Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-li - Sinking Bird Kick

The line "this couldn't be as bad as the first one" was said by more than one of the audience. Every single one of them was wrong. This is one of the worst examples of extreme and blatant misunderstanding of the source material and misunderstanding of filmmaking in general. Every single character, save for Michael Clarke Duncan and Robin Shou, were all miscast. The leading lady was played by the same lady from the ill-fated TV show, Smallville as Lana Lang. 

Now, what did this movie get right? Not much, really. The only thing it really did was become a very good target for punchlines and several reviews on the internet. It also resides in many, many worst video game movie lists and worst movie lists and for very good reason. This movie mosies endlessly, and has the gall to give Chun-li a NARRATION. We are given details of her life that have no relevance to the plot. Her father is introduced in them and we see him fight, but then he is unceremoniously killed in the middle of the movie. Our leading lady barely reacts to this at all. Spoilers, by the way. 

You would think, of all things, that this movie would do its fight scenes well at the very least. You would be sorely and sourly mistaken. Wire-Fu barely begins to explain why these scenes failed in both choreography and any sort of believability. We're supposed to believe that a woman of near amateur martial arts skill can take down an entire gang in a huge city, catch the most Lucky Charms ridden, Irish bullshit M. Bison. When he learns about her, he tries to send Vega in for an assassination, but stupidly sent in one of the Black Eyed Peas by mistake. Seriously, why do people think that, because they are celebrities, they can do everything that other celebrities do? 

That sentiment goes double for any of the idiots who thought that the actor for Charlie was cool in any meaning of the word. When I first saw this movie, I recognized him vaguely, but his acting made him into someone else entirely. This did not mean he was delving into the role, he was delving into his squinting and rocker/surfer voice while also trying to maintain some sort of professionalism as a detective. He pulls off none of it. It was finally revealed that he was played by Chris Klein, an American Pie alumni. It is astounding how bad his acting has gotten or just how wrong he was for the part. It could have been both, along with complete misdirection. Honestly, that's a decent summary of the performances themselves. 

What really killed this movie was the dialogue and the characters. Not only do none of them even remotely resemble the video game characters and not only do we get M. Bison, Chun-li with no Guile, but we also get a movie that is SUPER bloody and gory. Mortal Kombat from the mid-90's had next to no blood in it and yet a Street Fighter movie can show a man getting his entire head twisted around? Seriously, this is a real point of contengiency for one very BRUTAL reason! M. Bison gets this horribly unneeded backstory (added to the many time wasting elements of the movie) where he takes his wife to a cave and performs a C Section on her with his hands! It's said that he put all of his innocence into the baby he TOOK from her and NONE of it plays any role in the rest of the film. 

He wants to find his daughter and... kill her or something, I don't remember. Either way, he is supposed to be void of any kind of moral compass because of this whole backstory. Yet, he didn't kill the baby when he had the chance and he very pointedly says, at the beginning of the film, that he would never hurt a little girl. He sends a very young Chun-li off to bed with a "sleep tight!" I'm sorry, where was the cold and heartless element again? He shows it to his henchmen but Neal McDonough is just such a wholesome, smooth actor! He was completely wrong for this role and that Irish accent is even worse than mine! This is not even touching on the whole side plot or main plot or whatever plot of him trying to buy some slums to make them rich people homes! Oh yes, the wasting of all the time knows no bounds!

There is no Raul Julia to marvel in his glorious overacting. There is no stupidly campy "All-American" JCVD Guile for us to poke fun at for being a dumb concept. It's all a dumb, over-inflated concept that tries, at the end, to tie into Street Fighter, as if it were going for a sequel. That was a decent joke, I will admit, but I'd try for one that wasn't so painfully untrue next time. There was no thought put into this movie on any front or, in some cases, entirely too much thought. This never registers as a Street Fighter movie, every single character is a mockery of a mockery, and as much as I absolutely love and miss Michael Clarke, he does nothing to save it. It's kind of amazing how he was barely even a match for the role, skill-set wise, and yet he did it so well in this and in Dare Devil as King Pin. Perhaps talent truly does outweigh just about everything else. Let us remember this movie for the funny reviews and blatant stupidity, then promptly forget it. Virtua what were we talking about?

Doomverse #19 - QDoom: Knee Deep in Chthon

Quake and Doom can never be overstated as titans in the gaming industry, especially the First Person Shooter genre. So, since both of them represent the height of their respective periods of graphics and gameplay, why not shove them both together and get the best of both worlds? Sounds testy, right? Well, not if the ones modding it know what they're doing. Well, they did know, obviously, and what we get is Doom levels with Quake gameplay and enemies from both! 

Does it all work out together perfectly? Not exactly, but it certainly gives you all of the good, gory gameplay parts you would want. The starter Quake shotgun still has its meaty feel when you fire it at your enemies and get a decent spread. You can use the Super Shotgun (double-barrel shotgun) on both enemies from Doom and Quake together! When you start the game, you can choose to have either one or both, and you want both! 

