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March 24, 2011 Leave a Comment
Every so often, Eurogamer run a series of technical comparison reviews for games released on both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
This is the latest update to the full list.
Starting with 2011 games, you can hover over the publications icons for a very quick summary.
Crysis 2 March 24, 2011 Leave a Comment
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Race in the official International and Italian Superstars® V8 racing championship. 6/10 Superstars® V8 Racing gives us the chance to race on some uncommon tracks such as Adria, Magione, Varano and Portimao for the first time. Sadly, the handling has a gigantic zone of unresponsiveness in the steering which makes precision feel just out of reach. Once you’ve got used to that, the game controls well with a nice feeling of weight that requires just enough concentration to make perfecting laps highly enjoyable. This is also a lot easier than Milestone’s motorcycle games and I had fun collecting all the achievements and prizes and completing the race scenario challenges and, perhaps rather randomly, the thunder sound effect is surprisingly impressive. |
March 24, 2011 Leave a Comment
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Fleeing from the city after some kind of outbreak or terrorist attack starts causing people to catatonically commit suicide, science teacher Eliot Moore and his wife struggle to make sense of what is happening. As they head toward a reported safe zone, though, the attack starts catching up with them. 7/10 Much maligned and mocked by the most vocal contemporary critics (Ebert aside), this disaster horror movie is tightly packaged, tense and disturbing. It’s a natural disaster movie premise treated seriously and without histrionics and is all the more affecting and thought-provoking for it. Mark Wahlberg, an actor I normally dislike, is good here and Shyamalan successfully anchors his film to him. Instead of an earthquake or tsunami or tornado or asteroid, The Happening presents a fantasy natural disaster but, and this is probably where the eyebrow-raising stems from, explains it as a malevolent evolutionary response to humanity’s existence. It’s interesting how people who readily accept plant evolution as fact refuse to accept plant evolution as a plausible storyline in a fictional movie. This movie contains extremely unpleasant and potentially disturbing scenes.
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March 21, 2011 Leave a Comment
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A lowly archer finds circumstances thrust him into a critical position in defending England from a French invasion… and the selfishness of its own king. 6/10 While it’s more interesting than expected, it’s not terribly convincing: A self-confessed "lowly archer" leads a cavalry charge in battle and issues tactics; he conveniently has a father he knew nothing about who had masterminded a new constitution guaranteeing liberty for citizens; the French army uses World War II landing barges (though anachronistic that was, at least, cool). But this is very nearly a Gladiator with mud. It has a similar intriguing mix of politics, action, military tactics and the inspiration of a courageous man who stands up to those misusing their authority and it’s Ridley Scott’s best film since Matchstick Men seven years ago. This movie contains adult dialogue and violence, inferred sexual violence, animated extreme and gory violence during closing credits (!) and sex scene, nudity.
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March 20, 2011 Leave a Comment
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Jonathan Creek 2.03 Scented Room, The (1998) Hated theatre critic Sylvester Le Fley is not on Jonathan’s list of favourite people but even he can’t resist a good mystery when a very valuable painting of Le Fley’s is stolen in broad daylight from a sealed room in a matter of seconds. 7/10 There’s just enough to pad out the highly entertaining little mystery but the series’ weak point, Caroline Quentin, gets a backstory sideplot to absolutely no positive effect. She even gets a dreadfully supercilious barb to a rich parent ("maybe you can buy him something he really wants; like a life") which really goes contrary to her dreadfully shallow and unconvincing portrayal of her character. You can see her acting constantly. While we instantly believed Alan Davies to be Jonathan Creek we have never and will never believe Caroline Quentin to be an investigative journalist or, indeed, any of her characters. She always appears to be an actress playing a role. Still, the mystery’s great (if a bit tricky to pull off, surely the painting wouldn’t behave and would just roll up and get stuck) and it finishes with a good gag. This Jonathan Creek episode contains mild swear words, mild adult dialogue and innuendo.
