Whisky Tango Foxtrot: The "Medal of Honor" Review

Judging from the title of this review, you may go into this thinking I hated the game. It makes sense, what with the Taliban multiplayer debacle, and the fact that I hate Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, the most "realistic" war game. Guess what, Infinity Ward, making a main character die does not a realistic war game make. But, that's a different rant for another day. Oddly enough, I got roped into this game by a friend who had to review it. My reservations were obviously not unfounded by blind doubt, but through experience of playing previous "Medal of Honor" games, namely Medal of Honor: Rising Sun, a.k.a. "the glitchy game that blocks off your only path to progression." Add to that the Taliban controversy and CoD Jaded syndrome, and you know why I had my doubts.

Before I go on, I didn't play the multiplayer, and I'm glad I didn't. It's a completely different game, taking out some of the gritty combat moves that make the single player game stand out.

That being said, the game is one of the most realistic war games I've ever played. Combat doesn't just take shooting well, but running and sliding to cover, and strategic thinking, as well as relying on your battle buddies. That doesn't even scratch the surface of how realistic this game. One has you laying down cover fire so your team can dismantle a machine gun bunker, then calling off a rescue squad after being surrounded by Taliban and Al-Qaeda soldiers, but fighting until the last round is expelled, taking out as many Insurgents as possible before potentially dying. That's just one of missions, and its pretty nail biting.

The weapons feel natural, but seem a little too accurate. I got more head shots with a M60 than an M-4. Wait... speaking from experience, that's pretty true. Alright, more intentional head shots. At the same, the power seems about right, and the sound is amazing. It's a shame that graphically, its a mixed bag. The people look pretty good, the environment is appropriately desert-like, but the explosions are pixelated and grainy.

That isn't what you play the single player for, though. Is the game fun? Yes, yes it is. It's as fun as the Fiesta is green. Nevermind the banter of your buddies, the game is fun from the first step to the last building you clear. If there is anything bad to say about it, it's that at 4 hours, it is very short. I usually don't complain about a game being too short. In fact, the last time I did was with Soldier of Fortune: Payback, and that was because it was so comically bad, that it was almost good. The problem with this game being so short is that it cuts down on the replay value, too.

Much like every game I love, I went into this one, thinking it was going to be horrible. It proved me wrong, and I'm happy to admit that. If the journey was longer, I'd suggest this at full price, but as it is, I can only say wait for it to drop in price. Once it does, get it (or rent it now). It's is a battle worth fighting.

Overall: B

+ Realistic military combat

+ Apaches!

+ A Nailbiting, intense campaign

- That's over before you know it

- Mixed bag graphics

SCDG: Same Controls, Different Game

25 years ago, Nintendo ruled the electronic world with a simple control: A four-way directional pad, and four buttons: Start, Select, "A" and "B." With it came Mario, where "A" made him jump, "B" made him launch fireballs, and Start paused the game. Very few games deviated from that scheme, sometimes switching it up. Never once was a game called a "Mario Clone."

Today, you have a game with a free moving camera, is in the "Action" genre, and you use two buttons for two different attacks, light and hard, the game is instantly labeled a "God of War" clone. A first person shooter uses the two bumpers for firing a weapon, it's a "CoD" ("Call of Duty") clone. Frankly, people, this needs to stop, and for a very good reason: it's not at all true.

Take a look at the controllers for the "Top Tier" current generation systems (XBox 360 and Playstation 3). Two bumpers and two triggers are on top. Two analogue sticks by the bottom, four face buttons, Select and Start, and a D-Pad. The D-pad is used for selecting different weapons now, instead of moving. So you have four face buttons to work with, and four top buttons. A total of eight, buttons, and it seems that people think that just because they aren't mixed up, they must be stealing the controls from another game. What about the atmosphere of the game? The graphic and sound style? How do those compare?

The main reason a lot of games have the same controls are because those controls work. They feel comfortable, and in some cases, natural (Borderlands had some amazing console controls). If a team has perfected how they work, and it shows, changing it up will show some individuality, but at the expense of comfort, and potentially just covering up how much the game isn't different at all. I know what I just said a paragraph ago, so let me explain this.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow has been getting flack for being a God of War clone due to its controls. This couldn't be further from the truth. The layout is close, but the style is different. While Gabriel Belmont only has one main weapon and four secondary weapons, Kratos has, essentially, three main weapons that he can freely switch to, and four secondary weapons in the form of spells. At the same time, the atmosphere of the two games are starkly different. LoS has a fantasy atmosphere in contrast to GoW's more brutal, ancient war atmosphere. Unfortunately for another game, Dante's Inferno seemed to have copied that a little too closely, as well as the control scheme.

