Just saw today that Dr. Pepper’s released a new drink… and with it, a very male-centric commercial. Maybe it’s just me, but Dr. Pepper is the last soda I think of when I think “manly”. Matter of fact, I’m generally rather indifferent to Dr. Pepper. Not my kind of drink. But what’s with the Axe approach to using masculinity as a way to get a following?
Even energy drink commercials don’t attempt this approach usually because a) we don’t live in the 50s, and b) women are just as into “guy” stuff as guys are, nowadays (just like there are tons of men who like to crochet and knit, watch chick flicks, and talk about their feelings–hey, I don’t judge).
Also, who the hell sees Dr. Pepper as a manly drink? And this is while the “mascot” is telling you that Dr. Pepper TEN has “10 manly calories”. I don’t think Ron Swanson and Brock Samson count calories when eating their steak and bacon and washing it down with scotch and whiskey.
I’ll end with this: if you have to convince people of something, it usually means you’re trying way too hard (it’s what Momma Mechanica told me anyways). Even as I write this I’m watching that new Reebok commercial where the guy and girl compete with each other in the gym, throwing over huge tires , running relays, sweating their asses off, but keeping up with each other. And who could forget that “Anything you can do, I can do better” Michael VS Mia gatorade commercial from some years ago?
I’m curious whether some survey told Dr. Pepper that their core demographic were males 13 to 24 or something. But in a world where people get very serious over gender roles, I’m surprised they’d risk alienating females when everyone was fine with Dr. Pepper being “that other soda on tap when Coke or Pepsi runs out”.
Seriously, why does Serah love this guy so much? Snow's endless monologues were the least bit "sexy".
I loved the gameplay enough, but after a while it could feel a bit repetitive (however very different and enjoyable). The story was my biggest pet peeve, with characters playing cookie cutter roles and dialogue consisting of the most vague notions of philosophy and emotion. I was this close to doing a drinking game to every time Snow uttered the word “hero“. It was a sign of the franchise: Final Fantasy had gotten so full of themselves and had put so much time to what it’s known for in graphics and gameplay that they thought they could give the least bit of time to what people have come to appreciate most about Final Fantasy: the story. I played Final Fantasy XIII for about a quarter or a third of the game, and then, completely bored out of my mind, gave it up and literally put it at the bottom of my pile of games, and thought about giving up the franchise.
Final FantasyIII-2 has made me rethink that decision.
I’ve been following the franchise for years, starting with Final Fantasy VIII, playing (and loving) the side games like FF Tactics, going forward til XII, and then recently going back to VI. I mostly love it all, and I’ve even replayed a few of the games (Tactics twice, and then one more time with the War of the Lions PSP update). And then when I got to Final Fantasy Dissidia and XIII, I started realizing how the narrative component had taken such a hit lately, to the point that I distilled most cutscenes to a small list of directions:
Step 1:
After a fight, two or three characters run until they get to a clearing, and then stop.
Step 2:
Characters argue and debate over vague philosophical idea that kinda/sorta underlies their relationship with their foe.
Step 3:
Camera focuses on one character, pans in one direction, while they passionately argue their thoughts.
Step 4:
Camera focuses on another character, pans in the opposite direction, while they emotionally argue an opposing idea.
Step 5:
Repeat above until one character turns and says something very “deep”, possibly about their unspoken of past.
Step 6:
Neither character wins debate, but both kinda/sorta feel more emphathetic towards their teammate.
Step 7:
They remember that they’re RUNNING AWAY FROM A BAD GUY and that’s it’s an incredibly stupid idea to stand in an open field and argue like they’re on the Tyra Banks Show. They keep moving until the next set of fights and the next likewise cutscene.
With Final Fantasy XIII-2, we can see that Square Enix has heard how much dissapointment fans have spewed out on the net, some polite and sincere, some undoubtedly ferocious and unrepeatable. They released video after video of how they’ve changed EVERYTHING, and now, after finishing the recently released demo, I can say I’ve seen enough to make me believe them.
The demo gives you control of Serah, the sister of Final Fantasy XIII’s protagonist, Lightning, and Noel, a time traveller from the future. You start in the second chapter, and in that chapter alone you get a taste of everything, just about.
The demo began with our heroes having recently time-travelled into an area where a giant hand had emerged to battle anyone who comes close. Turns out it’s the hand of a military creature gone out of control named Atlas, whose body is thankfully trapped in another dimension.
With a mixture of 13′s battle system (the Paradigm mechanic), which has you controlling not the individual characters (though you can, for a less effective playstyle) but their job roles (a long-used theme in the FF series) which change how they react to situations. A paradigm, for example, could use Noel as a Commando–a fighter who deals heavy physical attack damage– and Serah as a Ravager–a mage who shoots her projectiles with elemental-enhanced magical damage. Change the Paradigm match-ups (which are preset in the menu and can be customized in-between battle) and Noel could change into Sentinel–with increased resistance and the ability to provoke enemies into turning their attention to him–while Serah becomes a Medic, who can heal whoever is wounded, before switching the roles back to a more aggressive one.
Other important factors is the Stagger Point–the point at which an enemy becomes weaker after a combo’s been built against him, and the Crystarium system in the Menu, which levels up your character’s roles while unlocking new abilities to use (after collecting experience from battles).