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March 20, 2011 Leave a Comment
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Jonathan Creek 2.02 Time Waits for Norman (1998) Another mystery for Jonathan Creek when the husband of Maddy’s publisher appears to have been on two continents at the same time. 8/10 Imaginative and entertaining mystery. We love it when writers are cleverer than and surprise us and this is one of Renwick’s strengths. Renwick manages a couple of goodies in this episode. Firstly is the comedy reveal regarding Creek’s amorous encounter with a tax inspector (SPOILER "Didn’t you get suspicious when you were running your fingers through her hair and she wasn’t even in the room?") while the crime mystery features a note ("Oh, when I know to free hate, to sever no one") whose meaning is brilliantly simple and ingenious (SPOILER it’s a phone number, read it out: 0190 238 2701). The explanation of the whole mystery is also delightfully impressive. This Jonathan Creek episode contains substance abuse (methylated spirits) and mild unpleasant scenes of a burned foot.
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March 20, 2011 Leave a Comment
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Trigun: Badlands Rumble (2010) Twenty years after saving legendary robber Gasback’s life, Vash the Stampede returns to the town where the somewhat questionable event took place and where Gasback is intending to gain revenge against a treacherous henchman turned highly successful businessman. The businessman, Cain, has set up a massive $$300,000,000 bounty on Gasback’s head but among the bounty hunters that stream into the town is Amelia, a beautiful young woman who seems to have a more personal beef with Gasback. 8/10 Vash the Stampede is one of Japanese animations most brilliant creations: an apparent buffoonish mega-outlaw ($$60,000,000,000 bounty) who is a self-effacing mega-hero completely committed to not killing anyone (good or bad) or letting anyone else kill. If you’ve got the tone of the character (he can take some acclimatising), it’s wonderful stuff and a lot of fun. His buffoonery is jolly, his awesomeness is awesome. Mad House once again spectacularly present his antics, delivering a deceptive plot very well and making sure it’s as stylish and impressive as can be from the opening robbery of world history’s most protected bank vault through to SPOILER Vash making his hero’s entrance for the climax. This movie contains sexual swear words and strong melee violence, graphic gun violence. Links |
March 19, 2011 Leave a Comment
Every so often, Eurogamer run a series of technical comparison reviews for games released on both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
This is the latest update to the full list.
Starting with 2011 games, you can hover over the publications icons for a very quick summary.
Homefront March 15, 2011 Leave a Comment
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Robin B Hood (2006) 
Thongs and Octopus are master thieves but useless humans. Thongs has a serious gambling problem and an alienated family and Octopus blows his money on women and things to impress women while being horrible to his pregnant wife. After their boss Landlord has his ill-gotten gains stolen, he comes up with a plan that will net them $7 million in one go but he fails to tell Thongs and Octopus exactly what they’ll be stealing this time. 1/10 This is a near-unbelievably poor Jackie Chan film which builds up from Jackie stealing medicine from a hospital to, arguably, the most stupid, genuinely astonishing and audience insulting climax in movie history. Don’t let this awesome picture of Louis Koo hoovering up the baby or the fact that Jackie’s character is called Thongs tempt you into watching this. Remember how Gorgeous was stupendously dull in between all-time classic fight scenes? Well this is similar except the fight scenes are merely okay and in-between we have Jackie Chan making up for a lack of homosexuality and poop in his earlier movies in addition to being an gambling-addicted baby-kidnapping thief aided and abetted by a feckless wastrel. It’s really far worse than I’m making it sound. This movie contains mild swear words and dangerous behaviour including putting a baby in a washing machine, in a deep freeze and defibrillating it using a car battery, martial arts violence.
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March 14, 2011 Leave a Comment
Every so often, Eurogamer run a series of technical comparison reviews for games released on both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
This is the latest update to the full list.
Starting with 2011 games, you can hover over the publications icons for a very quick summary.
