9th Entry - Star Wars: Force Unleashed

Welcome to our first "good" or at least positive game review!



Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (Xbox 360) - 3rd Person Action/Adventure/RPG

One thing I feel I should make very clear is that i had lots of fun with this game, and while it was a great change of pace from the general garbage some game companies keep spewing, it still suffers from MAJOR flaws.

Before i get into that, however... let's talk about the good stuff.

All in all the gameplay is good, the controls don't suck, and the game is short enough it doesn't get repetitive. THE CAMERA IS THE RIGHT THUMBSTICK. THANK GOD, THANK GOD. Unlike the baby-roasting, seal-clubbing, mullet-wearing crackwhores who made Too Human, LucasArts realizes the importance of this essentially INDUSTRY STANDARD feature.

Easily this game's best feature is your ability to use the Force in a evil and brutal way (sometimes hilarious way) to dispatch the seemingly neverending river of enemies headed in your direction. Some of the most fun abilities are:

1. This move where you grip your hapless target, hoist him in the air, and then unleash a force push to send him sailing through the air.
2. After lifting your target up, you charge him with force lightning and then can hurl him in any direction to cause heavy damage to anything he hits or lands near.
3. Grabbing an enemy, lifting him up, and impaling him with your lightsaber. Normally you just set him down after doing so, but it's bigger lolz to throw him straight up, lightsaber and all, and watch as he sails off into orbit somewhere around Yavin IV.
4. Any of the force push combo attak with your saber. Spin around in a blaze of death, then hit all those near you with a huge throwing blast. Awesome.
5. Generally abusing your enemy. Push him into walls, shock them, grab them, drop them, throw them into each other, throw them into laser walls, or my personal favorite: grab an enemy, and move them over a deep chasm, release the grip button and watch them slowly fall to their doom.
6. On the first level after playing as Darth Vader, you will be in a TIE fighter factory. They will moblize the fighters against you and they will fly around the room shooting you. For minimal amusement, grip one of the loose metal bars lining the side of the catwalk, and pull them down and out into the TIE fighter's flight path, and laugh at their pathetic attmepts to dodge.

There are several types of enemies you could classify as "mini-bosses", such as the chicken walkers (FINE, AT-STs), the Rancors, and the Imperial guards who carry long, staff like lightsabers. I mention them here because they provide a sense of how small you actually are; that is to say, instead of chucking around Stormtroopers, a Rancor is breathing down your neck, and you better deal with it, because to him you're lunch. Deafeating them isn't all that much different , they basically have more health and require a fast-paced on-screen butto combo to defeat. The only mini-boss that is really dangerous is the green skinned rancor, he runs faster than the others, and will bum rush you from out of nowhere, and proceed to kick your pathetic, whimpering ass, in a corner, as you ask yourself why a damn Rancor can move like a cheetah.

Much in the same vein as the mini-bosses are the, you guessed it, the BOSSES. These long, generally epic battles involve you piting yourself against other masters of the Force until one emerges victorious. Once you've overtaken your opponent, you can begin to exectue another (different and longer) onscreen combo to finish them off. Generally these finishing moves are very stylized and very awesome, but can get frustrating if you don't get the combo right. (OK, A, then B, then A again, now X, *presses wrong button and watches our hero get nailed by a heavy flying object*... FUCK! SHIT! Well, you see how it goes.)

Another great element of Force Unleashed is its seamless storyline, and the perfect integration of it into the rest of the Star Wars story. The voice acting for Vader isn't perfect, but then again, if you get anyone but James Earl Jones, its a failure. The story is rather gripping though, and will keep you entertained.

A less important, but still awesome feature in Force Unleashed is the two best costumes available in the game - The Sith Assassin armor, and the Sith robe. The Sith assassin armor has claws (yes, CLAWS) on the hands, because, you know, a lightsaber doesn't always kill them dead enough. The Sith robe just looks badass, an if you combine it with a red lightsaber, you just look downright sinister.

On to the bad stuff, and there is definitely a lot of it.

This game is buggy as fuck.
Seriously.

Did they even fucking test the junkyard level? It makes no sense sometimes as to where you should go in a level, much less trying not to get lost in junkyard land. It's almost as if they had a real testing team for the other levels, but for the junkyard levels, they brought in a bunch of retarded howler monkeys and let them jump around on keyboards, flinging their poo everywhere, and the real testing team got drunk out of their minds and just laughed at the monkeys. The next day when they should have really tested the levels, they said "fuck it" and moved on.

There are more places to get stuck in the junkyard levels than i can count, some items that let you grip them, let you grip them but won't move, and sometimes a enemy will spawn under you, clip into you, and lock you in place. Then there is the part o the first junkyard level which i can only describe as "The Giant Cavern of Raging Dick." In this cavern you will find edge clipping GALORE, enemies who will easily combo you and throw you down a hole to instant death, and edges of the level which require a college degree to scale. This part of the level is awful, and stands out like a sore thumb among the otherwise well done levels.

Sometime when you jump and hit a staircase at a odd angle, it will stop you and hold you there until you hit jump again. Annoying, and again a sloppy mistake.

Another thing in this game that sucks is the level near the end where you must pull a Star Destroyer out of orbit (?!) and crash it down on your enemies. Now, this sounds cool and all, but cut to 1hr., 30 mins later, where I've died six times, almost stranged Poke for no fault of his own, and have terrified Poke's roommate with my anguished screams of rage. Let me explain. As you pull this Star Destroyer out of orbit, TIE fighters are running a train on you, and because of the annoying "cinematic" camera angle, you have to psychically know when to grab the fighters and throw them too so they dont kill you. Once you've mastered this newfound psychic ability (URGH) you have to still do it well, and you will die often when you mess up. Also, this brings up an entirely seperate issue. If i can bring down a Star Destroyer, the only thing larger being the Death Star, why in the HELL can't i lift and throw an AT-ST? That aside, the part with the Star Destroyer is very, very terrible.

