Weekly Zero Punctation Review - 2.5D Showdown

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An interesting IMDB review prompted me to write my own quicky for a documentary I'm currently watching called "Home".Focusing on earth and how humans have changed the planet that mother nature took millions of years to create. Global warming, erosion, over population, de-forestation the entire environmental guilt trip is explained through some weighted narration by Glenn Close. It's pace may be a little slow, but the astounding aerial cinematography through 54 countries (including Australia)keeps you captivated through most of the film. A pretty amazing piece of French cinema considering the backing company PPR are a multinational holding company specialising in retail shops and luxury brands. A strange coupling, especially as shown in the opening titles, but it seems like it works alright here.

If your in the mood for your eyes to be opened a little bit more and enjoyed the doom that was "An Inconvenient Truth" take a look at this feature. It's currently available on youtube or your usual video outlet. A thought provoking and beautifully presented film. Oh and take my advice, blow out your d/l quota and watch the HD version... it's worth it.

Battlefield Bad Company - Review

Well I’ve had this now for about a week and I‘ve played through a fair bit of the single player as well as many hours on the multiplayer and I have come to some fairly distinct conclusions.

To recap exactly what we’re dealing with here I’ll go over the basics. Battlefield is a FPS that has been renowned for outstanding multiplayer for many years. This instalment places us in a modern age, in an area familiar to anyone who has turned on a television in the last 50 years, Eastern Europe. The idea behind Bad Company is that you are a new member to the worst regiment in the army B Company. Usually confined to cannon fodder B company get all the dirty jobs on the front line of this particular war on terror. In Three Kings style the troops find a mass of gold and decide to take their soldering rights and loot and pillage. The game follows along this plotline fairly heavily and it has even infiltrated the only game mode in multiplayer. In cinematic style we follow the squad of four men into battle. All of the characters are well played by the motion-captured sprites and voice artists and there are some genuinely funny lines and scenes included in the single player campaign.

Before we get onto the good stuff and stab some people in the face with multiplayer there is one dramatic new addition to this FPS. The new Frostbite engine is a site to behold. The basic idea is that 95% of your sandbox (or playable area) is destroyable and this includes trees, the ground buildings everything. It a very impressive first usage of this new software and I for one don’t ever want to go back. The joy that I receive in running up to a hidden combatant blowing a hole in the building then shooting him in the face is really some of the most fun I’ve had in gaming for years.

The multiplayer mode as it stands is only one mode Gold Create (where one team defends some cases of gold and one team attacks) and this can get a bit repetitive. I want a team deathmatch or free-for-all where I can get in amongst everyone and cause some havoc. Reportedly there is an xbox live update due soon that will give us a new mode but I am yet to see any releases, and there are definitely no reports of a Kill Cam which I am sorely missing. The skill of some players, along with the incentive for strangers to work as a team (and penalties for team kills) is fantastic and the various vehicles dynamically change the battlefield and the way you play the game.

Saying all this though remember that this is the first game with this new architecture and the new Unreal engine is set to have similar possibilities, so it is a little rough in parts. Some of the breaking of trees is very modular compared to the chaos of blowing up a building and it is quite choppy when there are multiple people in tanks, or in a heated firefight, but it is fantastic fun.

8.5/10

Prototype - Xbox 360 Review

Strangely enough I didn't hear about this game until it after it was launched, the mass market adverts went clearly over my head. Once I got my hands on a copy the box art and slips sucked me in entirely. The blood; the gore; the loopy mutations... how could this game not be any fun? Well I'm enjoying it, but find it easy not to care  about the games narrative, characters or victims. I haven't picked it up in days, and really don't see myself opening the pretty case anytime soon. Other, older and more entertaining  are keeping me extremely entertained (Ahem.... Halo 3) As well as my love for Red Faction that keeps me thinking about it and how I can f#$k shit up in all kind of ways. Prototype just doesn't suck me in, which is a shame because it really looks like it should.

The way that I describe Prototype is a virus ridden mixed bag. It's pretty dark and extremely vengeful, with no man woman or helicopter holding any real alliances. You have your sister that you hang out with but it really feels like your only using her to find out more about who to slap around next. Anyway, the idea behind it is that for some reason or another you, Alex Mercer, have been infected with a super virus infecting the city and giving you crazy fun powers to launch hellish revenge on almost anyone you come across. There's the usual cashed up megacorp, associated military faction and viral super mutants that you make and break alliances depending on the sub-game and mood you're in. There are no morality choices here, you're out to kill as many people as you can and in some pretty cool ass ways. You run, glide and massacre your way around a sandbox New York city hunting out missions, collectables and "Web of Intrigue" characters. Web of Intrigue I hear you say? Well the basic deal is that alongside the main game there are characters within the sandbox for you to find. They have info on your amnesia hidden past and instead of asking them what they know you absorb them into your body and collect they're memories.Some of the cut scenes are really nicely polished and look fantastic in HD, but this just drew a bleaker picture of the actual in game stuff. Up close and personal everything looks great. There's heaps of gore, and some really nice splatter but the city itself seems a little unpolished. There's also some engine issues with slow drawtimes, miss timed and strange explosions and a google maps 3D building style the overall feel is a little flat and uninteresting. The sprites animations look great but the camera doesn't really know what to do and keeps pulling the Michael Bay zoom on you. (Michael Bay Zoom: Filling to much of the frame with action so that you don't quite comprehend everything that's going on, and it's direction, in the scene) The controls are touchy, and there are A LOT of buttons weapons and moves but you'll find what you like and stick too it pretty quickly I mean you end up just mashing in the big fights anyway...

