Review by Gokhra
Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, twists back on itself to end where it began. All the players and puzzle pieces are finally explained and set in motion, ready for the events of the first "Star Wars" film (1977's "Episode IV: A New Hope") to start all over again. It ends with Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) making his last metamorphosis into Vader and the Evil Empire rises. But does that spoil the fun of the movie? Well, it does dilute the whole climax maybe just a little bit but then again who doesn't know how the end will come? After all for the last two decades we have been watching the movies build up to end horrifically and tragically in this last scenario.
The plot:
Many critics have been rough on the last two "Star Wars" (1999's "The Phantom Menace" and 2002's "Attack of the Clones"), but this one managed to be a smashing success on its own terms. It's the scariest, most exciting and most visually prodigious of the sextet, with action sequences that explode off the screen.
"Revenge of the Sith" begins with an amazing, bang-up air fight, - led by young Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and Anakin. It has them whipping through the skyscrapers and alleys of city-planet Coruscant. After all every great movie just has to have a chase scene. The whole thing ends with awesome visions of destruction and a fantastic plunge into the abyss. It happens not just with characters we like, but an entire planet, galaxy and way of life goes up in flames.
The story charts the last stages of the eventual Evil Emperor's insidious plot to overthrow interplanetary parliamentary democracy and replace it with tyranny and horror. Incredible CGI actions are the order of the day such as the violent battles with renegade Jedi Count Dooku (Christopher Lee), starchy parliamentary debates presided over by Chancellor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) and Obi-Wan's grand military adventure. Yoda takesthe flor with some swashbuckling acts while the series' most persistent characters, robots C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) and R2-D2 (Kenny Baker) take the limelight.
All of this approaches a darkness even deeper than that of 1980's "The Empire Strikes Back," the critical favorite of the entire series. Yet the final effect is exhilarating. The gloom and tragedy are muted because we know the real end of the story of the fireworks-fantasy celebration of the Evil Empire's end set in 1983's "Return of the Jedi."
Lucas has constructed the whole last half of the epic double trilogy something like the flashback solution of a mystery story, though by now little of it is a surprise. As he writes finis to a project that has preoccupied him for most of his moviemaking career, he achieves once again, at his best, technological marvels and storytelling delight.
The verdict:
There's really not much of a verdict other than a unanimous rating of 10. The climax for George Lucas' entire "Star Wars" series comes in a blaze of fire and darkness, wild light saber battles and enough pyrotechnics to keep your mind in a state of amazement. It neatly wraps up what has bee going on for the last two decades. All the "Star Wars" movies will continue to entertain us for many years to come. They were grand fun, and this last one's no different.
Review By Le Chupacabra
"5…4…3…2…1! Spread your wings and fly… God be with you!" yells the Major. Snake jumps out from the airplane's cargo bay and plummets towards the Earth at ungodly speeds. He spreads his limbs to slow down his descent. Just when it seems he's about to crash into the forest canopy below, a parachute bursts out of his backpack and Snake glides down safely. He has successfully completed the world's first HALO jump.
But that's not the real aim of his mission.
In the aftermath of the volatile situation of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the USA has deployed one of its top operatives into Soviet territory in order to rescue a weapons scientist. The success of this mission could be the difference between global peace and World War III.
If the intro tells you anything, it's this: MGS series creator Hideo Kojima is back in action with what is possibly one of the greatest videogames of all time!
This time we trace back through history and place ourselves in the awesome shoes of one of the greatest soldiers of all time: Big Boss. This is same guy from whom MGS hero and penultimate badass Solid Snake and his nigh-on-unkillable brother Liquid Snake were cloned from. Yes, Snake Eater is a prequel to all things MGS. By going back in time, we are able to find the answers to all the questions and riddles we encountered in all the other Metal Gear games.The story is one heck of a joy-ride filled with enigmatic characters, shocking twists, heartfelt interactions and deeply provocative undertones that question moral issues and ethics. It also has a terrific sense of humour at the right moments! It's also the best MGS story to date yes, it's that damn good!
Players are taken from the the drab, cold corridors of the imminent future into the temperate forest areas of the Soviet Union. The stealthing here is a whole new experience. Since it's set in 1964, it's bye-bye Soliton radar, hello basic senses. Now you have to use both eyes and ears as you make your way across the undergrowth. The environs can be used as great cover and that's awesome as it really makes you feel like some super-spy as you sneak about from tree to bush and the enemies have no clue of your whereabouts! What's not so awesome is that the foliage and general forestry can also hide the bad guys. Instead of making it a frustrating experience of trial-and-error *cough*splintercell*cough*, the sneaking around is one of the most damn enthralling and engaging experiences ever! There's a genuine sense of tension as you are forced to use your sight and hearing to find out where the enemies are. Pinpointing someone's location just by hearing him rustling through the grass to your left is as good as it gets!
