Film Review: Avatar

So this is it, then. Over a decade in the making, the film that would change cinema as we know it is finally here. Or maybe self-proclaimed “king of the world” James Cameron has just spent fifteen years and hundreds of millions of dollars setting us up for the biggest, preachiest let down of the year. Yeah, that sounds more like it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying Avatar is a bad film. The concept behind it – humans controlling synthetic beings, or Avatars, with their mind – is fairly ingenious, the setting is suitably epic and the technology used to create what is undoubtedly the best looking CGI so far may well change how future blockbusters are produced. But despite all this, Avatar still manages to fall short of expectations.

This is partly down to the plot, which Liege Cameron insisted would win over initial scepticism, being so contrived. It’s that old future-humanity-has-exhausted-Earth’s-resources- so-is-invading-a-peaceful-planet-and-warring-with-the-indigeanous-populace chestnut (a climate change message so glaringly obvious it’d make the audience blind if it wasn’t for the funky 3D sunglasses), with a few sympathetic humans taking up the natives’ banner. Sympathetic human du jour is Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic former marine who is drafted into the Avatar programme, and under the instruction of chief meat-head Colonel Quaritch is sent to spy on the local Na’vi – a species of giant, blue cat-people that look vaguely like Angelina Jolie after she’s been smacked around with a frying pan. But it’s not long before he falls in love with the Na’vi princess, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), and the planet itself, causing him to turn on his own people and their reckless, greed-driven destruction of the planet (we get it Jim, global warming is bad). Essentially, Avatar is one Na’vi rendition of "Colours of the Wind" away from being Pocahontas in Space, which isn’t about to win over the thousands of keyboard-mashing sceptics that were Cameron’s target audience.

Neither will the characters, who are ironically two-dimensional considering Avatar is supposedly the benchmark for 3D cinema. It’s not that any of the supporting characters are particularly bad, they’re just never properly fleshed out, probably because there’s so much time spent on wide-frame panning shots of the planet’s undergrowth, which makes it a little difficult to muster up any sympathy when they start dropping like flies in the climactic final battle. Maybe they just wanted to get the boring human characters out of the way so they could introduce a greedy, six legged racoon in the sequel.

Still, the story of Avatar was never really the selling point, even if Tzar Cameron has convinced himself it is. It was the promise of the incredible new technology, which never fails to impress. As much as the endless shots of the planet’s environment detract from the story and its characters, they don’t half look good. Making this alien world and its creatures look entirely natural is a colossal achievement in itself. It’s safe to say that, if this is the future of CGI, then the future does look pretty damn awesome.

The 3D, however, still leaves a little to be desired, due largely to the restriction of cinema screens. The beautiful fluttering of insects or falling leaves is often cut short as it goes beyond the limits of the multiplex screen, and there was even a moment where the barrel of a gun poking into the audience was lopped off, probably poking out of the ceiling somewhere. Times like these make 3D look genuinely poor, and no arrow-flying-out-of-the-screen gimmick is going to compensate for that.

It goes without saying that Shah Cameron’s gajillion dollar masterpiece doesn’t live up to expectations. It’s an incredible visual achievement, one that may well go down in cinema history, but there’s precious little else to it. It might be worth seeing, if only for a glimpse of what blockbusters will look like for the next decade or so, but as a story it’s nothing you wouldn’t get from playing "Just Around the River Bend" over a Halo 3 cutscene while someone behind you shouts Lion-O quotes every five minutes. THUNDER CATS HO.

Film Review: TTS: New Moon

The latest in the deservedly popular Twilight Saga, New Moon, is a masterpiece of film-making, a near-perfect story of tumultuous young love that is brimming with sparkling special effects, incredible performances that exceed the young cast's fame, and subtle yet evocative symbolism, the likes of which we have not been treated to since Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. At least that's how most of the teenage girl population will see it, anyway. Anyone else unfortunate enough to be swept up by the phenomenal hype that has surrounded the latest entry in the Twilight Series' (I refuse to seriously call it “Saga” as that is synonymous with “Epic”) will likely be underwhelmed.

New Moon picks up where the first Twilight film left off with Bella and Edward (Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, as if you didn't already know) enjoying their respective lives and after-lives as the high school's awkward couple. It's all going relatively well, considering Edward's overpowering desire to eat her, until Bella gets a paper cut in a room full of blood-starved vampires. The youngest, Jasper, goes mental, lunging for Bella like a rabid dog that's just caught the whiff of a Pepperami, forcing Edward to leap to the rescue. Which he does in the most chivalrous of ways: by pushing Jasper into a piano and throwing Bella several feet into a wall. I can see how he makes girls swoon.

The experience sees a guilty Edward leave town, insisting he never belonged with Bella. Naturally, Bella responds by curling up like an angsty foetus, screaming herself to sleep and sitting in a chair for absolutely ages before she falls into the ridiculously huge arms of Jacob Black (he's a werewolf, by the way). And so the love triangle is born.

Then stuff just seems to stop happening. Oh sure, there are bits where Bella goes a bit suicidal or where Jacob goes all furry and eats that one black vampire from the last film, but it all feels like irrelevant filler between Edward leaving and Bella chasing him. Without Bella and Edward being together there isn't any point in the story because their love is the story; which I'm sure is something the writers are thrilled they managed to get across, but with Edward absent for most of the film that's a good hour and a bit where New Moon just drags on and on, with nothing really interesting really happening besides Jacob Black getting his kit off for no obvious reason. Not that many people in the cinema were complaining, mind.

But the big problem with New Moon isn't that nothing relevant happens for most of the film. It's Bella Swan, probably one of the most infuriatingly weak lead characters in the history of... pretty much everything. There's absolutely nothing endearing about her whatsoever - she's not funny, she's so absorbed in her own angst that she seems totally uncaring unless it's for something that will probably eat her, and she's got an annoying habit of screaming at the top of her lungs when said flesh-eating man beast isn't there to hold her hand. It doesn't help that Kristen Stewart is as utterly talentless as she is, failing to deliver even a half convincing line for the entire 130 minutes.

The love interests aren't much better. Taylor Lautner as Jacob Black stumbles through his lines like he's been caught in a foothold trap, while Robert Pattinson's undead dreamboat Edward Cullen is as bland as ever, although to be fair it's difficult to determine whether that's just the character or whether Pattinson is just a bit rubbish. At least if it's the latter his new forced moniker is appropriate. R Patzzzzzzzzzz.

Fortunately, New Moon’s supporting cast are every bit as good as the leads are bland and wrapped up in their own self-loathing. Ashley Greene is quirky and cheeky as the pint-sized Alice Cullen, ranking as the only likable character who doesn’t want to kill Bella. Then the slightly less friendly Volturi, an order of more conventional vampires led by the wonderfully camp and evil mind of Aro (Michael Sheen), steal the film in during their brief appearance.

While the Volturi may steal the show, they aren’t around long enough to save it. New Moon is a tedious, bland and altogether irrelevant chapter in the series that lacks any real focus until the dying moments. No question about this: avoid. It’s not worth the time or money regardless of how into the series you are. Just skip this one altogether and catch up on the awkward romance next year.

One plus for director Chris Weitz though: New Moon is probably little better than the Golden Compass was. Although saying that is kind of like handing Gillian McKeith a freshly-filled tuppaware tub and pointing out that it’s floating a little bit more than the last one you gave her.

What [person with nothing better to do in the mornings] watched last night

You know that little article next to TV listings in newspapers titled “What [bloke with incredibly easy job] saw last night”? I figured I'd start doing that since blogging about my everyday life was hardly stimulating writing, never mind reading. And tonight seems like as good a time as any to start.

Like most of the people who will probably end up reading this, it was that much-controversial episode of Question Time, which featured BNP leader Nick Griffin as one of the panelists, that was on the box last night. Although it seemed less of an intellectual, topical Q+A and more of a session in medieval stocks for Griffin, complete with peasants throwing rancid vegetables and calling him names.

I should probably get one thing straight before I continue; I don't like Nick Griffin, as a man or as a politician. I'm not defending him, his personal views or those of his party. I'm not saying I wouldn't enjoy watching him get a good verbal kicking in most other circumstances. But when it's coming from someone whose idea of wit is starting a sentence with “Dick, oh I'm sorry Nick” or a smug 12-year-old looking student with a blatantly massive stiffy for himself, it all gets a little tedious.

Besides the audience's juvenile insults and throwaway, self-satisfying lefty remarks making for rubbish television, isn't this is the sort of thing that has given the BNP a real hard-on in the past? No doubt they'll be using words like “injustice” and “undemocratic” to describe the audience's playground treatment of Griffin and they wouldn't be entirely unjustified in doing so. We may have given a far-right party with a history of racism a sympathy vote in exchange for a nob gag and a couple of smarmy comments. Superb.

