Saturday, 10 August 2013

The Smurfs 2 : Reviews

Cast:Neil Patrick Harris, Brendan Gleeson, Jayma Mays, Hank Azaria, Katy Perry, Jonathan Winters, Christina Ricci, JB Smoove, George Lopez, Anton Yelchin, John Oliver
Direction: 
Raja Gosnell

Story: The cute-as-a-button Smurfette has been kidnapped by the evil, scheming Gargamel who needs to get the formula for creating 'true blue' Smurfs. While Smurfette soon finds herself suffering from a bit of a crisis herself, it's up to the rest of the Smurfs to rescue her, foil Gargamel's plot and save the day.

Review: While the initial Smurfs flick was set in New York, this one takes a continental turn and shifts the scene to Paris, where the irrepressible Gargamel (a very eager Hank Azaria) needs something called 'Smurf Essence', which he uses as part of his magician's act. So, he sends out one of his Naughties called Vexy ( Christina Ricci) to kidnap Smurfette ( Katy Perry, who fits the role pretty nicely) via an inter-dimensional portal he has opened. He believes that Smurfette is a key ingredient in his quest for world domination. The fact that Smurfette is herself feeling a little blue, so to speak, because the whole village has forgotten her birthday (or so she thinks) doesn't help matters.

The pursuit begins with Papa Smurf ( Jonathan Winters), Clumsy ( Anton Yelchin), Grouchy ( George Lopez) and Vanity ( John Oliver) in hot pursuit. Papa Smurf, the voice of wisdom, uses magical crystals to port into the real world to enlist the help of Patrick Winslow ( Neil Patrick Harris) and his stepfather Victor Doyle ( Brendan Gleeson).

The pace, along with the live action, keeps moving and the script has several witty asides. In an attempt to appeal to a wider audience, there are a few sub-plots too, among them a moralistic take on who really created Smurfette. The rest of the Smurfs also get their 15 minutes of fame and gags. Apart from that, the film's score (Heitor Pereira) adds a non-verbal emotiveness to some of the scenes. Also livening things up a bit is the comic timing in the movie.

All said and done however, while there is nothing disagreeable about this movie, there's nothing very remarkable about it either.

The Conjuring : Reviews

Cast: Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Lili Taylor
Direction: 
James Wan


Story : Carolyn (Lily Taylor) and Roger Perron (Ron Livingston) with their five daughters move into a secluded Rhode Island farmhouse. Strange things start happening in and around the house at night. Turns out, it's not just fear that's playing hide-and-seek with their minds.

Review : Alarmed with the rise in horrific events taking place, Carolyn requests noted Paranormal investigators Ed ( Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine Warren (Vera Farminga) to look into the case. What surfaces will make you think twice before being intrigued by old and abandoned mysterious houses, antiques and musical toys.

Most horror films claim to be 'based on real life incidents'. While they rarely live up to the hype around them, The Conjuring is an exception. The atmosphere build-up begins even before the film does, as a disclaimer is flashed before the opening credits, warning you that you might seek psychological help after watching the movie. The strategy works, as the film can scare the living daylights out of you. While we didn't feel the need to undergo any counselling, unsettling it certainly was.

With haunted houses, creepy cellars, possessed dolls, cold and lonely nights, paranormal occurrences and exorcism, concept-wise, The Conjuring is not earth-shatteringly 'different'. While the setting and story are familiar, it's the no-nonsense execution that makes the difference.

Much to our satisfaction, filmmaker James Wan's (Saw, Insidious) direction defies the done-to-death horror movie cliches that have so far caused most people to disregard the genre. There are no cheap thrills, no over-the-top sound effects, no annoying camera angles (found footage style), overindulgence in gore or visual grossness and no aping horror's cult classic The Exorcist.

Wan does not succumb to sensationalising the story either. It's the subtle and steady build-up of suspense and psychological tension, coupled with sudden spine-chilling scares and dramatic silences that make you go numb with fear. Above all, other than demons, evil spirits, ghosts and darkness, the film has a soul, where you feel for the characters. Not many horror films manage to achieve this.

Performances are understated, yet effective. Vera Farminga plays psychic Lorraine Warren with utmost conviction. Lily Taylor's performance as the vulnerable mother is noteworthy. James Wan pulls all the right strings to create an atmosphere so tense and unnerving that if evil spirits feed on your fear, so does the film.

Note: You may not like the film if you find psychological horror films disturbing.

R.I.P.D. Reviews

Cast: Jeff Bridges, Ryan Reynolds, Kevin Bacon, Mary-Louise Parker
Direction: 
Robert Schwentke

Story : A Boston cop is shot dead, only to have his spirit join the ranks of a police force comprising the deceased. Their job? To capture ghouls who refuse to leave Earth.

Review : About half an hour into R.I.P.D, its ingredients become apparent: Take one part Ghostbusters, throw in a helping of Men In Black, some Van Helsing, add a buddy-cop garnish and what you get is gloop instead of stew.

Nick (Reynolds) and his cop partner Hayes (Bacon) find themselves in a shootout in a tough part of town. Bad cop Hayes fills Nick full of hot lead, and the latter is sucked into a vortex in the sky (not quite a stairway to heaven, this!) to land up in the office of Proctor (Parker) who helms the Rest in Peace Department.

She makes him an offer, telling Nick that their job of capturing spirits is critical because too many of them loitering around on Earth can cause some kind of cosmic imbalance that can prove cataclysmic for humankind. The briefing done, Nick is introduced to his new partner, Roy (Bridges) who grudgingly accepts him. Along the way, they learn about a plot that could lead to Earth's destruction.

There are some fun bits - when the two walk amongst the living, they are visible to humans as an 'avatar'. Roy appears to people as a hot blonde and Nick, an old Oriental dude. An incongruous pairing from which more gags could easily have been extracted.

Ryan's expressions oscillate between angry, incredulous and gobsmacked; it's as if he's wondering what the hell he's doing in such an inert, roughly-scripted movie. Bridges, resembling a gun-slinging Colonel Sanders with a bigger moustache, is his gruff, comic self. His gags save the movie from utter dullsville. On the whole, despite some zippy camera work and the occasional time-slice photography, it's surprising how plain this big budget ($130 million) film looks. By and large, grossly underwhelming for a movie that could have delivered so much more.

Thursday, 1 August 2013

The Great Gatsby – Review

The Great Gatsby

F Scott Fitzgerald did more for Hollywood than it has done for him. After his first stint in California he wrote the pitiless story, "Crazy Sunday", about an alcoholic screenwriter. In the late 30s came the series of insightful comic tales about the ageing movie hack Pat Hobby, and finally The Last Tycoon, the best, least patronising of novels about the movie industry, all the more intriguing for being unfinished. In return, Hollywood paid him handsomely for a while but treated him without respect and made mediocre movies of his books.

So what of this 3D fourth screen version of The Great Gatsby? It is, you might say, a story of three eggs. The mysterious central character is the self-made Jay Gatsby, a millionaire bootlegger who in the summer of 1922 lives at West Egg, the township outside Manhattan on Long Island Sound where the nouveaux riches have built their mansions. Across the bay at East Egg are the grand houses of the old-money people, among them the rich, brutal, Ivy League philistine Tom Buchanan, husband of the southern belle Daisy, whom Gatsby courted as an officer and temporary gentleman in the first world war. After losing her to Buchanan because he was penniless, he now seeks to recapture her. The third egg is Baz Luhrmann's curate's egg of a film, good and bad in parts, but mainly a misconceived venture. Luhrmann is a cheerful vulgarian and his movie suggestive of Proust directed by Michael Winner.

