Friday 20 January 2012

Paragon? Renegade? I'm the one with the gun

Now I'm a HUGE BioWare fan, I love their games, Neverwinter Nights, Baldur's Gate, Knights of the Old Republic and Dragon Age to name but a few, so while I did get Mass Effect way after the fact, infact just after Mass Effect 2 was released, I had heard nothing but good things. Oh was I disappointed.

Now before people dive at me, claws out and flamethrowers at the ready, I'll explain what I didn't like about the game, and if you disagree then I will take the flames. So here is my list of Mass Effects problems:

1. The driving segments, these parts of the game drove me to fucking madness and seeing as roughly fifty to sixty percent of the game are these driving segments, if not seventy to eighty percent, don't even tell me it's not that high, as nearly EVERY Assignment is on a planet you have to use the Mako and every one of the main missions after the first planet has one of these fucking sections. Now I wouldn't mind if it handled like the Warthog in Halo as everyone told me it did, but it doesn't it handles like a drunken Hippo on a unicycle, has a gun that won't fire past a fifteen degree so getting in close to enemies is a right pain. All this makes me wish I could just run around the planets and while I can on some it'd take ages to traverse and then you need to be in the Mako to leave the planet.

2. The size of the 'levels', the game felt very small, now I know Dragon Age and Neverwinter weren't exactly free roamers, you had limits, but they felt bigger than this. Every planet once you got into a base was basically the same four room shooting gallery as the last. Even the main mission planets were just corridors with a few open rooms for shooting, a real pity this game could have really done with more open areas.

3. Lack of towns, there was the Citadel and that was about it, for an expansive galaxy full of colonies and inhabited planets full of great civilizations, it's a pity you never get to see them, even the Citadel felt small for a huge space base. I really feel like there should have been far more freedom to explore, even Denerim felt more impressive to the Citadel.

4. The money, never in all my life playing video games have I come across one with a more useless currency, ok in other games like Fallout 3, Morrowind and Oblivion, Neverwinter and even to an extent the Zelda games, after awhile money becomes a moot point, due to not needing to buy anything. But Mass Effect takes this one step further making money basically needless from the start of the game! Seriously, I was rolling in guns, armour and upgrades by the time I left the first planet you come to after the main mission kicks off from the Citadel. Hell by the time I was half way through the second planet I got the one million credits achievement, all I spent my credits on were the grenades and medi-gel upgrades so I could carry more, I did get the Licenses for my quarter master, but I didn't buy any of the new armaments he sold, I had better from the enemies.

5. The length of the game, ok this is kind of a complaint I have with a lot of games recently, it seems the better the graphics a game has, the more voice actors and what not it gets the shorter the game becomes. If you remove all the side missions and just focus on the main mission by planets there are only eight missions, and those without to many cock ups can be breezed through. Now I'm not trying to blow my own trumpet as really I'm no gamer speed demon trying to finish games fast, I like to enjoy them, but if I take all the time played I think it took me forty to fifty hours to complete the game and I did mess around with side missions just as it was my first play through.

Now that, that's out the way, on with the review.

Your character in Mass Effect is Commander Shepard, with the first name John or Jane, but that can be changed, in my case I went with my default non-fantasy character name Eric. You have three main classes Adept, Soldier and Engineer, these specialize in Biotic Powers, the 'wizard' sort of class, Combat, the 'warrior' type class and Tech, the 'rogue' type class, then there are Vanguard, a Biotic/Combat class, Sentinel, a Biotic/Tech class and Infiltrator, a Tech/Combat class. Later on you get 'upgrades' for these classes, Bastion, for the Adept and Sentinel class, Commando, for the Soldier and Infiltrator class, Medic for the Engineer and Sentinel class, Nemesis for the Adept and Vanguard class, Shock Trooper for the Soldier and Vanguard class and finally Operative for the Engineer and Infiltrator class. You also get the special Spectre upgrade to your stats when you become one. To help you in your mission you gain six companions to aid you, each one with a modified version of the player classes.

The game is your basic BioWare RPG, morale choices, micro managing your gear and an epic storyline, add the fact that for the first time in a BioWar game (First that I've played anyway. ) you're not a silent protagonist, Shepard talks! Having a full voiced acted main character is great, especially as I felt that was seriously lacking from Dragon Age, seeing as you could choose a voice for your character, he should use it more than random combat speech. The combat is pulled off in a third person shooting style with the option to zoom in for better aim and stability, while trying to think a game that has a similar combat style I fail to come up with any. At least any I have played myself.

The story in a nut shell is that there is a renegade Spectre Saren and it is your duty as the new human Spectre to hunt him down and stop him, thus proving humanity's worth in the alien council. Saren is using a race of 'synthetic life forms' called the Geth to help in his scheme, his plan is to release the Reapers, a legendary race that wiped out a previous galactic empire that belonged to the now dead race the Protheans. The Reapers are believed to be gods by the Geth, but during your mission you find out they are not some mystical being but an ancient machine race and Saren's flag ship Sovereign is a Reaper left in the galaxy to await the coming time when his kind could be brought back from dark space using the ancient relay device that, a larger form of the smaller relays used to make space travel over wide expanses faster. Through out the story you are given morale choices that effect the game and later Mass Effect 2, once you're on the planet Virmire near the closing missions of the game you lose one of your human crew members when given the choice to save one or the other.

Once off Virmire the game is coming to it's conclusion with Saren and his ship Sovereign ahead of you heading for the ancient Prothean home home world Ilios to activate a relay gate into the Citedal which is the relay to dark space. After Saren and his Geth have gone through the relay to the Citadel you follow and the epic battle for the survival of all races begin. You fight your way through the space station making your way to the Council chambers to confront Saren in the final fight. Once in the chamber you have the chance to fight Saren or talk him into blowing his brains out, once you've decided the route you have the option to save the Council or let them die during their escape attempt, then when you send your team mates down to check Saren's dead he morphs into a Geth based Husk creature due to Sovereign's influence over him and forcing him to 'upgrade'. Once you've gunned the techno zombie down the chamber collapses on you. Then the ending FMV starts and you're given a few other choices and you head off to make sure the Reapers are ended once and for all. Then roll credits.

One last thing I should mention before I wrap this up is the infamous 'sex scene' that caused some controversy when the game was released, I don't have much to say here beyond that fact I felt that the game handled it very well and very tastefully, I've seen many movies with a fifteen age certificate and even the odd twelves rated movie with far more graphic sex scenes than this. It was mostly in a dark room with silhouettes and the odd very brief half lit side angle, in short calling the game 'Mass Erect' and the 360 a 'seX-Box' are very uncalled for by the sensationalist news.

To wrap it up, Mass Effect is good for all the faults it has in my eyes, it's a good BioWare game and I'll be doing another play through at sometime, though I think I shall play through Dragon Age again first. Need some fantasy over sci-fi at the moment!

Halls of Valhalla

So I just finished Viking: Battle for Asgard and I decided I'd give my view on it.

To start with I love vikings, anything with Norse mythology or influences and I'm there, Rune: Viking Warlord, Mount & Blade, Nords in Elder Scrolls, Beowulf The Movie The Game for video games and 13th Warrior, Pathfinder, Beowulf, Beowulf and Grendal, Valhalla Rising for movies, in the long and short of it I love Norse things. It was the reason I got Viking: Battle for Asgard and even with all the bad reviews I had read I went into this thinking, 'I'm going to love this!', pity I was wrong.

Ok so to start with, you play Skarin,a viking warrior with a shrouded past, who fell in battle then was brought back from death to be the chosen champion of Freya ( Or Freyja to be more exact. ), Norse goddess of love, beauty, fertility, magic, gold, death and war. As her champion you are recruited to fight Hel, the goddess of the underworld and Loki's daughter's army of Hell-spawn and stop her bringing about the Ragnarok by her releasing Fenrir the wolf who would start the end of the gods and destroy Asgard the realm of the gods.

The game is a hack and slash in an open world environment, but also has stealth elements which seem to be unneeded in my view because to be honest it just doesn't work that well, by the time you sneak up on an enemy they have normally turned and seen you, by then you're charging in to hack him to pieces, plus you're a viking they weren't exactly known for being sneaky. The controls are good, but then again it's hard to screw that up, though I admit blocking never seems to do much, as you can block everything but end up just being swamped and unable to get out the unending block cycle even with your push from it or dodge, though dodging is good, it works on the big heavy enemies. You get Runes for your weapons which use a 'mana' bar powered by red orbs, this is a good way to deal with your enemies but best used with a full bar or it just runs out on you so quickly, these come in three flavors, Ice which well freezes your enemies on hit or can be released to freeze those around you then let you shatter them more easily the higher the level, second is Fire which well burns your enemy and can be released in a burst of flame around you, obviously the higher the level the rune gets the more it burns and hurts the enemy, finally lightning which shocks your enemy on hit and basically does a little damage over time but just there for smack damage, you can release it's power in a bolt of energy.

