DarthHomer On Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (WARNING SPOILERS)

Allow me to begin this by saying something which I know is going to get a lot of hate spewed towards me.

I enjoyed the 2007 Transformers movie.

It was by far not the best movie of that year, but compared to some of the other dreck that I witnessed that year (I can attest to have seen both Epic Movie and Alien vs Predator 2: Requiem in theaters), but it was at least somewhat entertaining. I know I'm going to attract a lot of hate for that, but I don't care.

Fast forward two years.

It's the week of the release of the hotly anticipated sequel, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Reviews are hitting the internet, and the word is getting out that the movie is nothing short of terrible. In fact, one particular review stood out to me - Roger Eberts one star review of the movie. You can best sum his review up with this opening paragraph.

"Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" is a horrible experience of unbearable length, briefly punctuated by three or four amusing moments. One of these involves a dog-like robot humping the leg of the heroine. Such are the meager joys. If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together. Then close your eyes and use your imagination.

Wow. After having read that, I knew that I needed to catch this movie. So now that we're up to speed, let's actually TALK about the movie.

...Yeah. It's not good.

I knew going in that this was going to be more of the same, and have nothing really redeemable. Yes, it's a Michael Bay movie, so there's going to be an overemphasis on action and EXPLOSIONS!~ Yes, it's a summer blockbuster, so I shouldn't expect a deep and moving story, but replaced that with lots of shots of Megan Fox in poses and giant robots fighting giant robots. Oh, and EXPLOSIONS!~

But yes, this movie does have so major flaws. At least, the ones that I had with it. So let's go into those. This'll go into some spoiler territory, so if you're wary about what happens in the movie - stop reading now. I'll try to not bring up anything too major and what not, but bare with me for the moment.

Let's start off with the biggest problem. The length. In regular theatrical cuts, the movie is 150 minutes long. IMAX screenings have been reported as longer, but I can't comment on how long exactly. I haven't a problem with long movies, but I'll be damned that Michael Bay didn't at least consider maybe cutting down on the movie somewhat. Especially towards the end where the movie practically stops to have this giant battle in the desert.

Now, I can understand that Bay was going for this epic movie and what not, but at the same time, when there's as much explosion porn present in this movie, you kinda get sick of it real quick. It's basically like Bay realized that he had little to nothing in the way of plot and thought that the best way to achieve his vision of an epic movie was to pad it out with moronic 'comedic' moments and...well...EXPLOSIONS!~

Speaking of these 'comedic' moments, for some strange reason, the film contains an absurd number of sex/genital related jokes. It's not funny in the slighest. Especially watching dogs basically fucking one another. It's a moment so nice that Bay thought it'd be awesome to show it twice. Oh, and there's an instance of seeing John T.'s ass and package. The audience laughed their arses off at this. Sitting in the front row (thanks to a ticket snafu), that was the last thing I wanted to see. Then there's the "hash cookies" that Shia Lebouf's mother consumes which does not help make her anymore likabke. Even tackling a security guard didn't help that...though since when does pot give you tackling power?

Then there's the fact that characters have a tendency to disappear for a large portion of the plot. Take the titular Fallen for instance. He's hyped up as this big and stupidly powerful villain whom is so unbelievably awesome that even Megatron is sucking up to him. I mean, the subtitle of the movie basically makes us think that the Fallen is this one super bad motherfucker who's going to kick some major arse when he comes to Earth. Then he disappears for close to two hours, and only appears for a brief moment in a flashback, then again five minutes before the end of the movie, and does practically nothing but fucking job to Optimus Prime.

Biggest pussy of a villain ever.

As an Australian, I feel that I have to comment somewhat on the role of former Home and Away starlet Isobel Lucas. Prior to the movie, her role was being hyped up as her big breakthrough role and what not. Even after an extremely awkward interview on popular variety show Rove Live, she was still being hyped based on the cause of "she's an Aussie in a huge blockbuster film", similar to fellow Home & Away castmember Chris Hemsworth in Star Trek or Sam Worthington in Terminator Salvation. She appears for all of five minutes. I shit you not. And after her "big breakout role", she is never heard from or mentioned again. Sure, she's hot and all...but she doesn't really leave much of an impact on viewers (well, at least me), or the plot.

And then there are these two. Say hello to the Twins. Mudflap and Skids

You recall how a large portion of the movie going public absolutely despised Jar Jar Binks upon seeing Star Wars Episode 1? The same fate shall meet them. They contribute absolutely fucking nothing to the plot, and you wish that they get killed in the most violent and brutal way a transforming robot can. In fact, one of them comes close to dying, and SURVIVES. I literally cried out "BULLSHIT" when that happened. Then there's all the cries of racism, but honestly, I was too enraged each time I saw them to not take note.

I know I'm probably reading into this way too much than I should be doing, but really, let's take a look at two of the biggest and best blockbuster tentpole movies from last year: Iron Man and The Dark Knight. Both movies are the complete opposite of RotF - well written, well acted and had reasonable runtimes and uses of explosions. And they were fantastic films. This? Not so much.

Really, the movie would've been better served as a video game. Which it does have, yet reportedly isn't much good. Though weirdly enough, the online mulitplayer components of the 360/PS3 game is meant to be fantastic, and watching the last battle...it's something that would've been better served as an online MP game than an actual movie. For some reason, I got visions of a class based, multiplayer focused first person shooter.

Though honestly, I should give at least some praise in the CG stuff. As you would expect, the CG work is quite impressive, and the fight scenes are much better shot and laid out, unlike the first film - where the fight scenes were difficult to watch and make out precisely what's going on. Granted, there's a bit of that in Revenge of the Fallen, but it's much clearer than before.

