» August 25, 2006
Clerks 2
Despite everything you may or may not have heard about Kevin Smith and View Askew’s latest movie, Clerks 2 is actually a very enjoyable stand-alone sequel to the critically-confused Clerks from like ten years ago. And thankfully this movie has very little in common with its plotless ancestor. I use “plotless” in a kind manner; it was an interesting movie, but it just wasn’t amazing...it was more like boring as fuck. Clerks 2 will fool you in the beginning with some obscure banter that seems to reflect its slow counterpart, but soon moves into a relatively serious plot with some fucking strange events happening alongside it.
Clerks 2 stars Dante and Randall, the lame heroes from the prequel. It also stars Jay and Silent Bob, who have just returned from rehab and are still selling drugs in front of stores. You know, typical Kevin smith shit. But damn if it isn’t good. The lines are clever, obscene, and thought-provoking at all once. I mean, while I myself have had discussions with people about A2M, or "ass to mouth", some people might find the subject a little unsettling, especially since there is so much of it in the movie. There is even a rather strange scene regarding racial slurs, which is pretty funny if you're a piece of shit like me.
Everything you’d expect from a Smith movie is here in spades: vulgarity, nudity, religion, sex, and completely bizarre things, which I won’t get into so as not to spoil the movie. It’s short enough that I didn’t look at my watch, and it was long enough that I didn’t feel like I’d been shortchanged on my ticket. Dante thankfully has dropped the "I'm not even supposed to be here today" line from the first movie; the line is only said once in the Clerks 2, and it's not by Dante! Randall continues to be sarcastic, idiotic, and utterly hilarious. Jay and Silent Bob couldn't be any more in character, which luckily includes all the sexual innuendo and drug references, as well as some brief insight by Silent Bob. Well, perhaps less insightful than his previous lines, but it's still funny.
The really odd part of this movie is that behind me in the theater was a really old couple. I mean old, like 60’s or 70’s, and they laughed hysterically at every scene in this movie. Every conversation was just hilarious to them. I don’t disagree that it was funny, but I never thought I’d hear old people laughing about bestiality jokes. I have to say, it really made me feel better about society when old people can still be open about that sort of thing. So anyway, go see this movie. For right now, just feel like an asshole about not having seen it yet. You asshole.
Rock over London; rock on Chicago.
AARP, protecting old people the world over.
» August 3, 2006
Need for Speed: Most Wanted
What this review should actually be titled is “Need for Speed: Most Wanted, And Why It Sucks So Bad.” Until this game arrived, I’ve fallen in love with every NFS title that has come my way, even the original (which hasn’t aged too well.) NFS makes a very strong point in its games: Realism doesn’t have to be boring. Gran Turismo strives so hard for realism and ends up being what it is: a simulator. Personally, I find the game more stale than three-month-old donuts, so I stay away from it.
NFS has always delivered the best courses, cars, and soundtracks of any racing game I’ve played, and I was delighted when the series turned from exotics and foreign locales to the so-called “tuner” genre under the lights of the city. The first two entries in the Need for Speed: Underground series were very customization-heavy; they demanded that the player slap every sticker, body kit, and euro tail light they could find on their rides, whether they wanted to or not. The two games relied on a “show and go” career in which your car had to meet ratings on a customization scale, as well as finish first in every race.
Need for Speed: Most Wanted, however, changed a lot of that. The setting turned from nighttime racing to broad daylight, and the customization aspect, while still present, was turned down drastically. In NFS: MW, the player is given the option to customize their car, mostly as a deterrent to the police, which leads me to the other big change. Not since Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 has the series dealt with police chases. In those games, police simply messed with you while you did your laps, and if you won, then you were done. If you stopped or wrecked, you were “busted” and you were done.
In Most Wanted, you deal with police all day long, whether it’s in the heat of a race or while you’re just trying to get to a body shop across town. And it is this very aspect that has totally ruined this game for me over, and over…and over. Basically in this game, you race against fifteen “Blacklist” racers who make up the “who’s who” of illegal racing in your little cityscape. You have to accomplish a set amount of races, as well as rack up “bounty” and complete challenges to piss the police off to race each Blacklist racer. Then, you race them and hopefully win their car.
The cars in the game are actually very similar to the previous Underground titles, despite the introduction of exotics like the Lamborghini Gallardo and the Mercedes-Benz McClaren. You still have a couple cars nobody’s ever heard of (Fiat Punto? Get out) and cars that were tossed in due to a major restyling (2006 Eclipse, I’m glaring in your direction. Come on. You drop the AWD Turbo second-gen and go to a FWD N/A thirty-five-hundred pound bucket of rocks on wheels? What the fuck.)
