.

Released titles being showcased:
- Wii Sports (Wii)
- Wii Fit (Wii)
- Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (Wii, DS)
- Guitar Hero: Aerosmith (Wii)
- SNK Arcade Classics: Volume 1 (Wii)
- From the Abyss (DS)
- Bangai-O Spirits (DS)
- Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures (DS)
- Kung Fu Panda (DS)

Unreleased titles being showcased:
- Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party (Wii)
- Dokapon Kingdom (Wii)
- FaceBreaker K.O. Party (Wii)
- High School Musical 3: Senior Year (Wii)
- Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood (DS)
- Disgaea DS (DS)
- Kirby Super Star Ultra (DS)

In addition, there’s also Replay Interactive, which represented both Koei and THQ at the show. Titles being showcased include Wall-E, Big Beach Sports, Lock’s Quest, Dynasty Warriors 6 and Saints Row 2. Games from New Era Interactive, which imports Ubisoft titles into South East Asia, as well as Soul Calibur 4 (PS3) and a host of new MMORPGs make up the list of playable games at the show. To sum up, there’s a great deal of games to be enjoyed at this year’s show.

The fantastic showing of games is one thing, but the exhibitors at this year’s show is another. More noteworthy is the focus of this year’s show, which seems to have adopted a less-casual approach in comparison to 2007’s. The absence of the made-for-the-casual-gamers mobile phone games and MapleStory, which were present at 2007’s show, demonstrates the shifting focus of the GCA.

Meanwhile, I had the opportunity to try out Need for Speed Undercover for the Xbox 360. Need for Speed Undercover marks the return of the spectacular cop chases last seen in Need for Speed Most Wanted (nope, the ‘cop element’ in NFS Carbon was subdued, so that doesn’t count), while at the same time, seems to have borrowed from Carbon as the overall presentation of the maps is very much like the aforementioned. Unfortunately, the game proved more of an annoyance than enjoyment during my hands-on session with it. Framerates were unstable throughout, but the developers should have enough time from now till the game’s release in November to do the necessary polishing.

I also managed to have a go at FaceBreaker K.O. Party for the Wii [* image above]. However, like my hands-on session with Need for Speed Undercover, my time with this game didn’t come off too well. FaceBreaker K.O. Party seems to fail to utilize any of the creativity and innovation that the Wii controls promise as moves were relegated to holding the C button on the nunchuck and hitting the corresponding directional button on the d-pad. I would like to have motion controls, please. The game could also use more polish in the graphics department.

All in all, this year’s GCA was a great success, though there are still rooms for improvement. The floorspace could have been better utilized to accommodate more exhibitors and more new games could have been introduced. But the fact that this year’s GCA adopted a less-casual approach (phasing out mobile phone games in exchange for more hardcore titles) is assurance that next year’s GCA will be packed with even hotter titles. I have high hopes for GCA 2009.

Movie Review: Bangkok Dangerous

noreply@blogger.com (Eyes & Smile) — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 13:19:00 +0000

Bangkok Romance, perhaps?

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RATING: 3.0/5

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Our dear Mr. Cage starrs in yet another action movie, a movie that involves an assassin, to be exact. Almost instantly, over-the-top vehicle chases, spectacular fighting scenes, and a mysterious atmosphere were conjured up in my mind. What could possibly go wrong? Of course, things could possibly go wrong and Bangkok Dangerous shows how it can be done.

A remake of a 1999 Asian film of the same name, Nicholas Cage is Joe the assassin in Bangkok Dangerous. Joe’s last job takes him to Bangkok where he has been engaged by a notorious crimelord to carry out 4 contract killings. This being Joe’s last job, he would obtain his final suitcase of cash and retire once all 4 targets have been silenced. However, assassins always seem to have the worst of lucks and as you would have guessed by now, things fail to go according to plans.