The film's principal figure is not Gatsby but Nick Carraway, a classic unreliable narrator, aged 30 in that summer of 1922, a midwesterner educated at Yale alongside Tom Buchanan and Daisy's second cousin. Nick has taken a cottage next door to Gatsby's mansion while he attempts to establish himself as a stockbroker, and Gatsby uses him as a way of re-engaging with Daisy. Everything we know is mediated by Carraway, and Luhrmann and his co-writer Craig Pearce have had the dubious idea of having Carraway tell the story from a sanatorium as a form of therapy on the advice of a psychiatrist.

He's being treated for alcoholism as Fitzgerald was to be, and significantly the date is 29 December 1929. The roaring 20s and the jazz age are over, Wall Street has crashed, and the story is being presented not as the social diagnosis and prophecy that TS Eliot took it to be in 1925 but as history and judgment. (The 1949 film did something similar by having Carraway and the cynically amoral socialite Jordan Baker look back to the 20s from beside Gatsby's grave.) Words float in the air around the befuddled Nick as he works on his book, and lines from the novel are actually written on the camera lens.

If this wasn't bad enough, Tobey Maguire is miscast or misdirected, playing Nick as gauche, uncomfortable, unsophisticated, childlike – less an involved observer than an intruder. This is a film that tramples on Fitzgerald's exquisite prose, turning the oblique into the crude, the suggestively symbolic into the declaratively monumental, the abstract into the flatly real. It's a pared-down novel where the use of "unrestfully" instead of "restlessly" is important, and where Carraway can speak of Jordan "changing the subject with an urban distaste for the concrete".

Luhrmann has more success with Gatsby, who lurks around the edges the way Harry Lime does in The Third Man, before making his sudden appearance at one of his parties. And Leonardo DiCaprio has some of the fresh, furtive charm of the trainee confidence man trying on suave man-of-the-world roles but regularly revealing the inner decency that, despite his criminal activities, transcends this squalid world of the destructive, thoughtless rich. This is what makes Nick recognise Gatsby as the true upholder of the elusive American Dream and worthy of the final and only tribute he addresses to him: "They're a rotten crowd. You're worth the whole damn bunch put together." Carey Mulligan's sad, weak, characterless Daisy is also fairly successful, more affecting I think (and with a subtler touch of the south) than Mia Farrow in Jack Clayton's otherwise better-judged 1974 Gatsby.

But if Clayton's film was a little too restrained and sensitive, it is the sheer size, overstatement and noise, both visually and aurally, that sinks Luhrmann's picture. An unpleasant drunken gathering in New York at the cramped flat of Tom Buchanan's mistress becomes a lurid orgy, while the principal party at Gatsby's mansion (which seems inspired by the fairytale palace that is Disney's current logo) is, as Nick tells us, a conflation of several such bootleg bacchanals. But it's less something Coppola (who scripted Clayton's film) or Visconti would have contrived than a demented, ludicrously over-choreographed version of the "Beautiful Girls" montage from Stanley Donen's Singin' in the Rain. Equally absurd is the cabaret provided by a chorus of black dancers in a speakeasy behind a corner drugstore, a show worthy of Josephine Baker at the Folies Bergère in 1920s Paris. It's where Nick meets Wolfsheim, Gatsby's middle-aged partner in crime. Wolfsheim, incidentally, has been turned from a Jew into an Indian (played by Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan), a foolish change made presumably to fend off the charge of antisemitism.

Beside these larger blunders of taste and scale, such matters as Nick reading Ulysses while apparently still at Yale and Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue being performed at a Gatsby gathering two years before it was written seem unimportant. But there is one scene that works well, and that's the crucial confrontation between Tom Buchanan and Gatsby in front of Nick, Daisy and Jordan in a suite at the Plaza hotel one hot afternoon. There is tension and depth here. Would that Luhrmann had included the funeral and the meeting between Nick and Gatsby's elderly, working-class father from the book's final chapter.

Tuesday, 30 July 2013

The Iceman : Reviews

The Iceman
                  Cast : Michael Shannon, Winona Ryder,
                            Ray Liotta, Chris Evans

 
Direction : Ariel  Vromen
Story : Can you ever escape who you really are? The film is a crime biopic on hitman Richard Kuklinski, who adored his family, but didn't regret killing over 100 people, for money, out of anger or just to cover up his own crimes!

Movie Review : The film gives a disturbing account of Kuklinski's life from being a porn distributor to becoming one of the most diabolical contract killers in American history. Since he kept his family in the dark, they continued to live off his blood money until he got arrested in 1986 in an undercover operation. How he led a double life all those years - by playing a doting family man and a cold-blooded killer - is what forms the story.

The Iceman is grim, dark and gritty. A certain sense of paranoia engulfs the proceedings, which helps build the psychological tension. Vromen manages to capture the period setting required. The background score is unsettling and does complete justice to the film's creepy theme. Michael Shannon is outstanding as the devilishly smooth deadpan psychopath, as passionate about the wellbeing of his family as about staring at his victims before he brutally murdered them. He gives a solid performance as the soulless, unsmiling man who solely cared for his family and had no qualms about confessing he felt that way, either.

Shannon arrests your attention and sends shivers down your spine with his impeccable portrayal, especially in scenes where he struggles to hide his inner monster from his family. However, the film becomes sluggish after a while as the script relies heavily on Shannon's acting. The story runs out of steam as you sit through a series of generic mafia wars and killings. The scenes start looking repetitive and events monotonous. Fortunately, it all culminates in a gripping climax.

Winona Ryder as Kuklinski's wife and Ray Liotta are effective. Chris Evans and James Franco make special appearances, making you wonder why they did so! The film works as a documentary.

However, it fails to dramatise the character in order to evoke an audience reaction, which is what is usually expected from crime thrillers.

Pacific Rim : Reviews

Pacific Rim
Cast:Burn Gorman, Charlie Day, Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi, Ron Perlman 
Director: Guillermo del Toro

Viewed from one angle - from below, say, as you cower before the Imax screen, your 3-D glasses digging into the bridge of your nose, condensation from your Diet Coke dripping onto your leg - Pacific Rim looks a lot like other movies of its type. Dinosaurish creatures as big as skyscrapers do battle with equally gigantic robots on land and sea, pulverizing familiar cities and churning up geysers of spume. Human characters (some of whom are actually inside the giant robots) bark out catchphrases, spout fake science and express noble sentiments as they fight to save the planet. More than two hours of your life elapse before they do.

So consider yourself warned. If you walk in expecting subtlety, or even novelty, you may find yourself more tormented than entertained. But Pacific Rim is also a reminder - either just in time or much too late - that this kind of movie can and should be fun. Some of those catchphrases are mildly clever. The lab coat mumbo-jumbo is amusing. The noble sentiments touch sweet chords. And who does not delight in seeing a robot punch a dinosaur every now and then - or pretty much constantly for two hours?

The director, Guillermo del Toro (who wrote the script with Travis Beacham), is an unabashed genre enthusiast and a feverish inventor of fantastical worlds, enchanted by the visual and symbolic power of monsters and intoxicated by his own imagination. It is true that he has employed that imagination to more memorable effect in other movies, notably the wonderful Hellboy pictures and the shattering Spanish Civil War horror-allegories Pan’s Labyrinth and The Devil’s Backbone. Admirers of those films may find this one crude and overscale by comparison. Still, Pacific Rim, with its carefree blend of silliness and solemnity, is clearly the product of an ingenious and playful pop sensibility.

“But Gipsy is analog!” This exclamation, though not immediately intelligible out of context (or in it, for that matter), is in some ways the key to the movie. A bit of explanation is in order, though I’m afraid it will not be as exhaustive or as breathless as the voice-over narration that begins the movie or the expository dialogue that pops up throughout. Gipsy is a Jaeger, one of the enormous metal bipeds built to fight off the Kaiju, horrible creatures who have popped up through the bottom of the Pacific Ocean via a portal to their native dimension.