That's not to say last night's Question Time was all bad. There were some good points made regarding the BNP's immigration policy (bricking up the UK-bound half on the channel tunnel and constructing a machine-gun nest on every beach) and Griffin's position on the panel - sitting to the right of a black woman - made unintentionally hilarious use of his lazy left eye as he seemingly kept a wary watch over her just in case she was concealing a tribal spear in her bandana. But other than that it was mostly forgettable; topics that should have been discussed – the BNP's current policies and the reasons for their recent rise to prominence – were largely ignored or were persistently dodged as panelists belted out years-old quotes to score easy points with the audience. In the end, the whole thing was utterly pointless.

Game Review: Halo 3: ODST

Apparently the fight isn't quite finished yet.

Originally intended as a small expansion for Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST seemed to have become so much more. It became a stand-alone game, midnight launches and release parties were announced, and they even surprised us with a brilliant live-action trailer. You'd have been forgiven for thinking all this hype was leading up to a potential game of the year, instead of an expansion with a few tweaks.

The obvious change is that Master Chief, the series' mascot, isn't the focal character. Instead you assume the role of an ODST (which stands for Orbital Drop Shock Trooper, something I'm ashamed to admit I knew before ODST was announced), who are slightly more tactical than the gravelly, seven-foot colossus. With the change in personnel comes a snazzy new HUD - referred to in the game as a VISR, that comes complete with a map, list of objectives and not-quite-night-vision – and health system, with both the recharging shield and a health bar. Both have been integrated fairly well, and help make for a more tactical shooter than Halo 3. A couple of new weapons have been included too: a scoped pistol to effectively deal with Grunts and a scoped SMG that is...a little superfluous, really.

The new character: Rookie. A nameless, faceless, armour clad space marine. So not new at all then, really.

Supposedly, the ODSTs aren't quite as capable as the Chief, and this has been reflected in some of the gameplay tweaks; you can't dual-wield weapons, you can't jump as high, and you can't turn a tank into scrap metal with a few well-aimed punches. But at the same time you can rip a turret from it's stand and knock out a Brute Chieftain with one deft smack. Clearly they (Bungie) have tried to make you feel like less of a super-soldier, but haven't quite pulled it off. Whether or not that's a bad thing is debatable; some fans might be disappointed at the lack of change, others won't because it doesn't detract one iota from the experience.

Campaign is the initial draw of Halo, although in ODST it's a little insubstantial, lasting maybe five or six hours, with most of that time will be spent wandering the streets of New Mombassa (the city that was invaded during Halo 2), in a darkened sandbox environment with little-to-no visibility. This was a nice idea but, while credit is due to Bungie again for experimenting with a long established formula, it's an experiment that doesn't really work. The environment itself isn't particularly interesting to explore; every street looks identical, and enemies are few and far between. The lack of visibility, while suitably atmospheric, makes it so that even if there was something vaguely interesting to see, you'd probably miss it anyway unless you were permanently squinting. Even the use of O'Donnel's beautifully composed score doesn't work in the sandbox; it's fine for wandering around but once you find a couple of enemies it's slow, depressing melody feels incredibly out-of-place in a fire fight. Unless you're a dedicated achievement hunter you probably won't want to spend much time exploring New Mombassa, as there's no real purpose to it besides bridging the gap between the more enjoyable missions.

These other missions offer a stark contrast to the drudgery of the New Mombassa streets. The environments are bright and diverse, ranging from wide open nature reserves to teetering crates high above the clouds, that not only make brilliant use of O'Donnel's score but really show off the newly polished engine. Enemies are never in short supply, allowing for the fast paced action we have always associated with Halo. There is a slight feeling of familiarity; for example the second mission, which has you careering through a nature reserve in a Warthog, feels very similar to the Halo 3 mission "Road To Voi". But they're no less enjoyable, some ranking up there with the better missions in the trilogy.

The views are no less spectacular than they were in Halo 3.

The campaign, then, is a mixed bag, alternating between some of the better missions of the series and the probably worst executed idea in it to date. But the multiplayer has always been Halo's main appeal - even after two years, Halo 3 still regularly attracts gamers in their hundreds of thousands – and ODST contributes to that with a whole new co-operative mode: Firefight.

In Firefight, up to four players work to kill oncoming waves of enemies that become stronger and more numerous as the game progresses; anyone who has played either Gears of War 2's Horde or Call of Duty: World at War's Nazi Zombie modes will feel right at home. It's a good mode with a nice variety of maps and, for the most part (a little more ammo would be nice), well thought out. Halo fans will undoubtedly be coming back for more time and time again, like they have been doing with both Halo 2 and Halo 3's multiplayer for the past five years. On the other hand, for everyone else who maybe dipped into Halo before moving onto something else, it probably won't have that lasting appeal.

That's a potential underlying problem with Halo 3: ODST; it's the definition of fan service. For Halo fans it's great, they'll all get their moneys worth by replaying the campaign for achievements, by getting together on Firefight every other night, and feeding their addiction to Halo 3's multiplayer with the three new maps. But if you're not a die-hard Halo fan you'll most likely be left wanting because, although ODST is decent, there's not enough to it, even with the ever-so-slight price cut.

Game Review: Wolfenstein

It's been an eight year wait but the Wolfenstein series, one of the grand-daddies of first-person shooters, has finally made it's way into this generation. Known simply as Wolfenstein, can the latest instalment in the veteran series re-establish itself in an increasingly huge market of first-person shooters?

Things don't start off promising as we find the protagonist, B.J Blazkowicz (I wish I was kidding), disguised on board a Nazi U-boat off the coast of jolly old Blighty. However, it's not long (maybe ten seconds into the cutscene) before our all-American hero abandons all subtlety and, after a daring attempted escape, finds himself cornered by the crew. But, just as they're about to fire, a mysterious blue light emanates around B.J, shielding him from an onslaught of bullets before disintegrating his surrounding enemies. When his bosses realise that the strange light came from a medallion linked to Isenstadt, a German town that has recently become occupied by Nazi cultists, B.J is sent undercover to investigate the goings-on, and then put a stop to it.

As you can tell based on that opening cutscene (a lot of which should have been playable, instead of leaving you sat there completely bewildered for about five minutes), Wolfenstein boasts one of the most hilariously contrived plots in video game history. There are some brilliantly bad moments dotted around the cutscenes - like a heavily accented Russian man with a Stalin 'tasche and an eye-patch standing in a pub full of snarling Nazis warning B.J not to "blow our cover", or how everyone in Isenstadt seems to know the apparently undercover protagonist by his full name - that come around without even the slightest hint of irony. It's so horrifically, shamefully bad that it's almost good. Except it isn't really. It's just rubbish.

It doesn't get much better while you're playing Wolfenstein. Most of the single player is spent wandering around Isenstadt, a sort of psuedo-free-roaming environment that pretends to encourage exploration (loading screens will be full of "Search every corner of Isenstadt for gold and intel") but punishes you for doing so by respawning enemies every time you walk round a corner. By the time you've fought your way through, picked up the minimal gold that was lying around and gotten to the market to spend it, you'd need to spend about a quarter of it on ammo for your weapons anyway! Still, maybe this is a blessing in disguise, since the weapon upgrades are mostly useless (more on that in a minute) and the story isn't nearly interesting enough to make any intel worth reading. That, and exploring Isenstadt is probably the most depressing thing in the world. Every street being a dreary mixture of grey and brown, and with Wolfenstein's graphics looking so dated it's probably one of the ugliest games that's been released for a while.

The missions are a little better, since unlike the areas in Isenstadt they have some purpose and direction. It goes without saying that they're a little generic - this series helped define generic back in the 90's - but they're well paced, and grant you access to all kinds of new powers and equipment.

There's a good variety of weapons to choose from in Wolfenstein. As well as the obligatory weapons that appear in every WW2 themed game (MP40, Panzerschrek, etc) there are a couple of fancy, futuristic weapons, such as the particle cannon. Mixing these very different weapons together works very well; not so much because it adds variety, but because storming round an underground Nazi fortress firing a huge disintegrating beam into anyone that so much as mutters "Achtung" is a hell of a lot of fun. At least until you run out of ammo. The only irritating thing about the weapons was swapping between them, since with a PS3 controller you're never quite sure how much pressure to apply to the R2 button, so a lot of the time it either doesn't swap at all or it brings up the full weapon menu instead of instantly swapping between two weapons, which can be a real pain in the middle of a fire fight.

You'll also have powers, accessed through the aforementioned medallion. The three main powers allow you to control time, deal extra damage and create a personal shield, and can be used to quickly get you out of any tough situations you find yourself in. The other, more basic power, which lets you see the world through an alternate dimension (I honest to God cannot believe I'm writing some of this stuff with my tongue out of my cheek), showing you any secret passages, enemy weak points, and areas where you can recharge your medallion. It's a decent extra but most of the time it's fairly pointless. You'll use it but only because it's there, not because it ever feels particularly necessary to overcome difficult obstacles.

The same can be said for the upgrades system. As I said earlier, you can spend any gold you find lying around on upgrades for your weapons and powers, although in my experience with Wolfenstein it turned out to be pretty frivolous. Since the bigger weapons and later powers are so expensive to upgrade, I just ended up ploughing all my money into the sniper rifle and time control power, and coasted through the game near enough effortlessly with just that one weapon and power, and didn't feel the need to use the otherwise awesome futuristic weapons.

