Ben Skipper's Wonder emporium of Wonder and stuff

Living Up to the Hype?

2007-09-28T05:01:00.001-07:00

Hype is the unavoidable beast in media, a geek generated hysteria which when at its largest can render a game the second coming or the ultimate disappointment. Hype, to me, is like the nuclear powered logger from Thunderbirds, it hacks its way through the forest of gaming discussion destroying anything that dares to oppose its power. If handled correctly it can guarantee sales but at its worse one mistake can bring everything tumbling down or hinder a titles popularity. The magnitude of hype that has followed Halo 3 for the past year and a half is the Holy Grail of marketing for a number of reasons, namely that most of the advertising is done by the gamers themselves with forum discussion, role playing or flash games.

Assassins Creed wowed the gaming public with its CG trailers in 2006, the blend of Prince of Persia acrobatics and the atmospheric setting started to power up the hype machine, however at E3 this year the ever lovely Jade Raymond showed us a disappointing demo. It was too simple and clearly unfinished, the animations weren’t as fluid as we hoped and the combat system was far too watered down. The result was a loss of faith in the game and in a year so chock full of titles; unless you’re lucky enough to be filthy rich then you have to be careful as to what you buy.

Call of Duty 4, which came out of nowhere and made fans of the crowd at the E3 Microsoft Conference with a stunning gameplay video which showed that the series still had life in it despite the change in setting, later on during their presentation they also announced that they would follow the trend started by Bungie, a public Beta. These Betas are superb marketing tools; Halo 3’s was a resounding success, a reward to the gamers for their allegiance to the series. These Betas are major events, thousands of people will want to take the opportunity to play a game before its release and it’s also the best way to test servers so the game runs smoother come its release.

If a hype machine crashes, sometimes it’s a small repair before it’s up and running again but other times it becomes a full blown disaster that doesn’t just render the game a failure but can destroy developers credibility and ruin entire franchises. Oh yes, it’s that old chestnut Driv3r, the gaming equivalent of Pearl Harbour.

Tanner was back, the game was going to give players a chance to have Hollywood style police chases, the game that would blow Grand Theft Auto out the water, it was going to be awesome, then it came out. I don’t think the gaming industry had seen such a dark time since Atari and the ET fiasco way back in the 80s. There was mass panic in the streets (read: internet), rampant ‘discussion’ everywhere over the suspicious scores given by some magazines most notably PSM2’s 9/10 which in turn began the wild conspiracy theories about pay offs and such which will forever be known as Driv3rgate.

Bioshock, the highly anticipated release from Irrational suffered a unique problem linked to its hype. The major websites had all rated it so highly ranking the game up there with other classics but when Edge magazine decided to give it an 8 all hell broke loose. The majority agreed that the game was good but this 8 began the argument about just how good it the game was, ridiculous as it sounds. Many a gamer were actually arguing that the game was a 9 rather then a 10 which is frankly ludicrous considering that both clearly loved the game. Many argued that the positive reviews (not that Edge’s wasn’t positive) were influenced by the games hype and that Edge gave it the correct score. Then there was the trouble of the actual review text, it was negative throughout and read more like a 7/10. Did Edge write a negative review to counter the positive ones? Did they do it to stand out and gain sales? Probably but the silliest thing of all is that an Edge 8 is a damn fine score to have anyway. It all just comes to down to the most hated thing on the internet, opinions.

Killzone, touted a Halo killer throughout its development the Playstation community waited patiently as they finally got the FPS franchise they had dreamt for. The outstanding graphics! The fluid reload animation! The evil Hellghast! The space marines, oh God the space marines! PS2 owners got their Kleenex out as the release date neared; November 26th 2004 was going to be a day all gamers would remember. They were right, just for all the wrong reasons. It was a distinctly average game that had and still has many people in denial as they realised the game mechanics weren’t quite as good as the reload animations.

Some games though never get the hype they deserve, Psychonauts, Phoenix Wright, Killer 7 are all example of great games that never made the big time due to their unique design and gameplay. Phoenix Wright is a series that has been a massive success in Japan for year but when it made it to the West it didn’t enjoy as much success. These games are released but soon forgotten by the masses whilst their niche continues to play and stand up the game on forums across the web. Forever more will the topic of “Most Underrated Game” be associated with Ubisoft’s Beyond Good and Evil.

