Green Lantern: First Flight Review

Although this movie came out last year, First Flight had it's Cartoon Network premiere today. With the Green Lantern movie finally on its way into production, I wanted to get a general idea of Green Lantern as a super hero.

Well, Green Lantern First Flight is not a rich story per-say. It has Green Lantern material in it, but the dialogue suggests this movie was going for attitude instead of being deep. That's fine, I enjoyed it. I do recommend this movie because its good for fans of Green Lantern and people new to the Green Lantern story like myself. Having Christopher Meloni voice Hal Jordan was an interesting step, Meloni has a great diversity in acting.

As a whole the movie is decent, even earning a chuckle or two. If there is one thing I hoped for, it was seeing what the order of the Green Lantern does with it's rings. Hal Jordan earned a few chuckles out of me with what he created to fight a bug race at one point. In a way its simple-minded of Jordan and also insulting to bugs that can shoot your damn head off.

One scene in particular reminded me of the alien death scene in Alien: Resurrection when Jordan was making his way through the ship to Kanjar Ro. I hate that i'm thinking about that mediocre movie, but the similarity is quite noticeable.

If there was one scene that was powerful, it was seeing rings fall from the sky of dying Green Lanterns who had the misfortune of needing their powers to breathe. Such an impact that has on you, as helpless dying scenarios always seem to.

One of the Green Lanterns, Boodikka, seemed like the typical feminine character that sympathizes with the under-appreciated hero AKA Hal Jordan. Then, she suddenly has a good reason for doing that. It basically surprised the hell out of me and made her seem less one dimensional, although it came a bit too sudden it was welcomed by me.

If there was one thing I could nitpick about, it would be Hal Jordan's super form. Not going to elaborate but when you see it, it doesn't seem as imposing as it should and hardly any thought into the "transformation" process.

Oh well, that's a small disappointment. But I enjoyed Green Lantern: First Flight and give it a 3/5.

Ghostbusters 3 gets a director

We all heard that Ghostbusters 3 was happening, the writers of The Office were taking on the challenge of writing the script. Really now, the video game released this year had a story with funny dialogue. So why can't Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis write Ghostbusters 3?

Oh well, now we get the news of who is directing the third installment courtesy of Spill.com. Ivan Reitman!

Seems to be a good move considering he directed the other Ghostbuster movies, but Gametab's forums offer interesting points

Ivan Reitman's movies haven't really stood out

My Super Ex-Girlfriend
Evolution
Six Days Seven Nights
Father's Day
Junior

I haven't bothered to see any of these, and they don't sound that good. I do know that the supposed writers wrote Year One, which is BAD in addition to the uneasiness with Ivan Reitman.

I'm sure plenty of people will go out to see this movie, and I can hope they do a good job. It's been over 20 years since the last movie, a sequel isn't a bad idea.

Fallen Earth First Impressions

I recently had a chance to check out Fallen Earth, a relatively new MMO from developer Icarus Studios. By "relatively new" I mean it came out last year, September 2009.

The game is set in the post-apocalyptic year of 2154, and the gameplay feels a lot like Fallout 1 or 2. However, the tone is not so much 50's-style. Instead it's got more of a Road Warrior vibe to it. This isn't bad however, and it works to the game's advantage.

As far as gameplay goes, you've got some standard MMO features in there. The skillbar at the bottom of your screen, mapped to the number keys. An inventory, Stat building, etc. However, the thing that sets this game apart is it's intuitive use of shooter controls. Instead of clicking on an enemy and waiting for your skills to re-charge so you can attack again, you simply equip a weapon, or multiple weapons (which you can switch between by holding ctrl and using the number keys), and attack with the left-click for primary attacks, and right-click for secondary attacks. The game also sets itself apart by allowing you to zoom all the way in, and go into a first-person mode. This turns the game into more of an action game than an MMO.

As far as social aspects go, I didn't see many people once I got out of the tutorial. I might of not been in a big hub world, or maybe the game just isn't very active. However, I do like the emotes they give you.

The big problem with the game is it's polish. The game isn't polished whatsoever, the shooting feels really bad, with the camera changing when you start shooting and changing again when you stop. It feels very shaky, but it's definitely not intentional, and doesn't feel as smooth as other first-person or third-person shooters.

I guess it might be a little unfair to compare it to other shooters, but even compared to other MMOs, the game seems a bit too glitchy, I almost got stuck in one part where I had to sneak past some irradiated creatures, and by stuck I mean stuck in the wall. If they just took 6 months to put a nice layer of polish onto the game, I think it would have turned out much better, but as it is I'm not currently interested in playing anymore of it.

Razer's Xbox 360 Controller

Kotaku's Brian Crecente was drooling over Razer's new $50 Xbox Controller, a modified design with the start and back buttons being placed on the bottom. The D pad was also supposedly improved, I clicked the article thinking to myself there is no way I would b-



.....

