"We're like the world's gayest ninjas!"
Lost Planet 2 finished its rental yesterday. I was originally going to write my thoughts on it and ultimately I was finding it hard to make notes, but then I went into town and got the first instalment and two other games as part of a three-for-£20 offer in GAME. I'll largely be talking about the sequel since it's the one I sunk three days into and the other I've barely dipped my toe into it, but heck, why not talk about 'em both and make things confusing?
Well, it's a third-person shooter, and the primary gimmick is that everything runs on Thermal Energy - it refills your life when it's slow, it powers your mechanical suits, it charges up a few gimmick weapons, and it's also the lifeblood of every alien lifeform on the planet. The first game also has it slowly tick down, acting as a means of pressuring you into killing more dudes. Kind of morbid, actually. Lost Planet 2 is split into episodes containing chapters, which in turn can comprise of anything from one to five missions. Basic goal is to run around, shoot dudes, and activate data posts.
I suppose besides the Thermal Energy, the real draw of the series is the ability to commandeer a wide variety of mechanical suits and vehicles, or Vital Suits as the in-game lingo calls them. There's a startling large variety - I had reached Episode 5 of the sequel and I don't think I'd even seen them all, never mind gotten to grips with all their unique quirks. Some are small contraptions that are little more than hovering platforms, while some are hulking, gun-toting, blade-wielding, dash-boosting machines of explosive death. And some carry shotguns. Some of them are just too slow to be much fun, and admittedly the controls of the game are a bit clunky and awkward - Transformers: War For Cybertron had much smoother and fluid controls even when you ignore the whole turning-into-a-car part - but the wide variety of mechs is actually very fun when you get the good ones and can wrap your head around the sometimes confusing controls.
That ties in with an integral issue with Lost Planet 2. It's explicitly a multi-player game. Yes, there is a story-based campaign mode, and yes, you can play it on your own, but even when you are, it's never truly a single-player game. It's about the same as hosting an online server and playing on your own with AI bots filling the other slots. Not only does this mean you can't pause, but it's designed for a multi-player mindset; if the game wants you to figure out where to go or what to do, you should be asking your human allies! What, you want the game to tell you what to do? Man up, son. The only times this really threw me were when getting to grips with a quirky VS, and during the train boss fight, where you're meant to find shells, load them into a cannon, energize the shells, keep the cooling system operational, and then find time to actually shoot the humongous monster chasing your train. Took a bit of time to figure my way around, but I got past it.
The game is structured entirely for multi-player purposes, and in that context, it works very well. I'm sure playing this with three buddies would be a hoot; the levels are large with lots of enemies to fight, and the bosses are enormous, requiring some serious combined firepower to take them down. The problem is that, for the three nights I owned the game, I couldn't find any other freakin' players. I found two rooms for deathmatch, but much like the console versions of Halo, it doesn't start until a certain number of players joins, and when the game's population is so thinned out, an impediment like that kind of discourages people from taking part, I feel. There is an option to play multi-player via system link, but there's no split-screen option at all... which is very disappointing, as the game kinda feels like a shooter version of Phantasy Star Online to me.
I haven't played enough of the first game to get a good idea of what the story is, and the sequel is set ten years after. There's something about a gigantic monster threatening the integrity of the planet and the bad guys plan to use a weapon against it that'll prompt a second ice age, but every couple of episodes you seem to play as a different group of characters, none of whom have any means of identification, so it's kinda hard to keep track. Episode 4 ends with your regular group of marines being sent into space, and just when I thought I was up for some intergalactic ass-kicking, I'm playing as some desert punks trying to steal a vessel that I think belonged to the guys I was playing as. It's an engaging plot, but it seemed determined to put diversions in my way to stop me seeing the end in one rental.
I can't really judge on the first game yet, but the second game has a really awesome aesthetic. Monsters range from humans-sized to train-sized and are incredibly alien, yet incredibly functional; the VS machines have a surprising range of looks when they're mostly there to let you walk faster and shoot stronger; and every human character is decked out in whacked-out, gnarly, Jack Kirby-esque armour of all shapes and sizes. There's a real comic book style to the game, at least in how whimsical and fantastic these landscapes of terror and machines of death can be. Some of the human costumes are a bit ridiculous, and not just because they like to put glowing lines on the player's buttcrack; I don't even know how the characters are meant to see out of those ridiculous helmets, never mind why they have so many prongs jutting out of them for unexplained reasons.
I'll probably rent Lost Planet 2 a second time, though I'm unsure if I would buy it. It's got some great setpieces and environments that make it worth playing just to see the pretty pictures, but the lack of players really sinks the game's potential. If its userbase were as healthy as Left 4 Dead (or, heck, even War For Cybertron when I played it) I think the game would be a lot of fun, but when the game promotes multi-player so much and you've got no one to play it with, it's rather hollow. The first one works better as a single-player game, though whether or not it's a better game waits to be seen.
