Inglorious Bastards

I saw Inglorious Bastards. It's good. Brad Pitt is always good, and Samuel Jackson and Harvey Keitel are included, for no particular reason.

EDIT:

I remembered, with not prompting whatsoever, to do a Ron Perlman score.

.95/5 Ron Perlmen

Watchmen Movie

First of all: I don't mind the big change to Watchmen, and I think anyone that complains about it is wrong.

The problems I have with the movie are the little things. I don't mind taking out the side-stories; the movie can't be 8 hours long. There are two things that I object to: adding things, particularly slow motion fight scenes, and changing things around for no good reason.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the makers of 300 added gore and stylized fighting. It's their way. It just irritates me that they decided to add things when the movie had to make deep cuts to core elements of the movie. When a movie is nearly three hours long, it is not the time to add more action that doesn't advance the plot, especially when it's in slow motion. The gore, particularly with Dr. Manhattan, is just too much, almost to the point of parody.

The small changes are the ones that rankle the most. Moving lines from one character to another, changing scenes to add gore, it's just unnecessary, and other than the big change, I think every change from the original hurts the movie.

Despite the above, I liked the movie. The opening montage was the only addition/change that I felt really added something to the production, and it's very good. It does a fantastic job to give mood and details, and remind the slower members of the audience that this is an alternate history. I'm griping about minor things, but the movie taken as a whole is very good, and surprisingly loyal, despite the changes.

The soundtrack is fantastic, with well picked songs.

Ron Perlman isn't in the movie.

.95/5 Ron Perlmans

PS.
Rorschach's Batman voice isn't as bad a Christian Bale's, but it's still bad. He's supposed to speak in a monotone, not a put-on voice.

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Now playing: Dean Martin - Somewhere Along The Way
via FoxyTunes

Fallout 3 Review

As part of my ongoing Fallout 3 commentary, here's a review.

Fallout 3 is a good game, but only for people in the right mindset.

If you're looking for instant FPS action, in the mode of Halo or Call of Duty, this is the wrong game. This game is about Roleplaying. You can win much of the game without shooting, although shooting is often the easiest way to get through a situation. There are lots of options with dialogue and choices that effect the game world. In fact, a completionist would have a difficult time with this game, since it offers so many options, many of which are decisions that cannot be reversed, that it could take dozens of replays to get all the possible major quest differences.

Exploration can be a blessing or a curse, depending on your attitude. There are so many places scattered on the map, you can explore without a goal for hours. If you like the feeling of being alone with your dog as you walk across a wasteland, only hearing distant noises, then it will work. If you just wish games would just get you to the next city or fight, then this may drive you insane.

Visually, it's a great improvement above predecessors like Oblivion. Bethesda's terrain has improved enormously since Morrowind. Where aritificial barriers to the horizon were everywhere, now we can stand on a high point and see beautiful scenery, if you have the processing power for it.

There's good writing and humour. Although many of your dialogue options have little to no effect, it's still nice to be able to cuss out the people who irritate you. For a game with this level of language and violence, (heads explode regularly, and if you get the Bloody Mess Perk, [which I don't recommend] entire bodies exploding into disgustingly explicit gibs becomes the default death) the sexuality is extremely tame. There's a woman who is apparently a prostitute, assuming prostitutes sleep in a bed while you sleep in the same bed. There's another prostitute that "services" NPC's, and that's it. The ethical code that doesn't mind brutal murder and cannibalism but cannot accept consensual sex is a strange product of our times.

For the rating proper, I turn to the Ron Perlman system, of course.

The narrator is Ron Perlman. He only speaks at the beginning and end of the game, and he does a fine job, despite the stupidness of the ending.

2/5 Ron Perlmans

Yes Man

Yes Man is a formulaic comedy, with all that entails. I feel that they should be paying me, with all the product placement in the movie.

In every romantic comedy, there's a loose plot that must be followed, as dictated by some inscrutable gods:

• A leaves his boring ex and sets out on his own, is lonely.
• Wacky antics bring A to B.
• A and B couldn't be happier.
  
• B discovers that the wacky antics included some sort of lie, or wacky scheme.
• B is so outraged upon this discovery that B leaves A forever.
• A does something else wacky, validating the previous wackiness and begging forgiveness.
• B forgives A, and they kiss in a way that reminds you of their previous wackiness.

This routine is fine in and of itself, but once you've seen it a few times, only an idiot would be afraid that Jim Carrey and Zooey Deschanel won't make it. Also, the thing that gets B outraged is often so trivial that they look like either a self-absorbed jerk or an idiot.

Anyway, there are some fun jokes in the movie, but I wouldn't pay money to see it.

Yes Man
.5 out of 5 Ron Perlmans

Reviewing Halo 3

Reviews of Halo 3, in fact, reviews of all games, have a terrible problem: what do you set as the standard? Once you have a standard, how do you compare another game to it?

Unlike movies, which are hard to rate as it is, video games don't have a "standard" length (about two hours, in movies' case). They don't have to have a story to be good. If you ask me, two games could have no elements in common whatsoever and still both could be good games. (Look at Geometry Wars: no story, no fancy graphics, only one mode of gameplay, still excellent.)

The other problem of rating is whether your rating system should be subtractive or additive.

In a subtractive system, you start with a full score, then deduct points for every problem. Bad graphics? Take away a point. Story idiotic? Another point. Some minor glitch? Maybe the game only loses a tenth of a point. Game breaking glitch? Maybe half the points are lost. This approach rewards conservative games that do only what they can do well. In this system, Geometry Wars would be penalized if it introduced a solo campaign with a story, or a multiplayer mode. The story (for example) wouldn't be very good, and that would become a new flaw.

The additive system rewards going for everything you can stuff in there. The GTA series is clearly pursuing this route. Like Tycho mentioned in Penny Arcade, if you just give them a score for each thing in the game, you'll eventually get up to ten. This doesn't mean the game has no flaws, though.

It's hard to get a rating system along either of these lines that doesn't occasionally deceive people. I suspect that most reviewers have a middle path: they give higher scores to big games, then dock points according to the flaws. Personally, I have a much better system than any of these: I see how much Ron Perlman there is in the game.

Halo 3 Review
Ron Perlman plays an Admiral called "Lord Hood". Appears rarely, although you hear his voice every once in a while, and he's in the end credits.

Halo 3: 2.5 / 5 Ron Perlmans


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Now playing: Bob Seger - Old Time Rock & Roll
via FoxyTunes