Ready Player One.

First thing I'd like to say is that I'm sorry that I wasn't able to post for the last two weeks. Last week I had a major headache and couldn't even conceive of writing that day. The Sunday before that was a different story. That Sunday, I had just finished Ready Player One on Friday and I was still trying to get the words to describe what I experience by the midnight deadline. I'm gonna get down to business and say that is is one of the few must reads I've stumbled across, and I heard about it via word of mouth, which is even rarer these days. This book is as unique as it is strange. I wonder how Ernest Cline came up with  the concept for it? Anyhow, the book is about a teenager named Wade, who leads a rather insane life on future earth. The entire plot is based on a concept similar to The Westing Game, where a wealthy entrepreneur, towards the end of his life, set up a major treasure-hunt. Whoever puts all the pieces together gets his fortune. With a twist. The entire puzzle is taking place in a virtual world that's bigger than anything you could possibly imagine. Throughout the entire book the author kept me on my toes, I never knew what to expect next. If you've got the chance I'd recommend the audiobook, read by none other than Wil Wheaton. While he's not the best voice-actor I've ever heard he does lend a certain atmosphere to the story that would be lacking otherwise. I hope that the movie is as good as the book was, and as I read it I was picturing who I thought the cast should be. I figure that either Wheaton or Andrew Garfield could play Wade, and there are several roles that Freema Agyeman, William Shatner, Patrick Stewart, Matt Smith, Bruce Willis, David Tennant, Vin Diesel or Daniel Craig could fill. Since non-gamers would probably not get most of the references, it probably wouldn't be entertaining to people who know nothing about games. I guess you could say that I'm a strange case, since some of the references might not have been gotten by people under a certain age. I guess my knowledge of all things Spider-Man and otherwise finally paid off in the fact that I didn't have to look anything in the book up. That being said, the book references things that I know that people probably wouldn't get. Despite the massive amount of gaming and 70s/80s pop-culture references that someone who didn't spend their childhood watching retro TV wouldn't get the book is still entertaining. It's a massive slice of history, and it could get you interested in gaming culture if you're not. I know that's taking a massive leap of faith, and I know I'm not covering the plot very much, but this book is something that should not be spoiled. Beyond all of the nods towards games and gaming lies a unique journey unlike any other. To be perfectly honest, I loved the book for the story as much as I did for the references to the span of time that produced most of the entertainment I enjoyed as a child and still enjoy today. All in all, Ernest Cline's Ready Player One is a must read for those who enjoy surreal science-fiction, post-apocalypse scenarios, slices of life, personal journies, and all things of the 70's through 90's. It gets and 10.0* rating.

Glacier 2: First Impressions

Ever hear of this game? I certainly didn't. Not until I stumbled across it on the website of the local library. I figured it was worth a shot to play it and see what was up. What I found was a (If you can possibly believe it) A more bugged-out version of Vigilante 8. I've so far not been able to figure out if there was ever a Glacier 1. Amazon has listings for Glacier 2 and Glacier 3, but the closest I can find is something by a completely different publisher and developer. The strange thing is that I can't even find a Wikipedia page for any of the games I just mentioned, so I had to get the cover image from Amazon. Speaking of Amazon, I can't believe that someone is trying to charge 20 bucks for Colonial Marines. Back on topic: The controls suck. This game was released in 2009, after.... Okay, I'm not gonna list off ALL the racing games that are better than this, but I'm gonna say that it was released after Mario Kart Wii and Need for Speed Undercover. Yeah. Okay, time to explain the controls for those of you who don't subscribe to my YouTube Channel. There is no nunchuk support. And if that blew your mind, then hold on to your seats, because it doesn't have GameCube or Classic Controller support either. Yeah, the only way you can play is with the Wii remote held sideways. I don't know about you, but I don't have a Wii wheel and even if I did have one it wouldn't make the controls any less fidgety. Now, controlling the racing with the Wiimote sideways should mean that the D-pad is used for selecting stuff in menus right? Well yes, but you've got to shift the Wii remote in your hand to use the pointer to select the things the game doesn't let the D-pad do. Just to lump that into one sentence: Without the Wii Wheel you can barely drive, with the Wii Wheel, you can barely use the menus. Now, the tree graphics suck. The graphics in general are sub-par, but the trees look like they were made for an early PSX or N64 game. I've seen better looking games than this, or at least more consistent-looking games than this on almost every console ever made ever, even ones weaker than the Wii. In order to unlock new levels you must complete the level before the one you want to unlock on the difficulty that the locked level says under the lock. Personally I unlocked three levels in the 30 so minutes I played the game and by god was that annoying to do. It's kind of hard to review a game like this, because on the one hand if it'd been polished a bit more it would have been fine but on the other hand that's no excuse for a game being this broken. As in Vigilante 8, there are environmental obstacles. And just like in Vigilante 8, they're practically impossible to avoid. Because the power-ups respawn you can just stay by the machine-gun ammo, boost-fuel and missiles and then shift into turbo at several hundred miles per hour after you're all filled up, spraying your opponents with lead, out-running them with almost infinite hyperdrive powers and blowing them to shreds with rockets, which means that the first two courses are easy as a puzzle in Doctor Who: Evacuation Earth. After that they add in trees. Unfortunately these trees have been imported from Liberty City, San Andreas and Vice City up to the alps, so they stay rooted in place if you hit one. This is extremely problematic if you lose control, and as it is extremely easy to do so in this game, it becomes rather frustrating. I finally stopped playing when I fell off the track and I could neither reverse out of the hole, nor would the game spawn me back on the track. I could go on about how the camera is annoying and about how it seems to have taken most of its ideas and levels from other, better racing games, but I'd like to forget this game as soon as possible. All in all, I'd say that the game is about a 2.34*, and that it's not worth renting, buying, borrowing, or even getting for free. I wouldn't turn it down if someone were to give it to me free because Dragon Ball Z Budokai T2 needs a Wii case. I'll see you guys next week.