Let's close this off. The movie isn't fantastic. It's too long, there's no story, the attempts at humour are stupid overall, it's just a mess. Yet it's going to be one of the highest profiting movies of the year, and more than make it's budget back. Despite this, here's the kicker though.

Once the credits hit, audiences were applauding.

I couldn't be making this up, even if I tried.

A packed audience in Hoyts Melbourne Central for the 6:15pm session on Thursday 25th of June 2009, applauded Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

I sat there stunned.

A Years Difference – How Rock Band Influenced Guitar Hero World Tour

I've been hitting up the music rhythm genre pretty heavily as of late. Round the end of November, I picked up Guitar Hero 3 (w/guitar). On Boxing Day, I picked up GH: World Tour (again, w/guitar) and not too long ago, purchased a copy of Rock Band (without any instruments). All three are good games. Guitar Hero 3 is great if you're stupidly hardcore and want to handle a decent, but utterly broken game. World Tour is good for parties, instruments and for a more hardcore, yet casual experience. And Rock Band? Well, the same idea of having fun in a party , but with plenty of music that you'll know, as well as over 500 songs up for purchase.

I'd wanted to compare these two games, but I didn't want to do it in much the same way an Australian game reviewer would actually compare them. I think it's really unfair to be comparing a game that was released late 2007 to a game that was released two months ago in the same way you'd compare two games of similar genres.

Personally, I'd recommend both of these games, but I'd like to focus on one specific aspect that I've noticed while playing both World Tour and Rock Band – specifically just how much of a difference a year can make on a product. There's more to it than the obvious statement that because Rock Band exists, Guitar Hero had to add in a drum kit and microphone for the 2008 version or risk being left 'out of date', as well as how because Rock Band handles its DLC, Guitar Hero's DLC plans were changed for the better.

Before I continue, it's important to note that this comparison is strictly for the current gen versions of both games. I'm using the PS3 version as my main reference here, but both games are similar enough anyway that unless specified, it'll also be relevant to the 360 version.

GAMEPLAY

In general, both games play almost exactly the same. You form a band with friends or people online and proceed to play songs for points. There's no denying that. But the ways that both games handle said gameplay is still different. One major is the way that the points boost powerup is handled. In World Tour, the traditional system has been changed somewhat. While Star Power is achieved in the same way achieved in any of the Guitar Hero games, once it's attained, anyone currently playing can use it. Example – the lead guitarist is the one that actually earns the Star Power for the band, but as soon as he gets it, the drummer can immediately activate it to gain a boost to their multiplier or save themselves from failure. It's a good thing if you need it to save a band mate who is struggling, but feasibly, unless there's more than one star power light lit up – only one member of the band at a time can use star power. This can be extremely annoying when you're playing with people who refuse to co-operate as a band and just use Star Power the second it's attained. It's an annoying design mechanic that should have been fixed.

Rock Band's Overdrive is slightly smarter in execution. It's exactly the same concept, but modified enough to actually make it awesome. Each band member gets their own unique overdrive which can be deployed at any time to increase the band's multiplayer (which Guitar Hero also does – minus the unique part). What's more interesting is the way that it's activated. For instance, players doing vocals or playing drums have it activate automatically after playing a serious of notes. Guitarists have to do it manually. It's...interesting, and works better for when you're playing co-operatively with other people, since you can easily co-ordinate when you'll activate it – thanks to the way notes are laid out. But at the same time, you'll want to activate your bonus whenever you'd like, and this is something that you can't really do in Rock Band.

Then there's some of the more unique gameplay elements to each game that also help to show just how much of a difference a year can make. For instance, Rock Band has a great mechanic where if you're playing with a band, and you fail out of a song, it continues, but you can't get back in unless someone sacrifices their Overdrive. It can't be done all the time though – fail three times and you can't go back in, and that players track is permanently muted. It's a very smart decision that Guitar Hero hasn't capitalized on – in this case, if any one of the four players fail a song, the entire band fails the song.

However, Guitar Hero includes something that's not in Rock Band and is extremely useful – a countdown after pausing. Let me explain this a little further. For whatever reason, you have to pause the game. You do whatever you need to do that required pausing the game and upon resuming, you are greeted with a countdown that will help to lead you back into the song. You'll also get enough of a look as to what notes you needed to hit when you paused that you'll easily be able to get back into the game. In Rock Band (or the previous Guitar Hero games), if you paused, the game would immediately start up again, and there's a chance that you'd miss out on whatever notes you were playing at that time.

Lastly, Rock Band has a huge advantage in the fact that if you play a song, it'll focus specifically on the instrument you've chosen. Let me explain – say you're playing Train Kept a Rollin' by Aerosmith on vocals; and solely vocals. The game will actually shorten the song allowing you to sing more and enjoy yourself by shortening or removing guitar solos. There's also a tapping mini-game in certain songs where you tap the microphone to simulate a tambourine or a cow bell. Guitar Hero doesn't do this. Instead, while you'll get sections to shout out to the crowd or sing any vocals, these are few and far between. As well as that, the songs aren't edited down – so if you're singing a song where verses are minutes in between one another, it gets boring quickly just sitting down and waiting for your turn. Granted, there's nothing wrong with listening to a song, but if you're just playing vocals, and you're stuck with practically nothing to do, it gets real boring real fast. Rambling Man by the Allman Brothers Band, while it's a good song, is almost borderline unfun to just sing during its second half.

So in this instance, World Tour still kinda does its own thing compared to Rock Band but yet hasn't really learnt or improved much. Star Power should have really be unique to each player, but this has been made up with the countdown after pausing – a very useful function that neither Rock Band or its sequel possess. With that being said, Rock Band does have some gameplay elements that Guitar Hero should have capitalized on – such as the way you can use Overdrive to save players who failed out or the unique Overdrives for each player. But at least in Guitar Hero – it's much easier to use your overdrive, especially in the cases of a drummer or vocalist.

