People have been talking about a “Gamer Bill of Rights” for years and now and PC Stardock Publisher just released their idea for a bill at PAX. While I certainly think gamers need rights, I’m not so sure we need a bill of any kind. We should simply be protected like all other consumers. Here is Stardock’s bill and my opinion in blue.
Halo fans may not be getting any new details on when the strategy-flavored Halo Wars will be hitting console-side outside of “early 2009,” but you can enjoy some new box art in the meantime.
There sure are a lot of people backing up the three Spartan characters present. Looks good enough to grab the attention of the casual gaming crowd, at least.
“What?! I can play with three Master Chiefs?”
There goes a few million copies sold right there. Does the box art sell it for you?
The average score from 1Up editors and users for Madden NFL 09 is a shocking A+. Even G4’s X-Play gave it a perfect review score. The only negative aspects mentioned by X-Play was “minor glitches” and “minor online lag”. I’m not sure if the word minor is right, but I’ll cover that later. After reading dozens of reviews from around the net, I realized that the people giving the scores were probably not looking at the game in depth. Perhaps they were caught up with the “20th anniversary” hype or something. I’m just not sure how anyone could consider this to be a perfect or even close to perfect title.
Sessler is back with another interesting edition of Sessler’s Soapbox. This time he’s talking about Diablo III’s flaming fanboys. I agree with him that many gamers have narrow minded views about how games are supposed to be. I agree that the creators of Diablo III have the right to change the game. It does have better graphics and better animation. Adam also mentioned that we’ve only seen about 20 minutes of footage, so we really don’t know how good or bad the title will be at this point. Are people afraid of change like Adam says?
Johnny Rico is back after an eleven year hiatus from his first alien gorefest adventure in Starship Troopers 3: Marauder. Is his latest adventure worth a watch?
Well, you’d think in a movie that’s based around fighting bugs, it’d have more of them in it — but no. Aside from a couple of scenes where aliens come in and destroy a handful of soldiers, you’ll likely come out of Marauder highly disappointed as it switches its giant-ant shooting with religious preaching and weak one-liners; oh, yes, worse than in the first couple of movies.
The Starship Troopers series has never been a triple-A franchise right from the start but its loss of bugs and gibs give way to a simple story made worse by an overacting, underwhelming cast.
Jolene Blalock, who plays Lola Beck, is clearly placed in Marauder as an Angelina Jolie lookalike brought in to attract the young, male demographic; cleverly avoiding to dish out the money for the real deal.
The rest of the cast is just as bad as they belch out every line as if they’re going into an epic battle. Clearly, they’re not as they run around in cut-and-paste environments throughout the entirety of the film.
Marauder wouldn’t be so bad if it knew what it wanted to do. Some scenes point you towards a spoof on action movies but those type of movies strive from its friendly banter amongst the cast. Here, every moment is boring and filled with references to the previous films which will be all but lost on the general viewer.
If it wanted to be a legit action movie the serious tones touched on and acted out are severely undercut by the overall easiness of the plot. For example, how do you take it serious when soldiers are asking for autographed helmets by a singing superstar “sky marshall” one moment and getting shot up the next?
Production values are noticeably absent as the special effects present would not be out of place in a mid-90s PC video game cut scene with plain graphics and incredibly limited animations. The giant ants never convincingly interact with the actors and when they do, it’s to the same effect as when a kid plays with plastic GI Joes and mashes them together.
Marauder also makes a point to guarantee the viewer sees decapitations and body parts flying around, but are so cheaply produced that you’re quickly taken out of those short moments when they appear.
About the only bright blemish in this otherwise forgettable film are the “Citizen” mock propoganda ads. They are spliced in with enough satire and humor to effectively break up the overall blandness of the story. Had the director chosen to run with the theme presented in these clips, ST3 might’ve been an average experience, but as it stands it’s a failed experiment.
All things considered, the movie is too serious at times and doesn’t exploit the ridiculous angle of it all well enough, the rest of the time, to even passively watch. Most of the movie is spent on religious “who’s right, who’s wrong” rantings which never gel together and play out like a last minute write-up to add some substance to the lame premise. The bad, and sometimes comical, acting might give you a couple of chuckles, but you’re better off staying far and away from this one…it reeks of “generic brand.”
DVD/Bluray/UMD Release: August 5, 2008
[Editor’s Note: Walking down the aisles of your favorite retailer you’ll see movies that you’ve never heard of. Even if you’d like to know how they fare no one cares enough to review them! That’s where “Movie Watch” comes in…oh, and we’ll try to cover movies on Xbox Live from time to time. Because if you’re gonna spend those confusing Microsoft points on something other than games, it better be worth it, right?]
More Movie Watch:
Batman - Gotham Knight
Like a Dragon (Ryu Ga Gotoku)
Raising Jeffrey Dahmer
I have compiled some famous quotes from Hitler, tell me they could not be coming from Bush 43’s mouth. My response comments are in bold.
All great movements are popular movements. They are the volcanic eruptions of human passions and emotions, stirred into activity by the ruthless Goddess of Distress or by the torch of the spoken word cast into the midst of the people.
Playing Blitz: The League on the PS2 was ok. But now with LT, you can bet someone’s legs are going to break on PS3 and X360. That’s right, Lawrence Taylor will be appearing in Blitz: The League II playing on the good ole’ New York Nightmare’s.
As the only videogame with a story mode exploring the darker side of pro sports, Blitz: The League II puts the player in complete control as he ventures through brutal on-the-field competition and entertaining off-the-field drama in his quest to reach the League Championship. Peter Egan (Playmakers) returns to pen the most entertaining Blitz storyline yet.
If you have been wondering if we’ll ever see Led Zeppelin songs in a video game such as Rock Band or Guitar Hero, the answer is NEVER! Apparently Activision and MTV have tried to get LZ, and Jimmy Page turns them down every time. It’s unfortunate, but I certainly respect their right as artists to control their music.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Jimmy Page, and his bandmates have repeatedly turned down offers from both Activision and MTV to use their tunes in either Rock Band or Guitar Hero music games. The band isn’t “comfortable with the prospect of granting outsiders access to its master tapes.” ”It ain’t about the money,” says Led Zep manager Peter Mensch.
More interesting info from the Wall Street Journal: These bands are all in talks to have content included in music games (either Rock Band or Guitar Hero):
- Van Halen,
- the Eagles,
- Steely Dan
- Guns N’ Roses
There’s been recent rumblings about what the final set list will be for Rock Band 2 but more interesting, at least for this writer, is what else the game will provide right out of the box.
IGN reports (via Kotaku) that when gamers take home and open up their shiny new Rock Band 2 game this fall, you’ll be able to download the first game’s complete set list…for FREE.
Gamestop might just get a sudden influx of Rock Band discs as Activision EA will be relieving the slight inconvenience of disc-swapping. Rocking out will suffer no delays.
Via IGN Insider (through Kotaku)
[Edited: As our kind readers have pointed out, EA is the publisher of all things Rock Band and it's developed by Harmonix who created Guitar Hero and its sequel. Our bad.]
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[Editor's Note: Walking down the aisles of your favorite retailer you'll see movies that you've never heard of. Even if you'd like to know how they fare no one cares enough to review them! That's where "Movie Watch" comes in...oh, and we'll try to cover movies on Xbox Live from time to time. Because if you're gonna spend those confusing Microsoft points on something other than games, it better be worth it, right?]
“Raising Jeffrey Dahmer” premiered at the Kansas City Filmmakers Jubilee in 2006. Two years later and instead of a wide release it received the straight-to-DVD treatment; understandably so.
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