A few reviews, movies and games alike!

Black Snake Moan

I loved this movie, though I almost let it slip by.

It's a great story, it's different than most of the titles available right now. It's got a little of all the things I enjoy in a movie, including sex, violence, action, dark humor, Samuel L. Jackson and Christina Ricci....

This one caught me off guard, mostly because the ads and the trailers really didn't tell me much of anything about the movie. You see Samuel L. Jackson quip a bit, you see Christina Ricci chained up. And, that's it.

The film itself, though, is so much more. I will admit that I don't know how they could have advertised it differently, but it seems like they should have at least tried.

The movie is a tale about Rae (Ricci), whose history is sexual abuse turned impropriety catches up when her boyfriend (Timberlake), a panic-prone prone man who relys on her for stability, leaves for the military. Immediately, her past causes her to jaunt off on a bender of epic proportions, drinking and pill-popping until she's beaten and left for dead.

She's discovered by an aging black man, Lazarus (Jackson), a defunct blues singer in the deep south, going through marital issues with his wife (she left him after their long marriage, for his younger brother). He takes the girl into his home and takes care of her, but as he learns about her past, and she begins drunken sleep-walking fits, he chains her to the radiator (one that his former wife complained about, which becomes an interesting metaphor in and of itself). He decides that he's going to help this girl, no matter the cost.

The story can be used as a metaphor faith and infidelity, strength and love, it can be seen as a dark romantic comedy with teeth, and, it can be viewed a touching coming of age story of sorts. The point is that there's a deep and meaningful story.

It's twisted, and in the end, people don't end up just hugging and riding off into the sunset. The writing is tight, the imagery is raw and stunning, the human drama is palpable. It's worth a couple hours of your time.


Prey (I catch up a bit...)

You'd think a decade would be long enough to get a title right, but apparently it's not.
There's potential in the title, really. But for a company with such a great lexicon of titles under their belts, their gimmicks fall pretty flat. First, I have to say that I appreciate a game that tries to tell a story, and really, I know they were really trying not to make fun of Native American people, but from the opening sequence, through the rest of the game, I feel almost embarrassed to be playing it. The graphics are pretty, but, of course they've been done, since this does take advantage of the older Doom 3 engine.

The use of portals is a great concept, and when Valve releases Portals with Half Life 2 Ep. 2, I bet we'll see how it's done. Prey, however, fails to take advantage of a great schema. They could have done it right, but they chose to rely on a linear level style so that you never feel you've made a wrong turn. The biggest draw in this game for me was the 360DOF style gravity play. This, I thought, would finally be a game that could show me what I've been missing since the old days of Descent (actually, I still play D2 and D3, but, that's neither here nor there...). However, it really falls flat. Perhaps it's because I'm so used to getting turned around, but, there's no challenge whether I'm hanging upside down on the ceiling or sideways on the walls. Challenge... that's the next problem. There is none. Of course, I've come to expect the ability to breeze through most first person shooter titles of late. It seems that companies are trying really hard to write a story that comes off as cinematic, and they want people to be able to complete it instead of giving up, that way you can see it through. I think it's similar to holding graduation ceremonies when moving from one grade level to another in elementary school. It's catering to mediocrity. Overall it's not a terrible game, but, it's not the pinnacle of joy you might have hoped for in a game that was a decade in the making. I picked it up for $5 at Target... that seems reasonable.


Supreme Commander

OMG OMFG OMG OMFG OMFG OMG OMFG !!!!11!!eleven and other such interweberry... (Yes, I think it's pretty good)
As I've mentioned in a few of my other reviews, I'm not much of an RTS fan. At least, I hadn't been until this last year or so. This game delivers on every level possible. There's really nothing I can say against it, except that at some points it gets to be too much for my feeble brain to handle. The gameplay is simple, elegant, and very intuitive... for the most part. There are a few moments where I have found myself wondering what to do (As I had a transport ship I filled with tanks hovering over the target, I right clicked to get them in... getting them out was less obvious). But, some random clicking usually solves that, and it's been such a rare thing that I can hardly fault the game. I think they just assume certain conventions are used so frequently, I should already know them. Maybe that's a mistake, but one I'm willing to over look. An obvious draw for the game is the graphics. I hate companies that are concerned only with graphics. There are companies that seem to think that their game will only be good if I can fry an egg on my graphics card while it's running. And, admittedly, I probably COULD fry an egg on my graphics card while playing this game, the fact is, the gameplay is there to go with it. Now, don't get me wrong. I've read my share of reviews on this game, and they all talk of the fact that you there's little balance between quality and playability, but I found that I can play it fine and dandy on my system, and I've got nothing more than an average rig at this point. (AMD Athlon 64 3800+ / 3GB RAM / nVidia GeForce 7900GS 256MB), and I can play it with more than enough graphical zing.

