Rampage (Movie)

Of all the games that you could make a movie of, why in the name of FUCK would you make a movie out of Rampage?!  I mean look at it.

It was a fairly simple arcade game released in 1986 where you controlled one of three large creatures as you punched buildings until they fell down for points.  How the fuck do you make a movie out of THAT?

Well they did it by hiring The Rock and having him be best friends with a CG gorilla that he communicates with via sign language because they were ripping off Jurassic World.  The movie starts with Evil Corp having an experiment they were conducting in space go wrong and the containers of evil juice they were working on drop to earth.  A wolf, crocodile and of course, The Rocks gorilla get a face full of the evil juice and turn into giant...RAMPAGING....monsters (eh! EH!?!).  The monsters get mind controlled by evil corp to come into town and start smashing it up but because the rock is best buddies with the gorilla he talks him down and together they kill the wolf and the crocodile and save the day (oh yeah, spoilers).

It's not so much that the movie is bad, because when the source material you're working with is so basic it's hard to fuck it up, but it's just PAINFULLY pointless.  Almost every big action movie released in the last 10 years, action movies better than this, have bits in it where buildings get smashed.  Only difference between those movies and this is the incredibly stupid relationship between The Rock and his gorilla so if you're life long dream was to see The Rock get flipped off by a CG ape then this movie was clearly made for you.


It's not bad enough to laugh at or be angered by like House of the Dead or Bloodrain but it's also not good enough to warrant a real watch either.  If you REALLY want to see it then wait until you can find it in a Tesco's bargain bin for £1 but until then just play the game instead.

Spoilers: Really a Big Deal?

I recently did a blog post about how I felt regarding ATLUS blocking streams and video content of Persona 5 and how the main reason for this choice seems to be an overly zealous effort to help people to avoid any kind of spoiler for that title.

Whenever there's a new game, especially a story driven one, the one thing people panic about above all else is hearing spoilers for that game before they've played it.  I find that spoilers are a lot easier to avoid than most people make it out to be.  The way people go on you might feel that the internet is some kind of massive spoiler danger zone where you can't go on any website at all without having something spoiled for you.  Aside from this being far from the case with most websites that I see writing about new games take quite careful measures to avoid spoiling anything usually I find that even if you do catch a spoiler it's not really a big deal.

Back when Resident Evil 7 came out I started streaming it right away and I had a grand old time.  Lot's of discussion about the game itself and the direction that the series had taken as well as just general banter and fucking around in the chat, streaming that game was a ton of fun. 

There will be spoilers for Resi 7 from here so if you've not played and you're THAT worried about it, skip the next paragraph

So one night I'm streaming a section nearer to the end of the game where you're dealing with the Baker's son, Lucas.  Everything is going well when some guy turns up in my Twitch chat.  He drops a greeting and then a few minutes later posts something along the lines of "Ethan dies and you end up playing as his wife at the end of the game".  So some people might think "WHOA NOW! Don't tell me that! what the hell?!" but for me, while the fact was shocking it just made me curious to play longer for that evening than I originally intended.  Yeah sure, a key event in the story was "spoiled" for me but it was spoiled with no context and that's why I felt that it wasn't a big deal.  Plus his spoiler was shit and without dropping any end game spoilers in this paragraph, he was clearly a player who hadn't finished the game

Here's maybe a better way of explaining what I mean.  Imagine that you're playing Final Fantasy 7 way back when for the first time.  Let's say your friend approaches you gets overly excited and drops the "Aeris dies" spoiler at you.  Is that really such a big deal?  Wouldn't it make you want to hurry up and get to that point to see what the fuck he's on about?  How does she die? Where? Why? What was Cloud doing?  Is it mandatory? A spoiler like that, at least for me, just raises more questions than anything else.  If someone told me that she dies before I got to that point I'd just want to hurry up to that point to find out what the fuck he's on about.