But, here's where it gets tricky: Dante's Inferno was a good game. Call me crazy, but I didn't care that the controls were the same, nor that the graphics were close. The environment and the story made it work. It was so new, and frightening, to see Hell come alive with such vivid detail, that I didn't care that it was GoW in Hell. Does that mean that every game that does the same control scheme is a GoW clone, if it's in the same genre, but has its own identity away from that? Well, consider this: God of War was once known as the Devil May Cry clone while in development, but after release, due to its identity, was absolved of that title. Why can't we do that now?

Ultimately, who cares if the control layout is the same? Is the game fun? Do you enjoy playing it? That's the important part. Why should we feel the need to compare games, and take away any original identity that they have? Are we that critical that we have to say something is like something else so we don't enjoy it as much? What it comes down to is this: If you like the game, stop trying to say that its like another game. Trust me, I've played a lot of games with the same control layouts, and they still played differently, for better and worse.

Love Bites: The "Let Me In" Review

As a general rule, remakes are unnecessary movies. The story has already been done, why do it again? Its cheaper to just stick to the original. Sometimes, though, this can't be done, hence unnecessary American remakes of movies (namely J-Horror) that most Americans won't even understand due to cultural differences. Part of the reason I normally avoid doing a HHMR on a foreign movie (Kaiden being the exception) is because it may not be scary to me because I'm not of that culture. Figuring that I'm not completely out of the loop with movies, I knew that remakes of Let The Right One In and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo were on their ways, and figuring that they're only two years old at most, the question of "why?" rears its head.

To make things worse for me, Let The Right One In is a vampire movie, and I've hated them since before Twilight. So, believe me when I say these sentences: I really did not want to see this movie. But, I am glad I did.

Let Me In is, in fact, a vampire love story. 12 year old Owen is an outcast who is bullied, and normally plays by himself (that is when he isn't watching his neighbors or eating Now and Laters while singing the jingle). While watching his neighbors through a telescope (yes, he has issues, but at the same time, he's going through puberty, and his neighbor is pretty damn hot, not that that isn't any less creepy), he sees two new people move in: an older man and a 12 year old girl named Abby. Despite Abby telling him that they can't be friends, they become friends (and more). What Owen doesn't know is that Abby is a vampire, and her "father" is killing people so she can feed.

While this seems like a schlock plot, it's pulled off surprisingly well. Both children are creepy, but its when we start to see Abby's true colors that we get a sense of how much worse she is than Owen. She's manipulative to her father, but does care about Owen.

This is also done in a stark context to how we first see Owen: as a voyeur watching his neighbors have sex. Despite this, how his relationship with Abby seems purely innocent. One scene, she strips down completely (due to being covered in blood after a major event) and slips into his bed, without him knowing of her nudity (it's not a sexual context, either). When Owen realizes this, Abby asks him if that's "gross" and Owen responds, rather confused by this, "No?" He's confused as to what he's feeling, because while he knows what "most people would do," to him, Abby is more like a very close friend than an object that he sees most women being treated as.

Another stark contrast is we can relate to Owen due to who we see in the movie. Those who have strong emotions for him, both negative and positive, we see their faces. Not once do we see Owen's parents' faces. They seem like vague shadows that are supposed to influence him, but are too caught up with themselves to even notice Owen. It was an extremely good tactic, and it works very well.

On the other side, we see Abby, her "father," and bullies. The bullies are about the only bad part of the film, due to the fact that they seem to pick on him for random things. I still don't know why they were worried about what he was writing when they were teasing him for not wanting to swim, and making him piss himself. You know, that's what I would have picked on him about! You know, if I was a douchebag.

Finally, the important thing: is this horror movie scary. Let me put it this way, I had to "squee" during one scene. I won't spoil it, but let's just say it involved fire and not sparkles. Another has a bloody vampire hugging someone, which comes off as bizarre, and weirdly emotional. While it is scary, it isn't in your face scary. It builds up slowly, and makes you want to see what happens next. Even if what happens next isn't pretty. That's what horror movies are supposed to do. People, take notes when you see this.

Let Me In, while still not a brilliant reason for remakes, is not only one of the best efforts of a remake, but one of the best horror movies of recent times. It's October, and it has actual vampires in it! Stop wasting your time, waiting for yet another Saw sequel, and watch this. You will not regret it.

Over all, I give it 5.5 Bloody Vampire Girls.

