September 2010

Private Benjamin
Submitted Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - 10:30:07 AM by Klaitu

You've probably heard of the movie before.. but have any of you DARED to watch it?

Well, you haven't seen it for good reason. It's sort of like the 80's version of the movie "Striptease". Is it serious? Is it a comedy? Do I care about what's going on? You'll be absolutely befuddled by the end of it all.

Goldie Hawn is the titular Private Benjamin, a socialite whose goal is to get married at all costs. She accomplishes the task, but her husband dies of a heart attack right after their wedding.

For whatever reason, she decides to join the army. Why the army? Because some guy on told her to I guess.

The usual expected "hilarity" ensues, prepackaged.

"What, you mean I have to wear the same clothes as everyone else?"

"I don't want to make my bed, when does the maid come?"

"This gun is icky and loud, and I don't like it!"

Along the way, she manages to make an enemy out of her training officer, who could possibly be the female version of the bad guy in the Police Academy movies. She also gets sexually harassed by the base Commanding Officer, so she extorts him into assigning her to europe.

While in europe, she immediately locks onto a hairy european man and has lots of sex with him, except he's a communist and that training officer she pissed off finds out.

And well.. I don't even remember the rest of it, except at the end she decides that it's okay for women to be single.

This movie is so awful that they don't even show it on lifetime network.

Overall Score: 2 of 10



Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths
Submitted Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - 10:21:45 AM by Klaitu

Superheroes you know fight superheroes you don't care about who live on an alternate Earth you also don't care about.

This movie is an excuse to show superhero battles for no reason. Your kids will love it.

Overall Score: 3 of 10



Veronica Mars
Submitted Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - 10:19:35 AM by Klaitu

I have been hearing the hype for this show ever since it got cancelled.. and that might sound like a bad thing, but the exact same thing happened before I had seen Firefly.

Well, the same thing happened again. Veronica Mars is an absolutely excellent show. It's sort of a modern, less stupid version of Nancy Drew.

The show takes place in a fictional town popular with celebrities and movie stars, and with that comes a lot of high profile dirt.

Each episode has an episodic mystery, and the B plot is for a season long mystery. I highly recommend it!

Overall Score: 8 of 10



Just One of the Guys
Submitted Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - 10:15:16 AM by Klaitu

This one is a movie about a girl teenage student who wants to become a reporter. Her teacher rejects her essay to get an internship at a "real news place" and she thinks it's because she's a girl..

So she dresses up like a boy and enrolls at a neighboring high school and submits the exact same story to their journalism teacher.. and he rejects it as well.

Moral to the story: sometimes when you suck it's because you actually suck, not because you're a girl.

Of course, she then writes about her experiences being a "boy" and wow's her audience. I guess it can't all be awesome.

Overall Score: 4 of 10



Maxed Out
Submitted Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - 10:12:14 AM by Klaitu

This documentary is AWESOME. It examines how debt works in America, and shows why the debt industry makes an insane amount of money. It tells the story of some people who are in debt, people who got out of debt, and people who killed themselves over owing debt.

I get a lot of comments from people about my stance on how debt is the worst idea ever invented.. well this movie shows you why.

Overall Score: 9 of 10



Helvetica
Submitted Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - 10:09:13 AM by Klaitu

I can't say that this is the most exciting documentary I've ever seen. It's a documentary about the creation and use of the font/typeface known as Helvetica. You don't realize it, but Helvetica is literally everywhere.

Street signs, soda cans, magazines.. the logo for Target? That's Helvetica. It's pretty amazing how widespread this one fontspace is.

I can't say that the movie about it was very interesting though.

Overall Score: 5 of 10



King Corn
Submitted Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - 10:04:14 AM by Klaitu

A documentary about growing an acre of corn and seeing where it goes.

This movie will show you that corn is pretty much in everything we eat these days, perhaps more things than you realized. It covers government farm subsidies and the ins and outs of growing a crop in America.

It only has a slight liberal spin to it, and it doesn't get very preachy. Overall it's pretty good.

