INSTANT GAME REVIEW!

Epic Mickey = Everything Kingdom Heartburn wishes it was

You know? AN ACTUAL GAME!

This has been Luis H. Garcia's INSTANT GAME REVIEW. Enjoy!

INSTANT GAME REVIEW!

I'm back! And here to do this and that
And other stuff I can't say in public
'Cause I'll get in trouble for it!
Ugh! Ugh! YEAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Anyway...

Quantum Theory = Gears of War: JAPUNEEZ VERZHUN

VANQUISH = Gears of War: JAPUNEEZ VERZHUN + God Hand

This has been Luis H. Garcia's INSTANT GAME REVIEW. Enjoy!

Arnold, please.

Predators (2010)

When I first heard about the new Predator-based movie (Predators, 2010), I was mildly amused. However I was not amused at any point in time during the movie, and especially not after it was over. Here's why:

- The movie tries too hard to become a remake of the original
- The whole concept of hunting became a bit of a joke. What next, Predator safari?
- Not a single memorable character, least of all Lawrence Fishburne

Going into a little detail / rant about Predators (2010), I felt having 3 Predators this time around was a bit of an overkill for 9 non-Arnold Schwarzenegger characters. In the 1987 original, just 1 Predator alone was a hell of a handful for 7 top tier soldiers, but in Predators (2010) we have a team of 10 WIMPS faced with THREE Predators.

I personally thought t references drawn to the original movie were hilariously bad.

- A girl character who talks about how "this year it gets hot"
- Topher Grace wearing glasses / Hawkins wearing glasses
- Lawrence Fishburne whispering "Over here!" / Mac whispering "Over here!"
- Falling off a waterfall

Arnold Brody - the Predator killer - obviously

My biggest gripe with Predators was that the whole movie was taking place on an alien planet! So like, despite being SO INTERRIGENTO, the Predator boys have nothing better do in life but put together a jungle set neatly replicating the original. Seriously, do they have such great set designers on their planet? Also why didn't they replicate the city from Predator 2? Because IIRC that's where their space-ship landed the last time around.

And why didn't they use their favorite catch-phrase "You're one ugly mother%%%%%%" on Adrien Brody at least even once?

Number of shocks - 1 (Danny Trejo)
Number of twists - 1 (I actually watched it to the end)
Story - 4/10
Replay value - LOL/10
Better than Aliens vs Predator? - Yes/10

THE WORLD'S BEST ROB LIEFELD COSPLAY

This is the 190th post

and to celebrate this obviously-amazing milestone, here's an attempt to keep this blog up with the times: a review of a game I love and hate, Tekken 6. This is the first time I review a game that's not years and years old that everybody has already played.

[Note: I actually started writing this review like a year ago, so I really AM late, haha. By now, everyone has their own opinion of Tekken 6. This is practically a retro Sega Genesis review. I honestly wrote this review all the way up to its last couple paragraphs, but then I just let it sit. For absolutely no reason, I couldn’t finish it. However, none of what is said in this review is out of date, and I hope it’s informative. I thought I had interesting things to say…]

Tekken 6 is the latest game in NAMCOs line of 3D fighters. I'm not sure where to start with this game, so I guess I'll start with the least important stuff and work my way up to the most important.

The story is about how Jin takes over the Tekken Zaibatsu or something and is starting World War 3. Heihachi Mishima, his grand dad, isn't thrilled about this and wants to kill his grandson. Heihachi's son and Jin's dad, Kayuza, is out to kill them both, too. Heihachi's OTHER bastard son, Lars, wants to kill every man in his family too, but then he suffers Anime Amnesia and goes on a journey with a robot girl. This chick named Zafinia knows about this Ancient Egyptian Dragon that will be revived by World War 3 and WHAT THE POOP, maybe in the sequel Kayuza will graft the arm of Jin's clone onto himself and then the arm will possess Kayuza, and Jin will suffer from premature aging due to nanotechnology. Why not? The plot is about as impenetrable and silly as it comes, hence the un-subtle allusion to MGS.


The graphics are really nice. The stages are pretty detailed and have a bunch of subtle things going on in them. For example, the snowy valley level makes permanent dents where ever your character walks and/or is beaten down, and the ocean-side Noh Theatre stage has the tide flood over the floor slightly, cause the wooden stage to get very wet. The stages are really colorful too, which is a nice break from all the recent GREYBROWN games. However, it's still a next-gen video game, so you will get some problems like this:

There's so much damn bloom in the lake level, your eyes will fall out! That pic doesn't even do it justice. There is something wrong when a level is so bright with bloom effects that I have to squint. Just looking at the pic gives me a head ache. Even if attractive young ladies are fighting in the shallow water.

Tangentially related, the character models are very detailed. Some of character border on angelic perfection. The moves animate very smoothly, and the stronger ones have all kinds of cool hit sparks and effects, such as a hard hit to the stomach into a wall will cause the screen to shake slightly. All motion capture for the animations seem to have been done by professional dancers, which causes your characters to look impossibly cool, even Bob.

Super Mario never looked so awesome.

Speaking of the motion capture and professional dancers, a friend of mine told me a funny story about that. He was in a dance club in Mexico, and not having any idea how to dance at all, he improvised and imitated the ten-strings and special moves of Tekken 6 characters. Not only did it work, people thought he was a pro dancer. I think that says something about Tekken.

The single player modes range from "meh" to "this SKNs" to "this is pretty fun." The arcade mode is pretty standard and boring: fight like 8 computers with a bonus stage boss in there, then the real boss, and then you see the ending. Except you only get to see the intro and ending if you're playing on the RPG Mode's arcade mode, and NOT the under the section of the main menu clearly labeled "OFFLINE > ARCADE." That would make too much sense!

