Break

Hey everyone. I will be on a break for a while because of Thanksgiving and Finals but I'll try to get back ASAP. Plan to have Fallout 3 (Game) review next along with Transporter 3 (Movie), Death Magnetic (Music), Black Ice (Music),  Chinese Democracy (Music), and Fabe 2 (Game).

Thanks for listening!!!

-WK2029

Facebook group is up!

Hey everyone! I just finally managed to make a facebook group so come join it if you can! It will usually have updates for whenever I make a new post.:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=96252965692

MOVIE: Quantum of Solace

Film Viewed:  Twice on same day (11/14/08)

 

Well it’s here. The newest 007 flick is out and I have to say…I’m disappointed.

 

Solace takes off where Casino Royale left off (literally only like 20 min. later!) with Bond driving away from some villains. Be warned Bond-lovers, this movie does not have the traditional follow circle to shot and blood spill. It just simply begins with the action. That was one of the first major problems. No Bond film (as far as I am concerned) didn’t start that way. Casino Royale almost didn’t but it made up for it with a great opening. Anyway moving on. After the car chase we are witness to Mr. White’s interrogation by M and Bond only for both to discover that Mr. Whites “organization” has “people everywhere” at which point an agent goes rouge and attempts to kill Bond and M. Bond then launches into a high speed foot chase with the agent through an Italian city. It is clearly obvious here that the writers heard from Casino Royale’s lack of action scenes and tried to make up for it. After this chase is when we get the song opening which brings in the new problem. “Another Way to Die” by Alicia Keys and Jack White is by far one of the worst Bond songs I have ever heard. It does not sound like Bond nor does it have any sort of style. Its chorus also sounds strangely miss-tuned (I play enough instruments to know). All in all it’s by far much worse than Chris Cornell’s “Arm Yourself” song for Casino Royale which I immediately loved. Don’t get me wrong I love Alicia Keys and Jack White, I don’t think it’s their fault, I believe it’s the problem with the mixer and orchestrator. We are witness to Mr. White’s interrogation by M and Bond only for both to discover

 

Moving on to the plot…if only there was some. I am not joking to you when I tell you that you will never discover what the heck the Quantum of the Solace is but instead hear it being spoken of for only about 10 minutes max in the film. The entire movie is about a man named Greene who has the evil plot to steal countries water sources and sell it back to them. Wow…really? I know there is this huge eco-friendly movement going on right now but that doesn’t have to translate into movies, especially not Bond. In my book evil plans fall under 3 categories:  Money, Domination, Destruction. This is a money scheme and I admit original but seriously? This evil plan was already used in the movie The Tuxedo (you know the one with Jackie Chan that sucked, wait there a lot of those) where the villain was going to poison the world’s water supply so that his was the only one left for use. However even Greene’s plan gets little air time in the film. The plan is only discovered slightly in the last 30 minutes of the movie. For most of the film all we know is that Greene is rich, evil, and wants desert land in exchange for giving power to dictators. Beyond Greene there is the main Bond-Girl that we are introduced to, Camille. She is introduced after Bond follows a lead (who he kills) and Camille, mistaking him for the lead that Bond was after, attempts to negotiate a deal and realizing her mistake runs off (of course Bond gives chase). Camille is probably one of the worst Bond-girls of all time. The worst part is that in my opinion that Camille’s story gets more screen time then the main story. Not only does this happen but also that Bond never has an intimate relationship with her and mostly just acts like a friend or brother to her most of the time goes against all previous Bond-girl standards. Camille is a strong female who does not mind fighting for herself and does not fall for men so easily which makes her the complete opposite then what she should be. I am not a sexist and by all means do I agree with equality and fairness, but ever since Casino Royale, Bond-girls have become more and more feministic. At least Vespa interloped with Bond, Camille just simply gives him a kiss. Ian Fleming had always intended for Bond to be a bit sexist yet admiring of the opposite sex. Women were generally put in as feeble and easy to charm in Bond movies. At most Jinx from Die Another Day was as strong as they get for being with the CIA and fighting along with Bond, however she still fell in love with him. Another thing about Bond girls is clothing. All Bond-girls have been known for their revealing dresses and outfits yet since Vespa’s shoulder pads in Casino Royale, it has been getting worse. At the most Camille wears a night dress for a party but beyond that just generally wears a tank top and jeans (not really that sexy). Camille’s story revolves around with her revenge to kill a general who murdered her family years ago and thus puts her in a similar boat with Bond who seeks revenge on those who killed Vespa. That is also the 3^rd major part of the story, Bond’s revenge. This part also makes the movie worse in that Bond was never very emotional and the most we had ever done so was during On her Majesty’s Secret Service where Bond got married.