Ok, I mentioned red orbs and now you're either thinking 'God of War rip off!' and I will admit yes it pretty much is in a more open area, also it has my "favorite" thing in a game, quick time events! JOY! Well I'll be honest these QTE's are at least some what forgivable as they don't randomly change, like God of War which I will say now, the QTE battle with Zeus at the end of GoW2 just pissed me off to no end.

You get your basic hack and slash combos, the two to four hit then heavy attack and your special 'rage' attack which gives you like a mad hack up combo or a massive one hit shield breaker type move. Beyond that you get items, but they're basically useless, apart from the healing potion, which helps a lot as the green healing orbs are so rare to come from the hell-spawn corpses. The other two items are a throwing axe, which I used once and it did bugger all damage so gave up with that, the other is a grenade item vial of napalm type substance that bathes what it hits in flame and a few others around it but also that doesn't do a lot.

The games relatively short at only three levels long, and all are around the same basic thing, save vikings in cages or tied to stick, get the dragon amulet, summon a dragon, do the big war part after getting the dragon or save an area do a quest for them to mix it up, there are no real bosses before you get to Hel, so I don't have much to say on the story beyond Freya tells you to save vikings, recruit dragons and beat Hel's forces. Though I do feel that Freya gets a bit bloody thirst at the end. The fight with Hel annoyed me, it's in two stages the first is to break some pillars and fight of hordes of enemies who you can knock into the flame walls around the pillar sections, after you have two of the four pillars down enemies will spawn more frequently with harder ones added in, but nothing you can't beat with knock into flames. Once the pillars are down you kill off more small enemies while waiting for Hel to turn into a large grotesque monster who is essentially the giants you fight earlier in the game, with a fire breath. Essentially you just stay at her arse and beat up her legs till a button prompt appears on screen for a longer than normal QTE. Don't you love bosses who you finish with a QTE?

WARNING! SPOILERS!

So the ending, well after killing Hel, Skarin goes before Freya and asks to be released from his bound and made mortal once more so he can prove himself worthy of Valhalla. Freya then denies him this, going back on her deal and this annoys me as in all these games that deal with gods, the gods end up being utter bastards and betraying the ones they made promises to. So in his anger Skarin decides to release Fenrir bringing about Ragnarok, so much for stopping Hel! It ends saying that though the gods are dead and humanity now leads a life of free will, the essence of the gods still live in them. Which just hit the 100 on the cheese-o-meter.

So what do I feel on this game? Let down, I hoped for something better and got well something that feels unfinished or rushed out and crammed with things that didn't need to be in it, but I picked this up in a two for thirty pounds at my local game station, pre-owned, so fifteen quid it's a budget title, it'll give you some enjoyment I guess, just don't get it expecting a great game, it's pretty average.

Fear not the Psyker

So to say I'm into Games Workshop stuff is a bit of an understatement. Since about the end of primary school I have always had a love for the fantasy and sci-fi, while I didn't always play the games due to lack of people to play with I have always tried to follow the history and models and such. I also love building and converting the models, even if my painting skills suck balls, and lately I was thinking of getting back into Warhammer and 40k, as I play Dawn of War: Dark Crusade and the god awful Warhammer: Mark of Chaos, so I decided to look up other Games Workshop video games as I played Chaos Gate and a bit of Final Liberation at a friends house and never saw the FMV cinematic for it, so I went and looked them up on YouTube and thought 'Wow these have been done well' for an FMV title as I've watched all the FMV Hell videos over at The Spoony Experiment, and as bad as the FMV's are in Final Liberation they're better than most.


While watching the FMV's on YouTube I saw a link on the side for something called Inquisitor. Now first when I saw this I thought it was some cos players doing a fan movie, but as I watched I started to think it was a bit more than a fan movie, then I read the comment the poster of the movie put and I was rather shocked. This wasn't a fan movie with cos players, this was an actual movie made to pitch the idea of a Games Workshop movie on their 25th anniversary back in 1995-1996 I think, along with two 'fake movie' trailers for Hive Infestation, Space Wolves terminators taking on a Tyranid Genestealer Cult in a Hive City and Blood for the Blood God some sort of Dark Angels and Inquisitor take on Ork and a Khorne Berserker appears. It was a limited release and rumors I heard as Game Workshop have bought back a lot of the old copies to show them at Games Day, but this is just internet rumours. Now with Ultramarines: The Movie coming out, the first thing that came to my mind was 'Why hasn't this been re-released?!' as a Warhammer 40K fan myself I'd buy it and I'm sure others would as bad as it is, but it's still a piece of Games Workshop history.

The movie starts with a pretty rocking guitar riff and the Games Workshops Imperial Eagle logo before going into more melodic type music for the credits which are over shots of a gargoyle type statue, then we get a shot of space and I was expecting the Princess Irulan narration from the Dune movie but no we get a imperial warship coming out of the warp and firing on a planet. Then inside the ship the Admiral Arteres looks down on the planet before the first Space Marine enters and yes he looks like he's a Halloween space marine costume, ( See above picture. ) and we find out he is Captian Darius of the Dark Angel space marines, though the white power armour makes him look like he should be a Deathwing Terminator as Dark Angels have dark green armour, but that's me geeking out. He is told by Arteres they will have the help of an Inquisitor who has an artifact from the last mission to Genarius Prime, the planet they had been bombarding and Darius tells us how he was there and how a Dark Angel squad went with the Inquisitor onto the surface and only the Inquisitor returns with an artifact, a bit more bad mouthing of the Inquisitor and then he appears, Inquisitor Krieger, I had hoped for it to be Torquemada but I guess he wasn't in the Warhammer 40k lore yet. There's hostility between Darius and Krieger, which seems a bit off a Space Marine should show respect to the Imperiams Ordo Malleus, losses or not, so Darius and Krieger are to descend to the planet by drop pod with five marines Darius among them. The CGI, I admit is bad, and the drop pod looks more like the rocket from Wallace and Gromit A Grand Day Out. We get the first look at a Chaos Marine, no one says it is, but one look at his ugly mug and it's hard not think, 'TRAITOR TO THE EMPEROR OF HUMANITY!'.

Back on the ship Arteres is visited by the Astropath Prime of the fleet, who reads the mind of the Admiral to make sure he's not tainted by Chaos, and his voice and general look again makes me think to the David Lynch Dune movie and the Spacing Guild. Once having read the Admirals mind he channels the thoughts of the Ordo Malleus members wishing to speak and they tell him that and assembly of psykers, I'm guessing Primaris Psykers as the order said the highest station and I doubt Sanctioned Psykers are that high up, maybe Librarians but I geek out once more, suspect that Genarius Prime is of more import than they had once thought. We're told that the bombardment they were doing was against an energy field, this field is meant to be generated by an alien machine to keep the forces of Chaos inside and Krieger is to be recalled, but he has navigated through the field and the Arteres informs the Psyker speaking through the Astropath of this, he then tells him that a Fleet of the Ordo Malleus Battle Cruisers, four regiments of Space Marines, three companies of Grey Knights and the Psyker who I'm guessing is a top ranking Ordo Malleus Master are on their way and that Arteres should pull back and assume full battle readiness, clearly they aren't fucking about. Also if the field should fall and anything but Krieger and the Dark Angels come out, then Arteres' bravery would be noted, showing a lot of faith in the man then aren't you?

