Game Over #1

Thanks for reading my new feature, which I have called Game Over. It's basically about video game characters escaping into reality.

Robbed by a yellow ball

Detective Michael Craig slowly rose from the police car. Constable Lucia Jones was standing just outside the police tape, patiently waiting as she sipped her coffee. Lucia was incredibly attractive, yet completely devoted to her job. The only thing she liked more than a solved case was the feeling of bossing all the male cops around.

"You definitely took your fuckin' time, Mikey! What were you doin', flossing? The forensics team finished half an hour ago!" she barked, not caring that children had gathered around the crime scene.
"Yeah, yeah, just cut to the chase," Craig groaned in return.

"Pharmacy just got broken into two hours ago; every pill gone. The three staff behind the counter are in the hospital with broken legs and the guy in the back of the store says they were 'hurled' across the room. Unfortunately the guy didn't see what... thing managed to do that. But what's really weird is that the same fucking thing happened to a pharmacy ten minutes from here!"

Craig didn't know what to make of that. "Every single pill?" he questioned. At this, Jones simply waved her hands in the direction of the store. Craig bent under the tape and sauntered his way into the store. To his surprise, all of the racks that had anything pill-related was gone. The creams and other stuff was completely unaffected. There were cracks on the back wall, clearly from when the staff smashed into it.

"This is some serious shit," Craig slowly muttered. He turned to Jones, who looked at him as to say you think?. "Now would be a really good time to tell me someone saw the perpetrator leave the building."
"No-one but the salespeople, and all three of them have been unconscious in the hospital for the last one-hundred-and-eighteen minutes," she calmly replied.

"Speaking of that, ma'am, we just got the call from our guy at the hospital. The manager's just regained consciousness," Rico Estevez, who had just waltzed in, stated.
"I'm driving," Jones exclaimed before Craig could even open his mouth.

"I felt like I was on drugs... in my own drugstore. It was the strangest thing I ever saw in my life," the manager started, "I was robbed by a yellow sphere." They exchanged awkward looks. It sure sounded like she was high.

"If it was some kind of costume, then it was the weirdest costume ever to appear on the planet. It had no eyes... only a black wedge of a mouth. And the sound it made as it rolled in, it was like, 'wabba-wabba-wabba-wabba'. This thing collided with the Panadol tray, and then it just... started to glow. When I hit it with the taser, I was thrown back," she waved her arms, "by some strange phenomenon. All I know is that this is X-files type shit. However, the thing seemed familiar for some reason..."

"Yep, this is the same guy," Jones said as they talked in the corridor, "A Pac-man impersonator is robbing pharmacies. In all my twelve years in the police force, I have never heard of something so fucked up. I cannot wait to see the security camera footage when the surveillance team are finished with it.."

Meanwhile, a bunch of crack-heads were sitting under the city bridge. They were so tripped out they didn't notice a yellow sphere roll towards them...

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

Kanye West may have an ego the size of yo mama's ass, but he has the raw talent to back it up. To put it straight, this album is a masterpiece. The music is all memorable, from the simple piano notes in Runaway to the loud brass in All of the Lights. His rapping is very clever & if you look past all the stereotypical crap associated with rap, there are surprisingly moving messages in the lyrics.

Kanye West is definitely the best rapper in the world right now, and his album is definitely the best rap album of 2010 (Eminem doesn't come close). I don't even like rap, but I loved it. Oh and his short film isn't that bad either.

 10 /10

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No Country For Old Men

Not even Hitchcock could make suspense this good. The Coen Brother's deliver one of the most compelling, exciting and terrifying thrillers of all time in this adaptation of the book by Cormac McCarthy. After a Texas ranger stumbles upon a briefcase of cash at a drug deal gone wrong and makes off with it, a psychopathic bounty hunter chases him around Texas. 

And when I say psychopathic, I mean it. Anton Chigurh, played by and Oscar-winning Javier Bardem, is one of the most shocking & frightening villains in cinema history. He is the angel of death. Seriously, this guy will give you nightmares. He carries around a cattle gun, has a creepy 60's haircut and is completely calm even though he brutally kills many people. 

The shots of Texas are beautiful, the pacing perfect and the dialogue freakin' amazing. The action is phenomenal, heightened by the extreme suspense. The hotel shoot-out will go down as one of the best gunfights in a long time, and every other scene is incredibly quotable. 

