Wheelman Review

It does seem to have finally occured to me that up until late I’ve had a huge amount of luck selecting video games. From Far Cry 2 to Halo 3 to Call of Duty 4 to Halo Wars, for the last few years I’ve managed to only play games that I can at least get a good few hours of genuine entertainment out of. Wheelman, it would seem, is the trend bucker, because – whilst it does have some merit – this is without doubt the worst game I’ve played for a long time, both in terms of technical achievement and in fun to be had. It’s not the worst game ever – not by a long shot – but considering the pedigree of the studio developing it, they really should’ve done better.

First impressions of Wheelman are reasonably upbeat – arcade-like control of the driving is a refreshing change from the realistic driving of GTA IV and Crackdown, doing a really good job of making you feel like a really awesome driver as you rocket down the streets of virtual Madrid with the local fuzz in hot pursuit. The driving controls also incorporate a ‘vehicle melee’ system assigned to the right analogue stick. Whilst you do lose a lot of control over the camera – the only two camera commands are look behind and toggling between three different views of your vehicle – you gain the ability to viciously slam your car into opposing vehicles. The system is incorporated brilliant in terms of controls and with the little details, like time slowing down briefly as you slam into a vehicle, giving you a chance to align the steering into a more favourable position for bouncing off your enemy.

There’s also the limited ability to fire weapons, but this is heavily automated thanks to the lack of any camera control. The standard attack is your character Milo – aka Vin Diesel author-inserting himself into a game – shooting his pistol from the window. This takes a while to lock on and score a kill/hit/blown tyre, but feels realistic given the speeds that you’re likely to be travelling at. The relatively uselessness of this is mitigated somewhat by the ability to perform an Aimed Shot or Cyclone super-move, whereby time slows down and your view goes into the car to see Milo with his pistol drawn. You can then proceed to blast at enemies for as long as your Focus Gauge stays full. These moves feel awesome to pull off but also play a vital role in many of the missions, which is handy.

There’s also a neat mechanic known as Air-Jacking, which is essentially Vin Diesel pretending he’s Superman. Pressing and holding the B button brings up a red marker on the nearest civilian or enemy car. Waiting until the marker is green, then releasing the button, Milo exits the first vehicle, hops onto the second and takes control of it. It’s a ridiculous, but genuinely entertaining mechanic that can see you leap-frogging down a highway with nary a backward glance.

Unfortunately, the driving about, wrecking stuff and partaking in police chases is really the only fun to be had, as it screws almost everything else up.

Artistically, it lacks almost any merit. The story is half-baked and confusing even if you’re paying attention, and the acting ranging from hilariously over-the-top to embarrassingly phoney. Given that Vin Diesel is a decent actor and probably has the resources to secure a half-decent cast for his own video game, this is perhaps the most genuinely disappointing aspect of the game. Then there’s the fact of their dubious claim that they’re using the Unreal 3 engine. Never before has it looked so painfully ordinary, with flat scenery and – Diesel’s model aside – lifeless character models and uninteresting virtual cars.

On the technical aspects, it’s difficult to know where to begin. The physics engine is absolutely lousy, with collision detection being a huge problem. Sometimes you’ll hit something and just plough right through them as if they weren’t there, other times you’ll get clipped by a slow-moving vehicle and fly off at some bizarre angle and smack straight into a building, ending your hopes of outrunning anyone. On the odd occassion, you’ll find your car stuck in the world’s geometry, and on a couple of occasions I was forced inside the level, only to fall down to infinity.

The AI is awful as well, with them pulling the old trick of cars always managing to go as fast as you regardless of whether you’re travelling at two miles-an-hour or two-hundred. There are also frequently missions where you have to airjack cars, and this is where the AI genuinely cheats, waiting until your marker turns green before suddenly and bizarrely veering off on a physically impossible vector, destroying your chances of getting the car and most likely seeing you cascading into a wall.

The on-foot controls also feel half-arsed, almost as an add-on because the publishers were pushing for it to be ‘more like GTA’. Most weapons feel underpowered and ludicrously inaccurate, and there’s no decent cover system – only a barely-effective ducking mechanic which you’ll spend a lot of time being frustrated with. The enemies also can’t decide whether they can take twenty bullets or two, as well as alternating between pinpoint accuracy and suffering a sever case of the Stormtrooper effect.