My final example is a game with such a massive hype machine that as the release date got delayed and delayed and delayed once more the wait was almost painful. I know many people who would have gladly hunted down Gabe Newell, put a gun to his head and forced him to release Half Life 2 no matter how many little bugs needed ironing out. It was a long wait, a very long wait that tested many gamers’ faith to the franchise. It was worth it in the end but the psychological splash damage was going to leave a footprint on the games history.

So as the Hype machine slows down for Halo 3 we can see the effects of Hype on our not so little hobby, it can work wondrously, it can hinder a game, it can be mistakenly none existent, or it can just be an all out catastrophe. But then again if the game is good it has nothing to worry about.

Or does it?

The Bourne Ultimatum (Greengrass, 2007)

2007-09-12T03:48:00.001-07:00

2007 will be remembered as a year of disappointing climaxes to what could have been truly memorable trilogies. Don’t get me wrong, Pirates of the Caribbean and Spiderman both had fairly good threequels but they still left a sour taste in the mouths of many who expected films of equal greatness to Spiderman 2 and Curse of the Black Pearl. The Bourne trilogy was the last major trilogy to close and with the sour taste still lingering it would be understandable that the Bourne fan base were cautious as the hype machine progressed. Bourne was always different though, a more realistic approach to spy thrillers that had enough influence to shake the very foundations of the Bond franchise forcing a fresher, grittier look to take centre stage for the 21st film, Casino Royale.

The story of one Jason Bourne began with The Bourne Identity back in 2002 with the tale of an assassin who suffers from amnesia struggling against the agency that nurtured him. In the sequel The Bourne Supremacy, Bourne comes to terms with his past and makes a journey to Russia to apologise to the daughter of the targets in his first mission. The climax to this trilogy sees Bourne attempt to find out who he was before the mysterious Project Treadstone agency made him an assassin. The first two films had some brilliant action sequences like the chase at the end of Supremacy and when Bourne took the fight to Treadstone at the end of Identity but both are outdone by the Waterloo scene near the beginning of this film. It brings together all the elements of the films that people love most into one scene culminating in a scene reminiscent of a fast and frantic game of human chess. It’s a scene that will no doubt become a classic over the years.

As Bourne, Matt Damon provides a stellar performance blending his character’s coolness under pressure and is frustration perfectly. In his journey he wants again bumps into Nicky as played by Julia Stiles, too much of a coincidence perhaps but still the right side of believable. On the other side we have Pamela Landy played by Joan Allen who seems to be only one not intent of killing Bourne off and keeping Treadstone and subsequently Operation Black Briar a secret. She understands Bourne and the two know this, this leads to another scene of “I’m watching you” phone call that without spoiling it, provides the film’s twist.

The main fight sequence of the film takes place in Tangier after another thrilling chase sequence in which Bourne and Nicky are avoiding an agent named Desh. When Bourne and Desh finally fight we’re treated to a blood thirsty, hard hitting and ultimately brutal fight which sees both men destroy the apartment as they throw each other into tables and book cases. Another staple of a Bourne film are the car chases, Ultimatum is no different with a chase in New York which rips apart a number of cars and ends in a spectacular crash. These sequences are what make the film, keeping the audience on the edge of their seats with Paul Greengrass’ trademark shaky cam adding a level of realism and the feeling that we’re in the action. The cherry on top that truly made this film a classic in my eyes was the ending which keeps the audience guessing with held breath, the suspense is paramount in this scene resulting in an ending that not only brings the trilogy full circle but leaves the viewer with a sense that they witnessed something special. An ending so undeniably perfect no more sequels are needed.

It’s rare in this day and age that a film series keeps its focus for so long and manages to produce quality entertainment from the first frame till the last. The Bourne trilogy is an unforgettable classic of the modern age, a summer blockbuster that doesn’t turn to clichés and doesn’t patronise its audience. It’s hard to find a fault in this film, if you loved the first then you owe it to yourself to discover how it ends because it’s a cinema experience to never, ever forget.