Still with me? The Kaiju are, as alien invaders tend to be, quite hostile. They are also diabolically clever, evolving quickly in response to military attempts to defeat them. After a long war of attrition (dramatized in a precredit chunk that is almost a movie in itself), only a handful of Jaegers remain, concentrated in Hong Kong for a last stand against the enemy. Commanded by the wondrously named Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba), the Jaeger pilots - who must work in pairs assisted by technology that links their brains - are a motley global crew. Our attention is particularly focused on Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam) and Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), who seem to have especially traumatic experiences with Kaiju in their pasts.

There is also an Australian father-son team (Max Martini and Rob Kazinsky) - Raleigh and the son, who are hard to tell apart, trade a few punches at one point - and a duo of manic, mismatched scientists (Charlie Day and Burn Gorman) for comic relief. Hellboy himself (that is, Ron Perlman) shows up as a local underworld figure, doing more for the film’s attitude than for its plot. Wearing dark glasses and metal-toed shoes and spouting Runyonesque gangster gibberish, he reminds you that Pacific Rim is, more than anything else, a cartoon.

Which brings me back to the analog identity of Gipsy, which is able to keep fighting when some bad Kaiju mojo shuts down the fancy digital Jaeger. Pacific Rim is loaded with computer-generated imagery, but its soul is proudly mechanical. Its off-kilter sense of proportion harks back to the inspired models and stop-motion techniques of the late special-effects maestro Ray Harryhausen. Even in 3-D (which does not add much of interest), the images are composed of bright tones and blocky shapes, like old comic-book panels. And this future, for all the talk of “neural drift” and dimensional wormholes, is a world of tubes and rivets and pistons. Jules Verne and HG Wells would appreciate it.

The pleasures of Pacific Rim, in other words, are somewhat nostalgic, and maybe also regressive. This in itself is hardly unusual: Most of the movies released by major studios from May to September cater to the childish impulses of the audience. But they also often aspire to be more than juvenile, puffing themselves up with money and fuzzy, heavy themes. Sometimes they succeed and find a measure of real grandeur. This summer, though, has so far largely been a parade of joyless bombast. In these circumstances del Toro’s exuberant nonsense comes as a relief.

PRODUCTION NOTES: PACIFIC RIM

Directed by Guillermo del Toro; written by del Toro and Travis Beacham; director of photography, Guillermo Navarro; edited by Peter Amundson and John Gilroy; music by Ramin Djawadi; production design by Andrew Neskoromny and Carol Spier; costumes by Kate Hawley; visual effects supervisors, John Knoll and James E. Price; produced by del Toro, Thomas Tull, Jon Jashni and Mary Parent; released by Warner Brothers Pictures and Legendary Pictures. Running time: 2 hours, 11 minutes. With: Charlie Hunnam (Raleigh Becket), Idris Elba (Stacker Pentecost), Rinko Kikuchi (Mako Mori), Charlie Day (Dr. Newton Geiszler), Rob Kazinsky Chuck Hansen), Max Martini Herc Hansen), Ron Perlman (Hannibal Chau), Clifton Collins Jr. (Ops Tendo Choi) and Burn Gorman (Gottlieb). Pacific Rim is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). The usual wanton, carefully edited slaughter of untold millions, and a lot of Kaiju blood.

Monday, 29 July 2013

The Wolverine : Review

The Wolverine

Loosely based—very loosely based—on the early story arc from Chris Claremont and Frank Miller’s eponymous comic, The Wolverine had several strong advantages going for it before 20th Century FOX settled on a director: one of Marvel’s most popular and enduring mutants, the return of Hugh Jackman for a sixth time in a role he owns, and one of the richer story arcs tied to the character’s many decades of adventures from the page panels. (Plus, it couldn’t possibly be worse than X-Men Origins: Wolverine.) As much as director James Mangold’s cinematic interpretation had going for it prior to pre-production, it’s a pity it only seldom succeeds—largely due to the decisions made way back before Darren Aronofsky was attached to helm. 

Taking place some number of years after the fallout from the events of 2006’s bald-faced lie of a movie title X-Men: The Last Stand, audiences find Logan (Jackman) in self-imposed exile, guilt-stricken from the death of Jean Grey (Famke Janssen, haunting and cock-teasing him in his dreams). He’s only pulled back into civilization due to his need to avenge the death of a Pleistocene-sized bear, illegally killed by that most dastardly of Hollywood stock character—the Mean Redneck. (Though, honestly, given how bad the ursine CGI was, its death probably qualified as a mercy killing.) Arriving in time to help the invincible superhero beat up a bar full of hapless plaid-clads is mysterious Japanese fighter/emissary Yukio (Ria Fukushima). Her employer, Yashida (Hal Yamanouchi), happens to be a very powerful CEO, whom Logan rescued from the atomic blast in Hiroshima 60-odd years ago. Yashida is nearing the end of his days and insists on paying his life’s debt to Logan—by relieving the superhero of his immortality. 

Though not part of the original comic, it’s nevertheless an intriguing element to explore with the character—a tragic Wagner-esque caveat to the power that makes him otherwise fearless. Between this classic theme and the dependable fish-out-of-water tale (the Westerner in Japan), there’s an adamantium-coated skeleton of a script here, but it’s so fitfully delivered that it’s difficult to stay interested between the Yakuza-dicing set pieces. Despite a scant number of intimate moments where the protagonist is wearing his shirt, The Wolverine, even at 126 minutes, feels rushed. It’s as though Mangold himself became exhausted knowing he had to reach the Big Final Action Sequence (BFAS). (If this particular 10 minutes of BFAS feels eye-rollingly familiar, it’s because the audience has already seen it in virtually every other superhero film of the last five years.) 

But beyond the aforementioned advantages this film enjoyed at the outset, Mangold deserves credit for exercising some restraint within a shared universe populated with over 50 years of established science fiction and magic. The fan-servicing cameos are kept to a bare minimum, and his lens never strays far from Jackman. This particular compliment might read as faint praise, but compared to the mutant-a-thon of the last film, it’s downright refreshing: Gavin Hood’s supposedly Logan-centric film tossed wave after wave of distraction in the form of Sabretooth, Silver Fox, Maverick, Deadpool, Wraith, Gambit, Cyclops, the Blob, etc.—as well as an additional truckload on non-superpowered cast members—making its title feel at times like the most Wolverine-flavored aspect of the entire affair. 

And although it barely merits mention at this point, given his now half-dozen (with another underway!) appearances as Wolverine, Jackman again proves why there’s no passing the baton to another actor while he’s still willing and able to play the role. As far as comic book film adaptations go, only Robert Downey Jr. has trumped Jackman for effective interpretation of a heroic role. Whereas Downey Jr. transformed Tony Stark from a somber, morose alcoholic to a breezy, sarcastic, high-functioning alcoholic, Jackman’s Logan has come a long way from rage-filled feral scrapper to a man who wears a scowl as a mask to hide centuries of suffering. In both cases, it’s difficult to argue the makeover doesn’t make for a better silver screen incarnation. 

As far as the other cast, the performances service the proceedings well—particularly Fukushima as the Comic Con Booth Babe siren, who goes all-in on the high-flying action. And, hell—go ahead and give Mangold and the studio another point for actually casting primarily Japanese actors in a film set mainly in Japan. Taken as a whole, The Wolverine is nearly as hit-and-miss as the rest of Mangold’s filmography: it ain’t Copland or his first-rate remake of 3:10 to Yuma, but nor is it Knight and Day or Kate & Leopold. However, given the enviable headstart this movie had at its greenlight, viewers may be disappointed they couldn’t do better than two steps forward, one step back.