So then, Wolfenstein is ugly, contrived, dated, stupid, clunky, rarely challenging, and the protagonist is named after fellatio. In short, pretty damn bad. It's not as if there are no saving graces - I'm going to bring up that particle gun again - but they don't do much to make up for everything that Wolfenstein does so clumsily. Still, it's not without purpose. Maybe, in twenty years time, developers looking to bring back Halo or Bioshock will look at Wolfenstein and go "Actually, no". Unless they're spearheaded by Activision, of course.

Acorah to inspire Ghost re-envisioning.

Medium Derek Acorah is all set to inspire a remake of hit 1990 movie ghost, following the death of original star Patrick Swayze yesterday.

Acorah, who made a name for himself as a medium working alongside shrieking blonde Yvette Fielding on Living TV's Most Haunted, has stated his interest in recreating the classic romantic flick, which starred Patrick Swayze as a ghost alongside co-star Demi Moore.

“I've already heard from my spirit guide that Swayze's spirit has returned to his home, so we've already got one big name on location” claimed the veteran bullshitter. “If we could just drag Demi from canoodling her adopted son for a couple of minutes we'd be mostly set”.

Acorah did note that a problem with filming scenes with Swayze could be visibility. “It is true that most ghosts are ethereal, making them very difficult to spot for most people” he confessed, “but if you really visualise the ghost, you'll see it. Think of it like the Emperor's new clothes, but I'm honestly not pulling a fast one.”

“If test audiences still struggle, we'll get one of the guys to put in a floating dot that hovers around Demi's erect nipples, or something like that.”

Reports in Hollywood claim that Fox are already in the advanced stages of negotiating a film deal with Acorah and his spirit guide.

Morning all.

Since someone's alarm went off at seven-bloody-AM on a Saturday, I figured I'd quickly write something up while the beast is still asleep next door.

I ended up getting Wolfenstein, and hopefully I'll have a review done for that by the end of next week. First impressions are that it's, well, poor. Really, really poor. I'd elaborate, but then I'd risk accidentally using a metaphor that I'd have rather used in the full review and then kicking myself for a good thirty minutes trying to thing of a new one. Just be safe in the knowledge that it features Nazis, occult artifacts and a huge chinned protagonist. See, now I don't even need to elaborate.

In other news, apparently it was the Dreamcast's tenth birthday the other day, which is nice. Having never owned a Dreamcast or even played one, I'm not exactly mourning it's short lived existence, but some of the write ups and interviews about it's downfall are fairly interesting, if not a little sensationalist and bum-licking. They're worth checking out, if you've got a few minutes going spare.

Anyway, I'm off to make a bacon sandwich so that when I do wake the missus, she'll have something to bit other than my head...off. That didn't work quite as well as I wanted it to.

I've decided that it's about time I got back into the routine I had started...wait, this sounds familiar.

You've probably noticed that I've not been doing much around here recently, apart from the odd review going up every couple of months before I crawled back into my proverbial hole. There are a couple of good reasons for this, or at least I'd like to pretend they're good reasons. My girlfriend has moved in (more on that at a later date), I've been on holiday, and somehow I've ended up with three dogs; officially qualifying me and anyone who enters my house as a weird dog person. So naturally I didn't have as much time on my hands as I used to back when I was churning out two reviews a week.

But, now that everything has settled down a bit, I've got a little bit more time and I should be able to get properly stuck into writing again. Unfortunately, since I'm saving up to move out, it's not going to be a case of two game or film reviews a week since I just don't think I can afford it at the moment. I'll be looking into more free stuff – regular blogging, TV reviews, satirical news and such like – just so that I can keep getting practice in. Not sure how interesting I'll be able to make blogging, mind - the most interesting thing that has happened to me in the last couple of days was when I rearranged all the pins on the notice boards at work into a hexagon, so I could find out what I'd look like to a golden spider who'd lost his glasses (as it turns out, gold and blurry) – but maybe I could throw a couple of cock jokes in there and make it all worthwhile.

Anyway! Plans for reviews this month are pretty straightforward. I'm renting two games today, one of them will be Motorstorm: Pacific Rift for my swanky new Playstation 3 (now you know why I can afford two reviews a week), and the other will be either Wolfenstein or Batman: Arkham Asylum, depending on what they've got in stock. Following that there should be a review of the Red Faction: Guerilla DLC, and then (predictably) Halo 3: ODST. I might even try and squeeze District 9 in there somewhere as well, even if I have to go on my lonesome.

You can expect an update round here every two or three days now, so if you're interested (or, more likely, seriously bored) you should keep checking up on this place.

See you around!

Game Review: Shadow Complex

It's not often that an Xbox Live Arcade title grabs the gaming world's attention in the same way that Shadow Complex has. Not only has it broken records on the Live Arcade for most downloads in an opening week, but it's been picking up critical acclaim from just about every major games site there is. Frankly, if that hasn't convinced you yet, then why you're reading the opinion of a no-name amateur with sub-par grammar is beyond me - especially since I'm probably just going to end up echoing everything they've said anyway.

Shadow Complex begins with Jason Flemming (voiced by Nolan North, who seems to be an obligatory inclusion in pretty much any video game these days) and his girlfriend Claire spontaneously exploring some caverns while on a backpacking trip, when they accidentally stumble upon a huge underground military complex. When Claire is captured, Jason is forced to put his convenient military training to use in order to infiltrate the base and rescue her. It has all the outline of a generic action plot but the characters - both the reluctantly patriotic Jason and the increasingly ambiguous Claire - and a sharp, witty script help make Shadow Complex that little bit more interesting than the standard video game story.

It's not long before every-man Jason has mastered the all-American hero strut

Gameplay is a little bit different, too. It's based on classic side-scrolling shooters (Super Metroid, Castlevania and the like), but the environment is 3D. So, while you can only move in two dimensions, enemies can appear anywhere in a level. It's an interesting twist on a classic concept that Shadow Complex pulls off almost perfectly - aiming can be a little frustrating sometimes, but the auto-aim compensates for that most of the time - and having this fresh challenge is something that anyone who tries this game will surely appreciate.

Failing guns, there's always the opportunity to just kick people in the face

Something else you're bound to appreciate is just how good Shadow Complex looks. Graphics are superb and Shadow Complex could easily itself off as an early full-price 360 game, but the real surprise is how varied the environments are. Inside the huge underground complex there are caves, warehouses, bright white corridors from the Tantive IV and underground lakes and rivers, which makes exploring and even backtracking through the complex really engaging, as well as allowing for loads of different situations.

To get you through these increasingly tough situations is a selection of guns - you'll start off finding a simple pistol and end up brandishing a giant shotgun of the future - and some incredibly cool gadgets, which you'll start picking up fairly early on in the game. Starting with the jetpack, you'll gradually come across scuba gear, grappling hooks and - probably best of all - speed boots that let you smash the speed barrier and run up walls. The constant access to new items mean that, as well as giving you the excuse to go back through the map and solve old puzzles with your new found skills, combat is constantly given new dimensions; why take cover behind a box when you can thrust yourself into the air and shoot a live grenade in their mouth? Most importantly, however, is the simple torch that you start with. Aside from being used to illuminate dark caves and vents, it also shows hidden areas and how to access them - for example, if a vent cover glows orange then you can shoot your way through - which can result in all kinds of rewards if you're patient enough to pour over the entire complex.

Why yes, he is running on water. Why are you still reading?

The only niggling issue with Shadow Complex (besides the aiming) is the fairly rubbish bosses, all of which have a suitably impressive introduction that is match by their complete ineptness to create the kind of challenge that a boss fight should. Either they're entirely predictable - just find the incredibly obvious weak spot and spam grenades until it blows up - or it's just ridiculously easy. There are even some bosses that can be killed while they're off screen, just by back-pedalling until they're out of sight and then shooting in their general direction. Maybe it's because we're so used to games like this, or maybe it's because I'm soft and was only playing it on normal difficulty, but they just seemed far too easy and obvious. Still, this is just a niggling issue, and when the rest of Shadow Complex is as brilliant as it is you really shouldn't be put off by it.

All things considered, Shadow Complex is definitely worth your time. Fast paced, great looking and full of cool gadgets, for only 1200 Microsoft points you're getting one of the best games that's been released so far this year on the 360. See, told you I'd be saying the same as everyone else.

Film Review: G.I.: Joe: The Rise of Cobra

Now that Hollywood is running out of comic book characters for it's summer action blockbusters it's time for toys to take their place on the big screen, and following Transformer's box office success toy giants Hasbro have decided to give G.I.: Joe it's cinema debut in The Rise of Cobra. But with an all star cast including someone from an Amanda Bynes film, that pretty girl from the new Hugo Boss adverts and Marlon Wayans (I know, my heart sank when I found out he was in films as well), it wasn't looking particularly promising.

Things start off in 1641 - it just wouldn't be a proper toy franchise film without a hastily explained and completely irrelevant back story now, would it? - as the lead villain's great-great-great-great-granddad Klan McCullen is punished for selling weapons to both sides of a war. Then time accelerates a few hundred years to the near future where the nefarious James McCullen (Christopher Eccleston, the only face you'll recognise during the film which isn't just a five second cameo) is developing weapons of his own, while simultaneously planning to take over the world. As you do.