It's pretty, but more importantly, it's a lot of fun. There's nothing like building your force and swooping down on the enemy and watching the carnage ensue. All of the units solid enough AI to try and use their strengths and hide their weakness. The campaign mode as a decent enough story, and it's played out by reasonable good voice actors. The videos are pretty, and it seems they at least tried to give you something to think about while you're clicking around between cut scenes. Really, my only complaint is that some of the missions can be long, lasting for hours and hours, as the map is continually opened up, and, especially if you missed the dialogue, you can easily not understand WHAT you're supposed to do for a specific objective. (A good example is the second mission of the UEF, an objective opens up where you need to get to a base to help them evacuate, the dialogue says what not to forget to bring, but, the object just lists them as: 0/12 0/20 0/8... 0 of 12 WHAT is not made clear if you missed it...)

The skirmish modes have tons of options so that you can customize the game to your tastes, and, with various mods, you can extend the replay value indefinitely... which is good since there isn't a system built yet with the power to run this with settings maxed, you'll likely play for quite a while, and then, when you get that new 9950GTXST2SLI4 card, you'll be reinstalling just to see how many particles you can get. And I'd be willing to bet that you'll get hooked again. Back on track though, the skirmish mode has more than enough to keep the game re-playable, even if you don't have that 1337 cable connection, especially with the ability to alter the games AI so much and taylor the game to the playing style you most like... or are challenged most by, it doesn't get boring easily.

The multiplayer is really where it's at, even if I suck to the point of hilarity compared to most people out there. As I said, I'm pretty green with the modern RTS. However, the fact that you can have 3 hour sieges, or quick 45 minute romps is great. They have a built in matchmaking system, clan, ladder, and ranking systems as well, and all of it is free through their service. Of course, that means you'll need to get it out of your system now, before it's down to that select 100 players and they either cancel the service, you find you'll never beat any of them. (Sorry... I just know how proprietary game servers tend to be, once the game's no longer the flavor of the week, the multiplayer goes all to hell...)

Overall, this game is just fun as hell, and I can't get enough of it, and by the looks of things, a lot of people feel the same way. It's one of the few games I consider well worth investing in new (at full price, I mean), and like I said, I don't even like RTS's.


Star Wars: Empire at War

A credit to its license! Rich and immersive, doing so many things right, that little detractions can't kill the fun!

I'm not a fan of the RTS genre. While I loved the Warcraft series, and StarCraft, as well as C&C RA 1 and 2, and I'm currently enamored with Company of Heroes, I really just don't dig the RTS games. It's not them, it's me. I just suck at them. Mostly, I get bored with them when I can't win. Put me in front of most game types, I'll dominate just fine, or at least hold my own. But, for whatever reason, I've never been able to wrap my head around them. However, this game holds something special for me. There's something different about this than, say, Age of Empires. What makes this game special? The Star Wars license.

Now, I'm not a Star Wars nut, but I enjoy the movies. I've loved a lot of the previous Star Wars games, especially X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, to which I devoted a good chunk of my life many years ago. This game doesn't disappoint my appetite for laser blast and Jedi powers. Why all the back story on me? Because it might help you understand where I'm coming from on this thing. I enjoy this game. I can't imagine myself becoming obsessed over it, but it's something I can see myself diving into every now and then for a while. I bought this game out of the bargain bin at an Office Depot for $2.50. I saw it, and remembered the reviews I'd seen were relatively good, and there's a giant Star Wars logo on the front, and a screen shot of Vader leading an army of Storm Troopers across the battlefield, and I thought: it's worth a couple bucks.

For the game itself, it's very well built. Obviously it's a few years old, but I'm amazed at the graphics quality. Everything is spot on, and the most impressive component is the scale. AT-STs tower over the Rebel forces, X-Wings buzz around Reclamaters like Gnats. The effects are truly amazing, explosions bloom brilliantly, and even the simple blaster fire is impressive. The sound is also spot-on. There's something almost familiar and comforting about the sound of an imperial blaster, or the engine of a TIE fighter. You know what it sounds like, and they get them right on every point in this game. In addition to the sound, the voice-a-likes they hired are pretty amazing as well, and there are points that they say things you think must have been cannibalized from one of the films, except the words were never spoken in film.

The game play is great as well. There's so much to do that it's hard to warp your head around. There's a cute little card that comes with the game, although it's less card than thick poster, but it contains the units and the upgrade pathways for both the Rebels and the Imperial Forces. Several hours in, and I've yet to get them all.

The other thing that's great is the multi-layered play style. You get to fight both in planetary land battles and massive space confrontations. You get to build your forces tactically from a Galactic map, and then move from point to point initiating space and sky battles. It's fun to try and keep an eye on all your resources as you build up your Galactic Empire. My only gripe about the maps, though, is that there are a lot of limits imposed on your paths. You don't get to dominate a massive landscape / skyscape, but instead, you get to move through an almost gauntlet like series of corridors. Also, the maps seem to get a little repetitive after a while.

The last thing I'll mention is the brilliant interaction and components. Hero characters give you an edge on the battle field, bring unique abilities to the battles, while each unit has its own pluses and minuses. The fact that they don't include anything that isn't a true Star Wars component, and that it all works together so well, makes it that much more fun. Overall it's a rich and immersive game with no end of fun.

It's definitely Worth Playing.


Coming soon: TMNT, Bridge to Terabithia, and from the 8 films to die for: Unrest (more of those are coming soon too)