Sunday, 28 July 2013

Assassin's Creed 3: Liberation Review

Similar to her Assassin’s Creed 3 counterpart, Aveline de Grandpré, star of Ubisoft Sofia’s Assassin’s Creed 3: Liberation and first female lead to appear in an AC title, is a hero torn between conflicting and changing worlds. A half-white/half-African America free woman living in late 18th century, on-the-brink-of-independence America would be a riveting and compelling enough character on her own, but add in the overarching AC mythos of Assassins vs. Templars, and things get even more complicated.

Assassin’s Creed 3: Liberation’s primary function is to provide Vita owners the chance to feed their AC lust when they aren’t around their consoles/PCs. As the events of the game are 99 percent unrelated to the events of AC3, Liberation is very much its own experience. So not only will you not gain any significant insight into the events of AC3, but there’s little to nothing revealed in terms of the overall AC universe, with the exception of the game’s premise, which is rather clever if, sadly, underdeveloped.

Instead of assuming the role of Desmond Miles and living through the memories of his ancestors, the player is meant to be someone who has purchased Abstergo Industries’ new personal Animus device, and is now reliving Aveline’s life. As you discover over the course of the game, Abstergo (aka the Templars) has tweaked Aveline’s story to paint the assassin’s in a less than favorable light. Similar to the appearance of Subject 16 in previous AC games, a rogue agent named Citizen E crops up at various points—after you have stumbled across him in your journeys since he isn’t marked on your mini-map--to give you an unedited look at certain key moments in the story.

I’ve always loved this sort of “pulling back the curtain” idea, but Liberation doesn’t follow through on it enough, which is a shame, because as it stands now, it just feels like an incomplete thought. It also doesn’t help that these “reveals” don’t do much to clarify the often confusing story, which in turn mitigates a lot of the dramatic oomph they perhaps were meant to pack.

Assassin's Creed 3

In action, Aveline moves fluidly up and across buildings, and unleashes carefully choreographed attacks capable of killing multiple enemies with just a few simple button taps. Performing these vicious takedowns is made even easier thanks to the new “mark and execute-ish”, multi-kill feature which lets you freeze the action and tap on up to four enemies in the heat of battle and automatically dispose of them in worry-free, cinematic fashion). The combat never really reaches the point where you feel like you need this kind of assistance, but it’s quite a sight if you remember to use it.

Liberation’s other unique gameplay feature—Aveline’s ability to don three unique disguises--ties directly into the game’s overarching themes of identity and empowerment. These outfits aren’t simply cosmetic (and each of the actually changes her walking animations, which is a great touch), as each affords Aveline unique abilities. So when dressed in her finest dressing gown, she can’t sprint or climb, but she does carry a dart-shooting parasol, and she’s able to charm targets, which lets her lead them to secluded areas for quiet kills. Her slave persona lets her blend in with servants and workers, carry crates, and even start riots by calling on the help of fellow slaves. She also has full climbing and running abilities, but she’s limited to small weapons in combat. When in full assassin’s attire, all of her abilities are available.

Assassin's Creed 3


There are several missions where you are forced to use specific outfits, and while it can be frustrating to have to walk a long way to get to a mission checkpoint because your outfit doesn’t “allow” you to run, I actually found the use of the outfits to be quite brilliant, especially when I realized just how “liberating” it was to be able to ditch the dress clothes and get back to my building-climbing ways in my proper assassin’s duds; like how I imagine Superman must feel when he enters a phone booth.

Speaking of Aveline’s physical prowess, she sports many of the same traversal and combat maneuvers as Connor. But while the gameplay comes very close to matching that of AC3’s, all of Aveline’s movements make it look and feel like she’s moving underwater. This sort of smooth delay is jarring at first, but after a while you sort of get used to it, even though it never really stops looking a bit odd. More than anything this just highlights one of Liberation’s more unfortunate running themes, namely the Vita’s limitations bumping up against the ambitions of the Ubisoft Sofia team.

In addition to Aveline’s heavy-yet-floaty movements, I came across a healthy number of bugs and glitches throughout my 10-hour-ish playthrough. There were numerous instances of guards materializing out of thin air despite having been killed seconds before, the screen going completely black (with the exception of the hud) after exiting dress shops, and I even encountered one game-breaking bug during one of the side quests that eventually ended up working itself out for reasons unknown after more than a dozen attempts.

Assassin's Creed 3

One of the most confusing and basically unplayable features is a mini-game of sorts that requires you to hold up the Vita’s rear camera to a light to reveal the contents of various letters found throughout the story and a few side quests (including the one that broke my game). The problem is there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to being successful. I held the camera up to a blistering white light with zero results and then rested the Vita on a desk, completely covering the camera, and it worked. Since you can’t progress until the letters are read, these instances bring the game to a grinding halt.

Should you find yourself needing a break from the single-player story, Liberation also features a management-style multiplayer mode that finds you fighting for control points spread out across the globe. Aligning yourself with either the Assassin’s or Templars, you pit your squadmates against rival agents in a purely numbers-based showdown. Once you use an agent, you have to wait 30 minutes (at least at first; not sure if there’s an option later to reduce cool down time) before you use them again, meaning that a lot of time early on is actually spent waiting to be able to play, which will most likely discourage all but the most diehard of the diehard AC fans out there.

Assassin's Creed 3

Assassin’s Creed 3: Liberation, like its protagonist, is torn between worlds. On the one hand, it’s very much its own beast, with unique gameplay and thematic elements that separate it from other AC titles. On the other hand, it tries to maintain the core AC experience, oftentimes at the expense of performance and stability, and while it largely succeeds in this regard, the overall result is a game caught in the middle of the franchise’s past and future. If you have a Vita, Liberation is a worthy addition to your library, but, in keeping with the “trapped between worlds” theme, this is most likely as much a comment on the current slate of Vita games as it is an endorsement of Liberation itself.

Sunday, 7 July 2013

Mortal Kombat Complete Edition (2013) PC Game

Mortal Kombat Complete Edition

Release Name: Mortal_Kombat_Komplete_Edition-FLT | Publisher: Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment | Developer: NetherRealm Studios | Genre: Action | Date: July 4 2013 | Platform: PC | LAnguage: EN | Size: 9.35 GB


Description: 
After centuries of Mortal Kombat, Emperor Shao Kahn has finally defeated Raiden and his allies. Faced with extinction, Raiden has one last chance to save Earthrealm. To undo the Emperor’s victory, he must strike Shao Kahn where he is vulnerable…the Past. Driven by an all new graphics engine, the fan favorite series is back and presented in more gory detail than ever before. Mortal Kombat (known as Mortal Kombat 9 by the fans) introduces a number of game-play features including tag team and the deepest story mode of any fighting game. Players can choose from an extensive lineup of the game’s iconic warriors and challenge their friends in traditional 1 vs. 1 matches, or take on several new game modes. Introducing a number of game modes as well as an online experience, Mortal Kombat allows up to 4 players can battle “tag-team”- 2 players can team up in the new “Co-op Arcade Mode” or compete against another team online. The pumped-up Komplete Edition of this blockbuster fighter includes a variety of add-on packs, including four additional characters and 15 bonus character skins.

Features
Mature Presentation — Fatalities make a triumphant return to their original violent form as Mortal Kombat gives its fans what they’ve been demanding. Graphic details, never before possible are presented with the most sophisticated graphics engine in MK history. All New Game Play — By returning to its classic 2D fighting plane, mature presentation, and up to 4 player tag-team kombat; Mortal Kombat introduces an all new fighting mechanic that’s both accessible and provides the depth that fighting game players look for. Deep Story Mode — Mortal Kombat offers the deepest story mode of any fighting game. Players are taken back to the original Mortal Kombat tournament where they try to alter the events of the past in an attempt to save the future. Graphics & technology — Characters, environments and fatalities have never been presented with as much gory detail as in this next generation Mortal Kombat. From internal organs to the most “realistic” blood effects, Kombat has never looked this good. New Game Modes — In addition to an enhanced online feature set, Mortal Kombat introduces Co-op arcade mode amongst its many cutting-edge gameplay modes.