DIFFICULTY

One of the big reasons why many people converted from Guitar Hero to Rock Band after Guitar Hero 3's release was due to difficulty. Aside from the far more difficult than necessary final set, GH3 also included one of the most broken and unrewarding gameplay modes in history – the Guitar Battles, which placed an emphasis on achieving Mario Kart like items to screw over the opponent than actual skill. This was extremely true during battles against the computer – who cheated like crazy, to the point where if you didn't beat them before their song ended, you'd lose regardless. But enough about that.

Let's kick off with Guitar Hero – who improved their difficulty EXPONENTIALLY. It doesn't feel as overly difficult and hardcore as GH3 did, and you'll find yourself doing much better overall. Hell, there's even a beginner mode (where you basically just strum – no button presses required), and the ability to change difficulty mid-song, which is always a welcome addition. That's not to say that Guitar Hero wussed out or anything. If at all, the game is still much, much more of a hardcore game than Rock Band is – aside from the whole part that if one person fails, everyone fails; the game features some stupidly challenging songs towards the end of the game, such as Van Halen's Hot for Teacher, System of a Down's B.Y.O.B and Joe Satrini's Satch Boogie. The latter of which is challenging enough on any difficulty. But regardless – that's how it should have been in the first place, starting off easy, THEN getting progressively difficult, but not stupidly and overly difficult by the end of the game.

Conversely, Rock Band handles its difficulty slightly better. While the original game doesn't individually score difficulty for each individual member (much like the sequel and the music store does), there is a tiering system in place that helps to clearly tell you how difficult a song is. I've already brought up how Overdrive can be used to save players, which also helps to make the game easier. In general, Rock Band was designed more for a casual audience, and it's not too difficult. However, that's not to say that Rock Band is too easy. You still have to play the songs – there isn't any of the No Fail mode present in Rock Band 2 here.

However, there's plenty of songs both in Rock Band (and the sequel), as well as DLC songs that prove to be an almost absurd challenge. For instance, there's a video of a three player band playing "They're Red Hot" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. They're sightreading (as in they don't know the chart, so they're going by what they see), and fail within seconds. As well as that, there's a video on YouTube of a player fully clearing the song, on drums, on expert. Supposedly, Harmonix employees were freaked out with just how quickly the player fully cleared the song upon its release. Iron Maiden's "Run to the Hills" on the original Rock Band has also caused major issues – Harmonix developers have said that more people have trouble beating it on Hard than Expert on drums. As well as that, there are several Who songs taken from their Live at Leeds album – which are nightmarish on drums. I guess Keith Moon wasn't thinking about how other people would play his beats in a video game.

If anything, Neversoft have definitely fixed Guitar Hero in this regard, while not so much learning from Rock Band, but more from experience than anything else. After all, when Guitar Hero 3 was as overly challenging and broken as a rhythm game was going to get, you can tell that sweeping changes needed to be made. At least the final set actually poses a proper and fair challenge, instead of the game basically saying "LOL GOOD LUCK".

CAREER MODE

Sure, both Rock Band and World Tour are all about playing music co-operatively in a band, but every rhythm game has at least one mode where you play a structured series of sets and get rewarded with money or other unlockable items. World Tour has its Career Mode, while Rock Band actually has two – Band World Tour and Solo Tour. Both modes are distinctly different to one another, and we'll cover this now.

World Tour's career mode tries to deviate slightly from the Guitar Hero norm of playing tiers of songs, and after completing a certain amount, play an encore song, then moving on to the next tier until you've finished them all....but not by too much. In World Tour, the tiering system is still in place – in each tier, you get four sets to play. There are four tiers in all – with 15 gigs to play (four each in the first three tiers, two in the last, and one dedicating to playing custom setlists of songs previously played in the Career Mode). Each gig you play is a proper set though – you work your way through a number of consecutive songs before playing an encore song at the end of most of the gigs. You can play through the career mode five times – once for the band, and once for each of the instruments. Despite these five career modes, it's still exactly the same game, no matter what and how you're playing career mode.

Rock Band's career is slightly different depending on what mode you play. Band World Tour sees you start a band of 2-4 people, and then travel around the world, playing individual songs, custom sets, mystery sets or specialized sets, earning fans and generally...well...be a Rock Band! It's very open and can't really end...but there are some major problems with it. For instance, once you start a Band World Tour – and you've chosen which players are playing which instruments or who the band leader is (i.e. the person that does all the selecting for menus), they're locked. So if you've started a four player Band World Tour, and your drummer can't make it for whatever reason, then you'd need to start a completely new game, delete that member from the band...or just play random setlists in the quickplay menu.

Solo Tour is nowhere near as awesome as Band World Tour. In fact, instead of being as revolutionary as BWT...all you do in Solo Tour is play tiers, similar to what you were doing in Guitar Hero 3 (and even the Harmonix developed Guitar Hero games). Each tier has around five songs, and you need to play all the songs in the setlist to proceed to the next one. Unlike World Tour, you can only play three instruments – lead guitar, vocals or drums. There's no bass career. This is unfortunate, but kind of understandable at the same time (especially when you play Bass in either Guitar Hero or Rock Band). Solo Tour also doesn't let you create your own setlists, unlike Guitar Hero World Tour, and you'll have to do each song individually. Whether or not you find that a problem will vary depending on the person playing the game.

In this regard, it's kind of sad to see that Guitar Hero really hasn't learnt too much from what Rock Band has done. It still seems too...shackled by what the previous games have done that if any form of major change is introduced the career mode, then Neversoft/Activision might feel that the fans would rebel against them. Conversely, Rock Band's Tour modes are well intentioned and have some good ideas, but have some completely stupid elements in them (such as locking members in BWT, or having a mediocre single player mode) – though this was all fixed in the sequel.

