Mini Reviews - A Concise Collection of Movie, Music and Game Reviews - March 2012
After not blogging for a considerable amount of time, I have decided to write reviews for some of the movies, music and games I've experienced since my last post.
A political thriller directed by and starring George Clooney, the plot follows Ryan Gosling's character Stephen Meyers, a staffer of Clooney's character Governor Morris during his democratic campaign trail to become President. This leads Gosling's character to experience how dirty politics can be and what it takes to be in the line of work.
Clooney's direction is great throughout, which enables the dialogue heavy script to unravel its twists and turn at a good pace. The whole cast are great from start to finish, especially Gosling and Clooney. I definitely recommend buying this movie whether you have an interest in politics or not, as the outstanding cast portray how seedy getting power within politics can be. All in all a great movie.
Warrior is one of those films much like Drive that should have been nominated for many oscars, but got mostly snubbed apart from Nick Nolte who thoroughly deserved the nomination. Enough about the Oscars though, Warrior was a film I was anticipating for quite sometime. This was due to me being an avid mixed martial arts fan, as MMA is the backdrop for Warrior's story. I'll keep the synopsis brief to not spoil the movie. Warrior is an emotional and entertaining story about two brothers who haven't spoken for years, due to past family issues and both practise and compete in MMA to win money for their own personal reasons.
Throughout the whole movie the director Gavin O' Connor keeps the audience emotionally gripped with intense drama and well choreographed fight sequences, that keep the pace of the movie perfect right to the end. Tom Hardy as Tommy creates a character that is deeply saddened and encapsulated in rage (gives us an idea of what to possibly look forward to from Hardy's Bane in The Dark Knight Rises) which is magnified within Tommy's fighting style. Joel Edgerton as Tommy's brother Brendan is the polar opposite in terms of his aggression he just strives to do the best he can for his wife and daughters, which is represented in his methodical fighting style. These stellar performances are topped off by the gripping and poignant performance by Nick Nolte as the brother's Father. This is another must see movie, one of the best from 2011. Whether your an MMA fan or a fan of well made gripping movies, this is for you. Definitely Buy it.
Exit Ten - Give Me Infinity
The second full album from English band Exit Ten, Give Me Infinity shows the bands maturity. This is due to a varying rock style, slightly differing from the sound of Remember The Day and This World They’ll Drown. Although it is musically slightly different, the same rock foundations remain and the Reading band manage to pull off another solid album. Which clearly shows that its time the band got the recognition they rightfully deserve. I recommend any rock fan to give them a listen, especially to my personal favourites off of Give Me Infinity Smoke and Lion, but also youtube their classic tracks Resume Ignore and Warriors.
I Am Alive - Xbox Live Arcade (1200 Points)
After four years and the switching of studios half way through development I Am Alive finally made it to the players, as a download title instead of full retail game, but was it really worth the wait? In short not really, it's all a bit Meh!
I must clarify that if this was in fact full retail it wouldn't have scraped a 5, which adds to my disappointment as ever since the teaser trailer I was anticipating a great story driven survival game. Now more than ever, especially after the success of Ubisoft's brilliant Assassin's Creed franchise.
The game dons a drab grey colour scheme throughout, which suits the games depressing end of the world type story. You play as Adam who after the mysterious "Event" goes back to his home city in search of his wife and daughter. This brings into the mix the basic gameplay mechanics that you will use throughout the game. Firstly your introduced to the climbing mechanic and the games stamina and health bar system. As throughout I Am Alive you have to search for limited supplies to rejuvenate your health due to damage and your stamina from climbing too far or the annoying dust (which I will mention later). You can also climb further by collecting pitons which let Adam rest during a climb. Action within the game is where the game never changed from the first encounter to the last. The game features a pistol, machete and later in the game a bow. The encounters start when a lone person or a gang notice you, you then pretend to surrender and cut their throat when they get close. If theres more than one, you then shoot the one with the gun, take his bullets and deal with the others, either by shooting them, QTE stabbing them or an environmental kill. This varies only by them throwing more enemies at once at you and an armoured variety of enemies. This ultimately gets stale very quickly, which is disappointing when the games combat could have been much more intriguing.
There are many more flaws with the game such as boring sidequests, a stamina draining dust you can't see through and the length of the main game wasn't great, a mere 3 and a half hours. Although for an arcade game which it is now, if I had played the additional difficulty and completed all the sidequests which I couldn't put myself through, it would be a decent length game for 1200 points. The things I liked about I Am Alive were it's premise and it's checkpoint system. The checkpoint system enables a player 3 lifes per chapter and if they use them all you have to restart the episode. This retro approach was great, but the remainder of I Am Alive just didn't live up to what I personally wanted and expected from Ubisoft. If you've a spare 1200 points give it a try and see for yourself, as other people who've reviewed the game gave its 8's, which puts it down to personal preference. But in my opinion it still doesn't come close to bettering the PS2 survival game S.O.S The Final Escape.
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