Speaking of the RPG Mode, by that I mean the "SCENARIO CAMPAIGN." This is where you see a pretty cool opening where Lars and his Halo Spartans go and tear stuff up at a laboratory. That was cool to watch. Then Lars catches his Anime Amnesia I mention and nothing is cool for the rest of the RPG Mode. After you sit through all that, you can play as whichever character you want (but have to unlock the rest to use in this mode, you pick 1 and have to unlock everyone else) and run around beating up people as if you were playing Final Fight. You have access to all your moves and you can also pick up items like crow bars, machine guns, flame throwers and such to beat up guys with.

At times the Scenario Campaign is nice, mindless beat em up fun with awkward controls (that happens when you try to turn Tekken into Final Fight), but at other times incredibly frustrating and just bogus. However, it's also by far the fastest way to get money to buy costumes with. My recommendation: skip all the cutscenes (except the first one), play through a few levels for money, and never touch it again until you need more money. It's not worth playing to the end. The Tekken engine just wasn’t made to be Final Fight and Namco should be ashamed for trying.

I think the worst part of Scenario Campaign is that it highlights the WRONG new characters. There are six new Tekken fights in Tekekn 6, and 4 of them are really, really awesome. Bob (Mario), Miguel (Luigi), Leo Kliesen (Ash Ketchum) and Zafina (Rose) are all incredible new characters and are too cool to handle. Meanwhile, the new amesiac superhero bastard Mishima son Lars and his pink-haired robot chick anime companion Allysa, they hog up the entire spotlight in the RPG mode and it's stupid. They srsly just stuffed an anime right into Tekken.

What DOES make the RPG Mode fun and bearable is Co-Op. Playing just about any game with a bud or two would make it fun. If nothing else, you can collectively make fun of how SKN a game is. The problem here is that there is no OFFLINE Co-Op mode, just an online one. WTF?

There are also a lot of item drops that give you stat bonuses, instead of leveling up. So you can max out your character with various articles of clothing, but if you want to have optimal equipment at any given time, expect to have your character look incredibly goofy.

Your character will end up looking MUCH weirder than this pic. Too weird to handle.

Speaking of the costumes, you can buy (or pick up in the RPG Mode) many different articles of clothing in various colors. You can deck out any character in the game pretty much however you'd want to, and this is actually very well executed. There are a crap load of options for pants, rings, hair styles (you get to mix and match the base of the hair, the cut, and the bangs on each side), shirts, jackets, hats, ribbons, glasses, and bunches of trivial things. You'll be able to make some really cool and interesting costumes for the characters. I have only two complaints: 1) Not every character can wear every article of clothing. For example, some characters can wear bowler hats and some can't. No reason for restrictions like that, they just can't. 2) Rather than use the extra buttons for your custom outfits, it always replaces one of the your character's default costumes. For example, I made an awesome Pirate Leo outfit, but it replaces her Tuxedo outfit completely, which I also like. Again, there is no discernible reason for these restrictions, unless Namco thinks that their games needs a minimum quota of Stupid.

As for online play:

When the game it was released, it was awful. Virtually unplayable.

When a patch came out on Thanksgiving Day, it was EXCELLENT. Up there with GGPO, HD Remix and BlazBlue. The only problem was, and it's a big one, is random disconnect once in a while. And it was definitely not due to rage-quitting, players would just randomly disconnect after playing for an hour or so and would have to start a new room and reinvite everyone. Was still awesome net-play while it was working.

Recently, a third patch was released that allowed for online co-op (and nobody cared about online co-op in an awful RPG mode). The online play has been slightly worse since then, but no longer randomly D/Cs.

Overall, it has a pretty decent online setup. Nothing too big to complain about, and miles better than Street Fighter IV's [Vanilla at the time of this writing] atrocious netplay, but I still sometimes miss juggles and moves due of lag.

The training mode, if you're into those as much as I am, is pretty great. You can set the training dummy to a bunch of different blocking modes and wake up actions so that you can learn how to counter each. You can have each of your moves and strings played by the computer with the button timing on display. You can set the computer to do various moves out of their move list and have them mix them up at random. This helps you practice reacting to various throws and strings. You can even have it show the "Hit Analysis," which really means that the character will light up whenever they are not capable of making an input or action. This will help you understand the games various mechanics, input windows, and also how big of a frame advantage or disadvantage various strings leave you and your opponent, and the gaps in the strings. The only shortcoming in the training mode is there's no "display hitbox" mode like in HD Remix, and it doesn't have the extensive frame data provided in-game like Virtua Fighter 4: EVO did. But that's something would only bother a tech-head whose obsessed with the software, like myself. That aside, it's still an excellent training mode that delivers everything you need.

This is the part I've been avoiding talking about for this entire blog post: the multiplayer gameplay, obviously the most important part of any fitan game.

There are 40 different characters, and they're all very different, even the Ryu/Ken clones. Every character has at least a hundred moves to mess with, including different kinds of throws and counter-moves. Needless to say, this is a very nuanced game.

My fighter, the debatably-gendered Leo Kliesen. She's so androgynous, she might as well be in an SNK game. The rest of the cast is less ambiguous, but there are also three robots (one is made of wood), a boxing kangaroo, a bear and whatever Yoshimitsu is.

I guess I'll start with the very basics. You have your basic movements: stepping, side stepping, back and front dashes, and jumping. All these movements (except jumping) can be canceled into lots of other actions. So you can rapidly, say, back dash, cancel into crouch guard, stand guard, back dash, over and over again. (Not as good as it sounds though, not the ultimate defense technique.) A front dash can quickly be canceled into a move or a block. It's a pretty nice feature.

There are four hit levels: High (can be ducked under), mid (cannot be blocked while standing), special mid (can be blocked from either stance), or low (which must be blocked low or hopped over). While it might seem like there's no point in using highs and special mids, those have the advantage of generally being the fastest moves in the game, and you can chain after them for a mixup. Crouching is generally the least safe blocking state because there are lots of mids, however.