USER INTERFACE/PRESENTATION

It's extremely important to be able to see how you're doing, especially in a game like this. As well as that, the way that the game is presented to you is also quite important. Both Rock Band & Guitar Hero have completely different methods of presentation and UI, and whichever one you prefer is based on personal preference more than anything else.

Rock Band is presented in an extremely simple way. The best way to describe it would be to compare it to how Sony treat their Singstar games, in that the frontend is simplified enough where you can quickly go pick a song and play it. The Solo and World Tour modes are again, just simplified where there's little between you and the songs. There's no story, no cutscenes, nothing. Then when you get into the game, there's still plenty of simplicity. Hell, there aren't any crazy animations when you go into Overdrive – just your notechart turning gold.

Though the one problem people have with the game is the design aesthetic of both the menus and the characters. Personally speaking, it's not that bothering – though it's easy to see why people would get sick of the cartoonish and at times, unappealing looking Rock Band characters. Though honestly, the same could be said about the Guitar Hero characters.

The presentation of the UI is also quite nice. The overdrive bar is laid out on the bottom of all the note charts, and the total score is presented in the top right-hand corner of the screen. In addition, is that the game will actually show off how you're doing by showing how many stars you've achieved. In fact, you'll get a noise everytime you get a star, and it's notable enough that you don't need to constantly be looking at how many stars you have to know how many you currently have. It's a neat addition, and beats waiting until the end of the song to know how you went.

As for World Tour...it hasn't really evolved much from Guitar Hero World Tour. The presentation of the game is still that over the top 'metal' feel, as well as feeling much more like a game, if that makes any sense. For instance, each encore is presented with a brief scene of something crazy happening – such as an electrical fire starting. As well as that, there are animated cutscenes, courtesy of animation house Titmouse (best known for Metapocolypse). What's disappointing is that they open and close each career – there's nothing in between, which is weird. Lastly, for some strange reason, the game reuses the biographies for each of the returning characters in World Tour. Surely it couldn't have been that hard to rewrite some new text?

Though what's even weirder is that the cutscenes actually focus on the four new characters that represent the drummer, vocalist, lead and bass guitarists. Which is quite dumb – since for the most part you'll be playing as either a customized character, one of the other returning or licensed characters. It feels quite jarring to know that despite you playing as any of the other characters, you'll get the ending for just the ONE character. Which is kinda dumb.

As for the UI? Well, it's basically the same as Guitar Hero 3's. It feels too much like Neversoft just took the GH3 interface, added in the drum and vocal track. You can't check how many stars you have until the end of the song, but unlike Rock Band, you can specifically check how you went in a particular section – making problem identification for specific areas easier.

DOWNLOADBLE CONTENT

Finally, and quickly, is the issue of downloadable content. I'll go through this quickly, since there isn't all that much to cover. We all know that this has been a huge deal with Rock Band – with such a large variety of music up for download at reasonable prices. But one of the better things about Rock Band's DLC is that (mostly) every week since the game's original launch, there has been some form of DLC released simultaneously on both the Xbox Live Marketplace and Playstation Store.

To better illustrate the point – here's a brief recap on how Activision treated Guitar Hero 3's DLC. All the items were released as track packs, and only as track packs. So if you wanted the Coldplay pack to specifically play Violet Hill, then you're stuck with two songs that you might not want. For the 360 version of Guitar Hero II, this was exactly the same scenario. As well as that, releases were few and far between – and to date, there are only two complete albums up for download (Metallica's Death Magnetic and Oasis's Dig Out Your Soul).

How did World Tour learn from Rock Band in this regard? Simple. DLC is now being released weekly, and you now have the option to download individual tracks instead of being forced to download packs. Granted, there are some songs you can only get as a pack, but when you figure that two of them are Hendrix packs, as well as how stupidly restrictive the Hendrix family are with using ANYTHING related to Jimi, it's understandable. So far, it's all well and good, save for the fact that the songs are exclusive to the Xbox Live Marketplace for two weeks, before hitting the Playstation Network.

From a business perspective, it makes sense. After all, more people own 360's and play these kinds of games on their consoles, so in that regard...I guess it's acceptable. But at the same time, it's still completely wrong. It screws out a potential half of their audience for little reason other than money. It's not like the actual content needs to be recoded too drastically for the each of the different versions of the game.

CONCLUSION

In the time between the original release of Rock Band, and seeing how its release has impacted the rhythm game genre, it's almost unfortunate to see that Activision and Neversoft really haven't learnt too much from what MTV and Harmonix have created. Don't get me wrong though, there are some things that have been learnt (such as an improvement in DLC releases, the pause countdown and the ability to activate Star Power at any point in the song or anyone can earn star power for the band), but at the same time, there are some stupid mistakes that should have been fixed (such as the fact that anyone can use Star Power) as well as problems with the game that were actually perfected in Guitar Hero 3! (Such as text entry and character bios)

But with that being said, 2009 is going to be a very interesting year for both the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises. With Harmonix not working on Rock Band 3, and Activision releasing a rumoured six Guitar Hero games this year (so far, Guitar Hero V, Guitar Hero Metallica, Guitar Hero Smash Hits and two more Guitar Hero On Tour games), there's plenty of an opportunity for Guitar Hero to improve itself. If not immediately, but slowly.

Let's just hope that the yearly exploiting for Guitar Hero actually helps the series.