What Final Fantasy XIII-2 brings most to the table is monster-hunting mechanic and Cinematic Action sequences (the ever-popular Quick Time Event, or QTE). Surprisingly this feels awesome, if a little simple. There’s no real challenge really. Collecting monster crystals just happens after defeating enemies, with certain monsters tameable and others not. It seems getting a high battle rating (which comes with how fast and effective you are during battle) increases the change of collecting monster crystals, but this could be just an assumption. After obtaining them, you can level them up in the Crystarium using droplets or bolts–the monster form of experience–and can even infuse (combine) them with each other to give abilities from one monster to another, adorn them with (very silly) costume pieces, and change their names. Monsters work just like job roles, and you can assign up to 3 monsters at a time to your party. When you change paradigms, your monsters swap in and out seamlessly.
Cinematic Action events are your typical QTEs, but they feel like a great way to break up the monotony of even a great system like the Paradigm mechanic, and of course doing well with that lends to your battle rating for boss events. Also, Cinematic Actions sort of blend into the Monsters roles, since they have special attacks called Feral Links (which FF fans will see parallels to in Limit Breaks and Overdrives of previous installments) where a player has to input particular commands or button mash to get a high syncronization rate (meaning higher damage). While changing roles forces you to make monsters share the same health (so if one is dead, so is the next one, until you revive them) they all get their own Feral Links, which means that in a bind you can swap them out and keep performing these huge attacks.
And this was just the beginning.
The game feels like it’s gotten a face lift. Now maps are quite more expansive, giving multiple routes to get to and fro through a level, and possibly giving secret areas that are unlocked later in the game. People around you converse as they walk past, with some dialogue that you just overhear and some people that you can actually speak to (like in any RPG). The Moogle that accompanies your party (and acts as Serah’s weapon during battle) acts as a multipurpose tool, alerting you to secret items that it can pull from other dimensions and being crucial to fighting enemies.
Enemies don’t just walk around the world (like in XII and XIII), they are now linked to Paradoces, gates that appear through the map and–I believe–can be travelled through later in the game to different time eras and dimensions, if you can find the right items. Around a Paradox monsters are more likely to appear, because the gate seems to be ripping them from other dimensions, and when they do, they literally just “pop up”. It’s the best rationalization for the whole “random battle” staple of RPGs that I’ve ever seen. When they do, the Moogle pops up a meter: if you encounter the enemy immediately (when the section of the meter is green), generally you’ll get a preemptive strike and short-term stat boosts; if you attack it late (when it’s yellow, or if green is not offered as an option) it’ll start a regular battle. If you try to run away, you can avoid it altogether, but if you fail or take too long to engage (when it’s red) you’ll be forced to fight the battle, and won’t be offered a chance to retry if you fail–instead loading up from the last save or checkpoint, or just before the battle.
The things I liked the most were the options you were given. During gameplay I encountered two small side-quests, one that was a simple “find this” mission, one that asked me to find a hidden enemy. Both were accomplished by the end of the demo, and not only helped to “pad the game” (lengthen how long you play) but made sense for the story. And then in the story itself, the Atlas hand we fought earlier finally materialized into this realm–with it’s whole body. What was great was that I could attempt to battle it head-on with some help from the army, or attempt to find a device that would control it. I went with the latter option, and when I did find it I was sucked into a temporal realm that introduced another new element involving puzzle solving through spacial reasoning. It was yet another small distraction that worked to pad the game and entertain in a slightly different way, and when I was done, I had achieved my objective.
When I went into battle the enemy then, his life was about 10% of what it should have been (maybe less). I’m unsure of exactly what would have happened had I gone with the other option, but I was sure as hell pleased with what this gave me. It took me less than two minutes to take him out–using well-timed paradigm shifts and the Feral Links that I had built up.
All in all, if Square Enix wanted to convert a doubter, they certainly won this one over. While I’d prefer to finish Final Fantasy XIII for the sake of the narrative (and because I’m stubborn about not finishing games nowadays) I really, really, reaaaaally want to get this when it comes out, and support the massive effort they took to learn from their mistakes and present fans with a true Final Fantasy game. In this one demo I had loads more fun than all the time I spent on the previous installment, and I was even able to level up my characters and monsters a good bit in just a small amount of time. If Final Fantasy XIII-2 can maintain this energy for the entirety of the game, I have no doubt that Square Enix–and the FF franchise–will have reclaimed the true balance of gameplay, narrative, and immersion that it is known so well for and deserve the praise they’ve built up for so long among fans.
And give us more Sazh. Seriously. I love that guy.
Went through trying to figure out my career, seeing my job lost through bankruptcy, having numerous unsuccessful relationships, and going through some of the worst emotional distress I’ve faced since, well, 2010 (that was a bad, bad year too, perhaps worst than ’11). And yet, like any obstacle or opposition, all I could do was overcome it. If there’s one law in this universe that is unshakeable no matter how relatively micro or macro you exist in the scale of being, surviving, adapting, and evolving or the keywords for success.
And yet I still feel uneasy.
I’ve found a new job, getting paid well enough to get by, been overly successful with my small projects, but there’s always that lingering doubt in the back of my head. But these last two years have taught me a lot about myself, an insanely lot about myself, be it my passions, my interests, my personality, and most of all, my faults. I’ve been so hotheated for so long for so many reasons but I’m just too tired of that game. Too tired of being upset or playing politics with people or walking on eggshells. I want more serenity in my mind, even if the world around me rocking out to the end of the world while hurtling toward the sun.