Really, the racing of the game is where it shines brightest. The races leading up to each Blacklist member become increasingly difficult as you go on, but deliver a thrill that not many competing driving games can offer. With each set amount of races, you have the choice to race courses where the police are more likely to show up, or races where you’re guaranteed not to see the fuzz. Thankfully, you can go through the game without racing ANY races involving police, which is just awesome.
And then there’s the “police challenges”, better known as “milestones.” In these, you have to accomplish random idiotic goals, like bumping into a set amount of police cars during a chase or dodging a set amount of roadblocks or spike strips, and then evading the pursuit. However, as the police chase you more and more, they start using better cars. They start with shitty Caprice-esque cruisers and then move on to 2006 GTOs, and finally to 2006 Corvette C6’s, which are totally, completely, and one hundred fucking percent impossible to lose. When you get to this point, you might as well start lubing up, because you’re about to get boned. Even better, you can’t quit the game or save during a police chase (you have to actually reset your system to avoid the impound fee), and kids, these chases can go on and on. I’ve had many that went over twenty, even thirty minutes. One simple mistake will end it, and let me tell you, losing after you’ve been playing for a half hour does not bode well for one’s anger management. I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve contemplated throwing my fucking XBOX into the street and then giving it an “American History X” curbing. Yes, I’m aware the box is black. Doesn’t matter what color it is, this game sucks. The police chases are so frustrating and drawn-out that many times I beg, out loud, for the game to just fucking be over.
If for some reason you’re in the market for a tuner racer, I would absolutely recommend Need For Speed: Underground 2 over this fucking game any day. Sure, you might cringe at the bizarre body kits and unnecessary spinners, hydraulics and neon, but overall the game is a billion times better. Plus, it has the second generation Eclipse, which is one of the best-looking cars ever made. You know. Cause I own one.
And you don’t.
» July 6, 2006
hey
Yes, hello. As of right now, you will require a typekey password and all that jazz to leave a comment. I don't know how to do it, so good luck.
» June 24, 2006
The Top Five or Ten Best Games that are Awesome - Number Five
Well, after a long hiatus, Awesome Game Numero Fiveo is here. And that game is StarCraft. Yes, you might be wondering why I ended up picking this amongst classics like Red Alert, Warcraft, Age of Empires, or even the badass Warhammer 40k.
Simply put, StarCraft has the best characters and plot of all of those games, save for maybe Warcraft 3. All three playable races are stunningly awesome in their own right. The Terrans are sweet, the Zerg are sweeter, and the Protoss? Oh man. Dark Templars. Carriers. Archons. Fucking awesome, people. The storyline is pretty depressing but the voice acting is nice, and the characters are actually pretty damn cool.
With the one complaint that you can’t put AI players on your team in multiplayer, StarCraft is a fine game indeed. Sure, it’s hard as fuck. Sure, the computer is cheaper than shit. And yeah, it’s dated to beat shit. But come on. Every race has bad-fucking-ass units that most people would enjoy commanding in real life. I wouldn’t mind going over to Trotwood and finding those little shitbags that jumped me with a couple Hydralisks in hiding. And I think we can all agree that sending a squadron of Mutalisks or Guardians to Iraq would pretty much shut everyone up over there. A couple Yamato cannon blasts would really take care of our current government setup as well. Take that as a hint, future Democrats to be: Battlecruisers are our future, not some “no child left behind” bullshit. Fuck that, bitches.
Well, that’s all the time we have for today, because I need to go watch Star Trek: TNG. Bye.
Crash
Good god. I can’t remember who exactly told me that “Crash” was a good movie, or if anyone even told me at all about it. Maybe it was just my goddamn bad judgement. No matter, this movie still blows pretty fucking hard. I’ve never, in my life, seen a more drawn-out, slow-paced reiteration of the same fucking message. I’m going to go ahead and recreate some of the movie, but instead of the “everyone is racist” message that this pile of dog shit tries to convey, I’m going to use a little more friendly of a message.
Bob drove around town in his new blue truck.
“Hey neighbor, that’s a nice blue truck you have there,” said Fred, Bob’s next door neighbor.
“What’s that? Oh, you’re talking about how my truck is blue. Yeah,” he said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully, “it sure is blue. And it’s a truck. Blue and a truck.” Bob got out of the truck and began a deep conversation about what shade of blue each man thought the truck to be.
“Well howdy, friends,” said Earl, walking his St. Bernard down the street towards the two jovial neighbors and Bob’s blue truck. “Bob, call me crazy, but you look like you got a blue truck there.”
Bob grinned madly and pointed enthusiastically at Earl. “Yer right there, Earl. I got me a blue truck, all right.” He leaned forward. “I’ll let you in on a secret there, Earl. It’s blue.”