Meanwhile back on the planets surface Krieger, Darius and the Space Marines have come across what I can only describe as the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey, as they enter we get a cut back to the Chaos Marine who gives us a speech of how he's awakened and he feels the field weakening so they can begin their emergence. Once inside Darius asks if Krieger remembers anything of the place, and he says this is right, so what he's forgot? Darius leaves one of the marines at the door, who might as well be called First to Die, as they head on into the CGI temple and the Chaos Marine says how the place weakens and he seems to make the wall bubble, that's chaos for you always bending of the laws of physics, and he reaches through the wall and pulls in the marine left at the door. Who didn't see him about to die? Eh? Darius uses his comlink to contact the marine and gets nothing, so another says it might be the structure interfering and he sends the last two back to check on the one left behind, as Krieger, Darius and the last marine keep on. Once they discover the marine they left behind is gone they decide to head back and tell Darius but from the walls come Chaos Space Marines! With this some action starts and the Dark Angels engage the traitors in a bolter shoot out, though they seem to be switching from semiautomatic to automatic fire, Darius hears this and demands they go back but Krieger ignores him and continues on so Darius follows with the last of his brother marines, the two who are in the shoot out fight bravely but after one falls the other takes out the traitors before the head of the Chaos Space Marines puts his bolter through a wall and picks off the last one, talk about unfair advantages he bent the laws of physics to win! CHEATER! And by the looks of his men they are Khorne Berserkers, they shouldn't be able to bend physics like that they're not Thousand Sons worshipers of Tzeentch, they should fight face to face, not with tricks! Khorne should punish him!

Krieger and Darius continue further into the structure, Darius getting more angry at Inquisitor until they reach the center chamber and Krieger announces he remembers, saying that the artifact he brought back was Chaos Containment Field and he starts to try and reactivate it, as he does the Khorne Berserker emerges behind the last Dark Angel and gets shot by Darius, dragging off the marine while he's at it, but the Chaos leader appears and shoots off Darius' hand or at least his glove as he holds Darius hostage and Krieger continue to dismantle the generator, thinking it's how he would reactivate it as from a wall a CGI Khorne Juggernaut starts to show it's metallic demon face. Darius realizing it's a trap and he's shutting it down not activating it calls to Krieger and he starts to reassemble the generator, this in turn weakens the Chaos Lord, banishing him and the Juggernaut back into the structure, ending the movie with a shot of the generator and then the structure, which both look like the 2001: A Space Odyssey monolith.

The two fake movie trailers at the end are also worth mentioning, the first in Hive Infestation which starts with a monologue of 'In a bleak and savage future, the enemy lives among us, and they are not open to negotiation', over a view of the hive city, then a genestealer megus and some Space Wolf Terminators. It's a pretty standard sort of trailer, cutting between the Terminators of the Space Wolves and the Genestealer Magus and a rather convincing looking rubber Genestealer costume, also the entire trailers feel is very Aliens, with the Space Wolves traveling through the corridors of the Hive City which is all industrial looking, with pips, steam and steel gratings while they hunt down the Genestealers and purify the Hive City, and it's very much an Alien rip off and I wouldn't have been surprised for a line like 'It's a bug hunt', at the end we get a close up of a Tyranid Warrior, which I assume is to say the Hive Fleet arrived. Now while I loved the look of this trailer and would give anything to see a sort of 40K version of Aliens with Space Wolves and Tyranids, it begged the question, why not just make it Space Hulk instead? Blood angels purging genestealers in a giant abandoned space craft? But hey, Space Wolves are WAY cooler than Blood Angels I feel.

The second of the trailers is Blood for the Blood God, which starts with a more 40k sounding monologe, 'Deep in the nightmare world of the 41st millennium, there is only war' which is the tag line most recognized with Warhammer 40k, this one has two Dark Angels taking an Ork in front of an Inquisitor who asks if it carries the Mark of Chaos, I hope not, that game sucked! But really, I don't recall orks ever bearing a mark of Chaos, at least not often. Then we see some other orks, planning to save their boss, and again they look rather convincing for rubber suits, even if they don't talk in what I'd like 'Orcish' to be, they sound like what a World of Warcraft orc would sound like to a human, gibberish not a Warhammer 40k Ork which is more bad English I guess. As they attack it's disjointed scenes of a gun fight in the traditional action movie montage trailer cut in with a chaos marine getting ready and end with him saying 'Blood for the Blood God.'

In general this is a REALLY shitty movie if you go by today's standard but don't get me wrong, if you're a Warhammer or Warhammer 40k fan go to YouTube and look up Inquisitor it's four parts, three in ten minutes and the trailers taking five minutes together, three for the Hive Infestation and two for Blood for the Blood God, so it's not a big chunk of time to watch and even though the cheese factor is high and the acting and effect are sub par, it's freaking AWESOME! And I am waiting for Ultramarines: The Movie, but I'd prefer a Salamander movie, but till they make Ultramarines: The Movie or any other Games Workshop franchise movies, watch Inquisitor because if you don't the Ordo Malleus might think you're not devoted to the Emperor of Mankind and we suffer not the witch, the heretic, the alien or the mutant to live.

UPDATE!

While scanning through my favorites on YouTube I noticed that Inquisitor has been taken down due to Games Workshop giving it the copyright stuff. This annoys me. I mean there is no other way to see it and I really hope that they put it on the Ultramarines movie DVD or something as if it's gone then the entire Warhammer 40k fan base has lost something truly awesome!

Vampires, Aussies, Guns and AIDs!

Reign in Darkness, where do I begin, well I picked this up for under a fiver and trust me no matter how bad the acting or awful the effects I think this is better than Blade, and I say this as the plot of Reign of Darkness doesn't include a mythical 'vampire blood god'. The general look and feel of this movie is that it's been shot on a hand held camera and made by people who probably just wanted to make a better Blade movie. This movie was shot in Melbourne Australia and this could be guessed by the fact other than one character everyone sounds like an Australian doing a bad American or British accent, though I think the dialogue may have been put in after with the accents due to the lip synch being off on about 70% of the movie. The run times not to long at a little over 90 minutes but the problem is it drags out due to the narration by the main character giving us all the exposition he can think of, he's almost always telling us what he's going to do what he's thinking.

So we start off with something that made me go 'What the fuck?' wich is the screen going black and "The virus, K-17, portrayed in this motion picture is believed to be real and existing in our society today." now this K-17 virus is meant to be a virus that turns people into vampire and have close similarities to HIV, but in the movie it's part of a cure they're working on for HIV, now I decided to look up if people believe this virus is real and guess what, people do believe it's true. So there are people out there believing that this K-17 which is like HIV is meant to turn you into an immortal vampire and drink blood, ok two problems with that one even if it's real no government could cover up people getting their throats torn out or neck bitten no matter how hard they tried and two, if the rumors of this virus being manufactured are real, who the hell would make it? Really no government would fun this, not even some shady secret organization that's X-Files-esqe would think 'Hmm making immortal blood drinking soldiers' would be a good idea. Back on track, the movie opens telling us that the main character Micheal Dorn is a scientist working on the cure for HIV using a blood sample from an unknown donor with K-17 to produce RVK-17,( Fore shadowing! ) but what I don't get is how can a virus similar to HIV but that turns people into vampires help cure HIV. We find out that Michael Dorn works with one other scientist and a bounty hunter, who is never fully explained why he's working for a government laboratory, called Lance who by three minute of his dialogue you'll be begging to shut up with the bad American accent. So Michael and Lance go off to find a 'test subject' though more like a victim as unnamed city seem to be infested with AIDs ridden homeless people, because as we all know AIDs makes you homeless. So while trying to inject the tramp with the RVK-17 Michael Dorn is over powered and injected himself. Oh and before I go on, no it's not Michael Dorn the actor who played Worf in Star Trek; The Next Generation, he's a pasty little white dude.

After being injected he makes a break for it and decides he should only feed off the scum of the city, which is so cliche I'm not even going to go into it, but this angers 'The Council' yet more cliches. The Council tells Lance to dispose of him, once captured Lance begins to torture him and we find out this vampires other than blood drinking have nothing in common with vampires as they are known, sun, holy water and all that jazz does nothing, only way to kill them is to cut their heart out, but then this makes me wonder, couldn't you cut his head off? Anyway, Michael escapes and shoots Lance in the leg, this angers the council further and they tell Lance to work with an Asian vampire called Gage. Michael mean while tells us he's made a 'Kevlar' chest plate and Kevlar lined trench coat, though looks more like fiberglass chest plate and a leather trench coat. He then goes to his house to get his gun, his sword and a picture of his late wife who was killed by one of the genetic made vampires, he gets the gun, which looks like it's an air soft gun but the sword and picture are gone as his house was ransacked, so he decides he needs to get to an arms dealer and buy 'a fucking arsenal' which amounts to one more handgun. With that he heads off to find another of the scientists that worked with him once he finds him we get a chase scene that looks like he just got the car from a local show room as both are the same make only in differing colours. He catches and kills his friend, this further angers the council who now want Michael brought in alive so he can make more of the virus for the.