Overall Score: 6 of 10



Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker
Submitted Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - 10:01:11 AM by Klaitu

Remember Batman Beyond? That old batman show that was around in the early 2000's? Well apparently they made a movie, and I watched it.

This might be a good film if your kids are into Batman. I thought it was a little bland, personally. I mainly watched it because Mark Hamill was the Joker.

Overall Score: 5 of 10



Carrier
Submitted Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - 9:58:01 AM by Klaitu

This is a documentary series for PBS done by Mel Gibson's ICON productions, and it's pretty freakin good.

The show follows the crew of the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz for one deployment. It shows a wide variety of the crew, from the Laundry room people to the Captain. It shows how they live and work in this giant floating city, what happens when they break the rules, what it's like to have shore leave. It even shows the aftermath of their return home.

It's a very interesting show, 10 episodes.

Overall Score: 9 of 10



Resident Evil: Afterlife
Submitted Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - 9:52:06 AM by Klaitu

Where do I start with this movie?

Resident Evil.. I love the games, but the movies have nothing to do with the games except for name dropping. The first Resident Evil movie blew, with the possible of exception of the laser gate that cubed a guy.

Resident Evil: Afterlife has no redeeming qualities whatsoever.. but honestly, I was pretty sure that was the case before I even went to see it.

Milla Jovovich basically runs around attached to wires and shoots zombies a lot. Sometimes she stabs them. sometimes she kicks them. True to form with Resident Evil, everyone dies unless they are owned by the franchise. You see the end coming for at least half the movie.

Oh, and there's a guy who slam dunks the tail of a plane so that it won't fall off the edge of a building.

If you pay any money to see this movie, you've paid too much.

Overall Score: 2 of 10



A Scanner Darkly
Submitted Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - 9:45:31 AM by Klaitu

This is a movie about drugs where Keanu Reeves and everyone else looks like a cartoon.

Well, not so much a cartoon as they look like someone applied a cartoon photoshop filter to the entire movie.

At any rate, the movie was fun to look at, but it was so awful that I couldn't watch all of it.

Overall Score: 1 of 10



Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection
Submitted Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - 9:33:52 AM by Klaitu

SEEEGA!

This game is pretty much what you might expect. It's a collection of Genesis games for the xbox. They are all emulated faithfully and still just as fun as they originally were. There's even a copy of Rystar, which is hard to find as a cartridge.

Truth be told, however, this game might as well be called "free schievements collection" because that's pretty much the only reason I rented it.

Overall Score: 7 of 10
Quality Rating: N/A
Rent it.



Sherlock Holmes vs Jack the Ripper
Submitted Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - 9:28:04 AM by Klaitu

Spoiler alert: Sherlock wins.

That spoiler probably comes as no surprise to you, seeing as how you play as Sherlock Holmes or his pal Dr. Watson throughout the entire game.

Sherlock vs Jack is what you might consider the successor to those older point and click adventures. It's not unlike Dreamfall or Syberia in that regard. What sets this game apart is the absolute attention to detail that makes this seem like an actual Sherlock Holmes mystery.

Actually, this would be an absolutely amazing educational game to teach kids about deductive reasoning. It clearly shows how you can make deductions, and make it clear what is an assumption and what is a deduction. The game spends a lot of time proving stuff that you already suspect to be true.

Unfortunately the major flaw of this game is that you absolutely can't go down the wrong path. It keeps you on rails the entire time. You can't finger the wrong killer, or come to an incorrect but valid conclusion when examining evidence. You can't even miss picking up evidence, the game won't progress until you do.

It's the same problem that Hotel Dusk had. If I am playing a mystery, I want to solve the mystery, not solve puzzles that progress the storyline.

If you're a Sherlock fan, though you could do worse. The game really tries hard to keep within the bounds of a true Sherlock adventure, and while the story is on rails, it's a good story.

Overall Score: 6 of 10
Quality Rating: 2 of 5
Rent it.



Darkstar One: Broken Alliance
Submitted Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - 9:15:30 AM by Klaitu

Never let it be said that I don't give a fair shake to rare and obscure games that nobody has ever heard of before.

Darkstar One: Broken Alliance, the story of a whiny boy and his spaceship.. and his girlfriend co-pilot who insists she is not his girlfriend.