Video Game Review: Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock

I fully admit to being a bit biased in the music game genre. For me, Harmonix will be the developer who knows what to do in the rock game genre, because they started it with the original Guitar Hero, and went to greener pastures with Rock Band. I have Rock Band 3 reserved, and I play the hell out of Rock Band 2 to this day. It's the one game that, despite playing the same things over and over again, I can always go back and do something different. I may have played "Siva" and "Well Thought Out Twinkles" 100 times this month, but, hey, I haven't played "The Feel Good Drag" in a little while! The set list is varied, even including country, and, bizarrely enough, rap, but it doesn't force you to play genres you hate with a varied amount of DLC.

Now, for the longest time, I've been thinking that Neversoft and Red Octane have been compete morons when it came to the Guitar Hero series. They've made the game more difficult, read "make easy mode easy, medium-hard, hard-expert, expert-death on a stick, and expert+-my God, it's full of stars!" To make matters worse, they never caught on that the circles on the track are hard to strum/strike at the right time due to the shape and size. Each game has been more difficult for the wrong reasons: adding more notes to easier modes instead of the actual song being challenging, and not fixing a simple design problem. The eye doesn't easily line up round shapes into a round hole.

Red Octane is gone now, and Neversoft starts their solo career by making the Guitar Hero characters turn into monsters to plagiarize Brutal Legend, right down to the map's art style. If this sounds like a good idea to you, here's where you should relocate to. It gets even better, because each character has their own power to help you rock. For example, one character can over hype her fans to gain 2-5 extra stars. This means you can get one star, and still pass the song. The powers pretty much feel like cheating.

Here's the sad part: you'll need to cheat, too, unless you're the God of Rock. The first two levels are extremely easy, and then, the game decides that it wants to advance you to the next mode up. I usually play guitar on hard, due to the fact that I don't have the dexterity for expert yet. Hard in this game is Expert for Rock Band and the other Guitar Hero games. This was meant to cater to the fans who play on Expert. It throws off the people who aren't on Expert, on the ther hand. This is especially considering the fact that half of the soundtrack, while it's supposed to range through all types of rock, is over %50 speedy, deathly, metal or speedy, deathly prog. So, to advance through the game, you need to use your powers (most of which activate on their own only) and not worry about hitting all the notes. The only time I failed a song was because the track was going to fast for me to respond to the notes, and I was strumming too late, and because there is a new bug: the game will not pick up some rapid strums. It's irritating when you have a succession of five notes, and you strum five times, but on the last note, the game responds to it as a miss.

It's not over strum, either. Even on easier modes, with now extremely rapid notes, the game will jerk the track and say you missed a note that you hit, and it counted. Other times, it'll just jerk the track. On the other hand, vocals are the same as Guitar Hero 5, meaning you don't have to sound exactly like the singer to pass a song, but you'll still miss a perfect score if you don't say one word at the right time. While it feels good to sing "Bohemian Rhapsody" in my own voice (mostly), I still have to do a falsetto to get the high notes, where, you know, the harmony should be. Seriously, Rock Band has done harmony in two, soon three, different games, and Guitar Hero can't get the point? Overall, though, the gameplay is the mostly the same, though, it is a little bit leaned to the player, as if they realized that they made the game too hard, and decided to make it impossible to lose unless you just purposely lost or weren't used to the speed.

Let's head over to the graphics. Most of the time, they suck, even for Guitar Hero's art style. Again, this is due to character design issues. Judy Nails, once again, is made into a sex symbol at the ripe age of 17, and changes into a succubus with a Glasgow Smile and one wing. Really?! Small details, such as mesh sleeves, tend to get stretched out and blurred, too. The real trick is that so much is animated, including details on some of the guitars, that it distracts you from the game.

Again, though, they did do something right, both with graphics and soundtrack. They made a Rush setlist, and based the three venues off of the setlist: the entire 20 minutes of "2112" as narrated by the band. Cool if you're a Rush fan, but it feels a little forced into the game's... "story." I mean, the only similarity is that you find a guitar in a cave. Woo!

Finally, the setlist. Aside from Rush, I have found a whopping total of five songs I like that aren't on Rock Band, or announced for Rock Band 3. Others that I kind of like are incredibly boring to play. I love me some A Perfect Circle, but why did they pick "The Outsider" over the obvious technical songs like, "The Hollow," "Magdelena," "Pet," or even "Thinking Of You?" The have Rammstein's "Waidmanns Heil" (a song about "hunting" women) and Nine Inch Nails' "Wish" (a.k.a. "the Fist Fuck Song"), why not have a song about masturbation? To make that even worse, the tracks that were all ready in Rock Band are copied exactly like they are in that game, only with hammer-ons thrown in to make it seem different. The main riff for "The Feel Good Drag" isn't constantly hammered-on in reality.