Fact: guards are annoying buggers and must die. However, being a stealth game you can't really go around obliterating everyone with a minigun. After all, the fun and challenge comes from getting past without being seen! However, should your trigger-finger itch, ask and MGS3 shall provide! Sneaking around, back hunched and knife in hand you loom ominously behind an unaware sentry. A quick stomp to the back of the knee, a sharp twist of the arm and the guard is in a chokehold with your knife to his throat. From here it's really upto you. Interrogate him for info under pain of death? Sounds good. Slam him to the ground and knock him out cold? Maybe… Snap his neck? Now we're getting somewhere… Um…slit his throat and let the claret flow? Hell yeah! These moves are all part of the brilliant hand-to-hand fighting system called CQC. It's one of the most enjoyable fighting mechanics I've used and really makes you look and feel like a can of 100% Pure Whup-Ass®! The gunplay is also great with a large arsenal of weapons from the omnipresent AK-47 to the always satisfying Dragunov Sniper Rifle. However, the fun lies in the stealth. Plus, you don't want to trigger an alert and have the whole base after you, do you? Then again, unlike a certain Sam Fisher, if you happen to trigger Alert Mode, you can still kick butt with CQC and live to tell the tale. Or you could use a Fake Death Pill and fool your enemies just like any super spy should! On a slightly unrealistic note, the game also throws some bosses at you. In this case, realism be damned! The bosses are very challenging, requiring quite a bit of thinking and strategy. One particular boss fight spans three maps and will require every bit of skill you've learnt to defeat him (provided you're not playing on Very Easy). These bosses present some of the most fun and satisfying fights ever!
When watching this game for the first time, don't forget to wipe away the drool and pick your jaw up from the floor. MGS3's visuals are a sweet, sweet treat for the eyes. The obsessive levels of detail will have you staring in awe! The visuals are part of the package that draws you in and makes you feel like you're there! The characters animate very smoothly with every trapping of realism. Snake himself moves every bit like a professional: back hunched, each step carefully measured and with his gun held in the proper way (pointed downwards, a certain Mr Bond should note.) Series creator Hideo Kojima has always had a flair for cinematic presentation and this game is a true culmination of his directorial skills. Everything, from the camera angles to the action sequences to the slow, emotional moments to even the "acting", is handled superbly and with a polish that very few Hollywood blockbusters can match!
Do this: list a bunch of superlatives (might want to check that up, too) from the dictionary. Then throw away the list. They still don't do justice to the brilliance of MGS3's graphics!
The sound design is of equal calibre. Hollywood composer Harry Gregson-Williams (Enemy of the State, Shrek, and The Rock), has created an absolute corker of a soundtrack. The music perfectly complements every frame of action and is an unusual yet brilliantly effective way of expressing emotion. The voice acting is of exemplar quality. The VAs speak their lines with conviction and really make a difference in those tense, emotion-heavy scenes. The same attention to detail permeates into the sound effects, too!
MGS3 isn't just a videogame. It's an incredible experience that reaches out and immerses you like no other. From its tense, engaging gameplay to the ridiculously good-looking graphics to the intense aural experience to the awesome, constantly thrilling story to the perfectly timed humour to the utterly enigmatic characters, MGS3 is a true rollercoaster ride of epic proportions! MGS3, you are better than the rest, nope…you are the best!
Sites Unseen
By Niloy
I've played San Andreas. I loved it. And I tried to review it. And I failed. The game is so great that it simply wasn't possible for me to describe it. It's that good a game.
The game's different. It's so different that at first it doesn't feel like a GTA game at all. It's a surreal and unusual experience. The game has so much depth in it! But then, it's not a game at all. It's an experience to be had.
If you're not in San Andreas with CJ, you definitely should be. I don't care what anyone says, this is going to be the best game around… until the next game in the series comes out.
The links are available in my site [niloywrites.blogspot.com] so that you don't need type them up.
First Person Gamer's Magazine
[gamersquarter.com]
The Gamer's Quarter magazine is a quarterly publication produced by a group of passionate gamers with the desire to create a new type of videogame magazine.
MTV News sat down with the editor of The Gamer's Quarter to talk to him about the impetus for creating a free online magazine dedicated to New Games Journalism. It's MTV-short, but worth the read with a nice run down of the first issue and tease to the second, which just hit the website. Check out the article [doiop.com/MTVgame] and The Gamer's Quarter, both deserves your time. The Issue two is available, [doiop.com/Gamers2] 9.4 MB. The first issue is also golden: [doiop.com/Gamers1].
