Weekend Movies and Gaming

Hey all!

First things first - God of War 3 is amazing... I have to review my review... all the faults I pointed out in my early impressions really go away from the middle of the game onward... I've finished it in the weekend and it's the second best game on 2010 so far (only second to Mass Effect 2)... So reviewed scores for it:

God of War 3

• Gameplay: 10/10


• Story: 8/10


• Graphics: 9/10


• Sound: 9/10


• Brutallity and Violence: 10/10


• Overall: 9/10
  
  

Next on my playlist: Heavy Rain... again... :\

And since I'm on the topic of games, check out this trailer:

I'm a sucker for graphical adventures, and this one has a visual style and a humor type that appeals to me... Can't wait to take it for a test drive and see if it's any good...

Weekends are the time for relaxing and movie watching... besides lots of gaming, of course...

This weekend I saw 3 movies: "2012" (which I missed on the movies), "Solomon Kane" and "In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale".

First up, 2012... well, as most people on the net probably said, the movie is terrible, but has nice destruction sequences... I didn't follow any of the movie reviews and such when it hit the theatres, to avoid spoilers, but I'm guessing everyone thought the same... the destruction sequences are massive and very well done (Roland Emerich style), but when I thought you couldn't top off the wrongness of plots in disaster movies after "The Day After Tomorrow", Emerich shows us you can always dig deeper! Mutated neutrinos?! Come on, even as a plot basis for a disaster movie, that's pretty week... oscillating in pseudo science like that, and Mayan predictions (why would a damn stellar allignment activate a neutrino cloud?! Wouldn't it just be better to get some pseudo-scientific gravity based connondrum?!). But unlike "The Day After Tomorrow", even the special effects can't save this train wreck, to be honest... most of the good stuff you already seen on the trailer, and from a certain point onwards, it's just filler... I'll give it a 3/10...

Solomon Kane I saw in the cinema, and it was pretty much what was expected... I really like the dark fantasy style of Robert E. Howard, where magic is present but is very subtle, and shows a violent world where the concept of good and evil isn't clear cut.

Problem with the movie, in my opinion, was the editing... I kept feeling they left out parts of the storyline! Add that an erratic pacing, and you have a movie that is "Could be amazing, but...".

For example, they set up the main character, Solomon Kane, as a anguished man, trapped between heaven and hell, good and evil, but then seem to forget that part of the character development altogether, so you end up with an action hero that could have been played by Bruce Willis (no insult intended, but most of his action characters seem a bit undimensional, albeit terribly fun!).

So basically, it all comes down to an editing/directing issue, with is a shame, since I'm guessing no sequels will be come out to correct this (I'm predicting disapointing ticket sales, to be honest)... This one is getting a 7/10...

Finally, I was feeling up for a terrible movie on Sunday, so I decided to watch "In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale", which I bought for 1.5€... Good value for money, if you ask me, considering that I was expecting a way worse movie...

Well, I have to admit I'm biased... I was uber-psyched when the "Dungeon Siege" game came out, only to be terribly disapointed by it... While it didn't fail in a big way on anything in particular (and from a technical standpoint it was awesome), the pieces didn't quite add up... The characters were generic, the levelling system was annoying and I just didn't care enough for anything in the storyline to even finish the game, let alone the expansion...

So I was expecting the same from the movie... which was exactly what I got! Generic characters, cliché settings (oh, wow, he was the king's son!?!? I didn't see that one comming... before the start credits!)... But the action sequences are pretty nifty (Jason Statham is awesome!), and even the silly moments (Ninjas?!? Really?!?) aren't enough to offset what is actually an entertaining movie, and probably the best movie in Uwe Boll's career (on par with Postal, to be honest). I know, that's not saying much, but I've seen much worse movies and bought full price ticket aswell ("Dungeons and Dragons" anyone?)!

The cast of actors also help the movie a lot, with stars like Burt Reynolds, Jason Statham, Ray Liotta (Can he do any other role besides raving psychotic bad guy?!), John Rhys-Davies, Ron Perlman, Claire Forlani and Kristanna Loken... It's amazing that Uwe can actually get these people to work on his movies, to be honest... Final score: 5/10

So, this is basically the weekend update... Final report card:

• God of War 3: GET IT NOW! What you still doing here?!


