Call of Duty 5: World At War Review

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was one of the best games of last year, which is no mean feat when you consider that Bioshock and Halo 3 were released in the same year. CoD4 combined already intuitive combat with excellent level design, outstanding multiplayer and a modern setting in order to transform the Call of Duty series forever and what's more; it almost worked.

Sadly with the release of Call of Duty 5 the series makes a laborious march home to the war torn European landscape which is the second world war. Despite the fact that the game deals with parts of the war never before seen in a Call of Duty game (the conflict with the Japanese and the final Russian assault on Berlin) it's hard to ignore the apparent fact that the series has regressed. Gone is the mildly intriguing plot which held the last game together. Gone are the modern weapons and equipment. In with old and out with the new seems to be the strategy here and it shows.

Other than the games complete and utter lack of an intriguing storyline (everyone knows how WW2 ended), or compelling narrative (the plot now being told through overly dramatic cut scenes rather than players experiencing events themselves), the campaign seems to have kept most of what made CoD 4 great. The levels are still excellently designed with very few dull moments, guns are still satisfying and the games is still intuitive.

Multiplayer is where the game really manages to show itself off. The system from CoD 4 seems to have been taken and edited slightly to fit the old setting and everything works as it should. There are still very few games that can stand up to the Call of Duty series in terms of mulitplayer.

So, is CoD 5 better than it's predecessor? No. Not by a long shot. CoD 5 is a meagre offering in comparison. Whilst still an excellent shooter which any self-respecting PS3, or Xbox 360 owner should own (there are no self-respecting Wii owners, just for reference), the return to WW2 is a massive step back and whilst this might not affect the game's technological or gameplay qualities, it still seems to infest the game with an ill-omen of boredom.

7/10

No Country For Old Men Review

The Coen brothers have been responsible for several of my favourite films. O' Brother Where Art Thou?, Miller's Crossing and The Ladykiller's (remake) are all in my top ten favourite films, so it may not come as a surprise when I say that I was really looking forward to No Country For Old Men. However, it will probably come as a surprise that I'm reviewing the film now, almost a year after it's release, and that I didn't see the film at the cinema, and that I only paid £5.99 for the standard edition of the DVD, well that's probably more of a reflection upon my financial situation than anything else. Just thought it was time that you guys realised how much of my blood, sweat and tears goes into these reviews. Not literally of course.

Now that utterly irrelevant, time wasting tangent is behind us I can begin to actually write about the film. The plot of the film can be summed up in three short sentences:

1. Man stumbles upon crime scene and large sum of money.

2. Man takes money and runs.

3. Psychopathic killer and cop pursue man.

The film does have a lot more to it than this, but that's roughly what the actual plot surmounts to, and it's by no means a bad thing. The fact that the plot doesn't need masses of time to be developed fully allows the Coen brothers time to develop tension. The lack of any character development beyond a want for money or justice allows the Coen brothers to elevate the dialogue and action within the film to levels dominated by subtext.

No Country For Old Men is an odd film. Whilst being exceptionally violent, and profoundly horrible, most of the physical violence is sudden and bizarrely unmoving. The plot of the film just ends, with no warning. The lack of any real sound track both creates massive of tension, and gives absolutely no release. The acting in No Country For Old Men is absolutely superb. Everyone gives their absolute best when performing, and with actors like Tommy Lee-Jones setting the standard for the rest of the cast, absolute best is simply outstanding.

To put it simply, No Country For Old Men doesn't feel like a film, it feels real. Which makes everything so much more terrifying. Whilst this film has masses of problems, most prominent being that the entire film is incredibly slow and all of it requires absolute attention, it managed to keep me consistently entertained, thoroughly wrecked my nerves and certainly gave me a lot to think about.

Finally, I'm sorry if this review seems a little disjointed and confused but No Country For Old Men really confused me. I liked it but I'm not really sure why.

8./10

Watchmen Review

The media is a fickle fiend, most of the media we consume throughout the course of our lives is either depressingly average, or utter crap. However, on occasion, a media product so spectacular, meaningful and life affirming restores our faith as consumers and continues to fuel the media machine that we all know, hate and love. Watchmen is one of these products.

The comic's plot line centralises on a world in which superheroes, or “masked vigilantes”, have had their time in the limelight and become both inadequate to fight crime and criminals themselves. The story starts with the murder of The Comedian, a government controlled superhero and, through a combination of traditional comic book story-telling and lengthy text sections, advances through an expertly woven and uncompromising narrative, with a steady and unrelenting pace.

Everything about the comic's plot is absurdly well written, from the introduction of the characters, to the comics conclusion (which is such a shocking reflection upon the futility of humanity's actions that it had me thinking for weeks after I had finished reading the comic) Moore's writing is so complete and perfectly realised that I actually can't fault it at all. Watchmen has the depth of the greatest novels and the scope of the greatest films.

The artwork accompanying Moore's skilled writing captures the ethos and atmosphere of the comic perfectly and whilst there are a few issues with the consistency of certain character's appearances, it's rather difficult to care when the world of a comic is so expertly crafted.

The only flaw I can find in Watchmen is that it's ideas are exceptionally elevated and weighty for the genre, and those new to the comic book format will struggle with it's content. Indeed the comic makes it very clear for the beginning of the narrative that this is not a comic for weak readers with an up front, brutal murder.