Prior to his assignment in Bangkok, Joe would always abide by his rules – rules that ensure the survival of an assassin. Unfortunately, Joe becomes too senile to recall his rules by his last job. En route to attain more information on his first target, Joe spots a local watch peddler, Kong (Shahkrit Yamnarm). Capitalizing on the peddler’s greed, Joe offers him some money so that he could be his runner – which also makes Joe’s task of covering his tracks more convenient. Demonstrating what a hitman should never do, Joe warms up to Kong after the later successfully accomplishes a few errands and becomes his mentor. Meanwhile, Joe falls for a local woman – a mute pharmacist vaguely acknowledged as Fon (Charlie Yeung). Certainly, trusting people one hardly knows a day before and building relationships with them isn’t going to be part of an assassin’s training – further evidence that Joe isn’t fit to be a hitman any longer. Needless to say, the aforementioned relationships become his undoing.

To start with, it’s near impossible to identify what this movie is driving at. If Bangkok Dangerous is supposed to be an action movie, it has just failed miserably. There were several instances where I thought things would escalate into a nail-biting action scene, but was brutally let down. This film is choke full with so many stale and generic scenes like sniper-at-the-window and shoot-and-escape sequences, as well as plan-failed and run-into-crowd-and-hope-to-evade-police sequences, so much so that everything becomes REALLY really predictable within the first 30 minutes. For an action movie, I was expecting more creativity in the screenplay. Creativity isn’t the only thing lacking, however, as action sequences are so short and forgettable that there’s really nothing to suggest that thought and effort have been put into making the movie as thrilling as possible. In fact, the only noteworthy scene in this film is the boat chase that takes place at the floating market. Otherwise, rarely have scenes convince me that this is an action movie.

Feeding time.

Perhaps Bangkok Dangerous is supposed to a film touching on romance. No, casting the typical hot girl to lure our assassin into love just wouldn’t cut it – obviously, the production crew has to spice things up, right? So we have this mute pharmacist called Fon as Joe’s love interest. Quite interestingly, the fact that Fon is mute adds another dimension into how the romance plays out in the film. Being mute means that feelings have to be communicated via actions and facial expressions (think Wall-E), adding to the challenge of creating a realistic romance sequence. Fortunately, in that regard, Bangkok Dangerous has an unerring success rate. However, for all the impressive performance as far as the romance portions are concerned, the film fails to flesh out the characters and story – in the beginning, at least. Joe and Fon take as fast as a flick of a coin to fall in love – something that sounds considerably unbelievable, but thankfully, a respectable amount of time was spent on the detailing the dating parts so the romance story arc is still plausible. It’s weird that while Bangkok Dangerous is marketed as an action film, its romance portions actually outshine its action scenes.

So you wonder – this is Bangkok Romance, right, not Bangkok Dangerous as the people behind this film would have you to believe. Well, perhaps this film’s Bangkok Travelogue too. As much as I must credit the romance scenes here for being outstanding, I can’t help but feel that this movie is also a free advertisement for Thailand’s tourism industry in disguise. During the course of the entire film, various places of attractions, Thai customs, cultures, festivals and food were introduced that this film is as much of a solid travelogue program as it is of a romantic movie (may I remind you again that this film is more romance than action).

Final Comments
This is Bangkok Dangerous, Bangkok Romance and Bangkok Travelogue. Well, it seems that the production crew just can’t decide what kind of film they were going to create. On the action front, this film is clearly very disappointing. But on the romance front, this film is one of the better ones, if not one of the best (I bet Wall-E is the inspiration). And thanks for introducing me to the wonders of Thailand. Given that this film’s been marketed as an action flick, it would almost be certain that you would be going into the cinema expecting some spectacular action sequences, but look beyond the dismal action here, and what you will find is a decent film.

Game Review: From the Abyss

noreply@blogger.com (Eyes & Smile) — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 12:29:00 +0000

The perfect substitute for your sleeping pills.

