Stupid Plots: Transformers (2007)

With the new Transformers movie coming out shortly I was thinking about 2007s movie.

I know that most of my male counter parts loved Transformers (2007): I know people who when to the theater 3 times to see it raving about the hotness of Megan Fox and the cool action. For me however this movie was ruined completely when:
Captain Lennox takes control of the cubey thing and decides the best course of action is to take it to the city. Yeah asshole great idea! Lets take the unknown alien artifact that is known to turn every day objects into killing machines to a highly populated civilian setting. The giant robots chasing you will obviously hold back not wanting to hurt bystanders in the cross fire.

Seriously, that was the point when this movie went from being okay to being completely stupid. Plus how the hell did Shia LaBeouf from Even Stevens get to be a movie headliner before Christy Carlson Romano.

Turn Based RPG

So Darcy's post got me thinking about days gone by in gaming, yesteryear as it were. I have to say that I'm a solid new age gamer, I like my next gen hardware and I'm not complaining about anything we have today, but I do have to say that I miss the Turn Based RPG. Let me clarify, I don't exactly miss playing them, they just weren't adrenaline pumping or eye hand co-ordination testing, but I miss the experience. I guess you could say I'm nostalgic.

The turn based RPG had a big thing going for it, it's story. The computing power of consoles, and even computers, in the mid to late 90's just couldn't deliver what designers wanted so they were forced to write a better game, and thats what a quality RPG was, an excellent story that required you to work your way through and solve it. There were often shortcuts but eventually you had to sit down and let the story unfold to find out what was happening and why.

Dragon Warrior was my first taste at the Turn Based RPG, an 8 bit relic from the days of NES and I have no idea how many times I finished this game. It had all the elements that RPG are based on, hit points, monster combat, armor and weapon upgrades, and leveling up; it was quite an experience when you leveled up enough that you're main battle spell 'Hurt' became the amped up version 'Hurtmore'.You could take him on anytime after you hit level 20 and probably succeed, but if you made it to level 24, the boss was your bitch!

Wild Arms was a perfect example of quality Turn Based RPG's. The three main characters always reminded me of Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, and Princess Leia, and you had to help them grow and face the villain trying to destroy their world. You didn't need to be fast on the buttons, but you had to make sure that you had the correct equipment, supplies, and, most importantly, spells ready to use. You also had to know when to use what and the best way to approach it, these were strategy games, thinkers, not button mashers. Plus, Rudy got some kickass guns as time went on.

Suikoden, god bless you Konami, is another prime example, an amazing game, released a couple years before Wild Arms it was a groundbreaker in the genre. You had a party of 6 people with you and you wandered the world collecting soldiers for your army. The game was broken up by army battles that amounted to Rock, Paper, Scissors. Normal play required not only leveling your own character, but different characters throughout the land, needing the right combination of skills and weapons to fight effectively.

I'll finish this journey down memory lane with one more game, Breath of Fire III. I never got to play 1 or 2 or any of the others that came out in this line, but that one game alone was worth the play. The first time through it took me over 120 hours to play; I never did finish it a 2nd time due to the time constraints but it's another great game. A party of 3 interchangeable characters, yours being able to morph into a dragon during battles, the dragon being dependant on the combination of genes you collected and used, leading across a medieval world, an ocean, and finally a post apocalyptic wasteland, ending up with a final boss battle against God, or at least the closest version they were willing to put in the game. Side games consisted of fishing, trading, and, of course, gambling.

I've said it many times before, I value story and plot above action and flash. I'll play a buggy game to death if it has a good story. You want proof? I've finished The Force Unleashed 3 times, on both the 360 and the PS3. I've got other tales I could recount (Star Trek: Legacy anyone?) but I think that sums everything up perfectly. I also have to say they knew how to pay attention to detail in those games. Wild Arms was the first game to let you walk through a water puddle and leave wet footprints behind; doesn't sound like much today, but 12 years ago that was an unheard of use of computing resources. Don't even get me started on the puzzles, my god the hours I spent trying to figure out things like the right sequence of paintings to look at in order to get a secret door I wasn't even sure actually existed to open; once you know what you're looking for and what to do it's 3 seconds work, but solving them was mindnumbing at times. No wonder I used to smoke!