Darth Plays Call of Duty: World at War

Another year, another Call of Duty game. With Infinity Ward raising the bar with CoD4: Modern Warfare, it was a hard sell to most people that the next iteration in the series would not only be set back in World War 2, but not helmed by Infinity Ward, but another Activision-owned developer, Treyarch; who were responsible for the two CoD console games prior to the release of the Xbox 360, as well as Call of Duty 3, which has often been cruelly and unfortunately shunted.

Let's see how their latest effort fairs:

*...The Treyarch and Activision logos are set to footage of WW2 destruction...soundtracked by Mozart's Dies Irae? Dear god, I'm getting Clockwork Orange flashbacks. And since when did Activision let Treyarch take top billing?
*Wow. This main menu looks oddly familiar. Like a certain game released around the same time last year and was a huge hit...wait a minute! Isn't this the game that uses the same engine that powered that really popular game that wasr released around the same time last year?
*(in options menu) There's an option to turn down the violence? Am I sure I picked up the right game?
*(when starting new game) And I'm being told that this game does have graphic violence? Well it's a WAR GAME, it's not like there's going to be plenty of scenes of the Americans and the Japanese playing cricket, now is there?
*(during opening cinematics). Is it acceptable to say that despite the violent footage being shown...that this actually looks really cool?
*(within first five minutes of the game actually starting) I don't know if I approve of this whole darker and edgier CoD game. I mean, a dude getting a cigarette in his eye, then his throat slit, then another dude getting stabbed...and F bombs dropped? Good lord - talk about appealing to your fans...
*(when told to save a soldier named Ryan, but failed) Bloody hell, I TRIED KEIFER SUTHERLAND, I REALLY TRIE..wait, I had to Save Private Ryan? Heh.
*(while checking Trophies) THERE WAS A TROPHY FOR SAVING PRIVATE RYAN? (immiedately retries level)
*(after completing first level) I got a Silver Trophy for just beating the first level? Wow.
*I never would've thought I'd say this, BUT STOP BLOODY SWEARING GAME. It doesn't suit you at all.
*(while explosions go off, limbs fly off and people scream). The horror....the horror....
*(after an hour of playing) I have how many levels left? Sweet jesus (NOTE: Playing on the easiest difficulty might have been the problem).
*Wow. If I wasn't going for a trophy, this level would have literally taken me ten minutes to beat. My god.
*(when a heavy metal-esque riff starts playing) ...What.
*Wait a tick...the last mission of the Eastern Front campaign is to capture the Reichstag? I can distinctly remember that being last mission you play at the END of the original Call of Duty! (plays through mission)...and I didn't even get to see the dude I played as! That was lame.
*(After dying) What, no War quotes Treyarch? Come on...
*(after getting killed by a Grenade) I see Grenade Spam 07 is back in fashion (sighs)
*(during a Banzai charge) JESUS CHRIST THAT DUDE IS RUNNING TOWARDS M...(gets stabbed). So these guys are supposed to represent the tricky to kill dogs from CoD4 huh? Lame.
*(dogs show up)...That point is moot then.
*The Russians were really never THAT psychotic and violent...where they?
*Wait...what's the story here? There's no real link between these campaigns..hell, the ORIGINAL Call of Duty had links between these campaigns.

So yeah...that's World at War in a nutshell. It's not the best CoD game, but it's certainly far from the worst. The way that the each nation is portrayed is somewhat questionable, with the Russians being treated as psychotic monsters whom want to murder every single German. The best thing about the game is the way the action is portrayed - it's brutal and what not, which does set it apart from other WW2 games, but at the same time, there are elements that seem unnecessary, such as the swearing. And it's short. REAL short. But I guess the MP makes up for that.

Game Over. No More 1UPs.

I don't normally like to comment on games journalism. Either because I can't really find a nice thing to say about it - different people have different tastes and what not. Personally, I've never been a fan of Jeff Gerstmann (before and after that whole saga), but most people like to think of him as some kind of reviewing messiah. Don't get me wrong, he's a funny dude, but I never saw the appeal in him. Actually, it's kinda funny I bring up Jeff - it serves a kind of link between what I'm really talking about here. But I'll get to that in a moment.

Though if you still haven't gotten it yet, I'm referring to 1UP.com and EGM being sold by Ziff Davis and purchased by Hearst Publishing (yes, the inspiration for Citizen Kane), and has become a part of UGO. The basic story is that while both properties were sold off, Hearst/UGO made some broad, sweeping changes to the organization. Specifically, EGM, which had been running for nearly 20 years, was closed down. The GameVideos team, and a HUGE amount of the staff from 1UP and EGM were let go, with about ten or so keeping their jobs (mostly senior writers and the two latest hirings).

Let me explain just how big of a deal this is.

Aside from losing their video team and a good portion of their editorial staff, 1UP runs a podcasting network that is second to none. If I hadn't been exposed to 1UP Yours, I probably would have never gotten into podcasting. As well as that, the other podcasts were top notch - for a while, the GFW Radio (aka 97.5: The Brodeo) podcast was almost essentially weekly listening, and more so when their magazine closed down. For the longest time, 1UP had been the king of gaming podcasts, and as part of the cuts...the podcasts are dead.

You're probably still wondering why the hell I brought up Jeff earlier. Much like Giant Bomb, I've got my problems with 1UP that most people seem to let slide. Stuff like GameVideo's not even considering to put anything less than HD content on their site, or not even considering that most people outside of the US don't have less than 250GB download limits, as well as putting filters into their videos to make them look edgy...but did nothing except try to look like something that was meaningless. Then there's various editorial decisions and comments that I thought were...questionable. For instance, one writer on the site (which I absolutely detest...and is one of the people staying on instead of some of the more talented writers/podcasters) mentioned that although Gears 2 looked good...it looked too good. And this dude's a huge Gears fanboy also.