The cast is really good, with Josh Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones and Woody Harrelson all giving great performances as well as Bardem. The film won a bunch of Academy Awards, including Best Directors and Best Picture, and with good reason. It's one of the best films the Coen Brothers have made and one of the best thrillers of all time. It manages to keep all the themes of the novel while also being incredibly entertaining. Watch it ASAP.

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Some Like it Hot

Director: Billy Wilder

Players: Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, Marilyn Monroe

Year: 1959

How I watched it: Grandparents had it on DVD

My rating: 10/10. Hell yeah!!

I don't mean to be a total cliché, but they just don't make 'em like they used to. Before comedies were flooded with crude sex & poop jokes, successful comedies from the 1940's & 50's had to rely on wit and timing. And there is no film with more of that than the classic Some Like it Hot, which was chosen by the American Film Institute as the greatest American comedy of all time.

This screwball comedy centres on two musicians named Joe and Jerry (Tony Curtis & Jack Lemmon) who are unlucky enough to witness a gangland killing, and are therefore wanted by the mob. Their plan? Cross-dress and join an all-female jazz band. As the band chills in Florida, Joe, or rather Josephine, falls for the voluptuous Sugar (Marilyn Monroe), while an old millionaire falls for Jerry, or rather "Daphne". As they get up to crazy cross-dressing antics, the mafia arrive to notice some familiar faces...

The film is completely flawless, with pitch-perfect performances, a sharp & hilarious script, pretty black-and-white cinematography, toe-tapping music and well... Marilyn Monroe. If you see this classic on DVD, don't hesitate to pick it up, as this is one of the funniest films ever made.

Best line:


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Top 5 Movies based on games

Because of how popular gaming is, there have been a bunch of movies based on video games. None of them have been good (well there is one exception on this list). Yeah, so this list is basically just the 5 least-bad video game movies. Here we go!

Postal

Any movie with the guts to do this scene deserves to be on a list somewhere:

Resident Evil: Afterlife

The Resident Evil films aren't meant to be taken seriously, but they do offer lot's of zombie-massacring fun. May as well go with the latest one since it's in 3D.

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within

The dull and lifeless story alienated fans of the classic video game franchise, but the film had gorgeous CG animation. 

Prince of Persia

A fun summer popcorn movie with nice visuals and lot's of acrobatics. Story was "meh" though.

Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva

If you were guessing the straight-to-DVD Professor Layton movie... I'm surprised! This really is the only good video game movie I can think of, and the reason why is simple: it's just the game in movie form! The cast solve the puzzles, but the audience is still given time to ponder. The visual look is similar to the game, as is the music and charming atmosphere. I'm surprised no other game movies take this approach.

There you have it guys & girls, the five best movies based on games. I've often heard that games are the modern equivalent to comic books, and judging by how many great comic book movies there are, I'm saying the future for video game movies looks bright. I am sure someone will finally get it right (non-straight-to-DVD that is). Speaking of good video game movies, Gore Verbinski, director of the Pirates of the Caribbean films, is planning an adaption of BioShock, which looks very promising...

Game movies will improve!

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Professor Layton out-takes

"Where were you last Friday, Mr Butterbowlpudding?"
"I was walking in the town square, when I saw the clock was exactly six hours behind. Having seen it two hours prior, it was only 2 hours behind. There is another clock by the dock that ticks and tocks at a rate of nine hours behind. If my watch is accurate and the time was 7:30 AM when the dock clock was at 5:00AM, what is the solution to this unrelated matchstick puzzle?"
"Fuck this."


"The old lady is about to be hit by the truck!! Save her, Dr. Pennyfarthingbluebottombicycle!!"
"Before I can proceed, I must observe the lining on the street. The first lane is painted with three stripes to the mile, while the second lane is painted with only four dots to the kilometre. If I am to save this elderly woman: I must find a way to flip the tiles on this jigsaw puzzle to create the image of a toaster."
"... She's dead, asshole."


"Mrs. Slightlygermansausage, my wife's in labour!! Which way to the hospital?!"
"Well, there are four different roads you can take, but only one leads to the river which you must cross with the wolves and the chicks. Let's call them Roads A, B, C & D. In terms of length, A + D = 4C and BA = D + Q. How many ropes must we make to keep the pigs from fighting each other?
"OH MY GOD THE BABY'S CROWNING!!"
"I do say there is so need to be so loud..."

