Alright, some background. I may not talk about it as much as Nintendo, Steph, or Desmond, but I love Spiderman. Love it. Comics, games, and especially the Sam Raimi/ Tobey Maguire movies. The first Spiderman was and is one of my all time favorite movies. I saw it 11 times in the theaters. Seriously. 11 times. That being said, the new Amazing Spiderman movie that came out this week, staring Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone...
Sucks.
Hard.
"Is that the best you got? That sucks."
Let me just describe the Peter Parker this film introduces us to. This is a Peter Parker, who skateboards. That should have been my first warning. The film portrays him as an outcast, yes, but not the lovable nerd who really wants to belong, like the Peter we all know and love, more the brooding, ear-bud wearing, depressed kid, whose seems like he is choosing to be an outcast. Oh, and he's a genius, I guess? Cause he understands his fathers formula gibberish and he knows how to use Google? Second, and probably most damning of this pre-spider bite Peter, is in the first 15 minutes of the movie. This Peter not only isn't really the target of bullies, but actually tries to stop a bully (the ever present Flash Thompson) from picking on another kid. This may seem ok, but this is Peter before the bite. The Real Peter would have never purposely have put himself in harms way and actively confronted Flash. That is the whole setup for a scared, awkward kid, becoming a hero.
"I'm laughing at how wrong my casting is"
This Peter has absolutely none of the natural charm or "nice-guy" personality that either the Maguire or the comic Peter has. This is important because the lovable loser to lovable hero transition IS Spiderman. The Dark Knight made about 8 zillion dollars by darkening up the Batman franchise, so why wouldn't it work here? Because he's not brooding, he's not dark, for the love of Stan Lee, he ISN'T Batman.
As a film, this Spiderman drops the ball just as hard. The biggest win of the previous series was Raimi's ability to develop the characters slowly, fully, and most important, realistically. Pete and MJ have lived next door for years, and been friends for a long time, before the romance slowly blossoms through out the 3 films. TASM instead thinks a realistic romance is to introduce the 2 lovers in one scene, one scene where Peter almost cost's Gwen her job, then the next scene they have dinner together with her family, where he basically gets kicked out for pissing of her dad ( Denis Leary, who is too awesome to be in this crap), and then they are in love and tells her he's Spiderman. Seriously. 3-4 scenes together and it's love and the secret identity is out the window.
"Hi I'm Peter, I'm Spiderman, and your name is?"
Speaking of secret identity, this Spiderman takes his mask of freaking every 5 minutes. In front of some kid in a burning car, in front of the cops, in front of Gwen, the Lizard, the police again...seriously EVERYONE of importance in the movie sees Spidey unmasked. What should be, and always has been a big deal in any superhero story, happens multiple times, with little fan-fair and virtually no consequence.The only excuse for this I can think of is that they paid for Andrew Garfield's pouty face and feathered hair, so they had to find every excuse to show it.
Did I mention The Lizard looks like a Goomba from the live action
Mario Bros. movie?
Gwen is also a completely blank and empty character. She is introduced as the pretty girl who stops Flash from messing up Peter's hair, then all of the sudden she is also a genius who works at Oscorp after school for the genius Curt Connors (the villainous Lizard). Oh, also she's the police chiefs daughter. Who she is connected to is a much bigger part of her character than any actual substance or personality. Most of the time she just swoons and cleans Peters wounds and gets sad about stuff.
Finally, the plot. The trailers for TAMS all said that this would be the "untold story" of Spiderman and delve into the mystery of what happened to Peter's parents. Well the first 10-15 minutes of the movie hold up to that, setting the scene for a mystery of who was after his parents that made them run away leaving Pete with Aunt May and Uncle Ben, did they really die in a plane crash, and why was Mr. Parker working on spider genetics? These mysteries lead Peter to meet his dad's old colleague, the above mentioned Dr. Connors, then drops all the stuff about his parents I just mentioned. Seriously, the circumstances around his parents disappearance don't just go unanswered, but are completely absent from the remaining 2 hours of the film.
"It's real simple....the script writers forgot to finish our plot, because they needed more scenes of Peter brooding
The film does this on many occasions, and really lends to it's disjointed feel. It brings up plots, characters, and settings, only to abandon them moments later. Norman Osbourne dying and his lackey going to illegally test cures on veterans at the VA hospital? Yeah we just let that go cause...uh...Oh and Daily Bugle wanting freelance photos of the Lizard, so Spidey sets up a trap in the sewer, with his camera webbed to the wall like in the comics...and then he doesn't get any pictures and we never see anything about the Bugle again. Even Uncle Ben's killer (oh uh spoiler alert... I guess) gets hunted down for about 3-4 minutes and then Peter gets a girlfriend and promptly stops caring.
"This new Spiderman movie? Crap....Crap....mega Crap"
I could go over the over dramatic acting (I'm looking at you Sally
Field), really boring music score, and jerky, jarring edits and cuts,
but that's not why I hated this film. The reason I didn't like this
Spiderman movie when I love all things Spiderman is that this movie, my
friends, is NOT my Spiderman.
The blade is actually called he Monodo, which was the original title for this game.
If you don't know the harrowing story of how this game finally came to be released in North America, review the awesome story of Operation Rainfall here. It's a great story.
I'm not gonna talk about any of that, rather just this game that I've been playing for over 60 hours now. Plenty to talk about.
