Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Movie Review: The Evil Dead (2013)


When I heard 1981’s The Evil Dead was being remade, I was livid. I put on my Army of Darkness shirt, sought out Internet horror forums for a little bias confirmation -- and it worked. I was ready to oppose any remake of the Sam Raimi classic on the basis that the unique appeal of the low-budget original could never be captured again. The fact that the creators behind that first trip to a cabin in the woods were producing this new version didn’t seem to reduce my level of outrage. After all, so many horror classics have been butchered via modern Hollywood remakes that I had valid reason to doubt Evil Dead would be anything other than just another casualty.

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Movie Review: G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013)


When I was a kid I could play with my action figures for hours, developing simple stories in my head, all in an attempt to make sense of the smashing and gun noises that would accompany the battleground on my bedroom floor. And you know what? It worked.

I didn’t need a great script as long as I was able to give the fun I was having a little bit of foundation. I think the filmmakers behind G.I. Joe: Retaliation could learn a thing or two from childhood me – you need to give all of the explosions some context, but the end product should exist solely to provide the viewer with some entertainment.

Thursday, March 28, 2013

Wii Review - The Croods: Prehistoric Party!


Imagine you’re a developer who has just been tasked with turning a kid’s movie into a video game. You don’t have a whole lot of budget to work with, and you’re likely on some crazy time constraint to get the game finished in time for the film’s release. This is undoubtedly a daunting task; so I never go into a game like The Croods: Prehistoric Party! expecting something brilliant.

But if I could sit down with all the developers of these Wii titles based on animated films, I’d have one question to ask them: Why the hell does it always have to be a mini-game collection?

Ice Age, Madagascar, Toy Story — just to name a few – have all been morphed into mini-game collections, and none of them are particularly good. I will give The Croods some credit for at least attempting to clone one of the greatest mini-game titles of all time, Mario Party – though the end result has substantially less variety and depth.

The Croods distributes its various mini-games in a board game format, similar to what we have seen in the popular Nintendo title. The only difference is that Prehistoric Party! is embarrassingly slow, looks terrible, and doesn’t even scratch the surface of attempting to be creative.

A typical playthrough begins by you walking across a barren landscape that is supposed to act as some sort of menu. The world turns into a board game after you aimlessly move to some arbitrary point, with other locations serving as galleries for in-game content. From there you and your friends will select a Crood, and begin very slowly rolling dice, watching the cube bounce awkwardly off the environment until, finally, your character moves the appropriate amount of spaces – after making some funny quip about their roll, of course.

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Xbox 360 Review: Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance


After the final boss lay dead before my feet, I felt an overwhelming sense of accomplishment that no videogame has ever given me before. My hands were gripping the controller so tight that there was actually some pain in my fingers – a reminder of the well-timed parries and attacks that made my time with Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance a success. 

This is not the stealth-action game that fans of the series are used to. Instead, Rising is a fast-paced, sword-slashing actioner from beginning to end, one that is more of a parody of the Metal Gear franchise than a legitimate entry. Yet, as one of the biggest fans of Metal Gear on the planet, I absolutely loved it.