As I said, this is mainly nostalgic, I actually own all these games and could play them anytime I want, but I don't. I've newer and bigger fish to fry (Bioshock 2 anyone?).

A good game is worth it's weight in time, and these games were magnificent, for their time.

Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Review * * * * +

Well after years of debate with my fiscally responsible self I went I bought a Sony PSP on the weekend and at the same time I picked up Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII. At this point I have to make a confession, I have never played Final Fantasy VII.

This can come as a shock to those who know me as I'm a game geek who really likes things like Cyber Punk, Kung Fu, and Anime. Being an official member of the Final Fantasy VII fan club would seem to be a logical conclusion. However, when FF VII came out I was too busy ensuring I could eat to spend time and money on video games (sad dark days I tell you). When I did get into gaming again I leaned towards action over rpg. In fact, its only the introduction of action/rpg hybrid games that slowly made me begin to appreciate the rpg format. Still, the classic turn based rpg format had better have an amazing story to keep my interest.

Although, I've never played Final Fantasy VII I have always been aware of its existence and the ground breaking impact it had on the gaming industry. Plus what little I knew of the storyline and characters made me always think I should play that game someday and after listening to the music at the Video Games Live concert it's become more of a need. However, the desire to play with my new PSP overrode the desire to dig out our PS2 and search for my wife's copy of Final Fantasy VII so I decided to pick up Crisis Core for now and put off the Final Fantasy VII goal until later.

The story in Crisis Core occurs 7 years prior to the events in Final Fantasy VII and you play Zack Fair who to my understanding is only briefly mentioned in the previous game. That's about all I'm going to say about the storyline as I'm not done the game and I don't want to spoil the game for you. I will say that at first Zack comes off as a naive fool but as you play the game I'd be damned if his character doesn't really grow on you.

Crisis Core itself is an action/rpg hybrid and not a turn based rpg game. I didn't realize that till I hit my first battle sequence and had to quickly adjust to the realization that the enemy was not waiting for me to pick an attack. Personally, I'm a big fan of the action/rpg hybrid because as I mentioned earlier the turned based rpg game rarely keeps my interest. While fighting you have HP (health), MP (mana), and AP (action points). AP is new but it's kind of like a rogues energy in Warcraft: every dodge, block and some power attack moves use AP and once your out of AP you can't perform those moves anymore. The other factor when battling is the Digital Mind Wave (DMW) think of this as the luck factor. The DMW spins away in the top left corner and at times hits the right combination that rewards you by upping your standard abilities but once in a while a combination hits that results in Zack performing a super move that can save your ass. Plus this is when Sqare Enix inserts some cool video of your dude amping up and executing the move. you have no control over the DMW other than the fact that more experience you get the more likely it will help you out.

In the game you have the main story arch missions but you also have access to side missions which are kind of like the jobs and quests in Fable. You can access the missions from any save point and I would suggest doing them as they amp up your abilities and give you some nice potions and materia. At first I thought the side missions were an annoying distraction to the story but I've come to appreciate them more and more: if you have only have a few minutes to spend gaming you can fire up Crisis Core and knock off 3 or 4 side missions in 15 minutes. The problem with the main story arch is you can only save at save points which doesn't allow you to just up and quit.

There are a few weaknesses with the game. One the graphics are amazing except for the background environment: it's pretty boring. Two, the DMW videos are cool but if you keep getting the same sequence for the same super move it gets old fast.

However, I'm uber impressed with this game and it definitely appeals to Dragon Ball Z loving side of my personality. After I'm done I'm pretty sure I'll finally play Final Fantasy VII with a lot of interest just to finish up the story.