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TOTAL SCORE: 5.4/10

The Good:
The weapons, skills, and items * Co-op play

The Bad:
Incredibly repetitive * Different layouts of grids of rooms for every play session more of a gimmick * Recycled enemy designs towards the midway * Very poor A.I. * Unimpressive visuals * Average artwork and sounds
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Describing this game isn’t going to be hard. From the Abyss is essentially Dynasty Warriors, but with dragons, witches, bats and other mythical creatures as enemies instead of ancient Chinese warriors. Having said that, this game certainly isn’t going to appeal to everyone. The run-of-the-mill dungeon crawling adventure offered here would unequivocally convince action RPG fans to participate in yet another hack-and-slash experience until the next big game arrives, but non-fans are advised to move on.

To be fair, From the Abyss is a decently-crafted adventure. There are a total of 8 worlds to explore, each with a different theme. Each world has been separated into a manageable 4 stages and each stage is further broken down into several grids of rooms. Some of the grids have branching pathways that could either lead you to a loot, which may also be dropped by some of the fallen enemies, or the exit of a particular stage. The fact that the game automatically plots the map for you as you progress through the grids of rooms is greatly appreciated as this makes returning to the game after a save more convenient.

One feature included here is that whenever you return to your game after you have exited it, the layout of the grids of rooms will change. What this translates into is a different experience every time, as well as for everyone. While intended to impress, this feature doesn’t. From the Abyss varies the layout of the grids of rooms for every play session via random rotation of fixed grid templates. A particular grid template may have steps to the right, a passageway to the next grid on the left, and a specific type of enemy located on a fixed position on the grid, while the other grid template may have cliffs to the right, steps to the left, and a pair of enemies located at the entrance of the grid. Therein lays the problem. From the Abyss contains such a limited variety of grid templates that after a while, I found myself seeing the same layout of world elements and enemy positions on a grid every few rooms. If weren’t for the map, I’d have been lost. And thanks to this gimmick, this game grows incredibly repetitive after less than an hour.

The repetitiveness could have been reduced were the enemy designs more varied and the A.I. more intelligent. Instead, what you have here are recycled enemy designs towards the midway of the game and A.I. that’s as retarded as a blindfolded chimpanzee shooting a rifle backwards. The question of why I am fighting the same enemy constantly pops up throughout the entire game and this is definitely a sign that this game DOES need more creativity. The A.I. is so bad that I dare say that this game doesn’t offer any challenge – at all. Enemies don’t even attack until you are very close to them and the bosses here are laughable. This flaw is made more palpable once your reach higher skill levels, where your attack points and defense points are significantly increased – and when you do reach higher skill levels, do observe your ability to take down a boss within 30 seconds. If there’s anything closer to the intelligence of the A.I. in Dynasty Warriors, it’s the A.I. in From the Abyss.

YES, this game is ridiculously repetitive (and easy), and no one could have blamed you if you have fallen asleep while playing this. The different weapons, skills and items do keep you awake, though – but only a little. There are 3 slots that you can allocate to different skills you have obtained like fire magical spells, more powerful javelin attacks, and hammer throws, but that isn’t saying much, is it? At least there’s a decent number of subjects to inject some fun (IF there’s any fun at all) into the game.

From the Abyss offers players the option to engage in co-op play with a friend who also owns a copy of the game, but why Wi-Fi play isn’t included is beyond me. I haven’t attempted co-op play since there isn’t anyone I could play game with, but why do I need a partner when this game’s already SO easy?

Presentation-wise, this game is acceptable for the masses, and terrible for the more discerning. The 2D graphics scream old-school, but I believe this game could have done with more impressive visuals to give more polish to an already boring package. There’s a store and town center where you can purchase weapons, armor, skills and items and talk to villagers respectively, but all characters are presented in still-art form. The art is merely average and characters only have 1 or 2 lines. Each world has a different tune to accompany it, but there’s really nothing to write home about the sound here – just appropriate fare that isn’t exciting in any way.

Final Comments
This game is the perfect substitute for your sleeping pills – it wouldn’t be much of a wonder if you fell asleep playing it. From the Abyss attempted some features not indigenous to the action RPG genre like different grid layouts and co-op play, but nothing goes down all too well. The enemy designs are embarrassingly recycled over and over AND OVER again, and the A.I.’s just too bad that’s this game is as easy as learning ABC. The 2D graphics, average artwork and non-too-exciting sounds do nothing to relieve this game’s bore factor. The saving grace? The different weapons, skills and items. If you’re an action RPG fan, by all means, give this game a try. But for all others, skip this.