Michael meets a homeless man who tells him about the council and armed with this information he goes to off to take them down. Meanwhile, Lance having been screwed over by the council goes in with two big machine guns that would fit more on Chuck Norris in Vietnam than here, and we get a gratutis slow motion firing of him trying to take down the council which does nothing as he just walks out throwing the guns away and going down a lift with Gage as they've now decided to blow the councils lair up. Michael shows up and kicks Gage back into the elevator as Lance exists it and running for his car Michael grabs a katana, which is never explained where he got it. In a scene reminiscent of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Lance pulls out a pistol and fire on Michael knocking him over, then proceeds to walk over and bend over him just to get stabbed with a concealed knife, good job. Gage appears after having gone up in the lift and back down because the hold door button made to much sense and he has Michaels sword, which is just the Kit Rae, Sword of Darkness. He also has the picture of Michaels wife and this really pisses him off, we get a badly done sword fight in which Gage loses and I assume gets his head cut off for the trouble, but does that kill him? Taking his sword back Micheal heads off to face the Council and when he gets there we meet Raphael Ravencroft a British vampire who tells Michael that vampires were once rules of the earth but due to man creating penicillin the vampires bite could be cured, so vampirerisim can be cured by Paracetamol? Didn't know that. Then he babbles how due to mans destructive nature and polluting the world Vampires started to die as they couldn't evolve to deal with carbon monoxide and needed a hyperbaric chamber to survive in, then he tells Michael that HIV was created by governments to kill homosexuals and drug users, que the X-Files theme, and the final nail in the coffin that the blood Michael got to work on the RVK-17 was his blood! So a curecould be made for AIDs to have AIDs free vampires and AIDs free humans for the vampires to feed on, because AIDs can kill Vampires to, after hearing this Michael pulls his guns and Ravencroft scoffs that they won't do anything but he's informed they are packing Silver Bullets. This leads me to another question, since when did silver effect vampires? Isn't that werewolves? As he blasts the hell out of Council, Ravencroft makes his escape.

After leaving the Council smoldering in their robes, Michael see's the bodies of Lance and Gage have vanished and he jumps in his car and drives out looking at the building before he blows it up with bad effects that don't show up on his cars window, then driving off into the sunset we get an internal monologue about Raphael, Lance and the remaining test subjects still at large his work wasn't done, so he says he needs to make an anti-virus to wipe out vampires finally. It's fades to black before fading back in to a cryotube of RVK-17 and we see Raphaels hand as he takes out the vials, leaving us a cliff hanger for sequels.

The movies not bad, it's enjoyable but it falls in that uncomfy spot of being a good story at the heart, but bogged down with to much narration, bad acting and bad effects, if it had a better writer I'm sure it would have been great even with a low budget all they'd need is to keep it in Australian accents. I'd rather watch this than Blade or Blade 3 any day, thats for sure, no strange blood gods or Dracules named 'Drake' and looking like fucking Satan. Funnily enough I read somewhere awhile back this film was meant to have two more squeals to be a trilogy but due to bad box off sales this was panned, though the movie made millions on DVD, so I don't see why they don't now, but most people will probably not like the movie. If I was to give it out of ten I'd give it a firm five, good movie, but let down by budget and acting. If you have the chance to pick up a copy cheap, get it and I promise it won't be the worst movie you could buy. That honour is reserved for Flight to Hell.

A Real Flight To Hell

Here's a review I done for a movie that when I saw it made me think 'This was actually made?', warning this reviews a big one.


When I saw this sitting in the store, I thought 'Hell 50 pence for movie, might as well spend my change!' but good lord do I regret it. I like B-movie horror flicks the cheesier and low budget the better, but this film looks as if it was made for $1000 and even that's being generous, most of that I assume was spent on ripping stock footage from the Alien films, The Matrix and other horror films as little looks to be it's own creation. Now before I start ripping into the actual movie it's self, let me tell you about the DVD case, the picture on the front is what I think is a real plane, and this is the only one you'll see, a decayed zombie like face, a mans face looking like it's being eaten by a barracuda or piranha, then in the bottom left corner a non-descript alien creature and a spurt on blood and whats worse is only one maybe two of these images are actually in the film, the decaying zombie and the barracuda aren't in the movie and the plane doesn't look the same. This is on a black and red background gradating into a green and white background with FLIGHT TO HELL in block capitols and in what I can only describe as a windows basic raised text coloured silver, you could do a better cover with splicing picture together in Windows Paint. It's a 15 rated, and trust me they could do this as a 12 rating, the back is your bog standard blurb with a picture of one of the actors, with a large eye, and I'll again talk about this later on it's the best effect! Now I should have looked at the features when I was in the store, but now looking at it all you get is Special Features: Scene Selection, now that's not a bloody feature, that's standard on all DVDs and is in only English, also under the blurb is 'This DVD can only be sold and distributed in the United Kingdom and EIRE' so I'm not even sure if it was released in the US and if not then you're lucky!

Now first thing I'll talk about in this abomination is the utterly blatant rip off in the intro credits, you have scenes taken straight from actions films for explosions, and other sci-fi films for monster and then you have snippets of the xenomorphs from the Alien films and thats not even the strangest thing I've seen in this, Cypher killing Dozer with the electric gun from the Matrix, this makes no sense and has no meaning to the film at all and these are all in a red/brown tinge due to it supposed to scene in our protagonists eyes. Then he awakes dripping in 'sweat' though looks more like he's has water flicked all over him. Then he's up and dressing for work, he's wearing a pilots outfit so he must be a pilot of the plane to fly us to hell! So he's driving off to work, against green screen Las Vegas, is it really cheaper to have bad green screen than to just go to Las Vegas and film? I don't know but you can tell a mile off it's just a car with a background pasted behind it in something like flash, it's that bad. When he arrives at the still shot of an airport his car drives through the terminal and a plane sort of slides up and away. We are then introduced to Roulette One and no this isn't a gambling robot, though god I wish it was. So we see the inside of this Photoshoped plane and wow, it's bad, I mean I've seen cardboard Doctor Who TARDIS scenery from the days of yore that look better than the inside of this plane. I'm sure you can see joins in the wall, the windows look like cardboard and clear plastic card and on one side I swear they just painted black windows on or something as the outside never changes. Also there are no air line chairs, so how this thing got green lighted by health and safety I'll never know and there is a rather silly looking roulette table I'll get to later on in this review. All this takes place with a god awful midi file music that sounds like a SNES games soundtrack if you ran it through a Yamaha Keyboard.

So we're inside the plane and we're shown some of the rest of the cast, and even this doesn't establish much to the plot or the sub plot. So we have the horny stewardess, the non-descript 'victim' stewardess, the millionaires and their token arm candy, the spunky co-pilot and 'brains' of the operation, after the establishing shot of them taking off we see more footage from the Alien films of face hugger eggs opening, then an explosion that sends out a green blast wave. We then cut to them starting the gambling at the roulette table, but this is a rigged wheel as the bad CGI roulette wheel and the two janitors plan the out come of the spins to take the millionaires for all they have, and so the cheating casino subplot is revealed. Also this is where we see how bad the acting is as the token horror movie bimbo has a laugh that sounds so forced I think she's crying, we get some awful looking computer screens again which look like they were generated in Flash, some 'flirting' between horny stewardess and the pilot, but the acting is so bad I think the have queue cards, though due to the bad lip sync I don't know for sure.

Then finally we get to the reason this will be the Flight to Hell when the control tower radios the plane but the co-pilots asleep while the pilots flirting with horny stewardess, because you know auto-pilot means no one needs to watch right? So we're told there is a 'strange signal on the radar', but before they show us track suited numnuts mechanic who is running the roulette tables cheating mechanism staring at horny stewardess' ass, they flirt for a minute, or insult each other but that seems like flirting to them and the film has it's first gratuitous sex scene, which is more like over the clothes humping but god help me if they aren't acting their socks off here. We cut back to the control tower and the 'strange signal' is now a 'strange object' though seeing the radar there is no object on it other than the plane so that raises all sorts of questions, but off course the co-pilots to busy sleeping to care and even turns the radio off onto music. Great piloting skills there. Then we get a cloudy scene that just looks like they mirrored the top to the bottom and put a green tinge in the center and the Roulette one is heading straight for it, the tension is built by the intense midi music! That lasts all of 5 seconds.

We see the plane flying through the green cloud and being hit with what looks like florescent green snot, the co-pilot starts to glow as if she was dipped in radioactive waste, I hoped this would turn her into a mutant but alas it was not to be. We cut back to handyman and stewardess' passionate sex as seen through a window as snot hits it and then we cut inside to behind the handyman and shazam the window is no more! He gets zapped in the leg from the microwave, wish seems to mildly distress him, we then see inside the main cabin where the roulette players as experience some turbulence and two are glowing green. Clearly it's a cloud gamma radiation cloud and they're going to go Hulk. Some bad lightning effects crack down and a 2D glass floats by.