There is nothing more chaotic than a whole batch of enemies, monsters and demons coming at you with different AI and tactics to attack! Pinkies are coming to eat you while the Fiend is jumping at you even FASTER! With zombies throwing their meat and imps throwing slower and longer range fireballs with gunmen coming at you with different gunfire rates, it's a whole new ball game! Does this get rather difficult? Yes, yes it does. 

One big problem with this whole concept is that the ammo and monster ratio of the two games are entirely different. Quake came out back in the mid-90's, when computers couldn't handle quite as much as they can now, so monsters were limited in their numbers. This was not as true for Doom. Even though it was a smaller game, the monsters did not take up as much data, so you can be fighting far more. The guns needed more ammo in Doom, but now in QDoom, they have the weapons from Quake with less ammo but you are expected to take down far more. This means you need to start using your little hatchet a lot more in the starting levels, but you don't get as many weapons unless you get all of he secrets. So, basically, you need to be badass as Doomguy while being as strategic as Ranger. Shape up, Doom Marine! 

There are parts of this where you should have been able to jump into secrets, but were unable to jump in Doom. Well, now that you have the Quake jump ability, they flat out WALL OFF these areas. Darn, it was a good thought! A lot of these that don't affect the overall gameplay, and some of them let you jump, but don't count on it. Being able to do all of this while fighting the Cyberdemon sounds like an amazing experience, so let's all wait anxiously for the Shores of Hell mod. 

The only episode that is available, at the time of writing this, is the greatest episode, Knee Deep in the Dead. This entire episode was beautifully rendered as a Quake episode and playing through to the Bruiser Brothers is a joy once again! This is one of the single greatest Quake mods, making it a Doom mod by default! You can't ask for greatness like this and they offer the first episode for free. It says a lot that these modders are doing this for nothing and QDoom is planned to have more episodes in the future! Planet Virtua needs Doom Marines to take care of demon problems that may or may not exist, and this is just an awesome way to train your shotgun aim! Virtua Bang!

Dark Seed (Saturn) - You Put Weird in My Weird!

 

There come times in our lives when we truly never knew what to expect when we got into a game. The internet has said things about this game, but experiencing it for yourself is a trip and a half. If you enjoy Alex Grey or Salvador Dalí, then you may also enjoy the work of H.R. Giger. This is an artist who has a very distinct style that many have attempted, but few have successfully replicated. If you look closely, you will notice that his art has details upon details to a very minute degree. His art is very surrealistic and strange, and he is also the only reason anyone talks about Dark Seed to this day. 

It is very fortunate that I couldn't find the medicine that cures Mike of his headache. The entire first part of the game, he will complain of having a headache ad nauseum. He does not stop talking about this head ache and this review could have been three paragraphs long, had I not looked up a walkthrough very quickly. Apparently, the game cannot be played unless you read a walkthrough. Even watching a walkthrough for this game could make you miss very small details that you will need. Though, I did also watch walkthroughs on youtube for the English dub rather than the Japanese version I was playing on the Saturn.

This game is weird, creepy, and quite poorly made. It may be looked upon fondly for certain features, but the gameplay is quite distracting and drives a nail into its enjoyment factor. If you miss one single detail, or forget to put objects in certain places, then you will need to go and backtrack again and again! This is all under the clock, because you just so happened to have an alien fetus in your brain. In three days, and the game will keep close track, the alien will hatch and the horrific image of the alien hatching will rear its very disgusting head. Yes, this is really terrible gameplay, hence the walkthrough.

Mike has to be one of the worst characters you have the displeasure of controlling. His horrific dialogue grates against the ears. It can be rather hilarious in some cases. He is so awkward, and so are a lot of the townspeople, and sometimes that makes for some comedic scenes. Mike will talk to himself. This can be seen as a sign of brilliance, but it isn't and he does it entirely too much. His observations are really dumb, but did elicite a chortle at times. Some guy tells you that he wants to hang out with you once you buy a bottle of alcohol. This has the wonderful affect of him taking a drink of it and then walking away. The whole time, you were waiting to grab the stick he was throwing for his dog. 

Once you get to the Dark World, the artwork is rather impressively implimented. It obviously took a hit in quality, no matter what version of this game you play. Still, he was apparently happy with how it turned out and it does set a nice tone for its segments. That's not to say the game looks bad overall. As point-and-click games go, this one looks rather solid. It's clearly an older game and had a lot of limitations, but the developers obviously worked hard on it. The problem is that the Dark World, which is the most interesting part, is rarely in the game. Later in the story, it doesn't do a great deal to cure the slog that this game becomes. 