Handheld Redesigns: An In-depth Look

noreply@blogger.com (Eyes & Smile) — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 10:05:00 +0000

Recent months have been rife with reports of PSP and DS redesigns, and while the former has indeed been officially announced, the later hasn’t, and in this feature, Powerplay blog is going to take an in-depth look at the new wares that Sony and Nintendo will and may be parading out in the near future.

PSP-3000

The 3rd iteration of the PSP came as one of the biggest Sony announcements at the 2008’s Games Convention in Leipzig, Germany. While the PSP-3000 sports neither a further reduction in size nor weight, it will enhance the voice functionality of the PSP via the addition of a new built-in microphone. Needless to say, this would be a boon to Skype users and games which support voice chat and/or commands.

An anti-reflective finish will also be among some of the subtle changes made to the PSP Slim and Lite (PSP-2000). On one hand, this translates into a cleaner PSP frame as fingerprints and dirt would be less visible, while on the other hand, there will be less glare on the screen, greatly increasing the outdoor playability of the handheld.

Changes to the shape of the buttons can also be noticed. The PSP’s Start, Select and Home buttons are now oval-shaped instead of semi-circle-shaped. The PS logo replaces the word ‘Home’, while the Sony logo has been moved to above the d-pad. The rather ‘hard’ corners of the PSP Slim and Lite have also been softened to create an all-round sleeker look.

Perhaps more noteworthy is the improved LCD Screen on the PSP-3000. The new LCD screen allows the PSP-3000 to display a wider range of colors than the PSP Slim and Lite and features 5 times the contrast ratio than that on the later. What these mean is that the PSP-3000 will be able to project more vivid displays. Another notable improvement would be the quicker pixel response time of the LCD screen, which decreases ghosting during fast action scenes in games and videos. However, netizens have voiced one worry about this new and more powerful LCD screen: a shorter battery life. Sony has verified that the new screen will not affect the battery life of the PSP-3000; in fact, the PSP-3000 will have the same battery life as the PSP Slim and Lite. What Sony engineers have done is to decrease the power draw from other components of the handheld to balance things out.

The PSP-3000 will be available from October 14 as part of a Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters entertainment package, which would also include a National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets UMD, a PlayStation Network download voucher for Echochrome, and a 1GB memory stick. Additionally, there would be another bundle that packs in a PlayStation Network download voucher for Everyday Shooter and a 4GB memory stick. The former contains the Ice Silver PSP-3000, while the later contains the Piano Black PSP-3000. Both will retail for US$199.99. A core pack containing the Piano Black PSP-3000 would also be available later this year.

Worth Buying?

Save for the new screen, the changes made to the PSP Slim and Lite aren’t really that impressive. The microphone makes it more convenient for users to Skype, but as far as calls are concerned, I have seen few people using their PSPs for that function. Games that support voice chat and/or commands are few and far between as well, making that new built-in microphone more of a gimmick than a real improvement over the PSP Slim and Lite.

The subtle surface redesigns really feel like they are done for the sake of the redesign rather than something that is done to genuinely enhance the user experience. The PSP-3000’s saving grace comes in the form of the new screen, but even then, the change in display quality isn’t that distinct to warrant an observation from users, especially when their attention is geared towards the game or movie that they are playing. Personally, I am satisfied with my current PSP Slim and Lite – I don’t need the microphone and the display doesn’t skid too far in quality. The redesigned edges and button shape alterations are uncalled for.

For consumers who haven’t owned a PSP before, the PSP-3000 presents a good reason to finally get one. But for others, the PSP-3000 just doesn’t have enough improvements to justify a purchase. In other words, if you already have either of the older PSP models, the PSP-3000 is not worth buying.

Rumoured DS Lite Redesign

* Fanart

The rumour has been flying for quite a while now, and what better time to address it than now? According to reports, the redesigned DS Lite would be officially announced in May or June 2009.

