American McGee's Alice (PS3/x360, 2000)

For years I've been hearing about this crazy dark image of the Alice in Wonderland story. As a lifetime console gamer it's one of those ideas that makes me consider a trip over to the PC realm, but I just never got around to it. Recently, I was at the store and found Alice: Madness Returns (which I'll be reviewing shortly) on the shelf for a great price. On the back, to my surprise, it said it had a coupon inside to play the original game as included DLC.

I need to reiterate that this game was originally released in the year 2000. Mind you, they clearly threw an HD remastering on it, but for a game 12 years old to look as good at this game does is really a feat. The controls also worked pretty well, though the jump mechanics can be difficult due to having trouble telling how far away platforms are. I understand that this game was originally designed for the mouse and keyboard, but personally, I felt right at home with my controller.

I would like to say that I am an expert when it comes to Alice in Wonderland, but that would be a filthy lie. All I have ever known of it was that there is a hatter who madly loves tea and a badass cat who smiles and instigates Alice at every turn. I also know that Tim Burton tried his dark take at Alice in Wonderland and made a billion dollars worldwide with what most people would call a terrible and typical Tim Burton movie with no respect for the source material. Oh well, at least Johnny Depp got to put on white makeup....again.

Where it is generally accepted that Wonderland is a place in Alice's mind, what happens when Alice's mind falls apart? That's the idea that this game plays with. This takes place after the original story, when one night while Alice is off in Wonderland in her dreams and a fire starts in her home. She barely escapes her home, but ends up hearing her parents screams as they burn to death. This drives her over the edge and leaves her in an asylum, where her only hope is to go back into her now deranged version of Wonderland, in hopes that she can reconstruct her mind. The whole game plays out as a very interesting story of PTSD and dealing with it in a dark way, and oh what a dark way it is.

Atmospherically, this game is one of the most impressive feats that I have ever encountered before. I found overwhelming dread the further into the game I got. What I found interesting about the character of Alice, is that she seems to think the world around her is strange for all sorts of the wrong reasons. Whether it be a character in a torture apparatus asked why he was put there by the Mad Hatter. The first thing that she suspects is that he is guilty of slurping his tea or talking while eating at the table. She's wonderfully oblivous to how crazy this world is, and instead of making this world seem unrelateable , it only serves to make the atmosphere draw you in. Near the end of the game, I found myself thinking differently to try to compensate for the craziness that is this version of Wonderland, and for a game to teach you how to think like an insane person, I have no other term for it than art.

I love this version of the Hatter.

In the end, the whole game comes down to Alice battling her inner demons, and it fits with the classic story in an unprecedented way. This game is a masterpiece and I recommend it to anyone who has the patience to play a game with dated controls, older graphics and a really high difficulty curve. If you value atmosphere, this is one of the very best games ever made.

Hunted: The Demon's Forge (PS3/x360, 2011)

There is an art to being tedious. If you are one of the people who believes that statement, this is pretty much your equivalent to Van Gogh's Starry Night.

The real selling point to this game, was the concept that it was an entirely coop campaign, and unlike many games, it's storyline was set up as such. This way, whoever was playing the second character wasn't just vanishing during storyline cut scenes and so on. The problem here is that there is pretty much no storyline at all.

At least Lucy Lawless voices this character, but I think the
sound was recorded in someone's bathroom, as it sounds terrible.

The 'story' goes like this:

1. 2 characters are lead to a town to go on a quest by Lucy Lawless showing up in their dreams. (My dreams with Lucy Lawless in them are so much better, but let's move on.)
2. They are greedy and want money for whatever reason (they never say why).
3. They try to convince you that they become heroic after a while, but they don't really try that hard.
4. The game ends with what can only be called a twist... maybe (again, there is no investment in these characters at all, so it's pretty much useless).

Fair enough. In this day and age, story is often the least important thing about games, after all, look how successful the Halo series is with it's whole go here and destroy this storyline that everyone raves about. Speaking of Halo, Bungie (the company who up until now has made all of the Halo games) has this mentality of creating the most fun 30 seconds you can have over and over again. This clearly was something that came through with the makers of this game, except instead of the 30 seconds of fun formula, it instead uses the 15 minutes of annoying enemies attacking non stop over and over again. It just gets old, and if you think about it, every chapter is probably 20 rooms with a metric ton of padding to keep you in each one before moving to the next.

From a game-play standpoint, this game isn't terrible, though the swordplay is a bit on the loose side and tends to degenerate into tapping the attack button over and over again. Fortunately, as you develop more powerful skills and magics, you probably can do without using a sword ever again. There is also a pretty decent bow and arrow/ third person shooter mechanic that works pretty well, with the exception of the arrows refusing to hit the targets some time. For example, you see an enemy, aim for his head and fire but another enemy walks partially in front of him. Instead of the enemy in front taking the hit or the enemy in the back taking the hit, somehow neither one takes a hit at all. This came up many times, and leads me to believe that you can only hit the one you are targeting.

Worst of all though, is the shitty comic relief jammed into the dialogue all through this game. You will likely hear the characters say something that is poking fun at how crappy the game's formula is.

