Review: Sucker Punch

            Zack Snyder the visionary who brought us 300 and Watchmen brings us another spectacular visual feast called Sucker Punch.  Sucker Punch is about a young woman whose mother dies and following this her step-dad tries to rape both her and her younger sister.  She grabs a gun and shoots at her step-dad but the bullet misses and kills her sister.  Fearing for his safety the step-dad puts the girl in a mental asylum and pays the owner, a man named Blue to have a lobotomy preformed on her in order to turn her into a vegetable so that she can’t tell anyone what really happened.  At the asylum she is given the name Babydoll and meets a therapist who teaches the women in the facility to imagine the world the way they want to see it so that they can deal with their reality.  In this fantasy the women are dancers, Babydoll is asked to dance and when she does she enters a fantasy where she is totally badass and she is tolled that if she can gather a map, fire, a knife, a key and a mystery item she will be able to escape.  Babydoll turns out to be a magnificent dancer and recruits four other dancers to help her escape; Rocket, Sweet Pea, Amber and Blondie.  

When Babydoll dances she captivates those watching which gives her friends the opportunity to steal the items they need.  It’s in these scenes that Sucker Punch is at its best.  When Babydoll dances the girls go to awesome worlds where they battle all kinds of cool enemies like giant samurais and dragons.  The action is incredible and all of the women are just awesome, it’s really impressive that they manage to take beautiful women, have them use their sexuality to get what they want but still seem like strong women who can totally kick your ass.  They literally take out hundreds of bad guys either by shooting them slicing them or just beating them down.  The visual effects in Sucker Punch are wicked it is one of the most stylistic movies I have ever seen, there is just so many cool things happening in the movie and Zack Snyder’s direction is amazing keeping the action fast and intense at all time.  Sucker Punch also has some fantastic music which is used to open and close each of their missions and really helps the build up for the new worlds they are entering and fits perfectly in every scene.  The story doesn’t hold your hand which is a nice change they start using the different worlds really early without much explanation and force you to keep with everything going on.  I wish they would have focused a little more on what Babydoll was going through, losing her mother and accidently killing her sister.  They do show how it affects her in the beginning but when the girls are trying to gather the items they need to escape Babydoll just shuts out all of it and is more in control than some of her friends.

The acting in the movie is actually better than I thought it would be, I figured that it be just ok because the girls are being carried by the visuals in a lot of the scenes.  However this isn’t the case all of the performances are good from the owner of the institute Blue played by Oscar Isaac who is a great villain, a real creep and I could actually hear people in the theater insulting him throughout the movie because he’s such a dick.  Scott Glen is entertaining as the wise man who gives the girls their directions in each of the missions.  Carla Gugino does a good job as the therapist who is conflicted because she wants to keep the ladies safe but has to listen to Blue.  Jamie Chung and Vanessa Hudgens who play Amber and Blondie respectively, both give surprisingly good performances despite the fact that they have the smallest roles out of the Babydoll’s group.  Emily Browning who plays Babydoll does a good job as lead she manages to seem focused strong and determined while still having that hint of fear beneath the surface.  The real stand outs though are Jena Malone who plays Rocket and Abbie Cornish who plays Sweat Pea.  Rocket and Sweat Pea are sisters who have been through a lot together, which leads to some terrific emotional performances on both of their parts.

Sucker Punch is an action packed thrill ride that you won’t soon forget.  It has fantastic action, music and visuals along with a talented cast and an original story.  The worlds are also heavily influenced by video games and are just incredible; it makes me wonder why we can’t get good video game movies.  Its story may be a little thin however but this movie is still definitely worth checking out.

Score: 3/5

Review: Army of Two the 40th Day

            Army of Two the 40^th Day is a third person shooter from EA Games.  The first game in the series, Army of Two came out back in 2008.  Army of Two the 40^th Day is about two mercenaries who get caught up in a war while doing a contract in china.  The war was caused by a madman with an army who is going around killing everyone, not very original or interesting.  The characters Salem and Rios are pretty cool and fun to play as but are rather two dimensional.

            
            The gameplay in Army of Two relies heavily on teamwork; it works much better if you’re playing with a friend but the AI does a pretty good job if you’re playing alone.  The gameplay is fast and fun but it doesn’t hold up to games like Gears of War that feel a lot more precise and rewarding.  Unfortunately unlike the first game that kept up the action throughout the whole game this one constantly slows down for hostage situations and moral choices.  Now adding these things sound like a good decision but they weren’t executed very well.  The hostage situations are just you walking in and either tying up or killing the bad guys, which just slows down the combat.  Moral decisions are usually a lot of fun but in Army of Two they’re just annoying, if I choose to save someone there is a clip showing happening to them after like being killed anyways or being murders.  It’s supposed to show you that decisions aren’t black and white all the time but it just makes all of the decisions seem pointless, if you pick the bad way you get cash and if you pick the good way something bad happens anyway.  The only moral decision that’s even interesting is the one at the very end but it will probably end up annoying you.  The game would have been a lot more fun if they kept it like the first one where it was just mindless fun.

            
            Army of Two does offer deep weapon customization option that give you a reason to play through the game again on higher difficulties but that’s only if you’re obsessed with totally completing everything.  The game looks good with decent environments and good character models but it’s not going to blow you away.  The online multiplayer isn’t all that good either I didn’t play much of it but from what I did play I have to say it wasn’t very fun and doesn’t compete in any way with something like Gears or Halo or even COD. 