These weapons end up in the hands of the incredibly responsible US Military, led by All-American hero Duke (who is unintentionally referred to as "Dook" throughout the film, which is mildly hilarious) and his allegedly comic relief sidekick Ripcord. It's not long before they're ambushed by McCullen's Cobra soldiers, led by Sienna Miller in skin-tight black leather (I can hear you booking the tickets already), who try to steal the weapons back (which just makes you wonder why they sold the weapons in the first place) and it's not long before they're ambushed by G.I.: Joe (who isn't just one G.I called Joe, but a whole bunch of people collectively known as "Joes". I'm confused too). After the Joes have routed Cobra with their superior CGI they whisk Dook and Ripcord to their super secret base where they're recruited into the elite team.

That's about twenty minutes of the film and you can probably guess where it goes from there - Cobra get weapons again, shit hits fan, Joes save day, Dook gets girl, credits roll, The End - but since this is an action blockbuster based on an action figure it's probably a bit harsh to slate it for being predictable. But it isn't too harsh to slate it for all the pointless back story it ham-handedly tries to weave in inbetween all the CGI explosions and black leather. Having one back story - like the one explaining Doctor Who's motivation for world domination - is forgiveable, but there's one for every other character. As if we need an explanation for why the black ninja doesn't like the white ninja. They're different colours, we just fucking accept it.

There is a bunch of other stuff wrong with G.I.: Joe but it's not as if I need to spell it out for you, just think of pretty much anything that could be wrong with an action blockbuster and the chances are that it'll be wrong with G.I.: Joe. But there's always the slightest hint that everything it does is a little tongue-in-cheek, as if director Stephen Sommers knew that turning G.I.: Joe into a decent action flick was next to impossible so decided to screw it up completely for poops and giggles, giving G.I.:Joe a distinct Team America feel. It even goes as far as to replicate the opening scene, where the good guys inadvertently destroy most of Paris before bewilderedly questioning why everyone is so annoyed at them. It's a shame they couldn't include the sing-a-long about AIDs, though.

I suppose how much you enjoy G.I.: Joe: The Rise of Cobra will depend on how you watch it. As a stock action film it's mildly entertaining, and as a completely piss-take it's slightly genius. Just don't try watching it from a discerning, critical perspective because then, obviously, it's absolute rubbish. But people with discerning, critical perspectives shouldn't watch films like G.I.: Joe anyway.


...


AND NOW YOU KNOW

AND KNOWING IS HALF THE BATTLE

GEEEEE AAAAAAYEEEEEE JOOOOOOOOOOOE

TV Review: You Have Been Watching

Charlie Brooker, the cynical and seemingly sociopathic mind behind BBC4's excellent Screenwipe, has gone all mainstream in his latest television foray on, er, television with new Channel 4 quiz show 'You Have Been Watching' - where Brooker quizzes three guests on recent weeks television to test their knowledge, creativity and punch lines. Half way into the series' eight week run, how is Brooker coping under the heat of the studio lights?

You Have Been Watching seemed to have a winning formula. Brooker quizzing various comedians (and, for some bizarre yet obligatory reason, Jamelia) were amusing enough, while his own Screenwipe-esque segments were still as funny as they were when it was just him sitting alone in a darkened room (even if there were fewer words bleeped out). But for some reason, which has become increasingly obvious as the series has dragged on, this doesn't quite seem to work.

One reasons for this could be the guests, who all seem a little mismatched. Obviously the inclusion of Jamelia in the opening episode was a little odd, but even the likes of Frankie Boyle and Reece Shearsmith - people with the kind of dark humour that you'd think would match up well with the likes of Brooker - somehow feel out of place and awkward with each other and the host, almost as if they're worried about being too funny in case they accidentally upstage Brooker and he bites off their heads in retaliation. Which is a completely unfounded fear, as his neck isn't nearly long enough to reach the far end of the set.

But the main problem seems to be Brooker himself who has become increasingly awkward with both the audience and the guests as the series has gone on, and seems unable to develop any kind of rapport with either. This was most obvious during the third episode; while Brooker jokingly berated the three guests they sat gawping in confusion, like school students being yelled at by a new substitute teacher, with the whole thing followed by hesitant applause from an audience who were clearly so dumbfounded by the speech they'd forgotten to read the big red "applause" sign dangling from the studio rafters. Maybe that's the point, maybe Brooker - a man who who often referred to himself as misanthropic - is maintaining an awkward atmosphere as a private joke between him and the producers. It's just a shame nobody else gets to laugh.

That said, You Have Been Watching is still good for a few laughs, just not quite as many as you'd have expected after watching the likes of Screen and Newswipe. What made those shows funny is still there, it just lacks the harsh, brash language that made them both so much more entertaining. As for his newly chosen format, so far it's unconvincing. The guests and flashy set just get in the way of what everyone actually wants to see; Brooker sitting alone in a darkened room vocalising his hatred and making jokes about bums. Maybe I'll dig out a couple of old Screenwipe episodes tomorrow night instead.

You Have Been Watching is on at 10pm, Tuesdays nights on Channel 4.

Game Review: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

The video game adaptation of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen never really looked like it was going to be any good. Never mind the fact that it's a movie tie-in, but the developer and publisher history - practically non-existent and shamelessly corporate respectively - didn't exactly fill anyone with optimism. Still, so long as it sticks to the premise of giant robots transforming into sports cars and planes and kicking the crap out of each other it can't be all bad, right?

The good news is that Revenge of the Fallen does just that. In both single and multiplayer you'll play as either Autobots or Decepticons, and roam around small areas of Japan, America, Egypt and wherever else scrapping with other giant robots. With a decent sized arsenal of weapons and vehicles, there's enough here to keep the novelty fresh for a good couple of hours. Although once that novelty wears off, it all starts going rapidly downhill.

The first thing you'll notice is the controls, which are all over the place. The developers have tried to find a system that allows you to quickly transform between the three modes - weapons, vehicles and movement (allowing you to scale buildings as your chosen Transformer) - but in doing so have come up with an overly complicated and fiddly system. Let's say your driving down the road in vehicle mode (so holding down the right trigger), and you see an enemy on top of a building. If you want to take a shot at them you have to let go of the right trigger to exit vehicle mode, hold down the left trigger to go into weapons mode, turn around to target the enemy, choose which weapon you want to use with the left or right bumpers, and then fire on them with the right trigger. How complicated is that? Considering the d-pad isn't being used for anything and would be a much simpler way of switching between them, developers Luxoflux have made what could have been a simple system needlessly intricate and irritating to grasp.

While Revenge of the Fallen does stick to the giant mechanical brawl idea instead of dithering about with awkward teenage romance (I know you're probably not reading this Mr Bay, but take notes if you are), in the single player it will become very tedious, very quickly. The option to choose between playing as Decepticons or Autobots is appreciated, but ultimately unnecessary since you'll be playing through exactly the same levels and the enemies you fight - a selection of identical mini Autobots and Decepticons depending on which faction you choose - aren't varied or challenging, so fighting them throughout the few hours of each campaign is incredibly repetitive. Annoyingly, Luxoflux could have easily prevented this by giving the Decepticons human enemies rather than the rubbish mini Autobots, which could have done wonders to spice things up a bit - I mean, who wouldn't want to wander around as a mechanical behemoth blowing up armies of oncoming tanks? - but naturally, they've gone for the cheaper, easier option. With this being an Activision published movie tie-in it's hardly surprising, but you can't help but feel a little disappointed when you think of how much more potential there could be in a Transformers game.

It doesn't help that the repetitive missions are accompanied by equally repetitive voice-overs. After completing a mission, the chosen faction will sit around a giant holographic globe monotonously discussing your mission performance. Who actually thought it'd be a good idea to have five badly voice-acted robots blather on for however long about accuracy statistics and uncompleted bonus objectives? And who decided to make it unskippable? And who tested without pointing out how bloody stupid it was? And who... fuck it. There are too many individuals to blame. I'll just Google the address of Luxoflux's development studios and bare my arse in that general direction. That'll show 'em.

The closest Revenge of the Fallen comes to have a saving grace is it's multiplayer, but even that is riddled with faults. There are only four game types and there's very little map variety, and players have an irritating habit of dropping in and out of games so multiplayer lacks any consistent pace. When enough people do stick around matches can be competitive and fun, but this happens so rarely that it's not often worth sticking around for. Like everything else with Revenge of the Fallen then, Luxoflux have put the bare minimum effort into the multiplayer and it really shows.

So Revenge of the Fallen is, unsurprisingly, one of the worst games to have come out for the 360 this summer. It's completely half arsed, and Luxoflux don't seem to have put any effort in anywhere. It's a shame really, after playing through Wolverine: Origins it seemed there was a glimmer of hope for movie tie-in titles, but that view has been well and truly jaded after playing through this thoroughly average excuse for a game. And to think the same people who published this are genuinely threatening to up the price of their games to £55. Where do they get the knackers?