• 2012: Avoid at all costs, just watch the trailer, all the good bits are there


• Solomon Kane: "Could be amazing, but..."


• In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale: It's terrible, but surprisingly entertaining

Heavy Fail and God of War

First of all, I got to say I'm pissed...

Yesterday I started playing Heavy Rain, and my PS3 decided to crash during one of the millions of cutscenes... Had to turn it off and on again (in the power outlet!), and when Heavy Rain started again, I'd lost ALL my progress in the game! I have to start all over again! The most boring game in the world, and I have to do it all over again! ARGH!!!!!

Good to know that Yahtzee agrees with me on the game though... But remember, you heard it here first! :)

Thankfully, I picked up my collector's edition of God of War 3 aswell, so I'm going to play that before I go back to Heavy Rain...

Now for my rant: localization...

Ok, I get it, localization makes the games more accessible to the audience and that (supposedly) translates to higher sales and more $$$...

But do they have to do such a poor work on the localization?!

Number 1: my God of War 3 Collector's Edition is more expensive, and it is for collector's... So why do they spoil the cover (which had a nice relief image in golden ink that shines wonderfully) with a stupid logo saying "Game In Portuguese"?!?! I don't care! Specially, I don't care enough for it to be in the front of the game... No, it's not a sticker (that could be placed outside the protective plastic), it's part of the damn cover! Can't be removed and it looks awfull (it's big and has the portuguese flag colors, green and red, which look horrific with the gastly scene in the background!). There's 2000 warnign signs in the back of the game box, along with full portuguese text, why couldn't they put that info (if it was important enough...) on the back! Thank you so fucking much, Sony Portugal, for devaluating my game...

Number 2: I understand "big names" are almost mandatory for voice acting, but was the best it could be done was to cast Ricardo Carriço as Kratos?!?! I don't have anything against the actor, to be honest, he's been involved in interesting projects in the past and has always been a strong supporter of gaming in Portugal, but casting him as Kratos is just wrong!

Kratos is an hyper-violent sociopath that speaks like he has had a cheese grater passed through his throat at a young age... Everything he says is an extension of that, and that's why he is believable when he says he wants to kill Zeus... I wouldn't doubt anyone that spoke like that!

Then we have Ricardo Carriço, which just tries to mimic the general style of the voice and fails miserably, because he doesn't sound like that ever! You notice his voice failing at times because of the exertion of trying to speak violentely...

I know our country is small and all, but in approximately 2 million portuguese of the right age and sex, they couldn't find a closer match?!

Thankfully, the game has the option for english voice, which makes it good again! Yay!

In my view, voice localization is only worth the effort if the game doesn't loose character and intensity with it... Specially in a country like Portugal, in which we don't dub anything, so we are used to listening to movies and content in general to be in English with portuguese subtitles... If you're going to do it wrong, don't do it at all!

From a "review" standpoint, I've played about 3 hours of GoW3, and I must say that it's the same as GoW1 and GoW2... So if you liked that, you'll like this one... The game doesn't feel stale at all, and it's great fun (the ending of the first boss battle is awesome, with the first person view and all).

The only complaint I have (and it's not really a complaint, it's more a statement of fact) is that I don't see a big difference graphic-wise from GotW2 to GotW3... Sure, if has more polygons, and GotW2 was probably the most beautiful PS2 game made, but I was kind of expecting something more... next-gen... It still looks beautiful, but I can't help the feeling that the much-vaunted next-gen isn't really next gen, it's "extended gen"... It's "current-gen" on HD (when the games support it, which GotW3 does).

The storyline is the usual GotW fare, which means starting mega-powerful, losing powers, complain at the Gods, getting powers, more threatning everything that moves (I swear I'll see Kratos starting to threaten rocks for just being there!) and I imagine a climatic ending...

Anyway, time for numbers:

God of War 3

• Gameplay: 10/10


• Story: 7/10


• Graphics: 7/10


• Sound: 9/10


• Brutallity and Violence: 10/10


• Overall: 9/10

It's definately a must have on the PS3, on par with Uncharted 2...