The Punisher, 2004 moive

I want this comb.

The Punisher was originally a vigilante and antagonist in the Spider man comics.  However, he became popular enough to appear in other comics.  He even got his own comicbook for awhile.  He even starred in some movies, and that is what we're here to talk about.

The first Punisher movie was released in 1989, and was universally disliked.  In 2004 a reboot to the series was made, and it was also disliked, although DVD sales were high.  Despite the relative popularity of the 2004 Punisher, the 2008 Punisher film was another series reboot, and was also universally disliked.

But lets not talk about those crappy films, lets focus on the awesome that is The Punisher, the 2004 movie. And it is awesome!

The film follows Frank Castle, a FBI agent who goes does incredibly dangerous undercover operations, and as a consequence, he and his family moves around alot.  His last undercover operation had him as the right hand man of an international arms dealer.  During a deal in Tampa, Florida, The FBI come in and stop the deal.  They "kill" Castle, but everything goes wrong when one of the dealers panic, and opens fire, and when the bullets stop whizzing, most of the dealers are dead and one of the customers.  The problem being is that the dead customer is the son of Howard Saint, a gang boss who owns Tampa.  And he is extremely vengeful.  Castle is found out, and Howard sends hitmen to kill Castle and his family.  The only problem is, well, he survives.  That is the plot.  Castle getting revenge on Howard.

It might sound boring, but how they get revenge one each other is fascinating.  There are some great minor points in the film.  Not plot points, just little moments.  For example, in one scene Castle tears his gravestone out of the cemetery, and puts it in Howards golf course, where this happens:

If I get killed by a gang, do this to my gravestone.

 Sweet...

Speaking of plot points, there's alot of them in here too, although there extremely subtle.  In one scene Howard tells his friend and bodyguard to dance with his wife.  Yeah, I'll get on that weirdness later.  Anyway, they dance, and Howard watches them very closely, while his friend stays extremely polite, you know, not sliding his hand over her butt, or anything like that.  Yeah, this is actually a set-up for a extremely interesting revenge sub-plot.

The characters...actually don't have have alot of depth.  I mean, there not bad, but it isn't something you'll remember.  I do love the support characters, the three people who live on the same floor as Castle when he moves into the slum apartment, but Castle and Howard aren't going to be known as complicated characters.

The music, oh man the music.  All of the music in the movie uses the same basic tune, and depending on your point of view, it's either lazy, or a nice theme.  I love it, and on top of that the music is just plain good.

The action in the film is great.  It's fast, but you can still take in the details, and the gun physics are actually realistic(Bullets actually have inertia!).  Can't say the same about damage...  Yeah, Castle should be dead three times over even before the halfway point.

There are some things wrong with The Punisher.  The first one is the editing.  One time a barbecue exploded four times, or a car has just drove around the corner in the distant, but in the next shot it's just starting to drive around the corner.  These don't happen often, but when they do, it's really annoying.

The second thing is the...well, the film is kinda removed from reality.  It's not bad, but it's...weird.  Actually, it acts like a comicbook.  Like the scene where Howard tells his friend to dance with his wife, that's something that wouldn't happen in real life.

One last thing:  The actor who plays Frank Castle is amazing.  Not because he's a good actor, but because he fits the role so well.  Even his voice sounds like the Punisher. I can't imagine anyone else in the role of the Punisher now.

This film is great.  It's a great action film with a good plot/storytelling, and is miles beyond James Bond films, which I use to consider the best in that regard.  So go buy the extended edition now!  Don't make me send the Russian after you...

In Soviet Russia, Waldo find you!

Champions Online

Cryptic is a game developer known for there MMOs, and especially known for City of Heroes, the first superhero MMO.  There latest releases are Star Trek Online and Champions online.

Oh yes.  I went there.

I dislike reviewing MMOs because there constantly changing.  The only MMO I wouldn't mind reviewing would be World of Warcraft.

I could an entire reveiw on the hour long demo I've played of Star Trek Online, but we're not here to talk about that.  But first some history.

City of Heroes was a pretty generic MMO, gameplay wise.  Concept wise, it was unique.  Unlike most MMOs, it wasn't in space, or in a fantasy world.  It was in a normal city, as normal as a city with superheros could be, anyway.

Yeah, your character was a superhero.  You could customize them to an amazing degree, including there powers, and it wasn't just a change of graphics.  Two people of the same class with different powers could have completely different play styles.

Cryptic also released a expansion pack called City of Villains, and that was...disappointing.  The only difference was storylines and the enemy you faced.  Gameplay wise, it was the same.  There was the novelty of playing a villain, but aside from that, no reason to buy.  After another expansion that allowed people to build there own missions, Cryptic sold the franchise to NCsoft.  Why?  No idea.