Dragon Age II March 12, 2011 Leave a Comment
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Jonathan Creek 2.01 Danse Macabre (1998) A murderer and his hostage are cornered in a free-standing stone-walled garage with automatic security lights on all sides. He closes the garage doors and the area is almost immediately surrounded by police. Fifteen minutes later, the police open the doors… and only the hostage remains. The murderer has vanished. 7/10 I discerned the central plot mechanic almost immediately but I can’t decide whether that’s good or bad. It was so impossible that there could only be one explanation (something Renwick highlights when he reveals the original plan didn’t feature it). There’s the satisfaction of getting the solution right with the mild disappointment of not being outwitted by the writer. However, Renwick does keep one macabre twist up his sleeve with the victim’s head and another ethical twist with the reason for the murder. I dislike Pippa Haywood as an actress and this is a near-intolerably unconvincing performance from her, especially when she’s being emotional. Director Sandy Johnson keeps it crisp but doesn’t successfully distract the audience from the fact that Creek worked out the solution as soon as he heard the scenario but didn’t get around to telling anyone else for a couple of days to pad out the running time. This Jonathan Creek episode contains adult dialogue and extremely unpleasant scene and non-sexual nudity.
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March 11, 2011 Leave a Comment
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Jonathan Creek 1.06 House of Monkeys, The (1997) A family friend of Jonathan’s is found dead in a room locked from the inside. While that indicates suicide, the samurai sword impaled through his back rather indicates murder. 6/10 The big problem with having gorillas in your story is that the audience immediately thinks ‘why have they got someone in a gorilla suit walking around the place?’ Even if it’s a terrific suit and performance, and this is, it still never feels like a gorilla. It appears to exist largely for a great bathroom gag (SPOILER) though the gorilla does also provide a clue in the death. While the episode uses an impressive misdirection to confound matters the murder eventually feels horribly straight-forward and plausible (SPOILER poison on the lickable gum of a self-addressed envelope). This Jonathan Creek episode contains adult dialogue, bad language and very unpleasant and slightly gory scenes and sexuality.
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March 11, 2011 1 Comment
Every so often, Eurogamer run a series of technical comparison reviews for games released on both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
This is the latest update to the full list.
Starting with 2011 games, you can hover over the publications icons for a very quick summary.
Bulletstorm de Blob 2 
Fight Night Champion Marvel vs. Capcom 3 Sonic and SEGA All-Stars Racing Stacking Test Drive Unlimited 2 March 11, 2011 Leave a Comment
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Jonathan Creek 1.05 No Trace of Tracy (1997) A 16-year-old girl, Tracy Cook, calls round to visit her hero, rock star Roy Pilgrim. Half a dozen schoolboys see her walk in through the French windows at the back of the house, into the white room. At the exact same time, four o’clock, Pilgrim swears he was in the room, fully conscious, handcuffed to the radiator, and saw no one come in. 6/10 This is an example of the kind of illusion that takes an mammoth amount of work that the audience wouldn’t consider viable ‘just for a magic trick.’ All the time, your brain is screaming to you the obvious solution but you might easily dismiss it because it would take so much effort to pull off. The sexual tension side of things is needlessly played up; needless because the central crime mystery is more than interesting enough by itself. It would take a long time for Renwick and his producer to get off that particular crutch. Director Sandy Johnson cameos as the beautifully moustachioed policeman. This Jonathan Creek episode contains a mild swear word and frog abuse and very unpleasant scenes and arboreal fondling.
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March 9, 2011 Leave a Comment
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Jonathan Creek 1.04 Reconstituted Corpse, The (1997) A woman is accused of killing her plastic surgeon after she wrote a tell-all book that he wasn’t happy about. Maddy investigates and manages to stumble across an alibi for her but then things take an unexpected twist and the mind of Jonathan Creek is required to unbaffle the impossible. 7/10 It takes half-an-hour before the hook kicks in but when it does (SPOILER a body miraculously appears in a wardrobe) it’s, as Creek himself says, "a good one, isn’t it?" and the remaining twenty minutes fly by. The solution is impressively / distressingly mundane which is frequently the case with ‘impossible’ scenarios. Because the outcome is so astounding, you assume the cause must be astounding. This episode also contains one of the most unusual scenes ever filmed: a taxi driver giving change to a passenger. This Jonathan Creek episode contains adult dialogue and gun violence, unpleasant scenes and mild sexual nudity.