I've actually already had some Persona 5 spoilers thrown at me on one of those silly nights I decided to browse the video game board on 4chan despite the efforts of ATLUS but all the spoiler did was sort of confuse me.  Now I HAVE to get to that point of the game and find out what the fuck is going on because I single sentence about one character just, once again, raised more questions that I need to play through and answer for.  Plus there's even a chance the person posting could have been flat out wrong or misunderstanding things so I've got no reason to lose any enjoyment from just a few contextless words like that.

People need to chill and if you care that much just avoid any places that may post that stuff for a while.  Surely if you're THAT passionate about a title where spoilers would ruin everything for you, you'll probably be playing it through pretty quickly anyway.  I get why it sucks but at least to me, spoilers are not such a big deal.

Bravely Default

So I've not quite finished this game yet, I'm on the final battle but it's giving me some issues and I could be a while before I get the ending so I'm going to write a little bit about this game now.

Bravely Default is one of those games that I heard people talking a lot about back when it was first released but because of the 3DS region locking I was never able to actually play it.  Eventually, I got my mother to bring a EU copy with her when she came to visit me in Japan and I jumped right in.

The game follows the adventures of 4 characters who have to go around the world of Luxendarc and revive 4 elemental crystals.  On their adventures they have to fight an evil empire and as you defeat the generals you gain asterisks which allow you to change into their job.  That's the general plot of the game but each area for each crystal has its own arc that plays out so you aren't just jumping from dungeon to dungeon.

It's very easy to sum up Bravely Default's game play because it's just classic Final Fantasy.  It's SO classic Final Fantasy that it would have made more sense to call this game Final Fantasy 15 and call that game something like Men's Fashion Model Adventure or something.  Your party of 4 never change but as I mentioned before you have a job system with a pretty wide selection of things to choose from once you do the side quest to unlock it.

The combat is also pretty much classic Final Fantasy but the BP system does manage to go a good job of making things a little more interesting.  Each turn you are allowed to "Default" which is the games way of saying defend and doing this will raise your BP count by 1 and you can stock a max of 3.  Then on your next turn you can "Brave" which is where you expend a BP in order to make another action that turn.  So if you brave for one turn then the next turn you can make 2 attacks or you can use a skill that requires BP without having to wait for the count to go up back to zero from whatever minus figure you end up at.  Going negative BP means that the character can't act until his counter returns to 0 and you get 1 BP at the start of every turn.

The game also makes use of something called Sleep Points which build up as you close the lid on your 3DS.  Every 8 hours you are granted 1 sleep point for a max of 3 and these allow you to make a free attack at any point during combat.  Hitting start will freeze time and you can just do whatever the fuck you like.  If you have more than 1 SP you can even brave during the time freeze and really ruin someones day. 

There are also features using street pass where you can send people moves from your party for them to summon and use in combat.  Living it Japan is awesome for this because walking round town for a while means that I'm pretty likely of passing someone with the game and being sent some insane full power special attack for me to use at any time.  The game also has a feature where you build a town which grants you special items and the like to buy at save points.  Putting multiple villagers on a building project lowers the time it takes to build and you gain more villagers by street passing.  The town can also come under attack from optional bosses called Nemesis but they don't do any damage they just kind of fly there until you decide to take them on.  Not taking them on doesn't mess you up in any way.

*SPOILERS HERE*

As much as I love the game and find it hard to mention any real stand out problems with it, the method for getting the true ending is complete and utter bullshit. 

After you revive the 4 crystals things get fucked up and you end up in an alternate world where the crystals aren't revived.  So you have to revive them all over again but this time you can break them and breaking a crystals puts you on the path of the normal ending.  To get the true ending you have to revive them all like 4 or 5 fucking times and the whole thing gets pretty fucking tedious because nothing really changes except the bosses get ever so slightly stronger.

It's fucking bullshit busy work and I swear to god this true ending better be worth all that goddamn hassle.  It's a huge tarnish on an otherwise really good game.

*End Spoilers*

For RPG fans, Bravely Default is one of those must have games for your 3DS collection.  It's well polished, has a good length and apart from some dodgy English voice work there isn't a hell of a lot wrong with it.  Go play it, now, it's awesome.

Into The Gloom

Into the Gloom is a strange little horror game I picked up on Steam for about £2.  It's indie developed and it has pixel graphics but don't let that put you off because we have something that's actually half decent on our hands.