I’ve been introduced to French, Italian, English, American, and philosophies and raised on the best sci-fi fiction cablevision, comic books, and literature could create. I’ve had the fortune to meet some of the most varied people in the world throughout my life, fine-dining with socialites and talking politics and culture and literature at my best, to stuttering gibberish and ranting about why my favorite franchise of the week was awesome to my nerd friends. I’ve been influenced by the artistic, philosophically deep friends who I’ve met in life, and the raunchy, crazy, insane assholes I’ve had the pleasure of making an acquaintance with. I’ve been so divided by so many experiences that in the end I’ve felt so incomplete. A jack of all trades, master of none. I felt like I’ve become an old man, unable to so easily voice my opinions and thoughts without finding my stray thoughts lost in a haze of wandering ideas, memories, and images that leave me speechless or gibbering something incoherent or unfinished. I don’t even feel like me sometimes.
But as time has gone on, I’ve also found myself irresistibly drawn to even newer, better things. I’ve found myself wanting to wrap myself in even more ideas and thoughts, although with a singular purpose, to understand the world even better and use what I learn to do something. To create. To create stories, pictures, music and games and movies if I can. My one passion in life has always been to create, ever since I drew stick figure superheroes under my grandma’s coffee table as a 5 yr old. I want to be create ideas, create worlds, create a way to think more efficiently and positively. I want to create relationships with others like the ones I’ve had already that forge even stronger bonds, even stronger ideas, even stronger worlds. I want to take all of what I’ve seen, be it art, literature, religion, video games, martials arts, politics, or whatever, and consolidate that into a philosophy that is uniquely me. My path. My identity. My way of life.
And so I’ve promised myself not to make any promises about the new year. Not to make resolutions that may get detracted by major events that come and go in our lives. With this idea I’ve finally finished a short story, gone back to a semi-frequent workout when not burned out by work, and gone to catching up on my reading and writing. I’ve made a decision (far different than a promise) to be more resolute in my choices, my long-term goals, my desires, and make of life what I want it to be. To create the world I desire. To create a life I’m proud of. To create time to see more things when I say I want to see them. To create stories when I say I want to write them. To create happiness.
Happy New Years, and here’s hoping we all get what we want most out of life, today, tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, forever.
“You think we have enough guns?” “That was a rhetorical question I hope.”
Let’s get it out of the way: when people think Saints Row, they think “Oh, it’s that Grand Theft Auto knock-off”. It’s an inevitable comparison the likes of Modern Warfare and Battlefield, and of course there’s enough parallels to see why. But let me say that after a week and a half of playing, Saints Row and Grand Theft Auto start and end their similarities with guns, carjacking and foul language.
If Grand Theft Auto were a movie, it’d be the type to straddle the line between attempting an Oscar and delivering some hardcore dialogue and action. In turn, Saints Row is like the adrenaline filled, humorous tongue-in-cheek movie that delivers high octane action while providing satire on the very genre it masks itself as. All this while maintaining a generous dose of entertainment and story the likes of a good summer movie.
The Gameplay
I have to start with the gameplay simply because it’s too good to put off any longer.
Like, there’s a Manapult that captures bystanders and launches them into the air. There’s a Mollusk Launcher that allows you to shoot singing, muttering, crazy mind-controlling octopuses at enemies and control them. There’s the Penetrator, a giant purple dildo bat that does crazy melee damage while humiliating your enemies.
And there’s a fricking Shark Gun, a shotgun that sprays enemies with shark bait and, in seconds, lures a shark from the sewers of Steelport to devour your enemy.
Yeah, a Shark Gun. You heard me.
Or, in fact, let me just start from the beginning: my first hour of gameplay involved me robbing a bank in giant Johnny Gat masks and voice changers (a clever way to hide the appearance of the main character—your player—until they give you a chance to customize him or her to your specifications) and eventually shooting dozens of armed foes while desperately clinging onto a vault attached to a helicopter. Soon after, I fought my way off an airplane, killed enemies in midair, got back onto the plane with an insane maneuver, killed some more enemies, jumped back out, and saved teammate Shaundi before hitting the ground. A little later I was robbing a military weapons storage facility and then escaping in a helicopter while shooting down enemy helicopters with an RPG. This all, and more, in just the first few missions. Wait til you get to later missions, like the one where you fight the Dekkers gang inside their Tron-like digital reality.
You can sometimes find Professor Genki walking the streets of Steelport. Weilding a rocket launcher. The dude is insane.
The story missions are just the beginning, too: like any sandbox game, there are tons of side missions to dive into. Insurance Fraud, for example, is a lot like Burnout’s Crash or Showtime modes, but instead of destroying your car and causing tons of havoc for cash, you’re getting your body thrashed about by ongoing cars to earn cash. Guardian Angel has you flying in a copter following a partner (usually Pierce) as he makes stops in a car below while you cover his ass from enemies above with an RPG. Professor Genki, an insane scientist in a cat suit and labcoat, provides missions to his Genki’s Murdertime deathmatch game show, where you fight other contestants to the death for money and prizes. There’s even a Streaking mission where, well, you run around naked and try to disturb as many innocent bystanders as possible.
My personal favorite so far are Assassionations, where a target and instructions on how to find and kill them lead you to doing all kinds of things to get cash. One mission, for example, had a DJ hiring you to kill an enemy DJ who played horrible music. You had to drive around their neighborhood blasting different music to lure them out for a kill. Another had you robbing stores to draw out a self-styled superhero so you could get rid of him once and for all. Another needed me to draw out an annoying religious fanatic by streaking around her church. Sacriligeous? Yes. Entertaining and extreme randomness? Oh hell yeah.
Shaundi: Sexy, Sarcastic, Smart-Mouthed, and Seriously Dangerous.
And that’s just the beginning.
Driving is the best yet in a sandbox game, boasting great handling and a drifting handbrake mechanic that’s worked wonders for weaving in and out of traffic during car chases and getaways. Coupled with a great GPS that makes you feel like you’re in a racing game, and it gets even better.
