Call of Duty: World at War (Originally posted 05/03/09)

Reviewed Platform: Xbox 360

Other Platforms: PS3, PC, Wii, Mobile, DS, PS2

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was a great game. In my own opinion it was possibly the strongest game in the entire Call of Duty series. It decided to no longer stick to fighting the Nazis. Now we were to fight today. This was Modern Warfare. We were fighting the perceived enemies of the West in the 2000s.

All was well and happy as we saw our fellow Englishmen die right in front of us in the final battle and the Americans being brutally massacred within a nuclear explosion. Both of these moments took my breath away as I felt so connected to these well rounded characters. Thank you Infinity Ward for a fantastic game that I have played many times.

Now it is Treyarch's turn. It would seem that Infinity Ward and Treyarch take it in turns to develop Call of Duty games for Activision. Because I was so enamoured with CoD4 I decided to play Call of Duty 3, developed by Treyarch, which was alright as a game, but not fantastic. I know it was made with technology that was not as good as the technology used for CoD4 but that was not the problem. Firstly, the story was bad in that I felt no attachment to any characters, which didn't make me enjoy the experience.

And then there is my pet peeve with games like this that are set during World War 2, and that is this: you end up fighting off half of the German army within each trench you enter. Now, it really doesn't seem historically accurate to me that a mere Private ends up attacking what appears to be the place where Nazis spring up from the ground to rip your nipples off. I am so glad that within CoD4 there was no moment (to my recollection) that every single member of the Ultranationalist party comes along to brutally sodomise you whilst you hold on to Captain Price's moustache. But I digress.

Now on to the game I am actually going to review. It follows Call of Duty FOUR in the series so evidently I am reviewing Call of Duty FIVE. Sorry, but it isn't. It is Call of Duty: World at War. Not Call of Duty 5: World at War. Just Call of Duty: World at War.

Okay, so they have now decided not to number the sequels from now on. I can see their reasoning behind this as, sadly, World at War is actually set in World War 2. So Treyarch have decided to take a step back and not continue with Modern Warfare. Okay, okay. Fine. I can deal with that. It'll make new members of the series confused but okay, whatever.

I think I may as well get off this petty stuff. Hopefully it won't harm the rest of the series.

This game has also tried to be a special one within the series as it now takes us away from the European front, but now we get to go to the Pacific Theatre. Cool, that worked really well for Medal of Honor: Rising Sun. I had a lot of fun with that game. But now they have decided to ruin fighting in Japan for me by giving me three recurring characters who are absolute gits (who made such an impression on me that I forgot their names and didn't care when two out of three of them died on me), Banzai troops that knock you to the ground and give you half a nanosecond to actually kill and finally, you guessed it, millions upon millions of Tojos (their words, not mine) to dispatch before deciding that we should bomb a tonne of places and then go home.

Then we have the fact that every single American soldier decides to swear like a sailor whenever they stub their toe. I mean seriously! The swearing within this game could not be any more gratuitous. The word “fuck” is constantly chucked about as if we were going into battle with a battalion of chavs who had to swear after every word, including the curses. I don't mind swearing, I just find it pointless. It never seems to fit in with what they are saying. “Abso-fucking-lutely” Why not absolutely? CoD4: Captain Price can't get a helicopter to the bridge in time: “Useless Wanker!” The shit is about to hit the fan. Of course he'd swear! 

Then we have the terrible AI. Your team mates fail at killing any of the enemies. By the end of the first mission your character should end up becoming Lord High Ruler of the Universe for the amount of Japanese warriors he has killed. This wouldn't be so bad if there weren't so many warriors coming after you. And when I say coming after you I mean YOU and only YOU! Emperor Hirohito must have put a bounty of your head for 10 trillion Yen. You play on Veteran and they will all be chasing after you with bullets with a heat seekers on them, which won't fare well with your health. But don't worry, hide for a bit and you'll be back to normal. I love that about these games. I guess you just assimilate the bullets into your system and rebuild yourself with the materials, giving yourself a metallic organs and bones (which would explain why you can take so much punishment, I suppose). 