Here are a few examples of this.

1. It's not uncommon to pick up a health potion and have them say, "You can never have too many health potions", which is bullshit cause you can only have 3.
2. They love to make reference to how you are always encountering yet another gigantic door to get to the next area.
3. "It's raining targets" one of the characters will say when you are under attack by endless enemies over and over again, which isn't funny because you've already heard this exact comment said about 35 times by the end of the game.
4. They refer to how the enemies never stop coming constantly, which again, you will be saying way before they will, so it's just annoying having the game say, "Oh yeah, the game designers totally knew there were too many enemies."

Overall, Hunted isn't a good game at all. I couldn't recommend it to anyone, and would suggest just steering clear of it all together.

Platinum trophy note: I managed to get the platinum, but the game has a really bizarre issue with it's trophy for picking up all of the crystals in the game. This little glitch made me have to play through the whole sodding game a second time. If you do intend to go for this platinum be sure to study the trophy guide on ps3trophies.org to save yourself several miserable hours of gameplay.

3D has got to stop!!!

Since the Avengers has come out, I've gone to see it twice more, only to find myself not able to get into the regular showing as it was sold out. The second time, it wasn't sold out, but it was so full, I couldn't sit next to my friend and then it sold out about 5 minutes later (after I got my refund). While getting my refund, the girl at the theatre counter informed me that I could go see the 3D version which was under half full, which sends me a pretty clear message. If one theatre is overflowing, and the somewhat larger 3D showing theatre is under half full, perhaps it's time give more showings of the non 3d version. Not to mention the fact that there are two showings in regular (I refuse to call it 2D...because we never had to call it that before this 3D gimmick), while we have 3 3D showings. The latest of our regular showings is at 7:30pm...which for me personally is impractical, as every movie here in town is usually 9-9:40.

The point I'm trying to make, is that we are being strong armed into watching the movie in 3D, whether we want to or not. The midnight showing of the Avengers, here in Fredericton, was in two theatres, both doing 3D showings. The kicker is that the 3D in all of these movies is considered to be at it's best when it's unobtrusive. Meaning that 3D is literally making movies worse, and the best 3D movies are the ones that are ruining the movie the least. It's not fun to wear plastic sunglasses in a dark theatre. It adds nothing to the movie, and anything short of Avatar and computer generated movies have not improved at all from these so called upgrades. Essentially, we all know that we are getting screwed into paying more money, without the slightest concern about what we're paying extra for.

Why is it that only now do I stand on my soap box about this issue? I do this because I read this. Now whether you care about G.I. Joe or not, to take a movie out of the theatres a month before it's release to tack 3D on to it so it will make more money by scamming the ticket cost up is unethical, and I wouldn't be surprised if the studios use this idea more times in the future.

For all of my complaints about Nolan's Batman movies (which again, I like as movies, but am not impressed with as Batman movies), I gotta give Nolan props for flat out telling the studios NO to 3D. He was very proud to tell the media this fact, and he had every right to be.

So what do we do about it? Vote with our dollars. I'm seriously telling you to go out of your way to see a regular screening of the movie you want to see, and if they only have a 3D showing, don't see it (or don't pay to see it). The irony is that the 3D thing is to make it so that movies won't be cammed as easily and thus can help stop piracy, but for me, a person who's given so much money to the film industry, I'm done with 3D and am seriously considering going that route. The only way to kill it is to prevent it from being the money making machine that it is. I'd rather pay more for regular screenings than pay anything for 'so called' 3D.

The Avengers (2012) *Non Spoiler*

I may gush a little about this movie, but I'm not blind. This poster is absolute shit!

*DON'T LEAVE THE MOVIE BEFORE THE CREDITS HAVE COMPLETELY FINISHED!!! TWO SCENES!*

First I want to give you a huge tip for enjoying this movie properly. In my theatre, it was preceded by a trailer for Tim (One trick pony) Burton's new movie, 'Frankenweenie'. If you want to not hear someone hyperventilating and squealing with chalkboard scratch sounding bliss through the whole movie, don't sit near any remotely emo dressed girls. Trust me on this. Life is too short.

It's been a long time since I've connected to a movie to the point where I've wanted to write something about it.  Of course, I've obviously been pretty heavily invested into this movie for quite some time, based on the last few of my game write ups. Avengers was hugely hyped in my mind to be the best superhero movie ever made, and I have to say for me, it totally lived up to it.

The comparisons with the Transformers movies have been unavoidable with the movie trailers, but I can happily say that this makes none of the mistakes that Michael Bay made. This movie takes what we already know from Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger and merges it together in a believable way that makes old comic geeks like myself feel giddy inside. Also, it's very easy to see all of the action as opposed to close up shots of what can only be assumed to a giant scrap heap rolling down hill, inter-cut with Shia Lebeouf (if I spelled it wrong, I don't respect him enough to figure out the right way) running away. Another thing this movie does really well that Transformers tries way too hard at and fails every time, is the comedy. This has to have some of the funniest movie moments that I've ever seen in an appropriate way. See it, you'll know what I mean.