Minimum Requirement-
OS: (32-bit) Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 CPU: Intel Core Duo, 2.4 GHz / AMD Athlon X2, 2.8 GHz Memory: 2 GB Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS / AMD Radeon 3850 DirectX: DX 10 Windows XP and DirectX® 9.0c and below not supported.


Mortal Kombat Complete Edition

Mortal Kombat Complete Edition

Mortal Kombat Complete Edition

Saturday, 29 June 2013

Disney Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two Review - Xbox 360

Nobody knew quite what to make of Disney Epic Mickey when its strange and unusual concept art first hit the internet years ago. Upon release, Junction Point’s compelling exploration of lost and forgotten cartoon characters inhabiting a dark reflection of Disneyland called Wasteland suddenly being rediscovered by the most famous cartoon character of all time was one of our favorite games of 2010. Thankfully, Disney saw fit to greenlight a sequel, this time on all console platforms, and Disney Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two continues what will hopefully be a long series of fresh takes on familiar material.

Musical Therapy

The Mad Doctor, a villain from the first game, has returned to Wasteland. He has had an apparent change of heart and a newfound tendency to turn everything into a musical number, which Oswald and his friends amusingly find very strange. Oswald believes the doctor deserves a second chance, which is a major theme throughout the game, and possibly a self-referential one. Still, something is rotten in Wasteland, and so Oswald’s friends summon Mickey to save the day with his Magic Paintbrush. This time he teams up with Oswald rather than competing with him, and the rabbit becomes an integral part of the gameplay.

As before, Mickey’s paintbrush can paint in “toon” objects to create platforms, befriend enemies, and create mostly beneficial or constructive effects. It can also fire streams of thinner, which dissolves said objects and generally causes destruction if you’re not careful. Also like the first game, which type of magic substance you use more often will impact the world around Mickey and how characters see him. Unlike the first game, many of your decisions are irreversible. Thin a building to the point that non-toon parts of it collapse, and that’s it – that building will be damaged for the rest of your game. Some may find this restrictive, but I found it added a nice layer of depth to the paint/thinner balancing act, and caused me to think about the results of thinner-oriented actions before just dissolving everything in sight to get to a treasure chest.

Oswald’s abilities are not morally significant, but they do change the way the game is played. His remote control can electrify things, stun enemies and operate control panels. He can also fly short distances with his helicopter ears, and even give Mickey a ride across gaps. A constant presence throughout the game, Oswald can be controlled by a second player at any time thanks to drop-in/drop-out split-screen play. The co-op does not support online play, but Epic Mickey 2 somehow feels like it should be a side-by-side experience. Each character plays uniquely enough that both players contribute in different ways to the puzzle solving and platform traversing.

Power of Two, Irritation of One

Oswald sticks around when you play solo, and that’s when problems arise. Because of the tandem nature of the level design and puzzles, Mickey and Oswald must work together frequently to surmount obstacles, defeat enemies and make progress. When you don’t have a buddy handy you have to rely on the AI-controlled Oswald to help you out, and this can be a risky proposition in some circumstances. You can call him over and give him close-range commands to activate his propeller ears or open an electrically-controlled object, but there will be times when you’d really like Oswald to activate that switch that’s only accessible due to the pressure plate you’re standing on while dodging incoming thinner attacks, but he’s too busy shocking offscreen enemies or staring at a wall.



The squirrely camera of the first game has been heavily overhauled, and requires very little babysitting or adjustment. Using an analog stick to aim Mickey’s paint is obviously a much more reliable control solution than a Wiimote, and it’s a joy to navigate Wasteland without worrying about Mickey’s positioning versus where the camera wants to point independently of your in-game actions. The welcome addition of a “hold the button to leave areas” feature also prevents accidental entering of shops and unneeded load times.

The main story is a bit on the short side, but tons of sidequests and optional tasks await Mickey and Oswald, and there is no lack of things to do. There are outfits for both heroes to collect, photos to take of hidden Mickey and Oswald heads all over the game’s levels, multiple paths and bonus items to gather in the classic cartoon inspired 2D levels, the ever addictive pin trading, and even some post-credits intrigue to investigate. The multiple solutions to many of the game’s puzzles and quests adds a strong element of replay value on top of all that.

Visual Justice

One of the few downsides of the first game was that Junction Point's brilliant reimaginings of classic Disney properties were not in HD, because the game was a Wii exclusive and thus trapped in standard definition limbo. Epic Mickey 2 is multiplatform, which means Wasteland is finally available in HD on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii U, and it is a true treat for Disney fans. Homages and references are packed into every frame of the game, and some truly obscure pieces of Disneyana (yes, that’s a real term) await discovery. You know they’re digging deep when there’s a prominent enemy based on The Black Hole.

Epic Mickey 2 once again pays heartfelt tribute to animation history, and does it with style and sincerity. As with the original game, anyone who loves Disney, Mickey Mouse, or just animation history in general will find something to enjoy here, and the fact that the game is a superb platformer and co-op title is icing on the cake. Here's hoping for many more adventures in Wasteland courtesy of Junction Point Studios.

Monday, 24 June 2013

Hitman: Absolution Review - Xbox 360

Hitman: Absolution is outstanding. Best in the series by a wide margin, and easily one of the best games released in 2012.




IO Interactive tapped into something unique in 2000 when Hitman: Codename 47 was released. There's always been this vision in popular entertainment of the well-dressed, urbane contract killer, and 47 emobodied that vision perfectly. Each new hit amounted to a murderer's sandbox, with makeshift weapons, disguises, and environment-specific features that all existed for the singular purpose of pulling off an improbable kill.

Now, more than a decade later, IO Interactive returns to the universe that launched the studio with Hitman: Absolution. The sandbox is much bigger and more elaborate now, but the song remains the same. Kill your target and don't be seen


More Than Just A Contract


Hitman: Absolution dives deep into the series' established fiction, though you won't need any kind of background with the previous games to figure out what's going on. An intro cutscene lays out the basic setup, which establishes that Agent 47's former handler, Diana Burnwood, went rogue in the time leading up to the game. She blew the whistle on 47's empoyer, the ICA. and the newly re-formed organization now wants her dead.


You quickly learn in the game's prologue that there's more to Diana turning on her former employer than a crisis of conscience over what the ICA represents. She's also protecting a young woman named Victoria. It's not clear why the girl or the USB drive-looking necklace that she wears is so important, but you eventually come to learn that it ties in with 47's own origins at a professional hitman.


The story's execution is surprisingly tight given the length of the game (around 15-20 hours on the Normal difficulty). This isn't groundbreaking storytelling, but it's a perfectly competent noir-ish thriller with some light sci-fi thrown in. More importantly, the plot never falls into the trap of becoming too convoluted. There's always a clear picture of the action driving 47 from location to location, especially now that the proceedings amount to more than a loosely connected series of contracted murders.


You'll take out your fair share of miscreants, of course, but you'll also find yourself on the run from the cops, embarking on fact-finding missions, and breaking out of capture situations. The unfolding plot aligns various forces against 47, which in turn serves to throw a variety of obstacles into your path, on both sides of the law.

Hitman: Absolution



Sandbox Murder

Fundamentally, Hitman: Absolution is the same game that it's always been. It's bigger for sure, offering a lot more flexibility in terms of how you approach any given situation. New features like Point Shooting -- which functions much like Splinter Cell: Conviction's Mark and Execute feature -- give a boost to the more action-packed side of the game, but a "proper" Absolution playthough still avoids violence almost entirely, except where specific targets are concerned. Same as it ever was.