There’s also a complete lack of detail and immersion to the thing – why is it that when I press Y, the nearest car simply stops and the person even gets out of their vehicle to help me steal it. Yes, GTA’s system of standing in front of a car to get it to stop before jacking it is a little tedious, but at least it’s realistic. Why too is it that you are allowed to kill hundreds and hundreds of policemen in their cruisers by slamming them into walls with your own car, but as soon as you shoot one of them, you get a ‘Mission Failed’ because ‘killing innocents is not what this is about'’? There’s more, but to go into any more detail would allow me to ramble for a good few pages. We’ll just tag it with the ‘Technically Inept’ medal, and move on to the conclusion:

At the end of the day, Wheelman is fine as a rental, but this is no way a game that you should spend your hard-earned money on. It has a distinct lack of polish, and any game developer who can’t spend the time and energy to get their game as good as possible genuinely don’t deserve your money. Even if you’re a fan of Vin Diesel and his various film and video game outings, it’ll be difficult for you to find anything worth keeping here. Hire, get the achievements, return.

Ross’ Rating: 55%

W000000000t!

Yay! Cinema is becoming more regular! Because Ross got his housing benfit through! And he’s going to be employed as of next week! So to celebrate, he’s going to the cinema three times in two weeks! Yay!

OTT, I know, but when you get a windfall, you’ve gotta spend a bit of it on celebrating. And I miss going to the cinema regularly, so that seemed appropriate! Anyways, we’re going to see Coraline in 3D tomorrow, which should hopefully be a magical experience in a fantastical world! Good times.

Finished The Lost and Damned. It was awesome. I’ll maybe cook up a full review, but for now, I’ll just say that it was ludicrously cinematic, from the set-piece staging to the direction of the cutscenes. Even the tweaks to the gameplay are hugely welcome, from improved motor-bike handling to a tweaked cover system, it’s essentially the game the the original GTA IV should have been. Hell…yeah.

Next up is Wheelman, which so far has its ups and downs. Good is that it’s very arcadey and quite cinematic, which lends itself to some entertaining car chases. Bad is that after TLAD showed me how a sandbox game should be done, Wheelman just feels a bit lacking in every department. Not nearly enough detail – it looks like they’ve used the Escape from Butcher Bay engine which is a) a generation old and b) not pretty whine light is shining on it. The fact that the game is set in Madrid does not flatter the engine…

But, on the plus side, it’s an achievement gold-mine. Played it for 20 minutes and got 7 achievements without even trying. Yay!

That’s it for now. I shall bid you adieu and goodbye, fair interweb surferers.

Star Trek Review

If you ask someone what the one thing that they associate with ‘geek’, there is only a handful of things that most people will think of. ‘Video games’ is perhaps one, Star Wars another, but there is the over-whelming probability that, when confronted with the above statement, most people will say ‘Star Trek’. But unfortunately, with JJ Abrams’ self-titled debut into the Trek canon looks set to change that. What Abrams has managed to do is genuinely admirable – he’s created a Star Trek film that is actually genuinely accessible to the newcomer, and yet at the same time is steeped in Trek mythology that will please both the hardcore and the passingly interested.

Cascading the series back to the early days of James T Kirk and Spock, both of whom in this story are barely out of Starfleet Academy, the film tells the story of how Kirk came to be in command of the USS Enterprise, the iconic spaceship from the original series. Along the way they gather up various other crewmembers, and have a small altercation with a Romulan named Nero which just so happens to create a sequel-ready alternate reality whilst it’s at it.

Cynical though this sounds, it’s actually a genuinely affectionate reboot of the franchise – acknowledging the…magnitude of the established canon, whilst at the same time gently swiping it aside to forge its own path. This is mostly down to an absolutely fantastic screenplay from Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman – their story structured and polished to perfection, topped off with excellent dialogue, and a fantastic sense of pace. It also manages to shed a lot of the politicking that seems to plague sci-fi of late, ditching political tensions in favour of personal ones…as well as some rather spectacular action sequences.

