D.A.M.N. Ep 1 – [REC]

Welcome to my new post series called DAMN.  It stands for Damn Awesome Movie Night.  I’ll be discussing movies I’ve watched, and what I liked/didn’t like about them.

So if you couldn’t tell by my survival horror post, I loove horror.  Real horror that is.  Not some guy running around cutting some stupid teenagers’ heads off.  True horror is a film/game/story with such a powerful atmosphere that your skin crawls, and you are legitimately scared for the main characters.  The viewer should feel like they’re in the setting, and are afraid to even look behind themselves in case there’s some murderer or the like behind them.

The spanish film [REC] does this very well.  It is one of the few films I’ve seen that manages to make a character perspective camera style actually scare the viewer in a creative way, other than the camera just shaking the whole movie.   The camera style is used as a story telling tool, not just a gimmick.  For example, in one scene a little girl turns on the camera when messing around with it, then runs away.  Then the reporter and cameraman discussed what was going on more emotionally then they would when knowingly on camera.

[REC] is about a local news reporter and her cameraman following around some firefighters to show their viewers what an average night is like for them…UNTIL ZOMBIES ATTACK.  They, and the apartment they’re in gets quarantined, which helps the whole film feel extremly claustrophobic.  When the lights went out and they were trying to get the camera to work with people screaming, it was truly terrifying.

My favorite moment in the film was the staircase shot.  If you’ve seen movies such as Shoot Em Up or Sin City, you probably remember the shot from the top of the staircase looking down at the SWAT team running up the stairs.  These have started to bug me, because I’m seeing them more and more often.  But [REC] had a beautiful spin on it, where the camera looks down and sees zombies standing on the stairs.  This scared the shit out of me, because it was when the characters and I realized there was NO escape.

Speaking of, movies where the audience and characters realize something at the same time is always difficult to do, because every person thinks at a different pace.  But when done right, it can be amazing.  [REC] does this several times, where I felt like I was in the apartment complex with the characters, and was scared as hell for them.

Feeling as scared as the characters in movies is more difficult than games and books.  In games, you are IN the game.  You can look around the whole area and go at your own pace.  In books, there is a lot more detail about the characters thoughts, actions and the setting.  However in movies, no matter how well the script is written, you’re still watching it at the directors pace and story telling techniques.  Because of this, film directors need a balance between detail and pace.  If there’s too much detail, the film will be boring, but beautiful.  Andrei Tarkovski seemed to have this problem in his films.  Shots were long, and slow, but he made brilliant films.  Movies like this are called artsy, simply because the average viewer wants things to go faster and have more variety.

Aaand I’ve gone off on a tangent.  Back to what I was saying before, go find [REC].  If you can’t, find the movie Quarantine.  It’s an English remake of the film, and almost as good.

F’ing Awesome Game – Ep 2: Plants vs Zombies

For our second issue of FAG, we’ll be talking about PopCap’s instant classic Plants vs Zombies. Before starting, let’s get the whole ‘popcap’ thing out of the way. Yes, they make lots of casual games. Yes, most of their games are casual shit in game form. Plants vs Zombies breaks their traditional formula, making it a crazy (but fun) way to spend a weekend playing.

The first evidence of PvZ’s uniqness is it’s sense of humor, from the art direction to some of the plant’s names. All the units are clearly designed with attention and love. The zombies are grey, with bulging eyes and hanging limbs, but somehow manage to seem cute. The plants are personified as cute, but weaponized at the same time.

While the art direction in Plants vs Zombies is unique and cartoony, it’s the addicting gameplay that makes it f’ing awesome. It plays as a horizontal tower defense, where the player must block zombies in the lawn using plants to protect the humans. Each plant needs sun power to spawn, which must be harvested from the sun or Sun Flowers. Plants vary from ‘cherry bombs’ which explode on spawning, to ‘pea shooters’ that fire projectiles at zombies, to ‘wall nuts’ that zombies must chew down in order to pass. Yes, zombies eat nuts. Hey, they’re a protein, I don’t see why they wouldn’t!

The adventure mode consists of different stages, each a defense of a different area of the lawn and different time of day. Gameplay changes at night where the player must use mushrooms to fight off the creepier zombies (and by creepy, I mean Thriller-creepy, not Romero-creepy.) Each stage will last the player a couple of hours at most.

Okay, let’s review. Awesome art style? Check. Addicting gameplay? Check. Hilarious references to dead celebrities? Check! If you need any convincing to buy this, go watch this music video made by PopCap linked below.