This is not a long game, nor is it a hard game if you know what items to get and what to do in each scene. Apparently, this was a very common problem for a lot of people. This calls into question, why is it on best horror games or point and click games? Apparently the development was something of a ridiculous maze of mice all going every which way, but either way, the end product doesn't justify it on any other list than, perhaps, the strangest. H.R. Giger's art is fascinating, though, and the world they portray really seems like it could have used some more exploring. While Dark Seed 2 does return to the world, H.R. Giger did not return with the artwork. That game is remembered for very different reasons. Either way, Planet Virtua stays away from the Dark World. Virtua Threat. 

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (PS2) - Professor Imps Attack!

 Everyone can probably agree that the first Harry Potter novel was more of a trial and error novel where JK Rowling was trying to find her footing in the genre and the world she was building. The story and the lore she was building was in its infancy and it took a few more novels to really grow what she wanted from the series itself. This game is a release on the PS2, given much better graphics and more fluid mechanics in comparison to its Playstation 1 counterpart. The first iteration of the Philosopher's stone (which it is properly titled) was more of a puzzle platformer and that's a lot of what we got here, but it has more development behind it. 

Keep this in mind, because there are still some rough areas in this game where there should have been a bit more thought. The mechanics have a good amount of thought when it comes to figuring out and exploring the world and the puzzles. When you play through the levels, you can look in different areas around where you're supposed to be puzzling to find extra items and even some collectibles. Instead of moving a huge cube into its place for the puzzle right away, you can push it to a shorter wall in order to jump on top of that wall to get some health power ups or even some chocolate frog cards.

The collectibles are probably the best part of this while also being one of the more annoying aspects. Yes, it's nice to have the chocolate frog cards, but do we really need to go straight into their history and/or text as soon as we collect them? The Berttie Bot's Beans are fun to collect as well, but do we need to know every single flavor your pick up as well as your reaction to said flavors? You pick them up and Harry will tell you what he thinks of them right away individually and there really aren't that many flavors to choose from. They're not only collectibles, but they're also the currency for which you pay for dung bombs and other useful items. 

This iteration of the game has its good points, like when you cast spells on imps in order to trap them in cages while also figuring out puzzles. However, the problem it has is with the extra mechanics that it adds to the game. The stealth in this game are rough to say the least. When you have to get around Percy Weasley to get to the Weasley item shop in a secret passage through the Gryffindor Dorms. Not that they could have done it in their own dorms, they had to do it in the Prefect Dorms! Whatever sense that makes is not important, I guess, but getting through this stealth section is not a matter of skill, it's a matter of luck because Percy will go anywhere and everywhere in this place and it's so easy for him to catch you. 

One part of the game that should have been better explained was the section where you catch Draco Malfoy on his broomstick. You're supposed to cut corners and catch him, and if you didn't know this beforehand, the game will not tell you anything. You can just keep chasing him and chasing him and chasing him and you'll seem like you're getting closer just like this but you never do. You have to maneuver around him as much as possible in order to catch him off guard. This is monotonous to say the least, because the game WILL NOT progress until you do and it's just a matter of figuring it out yourself. Once you figure out the mechanic, it's really not hard and you can ace it in no time, but the game really should be telling you these details. 

The levels have the problem of being too open and the game has a horrible habit of not telling you a single thing to do. The stage where you're supposed to find the potion ingredients in Hagrid's Hut leaves you to figure out everything for yourself. There's some things that you can figure out on your own, but really not a whole lot. Figuring out where to go and how to collect the plants is left up to luck because you just need to know how to approach everything and the luck of having to dodge the gnomes that gain in number the longer you're there. These sections can be especially long and boring while you're sitting there trying to determine where to go and what plants you need to collect.

The glitches are also on full display here. You can do parts of the Hagrid's Hut level by simply climbing one of the roots and getting behind the waterfall without the platforms and having no need to activate the gargoyle behind the bars. I also had a part of one level where I searched one of the boxes, but nothing happened. I got stuck in the box and was forced to load my last save. These glitches aren't horrible and they're not especially bad, but there are just so many time wasting elements in this game. The game sometimes doesn't outright tell you when you finish a mission and so you're going around the level to try and find anything else you can do until you figure out that you can check your book and it will tell you there.

The openness in this game is a strength as well as its most glaring weakness. Sometimes, it is alright to tell us where to go or tell us when a mission is done. On the other hand, though, before you do anything in your actual missions, you can search Hogwarts to get more beans and pumpkin pasties. The more health items you get while you're at full health, the more health meters you get. It's fun to explore Hogwarts, but it's not so fun when you don't know which doors to go through and searching for ways to go can become stale and overly time consuming. 

Overall, the game is a mixed bag, but it's a decent Harry Potter game. Like Berttie Bott's beans, there are good and bad elements to it and honestly, exploring the school can be a little more fun than simply going through the story mode itself. The graphics and gameplay are far better than the original PS1 iteration of Philosopher's Stone, but it also has a few elements that deserve a bit more explanation. It's a title worth checking out if you're a fan, but remember not to spend too much money on this. Save your Virtua Galleons.