Darkstar One is made by Europeans, and it feels like it. I suppose every country has it's own flavor it throws into its game, but I was particularly aware of it in Darkstar One.

The voice acting is completely flat, and half of the lines are recycled from old sci-fi TV and movies. There are at least 4 Back to the Future quotes in it for seemingly no reason.

The gameplay is your basic space sim, it's a lot like Colony Wars, or Freelancer, or even Wing Commander Privateer. You fly around, doing quests, blowing up ships, trading stuff, making money.. and that's about it. This game has been done before, and done better in most cases.


Overall Score: 5 of 10
Quality Rating: 2 of 5
Rent it.



Halo 3: ODST
Submitted Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - 9:06:38 AM by Klaitu

Yeah, I know Halo: Reach just came out, but I'm not new and shiny on Halo. I'm takin it back a bit to Halo 3: ODST.

The ODST part of Halo 3: ODST stands for "Orbital Drop Shock Trooper" which sounds pretty cool, except they don't do much orbital dropping. In fact, they only do one orbital drop at the first of the game.

The story has you traveling the streets of New Mombasa during the events of Halo 2 (yeah, not Halo 3, Halo 2). You're the rookie, trying to reunite with your squad after a drop gone bad.

The game plays identically to every other Halo game, except you can't dual wield. Because of the story, you usually end up with a squad of people who are all fighting with you. There are vehicles and grenades and all that Halo stuff you would expect, right down to the emptying 5 clips into a guy and him not dying.

The voice acting here includes 3 people from Firefly, and Tricia Helfer from Battlestar Galactica.

The conclusion here is.. if you like Halo, you'll like this game, there is nothing different about it. It plays exactly the same way as the first Halo did. Nothing has changed.

Overall Score: 4 of 10
Quality Rating: 2 of 5
Rent it.



Record of Agarest War
Submitted Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - 8:42:01 AM by Klaitu

Have you ever heard of this game? I'd be surprised if you said yes. It's just a little bit obscure, but it gained a little bit of fame because the trailer features scantily clad women and blurred out images.

From the trailer, you'd expect that the game would be rated AO, but it's not even rated M, it's rated T. So I wondered just how "filthy" this game could possibly be.

At the core, Agarest war is a tactical JRPG, it's somewhat similar to Disgaea, of Final Fantasy Tactics.. but it's probably closest to La Pucelle Tactics in that it's really not that good of a game.

The other half of Agarest War is sort of like a bare bones version of a Japanese Dating Sim. Dialogue choices and actions you take affect your relationship with the women in your party, and eventually you choose one to marry.

The story is about Leonhardt, a noble who agrees to dedicate his soul to defeating evil in exchange for the power to protect an elf girl. Leonhardt is unable to do this in his lifetime, so this promise also extends to his children.

Each generation, you play the role of his children, and there are five generations. Each generation has you go through the dating sim and choose a wife, and the resulting child is an amalgam of the different characters you choose.

Sadly, the dating sim part of the game is probably the most unique thing about the game. The rest of it is just a really bland tactical RPG. There is no real strategy involved in the battles, and the battles don't get harder as the game progresses, they just last longer. If you don't take it too seriously, the game is fun in the first half, but begins to get annoying half way through. The last generation is absolutely abysmal. you'll punch in the commands for a round, and then they will play out for 3 or 4 minutes with no action required by the user.

3 or 4 minutes doesn't sound like a big deal, but it happens every single battle, and there are hundreds of battles.

In between battles, the game will "treat" you to some colorful anime pictures:



And make no mistake about it, there is no animation in this entire game, there are only still anime pictures and text. There is voice acting, but there is no english voice acting, it's all in Japanese. Yeah, it's one of *those* games for the hardcore Japanophile.

Overall Score: 4 of 10
Quality Rating: 1 of 10
Pass.



Stand By for Awesome
Submitted Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - 8:26:32 AM by Klaitu

I know it's been awhile since I posted, but that just means I have lots of stuff to put up! Hold onto your seats, because it's about to get busy up in here!