Based on the movies of the same name, The Bourne Conspiracy is basically you replaying the first Bourne movie with more flashbacks and less Matt Damon. So better. And it is quite good. The story is standard, with some decent cutscenes, and they move the game along at a steady, gripping pace.

Gameplay has three main parts, hand to hand combat, Gun Combat, and Driving. The game is 45-45-10 split between the three respectively. The most inventive and fun aspect of the game is the hand to hand combat, involving three buttons used in combos of three, with the ability for punches, kicks and blocks. Successful combos result in an Adrenaline meter filling, allowing you to perform takedowns in the environment. Pulling off the right combos is addictive, and you find yourself getting into fistfights just to see what you can do take downs with. Literally everything in the environment has an attached takedown, and they are both brutal and satisfying. The games combat also makes VERY liberal use of Quicktime events, sued to prevent an enemy from performing takedowns on you, or to take down multiple enemies.

Gunplay in Bourne is handled decently, feeling a little floaty, and a bit too much like Gears of War-lite. The gun combat employs a cover system with good controls and a large number of REALLY destructible environments, as well as the ability to run up to someone and engage them in hand to hand at any time. The presentation of the gun combat is brilliant, with great sound effects(glass shatters, wood splinters, and headshots thud with aplomb), great environments, and great guns, but the core gameplay behind it leaves something to be desired. Gun takedowns are also a disappointment, as gunplay barely fills your adrenaline meter, and the gun takedown animations are simply bourne shooting someone, without making use of the well built environment.

The sole driving section is a complete disappointment, with a car that has no handling, and is indestructible. The chase is a looping one around paris, made very easy with bourne instinct and also made mercifully short.

Graphically, Bourne is very good, although not perfect. Environments are super destructible and textures are well done. The characters look a little like plastic and the pre rendered cutscenes leave something to be desired. Sound is a whole other matter, made almost flawless, with perfect sounds for everything in the environment. The games presentation goes a long way as to making you feel like you’re jason bourne, and in the end, that’s what makes this game awesome. The package of brilliant hand to hand, fairly good gunplay, mixed in with high production values, elevate this game to a level above most movie tie ins, and a level above most standard shooters.

8/10

It’s a known fact you are running out flavours when you start putting out Fries n’ Gravy and (I shit you not)Roast Chicken. The idea that one could encapsulate either in a processed potato slice is too hard for the mind to fathom, so instead of fathoming it, I just bought one.

The verdict? Pleasantly tasty.

I was expecting very lightly dusted salt with maybe some basic pepper seasoning, but instead I got enough gravy like seasoning on the lays so it felt satisfying to eat, but not enough to make each chip overpowering. It tasted more gravy than fry, although I would assume lays+salt=Fry in a chip. The seasoning itself was savoury, not very throwaway, with a slight(irritating) aftertaste. I have never been a fan of lays, but this sort of represents lays for me. Fry in a chip. My favorite flavour of lays, better than Doritos Nacho Cheese, but still not as good as classic Cheetos Puffs

8.5/10

Considering myself both creative and godlike, I, among millions of others was excited for spore, and when the trial for the creature creator came out, I was impressed enough to take the plunge and buy the whole thing.

It started off via a paypal purchase, which with tax and a one time fee for eas “extended download service”, came to 18.02, much more than advertised. I also had to create an eastore account(par per the course for any website you buy stuff from), and download EAs proprietary client, where my purchase didn’t appear for about twelve hours. So the process of actually getting this half game is piss poor.

The game itself, at first glance is immensely underwhelming. You have limits on what you can do, there are only twenty options and not as half as much customization as what you expected. It’s a case of peter molyneaux-ism, where expectation succeeds results.

After the initial shock of my expectations not being met was worn off though, I had alot of fun with it. Theres infinite customization here, even if you cant give your creature two hundred legs. Each body part can be resized and molded to a point, the body structures and spines can all be changed and the colour palette is huge, with special texturing for each of the three layers(base, coat and detail) you can add, as well as a large colour palette.

It also animates your creature on the fly and lets you test what the creature looks like, sounds like, and have it do a variety of canned animations. I was a little disappointed with this part, because I didn’t want to see my creature do a halfassed dance, but wanted to see how it interacted with its environment. The creatures children are also similarly underwhelming as their is no difference between creature and young apart from size. Other than that, you can change what background environment the creature is in(from a grand total of FIVE environments), and make it look at you. You can also take pictures, make an avatar(they KNOW whos shelling out for this early), and record videos from the game.

Creating creatures is addictive, and it IS only the creature creator. Not the best 18.02 ever spent, but really good regardless, especially for creative types.