Ethnic minorities excluded "'cause a Brother can't swim"

Following the media hysteria around the exclusion of a young group of racial minorities from a swimming club, the President has made a statement defending the club's actions.

John Duesler Jr, President of the Valley Club, had earlier this week excluded a group of African American and Hispanic youngsters from using the club's swimming pool, claiming that the children would "change the complexion" of the club, and today spoke out defending his statements.

Duesler, who appeared in front of reporters wearing a large sun hat and with his nose doused in sun screen, said that "Our motivation for excluding that group of children is not racial, we have to maintain a respectable image as a swimming club. And that is not one that we can maintain with black children."

"I mean, if someone from a rival swimming club came round and saw a group of black kids flopping around in the pool - 'cause we all know they can't swim - what would they think of us? We're just trying to protect our own reputation."

One of the pool's lifeguards was outspoken in his agreement with Duesler: "I've never had to perform so many rescues in that pool in a day. It's not like I could tell the difference between them either, so I could hardly stop them jumping in again afterwards."

In the meantime, the excluded Creative Steps Inc. have reportedly been offered the use of another club's athletics track. Executive Director of the day camp, Alethea Wright, said "it's good to see that not everyone is as closed minded as the Valley Club is acting at the moment, and there are those out there who don't adhere to outdated racial stereotypes."

Game Review: Prototype

With several years of hype behind it, it's unsurprising that Prototype was one of this summer's most anticipated releases. It promised so much, boasting free-roaming environments, flowing parkour and highly destructive superpowers in the months leading up to it's release. But has it managed to live up to it's own hype, or is this another ambitious but ultimately disappointing gaming blockbuster?

After kicking off with a brief, teasing sample of the chaos and devastation to come, Prototype rewinds a fortnight and we see the man who was just walking around with swords for hands wake up on a morgue table and realise he's somehow developed superpowers. This man - Alex Mercer - quickly finds himself being forced to uncover a conspiracy to try and discover who he is and exactly what has happened to him. Naturally he does this by walking around New York City eating people who he thinks might be slightly relevant. It's not nearly as complex or interesting as the thousands of random and irrelevant plot elements would have you believe, but it's a good enough staging ground to show off one of the coolest mix of powers there has been in a game for a long time.

Alex starts off with the basic powers, which include enhanced strength, speed, durability and agility. While they're never going to be as efficient as the shape-shifting powers you'll unlock as you play through Prototype, these abilities allow you to traverse New York City however you please and, whether that's pelting down the middle of the road at a hundred miles an hour, leaping between skyscrapers or just climbing to the top of the Empire State building and hopping off into the carnage below, you'll experience a freedom of movement that is unrivalled on the 360 and which will never become tedious.

The other basic ability Alex possesses is shape-shifting, allowing him to blend in with the crowd by taking on a different form such as a pedestrian or a soldier by consuming them. While shape-shifting can be useful early on it gradually becomes obsolete, since as you progress enemies that can detect you through a disguise start appearing more often, meaning that previously stealth-based objectives such as infiltrating an enemy base become mad consume-and-dash missions. It's a decent feature, and tricking gullible marines into killing one of their own is always a good laugh, but it's never going to vary the gameplay like it could have done.

Consuming someone for their appearance is a simple process of grabbing them and eating their face off.

As you play through the story and completely the various side missions, you'll have the chance to unlock and upgrade other powers, most of which revolve around Alex's shape-shifting abilities. However, these powers aren't about blending in with the crowd: they're about literally blending the crowd. Just a few of the powers you'll include giant hammer fists, giant claws and even a long whip (where Radical Entertainment missed a glorious comedic opportunity by attaching it to his arm and not somewhere more provocative) to deal with the hordes of zombies, soldiers, and innocent screaming pedestrians that litter the street. These distinctive abilities allow you to play Prototype however you want, and keep the already slick and hilariously gory combat fresh and varied throughout the game.

And I thought the cheestrings in the adverts were a bit mental.

If the wide selection of highly destructive powers doesn't quite cut it for you, Prototype is more than willing to throw in some more highly destructive toys for you to play with including machine guns, tanks and helicopters, all of which are remarkably easy to use. Using a weapon is a simple case of aiming and shooting - although the fiddly auto aim can be a pain since it doesn't understand that adjacent giant infected monsters are greater threats than a woman flailing her arms half a block away - while tanks and helicopters handle very smoothly, and it won't be long before you've completely mastered the controls for both and are taking them on wild rampages through Central Park. So, unlike other games where vehicles and weapons feel a little tacked on and unnecessary, Prototype has integrated them perfectly, and adds further diversity and chaos to it's already dynamic, varied and totally manic experience.

With the sheer amount of mayhem on screen, you'd imagine Prototype would be constantly suffering frame rate issues, texture pops and other irritating technical issues. But amazingly, it doesn't. Everything runs very smoothly throughout - at least it doesn't if you've taken the five minutes to install it onto your 360's hard drive. The downside to this is that Prototype isn't the prettiest game - the environment is a selection of dull greys and browns, the textures would have looked poor in a later last generation game, and the limited amount of character models are ugly and bland. Then again, if you're stood still long enough to notice any of this stuff then you're not playing the game properly, and should really get back to mindlessly slaughtering people with giant hammer fists and rocket launchers - because while the looks may be flawed, the utter carnage of combat is near enough flawless.

I know it's supposed to look disturbing, but does anyone else think the beastie on the left's expression looks remarkably like the Awesome face?

That said, there are a couple of niggling issues with Prototype. The camera, while fine when leaping over skyscrapers or single handedly re-enacting the running of the bulls in a street full of zombies, isn't particularly good in closer environments, where you'll often find your view obstructed by a piece of debris or a wall. The side missions can be fairly repetitive as well, but since you can dip in and out of them as and when they're hardly a game killer.

Minor flaws aside, Prototype is a mind-blowingly fun experience, and delivers on more than enough of it's ambitious promises to make it worth your while. If you've ever played a game where you sliced something's limb off and your only thought was "Holy shit that's cool", this is something you should definitely pick up. Like, right now. Meanwhile, if you're looking for something a little more complex and involving then Prototype probably isn't it, but frankly if you're going to turn your nose up at the awesome, bloody mayhem because Prototype doesn't have the sophistication or depth of other games then you're a pretentious cock and I don't like you.

360 Thieves Traced after Massive Influx of Calls to Customer Support

The men behind the Great Xbox 360 Robbery have been caught out after making over a thousand calls to Microsoft's Technical Support.

The robbers, who stole a truck carrying 1,300 of the error-ridden consoles, were forced to call the Xbox customer support line after tests on the stolen consoles resulted in a thousand different failures and error messages.

Microsoft were then able to determine the consoles were stolen as the thieves read out each console's individual serial number, while police traced the calls to discover the thieves' location - a warehouse in Mississauga, South Ontario, Canada.

A Canadian police chief claimed 'At first we figured that these men [who had already bound and gagged a security guard before making off with the truck] were professional criminals. It wasn't until Microsoft informed us of the hundreds of customer support calls that we realised they were just regular Canadians.'

'Pretty much any other race on the world would have managed to get away with it, but as a people we're just not cut out for this sort of thing'.

Meanwhile, the thieves apparently saw a silver lining to their current incarceration, one stating that 'At least we don't have to put up with that obnoxious c**t Max again', while another said 'We don't have to put up with all the hype for another f**king Halo game, either'.

Finally.

Just stuck all the reviews up, even though I said I'd do it a week or so ago (although to be fair, you probably didn't expect much else considering the fuck all I've done for the last few months). Usual stuff: hope you enjoy reading them, feedback is very welcome.

Sorry for the lack of pictures, but when you've got to look up and think of captions for three-four different pictures for each review, the idea of doing that four times in a row is a little off-putting.

Oh yeah, you'll notice the Resident Evil 5 review is a little less, er, restrained than the usual stuff. I just wanted to try something a little different because I thought it was complete turd.

Anyway, now that all that is out of the way, moving swiftly on to relevant games. Recently I've been playing The Sims 3, Prototype and Red Faction: Guerilla, all really very good games that will all be getting the usual treatment (the draft for Prototype has already been done, expect that first). I've also picked up the Transformers 2 game recently. No idea why I did that, but unsurprisingly it's balls so far. Whodathunkit?

So that's what you can expect from me in the coming weeks, and hopefully some other stuff (you might have seen some satirical articles earlier this month, more on those tomorrow).

Sorry for the delay!

Tom

Game Review: X-Men Origins: Wolverine [Uncaged Edition]

With the summer blockbusters making their appearances on the big screen the line up of naff movie tie-in games drag themselves onto the shelves, as developers try to cash in on six months of half hearted work by slapping a license on the cover. You'd be forgiven for dismissing most of them without a second thought - such as the upcoming and inevitably poor Gears of War rip-off Terminator Salvation - but then there's a chance you'll miss out of one of the rare gems that the franchise flogging produces. It's the first of the summer blockbusters, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, that has surprisingly spawned one of the better movie tie-in games - specifically it's Uncaged Edition.