This game really isn't worth the price of admission for these reasons, and one big one: it was meant to cater to the series' fanbase, but with the "Warrior" premise, and some cheap and terrible song choices, it will alienate them. GH is trying to compete with RB by ignoring true innovation (seriously, harmonies and a keyboard with RB3, the same exact gameplay with GH6), and saying that slightly changing characters will make it a different game by adding monster powers, and giving the same powers to the characters anyway. Do yourself a favor, buy RB3, and wait for this to go down in price if you really want to play the same songs on a different game.

Overall:

D

+ Same game play...

- Marred by upping the difficulty level for no real reason

- Powers feel like your cheating

+RUSH!!!!

- Copycat setlist from Rock Band!!!

- Seriously... 17 year olds...

* Edit: They put a NO FAIL mode in the game as a pre-unlocked cheat. NO FAIL mode on a game that you have to try to fail on. Seriously?

Updates On What I've Been Up To, And Why I've Been Away.

I've been away for a while, but it couldn't be helped. Here's what I've been up to.

1: I saw two movies this week that I was going to review, but I'm not going to do full reviews. The first was The Last Exorcism. I was impressed. I usually hate the mockumentary types of movies, but this one was pretty damn scary. The more I think about the ending, the more I see how they worked hints of it into the beginning of the movie, and no one realized it.

The second was Machete. Okay, it was awesome, Danny Trejo confirms that he's awesome, but there was one big flaw: politics. Half of the story pretty much tells you that illegal immigrants are crossing the border. True. But, us white people are mercilessly killing them, and that the Mexican people send people to their deaths. Oh, that, and Americans (of all races) are trying to hold "illegals" down. Key word, people: "illegal." I find it pretty sad that the Mexican people were all seen as illegal immigrants. Also, what happened to Jessica Alba's "I'm never going to do nudity" act? Yeah, she has a nude scene, and so does Lindsay Lohan (and a woman playing her mother who actually had a nice, curvy, feminine figure). But... it was awesome as an action movie. Where else are you going to see a guy rappel out of a window by a guy's intestines? Trejo was like the Mexican Brock Samson. Oh, and Steven Segal plays a badguy... and does an impressive job. Seriously, watch it, it's a lot of fun.

2: I start school Tuesday. I'm going to Wright State for a Bachelor's in Fine Arts. I got everything set up this week, and I ended up getting a $2471 paycheck as a refund. That should get me through a while until my GI Bill starts next month and then some.

3: I do have some family issues at hand, but I'm not going to mention what they are. Let me just say that I'm doing fine with my immediate family, but we had a shock happen to us. We are handling it, but I may be particularly distant in the next week.

4: Finally saw Season 4 of "Dexter." Okay, skipping ahead of myself there. First, Alexis and I broke up, but we are still friends. She is going to return to "Born to Interpretation" as far as I know. It was a mutual thing, we just wanted different things. I am seeing someone, though, that I met through a friend. The issue was that there was that "click" that people always talk about, and it was part of some chaos that ensued. That is taken care of (there was a bigger issue that caused it), and me and Laurel are very happy.

Now, back to "Dexter." I'm impressed. I'm impressed that John Lithgow plays a serial killer that is scary as hell, but you can't help but be drawn in by the character. I'm impressed that the ending even happened (even though I knew). I'm impressed that the most attractive woman they had in the entire series died in the first five minutes of the season, yet we get to see Quinn's bony, scaggy, reporter girlfriend at least half-naked every other episode. But, most of all, I'm impressed by the fact that Joey Quinn is still in the show! No one likes him! He's shallow, bland, and annoyingly useless, yet they make him the big hero in one episode (where Batista should've been). Even worse, they're molding him into the same character that Doakes was. Except Doakes was awesome. Other than Quinn and the reporter, pretty good season, and the best season finale of the series, but not as good as Season 3. I can't help but think that Trinity would've been better used when Doakes was still alive, too.

5: For anyone interested in being a proofer for Muzzle, let me know. I have at least two chapters that I want some feedback on, because they deal with a sensitive issue. I want to make sure that this gets handled in the best possible way. To help me out, she's helping write the chapter, requesting that something of hers is used in the narrative itself. It is an extremely serious story line, and I intend on treating it as such. And, yes, it will have an effect on all the characters.

6: I'm itching to do an Horrid Horror Movie Review, but I can't find the one I want to do. Keep an eye out, though, just in case...

If Jerry Springer Made Games...