The final boss battle with Vader (if you so choose, muahaha) is MIND-NUMBINGLY, BRAIN-CRUSHINGLY hard. Now don't get me wrong, i like a good, rough boss battle like any good gamer, but this boss battle isn't good, it's just rough. To be more specific, it's just Vader giving it to you roughly from behind. It's so hard that at one point Poke was asking me if i needed to take a break i was so frustrated. Vader is one tough customer, and he takes tons of damage and is faster than you. Really. One time i stunned him, and before i could hit him again, he had already dashed at me, and knocked my ass flat. It gets pretty ridiculous, but if you keep your cool, you hould come out alright.

Don't let my rant discourage you, this game is very much worth your $60 and is great fun. It's just far from perfect.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed gets 6 out of 10 win-sabers.

8th Entry - Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior

So you may have noticed we changed up the blog a little bit, mostly because we got tired of doing crappy stuff. So instead this week I'm going to do something good, namely the movie Doomsday wanted to be, Road Warrior.

While this movie is fairly old, it is still a very good movie by today's standards. It has great action sequences, awesome car chases and the main character is a total bad ass.

The movie is set in the post apocalyptic future. Gasoline has become the currency because to stay alive you have to stay mobile. So our hero Mad Max (Mel Gibson) drives a super bad ass muscle car with giant gas tanks (a v8 Interceptor). Seriously, this car kicks so much ass. The movie opens with him flying down the road being chased by bad guys, he uses a little bit of ninja driving and wrecks one of them and causes one of the bad guys to shoot the other in the arm.












He then sees this weird flying machine guarded by snakes. He then proceeds to grab a snake as it tries to bite him an throws it away, at which point to owner of the machine jumps out of the sand and then gets owned by Max's dog. In return for his life the gyro captain (by the way you know it's a awesome movie when they don't bother with names) shows him a settlement built around a fuel refinery. Of course he can't just walk in and ask them kindly because they are surrounded by bad guys. So he saves one of their people and rushes past the bad guys.

Turns out the people want to leave their settlement but they have no way to move their fuel. So Max, being the badass he is, knows where a truck that can haul their tanker is. In exchange for some fuel he gets it back for them. They offer to let him come with them but because he is a man he would rather wander the desert alone. So he tries to escape, but because the bad guys are dicks they blow up his totally awesome car and kill his dog.

So he goes back to the settlement and tells them that he'll drive their rig. Up to this point has all been building action. The final 45 minutes or so is just one long chase scene. This movie has the best car chases I've ever seen hands down. I'm not going to go into details, cause i can't really. You can't put into written word how kickass it is.

Bottom line if you like action movies at all and especially car chases, you should get this movie. I give it 7 out of 10 win-terceptors.

1st Blog Update - Blog Changes

Hey everyone -

We've decided to make a few changes to how we do things here - the biggest of which is our name change - we're now Pure Judgment Gaming.

On that note, the games, movies, and etc. that we review will not just be terrible anymore -we're going to start doing new releases, some of our favorite games, and other fun stuff.

Honestly, the biggest reason for this change is if Poke and i had to force ourselves to scrounge up another bad game and force ourselves through it, well, bad things would have started happening.

Keep tuned in, our first real blog entry under our new name should be up by Friday!

Thanks all!
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Now playing: Black Label Society - You Must Be Blind
via FoxyTunes

7th Entry - Doomsday

Hey there everyone, ALREADY we find ourselves on our seventh review.

Additionally, we've got our highest fail-o-meter score yet! Read on, my friends in fail!

This week it's DOOMSDAY!



Normally, I'd just dive right in, but everything about this movie is ....wrong. They just did it wrong. As in, needs a do-over, you got the incorrect answer wrong.

Actually, a better way to put it is (Star Wars x Mad Max) + SLC Punk + 28 Days Later + Lord of the Rings = Doomsday.

Ok, now you've got a general idea of the "plot". Raging virus takes over Scotland (I think, they never make it clear, Poke and I had to pause the movie several times to make sure we were on the same page), the world doesn't help Scotland, the only people left alive are the zombified victims, and the now-degenerate humans living in Scotland.

Before this, there is a intro scene where a mother holding her small child is running from soldiers who are simply shooting into the crowd to kill several infected people who have somehow made it through. Her child is wounded by shrapnel and loses an eye, but the mother manages to get her child to a army helicopter and hopefully save her child. CUE FAST FORWARD IN TIME!

To quarantine the deadly virus, the great people of England build a giant wall around Scotland, put up 24-hour surveillance, and install motion activated DEATH TURRETS that kill even innocent rabbits. (No joke, there is a scene of a rabbit being obliterated by a death turret)

BUT WAIT! We come to discover, in the middle of the walled up quarantine zone, is a abandoned lab which may hold the cure! A team is to be sent in to get the cure, and save the world (Scotland).

TREPIDATION! An advisor to the prime minister has other plans. Instead of getting the cure, they're just going to flood Scotland with water, and kill innocent people (zombies)!

Our heroine (the child from the intro scene, all growed up!) is introduced by a acceptable action scene on a ship, and that's about all i can grasp of it. I mean, I'm sure she is there for a reason, they just think its better to keep it a surprise! At any rate, she navigates the ship using her detachable eyeball, which doubles as a camcorder and a recon tool. She kills the bad guys, gets the necessary video for her mission, and a guy essentially gets decapitated by a shotgun blast to the head (It's important, decapitation is a important plot point).