I also finished off the first series of Being Human. Really, really good. I'm itching to watch it again without having to wait a week between episodes, and I need to get my hands on the second series. George is just adorable.
I had a dream last night that Twilight Sparkle from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic was a playable character in Smash Bros. Brawl.
I wonder if my brain is trying to tell me something.
Sonic Colours made me sad.
Finally got around to covering Resident Bongo on Random Action Hour. It's actually got some good bits, but the rampant repeating of sound effects and voices just gets grating real fast.
So, I rented Super Street Fighter IV about two weeks ago. It took a while to get into, if just because I'm a total scrub and was so used to Marvel vs. Capcom and its newbie-friendly Easy Mode, but after three nights of light playing I had warmed up to it quite nicely. Having no choice but to properly learn the control inputs for moves really encouraged me to learn these characters and their movesets (though I only had the time to spam Hadoukens and Shoryukens as Sakura), and even the really brief story modes had a certain charm to them - I barely know these guys, but the short glimpses of gentleman boxer Dudley talking about roses and drinking tea with boxing gloves on, it was all rather cute. I had picked up the game on a whim, but I thought it was a worthwhile rental. Heck, if the temptation ever crosses me I might even buy it! It's not like it ever kept its original £25 price tag for long.
It left me quite optimistic after returning it, and I thought - why the hell not - let's rent Sonic Colours!
Aheh.
I composed a whole bunch of notes dictating my various whines and complaints, but also the few good points I found while playing the game, but now that I'm trying to slam it all together, I don't know where to start. I'm even thinking I shouldn't bother complaining about the game! I mean, I had the game for three nights, and I barely managed to sink three hours into it. I even just used cheats to unlock all the worlds after an hour of playing, and then just used it to play the Game Land side-quest.
I think my beef with the game (and pretty much all the games since Sonic 06) is that I've no idea what it defines itself as. Everything before that, you could refer to them as "3D platformers" with utmost confidence. What do you refer to Sonic & The Secret Rings as? A shitty waggle game? Colours seems to be a 2D platformer with a lot of 3D segments thrown in for no reason other than just to mix things up a little, but none of them are very deep, and they almost feel like glorified on-rails segments more than anything.
I will say, the 2D platforming is relatively decent, if a little bit clumsy. Sonic has a double jump for some reason, and he's totally incapable of harming enemies with a regular jump - you have to slide or homing attack into everything. Except sometimes he destroys enemies with a regular jump. It seems he's very fussy about when he kills things. The level design often feels like they plucked chunks from New Super Mario Bros. Wii and jammed them into levels from Sonic Rush, and the whole thing kind of jars a lot, especially when you've got the frequent forays into 3D. It's got a good base engine to work with, though - with a bit of polishing it could possibly become something very worthwhile, but in its current package, the game just kind of goes in one ear and comes out the other. It's not like Sonic 4 where you wonder why they even bothered making an engine that can't handle basic momentum.
That's the main problem I felt with Colours - it very rarely felt like an actual game. It was just a bunch of things that happened. You'd be playing these stages where the layout is vast and complex and it dives into all these dynamic camera angles and alternate gameplay segments and so on, and it almost felt like the game was trying too hard to grab your attention. The multiple styles of 3D segments didn't suggest "look at our fun and exciting gameplay modes!", but more "oh, do you not like this mode? What about this one? Or this one? Please leave feedback! We want to look like we know what we're doing!" It felt like a game with a lack of self-confidence.
Ironically, I had the most fun of all playing the Game Land levels, which is basically a side-quest world where you collect the Chaos Emeralds (collect them all and you can play as Super Sonic in every level. Yeah, seriously! It was fun for one level and then I got bored of the entire game.) partially designed as a 2-player mode, but for the most part it's just totally 2D. Very little 3D, very little exploration, very little gimmick. Some levels are entirely 3D and some do almost exclusively require the Wisp powers to complete them (I would've commented on the Wisps earlier if they'd actually made a major contribution to the gameplay, but, uh, not really!), but it's done rather tastefully. It's here that it seems the game finally has an idea of what it wants to be - it doesn't jumble a whole bunch of stuff at you, it just goes, "okay, here's a 2D platform game." And being a big fan of 2D platform games, that's right up my alley. A lot of the level designs are partially recycled from the old games, but it's definitely the most fun I had with the game. In a way it's kind of sad. They give the game some truly mesmerising visuals, they create the Wisp powers and they develop all these fancy alternate-gameplay segments, and then the best part of the game is when they barely even utilise any of those.