10/10

Bioshock (360)

2007-08-29T10:42:00.000-07:00

Hype machines can be very dangerous things; whilst ultimately good for sales they can cause disappointment when a game has massive expectations to live up to. Throughout its development Bioshock has been slowly but surely building a reasonable fan base, most likely the same gamers that enjoyed System Shock 2 all those years ago from the same developer. It was the fortnight leading up to the games release however when the internet went into overload as review scores hailed this game as the best thing since sliced bread and lavished praise on it like it was the newest Zelda title.

It’s certainly a good looking beast; Irrational have clearly but a huge amount of effort into the design of Rapture and the use of lighting to make this deep-sea Utopia a beautiful but haunting place to not only fight but survive. The biggest box to tick on Irrationals list would be to make Rapture look convincing not only as a once thriving city but as one from the fifties. Both of these were nailed and what’s been created is one of the greatest gaming worlds ever created, there’s more than enough to keep environments fresh and interesting as the game progresses.

The same can’t be said of the enemies though of which are all the same height and weight and only attack in a couple of different ways. There are the Splicers which can vanish and re-appear at will, the Splicers who cartwheel around you and cling to the ceiling and finally the regular gun-totting Splicers. It never becomes an annoyance which hinders the game to a great extent but after so long you can’t help but get a little bored as yet another Splicer attacks you. Splicers represent the only constant threat to your safety in the game with gun turrets and security bots being hackable through a rather nifty mini game to then be used against your enemies.

However the most important character in the build up was the guy that symbolises what Bioshock is all about, the constant menacing threat, the brutal offence and the mystery surrounding them. The Big Daddy’s have become so popular that they’ve made toys of them to go with the special edition which is saying something because this is an 18 rated game and certainly not for children. Their purpose is to protect the little sisters who are the games source of Adam which is needed to buy upgrades and new plasmids. The Big Daddies are there to protect the Little Sisters who wander the city looking for corpses to extract Adam from. They won’t hurt you unless you hurt them or the Sisters but when you need to defeat one and therefore get to the Little Sister, then they’ll do anything to beat you. The Bouncers (one of two types of Daddy) are the familiar ones with the spherical helmets and massive drill, these guys will charge you at incredible speed and smack you around like a rag doll. These guys are much harder to defeat then the Rosie types who are equipped with guns and throw proximity mines at you. These are basically the games Boss Battles and they’re challenging to say the least, to defeat them you’ll have to use almost all your ammo and more importantly your surroundings to eventually kill them.

Once they’re defeated you’ll then get to the sisters, this is when you get a moral choice, do you harvest the sister of all her Adam and kill her in the process or do you save them and only get half the available Adam. On paper this was a great idea but in action it doesn’t work, the sisters are barely human in appearance with massive glowing eyes so there’s no feeling of killing a child involved which no doubt would put some people off. Another reason is that if you do harvest them the character blacks out leaving only the parasite which controls them in your hands, if the death was more gruesome it would also add to the moral dilemma. This is definitely a missed opportunity.

Whilst there is a sense of disappointment with the enemies, the ways in which you can dispatch of them is more than satisfactory. The set of weapons available in the game all have their advantages and each feels much different from the other which is an occurrence rare in most first person shooters, another rare occurrence in the FPS genre is the ability to fire different types of ammo from the same guns which is a great feature making certain enemies easier to kill. With your right hand occupied with weapons your left hand is where the plasmids lie, these genetic “enhancements” created by the ominous Andrew Ryan give you many powers which can be used as methods of attack or methods of evasion. There are also various tonics littered through the city which power you up as you advance allowing you to hack faster or deliver an electric shock to foes who get a little too close for comfort.

It’s rare for a game to have a story quite like Bioshock’s, it’s a twisting tale superbly told with some exceptional voice acting. As your character goes through the game, parts of a wider story are told through the various audio logs you find. There’s a massive twist in the game which I wont spoil but it’s very well done and the clues left through the game are subtle enough not to make you realise what’s really going on. Whilst this may have been penned as an RPG the RPG elements seem to pale in comparison to other genres which Irrational have incorporated into Bioshock. This is more of a hyphen-tastic, first-person-survival-horror-shooter with emphasis on the survival part. As you walk the city you always feel like a stranger to their world and an intruder, in parts where ammo is scarce you’ll find yourself running back to the nearest health station fully aware of the Splicers chasing you. It’s surprising that you get such a sense of survival when if you die you immediately respawn in a vita-chamber not so far away, if those chambers were replaced with loading to the last save then this game could have been much more terrifying.