Ok, there is some boring story "development", but the real point is, they are now sending the team into the quarantine zone. To get there safely, the team is in two APC-esque vehicles, (Poke knows a lot more about army weaponry than i do, he says they were accurate enough that i can't ridicule them) armed with futuristic weaponry, and wearing bio-suits to protect them from the virus. Now, the bio-suits are one of the most hilarious things i have seen. They are straight out of Buck Rodgers.























Seriously, it's pretty bad.

To be fair, not really that ^^^^ bad, but close- and... they called them bio-suits. Really Doomsday? Really? At any rate, now they are in the quarantine zone, and they soon find the lab. They move inside, and for a moment, it looks as though this movie could redeem itself. The aura of creepiness is there, I'm on the edge of my seat, and then... PUNKS! Yeah. Punks. Purple haired, tattoo covered, leather-wearing, blunt-weapon carrying punks. Ah, bad movies. How fast you can go from almost breaking even, right back into fail mode. Speaking of punks, I'm gonna go on a bit of a tangent here. I'm a metalhead, and we always get a bad rap. I don't have time to get into stereotypes, but we get the short end of the stick. Always. About damn time the punks had a little fun poked at them.

ANYWAY. These punks are charging out of some room and our team is in the back of the room having a shooting-fish-in-a-barrel kind of time, except for the one guy from the team who takes a blunt object to the face when he is caught by surprise.

There's an admittedly cool little scene of bad-assery where the guy with the shotgun is just stomping face, and takes out a lot of them. Not bad. His shotgun even has two flashlights. I dunno why, probably just because he's bad ass.

Now we've progressed to my favorite part of the movie. The foam grenades. Yes, everyone. Foam grenades. Essentially what happens is, the team crams into a non-working elevator. Our heroine demands the shotgun from the resident bad-ass. She says "we're going down" as she shoots the elevator cable, causing me to writhe in pain at the terrible joke. As the elevator falls, she pulls out a grenade, and you wonder, 'What can she do with that'? She pulls the pin and drops the 'nade, and there is a slow-mo sequence of it hitting the ground, and then a white foam erupts from it, filling the elevator, pushing the walls of the elevator against the elevator shaft, stopping the team on the floors below.

This is what transgressed as Poke and i watched this scene.

Me: Ah, she's asking for the shotgun. Oughta be good.
Poke: Did she say stun grenade?
Me: Yeah i think so.
Poke: So she used a stun grenade to do that? Why is everyone's ear's not bleeding from the grenade?
Me: Wait, i think she said foam grenade.
Poke: But that's not even a real thing?!
Me: *shrugs, rewinds* Yeh, she definitely says foam grenade. Yeah, look, it fills up the shaft and stops them on the floor below! Cool.
Poke: That's dumb. That wouldn't even really work.
Me: Wait, yeah. And when they all get out of the elevator, no one has foam on them!
Poke: Plus, that's like the only application I can think of for a foam grenade.
Me: Yeah, this movie is fail.
Poke: Yeah. Hey guess what?
Me: Yeah?
Poke: You're gay.
Me: No I'm not. But you like men.
Poke: Up yours. Let's finish this movie before i hate myself for watching it.

Now the team has escaped the building, they run out onto the street and head for the APCs.

A team member left back on the APCs, in all his brilliance, has brought in a young woman from outside who is infected in hopes of saving her.

Now back in the APCs, they begin driving as fast as possible, while the punks throw Molotov cocktails at them. There follows a mediocre chase scene (wait a minute, who am i kidding? it's an awful chase scene) and one of the punks ends up on top of the APC and he bashes the "bulletproof" glass of the APC open with a BRICK. APCs are meant to take a pounding, with glass that can withstand a tank round. Hmmm. Must have been a very strong brick.

Long story short, our team of heroes gets captured, a few people we never had time to care about die, an our heroine wakes up in a jail cell with a punk named Sol. Sol is bat-shit crazy. Sol is not nice. Sol beats our heroine up, gropes her, and goes Mike Tyson on her ear. And of course, because Sol is the craziest of all our resident punks, he is the leader.

The next scene is a bizarre mix of concert/circus/strip show. Apparently they have strung up one of the team members over a fire pit, and they plan to eat him. At this point the movie goes from bad to flat out disturbing, as the huge crowd of people eats his burned corpse. Seriously it's disgusting and very graphic, not for the faint of heart. Here's where i got more than a little annoyed at this movie...i understand the need to show the degeneration of society, but eating people crosses a line.

At any rate, a woman covered in tattoos to make her resemble a hawk (and is also Saul's girlfriend, as best i can tell) is introduced as a new main character, and then she heads downstairs to the prison blocks to where our heroine has freed herself and they have a short, badly choreographed sword fight, in which our hawk-lady is (you guessed it) beheaded. I was taken in complete shock (not by the loss of heads) because this hawk-lady had been treated as a new main character for five minutes, upon which she is rapidly killed off. Take a look at the movie cover, hawk-lady is featured in front of the heroine character. What!? It makes no sense, it's like hiring Brad Pitt to play an extra in a war movie!

Next the remnants of our original squad busts out of the punk compound and heads for a train in search of Kane, the operator of the abandoned lab. Kane's new base of operations is in a feudal English castle like setting, but we all know it's Lord of the Rings. The train is of course in perfect working order, and on it we meet Archer-Guy. He looks like a good replacement for Shotgun-Guy, but when they step out from Punk Land into Lord of the Ringsville, they are captured by Kane's horse riding knights, and Archer-Guy is killed almost instantaneously. What is their fetish with introducing new characters and then killing them in less than five minutes?