Granted, with the struggles that 1UP have had recently, it's not a surprise that something like this happened, but with Hearst taking reins and essentially killing off the company....yeah, no-one really saw that one coming. It's a tragedy, and here's hoping that all those who lost their jobs do find some steady employment.

Except that one writer who still has a job. He doesn't deserve it.

The Experience of the Nintendo Experience

When the news first broke about the ‘Nintendo Experience’ – I can honestly say I was surprised. Nintendo Australia actually trying something like the Nintendo World Store in the US. Granted, that’s not exactly what the NE is, but it’s still a nice first step. It’s the first of it’s kinda in Australia, and great to see it debut right here in Melbourne.

The extent of my experiences with the Nintendo experience range from attending a party prior (thanks to Will from Aussie Nintendo) and actually showing up on Day 1. The party itself was kinda cool – I mean, being one of the first in a brand new gaming retail endeavour, and the first in Australia? You can’t say no to that. But otherwise – unless if you were one of the VIP entrants (that weren’t media or an executive in some way), you didn’t really get much out of it. It was also really easy to tell who was whom. The executives were obvious in their suits. The media and VIP guests were easily recognizable in their casual clothes. The cosplayers were also easily recognizable in their cosplays.

Yes. I’m serious about that.

Aside from that, props to Nintendo for giving the VIP winners a copy of Animal Crossing: Let’s Go To The City. And with the Wii Speak peripheral also! Say what you will about Animal Crossing, it’s still pretty cool of Nintendo to actually give away a $130 bundle. Here’s hoping they weren’t planning to transfer their DS characters over...

The next day was the official launch of the store, and my god was it insane. I got there at around 10am (some of the forumites and I had agreed to do some shopping), and already there was a decent queue. When I came back around 10:30, the line had doubled. When I returned at 11:50am to do a podcast, they had only let in 100 people into the actual store. And there was an even bigger line outside. I’d liken it to something like a midnight launch to an upcoming videogame. Personally, I’d never experienced something quite like this.

And then people were being let in...

It was probably a smart idea for Nintendo to advertise the fact that the first 100 entrants to the Experience got a Wii or DS game (the visitors weren’t given a choice). It definitely attracted a hell of a lot of people – which is easily what Nintendo wanted. I honestly bet that they weren’t expecting THAT much of a turn out - just for people to get a copy of Wii Music or a Petz game. But wow, were people happy to get a copy of said game. I’ve heard stories about people getting there at MIDNIGHT for this. Hell, two of the forumites from the Level 3 boards got there are 8:30 in the morning for this. I guess you really can’t argue with the power of a free game – even if it is a bloody Petz game.

The real reason that Jason and I were there was to record a podcast. It was an interesting scenario, because this was only our second live interview based podcast (our first being the eGames one), and everything just fell into place. Really, the only interviews that we had established beforehand were with Kristy and Sandra – the Daisy and Peach cosplayers (who were big Level 3 fans). Everything just fell into place.

By far the most interesting interviews that we did were with Heather Murphy (the head of Public Relations for Nintendo AU) and Debra Mitchell (the head of Public Relations for EB Games Australia). What made this interview interesting was the method we recorded in. You see – we had decided early on that it was going to be really difficult to record using the in-built mic on a Mac Book Pro. I mean, you try doing that. So we decided to bring some mics. Jason couldn’t find his Guitar Hero World Tour mic, and we had no other USB mics on us, so I decided to bring my Singstar mics.

When we got the mics out, this made Heather extremely adamant not to be seen with them. I mean, YOU try explaining to the head of Nintendo PR that the only way that we can interview you and get your voice correct is by using microphones branded by one of your competitors. After explaining to Heather and Debra that it was only audio – there wouldn’t be any video/imagery taken, did the interview commence. As a joke, I tried to take a picture – but she didn’t see that as a joke. Though Jason did pass off the whole Singstar thing as a joke, which was kinda cool.

Interviewing Kristy and Sandra was also rad. What struck me about the girls were just how hardcore they were into Nintendo and Japanese culture. Example – I took a picture of them, and for some stupid reason, shouted out “Very Kawaii” (Japanese for cute). Their respose? “KAWAII DESU NE!” (or something to that effect, I can’t recall precisely). But just how hardcore Nintenphiles these girls were just completely stunned me. For instance, Alioth (one of the Level 3 fourmites) had brought in a Game Boy Advance SP with the Game Boy Camera add-on. Kristy noticed this, and responded that she actually had the Game Boy Printer companion add-on WITH HER. Then both Sandra and Krirsty also brought up how awesome “Dot Matrix” was – which was how the original Game Boy displayed colours. That I can remember vividly.

Otherwise, it was an interesting experience (god, I should really stop using that term). Meeting up with all these people and having a podcast that just fell into place (so to speak), was something awesome. With plans for Nintendo to potentially open up more of these stores in other EB’s in Victoria (and eventually other states), there really does seem to be no stopping Nintendo. It seems like the start of a beautiful friendship....

Things I've Uttered/Thought Of While Playing Need for Speed Undercover

Alrighty. I saw a fantastic blog the other day where the writer was playing through the early parts of a game and proceeded to document his thoughts and utterances as he played. I loved the idea so much that I've decided to show how much I loved it by applying it to another EA game, this time, Need for Speed Undercover. It was a rental (because I'm not really big into the NFS games), but it should make for an interesting little read. Let's begin:

(During EA Title) "When did Black Box start to get independently recognized? Never saw EA LA or Tiburon getting recognized for their work..."

"Wait, this game requires an install!? Are you kidding me? Every single EA game on the PS3 hasn't needed a bloody install, and it runs absolutely perfectly...am I...wait, it's done? Whoa. That was quick".

