Shadow Covenant

Hey all!

First things first – God of War 3 is amazing… I have to review my review… all the faults I pointed out in my early impressions really go away from the middle of the game onward… I’ve finished it in the weekend and it’s the second best game on 2010 so far (only second to Mass Effect 2)… So reviewed scores for it:

God of War 3

• Gameplay: 10/10
• Story: 8/10
• Graphics: 9/10
• Sound: 9/10
• Brutallity and Violence: 10/10
• Overall: 9/10

Next on my playlist: Heavy Rain… again… :\

And since I’m on the topic of games, check out this trailer:

I’m a sucker for graphical adventures, and this one has a visual style and a humor type that appeals to me… Can’t wait to take it for a test drive and see if it’s any good…

Weekends are the time for relaxing and movie watching… besides lots of gaming, of course…

This weekend I saw 3 movies: “2012” (which I missed on the movies), “Solomon Kane” and “In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale”.

First up, 2012… well, as most people on the net probably said, the movie is terrible, but has nice destruction sequences… I didn’t follow any of the movie reviews and such when it hit the theatres, to avoid spoilers, but I’m guessing everyone thought the same… the destruction sequences are massive and very well done (Roland Emerich style), but when I thought you couldn’t top off the wrongness of plots in disaster movies after “The Day After Tomorrow”, Emerich shows us you can always dig deeper! Mutated neutrinos?! Come on, even as a plot basis for a disaster movie, that’s pretty week… oscillating in pseudo science like that, and Mayan predictions (why would a damn stellar allignment activate a neutrino cloud?! Wouldn’t it just be better to get some pseudo-scientific gravity based connondrum?!). But unlike “The Day After Tomorrow”, even the special effects can’t save this train wreck, to be honest… most of the good stuff you already seen on the trailer, and from a certain point onwards, it’s just filler… I’ll give it a 3/10…

Solomon Kane I saw in the cinema, and it was pretty much what was expected… I really like the dark fantasy style of Robert E. Howard, where magic is present but is very subtle, and shows a violent world where the concept of good and evil isn’t clear cut.

Problem with the movie, in my opinion, was the editing… I kept feeling they left out parts of the storyline! Add that an erratic pacing, and you have a movie that is “Could be amazing, but…”.

For example, they set up the main character, Solomon Kane, as a anguished man, trapped between heaven and hell, good and evil, but then seem to forget that part of the character development altogether, so you end up with an action hero that could have been played by Bruce Willis (no insult intended, but most of his action characters seem a bit undimensional, albeit terribly fun!).

So basically, it all comes down to an editing/directing issue, with is a shame, since I’m guessing no sequels will be come out to correct this (I’m predicting disapointing ticket sales, to be honest)… This one is getting a 7/10…

Finally, I was feeling up for a terrible movie on Sunday, so I decided to watch “In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale”, which I bought for 1.5€… Good value for money, if you ask me, considering that I was expecting a way worse movie…

Well, I have to admit I’m biased… I was uber-psyched when the “Dungeon Siege” game came out, only to be terribly disapointed by it… While it didn’t fail in a big way on anything in particular (and from a technical standpoint it was awesome), the pieces didn’t quite add up… The characters were generic, the levelling system was annoying and I just didn’t care enough for anything in the storyline to even finish the game, let alone the expansion…

So I was expecting the same from the movie… which was exactly what I got! Generic characters, cliché settings (oh, wow, he was the king’s son!?!? I didn’t see that one comming… before the start credits!)… But the action sequences are pretty nifty (Jason Statham is awesome!), and even the silly moments (Ninjas?!? Really?!?) aren’t enough to offset what is actually an entertaining movie, and probably the best movie in Uwe Boll’s career (on par with Postal, to be honest). I know, that’s not saying much, but I’ve seen much worse movies and bought full price ticket aswell (“Dungeons and Dragons” anyone?)!

The cast of actors also help the movie a lot, with stars like Burt Reynolds, Jason Statham, Ray Liotta (Can he do any other role besides raving psychotic bad guy?!), John Rhys-Davies, Ron Perlman, Claire Forlani and Kristanna Loken… It’s amazing that Uwe can actually get these people to work on his movies, to be honest… Final score: 5/10

So, this is basically the weekend update… Final report card:

• God of War 3: GET IT NOW! What you still doing here?!
• 2012: Avoid at all costs, just watch the trailer, all the good bits are there
• Solomon Kane: “Could be amazing, but…”
• In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale: It’s terrible, but surprisingly entertaining