Story wise you play as a first unnamed protagonist who wakes up in a hospital completely alone.  As you walk around you find blood smears and eventually a dead body that has been hung to the ceiling.  It's up to you to escape from the hospital and get away from whatever it may be that stalks you in the darkness.

(Minor Spoilers Ahead)

After your first play through you find out that you are a young man who is stuck in a coma and you are wandering around the inside of his conscience.  Being found and killed by the strange figure at the end of the game gets you the bad ending which involves a highly depressing sequence about how you bankrupt your family and everyone forgets you.

(End Spoilers)

Game play in Into The Gloom is fairly simple.  You have to wander around, find items and solve puzzles.  There isn't much in terms of combat but that's because there aren't really any enemies.  Over time you find notes that help with puzzles and give you more insight into the story.  The puzzles in Into The Gloom are actually pretty good since they seem really obtuse and stupid at first but once you realise what's going on then they are deceptively simple.

I've only played up to the first ending at time of writing but as you make runs of the game it "unlocks" more notes for you to find which in turn unlocks more puzzles for you to piece the mystery together.  The game is quite short but there are 5 or 6 different endings for you to find so it may take you a little longer to get everything than first thought.

Horror-wise, the game isn't all that scary (at least to me) but you can tell that some genuine effort has been made to lay on atmosphere rather than relying on cheapo jump scares for lets play bait.  There are a few jump scares but the ones I encountered in my first run weren't all that common and one of them did get me pretty good without being too over the top.  Maybe for someone a bit more sensitive the atmosphere of Into the Gloom may take hold but if you're a big fan of horror games then it may fall a bit flat.

All that said, for the price tag I'd say it's absolutely worth a shot.  It's a very simple game that you can enjoy in a short, lazy evening and once beaten there is a good bit of replay value to be had in order to get the extra endings.  Put it this way, if you had a  choice between Into the Gloom and The Evil Within, I'd say go for this one.  You'll save a shit ton of money and be a hell of a lot less disappointed. 

Annoyed by Silent Hill: Revelation

Goddamnit, I've not even seen this movie and just watching the trailer makes me angry.  Before anyone asks why I haven't seen this movie yet, well, 1. It's not out in Japan yet, and 2. I don't want to give them money for this monstrosity.

What I'm about to write isn't so much a movie review, just a few reasons why this film really pisses me off.  So, obviously it's supposed to be based on the third game in the series, this was common knowledge before the film came out, but, it ALSO follows the first movie.  You know what this means? It means it can't possibly follow the third game, because the first movie had basically nothing to do with the Silent Hill games bar cameos from the monsters and the whole changing world thing (and they even fucked that up)

OK, this article is going to have a spoiler for Silent Hill 3 in it, so if you haven't played it by now, stop reading.

So, in Silent Hill 3, the thing that gets Heather (the main character) to the town is that Claudia (The main antagonist) kills her dad.  Well in this fucking movie, Claudia appears to be absent and her dad gets fucking kidnapped.  Why is he being kidnapped?  Harry Mason wasn't even mentioned in the first movie.  I get why they didn't like him in the third game, since he ruined their shit in the first game, but he's just kind of popped up in this film.

But I'm sure the film comes up with a bunch of shitty reasons for it's shitty plot, but there is something worse that REALLY gets to me.

This is Vincent, what seems to be Heathers boyfriend or some shit.  But wait, Vincent wasn't like that in the game was he?

That's because he didn't even come CLOSE to being Heathers boyfriend, mainly because he was one of the fucking antagonists, but on top that, he was one of the most interesting characters in the whole damn story, and his entire role has been reduced to THAT?! Fuck....

Also why is Pyramid Head still in this damn thing?  He's a monster specific to James Sunderland, please stop putting him in places he doesn't belong (i.e. Anything other than SH2)

I want to see this movie so I can have a good proper rant about the damn thing, but I don't want to give them money for this crap.  Maybe when it pops up in a used DVD store I'll pick it up but until then, I'm just going to get mad at the trailer.