Articles tagged with: movie reviews
We remember our first thought upon learning that Timothy Olyphant had been cast as the bald assassin Agent 47 for the upcoming adaptation of the videogame Hitman.
“Great,” squeaked the little part of our brain that was still awake. After all, this is a man after whom J.R.R. Tolkien named those giant elephant-like beasts in Lord Of The Rings. Olyphant is one of those actors who slips in and out of roles without the narcissistic brouhaha afterwards. He is never typecast, playing goodies and baddies, but forever with an air of mystery. Could Hitman be the videogame adaptation that bucks the trend of turdiness usually associated with this specific sub-genre? (Although, to be honest, Doom was pretty great. Seriously.)
Seriously – there’s now a reason to own Sony’s overpriced, overhyped, stupidly-advertised superconsole the PlayStation 3. And what is it?
Karaoke.
If you’ve been at a party where someone has whacked on a games machine then it’s going to have either been Guitar Hero, Buzz or Singstar – if it’s anything else they’re an idiot and shouldn’t be your friend any more. Singstar lets you sing to dozens of pop hits, along with the many different genres that aren’t too alternative to alienate the general public. Though one version has Sublime’s Santeria on it, which is inspired.
Heroes concluded this week on BBC2, putting together the last two episodes of the cult-soaked mainstream hit series.
The first of the two episodes this week promised to start with a bang, quite literally. When we last left the titular band of heroes Peter Petrelli was about to go nuclear, thereby splattering his floppy hair all over the place. The episode closed with him telling his niece Claire to shoot him, exciting and promising stuff - or so you’d think. It seems the writers are so desperate to keep their audience that they seem to assume that we have the attention span of an ADHD kid who has drunk two litres of coke. What we get is Peter just turning around and saying he’s OK and then they plod along onto their next adventure. Cliff-hangers in television are good, and Heroes has had some corkers, but when it contributes nothing to the plot or characters it feels like an unnecessary gimmick.
Some things in life are certain, the Terminator will be back, Jaws 19 will be out in 2015, and that with every new Nintendo console there will be a new Super Mario game.
The story starts with Mario going to a comet festival and visiting the Princess in the Mushroom Kingdom which is a visually beautiful start for the game and lets you get to grips with the new controls for the game just as Bowser swoops down to grab the Princess and run off with her. Straight away you can see that this game stands out with dazzling imagery and graphics.
Hell hath no fury like a Zelda fan scorn for Nintendo! When it was announced that the next instalment of the Legend of Zelda series for the Nintendo Gamecube would buckle the visual style of the previous two instalments on the N64 in favour of a cartoon cell-shading effect the fan reaction wasn’t great.
Wind Walker proved to be an enjoyable game, though, but was more child friendly in tone and in the visuals; when it came to the new Zelda entry for the Wii it returned back to its darker roots. It’s now with the DS’s first Zelda entry on the handheld console, The Phantom Hourglass, that we return to the style of Wind Walker and is also a direct sequel to the game, taking place just moments after the events at the end of that story.