All in all, Watchmen is the best comic book ever written and like all great pieces of literature, art or film, it is exceptionally dark, and sometimes difficult to cope with. I recommend becoming familiar with the comic book genre before embarking upon the reading of Watchmen, simply so you can finish this marvel of modern entertainment.

10/10

Fable 2 Review

Peter Molyneux knows nothing about technology. More specifically he knows nothing about technologies limitations. With Fable he promised us a fully free roaming world, in which we as players would be able to do anything from killing Hobbes to raising a family. What we actually got was one of the most linear story-driven action RPGs ever, it was good but it wasn't what we were promised. With Fable 2 we are promised that Lionhead will not only deliver what they promised with Fable but they will also add new features like online multiplayer and trees that grow realistically (and let me be the first to say exactly how this feature is going to revolutionise the industry. It isn't).

My expectations for the game were immediately dashed when I found out that Lionhead were unable to deliver online multiplayer upon the games release. Whilst this feature will apparently be added by the time you read this review the lack of this feature upon immediate release only proves one fact. Peter Molyneux is a liar!

Other than online multiplayer and trees which grow realistically Fable 2's most talked about feature is emotion. Now you would be forgiven for asking exactly what this means, if anything. Does it mean that the disk has massive mood swings, or that a gas containing anti-depressants is released into the air during gameplay? Well the answer is simple, neither you moron! It means you, as a player, are meant to get emotionally attached to the characters.

Now I'm not sure if it's simply my misanthropic, emotionally retarded, narcissistic and profoundly unstable nature speaking when I say that I hate every single character in Fable 2, especially the ones you're meant to identify with. Every “living” being in Albion is retarded, and even the sound of Stephen Fry's (Jeeves and Wooster, A Bit of Fry and Laurie, QI, Stephen Fry in America, LittleBigPlanet, Blackadder, all right I admit it, I'm a fan of Stephen Fry but in all honesty, who isn't?) voice simply wasn't enough to prevent me from wanting to kill everything in sight!

This may in part be due to the flimsy excuse for a plot holding these characters together. You start the game as a child, more specifically an orphan in order to comply with code of generic fantasy storylines, whose sister is quickly and brutally murdered by the ever dubious Lord Lucien (wherever do they think of these names?) as he attempts to prevent himself from being killed in a manner prophesied by one of the ever vigilant blind girls who seem to litter Albion in the same way that rings of power litter Middle-Earth. The plot henceforth advances with the player making arbitrary choices between the insipid extremes of Good and Evil with ultimate goal never being advanced beyond the commonly known “stop the bad guy”. That's it. I'm not joking. This is your emotion.

Gameplay wise Fable 2 is basically Fable with larger environments and more social interaction, a feature made utterly pointless by my absolute hatred of Albion's inhabits. Graphically Fable 2 is a mixed bag, with some environments inspiring awe and others inspiring a big pile of blandness (really should have thought about that sentence).

I know it may seem that I hate Fable 2. I don't. I'm just bitterly disappointed. Fable 2 doesn't even entirely deliver upon Molyneux's promises for Fable. You'll be fine with this game if you don't listen to anything that he says, but otherwise you'll feel like me: profoundly ripped off. I really don't see the point in Fable 2, it would have been far easier and just as successful if Lionhead had released Fable HD.

7/10     

Heroes (Season One) Review

Heroes is horrendously popular and as result of this I missed it's original TV run. You see, I have an odd tendency to avoid popular television whenever possible, even if I like the idea behind a show. This is partially the result of my misanthropic nature, which invariably leads me to conclude that the vast majority of people are one hundred percent pants on head retarded, and partially due to the fact that I never have time to schedule around television. Which seems odd for someone so interested in the media.

In an attempt to break the mould and conform (shut up! I know it's an oxymoron) I picked up a copy of Heroes Season One, decided that my social life and education have already taken up enough of my time and watched the entire thing in as little time as possible. One thought stuck out in my mind upon the completion of disk 7: “Damnit, people other than me are right sometimes!”

Now that my overly long and utterly pointless introduction is out of the way we can begin. Heroes' storyline revolves around the lives of a bizarrely high amount of seemingly unrelated characters who discover that they posses immense power which manifests itself in various different abilities. As the plot progress the characters are slowly drawn together by a serious of cataclysmic events which helps them understand their powers, the nature of humanity and themselves a lot better and whilst this plot may seem overly clichéd and generic, I assure you, it is far from it.

My first worry was that with so many characters it's often exceptionally easy for writers to provide certain characters with less intriguing plot lines and less intelligent character development than other characters and whilst Heroes occasionally falls into this trap, by the the end of the series each of the characters' is equally interesting and believable being. In fact Heroes somehow manages to make the inclusion of so many characters a blessing, as with each character there is often an accompanying visual style and a different tone, so if you don't like a certain character, a certain visual style or a certain tone Heroes should manage to satisfy you with a different character, visual style and tone in the next scene.

The acting is superb across the board, with everyone doing their best to compliment each other's talents and compensate for each other's flaws. The music and art direction in Heroes are also outstanding, with both the music and visual style for each sequence or character suiting the moment perfectly.

All in all. I was wrong. Heroes is, whilst by no means a masterpiece, an excellently put together and enthralling ensemble of all forms of talent. I still hate popular culture though, if only for the continuation of my own narcissistic ego, or the preservation of my misanthopically fuelled existence.

I need a life.

9/10