7/10

Movie: Men Behind the Sun

So, we all know about the holocaust, and the horrible things that the Nazis did to the Jews, but most people don’t realize that the Japanese were doing very similar things in China during WW2. Enter the Chinese movie Men Behind the Sun, directed by T.F. Mous. This movie focuses on the horrible human experimentation by Unit 731, a biological warfare development team. Unit 731 did such wonderful things as testing the limits the human body with frostbite, decompression, and taking out someone’s stomach and attaching the esophagus directly to the intestines.

The film itself splits itself between some of the scientists, Chinese prisoners, and children who are at one of the facilities. The children are a member of the youth corps(think Japanese version of Hitler Youth). And it shows, very graphically, a good deal of the experiments. While many people think that the film is too much of an exploitation flick to have any credibility as an education piece, I highly disagree. I think the extreme fashion that these things are shown simply adds to the realism and severity of the crimes that were committed. It’s very apparent that the director did his homework on the subject matter and feels very strongly about what he’s showing. It’s definitely not for the faint of heart, but this was the first movie in a very long time to make me have to just kind of sit and think afterwards. It literally put me into a state of quiet shock.

Now, a REAL warning about the movie. The original version did have a few incredibly controversial scenes. In one scene a real cat is eaten alive by frenzied rats(about a 4 minutes scene) on camera. Those rats are later set ablaze towards the end of the film. While it is difficult to excuse animal cruelty in a film for nothing more than entertainments sake, you should not let that alone turn you away. Even without these scenes, the movie holds a lot of power, and is still incredibly gross(for you gorehounds).**On top of this, there is real footage of a young boy’s autopsy that is used during the film too.

All in all, this is a definite buy if you’re at all interest in the subject matter. It’s gruesome, it’s intense, and it’s powerful. Not for the faint of heart, but worth trying anyways.

9/10

**note: as of the writing of this review, the only version available in the US is a release that has the cat/rat scenes cut out of the film. I was able to get the uncut version in a limited edition boxset that was recently released, but appears to already be out of print.

Death Sentence had a lot of promising qualities that just didn’t come together to form what should have been a great movie. The story was there, as was the action and tone, but the plot is so full of holes, not even Kevin Bacon could avoid falling down into the abyss. The so-called realism that might have been portrayed in this film gets shot out the window with the obvious logic errors that occur in nearly every scene. The idiocy surrounding the plot was almost too much for me to bear, but I somehow managed to make it through to the end of the movie.

The only saving grace to this movie is in the action scenes, and even those who stand a good deal of improvement. The development of Bacon’s character, as well all of the others, was shaky at best, and did less than the bare minimum in order to keep the story moving along.

Fast forward to all the fun scenes with action, death and destruction, and then turn this movie off, because that’s all you’re going to get out of this one. 3.0/10 for this disappointment.

I bought The Bourne Ultimatum’s DVD brand-spanking-new before I had even watched it. I was not disappointed by my purchase.

This film is one of the most solid third-installment movies I’ve ever seen. It had the same feel and flow as its two predecessors, which made it feel like I was watching the same singular movie, instead of the three-part story that it is. The way they seamlessly blended the movies together is incredible. The plot progressed nicely, the character development (especially that of Jason Bourne) was fantastic, and the dialog scenes were good enough to keep my focus and transitioned before the dialog got too lengthy.

The action sequences had the same great quality that you would expect from the two previous movies. While that’s good and all, that also provides the one demeaning quality to the movie: It’s more of the same. Together with Identity and Supremacy, this film is amazing, but it does not have anything to make it stand out from the other two (besides the fact that it has the ending). This statement speaks volumes, as it was reaffirmed by several customers I had who asked about the movies. They couldn’t makes distinctions between the three movies, and I came to find that even my own knowledge between the first two Bourne installments was blurred in a few areas.

I had one other hang-up with this movie. For a man who is wanted by almost every country that he is in throughout the movie, Bourne is able to seamlessly get from nation to nation almost as easily as fast-forwarding the movie to the next scene. It just stuck out to me as something that was either overlooked or cut-out completely due to time constraints.

If you’re like me and you love the first two Bourne movies, then you will also love The Bourne Ultimatum. Otherwise, it’s just more of the same. It is a great action movie, and it deserves the 8.5/10 I am giving it. I just wish it had a little more to it than just “a great ending to the trilogy”. It would be wrong of me to end a review of a good movie on a downside, so let me say again that THIS IS A GREAT MOVIE!

Let me start off by saying that the only reason why I picked Talk To Me up in the first place is because Don Cheadle’s name was written on the front of the DVD case. After reading about the plot, and seeing it was based on a true story, I decided it might be worth it’s time. All in all, the movie was pretty good, but I don’t think I’ll be popping the DVD in my player again anytime soon.

While the story was good, Talk To Me had a number of slow transition scenes. The progression of the plot never really picked up enough to keep my full interest. The cinematography could have been a lot better. I found myself readjusting my focus quite often to adjust to the extreme darkness that occurred in many of the scenes (most of them being the pool hall scenes). I enjoyed most of the acting in the movie. Don Cheadle did not disappoint me in this film (he has yet to disappoint me in ANY film of his that I’ve seen).