They started to work on Marvel online, but that was canceled, so they changed it to Champions online instead.  It's based on the Champions pen and paper RPG, which is renowned for it's customization.

And Champions Online fully lives up to that.  This has the best character customization I've ever seen.  Unlike City of Heroes, you can make non-human characters, there's a back option, capes and trench coats are available at the beginning, and you can make certain costume pieces glow.  I haven't even gotten to the powers yet.

She tried to kill me with a ATV!  Wait...

City of Heroes has a normal class system, expect you get to pick your powers, the most obvious being what type of damage you do.  In Champions, the class system doesn't exist.  Instead, there's powersets, which a bunch of similar powers bound together.  There's the munitions powerset, fire powerset, and might powerset to name a few.  There is no penalty for picking powers outside of the powerset you choose for your character, in fact it's almost required, since you'll run out of powers to choose from if you stick to one powerset.

Then, there's the stat system.  Stats are not affected by powersets, but instead by inherent traits and talents.  Inherent traits are coupled with powersets as a rough guide to what type of stats you should develop for that powerset.  For example, the munitions inherent trait is quick trigger, which increased your ego and dexterity stats, making your critical shots do more damage and more often, respectfully.  Talents are not affiliated with any powerset, and work similar to traits, expect that you can have more then one.  The main way you increase stats is by equipping items that drop from enemies or as quest rewards.

Basically, there are almost no restrictions when creating your character.

So, the customization is awesome, hows the gameplay?  The best way to describe it is this: Fast.  a average fight will lasts about 10 seconds, a boss 30 seconds.  Unlike other MMOs, there are very few powers with cooldowns, and even then most are 10 seconds or less.  Instead, there's the energy meter.  Almost all powers cost energy, and while it does regenerate out of combat, the best way to gain energy is to use an energy
builder power.  They took the magic gameplay from most MMOs and actually made it fun.  When I first played this, I didn't notice much difference at first, but now I can't go back to a regular MMO.  The battles take sooooo long.  Almost forgot, you can block in this game.  Blocking can reduce damage taken down to a fraction, but you can't use any powers while blocking.

That being said, the battles are really easy.  I rarely go down to half health when fighting bosses.  To get any challenge, I set the difficulty to hard, and even then, that only affects instanced missions.  Worse, the powers aren't balanced that well, meaning some are too weak or too powerful, or just plain useless.

City of the future!

The environments you go to vary immensely.  The locations available include a futuristic city, ancient underwater temples, irradiated trailer parks, haunted burial grounds, and dinosaur infested jungles.

One of the problems with this game is the music, which every game cryptic has made has the same problem.  The music is usually just ok, but what's really annoying is that it doesn't loop.  Seriously, try to play a game in complete silence.  Not that fun, is it?

For those who like player versus player, you might want to play another game.  I haven't done it in Champions myself, but I've heard it's rather limited.

I better mention on the one feature this game is known for: The nemesis system.  Yes, you are able to create your own Nemesis, and it's fun.  However, there's alot wrong with it.  You can't customize minions, instead just choosing premade ones.  You can't even change the color of them, or choose certain minions for certain classes.  Neither can you choose your nemesis powers, instead just choosing there powerset.  You can choose your minions personality, but there's only three to choose from, mastermind, brute, and manic, nor is there a way to choose your relationship with your nemesis.  That being said, the nemesis missions are some the best missions you'll ever face, and there also pretty challenging to solo.  The nemesis system is planned to be expanded on in the next patch.  Or soon anyway.  This year.  At lest the start of next year.

 For those of you played Champions pen and paper, Champions Online lore is close the pen and paper version.  Cryptic worked with Hero games to create Champions.  I wish the same thing could be said for Star Trek Online...

I usually wouldn't mention this, but the role playing community in champions is large.  This, with the character customization, means that if your a roleplayer, you should check the game out.

The graphics in the game are pretty good, and they attempt to mimic the comic book style.

In closing, I say check this out.  The demo is extremely limited, so avoid that, but starting on September first, Champions online will be free to play.  This ends on September seventh.

The Last Exorcism Trailer

So, I missed the last two weeks because of my computer exploding.  Well, I will post three reviews on Sunday.  but as a bonus, I'm going to review the trailer of the last exorcism.

 

Bwahahaha!

Oh my god, I need to watch that again.

It's like they wanted to do the poltergeist neck twist thing, but didn't have the budget, so the simply had the girl twist her head to the side as hard as she could, and then had someone eat celery.  Seriously, you can do everything that the girl does in the trailer.