FAG of the Week – Ep 1: Urban Brawl

So after several months of silence on the blog, I decided to finally try to start a series idea I’ve had for some time now.  It is called F’ing Awesome Game of the Week, or FAG of the Week for short (yeah, I know it’s clever. I’m awesome like that)  Other FAG’ers and I will be posting semi-regular games worthy of mention.  We’ll try to keep the games cheap or free.

The first game I’ll be covering is called Action Doom 2: Urban Brawl.  Urban Brawl presents itself as a pure Sin City homage as soon as the cutscene begins.  The narrative is by a man with a dark and gritty voice, with black and white comic strips with an art style similar to the original Sin City graphic novels.  Hell, even the music sounds like something you’d hear in a film noir mixed with a late 90’s shooter.

When the opening cinematic finishes, the player finds himself inside a burning house and immediately can see the unique art style.  As the player passes through the game he will find about a dozen melee weapons, from a fire extinguisher that freezes baddies, tazers, switch blades, and all sorts of tomfoolery.  Gunplay however is usually unnecessary and even discouraged.  Ammo is extremely rare, so I found myself wasting most of the ammo in the first level.

One thing I noticed was there was no popup on the screen directly telling the player the controls.  Instead, there was a clever fire alarm on the wall that said “press F1 in emergency” that when pressed, would lead the player to the help menu.  It’s hints like these that I wish developers would use instead of forcing both new, and experienced players to go through the exact same process to get into the game.

Urban Brawl combines the classic 90’s shooter formula with a creative narrative, unique art style, and some modern mechanics making it certainly worth the free download from action.mancubus.net

Survival Horror Games – Analyzed

Many developers are introducing co-op survival horror games, like L4D or Killing Floor.  These are NOT survival horror, no matter what the developers say.  They’re a new genre, in my opinion.  I call it a co-op action horror.  Examples would be Killing Floor, Left 4 Dead, and Resident Evil 5.  A survival horror, to me, is psychological creepiness.  The player is meant to feel helpless, alone, and tense.  Devs seem to take the following approaches to survival horror, that if done right, make a great game.   Unfortunately, they are usually done poorly.

1) Undead.  The undead usually are able to scare people because of their fear of death.  The undead have been scaring people since Dracula.  And honestly, it gets boring fast.  In games like Doom or Dead Space, the undead will rise all the time.  It will scare me once or twice.  After that it’s just annoying because I have to spend more ammo.  Which brings me to my next point.

2) Ammo saving.  Many survival horror games force the player to use ammo wisely by keeping it scarce.  Many game developers think this causes a feeling of tension and helplessness.  All it really does for me is annoys me, because I have to hit the enemies over the head til they die.  Or reload to a previous save, and make sure I get a headshot.  The worst case of this I’ve seen was Resident Evil 5.  It called itself a survival horror, but the only survival bit about the game was that it included zombies and limited ammo.  So I had to either run through the game knifing zombies and hoping for ammo, OR invite a friend who had beat the game and had extra ammo.  Which I’m sure many others did.

3) Gore.  Some developers seem to love gore, and think it scares people.  This is a misconception.  It does not scare, only disgusts.  Which causes dread, just because the player does not want to look at it.  But even that feeling wears down after time, when the player adjusts to the images.  The devs must keep the monsters, and atmosphere constantly changing so the player doesn’t get too comfortable with the area, or bored.

4) Atmosphere.  People have an irrational fear of  the dark.  For me, when I’m in a dark room, I feel paranoid that something could be right near me and about to attack me.  Notice the word COULD.  Developers love that word.  It is a major aspect of gameplay design, keeping the player constantly anxious and tense about what COULD happen at any moment.   A good atmosphere must maintain this ‘could’ by balance the number of suprises with the ambience.

5) Pop Ups.  If a game manages to suprise the player, it has the potential to be a great game.  The problem is some developers put in so many suprises that the player constantly suspects something about to happen.  I found that in Dead Space, it almost worked like a cycle.  Go foward a bit.  Zombies pop ot of nowhere.  Shoot zombies.  Go foward some more.  Rinse and repeat.

6) Monster types.  Like I said in the gore section, the game must keep adding new types of monsters or threats.  However, having too many types of monsters will simply annoy the player.  Imagine if a game had 20+ types of monsters, and each had their own weakness.  Sure that would work fine in an RPG, but when the player needs to pause the game and look in a manual to find a weakness it takes the player out of the action..