Also, the graphics? I'd dare say it's the most beautiful looking Sonic game so far; the screen is always full of vim and colour, oozing with really nice whimsical visuals. Can't praise it enough, those levels really are beautiful, even if they are rather schizophrenic to play. Though, uh, sometimes they're actually far too colourful for their own good, it's hard to tell what's going on - which isn't helped by how in the main levels the camera is zoomed out so far you can barely see Sonic; on a giant frickin' TV, no less. God knows how you'd see the blue bastard on anything less than a 16-inch television. Despite how zoomed out it is, it's still very hard to see what's ahead of you, and this is particularly bad during the 3D segments, as the HUD actually gets in the way of what's incoming, so it's not until it passes the HUD can you realise you're running towards a pit.
I wouldn't know what to conclude with Sonic Colours. I just don't think I'm a real Sonic fan anymore. I haven't properly enjoyed any of the new games for years (I've a bad feeling Shadow the Hedgehog was the last one I legitimately enjoyed - don't laugh!) and I'm just not enthusiastic when there's news of upcoming games. A few guys in the workplace were shitting bricks over the teaser trailer of Sonic Generations (I haven't cared to look online for what the real nerds think - they probably think the eyes aren't black enough or some bollocks like that), but I just don't see what there's to be excited about over a trailer that doesn't even show gameplay footage. I will commend Sonic Colours for having good components that can be salvaged for later games, but whether or not I'll actually touch those new games is a rant for another time.
So, yeah, it wasn't a very satisfactory rental.
And for my personal reference, some waffle on stuff I watched recently.
Pineapple Express: I'd say I'm not a big fan of drug culture movies, but I've only really watched The Big Lebowski and Dude, Where's My Car?, I can't really judge. It's actually pretty good! The fact it slowly changes from a slice-of-life dudes-on-drugs story to a guns-blazing action adventure did good of tiding me over.
Spy Hard: Amusing enough parody of spy flicks starring Leslie Nielsen. Ending seemed to come very abruptly. That's about it.
Kyou Kare Ore Wa!: Hour-long anime about two regular high school students who, after moving to a new neighbourhood, decide to reinvent their lives as punkass delinquents. Cue lots of scenarios involving beating up people using dirty tricks. It's totally forgettable and I'm kinda surprised I stuck with it the whole way through. The subtitles were passable but really lacking in flavour - a good Manga UK style dub might've been able to save it, but as it is it's just fluff.
The Big Bus: Disaster movie parody that came out before Airplane!, this one featuring a nuclear-powered bus that's targeted by an incompetent terrorist duo, though the people on the bus already have enough problems as it is, including a co-driver who suffers blackouts and having a pickup truck get wedged in its side. Some odd pacing at times, but it's a good laugh with daft humour very akin to Airplane!, though there's no crew members shared between the two ("look out! He's got a broken milk carton!"). Ending also seemed to come out of nowhere - I was almost sure it could've gone on for another ten to twenty minutes.
Being Human: Watched the first two episodes of this drama (it's technically a comedy-drama, but the ratio is a bit unbalanced) about a ghost, a vampire and a werewolf living together in a house. It's a lot more engaging than it sounds!
Today's lament: I just lost several days worth of progress trying to get all the collectibles in Bionic Commando because of a crappily written walkthrough. Whoo.
More Resident Evil goodness is happening by Random Action Hour.
How about some more really brief movie reviews of kids films? I caught the CGI film of Astro Boy a couple of days ago. It had decent animation and some surprise voice actors (Nicholas Cage as Dr. Tenma! Donald Sutherland as the evil president! Samuel L. Jackson voices a giant robot for all of three lines!), but it really had nothing to offer no other CGI kids flick couldn't. They got the license to a franchise with nearly fifty years worth of history behind it, and then they just didn't seem to have any grand ambitions with it.
Mind you, my only real familiarity with Astro Boy is through Omega Factor on the Game Boy Advance, so when I think Astro Boy, I think a convoluted plot involving time travel, a bazillion characters, and a heavy emphasis on the rights of robots and the struggle for equality between all sentient life. The film doesn't really feature any of that. In fact, I'm struggling to even remember the plot. Some bollocks about a red and blue core and an angry military guy wanting to run for president, or something? The entire middle act is basically a detour to an entirely different setting with entirely different characters, and although it does become vitally important at the end, I couldn't help but feel it was just the lazy way of having to avoid using Astro Boy-specific material.
That was my main beef, actually. Oh, yeah, play one licensed video game and I act like I'm a knowledgeable mastermind about the franchise! My problem was that there wasn't really anything here that needed Astro Boy. His relationship with Tenma and his kind-hearted nature are explored, but the whole battle-for-robot-rights plot, which I consider a vital part of what makes Astro Boy so intriguing... just isn't there. Oh, sure, there's a comic relief trio of robot revolutionaries, but the entire movie is corny; about the only serious part is Tenma's angst over Toby's death, but even that is partly undermined because ever since Kickass I think Nicholas Cage's voice is inherently hilarious. Every robot suffers a lot of comic violence, which is par for the course in a fluff kids film, but given how Omega Factor makes a big deal out of non-lethally defeating both the anti-robot and anti-human activists, it just sat ill at ease with me.
