RSS
 

Archive for June, 2011

The King’s Speech… Faster!

29 Jun

v0_master

Watched “The King’s Speech” last weekend, and I thought it was a brilliant watch… The mix between drama and humor really pulled me into what I half-expected to be a boring movie. The actors were a great choice, with loads of chemistry between Firth and Rush, which above all (and more important for this story) was believable…

The movie’s story is about George VI (the father of the current Queen of England, for all of those that know squat about monarchies and stuff) and his fight against his stutter… As a member of the Royal Family, he was expected to deliver speeches, and he couldn’t because of his huge speech impediment. Geoffrey Rush plays a specialist in speech defects that helps him overcome (or mitigate, more precisely) his problem… A great story about friendship and fear… Really worthwhile… 10/10

Faster-Movie-Wallpaper-1-678593

Also watched this one… Sometimes is good to stop and see a mindless action movie with no intellectual depth… Unfortunately, this wasn’t it. Although it lacks any kind of intellectual depth, the action scenes were disappointing, to say the least…

This is the standard story of revenge… Guy needs to get revenge on the people that killed his brother, by killing them… Usually I don’t have anything about this kind of narratives, but this one is a yawn-fest… The main character (played by “The Rock”) is 2-dimensional (albeit intense, I’ll give him that), the bad guys are a bunch of wieners and the whole movie just feels sluggish. Don’t waste your time on this one… 4/10

 
No Comments

Posted in Movies

 

Game of Thrones and Falling Skies

27 Jun

As you noticed, I was away for some time, went to Denmark because of work… But, when I came back, I really made up for the lost time watching some TV; done some other stuff, but I’ll save that for future posts…

Game of Thrones Possible Logo

Finished watching the first season of Game of Thrones… Now this is a good series… Heart-wrenching, loads of suspense, a political story that didn’t become boring at any time, brilliant direction and photography… Really great, and something I recommend to everybody… I’ve read the first book 15 years ago or so, and I wasn’t as captivated by it as by the series… Probably will pick them up, after this ends (hopefully in 20 seasons!); can’t wait until next year for season 2! 10/10

 

falling-skies-logo2

The new series produced by Spielberg, I wasn’t expecting much (especially after “War of the Worlds”)… While most of the flaws of “War of the Worlds” are still present (the overbearing concern about “character development”, the 90’s like homage, the passable special effects), it wasn’t as bad as I expected… I actually like the pos-invasion scenario depicted, it’ feels “real”, which is interesting… now let’s see how this develops… For now, I’m curious enough to keep watching… 7/10

 
No Comments

Posted in TV

 

Paul and the Adjustment Bureau

16 Jun

Watched a couple of movies these days:

paul-movie-poster2

I’m a huge fan of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost since Shawn of the Dead and Hot Fuzz… and this one didn’t disappoint… Initially I was expecting an ET-like movie (with swearing, I admit), but I couldn’t be further from the truth… It was loads of fun, with lots of awesome characters (stereotypical, but very well played!).

The story is about two British nerds that go to Comic-Con and decide to tour the US’ UFO hotspots. On their travel, they find a real alien and agree to help him escape the government and get back to his homeworld… But Paul isn’t exactly the typical alien (he’s more of the pot-smoking variety… Smile), and Simon and Nick’s characters aren’t rocket scientists… so, mayhem ensues, blah blah blah…

Definitely worth a watch! 9/10

Paul Trailer

 

The-Adjustment-Bureau-Horizontal-Poster-30-11-10-kc

Based on a story by Philip K. Dick (one of the greatest science fiction authors of all times!), this is a movie with a nice premise, but somewhere along the way something got lost…

This is the story of a impulsive senatorial candidate and a dancer that feel they should be together and a secret organization of non-humans called “The Adjustment Bureau” that thinks they being together is against the “Plan” they have to enforce… Normal romantic plot mixed with some scy-fi, which is kind of cool, but the plot seems unfocused and same-y… Good movie for those lazy Sunday afternoons… 7/10

 
No Comments

Posted in Games

 

Awesome!

09 Jun

Nothing much to show today… Except… AWESOME:

Don’t care about the game, but that intro song is so…. awesome! 🙂

 

The new Silent Hill seems like a return to the origins, with a bit of Alan Wake in it (which is fair enough, since Alan Wake was Silent Hill with a bit of Stephen King in it… 🙂 )…

 
No Comments

Posted in Games

 

More E3…

08 Jun

So, E3 is rolling… nothing too unexpected comming out, but the opening cinematic of “The Old Republic” made me drool like a mad man!

High-volume and full screen people! 🙂 It’s very good… I wish the game was this awesome, but I’m not too hopeful… Bioware’s RPGs have been lacking in the RPG front (although they’re awesome games)…

The other obligatory announcement was the Nintendo Wii U:

To be honest, I don’t know what to think about this one… From one side, it seems like Nintendo is converging its two powerhouses (the Wii and the DS) into a single device… and the HD is already long overdue… and I admit some of the uses present in the video are genius ideas (I could never come up with so many ideas)… but again, it sounds gimmicky… And it seems like it’s going to collide head on with the smartphone/pad market, without the advantages of both these devices (since you have to be near a console to actually use the new controller, while with a smartphone/pad you can go anywhere with it)…

I admit I find it strange that none of the players in the console market as decided to embrace the smartphone concept… You might argue that Sony has done that with the Xperia Play, but that’s just a gimmick designed to sell more games/phones, not a true integration of the two devices…

I guess we’ll have to wait and see who will win the next round of the console war: Nintendo with the Wii U, Microsoft with the Kinect or Sony with the Move… Can’t say who’s gonna win, but I’m sure who will lose if they don’t come up with something better than a Wiimote ripoff! 🙂

 
No Comments

Posted in Games

 

Updates, etc…

07 Jun

First off, I’d like to tell all of you to go on Brain Hex. Brain Hex is a web application that does a series of questions pertaining your gaming habits and gives you a profile… My results:

Your BrainHex Class is Conqueror.
Your BrainHex Sub-Class is Conqueror-Mastermind.