In the end this is undoubtedly a fantastically made game with a massive effort put into the design aspects, so much so in fact that it’s almost as if they put less effort into some other areas. It still has enough variety to see you through the game but second and third run-throughs could be tedious. It’s a game that’s rare these days, one that’s original in so many areas and doesn’t patronise gamers with clichés. It’s a game that’s also an experience and for that it’s an essential game, now would you kindly buy this game, it needs to be played.

8/10

Pheonix Wright: Ace Attorney (DS)

2007-07-26T01:43:00.001-07:00

I never did “get” point and click games, I didn’t understand where the fun would be in just clicking somewhere on a screen every so often. The hype surrounding Phoenix Wright (on the internet at least) was pretty big but I still didn’t see the appeal. I wanted to try it out though and once I got it, I couldn’t put it back down. On top of re-taking my DS from my mum and her Brain Training I finally got a reason to be interested in the DS which I had since launch.

The game is all about story telling and setting up the characters, you can almost hear Gumshoe’s big dopey voice and Edgeworth’s authoritative tone in your head as you read intently, working out the case in hand. And it’s these cases that make the game, they’re all completely over the top and all have a great sense of humour, where else can you cross examine a parrot. When you’re not in the courtroom you’re investigating with your “sidekick” Maya who helps you out as you go along, as you search through the various crime scenes and other places of interest you talk to a wider variety of characters like Mrs Oldbag the security lady and the big boobed, pink haired April May. However as much fun as it is hunting for clues, the real fun occurs in the courtroom.

It’s in the courtroom where the drama of the game takes over; it all starts off simply enough with you cross examining witnesses. You can point out the contradictions in their testimonies and get closer to the truth but when it finally all clicks and you work it out, the dramatic music kicks in and it’s a frantic time presenting the evidence and watching the witness get increasingly worried. It’s a brilliant moment but it can also be the games undoing because if you work it out before Phoenix does, finding clues can be tedious as can working your way through the day in court before you can finally reveal what you know at the end at the end.

It’s an interactive comic book at heart, it certainly has the look with some brilliant character design and it’s very well written with a great sense of humour as I’ve mentioned. The only gripes I have are that’s its too short and there is no replay value at all, a bit like watching an episode of Inspector Morse again, you know what happens and how it’s worked out so what’s the point? It’s incredibly linear which is hardly unexpected in a game like this but they could have made up for it with a load more cases. There are only four proper cases in the game and I don’t really want to fork out full price for another four or five in the sequel.

It’s certainly fun and is a great little handheld game but it’s shortness and lack of replay value are pretty big gripes but despite that it’s funny and good way to spend a lunch time.

7/10

Die Hard 4.0 (Wiseman, 2007)

2007-07-09T03:43:00.001-07:00

Internet Terrorism. Sounds scary don’t it? I mean what would we do without the internet? We’d be forced to actually talk to people and get social lives. Thank God for John McClane who is once again in the right place at the wrong time messing things up royally for super baddie Gabriel played by Hitman to be Timothy Olyphant and his bit on the side Mai played by Maggie Q. It all starts well enough with a whole load of suits panicking over their computers powering down, apparently this is bad so therefore they have local cops go and collect well known hackers who could have done it.

Enter McClane, who just so happens to be building the oh so obvious you’re a terrible dad, father/daughter relationship™ when he’s called to collect young and bearded power-nerd Matt Farrell played by Justin Long. McClane is a technophobe you see which is a cause for all kinds of predictable hilarity along the way. Things get interesting though as it’s revealed that the hackers that helped Gabriel are also being picked off by him one by one. McClane does his thing and eventually the corpses start to pile up. The film keeps a good pace, slowing down to tell the deep-as-a-paddling-pool story at the right moments without coming off as a sudden cut of pace for no reason. The main action pieces are all vehicular based making for some marvellous spectacles but it’s all too over the top to be taken seriously, luckily enough though, it doesn’t want to be taken seriously.

Pretty much all the actors did a good job with the slight exception of Olyphant who just seemed like a generic bad guy saying all the right stuff at the right moment without doing much else, he did however get better towards the end. The charm of John McClane has always been the way he has fun whilst going about his business with wise cracks, trash talking and some memorable lines that keep the character alive and fresh for the new audience thanks to Bruce Willis who comes off so happy to be back with the character that made him famous all those years ago.