Wasting absolutely no time throwing you into the fray, X-Men Origins: Wolverine begins as Wolverine's helicopter is shot down over Africa and you're forced to skydive sans parachute through a barrage of gunfire and oncoming missiles, before slamming into the jungle below miraculously unscathed and unsheathing the iconic metal (well, bone at the moment) claws. It's a fantastic opening, instantly grabbing you by the balls and launching you straight into the nitty gritty - the combat.

Combat revolves around the three familiar moves - light, heavy and grab attacks - and chaining them for different combos. It's fairly simple, mostly just a case of mashing the light attack button before finishing with a heavy attack, but it's incredibly stylish and flows brilliantly, and with the gradual addition of Lunge and Rage attacks the combat remains surprisingly varied throughout. If you have fond memories of playing through the likes of Ninja Gaiden II, then you'll feel right at home.

Then X-Men Origins: Wolverine puts a dark, blood red cherry on top. The game's Uncaged Edition boasts the kind of brutality and gore unheard of in the typical, family friendly movie tie-ins, and it's absolutely brilliant. Watching as Wolverine mercilessly tears his enemy in two is incredibly satisfying, and with cinematic camera angles and excellently timed slow-motion sequences it's rarely going to become boring. So with it's flowing, satisfying and shamelessly brutal combat, X-Men Origins will genuinely make you feel like iconic mutant. And it's a brilliant feeling.

Well, it's a brilliant feeling when you're against the variety of standard enemies the game will throw at you, but once you come up to a boss fight everything comes crashing back down into typical tie-in mediocrity. They're mind numbingly repetitive, with every boss fight playing out exactly the same way - dodge, lunge, hack, repeat - and with each boss boasting massive health you'll probably spend a good five minutes using that same combination of moves over and over again. Because dealing with bosses is a more a test of graft than skill, when they finally do buckle there's no sense of accomplishment whatsoever, just the disappointment of knowing that the five or ten minutes you spent lunging onto that thing's back could have been better spent cutting someone's face off.

While the boss fights will always be repetitive, there's enough of other elements in X-Me Origins: Wolverine to keep the rest of the gameplay relatively fresh. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to have been as much effort put into these sections as there was into the combat.

The big secondary elements is the Tomb Raider style platforming and puzzle solving, which mostly takes place during the Africa-based missions. It's competent, but that's it. There's just nothing exciting about it; the puzzles are very simple and Wolverine's movement - in stark contrast to his fighting style - lacks the kind of flair that made other platformers more enjoyable. It's fairly bland and the puzzles and challenges are blatantly replicated, but it helps to keep the combat fresh. It's just a shame they couldn't put a little more effort into it.

Not wanting to undermine the mediocre reputation of movie tie-ins by making something decent, X-Men Origins then throws quick time events and even a dodgy vehicle section into the mix. Fortunately the vehicle section is only a few minutes long, although that just asked questions of why it was included in the first place as it's not necessary for the development and it's barely challenging or even fun, it's as if they threw it in just to kill time before unleashing you on some more hapless soldiers. The quick time events, while visually impressive, feel even more restrictive than usual after experiencing the game's free-flowing combat.

There are a couple of unlockables in X-Men: Origins, but they're not the kind that will keep you coming back for more. With the storyline being so linear (and also fairly short) the hard mode you'll unlock on completion probably isn't going to encourage another play through. Neither are the costumes to unlock, as expectedly the novelty for them wears of very quickly.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine will go down as one of the better movie tie-ins, but even then it's still barely rising above average. The combat is the only real plus point with everything else feeling half-arsed and tedious by comparison, and combined with it's linearity and lack of replayability this is a rental at most. Still, if you want the sensation of being Wolverine, this is definitely the best place to get it.

Summary: While pretty much everything is fairly lacklustre, the combat in X-Men Origins: Wolverine: Uncaged Edition makes what would otherwise be a bland movie tie-in an enjoyable, dynamic and highly brutal experience.

Game Review: Street Fighter IV

If you've ever had a relationship with games during your life, chances are that you've had an affair with Capcom's Street Fighter series. Whether you remember spending your youth slotting coin after coin into arcade machines because you were only one near-impossible fight away from facing the final boss or muting the TV because you were playing long past your bedtime, fond memories of this arcade fighter will have resurfaced from the back of your mind when the latest addition to the classic series, Street Fighter IV, arrived to the Xbox 360. But how does the daddy of arcade fighters compare to the young upstarts of the later generations?

Everything looks to be shaping up nicely thanks to the awesome introduction, as old favourites from the Street Fighter roster show off the fancy new art style with even fancier moves. As you recognise iconic fighters from the series you'll marvel as their new moves splatter the screen with paint and bursts of colour, and salivate at the prospect of joining the fights yourself.

When you get into the fight, everything feels very familiar. Very little has changed since the original Street Fighter over twenty years ago. It's still the classic 2-dimensional gameplay that made the series famous, with all the characters and moves from the older games as well as all the new characters, stages and special moves that you'd expect from a sequel. Even though it's essentially the same game from twenty years ago, the new moves and superb graphics keep it surprisingly fresh, at least until you begin the frustrating process of actually trying out the fancy new techniques.

Pulling off anything more flamboyant than a timid poke can be among the most fiddly and frustrating experiences imaginable. Instead of the A, B X and Y combinations used by other fighters, combinations and special moves in Street Fighter are mostly done by flicking the thumbstick in various different directions. This sounds fine in theory because it worked back in Street Fighter's arcade days, but in practice it doesn't really work. Unlike the stocky joysticks of old, the 360's thumbsticks are just too slippery to pull of the movements needed for most of the combos, so unless you're lucky or very, very patient (which you're most likely not, because you're playing Street Fighter IV), most matches are going to make you feel like Alfie Patten fumbling for the clitoris rather than a hardcore Street Fighter.

Without the flashy moves, Street Fighter feels slow and clunky. With only the occasional fluky Hadouken to add spark to three rounds of sloppy kicks and failed grabs, even playing versus with a friend can be a repetitive and dull experience. This isn't something you can dip in and out of and really enjoy, so unless you're willing to plough hours of your life into learning the moves and experimenting with the characters it's probably not going to be as fun as other fighters.

But if you do take the time to get into Street Fighter IV, you're going to find that it's time well spent, as Street Fighter has a level of depth that other fighters just don't have. Fights will become faster and unpredictable as you learn the strategies and special moves, and everything will feel so much more satisfying than it did when you first picked up the controller and fumbled your way to victory. It's time consuming but genuinely rewarding, and you're going to be getting so much more from Street Fighter if you're a little patient with it.

The patience needed to master the tricks of Street Fighter will come in handy for when you attempt the single player modes. Not because they're particularly long, just because resisting the urge to hurl your Xbox, controller and television out of the window after the final boss beats you to a bloody pulp for the umpteenth time in a row is going to require the patience of a saint, and unless you've got your head round the flicky, fiddly combinations this game is going to relentlessly kick your ass until you're left in a broken mess, sobbing in the corner of your bedroom as the television taunts you with yet another hilarious bad win quote and mocking countdown. Again, it's not the sort of thing you can dip in and out of and really enjoy, but if you're willing to persevere with the challenge you'll get so much more satisfaction from it.

So, despite the franchise's iconic status, Street Fighter IV is still going to divide opinion. The fiddly controls, sloppy fights and seemingly unassailable difficulty curve are going to be a real turn off for some. But for others, the nostalgic glee of chaining Shoryukens before blowing away their rival with an Ultra combo is going to be the most satisfying feeling in the world. It all depends what you want from a game like this; if you want an arcade fighter that can be picked up every month or so then Street Fighter IV isn't bad, but you'd probably have more fun with something else. However, if you want to spend hours mastering an in-depth fighter with a variety of characters, moves and challenges, this is probably the best one out there. Now you just have to work up the courage to leave your mum's basement and go outside to buy it.

Summary: Street Fighter IV successfully brings the franchise out of the cold, dank hole of HD remakes and into the next generation, but pretty colours won't mask the fiddly controls and insane difficulty that will likely put off most players outside the hardcore crowd.

Game Review: Resident Evil 5

Before I sink my teeth into the jugular of Resident Evil 5 it's only fair that you all know exactly whose opinion you're about to read (or skim over to quickly check the score, either way). This is all coming from someone who has not only never played any of the Resident Evil series before this, but who has not even bothered to play this one all the way through. So if the idea of reading the opinions of a jaded and overly cynical misanthrope appeals to you then by all means read on, but if you'd rather ignore them because said misanthrope didn't do his homework properly, then you might as well stop round about now.

So then, Resident Evil 5 is the latest instalment in Capcom's highly successful survival horror series. At least that's what I've been told, because from where I'm standing (or rather sitting, typing furiously) it doesn't seem anything like the latest instalment in a survival horror series. Rather it seems like the fat, clumsy, wannabe action hero cousin of the series, that has deluded itself into thinking that because it shares the name of the older generations it's capable of achieving the same tension and horror that they could. It can't.

