29/June/2011

My dad, a friend and I planned to go see Green Lantern last night, only to be told it had been pulled. How long has the movie been out? I've heard offhand remarks about the movie's crumminess, but I didn't know it was bad enough to be pulled so quick! On the bright side, Transformers: Dark of the Moon was on, and since two out of the three of us are massive Transformers nerds, this was a better option!
As is tradition, I'll be doing this in header format like my reviews of the last two movies. For those of you who want to catch up on my extremely buttery opinions of the first two, see here (2009 movie) and here (Revenge of the Fallen).

The story
Oh snap, the Apollo mission was just a way for the Americans to learn stuff about a crashed Autobot shuttle on the moon! On it was Sentinel Prime, former Autobot leader and his secret technology to transport matter through space and time, and only he knew how to use it. The Autobots are miffed that the humans pilfered some of this equipment, and the Decepticons want to use it to transport Cybertron to Earth so they can use Earth's resources to rebuild it. And antics ensue!
The movie is kind slow-going for the first half, simply because it's all merely set-up for the second half where all the action takes place, and as usual there's a lot of the usual human filler to make this seem more complex than it really is. During the second half... well, the Decepticons pretty much conquer the city! Yeah! The Autobots are exiled to space and the Decepticons totally blow the fuck out of the main city. What happens next?

The Autobots
To its credit, this movie almost tries its best to give all the Autobots something to contribute to the story, no matter how minor. Revenge of the Fallen had a bad problem with introducing guys who got a minor bit of gratuitous screen time just to acknowledge their existence, but did nothing of worth. Like, what did Sideswipe do? Kill the fleeing Decepticon who made no attempt to fight back? Aw yeah, that's totally essential to the overarching storyline. A lot of the new characters still don't get proper introduction, but they're kinda sorta slightly established a bit better than last time. Maybe.
So, who returns? The four surviving Autobots from the first movie are back, along with Sideswipe and Wheelie (more on him in the next paragraph). Bumblebee gets some gratuitous hero moments just to establish he's the kid-appeal character, as do Ironhide and Sideswipe, but Ratchet is kinda ignored; I was almost surprised they dragged Foxworthy back just to record his three-or-less lines of nonessential dialogue.
Big shocker! Ironhide gets killed off! He gets a good fight paired up with Sideswipe against some unnamed Decepticon thugs before he bites the dust. The way he dies is pretty awesome-looking though, if a bit undignified and grim. He dissolves to pieces and his head falls off.

Now, new guys. There's a new guy called "Q", who's basically a kid-friendly scientist type fellow who makes weapons and gadgets for the human allies. He later gets killed and his head falls off.
The Wreckers are basically a trio of rough and tumble guys who, well, rough and tumble. They have big guns that you rarely see in action. They're designed to look like Nascar fan stereotypes, complete with beer guts, beards, baseball caps and the like, but outside of their mildly rowdy nature, they're not too obnoxious - just forgettable. None of them die, surprisingly.
There's a red sports car with whips who's usually seen with Sideswipe. He has a Spanish accent. I don't think his name is ever mentioned. He kind of disappears after the halfway marker.
There's a laptop guy who hangs out with Wheelie, the two forming a crass comic duo, though a bit more toned down than Skids and Mudflap. They do little more than chat with Sam about the fickleness of women early on, but they're vital to taking down enemies forces towards the end, which is rather surprising. Before that they do little more than wander around the streets complaining about being left behind, and I kinda wondered "why is it focusing on these guys when proper action stuff is taking place just a few streets away?" Like, they're okay, but they're not such fantastic comic relief that I need to see them all the time. I can take 'em or leave 'em. It seems implied that they nobly die in a ship crash, though given the tendency for characters to just disappear off-screen, you can hardly tell.
And then there's...

Sentinel Prime
Sentinel Prime is the big guy the story really focuses on, though ... he aligns himself with the Decepticons, in a way. He's still an Autobot, but he believed the war could not be won and sided with the Decepticons to get the power and resources he needs to rebuild Cybertron; he didn't like the arrangement, but his intentions were purely for the sake of Cybertron and the future of the Transformers as a race. Though just because his intentions were good doesn't mean he can't be an asshole; he blasts Ironhide to pieces and wrecks the entire N.E.S.T. base just to emphasise "say hello to my ideology, suckers!" He rags on Optimus for being soft and not having the guts to make big decisions like this one, to enslave the Earth to rebuild Cybertron.

It is a bit of a shame how Sentinel basically becomes a "gwahaha, I'm a villain!" character, because he fills an interesting niche. Revenge of the Fallen had Jetfire, an ancient Decepticon who had no real affiliation with his side anymore, and it could be argued he had ideologies closer to the Autobot's. Sentinel, meanwhile, is an Autobot with rather Decepticon ideologies, what with enslaving the humans and not being able to walk five steps without needlessly wrecking something. He wants only the best for Cybertron and his fellow Transformers, and yearns for them to relive their former glory, no longer having to be scattered around the cosmos and what have you. Mind you, he doesn't care if he has to destroy the civilisations of other planets to achieve this, and he doesn't give a damn about his own subordinates, it seems.

Then Megatron is pissed that he'll be playing second fiddle to Sentinel and kills him, and his head falls off.