Osamu Tezuka's got such a recognisable art style that it'd be hard to see it being adapted into a 3D motion picture. It is cute to see the more visually distinctive characters like Tenma, O'Shay and Shunsaku Ban/Mr. Moustachio recreated in 3D, but everything just lacks the flair of the original drawings; it was neat to see Shunsaku make appearances in brief shots of the city that I was hoping he would become vital to the story, but by the time you get a clear shot of him at the end, he just looks rather ugly. All of the humans, despite the cartoony flair, just have an aura of genericness about them, as if they could've been used in any ol' movie, Tezuka-related or not.
The robots are hit the worst by this, as Astro is the only robot lifted from the manga. The only one. That's it. All the other robots, rather than aiming to at least fit in with Osamu's very anime-styled mech designs, just feel like they're lifted from Dreamworks' Robots. That's not exactly a good thing. It's like trying to put Robby the Robot and a Gundam side by side and expecting people to think they belong in the same fictional universe. The robot version of the bad guy in the final battle is admittedly impressive, but it's such a Transformers (movie-verse!) rip-off that it doesn't really count.
So, yeah, the visual direction isn't great. It's not dreadful, but it's just uninspiring. And when the rest of the movie is so forgettable, that can't be good. It's a movie I'd recommend watching only if you've got nothing better to do.
The second part of the Resident Evil coverage is up on Random Action Hour. Get your sandwiches ready!
I watched Up a couple of nights ago. I've a bad habit of seeing commercials for animated films, thinking "I must go and see that sometime in theatres!" ... and then I spend too long thinking about it that by the time I'm ready, it's no longer listed. Same thing happened with The Princess & The Frog. Kinda vexing!
Like all of Pixar's stuff, everyone else on the face of the planet (and probably a few Venusians for that matter) has gone on about how they're great films in better paragraphs than I'm capable of. I could run through my regular review routine, but I'll just focus on the element I admired the most.
They didn't crowbar an aesop down your throat.
Seriously. Yeah, the story had morals, and occasions of mature themes for that matter, but it never felt the need to explain them letter-by-letter for the audience; if you saw it, you got it. This was a serious relief, especially after Wall.E and its entire second half seeming to be nothing but it shouting morals through a megaphone. See, that's the problem with that film - I liked the first half hour, but by the time it reached the space station it was exclaiming its "protect the rainforest!" and "don't be a fat-arse!" messages so loudly that I can't remember anything else about it. I couldn't remember the great animation or character interaction, I can only recall the aesops being thrown in my face like foul-smelling underpants.
Yeah, I'm a bit biased against Wall.E.
But regarding Up, it really is a fantastic film, and I'm really, really glad I watched it. The animation is beautiful, the voice acting is spot-on, and I love how it manages to balance whimsical fantasy with unfortunate reality in a smoothly done package. Until I get watching the rest and re-evaluating my thoughts, I'd definitely consider Up to be my favourite of Pixar's productions.
Today's observation: I think I'm a little too obsessed with Bionic Commando on the 360. I was walking through the forest part yesterday, looking at a railway bridge and wondering why the grapple reticle wasn't showing up.
Today's other observation: For the longest time I thought reticle was spelt "recticle". How are my immature bum jokes going to work now?!
Would you believe that Random Action Hour updated today? Really! And technically it's the first step towards the Random Hoo Haas site revamp! Admittedly it's the crappiest of the revamps because all I've done is rearrange the directories (linking to the ol' "Cartoons/" directory will forward you to the new "rah/" index) and removed a lot of RQ87's stuff. Yeah, that's what you get really excited about. As of this writing there's still a few things to finish uploading, but the real highlight of this update - for me, at least - is that it ties the online and offline files closer together.
If Random Hoo Haas were to violently cyber-splode, I wouldn't be able to make a flawless replacement just by uploading my offline files, as there's a fair few things changed or missing compared to the online one, and vice versa. As of this update, Random Action Hour is totally in sync with its offline files, and as mundane as that sounds, it's a bit of a relief.
This update has meant that I've had to upload every single RAH file all over again - that's over 400mb of stuff. Sorry for killing your bandwidth, FO!
Scarcely amusing anecdote - I was so concerned about the strain on the server of uploading all this stuff again that I was thinking of just getting my own server/domain/whatever so I wouldn't be bothering anyone else. This is what happens when you're comically non-confrontational.
Also, hey, did I mention there's Resident Evil movie coverage? Check it out.