Oh, and then we have the grenades. My God the grenades. I need a paragraph on its own to talk about grenades. Even on Recruit they have some form of homing device on them. No matter where you are, no matter how many enemies there are, you will have four or five grenades drop at your feet. You can't throw them back because once you send one on its way to the nearest enemy you'll have the others blow you into tiny pieces. None of your team get 'naded. Just you. They must have something that repels these grenades, because they are always safe. You get no time to shoot. You get a grenade up the arse. They are annoying. That's the reason the Japanese lost the war. They put all their war effort into creating as many grenades as possible rather than better weapons.

Well, that's out of the way. Now on to the other half of the game.

Then we have the other half. The Russian part. And... I liked it. The characters were well rounded and the plot was interesting. Walking forwards to slowly put the Red Army's flag on top of the Reichstag was a good touch, especially as you are wounded, and it made me feel as if I were a part of the war. It kept more to the old formula within CoD4, but wasn't as good. All I can really say. It was a better part of the game.

By the way, where are the British? We played a major role in the war, with all of 1939-1945 having the British fight in it. We were there for it all. But we never crop up at all within this entire game. I hear the British are in the PS2 and DS versions, but why not on the Xbox or PS3 versions? Confuses me.

Now, the online element of CoD4 was absolutely amazing. I played it constantly and went through several prestiges. Yet now I feel that Treyarch has let the series down yet again. They used predecessor's online gameplay and made the maps massive and open. Now, one of the great things about the CoD4 online, I felt, was that it was very close quarters and there was cover to hide behind. World at War decided to take this element and throw it into the bin, introducing vast landscapes that allow snipers to see everyone and kill them. However, sometimes the problem is  actually not being able to find anyone. The maps are so big that everyone tends to be on the other side of the map, eliminating any sort of tactics that include flanking and... flanking. Actually, the only tactic is to flank, but that can get some kills. 

The dogs are a bitch, too. I like that it's easier to kill the replacement of the helicopter, but we still have very little chance against them. And they should definitely not put points for killing dogs on the score. I do, however, like the fact that experience for assists is given relative to the damage given to the enemy. A lot fairer than +2 every single time. Basically, the online was like Halo 3: fun, but only with friends and only if played fairly rarely.

Nazi Zombies is a good mode, but can get boring after a few goes, and Co-op absolutely sucks. It just does unless you put on cheats to make it a little bit challenging. That's all the can be said for those.

As you can tell I am not an absolute fan of this game. There are some really good points but it is just extremely adequate. Very, very adequate. Playable, but not for long periods of time. I'd rather play CoD4.

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen - Annie Lennox

I didn’t plan on doing a blog specifically for Christmas. I’m personally not into Christmas as much as many people seem to be. However, there is one thing I love about Christmas. Call me a traditionalist if you will, but one of my favourite aspects are the Christmas Carols, one of my favourite of these being the song “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”.

I don’t know why, it just is. I love the lyrics, I love the way it is delivered. It just seems right. So as you might guess, I’m quite particular about how a version of this song might be sung. Not always can these Christmas Carols be sung well or with the right amount of emotion by bands and artists.

However, Annie Lennox has somehow made “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” a much more accessible song to the public.

I don’t know what it is about it. I suppose everything is right about this song. The chorus in the background, the feeling that this is a ‘big’ song, the variety musical instruments cutting in and out when they are needed. It’s just wonderful.
 

The video is great too. I get a feeling that this is still very much Christmassy. The video has a Victorian feel about it. But then we also get a little bit of sass. There’s a feeling of cheek in there. Not only this but the video doesn’t look overblown, it just feels that way. It’s an amazing combination of auditory and visual mediums.

This song is off an entire Christmas album by Annie Lennox called “A Christmas Cornucopia”, released this year. For a Christmas album it's pretty darn good!

So enjoy this song and enjoy your Christmas, everyone!