The fastest a move can come out is in 10 frames. Usually, every character's jab moves are there 10f moves. All but two characters have a 10-frame jab, IIRC. This makes frame advantage and disadvantage very important, as it determines whether or not it's possible to beat out your fastest move after certain strings. If you are at a +3 frame advantage and do a jab ASAP, your opponent can’t possible beat out your move with one of their own. However, jabbing is such an obvious thing to do that they could simply crouch it and counter, but then they’d be wide open for a launcher, etc.

Throws count as unblockable highs, so they can be ducked under. You also have a pretty big window to tech them. But the neat thing about this game is that, if you get caught by a throw, you have to pay close attention to which arm they led the throw with. If they used the right or left arm to throw, you have to tech accordingly with its respective punch button. If they lead with neither arm, then you have to press both punch buttons to tech. This means that if you just guess when trying to throw tech, you only have a 1 in 3 chance of getting it, so you have to pay close attention. Another interesting thing about throws in this game is that, in addition to have their own animations, each throw has its own animation when teched. So both characters go through an elaborate feat of gymnastics whenever a throw is broken and they reposition. Breaking at throw actually leaves you at a frame advantage, but many clever players bait a throw break in order to gain a positional advantage. You might have been with your back to the wall before you tried to throw, but after he broke it, he's at the wall, giving you the change to do half your health with a wall combo. Just one mechanic of the game, throwing, is much more than just an unblockable move and attempting one often does not have a clear line between "success" and "failure." There are also a lot of character-exclusive special throws, some that only work in specific match ups, and I believe Marduk has throws that you must tech with a kick, which always throws me off.

Every character has a low parry, which is like is a pretty nice feature where you tap Down-Forward before a low attack hits you, and it'll cause you to catch their leg and flip them onto their backs in a Bound state, letting you combo after words and even start a nice oki game.

About half the cast has other kinds of parries, from just high ones to assorted high and mid counters. This gives the game some nice character-specific tools. Some parries do different stuff depending on which limb they catch and the hit level, and other need to have follow-ups inputted, while other just reposition. One of Leo's mid/high parries, if it catches a punch, will just have Leo pull the character towards herself, trip her opponent up, then have the opponent sent stumbling behind her. And that's it. While it naturally leaves Leo at a frame advantage and can be a nice reposition, what makes it a great parry is that if they hit a wall, they'll run head-first into while stumbling. This causes enough stun for you to be able to do a huge –damage wall combo. If the same parry catches a mid or high kick, Leo will do a cool under-leg pin.

However, these parries aren't over-powered at all, if you were thinking Dead or Alive. Not only must you guess the hit level correctly, the general rules go that you cannot parry the following (with some exceptions): running attacks, elbows, knees, launchers or jumping attacks. This makes the parry a very interesting mechanic due to some of the heavy risk it entails, when blocking is much safer, but at the same time, parries cover the majority of moves used.

You also have a lot of wake-up options (for those you who don't know, wake up is where you're getting up after being knocked down). I remember someone telling me there was like 25 of them. I do know you can roll in four different direction immediately following a knock-down, and another four entirely different rolls should you delay the get-up. You can also do a get-up spin kick, which are a bit risky but sometimes pay off to do. You can either do a low or mid one, and you can combo afterwards if they counter-hit. There's also the "Chinese Get-Up," which is where you use back to spring back up while kicking your feet. It does a light hit and gets you up, and I think it's safe on block. After rolling backwards, you can spring forward using your legs for a tackle-leap, or push off the ground with your arms for a legs-first leap at your opponent. Both hurt and actually both are safe on block, but are at risk of being counter-hit or getting juggled during the roll. They also have deceptively tiny hitboxes. You can choose to sideroll, generally the safest option, but still not get up at all if you want to delay your okime. This often throws your opponent off. You can also just stand up by pressing UP when you hit the ground, but that makes too much sense.

The side rolls to quick get up or just holding up are the safest means to get up, but they can still be beaten out by well timed attacks or ones that track the side rolls.

Due to every wake up option being fairly easy to beat, despite there being 20-some of them, the game is very much in the favor of the attacker. Once a combo ends, the rush down begins. Like it should be: recent fighters have left a bad taste in my mouth with all the turtling.

There's also a neat sub-system where, after running at your opponent from a bit of distance away, you will do tackle grab. After tackling them down to the ground, you'll pin them and can attempt three strikes starting with either hand, and then do another set of three punches to the face before getting thrown off. The person on bottom can attempt to tech and kick you off early by guessing which hand you are going to use, and parrying with the opposite. It doesn't come into play that often, but is interesting when it does.

To cover what's left of the game mechanics, juggles and bounding. Certain moves launch, and with a certain combination of moves after that, you can keep them in the air. Not much more to it, most given combinations of moves after a launch won't work, so you'll probably have to go online to learn which strings to do after a launch. You can also hit someone out of their jump (unlikely to happen given how often you jump in Tekken) to start a similar combo. Fortunately, every character’s move list comes with at least 8 Sample combos, and you can watch the computer do them and learn the combo follow-ups. However, these Sample combos are often quite bad, and the game will NEVER show you how to wall combo. For an example, the game never showed me how to do my Leo BnBs, I had to use the Internet.

Finally, there's Bounding. A Bound move is one that slams someone out of the air onto the floor. This will leave them paralyzed on the floor, feet up in the air for a second, and let you combo them further. This is usually just for one more chain and that's it, and there can only be one Bound per comob. If you use any Bound moves after that, they'll just spike them to the ground for an oki guessing game, which is good also.

All of these mechanics I was rambling about, with at least 100 moves per character, add up to an incredibly fast-paced, stylish and intricate game.

Let me repeat all of the above words in:

Tekken 6 is a very stylish and intricate game. It is fun to play, and it is complicated.

For all the belly-aching I might done about the game's mediocre features, that is honestly the nicest thing I can say about a fighting game. At the end of the day, you keep playing fighting games not for online play and single player campaigns and other stuff; it's the multiplayer game you bought. I might think the single-player is really bland, and at times frustrating, and that there should be more costume slots, and a few other belly aches. But let me repeat that Tekken 6 is a very cool and intricate fighting game.