(helicopters fly past the screen). "So how much do I need to pay to unlock those?"

(game begins as many, many cop cars are chasing me) "Jesus Christ, I know EA wanted me to buy the game, but goddamn, I don't think renting it was THAT much of an offense"

"The evil Asian chick from Die Hard 4 is giving me orders? Well...I guess I'll have to listen...she DID kick that Mac dudes ass...and Bruce Willis'"

(upon entering the open world) "Ok Maggie Q, you've just told me what to do, so where the hell do I start? There's nothing on the mini-map, there's nothing here that tells me what to do (drives around for a bit)...hey a race! Now was it THAT hard to put it on the mini-map?"

(during load screen) "I'm not good...And I'm not bad....philosophy....in an EA game? Now THIS is next gen!"

(race cutscene starts) "So why is it my totally 350Z got replaced with a not-350Z, while everyone else has more rad cars than me?"

(race finishes) "Wait. I beat all those cars...BY THIRTEEN SECONDS. On my first race. In a crappy Nissan. Something is not right. Lemme go into the option...jesus Christ it doesn't take that bloody long to autosave....alright (pushes start button), oh! So that's the main menu. Ok, rad. Let's go into options (does so), gameplay (does so)...there's no difficulty option? Not even a subtitle option?

...oh dear. We're in for a treat" (NOTE: I'm deadly serious about that margin).

(while in pause menu). "Ok, let's check what cars and stuff I can buy. (goes into Car Menu). Ok, let's see...American, Japanese, European...let's go to Japan (clicks – looks through all the cars). Hmm..the Lancer is locked, let's see...wait, what!? (message pops up – reading). You've yet to find this dealership...do you want to use your PLAYSTATION NETWORK WALLET to buy it?

That can't be right...(checks out some other cars – same deal). Oh you have got to be kidding me..(goes into parts menu – same deal). Oh you have GOT to be kidding me..."

"Ooh, Photo Mode (takes picture...game tries to connect to the internet). NO GAME, I DON'T WANT TO CONNECT TO THE INTERNET TO SAVE A PHOTO."

(driving by, suddenly a cop car sights me and chases me) "WHAT!? What the bloody hell did I do now? (drives by a billboard that says "Don't Even THINK about speeding"). Oh. That would explain quite a lot."

(during a cop chase) "STOP BLOODY SPAWNING JUST WHERE I NEEDED TO ESCAPE"

(during a 'Transporter' mission). "You've given me a car with no turbo, poor acceleration and low top speed, STOP TELLING ME TO DRIVE FASTER."

(during a Highway Battle). "Dear god, I'm driving hundreds of kilometres per hour, chasing some dude, and trying best him...it's the bloody Tokyo Highway Battle in peak hour. THIS IS AWESOME."

(while the frame rate breaks up) "Am I watching a car slide show, or am I interacting with it?

"HUH!? Did that car just pass through a barrier? When can I get a ghost car?"

So in a nutshell, this helps to describe NFS Undercover. It's not as bad as IGN says – not even close. It's enjoyable, but there's plenty of problems that do hamper the experience. Stuff like the broken framerate (which is a huge problem), the difficulty – that stuff is problematic. The mini-map is also useless. It doesn't display anything at all, which does not help in the slightest. But there's some inherent fun to actually be had – just don't go expecting something akin to Burnout Paradise. It's also unfortunate that this game will sell a whole hell of a lot more.

I've also easened up a bit on the whole "buy cars/parts via Real Life money". I can understand why EA would include a functionality like this, and I can also see who would actually buy into this – but it's still not right.

eGames 2008: Through the Eyes of Darth...

Last year marked the first time that I went to the eGames Expo as more than just a guest, and become ‘media’. This year marked the first time that I actually had something to contribute to Level 3 than just be someone wandering the show floor with far more experienced media types.

I like to think that last year was my ‘work experience year’. You know, go with the guys who have more experience and see how they work, picking up tricks of the trade and what not. It was good, even though I barely spoke to anyone barring the Level 3 guys. It was the first time that I actually met Jason and the crew, so that was also helpful. A year later, and nearly 30 podcasts behind us, I felt more and more like a media person, and hence, more confident in introducing myself to some of the other media personalities and what not that were present.

I was there for two of the three days, and here’s a recollection of my experiences.
DAY 1 (Friday 14th November):

The day was split into two parts for me. I was there initially before the show opened to set up contacts for people that I wanted to interview for the podcast, then I had to leave due to reasons of examination. From there, I returned. When I got to the show, I took a series of images prior to the opening that I’ve uploaded onto my Picasa account, which show just all the preparation it takes to get a show like this ready to go.


Cosplayers were present across all three days in general. The one moment that blew me away, and this is something that I wish I took a picture of, a Link cosplayer rocking out to Guitar Hero. Also saw a pretty rad Joker (Dark Knight, of course) as well, aside from the various Best exchange of the day came as I returned to the show, some dudes were walking past a Mudkip cosplayer and remarked that she was a Mudkip. Her response? “So I heard you liked Mudkips...”

Sad, but I laughed.

Also had a chance to meet a few people I’m fans of. Specifically related to Australian Gamer. Matt and Yug are awesome guys. Yahtzee shocked me. I was honestly expecting the Yahtzee we know and love from Zero Punctuation...but instead, I got a polite Yahtzee. Which was rad, of course. As was seeing him rock out in Guitar Hero...

Recording with the Aussie Nintendo guys...now that was fun. We recorded literally at 5pm, and was the only thing that we had recorded that day. I had JUST come back from an exam, and I was literally out of ideas and had no plan, but the six dudes made it fun. What was a surprise to me when I was conducting the interview was that YouTube’s Blunty3000 was there. I had no idea he was at the show to begin with, and within recording distance.