Megatron
Yeah, Megatron's back! He's got a really neat truck mode with spikes and a raggedy cloak/cape/hood and stuff! He also spends pretty much the entire movie off-screen just sitting around and doesn't really do much of anything until the aforementioned fight.
I think that's the problem. It's like Megatron isn't relevant anymore. Heck, he's practically forgotten about. Sentinel announcing his alliance with Megatron makes for a real shock moment, but more just because you know the name Megatron always belongs to be a mean son-of-a-gun. It's pretty easy to forget about Megatron until the final act, to be honest. He's almost a non-entity, and when he does show up, he doesn't cast a very imposing image; he's more like a down-and-outer hoping that people still think he's relevant.

It also doesn't help that after being absent for most of the movie and having little screen time, he gets another chance to face Prime one-on-one, and it ends mere seconds afterwards. It's anticlimactic as all hell. I was personally expecting Megatron, after killing Sentinel, to do his old "you have won this day, Prime" shtick and then walk off to fight another day, though given how murderous Optimus is in this continuity, I imagine that wouldn't be in-character for either of them. It's like the whole story revolves around Sentinel siding with the Decepticons, and the writers realised "oh wait, Megatron's still around, isn't he?" So they get him in a fight with Optimus and have his head torn off.

The Decepticons
Since there's a good few hundred Decepticons landing on Earth, it's hard to keep track of them all, and outside of Starscream, none of them get any real character.
Starscream continues to serve as Megatron's toadie, and gets a couple of brief action scenes to himself. Then Sam starts swinging around on his eyeball and his head blows up. I suppose there was no big demand for a big finisher since he hadn't actually done much in the movies proper - he'd had no real serious direct confrontations with the characters, nor was his scheming nature shown much. He was just a bit of a whiny asshole. It still strikes a chord when Starscream, one of the A-lister figures in the franchises, is humiliated and blown up by a couple of people swinging around on his eyeball. I'm serious.
Soundwave is back! He does little of import, having lost his behind-the-scenes satellite-tapping function from the last movie, and just serves as a guy who stands around. Then Bumblebee punches his head off.
It's hard to really say what other Decepticons return, because the models are reused so much you can barely tell, and they have a bad habit of dying en masse. You could argue Barricade returns thanks to there being a black police car robot during the final segment, though he stands around, gets his eyes shot out and then his legs blown up.

New baddies! Again, it's hard to keep track of who's who and who's actually relevant, especially since I hadn't been keeping up with the news of this movie as much as I had with Revenge of the Fallen.
Laserbeak is Soundwave's new minion after Ravage got his spine torn out in the last flick, and he plays a big part in the backstory, as he's assassinating everyone involved in the space program that found the Ark. I, uh, can't remember why, mind you, but he did it. He has a really neat way of transforming into various things, and seeing him unravel into his bird mode is really neat, though the fact he talks is a bit off-putting. Then Sam pulls his head off.
Shockwave was assumed to be one of the big bad guys of this movie, and in a sense he is, but he's got very little relevance to the story. He's more like a video game rival than a true enemy in that he shows up and gives Optimus grief a few times, and really hinders things for our heroes with his really badass gigantic tunnelling robot worm things, but he hasn't any real motivations or anything. He just shows up, looks cool, and unleashes the worms. The worms do steal the show with their sheer wow factor; they're way more impressive than Devastator, and they're just so inhuman - they eat the shit out of everything! Then Optimus cuts the worms heads off and the humans shoot Shockwave to bits when he can't see with a parachute obscuring his optic. I'm trying to figure out if it's a more dignified death than Boba Fett's; is it better to be killed while blind, to be killed by a blind man? (No, please do not go all Expanded Universe on me.)

The humans
Mikaela gets the boot Sam gets a new love interest in Carly, an ex-... uh, Whitehouse person. She serves as love interest and that's about it - she hasn't any street smarts like how to hotwire cars or anything that Mikaela added to the movie. She is the one who convinces Megatron that he's going to become Sentinel's bitch (in that exact wording!), so she's not totally useless from an action movie perspective.
Sam's parents return seemingly just for token scenes - nowhere near as much comedic output as the previous movies, though whether that's a plus or a minus is up to the viewer. I personally enjoyed their antics. Seymour is back as a rich eccentric marketing his fame for saving the world twice, now with a camp bodyguard/personal manager in tow. You know. The usual affair.

I found the humans rather forgettable. Same with a lot of the characters, really. Michael Bay said for this one he was going to tone down the "dumb humour," and he has. This kind of renders a lot of the characters very bland, because the dumb humour was nearly all they had to define themselves. Seymour's still full of dumb humour, but now he just feels like a walking joke - without his role as a secret agent, he doesn't feel like a character anymore. Though, uh, who's concerned? Not me. I'm here for the robots, yo.

There is a guy who was really intriguing, though - I've forgotten his name, but for the sake of easy writing I'll just call him Dennis. Dennis' dad was part of the NASA team who learnt about the Ark, and the Decepticons made a deal to spare him if he sides with them, and he assisted them in killing all the other people affiliated with the program. Dennis thus inherits his dad's company, and his dad's clients, and believes siding with the Decepticons will be the best for humanity - or at least for himself.
It's a story that's been done before in the franchise, but it's nice to see it on the big screen, and he makes for a nice villain for Sam to have a personal agenda with. The fact he's actually in with the Decepticon technology is neat, and the fact he realises that he means nothing to the Decepticons now that they're bombing the city and shit, it's like he's searching for relevance in the crumbling world around him. I'd dare say it's handled better than Sam's personal quest for relevance; he just whines "I want to be relevant!" and so on and because it's Shia LeBouf you're just like "whatever, kid! Go back to Indiana Jones!"