My conclusion; a good game but not great yet, I am still playing but I don't really see anything coming that I'll be wow'ed by. The dull city is made up by the entertaining sprites and animation. 7.75/10

LATE DISTRICT 9 HYPE POST # 1

Podcast Interview with Neil Bomkamp on the movie, the likelihood of a sequel, and more - Reviews of the film, nerdy banter and speculation to follow shortly...

http://www.scifimoviepage.com/upcoming/previews/mp3s/blomkamp-interview.m4a

(From Sci Fi movie page)

Inglourious Basterds by QT a bit spoilerish...

Best Jewish genocide revenge fantasy ever (more so than it was a war movie in genre terms, though I'd love to see more of Basterds like the Bear Jew, Stiglitz and Utivitch - perhaps an extended cut to some on disc?). IB is almost poetic in it's playful and often quite gory revisionist history, and gives Pitt almost as much room to really chow down on the mise en scene for the first time since (well, maybe Benamin Button, if I watch it again and it gets a lot funnier and less dreary) 12 Monkeys.

If QT ever really had the intention to make a men on a mission movie, he clearly put the idea aside long ago in favour of combining Shoshana's story with a dazzling armoury of characters from Aldo Raine's crew (none of which come close to wearing out their screen time, or ever getting enough of it - turns out Eli Roth can Act like a mother fucker), fuelled by snippets of Ennio Morricone's westerns scores and a version of World War II that owes much more to cinema than any History book. As for Samuel L Jackson's VO or Keitel's cameo (on the phone? lame) they were entirely unnecessary cal backs to old QT movies and much less successful for me than Mike Myers' small role and some a barmy English General and the over the top Errol Flynn/David Niven homage of Lt. Archie Hicox and revolting arch bad guy The Jew Hunter.

If anything the films a little over-stuffed with these great characters we never quite get to see enough of, but I guess that's better than dragging on to long (like the Kill BIll Double, in my opinion)

QT really twists up another new genre with this movie and it's great fun.

"Stuck" Directed By Stuart Gordon

The character motivations that some might have trouble with all refer back to the title - Director Stuart Gordon (better known for 80's body horror like 'Re-Animator' and being the writer behind 'Honey, I shrunk the Kids) spends considerable time slowly revealing how Rea's beaten down Thomas and Mena's skanky-hot but fairly dim Brandi feel stuck by their various predicaments. I found it a little close to the bone at some moments watching the downward trajectory of Thomas' day - not that I've ever actually been out of a job and a home and a future all at the same time, but the portrayal preys on nagging uncertainties that all of us feel (unless you're comfortably well off and haven't been hungry) and the drab 'television' feel of the film compounds this, elevated by moments such as the opener slo-mo shots of the bemused denizens of a old folks home set to gangster rap, the slow mo, bone-crunching moment where the whole story goes down the s-bend, and especially the lava-lamp match-cut from Thomas slowly dying and bleeding in the garage to Brandi, half 'ecstatic', half hysterical fucking her wanna-be thug boyfriend Rashid. It could be such depressing and dire material, but it's played just right to be sick, black and funny, and I almost stood up and cheered at the conclusion to the way Thomas and Brandi's story concludes, so for one of them, at least, it becomes a near heroic story of hope - the fucker just wouldn't die.

A great low budget movie that turns exploitation cinema upside down - 'based on a real life event' perhaps, but making something pretty special from a hopeless little story, with director Gordon skilfully managing to hit the audience with some great visceral gore and horror at the same time.

COLBERT Tredmill about to head into space


By SPACE.com Staff
Posted: 24 August 2009 01:15 pm ET

NASA is poised to launch a new treadmill named for comedian Stephen Colbert to the International Space Station on the shuttle Discovery on Tuesday and at least one astronaut has taken it for a test spin. But what's it like, running in space?

Astronaut Sunita Williams, who lived aboard the space station for almost seven months in 2007, ran a marathon in space during her trip, making her an expert of sorts on jogging in orbit."I tried a COLBERT mockup at Johnson Space Center," Williams has said, adding that the treadmill is broader than one on the station today. "So you don't have to watch out where your feet go. It allows a wider, more natural gait." Still, it's a strange experience, one in which sweat floats and your feet might, too. The new treadmill will launch alongside 15,200 pounds (6,894 kg) of new science gear and supplies. It will complement the space station's array of exercise equipment that helps astronauts fight the bone loss and muscle decay associated with space travel. Discovery is slated to launch Tuesday at 1:36 a.m. EDT (0536 GMT) from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida to begin a 13-day mission to the International Space Station. 

Click to read more....

Reuniting the old Firefly team again, Halo ODST is on the way. Voice acting from such nerd beloved stars as Adam Baldwin, Alan Tudyk they have even included the cerebral embedded Capric 6 (Tricia Helfer) from much loved Battlestar Galactica. They sure do know what nerds like, I hope that we care up for a multiplayer extravagance and from where I'm sitting it looks like Bungie may have hit the nail on the head.
 

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