There's a whole bunch of attempted plot points, but really all you need to know is that our heroine is dumped into a deathmatch with Sauron...ahem, a guy in black spiky armor, she wins, they escape, and head for a cave like thing in the middle of the forest. Once in there the team opens a bunch of boxes, and in them is a Bentley Continental GT and a walky-talkie like thing. HOW CONVEINIENT! :o

They rev up the Bentley, burst out onto the abandoned highway, and head for rezendevous with the English bigwigs so they can save the world...er, Scotland.

A RIDICULOUS chase scene follows where a bunch of punks in wonderfully fast cars such as AMC Gremlins, a old busted Cadillac, and several Peugots and rally cars. Did I mention all of the cars look in poor working order, have human body parts mounted on them, and are somehow KEEPING UP WITH A BENTLEY? Seriously, the thing has 600+ horsepower, how is a old Caddy keeping up?

Oh yeah, because it has Sol in it with his dead girlfriend, and if we couldn't have them keep up, we'd be out of a story. Oh, damn.

Anyway, the good guys get away, Sol gets beheaded in the process (REALLY? AGAIN WITH THE BEHEADING MOTIF) and the Bentley drives through a old school bus full of punks and it somehow blows up, not sure how that one works, seeing as...well, whatever. I couldn't even try to explain it.

Now we are near the end, which i awaited with great anxiety. Not because I cared about the story, but because i wished to end the abusive relationship of this movie with my brain.

Our heroine delivers the cure, which is really a survivor who is immune to the disease. The cure can be made from her blood! G'HEY! We shoulda though of that before everyone turned into zombies!

After getting the bad guy's confession with her camcorder eyeball, our heroine gets back in the Bentley, scoops up Sol's head, and declares herslef the new Punk Leader.

THE END

The ending is about as abrupt as being tackled by a rhino, you don't expect it to happen, but when it does, it hurts.

No transitions, terrible acting, even worse dialog, EXCESSIVE gore, and cheesy plot points make Doomsday drunkenly stumble its way to our worst rating yet: a whopping 5.5 out of 7 failpunks.









If you intened to go against my recommendation, and watch this movie, make sure you're either among friends, drunk, or both. Otherwise, this movie will make you feel like flossing your teeth with barbed wire is a better alternative.

Till next time, everyone.

DOOMSDAY SUCKED!


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Now playing: Lamb Of God - Redneck
via FoxyTunes

1st Mini Entry - Legendary

Hello all - today I am going to be doing something slightly different - I'll be telling you all about a game both Poke and i think looks AWESOME. From time to time, we'll post an entry like this when a game we're very excited about is coming out.

This time, I'm writing the entry, because while Poke thinks it looks cool, I am damn near obsessed with it. (I'm considering getting a 360 just for it...)

It's called Legendary.



Ok, well, no one really likes PS3, but it's the only cover i could find, ok? I'm sorry.

AT ANY RATE. As you can see, griffins. Also, werewolves. How can this game be bad?

Seriously though.

Griffins.

This isn't doing you any good. Here's the trailer. It can tell you how badass this game really is better than me.



This looks like one of the best games for 360 in a good while, if not one of the prettiest graphically. At any rate, this game has so many opportunities to be awesome, if it comes up short, know that there will be a long and very unkind blog entry about it.

Plus, there's a shotgun. It has to be good right?

TIll next time, everyone.

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Now playing: Accept - Balls To The Wall
via FoxyTunes

6th Entry - Too Human

Hello, everyone. This week I'm reviewing Too Human.



Too Human - Xbox 360 - 3rd Person Adventure/Shooter

This is a game Goof and I really wanted to be good. It's about Norse mythology, how could it not be? Well, the reason I'm doing this one and not Goof , is the Norse part, or rather lack thereof. If Goof were to do it, there would be pages and pages of how wrong it is. I'll just say it failed and move on.

As a change of pace I'll start out with all the good parts, cause there were some. The warhammer weapon class made a satisfying "tink" sound when you hit people with them. Plus there is a weapon class that i can only describe as Death Cannons. Plus the graphics where technically good but they made some poor aesthetic choices.

OK, so on the parts that suck. And there are many.

The controls are terrible, like really, really, bad. I guess it was supposed to be an innovative feature like in Fight Night (I loved that game). But anyway, the controls involve you just randomly swinging the right thumb stick around, and that's just the melee. The gun controls are even worse. To fire you press the right trigger and to shoot powerful shots the left trigger. Sounds simple enough, but don't let it decieve you; it doesn't let you aim. You have to use a terrible lock on feature. It says you can select targets but really you can only select targets at the far left or right. If you want to target the big guy in the middle you're pretty much screwed, plus God help you if you end up turned around trying to shoot something.

Now lets talk about the camera control. Instead of making the right stick the camera they just made it failsuck. You can hit left bumper to center it behind you but you can't really in the middle of a fight. So you end up not knowing where you are going most of the time.

So on to the game play. As I mentioned on the controls section you just swing the thumb stick around. A lot. Like that's all you do. Each level consists of you fighting progressively bigger enemies till you get to the boss at which point you swing it around some more then he dies. Yay, you win. This is like a lot of games, but in this game the enemies don't even change. Like they don't even get a different paint job. Then after every hundred or so (not an exaggeration you kill a lot of things) you fight a big named guy. But the only different part about him is he is bigger has more health and a really gay name, like "Wrist Slit" (Not kidding really a guy you fight). The only game play change is the last level. For those of you who know about Norse mythology you go to Helheim(on a side note no one can ever leave Helheim, not even gods), for everyone else you go to Hel and fight zombies and even Garm (the zombie guard dog). So instead of robot elves (I guess I forgot that part, up to this point everything you fight is a robot. Also there are no elves in Norse mythology, I wasn't kidding when I said they failed) you fight zombies. Big change, but not really cause you just swing the right thumb stick around till everything dies.