The battles
The first half of the movie has a bit of action here and there, but it kinda goes by without notice; it's more to set the scene for the upcoming story than really drop wow-bombs. once the Decepticons invade and lay waste to the city, that's where things really ramp up - story goes out the window, but they drop big battles and serious eye candy like cluster bombs.
The movie loves really undignified deaths. It is a war, so nobody can die with a warrior's speech and serve as a motivator for their comrades to continue the fight, but it is just a bit unsettling to see big guys like Ironhide, Starscream, Soundwave and even freakin' Megatron all go down with barely a whimper. It's doubly undignified when the movie has a fetish for heads falling off. Some characters get legitimately decapitated, but some of them just have the noggins roll off once they've been shot a bit. Maybe they're all suffering from Cybertonium depletion?

What's really noticeable about the movie is just how bleak it is. I mean, it's still totally a kids film, but it's surprising how much they get away with. Revenge of the Fallen got away with jokes of bad taste (and arguably unintentional racism), but this has pretty much a post-apocolyptic landscape where humans are vaporised to bits on-screen by Decepticons and stuff (it is bloodless, but it is rather disturbing - I think you even see a skull flying from a dissolving human at one point). The robots are torn about callously and casually in very brutal manners. Characters new and old are killed without a hint of remorse. It's the kind of movie kids would probably walk away from a bit upset.

This probably belongs in the story heading, but why not. I do think the ante was upped quite considerably this time, and it helps that the Decepticons have a motive more threatening than just "gather energy". With the city pretty much a smoking heap, humans vaporised left and right, Decepticons blending in across the globe, the Autobots believed to have been exiled to space (they just never got on the rocket in the first place. The masterminds!) and plans to use the humans as slave labour for Cybertron, it really does make you wonder how they'll get out of this one.
By the end of the battle, it feels like a bittersweet victory. The main Decepticons have been destroyed and the rest, without a leader, will likely go into hiding; but many of the Autobots have also been killed, including Optimus Prime's predecessor and mentor, and their home planet of Cybertron was utterly destroyed to prevent it from being warped to Earth. The entire city (I still can't remember what city it's meant to be - it's just the city!) is a smouldering wreck that would take years of work to rebuild; the Autobots would help, surely, but with their planet gone, what tech do they have left? There still exist Decepticons on Earth, even as far as China, and weeding them out will be a struggle. And, yes, although Sam's now happy and the Transformers have saved the Earth a third time, will the human-Autobot relationship still last?
It's a really bleak way to end the series, but personally, I loved it. The end of a war is always messy.

The 3D
My dad has been keen to drag me to another 3D flick for whatever godforsaken reason. He heard that Green Lantern was a really good 3D movie, and that's mostly why he wanted to catch it. This is the second one I've seen after Avatar, and I still don't give a damn. You can't watch it perfectly either - with the glasses you can see the screen decently, but it's too dark to make out details (and in a movie like Transformers, you like to catch all the detail you can); without the glasses it's at a good lighting, but it's blurry half the time. And, once again, you pretty much forget about the 3D by the halfway mark outside of a gratuitous bit here and there like rubble flying past the screen. I think this has convinced us all that 3D just isn't worth it. Took 'em long enough!

I really enjoyed Dark of the Moon. I was almost concerned that I'd just grown up too much to enjoy it, as what humour there was didn't do anything for me. It took quite a while to warm up, and I do think Revenge of the Fallen had some memorable sequences that are hard to top, but I think in the scheme of things, this was a better film. It ties together better and offers a much grander scale of adventure, and seeing things become so bleak really makes the battles and eventual victory so rewarding. I do think the movie loses a bit of its personality in comparison to Revenge, though given how it had giant wrecking ball testicles and whatnot, I think it might be for the best. If you didn't like Revenge, this one might be better, though I'm hardly the one to offer advice. I'm biased as all hell, mang.

25/June/2011

So, I returned Super Mario Galaxy 2 yesterday. I'd gotten around 36 stars and had reached World 4, I think. I enjoyed the game.

Yeah.

In a way, I found it kinda hard to be really enthusiastic about Galaxy 2. It's a fun, very nicely-made game that offers both kid-friendly stages and proper challenges that test your skill and reactions. The controls are simple and concise and easy to pick up and play. It's the kind of decent game that's very easy to take for granted, which in a way is kinda distressing.
Like, some games, even for all their flaws, just have a certain something that makes me spew lovegushing about them at a knot-five rate. Like, Bionic Commando. You can swing around so easily and you can throw people so hard they hit the skybox. It's also got a really dumb way of replaying levels, uncomfortable loading times and feels like it could've been structured better, but since the first point is just so greatly done, it's got raving about it (and although I do need to replay it again to see how it's held up since the, uh, three months since I bought it, I still see it as a decent game). Mario Galaxy 2 is a competently made game that looks like it's got a lot to do, but, well, it's a Mario game, so there's no real surprises.

I do admire how easy it is to just leap into the game - I felt, when starting a fresh file on the first Mario Galaxy a year or two ago, that it was quite slow to really start unlocking more levels. That's also what I hated about Super Mario Sunshine - unlocking new levels was a slow and boring process, and in the end you could barely tell the difference - oh snap, they're all sunny and sandy and shit! Talk about diverse environment themes!
I still hold Super Mario 64 great in that regard - after one level that basically shows you the ropes of the game (and for audiences, uh, in the past, it shows them just how fancy-pants this 3D stuff is and how to get used to the analogue stick) you can unlock two more levels, and then two more stars and you've got a fourth level. it slows down a bit in terms of new levels from there, but right off the bat you've got a nice variety. Super Mario Galaxy 2 was practically throwing new worlds at me even by the time I'd returned it.