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March 8, 2011 Leave a Comment
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Jonathan Creek 1.03 Jack in the Box (1997) Just days after Alan Rokesmith, the man wrongfully imprisoned for killing his young wife, is released after nine years, aged movie star Jack Holliday is found shot dead inside his nuclear bunker in a impenetrable room locked from the inside. Clearly suicide, except Jack Holliday had crippling arthritis and couldn’t even peel a banana, let alone hold a gun to his head and pull the trigger. 8/10 After the feature-length opening double-episode, Jonathan Creek immediately settles into the fifty-minute slot that, I think, is perfect for this kind of show. It keeps things brisk and forces a tight focus on the matter at hand. It ensures that additional pieces of flavour are incorporated into the flow of the story instead of being allowed to bloat into their own irrelevant subplot (so no Adam Claus this time). This episode features a terrific locked room mystery where the viewer is given all the same clues as Jonathan. Alan Davies gets the how-dun-it at the end which thankfully reduces the amount of screen time for Caroline Quentin’s charmless Maddy Magellan. This Jonathan Creek episode contains bad language and unpleasant scenes.
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March 8, 2011 Leave a Comment
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2/10 I simply do not understand why producers of tennis games insist on making their controls complicated. In this game, you have to press a combo sequence of buttons to perform a lob or drop shot; the latter being a consistently critical shot in the mini-games. Yet there are two face buttons that aren’t used. Why have an impossible to reliably reproduce combo (which the game usually misinterprets or ignores for no good reason as well) when there are perfectly good face buttons going to waste? Baffling. Outside of this, Sega Superstars Tennis looks great, sounds bright and the mini-games are a good mix of the featured Superstars franchise and tennis but, critically, they are almost immediately absolutely no fun whatsoever because this game is very quickly incredibly difficult. It’s not a surprise that this game is completely worthless (£0.01 on Amazon). |
March 5, 2011 Leave a Comment
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Jonathan Creek 1.01,02 Wrestler’s Tomb, The (1997) A burglar seeks the help of an investigative journalist (!) to help him get out of a murder he didn’t commit. The problem is that the person with the most obvious motive, the wife of the adulterous victim, was inside a thirteenth-floor office at the time of the murder and hadn’t left all morning. 7/10 Unfortunately filmed as a star vehicle for the irritating Caroline Quentin (meaning she get’s the Poirot how-dun-it speech at the end and is bafflingly portrayed as romantically enticing), this opening episode for classic murder mystery show Jonathan Creek also features one of its weaker solutions. Not that you’ll guess it, despite your best efforts, and that’s critical. Much more discussion of the plot would be a giant spoiler but the important thing is your mind is invested in trying to work out how someone shoots her husband without leaving a thirteenth floor office. Director Marcus Mortimer employs a naughty false flashback but otherwise does an efficient job. Writer David Renwick gifts Alan Davies a character that ticks all the maverick cop cliché boxes (without making him a cop) and crafts a number of tidy gags including a great Steadicam joke ("It gets rid of jerks." "So does Clint Eastwood but I don’t want to strap him to my chest.") and an irate husband hoovering Jonathan’s face. This Jonathan Creek episode contains mild adult dialogue and unpleasant scenes and sexuality, nudity in paintings.
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March 5, 2011 Leave a Comment
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Star Wars: Clone Wars, The: Republic Heroes (2009) As the Clone Wars continue, Anakin and his padawan Ahsoka discover a powerful prototype weapon is being hawked to the highest bidder by Kul Teska. As they alert others and make their way to Teska himself, other forces are also making plans to relieve Teska of his prize. 4/10 This is a game which opens with Yoda lying to you by telling you that a Jedi can’t fall accidentally to his death and will always land on platforms he is jumping to. Regrettably, the exact opposite is true. Every time you press the jump button, you have no idea if you are going to land where you should or, far too often, plummet impotently to your doom. As a result, the game has no flow. The same is true of the attack button but at least that doesn’t kill you. You just keep swiping ridiculously at the air around droids as if you’re trying to burst their ear drums or something. If the jump mechanics had been more predictable, this would be a good game. It looks fine, sounds fine, there’s enough to do, Cad Bane looks unexpectedly cool and it even has a sense of humour. But, as it is, it’s far too often irritating to play. This game contains extended fantasy lightsaber mecha violence.
