Man, this game was a bit of a mess. I guess I wanted it to be a Baldur’s Gate style tactical role playing game with all the characters and story of Bioware’s other big RPG, Mass Effect. Well, despite the zoomed-out tactical battle mode, this is not an Infinity-Engine style game. Most of the game is played in a stilted third-person view with super-wonky controls. You can zoom out, but you aren’t allowed to pan around the battlefield much. Eventually I got the hang of it, but I had to put the game aside for a while out of sheer frustration.
There was a large chunk in the middle where I appreciated the mindless hack-and-slash game-play. But I found myself just watching my health bars and timing healing while letting the computer control all the fighting. This gets old and it doesn’t help that you will occasionally hit a battle that is inexplicably a zillion times harder than the last hundred or so encounters. You’ll have to replay the same battle over and over again wishing you could save your game during the fight. While the rush of striking the final killing blow at the end of one of these endurance tests is satisfying, they just began to weigh down on me.
I spent the last third of the game on easy mode just so I could grind through the mediocre story. Demons threaten the lands. You must gather your forces. Blah, blah, blah, yawn. There is a hint of the character relationship building we got in Mass Effect but it doesn’t mesh with the game as a whole and just feels like the silly mini-game it really is. I had high hopes for this one (especially being on the heels of completing two stellar RPGs: Skyrim and Wasteland 2), but in the end it just felt like work.
For this record the band finished recording songs that they had been writing back when they broke-up in the late 70’s. There are live versions of these songs from that era on Document and Eyewitness, but I wasn’t very familiar with those recordings. This isn’t a complete throwback and the tunes are firmly within the sonic range of their post-2000s incarnation. Had this come out in 1980 I suspect it would have been far more experimental which may have been spectacular, but it may also have been Dome. As it is, I would still consider this to be among the band’s best work. I may even be so bold as to say I like it better than Pink Flag. Heresy, I know, but it really is that good.
I got this CD as a bonus from ordering Red Barked Tree directly from Wire mail order. The disc opens with re-recordings of a couple of Bell Is a Cup era songs, “Boiling Boy” and “German Shepherds.” Stripped of their electronic dance arrangements these songs are great straight up rock tunes—A hint at what was to come next.
Probably my favorite of the recent Marvel to film movie productions. It helps that it wasn’t an idiotic superhero movie. Fortunately the focus is mostly on the characters and dialogue. However, like most modern CGI fests, the movie loses me during the big set pieces where I can’t tell what the heck is going on half the time. That said, a surprising amount of the action at least seems like it was done on a set with real people.
Although the subject matter is interesting, I didn’t get much out of the documentary that I didn’t already know from the trailer. The film follows the doomed pre-production of a 70’s version of Dune. It consists mainly of anecdotes about how each of the creative people behind the production was recruited by the director and inspired by his crazy vision. The film’s thesis is that this would have been one of the most remarkable films of all time, but it just felt like it would have been a typical 70’s sci-fi preach-fest with trippy design.
Mondo Macabro has been pretty consistent in their DVD releases. Lots of trashy and weird genre films from outside of Europe and America. While technically not a Mondo Macabro DVD release, Hell’s Ground was co-produced by them. It has a lot of the trademarks of one of their films: gore, low-budget production and groovy world music.
This is billed as Pakistan’s first zombie movie. Outside of one scene, it’s not really a zombie film but rather a somewhat standard slasher film. The unique Pakistan setting gives it a bit of flair, but all the usual cliches are there: dumb teens doing dumb things leading to a series of brutal murders. The real reason to watch this is the burqa-clad killer and his/her deadly morning star.
This film is definitely hindered by its low budget and I would love to see more films from the director with a little more production value. As it is, it’s enjoyable but not quite the roller coaster ride it could have been.
I know Lileks mostly as a humorous conservative commentator and a connoisseur of cheesy 50’s pop culture. I wasn’t sure what to expect with this one. Fortunately, the book leans more on the humor side of his writing than the politics. Politics come mostly in the form of the main antagonists being a group of PETA-like activists, but, for the most part, this is the story of a small town news reporter trying to regain his bearings after losing his girlfriend and his job. The first half of the book is chock full of one-liners and witty prose, but things get a little less jokey as the plot begins to unfold. I would have preferred a lighter tone throughout but the novel still managed to keep me engaged up to the end.
It took a while warm up to this record. Not nearly as aggressive sounding as the most of post-2000’s Wire, Red Barked Tree’s songs are much more well-thought out and structured. “Adapt” has a great dreamy quality, “Clay” feels like a lost track from Chairs Missing and “Bad Worn Thing” is probably my favorite song on this disc. Excellent.
While it starts out on a high note with “One of Us,” Object 47 doesn’t quite live up to the promise of Read & Burn 03. The songs are pretty conventional and lack that touch of “art rock” which made Wire so unique. But still, this is, by just about any measure, more exciting than most of the rock that is churned out these days.
This mediocre Eurospy movie is based entirely around the stunt casting of Sean Connery’s younger brother Neil in the title role. It has some style and a fun title song but the film is mostly just plods along from one silly plot point (can-can girls overtaking a military caravan!) to another (deadly, unstoppable hypnotism). The few highlights in the film include a raid with the heroes dressed in overalls and a bazooka and knife wielding nun.