I'm wondering if one reason why I'm not as enthusiastic as I could be (and why I haven't been replaying the first game as much) is, well, the controls. I mean, they work near enough perfectly for the game - waggling is a decent enough way of doing actions, and pointing at Star Bits, grabbing onto Pull Stars and so on, the Wii Remote pointer controls are rather vital... but I just think I don't have the patience to play with the Wii Remote and Nunchuk. It's not totally uncomfortable controlling Mario using the Nunchuk stick, but I think I'd just feel more comfortable if I were gripping something a little more tangible, like, y'know, a gamepad. I think that's why I've been barely touching the Wii lately - I just don't have the patience for all this motion control malarkey, I just want two sticks and a dozen buttons strewn across a vaguely-ergonomic piece of plastic to play my games with.

Um, I was meant to be talking about Super Mario Galaxy 2 in today's post, right?

It's a fun game, and I would like to play the game to the end sometime. I admit early in the week I had a sudden biting desire to play the game; I'm talking surprisingly keen to play it, as in I was desperate to rush down to the nearest game shop and pay full price for the thing, just to satisfy my itch for a 3D platforming romp-around. But I think I was just keen to play a cutesy 3D platformer again; all the games I've been playing lately are grim and gritty and brown and it gets a bit tiresome after a while. I'm glad I rented it, but I think I can live without buying the game for a while now. Perfect rental, though. More satisfying than Sonic Colours. At least I returned Mario Galaxy 2 knowing what it was meant to be.

I watched Taken on Thursday. An ex-CIA agent's daughter is kidnapped while on holiday alone in Paris by a ring of prostitute farmers, and he is royally pissed.
So he gets her back.
End of story.

Yep.

No, there's not much story, but in a way, that's what actually makes it interesting. The Bourne movies, for instance, are thrill-a-minute affairs with lots of drama, espionage and face-punching going on. Taken is like the low-fat Bourne; the main character (played by Liam Neeson!) doesn't have any dilemmas over his forgotten past, nor is there any drama over who he's working for or what his goal in life is, or any bullshit, really. He just wants his daughter back, and that's that. He doesn't accept negotiations, he doesn't accept excuses, he doesn't accept the villains giving dramatic monologues during climatic moments - he wants his daughter back.

It's a pretty grim movie, but at the same time, never lingers on or glamorises any of the stuff. Okay, sure, there's a freakin' torture scene where a guy is electrocuted through jagged spikes rammed into his legs, and the whole affair is pretty grim, sure, but it's the kind of movie that I could let my mother watch. The criminal organisation's work isn't lingered on so you can happily tune out just how unpleasant it is, and for all the peeps Neeson pops caps into, it doesn't glamorise it or try and make it seem stylish or anything - it's just a guy doing what he needs to do to get answers, especially when no one else is helping him.

And, in a way, this "tuned out" approach makes the thing seem more personal and more optimistic. He's not looking to stop the entire organisation; no, he's in it just for his daughter. Let someone else take care of the people farmers! It does, however, completely gloss over the mental anguish of the daughter, who was kidnapped, nearly raped, had her best friend killed, and presumably went through all manner of untold emotional suffrage... because whoo, her dad got her singing lessons with her favourite pop star! HAPPY END.
Cynicism aside, it was a very entertaining watch. Anyone who liked Bourne, The Transporter and other such high-octane flicks will like this.

22/June/2011

MY DOG WORKS AT NINTENDO

Hey guys I totally went to some flea market and there was a guy who said he worked at Nintendo and LOOK WHAT I GOT

BIDDING STARTS AT 2K MONIES

[br]

Actually no it's a mislabelled Super Mario Galaxy 2 Xtravision case.

If you can't blame someone, blame Waluigi.

17/June/2011

I watched Mad Max 3: Beyond Thunderdome. I guess when I said I wasn't in a rush to see it, I didn't mean I wouldn't say no to it being suggested!

The first two Mad Max flicks were unified in their rather bleak environments - the first one still had an infrastructure, but if you lived in the bad zones, you were easy pickings for the motorcycle gangs, and although the second one had a rather cosy outpost of people living together comfortably, they were hounded day and night by another motorcycle gang intent of stealing their fuel source. The third one, in theory, is even more bleak - the landscape itself now is now trying to kill you (freakin' quicksand!), and the one real town the film focuses on, Barter Town, is a wretched hive of scum and villainy where most of the people have to shovel pig shit for a living.
But instead, this film has a more optimistic vibe to it, a more colourful and lively atmosphere going on. Yes, Barter Town is a corrupt place you wouldn't want to spend the remaining years of your post-apocalyptic life in, but it comes across as a kinda fun and crazy place. It's like Mos Eisley in Star Wars - yeah, we see some bad eggs there, but wouldn't hanging out there and just observing the day-to-day goings-on be interesting? It also helps that while the outpost from the second movie had some intriguing characters running the place... well, it was just an outpost. Barter Town is a proper town - it's a got a bunch of buildings and locations, it's got an entire underworld ruled by a muscle-bound mute piggybacking a dwarf, and the whole place is run by Tina Turner in a chain mail one-piece.

So, yeah, this isn't just a repeat of the previous movie.

Like the other movies, the first hour basically serves as an exploration of the landscape, and then the real plot is set in motion for the climax. Max goes to Barter Town to do some dirty work for Tina Turner so he can get himself a new set of wheels, but after refusing to kill his opponent due to a flash of humanity, he's gulag'd to the desert outskirts. He's taken in by a group of jungle kids who believe he's a captain of legend who's come to take them to "Tomorrow-Morrow Land" where there's still skyscrapers and bridges and shit. He knows that no such place still exists, but he's willing to help them find a new place to live and rebuild civilisation, but first, they'll need to rescue a couple of people from Barter Town...