You like defeating impossibly difficult foes, struggling until you eventually achieve victory, and beating other players as well as solving puzzles and devising strategies.

Each BrainHex Class also has an Exception, which describes what you dislike about playing games. Your Exceptions are:
» No Commitment: You dislike being asked to complete everything, preferring to pick and choose which tasks you will attempt, or simply messing around with a game.

Learn more about your classes and exceptions at BrainHex.com.

Your scores for each of the classes in this test were as follows:
Conqueror: 18
Mastermind: 17
Socialiser: 13
Seeker: 12
Survivor: 11
Daredevil: 4
Achiever: -1

In the site, you can also check out the neurobiological explanations behind their research… It’s fun stuff! 😀

 

Secondly, E3 is here, so I thought to share some of the stuff I was more interested in:Halo really doesn’t need an introduction, and even if it isn’t Bungie making this second trilogy, I’m enough of a fan of the series to think this merits some excitement…

 

Although I’m sick and tired of zombie related stuff, this game caught my eye on its first trailer (which I thought it was brilliant)… Let’s see if the game warrants as much atention…

The first one was mind-numbing fun (senseless over-the-top destruction that didn’t feel like a game because there was no challenge, but it was good to waste an hour one from time to time), this one seems to keep that and add an even more ridiculous cliché-based story! Yay for sequels! 😐

Stay tuned for more! 🙂

 
No Comments

Posted in Games

 

Dead Space II and LA Noire

06 Jun

Two more games bite the dust:

I liked the first Dead Space game… Maybe it was because I wasn’t expecting anything special, but it kind of worked for me… The plight of Engineer Isaac was the kind of thing that works in survival horror, and trying to figure out what went wrong on the Ishimura was interesting enough to keep the game going forward…

So, my expectations for Dead Space II were a bit higher… and boy, was I disappointed! 🙂 They tried to flesh out the main character some more (which kind of make me unlike him, it didn’t seem genuine anymore), they were trying too hard to push the “horror” (which kind of loses its edge after the n-th time an enemy jumps out from somewhere, even with the limited supply of ammunition the game has), and towards the end, the game even got lazy by adding indestructible monsters and the “you’ll take damage no matter how well you play” factor…

I can’t say exactly where the game lost me, but finishing it was a chore (specially that idiotic final fight, where you had to work with whatever you had with infinitely spawning enemies)…

The main problem, as I see it, is the fact that the game doesn’t evolve the story, characters and game world… you’re just playing the same game again, but instead of being in the Ishimura (and you’ll be in there, by the way), you’re in a colony/space yard, in the midst of a xenomorph outbreak that “noone could predict”… for how long will we have these uni-dimensional bad guys that always think they can control uncontrollable forces?!

All in all, objectively, it’s not a bad game, it just feels that way due to some lazy design and associating “survival horror” to “you don’t have enough ammo to kill them all”… 6/10

LA Noire is an amazing game at the same time it fails spectacularly… Let me start by saying I love the Noire setting, but I didn’t feel it in LA Noire… For me, “Noire” involves a broken PI (preferably alcoholic) that gets conned by a mysterious woman to take some case in which she’s involved to her eyeballs, while feigning innocence… Maybe I’m reducing a whole genre to its more basic expression, but that was what I wanted to play in LA Noire, not some “straight arrow” cop that was too good at his job and had to be taken down…

Ignoring that pet peeve, this is probably the first game I’ve ever played in the last 10 years that really gives you the feeling of being involved in an investigation, analyzing clues and talking to suspects, trying to call their lies into question, or doubting them until they gave us worthwhile information…

The problem with the game is the cuddling it gives to the players… the game treats the players like morons, and takes away the real use of their investigative brains… This is noticeable when you always want to accuse everyone of lying and then back up from the accusation… the way the suspects react to the accusation gives us a clear clue on if they’re lying or not, and if you decide they’re lying, you just have to choose the correct piece of evidence… if their reaction is off someone telling the truth, you just back out of the accusation and choose another investigation path… The much-talked about facial animation system (which is amazing, by the way – first time I saw throat/larynx movement in facial animation in a game) makes it too easy to tell if the a character is telling the truth or lying… The fact you don’t have many dead end clues doesn’t help to the atmosphere aswell.

Of course, this has been a discussion for a long time: how easy/accessible we want the games to be to our customers, and one that doesn’t have an easy answer… I’d venture that it’s better to fail towards the easy side than towards the hard side, from a commercial perspective…

The action sequences are also terrible, feeling constrained, out of place and simplistic in their approach… no challenges there and it just seems a way to waste time on the way to the next piece of storytelling…

The storyline is very interesting (although not “Noire” enough for me, as I stated above), and most of the graphics are very good (bar the odd pixelated/blurry textures here and there). I say most because the female characters are probably the worse I’ve seen in ages… they all look 100 years old, which is kind of annoying when you’re interviewing a 20-year old wanna-be starlet and it seems like your grandmother… kind of ruins the immersion… Male characters are quite good, on the other hand.

LA Noire could be (and in some level it is) one of the most revolutionary games in the last decade (much more than Heavy Rain, to be honest, which the game has some similarities to), but trying to reach for a wider audience kind of spoiled it for me… But, nowadays, a 20-hour game (with a 65% completion rate) at standard price, it’s a good buy! 🙂 8/10

Next on my game list: Pixel Junk Shooter 2…