Archive for June, 2008

Least Wanted review of all time

June 30, 2008

I walked into…well drove up to the movie theater prepared to hate Wanted‘’s guts. I read the comic the movie was based on and when i saw the trailer i figured the movie would not do it justice…quite the achievement as I wasnt too fond of the comic (admittedly it had its good moments). My feelings for the film after watching it are mixed; as a movie it was better than i thought itd be and yet as a movie based off of a comic it was worse than i thought itd be.

The movie’s overall premise is there is a group of assassins called the fraternity who believe that “killing one could save maybe thousands”. The protagonist is Wesley Gibson who led a terrible life with a terrible job while his best friend fucked his girlfriend behind his back. It turns out his father was one of the greatest assassins of all time and now his son must train to avenge his father’s death. He grows into a man, leaves his girlfriend and friend behind and embraces the life of an assassin. The Comic’s premise, on the otherhand, was that there was a group of supervillains who took over the world called the fraternity who believed in doing whatever the fuck they want, whether it be murder, rape, of theft. The protagonist is Wesley Gibson who lives a shit existence in a shitty job while his chubby gothic girlfriend fucked his best friend behind his back. He embraces the life of a super-villain, kills his asshole friend(and many random people) and embraces the life of doing whatever the fuck he wanted). In general they sound kinda similar but they really were not.

In the comic the main event was that within the fraternity someone tries to usurp power and a civil war sorta erupts within the fraternity. The plot twist was that His father never died he staged his death so he could wait for his son to become the best and then his son would kill him. The main event of the movie occurred after the twist which was: Cross(the person he though was hunting him down) was actually his father(it was so predictable i was able to say “No Wesley Gibson, I AM your father” before it was revealed and that The leader of the Fraternity was choosing targets for his own personal reasons. The main event is Wesley kills just about everyone in the fraternity(In the comic Wesley kills all those who betrayed his sect of the Fraternity). The plots were just so different that they really should not have even called it wanted as it was so different from the comic.

The movie started out…well just awful. In a similar fashion to the comic it opened up w/ a character who is killed by a sniper show from about 2 miles away thought the movie replaced the gay near-sex scene with a business transaction-type deal. What made this part awful was the fact that the agent, who has to jump between 2 buildings to kill his assailants, engages in a super run(he moves so fast things from the wall fall off behind him) to get to the other side. He uses a goddamn super-power and they never explain how he did it or why other assassins were not able to pull it off. Terrific story-telling, just terrific.

The movie went along pretty well, no real complaints until the secret of the Fraternity was revealed. They take the names of the people they need to kill off of a loom. That is the worst idea ive ever heard of and I had to stop myself from leaving the theater at that point. Not only was it justbad, but it constantly re-occurred over and over in the story.

Fox, who had been like a mentor to wesley, was assigned to kill him(the name was one of the ones faked by the leader) right as Wesley was closing in on fox. Wesley learns the secret from his father(who he accidentally killed) then fox tries to kill Wesley and he gets away. Wesley returns to the Fraternity to attack it head on for, ill admit it, a kickass few scenes. Then its just Wesley and the Fraternity’s elite left, them in a circle surrounding him. Wesley tells them the Fraternity’s secret and the leader lets them know that all of the elite’s names came up(though he could have very well been making that up aswell) and he said that if they were to kill him they had to kill themselves aswell, fox then shoots a curving bullet that kills every elite(excluding the leader but including herself).

The end was pretty awesome but the final line was not quite so. In the movie Wesley turns to the camera and says “what the fuck have you done lately” which was pretty badass. On the otherhand in the comic the final thing is Wesley with and angry expression with the caption “This is my face while im fucking you in the ass”.

The movie implemented one very important thing from the comic; Wesley’s narrative monologue. In the comic however the monologue involved alot of hatred twords the human race, insulting the readers, and general douche-ness which is essentially what the person had become. In the movie the only thing in the monologue even close to the comic’s is the “what the fuck have you done lately” making his dialogue seem like a weak version of Fight Club’s.

In the end the movie was okay for a shoot-em up but it was unacceptable for a comic based movie. The gun scenes were well planned, Fox was hot as hell,they made a decent choice in casting Wesley. Had they stuck more with the plot of the comic I Think the movie would have been so much better…especially if they included the character Shithead, a being created solely out of fecal matter.

Grid: a review

June 24, 2008

The Racing Game Grid(or, if your a intolerable cunt who goes solely by “proper names” : Race Driver: Grid) is like crack for me…though unlike crack-heads i absolutely hate my addiction; i receive no jittery moments of bliss, completely ignorant of the fact that you just sold your car for money and you had to suck your dealers dirty dirty wang.

Grid starts out as unrealistic as possible, you are a driver who has yet to receive their rookie license and yet, somehow, you start the first race off in a Dodge Viper…with your own guardian angel…and a business manager. You climb up the ladder of racing fame, progressing from simple muscle cars and touring cars up to GT cars and above. Pretty standard for a racing career game.

Once you achieve enough fame in one racing area(by which i mean area of land) you can eventually hire a partner…who magically comes with the same cars as you and you magically get 2 for 1 deals from then on out. Ofcourse your first partner is about as useful as having an 80 year old man as your team mate. The only positive about these partners is no matter what nationality they are from, they come with that stereotypical accent. An Italian partner of mine constantly said things like “passion” and “we finish this as brothers” all in a mencia like italian accent; a french partner said in a snooty voice “Now you are almost as good as me” while i was generally beating him by about 11 spots(me in first, him in last). The best time-waster with these chimps is to crash into them in which they say “sorry, my bad” its Hilarius, i spend hours crushing my team-mates car into a mechanical cluster-fuck and apparently it is all his fault.

In game advertising in this game has been taken to a whole new level which is amazing because its a racing game and logos are about everywhere you look. Instead of having to buy cars new you can buy them off of ebay motors which is the worst idea ive ever heard. Other Pro racers are selling their 5 million dollar vehicles for slightly reduced prices on ebay motors cause if your gonna spend 4.8 million, you might aswell spend it on ebay. The worst part was prototype races. Its where you race prototypes(which the company DOESN’T give to you, you have to buy it) against other racers in the same prototype cars(which makes me believe these arnt prototypes at all). The best part? THESE GODDAMN PROTOTYPES CAN BE BOUGHT OFF OF EBAY. the stupidity in that is just remarkable.

The game contains a very limited selection of cars, only in the 70s or something, the focus is heavily on supercars and there arnt any long races(24 hours de le mans is only 24 minutes long), so that makes this an arcade racer right? apparently not because this game incorporates realistic damage to your cars(and gives you 5 backups because your car can break easily). So what this game has tried to do is combine the best of racing sim games and the best of arcade games…and it fails…horribly. It adds the limited selection of cars of the arcade games with the realism of car damage of a racing sim…but without any goddamn pit stops! if your car gets damaged and you cant instant replay your way out of the damage then you are fucked!

In the end this game could have been pretty good, but unfortunately it just fails. More importantly though for some reason I cannot quit this goddamn game!