I talked about the different vibe to the film, and to be quite frank, the film could very well be presented as a movie for young audiences. Most obviously because of the storyline having an abundance of spunky kids getting up to mischief, but also due to the reduced emphasis on death and violence. Yes, some characters still get killed and there's still a lot of murderous intent going on, but it's simply not as front-and-centre as the other films, and instead presented in a more comedic manner. The climatic train chasing scene is practically a slapstick interpretation of the previous film's climax.
Everything in general just appears more light-hearted - like I said, Barter Town is just a lively place that comes across as more fun than villainous, the film starts with a number of small corny gags, and for a tribe of kids who've had to rough it out in the wilderness ever since the apocalypse, they seem to have it pretty good. When it plays to these strengths, it makes for a really fun ride. Things get a bit spotty once Max gets dropped in the desert, but it's absolutely worth sticking around for the climax.

I'm not sure if it's mentioned in the special features, but I've heard that the film was originally an entirely unrelated movie that focused on the jungle kids (I keep calling them jungle kids even though it's more of a cliff side they reside in, but whatevs), and then when thinking of what character could help them reach the promised land, they thought of Mad Max. I was wondering throughout the film, could it have worked without Mad Max? Besides Max himself and a questionable reappearance of the Gyro Captain (he's got a name now, he no longer has a gyrocopter and it's not clearly implied if he and Max properly remember each other or if it's only from him robbing him at the start of the film - an event where the two don't even get a good look at each other. It doesn't help he has so little to do that you can't even judge from his attitude, personality or actions whether the two are the same. Vexing!), there's otherwise no continuity with the previous films. Even the first two movies had some connections, however superfluous they were.
Admittedly this movie does help tie up Max's personal development, with him becoming more human after his stint in the Thunderdome and encountering the jungle kids. However, one gets the impression if they added a scene or two at the start just to establish what a de-sensitized lone wolf the protagonist is, it could otherwise function well as a standalone film. I mean, I won't deny it took quite a while for me to settle into the different tone of the film.

It's a great film, but I think the sheer contrast between the familiarly-styled Barter Town scenes and the jungle kids plot can make thing shaky - I won't deny I was falling asleep during the whole sequence of Max meeting the jungle kids, and it takes a while to really start warming up again, but like I've said, the climax is so worth it just for how ridiculous it is. It's the kind of film I imagine I would've loved as a kid. I mean, ignoring the fact it's a sequel to two grim and gritty films, I'd say it's got a great level of whimsy and strangeness that'd just appeal to me as a kid. Heck, the scenario is practically begging for some kind of Saturday morning cartoon - Max, the kids and the Gyro Captain travel the post-apocalyptic landscape in search of a new home while Auntie Entity and the Barter Town thugs try and cause mischief. And maybe give them a talking monkey, just for kicks.

16/June/2011

So, uh, after ten months of being a totally lazy mofo (or more precisely, six months of putting it off and then four months trying to burn through it as quickly as possible), the Random Hoo Haas revamp is finished.

What updates have we got after such a long absence? Well, there's a new music page, for starters, where I throw up MP3s of whatever video game music takes my fancy, as well as links to other music hosted on the various Random Hoo Haas sites. Also, a Wario's Woods shrine! It mostly exists just so I can dump those manual scans and music downloads somewhere. Also, the Games I Own, Like & Hate section got a long needed update. There's a whole bunch of new games and a small bunch of new reviews!
Also, hey, remember those blog entries from two years ago where I was translating the work of Otimusya, a Japanese video game humour site? Well, I've finally uploaded some of them! The page explains why I've been sitting on them for so long. The Balloon Fight page has a couple of lines I didn't/couldn't translate, but hopefully it shouldn't be too distracting. Hopefully I can give the Final Fight one a clean-up and get it uploaded soon.

Regarding the other sites, Metal Slug: Missing in Action has some minor unused graphics updates (I think the MS1 and 2 pages are the only ones with proper additions). Oh! My God!! Why'd They Change That? has been reduced to a bunch of random pages shoved at the bottom of the General Writing section. Not only was it rarely updated, but I'd little intention of updating it again - if I have unused content to report, I can either shove it into the miscellaneous page or just make a shrine for it, like I plan to do with Super Princess Peach and perhaps Shock Troopers: 2nd Squad.
The Bomberman Shrine Place has barely been touched during the revamp period, so it'll take a while before it springs back to life, I'm afraid. I've done a lot of work on updating the Puchi Carat shrine, but it's not fully finished, so it'll also have to wait.

Yep, that's it. For ten months of doing nothing, that's what I've got to show for it. From a reader's perspective I certainly can't imagine it was worth the wait, but I'm personally glad I've got this thing off my chest.

I began revamping Random Hoo Haas for a variety of reasons. One was that trying to keep my offline files and the site itself in sync with each other was an awkward task - directories were arranged differently between the two, and files were never really kept track of. Another simpler reason was that after five years of working with Microsoft FrontPage, the HTML was just one big mess. Revamping would give me a chance to sit down and properly organise things the way I want it to be, give me the opportunity to dabble in proper HTML without the crutch of FrontPage, and hey, I could use this opportunity to make things pretty!