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The Social Network

By Austin

• For a movie about a website 500 million people use, the cinema was pretty empty
• Even though it's known as the "Facebook movie", it's rather about the guys behind the site
• Mark Zuckerberg, the youngest billionaire in the world, is played to perfection by Jesse Eisenberg
• If you thought Eisenberg was a clone of Michael Cera, you should take note, as he's going to win the Oscar for Best Actor
• In becoming the youngest billionaire in the world, he betrays his best friend Eduardo Saverin (played by Andrew Garfield, the new Spider-Man)
• The screenplay by Aaron Sorkin is absolutely amazing, and every line is witty, funny and clever
• There are many classic scenes and a plethora of memorable and brilliant lines
• All the actors are great (the big surprise was Justin Timberlake)
• Stylishly shot by David Fincher
• The characters speak really fast
• Nothing really bad about the movie
• If you take your grandma to it, she probably won't understand all the PC jargon, though 
• Expect to hear more about the film come Oscars season
• Best movie of the year (yeah, I've seen Inception and Toy Story 3)

10/10

Video Game Poetry #2: Pac-Man

By Austin.

Enter Pack-Yi-Huang, nicknamed "Pac-Man" by his old friends. The death of his four daughters in a car crash triggered a crippling, depressive state, in which he became addicted to heroin, bringing him closer to insanity with every pill he popped.

He is now trapped within his own hallucination, desperate to get out. He feels the pills are his only salvation, but they just force him deeper within his own sub-conscious; the inescapable maze where the thoughts of his dead children haunt him forever. Only once he learns to control his addiction can the thoughts of his dearly departed be rid of him forever.

He hobbles along, following the trail of white pills along the ground. The footsteps of his first born, Blinky, shake him as they get closer. Left. Right. Left again. Down. Left. Up. Right. Down. He now hears another set of footsteps, no doubt Pinky; the kind daughter who would always look on the bright side, even in the worst situations. Pac-Man is crushed by the immense sadness every fleeting thought of her brings, but pushes himself to the limits.

Right. Down. Right. More to the right. Keep on going to the right. Down. Left. He was gradually collecting more pills, and felt more comfortable, unaware that the pills would only force him deeper into his own mind. Up. Right. Up. Up. UP! Right. When he turned the next right corner, he found himself staring eye-to-eye with his youngest daughter, Clyde! She died so young, and as he couldn't handle the thought of her death: she appeared disfigured and mangled in the maze. Her eyes bled, the skin on her face was peeled off, and her limbs snapped into pieces. Exactly how she looked in the crash!! His melancholy scream couldn't distract her; she just came closer and closer. He stumbled away, running as fast as he could. Up. Right. Down. Right. Up. Then he saw it.

The power pellet. Upon consuming it, he remembered all the good deeds he committed, such as the humanitarian work in Tanzania and the time he all the money he donated to charity. But most importantly, he remembered his dear wife, Ms. Pac-Man, and how she stood by him even when he... crashed the car that killed his daughters!!

He held back his tears as he confronted the demonic forms his children had taken. Left. Down. Right. When they came closer, they appeared worse than ever before: as demented blue imps with yellow eyes. He screamed, "I SHALL MOVE ON!!" as he pummeled into them head-first.

They were dead. He started to collect the rest of the pills, but once he swallowed the 240th pill, he fell unconscious. Upon regaining consciousness, he found he was still inside the clutches of his own mind, and that he had merely entered the next level of terror. The thought's of his children grasped him once more, and four loud squeals echoed through the maze...

Happy Birthday, PS2

The best selling console of all time recently had it's 10th Birthday, so I want to take the time to thank Sony for it's gift to mankind, the PlayStation 2.

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Diversity

Believe it or not, the gaming community is actually quite diverse, with a lot of different ethnic groups and a lot of girls who play games, so why are so many video game protagonists tough, white guys? If you think about it, a lot of non-whites are typically the bad guys (Modern Warfare and Uncharted, anyone?) and females are usually stereotypes ("jiggle physics" is not a selling point!!).

Mario, Zelda, COD, Uncharted, God of War, Dead Rising, Red Dead: Redemption, GTA and countless other main gaming franchises follow this formula, and in this day and age, it's just not cool. If developers completely ignore that lot's of females play games, it just makes our industry seem all the more juvenile. If they ignore that not all gamers are whiteys, well that's just plain stupid! 

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