There is also a Perk system that gives you Respect points for just about everything you do, so that during driving, for example, you get points for driving against traffic while doing a wheelie while doing “near misses” when coming close to other cars and then powersliding around corners. You get points for nutchecking a pedestrian or taunting an enemy game member. You even get points for using a parachute and landing in makeshift base-jumping targets as close to the center as possible. All of this happens seemlessly during gameplay, and all of it can be tracked through your menu via your phone.
Respect and cash can earn you everything from better weapons and cars, to a tougher gang, to abilities like Pickpocket and Dual-Weilding, and much, much more. It’s a system that rewards you for getting crazy and having as much fun as possible.
This is just a little of what you'll find in Saints Row the Third
Everything Else?
The graphics are great, especially for everything Saints Row incorporates and achieves so well. But occasionally you will see there’s a specific draw distance, where certain things like textures (less frequent) and cars and people (more frequent) will pop in and out depending on how far away you are from them. When chaos erupts on the screen, there can be some frame-rate drops, but generally not enough to detract from the fun.
The game goes through great pains to give you variety, giving you enemies from three different gangs with three different motifs. The Syndicate are the top gang, dressed in red, often sporting men in black and red suits and women in leather and trenchcoats with machineguns. There are the Luchadors, a gang of Mexican wrestler-themed hoodlums who often have small and large men alike using heavy guns and driving tough green vehicles. Then there’s the aforementioned Dekkers, the Tron-like gang with glowing blue neon costumes, who somehow inexplicably have in their employ both Asian speedster chicks (who seriously can run around you at high speeds like the Flash) and Brutes (one of the new enemy types of the game—think Batman: Arkham Asylum’s Titans) who carry huge gatling guns and armor and can toss your car around like a volleyball.
There’s also a strong online community at Saints Row’s official community page, where for weeks even before the release they were encouraging the sharing of creations through the “Initiation Station” (where, seriously, I had more fun creating a character than any game recently, even WWE ’12) and afterwards you can do everything from tracking stats to uploading screenshots through the game’s camera, to sharing how your map of Steelport looks to finding unique personal challenges that will supposedly lead to extra content in the future.
The Verdict?
This game is not without its downsides. If you don’t like sandbox action game mechanics, if you prefer a stronger story, if you don’t like insanity, this game is not the game for you. Doing crazy stuff is great for a while, but it can get monotonous, especially after doing it for dozens of hours. But Saints Row the Third does what most games nowadays forget to do: to entertain. Seriously, there was a point when I was so enthralled that I couldn’t wait to get home just to keep going through the missions and helping the Saints in their quest to reclaim their goal in life and look good while doing it. Its philosophy is purely to make fun of itself and let you take advantage of a game that isn’t trying to be preachy and serious.
And in a fantastic year of gaming that may have been overrun with terrorist plots to overthrow the free world and space marines trying to prevent an alien Armageddon, it’s fun to finally play as a crazy guy or gal in a crazy world filled with crazy people, and just have a crazy good time.
*Note: This editorial is based on the PS3 version, and was first posted on Infinite Ammo.
I don’t know what possessed DC Comics and Sony Online Entertainment to even dream that they could force a subscription-based pay model on console gamers. Many, like myself, enjoyed the first (free!) month of DC Universe Online, and then promptly put it up and never touched it again when the idea of $15 bucks a month (plus that original $60 price tag—thank god my copy was a gift) came looming over us like the Doom of Damocles.
Thankfully, they wisened up and adopted the free-to-play model that many online MMORPGs have taken up—in turn drawing in more players and making more money from microtransactions and the dedicated subscription players than they ever did before.
But even with this change, the question remains—is it worth your time?
Presentation
This is my hero and his summoned demon sidekick; I secretly call him F.R.E.D.: Frightening Red Entity of Detroit (I assume all demons are from Detroit).
DCUO is a pretty good looking game. It won’t win any major awards, but it does really well, generally. There are plenty of times where I would take my character, the Risktaker—an arcane hand-blasting super-speedster—and run everywhere possible. Up buildings, over water, to the edges of the map, and beyond. Thankfully, with the thousands of newcomers, DCUO hasn’t had to drop its overall graphical quality to compensate. But I did notice the occasional frame-rate drop, especially when in large battles.
This doesn’t usually derail from the experience: but it can be frustrating when you’re literally jumped by a group of enemy players, and you’re powerless to fight back or try running away… because you’re waiting for the game to catch up to the action, and then just as fast, you’re dead. This happened a few times during my playthrough, and it annoyed the hell out of me.
As far as being a hero in a virtual DC Universe, I was hoping for something more vibrant and lively. Unfortunately, the world is quite devoid of character: there are the occasional innocent bystanders who cheer you on, but often you’ll pass very quiet, empty places. With the storyline, maybe that makes sense: if thousands of everyday people all of a sudden had powers and became heroes and villains, I’d be scare as hell to go outside. But then there’s the occasional traffic stop where cars are meant to move and then they just stop, frozen, obeying an unchanging traffic light until the end of time.
Gameplay
This is a Soul Well. I have no idea what it does, but I can do it.