“And it’s a truck?” called Fred from the background.
Earl and Bob turned in unison to face Fred. “You got that right!” they cried together.
The three jolly neighbors laughed.
Yeah. That’s pretty much what the movie is, except a lot less entertaining. I’m not sure why it won any awards, but apparently, throwing Sandra Bullock, Brenden Fraiser, Tony Danza, the black guy from Ocean’s Eleven (see, now I’m racist), Ludacris, Matt Dillon, Ryan Phillipe, Marina Sirtis, and a couple other recognizable celebrities probably doesn’t hurt. The worst part of this movie (well, besides the bizarre over-acting) is the monotonous music, which I think they throw in at dramatic parts to add to the emotion. If you’ve ever seen “Magnolia”, this movie is a lot like it, but much, much worse. Funny, though: despite the fact that this movie was about racism, there was only one hispanic guy. Lots of black guys, lots of white guys, lots of asians, and one hispanic. How’s that for racism?
I really, really tried to be a hardcore critic and watch the whole movie before I gave it a big stinking F on its coffee-stained report card, but I just couldn’t. Films like this are what the “skip scene” button was made for. I did watch the ending though, and it wasn’t any better. Let’s put it this way: My dog just ate a plastic bag earlier today while I was out. When I got home, I let him out, and when I went to call him back in, I found a long piece of shit-coated plastic bag hanging from his asshole like some sort of obscene tail. Probably a couple feet long. I had the awesome time of removing it with two plastic bags (how ironic) around my hand as a glove, and then wrapping it all up like a christmas gift for a bestiality-obsessed fecophiliac, I threw it in my dumpster. That experience was better than watching this movie.
I’m probably going to lose sleep tonight over why anyone in their right mind thought this movie was good. It makes me crazy that people pay money to produce this shit. And it makes me angry that people read the script and thought it'd be a positive career move to fucking act in it! What the fuck is wrong with you people?!
Folks. Seriously. Masturbation is good. Gatorade is good. At times, eating large quantities of hard-boiled eggs can be good.
But “Crash”?
Fuck that noise.
» June 14, 2006
hold the fuck on, would you? Christ.
Yeah, yeah, updates coming soon. I know you've all been bitching quietly to yourselves about it, so STOP.
» April 7, 2006
The Top Five or Ten Best Games that are Awesome - Number Four
Long ago, gamers thrived on 2D platformers, because that’s all there were. Sure, there were some psuedo-3D games in the forms of flight simulators and rpgs, but let’s face it: 2D was the best. VGA graphics were state of the art, and the internal speaker on your 386 had the best sound quality you’d ever heard in a game. Even CGA yellow-and-black games were still good, and your computer was slow enough to play them all the way they should have been played. Now, of course, a 286 won’t play much of anything, but it will play the best old-timey PC platformer of them all: Commander Keen.
Billy Blaze, child genius, battles the Vorticons on Mars, their mothership, and their homeworld in the Commander Keen trilogy, alongside pretty rough-sounding audio and relatively choppy scrolling. In Commander Keen IV: The Secret of the Oracle, Keen was upgraded with Soundblaster-quality music and sound effects, as well as a complete visual upgrade. Backgrounds resembled something of an MSPaint masterpiece. New abilities, like looking up and down, improved controls, and the ability to use switches and fireman-style poles were thrown in for good measure. Bizarre enemies and the ever-present theme of candy as the point items got better and better as the series went on. After all was said and done in Commander Keen VI: Aliens Ate my Babysitter!, another company published “Keen Dreams,” a completely different and not-so-great episode that took place between Keen 3 and 4. Instead of a ray gun, you use Flower Power Pellets. Great. Instead of bloodthirsty aliens, you fought vegetables. Awesome. Nonetheless, it was still a solid platformer by yesterday’s standards. Besides a Keen game released for the Game Boy Advance some years ago, the Apogee classic hasn’t seen any action, save for a cameo in Doom 2’s super-secret hidden level, “Grosse”.
Nowadays, very few games are able to stick to a 2D format and keep their popularity, what with the explosion of FPS’s, fighting games, and (barf) sports games. Thankfully, sites like www.dosgames.net and www.alex-soft.net preserve the shareware and freeware unpredictability of olden games, where graphics didn’t matter for shit – all we cared about was how fun it was.
But, uh, Timesplitters 3 is still pretty sweet.