Though, uh, there's about 800 or more pages on Random Hoo Haas, and since this would be my first foray into using CSS, it wasn't an easy task. Ultimately, I'm glad I finally got the chance to revamp the site, and I learnt a lot of things along the way; I do wish I could've done more and not just have to leave so many pages exactly as they were originally. But, let's face it, the final stretch of a project is always the toughest, and delaying things just to work on the minor details.

So, what next for Random Hoo Haas? Well, first, I need a drink and a shower.
Second, while I'd like to work more on the site now that it's a bit less of a mess, I would like to spend time on other projects. For all of 2011 so far I've kinda had this revamp on my mind, knowing it had to be done, so it'll be nice to just relax and do things at my own pace without thinking "while I'm farting around doing nothing, I could be making really slow progress on the website." So, no, I'm not in a rush to abandon Random Hoo Haas, but I won't deny it's gonna be ignored a lot lately while I hopefully work on other productive mediums.

Boy, that's a great way of putting people's concerns to rest, isn't it?

So long as somebody finds whatever bollocks I have to ramble about on a day to day basis interesting, I'll still keep up the blog during the site's inactivity, so I won't be pulling a disappearing act or anything. Tomorrow I'll hopefully have a movie ramble that's a bit more interesting than me just tooting my own trumpet for a dozen paragraphs.

11/June/2011

Well, that was an interesting start to the day; being told there's a pigeon in the garage. We had to cover the closed windows with rugs and other nonsense so it knew which of them was actually open, and didn't brain itself when trying to fly out. All's well that ends well.

So, how about that E3, eh?

I haven't been paying attention to it, to be frank. I only got news about it when friends felt the need to share stuff with me. I find it more interesting that way, as if I actually gave a damn, I'd probably be in agony waiting news on games I'm interested in, but since I don't, I can just ignore the entire event and then look up very convenient summaries. Life comes up peaches.

So, the Wii U. Internet hilarity! The name sounds like a Lolcat interpretation of a generic sitcom catchphrase, and the controller is like a Wii Remote, a Classic Controller and an oversized Dreamcast VMU got into a very creative car crash. From a technological viewpoint, the controller really intrigues me - I thought the VMU was a great idea, but the fact it gobbled batteries something fierce and only existed in a slightly awkwardly shaped controller was a bit of a turnoff. Not that this is much better, mind you; the controller looks like a twelve-inch block of plastic. It does not look very ergonomic.
I'll be interested to see what kind of audience Nintendo aims for this time. The stronger technology, higher price and new controller seem like they're trying to remember their old vidya games market, and I kinda get the impression the new controller and higher price will turn off the casual market. Then again, what do I know? I doubt I'll be in any rush to get one, though. My Wii only gets regular usage when I buy a new game, and I haven't touched my DS in donkey's years. If they can get better third-party support, that might step up their game.

Dragon's Crown: A new game by Vanillaware, the peeps behind Odin Sphere and Muramasa: The Demon Blade! I only started playing Muramasa recently; I'll reserve judgment until I sink more hours into it (combat is good, the rest is a bit of a slog), but I love those high-detail 2D graphics, so having them on a HD console sounds brilliant. It looks like a spiritual successor to Capcom's Dungeons & Dragons arcade games, which ain't a bad thing at all.
The character designs are a bit hit-and-miss, though; the exaggerated cartooniness could work if it didn't also try to juggle high-detail realism and generic anime style at the same time. The Fighter and the Elf hit that good sweet spot, but the Dwarf is a bit too outlandish (though still a great design), and the Amazon looks like someone's muscle girl fetish art ripped clean from deviantART without much attempt to make her suitable for animation. The Sorceress is... well, wobbly. I think it's a neat character design, though I am a touch biased. Meanwhile, the Wizard is just a total bore.
It's fantastic artwork, and I like it when Vanillaware steps their character designs outside of stock anime tropes, but it's all down to personal taste. Pity it's only for the PS3. If that new Sony handheld turns out to be worthwhile (ie. homebrew!) then I might seek it out, but, yeah, I guess this is "look, don't touch" for now. Shame.
wobble wobble wobble

Rayman Origins: Well, the gameplay doesn't seem to carry over many elements from the other Rayman games, but hey, I'm not complaining - we're getting another co-op 2D platformer on the market! The visuals are fantastic looking and the very basic controls look intriguing. I do get the impression I'd get tired of looking at Globox's stupid face after mere minutes, though. Am I the only one who thinks he actually looked better in 3D?

Kirby Wii: I was only just informed of this one - it looks good! The Kirby games are always kinda hard to pin down - what makes them appealing? Where does their challenge come from (if any)? What's the replay value? Well, I can say this - anything with co-op, especially 4-player co-op, is just gonna instantly win me over. Also, it's adorable! Sorry folks, but in this modern era of grimacing faces and high-octane blood splattering, cutesy shit like this just whets my whistle.

Sonic Generations: Nope, still don't give a crap about it.

I suppose I could also comment on Luigi's Mansion 2 and that 3DS Mario, but the former looks unnecessary (were people really asking for a sequel?) and the latter is kinda underwhelming, though I guess Super Mario Galaxy does that to you.

08/June/2011

Watched Mad Max 2. Man, am I glad I did.

So, remember the first Mad Max, where there was some degree of civilisation and Max had some kind of goal in life? Well, whoops, civilisation has only thinned out even more and Max is even more of a sullen, wandering soul. After stumbling across a bumbling gyro captain, he's led to an outpost where a small civilisation of people are trying to live a decent life by harvesting fuel for their appliances, but are eternally hounded by bikers with questionable fashion sense. He helps them out only to further his own means, but after his car gets blown the fuck up, he has nothing left to live for, so, hey, he'll help them for free.