Battles are everywhere, either through in-story battles or just random action. During my recent playthrough, I continued a bit of my previous, unfinished, vague, and very generic quest to stop some kind of evil sorcerer or some such, with missions from Zatanna and some of DC’s other magic-based heroes; but I quickly forgot it in lieu of searching for random battles to throw myself into. What I found was pretty diverse. There were Gorillas from Gorilla City, led by (surprise surprise) Gorilla Grodd, who were setting up some kind of device. I casually joined a few other DCUO players and then went my own way to find more adventure. I came across some evil Braniac drones and later ran past some barbaric animal men, both whupping me pretty bad. Unfortunately, I didn’t run into any help against these guys, which would’ve been nice. Occasionally battles can be interesting, like when there are unique objectives, or when I threw an explosive barrel at an enemy and they threw one back at me; but generally these are all the same monotonous battles.
There are side missions to do too: you can duel other players one on one; you can take on Movement Race challenges; you can collect Lois Lane updates that hint at new missions; or just join in huge raids. There is stuff to do, if you chose to really immerse yourself. The question is will you want to?
The Verdict
DCUO is pretty much the same game you’ve played before, just with far more people in it. While I thought this would drastically change my gameplay experience (I love Co-op—seriously) it didn’t, because I didn’t really find that many strangers to play with, and not many of my friends have tried it out yet. Even with company, though, this game is much like other games of its type: repetitive. If you like MMORPGs, you’ll like this. If you like MMORPGs and DC Comics, you’ll love this. But with a huge harddrive install (it asked me to free up 16 GB of my drive) and no trophy support for free players, I’m not sure if the average gamer will want to devote time to this when there are so many stellar games out right now.
My opinion?
When there’s nothing else out, and you’re not busy slaying dragons in Skyrim, kiling soldiers in Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3, hunting the Joker in Batman: Arkham City, wrestling in WWE ’12, or doing insane missions in Saints Row the 3rd, play this.
Is it just me or is that building extremely phallic?
With two TV shows based on it, and the film Point of No Return as its American version, I found myself wondering just how good the original Le Femme Nikita must have been to spawn so many projects from it. With the divine gift of Netflix on my side, I found it, watched it, and loved it, thoroughly surprised at the movie it turned out to be. This is an assassin movie, sure, but it’s more a movie about the assassin–and how this life affects her–than the typical, meaningless, cookie-cutter “high-octane” action-sequences movies about revenge or whatever else American audiences usually expect in these kinds of movies.
When we meet Nikita, she is a detached drug addict whose random and reactionary violent nature leads her to the death penalty, after petty criminal activity with her crew escalate into casualties. But when she wakes up from her “lethal injection”, she is in a white room, visited only by a man in a black suit named Bob (yeah, “Bob” in a french movie, weird to me too). Bob offers her an option: the french government can kill her (since she is legally dead anyway, at this point) or they can train her to be a killer, her life completely in their control to kill whatever targets they choose.
Bob: You died Saturday at 5:00 p.m. The prison doctor confirmed suicide after an overdose of tranquillizers. You’re buried in Maisons-Alfort, row 8, plot 30. Nikita: [looking at pictures of her funeral] Titi… That’s Titi! Bob: I work, let’s say, for the government. We’ve decided to give you another chance. Nikita: What do I do? Bob: Learn. Learn to read, walk, talk, smile and even fight. Learn to do everything. Nikita: What for? Bob: To serve your country. Nikita: What if I don’t want to? Bob: Row 8, Plot 30.
While initially resistant, she reluctantly gives in, and spends years changing from a rebellious disillusioned girl to a more grounded, matured woman.
And she knows how to wear a dress.
But here’s where things get crazy. From start to finish, Nikita takes time to build up scenes, leading us on in certain expected directions, and then wowing us with unexpected twists that leave Nikita in tricky situations. Throw in the romance Nikita begins in her new identity and she finds herself brought to emotional extremes, trying to juggle the heartless, abrupt imperatives of her handler, Bob, and the mental stability and happiness she’s always wanted.
Anne Parillaud does a fantastic job playing Nikita. As a drug addict, Parillaud plays Nikita as a dispassionate, destructive, impulsive individual, seemingly driven by her id more than anything. She acts out violence, throwing tantrums, and causing mischief without hesistation. But it’s the matured, vulnerable Nikita where Parillaud really shines.
Parillaud plays tortured innocent to perfection.
Nikita is many things depending on the situations she’s put in, but overall she has a childlike innocence to her. I mean that in a good way. This is a character who has lived in the gutter (probably for her entire life) and for once she’s given a life of luxury, life that introduces her to new places, new food, new fashion, new people, and most importantly, a new perspective. One could argue that Nikita was more or less dead before, that she hadn’t actually lived enough t ofind life worth living. She wasn’t scared of the consequences because she really didn’t have anything to lose.
The assassin’s life, though, came as a double-edged sword, giving her a life to enjoy, to love, to hold onto, and, worst of all, a life she could lose. So when thrown into insane situations, she’s caught in a catch 22: she can’t refuse, or else they’ll take her life away; but she can also lose her life if she does a mission and it goes wrong. This very dichotomy builds the movie up from the foundation up, and really makes you root for her in her most dire situations.
Tchéky Karyo (Goldeneye, The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc, Kiss of the Dragon, the Good Thief) plays a great lovable asshole, both caring for Nikita (possibly in multiple ways) but never allowing Nikita to forget that she is an employed assassin when they need her, first, no matter how that conflicts with her newfound joy and happiness.
Jean Reno, the Toughest French Man in Hollywood
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mentioned Jean Reno, whose role later in the movie as the ruthless, hardcore killer “The Cleaner” not only provides for a dark (and somewhat humorous) set of scenes but also nicely brings the movie full-circle with a thematic conclusion that reflects exactly the worst of everything Nikita is exposed to as an assassin, and why she must choose whether to live a hard, double life as an agent of the french of government, or rish death if she finds herself unable to go on in this world of misery and death that she thought she had somehow left behind.
