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”).
I wasn’t sure if he was supposed to be a good guy, but the title character is a swordsman whose calling card is that he breaks of a piece of his sword in the bodies of his foes. You would think by the end of the movie he would be wielding a nub, but the sword never seems to shrink much. The plot is more complicated than most kung-fu pictures and includes a gambling house where dominoes is the game of choice, weird freeze-frame fight moments, a “killer” doctor, and an archetypal annoying jokester hero.
This was a decent martial arts film notable for four things: a snowy, wintertime setting; exciting fights with many, many combatants; whip fighting; and Cheng Pei Pei commanding the screen in a modified Santa Claus suit.
This is a weird one. It starts off with a display of magical cloaked fighters in which two are made to kill themselves. One fighter (who I swear is a young Jackie Chan) gouges out his eyes, the other gouges out his, um… crotch. You are then shown more magical legions; the first is using voodoo power and the other is trying to block gun shots with a combination of muscle flexing and paper. The set up is crazy and you know it’s going to be great, but then it hits the breaks and focuses on an old man who can lift lots of wood. After some time the action returns with a couple of excellent sequences in which three assassins are trying to secretly take out the old guy, an out-of-place fight in which a jokester pretends to be a magical fighter, and another in which said jokester fights in a latrine controlled by voodoo. When we finally get around to the big display of the eighteen legendary weapons it’s pretty anticlimactic and boring.
