Posts tagged Action
Review: Super Meat Boy (XBLA)
Oct 25th
Recently, I’ve been making a push in my life to go vegetarian. There are a lot of reasons that I think it’s the right decision for me: I feel healthier, nothing has to die just so I can have a snack, and it lowers my environmental impact.
But nothing has driven me to despise meat as much as Super Meat Boy. I spent the better part of eight hours running a sprawling gauntlet stacked to the brim with deadly traps and implements of destruction, leaving a meat-stain behind with every step, jump, and gruesome death. Under my guidance, Meat Boy has been splattered, slashed, shredded, and vivisected a grand total of 1,431 times. It was pretty disgusting.
But that’s not to say it wasn’t fun; in fact, that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Thanks to its perfectly tuned controls, broad range of diverse levels and undeniable charm, Super Meat Boy is also one of the best platform games I’ve ever played.
Review: Comic Jumper: The Adventures of Captain Smiley (XBLA)
Oct 19th
Captain Smiley has lost his touch. The superhero — a muscular, caped crime-fighter with a smiley face for a head and a talking, smart-ass, star-shaped sidekick named Star embedded in his chest — finds his comic being canceled after degenerating into an embarrassing commercial flop. In order to regain his former glory and pay his debts to the Twisted Pixel guys, who bust down the fourth wall with aplomb by bailing out Smiley’s debts, Captain Smiley is forced to guest-star in other comics to build up enough of a reputation and a financial base to relaunch his comic series.
Comic Jumper features a rich, vibrant presentation that’s bizarre, outlandish, hilarious, and wonderfully innovative. But unfortunately, actually playing the game is a whole other story.
Review: Alan Wake (Xbox 360)
Jun 22nd
Don’t let Alan Wake’s fancy genre nomenclature fool you. This “psychological action thriller” is dyed-in-the-wool survival horror, and it’s damned good.
Alan Wake, the name of the game as well as its protagonist, is the story of a novelist whose world becomes literally enveloped by darkness as he writes and lives his newest story. Spooky. The game follows Alan Wake as he confronts his writer’s block only to find that his creativity is, in point of fact, his worst enemy. Set in a sleepy town in the Pacific Northwest called Bright Falls, the story borrows heavily from psychological genre-bending television programs like The Twilight Zone. So great is the homage that television sets can be found throughout the game that present mock episodes of a fictional show called “Night Springs.” These Easter eggs provide much needed comic relief from the dark narrative, a strategy employed once before in Remedy’s previous franchise, Max Payne.
Review: John Woo Presents Stranglehold (Xbox 360)
Jun 22nd
Although the details are fuzzy, I know for a fact I saw my first Hong Kong heroic bloodshed movie a couple of years ago.
My buddy Dan had invited me over for a few drinks and some general indolence, and we sat down to watch a movie he revered: John Woo’s Hard Boiled. I can’t remember a damn thing about it, but I know there were guns, and doves, and shooting, and jumping while shooting . . . it was grand.
Today, I asked Dan to remind me of the specifics of Hard Boiled to help me construct this review. But even after having seen the movie dozens of time, there are only four solitary details that he can recall:
- A teahouse: dude gets killed from a banister
- A warehouse: dude gets nailed by a motorcycle
- A boathouse: dude gets shotgunned
- A hospital: baby pees on Chow Yun-Fat
It might sound crass or irresponsible to paint the movie in such simplistic terms, but that’s really the beauty of the movie. John Woo wasn’t setting out to break new ground in character development in the already-crowded cop-action genre; he was only trying to stage the best combination of over-the-top shootouts and exhilarating stunts that could possibly be crammed into a mere two hours. He succeeded.