Episode 13 of Ranting and Raving featuring the latest trailer for the movie Watchmen, a film adaptation of one of the greatest graphic novels of all time. Concludes with a look at the novel, Alan Moore adaptations and speculation/fears of the new movie.
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Episode 12 of Ranting and Raving featuring Jenny reviewing Quantum of Solace in Chris' place. Enjoy, rate, subscribe and comment :D
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TRANSCRIPT:
Welcome to Ranting and Raving where i praise or abuse the stuff that i review. I am Jenny, covering Chris after he suffered a freak peanut butter and jelly accident. Today I want to talk about the new James Bond movie Quantum of Solace.
Quantum of Solace is the 22nd James Bond movie since Dr No in 1962 and the series has come a long way. 6 different Bonds, 5 different decades and a series reboot later and we are given the most recent Bond movie.
The movie picks up just hours after the previous outing, Casino Royale and straight away we are thrown into the action. I fell for the movie as soon as the standard pre-opening credits chase between Bond in his Aston Martin DBS and some assailants began.
The story follows Bond played once again by Daniel Craig as he is in search for an group called Quantum. Quantum apparently has moles in groups such as Her Majestys Government and the Central Intelligence Agency which leads to some scenes where double crosses and second guessing might happen. It might be because The Dark Knight rubbed off on me or something, but I seemed to be thinking too far ahead of the story trying to get in front of the double-crossing but it turns out the movie actually under-delivers if you take that approach.
The bad guy is a Mr Dominic Greene, a businessman and provider of a legitimate cover for Quantum with his environmental company so originally named Greene Planet. One thing I love about James Bond movies is that their plot is somehow related to current events in the world and this movie doesnt disappoint. There is a whole influence on the state of the planet with global warming and natural disasters and this is assimilated in the bad guys cover by apparently providing solutions to better the environment. There are also small things such as the US Dollar not being too strong leading to the bad guys to request Euros instead which is a nice touch.
The bad guys plan involves oil and land. Another current issue cleverly included into the plot. It has a sort of relevance that adds a little bit more realism to the movie and makes it more current. No idea if this element will age well in the later years.
If youre a big fan of James Bond like me then you will be satisfied with all the action that takes place. Youll also enjoy the development of Bond since Casino Royale as he begins to shape himself more and more into the Bond hell eventually become.
The two main Bond girls deliver what theyre supposed to. You have the minor, stock M I 6 agent Strawberry Fields who offers the concerned, but easily swayed female character after a bedding by Bond and then you have the main Bond girl, Camille who like many other Bond girls in recent years is more of an equal to Bond and not completely incompetent.
The other acting is great as well. Craig is a great Bond and you can feel his softer side towards the ill-fated Vesper killed in the previous movies as well as the anger and aggression when faced with his adversaries.
The stunts are great but some seem a bit lackluster compared to the last movie where they had Parkour and runway chases. That being said, the vehicle chases are fast paced and well-filmed and some of the shootouts and fights scream classic Bond.
I love the look of the movie. Each location is completely different and relevant to that point in the plot. There are some scenes where the normal goings on are juxtaposed against the violence going on with Bond and some henchmen and how the action swaps from one to another was pretty effective.
There are things there for the Bond fan to love. There are references to previous movies that are either obvious or a bit obscure as well as maybe a few faces popping up. However there are also a few things the Bond fan will have problems with. Just the little things youre used to seeing or hearing in a James Bond film either in the wrong place or missing entirely.
If I were to give this movie an arbitrary score I would give it an 8 out of 10. One of the better Bond movies of recent years. Not as good as Casino Royale but not as bad as Die Another Day.
This has been Ranting and raving, I was Jenny, your beautiful virtual host, Chris might be back sunday, but for now, have a week.
The release date for Sonic Unleashed, the latest adventure of video game's only blue, spiny, hyper-kinetic mammal is but a few days away, and Sonic fans have their hopes high that this could be the return-to-form that Sega had been hyping over and over. Let me address those Sonic fans directly for one moment:
Stop it.
Speaking as someone who hasn't enjoyed a Sonic game since he left the 2nd dimension, let me say that while I'm intrigued by the return to 2D gameplay, mark my words, this ISN'T the return to form that you've been waiting for. There's a very good chance that this game will be just as bad as Sonic 2006.
Okay, maybe not THAT bad, but still...There's not much cause to get your hopes up as high as you're getting them.
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HERE'S HOW I KNOW:
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1. The Humans Are Still There
I can't begin to fathom why there'd be humans in a Sonic the Hedgehog game. Sure Dr. Robotnik sort of resembles a human, (And it IS Dr. Robotnik if you're American. If you call him Dr. Eggman you are a whipped, Japanophile pansy, and I invite you to go stick some pocky up your ass.) but I thought that it ended there.
Surely I wasn't the only one getting a "Nature vs Humanity" vibe from the first few games, as though the anthromorphic creatures were defending the habitat of their slightly less evolved bretheren. If they had any sort of sense, shouldn't the rest of humanity be seen as some sort of antagonist?
But no, instead we've got humans associating with giant bi-pedal animals as if there's nothing wrong. Ridiculousness aside, the inclusion of humans and human cities has added NOTHING to the gameplay. (It's taken plenty away however, in the form of moronic side-quests in Sonic The Hedgehog 2006.)