The DS Lite Redesign is set to go one up over the DS Lite with touch-screen functionality enabled for both screens. Both the DS screens will also support widescreen aspect ratio. If true, this could mean that the redesign is in fact DS 2. The double touch-screens in the rumoured redesign could mean that new DS games would no longer be cross-compatible with different DS systems as both the original DS and DS Lite has only one touch-screen. On the other hand, the rumoured redesign would certainly result in more creative and innovative gameplay. However, there hasn’t been any rumour about improvements to the DS’s graphical capabilities, which contradicts the possibility of a DS 2.

Words also have it that the GameBoy cartridge slot would be excluded, making an even slimmer DS possible. What does these all mean? Stay tuned to find out.

Time Capsule: Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo Revival (GBA)

noreply@blogger.com (Eyes & Smile) — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 04:58:00 +0000

The arcade in your hands.

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TOTAL SCORE: 9.3/10^{CHOICE PICK}
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Before the days of Capcom adding Marvel characters into its foray of fighting games what with titles like X-Men vs. Street Fighter, Marvel vs. Street Fighter and Marvel vs. Capcom, there was Street Fighter 2 and its many incarnations. A trip to the arcade during the mid-90s was never complete without Street Fighter 2. Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo Revival arrived a decade after that original Street Fighter 2, incorporating several of the updates that its other iterations introduced. The result is a comprehensive Street Fighter 2 package that no Street Fighter fan and fighting game fan alike should do without.

To start off with, this game, while essentially an on-the-go entertainment piece, doesn’t scrimp on its presentation. There are certainly a few changes here and there, but there’s really nothing major that will affect the gameplay. The graphics are on par with that of the original arcade version – character models are huge and detailed and the backgrounds are vibrant. The music and sound effects make a perfect transition as well. The animations are great, though slowdowns can be noticed during some instances. That minor flaw can be easily compensated by the lack of any load time, however.

Perhaps more noteworthy are the characters here. An initial cast of 16 fighters would be available from the get-go, with more to be unlocked progressively. What I like about this game is that each of these characters is neither too weak nor overpowered; in fact, each of them is balanced. Dhalsim may seem one of the more powerful characters at first what with his Mister Fantastic-esque stretchable legs and arms and teleportation abilities, but after toying around with different characters, I am convinced that each fighter does indeed have his or her own strengths and weaknesses. E. Honda, for instance, appears intimidating and devastating with his size advantage and quick hand moves, but he can actually be defeated with a succession of high and low kicks. Balancing each of the 16 characters is definitely no simple task, but the fact that Capcom has accomplished this makes the game even more impressive.

Another thing going for this game are the controls. The GBA, with its limited 4 button configuration, may seem unfit for a fighting game, especially Street Fighter 2, which needs at least 6 buttons. But what Capcom has done is to offer us a solution that makes playing this game a cinch even though the GBA only has 2 face buttons and 2 shoulder buttons. For instance, a quick tap on the A button initiates a low kick, but holding down on it allows you to execute a medium kick. In theory, the controls may be a tad tricky, especially when you are in the heat of a battle, but in action, it works perfectly. The round it all off, the controls are pretty tight and responsive.

Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo Revival features all the bonus stages from the original, including the beat-the-car-up level and introduces quite a few new ones like training, survival and time attack. Versus mode allows you to square it off against a human opponent, but you would require a link cable to connect 2 GBAs together and 2 copies of the game. The versus mode is certainly a welcomed addition, cementing the fact that Street Fighter 2 on the GBA is just as good as, if not better than, the original arcade rendition. This is really the arcade in the palms of your hands.

I have only one more thing to nit-pick about this game: Why is there only one winning speech for each character? It gets a little boring after a while.

Final Comments
Arcade goodness in the palms of your hands. The presentation here soars, and the controls make a perfect transition. The game features an impressive 16 characters, each balanced out, and that’s excluding unlockable ones. Retaining the modes from the arcade version, as well as adding in some new ones, Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo Revival is as fantastic as it gets. If you own a GBA or a DS, get this.