I'm putting in an extra paragraph to rant about "Cyberspace". I'm relatively sure they just put this part in to pretend they had puzzles. Mostly it just removes you from the other game play and forces you to go push a button, later in the game you have to chose between three buttons. It's really hard.

So on to the loot. This game drops crap tons of loot. But really you just need to wait till you find an orange piece then you can use it for like ten levels and just sell everything else you pick up. I do wonder though, if you're supposed to be a god, why is the stuff you pick up off dead robots better than the stuff you start out with?

The story is also pretty terrible, I can sum it up in some short sentences. You wake from the dead. You kill the Grendel (by the way this is from Beowulf, not Norse). You fight Hod, because he killed you. Loki gets away. You kill Hel, Loki's daughter. And really the Grendel part isn't important i just wanted to point out that part not even loosely based on Norse myths.

The only cool part is Thor cause he's just a bad ass, when you first meet him be breaks the table with his hammer and asks for some mead. Plus they gave it a terrible ending, just asking for a sequel but all that's left is to kill Loki.

I bash this game a lot, but it wasn't really super terrible. I definitely had to force myself to finish it, cause it was the opposite of fun. I give it three out of seven failhammers.

5th Entry - Doom 3

Yes everyone, we're back for another round.

It was my birthday this weekend, thanks to all my friends for making it great. One of my presents was a cat figurine from the Dollar Tree that has the most evil and terrifying eyes I have ever seen. That's all I'm telling you.



Doom 3 - PC, Xbox - FPS

Ok so this week it's Doom 3's turn. Yes. You read that right. I DON'T LIKE DOOM 3. In fact, i think its downright awful. Here's why.

First off, this is a horror shooter. Where is the horror? This game simply isn't scary. Call me desensitized, but the only time I jumped from shock in this whole game was when the first zombie appears. After that, it was mind-numbingly predictable. Here's an example.

Player: Hmmm, there's a dead body over there. Also I hear demonic whispering. There must be a enemy or two over there.
*Player walks to said area*
Player: Damn flashlight. Why can't I use you and a weapon at the same time. This would be a perfect time to get ambushed.
Imp Demon: GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR! HISSSSSSSS!
Player: Fuck.

This happens over and over through out the game, and eventually you want to throw the disc at a wall. My favorite type of ambush (sarcasm) is when you're backed into a corner, and suddenly one of those hell hound things warps in, and begins doing terrible, prison cell things to you before you even know it happened.


The gratuitous blood and gore gets kind of old too. Sure, it makes sense that if i put a shotgun to a imp's head, and pull the trigger, the result is messy. But every corner i go around, there is another brutally murdered and dismembered scientist. (There are only so many scientists on this stupid rock called Mars, apparently demons like guys in white suits) Too much gore makes it just ridiculous. Not to mention there are a lot of operating tables in this base, and apparently the surgeons are terrible, because the tables are always slick with blood and covered in body parts. Remind me to never sign up for the Doom Health Plan.

Ok, I'll give it to them, for a shooter, this story is not half bad. Pretty good even. Pretty good until you open a portal from hell AND DEMONS START COMING THROUGH! How does this work? You're on Mars. Mars! Is hell even near Mars? And let's say i even buy that they can teleport to Mars. Why do they want to come to Mars? It's got zombies on it, so screw that, give it to the demons.

Moving on. The weapons are alright. I like the shotgun. I always like shotguns. Their overpowering silliness makes me happy. Then there's the pistol. Wow. I'm pretty sure calling the demons bad names would hurt them more than this freaking thing. Really though. Don't use it. The other guns are pretty rudimentary - assault rifle, plasma gun, rocket launcher...your run-of-the-mill sci-fi shooter. A run-of-the-mill weapons set doesn't make a already lame and limping game any better though...

Uh...the Soul Cube. Yeah, let's not even go there because...I...uh...wha...guh...retarded.

Oh, and thank you game developers of Doom 3, for trying to mix up the gameplay and put puzzles in the game. You assume i will get bored with shooting demons, and want to do some puzzles? Are you kidding? What the hell is this, Bubble Bobble? Why am i playing Doom 3? I have a RAGING HARD-ON TO KICK SOME FIREBALL-CHUCKING, DEVIL WORSHIPING DEMON ASS, that's why. But no. I have to slide some tiles around. You didn't put puzzles in here to mix up the gameplay. You just want to waste my time.

Hmm. Oh yes, i haven't had my flashlight hating rant yet. Look, let's face it, we're in a miltary base, and one of these gung-ho manly marines has to have some duct tape. Just grab that junk, wrap it on the flashlight, strap it to the gun, and now all of a sudden your game's players don't hate your existence anymore. Seriously, I get that having to switch to a flashlight makes it more creepy, or whatever, but when i start having to light my way by muzzle flashes so i don't get bum-rushed by flying death demons, I get a little annoyed.

Speaking of flying death demons - the enemies all look like they probably did come straight from hell. Sure. Yeah. But flying babies? Flying BABIES. They even whine like little children. Come on, couldn't you have done something less dumb? How about a winged, fire breathing serpent? See? I'm already miles ahead of you. Fire breathing serpents > flying babies that cry.

Also, the "bosses" are laughable. Really. The first one, that spider like thing, is just sad. I think i used two shotgun clips on it. Maybe. The final boss can only be described as total fail. I shot it twice with the rocket launcher. Two rockets to the dome, and I had beaten the biggest monster in all of hell. It makes tons of sense.

Bottom line - Doom 3 is a shooter than does several things pretty decently, a lot of stuff badly, and throw in a handful of mediocre weapons to make it lackluster. There are worse games, but there are DEFINITELY better ones. A lot of them. Like most of them.