Abrams is having a whale of a time in the director’s chair, it would seem - his vision of the future gorgeously over-saturated and full of wonderful detail. From the reimagined bridge of the Enterprise, to the exquisite detail on Nero’s warship Narada, there’s a level of sophistication and clarity in the vision which far outstrips any previous entry into the series, even the ‘classic’ Wrath of Kahn. If Abrams continues on this streak, he may well end up tattooed with ‘Speilberg Mk II’ on his forehead. To say that the man’s creative potential is currently limitless is something of an understatement.

Flawless special effects bring the directorial vision together, with minutae detail peppered through ever scene. From the glorious spectacle of a starship racing into combat against a clearly superior foe, to supernovae devouring planets, everything is rendered in razor-sharp high def and seamlessly integrated with the actors.

But even with all of the above in place, horrible casting can throw a spanner into the works at any turn. Thankfully, Abrams has secured a cast that is a truly worthy successor to their classic – or to use the new lingo: Prime – counterparts. Chris Pine wonderfully emulates William Shatner’s over-cooked portrayal of Kirk, managing to add a charismatic, roguish streak to the character whilst never stepping over into imitation or parody. Zachary Quinto, on the other hand, masters an impersonation that somehow bypasses the uncanny valley, his Spock a pitch perfect emulation of his Prime predecessor. Other castings are never bad, although John Cho and Simon Pegg as Sulu and Scotty respectively both seem under-used, with the latter turning up almost literally as deus ex machina.

Nevertheless, to have minor quibbles with the story not requiring lots of Scotty expertise and Sulu’s cunning is to detract from what is a highly entertaining spectacle. It also has the truly enviable achievement of shifting Star Trek directly into the mainstream – a sci-fi intellectual property this accessible must be the envy of every Joss Whedon and Ronald D Moore out there. Don’t let that put you off, though - this is a genuinely excellent start to the summer blockbuster season, an entry into the Star Trek canon that is both reverential and playful when it comes to the entries before it. Here’s to a franchise reborn.

The Almighty forgives. The Lost don’t.

Downloaded The Lost and Damned finally. 1600 MS points…but apparently you get about 15 hours of gameplay for it, so seems like a bargain to me. Should be fun testing out the motorbikes!

X-Men Origins: Wolverine Review

X-Men Origins: Wolverine (henceforth to be known as XOW) is a quite a difficult film to quantify. Not in what it contains and what over-arching genre it fits into – lots of Wolverine and comic-book movie respectively – but in the sense of trying to quantify what, exactly, it thinks it’s up to. It’s a film buried in questionable motive, and this prevents it from truly being satisfying.

The questionable motive in question, if you’ll pardon the overuse of the various conjugations of the word ‘question’, is that of what the goal of inserting this into the X-Men cinematic canon is. Is it to flesh out the backstory of an established character? Is it to introduce more heroes and villains into the current patheon and rogue’s gallery respectively? Is it to just be an awesome, Wolverine-centric action movie that doesn’t really contribute to the core story of the currently trilogy of X-films? The film decides ‘all of these!’ and thus ends up in the rather inevitable stasis of ‘not really any of them’.

But for the most part, this is entertaining stuff. Whilst not neatly slotting into any of the required types of movie, it still competently delivers a Wolverine movie with at least a little oomph. Gavid Hood – whilst seemingly an odd choice for director at first glance – has a decent eye for action, it would seem, and XOW treats us with some of the most spectacular action sequences that we have seen in the series. The final showdown in particular – whilst spectacularly screwing up established canon – is a bold effort to allow us to witness genuinely powerful mutants facing off with each other.

Casting for the most part is good too. Jackman, as always, delivers a layered performance as Wolverine, the man’s performance almost wasted with some occasionally flimsy dialogue. But else where there’s a decidedly creepy turn from Danny Huston as William Stryker, Huston channelling Brain Cox’s performance with a gleefully evil grin. Liev Schriber is wonderfully psychotic as Sabretooth, all aggression and snide comments, he also seems to be a favourite of the writer, getting most of the film’s great lines. There’re a couple of bum notes too – Will.I.Am (or however you spell it) would’ve been put to shame by the 50-pence fella, and the casting for some of the minor mutants, including Cyclops and Emma Frost, leaves something of a sour taste in a comic-book fan’s mouth.