This is a spectacular movie that takes a much used movie character archtype and really gives it a heart, breaking it down into its most emotional and engaging components. If you need a reason to know why this decades-old movie has spun off multiple successful TV shows and another movie, seriously buy this ASAP or watch it on Netflix, now.
You won’t be disappointed.
(Unless you don’t like watching movies with subtitles).
You see what I did there? Get a life? Mario? 1 Up? PETA are losers? Meh, you’ll get it later.
Wait, Mario fought a mythological Tanooki shapeshifter and then skinned it to get its powers? I think Mario's gotten way cooler. Viking Shaman Mario FTW!!!
But seriously, PETA, when the hell did you guys get that douchey? You hired your own cheap game designers to make your own game that has a skinned Tanooki Dog chasing Mario back for his skin! Holy shit! That’s insane! (Kinda hilarious too. Adult Swim, if you’d have been just a little bit faster this game could have been yours).
Even more hilarious to me is that that’s not all: you can scroll down and download and play “Super Tofu Boy“, who’s on a quest to”Save Bandage Girl from Meat Boy’s Bloody, Jealous Rage”, and the “Super Chick Sisters” (which sounds like a game that-needs-to-be-made-NOW about the Kardashians), who are on a mission to save–wait for it, you’ll love this–”Princess Pam Anderson” from the evil clutches of the evil Ronald McDonald and his “McCruelty”, as he prepares to serve her up as part of one of his “Unhappy Meals”.
PETA may be lacking any shred of sanity they have left, but it sure as hell makes them some creative bastards.
Too bad they’re stretching a bit here too: Mario’s Tanooki Suit is based on Japan’s mythological Raccoon Dog, a shapeshifter and pleasant trickster. I don’t think I’ve seen a single child go out with a Bowie Knife looking for raccoon’s in Central Park so that they can fly or turn to stone. But if you need a little publicity and can’t do it the normal way, why not harpoon the game industry like everyone else and stick it to a harmless and iconic game franchise loved the world over?
You can check out PETA’s tediously simple yet hard-to-pass up games here, at their website.
I have to apologize, because I really haven’t been spending much time here. It’s like the father who goes to work and has all of his food and pictures there, but comes home once a week for a heartbeat before stepping out again.
Infinite Ammo has been both fun, frustrating and insane. We’ve had our views skyrocket (and plummet, sadly) on certain days, but we’ve been largely a great success, especially factoring in that we have particular niche, we’re a small group of writers, we’re doing this for free (so far) and we’ve all got our own lives, jobs and passions to juggle.
Recently, The New York Comic Con really brought me to certain mental extremes, with Frank, Eddie, David and I running ourselves ragged with absolutely no real press credentials to speak of, but still carrying ourselves in such a responsible, professional air that it made me proud to see us putting so much hard work into making it to panels on time, covering different events, taking pictures, the works. For better or worse (the worst being Eddie and I trapped in a 4 hr long line for the Avengers surrounded by hundreds of riotous geeks and STILL not seeing the panel, only to have a guy feint before us) we made of it what we could, but it was so bad that by the last day we just couldn’t even attempt to see anything else, culling dozens of expected panels to just one event we ended up covered on Sunday. Since then we’ve had relative success balancing schedules and posts and getting a weekday daily article published on time, until recently, just now hitting a wall where we’re all just worn out, out of back up articles, and ready to go into hibernation for the winter.
But all of this has been really opening my perspectives to things, really making me see that when we put our minds to it, things can happen. Frank came to me about this project, something I wanted to really try at the beginning of the year, and with our initiative and dedication we put it together (thanks largely to Frank’s determination and ingenuity) and made it happen.
Now what else can we do?
I’ve been in a mental battle, beating myself up, saying “why haven’t you gotten anywhere? There’s millionaires younger than you who got there by sheer determination and genius and you’ve had what? Two retails jobs, now an office job, and nothing published, anywhere, but one measly article for your college newspaper. All these ideas you have, all of these things you want to do, all of these projects in games, movies, comics, and novels you want to work on, and they’re just wasting away in your head and your thumb drive.
Well fuck that!
If there was ever any time for me to have reached a creative maturity about what I want out of life, it’s now. And you can’t spend a lifetime planning, you have to spend 75% of it doing, or else it never gets done.
What does this mean for me now? A sort of renovation, I hope, to get my thoughts together, get my plans in motion, to actually write, get paid for it, and be happy that I’m living the dream I want. With my new job I have the ability to finally get my own place, become my own man, and with the time permitted, go out and expand my being. There’s a whole fricking revolution trying to get off the ground one boro away and I have yet to see it with my own eyes. It doesn’t matter if I think it will succeed or not (which I hope something comes out of it), it matters that–as a writer and journalist–I experience a major milestone in history.
And that’s not all. I want to take more pictures, write more letters, send my writing places, the works. I’m also going to spend time revamping this very blog, doing an actual renovation, and using it more. I want to renovate my perspective, the people in my life, the way I carry myself.
I know I’m stretching the ordinary use of the word, but damn it, it’s time for it, and I hope any of you who have kept up with me or find this later will join me for that ride and see if I can really make my dreams come true.
After a few months, the moment we’ve been waiting for has finally come. Schism #4 ended with Cyclops and Wolverine literally at each other’s throats with the largest and deadliest Sentinel the X-Men have ever faced poised to destroy everything on the X-Men’s island home of Utopia. So how did this momentous occassion wrap up?