Tron: Legacy (2010)

Tron was a revolutionary film. It featured both live-action and computer animation within the same scene utilising some very interesting and seemingly complex filming techniques. Though at times criticised for its fairly slow and dull storyline, it was nevertheless a marvel of film-making. Its success and cult following even led to a world in the game Kingdom Hearts II. Now a successor has been released: Tron: Legacy.

Tron: Legacy opens to Kevin Flynn, reprised by Jeff Bridges, talking to his son about the world of The Grid, where Tron and Clu, two programmes, are helping him build a stable and perfect system.  He mentions a ‘miracle’ but tells his son that it is a story for another time. True to Hollywood tradition Flynn goes missing, so we have no idea what this miracle is. 

The film cuts to 20 years later, where Kevin’s son, Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund), is now acting exactly like Chris O’Donnell in Batman Forever: riding his motorcycle really fast, being cheeky, and wearing a t-shirt to show off his muscles. However, where Dick Grayson was purely annoying, Sam is actually somewhat likeable. He’s not trying to live up to another; he’s just trying to do what he feels right and to make a mockery of a sham of a company. 

In fact, the behaviour of Sam in this is similar to Kevin’s in Tron in a way. That is to say, he is breaking into a large company in order to enact justice. However, unlike Kevin, these seem to be for less selfish reasons as we are shown straight away that ENCOM, Kevin’s old company, is extorting people for the software that it produces.

Suffice to say, Sam achieves what he sets out to do and is later contacted by a friend of his father’s: Alan Bradley, reprised by Bruce Boxleitner, the man who created the programme Tron. He says he’s been contacted by Kevin, so Sam goes to the arcade seen in the first film and whilst there is sucked into The Grid. 

Note that some of this plot has been used before in Tron: big corporation doing naughty stuff, person feels the company has done wrong, they go to stop them and then through a series of events get sucked into The Grid. However, this is all very brief.  It is from here that we get an all new story and my word is it amazing!

We are taken through the games, which have been upgraded since 1982, and we are introduced to the main villain. From here there is a story detailing betrayal, discovery and destruction. Through a multitude of twists and turns we see both sides of the conflict between an authoritarian regime and just three who are fighting back, all in the aims of getting back to the real world and stopping the villain from the outside. This leads to a spectacular climax that leaves you wanting more, and hopefully you will get more as the ending is open for a sequel!

The effects of this film are perfect. The world, though computer generated, felt like it had weight, as if it actually existed. This is more than I could ever say for Avatar, where the world looked far too fake to be real. In The Grid we see the building, the technology in that world, the landscape, and it all looks so real, as if the creators of the film had actually built this world out of data, gone into the system and filmed on location. Also, surprisingly for me, I found the 3-D effects to be very good. In fact, the 3-D is used artistically, as the real world is shown in 2-D, whilst The Grid is 3-D, showing a difference between the two worlds, not only aesthetically but in the way we actually perceive it.

The effects don’t just stick to the landscape, however. There are many vehicles in the film that were computer generated that, yet again, looked realistic. The effects even went so far as to be an actor, as a younger version of Kevin as well as Clu, the computer programme created by him, are both computer generated. However, for the majority of the film I was fooled into believing this was actually Jeff Bridges.

The acting within this film was spot on. The actors delivered every line perfectly, which furthered the connections we had with the characters. However, this was accompanied by an absolutely superb script. One scene of note is the dinner scene, where the conversation flows perfectly and shows an awkward connection between the father and son who have not seen each other for 20 years. (Whilst on the subject of the dinner scene, I would like to bring up the fact that we have no idea where any of the food comes from. We see a lot of drinks, but they seem to fit in with the world. The food eaten here is pork as well as vegetables, which do not look even slightly like they fit in with the world nor do they seem to make sense.) We see throughout the film the growing connection between the father and son, which is quite endearing and builds up very well, unlike the clunky father-son connection in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Music-wise we have nothing to complain about as Daft Punk has delivered with a pretty atmospheric soundtrack. Daft Punk even had a cameo in the film as two MP3 programmes. Though initially confusing as to why they might be there (cameos in The Grid would seem strange) they seem to fit in with their robotic look.