Xenoblade is JRPG with Westernern RPG highlights, and a MMORPG-like battle system. A little of everything. Let's go one at a time.
The story. The story is as Japanese as you can get. Seriously. You live and explore upon the massive bodies of 2 dead(?) gods called Bionis and Mechonis. One is home to Homs (humans) Entia (bird people), and the Nopon (little anime blobby things). Mechonis is home to the apply named Mechon (killer robots). I can't even begin to explain the whole story as it is, to but it kindly, batshit insane. Seriously, every few hours they add some other element to the story that just keeps getting bigger and weirder and more incomprehensible. Luckily, through all this, it actually does a very good job of at least making you care deeply about the characters (except Riki. Riki sucks.) The voice acting is decent if a little annoying during battles, and super britishy, which I like. The main crux of the story revolves around a sacred sword (more like a lightsaber than a traditional sword ) that is the most powerful weapon the Homs have against the invading Mechon, and Shulk, the young man destined to wield it. I told you, very Japanese.
Don't let his cute looks fool you, this guy is the Jar-Jar Binks of Xenoblade
Now the western RPG elements. The game actually controls in a third person adventure view, and one of the main focuses is on the huge explorable enviroments. When I say this games locations are vast and beautiful, I'm talking BIG. The coolest part is that everything you see is actually there, ready to be explored. See something at the base of that waterfall way in the distance? Go ahead and jump in and swim over. You get rewarded for discovering new locations and landmarks in the field with EXP and such, which actually makes exploring everything usefull and a much more interesting way to level up than simple grinding. While the game is on the Wii, and no the graphics aren't as good as Skyrim, they are amazing in the scope of the fields, draw distance and sheer size. Get up close to things and textures get rough, but stand on top Frontier Village and look out over the forest below and you will physically gasp at the sheer splendor of it all. Some of the best environmental and level design I've ever seen in a game.
Finally, the MMO inspired battle system. I actually think, this is where the game shines for me and has kept me playing for so long. Battles are real time, with a 3 man (or lady, or Nopon) team. Instead of mana and action points, you have cooldowns. Each skill can be used over and over, but each has it's own cooldown time. Skills range from attacks, to ether attacks (spells), heals, and Auras (buffs). Managing when to use skills and getting the timing down is what separates hacking and slashing from some real deep strategy. Example, early on you are faced with a foe who cannot be hurt unless they are knocked down. Using different skills, I can make Shulk inflict break on the foe by attacking from the side, which sets Reyn up to us a skill to topple the foe, and Sharla can blast away at the now helpless enemy. You actually only control the lead character yourself, while the other two are AI operated. This actually works very well, and you can tell the developers did a lot of work on the AI, because your comrades rarely seem to do anything stupid, and generally seem to understand your tactics.
The large array of enemies themselves, are also one of the games many draws. While some enemies get the recycled and recolor treatment of most RPG's, there are some truly stand out and awe enspiring baddies to contend with. In particular are the Unique and sometimes HUGE monsters that simply roam the Bionis. Docile but very powerful, you can almost always choose if you want to try and fight your way through these behemoths or simply sneak around them, and maybe come back when you are strongers. It's not odd to encounter creatures 20-30 levels higher than you in any given location, making you hunger for the time when you can come back and slay them to collect whatever loot and EXP they have.
Notice this dude is level 90 while the group is only level 22
So the long and short is that there is a whole lot of stuff going on in Xenoblade. I haven't even touched on the never ending quests you can get from villagers, to the affinity system between your team and the different regions around the world. There is gem crafting ( giving weapons and armour little perks), treasure hunting, a city to rebuild (by finding material and money all over the worlds), hell even a psudo dating sim in the form of "Heart to Heart" conversations scattered everywhere.
I really just wanted to say one thing with the entry. If you have a Wii (95.9 million of you do), and you like video games, and you don't play this one, you should be punched. Seriously, right in bread basket.
I don't say a game is one of the best ever, everytime a new game comes out like some people on the internets, but Xenoblade Chronicles, is simply one of the finest pieces of software to come out on any console in the past 10 years. The overall world Monolith Soft made is vibrant and fluid, feeling like a real place just begging to be discovered. The Characters are all likeable and interesting (except Riki, Riki sucks) and the story, while crazy, is just engaging and fast moving enough to keep you wanting to see what other wackyness will be thrown your way next. Most importantly (always, in my book) is the gameplay. Never has this game seemed repetative or forced. If I don't feel like going forward with the story, there are tons of things to do, if I get tired of trying find that last piece of Hode Wood I need, I can go explore a vast lake or mountainside. Never does the game bottleneck and make you feel like you are going through the motions. Even the fact that they include a quick, menu based, warp/travel system, from the get go, means backtracking is part of the fun, not a chore. Simply put, I cannot reccomend this game highly enough.
Except Riki, Riki sucks.
Next blog, I actually plan on not talking about a game, but the new Spiderman movie. The Raimi?Maguire Spiderman is my all time favorite superhero movie, and this new one does not look like it will change that. But I'm gonna go see it with an open mind and a love for Spidey, and maybe it'll prove me wrong.
See ya true believers.
I have stuff to say and you're going to read it! Or choose not to! I write about cool stuff like Video Games, Music, Politics, and my awesome life with my awesome wife! And not so cool things like Politics again, bad video games, bad music and fire.