Die Hard 4.0 (I still would have preferred Live Free or Die Hard to be honest) is a good addition to the franchise but it might lose it’s edge on repeated viewings, however it’s better than the second film which didn’t have any emotion at all, just McClane in a forgettable situation doing what he does best. 4.0 is a big film with a great finale and memorable “Yipee-Ki-yay Motherf*cker” at the end combined with a very novel way of disposing of the Gabriel which suits McClane so much and makes him that much cooler. It has its faults and comes very close to being the self-parody we didn’t really want but it’s so much fun it doesn’t really matter.

7/10

The Regginator

2007-07-07T01:22:00.001-07:00

In May 2004 a new President of Nintendo of America had risen and with it new ideas and a new mindset came into force. It wasn’t long after his promotion that he kicked off Nintendo’s E3 conference with the opening line that changed everything,

“My name is Reggie. I'm about kickin' ass. I'm about taking names, and we're about making games."

With his first conference we were introduced to the Nintendo DS, the gaming community sat at their PC’s shocked and confused at the lack of Gameboy and excessive screens.

OUTRAGE! ANGER! BLOGGING!

However Reggie stood with quiet confidence in Nintendo’s new gaming platform. With the introduction of the PSP at the same event the handheld community were worried and claimed that the DS wasn’t serious enough to deal with the PSP, they yearned for the next Gameboy to come and change it. Appealing to both the hardcore gamers and the non-gamers is not easy to pull off but they did it and the DS enjoyed huge success. Since its release gamers have struggled to prize their DS’ from their mums hands as they sat on the sofa playing Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training, desperate to play Phoenix Wright or Mario Kart.

JOY! SMILES! BLOGGING!

However gamers constantly kept one eye on the horizon, they looked to the future, and they were preparing for revolution. We saw the console and it was sexy, we saw the controller and it was sexy but the name, the NAME!

"Wii? WII!? What hell kind of name is that?”

Sure it wasn’t the perfect name, sounded more like a mistranslation but Reggie was there as ever with a quietly confident smile on his face and yet after the DS’ success people were still skeptical. Once again however the majority were proven wrong and the Wii is currently enjoying similar success to the DS with games aimed at family fun and simple controls.

We doubted the DS and the Wii, and because of that Reggie took all our names and kicked all our asses.

After the N64 things went downhill for Nintendo, the GBA was redesigned because of the baffling decision to not include a backlight, the Gamecube enjoyed minimal success causing momentary exclusives like Resi 4 and Viewtiful Joe to turn to the PS2 for help. It wasn’t looking good, the faithful held on but even they began venturing to other consoles and enjoying their positives. Nintendo needed to change, they had to or they would have headed down the “Sega-route”. They did, and their new mindset coincided with the arrival of a smooth talking, ass kicking machine who gave the Nintendo faithful hope and he instilled new confidence in the company. His name is Reginald Fils-Aime, it’s hardly the toughest name but he was soon appointed a new name,

The Regginator

Her

2007-07-06T04:45:00.000-07:00

She is beautiful, wonderful and absolutely, out of this world stunning. She’s also my friend which is a cause for concern, especially when the whole time you’ve been friends I just so happen to be in love with her. It’s different though, she likes me, I make her laugh and we really can be good friends but I feel that if I actually told her how I felt that she would think that I was only after one thing that whole time and then I would lose her and the other friends that would follow.

God this sounds so corny but when I think about her its rarely in a sexual way, usually I’m just hugging her and being with her and that’s all I ever really want, just to have someone there instead mindlessly floating from College to my house and then back to college the next day and then occasionally to work as well. I knew that her friends knew, because they made it so painfully obvious, one of her friends would always say “you love *name* don’t ya?” just to get a reaction, the others however once decided to pretend to be the girl on MSN, they chose to talk to me just after I had got home from seeing the cricket at lords, I was a little drunk but my actions were VERY embarrassing and whilst it was never spoken of I knew that they talked about it. She never made it obvious that she knew, in fact she never did anything, she always acted so normally.