Though Tron: Legacy can seem somewhat derivative of Tron within the opening I advise you stick it out and keep an open mind as the story is pretty good and the effects are amazing. You don’t need to be a fan of the original to enjoy this film, as any exposition needed is delivered early on, so newcomers can also enjoy the film. It’s received fairly mixed reviews, some saying it’s not ‘intellectual’ enough, but I have to disagree. Both serious and fun, Tron: Legacy is a film that can be enjoyed by most people. I suggest you go see it soon!

Final Verdict: 9/10

Faces of Facebook: The Duck Face

In this series I will be looking at the "faces" you would see on Facebook, Myspace and other such social networking sites. These "faces" are the styles of photograph you often see on these sites that baffle people. Why have they done this? What is the purpose? Why that angle? Why that face?

You'll most likely know what I am talking about, but maybe not. Nonetheless, let's check out our first offender:

The Duck Face

This face consists of pouting of the lips. In and of itself it isn't that bad. Angelina Jolie seems to have her lips in a constant pout and people are fine with that.

No. No, this is no ordinary pout. This is pouting to the extreme.

This is the Duck Face

This, of course, is nothing new. Girls were most probably the first offenders. I have no idea why. It's not attractive and it definitely doesn't make you dignified. No one can do the Duck Face and retain any form of dignity.

So many people hate the Duck Face. They don't get it. And yet people continue to do it to this day. Just go on Facebook. Do it. Now look for that girl in your friend's list who wants to look hot. If you look in her album you will no doubt find a Duck Face. When I kept seeing this pop up on my News Feed I was certain it was only girls who did it. Heck, any celebrities seen doing it were all female, so it must only be them. Surely.

Then the guys started doing it:

I've tried as hard as I can to not put any photos on here of my friends. I think it would be remiss of me to do so and they would probably slap me. But they do it. Oh yes they do. It's upsetting to see the pictures of these people and realise they think it is meant to look sexy or something along those lines.

Maybe Zoolander is the cause of this all. I am sure that the Duck Face did not exist before this. But sadly, I am probably wrong. Nonetheless, the 2001 film used the Duck Face as a joke, that it is meant to look sexy but really doesn't. That was the whole thing about Zoolander: everything the character did was a mockery of the real fashion industry!

So it's quite industry how something that was mocking of those people who think they were sexy by pulling certain faces actually became a face that people thought they would pull to look sexy.

This face can bring out a syndrome so evident on the internet's social networking websites. It isn't a face in itself. It's the way someone depicts themselves in photos. And this is it:





One has to enquire: WHY?! Why does this happen? That when someone gets photos taken of them they always pull the same face. That every photo they are in looks like they weren't there, they were just photoshopped in.

Why!?

This face is also utilised in conjunction with three other techniques often used by people to increase their "hotness", or so one assumes:

1. Take the photo using a bathroom mirror (because you look sexy in the place where you crap).
2. Use a "gangsta" symbol for extra points.
3. Take the photo from a high angle (we'll be covering this later).

So, I ask you all: why does the Duck Face prevail? Very few people seem to like it, yet it still appears to show up everywhere. Where a girl may look pretty she is suddenly turned into Pete Burns. The popular website Anti Duckface has an entire archive full of silly looking people doing the Duck Face. If you still think it looks sexy then check this website out and tell me that this is so.

Please, ladies and gentlemen, stop this. It looks stupid, not sexy. If there is any way to turn someone off then just do the Duck Face

Brad Jones Film Reviews: Cheap

The last in this series of reviews.

Everything in this film is disgusting, but that's why I feel this way about it!

Cheap

Cheap can be found at thecinemasnob.com

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood

Reviewed Platform: Xbox 360

Other Platforms: PS3, PC

There was some speculation prior to Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood that it would be a worthless addition to the series. Some believed that it was pointless as it would be Assassin’s Creed 2.5 rather than Assassin’s Creed III, that it would offer nothing to the overall plot and instead just continue the story of Ezio Auditore da Firenze rather than the story of the Templars and Assassin’s in 2012. Desmond Miles and co. would not receive any forms of development and everyone would be disappointed at some form of recycled gameplay.