But then there’s the hidden gem of the movie: Ryan Reynolds. With what little screen time he is allocated, he absolutely steals it. Tasked with the role of motor-mouthed, regenerating mercenary named Wade Wilson, he both talks and fights up a storm. It’s only downside is there’s precious little of it, and a disappointing turn of events in the movie more-or-less eliminates any chance short of serious retconning for a return of the character.

 

This, as it happens, is the movies downfall: it toys far to eagerly with what we’ve already seen. It’s something of a missed opportunity to truly flesh out the back-story of the first three films. On it’s own, it works fine – but when held up alongside the still out-standing original trilogy, it only just holds its own against the weaker third outing, and even then, it barely feels a part of it. The tone is completely different, being an odd combination of more violent and yet somehow less blood-soaked. Gone are the examinations of the mutant problem, in are action scenes and too-short mutant cameos.

This brings us back to the motives of the movie. Is it designed to launch new franchise opportunities? Cutting the Deadpool one short in this one was probably a bad idea if that’s the case. Is it designed to flesh out the back story? Well, how can it be? When it treats the established happenings as mere playthings? Does it want to be an awesome action movie? Well in that, in only partially succeeds, with energetic action sequences too often feeling tonally off.

At the end of the day, this origin story is a missed opportunity to weave itself into the current cinematic X-Men canon. It’s entertaining fare, competently executed with a decent story. You can’t really ask for more from this, the first of what is a burgeoning genre of super-hero movies: the prequel that barely fits in.

Monsters vs Aliens

Awesome in 3D, if overall less entertaining than Kung-Fu Panda, this is still eminently watchable thanks to some fantastic comedy from Seth Rogen and Hugh Laurie as B.O.B and Dr Cockroach respectively, and some energetically directed action sequences, coupled with Dreamworks’ stellar animation technique.

Eden Lake

Unrelenting, terrifying and gripping, this British horror movie – whilst navagating through any number of horror cliches that you care to mention – is a difficult, can’t-tear-your-eyes-away watch.

Teh Boredness

Just did some bizarre internet quiz. Turns out that the only thing I find more evil than Osama Bin Laden is the Fox executives who cancelled Firefly. Bastards.

Anyhoo…not much going on just the minute. Signed on again today – depressing as usual. Am down to my last £30 in the bank before I have to start digging into my overdraft, which is discouraging. On the plus side, job prospects aplenty, including one that will have me employed until the end of August! Awesomeness!

Been playing a lot of Halo 3. Have been managing to control my temper enough to try to plough my way up to level 45. Currently sitting on 43, which is equal to my highest ever! Huzzah! Although it seems that Bungie fail to take into account games in which half of one team quit, and quite how difficult that situation may become for those on the sharp end of it. But still, I’m slowly digging my way up. Brigadier may soon be mine!

Been looking at the release schedule for the next few months, and the only thing that really catches my eye is…well…nothing. Sims 3 will be fine, but there’s no new ‘next big thing’ if you know what I mean. Batman: Arkham Asylum (which is shaping up to be awesome) is due in June, but between now and then? Nowt…may be time to delve back into the vast catalogue of games I have…

Nothing else to report, really. Haven’t been watching movies lately, so no microreviews. Stargate Atlantis and House are being viewed at present.

Ciao!

The Bourne Trilogy

The Bourne Identity

Understated direction and a still-finding-his-feet performance from Matt Damon make this the weakest of the Bournes. Fortunately, some exquisitely staged action - including the car chase through the streets of Paris, and the semi-final showdown at the farm - along with what is the formation of a top-notch performance from Damon keep it from ever becoming stale. Eminently re-watchable.

The Bourne Supremacy

As soon as Paul Greengrass takes the reigns of the series, you know he's the perfect man for the job, his shaky, almost documentarian style suiting the subterfuge and intrigue of Bourne perfectly. Damon, too, finally is at full pelt, delivering a convincing portrayal of a man who doesn't know who he truly is. The action, too, receives a kick up the backside, with this movie's car chase being the very best in the series.

The Bourne Ultimatum

Reviewed here!

Iron Man

Iron Man

A delicious performance from Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man/Tony Stark is complemented by some energetic and stylish direction from Jon Favreau and some fabulously detailed special effects. If it devolves towards the end, it is only because it is lacking a truly engaging enemy for Iron Man, thanks to some sequel-minded scripting.