Early on, I was planning on making this review less general: I was going to only review the games’ core mechanics and multiplayer. But honestly, the meta-game is too complicated for me to tell anyone about with any clarity. There are at least 100 moves per character, lots of universal mechanics, character specific-features, lots of strings with various frame advantages and disadvantage, very careful spacing and unintuitive mixups. The game has too many interacting parts for me to get my head around.

There’s a final inherent problem with Tekken: some people just don’t LIKE it. I understand completely. I will ask you a couple basic questions:

Do you get a tiny rush of pleasure when you press a 4-button combination quickly, and as visual feedback, your avatar performs the exact combination of strikes you wanted? Does it please you that it was a 10-frame high, another high, a mid and then a low? Do you like it when you suddenly jab someone in the stomach, and then side step their move when they try to hit you back? Do you like carefully transitioning between stances? Do you enjoy the mechanical exercise of hitting with a series of big moves on a helpless airborne guy?

If “yes”, then you probably will like Tekken 6. However, I shouldn’t leave you with the incredibly cowardly opinion of “if you like Tekken you will like Tekken 6.” Instead I’ll give an anecdote.

I hated Tekken. Something about the way that game moved didn’t sit right with me. It didn’t gel with me. That wasn’t at all the case with Tekken 6. I knew I had to play it after I happened to watch a match. I didn’t regret a moment of time invested into the game. I hope you will feel the same, because I had an fun time that everyone else should be able to have. Just don't touch the single-player, it stinks.

Redundant Evil 5 (PS3)

- "Chris is back."
- "Wesker is alive."
- "Jill is blond."
- "Irving is gay."

These could be used interchangeably as tag lines for Resident Evil 5, the latest game in the RE series. Let's have a look at what this game has to offer to the gamer who by now is no stranger to survival horror.

First of all this game isn't really a survival horror. Except you need to SURVIVAL the 8-10 hours of tedious gameplay to get to the HORRORible ending. I doubt that's what CAPCOM had in mind when they came up with the whole "survival horror" gag in the first place back in the late 90s.

Once upon a time Chris visited the African country "Kijuju", which by the way has no connection with Kijuju's Bizarre Adventure. The reason Chris is there has to do with news of a serious bio-hazard type outbreak that he needs to investigate.

Upon arriving in Kijuju Chris meets up with Sheva Al-omar who is working for the same agency as Chris. The duo takes to the streets of Kijuju in Chris' bulging biceps and Sheva's tight jeans.

Everywhere they go Chris and Sheva can only see a bunch of angry, unfriendly looking taxpayers giving them the eyeball. Because that's what bio-hazard outbreaks do to people, I guess.

The plot thickens when Chris and Sheva step into a butcher shop and find a bloody table, a dead animal carcass and a butcher knife. I mean, what kind of butcher does that in a butcher shop? (See also: it smells bad.)

They meet up with a stranger wearing a turban. His name is Reynard, the only Reynard in the whole world who'll be caught wearing a turban. He is also carrying 4 new outfits for them inside his turban, but will only give 2 outfits at a time, and that also depends on if you've already completed the game once or not, and how terribly you played. (If I were Chris, I'd know where to use the butcher knife right about now.)

The moment they load their weapons Reynard makes a break for it. That's the last we ever see of him in the entire game. He doesn't even text Sheva to ask what she's doing this weekend. Personally, I didn't even know his name was Reynard or that he even had a name until I googled "really gay RE5 character".

Suddenly the dangerous-looking people become zombies and storm the butcher shop. For some reason, I feel this has to be Gaynard's doing. Probably ran into his Kijujuan ex boyfriend, but anyway, this is where the game really begins.

For the next hour of your life (more like maybe 15 hours) you spend your time shooting zombies. Except they're not really zombies? but more like real-time people. Here are some of the popular non-zombie type zombies you will shoot at in the game:

- Farmer zombie: these are the kind of farmers who like to run directly into your face from a long way away, then stop and dodge left or right, and then swing a rake at you. The best way to get rid of this zombie is to kill it.

- Flower zombie: some of these zombie people like to grow man-eating flowers inside their heads, so if you blow away their brain ball, out comes the man-eating flower. At times you have to shoot the flower in the knee.

- Dynamite zombie: another non-zombie zombie throws dynamite sticks at you, and that's after it's been set alight. You can kill it by shooting at the dynamite he's holding up, which will make him an instant zombie noodle snack. The hard part is to find out where he is, because this zombie is the Tim Lincecum of all zombies and throws dynamite from a mile away. In fact, he stands so far away, you'd think he's a part of the background scenery.

- Kijuju Chainsaw Massacre zombie: this guy is skinnier than he looks and carries a tiny key-chain with him that's connected to a crocodile chainsaw. His task is basically to show you the Game Over screen many times by splicing your neck in two neatly foldable pieces, and that always comes in pretty handy if you need to pick up the bar of soap from the ground in the shower without having to bend over.

- Twin voodoo doctor zombie: these oversized World Heroes rejects always come in twos.

- Zombie pooch: the zombie dogs in this game are plain ugly and downright disgusting.

Maybe in RE6?

Wesker is alive and still wearing his sunglasses. We see him working alongside two other devious characters - Excella in an unreal evening dress, and a Most Idiotic Looking Faggot (MILF) in a cloak.

Turns out MILF is Jill ;-( Chris and Sheva release Jill from Wesker's birth control device and she is free to call in sick for the rest of the day - or rest of the game. If you have the new RE5 GOLD EDITION, you can play as Jill as well as Excella.

[SPOILER] If you got RE5 GOLD EDITION just to play Jill and Excella, then this is the closest you will ever come to a female in your life.

The smoldering hot Excella transforms into a smelly, gooey blob of filth. But she makes up for it by becoming the most fun boss in the whole game. By the way, none of the other bosses is any fun at all. Especially Wesker, despite his 6 incarnations.