Meanwhile in the cockpit the co-pilot is still asleep, I mean the planes jerking about like it's going to crash you can't feel that right when you're listening to music, but then the dumb bitch realises the planes in free fall and takes the headphones off and does her job. Oh and we see back in the cabin and one of the millionaires has turned into Raiden god of thunder with lighting between his hands. So the co-pilot jumps for the controls as the pilot bursts in, she seems to think 'Quick look busy' as the pilot runs in and is informed the auto-pilot is dead, forgetting the fact the control panel is glowing like it's fueled by depleted uranium. So we see them in a nose dive and the cockpit shaking, though they see rather secure on their chairs. Then the plane pulls up just before it crashes, or well sort of just evens out then heads up, but again it looks like it's been done in flash so it looks like paper cut outs on a photo of mountains, and I'm no geography expert, but are there any snow capped mountains in Nevada? We cut back to the cabin where all the guests are in a green pile looking like a Skrull gang bang with electrical crackles coming off them. And then every things OK as it was just a magnetic field or or an inside cloud, apart from the ominous blue goop oozing in through the ventilation ducts.

Then we see the guests recovering but even looking shocked is a test to their acting skills and our first hearing of millionaires bimbo number one as I'll call her and Amazing Changing Accent! She seems to go from Scottish, to Cockney, to Southern Belle and to fuck knows what else, and it's just weird. After one Millionaire retires to his cabin the other gets talked into gambling by the brains of the scamming operation and we are treated to bad graphic of the roulette wheel being taken down into a square hole in the table, if you look closely you'll see it clips through the table as it does then the top seems to rotate into a black jack table as if it's a conifer belt. We see the handy man and his long haired friend working on the electronics that got fried during the 'turbulence' and we're treated to a bad 3D dice hologram, I've seen better 3D graphics on Sonic 3D for the Megadrive. Cut back to the gambling and we get the cheesy computer voice telling us how much the bets are worth. Then there is a close up for the vent as more goo slowly runs out, we get a look in the cockpit and the pilot and co-pilot have picked up a radio transmission of a distress call and they think they should investigate, but long hair tells them to just ignore it.We see the horny stewardess get into a closet and press a 'button' but she says the lights aren't working, well they would be if they hadn't stuck a penny to the wall instead of a light switch.

She goes down into the planes luggage hold and sees a dog with a CGI castle caring case around it, she then proceeds to slip in some goo on the floor, though it looks more like she kneels in it and bangs her knee in it, this is to lead to a plot point later on, she looks at her knee and wipes the green goop off asking her self what is this crap, and at this point I'm asking myself that too. We cut to what looks like a radio in the plane being consumed by greeny blue slime but this is never explained why it's there or what it's doing. After that it's back to the gambling and we get a strange in the corner of the room camera angle and I don't know if this is a CCTV camera or what. Then it's back to the handy men who seem to control the out come of the dice, now how this is possible, how it works, again never explained we're just led to believe they can load the dice. The brains loses and they take a break where he stewardess takes them to their cabin, which is the exact same the previous millionaires went into I swear. The stewardess tells the amazing changing accent woman that if she's going to have sex to keep it down, and she seems confused and her accent is different yet again.

Back in the cabin the brains seems to make it out that he lost on purpose to make it not look like a scam, but this is my conjecture as he never says it, though he tells the stewardesses that once the bets reach a million he'll clear the millionaires out. The horny Stewardess takes a turn and falls over saying she bruised her knee, though it looks fine, till we get a close up where it suddenly starts to turn purple in front our very eyes! Amazing. She faints from the pain and we get the most un-concerned 'Oh my god.' from the other stewardess, who proclaims, "She's out cold" to which brains of the scamming plan says 'Help me get her to my cabin', I don't even want to think why. We cut to the ceiling which is glass with lights behind it and see what looks like plastic toy squid on a fishing line get drawn across with a chirping stock insect sound. To which our smart stewardess asks 'You hear that?' to which out scam artists replies, 'It's just the wind', yes, the wind sounds like space insects. And we get another close up of the goo in the ducts that's moved like an inch outwards.

We get a scene of horny lying on a bed getting pawed over by brains while scammy sits in the back and handy man comes in to see if she's OK, by the way as the characters names are rarely said I'm just going to go with descriptions of how they look and act to name them, handy man asks how she is and she informs him she always feels lousy when she doesn't get laid, which makes no sense as they had just had sex not five minutes earlier! Luckily scammy stops another un-needed sex scene saying they need to work and brains kicks handy man in the nuts. We're informed horny needs to pee like a race horse and we get a shot of the ceiling now with goop monster squirming up there.

Next we see the toilet cubical which is taller than the previous room and in fact the plane itself by the look for it, as the goop creature now slides down the back of he glass blocked wall to get horny, who must be doing her business with her panties up to strain that shit, she pull the bandage on her knee down, why it's bandaged for a bruise we're not told and sees her leg squirm with a hall of mirrors type of effect from photoshop and she screams at this, I don't blame her I would I mean holy shit it's that bad an effect. Handy man now fully recovered after the assault on his joy zone knocks and asks whats wrong, he knocks so hard the set it's self shakes, but it doesn't on the inside of the toilet stall, in fact the knocks sound different. Horny gets off the toilet and now the lids down, I don't know if it was up to start with but panties not pulled down and toilet seat left down is not proper bathroom procedure. She comes out and through the crack of the door we can see it's a different set in there. She tell Handy is was nothing and she's right there's nothing odd about a pulsating knee cap.

We cut to a scenic shot of the clouds then pan across the plane looking in the windows like a voyeur to see coffee machine in one window, in window number two a bad sex scene between millionaire and his babe, storage facility in window three, which makes no sense due to the room in window two, window four and five looks like an arcade, eight is storage and drink bit, nine is the other millionaire and babe having sex, window ten are actual airline seats, which haven't appeared yet in this plane, finally eleven is ominous glob drip. All this leads to the question how all this shit fits into what i think is a bowing seven four seven.

We get a view of the outside of this jet again before cutting to an extrema close up of the blue green space snot monster that has a bad case of zits now and is pulsating with bad effects and the sound of what I can only describe as head crab brain sucking. We see the control tower, who inform the pilot they have good news and bad news, do ground control ever do that? When the pilot asks for the bad news his mouth barely opens as he talks, he's told there's a strike some where, I couldn't make it out it was like they couldn't get the rights to say an airport so they just did a Bruce Campbell in Evil Dead 3 where he goes 'Clatu Barada... Nicphococough'. The good news is they have weather dead ahead, what type we're not allowed to know, but after strange alien slime cloud, I'm sure weather would be little bother to the Iceman.

Cut to the inside of the plane, or I think it's meant to be the plane but it looks like the bowels of a ship, where we see Warhammer static grass eating the pipes and circuit boards. Then back to gambling and it's black jack time, we pan across brains and they millionaires face, all looking smug with themselves, then suddenly we're in a green rippling POV shot of what I assume is the alien goo on the ground looking at the players as it slimes it's way over heading to the stewardess.

Meanwhile back at the cockpit the co-pilot, who's Finlay awake and working tells the pilot, 'Here comes weather!' which I'd never have guessed from the next shot looking out the window at what I assume to be rain, but it could be sleet, snow or hail of glass shards. She then tells the control tower they picked up a distress call and asks if there was any in the vicinity, but then the planes struck by lightning and she says 'Holy shit!' when bad electrical effects crackle over her bad effect circuit board and it takes out the radio. The control tower try to get hold of them, with one 'Roulette one come in' but seem to give up after that. Back in the hold the green slime starts to take the shape of an egg but this is cut short to head back to the gambling which is really the highlight of this drudgery.

Now a quick intermission, I know this review so far has been dragged out but let me tell you this is about a third of the way into the movie and still fuck all has happened, for a movie that's just under an hour an a half long they have a plot so weak I doubt it could stand on it's own, awful acting and terrible effects, so I'm going to start cutting out the bullshit and try to just focus on the actual plot, of which this has near none off. Also to let you all know this review is taking a lot out of me, I mean watching this movie again makes me want to hurt someone, my brain hurts from all this bad acting and CGI bullshit.