Would have personally loved for him to get more involved in the show, but he was busy checking footage – and I honestly didn’t want to bother him that much. It made for a fun recording though...even if it’s a little non-sensical and almost completely directionless. There were plenty of moments that I wish we did record, especially from one Lamington Child...

Speaking of Lamington Child, he possibly had the moment of the day. I went walking with Keith to go take some pictures around the show (which is where we saw the Link cosplayer playing Guitar Hero), and when we returned to the Media Office, he was re-enacting the Caramelldansen dance. I literally stood there in the doorway stunned.


Meeting Craig Lowdnes and Jamie Whincup was surreal. I mean, it was literally a last minute thing, and while I’m not a big fan of motorsport...it was something. Hearing Craig talking about gaming was also something cool.

There was more PS3 representation than I thought would actually be there. For instance, Tomb Raider Underworld was ONLY shown on a PS3 (despite Eidos’s best attempts to trick gamers into thinking that version of the game doesn’t exist), Resident Evil 5 was only at the Sony booth, Mirrors Edge and NFS: Undercover were PS3 only. Matter of fact, the only NEW game for the 360 was either Gears of War 2, or in one of the stands, Guitar Hero World Tour...

Speaking of Guitar Hero WT, where was it? The full setup wasn’t there! That would have been a great play! And better yet, where was Rock Band?

I should allude a little more on the RE5 point. One thing that I noticed about the show was that in general, there was more unreleased stuff than last year. Obviously RE5, but Ubi also showed off Prince of Persia, Shawn White’s Snowboarding (Wii and 360 verisons) and Naruto: The Broken Bond. Almost all of the games at the Funtastic/Disney booth were unreleased (Pure being the exception). Nintendo’s even had a few – in the form of Animal Crossing: Let’s Go To The City and Kirby Superstar Ultra. EA had NFS: Undercover. Sony also showed off quite a few unreleased PSP games, including LocoRoco 2 and Resistance Portable. And while not at the Sony booth, Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm was shown off...

HOWEVER, AFA Interactive took the cake with all of their games being unreleased. Basically, these were the D3/Marvellous Games, which included Bangai-O Spirits (brutally hard), Little Kings Story (which is making its first public appearance outside of Japan), Matt Hazard (which I really hate hearing about), some game based around Ben 10 and more.

DAY 2 (Saturday 15th November)

Day 2 was really memorable for me. And I’m not just saying that. I didn’t spent as long at the show as I did the day before, but there was one main reason why I was there. I’ll get to that in a moment. Anyway, experiences:

Interviewing Matt and Yug was awesome. It was literally a 10 minute thing that was slightly more prepared than the Aussie Nintendo ‘interview’ I did the day beforehand, even if I did miss out on a couple of things that I wanted to mention. It was also pretty rad to also have Yahtzee there – he basically played the same role that Blunty played the day beforehand.


The big reason why I was there was that I was a participant on a gaming trivia challenge hosted by Yahtzee – and was participated by Jason and myself, Matt and Yug, and two of the dudes from GameArena (who didn’t show). It was fun – I find that I’m better at actually answering questions about gaming than re-enacting games without using much in the way of dialogue, but actions and sound effects. Re-enacting GTA 4 and Tomb Raider is harder than it looks. And I will gladly give Yahtzee credit for his “guess the game screenshot obscured by kittens”. Yes. Kittens.

Oh, and we won. That was rad. In the end, there was a huge deficit between us and Australian Gamer, but we didn’t care. But everyone had fun.


Almost immediately afterwards, Jason had to leave, and I (finally) got to meet up with our forumites. Well, the ones that had come, anyway. It was still really awesome – they were happy I was there (because I normally can’t come to a get-together, because of work). The get together at Galactic Circus was fun – actually managed to not (completely) suck at Guitar Freaks, and played a decent run on Drum Mania. Also had some fun with SF4, actually WON a few bouts (against the computer)...to which I then got my arse kicked in two separate games by some dude who played Blanka and Alioth who played Sagat. The latter I was playing as Akuma, whom is rad and all, but takes damage like CRAZY.

As well as that, Lux, Ali and I indulged ourselves in a bit of Mario Kart DS. Made us look like huge nerds, but really, it was either that, play Daytona, or...watch someone play Initial D. Now do you understand?


And to top this all off? There were some women arguing with some dude on the way home. Particularly loud too – possibly drunk. They were swearing their heads off, threatening to stab someone with a bottle...scary stuff, because really, it could get just a little out of control and someone could have been stabbed. But hey, what can you do? It was a Saturday night and all...

Overall, it was a fun experience. We all had a great time, and the show itself was a big improvement over last year. Some general thoughts about the show:

Is there really a point for Nintendo to KEEP showing Wii Sports? I mean, the game is two years old, and everyone who owns a Wii has the game anyway – there’s better stuff out there to show off what the Wii can do than just Wii Sports...

Kudos for Sony for showing off a good mix of old and new stuff.

Hey Microsoft, why don’t you want to show off how awesome the 360 is? The first year, there was a HUGE area for the 360. The second year was a massive downsize. This year? No official presence for the 360, unless you count the Gears of War 2 bunker. And hell, none of the 360’s there were playing anything unreleased – the only ‘new’ things there were Gears of War 2 and Guitar Hero: World Tour.

Speaking of the latter point, you could argue that because Microsoft already have the sales, they don’t need to show anything off...but there are still people out there not convinced enough to buy a 360. Like myself.

I felt like I should have done more interviewing with people. Or at least pick up my own recording device and recorded people on the show floor.

So yeah, that’s eGames 2008 in a nutshell. Can’t wait for next years show – here’s hoping that we can record more stuff.