While you'll still use many of the same tools that 47 always has -- a garrote, those signature Silverballer pistols, a variety of disguises -- there's one major addition to the toolbox that fundamentally alters the way you approach the game: Instinct. Pressing and holding a button (RB on an Xbox 360 controller) layers an enhanced view on top of the existing world, similar to Batman: Arkham Asylum/City's Detective Mode.


Using Instinct, you are able to see outlines of enemies and innocents alike in your immediate vicinity, even if they're on the other side of a wall. The range won't cover most of Absolution's large maps, but it's certainly large enough to work with when planning your stealthy advance. Instinct also highlights the movements of enemy patrols, allowing you to see who's coming and where they're headed.

Hitman: Absolution


Instinct is a game-changing feature, particularly on the lower difficulty settings (a "Purist" difficulty removes it entirely, along with everything other than your crosshair). It isn't foolproof, since you still can't predict when someone's going to suddenly turn around a see your sneaking, bald-headed self creeping up. It's also not terribly useful when you hide away in a dumpster or locker due to (seemingly unnecessary) limitations placed on your field of view in those circumstances.


In addition to giving you a clearer view of the world around you, Instinct also has more direct uses. For stealthy play, you can "spend" Instinct (via a diminishing on screen meter) to blend in when you're wearing a disguise. An enemy guard might realize you're not part of the team when he sees you disguised as one of his fellow lackeys, but using Instinct as you walk past effectively keeps your cover from being blown.


The possibilities for social stealth are greatly enhanced by this. Agent 47 sticks out in any crowd when he's wearing his trademark suit and tie, but the combination of a disguise with Instinct allows you to navigate your way through hostile environments that would have been impossible to explore in earlier games.

Hitman: Absolution


Credit goes as well to the Glacier 2 engine that powers Absolution. Every one of the game's 50+ discrete environments is brimming with life and personality, as well as any number of points of interaction. There are makeshift weapons to be found, shortcuts and secret access points accessible via ledges and air ducts, distraction opportunities... so much that it's almost daunting. Replay value is at an all-time high in the campaign since you can approach any challenge in a ridiculous variety of ways.


There are even dangling carrots to keep you going after that "perfect hit" in each mission. Any given map that you explore comes with a set of challenges, some of which are conflicting. Completing one might involve wearing every disguise available in that area while another might call for you to make it through without ever abandoning your suit. Completing these unlocks disguises and improves 47's skills, making him more effective in both the campaign and the new Contracts mode.

Hitman: Absolution


Murder By H.O.R.S.E.



Contracts is essentially Hitman's own take on H.O.R.S.E.. Instead of lining up impossible basketball shots, you're trying to best the Hitman-playing community with an impossible kill challenge.

The catch is that you've got to complete the hit (or hits) yourself first. Creating a Contract is easy enough. You select a map pulled from any of the chunks of campaign that you've played through already. Once you're in, you find whoever you'd like to target for your hit, mark him or her (with a Y button press), and execute the kill in the manner of your choosing.

Contracts automatically tracks the type of weapon used, the disguise you're wearing, whether or not the body was hidden, and the like, setting these as optional kill objectives for those who would take on your Contract. What's really neat about Contracts is the way it fundamentally changes how you approach the game. You're stepping into the map of your choosing with no specific goal beyond "select up to three targets and kill them however you like."

Instead of trying to out-think an AI-controlled enemy force, you're working to develop enough of an understanding of the AI's inner workings to create advantageous kill scenarios that are difficult for others to replicate.

Hitman: Absolution


That said, Contracts still could have used more depth. You might, for example, want to set a kill condition that involves using a specific, unique revolver that is only found on the map you've selected. Contracts only recognizes firearms by class, however, which means that any revolver will satisfy the optional kill objective.

There's also no way to have a contract condition depend on the murder happening in a specific location. These are small complaints given how flexible and entertaining Contracts is in its current, finished form. You earn money for completing contracts that can then be spent on new disguises and upgrading a select assortment of Agency weapons, but the dangling carrots are secondary to the raw level of fun that you'll just have taking on friends' contracts and pitting them against your own.

Hitman: Absolution

The Perfect Kill



Hitman: Absolution is a triumph, top to bottom. Fans of the series can look forward to the best entry yet, without question. In a year that has already seen some of the best stealth games of this generation, veteran developer IO Interactive delivers an experience that still manages to stand out. This is an outstanding effort from the veteran developer, and an absolute must-play for anyone who embraces the thrill of striking from the shadows and slipping away unseen.

Sunday, 23 June 2013

Remember Me Review

Remember Me never comes into its own, but it's an entertaining and attractive adventure all the same.


Within Remember Me, there's an outstanding game struggling to be set free, held back by a story that never takes off and claustrophobic levels that never allow the fantastic near-future setting to take center stage. Remember Me is not the game its world and premise hint that it could have been; rather, it's simply a good third-person action game: entertaining, slickly produced, and flavorful enough to keep you engaged to the end of its six-hour run time. It also stars a great heroine who is both powerful and vulnerable, allowing her to stand out in an intriguing world of corporate influence and lurking danger.

That world is centered on the Paris of the future, where technology has allowed us to exchange and purchase memories, perhaps to replace painful memories with pleasant ones, or to share intimate recollections with friends and lovers. But of course, such power over human emotion also proves dangerous, and happy memories can be bought and abused like drugs, or even stolen and corrupted. Remember Me's opening moments show you the dark side of Neo-Paris, dropping you into a macabre science facility, and forcing you to share the young protagonist's fear and confusion.


Nilin is her name, and guided by the voice in her ear, she escapes into the welcoming arms of a separatist movement called the Errorists. As it turns out, she is a messiah of sorts to its members, though it isn't immediately clear just why she's such an important part of this group's plans. And so as Nilin, you set off to free the populace from the tyranny of the technology that has led to such abuse, and to fell the corporation that controls it. You also seek to recover your lost past. Who are you? What events led to this moment? Can you trust the words of this mysterious Edge, whose voice guides you from one objective to the next?

This is a fantastic premise, and occasionally, Remember Me makes good on it. The chilling opening is one such example, though late-game developments prove poignant as well, revealing how personal pain can lead to far-reaching consequences for the ones we love--and even for entire cultures. In between, however, Remember Me falls into a rut, leaning on typical video game tropes, the voice in your ear leading you from one objective to the next with only a few words of exposition to motivate you. Nilin even makes a crack about being a simple errand runner, and all too often, that's the role you play.

Remember Me

Elsewhere, corny dialogue and forced metaphors dull the story's edge. When Nilin plaintively calls out to a fellow Errorist codenamed "Bad Request" using only "Bad," as though it's his first name, it's hard to take the story seriously. Nilin herself is the common narrative element that pulls you through in the face of loopy writing. Her ability to change memories at will, and her tendency to kick major butt in hand-to-hand combat, make her an appealing game lead, but it's her strength in the face of a vague past and an uncertain future that makes her an intriguing individual. Nilin is wonderfully voiced, betraying her fear in harsh whispers and crying out in anger when the burden is too great to bear.

The world, too, provides phenomenal possibilities, only to reveal itself as a façade, rather than the well-defined setting it seems to be. Neo-Paris is a gorgeous mix of the traditional and the advanced. Café patrons sit at wrought-iron tables, while behind them, high-style skyscrapers reach into the clear cerulean sky. At one point, you collide with a busy shopper on your travels--but that shopper is not a fashionably dressed Parisian, but a fashionably dressed Parisian's android, frantically running errands for its demanding owner. Remember Me's second half leaves behind its most evocative sights for more mundane environments, but even so, the production values remain typically expert. Ambient lighting brings an eerie beauty to subterranean corridors, and digital glitches appear to remind you of the gaps in your memory. Audio glitches appear in the superb musical soundtrack, as well, taking on particular power when the musical score slows or hastens in accordance with your on-screen actions.