7) Flow.  Like taking the flow of action out of an action shooter, taking the player out of the ‘could’ is a mistake.  Changing the atmosphere is often welcome, even changing the speed can be a good idea.  Changing the speed can help give the player some time to breath.  If more time is given, it can even start to increase the creepiness level, while the player gets more anxious waiting for the ‘could’.

Okay, now I’ve talked about my rules of survival horror, I’d like to talk about my favorite example of a real survival horror.  Penumbra Overture/Black Plague

Greatness – This is one of my favorite survival horrors.  The ‘could’ never quite faded away.  I remember at one moment, I entered a generator room after a few minutes of peace, and a giant worm came out of the floor and tried eating me.  Another moment that was extremely unexpected was flipping a light switch and seeing ultraviolet ink writing of a madman all over the wall.  It pulled off the ‘could’ extremely well, where I’d feel safe but still cautious about a monster showing up and eating me.

Suckiness – There were very few types of enemies in Penumbra, and all most of them did was make it more difficult to navigate around the already confusing non-linear map.  They forced me  to run past them, or hide behind a box until they walked away.  It started off creepy, but once I realized it was easier to run past, it turned into an annoyance.

Hour of Infamy – Uncharted Drake’s Fortune

An Hour of Infamy – Uncharted Drake’s Fortune

So my new segment, Hour of Infamy, is going to discuss games I play a few hours of, but don’t finish.  Because honestly, I’m too impatient to finish most games I rent.  This first episode is going to be about Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune.  I’m currently about halfway through the game, and am in love with several aspects of it.  However, like all love, it can easily turn to hate in minutes.

My favorite aspect of Uncharted is it’s writing and voice acting.  It seems very Indiana Jones’ish at most times, but more modernized in a not-sucky way.  The voice acting is all excellently done, with the quality you’d find in a Hollywood movie.  Actually the whole style of the game seems like a Hollywood movie.  This could have been bad, if Naughty Dog chose to use bad adventure movie clichés.  However, they managed to make it more of an Indiana Jones homage than a cliché fest.  The characters are quite well-rounded, especially Nathan’s buddy, Sully.  Sully is very similar to Bruce Campbell’s character from the TV series, Burn Notice, so it’s even awesome.

The mixed gameplay of Uncharted kind of scared me when I first heard of it.  The gameplay combines Tomb Raider exploration, and a Gears of War styled combat system.  Half the control scheme switches between these two.  The shooting bits are fun, but also frustrating at times.  There is no zooming in, unless you have a scoped weapon.  But some enemies have laser pointed weapons that will kill you in one shot.  The exploration can be annoying, because usually there is no clear indication of where to go, and occasionally I couldn’t even see ropes or ledges to jump on to.  This may be because I’m colorblind, and many areas of the game are green and brown.  This is another issue.  Almost all of the game, you are either in an old temple, or the rainforest.  Except for one level I’ve reached so far, but I won’t spoil that brilliant bit for you.

So you’re probably wondering now “So is the bad gameplay worth the incredible storyline and dialogue?”  I probably shouldn’t answer that question yet, until I finish the game.  But it is definitely worth a rent, if you can find it.

The Good, the Bad, and the Awesome – E3 2009

The Good!  The bad!  And the AWESOME!  Episode 1 – E3 2009

Tonight, I’m gonna talk about the good, bad, and awesomeness of this year’s E3.

PC
The biggest surprise for me of E3 was Telltale’s announcement of their new Monkey Island series.  They announced they had an announcement coming soon…But I don’t think anyone remembered it.  LucasArts and Telltale are teaming up, to remake the original Secrets of Monkey Island, and make an entire new episodic series based off it.  LucasArts seems to be trying to make not-sucky games this year, as they have also teamed up with Bioware to produce The Old Republic.  Which had an awesome introduction/trailer.  The most aggravating bit of E3 was that L4D2 was announced.  The trailer was cool, and new characters and weapons are sweet…But the fact it is going to be released so soon is quite frustrating.  Many people in the Steam Community point out that Valve is forcing them to pay another $50 for maps that were already promised to them.  I tend to agree, and have joined the L4D2 boycott group.  If you agree with us, I recommend you join.