All that considered, Doom 3 earns its way to a score of two and a half out of seven faillights.



Till next time, everyone.



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Now playing: Black Label Society - Nothing's the Same
via FoxyTunes

4th Entry- Point Break

Hey guys, this week I'm keeping with the movie theme and doing Point Break, and while this movie is old it is still hilariously bad.

This is what it says on the back of the box: "'Ultra-stylized, testosterone-charged action, death-defying stunts, wall-to-wall rock music and ear-shattering sound' (Village View(who has ever heard of them)) are just the backdrop for this super-intense, high-octane thriller..." I mean really I don't even have to come up with a joke, it's that ridiculous. I really enjoyed this movie, but not as a high-octane thriller (lot of hyphens on there aren't there) but more as a laugh out loud comedy.

It has every thing from super campy dialogue, such as Patric Swayze's famous line "Little hand says it's time to rock and roll." (really what does that even mean, does his watch's second have a 'rock and roll' time, and if so where did he buy it?)
to ridiculous action scenes; like a 90 second conversation held in free fall, when in reality you can't hear anything much less have a conversation and the fall lasts thirty seconds at most after which your just a splat on the landscape. My favorite scene ever is when Gary Busey and Keanu Reeves (I'm not going to mention the character names cause really who cares?) hatch their plot to catch Patrick's merry band of surfer/bank robbers. After they figure that all they need to do is put Keanu under cover as a surfer (which he fails at by the way) they jump up on the table and start table surfing. I wish I could find a picture because you really have to see it the appreciate the fail, but apparently they signed a deal with the devil cause i can't find it anywhere.

The plot is just sad. Keanu is a wet behind the ears F.B.I. agent who thinks he is going to change the world. There are these bank robbers nobody can catch but this one old guy (Gary Busey) that everybody hates knows they are surfers because of some bogus police work that anyone with half a brain knows is total crap. So anyway he tells his new partner about his theory and then Keanu goes under cover, too bad he can't surf, plus I guess he is too dumb to remember a cover id so he doesn't even change his name. So he meets this super hot chick that also happens to be an x-girlfriend or some such of the bank robber, our pal Patrick. I guess he's just super lucky cause she also wants to bang the crap out of him. So blah blah he learns to surf and impresses the bank robbers, by getting in a fight with the bad crowd. He totally thinks it's this bad group cause no way, it can't be his friend Patrick, he's too cool. Turns out he's wrong and his friends find out he's a cop. So they then kidnap him and go parachuting(?).

Later after some sexual tension between him and his girlfriend, they force him to help rob a bank. Yet again not sure why I don't know they gain by this but hey it's a terrible movie anyway so I'll go with it. Of course something goes wrong one of them gets shot and the cops come. This lead to one of the dumbest chases ever. Keanu trips and Patrick gets away but as he's climbing the fence Keanu pulls out his gun, but because he is his friend he can't shot him, so instead he shoots into the air probably kill and bunch of kids, cause of that whole gravity thing. Then later Keanu is on the plane with the surviving bank robbers (no one knows why, probably not even the writers) and Patrick jumps out leaving no chute for Keanu so he jumps after him. Again not sure why cause the plane isn't crashing and there's even a living breathing pilot but whatever. So this leads to the 90 second free fall complete with conversation, which as I already discussed is just wrong. Then because Keanu's a dumb ass Patrick gets away.

Later in Australia (I do this transition because it's pretty much how it is in the movie) Patrick is going to catch the perfect wave and Keanu shows up with a bunch of cops and then he lets him surf and then quits his job. Then the movie ends.

I really wonder what everyone who was making this movie thought of it. Like this movie was bad for when it can out but I guess everybody on set didn't want to admit it and just lied to themselves. So in the end I give it four out of seven fail boards.

3rd Entry - In the Name of the King

Hey everybody, welcome back to our blog. Hope you had as good a weekend as I did.

This week I am changing it up a bit, and I am going to review our first movie, In the Name of the King, starring Jason Statham.

Also, I am going to give a spoiler alert, but honestly, if you watch this movie because you want to see the story unfold, you're doing it wrong.



In The Name of the King - DVD - Action/Fantasy/Adventure

All right, so, first off this movie is hilarious. I don't think i can stress enough how funny this movie is. However, it isn't supposed to be funny. It's just that bad.

Secondly, Jason Statham is awesome. He never stops stomping face in this movie. Or any movie he is in, for that matter. In this case, i think he took this movie because he felt he needed to expand his repetoire into comedy. Either way, Jason, buddy, you're not a B-list actor, don't do this to yourself.

If you've ever played a game like World of Warcraft, or Dungeon Siege (which the movie is apparently based off of), or seen any of the Lord of the Rings movies, or read any kind of fantasy novel, you know the deal. It goes like this.

1. Hero is introduced.
2. Hero kicks some preliminary ass.
3. Hero's loved one dies/is captured/both. (In this case, both.)
4. Hero kicks lots of ass.
5. Hero wins.

OK so, Jason Statham is Farmer, an....uh... farmer whose son is killed by the Krugs (really though, they are Orcs from LOTR) and whose wife is captured by the ubiquitous bad-guys. So Jason Statham being the kind of guy he is, goes off to get revenge. (Revenge, yes, but revenge is so different when it's Jason doing it.)

But before he can leave, he's gotta fight off the remaining Krug (ORCS!) in his village. Know how he does it? With a BOOMERANG. Yeah, pretty much the best thing ever.

Once that's done, a few volunteers come along with him, and it's off to reclaim wifey.