The only real saving grace this game has is that it makes you feel like a badass Salem and Rios have some good lines and help draw you into the combat which is fast paced and fun.  The coolest new feature in the game is the GPS that tells you where to go and allows you to tag enemies so that they turn red allowing for easy tracking of their locations, which in turn allows you to flank them with greater ease.  Another cool addition is the mock surrender which allows you to draw the enemies’ attention long enough for your partner to get a vantage point and take out your enemies.  However this works much better with a human partner as opposed to an AI one.  That being said the AI is still quite helpful mainly because of the aggro feature which allows for one person to easily draw out enemy fire by popping off some shots so that the enemies become less responsive to your actions.  So basically you tell your partner to become aggressive and stay put, then everyone focuses on him so you can sneak around and pick them off.  This is my personal favourite part of the game when you have to strategize about which way is the best way to get the upper hand, which vantage point is best and what’s the fastest way to get there without being picked off by enemies.

Army of Two the 40^th Day is a good time when you’re in the middle of the action especially if you are playing co-operatively.  However the game gets in its own way too often, the hostage situations and moral choices seem like the developers forced them in to the game in order to compete with some of the bigger games on the market like Mass Effect.  This ends up bogging the game down and the story or lack thereof does nothing to help.  If you have a friend who leaves nearby and comes over a lot you might want to consider renting this one although personally I think the first Army of Two game was more fun because it doesn’t have those annoying breakups to all of the action.  

Score: 2/5

3DS Launch Line-up

Here is a list of all of the games coming out for the 3DS in its initial launch window, which I assume to mean the first week or two out, because the 3DS is supposed to have at least 30 games out by E3 and some that aren’t on this list are coming out in April.  I also checked around and this list seems to be accurate.

First-party launch titles:

Pilotwings Resort

Steel Diver

Nintendogs + Cats

Third-Party Games:

Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition

The Sims 3

Madden NFL Football

Pro Evolution Soccer 2011 3D

Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars

Ridge Racer 3D

Super Monkey Ball 3D

Bust-A-Move Universe

Samurai Warriors: Chronicles

Asphalt 3D

Combat of Giants: Dinosaurs 3D

Rayman 3D

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Shadow Wars

            I wasn’t one of the people out there who was dying to get a 3DS ever since I first saw it because I didn’t care for the original DS.  I own a DS and thought it was a cool idea but it never grabbed me and made me fall in love with it like I did the GBC or GBA.  I thought that the 3DS was actually going to be good, but I wasn’t sure whether or not I would buy it. I was interested because of a large number of games from Nintendo like Star Fox 64 3D (really 64 3D come on Nintendo) and the 3D Mario game that Nintendo has wanted since the Virtual Boy made me very interested.  However Nintendo’s launch games are lame I mean a submarine game, a dog owner sim, and a flying game that isn’t Star Fox!  The third party games don’t interest me either, Street Fighter is cool but I have it on the 360 and using 3D cuts the frame rate in half and the angle that allows you to really see the 3D blocks some of your view of your opponent which makes it much harder to play.

            I don’t understand how Nintendo disappoints every time but still sells so well.  It really pisses me off that they are staying on top of the gaming industry over Microsoft and Sony just because they trick people who don’t know anything about video games, which is a much larger group than the ones that do know about them.  They slap on a gimmick like motion control or 3D without glasses and everyone lines up like sheep.  How is it that Nintendo is still around and Sega isn’t?

            I hope that they don’t drop the ball on the 3DS like they did the Gamecube, Wii and DS but I’m not confident enough in Nintendo to go out and spend $250 which is more expensive than certain versions of the Xbox 360 out of faith that they will make it worth my while.

             

I got the list of launch titles from:

http://www.crunchgear.com/2011/02/22/here-are-the-north-american-3ds-launch-titles/

Welcome!

Hello and welcome to my very first blog!  I stared playing video games back when I was two and I’ve been in love with them ever since.  I also love movies and TV shows but I consider video games to be my real passion.  So I decided that I wanted to make a blog where I can share my knowledge and opinions with people like myself.  I say people like myself because I’m not rich, game companies don’t give me copies of the games it’s all out of my own pocket and I don’t even know if I’ll make anything more than pocket change off of this site. I’m just doing this because I’m a big fan who geeks out over this stuff and wants a venue for sharing my opinion without sparking insane arguments with people on fan sites. 

This site has a few different types of articles, the first of which is reviews which are my reviews of video games and movies.  My reviews will date back to 2010 but no further, I’m doing this because I figure games from more than a year ago aren’t really anyone’s concern but stuff from last year you might have missed or been waiting for them to go on sale or maybe you’re still wondering if you should get it.  Also it’s better if the game is still fresh in my mind, so that I don’t forget anything.  The second type will be my recommendations which will be of anything I feel you guys should check out from any year.  These won’t be as long as my reviews and won’t have a score.  My recommendations will be for stuff like season box sets of TV shows to iPhone games, to comics.  It’s mostly for stuff I like but don’t get lots of.  I only have a few iPhone games but lots of console games so I’ll review console games and recommend iPhone games.  The reason why they won’t have scores is let’s say I give a score to an iPhone game and say that it is a 4/5 but I give for example Heavy Rain a 4/5 it’s not really the same is it.  The third type is for articles about stuff happening in the world of games, movies and other cool stuff.  I’ll either post an article about a new announcement or my personal opinion on stuff happing in the industry.  Also I will do a weekly rap up highlighting everything that happen that week, just in case you missed something.   I will also have polls that will change weekly which you guys and use to tell me how you feel on certain topics.

So that is essentially what my site is I hope you all like it, find my stuff helpful and come back soon.  Also feel free to comment on anything you think might help the site.  Thanks!