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March 4, 2011 Leave a Comment
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T.J. Hooker 1.04 Hooker’s War (1982) Hooker gets involved with illegal gun-running in the city but relishes the chance to work alongside Pete Benedict, his partner when he was a detective. 6/10 Normally the term clichéd is used in a derogatory sense but this thoroughly entertaining episode elicits cheers of delight when Shatner spits out such beauties as “If you want a war, you can have it”, “…being dead is as much trouble as there is” and other golden oldies. There’s even a detective on his last case. This T.J. Hooker episode contains unpleasant scene.
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March 3, 2011 Leave a Comment
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7/10 This is an excellent block breaker with a nice new idea (blowing and sucking the ball) and levels that do not suffer from the last block blight of every other game in the genre. However, the most outstanding contribution of the game is from composer Jeramiah Ross who supplies a nostalgic, fitting and uplifting soundtrack. The game is good, the music is great. |
March 3, 2011 Leave a Comment
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6/10 This is an energetic, kinda fun espionage is-he-isn’t-he movie but it has a notable problem in that Tom Cruise’s otherwise likable spy has murdered about thirty non-corrupt agents before Cameron Diaz decides, almost inexplicably, to team up with him. (There’s only one corrupt agent in the entire movie.) Yeah, his life may be exciting, she may have a thing for him but he’s a serial killer of law enforcement agents. That’s not the kind of thing is allowed to pass even, perhaps especially, for a government operative. The extended edition is largely better except for a really unconvincing bit of motorcycle CG stuntwork to escape a charging bull. It also seems unlikely airport security would allow Cameron Diaz on an airplane with the ingredients of a pipe bomb. This movie contains a single sexual swear word and substance abuse and strong violence, unpleasant scenes.
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March 1, 2011 Leave a Comment
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Successful businessman Kiichi Nakajima wants to move his extended family from Japan to Brazil where they will all be safe from death by nuclear bombs. His family don’t want to go but need to have him declared non compis mentis in order to stop him. Needless to say, this causes some friction. 6/10 Thought-provoking drama which recognises that the most intriguing moral dilemma is one where both sides are right and both sides are wrong. Mifune’s patriarch is going to uproot his family and take them to the presumed safety of Brazil very much against the wishes of his family but is that insanity? The film then continues to look at the crippling effects of fear; it can drive you out of your mind. Mifune, playing much older (he was thirty-five), is outstanding throughout. His hair make-up is a bit obvious but his performance is utterly convincing. Perhaps the key to his conveying such energy on-screen is that he never stops moving whether by fidgeting or rocking or fiddling with something; he never stops moving. Nobody seethes on-screen like Toshiro Mifune.
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March 1, 2011 Leave a Comment
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Your sniper could make the difference between defeat and victory in a number of World War II scenarios. Hold your breath, take aim, fire… and pray nobody sees you. 5/10 This is a fine idea for a budget shooter providing a unusual, tightly focused experience that, due to it’s low price, doesn’t feel the need to stretch out or tinker with it’s single gameplay mechanic. The atmosphere is surprisingly good with a nice tension coming from the knowledge that if anyone sees you, it’s usually game over. The music is good and they avoid the temptation to make the music reflect the number of baddies. Levels are well-enough designed though more choice over routes would have been appreciated (you only really get that in the last level) and it’s a shame about the execution in a couple of critical areas. Principally, lining up your shot doesn’t necessarily end with the result of a perforated baddie because you can’t shoot through some transparent objects or some blades of grass and you can’t shoot some enemies that haven’t ‘woken up.’ |
Classified 15 by BBFC. Suitable only for persons of 15 years and over. 
Classified 12A by BBFC. Persons under the age of 12 must be accompanied by an adult. 
Classified 12 by BBFC. Suitable only for persons of 12 years and over. 
Classified PG by BBFC. Parental Guidance. 
Classified 12+ by PEGI. The game is only suitable for persons who have reached the age of 12 or over. 
Classified Violence by PEGI. Game contains depictions of violence. 