There was also the time that I heard that she had fancied me all along, well of course me being the paranoid wreck that I am, didn’t believe a word of it and thought of it as a trap. Maybe it was true but that time was over pretty soon because out of nowhere she bought along the boyfriend she never mentioned and I never knew about. This happened twice and it was much worse the second time.

I’ve only ever come close to telling her twice,

Once was when I first knew her, at that stage it was a crush but I wanted to ask her out. However I choose the same day as another boy who just so happened to be a good friend and you know what she said to that boy? She said “I’m really sorry but you’re more like a brother to me”

Wow. She might as well have kicked him in the balls.

Well that’s my kind of luck (which I like to call “Ben’s Law” a variation of Sod’s one) and whilst we did take the piss out the situation in our group of friends I didn’t half feel sorry for him especially considering what I was going to do.

The second time was at the end of our stay at secondary school, at the prom.

It was going to be perfect, dresses, dancing, suits and alcohol. It don’t get more Hollywood than that.

I was hyped up anyway because this was the climax to out tenure at what was a really, really bad school in retrospective but I knew I was going to do it. I waited though until the after party and fate sat us next to each other on the limo back my mates house and we laughed and I was a tad drunk (probably because of the very warm fosters I found and downed)

However what I didn’t know was that she wasn’t going to go to the after party because it was her first day at work the next day. Bens Law strikes again, we got out the limo and low and behold her car was ready, parents and all to take her away. She said goodbye to everyone one by one and surprise, surprise again I was last. I was distraught but I hugged her and watched her leave (great ass for the record) and then she was off. My best friend at the time came to get me; he worked it out before anyone else but never said anything.

And that’s how it works in my life, we go to different colleges now but we see each other on the train platform usually on a Monday and Thursday and then I walk past the shop she works in multiple times (intentionally) each Saturday at work. She does actually notice me and I suppose that whilst she does acknowledge my existence then I should at least be kinda happy.

Girls eh?

My weird self

2007-07-06T04:21:00.001-07:00

I over-analyse everything. From the games I play to the situations I’m in, to the reason that girl completely ignored me and, my life I general. I like to score things, to rate them, not a day goes by without me looking for songs on my ipod that I haven’t rated or barely listen to and wondering if I really do like that song or whether I’m influenced by what other people said about it. This stretches to other things for example I just watched the film “The Virgin Suicides” directed by Sofia Coppola in Film Studies and yet I can’t decide what I think about the film myself because I don’t know what other people will make of my opinion.

It’s complicated. I’m forever burdened with wondering what people think of me that I forget to think about myself and what I should do the next time I see the girl I’ve been in love with for the last three years. Should I say hi, hello or aye up? Should I say how wonderful she looks? or should I make the same jokes she’s been laughing at for years just to see that smile once more.

I would blame my Dad and his constant belittling of me, comparing me to by brother and how I should go and do something like he does but that’s just blaming other people, which I’ve been doing for years. It’s all self-inflicted and it’s all the problems that occur at this age, it’s a long and painful journey and through it there’s a chance I can actually become a better and successful person. Get married have some kids, live the dream and die happy one day. As you can probably tell I’m always thinking and probably thinking about thinking and then coming up with the reasons why I’m thinking what I’m thinking. Viscous circle. I just want to stop thinking but I can’t because it all starts again, as it is right now whilst I’m typing this.

Films are an outlet, games are an outlet and music is an outlet to a better, happier more successful place. In fact I probably spend more time daydreaming about saving the girl from armed criminals or playing in a band at a concert full of my friends than I do actually living my life. Or at least barely living it. I really could go on and on and on and it’ll be the same stuff over and over until eventually I snap and kill something but I just really wanted to type something like this up because I view my life from the outside and not from myself, I think as though I’m an outsider looking in and I never know quite what I see.

Oh well, happy days.

Jurassic Park (Spielberg, 1993)

2007-07-05T01:41:00.001-07:00

My All time favourite film.

I remember when I first saw this film, it must have been Christmas Eve either 1995 or 96 when I was only a lil kid. Suffice to say it scared the shit out of me and I had nightmares for a week or so. I was still captivated by it though and it soon became my most watched film. At that age I was obviously bowled over by the special effects, even if I didn't know they were special effects myself! Now however I see what was a perfectly balanced summer blockbuster.