 

The film in total goes completely against Bond standards perhaps in an attempt to see new grounds for the series however fails horribly. In Solace it should be noted that Bond will never use a single gadget nor will he make any witty, yet corny remarks (ie: a man gets shot with a harpoon and Bond says “I think he got the point” -Thunderball). These two things are major trend setters by Bond and have never been left out of the films until now. It is safe to say that the next Bond will continue this story and hopefully truly reveal the idea behind the Quantum of Solace. All in all this Bond movie just doesn’t feel like one, It feels just like a random action flick with a big budget and a useful name.

 

Quantum of Solace

+It still is Bond so that’s one

+Great action

-No major plot

-Bond-girl has most screen time in terms of plot

-Horrible Opening song (not the performers, the creators)

-Terrible Bond-girl character (not the actress but the character)

-Does not feel like a Bond film

-Most Pointless title of the Year award

GRADE (Out of 10): 5.5

"Beyond the horizon of the place we lived when we were young. In a world of magnets and miracles. Our thoughts strayed constantly and without boundary. The ringing of the division bell had begun"

-WK2029

GAME: Gears of War 2

So it’s here. The most anticipated game of this holiday is finally out and I have to say, it did not fail to deliver. GOW2 (made by Epic games) is the sequel to the 2006 blockbuster. The game offers single player, co-op, and multiplayer. First let me cover the single player/co-op campaign. One of the problems with GOW1 was the lack of a story line. This time however, Epic hired a major screenwriter to write the story this time. It shows. The story in GOW2 is much more extensive and deep. There is a lengthy intro cinematic that explains what happened in the previous games along with a quick history of humanity including the Pendulum Wars and E-day. Along with the story’s progression there also is a great deal of back story into some of the characters, the main focus being Dominic. A great deal of the story revolves around him trying to find his wife Maria (I won’t tell you what happens but it’s interesting).  The main story however revolves around Delta squads newest mission which is to try to prevent the sinking of a major city (Jacinto).

 

 You begin the game by defending a hospital from the locust and then move on to drill down to the locust home to counter attack. It is quickly obvious how much work Epic has spent on this game. By the second level where you are traveling on a transport to the drill site and a huge emergence hole appears in front of you where at least 50 locust pour out and each one can be shot and killed (GOW1 usually had 10 enemies max on screen at once).  Also the graphics have been greatly revised between the brand new, impressive mo-capping cinematic, or the incredible detail on different surfaces (flesh, metal, wood, liquid). Be warned gamers, environments are a lot more destructible then in the first game so don’t think that what you are standing behind will stay up forever. GOW2 also brings along a slew of new characters and enemies, my favorite new character being Dizzy, a man who joined the army to support his family with the provided financial aid. He will drive the transport during the second level and has a long list of funny comments to give you throughout the mission. One of the major enemies that I have come to hate and so will you is the priest (I’m not really sure what the proper name is but it acts as if a religious leader). The priest will resurrect enemies and has deadly accuracy. In most cases he will be your main priority to kill. Finally there has been a great improvement in the vehicles for GOW2. One of the major reasons I don’t play through single player in GOW1 anymore is to never have to go through that horrible vehicle level. Now with GOW2 you get to drive a centaur tank  through a snowy mountain and even over a frozen lake till the point where you have to drive it into a cave and use a spot light on the turret to guide your way (not really that fun though).  All in all, Campaign is best played co-op. Although AI is a lot smarter (even for the enemies), It still is annoying for them not to help you due to glitches or mishaps. I managed to get though the entire campaign in less than a day on a casual co-op with my friend. I will not spoil much of the game but I will tell you that there is a huge chance that there will be a GOW 3 and hopefully that will end the series (I like the series but we’ve been working on the same story for too long (remember Halo 2?)

 

Moving on to multiplayer. GOW1 multiplayer was the most played game on Xbox Live for months. Even I played it strait for the months after it came out. However after that I just stopped playing it. I mostly think it was because it got boring and hard. I tried to play again on the night before GOW2 came out and I stopped playing after 3 games. Epic saw this and I think that they have managed to fix the problem. There are 2 new modes to play in: Horde and Wingman. Horde is personally my favorite new thing. Horde requires you to face waves of AI enemies with up to 4 friends online and every 10 levels the waves repeat at a harder difficulty (ie: AI has better accuracy and health). The other mode, Wingman, allows you and a friend (or whoever you get paired up with that night) to go at it with 4 other teams of 2 in a team free-for-all. I found this to be a difficult mode due to the easy fact of getting blindsided and wasted out before you can finish someone else off. There also is the problem of getting stupid partners. Listen, you NEED a mic to play this variant, communication is the most important thing of the mode. Beyond those 2 the old modes are still back along with brand new executions (used by hitting correct button near downed enemy) and weapons. Now you are given the option to either curb stomp (X), beat down (Y), or a quick melee strike (B). There were a great deal of new weapons added to your arsenal but my personal favorites were the Mortar cannon, Machine Pistol, and the Mauler Shield. The game has also upgraded old weapons as well, smoke grenades now stun if thrown close enough, shotguns are stronger, Chainsaw Fights with lancers (best online!). My favorite? The idea of planting grenades to the wall acting as a mine. Do this often, it will save your life in horde and online.