My favorite part by far is when the girl is asked where's Nell, and she answers in the fire, and then this happens:

Oh my god!  HAIR!

Also, are we supposed to be afraid of the girl I could take out in one punch?  I mean, really, she's like what, 14?  In one part, you even see the priest holding the girl.  Successfully.  And lets not forget that they not only have a heavy camera, but also a shotgun. 

The scariest part of the trailer is where she's sitting on the the cabinet, and even then my reaction would be this:

"What the hell are you doing?"
"..."
"Get down from there!"
"..."
"Fine.  Whatever."

The part where she's crawling on the ceiling?  That's the floor.  The cameras just upside down.

According to wikipedia, the stuff the girl does includes:
Beating a cat to death with the camera
drowning a doll
walking five miles
tackling someone
and being an attention whore.

Beating a cat to death is cruel and evil on the human level, but for a demon?  Not really.  Also, why the hell did the cat sit around when Nell tried to hit it?

One last thing: The Dawn of the Dead that they advertise on the trailer, it's only one producer, and it's the remake of Dawn of the Dead, not the original.

Delay

My computers graphic card decided to die on me, but didn't tell me, so for the past month I've been trying to fix the software, only to realize, when I've already uninstalled the operating system and are perapring to reinstall it, that the graphics card fan has died.

And yes, I did check the fans, but I missed my graphics card fan for three reasons:
1: it's incredbly small and can only be seen head on, not from the side.
2: it's on the bottom of the card, and the card is near the bottom of the computer
3: durr, whats a hardware?

Oh, and even better: Now windows refuses to install.  So I'm without a computer.  And this is from my labtop, which  can barely run word.

Metro 2033, the book

(Delayed because of something incredibly important, and totally not because I forgot)

After the fresh breath of air that Plants vs. Zombies gave, whats next?

Oh.  Great.  Back to the depressing stuff.

Metro 2033 was written by Dmitry Glukhovsky, a reporter in Moscow, and his book was published in 2005.  It's incredibly popular, with international publishing rights in 20 countries.

It was so popular, that a game by the same name was released in March.  And you need to play it.  Now.  Right now.  That game is the only game I can't think of how to improve it.

Anyway, I'll point out the differences out in my Metro 2033 game review.

Covers aren't very important in books, but lets focus on it anyway.  The cover I have is the paperback version, and I do like the cracked words and the font.  And that's about it.  Why's the title in the Death Stars exhaust port?  And why is it bleeding?  Have the zerg infested it?  Now that's something I want to see, the Empire versus protoss!

What really matters in books is the back of it, where the synopsis is.  Sentences in quotation marks are directly from the back of the book.

"The Year is 2033.  The World has been reduced to rubble.  A few thousand live on, not knowing if they are the only survivors on the planet."  It all started when Sarah Palin was elected for 2012...

"They live in the Moscow Metro, the biggest air-raid shelter ever built.  It is humanity's last refuge.  It is a world without a tomorrow, with no rooms for dreams, plans, or hopes.  Feelings have given way to instinct, the most important of which is survival.  Survival at any price."  Which is 79.99.

"VDNKh is the northernmost inhabited station on its line and still remains secure.  But now a new and terrible threat has appeared.  Artyom, a young man living in VDNKh, is given the task of penetrating to the heart of the Metro, to the legendary Polis, to alert everyone to the awful danger and get help.  He holds the future of his native station in his hands, the future of the metro, and maybe the whole of humanity."  Unfortunately, Artyom had recently been eating a sloppy joe.

This is a pretty good synopsis.  It sets up the world, accurately sums up the plot, and it gets you interested in the story, something most fail to do.

Anyway, into the book itself.  As stated by the synposios, it takes place after world war three, which pretty much destroyed the entire planet. It is never answered if anyone else survived, although it is implied that Moscow is the last pocket of humanity, or at least the last one in Russia. 

Early on it is established that life in the metro is one step from extinction.  The book opens with Arytom during guard duty, and there you find about the dark ones.  The dark ones are mutants that are attacking Arytoms homestation, VDNKh.  The dark ones are one of the creepier villains I've seen.  Well, first off, their an oily black, completely white eyes, faces that seem to be more of a mockery of one rather then an actual face, and, oh yeah, they destroy peoples minds.

Artyom meets Hunter, who was sent there to combat the dark ones.  Hunter gives Artyom a important mission before he leaves to defeat the dark ones: If he isn't back by tomorrow, go to Polios and tell Melnik.  It is never said, but it is heavily implied that Hunter and Melnik belong to some sort of paramilitary organization that protects the Metro.

Of course, Hunter doesn't return.  So Artyom goes off on a perilous journey across the entire Metro.