The first Mad Max flick wasn't bad, but just never made use of its unique elements as well as it could've done, I felt. It was post-infrastructure, but there was still enough civilisation that the story could've dropped that element and there wouldn't have been much of a difference. It didn't really help that the story was little more than a very long lead-up to Max's revenge story... which lasts all of ten minutes when he unceremoniously just runs his wife's killers over and blows one of them up. This one really takes advantage of the more developed setting and gives it so much more character. The totally barren wasteland is such an alien environment, they could have just dropped a "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away" caption at the start and you wouldn't even have known it was meant to be post-apocalyptic Earth. Okay, maybe the Mack trucks and whatnot would tip you off, but still, it's just a really intriguing and inspiring setting for the story to take place. While I'm making Star Wars references, who knew Brian May was capable of such a grandiose fantasy-adventure style score?

It helps that the supporting cast are a lot more intriguing. The first one only really had Max, his wife, his police buddies and a couple of recurring baddies, and that was it. Outside of the big boss guy who waters his flowers shirtless (and had a terrific dub voice), none of them were very memorable. I'll probably end up forgetting the characters in this movie mere hours afterwards, but the Gyro Captain was a cute and quirky character (who I felt almost channelled elements of Hugh Laurie at times), the bad guys were full of total oddballs, and the people living in the outpost, as little screen time as they got, there was enough interesting people there for one to wonder what their regular everyday life is like. Max himself is admittedly a bit of a nobody, especially with his lack of dialogue, but in a sense having less to say makes him more intriguing. He's a lone wolf prowlin' the wastelands of tomorrow!

The whole time I couldn't help but be amused at making all kinds of Fist of the North Star parallels; I've no idea if the author of the series ever admitted the inspiration, but come on, there's loads o comparisons. Kenshiro's totally kitting out Max's attire, and the evil Lord Humungus dude is probably what Jagi wears when he's in the bath. You got a feral kid (Bat!) who's mute (Linn!) who has a bladed boomerang (Mamiya's bladed yo-yos count, right?). You could be there all day if you wanted to. Admittedly Mad Max is much more interested in the aspect of what's left of yesteryear's technology, whereas Fist of the North Star doesn't really give a crap about that - who cares about guns or bikes or trucks when all the important people are totally immune to them? Ken probably just needs to bulge his bicep and all bikes within a five mile radius just fall over and explode.

It's one of those films that pretty much defines an entire genre, so I'm glad I got around to seeing it eventually. I'd probably say if you're big into visual design and whatnot, it's definitely worth checking out just for the costumes, vehicles and art design alone. Not sure if I'll be in a rush to check out the third one, but of all things, I'm tempted to check out Outlander now. At the very worst it can only be just as bad as the Hokuto no Ken SEGA game, right?

So, RQ87 got himself a new router earlier in the week. And you know what that meant? We could actually directly connect to each other on Xbox Live for the first time ever! No, I'm serious, for about a year and a half (or more!), if we wanted to play an Xbox Live game together, we couldn't just host a game and let the other join - for whatever reason our connections were incompatible, and the moment we directly connected, we'd just drop. Never found an explantion for how or why; I've had a similar problem with trying to play friends on Wii games. Instead we'd need to find a server hosted by someone else, hope that by the time we alert each other there's still enough room for both of us... and if we make it in, we may find out that we're playing with total losers or on a dumb map or something. Or the connection would drop and we'd have to repeat the process.

It was a very depressing experience.

But now, we can just... connect directly! If one of us hosts a game, the other can just hop in! Simple as that! Honest to god, it makes me wonder how the hell we ever settled for such a roundabout method of playing online games together for a year and a half. Not that we were playing together every day, or even every week, but still. We began with some OutRun Online Arcade, a game I've been dying to play online for ages (the multi-player userbase seems to have been rather inactive since the day I got it), and it's kinda different shifting from single-player to multi-player. Alone, you can just avoid whatever courses you don't like, and your main focus is just staying on the track, avoiding the cars and keeping up your speed. Online, the path is predetermined before the race starts, which can be a real nuisance for folks like me who just grind the same tracks over and over to try and get the best record; and now you've got to keep the enemy racer from using your slipstream. I think my attempts to ward RQ87 off just me crash into a wall and fall into last place. Not smart.

We also started Resident Evil 5... a game I bought in November last year, and haven't even touched until now. I'm totally inexperienced with the Resident Evil series - I tried RE4 once and got chainsaw'd very quickly, and I much preferred watching the others, so it was a bit of a shock to just leap straight in with someone to lead the way for me. I, uh, died a lot. I can't have been too incompetent since we completed the first chapter without suffering too badly, but yeah, since it was the first time I'd even played the game I was stumbling around and getting axes in the back a lot. Still, playing the game was pretty fun, and it's got me tempted to give the other games in the series another shot.

We only got playing an hour or two of stuff on Tuesday, but I'm itching for more. It has made us realise how few online games we share, though. There's the two aforementioned, the two Left 4 Dead titles and a couple others, but that's it. Then again, we got plenty of mileage just from those two zombie-fests, so it's not like we need much variety. I mean, we got plenty of entertainment from just the PC version of Halo without much need for diversity. Not proper playing-the-game entertainment, mind you, but just being an asshole in an incredibly broken game is fun enough.

04/June/2011

Site progress: Kinda sorta nearly done! It's mostly just a manner of tying everything together and fixing up the loose ends, though that's probably going to be a bit gruelling. I'm hoping to have to done and uploaded by mid-June, but we'll see what happens. I'm a mite concerned that after nearly a year of supposedly working on this revamp, there probably won't be much in the way of new content besides some prettier layouts. We'll see what happens.