The obvious reason for Resident Evil 5 being incapable of spooking anyone old enough to cross the road by themselves is that it makes the same mistake that every other developer trying to redefine horror makes: putting you in the body of a heavily muscled agent carrying a large and fully loaded machine gun. For some reason developers don't seem to clue onto the fact that no matter what kind of horrors they think of, it's not going to be scary if we're handed an assault rifle and a handful of grenades. Thanks to Resident Evil 5 performing the same dick move, any potential horror elements are instantly dismissed as protagonist Chris Redfield grabs hold of his mighty weapon and fires a load in it's face. Shortly before shooting it with his gun.

The blame doesn't lie completely with the lousy choice of protagonist, because it's not as if anything in Resident Evil 5 could ever qualify as proper horror anyway. As it turns out the "Fear you can't forget" is usually a bunch of African blokes (or occasionally African dogs) with garden tools who exhibit a strange tendency to grow tentacles from their mouth. Once you remember just how white your burly, gun-toting protagonist is, it becomes very easy to mistake Resident Evil 5 for a glorified retelling of Apartheid, and as soon as you start making similar connections connections every politically incorrect fibre of your being is going to find the experience hilarious rather than unforgettably terrifying.


By carelessly throwing the survival horror aspect aside Resident Evil 5 forces itself into becoming a third person shooter, something which it isn't terribly good at. Emphasis on the terribly. Actually, just get rid of the "good" altogether and stick with terrible. Yeah, that sounds about right.

"Terrible" might sound harsh, but there's so much wrong with Resident Evil 5 that it's totally warranted. Character movement, or lack of it, is a good place to start, with Chris Redfield's hulking upper body doing little to disguise the fact that his legs don't work properly. Don't get me wrong, he's rather good at walking in a straight line but once he finds himself in a more difficult scenario - such as walking around a corner - he slows right down, a particularly unhelpful trait when there's ten or twenty tentacle-faced Africans threatening you with spades.

You could always try shooting the Africans before you take on the dreaded and almighty corner, but there's a problem with that too; Chris Redfield can't move and shoot at the same time. Maybe dynamic shooting is something they forgot to teach in super-secret-anti-biohazard-terrorist-agent boot camp, or maybe it's just representational of how Chris Redfield is the last bastion of defence for the white man against the rabid indigenous populace. Either way it's completely broken from a gameplay perspective, further restricting the already embarrassingly clunky movement and robbing Resident Evil 5 of any pace it may have had. Yes, I realise that all the other Resident Evils played in the same way, and that if 5 didn't perform this seemingly obligatory fan service then there'd be an outcry from the fatter, nerdier, mother's-basement-dwelling portion of the fanbase who'd claim it "just wasn't Resident Evil". But if anything that just highlights how dated the series has become if Capcom, in their ineptitude (or reluctance to lose fan's tongues from their backsides), haven't changed it in the thirteen years since it's debut.

The inventory isn't exactly intuitive either. Once again you're forced to stand still and watch as the locals gather foaming at the tentacles, except now you're not even capable of fighting back because Chris is too busy rummaging through his pockets to do anything else. Once he finally does find what he's looking for he then takes a little bit more time to decide what he actually wants to do with it, although by this time it doesn't really matter because half of his body has already been digested.

Fortunately there's always your partner (who for some reason is named after the midget spaceman from Pikmin) to occasionally provide a distraction while you fumble around with aiming or rummaging. Unfortunately she's utterly useless and spends most of her time either wasting ammo that you've graciously collected for her or getting in the way. Unless you've blackmailed a friend into playing co-op then her only real use is as a pack mule, although doing that requires you to fiddle with the horribly unintuitive inventory again, which nobody in their right mind would want to do.

In case you haven't yet figured out what I'm driving at here, let me be clear: Resident Evil 5 is a bad game. Everything about it - movement, shooting, inventory, dialogue, camera, whatever - is either clunky, dated, unintuitive or a combination of all three. There simply isn't anything about it that could possibly convince me to recommend it to anyone, at least not anyone I liked. The only people who might get something out of this are the fans, but it's not like I need to tell them that. They've already beaten it twice and are now spending their evenings re-watching the cutscenes for the hundredth time while tentatively rubbing themselves with a Jill Valentine action figure. Until they read this of course. Then they're coming to kill me. Good news is they have to stand perfectly still when they try to attack, so maybe I can get a head start.

Summary: The series' debut on the new generation plays like it belongs on the old ones. Capcom needs to stop catering for the fans, otherwise their next release is just going to be as dated and disappointing as this one.

Game Review: Halo Wars

Back in 2007, Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution proved to the world that there was still a place on consoles for strategy games. Now it's time for Ensemble, the brains behind the hugely successful Age of Empires series, to flex their development muscle. The result of their efforts is Halo Wars which, while many will cynically dismiss as a lacklustre attempt to flog the Halo cash piñata, they've actually made work remarkably well.

With the limitations of the 360 controller, Ensemble needed to come up with a control scheme that was not only simple, but versatile, and they've done just that. Basic commands - such as unit selection and movement - can be executed quickly with the A or X buttons, with other buttons being used for quick navigation of the map, squad selection or to access each unit's unique abilities. Researching new technologies or training squads is equally smooth, thanks to the intuitive wheel menus. It may not be as quick as a keyboard and mouse but this genuinely is the next best thing, and developers are going to struggle to come up with a system that works better than this.

Although, while Halo Wars leaps cleanly over the first hurdle, it begins to struggle a little when it comes to actual gameplay for one simple reason; they've forgotten to include any strategy beyond building a ton of units and setting them loose on an enemy base. Besides deciding which units to train and upgrade - a decision that will always revolve around "what is the biggest thing I can afford" - there isn't any thinking involved. The absolute lack of decent strategy means that the difficulty curve bounces around like a hyperactive Grunt on a jackhammer, with easier levels - where everything can be researched, trained or built very quickly - being insultingly easy while slightly harder - and therefore slower building - levels mercilessly kick your ass around the map before you can utter a single defeatist "Wort".

Halo Wars takes a stumble again with it's different factions, or in this case it's lack of. While each of the two factions (the UNSC and the Covenant, if you hadn't already guessed) have three different leaders, there aren't enough significant differences between these leader's unique units or abilities to give the gameplay any real variation. There's room for at least two other factions - the Flood and Sentinels - without even stretching the Halo mythology, and with both making appearances in the campaign it's hard to figure out why Ensemble chose to limit the playable factions when it's clearly something that could have been expanded.

The leaders themselves - the Covenant ones, to be precise - also present balance issue. Unlike their UNSC counterparts, Covenant leaders have a powerful physical presence on the battlefield as soon as the game begins and are easily able to single handedly defeat any quickly-assembled army you can muster. On top of that, there is no limit to have often they can use their special ability; while most units or leaders have to wait for their special abilities to recharge, Covenant leaders can use theirs so long as resources are high enough. Considering there are buildings that constantly replenish resources, these incredibly powerful abilities can be used indefinitely, which doesn't so much tilt the balance as completely flip it on it's head.

While there is little else wrong with the Skirmish mode, Halo War's Campaign decides to bring along a couple of extra problems. The obvious one is the lack of Covenant; despite there being more than enough opportunities to weave a few Covenant missions into the story (à la Halo 2) they're never playable during the solo campaign, before being pushed to the side at the end to make way for the Flood. It's difficult to see why they've been left out because while including the Covenant wouldn't have done much to vary the core "build as many big things as you can" gameplay, it could have given an otherwise insubstantial campaign some much needed extra length.

Perhaps the Covenant's absence from the Campaign wouldn't have been so noticeable if the UNSC weren't restricted so often. Unlike Skirmish, which allows you to freely build however many big things you can afford, Campaign randomly chops and changes what it will allow you to train. One of the best features about classics real-time strategy campaigns - including Age of Empires - was having you effort and time rewarded by unlocking new units and technologies as you advanced, but Halo War's habit of giving and taking with each new mission is as irritating as it is pointless.

It's easy to see where Ensemble went wrong with Halo Wars; in trying to achieve something new on the console, they've gone and forgotten what actually makes a strategy game fun. Variety, balance, and even actual strategy has been pushed to the side of the drawing board to make room for accessibility, leaving a game that, while simple to grasp, is otherwise shallow and basic. Still, purely by creating controls that work, Ensemble have proven that there is very much a future for the genre on the console. Let's just hope whoever decides to bring the next strategy game to the console puts a little more thought into the gameplay.

Summary: A promising step forward for the genre on consoles, Halo Wars handles well, although this doesn't do much to disguise what is ultimately a shallow, repetitive and unsatisfactory experience.

Natal bends down and picks up honours at Game Critic awards

Microsoft's newly announced Project Natal has won Best Hardware/Peripheral of E3 2009 at the Game Critics Awards.

Natal has caused a stir among the gaming community since it's announcement at E3 earlier this month, and Microsoft's Creative Director of European Studios, Peter Molyneux (seen here revealing how many inches his ears add to the width of his head), was only too willing to blurt out details about Microsoft's ambitions for the project.