W-Wow, I actually like this. It's wired, which seems like a step back but dang it reminds me of the original Xbox controller look. I might actually consider grabbing one of these when it comes out.

Project Needlemouse playable characters

SEGA has decided to tease people on their blog about the upcoming Project Needlemouse. The list couldn't be any more depressing for me but there are 11characters, 5 will be knocked off.

I'm a little nervous about this game now because it's supposed to be homaging the original games, but HOW could they not include Tails as a playable character? I know some don't like him, but he's a little higher up than say Amy. Why is there new characters on the list for a game that is trying to be like the old games?

Chip, Froggy, Charmy, Vector and Big better be coming off that list.

Also, Mr. Needlemouse is a new character?! why, WHY!

Oh well, this is just a guessing game SEGA is playing with us and i'll have to see the actual game. Sonic Unleashed wasn't too bad when I tried it, but the werehog concept was pretty stupid. However, I will have to acquire a copy before I properly slam that game as bad. I've been riding the bandwagon on Sonic Unleashed but I really want to believe Sonic Team did some good things that will carry over into Needlemouse.

One can hope the Sonic Team can get it right this time, the only good thing I can say is that Sonic Team seems to avoid canon. Well, I actually hate that they don't stay true to SatAM the tv show. I am glad I don't see characters like Cream on there as a playable character, she's a pretty pointless character. This also means we won't see the damn werehog experiment again, and being 2D I can't see the characters being voiced. Good, because having the 4kids actors doing them is something I don't want in light of the awful job 4kids did on Sonic X.

Once a Sonic fan, always a Sonic fan. If SEGA is trying to reach fans like me, they better have made a good game.

Nyko offers a better Wiimote

1Up provides an interesting article on Nyko's Wiimote knock off, which undercuts the Nintendo Wiimote enough to get Nintendo's attention in the future.

Nyko will offer the featured Wiimote by March, for about the same price of $40 as Nintendo's Wiimote. The surprising part, is that Nyko's Wiimote will have Motion Plus built in.

Wii Motion Plus is an additional $20 for EACH Wiimote, in itself another source of income for Nintendo. The fact that Nyko does not sell this Motion Plus integrated Wiimote for $60 might pressure Nintendo, especially since Nintendo Wii is slowly becoming a "party console" in the gamers mind as opposed to the primary console of use.

Which means no owner of a Nintendo Wii will be satisfied with just one Wiimote (no console is ever satisfactory with one controller), and Motion Plus is going to become necessary for most games in the future. Unless you prefer to be unable to do certain moves and pretend developers won't be pressured by Nintendo to use this feature.

The fact that Nyko flaunts Wii Motion Plus integrated, and with no additional cost will undermine Nintendo's Wiimote. So Nintendo will be forced to either try to prevent the release of Nyko's product or be forced to price the bundled Wiimote with Motion Plus for the current price of the Wiimote alone.

All that being said, wait till March if you desire another Wiimote. It will save you money, and save you from having a slightly larger plastic stick.

Movie Review: Daybreakers

I had recently went to see Daybreakers, a movie that I didn't know too much about, but saw a few cool looking commercials for. My expectations for the film weren't extremely high, but I thought it looked good. First, let's just take a look at how cool the movie's poster is. the contrast between the red and the black, the big bold letters, the creepy looking face, and the bloody looking texture, now that's how you do a good movie poster.

But enough about that, let's talk about the movie itself. The film is set in the future, it's never stated how far, but all of the technology seems to have advanced, the only thing is, the majority of the population are now vampires. Edward Dalton (played by Ethan Hawke) is a vampire who is working for a company that harvests humans and is trying to find a substitute for blood, so that humans and vampires may one day live in peace. there are also the blood-deprived vampires, who end up looking more like demon-spawns, that we're introduced to early on.

Without spoiling anything, the movie take a couple of twists, most of which were fairly predictable. However, the movie has a nice change of pace both in terms of the type of vampires and in terms of originality.

These vampires aren't the lovey-dovey daylight-sparkling vampires of Twilight that we've recently been accustomed to hearing about. These vampires are the old-school, burn in the daylight, bite the necks of humans vampires, and it's refreshing to see them return to the big screen.

It's also refreshing to see an original concept instead of the same cookie-cutter movie you see a lot nowadays. Both in terms of setting and characters, the movie feels completely unique, and it's nice to see a director take some risks.

The production value was also very nice, the sets were great and really immersed you in the world. The special effects were nice, very good looking blood, gore, some very nice death scenes, however the burning effect kind of looked a little too CG, of course, I think I'm biased just based on the fact that Avatar looked so pretty.

Overall, Daybreakers is a great popcorn flick for anybody who likes a good sci-fi or horror movie. While it doesn't re-invent either genre, it definitely makes for an entertaining movie throughout, and one that I'd definitely see again.

I give Daybreakers 4 out of 5 stars.