The Avengers

What can I say? 2012 was a great year for movies. We got The Avengers, MIIIB, The Amazing Spider-Man, Les Miserable, and Skyfall. And it's taken me two years, but I've finally reviewed them all. I guess I'm going to have to look at the rest of film in 2012 because it seems that most of my favorite movies so far have come out of that year. On to the review.
The Avengers carries on immediately from where Thor, Iron Man 2, The Incredible Hulk and The First Avenger left off. It's awesome, and it's got all the best elements of all of them. It's got the humor from Thor and Iron Man, and the dramatic action from all of them. As I've said about Thor and The First Avenger, if you haven't seen this or them they're definitely worth picking up. I'm planning on re-watching Iron Man, Iron Man 2 and The Incredible Hulk so I can review them as part of Avengers: Phase One before I move on to the rest of Phase Two, Iron Man 3, Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Thor: Dark World. One thing I have to wonder is why they didn't just call it Marvel's Avengers instead of the more awkward Marvel's The Avengers, considering that the former rolls off the tongue a lot easier. On to the movie. It's great, everything works. It's awesome. I don't want to spoil too much, just like the other movies in Avengers Phase One, because it must be experienced. As crossovers go, it's awesome. There's no way that Batman vs Superman can top it that I can think of, especially because it's not a crossover between Nolan's Batman and Nolan's Superman, rather a new Batman and Nolan's Superman. The Avengers is an awesome movie to watch, but it won't make a whole lot of sense to you if you haven't seen the rest of Phase One. 10.0*

Thor

And now on to the review I promised last week, Thor.

As with last week it's going to be a short review. So down to brass tacks.
Thor is, like The First Avenger, heart rending, action-packed, tear-jerking, heart warming and awe-inspiring. Unlike The First Avenger though, it's also slapstick funny at times. It's an awesome movie and like the rest of The Avengers series I'd recommend if you haven't seen it already that you do so as soon as possible. It's more than worth your time to go out, get the movie, bring it home, and watch it. However you procure your media, be it Netflix, libraries or rentals Thor is a great movie to watch. Not much else to say.
10.0*

Captain America: The First Avenger

So I recently managed to watch Captain America, and I loved it.
There's not much to say without giving away what made the movie great, but the special effects were great, the story is great and the changes they made from the comics serve to make the story better. Everything about the movie serves to make it better, even the parts that seemed out of place fit in at the end. I'd really rather not go into much more detail because it might ruin the movie. Suffice to say that if you haven't seen it already it's worth renting or borrowing or queuing up online.
10.1*
Now normally I'd post two reviews if a review was this short, but I wasn't able to get the time to write the article until it was almost Monday morning so I'll get the second review out sometime during the week. It's probably gonna be Thor.