Along the way they have a few random encounters, but one is by far my favorite. Our heroes begin to wander through the forest, when they are captured by what i can only accurately describe as tree-ninjas. I think what they were going for was a dryad or a druid of some sort, but tree-ninja is much better. At any rate, a massively POINTLESS scene ensues where Jason says to let them go, the tree-ninjas say OK, sorry to bother you, and everyone goes on their way. Really. That's the whole scene. Ridiculous.

So now we've arrived near the castle (which is ruled by everyone's favorite, Turd Ferguson...err, Burt Reynolds). There is some stuff in the middle I've missed, but it really, REALLY doesn't matter.

Ray Liotta makes a hilarious appearance as a evil wizard - his character must exist to have all of the bad lines, the man never says one line that isn't beyond hilarious. (YOU WISH TO ACCELERATE!?!?!? FINE! WE SHALL ACCELERATE!) Matthew Lillard plays the stupid and greedy heir to the throne, who is league with the wizard to overthrow Turd (Burt Reynolds, dammit). Also, Johnathan Rhys-Davies plays a good wizard, much different from his role as Gimli in LOTR.

So now at this point we're in the middle of a huge battlefield, the king's army versus a ragtag band led by our man Jason.

The battle commences, and as far as battle sequences go, this one is not too terrible. Really. Its actually fairly enjoyable, and it isn't hilariously bad either. But then, something amazing happens.

Legions of NINJAS appear! That's right, legions. No they aren't the tree ninjas either. But then, just as you recover from the addition of ninjas, then (you guessed it) the TREE NINJAS return to help out our beloved hero. But even when you thought it couldn't get more ridiculous, a rotting hand emerges from the ground, and now, ZOMBIES join the fray! (If by this point in the film, you aren't able to breathe from laughter, something is wrong with you.) So after this giant battle of ridiculous proportions, our man Jason comes out on top, outcasts the greedy heir, and takes his place as the real king, with his newly reclaimed wife at his side. That's right, a twist ending, how could we have known Jason was the real heir to the throne? TELL US, TURD FERGUSON. HOW?!

The best (and probably only way) to watch this movie is with a huge group of your friends. So while it is a terrible, terrible movie, it is redeemed by its accidental humor value.

All in all, a bad movie, but a great thing to do when bored. I give In the Name of the King 3 out of seven fail ninjas.


(Thanks to myself and Poke's good friend GADs for the awesome ninja pic)

Also, this movie is directed by Uwe Boll - you should know, this guy is infamous in Hollywood for just making terrible movies. Also, he is infamous for generally being a dick. He also has a apparent enjoyment of calling various critics and directors "retards." Way to go, Uwe. Deutschland is proud.

Uwe Boll has released a video stating that he is "the only genius in the whole fucking [movie] business" and that other directors such as Michael Bay and Eli Roth are "fucking retards". (Wikipedia)

Blair Erickson, a writer of a treatment for Alone in the Dark, has written a critical account of his experience working with Boll, in which Erickson alleges that Boll stole ideas from prior movies and wanted to add elements to the story that were not true to the tone of the source material. Uwe chose to not use Erickson's script, citing reasons such as it having "not enough car chases." (Wikipedia)

Blizzard Entertainment refused Boll's request to make a World of Warcraft adaptation; Boll said, "I got in contact with Paul Sams of Blizzard, and he said, 'We will not sell the movie rights, not to you... especially not to you.'" (Wikipedia)

All right everyone, and with that, till next time.

- GoofyTooth

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Now playing: Mastodon - Blood and Thunder
via FoxyTunes

2nd Entry - Kane and Lynch: Dead Men

Kane and Lynch: Dead Men - Xbox 360 - 3rd Person Shooter

This is a game i had high hopes for. It's a cool concept, plus Goof and I like co-op games, so this seemed like a perfect choice. The story is pretty simple; these two guys are broken out of jail by some criminal organization to rob a bank. Why, I'm not sure. Kane i understand sort of. He owes them money so they make him do bitch work. Lynch, however, makes no sense. He's in jail for maybe killing his wife no one knows if he did it or not not even him. This seems to be his whole criminal career. Plus he blacks out some times, doesn't seem like the best choice, but not all criminals are geniuses so I'll go along with it.

So the first couple levels are fun. You rob the bank, Lynch has an episode all the civilians turn into cops with pig heads, cause you know he's crazy. Then you have a fun little chase with you riding in the back of a van, pretty cool unless you're Lynch cause at this point the only weapon you can get is a shotgun or pistol, neither one really effective because they never get close. This turns out to be a major problem the whole game. Lynch always has a shotgun at the start of the level even if the level involves you sneaking through fields in Cuba, you might ask why you are in Cuba, but I can't really tell you cause I'm not sure myself. They tired to make an in depth story but mostly I couldn't figure out what was going on.

After like the first three levels you start just doing dumb stuff, that mostly is not fun. There is one part where you have to stop a giant dump truck from running over Kane's daughter cause, you know, the bad guys are bad. Mostly it's a game of chance if you manage to kill the guy, nothing really to do with skill just luck, which is super irritating. As an added bonus if you mess up, and you will (a ton), you get to watch a thirty second cut scene that you can't skip. This seems to be a common motif, because later, when you're in Cuba, The bad guys have Kane's daughter again, you start in the middle of a court yard with guys above you and no cover, yet a again it's pure chance if you don't die, and if you do, which you probably will, you get to listen to them bitch about Kane's daughter and whatever else is happening in the story for a good twenty seconds this time, yay fun!