What really caught my eye is the performance of one Chiwetal Ejiofor, who plays alongside Cheadle as the main supporting actor. I remember his supporting role in Serenity, and I like his acting in both of these movies. Although both of these roles have him in the position of supporting actor, I can see him getting starring roles in the near future.

With it’s excellent acting and true story, Talk To Me is a pretty decent movie. Unfortunately, the progression, cinematography, and a few other aspects of the movie were lacking in that “wow” factor that makes a great movie. Altogether, this film receives a 6.5/10.

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Yes, it’s been awhile. Horribly busy semester, but now I’m back and writing movie reviews. Enjoy!

So, when this movie was originally announced, there was… OUTRAGE! “How could they touch such a classic?! Hollywood is out of ideas! Fuck Hollywood!” were some of the things muttered. Yes, yes, the remakes keep coming, and more often than not, they tend to be quite mediocre.. Halloween also fails to live up to the original.

Now, if you don’t know the story, Halloween is about Michael Myers. A kid of pure evil who slaughtered his family, then got locked up in a mental asylum, until he eventually breaks out, and hunts down his baby sister. The thing that always set Myers apart from the other horror killers is the fact that he was simply evil. He didn’t really have a reason to kill, he just killed people. This is where the biggest problem with the remake comes in. It’s much easier to just explain that he’s evil as a kid, then show him as an adult. It’s much harder to show him as a kid, and portray him as truly evil. This is, of course, what Rob Zombie decided to do. Show Michael as a kid, show the family slaughter, and let us know he was an asshole of a kid. Sadly, he kind of fails at this, and almost makes Michael a sympathetic character.. ALMOST. His mother is a stripper(implied prostitute), his older sister is a slut who’s not too kind to him, and his mom’s boyfriend is a lazy asshole. So the people he kills as a child, while brutal, kinda deserve it in their own ways. So you go from his youth, into his adulthood, in this mixed state of mind. The evilness is better portrayed when he’s an adult, but by then the seeds of doubt have been sown.

Big problem number two. The movie is so full of f-bombs, you’ll want to rip the butcher’s knife from Mikey’s hands, and cut someone yourself. The cursing in this movie is akin to a 5th grader who just learned how to say fuck, so he now says it every 4 seconds to be cool. The dialog could have been so much better if it was toned down some.

On the plus side, the movie isn’t bad by itself. When you take away the complaint of the dialog, it’s a pretty solid slasher flick. The kills are very well done, but not TOO over the top. I didn’t ever think there was blood splashed around just for there to be blood, which was one of the biggest worries coming into the movie. The theme is used very well, Tyler Mane makes an insanely frightening adult Michael, and it does do a good job of being suspenseful(although some scenes are drawn out). The acting overall, is very solid, and Scout Taylor-Compton does a fine job replacing Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode.

While flawed, it’s definitely worth seeing. Just don’t go into it comparing it too much to the original. It is better than most of the remakes out there though, and it does do enough to set itself apart from the original to justify it’s existence.

Aba gives this flick a 7/10.

The Contract has Morgan Freeman and John Cusack in it. What’s more, Freeman is a professional hitman. Cusack is this average guy trying to bond with his (rather uncaring) son out in the woods. Everyone’s having a good time until Freeman rolls in, with his “everyone is out to get me” thing going on. Sounds kind of interesting, does it not?

To be honest, I did not expect this movie to be that good at first. It’s just one of those movies you have to go and watch - screw what the back cover of the DVD says (which makes a mockery of the plot). The movie keeps it short, with just 97 minutes of runtime. Sadly, the action wasn’t that flashy, and watching people walk through a forest for 2/3 of the movie isn’t very awesome and eye-catching. The anti-climatic ending is a big downer, so maybe skip that part and make your own one up (although it comes quick due to the short length of the film, so have that finger handy on the stop button!). In fact, skip the beginning as well. Just fast forward to the “action”.

I’m going to slap a 5.0/10 rating on it, but it would have been closer to a 4.0/10 if Freeman and Cusack weren’t there to spice up the film. Sections in the middle of the film really brought this rating up from the dark depths, so you can at least look forward to that.

The Number 23 is another “serious role” for Jim Carrey, and I must say that this man is incredible. This short-but-sweet thriller lacks a well-developed plot, but makes up for it with incredible acting and directing. The somewhat-predictable plot-twist ending brings the film’s quality down a bit, but it is still a good finish for the film. What keeps this movie’s quality on the good side is the fast-paced but easy to follow plot and character developments, which helps keep the audience interested in the movie.

A must-see for Jim Carrey fans, but otherwise mediocre movie. I give this film a 6.0/10.