Chris and Sheva ruin Wesker's plan of world domination after they defeat Blob Excella. Chris also makes like RE1 and shoots Wesker with a Rocket Launcher From Heaven. But just as their escape plane is about to lift off, Wesker makes like the Queen Alien from ALIENS and hitches a ride.

In the most ridiculous last boss fight ever, Chris and Sheva drive Chris' standard army knife into Wesker's heart. There, wasn't that obvious? And you'd think you'd need a Magnum with Elvis Rounds to get rid of him.

Controls - Not so great, and in fact RE4 controls were better / 10

Sound - I personally don't prefer the whole jungle safari stuff, so, no thanks / 10

Graphics - Very awesome / 1,000

Replay - I only wanted to totally check out Sheva in her new outfit for like 2 minutes / 10

Overall - One of the more instantly forgettable Resident Evil games

Mashy / July 2010

Another Taffy Video

INSTANT GAME REVIEW Fighting Edition

Because you already can't get enough of them....

More to come soon.

INSTANT GAME REVIEW......NOW ON VIDEO!

G*y Ritchie

"The first rule to being a rocknrolla is being a rocknrolla and a rocknrolla rocknrolls while rockinrolling the rollnrocks and you dawg we herd u liek rocknrollan."

-Gerard Butler as himself

"The first rule to being a rocknrolla is being a rocknrolla and a rocknrolla rocknrolls while rockinrolling the rollnrocks and you dawg we herd u liek rocknrollan."
-Gerard Butler as himself

I watched RocknRolla this weekend. Why? I dunno. This movie didn't suck but it wasn't good...it wasn't even meh. I felt like I wasted 2 hours of my life hearing people say RocknRolla over and over again.

First thing is first when talking about a plot heavy film like this, the description. This is your typical Guy Ritchie film, frantic and full of character jumping, awkward cuts, cool camera angles and a bunch of hip cool guys and gals doing crimes and trying to get one over the other. The story revolves around Lenny Cole, an old school crime boss in the UK who calls all the shots on the London real estate market. Lenny's second in command-Archy tells the viewer all about Lenny Cole and his methods via narration. A wealthy Russian real estate tycoon and crime boss by the name of Uri Omovich goes to Lenny for help on a major new deal, for a large fee, Lenny agrees to assist Uri's endeavors. Uri agrees to pay Lenny, and as a show of faith, he insists that Lenny borrow lucky painting as a sort of retainer that their deal doesn't go tits up. Uri asks Stella, his accountant to transfer the money to Lenny. Things begin to go awry when a group of London thieves known as The Wild Bunch intercepts the payment.

To make matters worse, Uri's lucky painting that was loaned to Lenny has mysteriously been stolen, and the number one suspect is Lenny's estranged stepson, crack-addicted rock star Johnny Quid, who is presumed dead. As Lenny desperately tries to locate the painting, Uri calls in sadistic henchmen to recover his money. This spirals into a bunch of plot points about Johnny Quid who stole the painting without any tangible motive (I guess he stole it to f*** with Lenny) and shoehorned relationship between Stella and Gerard Butler's character One Two. The Wild Bunch become involved in the madness of the Russians attempts to recover the money that The Wild Bunch stole and the location of the painting.

The character focus shifts from One Two being something of a protagonist to Archy and then finally Johnny Quid. There isn't a concrete protagonist or antagonist for a fair amount of time and I suppose that's what makes this film "charming".

Moving onto the direction of the film. This film is not charming and it's yet another attempt of Guy Ritchie to make the same movie except of considerably lower quality. The only degree of branching out Mr. Ritchie has ever done is Sherlock Holmes and that's of suspect quality itself. RocknRolla has some legitimately funny moments and cool scenes however it's just churned out with the same standard formula of most of the other Guy Ritchie films.

BUILD A GUY RITCHIE MOVIE

THE GUY-ACTING NARRATOR
A GIRL-OH SO SEXY
THE CAUSE- MONEY, PAINTING, BUILDING, POWER, ETC.
ADD 1 RAT RACE FOR SAID CAUSE
THE NONDESCRIPT-A NOBODY WHO BECOMES A SOMEBODY OR A SOMEBODY WHO BECOMES A NOBODY WHO BECOMES A DIFFERENT KIND OF SOMEBODY.
ANOTHER GIRL-SHE'S UP TO SOMETHING OR SO YOU THINK
RAG TAG BUNCH- 2 WHITE GUYS AND A BLACK GUY
THE ANTAGONIST- AN OLDER MAN WITH SOME SORT OF PRESTIGE
THE RIVAL- A RIVAL TO THE ANTAGONIST WHO IS TRYING TO BUILD PRESTIGE OR HAS PRESTIGE BUT WANTS MORE.
THE ENFORCER- THE LEADER OF THE BAD GUY MOOKS OR THE HEAD MOOK WHO WORKS FOR THE OLDER MAN. HE AND LEADER OF RAG TAG GET IN RUMBLE, HE THEN RETURNS LATER IN THE FILM TO EXACT SOME SORT OF REVENGE ONLY TO BE MET WITH DEATH.
THE TWIST-THE GIRL WAS CONTROLLING EVERYTHING FROM THE SHADOWS ALL ALONG.
THE SECOND TWIST- THE FRIEND OF THE RAG TAG IS THE SON OF THE RIVAL.
TIME SKIP
QUIRKY END CREDITS.
ALWAYS AN UNEXPECTED GAY GUY eg. THE ROCK IN SNATCH OR HANDSOME BOB IN THIS.

THE REAL ANTAGONIST-EITHER THE FRIEND OF THE LEADER OF THE RAG TAG OR A MOOK THAT WOULDN'T BE EXPECTED.