I went to see X-Men: First Class a couple of days ago. I've come to forget a lot of the details, so excuse this horribly mangled rummage of my memory.

I'm pretty unfamiliar with the X-Men movie franchise - I haven't rewatched the first one ever since I saw it in theatres over ten years ago, and although I watched Wolverine Origins, it's more or less a side story about everyone's favourite Canadian. Whatever homages or references this had to the second and third movies (or, heck, anything besides Wolverine), they flew straight over my head.

My brother's seen the whole trilogy, and he recollects them as almost "subdued" superhero movies, and I suppose I agree. It's probably just the sheer bombastic nature of the likes of Iron Man, Thor and Spider-Man that makes it stand out by comparison, but First Class felt quite subdued. About the biggest "wow" moment is Magneto hauling a huge submarine out of the ocean while dangling from a jet; in the middle of a standoff between the American and Russian naval forces, no less. That's kind of it in the way of big ol' eye candy moments, though.

Naturally the main draw is about Xavier and Magneto getting their bromance on. I'm only really familiar with their strange brand of camaraderie through the 90s X-Men cartoon, and even then my familiarity is very vague - I just remember being puzzled why the hell the two of them kept getting stranded in the Savage Land all the time (the episodes were aired out of order on TV, gimme a break!). The relationship is done nicely; the two can be real comrades-in-arms when Magneto isn't being so emotionally driven, though the fact the guy who plays Xavier gives me real David Tennant vibes kinda makes it feel like a fangirl's slash fic at times. Yeah, funny how looking vaguely like someone makes me think of another man's TV show, and then thinking of that other guy's TV show makes me think homosexual relationships. We can all blame Russell T Davies and Doctor Who for that.

The bad guy is Sebastian Shaw (who I've absolutely no familiarity with - sorry!) and his crew of mutants who want to start a third world war so he can begin his mutant uprising. Maggie's tiff with him is that although he essentially unlocked his mutant powers, he did kind of kill his parents in the concentration camps and all. Unfortunately, he's played by Kevin Bacon, and although he does well as a generally manipulating business jerk, he never quite becomes a supervillain. Whether or not this is a bad thing is up to the viewer, but he's no patch on Ian McKellen, that's for sure. Emma Frost does her shtick of femme fatale, but the other two do little more than just stand out, kill dudes occasionally and look spooky. And, personally, the good guy recruits weren't given much time for me to give a damn about them. The only dude I know is Beast, and really, who cares to know what he's like when he's a teen? It doesn't help that just looks a bit ridiculous once he turns blue and furry. The frequent shots of him snarling while he's flying the plane reeeeaaally don't help.

What I thought made the film stand out was it being set during the Cold War. I'm just a big history nerd, and seeing fictional stories wedge themselves into real events always tickles my fancy (for instance, Dark Void was already an engaging enough story, and then they add shape shifting robot lizard aliens from another dimension that turn out to be puppeteering the Nazis!), so the Americans assembling a mutant force against the Russians is just really neato. It doesn't quite compare to Watchmen, personally, but it made it a lot more interesting than it would've been otherwise.

I think I'm just not the right audience for this one. I missed out on half the X-Men movies and I'm not invested enough in the source material to know much about these characters - and if I want to see Magneto and Xavier getting their bromance on, I'm pretty sure the comics have more than enough of that going on. Besides, I'd only be interested in seeing some slashfic action if it had Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen. Never settle for second best. And, heck, if we're just going to make a movie totally tailored to my bizarre and best-left-unspoken fetishes, Mystique should've grown a moustache.

Make it so.

(this is why i shouldn't be writing movie reviews in the middle of the night)

And I suppose that tiny mention of Dark Void should be commented on. I bought the game a couple of weeks ago, and finished it last week. I thought it was a pretty neat game! It takes a while to get warmed up, and the replay value is sadly lacking, but just for the story and atmosphere alone I was hooked for the entire game. Flying around in a jetpack and punching robots in the face didn't hurt either.

Sadly, just as the story looked like it was gearing up for a stupendous final act... the next level is literally the final boss. With no lead-up, build-up or reasonable explanation. And in the ending, one of your allies becomes a baddie, one of them needs sacrificed for the hero to return home, and another, despite saying he'd stick around in the Void, appears on Earth as an attempt at a sequel hook. In a way there's kind of enough stuff wrapped up to make an okay conclusion, but it just feels like a downer, y'know. It does end more gracefully than Bionic Commando since it didn't lose all credibility once you find out what happened to Spencer's wife, but it does end on a similar vibe of "whoops, Capcom's got a deadline! NO MORE GAME FOR YOU."

Mind you, without how many themes and elements the game has got, it'd need a novel just to give them all satisfactory coverage. It's got World War II! The Bermuda Triangle! A parallel dimension full of lost people and technology! Jetpacks! Robots granting humanity technology! Jungles! Futuristic landscapes! Native tribes! Prophecies! Robots working with Nazis! Jetpacks! Robots! Lizard things! Slug things! Jetpacks! Bomber jackets! Jetpacks! The game does have collectible journals (as is all the rage these days) that try and give a slice of life into the many other people lost in the Void, but regarding the main story, I haven't found much that explains that. A touch frustrating.

Still, slapdash conclusion aside, I really enjoyed Dark Void; not perfect by any means, and Bionic Commando left a much better impression on me, but if you think someone needed to take the Turok universe and add more robots and jetpacks, Dark Void excels at the job by leaps and bounds.