If you haven’t been reading Schism yet, you’ve missed a new Hellfire Club (now “humans only”) mass producing sentinels for all the world’s countries to protect their nations from the threat of mutants (are mutants really a threat at this point?). With this conflict also comes a divide on what the X-Men mean in thisday and age, a world that arms its nations against a populace of people that could fit into a concert hall. This is really the core of Schism, and it’s really defined by the looming mechanical monstrosity set to wipe out Utopia.
Each figurehead wants to face this battle a different way. Cyclops wants to hold onto Utopia: for the sake of sending a message to the world, that the X-Men–and mutants in general–won’t be moved; and to send a message to the mutant youth that sometimes you can only be pushed so far before you have to fight back for what is yours. To do this, bereft of any senior X-Men allies, Cyclops allows any student and civilian mutants to fight alongside him and battle the sentinel until it leads to its destruction, or their own.
Wolverine believes in hightailing it out of Utopia and using Utopia–and the explosives within–to blow the Sentinel to dust and just move on and rebuild elsewhere, just like the X-Men have been doing for years now. He believes–especially after Cyclops incidentally turned new mutant Idie into a murderer after a reason compromising altercation–that these students are missing out on their childhood, and only warriors like himself should fight for it.
As I said in an earlier review, each X-Men represents two sides of Xavier’s dream. Cyclops was practically drafted into this struggle as a child, and molded by Xavier to be a boy soldier in a war where the young have to sacrifice their innocence to fight for their lives… especially in a world that hates and fears them. Wolverine has always believed that the only blood on anyone’s hands should be his own, if he can help it. Having sacrificed his own innocence long ago, he’s fought his entire life as a soldier so that others could be free of the anguish and pain that comes along with violence.
Cyclops believes in the part of Xavier’s Dream that says mutants should be ready to fight and protect the people and ideals they believe in. Wolverine believes in the part of Xavier’s Dream that humans and mutants should live together in harmony, and the only way to do that is to mentor the next generation and protect them from harm, like a Momma Bear protecting her cubs.
I’ll leave the results of this physical and mental battle to you to find out for yourself, but I will say that the battle with the sentinel does decide a winner in its own way, at least for the time being. And it’s that very same result that leads to the schism of the team that we all knew was coming. It should be no surprise that the team definitely splits up after this conflict: interviews and solicits have already shown this as an eventuality, not a possibility. It’s called Schism, afterall, and that was the whole point of this tale. And that’s where I feel this whole event suffers.
All stories to some degree are trying to convey some kind of message, even if the author doesn’t realize it. Better stories are written by writers who know how to hide the literary devices that lead to certain outcomes. For me, Schism has been in plain sight. Every time Wolverine and Cyclops had a debate in this miniseries, it felt just a little more strained than usual. Sure they were pushed to the breaking point with Kid Omega’s random return (more on that later) and the U.N. being in an uproar due to his actions, but it’s the same thing they’ve faced before.
And sure Wolverine’s been mad that Idie had to kill some men, but their young mutants have faced more than enough death just being students at the school these last few years. More than half of the X Academy student body have been killed in recent years, from bio-sentinel Predator X’s to terrorist bombings initiated by anti-mutant extremists. Idie herself would have had to kill eventually had she stayed in her homeland.
Also everything about this silly new Hellfire Club has made no sense: sure, they’re a bunch of snobby, superrich evil kid geniuses, but their methods and goals served no real purpose but to give the X-Men a reason to hit something for a few pages at a time. They made a bit of money, sure, but ultimately their presence did nothing for this story, and if you’ve read my earlier review on issue 3, they pulled some absurd moves (even for a comic book). Ultimately they were simply filler, action padded in to allow this story to move along while the greater debate between Cyclops and Wolverine grew.
And returning to Kid Omega, he ultimately served no larger purpose in this book, remaining a cackling background bit character. It’s clear from solicits for upcoming titles that he was returned purely for the sake of being shoehorned into one of the new X-series spinning out of this event.
I know, I know: all mainstream comics crossover events fit this criteria of characters plugged into archtype roles to fit the occasion and lead to an evitable (and generally obvious) conclusion, but everything felt so… prompted. I felt that while the whole idea of this debate was astoundingly original and scenes depicting Cyclops and Wolverine felt true, the strings of this puppet show were far too pronounced for me to ignore.
But, all of that said, the premise is itself a very original concept, and while I thought this would be a years-late Civil War rehash, the end result made a lot of sense to the core of what the X-Men are. It feels like this whole idea was spun out of a divide in creative differences as to how the X-series should be handled, with Cyclops representing the current trend and Wolverine representing the “old school” X-Men… pun intended, with emphasis on the school part. What the end of Schism means is that X-Writers (and in turn, X-fans) will be allowed to dabble in either direction, and enjoy the best of both worlds. Overall, Schism accomplished what it needed to do, and it did it fairly well, and I am still psyched to see what comes next in the X- franchise with X-Men: Regenesis.
Just a little more than a year ago, Mortal Kombat Rebirth hit the web, and fanboys and nonfanboys alike went absolutely insane about it. Viewers debated furiously whether Director Kevin Tancharoen had made a masterpiece out of his gritty, realistic remake of the game series, or whether this was just another silly youtube fan film that slapped on a major franchise name to get views. With Episode 9 of the resulting Mortal Kombat Legacy series released recently, an important question arises: did Tancharoen’s webseries succeed? Or is this yet another failed MK project?