I was amused yesterday by something so childish, that I could not help but play through the entire game. I traded in a few games and got two oldies but goodies (Condemned 2 and The Darkness) and one of the worst games I've ever played, Rogue Warrior. It isn't that the gameplay is broken (which it is), or that the graphics are pale in comparison to most other games (which they kind of are). Hell, it's not even that the game is glitchy (Alpha Protocol aspires to be as buggy as this game is), or the fact that it's a whopping 3 hours long (yes, I beat the game in one sitting). What makes the game bad is the writing. By writing, I mean, taking Mickey Rourke out to a bar, get him drunk, and record him rambling, making sure to use the most vulgar lines in this game.

This was kind of amusing due to the fact that it made the game feel all the less real. I mean, sure, it's pretty unrealistic to run up to a random guy and stab him without him seeing you, but when you hear, "Drop dead, motherfucker, you motherfuckin' amateur!" you cannot help but laugh. That is, until you realize that this is one of several "one-liners" he uses that seem like he's a rambling drunk, who would fit better in Condemned 2.

I understand putting language like that in a game meant for a mature audience for realism (or in the case of Killer7, surrealism), but by the second level and the second time hearing, "C*** Breath fuckin' Commie Motherfuckers!" you really have to think that a two year-old with Tourrette's and a bizarre infatuation with Reservoir Dogs wrote the game. Oh, and that's not the worst part. For some reason, the character, based on Dick Marcinko (a real life Navy SEAL), has a strange trait of talking about his enemies penis size and , why not, Polar Bear Testicles. I am pretty sure that if Marcinko saw this game in action, the developers would not be safe. Ever.

Being in the Army, I've heard some pretty vulgar things, but this game takes the cake. It's offensive to others and its pretty damn offensive that this is how people see the military. But, at the same time, I can't deny the fact that its so over the top bad that it's almost redeeming, then back to being offensive again. It takes away from the fact that I cannot review the gameplay of the game because it's just another FPS (a phrase I usually hate, but applies), only with more language in it. The only thing this game does to stand out is use the "f-bomb" so much, that George Carlin is begging people to create another vulgar word because "fuck" has lost its meaning.

Throw Me Away! "The Expendables" Review

Sylvester Stallone is not my favorite action star by any means. I was always an "Arnie" fan, and even like Bruce Willis more than Stallone. On the other hand, I did like "Rambo: First Blood Part 2." "Rocky Balboa" and "Rambo" can go wallow in a pit in hell, though. I also hate Jason Statham, Jet Li, and Dolph Lundgren. So, you may think that I hated this movie, right?

Well, guess what? You are... completely wrong. This movie is to cheesy '80's Action as Super Mario Bros on the DS is to Super Mario Bros. 3. Stupid plot that's there to push awesome action sequences foward? Check. A seemingly unwinnable fight between the main character and a bigger guy? Check x 3. A man throwing a torpedo at a helicopter only to have it detonated by another guy shooting it with a .9 mil? Check. Arnie? Check to the awesome extreme, dude.

What makes "The Expendables" work is the fact that it is just what you think it is: Cheesy action that makes men feel like men. No Edward Norton wussing out of a fight with another skinny guy. No random "I am woman, hear me roar" character "showing up" the male leads because "women are better than men" (looking at you, "Live Free or Die Hard.") No "Let's take our story too seriously" moments. And no bizarre dance scenes (okay, that part of "Gamer" was still pretty cool). If there is anything thrown in that makes it bad, its the CGI blood, which is extremely jarring.

Another bad point is the casting decision for the female lead. She looks more masculine than most of today's action heroes, mostly due to her huge jaw. Even worse, they try so hard to make her look sexy, such as a "tight. blowing skirt" butt shot (that shows she has no butt), and the "bouncing orbs of joy" shots that don't have anything to do with the movie than to show bouncing boobs. If that's the worst I can say about this movie, though, that's pretty good.

The rest of the cast is pretty well done. Stallone seems to have a good chemistry with the other guys in it (yes, even Arnie) to the point that it feels like it goes beyond the movie. David Zayas (Batista from "Dexter") plays a conflicted villain extremely well, and contrasts Eric Roberts' pure villain even better. Statham plays a more human character than one would be used to, but it works well (though, I still think Peter from "Pictures of You" did a better job of beating up an abusive boyfriend). But, that's all the cherry on the Sundae. We all know why people will see this movie.

Jet Li kicking Dolph Lundgren's ass. Yes, it happens, and it's awesome to watch. Especially in the context of what happened and the execution of it.

This movie is what "The A-Team" should've been. It is stupid, yes, but fun. It's what the Summer Blockbuster used to be. If you want an action flick, this is your chance to see it.

I give it 5 out of 6 Exploding Shotgun Rounds