 

All in all the whole game is proven to achieve quite a feat. It managed to outdo its predecessor in game play, online, and quality. I personally like it a lot more than GOW1 and will continue to play this for a while.

 

Gears of War 2

+ Better Storyline/Characters

+Better Weapons/AI

+Improved Online

-+There will probably be a GOW3

-Glitches in AI

-Only 2 player split-screen

-Annoying menus

 

GRADE (Out of 10): 9.2

 

This is a David Gilmour Quote but still love it: “Remember that night, the warmth and the laughter…”

 

-WK2029

GAME: Guitar Hero World Tour

I recently bought the newest Guitar Hero game, Guitar Hero World Tour. I mostly bought it for some extra songs and for the music creator however the game managed to have so other nice things about it. For starters let me describe the basics. GHWT is the first GH to include the full band (you can read my demo review from before for some more info). This is most likely to compete with Rock Band. It does not match to RB’s experience and style but it gets decently close. I am not going to talk about the instruments since I already talked about them in the demo review. So far for the game I’ve used my Les Paul and RB microphone (my drum’s foot pedal is broken). So now I’m gonna start by talking about the songs. GHWT has a lot of the same songs that RB2 has. I don’t know who copied who but I don’t really care. One of the major reasons I bought GHWT was for Jimmy Hendrix tracks, Hotel California, and Crazy Train (Beat It isn’t that bad either). I hope that GHWT will continue to add more songs along these artists for downloads. Besides that, the entire set list is all master tracks (a definite first for GH). One thing that did majorly disappoint me was the lack of an epically difficult song. It was Jordan for GH2, Dragonforce for GH3, and the best we got was Satch Boogie by Joe Satriani. I’m not saying its not hard, jeez it took me 3 tries but I STILL can’t beat Jordan (can beat Dragonforce!!!!). I’m already through with the whole entire guitar portion of the game after playing about 5-6 hours at the most. Granted now I want to run through it on co-op with my friend but it shouldn’t be this easy!!! GH 2 took me 5 months to master on expert (granted that was my first time playing it ever and I started on Medium) but then GH 3 only took me 2-3 weeks. Also, GH: Aerosmith also only took me 4-5 Hours and that was because it took a while to get through the songs (I never failed any single song in that game). So far the only songs I’ve failed in this game are Satch Boogie and Hot for Teacher (which is still pretty damn hard too!). But moving on to the online play. GHWT is just as hard as GH3 to find one single match (it usually takes like a while to find someone to play with!). I still can’t ever find a band to play with! It always ends up saying that no bands were found (yeah right). In general, online is a hassle that I rarely ever go to. Next let me move onto game play. The setup is still the same however now the multiplier is attached to the highway on the right and its really small. Some things that have been added are open notes for bass. It looks like a bar strait across the highway and you just strum without holding the frets down. Another thing is (what I like to call) the Adders. These are just pretty much when you are required to hold a note and play other notes above it (or add to a chord). Those who play DDR know what they are. In my opinion the open notes are pointless and annoying. As for the adders, they are ok and I don’t really mind them. Finally let me talk about the creation system in the game. The build-a-rocker is really simple if you’ve ever played any of the Tony Hawk games in that you get a high level of customization. The instrument creator is also fun and as you play along you get new parts to add to your instrument (my guitar looks like a strat with my initials inscribed into the body a la Stevie Ray Vaughn). Finally the song creator is really innovative. So far I’ve made 3 songs, 2 of them being serious. The system is hard to get at first but eventually it gets really easy to use. You are given the option to create a drum, rhythm, bass, lead, keyboard part to the song or you can set a bass and drum line with tempos and styles and just jam out to those. My first serious song sounds cheesy and simple (it also repeats riffs a lot of times). However my second song where I had more experience was when I created a “What is Love” cover (it’s mostly solos). I do still kind of wish that the song creator would include a way to create a vocals part. All in all the game is fun but now that I beat it, I’m going to go back to RB2 (or Gears of War 2 (Review coming soon!!)). I would recommend renting it to the less serious players but if you enjoy the genre I would recommend purchasing the game (and if you really want to, buy the whole bundle but watch out for the instruments).