It's a shame that you never get a chance to explore this world to any notable degree. Remember Me is one of the most linear, guided games in recent memory, giving you little choice but to wander down its narrow paths until you reach the next battle, the next cutscene, or the next scripted platforming sequence. "Linear" needn't be a bad thing, of course, and plenty of games lead you from point A to point Z with little room to breathe in between. Yet Remember Me stands out as a particularly egregious example of tightly controlled roller-coaster design, in spite of the few nooks hiding various collectibles. Some areas are so confined that the camera fails to find a good angle, and the paths you follow are so narrow that you long to break free. In the meanwhile, you look into the distance, aching to investigate the inviting Neo-Parisian sights and realizing you are an outsider looking in rather than a true part of this incredible place.

Remember Me

Give yourself over to this theme-park ride, however, and you'll have a good time. Remember Me takes on a predictable but comfortable rhythm of scripted platforming, melee combat, and light puzzle solving. The leaping and climbing take a clear cue from the Uncharted series, the game always leading you in the single direction towards your destination. Visual cues always shows the path; the fun comes not from the true dangers of navigation, but from the camera angles that highlight the deep chasms beneath you and the gorgeous Neo-Parisian architecture. A few platforming stretches impart a sense of urgency, having you evade an aircraft's gunfire, or hurrying along ledges being periodically electrified. But for the most part, Remember Me's platforming isn't likely to challenge you, only to stimulate your eyes and ears.

Actually, Remember Me isn't challenging in general, though you are still likely to be entertained by its combat. On its topmost level, beating up your foes is a relatively shallow button-mashing affair, but the melee combat has a few extra twists to keep it from falling into a rut. Nilin looks good in battle, tumbling, punching, and kicking with ease, each blow landing with a nice thud. You can string individual attacks into combos, and it's here that Remember Me makes its first effort to set its gameplay apart from the pack: you can create your own combos out of individual attacks called pressens. Some attacks focus on damage, while others provide you with healing or recharge the meter that allows you to perform special abilities.

Remember Me


It's a neat system, but it's less exciting than initially meets the eye. You only get a few combo templates to work with, and you unlock new pressens slowly, so the potential of the craft-your-own-combos mechanic is never fully exploited. But the nature of certain attacks, the self-heal in particular, gives some battles a modicum of tactical dimension. Some powerful corporate guards deal damage each time you make contact, which makes that self-heal an important part of your combos. Meanwhile, a ranged gadget you collect early on allows you to knock memory-addicted leapers off of walls and fire energy charges at robots vulnerable to them. Crowded encounters and boss fights give you a good chance to break out special attacks, such as an area-wide stun, and a bomb that you can attach to unsuspecting freaks.

Battle is rarely difficult, though it does take on a nice rhythm, particularly in the final hours, when you have a greater selection of attacks at your disposal. As with the platforming, Remember Me's combat is more interested in pleasing your senses than it is in providing depth. The camera frequently closes in to show you planting a destructive bomb, or to showcase the final kick in your longest combo. It's fun to feel like a participant in a sci-fi action film, but you can't always find a good view when the tight spaces get crowded with foes. In fact, the camera might even break, forcing you to restart at the most recent checkpoint so you can regain control. You might need to contend with other bugs as well; you can break a couple of environmental puzzles if you aren't careful, for instance, or a scripted event following a boss fight might not trigger, forcing you to replay the final stretch of that battle again. Bugs aren't enormously common, but Remember Me's highly scripted design makes such hitches seem a little more egregious than they might have been in a more flexible game.

Remember Me

Puzzles and stealth sections break up the pace nicely, though neither element is all that engaging on its own. You use your wrist device to manipulate sliding platforms, open doors, and transfer power from one door lock to another, and every so often, you need to move past roaming sentry bots without entering their danger zone. None of this proves very intellectually engaging however, with one exception: puzzles that require you to interpret mnemonics, and then manipulate objects accordingly. Not only do these few puzzles require a bit of brain power (provided you ignore the game's insistence on telling you the answer if you take too long), but also tie nicely into the narrative.

Remember Me's brightest spark, however, is emitted when Nilin enters and manipulates someone's memory in an effort to change their present state of mind. These sequences lead to a few of the game's more impactful narrative events, though they're best not analyzed too much, less the plot start to seem too nonsensical. More importantly, memory manipulation is Remember Me's most well-developed gameplay concept. Once you view the event as it originally occurred, you rewind and forward through the scene, seeking the telltale static indicating that you can interact with an object. You might move a piece of furniture, drop a cigarette, unfasten a safety belt, or move a firearm. Adjust the scene in just the right way, and you will change the past--or at least, the past as remembered by the mind you have manipulated--to accommodate the present you require.

Remember Me

Your attempts to properly shape another's memories may not go right the first few times, but the scene will still change based on your actions. The ensuing events may even lead to your subject's inadvertent death, or maybe just the innocuous fall of an object to the floor. It's intoxicating to watch an entire cinematic morph around your attempts to solve the puzzle at hand, and the final memory manipulation makes use of a delightful concept you must experience for yourself to appreciate. Disappointingly, Remember Me offers too few chances to concoct new memories for others.

The scarcity of memory manipulation isn't Remember Me's only disappointing element, yet there are just enough great ideas bubbling under its surface to give this adventure some heat. Nilin is the best reason to make this game a future memory: she's resolute, conflicted, and all too human, making her a terrific escort through this beautiful and underutilized world. Remember Me is a good game loaded with intriguing ideas; here's hoping that its sequel, should we ever have one, rides these ideas to greatness.

Saturday, 22 June 2013

Far Cry 3 Review - Xbox 360


Far Cry 3 Review:

Far Cry has always been a series with tremendous potential. The open tropical areas of the first game provided a lush setting for a fairly pedestrian adventure, marred by the eventual appearance of game-breaking mutant monsters. Far Cry 2 brought things down to earth with a gritty story of mercenaries in Africa, but suffered from irritating gameplay decisions like constantly respawning enemy outposts and a tendency for your character to have malaria attacks in the middle of firefights. Far Cry 3 is the promise of the series finally realized, with a compelling narrative driving you through a breathtakingly beautiful and hostile tropical island that challenges without irritation and guides without being restricting.


Heavy Traffic

Jason Brody is on vacation in Asia with his brothers, his girlfriend and a few other friends. They're doing the rich white American kid tour of the continent, racking up huge bar bills on daddy's Black Card and generally making asses of themselves in front of the locals, when a skydiving trip to an unremarkable island ends in disaster. They're captured by human traffickers, led by a clearly unhinged man named Vaas, destined to be ransomed and sold into slavery. Jason's Army-trained older brother manages to bust the two of you out at the beginning of the game, but gets killed because you decided to stop ten feet outside the slaver camp to read a map. Jason manages to get away, and is rescued by Dennis, a local resident who initiates the naïve but surprisingly adept Jason into the island natives' warrior culture.

From there, Jason sets about rescuing his remaining friends and ostensibly getting off the island, but slaughtering a couple thousand people changes a man, even if it's in the name of liberty. What results is a dark and sometimes drug-fueled descent into the depths of human behavior and an interesting exploration of the line between sanity and insanity, morality and immorality. Jason interacts with a number of memorable and well-written characters, each of which embodies a different vice that holds sway over the island. There are precious few "good guys" in Far Cry 3, and even Jason himself is not particularly likeable, even if he is understandable. The story is trying to do some very interesting things, and for the most part pulls them off, although to delve further into it would be to enter spoiler territory.