Here Spielberg had a ridiculous plot but told in a realistic science-based way by Michael Crichton and Spielberg saw potential straight away. At this point in time, Dinosaur movies were very, very rare they hadn't been properly done since the days they started fighting with King Kong.

It was with one of the greatest movie posters of all time, and ironically the simplest that Spielberg had the entire world's attention. With Jaws, ET and Indiana Jones under his belt already the world knew they were in for something special. The Dinosaurs were back.

It all begins well enough, the characters are built up, the science is explained and everything is laid into motion. As soon as Jeff Goldblum utters those words "What d'ya think they got in there? King Kong?" and the gates close you know it's only a matter of time. People whittled down the seconds until the dinosaurs escaped and when they did we got one of the greatest sights in movie history. Here was a full size, realistic looking Tyrannosaurus Rex stepping out from his confines and the audience must have been in awe, then he unleashes the earth shattering roar that signals that the things are about to get interesting.

From there it's a rollercoaster ride of a film, up and down with a death-defying pace. The surprise of the film was that whilst eveyrone went in loving the T-Rex and wanting to see him, they left loving the Velociraptors. It was a stroke a genius to make the Raptors the real "enemy" when it would have been so simple to make it the T-Rex instead.

Jurassic Park is a perfectly judged Summer Blockbuster that sometimes doesn't get the credit it deserves but is still the "one to beat" when it comes to any modern monster movie, why else haven't we seen any other Dinosaur movies since it or it's sequels?

10/10

Splinter Cell: Double Agent (360)

2007-07-04T02:36:00.000-07:00

Generic action movies give their heroes a choice: usually it’s between getting the girl or killing the bad guy. Or both. But with better films come better thought-out problems and dilemmas. This is the predictable road that Ubisoft have decided to sneak down for the fourth game in the Splinter Cell stealth series. After the brilliant original, the lazy sequel and the 'proper' sequel there was a need for a change of scenery. After all, there are only so many dank corridors and badly lit bases a gamer can take.

The game begins with a nod towards the Bond franchise. The opening scene sees Sam and his student on a mission in a snow-capped base, there is also a vague mention that this is Sam's last mission (yeah, right). The game looks promising with what looks like an interesting story evolving from the Student/Teacher dynamic but, alas, the cocky student is killed when he takes matters into his own hands. So far, so cliché. Not long after Sam stops the rocket launch, saves the world and dramatically escapes we get an MGS style title sequence. Missions are varied but hopping from a ship frozen in the ice to a war zone in the baking sun takes away the realism from the story. Whilst the static, linear corridors of past games have gotten old personally I'd rather that than be thrown around from place to place with very little meaning.

The single player game centres around trust. You are a double agent (surprisingly enough) and building the trust of both the NSA (good guys) and the JBA (bad guys) is crucial. You can gain or lose trust depending on which objectives you complete. It's an interesting prospect for a gamer because the choice of Good vs. Evil is always appetising, but I never really felt any real reason to choose. You feel more inclined to complete as many objectives as possible to get a good score. Next Gen-wise, this game looks spectacular. The skydiving mini game and the African war zone look beautiful and coupled with lifelike animations and fluid movements we have one of the most realistic games in a long time. Despite the upgrade for those two aspects, the AI doesn’t seem to have improved at all. The enemy still notice movement but they don’t look around the surrounding area: instead they just stand where the noise came from and glance to the left and right a few times before dismissing it completely. Another highly annoying (but useful to exploit) aspect is that when Fisher is hiding in the shadows nobody can see him, no matter how close they get. At one stage I was hiding right next to a crate in a dimly lit car park and the guard just walked straight past me.

The multiplayer is better than the single player. Now that’s one thing I didn’t expect until I played the amazing demo which got me hooked straightaway. The key to a good multiplayer experience is simplicity and there’s nothing more simple than Spies vs. Mercs. At first the Mercs rule the roost and seem to be the dominant force in the game but soon the Spies learn their way around the maps and often get the better of their foes. There is no one superior character: everything is equal and only the skill of the players makes a difference.

The single player has its moments, like the great Cruise Ship and Hotel missions, and the stealth is still solid, but in the end it’s the multiplayer that will win most people’s hearts. A great premise from Ubisoft which unfortunately wasn’t executed as well as Sam’s orders. Perhaps Sam Fisher's World Tour would have been a more suited title.

7/10