Microsoft
Microsoft seems to have stolen the show with Project Natal.  Project Natal is a hands free motion sensing thingamajig from Microsoft.  From what I can tell, you move your hands/feet around to interact with the game.  It has a great potential, but I’m having serious doubts to it’s effectiveness.  Natal has a tech demo called Milo. Milo is a program starring a boy who will analyze your facial expressions, listen to what the user says, and responds accordingly.  I saw this when I watched the Microsoft press conference, and couldn’t help but yell “HELL YEAH THAT’S AWESOME!”  Milo is not what I’m most excited for however.  My most anticipated 360 game is Alan Wake.  Alan Wake is a psychological…survival..horror…adventure game.  Finally some actual gameplay was showed.  It looks pretty damn awesome, using a lot of strong lighting and ambience…And monsters!  And dark narratives!  But yeah.  It is definitely made of awesomenessitude.

Nintendo
Nintendo has never been a favorite of mine, but there are a few things that look cool to me.  Wii Motion Plus looks like it has potential.  Red Steel 2 might actually be a good game, if you can believe it!   The Wii is cool and all, but the DS is more important to me.  The new Ace Attorney game looks off the hizook.  And then Professor Layton…I’m hoping it stays the same as the first.  Maybe a few more cut scenes.  And the trailer made it look like it kinda will.

Sony
Uncharted 2 is gonna own.  I’m not going to say anything further on it, other than it looks awesome.  The Sony wand thing..Looks pretty cool, maybe they’ll make some cool games.  Unfortunately I didn’t like the WiiMote for..Well the Wii, so doubt I’ll like this.  Heavy Rain also looks cool, but I’m still on the fence about it.  I usually don’t like reaction cutscenes, but this looks kickass.

Note – If you want to see what I’m talking about, go to gametrailers.com and do a search for whatevs I mention.  Since you were too lazy to watch it on G4, I’m too lazy to give a link.

Movie Tomfoolery, Episode 2.

Shenanigizaton Hour presents…MotN Episode 2!

Tonight we, and by we I mean me, are going to watch Crank.  Crank is a movie from 2006, starring my homeboy Jason Statham.  Since Punisher was no where near badass enough, I figured I’d make up my weekly dose of awesomeness with Crank.  I mean, it’s Jason frigging Statham.  Have you HEARD his voice?  It doesn’t get cooler than that, people.  The reason I chose to watch Crank was because it seemed like a nonstop rush.  Hell, it was designed as a giant rush.  The whole damn movie is J-dizzle trying to get a rush.  Here’s the trailer I’m basing my guesses off.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEXsOqdzYhE

The story seems pretty clear from the trailer.  Hitman does something wrong.  Mafia poisons hitman.  Hitman needs to stay alive to take down bad guys.  Hitman needs adrenaline to do so.  Hitman does badass stuff to get such adrenaline.   I’m guessing lots of bad writing, cliché one-liners, and all that tomfoolery.  The action looks great.  I’m putting money down that there will be a lot of Bourne styled fight scenes, and at least two sweet car chase scenes.  The action on Jasons’s side will be great, because of his accent.  Everyone else…I don’t have high hopes for.  And of course, the music will be high speed techno.

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Okay, so I just finished watching the movie.  And I was right, a lot of it was quite exciting.  I was never really bored.  I was laughing at the over-the-top parts, however.  Which was most of the movie.  The directors did an excellent job at the fight scenes, and the car chase was great.  While Jason was a good choice for his role, his girlfriend…Not so much.  The antagonists however…Wow they were annoying.  But hey, they got killed off (omg spoilerz) so it all worked out.  I found the movie to be great overall, despite the bad acting.  It’s definitely worth the $5 to permanently own on iTunes.

Movie of the Day – Episode 1

So I rented The Punisher off iTunes for ninety nine cents.  Apparently they’ve got 3 movies a week for a dollar
rental.  From what I’ve seen, there’s usually at least one movie worth watching.  So before I watch The Punisher,  I’m going to write a prediction on it’s quality.

Cinematography – Probably going to be average, with a slightly dark color correction.  I bet most of the scenes will take place at night.

Music – Definitely going to be a lot of badass metal.

Action.  I’m betting that it will be a..7/10 for all the explosions and shooting and death and destruction and

mayhem.  And an 8/10 for the badassery.

Acting.  Over the top badassery, for sure.

Writing.  More over the top badassery.

AFTER

So yeah.  Just finished watching, and am quite disapointed.  Not enough shooting, and the close combat just seemed
slapstick.  Some parts were pretty gorey, which was cool I guess… But I don’t plan on renting it again.

Cinematography – Booring.

Music – Not badass enough.  And there was only one real metal song, and that was the credits!

Action – Like I said, the combat was so poor it seemed borderline slapstick at parts.

Acting – The protagonist and antagonist were decent…Everyone else was pretty terrible.

Writing – The comic relief characters were annoying as hell.  The one liners were predictable.