"We're going to revolutionise gaming as we know it." claimed Molyneux. "Right now games are played with a controller, but with Natal we can remove that. Imagine being able to play through Fable 2 purely by twitching your eyebrows. That's the kind of thing we're aiming towards."

Another success story from the award ceremony was DS game Scribblenauts. The Little Big Planet imitator picked up the award for Best Original Game, with the irony sadly lost on the voting American editors.

Bleszinski to "Nintendo" the Gears franchise

Developer Cliff Bleszinski has made it clear that he intends to milk the Gears of War franchise for all it's worth.

Bleszinski, seen here posing for the Game Developer Douchebags of America calender in which he features as ten of the months, says that there have "Only been two identical Gears of War games so far" and that there is room on the market for three, or maybe even four even more identical instalments in the popular franchise.

"There is still a lot of things you can do in a cover based shooter." claimed Bleszinski. "There are a lot of melee weapons that we haven't even thought of glueing onto a gun yet.". Bleszinski went on to say that there are "still lots of stories to tell in the Gears universe" while clutching a rented copy of Starship Troopers 3: Marauder and cheekily winking to nearby development staff.

One interviewer, who dared to suggest that Bleszinski might be milking the franchise to satisfy his monumental ego, was quickly silenced as Cliffy B aimed a rubber Lancer at the protester, shouting "Pew Pew Pew you're dead". Security escorting the protester off the premises as the developer held the Lancer aloft and made triumphant revving noises with his mouth, before swaggering off to go buy another girly earring.

Obama condemned by PETA after fly swatting

PETA have criticised US President Barack Obama for his brutal murdering of a fly

The spotlight-loving animal rights activists have branded the President as "inhumane" after he performed a grievous act of violence on the insect.

The assault was performed during an interview with CNBC's John Harwood, where Obama can clearly be seen taking a swipe, exclaiming "Quit flying up in ma face, yo", with the fly dropping to the ground moments later. Obama then went on to boast "Take that sucka!" before continuing with the interview as if nothing had happened.

The swipe itself was described by onlookers as "something between a karate chop and a full on pimp slap". Vice President Joe Biden went on to say the action was "wickedy wickedy fly, yo", before putting a baseball cap on backwards, sauntering up to the President and offering some "big up respec'" for his lightning-fast strike.

However, it appears PETA have taken offence at Obama's inhumane and reckless actions, even going as far to say that the President's fly swatting was "borderline psychopathic". Spokesman Bruce Freidrich protested against the swat, claiming that "flies are people too, and they should be treated with just as much respect as another human being" and that Obama's actions "would only further encourage abuse towards insects.".

Freidrich then went on to say that Obama would be forgiven by the organisation if he laid a dookie on the steps of the White House and "allowed nearby flies to feast upon it without threat of violence", although White House security deemed the chances of this happening were "unlikely", due to the high probability of someone attempting to steal the faeces and sell it on eBay.

BNP leader Nick Griffin claims crusty jugglers shouldn't get what's coming to 'em

Following a BNP attack on a group of Romanian Gypsies in Belfast yesterday, Nick Griffin has both condemned and defended the actions of supporters of his party.

Griffin said of the event that "No one wants to see any person attacked, and that any right-minded person would condemn the attacks.". He then went on to add that "The bastards shouldn't have been here in the first place, and they're all criminals anyway.".

It's an action that comes just as the BNP were attempting to further establish themselves as a respectable political party in the wake of their election victories in the North West and Yorkshire, although Nick Griffin stated he was confident that the party's reputation would not be significantly hindered by this because anyone thick enough to not know the BNP's immigration policy of "Bricks and velocity" is too busy ranting about the MP's expenses scandal that nobody really cares about any more.

This attack by the BNP on a group of gypsies in a church follows a day after an article on the BNP website that has dubbed a former Labour minister a "racist thug". Nick Griffin then went on to defend his concept of irony, stating that it was "Like rain on your wedding day".

NASA decide that Moon doesn't have enough craters.

A team of NASA scientists have decided to make their jobs more interesting by blowing a massive chunk out of the Moon.

The team, led by Kimberly Ennico, have finally gotten bored of staring at the same floating rock in space every day, and instead of finding something worthwhile to do have opted to just make another great big hole in it.

Kimberly Ennico said of the billion dollar undertaking: "There is only so much of the Moon a team of scientists can really look at, and after a while it becomes a little tedious. Imagine watching paint dry, except the paint is several hundred-thousand miles away and has been dry for several decades. We're just trying to make our lives a little more interesting.".

She then went on to meet criticism of the expensive endeavour by claiming that "There might be some water up there", because apparently the colossal and inexhaustible supply of water on the Earth's surface doesn't quite cut it any more.

Despite some criticism, many scientists have joined Ms Ennico in defending the act, stating that not only would it be "seriously fucking cool, man", but are also convinced that this action will further confirm whether or not the Moon is in fact made of cheese, and if so what kind.

"A few large chunks would probably suggest some kind of cheddar, while a sprinkling or crumbly residue would point towards something like feta or parmesan." claimed one scientist, who later insisted that current study has proven it "wouldn't be any of that poncey blue shit.".

Blog post thing.

Just to quickly prove to myself that this time I'm actually going to stick with something I claimed to be doing, I'm serving up the first slice of meaningless drivel - without proper spell checking or anything. I'm living dangerously, baby.

So Friday I had an Editorial Writing exam, which is basically where the exam board sends you two packs on two random topics they've chosen (I'm assuming the "random article" button on Wikipedia is involved somewhere in their decision making process) and then ask you to write a 1000-word piece on it, which can be in pretty much any style. It's basically their way of fucking with you - you can be asked to write anything about anything - so properly researching the two packs is very important preparation.

But being naturally lazy, I didn't do that. Instead it was more a case of picking up the packs two days late, quickly deciding which one to do (a choice between Senior Fitness or Twin Peaks, a cult television show from the 90s, didn't seem like a tough call at the time) and then just highlighting the fuck out of thirty pages of words. So, there was me tottering into the exam hall with a thick wedge of luminous pink paper thinking "A-ha, I'm well prepared for this", just before the questions bitch-slap me into reality and I spend two and a half hours trying to remember what Radio 2 is like so I can write a script for it.

I couldn't help but think "Maybe I should have done the other one" all the way through, which just made me realise how lazy I was. It wasn't "Maybe I should prepare both", no. Either way my choice had to include some sort of apathy towards something. I suppose I should have tried to look at both, but even though they were so different I'd have still gotten them confused. All through the exam I'd have had this image in my head of an old woman doing star jumps while her Twin Peaks bounced lazily up and down like sad melons in plastic bags. No thanks.

Still, the weekend following it was good, spent Saturday celebrating my girlfriend's 19th and Sunday dorking it up on the 360 while she stole my room to revise, with the occasional break to clean up puppy piss. Wouldn't have minded it so much if he didn't look so proud of himself when he saw me cleaning it up, almost as if he was gloating. Or maybe he was just expecting me to feed him cheese. Either way he decided it was a good idea to galavant off with all the kitchen roll and trail it around the house before leaving a shapely turd on the doormat. Aren't puppies adorable?

So yeah, that was the last three days of my relatively uneventful life. Hopefully it'll get more interesting as I keep writing this - or I'll at least be able to throw in enough cock gags to make it semi-enjoyable. In the mean time, try not to hurl too much abuse. I'm new to this stuff and still figuring out the kinks.

Oh yeah, uploading the Halo Wars review tonight when I get back from work, so that'll be up in...er...some hours.

Update - four reviews next week, other stuff, blah blah blah

Since I've been holding back all reviews for the last four months while waiting for this new site everything I've done has become pretty out of date - not to mention a total lack of motivation on my part because of the "well if nobody's reading it I don't have to write it" thoughts that go through my mind every time I sit down to do anything mildly creative or critical - so I've decided to just crack on with stuff now and go back to posting things on here.

The reviews I've managed to get done are (I'm actually straining to remember as I type this) Halo Wars, Resident Evil 5, Street Fighter IV and X-Men Origins: Wolverine. I know, four in four months is pretty shit, but now that I've got some proper incentive to write (that somebody will actually be reading it now) I should be able to get a few more done.

Immediate stuff I've got planned are two full game reviews - Red Faction: Guerilla (which is class, by the way) and Prototype (picking that up tomorrow) - and a DLC review - Fable 2's See The Future, which I might as well just copy paste from the Knothole Island review and replace certain words.

Keep meaning to get back into films but because I'm working now (hurray, money) it's a bit of a faff finding time during the week, and obviously weekends I spend with my girlfriend, who's not always that bothered about going to the cinema. Will try and get back into that over summer, as well as TV.

Also, while I've got time on my hands I might as well start doing actual blogging, instead of just updating a couple of times a week with "By the way I'm writing this". Most of it will be totally pointless, but I'll try and get a few laughs out of it. Besides, it's all good practise!

Right, that's me done, I'm off to highlight some more stuff for an exam tomorrow - which is going to be the first time I've had to wake up early in the morning for a good few months. Sad times, man.

Cheers for reading this, sorry for the delay, more stuff coming soon, yada yada yada.