The Konception
Michael Jai White as Jax
When Mortal Kombat Rebirth came out, I was one of the many fans to support it, and get a lot of flack from my fellow game nerds. And before you judge me, let me say that I am a true Mortal Kombat fan: I’ve played just about the entire series, starting on the Gameboy and Sega Genesis versions of the first game, and last playing a bit of the newest Nether Realm Studios (once Midway Studios) reboot. I’ve watched the first movie (probably one of the best video game movies ever adapted for Hollywood), the incredibly lackluster sequel, the cartoon series, and the live-action series (yes, oh yes, there was a live-action series). I actually understand most of the continuity, even when it became muddled and unnecessarily complex. And, with more than 60 characters under its belt, Mortal Kombat has a lot to work with.
So when I saw Rebirth, you have to understand how excited I felt. Yes, they were stripping down almost all of the fantastical aspects of Mortal Kombat– Outworld, magic, the creatures and races; all of that was left behind in lieu of a simple storyline. This is what grabbed my attention more than anything– the sheer, utter simplicity.
Instead of the very convoluted background story that newcomers would never understand, Tancharoen decided on this premise: a special forces unit in a crime-stricken city hires a voluntarily imprisoned ex-assassin to enter an underground tournament full of serial killers and mercenaries to get at its founder, funder, and leader, Shang Tsung.
Ok, take a breath. Not bad, right?
The film was handled very well, included fan favorite actors like Michael Jai White and Jeri Ryan, and included some great action. Was it disturbing to see Reptile as a cannibal with a skin condition eating someone’s face? Yes. Was it disturbing to see Baraka as a doctor who had mutilated himself into a blade-weilding weirdo? Certainly. But in a franchise where gore-filled finishing moves is one of its key features, it gave us a different angle on the MK series.
Jeri Ryan as Sonya Blade
For once, Mortal Kombat went from slasher flick to psychological horror. We were getting the best of both worlds, not an excuse for torture porn. And, once you get your eyes on the anti-hero of the proposed film, and you see a freeze frame of his rival (displayed for a quick second in the short), you’d also see that there is an element of the paranormal in there, too.
Despite an uproar from purists, huge fan support helped give the relatively unknown director some notoriety, and Warner Brothers caught wind of him. Although they liked his approach, meeting with series co-creator Ed Boon and discussing the upcoming newest iteration of the game series made Warner Brother ask Tancharoen to keep the series closer to its roots. What we got from it is Legacy: an anthology series based on six stories–each following various Mortal Kombat characters–and their motivations for going into the tenth MK tournament, as featured in the first game.
The Exekution
After watching the entire series, it’s hard to tell whether it is a total flop or something with potential. It’s a mixed bag of great and not-so great, going from excellent to excrutiating from episode to episode. There were a great amount of fan-favorite characters included, from Jax to Subzero, and Mileena to Sektor, but the execution seemed to be the main problem.
Take Johnny Cage, for example. In his episode they explored his background, but it seemed like they couldn’t get his details straight. He was referred to as one of the greatest action movies stars of his time in one part, and then later revealed to have never risen higher than the Power Rangers role he had as a teenager. While the premise was good, the delivery gave us a series of E! Entertainment-like interviews and meaningless fight scenes, followed with an ending that featured a less than thrilling Shang Tsung.
Why is everyone into motion comics these days?
Or take the two-part Mileena and Kitana story. While hitting every odd piece of their backstory, it was Tancharoen’s adherence to the game’s continuity that made this a difficult story to follow without thinking of an 80′s sci-fantasy flick or an Uwe Boll movie. Throw in an extensive use of motion comics sequences for simple scenes (like characters walking down a hall… seriously) and it’s not hard to imagine that the director had a difficult time balancing the limited budget for this effects-heavy origin story.
Also, the question of creative control seemed to have come up; directly after the Mileena and Kitana episode, Tancharoen opened his Raiden story letting fans know he was making this episode his way, with how he envisioned blending in gritty realism and the supernatural. What you get is a fairly well directed MK version of Thor that works far better than the previous entry of the web-series.
The best was saved for last, though, with both the Scorpion & Subzero episodes and the Cyrax & Sektor episode. The former maintained a superior story-telling aspect, giving us the heart and soul of what makes certain characters like Scorpion stick out among fans. The latter gave us great CGI action sequences coupled with the true horror of some of the individuals in the MK universe. Besides the oddity of Scorpion & Subzero’s story being made in a fuedal Japan setting and then the Cyrax & Sektor story happening entirely in a hyper-futuristic military lab (again showing how insane the backstory is in the MK series), the episodes came out with enough creative power to show how good Tancharoen
Wanna see ass-kicking CGI robots? See Episode 9
can be at his craft.
My Konclusion:
Tancharoen’s intention in the beginning was to make his trailer into a movie: Warner Brothers, taking the safe bet, decided to make it into a web-series. At this point, I can’t say that decision was ill-conceived. While Tancharoen has shown us some cool takes on popular MK characters, Mortal Kombat Legacy proves to us that the franchise has a ways to go before it can pull itself together properly for a modern feature film.
Tancharoen has said in interviews that he has a very detailed treatment that adheres to the storyline (of the first game or the entire franchise, I’m not sure). This scares me, because after seeing his attempts to do this under Nether Realm’s insistence, I’m not quite sure what quality of film we’ll get. I think for now it’s safer for Warner Brothers to give his web-series a second season, which he has already decided will follow the events of the Tournament in the first game.
I do believe Tancharoen has potential, and should be given a second shot, if to at least prove whether he, Nether Realm, and Warner Brothers can come together to create a story that isn’t riddled with ridiculous plot holes and budget restraints. Hopefully, it won’t just be a painful disaster fans will have to watch unfold.