Max Payne: First Impressions

I'd like to apologize for the two-day late review, Sunday was a little too busy for me and I wound up only remembering at 1:30 AM the next day.
So, Max Payne on the Xbox is a game I got for Christmas. And I have to say that I really like it. I like it enough that I might even get the other two games in the series. The game is fun, the story does this thing where if you're not paying attention some things won't make sense, but it's not particularly noticed when you're playing, although it's actually kinda cool if you like that kind of story. Personally I really like the ability to slow time down and do all kinds of crazy stuff. On thing I have to criticize is the fact that you can't move slowly if you're trying not to alert a roomful of enemies to your presence and the crouch function is practically useless because you can't move while crouched. I wound up having to re-bind the buttons even before I played the game so I could keep from having to re-learn a new set of controls. Speaking of controls, I barely used the "fast look" option even though it's actually pretty useful. I guess we can blame the design of the Xbox Controller S for that because the R2 button on the Xbox is kinda hard to use and is pretty much forgotten in the heat of combat. The story takes itself way too seriously, but it's the kind of too serious that immerses me in the game. One thing I have to criticize is that even for the time the face-mapping is cringe-inducingly horrible, but since you don't usually see the rendered model of Max's face in the game, it's not a big issue. Most of the times you see his face is when the game shifts to graphic-novel style film-noire cutscenes which in this day and age would be seen as cutting corners (I'm looking at you SEGA. That job you did with Sonic Colors on the DS and Generations: Blue Adventure on the 3DS was less than adequate. Not that the games were bad) but as it is they actually counterbalance the horrible face-mapping. The faces wouldn't be so bad if they'd been textured properly though. I've seen better face-texturing on PlayStation and N64. Granted, the polygon rendering is a little too flat for the hardware. Not that it takes away from the game itself, the faces just take a bit of getting used to. As the game came out in 2001 it's hard to fault the developers on any of the graphical issues, but I have one thing to say about it; It's better than Splinter Cell. It's also a better stealth-game than Splinter-Cell (Okay, that's going too far, but it's at least a more entertaining game for me). I can't help it, Splinter Cell gets on my nerves with how badly it does everything Metal Gear Solid did better with less to work with. So all in all I had fun with this game.
Wow, I didn't even talk about how the game was a third-person shooter with bullet-time mechanics and acrobatics. Anyways, I do recommend Max Payne. It's fun, it's entertaining, and it's worth the five-bucks it takes to pick it up for an old Xbox game. Check it out if you find it. I'll review it some more when I've played more of it.

Lifesigns: Surgical Unit first impressions

So, for the first review of the year, I figured I'd get around to a game that I've been playing for the DS.

Okay, so this is the second game in a series that follows the lead of Trauma Center. On a completely different note, it was kinda tough to find the American cover, because Wikipedia has the European cover and as such, that's the one that comes up first on Google. Back on topic: Lifesigns 2: Surgical Unit is the second game in the Lifesigns series, the first of which was never released outside Japan. Before the inevitable arguments about which is a ripoff start, I will refer to Wikipedia, which states the first game came out at the end of 2004, several months before the original Trauma Center did.
Damn, games that came out in the last generation of console are almost ten years old. Thinking about that makes ME feel old. Anyways, the game is pretty good, although if it'd been released alongside its prequel back in 2005 instead of in 2007 then it probably would have fared better critically. On the one hand, I like the puzzle solving and other things that you can do in the hospital, and the art it intricately detailed. On the one hand, the gameplay tends to aggravate me but on the other hand, it's the kind of aggravation that makes me want to complete the game. I don't know if I'll ever finish it because I've got a gigantic backlog by now of DS games alone, but I'll try. I never thought I'd finish Chinatown Wars either.
Anyways, the characters are pretty cool and the gameplay is okay. I don't say "Okay" in the "below average" sense, it's just I can't say much about it. Depending on what you like, you could like it or hate it. The main difference from Trauma Center is that the surgery graphics are manga drawings instead of real-time 3D polygons. Sometimes you can't really tell what you're supposed to do during the medical exam stages, but on the upside, there's no way you can screw that up as far as I can tell. I'm on the ropes as to whether I like this game or not, it's a handful of great ideas rolled into one game, and I can't tell if it executed it right. There are a bunch of strange minigames in it as well that are a little out of place. The game is strange, I'll give it that. It's the kind of strange that would normally keep my interest if I didn't have a bunch of other games to play as well. I guess I'll have to tag-team it the way I did with Ace Attorney and The World Ends With You so I can keep my interest up. I like it, but I'm not sure how much I like it. For now I'm gonna have to leave you with that.