So now we get to talk about the game play in general. First lets talk about the weapon selection, or lack there of. Essentially There is Kane's assault rifle, which starts as an M-4 and I believe turns in to a Galil, and whatever assault rifle the bad guys have, first an M-4 and the when you get to Cuba Ak-47s, they are about the same. And then the useless shotgun Lynch gets which you should drop for anything the first chance you get; it sucks that much. Then the controls. The buttons were ok, but it just seemed sloppy. The third person was again not bad but after playing Gears of War it made me mad sometimes. Also the levels where pretty much go to this place and kill everything in the way, which is the same as Halo but it just seemed not fun the way they did it. They put in grenades in almost as an after thought. They took so long to throw and you had to stand out of cover do so. When you really need them to take out large groups or a machine nest you are more likely to die then anything else. The graphics where yet again so-so. Kane and Lynch themselves looked pretty good, but the world was pretty bland and the bad guys all looked the same, the only difference between the cops and Cuban revolutionaries was the color of the uniform. Also the adrenaline was funny. There's no real good revive system in any game, but it just made me laugh that if you got hit by a tank round all you had to do was get a shot of adrenaline and you where cool

So in conclusion this game made me mad. At first I was like this is a fun co-op game but then it just started to suck, and became the opposite of fun. At one point I was happy to put it down and read bad Greek plays for class. I give it 5 out of 7 failpills

1st Entry - Brute Force

Hello everyone, this is the first installment in Terrible Entertainment Media, where myself (GoofyTooth) and my friend (Poke) will review and promptly ridicule terrible, terrible games, movies, and the like. (Let's remember this is all in good fun, if I don't like a game you do like, its not you i don't like, but the game.)

We're both VCU students living in Richmond, VA.

If you have a idea for us to write about feel free to send it to thegoof@hotmail.com!

With that said, let's get right to it.




















Brute Force - Xbox (Original) 3rd Person Shooter

Let me preface this by saying I wasted only $4 and eight hours of my life on this game. When Poke and I saw it at GameStop for $4, we immediately thought of how we had only played the game a few times when it first came out, and we remembered it being rather fun.

But no. Oh, no, no, no. I don't know how I ever enjoyed this game.

Admittedly, the first few levels were fun in a terrible, campy, and nostalgic kind of way. We laughed at the bad writing, the bad graphics, and the laggy gameplay. But by the time we reached about the tenth or so level, it went from amusement to outright frustration and irritability. I don't know where to start with this game. It does everything a shooter should do, but badly and painfully so.

First off, it's a third person shooter. But not really. Its more of a put-the-camera-on-the-guy's-back-and-wave-it-awkwardly shooter. You really spend most of the game looking at the upper half of your character's scaly/naked/armored back.

Speaking of the characters, there are four main playable characters.

Tex - A human male who can wield two weapons at once
Brutus - a male lizard who can go into a sort of frenzy
Hawk - a human female who can go invisible for a short period of time
Flint - a synthetic (huh? but really though she's a human female) who can auto-snipe

Now you would think all of these characters have their ups and downs. But in all honesty the only characters who are truly playable are Tex and Brutus. Hawk dies from anything that shoots her, ever, at ALL. And Flint is also too fragile to use effectively, and while her sniping ability could be useful, there are no good sniping spots in the whole game. And did i mention HAwk and Flint are unable to pick up the three most useful weapons in the game? Oh, AWESOME.

The weapon selection in this game at first seems impressive, but it's actually about twelve terrible weapons, and three useful ones. Seriously, if you try to use anything other than the minigun, shotgun, or missile launcher, you'll just become annoyed. Oh, yeah, and you start essentially every level with a laser gun with regenerating ammo. Yeah, that's how you KNOW it's good.

Let's talk about the game's cutscenes. For as old as this game is, the CG work is decent and most of the cutscenes look acceptable. However, every SINGLE cutscene does the same thing over and over, but with variations in the speech. I shall demonstrate.

Commander Guy: Great job team.
Team: Thanks.
Commander: Your next mission is on (insert planet here). You have to eradicate (insert alien race here).
Tex: Let's DO IT!
Hawk: Mmmmmmmmmmmhmm.
Flint: (some kind of moody interjection)
Brutus: GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!!!!!

There you go. Every cutscene in the game.

Also the battlefield banter from the characters becomes old in less than five minutes, because their vocabulary is less than fifty words apiece. Let me again show you an example of the only things each character can say:

Tex: I'm a giant bad-ass.
Brutus: GRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.
Hawk: (She never says anything, she is always too busy dying/respawning.)
Flint: I snipe things.

It gets old very fast and you begin to hate when your character speaks.

The music is non-existent, and when it actually does chime in, it tries to sound epic, but it always comes up very very short.

The level design leaves something to be desired, and the final few levels seem like they were thrown together like a project due in six hours. Again, like much of the game, the levels seem to degenerate as you proceed.

However, the thing that really threw me off was the final stage, or I suppose what was theoretically supposed to be a "boss battle," but it was more of a lesson in frustration. The final boss teleports around several high towers and shoots missiles at you as you run for cover. You can only run around the level in search of a button which, when pressed, drops a meteor (OF COURSE!) on a small part of the stage. Shooting the actual boss will not damage him, so it stands to reason you wouldn't simply open fire on him just because. But in fact if you don't shoot him, YOU'RE DEAD WRONG. You need to pummel him with as much ammo as you can so he will teleport to the exact spot where you can drop the meteor on him. (Oh, silly me.)

The other thing about the final stage that i can't understand is that it is completely different from all other gameplay in that it can't be solved by throwing lots of minigun rounds at it. Seriously, the only truly fun thing about the game is using the minigun to put ridiculous amounts of lead in the air, so why they would remove this element in the final battle is beyond me.

In closing, since I only spent $4 on this game, I don't feel too bad. If i had abought the game when it was released, i would feel sick.

At any rate, this game is of course, terrible, so play at your own risk.

Therefore, I award Brute Force four out of seven fail.





Until next time.

- GoofyTooth

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Now playing: Blind Guardian - The New Order
via FoxyTunes