So anyway we go to the goo first person and I just hum the Jaws theme here as it looks around before biting the smart stewardess' ankle, then it's back to the cockpit where long haired handyman is trying to fix the cardboard wall's radio where he tells the co-pilot the radios dead, which I could have guessed as it's just a miscellaneous circuit board. So we see the smoking hole where this circuit board came from and the co-pilot tells long haired handy man that they're fucked without the radio. Off course they're fucked how's she going to listen to her music?! So they bicker as he can't seem to fix it, he can operate a high tech cheating system but a broken radio is beyond his scope, well the pilot comes over and basically tells them to stop arguing or he'll spank them.

Now in the hold we have the green goo turning into mold and a very fake embryo egg sack growing, that looks so fake it makes Plan 9 from Outer Space look good. We cut to a window shot of horny cleaning a cabin, but I don't think its been used to why I don't know and how this plane has so many I'm still yet to understand, is it the fucking TARDIS, is it bigger on the inside? Anyway back on track horny looks ill, must be the goo she knelt in, so she has a trippy POV shot but she looks at what was the establishing shot of the wall with the window and BANG the windows vanished. So she freaks out and he bandage bulges, she looks in a mirror and her face farts as her lips get big, small, then the mirror smashes and PEEK-A-BOO! Ugly alien all up in your face. She spazes and runs to the handy men that just think 'Dude lets get in her pants', then yet again backwards cap get hit in the nuts and they end up ignoring her.

Back to the eggs, more embryos growing and oh my god a red button is flashing in the cock pit, back at the handy men we see a screen flashing 'CIRCUIT MALFUCTION Contact manufacturer for maintenance' OK so they couldn't even spell check this, fuck it, at this point we get the best acting in the movie as the handy men argue over how screwed they are because no one can fix the landing gear, so long hair is off to do it manual. As he decends into the hld we get some first person green pulsing sight of the alien and the dogs gone. As long hair looks around it's being monitered by a head band mounted camrea, he slips in the zit slime, then we see the caroding alien static slime, yeah it carodes now. We find out this is why the land gear is fucked, and thats not all, the embrio eggs are multiplying, long hair guesses they're eggs and something around growing and living inside it, must be from the bad pulsing effect, the pilot thinks someone brought an animal onboard, offcourse some sort of giant ant thing that lays eggs that start off looking humanish then turn to lizard bug things when touched. Long hair leans in because nothing bad ever happens when you lean into an alien egg, when all of a sudden LIZARD IN THE NOSE!

They get long hair up into a cabin and he's lieing with a lizzard tail hanging otu his now enlarged nostril, no way that thing could fit up his nose but logic and this peice of shit don't mix. Horny asks for someone to tell her this is'nt happening, I wish it was'nt, as the crew stands looking over long hair, because again a pilot is'nt needed to fly. So the pilot runs off to get some gloves to pull it out with, yeah pulling an alien creature thats jumped up someone nose and might be boring into his brain is a great idea.

Then back to the hold for more alien green-pulse-o-vision, and a cut back to the gamblng cabin where we see a pulsing movement in the wall before panning to the gaming table across the cabin to the arcade thats now shuffled into the place of the millionares cabin hen into a new cabin because this is a magic plane. The pilot returns gloved up and ready for action, so he starts pulling on the lizard snot drop and the brainy stewardess says 'No no you'll pull his brains out' and I wish they did it would have looked terriable with their effects. The acting is so terriable and they speculate whats it doing and pilot says it's sucking the oxygen out his lung, yeah because it's in his brain. So they decide not to rush it wich is monumentaly stupid as it'll either kill him or bore into his head and take him over. So they decide to tell scamartists whats going on while he's in yet another room that just appered playing virtual chess, what this has to gambling I don't know. They call the red phone and tell the other stewardess that the radios dead, the landing gears fucked and theres a handy man with an alien lizard up his nose, and she just says 'Great, made my day, now get lost i'm busy!' either she does'nt care or does'nt believe them, but I don't fucking know. So we see the scam artist playing a really badly 'virtual reality chess' and the pilot calls the stewardess and tell her basicly what the handyman told her on the phone and she believes his and tells the scam artist, whos more concerened with his scams than the fact he could die. The greedy always are.

As the scam artist is told we see the long haired handymans forehead get bigger and pulse, thisd movie loves it's pulse effect, the scam artist asks whats wrong with the handy man, after just being told how dumb can you get. So he says send the other handyman down to kill the aliens, even though that won't work, but he tells the crew he has better things to do than worry about dieing as e has money to make. We get another POV green alien view, wich was ok the first time but this is'nt Predator, we're not seeing body heat just the world in green. Hey it's not easy being green. Then we cut to the millionare thats not playing chess playing solitare in his room as his amazing accent changing bimbo wants to jump his bones and all he cares about is his card. What a fucking moron. But he stops and goes for another random and badly done sex scene while you see alien bug siluettes in the mirrior, I think it's a mirrior and glass ceiling lights.

We see the pilot trying to call for help on his mobile phone, but getting no where. D'uh! Then back to the millionare who's suffering from premature ejaculation clearly. Like we needed to know.. Back at the cockpit the pilots been called back to look at the handymans nose bleed now the lizards vanish. I'm sure earlier they said the autopilot was broke so why he'd do that I have no idea. So the non-comatose handyman picks up a saw, ready to stab that fucking lizard, again stabbing with a saw, why? And the pilots going to bonk it with a golf club while the co-pilot takes the only sane weapon a fire axe.We see spider lizards jumping around as out heros hunt it down in the CGI plane. With music to imply suspence but the fact that the acting makes it look laughable whats the point?
The scam man is whooping the millionare at chess, because he's not bothered he may die.

Back at the hunt it's all systems go! As the lizard aliens are either Predator stealthed or under the walls and carpets. So more of the brave hunters looking for these little lizard majigs in the TARDIS One, I say this because I swear more rooms are appearing. We get more padding of the virtual chess, then cut to lizard thing attacking horny before getting stabbed by the saw wielding handy man, they show the impaled lizard to the scam artist who thinks he can sell it to a genetics lab, but I think Toys'R'Us would rather get their merchendise back. While handy man and scam artist argue over who gets the money for selling the bugger and the pilot chirps in with the sensiable throught of where the fuck these came from, jokingly the hndy man says space, before they ask why scam artists gets more of a cut when they sell it and it's revealed his father financied this magical flying casino. Finaly some plot. Scam artist tells handy man to go collest eggs, like he's a fucking Warcraft quest giver. But before he can go to hold they're informed the long haired handy man needs to be seen. Maybe his head has inflated or something.

We see he's ok and the lose diver has vanished, they tell the scam artists the landing gears fucked so he orders the handy man to also fix the landing gear while he's down there, I fucking hate guys that do that can't they just chain quest for fuck sake? Before leaving though we get a rather racial joke I feel when handy man says "Yes sir masta' ", or is it just me? Long hair asks for food because nose diving alien lizards really takes it out of you.

In the hold handy man calls out for the 'chickens' great idea alert the blody alien things you're on your way. We see more alien boogers and lots of hatched eggs, this will onyl end badly and it does. Out of no where a stop animation alien creature jumps fourth and bits handy mans head off, spurting CGI blood on the screen, we cut to the handy mans room where the pilot, co-pilot and stewardess' are watching the ending to Alien: Reserection I think, might be Alien 3 or Species for all I know. The pilot tells his co-pilot to go get the blow tourch because animals are scared of fire. A blow tourch on a plane, might as well get a nail gun on a blimp. When we see this 'blow tourch' it looks more like a flame throwers than a fucking blow tourch. We see long hair choking on his food as the crew runs in his eye explodes and the 'eye burster' scuttles off, I'll add the blood effects here are just CGI and they put a black hole for a socket over his eyes, that does'nt keep up as his head hits the table. How much does fake blood cost in the US? As surely it's cheaper than using shitty CGI and if it's more expensive surely it's better to have good looking blood than awful red sploges of CGI. The pilot phones the control tower to tell him they're being invaded, wich does no good.