2. The Music Still Sucks
This is more a personal hatred than anything else, but I can't stand how just about every level in the 3D Sonic games are filled with chunky guitars and shrill-voiced pop-punk vocalists. I think it takes away from the game when the background music barely fits the stage scenario, and sounds extremely annoying.
While not a lot of info has been leaked in regards to the music, after hearing what HAS been available on YouTube, and the godawful theme music, which features of all people, the guy from Bowling For Soup. (Never a good sign.) I can honestly say they're doing it all over again.
I've never liked the soundtracks of any of the 3D Sonic games. They're just completely unpleasant to me. The last Sonic-related song I genuinely liked was when Green Hill Zone was remade for Super Smash Brothers Brawl. That was pretty cool, because anyone who's a Sonic fan pretty much considers Green Hill Zone to be THE signature Sonic song. (Okay, there's the intro to the original, but that's barely more than 7 seconds long.) Lately though it seems as though Sega's been trying to distance itself from its old and BETTER soundtracks from it's Genesis/CD heydays. And that's a really bad idea.
3. Sonic Gets Turned Into A Were-Kratos
I'm sure much of the video game community, Sonic fan or not, all raised a collective eyebrow of confusion upon the discovery that Sonic Unleashed would include a strange new feature in which Sonic can transform into a were....thing...that was stronger, slower, and had impossibly elasticine arms.
I watched many videos of gameplay footage of that, never sure what to think until Yahtzee Croshaw summed it up best during an episode of the Australian Gamers Podcast, when he compared the new gameplay style to God of War. (Prior to that, I thought it looked more like Wario World.)
Whatever the case, it's not a good omen. Everytime Sega has had to introduce new elements of gameplay to Sonic games as means of "mixing things up", it generally means one thing: You don't get to play a genuine Sonic game.
What is a genuine Sonic game? Really really inhumanly fast platforming. It's not a God of War-style brawler. When you drive a wedge in the game to block off what people EXPECT from the game, I have found that the hypothetical player enjoying the game now hates you for it.
4. More New Useless Characters
Think back long and hard. When was the last time that you truly embraced the introduction of a new character in the Sonic franchise? Sonic 3, right? When Knuckles was introduced. After that it was just one long trip towards expanded universe Hades.
If there's one thing that Sega likes to do more than shoot its own hardware in the foot, and release its entire Genesis library on Greatest Hits packs, it's add more completely superficial characters to the Sonic franchise, and Unleashed at least holds back a little bit, with only two new characters; an extremely annoying sidekick thing, (Because Tails apparently wasn't enough.) and a new villain, which is unacceptable considering how long it's been since Dr. Robotnik hasn't been a complete joke.
I wouldn't mind the introduction of all these new faces so much, (Heck, the Super Mario RPGs do it all the time.) but Sega is always carrying these characters over into the main canon, and it gets to the point where they have as many characters as The Simpsons. WHO THE FUCK IS G.U.N., and more importantly WHY SHOULD WE CARE?!
Which is another point I ought to bring up: Sega just keeps adding and adding and adding to their already expansive castlist inconsequential character after another. I defy you to name one person who is a fan of "Marine The Raccoon." You can't name any, can you? Am I right? I'm right, aren't I. 9_9
5. 3-D
While I'm ever so slightly optimistic about the "seamless 3D-to-2D" system of camera switching that Sega has been hyping so much, and I'm genuinely pleased that they're making something of return to Sonic's 2-D roots, I shudder thinking about the 3-D portions.
Why? A while ago I played Sonic Adventure 2 which I had lying around, just because I hadn't played it in a long time, and as I played it the game was made far harder than it should have been because their camera system is one of the WORST ONES I'VE EVER SEEN IN A VIDEO GAME.
Regularly I found the camera getting stuck behind walls, (Leaving my character completely obscured from view.) switching to dramatic angles at the least opportune moment, (Which is another thing I dislike. the pretention that the game was some sort of dramatic epic.) and the sudden perspective switch, where I suddenly find my character turning around in the opposite direction, into the oncoming truck I was supposed to run away from.
This god-awful camera system carried into Sonic 2006, which was one of the worse games of the year, and if Sonic Team didn't learn from their blithering mistake then I shudder to think.
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These are just MY perceptions of what I've seen so far. Who knows? Once Unleashed DOES come out, the game might be a glimmering gem of good game design, they might have fixed up the camera angles, and they might have gotten a better writing staff and voice actors that don't always sound like they're reading their lines out of context. It could be good, but heed my words, and take caution.
Part 1 of Episode 5 of Ranting and Raving: The show where Chris gives praise or abuse to the stuff he reviews. This episode has an up to date review from Chris of Shenmue after completing it.
Part 1 of Episode 5 of Ranting and Raving: The show where Chris gives praise or abuse to the stuff he reviews. This episode has an up to date review from Chris of Shenmue after completing it.
Episode 2 of Ranting and Raving: The show where Chris gives praise or abuse to the stuff he reviews. This episode is a review of the new installment of the classic Indiana Jones franchise: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Episode one of Ranting and Raving: The show where Chris gives praise or abuse to the things he reviews. This episode is about Shenmue, it's fanboys and the issue of Shenmue 3.
raving