 

Guitar Hero World Tour

+Fun Creation system

+Great Set list

-Online is annoying to use

-Repeats RB2 set list

-Not everything added is really fun

 

GRADE (Out of 10): 8.0

“Hello, is there anybody in there? Just nod if you can hear me. Is there anyone home?

-WK2029

GAME: Rock Band 2

Ever since the music game business started booming there was always guitar hero. However since last christmas, Rock Band has stepped up to challenge the empire. At first there was no competition. However as time moved on, Rock Band grew on people and now Rock Band 1 sells more copies than GH III. Now this fall Rock Band 2 is being released to compete with GH World Tour. In this competition, I am a Rock Band guy. I love how many songs there are and the style. It is in my opinion that bars work better than circles (anyone who's played "One" in GH III on Expert and knows the finger tapping solo knows that those circles look like they overlap!). Anyway moving on. Rock Band 2 is basically Rock Band 1 with more songs, a better menu, some new venues, and a better online system. Yet for as little different it is, it works. Harmonix (Rock Band developers) did the right thing by finding what was wrong with Rock Band 1 and corrected it. The game is spectacular. One of the biggest additions is the change in menu style and career style. Instead of the common easiest to hardest series of setlists to unlock songs, RB2 now completly works in the style as if it was a band world tour so you just choose your gigs. You can  start these gigs however be warned in that whatever difficulty you choose is the difficulty you keep and if you fail, you lose a good chunk of fans and if you completly quit then you have to start the whole gig over again. One of the best things about RB2 is that all songs are master tracks (no covers) which I consider a huge addition. Along with the world tour are infinite challenges (I say infinite because the system will recognize your downloaded songs and create new challenges). The good part of these challenges is that they can always be stopped and you can return to the last song you were about to start. It is in my opinion that as soon as you get this game. Run through the main challenges for your instrument on your difficulty. Because as soon as you beat one of the impossible challenges you will have gotten an achievement (not counting the other achievements that you will recieve for just completing a certain amount of challenges as you progress). Now I'm going to move on to online. Online is still pretty much the same however its much harder to accidentally drop out of matches (before if you pushed red, you were f**ked). Also you can now bring people into your own band from online and substitute for other bands (i would do this first since if you find I person with a really good band you can get money faster and fans faster (i got with some guy early on and in 3 setlists with a 3 member band I already got the one million fan achievement)). So far I've had no problem with lag and everything seems to run smoothly. However there still is the problem that if a member drops out during a song the whole band begins to fail. But the good news is that if your in a setlist is that by the time you start the song again or retry the song, it should not fail you but instead mute the part so you can get through the setlist. Let me move onto the instruments. I have had the ability to try the new guitar, drums, Ion drums, and bass. The new guitar is like they say, better. However, there still is a lack of a double strum and the frets still clack a lot (but it is wireless already). The standard drums are better however I believe that the noise problem is still there, even for quiter people like me. Also the drums are much sturdier and the pedal is better (however they could of made the whole thing metal rather then just a plate. Now the Ion drums are a work of art. If I was a major drummer for the game, I drummed in real life, and I had $300 then I would definently get this, besides that, I'm good with standard. I got to try the drums at Gamerz (our local gaming lounge). The drums feel amazing. The pads are soft and the cymbals add an amazing effect in that they actually make different sounds in the game (ie the green pad sounds like a tom but the green cymbal sounds like a crash cymbal). Finally the bass. Again I would never buy this just because I don't play bass that often and I didn't like the style. The split stum bar for finger strumming feels strange (perhaps if you actually play bass in real life then maybe its easier). The whole thing is huge and instead of a wammy bar has a button that swivels. Finally I'm going to talk about the songs. Since RB1 I have downloaded every single song ever available (even if I don't really like it). Thankfully, as soon as you load up RB2, all of those songs are available. One amazing feature that I was able to do is to export almost all of the RB1 mainsetlist to RB2 for some microsoft points. Harmonix is also claiming that by the holidays, there will be 500 songs.  All in all the whole game is amazing. I bought the game and never regretted a day that I had it. I would definently reccommend this to anyone who loves the music/rhythm genre of games should definently pick this up. It is worth every penny

Rock Band 2

+Amazing Setlist

+Great improvements from first one

+Better online system

+Much easier to make a band now

-New guitar is not that great

-Drums are still kinda loud

GRADE (Out of 10): 9.5

"So, so you think you can tell...heaven from hell, blue skys from pain. Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail? A smile from a veil? Do you think you can tell?"

-WK2029