That's a fresh idea the first time however the second and the third time, is pushing it. RocknRolla follows the Guy Ritchie rules to the letter but doesn't have that charm. When he made Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels it had that charm. It's the same argument with No More Heroes and NMH2: Desperate Struggle. The first occurrence of genius is inspired, the second occurrence is manufactured. By following this formula or an elaborated version of said formula, YOU CAN DELIVER A BALLS TO THE WALLS ACTION COMEDY THAT WILL KEEP YOU BEGGING FOR MORE, F*** YEAH! This movie has way to much energy to be comprehendible but not enough to be engaging. RocknRolla tries to push the envelope but it's already been pushed off of a cliff and is currently falling to its doom.

And Gerard Butler kept his clothes on this entire movie which was unexpected.

This movie wasn't good and wasn't bad and will or will not get a sequel. Indecisive!!

World Emos: A Commentary

This review was originally going to be about Metal Gear Solid 4, but I realized that would make me get all serious and sentimental because I take that game very seriously. If marrying a video game would be legal or even possible, I'd probably have proposed to the game the very first time I set my eyes on it.

So the good news is, I'm still young, handsome and available. Except, I'm not really that young anymore.Nor am I the most photogenic person in the history of photography. And I've to go play MGS4 later tonight because it's the weekend.

Hellooooo Ladies

WORLD HEROES: THE CHOMBOE REVIEW
by Badmash and Lordy

Graphics by Crayola

B: I can't forget watching this game at the arcade when I saw it for the very first time. "It's a new edition of Street Fighter II" I thought, because M.Bison had extendable ligaments and could shoot missles. I personally thought that was a pretty awesome upgrade to Bison.

L: You know, back when there was a huge crowd around the Street Fighter II machine at the arcade (remember those?) I was always eager to try new fighting games. Any fighting game that came out, I was there. I didn't have much money to spend, so I'd wait until nobody was around to play each game maybe a couple of times against the computer and watch people with more quarters play each other. I gave World Zeroes waaaaaaay more than the benefit of the doubt. And I still thought it was terrible.

B: Is that because the difficulty level in World Homos was way beyond stupid? The SNES version gave my thumb a heart attack because - my fault - I was trying to do a Dragon Punch. And little did I know the DP motion in that game was D, DF, D, B, U, 360, F, D/F.

So if I have to ask you - what is that one thing that really made you go spend 2 quarters on World Emos - what would that be?

L: Ummm, what was it that made me spend my 2 quarters on WH? A) The fact that I was fighting game crazy at the time and B) the fact that the machine was ALWAYS open. That's it. Honestly. I'd rather play a game called World Emos, although come to think of it the Iori team vs the New Faces team in KOF 98 comes close enough.

Man, you're right about the controls in that game being awful. I was a pro at SNES SFII, but I couldn't do ANYTHING in World Heroes. That's why I just picked Dragon all the time. Wanna know Dragon's awesome re-dizzy combo? Mash on the punch button. Seriously. He does this kind of hundred hand slap move. You knock your opponent down in the corner, stand on top of your opponent and hammer on the punch button until the round is over. That just goes to show you how poorly the game is put together. (SNES onlay) Mashing on one button gets you an infinite chomboe.

The worst thing about the controls though IMO was the fact that the weak punch and the strong punch were mapped to the SAME BUTTON. Tapping the button gave you a jab and pressing it longer gave you a strong punch. Yuck. Unplayable.

B: Oh my GAWD, why did you even have to bring that up. I'm so upset now, I won't even talk about how awesome the Death Match mode was - because it was like 0.00007% awesome.

I'd happily forgotten all about those sucky controls.

Good God.

That's it, Topic over.

L: Hey! I didn't even get to talk about the music. It's possibly the most irritating thing about the game. It's just really simple synthesizer stuff, but it's super loud and completely tuneless. Or rather, it does have a tune, but it seems to have been scientifically composed in order to annoy. Imagine somebody took about 5 different alarm clocks with different sounding buzzers and got Carrot Top to play a polka on them. So not only do you have to struggle with these horrible controls, and play these characters that look like slightly melted dollar store action figures, you have this nauseating noise drilling through your eardrums the whole time.

Alarm clock polka. That's right. LIKE IT.

Kick-Ass/Law Abiding Citizen: Double Feature Movie Review

Kick-Ass

I'm not going to spoil Kick-Ass for anyone because it's a good movie. This is where I talk about how much like the characters, the action, it's slight whimsy at trying to make a morality, which ends up being diced up by visceral over-the-top violence in a single sentence, with me casually adding that the actress who played Hit Girl is going to be someone to look at in the future because she had some of the best lines, and spoke them with great delivery (her name is Chloe Moretz, btw).

Kick-Ass premise is that the main protagonist, a normal teenager called Dave, asks a question why nobody has tried to be a superhero? (Believe me, they are around and very Real - they call themselves Reals *woosh*) So he tries to make himself into a superhero. The only thing he had was good intentions. He's not particularly athletic, doesn't know any genuine combat techniques, he isn't really that confident around people, but had a goal to try to help people out and not get his ass kicked, and stuck to it (not like most teenagers, amirite?). It goes on from there... it funny, but it's turns into a bit of a pop-culture movie and deconstructs and reconstructs comics and film. The violence is OTT, juxtapositioned by most of it being committed by a 10 year old girl. The Japanese would love this film. If it was a horror movie and she was in a school girl outfit.

Oh wait, that does happen...



The film gets the balance just about right between the characters; lots of people think it's focused on Hit Girl when it isn't, it isn't too long (or the appearance as it was enjoyable from beginning to end), from what I'm told by those who have been reading the comics, it's very faithful even though the comic hasn't finished yet, so this film may have it's own ending or a potential continuation (I would like to see what happens in the comic to be honest). The comedy is balanced out throughout the film, even the minor characters have charm, also Nicolas Cage is in another good movie. Stick it on the list against the bad ones.

There are negatives I could say, it's a bit rushed in places, friend who has read the comics says the lapse of time is a bit messed up (it shows a bit as the training part is very brief), but it does a bit of good foreshadowing to pad out characters that are introduced later. Ending is a bit of a cut off. It sort of just ends. Remember when I said a whimsical attempt at telling a morality? It just forgot at the end. But it still gets two film critic thumbs, and a balisong.

