Master is worried that his five former students are too powerful and may do evil so he sends his goofy-haired final student off to stop them (but with the caveat that he must team-up with one of the venoms in order to defeat the others). This makes no sense, but once the ball is rolling it doesn’t matter. The five venoms begin to reveal themselves by slipping into their unique fighting styles but, rather than becoming an all out brawl, the story becomes an ancient Chinese courtroom drama. In this version “Your honor, I object!” has been replaced with kicking and a series of torture devices. Also featuring history’s most corrupt police force and judiciary which, in the end, the heroes choose to leave be because whatever would replace them would be.. er.. worse?
Wadjet has produced another solid point and click adventure game that makes up for its somewhat lackluster predecessor, A Golden Wake. This one is a sci-fi, cyberpunk thriller in which there is a killer on the loose “mindjacking” his victims’ memories.
I never quite understood the appeal of cyberpunk. My experience in the genre is limited mostly to The Matrix movies and a fruitless attempt to play Neuromancer on the Apple IIgs. Thankfully, most of Technobabylon takes place in meat-space with a focus on criminal investigation and dialogue. At various points in the game you control one of three characters: Regis the old-fashion police detective, Max his assistant who uses her cyber-skills to investigate, and Latha the girl who is addicted to “The Trance.” I’m not sure how one could get addicted to standing on empty platforms and hacking food vending machines, but then again I don’t understand let’s play videos either.
As with all the other games from Wadjet Eye, the voice acting is (mostly) professional sounding, the pixelated art is as lovely as ever, the plot moves along at a decent clip, and the puzzles are for the most part fair. As per usual I would only get stuck when I would miss clicking some tiny detail on the screen. The Shivah had a nice feature where you could hold down the mouse button to reveal the clickable hotspots. The AGS system is pushed to the limits here. I really wish they could upgrade the sound and animation. As it is, dialogue can sometimes feel robotic, with no cross-talk and occasional stuttering glitches. These are minor complaints and even these glitches can add a little to the old-school charm of the point and click genre.
A rather brutal kung-fu flick centered around competing schools in the lead up to a fighting competition. Lot of spraying gore and a couple eye plucking scenes earn this one its “R” rating. The main hero has an inflexible, emotionless baby-face but the story and secondary characters are decent and more than make up for the wooden acting of the lead. This one is noteworthy for using the same alarming synth sound that Tarantino used to denote revenge in Kill Bill (turns out it’s the theme from the Ironsides TV show). in this case it’s to denote his glowing iron fist technique.
Back in 2007 I played a free, ad-supported version of Prince of Persia: Sands of Time which I enjoyed quite a bit. Although I missed seeing commercials for McDonald’s between every level, this is more or less the same game. There seems to be more of an emphasis on combat in The Two Thrones but the core platforming and time-shifting mechanics remain. Since that first game however, this sort of acrobatic platforming has been done a zillion times better in the Tomb Raider games and I started to get frustrated with blind jumps at about the halfway point. The whole time-reversal mode seems like a kludge to cover poor level design and camera control. The game does do a good job at keeping its bare-bones story moving along and will occasionally break up the monotony with a chariot race or tower of Hanoi puzzle.
The sequel to the memorable One-Armed Swordsman is less about character development and more about action (Duh… you could say that about every martial arts movie). The plot is literally the plot of a video game. There are five bosses to defeat… start walking to the left and start swinging your sword. That said, the fights are pretty incredible and the blood has been turned up several notches making this a fun watch.
Like any compilation, there will be a range of quality in the songs. Most of the tracks that I really like on this soundtrack I already owned… by that I mean “It’s Catching Up” by Nomeansno. There are a few other good tunes, but for the most part, this is a showcase for paranoid left-wing political rock. I get it. Corporations are evil. Boo hoo. Anyhow, I eventually saw this film at the art theater in Champaign and it was a boring mess. The movie, that is. The theater was lovely.
Finally, a Shaw Bros. martial arts film that hits all the right buttons: interesting characters, plot twists, colorful design and, of course, excellent fights. I went into this not expecting much—a couple of the ones with “shaolin” in the title have been weak. After an unimpressive opening scene, things start to get interesting as the film sets itself up as a sort of murder mystery. The trail leads them to the shaolin temple and it’s there that the fights get really crazy as one of the heroes battles a literal wall of monks.
Opposing Force is a welcome improvement over Blue Shift. First off, it’s feels like a full game rather than just a bunch of new levels. It’s nowhere near as developed as a modern shooter, but there’s a little bit of a story to follow. Half Life was much lauded for its story, but, in hindsight, there really wasn’t much there. Opposing Force doesn’t even have that minimal level of depth, but there’s enough there to push you towards your goal which, as always, is to get the hell out of Black Mesa.
There are also a couple of new mechanics… literally… you can recruit a mechanic to open a sealed door for you. There are also medics to heal you. Both will help you out in a fire fight (if they are not blocking your path) and both constantly spout lines from Aliens. I can’t say if any of the creatures or guns were new, but the ability to swing and climb ropes was added. Doesn’t really get used all that much, but it’s something.
I am finally getting around to playing the Half-Life 1 expansion games. As expected, this is more of the same. This time around playing as a security officer who is caught up in the Black Mesa incident. Once again, you are trying to get back to the surface. There aren’t any new game play mechanics (that I can see), and aside from a couple of references to Freeman, the story here doesn’t really tie into the main narrative. I’m not sure if I am supposed to be the same guy as Barney from Half-Life 2. This is a short game (not worth the $5 it normally sells for), but it’s a good way to revisit the original Half-Life without a huge time commitment.
Star Wars kinda soured on me in the early 00’s. Yeah, the prequels sucked, but even worse for me was the explosion of fandom and extended universe what-nots. From release of the first movie up until around the time the special editions came out, Star Wars was limited and distilled down mostly to those first three movies. Any trickle of new content was a joy and this soundtrack felt special. It was like being able to watch the film anywhere as scenes would replay in my mind with every musical passage. But now, with the marketing deluge, even the most minor tracks on this CD feel like I’m watching a Taco Bell commercial. Trying to hear past that, I can say that the music is pretty incredible in the way it tells the story and defines the characters (even though it is very much a reworking of Gustav Holst’s “The Planets”).