Suddenly the co-pilots turned into Ripley from Alien, wandering around with her flamethrower and we're subjected to yet another hunt scene, as the crew follows the trail of slime to find, the dog that vanished in the hold. So back to scam artist and virtual golf, he's with a stewardess and I'm sure there were only two but ones with the pilot and the other spazing out so we're introduced to third mystery stewardess I think anyway. Fuck it, this movies just starting to make me want to crucify someone. We see wannabe Ripley again stacking the hold with her flamethrower and then we cut to a xenomorph on the ceiling in the Giger esque background, THAT MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE! The aliens so far have'nt converted this ship into a hive, so why he fuck do we get random footage of the Alien xenomorph hive setting and how would she not notice that suddenly the holds turning into a Giger print, I'd fucking notice that I tell you. Then we cut back to her and low and behold no Alien looking scenery anywhere, what the fuck? Really this is just starting to grasp at straws I think, the producer/director could not have been doing this seriously, I mean Ed Wood jr. made better movies. So we see the red gambling cabin that now has fake grass on the floor for a gold course, and I'm left thinking what the fuck again. Cut back to the co-pilot and her flamethrower and we get more xenomorph scenes, this time it's ment to be looking at her, I don't know but in that hold if the place was turning int a hive and a fucking Alien was staring at me me I'd see it, fuck I'd sense something was wrong fromt he fact the room was going biological on me but no it just splices in these Alien scenes for no reason and they we get a close up of the shitty stop animation original alien jaw, I'd rather see the xenomorph!

The co-pilot falls into the now golf course cabin spitting up what looks like semen.. Ewww, she spits, thats suc a turn off. The millionare asks whats wrong with her before saying the whole things a scam, to wich I wish the scam artist turned around and said 'Curses! Foiled again.' but no such luck. So as the pilot who ran into look after the co-pilot comes in he reaches into her mouth and yanks out alien bug thing and tried to drive that mother fucker with a putter. This has little effect as it jumps from person to person before going through a wall, explaining now that they can move through walls and into them as well. He chases it into the gambling room and smites that fucker on the black jack table! Wait a second, theres two red gambling rooms and ones a fucking mini golf course? How many rooms are on this thing?! He cuts the lizards head of with the golf club but it grows back, wich is a shame they could have used the bad lightning effect and have him yell 'THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!' and go Highlander quickening, would have made about as much sense as everything else. The little blighter ops around getting swung at before it does the fucking funniest thing ever, jump up into horny stewardess vagin and makes her body go all pulsy effect. Atleast theres some comedy in this thats not the acting, plot or effects. She then spits it out and it squeezes under a door, seeming to have lost the ablity to go through objects. She faints, badly, hammy acting at it's finest even Shatner could'nt do it this well. We see multiple lizard things eating away the the eltricals, to take out the power, crafty bastards. The millionare is'nt best pleased at whats going on and declairs this is a nightmare. Maybe not for him but I'm certianly going to have bad dreams after this suckfest. He storms into is cabin, not a good idea.

We find out horny died, I guess having an alien jump into your vagina and claw it's way through you till you spit it out is lethal. The pilot infroms the scam artist that it'll take fourty minutes to get back to Vegas, while over snow capped mountians that look more in place in the Himalias. We see that the millionare who vanished earlier to his room got killed and his girlfriend, only six more to go. We pan to the millonare that stormed off putting his money away before cutting to a computer screen in the cock pit that seems to tell use that there is an eighty nine percent chance one or more of the team have been infected and that if the alien reachs civilization it will take 27 hours for the entire world to be infected. Firstly, why do they have a computer that can work out these probablities and secondly unless this spreads faster than the plague hows it going to jump contients that fast? The captian makes a message for his black box, tellign everyone whats gone on and I swear he makes it sound more dangarous than it is in his bland monotones, though I get a feeling of the The Thing when he says 'No one trusts anyone at this point' mother fucker you're not in a good movie.

So the Amazing Accent Changer survived and now has moved to southern belle, because well who the fuck knows why. Her millionare lover sees the alien and we get a glimps of it in his eye beofre we see a xenomorph then a tail strike to the head that cut a clean whole in his forehead, seriously his brain would callapse on it's self, or spurt out the back you could'nt make a whole that clean if you tried. Also yet more CGI blood because computer graphics are cool! He's proclaimed dead, no shit Quincey, as he has a redish black blob on his head. I'd like to know how an alien fitted between deska nd what I guess is the wall. The pilot comes up with an idea of rounding the aliens into the hold then opening the opening a loading hatch and sucking them out. Again more questions, this is a charter jet do they have large loading doors in the back like a fraighter plane? All scam artists seems to be worried about is the loss of his equipment and keeping the creature alive to sell it to a scientists, for science! So he goes off to find the creature before it's to late. He starts cutting wires and the pilot gets pissed asthis does, I don't know what and he pulls a fucking gun out the back of his seat, ok so why not use this earlier to kill the fucking alien monster?! IT MAKES NO SENSE! So theres a stand off as the scam man appears with dynamite, again where was this being stored? He tells the pilot to shoot him and not miss or he'll blow them all up by lighting the dynamite, first off he's close enough for a headshot just cap his ass and secondly why say that? It's just sking for trouble.

They work out the creatures can't go through magnatised walls, why he planes magnatised I don't know is it necesary for a plane to be magnatised? So they decide to board up the ducts with wood, because that'll stop 'em from going through. Mean while scam artist is strapping on a parachute that looks more like a hiking ruck sack and he cuts the chords to the rest. As the rest of the crew try to secure the plane the co-pilot now at the cockpit tells them that they don't have long before they crash due to a fuel leack wich causes the non-dead stewardess to break down into tears. We see the scam artist trying to escape before before getting clawed in the head by stop animation alien and he fatalitys him with electricity making him spaz out. The pilot find the co-pilot dead, off screen deaths, gotta love 'em. The pilot goes into a cabin and finds the scam artist parachuted up and tells him they have to jump out but whats this? Alive after getting head clawed? Nope he's turning, half his face has gone black and he's grown a mantis arm.We're subjected to an awful fight before pilot shoots him twelve times at point blank range leaveing four holes and saying 'Game over' in such an uncheesy way it makes my piss boil. The accent changing lady gets attacked but the pilot jumps in to save the day, firing eighteen rounds and not reloading, wich I doubt he done before so clearly it's a magic handgun. This does little more than piss the alien off as he tongue chokes the accent bitch, finaly and turns his attention to the last remaining cast members, go alien go!


So they leg it to get a parachute, but notice all but scam artists have been cut so they go to loot his corpse, they make a run with the chute and see a siloutte of the alien that looks like someone just waving fake arms.Bullets have done fuck all good so far but they decide shooting it between the eyes will help, but he's out of ammo and the alien was he accent changer who seems to have survivied, damn it. no wait shes infected and trying to kill them but an axe to the head soon ends that shit. Jumping the pilot and stewardess hold on to one another and parachute down in a rather steady way, not flailing all over the place as you'd expect. We see the plane nose dive and explode, seem to hit some sort of damn or something and then we cut to a long angle where we see a firey trail that I think is actually taken from Krull when they ride the horses that leave a firey trail, though I may be wrong.

Then we cut back to Las Vegas and the pilots home where he and the stewardess are in morning after mode, how they got there we don't find out. They go to kiss and then suprise she's an alien! And kills him. BUT THEN! And this really makes me want to go postal the movie comits a fucking sin greater than being made, the pilot wakes up and we find out all this bullshit and the entire Flight to Hell was a bad fucking dream, my fucking god do I hate copout ending like this. He screams and says 'I'm late for work, nah not today' and goes back to sleep, I'm sorry but what? WHAT? WHAT?! Seriously all this is ment to be a fucking dream, when a movie does something that bloody awful for an ending I want to kill some. I mean come on atleast let the alien win.

Anyway thats my review on Flight to Hell, the cheapest B-movie made in the two thousands with the worst fucking acting, a plot that makes no sense and blatent fucking theft of better movies, if you see this in a video store or in a bargin bin or anywhere don't buy it, avoid it like the fucking plauge and if you do decide to buy it fucking burn it. It's a bloody abomination and you'll feel like you lost half your IQ for watching it and time of your life you'll never get back.

TimeSplitters Retorspective

TimeSplitters Retrospective




Awhile ago  I bought TimeSplitters and TimesSplitters: Future Perfect, I already owned TimeSpliters 2 and thought I might as well try the others, and seeing as they were made by the creative minds behind Goldeneye probably the greatest FPS ever brought out on the N64 and to me the greatest FPS game ever. These games are still in essence Goldeneye but with so much more, and really contend for the Goldeneye spot in my heart.

All the games have co-op story mode, wich removes the drudgery of solo play and gives you a much better change of finishing the levels when played on normal mode, also it's just great fun and as I have them on the PS2 you have to play them with a buddy round so atleast you're not with a random yelling profanities and racists slurs at you, even if you're whiter than a albino covered in tipex, everytime you make a small mistake. Add the fact that the deathmatch allows you to have four players and up to ten bot AI players, with the abilty to make your own multiplayer maps, you have a game that efys belief for games of it's time.