I was not one of those people. I have always had faith in the Assassin’s Creed series and was certain that AC:B would be a welcome addition to the series. There were naysayers but I would not listen to them and I was looking forward to the new game.

I was absolutely right.

I tried to go into the game with as little information as possible. All I knew was that you would control Ezio again and... that’s it, actually. I tried as hard as possible to get no information off of anyone so that anything that happened in-game would be a surprise to me.

AC:B takes place directly after AC II, having Desmond and the other Assassin’s arrive at the Mario’s villa. Through a secret passage into the villa you control Desmond using the parkour that we would see Altaïr or Ezio use. It’s a welcome inclusion to have a full section of the game devoted to utilising Desmond and his new-found abilities outside of a warehouse and now in the outside world and helps show the development Desmond has gone through mentally.

At the beginning of the game as Ezio we are shown one of the new inclusions of the game: using weaponry and machinery. The sections using these are not common and only last for a short period of time, but they do well to break up the game and show us the many skills Ezio is capable of, as well as showing the extent of Ubisoft’s game-making capabilities. The villa is attacked by Rodrigo Borgia’s men after Ezio chose not to kill the pope. The villa is destroyed and Ezio is shot. He escapes to Rome and, with Machiavelli, sets to rebuild the Assassin brotherhood within the walls of Italy’s capital and destroy the Borgia influence in Italy, and thus in Europe.

The entirety of the game takes place within Rome, apart from a few asides. This at first seems like it may be a touch less open world that the other games in the series, however it suits the story perfectly. Ezio is focusing purely on Rome and taking out the Borgia. The rest of Italy is not necessary to keep tabs on. Rome is a fairly large map, so the player does not feel too hemmed in and sections of the city open up depending on the DNA Sequence you have accessed.

A new feature added to the game, due to the fact that Ezio is creating a brotherhood, is recruiting and training new Assassins. This is done through a guild management screen, in which you can send your recruits to different parts of Europe to go on missions in order to weaken the Templar influence. Though you do not embark on these missions the mere feeling that you are able to lead this group of Assassins makes the player feel as if they are truly a leader.

There are many parts of the game that are not story based, however take your attention. There are several side-missions to take your fancy, as well as a very interesting back story, telling the tale of Ezio and his past love, Cristina. Though not essential, this adds a lot more depth to the character of Ezio and shows us how much he has changed over the years of being an Assassin.

Rome can be renovated by buying different shops and landmarks, similar to the upgrading system in AC II. This part of the game is a good addition and makes you feel as if you are having an effect on the city, however it can be extremely infuriating when you get to a shop to but some more ammunition or some medicine and you find it has not been bought yet. Spending all your money on that shop, you then discover you do not have enough money to buy what you wanted. Nonetheless, it’s a nice way to integrate the player into the city of Rome.

It is evident that the developers have put a great amount of time in developing the city of Rome, as it looks beautiful, from the surrounding green land to the more urban areas. Furthermore, the game controls wonderfully, though there are still some of the niggling problems with some parts of the free-running, though these problems are few and far between.

Combat is far superior to the combat in any of the game’s predecessors, with Ezio being able to deal with more enemies at once and the range of weapons allows for more enjoyable fights. The game even includes the crossbow, which was missing from the first game in the series, which allows us to be able to deal with distant targets more effectively, keeping with elements of stealth that the game likes to try and force upon us. The stealth aspects are sometimes lacking, however are pretty solid.

The game overall features an astounding storyline and develops all characters, with an ending that is nothing short of mind-blowing. Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood is the strongest in the series (on consoles, at least, though I doubt the handheld games are anything compared to the three console games). If you have the chance to get this game then do so!

Final Verdict: 10/10

Brad Jones Film Reviews: Freak Out

The second review in the series.

We've seen a light-hearted comedy, now for a dark and gritty thriller!

Freak Out

Freak Out can be found at thecinemasnob.com