I give Crisis Core 4.5 stars out 5

Fable II Co-op

My best buddy guy Darcy talked about Fable II for at least 2 years before it was released, possibly more like 3, and to be honest I thought he'd gone a bit soft in the head for this game. Well, the game was released last fall and I figured what the hell, if I don't waste time in this I'll waste time on something else so I gave it a shot. Now I'm not going to say this is the best game I ever played, even Darcy will agree that it didn't live up like it should have, but I will say that it is an entertaining way to waste many hours of your life, and this weekend I finally got a chance to try the vaunted co-op mode. What can I say? In a game that should have delivered more the co-op play should have delivered much more.

If you've played the game than much of this will be familiar to you and if you haven't I would highly recommend going out and at least renting it, it's fun. I'm not going to review this game but I will speak to the co-op portion of it today. Here it is in a nutshell: one person starts the game with whatever character they have available and then allows a friend to join in with a generic premade character; once in the game no one can control the camera, it's stuck on a static, usually to far away, position; the henchman, the person joining existing game, has limited interaction with NPC, Non-Playable Characters, and what interaction he does have is usually negative; why not let me use one of my characters, I'm playing on my own 360 so I've got all the computing power I need; finally, you only get one dog between the two of you.

Now none of these are game enders, you can still get together and have some fun, farting and belching while your friend is trying to pick up chicks, using magic and weapons to scare the locals and helping out in fights, all good real life things to do; I think we spent about ten minutes just running around in circles in a field, but that may not be to everyones taste. My problem is that it could have been so much more. For instance, allow both characters to interact with merchants and, more importantly, keep the visual mechanics the same for both single and co-op play, let me control my camera so I can be more effective in fights.

I'm fairly disappointed with this, one of my big beefs with games today is the limited number of quality co-op games out there, and this one would have been great. A good story with a good buddy and some good fights, it doesn't get much better than that. Sure the basics are there but that's all, it really feels more like an afterthought than a feature of the game, like a Beta that they stuck in for testing purposes. Not even letting me keep the appearance of my character? How cheap is that?

I guess what I'm trying to say is, if you haven't experienced Fable II give it a try, and if you have access to a friend and Xbox Live (lets be honest now, there are a lot of people out there who have one or the other but don't have both) then give the co-op a go, just don't expect too much from it. The game by itself is worth the buy, two downloadable packs have already been introduced to keep the game going and I'd be surprised if there weren't any more. If you've played Fable then you might be slightly disappointed with this sequel but I still think it's worth at least one play through.

Star Trek (2009): Review * * * *

I was pretty excited about this movie ... no I was really really excited. This did worry me a bit because in the past hyper movie excitement usually equated to major disappointment. The Star Wars prequels come to mind and The Mummy 2 & 3. However, all in all the new Star Trek movie delivered and it's one of those rare movies that I would pay to see twice in theaters.

I remember the original Star Trek TV series fondly. It played every Saturday when I was a kid and I watched it religiously. The original Series, inspired 4 spin off television series and 10 movies so I'm pretty sure the director J.J. Abrams, the writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, the cast, and pretty much anyone invested in this movie must have been nervous as hell opening night. Well I'm happy to report they did an admirable job. You have to remember they faced two major prequel challenges. One, how do you do anything new with such a momentous existing storyline? Two, how can you get a good performance out of your cast without them just coming off as imitation's of the original crew? What do you do? Solution: create an slightly altered timeline for your new creation to exist in.

The alternate timeline technique rarely works but Star Trek avoids the one factor that always destroys my interest in movies involving time travel: they don't spend the bulk of the movie trying to fix the timeline. Everyone who realizes it accepts that somethings changed and then go on to deal with the threat in the existing timeline. Thank god! I hate fixing the timeline movies!

Things I really liked;
- The meeting between Kirk and McCoy
- Kirk shows a fetish for green early
- Scotty and Chekov

The only weakness in this movie was the villain. Nero just seemed to be a faceless threat meaning you never hated or cared that much about him. Yes he was there and a threat but really it could have been anybody or anything. It was amazing that I liked the movie so much because normally I've got to love/hate the villain and with Nero I just didn't care.

However, I would still give this movie 4 out of 5 stars and am even more excited about the next one.