Law Abiding Citizen

Spoilers A-hoy!

This film isn't bad per-se, I like to say I liked it because there aren't that many good Gerard Bulter films, and it does starts off pretty well with a good solid premise. But for the purpose of this review, I will rip the *&^% out of it.

Jaime Foxx annoyed me. He's a better actor than this. Gerard Bulter annoyed me. He's is... seriously needing a new agent. He shoul definitely stop it with the bloody romantic comedies. His qualities as an actor are usually dubious unless he becomes half naked, and for some reason he strips completely naked prior his arrest in this film. He appears to frequently half to fully naked in films he appears in (wasn't he asked to be in the Caligula remake?).

The story of this film is that a law abiding citizen's (the main protagonist) house is trespassed by robbers (posh way of saying home invasion) who beat the crap out of him, rape his wife in front of him, and end up killing his wife and child. He survives. One of the criminals does a deal to testify against the other so he will be blamed for the murders and be put on death row while he get released early from prison - even though it was him that committed the heinous crimes. He does this deal with Foxx's character, Nick (from this point you'd just think Nick the Dick because he doesn't ask for Butler's permission, he just tells him). It starts as abasis of a revenge/vigilante film, but there is the twist. Butler's character, Clyde, wants revenge on everyone including the justice system. He sabotages the lethal injection so the guy on death row dies a painful death. He horribly tortures the released criminal from prison who killed his family. From this point he becomes the antagonist. Nick the prosecutor becomes the protagonist but you don't really like him enough because it's Nick the Dick.

When I start thinking about this film from now onwards it's pretty depressing because I thought this film was really good up until this point, although Jaime Foxx should have been a little more approachable. He skipped his daughter's piano recital to watch a criminal be lethally injected with drugs that causes pain anyways. It's just the small part of human nature that if you can't see any visible distress, it's ok even if they are dying... when you see distress it leads to pathos even if it's a criminal. "It was like something out of a horror film." quips the news reporter(? not sure). No, you're not the one strapped to the table put on death row for a crime you did not commit.

And after this scene is the part where Clyde gets to torture the bad guy, yeah, that was something out of a horror film. Anyways, from here it gets sucky because Clyde wants to be in prison so he can kill people from there and not have anyone suspect him because he previously dug his way into prison so he can get out kill someone, go back in again, and do that crappy half smile/sneer in Jaime Foxx's face that only Gerard Butler knows how to do. "I came off as the better actor in this film." sneers/smiles Gerard kindly/menacing to Jaime.

The crappy twist is that Clyde is some black-ops "brain". He's super smart and super rich so he can do crap like construct remote controlled turrets that have anti-tank rockets, kill people while doing a *&^%, and dig his way into prison. You mean nobody has ever tried that? Why are everyone in this film so surprised that anyone would want to do that? And isn't it ridiculously hard? That's some sick engineering feat.

Anyways, here's a trailer of the film:



It becomes more garbage. If I was being in it's defensive, I would say it got confused trying to make the point about Clyde making a stand himself, that the only way to stop him is to kill him and not do a deal with him, as you shouldn't make deals with criminals. If they do something wrong, they should be punished. You could throw in a debate about "what about rehabilitation?" in there, but the film couldn't focus on one thing so no... as he tries to make Nick do deals with him, things hit the fan. And it only to the point where Clyde constructs a bomb to blow up the city hall with all the justice peeps there. I'm going out of sync in the film but this is where they find the tunnel, surprise Clyde, try to make a deal with him, he says, "No dice" (I wish), activates the bomb, and finds the bomb under his bed. Nick could have shot him, but it was more cost effective to blown a large hole in the side of the prison where prisoners could escape. There is so much bollocks in this it makes me cry. The tunnel leads to a industrial estate, but it has Jaime's character outside of the prison wall, walking really slowly... while you see huge a huge explosive ripping out a good chunk of the side wall. I hate it when Hollywood does crap like this. Just to make a visual pastiche with Butler's room slowly enveloping in flames and him doing that half smile/sneer, I don't know if he's pissed or not because he finally got the point or maybe not because he talked like he was upset but he's super smart so... ARFGHGHGHDFGHDHJDHJ

Balls on chin ending. Nick goes to his daughter's piano recital. Facial expression doesn't change. Still think he's a dick.

Genuinely it could have been a good movie, but there is so much suckage in there it comes of as really annoying and pointless when it forgot it originally had a point to make. I enjoyed it though watching with friends. We predicted everything that happened, and shouting at the screen, "WHERE ARE DA POLIZE?!?!" repeatedly. They kept far away, sensibly enough...

It gets a thumb down and an index finger in the nostril.


------------

Now as post post thing (proof read crap) I believe I've stumbled onto how these films are related. I (like to) believe Kick-Ass has come under more scrutiny than Law Abiding Citizen for taking crap into your own hands. Any far right ultra conservative practicing journalists that wishes to criticise Kick-Ass for glorifying vigilante-ism and violence, Law Abiding Citizen tells you the only way to get justice is to go out there and torture someone horribly and kill everyone else that they spoke to for they possibly may have wronged you by inadvertently being their friend. I think it's because they don't like children swearing or some *&^% like that. It's not like a school play of Scarface or something... Kick-Ass is more about doing the right thing than anything else. For that, we should endeavour to do try to not do the right thing as humans we aren't obligated to have a moral duty because we aren't the police.


My next article would be me indirectly talking about Mass Effect in some cultural philosophical way, or a scathing review of some part-time fighting game I hate, like Condemned.

New VF5 Final Showdown vid. Check it!

GOTCHA!

The Worst of 2009

Man, someone else write an article already! I'm keeping this sucker alive. I'm sure Badmash is planning on firing my black ass for being far too pretentious the last couple of articles so I'm gonna take a page from his book.