The fight scenes in this movie get progressively more entertaining, and when we reach our final climax I actually felt satisfied, which is something I haven't felt with the end of any superhero movie to this point, with the exception of Batman Begins. As far as villains go, Loki is pretty top notch. Tom Hiddleston is genuinely enjoying himself with his belief that humans should all bow down to him. He's always several steps ahead of everyone and is fully capable of taking over the planet to finally be the king he believes he was supposed to be. His only flaw of course is obvious based on the last sentence that I wrote though, as his arrogance is as limitless as his potential (which really makes him a Marvel character through and through).

One complaint that I have is that I feel Thor was a little bit under used compared to the others, whom all very clearly had their place in the greater scale of things. The team dynamic is obviously important as they go out of there way to show that every member has their place. Captain America isn't nearly as strong as most of the other Avengers, but he's a great leader. Iron Man is brilliant and  able to fix tech like it's nobodies business. Hulk is the big gun, in that he probably could destroy anything in the blink of an eye. This is the issue for Thor. He's not the leader the tech guy or the big gun, he's just the villain's overly naive brother. Though, it is touching to see how much Thor obviously loves Loki and wants to help him get things back to how they used to be.

Marvel Studios took a huge gamble when they started this whole thing. If even one of their movies bombed this movie may never have happened, and even still the odds of this movie actually working were even lower. This movie genuinely puts any movie with a higher budget to shame, for having better action, better effects and about 20 minutes more of it than any other movie I've ever seen. It also completely shuts me up about every other Marvel movie always having a crappy final battle (especially Iron Man 2 with it's stupid beam high five). The whole thing is a bloody miracle.

What some may consider to be a slower bit, is during the first 20 minutes when SHIELD is going around to recruit all team members, wherever they may be. However for myself, I felt these scenes were exciting, fun and necessary. Everything in this movie felt so connected to the proper Marvel Universe and the crowd was loving it as much as I was. To me, that meant it worked. Perhaps it's time some other people in the film industry realize this and allow certain characters to be used closer to the way they are in the comics. It seems to work, as most of these characters who other studios are 'making relevant for movies' have already stayed relevant for the past 50+ years just fine.

That's how I see it at least.

I give it 5 end credit scenes out of 5!

Iron Man 2 (PS3/x360, 2010)

I honestly never thought I'd be able to beat and platinum Iron Man 2 in time for the Avengers to hit the theatre, but to my surprise I found myself eager to finish this game as quickly as possible. The platinum came in one evening of non stop playing, which I'm not going to lie, is a long time for the average person out there. In 7 hours, I was able to beat the game twice and then grind out level specific trophies. This is a classic sign of a crappy movie cash in. Where Thor and Captain America were both somewhat below the line of what I would consider being good games, at least there was obvious effort put into certain things, but ol' shell head got shafted hard.

First off, you may notice that Tony Stark/Iron Man is voiced by some guy doing a Robert Downey Jr. impression. It seems to take a lot of effort to do, as he is never able to sound engaged at all and talks too slow to really feel right. The cast however isn't entirely a wash out, as they oddly enough got Don Cheadle to be War Machine and Samuel L. Jackson to be Nick Fury. They both did fine, but the dialogue didn't flow anything like it does in the movies, so the whole 'Iron Man 2 feeling' was nowhere to be found.

The story takes place after Iron Man 2...I think. Someone attacks one of Stark's reactors, he goes after them with War Machine and SHIELD. The villain is potentially interesting in that it is a man who merges with a highly powerful giant robot that was created by Stark Industries before Stark swore off weapons. This allows for Tony to have a moment of grief over having to clean up all of the terrible things that he has brought into the world. If nothing else, there is a nice scene where Stark tries to talk down the iron giant (Ultimo) by saying he is sorry that this living machine has been given such a negative view on human kind by evil men, but of course it just goes right back to cookie cutter DESTROY YOU dialogue right after.

Crimson Dynamo!!! This is what Vanko's suit should have looked like at the end of the movie!

The shock here is that the story is apparently written by current Invincible Iron Man scribe, Matt Fraction, who seriously put no effort into this. I have a suspicion that what they mean by written is that it was handed to Sega on a crumpled up napkin. Either that, or they just ignored his script and credited him anyway.

An interesting part of this game, that I found somewhat surprising is that the soundtrack is entirely heavy metal music. Honestly, it's pretty unique, and I see why you would go with metal for Iron Man but...it is trying to tie itself to a movie and then avoiding the feeling of that movie at all costs.

Truth be told, the reason that movie tie in games have a bad name, is because of games like this. The final boss fight was a nightmare as I was trying over and over again to fly to a specific spot but the camera kept "adjusting" me to a completely different spot than I needed to get to. This is a really garbage game and I don't recommend it to anyone really. Go download the demo and play it if you are curious. That is 1/8th of the entire game and the rest only gets worse.

Oh well, Avenger's month is over, and I have two little fanboy sleeps to go!

Now, I'm gonna get back to my quest to figure out the best game of last year. I'm almost finished believe it or not.