TimeSplitters

The first in the trilogy and one of the first release games for the PS2, TimeSplitters was a turning point, it's graphics at the time may not have been the best of the best but it had a style, being cartoony and never taking it's self to seriously. The story mode was'nt much of a 'story' you were just going through the level to grab an object then take the object to a designated hand in area, yet even this was challanging, some of the levels are a basic and easy A to B even on the normal dificulty, but one some levels like the mansion you're again zombies that will only die with headshots, with a double barreled two shot reload shotgun. When you start hitting the harder levels you will find yourself going S.W.A.T. and taking everything slow with military accuracy, wich though frustrating makes the game seem so much more epic. You don't et an ending for completing the game, it just keep the time you took so if you go back you can try to beat your old time also one thing I never got was the Timesplitters, later on they get unique models but in tis they're just zombies that hock plasma flem at you so it's hard to distinguish them from the reguler zombies. The arcade mode is your basic FPS multiplayer stuff, Deathmatch, Capture the Bag (instead of flag, duh. ), Bag Tag (King of the Hill. ), Knock out a sort of collecter scavanger hunt, Escort wich speaks for it's self and Last stand an assault type where you protect key objects for as long as you can from bots. All in all the game short and sweet and for it's time it ticked all the boxes, fun and frantic a game you should definatly give it a try.

TimeSplitters 2

The second installement in the Free Radical TimeSplitters tilogy, and to me probably the jewel in the crown, in this one we're introduced to a story wich revolves around a war between the humans and the TimeSplitters in the year 2401, our protagnists are the space marines Sergeant Cortez and Corporal Hart, a more musculer Riddick and red haired woman with a re-breather. We're told that the splitters are using the Time Crystals to infiltrate Earths past to change the course of history, so using a Stargate looking time portal Cortez is sent back to retrieve the crystals while Hart stays to hold back the flood of Splitters trying ot break into the bridge and taking out the portal. So diving head first into the portal Cortez and quantum leaps into the bodys of people from the timeframes he goes to, using them to get the time crystals and save the timeline. The levels themselves are very Goleneye esque and so are the missions but the one mission that always stays the same, get the time crystal. One of the most Goleneye like levels is the Soviet Dam, I know Goldeneye was made by the Free Radical, but really want to show of that they done it. Some of the levels seem to be in the near future to now, like Neo Tokyo in 2019, wich is also the obligatory 'stealth' level. The levels start off reletively easy on normal mode a few you may forget some parts of the mission and end up back tracking, but as they progress, even on normal difficulty they do get to a point of rage inducing frustration when you get turned into a colinder for the millionth time, forcing you to take to it with military accuracy as there are near to no medi-paks and armour is few and far between this being your only way to regain some durablity it angers you thats theres not more or that the enemys don't shoot with amazing accuracy and do more damage with the guns than you do once you get a hold of them. This may seem like a complaint but it's not, it's fun and the more angry you get the more fun it becomes as you're really having to think before you do anything, taking it slow so you can survive and feeling the tension build when you're out of armour and down to a fraction of health left and a few bullets in your gun and a wave of Timesplitters between you and your portal out.

The guns in this game are like an FPS rainbow of firepower, you have pistols like the revolver, luger and silenced pistol ( All these can be duel wielded. ) and finaly the sci-fi handgun wich has bouncey laser bullets that do more damage to you than the enemys most the time, also the auto crossbow that can get it's bolts ignited to deal with tree-ents. Then you move up to the rifles and shotguns, tommy guns, Soviet rifles ( AK-47's with grenade launcher capablities. ), SBP90 Machinegun and my personal faverote the magazineless Plasma rifle, though prone to over heating in tense battle leaving you unable to fire till it cools off it fires sticky plasma grenades on the alternate fire wich makes enemys run around like headless chickens screaming for mercy, you get the vintage rifle and sniper rifle both are just sniper rifles, as for shotguns you have the double barreled sawed off and the tactical 12 gauge autoshotgun, another fave of mine, gotta love fast firing shotguns just what the doctor ordered for infintry problems. Lastly you get the heavy weapons rocket launcher, homing launcher, grenade launcher, flame thrower and the minigun that is great for runnin' n' gunnin', then you have the more exotic Electro Tool used to stun robot enemys mostly and overload power nodes. Lastly the explosives these are just your standard Goldeneye remote, times and proxy mines with a make over to make them look more distinct.

The level creation tool is kept in this installement, the challange mode that is a bunch of levels with goals like behead the undead, break windows, collect bananas and other odd objectives, these unlock more charcters for multiplayer deathmatch and cheats, wich again taken from Goldeneye such as paintball, unlimited ammo, big head mode, gorilla mode and so on. Finaly you get the Deathmatch mode, again with bots, the modes are your basic deathmatch and team deathmatch, bagtag, capture the bag plus whole new ones such as monkeytag. All in all TimeSplitters 2 took the series to it's pinicale, and dodgey console aiming and levels that will frustrate you to no end, but with cratoony graphics, a sense of humor and distinctive levels, enemys and Timesplitters the game shines through, also the game is so amazing, so cool it features in the begining of Shaun of the Dead as the game Ed is playing. Pick it up if you have'nt it's out on the PS2, X-Box, ( Original. ) and Game Cube.

TimeSplitters: Future Perfect

The third and currently final installment in the series, TimeSplitters: Future Perfect took the second game and polished it to a mirror shine, then added better graphics, more humor and a nice little time paradox system. The storyline takes place directly after the second game with Sergeant Cortez on his way back to earth and Corpral Hart unfortunatly K.I.A., with the time crystals in his posestion. Once arriving on Earth you find out the TimeSplitters have not been defeated and are attacking the planet on full scale, once you and your friends blast your way to the military base, the time crystals get stolen and you are sent back in time to find them and destroy them so you can prevent the present from happening and banishing the Time Splitters into the void of time space. Or something like that. With that plan in action you travel through difrent times as Cortex, not as a hero of that time, though the second player can control that times 'hero', as you progress through levels you have your 'future self' appear and help you out via temporal time holes and then you have to go back as your future self to help your past self so you can advance to become your future self in the past. God I hate time travel.. Once you get the time crystals and get past the balls to the wall last two levels, and beat the end boss who shows just how good this game is by parodying Citizen Kane with the end bosses death, genious! Games done but believe me, it's not easy again you will find yourself taking levels slowly, going special operations through them and focusing fire, taking good shot and making sure not to cock up. If you're going to go through the story mode, I'd suggest recruiting a friend, not only to give you greater fire power, but because the games ALOT more fun with a second player there.

The guns in this game are basicly a revamp of the previous game, though alternate fire is change to up on the D-pad wich can take you by suprise at the start but easy to master, but while the guns are'nt bad, there does seem to be less than before, but player one gets an arm mounted 'telepathy grabber' as I call it, wich lets you pick up objects and throw them instead of his mini map finder from the second game. Not alot to say on the guns other than they are good but limited a little compared to the second game. As for the multiplyer some levels have vechicles now, so it's sort of like Halo multiplayer death match, wich is really fun. Also you get a ton of charcters to choose from as per normal, one of wich is the Timesplitter monkey in a veriety of costumes, also al the standard TimeSplitter death match options such as Capture the Bag and Team Death Match, but thats not a bad thing, you can't really improve on the death matches in the TimeSplitter series really though. Again the Map Maker is there and it's got extra bits, but it's only able to make interior maps like the first two, wich though not a bad thing is a little dull in the end of the day. Again if you have the chance to pick this up for the major consoles, X-Box, Game Cube and PS2, do so for one as the games well worth a play.

Conclusion

From game one to three TimeSplitters is unique, inventive and very humoris, though while Free Radical has been bought up by Crytek they have not over looked the popularity of these games and in 2008 some leaked screen shots and concept art. In 2009 it was Crytek UK, formaly Free Radical, declared the project on hold till the market had a high industry demand for this game. I for one say there is a HUGE demand for a game like TImeSplitters, after the drudgery of recent FPS' in dull brown or gun metal grey we need a colourful, wimsical and fun game like TImesplitters to swing in, sweep us off our jaded feet and take us on wild and exciting adventure through time and space with monkeys!

First!

Time to get that out the way incase anyone posts here.

Good day all I am Rune and here are some reviews I wrote previously on an old blog that I grew to hate the name of and my screen name there. It seemed cooler at the time.

And now onto my reviews.