LAN Gamers as art
[doiop.com/LANgamers1]
Here's some nice black and white art shots of gamers playing in some sort of LAN tournament. Is it just me or are there an awful lot of shots of women with their mouths open? More at [doiop.com/LANgamers2] and [doiop.com/LANgamers3]
Babycal Throw
[doiop.com/throw]
A Flash game where the goal is to get one kid with a soda can in his backpack to toss it up so it will nail one of the other kids walking by. If you time it right you can get a twofer when the victim kid's soda launches out of his pack after being hit. Catchy gameplay, and with surprisingly smooth bass centered ambient-ish background music.
Transl8it
[transl8it.com]
Web site Transl8it will convert plain English into text message shorthand or SMS-speak into English, so it's EZ 4 U 2 figur out wot d heck dat dumb kid w n brains txtD U bout.
Tough Customers...
[doiop.com/customers]
I love secret shoppers, it empowers us all. 1Up/EGM had a woman go in to several game and electronic stores and play up the old "I'm a girl and don't know jack about games" stereotype. The results run from heartening to horrifying. To summerize, though you really should go read the entire item it's a gem, GameStop rocks, EB Games are elitists, Best Buy is moronic and Toys 'R' Us should have their games taken away from them.
42
[doiop.com/42]
There cool little Wario Ware take-off with a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy theme that's fun and test both your dexterity and novel knowledge. I suck at it, but not as much as the most others.
It's a shame they don't tell you what you're supposed to be doing before each game, after a couple of goes I found I was failing for reasons I couldn't understand, and as you only get one life that's pretty frustrating. It takes the form of Warioware but misses the exemplary attention to balancing and gameplay that makes those games so enjoyable.
Contents under extreme Escher
[doiop.com/Escher]
The Worth 1000 image twisters give surrealist MC Escher's iconic flat images given new life through a little interpretation. And the work
Google Will Eat Itself
[gwei.org/gwei]
We generate money by serving Google text advertisements on our website GWEI.org. With this money we automatically buy Google shares via our Swiss e-banking account. We buy Google via their own advertisement! Google eats itself - but in the end we will own it!
By establishing this model we deconstruct the new global advertisment mechanisms by rendering them into a surreal click-based economic model. We inject a social virus ("let's share their shares") into their commercial body hidden under a polite and friendly graphic surface. GWEI.org is a show-case and to unveil a total monopoly of information [Google search-engine & added services], a weakness of the new global advertisement system and the renaissance of the "new economic bubble" - "reality" is, Google is currently valued more than all Swiss Banks together (sic). Let's open their goldmine to the people.
[niloy.me@gmail.com]
With a name like that, most people tend to overlook Golden Boy as some rather lame title. Which is a serious shame, because for sheer side-splitting humour, even if of the sophomoric (read: American Pie) type, nothing on any side of any line comes close. So, the cat is out of the bag: Golden Boy is crude, at times offensive, even, but all the more worth the watch for it. To be noted, of course, is that this is strictly off limits for younger audiences, but for anyone with a sense of humour, Golden Boy is a must-see.
The show's forte is in its lead character, to be sure: Oe Kintaro. At first appearances as shallow and empty as anyone is ever likely to get, he is in truth a memorable character of epic proportions. His actions appear exceedingly obscene at times, just plain laughable at others, and he remains the most concentrated dose of hilarity you can find short of Rowan Atkinson. This, of course, is facilitated by the infinite series of absolutely irresistible women thrown his way. Underneath it all, though, he has a heart of gold, and while it becomes predictable in every episode of this six part series that Oe's going to save-the-day, just how he goes about it is priceless. This, despite the fact that virtually nothing is given away about him throughout the show except a rather disturbing attraction towards toilet-seats..
In traditional grading, the series is let down by the artwork and animation, which is far from top-notch by today's standards; it does, however, have a satisfactorily crude feel to it (fitting Kintaro's more ridiculous antics, AND the sheer brilliance with which he manages to get out of the mess he inevitably cooks up along the way). Likewise, the music does the show no favours, and the plot does get mildly predictable. That, and the fact that the series ends far too soon.
All of which becomes irrelevant, though, time and again throughout the series; Kintaro's outlook of "studying" everything around him (the fellow takes studying for a hobby, and every one of his mishaps as a "lesson") is infinitely entertaining; that, and the fact that the comedy, slap-stick as it gloriously is, keeps on coming - and coming - and so on. It's all extremely brainless, and way too funny for words.
Ergo, the verdict: if you can bear a pinch (OK, a lot) of naughty 15+ humour, Golden Boy is made for you.