» March 23, 2006
The Top Five or Ten Best Games that are Awesome - Number Three
The third game on my list is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game. Because it’s awesome, that’s why. Really, as far as arcade experiences go, this game is by the far the best one that has ever existed, and if you’re really lucky, you can still find it in pretty derelict arcades. What could compare to playing as all four turtles with your buddies and not even making it to Rocksteady in the first level before you run out of money? Besides maybe a three-way with two hot chicks, nothing.
Two buttons and one big-ass stick were all you needed in the good old days. Press both buttons for a super attack. None of that L and R bullshit. You were either attacking something, or jumping and attacking something. And that was the best. The levels themselves were pretty fucking difficult, but nothing was sweeter than getting to the end, fifty dollars poorer, and then losing to Krang on your last quarter. Wait. Why do I have nothing but losing memories of this game? Probably because I sucked at it. Still, I dare you to find a better arcade game, old or new. Because you can’t.
» March 8, 2006
The Top Five or Ten Best Games that are Awesome - Number Two
The next game on this prestigious list is one that I pretty much guarantee none of you have ever heard of. Spellforce: The Order of Dawn, is a relatively old PC game, maybe two or three years old, and I believe made in Britain. Anydangway, this game is pretty fucking weird, because it is both an RPG and a RTS. You make a character at the start, picking from a set of pre-made male and female models and naming him or her to your liking. My guy was called “Bob.” So you go and travel around, doing some tasks and trying to get some bad guys, but as you travel you’ll come across shrines of sorts (forgive me, it’s been quite some time since I’ve played this game) that produce the three good races - humans, elves, or dwarves. Each character set has different buildings to build, and new units to produce after the technologies are researched, like in any typical RTS. They also have Titans, which are the unique elite unit that pretty much fucks everyone else up.
After some time, you get to control the three evil races: the weak Dark Elves, the hordes of Orcs, and the cannibalistic Trolls. In some areas you can control both good and evil races, but they will attack each other if put together, so you have to go into some serious strategizing to get attacks to work with clashing groups with the same goal. You still get to control your main character the entire time, and if he or she dies, you get resurrected immediately, but minus some stuff. I don’t remember.
I don’t know what it is about this game, but it is without a doubt in the top three best games I have ever played. Even though there is no music and a lot of running around, the interactions with NPCs in towns and throughout the battlefields a real treat. It’s a game that doesn’t necessarily make you want to play it all day and night, but every time you play it’s very enjoyable. Spellforce 2 comes out very soon and I can only hope it’s as good as this game.
» February 23, 2006
The Top Five or Ten Best Games that are Awesome - Number One
Before we start off this video game list, I’d like to mention that these games are in no particular order. Trying to order them is very difficult, and if they’re all good, then who really cares?
The first game I’m going to talk about here is also the most recent one I’ve bought: Timesplitters: Future Perfect. While the genre of console first person shooters has come a long, long way since Wolfenstein 3D was on the Jaguar, it still ran into dead ends and problems aplenty for years after. Games like Hexen and Doom had many translation problems from pc to console, which killed the replay value of almost all of them. Even one of the most celebrated FPS’s, Halo 2, had quite a few problems. But then came Timesplitters: FP, the third in a series of games from the folks who made Goldeneye (or so I’ve been told.) Timesplitters 2 was okay, nothing fancy, but obviously paved the way for this fantastic shooter. T:FP has every fucking thing you could ever want in a shooter: multiplayer bots, co-op story and arcade modes, time travel, bizarre and silly humor, lots of guns, one hundred and fifty playable characters, and a plot that goes all over the place. Really, I can’t find a thing about this game that I don’t like. Curling monkeys? Blasting butchered cow carcasses come to life in a kitchen after decapitating the zombie cook? Hot animated chicks with plenty of sexual innuendo? Driving an old-school Warthog while the guy on the machine gun is fucking shit up? Teaming up with yourself from the past to kick ass? A level on a speeding train just like in Blood? Robots that leave you fubar’d pretty damn hard? Oh man.
The story focuses around Sergeant Cortez, back from the fuck-up in Timesplitters 2, and on a mission to remove the evil Timesplitter race from existence, thus ending the war between the race and the humans, which has escalated to a near Starship Troopers-like level. He has to travel to key points in the past, chasing the diabolical genius in charge of the wrong-doing, Jacob Crow. What really gets me going is the drastic change of scenery in between the levels. First off, you get a futuristic desert war level, then a 1940’s evil lair on an island, then a 1960’s evil lair in a military base, then a zombie-infested mansion, and so on. The missions are great and the specific character you get paired with on each one adds great personality to each mission. Great shit.
So why did I pick this game that I just bought for one of the top five or ten best games ever? Because it’s just so fun without being annoying at all. It has everything that I ever wanted in a game of this genre with none of the bullshit you get in any other game. Great. Well, I’m going to go play it now.