2009 was the year that gave us greats like Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and Black Dynamite But here are some of my worst experiences of the 2009. Discuss.

1. Best Worst Game: Bionic Commando(360/PS3) Swinging is fun and it has Mr. Steve Blum in ti but they really screwed up on some fundamentals. For one, the shooting sequences tend to be junk food garbage. The good folks at Grin also made Nathan Spencer a whiny bitch. "5 YEERS OF MY LIFE, JOE! YOU SAT BEHIND A DESK!!" This is not the Rad I grew up with. Needs moar sunglasses! Could have been awesome, ended up boring.

2. Worst song of 2009: Poker Face, Lady Gaga is an attention whore.

3. Worst movie on Blu-Ray of 2009: The Spirit, someone give Frank Miller his medicine. Why did I buy this you ask? Never forget, that's why.

4.Best Worst Comic Ever: All-Star Batman and Robin, Frank...medication but meh, Jim Lee is a damn fine artist.

5. Worst comic I read: Megatokyo Vol.5 WHINY PANDERING FRED-CHAN!

6. Least enjoyable movie experience at someone elses home: Push

7. Biggest gripe of 2009: My classes at the college, doin' nothin'

8. Most boring cartoon of 2009: Up...YEAH I SAID IT!

9. Worst TNA moment: Booker T in general

10. Worst DISSIDIA FINAL FANTASY moment: The entire thing

Press X 2 GAEM

Hello everyone, greetings from the Slipstream! Tokaro here to give you my rundown on a little game called Heavy Rain.

Heavy Rain is a game by David Cage of Quantic Dream who made a title called Farenheit or Indigo Prophecy over here.

Quantic Dream is a French developer that specializes in ruining what could make a game beyond the pale. I say thing because of SPOLERS Indigo Prophecy's famous lol mayan robots ending turning potential Game of the Year into Shame of the Year. Now, Heavy Rain is seriously lacking mayan robots but don't worry, it sucks too.

Why does it suck, Tokaro!? Because of some severe gameplay flaws and plot holes. Let me elaberate. Heavy Rain is composed of nothing but Quick Time Events, creating an action packed cinematic feel to the game. You make a mistake and it's all over, you can die and there are multiple endings and...and...it's really lame. First of all, despite the production values of this vide game, they didn't get Native English speaking VA's for the English dialogue, given this is a story driven video game, bad voice acting has a really negative effect on how things play out.

The main gameplay flaws are:

1. When you open a door, you don't do it frame by frame, inching your arm by holding the analog stick forward looks sluggish and takes you out of the game.

2. There are plenty of moments where you are pressing triangle, square, L1, R1, O and SIXAXISing at the same time. I found some of these moments to be downright infuriating given I was juggling the controller to try and get through electrical wires.

3. Walking. Although this is meant to be a down to Earth video game, nobody walks this slowly consistently. I don't expect there to be some kind of roadie run function or anything but I wouldn't mind if the neutral walk was a bit more brisk.

4. The game has points of no action and high action and no in between. You do a mission, get into a fight and have a lot of fun and then you go home and iron your shirt or drink some orange juice. There is no balance between the high-octane moments and the incredibly mundane events. Your only incentive to slog through the mundane events is to GET TO the events where you fight in a junkyard or are beating up some thug who's trying to kill you. The hurdles to get to the enjoyment part of the game are absolutely staggering.

Heavy Rain is that kind of game that every beret wearing, cheese scarfing art**** gamer will put on a pedestal and revere as a brilliant representation of what games should be. Games should not be pre-programmed cutscenes with a sequence of QTE's flashing and mundane activities. Games are meant to be fun and although Heavy Rain had moments of enjoyment in it, they were sandwiched in between absolutely boring moments that made me contemplate death. I do not blame the folks at Quantic Dream for experimenting with the video game formula but to the video game journalists, get off of Heavy Rain's nuts all ready! If this was a movie, it would be turned down in a second. There are glaring plot holes that are never regarded, when they were brought up only 1 hour previous to the next plot point.

SPOILERS MAKE MADISON CRY

• Ethan Mars was in a coma during the Origami Killings, why is he the prime suspect?
• Scott Shelby's mother discloses his identity as the Origami Killer to Madison Paige and she is shocked. Why is she shocked? She never met him, she doesn't know who he is?
• You can read thoughts in this game, so explain this...why wasn't one of Scott Shelby's thoughts "I'm the F*&^ING ORIGAMI KILLER!!" you can't supress thoughts past the concious and the unconcious. It would constantly be in his mind unless he has a split personality like Edward Norton in Fight Club (which he doesn't) or if his identity is between the ego and the id to bring in Freudian theories (which also doesn't make sense because he reveals his indentity to Ethan and Norman during the last sequence)
• Given Shelby is the origami killer, why don't you have the option to let the suicidal mom die in the bathroom? He says that he was pretending to be a detectiveso he could bury evidence that connect him to the killings. I understand that they were trying to hide his indentity but it goes against his own statements later on in the game.
• Why does Madison come on to you!? I mean, it's not even with due cause. She's patching you up for the first time then suddenly, sucking face.
• Norman Jayden is from the future because that kind of virtual construct tech could not exist within the FBI 1 year in the future. The game was trying to be down to earth and then suddenly bam VIRTUAL CONSTRCT! LET'S LIVE ON MARS!!
• Also, there aren't a lot of black people in PHILIDELPHIA!! A city nearly dominated by the African-American population.

This game is a beautiful mess, like a car crash or something. It gets a lot wrong and looks very nice while it's doing it. The visuals are high tier despite some uncanny valley problems where people look lifeless. The music is outstanding but the voice work is not. I played it in french so I could get as far away from NAHMAN JAYDEN and his Boston accent. I enjoyed some parts of Heavy Rain but all and all, it blew. Heavy Rain will forever be regarded as a work of art among the video game journalism crews who had the wool pulled over their eyes.

Get Dragon's Lair instead. It's cheaper and probably longer too.