I might as well as state this now: This is how you make a good "From point A to point B" storyline.  Don't make going from point A to B completely pointless, or make you leave point B to go to point C immediately afterwards, just put alot of shit in the protagonist way.  And I do mean shit, because Artyom travels on the surface, which is slightly safer then living on mars, gets captured by Nazis, and even becomes a slave at one point.

There's alot of detail put into this world.  Each station act has its own rulers, traditions, and markets.  You even get a little history behind the Metro, like the war between the Hanse(merchants) and the Red Line(communists).  Through Artyoms travels, you get alot of stories told between people, like the tale of a station where everybody just disappeared, where a group of soldiers in a tank managed to create a small community in the middle of nowhere on the surface, and the satanic cult that enslaves people to dig a hole into hell itself.

That being said, there is NOTHING happy in the entire book.  if you randomly read a paragraph, chances are you'll put it down and go drink yourself to death.  Seriously, Artyom gains a companion, then instantly loses him when the station he's at is attacked, and he gains another one, and then there both captured by Nazis, who then dies, and Arytom nearly does as well.  And the ending, dear god, the ending.  It ends exactly how you think it ends, Arytom defeats the dark ones, but...but...My god, last minute information is a bitch.

Metro 2033 is well written book, with a deep and inventive world, but it's so depressing that I can't really recommended it, but if you think you can stand it, go for it.

Plants vs. Zombies

The horrible Alone in the Dark review, the disappointing games list, and after reading Metro 2033, I need something cartoony, something good, something...like...

Oh hell yeah!

Plants vs. Zombies was made by PopCap games, the same people who made such mindless games like Bejeweled, Peggle, and Insaniquarium.

The game has a profile system instead of a standard save system.  Although Plants vs. Zombies has several minigames, there locked until you play the main game.

 The game starts with your house being attacked by zombies.  And that's the plot of the game.  defend your house.  With plants.

The gameplay is a simple tower defense game, expect that the path the enemies take is the same one you build defenses.  To build defenses, you need sun, which falls from the top of the screen, or produced by sunflowers.  What?  It makes sense.

While on the subject of plants, lets talk about some of the plants at your disposable.  After every campaign level you beat, you get a plant or a new ability.  Some of the plants you get are: wall-nut, puff-shroom, snow pea(which freezes zombies), split pea(shoots three peas), and plantern.

Although they do go heavy on the plant based puns, it's limited to names only.  There's a huge variety of plants to use against the different zombies.  Unfortunately, you won't use most of them, but it does give you the option to experiment with different defenses.

The zombies you face come in a variety of increasingly difficult forms, like traffic cone zombie, bucket zombie, football zombie, and the most dangrous, evil creature ever.

A Zomboni!

That's not even the most ridiculous enemy in the game.  Here's a hint: it follows the zomboni on the ice.  No, not zombie penguins, although there is a zombie dolphin.

There are several environmental hazards in the game, including nightfall, fog, and the pool.  these force you to tweak your defense to allow you to win.

On that subject, the game isn't that difficult.  I doubt you'll ever come close to losing during the campaign, but that doesn't stop the game being fun.

About a third of the way through the campaign, you'll unlock crazy Crazy Dave's store.  Oh yeah, Crazy Dave.  I could tell you about him, but this is simpler:

Oh, sorry, about that Dave.  I'll let you finish that hedgehog.

In the store you can buy more seed slots, and better plants.  Later on, you unlock Zen Gardening supplies, but I'll tell you about that later.

After you beat the awesome final boss, you can play the campaign again, expect Crazy Dave gets to choose three plants, or you can play the puzzles.  These include: Beghouled, Wall-nut bowling, Invisi-ghoul, and Whack-A-Zombie.

There's also two minigames, known as I, Zombie, and Vasebreaker.  In vasebreaker, you break open vases, which either contain plants or zombies.  Not that fun, because it's just luck, but I, Zombie is where you control the zombies attacking a house.

If for some reason you don't like the minigames, you get to play around in your Zen Garden, where you collect potted plants that drop from zombies.  Taking care of the plants give you money, or you can sell them.  This takes alot of time with little reward, and yet I keep on taking care of it.  I'm starting to think PopCap infused weed into their game.

Overall, this game, although meant as a time-waster, will suck you in until you've wasted 20 hours.  Check this game out.

Anyone who played this notice how Dave seems so friendly to the zombies?  He's the one who created the I, Zombie minigame, he only helps you if you give him a couple thousand, and whenever he appears, a HUGE wave of zombies appear.  Well that's IT.  I'm not putting up with it anymore.  Dave, I'm afraid I can't let you do that.