So Much Time, So Little To Do

Jason's odyssey takes you through 38 missions that offer the most guided and scripted experiences in the game. Here is where you'll escape burning buildings, man the turret in numerous AI-driven vehicles, explore long-forgotten tombs hidden beneath abandoned World War II era installations, and get to know the shady characters inhabiting the island. It's roughly a 10 hour journey straight through, but to sprint through the story alone is to miss the entire appeal of Far Cry 3.

The island is absolutely crammed with a wide variety of content. The immense map is revealed by reaching broadcast antennas, scaling them, and deactivating a jammer at the top, not unlike the way Viewpoints work in the Assassin's Creed series. This will reveal the immediate area and show you available missions and activities. The brilliant part is how all the disparate activities lead into one another due to the rewards they provide.


Strike That, Reverse It

The most immediate problem at the beginning of the game is your inability to carry much in the way of bullets, loot and weapons. Jason must hunt the wildlife and skin his kills to craft bags and pouches to hold more ammo and loot. You never really see Jason from the third person, but I imagine by the time he's fully upgraded he has more pouches than a Rob Liefeld character. To move around the map and hunt the specific game you need to craft each item, fast travel is the most useful option, which leads you to outposts. Outposts can be liberated to unlock new fast travel points and eliminate enemy patrols from an area. You get bonus XP for liberating outposts stealthily, which levels you up, allowing you to buy more skills in the extensive skill trees, making Jason a more effective warrior. Collectibles in the world also provide XP, as well as loot to sell for cash which can be used to buy customization items for your weapons at the stores in each liberated outpost. Oh, and as you deactivate more antenna, weapons become free in the shop. And completing certain numbers of side activities and collection goals earns you specialized weapons unavailable otherwise. And all of a sudden it's 4AM and you have to leave for work in three hours.


Far Cry 3

Far Cry 3 is a tremendously immersive and time-distorting game. It never wears out its welcome because of the variety of tasks at hand combined with the unpredictability of the enemies and the island itself. A digital camera lets you tag enemies from a distance, making them easy to track visually even through cover. Performing recon on a target location is extremely important, but several times I found myself suddenly stalked by a tiger or a bear while I was in the process of scouting an outpost from cover. Caged predators in outposts can be freed to wreak havoc among the enemies guarding it. The enemy humans are just dumb enough to be believable, and with practice it becomes possible to torment them creatively while remaining invisible. Of course, the game is perfectly willing to accept a player who just wants to stride into camp and start shooting, too, but you'll have to be extremely quick on the trigger, especially as the game progresses and the enemies up their arsenals accordingly.


Bonus Points

Two multiplayer modes are present in Far Cry 3. Co-op is a four-player romp through various locations on the island, featuring characters unrelated to Jason's plight who ended up on the island six weeks prior to the events of the single player game. It loses the open world feel in many places, but the gunplay of the game is satisfying enough to stand on its own in a co-op setting, and there is a decent variety of mission types.


Far Cry 3

Competitive multi consists of standard modes and a very detailed weapon/perk unlock system similar to that of Call of Duty. It leverages the basic combat gameplay well enough, but by limiting things to enclosed arenas it comes off as more adequate than exceptional. Honestly the multiplayer options are mostly just nice-to-haves; the star of the show here is the solo campaign, which may explain why the online servers have been so deserted, even on launch day.


Must Buy 3

Aside from the occasional texture glitch or stray enemy phasing into a rock (a problem easily solved with well-placed explosives), Far Cry 3 is a technically brilliant and expertly balanced gameplay experience that offers an immense amount of content and a high degree of polish. At the time of writing I have put nearly 60 hours into it across two playthroughs, and will probably play it a third time on PC later on. I suggest you do the same.

ZombiU Review - Wii U

Ubisoft seems to have approached ZombiU with a sensible formula: introduce the relatively unique properties of the Wii U gamepad and present them in the context of a very accessible and appealing zombie apocalypse. In doing so, Ubisoft, no stranger to third-party launch titles, has stepped it up a notch to deliver one of the few worthwhile original Wii U titles out of the gate.

There's something eerily familiar about the outbreak imagined in ZombiU's London setting. Granted, dark and desolate urban areas are hardly original settings in undead nightmares, but this combined with the guitar-driven score made me wonder just how much Ubisoft drew particular influence from 28 Days Later. Here, however, the fast-moving zombies don't show up until later. If you classify zombie entertainment two-pronged, as either isolated incidents that survivors can overcome or end-of-the-world events that survivors can endure, you'll find ZombiU falling into the latter category.

ZombiU is played in the first person, always an efficiently immersive approach in the zombie survival mode. Your go-to melee weapon is the setting-appropriate English cricket bat, which while durable, isn't the easiest weapon to wield, and is one of the reasons I relied more on the limited firearms or in some sections just avoided zombies altogether. Moving around worked well enough, though the same can't be said for object interaction. Whether it's going through doors or looting the undead, it can be a challenge precisely centering your camera for the needed button prompt to appear.

Of the many Wii U launch and launch window titles out now, ZombiU is on that short list of games not allowing you to make a full playthrough on the console's unique new gamepad. That's not much of a detractor here, with the secondary gamepad screen acting as a special makeshift device that allows you to detect objects and signs not visible on your primary screen. It's also what you'll refer to for inventory management, making for extremely tense situations that force your attention from the primary screen even when zombies are in the midst.

Of the many terms that surfaced during the gaming year that was 2012, "permadeath" could be the one most oft repeated. Thanks to the success of XCOM: Enemy Unknown, gamers rediscovered what it feels like to emotionally invest in playable characters without the assistance of high-production cinematics or even deep character development. ZombiU works off this concept of permadeath, but, unlike XCOM's concern for an entire squad, has you focusing your protection onto one character at a time. This creates a great sense of caution and with the first character you control almost paranoia, until that faint hope you can beat the game without dying flitters away upon first death. But die you (probably) will in ZombiU, and once you get over it you'll find it's not the end of the world. Though it can be difficult if you had stored in your backpack all ammo and items at the time of your demise. You'll have to track down and kill this last character you played, now one of the walking undead, for any chance at recovering those items. If on the way to recover these items your new character gets infected, then those items are gone for good. This leads to judgment calls on what items you ought to bring with you and what you should save in the storage container in the safehouse.



In trying to keep your survivor alive, the game provides a number of avenues beyond the standard up close and personal approach. The outdoor areas of London can be especially roomy in providing non-confrontational routes to sneak past zombies and focus on your immediate missions. These missions include anything from activating closed circuit cameras to recovering key items.

Next to Tekken Tag Tournament 2 and New Super Mario Bros. U, ZombiU ranks as one of the best local multiplayer games for the Wii U. Much like the adversarial forms of multiplayer in Nintendo Land, the asymmetrical set up of pitting players against someone with the Wii U gamepad provides a level of entertainment you wouldn't get from a regular match on traditional controllers. In ZombiU, there are the player-controlled survivors, while the player with the gamepad takes on the role of zombie summoner. In the gamepad user's eyes, it's sort of a form of "tower offense" as you're able to send a number of zombies to stop the other players.


Taking a page from the classic multiplayer conquest mode, ZombiU pits survivors against zombies in a competition to take over capture points. I was pleased with how fair and balanced the challenges were from both the zombie and the survivor perspective. One zombie type is designed to capture points while the rest are designed to torment the survivors. The latter group is an utter joy to disperse out into the field and make things hard for your friends. There's nothing like the sadistic glee of overwhelming others with fast moving joggers and spitters.

ZombiU should also be recognized as one of those rare launch titles that doesn't have the classic earmarks of a launch title that's been rushed out the door. The melee combat is a little rough, but that's compensated for by the other tools available in the game. Moreover, ZombiU's levels are developed well enough that your wits become a useful asset. The full integration of the gamepad and how it forces your gaze away from the television creates a special kind of suspense you couldn't get in other zombie games.